kalilily time

Home Sweet Home

2004-02-23T20:22:00.000-05:00

I'm heading back to the old homestead, back at the real kalilily time. Sorry for the inconvenience, but b!X has finally got his DSL back and so I'm back in business on MT. At least I am now -- until the next time fate intervenes.

Debacles

2004-02-23T09:49:00.000-05:00

I'm frantically trying to turn around a editing job that needs to be done in a couple of days, but I just have to note an excellent piece by Walter Cronkite about The Marriage Debacle. The right wing would do well to pay attention to the perspectives of this respected elder statesman about the gay marriage issue, which conclude with the following:

Where is the Christian tolerance in those right-wing Christian leaders who would impose their religious beliefs on the entire diverse population of the United States, even to the extent of a Constitutional amendment curtailing our rights of religious freedom?

As the CCR leadership presses this matter, which they depict as a moral issue, they threaten a religious war that will split our nation at a time in our lives when unity would be helpful in attacking far more critical problems on which the future of our nation depends -- our foreign policy, the economy, education, medical care and the environment, to name a few.

In the difficult days ahead, the tolerant among us -- Republican, Democratic or Independent, Christian, Muslim, Jewish or nonbeliever -- are going to have to try to preach another morality, and that is the morality of tolerance.

And speaking of debacles, what the hell is Ralph Nader thinking!!! He used to be a smart man who understood that personal ego needs to come second to larger human issues. How the mighty have fallen.

Out of Focus

2004-02-22T00:29:00.000-05:00

I think I remember a time when I could focus on one thing at a time -- a poem, a person, a pleasure -- when the process was as important as the product. I'm trying to remember when the last time was that I felt that focus, that stillpoint. Oddly enough, I think it was was a decade ago when I used to go out on Thursday nights to dance the Hustle for hours on end. I would follow the lead with such total focus that all I was aware of was my blood humming to the rhythm of the bass and my body carving sharp arcs through the smokey air.

I think I used to know that same kind of focus when writing a really good poem, feeling the rhythm come, hearing the hum of swarming words. But that was when I lived alone, with long, quiet moments to feed my focus. That was when I would have hours of down-time at work, alone in my own office, with nothing to do but let myself succumb to the processes of dream time.

I think what happened is that I got really good at my job -- multi-tasking, meeting deadlines, serving many masters. Scheme thinking. Quick thinking. No time to dream, alone, in a corner with a window.

I think what happened is I learned to care too much. I think what happened is that I let the world nibble away at my layers so that I lost my deepest secrets.

"The Many Breasted Artemis" my shrink once noted, as I unloaded my distress at being expected to always be the nurturer, the feeder, the source of unlimited resources, the problem-solver, the responsible one.

I thought that when I retired, I would be able to find, again, that dreamy focus. Instead, it takes me until midnight to finally breathe evenly and deeply, to let go of all of the knowing. It takes me until midnight to finally feel the yearning for deep secrets.

But to have secrets, one has to have a life beyond the giving of care.

I'm waiting for my time to come again, when I will, again, simmer and stir, ladle, at last, into mounds of midnight words, that witch's brew.

You can't choose your family....

2004-02-20T15:14:00.000-05:00

... but you can choose your friends. And, in many cases, friends become better than family.

I'm thinking this because of conversations that have been going on as a result of something Shelley Powers wrote about "community" and that Jeneane Sessum took off on.

I'm thinking this because, surrounding the quilted piece that a friend made for/about me, I've hung photos of family and friends -- my community. Together they make up my "wall of power" -- of which I'll post a photo when I get back to my regular weblog.

I'm thinking about this because my family of origin includes too many narcissists. They wear me down, weary me, stir worry. So it's my friends who help to keep me sane.

Community.

Some people seem to need the support of a close -- and often closed -- community. They feel protected by norms, rules, limits which they are not supposed to cross. "Beyond here there be dragons" the old world maps used to say. Stay where it's safe.

Then, there are others, like me, who are more comfortable walking the rim. Not really outsiders, because we tend to keep our fingers on the other pulses. And not really loners, because we do form friendships. But we don't really join or participate in large group-think. We like the freedom of the range, dragons or not. It's not that we particularly like dragons, but we'd rather risk incineration than accept the confinement of rigid community. Rim Walkers. Warriors. Dragon-riders. Mythology is full of the glory of such lifestyles.

Somtimes it's nice to be nice. But spice is more alive, and also a lot more fun. You just have to make sure your skin is thick enough to withstand the heat.

Worried and Weary

2004-02-19T23:55:00.000-05:00

My mother turned 88 yesterday. I just had some major dental renovation completed. I haven't even begun my taxes. I finished knitting two sweaters for myself that came out really well. I keep thinking of all of the things I want to blog about and then get so tired that I never make it to the keyboard. But here it is, after 11 p.m. and here I am.

Speaking of knitting, Allan Moult, over there on the other side of the planet from me, is publishing an attractively designed online magazine, Leatherwood Online, that recently had a really neat article about

a powerful art installation .... enabling everyone and anyone in the community to actively participate in the creation of a statement reflecting their love, care and willingness to protect the beauty of the Styx forest from further old growth logging. People throughout the community could knit red wool into pieces as short or as long as they personally had time and ability to produce, to be sewn together into 'hugs' that would be wrapped around the bases of trees.

I love the photos of guys knitting these bright red "hugs," -- punk guys, guys in suits, guys tending bar. What a multi-layered message about what's really important!

Jim Kulleny at NoUtopia is always posting important messages that add significantly to my worry about what's happening to my country. I happen to really like his piece on The Incorporeal George Bush, that. along with a great cartoon depicting George Bush's Vietnam war "decorations," ends with

For some, though, class discrimination is a way of life and as natural as falling into the presidency. This is what should matter to a nation stuck with the silver-spooned George W. The particulars of his story are important only as they reveal that while the probable Democratic nominee chose to lay his life on the line, George was busy forming an essential and enduring part of his character: enjoying the perks of influence while testing the meaning and value of connections and learning to smirk about it.

Meanwhile, I've been in and out of the orkut.com poetry community, feeling like the "matriarch" that one of the poets (as a compliment) said I am. Well, I certainly have been writing and publishing poetry longer than most of the other poets in that community have been alive. As a matter of fact, I just took a big risk and applied to the New York State Writers Institute for acceptance into their upcoming workshop led by poet Eammon Grennan. They only accept "experienced" and "published" poets. While I fit into those categories, it still remains to be seen if the poems I submitted are good enough.

Actually, I did get accepted into and particpated in a Writers Institute workshop with John Montague, back in 1996. Suggestions he made for one of my poems helped me to get it published in The Berkshire Review.

I have no idea what my chances are of getting into the upcoming workshop, but, hell, it was worth a try.

I've been a little frustrated about not being able to post photos on this site. My friend Joan, the quilter, finished the piece she was making for me/about me. When b!X gets his DSL account straightened out, which he says might be as early as this Tuesday, I'll have to get back on my regular weblog and post a photo. I've got it hanging in the middle of what has become my "wall of power." Joan says that this piece is a reflection of her perception of my "inner" self. She's making another one for me that's more funky; she says that it includes an image of Betty Boop (a favorite character of mine) and one of my poems as well. Now, that's a real friend -- especially since, if she were going to actually sell the one that's hanging on my wall, she said she'd have to charge $300.

It's nigh onto midnight. Tomorrow I will find out if the people who need someone to edit their 400-page (about 8-times longer than it should be, as far as I'm concerned) proposal for a Charter School are willing to pay me enough to make it worth my while to get it done by their deadline, which is next Thursday. So, if I'm absent from here -- again -- this time you'll know why.

Just to add to my worry and weariness, on BuzzFlash, Maureen Farrell reminds me of those kinder, gentler days in her piece on The Way We Were

War

"The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war." – John F. Kennedy, June, 1963

"F*ck Saddam, we're taking him out!" -- George Bush, 2002

Sigh.

Families in Jeopardy

2004-02-12T21:20:00.000-05:00

According to The Washington Post, President Bush will endorse the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment. In doing so, he parts ways with a majority of Americans who do not believe we should write discrimination into the US Constitution. Amending the Constitution to discriminate against same-sex couples and our families is shameful - and we need to make sure that our elected officials know it. . You can go here to sign a petiton to support the right of every American to marry the individual of his/her choice.

Even though I am heterosexual, I have always had gay friends. I become friends with people who share my creative interests. I have danced with both gay men and gay women. I'll dance with anyone who's a good leader.

Having been educated in Catholic schools until I went away to college, I never even knew what homosexuality was until during my sophomore hear in college, when a female classmate decided she had a crush on me. I didn't know that at the time; I just figured she wanted to be friends, and so I was friendly to her. It wasn't until she invited me up to her room, and I went, and she asked me to sit on her bed, and she tried to kiss me that my perspective on the sexualities of the human species began to broaden. I remember stuttering out some lame excuse and stumbling out of her room. It took me a while to process what had happened; I didn't want to hurt her feelings, and I didn't have any idea how to handle the situation. So I tried to avoid her. But she was always there. I even found her sleeping in my car. I finally gathered up the courage to tell her that I wasn't interested in her. It was all so awkward, so painful for both of us. No one was really out of the closet then; no one really wanted to talk about what it's like to be gay.

How different it all is now. Last month, when I ran into one of my gay friends/former colleagues and her partner at a movement workshop, we all hugged and asked about our kids and what we were up to and how our kids were doing. (My friend had a daughter through artificial insemination, and she and her partner are raising the girl together; they are a loving and committed family in most most nurturing sense of the word.)

It seems to me that, if there is such a thing as a human soul/spirit, it is gender-neutral. Marriage is the joining of spirits, the connecting of souls. What matters is how you join your lives, not how you join your bodies.

This world is full of so much violence and hatred and abuse and fear. We should support and celebrate any human union that is founded on caring and love and respect.

The Bush Action figure.

2004-02-12T18:56:00.000-05:00

Heh. It's about time --

Check this out!

So, how does this look?

2004-02-10T16:01:00.000-05:00

I needed to change this template so that I could have a sidebar that would take links. And I figured out how to add a Comment feature. I was hoping that b!X would have his server hooked up to his DSL by now, but I'm beginning to think it's never going to happen.

So, how readable is this new format? Hello?? Hello??? Anybody out there who knows where I'm living these days?

Gun Shots in theSpring Air

2004-02-09T13:54:00.000-05:00

It's almost 40 degrees here today. And about 15 miles from where I live, at Columbia High School (where I taught back in the 70s), a teacher is shot today. Apparently Michael Bennett, a Special Edcuation teacher, is OK and no students were injured. The local news speculates that it was a student who did the shooting; officially, he's described as an "intruder."

When I was barely in my mid-twenties with no real teaching experience under my belt, that school hired me to spend each afternoon facilitating a "supervised study" double period with potential drop-outs. Talk about trial by fire! After the first few weeks of surviving their testing me (like one of the boys walking in holding a boot and announcing to me that he found a rubber and what should he do with it), we all managed to find a common ground. We spent most of the rest of the year sitting around and talking about whatever interested them at the moment. For a while it was the pregnancy of one of the girls.

They were problem kids, angry at lots of people and things. But they didn't bring guns to school and shoot teachers. What's happening to our children!

WWJD with Rapturous Right Wing-Righteousness?

2004-02-09T11:16:00.000-05:00

Maybe it all boils down to whether you're a fan of the god of the Old Testament or New Testament. Me, I'm a fan of neither (although the New one is more to my liking), but I don't really count in this world of right-wing righteousness anyway.

On 60 Minutes last night, the self-righteous Ratpure-Awaiters explained how they will be going to "heaven" and the rest of the world's population will not. They base their rapturous opinions on their interpretations of what goes down in the bible's apocalyptic Book of Revelations -- which, according to scholar Eugene Gallagher (the Rosemary Park Professor of Religious Studies at Connecticut College), essentially offers an arsenal of apocalyptic images and predictions that can be used to target any specific time as the apocalyptic moment.

"With [George Bush in] the White House, Tom DeLay...in the House of Representatives...these are parts of the righteous army that has finally come into its own" stated the righteous Rev. Peter Gomes, a Baptist theologian at Harvard University, in the Morey Safer CBS interview.

If that doesn't scare you, I guess you're one of them.

Meanwhile, over in Iowa,
An ordained Mennonite minister and her husband were among five co-defendants in a four-day civil disobedience trial in Des Moines (Feb. 3-6.) The five sought to hold the Iowa National Air Guard accountable to international law over their bombing patrols in Iraq. "This was a small action we were led to take as another opportunity to witness to Jesus’ way of peace," reflected Pastor Jennifer Davis Sensenig of Cedar Falls Mennonite Church. "We felt called to protect the spiritual and physical welfare of our soldiers as well as the people of Iraq, and work for a more secure world for everyone’s children. Our mutual security is gravely threatened by the irresponsible and illegal foreign policy the US is currently pursuing in the Mideast."

Now, really, what do you think that peace-loving, compasionate Jesus Would Do? Rapture away the right-wing righteous or stand with those whose faith is based in peace and compassion? Check out Frank Paynter's piece here for more on the current persecution of peace activists.

Oh yes, this might well be an apocalyptic time. But guess where the evil is that's making this happen. I think I asked this before, but why hasn't anyone made a big deal of Bush being the real "AntiChrist" of this century?

The way I've always understood the AntiChrist is that he/she would be a kind of "wolf in sheep's clothing," someone who, on the surface, seems to be truly righteous and leading true believers to their salvation, but really is manipulating everyone for his own evil-doing-motivated ends -- ends that involve personal, economic, and environmental mayhem and murder and means that cause rifts between peoples and philosophies. Sound familiar?

Dealing Dean Dirty

2004-02-09T10:33:00.000-05:00

Dean Returns To Wisconsin After Disappointing Weekend

So goes at least one headline reporting on the last round of Democratic caucuses.

So let's see. Kucinich gets a positive nod for finishing third, even though he has fewer delegates than Al Sharton. But Dean -- who twice in three days finished in second place (Washignton and Maine) in better showings than he was making before, and continues to have the 2nd highest number of delegates, gets only "disappointing" and "downward spiral" and the like. But Edwards, who is third in the delegate race, is still considered to be in the running.

Just another frustrating example of how the mass media continues to purposefully skew and screw.

Feh!

A Kalilily Retrospective

2004-02-04T22:06:00.000-05:00

As I poke around this old homestead, I'm uncovering some pieces that I like that I wrote once upon a kalilily time. So here are a few to link to if you have nothing better to do.

Like this early one about the blog as the village water pump.

And this on a little history.

