Springtime
in Alaska

I’m not blind to the stark natural beauty in the image above.  What disturbs me is that for me the outstanding feature there is the snowmobile trail across the muskeg.  I’d love to just blissfully enjoy the scenery, but I get tripped up by the details.  

They’ve been out there on the sparse snow, tearing up the vegetation, the sheltered rabbit runs and thickets where all sorts of little things hide and nest in summer.  I felt like weeping when I walked out the cul de sac this morning.

This is “dedicated parkland”, a protected wetland that the developers who subdivided this old homestead couldn’t fill in and sell.  They left strips of it among and adjacent to the big blocks of one-acre lots in this subdivision.  No governmental agency administers or supervises these little parks.  They are, I suppose, the common responsibility of us, the landowners here.  However much I would have liked to have gone out there with the pump shotgun and run off those fools who strayed all over the place off the established trails last night, it seemed imprudent.

If I had called the troopers, by the time they came, the snowmachines would have been gone, and our troopers are spread pretty thin out here, with bigger fish to fry.  The weekend snowmachine pack was just passing through, tearing up muskeg parallel to the highway for who knows how far.  Koji barked and bristled the whole time they were out there, engines screaming up into the hypersonic range.  They whined and buzzed  around out there in the open area, then took off toward the railroad tracks and on…. …and my dog growled and woofed in here for a few minutes and then they were gone and peace returned.  I didn’t give them another thought until I walked out there and saw the results of their brief frolic in our park.

I’m not sure if I’ve stated this in these bald terms here before, but I love this land.  I love the ecosystem that exists here, and with some thought and soul-searching effort, I love the snowmachiners, too.  I can relate.  I look off along those frozen strips of wetland between the trees and think how sweet it would be to explore them.  But on foot it’s too hard on me and any other vehicle is too hard on the land unless the snow is deep.  This year’s snow is barely there.

Areas in the state and national parks around here, if they aren’t strictly closed to snowmachines all the time, close when the snow is too sparse to protect the land.  This year, the Anchoraguans have a long drive before they even get here, about a hundred miles.  It’s a much longer drive pulling those trailers on slick narrow roads, another 60-75 miles now, to find snow that is deep enough for safe snowmobiling.

When they trigger avalanches and bury themselves and their machines, Greyfox looks on the bright side.  He says it’s thinning the herd.  I see the waste, and I sympathize with their families.

But let’s not dwell on the torn up ground.  Look up in the trees in this shot and the one above.  I have never seen these woods this clean and thin.  The wind pruned the trees and blew down every old leaf and a lot of the dead limbs.  Way to go, Ma Gaia!  The birches are all spruced up, so to speak.  **snicker**

Snowmachiners are important to the economy in this valley.  Two campgrounds, some general stores and gas stations, and a motel in our neighborhood are owned by friends of ours.  We know how rough this season without snow has been.  Nature messed with the recreational snowmobilers, too, making them drive higher in the mountains and farther north.

It messed with the bottom line for snowmachine dealers and mechanics in Anchorage because so many guys can’t afford the extra gas and time to go the extra miles.  In normal years, there’s snowmachining within minutes of downtown.  This winter, not within 150 miles.  They stayed in town and rented videos or took the family to the zoo.  Air quality in Anchorage, in consequence, is about as bad as it has ever been.

Roadside business all up the valley has sucked this winter.  No snow, no dough, but we’ve had cleaner air and quieter nights.  So the weather messes with the people and the people mess with the land and each other and the old leaning tree there is leaning a little more than before, and life goes on.

I have plans.  I’m not generally a good carrier-out of plans.  I’m distractable and most of the time I get more done spontaneously, but sometimes plans happen.

Some people want readings, and the readings will start showing up here soon.  Some of those people are ones I said I’d read for months ago.  Sorry about that… like I said, I’m distractable.

First I will do a blog full of disclaimers and general info for anyone wanting a reading.  That should be fun. (not)

My kid couldn’t recall ever having heard Bob Dylan’s “With God on Our Side” and he took it on himself to find an MP3 “for Mom”.  I listened to it this morning, over and over, and edited those transcribed lyrics I’d copied off the web.  Now the transcription reads like the recording sounds.

Now my headphones are rockin’ with a more upbeat (vaguely) anti-war ditty, Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”

We didn’t start the fire 
It was always burning, 
Since the world’s been turning. 
We didn’t start the fire 
Well we didn’t light it, 
But we tried to fight it.

If you know the song, you’ll recall the long strings of names of people, places and events:  Harry Truman… Dien Bien Phu… payola… Marilyn Monroe…  This English language class in Germany and their teacher (back row, right) transcribed the whole thing and linked every name, place, etc., to a brief bio or description.  It is at the song-title link above.

Psionic Shitstorm

My Tarot reading on the State of the World got some noteworthy comments.  The conversation that went on around here while I was responding to them drew the “psionic shitstorm” remark from Doug.  I’ve responded to a bunch of those comments below, but first I want to answer a question that came up over the long Sins and Virtues questionnaire:

Veruca_salt00  asked:

“…Have you ever put in a person’s name in Google? Chances are, it’ll come back with information… that might be your key to finding Larry Joe Turner (if you really want to)….”

Yes!  I love Googling.  I found my long lost middle aged “little boy” Will that way.  I’ll have to dig around for the links to those early blogs when my thirty-something son and I, who were separated when he was a toddler, were reunited by Google.  I didn’t have many readers back then, and maybe some of you would appreciate the story.

