Month: August 2004

  • Yecch

    The sky is hazy brown, the sunlight is orange in hue, and as it rose
    this morning it was just a rusty-red disk in the sky giving little
    light.  Now that it’s above the haze, it’s brighter out there, and
    hot… and smoky.  Breathing this stuff is not easy.   I
    keep thinking about Mountain Mama, my friend Barb who lives up north
    where the fires are burning, and the hundreds of firefighters trying to
    keep the fire away from settled areas.

    Some of this smoke may not be coming from the interior, though. 
    Greyfox called as I was writing this, to tell me he’d just seen four
    fire trucks headed out of town in our direction.  If it is a
    nearby wildfire, this would be bad timing.  After a couple of days
    of near-dead calm weather, the wind has come up today.

    This is not the sort of sky and light we usually have here.

    This is what I’m used to:

    and this:

    This is what we have now:

    I have never seen our forest as sick as it is this summer.  Every
    aspen tree I’ve seen around here and for forty miles or so down the
    valley is showing silvery leaves that have been tunneled out by leaf
    miners.

    Willows, alders and other plants are all chewed up by insects.

    First it was the wild rose bushes that were covered with big splotches
    of mildewy stuff, then they turned brown and dried up.  Now those
    gray splotches are on other trees and shrubs.  The smaller gray
    spots on the darker leaves in the bacground at the right of the shot
    below are more insect damage, different insects.

    I didn’t have to do any searching to find those examples of sick and
    damaged plants.  They are everywhere.  I looked around for
    healthy plants, and about the only ones I found were birch trees, and
    lingonberries growing low to the ground.  The yellow leaves below
    are probably the natural color of the season, and not a sign of
    sickness.  Leaves are falling already here.  The fireweed
    flowers are mostly gone to seed now at this end of the valley.

    My melancholy mood could be partly seasonal, too.  I’m better now
    than when I used to get a panicky migratory urge about this time every
    year.  I don’t fear winter as I used to.  I do wonder what
    will become of the aspens whose leaves are all mined out, and the wild
    roses that died off this summer.

    I don’t think this is what the people had in mind a few years ago, who
    had bumper stickers printed up:  “Support Global Warming, bring
    palm trees to Alaska.”  We all laughed at it, never realizing that
    the bugs would have to move in and eat the trees we have, to make room
    for the palms.

    Even with the haze blocking some sunlight, it’s over eighty degrees out
    there now.  Even with the breeze blowing outside, the indoor temp
    is cooler now.  That’s rare here.  Even in summer it’s
    usually warmer indoors than out.  Not complaining — just
    reporting… the cool temp in here, that is.  I am complaining,
    whining, about the air that’s not fit to breathe.

    It’s hard.  Greyfox says it’s just as bad at his end of the
    valley, too.  It burns our throats, makes us cough.  
    Particles stick in our eyes and make them itch, leaving deposits in the
    corners.  I’m considering the old cowboy trick:  wet bandana
    tied over the face, to filter out some of the smoke.

  • There and back again….

    It has been a shitstorm of a day, and I seem to have run between the “raindrops”, so to speak.  How do I look?

    No, no, those are just freckles.

    The tone of this day’s trip down the Susitna Valley to Wasilla was set
    within the first few miles.  I rounded a curve and saw the
    flashing red and blue lights of a Trooper car.  Got a little
    closer and saw a big diesel tractor on its side on the shoulder, and
    another tractor/trailer rig upright in the ditch.  There was a
    second Trooper car parked up a side road, plus the usual stand-around
    crowd of looky-lous.  I eased on by, a little more alert and a
    trifle anxious.  Several more times today my course has brought me
    close to other people’s misfortune and/or misery, and my empathy has
    filled my consciousness with it.  I’ve been grateful all afternoon
    for the email this morning from a Starseed contact, which reminded me
    of the need to “shake off” the negative influences.  Whole lotta
    shakin’ for me today.

    As I had gone out to get in my car this afternoon, the sky had the same
    brownish look as it did last month when smoke from the wildfires was blowing our
    way, and the light had that same orange cast to it.  The huge Central Complex
    of fires in the Interior is still growing, and weather conditions don’t
    look good for the upcoming week, either.  I guess that could have been
    the source of the haze, or it could have been the volcano, but I’d heard nothing about the volcano until I got to town.

    When I pulled in at Felony Flats and parked beside the bike path across
    the drive from Greyfox’s stand, he walked over and we schmoozed a
    while.  I told him about the wreck up the road, and about the
    600-pound woman in Florida who had become one with her couch. 
    Then a customer pulled up and Greyfox went back across to the
    stand.  The young man had his back to me, and I couldn’t catch
    much of what he said, but my Old Fart is going deaf and talks pretty
    loud.  I heard him say, “Did it go off?” and “I’d heard that it
    was making noises, but not that it had gone off.”  I knew
    immediately that they were talking about one of the nearby
    volcanoes.  I looked off toward the west and wondered whether that
    colorful haze was woodsmoke or volcanic steam and ash.

    The BIGQUAKE email alerts have told me that the Pacific Ring of Fire
    has been seismically active lately.  We are on the northern edge
    of it here.  The Aleutian Island Chain is part of it, and the
    Alaska Range is simply the mainland extension of that chain. 
    Since I’ve lived here, we’ve had ashfall from eruptions about five
    times.  One winter a series of eruptions and ash plumes blowing
    our way left layers of gray and brown between the layers of white
    snow.  As soon as Greyfox’s customer left and he moseyed back over
    to talk to me, I asked him which volcano it was.  Mount Spurr, he
    said.

    We asked a few people if they’d heard any news on the volcano but no
    one had, so we decided to catch the local TV news at ten before we
    watched the video Greyfox had rented today.  We were delayed getting back
    to his cabin at Felony Flats after the meeting and caught only the weather report and a
    brief mention of “no ash.”  It wasn’t until I got home and checked
    it out online that I learned that the National Weather Service this
    morning issued an ash alert based on one pilot’s report, and then
    cancelled it when the AVO‘s
    overflights failed to confirm an eruption or ash plume.  There is,
    however, a big hole melted in the snow at the peak of Mount Spurr
    (below) and the cone has been venting steam for weeks.  Right now,
    six volcanoes in the Aleutians and on the Alaska and Kamchatka
    Peninsulas are at a yellow level of concern, quaking and venting steam,
    and Sheveluch Volcano on the Kamchatka is at orange, actively erupting.  Interesting planet, this.

    After Greyfox and I met back at the ranch following the meeting, as we
    were heading to La Fiesta for dinner, I dredged up the courage to ask
    the question I’ve been avoiding for a few weeks.  I’ve known that
    cold weather is closing in fast, and if I’m going to have to get up on
    the roof and fix that TV antenna wire that Doug broke when he was
    shoveling snow from the roof last winter, now would be better than
    later.  I asked Greyfox if he would be able to get by without TV
    after he moves back in here for the winter, or if I need to fix the
    antenna. 

    He said that he would
    like to catch Antiques Roadshow and some of the things he has been
    missing while he’s at work.  I reminded him how addictive TV is,
    and about the way, when we first moved in here on the electric grid
    with TV and all, we would check the schedules and watch only a few
    shows that looked good.  But then very soon we were watching more
    and more.  I said that if we fixed the thing, I’d probably start
    watching the Today Show again, and then that would segue into Martha
    Stewart, and before I know it I’d be watching the soaps that come on
    after that. 

