The Vine

RITUAL OF HAND-PARTING, DIVORCE OR BREAK UP

2008-10-29T14:50:00.000-07:00

This ritual is for the ideal circumstance where both parties are available and willing to consciously end their relationship.

I used the symbolism of bridge and creek. The location is ideally on a bridge over a creek, although it could be done at a fountain or into the Sea directly. It could also be mediated by a Priest or Priestess if appropriate. Each partner will go their separate ways, whichever direction is their direction home, immediately after the ritual without looking back.

Ritual items: two small stuffed animals, one representing each partner
bottle of the couple’s favorite wine (or grape, apple or other juice)
two sets of three small circles of paper with the words “I Forgive”, “I Apologize,” and “I Thank” written on them

Ideally this ritual is performed nearest the Dark Moon during the waning Moon as convenient. Do not break up during a Mercury retrograde or you might find the breakup is not permanent and you both end up in an on-again off-again boomerang.

Meet at the agreed upon time and have a very short discussion of anything that needs to be said before you part, for you will not be speaking with each other afterwards for quite some time if at all, in all likelihood. Make sure that you agree on how much time or under what circumstances that would be acceptable for either partner to re-initiate contact or re-initiate the relationship, if this has not already been made clear.

Stand in the middle of the bridge, over the water. Cast a circle and call directions for the best ritual. Call Aphrodite and Poseidon, or if preferred, any other chosen deities, one for each partner. If one or both parties are uncomfortable with this sort of ritual framework, simply proceed as follows.

Part I Accounting

Partner A begins, holding their circle of paper that says “I Forgive.” They say anything that they wish to forgive the other partner for, and then they drop the circle of paper into the creek below.
Partner B then holds their own circle of paper of Forgiveness, and forgives in the same way, tossing the circle of paper into the creek.
Partner B then takes their turn with their “I Apologize” circle of paper, and tells Partner A what they need to apologize for. The circle of paper is then dropped into the creek. Partner A then takes their turn with the Apology, dropping the circle of Apology into the creek when they are done.
Partner A now begins with the “I Thank” circle, and thanks Partner B for whatever they want to acknowledge in thanks.
Partner B then takes their turn with the Thanking, and then drops the Thanking circle of paper into the creek.

Part II Toasting and Sacrifice

Either partner opens the bottle of wine. They then toast each other for the good times, each taking a sip or gulp of the wine. Then they both hold the bottle of wine, and pour it into the creek. A good thing to say together here is: “Love released is not love lost. It returns to the Sea, It returns to the Sea, It returns to the Sea, It returns to the Sea…” until the bottle is empty.

Part III Releasing

Either partner picks up the stuffed animal that represents their soon-to-be-ex. They hand it to the other partner saying, “[Full birth given name of partner], I release you from the bonds of my love and my desire. The other partner likewise says “[Full birth given name of partner], I release you from the bonds of my love and my desire.”

At this point the ritual is complete. Dismiss deities, directions, and the circle according to tradition and then part ways, without looking back.

Aftercare

Many healing blessings and comforts to whoever has the courage to complete this ritual.

Take your stuffed animal, which is you, home with you, and treat it as you would be treated in a loving relationship. Comfort it when you are feeling down, encourage it when you are feeling good, ask it to take you to the park when you are feeling lethargic, etc. This might seem strange, but it is a very effective method of sympathetic magic, and it also can re-direct your caretaking tendencies back to yourself if you are more comfortable taking care of other people than yourself, or loving other people more than yourself.

C Princess Poysen Ivieee

Formulation of Elemental Oils and Incenses According to Natural Magick Theory

2008-06-26T09:47:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce two new lines from Natural Magick Shop: Elemental Magick oils and Elemental Magick ritual incenses.

These most basic of formulations have taken fifteen years to develop. For both my Planetary and Elemental potions, I wanted very special, very rational, extensively researched formulae. I wanted them to be – if not at first perfect in subjective Fragrance (though NOT out of reach of my capabilities) – as Alchemically perfect in Magick of Number, Planet, Phase of Moon, Time of Day, Color, and Cardinal Direction.

Magick of Number

For the Cardinal (tangible) Elements, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, I deduced that each would be ruled by the number Four, for the four Directions with which they are associated, East, South, West and North. Each of these has four ingredients.

For the Intangible Element, called Spirit or sometimes Akasha, the ruling number is deduced to be Five, the top peak of the Pentagram, and the number which guides the unfurling of the Spiral, which is one of the magickal symbols for Spirit, the Elusive Element of Time. Spirit oil and incense are therefore compounded of five ingredients.

Since Center or Spirit partakes of, and is the source of each of the tangible Elements, these formulations would include one of the four ingredients of each, plus one rare ingredient which only could be ruled by Spirit.

Magick of Planet

This set of correspondence is not as easy as number. While the four Elements are easy to unfold into Planetary correspondences, the reverse operation is less natural. I do my best, hoping it benefits us all.

Air Element breathes the nature of two Planets: Mercury and Jupiter. Air incense and oil is made on Wednesday.
Fire Element burns with the nature of Sun and Mars. Fire incense and oil is made on Sunday.
Water Element reflects the nature of Moon and Venus. Water incense and oil is made on Monday.
Earth Element resides only in the nature of Saturn. Earth incense and oil is made on Saturday.
Spirit infuses all of the Planets, but Mercury carries its message best of all. Spirit incense and oil is made on Wednesday.

Phase of Moon, Time of Day

Many Magickal and Alchemical scholars have provided time-tested process for Lunar harmony in our spell work and magick. Here I have again taken the uncomfortable task of folding the Lunar correspondences back into the Elements.

Air Element blows through the Crescent Moon, since the New Moon rises at dawn, Air incense and oil is formulated in the morning.

Fire Element charges the Second Quarter of the Moon, since the waxing half Moon is seen rising at noon. Fire incense and oil is therefore concocted at midday.

Water Element flows down from the Full Moon, and since the Full Moon rises at sunset, Water incense and oil is potioned at the end of the day.

Earth Element weighs in on the Third quarter, which rises at midnight. Earth incense and oil is compounded around midnight.

Spirit envelopes all phases of the Moon, and is integrated on the Dark Moon/ New Moon.

Magick of Color

This correspondence has plenty of tradition, so all that was to be done for my potions was apply it.

Air Element is corresponded to Yellow or Clear/White, easy to achieve in the Air oil with just my pale yellow base oils of Almond/Jojoba and the light, colorless essential oils affined to Air. For the Air incense, Benzoin base makes for a relatively colorless powder.

Fire Element is colored Orange and Red, and Dragon’s Blood resin gives both my Fire oil and Fire incense a burning red/orange color.

Water Element is naturally associated with the color Blue. Water oil is given blue by Blue Chamomile essential oil, and Water incense approaches a blue/green with Blue Tansy essential oil.

Earth partakes of the colors Brown, Black, and Green. Earth oil is deeply brown/black with Mushroom essential oil. Earth incense is the color of good garden soil with, among other things, Wood Aloes.

Spirit is alternatively imagined to be: White, Black, Grey, or Purple. Spirit oil is given an approach to Purple with Alkanet infused oil and Blue Tansy. Spirit incense is Grey with the mixture of all the elements plus the rare and esteemed clear colored Ood wood powder, also known as Lignum Aloes.

Cardinal Direction

This is one of the really easy correspondences often overlooked by even professional potioneers. As I create each oil or incense, I face the Cardinal Direction indicated. While I employ an energetic shield between myself and my potion, (to prevent my energies from contaminating YOUR potion) that same shield serves to catch and concentrate the Elemental energies flowing from the cardinal direction. As I face East, the winds blow towards me, but are blocked with my shield and directed into the Air incense or oil being created. And so I face South for the Fire formulation, West for the Water workings, North for the Earth aggregations. For Spirit, I will necessarily change directions as each Element is integrated into the incense or oil.

CONCLUSION
As you might imagine, the exacting circumstances indicated by my process limit the production of some of these formulae to a few times a year. They are consequently more expensive than my main line of ritually crafted potions, which don’t slouch a bit. It is my hope that my Alchemical Oils and Incenses will satisfy the requirements of the most diligent Hermetic practitioner, or the wild desires of the studied eclectic NeoPagan. With one set each of the Elemental and Planetary kits, any magician of any tradition could produce a spell or ritual for any required end.

With These Potions
Your Desires and Notions
An It Harm None
May Thy Will Be Done

Elemental oils are sold separately in my usual ½ ounce bottles for $7 each. Elemental sets are sold in sets of four (Earth, Air, Fire and Water) ½ ounce bottle size for $26, and sets of four ¼ ounce vial size for $13. They are also sold in sets of five (Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Spirit) ½ ounce bottles for $33 and five ¼ ounce vial size for $17. Elemental incenses are in ½ounce corked vials for $6 each, or sets of four for $22, or sets of five for $26.

c Princess Poysen Ivieee 2008

Planetary Magick

2007-10-01T09:54:00.000-07:00

Planetary Magick is the next system to layer onto one's practice, after mastery and understanding of Solar, Lunar and Elemental Magick. If you have a yearning for an ancient link to magickal practice, it is more likely to be found through the seven "fixed stars" or planets than by any particular witchcraft tradition or magickal system, most of which date to the 1950's or Medieval times. This essay describes the theory that Natural Magick Shop uses for our Planetary formulas.

In ancient times, the movements of the "planets" were easy to observe as different from the stars. Most of the stars rotated in unison, over the course of the night, but seven heavenly bodies could be counted in different rhythms. Fastest moving among them is the Moon, whose orbit has a periodicity of about 29 days. Faint, but still observable much of the year also, Mercury travels its path every 59 days (or 88 days, it used to be believed). Venus at 243 days, the Sun itself at 365 days, Mars at 687 days, Jupiter at 12 years and elder Saturn takes 29 years to complete its circuit, from an Earthling’s perspective.

From Sumerian times, these unique heavenly bodies were seen as representations of the gods, if not gods themselves. And through the ages, the names of these planets have changed, but the roles of the gods they have been named for have changed very little. For example, in ancient Sumer, Enki was the name for the planet we now call Mercury, and they are both gods of information and communication. The Babylonians called the planet Mars by the name Nergal, who was also god of war. Our beloved planet Venus was Aphrodite in Greece, Astarte in Phoenicia, Ishtar in Babylon, and Inanna in ancient Sumer, love goddesses all of them. Solaris or Helios is the Sun god, Iuppiter or Jupiter is a god of kingship and growth, Selene or Luna is goddess of the Moon

The association or correspondences of these gods with the planets is discernible from their colors, movements, or time signatures. Saturn, with its lengthy period, was associated with elder or death gods, gods of the underworld or harvest, master of time, architect of destiny. Mercury, with its speedy cycle and quick changes of direction were related to the messenger god.

Some astrologers and magicians have added Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto to the classic seven planets. These planets are not discernible to the eye without telescopes, and therefore they are not as familiar to humanity, and they have fewer Earthly correspondences. Neptune is viewed as a higher frequency of Venus, Uranus likewise is an octave over Mercury, and Pluto is the dark reflection of the Sun. Their distance from our planet makes magickal correspondence much more tentative and not especially useful to most practitioners.

Most important for the modern practitioner is that, since the times of the most ancient western civilizations, these planets or deities have determined one of the most basic conventions of social organization: the seven day week. Each day is said to be “ruled” by one of the seven planets, and further, each hour of the day and each hour of the night are ruled by the same succession of planetary deities. We have lost a bit in the translation of the names of the week to the Germanic roots. The Norse gods are not associated with the planets themselves, though their diety functions are still correspondent to the ancient rulers. The Latin names of the planets and the days still correspond exactly.
Sol = Sun = Sunday,
Luna = Moon = Monday (Moon-day),
Mars = Mars = Tuesday (Norse Tiu, a war-god),
Mercurius = Mercury = Wednesday (Wodin or Odin, a scholar/magician god),
Iuppiter = Jupiter = Thursday (Thor, god of thunder),
Venus = Venus = Friday (named for Norse goddess of love Freya) and
Saturnus = Saturn = Saturday.

Note that our familiar workweek begins on Monday, ruled by the quickest planet, and ends on Saturn’s slow day, the day of rest. More recent calendars have changed the Sabbath to Sunday, or alternatively had Sunday begin the week. Over time, and even in our current datebooks, which of these three days is the start of the week has rarely enjoyed consensus. If you consider the matter you could derive logical arguments for all three cases.

Our reckoning of the day as beginning at 12 am (the middle of the night) is a new convention. For millennia, the day began with sunrise, and the night began with sunset, and the planetary hours commenced their count at sunrise. The order of the hours follows the periodicities of the planets: slower, elder Saturn begins the week (or used to do) and the quickest planet, the Moon is the last, repeating eternally in the pattern:
Saturn Jupiter Mars Sun Venus Mercury Moon

But this is not the order of the days of the week! Which is of course:
Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday

The explanation is that in Babylonian times, the day was divided into twenty four hours (Sumerians used a twelve hour day) with twelve hours of day and twelve hours of night. If you begin at sunrise on Saturday with the first hour being ruled by Saturn, 24 hours later you will end up at dawn the next day with the hour of the Sun. That being the planet governing at the time of sunrise, that planet governs and names the new day, Sunday. Beginning with Sun ruling that first hour of the day it rules, if you tick off another 24 planetary hours in that order: Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, etc., you will arrive at Moon at dawn of the next day, Monday. After another 24 hours you will arrive at dawn at the next day, Tuesday. Repeat this pattern and you will derive the order of the days of the week.

It is easy to think of time and days of the week proceeding this way, a function of the relationship of the number seven with the number twelve, and indeed, this relationship is expressed elsewhere, most notably in music in the relation of the chromatic to the diatonic scales. Mystics, alchemists, and early philosophers were always seeking to understand, and emulate in law, architecture, art, and social convention, the music of the spheres, a way to harmonize human activities with the movements planets of our solar system and then hopefully, further into the heavens. (You might note that the next tier of magickal practice after the seven-planet realm is the astrological zodiac, which is a system of twelve.)

One problem is that nature does not always fit the philosopher’s ideal mathematics. We have here the inconvenience of unequal day length caused by the seasons. With the advent of uniform timepieces, the convention has moved toward the fixed hour. But in ancient systems, the length of the hour changed according to the length of the day. Around the equinoxes, September 22 or so and March 22 or so, the hours of the night and day are equal, and this is where convention set the fixed hour. Somewhere along the way, the rigid application of fixed hours made it expedient to even change the time of the beginning of the day to the darkest hour of night!

In Natural Magick, we follow Nature and ancient customs. Wednesday morning begins at Dawn on Wednesday, and it lasts all day and all night until the Sun rises upon the next day. If that Wednesday is near the Winter Solstice, the hours of the day are shorter, and the hours of the night are longer. We go through the exercise of calculating the relative length of the hours through the seasons in order to precisely time magickal operations, especially those that are related to the planets. A bit of algebra and interpolation is applied to our magick. This brings us closer to the magick of the Spheres and the practices of ancient magickal systems. Not to mention, it reminds us that we did once pass Algebra in high school!

With this we introduce the Natural Magick line of Planetary oils. Each of these oils is made on the day ruled by the planet and in the hour of that day that is ruled by the planet. Five of the seven planets are made during the day in the waxing Moon. Moon is made at night under the crescent Moon in the hour of the Moon. Saturn is made on the first Saturday after the Full Moon, in the Saturn hour of the night, to fully capture the elder and dark aspect.

Each oil is potentiated with a mineral which corresponds to the power of the planet concerned:

Saturn - Hematite
Sun - Citrine
Moon - Moonstone
Mars - Garnet
Mercury - Fluorite
Jupiter - Amethyst
Venus – Peridot

Each bottle of oil has a 4mm bead of the same stone as a focus.

As each oil is made, I use the following binding spell:

This is the Day that you were made
This is the Hour that you were born
This is the moment of your creation
To magick of ___________, you are now sworn.

Each of the planets and the gods that govern them has resonance with different parts of our Selves. In a sense, by honoring each of the planets in a ritual way, we are dissembling, re-assimilating, and reclaiming each part of our Selves, the whole and separate parts of which issue forth from the Music of the Spheres.

c. Princess Poysen Ivieee 2007

Witchcamp Tejas Approaches As You Sleep

2007-01-08T18:48:00.000-08:00

Howdy friends, just wanted to let you know, there is an incredible opportunity to study the Craft, Reclaiming-style, coming up soon, during the balmy wildflower Spring of Texas. March 24th - 31st is Witch Camp, and early registration ends Feb 1st.

The Dwarves and the Dreamer

We take the story of Snow White on a most un-Disneylike journey to visit with The Dreamer, who brings all things into the world by Dreaming.

Witch Camp is seven days of magick, morning to midnight, cloistered in a wild Hill Country retreat. Dorm space is available, but I recommend camping. Food is included.

Yours truly will be facilitating one of the paths woven through this story. Birch and I will present Mysteries of the Faery Star, an occult exploration of the powers of the Septagram. It is an intermediate to advanced path, and prior experience such as the Elements of Magic is highly recommended.

Registration is limited and early signup gets you a discount.

I have been a Witch Camp camper for a number of years, and I consider it to be the most important training I have ever had. This is my first time to teach at Witch Camp. Although I am an experienced teacher, this is relatively new and challenging material. Birch and I are very excited to have the opportunity to bring our Faery Star material to the larger community for the first time.

PPI

Global Warming Shifts Gardening Schedule

2007-01-08T17:59:00.000-08:00

Here in Austin, Redbuds had a fall bloom, which I had never seen. But really, ask the gardeners about global warming. I found an old planting guide for Travis County, rev. 1990. Compare it to our updated guide:

Beets
1990 - Feb 15-June 1
2000 - Jan 10-Feb 28

Broccoli transplants
1990 - Feb 15-Mar 15
2000 - Jan 15-Feb 28

Chard
1990 - Feb 15-May 15
2000 - Jan 10-Feb 10

Leaf Lettuce
1990 - Jan 15-Apr 1
2000 - Jan 1-Apr 1

Spinach
1990 - Jan 15-Mar 1
2000 - Oct 1-Mar 31

So most of the early spring planting has to be done about two weeks to a month earlier now than it did ten years ago, and you must finish planting about a month earlier, before the heat sets in.

Summer plantings, like okra and sweet potatoes stay about the same.

Then, for the fall plantings, we are starting two weeks to a month LATER, because the summer heat lasts longer.

That is the extension service recommendations, but the gardeners themselves are being much more experimental with earlier planting. I would have to say that we are now Zone 9 where we were Zone 8. I am ordering seeds for plants that are hardy up to Zone 10, because it just might work given the new climate.

LA BEFANA AND ST. NICK

2006-12-21T14:13:00.000-08:00

To begin this story, it will be necessary to tell you something about a person not many people will know about, unless they come from Italy.

La Befana. La Befana is said by some to be a faery, by others a witch, nowadays she might be properly titled a goddess. La Befana. She appears for the week of the Annunciation, the days after the New Year. On these days she visits children all around Italy, bringing gifts and sweet treats. Kids petition her by tying little notes to the trees in the town square. All the children await the arrival of La Befana, the old, old lady in the tattered peasant clothing and the benevolent smile.

One can’t but notice the similarity, in function if not in form, to a more familiar character, popularly know as Santa Claus. Around the same time of year they appear, giving gifts to children, and kids write letters to both of them.

It should not be such a surprise that the two of them have met.

This is the story of that historic meeting, between a man named Nicholas, and the mysterious La Befana.

Back in those days, what we refer to as the Renaissance, Nicholas was not a Saint, not an elf, not even close to the wizard who can bend time and space. He was a normal human being, though maybe a bit better cut than the average. You might call him one of the early philanthropist benefactors. A wealthy man from a respectable merchant family, Nicholas took a great interest in the welfare of children. That might not seem so strange to us in these days of charities and foundations, but back in Nicholas’ time, it was pretty much accepted that if you were poor, your children were poor, and that was the luck of life. Nicholas, for whatever gift of grace or soft-heartedness, cared for children who were not members of his own family, and he helped many otherwise bereft children and their families escape lives of misery and poverty. It is easy to understand how he would come to admire the legendary La Befana, then, and eventually he sought her audience.

It was easier said than done. As an adult, your chances of seeing La Befana were next to nil. Even most children who believed in La Befana with the most fervent faith could expect to never catch a glimpse of the famous faery witch, no matter how many of her sweets and treats you had eaten. For years, Nicholas would travel around, following the trail of cookies, oranges, dolls, and toy horses during her season of benevolence. Eventually he thought of enlisting himself in her service, and one year he took a great sack of gifts, and began handing them out along the way of his search. Of course, being visible, human, and obvious as a sore thumb, he caused a great commotion, and in one village he was absolutely mobbed by children, until his sack was empty, and in exhaustion Nicholas started on his way home.

On the road home, a sudden wind pitched up a fierce little dust devil right in front of Nicholas, and he squinted his eyes and breathed through his sleeve as he waited for it to pass. The flurry abated, the sun caught his eyes, and when he recovered from his momentary blindness, there she was. La Befana, stepping off her broom!

Nicholas fell to his knees. Here was the woman he had seeking these last three years, and immediately, in spite of her apparent age, he fell utterly, completely in love with her. “My Lady!” he managed to stammer.

“You’re operating in my turf!” she hissed at him, and as he looked into her eyes, flashing with threat and anger, for a split second Nicholas saw her as another person, regal, barely middle aged, and dressed splendidly in a way from antiquity. Then the vision passed and she reappeared as a bent old peasant woman in rags. At that moment Nicholas knew there was much more to La Befana than the legends told.

“My Lady,” he managed to repeat, “I just saw you as a younger…”

“Well that matters for nothing, and what is at hand is that you are usurping my territory. Italy is mine, and treating the children at this time of year is my duty. Did I seem to you to fail in my obligation, that you must so ungraciously mock my station?”

“Oh, Lady, do not think…I never meant…You see I meant to…” sputtered Nicholas.

“Take your time,” said La Befana, crossing her arms in front of her. “I have plenty of it. A whole ten hours to complete Florence, Venice, Tuscany, Naples, and the villages in between. Should be no trouble,” she said, and again, through the flash in her eye, Nicholas caught a glimpse of the younger noblewoman. Clearly, in some way she was enjoying herself, and he relaxed a bit.

“Oh dear, forgive me, My La…La Befana, if I may. I have been seeking you for many years. If you would, I would become your student, your disciple, your…well, never mind. I, like yourself, am dedicated to the welfare of the children. Whether poor or well born, the children are no better nor worse one from the other, and all possess the creative divine potential of the best of the human race, and it is this potential I seek to nourish. I by the grace of God command a respectful family fortune, and I thought that working together we…”

“We could exhaust your fortune in short work; such is the need of poor children in this country and beyond. What we need to do is….wait a minute! I just realized I said ‘we’!”

“Please feel free to do so, La Befana,” whispered Nicholas. “I will be your servant, if you will be my Lady.”

“I see,” said La Befana, and turned her back to him, to consider the matter.

After a moment she turned back to him. “What we are really trafficking in here, the real gift being given to these children, is Hope. Do you understand? I give these small gifts, but really what I give them is something to hope for. This makes the most profound change in what a child can or can not do, and gradually this can change the country, the people as a whole. This has been my work these last few centuries…”

“Last few centuries?” asked Nicholas. “But what of the story that the Three Wise Men invited you to join them in their search for the Christ Child? You were too busy cleaning house to go along on the adventure, but according to the tale, you thought differently of it and tried to find them, and that is why you travel giving gifts to the children.”

“Oh, ha!” laughed La Befana. “That is a great story, one of my favorites really, but I am not as old as Our Savior. I was only made…I only received my duty as a human in the feudal days of the Middle Ages. But what I was getting around to, a challenge I would give you as my student, and as my suitor if I read your intention would be this: I alone will continue to bring gifts and hope to the children of Italy, as my charge commands me to do, and you, as my consort, will do the same in the same time – for all the rest of the children of the world!”

Nicholas gaped. “My Lady. Do not mistake my admiration, devotion nor love. But I am a mortal man, human. You are…well, you must be something else. To do what you ask, I would have to be a saint, or a god!”

“Yes, you would,” said La Befana, thoughtfully.

“Is such a thing possible?” said Nicholas. “Surely as Christians we can not speak of such things.”

“I am a Christian. Roman Catholic.” said La Befana, perhaps a bit defensively. “Among other things.”

Nicholas crossed himself reflexively “Lady, you are a goddess, that is clear. You are a witch, or so they say. You are a faery, friend of La Bensozia, everyone knows that. But you said you were once human. How does one become a god, having been mortal once?

La Befana approached him, and assumed her tall, noble form. Without warning she grasped his shoulders and leaned to look into his eyes. Nicholas has no choice but to surrender to her gaze, which seemed to probe his soul from the inside out. After what seemed a very long time, she released him and turned back as the stooped old woman.

“Very well. Nicholas, you are a rare human. So I will tell you this.”

“There are two ways to become a god. You must be born of a god or goddess, like so many sons and daughters of Zeus, or you must be made a god by another god or goddess.”

“So then, you yourself can make me what I must be, to meet your challenge and merit your troth!” exulted Nicholas.

“Nicholas, I am afraid not. My charge as a minor deity is fairly limited. I can do this thing for the children, and my powers are limited to Italy.”

“Well, who made you goddess, and why?”

“Aradia, daughter of Diana of the moon. She admired my work, back in my mortal days. I, like many of the feudal gentry, had mastered the arts of witchcraft. Unlike them, I made my gifts and wealth available to the peasantry. My husband would have hung me himself if he knew I was aiding his serfs. So I used my arts of illusion to make myself as one of them. This is my disguise I use to this day.”

“Aradia was a bit of a rebel, even by her mother’s standards. She would suffer no hypocrisy or sadism, and my husband and most of his lot stank of both. She made me a goddess, and charged me with bringing material comfort and hope to her people, ALL of her people.”

“And, may I ask, My Lady, your husband…”

Aradia was no fluffy bunny. She poisoned him. There is no more to his story. Ahem.”

Now Nicholas was the silent one. He sat down on the side of the road. After a spell, he continued.

“If not you, La Befana, who then will make me the immortal you require me to be?”

“Yes, there is our situation,” she agreed. “Since the classical times with Zeus filling up the world with gods of every minor description, the Immortal Ones are extremely reluctant to make any more gods on this earth. My advice, my best suggestion, should you take this challenge, is to go north, to the snowbound lands of the gods of the Asatru. There is one very lovely goddess who might be the softess touch of the Immortals. Yes, you must seek Freya.”

In his mind, Nicholas saw the snow, the pine trees laden with white brilliance, and the lady that La Befana spoke of, trailing waves of reddish blond hair, riding a sleigh drawn by cats, beautiful beyond compare, seductive, laughing. “I see,” he said. “I will be off directly. But let me be clear to you, La Befana, it is your hand I seek, not hers. You alone are my partner; you and I will bring hope to the children of the world.”

La Befana smiled, closed her eyes, and in a gust of wind, was gone.

As Nicholas traveled north, the weather became perceptibly colder. As he climbed into Switzerland he was treated to his first sight of snowy landscape. The brilliance of the falling snow, the softness of the draped trees, it all seemed so serene to him, and he began to feel like he was coming home instead of going out on a harrowing quest.

At each hamlet he simply asked for directions to go see Freya. Now, people pointed north, and fewer and fewer looked at him oddly. As he approached what is now called Germany, the snowy landscape drew him forward. He found himself loving snow, the brilliant blue sky, the powdery quiet of the air.

But with just a few more paces the sky disagreed with Nicholas serene mood. Clouds assembled, darkened and loomed threateningly, and a thunderbolt of lightning struck out towards Nicholas. He ran for the shelter of a large fir tree and another bolt cleaved it in half. Darting for a boulder, another flash annihilated it before Nicholas got close. A huge swelling in the thundercloud boiled down towards Nicholas and he was forced to his knees to pray for mercy. “Oh God, save me from this storm,” he shouted, and the winds howled in rage as response. Thinking more to his recent experience with La Befana, he shouted, “May the gods preserve me! I seek audience with Freya, and I come with a pure heart!”

The downward-moving ball of thundercloud moved towards his voice, and when it touched the ground with a deafening boom of thunderclap, Nicholas found himself kneeling before a huge personage dressed in skins, with a massive double-headed hammer, and two horns rearing from a pointed helmet. His long moustache was braided into his longer red beard, and his breath smelled like strong ale. “Who are you, who seeks Her so brashly?”

“Sir,” said Nicholas, standing up from his knees. “I have no reason to hide my search. I seek Freya on a mission from La Befana.”

“Who?” said the warrior, tilting his head doubtfully.

“Oh, uh. La Befana, herself a servant of Aradia, which would make me, uh, her…”

“Aradia,” said the giant, stroking his beard.

Yes, you’ve got it. Aradia, daughter of Diana?” said Nicholas hopefully.

“Diana, aww, of course, why didn’t ya just say so? Har!” said the man, clapping Nicholas on the shoulder. Of course, ya know me, Thor, right?”

“Oh, couldn’t mistake Thor for anybody else,” said Nicholas rubbing his shoulder. “But if you please, Thor, time is of the essence here. I’ve been traveling for nearly a year now, and I must take care of this errand with Freya on behalf of La…oh, Diana. Sir.”

“No doubt, yes, you should be off. Look, you should find her somewhere between here and Valhalla,” said Thor, gesturing with his huge hammer. “On further north, follow the signposts is what I do.”

“Thanks Thor, and, if there’s anything you can do about the weather, uh, it’s really dark under this cloud.”

“Ya, no problem, how about this?” Thor lifted a powerful fist, opened his hand, and the clouds twirled down into his palm, leaving a clear blue sky. “Safe travel for the Son of Diana!”

“It is most appreciated Thor, may you have a peaceful time with your rounds! Ho ho! Off I go!” And off marched Nicholas into a bright snowy, northbound road.

“Hallooo, friend,” said Nicholas to a small, dark man at a fork in the road. He had been walking for several hours and though the bright day, blessed by Thor, was long, there was still a short nighttime this far north. As he approached, he had a difficult time focusing on the shadowy man, who was leaning up against the signpost.

“Hi there, sir, what does this signpost say is the road to Valhalla?” asked Nicholas.

“We-e-e-ll,” said the shadow man, turning to look at the signpost he had been leaning on. Then, with some drama, he feigned tripping over a small stone, and fell into the signpost, causing it to go spinning around. When the signpost stopped spinning, he stood up slowly, and stepped back. “Well, there you go,” he said. “That is the road to Valhalla.”

Nicholas followed the arrow of the sign toward the road it pointed to. He frowned. “No, that couldn’t be right. That is the road I just got here on.” Nicholas pointed. “See, there are my boot prints approaching this junction in the road.”

“Oh, yes, well let me fix this sign, then,” said the little man. He grabbed the signpost and swiveled it around so that the Valhalla arrow pointed toward on of the other two roads. “There you have it unmistakable, Valhalla is that way. Good day.” And he started off himself on the other road.

Nicholas looked at the man walking down the road. He looked back to the road he had just come from. Then, sighing, he pushed off down the path now indicated by the sign. “At least,” he said to himself, “I won’t have to meet that shifty little man down this road.”

Nicholas trudged on through the short northern night, still marveling at the snow which seemed to glow from within. Luminescent clouds danced in eerie, erratic patterns which hypnotized the traveler. He had never seen the Northern Lights before, and in his walking dream, they came from reflections cast by Freya’s jewelry.

As morning dawned just a few hours later, Nicholas saw another fork in the road ahead. As he approached the signpost, blinking in the morning sun, he was startled by a shadow.

“What? What are you doing here? You went down the other road!” protested Nicholas, for the shadow resolved into the same dark little man he had met before.

“You really should pay better attention, when you’re out traveling at night,” said the man, pointing at the sign. “You’ll get nowhere like this.” He snickered and lit up a long reed pipe.

Sure enough, Nicholas looked at the signpost and it was identical to the first. “You cruel prankster,” he growled. “I will not be thwarted by your tricks, for I am on a true mission to seek the Lady Freya!”

“Lady Freya!” he shouted towards the last of the glimmering Aurora Borealis. “FREYA! LADY FREY-YAAA!”

Suddenly, Nicholas heard the ringing of bells, and a sleigh flashed into the crossroads. Drawn by two giant cats, ornamented with gilt gold, sparkling with pearl-embroidered reigns, the lady in his vision stood up in the sleigh. Her red-gold hair trailed behind the carriage, glinting as brightly as her copious jewelry. She stepped from the carriage and embraced the dark little man.

“Loki! So good to see you!” she cheered, her voice musical and ringing. “You have led our pilgrim to me, how can I thank you for your true service?”

“Oh, the ways are many, Lady,” said Loki, leering.

“And you must be Nicholas, how good to meet you! Do sit down and tell me your story!”

Nicholas turned around, and a plump pair of sofas had appeared, with a little table between them bearing three steaming mugs of hot mulled mead. Gratefully, he sat down and drank, trying not to notice Loki sitting next to him on the sofa.

Nicholas told Freya his whole story, while she smiled and nodded companionably. Her beautiful blue eyes glinted with brimming tears, as Nicholas described his love for La Befana, and his desire to bring hope to children around the world. When he was finished telling his tale, he fell silent, and a profound peace settled around them.