Fortunately, Will had had an unusual surname.  With Larry Joe Turner, the name is so common that I get back too much information, none of it specific.  A forty year timegap since I last knew his whereabouts, and my total ignorance of his birthdate and social security number, make it a big field to sort out.  I’ve even tried some paid people-finders, but to no avail.

Just in case Xanga can help, here is what I know:  Larry Joe Turner was born in the early 1940s, possibly in Mancos, Colorado, or maybe Wichita, Kansas.  He had close relatives in both places.  His mother, whom everyone called “Dolly” because she had been a preemie cradled in a shoebox, but whose true name I don’t recall, had been unmarried when he was born. 

She later married a man named Ensley and had a second son, Perry Dean Ensley.  They lived, along with her mother, in Mancos, Colorado, in 1962, the last time I saw or heard from them.  Dolly’s brother Lonnie Turner and his wife and two sons lived in the 1800 block of Exchange Place in Wichita, KS in the fifties and sixties.

Lonnie’s elder son, Dennis Turner, was born in the early- to mid-1940s and went to Hamilton Jr. High and West High School there.  Dennis’s HS graduating class was probably 1961, if he graduated.  I had no contact with Dennis, Larry’s cousin, after about ’56, except indirectly through Larry.

When I last heard anything about Larry, he was working for the U.S.Forest Service planting trees in the Four Corners area of the SW.  He was a fast-draw competitor with a few championships at the time, and had worked as a stunt man and gunfighter in Old West recreations at Cow Town theme park in Wichita.

Yeah… I really want to find him, though I  haven’t a clue what I’d do with him if I did, and I think his daughter Angie would like to find him, too.

And now for the promised psionic shitstorm…

zoodom  wrote:
“…You know what I love about the tarot cards though? They are just good common SENSE! Know what I mean?”

Absolutely!  “Common sense”, the collective consciousness, is where those archetypal images reside.  The bluebirds of happiness and the clouds of uncertainty in the imagery on the cards is an echo across time of the instructive murals in the halls of the Temples of Wisdom back through ancient Egypt to Atlantis, or so it is written, and so I recall, if memory serves.

RoseCrow  asked if I use:

“…the Wang GD Tarot or the Cicero GD Tarot?”

My deck, pictured in that blog, is illustrated by Robert Wang.

She also asked me to:

“…please post a reading from time to time….”

I will, and thanks for the suggestion.  I already have a subject for the first one.  We’re discussing parameters now:  issues such as anonymity or not, a focus for the reading….

CoalMinersDaughter  wrote:

“…I would love to have a reading from…maybe someday!

If you want one from me, let me know.

crazybear  said:

“…I had my tarot read on a few website’s but they tell me almost the same thing….”

I would consider that to be validation of the same sort that one gets in a second medical opinion.  And yet I get the impression you don’t really trust it.  Or am I misreading?

This from Mandrake  reminded me of one of the most valuable things I’ve taken from the times when I have exchanged readings with other psychics, or just sat around with others at a psychic fair and talked shop during slow times:

“…it’s nice to know that forgetting the readings is normal, since once I’m done I rarely remember what I’ve said.”

It’s helpful to share our experiences, since they don’t teach this stuff in school.

Sweet MyKi_Whatzerface gushed at me:

“Oh My.
I have shivers. Still from reading this… I cannot believe that I chose to click onto your site today for whatever reason — on this very day that I am looking for facts– and Oh my, it comes to me in the form of your divination… and with Tarot cards which I’ve lately been looking into no less… oh my. People who scoff at the mystical, they probably have never had this sort of goose-pimple-making experience in their lives… I believe wholeheartedly in what you’ve said… and I am comforted by it. And what a great tutorial into tarot reading to boot.”

Thanks for the validation, MyKi.  The synchronicities associated with which particular people happen to walk past my booth when I’m free, or see one of my ads at a meaningful moment (Sarah  found me in a magazine in, I think, a tattoo parlor, and she’s not just my soulmate but she brought me to Xanga.), always blow me away.  I once had a worry cross my mind that these insightful readings of mine were not getting to a wide enough audience.  My spirit guides assured me that I could stay right where I was and they would bring the ones who needed me to me.

FlightsOfWhimsy  said:
“…I do readings using regular playing cards (I was taught by my grandmother) and they are sometimes so accurate that it scares me….”

I used to get chills at the accuracy of what I saw in the cards.  Occasionally, I still get a thrill or a chill but now they usually come before I lay the cards down.  Then when I look at what’s laid out there, I go, “Yeah, that’s it, uh-huh!” 

Go ahead and get the Tarot off the shelf.  It gives you everything you get from a regular deck of cards, plus another set of face cards (young women to go with the jacks), and the 22 Trumps with their richly symbolic pictures.  Some deck, sometime, will probably speak to you.

fatgirlpink  wrote:
“I’ve been reading since my early teens….”

I’m not surprised.  You’re one of the Xangans I took to from the first entry of yours I read.  I know I was among your first handful of subscribers.  Something drew me to your site.  We have soul-bonds you and I, and it’s appropriate, to my mind, that Tarot should be one of them.
 
Dunazade says:
“…I am an atheist.  I believe in nothing.  …although I continue to search for it, I still lack it.”

D., this comment from you and an old song that wouldn’t stop repeating in my head all day yesterday, led to my blog, “With God on Our Side.”

