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Some might think life on the Range amid pits and dumps would be bleak, industrial, dusty and impoverishing; draining rather than uplifting or affirming. But what eye to use? 
Is the drear rust of dark spoils and waste only that, or is it an effort asserting future productivity as yet unseen? 

Every miner, my dad began in coal, knows what they do, no matter how black and tired it makes them, brings light or heat or safety for others they’ll likely to never know by name but who are the reason for and beneficiaries of enterprise. 

An outsider might look and see big, ugly holes ripped in the earth. Miners, some of whom are damn good at hiding it, most often love their work and take to heart its difficulties and challenges. 

I might say things are seldom as they seem and, more like than not, contrary to what we’re told. Miners and mining don’t rape the earth. Those saying so speak having all the fruit of the labors they deny. 
As much or more can be said of any of the other unpopular, ungreen and unpretty things detractors take for granted as they rest in comfort on the sweat of others.

In my family and the town I grew in (a new community built for taconite workers) there was (both union and management) pride and concern. Was everyone happy and content? Sure, you bet, as in NO. 
But wrangling, even when hot, aimed at improving, doing a better job. Work is a good, perhaps necessary, part of happiness. 

What? 

The incredulous (I could say more of them) say surprised I’m not touting leisure and ease and fun. Nope. Not me. I find most advertised fun to be loud and expensive, two things I can do without: non-fun. 
In contrast, work is rewarding and satisfying. A person has to be, much as possible, stubborn about work choices, but even a small task done brings reward. 

My larger family was full of workers: sign painters, upholsters, lots of machinists along with tool and die makers who did, made, built things. We had a couple a couple of crooked salespeople, too. 
There’s a Polack saying, “Work teaches how to do it.” It does, along with instructing about self and revealing vocation (or occupation) distinct from a paid position.

Robert Bly, who I never properly thanked for doing so, alerted me to a poetic reality of being successful as a walnut tree. Think of that. 

Maybe my Busha came close being 100% herself with backyard garden, constant devotion, attention to family and happy in a no nonsense way. I wish I could be successful as a tree or even a shrub.

So, time to ask, what does a shrub have to say (or have any business addressing) regarding Anima Nostra? Hum? For a change I’m not pushing Latin. This one’s Italian. OK, close, but not Latin. 
What’s it mean? 

Easy to put into English as is SISU for a Finn. Those who will look the two words up will find English equivalents, quite awful ones, me thinks. 

Anima (contrast with animus) says animation, life, together with Nostra combining to say Arise, My Soul. We in the neutral, de-sexed and homogenized world don’t make much mention of antiquated souls, do us? Personal reflection isn’t encouraged. 

Outward culture tends toward costume, make up and décor to be “us” as personality or politics or origin. In some instances going shopping is like attending a costume ball with Halloween (heavy on the hollow) themes. Is that you or who you pretend or hope to be?

A puzzlement (thank you King and I) like Anima Nostra might not become clearer, but is a lot prettier if we go to Haydn, M’s choral version. I know, I know, such music is mere appropriation or Western theft culturally no better or worse than any other. Fine. 

We can consider other music and noises another time. Right now it’s this one by Haydn, M, a few hundred years out of tune with our times, but perhaps not lacking tune for something inside and unnamed because, opposite to Voldemort, it speaks of things outside the advertised norms that live inside, some call it heart.

Heart. Did you know Chopin’s heart was supposedly smuggled back to Poland, a tale or gesture from the time musicians represented threats depending on who backed them? Sounds a bit familiar, maybe. Who knows? 

But back to singing about a soul alive or lively or enlivened is, I think, on the upbeat optimistic side. Isn’t it? But in any case, how do we understand ourselves and things in the world around us? What’s important or valid? What’s waste, what’s not? How do we know? Listen to your heart? 
Whatever it is lies outside words themselves. So maybe it is the heart after all.

As a young aspiring nobody I felt (heart?) my church made a big and alienating mistake by removing Latin so we’d be more contemporary and popular. (See how well that worked out, hum.) 

Putting aside beautiful, well developed ritual was questionable enough, but to assume members were too stupid to understand the Latin Mass was an insult. 

My Polish busha did it, countless others from many language families did it, so just when did members of the Body get too dumb? Wasn’t the Body, but the Head plugged its ears to not hear the voice urging on an arising soul.

Can (and I’m going to) bring the thought to a secular stage. How about a Puccini opera with “Nessun Dorma” being sung. Not religious. Not easy to crack or open up, same as SISU is not easily simplified (if there’s a Finn around I advise you not to try). 

When put in English two words of Italian grow into more that lack, simply don’t have, the push power of two in Italian. 

It takes heart (defined modestly) to approach Anima or Nessun Dorma, etc. and find humanity. When heart is absent in us, in our teachers and leaders core meaning is lost, withers, dies.