Ladybelle Fiske (nickname)

Writer, champion of children and animals, co-supporter of Quarry Hill Creative Center in Rochester, Vermont. An old hill farm, it became a retreat for artists, writers, and other creative people, and for freethinkers , when my parents, artist and writer Barbara and Irving Fiske bought the land in 1946. Many people flowed through here throughout the years. Some built cabins and raised children here, on the principle of Irving and Barbara that children should never be spanked, called names or neglected. “Children are ambassadors from another dimension and should be offered every courtesy.” – – Irving Fiske.
I have a daughter, Joya Lonsdale, who is an Internal Family Systems Psychotherapist in Boston who also trains other therapists. The daughter of astrologer Ellias Lonsdale, Joya grew up at Quarry Hill and was raised by many caring “fathers” and “mothers,” as well as me. She attended North Hollow School, created and run by parents of the children, and other adults who lived at QH and helped to raise the kids. Joya was raised by many people here who loved her Her joy in life and openness to people has never changed.
I have a son, Andrew Daniel McFarlin, who is a deputy states’ attorney in Chittenden Co. VT. He attended NHS as well until he decided he wanted to go to the public school in Rochester, from which he graduated as valedictorian in 2006.
I have written since childhood, but published not a great deal; some of my work has appeared in Vermont magazines and ‘newspapers. Recently, meditation teacher Yvonne Aliquò recorded some of my poetry and published it on Insight Timer, the free meditation app, where it seems to be reaching people who enjoy it. In the 1990s, with others, I wrote an academic essay on Quarry Hill’s opposition to hitting children and our believe that they should be raised in as much freedom and love as possible. The essay appeared in “The Journal of Psychohistory.” I published there as Isabella Fiske McFarlin.
I grew up at QH , went through, and helped to create its changes and permutations. I helped my parents entertain and find spaces for the many people who began to visit us from New York City and elsewhere.
I wrote meditations , mostly sleep meditations with positive affirmations, for others in the 60s and 70s.
I’ve had many other adventuresome chapters in my life. One was as a friend of the underground cartoonists who were becoming well-known in New York in the 1960s , when my family had a storefront called “Gallery Gwen” on E. 4th St.
Here Irving Fiske, my father, gave talks on Tantric Yoga, Zen, Sufism, Tibetan, Buddhism, psychology, and human transcendence. I remembered quotes for his talks from memory, and I also ran the weekly folksong gathering and poetry reading. I was in my mid -teens at that time. All sorts of people came in and out ; some then came up to Vermont. and my friendship with Trina Robbins, the cartoonist and writer, I got to know other cartoonists. In the 1970s, at Q. Hill, we l
produced underground Comix rubber stamps and sold them. The catalogs were designed by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly, with designs by Robert Crumb , Art, & many other well-known cartoonists.
In 1984 I married a truly great man, Brion McFarlin, then an astrologer on his way to teach in Oregon. After a few days at Quarry Hill, he decided to stay , helped raise the kids, and became a great supporter and sustainer of Quarry Hill. He is one without whom QH would no longer exist. Our son Andrew was born in 1988. Brion also works as a senior quality control engineer at at a major medical software firm in Colchester, Vermont.
I am working on a memoir of my life at Quarry Hill and elsewhere. A chapter of it can be read online at blogcritics.org under the name Ladybelle Fiske. It’s called “The Battle of ‘The Fountainhead.”
I’m sure a lot of other things also apply to my life, but this seems like plenty for now.