Breakfast in the Fine Company of Morning Glories

I am packing my literary, artistic, and culinary bags and moving over to hotel_jewelweed .

I will not deleting this journal, but I will soon be friends-locking all of my entries, archiving it through LJBook, and posting a 'Gone Fishin'" sign.

My reason for doing this is simple: I want to clean things up and start a new chapter. This journal is five years old, filled with all kinds of cluttered posts addressed to different audiences, interspersed with travel logs and recipes, and I really want to simplify things, clarify, and refocus. I also want to make it all prettier.

So dear friends, if you would like to hang around for the second act and continue reading, you can find me at hotel_jewelweed  and I hearily invite you to join me there. I promise good conversation, gracious living, and a delightful room with a view. ¹

Oh, and I'm still whoring:


EDIT: smolder ? If you see this, could you friend hotel_jewelweed  onto both kielle  and _redpanda_ ? I want to always be able to read Kielle's locked posts, without having to log into jewelweed . Thanks!!


¹ Building is in progress-- its pretty naked at the moment, with sheets draped over what little furniture there is.  Please don't worry if I haven't friended you yet-- I'm just disorganized.

That said, I am generally going to prune my f-list pretty strongly, not as any kind of personal statement but mainly because I'd rather keep this list pared down to people who really do read my LJ and seem to still be "connected". Sometimes you follow a journal for awhile and there's a connection there, but then things kind of drift apart. Its a cluttered list and I just want it to be less so. If you friend me though I am very likely to friend you back.

Damn, changing your name is hard.  How do these sound?  Yes, I am fishing for ideas.  The wackier the better.  If this were a paid account, I would create a poll.

Radio Medici

Silverweed (Zap. Was just informed this has icky conotations)

Alma Datura

Allegro Maestoso

Placet magistra

Vesper Sparrow

Rock Violet

Saxifrage

Palazzo Jewelweed

Inner World of the Outer World

A Nice Chianti  (ggrrr... it appears that every variation on this is taken!)

Queen of the Blackberries  (according to lore, When you put blackberries on a threshold or windowsill, you can force a vampire to count over the thorns and berries until morning comes.)

Glove of the Fox

or (Thanks to the Unitarian Jihad Name Generator)  Sister Pepper Spray of Quiet Reflection



New Ideas:  

Allegro con l'Oro  (I think that  means "Quickly, and with the gold." Or maybe Allegra con l'oro?  "Happily with the gold"?)

Puttanesca (courtesy of tar_miriel .  EDIT:  Ah too bad!  It's taken!)




EDIT:  *coughcough*  Oh, and I am still whoring, of course:

I took a break in my completely chaotic holiday schedule to enjoy the yultide hospitality of my friend Brian, who lives in this breathtaking historic house in Cambridge. It's the oldest still standing house in Cambridge with low ceilings and four gigantic fireplaces (one of which he turned into a lounge with cushions, candles, and a creche hiding in the breadbaking oven).

His tree, swathed in ribbons and shells, was admired, and carols were sung. Including the following verse from We Three Kings, which was all new to me, and which we all sang with gothic gusto:

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes a life of gathering gloom;
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in the stone cold tomb.

Every lugubrious verse sung by what sounds like drunken pirates

Wow. Those Victorian holiday carols are so... wow. Time for a cheerful prance through Highgate cemetary, I say. This is my kind of fun.

I have to confess belting that out at Brian's place was the biggest thrill I've had so far this holiday.

In other news, I am finally getting my energy back-- just in time for another journey into the family zone. Gah. I think I am going to let my hair down for New Year's. I will really, really need it.

I am sorry I haven't been posting much lately-- much catching up is in order for the new year. Promise.

My little nephew has declared that he is going to climb Mount Everest.

But not until he is fourteen.

Only in Finland....

Digital Disobedience: Cyberactivism and Culture Jamming Workshop

Friday, December 1, 6:00 pm
Science Center 110, Harvard University
(One block north of the Harvard Sq T)

Ji Lee, Artist and Creator of the Bubble Project (www.thebubbleproject.com)
J. Salvatore Testa, Defender of Truth and Liberty, Hacktivismo (www.hacktivismo.com)
Prof. Fred Turner, Stanford University and author of "From Counterculture to Cyberculture"
Prof. Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Harvard VES Dept., teaching "Art and Activism since the 1960s: Culture Jam"

Join us to explore the interplay between digital technologies, activism, and the ability to modify and critique cultural institutions. The format of this event will be highly interactive. We'll first have short presentations from each of the speakers, then we'll break up into groups that will discuss ideas, issues, and projects with each of the presenters.

Sponsored by Boston Free Culture and the Berkman Center with support from the MIT Computing Culture Group and the Culture Jam course.

With....

George Lucas's remastered version of the timeless classic Singing in the Rain!

Conversation with my sister-in-law:

Me: So do you want me to watch the children while you go to the wake?

Amy: Oh no. We'll bring them along. You can hold the baby, I'll look after Johnny.

Me: Its going to be open casket. Errmmm... will he be okay?

Amy: Oh, he's been to open casket wakes before, no worries. *laughs*

Me: Oh?

Amy: Yeah, actually he likes to look at the dead bodies. He thinks their cool.

Me: O.O

Mercury is going OUT of retrograde tonight, correct?

Its about time.