    He went, “Ooooh, the hard stuff, eh?”  As I pulled into the
    parking lot, he said he didn’t think I had any business on the roof as
    shaky and achey as I’ve been lately, and that what it sounded like was
    that fixing the TV would be just hurting myself now to hurt myself more
    later.  I said it wouldn’t be the first time, and he said it’s not
    gonna happen this time, or something like that.  Anyway, the TV
    remains disconnected and my fantasies of a satellite dish remain in the
    same file as the ones about half a pound of methamphetamine:  the
    shitcan file where they belong as long as I’m an addict in recovery.

    That video he rented today was something we’d been planning all week,
    and the plan was contingent on his finding a copy of Kill Bill vol.2 in
    stock at Blockbuster today.  There are two Blockbuster stores in
    Wasilla, and he checked them both this morning–nada.  Another
    video store had one DVD, but his little TV/VCP at the cabin is
    VHS.   Then he swung by there again on his way to the meeting
    after dropping me at the rehab ranch to pick up my vanload of
    passengers.  He greeted me at the meeting with a big grin and, “I
    got it!”

    I’ve been wanting to see it ever since we saw vol.1 last winter. 
    Quentin Tarantino is a genius,. He didn’t just make one movie and cut
    it in two.  They both stand alone and stylistically are quite
    different from each other.  The casting was great, acting
    excellent, and the story… even the predictable parts worked because
    the logic of them added versimilitude.  I even enjoyed the
    extended cast credits at the end, which included scenes from the first
    film as well.  Afterward, Greyfox suggested that sometime in the
    coming winter after he moves back out here, we rent DVDs of both
    volumes and watch deleted scenes, director’s commentaries, etc., “until
    we’re all bleeding from the eyes.”  I seconded that with
    enthusiasm and added that I was sure Doug would concur.

    Eeek, I’ve just noticed what time it is.  How did I stay up all
    night?  Why did you let me do that?  I need my sleep. 
    Seeya.

  • Busy day ahead….

    It’s my turn to drive the van and take a load of residents from the
    rehab center to the NA meeting.  But first I have to put on the
    teakettle and when it’s hot, pour it and three pitchers of cool water
    into the SunShower bag for my shower, get clean and presentable and
    drive the fifty miles to town.  But I haven’t had breakfast
    yet.  Gotta fix that right now.  My stomach is growling at me.

    Oh, yum!  These muffins are as good hot from the microwave today
    as they were when fresh from the oven yesterday.  That endless pot
    of old weak tea just keeps getting better.  Inspired by HomerTheBrave‘s
    advice, I added a wee smidgeon of maté to the mass of rare Sky Between
    the Branches green tea leaves in the brewing basket.  Hang on –
    the coffeemaker just gurgled its last hiccup on this, the second
    go-’round for the maté/green tea blend.  I’ll be right back.

    That’s nice tea…  I love maté, particularly the smoky-flavored
    roasted kind.  Earl Grey also has that smoky aroma, interesting,
    intriguing….  I’ve consumed many cups of Morning Thunder, a
    blend of black tea and maté.  Moe (or his successors at Celestial
    Seasonings) pulled it off the market for a while when the
    down-with-caffeine craze was at its peak before the espresso craze
    swept it away.  I remember Moe from his little herb shop in
    Boulder, with all those jars… the fragrance.  That’s where I got
    the copy of Back to Eden I carried to Alaska in my backpack and used
    for identification of much of the local flora, as I stumbled around in
    the woods, field guide in one hand, plant sample in the other, trying
    to keep up with Charley during my first years up here.

    See, it’s little blasts from the past like that, those strolls down
    memory lane, that I appreciate about Mercury retrograde.  But
    there’s no time today for writing memoirs or much of anything
    else.  I did want to share this bit from an email I received this
    morning.  It is from my favorite soldier in Iraq.  He seldom writes about this sort of info, usually keeps the tone of his communications on a higher plane.

    “…oh shit, it’s getting up to 150 degrees
    here and we still wear full body armor on top of that pulling guard shift
    outside. I can’t begin to tell you how much that sucks. You would have to
    mutilate the word suck and then do some really sick shit to it too.”

    So, that’s the news from the front, folks.   Gotta go now.  Seeya later.

  • All or Nothing

    Either I was born with a predisposition for extremism, or some part of
    my early development fostered such a trait… or both.  It
    expressed itself as “perfectionism” even in early childhood.  I
    destroyed almost every artwork I ever created (only those my mother
    snatched to save survived) because they were not “perfect”.  I
    rejected clothing if it had a tiny stain, tear or flaw.  When an
    object I treasured was broken or damaged, I grieved rather than try to
    mend it.

    I applied those standards to people, too.  My parents were
    hopelessly flawed, but what could I do?  Foremost, I hated myself
    because my left leg is shorter than the right one and I walk
    funny.  I can’t run without falling down or climb stairs without
    stopping to catch my breath.  All the melanin in my skin comes out
    in spots (freckles) and not an even tan.  My hair, my eyes, my
    hands, my feet, my butt… not a perfect feature in the whole
    package.  Maybe the best thing I was born with was my mind, but as
    soon as I realized that it makes mistakes too, I disparaged it,
    despaired of having anything to feel good about.

    So much of what I encountered seemed perfect at the first, only to
    reveal flaws later on, that I was continually seeking something
    new.  Along the way I was taught that nothing is perfect and I
    came to accept that, but I didn’t stop seeking “better” things.  I
    was always comparing and contrasting, looking for ways in which one
    person or thing was better or worse than another.  I went from
    friend to friend, husband to husband, job to job, town to
    town….   Somehow I always ended up taking this imperfect
    self with me, though.

    My all or nothing style of thinking applied to politics, philosophy and
    religion, too.  I adopted new ones frequently, rejecting the old
    ones with the characteristic zeal of the new convert.  Somewhere
    along the way, my either/or philosophy turned into both/and.  I
    think that change of mindset started with philosophies, when I adopted
    a Chinese-menu belief system:  one from column A, two from column
    B….  I never lost the ability to compare and contrast, nor the
    tendency.  I simply seem to have gained an ability to accept
    ambiguity and relativity, and made a decision to avoid absolutism.

    Some of the people I respect most have absolutist leanings or make
    absolutist statements, but I don’t reject them for it.  The first
    example that comes to mind is Dick Sutphen’s oft-repeated, “Everything
    is Karma, or nothing is.”  That sounds to me a lot like the old
    argument of randomness versus predestination or synchronicity. 
    Some people insist that NOTHING happens randomly, while others are
    equally vehement in claiming that everything is planned out in
    advance.  What is cunning synchronicity to one person is just
    chance coincidence to another.  I don’t see why we cannot in this
    vast universe have all of that.  At least in this finite
    observable universe it appears to me that some things are meant to be,
    some things proceed in an orderly fashion from determinable causes,
    some things happen at random and others are tied together in a web of
    synchronicity.  I have never lost my curiosity about which might
    be which, nor my tendency to try and puzzle it out.  All I’ve lost
    is that deep, intense, anxious caring
    about it all.  I love this universe just the way it is and I
    choose to believe that no matter how things look or feel from my
    limited temporo-spatial perspective, EWOP: everything works out
    perfectly, eventually.

    The latest batch of gluten-free “health muffins” on which I depend for
    breakfast and snacks, just out of the oven, is as near perfect as any
    I’ve baked.  The aroma of fruit and cinnamon is heavenly. 
    The bread has the tang of yogurt and the savor of salt, and all of the
    sweetness is in the little nuggets of raisins and date pieces. 
    I’ve got a couple of weeks of good breakfasts ahead of me… but how
    did I manage to leave one of my oven mitts in there and bake it for
    those extra minutes after I checked the muffins for browning?  Oh,
    well, nobody’s perfect. 
     

