I have edited and uploaded a selection of photos from the 4th of July parade in Takoma Park, MD on my gallery page.
I put this list of webcasts together for my friend Kevin. But others may enjoy them too.
The American Folklife Center records its events for webcast and so I put together some links to a few that I thought you might like. I chose a few different kinds of things, so I am sure you will find something you enjoy. If you find the introductory remarks a bit boring, that's ok, just slide the button a little bit and go straight to the performance. They are all about one hour long, except the Seeger Family Concert, which is two hours.
STORYTELLING
Mary Louise Defender Wilson and Keith Bear (Sioux and Mandan Hidatsa Storytelling)
Opalanga Pugh: African-American Storytelling
PETE SEEGER AND FAMILY
Seeger Family Concert (Mike, Peggy, and Pete Seeger, with the Short Sisters)
IRISH MUSIC
Tommy Sands and family in concert. (Music and song from Northern Ireland)
Robert Watt and Daithi Sproule and Perform in Concert (Northern Irish music and song. Robert Watt plays Highland bagpipes. Daithi Sprole sings traditional Irish songs. )
COWBOY MUSIC
Bar J Wranglers (Cowboy music)
D. W. Groethe (Cowboy music and poetry)
DANCE
Surati: Indian Dance from New Jersey
Hoop Dances by Dallas Chief Eagle and Jasmine Pickner (Souix)
GOSPEL SINGING
Reverb (A capella Gospel singing)
Birmingham Sunlights (Gospel Quartet)
IRANIAN MUSIC
Sama Ensemble (traditional Sufi music)
The American Folklife Center records its events for webcast and so I put together some links to a few that I thought you might like. I chose a few different kinds of things, so I am sure you will find something you enjoy. If you find the introductory remarks a bit boring, that's ok, just slide the button a little bit and go straight to the performance. They are all about one hour long, except the Seeger Family Concert, which is two hours.
STORYTELLING
Mary Louise Defender Wilson and Keith Bear (Sioux and Mandan Hidatsa Storytelling)
Opalanga Pugh: African-American Storytelling
PETE SEEGER AND FAMILY
Seeger Family Concert (Mike, Peggy, and Pete Seeger, with the Short Sisters)
IRISH MUSIC
Tommy Sands and family in concert. (Music and song from Northern Ireland)
Robert Watt and Daithi Sproule and Perform in Concert (Northern Irish music and song. Robert Watt plays Highland bagpipes. Daithi Sprole sings traditional Irish songs. )
COWBOY MUSIC
Bar J Wranglers (Cowboy music)
D. W. Groethe (Cowboy music and poetry)
DANCE
Surati: Indian Dance from New Jersey
Hoop Dances by Dallas Chief Eagle and Jasmine Pickner (Souix)
GOSPEL SINGING
Reverb (A capella Gospel singing)
Birmingham Sunlights (Gospel Quartet)
IRANIAN MUSIC
Sama Ensemble (traditional Sufi music)
King Neptune, right, is wearing the crown I made.
So here we are. I made King Neptune's crown, helped people with costumes this morning, and photographed my friends, neighbors, and co-workers in the parade. But my question is: should I admit that I know these people? ;-)
Photo: Ocean Orchestra, with King Neptune, his Queen, and Mermaid in tow. Photo by S. Hall, July 4, 2009. See web site for information about their CD OCEAN: Songs for the Night Sea Journey.
Fuji is very annoyed with all the noise and fuss. She has to stay in the study when I am at work. She has a window to look out, as well as all her necessities. But she is understandably craving attention.
Left is an unnamed seedling, Indian Giver x Starman's Quest #13.
Yesterday I did manage to get together some entries for the DC area Daylily Show. My best seedlings were not blooming yesterday morning. So I took a couple of the ruffled ones and one purple masked one for the seedling catagory, as well as some registered daylilies to show. I received a club award for a bloom of the Forsyth Tepaled Double -- a flower that is both polymerous and double. I don't think there were any other polymerous (extra petaled) daylilies in the show. I really wanted to take some others, but FTD was the only one blooming yesterday, except I'm Different, which was being its spectacular self. Unfortunately I'm Different can't be shown because it was an early polymerous daylily and it was registered as a double. There was no polymerous catagory at the time. It is very clearly not a double daylily, but blooms with four or five petals and sepals. There are other early polymerous daylilies with registration problems because of prior prejudice against them by the American Hemerocallis Society. A few passionate growers defiantly wrote in their AHS registration "poly" or "polytepal" even before there was a catagory. Those can be shown, but those misregistered as double or single can't. Polymerous daylilies are just emerging from the daylily ghetto to be accepted.
The neat thing at the show was that hybridizers Margo Reed and Jim Murphy were there, and predictably, swept up many awards, including major awards, with their spectacular hybrids. It was great to see their newer registered daylilies and their seedlings. Margo Reed won best in show. The great part was that the daylilies they grow are mainly what are classified as "unusual forms": twisty, spidery, lacy, and etherial. Orchids by any other name. Daylilies like these were not likely to get recognition as recently as a decade ago. Like the polymerous daylilies, they were practically outcasts in a world dominated by round ruffled cultivars. So the world is changing to appreciate more variety, and as the other types of "unusual form" daylilies gain recognition, this is starting to happen for polymerous daylilies too.
