Marcia McCord Tarot Reader

Do Alligators Dream?

2012-01-28T08:43:00.000-08:00

"Over there on the opposite shore," our guide pointed the very few feet away as we tender morsels perched on our inadequate flotation devices in the largest airboat in Florida, "is Fred, our resident alligator."

Fred smiled. At least I think he did. It's hard to tell when alligators smile. It was daytime, warmer than usual for this time of year at Myakka State Park. Alligators snooze in the daytime, digesting what they've eaten in the night.

Fred
Myakka State Park 2012

"What do they eat?" the guide prompted us. "Anything that moves." We sat especially still, smiles frozen on our faces at the joke that was not a joke.

We were headed out on Myakka Lake to see more wildlife. Our cheerful guide went on to explain that there had been no officially documented alligator attacks at the lake, citing the lack of documentation provided by successful alligators. Those little keys on the computer are particularly difficult for 8-12 foot long reptiles who are, ok, let's just admit it here, illiterate. How would the alligator begin to report the attack? As a description of gourmet dining? Certainly the person involved would not report it.

'Wiggly, jiggly, with some crunchy parts marked 'Canon'. Thrashed a bit and made a fuss. Tastes a bit like the javelina although more tender once you get past the annoying textile coverings. Not a snack but a full meal. On the whole, however, I prefer the anhinga for its bite-sized portions.'

I doubted Fred was the food editor for the Myakka Alligator Herald somehow. I wondered what alligators dream of during the day. Food, I figure.

Fred continued to smile as we left the dock and moved out into the lake.

We begin now the Chinese year of the water dragon and it was not lost upon me that I was hoping for an alligator encounter of the photographic kind, only, at the Water Dragon time when Fred and his family are my closest representation.

My husband and I have traveled to Florida to spend time with his cousin Margaret and pursue wildlife photography. Margaret is the self-proclaimed family matriarch, formidable herself without the least bit of comparison to dragons or alligators. She has survived much in her life. She is deeply religious. She cooks killer breakfasts and dinners. She will pass on wildlife of any kind.

"I like people," Margaret says. "Is it so awful that I don't want to hear stories about your cat or dog?" Margaret does not come with us on our wildlife photography forays.

Florida is one of my favorite places to visit because of its natural beauty. True, my idea of nature and beauty is skewed because my childhood was spent there in the oaks, pines and palms, the veils of Spanish moss, the birdsong and abundant water. There seems to be less and less of the Florida I knew as a child since that joke about selling swampland in Florida for housing developments isn't really a joke. It's a good thing Margaret likes people. Good grief, they are everywhere! Little grey and white haired people having a wonderful time in their retirement in deed-restricted communities have taken over the swamplands with their houses and condos, many of them also lovers of the natural beauty of the place. But it's still not as crowded as California and the yards are often long, the yards uncurbed and rimned with sand, the driveways filled with fossil seashells dug from the interior quarries. It is still a place I love despite its changes.

Myakka Lake, Florida

I used up batteries and storage chips as we floated past the ibis, roseate spoonbill, bald eagle, pairs of sandhill crane, wood stork, pelicans, grebes, egrets both great and snowy, herons blue, tri-color and Great Blue. The wild boar, let loose by early settlers, rooted by the lakeshore while deer clung closer to the edges of the clearing. Another alligator, this one in the water, appeared. We circled it. It swam under us. We were properly horrified and fascinated at the same time. Towards sunset, all of us seemed to be looking for a drink. We putted back to our "crash landing" at the dock, Fred still in full snooze.

In the tarot, the Fool is without preconceived notions or plan. He is not particularly prepared for what's around the corner. His attention is likely on what is just under his nose and not necessarily what is just beyond his feet. There is information all around him. If he is fortunate, he learns something on his journey. If he is more fortunate, he has a helpful companion to warn him of danger and encourage him along the way. If he is even more fortunate, he experiences the terrible beauty of the world and all its wonders. He is subject to surprise.

Victorian Trade Card Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

I expected to see all the wonderful birds and hoped to photograph them. I had hoped for some alligator shots and was delighted when we had lots of opportunities. What I didn't expect was the warning handed out at the Myakka State Park entry.

Apparently, the black vultures (not the same bird as a turkey vulture with the red heads) are particularly fond of snacking on anything made of rubber particularly towards sunset. They eat your windshield wipers and edges around your car windows. The park cannot be responsible. They just want you to know.

We speculated on how we would word the insurance claim. We weren't sure our account and the warning provided by the park would be enough to explain the situation. I took a photo of the vultures waiting for sunset, perched in a tree, seemingly selecting their car from the shady parking lot. I felt vaguely like a dupe on a snipe hunt but animals do some pretty crazy things. They are almost as crazy as tourists.

Best wishes!

Golden Handcuffs

2012-01-18T23:51:00.000-08:00

We went to dinner with our friend Mr. Delinsky last Sunday. We went to a favorite hangout, Marin Joe's in Corte Madera. His name is Harold but I never call him anything other than Mr. Delinsky, even when I'm giving him a hug and a kiss and telling him we love him. We do. He's a little guy originally from the Bronx, thin with a hank of grey hair and an Important Nose. He came to California while he was in the Army. He thought he might become a veterinarian at some point and was in charge of the commanding officer's horse.

He never went back to New York to stay after that. It's hard to take the Bronx out of the boy and all he has to do is speak a word or two and you'll know where he's from. At some point he became an insurance adjuster. That's how he met my husband. They met some real characters together in their jobs as insurance adjusters, most of them other insurance adjusters. They were two nice guys in a world that wasn't necessarily so nice to them.

Mr. Delinsky never married even though he still has an eye for a beautiful woman. I can tell he was shy, still is. I suspect he never could feel right about a long term commitment either, the adjustments, the compromises, the indignities. My sense is that he didn't think someone would feel that way about him. He had a dog that he loved. The dog has been gone a while now but he doesn't think he will get another. I teased him once that I was going to find a rescue dog for him for his birthday. I didn't realize that this would upset him or cause him anxiety. It did. Mr. Delinsky doesn't like to be pushed into situations. Everything was better when we both told him we wouldn't really force a dog on him.

He's a gentle man, Mr. Delinsky. He loves Broadway and show tunes. He loves listening to good live music as long as they play the standards. He's always trying to get me to sing with the piano player at dinner. I did once. I'm not sure I would do it again. I'll sing to him at the dinner table though. He loves that.

We went to the Top of the Mark one evening to listen to Riccardo Scales. We met Jeff Labes at Marin Joe's and caught a special dinner show with Jeff and LynAnn King, a Johnny Mercer revue at a cozy Italian restaurant called Aurora in Marin County. We went to a special engagement at the Jewish Community Center featuring a torch singer. His crush on her from afar was clear, so I took his arm and slowly walked him to the table of CD's in the lobby where she stood after the show so they could talk. It was magic for him.

Mr. Delinsky is in his 80's. He plays tennis. He meets his old cronies in the City. His nickname at Marin Joe's is "Dino." People mistake him as someone who would be a member of the Rat Pack, but he's a little less flashy, a man of manners and humor. He is always so stunned that we love to spend time with him.

We have no need to try to arrange a date for Mr. Delinsky. We know he's a confirmed bachelor. We like having him to ourselves anyway. He's a Leo and he is like a little lion who is comfortable in his territory. And yet, he's still got a few surprises, Leo-style.

Victorian Trade Card Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

"You know that YouTube thing?" he rasps over Jeff's piano-playing, a song too modern to interest Mr. Delinsky. "YouTube, right?"

We nod, suddenly curious. Mr. Delinsky is not a computer guy. We want to know the YouTube connection.

"This guy," he continues, "this guy does movies. Real movies. He asks me will I do a movie. I think he asked me because he thinks I'm the only one who would actually do it."

His eyes twinkle at the danger of an acting debut.

"So I said yes. It's something about Rudy Kaputnik. How do you spell that?"

We venture a guess.

"Look it up." I get out my new phone and finally find it. It's The Rudi Kapootnik Story. I play it for him.

"Can you see that?" He points to the tiny screen.

"Oh, look, Mr. Delinsky! You're a movie star!"

He beamed shyly. He told us about the next project his friend has cast him in. He has misgivings. The subject matter doesn't exactly match him. His friend wrote the piece with him in mind, though, misunderstanding his shy and respectable side. He doesn't want to hurt his friend's feelings. We talk about the possible alternatives. He's going to think about it.

He's a lovely example of a modest American dream. Have a house. Maybe a dog. Meet some friends for tennis or lunch. Fall in love from afar. Chase your favorite music. Try something completely different like starring in a movie. His retirement is small but has its satisfactions.

Victorian Trade Card Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

I think about my own working future. I'm on the "work until dead" plan myself. But I have so much to learn from Mr. Delinsky. The next time someone tells me I have "golden handcuffs" at work, I will think about him and the 8 of Swords and Strength. They look like handcuffs to some, but I know I have deliberately set the thoughts around me with the Strength to stay for a reason.

Best wishes.

***

Watch Mr. Delinsky starring in The Rudi Kapootnik Story. And if you wonder what America is really like, here's the real Mr. Delinsky, our adorable friend.

The Year of the Scary Guy

2012-01-11T10:35:00.000-08:00

2012 is the Year of the Hierophant. OK, all you non-tarot geek people do not have to tune out here. This is Tarot-lite anyway. All the best people will tell you that. Just like last year, we go through the easy task of adding the digits in the year, which is of course completely a human construct since different cultures use different calendars. Never mind about all that. 2 plus 0 plus 1 plus 2 equals 5 in nearly any culture and 5 is the Hierophant’s number. Oh, play along.

Omigosh, what’s a hierophant? And why did they have to pick such a big word to mean…what? A bit of ogling the ol' Google will tell us:

hi•er•o•phant/ˈhī(ə)rəˌfant/

Noun: A person, esp. a priest in ancient Greece, who interprets sacred mysteries or esoteric principles.

Well, that’s actually an excellent basis for discussion about this card, this year and a bit of history. So, in case you hadn’t known this before, the first traces we have of something called Tarot came from documents in northern Italy in the late 1300’s-early 1400’s. I like to think of them as the police blotter reporting the cops breaking up a bar fight over a card game and basically, that’s what happened. People used these decks of cards first, however, as presentation pieces because paper wasn’t that widely available (go back and look at the history of printing and the whole lifetimes people spent in scriptoriums because things were handwritten and drawn before mass communications had the big printing breakthrough). Suffice it to say, the early decks sprung up in Italy when popular culture assumed, incorrectly of course, that everyone was some kind of Catholic Christian.

So the person at the top who interprets sacred mysteries or esoteric principles is, for $100, Alex, is – pausing for dramatic effect – The Pope! So this card was originally called The Pope. Customs changed and after a while it was rude, and in some cases rude meant punishment in the extreme, to do things like have the Pope as a character in a card game or divination tool. Well, you see where this is leading? They had to change the name of course to something that was a little less inflammatory, hence, Hierophant. Fine, ancient Greece doesn't seem so rude.

Obviously, this wasn’t that simple, but I did promise you Tarot-lite. There’s a lot more to that story.

The essence of meaning didn’t change, though. The number 5 major arcana card still means the person who is The Spiritual Leader who translates spiritual messages to the folks who are, well, not the spiritual leader. This is the person who teaches us how we should live.

Now we get to the scary part. You expected the Spanish Inquisition, didn’t you? Nope, the scary part is how we view this card today because, well, my whole discussion here is how we, the People of Today, interact with the concept of “the person who teaches us how we should live”.

Raise your hand if your hackles raised before your hand when reading that phrase. In “free-thinking” Western Society and especially the sassy, back-talking, wash-your-mouth-out-with-soap United States, we who speak our minds, our hearts, our bathrooms, our bedrooms, our closets, our frivolous opinions, our trips to the grocery store through any medium available and only sometimes regret it later are positively incensed by the idea that anyone would even try to tell us how we should do anything. This distills to the sigh you may hear that “young people are falling away from The Church”. Please note, you may insert any denomination here.

Still, strangely enough, we of the Country of Smart Aleks are often in search of spiritual leaders. We don’t want to be told what we should do but we want to be told how we might do. And, unless we’ve lived Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall, the word Teacher seems to be a tamer, less volatile interpretation of Number 5.

From the point of view of the Teacher, without all the brimstone and other signs of enthusiasm, the Teacher has knowledge to translate into something understandable to the Student. Consider how difficult this translation can be if the nature of the information is spiritual, something that by definition defies description in concrete terms so that any Fool could clearly understand it. Is it any wonder then that spiritual topics are often those causing the worst misunderstandings in the world which of course lead to war, hatred, crimes against humanity and all the dreadful things that are anathema to a Spiritual Life?

After all, why did the chicken cross the road? That and so many other things, when discussed by the Teacher with the Students, can be taken out of context and misconstrued by the Teacher’s all-too-human analogies which hit the wrong note with the Student, the Student’s Parents, the Student’s Friends and the Local News. The Teacher, the Hierophant therefore has one foot in the Spiritual World with his understanding of the mysteries and one foot in the human world where he or she tries to make that information make sense in an everyday setting.

Tired of me yet? If you’re the Hierophant, you’re tired. You’ve tried to explain it eight ways to Sunday and sometimes you just want to say, “Don’t try to analyze it. Just accept that it’s true.” That blind faith is the unsteady bridge we build to leap the gap between what the Spiritual Leader “gets” and none of us can describe exactly. Obviously, the simplest messages seem to work best because they don’t get into too much detail that people can quibble about and they make some kind of sense: “Be ye to others kind and true,” as antique samplers might say.

Picture Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

From the Student’s point of view, the Hierophant may be just this side of insane. The Student knows he has some message but, like any skeptic, wants to evaluate it (see my previous post on the Pages' take on the Teacher’s message). From just about any point of view, though, the Teacher with one foot in this world and one in the next is a bit off his nut, you might say. And that, in itself, is scary. You and your companions have strayed into the Spiritual Woods and the Guide is not all there. But that's just one perspective. What if he or she is enlightened and struggling with translation?

And so, full circle, 2012 is the Year of the Hierophant. You may have a flash of insight and when you share it, the recipients of your new-found Eureka moment may think you’ve lost your mind. You may struggle to teach others something you are afraid is being lost in our fast and furious society. You will see others try to insert their teachings into everyday life, like current political candidates are doing, for good or ill. In this Year of the Hierophant, I urge you to translate carefully, gently, patiently, kindly and allow for the glorious variation that exists in the Spirit Human. Even the Teacher learns. Please, give the Hierophant a break. Let's put the "Hi!" back in Hierophant!

Best wishes. It's just a suggestion.

Possum Holler

2012-01-04T09:45:00.000-08:00

I love urban wildlife. I don't mean spouse swapping. I mean critters who have adapted to human invasion of wild territory. Some critters adjust better than others, like squirrels and the birds at the bird feeder.

Art Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

Some of the species are "introduced" although I don't think it was what Miss Manners had in mind. Our friend Karen in Fort Lauderdale took us for a little walk around her neighborhood when we visited a few years back. Part of the tour included show and tell about their current problem with iguanas who roam the neighborhoods. We saw them. They run in gangs and look like thugs in green leather jackets and little iguana-Mohawk topknots. The grouping (what DO you call a collective of iguanas?) we saw near the houses next to the canal looked like they were waiting for a friend outside a tattoo parlor, chain-smoking.

Aside from being startling, and I mean who, like the Spanish Inquisition, expects an iguana at your front door, I was curious about the harm these escapees cause. Apparently, they eat things like your landscaping. The most curious problem happens about this time of year, Karen said, when they sleep in trees in the winter. Being cold-blooded, they don't move much after a cold night and tend to fall out of the tree. OK, an iguana at the gates is one thing but one falling on your head is a bit much.

Most of my encounters with urban wildlife have been with the natives, like raccoons and deer. Deer love roses and so do people who live in California. One of my favorite garden tips came from the Marin I-J. A disgruntled gardener wrote in to the garden columnist, "Can you name a variety of rose deer won't eat?"

"Yes," came the expert reply. "Plastic."

The deer in California are different from the deer in the midwest. California deer are about the size of a good-sized dog. Deer in the midwest are about the size of a small horse. Well, they are when they are crashing through your backyard during a pleasant Sunday afternoon when you're trying to read a trashy novel in the sunshine. But, with the price of landscaping, rose-eating deer cause a lot of consternation. My friend Ronda has deer roaming her neighborhood and wild turkeys too. That's the bird, not the bottle.

Another thing that I wasn't used to when I moved to California is the occasional wild pig alert in the Mt. Diablo area. The pigs are descendants of domestic pigs brought in to keep the cows from eating acorns and losing their calves. A lot of little pigs later and occasionally wild pigs completely destroy people's yards, etc looking for goodies.

Lucky for me, my encounters with wildlife at home have been more benign and less costly to the property. A small rattlesnake was quickly relocated to the designated open space by a neighbor. Just part of the gold in them thar' hills here.

One of my favorite encounters was with the vain red-tailed hawk who hung out near our house for a while. He perched on the windshield wipers of the van across the street and admired his reflection in the glass, turning his head one way, then the other, as if to make sure his sideburns were even. He's moved on at least, hunting for songbirds and other small creatures in easier locations with fewer powerlines and dogs to interrupt the process.

Last night, however, the visitor was something of a more mundane variety.

First, I should tell you that Martha and Miguel next door have the cutest little chihuahuas, Chocolate and, um, Mrs. Chocolate. I've never quite gotten her name. Along with Mr. and Mrs. C also lives Moche who is, to the best of my understanding, a papillon. Moche makes a pretty good guard dog. You make the wrong move, you could lose an ankle. And he barks. In fact all of them bark and howl. When the ambulances screech down the next street over on their way to one of the two hospitals nearby, our very own "Mariachi Chorus" entertains us with their high-pitched song.

Ordinarily, I don't mind their serenades even at odd hours. I realized last night that the reason I don't mind is that ambulances go past here pretty fast and the accompaniment is generally brief. Last night was an exception, a long exception.

When Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus (the hubs and me) settled in for our long winter's nap last night, we had fully expected that the noisemakers and excitement from New Year's Eve was pleasantly over. You know, over, like a couple of days ago. We had just reached an agreement between the dog and cats Tony and Alice about which sections of what real estate on the mattress were allocated to whom and where the easements were when the racket started.

With no high pitched screaming, I was pretty sure the three canines next door did not have a cat as a quarry. After all, these are small dogs who are justifiably afraid of cats. The few outdoor cats in my neighborhood could take three small dogs with one paw tied behind their backs but are entirely too lazy to get into a situation like that.

Amid the chihuahua high notes was a baseline of songless growling. John and I looked at each other and shrugged. We were pretty sure the situation would resolve itself shortly. We were wrong. It went on. And on.

"I'm pretty sure the Mariachi Chorus has cornered an opossum in the fence back there," I gestured out the window where Alice was now enjoying her ringside seat.

"Ungh," John said. Really, he is a big talker, just not after 11 pm or so. The ruckus had been going on for half an hour. I turned a page in my novel, no where near sleepy.

"It's surprising Miguel and Martha can sleep through this." I imagined shoes being thrown out windows. A shoe could hit a dog, I reasoned. We wouldn't want that. John muttered something about rolling over. I endured another 20 minutes with remarkable patience. Alice never left her post, enthralled with the yaps and squeals of the dog and the gutteral rumble of their quarry. These are tame dogs so while they might corner their prey, the next steps were not entirely clear.

"I know where a flashlight is," I said, nudging John gently. "Wouldn't it be terrible if little Pogo got hurt?"

John sputtered a few things that might have been Butte-en-ese or Gaelic or something else my mother would have pretended not to understand and swung his legs over the side.

"I get a back scratch out of this and that's final." I agreed quickly.

He donned his robe suddenly reminding me much of an elderly spinster who had neglected to shave her legs. Or beard for that matter. He left the bedroom, rattled around in some utility storage spot. The backyard light came on and Alice sat up with greater interest. The crunch of leaves and the beam of the flashlight helped us follow his progress. He was my Knight of Wands, bringing light and energy to change the stalemate.

"Daddy's going to save the possum, huh, kitty?" Alice was not sure if that would mean saving it for her or just saving it. One of those would be good news. She intended to watch. Tony hid as the better part of valor. Quincy slept, deaf dog.

The barking and growling continued, but in a few minutes it slowly moved along the fenceline from the back of the yards towards the front. A bit of scuffling followed by a de-escalation in barking. Gates opened and closed. Feet trudged up stairs. The back yard light went off. All was quiet. John slipped back into bed.

"You were right," he muttered. "Possum. In the corner of the yard. Got his tail stuck in a board in the fence. Used a stick. Should be OK now."

He rolled over, no longer interested in the back scratch. I assume he will collect later. He likes a good scratch.

Mrs. Chocolate started up again. We looked at each other and sighed, no longer willing to answer the alarm. I read a little more in my novel and started to snooze, noise and all. I turned out the reading light finally and Mrs. Chocolate gave up the possum alarm, finally realizing she was no match in the dark for a fully grown and annoyed Pogo. We all settled back down into our naps with hope for a better tomorrow.

Best wishes and Happy New Year.

Nearly Silent Night

2011-12-28T10:08:00.000-08:00

I woke up in the dark, sometime between bedtime and dawn. I didn’t want to look at the clock. I counted the snores. Hubby, 1; dog, 1; cat, 0. Tony doesn’t make much noise when he sleeps so I wasn’t too concerned; Alice is a completely different story but she was out in the living room. Tony chirped and hopped up on the bed beside me to snuggle into my hand. Some critter in the back yard rustled some leaves, just enough to make Tony turn an ear towards the window but not enough to get up and investigate. We were all warm and safe.

Tea Tarot
(c) Copyright 2011 Marcia McCord

We had had a peaceful Christmastime. Other than my gift of a cold from the outside world, all was calm and at that hour, we all had excuses for not being too bright. I sniffled softly, trying to keep the rest of the house asleep.

This year was the closest thing to an old-fashioned Christmas I have had in a while. It started out the first weekend of December with the Global Holiday Fair, an annual charity event. I usually take a shift in the kitchen filling orders for chili, no chili dog, no make that 2 chili dogs and could we have the spicy vegetarian chili, not the mild, medium or hot beef chili, and banana fritters and turkey vegetable soup and sodas and few other local delicacies and could I have the chili on the side? After a couple hours of that and my holiday spirit really sets in. I’m glad I don’t work in a restaurant. Those people are made of stronger stuff than I am.

Over the years volunteering for kitchen duty, I’ve learned that “zone defense” seems to work the best. The kitchen aisles are not that wide and the kitchen workers for the most part, ahem, are that wide so that we seem to do better “bucket brigade” style than trying to run a hundred yards for a touchdown. I like low-contact kitchen sports when you’ve got an armful of molten chili. I’m pleased to say this year that no kitchen workers were harmed for yet another year of Christmas kitchen safety. Church choirs sing and different charity groups have booths and sell Christmas-y and other winter holiday gifts. My husband always goes big at the bakery booth. This year, I was enchanted by the sculptures done by Doug Chenelle and his friends at Milestones of Development. Where else can you get gift exchange items that are individual pieces of art for the low, low price of, well, what you’d spend on a gift exchange item?

My husband is fond of consumables for gifts. If you saw our garage, you’d know why. So our big gift this year was my favorite Yule welcoming celebration at the Cal Revels in Oakland, California. Once again we had the perfect seats. I use the “nose” method of determining seating chart selection. If you are sitting so far in the back that you get a nosebleed, you’re too far away; if you can count the hairs in the performers’ noses, you’re too close. I have to say it’s hard to get a bad seat at the Scottish Rite Temple in Oakland, though. The theme this year was King Arthur and Camelot. We were treated to the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with colorful costumes, artful dancing, juggling and as always a sing-along with the crowd. I love the Cal Revels' Christmas spirit, full of joy.

This year I had an added treat of a visit from my sister and her husband. My family never gets together at the holidays so I was thrilled to get a chance to have dinner at the Union Hotel in Occidental with them. Occidental is Away From It All, charming, woodsy, and has two famous rival Italian restaurants, the Union Hotel and Negri’s. Both are delicious dining, worth the scenic drive through amazing Northern California.

We always spend Christmas Eve with our friend Gerry and her family. The family is growing and growing, with adorable Lu, now almost two, and her new little sister who will arrive next week! Gerry’s grandson Nick had splurged on Scratcher tickets and I came away $3 richer. And, Nick, thanks for the pepper spray! I hope I never need to use it.

I decided to tackle Christmas Day head on this year and invited my brother-in-law Don, plus my young friend Andrew and his buddy Patrick to dinner. I had taken a somewhat more leisurely approach to the meal than usual. John likes his roast beef burnt, the condition where the chef in the finest and even less-than-fine restaurants will toss up their hands in a fit of pique and exclaim in some accent or another that “ze can NOT guarantee zee quality when zee customer demands zee beef overcooked!” I decided to pass on the fit of pique. John and Pat wanted well-done roast and although it makes me shudder to do it I figured out a way to give them their burnt beast and still have a decent, recognizable cut of prime rib for Andrew and myself.

“Two roasts,” I said as my Final Answer. Though it hurt me to do it, I scorched that poor beautiful rib roast until properly petrified for my well-done-ers and waited a discreet amount of time before introducing my well-cooked rare roast to the oven. A generous crust of maple seasoning and garlic salt graced them both. We played board games at the big round oak table while everything cooked. I lost on the last question for Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? and won at cribbage by a hair. We then quickly swept the cats into the bedrooms, set the table with my Grocery Outlet Christmas dishes, brought out the better silver, and had a feast fit for any king and a table full of knights, including the pumpkin pie with generous whipped cream.

My favorite Christmas moment, however, came the next day. I am in the midst of helping my friend Susan and her daughter Della get their internet connection up and working. I hadn’t seen Susan in a long time so I was so happy to get a chance to talk. Her cat had died a few months ago and they were still blue, missing Coalie.

“You need a cat,” I said, with my usual subtle diagnosis. “I know a cat.”

I didn’t exactly know the cat. I knew of the cat, or rather cats. My friend Becca had just told me about a recent rescue of a set of indoor cats who had not reacted well to one of the cats in residence. Teddy had been ousted from his territory in the office and had set up his last defenses in the bathroom. The situation was dire, especially since Teddy sounded a lot like the low-key lovebug that my Tony is. Teddy, the little Knight of Cups, sought peace, love, harmony and was currently lost in the deep, deep woods of a once-familiar home with monsters all around.

Boxing Day became Teddy Day and Teddy was introduced to Susan and Della. Teddy is a luxurious silver tabby with well-proportioned features and a soft medium coat. We knew the introduction could be delicate but we were hopeful. While Teddy did show his shy side, he didn’t panic. No barking dogs, no marauding gangs of invader felines, just two sweet ladies with a vacancy for a snuggle bunny. Teddy crawled up into a secluded spot in Susan’s recliner, not yet ready for thorough exploration. He didn’t hiss. He didn’t run or scratch. He let us all talk softly to him and pet his tail or foot.

“I’m a match-maker!” I beamed to John. At least I hope I am. Like the Knight of Cups, I feel it is never too late to pursue love, no matter how shy you are, no matter how long it takes. What better season than this to try to bring a little love into creatures’ lives?

Bright hopes and best wishes!