  • Moi-kure-eee Wet-rug-raid

    Yesterday afternoon was a Mercury station.  I didn’t know that until late last night when I checked my email and found the Celestial Weather Report
    Meanwhile, Greyfox and I had been busy doing those things we tend to do
    when Merc goes retro:  He left behind in my fridge the dozen eggs
    he had called ahead and instructed me to boil for him the night
    before.  While he was here for a few afternoon hours, I trimmed
    his beard.  At the laundromat later, when he came out of the
    shower I noticed a little tuft under his chin that needed a touchup
    trim.  I was going to do that when we got back to my place before
    he headed back to town.  We both forgot that.  Rich Humbert
    calls the ordinary screwups that most of us do around these times,
    “informational dyspepsia.”

    He was born when Mercury was retrograde and he says, “Those of us with
    Mercury Retrograde in their personal horoscopes, and that’s about
    twenty percent of the population, find their mental processes operating
    at a high level while the rest of the population struggles to find
    those lost keys or puzzle out directions with reversed numbers.”  
    The communication difficulties and memory lapses the majority of people
    experience in retro are the normal state of mind for those with Merc
    retro in their charts.   I have a close friend with such a chart,
    and following his train of thought can be a trip.  Maybe it was
    lucky for me that my mother was in labor for a couple of days before I
    was forcibly delivered with forceps.  Mercury made a direct
    station two days before I was born.  Uranus went retrograde on my
    birthday, but that’s another story.

    Our ISP was down for a while this morning.  That’s typical Merc
    retro stuff.  Another typical example just occurred while I was
    writing this.  The ISP had come back online and the internet
    answering machine took a call from Papa-Do-Run Transport, one of the
    banes of our existence.  That flimsy excuse for a shipping
    expediter handles UPS shipments out here because UPS doesn’t exist in
    our neck of the woods.  Either Greyfox forgot to instruct NA World
    Service to send the latest literature order for our group by USPS
    Priority Mail, or he told them and they screwed it up again.  The
    order before this one got as far as Papa-Do-Run and then got returned
    to NA because Papa-Do-Run “couldn’t find” us.  Eventually, after a
    few phone calls, it got to us via U.S. mail.

    Of course, this situation was set up before Mercury went retro, but my
    exchange with Theresa at Papa-Do-Run was typical.  Her message
    said they had a UPS parcel for our group care of Greyfox, call them
    at….  I got offline immediately and called.  She listened
    as I identified myself and started giving her directions, then she
    started talking over me to someone there, and came back to me to say,
    “He’s already left.”  The driver, with our package presumably,
    though it’s hard to tell from her gibberish.  First she says,
    using incomplete sentences and a hysterical tone, she can deliver it
    and then she says no, “he’s gone already,” so I take that to mean he
    took the package with him even though he doesn’t know where to take
    it.  Three times as she’s babbling on to me she said she’d made
    the call, “as a courtesy,” but she had to be gone.  Once, she
    actually said, “I’m out of here.”  Finally, I cut off her
    hysterically defensive monologue and asked her what she wanted me to
    do.  She quieted suddenly, paused a moment, and said, “Oh… give
    me the directions.”  She didn’t repeat any of it back to me,
    apparently took no time to write it down, just said okay and hung
    up.  I wonder if she’s the same one that used to haul her kids
    around with her on deliveries and let them scribble on our packages
    with crayons.  Oh, well….  Mercury is retrograde.

    I’ve done some of my most prolific and productive memoir writing with
    Mercury retrograde, but it’s a struggle to keyboard.  More typos
    than usual and many other ways to screw up–about as many as there are
    keys on the keyboard, squared.  The memories surface, and if I’m
    wise and prudent (and courageous) I’ll get some of them written
    down.  I first bogged down after I finished the late ‘sixties /
    early ‘seventies, the interesting part of my life.  Scanning in
    all my childhood pics helped pull up memories and motivate me to write
    that portion.  Now I’m into a difficult time, one that for many
    years I tried to forget.  Trying now to remember it… well,
    that’s an iffy business.  But Mercury retrograde can help with
    that, so unless something interesting happens here and now my next few
    entries might be memoirs.

    Meanwhile, today Mercury is conjunct its natal position for me, and
    spang on a major nexus of my “intensity” stellium, AKA the
    curse-blessing pattern.  today’s chart
    shows Mercury (the traditional ruler of my sign, Virgo) and Mars (my
    most elevated planet) both opposite Uranus (which rules my natal chart
    because of it’s station on my natal day).  I just
    uncharacteristically screamed at Doug over something that’s only an
    everyday annoyance around here on most days, seldom cause for a raised
    voice.  Today there is also a T-square pattern, with Moon opposite
    Pluto, both square Jupiter.  Rich says, “This pattern suggests a
    surfeit of information; we may be bombarded with too much to take in
    and process. Our heads may be whirling and buzzing.”  I guess
    that’s what happened to poor Theresa at Papa-Do-Run.

    Jupiter is in Virgo, conjunct my natal Sun / Chiron conjunction. 
    And that’s enough for me.  I’m getting frustrated at all these
    typos.  I hurt my throat yelling at Doug and he still is not doing
    what he said he was going to do.  That situation needs my
    attention, even if in this mood I’m likely to just piss him off and
    trigger more resistance.  I am outta here, anyway!

    Well, not quite…  As I wrote the line above, he thanked me for
    keeping him on task, saying, “I may not appreciate them, but I need the
    reminders.”   I have neglected to mention today’s harmonious trines: 
    between Moon and Neptune (which are conjunct in my chart and in
    Greyfox’s, and those conjunctions of ours are conjunct each
    other’s:  our “twin” star stuff); between Venus and Uranus (I’ve
    been “tough loving” my kid a lot for a couple of days, trying to wake
    him up); and between Sun and Pluto.

  • How many times can you reuse tea leaves?

    I just poured water back through the tea leaves in my drip coffeemaker
    for the ninth or tenth time since I started counting.  I don’t
    know (of course) how many times I did it before I decided to count, but
    it had to be at least half a dozen over the course of more than a
    week.  It started one day about three weeks ago, when for once I
    decided to ask my body about drinking coffee.  I use kinesiology
    (MRT:  muscle response testing) to determine which foods are safe
    for me to eat, but I’d not asked about coffee.  The answer was
    coffee no, tea okay, and to further questioning I got the response that
    the goal was to withdraw from caffeine gradually.  For some drugs,
    cold turkey works best and for others some tapering off helps minimize
    withdrawal symptoms.

    Both caffeinated drinks taste equally vile to me now that cream,
    “non-dairy” creamer (which contains casein, the addictive peptide in
    milk), sugar, honey and artificial sweetener are taboo, and both smell
    equally pleasant.  I might have been drinking more tea and less
    coffee if tea had been easier to make, or coffee less so.  Greyfox
    got an electric drip coffeemaker with an insulated carafe that keeps
    the stuff hot all day.   Making tea, on the other hand,
    involved messing with leaves or tea balls or my neato little infusing
    spoon dealie (teabags are less appealing), and either brewing it one
    cup at a time or having a potful grow cold and drinking it room temp or
    nuking it.  Coffee being easier, and Greyfox always being willing
    to make coffee but leaving the tea brewing to me, meant I usually drank
    coffee. 

    When I had to switch to tea (gotta listen to this body — I sorta
    depend on it to carry me around), I decided it was worth a try brewing
    it in the nifty insulated carafe.  I loaded the filter basket with
    a plentiful heap of tea leaves, figuring it was a large carafe and
    perhaps the drip brewing would not extract the essences as fully as
    does traditional steeping.  Boy, was I wrong!  The first pot
    was so strong I had to water each cup down about half-strength to make
    it drinkable.  When that pot was half gone, I ran a half measure
    of water through the same leaves to get a weaker brew.  It was
    still stronger than I liked, so I kept repeating that process. 
    After several days, I started checking the leaves each time to make
    sure they hadn’t gone moldy, and it occurred to me that daily dousings
    with boiling water dripping through would keep them from growing
    mildew. 

