Cape Blanco Photos

The other week we went to Cape Blanco. The Cape Blanco lighthouse is one of the highest lighthouses on the west coast.

In this photo, the sky is clear, but the previous afternoon, the heat in-land, 95F, drew the moist sea air inland and created a bank of fog so think the lighthouse was not visible from the visitors' parking lot.






The steps were very steep.

And modular.

We were asked not to touch the bricks as we climbed.

I kept waiting for the cast of Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to pop out somewhere, pose dramatically, and start singing.





I took many pictures of the lens and light assembly. I like this one because it reminds me of an old drawing of the solar system or an atomic structure. Or magnetic field lines.

The original light would have been a flame fueled by (if I remember correctly) clarified lard. Turning the light off involved letting everything cool down slowly to prevent breaks. If the air temperature got too cold, the fuel would begin to solidify (I think it became jelly-like).

Little Boxes

Today I'm fatigued.

Which is crazy, because I could have sworn I got enough sleep last night. Maybe today's fatigue is a reaction to air-borne dust, hay, nasty bathroom cleaners, and too much Pepsi.

This Saturday's big adventure was detoxing various parts of the house. Sunday's big adventure was... cleaning the garage. Sort of. I suppose "beginning to make a dent in the stuff" would be the most accurate description. Even after about six hours.

When we moved four years ago, especially at the end, I went a little crazy putting things into boxes and then the boxes ended up in our attic. Some of the boxes had really cool things in them, which turned cleaning out the garage into a kind of treasure hunt (I found more little tins, masks, and ocarinas than one would expect). But some of the boxes are -- to my chagrin -- crammed full of the sorts of records and letters that my Uber-Organized Mother puts into folders by month, and then transfers into new folders by year. So, I have a lot of (bluntly) trash with a few important documents mixed in to keep things exciting. Which I need to sort.

It's so bad that Mark has suggested burning things; this is the same person who is usually insisting that I be twenty-five feet away from the house with anything that even mildly approaches a spark or flame (let alone anything that makes an artsy flame, like, say, isopropyl alcohol).

Needless to say, I'm going to have my hands busy for the next few weeks.

When Images Come to America...

The last week or two, I've been seeing this image with a quote (mis-) attributed to Sinclair Lewis: "When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."

My initial reaction was, "Yikes! This is scarily accurate."

And then... I thought the photo was a little too good to be true, did some research, and came to the conclusion that A) while the woman in this photo looks like the former governor of Alaska, it's probably not her, B) a lot of things come to America wrapped in the flag and waving a cross, and C) the Sinclair Lewis quote is misattributed. (Here's someone else's research

http://shii.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Fascism_comes_wrapped_in_the_flag )

I told some friends, and for the most part the reaction was, "Aw shucks." But then someone wrote words to the effect (the original discussion has been zapped into the virtual ether) that even if it wasn't a real photograph, it still spoke a truth and that "even if Sinclair Lewis didn't say it, he should have." (The quoted part is what I remember; I'm tempted to imply a tone, but tone is so difficult with electronic, text-only media.) Possibly they meant, "Even if he didn't say it, I wish he had." But then there were a couple of follow-ups along the lines of, "Yeah; it should be true."

Whoa. He should have said it? That's like saying, "Well, even if it isn't true, it should be." (Insert image of John trying to figure out which logical fallacy the previous argument is at http://www.logicalfallacies.info/ .)

The whole exchange bothered me, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it (and I was having difficulty turning away from logicalfallicies.info...). Was this someone's idea of Truth equals Beauty, Beauty equals Truth? Or was this line of reasoning some sort of sympathetic magic: it's true because I say it is?

And then I started thinking about this old New Yorker cover.

I mean, there are some folks on the opposite side of the political spectrum from me who might argue that this image from a cover of The New Yorker speaks a truth, and they would like it to be true because... well... it should be.

Right?

Are we talking historical truth , or mythic truth ? Because, you know, I've been here before when it comes to people insisting to me that a image is a record of a historical truth (and that I shouldn't doubt it), when all it really is an image that speaks with the power of myth to their needs, either for personal validation or to fulfill a political agenda.

Here it is:
Yep. "The Sorceror." Ooops, I mean, "The Lord of the Animals (humanity's first depicted deity)." Ooops, I mean "The Shaman." Ooops, no, that's definitely Cernunnos, -- wait a minute! This drawing isn't the same as what's on the cave of the at Trois-Frères! But, hey, even if it isn't true, that mean ol' Christian Church probably would have repressed it if it was!

Yes, I just made that last sentence up; nobody has actually said that to me. And even if they haven't, they probably should.


