Carousel Dragon

The other day we took a secret, spur-of-the-moment trip to Albany.

 For the last ten years so so, volunteers have been working on a carousel, carving and painting animals to put on a circular platform.  The mechanical parts are from 1909 -- which makes them the same age as my Grandma Agnes.

The animals are all ornate, whimsical, and amazing.  Here's "Igknighter"

We had fun riding the carousel, and I tried to photograph everything, which was hard because the glossy finish on the animals reflected all the lights and windows -- luckily it was overcast, so my camera didn't have to deal with the direct sunlight.

I think my best photos were when I was on the platform taking pictures of the animals' left sides... although I did find a sweet spot at about south-southwest (I think).


I thought that I'd read somewhere that some animals are anchors:  extra heavy animals that help stabilize the carousel platform.  But I may have gotten confused between standers (the stationary animals on the outside ring) and jumpers.

Epiphany 2018

The Child has been watching the Star Wars prequels. They don't seem quite as bad as I remember when they first came out, and I'm going to chalk that up to changed expectations on my part (expecting the Splendor of the Old Republic the first time around and getting Jarr-Jarr Binks) over the movies improving over time (and expecting Jarr-Jarr).  In some ways it's like watching Mystery Science Theatre 3000... although I have to admit, the sets, costumes, and CGI work are still stunning.   My favorite movies are still "The Empire Strikes Back," "A New Hope," and "Rogue One."    

On the writing front, I'm learning how to format documents with Scrivener 3.  The compile and formatting commands are very different from the 2nd version, but I think I like them better (at least in terms of setting up things like meta-data, author information, and document titles).  

I'm reading Hillary Rodham Clinton's "What Happened."  I wanted to see what her writing voice is like. I wanted the story to be gripping, but I'm afriad it's a very slow read for the first 100 pages -- mostly because there's a lot of thanking of various people, name-dropping, and historical-site-visiting in a narrative summary way.  She has a complicated relationship with other politicians and presidential families, which is one part graciousness towards past residents of the White House, one part "OMG, bad Republican policy," a dash of praise for Obama, a sprinkle of incredulousness for Bernie, and liberal sprinkles of "look at the mysoginist, crude, hate-spewing, non-sensical, train-wreck that got elected to the American Presidency."  (She establishes early that Trump makes George W look good...)

It's picking up a bit at page 120-ish because she's describing the process she and her team used to prep for the debates and she's experiencing a situation, reacting to it emotionally, and then making a decision to act based on her reaction.  I'm only about half-way through, but...  If this were my book, I would have organized it more around "what we didn't know," "when we learned X," and "how X raised more questions."  I'll have to see how the second half of the book plays out.

(Talking with Mark about the book and the chapter on "It's Hard to Be A Woman in Politics," he asked if she had any insights on Angela Merkel, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, or one of the other women leading their countries.) 

Went to the gym Saturday:  Warmed up on the elliptical (about 100 calories), then switched to the rowing machines (another 100 calories).  Went downstairs; 30x40x30 on the deltoid-fly.  30x40x50 on the pec-fly.  40x50x60 on the lat pulldown.  3x12 Roman Chair curls.  20x20x30 barbell curls.  3x12x30 triceps pull-downs.  Cooled down with spine-rolls on a pool noodle.  Sunday, I'm sore in the trapezoids, pectorals, and lower back.

Internet Karma

In a moment of quick-turnaround karma, last night (Wednesday) I told myself that I'd get up early to compile a story and send it to a beta reader... only to discover that during the night, the phone cables in our wall had come loose (I'm not sure if I should blame the cats, and Mark was surprised when I told him) and we now had no Internet.  We'd been fiddling with the old 1950's line in anticipation of having them replaced so it wasn't like I didn't know that the wall plate was off and the wires were exposed.  Alas, even re-attaching the yellow and black wires where it seemed they should go did not improve the connection.  (Mark has since managed to restore connectivity.)

Went to the gym yesterday (Wednesday).  Warmed up for ten minutes on the elliptical, then switched for another fifteen on the cable rowing machine.  I made an effort to keep my spine straight and my trapazoids engaged so I wouldn't have a sore lower back later (we'll see).  Downstairs I did 20x30x40 sets on the pec-fly reverse-deltoids.   Lat-pull-down 40x50x60.  3x12 Roman Chair curls.  20x30x30 barbell curls.  3x12x30lb triceps pull-downs.  Some 5lb dumbell work.  Ended up rolling my spine on a pool noodle as a ending stretch.  