    That’s what I’ve been doing for these three weeks, and will go on doing
    as long as the resultant brew has color and flavor.  How’s that
    for gradual withdrawal?  I don’t suppose I’ve had more than a
    homeopathic dose of caffeine in the last few days.  My caffeine
    withdrawal headaches stopped over a week ago.  I’m drinking less
    of my weak tea each day, and more water.  Much of that is
    sparkling water, because I like the fizzy stuff.  There’s a brand
    of naturally flavored calorie free sparkling water, Crystal Clear,
    sweetened with sucralose, which my body (through MRT) says is safe for
    me.  It is too sweet for my taste, so about an ounce or two of it
    in the bottom of a tall glass flavors the whole glass of sparkly water
    – my version of soda pop — and makes me feel both virtuous and
    luxurious when I drink it, not to mention frugal.  Two liters of
    plain sparkling water cost the same as a liter of the sweet stuff.

    Douglass, my father’s family name, is a Scots name, y’know?  My
    mother’s family name was Scott, and you can’t get much more Scottish
    than that.  Thrift and frugality are in my blood and part of my
    early training.  Both my parents went through the Great Depression
    in their youth, and even when they had plenty they never wasted
    it.  Weekend trips to the Alviso dump were fun alternatives to
    fishing trips during my early childhood.  I smile every time I
    pour another pitcher of water through those old tea leaves, and frankly
    the brew tastes better with each pot.  Maybe those leaves are
    fermenting….

    I guess I tried too hard to tie everything together in that last blog
    about my two-meeting day in town.  Next day when I read it, I saw
    that I’d left out a lot of what I had intended to include.  One
    thing, implied but not stated, was that I brought all that stuff for
    the thrift shop back home again.  There are five thrift stores in
    Wasilla.  The one at the rehab ranch is my first choice and they
    were not taking donations.  My old friend and associate from the
    SCA, who runs the Women’s Center store, whimpered the last time I took
    a donation in, and complained that she had more things than she could
    get priced and displayed.  Likewise Greyfox’s favorite shop, the
    Treasure Loft, is overstocked.  They have an entire back room
    piled high with 55-gallon garbage bags full of clothing and toys, and
    their shelves for housewares runneth over, literally.   It’s
    dangerous walking by one of them.  The vibrations of one’s
    footfalls could set off a crockery slide.  Besides that, the
    manager has a capricious pricing policy and knows little about relative
    values of things, plus they often spoil objects by using masking tape
    for price tags.

    The Salvation Army store just moved to a new larger building, but
    Greyfox and I both have reasons not to want to support them.  Mine
    are Virgo-picky:  they’ve stopped organizing clothing racks by
    size and now it’s a time-consuming task trying to find anything, plus
    they eliminated their fitting room.  Instead, they allow people to
    return things (for store credit, not cash refunds) within a week. 
    I don’t always get back to town every week, so last time I was in there
    (possibly my last time EVER), I stood in a back corner of the store and
    tried on pants.  Luckily I’d worn thin leggings that day and
    didn’t need to fully disrobe.  Greyfox’s reasons are more
    politico-economic.  Sally Ann’s prices are excessive, higher than
    any other “thrift” store in town, and the uses to which they put their
    funds range from questionable to regrettable.  Making street bums
    sit through a sermon to get a meal seems petty to me.  I have a
    bit of a semantic quibble with them, too.  Calling proselytizing
    and converting, “salvation”, well, that’s just mealy-mouthed weasel
    words to me.

    Political ideology is also the reason we’ve agreed not to take
    donations to the other thrift store in town, Earthly Treasures. 
    They use their profits to support Christian missionaries who interfere
    with the indigenous cultures of Central America.  Greyfox’s
    feelings on this are so strong that he won’t shop there unless it’s a
    bag sale and he can be sure of getting the greatest value for a few
    meager bucks.  My thinking is that they’re going to be down there
    in Guatemala doing their thing with or without my few dollars, but I’ll not, on principle, give them my treasures.  We will just wait until winter when the donation stream tends to dry up, and take our stuff to the ranch again. 

    Thank God there’s no Goodwill up here, or I’d have to compose a
    diatribe against their exploitation of crips.  (Speaking as a
    card-carrying crip — my handicap parking placard is one of my most
    valued possessions — I can use that politically incorrect term.) 
    Some of my old friends are among those exploited, and I have plenty to
    say about that.   Maybe some other time.

    Another thing I neglected to mention in that last blog was a
    conversation before the AA meeting, with a man I’ve seen in all three
    of my current 12-step groups:  AA, Narcotics Anonymous, and Double
    Trouble in Recovery for the dually diagnosed.  He has stopped
    going to DT for the same reasons that it is my favorite meeting. 
    It doesn’t adhere to the cultish AA program as strongly, there’s more
    “cross talk” at meetings making it more like a therapy group than the
    series of monologues you hear in AA and NA, and members are often heard
    trashing their doctors for overmedicating them.  He’s a firm
    believer in better living through chemistry and thinks that
    prescription meds are all okay.

     After he got through trashing Double Trouble for being too free
    of dogma for his taste, he said, “I might have done bad today.” 
    He had first offered to help a female member of all three groups who
    had car trouble.  Then he found that her problem was beyond his
    skill level and he managed to start her car for her and take her to a
    mechanic.   That wasn’t the “bad”.  She had a headache,
    and he gave her one of his hydrocodones.  Belatedly, he started
    worrying that it might trigger an alcohol binge for her.  This
    typical alkie thinking is one of the reasons that AA comes third on my
    list of three current 12-step groups.  If there was a Food Addicts
    Anonymous chapter locally, or one for sex and love addicts, my list
    would be longer.  The only other 12-step resources I know of
    locally are AlAnon and Overeaters Anonymous.  OA adheres to the
    dogma that it’s all in the mind, and doesn’t recognize the physical
    nature of addiction — FAA is just a step nearer reality on that
    one.  But I digress.  This man surely would have known, from
    seeing that woman and hearing her share at DT and NA meetings, that
    she’s a drug addict, but his only concern was that the hydrocodone
    might make her pick up a drink. 

    To far too many AAs, it’s like that.  Any drug is okay, except
    alcohol.  People wearing blinders, stuck in ignorance, wallowing
    in their own denial and reinforcing the denial of each other, have so
    badly distorted what Bill W and Dr. Bob intended for that organization,
    and are turning it into a dogmatic cult… it’s pathetic.  The
    foundations, the steps and traditions, are sound.  The original
    club based on them, like many other institutions that have been around
    for a while, is now corrupt and dangerously obsolete.  AA
    literature mentions the “X-factor” the “unknown” thing that makes a
    person an addict.  Those who would have this organization be a
    personality cult revolving around its founders ignore all the research
    on biochemistry that has occurred in the past eighty years. 
    Ironically, Bill W, before his death, had gotten into orthomolecular
    medicine (while it was still being called mega-vitamin therapy) and
    tried unsuccessfully to introduce it to AA.  Ah, well, enough of
    that dead horse.  I had one other thing I’d left out before….

    The topic at the NA meeting was “the shape of our thoughts,” and how
    they change during recovery.  That was right up my alley.  My
    way of thinking has changed so much in the thirty-some years since I
    was doing IV drugs that I have a hard time recalling how I thought and
    felt back then.  I can no more relate to that “me” than I can to
    some of the people still struggling to get out of the addictive mindset
    and into recovery.  The 12-step programs don’t magically do that
    for them.  One does not enter recovery when one starts going to
    meetings.  Some of the ways I’ve heard that stated is that there
    is more to recovery than just abstinence, and that the programs won’t
    keep you from using, they’ll just take all the fun out of it for
    you.  I think those things are true, and also the line, “it works
    if you work it.”