Freya stood up, and beckoned Nicholas toward her. He stepped forward, and she caught him up in a tender embrace. Leaning down to his face, for she was very tall indeed, she closed her eyes and kissed him gently and sweetly. A course of electricity warmer and more intoxicating than the mead spread through him, and each cell in his body vibrated, tickled, itched and seemed to ring like millions of bells. That is the only way he could describe it, being kissed in this special way by the goddess Freya.

When she stepped back from him, she steadied him with her hands. “It is done, Nicholas. So it shall be. How do you feel?”

Nicholas patted down his body, which seemed no different on the outside. But everything inside was changed. He felt golden, like he was made of pure light. “I feel divine,” he said.

Freya leaned back and laughed. “You ARE divine now, Nicholas, welcome to the company of the Immortal Ones!”

“But wait!” she exclaimed. “Your drab travelers clothing do not suit your divinity. We need something as fine as the god you have become!” She clapped her hands softly and rapidly, and hundreds of mice came racing towards then from the forest. They climbed all over Nicholas, weaving and spinning as they went, and when they retreated, he was covered with red velvet, green wool, shiny black leather, fur trim, and his moustache has been combed, waxed to impossible lengths and gently perfumed.

“Ho Ho!” he laughed, and now his voiced boomed deeper than it ever had before. “This is fine treatment!”

“It is just as fine as your calling to bring hope to the children of the world. I have brought you this much closer to your goal. But the other powers you will need, to make your errand possible, are beyond my ability to give, Nicholas.” She shook her head, but no sadness marred her expression.

“You need not just immortality and the ordinary gifts of the Divine Ones, but the ability to bend time and space. For that we seek a higher power.”

“What, Lady, or should I ask Whom, is this higher power?”

“To learn the arts of Time, you must go to see Odin, who learned them by sacrificing himself on none other than the World Tree. Here, you will need transport.” She whistled and sang several ringing notes, and a fine snow sleigh appeared, drawn by the finest reindeer you could imagine. “Loki would be happy to show you the way.”

Nicholas looked over to Loki, who had been sprawled out on the sofa stroking his goatee through the whole proceedings. He grinned at Nicholas.

“Um, Lady, if you will, I would love it if YOU would accompany me on the journey. Our visit has been so short, it would be a shame to part company before the mission is complete,” said Nicholas. “That is, if I am capable of completing it.”

“Well, I don’t see why not!” Freya laughed. “A merry visit it will be! Away we go!”

The little sofas disappeared, folding up into cushion in the carriages. Loki hopped into the back of Nicholas’ sleigh, to his distaste, but before he could complain, they were airborne, flying over the sparkling snow covered forest.

The short Northern night had fallen by the time they landed. The forest they found themselves in was darker, more ancient. “Odin?” Freya called softly. It occurred to Nicholas that she was a bit shy of the elder god.

The forest seemed to part, and draw them forward. The forest then opened, but it seemed even darker. Stars illuminated the trees and the travelers, shining more brightly than on any other place on earth.

And he was before them. Against the backdrop of a tree bigger than any he had ever seen, its upper branches seeming to be tipped with the stars, Odin hung upside down in mid-air. He held a huge book in front of him, deep in study he was, though one eye was closed, and the other, blind and milky white, stared into the book.

“Welcome, Freya, Loki, my friend. Who is the newly-divine traveler you bring to me?” he said, righting himself and closing the large leather book. His seeing eye opened and peered at Nicholas, making the young god squirm.

“I am Nicholas,” he said, and bowed.

“Tell me Nicholas, have you studied much of the great Mysteries?”

“What I know of the Mysteries, Odin, all I know is what I have studied from the Good Book, the Bible, but I know not if it is the same as yours.”

“The Bible?” mused Odin. It is the book of the Jews and Christians, followers of YWHW. Interesting to find any of your tribes at these latitudes.”

“Yes, Odin, I am Christian, or at least once I was. Now that I am evidently one with the Immortals, I don’t know if, um, I’m qualified anymore.”

“Interesting. You bring up a very profound question, a Divine riddle. Just for my amusement, no challenge or anything, what how would you answer this Divine Riddle? Nicholas, tell me, what IS the religion of the gods? In three words or less.”

Odin rotated back around to upside down, and he closed his seeing eye and the blind one wandered between the worlds. Nicholas knew very well that he was indeed being tested, and he could feel the gaze of the blind eye peering through his brain. What IS the religion of the gods?

Three words. Three gods stood around him, except, of course the one who was hanging upside down. Odin took out his great book again. Freya clasped and unclasped her hands. Loki coughed gently and lit his pipe.

Nicholas looked to Freya. Words bubbled up in his head. First: Beauty. Then: Love. Then the one he spoke aloud.

“Creation,” said Nicholas. Odin smiled cryptically with one side of his mouth, turned some pages and scribbled a note in the book.

Nicholas looked at Odin, hanging there before him, and again the words welled into his mind. Knowlege? No, but close. Wisdom? Too proud. Then, the word came.

“Seeking,” he said, pleased with himself. Odin’s blind eye blinked, and the other side of his mouth smiled. He checked off something else in his book.

Nicholas looked over to the shifting image of Loki. This one would be harder, he knew. Chaos, thought Nicholas, no. Pranks, he thought, and grinned to himself. How much of creation might be explained by the pranks of the gods? Odin sighed and shifted. What is it? Nicholas wracked his brain. Illusion? Deception? Mishap?

Nicholas stared at Loki, who shrugged and blew out a long puff of smoke. The shapes shifted, merged, becoming one picture then another. Nicholas could now smell the fine tobacco, and he understood.

“Change!” he crowed. “It’s so simple! That is what we do!”

Odin wrote a symbol in the book and slapped it closed. Righting himself again, he laughed jovially and said, “As good a description as any, Nicholas. Now, tell me, what is it that YOU do, as a divine Immortal? Specifically. And why my help is needed."

They all sat down on the little sofas again, and steaming mead appeared again. Between Nicholas and Freya, with a few tangential interjections from Loki, the story was told.

“I will grant you this power, Nicholas, for your calling is true and good. You will be able to bend the laws of time and space to deliver your gifts, and the Hope that they bring, in one night. But you will not be able to do this from your southern latitudes of Italy. In order for you to access the vortices of time space, you will need to relocate to the North Pole. The magnetic field of the Earth herself will allow you access to timelessness, that and Loki’s excellent chaos magick. You will be able to do this on one night, when the sun never sets and times stands still, the Winter Solstice or thereabouts.”

“And I will send you teams of elves and dwarves!” sang Freya. “The finest jewelers, craftspeople, toymakers, cobblers, they will love to serve your mission.”

Nicholas’ heart stopped. “The North Pole?” he stuttered. “I have come to love the snow, and eternal winter would suit me well. But…what if She will not come with me there? Italy will always be her home…”

“Nicholas. Why are you doing this? For the love of a woman, or to bring Hope? What is your will? And would she have you anyway, if romantic love was your only end?” frowned Odin.

Nicholas held a vision of La Befana in his mind. She morphed back and forth from her matron to her crone forms. No, thought Nicholas. He is right. If I were not willing to do this without her, she would never be willing to do it with me.

“Then let me go to the North Pole. The Winter Solstice is all but upon us,” said Nicholas. “So be it. Without her, I will be a lonely Father Christmas, but I will be myself in no other guise.”

And so it all unfolded. Nicholas built a great manufactory at the North Pole, and the dwarves and elves emigrated, all but a few, to aid him with their great skill and labor. And just a few days after the Winter Solstice, Nicholas was ready. The great sleigh was laden with gifts, and the reindeer stamped their hooves in anticipation of the adventure. He could almost see the magnetic fields of the North Pole spinning in a brilliant vortex, just outside the range of his color vision. Loki danced around madly and threw sparks and screamed words in a language Odin himself would not have remembered. And at the last second, he threw himself into the sleigh, and hid himself under the great sack of gifts.

“What are you doing, you coward?” hollered Nicholas. “This better work, you sneaky little prankster, you fraud, you, you, you, WHOA-OH-WO!”

For the sleigh had jerked into the sky, spinning the reindeer after it. They were rotating madly in the vortex. “What do I do? Loki, what do I do????”

“Reins,” came the muffled monosyllable, from beneath the packages. “Reins!”

Nicholas caught the reins in his hands and pulled the slack out of the lines. The reindeer then all queued up and leaned into a forward motion. The vortex of Time still spun around them, but now Nicholas was in control.

“HO HO HO!” his laugh bellowed out! “Merry Christmas!!!” And he shook the reins, just to hear the jingles.

The evening flew by like he never could have imagined. To us modern people it would be like watching a film in fast forward. But to Nicholas it seemed like a miracle, which of course it was. He left presents all around the world, and no-one knew where they came from, for of course this was the first night of Santa Claus’ ride on Christmas.

When they were done, Nicholas asked Loki, who was now confident enough of his art to ride shotgun, “How much time do we have left?”

“Time, that’s a funny question, Nick. We really have no time at all. We have to be back at the pole or, hmm.” Loki frowned.

“Look. One more stop, it won’t take long.”

Loki rolled his eyes. “You’re the captain, Nick.”

Nicholas pulled the reins and the sleigh spun downward. He landed on the roof of a little cottage in a sprawling countryside filled with grass. He hopped down to the ground. Loki put his fingers in his ears.

La Befana stepped out of her cottage and smiled.

“Here I am in your turf again, Befana.” And he kissed her, because of course she knew that he would not return to her unless he had fulfilled the quest she set for him. “Now, my only question is, will you join me in my realm?”

And so that is the story of how La Befana adopted another form, as Mrs. Claus. She agreed to live with him forever after at the North Pole, and she took up the management of the work of the elves and dwarves in the great factory, since she was already on such good terms with the Little People.

But on the Eve of the Annunciation, she returns to her beloved Italy as La Befana, and to this day she still gives gifts and treats to the good children, and of course the occasional lump of coal to the naughty ones, who she loves just as well. In the view of La Befana and Santa Claus, there is always Hope, and that is their eternal gift to all children.

THE END
Princess Poysen Ivieee Dec. 2006

October Is For Lovers

2006-11-01T18:30:00.000-08:00

Cowboys Halftime Fish Tacos

2006-10-29T20:51:00.000-08:00

He likes the Cowboys, I like to cook, are we fitting our gender assignments so far?

I couldn’t think of any of the usual halftime dinners we have made in the past that I was in the mood for, so I was forced to come up with an entirely new dish. You see how the patriarchy grates on you???

First mix up the dressing:
*A large dollop of sour cream
*A large dollop of mayonnaise
*About ½ ounce of dill, 8 sprigs or so, more than you think
*Juice of ¼ lemon
*Several shakes of chili powder
*Several shakes of Tony Chachere’s Creole seasoning
*Several shakes of Cholula original hot sauce

You could probably use Tabasco sauce or any shaker type sauce if you don’t have Cholula, but it really worked well and it’s great for any kind of taco, and it never goes bad, so why not just get some for future use?

Then slice
*Three Hungarian wax peppers
into thin rings and sauté them in a little olive or vegetable oils, til they are slightly limp. They are quite spicy, surprisingly. And I know, nobody sautés them. Usually they are used fresh in salads. But humor me, just sauté them for this recipe.

Then slice very thinly
*Five slices of red onion
and squeeze a little lemon juice onto them. That does two things: it keeps the onion fumes from getting into your eyes and it makes the red of the onion mix into the slices so it all looks magenta-purple.

Then slice very thinly
*About two cups worth of green cabbage
I sliced off about a fifth of the top of the head of the cabbage, so as not to get any midrib in the greenery. And again, it just seemed right, I squeezed some lemon into the shredded cabbage, to keep it from turning brown even a little. That browning on your freshly cut fruits or vegetables is oxidation and should be avoided for the best vitamin and antioxidant benefits of your veggies. Not to mention aesthetic and presentation appeal. Pile the cabbage in a mound with black pepper and Tony’s sprinkled on top.

You are wondering if there is any fish in this fish taco recipe, perhaps! Okay, so next you will slice into ½ inch to 1 inch strips
*Tilapia, we used .69 pound, two good-sized filets
and sauté it in as little vegetable oil as possible. Towards the end add finely sliced
*4 cloves of garlic
*Shake of Tony’s
*Shakes of black pepper
It is best to “flip” the fish strips in the pan the way you would toss a fried egg. If you stir it with a spatula, you will end up pulverizing the fish strips into fish crumbles. Shoot for just a hint of browning. Usually I cook fish as little as possible, but in this case I give you permission to overcook the Tilapia a bit.

Lay out the ingredients seductively on a big serving plate with five
*White flour tortillas, lightly toasted
and the bottle of Chollula sauce for good measure

Encourage your guests to make the cabbage be about half of the volume of the taco by demonstrating with your first taco.

Go Cowboys!
(You can hear the sarcasm, can't you? We feminists have to protest somehow.)

Where the Hell I Am

2006-10-10T22:53:00.000-07:00

I have so many ideas for this blog. A few short stories that have been demanding to be written. The stories are more complex, more tricksy to write though, and longer. And maybe sooner I can do a three or four part series I call "Essays on Paranoia." Tales to tell!

What is getting in the way of this is that I am ending my business, a local-Austin Weird institution, for financial and sanity reasons. It will all be over, except for the accounting, by the end of October. Then I will begin a new web-based enterprise. You know, to suplement my waitressing career.

LM had to remind me that Oct. 1 was my four year anniversary of being a nonsmoker. I had totally forgotten about it, in spite of my previous post!

How I Quit Smoking With Herbs, Substitutive Behavioral Modification and Magick

2006-08-31T11:15:00.000-07:00

I smoked for about twenty five years, the last ten years of which I primarily smoked filterless hand-rolled cigarettes. I was deeply addicted, no doubt about it. Here is how I finally quit.

I was strongly motivated to quit, because whereas before I had experienced few health side effects, now I could see my skin aging and worse, my gums had started to recede pretty quickly. Also I got a boyfriend for whom a smoking habit was a non-negotiable. Probably any one of these would have been good enough motivation, but for me, the signs just all piled up at once. I was about to turn 40 years old.

I planned my quit date, giving myself nearly two weeks. I timed it such that my Q day was on the first day of the month, so that my nicotine-free days would count out with the date. I knew it would be nice to have that record, to reward myself with.

For about a weeks I just lived with the impending quit date, continuing to smoke while I allowed myself to argue with myself into quitting and then back into not quitting, just having all that conversation in my head. Screwing myself down to the task, you might say. I told a few friends what I was up to, to get some support. Then a week before Q day I started to take measured doses of an herbal tincture blend called Smoke-Free drops by Herbs Etc. It has the alcohol extracts of a number of herbs which take the edge off of the nicotine craving, help you kack up the crud out of your lungs, and mellow out the bitchies. I took about four or five droppers full of the stuff during the day, trying to dose myself in between cravings for cigarettes. The effect is that when you do light up a smoke, it’s kind of icky, like you have just already had too much to smoke. I am pretty sure that that is the effect of the lobelia. What I understand is that the lobeline in it fits into the nicotine receptor sites in your brain, which satisfies the craving. But it doesn’t cause the mild eshilaration, so it is not addictive. As each nicotine-free day allows you body to detox, the unused, bored nicotine receptors detach from your brain and get recycled. My experience is concordant with this theory, anyway.

By the night before Q day, I had polished off a bottle of the Smoke-Free drops and with its help I had gotten myself down to only four cigarettes per day for the last two days. That was a pretty mellow jumping-off point for total nicotine cessation. The strength of your addiction is directly related to the daily dose of your substance in this case.

I had a non-nicotine smoking herb blend prepared for this phase of smoking cessation. Starting with Q day, I switched from tobacco to what developed into my own Ex Smoker blend. I gave myself two days off work and a TV to watch by myself if I wanted to, and it was okay! On day two, no kidding, I was in a bar drinking beer. (Before the smoking ordinance ended smoking in bars.) During this phase I smoked the blend as much as I wanted. It contains several of the herbs also contained in the Smoke-Free drops, which I also continued to take in between Ex Smoker cigarettes.

I did affirmations. Every morning, every night, and ever time I looked into a mirror, I smiled to myself and said aloud, “Congratulations, you’re a non smoker!”

Here is where the magic comes in. I had come to see my addiction to nicotine as a dysfunctional relationship. Tobacco was my demon lover. I had noticed that I would make love with my boyfriend and then afterwards I couldn't wait to sneak out onto the porch to smoke. The cigarette was my real lover. And I was the one to blame for initiating the codependent relationship. I had to smoke the tobacco first; it had not come to seduce me. My own feelings of social inadequacy were at the root of it. I chose tobacco so that I would never be alone, not because we were suited partners.

I made an effigy of my addiction lover. I had already had strong visuals, being an imaginative child and having seen enough horror movies. The demon lover had no feet, just pointed roots which occupied my lungs. He wrapped around my heart and larynx and hid just behind my mouth in my esophagus, with his hungry mouth open, ready for the opportunity to dose. When I smoked, this demon wraith would emerge from my throat just enough to partake in the smoking. I built the effigy, made crudely of packing paper and masking tape, so that I could mentally project my demon lover out of my body into an external form. A few people saw him and were very creeped out, he was so pale and eerie and hungry looking, a parasite. I spent a few nights with him several days after Q day, and we had the breakup talk, cried on each other etc. Yes, very weird, but I really think that having a form like this, a voodoo doll if you will, to project my addiction into was extremely important to my ultimate success. In this way, I was able to metaphysically, perhaps even metabolically, take the addiction out of my body so that my body could begin recovery. Perhaps you can imagine how this technique could be used (or rather has been used throughout history in many cultures) to aid in the healing of many illnesses.

Then, I stuffed all my remaining tobacco products into his mouth and burned him in a backyard campfire. Goodbye demon lover.

About a week after Q day, I was able to stop taking the Smoke-Free drops. Really, I think the lobelia is kind of toxic, it satisfies the nicotine jones but it makes you feel icky. Likewise I had had enough of smoking the Ex Smoker blend after about two weeks of using it. It is smokable but it is slightly harsher than hand rolled tobacco, so after awhile you are sick of it. Time for the final phase

I had another substitutive behavior lined up, just in case. I got ginseng roots, about 3 inches long and roughly cigarette-shaped, and I would chew on them when I drank coffee or beer, and at parties. Ginseng tastes good with both coffee and beer, and it is a mellow, nutritional stimulant, which helps you to be more social, more extroverted. Cigarettes are used to compensate for social anxiety (although they actually contribute greatly to feelings of social anxiety), so I think this is an important problem to address for anyone who is quitting smoking.

All along this process I was regularly blessing myself with the “Congratulations, you are a nonsmoker” affirmation. I added another: “It just keeps getting easier, the longer you go.” I also had to avoid marihuana use, because for me it was a serious trigger for social anxiety. The couple of times I failed at this were the scariest trials of my nicotine withdrawal.

It has been nearly four years that I have been nicotine free, and I mean totally. Yay for me, but let me warn you about a few traps that could force you to start over again at Q day #1.

#1. Having “just a drag” from a friend’s cigarette or –who’s proud?- a butt from a public ashtray. Just don’t, because this sets the biochemical addiction withdrawal phase back to the start. The use of the substance is the reason for the addiction. This danger presents itself strongly in the first week. Take a dropper of Smoke-Free drops instead.

#2. Using a cigarette to reward yourself for successfully quitting smoking. Sounds crazy, but those are the last starving nicotine receptor sites in your brain making that plea, and they will say anything. They belong to your demon ex lover, don’t pay them any mind. Take my permission to externalize them from your body. They really are not you, your desires, your will.

#3. Allowing yourself to use a traumatic or unsettling life experience as an excuse to go whistling at the graveyard for the demon lover you dumped. Smoking will not help you cope with your problems, not in the least. It will make you worry, fret, waste your time, and it will give you back your demon ex lover, a problem you really don’t need to add to the pile.

#4. Dreaming that you smoked. Sounds even crazier?? This one almost undid me. I would (still occasionally do) have dreams where I noticed myself smoking. In the dream it seemed reasonable, I had fast-forwarded myself to a time where I could enjoy a smoke at a party and not re-enter my addiction contract. This is absolutely not true. If you smoke, you re-enter your addiction contract, and I am sure you know who has the upper hand in that document. My problem was that the dreams were virtually indistinguishable from an actual memory. I had to do deeper dream work to catch myself and be able to remind myself in the dream, “No, I do not smoke, no never! Because that would be re-entering the addiction contract.” Again, this is the last few nicotine receptor sites on your brain talking. For me this danger has dwindled to very seldom after three years off nicotine.

The Rest of Your Life
Because it is probably going to be longer than it would have been! While many people describe having a lot more energy, that didn’t happen for me, possibly because I was very physically active during my smoking years. What did happen was very positive, however. I could see the fine lines in my face disappear, and I actually aged backwards for the next three years, as far as my facial appearance went. The receding of my gums reversed itself, I actually gained ground in dental health.

The forecast may be better for quitters because social norms have grown towards strong negative reinforcement against smoking. This is a persuasion of personal liberty in favor of the greater social good, but when does negative reinforcement become a violation of personal liberty? I am very much in favor of persuasion over the use of regulation as far as personal liberties are concerned. While new anti-smoking regulations have definitely given society some tools of negative reinforcement, I would ask you to look for any negative reinforcement in my successful smoking cessation program. What worked was a program of substitutive behavior and positive rewards in a context of self-compassion. Remember, it just keeps getting easier. I hope it works for you.

c Princess Poysen Ivieee 2006

Update/Correction to an Earlier Post

2006-08-02T09:59:00.000-07:00

Some months back I wrote this post about the early Israelites' brutal conquest of the Land of Canaan under the direction of Joshua, as recorded in the Bible.

Turns out that it just did not even happen. Modern archaeologists have painstakingly dug up pretty much this whole area which gave birth to western civilization. There is no evidence of the kingdoms of David nor the massive temple of Solomon, early Israelites never were enslaved in Egypt, never invaded Canaan, never murdered all those idol worshippers. They just thought it would be a good idea for them to understand that to be their history as a way to unify the tribes under one national/religious identity.

The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman is written for the general public, and to my knowlege is the first attempt to introduce us to what archaeologists have known for quite some time.

Of course it might be a totally wasted effort, since it comes from the "reality-based" way of thinking. This book shows clearly that reality-based thinking and understanding of history has been on the run since ancient times.

I will not be spoiling the book for you if I tell you that according to archaeologists and other serious students of the Bible and the Holy Land, that the whole darned Old Testement was put together, a collection/editing and revisionist story, during the 7th century under the rule of King Josiah. Some of those cities supposedly sacked by Josua never even existed until Josiah's times.

After an initial relief that my chosen spiritual ancestors, the polytheistic Canaanites, were not destroyed by early Isrealites, a darker feeling descends. No, the followers of YHWH did not commit genocide, they just thought it would have been a good thing to have done! So they assembled, edited and wrote and rewrote these legends which were to become the new history. It is all based on huge cognitive dissonance. Pretty much the first thing that we do after getting the Ten Commandments, near the top of which is "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is to go out and supposedly eradicate the whole population of a dozen or so city states. Well dang. Off to a good start.

Next stop, the Koran. I've already peaked into some of the first verses, and it starts out with war and religious intolerance from the very beginning. I'll have more of the same, please.

How are we to ever have peace, freedom, or democracy, when the foundations of these major world religions is built on worship of angry and jealous war gods?

What Happened Last Night

2006-07-08T21:25:00.000-07:00

Tigger and Tilly,
Cedar and Stella
Sat down by the TV
They watched the grey blue glowing box
And what then did they see?

Tigger saw a bouncing tail hopping right on by
Cedar saw the faeries dance and never wondered why
Stella saw the ghosts as play as if it were a game
Tilly saw the stars at night calling her by name

The house dissolved, the trees gathered ‘round
A singing wind the only sound
The TV then became the moon
They danced almost until they swooned

The moon did set
The sun did rise
Tigger and Tilly
Cedar and Stella
Wiped the laughter from their eyes

HHS Trout au Pistache

2006-06-26T23:42:00.000-07:00

This was so easy to do, does it count as a recipe?

LoverMan and I made an excusion to one of the tonier grocery markets in town to see what the fish market had to offer. We call it "Central Markup" how 'bout you?

In spite of my class attitudes the produce section gave me instant mall-eyes. Every vegetable looked new, interesting, fresh and delectable. Maybe because it is early summer and Central Texas local farms are at the peak of their produce. I got some freaky little spaceship shaped summer squashes which melted into succulent morsels in a steamed butter bath with basil. But I'm skipping ahead

LM helped steer me through the produce aisle with all my clothes still on, then we were in fish, so why was it so important to not be naked? The setup was a little off-putting, bot LM and me were straining bad eyesight to look at the little fishies while the "fish team" tried to land the catch into the customers hands. Note to self and others: I have been told this is easier on weekday nights than weekends.

We settled on some golden trout back in the corner. Maybe we could see better than the other boomers crowding the aisle. With the greenbeans in hand already, we proceeded to check out with fewer diversions.

Really this is a pretty expensive grocery store. I would not go there if I didn't have food stamps. But since I do...

Pistacio Crusted Trout

Two trout fillets, each about 1/2 pound
two handfulls pistacio nuts
two crackers any kind
paprika
1-2 tangerines or tangelos
3 tbsp butter

Shell the pistacio nuts and throw them in a blender with the crackers and just a smidge of paprika. Blend til it is like sand with small pebbles.

Melt the butter in a flat baking pan under the broiler at 500 degrees. Add the juice of the tangerines and return to broil. In one or two minutes remove and dredge the trout in the butter sauce, making suer to coat the flesh side with plenty of moisture. Lay the trout fillets in the baking pan skin side down. Shake the pistacio meal on top of the fish, a strainer is helpful. Ideally, all the grains of crusting soak up a little of the butter/tangerine sauce.

Our trout was only 1/2-1 inch thick, so as soon as we smelled pistacio in the kitchen we retrieved the fish from the broiler at 3 - 5 minutes and it was done. If the fish was thicker or denser than this tender trout, the pistacio crust would burn before the fish was done. If your fish is thicker, I recommend turning the broiler down to a baking temperature.

We served these golden trout with plain brown basmati and green beans. The beans were lightly steamed into an olive oil/white wine mix with lemon juice, thyme, black pepper and a shake of salt.

This probably sounds very extravagant for someone shopping on food stamps. I think I can do this sort of thing because I get the raw ingredients intead of anything pre prepared. This is one of the best examples of the predictably outstanding results of me and LM "cooking for entertainment." Keeps us off the streets, one night at a time.

Food Stamp Snafu Unsnarled

2006-05-16T10:16:00.000-07:00

I got some excellent help with my food stamp situation. LoverMan went to his boss, an incredible public servant in the Texas Department of Health Services, and told her about my situation. She referred him to the Center for Public Policy Priorites, a nonprofit watchdog group with it's fingers in many pies. They are an extremely informed group who presents information on the national level. In March, they published a document, "Problems Enrolling in Public Benefits?" which listed exactly who to go to in state and federal governments with my complaint, and how to present it. The magic word is: I am filing a complaint under 7 CFR 271.6, in case you were wondering why your previous pleas fell on deaf ears!

I cleaned up the below blog entry about my tribulations, and off it went to the authorities. Within two days the machine was CRANKIN! And I had become e-buddies with the author of the above CPPP document.

I got my benefits on May 9th, and because CPPP had advised me, they were retro back to February 7th, my original filing date. Whoo-hoo! Full fridge!

Now, I have no idea what the behind the scene cusalities were, but on May 16th it was reprted that State workers took back the job that had been outsourced to Accenture, a private corporation that has fucked up food stamps, MedicAid and any number of social safety net services in Colorado and Texas, from what I have learned. I know that several Texas Democrats had been getting huffy about the situation, AND Carol of the Many Names. According to the true public servant who gave me my phone interview, the state workers were going to train the Accenture 'bots until they get it right. I just hope that Accenture wants to get it right.

Storm Stories

2006-05-05T11:29:00.000-07:00

Hey LoverMan!
It was very scary and exciting. We had just finished our teacher's cell meeting in way south Austin when it hit. We only made it about two blocks from M's store, then we had to take shelter in a car wash slot. Street signs and tree branches were blowing around like paper! It was so furious I was sure it would pass over very quickly but it just kept getting worse. Then the hail started! I'm pretty sure we were huddled under the car wash for 20-30 minutes. Then we headed towards I-35 and missed it because we couldn't see the exit! Some people were driving slow like us, others were driving as fast as if there was nothing going on. The lightning show was dazzling as we headed north into the wind, and the rain made windhield wipers superfluous. Heading into the neighborhood, we had to drive around tree branches in the streets. Then I was home and S had to head back to south Austin. Talk about friendship above and beyond. The worst was over by then, though. T had candles on when I got in. He had decided to go for an adventure walk in the storm when it started, got halfway down the block when there was an explosion and he saw a wedge of the sky lit up bright orange. That was when the power went out, and he ran home, adventure abandoned! So he thought. Then a huge thud and crunch hit the house and he looked in the backyard and thought a whole tree fell down. I was able to determine that our roof was not hurt, but two of J's cedar elm trees lost most of their top limbs. Our back yard/side yard area is impassable, about five big limbs of 6 inch diameter are down, mostly in my backyard. It doesnt look like any of my trees lost any major limbs. T was hungry and had no idea how to cook anything that didn't involve the microwave. So I made nachos and he accepted an alcoholic beverage! We sat at the back door and watched the lightning and laughed and laughed.

The power is still out on just our side of the street. I might ask for a refrigerator rescue later on today, honey. We must save the green chile sauce! You could hear chainsaws all over the neighborhood this morning. There is a tree-killed-car on Dancy two houses north of D's place.

If the power is back on at either your place or mine we can watch the movie. But I heard that City crews are facing over 16,000 customers who are still out of juice (down from 52,000 earlier in the wee hours), might take awhile...and we are in for more thunderstorms tonight, starting at 10pm.

XO
PPI

~o}0<

>From: LoverMan
>
>I thought it was sweet for you to call last night in the storm, too bad we didn't have better connections. The power is still out. The utility company (or someone) pushed the dumpster into the alley and put tape up to block access. A power line is hanging down and running along the ground behind the complex. Trees down all over.

Texas Food Stamp Privatization Scams Clients, Taxpayers

2006-05-02T10:38:00.000-07:00

I was denied foodstamps on April 29th. They sent a letter on April 26th that had one thing on the back, cryptically, a time and date April 28 2006 2pm. That is all, no instructions or information. The letter itself arrived on the 28th some time in the afternoon, I don't know when, because I was at work. What I was supposed to understand from this is that I was going to get a call at 2pm on the 28th for a phone interview. They say my housemate took the call and said I was not there, so my whole application was denied. I asked Homie about it and he remembers getting the letter that afternoon, and he was home, but there was no phone call. I am spitting mad. I'm not the only one.

I have been reluctant to blog about this because some of you know where I work and might be unpleasantly surprised that the owner of a successful small business needs foodstamps. Well I do. Business has been bad as much of retail here has experienced a downturn over the years. We can't afford paychecks often anymore. I have been surviving on about $500 gross a month since last June.

I have all my documents. To begin this process I went to the food stamp website to self-screen. It is a very nice website and makes it all seem very pleasant. Just you wait.

It was pretty clear that I was probably eligible for emergency food stamps. I rode my bike down Airport to the office and began the process, after calling to find out what verification documents I would need. I filled out my application on February 7th, and at the end of the process, Sandra Lee Rodriguez gave me my receipt of application and told me to call the call center line, 211, on the 10th or 13th. So I did, on the 13th of February. The call center operator had no idea, my application had not made it into the system. This didn't really surprise me, but they had told me to call so I did. When I told her that I had applied for emergency food stamps, she got confused and said that they should have given me my stamps on the 7th. We agreed that It would be best if I went back to the office the next day to see what happened.

That's what I did, on Feb. 14th. That is where they told me that on the 7th I had been denied emergency food stamps and that the regular application would take up to 30 days to process and that I should call the help line every day. I asked a) why was I denied, and b) why didn't you tell me I was denied. Ms. Rodrigues just said that based on the information I had submitted I had been denied. Another office mate of hers asked if I worked and had an income. That was why I was denied, even though the self-sceening process make it clear that working people can be eligible based on an income/expenses formula.

I called 211 either the next day or the next, and they said the same thing, it would be up to 30 days to process the application. They said there was no need to call back every day, I would get something in the mail.

At that point I just waited. I had heard about the food stamp backlog caused by the newly privatized system. Other people have kids and stuff and probably need help first. I called again some time in March (Stacy ref. #73359) to check on things, and she told me that I had been told in a previous conversation that I had been informed that my application had missing documents and I had been told that I had to fax this stuff to them but that I had not done so by the deadline so my application had expired! I informed her that no such conversation had taken place and could she tell me who I had supposedly spoken to and the reference number for this alleged conversation, and did I have to apply all over again? Then she made some changes on the computer to un-expire my application. She told me what I had to fax, all stuff that I had brought to the office for my original application, but the staff had not seemed interested in these required documents.