I'm fairly certain that a lot of my shoulder difficulties are caused by my mouse placement at work, and slouching.  I'm trying out different mouse positions and I've re-configured my chair so I'm sitting up straighter.

On the dream front... I had an interesting, if bloody, dream Tuesday morning that involved evil magicians, evil followers, an interlude where the evil magicians were attempting to place my head (with the rest of me dangling below) in the excact center of a hollowed out sphere using a laser-site.  Other highlights involved a baby piglett evolving into a bristle-back boar, only with metal florettes for bristles.  The dream ended with me climbing up a spiraling stair-well on the heels of evil minions, and placing my  hands on them to kill them.  This worked well until I got to someone immune to my hands and then I got stabbed.

This morning's dream was too sexy and political (both in a bad way) to post.  

Writing Night

(Tuesday) Writing night!  This time I've been working on several stories.

• One, about a baker, (4200 words) is as clean as I'm going to get it and I should run it past a beta-reader.  
• A second, is a Halloween short (1500 words) from a few years back that I polished after critique, put aside for about two years, and I've decided could be sent out for market rejections.  
• The third is a Arthurian pastiche (about 1000 words + 500 really rough vingettes) that is probably a good example of why I shouldn't write snarky:  the knight character needs fleshing out and the snarky bits jump out like the Witch from Monty Python and the Holy Grail breakig the fourth wall to say, "It's a fair cop."
• The fourth is a long science fiction piece (about 5000 words at last count) that probably wants to be a novella and the feels off because I'm trying to do a cultural flip of perspective and the main character isn't flipping right.  
• The fifth, a Wordos Winter Short, is stalled at 1500 words; the part that I read was well recieved, and I'd like to finish it... and I should write the end and work backward.

This means that tomorrow (Wednesday) should be a marketing day.

Holding Patterns

I managed to get to the gym twice or so since my last posting (and I should go today).  I've continued to go easy on the weights, starting out at about 20 lbs and moving up 10 lbs every set.  This has prevented me from turning into a total marshmallow over the winter break.

On a slightly related topic: After getting out of the winter break routine, I think I've discovered that the reason my lower back feels sore is that I must be using the rowing machine wrong; my hands feel sore after lifting barbell weights; my neck feels sore because my work monitors are too high; and my right shoulder is sore because my work mouse is in the wrong place on my desk.  So my body isn't falling apart so much as I need to pay more attention to my posture.

As usual, I had hopes that I would actually get some projects done... and, as usual, I managed to get far less than I wanted done.  Some of this is I always underestimate how much time holiday visits will take, but a surprising amount of it is looking up from a screen or a book or the bed and discovering how much later it is than I thought.  I suppose I should take updating the operating system on the writing computer and upgrading to Scrivener 3 as small victories. 

Reading about all my friends' writing accomplishments on social media was getting depressing until I read a post that said, "It's OK if you just got through the year."  That helped... and still did not prevent me from lying awake at 4 A.M. New Year's Day beating myself up about how little I've written and how much less I've submitted.   At least I did have one short story published last year.  I guess "Stop Whining and Write and Submit" is the next sign over my desk.

On the Fourth Day

It's the Fourth Day of Christmas.  The Child and I are in the Library while Mark is home looking for employement.

I'm in the kid's section of the Library, which is taking me back a decade to when I used to take The Child to Enthusiatic Child Reading.   There are a lot of toddlers today, and I'm reminded of the toddler schedule of wake-breakfast-activity-nap-activity-lunch-nap.   

The kid-chairs are less comfortable than I remember them.

We had a open house for my birthday, and lucked out for the weather.  Mark worked very hard to make the house nice; we have to re-configure the davenport and the dining room table so that the living room would be convival for more than six people.  There was singing and piano and harp.   I think Nina won the prize for the most clever hat.  

I've decided being in my early fifties is difficult.  I can't pretend I'm still forty-nine.  Well.  OK, maybe I can if I keep my gym work up.  