How ironic it is, that I work to shed my beliefs while you look for something to believe in.  I understand your frustration; I’ve been there.  I couldn’t believe in the myths and fairy tales most people took comfort from.  The only beliefs I had were an odd assortment of things my parents told me or that I learned from school, friends and TV.  Then I started listening to the voice of Spirit within, and a few years after that I got exposed to some progressive New Age ideas (beautifully expressed by Michael Misita in How to Believe in Nothing and Set Yourself Free) and started clearing the false and limiting beliefs from my consciousness.

Then, Dunazade says:
“…something is changing in me.  I don’t know what it is.  It is something I have never felt.  I hesitate to call it spiritual or anything of that nature because I still don’t know what this thing is that has consumed my life.  Why am I telling you this?  I have absolutely no idea but something is telling me not to hesitate.”

Will you be my next subject for a reading?  I’d like to do a reality check for you.  Something tells me it will be interesting.

This comment I couldn’t resist answering, but maybe I should have tried harder:
“I won’t let anyone read for me. I don’t want to know.”
James

That’s a not-uncommon attitude.  I’m the opposite.  I want to know, I don’t want to just wander in the fog.  I even want to know what it is that James doesn’t want to know.  I was being disingenuous there.  I think James probably doesn’t want to know the future, or maybe he doesn’t want to get any second opinions or alternate perspectives on present reality.  I, as I said, want all of that and more. 

Unfortunately, I don’t and usually can’t “know” the future.  It’s malleable.  If a series of events of a given predictable outcome has been set in motion, I can predict the outcome.  If something interrupts the series of events, or if it has never been triggered at all, then I’d have made myself a false prophet and so I don’t predict the future.  My readings deal with NOW, the only time about which there can be certainty.

…and this one:
“y’know, Suse?  I felt sort of hopeful when I finished reading this.
Thanks.”
LuckyStars

You’re welcome, Marian, and also everyone else who thanked me and you all have my thanks right back atcha.  I feel somewhat hopeful about the future, too, despite an echoing chant of, “Hope is all about despair,” in the back of my mind.  I wish I had assurance that a large enough number of the inhabitants of this planet will wake up to their power for positive change soon enough to keep the planet inhabitable.

Yes, I know…
I know the race is over, but…

Do you remember the adorable picture of Jeff King cuddling his dog?  Well, here’s another picture of Jeff, a park ranger at Denali National Park, accepting the Leonhard Seppala Humanitarian Award for his exceptional care of his dog team.  Love’s rewards are not ALL intangible.

Clay Pollock (R) of Chevron awards the Most Inspirational Award to Dee Dee Jonrowe.  This years’ award was given to 2 mushers, including Charlie Boulding.  Unfortunately Charlie scratched from the race and was not available in Nome.  (this caption and all photos taken from www.iditarod.com)

Here, Jessica Hendricks, age 20, receives the Rookie of the Year Award from past Iditarod musher Jerry Austin.

I have no personal desire to mush that trail, but maybe someday I can be on Front Street in Nome when my favorite mushers come in, and then at the Awards Banquet to applaud when they take their trophies.  If I get there, I’ll be able to post my own pictures for you afterward.  Until then, thank you , Jeff Schultz.

Oh my name it ain’t nothin’
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I’s taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that the land that I live in
Has God on its side.

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
For the country was young
With God on its side.

The Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too was
Soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I’s made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side.

The First World War, boys
It came and it went
The reason for fighting
I never did get
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don’t count the dead
When God’s on your side.

The Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And then we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.

I’ve learned to hate the Russians
All through my whole life
If another war comes
It’s them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.

But now we’ve got weapons
Of chemical dust
If fire them we’re forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God’s on your side.

Through many a dark hour
I’ve been thinking about this
That Jesus Christ was
Betrayed by a kiss
But I can’t think for ya
You’ll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

So now as I’m leavin’
I’m weary as Hell
The confusion I’m feelin’
Ain’t no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And they fall to the floor
That if God’s on our side
He’ll stop the next war.

With God on Our Side
by Bob Dylan
Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

God is not on our side.  God’s not on anyone’s side.  God wouldn’t take sides, I’m sure.  Oh, I’m not sure about your god; it’s my God that I know won’t take sides.  I don’t know about your god, and I’ll bet that you would have a hard time, in your own words, telling me about Your god.  One thing I know about your god, for sure:  If You have a god, you call your god “God”.  The reason for that is the same as it is for me and Everyone Else.  To all of us everywhere, our own gods are God or Goddess, Allah, Kali, Hera or Heyoka: capitalized All, even down to His or Her Divine Pronouns.

Of course we don’t capitalize other peoples’ gods in the collective, though we do by convention grant them Proper Personhood in their individual names… even when we don’t believe in Them.  I think it makes just about as much sense to capitalize We, Us and Ours as She, His and Theirs, but I observe the conventions most of the time, anyway.

Anyway, I was telling you about my god.  Oops, I mean God.  Either way, really, doesn’t matter, It doesn’t care if it is capitalized or not.  My divinity is big enough not to care for conventions or flattery.  My Creator, the First Source and Center of All, is not jealous or petty.  This is not a vindictive bitch or a micromanaging master.  He might have some pet project somewhere, or some local domain in Its neighborhood where She guides every step and sees every sparrow-equivalent fall.

On this planet, though, Whatever Divine Source first set up the process whereby We came about, it delegated a lot of authority to Us.  It delegated one helluva lot of authority before things got down to us.  We’re not even Galactic Middle Management here, but we are potential masters of our own domains nonetheless.

Through the power of our focused attention and the mechanism of our body/mind, we can do marvelous things.  It gave us all Free Will so it could watch us deal with this awesome power.  If it notices anything at all, at such a remote distance in spacetime, from such a minute mote within its Universe of Universes, what She notices is how his/her/its offspring differ from one another.