This about Sybil and Cybill.

This on faith and fairies and the Sisters of the Blog.

This on Crone magic.

This on planting grave-sized gardens.

This on living and dying and blogging.

This ondancing with my shadow.

Or this on the digital divide.

Or this on a poet I know.

Or this on having no political power.

On blogging as journalism.

On being an elitist.

On becoming a feminist.

On Sci Fi and me

On Jezebel as feminist.

On gods and daemons.

On my un-scholarly, heterosexual, female chauvinist opinion about Camille Paglia.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, it turns out that my mom has to have by-pass surgery on her leg before she can have corrective surgery on her foot. The by-pass is not advisable, so the corrective is impossible. Now we have to come up with a Plan B.

And, if anyone reading this knows what Blogger time zone I'm in on the East Coast, I'd love to know so that I can set my post time correctly. I can't figure out where I fit in all the choices that they give. Nothing says plain old Eastern Daylight Savings Time.

Everything Leaks

2004-02-04T10:42:00.000-05:00

I read that yesterday somewhere over at Jeneane's but now I can't find the place where she posted it and she got it from someone else anyway.

At the moment, my home blog at kalilily.net has leaked somewhere into the virtual space over Portland, Oregon, where my son b!X has his server and where kalilily.net resides. He's on his back-up blog as well.

So, consider this my vacation home-away-from-home. It's pretty rustic here -- no comments. At least not at the moment. I have to find the time to go and read through the full-topic index here at Blogger and figure out how to do some of the things I take for granted over at the MT site.

And now, I'm off to take my mother to the vascular surgeon to find out the results of the MRI she had last week to determine why she has 50% circulation in one leg (which, it seems, is why a sore is not healing). And so it goes.

2002-06-26T21:18:00.000-04:00

The Crone Has Flown

Goodbye Blogger. Goodbye Ev. Goodbye old template. Goodbye old posts. Goodbye old archves. Goodbye old comments. Goodbye old URL.

The Crone has flown to Movable Type and her own domain on the coat tails of theonetruebix and his Spartaneity Project.

So, link to me now at www.kalilily.net

Or else....

2002-06-26T15:48:00.000-04:00

Consensual Amnesia (Why Dissent Matters)
I have a hard time keeping up with the pithy (no, I'm not lisping) stuff that b!X is tossing into his blog these days. But his intensity makes in unnecessary for me to blog about the depressing and oppressing tenor of the times. All I have to do is link you back to him. So that's what I'm doing to clue you in about the illegality of the pledge of allegiance, here and here; the citizen rebellion in Northampton, Massachusetts; and the environmental tragedy of progress.

And while he's running virtually around to gather all of that crictical citizen information, he's also been working on revving up spartaneity.com, with my new blog as the current project. So, watch for the Crone's Grand Re-opening in MT, coming soon to a screen near you.

And, by the way, forget Aunt Sally, Rage Boy. The Crone is three for three.)

2002-06-25T21:27:00.000-04:00

Conspicuous by its absence...
...is mention -- in the blogs that I read -- about Dave Winer's bi-pass heart surgery that was the painful result of his cigarette smoking. I know that many of my blogger friends smoke. I'm sure that they don't want to think about what happened to Dave. Obviously, they don't want to blog about it. (I think that's called "denial.") Except I noticed that b!X, also a smoker, is forcing himself to take a hard look at the issue.

So, if you smoke and are reading this, please take your own hard look at what Dave has to say, including this:

OK, here's the deal. I did not have a heart attack, but it was close. I had bypass surgery, which I am now recovering from. It was my fault -- I had classic warning signs that I ignored. No family history of heart disease. Most important -- I wanted to keep smoking. The numbers are good if I quit smoking. If I don't the numbers are totally awful.

Blogging about what you went through is doing a real service for your fellow bloggers, Dave. I know that they probably don't want to hear it. All the more reason for you to blog it.

How fragile our real lives really are.

I feel fortunate that I never got into smoking -- just some early adolescent puffs out the bathroom window and some late adolescent drags while playing college sophisticate. I had very bad asthma as a kid; I knew getting hooked on nicotine would probably mean giving up non-stop lindy-hopping. And I'd always rather be dancing -- although these days Salsa is my preference.

2002-06-25T12:21:00.000-04:00

Meet the Geek Icon
She's young, she's smart, she thinks, she writes, she sees, she cares, she believes. She's the subject of Frank Paynter's latest interview. Andrea Roceal James, my Apprentice Crone. Check her out, in words and pics. The world needs more like her.

2002-06-24T22:04:00.000-04:00

The Crone Chants a Full Moon Om.
The full moon commands the deep night sky. I take my ritual outside, stand with arms outstretched to the bright promise of the moon. I wear the shirt on which I painted the magic mandala. I chant. Aum. Aum. Aum -- the sacred sound of OM. I watch the thin strands of clouds move into the form of the syllable. There is no wind. There is no sound other than the hum of the universe.

Sons are borne. Sons are born. Sons are borne. This full moon is for my son, too far away to see the sky as I see it. Across the continent, tonight I send magic through the ether. Tomorrow, I send magic through the mail. The Crone chants Om. Om. Om. See the mandala moon. Chant Om. Intend. Become.

2002-06-24T11:11:00.000-04:00

Blogdom as the Village Water Pump
From an print newspaper article by Jay Bookman, who writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

In his 1964-classic "Understanding Media," Marshall McLuhan related the story of several post war villages in India where UNESCO, the United National relief agency, had installed pipes to deliver running water to each home. After a few months, village elders went to UNESCO officials and asked that the pipes be ripped out.

The villagers had realized that nobody congregated any longer at the village well, where they used to wait in line to fill their water jugs. The well had been the communal center of village life, the place where gossip was exchanged and village values reinforced. It was the place where the village met to create a sense of identity.

I suppose that when "The Well" was created, the idea was to bring that village well into cyberspace. What has really accomplished that miracle, however, is blogging. We meet here to exchange gossip, reinforce "geek" values, argue politics, and share opinions on everything from gender issues to software preferences. And, just like at the old village water pump, we each establish our very specific voice, recognizable after a while by all of the others who gather with us. Then instead of a couple of us going back to my hut to balance some herbal refreshment on our laps while we hash over more personal trials and tribulations, we e-mail or instant message, with our cups of coffee or tea balanced (just as precariously) on our CPUs.

Just as the village values were reinforced at the village water pump, the values of a non-discriminatory, free-speaking global village are constantly being reinforced at the flowing pump of our collective blogs. We are becoming a village with our own identity.

2002-06-22T23:04:00.000-04:00

Being a Woman is Often No Treat
This post and this one on Blog Sisters have drawn attention to the fact that religious fundamentalists around the world are joining forces to halt the efforts of women around the world to ensure their rights as autonomous human beings.

Back in 1975, the First world Conference on Women in Mexico City called for a Treaty for the Rights of Women. I still have in my jewelry box the pin that I bought to assert my support of that still U.S.-unratified Treaty and of the (finally) official acknowledgement by the United Nations of International Women's Day (which was first established in 1911). The bird-in-flight design of that pin is the logo for the current web site of the Treaty for the Rights of Women.

I am asking that all who read my weblog take action and overwhelm our government "leaders" with statements of support for this Treaty. Why? Because (as the Treaty site indicates) even though the lives of women in some countries have improved, there is still much that needs to be done on these issues:

-- Female genital mutilation: 130 million women are victims worldwide;
-- Maternal mortality: 510,000 women die each year from pregnancy-related complications;
-- Obstetric fistulas: some 2 million girls suffer uncontrollable leakage of urine and feces through vaginas damaged in obstructed labor, most because of forced early marriage;
-- Sex trafficking: 2 million girls are sold into sexual slavery each year;
-- HIV/AIDS: women are four times more vulnerable than men, and 1.3 million die each year;
-- Violence: an estimated 25 to 30 percent of all women experience domestic violence;
-- Discrimination: millions of women lack full legal and political rights.

Today, the headline of an Associated Press article by David Crary announces Bitter Divisions Resurface Over Global Women's Rights Treaty That U.S. Has Never Ratified. There is great pressure being exerted by Americas religious fundamentalists to join with kindred soul-less males throughout the world to to destroy the spirits of women by defeating the Treaty for Women's Rights.

2002-06-22T15:51:00.000-04:00

Just who's really in control here?
b!X posted the other day "about a recent poll from blowhard William Bennett's new pro-war group." As usual, my erstwhile son presents the issue better than I might, ending with:

Although I do find it interesting, as always, that apparently those who make themselves allegedly subservient to a God who commands against killing might be the most willing to go unquestioningly off to kill at the behest of their government. Which, I guess, means that it's not about God -- because, well, you know, you're suppoed to obey his commandments and all -- but about a preference for being under someone else's control.

And so, again, yet another affirmation of the wisdom of my remaining an irreverent non-believer and equally irreverent citizen.

2002-06-21T23:15:00.000-04:00

Holy Halley!

I'm back from my trek to the Maine shore, where the highlight was a chatty day spent with Halley Suitt, walking on the beach, analyzing sea weed, reading Tarot cards, and doing some major Blog Sister bonding. It was pretty windy on the beach that day, but it was Halley who really blew me away with her amazing energy -- both head and heart -- and her genuine openness to whatever life throws her way. I have always liked what she says in her blog; what's even better is how she says it all in person.

The rest of the week was just what I intended -- lots of beach time (yes, Maren, I did wear lots of sunblock), quick reads through a couple of sexy mystery novels, and hours of just doing absolutely nothing. The bright half-moon meandered past my bedroom window each night, and clear blue skies woke me each morning. The real beach season started today, so even the beach time was peaceful, wrapped in the hushed rushes of Maine's mini-waves.

Tonight's the Solstice, and I've just finished painting a t-shirt for b!X with an image of the Sri Yantra. Now it sits with a major crystal -- progammed by Marcel Vogel himself -- holding its center, waiting for the full moon on Monday, when the ritual will be completed. All together now, everyone chant -- "Om Namah Sivaya."

Very often asserting the power of intention for someone's benefit doesn't bring to that person what he/she thinks he/she wants. What it usually brings is the wherewithall to help that person get what he/she needs. So it seems it is with Mike Golby; so, I suppose it is with Chris Locke. Or maybe not. And so, I imagine, it will be with b!X. Or maybe not. As with the saving of Tinkerbell, magic only works if you believe.

2002-06-16T15:41:00.000-04:00

My bags are packed
I'm ready to go. Got my trashy novel, my Scrabble game, my flip-flops, the ritual object I'm working on, and enough assorted clothes for any kind of weather. I shaved my legs and painted my toenails. Tomorrow I'm off to York Beach, Maine but will be back for the Solstice, when I am doing my last ritual for a while. This one's for b!X (and he knows why). But most of the time for the next five days, I'm going to be somewhere on that beach communing with the sea and the sun (what there will be of it). I need to re-create.

I've set my mom up with food and emergency numbers. She's also going to feed my cat (I hope, I hope!) so I made little baggies of cat food and posted the feeding schedule all the hell over the place so that she doesn't forget. My brother says that he'll be up on Tuesday and stay overnight. That’s better than nothing.

So, please don't blog anything important until I get back. I hate it when I miss out on something big.

2002-06-16T10:20:00.000-04:00

From Father to Son
b!X is in a posting frenzy, and I hope that those of you who might have given up on him are rediscovering his way of hitting the mark with clarity and brevity. If you're interested in the ongoing discussions about journalism vs blogging, read his take here.

2002-06-15T22:18:00.000-04:00

A Father's Day Synchronicity
My Dad died 18 years ago. Each year since then, I have ignored Father's Day. It's irrelevant to me.

Today I was contacted by a writer from my home town of Yonkers, NY -- a woman who writes for a Polish weekly newspaper. She wants to do a feature on my Dad, who, during his lifetime, was well known in that city, not only for his work among the Polish community, but also for a range of political activities behind the scenes that put him in contact with some of the major players in New York State.

So, I spent this afternoon-before-Father's Day looking through the folders where my mother has stashed dozens of newspaper clippings, award certificates, photos, and other documentation of my father's life as an active citizen. There are notes from Nelson Rockefeller and photos of my Dad with Thomas Dewey. There's another photograph of him with Francis Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of New York back in the '50s.

What really got to me, however, was a copy of an op-ed piece I wrote that the Yonkers newspaper published on January 31, 1985, a little over a month after my Dad died from pancreatic cancer. In email conversations I had with Halley Suitt while she was struggling with her father's dying, I mentioned the article, and she asked me to share it with her if I ever came across my copy.

So, here it is now, edited for length and relevance. This is for you, Dad. I am thinking about you this Father's Day after many years of not wanting to feel your loss all over again.
_____________________

My youth in Yonkers was bordered by death. My father was an undertaker, and I grew up with death as a matter of everyday, emotionally distant, fact.

When my father received his own death sentence last October on his 71st bithday, however, death abruptly closed that distance. For the first time, I looked death in the face, and it was my father's face.

My father was well-known in Yonkers. In his prime -- which it seemed extended throughout his lifetime -- he was well-respected by colleagues and adversaries alike for his compassion, pragmatism, and humor; for his ability to see all sides fairly; for his willingness to seek and accept advice and cooperation. These were the virtues that brought meaning to his life. These were the virtues that brought dignity and courage to his death.

Four days before Chrismas, having become progressively weaker, despite the best effort of hopital staff, my father told us that he wanted to die. He had, in his life, virtually worked miracles for the Polish people of Yonkers, but he knew that there would be no miracle for him. The next day, irreversibly weakened by the strain the disease had placed on his system -- but mentally alert and aware -- my father asked to have all tubes removed from his body. The nurse had tears in her eyes when she came out of the room with the doctor after thay had presented their final argument for delaying the invevitable.

The hospital staff had all liked my father; no matter how weak he was, he would find something to joke about. When one of the doctors had asked him what he did for a living, my father paused for a moment, smiled, and shot back, "I take care of your mistakes."

We cared for my father at home for four days, massaging the tired flesh hanging looser and looser from his proud bones; struggling to move him, turn him, find ways to ease his bad back, urge liquids into him --first with a straw, then with a spoon, and finally with an eye dropper. We warmed his icy hands in ours, wiped his forehead of the cold sweat that matted his still-thick head of gray hair. We told him jokes and told him we loved him. We assured him, again and again, that we would be all right; he was not to worry about us.