On the workout front, I've gone to the gym a couple of times.  Given some advice, I've moved to an elliptical with ski-poles in an attempt to loosen up my shoulder joints before any downstairs weight clinking.  On the same advice, I've started up the reverse-pec-fly on low weights to strengthen my back muscles, which will allow me to continue on my pectorals.   Usually I start out at 20 lbs and then work up to 40 lbs.  The idea is to keep my collar-bone and shoulder muscles limber so I don't pull them like I did last September.   

Thinking About Writing

Not much on any fronts.  I've been off-again-on-again congested, which has made me off-again-on-again tired.  I'm also going to blame the weeks around Winter Solstice for a lack of light that makes 6 PM feel like midnight. and 8PM feel like 2 AM.

I've been ruminating about the novel form and the Amazon form.  The other day I was speaking with an English Professor about attention spans and voice and web design vis-a-vis monitors-versus-mobiles and she said that the department makes students read paper versions of the books they study.  Apparently e-reading is different from paper-reading, in a way similar to someone who plays weekend basketball is different to a professional basketball player.  As I have noticed recently that when I don't balance out my social media reading with longer pieces, I have to work harder to process longer pieces, what she said made sense to me.

When I think about Amazon form, I worry that it's not a good fit for my voice, and I wonder, how would Tolkien have been received.  Maybe I should approach Amazon Writing like I do Twitter tweets, especially haiku.  But then again, I'm probably over-thinking it.

Teeth

I'm waiting for a new crown to cure.  I'm trying to remember what it's made of, I want to say lithium disilicate.  So close to dilithium crystals.... It is monolynthic, meaning it comes in a homogenus brick that gets milled down and then fired in a kiln to stabilize the crystal structure.  The process feels fairly new: my dentist stuck a camera into my mouth, got a 3D map of the old crown and the teeth it grinds against, and was able to 3D mill new crown during my visit.

I Know They're Trying to Tell Me Something

Tuesday, Dec 5:  Lots of magical imagery in my dreams last night/this morning.

I was casting a spell in a cave, after which I met with Leslie the Shrew and had some sort of wise words from a female elder moment.  

There was some other stuff, involving a Mephistopheles like grey-haired man who told me a story of meeting with other gay men in the English Theatre, and an actor he really admired came limping in full costume (I think as King Lear) and everyone was really excited until they realized that he was leading in the Vice Squad.

Then I was in a Handel opera.  The entire cast was led by a baritone in seventeenth century clothes and a white wig.  I think the rest of the cast may have supposed to be shepherds and villagers, but I think they were dressed contemporarily.  The baritone was a prophet, and was singing an aria along the musical lines of "And who shall stand when He appeareth? For He is like a refiner's fire."  Only this was about the apocalypse and he was pointing to a hole in the sky where a middle-aged and matronly Virgin Mary was sitting and presumably intervening for us.

We ascended Ridgewood Hill, and may have gone to it's mysterious dream-North side.  At this point the baritone prophet was singing about how a new earthly paradise could be aborted.  I think the Virgin Mary took a rest from the hole in the sky and came down to Ridgewood... she was dressed in brown, with sort of frazzled brown and grey hair, and I'm sure she said or sang something, but I don't recall what it was.

And then I was at an Episcopal service with my folks and The Child (I don't recall that Mark was there).  The pews were arranged in four arms, and we were in a square chapel.  I want to say that Father Neville (the old rector from the 1970's) was leading the service.  The Child started playing my harp (which he played well), and Father Neville was offering a cup to people, only instead of having the Blood of Christ in it, it was filled with rain water.  I opted to take the cup, and was surprised that the silver chalice had a flat, triangular bowl.  Father Neville jammed the chalice into my face, and I felt the cold metal against  both my lips; I was aware of the points of the triangular bowl as I sipped some of the water.

I woke up thinking that lots of messages were trying to come through.

Writing Art and Craft

This has been the week for getting helful rejections from markets.  The latest said essentially, "great world-building, and get to the story sooner."  Which means the voice, writing and world-building wasn't enough to hold the editor's interest.  There is a bit of driving to the story, and it's there to introduce the reader to how the story's world is different from our contemporay one... so I guess I need to take a quick look at the manuscript from a craft POV.