It is big enough not to judge one from another, I know.  If It should have any favorites at all, I think they would probably be the Misfits, since It, in all of its manifestations that I have known, seems to Love diversity.

I don’t say I believe this.  I don’t believe this.  I don’t even believe in god/Goddess/jehovah/Heyoka/All That Is, Whatever forever, amen.  I know God, my god, the divine spark of Light, Awareness and Oneness Within.  That’s not a belief, not Faith.  It is Gnosis, awareness, familarity, communion of Spirit with spirit.  That is all I know about That:  that there is a transcendent Consciousness to which I can tune mine.  All the rest is inference, supposition, intuition, reason and working hypothesis.

The Thing or BEing I hold in awe is ancient beyond imagination.  By the time basic, primitive unicellular life showed up on THIS planet, it had already ordered and organized the Master Universe and delegated planning and production of the entire ensuing sequence of universes to Its subordinate creative intelligences.  It had developed an appreciation of variety and diversity.  It had found a basic pattern that worked and had built a staff whose task was to try every imaginable variation on that theme.

The Intelligence behind the underlying patterns within the Cosmos imagined and initiated not just creation and destruction, Light and Darkness, truth and lies.  The First Source and Center encompasses not just those dualistic polarities, but also every shading of gray between the poles and all the colors of the spectrum.  If It is Anything, it is not petty or picky.  God is supposed to be infinite Love and ultimate perfection.  Why would Ultimate Perfection demand perfection of its Creation?  Why would It even bother creating a copy of itself if It was already Infinite and Complete?  If it had wanted a perfect creation, wouldn’t it have created one whole?

Maybe it wanted to find out if it could come around to the same place by a different route.  What appears self-evident to me is that the Force within All, being Perfect and Changeless, desired Change and Imperfection.  That’s utterly logical to me and feels right to heart and gut.  In all that I can perceive, I perceive imperfection and change.  If everything is here because God Wills It, then change and imperfection are God’s Will.

I infer, correctly or not, perfectability.  This reassures me.  If I wanted to believe in anything, that’s a belief I’d choose.  Being the multiple Virgo I am, with almost my entire chart focused at the top, in Virgo and Libra, in the ninth and tenth houses, I’m a living validation of natal astrology, focused on higher learning and the Divine, with extreme perfectionism.  I was all of that a long time before I ever knew that astrology says an extreme perfectionist is what I’m supposed to be.

If I’m not perfectable, I’m at least improvable.  Improvement has come to me in my pursuit of perfection.  My Inner Vision has grown truer, my balance more stable, my peace more durable as I progress in my quest.  From past experience, I infer the potential for future improvement.  Awareness expands.  Life grows.  I Am.

I know what I know and there is a lot more than what I do know, out there in the realm of all that I don’t know.  I think about some of what I don’t know.  I wonder, and I investigate.  I imagine and form opinions and working hypotheses, but I don’t jump to conclusions or adopt the beliefs of those who have jumped to conclusions before me.  I have done all of those things before in this lifetime, but have thankfully grown beyond that.

I no longer need to choose one of several possible explanations for anything, in order to comfort myself that I understand what’s going on.  I am not comforted by blind belief.  I prefer to rule out all the false hypotheses and have some fair certainty and good evidence for what I accept as reality, before I buy into any explanation.  In my current reality, many things are a set of possibilities, one of which is always “none of the above.”  Some other things are just black boxes, inexplicable occurrences for which no conventional explanation makes sense and for which I’ve found no better explanations.  I’m okay with that, for now.

Playing Catch-Up

I’ve decided to deal with my blog backlog by cramming most of it into one blog.  Beware of sudden topic-shifts.

The shot above was taken with the new Fuji camera, the first time I took it out on a water run.  Wow, how that thing eats batteries!  I feel like dragging an extension cord and the AC adapter wherever I go. *grin*

At the spring, a lot of bare ground has been showing since the weeks of rain, followed by weeks of high winds.  That first shot above shows how it looked a few days ago, with glacial flows of ice from the roadside ditch covering one of the paths down to the waterhole. 

It snowed here last night, so it all looks different now.  If the sun comes out today, I may get some pics of the snow.  Otherwise, with this overcast, it would just be the usual gloomy black and white nothing of a day, not worth recording.

Sudden cold created the flowing-water-patterned ice above, and the surface has been polished by the same winds that shaped the chaotic knobbly icicles hanging over the wavy surface.  This is a closeup of the underside of the freight-pallet platform on which we stand to fill our buckets and jugs.

That’s my boy, showing off his agility and adaptability, working around some difficult conditions at the spring.  The sandy slope in the foreground is a layer of sand spread over the slick icy compacted snow.  Getting in and out of the waterhole wasn’t hard, but finding a place to stand to work was tricky.

It was a routine water run, except for the neighbor who showed up near the end.  I don’t know her name, but from things she said about trying to get water out of Caswell Creek and falling through the ice, I can infer approximately where she lives.

While she waited for Doug to finish filling our jugs, we swapped stories.  She had a funny one about her childhood, when her father came in drunk from a water run and spilled a milk-can of water.  It was cold, and she and her sister skated in the hallway next day. 

We’ve had some icy water spills in our house from time to time, too.  Once, when the mop froze to the floor as I tried to clean up a spill, I waited, used a hammer later to break up the ice, and then picked up the spilled water with my fingers.  Alaska is a great place to visit (support tourism) but YOU wouldn’t want to live here (preserve the sparse population).