Birth Certificate
Paycheck stubs for the last 3 months
copies of utility bills, car payment, insurance payments
copy of rent check
bank statement
And now, a new requirement: a finger image

Finger image? I would have to go back to the office and get them to fingerprint me. I was beginning to get an idea of what finger image I would fax to them. But I behaved and faxed everything, except the finger image. This is really the only non-obedient thing I have done in the whole process. They have my social security number, birth certificate and all of the other private, rectally-retained personal and financial details of my life. It had become enough of a humiliation. I have been fingerprinted before. It happens before they put you in jail. So after faxing this stuff, I called the next day to confirm that they had gotten it. They said they had, and I asked if they had everything they needed and they said they did, and that it would take up to 30 days to process my application. Another 30 days? I was having the clock re-set because the office staff had not bothered to put my docs in my file, or they didn't know they were supposed to, or as I was beginning to suspect, there is a systematic policy of getting people to mess up their apps and cause delays and even fabricate conversations in order to achieve a denial of benefits.

Today, I spoke with Shamay ref. #73223 about two letters from Texas Health and Human Services Commission. One was dated April 26th, recieved on April 27th regarding the finger image, and basically it means yes, I have to get the fingerprinting done at the local office. Shamay told me that now EVERYONE has to get fingerprinted. The letter gives me a deadline of May 7th to do this. However, further down the letter it says that if the info is not submitted by Mar. 10th, my case may be denied.

The second letter that Shamay and I discussed was much more cryptic. Also dated April 26th, it was received (my Homie remembers) on Friday the 28th. It has my name and address and -finally- a case number on the front. The was another page that was blank except for "306" printed real small sidways on one corner. But, as I noticed today reviewing it, there is something on the back of the address page. It says:

04/28/2006 Friday/Viernes 02:00 PM

(512) XXX-XXXX(my phone #)

02:00 PM 02:30

That is exactly what it says. Shamay told me what that meant was that I was supposed to have had a phone interview at 2pm on Friday the 28th. Checking further into my information, she found that I had been called at that time and that I wasn't home, so I was listed as a "no-show" for my appointment and therefore my application for food stamps was denied! A letter of denial had been sent on April 29th (they're working Saturdays now??) and that I had the right to appeal the denial. She did not seem sympathetic or even interested in the fact that I could not have known to be there for the appointment because the letter regarding the appointment didn't mention that there was an appointment and was recieved after the appointment time! In fact I was at work, and they have that phone number also and my Homie was home that day and did not get a call, nor were there any messages from that day. So they made it impossible to make this appointment, and they called (or lied about calling) out of the blue during working hours and denied my application!

Let me tell you what will happen. If I appeal the denial it will take up to 30 days to process the appeal, unless they can trip it up and drag it out for longer. Then I will re-apply for food stamps, and THAT process will take up to 30 days unless they can foul it up.

The reality is that this new private company has a policy to not pay out benefits in Texas, that food stamps are virtually unavailable in Texas, and that this corporation has created a maze of gerbil wheels to keep people from figuring out that he heads of this private corporation are buying lots of computers while eating our food stamps.

Southern Sides: A Theory of Vegetable Balancing

2006-04-18T13:11:00.000-07:00

Although I am no longer a vegetarian, I will always love vegetables in my meals. With a Southern/Creole/Mexican culinary back ground, I was taught to love vegetables and meats well prepared with spices, and unfortunately, too many fats and even carcinogenic methods of preparation. After nearly two decades of vegetarian cooking, I was able to re-visit these favorite vegetable sides, and easily replace things like bacon fat, lard, or blackening with olive oil, better herb seasonings, and quicker cooking. Oh, but sorry, I never got rid of the butter, and I am certain that one day butter will be redeemed as a “good” fat.

One of the classic Southern meals is the three-vegetable plate (sometimes with four vegetables) or Southern Sides. With chicken, beef, and pork seasonings, the Southern way of preparation of vegetable is rarely vegetarian, but it easily could be. Even with a fish or meat entrée, the vegetable sides tradition presents an always-changing range of options that can suit any seasonal availability issues, and, if intelligently selected, bring a nutritional balance to the meal.

Back when I first became a vegetarian, we were greatly influenced by the meat industry’s propaganda and a vegetarian cookbook, Laurel’s Kitchen. Both of these polar-opposite information sources agreed on one thing: It was very difficult for vegetarians to get enough protein, and having been raised with images of starving Africans suffering from kwashiorkor, none of us wanted that! Laurel taught us that the only way for vegetarians to get enough protein was to assiduously balance the nine essential amino acids in our diet was to balance grains plus legumes (beans). So since lysine is more available in legumes, and methionine and cystine were more present in grains, EVERY meal was based on beans and rice. It is amazing so many of us stuck it out!

While it is true that legumes and grains have complementary proteins (which is why every nation has some classic recipe that is some version of beans and rice) we now know that the human body, at least a healthy one, is much more flexible in its ability to obtain and convert and combine amino acids. We also know that vegetables alone contain more than enough protein than necessary for healthy human bodies. Nobody, even the loopiest, most unbalanced diet wing-nut ever developed kwashiorkor (protein starvation) in the US. Protein starvation is difficult to arrive at without actual calorie starvation, marasmus.

Nevertheless, as I developed my recipes menus and food theories, I remained committed to the idea of balance, harmony through the combination of dissimilar ingredients. Now I was back to the basic Southern Sides but with new information. Since the protein problem was solved, the role of vitamins and antioxidants, phytochemicals (literally plant chemical) became much more important to promote optimum health and to prevent disease.

Now we strike into my own theories. I believe that the reason we evolved the ability to see colors was that it allowed us to choose and harvest fruit and vegetable foods of high phytochemical content. Green leaves, purple fruits, yellow seeds, orange roots are “beautiful” to us because they are nutritionally advantageous for us. Of course there are more than a few exceptions to this, but those lessons are easily learned. The pretty, green aloe vera leaf looks plump and juicy and even smells good, but one bite and your average primate will spit it out. The aloins would cause diarrhea if you ate too much.

If the colors of plant advertise their vitamin content, the next natural step is to balance these vitamins and phytochemicals by serving portions of contrasting colors. So I would choose to serve a green vegetable with a yellow vegetable and a white one, but I would not serve two yellow vegetable together. Hence I would not serve roasted red bell peppers next to red tomatoes. Nor carrots and butternut squash on the same menu. Instead, I would serve three vegetable sides, each prepared in their own way, each of a different color. Thus, sweet potatoes, corn, and green beans would be a perfect combination, but not yellow squash, corn and green beans.

The next level of balance-by-contrast is to serve portions of vegetables that come from different parts of the plant. While beets are red and turnips are white and carrots are orange, I would not serve them in the same menu, because they are all roots. Nutritionally, different vitamins, minerals and carbohydrates tend to occur in different parts of plants. So, I would serve orange sweet potatoes (a root) with collard greens (a leaf) and either yellow squash (a fruit) or corn (a seed). I have created a meal that is made from vegetables of three different colors AND three different parts of plants.

What if you do not know what parts of the plant your vegetable came from? This is some very basic nutritional and biological information that is pretty easy to come by, and any produce worker should be glad you asked such an interesting question!

Does it seem too complicated? Maybe while reading this article it does, but once you are in the produce aisle, it falls together pretty simply, just by seeing “what looks good today?” Although I try to choose produce that is in season in Central Texas at any given time, we are blessed by the produce of the world in any good grocery store, so there are plenty of choices.

Here is a list of different parts/colors to give you an idea how to balance the Southern Sides:

Green stem/stalk: celery, asparagus
Green leaf: spinach, kale, chard, cabbage, lettuce, bok choi, mizuna, mustard greens, Brussels sprouts
Green flower: broccoli, artichoke
Green fruit: green bell pepper, zucchini, okra
Green seeds: green beans, peas, snow peas, sugar snap peas, lima beans

Yellow root: golden beets, yellow potatoes
Yellow fruit: yellow bell pepper, yellow squash, yellow tomato, chanterelle mushrooms
Yellow seeds: corn

Orange root: sweet potatoes, yams, carrots, rutabagas
Orange fruit: Orange tomato, all types of winter squash

Red root: beets
Red fruit: tomato, red bell pepper

White root: onion, potato (even the purple ones since they lose the purple upon cooking)
White stem/stalk: kohlrabi
White flower: cauliflower
White fruit: oyster mushrooms, eggplant, yellow squash, zucchini
White seed: rice, pasta (macaroni and cheese!) okra

Brown fruit: mushrooms
Brown seed: blackeyed peas

Obviously there are some points of argument and overlap here. It is meant to be a general guideline, and the parts-of-plants is less important, for example, would I serve sauteed okra with braised yellow squash? Sure I would. These two fruits are balanced just because they are so dissimilar. If you find yourself disagreeing with these categories, you are already on your way to creating your own version of this meal plan!

Now let’s talk about the why-bother part. I will share with you a few anecdotal observations about the result of this sort of meal on myself, LoverMan and friends. First, there is an almost opiate sense of satisfaction. “I feel like my cells are all singing. Every cell in my body!” I said to LM. “And for once, they are all in harmony,” he joked. Most guests comment on how they feel afterward, a bliss factor. They also say that my vegetables taste better than their mother’s. Most boomers relate that to our parents’ fondness for canned and frozen veggies, while we prefer fresh. But I contend that it is the contrast in flavors that makes them more appealing in this context, and people end up eating much larger portions of vegetables like cauliflower, beets or greens, usually a hard sell in other meal plans. You can eat more of this kind of food than other more calorie-dense foods because veggies are by volume mostly fiber and water. This is then better for regular bowel movement.

Both LM and I, who love to drink alcoholic beverages with meals, find we don’t drink as much during or after these dinners. And he, a decided snack-a-holic, will have less craving for potato chips and cheesy puffs for at least a day after. I believe that most unhealthy cravings are really minor dietary deficiencies trying to be satisfied. The balanced Southern Sides meal puts the stop to those whiny little voices!

While you can add meat entrees to this dinner to beautiful affects amidst three colorful veggie portions, rare is the person who will eat this meal and say, “Well, dang, that would have been great if it came with some pork chops.”

I leave it to your creative genius to develop simple recipes for each of these veggies, as I have done. Enjoy the tradition, and now the health benefits of Southern Sides!

Green Dragon

2006-03-12T12:27:00.000-08:00

GREEN DRAGON FAERIES

The Green Dragon is an infrequently encountered herb of ancient lineage. Related to the more well known Jack in the Pulpit, it has a similar life history, except perhaps for this:

Rarely witnessed by human eyes, the male Green Dragon Faery goes about in early spring. Arrested by the beauty of the season, nature impels him to please himself in the private bottomlands near lovely creeks. His seed is let out upon the ground, and from this, the flower arises in spring.

During the remainder of the spring and summer season, the herb is known only by the unusual palmate leaves, signature of the male faery’s handiwork.

Later on in the summer season, the inseminated stalks of the Green Dragon herb appear as a fruiting body, a cluster of jewel-toned red berries, rising perhaps two or three inches from the soil. With no further interaction, any number of these berries eventually falls to the forest floor, where they stand as good a chance of any of sprouting into a new Green Dragon plant. Many berry stalks, however, persist long into the fall. These appear irresistibly in the fantasy of the female Green Dragon Faery who happens by. Called by nature, she mounts the stalks of berries to satisfy herself. Inevitably, one or more of the berries is dislodged into her womb during the experience. These berries, in a favorable year, take root into her womb to later be born as the next generation of Green Dragon Faerie.

Spectral Analysis

2006-03-09T08:52:00.000-08:00

Get your own spectral analysis from Area 23^®

Faery Falling

2006-02-26T19:10:00.000-08:00

Sometime around the time that your mother was born, a Faery mother was giving birth to a daughter. Faery labors are notoriously difficult, often resulting in the death of the mother. Phaebee swore (though it sounded like flute music to you or me), she screamed, though it seemed a rare bird call, and she sweated furiously which looked like falling stars were streaming from her. She rocked and pushed and did hundreds of aerial somersaults, for Phaebee was very much an airborn Fae.

Finally during one huge high altitude loop-de-loop, and with relatively little bloodshed (appearing as a magenta fog), the baby popped out of the bump that had ridden nearly fifty years on Phaebee’s back between her wings, for that is the peculiar biology of Phaebee’s sort. To Phaebee’s surprise, the tiny parcel began to plummet towards the earth. Out of curiosity Phaebee flew down, alongside the baby Fae, keeping time with the tug of gravity. As the baby fell through the clouds, Phaebee saw its eyes open, wide, violet, and innocent. By the time the baby was approaching the treetops, Phaebee had formulated a theory that the reason the baby was falling from the sky was because it had no wings. No such reasoning troubled the child’s unwrinkled brow, and it smiled with love and trust at its mother, who by now can be understood to be utterly clueless and indifferent to the realities of the force of gravity, and what it might mean for those of us not blessed with wings.

A swooping rescue was not inevitable, for Phaebee had no idea that the terminal velocity of her baby’s fall, interrupted by the inconvenient placement of the Earth, could result in what us more-prone-to-mortality sorts would call death.

So you think that this could have been the end of this Faery baby. Well, obviously you don’t know very much about one thing about Faeries which has to do with Luck.

Phoooommmm---phhhhh! Went the puffball mushroom, when all of its three inch diameter was impacted by the two and three-quarters of an inch length of the Faery baby.

Poooo—oooph! Went a cloud of puffball spores, causing the baby and Phaebee to sneeze repeatedly, which resembled a mist of rainbows.

After the sneezing, Mother and Daughter went into a peal of laughter, and there is no lark, no canyon wren that can mimic such a tune.

“What is your name, Daughter?” asked Phaebee.

“If you will, Mother, please call me Plummet,” answered the babe.

Phaebee did not exactly approve of her daughter’s name, but you know how children will be. Not knowing exactly what to do with her non-aerial child, she leased from a dove who had built a nest much higher than usual. As a first time mother, Phaebee expected (or at least hoped or at worst convinced herself) that Plummet would develop wings at some stage in her maturation, because did not caterpillars grow wings after a time earthbound?

After the passing of seven years, Plummet asked Phaebee directly, “Mother, when am I to get my wings? I see you gambol, I see you sport, you fly here and where far away, you bring me marvelous toys and treats from many lands, but I tire of waiting in this nest while you and many other Fae fly free across the globe, exploring the stars if you will!”

Knowing that this time would come, Phaebee bluffed. “Child, it is good that you have many intentions, but it is the nature of our sort to be long lived, and one result of this is that we have long childhoods. Enjoy yourself, and your wings will come in time.”

“Send her down here!” called some Pixies and Corrigan beneath the trees. “We go by foot through the woods and valleys, we visit the towns of men on the ground, and we think it a merry life indeed! Come, mislead some oafish manchild fall into the bog and we will laugh and drink of the sport!”

Bluffing again, Phaebee warned, “You will not find a pair of wings amongst their lot, Plummet.”

So Plummet dreamed and imagined for another seven years. How would you have liked it, to be fourteen years old and still being brought worms to eat by your mother, like any robin? Of course, what Phaebee brought Plummet in the way of comestibles was far exceeded by what she was able to bring in the way of poetry, science, herbology, magic, global politics and theology. Those aerial Faeries really get out and about, you know. Plummet desired nothing more than to be one of these couriers of language, knowledge and culture. She pressed her mother further.

“Just when is the average time for a Faerie of our sorts to develop wings, dear Mother? For I am truthfully beginning to wonder if we are really the same sort of being at all. If I am to never gain my wings, how long do you intend to keep me up in this lofty nursery? Until your distant and hard won death?”

Phaebee could no longer illude her daughter. “Child, it is true that I have wondered about the truth of our relation. My own childhood is equally distant from my death, but I remember no time when I had no wings. I am sorry, daughter. Worry has crossed my brow, sparing yours. Our times in this world have more trouble than before. There are kemm-ie-kals now, brought about by the Sons of Adam, which are new to us, and we know not whether they affect the development of the Fae as they affect our Insect OtherKin.”

“But my faith is in you, Plummet. You are my daughter and I know that Faery luck and magic will win you your wings, if Fate wills it.

Plummet had many things to consider which easily took the next seven years. In twenty one years many things pass in the world of the Sons of Adam, compared to a dull and cloistered life among the Fae. For one thing, the very remote nature of Plummet and Phaebee’s nest changed to being not very remote at all. Brownies pretty much went extinct, and Pixies and Phookas increased in number and persistence of attempted seductions. Elves appeared and disappeared, always threatening to leave forever. Plummet continued to be a great student of science and magic, devouring many more complex theorems than her flighty mother could tolerate.

No intellectual pursuit seemed as lofty as the object that floated towards Plummet one Autumn day. Tossing one way and the next, it seemed to be the very personification of the breeze, messy and erratic in its indecision, and utterly fascinating because of it. Sitting on her nest overlooking what had now become suburbs instead of forest, Plummet wished upon the billowy object as if it were a star. No Fae she knew traveled in such a habit, so she simply wished for it to come near. Her Faery luck made the rendezvous inevitable, and the airborn film caught itself on the branch before her.

It was white, and thin, and bore red and blue lettering. “Sam Smith’s Food-N-Go” it said, embellished by a flag of the same color scheme. Plummet examined her new toy with delight, and then, wishing that she could be as free as this plastic bag, she sighed deeply.

Her sigh seemed to be like a swarm of bees flying from her mouth, and they flew into the bag and billowed it out to the seams, lifting it and Plummet from the branch of her childhood nest. She found that the bag would gently sink if she didn’t breathe into it, and that she could alter her course and speed by how hard she blew into it and in what direction. She hung from each handhold of the bag, and made a delightful sport of swinging, racing, and shooting across the sky. The freedom which was the birthright of her species but which she had never experienced was now hers, and the joy of it caused her to soar across the countryside in a flurry of wild abandon.

Abruptly, her bag stopped moving and nearly tossed Plummet off the handholds, high above the ground. Her bag had caught itself up in a tree, and there she was forced to scramble up onto the offending branch. The bag had a big rip in it, and after she untangled it, she was not able to fill it with her breath. So here she was, stranded in a tree very far from home.

As luck would have it, though, there was another bag in a neighboring tree, and Plummet climbed over to inspect it for rips and holes.

“Hey! That’s my bag, Faery!” shouted another Fae who was resting on the branch just behind the bag. This boy seemed similar to Plummet’s kind, but like her, he had no wings.

“You look like me, and my mother. Are you an Aery-Faery or another sort? Plummet asked.

“Yes, I’m an Aery-Faery, but like you, not of my own power. I have to use a bag to fly too.”

“Are there many like us?”

“Many in our generation are born without wings, or worse,” he frowned. It is because of a kind of pesticide that the Sons of Adam used on their food plants back when our mothers were forming. They are pigs, aren’t they!” he said, and spit over his left shoulder.

“I can’t say, I have never met a pig, just seen pictures and read about them. They seem like nice enough people to me.”

“Ha ha, well see for yourself, my fellow Birth Defected, or take my advice and stay away from them!” His anger radiated with the zeal of a warrior, and his spirit seemed valiant and utterly incorruptible. Plummet’s heart twisted up in her chest. He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. And then he was gone, blowing his bag before him into the sunset. “Good luck!” he hollered back towards her, although it was scarcely necessary. Within a few minutes a fresh plastic bag, “Betty’s Discount Beauty Supplies” blew right in front of her, and with a breath, she was aloft again.

As the sun set, Plummet drifted over fields and woods and even the towns and suburbs of Sons of Adam. Several times she saw the humans pointing up at her, which confused her because she knew herself to be invisible to their eyes.

‘Round about midnight, Plummet was drifting over a small town, and she heard shouts and cries and laughter, but up in the air, not from the ground. At first it seemed like a roiling cloud of smoke, dust from horses’ hooves, and then she found herself in a swarming troop of Unseelies, who were out on a midnight rade. Not having wings themselves, they were mounted on flying horses, though Plummet knew that the horses were no more than glamoured-up stalks of ragweed.

“Hey pretty lady, good job, you got all those stupid AdamSons thinking they saw a flying saucer!”

“How can they see me? I’m invisible to them!” queried Plummet.

“Ah, well then, you are, but your bag is not, and when you blow in it with your glittery Aery-Faery breath, you light it up with all kind of spaceship colors!”

Sure enough, Plummet looked up to her bag, and it was filled with lights of all colors, mesmerizing against the night sky. “Let them think what they will!” she laughed, and all the raggedy Unseelies laughed along.

“Come with us, Pretty, it would amuse us to have such a bit of fancy stuff along for the rade,” they leered.

“Well, I just will do that! Whither hence, Unseelies?”

“Heh, we’re out to go get ourselves a drink or two!”

“Certainly no more than three! On the house, as it were!”

So Plummet followed along the rade, trying not to notice that the Unseelies delighted in causing mischief and mayhem along the way, dropping lit matches over barns, bent nails over roads, Chick tract booklets over synagogues. Then with no warning they all careened down towards a convenience store, and each murmuring some spell, they flew right through the small crack between the closed and locked front doors. Not knowing the spell password, Plummet smacked into the door and bounced back to the sidewalk, where (luckily) a Styrofoam food box absorbed her fall.

She climbed up onto the trash basket in front of the store and looked in. The Unseelies were sprawled out on the floor, chugging beer and wine. She had no doubt that they could make their theft appear as the break-in of local juvenile delinquents. She sighed, and rested till nearly dawn.

From off in the distance she noticed another plastic bag that was not acting normally. It seemed to try to loft itself, but it would settle back down, perhaps tethered to a bush? Blowing into her own bag, Plummet drifted over to investigate.

Next to a concrete drainage ditch by a muddy little tributary, there was a very homely troll holding a plastic bag. “Majestic Electric Value Components.” The troll blew into his bag, which billowed but did not take him aloft, and settled back down again. “I suppose it is because I don’t have your magic glittery breath,” he said.

“I figured that any Fae could do it,” said Plummet. “You are Fae, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am a Troll, or Hill-Folk, Berger is the name.” He wore red velvet, brown tweed, green leggings, a feathered cap, and was on the heavyset side. He had bushy eyebrows, and tufts of hair growing from his ears and nostrils. A beard grew up to the hair on his head, which was almost contained by his cap. “And you are Aery-Faery, or Unseelie, by the company you keep, eh?”

“No, I was just along for the rade. I guess I wasn’t invited to their party. Not very appealing, are they?” sniffed Plummet.

“Oh, they have their good points.” His eyes seemed old and wise, and held hers in their gaze.

“Plummet,” said she, and reached out a hand. “I’m an Aery-Faery, though perhaps of a new strain that has no wings,” and she turned so he could see her back.

Berger held her hand with reverence. “Would you like to come meet my family?”

“Okay, which way?”

Berger pointed to a hole in the ground next to the concrete pipe. “Only a few days by this way.”

Plummet didn’t much like the idea of traveling by way of a musty tunnel. “I have a better idea,” she said. And then next thing he knew, Berger was airborne, hugged onto Plummet’s graceful waist, flying away behind the plastic bag and Plummet’s magic breath. Plummet liked the way he held her so gently, and even though he was quite ugly, she found his smell to be very pleasant.

Following Berger’s directions, Plummet blew the two of them towards a hill, and they settled down next to a bridge which crossed a creek. Two older Trolls ran out of a hole under the bridge to greet their son. They were taken aback by the unexpected guest, the lovely Aery-Faery. Dropping hats in hands, they made to welcome her. “Berger, Miss, welcome!” said the woman. “Berger, if you please pretty lady,” said the man, “Do come in!”

Following them into the hill, Plummet whispered to the young Berger “Are all of you called Berger? How do you tell each other apart?”

“Oh, yes, well, all of our sort are named Berger. But just between you and me, I guess you can call me Culvert. Don’t let my folks hear.”

Once inside, Plummet was plied with honey mead, bread, cheese, fruits and all sorts of baked treats. The Berger family asked her many questions about the outside world, laughed and drank. She asked them about their lives and they showed her their fine metalworks. “Swords, and the best chainmail to be had. Not many orders for that these days. But you try to stay in practice,” explained Berger-the-father.

“We make horseshoes, and plumbing fixtures now is all, truth be told,” admitted Berger-the-mother.

It turned out that Plummet’s education into sciences, especially her chosen field of the study of gravity and magnetism, were of great interest to the Bergers, and it was a very long time before they tired of the conversation. Plummet could tell that the loneliness of her childhood nest was something these genial folk would never experience, and she envied them a little. Too bad they were not prettier.

Presently, Berger Culvert took her back upside for fresh air and a walk along the creek. Stopping at the headwaters spring, he turned to her and said, “You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”

“And you, dear Culvert, are so ugly.”

She looked directly into his big brown eyes with her wide violet eyes, and together they savored the naked honesty of the moment. After a while, a tear, but not a tear of sadness, formed in his eye. “Would you like to see me as I truly am?” he whispered.

“Do I not already? Then surely I would!” she whispered back.

“These tears will give you the power to see with Compassion,” he explained, and wiping the tear onto his ring finger, he dotted it into her left eye.

A stinging sensation made Plummet squint for a moment, but when she opened the treated eye and looked at Culvert, what she saw was a young man, handsome, genuine, and wise. Holding the Compassionate eye closed she could still see the Culvert who was ugly, non-adventurous and slow. Looking through both eyes together, the two images superimposed, then merged into a Whole. In that moment Plummet knew that she loved him, and burst into tears of joy. She hugged the Hill Man, and said, “This is the most beautiful magical gift in the world, and I will love you forever!”

By the way that he held her, she knew that the same was true for him. “Plummet, now your left eye will also hold the secret of Compassion and you can give it to whoever you wish.”

“Come!” she exclaimed, “We must go meet my mother, Phaebee!” Culvert hugged her waist and they were off.

In truth Plummet had not the least recollection of how to get home, so she just blew herself and Culvert up into the clouds and let the afternoon breeze take them where it would. Faery luck ensured that the prevailing winds just happened to take them to the nest where Plummet spent her first 21 years.

Though not much larger than Plummet, Culvert was much heavier, and the tree branch sagged under his weight. By coincidence, Phaebee was just returning for a visit. She had not noticed Plummet’s absence, because as according to the Faery flow of time, no time had passed during Plummet’s adventure.

Naturally, Plummet and Phaebee had much to catch up with, and Culvert allowed the joyful chatter and laughter to proceed with few interruptions. When it came around to Plummet offering her mother the Tears of Compassion, however, Phaebee declined. “I have other powers, enough to keep me occupied; you keep this one for yourselves!”

“But look, child, did I not teach you the Faery Faith and how it would bring you wings?” exclaimed Phaebee.

Plummet was confused, until Culvert stroked her back. He rubbed and scratched, and a film of old skin fell away on either side of her spine. Flexing her neck back in an impossible bend, Plummet saw what her mother was talking about.

There, tiny nubbins of wings sprouted. With concentration, Plummet could make them flutter and buzz, but because of their very small size, they would not fly. They were wings, though, and as beautiful, iridescent and gossamer as any Aery-Faery’s functional wings.

Plummet giggled and Phaebee beamed with pride, which seemed like a gale force wind of butterflies.

From there, Phaebee followed Plummet back to the Berger’s warren. Culvert was happy to be carried, one hand in Plummet’s hand, one foot held in Phaebee’s grasp.

News spreads quickly among the Aery-Faeries, and in no time at all a merry host, including some Unseelies, Naiads, Dwarves, Corrigans, Pixies, Gnomes and way too many Bergers to account for, had arrived for the wedding, which was a simple ceremony. Accompanied by music, Phaebee led Plummet by the hand and Berger-the-mother led Culvert by the hand. When they met in the middle, the two mothers joined the hands of their children.

The kiss that Plummet and Culvert then exchanged caused the musicians to crescendo, the Unseelies to laugh out loutishly, and the whole room filled with Phaebee’s tears, which seemed like fireworks bursting. Electricity coursed up and down Plummet’s spine, and then seemed to lodge between her tiny vestigial wings. For the first time in her life, Plummets eyebrows knotted with concern.

Other wedding guests gasped, for they could easily see the blister arise on Plummet’s back. They were shocked, even scandalized but considering the recent history of the failing population of Fae all around the world, they could not disapprove of this rare event. It made all the eldest and most long-lived sorts strain their memory back to when a Fae became pregnant at such a young age, much less upon a first kiss. Plummet’s eyes grew impossibly wide, and Culvert simply grinned a grin and winked a wink at her.

For the next seven times seven years, Plummet and Culvert worked on digging out a warren under the drainage ditch where they had first met. It became Plummet’s business to lure Sons of Adam teenagers from the nearby convenience store with the tricks of her plastic bags and glittery lights, and to anoint their eyes with the Tears of Compassion. I am sure you understand the need for such an enterprise.

And if this story of how Phaebee raised an Earthbound Faery daughter was an adventure, imagine the joys and perils of Plummet and Culvert raising their Aery-Faery boy with wings.

Princess Poysen Ivieee c 2006

Princess Poysen Ivieee ©2006

The Troll and the Bag

2006-02-06T10:50:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time there was an ugly troll who lived under a bridge over a little creek. He lived quite well there in spite of the fact that he was in the middle of the city, eating mushrooms and tadpoles and occasionally frightening schoolchildren. Until one day, a plastic grocery bag from the supermarket down the street blew into his creek right in front of him. This made the troll so angry that he huffed and puffed and swore such that his indignant breath blew the bag up onto the sidewalk above the creek, and the troll chased after it. There he frightened a little girl who had been walking home from school, for not only was he very ugly, but now very angry as well.

“Is this your plastic bag?” he demanded of the little girl.

“No, no sir, it’s not mine,” she pleaded, and ran on down the sidewalk.

The troll was now even angrier, so his indignant huffing and cursing blew the bag all the way to the Governor’s mansion, where a garden party was in progress. The troll marched right up to the Governor and demanded, “Well, is it YOUR plastic bag, then?”

“Uh, no sir, it isn’t mine,” said the Governor, and signaled to the guards. But before they could approach, the troll’s angry sputtering blew the plastic bag up into the air, where it sailed even further, with the troll in hot pursuit.

Now the bag blew all the way to the White House, and settled down right in front of the President’s feet. “All right, it’s GOT to be YOUR bag now, Mr. President! What are you going to do about it?” hollered the troll.

“Look, Troll, I don’t know anything about this plastic bag, and you better get if off the White House lawn before Secret Police ticket you for demonstrating!” sneered the President.

This sent the troll into such a conniption of swearing, huffing, and indignant rage that the plastic grocery bag blew way, way up into the sky, out of the atmosphere even, where finally it came to rest covering the Moon. The troll followed it, and settled into it like a swing, with one leg through each hand-hold of the bag, and there he dangled from the moon, making faces and sticking his purple tongue out and making raspberry sounds at the inhabitants of Earth.

The people of Earth were now quite upset that the view of their beloved Moon was now obscured by a plastic bag, and they cajoled, demanded and pleaded with the troll to take it down.

“Well just tell me, whose plastic bag is this that littered my pretty little creek?” countered the troll.

“It’s not mine,” “It’s not mine,” “It’s not mine,” “It’s not mine,” “It’s not mine,” “It’s not mine,” came the replies from everyone on Earth.

And that is why there is still a plastic bag draped over the moon, with an ugly troll swinging from it.

copyright Princess Poysen Ivieee 2006

The True Fate of the Star of Bethlehem

2006-01-03T11:40:00.000-08:00

Whizzzzzzzzzzzzsssssssstreakflasssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhh! In a perfectly soundless way, the flash of light more brilliant than any human had ever beheld struck across the night sky, following a roughly southeasterly trajectory.

Coincidentally, the Three Wise Men, Magi, or Three Kings, were having an evening together out in the desert. For one it was a way to get away from senators. For another it was a place to get away from the wives. For the third it was an escape from his generals. When they saw the falling star, they all mused on its spiritual significance. You would have to be mightily agnostic not to do the same.

Among themselves, they had no fewer than three great prophesies that the portent could fulfill. Each of them knew of a foretold coming of a Savior, a Son of God or Messiah who was more than a prophet. So they quickly agreed. “What we have just seen was either the portent of the new Savior or the actual man himself.” Seeing that they were the only authority figures on hand, or for a great reason to escape their offices for a great adventure, they decided to follow the falling star to the point where it fell to Earth, and there greet their new spiritual Savior upon arrival.

The bright traveling star had definitely been seen by local peoples as they followed the star. “It went that way,” they all pointed.

Clearly, what the Three Mages had seen was probably some sort of meteor, and what they might not have known was that meteors can cover a lot of ground.

They were not alone in the interpretation of legend of a Messiah, and so most of the local people blessed the Mages in their quest. Onward, they rode.

As they traveled, the villagers continued to encourage the Mages in their quest.

But as time wore on, the Three Kings were not so rallied to their cause.

“We have been on these blessed camels for nearly two weeks now,” one complained.

“None of those senators will know what to do as long as I am gone. Maybe they will know too well.”

“And I really miss my wife. Er, I mean my wives.”

In this spirit they were able to travel only a few more days. The only thing stopping them from returning home immediately was the realization that everyone in all the little towns on their return trip would be very much interested in the result of their journey, and were more or less expecting them to produce a Messiah of some sort.

As ministers or lords of their respective kingdoms, to fail at this endeavor could mean the end of their political careers. So they conspired to falsely anoint any newborn boychild at the earliest convenience. The end of their journey happened to be the town of Bethlehem. They walked into the first inn on the outskirts of the town as soon as they arrived. They asked the innkeeper if any boy children had been born in the area in the recent past and the innkeeper led them to the barn, where they met a young couple and their newborn child.