Malachi Ritscher's apparent suicide

On Saturday the Sun-Times ran a small item about a man who had set himself on fire during rush hour Friday morning near the Ohio Street exit on the Kennedy. His identity has still not been officially determined, but members of the local jazz and improvised music community say they are certain it was Malachi Ritscher, a longtime supporter of the scene. Bruno Johnson, who owns the free-jazz label Okka Disk, received a package yesterday from Ritscher that included a will, keys to his home, and instructions about what should be done with his belongings. Johnson, a former Chicagoan who now lives in Milwaukee, began making calls. Police are still awaiting the results of dental tests, but Johnson says an officer told one of Ritscher's sisters that all evidence pointed to the body being his; his car was found nearby and he hadn't shown up for work since Thursday. MORE

Malachi Ritscher's website Chicago Rash Audio Potential.

Wikipedia's entry about Malachi Ritscher.

Download Malachi Ritscher's Varmints

Courtesy of Uncle Shoe's My Space....

Keep Them Wondering

Come on! This is the good stuff!

Moonshine, moonshine dancing all around; Moonshine, moonshine, landing on the ground; Moonshine, moonshine, peeking through trees.... (music download from Matt's MySpace).

Uncle Shoe, as he is known, will be playing December, 7 2006 at Lizard Lounge in Cambridge.

Who wants to go?

Tapestry of Voices and the Forest Hills Educational Trust present

CELEBRATING ANNE SEXTON

with poets Lois Ames, Suzanne Berger, Robert J. Clawson and Victor Howes
Sunday, December 10 at 2 pm
in Forsyth Chapel at historic Forest Hills Cemetery
95 Forest Hills Avenue, Boston MA

If she were alive, Anne Sexton would turn 78 this year. Many of her friends, students, and colleagues are still around, though, and still celebrating her as a poet and a force. This November 12, they’ll gather for a fifth annual tribute at Forsyth Chapel, reading her
iconoclastic poetry and their own. The reading ends with a walk to Sexton’s burial site on the surrounding grounds of Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica
Plain.

People who love Sexton’s poetry - her rawness, her energy, her way with words - would do well to attend the celebration. This is a chance to meet Victor Howes, who knew Anne as a member of the New England Poetry Club; Lois Ames, who edited Sexton’s "Life in Letters"; Robert J. Clawson, who managed her band, "Anne Sexton and Her Kind"; and Suzanne Berger, one of her students at B.U.

Anne Sexton stirred up trouble with her poetry, and in her personal life. She was wild, transgressive, and wildly intelligent, a break-out from the suburban middle class. Her poetry still exudes disturbance, excitement, electricity. Its aggressive honesty still influences poetry today.

Admission: $5. Directions and details at www.foresthillstrust.org or 617.524.0128. PLENTY OF PARKING

Okay, I am just testing to see if I can post videos to my LJ. I just couldn't resist this one.

Yayyyyyaaaaaghh! Hasselhoff!!

Actually I think that chick with the cello is stealing his spotlight. :-)

"But I'm gonna be where the lights are shining on meeeeeeee!"

*dances*

Blue! Blue! Blue! The mandate it speaks!!!

Yeeeeeaaaaahhhahahahahahaha!!!

And Rumsfeld has resigned!

This calls for cocktails I say! And cartwheels!

Fresh: Violet Moss

In other news, I tried out what is possibly the skankiest violet-based perfume I have ever put on my body, and I cannot wait to scrub it off. It was okay going on, but now it smells like a plumber's butt crack. i Am tRaUmAtIzEd.

Alas, I have to endure this for four more hours before I can heave my poor body into the hot cleansing shower.

I am joining this time, though what I will writing is something which I have an eye to turning into a graphical novel. We will see how this goes.

Where do I get that weird little graphic that some many of you use to keep track of writing progress?

Here is an article about how sometimes saints have stood up to the church hierarchy when the hierarchy was wrong. Next time somebody slings around the phrase "cafeteria Catholic", I think I will refer them this way.

Sometimes speaking truth to power against all odds and against a powerful hierarchy is in fact the truly Catholic thing to do.

Many people think of the saints as docile, but Mother Guérin is not the only saint to have found herself at odds with local bishops, church officials or even the Vatican. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake at the behest of church officials. The writings of the great theologian Thomas Aquinas came under suspicion during his lifetime in the 13th century. And Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, was jailed during the Spanish Inquisition over complaints about his ideas on prayer.

Somewhat more recently, in 1871, Mother Mary MacKillop was excommunicated — the church’s severest punishment — four years after founding a religious order for women in Australia. One biographer wrote that the bishops of the day were intimidated by Mary’s “independent spirit and steely character.” In 1995, Mary MacKillop was beatified, the final step before canonization, by Pope John Paul II.

Courtesy of wylddelirium, who I found through glowroper, a ritual for this season:

A Candle and Thou

I haven't written in a long time-- it unusual for me to be absent for so long from LJ. Mainly I have been working too hard and battling a really nasty lingering cold. Some dear friends rescued me on Saturday and took me to the hot tubs, which helped quite a lot. I swear I could take a week off and hibernate at Urban Oasis and be the better for it.

I think tonight I am going to light my candle, run a bath, and see what I can do about working on some poetry. It feels very important somehow to write on this particular night. Mainly though I think I will crash very, very early.

A happy Samhain to all!!