Tuesday, the day after the above water run, Greyfox and I went the fifty miles to Wasilla for groceries and such.  Regular readers here know how much I dislike going to town.  I take antihistamines to help me with my chemical sensitivities on those trips, but it’s usually unpleasant anyway.  This one wasn’t as bad as usual.  Fatigue didn’t really catch up with me until I got home and got the groceries put away.

There were many signs of the recent storms farther down the valley where the winds were the strongest.  One huge steel industrial building looked as if someone had used a giant can opener on it.   Debris lay alongside the road and fluttered in the trees.  Signs were either damaged or missing–I think the intact signs were in the minority.  Some of the stores where we shopped had windows and glass doors replaced with plywood.

One of our favorite restaurants, the Windbreak Cafe, is closed now.  The roof over the attached motel was damaged in the storms.  A fire started in there during the night before our trip to town, and the motel was substantially damaged.  The restaurant is expected to reopen soon, but the hotel portion may have to be demolished.

Iditarod update:

Links below are to stories in the Anchorage Daily News.  More can be found at www.iditarod.com.

The race is over.  Russ Bybee of Willow (one of the two towns between which we live) won the Red Lantern Award on Tuesday as the last musher into Nome.

At right, Tyrell Seavey is eating pasta primavera with shrimp at the Ruby checkpoint.  Martin Buser dines on tenderloin steak and butter-drenched shrimp along lonely stretches of the trail.  Click on Tyrell’s pic to read the story, “Musher chow gets closer look.”

Clint Warnke was named the race’s “most improved musher”.  He’s a young man who once worked as a dog handler for now-retired four-time champion Doug Swingley.  Clint doesn’t own a dog team.  This year he ran the veterinary education team.   Dee Dee Jonrowe and Charlie Boulding were named the “most inspirational” mushers.   I’ll second that.

I have gotten so much response, in comments and by email, to the Tarot blog, that I am considering doing a series of Tarot readings here.  I will be responding to the comments soon.

I have a blog backlog.  I’m blog-clogged.  Days ago, I wanted to post the pics I took on our latest water run and Xanga wasn’t having it.  Meanwhile, I got several great comments on the Tarot reading and wanted to respond to them.  Greyfox’s interminable hours pecking out posts for totse and Doug’s never-ending file-sharing uploads and downloads–even when he’s not here at this keyboard schmoozing with his gaming friends or playing games– kept me away from the computer most of the time and made my time here a frustrating series of long waits and freeze-ups.

Then, yesterday was a town trip, one of those grocery shopping expeditions we put off as long as possible.  I didn’t even get to visit Xanga last night and check my comments.  By the time I got the groceries put away, I was too tired for anything but bed.  Now, I don’t know where to start.  Do I go back to the head of the line and try posting those pics?  Do I play socially responsible adult and respond to your comments?  Do I record my latest thoughts and report on the storm damage I saw in town yesterday?  Aaaargh!!

I didn’t even mention all the memories that have been surfacing lately.  I’m percolating memoir segments from the travels with my mother after my father’s death, and from the mid-’seventies and my first Saturn return, as well as other significant moments that are not in chronological sequence with any of my previously written memoirs.  I’m blog-clogged all right!

Greyfox wqnts to get on here now and check his email (all those notices of “totsiers” who have responded to his threads) and since I’m not making any headway, I guess I’ll get out of his way.

Later, y’all.

Sins and Virtues

There is another questionnaire making the rounds of Xanga, and I’ve answered it.

I don’t know who devised this, but I can infer youth in the creator
of these questions.  I don’t even recall where on Xanga I found
it, but some of the answers were fitting enough that I let them stand,
so someone may recognize her responses here.

ANGER

1. Who did you last get angry with?
My husband and the used car dealer he chose to believe over me.

2. What is your weapon of choice?
My voice and vocabulary.

3. Would you hit a member of the opposite sex?
I have
done so in the past, and given the unpredictability of my temper I
might do so again, but I’m trying to rein in my violence.

4. How about of the same sex?
See above.

5. Who was the last person who got really angry at you?
Probably some Xangan my words offended.  I’ve gotten a few flames.

6. What is your pet peeve?
Like George Carlin, I don’t
have anything so petty as pet peeves.  When I don’t like
something, I’m deadly serious about it.

7. Do you keep grudges, or can you let them go easily?
I forgive quickly and forget slowly if at all.  I value my peace of mind too much to bother with grudges.

SLOTH

1. What is one thing you’re supposed to do daily that you haven’t done in a long time?
My dental hygeine is quite lax.
 
2. What is the latest you’ve ever woken up?
Irrelevant:  I’ve worked all three shifts and slept at every conceivable time of day or night.

3. Name a person you’ve been meaning to contact, but haven’t?
My first true love, the love of my life.  Anyone know where I can find Larry Joe Turner?

4. What is the last lame excuse you made?
“I forgot.”

5. Have you ever watched an infomercial all the way through (one of the long ones…)?
I’ve left them playing as I waited for whatever came next, but “watch”, no.

6. When was the last time you got a good workout?
The
last time I tried was about three years ago.  An asthma attack
stopped me during the warmup.  I miss my regular workouts; that’s
one of the big things I look forward to, along with dancing, if I ever
get healthy enough.

7. How many times did you hit the snooze button on your alarm clock today?
I
haven’t used an alarm clock since my son graduated from high school in
2001.  I hate alarm clocks more than anything in the world.