One jubilated aloud. “This must be the Savior we have sought!”
“Messiah, you mean. How can you tell?”
Quieter though, one doubted. “I thought he would be nobler of birth, or have a halo at least. You guys are mad. These are two mongrel beggars and their bastard child!”
“Nevertheless he will be our King. This quest has become ridiculous. The star pointed the way, it didn’t say that we would have to circle the entire globe of the Earth.”
“Globe of the Earth? The earth is flat!”
“Never mind.”
“He’s cute. She’s beautiful. I sure do miss my wife.”

So the three Mages ended their journey and headed home, telling the people along the way that they had met the child Savior in a faraway town, but never exactly which town it was. They pleaded with people to let the Messiah have a normal upbringing before assuming His adult responsibilities, and warned that certain tyrant kings might not suffer a young rival to live. This was very convincing, so the deception of the Magi was never discovered.

History has not decided whether the Biblical Jesus found by the Wise Men was the same babe, or if some other pretender among many prevailed with popular opinion. In any case, the anointed one rose to the expectations of his people, and benefited from the education financed by one of the wiser Wise Men. The faith that he founded grew into a worldwide complex of related religions, arguably one of the best efforts as far as human spiritual endeavors go.

But where did that meteor land? Perhaps God the Father truly did forsake his only begotten Son, because every now and then, if anyone were near, from a crevasse in the desert Red Sea Hills, one might hear a hollow, metallic sound emanating from a shiny metallic pod which is now almost buried:

Pang pang pang
Pang pang pang

Which is the only way our true Savior has to say:

Let me out
Let me out!

Copyright Princess Poysen Ivieee 2006

A Real Nightmare Before Christmas Story

2005-12-19T20:22:00.000-08:00

I promised you a Christmas story, back during Halloween. I know, I already gave the fiction story. This is a true story, though. Like the Halloween story, it is also a Christian horror story, told to me by a customer.

He is just the sweetest little poofta you could ever meet! How could anyone NOT KNOW? 17 years old, Hispanic, working in the cosmetics sections of stores like Foley's to save money for college. Sings in the choir.

It is Christmas Eve, and the whole, large, Hispanic family is gathered. After while, his mother asks him, in such a way that everyone can hear, "D____, don't you have something to tell us?"

"Uh, I don't know, Merry Christmas, everyone???"

"No, I hear from a friend of yours that you are gay!"

"Well,....uh, yeah..."

Amidst jeers of derision, "Fag!" "Queer!", etc., he was kicked out of his home by his family on Christmas Eve, after being outed by his mother in front of the whole (Christian, intolerant) family.

Spirit of the season!

Here is a toast to this young man, though. Many of us would use such a family tragedy as this as an excuse to go on a downslide bender, get into drugs, start disastrous relationships. But no, D_____ had as I mentioned, been saving up for college. At age 17, he had nearly $3,000 stowed away, enough for deposit and rent and enough to go on for a month or two while he looked for full time employment. He had his own apartment before New Years. So no college, but hey.

Merry Christmas, Happy Yule, D____!

God of Love, Goddess of Iniquity, Blood Everywhere

2005-12-02T10:12:00.000-08:00

This is the sort of conversation you will get into, if you have a witch shop for many years at all.

I thought of her as a sweet older lady, slightly disabled by stroke, and slightly wacky by disposition. We got along great. But I was very much upset by the story she told me yesterday. She had hinted in previous conversations that she wanted to tell me about the origin of the Witches, which I anticipated would be some sort of historically unsupportable fancification. I have over the years dispossessed myself of the 70's feminist revision of middle ages history which many pagans continue to profess, about how the Roman Catholic church burned 9 million witches for practicing herbalism. This is some sort of self-victimization fantasy, sort of like how women have rape fantasies. "I feel repressed, so I will create a mythological alternative to history which gives me every right to feel sorry for myself, explains why I am powerless, and forces me to fight from the bottom." People playing historian, or poets and playwrights in general, always have their fingers on the pulse of such unmet needs of their audiences, and are willing to concoct a supporting document. Once that document gets quoted a few times, you have a completed act of historioveritogenesis, a word I invent with the intention of never using again. Gee, if I am going to revise history, maybe I'd be better off if I create a tale that gives me a chance to blossom as an individual within a culture of justice? I digress here because as a storyteller myself, I am humbled before the power of myth and its ability to change history, whether it is true or not. To footnote myself I will say that much of my thinking in this vein has been shaped by three books: tiumph of the Moon by Ronald Hutton, When God Was a Woman by Merlin Stone, and Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler.

So when someone uses the Bible as their source material, The Book of Enoch, and a few unnamed UFO crackpots, how do you insist on some sort of reality-based scholarship? I may be upset simply because the story she told involved one of the books of the Bible that I find most abhorrant, most contrary to the God of Love model, and most antagonistic to matrifocal Goddess idealizations. It was he Book of Joshua, a slaughter so profound that I myself wrote a story quite a few years ago in an attempt to resolve this God of Love myth with the reality we see today and in history.

Also I may be upset because usually we think of modern Witches as being primarily Pagan and Goddess-worshipping. But allow me to tell you, the Sybil Leek generation is fundamentally Christian, and because of the Golden Dawn and other Kabbalistic influences, they are more Old Testament than New Testament. Such was the case with my friend.

According to the story, the Witches originated thusly: After the big escape from Egypt, and the wandering in the desert for 40 years, Moses, Aaron and later Joshua were instructed by Yaweh to lead the Israelite tribes into the promised land, which was then occupied by the Canaanites. God warned the Israelites not to mingle, dine, worship with, or worst, interbreed with the Canaanites because they were demons.

Well, the slaughter of all the Canaanites, as per the book of Joshua, proceeded, and according to my informant, two of the tribes managed to remain free of the corrupting influence of these demons. One was the Essenes, into which tribe Jesus Christ was able to be born, a human avatar of the Godhead.

One of the tribes migrated north and became the Druids of the Celtic peoples, and it was the Druids who eventually formed the basis of the later strains of Western European Witches. Now I realize that I am missing a detail. Was this one of the tribes untainted by demon blood or are we all descended from demons, me and my friend as well?

There were a few other tangential details to the story, like the all-powerful people in the spaceships, and Jesus' spaceship being called the Star of Bethlehem. (Reminding me of a story I have yet to write!)

I countered with a refusal to believe that the people of Canaan were demons, and my horror at the brutality with which the Israelites killed them, every man, woman and child. It was a massacre, a genocide, and we see today genocide and mass murder and slavery being justified by the denial of the victims humanity. They are called cockroaches in Rwanda, mudpeople, etc. and these appellations of hatred stick in the books because the winners who write history.

(What I really can't believe is the the very strange synchronicity that the movie my housemate selected for me to see last night was! The Hotel Rwanda, a movie based on a true story which describes one of the most modern examples of a genocide taking place using the dehumanization/demonization apparatus of thinking. Unbelievable that this happened in this modern age, and that the Western world allowed it. But then again what just happened in the Sudan?)

So my story here is almost finished. After a little fevered research I found what many Old-Testament type Christians have used to justify the slaughter of the Canaanites. They were a debased polythestic people who sacrificed babies, and used sexual imagery and rites for the purpose of imbuing the landscape with fertility! Why didn't I realize that??? We had to save the babies by killing them all! This baby-killing was brought up by my friend and informant, who told me that the Canaanites built hollow idols of gold and that they stuffed them full of babies and then burned them inside the statues of their unholy gods. Now, I would just have to see some archaeological evidence of that. The baby-killing accusation often is applied to the intended victims of a genocide. And, archaeology is actually quite good at detecting clues of human sacrifice, so I will leave that for a future investigation.

I told my friend that I would have to side with the demons in this case, and if it was so, I was happey to have demon blood in my veins. She told me that I was a creature of exquisite light, something that I am well aware of. But I am not (very much) afraid of the dark, and over her objections, I had to admit to her that I would continue to work with gargoyles and such in my practice of religion and magic which more and more tends to attempt to resolve the Dark and the Light, because in my 40-something opinion and experience, the attempt to keep them separate and to keep the "purity" of the light has resulted in a lot of bloodshed and violence. I refrained from horrifying her with the details of me and Satan's sex life, however.

Didn't I mention that I had written a story about all of this? It is true. I hope you enjoy:

TRIPLE GOD

Once upon a time, there was a warlike and jealous god, whose name was Yahweh. After getting his butt kicked by some pagan gods in Egypt, he undertook the destruction of the Canaanites and many other peoples, and their gods (described in detail in the whole Book of Joshua). This turned out to be way too easy, and soon, this god of war had nobody to fight and he was very bored and lonely there in the desert all by himself. But one day, while he amused himself by burning up bushes on top of his mountain, he had a brilliant idea, that would result in him never being at a loss for war. He divided himself into three, himself, Yahweh, and Allah and Jehovah. Now, he could always have a choice of which of his two other selves to fight. Yahweh, Jehovah, and Allah got busy straight away, filling the history books with blood, and wrecking the world with war happily forever after.

-Princess Poysen Ivieee Jan 2002

Miscegenation

2005-11-30T19:45:00.000-08:00

Spoonful of chocolate ice cream
Spoonful of vanilla ice cream
2 shots vodka
1 shot half and half
1/2 shot Kahlua
Spash of bourbon
Maraschino cherry

Put the ice cream into a martini glass. Add the vodka and half and half, give it just one stir. Swizzle on the Kahlua, top with a splash of bourbon and the cherry. Serve without stirring, with a dessert spoon.

My martini glasses are oversized. You might have to scale it down if you have smaller ones. This is my answer to the Mudslide I got to sample in Grand Cayman.

Gumshu, Elf Spy of the North Pole

2005-11-25T12:10:00.000-08:00

Things were just not right at the North Pole. Normally
at this time of year, there would be a buzz of
activity, with all Santa’s elves hammering, soldering,
varnishing, assembling, stitching, pointing, gluing,
sawing, and Santa barking out orders. Every day Mrs.
Claus would come back from the mail center with bags
and bags of letters to Santa, work orders, as the
elves saw it. See, this tribe of elves who live at the
North Pole with the Clauses want nothing more than to
make toys and gifts for good boys and girls. It is
their very reason for living.

So when the letters to Santa started to slow down over
the past few years, discontent began to brew among the
elves. They became grumpy and depressed. They blamed
Santa, for not giving the children enough reason to
believe in him. They even threatened to strike, until
Santa pointed out that if they went on strike that
means they wouldn’t be making toys anyway. Santa
himself was affected. He snapped at the elves and Mrs.
Claus, and spent too much time alone in his office
drinking brandy and feeling sorry for himself. He
didn’t brush his beard and in no way would he be
called a jolly old elf. “Maybe the elves are right,”
he would mutter to himself, “and if the children don’t
believe in me, I can’t blame them. I don’t believe in
myself.”

But this year was the worst yet. From a trickle of
letters, the mail had dropped off to none. Zero.
Zilch. Nada. Even in his derelict state, Santa
realized that something was afoot. He put his bottle
of brandy back into the file cabinet and stomped down
to the basement, pausing briefly to apologize to Mrs.
Claus for throwing the dish of chocolate chips cookies
onto the floor in a snit the previous night.

In the very bottom of Santa’s toy factory, in the
basement there is a door with a sign that says
“Investigations.” “Sque-eek,” went the door, and Santa
stepped into the musty gloom. One beam of light from
the basement window lit up the dust in the office, and
a chair swiveled slowly around. A middle aged elf
propped his feet up on the desk, knocking off a whole
stack of cluttered file folders. He turned on a bare
light bulb, causing Santa to blink.

“Well, Nicholas old boy, it’s been awhile,” he
twanged.

“Alright, let’s just do away with the detective novel
opening lines, okay?” sighed Santa. “Gumshu, I need
your help.”

Gumshu’s Office of Investigations normally had one
line of business: knowing who is naughty and who is
nice. It was nice, thought Gumshu, to have a different
sort of contract. A challenge will keep my instincts
sharp. Now, what I need is some information. Where to
begin? We need an informant, someone on our side. Who
can we trust? And, with less than a week until
Christmas, I’ll have to work fast.

Gumshu decided to start with the obvious. He checked
his files and picked the oldest child who had racked
up the most “nice” credits on the naughty and nice
records over the years. “I don’t know if this kid
knows anything, but at least she’ll be on our side.”
Gumshu took out his old meerschaum pipe, loaded it
with his magic tobacco, and with the spark of his
lighter, he found himself in a girl’s bedroom.

“Would you mind putting that out, please?” said the
girl, who was bent over a project at her desk. “I
certainly wouldn’t want my parents to think I had
started smoking!”

“Well, no, you wouldn’t, would you,” shrugged Gumshu,
capping the pipe. “You are much too good for that,
aren’t you? Pardon me, it is just the most efficient
way for me to travel. Allow me to introduce myself,
I’m…”

“Oh, I know who you are! You’re Gumshu, head of
Santa’s investigations! You’re kind of famous, well,
at least if you are in the right Santa fan clubs.” She
blushed, embarrased by her own nerdiness.

“Well, gee, miss, uh...,” Gumshu scratched his
forehead under his green felt hat. It had not escaped
his notice that she was a very pretty girl, with fine
blond hair, a round face, and the biggest blue eyes,
bright like the sky on a sunny winter day.

“Woo, sir, Cindy Lou Woo,” she smiled. Then one
eyebrow shot up quizzically. “Why are you here in
person? Aren’t these naughty-and-nice checkups done
mostly by satellite now?”

“You look very familiar, Miss Woo, have we met
before?” asked Gumshu, ignoring her question.

“Uh, no sir. I, uh, played some parts as a child
actress. You might recognize me from one of my minor
roles.”

“Child actress? How old are you now, dearie?” asked
Gumshu.

“I’m twelve and a half. No, more like twelve and
eleven twelfths, you see, my birthday is on Christmas
and so, this is my last year to be able to write a
letter to Santa…” Cindy Lou Woo sighed, and as she
looked into the elf’s squinty eyes, he saw that a tear
was brimming in one of her great big eyes, and that it
sparkled like a snowflake.

Gumshu turned his face and looked away from the
dreaded tear. “Which leads me into my investigation,
and what part, if any, you might play in it. I presume
that you are now writing your letter to Santa, aren’t
you?”

“Oh, no, not yet Mr. Gumshu,” said Cindy, “I try to
wait at least a week before Christmas to write my
letter to Santa. I figure that other kids might need
to get in their requests before I did. Right now, I am
writing thank you letters to the elves, and to my
family, for making my Christmas so, so, well, so
Christmassy!”

Hiding a burp, Gumshu said, “Well that gives us a
chance to further the investigation. If you have not
yet composed your letter to Santa, then now you shall,
and we will try to find out who is stealing all the
work orders, er, the letters to Santa. I will track
this letter and confront our adversary!”

“I will go with you!” blurted Cindy. “I can help,
really I can Mr. Gumshu!”

“Please call me Gumshu. You will not go with me but
yes you can help. Just write your letter to Santa, as
usual, then hand it to me. I will take it from you and
then I will seem to become your very letter, and as
such I will be delivered to whoever is intercepting
the letters to Santa.

Cindy took a fresh piece of stationary from her desk.
She wrote several sentences and then folded the letter
into a scented envelope. She addressed it and then
sealed it with the big tear that still hung on the
edge of her eye. She handed it to Gumshu, who then
appeared to get vacuumed into the letter. Not knowing
what else to do, Cindy walked it over to the post
office and dropped the letter into the post. “Good
luck, Mr. Gumshu, I mean Gumshu.”

Big, long fingernails rasped the envelope. Gumshu
would not be able to shape shift again until the
envelope had been opened. He smelled the sulfurous
smell of unbrushed teeth. He closed his eyes and
then...

“Well, what have we here?” said a pinched, greenish
face with long yellow teeth. With squinted eyes, it
peered into the letter with a grumpy frown of the most
downward proportions.

Gumshu dropped from the letter, assuming his own
shape. He looked up at the strange creature above him
and said, “Good afternoon. I am Gumshu with Santa’s
Ministry of Investigations, and I just have a few
questions for you. Your name might be...”

“Where is the list.” said the ghoul.

“What list?” taunted Gumshu, holding it behind his
back.

“The list you just apparated from!” snarled the ghoul.

“Oh, you mean the letter, well, that isn’t written to
you, is it?” said Gumshu. “Who are you?”

“Give me the list. I need the list that is in the
letter. That is how we work here.”

Gumshu sighed. “Okay, why not? It won’t do you any
good. Here is the list Mr...?”

“Some call me ...Grinch! You'd know that if you read
anything but detective novels!”

Grinch pulled apart the letter from Cindy and a
lavender scented page read out to him:

Dear Santa, here are my requests this year.

1) All of us can live together peacefully, figuring
this thing out as best as we can.

2) We all can give each other presents.

3) Everyone should get enough love and attention to
feel special.

4) Nobody gets left out.

Much Love,

Cindy Lou Woo

With a sneer, the Grinch read his way through #1 and
#2. Then, as he read through #3, he began to choke up.
At #4, he tried to think back to a time when nobody
gets left out, and could not remember one which
involved him. Against the will of his frozen heart, a
tear formed in his eye and it splashed onto the
letter.

The teardrop of the Grinch thereby combined with the
teardrop that Cindy Lou had used to seal the envelope,
and then, POOF! Cindy Lou appeared.

“How did you do that?” whispered Gumshu,

“Hey, I’ve been in your fan club and you didn’t even
know it, but I guess I learned some of your elf tricks
anyway!” snarked Cindy Lou. “Sorry, I guess you will
write me up for that, won’t you?”

“We’ll let it slide this time, Cindy Lou.”

The Grinch scowled at Cindy Lou and her big sky eyes
and snowflake tear. “No! Not you! Why can you always
make me cry? What are you doing here?” Because of
course, Cindy Lou Woo was really Cindy Sue Who, who
derailed the Grinch's last attempt to steal Christmas.

“Never mind what she is doing here, what are YOU doing
here, Mr. Grinch?” demanded Gumshu.

As Cindy Lou fixed the Grinch in her eyes, she said,
“What are you doing with the letters to Santa,
Grinch-ie-pooo?”

“Don’t call me that!” coughed the Grinch. “I am
sending them all somewhere else, where the work is
cheap.”

“Cheaper than elves? Elves make toys for free,
Grinch!” pressed Gumshu.

“Well where is the profit, then, when presents are
free?” snarled the Grinch. “But, if the child-labor
factories make them, well, there is a lot of money to
be made in that, for our corporate allies, at least.”
smiled the Grinch. “My plan is so simple! We get poor
children to make all the toys for the children of the
western world. We cut Santa out of the market and make
all of the money for our corporations! And I get a
handsome bounty for intercepting all the lists. We
call them consumer polls, at the corporation.”

Cindy then began picking up the mail bags. “You think
you've stolen Christmas, again! But we are not
allowing it. This is a counter-heist!”

“What are you gonna do cry for it? Your tears got you
here, but you don’t have any plan to get all these
lists back to Santa. They are mine, and the
Corporations!” The Grinch leered, stalking over to
Cindy.

“Sorry Cindy, I am going to have to send you back.
This is too dangerous.” said Gumshu.

“On the contrary she will be very valuable back in the
child labor factory. She will make toys all the rest
of her days! Haw haw haw,” guffawed the Grinch.

Gumshu quickly lit his pipe and blew the smoke into
Cindy Lou's face. Coughing, she reappeared back at her
desk. She went to her computer, composed a news
release about what had happened and then punched in
the secret function code, which only kids under 13
years can access, and the message about the Grinch and
the kidnapping of their Santa letters and all the
child labor corporations was immediately sent to all
children online everywhere in the world. Cindy Lou had
requested that all the kids receiving her message
should send their own barely used toys to the children
in the toy factories.

Because of her prominent leadership position in all
the Santa fan clubs and organizations, her broadcast
had tremendous influence. Within days, kids all over
the world were sending toys as well as money and
useful presents to children in all the countries known
to have child labor factories. By the time Christmas
Eve arrived, all the children had quit their jobs in
the sweatshops and were enjoying a holiday with their
families and friends.

But meanwhile, back at the Grinch’s mail derailing
office:

“Okay, Gumshu, you got rid of the sniveling brat, I
appreciate that.” An evil grin spread over the
Grinch’s face. “She will probably cause lots of
trouble for my corporations, from that computer of
hers. But I still have the letters to Santa, and
there’s not enough smoke in your pipe to spirit them
back to the North Pole. So I have still stolen
Christmas!”

A big rustle and thud broke the Grinch’s exultation.
Grinch and Gumshu turned to the fireplace in the
office to see a pair of black boots flailing in the
soot. Gumshu went over, gave them a yank, and a
somewhat sooty Santa popped out of the fireplace. “I
would have thought you too clever to have a chimney to
your office, Grinch,” he said, pulling off his
mittens.

“Nick! How did you find me?” sputtered Gumshu.

“Oh, so sorry, Gummie boy. You have a transceiver in
your hat. Not that we don’t trust you. Oh, also, Cindy
Lou emailed me.” Santa turned his attention to the
green ghoul, who was backing away. “Now, Grinch, come
here old boy…”

“No, no, you can’t make me!” whimpered the Grinch. “At
least wait till after Christmas!”

“Come Grinch, give us a hug, it will be alright.”
Santa stepped toward the ghoul, and even though the
Grinch shrunk from Santa’s embrace, he did not really
resist.

Then the most amazing thing happened. It seemed like
Santa just folded the Grinch into his big velvet suit,
like the Grinch melted into Santa’s big chest, like
Santa’s heart opened up and swallowed the green ghoul.
Then there was just Santa, who nonchalantly began
picking up the bags of letters.

“What was that?” gasped Gumshu? “Where did he go?”

“Gumshu, my dear elf, you could really benefit by
reading some Jungian psychology. Don’t you understand?
The Grinch is my alter ego, my shadow self. I just let
him get away for awhile, and that is why he got out of
control. See, everyone has a dark side that is a
little like the Grinch. Selfish and pouty, we all have
that part of us which hates Christmas and feels left
out. We have to remember that self and love it, too,
because as you saw, even the Grinch had a part within
him that felt compassion, which cried at Cindy Lou’s
letter.”

“Now, Gumshu, we have a lot of work to do. Give me a
hand with these bags.”

With only three days and two nights left before
Christmas, you can imagine the bustle and noise in the
elves’ workshops at the North Pole. All their pent up
energy was released in a great burst of creative toy
making. Santa’s bags filled to near bursting.

Then it was Christmas Eve, and Cindy Lou rested for a
minute by the fireplace at the homeless shelter, after
her volunteer shift. All the homeless people had gone
to their bunks, and Cindy Lou was waiting for her
mother to pick her up. A shuffle and a clunk, and
Santa wriggled out of the fireplace and sat next to
her.

“Cindy Lou.” he began, with a sigh. “I had to come to
talk to you about your Santa’s list this year. You
know, don’t you, that what you asked for my elves
can’t make and put into a box. Now, none of that,
sweetheart!” and he wiped the big tear that was
brimming in her eye. “That is why we stop sending
letters to Santa after our thirteenth birthday,
because hopefully by then we have grown up enough to
ask for things that are not things. Those are the
sorts of things we have to make for ourselves in the
world, aren’t they?” Cindy Lou nodded, causing a new
tear to splash onto Santa’s waiting mitten.

“But here, girl, I know that Christmas is your
birthday too, so I brought you a little something.
It’s okay to open it a little early, go ahead.”

Cindy Lou gently peeled off the wrapping and peered up
to Santa. It was a little glass bottle with a simple
label that read "One More Year."

“Do you see? If you drink this, tomorrow on your
birthday you will not turn thirteen, but you will turn
twelve again. That way you will have one more year to
work on those wishes, organize your fan clubs and next
Christmas you can write me one more letter. Really, I
couldn’t bear the thought of this year’s letter being
the last, myself.”

Cindy Lou crawled into Santa’s lap and made herself
comfortable, and sipped the sweet potion from the
bottle. She fell deeply asleep and didn’t even notice
when Santa left and her mother picked her up. But in
the morning when she woke up and found her birthday
cake with twelve candles there under the Christmas
tree, she thought to herself, “This is the best
Christmas ever!”

Princess Poysen Ivieee 2005

DEMOCRACY IN THE RAW:

2005-11-09T11:20:00.000-08:00

DEMOCRACY IN THE RAW:
CONSENSUS PROCESS FOR FACILITATED MEETINGS

Facilitated meetings are the backbone of the social change movement. It would be nearly impossible to challenge oppression if our individual groups’ processes were conducted in an authoritarian manner. Form and content are intimately linked. This is a detailed primer for any group to use to develop its own participatory democratic consensus process.The consensus facilitation process was developed by feminist and peace groups oriented towards action, but the format can be used whether or not consensus is required or for discussion groups where no action is planned. The main goals of the process are to: 1) allow everyone to participate in discussions and decisions, 2) keep the discussions focused on the topic at hand, 3) prevent individuals from dominating the process, the group, and its actions, 4) keeping the agenda to a set time schedule, and 5) making sure that actions decided upon have a mechanism for being carried out.

When a group adheres to good process, it finds that people keep coming back to meeting, leadership is developed and distributed, gender ratios stabilize close to 50/50, and the group s work is distributed well among its members.

THE CIRCLE
Facilitated meetings are best arranged so that participants can sit in a circle. This is very important both practically and symbolically. Sitting in a circle allows everyone to see and hear each other, and it visually demonstrates equality, promoting democracy.

BEGINNING THE MEETING
Beginning on time is a sign of respect to each member of the group. Late arrival says to people that you are too busy and important to give this group your time.If there is just one new person at the meeting, introductions are in order. Go around the circle and have everyone say their name and maybe a sentence or two about why they are there. This establishes to new people that they will be heard and allowed to participate.

THE FACILITATOR
After introductions, the group must choose a facilitator. The facilitator should be someone who knows how the process works, and not be a person who has to say a lot about topics likely to be discussed. Some people are better than others at facilitation, but even so, the facilitation role should be rotated from meeting to meeting to demonstrate that no one person or subgroup controls the group and to develop leadership.In small meetings, of five to ten people, the facilitator can also fill the roles of timekeeper (who makes sure that agenda items are completed in the time allotted), stack-keeper (who takes the names of people who want to speak to a topic and calls on them in order), and even note-taker. In larger meetings, it is best to share these tasks with other people.

PARTICIPANTS
Meeting participants should be prepared to speak clearly and concisely. They need to listen actively and avoid whispering with their neighbors. Personal attacks, however veiled, have no place in facilitated meetings. Tendencies to interrupt, speak out of turn, off subject, too loud, too often, or for too long, are childish personality problems which become painfully obvious to people in a facilitated process. Participants are most effective if they have a pen and paper to take notes on the discussion and outline their thoughts before speaking, (and to avoid forgetting what they were going to speak about) and a calendar to refer to.AGENDAThe facilitator helps the group develop an agenda for the meeting by asking for items for discussion. With the help of the group, the items are prioritized and given time allotments. It is best if the agenda can be written on a chalkboard or flip chart so everyone can see it. A typical agenda might look like:
1) Introductions
2) Review of last meeting and unfinished business
3) Quick and easy discussion item, or subcomittee reports
4) Time critical discussion/action item that may take a lot of time, be complex, or controversial
6) New issue for discussion and planning
7) Evaluation of meeting (optional)
8) Announcements
9) Closing - set time for next meeting, make a proposed agenda

Meetings should last no more than two hours, so the group should set reasonable time limits for each item. Groups that are incorporated or have another legal status are often required to post action items of the agenda for a set time before the meeting. It is the facilitator s job to make sure that items not posted are only for discussion and information, not action.

THE PROCESS
Often, the facilitator will open a discussion item by asking for an introduction to the issue, especially if new people are present. From there, discussion proceeds. If many people want to speak, or especially if people begin to speak at the same time, the facilitator often starts with a "go-round" where each participant is given the floor in turn to speak to the item. Then often the facilitator or the stack-keeper will ask people to raise their hands to be called on to speak. A "stack" or list of names is kept, and each person will be called on in order. (This is where pen and paper come in handy - people often forget what they were going to say when they raised their hand!) It is the responsibility of the facilitator to make sure that people stay on topic (For example, "This is a whole new topic - do people want to do this now, or put it on the agenda for later?" or "Lets have some focus.") The facilitator will also make sure that people don t speak out of turn ("Bob, we have a stack going and there are a couple of folks before you. Anita, your turn.") being repetitive, or from engaging in two-person dialogue, ("Lets hear from someone hasn t spoken yet" "Is everybody into this or should we subcommittee it out to Helga and Carlo?")

As the discussion proceeds, a skilled facilitator will guide the group towards a proposal that everyone can agree upon. ("What I m hearing is this.. and ... and the other..., is there anything else we need to know? Are there any proposals?")The stack-keeper and the time keeper are the only people other than the facilitator who can interrupt the stack, and then only for the purposes of attending their jobs. ("There are twelve people on the stack and we only have five minutes left for this topic.")

Other than this, there are a few other ways to interrupt the process, basically ways of facilitating from the floor. By holding up a raised index finger, a participant is indicating that they have a "point of information" that will clarify an issue and save time in the discussion. ("Twenty-second Street Coop already has a program in place that does pretty much what we re talking about." "I just looked at a calendar and we have a major conflict with the date we decided on.") By raising up both hands with palms facing each other ( I I ) indicates the need for a "timeout" and the facilitator should call on that person to see what is going on.("Hey ya'll, the cops are here and they have a warrant for Steve.") Raising the palms facing each other with fingers touching ( / \ ), the participant is indicating a process breakdown that needs to be addressed immediately. ("The facilitator is not calling on people, we need someone to keep stack." "Only two people are talking about this and the rest of us are bored. Subcommittee? or "We had a proposal on the floor and it got ignored.") Silent applause or "twinkling" - holding hands up and wiggling fingers - is a non-interruptive way to show support for what is being said.

Respectfully used, these mechanisms allow the group as a whole to aid the facilitator, whether s/he is experienced or not.

The facilitator can put themself on stack to just make a comment on an issue. It is best for them to "step aside" if they might need to actively participate in an item, and to get another person to temporarily take over the facilitation role. ("I'm stepping aside as facilitator for this discussion because I have strong emotions about it. Ricardo can you take over?" "I'm too involved in this issue to facilitate. Who has the least amount of ego invested here, let them do it.") Once the item is cleared from the agenda, facilitation is usually returned to the main facilitator.

The facilitator should ask for a proposal when all concerns have been aired. After a proposal is made, the facilitator should first ask any people left on the stack if they need to speak before the proposal is developed. Often, people are ready to move on an issue by this time. The facilitator asks for concerns or friendly amendments to the proposal. The note taker is sometimes called upon to read back the proposal with any changes so people can keep track of its development. If everyone gives a "thumbs up," then consensus is achieved. The group then goes on to ironing out the details or agreeing to a task force to figure out details and logistics. ("Who is writing the media release?" "I have two spaces in my car, see me after the meeting if you need a ride," "I'll go get the stuff but we need a check first.") The facilitator should make sure that somebody can coordinate the planned actions, and remind people of what they volunteered to do.

If someone gives a "thumbs down," they are signaling a "block" to the proposed action. A block is a serious, often ethical objection to the proposal, out of concern to the group s reputation, safety or legal issues, the bigger strategy in the community, or something of that scale. ("If we lock up the consulate from the outside, we risk being charged with felony kidnapping.") The facilitator should ask for amendments that would allow the blocker to remove the block to the proposal or to "stand aside," (signaling that the person removes them self from the group for the purposes of the action at hand), but if this is not possible, a block means that no further action is taken on the issue and the group moves to the next item on the agenda. A block is a situation to be avoided, obviously. Blocks can often arise because a proposal was brought to the table prematurely, before all issues were raised, but a skilled facilitator can negotiate this. ("Thanks, Ursula, but can you hold your proposal until after we get through this stack? We have only heard from three people and we have ten minutes left for this item") Sometimes, though, a blocker is a person who simply does not share the same values or goals as the rest of the group. Someone who blocks proposals will eventually be asked why they want to be a part of the group.

Some groups have amended the consensus model to include for "consensus minus one," or even by using majority votes for certain types of actions. This is a bigger decision that needs to be resolved, often through a group's steering committee or bylaws. Which version is used depends on how big the group is, how diverse its members are, and how much time and patience people have. Even if consensus is not required, it should be the goal. Consensus decisions strengthen the group and inspire more commitment.

NEXT UP
As the group proceeds down the agenda, the facilitator should watch people to see if they are getting fidgety, and if needed, call for a break so people can stretch their legs, go to the bathroom or smoke a cigarette. Breaks can also interrupt the flow of a meeting, so other ways of maintaining peoples attention can be used: allowing a little chaos to break out, changing the discussion format from stack to circle go-rounds, or by changing the order of the agenda to give variety.

EVALUATION
Although this step is often skipped, it is called for especially if it has been a stressful meeting. A go-around in the circle can ask and answer questions that can be very helpful to facilitators: How did the process work? What could we do better? When this-or-that happened was it okay?

