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Been busy

| maggiebird
Waterolor painting of Lee
Lee by Margaret Sloan Watercolor on paper

I’ve been tremendously busy for the last few weeks; that’s why I’ve not posted. Yes! I’ve been painting. I’m working on a portrait right now of a friend, and I’m working much more slowly (even more slowly than usual!) as I try to nail down the design and the colors. But it’s been absorbing me to the point that I don’t do much else (except the day job, of course).

Here’s a painting of a friend of mine. I made this last month. Took me four tries to get what I wanted. She’s a dancer, but was taking a break and listening intently to the music.

Dream Time at New Year

| maggiebird

I don’t like to make New Year resolutions. For me, setting goals at the end of the Christmas holidays is an exercise doomed to failure. I’ve been on break, for heaven’s sake. For the last two weeks in December, the day job  was whittled down to giggly celebrations, vacation time, and three-day weekends. Visiting with family  and general laziness all ’round.

So I’m really in no position to decide on a regime of resolutions to follow in the year to come. Because when life returns to it’s normal race, I’ll fall behind on any resolutions I made during downtime.

I guess my only resolution is to keep to the usual goals: Draw. Paint. Try not to let life unhinge my self-discipline. (These goals never change.)

Instead, I dream on New Year Day. And this year, the biggest dream of all is to somehow have a painting studio. I do all my work in my living room right now. As you can see in the photo, it’s cramped, crowded, and a wreck. I have to clean it up on Sundays, so we can live in it the rest of the week. Some weeks it never gets tidied at all.

I’ve been told, put your dreams out to the Universe. Let It know what you want. So I’m going to do that, and put it out to the blogosphere. You never know what might happen.

What I wish for:

A garage, a room, a shack, near my home (this is important, because otherwise I’d probably never go to the studio).

It needs to be something that I can afford and be able to lock up when I’m not there. It should have electricity, heat, and light (Oh Universe, would a north facing window be too much to ask?). Big enough to have work table, easel, and a model stand.

There. The wish is out there. Does the Universe read blogs?

Christmas eclipse

| maggiebird

I’m dragging this morning, because I had to stay up (wa-a-ay) past my bedtime to watch the lunar eclipse. It was the first eclipse on the solstice in nearly 400 years, and that’s got to be portentous.

I didn’t think we’d be able to see it through the storm that’s been drenching the Bay Area. But at 11 the storm abated, and the clouds thinned. The moon flitted like a shy bird behind the blue-white skeins of stratus.

We sat in the backyard with the damp wind tugging at our hair, and watched the bright silver disk get eaten by the shadow of the earth. She turned dusky orange as scraps of clouds blew across her face. Wintery Orion and Gemini, growing more brilliant as the moon dulled, stood sentinel around her, Orion with his head towards her, and the twins, Castor and Pollux, facing away. She seemed well guarded in her moment of weakness.

A plane flew between the moon and a cloud, and the jet’s shadow was projected across the scrim of cloud, looking like a giant child’s toy.

Then the storm returned, and clouds hid the moon’s face as she regained her silvery self. Tonight she’ll rise at about 5:30, unencumbered by our shadow.

Happy Solstice.

What do your holiday parties look like?

| maggiebird

1867-1917-NewYearReaIrvin
Cartoon by Rea Irvin for "Life" magazine, ink over graphite underdrawing. Via reproduction online at Library of Congress website
Thanksgiving last night; the first party of the holiday season. And it was a blast.

Yes, we ate the required phenomenal amounts of turkey, carbo-loaded until our pancreases (pancrea?) screamed, and foundered on vegan chili and pumpkin pie. And while good food is always the center around which all great parties are built, what happened after the food fest was what made the party a blast.

It started with the mathematician and I playing some tunes. Normally, when we play tunes, people gravitate away, into the other room. “Oh, we’re listening,” they say, but they’re really not. The fiddle and whistle are loud, and make conversation difficult. Folks would rather gab.

But last night the other guests actually sat in the same room with us while we played! In between tunes, my dad and the host traded bad jokes about the Irish (we play traditional Irish music. These jokes go with that territory)

Boldly, we asked if someone wanted to sing a song. Someone did! A lovely piece.