    That thing I wasn’t “getting” Thursday, the struggling and trying
    instead of just doing, could be something I may never understand. 
    I even suspect that those who “struggle” and “try” may be in denial
    about what they are actually doing.  I do remember when I quit
    shooting speed and downers, and more recently when I kicked the
    lifelong sugar addiction and stopped smoking weed.  Quitting
    wasn’t a struggle.   Life was a struggle with the
    drugs:  to maintain a supply of them and to maintain some
    acceptable level of function with them, and to rationalize their
    use.  Quitting was just… quitting.  As soon as I made the
    decision to quit, I stopped.  Weed was easy to quit; for me it
    hadn’t been addictive.  IV speed and downers were easy, because I
    was locked up where I had no access to more during the detox and
    withdrawal.  Once free of them and then free on the streets, I
    chose not to enslave myself to the needle again.

    Pills were never as compellingly addictive for me as the needle was,
    and they were relatively easy to quit.  Nothing was as hard to
    kick permanently as the sugar was.   Many times I tried to
    cut down on my use and that failed every time.  Every addict knows
    you make the kicking harder if you try to cut down.  You either
    quit or your use tends to escalate.  It was not until I applied
    that same logic of addiction to sugar that I managed to get off
    it.  As long as I thought of it as food I was in trouble. 
    Over and over again I lied to myself and convinced myself that since it
    was okay for “everyone” else to eat the crap, a little bit wouldn’t
    hurt me.  Of course it’s not okay for everyone.  Look at the
    obesity epidemic in this culture, and the incidence of diabetes
    especially among those not of European ancestry.  And a “little
    bit” of an addictive substance just makes me want more.

    There are a few old-timers in my AA home group who will speak up when
    one or another of the newcomers or the relapsing crowd talks about how
    hard it is, the “struggle” to stay sober and “trying” to do
    recovery.  They say “bullshit”, and “tough shit, don’t
    drink.”   If not for that knowing core of members there, I’d
    probably never go back.  They remind me of the junkies who helped
    me turn my life around.  And that’s what it was, a turnaround, a
    transformation.  I went from making excuses for my behavior to
    refusing to accept my excuses.  I went from wishful and magical
    thinking to acknowledging the truth I knew.  I went from ripping
    and running, lying and denying, to a determination for the rest of my
    life to do nothing to damage my self esteem.  That lifetime
    commitment is at the core of my recovery.  I think one stumbling
    block for 12-steppers is a misinterpretation of the “one day at a time”
    idea.  

    One must live in the moment and not in regret for the past or fear for
    the future.   Life can be lived only one day at a time, or
    just from moment to moment, but commitments — the promises we make to
    ourselves and others — are forever.   There are probably millions
    of ways to weasel around and keep an addiction going while saying
    you’re “trying to quit.”  There is only one way to quit, and that
    is to not do it any more.   When I took a day off from eating
    sweet treats, the next day I was back to stuffing my face with
    them.  When I made a lifetime commitment to stop I ensured that
    even an occasional chance or unthinking exposure wouldn’t lead to
    relapse.  Anything we do, we do one day at a time, but if we
    expect to continue doing it for the rest of our lives, we must commit
    ourselves to that.

  • I hope I can tie this together.

    Usually when I sit down here to blog I have a coherent topic or theme
    in mind.  Sometimes it’s a story with a beginning, middle and end.
      Today’s theme is me, here and now, there’s not much coherence in
    that, and I’m having too much trouble figuring out where to start to
    even think about a middle or an end.  What I’ll have to do here is
    find a loose thread and see how it unravels.

    At least today is better than yesterday.  Not that yesterday
    wasn’t a fine day — I don’t mean that.  The only thing wrong with
    yesterday was me.  For two days before, Tuesday and Wednesday
    after the unaccustomed activity of a big load of wash at the laundromat
    on Monday, I had been walking funny, a sort of stiff-kneed, flat-footed
    stumble-shuffle that felt like a slow and barely controlled fall down a
    gentle slope.  If I bent my knees or flexed my feet my calves or
    my arches would spasm and cramp and I’d lose that bare bit of control I
    had.  I was stumbling and falling into things all day.  The
    bright side there is that I’ve had this damned disease long enough now
    to know it’s best to stay close to things I can fall into harmlessly instead of
    getting out in the middle of the room and falling down flat.  At the
    worst of these times I regress to the “cruising” stage before I learned
    to let go of the furniture and walk.

    On Tuesday, I did no more than absolutely necessary:  kept myself
    fed, hydrated and made a trip to the bathroom whenever I had to.  Six
    hours sleep Monday night, four hours Tuesday, and both of those with at
    least one interruption in the middle.  In other words, precious
    little REM sleep if any at all.  On Wednesday, I started thinking
    about weaseling out of going to town Thursday.  It wasn’t my week
    to drive the rehab van, but it was the night for the monthly business
    meeting, our NA Group Conscience.  I typed my notes from the
    previous month’s meeting and thought about emailing it to the group’s
    treasurer so he could read them, but I knew that no one would keep
    minutes this month if I didn’t go.  I’d made the commitment… and
    I went back and forth all day Wednesday over whether I could stand (and
    walk) to keep it.

    I got about six hours of sleep, and Thursday morning my legs were
    functioning, though stiff and sore.  I got most of my clean
    laundry put away and took a shower.  That tired me out, but I
    figured all I had to do was dress and comb my hair, then get in the car
    and go.  Most of the rest would be sitting down, after the stop at
    the spring to fill a few jugs for Greyfox.

    When I got to Felony Flats, offloaded the water and found room among
    the five bags of clothing (stuff now too big for me) on their way to the thrift
    shop, for some bags of things Greyfox had scrounged for me, I decided
    (at Greyfox’s urging) to do some scrounging myself.  There was a
    big pile of stuff:  toys, computers and desks for them, household
    goods, clothing, hardware, dishes, art, books… stuff, as I
    said.  It had been there for weeks, out in the weather,
    unattended.  The man who had brought it there hadn’t been around
    and some of the other denizens of Felony Flats had been scrounging, but
    not Greyfox.  Then Hunter came around.  He was someone we met when he lived at the Flats
    last year, who has just moved back in.  He said that Mike, the
    landlord there, had said he could move into the shipping container that
    had previously been occupied by the teenage drug dealers if he would
    clean up the pile of junk.  What had happened to the owner of the
    junk was arrest and incarceration.  That’s why nobody had seen him
    for a while.  So Hunter told Greyfox to help himself.  The
    more stuff we scrounge the less stuff he has to haul to the landfill.

    It hit me as I was picking through the piles of stuff that The Flow was
    working there at Felony Flats.  Scroungers had been at my old
    place, and here I was scrounging someone else’s junkpile.  I said
    as much to Hunter and Greyfox, and they pointed out that I’m not a
    looter or a vandal, but an authorized scrounger.  What I really
    felt like was a salvage worker, trying to minimize waste.  I found
    a few things I wanted, such as storage bins, bookends, Correlle dishes
    and a yellow Tyvek coverall (no, I don’t know what I’ll do with it, but
    it’s kicky).  For Doug, I brought home a big sports bag, a stack of
    PC game CDs, a blue dress shirt and some toys (really for me, but he
    can play if he wants to), and a lot of electronic stuff to take apart
    including ten or so remote control handsets, phones, answering
    machines, an HP flatbed scanner, and a dozen or so mapping mice. 
    I loaded some bags and boxes with things to donate to the thrift shop,
    too.