I also looked at bathroom tile this weekend.; mainly finding out what I do not want. Ready or not, we start today. Fuji is not amused.
One thing that I have found as a Unitarian who went visiting pagan groups of various sorts until I found a home among practitioners of core shamanism -- acceptance is a pagan value.
Well, isn't acceptance a value in other religions? It is supposed to be, and often is. But for those of us who are somehow different, acceptance is not always there. I remember an experience when I was to be a brides maid for a friend, many years ago. She was Lutheran, but being married in her husband's church, which was Missouri Synod -- that is very conservative Lutheran. Members of the congregation and the minister were very concerned about my friend asking a Unitarian to participate in the service. She invited me to go to a church service so that people could see me and be sure that I did not have fangs, claws, or horns. I myself balked when the selected hymn at the service was one that called for protection from heathens and unbelievers. Oh, help! I felt I was in the middle ages and about to be found out as a heritic. The service happened to include a confirmation for the hearing daughter of a Deaf Lutheran minister of a Deaf church. After the service I went to talk with him in sign language. It turned out that he had taken biology from my father at Gallaudet (not that surprising, he taught there for 40 years). Now, I could talk to the visiting minister when no one else at the church could. So after that, the minister had a talk with me about my beliefs, and finally decided I was ok.
Among pagans the experience is totally different. Going to a pan-pagan event, I am not grilled on what sort of pagan I am, asked what I believe, or anything else. If I show up, I am welcome. If I bring food, I am doubly welcome (food is a pagan value, maybe that needs another essay). I sometimes feel that I am not pagan enough to really call myself pagan, with my logical brain and my upbringing in science. Science gave me my powerful connection with nature, though, and I find that there are people in the pagan sphere who are very much like me and those that aren't are willing to accept me as I am. In pan-pagan gatherings there is the expectation that everyone is probably some sort of pagan, or trying to figure out if they are. But in core shamanism the variation among us is greater still, as liberal Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and others may be in the mix as well. As a Unitarian, I feel very at home in that mix. But though acceptance sounds simple, it actually has to be carefully thought out, especially by the organizers of an event, so that there is inclusiveness built into every gathering. My experience with earth-centered spirituality is that people are willing to go that extra distance for others, and that is a big deal.
[The photo is of Athena's owl on the John Adams Building, Library of Congress.]
This magnificent 10" daylily hybridized by, John Lambert, a hero among the creators of unusual daylilies. He was not appreciated enough in his time for what he did for all of daylily hybridization, and especially in the creation of daylilies like this, that twist, curl, and have have long petals. He created several polymerous daylilies, to the dismay of other hybridizers. Some of his daylilies, including Puppet Lady, almost disappeared; preserved in just a few gardens by Lambert fans. In his day Lambert received more recognition for producing whites, clear reds, and purples. His rounder, more acceptable, daylilies were taken and used for hybridization by other growers around the country because of the colors he achived. But the rounder daylilies carried the genes of the unusual forms, and so surprising characteristics kept showing up. Today, people are seeking out his strange daylilies and their descendants to create more eccentric forms.
So today's lesson is that eccentricity will out. Eventually the unfashionable will become fashionable when people become tired of the conventional. And even if your own particular eccentric creations do not find mass appeal, they will live on somewhere, in somone's secret garden.
What is so neat about daylilies? All the shapes and sizes of them, to start with. Daylilies, like all flowers, are mandalas. They are very spiritual in the same way that the legendary Japanese Buddhist monk who wore a frog on top of his head was spiritual. Contemplative but not stuck up about it. I am fond of the weirdest shapes, like Crazy Pierre to the right. That is a spider, with petals that are roughly five times as long as they are wide. Crazy Pierre also twists and curls so that every blossom is different. Also, this fower is huge. Crazy man, crazy.
After a long fight for acceptance, the polymerous daylilies are now grouped in the official daylily show manual to be catagorized under doubles. Groan! Genetically incorrect. But it is progress because now they can be shown, and as people see them they will fall in love with them. It is possible for a daylily to be both polymerous and double because these are completely different traits. (See gallery photo of the Forsyth Tepaled Double the petaloids in the center are what makes it double.)
So that is a good way to spend a midsummer morning, wading among sopping wet daylilies to get photos before the rain completely bruises the petals. My house is a mess. I can't find anything because too many people other than me have thrown things into boxes in the aftermath of the lightning strike and fire. But my garden is in a completly different and likable state of disorder, and it is wonderful.
See more photos of my summer garden in my scrapbook gallery, Summer 2009.
Since my house burned down
I now own a better view
of the rising moon.
I now own a better view
of the rising moon.
A journal of my life since my house was struck by lightning on Tuesday is below the cut:
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
At about 6:30 this morning lightning struck my house. The bang woke me up. There was smoke but I couldn't see any fire. So I caught the cat (who was freaking out), called 911 and got out of the house. The fire fighters came very fast. It turned out that the fire was in the wall between the bathroom and the kitchen. They smashed up the kitchen, the bathroom, and the basement ceiling. There was some confusion about whether the fire came in on the electric lines or through the plumbing. The plumbing in the bathroom is smashed up. So the fire fighters told me not to turn on the water or electricity until I had someone check them. The electrician just left and said that the electricity was not affected. So tomorrow morning the plumber will come.