GLUTTONY

1. What is your overpriced yuppie beverage of choice?
None. 
Our house coffee blend consists of 2 parts cheap dark roast decaf from
a discount store, to one part (cheap) Yuban regular.  I prefer
buying tea herbs in bulk if I can’t find them to collect in the wild.

2. Meat eaters:
Meat is a good source of protein,
especially for those with blood type O.  My diet restricts me to
the meat of birds and fishes.  An occasional beefsteak doesn’t
seem to do me any harm.
 
3. What is the greatest amount of alcohol you’ve had in one sitting/outing/event?
Once, about thirty years ago, while waiting for a friend I drank a liter and a half of strong sacramental wine.

4. Have you ever used a professional diet company?
No.

5. Do you have an issue with your weight?
Not a serious
one.  I gain weight when I go off my diet and lose it when I go
back on, but my health is the main reason for the diet and the main
negative consequence when I fail to stay on it.

6. Do you prefer sweets, salty foods, or spicy foods?
I
am addicted to sugar, starch/gluten, and the casein in dairy
foods.  I prefer to abstain from them.  Spicy foods don’t
hurt me and I love them.

7. Have you ever looked at a small housepet or child and thought, “LUNCH”?
No.

LUST

1. How many people have you seen naked (not counting movies/family)?
Over
fifty, and probably fewer than 500.  As a nurse’s aide, I bathed
six or seven bedridden patients a day for many months, but I’m not
counting them.
 
2. How many people have seen YOU naked (not counting physicians/family)?
Over
fifty, and probably fewer than 500.  Partial nudity, I have no
idea how many; I used to be a topless dancer in bars.  And, BTW,
WTF does nudity have to do with lust?

3. Have you ever caught yourself staring at the chest/crotch of a member of your gender of choice during a normal conversation?
I’ve
stared.  “…caught yourself…” implies a judgmental attitude I
don’t have.  Staring is a product of curiosity and curiosity is an
attribute of intelligence.
 
4. Have you “done it”?
Done what?

5. What is your favorite body part on a person of your gender of choice?
Body parts don’t turn me on.  I prefer my partners undismembered, thank you very much.

6. Have you ever been propositioned by a prostitute?
No.

7. Have you ever been tested for an STD or pregnancy?
Yes, to both, and from time to time the results came back positive.

GREED

1. How many credit cards do you own?
Two.

2. What’s your guilty pleasure store?
I don’t do guilt, and I never did consider it a pleasure when I did.

3. If you had $1 million, what would you do with it? 
Purchase
some remote land, build a big lodge on it and buy an airplane to get me
to and from it.  Then I’d let people come and stay with me to
unwind in the wilderness.

4. Would you rather be rich, or famous? 
If those are my only two choices, I’ll take “rich”.  Fame has too big a downside.

5. Would you accept a boring job if it meant you would make megabucks?
No,
not a boring one, nor an interesting one, nor the best job in the
world.  I’ve been free of jobs and bosses long enough to learn how
wonderful that feels.  I won’t go back.

6. Have you ever stolen anything?
Yes; my shoplifting skills were semi-legendary in my hippie days over thirty years ago.

7. How many MP3s are on your hard drive?
I have no
idea.  I share my hard drive with my son and he collects music
from anime.  My contribution to the collection is one music CD I
ripped so I could listen to it at the computer, and three or four
shamanic altered-state sound CDs I likewise put on the hard drive for
use when I’m at the keyboard.

PRIDE

1. What one thing have you done that you’re most proud of?
My
mental/emotional transcendence:  getting rid of fear and most of
my false and limiting beliefs; practicing unconditional love.  It
may read like a list, but in practice it is all one accomplishment, and
still in progress.

2. What one thing have you done that your parents are most proud of?
My father was proud of my intellectual accomplishments and my mother was proud of my children.

3. What thing would you like to accomplish in your life? 
Lose all fear; transcend all beliefs; practice universal unconditional love.

4. Do you get annoyed by coming in second place?
No.  I love to win but I don’t hate to lose.

5. Have you ever entered a contest of skill, knowing you were of much higher skill than all the other competitors?
Not knowing, but suspecting, yes.

6. Have you ever cheated on something to get a higher score?
Video games–I love GameShark.

7. What did you do today that you’re proud of?
I don’t think in such terms.

ENVY

1. What item (or person) of your friends would you most want to have for your own?
None.  If I want anything, I want my OWN.

2. Who would you want to go on “Trading Spaces” with?
…and just what is “Trading Spaces”????

3. If you could be anyone else in the world, who would you be?
I know how to live my life; I wouldn’t want anyone else’s

4. Have you ever been cheated on?
Yes, if by that you mean marital infidelity.

5. Have you ever wished you had a physical feature different from your own?
As an ignorant young person I was never happy with my body.  I outgrew that bullshit.

6. What inborn trait do you see in others that you wish you had for yourself?
None at all.  The inborn trait I value most is intelligence, and I wouldn’t trade mine for anyone’s.

7. Do you wish you’d come up with this survey?
No, and I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t decided to answer it.

8. Finally, what is your favorite deadly sin?
Gluttony is the one I wish I could indulge without making myself sick.

FAITH

1. What religion do you follow?
None; I do
spirituality, not religion.  The holy book I respect the most is
the Urantia Book; that religion is called Jesusonianism.

2. What religion were you raised as?
generic Protestant

3. Do you believe that forgiveness is a religious property, or a human property?
 *Blink*
*Blink*  Religious property?  What the hell is that? 
Are not all religions created by humans?  All religious properties
*are* human properties. (This answer was provided by the person from
whom I took this quiz.  It works for me.)
 
