Zelda's Inferno exercise: 1) create your own astrological system, or 2) write a fable

Disc-Oracle Cozmik Debris Prognosticaor for June 26, 2011:

Unicorn: The arrangement of traffic is particularly auspicious today. A house trailer in your Beltway indicates good fortune on the domestic front.

Cockatrice: Mercury is in retrograde, so any old thermometers you may own will run backwards. Time to upgrade to digital.

Yeti: Matters of money are highlighted today. Sew up the hole in your pocket.

Cyclops: The moon is in your seventh house. You must have been hit hard by the real estate downturn. Good time to diversify your portfolio.

Spriggan: The astrological omens are unclear. Ask again when the clouds clear up.

Sphinx: Some celebrity whose birthday is within a week or two of yours once said or did something inspiring. Don't you wish to emulate that?

Mermaid: GPS satellites are in the constellation of Ursa Major. Be careful not to get lost and eaten by a bear.

So you may have noticed that the blog has been fairly quiet of late. That's because for the past month or so, much of my energy was taken up preparing for the Free Spirit Gathering. This was my 14th FSG, and I've been working on staff for 13 of them. Even my first year, I ended up working unofficially in the Dancing Tree Cafe, the staff and performers kitchen, in return for being able to eat there.

But what made this year...interesting...is that this year I'm President of the Free Spirit Alliance, the organization behind FSG. (Yes, at FSG one can rise from "will work for food" to the Presidency!) Now, the President is not responsible for the day-to-day operations of FSG; that rests with out valiant Festival Coordinators. But under FSA's charter and by-laws, all the financial responsibility rests with the President and the Treasurer, and our fiscal picture has not been rosy of late; so leading up to the Gathering, there was plenty to do.

And during FSG itself, I'd resolved to use whatever gravitas or mana or whatever that the position possesses, to encourage people to join FSA and get more involved. (This year, at the suggestion of others, that included running naked across camp with "Join FSA" written on my butt.) If I had just done that, plus my usual work MCing the concerts and helping out the sound guy, it would have been a busy but enjoyable year.

Instead, I volunteered to serve as Fire Circle Coordinator, a position that had been vacant for several years. That vacancy had lead to a deterioration in the activity that is, to many of us, the heart of the Gathering.

For those who've never been to an event like FSG, a Fire Circle at a Pagan event is part eclectic interfaith magical-religious ritual, part musical/dance improv jam session, and part celebratory revel. I've written a bit about the structure of a Fire Circle before, and if you'd really like to explore what makes them work, you ought to read or listen to Billy Bardo's Fire Circle Rap, a classic of modern Pagan literature. (No, I'm not exaggerating.)

I fell in love with FSG largely because of the Fire Circle. My first night of my first year there, I found myself dancing naked around the fire until I was exhausted. I knew I'd found something special. When I go to a festival, workshops and concerts and more formal rituals and the like are nice adjuncts; but all I really want and need is a fire, a couple of drummers, and space to dance.

Over the years, the Fire Circle at FSG has waxed and waned. The past few years, it had been largely neglected. We'd left our Fire Crew -- the intrepid folks who build the fire itself and take care of fire safety -- alone down there, with no one to handle the ritual and energetic aspects. That's the stuff I picked up this year.

What this meant was that I was, basically, responsible for setting up and supervising a four to eight hour ritual, some nights involving over 100 or 200 people, each night of the Gathering. Which took things from "Boy, I'm busy but having fun" to "This is an Ordeal."

I don't mean that in the sense of "oh, my life is such an ordeal, wah wah wah." (Ok, maybe a little. :-) ) But rather in the sense of an ordeal ritual, a rite of passage, an initiation, a challenge that pushes one past one's limits.

One of my senpais is found of telling our karate students, "All you have to do is a little bit more than you can do." That was what FSG was about for me this year.

In some ways it was like my black belt promotion test: it was not fun, I was exhausted and sore for days afterward. But it was also exhilarating, in a way that's difficult to explain to someone who's never had a similar experience.

Similarly, when I look back at this year's FSG, there are not a lot of "fun" moments, on a personal level. I don't think I had a single supper that wasn't rushed, I didn't get to take time to play in the pool or sit in the shade and play guitar or any of the other chill time things I usually do at FSG. But what there is, is the memory of making a Fire Circle happen in the rain on Thursday night, against the difficulties, with no "real " drummers, just a bunch of hard-core crazies banging on water coolers and trash cans, a Fire Circle in which a first-time festival goer, a blind man, came out and danced in the rain. There's the satisfaction of putting something back on track, of defying predictions of failure, of creating a space where people can be brilliant and expressive and playful and mindful.