At one point on the night before he died, I went into the living room where the movie "Gandhi" was playing on the television. That night replays through my mind like scenes from a Coppola movie -- sudden shifts back and forth between two simultaneous occurrences, tension mounting toward some anticipated disaster. I would watch Gandhi building his ashram and then tiptoe in to see my father clutching at his pillow. I would listen to Gandhi speak for peace and freedom and then return to hear my father's raspy breathing. And so it went, until the burning pyre turned the TV screen red, and my father's cough brought my mother out of her light sleep in the other room.

Finally my mother lay on the bed we had pushed next to my father's, her hands folded around his. He was sleeping, panting rather than breathing; she was watching, murmuring encouragement and prayers. I fell asleep next to her.

It was the silence that awakened me. The clock said 6:26 a.m. For the first time in days, his hands were warm.

2002-06-14T23:47:00.000-04:00

You Can't Have Love and Patriarchy
As RageBoy continues his mystery-shrouded evolution into ...well, we don't really know exactly "what" or "who" yet. But there is a definte pattern in his growing affinity for females of obvious power -- both silently mythic and vocally authentic.

His latest discovery is Carol Gilligan's new book, The Birth of Pleasure, and he links to an interview with her that is well-worth the read.

The research documented in Gilligan's landmark book, In A Different Voice, provided the foundations for a major project that I was assigned back in the 80s to analyze the exhibits in the New York State Museum in terms of the "voice" they gave -- or in this case, did not give -- to women in the history of the state. In Gilligan's own words, the "Voice" book shows how including women's voices changes the human conversation, makes it more expansive, more real in certain ways and that's not only for women; enlarging the conversation and changing the resonance can also encourage men to say things that they know but may have felt but they couldn't speak about. That book not only triggered major changes in the way the Museum's exhibit designers and curators were expected to do their work; it encouraged me to release my own voice, both in the workplace and in my personal life as well.

Interestingly enough, Gilligan used students at the Emma Willard School for much of her research interviews. I did "development" writing for that school several years ago during a series of events promoting "girls in Science." I even got to write a speech for Jane Fonda, a graduate of that school, who came in to do the opening presentation. Heh. She used about half of it; most of the time she promoted her exercise videos. But that's off the subject.

Carol Gilligan's new book takes her basic premises in a necessarily deeper direction, one that she believes is beginning to begin the end of patriarchy. I particulary like the following statement that she made in her interview: Once feminism is understood not as a battle between the sexes but a move to free both women and men from contraints that have limited their capacity to love and live fullly, it becomes clear that feminism is one of the great liberation movements in human history.

You can't have love and patriarchy, Gilligan asserts in her interview. I agree. But, personally, I don't think that most men are going to be willing to give up the power of hierarchy and patriarchy for such a simple thing as love. As Gilligan goes on to say, Love means.....being willing to change.

2002-06-14T23:08:00.000-04:00

Into the silence, we leap.
With Andrea's Seven Memories piece added to the "power and protection" shield crafted for Mike Golby and his family, the ritual object is ready to be mailed out to Mike in South Africa tomorrow. This is the note that is going with it:

“Healing is the leap out of suffering into myth.” --Joseph Campbell

Native American shamans constructed “power shields” as part of healing ceremonies, often including or attaching images of sacred animals and representations of spirit folk to reinforce the protective capacities of the ritual object. The circle, itself, is a powerful symbol of wholeness, completeness, and the front of this shield is woven in concentric circles, an ancient symbol of the power of the feminine, the all-embracing, all forgiving, Great Mother. The colors and textures are like the fabric of life – unplanned, pieced together, varied and vibrant. The back of the shield symbolizes the power of what is often hidden deep in the great sea of memories, hopes, and dreams.

This gift, this prayer, this creative act carries with it the magic of friendship and opens a way to make the leap into the magic of healing.

2002-06-13T21:55:00.000-04:00

Identity Crisis
While I blogged early about my take on AKMA's theme du jour, "identity," I am now as lost at sea as was once the intrepid Odysseus -- referred to by Tom Matrullo in his post on the subject. This is not the first time in the land of Blogaria that I find myself time traveling back to my old chair in my old office, looking at an assignment from my boss to interview relevant professionals about on how they apply "integrated arts education" or "non-traditional learning" or "diversity in the workplace" and recognizing that I first have to go back to my boss and ask her how she defines those terms. Because I already know that there are as many definitions of those terms as there are people who use them. I know, from past experience, what happens when you set sail on a group journey of discovery without first all getting into the same boat. You often wind up all sailing off in different directions, having different adventures, and discovering different continents. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Except that the original "identity" of the journey gets lost at sea. Like me. With this whole "identity" trip. Hell, I know who I am. And if you read Frank Paynter's interview with me, you know who I am too. So what's the big deal anyway?

2002-06-13T12:28:00.000-04:00

Life is what happens while you're making plans
I'm supposed to be heading out for York Beach, Maine next week with one of my best friends. This afternoon, I'm taking my mom to the doctor's -- dizziness, weakness -- maybe a flare up of the multiple myeloma, the beginnings of which she was diagnosed with several years ago. I haven't had any time away -- I mean really away -- in more than a year. I really need this little 5-day vacation. I hope that I can still go.

This is the first time that I'm feeling angry about having to be the sole caregiver. I have an unmarried, unemployed brother who could very easily come up here (he lives about 80 miles away) and take over for a few days. But he always has an excuse. This time his cat is pissing all over his house because she's afraid to go outside because some other cat is menacing her. One would think, then, that the solution would be to get her a litter box. Only he doesn't want to have to clean out a litter box. So he has to stay home and make sure the cat doesn't continue pissing indoors. What's very very very wrong with this picture! (Oh, he says maybe he can come up for one overnight. What a guy!)

I want to cry "ENOUGH!". But there's this frail, frightened little old woman who depends on me. Someday, perhaps but I hope not, I will be just like her, and I will need someone to care enough about me to set plans aside and take care of life.

I want so much to have a few days at the ocean, nourished by the healing murmurs of Mother Sea, the warm Apollo sun -- to sit around playing Scrabble, laughing, and having a beer or two -- going out for some good dinners. Well, I have to remind myself that at least I'm not buried in a burda. Life. Happens. But I still just want to sit down and have a good cry. Oops, too late.

2002-06-13T00:48:00.000-04:00

Hecuba should have cried ENOUGH!
b!X ends this post with "Enough is enough."

The two statements above are synchronistically related.

Tonight I watched the film version of Euripedes' Trojan Women that featured Katherine Hepburn as Hecuba, Queen of Troy, who was given no choice but to watch while her city, her countrymen and women, and her family were ravaged by men of great ego and little else. They took everything from her that they could -- her birthright, her identity, her freedom. But what they couldn't take from her was her voice.

I watched the film with a group of women called together by my therapist friend in ritualized support of one of those woman -- an American nurse suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as result of her expriences in Viet Nam. We were there to help her give voice to her painful memories, to rage and cry out and vocalize whatever was staying stuck so painfully in the deep wounds of her soul. (Ritual, art, drama, healing: the legacy of Asclepius.)

ENOUGH! We wanted Hecuba to finally cry ENOUGH! We wanted the Trojan Women to all finally cry ENOUGH! But they didn't, and so we all cried ENOUGH for all the times we didn't -- for all of the times that men and women of conscience do not cry ENOUGH loud ENOUGH for all of the times that men of great ego and nothing else continue to repeat and repeat, over and over again, the very same tragic scenario that Eurpides so eloquently and dramatically and ritualistically unfolded all of those centuries ago. When will it be ENOUGH?

In the Middle East men of great ego and little else ravage and destroy what they cannot possess. In our very own America, men of great ego and little else take away everything from us that they can -- expect us to watch and endure, like Hecuba. We are all Hecuba, watching, enduring, while men of great ego and little else ravage our liberties, our identities, the very planet that sustains us.

Where are our voices crying ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH!

2002-06-11T23:27:00.000-04:00

Love those connections!
So, here I am blathering on about T.S. Eliot (like who but me even thinks about that guy any more), and after I sign out to do some surfing, there on Tom Matrullo's blog today is a couple of quotes from another Eliot poem. Now, I'm sorry to admit that I had not gotten around to putting Matrullo on my blogroll. But I have taken care of that pardonable (I hope) sin of omission. I take these kinds of synchronistic connections very seriously. Indeed I do.

2002-06-11T22:01:00.000-04:00

Cybill Sibyl Symbols
I am an old woman with a deck of cards
A witch, an Amazon, a Gorgon
A seer, a clairvoyant, a poet.
I have visions of becoming and
I dream in female
--(Barbara Starrett, 1974)

I adored the character that Cybill Shepherd played in her '90s sitcom. Raunchily relevant in menopausal splendor, she laughed a lot --mostly at herself -- loved largely, and dreamed in female. The Lady of Situations.

Sibyl is another gut-grabbing female, one I first encountered the first time I turned to the first page of T.S. Eliot's "Wastland." (I still have verses from that epic endlessly looping through my brain: Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyant/ had a bad cold nevertheless/ is known to be the wisest woman in Europe/ with a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, / is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor (those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) / Here is Belladonna, the Lady of Rocks, / the lady of situations.)
*****************
"For I once saw with my own eyes the Cumean Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when the boys asked her, 'Sibyl, what do you want?' she answered, 'I want to die.'"

The quote which prefaces T.S. Eliot's "Wasteland," "NAM Sibyllam quidem Cumis . . ." is taken from the Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter, a Roman of the first century B.C.E. The Sybil is a prophetic character who, when granted a wish by Apollo, asked to live for as many years as there are grains of sand in a handful. She forget to ask for eternel youth, however, and is confined to a bottle so as to prevent her body's disintegration..... The Sibyl, then, is a bit of a paradox: she strove to live eternally yet ended up in constant danger of decay and pain. Her quest for eternity was a failure that Eliot finds terribly important yet terribly dangerous. His goal is not to end up like the Sibyl, but to free her. (quoted from here)

Cybill and Sybil, symbols of women with strong voices -- strong with meaning, with intention, with visions of constant becoming -- with guts full of female dreams and hearts used to surviving great tides of sorrow. A lot like the many women bloggers I know and love.

But we still have to watch what we wish for.

2002-06-11T18:35:00.000-04:00

It's All in the Timing
Since the announcement of the New Moon ritual to bend the universe a little in favor of the Golbys, lots has been going on with Mike, including his belated Viking-type burial of his father's ashes. As Andrea stirred up her memories and turned around to catch an unexpected rainbow, on the other side of the planet, Mike was unknowingly mirroring her experiences. Some might say the magic is working. Others might simply note in passing that I have uncanny ability for insinuating myself into the destinies of others just at opportune moments. Personally, I have no idea how all of this happens -- something about the Flow, or quantum physics, or maybe it is just my surprisingly accurate sense of timing, my own destiny as a perennial catalyst --sort of like being always the maid-of-honor and never the bride. (Well, OK, not never; I was a bride once. Once is enough.)

The worrisome thing is that now Andrea's getting sick. That's what happened to Jeneane after she gave her all to the RageBoy ritual. Either I have to figure out how to protect my cronies (pun intended) from totally depleting their not-insignificant energies, or I'm going to have to become a Lone Crone.

Just as whatever was put into motion for RageBoy has not yet played out, so is the Golby saga continuing. It will be another couple of days or so before the ritual artifacts are complete enough to send over to Mike in South Africa. So, the magic energy is still out there, homing in on the Golby hearts and hearth. Pay attention. It's all in the timing. And the connected destinies.

2002-06-11T18:26:00.000-04:00

E-writer Reveals (Almost) All
As a pre-eminent blogger, Jeneane Sessum tends to be magnificently forthright and open in what she writes. But if you think her blog has revealed all there is to Jeneane -- well, read her interview with Frank Paynter and find out what she hasn't told until now. Once again, Paynter reveals his own artistry in getting to the good stuff.

It's interesting that, as b!X keeps track of our government's plans to make sure we keep nothing secret from them, we bloggers are keeping nothing secret from any one. (Well, almost.) I wonder what would happen to the world if there were no more secrets, if everyone revealed everything. It seems to me that it would pretty much level out the playing field. Actually, we'd probably have to call off the stupid game completely. Heh.

2002-06-10T22:53:00.000-04:00

Now, for something really serious
So, now that we've had our fun bending the universe in the direction of South Africa, it's time to tackle some very serious stuff.

I finally read Gary Tuner's post (somehow I missed that, what with all the fun I was having) about creating "Global Villagers: the Sitcom." He says As blogs extend the boundaries of communication into telephone conversations and now meetings (great post Anita ) I think that it's now about time we had our own sitcom show.

Of course! That's it! That's what we need to really put us on the map, and Gary makes some suggestions for sitcom characters. For example, he says Chris Locke can play a mad hippy revolutionary in a lead role reminiscent of Becker or something. David Weinberger can base his on-screen character on someone more sensitive like a Niles Crane. Crazy Marek J can be a bald clone of Kramer from Seinfeld.

After some very clever additional suggestions, Gary asks for input. Hah!

How about Anita, Andrea, Halley and Heather doing a kind of "Laverne and Shirley meet Thelma and Louise" type characters. (I didn't include Jeneane because Gary's post already mentions a role for her.)

As for me, it's got to be a Cybill-type (of the '90s Cybill Shepherd sitcom). A menopausal prima donna who does pratfalls and howls at the moon. Whoever wrote the scripts for that must have been following me around with a hidden camera. Of course, Cybill shares the spotlight with her friend Maryanne, a brassy, boozy, bombshell with a sharp, quick, and well-aimed wit. Sounds like either Shelley Powers or Mike Golby in drag, doncha think? Now, Gary, for you... I'm thinking maybe Alf?

In Comments to Gary's post, AKMA suggests the much more appropriate title: "Bloggal Villagers" and Andrea mentions "Blogwhore: The Web Game," which already has set a precedent.

So, forget Blogtank, Gary. This is the kind of serious stuff that we really want to work on.

2002-06-10T21:34:00.000-04:00

While the Golbys sleep....
...the magic continues. I've added a few more pieces. Andrea is doing her thing. Then we will join our magics and our part will be done.

While Mike's blog sits still, Mike is not. Things are stirring. Maybe the universe is, indeed, bending just enough. It's not over until it's over.

And, of course, Blogaria waits for RageBoy's next move. Is the voodun done? Has the magic worked? Patience. Patience.

We all wait with the moon.

2002-06-10T09:56:00.000-04:00

Moon Time
For me, it goes until midnight here tonight. Then it will move into the lives of the Golbys. The magic.

I started last night, outside under the moonless, cloudless, deep magic midnight sky. Among the various artifacts I took out there with me was this:

These are the sides of the Golby shield, without the piece that Andrea is making today to add. One side vibrant with color and surprises and a patchwork of textures and movement. Like life. The other, the dark of a moonless sky, the deepest ocean calm -- the place of dreams and memories.