Then, we asked, did someone else want a go?

The host didn’t bake a ham for that party; she didn’t have to. The room was full of hams!

The host’s sister and boyfriend dragged out a lap dulcimer and a ukulele and we sang Amazing Grace. A guest told a poem.The dulcimer and ukulele played Greensleeves. Someone told another joke.

It was fun, people! Nobody turned up their noses and sniffed. Rather, nearly everyone participated in some way; everyone had some sort of party piece that they could contribute.

That was a perfect party, as far as I’m concerned. No canned music, no artificial conversations, just folks sitting around, trading turns and entertaining the rest of the gathering, bringing their own selves to the center, then cycling out to allow the next song, poem, or joke.

 

 

 

 

Barn owls

| maggiebird
Barn owl
Pastel sketch by M. Sloan

It was late. Downtown. And a pale shadow soared silently overhead.

It was only the flash of unfurled white wings that caught our attention. We looked up just in time to see an owl landing on a parapet of city hall.

We heard small papery cries. Then, in another flash, the owl sped away. After a bit, two small faces looked down at us, as curious about us as we were about them.

They were baby barn owls, probably the most human looking of all birds. Right then and there I fell in love with them.

ARKive video - Barn owl in flight

Barn owls haven’t always been loved. People have believed (still believe!) all sorts of malicious things about owls: they’re harbingers of death, witches, and bad weather. Barn owls have screetchy voices that creep people out. They look like ghosts flying around in the dark. So we humans have hunted and persecuted them over the years.  We build cities over their roaming grounds. Like other animals that aren’t human, they’ve been in decline.

But they eat prodigious amounts of rats and squirrels. They’re good critters to have around. (I don’t know about your town, but in ours, we could sure use some help with rodent control.)

And clearly, barn owls will live in a mixed suburban setting (we’ve got lots of trees, and open space and green belts flanking the megalopolis).  But the birds need nesting places. I would love to put up an owl box in my garden.

Barn owls won’t steal your babies, your money, or your soul (I’m not so sure about chickens, though. Some say yes, some say no. Does anyone know for sure?). According to The Owl Pages, “the Inuit see the Owl as a source of guidance and help.” If you have to believe something about owls, believe this Inuit tale. And believe that barn owls are incredible creatures to see as they ghost their way through the night.

Other owl box sites:

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Remembering

| maggiebird

After the wildness of Halloween, the racing and running, the sugar high, the monsters and witches and goblins and ghosts, the next day seems so quiet that I can hear the blood rushing in my ears. It’s a sign that I’m still alive, my heart still pounding the drum that keeps me moving. And I think of my ones, gone on ahead where no heart beats to remind them of life.

Amidst all the Halloween fright fest and fun, we shouldn’t forget that the holiday, or observance, or whatever you call it, is really about remembering the dead. Cultures like Mexico, that celebrate Dia de los Muertos, haven’t forgotten that. Some of my best memories of the small Mexican town in which I lived were at the cemetery on November 1 and 2. The warm night, the smell of basil and marigold and candle wax, the soft sound of women chatting, of a band playing a song at a graveside. I thought it seemed so comforting to visit the folks who’d left this earth. And I wished my culture had such a celebration.

Galina Kraskova, a modern-day heathen, writes in a guest blog on Pantheon:

At Samhain we are reminded that to neglect our honoring of the dead is to stifle their voices, smother their stories, invalidate the tangled tapestries of their lives. It is to commit a crime against memory, piety, and honor.

People all over the world honor the dead during this time of year, calling the celebration by different names. All Saints Day. Dia de los Muertos. Day of the Skulls. Dziady. It’s important to them.

Because we’ve all lost those we love, and seek somehow to find them.

Samhain

| maggiebird

Halloween seems to be the lighter version of a much older celtic festival, Samhain (pronounced Sa-wane). We don’t celebrate the date in quite the same way that the old ones did (or maybe I should say auld ones?), with quite the same darkness. We’ve given it mostly over to children, or childish (some say boorish) behavior.