That, will make your heart grow three sizes.

Not to say I did a perfect job, by any means. But I feel I passed the test of this ordeal, no question in my mind.

I know that, because we ended up short-staffed this year, I was not the only one for whom FSG was an ordeal this year. If you know someone who worked the festival this year, give them a hug, they deserve it.

Again, from http://amyking.wordpress.com/2008/04/02/daisy-frieds-poetry-exercises/ : "Write a poem made up entirely of questions. Or write a poem made up entirely of directions."

The directions go something like this:

Go straight ahead on Divine Certainty Road
In 300 feet, turn left on Confusion Avenue
Recalculating... Recalculating... Recalculating...

Take the exit right and proceed on True Love Boulevard
Detour ahead
Turn around if possible
Recalculating... Recalculating... Recalculating...

In two miles, take the exit right and proceed on Career Parkway
Take the motorway
In ten miles, merge on to Wealth Expressway
In 300 feet, merge on to Wealth Expressway
Merge on to Wealth Expressway
Turn around if possible
Recalculating... Recalculating... Recalculating...

In ten miles, exit on to Art Road
Take the exit right
Pull over
Park the car
Get out and walk into the dark woods
Take the path
Climb the hill
Climb the hill
Scramble over the rocks
Reach the top
Fly

This is from two weeks back. The exercise: write a 10 line poem in which every line is a lie. (Idea taken from the list here: http://amyking.wordpress.com/2008/04/02/daisy-frieds-poetry-exercises/ . ) Note that, like all my poems, this is from the point of view of a narrator who may not be me -- in other words, when I say these are lies, I may be lying. Or, not. And it's not 10 lines, anyway...

I've never stolen anything in my life
And the check is in the mail
And I'm not in love with her anymore

I don't get angry anymore
And I've certainly never wanted to punch someone in the face,
      over and over again
And I'm not in love with her anymore

I never break the speed limit
And I've never run a red light
And I'm not in love with her anymore

I was late for work because I had car trouble
And I don't know where that baggie came from, officer,
     someone must have left it in my car...
And of course, I assure you, I say with 100% honesty:
     I'm not in love with her anymore

Gil Scott-Heron, the pioneering poet and musician best known for his piece "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", has died. Heron, who was 62, is often credited with being one of the forerunners of hip-hop. Sad news.

Actor Jeff Conaway died today. He was 60.

Conaway is best known to most people from his roles in the TV series Taxi and the movie Grease. But to SF fans, he will be warmly remember for his role as Zack Allan on Babylon 5. I recently finished re-watching the whole run of B5, and was once again impressed with both the character and with Conaway's portrayal.

Conaway struggled with drug abuse and addiction for much of his life. (Knowing this lends quite a bit of pathos to a scene in an episode of Babylon 5 where he confronts an alcoholic friend about relapsing.) In recent years he had been put through the exploitation of VH-1's Celebrity Rehab and subject to the bullshit of the "Church" of Scientology. Perhaps if he'd gotten genuine help, things could have gone differently; but instead, on May 11, Conaway collapsed from use of painkillers and prescription drugs, and was hospitalized with pneumonia and sepsis, which eventually proved fatal.

Zelda's Inferno exercise: free-write on one or more of the following random phrases, from the Urbanite and Baltimore Guide:

people don't go to the park now
it's like organizing butterflies
on the local front
something that will have a lasting impact
miniature golf course
a great deal of charm
two rainouts a week
free admission
dressed up nice
sleepwalks into their bed

I adapted the first phrase a bit and went with that.

do kids still go to the park?
i remember a summer
(maybe it was two)
when dad played softball in the evenings
on the diamond at Rosedale Park
while my brother and I would run around and play
trying to walk up the big sliding board that went down the side of the hill
climbing the pole to ring the bell at the top
swinging on the money bars in the twilight
spinning the carousel
we'd go back watch the grown-ups play for a bit and
then run off again
idyllic suburban July nights
after the game dad would usually buy us snowballs at the stand
     in the park's parking lot

the park was full of kids --
white suburban kids, mostly two or three or four generations from
      Polish and Irish and German and Italian immigrants
whose grandparents or great- or great-great lived in East Baltimore
and parents had moved just outside to the suburbs

and I never thought twice of this
until one evening a whole group
like a field trip
black kids with a handful of adults from the city
they walked around like visitors to another world, like tourists
in the big open green space
marveling at a jungle gym over grass, not over concrete

first intimation that mine was not the only world

Mike Huckabee has decided not to run for President in 2012. If the GOP holds true to form, this means that Mitt Romney will most likely be their 2012 Presidental candidate.