Over the weekend I went to a Self-Publishing on Amazon workshop.  There was a ton of information, and what I took away from it was, 

• short stories probably work best on Amazon as marketing freebies;
• an anthology of short stories would work best with the same characters in all stories and with an over-all story arc
• I probably need to choose a different pen name for each genre I write in because Hell Hath No Fury Like An Amazon Reader Lead Astray By A Cross-Genre Author.
• Amazon Readers want strong characters they can identify with over story plot over world-building.  
• Amazon Readers read differently than physical book readers. 
• It's all about keeping a steady stream of novels coming out.

I looked at the anthology of my various stories and realized it would be a mis-step the way I've got them arranged currently:  it's a mix of high fantasy, science-fiction, urban fantasy reprints -- I could probably sell it to super-fans once I had built a following, but currently I'm not at that point in my writing career.  

Insert my Great-uncle Conrad's Cautionary Translation-Of-The-Bible Story here.

Gym Reports and Male Desire

I've gotten behind in my gym reports... Um,  Went to the gym last Tuesday (11/14) , Sunday (11/12),  Thursday (11/9).  I'm still just doing 30 minutes on the eliptical (roughly 315 calories) and 3 sets of curls on the Roman Chair.  My shoulder's still stiff, but improving, so I guess staying away from the barbell, pec-fly and lat pull-downs for a while is a good thing.

Went on an impromptu museum visit with Mark Wednesday (11/15) night to look at 17th century tapestries.  Mark usually likes art I usually am indifferent to, and it's always fun to hear him speak about technique, or a part that he likes.  Also, this is 17th century art, so it's a little over the top, which means Theatrical Mark and John's Art Show moments.

Between Thanksgiving and fighting off some sort of illness, I did not manage to post much...

Went to the gym Tuesday (11/28/17).  A half-hour on the elliptical, not my usual machine, which reported that I did 400 calories -- which seems high.  Downstairs I did 3x12 Roman Chair curls, 3x12x10lb triceps pull-downs and 3x12x5lb dumbbell curls.  I keep thinking my shoulder is OK one day and then goofy the next.  

Went to the gym again Thursday (11/30/17).   Back for a half-hour on the elliptical on my usual machine, and back to my usual odd 320 calories.  Downstairs I did 3x15 Roman Chair curls, and skipped everything else.

On the writing front, I finally finished (11/28) a 4300 word short story.  I'm OK with the ending, but it feels a little mechanical.  I also got a short story rejection that was nice; it was a standard, "we've seen this sort of thing before" form rejection, but it had and admonition that it had taken a newly published new author 17 tries to break into this particular market and to "never surrender, never give up."  

On the essay front, I recently read an opinion piece: Stephen Marche's "The Unexamined Brutality of the Male Libido."  In wild summary, the opinion piece goes something like this:

Men's libidos are out of control and their beliefs about sexual equality and cultural appropriateness have no impact on their sexual misbehavior.  The nature of men is about their grotesque sexuality; men are pigs, with ugly and dangerous libidos. We should fear the male libido, which is unexamined in personal and intellectual circles.  Men don't have a social network for examination of their sexuality, often defaulting to aspiring to be better feminists.   Freud says men must repress their libidos.  Sex is an impediment to any idealism.  Social righteousness only takes us so far, and shame is on the rise as a sexual control.   How can we have nice things if the mechanisms of male sexual desire are brutal?  We must examine male sexuality -- and deal with the fact that men are monsters -- to find the answers.  

I think the overall tone of the piece is anti-sex and that men are damaged goods--which makes me instantly suspicious that the author is selling self-help. However, I agree with his call to have men examine male sexuality. And I agree that sexual harassment is unacceptable. But he seems to be stuck in a hetero-normative-Freudian-Joseph-Campbell-"Brute-of-a-Thousand-FacesConcupiscent " world view when he complaims about getting into a world where there is sexual equality and men's sexual expression.

Folks like Harry Hay have explored subject-subject consciousness as an antidote to the sexually exploitative subject-object consciousness; and Starhawk has offered the concept of Power-With as an alternative to hierarchical Power-Over.  But Marche seems to be unaware of these different approaches to people loving their partners, and focuses on men as monsters instead.

The piece relminds me a little of a passage from CS Lewis, wherein he opined that men have an animal nature and a devilish nature, leaving out their angelic or higher nature.  I guess that's the danger of having a transcendent, body-mind-body-spirit theology instead of an immanent one. 