ANNOUNCEMENTS
Announcements are often done at the beginning of a meeting, but people will be much briefer if they are done at the end. Alternatively, fliers or an announcement sheet can be passed around.

CLOSING
Almost done! The meeting closing is when the next meeting time and place are set, and if possible or legally required, a preliminary agenda is sketched out.

THE FUTURE
Facilitated meetings can at first seem slow and stilted. This is because we are culturally conditioned towards hierarchical decision making. All our lives, in the family, at school, and on the job, we are taught that the largest male, the loudest voice gets the attention, the toys, the promotion, the glory. Less aggressive people are conditioned to stay out of the way, and to gripe in private if they don t like what is going on. Since self-governance is not taught, democracy and equality need to be re-learned (remembered?) and practiced. It can take awhile for individuals to realize that they are heard (so they can now stop repeating themselves, or mumbling) they do matter (so they take responsibility and initiative) and not to feel ego-threatened by other people (so creative thinking and flexibility become more possible). Once a group has mastered this way of making decisions, any version of Robert's Rules of Order will seem slow and uncreative.Obviously, there are a lot of places to take shortcuts in this process. This is alright, but if a group gets too sloppy and lazy in its meeting process, problems may begin to manifest - often in ways that seem unrelated to meetings. If disgruntlement, hurtful gossip, lack of enthusiasm, or flaking out becomes problems for the group, a return to more formal meeting process will often go a long way towards remedying the situation. Also notice that there are no rules in the consensus-style process against fun, laughter, and personal growth. Every now and then, the "group mind-meld" made possible by this format can be a spiritual process.

Although this process is designed for no more than fifty people, it has worked for groups of several hundred, even in very stressful situations. Also, adaptations like the "fishbowl" or the "spokeswheel" (where affinity or focus groups have a representative at the circle) make this process theoretically available to groups of thousands. Now THAT would be a truly worthwhile experiment in democracy!

This document was prepared by Princess Poysen Ivieee, drawing on personal experience, several books and numerous how-to guides published by social change groups.

Scary Halloween Story

2005-11-02T10:30:00.000-08:00

A friend told me this story. As a child, his parents didn't believe in celebrating Halloween. So they put a sign in the front yard, advising trick-or-treaters not to knock, not to ring the doorbell asking for candy, because they didn't observe Halloween.

Some people thought it was a joke, and they would send their kids up to ring the doorbell anyway. "TRICK OR TREAT!" So my friend's parents then took to posting another sign at the door, explaining that no, really truly, this family did not celebrate Halloween, so don't even try.

Incredibly, some kids would still not believe this, and they would ring anyway. "GIVE US SOMETHING GOOD TO EAT!" Those little goblins and princesses! Finally Dad was forced to put a final deterrant in place. He re-wired the doorbell so that any trick-or-treater who dared ring it would get an electrical shock! BZZZT! "WHA-AAA!"

Wait a minute, I had to ask, why didn't your parents want to observe Halloween? Don't tell me...

Because they were Christians. That was why they had to electrically shock those kids on Halloween night.

BOOO!

Betcha can't wait for the Christmas story!

Screwed Again!

2005-10-18T19:57:00.000-07:00

How unbecoming of me, having just returned from Grand Cayman, to complain!

1) Housemate got a girlfriend.
2) Girlfriend brought her pit bull, to add to his pit bull.
3) At first it was promised that girlfriend had her won place to stay, now she is living here. They offered to pay more for rent, then they did not.
4) My cat will not stay at home because of the dogs.
5) My yard is now twigs and dust from the two dogs constantly racing around it.
6) My cat is a nervous wreck and developed a bad problem with lice, eww!
7) Now housemate and girlfriend are leaving. Gotta find new housemate by Nov 1st.
8) Found new housemate before Oct. 1st, who gave me $200 deposit!
9) Accordingly, spent all my savings ($400) in Grand Cayman.
10) Return on Oct. 15th from GC to hear a phone message from new housemate. She is not going to live with me after all because she didn't get the job she wanted. She's moving to Indiana.
11) Now she wants her deposit back! In spite of the fact that she promised to give 30-60 days notice before moving out. She claims that since she never moved in, she doesn't owe me that deposit money. I say that the deposit money is like earnest money, if you back out of a deal, you don't get it back. She asked about the deposit return, and I had told her that I would take it off the last month's rent, assuming nothing bad had happened. I might need that money to hopefully be able to pay rent for November if I can't find a housemate in 14 days.
12) She comes to my shop to have this argument, during business hours while I am working. Fortunately, the customer who had been crying on me about her sexual blackmail/stalker problem was willing to let me cry on her.
13) Girlfriend Firefly's cat dies, so I get to be Priestess of the Dead Animals again. I am extemely overqualified for this job.
14) I try to re-post my housemate needed ad on Craigslist. They give me a block notice, like I am some spammer or porn vender! (Yes, I deleted my previous ad from Sept. 22nd.) I can't publish my housemate needed ad, and Craigslist has neglected to tell me why or lift the block.
15) Last but not least, hurricane Wilma is now about 90 miles from Grand Cayman, where my parents are still, and predicted to become a force 4. GC is in the 20-percentile hit probablity according to Weather Underground.

Not all of these are gripes, but thanks for listening. I am particularly interested in what people have to say about #11. I have looked at leasing and deposit-return situations online, but nothing deals directly with a tennant who pays a deposit then backs out of the lease before they move in.

I should do a spell, but I'm just not in the mood, and haven't for quite some time....why is that?

My usually cheery nature is being stretched to its limits. Must go watch Simpsons now...

Season's Sneezin's

2005-09-27T11:27:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I didn't publish this silly poem to this blog last year when I wrote it! One folkloric detail that you might not know is the belief that the faeries were known to use stems of ragwort (locally ragweed) as horses to fly around with. In anticipation of the "cold" front coming this weekend, please enjoy:

Season's Sneezin's

achoo!
(bless you!)
atCHOO!
(bless you!)
AT-CHOOOOO!
(bless you!)

is all i ever know about this season
'cause when winds of change blow summer into fall
those winds set my nose to sneezin' !

when day's as long as equals night
you count on me a horrible sight
leaf drop and nose drip
stuffy head eyes of red!
a lovely season, if it was not
for the gallons and gallons and gallons of snot!

what enemy mine, what foe is this?
to assault my sweet autumnal bliss?

now there they go, my nemeses,
riding out upon the breeze
that indomitable species
the ragweed.

ragweed it's true may be nothing to you
useless to men except for the green
made from record sales of antihistamine
but according to legend and according to lore
the faeries knew what ragweed is for...
the fae, they say hurray!
grab a ragweed stalk so as not to walk
leap upon quick and give it a kick
now that's no inanimate stick
nor leafy weed, but now a faery steed!
they can ride into the air
with devil-may-care

they go where they please,
i stay here and sneeze.

who knew that these airy faerie horse's droppings
would cause so many miserable nose stoppings
or that as they fly by it would so tickle the eye
now we wonder if they do it for sport?
faeries snicker while humans snort
we blow our noses while they cavort

or perhaps it's revenge, they demand ablutions
for our own iron horses' exhaust pollutions
and it's true that where the ragweed grows
is where the plastic grocery bag blows
and auto runoff down creek flows

we wonder thus if we made peace
with faery, creeks, land, and trees
would the fae forgo their assault,
their horse born jousting at you?
then in the breezy season of fall
we'd no more hear achoo! at-choo!

copywrite princess poysen ivieee 2004

Storm Surge

2005-09-27T10:48:00.000-07:00

The storm surge of a hurricane usually means the wall of water that washes inland causing flooding and destruction and then washes back to sea, again taking its toll. But here in Austin, we have a human storm surge, which is not so much in a hurry to roll back to the coastline, even if they could. I have two "Lost Boyz" from Beaumont on my sofas. One just found out that his house is still there. The other is from further south of Beaumont, and as yet he has no word on the existance of his house, place of work, life, etc.

Later on, I will entertian a Katrina evacuee who may end up being my new housemate, paying rent with FEMA money.

Especially last weekend, when all of Houston was here, Austin was like one great big slumber party. Until we start gunning each other down, that is. As if jobs were not hard enough to come by before, now we have a sudden uncensused population surge, and I just wonder how this is going to be played out in the housing and employment markets when those $2000 check cards stop paying out.

My guests are really great guys, we have been having lots of fun and their impact on the houshold has been very positive. I even offered them first dibs on the room to be vacated end of the month. They admit that they are dazed, though. Austinites are accustomed to the funhouse affect of this town, the endless events and the party that moves from house to house to lake to creek to springs to Tex-Mex restaraunt and on it goes. But if you are displaced and out of work, or from a town where not much is ever happening, I bet Austin could become the acid trip that never ends.

So far, Texans have put aside their usual racism, classism and zenophobia, and their generosity and hospitality is of heroic proportions. Is it going to be a lasting change of temperament? This storm season could really mark a new way of life for us. I hope we have the imagination and grace to make it a permanent character development.

How Will I Die?

2005-09-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

You scored as Gunshot. Your death will be by gunshot, probably because you are some important person or whatever. Possibly a sniper, nice, quick, clean shot to the head. Just beautiful.

Natural Causes

67%

Gunshot

67%

Disease

67%

Posion

60%

Cut Throat

60%

Suffocated

40%

Disappear

40%

Stabbed

40%

Bomb

20%

Accident

13%

Suicide

Drowning

Eaten

How Will You Die??
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Burlesque Relief

2005-09-06T13:26:00.000-07:00

Sat. October 1st RELIEF, RESTORE, REBUILD
Benefit for Hurricanesurvivors in the Natural Magic Backyard, aka Club Majic. Natural Magic is located at 701 E 53rd St. in Austin, TX
Noon to 7pm FAMILY FESTIVAL
Fortune tellers, magic, food, fun, vendors, live music, and more...Mask contest? Parade? Jail? Two can/two dollar donation.

Sat. October 1st 7-10pm BOURBON STREET BURLESQUE
Nonstop sizzlingperformance with fire, charity gambling, live music, and the*naughtiness* of the BSB exotic performers. ADULTS ONLY $5 cover, andbring XXXtra cash for treats and sideshows.Proceeds will be donated to American Red Cross and Capital Area FoodBank. We have openings for venders and performers still. We need somehelp preparing the property for this fundraiser; especially thebackyard stage needs to be rebuilt. And bring us your Mardi Grasbeads! We intend to raise a lot of money and spirits here, folks.Call us at 451-4491 for vending and entertainment information.
And you can always see the rest of Natural Magic's schedule at:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/naturalmagicevents/

Too Terrible

2005-09-04T10:36:00.000-07:00

I am so sorry. When I first saw the radar pictures of Katrina in the gulf, I was awed by the beauty, the raw force of nature. Raised on the Gulf Coast myself, a BOI, growing up with stories of the 1900 storm, which my great grandmother survived to tell, and tell...and telllll....and TELL about over and over again, I developed a fondness for destructive weather. I dreamed of tornadoes and The Big Wave, and of drowning, over and over, all my life. I was actually acutely disappointed that for my first 18 years of life there I never got to experience a full force hurricane (unless you count Carla which hit while I was still in the womb). The storms we get here in Central Texas thrill me with electricity. In a post last year I even published a friends poem that fantasized the eradication of Houston by way of hurricane. But I even said to friends that this romanticism would end only when such powerful destroyer forces of nature killed someone or something beloved to me.

When I saw Katrina pointed at New Orleans, I knew that the dream was over and I wept for the nightmare that was to begin. For the first time ever, I prayed for a storm to weaken, and even though it did, what I did not know was how this government, and George W Bush had worked to weaken New Orleans' defenses against the storm that was sure to come, eventually. I am able to forgive myself for my fantasy because I never had the power to cut the Army Corp of Engineer's funding for levee mainenance, nor the power to emasculate FEMA. It took a president in thrall of rightwing conspiracy anti-public-good wingnuts to do that. I might have Wizard-of-Oz dreams of storms, but these people are actually, idealistically, seriously willing to use one to kill a whole lot of people as a result of bringing about a fascist state where government is all about who you can't have sex with or what you can't smoke and all against basic functions of public service.

If Bush et. al. conspired to launch a premeditated genocide, how would it look so much different? As far as I can see, his response has been to let a a lot of mostly poor, mostly black people die. There is blood of thousands (more) now on his hands, and I hereby name George Bush "The Man Who Killed New Orleans." Or tried to, if WE THE PEOPLE have anything to say about it.

The rightwingers who continue the keep the wool on say lame ass stuff like "Now is no time to point the finger of blame." Well I sure am proud of how the American people are rushing to help. But I am afraid that blame and punishment are a part of justice, and that you do not get to kill a bunch of people with incompetence and not stand trial for that. This is not hidden away on Gitmo, this is live on TV and when all is said and done, the whole neocon conspiracy has to explain their actions and inactions. They are not going to get away with it this time.

Please refer to PastPeak in my sidebar. Jonathan is really putting the case together about this.

As a professional Witch and potioneer, I and my kind owe a tremendous debt to the magical and spiritual traditions of New Orleans and the Deep South. If you start prying apart the ingredients of even the simplest of mojos, what you find is a lot of history encoded in these traditions that in many ways tells more than any history books. History of slavery, racism, survival of spirit, and even hidden and open cooperation among classes and races. I became interested in this a few years ago, and I found LuckyMojo and Cat Yronwood who has done a lot of this research already, interviewing old root hoodoo practitioners and transcribing rural blues lyrics to find the pieces. How does it come about that the story of High John the Conqueror, an African slave, who uses a root native to Mexico and used religiously by preColumbian Indians there, in ways traditional to ceremonial magicians in the European Western traditions using (Jewish) Kabbalistic structures of magic? You begin to suspect that many different sorts of people were talking and trying to help each other in a dire situation where slavery threatened the moral fabric of society.

It is really now a time for some kind of transformation, here ther is a direct order from God, if you will, for us to look at our racism and the deep scars that slavery has left on our souls, and beg for mercy and the grace it takes to heal. It is now time to admit to ourselves that racism is not about "nigger jokes" and that those words and feeling eventually add up to killing people. In magic we teach that "thoughts are things" and "words have power." Eventually a lot of racist (and misogynistic) thoughts, words and actions/inactions will come together in murder, in tragedy, where we are forced to look at the carnage, hear people screaming "Help Us!" and realize, "There is a part in me that did this." It is too terrible, but we have to do it. I hope George Bush and Co. are willing to do this sort of scary soul-searching, and if Love can not motivate Reparation, maybe Guilt will. Time to pay for the sins of our ancestors. Time to say "I Am So Sorry," and do everything you can, and give all the money you can to prove it.

In a few days I will talk about my own confrontations with racism, how it has come through my family line, and how we have dealt, or not dealt with it.

Who, me?

2005-08-15T21:48:00.000-07:00

You scored as Albus Dumbledore. Strong and powerful you admirably defend your world and your charges against those who would seek to harm them. However sometimes you can fail to do what you must because you care too much to cause suffering.

Albus Dumbledore

80%

Remus Lupin

75%

Ginny Weasley

65%

Harry Potter

65%

Hermione Granger

55%

Ron Weasley

55%

Sirius Black

55%

Draco Malfoy

55%

Severus Snape

50%

Lord Voldemort

15%

Your Harry Potter Alter Ego Is...?
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The Kennedy Half Dollar

2005-08-08T22:28:00.000-07:00

This would be one of those stories that I forgot if it hadn't gotten a postscript recently.

We are doing a spell by assignment. The assignment is for us to do a spell with an intention that we can all agree upon, something bigger that any of our personal or romance problems, something that we could perhaps see results of later on. We are united for just this event, and our ways will part after this class is done.

We decide to do a general prosperity spell for Austin. Layoffs, recession, lots of people looking for work. We don't want to attract huge corporate development that turns our city into Anywhere, USA. Our spell will create prosperity and jobs for Austinites by encouraging local investment and consumer loyalty to locally owned business. That way, we get the jobs we want while still keeping Austin wierd.

A map of Austin is spread between us. We light green candles for prosperity, and throw all our money onto the map. Working in a clockwise rotation, we push, pull, pass and stir the coins and bills around the map, chanting,

Locally we shall invest
North and East and South and West
'Cause we love Austin best
We have jobs, we have prosperity,
And Austin keeps its own identity.

When we had a whirlpool of motion such that coins were splashing off the map, the spell was done!

One of the women who was party to this intention could not be there that night, so I had thrown down a special coin for her, a Kennedy half dollar, and after the spell was done, I retrieved it, intending to give it to her so that she could help us with phase two of the spell.

Let me tell you something about Kennedy half dollars. While I don't think they are really rare, nobody spends them. After about five years in cash register running retail business, I had seen, oh, like ZERO Kennedy dollars coming through our register, hey? They really are special coins.

In phase two of our spell, all of us would go out and spend the money from the spell at some local business, get that spell money into circulation ASAP. So I collected my share of the pot and headed downtown with LM. At a local bar which makes its own homebrew, I was easily able to reintroduce the charmed silver into the local economy.

As we were returning to LMs car, all drunk and happy, we were spanged by and older homeless man, a VN vet. I told him that the only money that I had left was this Kennedy half dollar which I was supposed to give to a girlfriend, but I guess he should have it, since it was a prosperity charm. He was excited to get this particular kind of coin, and he said he had loved JFK and how the country had really been on the right track back then, and if it was "magicked" that was cool with him. So we were all very happy with this exchange which was all of 50 cents worth of currency involved!

Next morning, I woke up, mildly, pleasantly hungover and opened the shop. And I shit you not, it was not the first sale, it might have been the second, but surely no later than the third sale of the day, the customer paid part of his purchase with, you guessed it, a Kennedy half dollar.

With my eyebrows disapearing above my hairline, I told the customer about how I had given my "lucky" Kennedy half dollar to a homeless man the previous night, and he said that sometimes that good karma money came back real fast.

So that WAS the end of the story until recently. I will tell the sequel of the Kennedy half dollar story later, once I'm sure the spell can't be jinxed by the telling.

Use the currency you value, whether it be of silver or spirit!

Cherry Lime Collins

2005-08-07T22:11:00.000-07:00

"What are you drinking?" asked LM, and I asked for something cold and fizzy, with vodka and lime and cherry juice. Here is what he made for me:

1 part (two shots) Vodka (He uses Tito's and I use Monopolowa)
2-3 parts Club soda
1/4 of a lime juice plus the rind
Big splash of Maraschino cherry juice and 2-3 cherries

This drink is not fussy about proportions. Just make sure you can taste the cherry juice. Very refreshing in hot weather! Girls love it!

Hail Mary

2005-08-07T21:06:00.000-07:00

I was officially a Catholic from 4th to about 7th grade. There is a lot of beauty, grace and magic in Catholicism, and more than other religions it seems to harbor multitheistic diversity even when these subcultures are officially shunned by the orthodoxy of the Church.

Eventually, it was the demons, misogeny and antisex positions of the Church that drove me to Atheism for a long, very healing time.

Someone who I really missed from Catholicism was Our Lady of Guadalupe. Upon renewing my religious devotions, I was pleased to find the Catholic Mary, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Virgin and Mother, very welcome in modern Pagan witchcraft.

One of the sweet spells taught to us by the Catholic nuns was to say the Hail Mary whenever you heard ambulance sirens. It just seems like the Christian (or Pagan) thing to do, to say a prayer for a stranger in need. I found myself doing it even in my atheiest of days.

Here is my Pagan/feminist rewrite of the Hail Mary prayer, employing very few subtle changes that hopefully even a real Catholic could appreciate:

Hail Mary, full of grace,
The Power is with thee.
Blessed art Thou as Woman,
And blessed is the fruit of Thy womb.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray with us mortals
Now, in the hour of our need.

Amen

Say this prayer whenever you hear StarFlight, an ambulance or fire rescue siren, or feel in danger yourself.

Persephone's Promise

2005-08-02T12:09:00.000-07:00

Persephone's Promise

This one is much simpler than my other drink recipes!

2 jiggers vodka
4 jiggers pomegranate juice (we prefer POM Wonderful, but it's expensive!)
5 shakes of Agostura bitters

Serve over lots of ice.

Variations:
Substitute orange juice for some of the pomegranate juice.
Or/and add Club Soda for a lighter, soda pop version.

Grief Is a Spooky Monster

2005-08-02T11:14:00.000-07:00

My dear friend Spooky Monster died Memorial Day weekend. It is the end of a Great White Cat. I do not know why he died, I just found him curled up in the back yard. It is very painful not knowing what did him in. He was healthy and happy as far as I could tell. If any of you psychic types get a read, let me know what you think. Spooky was a friend and companion of mine for about nine years.I sure will miss my Spooky Monster.

About a month before he died, I was petting him during full shedding season, and that cat shed year round. I got this huge wad of his snowy, pure white fur, and it seemed too beautiful to throw away. So I started stuffing it into a glass jar. Over the month or so, it filled up, a jar full of clouds, like angel hair (if you didn't know him). So now I have a reliquary, a jar of Spooky's fur, with a small vial of tears in it. He died the Weekend of May 30th, but I'm still occasionally adding tears to that vial.

I have a lot of friends, who, being our age, now have cats who are fifteen, seventeen, nineteen. My cats have never lasted that long, but it was my dearest hope that Spooky would die of old age or I'd have to put him down at age 17. It was a vain hope, because if cats have nine lives, it is certain that Spooky had burned through his in a hurry, with his tough guy hard living. But at nine years he was just beginning to relax into his middle years. He hadn't gotten into another fight since February, and I had hoped that he would continue to act his age.

After losing Twister just last year, and helping quite a few friends bury their pets in recent history, and even burying a (probably) stray cat killed next to my shop, I have come to call myself a Priestess of Dead Animals. LM has commented on how I move through grief in huge gulps that other people couldn't stand to experience in a short time. It is astonishing to me how much grief I can sustain for my cats. It makes me want to never accept another stray foundling into my life, for the heartbreak sure to come. Every day when I come home I am temporarily filled with dread that Emo will be dead in the street because he is black and cars can't see him.

There is no way to look at this process as other than some emotional/priestess training on how to grieve and cope with loss and minister to each other for the loss of a human loved one. How many weddings can I priestess before I do a funeral? I highly recommend a book which LM let me read, called Swallowed By a Snake. It is written by a man to help men understand men's ways of dealing (or not dealing) with grief, but of course there is more than enough for a woman to understand from this book. I do not mean in any way that it makes death and loss and grief easy. It's not supposed to be easy. It is supposed to be acknowleged, ritually honored, and moved through.

Here is my ritual song for burying a dead animal:

Go, (___________), go-oh-oh
Go, (___________), go-oh-oh,
Into the Earth,
Into the o-ther wor-rld,
Go, (___________), go.

Sing it in a slow dirge over and over until the grave is filled.

It should work for burying a person, too.

Fourth of July Arachnophila

2005-08-01T22:25:00.000-07:00

On the 4th of July Austinites by the thousands conglomerate around Zilker Park for the fireworks display, jockeying for good open sky positions and assembling in whatever tribal units they choose or get invited to for the occasion. Sunburns cool off and potsmoke rises as if offerings to the masters of pyrotechnics. The show is usually great but it always seems too short.

People who live near the park try to help out the parking and gridlock situation for their friends, and you want to make sure you have one of these invites at least for parking purposes.

LM and I had two invites between us, one from Trailer Park Girl who assembled a sizeable clan of the Kingdom of Slack conveniently upstream from "Barking Springs," (the spillway from Barton Springs where you don't have to pay to get in and you, your kids and your dogs are welcome, except for the "NO SWIMMING" "NO WADING" and "NO DOGS" signs which we all ignore until at random calendar intervals the bike cops come and run everybody off, issuing tickets to the slowest runners. REMEMBER - always run!)

After hooping it up with the KOS crowd and catching some cold water at the spillway we moved up the hill to Triplewide's place. Good company was had, met a friend I had lost track of years ago, ate B's wicked grilled jalapeno poppers (never again), and, here is where the story began.

While I was out unloading my hoops, just in case, I heard L calling to her kids, "Hey, kids come look at this huge spider in the street!" Her boychild, C, obviously got the arachnophobia gene from somewhere, I know he didn't get it from his parents. "No, Mommy, I don't like spiders!" But naturally she coaxed him over, trying to get him comfortable with the critter. "I sure wanna see a big spider," I piped in, and joined them. Well this was a Texas Brown (or Tan?) Tarantula, easily 3 inches+ of leg span. "Hey, C, do you dare me to touch it?" as we crowded around our specimen, which froze. "No, don't touch it!" wailed C. "I'm gonna touch it..." I teased. Knowing that this species was gentle to a fault, I was still daring myself to touch it, and... I did, gently, on the rump. It sprang into motion, scuttling out of the street and onto a grassy curb just over a little creek drainage where perhaps it kept its web tunnel. "See, C, it was more afraid of us than we were afraid of it," explained L.

Shortly thereafter we all walked up the hill to the elementary school to see the fireworks which didn't last long enough, and I didn't have any potsmoke to offer and nobody made the offering for me, sigh.

On the way back, neighbors and their friends were streaming back into the neighborhood, like after some rock concert. LM and a few of our gang were in the lead, and what did we see, but the same tarantula in the street, next to the creek! Fearing that it would be accidently stomped, or become a victim of arachnocide, we endeavored to return it to safety. Being the least arachniphobic, most bug-loving of most any group of people, I tend to take the lead on things like this. I tried to shoo it towards the grassy curb, but it resolutely end-ran me back into the street. These critters like to warm themselves on asphalt, but gee, its the 4th of July in Texas, eight-legs!

People were streaming around, and some were encouraging us, and I attempted to block Tarantula's suicidal mission by blocking it with my feet. The creek was just 8 feet away!

JUMP! It jumped from between my feet and ran up the back of my right leg, and stopped for a rest on my thigh just below my shorts. Okay, I got a big fucking spider on my ass now, and people are staring. Now what do I do? I wasn't in a hurry since this was a good chance to do some important PR work on behalf of Arthropodia. I let people look, and see that a girl wasn't afraid of spiders, and that spiders, at least this kind of spider, was harmless.

"Get over to the creek," says H, with a Daddy's authority. "Shake it off over there." At least somebody wasn't spellbound. So I moved slowly to the curb, and as I stepped off the street, Tarantula climbed up my butt, up my back and came to rest on the top of my right shoulder. I looked back over my shoulder towards the gawking onlookers, and pretended to give the spider a kiss. I felt completely honored, and H had had enough of the spectacle. "Let me help you," he said, climbed up onto the weedy curd
and brushed the tarantula off my shoulder into the (dry) creekbed.

So I could feel chosen by a new animal guide, and get myself a new pagan name. I have always felt more called to the enigmatic microfauna as opposed to all the folks who go by Wolf and Bear and suchlike. The meek Rough Green Snake twines around my ankle, but most of my allies have been plants. Maybe it is yet again another excuse for a dream tattoo, a tarantula on my shoulder!

One possibility that it has led me to decide against is keeping a spider as a pet. I have often thought that a spider would be a very cool addition to my limited menagerie, and that vet bills would be less than for a cat, and maybe that grief would be comparitively less expensive for the eventual death of a spider.

Maybe. But again I came down with the moral bottom line for me which is: wild creatures are not pets. They belong in the wild.

Even if it is in the Wild of the streets of Austin.

Fare thee well, Fluffy!

Midsummers Silver

2005-06-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

I had an invite to a little party on Midsummer, a gathering then a pilgrimage to the Faery Tree. I just cut it a little too close and missed the bus.

But! I had my traditional viewing of Midsummer Night's Dream, the old one with Mickey Rooney and James Cagney, and when it was over I was real sleepy and ready to just drift off there, then:

RAP! TAP! like two little rocks hitting my window to wake me up. Only it was the window between my bedroom and the closed front porch.

I was scared, got up and looked around, and everywhere I looked it was quiet, but everywhere I had been made a noise. The night was alive with motion.

"Okay, that movie was an invocation, what did I expect." So I sat on the front door stoop inside the front porch awhile and accustomed my nerves to all the trooping traffic, then I went in to bed again.

Not good enough. Crack Crunch! from my housemate's room.

This time I think it was Emo the cat. But I was all spooked again so I went out to the porch again....and was bewitched by the bright silvery light. Of course, it is not just Midsummers but the full moon. And I am a witchy girl... so I got my selenite crystal ball and went out to where the Virginia Creeper grows over the pecan log and communed with the moon. It was bright, cool, and silvery magic. The selenite ball is like a natural fiber optics, so if you look into either end of it, the moonlight shines right through and magnifies silver light into your third eye. The trees, the grass, the air itself was crawling with presence, trooping traffic, just a spark away from visual manifestation. I wondered if my friends at the Faery Tree had seen any of this. Of course they had. Then I wondered if they had sent the one who threw the rocks at my window. Yes, it is the sort of thing they would do, by way of admonishment, for not getting out of WORK in time to join them for faerie magic on Midsummers. I suppose, almost swimming there knee deep in that energy, that I wasn't that separated from them, and that I probably didn't miss out on too much.

Weekend Full O Fun

2005-06-06T17:41:00.000-07:00

Dear friends, hope you didn't spend all your first paycheck of the month,
because this weekend is PACKED full of fun.

First, tonight is a difficult decision of loyalty. At Antone's is our fave
butt-rockin dance band, the sexiest DavidBowie/CheapTrick/LedZepp/RollingStones influenced but totally modern,
The Real Heroes. And there are some *really* cute girls who will be sad if
LM and I don't show up to dance with them.

On the other hand, with probably easier cover charge, the Deathray Davies
are in town tonight at Emo's promoting their new CD which has been raking in the reviews. I'll have to get that one. So if you crave some grunge-to-psych pop with a melancholy streak, throw on your blacks and comb those bangs over your face, eat a sour grape, but if they make you wanna dance, don't let anyone notice, dorkface! Sharing the bill is Ugly Beats, who I've been encouraged to look into (someone described them as surf, but with a lead singer that can't be right??) Grand Champeen is a local favorite so I'll give 'em another chance to impress me.

For a happy and wholesome break, join us at 4:20 at Barton Springs for Hooper's Paradise, LM and I will bring a bunch of hoops for everyone to
play with. The rest of you can point and laugh. Then when you get hot and
sweaty you can freeze yer buns in Barton Springs. The big hill over the deep end has a tradition of games and sports so that's where we will be.

Now Nasty's is one of those great places where you won't have to worry what
anybody thinks of you. And with the bands playing Saturday night you can go
ahead and laugh out loud and talk out of turn. First is what is left of my
favorite surf band, the Nematoads. With a sit-in bass player they will probably stick to mainly classic surf covers, but when was that ever a bad
thing? Then get a whiff of Three Pot Offy cause they just cleaned their carburators for YOU! Hear the rumble and let these large scary men will put
hair on your chest, Eustace. Finishing off the night is Basin Street, with
balls-out hard rock and the most frightening barefoot angry hippy bass player you ever seen. I do hope you brought ear plugs.

Hungover Sunday? The prescription might be Ted Leo and the Pharmacists back
at Emo's. Straight up pop/punk with Leo, better known on the East Coast/NYC. Revolutionary punk songs without self pity. There might be a steeper cover charge so call to check if that matters.

Hope this helps your fun-seeking nature!

Spring Fever

2005-04-28T22:38:00.000-07:00

Spring is my traditional time to do too much stuff. I think that my energies are boundless, and at times they fool me. In the springtime I can learn new skills, put on performances, produce sundry for-sale products, teach classes...Get while the gettin's good, but I guess what it doesn't involve much is writing. The weather is too good and the lake calls. Oh, yea, and my computer has been crappped up with adware and spyware. I'd call this a bunch of excuses, but I don't feel bad about it. See ya at Eeyore's birthday party!

Memorial to Sophora

2005-03-04T20:43:00.000-08:00

I lost a dear friend, advisor, and benefactor, and I don't even know when she was killed.

A mountain laurel tree on UT campus, one which I have matronized for over ten years, was gone when I went to visit earlier this week. Full grown, mature, just minding its business of adding some beauty in an out-of-the-way spot, at some point last year, it was removed. Completely, no trace, no stump, no seeds. Cheap honeysuckle vines had replaced a very valuable landscaping tree with no evident reason. UT is a motherfucker, if nobody ever let you in on that, corporate, unfeeling, imperial, unpredictable. Just ask East Austin.

I struck up a relationship with "my" mountain laurel tree over ten years ago, back when I was a student at UT. The hard, shiny, blood-red beans or seeds of this tree fascinated me, and Dr. Marshal Johnston, my favorite, most honored botany professor, told us that the name "Sophora" came from the name of the goddess Sophia, she of truth, wisdom, and justice, because the Indians once brewed a hallucinogenic, psychotropic, vision-producing beverage from the otherwise toxic red seeds, or "mescal beans." According to him, nobody knew the recipe anymore, how to extract the wisdom from the poison, and I certainly never experimented, though I am sure other ethnobotanical voyagers have.

I found that I could benefit from the wisdom of this plant simply by being in proximity, smelling the grape kool-aid scented intoxicating flowers, and by carrying or wearing the beans. I even for awhile wore them in my ears as jewelry, calling them my "ear-beans."