    The Flow, the what-goes-around-comes-around principle, one of the spiritual laws of prosperity, was working for
    me before I ever heard it called The Flow, and long before I had
    learned anything about Karma.  Then I read in Linda Goodman’s Star Signs
    about The Flow, and finally had a name for that principle I’d observed in action.  Greyfox laughed at me when
    I talked about it to him, but he now laughs with me in joy at the way
    it works.  We give, and we get, we lose and we find.  We live
    in a friendly universe that is set up for our survival.  All we
    have to do is keep the energy flowing.  A lot of material stuff
    has been flowing in and out, but my personal flow of physical energy is
    puny and easily exhausted.  I could have squeezed a few more
    things into my car, could even have bungeed one of the computer desks onto
    my roof rack, but I was worn out so I quit and headed for the thrift
    shop.

    They wouldn’t take anything.  Sign outside said “no more
    donations.”  The women there were shifting boxes around, trying to
    get stuff that had flowed onto the premises under cover out of the
    weather.   They told me they were planning a yard sale for
    this weekend, and were having a bag sale right then.  So, I filled
    a bag, paid six bucks, and brought home another pair of boots (knee
    high soft black leather), a forest green polar fleece jacket made in
    Homer Alaska, four more silk shirts, a Kinsale Smock made in Ireland
    that fits like it was made for me, size 10 GV black jeans and some
    like-new size 12 black 100% cotton Calvin Kleins that must have shrunk
    first time they were washed.  Again, I felt like a salvage worker,
    trying to find something of use to me among all those things discarded
    by others.  It wasn’t like shopping, but more like sifting. 
    It was near closing time so I didn’t try on anything but the smock and
    jacket, nothing that needed the dressing room.  I wasn’t “into”
    it, had been feeling disconnected all day, just going through familiar
    motions, pickin’ ‘em up and puttin’ ‘em down.

    When I got out of there, I had time to get across town for the 5:30 AA
    meeting, so that’s what I did.  I really felt I could use more
    than just one meeting that day.  Although I get a lot out of
    meetings, I seldom feel that I need them.  Greyfox and I have
    agreed that meetings are a necessity for him and a luxury for me, in
    terms of maintaining sobriety, abstinence.  There’s a high price I
    have to pay to make those trips to town, and virtually no danger that
    I’m going to relapse into active addiction without them.  My
    service work driving the rehab van and holding an office in the NA
    group is the main thing taking me down the valley every week, but often
    after I get there and have the chance to listen and share in meetings I
    am uplifted and inspired, and I have bonded with the other
    members.  But yesterday neither the AA meeting from 5:30 to 6:30,
    the NA meeting from 7:00 to 8:00, nor the business meeting afterward
    relieved that disconnected feeling.

    At AA, someone was celebrating 3 years of sobriety, and when called on
    to share most of what he talked about was the ten years he had before,
    the relapse during a divorce, and the fact that he’s now going through
    another divorce and hanging onto his sobriety with difficulty.  I
    empathized, but I could not relate.  I felt his fear,
    self-loathing, and all, but didn’t really connect.  I could not
    understand where it’s coming from.  In the NA meeting, someone
    talked about her problems with the law and child welfare authorities,
    her powerlessness and the anger she lives in through it all. 
    Again, I empathized but did not connect.   Everyone who spoke
    talked of thoughts and feelings utterly alien to me.  They spoke
    of struggling to stay clean, of trying to let go of fear and anger, and
    all I could say was, “In the words of the wise Yoda, ‘There is no try,
    there is only do and don’t do.’”

    There were only three of us at the business meeting.  The other
    three officers came for the meeting meeting and left before the
    business meeting.  Go figure.  It was a short meeting, not
    much to write down, anyway.  Later over dinner with Greyfox, I
    broke.  My voice was cracking as
    I expressed my confusion:  feeling the pain, anger and frustration
    of the others while experiencing  those disconnected, alienated
    feelings I was having, and my impotence, the inability to either grasp
    where the problem is for these people in those programs of surrender
    and serene acceptance, or to help them.  Hell, they’ve all been in
    those programs longer than I have and they have sponsors and supposedly
    work the steps.  I never had a sponsor, worked the steps by myself
    in prison, and learned about serene acceptance from Paramahansa
    Yogananda and Roy Eugene Davis.  I said I couldn’t understand what
    was wrong with me… “maybe it’s some astrological stuff going on.”

    Greyfox’s eyes lit up and one pointing finger came up as it often does
    when he’s making a point.  He said my sun sign in that day’s paper
    only got two stars for the day.  This evening when Doug couldn’t
    stay awake any longer and finally went to bed (online fanfic writing
    tournament going on for him now), I got on here and looked up the Celestial Weather Report.
    Sun opposite Neptune, Mercury opposite Uranus, Jupiter square Pluto,
    and Moon square Saturn.  Here’s some of what Rich Humbert said:

    …we are brought face-to-face with our
    ideals and projections.  Perfection is clear and shining before
    us.  Our imagination paints bright pictures of how life could
    be…if only…  For an artist this is a peak creative time -
    ideas and images flow from the unconscious to the creative will.  [This is what's going on with Doug, definitely.] 
    We can open our hearts to almost anyone since we’re empathetic and
    seeing similarities more than differences.  Sometimes, we project
    our vision onto those around us; sometimes we project our shadow and
    see our own faults in people near us.  This is a time for
    inspiration, re-dedication, and also some confusion.  The perfect
    future that beckons may be so far away or such a high climb that we
    don’t know how to take the first step.

    In a small town, John Donne’s words, “No man is an island,” are easy to
    appreciate, and in the remaining small towns they still are
    clear.  But in a global urban culture it’s a leap for many to find
    the same feeling, and an even bigger leap to Gracie Slick’s reply, “No,
    he’s a peninsula!”

    But all that data came after I’d resolved my conflicted feelings. 
    I got it together on the ride back up the valley last night and in my
    sleep.  I woke this morning with my usual attitude intact. 
    I’ll give it (whatever it is) my best shot and the universe will give
    me its best in return.  It’s always worked that way:  EWOP –
    everything works out perfectly. 

  • As promised:

    The Wintersgate Assassins’ Guild

    versus the

    Red-haired Women

    The
    Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), for those who don’t already
    know, is divided into local groups within which and among which there
    is strong competition.  Competition is what the SCA is all about,
    for those who participate and aren’t just spectators.  It can be
    contests of strength and skill in battle with rattan swords and
    aluminum armor, or quieter competition in cooking, brewing, designing
    and constructing costumes, telling stories, singing, dancing, playing
    musical instruments and anything else a member can think of that was
    done in the Middle Ages.  If human beings did it then, the SCA will make a
    contest of it now.  I frankly don’t know if the “poisonings” that
    took place in the mid-1980s in the Principality of Oertha (a part of
    the Kingdom of the West) were a competition among members of the guild, or just a schoolboy lark.

    Prior to the beginning of the series of dosings with drugs, the
    Assassins’ Guild had engaged in an ongoing game since even before I
    joined the Society.  At feasts and tourneys, they would drop diced
    carrots into the drinks of the unwary.  Those who got to the
    bottom of a drink and found carrots knew they’d been “poisoned.”

    As the first victim in the series, I was hit entirely without
    warning.  Even though I had gotten some electric watermelon 
    from Merry Pranksters at a Fourth of July picnic in Eugene in 1970, I
    knew the Pranksters and their pranks, expected the acid in the melon,
    and handled it pretty well when that high came on.  In Fairbanks
    at the Winter Tourney, when I started getting off on whatever the drug
    was, I wasn’t expecting it.  A normal busy day of cooking and
    serving three meals to a big crowd turned weird around
    breakfast time.