And it also reminds me the Minotaur... and centaurs.. and fauns... and the comcuspant company of Pan.  I think Marche is wrong to say that we have to suppress the male libido, so much as we have to link it to and direct it with -- like the charioteer in the tarot card "The Chariot" -- the rest of our drives and desires.  

Dream: Sexy Reed Flood

This is a dream from mid-October, that I'm just now getting around to posting.

I dreamed I was at a Reed College event -- sort of a cross between Renn Faire, Reed Reunion, and a Eugene-style, boat-show, gay-pride, pagan-pride festival.  In real life the cats must have been making noise, because Mark and I ended up in a vet booth.  Which might have been a science booth.

Through a series of (ahem) events, I ended up with a hunky guy's cell phone.  (He was the dream son of a real Reed professor--oh dear, I've just noticed the obvious Freudian pun on the last name) , and earlier in the dream, I told him the real-life story of how his father had taken a friend of mine to a fancy restaurant and (over the protestations of his wife) taught him how to turn a drinking straw into a primitive reed instrument.  (In real life I had told this story to The Child the previous day, so it must have been on my mind).  

The phone was an Apple iPhone, but it was square and had a clamshell cover.  None of the buttons worked quite the way I thought they would.  I tried to use the phone to tell someone that I'd found the phone (and possibly they had mine)  Despite the earlier (ahem) events, I had wondered in the back of my mind if Dream Guy was gay -- then the contacts' avatars and text messages I saw before I became hopelessly confused by the phone's OS convinced me that he was.  

Mark and I wandered around, and were near Elliot Hall when a flood hit.  The Reed Canyon somehow had the Willamette River in it, and a sudden downpour had it flooding its banks and the tall pines along the banks were being pushed back and falling over.  The water rose toward Elliot Hall and inundated the basement (in the dream somebody said something about the Psych Department, but they moved out of the basement in something like 1995).  

The water hit an underground relay station, or something, and there was an explosion like lightning.  People were yelling and running away.  More water was coming up out of ?Eliot Circle? or the field in front of Elliot Hall:  a large mound pushed itself up and water flowed out of it in several small streams.  There was a little bit more, but I don't recall it.

What strikes me in waking life is that three dream motifs:  The Reed Campus, a river, and flooding, came together in a combination that's new to me.   This dream almost counts as a dream-knot dream, but it's missing a holistic element to it that the others have.

November Thursday

A November Thursday: the clouds scud across the sky, now revealing the waning half-moon and Orion, now driving leaves before them, now dumping a second deluge.  The trees wear yellow leaves like ragged mittens over skelital fingers.  And the green has returned to the Vally:  green lawns, green moss, green algea growing on cars, green lichens sprouting up tree trunks.  But it's a dark green -- the sun, low in along its winter path, is flitered out by the clouds, giving everything a muted cast: red bricks are brown, lighter bricks are like wet agate; the wet pavement is matt grey;  white cars are the color of old bones; and the only bright cerylians and yellows are on pedestrians' raincoats.

This morning I steamed some eggs for breakfast.   I like steamed eggs for breakfast, and there are some mornings when just holding hot eggs in my hands feels wonderful.   On an impulse, as they were cooling, I took one and ran it over a knot I have running over my right shoulder.  Between the egg's shape and the heat of it, I managed to iron out the almost solid bump on top of my shoulder muscles.  I'm hoping that this will be a more long-term fix; previosly when I've kneaded that part of my shoulder, I've only manged to sort of losen things up without smothing out the knot.  I'll have to get some soapstone to use more regularly, since it's likely the family won't appreciating me using their steamed eggs as massage tools.  

About an hour or so of writing, mostly fleshing out scenes in a longish story about a baker.  It's hard to get a word count... and I think there's a way to have Scrivener track word count (not sure how helpful that is when you're editing out words, but...).

Bad Monday, Heros, and the Gym

Monday (11/6) -- I woke up kind of sore all over.  I'm not sure why:  I guess it's a combination of colder weather, and age.  But man, having sore toes and fingers and arms and back and shoulders puts a damper on morning productivity.  Eventually, I took a hot half-bath, which helped quite a bit.   I probably need to visit my doctor to see what's up with my right shoulder, as it doesn't seem to be improving (or at least seems good one day and then sore the next).