Mike Golby's blog is in stasis. We are all waiting for this magical ecliptical New Moon day to move into the past. And then the rest will begin. This day is for the Golbys. Send them your most loving thought.

2002-06-09T12:03:00.000-04:00

Feel the Power
The Golby shield is finished, except for the piece that Andrea, the Crone-in-Training, will add. This Geek Icon is coming into her own, and I can tell that I'm soon going to have to share the throne.

After midnight, it begins for the Golbys.

Meanwhile, like Andrea, I'm into the Ya-Ya Sisterhood thing and am going to see the movie later today with a buncha my ya-ya friends. Then out to dinner. Then...then...getting ready for the New Moon magic.

2002-06-08T11:08:00.000-04:00

Countdown to Golby's New Moon
It has begun: a woven shield for Mike Golby, the deep serenity of the midnight sky on one side and a vibrancy of colors and textures on the other, symbolizing the balance that one needs in a full and healthy life. Art as ritual. Ritual as art. It's not done yet, and there's much left to be done, so probably not much blogging until then. The good news is that I have a "sorceresses apprentice" conjuring on the West Coast, where she will be able to see about 50 percent of the eclipse that also will happen with the new moon on Monday. She will incorporate that "magical" phenonemon into whatever she contributes to our Mike-centered magic. Blog Sister and Geek Icon Andrea, cybercrone-in-training. Stay tuned. Join in and think of Mike on the New Moon.

Oh yeah, Andrea. We Got Mana! heehee cackle cackle

2002-06-06T23:27:00.000-04:00

The Moon Moves On
While my ritual magic seems to have had some effect on RageBoy, we have yet to know the total result. I believe it will be for his good; I think it already is. He's finding his way through the gate. No need to worry. It will be good. He will be back, better than ever.

In the meanwhile, there's more magic to be done. This time for Mike Golby. He knows it's coming. He's ready. I will be getting ready for the New Moon, which sits dark in the sky on June 10th. New Moon. Dark Moon. Emptiness. The Void that is the beginning.

I will make magic for Mike who waits in darkness half-way around the circle. I will conjure the words that will move the moon. You will see. You will see.

2002-06-06T22:13:00.000-04:00

The Crone goes South Park

2002-06-06T14:23:00.000-04:00

A is for AKMA
I have to admit that clerics are not usually among my favorite people, but over the course of my blogging life, AKMA has continued to earn my respect and admiration (even though sometimes his prose gets a little too intellectual for my preferences). He's able to balance the courage of his convictions with a heartfelt curiosity about how others view the larger issues that shape the convictions of those who populate the rest of the thinking world.

One more reason to like AKMA: he's accepted my humble application and named me Crone in Residence -- Purveyor of Eclectic Mysticism and Rhetorical Ritual at the ubiquitous University of Blogaria. I now can die happy.

Current reason to like AKMA: he's begun a discussion of "identity" -- If nothing else, "identity" serves as a principle of continuity that binds together the cute little baby, the uncouth adolescent lout, the aging-gracefully professor, and (what I hope will be) the white-haired nonagenarian. We customarily talk about this continuity as the subject's identity--who he or she really is.

My ex-husband used to criticize me for being like an onion -- layers upon layers, but nothing at the core. I think, perhaps he saw that "core" as being a person's fundamental identity and the layers being the roles that one plays.

I never agreed with him, although neither have I ever been able to identify what IS at my "core." Publicly and privately, I identify myself as caregiver, cybermom, crone -- dancer, writer, feminist -- activist, spiritual seeker. (notice the "8")

I recently discovered the Kali Yantra:

Like a mantra, a yantra is meant as a focus for meditation. To me, The Kali Yantra "images" my identity, which is the interplay of all of its essesntial pieces.

The square with its four entrance portals represents the boundaries enclosing the meditating self as well as symbolizing the earth element and the material quality of nature. The [notice the 8] lotus petals express the different stages of spiritual expansion. The circle is the symbol of wholeness and the downward pointing triangle represents the seat of feminine energy. (quoted from here)

At the core of my identity -- the essential female energy. But my identity is the whole ever bloomin' thing.

2002-06-06T11:51:00.000-04:00

Ya' gotta luv the guy....
b!X as a South Park character.

2002-06-06T11:47:00.000-04:00

What the....?
Big storms over here last night, growling in from the west. Everywhere but right where I am (where there was hard rain), hail, funnel clouds, lightning at a flash per second. The gates opened. Power drained from the firmament into the earth.

Then I do my usual morning check in and discover RageBoy's posts from last night. (This is where I usually do my heehee cacklecackle, but not this time; this is very serious magic.) Keep on dancin' through the gate, RB. The tribes are with ya'.

2002-06-05T23:37:00.000-04:00

Polyanna or Pronoiac?
Rob Breszny, the non-linear purveyor of reams of abstruse astrological advice is inviting us all to look on the bright side. His recent newsletter makes this announcement:

On my new Web site, which will debut in a few weeks, I will have a section devoted to "Pronoiac News." (Pronoia, for those of you who're new to our community, is the opposite of paranoia. It's the sneaking suspicion that the whole world is conspiring to shower you with blessings.) I invite all of you out there to share with me (and all of us) the interesting, invigorating, intellectually- and emotionally-stimulating pronoiac news that you stumble upon in your travels. Send it to freewillastrology@hotmail.com. ....... Please feel free, too, to take up the cause of zoom and boom as you resist the practitioners of doom and gloom in your own sphere. Let this be our battle cry: WE DEMAND EQUAL TIME FOR NEWS ABOUT REDEMPTION AND INTEGRITY AND JOY AND BEAUTY AND PLEASURE AND RENEWAL AND HARMONY AND LOVE.

And this is his astrology reading for me for this week:
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Your key symbols for the coming days: a night-sea crossing; Jonah in the belly of the whale; a treasure chest dislodged from its hiding place in the earth by a flood. Most reliable source of information: your dreams. Totemic animal: octopus. Special number: 44. Secret password: *superconductor.* Methods for building soul power: taking ritual baths; being naked for hours; singing songs you consider sacred. Inspirational role model: Dante Alighieri on his way out of the Inferno. Pop culture book likely to be most helpful: Joseph Campbell's *Hero with a Thousand Faces.*

Well, I read Campbell's book ages ago. I recently recalled a Motherpeace Tarot reading I had years ago that brought out the eight of discs as the card that reflected my fundamental modus operandi. I remember it as an octopus juggling eight discs. Still sounds about right. Four and four is eight. So far, so good. Ritual baths and getting naked? Well, metaphorically, anyway. Superconductor? Why not. Out of the Inferno? Don't I wish. We'll see about the rest.

2002-06-05T23:22:00.000-04:00

b!X is alive and well (well, alive, anyway) and blogging again.
So, in case you gave up checking in on theonetruebix.com lately, try again. He's re-surfaced. And that's good because now he won't be sending me all those URLs on issues that ought to be blogged. He does a much better job at that anyway.

2002-06-05T23:17:00.000-04:00

Confessions of the Bombshell Barrister
It's Denise Howell's turn on Frank Paynter's hot seat, and she proves just how cool she really is. Go here for the whole Howell scoop as she unpacks her Bag and Baggage.

2002-06-05T14:16:00.000-04:00

Now that's a really good rap
Thanks to a pointer from b!X to this account of a protest in NYC, where
Ten people, including singer Wyclef Jean, were arrested as thousands of teachers and students turned out for a rally to hear hip-hop stars and politicians denounce proposed cuts in New York City school funding......The rally, which police say attracted some 20,000 school children, was organized by the United Federation of Teachers and the Hip Hop Summit Action Network, a group organized by rap impresario Russell Simmons.

Bloomberg and his crew are sooooo clueless about the real impoverished world. Shame, shame on the Big Applelites for electing someone like him as their advocate and leader. Noting the number of students at the rally, Bloomberg spokesman Ed Skyler said he hoped teachers had not allowed students to cut class for the afternoon rally. Like, THIS is the only thing these well-heeled idiots could think of to say? What world do they live in? Good for those teachers who risked standing up and being counted on behalf of their students. Rap. Rap. Rap 'em a good one for me.

2002-06-05T10:59:00.000-04:00

The Other Side of Bombast
Chris Locke shadowdances through the mirror and shows us the other side of Bombast. It's Beauty. Beauty of heart. Again, he has proven himself truly a man for all seasons. Out of the silence, he shares a liberating soulfulness that is always there but not always shared.

I think now of one of the most influential books (for me) that I've ever read: Rollo May's The Courage to Create. The courage to share a deep and authentic humanity.

(And, who is to say but that our little ritual didn't contribute to this open-handed offering, this RageBoy resurrection. heehee cacklecackle.) The Crone is not done yet. Mike Golby, get ready for some major Crone magic.

2002-06-04T22:43:00.000-04:00

Testing....Testing.....Testing
If I periodically say things that remind b!X from whence he came, rest assured that he returns the favor. He emailed the link to this article about, well, in his own words, Nice fuck up with the Regents exam censoring/sanitizing passages from other people's writings in order to not "offend" any test-takers.

Ah yes, the New York State Board of Regents and their infamous statewide assessments. One of the major pieces that I left out of "the story of my life as told to Frank Paynter in five emails" was my 20-year career with the NY State Education Department, three of which were spent deeply immersed in promoting the "school improvement" agenda of the New York State Board of Regents. I did everything from write brochure copy, manuals and "town meeting" type video scripts (read "propaganda") to actually going into schools to help the teachers and administrators figure out how to improve their teaching strategies so that more kids could pass the statewide exams (read "propaganda"). Yes, I sold out. For the salary and the benefits, the promise of being able to retire at 62 and live relatively comfortably -- oh yeah, I spun their straw into gold. Or rather, gold plate. Gold plate that peels off very quickly and reveals some very flimsy, old, stale straw.

Interestingly enough, the woman quoted in article, Rosanne DeFabio, was my Team Leader's boss back then. She was the standard-bearer for the work that we did. Carefully coiffed and spoken, traditionally classy and well-mannered, Rosanne has never taught in a public school; her teaching background is in Catholic schools. So I was not surprised to read the following in the newspaper account:

Roseanne DeFabio, the Education Department's assistant commissioner for curriculum, instruction and assessment, said Friday, "We do shorten the passages and alter the passages to make them suitable for testing situations." The changes are made to satisfy the sensitivity guidelines the department uses, so no one will be "uncomfortable in a testing situation," she said. "Even the most wonderful writers don't write literature for children to take on a test." DeFabio said that, as a result of an objection recently received from an author, the department had decided to use ellipses in future exams. She also said that she thought it worthwhile that the department consider marking passages that are altered, but she did not feel it was necessary to ask the permission of authors to change their work.

One of the objections came from one of my favorite authors, Annie Dillard, who, according to the news report, wrote the following in a letter to the Commissioner of Education: "What could be the purpose of an exercise testing students on such a lacerated passage - one which, finally, is neither mine nor true to my lived experience." As explained in the news article, When they read a passage from Annie Dillard's memoir "An American Childhood," gone were any racial references from a description of her childhood trips to a library in a black section where she was one of the only white visitors.

Keep in mind, now, that the New York State Educational system is considered a leader in setting standards for learning and providing statewide tests to assess whether or not kids are learning up to those standards. (I even worked on some of the standards-setting documents.) On the surface this sounds great. Legislators who have to vote on how much money to give schools love it. Parents who want to see high marks on report cards love it. But guess what. It doesn't work. It doesn't work because of just the kind of manipulation of learning and testing that the news article reports. It doesn't work because it's not based on what makes kids want to learn, love to learn. It doesn't work because teachers teach to the test. It doesn't work because kids don't wind up with a love of learning; rather they wind up with just the opposite -- and with headaches and stomach aches from pressures imposed on them by both schools and parents to make sure that they pass the tests.

Well, I couldn't say all of this then, but I sure can say it now. My retirement checks come from the State and not from the Department. They can't fire me now.

P.S. I didn't hang in there all of those years just for the money and security, really. I considered myself an infiltrator, a wolf in sheep's clothing. I was trying to change the system from within. When I went into schools I tried to begin showing them the truth, I began conversations, I listened. In many ways I was beginning to apply the Cluetrain philosophies and Chris Locke's Gonzo Marketing approach to the education market. But that was long before the Cluetrain guys came on the scene. I had no models. I was winging it. And that's what made it fun. I remember I began one speech that I gave to the New York State Reading Association with the lyrics from Concrete Blonde's song (originally by Leonard Cohen) from the movie Pump Up the Volume. "Everybody knows the dice are loaded..." I told them to "Talk Hard." To tell the truth. To listen to what the kids are saying. To watch MTV. I expected that I would never be asked to speak to them again. Not true. They loved it. They loved that someone from that big bureaucracy came and used an authentic voice. But one voice is not enough, no matter how hard or true.

2002-06-04T21:56:00.000-04:00

If we don't laugh, we're going to cry
Got this from Tish. And this on the same site. Grab a cup of coffee and spend an hour letting Mark Fiore's repertoire make you smile.

2002-06-04T21:48:00.000-04:00

The Intoxicating Fragrance of Pesto
Well, I think this mindmeld with Halley has gone a little too far. Now RageBoy is personally promoting -- by wearing -- Isabella Rosselini's new basil-based scent, Manifesto. Listen, RB, I've got this great patch of basil growing full tilt out here in my grave-sized garden. I'll blender you up a batch and save you a lot of money.

2002-06-03T21:13:00.000-04:00

It's our fault but we don't care.
Or so Dubya seems to be saying as a response to a national report in which, according to the NY Times, the administration for the first time mostly blames human actions for recent global warming. It says the main culprit is the burning of fossil fuels that send heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

See b!X's post on this issue for the big absurd picture of the new ugly American: .......here they are (not that their self-interested hypocrisy should come as any surprise at this point) responding to the rest of the world's pleas for the U.S. to get with the program and protect the entire globe from the threat of global warming by telling them to go to man-made Hell.

2002-06-02T22:17:00.000-04:00

Amused by the Muse
When a wolf shows up, it is time to breathe new life into your life rituals. Find a new path, take a new journey, take control of your life. You are the governor of your life. You create it and direct it. Do so with harmony and discipline, and then you will know the true spirit of freedom.

RageBoy wanders back alleys in search of his wolf and turns around to find his Muse instead. Except that she's it. She's she -- the wolf in muse clothing. Like dreams, muses sometimes play with misdirection, take the words we know so well and turn them inside out. And then maybe we notice that the muse is hiding behind a mirror etched with the eyes of a wolf. And we look into those eyes and know.