There's an interesting pattern to Republican primaries: if there is a serious second-place contender for the nomination, that runner-up is very likely to take the nomination next time there is not a sitting GOP president.

Let's look at the history of the nomination, back to 1960:

Over on Facebook, our good friend Molly Griest pointed out the linguistic curiosity that if you whack somebody with an ax, you are an "ax murderer", but if you use anything else you're just "a murderer".

This got me thinking. It seems to me that we'd say "an ax murderer", and maybe refer to "a poisoner", but almost never "a strangler" -- "the Boston strangler" or suchlike, yes, but not so much "a strangler". You'd never say "a strangulation murderer" or "a poison murderer". "A shooter" or "a gunman" doesn't necessarily mean a killer, and you don't say "a gun murderer". You'd almost never say "a stabber" and certainly not "a knife murderer".

Or so it seems to my ear. But why speculate when we can actually examine how people actually use certain phrases? It's Google-fu time! Here are the number of hits on various murderous phrases. To keep the comparisons fair I've included the "a/an" in each search, so that we're not including "Boston strangler", for example:

• "an ax murderer": 157,000
• "a poisoner": 77,300
• "a poison murderer": 9
• "a strangler": 103,000. But, results for strangler figs show up on the first page. If we adjust our search to cut those out ("a strangler" -fig): 75,000
• "a strangulation murderer": 0
• "a gun murderer": 2,240. Though two of the top results are about this topic of how people use "ax murderer" and not "gun murderer"!
• "a knife murderer": 19,800. As with "a gun murderer", top results also include discussion of how rare this phrase is.
• "a stabber": 11,800. But the first several hits are about a class of spaceship in the game EVE Online.
• "a baseball bat murderer" : 8
• "a bow murderer": 6
• "a crowbar murderer": 1

I'm surprised that "a knife murderer" comes in higher than "a stabber". But in the end, there's no doubt about it -- despite their rareness, ax murderers get people talking in a way that no other murderers do. (That is, by the way, not a suggestion. Just to be clear.)

Being a civil libertarian often means sticking up for the rights of assholes. People espousing popular opinions don't need protection, and even those expressing unpopular views can sometimes do so without harassment if they've got a bit of charisma. It's the people whose ideas and personalities both nauseate us, who test our commitment to freedom.

Thus it is that, despite the fact that it makes me want to throw up in my mouth a little bit to find myself taking their side, I have to speak out against the violence, false arrest, and harassment directed at members of the Westboro Baptist Church -- Fred Phelps's gang of "God Hates Fags" idiots -- in Brandon, Mississippi.

According to the linked report, one member of this group was assaulted, and despite a number of witnesses, "no one seemed to remember anything about what had happened." Vehicles with Kansas license plates were barricaded in a hotel parking lot, and the police delayed towing the blocking pickup trucks; and members of the church were detained for several hours for questioning without probable cause.

There is no doubt that Phelps and company are sad excuses for human beings. Their tiny hearts are full of ignorance and fear and hate. But one cannot beat ignorance or fear out of a man. The cowards (and yes, these were cowardly acts) who assaulted the WBC demonstrator, who allowed that assault to happen without consequence, and who used police power to harass them, almost certainly only strengthened the convictions of these asshats. I'll bet you five dollars that, in the days since this incident, at least one of them has quoted the bit from the Bible about "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

The military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan supposedly died to protect freedom. (We'll leave aside for now the question of the real cause for which they were sent over, and the actual effects of their presence.) To then deny freedom of speech to Americans is no way to honor their legacy. Yes, Phelps's message is odious, offensive, disgusting, and hateful. But the funerals of agents of the U.S. government who were killed in carrying out that government's foreign policy are occasions calling for the greatest First Amendment protection.

There is no patriotism in assault, censorship, or false arrest, and I ask those of my friends who seem to be delighted with this incident to pause and seriously consider the nature of freedom.