Song Saturday- Unexpected Throw Downs...Maybe..

Maybe because perhaps there are signs. 

Okay, I'll admit it, today I allowed my ire to rise.

It came upon me unexpectedly. What I thought an honest misunderstanding led to all out war and truthfully, and I am telling the truth-would a ginger lie? I really didn't contribute that much to the conversation.  I simply stood my ground. 

I bring this up because it is a trend.  People getting spitting mad just because someone they don't agree with stands their ground.  The world is a troubled place, and men, women and children are feeling it in a whole new way. 

Their future uncertain, they have more on their plate, less to fill the plates with and more plates to go around.  One cannot fault others for taking their sadness, fear and aggression out.  However, I am disappointingly seeing people who claim to love peace, follow the 8 fold path and have a conscious regard for all human beings flying off the handle at the slightest provocation. 

What is this?  Where are we when peace keepers cannot hold their tongues? 

I certainly don't think peace keepers are less than human, nor do I expect them to eschew normal human needs and life.  However when someone begins preaching to me be it altruism, Buddhism, Christianity or Atheism I expect them to show it in the context of that particular discourse. 

We are seeing this outside of our individual relationships too.  Our countries are giving with one hand while they pickpocket us like a cutpurse with the other. 

Reports out of Great Britain are stating that the country is stockpiling food in order to make sure they can tame the masses if there is an uprising.  Food.  As if humans are on display in the Royal Zoo.  Maybe they are.  Maybe it's come to this that this is enough to keep us in our place.

Someone else brought up this week that nobody remembers the riots in Compton and Long Beach following the Rodney King verdict in 1992 ( paraphrasing).  But I do.  You know who else does?  Governments.  A lot was learned in 1992 like how to end a riot quickly and more effectively.  You didn't see Tottenham burn did you?  Yes there was looting, but people were arrested.  All sorts of people, people who weren't even directly involved, just regular folks posting stuff they saw on the telly. 

You had better believe that American government remembers it too.  New York city is currently invoking an ancient law allowing them to arrest those who are wearing masks.  They want none of this Guy Fawkes stuff to get out of hand.  Also there was the Bart incident last month which had mixed results. The point is that the machine was and always has been learning how to control civilians. 

Think the Batterrams utilized in South Central were just so Nancy Reagan and Police Chief Darrel Gates could see inside crack houses without getting shot?  Think again.  He would never have been allowed to use it if it weren't to test how civilians responded to it and make adjustment.

Be Aware. 

Think Batterrams can't come to your suburban or rural neighborhood?  Think again.  Just give reason for it, like say an overzealous college party.  Or maybe protesting at your congressman's office.  San Francisco bought one in 2008, check your local law enforcement to see if you have a Batteram for your police force.

Just Think.

John Twelve Hawkes was the author of a Trilogy I love.   It deals with this very loss of privacy, state control through computers and the government sending in very nasty people to test out the public.  It was first published in 2004, when a lot of this technology was becoming known, we are seeing almost every scary evil bad guy thing in the book play out in front of us. 

Anyway, we need to not be attacking one another.  We need to protect the weak.  Like Robin Hood.  Everyone loves that guy right?  Except maybe the Ghost of Prince John.  But Robin Hood was not complacent, that didn't mean he didn't have pacifists in his group either.  We need everyone for this fight and we need to put aside our differences in philosophy for what is right. 

Or you can expect a Batterram.

Which is no joke, really.  It's damn scary what the powers that be will do to their own. 

Announcing Grainne's Subversify World Re-location Tour! 20-teens!

I came back from the holidays to find that my health care provider Blue Shield has decided to ramp up the prices in my state 50%. It's not that I don't know that they are greedy bastards, it's just that they just increased it 50% with my Patron's insurance plan 50% last month. Since I do not want a new Patron I have decided to look for a new location.

I would also like to blame, erm, I mean give credit to longtime pal MadMollyMillions who has been egging me on for almost a decade now to relocate to Great Britain and even sends me nice links of job sites.

I figure this is going to take some time so I have allotted the entire decade to this search and yes I am committed. I will even be making World Re-location T-shirts which you can buy at our Subversify Web-store. Or if you are lucky enough to host my search for the most perfect place on earth to write with a Patron in tow and a gang of Brownies who will most likely be grumpy about re-locating, then you will get free t-shirt swag!

So this is my plan, I am going to start by visiting all the spots where my cohorts and writing partners already live. Don't worry I won't be writing anything bad about you unless you are veryvery bad host/hostess' in which case expect the worst.

No, really I just want to get a picture of the wide places people live and work and why they hang on there. People don't have to know I'm there if they don't want to. (just leave some warm cuppa by the couch and the bathroom light on so I can find my way)

I kid.