Writers are always in search of their muse. Jennifer Balderama, off to Paris and beyond, is figuring that she needs to re-acquaint herself with hers. Needs to re-think how she writes fiction. Needs to get less structured, more sloppy. Her mirror image, maybe. I wonder if she's going to be out of the country -- and without her laptop, too -- when Frank Paynter's interview with Denise Howell hits Blogaria. Maybe he can reveal Jennifer next.

I haven't written any poetry for a long while. That muse seems to have gone on an extended vacation. Maybe Jennifer will run into her in Paris. Instead, a blogging muse has taken her place. She looks like a faerie and needs lots of attention.

2002-06-02T14:52:00.000-04:00

let it rain, rain, rain
save me from myself again
wash away my ugly sins
opposing thumb, dorsal fin
that monkey died for my grin
bring my happy back again
let it rain, rain, rain
bring my happy back again
--- REM, "Lotus"

I dreamed last night that I lost my thumb.
It was the thumb on my right hand, and I didn't lose it; it broke off somehow but I never felt it happen. All of a sudden I looked at my hand and the joint where my thumb would have been attached looked like a chicken joint looks when you cut off the appendage. It didn't hurt, but seeing it missing triggered such a wave of panic and sadness and loss that I started crying uncontrollably (in my deam, that is). In the dream, my mother was there and tried to console me, but she was powerless to do so. And it was not her comfort that I wanted. Someone else's. Whose?

I moved out of the REM sleep, waking up to thoughts of Sissy Hankshow in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (great novel, btw; terrible movie). The benefits of the opposable thumb.

I told my mother about the dream, and, in typical good-Catholic-with-leftover-old-country-superstitions, she immediately went to consult an expert, to find out what the accepted "dogma" is. In this case, she consulted her book on The Classic 1000 Dreams, which said: To dream that you have injured your thumb indicates that you will shortly be in a serious quandary. You will have to choose between giving offence to someone whom it would pay you to please, and making yourself look ridiculous in the eyes of your acquaintances. Hmmm.

bIX once posted (long ago, in some other weblog at some other point in his life when he was actually posting) that dreams are the garbage dump of the brain. But I think dreams are important messages from our unconsious, from the oracles of our spirits: "pay attention, think about this" they say in their language of misdirection. But there is a message here somewhere in my missing thumb. I'm still trying to figure it out.

it's not that the transparency
of her earlier incarnations
now looked back on, weren't rich
and loaded with beautiful vulnerability
and now she knows.

now is greater
and she knows that

she just wants to be somewhere
she just wants to be
She just wants to be somewhere
she just wants to be
---- REM, "She Just Wants to Be"

2002-06-01T10:38:00.000-04:00

Oh ye of little faith....
Some things take time -- love, tomatoes, grandsons, magic. Some things take a special space -- same list. Halley surfaced on her blog last night long enough to remind us that "it ain't over 'til it's over." So please remember that about RageBoy's silence as well.

So, it seems that you can be sure that Blog Sisters will be the place to be this summer. Halley has explained why she's vowing to keep the cauldron stirred over there. Jennifer Balderama just officially joined the BSisterhood with her first post. We've got Andrea and Anita and Sheri E and Mare and Tish and Esta and Gina -- and growing numbers (close to 100) of other incredibly savvy Sisters -- voicing, voicing, voicing; and, of course, Denise -- who is Frank Paynter's next interviewee -- is one of the earliest and dearest of them all. And Jeneane and I -- well, heh, we just never shut down or shut up.

Now, as far as you men are concerned, while you're not allowed into the inner sanctum, if you're brave and pure and loving (like Marek J.), you can Comment.

And, just to reassure Halley and anyone else who is still wondering, if I am a witch (which I have never said I am), I'M A GOOD WITCH. GOOD. GOOD. MMMMM MMMMM GOOD.

If you believe in faeries, clap. Keep Tinkerbell alive.

2002-06-01T00:17:00.000-04:00

Friends
There is a group of women with whom I've been friends for more than a decade. On Tuesday, I will be attending an event at the offices of the New York State Bar Association in recognition of one of them, a lawyer who is receiving an Award for Excellence in Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare.

I met Joan Byalin when she was dating one of my ex-boyfriends. They broke up but we became good friends because we had so much in common. (Of course, that makes sense. He liked the same qualities in both of us.) Not only is she a great lawyer, but she's an amazing quilter, who -- until very recently when she finally bought a sewing machine -- constructed her quilts by hand. Her designs are built around vibrant Mexican colors and original, non-traditional patterns that sort of evolve as she goes. She is making a quilt for my soon-to-be grandson, and I can't wait to see it.

Among the other women in my group are an accountant who gardens, a parole officer who sings, a mail carrier who's a psychic, and an environmental specialist who does Fung Shui. Add Joan the lawyer-quilter and me the educator-blogger, and we've always figured that if they would just let us run the country, we would have just about every public sphere covered and do a better job than the people who are doing it now. Plus, we all collaborate very easily, share information readily, and know how to do rituals to bend the universe. (heh)

2002-05-31T21:29:00.000-04:00

Now there are three
Last fall, I started noticing a lone blue heron, standing watch in the evenings along the edge of a pond adjacent to the building where I live. He was always alone, holding his own on the shadowy water's edge. (Somehow I thought of the heron as a "he," although he could just as well have been a she.) Our eyes would follow each other as I slowed my usual brisk pace, and he willed himself even more invisible among the reeds. Once I must have done something to make him feel threatened, because suddenly he took low flight over the still pond and disappeared into the dense brush. I haven't seen him since.

Several weeks ago, instead, a lone turtle sunned herself on the partially submerged log where the heron used to stand. The other day, there were three. Three turtles, the color of murky earth, all facing east, waiting. They are there every day now, at least they are when the geese take themselves over to pond on the other side of the building.

My mother marvels at the strong goose-sense of family. I watch them, too, the six fuzzy goslings and their ever-watchful parents. When they walk, one parent is always in front and the other behind; when they rest, the adult geese bookend their offspring, watching sternly while the little ones sleep. "We could learn a lot from watching animals," my mother says.

I recently finished reading a lovely little book, Any Small Thing Can Save You: A Bestiary. As I learned on amazon.com's review, "Medieval bestiaries were compendiums of animal lore particularly descriptions of exotic and fantastic beasts as well as anthologies of moral instruction." This anthology of 26 vignettes, one for each letter of the alphabet, is a series of eloquent snapshots of the appearance of animals at subtly relevant times in the lives of various humans. It's like my witnessing the appearance of the three turtles just after Jeneane Sessum, Halley Suitt, and I held virtual hands and tried to bend the universe for RageBoy.

There is great significance to the number three, which is filled with magic and power. Triple spirals ..... are interdimensional symbols capable of parting time from space and allowing us to venture into other worlds and dimensions. Brigit, goddess of the fire and home hearth, is also the triple goddess. " Third time lucky," is a phrase well known even in our modern, western society.

And as for turtles, in Iroquois mythology, the turtle holds the earth up while sky woman rides safely on the turtle's back; the turtle has been a symbol for Mother Earth, for longevity, and for the awakening of heightened sensibilities.

Three turtles facing east. Three Wyrd (Blog) Sisters living in the east. Toil and trouble. And magic.

2002-05-30T11:59:00.000-04:00

Braz-Valentine's Open Letter is really a poem!
She responded to an email I sent her with the text of the actual poem, so you can go to Blog Sisters and read the correct version. I don't think it's recorded correctly anywhere else on the net, at least not that I could find. Ah. Another "first" for Blog Sisters.

2002-05-30T10:46:00.000-04:00

The Boob in the Hall of Justice
Thanks to Esta, who posted info about this on BlogSisters.

Remember the drape that Ashcroft had put over the naked breasts of Justice? Read here an absolutely perfect open letter to Ashcroft by an amazing crone -- poet, playwright, and journalist Claire Braz-Valentine -- that she presented at this year's In Celebration of the Muse, Cabrillo College. You also can see her and hear her read it.

As I post this, in the background on my television, Ground Zero, the Last Day plays out with sad ceremony. It sit here feeling the incredible schizoid nature of this country. We are a people of great heart and open soul. And yet so many of our leaders are such boobs.

2002-05-29T20:41:00.000-04:00

Getting to Forgiveness
It’s not that I’m obsessed with AKMA, but he never fails to blog good stuff, and other articulate bloggers invariably pick up and run with his themes way before they start to gel in my own head. But I catch up, eventually.

“Forgiveness” is the current theme du jour.

Now, I don’t take issue with any of the thoughtful thoughts on this issue presented, for example, by David Weinberger or Halley Suitt or Marek.

But they all left out one step on the road that I need to take to get to Forgiveness so that I don’t simply suppress or repress my hurt and anger and then unwittingly find myself at the mercy of what happens when those feelings erupt and displace at some time in my (and probably some other innocent person's) future. I need catharsis. I need to purge the bad feelings. I need to vent. Let me give you an example. And this is the goddesses'-honest truth:

Several years ago, as I was ending a relationship with a man I had been living with for only a year, I realized that he had already begun seeing (and probably sleeping with) another woman before I even moved out. He didn’t even wait until, as they say, “the body was cold.” Even though I knew it was over between us, I was still devastated. Hell, I was mad. Furious. I mean, how would you feel?

But I knew that I needed to move on, forgive, put it all behind me – not repress it or harbor seething rage. I had put an awful lot of myself into trying to make the relationship work; I even spent a great deal of my own creative energies editing and re-writing the first mystery novel that he had ever tried to write. His total disregard of my feelings after all of that truly hit a nerve. I was hurt. I was mad. I felt betrayed. How was I going to get to Forgiveness? Hee hee, as the Crone says.

This is what I did after I moved out: I made a clay figure that looked pretty much like him. (This stuff called Fimo is great for this purpose because you use your toaster oven to harden it.) I took a tin box and decorated it so that it looked like a miniature sarcophagus and painted it with female power symbols. I invited my women friends over on the night of a full moon (they were used to my doing weird stuff like this, so they came) and had them help me tear up various photos of us, cards, notes he had written me etc. and put them in the box, along with the figure. I wrote a chant, which basically said that I take back all that I had given him, all the creative energies I brought into his life, and I leave him as he was before I met him – non-existent in my awareness. We lit some candles, burned some incense, I did my chant and then I put the piece of paper with the chant on it into the box and sealed it up. And then we all sat down and had some decaf coffee and tea and Pepperidge Farm cookies and spent some time venting a whole lot of other stuff that bothered us.

After they left, at midnight I drove over to his house and left the box on his porch. Yes, I could have gotten arrested for trespassing, I suppose. But I didn’t.

With the delivery of that box, not only was my anger gone, but I no longer felt victimized, and that alone was worth the risk of getting caught trespassing. After that, it was easy to forget and forgive.

Maybe that’s not the accepted way to find Forgiveness as far as traditional religions and spiritualities are concerned, but boy, did it feel good. And the strange thing is, he called me some time after, and we talked about the incident and the experience. He knew he did something wrong, and my little ritual somehow expunged his guilt as well as my anger. And now, when we run into each other, there’s no anger, no guilt, a little nostalgia, a few laughs, and all in a zone of comfort that we never would have had without the shared catharsis.

So, for me, Forgiveness is not a place I can get to from here without taking a little detour. Does the end justify the means? Works for me.

2002-05-29T20:22:00.000-04:00

La Rouge et La Blonde
No, this is not a mis-remembering the titleof Stendhal’s classic.

Unlike AKMA*, who watched Moulin Rouge because others in his family wanted to and then didn’t like it although they did, I loved it. And so did my kids. Of course, we also loved Buffy: The Musical. Probably for the same reasons. It has something to do with moving beyond the accepted and expected, playing with anachronisms and somehow making them “play.” It has something to do with shuffling together assumedly dissimilar approaches to performance and coming up with a new genre. Moulin Rouge is also gaudy and baudy. I guess that’s another reason why I like it.

Legally Blonde is another movie I just rented and liked a lot – and not because I’ve opted for blondeness. Our society has a tendency to force women into narrow categories: beautiful and dumb or smart and plain, mother or mistress, good girl or slut, attractive woman or old lady. Any female can be any or all of these things at various times. It’s good to be reminded that sometimes she can be beautiful, smart, sexy, ethical, moral, assertive, free-spirited – in the parlance of the ‘40s and '50s movies (as Tom Shurgart reminds me), a real “stand-up broad.” And that’s a fine and fabulous thing to be as far as I’m concerned.

*I couldn't find the exact citation for AKMA' blog about Moulin Rouge, so if anyone knows what it is, would you please leave it in the Comments? Thanks.

2002-05-29T00:38:00.000-04:00

So, Am I Brave or Just Plain Stupid?
I had such fun answering Frank Paynter's interview questions about how I got be be "Resident Crone of Blogdom" that I just kept on e-mailing him the stories of my life, including things some of my closest friends don't know. Well, now they know. Now everyone knows.

2002-05-28T21:16:00.000-04:00

I am totally "Older Than Dirt."
Older Than Dirt Quiz: Count all the ones that you remember -- not the ones you were told about! Ratings at the bottom.
1. Blackjack chewing gum
2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water
3. Candy cigarettes
4. Soda pop machines that dispensed bottle
5. Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes
6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
7. Party lines
8. Newsreels before the movie
9. P. F. Flyers
10. Butch wax
11. Telephone numbers with a word prefix (Olive - 6933)
12. Peashooters
13. Howdy Doody
14. 45 RPM records
15. S&H Green Stamps
16. Hi-fi's.
17. Metal ice trays with lever
18. Mimeograph paper
19. Blue flashbulb
20. Packard's
21. Roller skate keys
22. Cork popguns
23. Drive-ins
24. Studebakers
25. Wash tub wringers

If you remembered
0- 05 = You're still young
6-10 = You are getting older
11-15 = Don't tell your age,
16-25 = You're older than dirt!

Heh. I even have the distinction of having been on one of the earliest Howdy Doody shows as one of the kids in the Peanut Gallery. I remember being absolutely disillusioned by the fact that Clarabelle's breath smelled like whiskey and he was mean to us. Yes, I learned early the difference between fantasy and reality.

2002-05-28T17:27:00.000-04:00

Damn YACCS
OK, so Ev went to another version of ProBlogger and it messed up my YACCS comments. So much for improvements. Now remember, I don't know how to do codes so I don't know how to fix mine. Can someone just give me the whole YACCS code that I now should put in to replace what I have now so that my comments will work in the new ProBlogger version? Dammit.