    First, there were intense emotional undercurrents in the kitchen. 
    That wasn’t unusual, but my sensitivity was extraordinary and all those
    hostile vibes, the covert dirty-looks-behind-another’s-back, and the overblown anxiety were creeping me out.  I
    took care of my immediate appointed task and got out of the kitchen,
    saying truthfully that I had an upset stomach.

    I watched the fighters for a while, and flinched a little more than
    usual when they got hit.  When one match was over, and the men
    took off their helms in the -55°F cold, the vapor coming off their hair
    and the crackly sound the sweaty hair made as it froze amazed me. 
    I was worried, in my typically maternal way, that the guys would get
    chilled.  Atypically, I mentioned it to one of them.  Here’s
    little me all bundled up and looking up at this almost seven-foot-tall
    fighter who was one of the two who had alternated as Prince of Oertha
    since the Principality had been formed, suggesting that the big guy dry his hair and put
    his helm back on or go inside.  In my ordinary state of
    consciousness, I usually leave such matters up to the individual adults
    involved.

    I still hadn’t a clue that anything was wrong with me, but I couldn’t
    sit down and couldn’t stand still for more than a few seconds.  I
    walked around tidying up, looking very closely at a number of
    interesting things, and forgot who and where I was.  First, my
    brat went missing.  That’s a garment/blanket, a big rectangle of
    wool tartan that can be draped around the shoulders as a cloak, rolled
    up into for sleeping, or folded lengthwise and gathered onto a belt for
    a kilt.  My SCA persona, Faianna ni Kenneth na Dunlioscairn, is a
    12th Century Gall/Gael from the Dal Riada.  Anyhow, I dropped my
    brat somewhere and when Charley (Fergus MacGown) asked me where my brat
    was I got pissed at him for calling our child a brat and started
    looking around to see just where the little monster (Doug, AKA Dougal
    “Doogle” MacFergus) had gotten off to. 

    Then the lights in the hall (a fairgrounds exhibit building the size of
    an aircraft hangar) went off.  I called out and asked someone,
    anyone, where the light switch was, because I knew that was where
    Dougal MacFergus was.  Sure enough, the lights came back on and
    there he was and then he turned them off again and on again… we
    didn’t have electric lights at home and he was fascinated with
    them.  Fergus and I collected our kid, and the event proceeded,
    but I was getting more and more confused and my face was flushed. 
    It dawned on Charley that something was wrong, especially since I still
    hadn’t found my brat, and even more telling, I wasn’t in the
    kitchen.  I’d never shirked a job that way in all the years he
    knew me.

    I babbled and wandered around the big building and interacted in odd
    ways with people and things.  On one of my crossings of that
    immense floor, I passed a small knot of young men all in black cloaks,
    and one of them said to me, “Thank you for the entertainment.”  I
    shrugged and said, “You are welcome, I suppose, but what…?” 
    Then one of his companions shushed him, they all turned away from me, laughing, and
    I continued my endless walk back and forth.

    By then Charley and the rest of our little party from the Shire of
    Selveirgaard had realized that I was involuntarily psychedelicized, and
    they ganged up on me.  One of the women found my brat in the rest
    room.  They wrapped me in it and made me sit down in a
    corner.  I protested.  They told me that someone had
    apparently dosed me with psychedelics, and the penny finally
    dropped.  Oh… yeah.

    But the rest of that evening and all the long ride back to the Su
    Valley from Fairbanks, I kept forgetting, and tripping, and then
    realizing I was tripping….  It was a while, a few weeks, before
    I felt entirely “myself” again, and I had a lot of anger over the
    incident.  I wasn’t just angry at the kids who poisoned me. 
    It pissed me off that everyone from the Eskalyan Chatelaine who
    micromanaged everything in the Anchorage group (and later did some jail
    time for having embezzled funds from her job at Girl Scouts to pay for
    the feasts and tourneys she autocratted, her trip to Ireland, her
    significant other’s hospital bills, etc.) to those at the Kingdom level
    wanted to sweep it under the rug.    I wrote an
    impassioned letter to the editor of the newsletter, but it never saw
    print.  Over the next few years, as at least four more red-haired
    women got the same treatment, the official stance was HUSH.

    I recall a chance meeting with one of them, a couple of years after my
    incident.  She was shopping with her husband when I ran into
    them.  She told me that after two more women were poisoned in
    Fairbanks, both of them redheads, she had become very watchful of her
    drinks while at SCA events.  We had figured out that the drug was
    probably slipped into my coffee before breakfast as I either chased
    Dougal or went to the bathroom.  It remained an isolated incident
    for six months or so, and then someone else was drugged, and then
    another. 

    No one knew whether I’d been a chance target of opportunity and the
    “red-haired series” had developed from that, or if they had planned a
    red-headed serial poisoning spree all along.  They had gotten to
    my friend at a summer tourney in Anchorage, with a hallucinogen
    injected into an orange.  She was diabetic, and started wearing an
    insulin pump shortly after the drugging incident.  Her husband
    expressed anger at the Assassins, but admitted that they couldn’t be
    sure what effect the dosing had on her diabetes.  After her death,
    he was still angry over it, confused, with unresolved doubts.

    Through the years I’ve encountered many of my former associates from
    the SCA.  Except with the redheads, I don’t bring up the
    poisoning.  I asked around and learned that within a few years
    there had been five in all.  I’ve had no news more recent than
    that, nothing since the end of the ‘eighties, so I don’t know if the
    game continued.  One of the redheads who lived in Fairbanks found
    out from a friend of a friend who was responsible.  It really
    wasn’t hard to figure out, with those black clad Assassins hanging
    around watching and chuckling over their victims’ behavior.

    My friends told me that there was a division of opinion within the
    Society on whether these poisonings were crimes or harmless
    pranks.  Pranks they may have been, but harmless they were
    not.  Since possession of the drugs themselves is a crime, it’s
    fairly clear in my mind that giving them to an unsuspecting other would
    be an even greater crime.  But given the nature of the events and
    the absence of any prompt legal complaints, or any preserved evidence,
    I don’t suppose it would have been a prosecutable crime.

    It’s definitely against the Commandments:
    8 brainsTimothy Leary’s
    Two Commandments for the Molecular Age
    Thou shalt not alter the consciousness of thy fellow men.
    Thou shalt not prevent thy fellow man from altering his or her own
    consciousness.

    But there are so many ordinary everyday things that run counter to those
    commandments, from tricky subliminal advertising to stringent anti-drug
    laws, that the Commandments are almost laughable… almost.

  • Unsought Treasures

    It happens to me all the time:  I’ll be looking for something
    specific and along the way I find something entirely different and
    totally delightful.  I was googling for references to go with a
    blog about the Oerthan Poisoners’ Guild (or did they call themselves
    “Assassins”?  That may have been the tag.), and I allowed myself
    to be led astray.  I will get back to the series of crimes against
    redheads at another time, but first I want to share my serendipitous
    find.

    The way I got to this was roundabout, and I’m grateful that I let
    myself be distracted from my original quest.  I had been looking
    for Timothy Leary’s “Two Commandments of the Molecular Age,” to be sure
    I had the wording correct and to learn, if I could, in which work of
    his they appeared so I could cite it.  Apparently it was in The Politics of Ecstasy
    But while I was looking for that, one of the search results that came
    up had the title line:  “bozos on the bus.”   That line
    from Firesign Theater, “We’re all bozos on this bus,” much used by Wavy
    Gravy, is a favorite of Greyfox’s and mine.  I think it sometimes
    goes over the heads of younger people, and I’ve even seen some offended
    expressions when one or the other of us has said it at twelve-step
    meetings.  Too bad, we’re bozos and those of us who admit it have
    the advantage, I think.