4. Do you believe in magic?
I commonly do many things many other people consider to be magic.  I do not believe in magic.

5. What was the last promise you broke?
I don’t
remember.  I’ve been working hard at keeping my commitments and at
not making commitments I can’t keep, for about thirty years.

6. Have you ever said the words to a prayer and not meant it?
I did a lot of that kind of crap back when I was a teenager and went to church.

7. Do you believe that anyone could be perfect?
We can try.  I intend to see how close I can get.

HOPE

1. Did you get everything you wanted over the last holiday season?
I
didn’t have a wish list, which is fortunate because the only thing I
got was a t-shirt not in my size, with something silly printed on the
front that had no relevance to me.

2. Regarding your future, what is the best thing you could hope for?
Sufficient health that I remain able to do for myself up to the end, or a convenient and unmessy way to end it if not.

3. Do you let yourself get your hopes up for something even if you know that there is a large chance of failure?
I did when I was a kid, but not for a long time now.

What happened to 4 and 5?  I hope they didn’t get lost or censored.

6. Do you gamble?
Yes, and I almost always come out ahead because I don’t gamble more than I can afford to lose, and I quit while I’m ahead.

7. Have you ever had something called off on account of bad weather, but then gone ahead and done it anyway?
Does
this count?  My son and I went on a long educational trip. 
We got to Serpent Mound (a prehistoric Native American sacred place) a
day or two after they had closed for the winter.  We got there
just at sunrise, snuck in, wandered all around staying on the paths and
leaving no trace of our presence, then left.

CHARITY

1. What causes do you support?
Whatever strikes my fancy when I have extra time or money to give.

2. What causes have you given money or time to?
Too numerous to list.

3. Have you ever worked in a soup kitchen or done another kind of outreach for the homeless?
Yes.

4. Would you ever consider joining the Peace Corps, Amnesty International, or another type?
I did consider it, when I was younger.

6. Have you ever helped out a friend with basic needs, like food and rent?
Many times.

7. What’s the greatest extent you’ve gone to help a friend in need?
Shared
what I had when I barely had enough for myself; let people move into my
home for indefinite periods of time; risked death and injury to protect
and defend various friends and strangers, just little things like that.

FORTITUDE

1. What are you most afraid of?
Regressing into fear–hehee, that’s a joke, folks, so smile.  I can’t think of anything I have to be afraid of.

2. What did you do today that was really brave?
Without fear, there is precious little need of bravery.
 
3. Who is your favorite superhero, and why?
Plastic man can reach things without getting up.  That would be nice.

4. Would you put your life in danger to rescue someone?
Have done, would do again, no big deal.

5. If you were to face the Wizard, would you want more courage, more brains, or more heart?
I’m okay as I am and that Wizard is a big fake, y’know?

6. Have you ever gotten stage fright?
Some mild performance anxiety a few times when I was younger, but not lately.

7. Do you consider yourself to be a leader or a follower?
Neither,
but people are more likely to be following me than I am to follow
anyone else.  I don’t like either role and don’t relate well to
people who want to lead or follow.  Those who want to be followed
have an inflated idea of their own importance.  Those who want to
be  led are pathetic.

JUSTICE

1. Have you ever been summoned for jury duty?
Yes.

2. If they reinstituted the draft (for both genders), would you go, or would find some way out of it?
I’m too old, but I’d resist and I will support and aid any resister, any time.

3. Do you support capital punishment (the death penalty)?
Not
the way it’s done in the U.S., with automatic appeals and the inhumane
treatment people get on death row.  And I’ve yet to see any other
system that works better, so my answer is no.

4. Which should be guaranteed legal, prostitution or marijuana:
Why choose one?  I’m an anarchist.  Until anarchy gets on a ballot in this country, I’m a Libertarian.

5. Do you believe that Dubya is rightfully President of the USA?
No.  The Electoral College is obsolete in the electronic age and was never truly fair.

6. What was your favorite media circus trial?
I’m appalled and amazed that anyone could enjoy such real-life demonstrations of deception and duplicity.

7. Have you ever written a letter to a politician?
My
congressional delegation and I correspond frequently.  I send them
my opinions and their staffs send me form-letter
acknowledgements.  It allows me to get things off my chest. 
My opinions mean nothing to them, compared to the opinions of their
rich campaign contributors and the lobbyists who represent big
corporations they hope will be contributors.

TEMPERANCE

1. What do you have the hardest time moderating yourself on?
Addictive foods.

2. Do you collect anything?
Rocks, pitchers, coffee mugs, Corelle, quotations, and all sorts of practical junk.

3. Are you addicted to anything?
Once an addict always an addict, so even though I am currently abstaining, yes, I’ll always be an addict.

4. Have you ever put anything on layaway or ordered an installment plan?
When I was a kid, I laid away a bathing suit and paid it off from my allowance.

5. What’s your preferred method of paying for things?
Cash in advance.

6. Tell us one thing you wish you hadn’t let yourself do: 
…when
I abandoned my healthy diet the last two times:  when no one
showed up (bad weather, sudden cold snap and a viral epidemic: 
horrible timing) for a feast I threw in ’98 and I ate most of
the pies and cakes myself, and again when my shamanic work
with 9-11 victims stressed me to the max and I went for the comfort
foods.

7. Do you feel that you obsess over things?
Occasionally, but much less than I used to, and over much more interesting things than what used to obsess me.

PRUDENCE

1. Who is the wisest person you know?
I am.

2. Have you ever participated in a vigil?
No–in fact, I’m not really clear on what you’re supposed to be watching for when in such a vigilant state.