P.S., Addendum, Whatever
It pays to cultivate smart and helpful friends!! Thanks to Gary Turner, who told me what to do, my Comments are back. And my deepest apologies for thinking that Sean Connery was Welsh (where the hell did I get that?). He's Scottish. Of course, No wonder! Thanks, Gary.

2002-05-28T17:18:00.000-04:00

Hands Across the Ocean...
---or rather voices across the ocean. Gary Turner in the UK is making a hobby of collecting the voices of bloggers leaving actual voice messages on his voice mail. So, not wanting to be left behind, I added my message to his collection, which you can hear, in all my allergic nasality, by linking from his blog. (I don't think I sound as dorky as I thought I would sound -- *sigh of relief*.) You can hear Jeneane, Sharon, Shelley and Marek if you go here. See if you don't just love Gary's Scottish brogue -- sounds a little like Sean Connery, who's Welsh, I know, but still....it's the same rolling rrrrs, resonant tone. mmmm.

2002-05-27T23:31:00.000-04:00

And for my next trick…..
So, now that the RageBoy ritual seems to have accomplished what it was intended to, my celebrity status is catching on. (No, that’s not what was intended.) Andrea is asking for my help winning the Mojo Jojo electric guitar so that she can achieve her rock star status dream.

Now, Andrea, the way Crone magic works is that we have to ask for what is “best” for you. I know that you promised that, if you get it, you
won't participate in or be the origin of any drug-ridden orgies that destroy hotel rooms. I will also give money to charity and be kind to small children. And I will go to church twice on Sunday and not swear when drivers cut me off on the freeway.

Well, we all know where good intentions lead.

However, since you write such great poetry and are such a model Geek Icon as well as a member of GEEK Force, and since you’re a BlogSister who actually posts on that weblog and also leaves nice Comments on mine, I will give it my best shot. Now, you gave me a very tight time frame – May 31. No time to find magical feathers and string beads and dig through my assorted paraphernalia for the other doodads that one needs in such situations. And not even a full moon to count on! This is going to be a tough one, so don’t get your hopes up too high. And, in the meanwhile, you’d better line up as many e-mail addresses as you can and make sure you play WinBall every day from each address. (Hey, I practice very practical magic.) And, while you're at it, make sure that you have your fave Sheryl Crowe (or other female guitar player of your choice) playing loud enough to disturb your neighbors. Oh, and buy a new guitar pick, drill a hole in it, and wear it around your neck for the rest of the week. Even better if you buy two and make them into earrings.

If you win it, of course, that was my doing. If you don’t, then I guess you just didn’t play enough WinBall. :-)

2002-05-27T22:12:00.000-04:00

The Elixir of Life
According to the BBC News, NASA has confirmed early Odyssey data about water-ice on Mars. Water is essential for life, so the discovery enhances the belief that Mars could have had life in the past and perhaps in the present as well.

2002-05-27T21:45:00.000-04:00

It's so good to hear your voice.
One would tend to think that, since it's so easy to communicate online these days, we wouldn't bother using a telephone to talk with other bloggers. But that's not so. Maybe we just get to the point where we want to match a voice to the "voice." Whatever it is, there have been a lot of phone calls going on lately. I even wound up leaving Gary Turner a voice mail message on his work phone. (Well, he DID invite us to do so on his weblog.) And, after all, Jeneane and Sharon and Shelley already got to Gary's voice mail before me, and I can't stand being left behind. Of course, I forgot that Gary makes our voice messages available to the world at large, and I'm sure that I sounded like a real dork. I knew that I should have written out what I wanted to say first!!

I also called Jeneane today because she's even got a worse sinus problem that I have right now (although I'm going to need surgery, so maybe mine really is worse; but she certainly sounds and feels worse). I guess our intra-national ritual took its toll on the poor thing. Not so with RageBoy, who sounded rather chipper on the telephone. (hee hee cackle cackle says the Crone). And then Marek J called me the other day, and we had just the kind of energizing conversation that one might expect to have with Marek.

The next step has to be some sort of face to face. Too bad we can't videoconference. Nah. We need to figure out how to all get together for a real messy group hug. :-)

2002-05-26T11:35:00.000-04:00

Let’s hear it for the grrrls.
Jeneane, Halley, and me stirring it up on the East Coast; Denise reflecting it back on the West Coast; RB center stage absorbing it all and finding himself buying a copy of Eve Ensler. Now try to tell me something hasn’t begun shifting in the universe!

The moon hid from my view last night, but she couldn’t hide her secrets. Denise saw a ring-‘round-the-moon. A portent if ever there was one. Jeneane and RB, ever in sync, paused to share the lucid moonlight.

This morning at about 8 a.m., which is when the moon was said to be most full-faced out this way, a brief, thunderous, and lightening-lit rainstorm. A little cosmic applause for the grrrls, Blogaria’s revisionist ladies of the nethernight.

Our part is over. But the rest isn’t.

If you believe in faeries, clap your hands.

2002-05-26T00:45:00.000-04:00

It has begun.
It didn't rain, but the wind blew fiercely, except when I needed it not to. Alice Hoffman's kind of magic. The in-between time has begun. Watch. Wait. Witness.

2002-05-25T22:46:00.000-04:00

Entredeux
Being between -- between two places, two worlds, two people, two states of consciousness, two hearts, two minds. Betweentwo. Betweentwo.

As Jeneane says Helene Cixous says:
Human beings are equipped for daily life, with its rites, with its closure, its commodities, its furniture. When an event arrives which evicts us from ourselves, we do not know how to 'live.' But we must. Thus, we are launched into a space-time whose coordinates are all different from those we have always been accustomed to.

Aha! Aha! Ahas happen because of entredeux journeys.

Rituals are meant to be catalysts for certain kinds of entredeux – to evict us, launch us – force us to alter our perceptions, perspectives, permissions. To force Ahas.

Soon, soon.

I am surprised that no one has emailed me and said, What are you weird? You don’t really believe that magic ritual stuff do you? Well, almost no one. Frank Paynter asked me. He asked me some other questions, too, and I wound up writing “The Story of My Life in 5 E-mails.” If he shares any of that on his blog, you will know if I believe in magic.

Meanwhile, I will share with you one of my favorite passages from one of my favorite magical novelists, Alice Hoffman. It’s from Turtle Moon.
Every May, when the sea turtles begin their migration across West Main Street, mistaking the glow of streetlights for the moon, people go a little bit crazy. At least one teenage boy comes close to slamming his car right into the gumbo-limbo tree that grows beside the Burger King. Girls run away from home, babies cry all night, ficus hedges explode into flame, and during one particularly awful May, half a dozen rattlesnakes set themselves up in the phone booth outside the 7-Eleven and refused to budge until June.

Magic is a way to view the world.

In another hour, I will leave and go outside, where three fir trees form a perfect triangle, where the roof of a strip of garages blocks the view of those trees from the windows of my elderly frightened neighbors, who, no doubt will call the cops if they see the flicker of candlelight, if they notice the subtle whirl of shadow and sage smoke.

The clouds obscure the gleam of the full moon, but I know where it is. The same moon that nestles above the cloud cover here in upstate NY is the same moon that watches over Boulder. The moon is entredeux.

2002-05-25T16:52:00.000-04:00

It’s the thinking that counts
Periodically, over at AKMA and Himmer and Sanders, and often spilling over to other fiefdoms in Blogaria, are meandering meaningful conversations about religion, afterlife, and all of the associated dogmas, beliefs, wishes, and hopes.

Again, b!X inadvertently reassures me that, somewhere along the line, I miraculously managed not to damage his soul. In his “In Heaven, Everything is Fine” post, he speculates on what if there were a Heaven in which everyone gets to spend eternity. In this thought experiment, he says:

It presents us with a profound choice: To live our lives however selfishly or destructively as we desire, since there will be no repercussions. Or to derive from this complete separation of worlds a deep sense of our own individual and collective power.

We and we alone would be responsible for making the world. We and we alone get to decide just what sort of world we wish to have.

I do believe that if b!X and Marek J. got together to join politically active forces, the universe definitely would bend a little in the right direction.

Now, whether it bends tonight when I conduct my Ritual for RageBoy is yet to be seen.

The crows already gathered in force at exactly 3 p.m. to begin cawing down the moon. Their insistent chant filled the circle of trees at the far end of the new park behind my building. It has begun, I thought, as I sat beside my re-planted garden, worshiping the drifting sun, offering the threads of my mind to Apollo, begging the beneficence of Pan with the new proliferation of basil bowing to his wanton will.

I hope it doesn’t rain before midnight.

I am thinking that, perhaps, for the Summer Solstice, when I will be on the coast of Maine, I will create a ritual for b!X – another Scorpio struggling to find a loving place in this world. Sounds about right to me.

2002-05-24T23:04:00.000-04:00

I’m not kidding, really.
I’m ready for the full moon – ritual objects representative of roots and wings: a feather that appeared before me on a path in the woods, to which I attached a tail made of fabric strips imprinted with RB’s words; a stick of wood inscribed with ancient symbols, wrapped in a double helix of golden glass, three rose quartz circles and various “milogras.” Abalone inserted into the tip. Don’t believe me? Here they are:

Selene, Diana, Hecate. Pan, Cernnunos.
Eagle, Bear, Raven, Buffalo.
Lilith, Lamia, Innana.
We are ready to rock and roll.

2002-05-24T10:00:00.000-04:00

"Anthurian" is the word!
Actually, it's a new blog worth reading. He's a collegue of Jeneane's, and the way that they discovered that they each are bloggers is wonderful. Check out her story and his blog. And then send him an email and tell him the Crone sent ya'.

2002-05-24T09:25:00.000-04:00

Countdown to the Full Moon
On Sunday, May 26 at about 8 a.m. on the East Coast, the moon will be at it’s fullest. This is the time of the Full Flower Moon, the Full Milk Moon. Somewhere between midnight and midnight, RageBoy will know.

The words are ready. RageBoy gave us the words. The objects are almost ready. Feather, stick, beads, crystals, sacred images. We are waiting for the moon. Full, it magnifies any energies generated. A full moon on Sun-day. The yin with the yang. Opposites superimposed. The ultimate connectedness.

If you’re so inclined, when the moon hangs full in your night sky on Sunday, say the words, feel the universe bend just enough.

2002-05-24T08:55:00.000-04:00

Truth Telling
I'm stealing this directly from Tom Tomorrow's site, This Modern World, which is quoting the following from from Media Whores Online (but Tom's link doesn't get you to the Whore's post). Thanks to b!X who pointed me to it in an email. (Why the hell isn't he posting this himself????)

"Don't miss this story in this morning's Times. I'm going to steal a summary from Media Whores Online, because they understand what the Times seems to be overlooking:

In a stunning revelation, the New York Times has reported that among the two FBI office counterterrorism chiefs who received the now famously neglected Phoenix memorandum last July was none other than John O'Neill -- then the top counterterrorist officer in the FBI's New York City's office, and the FBI's leading expert on Osama bin Laden.

O'Neill knew perfectly well what Al Qaeda was up to, and had been knocking on doors (and, at times, heads) for years to get his colleagues and superiors to understand what he did.

The last straw came in July 2001, when (as he told the French authors Guillaume Dasquié and Jean-Charles Brisard in an interview), O'Neill became fully aware that the Bush administration, anxious over negotiations for a Caspian Sea oil pipe line, had decided to back off of tracking bin Laden and opposing the Taliban, lest it risk alienating powerful Saudi families. Instead of going after the Taliban and bin Laden, the Bush Administration decided to negotiate and try to buy off the Taliban and bin Laden.

Unfortunately for the Administration, the pipe-line negotiations broke down in August.

And on September 11, bin Laden struck.

What no one has known until now is that at the very moment that O'Neill was finally giving up, in July, he was being apprised of the Phoenix memorandum -- a memo, it seems, that practically nobody inside the Bush Administration was willing to treat seriously other than himself.

At the end of August, in disgust, O'Neill left the FBI to take what he somewhat ruefully regarded as his "retirement" job --as head of security at the World Trade Center. There, on September 11, John O'Neill died at the hands of his arch-enemy bin Laden's fiendish followers.

Connect the dots? Well, duh! O'Neill got the Phoenix message. No one would listen. No one. The Bushies had backed off bin Laden. So O'Neill changed jobs -- and went on to die a martyr's death. While all the people who ignored him, on up the chain to the Oval Office, live on -- ghoulishly making political hay out of his sacrifice and their own incompetence -- and, in a sense, their own perfidy.

But here's the really amazing thing -- having unearthed this blockbuster, the New York Times reporters David Johnston and Don Van Natta, Jr., simply bury it in their story.

They report, incredibly, that O'Neill simply "retired" back in August -- ignoring the well-known background, leaving the dots unconnected!!

What did O'Neill know back in July? Whom did he try to warn? What happened when he did so? What did his "retirement" -- and its tragic consequences -- have to do with his frustrated efforts to get Bush's people to listen to him about the Phoenix memo, and/or about everything else he knew about Osama bin Laden's clear and present danger to American lives?

Here are some questions that the Bush people don't want asked, by the New York Times, by a National Board of Investigation, or by anyone else."

2002-05-23T12:24:00.000-04:00

Frank Paynter resurrects my AHA!
Back in the early feminist seventies, we were all having AHAs! -- that was how one woman writer back then (who, of course, I can't remember where or when) described the moment when we realized what had been holding us back, what had been making us angry. In the course of his e-mail interviews with me, Frank Paynter unearths the Ms. Magazine article that changed my life. My AHA! Read it here.

I had a chance to actually meet Lilly Rivlin, who wrote the article, several years ago when some of us who had contributed to Which Lilith: Feminists Writers Re-Create the First Woman -- including the editors -- gathered in a theater in Kinderhook, NY to read our pieces. What a phenomenal woman! We hugged a lot, cried a little, she gave me her card and then we each went off in our own direction to follow our chosen paths. But I've never forgotten her or how her words changed my life.

2002-05-23T10:25:00.000-04:00

I have always had a thing for Spike
If you’re not a Buffy fan, then you probably don’t know who Spike is. If you read my poem about Tin Men and Fallen Angels, then you now why I’ve always had a thing for Spike. Either way or no way, you should still read this, (found via this emailed to me by b!X, who is finally back doing some good political postings). I’m not even going to try to add anything. Salon's Stephanie Zacharek gets it good.

2002-05-23T10:11:00.000-04:00

RageBoy knows the words.
Powerful words. Words of power. Uncontained power that need to be embraced. RageBoy gave me the words to draw down the moon. Wait. Wait. It’s almost time. Unplug yourself, Halley. It’s almost time.