This sprung from my flippant remark that #in2011Iplanto show up in Alaska and Gloucester. And really I found that I want to. I have lived in California all my life and while I have travelled the western U.S. pretty extensively I have never been anywhere further east than Denver, I've never been to the American South, I've never been to the birthplace of my country-And yes Rich that does mean I am coming there, prepare.

Also I don't fly, I'm a big scaredy cat about it and really that needs to be fixed so that's another bit in this decision.

I will be writing about it, the places I go, the people I meet, the religions that try to get me to join up. And I do want to know if I want to relocate because to be honest I love California, but what do I know? Also our economy is in the shitter and the only thing really keeping me here is the employment gig, but there may be something out there...

Okay that sounded really "That Girl"-ish so there is definitely something out there but I don't know what's for me and us. I'm shy by nature. I am the one sitting in the crowd taking it in who you avoid because you think I look familiar and I know something about you or I am figuring something out about you. Which I am, it's my hobby which got worse in college when I discovered investigative psychology, but it helps me write.

It does not always help me interact with people, so I want to see how that changes as I move far out of places I have known.

I have a tentative list beginning as stated before with Alaska and Gloucester but also including:

Philadelphia, PA
Waterbury, Conn
Alberta, CANADA
B.C, CANADA-Okay I've already been there but I have to visit my second cousin anyway
Victoria,CANADA
Florida-undecided
New Orleans, LA
Puerto Rico
New Braunfels, TX
Santa Fe, NM
Phoenix, AZ
Portland, OR
The Sound Area of Washington State

Okay that's a start I'm sure places will be added, most places we have had contributors at Subversify from. There are other places I want to go but it will require more planning like Australia where one of my very favorite one-time contributor is from and New Zealand, and also India which I would love to visit and which may be do-able as we do have friends who have a family home there. But that may not make it in the decade-goal because...

This is going to be like a mix between a pub-crawl and a couch crash which as I'm writing this I realize go hand in hand anyway. It is going to be the anti-thesis of glamorous as it is the penny-tour. The sex drug and rock and roll bits of the trip will have to be cut out except for the rock and roll part. The sex and drugs are just out of my budget.

If anyone has great ideas of not-to-be missed cities/towns/areas/mountain tops for relocation let me know and I will try to add them in. Here are my requirements:

-There must be Internet/satellite connection in at least one pub or coffee shop in town.
-There must be someplace other than Walmart to shop
-People cannot be waiting there with effigies of me to burn...Okay, I'll drive by and get pictures of these places because an effigy of me is pretty classy, but really I can't re-locate there.
- Oh and jobs for Social Workers because yeah, we gotta pay the bills still.

Okay those are my preliminary plans, I am kicking this bitch off this year because really it's time to deliver on promises to visit and check places out anyway.

Walking the Fences 2011

I have spoken of this before in other blog-ish places. In the time between the olde year and the new year I do not make resolutions, promises or drunken proclamations. (mostly because I don't drink, I'm sure if I did I would make manymany drunken proclamations) Instead I engage in a practice that I call Walking the Fences. People of agricultural backgrounds will recognize right away what I mean. Fences need to be maintained. Holes get into them, animals knock them over, thieves cut the wires.

For my purposes my esoteric fences are not necessarily to keep anything out or in. But rather, to define what it is I am. What my boundaries are. What I need to care for. My fence, much like a barbed wire one is well defended. And yet easy to see through, it allows me to show concern for others outside of it while keeping the sensitive me safe. Also there are places where I have built stiles in strategic places where people can step over and so can I.

So for the last few days I have been doing this, walking, checking, seeing if all is safely gathered in. Also if there are places I need to fix and in some cases expand.

This year was an interesting year. It was despite the external turmoil in the world and indeed in my community a pretty mellow year for me personally. I was busy in the extreme, seeing grown children off to college and navigating that, dialing down spending to make adjustments for changes, etc. However everything seemed to flow pretty smoothly, in its own crazy way. I credit this with my changed attitude of letting things, personalities and people carve out their own path much like a natural mountain creek. It may not have been how I would have done things. Okay...it most certainly wasn't how I would have done it. But things fell into place. I felt more peace this year in a time of incredible change in our economy, world and political system than I have in a long time.

Or maybe I just feel more peaceful in crisis situations. That is highly probable too. Crisis' tend to make people either become incredibly still and efficient or make them crazy. I do tend to be the efficient type. I tend to crumble when things turn peaceful. So who knows, if things turn about soon and start going smoothly I may just have a crazy crumbly year.

I did pull out a fence stile in one place. The relationship there although I care for the person in question was just too much. I think it a good thing to remember from time to time, we do have choices in who we let close to us. That includes those who have traditionally been close. It doesn't do us or them or anyone in the general vicinity any good to continue a relationship that brings nothing but bad feelings. I had struggled with how I "should" behave, forgive, etc. with this person for years. The fact of the matter was I was the one struggling. The other was quite happy causing discord. We need to know that we can be compassionate from afar. And sometimes, no most times this is the greatest gift we can give to difficult people. How will they ever change if they don't know they are being disruptive? Of course they always have the choice not to change. But we can love them, care for them, pray for them, sit in meditation for them without allowing them access to more of us.