    Anyhow, the page that result took me to was Enlightenment Library and from there I went to an excerpt from Broken Open
    by Elizabeth Lesser.  At the end of that excerpt was a link to
    another excerpt.   This one is right in line with what I’ve
    been doing, benefiting from doing, and advocating.  The last time
    I was in town, as we were going through the checkout line, the clerk
    asked how we were.  We had just been venting to each other about
    our various pains and dysfunctions, and Greyfox had said how glad he
    would be to get home and sit down.  So, I said to the checker,
    “We’re ready to go home and sit down.”  She smiled and said that
    she felt the same way.  Greyfox expressed surprise that I had
    actually answered the pro forma question truthfully, and a friendly conversation ensued, lasting until we walked away from her checkstand.

    Sometimes I just say, “Okay,” and let it go at that.  I hardly
    ever use the word, “fine,” in response to queries about my
    condition.  I’m just not that hypocritical.  And sometimes
    there seems no point in belaboring some poor schmuck with my troubles
    just because he’s been trained that it’s polite to ask.  This time
    the question seemed sincere, so I gave it the answer it deserved and we
    all gained thereby.  I’m also unusually frank in my blogs, in case
    you hadn’t noticed, and I frequently receive comments expressing
    gratitude and appreciation.  That’s what I think this book excerpt
    is about:

    Why wave the dirty laundry about, when all she asked was, “How are you?”

    Rumi says that when we hide the secret underbelly from each other, then
    both people go away wondering, “How come she has it all together? How
    come her marriage/job/town/family works so well? What’s wrong with me?”
    We feel vaguely diminished from this ordinary interaction, and from
    hundreds of similar interactions we have from month to month and year
    to year. When we don’t share the secret ache in our hearts-the normal
    bewilderment of being human-it turns into something else. Our pain, and
    fear, and longing, in the absence of company, become alienation, and
    envy, and competition.

    The irony of hiding the dark side of our humanness is that our secret
    is not really a secret at all. How can it be when we’re all
    safeguarding the very same story? That’s why Rumi calls it an Open
    Secret. It’s almost a joke-a laughable admission that each one of us
    has a shadow self-a bumbling, bad-tempered twin. Big surprise! Just
    like you, I can be a jerk sometimes. I do unkind, cowardly things,
    harbor unmerciful thoughts, and mope around when I should be doing
    something constructive. Just like you, I wonder if life has meaning; I
    worry and fret over things I can’t control; and I often feel overcome
    with a longing for something that I cannot even name. For all of my
    strengths and gifts, I am also a vulnerable and insecure person, in
    need of connection and reassurance. This is the secret I try to keep
    from you, and you from me, and in doing so, we do each other a grave
    disservice.

    Rumi tells us that moment we accept what troubles we’ve been given, the
    door will open. Sounds easy, sounds attractive, but it is difficult,
    and most of us pound on the door to freedom and happiness with every
    manipulative ploy save the one that actually works. If you’re
    interested in the door to the heavens opening, start with the door to
    your own secret self. See what happens when you offer to another a
    glimpse of who you really are. Start slowly. Without getting dramatic,
    share the simple dignity of yourself in each moment-your triumphs and
    your failures, your satisfaction and your sorrow. Face your
    embarrassment at being human, and you’ll uncover a deep well of passion
    and compassion. It’s a great power, your Open Secret. When your heart
    is undefended you make it safe for whomever you meet to put down his
    burden of hiding, and then you both can walk through the open door.

    OPEN SECRET

  • That “bright side” keeps getting bigger and bigger.

    I mentioned that I’d found something to feel good about in the recent
    looting and vandalism at Elvenhurst, our old home place half a mile or
    so from here.  “Here” is where we’ve been “housesitting” so long
    now it’s beginning to look permanent.  The owner of this land
    hasn’t contacted us since 2000, when he came back briefly, gave me the
    title to this trailer and went south again.  The acre I own across
    the highway has two trailers, a school bus, two VW vans and some other
    disabled vehicles, a pile of junk left there “temporarily” 21 years ago
    by the man who helped us move, and the bits and pieces of my library,
    rock collection and other impedimenta I don’t have room for here or
    just haven’t gotten moved yet.

    Besides having found some treasured objects scattered around by the
    looters, the news came back to me through my ex-husband, Charley, who
    is my son Doug’s father, that some other valued things were
    retrievable.  The story was that these friends of his ended up
    (innocently) with a distinctive pair of green cut glass goblets with
    gold trim, which Charley had given me over twenty years ago.  They
    were expensive, and that wasn’t the only reason I treasured them. 
    When I was in the SCA, the colors I chose for my arms were gold, green
    and black. 

    My heraldic device was a black goblet issuing green flames on a gold
    field:  the power of life and growth arising from death, on a
    background of incorruptible truth.  My best mediaeval costumes
    were green and gold.  I also set a fine table at feasts,
    competitively so.  The goblets were a perfect accompaniment for my
    table settings.   I saw them at a Wasilla bookstore and the
    price made me go pale:  $180.00 each.  I knew I’d never have
    them, but every time we were in that store, I’d go feast my eyes on
    them, drawn to them, couldn’t NOT go gaze at their beauty. 
    Charley got a well-paid temporary job on Barter Island one
    summer.  He said that all the way home he was hoping those goblets
    were still there.  They were.

    But by the time he gave them to me, I’d stopped going to SCA events,
    partly from my chronic fatigue and my disgust at the petty politics,
    but mostly because of the Poisoner’s Guild.  They were a pack of
    Goth-looking young male university students mostly from
    Fairbanks.  I was their first victim, the first of a series of at
    least five red-haired women into whose drinks, and later when people
    became more careful with drinks, fruit, they had slipped potent doses
    of some hallucinogen.  I just got temporarily nuts and was
    fortunate in having a circle of friends who quickly caught on to what
    was happening and kept reminding me it was only the drug.  I came
    down okay.  Some of the other victims had less experience and/or
    more delicate health.  Several had very bad trips and ended up in
    psychotherapy.  One woman, with severe diabetes, became seriously
    ill and went into a lengthy decline from which she didn’t
    recover.  She and I were not the only redheads to quit playing SCA
    when the word got around through the grapevine about what was happening.

    Because
    I’d had no practical use for them, and because Doug was at that time a
    wild little thing with ADHD who wasn’t deterred by high shelves or
    latched cabinets, I packed the goblets away for safe-keeping.  I
    had known precisely where they were up until Greyfox moved in.  I
    remember showing them to him.  Then the pickup camper in which
    they’d been stowed was moved over to Charley’s place, and I wasn’t sure
    where they were put when all four of us:  Doug, Greyfox, Charley
    and I, moved my stuff out of the camper.  I thought they were in
    one of the VW vans, and it happened to be the one with the hatch that
    later got stuck shut.  I thought a few times about using a crowbar
    on that hatch, but never did, hesitating as ever to destroy anything,
    even junk.  I looked for my goblets every time I went to
    Elvenhurst to gather things to move here, even tried crawling into that
    van from the side door, but just couldn’t shift enough crates around to
    access every nook and cranny before my asthma drove me out of there.


    Charley saw my goblets sitting on a shelf at his friends’ house. 
    He asked about them.  I’m not sure whether he believed the story
    they told him or whether it was the same story he told me.  What
    I’m sure of is that someone isn’t telling the truth.  I don’t
    really care, because Charley got my goblets back.  He told me last
    week he was going to get them back for me, but I didn’t mention them
    when I blogged about the looters because I wasn’t sure what the story
    was there or whether he’d actually get them back.  He has made me
    many promises and kept few.  That was my main reason for splitting
    up with him.  Anyhow, whatever the real story may be, I have my
    green goblets back.  Aren’t they pretty?