My point is -- yes, images speak to us and can resonate with us; but so do optical illusions. And satire is fun (I love satire); but it is only a first step toward truth.

Writing Progress

I've had the luxury this week of focusing on my writing. It's been refreshing and I'm a little out of writing shape. Luckily, the form of 45 minutes on, 15 off (thank you Eric Witchey) helped a great deal.

The latest story, which I managed to flesh out (but not finish) has been entertaining to write. Yesterday shortly after noon the characters hijacked the plot -- I'm not sure if this is a sign of having a good feel for my characters or having poor control over my story. I managed to get them where I wanted them.

Because my dreaming self is sometimes much smarter than my normal (?) writing self, I've been visualizing the story scene I'm at now and trying to work ahead in my sleep.

Uh. So far it hasn't worked. Or, at least not for this particular story. I ended up hovering in a hypnogogic state, gently nudging dream imagery toward the last scene I was working on, then I'd sort of fall asleep (during which my id crept in and sexed things up) and then I'd wake up to try to remember what had happened, re-imagine the scene where it had been on the page this afternoon, and the whole cycle would start again.

When I realized that I would most likely spend the entire night waking up every ten minutes, I gave up and let myself really fall asleep.

So, in honor of not being properly awake this morning, today is Marketing Day, at least until I wake up a little more to actually write. (Note to self: remember what happened last time you weren't properly awake on Marketing Day and be extra careful with the submission guidelines.)

Lucid Dream

While I was camping, I had a dream.

I'm going to assume that somehow I got a little tangled up in my sleeping bag, because, in the dream, I had fallen down a very deep hole. I was telling someone the story about how I had fallen down the hole and at the same time physically falling down through the hole. The hole got narrower and narrower, until I was wedged between the moist, earthy, vertical sides. (It's possible that I've been reading too much A. A. Milne -- In Which Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets into a Tight Place.) At least I was head up, and not head down; but I was very far down, it was dark, my hands were digging into the earth in an attempt to arrest my descent, the hole warm-bordering-on-smothering, and I could feel claustrophobia clutching at my throat.

I said to myself. "I'm not going to take the story there [where I'm trapped in a crack under the earth]. And so I call upon the Sun and the Moon, and Mercury, Venus, Mars, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Saturn and Jupiter, too!" At which point I flew out into the heavens and the dream turned into a magical flying dream with stars and glowing waves of cosmic purple light.

I guess there's something to be said for coastal forest air; I haven't had a lucid dream like that in decades.

(And yes, in the dream I was aware that I had initially left out some of the planets, but I think it's pretty cool that I could remember all nine of their names in a dream).

Galadriel for President

Scene: The car on Oregon Highway 101. We are driving home from the coast. Somehow the discussion has turned to what a John Burridge Presidency would look like.

Mark: "...and John would be the kind of president who would Push The Button..."

John: (somewhat indignant) "I would never Push The Button."

Mark: "...because he gets passionate. Oh I don't know what, but something would fill him with Righteous Anger."

John: (nodding his head in agreement) "Okay; there is that Righteous Anger thing (thinks about several incidents). But I'm sure that it would be something absolutely horrible provoking me..." (wonders if maybe...)

Mark: "Sure; you'd rationalize it. And I can hear you saying, 'Don't we have just a small one?'" (Holds hand up with thumb and index finger really close together.)

John: (snorting because he was, in fact, just thinking, maybe a really small one...) "I always said I'd be a horrible president."

Mark: "Yeah; you and Galadriel."

John: (quoting) "All shall love me, and despair." (Secretly pleased that Mark has drawn an ironic parallel between himself and Galadriel, and briefly wonders how he could get a cool magic fountain with a silver basin in the back yard... Spends the next few minutes imagining himself singing the Queen of the Night's Revenge Aria, finger poised over an opera set Button, and tries to rework the "Sarastro has betrayed me!" part as a political diatribe )

A Writer's Perils

I'm not sure if it's a result of watching too much 1970's Dr. Who, or of being a writer, or what -- but Sunday afternoon, as I was deflating the wonderfully tall, queen-sized air mattress, I had what I call a "Tim Powers Moment."

Tim Powers once told a bunch of us, you can tell the writer in a crowd during some kind of mechanical failure (like an airplane crash) because they're the ones who stop, stare, and say, "Oh! So that's what would happen."

So, as I lay on the mattress as the air hissed out, and I sank lower and lower toward the tree root that would have kept me up all night had not the mattress been there between me and it, and the mattress began to envelop me, I thought, "Oh! So this is what being eaten by some kind of giant amoeba or space plant would feel like." (Pause to imagine the enveloping mattress has a sticky membrane making my hair, arms and legs adhere to it as I sink lower and lower into its deadly embrace.)