It was not till later that I remembered a highschool boyfriend, who told me that his mother's witch-practitioner had made him hold one in his mouth when he testified in court. He had been framed by some bad-boy friends, and the Sophora seed in his mouth was supposed tto help his testimony bring the truth of the matter to bear in the court of law. The red color also speaks to personal power, and I took up wearing a necklace of the beans whenever I had to testify at city council, or speak truth to power to a bunch of suit-wearing liars, back when I was an environmental activist. In other words, the deva of this plant is a very powerful person, and it seems that many people respond to her wisdom.

I also made (still make) jewelry as a part-time extra-cash endeavor, and having visiting all the mountain laurel trees on UT campus I settled on this, my grandmother benefactor tree, because she produced beans so prolifically, even in the drought years, of such perfectly even, deep red color and perfect form, she supplied me with as many beans as I had market for my necklaces. On Wednesdays in October I would visit her, to gather the seeds. Crouching and squatting in the planter box on UT campus, filling a bag with those seeds, nobody ever asked me what I was doing, although I would have that conversation ready to go in case I needed it!

Then I would go home with my haul, and using my high speed power drill, I would make the beans into beads and string them. They sold well at Christmas, owing to the cranberry-red color. I always included a tag that told about the powers and also warned against letting babies and children chew on them, candy-apple red as they are and very toxic.

Last October I was very busy and I had enough beans collected so that I didn't need to go "shopping" with my tree. I happened by earlier this week on my way to a meeting and found my tree gone, without a trace. UT is an unfeeling, impersonal, unpredictable, imperialistic, and yes even evil institution, and my guess is that they killed Sophora and two neighboring Sophora trees because the seeds got into a maintenence drain. That is only a guess, and I don't ever expect to know why she was killed or when it happened.

The only solace to this story is that her progeny have been coming up in my backyard for years and years. Not EVERY bean was absolutely perfect, but hopefully those at least one of these "discarded" beans will carry her perfection into the future. And, the last time I made necklaces, I thought I had used up every single last one of her beans, but now that I look a little, they are all over my room and my whole house, and I can easily tell which are her beans and which came from another tree. These will be planted in a sacred manner in a very special protected place, which has specifically asked me for a few gifts of biodiversity, especially including Sophora. I will carry them with me until I can make good on the special order from my grandmother benefactor Sophora.

On Tape

2005-02-23T13:10:00.000-08:00

Finally! Caught up on bills, rent, and most important, my ISP. So what do I do? Buy, on somebody else's credit, $165 worth of fancy colored tape for making my hoola hooops!!! I will sell them, and some of it is for me, my personal hooops and my performance, but it is just one example of what I was saying in the last post about dancing on the edge of a wine glass.

Dancing on Glass

2005-02-20T21:15:00.000-08:00

Pretty much all the broken glass has been swept up. But now I feel like I am dancing on glass, maybe a huge bubble of heated air that floats up which could pop at any moment, or mabe tightrope walking my stunts on the edge of a great wine glass. Or perhaps I am bending towards my own reflection in a dark mirror, leaning so close that I could fall through.
Teaching classes, learning performance, taking lessons and giving them, researching, writing, buying and making and selling, inventing. Everything boasts of potential, but which posssibilities will pay dividends and which will crash through the fragile bubble of my invention? I definitely see the potential for disaster, and certainly my finances have rarely been on less stable footing but really all I asked from life is that it be meaningful and interesting. Clearly all that is necessecary for that to happen is to entertain ten different avocations at any given time and see which ones pan out, and which ones were just interesting experiments. Kids, try this at home, but if the test tube breaks over the bunsen burner, you could get cut OR burned if not both!

Long Time No Fun

2005-02-10T21:43:00.000-08:00

Dear friends,
It has been a LONG time since I sent y'all a Fun Alert Bulletin. Hopefully y'all are ready to rock again. Here is the scoop, courtesy of the Nematoads:
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 11 @ BIGSBY'S
505 E. 6thAustin
8:00 The Bad Rackets Austin's answer to the New York Dolls minus the makeup
9:15 The Nematoads Your loveable bastards of surf back in action!10:30 Basin Street Those godless wonders of blues-drenched, Gretsch-fueled, alcohol-stained rock&roll revival
11:45 85 Decibels If Johnny Cash, Iggy Pop, the Beat Farmers, and Johnny Rotten had a kid, they'd call him 85 Decibels.

And on top of that, we're also shooting footage for our music video. We're working with local indie filmmaker Matt Kordelski to produce a wacked out video for our original song Bandera. So if you want to be in a shot or two, come on out to Bigsby's and get a good spot up front. Wear something unusual and stand out. There will also be a troop of huluhoopers in the crowd, so don't be afraid to cut loose.

Heh, heh, thanks, TJ. That "troop of hoola hooopers" would happen to be me and my loopy hoopy friends. All three of us. YEAH! So be sure to come ready to point and laugh, or better yet spin a few for the band! We will be there for all of the Nematoads set and then see what happens.
Bigsby's has changed it arrangement and they went and got a very cool manager, so it really is developing into a great live music venue. High ceilings (so smoke isn't a problem) and plenty of space, and the sound is great. And best of all - NO COVER!
See y'all there,
Hullaba Lula

Spooky Rides Out West

2005-02-10T20:40:00.000-08:00

Spooky is a BADASSS Puddycat. Pure snowy white naturally, dirty and smeared with auto grease normally, with no social graces, and a driving territorial aggression, he is forever coming home with his face/leg/chest/flank all messed up from the recent Saturday night brawl. "He just loves a good fight," says LM, shaking his head in admiration.

Well, this time his opponent got him back in kind. Homie noticed that his cheek was all swollen, presumably from a bite, and we knew that it would probably open up, or Spooky would open it up himself, which he did on Friday morning. He had the manners to go and drain it outside, but still his face was a mess. A silver-dollar sized hole of blood, pus, dead cat bits and fur. Tex-Mex anyone?

Having been through this sort of thing before, I plied the usual remedies plus some hardball topical anitbiotic left over from LM's affair with S. aureus. I spent a lot of time with him, sleeping on the sofa with him on my chest. But by yesterday I became worried that he wasn't going to resolve this himself, so I made a vet appointment. The ointment didn't seem to be having the miraculous effect it had on our human patient. Of course, upon having broken down and called the vet, I found a treatment that seemed to be working, a drying powder compound of Myrrh gum powder (vulnerary, antimicrobial) Goldenseal (antibiotic) Echinacea root powder (anti-hyaluronidase action, immune stimulant) and Prickly Ash bark powder (astringent, antimicrobial, topical anaesthetic). It helped dry up the oozing gore and help a crust begin at the edges of the wound, to begin a scab.

I couldn't get a ride to the vet and didn't try too hard, having used up a lot of car karma recently, so here is what you do when you have to transport a LARGE cat with a fucked up face: You tie the danged cat carrier onto your bicycle rack, and walk it over to the vet. Just cross I35 like you are an ordinary pedestrian. Get up and ride the bike? It didn't work, he is 14 pounds of loose weight and I already had nightmares of dropping the carrier and spilling my milky white kitty onto the bridge over the Interstate. (I just now realize why my right arm is so sore in an odd spot - I thought it was hoola hoop strain.) Really, he took it very well, but there is just NO WAY to look cool while you are doing something like this. I should have just muttered, cursed, and pointed like the crazy old bag lady that I am becoming, and nobody would have given a second look.

Has Spooky been vaccinated? -Yeah, most recently when I bailed him out of the pound! Flea treatment, earmites, previous vet records, feline leuk/aids testing? Jeez, I know I would have to walk the Hall of Shame, so I did it with as much poise and grace as I could, and in the end they washed out the wound (which I had also done of course but they have better gear) cleaned out the earmites and gave a scrit for a month's worth! of antibiotics. He had no fever, so I am wondering about the antibiotics.

Then back on the bike and across the interstate with no mishap! This is a new level of bike self-sufficiency, I guess, made much less stressful by the cooperation of the cat. So prayers and candles to Spooky Monster, the baddest cat of my neighborhood and a good friend. Speedy recovery, keep your ears clean, and stay out of trouble.

A Happy Ending

2005-02-09T11:32:00.000-08:00

I went to create a Yahoo group for my shop. Our current website was down, and we needed to have an announcement forum. Dang! I found that the name of my shop was already taken in Yahoo groups. Curious, I took a look at the moderator, and he had a link listed, one of which was www.myshop'sname.org! MMMMrrrrrrr! (Marge Simpson disapproval murmur.) When I followed the link, I found it was a local party girl/stripper outfit, that sends exotic dancers to your frat or bachelor party!

So I freaked out. I started asking for advice. The lowdown on free advice was that if my shop's name was not trademarked (it is not, because a carpet-cleaning product holds that right) we were SOL. Pornographers were assholes, they warned, they are not likely to sell you a URL for a reasonable price.

It is not like I disapprove of this sort of thing. Looking over the arrangements for the dancers, it seemed like they were being protected and treated well. What sent me into paranoia was that it soon was discovered that the guy who owned the site and the Yahoo group, was a guy who, upon moving to Austin in September, was directed to my shop on a listserve that I subscribe to! We even had a pleasant exchange, because I complimented him on a piece of writing he did. So he was well aware of my shop and it's name, and our standing in the community. So why did he have to use OUR name in the URL for his titty dancers???? We suspected foul play, that he had some grudge against us. In my paranoia I even thought that the drawing of the girl on the front page looked a lot like me! And the headshot behind her looked like my biz partner. To make matters more dubious, it also was discovered that he DID have his own URL, and that he was using both to point to his website!

A friend and member of the pagan community of some importance approached him, with a much cooler head, on our behalf. And guess what? The guy was unaware of the mixup, it was a mistake caused by him rearranging his web business, he took the stripper site down immediately, apologized to us personally and in a public forum with explanations, and gave us the URL as a goodwill gesture!

As I always say, "When in doubt, freak out!" to which my business partner replies, "Panic now, avoid the rush!"

Crawling Over Broken Glass

2005-02-04T20:29:00.000-08:00

When Trailer Park Girl recently wrote about how lately life was like crawling over broken glass, I knew she had a point, or several hundred. Here are some of the shards stuck in my skin, drawing blood:

cat's face all fucked up from getting in another fight

not knowing if housemates intend to pay rent

needing that money to pay rent and fix cat's face at vet

fought and lost a fight with my food co-op. they fired a friend of mine, the alleged offense (pot smoking on the job) was a frame, his grievance committee was overruled, and the BOD upheld managements decision to keep him canned for and offense he did not commit, in spite of employees appeals and the 150+ signatures I got from members

cut in pay

long distance service discontinued at work

not accepted to a county rent-to-own your own home because i am too poor

heater stopped working. raining in the upper 30's. fixed it, tho, cold wet crawl under house, two brown recluse spiders

jury duty (not usually something I complain about, but a lot of people would. a context thing)

someone, who knows of me and of my shop bought the domain name.org and it is now the website for a call girl service for bachelor and frat parties. no legal recourse

You know??? I mean, it's no tsunami, but I definitely feel overwhelmed by adversity. Better go get my voodou god some REAL good rum ASAP!

Use These Uncomfortable Words As Much As Possible in a Sentence in a Social Situation

2005-01-13T23:33:00.000-08:00

Taken from a list on my refrigerator started by Courtsie and added to by many guests for about 2 years now:

Flaccid, pulpit, papal, rectory, nuncio, bulbous, veinous, thrust, member (as something other than a person), membrane, dismember, pith, mound, mount, comport, expunge, chubby, smeary, curd, curdle, cup (as a verb), spongiform, insert, grope, erectile, tumescent, turgid, pus, worm (as a verb), plunge, fondle, stiff, bulge, shunt, fetid, dandle, squelch, eschew, discharge, prostrate, prostate, shirk, corpuscle, corpulent, squalid, grope, render, pleasure (as a verb), service (as a verb), engorge, murmur, porcine, pucker, moist, moisten, carbuncle, turbuncle, breach, broach, ointment, fecund, slake, swab, inured, manipulate, copacetic, pregnant, caress, puce, prod, probe, protrude, protract,

...to be continued???

Santa Claus Meets Juan Samore

2004-12-19T21:12:00.000-08:00

Santa Claus Meets Juan Samore
A Pirate Christmas Story

Presumably, you know who and what Santa Claus is. So let me tell you some things about Juan Samore, then. CAPTAIN Samore, some would insist, he was a pirate as fierce and greedy, as bloodthirsty and successful, as ever sailed the seas for gold, guts and glory.

Handsome as he was wicked, Captain Juan Samore had a twirl to his moustache, a point to his goatee, a ring of gold in his ear, plumed feather in his velvet hat, and he wore the finest silk scarves. Needless to say, his manicure was as perfect as his language was foul in several tongues. Whereas some pirate captains have a parrot that roosts on their shoulder and others have a pet monkey as a familiar, Samore kept a large chameleon lizard that gripped onto his shoulder and hissed into his ear. Some think that the Captain could see through the independently twirling eyes of the lizard but anyone who saw the man would know that he felt through that reptilian’s heart.

One fine Christmas Eve found Captain Juan Samore celebrating with his crew aboard the Corpse Raider down in the Caribbean, and let me tell you, they were not observing the holy day in prayer or reflection of Our Savior’s Birth. No ma’am, they were being about as bad as pirates can be. Mind you, these were not nice jolly pirates like the ones that disembark from Hollywood these days, but truly avaricious ones who would not hesitate to kill your mother for her gold fillings. They had just captured a slave trader’s ship (which was not considered pirate in the day but you and I know better now). The slaves thought they had been freed but then the pirates chained them back down back on the rowers' benches of their own ship. They made the poor slaves row the ship in circles for their drunken amusement. And they were fighting, and drinking rum from off the plundered ship, and singing, singing those pirate versions of Christmas carols like:

Swab the decks with boughs of holly!
Tis the season to be Jolly...Roger
Harharharharharrr...harharharrrharrrrrr!

So occupied they were, with their singing and fighting and drinking, and laughing at the men who fell off the spinning ship’s deck that they did not notice what was coming in from the north.

It piled up high, wide and white and loomed over the Corpse Raider before Captain Samore could retreat, a hurricane-sized blizzard from the North Pole which whitened the Caribbean sky with a snow flurry and blinded the whole crew. Only the slaves could still see what they were doing, and the spin of the pirate ship joined the spiral of the snow hurricane winds, and up into the spout spun the whole ship, up, up into the storm.

Riding the snow blizzard, and now back to their drinking, crew and captain and ship sailed into the dark night of the north. ALL the way north they flew, and when the storm came to rest, it still had enough force to suck up the ice, opening up a little pond of water right there at the North Pole. The Corpse Raider splashed down into it, its bobbing mast looking for all the world like a North Pole itself. When the snowy whiteness of the blizzard thinned, the dizzy pirates found themselves floating in a tiny sea surrounded by ice in the cold Arctic sunshine. And who was that strange man? No pirate, you could tell, who taunted them from way above, up top in the crow’s nest? Wearing hat and gloves of fur and velvet that made the pirates jealous?

Santa Claus.

Santa swung his big bag over his shoulder and tempted the pirates with what was inside. “Let me see, looking at the list, you all seem to be getting a bunch of coal. Here ya go!”

“Arrrr, arrrrgh!” swore the pirates.

“Hey you shouldn’t knock it, you could burn it and keep warm,” said Santa. “But... what DO you boys want?” he asked.

Every pirate then stopped trying to light the coal, and drew their swords, daggers, and pistols, and in one voice yelled:
“GO-O-O-O-OLD!”

“Gold!” “And silver!” “And rubies!” “And emeralds!” “And pearls!” “And diamonds!” “GOLD!”

So Santa started pouring down gold, treasures of all kinds, along with many other precious things the pirates would not appreciate.

The ship filled up with Santa’s plunder, and began to sink. Slaves broke their chains and tried to save them all by tossing the gold into the sea, but the pirates yelled for more gold even as they were sinking into the icy water.

Some say that there were no survivors, that pirates and slaves alike swam down to Davy Jones locker for a very long stay. I say, someone must have survived, perhaps by riding a polar bear to shore, or else who would tell the story?

Captain Juan Samore climbed the mast hand over hook as his ship sank, until only he and the crow’s nest were above water.

Santa said to Samore, “It looks like you have room for just one more gift, Samore.” And he held out a life preserver, a color of such pure bright platinum, it looked like a white cloud with a silver lining. Samore knew just by looking at it that it was so light, and so buoyant that it could save not just his own soul, rescue the drowned crew and slaves, and raise up the sunken ship he had ruined. He began to warm his heart, and moved to reach his hook up towards the magic life preserver...

“But don’t choose now, consider THIS!” taunted Santa.

Santa then pulled the last treasure out of his bag and held it up in his other hand. It was a huge golden anchor, exquisitely tooled and studded with all manner of jewels. ANY pirate would consider it the ultimate improvement to his ship, an anchor of the heaviest gold.
Juan Samore then stretched his hook toward the anchor. Below, bubbles of drowned pirates broke the water around him. Thinking again, Samore again turned and reached for the life preserver which Santa offered in the other hand. Just then, the lizard on Samore’s shoulder shot out its sticky tongue and caught the golden anchor, making the choice for the pirate. The anchor dropped and the last of the pirate ship with Captain Juan Samore and crows nest and all disappeared under the North pole. Immediately the North Pole ice cap froze over, covering ship, captain, crew, slaves, treasure and all. Santa, of course was caught up in his reindeer draw sled which had been awaiting him nearby.

Many years have gone by but still the stories are told of adventurers, treasure hunters, filmmakers and fools venture to find Samore’s pirate gold under the North Pole, but all of them sink with the heaviness of greed, fame, or budgets.

Others say that if the North Pole ever again unfreezes, that Juan Samore and his ruthless pirate crew and ship would be loosed out into the world. That is a good reason why many people nowadays fight global warming, whether they know it or not.

But all of us know that every child and every soul who shows kindness, generosity, respect, good humor or patience gives the grace that is needed for Santa’s elves to retrieve the pirate gold ounce by troy ounce from under the North Pole, melt it, remold and reshape it into joy and blessings to return to the world.

-Princess Poysen Iviee Dec. 2004

Holiday Rounds

2004-12-10T00:40:00.000-08:00

Xmas/Yule hit early this year for me. Barely back from Thanksgiving when last weekend off to Galveston to do an early Xmas with my parents, since they are visiting back home. Broke I am, but fortunately I make, buy and sell stuff, so for the relatives I generally loot the store, throw a bunch of stuff I make, soaps that my biz partner makes, some high quality perfumes form India, local hot sauces, tattoo booklets, in a box then dump it on a table and let everybody grab what they want. Well, everyone wants the cookies. I highly recommend this kind of giving.

Mainly we got wined and dined unmerciful by the parents. LM rented us a minivan and we took bikes, but really we were not able to work off the calories they put on us at one of Galveston’s favorite restaurants among locals. Two nights in a row, and on the secong, we found a homemade carrot cake that one of the waitresses had made for us _in her own home_! We even went to Bishop’s Palace, a major attraction which me, living there 18 years and they, many more til they retired, had never seen! My great great grandfather worked on that spiral staircase, and after he died they were going through his stuff, and his carpentry tools that he brought from Germany, nobody, even the carpenters, knew what they were for. And my old highschool boyfriend's sister was a tour guide. Her persona was of a creepy ghost girl, but I’m not sure if it is an act, or if she really is embodying one of Gresham’s daughters! Folks and I agreed, Galveston is better as tourists, rather than living there.

LM is right now snowboarding in Colorado. This is just after he healed up from a very traumatic infection that involved and emergency surgical procedure, loads of antibiotics, painkillers, me driving a car from the emergency room, and lots of figuring out what to do about this huge ugly gash! Man, I love this stuff, as long as it doesn’t threaten my LM. He was saved by modern medicine, and all my herbal remedies could not have saved him. Humbling, and we might want to get used to life being a little more precarious.

I just recently gave a very well received class on magic with Faeries with another local magic teacher. We will be offering a follow up in what could become a series. I have not written much about Faerie stuff here, other than a few poems inspired by Thomas the Rhymer, but this is my main religious/spiritual pathwork, a very edge area of inquiry even among Pagans, and I wonder if mainstream Paganism and most modern religion have more in common than Faery Spiritualism. This has been my spiritual work for some but not all of my first 40 years, and now it is starting to come out as opposed to the taking in of the first half of my life.

Since the weather has gotten colder, I have not spun a hoolah hoop in weeks. Sometimes that is one of the things that makes me not sleep, trying to work out new tricks in my head. But by next summer for sure, I will have performance grade hoop acts together, for a local fire performance group that I love.

Last week I took cuttings of some of my herb plants, because the weather was right, and the moon sign and everything. Lavender, Thyme, Basil (just in case) Marjoram, Sage, and Dittany of Crete. I found an old folder of my landscaping customers, and there was the receipt for this original Lavender strain, from 1994. So this Lavender strain has been with me for 10 years. When the cuttings take root, which could be real fast, I pot them up. Maybe I will give one for my neighbor, the client for whom I originally planted these Lavenders, as a Yule gift! Yes, I will!

I really do not want this blog to become journal or diary entries like this one. What I try to make it is screeds, essays, monographs and expositions. I have one that just needs some more typing. So hopefully before any more of these entries on “what’s going on in my life that keeps me from writing” appears, you will be treated to a how-to paper I wrote in 1996 on facilitated consensus process decision making. This will be my offering to the guy who is putting together the document on how to survive the oil crash. It struck me that self-governance is a skill that could be every bit as needed as how to make rain cisterns or fix plumbing, and after a survey of what is on the web, I think my how-to paper is a better than what is out there. The only purely creative offering I have in mind is a Yule story I have to come up with for a local Xmas/Yule function where I have a storytelling gig. if it translates to written as well a s oral tradition, I will post it here.

Maybe ya’ll didn’t know that I am an Elf in Santa’s service!!?? Buy only items that say "made in USA" which REALLY stands for Union of Santa's Associates.

Thanksgiving Feast

2004-11-27T08:50:00.000-08:00

I got to go to Dallas to share Thanksgiving with LM's family, who I adore. His Mom did the turkey, stuffing and gravy, and was very happy to allow me to take over all the sides. Here is what I cooked for them:

Stuffed Baked Delicatta Squash (I brought this last year - cheese, pine nuts, red and green chilies, etc)
Hungarian Red Cauliflower (an excellent quality paprika stains it red)
Brussels Sprouts with Walnuts and Raspberry Sauce
Maquechoux (a Cajun/Indian version of creamed corn)
Whole Sauted Mushrooms in Red Wine Sauce
Wild Rice Pilaf (with apple juice, pecans, currants & mushrooms)
Garnet Yams (cubed and roasted in a covered iron skillet with onions)
Mashed Potatoes with Wild Chives
Apple Pie with Cranberries and Walnuts
Cranberry Sauce (1 bag frozen cranberries + 1 can frozen applejuice concentrate opt. 1 small can crushed pinapple)
I have no idea how to make pumpkin pie.
I'm not good at stuffing, but I love it...
I don't know how to do that greenbean thing with the crispies on top...
I can make a mushroom/cream brown gravy for mashed potatoes, etc. if needed. I don't know how to make gravy out of pan drippings. Next time I see it done I'll be writing it down.

A Guest Poet Prophesies, and My Replies

2004-11-18T11:50:00.000-08:00

Butterflies Make Me Wish
(or: "The Only Reason on Earth to Spend a Day in Houston")
Morphos Butterfly
Hovering above the Orinoco River Delta
Flapped its wings furiously
Rippling the air around it
Sending a new hapless
Fly careening
Into the moss in front of Centipede
It struggled madly & hopelessly in her mandibles
As Centipede elongated & undulated herself
Until Tarantula shot forth from under a log
Seizing and poisoning Centipede
This motion drew the attention of Iguana
Who snatched Tarantula with pink, sticky tongue
Giving his position away
To Boa on the low-hanging branch above
She hurled herself from the tree
Landing on the ground with a thud
En-coiling Iguana
Spooking many Tapa
Sending them scurrying across
The forest floor, grunting and squealing
Agitating Howler Monkeys above
Into hoots, howls, & hurtles
Through the canopy
Violently rattling the tree-tops
Sending many Bird People
Flying in panic
Providing the final impetus
That prodded a misty steaming bubble
Of moisture-laden air upward
Entraining more buoyant air beneath and beside
Pushing inexorably skyward-free convection
Building a cumulus cloud
Of condensing Caribbean-Atlantic moisture
That burst latent heat into
This column of ascending air
Building and sculpting that cloud
Into cumulonimbus-an exquisite cell
With increasingly powerful updrafts and downdrafts
That unleashed drenching downpours, lightning, and
Gusty, rain-cooled winds which
Burrowed under the surrounding
Tropical maritime air mass
Lifting yet more of it
And more of it-so juicy and free of gravity
So much more latent heat exploding
Wholesale upward acceleration
(The Ocean loves the Sky-giving)
Creating a beautifully-structured complex
Of interdependent tropical thunderstorm cells
That drifted out above the warm salt soup teeming with life
So she fed this creature still more life-giving vapor
As the southerly winds on the west side
Of the Bermuda-Azores High-Pressure Ridge
Steered the growing, organizing convective system
North across the Caribbean and into
The western Gulf of Mexico
The rapid, continuous latent heat release
From widespread abundant condensation and
Precipitation
Further intensified the updrafts and
Subsequent entrainment
Forging a shallow low-pressure area
Spinning with increasing Coriolis Effect
Driving the winds around and inward
Forcing more air to rise-the Cycle ensues
Evolving into Force 5 Hurricane
(The Sky loves the Ocean-giving)
Who slams into Houston, Texas
Bombarding that mistake
With raging winds, flooding rains, tornadoes, and storm surges
Wilderness on the Move
Destroying the city's financial district
(Including and especially Maxxam Corp. HQ)
Making international news
Rocking the global "economy"
Scaring hell out of suits the world over
And inspiring me to wish
That I could have experienced it all
First hand.

The Radikal Weatherman Fall, 2004

Veritably, it is prophesy
Given to you by Thomas True
He could tell no lie
And neither could a butterfly

Sir Thomas, of Erceldun
Was a historical human man
Ferried by the Faerie Queene
Into that nether Land
To serve her six years and one
And when that contract done
Returned him to here did she
'Neath his Hawthorne tree
With gift of poem and prophesy
A gift or a curse, why
If you could tell no lie?
And every poem you told came true?
Your lament will equal Thomas' rue.

Fashion Non-Sense

2004-11-14T14:36:00.000-08:00

When I read Starr's and Dragonfly's blog entries on fashion I was feeling cold and frumpy, in a shapeless fleece pullover with stained grey jogging sweatpant. Yu-uk!

How inspiring to read this and find out that my girlfriend is featured and famous!

I got up, took a loooong hot shower, folded and hung up my laundry and started trying-on. What I think I have settled on, hopefully to go to the fashion show tonight, is one of my punk faeree clown original assemblies: purple chucks with black laces with lime green socks and the lime green baggy corduroy britches rolled up just enough to show the black-and purple stockings under them, but also hanging lowrider enough to show those stockings hiking up over the belt, a blue irridescent sparkly number that does no good holding up the pants but totally provides context for the blue irridescent spangled butterfly halter top tied on in back by a bewildering web of spagetti strap. A locally girlfriend-made leather-and-chrome brads choker reconnects with the black in the shoelaces and stockings, and a HUMONGOUS purple mardi gras beads necklace with inch sized beads that hangs down between my legs. Topped off with a lime green yarn raggedy-Anne wig, lime-green antennae and of course the chrome-green faux leather jacket with the green faux fur collar. Purple lipstick will be added at the last minute, with some bright blue glitter sprinkled into it. Ready to-go!

You Can't Get Much More Reality-Based

2004-11-05T23:51:00.000-08:00

We are now collaborators. Us, the American people. Do you think it will matter much to anyone else that we let them steal the election?

Just paint a bulls-eye on yer backside!

You can't get much more reality-based than this.

Election Results

2004-11-03T15:56:00.000-08:00

good. gods.

LM just informed me that last night i wailed for two hours without stopping. i remember very little of it, but what i remember was of hearing that voice, a bloodcurdling keening, like it wasn't me. like it was coming through me but not from me. i mean, yes it is very bad news and i am bummed, but not enough to do THAT! but something/body(ies) else must have been. and why is my throat not sore? LM said that after the wailing stopped, i cried like a normal person for another hour, that i was crying in my sleep. he said he could barely stand the wailing, but he stayed and just held me. what a wonderful man.

Riding a Wave

2004-10-26T11:50:00.000-07:00

If I have not made it known in my earlier writings, I am a big fan of surf music. I have recently made good friends with the guitar player of a local surf band, the Nematoads, and he gave me some of the music he produced on his Deep Eddy record label. It all ties in with hoola hooping, because of that show that I went to at Jo's Coffeehouse, a benefit for Surfrider Foundation where Three Balls of Fire was playing, then they showed Endless Summer on the outdoor screen right there in the parking lot. Very cool scene. I went with LM, took my hoola hoops, so I could hoop to Three Balls, and hopefully get other people hooping.

To our surprise, LM's ex-wife was there, it was the first time we met, and the first time that they had an in-person friendly visit for over a year. So I hung back and let them get reacquainted, and me and my hoops made friends with a sweet 10 yr old girl, and that was how I met the Nematoads, because she introduced me to her father. LM and I went to see them play later that night at Flipnotics.

Saturday they played our Block Party at my shop, and he gave me some of his Deep Eddy products, modern surf compilations, and I wrote to him this sprawling ramble about surf music, organizing, and Padre Island:

Okay, the Deep Eddy compilations you gave me are blowing my mind! What part did you play in getting all those bands together? I had not heard Shadowy Men before, so thanks for that one esp. LM and I sat around drinking Manhattans last night reviewing Fiberglass Jungle song by song. He pronounced it and the Shadowy Men to be very professional high-quality products. I let him take it to dub, hope you don't mind. He's also making a copy of my compilation of surf classics through time and style, Bajo el Sur, so I can give you a copy and you can check out my tastes.

It seems to me that you must be some sort of organizer. I am an organizer too, at least I used to be and I still have tendencies. During the mid 80's to late 90's I was a hard-core organizer for Earth First! here in Austin, that is why my musical education is so behind the curve, and why I missed stuff like the Sandblasters and Squid Vicious. Oh well, I guess I'm okay at playing catchup.

I'm just all excited about this music and how to me it seems different from the rest of rocknroll. I love how, from a fan's perspective, it is so difficult to know what band did what song because everybody plays each other's music, you know, *pooling* talent, combining styles, blending influences so liquidly! Maybe it's just the aqua-tinted sunglasses, but it just seems like there is more love and less ego in this music. Maybe its the lack of front-men vocalists. Maybe its the low pay and small crowds. I do think surf music is badly misunderstood and underappreciated. It could definitely benefit from promotion, education, and some well-placed propaganda. My opinion is that *everyone* loves surf music, but they don't want to admit it because it isn't in fashion. I intend to change that!

And all this enthusiasm makes me think things like, maybe I should try to help organize some really cool larger-scale surf-scene show, like specifically to benefit SurfRiders and/OR the Sierra Club's effort to get the drilling off of Padre Island National Seashore? Do you know about that??? It is really bad, and I have a good friend in the TX Sierra Club who is the point person for that issue. He is not as good of an organizer as I am, at least as far as getting lots of people to do one thing, and he has been trying to get me to step up to the plate on this one. Now as a burned out environmental organizer that sounds REAL scary, but if I could do something that pulled together musicians, activists, windsurfers, bellydancers, and performers, all in the context of promoting surf music and what it stands for, well, I would be in an excellent position to do that.

So I'd be interested in your imput on ideas like this. Feel free to burst my bubble, if need be, I like being part of the "reality-based" comunity.I'm thinking like late spring next year. I don't know, if Kerry wins, and if it was played right, it could come off as John Kerry, windsurfer, "gives back" Padre Island to beachgoers after GW Bush took it away from them and gave it to BP International.

Now I could be opening a can of worms with YOU, Johnny Vortex, because what the hell do I know, you might be one of those Bush-loving Republican SurfRider Ecology Action benefitting guitar players. In which case I'll shut up my liberalanarchistgreempartycapitalistsoshalistBULLshit and move on to a safe subject, like, say, trashing Dick Dale's last show in Austin. You just tell me where your boundaries are!

Keep It Up, Fool!
~o}0<

October Fun Alert

2004-10-19T00:03:00.000-07:00

October sure is stuffed with Fun! Here is what I am out-and-about for:

Tomorrow, Tuesday nite at 11pm at Beerland the Nematoads, original new wave/punk surf rock and one of my new favorites is playing, and somehow I let them talk me into hoola hoopin for the show. If even one other game girlfriend or boyfriend would hoop with me I wouldn't feel so self conscious. Of course if you want to point and laugh, its a free country, right?

This coming Saturday is a big one. Noontide starts the North Loop Strip Block Party, and my shop, Natural Magic, 701 E 53rd (aka North Loop) has a great lineup of free, excellent music:
3pm begin taking entries for Jack O'Lantern contest. Cash and gift prizes. $2 entry fee. 3 entry limit.
3pm Pam Peltz, solo songwriter rock diva
4pm the Nematoads, new wave surf rock
4pm Hoola Hoopers demo and fun-spun
5pm Sky Cult, straight up Rock, recommended by Rank & Review
6pm Underwerwolves, Rocknroll, a favorite Natural Magic house band
7pm Jack O'Lantern carved pumpkin contest winner named, prizes awarded.
7:30pm Drummers prequel for Typsy Gypsies8pm Typsy Gypsys awesome bellydancers and eye-popping fire spinners show. This is the grand finale show of the season! Last chance to get Typsy with the Gypsys!! Free show, bring chairs or blankets and some $$$ to Typ your Gypsy.