Monday also started out with some marketing, during which I got another rejection.  There's this one (well, OK, there's more than one) market that I'd really like to break into, but so far I haven't had any luck with them.  The difficulty is that they respond with a form letter that essentially says, "guess why we rejected your story."  I wish they'd just say, "We're sorry, but we will not be buying your story," because the offered reasons why make me want to pull my hair out trying to figure out which reason is the one.  It gets even more annoying when I look at what they do publish, and it seems as if they do publish stories that are close to what I'm sending them....

I'm thankful that the other story I sent out to another market on the same day did not get rejected, because double-rejections feel like a slap in the face.

I started to read "The Hero with a Thousand Faces," partially for writing research, partially because it's one of those books one is supposed to read.  It's feeling pretty White Baby-Boomer Guy to me:  every man is the hero/divinity of his own story working on being the star of his own personal film.   It's also striking me as Fraizieran in its approach to world culture and folklore.   ...And I'm pretty sure one of of stopping points along the Hero's Journey is the hieros gamos or sacred wedding with the Earth Goddess.

Anyway, the Hero's Journey keeps coming up as a story template.  Often writers' guides will feature Star Wars or Harry Potter or The Hobbit worked into the Hero's Journey and urge writers to think of their own manuscripts in a similar fashion.  I figured that I should go to the source material if I wanted to understand the form, but Campbell's style is fairly ramblely ... and because it's comparative folklore from the 40's, it's more a psychoanalytic way to explain the universality of various folktales, myths and legends than a writer's tool.

Went to the gym Monday (11/6).  35minutes on the elliptical for 340 calories.  Spoke with one of the folks there, and decided that I should either knock off any type of upper shoulder machines or only do them at about 10 lbs...

Went to the gym Saturday (11/5): 35 or 40  minutes on the elliptical for at least 330 calories.  3x12 Roman Chair curl ups.  3x12x20lbs triceps curls.  3x12x10?lbs preacher-bench biceps curls. 

Went to the gym Thursday (11/3):  30  minutes on the eliptical for at 300 calories.  3x12 Roman Chair curl ups.  3x12x20lbs tricepcs curls.  

Halloween Musings

The Child and I want to take Halloween in different directions.  For him, it's still about getting tons of candy from the neighborhood and filling the house with zombies, skeletons, and bloody blades.  For me it's more about how masquerades change our perceptions.  Mark's not really into Halloween; he's more into Thanksgiving and Christmas.  

Some folks say during Halloween, the veil between the worlds is thin and the inhabitants therein can visit between the worlds -- when the Grey Folk and the Dead and the Ancestors and the Numinous Ones visit.  For one of my friends, it's about looking into the shadow parts of oneself in order to deal with them more effectively.  For me Halloween is a time to be someone you're not.  To find surprises that jog you into a new awareness or understanding of yourself.  

Like Christmas, Halloween has gotten commercialized and the focus has shifted from the True Meaning of Halloween to Getting Loot.  The aspect of trick-or-treating that has been lost is that it is a gifting custom from the days of mumming.  Essentially the trick-or-treaters are gifting houses with the effort they put into their outfits.  They're essentially saying, "I am an embodiment of your fears, your anxieties, your wishes; I am the reaper, I am the forces of conflict unresolved, I am the dead you need closure with, I am the hero or heroine of your personal story."  Starhawk used to write, "Where there's fear, there's power," and the ritual of trick-or-treating is exchanging the gift of power of addressing inner fears with the gift of food... well, OK, candy.

This is going to be the first Halloween where I don't have RollerBlades, so I wont be able to glide along the streets underneath bare tree branchs and moonlight.  I still haven't replaced my old RollerBlades since they fatigued apart after the encouner with the giant leaf pile.  Mmmm. Gliding in the moonlight, trailing leaves behind, a silent shadow in the street.

This year I carved a Janus-faced pumpkin.  The pumpkin had a flat side, probably where it had grown against the ground.  That side had a divot, which made a great place for a nose.  I gave it a frowning grimcace and crescent eyes.   The other side of the face was more rounded; I give it a toothy smile and triangular eyes.   Mark is away at an East Coast Wedding, and The Child was disinclined to carve anything, so it was just me and the cats.  The afternoon was clear, and carving in the sunlight on the deck felt like a late Summer job rather than an Autumnal one.  Later I carved the mini-pumpkins with the intent of hanging them from some kind of tree.  But between one thing and another, I ended up suspending them from a stick between two rods.  They were still spooky.