But deep down I think we know what this time of year means. We have a genetic memory of the wildness and the mystery of the season when the daylight shrinks and the night ascends. We’re entering a season of uncertainty. Of cold, of darkness. We forget, those of us living in this blessed Mediterranean climate, that in other parts of the world, the night, and the cold, awakens during this season and stretches out over the land .

The green man takes on the colors of autumn. We can hear his voice in the crackle of leaves and fire. Some Wiccans say it’s the end of the time of the Goddess, and the beginning of the time of the God. Other people say that Samhain is the night during which the veil between the dead and the living is the thinnest, and that on this night the dead can cross over into the land of the living.

In this country, tonight is given over to wildness, to running loose in the autumn night that’s only just beginning to feel the taint of winter. It’s given over to costumes, and candy, and spooky stuff on every street. And kids know that the veil is thinnest tonight, and that what’s behind a plastic mask just might not be their beloved sister or brother, or the neighbor kid, but rather, someone dead who’s joined the hubbub of living kids, if only for an evening. And perhaps we know it too, as we willingly give out treats, just in case that cute kid in the the princess outfit is really not just a cute kid. She might really have been a princess.

While you’re waiting for or hiding from the little goblins and tinkerbells and obiwan-robot-vampire-princesses to come knocking at your door begging for candy, here are some Halloween links for you to explore.

50 best blogs for wiccans

The Witch of Forest Grove

Dante’s Worlds

Wyrd Designs – The Walking Undead

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The dreadful ghost

| maggiebird

A comment by a friend reminded me of a song I’ve sung for years; The Dreadful Ghost. It’s a beautiful, spooky song of ghostly revenge. It’s a typical girl meets boy, boy leaves girls when she gets in trouble. But in this story, she comes back from her grave and gets him. Gets him good.

I fell in love with the song “The Dreadful Ghost” 11 years ago when I heard Debra Cowan sing it at a session in Boston. It’s not very well known; only a few singers have covered it. I eventually learned it from Dark Ships in the Forest by John Roberts & Tony Barrand, but the version I heard Debra sing is still my favorite.

I wish I could find the whole song somewhere to link to this blog. But here are the lyrics to The Dreadful Ghost, courtesy of Golden Hind Music. If you like old fashioned folk music of the English persuasion, I highly recommend you check them out.

Addendum: Last night Debra sent me a link to this song.

Thanks Debra!

Nature in the raw

| maggiebird

In suburbia, we have a love affair with the natural world. And in the best human fashion, we’ve bestowed upon large animals, especially dangerous large animals, special spiritual appeal. We take them as our totems, our spirit guides, our “other” selves. We like to think we walk with the wolves, lions, tigers, and bears. Oh my.

Perhaps we do this because we need to confer the power of their hairy, scary hides onto our naked, shivering skins. Because without our weapons, our sticks and stones, spears and guns, we’re pretty helpless against other mammals. We’re the weak little brothers and sisters, easily damaged, spindled, folded, and mutilated. Even a mere house cat is able to fight us tooth and claw, and indeed, puss often wins the battle.

Let’s face it, non-human mammals are fierce. They are scary. They are dangerous. They bite, claw, and kick. Many of them can kill us with a single swipe.

When I lived in Northern California, I spent a fair amount of time wandering in parkland and timbler land with my dog, a smart yellow lab mix. On our regular rambles, we passed a bear tree. The bear had scratched the bark, shredding it to three feet above my head. Thankfully I never saw the bear, but they did sometimes show up in folks’ garages along the edge of town, eating the dog food or nosing through the garbage.

One day, while wandering through fields of ripening salmon berries, huckleberries, and bramble berries, the dog, running ahead of me, stopped in her tracks. The ridge line of fur along her back bristled up and, although she whined, she would not let me pass her on the trail, body blocking me until I turned away.

And even I, with my useless human nose, could scent the animal. It was a ferocious scent. I don’t know what kind of large animal it was, but I was not willing to find out. The dog and I slunk to the trail that led most quickly to the street, where, once again on human tarmac and turf, we felt safe. And very lucky.

For a scary natural history Halloween, I suggest you listen to Red Tooth, Red Claw at To the Best of our Knowledge. Who knew that chimpanzees want to rip off your jaws? Or that tigers could embark on revenge killings?

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