RV's and Scavengers

Last weekend we went on a camping trip to Cape Blanco State Park. We'd managed to leave Eugene pretty early, so we managed to snag a fairly nice camp site. Cape Blanco is a nice park, with hot water showers and a clean restroom, which explains why so many RV's were there. I have to admit, though, that I don't understand why people hop into RV's so they can go camping and bring their Dish TV satellite dishes with them; for one thing, the dishes have a very high pitched tone used to audibly tune their receivers. Think the backing-up truck sound meets a metal detector, only this one goes to eleven. Now imagine one of your VCR-impared relatives using it. In the forest.

RV's aside, we had a nice time. It was interesting to watch all the scavengers come out whenever they thought the coast was clear. I've never seen a chipmunk hop onto a fire ring that still held a smouldering fire before, and I'm not sure who was the more aggressive: the stellar jays or the wrens.

Since it was 90+ F in Eugene, the coast was about 70F. Interestingly, when the inland is that warm, it draws all the moist sea air inland; so Cape Blanco was swathed in fog when we got there Friday afternoon. When we went to visit the lighthouse, the fog was so thick, we couldn't see it from the visitors' parking lot.

What sticks in my mind the most about the beach on the north side of the lighthouse were how many bones we found. I've found dead sea birds before, and the occasional dead sea lion, but this was the first time I've found rib, leg, and back bones washing up in the surf. Something that looked mamalian was wedged in the sand below the tideline on the sea-side of some rocks. I would have tried to dig it out, but various sea critters had made their home in it, so I left it alone.

After two and a half days camping at the coast, we came back to a still-hot-but-not-as-bad-as-the-forecase-led-us-to-believe Eugene. My hair (and clothes) smelled like a campfire and Monday morning the car smelled like a salmon smokehouse.

Early Morning Rehearsals

Yesterday morning, I woke up mentally rehearsing the words and music for "Fine Knacks for Ladies."

This morning I woke up rehearsing answers to job interview questions like, "What was your least favorite aspect about working at Carleton College?"

These are helpful things to rehearse, except what I'd asked my sleeping self to work on was an ending to a story.

Shades of What?

I figured, why should Mary Robinette Kowal have all the fun, and so I built a little shadow box out of my favorite art supply (an empty cereal box) and some white paper. I managed to snap a couple of shots before the batteries in my camera ran out (so much for advance technology). The shadow box is still operational and promises hours of family entertainment. (Okay, it's true; I already want a larger shadow box so we can fit more dinosaurs into various tableaux.)

So... Um... Imagine a story Jane Austen might write -- where Unicorns wield the fate of the Cretaceous !

Now all I have to do is make some Regency outfits for the unicorn and the theropod. Heh.

(...and experiment with a magnifying lens and the Lava Lamp.... and I want to see if I can put a horizontal mirror behind the screen, cover the mirror with paper which has star shaped holes punched in it, and get another lamp so I can project stars off of the mirror onto the screen....)

Beach Blanket Hoof and Horn

A while back I composed this version of Hoof and Horn:



Mostly, I wanted chant accompaniment that didn't make the song sound like a Neo-Pagan version of Three Blind Mice. Or a dirge.

Anyway, I probably overcompensated and strayed into a place where Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon are the Goddess and God. Cowabunga!

Put A Little Dog In It

I'm back from a Renaissance Faire. I play harp and sing with a group of musicians called The Pearwood Pipers. We had a lot of fun, but as usual, ended our weekend gig with the standard question:

Why are the songs that we have the largest audiences for the ones about drinking (or the one where I put on a dress and pretend to be an oyster girl [hint: "oyster girl" is a euphemism]), whereas the beautiful, four-part madrigals by John Dowland (okay, yeah; they're kind of melancholy) make them leave in droves ?

Part of the problem is that it's easier for modern audiences to understand, "Jolly good luck to the landlady; good luck to the barley mow!" than it is "Wilt thou, unkind, thus reave me of my heart (of my heart, of my heart) and so leave me?" But still; these are folks who come to a Renaissance Faire -- surely they've brushed up their Shakespeare? Or is it true that they only came to see the Chicks in Chainmail.

It's a conundrum for us, because as performers, we want large audiences, but as musicians we want to create portals to other worlds with haunting, chilling, music. But maybe our audience is fleeing from the peril of transformative music. (Yes, there is always room for improvement in our music, but I don't think they're fleeing because we play badly.)

Perhaps it's time to make a sandwich board flip sign with a translation of the words and train a little dog to turn the pages...