What a day! Lets hope for good weather.

Saturday, Oct. 30th, also at Natural Magic is the not-to be-missed Halloween on Fire Show, a full-scale theatrical fire production brought to you by Brujas del Fuego. Let the Brujas ignite your passion for Death, Samhain, and Halloween. If the apple is on fire, should you eat it? $5 admission.

There may be more, but don't wanna scare you. BOO!

Two years and a Day

2004-10-15T18:28:00.000-07:00

Today is me and LM's second Year and a Day anniversary. Year and a Day refers to the traditional provisional pagan handfasting. Couples would agree to a year's worth of marital committment, then usually go on to either separate or do a more permanent marriage or seven year handfasting.

Our arrangement might not seem the most romantic, but for us, it walks the edge between committed adult love and freedom from artificial bonds.

Every year we will have what I have come to refer to our annual shareholder's meeting. A deliberate conversation where nothing about the relationship is assumed and a time to chase out any underlying issues of contention. An intentional decison of whether or not to continue this relationship and under what terms.

We have decided to carry on for another year and a day. Now we go for a little anniversary vacation. Hint: we'll be taking our fishing caps. And I will be taking my hoola hooops. It is a gorgeous fall and the weekend looks fine!

A Telemarketer Hung UpOn Me!

2004-10-07T09:08:00.000-07:00

Me: Hello?

He: Hello, Miz S____?

Me: That's me!

He: Goodevening, Miz S____, This is R__ calling with All American.

Me: All American what?

He: Heh, heh, it's just All American, that's the name of our company!

Me: Well, OK, it's dinnertime, what are you trying to sell me?

He: Oh, heh, we hear that a lot, but I'm not trying to sell you anything.

Me: So then do I know you?

He: No, I wouldn't think so..

Me: Then this is a "cold call" isn't it?

He: >click<

Whoo-hooo! A telemarketer hung up on me!!!

Limestone Mellow Harshed

2004-09-23T08:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, it has been long enough after the loss of my limestone holey rock for me to register a distinct difference in my life.

But first I must back up to explain a theory I developed quite some time ago.

Back in the 80's development boom in Austin, spurred by Reaganomics, deregulation, and the pillaging of the S&L's, one of the things us lefties, democrats, and environmentalists worried about was that all the new people moving into Austin for the blood feast would be the wrong sorts of people. You know, weathy, materialistic, uptight, and Goddess-of-Liberty forbid, Republican-voting.

And it was true that the newcomers did have that profile, and some bad things happened to our city and continue to happen, like Les Amis being eaten by a Starbucks. But although we gre at a scarey rate, and attendant cost-of-living increases have made the slacker lifestyle a thing of the past, the political center square of Austin has just moved nary an inch. They were Reagan youth when they got here, now they eat mushrooms and play guitar at First Thursday like the rest of us.

I theorized that it was because of the limestone. You see, on the average a human beings bones are replaced every seven years. New calcium molecules have been installed, and others have eroded away. And the calcium comes from our water, the limestone of the Hill Country that dissolves into our drinking water. After seven years of living here, your bones are made out of Glen Rose and Edwards formation.

Think about how the limestone formed. It was when a shallow sea covered most of Texas. Over millenia, single celled creatures in the water died and drifted to the bottom, and gradually deposited their bodies to accumulate this massive limestone formation. A patient, longterm, peaceful process uninterrupted by cataclysmic events like riting or eathquakes. Shallow seas, not deep scary emotions of the big ocean.

I proposed that the limestone makes us peaceable, mellow Austinites, if we stay long enough to replace the calcium in our bones. And that the limestone itself has a natural, magical power to promote peace and calm. Over time we Austinites have come to resemble in temperament the Tonkawa Indians who lived here before us. They were so mellow that they were easily made into victims of genocide, between the white settlers and the Comanches who were displaced here by white settlers on the Plains. But some of what is recorded about them sounds familiar: how their women wore little or no clothing (it was hot) and how they loved games and spent lots of time in passtime activities (some settlers looked down on them as being lazy) and how they had a habit of showing up to parties and events to guff food and booze, and they loved to adorn their bodies with jewelry and tattooes. So us slackers, hackeysac-playing, underemployed, pierced and tatooed, going from swimming hole to keg party and barbeque are really reenacting Tonkawa lifestyle. Our bones are made out of the same mellow limestone as was theirs. I don't think it is such a bad approach to life at at, in fact it is what makes me proud to live in Austin and take part of it's laid-back freakiness. Limestone, soft enough to chew, thank you Kevin Gant.

Which now takes me back to my personal limestone holey rock that I wore for seven years around my neck until it decided to rejoin its kin at Krause Springs. I had thought of it being a talisman of my connection to the Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer and Barton Creek, which I fought so long and hard to preserve, and a direct connection to that first recharge feature where the water begins to flow underground towards Barton Springs. And as a connection to the UnderWorld realms of Faery, for holed stones are also known as Faery stones, and through the hole in a rock you are supposed to be able to see the faeries who are otherwise invisible.

But now I am seeing that my rock also served another natural magical function for me, and that was to absorb and mellow down strong emotions for me. Both those coming towards me from other people and those coming from me towards them. I feel very raw, as I come to grips with anger, disappointment, fear, and love unmediated by my mellow limestone shield. Friends, lovers, coworkers, be easy with me, and be forwarned if I throw out some strong stuff at you! There are really valid reasons I needed protection from harshness then, and now I get to learn how to do it myself. Those are the lessons to be learned before I wear a Faery Sone shield again.

Turn the Peace Sign Rightside Up

2004-09-22T21:27:00.000-07:00

This is something I have been meaning to tell you about for some time! The peace sign is upside down! Let me explain:

T offered to teach a class - Introduction to the Runes. Runes, an ancient magical alphabet of the Norse and Germanic peoples, which most of us became acquainted with on the cover of "The Hobbit There, Back Again" in the 8th grade.

The class was fascinating from beginning to end, and T had a factual, historical skeptical/agnostic openmindedness towards her spiritual studies that I could relate to. Iconoclasm might have been one of my first spiritual tendencies, so when she told us that the peace symbol was upside down symbol meaning the reverse of its intention, I was all ears.

If you look at the peace sign from the Norse/Runic interpretation, it is the opposite of the Algiz rune for life. I had previously heard of it as the rune for protection, but the story doesn't change. According to her story, the symbol was adopted for the Anti-Vietnam peace cause erroniously. The symbol in its reversed position, T told us, was an attempt by unidentified Allied forces to force SS out of hiding by pamplet bombing hideout cities after the war. To the SS (who knew and used runes) it would be the upside-down (inversed, opposite) rune for protection, a spell against protection and life. But because of the context in which it arrived, at a time of deliverance and end of war, the rest of us missed the psych-op message and took it directly as the symbol for the end of WWWII, i.e., peace.

Therefore, according to T, my source, the peace symbol is a rune, a powerful magial symbol, being misused. It is the symbol for death, and if you look at the peace symbol and compare it to Algiz you can see the picture it makes. Algiz upright looks like a stick figure of a human being with head and arms spread and upraised. Life and joy of being alive. When you turn Algiz upside down, (to resemble the peace sign) it looks like a human diving down into the earth, diving into the grave. It was a psych-op warning from the Allies to the Rune-reading SS that they would not be alive much longer because they would be hunted to death.

"Could that be why the peace symbol hasn't worked so well?" I asked. "Hmmm, hmmm, you have to wonder, don't you, said our teacher T, smiling on one side of her face.

One of the students for T's class, of of the deep wise age of 13, came in a few weeks later, and looked at some peace sign window decals we had on display, which were displayed in the usual peace-symbol orientation. "Can I turn the peace symbols rightside up?" she asked. "Go for it!" I said. Maybe we all should. It couldn't hurt.

Absolutism Sucks

2004-09-17T09:20:00.000-07:00

Here's what I wrote to Digby when he admonished the Democratic hand-wringers for wailing about how Kerry lost the election:

If you like to scare yourself with the rightwing blogs as I do, you will notice a COMPLETE and TOTAL lack of any of this sort of self-doubt and self-analysis. Blind adherance to one point of view is not strength, it is an amoral personality defect that lends itself to bullying and fascism. So we could congratulate ourselves that the ability to be self-critical is not a loser trait, it just means that we are still capable of critical thinking.

I was paraphrasing the intent of a long-lost essay about the perils of absolutism. Thanks to the writer for the inspiration, I would ref. you if I remembered.

Those jocks and frats who are today's dittohead bad-boy Republicans were the bullies who beat up my friends in high school and college for being queer, black, stoners, goth, or brainy. They are just self-centered and mean, and they NEVER question themselves about what is right or wrong. So they never have to flip-flop on an issue, or admit that they were wrong.

So maybe those handwringing gloom and doom Democrats are not so bad. Maybe they will talk me into voting for Kerry after all.

When I talk to younger people today, I am often really impressed. Smart, worldy, mature beyond their years, they don't seem to think that cynicism or Rottweiler meanness is cool. So maybe they will be the ones who change the election and the state of the Democratic Party after my Reagan youth generation and the Limbaugh attitude have gone out of fashion.

Do I Matter At All?

2004-09-15T23:15:00.000-07:00

Or do you, if you don't live in a swing state?

Because of the institution of the electoral college, my vote against Bush is not even counted.

I have no one to vote for.

Kerry is not my man, and Nader has not won my heart.

I have no candidate, and no reason to vote, even though this election is the most important one to me, and perhaps to the world, in my lifetime. And I remember Nixon.

I Love Homework In My School

2004-09-15T23:12:00.000-07:00

To the creek and ‘neath the Hawthorne wood
I laid to bed upon the ground
But woke much sooner than I should
To the scritchy-scratchy sound
Of Thomas’s quill pen writing it down
True Thomas I said, give ME a poem!
But bring me safely back to home
For I care not to spend six years and one
In the faery realms as you have done
A punctuated flourish - then he looked
Up from that dog-eared ink-stained book
And pierced me with his eyes so blue
That I knew then what I must to do
We picked stalks of the wild ragweed
To use that night as a faery steed
With a an affirmation to my aspiration
I inhaled a breath of inspiration
And let out such a powerful sneeze
That it launched us both into the breeze
It’s a different journey than mine we’ll take
He said, a different poem that you will make
Concerned by his frown
I dared to look down
And gasped for fear that I might drown
In the mighty flooding river of oil
That flowed to every coastline spoiled
By that unhealthy thirst for the unmet need
Exploited to profit by corporate greed
But with no excuses or confessions said
He pointed ahead and ahead we sped
Towards the fiery river of hate I spied
That burns every soldier, civilian and child
And war-torn women cursed and cried
Widows on this bank, mothers on the other side
Next a river of ice did chill our bones
T’is frost of apathy, where nothing is done
And drugs and numbness still our breath
So to make us will a living death
Thomas, tell me that it is not true
Else tell me where to go and what to do
From whence do these rivers so foul spring
What healing or atonement can I bring?
Thomas and a whole faery host
Then took me to the place I fear most
A giant chasm between continents three
Living beings, humans and faery
With three gods pushing them further apart
This broken place reflects in every heart
They’re your gods not ours said the faeries and flew
I was left in silence with Thomas True
He flew me home, put me to bed
And maybe it was he that said
Courage, truth, love and embraces
May yet heal the heart and these three places
And staunch the rivers that divide the races
Call your gods home and give them new work
To mend the rifts that threaten earth
When I awoke his plumed pen was at my side
Proof of the dream and that Thomas never lied.

Holes in Rocks

2004-09-13T21:55:00.000-07:00

The water goes in through holes in rocks. Recharge features. The water comes out through holes in rocks. Springs. As a Walker Between Worlds, the hole in the rock, the Faery Stone, the Friendship Rock, has held a fascination for me as it does for many people who seek to see through the apparant into the underlying, the alternative realities, the Other Sides of the issue, of the world.

This weekend I made a trip several counties over to a sacred Spring, a hole in the rock which happens to be on private land where the "owners" choose to use their land for the benefit of the people, a privately run park and swimming hole with attendant camping grounds. They could have built a hotel, a cement staircase to the springfed pool, or any number of sacrileges in typical texan tack-headery, but they are satisfied with with what they have, a regular income that pays the taxes and the help and keeps the place well maintained.

And in spite of the fact that there are no Parks Police to inspect your fireplace, and in spite of the fact that a number of regulars are beer-drinkin YaY-Hoos the place is at least as respected and harmonious as any State Park in comparible situation.

It was in this sacred spring that I lost my Rock. This Rock, with a Hole through it, which I have worn on my neck as a talisman for seven or nine years, I would have to check records that do not exist.

The Rock came from a Recharge Feature. The water goes through the Hole, then re-emerges at Barton Springs. We have done what we could, also known as not nearly enough, to make sure that the water that goes through the Hole is clean enough to become clean water that comes from the Hole at Barton Springs.

On our trip out to this sacred swimming hole, we passed by the Gallerias at Bee Caves, which is one of the examples of how we did what we could but not nearly enough, to make sure that the water at Barton Springs emerges cool and clean. I knew that it was a battle fought, but I didn't know that it was another one lost, and I wept and wept, seeing that land on Little Barton Creek razed clear, where I once learned the names of frogs in zoology class.

So further away from the grip of Overpopulation and attendant Sprawl Development, we were able to remember without regret, how this Hill Country with its Springs and Holes in Rocks once attended to our joy.

And then, I lost my Rock. My skin's acids had for years been wearing at the limestone, and with one tug, the rock crumbled away from the ribbon that held it to my neck for seven years, as a reminder. What I drink, the water from the rock. What my bones are made of, the limestone in the water from the Rock, which I drink. Where my Other Side and Self walks and lives, the Faery realms underground and in the Aquifers. And what I did that was not enough, to save the limestone hills with the Bugs and Birds and Wild Lands, which has now fallen to sprawl overdevelopment like the Shops at the Galleria on Little Barton Creek behind the Backyard.

Weeping with the Rock in my hands (it still has the big hole that is not broken), at that beautiful fern-laced cliff under the waterfall of clean water from that Hole in the Rock, what was I to do. Seven years of it's protection and guidance and company?

I threw it into the Springs.

Whaaah-Haaa

2004-09-08T12:41:00.000-07:00

While I was distracted posting the previous post, that dog came and returned my blog without me even noticing it. I couldn't decide which one I liked better, so I left them both there, even tho they say much the same thing.

Dog Ate My Blog

2004-09-08T12:08:00.000-07:00

Last night a dog ate my blog. He came running out of the misty darkness of the Blogosphere (my nomination for inclusion in Matt Groening's "Forbidden Words for 2005" which he publishes in his Life In Hell cartoon at the end of the year) and I was so startled that I forgot to click "Select All" then "Copy" before he grabbed my tasty little blog entry and went running back into the Web. So I will try to paraphrase my "Where to Go?" entry.

Where should I go with this blog? So much is happening in the news, good, juicy stuff on the election. I keep up with Jonathan's Past Peak blog and get info faster than LoverMan, who listens to news on the radio. Then there are my friends returning from NYC and the stories of abuse from police and detention in the cages at Guanatamo-on-the-Hudsen as they call it now. All the contentious email on listserves, people judging the protesters as "commies" "idiots" they got what they deserve attitude, and leftyliberals defending their action and trying to deal with disparaging and defamation.

Or my own life is very full now, my (successful) efforts to enjoy life, dining out, cooking in, seeing all the lefty documentaries (Patty Hearst Story tonite!), mixing liquors, my hoola hooping meetup, and my (soon-to-be-successful) attempts to put down the Flea Invasion in my house with my own natural Flea Death formula, and (as yet unsuccessful) search for a new housemate, and the wondering if the boom of "infill" development is the reason why there are so many For Rent signs all over town, and everyone including me looking for a housemate, and if suppy and demand had anything to do with the market these days, RENT PRICES SHOULD GO DOWN! Also, I am offering several classes thru my shop, in magic and botany, and I have a few ideas for promoting The Picture Tree project. Oh, and yesterday was officially the beginning of Ragweed season, so I will be on heavy medication for the next three months...

Any of these topics could have drawn out one of my drawn-out expository writings, but I guess I am just overwhelmed. If anybody is curious I can provide more details. Right now, I think I'm gonna go start a fire with the pecan wood LM and me drug home for grilling, and roast some Hatch chiles for future use as green enchilada sauce. Pecan roasted green chile sauce, YUM!

Which Way to Go?

2004-09-07T20:08:00.000-07:00

For days I have not known which way to go with this blog! So much news has been coming in, from mainstream sources and from Post Peak and his network. I have friends incoming from the protests at the Republican National Convention and their reports of being held in guanatamo - on - the - Hudson, and lots of rightwinger dismissal of said protesters and the concept of political dissent in e-lists that I had the poor judgement to join. Bush is ahead in the polls for the first time since January and yes I am afraid. Afraid and disgusted with the Dems. that they could not make this season a dead zone for Bushite neocons, with so much ammo provided. And in the midst of all this, trying to (successfully) enjoy my own life, going to parties, sampling the food and culture of Austin, TX, (where magic is real and dreams come true) rocking hard to local music, organizing hooola hoopers at meetup.com, keeping the Picture Tree going, helpingpeople with family, health, and relationship issues at work. All while fighting an outbreak of fleas in my house and trying (unsuccessfuly) to find a housemate so that I don't go broke in this economic slump-which-somehow-has-engendered-a-building-boom.

And the bad news is...? Ragweed season officially began today, and my drugs of choice kept me from another sneezing fit while pleasantly zonking me out. (Successful? Unsuccessful?)

Any one of these subjects could have kept me awake all night writing one of the too-long-essays that some of y'all seem to like, but jeez, I have been at a loss as to which one to go off on. If anyone does not know about the overload I am talking about, they have they head stuck in a pot of oatmeal.

The Morning After

2004-08-31T22:33:00.000-07:00

Well, this is what I was afraid of. After the main demo on Sunday, when police and protesters got on so well, the cameras turned away and then:

Tuesday

"I'm in Union Square Park and it's 10:42 pm, and all of the sudden police start slamming people up against the barricades and getting everyone excited. Lots of rough handling and then more riot police came and encircled the park, and it's pretty much a standoff right now. People are coming and going, but there are people inside the ring of cops and outside the ring of cops and the subway entrance is all blocked off. So I'm not sure what's going on but that's what's happening."

According to my group's phone blog. Earlier today, a total of 20 of them had been arrested, no names released because they are doing jail solidarity, and no details like, were they doing civil disobedience or was it a police riot?

Nobody hurt so far in the Cluster.

However, I did get notice that another friend (not a Cluster associate) who happened to be in proximity of the dragon float that caught fire was tackled from behind by the police and is in jail with resisting arrest and assaulting an officer. Other folks in the vicinity were also arrested regardless of their association with the float or not.

This is the sort of stuff I was afraid of. If people want to get arrested doing civil disobedience that is one thing, but it sounds like they are just getting squished and run down by riot cops??? And is there any media? Someone with a TV and cable will have to tell me.

The Big Apple

2004-08-30T21:45:00.000-07:00

I have a bunch of friends and magical compatriots in NYC to protest at the RNC, and I have been keeping them in mind, praying that they may be in the right place at the right time with all the water and information they need to be effective.

It looks like similar prayers and tireless organizing has resulted in (as yet) a HUGE colorful PEACEFUL event, in spite of early media yowling about how protesters were trying to create mayhem in Gotham City.

Since I don't have TV, I go to check out Google and Yahoo this morning, to see coverage and some pics. Nada whole lotta. But check in with Post Peak who had the New York Times skinny.

And for a reality check, take a look at what a girl like me who lives there says.

Early estimates I had heard were lows of 100,000 and highs of 250,000. Good grief, that was a big demo! Then! Read the NYT article which had protest organizers and police agreeing on 500,000.

To me, New York City has always been one of those big scary cities like Mexico City or Los Angeles that somebody would have to drag me to. But here is what my good pal B did: he planned for a month and a half. He is member of no group and got himself allied with an affinity group. Took time off work that had to hurt a working class mortgage-paying budget. BUT he got his expenses covered by taking "pledges" from friends and coworkers, otherwise airfare would have seriously dented him. I gave him a $20 bill with a spell written on it, and I bet other people did too! Their group is using one of my magic oils, and they named themselves after the (now deceased) beloved pet involved in the production of said product.

I heard that the huge Spiral Dance that CNN broadcast showed him for a few seconds!

Protest Warriors are very proud that after all that heckling, they got one guy out of half a million to respond with violence. This guy, who was wearing a Che shirt, smashed the Protest Warrior's car windowshield with his bare fists. A highly respected, well-read rightwing blogger, SMASH headlined the incident: "Peaceful" Protest Ends in Violence. Goddam. Mission accomplished, Protest Warriors. The guy with the smashed windowshield looks positively gleeful.

So, all in all, except for the lack of coverage, a much better than hoped for result on the big demo on Sunday. But the RNC continues, and lots of the protesters, including my pal B and others from my groups in Austin, remain for the week's events. Me, well you know me, I am holding an intention that they are in the right place at the right time with enough water and information, protection etc, but ALSO that they get to take in some great live music and eat excellent food and meet many new friends and enjoy the unexpected cultural bonuses while they are in the Big Apple.

Fun Incoming!

2004-08-27T12:09:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,
I have a new favorite band that is going to blow you away. THEY are not new, but hey, I am still playing catchup in the Austin Music World. The Real Heroes are truly worth all our adoration. Best of 80's pop and postpunk, David Bowie-style sex appeal, and clean-burning danceable riffs. Dang, they DO attract some cute girls, too! They are very big in NYC, how long can we keep 'em in Austin?

Tonight they are at The Parish, which is one of the venues that I am willing to venture into 6th Street for. The sound will be excellent and smoke is not a problem 'cause of the high ceilings, and best of all, there is plenty of room. Room to dance, room for Hero Worship.

If you get downtown a little early, and you are willing to violate the one-covercharge-per-night rule, you can catch Tia Carerra at Beerland. How long will these hard rock jam geniuses keep putting out so much for free? It can't go on forever.

After two cover charges, I will REALLY be in for some FREE downhome backyard entertainment with the Typsy Gypsys on Sat. night. This is the next to last free bellydance show in the backyard of Natural Magic (701 E 53rd St. on the east end of the North Loop biz strip), so make it just in case October's show get sold out. Arrive at 8pm with lawnchairs, blankets, enjoy the free snacks, and bring a few bills for donation for the Franzia or beer, and to TYP your Gypsy! The last two shows featured firespinners from the best of a few troops, and the show was nearly stolen by a boy bellydancer who could jiggle right up there with the best of those hipshakin mamas.

I'll try to get to Nasty's later for the Stick Pony set You know Nasty's, the famous dive behind Mangia Pizza on the Drag? And Stick Pony always attracts the friendliest crowd.

Next of my fun browser is a three-ride surf show at Egos, with the Nematoads (new wave surf, these boys are new, but if we encourage them to turn in their math homework and cut loose, they're going to be great!) and the Queen of Spades, (now a tatsy main course in a surf show, all-girl band that does 60's style classics and originals) and those godfathers of surf, Three Balls of Fire. Last time we went to a Sunday Egos surf show they really did begin at 9pm, but the lineup was totally different than advertised.

Of course, if anyone is interested in hOOOping it up, the hula hoopers Meetup is Saturday Sept. 4th at Barton Springs. Send me a note, or go join at http://hulahooping.meetup.com/ for more info. I am looking for a ride down there with all my hoops...

Have a great weekend whatever you do!
Ivieee
Keep It Up, Fool!
~o}0<

If I Could I Would

2004-08-27T10:17:00.000-07:00

If I really paid attention to the news and had time to write a fine political blog I would aspire to the quality of Jonathan's PastPeak. There is lots of daily updates on the election and he seems to be fairly strongly pro-Kerry (instead of merely anti-Bush like most of us Americans) but what I like is that he also tries to view politics in respect to the looming problems of the End of the Petroleum Age and Human Overpopulation.

Having studied population biology in college (I have a B.A. in Biology) I understand the concepts of exponential growth, (which is what humans and the economy are attempting to do) but Jonathan outdoes any college level textbook explanation with his Story of the Petri Dish:

"Suppose you put a small amount of bacteria in a Petri dish. Suppose further that the bacteria population grows exponentially (i.e., by doubling) at a pace that causes it to double each hour. Suppose finally that it takes 100 hours for the bacteria to completely fill the dish, thereby exhausting their supply of nutrients. (It's a large Petri dish.)

Question: When is the dish half full?

After 50 hours (half of 100)?

No. Because the population doubles each hour (including the final hour), the dish is half full just one hour before it’s full. For the first 99 hours the bacteria have got it made. Then wham!

To make this more vivid and memorable, imagine the following as an animated cartoon. For the first 99 hours the bacteria are just partying and congratulating themselves on how smart and successful they are. It’s party hats and noisemakers, Conga lines and champagne, the bacterial Dow Jones going through the roof. Woo hoo! No limits! After 99 hours, some of the bacteria start to worry, but the rest party on — after all, the dish is only half full. Plenty of room left, plenty of nutrients. The first half lasted 99 hours, and there's another whole half to go! Sure, somebody’s gonna have to figure something out eventually, but meanwhile life is good, and nonstop growth will only make it better! An hour later — the world ends.

When growth is exponential, limits are sudden."

The part about the party with champane and Conga lines and party hats reminds me of nothing so much as the 1980's here in Austin, where Ronald Reagan deregulations led to a fantastic growth boom, and the S&L lootings which us taxpayers are still paying for.

404 - Document Not Found

2004-08-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

Heh, heh, I searched for a copy of the Bill of Rights to put in my sidebar. The first one was an official US Gubbmint website, which worked fine from my browser, but when I checked the link from my sidebar, I got a Gobmint page that said "404 - Document Not Found."

Hey man, I think they should look hard and try to find it! Maybe we should help! I think we still need it!

Shrimp du Lac

2004-08-24T21:54:00.000-07:00

More on bugs. Sea bugs, leetle arthropods that eat on the bottom. Well, I love 'em. Growing up on the Gulf coast, you eat 'em, you love 'em, you eat some more, all your life if you can.

At some point, I had had my fill. A tolerance level dose. I had been a vegetarian, was just transitioning to no being a vegetarian, and on a trip back home I had a crab poboy at a local dive with my aunt and mom. Man, was it good!

Then, less than an hour later the little blisters began to appear. All around my mouth. A ring of blisters, red and oozy, that lasted nearly a week.

A fluke? In trying things later, all seafoods gave me the same reaction, and not just around my mouth, but in my mouth, between my teeth, and even the fake crabmeat stuff, surimi, which is what, one percent cod? gave me a reaction. When I got the same reaction from wheat roast, I stopped eating high protein stuff of all sorts. Time for a detox.

It wasn't for another three years that I tried to eat anything out of the ocean. It was my birthday and my folks took me to a place called the Aquarium. I got the seafood platter, and damn the consequences.

No blisters! And since then it looks like I can eat seafood again. Now, the moral and environmental ramifications, you'll just have to look back to Wisdom of the Deep for that.

Needless to say, my cooking of seafood though, is as a result in it's infancy. Here is my first attempt, at the age of 41, cooking my own shrimp. Why even try, when you have a dad who once said, "I took them shrimps and I thew em on the grill!"

Nearly a pound of jumbo brown shrim, peeled. About half a cup of coconut milk and a quarter cup of lime juice and a splash of Tecate. Shakes of Tony Chachere's. That's the marinade, now put it in the cooler and go windboard and hula hooop til you're hungry. Be sure to clean the grill well if you are using a public one at the park!

They cooked much quicker than I thought, and some were kinda tough. LM doesn't mind that, but I hate to overcook fish and seafood. The cococut milk flavor really absorbed into the shrimp, and the lime juice pretty much pre-cooked them a la ceviche. Next time I would add the lime juice at the very end of the marinade session.

Grilled summer squash were mild and juicy as sides. Perfect veggie complement to those little seabugs. Yum Yum!

Teamwork

2004-08-24T21:11:00.000-07:00

We just got back from the Lake, LoverMan and me, and I'm glad it didn't happen DURING but you're still not in the mood AFTER neither...

"What was that noise?" "I don't know, but I heard it." "It sounded like a flying cockroach." "Yeah, well I think it is and it's right there!" (Pointing to the cluttered bookshelf right next to the bed.) Silence. "There it is, what can I kill it with?" Shuffle. "Here." A tennis shoe. WHACK!WHACK! "Good job!" "Flush it quick!" "Okay." -Flurrrrrsh-kllggg- "Goddam!" "Where is it? I can't see!" "It's on the VCR, wait don't hit the VCR!" "OK NOW!" -Whack! His eyes, and my reflexes, my ears and his reflexes, whatta team. "Okay sweetie, I'm gonna go sleep in my tent, I love you." "Bet there's no roaches in your nice zippered tent, sweetie." "Usually not." Kiss kiss.

But it wasn't over. I came into the livingroom to log on. What, am I supposed to go to sleep after that?? A roach scurried up my naked thigh from under the chair! Squawk! It In the kitchen, Emo the new black kitty pounced, forcing it into the doorway. Whack, whack! Dead roach! "Emo, don't run away, we got it! Emo, you helped me kill the roach!"

Emo just heard the whack, which must have sounded like harsh discipline, dammit, and out the catdoor he went.

Now, it's just me, just me and the cockroaches. Just me and the roaches and the Palace Princess Slipper of Death. Eyes all around my head, while I am writing this, I tell you. Breathing. Knowing exactly where the Palace Princess Slipper of Death is. ONLY hold it by the heel.

Four O'clock! the doorway jam! Whack! Dammit, it got thru the jammit! Swing open the door, it must be on the other side.

But it is not. Instead, there is a big, pink FAT Mediterranean Gecko.

Teamwork.

The Picture Tree

2004-08-19T21:45:00.000-07:00

The Picture Tree is a project that came directly from the Faery Queene while the Cult of the Faery Star was paying tribute. We got off real easy this time, a fun walking-orders for the whole family, not some grueling or embarrassing trial/task. Nobody had to give up drinking or smoking, or remain silent until 77 pounds of scrap iron was removed from the wild. Nobody had to quit their job and follow their dream. This time.

What she said to do was: get in contact with a tree, then paint a picture. It was assumed that this picture would include, as all paintings do, aspects of the world as we see it now, and parts of the world as we will it to be. It is difficult for any manner of Art to avoid this, and we didn't even want to try. Because of the genesis of the project, Faery inspirations and the wisdom of trees would be the incorporated, and will continue through the growth of the Picture Tree, for as long as it grows.

Once the Picture, which involved charcoal, watercolor, glue, leaves, glitter, etc., was completed by us, it was blessed, and then ripped into pieces.

One of the pieces will go to the Republican National Convention, where, like the other pieces, it will be glued, stapled, taped, whatever, to a new piece of paper. A new assemblage of Painters will paint a new Picture from the Piece, creating a new Picture Tree. This will in turn be torn into Pieces, and each Painter will take their Piece to create a new Picture Tree from in their own community.

I think this would be a fun project for art class in the schools. I think kidz would easily understand the concept. Paint it then rip it up and send it to a friend to do in their own art class? Yeah!

Photos were taken of the first Picture Tree, and we will post them on a website, though the Queene didn't ask us to do this. In this way, Painters can post Pictures of their own onto the website, so that a Family Tree of the Picture Tree can be kept.

Or not. It could just go feral from here. Wouldn't make any difference to Her.

Just Rewards

2004-08-17T10:57:00.001-07:00

To reward myself for my brilliant HTML wizardry, I decided to go make myself a Bloody Mary. It IS my day off, (even tho' I will be going in to work??) so keep your superior disdain to yourself, Prudence!

That is when I realized I had not shared any food or drink recipes in this blog for some time, and that it has gotten a little grim in here. Really, even though I do write about and think a lot about some heavy shit, I am a very lighthearted person with a huge streak of hedonism running through my self-created poverty.

I perfected this Bloody Mary recipe at the beach with LoverMan a couple of years ago, and then improved it considerable since then. Because it has so many ingredients, you make a bigger batch to share, no fewer than three coctails, and if it's more than just me and LM, or even if, I will often double the recipe.

First, peel a big clove of garlic, mush it a bit, and spear it with a wooden toothpick. Put it into a quart jar that has a tight seal lid. I use a big pickle jar. Shake Tony Chachere's Original Creole Seasoning 13 times into the jar. This is the secret ingredient. If you don't have a can of Tony's, go back to the grocery store. Grate fresh peppercorns into the jar, about 1/2 teaspoon. Add one cup of (ideally) Monopolowa (my favorite) or Tito's (LM's favorite) vodka to the spices, and swirl it around. But really, you can use any crappy vodka you want, it won't affect the taste much, but it may give you a hangover. Add the juice of half a lemon and half a lime, and a splash of the juice of Peperoncini peppers or green salad olives. Then in go four capsful of Lea & Perrins Worcesterchire sauce. If there are vegetarians or vegans involved, you can substitute Braggs Liquid Aminos seasoning for the Lea & Perrins, which has anchovies in it. Sorry if you didn't know that before and would rather not think about it. Swirl it all around. Notice I put the seasonings in first with the vodka. That is because the alcohol extracts the flavors better that way. Now, finally, add two cups of spicy tomato veggie juice. My favorite is Knudsen's Very Veggy Spicy.