2002-05-22T20:53:00.000-04:00

Does Rob Breszny know about my planned virtual ritual?
This is my Free-Will Astrology reading for this week:
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): The fork did not quickly gain acceptance as an everyday eating utensil. Though introduced to Europe in the eleventh century, it was regarded as an upper class affectation for hundreds of years. "Instead of eating with her fingers like other people," a medieval clergyman wrote of a Venetian noblewoman, "the princess cuts up her food into small pieces and eats them by means of little golden forks with two prongs." I invoke this historical fact, Pisces, to draw a comparison to your life. The innovation you're now in the midst of making may be ignored and even ridiculed at first, but ultimately it will become indispensable.

2002-05-22T20:37:00.000-04:00

GEEK Force needs you before July 4
You can go to the site and read this, or read it here:

Global Effort to Eradicate Know-nothings
We have gone through many incarnations over the years. What are we now? Your guess is as good as ours. Perhaps we've (d)evolved into pure brand. You'll notice that the only link currently offered here is our logo to the left -- which links to our CafePress store. Is this all that has become of us? Does the path end here? Your guess is as good as ours. We've been resurrected in the past, and maybe we will be again. Well, we do have something of an idea brewing for the Fourth of July, but that's strictly hush-hush right now. All we're free to say right now is that we need pro-corporate quotes, preferably from people inside corporate America. Specifically, we need quotes that illustrate anti-labor, anti-environment, anti-public interest viewpoints etc. Quotes which illustrate corporate disdain for greater social justice. Quotes which demonstrate their desire for control over the rest of us. If you've got any, email them to us, preferably with specific attribution and source citation so we can confirm them. And let us be perfectly clear: We are looking for statements defending corporatism, but that clearly imply the threats of corporatism. They could be quotes against attempts at organizing a union. They could be quotes about how environmental laws interfere with the free market. They could be quotes which illustrate a regard only for stockholders, and to Hell with anyone else. We are not looking for anti-corporate quotes. The reasons for this will become clear once this project goes public.

Do it or the Crone with zap you with zits.

2002-05-22T13:57:00.000-04:00

Do you believe in magic?
i'll tell you about the magic
it can free your soul
but it's like trying to
tell a stranger bout
rock and roll
--- the Lovin' Spoonfulls

I'm sure a believer in the magic of the web. My young Polish friend Marek J. is going to telephone me; I've already spoken by phone several times with Jeneane; Frank Paynter is interviewing me for his blog; I get personal emails from the legendary RageBoy.... what more could a cybercrone want?

For now, maybe to make her debut doing a long-distance virtual ritual. So I've decided that on the full moon, this Sunday, I'm going to perform a ritual on behalf of RageBoy. I'm not going to tell you what it is intended to do, but if you feel the earth move and the universe shift a little, you know that it's working. Do I believe in magic? I believe that there is a significant overlap between the processes of magic and the unconscious workings of the mind. And so, I am in the process of creating a ritual object and ritual words, which, combined with the "right" intention, might just work.

Those of you Buffy fans who saw the very last scene of the series finale last night might have a vague idea of the direction I'm going. So, on Sunday, May 26, when the moon rises full over your heart, think of RageBoy. I will be.

2002-05-21T12:13:00.000-04:00

BBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
Today I’m going to blog about a bunch of “Bs” that I know. No, they’re not Bastards, although there are some who might hold that opinion of them.

I’ll start with rageBoy, whose life (you know if you track him on EGR) reads like one long acidy, usually libidinous, trip. Even though my GEEKforce son (another B I’ll get to later) tried to get me to subscribe to EGR’s Topica list for years, an early skim of rBoy’s assumedly skewed-brain ramblings gave me pause. A long pause. A few years pause. But somehow, here I am, not only subscribed to EGR but linked there as well. Go figure. Bs in my bonnet.

Recently rBoy discovered rob Breszny, who’s the strange brain behind Free Will Astrology. Until recently , I subscribed to a weekly astrological newsletter from Breszny, who also writes from a lopsided right brain. His bizarre readings were often strangely relevant, and I used to post them on my blog. I discovered Breszny through my B-son, as I also discovered rBoy. From what I can assume, Breszny and rBoy tripped through their coming of age in at about the same time. As did my Brother, whose brain, however, took a sharp turn to the left instead of the right. Except when he writes his music. Oddly enough, I unsubscribed to Breszny just before I decided to subscribe to rBoy. That was lucky, since I'm sure that my brain certainly would have had a major misfire trying to absorb all of that eclectic bombast. Bs in my brain.

Which leads me to b!X, my Scorpio son, of another generation than the other Bs, and, as far as I can tell since I live across the country from him, pretty much drug-free (except for nicotine and alcohol and caffeine; but I think those count too). I just discovered that both rBoy and b!X are Scorpios. (Well, I always knew b!X was; did I ever tell you that he was yelling at the world before he was all the way out of my beautiful vagina?) My Brother is also a Scorpio. Not that that’s important, but it is coincidentally interesting. There’s something fundamentally similar about b!X and rBoy. Something about having a distinct voice and the urge to use it. Only b!X has been too silent lately. That worries me. Blog b!X! Blog!! Bs in my family.

Believing in the importance of coming full circle, I’m back to rBoy and his continuing saga of self-instruction. Yes, I said Instruction not Destruction. Like the magician, the jester, the fool, -- Loki, Coyote -- with misdirection and sad reflection, his virtual antics hold a mirror to both his own complex truths and even some of our own. Blog, rBoy. Blog. Be. Be. Be.

2002-05-20T23:33:00.000-04:00

Best Blogroll I've Ever Seen!
Got this from stavrosthewonderchicken. Start with this homepage and then check out the blogroll. Love it.

2002-05-20T15:58:00.000-04:00

Big Picture, Little Picture
Little picture: RIP Basil. And tomatoes. A couple of inches of snow and two nights of frost will do it. As in life, timing is everything.

Big Picture: Madeline Albright rightfully calls the Bush administration “bi-polar.” I was pointed to this from b!X, who is finally posting again, which makes me happy because I rely on him to keep the big picture in front of my nose. (The struggle of libraries to maintain their strong support of intellectual freedom is another important issue dear to my heart that he recently posted about.)

"They talk about the importance of the rule of law, but seem allergic to treaties designed to strengthen the rule of law in areas such as money-laundering, biological weapons, crimes against humanity, and the environment," Albright said in a commencement speech at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

I don’t agree with all of Albright’s positions, but in this case, “You go, sister crone!”

2002-05-20T12:04:00.000-04:00

OK. Here’s the thing…..
I’m obsessing over what really is a compliment about my writing from Mike Golby (see previous post). I’m not sure why I’m obsessing. I think it has something to do with my really wanting to be a female version of RageBoy but not having the balls. (heh)

It’s got something to do with being super-sensitive to the privacy issues of the others in my life. For example, I’ve never blogged about my brother. You don’t even know I have a brother-who-makes-me-crazy, right? And I rarely say anything about my ex-husband. He guards his privacy jealously. And I don’t use my last name very often because it’s my ex-husband’s last name and I don’t want to infringe upon his privacy. B!X reads this blog; but he’s a remarkably accepting guy and has never even suggested that I censor what I write.

Last night I dreamed about blogging, and I woke up wondering if Mike Golby’s wife reads his blog and if so what she thinks. I think we all know what RageBoy’s heart’s desire thinks. I doubt if Jeneane’s family (other than her husband) reads her blog. If they do, what do they think? Does she care?

I never wrote about my father until after he died. My mother’s still here, and I only write the most general things about my life these days with her, even though there’s an awful lot of frustration and sorrow and even anger that my gut would probably like to spill out on these pages. I don’t know why I don’t do that. Maybe those are the in-the-world details that I choose to omit. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? (Am I a good witch or a bad witch?)

Maybe my blogging reticence does have something to do with my need to keep a balance, not fall off the edge and take anyone with me. Maybe it’s because I have done that in the past and don’t want to do it here. Maybe it does have something to do with the “wisdom” of age.

Well, Mike, I’ll bet you never thought that your insightful words would cause such a stir in my psyche. And, you see, that’s what I really like about blogging – the interchange, the stirring up of ideas and perspectives and feelings and ideologies. The interchange. The Comments.

It occurs to me here that Shelley and Halley write beautifully and personally and balanced, and they get lots of Comments anyway. They spark interchange.

The question for me still remains: Do I want to stir things up or do I just want to write the kinds of “personal essays” with which I seem to be most comfortable. Sometimes too much comfort gets stale and boring. Just something for me to think about.

2002-05-19T23:37:00.000-04:00

Golby Explains Why My Blog Has So Few Comments
(Actually, I had been wondering about that.)
He says:
Unlike, as Nithia and I were discussing, our friend and resident crone of the blogs, Elaine , I am not an 'holistic' blogger. Sorry, Elaine, we were talking male / female, yin / yang, and you came up as the perfect example of the complete blogger. You're open to the Web in a private way, you give all sides of yourself while retaining those in-the-world details you choose to omit. You are, or have become, extremely difficult to comment on because you generally paint a full picture without compromising yourself.

Hmmm.. Hmmmmmmmm. Mike Golby makes me think about that. He’s right. I don’t compromise myself.

Hmm. I guess that’s true. I write my blog like a newspaper commentary. I omit details that would compromise me. Hmmm. Because my kids read my blog? Because non-blogger friends read my blog? Because I am manipulating what you think of me? Because I am inventing myself as I want to be rather than presenting myself as I am? Because I really am balanced and holistic?

So, this is what I Commented back to Golby:
Heh. Balance? I've been through depression, divorce, deaths.... just like so many others. I spent several crazy years drinking and disco-ing and "dating" (that's a euphemism) even a little toking -- and this while trying to raise my two incredible kids. I've come a long way, baby, and if I seem more balanced now it's because I had a lot of professional help getting through my dark night of the soul. But don't put me on any pedestal yet. I've got a few more wild dances in me to set the scales askew.

These days, however, my life is constrained by the fact that I live in a small one-bedroom apartment across the hall from my mother so that I can do what needs to be done for her. (Imagine living across the hall from your mother; it’s very inhibiting in any number of ways.) To make room for my sewing machine and the various artsy/craftsy stuff I do, I only have one twin bed in my bedroom. And there’s no one around here with whom I’m likely to have a relationship that would necessitate a bigger bed. I’ve sort of taken a hiatus from ballroom dancing because I can’t find anyone to dance with who’s really fun and sexy and worth spending time with. My thirty-something attitudes and energies have nowhere to go in this confined lifestyle. I miss the passionate life that I once led . And so I keep as my mantra lines from Theordore Roethke’s “The Lost Son” – A lively understandable spirit / once entertained you. / It will come again. / Be still. / Wait.

Balance. Yes. That’s the one thing that “aging” (god, I hate that word) has helped me to better understand. But just to throw things off balance for a minute, let me share some “poetry” I wrote not that long ago in response to a challenge from an distinctly unbalanced poet/colleague/friend to do an erotic poetry chapbook in collaboration with him. Here were some of my contributions to “Eating Disorders and Other Mastications,” which is what I titled the chapbook.

1.
something about turkey necks,
gizzards nestled in palm of hand
stroked with oil
moist heated,
until firm, juice-laden,
ready for needing,
nibbling, gnawing --
lip-licking
fine night dining,
giving thanks.

2.
no skinny men, please,
unless they’re hairy
from their necks down
(so that I have to hunt
for distinguishing features)
even on their backs,
like beasts to groom
with taming tongue,
or stroke against --
sweet skin on fur
smelling of caves, leaves,
banked fires.

3.
My mother’s words
were words of fear:
stay away from dark
eyes, streets, corners, bars,
skin, moons, hearts –
things that lurk, lure, linger.
And so, of course,
I conjure shadows,
wait at crossroads,
shrive the stranger
of a heart gone wild.

4.
unsatisfied still after
too much plum wine,
steamy rice,
bold-faced fortunes,
I let you (lead you
bring you)
stave my hunger
with your limpid kumquat,
leave me dripping
with the dredges
of those hot green teas.

5.
Saturday Night Fevers

Those were the nights!
tho’ I never did the coke
in the shadows behind the bar
where the blue-eyed bouncer
(strategically sun-bronzed and bleached,
macho-hot in open shirt gleaming gold)
found new places for fast hands.
But I’d arrive gone already
from toking on the road,
primed for fast stepping,
skirt hiked high on thigh,
smile that said ready
to hustle me dizzy,
spinning close and low,
dropping now --
all arms
and sweat
and bass-booming blood
binding me to the heat
of those gone dancing nights.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose. Now is the time for balance. At least most of the time. Sigh.

2002-05-19T16:02:00.000-04:00

I'm Going Where Bob Dylan Went
That's up to the Caffe Lena in Saratoga, which is the oldest continuously run coffeehouse in America. According to its history page, Bob Dylan played there on his first tour of the East. Don McLean first played "American Pie" on the Caffè Lena Stage. Arlo Guthrie sang there long before the rest of the world heard his music.

I'm heading up this evening with some friends to hear a friend of theirs, Joan Taub, whose unique and powerful alto voice has been featured recently with the Four Fabulous Females. Her vocal style has been described as a smokey Patsy Cline, crossed with the strength and sweetness of Georgia Brown. This is her first solo performance, featuring warm love ballads and breezy boppin' blues.

Of course, I'm taping the series finale of X-Files, even though I haven't watched it much since Duchovny left. But, hey, this is IT, folks.

2002-05-19T15:05:00.000-04:00

Rage on, Mick.

Mick Jagger, now 60 years old, is going on tour with his Rolling Stones. Some think that he’s too old. I agree with Providence Journal columnist Mark Patinkin, who had this to say in a recent article:

Years from now, if the Stones need walkers to dance across stage, perhaps even I’ll admit it’s time. But if you can still play the game, there’s room in this culture for those who choose not to retire gracefully from it.

Tina Turner and Mick Jagger, my esteemed contemporaries. Maybe I shouldn’t look to rock stars as role models, but they are the ones who are push the envelope on the stereotypes of "older" people. That’s what I like about their personas. That and they’re not afraid of getting in the faces of their critics. They’ve still got it and they flaunt it. Flaunt. Flaunt.

Yes, indeed, rock, roll, and rage on.

2002-05-18T21:25:00.000-04:00

What it means to be a Crone.
When God was a woman, she was worshipped in three aspects: Maiden, Mother/Warrior, Crone – the original Holy Trinity. Over the millennia, just as older women became less and less honored and respected, so did the image of the Crone-as-Wise-Woman become tarnished.