Tears In My Eyes Scam

Two of my friends have been the victims of bad guys breaking into their G-mail accounts (and possibly their Facebook Accounts) and subsequently had phishing e-mails sent from their accounts to everyone they know. The e-mail messages go something like this: "My eyes are filled with tears as I type this. I'm traveling in the UK (London or Ireland or Scotland) and I got mugged (or I lost my wallet with all my money). Please send me money."

Since the bad guys have control of the e-mail account, any replies (like money orders or banking information) go to _them_.


Anyway, you know the drill:

1) make your passwords eight characters (at least) long.

2) use upper- and lowercase letters and numbers in your password to make it complex.

3) use different passwords for your different accounts so if the bad guys figure out your New York Times account password they don't have your e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter accounts (or worse, your banking account).

4) scan your PC for Trojan Horses that might be watching for passwords.

5) avoid entering your password onto a public access computer (and say NO when you're asked if you want a social networking web site to remember your password).

6) use caution supplying a password over public, unsecured wireless networks (see #5)

7) change your password every so often



Here's some links:

http://www.givemebackmycredit.com/blog/2010/07/scam-alert-desperate-friend-mugged-and-stranded-in-london-not.html

http://onyoursi.de/2010/06/a-sad-story-of-a-gmail-hijacking-with-an-even-sadder-ending/

I'm On The Top of the World...

My version of "The View from the Top" is available on the Analog website!

http://www.analogsf.com/201009/vft-johnburridge.shtml

It was written as part of a Wordos exercise. As an experiment to see what happens to the art and craft of story telling, several of us wrote a near science fiction story using an identical plot. Jerry Oltion's version of the story made it into print, but Stanley Schmidt, the editor of Analog, kindly put my and Joshua Skurtu's stories in.

Josh's story is here:

Jerry wrote a short intro (with spoilers) for the on-line versions of the story here. His story will be published in the September 2010 print edition of Analog.

I'm so excited to have one of my stories up on the Analog web site that I can't type straight; so I'll stop now.

Starhawk Says "It's Not About the Goddess."

I stumbled across this article by Starhawk the other day. It's about a decade old.

http://www.starhawk.org/pagan/religion-from-nature.html

Whoa! Starhawk is pissed off! At Charlotte Allen's article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/01/the-scholars-and-the-goddess/5910/


Most of Ms. Allen's article appears to be a paraphrase of Philip G. Davis's (very hostile) Goddess Unmasked and Ronald Hutton's (relentlessly historic) Triumph of the Moon. She points out that many Wiccans (at the time of the 2001 article's writing) came to the craft after reading Starhawk's (c. 1980) The Spiral Dance, which includes the accepted history of Neo-Paganism at that time -- that Neo-Paganism was an ancient, re-emerging, Goddess religion forced underground by a repressive Christianity.

Then Ms. Allen's gloves come off.

I can overlook how Ms. Allen includes the mandatory Aleister Crowley (BOO!) cameo of Neo-Pagan history (and that the cameo links to a somewhat unflattering dictionary entry for Crowley) and her impolitic use of the words "hookum" and "bunk." But then she writes "Practicing Wicca is a way to have Christianity without, well, the burdens of Christianity." (Gee did Ms. Allen read Catherine Sanders's Wicca's Charm, too ?)

Starhawk was right, Ms. Allen did miss the point of Neo-Paganism's spiritual underpinnings. Starhawk angrily asserts that Ms. Allen is too stuck in a Christian world-view to be an ecumenical reporter (maybe Ms. Allen and Ms. Sanders hang out together) and she missed the point of Neo-Paganism (or, to be more accurate, Wicca / Goddess Worship). I'd have to agree with her assertion -- although I am not sure I agree with some of her statements about archeology.

Starhawk's argument is that A) she's written more books on Neo-Paganism since The Spiral Dance, and B) her spirituality is based not on history or archeology, but on her experiences of natural processes today.

If I were Starhawk (pause to smile at the image)... I would have added that Ms. Allen's article was about as politic as someone writing about Christians needing historical proof of Jesus for their faith.

It all comes down to faith, history, archeology, and if a single Mother Goddess is at the heart of Wiccan belief. Starhawk says: no, while she talks about the Goddess, what choices she makes, how she experience the world, what actions she takes and what structures she creates as a Neo-Pagan are based on the cycles of Nature.

I am so looking forward to quoting Starhawk the next time I get More-Pagan-Than-Thou'ed for questioning the validity or need for Neo-Paganism's pedigree or for not focusing exclusively on The Goddess.

In the meantime, the crescent moon and Venus are in the sky....