If you can wait, let the whole thing sit in the fridge for awhile. It really improves with age, especially that speared garlic! The one I'm drinking now was leftover from when LM and I were at his fishing cabin, ref. "Bass Attitude and Beet Wisdom."

Serve on ice with a stalk of celery in the tumbler. Spear olives, a Peperoncini pepper and/or coctail onions on a wooden toothpick and stick this into the top of the celery stalk, so that the celery terminates in a stack of edible "beads."

There is absolutely no reason to wait til you have a hangover to make this drink.

Late Bloomer

2004-08-17T10:57:00.000-07:00

Yee-haw! All by myself, following written instructions, I managed to edit the HTML of my blog template, so that I can add links! So go check out the stuff that warps my mind almost daily!

Surf n Hoop It Up!

2004-08-16T22:07:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd let my local Friendster hoopsters know about a coupla things -First, on Thursdays in Aug. at 7ish at Jo's coffeehouse on South Congress, they have a surf band followed by a surf movie (free) and I brought my hoops last week and had a great time. This week it is the Ugly Beats playing followed by Step Into Liquid at dark-30. So I'll for sure be there to hear the band and I'll bring my hoops for everyone to play with.Then, I've been putting together a meetup system for hoopers at meetup.com. Check out and join if you like. The next Austin meetup for hoopers is Sat. Sept 4th at Zilker Park at 4pm. Blankets, friends and kids welcome.

Ivieee, aka Hoolah Foolah

Entropy, Evolution, and the Basket We Are In

2004-08-14T22:29:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, when I lived in a houseful of environmental activists, we soon noticed a pattern: that after a stint of organizing, some demonstration or newsletter production period or benefit, the house would be a shambles. Why was it that organizing was such a messy business? I forget, and none of us there at the time remember, who it was that pointed out that the Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates that the universe tends towards a disorganized state (entropy) and that in a closed system (as most of us believe the universe to be, or at least Texas) organization is only accomplished by creating disorder in another part of the closed system. From there on out, the house was called Entropy.

Some time thereafter we discovered that there was a more proper definition for the word "entropy" which we all understood to be the bachelor-quality mess the house and our personal lives represented. That more scientific definition was "the amount of energy present in a system that is unavailable for work." More than a few pitchers and bottles of tequila were toasted to that!

Only because I was a fan of Ken Kesey's books did I later get into some of the less funny aspects of the 2nd Law. Having polished off Sometimes a Great Notion I careened straight into Demon Box. I won't even attempt to explain what a "demon box" is except that it is a perennial quixotic attempt to defeat Entropy and make possible the Perpetual Motion Machine. So often my introduction to reality comes through fiction that I will sometimes say things like "There is no such thing as fiction."

I had to check out a nonfiction treatment of the same concepts, and only now do I wonder if Ken Kesey had just finished reading Entropy by Jeremy Rifkin before coming up with Demon Box. Surely there were lots of physics professors who understood that stuff, but did Ken even take physics in college?

Entropy is very frightening in a way that may have contributed to my retirement as an activist while at the same time making me believe more in the goals and motivations of the environmental and green left movements.

Entropy argues that the process of evolution, and the evolution of human civilization not just follows the 2nd Law, but accelerates it. Each new advantage of evolution results in a creature more able to exploit natural resources and convert them into offspring and heat (aka entropy, the energy that has gone from a useful state to a dissipated one).

Next Rifkin has us take a look at human culture in this context, because we humans have managed to evolve beyond the necessity of evolution. Now knowlege and technology have superceeded biological evolution as the means for our species to accelerate the exploitation of natural resources. And when we talk about acceleration, it is not a mere mathematical acceleration, it is exponential, reflecting the exponential growth of human population, which has a consequent result of producing a lot of unusable energy aka heat, that is, global warming. I don't even think that global warming was a concept at the time of writing of Entropy.

Rifkin mostly relates this process to the uncomfortable processes that humanity has gone through in the search for the next energy source. Our habit is to get into a new energy source and then accelerate its exploitation until it is all used up and then switch to the next most easily exploited source, which is not as efficient and therefore in the effort converts a higher percentage of usable energy to heat waste. There are charts and graphs, so watch out!

His suggestion? If we want to be a long-lived species on a resource-plentiful planet and let other species do their thing, too: slow down. Slow down the conversion of natural resources into human beings, because as the most highly evolved beings on the planet using highly evolved energy intensive technology, we are very expensive on the planet and our organized state of living causes a concurrent increase of entropy in the system (our planet Earth). We experience this as global warming, hurricanes, and political instability, but it could just be called what it is: entropy.

So what is the bad news? It would be unlikely, anti-patternistic, and devolutionary to make any choices like this, because while we have used culture to accelerate the "goals" of evolution, we have never used culture to limit those goals in the interest of a long-term purpose. Anyone who make choices like that, well there are names for them. "Conquered" "colonized" "loser" "whining liberal" if you get my drift. Unfortunately, asshole/conquistador/fratboy genes win out in the entropic game of evolution, producing more heirs and more heat.

Whatcha gonna do? I wonder what Charles Darwin would have thought.

A Little Update

2004-08-14T10:30:00.000-07:00

My thumb is better, but there is still something wrong in that joint.

Emo is recovering from his neutering op. Animal Trustees, which provides low cost spay/neuter and other services, rocks. And since Spooky, my 8 yr. old white cat was beating up on the new arrival, I looked up info on how to introduce a new animal into the household. I had figured that they just needed to have time and establish dominance, but this site recommends gradual introductions and not allowing aggressive behaviors, which can become patterns. Kind of like humans, I guess.

And I have been taking myself on a cautious tour through some scary landscapes: the rightwingers blog community. I am really quite frightened by what I see there. These people are only two links away from this blogger's Vine, but they might as well be on another planet as far as world view goes. That would be totally okay with me, but unfortunately those accumulated worldviews add up to war, untempered nationalism, and a very meanspirited intolerance of anything left of Rush Limbaugh. This polarization is very dangerous, I think. We are becoming a divided nation, and the dominant class is getting more and more aggressive towards the submissive counterculture. Every time the left scores (Farenheit 911, nearly busting Bush for treason re: the Valerie Plame outing, etc) the rightwing response gets meaner, ruder, and more intimidating. Are we supposed to puff ourselves up in response? Hiss and spit? Wouldn't that further the divide, which if allowed to continue, could result in us evolving into separate species, or a pogrom or forced death march????

Reading about things like Protest Warriors, which do things like harass CodePINK (positively the creampuffiest side of the left, and proud of it) as they are leafletting could develop into patternistic aggressive behavior just like my cats, I am aftaid.

Of course I am very sensitive about aggressive nationalism after reading Night by Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, an autobiographical account of his boyhood experiences in Aushwitz and beyond, a struggle to survive and make sense of the inhuman cruelty of the Holocaust.

When my own family members talk about forced deportation of people like me and my friends who criticize Bush or neocon nationalism, I wonder how far away we are from reliving one of the worst nightmares humanity has ever created.

Higher Learning

2004-08-10T10:41:00.001-07:00

Which house do you belong in?
I'm in Ravenclaw...

Book Review

2004-08-10T10:41:00.000-07:00

Finally! I finished Triumph of the Moon! I have been working on this book for 4 months. Between the microscopic typeface, and the fact that I only read at bedtime and usually with only xmas tree lights so as not to wake LM, and because I was taking time to chew, I let this one take its time.

Triumph of the Moon examines the history of the genesis of modern pagan witchcraft. It is written by a real historian academic scholar, Ron Hutton, and he spends most of the book debunking popular pagan stories of our own genesis, like where Gerald Gardner got his material, no, there was no pervasive goddess religion that covered all of Europe, and no, the people killed during the Witch Burning time were not practitioners of witchcraft or an underground pagan religion.

My only criticism of the book is that once he smashes a myth, he rarely bothers to suggest an actual reality as opposed to the delusion. So I feel like I have woken up from a dream, but I can't find my glasses and I don't remember how I got here. Some kind of reconstruction is in order here.

I wonder what some of the living authors who purposefully or ignorantly passed on bad information will do to recant or do a new foundation job where the shims got taken out. Starhawk in particular takes some direct hits. The bookwriting and reading pagan clergy need to pay attention to this sort of thing.

It strikes me how easily language and human willingness to be deluded allow falsehood and misinformation to be passed around. Again I wonder how much else of the world we are taking for truth, just because it is part of the fabric of pop culture/the dominant paradigm (or the submissive counterculture's reaction to it). In many ways, myths and lies are easier to perpetuate. They are catchy, like advertising jingles. We want to believe. Truth is much more complicated, it takes time and work to do it justice, and most people just do not have the time or intellectual curiosity. Reminds me of the "Honesty" card in Brian Froud's Faeries Oracle deck.

I toast people like Ron Hutton who are brave enough to confront willing self delusion. "Here, I found your glasses. They were covered with crud, so I cleaned them for you." "Oh, thanks, Ron, but I sure hope you made coffee too, 'cause I have a mean hangover. And you're not nearly as cute as when I took you to bed!"

I'm All Thumb

2004-08-07T21:57:00.000-07:00

I might have to go to the emergency room tomorrow! Shit! Thursday night, my left thumb started to hurt, and it got stiff and crunchy at the last joint. Then when I woke up Friday it was frozen stiff and sore and swollen. I took the day off to self-medicate, but here it is Saturday night, and it is still big and painful and now it has some fever.

Either: the sprain I got breakdancing over a year ago actually chipped the bone and I have a bone spur, or, the cactus/mesquite spine I took to that knuckle over 5 years ago finally decided to get infected and/or come out, or the little knife wound I got cooking two weeks which seemed to heal just fine actually didn't, or, when I was under the house earlier this week or in bed a spider bit me on the thumb.

Too many variables! Ice, painkillers, aspirin, echinacea, reiki, and ichthammol and it is still screamming with pain!

I have been to the emergency room on my own behalf only once, but I left before I got treatment so I didn't get a big bill. I'm kind of scared that an emergency room doctor will be as clueless as me, and will give me antibiotics which won't work. I CAN'T take antibiotics anymore unless it's life-threatening, my immune system is all crapped out by antibiotic abuse in my youth.

So now I go to bed with the ichthammol on, hoping it will draw out the poison/infection/foreign matter like it has done for me so well in the past.

Black Cats, Crossroads, and Friday the 13th

2004-08-06T12:56:00.000-07:00

I got a new kitty, a rescued/abandoned 9 month old. He is shiny black, with a star on his throat and a crescent moon on his belly. I named him Emo.

I called Animal Trustees of Austin to get an appointment to get him neutered. Don't get me started about people who refuse to spay or neuter their pets. When they are in Hell hanging by the nuts from the intestines of all the abandoned kittens and puppies they are responsible for, they won't think I was harsh.

As Luck would have it, the first possible date for me to get my kitty fixed is this coming Friday the 13th! The lady setting the date chuckled about that. Here is what LM (LoverMan) said: "Castrating a black cat on Friday the 13th? ARE YOU MAD!??" All tongue-in-cheek, of course. LM is possibly the least superstitious person I know.

But am I poking a finger in the eye of Fate here? As a witch, I love superstitions, but I don't usually take them in the same way that the general public does.

The last time I encountered a black cat superstition was in fact on me and LM's first real date. He was giving me a ride back home from a show and a party, and it was very obvious that we liked each other very much. At a major Crossroads, a black cat ran across the streets in front of us! I think he asked me what that meant to me, and it just popped out of my mouth: "A black cat crosses your path, you make an important decision real fast. Like right now I am deciding whether or not to invite you in when we get to my house. Okay, I decided."

And it was one of the luckiest decisions I've ever made!

Finally Summer

2004-08-05T22:19:00.000-07:00

After a very long grace period, it finally feels like summer in Austin. Nobody, with the possible exception of Trailer Park Girl seems to notice or comment that we have had a blessedly cool summer so far, and it will be cooler within less than two months, which is a very short summer in Texas indeed!

I am one of the few people here who lives without air conditioning. I ride my bike to (minimally air conditioned) work just before noon, and I have to be cheerful to people upon opening the shop. So it can be done, adapting to the heat.

My theory is this: your body's metabolic processes are all done by enzymes, large proteins that break up food molecules, reassemble them, and do just about every biochemical conversion that takes place in a living being. But they are very sensitive to temperature changes, and most operate witin a two to four degree celcius range, some even less. This is the "reason" that some animals (birds and mammals) "decided" to be homeothermic (warm-blooded) which means that we will burn calories to make our bodies cooler or warmer in order to maximize enzyme function. So when it gets too hot or cold, we are potentially burning as many or more calories than we are gaining from enzymatic metabolic processes. Okay, all the previous was textbook, now here is my theory: At that point, your body is faced with the choice of shutting down, just sitting there and doing nothing because it is too hot, or doing a bit of biochemical dirtywork and switching enzymes for ones that work better in a few degrees hotter or cooler body core temperatures. That is the place in adapting to temperature change where we feel uncomfortable and complain a lot about the heat or cold.

The only thing to do is just go right into it and adapt and change enzymes. Be hot for awhile, exercise, don't retreat into air conditioning because that will just fool your body into thinking that it can put off that enzyme job for another few days or weeks even.

Wisdom of the Deep

2004-08-04T12:04:00.000-07:00

Since I began eating fish and seafood again, I decided to research to research the health and environmental implications of that dietary choice. Most of us know that the oceans are not as invulnerable as we thought back in the 60’s, and that overfishing has dramatically impacted the size and number of many fishes, and that pollution has made many unfit for human consumption.

Another question for me is probably not of interest to you consumers of animal flesh, and that is whether the fish in question is intelligent, has feelings, nurtures it’s young. “Intelligent fish?” you sneer? Hold on a minute, though. Some marine fish become sexually mature late in life, have a short breeding phase, and then go on to live a hundred or hundreds of years. What is going on there? I wanted to screen these fish for potential consciousness, especially after a saleslady friend of mine told me that although she ate seafood, she wouldn’t eat groupers because they were intelligent and nurtured their young.

I haven’t been able confirm her claim, but it is immediately apparent that nobody should be eating grouper at this point. Here are some of the resources I found, which makes it lots easier for me to eat seafood responsibly:

For example, Monterrey Bay Aquarium says ‘Orange roughy live longer than 100 years—the fillet in your freezer might be from a fish older than your grandmother! This deep-living fish, once known as the “slimehead,” grows very slowly and doesn’t spawn until age 20. Fishermen find them as they gather to spawn. At first, bonanza catches could be taken. But years of heavy harvest on the spawning grounds have decimated populations. Management is now in place, but it will take decades for this slow-growing fish to recover. Orange roughy are caught by bottom trawling, a method which can damage the seafloor, with unknown impacts on the fragile deep-sea ecosystem.’

Seafood Choices Alliance warns: ‘All commercially fished flounder in the Atlantic (summer, windowpane, winter, witch and yellowtail) are depleted and overfished. Landings have fallen by approximately 70% for summer flounder and 65% for winter flounder within the past 20 years, and by some 60% and 95% respectively for witch and windowpane flounder within the past 15 years. Landings of yellowtail flounder dropped approximately 90% between 1983 and 1995, and have since only partially rebounded.’

But, according to Environmental Defense ‘Channel catfish are the most commonly farmed fish in the United States. These omnivorous fish are raised in ponds in the Southeast, and are fed mostly vegetable-based diets. Channel catfish are a native species, and escaped farmed catfish do not appear to cause ecological harm.'

Much less is available about intelligence and emotional capacity of sea animals, with the exception of whales and dolphins, which of course should not be on the menu for many reasons other that it is the next most deplorable thing to cannibalism. The most that I have encountered about non-cetacean intelligence in the sea is about octopi and related cephalopods like squids and cuttlefish. These mollusks, relatives of brainless clams and oysters, have large brains, extensive sensory nervous system processing ability, learning capacity, and maybe even language and emotions. I have seen mind-blowing video of cuttlefish flashing color-changing patterns of rapid-fire diversity. Why? Especially when it seems to have nothing to do with simple camouflage, mating or hunting? I give these animals the benefit of the doubt for intelligence and don’t eat them.

Here is a really balanced look at cephalopod intelligence. ‘...the 1992 "look-and-learn" study, by neuroscientists Graziano Fiorito and Pietro Scotto at Naples, is the most controversial of all the attempts to understand learning in cephalopods. To test if O. vulgaris could learn a skill by observing the activities of other octopuses, the researchers trained one group to choose a red ball or a white one. When the trained animals reliably approached one or the other ball, untrained octopuses were allowed to watch. When later presented with a choice of their own, these animals not only selected the same ball more often throughout the five days of the trial, but also learnt more quickly through observing than the original subjects had under classical Pavlovian conditioning.

"The rapid acquisition and the stability indicate that observational learning in Octopus vulgaris is a powerful mechanism of learning," the researchers concluded (Science vol. 256, p 545). The finding was astounding not least because observational learning is considered by some to be a preliminary step to conceptual thought.’

This experiment has not been replicated in peer experiments (non-reproducible results) and how intelligent calamari are remains debatable. Of course one of the main problems is not how intelligent, but how differently intelligent they are, and we are still in the process of discovering how to ask and test this question. In other words, we humans are not yet clever enough to figure out how smart an octopus is. ‘Nuff said!

Blue Moon

2004-07-31T20:12:00.000-07:00

I get asked, What is the Blue Moon good for?

The concept of the Blue Moon as being the second Full Moon in one month seems to date all the way back to the 80's. A defunct medeival definition had to do with getting rid of the 13th moon so as to keep the ecclesiastical calendar straight, so that moon-date determined holidays like Easter, etc., would stay at about the same solar time of the year. Songs and some legends seem to refer to rare occasions when things like volcano spew would make the Moon look blue to the eye.

So how to figure out what modern pagan observation should make of the modern definition, which happens about every 2 1/2 years? Look at some correspondences. Also, layering on more tradition is that this July's Blue Moon falls on Lammas or Lughnasdagh, the Irish/Celtic feast of Lugh, the grain harvest.

Blue: truth, throat chakra, blue faerie fire; Full Moon: maximum fulfillment potential; Blue Moon: rare, unusual, special occasion; Lughnasdagh: the sacrificial Corn God, usually associated with the harvest in temperate old world paganism, here in central TX the fact is it is the starting point for new fall crops and gardens. Lugh comes back in a Fall crop for us by mid-November, so maybe our cycle of fulfillment is quicker here!???

Traditional for Lugnasdagh is the baking of a Corn Man, which is passed around to take secrets to the underworld (confessions?) before he is sacrificed, usually not eaten eaten but buried.

How to weave this together? My suggestion is to use the Blue Moon power for special, even outrageouse requests, dreams and hopes of the biggest order, that we use our Throats, Voices to seng them into being, petitioning Lugh, god of light, the working man's god, craftsman, warrior. Perhaps a Cornbread Man of blue cornmeal could be infused with Blue Faery fire, and this blue fire could be used to animate our speaking of truth and dreams into being.

Many people feel very shy about using their voices, speaking their minds, much less asking for what they want. Those of us who are not shy about speaking have an obligation to help make safe place for them to practice.

Peak Oil Hits Mainstream Media

2004-07-29T08:44:00.000-07:00

And of course it revolves around the testimony of Matthew Simmons, who is no patchouli-reeking dread-headed Chicken Little. I think this guy was born in a suit.

This material has been in New York Times and other big media, but this MSNBC stuff, I think, is read by people who don't read newspapers, e.g., me. (Embarrassed grin, looks at shoe.)

More About Fear

2004-07-27T13:15:00.000-07:00

There is a rapist loose who has struck in my neighborhood, we are running out of oil, most of us are uninsured, and the leadership of this country has created a drunken bubble of cognitive dissonance that could really do anything evil in the name of God and the Apocalypse. Read a transcript of an old-style investigative journalist who puts the as-yet unrevealed horrific tortures at Al Ghirab that our country committed, in perspective with the neocon religious cultist stranglehold that the Bush administration has on this country.

http://www.pastpeak.com/archives/2004/07/post_1.htm

We really let ourselves slip into this situation when Rush Limbaugh went unanswered, I suppose. Which was enabled when Reagan lifted fair-time regulations on the media, if I remember my history accurately.

Now we find ourselves, less than two decades later, in a divided, polarized culture where people of different political perspectives do not even come into contact, except in the family. Where if I bring up a politically embarrassing fact to my right-wing cousin, he blasts out death threats to my "terroristic friends" and has jokingly referred to political pogroms to cleanse the country of left-leaning citizens.

When I point out to him that such a policy would result in me, a natural-born citizen and blood relative being deported or "disappeared" he will say it was just a joke. I think lots of "jokes" like this are being made in families nationwide. And of course the result is that we are given this mental picture, of being forced out of the country, or into some concentration camp, at gunpoint, while our relatives look on, saying, "We tried to warn you." If that image is not funny, and we do not laugh, we are accused of not having a sense of humor. I think a lot of mind control and self-censorship is being effected in this manner. We are afraid to speak out in public, afraid of ridicule from our relatives who have been coached in dismissive, disrespectful argument styles by Limbaugh for two decades. We don't know how to argue like that, and why would we want to, over Thanksgiving dinner? Turkey with a side of fear.

Ivieee's Fun Selector July-August

2004-07-26T22:35:00.000-07:00

I am SO sorry I blew it. I didn't tell you about the Typsy Gypsy's Bellydance show at Natural Magic OR The Alice Rose accoustic show at Flipnotics on Sat. the 24th. I would have let you know, but I couldn't go myself. I know, "Its all about me." Both of them were a blast, from reports and forensic evidence that even I could interpret.

But now to make up for it, here is something that is all about YOU. You and fun.

A not-to-miss show on Friday July 30th. The Golden Apples bring it back home to the Carousel Lounge. This is their only show for the rest of the summer. What with having a baby and making a new record, what more can we ask of these legendary pop rockers. My most-often fielded question about this band: "Was that a ZZ Top cover, or did they just make that up?" (Some folks think that song is by T Rex.) Why don't you ask them yourself?

Yes it is rounding up to be a Surf Summer, with Three Balls of Fire offering three shows to land-lubber Austin audiences. Guys, I couldn't blame you if you moved to California where a good rhythm and blues surf band gets its due. Thursday the 29th they apply the wax at the Hole in the Wall, then a big show at Antones on Sat. the 31st, but what I can't wait for is...

Sun. Aug. 1st at Egos, where Three Balls has rounded up some of the best (though few) surf acts in town, starting at 9pm with the Nematoads. Go to their website and look at the pictures, there is LM's knee! I guess I would call them New Wave surf, meticulous, precise, and quirky. I've only met them once but I think I love them! Of course how could you leave when a really cute all-girl surf band, the Queen of Spades is up next, with 60's vintage surf classics and originals that do honor to the era. Then when you think you are ready for more, the Undertakers will deal the death blow with power-chord heavy surf. If anyone (not of or related to the Undertakers by blood or marriage) can tell me what WWJPD means, I'll pay your cover charge or buy you a Tsunami, your choice. When you wash up on shore, Three Balls of Fire will be there to warm your bones with down-home Austin style guitar surf. This is a rare opportunity to sample some very diverse local surf styles in Austin. For a landlocked town we do have some excellent salty treats.

Maybe you don't surf, but you hula? I will be demoing stunts and offering hoops for sale at a fundraiser at Natural Magic on Sat. Aug. 7th. Since the monthly Hula Hooping Meetups are on first Saturdays, this will be our default hoopers meetup, starting at 5pm. There will be plenty of free-for-play hoops for all. Free music, local vendors, bellydance and firespinning demos, raffle and beverages will be available by donation for the fundraiser, benefiting Pagan Pride Day. Fun for kids, too!

See y'all soon,
Ivieee

Keep It Up, Fool!
~o}0<

Too Close for Comfort

2004-07-25T21:25:00.001-07:00

Add this to the free-floating fear entries of the past and the ones likely to come:

http://www.chompy.net/blogs/sarah/archives/002394.html

Bass Attitude and Beet Wisdom

2004-07-25T21:25:00.000-07:00

I caught a fish! Actually I caught two fishes, and set one loose because it was too small to eat.

LM caught a fish, too, about the same size as mine. AND you should have seen the one that got away!

I had my doubts about fishing. The last two times we went to LM's little cabin on the lake in East TX, I didn't catch anything, and neither did he. I started to call myself his "bad luck fishing charm" and wondered if my vegetarian-queasiness about killing, then cutting up those beautiful fishes made me a fit fisherman.

But for some reason I nudged us up from a nap that had gone on too long and we got our butts out for another try. He went straight to a spot on the lake where I'd never fished before. I had a top lure and a spinner, and he had a spinner and a rubber worm. Sometimes you want Tex Mex, sometimes you want Thai....

I think my top lure got the first bite, and it was easy to reel in, so we were not surprised that it was too small to keep. LM dealt with the unhooking - I was not quite there yet. Then, I saw him cast a short cast off to the side - not his usual M.O., but something BIG hit it immediately, and my great big lunky man was reeling for all he was worth! He struggled it to the side of the boat, and I was expecting it to be a big scary garr but no, it was a huge bass, at least five pounds if not seven. (Maybe y'all have seen the bumpersticker: VISUALIZE 5 POUND BASS.) LM said he was pretty sure he had never caught a bass that big, and as he tried to pull it out of the water I thought... and it did... the line broke and the big one got away. Carrying a spinner lure as a lip piercing ornament, now!

LM had seen it off to his side, swimming at the top of the water showing it's fin, like a whale breaching, so that's why he made the little side cast. We kept seeing this guy do that, which I had never witnessed before, so I nicknamed him "Brown Fin" and of course he was the the object of our sport from then on. Some kind of Ahab fever kicked in, I felt it myself! We even went back to the same spot the next day, and saw Brown Fin breach several times, but he wouldn't take a lure.

The consolation prizes were considerable. That evening we each pulled in nice pan-sized bass. LM again showed me how to fillet the fish the way his dad had taught him. His dad had learned it from his dad. True men's mysteries, which I am being taught. The first time he showed me, he prepared me for disapointment. "You'd think you'd get more meat from an animal this sized, but that's how it is. We feed the turtles the rest."

I am not ready to fillet my own fish. Again, the ex-vegetarian queasiness, mixed with, I'll fuck it up and waste the meat of this creature of God that I killed. So I let him do it for us, then asked if I could "mess around with" the fishes hacked up body. I was finding out what it felt like to cut through scales, and flesh, and try to avoid bones, and as a result, I added some sizeable extra chunks for us to fry! LM was very happy with my effort to get more from the fishes' sacrifice, and I may be up for trying to fillet next time, and sorry turtles, less for y'all this time.

This is no time for me to talk about vegetarian recipes, but the sides to this delicious, battered-and-fried fresh fish was dark green Laccinatto kale...and beets. Maybe you already know how to cooks greens, I will assume you do, but here is how I have converted about 85% of my friends who were beet-haters into beet lovers:

It must be Organically Grown beets of less than baseball size or don't even bother. I prefer them whole, but for the transitional beet lover, cube them into about centimeter chunks. Put them in a smallish pot and add water almost to the surface of the beets. Add about two or three tablespoons of apple cider vinegar per beet, and a few shakes of good olive oil. Simmer covered til the beets are tender. I love to add fresh Texas Tarragon, about 4 leaves per beet, about half way through the cooking.

This recipe also works for beets with the greens. Just add the chopped stems partway through the cooking and the chopped leaves near the end. I usually add extra vinegar (yes, it MUST be apple cider vinegar, and Braggs is the best) because, since beets are in the spinach family, the green parts contain oxalic acid, which is what kids hate about spinach. It is not so good for your digestion, and it binds up iron in your meal so that you can't absorb it. Vinegar neutralizes the oxalic acid, which is one reason it appears in so many spinach recipes.

Beets are very high in antioxidants. That color is an active ingredient! The whole root moves through your liver and gently cleanes it. The moist bulky roughage gives you the equivalent of a colonic cleansing, without poking anything up your butt. Warning: it will make your poop bright red! Don't let it scare you the next morning! It might even make your pee pinkish, but don't worry, I bet those anthocyanins are sweeping out the free radicals that collect in your kidneys, too.

And to top off that beet, they are dumb-easy to grow, and they grow well here for two seasons in Central Texas and its easy to save the seeds and they make beautiful plants. A total post-petroleum age survival food crop to know. Sorry, but you can't beet that!

A Spooky Story

2004-07-23T22:47:00.000-07:00

Spooky being my sole remaining feline companion, offers this story:

At first I thought it was my imagination. A lump or just a roll of fat? Within a couple of days it was big, feeling like a small hard-on through a pair of jeans. Then it was round and about three inches around, and thick. Time to go to the vet.

"Can I shave him?" asked Dr. M, and I nodded. Need to get a visual on this. Immediately apparent were the two fang marks at the top of the lump, just healed up enough that I could scrape off the last scabbing. "So it's just a cyst or infection from the bite, right, Doc?" "Hmmm, well, it could be, but..."

BUT he wouldn't promise me until after a biopsy that my cat didn't have cancer, a huge tumor which would set me prematurely catless, and I sure am not ready to give up my great white cat!! Not-tumor!

Even so, when we got home, I treated it like it was a cancerous tumor. Lots of love, and an Edgar Cayce-style castor oil pack. Basically I bandaged a castor-oil soaked napkin against the lump. Cayce used this treatment for any lumpy ailment, I think, whether cancerous or not. It penetrates tissue easily and softens and dissolves lumps of whatever variety.

Spooky thinks that Edgar Cayce is a quack, and maybe you do too. He jumped out the window with a big harrrrumphhh. About five minutes he returned, to show me that he had removed the bandage. When I felt his lump, it was still greasy, so hopefully SOMETHING was getting in??? Then he looked like he really needed a snack, just to ease the trauma, so I gave him a few kibbles and went back to whatever I was doing. Probably blogging.

Just a minute later, I started hearing cat-urrck noises. But Spooky is not a puker, believe me. This would be a first, that I saw! He looked me straight in the eye and ... urrrcked up a clear viscous fluid. No cat kibbles. Okay, I felt the urrck, and it was greasy...the castor oil! Somehow puked up around the kibbles that he wanted to keep in the GI tract!

So the castor oil got licked up and then puked out. I don't know if it was this therapy, nature, or the vet prodding and squeezing, but the next day, the lump on Spooky's side was noticeably smaller! And within a couple of days it was a figment of my imagination. Gone.

It reminds me of another spooky story about a lump in my left tit....'nuther story, nuther time!

2004-07-23T12:13:00.000-07:00

this goes at the top of my sidebar

Am I Deserving

2004-07-22T21:38:00.000-07:00

There is no way to excuse my sheer pleasure and enjoyment of life considering all the misery and starvation, war and despoliation globally, and national/regional economic and personal depression.

Perhaps I am in some sort of anomylous cyst that has somehow enclosed itself off from the toxicity of modern life. But if I was, how would I know about it?

Hopefully I am being given authority of this particular cyst, which is of my own invention, in order to preserve if not to perpetuate a lifestyle of wonder and sensual satisfaction, just to show the world that it exists, and could exist for many, if we were to limit our population to a sustainable level, and just avail ourselves of the simple enjoyments of the natural world while taking into reverence the limits of said world.

Would this all evaporate if the fossil-fuel-dependant vehicle of transportation that LM uses to transport us to Lake Travis ran dry of that black dinosaur-blood? Surely that blood will slow to a trickle before humans wean themselves from it.

In the meantime we say our prayers of gratitude, and make those deals with divinity in hopes that we have the ante. We go to Lake Travis, and LM sets sail on his windboard and I spin my hoops in ever more challenging cycles.

Sometimes we grill dinner out there. I have only recently come of age as a Texan with the grilling thing, but I think it could all be part of the sheer pleasure in life that we may all equilibrate to after the petroleum addiction is shaken. Is that so bad?

One day all these ingredients may no longer be available. This recipe for pleasure may go into my cyst, just for reference.

Free-swimming salmon. It really makes a difference, in taste as well as ecology and karma. Thaw it while you make this sauce:

Saute about 1/4 cup each chopped celery, red bell pepper, and onion in about 2 tbsp of butter. When the onions and celery are soft and near carmelized, add a few heaping tsp of capers. Add more butter if necessary, then 1/2 tsp of good Hungarian paprika, then the juice of 1/2 a lime and 1/2 an orange. Simmer til its all just a little thinner than pickle relish.

Grill or broil the salmon. Don't overcook it. After the first turn, spread the sauce all over it in a thick layer and cook just a minute on the second side with the sauce on top.

We ate this on brown cardboard because we forgot to bring plates, with one spoon because we forgot to bring forks. Just as we were finishing, comparing the color of the beautiful salmon to the clouds of the sunset, we got the first notice from the parks employees to clear out. Park closed, time to go home.

I really hope I deserve this, because I hope I am not the sort of person who would take out high-interest loans from the Karma Bank.