3. Do you take advice when it’s given?
If it makes sense to do so, but frankly most advice I’m given is laughable.

4. What area are you wisest in?
body/mind/spirit stuff

5. Do you drive defensively?
Yes.

6. Have you ever had unprotected sex outside of marriage?
Yes, but not in the past 17 years.

7. What did you learn today?
To read the whole questionnaire before starting to answer it.

 

There!
That wasn’t so bad….

The Problem:
Putting a cap on my new stovepipe to keep rain and snow out of my woodstove was a big mistake… maybe.  Instead of the creosote condensing inside the pipe, coating and clogging it as it had before I replaced the pipe last fall, now it condensed on the cap and dripped down the outside of the pipe.

The old way, it clogs faster, but with less mess.  With the cap on there, we went almost the entire winter without having to climb up there and clean the stovepipe.

The Solution…

Well, that pretty much took care of itself.  Apparently, creosote eats the galvanized metal the cap was made of.  It came apart in my hands as I tried to remove it to clear the clogged pipe.

Then I discovered, when I rammed the Mutt® (that ice chipping tool Doug is leaning on) into the clog, that the pipe was blocked only at the very top.  Some of the condensed creosote had fallen off the inside of the cap and blocked the outlet.  I broke most of it off with my fingers and got rid of it.  Then I took a few more pictures and we climbed back down.

That’s the icy muskeg across the street.

I learned a few things from today’s trip to the roof.

One:  Charley was right.  He has told me for years that those caps on stovepipes are more trouble than they are worth.

The nearly horizontal faint white line, beyond the trees in the shot at right, is the road out to the cul de sac, where I go to take a lot of the pictures I’ve posted here.

Another thing I learned today is that Shop-Vacs® are tough.  Doug dropped ours off the roof.  It bounced a few times, skittered across the ice, and still functioned when he retrieved it.

That’s my good buddy Koji in the yard, wondering what I’m doing on the roof.  He is standing on a sheet of ice about six inches thick, which has a lot of dirt and debris drifted here and there on it, from the recent windstorms.

One nice result of that night and day of really strong winds:  the plastic shopping bags that had gotten hung up in the trees by the weeks of milder winds preceding the major storm were torn apart and blown away.

As Greyfox says with a chuckle:  “It’s an ill wind….”

Here’s an even better illustration of the icy yard and windblown debris:

The cement blocks are embedded in solid ice.  None of the pictures I took had the right sun-angle to catch the gleam and glisten of the slick surface.

Take my word for it:  the ice is both slick and shiny.  It is also littered with numerous parts of many trees.  None of the trees in our yard was flattened, and I haven’t been out in the woods yet to see if any of our neighborhood trees fell to the wind.  But I’ve heard stories….

And here, in lieu of welcome mat, are my two favorite male critters in the whole world.

Come on in.  We’ll try to clear a spot somewhere for you to sit down.

The fire is warm today, and now smokeless, too.

There’s a fresh pot of coffee, as well.  I made it right after I got the fire going when we came in off the roof.

Welcome.

Aaack! Beware, Caesar: it’s the Ides of March!
Can St. Paddy be far behind?
Erin go bragh, y’all.

Weekend Fluff

(or as fluffy as SuSu gets)

What annoying internet entity are you?
 
My battle cry:
 


What’s your Battle-Cry?
this quiz was made by Aroihkin of PlanetKulitron
 

I’m getting there. I don’t suck, but I’ve got a ways to go.
Are you a militant feminist?

Does anyone recognize these toons?

When I was seven years old, soon after my father’s death, my mother bought our first TV set.  Saturday mornings, I loved watching Crusader Rabbit and his sidekick “Rags”:  Ragland T. Tiger.

Yesterday, Doug, who has been slowing my internet connection abominably with his music and animé downloads, in an attempt, I think, to mollify mom, offered to find something I would want to download.  He asked me if there was any old music or cartoon I would like to have.

Immediately, I thought of Crusader Rabbit.   I got a funny sideways grin from Doug when I told him.  He knows how old it is.  I’ve mentioned it to him before.  His skepticism was right:  none of his file-sharing sources had any Crusader archives.

Undeterred, and thankful for the reminder of something I’d been wanting to do, I tried Google for “Crusader Rabbit”.  That brought me to

There, I learned that I had been witness to history back then:

“Most animation sources list Hanna-Barbera as the originators of limited animation for television, and Ruff and Reddy as the first made-for-TV cartoon. This is not true. In 1948, Jay Ward (of Rocky and Bullwinkle fame) teamed with animator Alex Anderson and sold NBC-TV a series of cartoons featuring Crusader, a crusading rabbit, and Ragland T. Tiger, his sidekick.”

Whether they were historic figures or just some Saturday morning fun, Crusader and Rags were friends to me at a time when I needed friends very much.  What I learned from Toon Tracker explains, also, what it was about Rocky and Bullwinkle that seemed so familiar to me in the ‘Sixties when I first saw them.  I thought it was just ’cause I was trippin’ that I loved them so at first sight.

I still don’t recall the name of that dinosaur, or anything about the little brown character in the group picture.  Crusader had a horse, and I’ve not found any good pictures of it, and don’t recall its name.  Thus my quest for Crusader Rabbit continues.

AND… Does anyone recall the first interactive TV show, Winky-Dink and You?  Greyfox and I both had the same experience, drawing on our family’s TV screens with crayons before our parents got us the stick-on “Magic Screen”.

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I wish: