I gave myself a headache last night.  Headaches usually just hit
me, and unless they’re obviously the result of low blood sugar, I
hardly ever know what triggers them.  This one was no mystery.

It started after I turned off the light and slipped down under the
covers.  My mind started working on the “problem” of my current
psychic and creative block.  Subjective evidence (that has come to
mind this morning in retrospect) suggests that one of the things going
on here is some fast, high frequency, brainwaves.  The standard
relaxation techniques that usually bring my waves down from beta into
alpha or theta now just seem to get me out of whatever state I’ve been
wandering around in and into “ordinary normal waking” beta state. 
In situations where I’m accustomed to drifting into a meditative state,
my rational mind, which has been figuratively slogging through oatmeal,
kicks in and starts analyzing things.  Last night it started
analyzing itself.

My rational mind has always had a fine talent for rationalizing
things.  Whether a given thing has any rational explanation or
not, I can come up with one.  When I was younger, I spent a lot of
time and mental energy rationalizing my behavior.  Never mind that
my motivations were often emotional and irrational, I found it
expedient and/or comforting to rationalize them.  Psychotherapy
and personal evolution didn’t entirely cure me of that sick tendency,
but it did serve to make it impossible for me to engage in the exercise
for very long without noticing what I am doing.

Last night, I built up a complex rationale for the backlog of work I
have allowed to build up over the last few weeks.  I wasn’t
thinking about the longer-running creative block affecting my writing
and jewelry work, but only my current acute failure to address my
clients’ issues.  I thought it could be instructive or therapeutic
to retrace it here, but that is proving to be difficult now that I’m
back in that world of oatmeal. 

After I’d realized that last night’s mental gymnastics had given me a
headache and gotten me nowhere, I resolved to write it all out
here.  I have been unable today to reconstruct last night’s
internal dialogue.  That’s not surprising.  It was, as all post hoc
rationales are, a flimsy structure.  All I have managed to do this
morning was start up a whole new dialogue with myself and generate a
new headache.

I’d have been better off to skip the whole thing and construct an Iditarod update. 

I’m mildly frustrated here.  The brain fog continues and I’m
tempted to give in to it and go play a game or read some challenge-free
fiction.  The frustration is only partially due to defects in
reception and processing at my end.  Updates at aprn.org and iditarod.com aren’t being posted as fast as I’d like.  I’m going to give you what I’ve got and then go veg out.

spinksy
wanted to know how author Gary Paulsen, who scratched very early in
this year’s race, had done in his previous attempts.  His first
and only finish was in  ’83 as a rookie, when he came in in 41st
place.  In ’85, he started the race and scratched.  Since
then, he has registered once and withdrawn before the beginning of the
race (last year, 2005), and then this year’s scratch.  (photo
credit: official Iditarod photographer, Jeff Schultz)

This year’s trail is harder on mushers than dogs.  DeeDee Jonrowe,
now in second place and in Cripple checkpoint at the latest available
update, talked last night to a radio reporter about the effects of the
soft, snowy trail.  She said that a softer trail and her ability
to control the sled better over snow than the ice and rocks that have
been standard trail conditions over the past few years, has made it
easier on the dogs.
Day 4 at Puntilla Lake, Trent Herbst and other mushers prepare their teams to leave Rainy Pass checkpoint.

Photo Credit Marc Lester, Anchorage Daily News

I reported Sue Morgan’s scratch yesterday, but didn’t have
details.  She had run into a tree and may have fractured some
ribs. 

Ramey Smyth is moving “funny” today after having hit a tree yesterday and putting something out of place in his neck or back.

During the night, Martin Buser broke through some ice and got the lower
half of  his body all wet.  The water was ice by the time he got into
the next checkpoint, where he got some help from bystanders to chip it
off his clothing.

Paul Gebhardt hit a tree at Farewell Lake, cut his gangline, and his
team ran off and left him.  The next musher through (Swingley or
King — I heard it, but didn’t put it in my notes — blame the brain
fog) picked him up.  There was no way they would catch up with the
unburdened team with two men on one sled, so Gebhardt was dropped off
at the buffalo camp where a hunter on a snowmachine gave Paul a ride up
the trail to catch his dogs.  Then, presumably, he went back and
hitched them to his sled and got on his way.  At the latest
update, he was catching up again, moving up into sixth place, from
seventh where he had been at the previous update.

Iditarod Air Force pilot Chris Urstadt, unloading eight dogs from his Cessna

 in Anchorage yesterday.  Photo credit:  Bill Roth, Anchorage Daily News
Some
of the canine athletes have been having their problems, too.  Only
seventeen of the seventy-nine teams still in the race are shown to have
all sixteen dogs they started with.  There could be as many as
three more, because the number of dogs isn’t shown in current standings
for three of the teams.  Two teams are down to eleven dogs, and
Terry Adkins and Noah Burmeister are down to ten dogs each.

One of Ken Anderson’s dogs made history this year when it vomited blood
out on the trail between checkpoints.  Ken loaded him into his
sled bag and rode to the Farewell buffalo camp, where they radioed for
help.  A race veterinarian flew into the buffalo camp, diagnosed a
bleeding ulcer, and the dog became the first in race history to be
med-evacked out.

About
midnight last night, four-time Iditarod Champion Doug Swingley of
Lincoln, Montana, won the gold for being the first musher to reach the
halfway point.  He is still there in Cripple, about ten hours into
his mandatory 24-hour rest.  DeeDee Jonrowe got into Cripple about
three hours behind him.   Each of them arrived there with
fifteen dogs.  About two and a half hours after DeeDee, John Baker
got to Cripple with fourteen dogs.   During the
morning,  Bjornar Andersen, Ed Iten, Paul Gebhardt and Ramey Smyth
have checked into Cripple.  None of them has completed the
mandatory  24-hour or 8-hour rest.

‘Way back behind the pack, which is now in the vicinity of McGrath, two
of the trailing mushers have taken their 24:  Rick Larson and
rookie Chad Schouweiler.   Sonny Lindner and Terry Adkins
have both taken their 24s, and are out of McGrath on their way to
Takotna.  William Hanes, out of Takotna and headed for Ophir, has
finished his 24.  Of all those who have completed the 24, Jeff
King and Aliy Zirkle are in the lead in tenth and eleventh places, out
of Ophir on the way to Cripple.

At least, that’s how things stood at 9:45 this morning.

When I started writing this entry this morning, Iditarod leaders Doug Swingley, Jeff King, Aliy Zirkle and DeeDee
Jonrowe were in Takotna, presumably taking their mandatory
eight-hour layovers there where the food, especially the pie, is
generally agreed to be the best on the trail.  Between midnight and 3 AM, they all blew
through McGrath, which in early years of the race had been the usual
resting place, taking only a couple of
minutes for the exchange of signatures with trail workers at the
checkpoint before heading out the extra 18 miles to Takotna.

While I have been gathering data, uploading photos, drinking coffee,
etc., Doug Swingley has left Takotna after slightly less than six
hours, and John Baker, Ramey Smyth, Paul Gebhardt, Lance Mackey, Aaron
Burmeister, Robert Bundtzen, Jessie Royer, Jim Lanier (who is
scattering Col. Norman Vaughan’s ashes as he goes), Gerald Sousa and
Matt Hayashida, have all gotten into Takotna.

The
food in Takotna is only one of the reasons for the shift from resting
in McGrath.  In the past, dog teams have picked up some serious
diseases from roving dogs in the village of McGrath.  Last night,
Doug Swingley paused to check out a puddle of dog vomit in the McGrath
checkpoint as he was checking in.  In response to a question from
a bystander or reporter, he said with evident relief that it wasn’t his
kibble.  A race veterinarian at McGrath, asked about the mushers’
having begun taking their mandatory rests a bit further along, hinted
that he wished he too were in Takotna where he’d have more time to
check the dogs’ health.

The leaders’ time into McGrath is about six hours behind the pace that
has been set in recent years.  The trail has been slow due to soft
new snow.  Race volunteers driving snowmachines and dragging trail
groomers are working hard to stay ahead of the first dog teams. 
That handful of trailbreakers have stopped to sleep for only three
hours out of twenty-four.  This year for the first time, trail
conditions will require grooming all the way to Nome.  The usual
routine has been to smooth the trail only as far as the coast. 
Beyond that, the trail has usually consisted of ice and packed
snow.  This year, there is fresh, soft snow all the way.

Four mushers have scratched early in the race:  66-year-old
Iditarod veteran and children’s book writer Gary Paulsen of New Mexico
scratched at Skwentna on Day One — or actually shortly after midnight
on Day Two — citing “personal reasons”; Lori Townsend of Willow
scratched at Rainy Pass late that night after injuring her ribs in
several falls; and Sandy McKee, 58, from Fairbanks made it as far as
Rainy
Pass before scratching on Tuesday due to frostbite on her hands. 
Rookie Sue Morgan of Utah also scratched in Rainy Pass yesterday.

There’s
something different about Terrie Hanke, this year’s Teacher on the Trail.  This
program sponsored by Wells Fargo is in its eighth year.  Until now
it has been aimed at elementary school students with lessons that tie
into sled dogs, Alaska, and the race.  Ms. Hanke is a high school
physical education teacher from Wisconsin.  The lessons she
transmits from the trail this year are pitched to older students and include
footraces where a lap around the gym represents a mile on the trail.

Oh, and kids — big or little — don’t forget one of my favorite iditarod.com features, the dog’s eye view of the race, Zuma’s Paw Prints, from the self-satisfied, pizza-loving blue-eyed husky who hangs around race headquarters.

---

Well, that was fun. 
Iditarod time always provides a welcome relief from cabin fever and I
can do these reports in my sleep, digesting and relating info from all
my various sources.

“Sleep” is a reasonably accurate assessment of my current state. 
After having KaiOaty’s site lie dormant for months with no one showing
any interest in it, now that Mercury is retrograde I have a growing
backlog of readings to do and can’t seem to see through the brain fog
enough to get started on them.

I told Doug this morning that it feels as if my head is stuffed with
oatmeal.  That conversation rapidly degenerated into a giggling
discussion of Avenomancy that would be funny only to other
diviners.  It drew a chuckle out of Greyfox when he called.

If you happen to be one of those waiting for a reading, remember that
patience is a virtue and virtue is its own reward.  In the case of
the virtue of patience, it is ever so much more rewarding than
impatience.  That is the voice of experience speaking.

Hurricane Greyfox blew through here yesterday, bringing groceries and a
rented DVD for us to view while he went on up to Sunshine for his
appointment with the dentist.  Snatch
turned out to be an unexpected mixture of blood and laughter.  I
can’t remember ever seeing such a funny movie with such a high body
count.  The intricately choreographed stunt work involved in the
series of auto accidents that tie the various plot threads together is
a masterpiece slightly reminiscent of Repo Man.

This
photo by Stephen Nowers of the Anchorage Daily News shows the mob scene
out on the ice at Willow Lake for the restart yesterday.   I
avoided it by staying home.  The news and gossip I’ll be reporting
here during the race are gleaned from radio, newspaper, word-of-mouth
grapevine stories, and the web.

In Anchorage on Saturday morning, Ken Anderson and his wife were
driving their truck from their hotel to the downtown area for the
ceremonial start.  Going up a steep hill, the latch on the back
gate opened and his expensive (about $3,000) racing sled slid out onto
the street.  By the time they got stopped and went back, it was
gone.  He called the police and filed a report.

Anderson had some tense moments.  His only spare sled had already
been airlifted out to McGrath in case it would be needed for the finish
of the race.  But several other mushers offered him their spares
and he showed up at his appointed starting time on a borrowed
sled.  Later the same day, police called.  Someone had found
his sled a considerable distance from where he’d lost it.  The
assumption was that the person who grabbed it had second thoughts and
dumped it.  He rode his own sled out of the restart in Willow
yesterday.

Lynda Plettner accidentally set her dogs’ gangline on fire and
destroyed it.  She was using a lighter to melt and fuse some loose
threads on the nylon webbing, and the fire got out of control. 
Presumably, she had a spare or borrowed a line from someone.  She
and her team are off and running with the pack.

Vi Redington, widow of Iditarod founder Joe Redington, died Saturday of
metastatic cancer.  She and musher DeeDee Jonrowe had mastectomies
around the same time in 2002 and went through chemotherapy together.

R.S. the publicity hound apparently isn’t getting enough attention this
year.  I spotted her name prominently placed at adn.com, then
noticed that it was a paid ad.  The mystery of who’s leading the
visually impaired girl from Utah, or Idaho or some such place, has been
solved.  Paul Ellering, the professional wrestler who was her
seeing-eye musher last year is running the race solo this
year.   Tim Osmar has taken his place as “visual interpreter.”

Best one-liner from yesterday’s restart came from a Dutch fan here to
cheer on his friend and countryman Ben Valks, a rookie who has been
training with Lynda Plettner.  The fan said that Valks hadn’t
handled dogs or a sled until recently, though he is a great
equestrian.  Asked by a reporter why, in that case, Valks had
decided to mush dogs in the Iditarod, the friend replied deadpan,
“because horses aren’t allowed.”

Today, my favorite de jour, Lance Mackey, was first into the Finger
Lakes checkpoint, leading sixteen other fast mushers who have broken
away from the pack.  Last year, after having won the Yukon Quest,
Lance finished seventh in the Iditarod.  This year, he won the
Quest again and is hoping to be the first musher in history to win both
long-distance challenges in the same year.

Doug Swingley is back, hoping for his fifth win, to tie Rick Swenson
who now holds the title for most wins.  Swenson is back again this
year after having scratched last year during a stretch of warm weather
and wet trail that endangered his team and several others. 
Overall, this seems to be a year when many mushers are varying their
strategies, running new dogs, or just trying something different. 
Martin Buser, who usually starts fast and tries to hold the lead all
the way, is loafing back in the pack and planning a big push later in
the race.

Keep coming back.  I’ll be here, keeping my eyes and ears
open.  Until the ground thaws and the tadpoles hatch, this race is
the only interesting thing going on around here.

P.S.
For several days, I have been engaging in “false advertising,” with the Xangazon link to Sephiroth‘s
book, Destiny’s Song.  I don’t have the book yet, so of course I
can’t be “currently reading” it.  This is just my way of
celebrating the fact that my friend and fellow-xangan has gotten
published.

Almost a year ago, I posted Tezcatlipoca, “Smoking Mirror”
and expressed my enjoyment of the way the Nahuatl language rolls off my
tongue.  Before my computer crashed, throwing us offline for
eleven weeks, I was planning another Nahuatl post, about
Quetzalcoatl.

When I got the new comp up and running, I had
forgotten what I intended to do with Quetzalcoatl.  That project
was recalled to mind recently when another Nahuatl word,
Huitzilopoctli, popped into my head.

Huitzilopoctli, Aztec god of war, has been identified by some
mythologists with the “black” aspect of the older Olmec / Toltec /
Mexica god Tezcatlipoca.  [Note:  Do not pronounce "Mexica"
by tacking an "uh" ending onto the usual Anglo pronunciation of
Mexico.  Say, "may SHEE cah."  That's not precisely correct,
but you could hurt your throat trying to get it right.]

To all but mythologers and some staunch adherents of the Archaic
Revival, Huitzilopoctli and Tezcatlipoca are dead gods, mythical
figures, the stuff of folklore and enigmatic ancient paintings and
carvings.  Quezacoatl (better start getting used to variant
spellings right now, because there are a few and I’ll probably use them
all) is just as old, but still alive, culturally vital right now and
into the future.

Some
mythologers identify Quezalcoatl [no matter how I spell it, I say,
"ketzalKWAtl"] with the “White Tezcatlipoca,” the attractive,
seductive, creative aspect of that shape-shifting Toltec-Olmec
deity.  In images such as that at left, Quetzalcoatl (white) and
Huitzilopoctli (black) are shown battling each other.

One
version of Quetzalcoatl’s myth has him running, wounded, across the
land of Mexico.  Wherever the blood of the light-skinned,
fair-haired god with eyes the color of jade fell to the ground, teonanacatl,
the flesh of the gods, sprang up.  There is some controversy over
whether teonanacatl is the psilocybin mushroom or the peyote cactus,
but everyone agrees that it is entheogenic or psychedelic.

Archaeological evidence at Teotihuacan indicates that the cult of
Quetzalcoatl came relatively late to Xocoma.  Images of the
feathered serpent are not found at the pyramids and older
buildings.  The Temple of the Feathered Serpent, above right, is
one of the last-built of the major structures at the site, and seems to
have been deliberatly burned at the time of abandonment.  Such
destruction by fire has often been interpreted by archaelologists as a
sacred act, performed not to defile a structure, but to sanctify it, to
“give” it to the god or gods when the priesthood is leaving.

In several strains of New Age thought and channeled wisdom,
Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, is identified with Jesus Christ,
the redeemer who has promised to return.  New Agers have their own idiosyncratic way
of viewing the return of Quetzalcoatl.  The image at left, by John Ross MacKimmie, is
emblematic of that view, designed to convey a blending of antiquity and
tradition with the future, space, and the stars.  The painting has an ethereal feel to it.

It’s a different feel from Mario Torero’s image of quezecoatl’s return,
at right.  Urban and right now, Torero’s art isn’t fitting an
image from an ancient and foreign culture into the New Age paradigm as
MacKimmie does.  Mario Torero and his art are part of the
tradition that sprang from Quezalcoatl’s land and people.

I like Mario Torero’s work; like it A LOT.  Finding his website
was, for me, the best part of the research I did in preparation for
writing this entry.  The final image, below, is his, too. 
Its title is simply, “Quetzalcoatl.”

I’m asking, not telling.  I won’t even venture to try and predict who will finish
the race.  It’s over 1,100 miles, the weather is unpredictable,
and the fact that there are 84 unpredictable men and women involved,
each of them with up to sixteen unpredictable dogs, just makes it more
foolish to try to predict the outcome.

“Smart money” might be on the Norwegians.  Robert Sorlie, who won
in 2003 and 2005, is handling dogs this year for his nephew Bjornar
Andersen.  They, along with teammate Kjetil Bakken, are Team
Norway, sharing dogs, training together, alternating between mushing in
the race and serving as support for each other.  They have bred a
strain of dog that doesn’t move as fast as the traditional Iditarod
team, and needs less rest.  Smart  money could be wrong this
time, however.  Some of the Alaskan mushers, including Jeff King
(the Park Ranger from Denali National Park), having seen those
long-running teams win, are building teams that run more than they rest.

In previous years, I’ve had sentimental favorites amongst Martin Buser, DeeDee Jonrowe,
Jason Barron and a few other local mushers I run into from time to time
at the community center, library, Salvation Army store or lodge. 
Martin has won the race a few times, and is a five-time (I think)
winner of the Leonhard Seppala Humanitarian Award for the loving care
he gives his dogs.  They are all running this year, and so is my
longtime acquaintance, Lynda Plettner, who had to drop out of this
year’s Knik 200 race in January and be med-evacked to Anchorage for
emergency surgery to correct a kink in her bowel.  My thoughts
this year will be with Jim Lanier, who is carrying the ashes of Colonel Norman Vaughan for the colonel’s last Iditarod run.

But the one I’m really rooting for this year is Lance Mackey. 
Lance’s father Dick was one of the founders of the race and won it in
1978.  His older brother Rick won in 1983.  Lance himself has
won the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race in 2005
after chemotherapy for cancer, and again this year in 2006, after
having an index finger amputated due to nerve damage incurred during
earlier surgery.  Lance seems to be making a career of the
comeback.

Lance’s old truck won him the Ugly Truck Award during one of his recent
races.  In Dawson City after winning the Quest this year, someone
stole his trailer, the one fitted with dog boxes in which he hauls his
team around to races.  They didn’t get very far with it, only
unhitched it from his truck and ended up leaving it elsewhere in the
same parking lot, so at least Lance didn’t lose that.  But he has
been having a lot of truck trouble lately.  It is common among
mushers to greet each other by asking something like, “How’s your team
doing?”  Everyone is so familiar with Lance’s old truck that they
greet him, “How’s your gear holding up?”

Lance has said that he would really like to win the Iditarod this year
because he, “could use that truck.”  In addition to the cash prize
(I’ve heard that it’s $70,000 for first place this year), the winner
gets a new Dodge truck.  Go Lance!

Tomorrow, the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race starts, or appears to start,
in Anchorage.  That, as fans know, is the “ceremonial” start
arranged for obscure reasons related to socio-economic politics. 
The city hauls back truckloads of dirty snow that they had previously
plowed from the streets, blocks traffic for a few hours along a route
across town from skid row to a parking lot on the edge of town where
the mushers can load their dogs back into their trucks for the 50-mile
drive to Wasilla for the “re-start” on Sunday.  That’s the way
it’s supposed to go, anyway.  Again this year as for the past
three years, there’s not enough snow in Wasilla and the restart will be
23 miles further up the Susitna Valley, in Willow.

Thus far, no musher has ever died on the trail, but this year’s
Iditarod has already taken the life of a trail volunteer before the
race gets underway.  Richard Strick, Jr. was riding his snowmobile
behind the Iron Dog racers, grooming the trail to make it more
dog-friendly.  He was buried by an avalanche in Dalzell Gorge, one
of the trickiest parts of the trail.  It took a few weeks, but
they have finally recovered his body.  Trail workers have been
doing avalanche abatement work along the trail since then, deliberately
triggering avalanches in places where the snow could cause problems
during the race.

The Iditarod Air Force
is an indispensible part of the race.  They have been busy for
weeks already, ferrying equipment, dog food and other supplies out to
the checkpoints along the trail.  In addition to being ready to transport the
47 veterinarians and 42 communications volunteers plus race judges, photographers, dog handlers, etc., this year the Air
Force’s 28 volunteer pilots have already hauled 800 bales of straw for
dog bedding, over 75,000 pounds of dog food,  tons of lumber, tents,
and 700 cases of Heet, the gas line anti-freeze that’s used on the
trail as fuel to liquefy water and cook dog food.

They expect to haul an estimated 650 dropped and scratched dogs back to
Anchorage over the next couple of weeks.  They have been doing this
year after year, and their safety record is flawless.

Despite the fact that my mother and plenty of other people have often
called me a know-it-all, I have always known that I still have a lot to
learn.  When I was a little girl, I actually thought that I could
just keep learning and learning until I knew it all.  Sad to say,
as my own capacity for learning has slowed down through the aging
process, the field of things to get to know has grown
exponentially.  Today, when I expressed that sad thought to Doug,
he reassured me thusly:  “The most important thing to know is
where to find the information you need.”

Even though I no longer expect to ever know it all, I still intend to
go on getting as much of it as I can.  I suppose I’d better
qualify that statement.  Since I have resigned myself to not
learning everything, my intention is to continue learning within a
relatively narrow set of fields of interest, with occasional forays out
into new areas of interest whenever some intriguing new idea catches my
attention.  In the interest of that pursuit the librarian at our
local public library pointed me today to a set of worldwide online
library catalogs.

Ever
since I have had internet access, only about five years, I have used
search engines to find much of what I wanted to know, and have
benefited from serendipitously stumbling across many new-to-me but
nevertheless very interesting and useful bits of data.  Many
times, my searches would dead-end in a review or ad for a book that
contained the information I sought.  The web’s database is vast,
but not anywhere near infinite and not even close (yet) to encompassing
all the data in books and libraries.

Prior to being on the web, I was in the habit of reaching out through
Inter-Library Loan for books I wanted to read.  I usually
discovered those books through reviews or ads in various periodicals or
through other media.  For some time now, since I can’t afford to
buy every book I want to read and don’t have room to store them, I have
been using the website of our “local” (a borough the size of
Pennsylvania) library system to track down books I learn about online,
and have them sent to my local library for me to pick up – or, usually,
for Greyfox to pick up on his way up the valley and deliver to me.

Image (about 100 years old) by J.E. Worden, of Tlingit woman,
Shak-Ish-Tin, who was over 100 years old at the time.
Not
every book in the world exists in our local system.  Until today,
when I really craved one that I couldn’t find there, I’d call up the
library and ask the librarian to find it for me, as I had been doing
for decades.  Today, the librarian pointed me to SLED, the
Statewide Library Electronic Doorway, in which Alaska has provided
access for Alaskans to library databases virtually everywhere
onplanet.  Now I can be more independent in my specific book
searches, and can browse through things I had never imagined
existed.  I got hung up for a while today in the Virtual Library and Digital Archive,
looking at pictures.  I’m sharing just a couple of the long-gone
people I found there.  I can’t even begin to describe the
gazillions of nostalgic and historic images there.

There is another new-to-me website that has some interesting apparent potential for tons of usefulness.  Are you hip to The Wayback Machine?  From 1996 to very recently, The Internet Archive
has been taking periodic “snapshots” of the internet.  If you
encounter a broken link to a site that’s just not there anymore because
its host site went down, or a page that has changed and no longer has
the information you once found there and would like to find again,
enter the URL in the Wayback Machine.  I found twelve different
“snapshots” of my old “PainSwitch” site that vanished when Cosmiverse
Folksites folded, and eight shots of the “Shaman” site we had on the
same host.

When I have more time, I intend to use the Wayback Machine to fix some broken links in readings on KaiOaty’s site.  When I have more time,
I’m also going to take care of the backlog of readings and other
housekeeping/indexing work over there.  But right now I need to
start getting ready to go to the spring for water.  This time it
will be a full carload.  The last one was a short load and
therefore the interval from then to now was too short.  It’s
either bigger loads or more frequent trips, because water is one thing
we can’t do without.

(written earlier today)

Twice in the last hour or so we have lost phone and internet
service.  Instead of a dial tone, the phone is issuing the loud
fast “busy signal” indicating that the system is down.  At least,
that’s what I think it means.  I have heard that sound a lot when
I was calling out and encountered busy circuits or some other system
malfunction.  I’ve never before heard it instead of a dial
tone.  Usually, if I don’t get a dial tone, I get silence.

Since that was something new, unfamiliar to me, I thought it wise to
test the system.  The deal we have with our phone co-op is that
they are responsible for everything from their facilities to a box on a
post out in our backyard.  Maintenance of the wiring from that box
into the house, and inside here, is our responsibility.  When
something goes wrong, the first step I have to take is to determine
whether it is in our territory or theirs.  I do that by unplugging
my phone from the jack in here and plugging it into a jack in that box
on the post outside.

The path to that box is a three-to-four-foot depth of ice and packed
snow that Doug has shoveled off the roof.  I only broke through
the crusty surface once on the way out there.  I was being
careful, because there are sharp-edged ice sheets from the roof
sticking up at odd angles all the way.  Phone in one hand,
screwdriver to open the box in the other, I was picking my way
cautiously by habit, not really thinking about that.

My mind was on other things.  The phrase that popped into it just
before my foot crashed through the crust, and I dropped the phone to
catch my balance, was, “Mercury afflicted.”  When I discovered the
phone/internet malfunction, I had been on my way to Xanga to share some
observations I’d made today that illustrate the Mercury station and its
tense, frustrating square aspect to Pluto.

Slips of the tongue have been frequent today, both around here at home
and on the radio.  A bumper crop of them came up during a call-in
interview with a college student who is running for mayor of
Anchorage.  His political naivete is attributable to his youth, I
suppose, but he seemed to be having a lot of trouble speaking.  He
must surely be more intelligent and articulate than he sounded today…
just MUST.  Maybe he always pronounces “especially” with an x, but
most of the rest of his vocal/verbal faux pas sounded like mercurian
garble to me.  The host made the most interesting slip, I
think.  She referred to the “MunASSipality of Anchorage.”  

I’m working in Notepad for transfer to xTools when I can get back
online.  During the time I have been writing this, our computer
has been trying every few minutes to connect, and telling me there is
no dial tone.  Once in a while I lift the phone and listen. 
A few of those times, even the loud insistent beeping stopped and the
line was silent.  

Briefly, after I got back inside with the phone and screwdriver, the
service was up and I logged onto Xanga long enough to read the two
comments I’d gotten on the entry I posted earlier.  When the
connection was broken again, and in the time since then, I  have
felt a helpless feeling that is probably out of proportion to the
reality.  As great as are my enjoyment and appreciation of the
access I gain from the phone and internet, I think that the distress I
feel when I  lose them is even greater.

There’s some insight into my obsession with communication in my natal
chart.  Mercury, the communicator, is conjunct Jupiter and the
asteroid Ceres.  That natal stellium (grouping) is sextile Saturn,
semi-sextile Pluto and my Moon, square my natal Uranus, semi-square my
North Lunar Node, and quincunx (150 degrees from) my Fortuna/eclipse
point conjunction.  The only really clear indication from so many
and various connections is that communication is important to me.  

How that importance shakes out is something that changes from moment to
moment sometimes.  It gets spotlighted when there are powerful
transiting aspects to it.  This week’s Sun/Moon/Uranus conjunction
in Pisces is in exact opposition to my natal Virgo Mercury.  

Tomorrow’s Mercury station (and Mercury’s apparent motion is already so
slow as to be nearly stationary) is square transiting Pluto, which just
happens to be in exact conjunction with my Ascendant, which has always
been square my natal Sun.  This places the Mercury station
opposite my natal Sun/Chiron conjunction.  I’ve been feeling ill,
but instead of talking (or writing) about it as I often do, I’ve mostly
been just moaning, groaning, and crying.  

My natal Moon/Mars/Midheaven conjunction is quincunx this week’s
transiting Sun/Moon/Uranus conjunction.  It’s a slight or “weak”
aspect in general, but that natal stellium, being on that “elevated”
point and with the Moon also in orb of conjunction with Neptune, has
enough strength to emphasize even the lesser transiting aspects. 
I may not be able to pin down and articulate the effects, but they are
there in the back of my mind and in my dreams.  Prior experience
suggests that when this moon goes full in a couple of weeks I’ll have
something to say about this stuff.

The phone is still out and I’ve been involved with this for a couple of
hours.  No point dragging it out any further.  I’ll save this
now (It’s 5:55 PM, my time) and post it when the web comes back up for
me.

The following is a PSA written by my son Doug for the beta test of a
new fanfic tourney system his cohort of shady characters is
developing.  Although the scenario stands alone (I think), if you
have been into console video games for a significant length of time,
you’ll probably recognize some of the characters and that recognition
may add something to the appreciation.  Amethyst is Doug’s own
character, a composite of Rouge and Blue from Saga Frontier.

---

My mentation today is woefully consistent with all the cautionary
prognostications of various astrologers.  Somewhere in the clutter
of my mind I have been working on a sort-of PSA about addiction, its
neurochemical aspect and the roles of culture, psychology and
spirituality.  Every time I formulate a marginally coherent
sentence, I see the fallacies in it and the whole structure of my
thoughts crumbles and fragments.

The only clarity I can achieve is this clear understanding that I’m
flying blind.  A stray thought just crossed my mind that maybe
thinking under these conditions is analogous to doing ordinary tasks
wearing wrist and ankle weights, and I’ll come out in the end with
stronger statements and more efficient neurons.  Maybe not.

Tomorrow is the retrograde Mercury station.

There’s my PSA for today:

I’m fumbling through an M.E. flareup,
trying to finish up some household tasks that I began long ago and
neglected when my energy level dipped and more important tasks came
up.  Sometime in the next day or two, Doug and I need to do a
water run.  If I transcend my aversion to revisiting North Texas
in the 1950s, and triumph over this foggy-minded state, I’ll try to get
my memoirs up into my teens within the next few days.