The insurance company is making things happen really fast, so I got a lot done today. A clean up crew came, mopped up the water, and cleared out the debris of the smashed walls and basement ceiling. At least now I can turn the refrigerator and dehumidifier on. I am staying at a neighbor's house for tonight.
It is a mess and hard to deal with, but it could have been much much worse because the fire was right near the gas line to the kitchen stove. So I have house that smells like smoke, but I still have a house.
The insurance company is making things happen really fast, so I got a lot done today. A clean up crew came, mopped up the water, and cleared out the debris of the smashed walls and basement ceiling. At least now I can turn the refrigerator and dehumidifier on. I am staying at a neighbor's house for tonight.
It is a mess and hard to deal with, but it could have been much much worse because the fire was right near the gas line to the kitchen stove. So I have house that smells like smoke, but I still have a house.
So I have bought several bars of Dial soap. Forget the coyote urine and the expensive repellants. Agricultural extension agencies have done the studies and found that not only is Dial the least expensive solution, it is also the most effective. Mist netting also works, as do six foot electrified fences, but they are more expensive (and may not be allowed where I live). Here on the borders of DC, having a hunting season or introducing wolves is probably out of the question -- though interesting to contemplate. So tonight I will be drilling holes in bars of Dial to hang around my yard. I hate the smell of the stuff - no wonder it repels deer!
The nematodes will get to work now and eat up the larve of thrips that lay eggs on daylily blossoms and disfigure them. They also will eat Japanese beetle larve. They don't like worms and won't harm the local cats, so they are an earth-freindly way to get rid of pests. The only thing is, you can't see them without a microscope. So it is a bit of an act of faith to throw the vermiculite they were sleeping in into a bucket of water and sprinkle it around. It worked last year, so I'll just believe that they are out there doing their thing.
The peonies are almost done blossoming. The one at the right is one of the last.
- Location:My garden
Below the cut is the draft for the letter that I will send to the clinic of a doctor who treated me unethically. Perhaps posting the text here will help someone facing a similar situation. Maybe it could inspire others to write down the experiences they have had as patients in the crossfire of the fibromyalgia wars.
One observation that is not in the letter is that I feel the doctor who claimed I was exhibiting "fibromyalgic behavior" was exhibiting witch-hunting behavior. It is very easy to poke prod and annoy someone until they do or say something that you can claim is mental illness as witch-hunters used to prod and poke their victims until they found an insensitive place. There are actually some disturbing similarities between modern diagnostic manuals for psychosomatic disease and the Malleus Maleficarum. These rheumatologists probably wouldn't get the reference. But I think my readers here are more broadly educated and will understand this perfectly.
( Names have been removed to protect the guilty.... )
One observation that is not in the letter is that I feel the doctor who claimed I was exhibiting "fibromyalgic behavior" was exhibiting witch-hunting behavior. It is very easy to poke prod and annoy someone until they do or say something that you can claim is mental illness as witch-hunters used to prod and poke their victims until they found an insensitive place. There are actually some disturbing similarities between modern diagnostic manuals for psychosomatic disease and the Malleus Maleficarum. These rheumatologists probably wouldn't get the reference. But I think my readers here are more broadly educated and will understand this perfectly.
( Names have been removed to protect the guilty.... )
Daughter of Hecate, on Covenspace, reports that when she went to a lawyer in Ashville, North Carolina for consultation in a divorce, he cursed at her threw her out of his office when he found out that she was Wiccan. Read more about these events on her blog.
The House passed the National Pain Care Policy Act of 2009 in March. Now it is in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and is expected to go to the full Senate for a vote soon (Senate bill 660). Please consider supporting this bill by emailing, writing, or calling your state Senator. This is a bill that would help to foster research on pain conditions and to remove barriers to effective pain management. Information on the bill and talking points can be found here on the American Pain Foundation Web site .
Although women are more likely to have autoimmune diseases and chronic pain conditions, men have these conditions and are treated with prejudice too. All people in pain can potentially be treated as if they have a mental health problem, or drug problem, instead of a physical condition by doctors. All these patients have families and communities who are impacted by these conditions. When pain and chronic illnesses are dismissed, misdiagnosed as mental conditions, and under-treated, everyone suffers.
May 12 is National Fibromyalgia Awareness Day and the International Awareness Day for Chronic Immunological and Neurological Diseases. That’s a mouthful, but there are reasons why people with these conditions and those who care about them have banded together. A better scientific understanding of fibromyalgia, Gulf War illness, chronic fatigue, autoimmune disease, and neurological disease can have a broad impact on health care for everyone. A movement towards a better ethical medical treatment of these patients can raise awareness of more general problems in ethical medical treatment for all of us. From my perspective, as a patient with fibromyalgia, I see the issues and controversies around my illness as a case study in what is wrong with health care in the US, and in many other countries as well.
( Continue reading.. )