So that is what I did this year, it probably contributed to some of the ease I felt.

Don't get me wrong, bringing in stiles is not easy. It's hard work, but for me at least, it was past time.

I read a lot this year, as I usually do. And yet, when I sat down to think of what my favorite read was I couldn't pull a name up. Most of the non-fiction I read saddened me and scared me for human-kind. As a result I took refuge in comforting old favorite writers for my fiction reading. I read a lot of new and revisited Charles de Lint who never ceases to please me in his story-telling.

Musically this year I fell in love with Sxip Shirey who incidentally was introduced by last year's musical love Amanda Palmer who incidentally just married one of my all time favorite writers Neil Gaiman-A very happy ending and I am hopeful that a girl who writes music about pubic hair and plays the ukulele and a man who writes stories about magick and cats and Olde Gods will live happily ever after.



Anyway Sxip with his homemade instruments and small venue concerts dazzled me. How a man with crazy hair and a bell strapped to a megaphone can make such intoxicating music is boggling. Sxip also incidentally introduced Himself to his new favorite band The Carolina Chocolate Drops, who while I don't love everything they do, I love Rhiannon Giddon's incredible voice. She makes arias out of traditional mountain music. They describe their music this way: “Tradition is a guide, not a jailer. We play in an older tradition but we are modern musicians.”-Justin Robinson



I just did a quick review on my ipod and I found the most played songs of late were Amanda Palmer, Sxip Shirey, Old Crow Medicine Show, Zoe Keating and Johnny Thunders. That pretty much covers it. I'm all over the place from early punk to Blue Grass. Although, I do find myself turning to blue grass more often than not, it's soothing.

As far as the Movies that came out this year, I was highly disappointed in everything. I was only compelled to see two movies in the theatre this year, Alice in Wonderland, which all in all was at least entertaining and Harry Potter, which is fun because you get to see the nerd-kids who dress up. I actually spent more time at the local playhouses this year where I was not disappointed. Granted it was during Halloween-time which is my most favorite time of the year. But I find myself wanting to be more a part of the experience and when you go to small venues you get just that.

Ch-ch-ch-changes were put in place in my own life this year. Due to the ideals of some of my writing partners I challenged myself to eat less meat. Mostly I wanted to see if I could make my favorite recipes with meat-less products. I found that a lot of the time I could and while it did not taste the same, it was good in its own way and I lost a lot of my meat-ish cravings. Also an article on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that I wrote allowed me the opportunity to speak with some marine biologists. While the Garbage patch has little to do with overfishing I picked up an ap from the Monterey Bay Aquarium which tells me which fish are bad to eat and made a commitment to stay away from them. It's a little weird to ask your server where they get their fish and honestly they don't know most of the time so fish were off the menu a lot too. I'd say I'm a 3/4 vegetarian at this point and I don't miss it. Oh the other change came due to Heather telling me cheese has addictive chemicals. I tried that theory too and guess what? It seems to be true. I craved cheese for about a week and after that, no more cheese cravings. Where we used to blow through cheese at House Rhuad it now sits for a very long time, which actually saves us money because I like expensive cheeses (usually).

I am looking at 2011 and while I feel some trepidation, I also am seeing some hope. People are tired of being pushed back and placated like small children. Politicians and leaders of churches and communities don't seem to recognize this. I recently read an article in which a poll showed young people (18-27) were leaving their church congregations not because of lack of faith but because they are tired of gimmicks like rock bands in the services and free t-shirts and study cells. What they are leaving over is a lack of serious spiritual discussion. I find this amazingly encouraging, the fact that people and especially the coming up generation want to dive deeper. The same is true in politics. Yes while a great many people are joining crazy Tea Parties, a lot of people are discussing something entirely different. The party system is not meeting the needs of the constituents. This is good, the discussion of change. Politicians had better take notice and stop believing that once they are elected they don't have to listen to the very people who put them in office, there are plenty of examples of this but the most recent ones are of the many public officials from our President to State Governors and city mayors taking sunny vacations while the eastern seaboard is shut down due to snow and ice. People aren't taking this lackadaisical governing well, and yes we all need vacations however, public servants are public SERVANTS.

I see uprising in the future. Which may look bad but to my way of thinking is a good thing. If President Obama isn't going to help with the change he suggested we need to roll up our sleeves and start working towards it ourselves.

Which leads me to the biggest thing I see for the coming year. I know in House Rhuad we have been talking a lot about change and work. Changing how we see service to others. It's going to be our new hobby this year. The thing we do together. It's necessary because if we as individuals don't do it, who will?

Anyway. That wraps up my fence walking. Holed mended. Some stiles pulled up. A heap more put out, because community is going to be the focus of 2011 at House Rhuad.