To be a Crone is to no longer be either maiden or mother; to have moved past those female roles into a place of personal freedom, self-knowledge, and deep experience; to understand the dark places, the dream places. The archetype of the Crone brings death so that there can be rebirth.

What does a Crone look like? She can look like Margaret Thatcher, Bella Abzug, or Janet Reno. She can look like your favorite grandmother or your little blue-haired neighbor. And, in this day and age, she can also look like Tina Turner or Judy Dench, Julie Christie or Blythe Danner, Jacqueline Bissett -- or even me. (I was going to mention Marlo Thomas, Jane Fonda, and Dyan Cannon --Cannon is the same age as Janet Reno and me --, but they’ve had too much surgical enhancement to qualify as authentic.)

So, when I promote myself as the Resident Crone of Blogdom, please don’t imagine the patriarchal stereotype of the “old hag.”

And, as Halley Suitt continues to cast her version of Anything Goes, I’m auditioning for the part Mitzi Gaynor* played in the movie. I am a dancer, after all.

*In 1989, when she was just about my age, Mitzi Gaynor embarked on a 36-city, 11-month tour with Anything Goes.

2002-05-18T10:26:00.000-04:00

It's Snowing on My Tomatoes!!
Forty years ago, by early May, we would throw on our shorts and tank tops, take our books and Coca-Colas out to the quad and start working on our tans and cramming for finals. As I sit here deciding whether to turn the heat on or not, it's snowing on my six beefsteak tomato plants, eighteen basil plants and assorted other herbs. The parsley will make it; it made it through the entire winter. I did mulch. In Jeneane's world it will never snow on tomato plants.

Last night, I had one of my recurring dreams: I parked my car (white 2001 Subaru outback sedan, loaded) in some parking lot and then couldn't find it. At one point I was walking down to the parking lot after work in very high heels and slouch socks which kept falling down. I saw my reflection in a store window and was embarrassed at how tacky it looked. And then when I got to the huge parking lot, it was dark and I knew that I had to change my shoes so that I could walk around and look for my car. I spent the entire rest of the dream trying to change my shoes. I never did find my car.

I have had frequent dreams about my car ever since I was married and we lived out in the country and only had one car -- which never seemed to be available for me. I used to dream that my husband would pack up the car into a briefcase size and leave with it. Heh.

Elsewhere in cyberspace, Halley Suitt and Chris Locke attempt to exchange brains. Personally, I think the only way it will work is if we do a massive cyber-ritual where we all get online and chant Boy George lyrics.
Ain't nobody's business
How I live my life
I learnt my lesson
Whether it's wrong or right
Ain't nobody baby
Gonna tell me how
I should live my life
Do live my way now

Satisfaction can be hard to find
I go crazy keeping it all inside

Funny. I've never wanted to be Chris Locke. At various times, I've wanted to be Tina Turner or Erica Jong. Today, I like being a blonde, sassy, sexy Crone -- a dancing Coyote Woman (I saw a t-shirt with an image of that and now wish I had bought it) and, mostly, today, I just want it to stop snowing on my tomato plants.

And, personally, if we're going to use technology to create the kind of male mate all of us (well, almost all of us) heterosexual females wish we had, I opt for the cyborg in Marge Piercy's He, She, It. Drool.

2002-05-17T21:56:00.000-04:00

The World According to Jeneane

I had a good cry today – the kind of cry that you feel building inside your chest, rising up into your throat, linking the pain in your heart with the hurt in your head (the one that swells just behind your third eye when you try not to cry over what you don’t want to feel).

Jeneane blogged a world that made me cry like that, made feel forgotten yearnings for deep and safe connections. Made me remember how I thought those connections would be there with husband and family, how during the ‘60s we used to fantasize about gathering all of our kindred-spirit friends and seceding our little 1/3 acre of house and trees from the Union. How now my women friends and I sometimes imagine that we might someday find land and build places for ourselves around a central room so that none of us would have to grow old alone. And all of that time in between, trying not to think too much about just how far I had wandered from the kind of world that would give me a safe and connected place and yet not steal my soul.

The world according Jeneane is my dream too:
A real place, a magical place that nurtures the ebb and flow of bloggers, our dreams, a place of potions and remedies, a healing place, a place we could all come, give, take, then go—or maybe never leave.

Go and read Jeneane’s world-dream. And if the cry builds from your heart until it hurts your head and forces out the wet sobs you’ve been holding in for longer than you can remember, then you’re one of us, you have a place in this world too – a place in a magical connected world that not only doesn’t steal your soul -- it gives it space to soar. Welcome to Blogaria.

2002-05-17T21:08:00.000-04:00

Hail Halley, Full of Grace
Halley Suitt begs my forgiveness missing my phone calls when I tried to reach her from my daughter’s in Boston. Hell, Halley, I’m disappointed, but not discouraged. We’ll get together yet. And with my forgiveness and AKMA’s blessings (they DID manage to get their families together in New Haven), thou art definitely blessed among women (bloggers).

Believe me, I know the way that six-year-olds have of stimulating an occasional need for a hide-under-the-covers afternoon. Heh. Just imagine what it was like trying to mother a 6-year old b!X.

Now, about your RageBoy wannabe urge. We might have a way………

2002-05-16T15:45:00.000-04:00

The Master's Voice
It's more Chris Locke than RageBoy, but it's still THE "voice" that we all know and love speaking the truth of the web. And you can even hear his actual mellow tones as he talks to Tess Vigeland on NPR's Morning Marketplace about the marvels of weblogging. According to Chris, the program's editors cut out a lot of his references to specific webloggers, but what they left in is his right-on take on what's really important about weblogging, and that's what matters most. It's worth the listen.

2002-05-16T15:17:00.000-04:00

Vote for zefrank
When I first started blogging I stumbled on www.zefrank.com and spent a whole evening giggling and popping from one page of his to another. It's a virtual playground. His sections on "Annie" still make me laugh, and if you're a cat lover, be sure to check them out. And then go and vote for him in the webby awards. The instructions on how to do so are on the first page of his site.

2002-05-15T23:15:00.000-04:00

The Vagina Knows It’s Beautiful

Do I have your attention? Today is “Turn Beauty Inside Out Day.”

As I drove out yesterday to visit my pregnant daughter in Boston, I listened, on NPR, to a presentation by Eve Ensler, the author of The Vagina Monologues. You can access the whole presentation, either to read or listen to. She’s worth listening to.

Meanwhile, think about some of these things that she said:

I often hear women in the West talking about the terrible lot of women in Afghanistan, but are you aware that 700,000 women in America are raped every year? We all have different forms of enforced burqas. Every culture has it. Whether it's an idea or a fascist tyranny of what women are supposed to look like - so that women go to the extremes of liposuction, anorexia and bulemia to achieve it - or whether it's being covered in a burqa, we all have deep, profound, ongoing daily forms of oppression. If you're a 13-year-old girl in this country and there's an ideal of what you're supposed to look like, do you really have a choice to look like yourself? The pressure of capitalist consumer culture is more than any 13-year-old girl can bear.

The interviewer for a New York Times Magazine piece kept saying to me, "You're so dramatic." I finally realized what that means: You're really alive. Things really bother you. Things really move you and excite you. Look at teenage girls. They get crazy, excited, pissed off, and they do it all the time. Then the world comes along and shuts it down and clamps it and punishes it, makes it immoral or too sexy. Then we get to be good, contained, quiet, behaved, then disappear.

We have been trained as women to divide against each other, to fight for each other's space, to not believe there's enough for each other.

If you're jealous of your sister, if you think she's shinier, bigger or more fabulous than you, get over it. If you can do anything for a sister today, if you have a moment of jealousy or competition, give her something. If I feel competitive, I just give it away: Have it, take it. Otherwise, I'm saying there's only room for me to shine and not for you to shine - and we all have to shine right now. Remember that Afghanistan is everywhere and that all of us get to be big, so that we can take back the planet.

I don't think women should spend their time recovering and surviving. We have better things to do, like feeding the planet, nurturing, creating, envisioning. If we bang, beat, burn, mutilate and destroy women, we've destroyed everything. If we really put our attention on stopping violence toward women, it would be like bringing back the sun or earth. It's not coincidental that the earth is being destroyed as women are being destroyed.

Know and love thy vagina, and hold it sacred. Do not give it to anyone you do not want to give it to. I mean that as a metaphor. So much of what happens to girls is that we don't know our desires and bodies. We don't know what we want, so we enter the world in a haze. I love college students: They have cunt clubs and big vagina parades and balls, and they have speak-outs. They wear vagina pins. They're outrageous and they're fully here. I look at them and think, What happened to all of us? When did we lose this? Be as revolutionary and passionate as you are, and don't let anyone talk you out of it.

One of the last things Eve Ensler says is this:

In the process of doing "The Vagina Monologues" I have met so many tender, seeking, loving men who really want the world to be better for women and men. We have to allow them to find ways to embrace their own vulnerability and tenderness. We have to stop shaming them for not being these superheroes and power creatures that they're supposed to be.

My soon-to-be grandson has one of these exceptional men as his father. Somehow my son-in-law manages to be a “regular guy” who is tender and sweet and easy and beautiful inside. (And he’s cute, too.)

I spent the past day with my beautiful and pregnant daughter. I held my hand on her belly and felt my grandson respond to my touch. I looked at my daughter, no make-up, hair up in a straggly ponytail, sweat pants hanging below her incredible roundness, glasses sliding down her nose -- and my heart hurt from the beauty of it all -- and her spirit, her heart, her humor. Sprawled across the couch in gestating disarray, she looked more stunningly lovely than she ever has even during her years of modeling and acting and glamorous headshots (which, by the way, cost me a fortune!) And when my son-in-law came home at looked at her, put his hand on her belly, well, it still makes me want to cry from the sweet, sweet beauty of it all.

*********
And that brings me to Chris Locke’s most recent Topica essay, in which he admits “God I do love women” and goes on to yearn for that as yet unmet “partner-in-crime” who will “cover his back,” knows how to be tough as well as tender, knows how to be his best friend.

She says, "You got that certain something..."

"What you give me," I say, "takes my breath away."

I check her eyes to see if she's lying. Gypsy woman. Girl that can tell my fortune, read my future.

Locke’s yearning narrative is seductive because it is what we all yearn for – someone to watch our backs; playfully go toe-to-toe with us; stand with us and by us and for us -- protect us and accept our protection – a partner, a best friend who shares our passions and understands our prisons. The key to our locks. The keys to Locke.

Cast the sticks, pick a card, read the runes, toss a coin. It’s such a crapshoot, isn’t it?

But if you win, it’s absolutely beautiful, inside and out.

2002-05-13T12:21:00.000-04:00

The Blessings of Rain
It's pouring in Albany, NY today and it will rain for the next couple of days. Great for my garden. Not great for my trip to the Boston area tomorrow for an overnight to visit my 7-month pregnant daughter, probably for the last time before the big event. While I'm there, I'm going to call Halley Suitt, although I probably won't have time to see her in person. I also talked to Jeneane on the phone a little while ago. There is something special about the company of special women, even if it's virtual.

Which leads me to bring up a very interesting article I stumbled onto last week that I'm trying to wade through because, while pretty dense, has some exceptionally interesting things to suggest about the way women blend their virtual and real lives. I'd love to have some others read it and give me their opinions. In addition to including some good related links, Feminist Cybermaterialism: Gender and the Body in Cyberspace offers some fascinating theories, such as:

.... we have the feminist analysis of cyberspace which very clearly takes the point of view that the male in cyberspace is attempting to transcend the body whereas the female or the feminine is attempting to use the technology to bring the body into cyberspace and cyberspace to the body.

and the idea that cyberspace is liminal space -- a place that is neither here nor there -- and

...people in liminal space have no responsibilities; they are beholden to no one. They are completely outside of society. But what happens is that, when they come back, they have a renewed appreciation for the order of the society in which they live.

All of this is relevant to the conversation going on in the Comments on Shelley Power's blog.

2002-05-12T22:31:00.000-04:00

Hooooo Hoooooo
Stay tuned for the “Mothers Day 2000” report from OWL (Older Women’s League), which will soon have, online, its analysis of how Bush’s hopes to privatize Social Security will devastate the financial stability of older women. From the OWL site:

Social Security Privatization and Women
As OWL members know, women are the face of Social Security, comprising 60 percent of beneficiaries over 65 and 72 percent of recipients over 85. Women depend on Social Security's guaranteed, lifetime benefits: 27 percent of women over 65 rely on Social Security for 90 percent of their retirement income. A comprehensive discussion of Social Security and its future cannot be had without women's realities, perspectives, and needs being made perfectly clear. OWL's 2002 Mother's Day report will prove instrumental in this discussion.

For those of you not versed in feminist mythology, the owl is associated with Lilith, the first “uppity woman,” whose identity merges with that of the Crone.

2002-05-11T23:21:00.000-04:00

Blueprint for Children

Tonight, David Letterman begins his monologue with “Tomorrow is Mother’s Day – that’s the day we honor the person who we blame for all of our personal problems.”

I was one of those kids who felt as though she must be a changeling or else adopted. My dreams were never my mother’s dreams. My “otherness” confused her, angered her, frustrated her, disappointed her, made her cry. My mother seemed to see me as an appendage of hers; she couldn’t understand my independent will, my need to separate myself from my family’s strong conservative attitudes.

I couldn’t wait to go away to college, but as glad as I was to leave home, I still wished that my mother would somehow come to understand me and accept me for who I was. And so, my freshman year, I sent her a copy of Kahil Gibran’s The Prophet for Mother’s Day.

And on the book’s flyleaf, before my signature preceded by “Love,…” I copied the following from the section On Children:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Since my mother has always been a committed Catholic, I figured that Gibran’s language style and references to a capital He might make the passage have the ring of “sacred truth” for her. It didn’t work.

It didn’t work for her, but it worked for me and the way I have tried to view my own children.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

Today CNN reported that A U.N. summit approved a new blueprint late Friday to improve the world for children in the next 15 years. The agreement came after contentious negotiations between the United States and other nations on sex education, abortion and the death penalty.

Succumbing to conservative pressure, the United States stood in opposition to the180 nations that adopted – by consensus and with a round of applause -- the final summit document, "A World Fit For Children." However, at the insistence of the United States, the intent of the original document regarding "health and reproductive services" was diluted to skirt the issue of abortion counseling, and, in addition, the United States is excluded from a requirement barring the death penalty or life imprisonment for those under the age of 18.

"A World Fit for Children" – except if they live in the United States, where an adult minority of small minds and stagnant souls refuse to acknowledge that life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.