Last Minute Christmas Gifts

2011-12-21T14:50:00.000-08:00

“Goon!” I bellered. I call him Goon but he’s actually my husband, Prince Third-Time’s-a-Charming.

“Goon! Come quickly! I broke the toilet!”

You have to realize that I took an awfully big chance marrying this guy. For one thing, Versions 1.0 and 2.0 were not successful releases, if you get my drift. I don’t like the blame game so I feel it’s important to note my own flaws in those previous and unsuccessful financial relationships. For one thing, I failed to see how wrong a choice I was making at the time. These are expensive mistakes and so, counter to conventional wisdom, traditional religious beliefs and what your mama said, I recommend at least a thorough beta testing of the model prior to purchase. However, I also have to admit that the enthusiasm of the sales force prior to purchase can diminish to near-zero after the sale.

If you didn’t follow that, you shouldn’t get married. I’m just sayin’.

Another part of taking a big chance had to do with the parties involved, namely The Goon and me. He’s a Capricorn and I’m an Aries and for me to say that he “grounds” me is something like saying that helium is holding down hydrogen. I’m flammable; he’s not. And there's more to it than just your Sun Sign. There were some who were concerned about the lack of adult supervision in our relationship but we have the dog now.

Quincy will bark at us until we are all seated and being nice to each other, preferably across the room. There is no hugging or kissing in dog, as John explains, so we have to sneak in PDA when the dog’s back is turned. This is one of the secrets of keeping our romance spontaneous.

“Quick!” I’ll hiss to the Goon in the middle of the kitchen.

“While he’s outside in the back yard!”

We’ll sneak in a smooch or dance to some tune in our heads, usually sung with made-up lyrics, something like this that was never meant to be in Oklahoma,

“Don’t cross your eyes like that.

They’ll just get stuck that way.

They look so cute stuck that way!

People will say we’re in love!”

We started calling Quincy “The Duenna” and just settled for calling him Dwayne when he starts supervising during the good stuff. We didn’t realize we had a Cocker Spaniel in law enforcement, his Day Job being the Knight of Swords. What’s funny is that he (the dog) tends to work only one shift. After about 10 pm or so, he just looks at us, snorts and goes back to sleep. My sense is that he figures if what we’re doing is fighting, it’s someone else’s problem until he’s back on duty the next day.

Picture Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

John figures his marriage vows were to love, honor and say Yes, Dear to just about anything I came up with. In fact, I did make him promise me one thing.

“Promise me…” I struggled with the exact wording.

“Yes, dear?”

He felt it wise to get practice in before the ceremony.

“Promise me you will not be handy.”

“What?”

See, the thing about guys is that they always want to fix stuff for you. That’s so Knight of Swords too. That’s so cute. Well, it’s cute unless he doesn’t really have a knack for it. It’s not that John hasn’t a knack for fixing things. It’s that he is so creative with alternative solutions and wants me to participate in the process of selection. My imagination runs wild with visions of burst pipes and John reviewing the choices of duct tape versus replacement pipes and whether copper is better than PVC. My promise extracted from him means that when the pipes burst, we call a plumber, period. He is free to speculate and even annoy the Hired Professional all he wants as long as he stands back far enough to let the expert do his work.

Sometimes John does do some handiwork but I always cringe at the descriptions prior to actually viewing the body, so to speak.

“Come out here and see this lash-up I rigged for watering your roses,” he will announce. I suppress all my fears and reason that as long as the “lash-up” doesn’t actually undermine the foundation of the house causing it to settle even more than it has already, it can’t be all bad. If necessary I could always purchase new roses for the yard.

Most of the time I think it’s a language barrier. John speaks Butte-en-ese (byoo-tuhn-EEZ), the native tongue of those from Butte, Montana, usually Irish in origin but with the occasional Finlander and Italian phrase thrown in. It’s almost like English and perhaps just a tad more cosmopolitan than the language spoken in the movie Fargo. Like so many things about John, I used to think he was joking because it sounded so funny. Then we went on our honeymoon to his family’s reunion in Butte and I realized he was telling the truth after all. By the end of the week, I was saying, “Yah, sure, you betcha’” with the best of them. At least full immersion in Butte-en-ese gave me a way to translate, but occasionally a term like “lash-up” is something I take entirely too visually.

How can you lash up water, I muse as I’m reluctantly trudging down the stairs to view whatever he’s done to my roses now. The project reveals itself to be merely a complex series of tiny hoses, valves and sprinklers threaded through my flower beds for zone watering. The materials he used were those actually intended for flower bed watering. He called it a “lash-up” because he was not sure, even after the success of his project, that he’d done the right thing.

Back to more recent times and the broken toilet, John rushes into our 1930’s era pink, violet and black tiled bathroom which I call Mary Engelbreit’s Bad Dream. Don’t get me wrong. I love the color scheme, but I recognize it’s not that California sea glass and sand thing that people associate with luxury bathing nowadays.

Tony Sincerely Concerned With the
Status of Things in the
Pink, Violet and Black Bathroom

I had reluctantly agreed to replace the 1930’s toilet a few years ago due to wear and tear. Little leaks become big leaks and replacement seemed like the right thing. You could sink the Glomar Explorer in that baby with the water capacity, so the new one is more eco-friendly and low-volume. It feels responsible to have the new one, even though I miss the old one. But if I’m saddled with the new one, I expect it to last at least 50 years like the old one did. Flipping the little flush handle on the new convenience and having it swing limply in response was, well, horrifying. I had to yell for help. My Goon came running. OK, it wasn’t running because of the replaced knee, but he hurried after he figured out I was hollering for him.

After all, I have to give him these little opportunities to rescue me, right? He threatened to use language that Mother would not have approved and eventually wrestled the chain back onto the hook, restoring order to the Universe.

“My Hero!” The big ones like praise like this so I like to make sure he gets it whenever possible.

“Dollie,” he calls me Dollie, “Dollie, if I’m a Hear-O, what would a See-O or a Smell-O be?”

My eyes close and my mind shuts down momentarily. I breathe deeply.

“Quincy, bite the Bad Man.”

It’s not very effective giving verbal orders to a dog who can’t hear so Quincy, picking up the scent of our breath, wags his tail, pretty sure he was just told he was a good dog. Bad jokes, however, are a small price to pay for getting the toilet working again especially since I’ll be cooking Christmas dinner for a motley crew of guests this year.

Sometimes those last-minute Christmas gifts can be the best thing. If I can find that nice bow the cats hid under the couch, I might put it on the toilet tank as a reminder that we still don’t have to go out under a tree like the dog does!

Best wishes for a bright holiday season, no matter what your faith!

***

There's a last-minute gift you can give any time of the year and that's your registration to be a bone marrow donor. Our little Tatiana's happy recovery was short-lived and we lost her. That bright little star twinkles down upon us from heaven. But you can make the gift of life to someone else. Be The Match.

While you're at it, please say a prayer for my friend Johnny Leadfoot who has been battling cancer this year. He's been trying to dress up as Santa for the folks at the cancer hospital in Houston with a sign that says, Does this make me look fat? Prayers for him and for his family would be appreciated!

Do You Hear What I Hear?

2011-12-14T09:50:00.000-08:00

The dog just barked in my ear, enough that it hurt. I have to consider this a good sign though. I can hear the dog well enough that he doesn’t have to scream in my ear. Hearing is important to my work, both the Day Job and my tarot work.

I had my hearing tested last week. It took almost a year to get the appointment and, unlike my medical plan’s other policies, this particular test wasn’t covered under the “diagnostic tests are free” rule for the co-pays. I had to pay money to find out if my hearing is bad enough to need a little boost.

I spent a good deal of energy in my childhood translating what my mother said to my father. I suspected it was “selective deafness.” He just couldn’t hear my mother. Lorna, my hearing test technician, confirmed this phenomenon also known as marital deafness. Apparently it can be contagious.

“Good news, honey! I don’t need hearing aids yet,” I said to John.

“Huh?”

Well, you get the picture.

The good news is that I didn’t have to spend an extraordinary amount of money on a personal speaker system to pump the everyday world straight into my head. Decent hearing aids are thousands of dollars and I’d love someone to explain exactly why.

I want to give a break to the deaf community here by saying I think it’s perfectly OK if they feel good about their variation of the hearing feature and alternative language skills. I’m not an audio bigot by any means.

However, since I have grown used to hearing, I would like to continue to do so as a personal choice. I attended my share of rock concerts. I saw George Harrison during his Dark Horse tour. Well, I saw his left shoulder and vest. I was on the floor of the arena in St. Louis in the last row of the folding chairs. Even standing on the chair, due to my lack of personal altitude, I feel the best I can say is that I saw George Harrison’s vest. But I did hear him.

I saw Bob Dylan when he was doing a jazz thing. I went to a concern where Blondie warmed up for Savoy Brown. I slept through Savoy Brown. Not many people can say that, I think. I loved the REO concert in Rolla, Missouri where we danced out of the gymnasium, happiest concert I ever attended. I thrilled to Renaissance in Edwardsville, Illinois by the river bank, transcendent music for me. I sat in the top row of another sports arena and watched fondly as one of my precious friends, with the aid of entirely too many brewskies, attempted to rush the stage in adoration of Stevie Nicks during a Fleetwood Mac tour. Bob’s attempts were foiled but perhaps it’s just as well. We are not sure he would have remembered the encounter had he been successful. We all understood the need, though, to touch the intangible.

I probably attended more Kinks concerts than any other group or single artist. My first husband and his best friend from high school were Kinks fans. The girlfriends and wives of the group of guys they hung out with generally turned up their noses at the Kinks but I think now they were just scornful of the primal scream competition that the guys held any time they got together, filled the rooms with smoke and turned up the volume on the stereo which was usually playing the Kinks. I could usually bring the scream-fest to a halt by participating in it with them, which made the guys look at me as if I were stoned and not them. As musical, melodious and meaningful as the Kinks’ music was, that had to contribute to my hearing loss potential.

Still when the girls would get together, they would ask me how I could stand to listen to Led Zeppelin or Jethro Tull and I would blink because, well, I liked them, seriously. I adored Pink Floyd and I didn’t care which one was Pink.

You’d think I was some sort of rock and roll groupie since my second husband was a sound and lights man for live events. And I have to admit one rabid fan moment as a backstage groupie. Oh, it was nothing like one of my college acquaintances who crawled into a bathroom window with a cast on her arm just to sleep with a pop culture author she had heard speak at the university that evening. (Insert bug-eyed emoticon here.) But it was bold for me.

I had come along to a private function, a high-priced fund-raiser that took up the interior of a mall in the Bay Area somewhere near Silicon Valley. Dressed in my t-shirt and blue jeans and complete with a sinus infection that should have prevented most normal human functions, I was a stage hand helping with the miles of cable and plugs and tape and test-1-2, test-1-2 that is the setup of a live event. It’s a Page of Swords sort of job, technical, not pretty. You have to do what you’re told and do it right the first time. You’re not paid to give your opinion or enthusiasm.

Picture Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

Most musical acts will do a warm up and sound test well before the concert in these small venues because the acoustics and placement of speakers and microphones varies each time they create a stage in a place where no permanent stage exists.

And there he was. One of my idols since, well, since I wasn’t really old enough to know better. Michael McDonald, once of the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan and now out on his own, was the featured act. Tall, dark, handsome, with a liquid voice that could make even my high school biology teacher weak in the knees if she’d given him a chance, he gave a sound check which was his entire concert. It was my own private concert. Heaven!

Shy, still, I quietly approached Mr. McDonald’s personal sound technician, not wanting to disturb The Artist Himself.

“Do you think he would mind,” I snuffled, “if I asked for his autograph?”

The sound guy looked at me, so obviously not a stage hand, covered in dust and grit. Was I the only 40-year-old groupie who had asked this question?

“Naw! Him? Are you kidding? He’d love it!”

I figured the sound guy was lying to me. Or not. Either way, if I wanted an autograph before I died of the sinus infection, I had to make my move. I stepped softly across the flimsy stage and tapped Michael McDonald on the shoulder softly but definitely. He wheeled around, surprised.

“I’ve been in love with you forever!”

My dirty hands flew to my mouth as my face grew red. The room spun or it could have been the ear infection. Mr. McDonald had half a grin on his face, perhaps looking for a security guard. I nearly melted with embarrassment. Smooth, I thought. Very smooth. I shoved my crew ID badge and a Sharpie marker at him.

“Can I have your autograph?”

We were both relieved that was all it was. He signed my badge, “Love, Mike McDonald.” I succumbed to my dread and infection, retreated and drove home, unable to speak for many reasons. I still love “What a Fool Believes.” I still have that badge. I want to keep hearing the music, if for nothing else than for nostalgia’s sake.

Best wishes.

Fighting for Love

2011-12-08T11:35:00.000-08:00

Tony and Binket don’t get along. This is like saying that the tsunami in Japan dampened spirits a bit. Cats when annoyed with each other usually pose sideways, dance around, fluff up their fur and make noises anywhere from severe automotive trouble to people being tortured. There’s a lot of spit and threats and insults thrown. There can be a retreat after both cats have decided that each could take the other with one paw tied behind his or her back and a lot of mumbling and might-have-beens afterwards. That’s not what happens with Tony and Binket though.

Victorian Trade Card Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

Binket, in her defense, did get here first. She was a rescue baby from southern California, just a tiny handful of calico fluff from an abandoned defense manufacturing plant. The property owners sent a few stray cats to clear out the mice. The people with this easy mouse-control idea forgot that cats left unneutered will multiply almost like mice. Now rescue groups will scoop up what they can from the grounds to see if they can be neutered, rehabilitated and placed in loving homes like mine.

Binket came complete with a roaring case of ringworm, a fungus that spread to the dog, the other cat, my husband and me. We all got the treatment. The dog lost his “job” as a volunteer companion for severely handicapped people. The rescue people said that couldn’t possibly happen when I called to warn them they might want to up their disinfecting so other rescues weren’t affected. I didn’t want to argue with them. These were two addled ladies who were trying to hold back the tide of unwanted animals in Orange County, just barely keeping it together to save the ones they could with nearly no money. If they bought bargain brand bleach, it was probably watered down and less-effective in killing the fungus, God love them.

Even though Binket was raised from just a few weeks by the softest touches in the Universe, my husband and myself, she ended up being a cranky kitty, so much so that I started to look up the theories of inheritance of disposition in cats. Apparently, if you’re a cat and if your father was a cranky kitty, you’re probably a cranky kitty. That’s what the latest cat science had to offer me. So I was a little dismayed that cooing, cuddling, coddling nurture did not have as much effect on No No Bad Cat’s nature. She buffaloed her older adoptive sister into submission which didn’t seem remarkable, except that she’s slightly smaller. Napoleon complex, maybe.

Peepers is the kind of cat to open pantry doors and snooze undisturbed for hours. More than once we’ve heard strange noises coming from the kitchen only to find that we do not, in fact, have a poltergeist. It’s only a 10 pound Siamese mix who has had her linen drawer closed and is now ready to get up and go about her kitty business. She really isn’t pleased that there is anyone in the house with her besides me in the first place but has grown used to Binket. Her way of dealing with conflict is to burrow until the blast is over.

Our little feline family grew and Eleanor joined us. I had thought I met Eleanor on the worst day of her life. It turns out that every day is the worst day of Eleanor’s life. She is the Omega Cat. No matter what the contest, she comes in dead last. Strangely, Binket, who by now had fallen deeply, madly in love with the dog, a romance still in full flower, adjusted well to Eleanor’s arrival. I think she sensed immediately that Eleanor was no threat to her Alphaness and dragged her around like a feathery 5 pound toy. Eleanor seems to like this sort of abusive affection from Binket so we determined not to interfere. After all, when you have a cranky kitty, any sign of positive relationships is a sign of hope.

It all came to a crash when I brought home Tony. True, Tony’s a male cat but I venture to say that never a more unsuspecting, unambitious, shy on brains and soft in the middle male cat has ever graced my doorstep. He’s like an animated stuffed toy and just about that smart. He seldom has an idea about anything other than warming up on the nearest warm thing, often my laptop computers. He steps on the telephone when I’m on conference calls, has a couple of favorite soft toys including one we call Stewart Little, is jolly with the dog, is scared of his own shadow and otherwise takes up cat space. He’s an unusual looking cat, considering he’s just a brown tabby. OK, he’s downright funny looking. I took him to the vet to see if his physique was in any way a dangerous health deformity. She laughed and said, yes, he is funny looking and it’s likely his parents were funny looking too. Instead of being that sleek, long luxuriant short-hair that model cats are, he’s a lot like a bean bag or turtle with an itty bitty kitty head. There’s quite a bit of extra Tony to Tony so he weighs in at about 16 pounds.

We went through all the standard instructions of how to introduce the new kitty to the household. Peepers seemed to think he was OK as long as he didn’t do anything aggressive and Tony’s not that kind of guy. Binket, though, went ballistic. Even when I put them on either side of an interior doorway with catnip on both sides to associate each other with psychedelic herbal pleasure, Binket did everything she could to kill Tony. She crammed as many paws and claws under the door, hissed and spat, and tried to figure out how to open the door by pounding on it. Tony immediately went on the defensive, which for him meant he tried to compact his generously padded and floppy frame into as tight a ball as possible and whimpered. This adds fuel to the flame for Binket. She knows now that her mission in life is to destroy her enemy. It doesn’t matter that he’s nearly twice her size.

She’ll do anything to slip into the section of the house where Tony is and attack him. Tony wets his pants, screams and cries and is generally dumbfounded at the assassination attempts. Naturally, I try to prevent this scenario, if for nothing else the cleanup needed afterwards.

Recently, though, Binket got a surprise. Tony fought back when she cornered him under a desk. She had grabbed his ear and he, amazingly, chomped down on her foreleg. A lot of screaming and flailing later and Binket retreated long enough for me to separate them, clean them up, comfort them both. Binket’s bite needed tending by the vet after a few days and she came home bandaged with anti-biotics.

Tony is his usual floppy, purring like an Evinrude, delighted to a frenzy over my just-washed hair, snuggly on cold mornings self. His ear has healed and you’d never know he’d been hurt. Binket has changed a bit though. She’s become snuggly instead of cranky. She wants to be a lap cat, now, after 5 years of dancing on the tables and shooting out the lights. She still doesn’t like Tony but she isn’t on the attack so much. Now she just wants to dash in and sleep on the bed. I’m good with that. She doesn’t resist being picked up and carried around and petted like she used to. Maybe this was a good thing.

This has been a 5 of Swords moment in our little family. What looked like a win when Binket exerted her aggressive bullying had always been a loss. But this recent battle lost seems, in the long run, to be a win overall. Binket? Happy? Who knew it was possible?

That win-lose scenario plays itself out in our human interactions all the time too. Sometimes winning the battle is losing the war. And sometimes, just sometimes, losing the battle means getting what you wanted in the first place. I think Binket had to push her limits to allow snugglies in her little cat life. I know people like that.

Best wishes.

Happy Families

2011-11-30T15:20:00.000-08:00

Cousin RoseRed says she’s a bit phobic about the 10 of Cups. This astonishes most of her acquaintances since most people think of the 10 of Cups as that Happily Ever After card. The RWS (Rider-Waite-Smith) shows hale and healthy Mom and Dad arm-in-arm under a rainbow set in a clear sky with ten cups perched on the rainbow. Their two children laugh and play nearby, paying no attention to their parents’ happiness, no news being good news and apparently good news being no news either.

But that’s a little strange, isn’t it? Rainbows are created from rain in the sky with the sun shining on it. The drops act as a prism, like the suncatchers in windows, and split pure light into its separate colors. And yet our 10 of Cups shows a clear day. From this we could not only get the “happily ever after” interpretation but an indication, no matter how subtle or beautiful, that the rain still exists. Is the rain the range of emotions that turn our lives from black and white to techni-color? Is the rain the vehicle for the delivery of nourishment that would be forever stuck in the earth otherwise? But in this picture, the rain is actually stuck in the sky. We are shown the rain, the happy side of the rain, the colors, the hope, the promise. It’s like what I used to call the “OK music” that monster movies play after all the scary stuff is over and vanquished and the movie ends.

Our lives aren’t movies, though. Happily ever after, if you really mean ever after, doesn’t really exist. It’s great for stories and it’s better to tell the kids about a happy ending to a story so they have hope that at least sometimes things turn out all right. But our lives go on after the end of the “movie” or “story” we’re telling. Other things happen, some good, some bad. Ultimately, for all of us, our story is over.

I admit I take some vicarious pleasure at Cousin RoseRed’s horror of the 10 of Cups. I’m sure experiencing the full measure of it is not so much fun, so my immediate apologies, cuz. But it’s the same vicarious pleasure we take in watching scary movies or listening to scary stories. They are titillating and they are, importantly, happening to someone else. Maybe we tell these stories to ourselves to build a sense of emotional distance so that when it counts we can laugh or better yet stand up to what scares us. This is counter to what most of us think we and the rest of the world need. Why should we teach ourselves purposeful insensitivity especially at a time when being kinder all around is the clear need in our world? For survival, for one thing.

After all, who can’t appreciate the irony of having survived a plane crash only to die of a snakebite? Just because one hazard has been overcome, one sorrow has been survived, one evil has been eradicated, nothing says more trouble won’t come later. So that feeling of everything’s just perfect is unsettling to my 10-of-Cups-phobes who are pretty sure there’s another velociraptor waiting around the next kitchen counter. Anticipation isn’t always a pretty sight. But the 10 of Cups tells us that we need to enjoy those moments when everyone in our little community is happy, really feel them, even if the rain never hits the ground to be truly nourishing. That rainbow is still a wonderful thing, if fleeting.

Often the 10 of Cups means that the whole family is happy. I’m not sure I remember specifically a time in my childhood when that occurred but like the two kids playing at their parents’ feet, the absence of a remarkable and memorable bad time resulted in a vague and seemingly endless good time. Its memory is more of a feeling than the stop-action horror film that bad times could be.

I still have to remind myself and others that what makes one community or family happy does not always please everyone else. One could point to US politics for that. In our political scene here, what appears as the 10 of Cups Happy Family to one group of people can be a killing blow, say, a 10 of Swords moment to another and perhaps just an undue burden like the 10 of Wands to another. It feels cheeky to say that Happy Families are relative, but there you have it.

Without drawing on recent events that could bring out the swords or wands or cups or even pentacles as a reaction, I can point to one Happy Family whose rainbow was not everyone’s 10 of Cups.

John and I traveled to southwest Scotland years ago. “Roots tour?” our occasionally helpful good Samaritans eye-rolled to us. We nodded sheepishly. As far as I can tell, Cousin RoseRed and my common family lived in this part of Scotland along the Galloway coast. It looks a lot like the coast of northern California, trees, cows, green, fog, sea. California has this interesting thing called sunshine which happens sometimes along its north coast and a somewhat more interesting thing called earthquakes which, thank goodness, happen even more rarely than sunshine. Galloway has a pre-historic ring of standing stones called the Tor House Ring, a stone circle that would be a terrific calendar if the sky were clear enough to figure out where the sun, moon, planets and stars were. I’m pretty sure they could tell sometimes. Galloway also has, or rather had, Sawney Bean.

In short, Sawney, his wife, and maybe 50 children and grandchildren lived in a cave or caves (you’ll see why the reports aren’t particularly clear) along coastal Galloway and were known terrors of the travelers.

Before I go into more detail, you should know that the word “scot” means “bandit” and getting away “scot free” is something more like that 7 of Swords thing, meaning the bandit mugged you, took all your stuff including your clothes and left you for dead, which you likely were if you lay there overnight because it gets cold in Scotland.

Sawney and family took this concept a step further. In short, they ate people. Invoking Sawney’s name was basically to call upon the boogieman of southwest Scotland and scare children into being careful if not good. But think of things from Sawney’s point of view. A fat traveler in finery traveling alone or perhaps in a small group is overcome by a family of incestuous cannibals. I’m sure Sawney and family were delighted. Roast tonight! Their 10 of Cups was very much the travelers’ 10 of Swords.

Now there are sources that say Sawney was a real person with a real family who lived in real caves, born in the late 1300’s and preying upon travelers in the 1400’s, coincidentally about the time that the Tarot was starting to become popular with the common folk. There are others who maintain that Sawney was a scary story invented in the 1700’s to strike fear in the hearts of outsiders traveling through this often difficult and disputed territory. Most agree, though, that things were desperate enough in Scotland from time to time that cannibalism did occur.

Sawney’s story, in fact, inspired such schlock-horror as the movie “The Hills Have Eyes,” which countless teenagers have screamed and laughed at. Sawney’s story proves at the very least that family happiness is relative. You do need to know whether you’re having dinner or being dinner at least.

Within our lives, families can be horror stories or a place of loving refuge. They can be familiar evils or remote fairy tales. The 10 of Cups can be the ultimate of an emotional cycle, a happy ending, the realization of hopes and dreams for more than just yourself. It can also be the last time we were ever together and happy. Every family has its rain suspended in the sky. It is up to us as family members to concentrate either on the positive or negative face of the family with the understanding that we cannot have rainbows without a little rain.

Best wishes.

***

My heartfelt sorrow and sympathy to the friends and family of slain Vallejo police officer Jim Capoot. He dedicated his life to making ours better. May he rest in peace and may his family take some tiny comfort in knowing that he was loved and will be remembered by the community he served so fully, so selflessly, so freely, so kindly, so well.

Straight Face

2011-11-23T14:34:00.000-08:00

“My little sister ate my homework.”

The worst problem I had when I was student teaching was keeping a straight face. I had defaulted to majoring in English in college and figured I wanted to teach. Junior high, I thought, was a lot like combat duty. You get all the thrill of a fidget in overdrive, raging hormones, defiance, a couchful of insecurities for each person involved, budding senses of humor and a crack of dawning civilization. They can be more adult than most people you know in one minute and sharing variations on the theme of rude noises the next. Combat duty, I thought. I’ll teach the little rascals some English. I had no idea they were going to be so funny.

I did my student teaching in a small town in southern Illinois. The State of Illinois is long enough that the northern part has little in common with the middle part and the middle part is fairly divorced from the southern part. When I lived there in the river bottom land, it was still a pretty good place for people hiding from authorities to hide until the heat was over. It’s woodsy with lakes and extensive limestone structures including caves. It’s more like The South than people think although my trips just across the river to Paducah, Kentucky convinced me that no horse money had made it across the river to southern Illinois. Paducah’s finely manicured lawns were a stark contrast the mining and farming towns at the bottom of Illinois.

Tea Tarot
(c) Copyright 2011 Marcia McCord

I was compulsive about trying to bring new, concrete experiences to young people to widen their horizons anyway. I wanted to give them something they didn’t already have. The urge is a Queen of Pentacles thing in me more than the Hierophant. I never felt I was the keeper of all knowledge spooning it out to acolytes in the small doses they could handle. I wanted to give them the whole wide world, to show them the wonder of this life. Maybe it was subversive in a way, but I wanted them to love this life and their world so that they didn’t have to cling to religion as their only respite but could choose it with joy as a supplement to their beautiful world. I wanted to teach them how to hope and how to make hopes real, that they could with their own choosing make their lives better.

There were a lot of people who went into teaching with ideals like this. I was the tail-end of the hippie generation and bought goodness and peace hook, line and sinker. I had seen what kind of transformation opportunity and positive thinking could bring to people, how fairness, justice and encouragement were fundamental. I still think those things but my own Queen of Pentacles realizes these things move ever so slowly, ever too slowly.

I had tried to show kids interesting stuff all my life including leading biology field studies for the little kids on my block when I first started college. What they learned wasn’t so much about the diversity of nature in the woods of south central Missouri then. They learned that if their gerbils escaped to hide in the sofa, they could call upon me to reach my hand into the foamy depths and risk getting bitten by the indignant little squees, all to save the neighbor kids from punishment when their parents got home. Gerbils have sharp little teeth. Teaching is a learning experience too. We all lived happily ever after that day, but I approached all future gerbil emergencies with caution.

Mrs. N was the regular English teacher at the junior high in the small town in southern Illinois. She was a sturdy, self-assured and practical woman who had hoped to expand little minds into public speaking at some point. She smoked the thinnest possible little cigars, saying she had to get all her smoking done in one preparation period, so a concentrated experience was required. I soon learned that getting the 7th and 8th graders to speak was not the problem; it was getting them to say something repeatable that was the challenge.

I had picked junior high for the challenge, thinking also that I had half a chance of being as tall or taller than the kids. I was right about the challenge, wrong about the height thing. It wasn’t that I needed to tower over them. I just wanted to see the kids in the back of the classroom. Quickly I learned that meant standing all day long and I adjusted my meager wardrobe to include the thickest-soled foam scuffs I could find in as many colors as I could find. They looked stupid, but at the end of the day my feet had not turned into something like pizza, cheesy, hot, bubbly, and seared.

But no one told me they were spit-your-drink-out-your-nose funny.

“Where’s your homework?” The condemned child looked forlorn and shuffled his feet. Apparently there was a story here. He answered.

“Your little sister?” Tears brimmed in my eyes which might have been mistaken for allergies in pollen-rich river bottom land. I did my best to keep the Queen of Pentacles’ calm but fact-based face as I looked at him.

“Can you bring your little sister in tomorrow as evidence?”

My student looked confused. Apparently no one had demanded proof before of the homework-eating toddler. I thought an experiment might be a good idea. After all, if she ate his homework, she might eat something else. The kids could write about it. It could be a lesson in how everyday life provides plenty of fodder for exposition and thoughtful reflection.

“Bring her in tomorrow along with your redone homework, but try to keep the homework away from her this time.”

The child blinked and nodded, still unsure of his ability to produce the human paper recycler. I moved on to the lesson of the day.

Mrs. N was right. Whatever you had during the one-hour of preparation period, you needed enough of it to last you the whole day. Instead of tiny cigars, I usually had to go to the teachers’ lounge and laugh until I cried.

The assistant principal frowned on this. We weren’t supposed to be having this much fun. We were supposed to be terrified of school administration and pass that terror along to the children. He had a line-‘em-up-and-shoot-‘em policy with the students. He was known to select one student teacher a year and pick on them until they broke. He picked me that year. He broadcast my classes live over the speakers in the principal’s office, hoping to get me fired before my student teaching stint was up because I couldn’t line anyone up, let alone shoot them. He didn’t get me fired but I think the office got a good laugh out of it. I know I did.

The last laugh happened later when I graduated, applied for jobs and got a job offer to teach at a small Catholic school 45 miles from my house. The school was in the process of closing but they advertised the job as a “foot in the door” for someone who wanted teaching experience. It was all subjects for kids in 7th and 8th grades with a student population in those grades of fewer than 10. The pay almost but not quite covered the gasoline to drive back and forth to the school.

At the same time I had been offered a position as a legal secretary at an established law office less than a mile from my house at nearly twice the pay. I caved, true to my Queen of Pentacles theme, and went for the bucks. Once again, I had been hired for my grammar, the product not of my college education but of the patient nuns at a Catholic grade school years ago.

And I never looked back, except to laugh. I never met that kid’s little sister.

Best wishes!

Bugs

2011-11-17T12:18:00.000-08:00

That high pitched screech you hear when I hit my high note at the sudden and unexpected encounter with an insect is something I call my “Bug Scream.” I’m a soprano, not the TV mobster kind, just the natural pitch of my vocal range kind. My choral director in Sweet Adelines once told me, “Marcia, only dogs can hear notes that high.” OK, maybe.

Let’s just say that I like to be properly introduced to bugs. I like to work up to a relationship with them and not have bugness thrust upon me, so to speak. Sometimes the dog comes in from a patrol of the back yard and brings in a hitchhiking baby slug. If I see it first, I feel quite calm about getting a tissue to transport junior to the back door (or to the toilet for a good flush if my husband isn’t home). My husband tends to name the snails and slugs that we encounter. I do not. Being surprised by one and getting advance warning are completely different experiences when the slimy-footed types are involved. After all, I love seashells and those are just seagoing slimy-footed types.

No, it’s the solid exo-skeleton bugs that give me the screeches. One thing I’ve noticed about living in northern California is that the bug thing isn’t as much of an annoyance as it is in other places in the US. Of course there are startling exceptions in California, like the potato bug. The first time I ran across one of those was in Copperfield Books in Petaluma. I was browsing through a spinning rack of interesting greeting cards, picked one up and woke my new friend up from its nap. Very shortly after that I woke up everyone within about a block, including the dogs. It’s just the one noise I make but it’s startling and completely involuntary.

Victorian Trade Card Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

I have a typical Knight of Wands reaction to little crawly beasties. Although I have never stood on a chair swinging a baseball bat at a bug while screaming at the top of my lungs, the urge has been there. I don’t mean to be unkind to them. I have this roach phobia from my childhood in Florida and I’m horrified every time I think that they apparently can survive quite a while without their heads [ed., she refrains from drawing any analogies to politicians here] and are likely to survive a nuclear blast. When it comes to bugs, I tend to have a “don’t think, just do” approach.

We’re certainly not bug-free here in California. There are fleas. This year was especially flea-ful since there was just a bit more rain. My vet told me that people were resorting to dosing their critters twice a month instead of the usual once-a-month treatment for the back-of-the-neck flea and tick killer. The dog and cats greet this treatment with the same enthusiasm the Occupy crowds have when told they need to disperse. They of course do not like the fleas any more than I do so we came to a compromise. The agreed not to take my hand off at the ankles when I put the flea stuff on them as long as they can grouse about it and I have to comfort them in their distress but only if and when they want it. Strong prima dona strains run in the cat family here.

The diva thing doesn’t prevent me from trying to teach everyone to hunt and eat bugs so mommy doesn’t stand on a chair and scream. They have so far shown moderate enthusiasm for this activity. What if a cat were too warm to move? Or too comfortable? Or bored? Or well-fed? Or engaged in some debate with one of the other cats? One could not be bothered with something as mundane as a Daddy Long Legs in the bathtub.

And we can’t forget scorpions. Seriously I’ve only seen the one but it was the sports spectacular version at the river house with my friends. But we do have them. There are pillbugs, aphids, ladybugs, moths, butterflies, mosquitoes, stinkbugs and spiders. This was a really big spider year too. They all began making webs early around July; usually September is their season. Usually they are what we used to call “jumping spiders” which helped you judge your distance in observation. The “garden spiders” (these are not technical terms, for you arachnophiles) were the big web-builders this year and there was one hum-dinger out on the patio, about the size of a half-dollar if you include the leg-span. My husband deposited that one in the agapanthus. After all, they eat other bugs so I don’t really want to kill them.

I’m just a little disappointed that there are no fireflies in California. Of all the bugs from my years in the Midwest, fireflies were my favorite. They hover like little votive candles over the ditches and meadows on a humid evening, looking for a date. On a trip back to Missouri, my husband thought he was suffering from fatigue-induced hallucinations. He was relieved when I pointed to the ditches full of ditch lilies in the twilight and laughed, “No, honey, those are BUGS.”

My Big Bad Bug encounter this year was with the yellow jacket on September 11 as I patiently waited for the firemen and police to come for coffee and cakes. I can barely see the scar now, which is surprising since I was pretty sure at the time my finger was going to fall off. The encounter did bring up some creative thinking about a new cartoon super heroine called Yellow Jacket who was completely into must-have fashions and of course ridding the world of meanness, one sting at a time. I figure my super-heroine has a thing for chocolate. Well, it got me buzzing; I could see the fantastic array of yellow jackets she would wear. Why stick to just one super costume?

It doesn’t seem to be such a huge logical leap that much of my professional life has been dedicated to the finding, eradicating and preventing of bugs. Well, that’s in software at least. I used to keep a trilobite fossil next to my keyboard at work. Just the thought of a time when the whole planet was literally crawling with these scuttly critters is enough to give me the heebie-jeebies. As a touchstone, it helped inspire my own “Spidey Sense” to find and fix problems in software intuitively. I’m so grateful that I’m not the only person in technology who does this sort of thing. One of my best friends admitted, although she can remain anonymous here, that she too has spent a career of having people ask her, “How did you know that was the problem?” and having to answer with a shrug. Heck, just had that crawling sensation over here in this section of the system…well, it’s hard to explain. But it brings out the Knight of Wands in me although I do tend to suppress the whole “primal scream with a weapon” when it comes to working on software.

Yet, I’m still grateful for all the critters (ok, I don’t see what possible positive impact a cockroach has but I’ll bet someone will try to tell me) and I encourage bees in my yard with some bee-attracting plants. I’ll buy a box of live ladybugs at the garden center in the spring to set upon the aphids if need be. I must say I’m not looking forward to the annual migration of the tiny ants, which are fair-weather ants at best. When the winter rains come they come indoors and forage for the interesting things in the carbs section of the cabinets. If you hear high-pitched screaming and rhythmic crashing coming from my house on a rainy day, don’t worry. That’s just my inner Knight of Wands expressing itself freely!

Best wishes!

Meaningless Harassment

2011-11-09T12:57:00.000-08:00

Just saw a Facebook post that said that a politician’s actions of sexual harassment were considered “meaningless.” Yeah, that’s probably right. After all, no one actually gets hurt being harassed, right?

Bullies are everywhere and sexual bullies are just another type of bully. No big deal. It’s just the dark side of King of Wands, the abuse of power and energy. Happens all the time, right?

Victorian Trade Card Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

After all, these people don’t really mean anything by it. It’s all in fun, isn’t it?

That’s why parents are getting together with schools to institute anti-bullying programs, because it’s no big deal. So what if your kid gets teased to the point of suicide, right? They should have been tougher stuff, probably. After no one on your side of the family ever had that kind of problem or dealt with it that way. Did they?

Take racial prejudice, for instance. Why, no one had a problem in the old days when everything was OK and people knew their place. Musicals like South Pacific contained songs like “You Have to be Carefully Taught” because those show business people aren’t like regular folks anyway. They’re too sensitive, for one thing. And a lot of them, well, nice people just don’t talk about that of course. It’s just too bad if parents didn’t like who was coming for dinner or didn’t want to call him Mr. Tibbs instead of “boy.” That’s their choice, right? A person is entitled to their opinions and it’s nearly obligatory to share those opinions because where would this country be without the freedom to hate anyone you choose?

And what if your kid is some kind of freak, right? Like they have something really goofy going on, like maybe a life-threatening disease or a life-altering accident or maybe they were just born that way? Maybe it’s a birthmark or the kid flinched and they could tell he was afraid. Maybe she wasn’t as pretty as she should have been at 13 or 14 by all our Western standards. Maybe she liked science or math and not girl-subjects. What if he wanted to dance?

Isn’t it a person’s right to point out the truth that your kid is, well, you know, different, like a puddle of oil that a person should walk around so they don’t stain their shoes? So what’s the fuss all about in schools with the bullying anyway? Let those kids buck up and take the real world for a switch instead of being coddled and told they are loved and told they can actually do something because everyone just knows they can’t. OK, so Stephen Hawking is maybe an exception or probably a fraud, you know? But that’s not like the usual brand of goofy.

I mean if a kid switches his letters around, he might just not be worth a person’s time. Or why on earth spend the money on an adult literacy program to teach people who don’t already read or speak English very well or, heaven forbid, have some kind of developmental disability? Just because Sue’s daughter is now reading to little kids when people thought she and her fellow clients at the ARC would never learn to read at all, I mean, is that any reason to invest any money in folks with problems? Of course, if they had jobs and paid taxes, that would be different. Oh, hey, right, OK, some of them do. Come to think of it, they are all consumers of some kind, if nothing else clothing and electricity and water and other stuff. That’s the stuff that gets taxed. So, yeah, they pay taxes, I guess. Somebody buys gasoline to cart them around. Now, that’s a lot of taxes, right? Hoo boy!

But, seriously, sexual harassment? I mean that’s just flirtation where she changes her mind, isn’t it? Aren’t they all like that? Then they turn on you. Doesn’t a girl know how to get places anymore? They pretend they are shocked or something when they know the score.

Take me for instance. Well, don’t, actually. But I could be an example, let’s say. So in my youth, I was a vibrant young lass. Sure, I got offers. I turned them down. After all, why sit on the Operations Manager’s lap for a cuddle when all he was offering was the chance to be his secretary. I mean, that’s a lateral transfer, for goodness’ sake. Or one of the Engineering Managers who sat on my desk and wouldn’t go away, even when I told him if he were the last man on earth and I were the last woman, I’d give myself to God: Just because he interrupted my work, the work I needed to do to pay my rent to live and just because the Operations Manager was ticked that I didn’t take him up on his offer, was that any reason to feel like the Boys’ Club was going to vote me out of the treehouse if I didn’t play along? I was such a risk-taker. I said no.

Or how about the attorney who was about twice my size who kept blocking my way in the hallway, trying to cop a feel? Meaningless, right? I mean I could always go to my boss and, well, wait. He was one of my bosses. It was all in good fun so why wasn’t I having fun like I was supposed to? I did make something of a game of it. I worked to find out what scared that guy the most. It turned out that he didn’t fear bruising of tender parts, the loss of his reputation, the possibility of disbarment or sanction, the disapproval of his senior partner, or even the wrath and heartache of his wife. I was pretty stunned that none of these things seemed to faze him, considering he was an up-and-coming young attorney with a reputation for putting deals together and being sharp. Nope, but I did find out what he was afraid of: his mother. She came into the law offices at least once a week just to see her baby. Something about what she knew about her baby made him think twice about having (more?) reports of sexual harassment by this successful, young, intelligent husband and father with a comfortable career and a thing for investing in larger carat diamonds. It was meaningless, right? I mean, what possible importance could I have in the scheme of his career? Oh, and never mind about what it would do to mine. After all, I was just a secretary then, nobody. I’m pretty much still nobody, so what’s the harm?

After all, it’s not like these guys were like the stalker the police picked up in the public library one afternoon after the librarians noticed he was following me as I went from ancient history, to antique glass, to metaphysics, to Agatha Christie in rapt attention to the books on the shelf, paying none to the sex offender in the green Army Surplus jacket. That guy just wanted to get to know me. That’s what he told the police. He only had a knife after all and the police escorted him away from the library. I mean, sexual harassment and bullying isn’t like that, is it? It isn’t the strong preying on the weak without empathy or regard for the other person, without understanding that the object of their attention is actually a person, like them. Is it?

It’s not like my own father who, when informed that one of his grandsons was gay, announced that the grandson was not welcome in his house and that there’s never been anything like that on his side of the family.

Not even when I replied, “Daddy, what makes you think they would have told you?”

Nope, nothing like that. It’s pretty much meaningless.

**Please note that if anyone somehow mistakes my point of view for one of trivializing bullying, sexual harassment, political dissembling, stalking or hate crimes, please re-read for content and understanding. There will be a test. It's called Life.

Best wishes.

***

Just had to share this TV Broadcast on PZTV where I was the guest speaker! That cat pin on my jacket was created by the lovely and talented Sharon Bloom, so check out her site if you love whimsy and need to buy a fabulous gift...even if it's for yourself!

Fool’s Jamba Juice

2011-11-02T12:41:00.000-07:00

What a huge weekend! I was so glad to be able to take Friday and Monday off my regular work. I didn’t realize how much I would need it.

The Tarot Collectors Forum 2011 Collaborative Tarot decks arrived from the printers mid-week last week. Andrew and I made plans to set up our little shipping and handling factory at my dining room table for Friday. A lot of people have paid but a few people haven’t so we wanted to make sure we had the list and addresses correct.

Apparently mail from the USA to New Zealand gets pounded to a pulp and my New Zealander asked for extra wrapping. We can do that! I’m always amazed at mail delivery anyway. That may be why I based two of my own decks on postcards. Can you imagine it actually got there? I have one of my 1903 picture postcards on my desk right now, my favorite Argentine gypsy card which is the cover card of my Picture Postcard Tarot. Her tinted scarf and heavy silver earring and beautiful profile tell more of a story than her August 26, 1903 postmarks in Buenos Aires. Someone thought of someone that day and reached out.

And one person no longer lives in France so we made sure we had the right address and the right country. We packaged, we boxed, we taped, we addressed, we filled out little-box customs forms, and we piled them into the colorful African woven market baskets I bought as my Ft. Bragg souvenirs. We did all this until well after the Post Office closed.

But I had a deadline to stop that Friday night, too, because I was scheduled to read tarot at a Halloween party here in town. The Halloween House was not too far from own house on a street I had never driven down before. It was a steep hill and I, dressed in my long black lace dress with my frog-handled cane, stepped carefully out of my car in the darkening nightfall. I made it to the house with my tote full of cards and walked up the luminaria-lined drive. Robin had gone all out with turning her front and back yards into a Halloween Haunted House, a benefit for Bay Respite Care this year. She’s been doing this for years to bring Halloween to her daughter who has a fatal form of multiple sclerosis.

By the time I was barely settled in the gazebo with the comfy wicker couch and chairs, shabby chic décor, incense and candle light, I had readings booked to last nearly to midnight. I met wonderful people, drank a gallon of water and read tarot in the flickering candles. It was a perfect evening and I was glad to be able to be part of it.

Saturday was busy too. The Berkeley All-Blues women’s rugby team hosted two rugby matches out at our rugby pitch. John wanted me to bring my tarot cards there to read too and had set up my favorite Italian-style tile-topped table and my two good folding chairs under the trees. Wine tasting! Now there’s a benefit of Northern California! A winery had hoped to ply us with their whites, reds and a lovely muscat. The white was buttery, the Zinfandel robust and I cut it off at two tastes. I don’t like drunk tarot reading any more than I approve of drunk driving. I had just one “customer” for my complementary readings, a career-path discussion that showed promise. There were happy dogs and happy rugby players, but I had to go at 4:30 pm if I were going to do everything we had planned for the evening.

Each year the last weekend of October, our local Catholic high school holds a Trivia Night. My friend Nancy asks us to come because John and I tend to know a strange and diverse bunch of factoids. Along with our trivial minds, we were also to bring goodies to share and wear costumes. This year, the theme was Hawaii.

I’ve never been there. I know muumuus, leis, Hawaiian print shirts, flip-flops (as opposed to thongs and You Thong People Know Who You Are), grass skirts and flowers at your ear. I figured that this is what everyone else knew about Hawaii too. As I drove to the grocery store to get the pineapple pieces and Hawaiian Kettle Style Potato Chips and anything else I could think of as island food, a picture began to form in my mind. Boy, was John going to be surprised when he saw my costume!

The Fool is usually placed with the Major Arcana but his number is 0, Zero, Null, blank. In the same way that the ancient tarot decks portrayed the Fool as the scary, crazy homeless guy, the picture of the way the unfortunate were treated in the 1400’s in Italy and everywhere else, the Fool is outside of the Tarot “society” and therefore can roam freely if randomly through it. Our more modern portrayal of the Fool is more like a court jester, the cartoon-Kokopelli amusing the court, speaking the truth without penalty, appearing foolish. He is the beginning of the journey, incompletely prepared, without a plan or support structure, save the dog (or weasel or cat-like creature nipping at his heels or a bit higher to tear his breeches). He does not understand consequence and is usually depicted as having benign intent. He is often shown about to step off a cliff and in the Tarot, in spite of his foolish leap before looking, he is protected by the forces of the Universe who are probably amused and nod knowingly as he progresses through wisdom.

Picture Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

Ah, I thought. In Hawaii, the Fool would be the Tourist, the idiot who came prepared to live a Hawaiian lifetime in a week, despite the impossibility of that. And so my costume emerged: I faked a wet-suit from black tights and t-shirts, wrapped a beach towel picturing a surfer around my middle, put on pearl and seashell jewelry, donned swim-fin flippers and diving mask and I was almost ready. All I needed was Tourist Sunburn. Familiar with decades of my own sunburn and instead of that luscious tropical tan, I faked the Coppertone near-death blistering burn so familiar. Yeow! I grabbed my dip-net, a sand bucket, a bag of seashells and I was ready. All I had to do was walk downstairs in flippers. Right.

I made it in one piece and John was properly stunned. Nancy’s mom Geraldine laughed out loud. I bent and folded myself into the back seat and we were off to Trivia Night. Sadly, we did not win the trivia prize this year; we flubbed the music section but John got some amazing answers in especially the basketball question. During one of the breaks between rounds, I noticed a tall good-looking guy from the next table staring at me in, at the very least, disbelief. I had to acknowledge his unvoiced thoughts. I pointed to my husband.

“Just think how he feels!”

My “fan” laughed out loud. And I won the prize for the women’s costume contest! It’s a gift card at Jamba Juice. Something in pineapple, perhaps?

Sunday was a little more restful although I had evening tarot readings in the back yard. Monday was the main event, though. This year I had help from my friend Andrew and his friend Patrick. Patrick and John put up the tent in the driveway while Andrew and I grabbed some dinner for everyone. The boys set up speakers with a Spooktacular playlist and featured a Deal or No Deal game where the prizes were, alas, not millions of dollars but extra candy for the kids. The Eye of Zohar and my Friendly Ghost papier mache props had survived their year of storage in the garage. The evening was perfect in its weather. I readied my brass cauldron of candies and shuffled my Tarot decks. I warmed up by offering free one-card readings on Facebook. Then, we were invaded! Spidermen, princesses, Minnie Mice, a Baby Bunny Wabbit, Iron Men, teens professing to be nerds, all wanted candy. Their parents came too, some for tarot readings.

“Uh, yer gonna wanna get that looked at by a professional,” I recommended to one dad with fake blood streaming down his chest from a “wound” in his Zombie neck. He laughed aloud. Even Father Steve came by for the entertainment and stayed to talk about travel long after we ran out of candy. It had been a long four days in the weekend, long but fun. We’ll do this again next year.

I Can Haz Jamba Juice!

Best wishes!

Bioluminescence

2011-10-26T15:47:00.000-07:00

The whales said to say hello! My friends and I saw them on their travels south past the California coast this weekend. Puff! Puff! Puff! Sound. When whales go by, they seem purposeful and thereby happier. It may be my imagining but I like the thought. They are in charge of their journey. I waved to the travelers out in the Pacific, beyond the roll line, beyond the rocks and almost to the horizon. Puff! Nothing else looks like that.

This past weekend my friends and I traveled to Ft. Bragg, California to a house Kaye had found and Ronda had rented for us. Kaye and I carpooled and met B. G. to take her SUV for the last leg of the trip. We agreed to listen to Team of Rivals after hearing B. G.’s review about Mary Todd Lincoln’s mental state of being either “in the basement” or “in the attic.” It sounded familiar. We all understood the idea of burning our candle at both ends, the Ace of Wands of new inspirations which can sometimes seem like the match that set the barn on fire.

Tea Tarot
(c) Copyright 2011 Marcia McCord

After all, that’s why we have these “Goddess Weekends,” because we all need respite from the “barn on fire” thing that is modern life. We talked and never listened to the book on tape, interrupting Mary’s basement and attic for more recent history as the miles rolled by. It was still light when we arrived at the luxury house on the rocky cliffs on the south side of the California coastal town of Ft. Bragg.

Ft. Bragg has long been one of my favorite easy getaways. My husband and I have often gone there even when the weather was raw and loved it. But our Goddess Weekend met its promise for glorious October sunshine. The house! There were slate floors throughout, skylights and a wall of windows making the most of the ocean view. We had a hot tub, a fireplace and beach access. We were prepared: Little did Julie know that we had plotted celebration for her. And Kaye brought her telescope. We were rewarded with a moonless night and plenty of stars.

Telescopes sure have changed. Kaye’s new baby is a lot like a lightweight red tuba on a football tee. I pointed it at the bright thing in the southeastern skies.

“Look! You can see planets,” we were properly amazed. “Think we can stay up late enough to see the meteor shower?” The Orionids were due to light up the sky. What could be better? The Milky Way ablaze over rocky ocean cliffs and waves below, plus a light show!

It’s our 19th year of getting together. Essentially we all know each other through Ronda. I happen to be the “newbie” since I met Ronda only in 1990. I was there for the initial weekend. It was the weekend Polly Klaas was taken from her bedroom window in nearby Petaluma, an unthinkable crime against innocence. Ever since then, our weekends together, now twice a year, have been dedicated to Polly. It is our candle in the darkness.

But the course of true relaxation never runs smooth and this year, to my barely suppressed annoyance, I was the Drama Queen. True, not everything that happened was about me. I can be grateful for that. Ronda’s dog Sofie expressed her upset tummy in a sudden way that was quickly cleaned up. Sofie’s a very gentle soul and we would never want her to feel like she was a bad doggie for a bit of personal business. We had sandwiches for dinner, told our stories and huddled around the fireplace while we listened to the ocean’s roar. We retired in comfort to our separate bunks, but then Ronda and I sneaked out to see if we could catch a meteor. In the quiet of the night and in our bare feet and pajamas we were rewarded with a single streaking blaze from Orion’s belt parallel with his sword. Satisfied with tagging our meteor, we retreated to slumber but not before I took a last longing look at the starlit beach and rolling waves which, with each roll glowed with churned bioluminescence. The response of nature to nature is to glow.

“Marcia, I heard you last night.” This is a recurring theme. As if I can control my snoring when I’m asleep! I had offered everyone hot pink foam earplugs the night before. Everyone had giggled but left their earplugs behind. Hey, both my parents were champion snorers. And I snored when I was a size 2 for those of you who think fluffy people snore more. It’s the slack jaw and sloppy soft palate, folks. Think of it as the musical accompaniment to the night.

B. G. made a de-lish couple of breakfast quiches with fruit and we were ready to start the day. Almost. I realized as I had gone to take my morning prescriptions that my blood pressure medicine was not in my bag. That rattle when Kaye had hit the brakes for a surprise stop must have sent them flying under the seat of her car, the car that we left in Ronda’s driveway when we consolidated to carpool. Now I had to figure out how to get a couple of tide-me-overs for the weekend. Fortunately, both my insurance and the local CVS pharmacy were willing, although it took hours to pull it off. And we got a chance to sneak a little shopping into mix. I snagged a couple of African market baskets (to put tarot cards in, of course) and some beads that looked like beach glass for a project I have in mind. It was a modest splurge as they go.

On the way back, we practiced our special song for Julie’s celebration while Julie rode with Ronda and Sofie. We continued in the acoustics of the vaulted ceilings in the living room of our luxury beach house, perfecting our harmonies, tweaking our arrangement while the guest of honor was delayed at Harvest Market. Julie was in charge of dinner and served us an Italian meatball soup worth writing home about. (Read: John, this is what your “snot soup” wants to be when it grows up, seriously.)

We held our celebration for Julie’s croning without setting ourselves and the house on fire, reading our poems and singing our songs. Julie is wise and drop-dead gorgeous, with an enormous heart in that well-tended body. She is a Big Sister to a little girl whose life seems to be turning a corner. She is a woman who Makes a Difference. We think that’s what Polly might have wanted.

I read tarot for everyone and we discussed the serious topics the cards nudged us into, life, love, work, health, home, future. Half the ladies landed in the hot tub for a midnight soak in the cool night air. I changed into my jammies and wandered out to say good night and salute the Milky Way once more. And then I discovered I had locked myself out of my bedroom, the bedroom for which there was no key, the bedroom where my glasses, my prescriptions, my book, my clothes, my tarot cards, fer goodness’ sake, were safe from every creature save a bug that could clear the doorsweep. Tired, we looked for a key, useless as it was. We attempted picking the lock and even Googled lockpicking, hairpin in hand. No luck. I gave up and called the housekeeper who promised to come the next day at 8 am. I sank into the couch with more waves against the sand, more reports of snoring the next morning.

Does trouble have to come in threes? Or fours? Or all at once? We realized we wanted to tidy up for the housekeeper’s arrival and there they were. The pumpkins Julie had selected and hollowed out for us to carve as jack-o’-lanterns had collapsed in an ooze of mold from the heat of the fireplace. The remains dispatched to the yard waste bin, I broke the news to Julie.

“The pumpkins died.”

“Died?”

“Died. Really dead. Ooshy-squishy dead. Runny puddles dead. They are pumpkin roadkill.”

Housekeeper Alma, good soul, arrived, unlocked and I was rescued again. Kaye and I made breakfast, bacon and French toast, something none of us would ever eat ordinarily. We cleaned obsessively and all at once it ended.

We’re thinking Hawaii in 2013. It seems like a good place to visit after the end of the world, Mayan time. We’ll light another candle for Polly. And for all of us.

Best wishes.

Mouse on the Moon

2011-10-19T12:04:00.000-07:00

“Can my friends and I eat our lunch in your yard?” Andrew asked. He had been helping them move and they were looking for a quiet spot. I was still in the midst of my workday and was happy to give them shelter.

“OK, but tell them nobody gets to smoke anything in my yard or my house, got it?” Hey, you guys put two and two together and come up with five, ok? Asthma plus liability equals house rules. “And don’t let the cat out. You know how she is.” Alice has been going on adventures lately. We talked her out of the street this weekend. Apparently she didn’t get the word that she’s a housecat. When you’re an 18.5 lb cat, you figure you have superpowers and your name is Adventure Kitty or something. I think she’s downstairs making her Halloween costume right now.

“Oh, and my friends are bringing their mouse.”

Aw, how cute, I thought. Maybe I can meet the mouse before the cats do. If it has eyes, a wiggly nose and a reasonable disposition, I probably like it. I’ve been a “Squee” person since I was a baby, before anyone realized I Can Has Cheezburger. Work was pretty intense that day so it seemed late when I walked downstairs for a break.

My guests were still resting at the table on the patio playing a game I didn’t recognize, something with large numbers lined up, something that didn’t appear to involve gambling, hard feelings or anything other than idle recreation. There on my paint-flaked bench was a cage. We introduced ourselves.

“Her name is Velvet,” my new friends indicated toward the cage. Velvet clambered up the cage side and sniffed at me hopefully.

“Velvet is a rat, Andrew, not a mouse.” I tickled her nose. She is a lovely rat too, rats being loveliest when they are tame and in their cages. I've encountered the wilder kind too.

I had had a pet rat as a child, uncreatively named Rat-a-Tat for machine gun fire, representing my brother’s love of guns and warfare. Rat-a-Tat was a fashionable black and white, front half black, back half white. Velvet is all dark with pink nose and toes. She’s a dainty thing with a taste for fashion as it turns out.

“Don’t sit close to the cage because she will chew your clothes,” her loving owners cautioned. Having had a few rodent-chewed textiles, notably one really nice afghan that John’s sister crocheted, I wasn’t surprised. I sat on the bench with a prudent space between myself and Velvet’s nibble range.

“Velvet want a leaf?” I offered a crunchy magnolia leaf to Miss Nibbles who happily took it to her ratnest and crunched with vigor. We talked for a few minutes. Velvet came back for further possibilities, obviously comfortable with human companionship. Alice pawed at the glass door from inside the house. I bent to pull a sprig of grass and gave it to Velvet. She was happy with the gift and snacked away. We talked a while, then break time was over for me and I had to get back to my own personal hamster wheel. “Money makes the world go ‘round…” played in my head.

Tea Tarot
(c) Copyright 2011 Marcia McCord

It was a small gesture, to play hostess to a well-mannered rat and her friends. It provided a moment of stability at a crazy time. Amparo, meaning shelter, comes to mind. It was the name of a waitress friend of mine in Southern California, her good service being a small refuge from the workaday world. I was able to provide the 4 of Wands hospitality in some small way, if only a little shade from the sun, a fence to shield from the wind, a quiet spot to sit and relax without interruption.

Echoing the rodent theme, a news story popped up into my consciousness that there’s an unusual population explosion of non-native mice out at the Farallones. A two-and-a-half hour boat trip from San Francisco, this bit of rocky outcropping is for the birds—literally—and in the 1800’s was the target of egg snatchers trying to feed the hungry mob that was the booming of the Northern California coast. John and I took a fall whale-watching tour there one fabulous afternoon and saw the birds: storm-petrels, puffins and murres. How the mice got there, I have to wonder. I like to imagine they drive their tiny boats in the night past the border patrol but I have a feeling that they hitched a ride one way or another. This year’s population of mousies on the Farallones has exploded to something like 50 times the standard rate for an official rating of “a lot of mice.” Where there are mice, there are owls and a few owls have whooshed out to what must be like owl heaven. Of course, owls like to eat pretty much anything that’s the right size and flavor, so when the mice population drops, the owls stay for the endangered other birds, like storm-petrels. Owl heaven turns into Paradise Lost because mouse is apparently the perfect food and storm-petrels, well, aren’t. So, the owls, thinking they must still be onto a good thing, stay too long and they start starving. People blame the mice.

So now they are trying to figure out how to get rid of the mice without getting rid of everything else. Why would we spend money on this? Because little stuff turns into big stuff, important stuff, stuff that affects humans and their way of life and at that point the people who don’t care about mice and birds and some rocks out in the Pacific will start to notice and wonder why someone didn’t DO something.

Fav Squee Mouse Photo

In order to understand things more easily, we separate them in our minds and analyze them a piece at a time. But we constantly forget that we are all part of one gi-normous system called probably inappropriately with the latest findings and theories of astrophysicians The Universe, not separate little universes. We’re like bad children, all of us, taking apart the alarm clock to see how it works then leaving it there on the bed for the cat to bat parts under the dresser, never putting it back together again so it will function. Then someone doesn’t wake up in time for something important and everyone’s in trouble, especially the cat. What do we do about this cat problem, we wonder?

It’s pretty clear to everyone lately that the mice rebel every once in a while, too. The current Occupy movement, which has put together a diverse set of characters no doubt, is working to show that Big Predators may be able to ignore one squeaker here and there but in chorus, the mice put up a pretty big racket. Listen closely. They might actually be saying something.

Tiring of the role of mice-as-pests which feed relentlessly on the hard-earned stores of grain, the Other Percenters are putting a human face on economic issues. It’s hard for me to think of my life and existence as being a drain on the harried wealthy. After all, I’ve done what they told me I had to do, pulled myself up by my bootstraps, succeeded despite the fatal flaws of being female and nowhere near Ivy League material. I took advantage of the opportunities for education around me, opportunities which for the most part don’t exist now due to the relative cost of education. I used my dull-razor brain with no advice from any mentor or sponsor and figured out how to educate, then re-educate myself so that I was employable at a level that allowed me to purchase a house on my own salary, in spite of the misgivings of the misogynist bankers in that town long ago and far away.

“Just because you made all A’s in all your classes,” the banker explained to me patiently while reviewing my loan request, “what makes you think you’ll be successful in your work?” Wow, maybe because bone-headed guys like you make me so mad I could spit and I have a happy talent for turning that anger into something productive for myself and others. The jerk finally accepted my loan application after calling my father and securing Daddy’s unwritten promise to help me out if I slipped on my payments.

Mouse hater, I say. The guy hates mice and yet insists that they stay mice. Pretty soon, like the Farallones, will the entire infrastructure be threatened? Will they say, what do we do about the mouse problem? Have they leaned too close to the cage so that we’ve nibbled on the cashmere sweater? Will even the wise old owls be threatened, those who fly silently whose perfect food is mouse?

This is no new story. I thought of Frank Herbert’s Dune and his hero Paul Atreides a/k/a Muad’Dib, the Mouse on the Moon. We are just as prone now as ever to need “…Frank Herbert's warning about society's tendencies to ‘give over every decision-making capacity’ to a charismatic leader. He said in 1979, ‘The bottom line of the Dune trilogy is: beware of heroes. Much better rely on your own judgment, and your own mistakes.’” And what fun! Here’s an Occupy poster, typo included, with that very allusion circulating on Facebook today.

The Occupy’s detractors say the message is diffused so it is bound to fail. Today’s mice read though. Will a hero arise among us? Or are we truly stronger being the diverse individuals we are with the illusion of separateness always before us. After all, if we can send a mouse to the moon, why not Wall Street? And will they blame the mice again?

Best wishes.

***

Quote from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Atreides

Thanks, Steve

2011-10-12T17:39:00.000-07:00

As I sit here during Day 2 of a long software implementation, I remember that I have Steve Jobs to thank for this. A long time ago when I still wore short dresses and high heels, my first job out of college was as a legal secretary. Four years of college to become an English teacher and the job I landed paying 50% more than the nearest teaching job was one that required my high school typing class and my solid Catholic grade school grammar. But the senior partner was a quirky guy named Troy who was trying to get an Apple computer to drive an IBM typewriter. This could be fun.

He and one of his clients had this contraption set up in the little law library at the back of the offices. Troy’s wife Jeannie refused to have anything to do with it, seeing only money being flushed away on expensive gadgets with no new money floating in. Office managers have to think that way. And Troy’s favorite legal secretary Sue likewise declined the opportunity to dip a toe into what felt at the time like science fiction. I was the new kid and basically it was my job to do what Jeannie and Sue didn’t want to do. But it paid so much better than the teaching job I had worked so hard to qualify for.

Even before I went back to college to get a second bachelor’s degree in computer science, I was pretty sure that Apples and IBM’s had just enough of a different philosophy to make this marriage a rocky one. The three of us however tinkered away like mad scientists, interrupted from time to time by real legal work and Jeannie’s increased annoyance at kids playing with toys.

Needless to say, Troy, his friend and I did not become famous for the invention. It worked, in a way, but really was better at proving a concept than being a practical solution. It did serve, however, to pave the way for my later career as a programmer, then database analyst, then the long dark years in technology management and finally emerging as an analyst in my present job. It gave me the “tab A, slot B” background for understanding the inner mysteries of Computer Magic and it also gave me the confidence to know that the machine is only as smart as you tell it to be. As a programmer and DBA I later gained an appreciation for Divine Intervention in the world of computers, but for the most part there was comfort in the binary “it’s either on or it’s off” simplicity of the computational life.

Naturally, it’s not that simple any more. The more stuff you plug into the chain of things between your question and the answer you’re looking for on a computer, the more complex that simplicity has become. I laugh just as hard as you do (or not) at the promise we made to unsuspecting non-techies that computers were going to make our lives easier. I laugh every time one of the cats walks across my husband’s laptop and hits the little setting that disconnects him from the network. I laugh when he roars and whines that his computer is broken. I laugh when I walk into his office and reach forward with one finger, like a magic wand, to press the one little button that solves his problem while he glares at me in disgust and disbelief. Magicians aren’t always appreciated, Mr. Jobs. I’ll bet you learned that too. Maybe we shouldn’t laugh when we do these things. But sometimes it’s funny.

Tea Tarot
(c) Copyright 2011 Marcia McCord

“See that little blue light-y thingee?” I ask in my best Goon-techno-speak. He’s a people person, not a computer person. “You’re gonna wanna make sure that stays blue and if it doesn’t, just touch it with your finger.” This bit of wizardry repeats itself because it is repeatedly lost. I find he doesn’t hear as well when he’s at his wits’ end. I’m pretty sure I have the same trait so I don’t actually mind.

Of course, I’m really only on the fringe of being a real geek. Oh, once, a long time ago in an Illinois far, far away, I lived in the belly of the beast. I worked for a major Midwest insurance company who at the time loved its technical people. You got a rose on your birthday. You could pick your Christmas present from the company out of a catalog. The company had a private park with tennis courts, a small lake, volleyball courts, picnic areas and golf course. I traveled to exotic places like Hartford, Connecticut and Chicago for more intense IBM training, only to learn, like much of life, that if you clean up after yourself once in a while and vacuum out the dust-bunnies, your household and your computer both seem to run more smoothly. In turn for these marvelous perks, I pulled so many all-nighters recovering databases that the IBM guys thought I might have the most experience of anyone they knew performing that little task. They quickly figured out how to automate it with tools and so my dubious glory was short-lived. I think my record was 43 full forward recoveries on the Big Iron. By then I was a long way from Steve Jobs’ idea of computing accessibility to mere mortals.

And then there was the dirty little secret. While I loved computer fire-fighting and had branched out into what I thought of as “preventative design” to keep others’ really good ideas from going horribly wrong with one little oops, I became bored. Bored! How could I be so ungrateful? The career that more than doubled my salary a couple of times became routine. I could recover mainframe databases in my sleep. Well, I kind of had to because most of the time it was over night so that the business day wasn’t interrupted.

I realized that I could concentrate on customer service, which I loved, or “chase” technology and continue to keep up with whatever the latest sexy trend in languages and hardware and database design caught the fancy of the gizmo guys. I loved all that relational vs. hierarchical debate and how far to go with normalizing data. But I wanted it to work, you know? I wanted it to be useful, to make people’s lives better. It wasn’t just a toy to fiddle with in the law library.

So I gave up trying to be the latest in techno-fashion and concentrated on the folly of trying to make customers happy. Ever after I have spent a lifetime of being misunderstood by my bosses, slugged by the “patients” while packing them into the ambulance and attempting to translate technical terms into something that makes sense to people who have better things to do than try to understand what a dad-blasted machine is thinking.

Here’s just a little tip for people hoping to make a career out of technology and customer service: Please, whatever you do, limit your expectations of gratitude from those you are saving. The Magician is so often considered a trickster, a liar, a showman, and a thief by his admirers. Somehow, it never occurs to many people who are your loving customer base that if you have an ability you might choose to use it for good even if you had the opportunity to do otherwise. You may spend a lifetime being needed but never trusted fully. You must remember that a Magician is no one without his audience and you need them as much as they need you. That’s the good news and the bad news.

For that, I’m happy we had a Jobs. RIP, Steve.

Best wishes.

What Are You Reading?

2011-10-05T11:42:00.000-07:00

Of course, I’m reading Tarot! I get asked what deck I am reading with or what books I would recommend and I thought, although my blog is not book-and-deck review themed, I’d share a few things that have come across my desk.

Derek who cleans my house says that things that come across my desk must have Velcro on them somewhere. He teases me about burning my decks and books, selling it all and starting over and other things that seem unconscionable to me. Sometimes Derek wins our little debates, but not this one. That doesn’t stop him from trying.

When I’m on Twitter (@MarciaMcCord), I do a daily tarot card draw I call Card du Jour. Usually, I use my little Pocket Universal Waite Tarot deck for that draw. I like it for clarity but I also like it for size. If you saw my desk you’d know that size matters and generally the smaller the better. There’s a lot to compete with. The Pocket UW is as “RWS clone” as they get with Pamela Colman Smith’s line images recolored in soft shades by Mary Hanson-Roberts published by U.S. Games and easily available.

When I do a reading for a client, I use a variety of decks. I don’t like to use the same one all the time because I don’t want to become so accustomed to the images that I fall into the same patterns. I like my own decks to read with and have been reading with my Art Postcard Tarot lately. I also love some other decks to read with, especially Kat Black’s Touchstone Tarot. This collage deck is taken from portraits of real Renaissance people like Mary Tudor, Jane Seymour, Christina of Denmark, Erasmus, the vivacious Marchesa Brigida Spinola-Doria, playwright and spy Kit Marlowe, and the dashing Jude Law look-alike William of Orange. These are real people whose real expressions blaze through paper and ink. I think this deck is excellent for relationship readings. Beyond that, the booklet describing each card and where the images originate is a riveting read in itself.

With all the denying that I’m a birder that I’ve done here, it’s no surprise that I recently picked up a Tarot deck called The Secret Language of Birds. It’s a large deck with a large box and a Druid theme (Order of Bards, Orates and Druids). Birds and their behaviors either individually or in flocks were considered omens in ancient times and even into the modern day. Consider the children’s rhyme Counting Crows:

Counting Rhyme (from The Folklore of Birds, by Laura C. Martin, 1993)

One for sorrow, two for mirth,

Three for a wedding, four for a birth,

Five for silver, six for gold,

Seven for a secret not to be told.

Eight for heaven, nine for hell,

And ten for the devil's own sel'.

As with the Touchstone, the booklet for Birds has a wealth of lore and reference, such as the introduction’s quote from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:

“How do you know

but every bird

that cuts the airy way

is an immense world of delight

closed to your senses five?”

Speaking of William Blake, I picked up a heavily discounted copy of The Portable Blake at one of my favorite haunts, Pegasus Books on Solano Avenue in Berkeley. I like Blake, always have. He was one “out there”guy. I like so many of the images he wrote and painted, like “I was in a Printing house in Hell…” and “’we impose on one another, & it is but lost time to converse with you whose works are only Analytics’” and “I see Past, Present & Future existing all at once / Before me….” Ah, Bill, what big eyes you had.

I’ve just started to dive into Marcus Katz' Tarosophy: Tarot to Engage Life, Not Escape It. One of my Tarot buddies said this was, at last, the tarot book they had been looking for. Marcus covers the practical (Difficult Clients and Querents) and the esoteric. A note for Ugly Americans: Do try to get past the fact that Marcus is after all from England and uses the word “whilst” and other noises foreign to our U.S. nano-adapted ears. If you want to read Twitter-ese, go to Twitter and LOL to your hearts’ content.

And whilst I’m in England, I’m having a delicious dive into The Book of English Magic. Arguably the best wizardry has its roots in England, even if transplanted from Norse, Saxons and Romans. Merlin, runes, holy wells, dowsing, henges and barrows, cups and spears, herbal recipes for the cure of elf afflictions, The Golden Dawn, Tolkien’s Middle Earth, T. H. White’s “remastering” of the Arthurian tales, plus short essays from experts in special topics fill this thick grey book that feels like a fairytale collection, especially if you can’t quite trust the fairies to do what you think is the nice thing. And I’ve only just started this book! This treat is on my bedside table like a box of chocolate mint candies. It's worth a read and a re-read.

My friend Beth Seilonen’s Tarot Leaves are starting to show up in the mailboxes of the ardent pre-orderers. That includes me! I have two copies of the deck now, one to use and one to keep. I have many but not all of Beth’s hand-crafted decks also including one original art set of majors she made just for me with owls. I use them in readings for clients only occasionally, only because these babies are little works of art. It’s not enough to say that Beth self-publishes. They really are hand-crafted. Tarot Leaves is her first commercially published deck and I love what Schiffer has done with it. The box and presentation enhance the deck without overpowering the images of leaves and images within leaves and images within images that Beth is known for. Using simple lines and “comfort” colors, this little walk in the woods has an eerie music track playing in the background. There is the surface of things; then there is deeper. This deck is a treat for tarot collectors and those who want something both tangible and mystical, that tenuous thread between this world and The Other. I’m looking forward to reading with this deck.

Just in case I didn't have enough to read, I went into San Francisco an hour early to browse the tall, tall shelves of Fields Bookstore. I nosed through section after section, drooled at the locked case of rare and antiquarian books and finally settled on a couple of books on the kabbalah, something I could learn more about. Heidi and I had a laugh at the checkout when she "tried" to charge me too little for my two books. Good to know I can still read upside down and that I can also tell that 44 and 22 do not add up to 46! When I told her I was on my way to Thalassa's class, she sent her good wishes. That class ended up being a real tarot experience. I'll save that for another time!

However, I will put in a plug for the Jay'n Bee Club in the Mission in San Francisco. What a terrific spot for a post-class debriefing with thin, thin crust pizza (sausage and mushroom, yum), perhaps the best in the City, and tall, tall margaritas. Plural. This is a place to solve the problems of the world. And get a designated driver.

Don't bring your books there. Besides reading the crawl lines on Facebook (“They Changed It Again”) and Twitter, I’m also reading Tarot in Benicia, California at Benicia Main Street’s Sorcerer’s Saturday: “Saturday, October 15th, 12 - 5 p.m. Join in this family-friendly celebration of Sorcerers, Witches and Warlocks! The day will welcome the magic and mystery of October with vendors, activities and special brews for adults!” I’ll be down at the end of First Street in the parking lot of the Old Depot Building. There is usually plenty of parking. Same low rates: $20 for 30 minutes.

So, what are YOU reading? Let me know in the comments below. Be sure to check out these books, decks, Fields Bookstore, Thalassa's Special Topics and the Sorcerer’s Saturday. Best wishes!

Stuff You Don't Talk About

2011-09-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

"I've been there," I pointed to the television. The process of learning about your sweetie is an ever-unfolding comedy for my husband and me. "There's stuff in Illinois you just don't talk about."

The TV ad pictured a hale and hearty man standing in his living room, gold streaming through his sunlit picture window, swinging a scythe to harvest the wheat growing there indoors.

OK, maybe it wasn't quite like that when I lived in Illinois. There was a lot of bad shag carpet. I remember that clearly. They used to sell shag carpet rakes too, to untangle your shags presumably, since no one apparently wanted dreadlock carpet. Fashion has its intangibles.

I'll always remember fondly that summer on Crab Orchard Lake when I somehow felt confident enough to wear a bikini. I'm not sure I would recognize that person now. The bikinis are a faint memory: There was a killer chocolate brown one and then there was one with blue and turquoise pattern. I would wear them, but I would put a beach wrap over them. My fantasies of luxurious beachwear were always trumped by my self-consciousness. Fashion is not easy, especially for the faint of heart. With my history of swimwear letdowns, no way was I going on that inner tube behind the boat, nope. I was happy to keep my wrap on and let my hair bleach out in the wind.

Besides the fear of failure of the structural kind, there's also the panache part of it. This was a time when stack heels were mandatory. Even professional models were reported to have injured themselves on the runway in those extra-high heels with a misstep. Imagine the possibilities with someone who has fallen down stairs all over the United States? And yet I wore them, even with my swimming gear. I figured I could take advantage of my natural shortness and wear those heels as high as I liked. I liked the leather and cork wedge heels. I was lucky that my ankles were flexible enough to take the abuse of turning them, falling on the side of my foot and landing suddenly and without warning. What do you do when that happens? You get up, smile, brush yourself off and continue with that "I meant to do that" look on your face.

Or that's what I did. No, I didn't mean to do it. I'm strictly a Birkenstocks girl now. I think I used up all my ankle credits in my 20's and 30's. My chiropractor has enough work to do with what I have going on now without my tempting fate. I do have one pair of high-heeled sandals. I look at them every once in a while. I don't talk about wearing them. It makes my feet hurt just thinking about it.

Ah, but the good old days! The only reason they made so much fun about Imelda Marcos and her hoard of shoes was that they knew about it. Other people had lots of shoes. We just didn't talk about them. We wore them, admired them, bought them, agonized over materials, straps, the perfect hosiery to wear with them. But some guilty pleasures are best kept mum.

Tea Tarot
(c) Copyright 2011 Marcia McCord

I mourned the loss of my hippie hand crafted boots, sandals and overstitched Mary Janes when their time had come. Letting go can be so hard. I even embraced my fashion failures and utility wear as long as they remained intact for at least one wearing. Flip-flop blowout was irritating, but consider the loss if you bought seven pairs and realized there was a manufacturing flaw and your other six pairs were doomed. It's stuff you don't talk about.

Years after those summer days on the lake, right about the time when my once-frightening mortgage on the haunted Victorian plus the car payment got to be momentarily easy to pay, especially when I was a computer programmer by day and teaching a (now "antique") programming language in the evenings, a shoe wonderland opened in town. Warehouse stores weren't common then so when the Shoe Circus or whatever it was called opened up on the east side of town with acres of inventory runoff of "name" shoes, all of us little moths traveled to the flame.

It started to seem like a good thing to have a huge Victorian house all to myself with such a shoe thing as I had. Not that my co-workers were comfortable with the idea that a re-"singled" woman with a "man's" job lived in a large house by herself.

"What do you do in that great big house all by yourself?" they wanted to know. If this had been said with a flirtatious tone it could have been either funny or offensive, depending on delivery. But the guys I worked with were programmers. They were sincere. They were sincerely mystified. They did not get why it would be cool.

"I stretch my arms out and don't touch anything," I teased them. "I make rug angels in the carpet in the turret room." In retrospect, maybe it would have been better to leave them with an enigmatic smile rather than a quip. Extravert, what can I say? But no girl I knew talked about her closets and the intensity with which they were maintained and fed.

My first venture into the Shoe Circus was electric with possibilities. It could have been static electricity too, a common wintertime hazard of indoor Illinois. No matter, I was thrilled to be there, guilty and thrilled. I held back. My circumspect five, merely five, pairs of shoes and I slipped into the checkout line. I looked up from my cart to the customer ahead of me. I was amazed. I was validated.

The woman at the checkout ahead of me had at least a dozen pairs of shoes and I immediately figured out why. She was an Amazon, a giantess, Jeri Ryan times about 1.5 times the expected in height, perfectly proportioned. She was, in short (well, pun must be intended since I am), the most intimidating woman I had ever seen. Her legs really were up to here, meaning my shoulder. And I realized, with a sympathy that surprised me, just over five feet tall and a mere mortal that I am, that this poor dear had a shoe thing too and worse yet had a lifetime of difficulty finding sexy shoes in Amazon size.

The rollercoaster of unspoken emotion was almost too much for me when, after Ultra-Jeri left with her score, the checkout clerk showed obvious signs of melting into laughter. I smiled and bought my shoes without saying a word, suddenly glad for my common bond to Ultra-Jeri and also for my comfortable ordinariness. I pulled my own 2 of Swords to hold back on expressing my thoughts.

I adored that one pair of 9 Wests in soft tomato red with the daring toe-cleavage I bought that day. No one ever knew what I really thought when I wore those shoes. Sometimes, there's just stuff you don't talk about.

Best wishes!

Tarot of Da Feet

2011-09-22T17:03:00.000-07:00

I love getting together with folks who love tarot or with people who have similar interest of any kind. It’s probably the extravert thing about me but how fun when we already have a topic of conversation, especially one as varied, controversial and dynamic as tarot. It gets even the introverts talking and you should know nothing pleases me more than to know what’s on an introvert’s mind. For instance, that’s why there’s a comment section at the bottom of each blog; you email people will just have to click on the link to the blog to see what I mean.

When I was in my 20’s it became apparent that the art of conversation was not something one learned in high school or at the parents’ knee. I realized that reading up to 4 books a day during my summers and watching entirely too many black and white movies gave me a skewed perspective of human interaction. They call those old movies “talkies” because they figured out how to add the sound of human speech to otherwise “silent films.” But I think today the common view is that those movies were “hyper-talkies” and our current films are something more like either “moodies” or “special-FX-ies.”

“Nobody talks like that!” people complain about those old talkies. Ha-rumph, she thinks, well, I do! So while all the girls were falling for the strong silent types in the more modern movies made while I was growing up, I had crushes on James Stewart and Humphrey Bogart. My father was particularly horrified to find this out.

“They’re MY age!” he sputtered. Well, that’s something that can’t really be helped. Love transcends time, especially movie-star love. It’s not to say that I didn’t swoon over Clint Eastwood chomping on a cigar in the sweaty west or rolling his eyes at administrivia in police work. I did. But my true loves were the guys who talked to me.

Now I’d love to give advice to the love-bound male to assure them that girls like it when they talk to them about anything, but, alas, it’s not true. Those same dull thuds who tried to convince me that no one talks “like that” were the ones who could drool on endlessly for hours with pithy statements like, “Oh, wow, stereos, man.”

Yes, these timeless words were often enhanced by natural chemical substances which are only recently available to those with a prescription in some states. Weed tended to slow down any conversation and limited the topics to the aforementioned stereos, whether Layla was the greatest song ever but still heard too often on the radio, the quality and availability of rolling papers and other paraphernalia and who had been busted recently doing something really stupid (as opposed to sitting for hours in a filthy living room talking about these timeless things).

Inevitably the conversation got around to food, usually brownies with herbal additives. Apparently the goal among those eligible males I knew at the time was to “astro-plane.” I think that meant losing some control over much if not most of your sensory capabilities, something ultimately all my friends would turn to me while discussing and say, “Yeah, but we don’t recommend it for you, Marcia.” I had to agree.

Seriously, purposefully lowering my IQ and that of my compadres does not seem like fun to me. I like to remember the concerts I attend. I like sparkling conversation. I liked dates who did not fall asleep midway during a romantic moment. And then, plush as I am, I’m also curious as to why people think the reasons for obesity in the US are such a mystery. “Man, I have got, like [giggle, snort, cough and spit all at once], the munchies, man.” The Big Lebowski is delicious fun as movie; in real life, I think I’d rather count paperclips than live that.

Rather than hurt any of my stoned friends’ feelings, I tended to wander off and do things like teach adult education courses in antiques at the local junior college, learn Gregg shorthand for fun and profit, dabble in geology to explore caves in Southern Illinois despite my claustrophobia. Oh, wow, man, like, salamanders!

Only much later did it occur to me that while I was at the same time trying to stifle my negativity about the Doper lifestyle and amuse myself with something I was truly interested in, I and my smokeless life were being “dissed” as “narc” behavior. Well, the stuff does make people paranoid too, I guess. The upshot was that while I liked most of those folks aside from their hazy moments, they for the most part did not like me. What’s not to like? Well, everything, I suppose.

Most folks just know to hang around people who have things in common with them. My own skin-crawling craving for novelty, diversity, change, new ideas, new experiences, the restaurant I’ve never been to before, the next moment because it’s never been here, etc., also leads me to think that because I like all kinds of different people, they will also like me. Well, how rude to assume! Nothing like a rejected thrill-seeker who is easily thrilled, I say. In a way, my acceptance, nay, embrace of whatever is different from me is also a bit of my blind spot.

This week I’ve had the chance to get together with a few different bunches of people and worked on applying one of my old saws about how to tell if some human interaction (it’s hard to call all human encounters relationships) is working: Do you like yourself when you are with them?

I dated a guy for a really long time, years, in Illinois. He was cute. He was smart. He would talk about ideas. He was collaborative. He could laugh at his dyslexia and work through it. There were a lot of pluses. There were significant detriments too. And the worst of these was that I did not like who I was when I was with him. So I broke it off. In the lonely days after the break up, I realized time and again that I had made the right decision. I needed to be a more positive person than I ever could be when I was around him. It was necessary for my survival. It took me a while to put it together, but finally I realized that I needed to surround myself with positive people and step away from negative ones. I tended to take on the characteristics of my surroundings.

So, Tuesday, I dragged my friends Becca and Andrew to a San Francisco Meetup called Tarot Café. You’ve heard about Andrew a bit before. He’s 24 and a tarot reader and enthusiast. Enthusiast doesn’t quite cover it. He will tell just about anyone his favorite deck is the Robin Wood although he does have a dragon thing going too. Becca is a professional illustrator who has worked for some Big Names and on some Famous Projects that you’ve probably heard of but to keep her out of trouble we will leave it at that and say she is some kind of artist. She’s been coming to my Backyard Tarot classes and is the first to tell anyone that she is not a tarot reader. I’m hoping we can do a deck together, but don’t get too excited, kiddies. It’s going to take a while.

There we were with our café drinks at Borderlands Café, sitting around the tables with our decks, talking with Anastasia Haysler of Tarot Media Company about balance and the equinox. In the midst of Becca’s dawning horror about the possibility of reading tarot for the fun exercise and another meetup member’s eagerness to get on with the reading part, the balance of opposites there across the table from each other, I realized I was happy there. I liked being with people who like what I like, even if they like it for vastly different reasons, lengths of time, images and symbols or uses for tarot.

Art Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

Yes, it’s different. Tarot is different. When people find out I read, write, talk, joke and create tarot, sometimes they have to step away because, well, because that’s just too different for them. But like Becca’s draft drawing of the Hanged Man (no previews yet), I’m happy in my difference even though I know it isn’t for everyone and that I might get shunned, “dissed,” made fun of, looked at with disbelief or actively disliked. The Hanged Man and I are like this, after all.

So at the Tarot Café when the regular part of the meeting was over, I was sitting next to RoseRed Robinson also of Tarot Media Company, who we have both determined is one of my cousins and not all that distant. She had an assortment of Tarot Bath Salt Sachets to choose from for the door prize people of which I happened to be one.

I asked, "Oh, do you have a Hanged Man?"

"I don't think so," she said, looking at the bunch. "What would Hanged Man sachet smell like?"

I thought for a minute.

"Feet?"

I settled for the Empress, roses and jasmine. Love that Tarot Cafe!

Best wishes!

No Good Deed

2011-09-13T14:25:00.000-07:00

You’ve heard the saying: No good deed goes unpunished. It ranks right up there with: The path to hell is paved with good intentions. I figure my tombstone, if I get a tombstone, will say, “She meant well.” She did and still does.

I finally submitted my written entries to the Little White Book (LWB in Tarot jargon) for the 2011 Tarot Collectors Forum Collaborative Deck. I had volunteered to help, meaning well. I did help, some, but not as much as I originally meant to. I had no idea that my time between April and the present day would be so busy. Luckily, I had created my card images early in the project and knew what I wanted them to look like.

My Hierophant is taken from a postcard from 1900, a Medicine Man, a shaman from his tribe, enfolded in skins, showing his hard-won humanity from within the animal and as if from an inner glow, the spirit within him showing through that humanity. I portrayed him in shades of plum rather than stark black and white, a color like the fruit that nourishes the spirit and the body, a color like blood, like royalty, like a cabinet piece kept behind curved glass, forever protected like a treasured pearl within an oyster. He is gentle and terrible. He is stern and understanding. On his face are the events of humanity somehow put together as a puzzle to answer the questions of spirit. He is here with the cure, although you may not like his answers.

My King of Wands is also from an antique postcard. Depicting the Master of Energy, my guy, the mighty hunter, has a solid grip on his shotgun but even that control is not enough to prevent an accidental misfire as the gun fires when the stock hits the ground. The Mighty Hunter’s hat is thrown back from the force of the blast, a bit of collateral damage, and he is momentarily thrown off balance. But the Happy Squirrel in the corner of this funky valentine is unharmed. I wanted to show that just a “hands on” approach was not necessarily enough to demonstrate true mastery of energy. You can be paying attention to one thing and something else can go wrong.

My favorite offering this year is my 9 of Wands. The subject of this card is a little fellow in colorful clothing, seemingly ready for a party, but he has a terrible toothache. It could be from some bad eating habits like too many sweets. Whatever, the cause from the past, he has a cloth bandage tied around his head and jaw. His lips and tongue are swollen almost to the size of the moon. At this moment in time, he’s apparently experienced some good times and has the expectation of more, but also he is currently experiencing the bad times. He has paused in his steps along the road, clear that his next move is to get some relief for that tooth but also with a dawning suspicion that his problems, which may have come all of a sudden, could be due to his own actions. Overlaid on the image is the music score to Abbots Bromley Horn Dance, a dance traditionally celebrating harvest. The throb of the music seems to be in sync with the throb of the pain of that sore tooth, like a tune he can’t get out of his head. It is a self-assessment he cannot ignore. Can he go on?

My father used to caution me about burning my candle at both ends, which sounds like typical fatherly advice from his Air Sign Aquarius to my Fire Sign Aries. I of course took a typical Fire Sign approach to this well-meant warning. I usually ignored him. After all, a candle does have two ends and what’s that other end doing just sitting there? Makes a better fire if you’ve got more, right? And if you hold that candle in the middle… well, if you do, it can start to look a lot like that shotgun the King of Wands accidentally fired. So over time, I have learned to try to limit my commitments to what I can actually accomplish.

It doesn’t always work that way. I have so many more ideas than I can ever implement or even write down and save for later. I thought I would have more time this summer because I had not committed to as many events for reading tarot. But I underestimated how time-consuming my two favorite tarot conferences would be, The Readers Studio in April and BATS, the Bay Area Tarot Symposium in August. Throw in that family reunion, a couple of classes to teach, a few readings, work, the house and basically, I think I ran out of candle! True Fire Sign, my first impulse is to ask for more candle, not to step away from any of the activities.

But I was happy I had caught up on some of my obligations, although I’m not sure my partners who have worked more steadily on the Collaborative Deck are quite ready to forgive me. I hope they do. They are good people and have continued to nag me without actually taking out ads to hire someone to hunt me down and execute me. I think that was going to be the next step. And I still want to participate in this deck and future ones. I have offered further help.

Art Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

The help comes with just a little ray of hope for my collaborators: I’m not actually committed to any big tarot projects between now and the end of the year. And I’ve volunteered for one of the more odious tasks in the deck creation, the money part. I’m hoping they will take me up on the offer so that in some way I can atone for my being the Prodigal Partner.

In that way, maybe my own 3 of Pentacles, the teamwork card, won’t have completely fallen off the cart of intent and we will get the 2011 Tarot Collectors Forum Collaborative Deck published after all!

Best wishes.

*** ***

This week’s results for Mr. Goon’s Sports Page are posted. Picks for the upcoming weekend games will be posted soon. Let’s see if we can do better!

In the Pool

2011-09-07T18:56:00.000-07:00

After picking the Super Bowl loser a couple of years in a row, I officially retired from sports picks with Tarot. But my husband convinced me otherwise. We are members of the GVMNFPEADS. OK, not every organization has a catchy acronym, but this one has been in existence for a long time. That’s a very long time, somewhere around 30 years, maybe more. (Children, please! Put away your calculators. These people have youthful ideas in spite of the cold, hard numbers. Besides, it's not nice to be rude to old people.)

I’m actually a newbie to the pool, whose official name is the Greater Vallejo Monday Night Football Pool Eating and Drinking Society. I’ve only been associated with the pool for the last 16 years. It was a little awkward breaking in as the new kid. In fact, when John brought me to the first football pool dinner, I had no idea that the members thought I was a kid. I figure it’s because I don’t have many wrinkles.

Tea Tarot
(c) Copyright 2011 Marcia McCord

My friend B. G. says you can’t have an unwrinkled face and a tiny derriere at our age. Well, it’s not like I wanted to be “plush sized” but if the side benefit is being mistaken for John’s “cradle robbee” then I guess it’s OK. Let’s just say I’m not as young as a lot of people think I am. Then again, I’d say I was much younger! One year I started dropping comments revealing my age so people would relax, for goodness’ sake. Over time, the poolies and I have gotten to know each other a bit and I don’t feel like I’m treated like both the blonde and the little red sportscar all rolled into one. I don’t think of myself as my husband’s midlife crisis, but more like the cure for it. They probably do get that between the two of us, the dog provides the only adult supervision in the house.

So, when Ricky Rasputin, our illustrious organizer, sent out the Week 1 picks sheet, I considered long and hard before playing along. There’s a little history of course. About three years ago, I decided to take the pool seriously. You know what I mean: Study. I read the newspapers, listened to the pundits, figured the point spreads, even threw in a favorite color or mascot into the mix for fun. I submitted my selections faithfully, writing role-playing emails to RickyRasp posing as the Faithful Servant to Mindless Leader of the Sunless World.

Even the role-playing has history. My husband spent two years in India in the Peace Corps and returned for a few visits, once as a Fulbright Scholar. Pardon me for bragging but I think that’s pretty cool. After all, at the same approximate age, I was still trying to referee my parents’ fights, teach junior college courses in collecting antiques and get a second college degree, this time in a marketable skill. I can’t call going to Missouri exotic travel, especially when I started from Illinois. Refereeing my parents’ fights died off as a calling when my mother was diagnosed with cancer and decided not to fight with anyone any more. At least I got to spend some quality time with her before she died. And I don’t think I saved the neighborhood from my parents’ quarrels since by then they were good at keeping them within household and decibel boundaries, refining the process over time.

So, back to the hubs. While he was in India, one of the people he worked with there thanked him for his efforts to bring sunshine to the sunless world. It transformed over time to be an official title of the Mindless Leader of the Sunless World. So when we got together, I became the Faithful Servant, the scribe for our little kingdom and Mindless' right hand. Maybe left too. As you can imagine, appealing to Ricky Rasputin requires a certain decorum. You can’t just say, “Here ya’ go!”

Week after week, I studied and submitted the picks, beseeching Ricky Rasputin to accept the humble efforts of the unworthy scribe. Week after week, our collective score sank like a stone to the inglorious position of next-to-last. If we had been last, we would at least have gotten the prize for being the worst.

Alternatively, our friend Maxine basically threw a dart at the wall and submitted all her picks at the beginning of the season at random and finished a teeth-gnashing above-average. Fie! Phooey! Fine. Other f-words came to mind, few of them football. So the last two years, we’ve signed up for the pool but not submitted any picks, watched our friends’ fortunes rise and fall throughout the NFL season, hosted our requisite GVMNFPEADS dinner on the Monday night we signed up for and just enjoyed everyone’s company.

There are a few poolies who have passed on, one in particular a retired doctor originally from the Boston area, who would have snorted at the idea of just enjoying everyone’s company. But Rocky adored my husband and was delightful with me, something not everyone can say. Rocky and his sunny wife Kay served us dinner most Thursday nights until they became too infirm to do so. Now they are both angels in heaven. At least Kay is. But Rocky was serious about his football. I’m not sure he would appreciate that we were just as serious about our socializing with the pool and its other extraordinary members.

We’ve had a judge, a couple of doctors, teachers, civil servants, politicians, other medical professionals, a roofer, a former merchant marine, the gardening experts, the flooring folks, sales, service and the humane society people in the pool. This is a fun bunch of people dedicated to good food and good football. They are world travelers. They are organizers. They are promoters. They are movers and shakers. They are people like anyone else trying to get along.

So this year, after a little prompting, I’ve decided I would dip a toe into submitting my picks, using, of course, the Tarot! No analysis, this time, no serious studying of the sports section or calculation of odds or factoring in injuries. Nope, just the Tarot this time. Each week, I’ll post the picks on a separate page here in my blog which I’ve named Mr. Goon’s Sports Page. Each team gets a card for the game it plays that week. Pitted against its opponent’s card, they will duke it out Tarot-style. The games will be ranked based on whether their card pair comparisons look like a sure thing (high point values) down to the hard to tell games (low point values).

OK, boys, let’s spin that Wheel of Fortune! I’ll let you know how I do.

Best wishes.

The Secret of 738

2011-08-31T11:15:00.000-07:00

“Wait, I’m getting something!” I looked more intently at my EMF (electromagnetic field) meter as I stepped slowly past jail cell number 121 on the section of Alcatraz prison they call Broadway.

The needle started to bounce rhythmically up into the “interesting zone” of readings around a 4 or 5 and I started counting, one, two, three. It bounced seven times. It paused. My friend Beth’s son Dylan rushed over to watch. It bounced three times, then paused again. It bounced eight times and then resumed its usual baseline reading of about 1.5.

“738. I can remember that.” The prisoners were called not by their names but by their numbers. I wondered who number 738 was.

Dylan had been looking forward to this night tour of Alcatraz for months. When I first found the night tours, I was hoping for a ghost-hunting theme. I think that was seasonal and this wasn’t quite the season yet. Never fear, ghost-hunting itself really has no season. So we came armed with my EMF meter and a couple of cameras knowing that we wouldn’t be able to do a real investigation with the 300 or so other visitors who had joined us for the evening tour.

We had found easy parking about a block away and walked to the Pier 33 Alcatraz Tour Snack Bar. In the hubbub, Beth, my husband John and I lost Dylan for a very tense few minutes and found him again, doing just what he had been told to do.

“If you get lost in the woods or in the City, just stay where you are so we can find you,” John had reminded him. And there he was just outside the snack bar door, waiting to be found while he took in the sights dockside San Francisco.

The adults all nearly collapsed in relief and we discussed the relative merits of pigeons. One had walked into the snack bar near our table. I sneaked a bit of the soft brown roll from my ham sandwich to the floor. “Rizzo” our pigeon (named for the character in Midnight Cowboy after the inevitable “flying rats” attribution) found the morsel immediately and gobbled it up. I figure Rizzo must be a regular in the snack bar because she looked up at the tables nearby to see who had sent her the offering. I launched another crumb over her head and she chased it down. A sullen teenager imprisoned by his cheerful family sitting at a table across the room frowned in disgust. Well, that would get better in time. Or not. The voice over the loudspeaker announced something official and we all got up to get in line for the boat. We declined the opportunity for a group photo, knowing we weren’t going to buy one. We had some different souvenirs in mind from The Rock.

Out on the water, I reminded Beth, who was a little concerned about sea-sickness, that the ferry ride we were on was smoother than the train ride to Sacramento a few days before. She pointed out the 4-ft swells and I noted that we really could barely feel them. I didn’t want to tell her I had been on San Francisco Bay in storms from time to time when I commuted by ferry, pretty exciting each one of them. Dylan speculated there might be sharks; I said it was pretty rare to see a shark in the Bay since they don’t like the fresh water. We disappeared into the fog.

The fog that night wasn’t the cute little cat-feet fog playing over the hills and into the City and the Bay. It was The Fog, Stephen King fog, Twilight Zone fog. It was fog where the rest of the world disappeared from view so that midway between we could see only ourselves and water but neither Alcatraz nor the bright lights of San Francisco. And then a wall of rock appeared and the voice of our guide told us more about how this remote and inhospitable spot had not been populated with Native tribes, who had the good sense to stay where food was plentiful and the winds didn’t howl, only a mile and half away. The Rock had appeared then white-washed with bird guano (which, if you aren’t into the “nice” names for ooky stuff is bird poo) further “un-hancing” the livability of this high spot in cold water.

First a fort, then a military prison, and then, starting in 1934 Alcatraz opened as the prison we think of as the federal maximum security slammer for high profile prisoners. More accurately, it was the place they sent prisoners who caused too much trouble in the prisons they were originally assigned to. Alcatraz is known for some famous names in crime like Al Capone, “Creepy Karpis” and “The Birdman” Robert Stroud, who by the way was not the sweetie-pie Burt Lancaster portrayed but a very scary guy. There were also the less famous but no less creepy, cranky, bad, rotten or just deranged. And three guys figured out how to escape; officially, no one knows what happened to them. Those and other sensational events provide the highlights of the headphones-guided tour where you can feel the cold fog-wind screaming in through the doorway to the recreation area, struggle against the tightness of a 5’x9’ cell and almost hear the instruments playing on music night, trouble piled upon trouble in 3 stories of cells guarded by men in double-breasted suits and red ties and forbidden blackjacks.

There is plenty of old wiring in these old buildings, some of which are in ruins. Those old wires can make an EMF Tri-Field meter go crazy with a normal source of electromagnetic energy. And then there are the things that make you wonder. One of the guides noticed my Tri-Field meter and mentioned that people often get a creepy feeling in the room next to us. No wonder, it’s what they call a “fear cage,” a room surrounded by electrical wiring that creates a constant strong field that registers high on my little machine. Places with naturally (rather than supernaturally) high EMF readings give sensitive people anything from a buzzing sensation to visual effects. And then there’s the argument that perhaps it is easier for a spirit to manifest in places where that energy is plentiful. Proof? I’m still looking but I know I’ve had my own personal experiences.

As to my 738, counting the bounces of the needle as it pulsed its electricity, I thought of tarot of course. Alcatraz inmate AZ-738 was Edward R. Mayberry. Was that you, Ed? At least there was the story for each of the inmates, 7, 3, 8 repeated over and over. 7 of Swords: Tried to get away with it, whether it was robbery or murder or other violent crime. 3 of Swords: The anguish of getting caught and causing heartache for their families and their victims. And finally, 8 of Swords: Bound by the iron bars and iron will of the prison system, wardens, guards and consequences of a bad idea that got worse as it went along. And then there were the three men who escaped: 7 of Swords, did they really escape? 3 of Swords, did they die in remorse and bitter disappointment in the nearly ice-cold currents of the San Francisco Bay? 8 of Swords, are they or someone else stuck in that place, forever playing out the problem of their lives and unhappy choices?

Dylan bought a t-shirt and a hat in the museum shop and we made our way back down the winding path to the ferry to return to freedom. I noticed that the seagulls, who laughed at us as we had walked up the path to the prison, had disappeared into the night. I heard only the sound of the wind lashing the water against the dock and fog horns in the distance calling their warning.

Best wishes.

All Aboard

2011-08-26T14:42:00.000-07:00

Did you ever want to hop a train and go where it goes? You could follow the rails instead of more familiar roads or path through countryside and the underbelly of towns, the shacks and fences and depots along the way. You could settle in comfortably in a seat facing backwards to see where you've been or you could face forward to keep an eye on what is coming up.

I did that yesterday, rode the train. My friend Beth and her son Dylan have come to visit for a few days so we can go to BATS, the Bay Area Tarot Symposium, an annual tarot event of delightful proportions where tarot readers, historians, collectors, designers and students converge. They tacked a little extra time onto the trip for some extra vacation fun. Dylan just had his birthday and Dylan likes trains.

Victorian Trade Card Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

Cool, I thought. We can go to the train museum in Sacramento and see Old Town Sacramento. I remember the last time I was there you could walk through one of the old train cars.

"Instead of driving, why don't you take the train up to Sacramento," the hubs suggested. Perfect for the train lover, of course! It was also perfect for the driver who could stand not to have to drive. The traffic between Sacramento and the Bay Area on I-80 can be slow and thick which annoys many drivers who think they should be able to drive lickety-split on a freeway. Fact: There are just a lot of people in California and a lot of them have cars. It almost seems crazy to live in a place like the San Francisco area and still have the need to "get away from it all." But we all need a change of scenery sometimes.

The 6 of Swords is often thought of as the "travel" card, although I contend there are a few cards in the deck that indicate movement like travel. Yesterday, the 6 of Swords felt like the perfect card, taking your thoughts from their usual venue and scenery to a calmer different place where you can sort things out. You can figure out what's true and what isn't, what's important and what isn't, what battles are worth fighting and which ones aren't. You can at least temporarily leave behind the thoughts of your work and home life to think other thoughts, sort things out.

So even in a wonderful place like the place I live, despite the 9th worst whatever on whoever's list, it's really nice to just think about something else entirely and rest the section of your life you deal with most of the time.

It was finally something like summer, too. We haven't really had much in the way of summer here (my apologies to those who have melted into their socks this year). It's always a little hotter, sometimes a lot hotter in "the valley" in California than the coast in the summer. Sacramento is right in the middle of that. We stepped off the train into the "hot oven" that some people say California is named for, the dry heat of the uninterrupted sun feeling good, at least at first, but mixed with a breeze to keep it bearable. Unlike many places in the US, our heat is fairly well-behaved. If you are in the sun, it's hot. If you are in the shade, it's not. If you've had enough of one, step into the other. We don't usually get the 100 degrees in the shade plus choking humidity that a lot of the interior and eastern US get. We have a civilized heat.

The train museum was just a short walk away from the train depot, the first building you come to when you walk towards Old Town. And it is a world of trains. Dioramas of miners, engineers, passengers, porters, brakemen are dwarfed by the many rare and beautiful restored "iron horses" that conquered the West. The train engines and cars are well-documented and surrounded with the stories and artifacts of the Age of Trains. We saw how tracks were laid and how standard and narrow-gauge tracks were determined. We saw the luxurious decor reminiscent of James West and Artemis Gordon in The Wild, Wild West, cars furnished with elegant furniture.

The train museum has expanded since I was there last with more cars and engines that visitors can walk into. I loved the boxcar with its description of all the fruits and vegetables, the different colorful produce labels and even a description of the lithographic process of printing the labels. I showed Dylan the surveying tools used to determine how to lay the tracks and explained that my father had been an engineer. I used to help him survey lots sometimes and then, if night fell and the timing right, he would point his transit telescope towards the moon so I could see the craters and mountains there. I loved the dishes made specifically for use in the dining cars, some elegant cobalt blue with gold trim, some with the "exotic" Mimbres-style glyphs of the desert Southwest. Best of all was the mysterious and complex multi-scaled cylinder-shaped slide rule, a marvel of computation in delicate and precise ivory long before computers.

Beth and Dylan went to the second floor of the museum where the toy train exhibits are, every scale train imaginable. I headed to the museum bookstore to see if I could find a special present for Dylan's birthday.

My friend Mark Wegman wrote a book (available through the museum store, Amazon and elsewhere) American Passenger Trains and Locomotives Illustrated. It's a wonderful book full of pictures and diagrams of "people trains" with precise interior seating charts and lots of information. I've known Mark since I was in my teens in college and his wife Sally is my most enduring friend. Notice I didn't say oldest because Sally is a few months younger than I am and I'm not going to admit to anyone as young as we are being the oldest anything yet. Lucky me, among the many, many books about trains in the museum shop, Mark's book was available.

We left the museum and wandered through the dry-hot streets of Old Town, enjoying the shops and the feeling of the Old West under our feet with the shaded wooden sidewalks, the remnants of old train tracks and cobblestones in the streets. We ate the appetizer platter at a New Orleans-styled restaurant, plus delicious fried mushrooms, which ended up being an over-abundance of fried anything. We explored the mystical shop where I picked up a tarot deck I didn't have, thinking John will be so surprised that there is a deck I don't yet have. We went next door to the Ology Shop filled floor to ceiling with stones, fossils and crystals. Dylan found a precious penny dated 1902. Beth picked out a lovely pink lemurian quartz crystal and I chose a large clear lemurian crystal that fascinated me. Just looking into it, I see stories. It must be for me!

We checked out a couple more shops, did not pass up the candy and saltwater taffy but selected in moderation, stopped at the coffee shop for a cold drink, then headed back to the train. It just happened to be waiting to take us home.

Dylan played with his treasures while Beth and I talked tarot. We talked about the court cards, personalities, narrative flow, the value of sharing with a tarot community, and, very, very exciting, Beth's new deck, the Tarot Leaves, her first to be published by Schiffer. I'm thrilled for her commercial debut. Like so many "emerging stars" Beth's "overnight" success will come after years of work and self-publishing over 70 decks. The towns, egrets, barns, cows rolled by quickly and we were home before we knew it. Dylan says this is his best birthday ever. I think he might be right.

Best wishes!

Licking Your Fingers

2011-08-18T10:52:00.000-07:00

“If I had two dead rats, I’d give you one.”

This is one of my husband’s and my shared endearments from one of our favorite cartoonists, B. Kliban. It’s a sort of “for better AND for worse” all rolled up in one, but we mean whatever we have of ourselves, we give it to the other person to share.

My gift this weekend was just a little free time, an entire day without obligations or plans. I was naturally tempted by sloth, my favorite deadly sin. After all, there are a lot of recorded television series episodes on that box under the big screen. A tiny voice from under the big screen says, I’ll be here until you erase me, too.

Other temptations were calling that were more immediate, like the gorgeous weather of the not-quite-summer we’ve had this year. Not that I want to jinx anything, but that great big low pressure swirl off the coast of Washington and Oregon has been a delight for me and brought the mildest of summers with sunshine, cool breezes and temperatures somewhere between perfection and boy-does-that-feel-good. At the risk of violating the no-gloating rule (who on earth makes these rules?) we really have had two good summers in a row with no air-conditioning needed. We still have the rest of August and all of September to go through, which are usually our hottest times here. So I may break a sweat yet.

Victorian Trade Card Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

With the ideal weather, the answer for the day’s adventure was most certainly, “Out.” I had talked with my friend Maureen Friday who was down from Sebastopol visiting her mother Gerry, our agile window climber buddy. I wanted to deliver a wedding present for Maureen’s daughter that was too bulky to drag to the wedding in the redwoods, a pair of Belleek cups and saucers. Gerry and her two daughters Maureen and Nancy were enjoying a dinner of scrumptious pasta from Napoli’s, a favorite haunt of ours. I didn’t want to stay long but we did get started telling stories about gym classes, teachers and students. As I left, Maureen mentioned the Gravenstein Apple Fair in Sebastopol as a possibility for the weekend.

That little conversation resurfaced when the hubs and I were discussing the lack of plans for an entire day of perfect weather, so I suggested that we go.

I love the drive from my house up to Sebastopol. We drive across the marshlands of the Napa delta where there seem to be a huge number of baby snowy egrets this year. They line the ditches and shallows of the delta looking for yummy crawlies wriggling in the mud. They are an elegant bird, their white feathers so purely white, their long black legs carefully stepping to the next spot, their long necks and dagger beaks made for the instant dispatch of the unsuspecting critter. Like gymnasts, they make it look easy. We took back roads to enjoy the countryside, the cows, the deer, the late summer blooms, the dust of dry paths, the breeze through the eucalyptus, redwood and oak.

The Apple Fair is a popular little festival set in a shady oak grove north of Sebastopol. It has a deliciously old-fashioned picnic quality about it, with a hay-bale maze, crates and crates of apples, booths with handmade treasures for sale, fair-food and fairly-good-for-you food. We indulged in a large cup of unfiltered apple juice, an alchemical mixture that is uplifting and grounding at the same time. There were three stages with musical performers but it still wasn’t miserably loud and the music was fun. The Caged Bird Society booth was popular with all the little kids including the little kids my age eager to talk to the birdies, a mackaw, conures, love birds, parrots, all in their party colors.

Just as fascinating were the Bee Society displays including a bee colony under glass and all kinds of honey. Her Highness the Queen Bee did not make an appearance while we were there, but our docents had fascinating bee facts. We found out just a little more information about our “Golden Snitch,” a marvel of nature John and I had both seen while in Costa Mesa in Southern California. That bee was an enormous, gravity-defying all-golden bee which we had first mistaken for a hummingbird due to its size. Our beekeeper friend gave us the name of the professor most likely to be able to identify our “Questing Bee,” another lead to follow up on for another adventure.

When I was certain that I had inspected every booth for its possibilities, I snagged two exquisite lampwork glass fish beads for a very reasonable price and a cute little business card stand from one of the pottery booths. Total damage, not bad at all. John struck up a rugby conversation with a jeweler whose work was interesting but outside my interest to buy. We considered all the possibilities of junk food at the fair, then decided to drive home through Sonoma to stop at my favorite Sonoma Market. Ah, heirloom tomatoes for my salsa, fig spread, brie, a couple of steaks, some little red potatoes and off to home cooking better than fair food. And we had somehow managed to avoid coming home with an apple pie!

Enjoying the view from the Napa River Bridge while stuck in a little bit of slow traffic at the end of our day, we mused on the advantages of our fair city.

“You know, in Vallejo you can buy heirloom tomatoes AND visit your local Hell’s Angels chapter house.”

“We have a Hell’s Angels?” I marveled, wide-eyed and always impressed with my husband’s knowledge of local lore. A slow grin and a sly look later and there we were driving past a large no-color building, a fortress closed to the public but plainly marked "Hell's Angels." And in the same block were the Sunday evening church-goers with their pot-luck dishes and high heels and suits and godly intent who waved to us as we smiled at them. Like so many mysteries, they were positioned side by side.

“Wasn’t this just a lovely day?” I said, musing about the 7 of Pentacles, the harvest of realized results. Not a computer was stirring, not even a mouse. “I think I’ll make some salsa.”

*************************

Marcia’s Salsa Recipe

2 really large, “dead ripe” heirloom tomatoes or 3 normal size tomatoes from your garden. Even a whole batch of Sweet 100’s will do if you have those. Regular grocery store tomatoes just won’t do. You can try it, but you won’t be happy. The regular store bought tomatoes make a kind of unappetizing frothy pale pink stuff that is nearly flavorless.

1 large red onion (cut in half, save the other half for the next batch of salsa)

1 fat clove of garlic. Don’t worry. If everyone eats it, you’ll all smell like that.

2-5 Serrano peppers (this is not a wimpy salsa). Jalapeno peppers are OK, but if you have to substitute, I'd go with Thai Dragons instead.

1 Pasilla pepper (optional but it’s really good if you can find it; you can substitute a banana pepper or even a green bell pepper but having tried them all I really like the Pasilla)

1 lime

1 bunch of fresh cilantro (don’t make a mistake and get the Italian parsley which looks a lot like it)

Salt

Coarse-ground black pepper

I used to use one of those hand-cranked plastic affairs I bought at a county fair and realized that Mr. Edison’s idea about electricity was truly inspired. So now I use one of those small electric mini-choppers you can buy at the grocery store. You can do this by hand, but you want to do this in the summer time and I don’t see any reason at all to work up such a sweat when a buzz or two of the mini-chopper will do the trick.

First, the order of ingredients is really important. Most importantly, do not try to chop the onions with one of the tomatoes. It just doesn’t turn out right. Remember, part of reaping results is learning from others’ mistakes. I’m just sayin’.

First, cut the half red onion into chunks that will fit into the chopper. Coarsely chop the Serrano peppers and toss them into the chopper (yes to seeds, no to stems). Smash the garlic clove with the side of your knife, remove the dry skin and slice it into chunks. Toss that into the chopper. IMPORTANT: At no point in this process should you rub your eyes with your hands. Others’ mistakes, etc. Zing that baby up until you can see the little bitty bits of onion, pepper and probably not the garlic. Dump the lot into bowl as the foundation for your salsa.

Next, slice the tomato into to crescent chunks and put them into the chopper. You will have more tomato than will fit into one round of the chopper. That’s ok. Continue to breath normally. Slice the lime in half and squeeze both halves of the lime juice, ever little bit of it, into the chopper with the tomato. Zing until it is a red and soupy loveliness; pour into the bowl over the onions and peppers. Chunk a second round of tomato into the chopper but this time add a teaspoon (oh, who am I kidding? I NEVER measure it; just put in as much as looks right to you) of salt and a generous-as-you-dare portion of black pepper. Zing until soupy and add to the bowl. Add a third round of tomato to the chopper and this time include the fresh cilantro, rinsed off and chopped into coarse chunks (I can tell you’re sensing a theme with this). Zing until soupy with green flecks, nice. Pour into the bowl. Last, if you have any tomato left over, and if you have decent tomatoes you will, pop those in the chopper along with the Pasilla pepper also coarsely chopped, again, yes to seeds, no to stem. Zing away and pour into the bowl. Stir the divinely inspired lava and serve with crispy salted corn chips and perhaps your local fire department standing by.

Also good on chicken, tacos, enchiladas, seared skirt steak, shrimp on the barbie and usually down the front of my t-shirt. Puts color in your cheeks. For medicinal purposes only. And it’s ok to lick your fingers but seriously, don’t rub your eyes.

Best wishes!

Re-Turn the Page

2011-08-11T08:39:00.000-07:00

You've heard me rant about Mercury retrograde disrupting my life before, right? Wiley Coyote got me again, a couple of times. It's not over, either, so I still have my guard up. Or at least I'm still trying to duck, dodge and dive. It's not all bad news, though.

Picture Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

One good thing that happened is that a small check I had lost not once but twice finally surfaced. It was too old to cash but I was so excited that I found it that I contacted the very kind person who had given it to me, twice. What a champ! A couple of days later a new check arrived and finally the interrupted transaction was complete. That "do-over" is a typical Mercury retrograde thing.

I'm not counting Facebook acting up tonight which ended up in my refreshing my browser a few times, then giving up, clearing my browser cache and cookies and disconnecting. There. I fixed it. I have the feeling that Facebook is having a few problems tonight. That's probably their MercRx. I hear the hack attack people have scheduled their big day for 86 days from now; I was pretty sure it was tonight from what I was seeing.

My husband and I have been spending our TV time watching previously recorded series. We even ran into one tonight we had watched partway through and restarted to watch it all the way through. I even recorded a series on SciFi from 1998 that I had somehow missed before. I love a rerun marathon.

Now, I don't mean to say that anything with a "re-" in it saves itself up for the Mercury retrograde times. Delays and do-overs happen all the time. But when you have Mercury as prominent in your horoscope chart as I do, you start to think something's up. I'm just sayin'.

But like I said, it's not all bad news. I cleaned out my purse and now, mysteriously, everything actually fits in there. I would ask what was up with that, but I have a sense that the wad of receipts, tissue, one piece of wrapped hard candy, extra pens and some other weird stuff I had put in there for safekeeping had built up to critical mass. That pain in my neck and shoulder is starting to feel better too. Think there's a connection?

During this magical time, I've been assigned a couple of recycled and resuscitated projects which have the renewed vigor and attention of upper management. That's actually been kind of fun because they were started by other people, then back-burnered. Usually the people who want those projects and who have suffered the disappointment of having them set aside are thrilled when some new fresh meat steps up to the plate to take a swing at what didn't turn out the first time. For all of them, I promise no miracles. After all, the people who had them before are smart and just got buried under the weight of other "hot potatoes" at the time. Hopefully these projects will go well under a restart.

I did treat myself during this time to a review of my horoscope chart by an excellent astrologer, Dena DeCastro. I had read (yup, you guessed it) a retweeted post on Twitter from another astrologer whom I admire that linked to Dena's sensitive treatment of Amy Winehouse's passing and the placement of the moon's nodes. Dena is one of the editors of Mountain Astrologer, a magazine I have loved for years for its meaty yet readable content.

What a treat it was, too! Now I don't feel guilty about enjoying that "exciting" t-square with the "nodal involvement" that results in my recurring spurts of creativity. The way I see it and thanks to Dena's confirmation, that's the engine that keeps me running. Our session was chock-full of information and Dena was wonderfully responsive to my questions and to my effort to confirm what I had heard. Plus, an .mp3 recording was included.

Other things I can't complain about: Repeat business from my tarot clients. It's great when I get feedback from my clients, especially when I can see them pleased with their own progress on their path. Even my little shopping trip to Tuesday Morning resulted in things for minor renovations. I replaced the ironing board cover which was, well, just plain sad. The new one is cheery, even designer colors. Tomorrow, that shower curtain liner is going to get replaced. And if my buddy Andrew comes over, I'm going to see if he can replace the doorknob in the downstairs bathroom. Those are all good "re's" for this tricky time.

But it wouldn't be a MercRx without something really stupid happening. Hopefully the Check Incident, as it will be called, will be my candidate for best stupid "re" of this season. My husband and I received a check made to both of us and agreed it should go into my account. This wasn't the Prodigal Check with the happy little ending from above. This was The Check, one we had been waiting for for a while.

After running a bunch of errands, we stopped at the bank with the stagecoach and pretty horsies. We signed the check, I went to the ATM, it scanned the check with a cute little notice popping up that unless this was a money order or U.S. Treasury check or something the money would not be available immediately. Well, that was OK. It just happened to be one of those special qualifying types. Ah, that's better! It was a check I didn't lose, at least.

I was cautious about depending on the funds from that check, even though all indications said the deposit went through. Trust, but verify. Isn't that what the State Department used to say years ago? I couldn't be too careful, especially with an electronic transaction. I logged on. Oh, yeah. I'd been "Merc'd". The bank had backed out the deposit.

I called the nice people at the bank. I talked to the nice person on the phone and the nice person's nice supervisor. I was upset but stayed reasonable. After all, it wasn't their fault. They were very regretful about their bank's policy but there was nothing they could do. That phrase usually produces the worst results in me. I translate "nothing I can do" to a lack of imaginative problem solving. I kept my "nice" on. They could provide me with the address to write to. I would get a replacement check in 5-7 business days. Not good. I kept the address but did not write the letter. Best not to do that when I'm upset anyway.

I got a call the next day from someone else at the bank, a very sweet person who had apparently reviewed my situation and was going to overnight me my check so we could re-deposit it if we showed up in person together with our identification. What a relief!

The next day, my friend at the bank called me again.

"You're going to get a package from me, overnighted," she said.

"Yes," I said and held my breath. Now what? She had said it was going to be overnighted yesterday. I was all ears. Honestly, in Mercury retrograde periods, it really pays to listen really carefully.

"I think you will be getting the letter without the check because I'm looking at the check here at my desk. Call me when you get the package to verify and I'll overnight the check today."

DAWGS! Will this little financial crisis ever end? The letter came, sans check as predicted. I called and the check and its replacement letter were overnighted. It came today.

"John!" I don't yell at him but this was more of a holler than a yell. "We're going to the bank this afternoon no matter what!" And sure, there were no parking places when we got there. I hopped out to stand in line since half of town appeared to be there at the same time. John followed shortly and stood with me. Our identification and signatures were accepted. The Check Is In The Bank. Boy, are the Tarot Garden people going to be happy when I get to BATS! That Mercury retrograde is not going to stomp all over that Page of Pentacles for me. That check was going into the bank if I had to stand in line until closing time.

But I'm still checking the bank balance tomorrow, just to be sure.

Best wishes!

Turn the Page

2011-08-02T22:49:00.000-07:00

Summer time gives me a chance to have my tarot classes in my backyard, hence the name “Marcia’s Backyard Tarot Classes.” I was trying to avoid being overly clever with the naming so that the purpose and perhaps even the location would be clear. Even the best of efforts, of course, can fail.

“I teach Tarot. In my backyard.” It seems simple enough but I do get questions. This year instead of dragging my tent to all kinds of festivals to read Tarot, I’ve limited that to just a fun few and set the ol’ tent up in the backyard. My husband had been threatening to trim the privet tree (you can’t call something that big a bush when it’s as tall as the house) and one of my Cecile Brunner roses (same height, old rose) which are intertwined so that the fence would stay up and the branches wouldn’t open a living room window, suddenly. And he did. It was such a good job that my shady patio wasn’t that shady. The sparrows pouted about their reduced real estate and the cats were fascinated about the improved view. But I still need my shade for the patio.

California is different from other places I’ve lived. Places like Illinois and Missouri don’t cool off on summer nights when the sun goes down. But California is delightful in its weather-etiquette. If you are in the shade, you are likely to be comfortable even on the hottest days. It’s just that California also has these desert sections that seldom provide shade for those over two feet tall so it can still be hot here. That, and the “Santa Anas” come when the wind patterns shift and suddenly the hot valleys empty their furnace-blast towards the ocean and everyone complains, with good reason, about the high fire danger. That time doesn’t usually last that long, thank goodness.

I don’t like to gloat but while lots of people have been having the sticky-gummy-runny-can’t-take-your-skin-off kind of summer, we’ve had another fairly cool one this year. Still, if you sit in the sun long enough, you’ll scorch, no matter how cool the breezes are. So, tent it is but with the side panels off so the breeze can blow through.

My last class focused on the Tarot Court Cards. Those are the page, knight, queen and king of the four suits, wands, swords, cups and pentacles. There are 16 court cards in all and they are sometimes thought of as the “personalities” of the deck.

So, not to bore you non-Tarot folks with too deep a dive into the class, my students are a fun bunch of gentle people with varying experience. This is just the kind of classroom diversity I like: extraverts, introverts, novices, experienced folks. Of course, since I’m an extravert…ok, raise your hand if you couldn’t tell. I like to say that I’m the quiet one in our family since John is an extravert also, maybe pegging a bit higher on the E scale than I do. This amazes my long-term friends who were used to my let us say “breathless” charm and banter.

There’s a cute post on Facebook right now that talks about the TLC needed by introverts. If you don’t read too carefully, you get the idea that introverts are people who are tired of listening to extraverts. Ha-rumph! I need my space too, you know. And I don’t always talk in my sleep.

Furthermore, there’s some assumption that introverts understand extraverts because they hear them talking. Who says we E people say everything we’re thinking? While I’m chatting you up about how much your hair doesn’t make you look like Justin Bieber really, I’m also remembering my dental appointment on the 16th, fighting off some song in my head that intruded when I smelled your cologne, about to get the appetizers out of the oven, noting the utterly divine red shoes across the room and about to change the topic to the piece of the tragic Columbia shuttle they just found in Texas because you are obviously uncomfortable with any further reassurance about your hair. In short, I’m trying to be nice to you but you have no idea of all the things I’m thinking from just what I’m saying. That would be like saying that all introverts have a one-track mind, certainly unfair too.

Actually, this is all good-natured banter. About 50% of the population of the world is classified in the Jungian-based MBTI as introvert while the rest of us Chatty Cathies are extravert. And interestingly, here we are back at the Tarot Court Cards. So one of the fun exercises we did in my class was to randomly pull a couple of court cards and have them talk to each other. What do they agree about? Where do they differ?

Our first pair was the King of Swords and Queen of Swords, whose pillow talk ranged from complaining to each other how stupid the rest of the world is and that they have to do everything themselves, despairing in the dull wits especially of their child who must be the result of an error in the maternity ward. The King groused away without a thought for her feelings, while the Queen sniped that his problems were, after all, all his fault. It was starting to get fun. Then we had the Page of Pentacles, who must be the dullard child of the K and Q of Swords, being asked to the prom by the Knight of Swords, a sort of irresistible force meets the immoveable object kind of thing. And the class was getting the hang of the energies of the personalities of the Courts.

So, I thought today, what if we got the four Pages in a room together, mostly because Mercury is going retrograde today and Pages are all about communication. They’d be something like students at Hogwarts without those cool wands or brooms. Maybe the Page of Wands would have the wand, OK. So what do they say to each other?

“C’mon, guys, let’s DO something! Wanna toss around the ol’ pigskin or go through a bucket of balls?” gushed the Page of Wands, always first to voice his not-too-well-thought-out impulses, raw energy apparent without too many specifics.

“Wow, hope this doesn’t hurt your feelings or anything, but I was going to watch that new Chick Flick. They say it’s a whole box of tissues. I just feel so connected when everything looks like it’s going to be the worst and then turns out happy for everyone,” smiled the Page of Cups, staring dreamily into his green tea, looking for leaves clinging to the cup. “I’ll bet you’ll have a great time, Wands-y.”

“Naw, I’m getting a pizza and watching the Dirty Jobs marathon. Me and my remote. After all, we’ve already paid for the cable,” said the Page of Pentacles, patting his solid “table muscle” and sinking solidly into the couch to ready himself for some serious downtime. “I gotta save my energy.”

“You guys are all idiots,” muttered the Page of Swords into his iPhone as he texted some smart people he really liked and put his earbuds in to block out the din of others’ voices. He had heard enough but wasn’t about to tell them anything more than that. He thought about taking the skateboard out but was drawn deeper into the mental gymnastics of the multiple games he played simultaneously in his electronic world, oblivious to his fellow Pages.

All of these Pages are going to grow up to be Big Courts someday, just like we did. When they’re older, they can afford their own places and not have to be bothered with each other. At least the Page of Pentacles can.

Best wishes!

***

All of today's Pages are part of the Tea Tarot, (c) Copyright 2011 Marcia McCord. The Tea Tarot is available for sale on the Tarot Decks page of this blog. Reproduction of images from this deck and others copyrighted by me is forbidden without my prior consent.

My next Backyard Tarot class is Saturday, August 13, 2011, starting at 1 pm Pacific Time in Vallejo, California. Cost per person is $30. Contact me via the email link on the right for more information.

And don't forget there is still time to sneak in a reservation to SF BATS, the Bay Area Tarot Symposium August 27-28, 2011. If you like Tarot, you will love BATS! Can't go both days? You can go one! Check it out!

This Film Is Not Yet Rated

2011-07-29T15:29:00.000-07:00

I’m glad I lived, although it’s possible that some things will never be the same. We had a family reunion, you see. It’s my husband’s family. Their roots are in West Cork, County Cork in Ireland, specifically the magical and wondrous Beara Peninsula and a lot of them have either lived in or are related to people who lived in Butte, Montana. If you know Butte, you’ll know it’s less magical and perhaps more alchemical than Allihies or Castletownbere.

Picture Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

It all started…well, no, that’s not exactly right. But Cousin Margaret (“Mike” to some but she let us know that she’d rather be Margaret since it was, after all, the name given to her at birth) had pointed out to us that she was now the head of the family and that we needed to host a family reunion. This is what happens when you stop in on your relatives during an otherwise innocent vacation to Florida.

You go out on a seashell hunting trip and come back with an assignment to bring people together from all over the world. I was starting to think that creating a scallop shell with a calico pattern out of spit and sand might be easier than organizing the rels. This isn’t to say they aren’t the nicest people in the world. God love them, they are. And through my sister-in-law’s diligent attack on dusty documents and available ancestry sites, there are even more of them than I ever knew. But just getting a large number of people to converge near a single spot for a single weekend has logistics, I mean logistics, people! There’s a lot of stuff to do.

I’m a novice at this. I’ve never hosted a family reunion. Well, not entirely. One time I got most but not all of my brothers and sisters to meet me at my father’s place in Missouri. I made everyone t-shirts, we had dinner, then entertained the residents of the retirement home with our musical renditions of just about anything we could think of. People threw dollar bills from the balconies. My siblings’ children or their children did not attend. It wasn’t that organized. I just thought Daddy would be jazzed about seeing almost everyone. That’s actually the only time my father, those siblings and I had ever been together under one roof, I think, unless everyone was there for my grandmother’s funeral. That’s Grandmother McCord. We aren’t much of a get-together family.

My husband’s family, however, actually like each other most of the time or at least they think they do which is better than most people manage. This is not to say that there wasn’t the danger of police helicopters, rescue transports or a S.W.A.T. Team involved or even just a trip to Urgent Care for stitches. Happily, none of that happened.

I had been to just one of my husband’s family reunions before and it was with the other side of his family. We had planned to go to the reunion in Butte anyway and ended up making it also our honeymoon. To my mind, this shows the pluck of the bride. I love adventure. It was over the 4th of July and we saw the parade, stayed two nights in the Copper King Mansion, a truly cool B&B, and a few nights in the high-rise section of the Finlen Hotel which I adore in a way that’s hard to explain. It was sort of like The Shining without Jack, atmospheric without being oppressive. We also spent a night in a “motor-hotel” cabin in Choteau which was actually much scarier than the Finlen since the owner said we could stay in the cabin, but “don’t open that door.” I didn’t. I regret that, not opening the door, I mean. And it snowed on July 1. See, I thought, silly me, I thought it was summer so I didn’t bring a winter coat. But it was still a wonderful time, the reunion, the Butte history, the horrifying Berkeley Pit and its toxic water and some good antiquing. But I didn’t have anything to do with the organization of the reunion. It was my only template for what people might expect.

John, his sister Tessie and I did try to get an early start. We interviewed the local hotel and found out that the rooms and catering were something like a king’s ransom and decided we could do better with something more affordable for everyone because getting here was going to be hard enough. So we put it together in pieces. We picked a weekend, mostly because it was Tessie's birthday and in the summer when people with children were more likely to travel. We decided that we would have a picnic on the rugby pitch since there’s grass, trees, water, electricity and, well, since we already lease the field, it’s all ours. We sent announcements. I started collecting old pictures of Butte and West Cork. Tessie continued her deep and productive dive into family history, coming up with long lost and delightful Margaret O, a different Margaret from our Florida muse. Margaret O’s wealth of family information, pictures and enthusiasm manifested itself at the reunion with a truly stunning slide presentation about the history and connections and even the story of poor Ann who was lost in a blizzard after work and found a couple days later up on Big Butte, bless her heart. Time passed.

I was kind of hoping that I wasn’t in charge, you see. I know I have this project management background and all but the last thing I wanted was to Be In Charge of other people’s family events, denying them the right to enjoy that privilege. It seemed presumptuous and piggy. So I held back. But I created an event logo and with my husband’s rugby connection, got t-shirts made, green of course because of the Irish thing. Time was drawing near and all of us on the committee, including Cousin David, his lovely and talented wife Wendy and their gorgeous and kind daughter Leah, were getting a little nervous. A lot of focus went into photographs. This is a photo-focused family so photos, especially the old ones that belonged to those now passed and perhaps fallen into obscurity, were a huge topic of interest.

Knowing this photo-fanaticism, I hired my friend Erica Shaw as our official photographer and videographer. You can check out the trailer of her DVD that’s in progress on my Facebook page. But we had logistical things still outstanding, like securing the hall for the non-picnic times, and settling on exactly how we were going to feed people.

It all fell into place, in spite of the nerves, freak-outs, panic attacks, and people who I’m sure will resume talking to each other really soon. The Raymond Victor Band showed up and played music at the picnic. My friend Andrew entertained the kiddies. We flew kites, ate hotdogs, beat a clown piñata into submission (yeah, I hate clowns), had birthday cake, some pizza, a pasta dinner and even cleaned the church hall up before 4 pm the last day. We lived! Ta-DA! Little Marina was crushed that her mighty blows on the piñata were not the winning ones. I’m hoping that’s the extent of the permanent scarring from the event. That, and I don’t think my knees or ankles will ever recover. I think I need more rest.

Truly, though, it could not have been a better 10 of Cups Happy Family Reunion in my opinion. We came, we saw, we talked, we hugged, we laughed, we cried. But most of all, we are NOT doing it again. I mean, I love you people, but it is so someone else’s turn!

Best wishes!

** ** **

And seriously, if you want a fabulous event memory, contact Erica Shaw: http://www.photographyandmediabyerica.com/information/Welcome_Page.html

Legacy

2011-07-20T16:26:00.000-07:00

Since my husband and I hosted his family's reunion last weekend together with his sister and their cousin, I'm exhausted but still thinking about family ties. I do, of course, plan to write about the family reunion, keeping with the tradition in blogging, if there is such a thing, that no topic is safe from discussion via a blog. However, until I can gather my wits...or was it just the one wit? Until I can gather myself back together, this is a reprinted column previously published in Aleesha Stephenson's lovely Timeless Spirit eMagazine, November 2010. I hope, if you have not already, you will take advantage of the free subscription.

Mom married late in life and had my brother and me eleven months apart when she was 41 and 42 before there were a lot of special medical processes to assist with late in life babies. She was overjoyed to have children. It was her lifelong dream. She had tremendous insecurities about her own looks and attractiveness, so two happy babies with big blue eyes were a miracle to her.

It didn’t matter that I didn’t have hair for a year or so; she taped bows to my head until my first wispy, then thick blonde hair grew in. She marveled that I spoke complete sentences at 9 months then realized the downside of an introvert mother raising an extravert child.

“The reason you talk in your sleep,” she explained, “is that you just didn’t get everything said during the day.” Most of the time, she adjusted as much as she could to having a chatterbox child. She was curious and eager about childhood mental development. One of my earliest memories is sitting in my high chair in the kitchen telling “Banana Stories” with her.

“If I had three bananas,” she held up her fingers and drew bananas in yellow chalk on our chalkboard on the kitchen wall, “and you ate one of them, how many bananas would I have?” I giggled uncontrollably at the thought of the delicious naughtiness of a possibly purloined banana and answered. I never tired of Banana Stories or the stories of her childhood. I became her confidante, her sounding board and sometimes her only friend.

Over time I realized my mother, despite her delight in her children, was almost constantly depressed. She held onto what was painful in her life like clutching a knife at the blade or gripping broken glass. I knew the stories of her pain so well that it was almost like being there. Her first grade teacher made fun of her drawing of a 4-legged bird. Her mother always dressed her sister in blue dresses and she got brown ones. Her college professor held a tuning fork to her head to prove it was a vacuum. She was flashed on a train. She was humiliated by her parents, her sister, her teachers, her first boyfriend, her friends, her friends’ families, her bosses.

Picture Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

Of course, she persisted in life. She had a journalism degree from a respected university. She was a reporter and an editor. She was a WAVE and worked at decoding secret messages. She was a wiz at Blackjack. She started her own business as an antique dealer. She loved baseball.

She told me in a matter-of-fact voice more than once that the more intelligent you are, the more suicide seems like a good option. The smarter you are, the more you realize how hopeless everything is, she explained.

Even as a small child, alarms, healthy alarms went off in my head when she would say this. She had praised me for my intelligence, rewarded me for it. I wanted to be smart. It was fun, fun being me. I wanted her praise. But I did not want to die. My mother had an encyclopedic knowledge of the world and voracious urge to learn more. She explained that the requirement for being a truly good journalist was to know everything. And I watched her every time she posited the correlation between intelligence and suicide, Chatty Cathy made silent at these times.

Picture Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

Must I choose between being stupid and alive v. being intelligent and dead? And of course, was she going to succumb to her idea of the ultimate intelligence? Was she the realization of the Queen of Swords reversed: bitter, sad, so focused on the negative, denying her own empowerment, hopeless, angry, constantly disappointed with herself and the rest of the world? Was she the embodiment of the 8 of Swords, the limitations of her own thinking imprisoning her? Was she also the 5 of Pentacles, always feeling on the outside, rejecting all comfort of religion with her professions of agnosticism, citing her favorite Biblical moment identifying with Doubting Thomas?

You never know the gifts you will give others, especially your children. In spite of her enduring and passionate negativity she had given me a few gifts, one consciously. “Just remember,” she told me, “Nothing, nothing diminishes you.” I don’t know exactly where this ray of hope came from within her. Perhaps she, like any ferociously protective mother, sought to sacrifice herself to her demons but save me.

Picture Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

An in her terrible Sphinx riddle connecting intelligence to suicide, she gave me another gift, unwittingly. She cemented my identity as separate from hers. I could not agree with her. I realized the limitations of logic, especially hers. I could not be diminished by her depression. I could not be dragged down into the hell of her sadness. Sensitive as I was, aware of spirit as I was, I was given such an important gift. I was able to separate myself from those near me.

Being a tarot reader, I hear and sense some amazingly wonderful things but also some horrors beyond the most frightening movies or books. Some tarot readers ask each other, “How do you separate yourself from your sitters or from a reading? How do you keep from falling in a hole with them?” Even if they survived an “identity crisis” in childhood like I did, I recommend exercises to maintain sense of self.

Take time away. Do something linear and tactile like wash the car, walk the dog, pull weeds. Meditate. Be conscious of your own boundaries and revel in them. They distinguish you, in more than one sense of the word. Soon, the paradox we live in, of being all connected, yet all separate in this life will settle in comfortably. We are spirit and matter. Both are important.

You’ll find the gift, the legacy of learning from others’ lives. Nothing diminishes you, either.

Best wishes.

A Simple Wedding

2011-07-07T14:22:00.000-07:00

A friend of ours is getting married this weekend. Her Facebook profile picture looks like a case of high blood pressure and she’s young, too. She wants a simple wedding.

Tea Tarot
(c) Copyright 2011 Marcia McCord

I really like the guy she plans to marry. He seems a hardy sort, the kind of guy who could tough it out with an enthusiastic, talented, opinionated, close-knit crowd like her family. When she started bringing him around, I thought, OK, that’s the one. It wasn’t immediately a sure thing and to be fair, I didn’t read any cards about it. I just looked at him and felt he had staying power. It helps that he’s cute as a bug, too. OK, cute as a big bug. Wait, that doesn’t sound right either. Anyway, the guy is nice looking, real looking, real sounding. He hung in there. Yup, staying power.

The bride and her sister aren’t quite like Night and Day opposites. They are more like Twilight and Dawn. They both have a little Show Biz in their blood although the bride is said to be “a little shy.” Shy is an interesting term. She certainly has her own opinions and her own likes and dislikes. She dances flamenco. She’s no doormat. She just isn’t loud. She’s like Twilight when the heat of the day cools a bit and the night birds call.

I’m something of a shirt-tail relative. The bride’s family, especially the bride’s grandmother just adores my husband for all the right reasons. They have been sweet to me since I met him and I really enjoy their company. So we get to be half-family of the bride. It’s really an honor.

Naturally when the Aunt of the Bride asked us if we would help make the wedding decorations, we said yes. If there’s something I can do to make the simple wedding happen, I’m thrilled to. I had a simple wedding. At least, I think so. That day happened so fast and I was so grateful for my friends and family. But I also know what it’s like to have your wedding start out simple. Then stuff happens.

My husband and I decided to get married one evening about 2 am one June 2. Sounds romantic, doesn’t it? I was on midnight production problem call. My team was working to fix it and preferred to suffer through it with them rather than leave them feeling alone. Computer problems can be like that. Since we were up anyway and since John was hearing only my half of the conversation, our own mumbles drifted and we agreed we would marry.

The next morning, I made sure I hadn’t been dreaming and excitedly starting The Planning Phase. Simple. Simple was what we wanted.

“Wouldn’t it be cool,” I suggested, “if we had the ceremony on the ferry in October?” We had met on the ferry and it sounded like such fun.

John hesitated.

“Seriously,” he squinted, “how long to you want to be nervous? I was thinking something like the end of this month.” So that’s what we did. We put a wedding together in 24 days. I made lists. Date, determined by the first opening at the Court House. Rings, special order Celtic knots from Jewelry by Da’oud whose work I had seen at the Renaissance Faire a while back. Dress. Rats. Gotta get a dress.

“C’mon, sweetie, we’re going to buy a dress!” John really likes to participate in the whole process and I wasn’t about to leave him out of the dress thing. We went to Nordstrom because, well, because John wanted to. They had sale racks.

“Our goal here today,” I announced, “is to find a dress that will do. Not the Barbie’s Dream Wedding dress. Not the perfect dress. Not even a dress that could be worn to something else. Just a dress that will do.” John grumbled in agreement, not convinced of my speed-shopping concept. There it was, on the sale rack, $67, the will-do dress.

“This means,” I giggled, “that the bride’s colors are salmon and, Honey, what color purple would that be? Well, anyway, salmon and cream for the background.” One pair of cream color pumps from the Nordy’s sale rack completed the ensemble. Dress, check!

Cake. Well, our friend Barbara wanted to be in charge of the cake. Fine, I thought, as long as she doesn’t put pornography on it. She had a vision of Irish shamrocks cascading down a couple of tiers and had a heck of a time with her limited knowledge of Spanish explaining that to the Mexican bakery nearby. Flores verdes? They thought she had lost her mind.

Flowers. OK, I went small on the flowers too, a wrist corsage for me. Our friend Rosie wanted to do the flowers for the reception. She used to be a florist until she got an extreme allergy to being a florist. I knew she’d do a nice job for the tables.

Reception! Eeek! John wanted to do the reception. We liked our friend’s little restaurant in a less traveled section of town and so we went with an afternoon dinner and some cases of wine.

The guest list grew. And grew. As it turns out, we had scheduled our wedding the day before John’s cousin’s lovely daughter was to be married. So most of his relatives were in town. It was too short notice for my best friend in Missouri to fly out or most of my relatives, but my father and step-mom were coming. Daddy wanted to know what I wanted for a wedding present.

“Just wear your Colonel’s uniform for me,” I said. I had had a long, long history with my family never showing up for any of my rites of passage. Just having him there and showing off his Air Force colors was going to be the biggest treat for me. I could hear him blush all the way from Missouri.

The rings didn’t show up until just after 10 AM the day of the wedding; Plan B had been the gumball machine at the 7-11. I was a wreck but they fit perfectly. We drove to Fairfield. My friends came. The wind blew. People took pictures. We drove to the restaurant. We ate. The wedding guests helped because the extra wait staff never showed up. Cousin Margaret kept hitting her glass with a spoon. We ran out of wine. I think. The cake had pigs on it, a bride and groom pig and a little flying cupid pig overhead because Barbara thought John would get married, “When pigs fly.”

“I never said that,” John muttered. We got a lot of flying pig presents.

Everyone went back to our backyard for the party after the party. We took my Dad and step-mom to their hotel. It was 7 PM and I was completely exhausted. I announced my retreat. This pig had flown.

John followed immediately thereafter. We slept like logs, like tourists, like the dead. We lost the gift certificate to Chez Panisse. We realized we had not invited some key people to the event and forever regret that. We got up at 5 AM to take my father and step-mom back to the airport. We went to David’s daughter’s wedding the next day, then flew to Montana for John’s family reunion for our honeymoon, something we had planned to attend anyway.

As I was folding, tying and fluffing paper flowers for the wedding this weekend, I thought about the 4 of Wands. No wedding is simple, no matter what we where-do-I-sign brides wish for. At some point, though, it becomes a point of stability and it all comes together somehow.

“I think I’ll wear purple,” I mused, tying yet another paper flower to the white ribbon, laughing at my own “simple” wedding years ago and happy being the zany half-aunt of the bride.

Best wishes, Erin. I hope you dance.

The Ace Up My Sleeve

2011-07-01T12:02:00.000-07:00

I would say that I never thought I would ever be laid off, but even at the time I knew better. The signals were all over the company, all over the cards. I could smell it.

Now I'm not here to talk about specifics. For one thing, the terms of the agreement I signed in order to receive my very generous, as they go, severance package make it clear that I don't want to talk about the specifics. I was part of several waves of layoffs that over the years has restructured that company into something I probably would not recognize now. That's actually a relief. I had knowledge at the time of some of the inner workings and vulnerabilities that was vital to doing a good job while I had it but a dreadful burden to carry when I was let go. I harbored a secret pleasure that I wasn't in the first wave, cold comfort.

I was, of course, emotionally devastated anyway. Some of my team members who had been dedicated co-workers and sincere friends stood with me on the curb that day while I waited, tears streaming down my face, silent, desolate, hoping my husband would get there quickly so the awfulness of that moment could pass.

I think my friends were not sure I was going to get past it. It was touch and go. I was utterly focused on getting through it, past it and on to the next job. The trouble was that when hundreds of peers whose resumes are also pretty good were laid off at the same time, the local market was flooded with people who did essentially what I did if you don't look too closely at the details. It was a time when I had to reinvent myself and highlight what difference I could bring to a potential employer. I was willing to do what it took to get that new job.

First and foremost, I had to be re-convinced I had something special to give. I had worked hard to get a job that I loved as much as the one I lost. I had put myself through school to get a second college degree while still working a full time job. I had turned myself from a clerical drone into a programmer, then a database analyst, then manager and director with a credenza full of awards for business appreciation, customer focus and technology peer recognition. And then, it was over. It must have been my fault, something I did, something I didn't do. It couldn't have been the wheel of misfortune turning to the "I have no reign" position. It couldn't have been a volatile economy affecting a volatile business. It couldn't have been something like human error on a large scale. I was the cause of my crisis. Right.

My head was clear enough to realize that I needed help and one of the best benefits of my package was employment counseling. My work was cut out for me. I had to remake myself from the ground up. It wasn't just a resume refresher. It was everything, the wardrobe, the career goal, the boundaries of what I would give up and what I would not. It was gaining a perspective on the job market, how well I matched what people wanted and what I needed to do to adjust so I was not just a match but the best match. No matter what the cause of my crisis really was, I had to be the cause of my recovery.

Victorian Trade Card Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

I was relentless, 16 hours a day for months while the money dribbled away. Finally, after 10 months, when the money had just run out, I found the Ace of Pentacles. I got a job offer. I wasn't second best. I was the one they wanted. It was real. Many things made it less than ideal. The money was less than I had made before I was laid off. But it was better than $0! It wasn't a management job, but I had come to realize that I didn't want that. I wanted to solve problems that were hard for other people. The biggest compromise was that it was 400 miles from my home. But I could make it work and make my house payments. Slowly, things were getting better, at a pace only pentacles could appreciate.

It's been a long road, but that was years ago now. I was digging through a box to untangle a couple of chains and found 4 of my "Excellence in Service" pins, the only keepsakes remaining from that previous job. It was a little like reading love letters I had written to someone long ago, someone who didn't love me, someone I no longer loved. I loved the excellent service I had given and finally felt that the source of that good feeling was within me. It wasn't at a street address in the financial district in any city. That was the ace up my sleeve I had lost, momentarily.

The Ace of Pentacles is the new start of something tangible. It moves more slowly than "fire sign" people like me would like. It stays longer than you would expect. It is not just the search for wealth or chasing a buck, although, if you make it that way, it can be that shallow. It can be that deep too when it is the basis for stability, health and general well-being. No matter how high your ideals, how spiritual your path, how crisp your intelligence, how noble your goals, you have to cover the basics one way or another. The pursuit of money to the exclusion of all else, that's shallow. Reinventing yourself, regrounding, starting over, starting a new job, career, relationship, life, that's hard. Hard, but not shallow. Hard, but even if it goes slowly, suffers setbacks, gives you nightmares in the daytime, sticking with it feels like winning the prize you get to keep.

Best wishes.

Summer Sun

2011-06-23T15:43:00.000-07:00

It’s officially summer and it has been too darned hot in the San Francisco area. Now I know all you sun worshippers have been waiting impatiently for the warm weather but some of us delicate flowers prefer the coolth to the warmth or if you ask me, the hotth. (It’s my blog and I can make up words if I want to, right?)

What better card in the Tarot deck to show us summer in all its glory than The Sun? Who wouldn’t want to feel like a happy toddler with a pony in a flower garden and play all day? Me, that’s who. OK, happy, check. Toddler, check. Pony, as long as it doesn’t stand on my feet, check. Flower garden, check. Ah, but check the wardrobe on our happy sweetums. That’s going to burn for sure.

I know about sunburn. I grew up half convinced that it was me in that Coppertone ad and not Jodie Foster. I had a black dog. I went to the beach. I scorched. Add sand in your britches and scream all night. Nothing like trying to peel out of a swimsuit that feels like wet sandpaper over boils and blisters at the end of a perfect day!

And yet the beach remains my favorite place, rain or shine, summer or winter. I love the smell, the sound, the aquatic life, the differences between soft sand and hard sand, the way you sink into hard sand with each little wave. I love seashells and fish. I love shorebirds running up and down the tides, playing tag with the waves, digging for critters. I love watching a storm cross the Gulf of Mexico and cloud-to-cloud lightning, all before it hits the beach. I love the phosphorescent sparkle at night, the growing hum in the morning, the blazing glare of noon, the cooling breeze of evening. I love losing track of time, except by the tides and the sun. But I hate sunburn.

Of course, you don’t really need to be at the beach for sunburn. One humdinger of a sunburn peeled not once but twice. I was babysitting two semi-angelic little boys, which is pretty good if you think about it, out on their deck under the trees on a breezy afternoon, reading a good book and watching the little darlings romp in the back yard. Like so many sunburns, I didn’t realize I was having an “off-color” experience until the day was over. Then I had the luxury of regretting my folly for days.

My first California sunburn came after a lovely hike on Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County to enjoy outdoor theatre at the Mountain Play. The cool breeze and dappled sunlight through the trees were so inviting. Liar, liar, pants on fire! I don’t remember the play at all. I remember later that night, rolling over in bed at 2 AM, gently, ever so gently, hoping my blistering arm would not fall off in the process of rubbing against high-count cotton sheets that were suddenly as rough as a country road.

“Stop, kitty,” I whined weakly, pitifully. The kitty must be having a heck of a good scratch to make the bed move that vigorously. Any movement at all was agony and I vowed never to leave the house again, knowing I would break my vows. The kitty had no mercy for me. The bed moved more violently.

Ka-boom! A noise like a semi-tractor-trailer hitting the house sent the bed and all occupants an inch off the floor. I sat up.

“What’s happening?” I bellowed in my best horror queen voice which must have echoed off the hills north of Sonoma where I lived. It was an earthquake, a shallow one, my very first in California. Its epicenter was reported the next day as being “in a remote area in the Napa Valley.”

“Remote, heck!” I said in disgust, still nursing my burns which surely must be third degree especially after having been ground down by the sheets. “It was under my house!” It took me an entire week to find the two things that tipped over.

Like a lot of people I grew up with, I still have a sneaking suspicion that a little sun exposure gives your skin a healthy glow. I love those sunshiny freckles across their cute little noses. I had only a few freckles but I was sort of hoping they would merge and become a tan someday. My swords-y logical self knows better, knows the dangers of sun exposure in a family with Irish roots. But there are still some fond memories of trying to get an all-over tan in New Mexico one summer without much success due to probably appropriate modesty. And one summer I spent so much time out on Crab Orchard Lake in my friend’s boat in my favorite chocolate brown bikini (this was a long time ago, remember) that my long hair bleached palest blonde, my tan actually lasted a month into the fall semester at college and I developed a new sign of the sun’s unfriendly effects: Skunk hair.

If you’ve never had skunk hair, consider yourself lucky. That darker, normal stripe close to my head was the final proof I needed to stay out of the sun. It wasn’t considered fashionable when I developed my skunk hair. I had put a lot of time into growing it out past my waist, trimming those split ends, giving up on any hope of a wave or a curl. I caved. I became bottle-blonde although my original color isn’t that far from the bottle. It’s just that now, after so many years, I’m not sure what color my hair is. There’s this funny pale stripe from ear to ear across the top of my head someone once called the Crown of Wisdom. OK, that's new. I generally estimate that my “real” hair color is somewhere between “mouse” and “mold,” a sort of greenish-dust bunny color not found in interior paint palettes. I guess the sun’s bad effects saved me from a life of mouse and mold or something. And it’s given me the perfect excuse for saying silly things with the thought that I resemble that remark.

Skin cancer and overexposure to the sun isn’t funny though. I have friends who have lost family to melanoma. My own father thought he could treat his own skin cancer with athlete foot’s powder. After about ten years of that, he went to the doctor, had surgery including a fairly painful skin graft. It was something that could have been avoided with early treatment or wearing the right protection from the sun. (Note to self: Skin cancer is not the same as athlete's foot.)

For Summer Solstice time, the Sun rules. But when you ride that pony around in the garden, bring your sunscreen and hat along. Your life is longer than a day so make your summer SPF-y.

Best wishes.

Pursuit of Happine$$

2011-06-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

The bird feeders just fell with a crash. The pole they were on wasn’t strong enough to hold the full load of bird seed, 8 finches, and a lovely old copper bucket with squirrel treats. Gotta get a new pole. My husband is delighted with a new project especially if it has the slightest hint of an engineering or design aspect to it. In the meantime, my critter watch is on hold.

When we get it figured out though, I have some new fruit-and-nut treats from Amazon that just arrived and my husband found a new mix at the feed store that the squirrels are bound to love. We think we’ve arrived at the perfect mix for our finches. So we have supply and demand; we just need delivery and fulfillment.

I was thinking that’s like a lot of things we have here in my comfortable western world, lots of supply really and certainly a lot of demand. My country based a lot of what it’s about on an individual’s rights, especially to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In our ever-abbreviating world, I sense we often leave out a couple of words in that phrase, specifically, “pursuit of.”

Is that what makes us Ugly Americans? That we forget that we have the right to pursue happiness rather than the right to happiness? We skipped a couple of words and the concept of striving and landed on the goal immediately? If we have a “right” to happiness, do some have that right and not others? Are some more deserving than others because they are able or young? Or because they have worked long and hard for it? Or because someone told them they were better than other people because of accident of birth? Is happiness limited? Is the pursuit meant to be restricted?

We get a lot of ideas about what “happy” means from our childhood of course. Chocolate does it for some of my friends, not a bad definition as they go. One of my closest friends in high school figured out that happiness meant a happy home and family, close loving ties, without harsh requirements for Ivy League connections or political aspirations. He has a bunch of kids, an unfashionable job seldom the topic of TV dramas and an address not aspired to by the rich and famous. But he figured out what happiness means to him. He pursued it. It wasn’t easy. It still isn’t. But he is my idea of the best success I always wished for him. His own family while he was growing up were people too concerned with appearances, achievement and monetary success and not enough for just plain love and acceptance. They could never set aside their worldly pursuits to allow a crack in the armor, to let a little humanity in. They would reject their own child because his goals were not their goals. I knew them. I did not like them. I did not like how they treated him, even if he was just a rebellious teenager, too clever by half.

I’m not sure my friend defines himself as successful because we are taught the measures of success here as a dollars and cents thing, as a material possessions thing. Oh, we teach other things, to be sure. But the evidence we see so often is the brute’s golden rule: Them’s that’s gots the gold makes the rules. There is some big ugly truth to it. Depending on whether you feel a greater affinity with the Rich and Power-wielding or the Poor and Kind, you tend toward one extreme or another. And most of us hope to be somewhere in the middle, making enough money, whatever that is, and being human enough, whatever that is.

Back a few years ago when Disco was still being played on the sound systems at Happy Hour, I worked for one of the larger telephone companies. I was new in town, newly divorced, newly transferred to the Home Office, new all over almost like being reborn. I had the chance to concentrate, finally, on what I wanted to be when I grew up. Yes, I knew I was a little older than most people making those decisions. I joked that I was going to be “this old this year anyway” and there was some advantage to having made some mistakes to help put the next steps into a realistic context. I made the decision to get another college degree.

It was hard, one of the hardest things I had ever had to do. But my idea of happiness was to “make it” on my own without being alone. I wasn’t pursuing prestige or power or the “M.R.S.” degree people joke about.

Like my friend, it had a lot to do with the traumas of childhood and family dynamics. My parents fought about money and hopelessness and helplessness, depression and abandonment, lack of personal choice. I saw they were also limited by their ideas of what they could do about it. I wanted to learn from that.

In the misunderstanding of the Pursuit of Happiness, some people might think that this kind of happiness, a kind of stability, should be given to them as a right. Again, that leaves out the important words, “pursuit of.” I had the right to make the most of my talents and opportunities, to work days and go to school nights around the clock for three years. I had opportunities to quit, too, and lots of pressure from peers. I was too old (late twenties), I was working too hard, I was burning my candle at both ends, good Aries that I am, I was making the other clerks at the telephone company look bad, and finally I was being selfish. I ignored it all and kept going, through parking tickets and derisive teasing from teachers and co-workers. I kept going, knowing that my mother was dying of cancer and knowing that I could not stop that. I wanted a better life. I wanted to Pursue Happiness.

The Knight of Pentacles is the tarot card that represents that dogged pursuit of the material world. Even I frown at the Knight of Pentacles because focusing too much on the material world creates awful human dynamics, like my friend’s family who valued only that his older brother was going to Yale or that his father was a leader in his political party. Focusing on that Pentacle can cause you to lose your soul. But ignoring it can do the same.

Like the Knight of Pentacles, I had the right here in this land that’s known for freedom to try to make things better, not the right for things to be better. I had the right to try because I was able. The time was right. I could figure out how to make it work. I could select a field that, unlike a B. A. in English, was more marketable and likely to get me a job where I could sustain myself without having to be dependent on someone else’s income: My idea of happiness.

It worked. I’ve had the opportunity to pursue financial stability, an opportunity few women in the world get, despite all our progress as a people. I had the opportunity to work so hard that I thought I would fall over, to be laid off in tough economic times and to recreate myself to find another job. My version of happiness broke up a date once with one guy sputtering in shock and dismay after learning about me, “But, you don’t need a man!” I explained patiently, fruitlessly, that I wanted a relationship where I wanted my partner. I wanted to marry for love, not necessity. My Knight of Pentacles may have his hand on the prize. His head and heart and soul are then free to be where they will go.

Best wishes.

Choices, Choices

2011-06-08T21:56:00.000-07:00

The helicopter has stopped circling my neighborhood so I’m assuming that whatever or whoever it was, they weren’t in my yard and it wasn’t my fault. After twenty-some years of living in California in a moderately densely populated area, I still have trouble getting used to the fact that there might be crime against person or property that would come anywhere near me. I’m like a lot of people that way.

I’m convinced some towns here promote their own reputation for being a scary place to live, if only to keep the housing prices low enough to be entry level for people from the Middle. My town has a bit of a reputation. I happen to live in the most racially diverse county around and in my town no one ethnic population is actually the majority. I know there are some people who would be horrified by that. I like it. I’ve lived in other places. I liked them too, truth be told, but they had their pluses and minuses.

We’ve had a bit of the “ick” factor in the news lately from places where people aren’t expecting people to dance on the tables and shoot out the lights like they expect in my town. Seriously, the economy has been down here for a while that if you can find a bar with tables and lights and the table is sturdy enough for you to dance on it, I say go for it. Most everyone here is trying to get by.

But the news does make you ask yourself the same question you might ask of junior high kids when you already know the answer, “What were they thinking?” What made it seem like a good idea to take photos like that and send them to, well, to anyone? There was a funny Facebook video I ran across yesterday where a score of attractive women had created a sort of public service announcement making it clear, if it weren’t already, that we’ve seen enough photos like that. I am aware there’s a certain market for things like that. Most women I know would actually be more impressed by men who pick up their discarded underwear, don’t splash, know where things are in a refrigerator and who have the good grace to say that you look lovely in that outfit and that your gorgeous friend would not. My husband fulfills most of these and has never sent me a photo that I wouldn’t show my mom. I’m talking my mom here. Your mom may be different but mine had a pretty narrow definition of what was acceptable behavior in public and in private, actually a little too narrow for my taste, but it’s a pretty good rule.

But seriously, Dude, what were you thinking? Like the junior high kids, nothing at all? Without investigating further because, well, because I may not really want to know, I prefer to accept the “nothing at all” answer and move on, kind of like that helicopter did.

Certainly I’m not above making stupid choices myself. Flashing back to my first wedding, if some small voice had whispered, “Run,” while I was walking up the steps to the church that summer day, I would have. I should have, as it turns out. I did get a really great best friend out of the deal, so it wasn’t a total loss.

And then there was a particular drive from one well-known spot in a Middle State to a lesser known spot in that Middle State where, on a dare, I drove without benefit of wardrobe. I didn’t get caught. Or at least I didn’t actually suffer any consequences other than feeling like an idiot and enjoying it a little. I am thrilled, however, that telephones were not mobile then and did not have cameras and that videos were never viral in that decade. Some decades have their advantages over others. And I have no political aspirations either. I’m glad to have survived most of my own foolishness; not everyone does. And remember, that was pre-California.

Also pre-California, however, was the time I had my wallet stolen by two traveling Bible salesmen from Texas. Nope, that’s just stuff you can’t make up. Yup, they caught them, just one town over about to enjoy a sandwich at a local motel restaurant. Yup, the younger man was convicted of using my credit card to buy gas and my driver’s license as identification. He was blond but seriously the resemblance ended there. They couldn’t arrest or convict his “mentor,” the older Bible salesman who talked him into it. Apparently the really big mistake was the forgery part. Law is funny that way. I just wish they hadn’t thrown out my photos.

But also pre-California were the two muggings I endured, a few assaults on dates that the times would have chalked up to “missed signals” as in what-part-of-no-do-you-not-understand and sadly child abuse at the hands of a family friend. These incidents resulted in no more dire consequences than my sliding scale of irritated-to-horrified. These were all in the “safe” places where people live and send stupid photos on their cell phones.

It boils down to no matter where you are, what neighborhood, how safe you think you are, how secure, how trusting or vigilant, how amused or disgusted, you have choices. If you’re having trouble deciding whether drugging yourself or your friend is a good idea, if you’re having trouble deciding whether you should take care of your child or get high, if you’re having trouble figuring out whether to go to college or join a gang, if you are having trouble figuring out whether the wallet you just found in a theater seat should be returned to its owner empty or full, these are all 7 of Cups things. You have choices. You may not realize it, but you have lots of choices. Even if you are the victim of a bad situation or a crime, you have choices and sometimes the outcomes are not going to be clear.

For instance, say your department at work has a structural reorganization and you are unhappy with the way things turned out. You still have a job, but it’s not the job you used to have or hoped you would have. Something about it feels wrong. Maybe you don’t know your new boss. Maybe worse, you do. Maybe nothing looks clear to you and when you talk to the new regime, they don’t seem very clear either. You have choices.

Oh, sure, you can bail out. That’s an obvious one. But in these “Be happy you have a job,” days that might not be the best approach unless you like living in a culvert or an old car. You can deny that anything at all happened, but that’s not going to serve you either. Something did change after all.

If you are presented with what looks like chaotic circumstances, you can choose to be angry, sad, depressed. You can broadcast your unhappiness to the world or share it with just a few. You can decide to be overwhelmed by chaos and wait for someone to rescue you or you can view chaos as an opportunity to start over, redefine everything and make things work better than before.

Sure, not all of our choices are even that easy. Sometimes we have to pick between two awful situations. And maybe that’s the most important time to choose what’s positive, even if it’s just the acknowledgement that you had a choice at all. At least you’ll know what you were thinking.

Best wishes!

Underwear: Revenge of the Lycra

2011-06-01T12:42:00.000-07:00

I found myself watching one of the Underworld movies while the hubby went to check on the rugby team and the pitch. He gets a little agitated when I watch scary stuff. Sometimes it's his concern over nightmares. He can have some humdingers. Sometimes it's the believability factor. It reminds me of my brother when we were little. I would thrill to One Step Beyond just as long as my older brother could take it. Then he would turn the television off to my protests and my mother, good mom that she was, backed him up saying no one needs any more nightmares. Very disappointing at the time. No 9 of Swords for me, nightmares, then waking up from nightmares. If I had nightmares, they happened during my waking hours.

It did spark my interest in finding good scary stories though.

A little later when my brother was less prone to nightmares and entirely too proud to turn off the television, we both loved Rod Serling's Night Gallery. He liked "The Girl With the Hungry Eyes." I liked that one, plus one starring Richard Thomas called "The Sins of the Fathers/You Can't Get Help Like That Anymore." There was something about customs from a time untouched by television or cell phones or even indoor plumbing that was fascinating, even if it was fictional. My favorite, though, was "Silent Snow, Secret Snow."

I wasn't sure then why I liked it so much. It was more eerie than anything else. There were no Kate Beckinsales with tossled hair and color-changing eyes. There were no ghosts to speak of, no monsters, no otherworldly dripping jaws smiling and sniffing while your hero perspired in fear and determination. There were no cute dragons or gremlins, dry or wet. There were no fangs or claws, no decapitations or suddenly animated inanimate objects. But it was scary to me, scary and delightful.

There was just a little boy whose fighting, bickering, battling parents were terribly concerned because the little boy would not wake up. He drifted in and out of consciousness, in and out of reality, preferring the quiet and cold of the snow to life on his parents' battlefield. The snow was so ordinary and yet so seductive. The frightening part was that it was so ordinary and to me so familiar.

I realized that the scary stories I liked the best were those where nearly everything was normal. Even my favorite non-scary stories were those where nearly everything was normal. I loved Edward Eager's Half Magic, so much so that I still own at least two copies of the childrens' book today. The children had a normal life, but not quite; they found a nickel that wasn't exactly a nickel and made wishes that sort of came true. Halfway. And I loved the Barbara Sleigh Carbonel series, two children and a cat whose language they could understand with just a drop of magic.

Over the top movies with a gorefest never appealed to me. My apologies to Freddy and Jason, but they just never were my cup of scream. And I generally preferred reading to movies anyway. If I wanted over the top stuff, all I had to do was dip a toe into H. P. Lovecraft's New England. Now something about Howard himself wasn't quite right either, but he was deliciously weird, a guy who stayed up all night and lived with his aunts, a guy who married another author and then agreed they should continue their relationship "by correspondence." We even have a cat toy I call Baby Cthulu for its combination of cute and, well, Lovecraftian yumminess. Gotta love that Howard. I figured if he wrote it, I "Dun-read-it." I even wanted to do post-graduate studies on Lovecraft but my English department wouldn't go for it. Such is the stuff of turning points in a life.

It's not that I can't be scared. I can. Reading Blatty's The Exorcist I had a case of goosebumps that would have impressed James Michener's Onkor the Goose in Chesapeake. By the time I saw the movie, either all my friends who wanted to see it had done so already and those who hadn't didn't want to. So I went by myself. I sat in the back row. Oh, I remember the stories of people running screaming from the theatres during the movie. Nope, not me. There were only a few of us there that afternoon and I sat in the back and laughed. Yeah, that was me. And I apologize to the other eight people at the movie that day wherever they are. The pea soup scene was especially funny because, well, because it wasn't ordinary enough for me.

I know everyone loves that darling little girl saying, "They're back!" in Poltergeist, but my favorite scene was the steak scooting across the counter. Aside from being sadly misnamed as a movie for the most part, I was a little disappointed in the goofiness of the medium (although she was cute) and most disappointed at the depiction of the ghosts. Seriously, just seeing something or someone that isn't supposed to be there is scary. They don't have to make them oozy skeletons. What if they had strollers and wore hats with flowers and carried umbrellas and woke you up while you were trying to get a decent night's sleep just to talk? What if Super 8 were just a scary motel with bedbugs or amorous neighbors instead of alien technology? What if the bugs started talking to you or worse, the sweethearts next door started calling your name? OK, that's scary.

One of my favorite ghost movies is Ghost Story where people connected to the callous treatment of someone they supposedly cared for suddenly became the victims of a very purposeful haunting. Normal stuff becomes abnormal. People start remembering things they wish they had forgotten. What first seems to be the "bad" ghost becomes a sympathetic character whose actions are at least understandable, well, until things go a step too far. Then you're glad to switch your loyalty back to the hero.

So for one of my very first comparative literature papers in college, while I had the chance to pick what I wanted to read instead of what they wanted me to read, I wrote about Conrad Aiken's Silent Snow, Secret Snow and one of his lesser known stories, comparing them. Both concern the wish of the child to escape his parents' terrible fighting, but while the child chooses escape in Snow, he chooses to move past this trauma and become his own person in the other story. I could relate. And I realized what was frightening about Snow was that the child chose to bury himself in his own mind, to become lost in the snow. Well, that paper got my teacher's attention and it wasn't to send me to therapy, thank goodness.

I'm older and wiser now. The things that scare me are wardrobe failures and departmental reorganizations. They are almost normal. Almost.

OK, so the really scary part is while I was writing this, the University where I wrote that paper on Conrad Aiken called me up as one of the alumni and asked me if I wanted to donate money to their English department. I laughed and told the student that when I went there, there was no such thing as an English department there. It was engineering only and I could only barely declare a major in English. Why, oh, why did my parents think that having me living at home while trying to major in English at an engineering university was "safer" than letting me go up the road to the next university where there was actually a college of liberal arts?

"So you're a student there," I tortured my caller, turning his interruption into my entertainment. "What's your major?"

"Electrical engineering," he said tentatively. It's not so much fun when I pry into your life, is it?

"Ah, not English. But Double-E is OK, right? You guys are usually pretty smart but not as swell-headed as the Chem Engins or the Ceramics." He snickered. So after determining that I was more interested in donating to the university radio station where I spent most of my free time while attending that respected hall of learning, we bid fond adieu.

I laughed. Coincidence, right?

Best wishes.

Mercy

2011-05-27T09:43:00.000-07:00

“Your Imperial Highness,” I begin, my throat closing in anxiety and my voice hitting a couple of octaves above my normal speaking notes. I breathe deeply, lower my head and clear my throat.

“Your Imperial Highness,” I address the Empress in something closer to my usual speaking voice, “I have come here today to ask for mercy. It’s the Law of Gravity. I … I need a personal exemption.”

The Empress smiles fondly at me. I wonder how many of these harebrained requests she gets a year. She adjusts a pillow for greater comfort.

“Haven’t you come to the wrong place, child?” she murmurs. “Justice is down the hall.”

“No, Mum,” she prefers her loved ones to call her Mum, “no, Mum, I have had Justice’s ruling. It is your Mercy I seek.”

“Tell us about your plea, then.”

“Thank you, Mum,” I breathe my relief in just being heard. “It started a long time ago for me.”

***

A three-year-old with cornsilk hair stands on her tricycle, trying to see over the picket fence into the yard next door. It is warm and dusty in the Florida afternoon, a good time to be in the shade.

“Can you come and play? Can someone come and play?” she calls over the fence in invitation.

She is persistent, a lifelong trait as it turns out. She wants the neighbors to like her. She wants them to be friendly and to play. She is innovative. She cannot see over the fence without her tricycle, a handy step-ladder. She can see the neighbors in their house, looking at her and smiling. They don’t come out. She grabs the points of the pickets, still calling out in invitation. The neighbors laugh.

She hops a little, her tiny shoes lifting off the seat of the tricycle. The wheels roll and she slips, a sharp point of a picket catching her just under her chin. Her mother hears her cries and scoops her off the fence, staunching the blood with her skirt. The doctors stitch the wound so that it is barely noticeable. The neighbors never come out. Her mother blames them forever.

***

The girl has just turned six and she is in a round in-ground swimming pool, the deepest point in the center of the pool. It’s a birthday party for her kindergarten classmate Buzz. Buzz’ family has a big house and a big yard. Buzz’ birthday party will be featured in the Sunday newspaper where fashionable society events appear. She likes Buzz, his infectious laugh, his crooked teeth turning his mouth into a perpetual grin. She has a new bathing suit. She does not know how to swim.

She grasps the tiles at the rim of the round pool while moms sunbathe and the other children scream with happiness, cannonballing into the water to make the biggest splash. The sunlight sparkles on the water. Her feet slide on the slanted pool bottom and she loses her grip. She goes under towards the deep center. She thrashes, her head momentarily surfacing. She is facing the moms in their lounge chairs in the sun. She screams for help but her cries are lost amid the other children’s happiness. She goes under again, swallowing some water, gravity dragging her down. She fights for the surface and learns, in an instant, that no one will be there to save her no matter how long she calls for help, no friend, no one’s mother. She cannot swim but she must. She does, awkwardly, frantic but determined, and reaches the tile edge. She is proud of her accomplishment, teaching herself to swim when it was most needed, and angry too. She knows she was almost ignored to death.

***

“Poor darling!” the Empress soothes, a small crease appearing between her brows. “Your mother sent you to swimming lessons after that.” The Empress knows these things.

“Yes,” I nodded, “but gravity, you know. Gravity’s pull almost got me again.”

“But it wasn’t always that way?”

“Well, no, not exactly,” I hesitated. Then I started again knowing she would understand this too.

***

The little girl with cornsilk hair is in her pink cotton nightgown sitting with her knees drawn up under her long skirts in the driveway in front of her house just before dawn. She loves the colors of the dawn, how light and color seep into the fluffy clouds, then reach farther out across the sky. She contemplates that color purple, then the next and next until they are plums and peaches. She stands up, looking at the grass and its heavy dew, and determines to try one more time.

Her father finds her sobbing, her back against the carport post. She is inconsolable. He is afraid she has been hurt and reaches down to pick her up, her face red and dripping, her nightie sopping and clinging wet with dew from the lawn.

“Are you OK?” he asks, looking up and down the empty street for the bad man who must have hurt his youngest, ready to retaliate against the unseen.

“Daddy, I can’t fly anymore!” She bubbles, wiping her nose with her arm.

He stops a moment not understanding, his confusion clear, but relieved there is no monster.

“Let’s go have some orange juice and cereal.” He was confident food should fix this problem whatever it was, and he carried her from the dew and dawn into the blue house with sparkles on the walls.

***

“It actually got worse from there,” I explained. “I mean, I’ve fallen down stairs all over the United States. The worst was in the Field Museum of Natural History and those marble stairs. My feet hurt so badly that I couldn’t feel them any more and I landed in the Egyptian exhibit. The baskets and cat mummies went skittering across the room. It was mortifying.”

She smiled and adjusted her crown, the twelve stars reflecting rainbows all around them.

“Is that a nice tribute to cats they did?” she murmured. “I know you love cats. They just wanted to keep them forever to be with them in the Afterlife. Cats are very special to me, you know. And none of the cat mummies were actually damaged that day.” She tilted her head and gave me a fond look. “Even you weren’t actually damaged that day even though those beautiful marble stairs were sharp in places.”

“True.” You can’t lie to the Empress after all. She’s going to know it if you try. “But what about that scooter thing in 2001? That was a gravity humdinger. The elbow, the knee. It’s a wonder I didn’t get a head injury too.”

“That backpack you had kept your head off the concrete. Remember how happy you were when realized you could see and wiggle your toes? And that nice man with the terrible look on his face was so startled when you asked him to get your scooter for you! And you got back on and rode it down to the ferry dock and didn’t even know you’d broken anything or ripped all those things until you tried to stand on the dock. And by then, all your friends were there to catch you when you fell the second time.” She smiled at her unruly child.

I nodded remembering the day, the fear, the relief, the ice packs, the phone call to my husband explaining that we would need to go to the emergency room.

“That’s just it,” I said, pressing on with my point. “I don’t mind the weather elbow so much. It’s nice to have another little predictive tool. And I’ve learned a lot from my knee about humility and taking life slower and the nature of pain. It’s been 10 years and I’m really grateful for only a few encounters with gravity since then. Why, that tush-over-teakettle thing in the ghost town in Nevada was actually one of the funnier parts of that vacation!” I hesitated.

“It’s just that I feel I have done my part to demonstrate the power and effectiveness of gravity. And, well, I was hoping for something like a hall pass. I’m just thinking that I don’t bounce as well as I used to. So I know it’s not fair, not just. Everyone is subject to the Law of Gravity. But, well, you being Mother Nature and all, I was hoping you could grant me an exception,” I added shyly, “Mom.”

“We’ll see,” she said, smoothing a wrinkle on her gown. “You need to eat your vegetables though and fewer potato chips. I know that astrologer told you that Gravity is not your friend, but that’s not exactly true. I feel if you learn to work with Gravity, Gravity will work with you.”

Moms are like that.

Best wishes.

FREE Tarot Readings on World Tarot Day

2011-05-23T16:35:00.000-07:00

World Tarot Day is May 25, 2011, and I’m trying something new. At Readers Studio last month, Marcus Katz introduced us to a new website called ShindigTarot.com. As part of the debut of this new site and in celebration of World Tarot Day, on that day only the readings are free. So I’m in! I will be available for tarot readings online through ShindigTarot.com from 8 am to 8 pm Pacific time and every reading is FREE that day only. Later in the day works better, by the way.

One of the panel discussion questions at Readers Studio was What’s Next for Tarot? Everyone got to participate in that one. One major theme was How Do We Help Tarot Become More Accepted? And an interesting perspective on that came from Caitlin Matthews who suggested that instead of wishing tarot were more mainstream, embrace the fringe. When people start to run from the cookie-cutter answers from the center, we will be there at the fringe to assist them with their next steps. I liked her answer. In many ways, if we accept ourselves as normal people on a sort of frontier instead of sideshow freaks, so will others. Naturally, some people will never feel comfortable with the tarot.

Oh, and if you’re one of those people and you read my blog just because you like me even if you think I’m a bit odd, huge HUGS for you. I love you guys. And it’s totally OK if you never want a tarot reading. I love talking to you anyway and hearing your thoughts. The idea here is that my life in tarot is really a lot less different and occasionally a lot funnier than you might expect. It’s just life. And so is tarot. People sometimes mistake it for religion; it isn’t. So if you don’t feel converted, it’s OK. That wasn’t where I was going either.

But, if you would like to try something different like I decided to, you don’t have to get dressed up and bring money. You can connect with me through ShindigTarot.com. If you put Marcia in the search box (that’s the one with the little magnifying glass), you’ll get the short list of Marcia readers and I am of course Marcia McCord Tarot Reader. It should look something like this:

If you go for a reading, we will be in a private chat room where we can both see the cards. It will be my experiment and free to you.

Shindig was met with interest and curiosity at Readers Studio. I asked so many questions during the demo that I was pretty sure the Shindig man thought I was a heckler. The left side of my brain momentarily took charge and I had assumed analytic mode. I’m used to asking a lot of questions about software and systems. I’m used to thinking outside the box and digging deeper than usual.

One of my questions may have seemed crazy to them at the time, but it stemmed from my own experience. A long, long time ago when I bought my first computer, back before there were hard drives and full color monitors generally available (no, I did not date Barney Rubble), I wrote a program. You guessed it: It was a tarot card program which dealt the cards out into the well-known Celtic Cross spread. I was so pleased with my little self, my glowing green screen blinking with 10 cards and their “book” interpretations. I fiddled with it for a while and realized that the tricky part, considering the limitations of printing and display technology at the time, was creating the shuffling part. The simplest random number generator I knew of in my “baby programmer” days was based off the computer’s clock. It proved too simple because, as it turns out, computers just hate being random.

OK, OK, while there are some fascinating advances in artificial intelligence coming on the scene, computers don’t hate or love. What they do really well though is compute mathematical formulas and repeat themselves. And that’s the problem. Random means not repeating, at least against great odds.

When we shuffle a paper deck of cards, there are a lot of ways to shuffle. After the shuffling and reading, hardly anyone I know puts their cards back in the order they originally came in: Fool, Magician, etc. So the next time I take my deck out, it is actually already shuffled as a starting point. I start from that unknown order and shuffle some more.

All that shuffling I do with real cards, sideways, riffling, stirring them up on the table, and the reversal flip-flop thing I do ends up being, well, fairly random. If I come up with the same card or couple of cards we had last time, I am sure I haven’t stacked the deck, knowingly or unknowingly. If you get the Ace of Swords over and over after shuffling this way, it’s clear that it’s some kind of message.

My own little program written so long ago had a flaw. My shuffler wasn’t random enough and I would get the same sets of cards repeated a lot more frequently than doing it by hand. So I asked some squirrely questions at RS11 about the random number generator that, well, glazed just about everyone’s eyes over. After a fascinating sidebar conversation with the effervescent Mike Hernandez who also has a long background in technology, I figured, wottheheck, go for it. I really want to see how it goes.

It feels right somehow that on this year’s World Tarot Day, a website will debut that was the topic of my first programming efforts. It’s a lot like The World in tarot, both an ending and a beginning, a culmination of what we have been through at the end of the Fool’s journey through the Major Arcana, tarot on the world wide web. What a great way to connect! Will it work? Absolutely.

What’s that you ask? Oh, no. Absolutely nothing will replace the feel of the cards in my hands as all the possibilities of the universe unfold. If we get the chance, I’d much prefer to read for you in person. In the same way that a website isn’t a deck of cards, electronic communication can never replace real human interaction. I’d rather be with you. But if distance separates us, give this one a try!

Best wishes.

***
Want to find out more about World Tarot Day? Check this out! http://www.worldtarotday.org/

The Sword of Action

2011-05-13T15:47:00.000-07:00

I was talking with a friend at work today, saying I hoped I had at least 8 more years of work in these “Be Happy You Have a Job” days. As long as I keep my youthful illusions (like typing faster than most people, being a smart-aleck, having a sense of humor and solving problems really quickly), I hope I can be useful in the workaday world. Oh, yes, I have my secret weapons like looking at things from a different point of view, an unusual gift for viewing systems from the unsuspecting user’s point of view rather than knowing all I really know, and factoring the dimension of time into the usually only barely 3-D imagination of computer system changes in what might ordinarily be thought of as a dull insurance job. It’s not dull for me. It’s entertaining. I remember weird stuff that comes in handy. It’s sort of like “Day Job Jeopardy.” Maybe my other talents bleed over into the Day Job too. I’ve always wondered how much of that happened and whether it was a good thing or a bad thing.

Being an intuitive in a linear world is not always a blessing. Just ask any intuitive. You get all the linear people surrounding you just before they stone you asking, How did you know that was going to happen?? Shoot me, it was obvious. But not to them. Of course, they are also willing to stone you if you mention in advance what appears likely to happen as the result of decisions. If they listen, and most of the time they don’t, they think you’ve lost your mind. Then, even if they did listen to, when it does happen, they will ask you why you didn’t warn them.

Start to get the no-win scenario here? The linear people outnumber the intuitives by about 7 to 1 so brace yourself if you’re intuitive. You’re surrounded.

Of course, I’ve had moments where even the intuitive people are a little spooked. One time back in Illinois (I almost slipped and said what decade; boy, that was close) when I was a baby programmer, I realized something I had seen earlier in the day was going to cause a program to fail or as we used to say in the Big Iron Age “abend.” I called the central office in Louisiana just as the program was dying as I knew it would. By then I was familiar with the voice on the phone there having helped them through a few long nights previously.

“Marcia,” the night operations manager said, “you aren’t supposed to call us when a program blows up. We’re supposed to call you. That’s scary.” I laughed and said that we had recently instituted psychic debugging at the home office but the announcement hadn’t come out yet. At least I was calling with the easy fix to the problem with a happen ending.

Often, though, I have found that being an intuitive in a linear world is mostly dangerous. It’s probably worse if you’re an optimist like me. I tend to like people, linear or intuitive. I like the energy that differences bring, the frisson of alternate points of view, the refreshing…well, you get the idea. And I have the optimist’s affliction of thinking that, if I like them, they like me. This is not a good assumption. It is one that needs to be proven in the specific each time before engaging. The usual scenario is that I’ll end up helping people who have been and will continue to be mean, nasty, selfish, conniving, lazy, self-serving or, in the case of arrogance undeserved, let us say misinformed. I’m a sap. I used to really fight with these folks for the right to help them, believing as I did then that anything could be helped with good will and a little understanding. In my maturity I have stopped doing that. If they continue to be really mean people, I just withdraw my help and let them wallow in the results of their own bad judgment. I would really rather have helped of course.

I’m pretty sure I can’t fix everything, of course. Some computer projects have a momentum all their own and it pays to know how to step aside and let the avalanche go by. That happens with people, too, of course, because it’s people who mess up computer projects, at least drawing first blood with the consequences of a bad project having the unhappy result sometimes of harming people. For instance, a “really good idea” that gets implemented with a very detrimental and unforeseen effect on business can result in people losing money or their jobs. They might blame a computer for it, but that’s only because they don’t know the name of the person who was so gung-ho to get that project in that they didn’t want to hear all the analysis from others. Maybe they did hear it, but it sounded so much like a sneeze causing a hurricane across the world that it didn’t make sense to them. It was beyond their belief. But maybe someone near them did understand that sneeze and its consequences.

So what’s this got to do with tarot, you ask? Well, maybe just about everything. In our traditional schooling, we’re taught to think about things logically. Obviously, the linear people are going to really happy with this because this generally means turning chaos into order. That’s alphabetical order for the really linear, like the way my first husband stored his socks: Black comes before blue. I was lucky they got in a drawer, being the non-linear one. Well, THAT didn’t work out as you might imagine. But what happens if you’ve got something going on and all that linear or merely 3-D thinking isn’t working? Logic is only one tool at our disposal; it’s not the only tool.

At Readers Studio 2011, Barbara Moore taught us different ways to develop a spread for tarot. One of my buddies said, “The 5 of Swords is stalking me!” We decided we would chase back and confront the cruel logic of the win-lose scenario portrayed in the 5 of Swords. We developed a spread called The Sword of Action.

First, we wanted to pin down exactly what the issue is, so we started out with cards in the pattern of a sword pinning down the issue. It looks like this:

……………1………….

………..2……3……….

……………4………….

……………5………….

If you squint, you can see that 1 is the handgrip and the blade (4 and 5) has “pinned down” something stuck in the earth. We looked at the traditional RWS 5 of Swords and decided that each of the cards represents the answer to these questions:

1. What’s in the air? The 5 of Swords has diagonal grey clouds that look like they are being whipped in the wind.

2. What sword do I set down? This card is like the logic, conflict or thinking that the main character has let go of or set aside. It’s not working in this case.

3. What sword do I pick up? This card is the logic, conflict or thinking that the main character (hey, that’s YOU) would pick up and use.

4. What is in the water? See in this card, beyond the people, there is water which represents emotion and undercurrent. Often in a situation where logic isn’t helping you, there is something else going on.

5. What’s beyond the mountains? In the background of the RWS 5 of Swords are mountains which can be obstacles to overcome or goals to achieve. What will be the outcome?

Now the really interesting part of this spread happens. We wanted to turn this from just a “let’s pin down what’s going on” reading into a “what’s the best action to take” reading. It’s the Sword of Action, after all. We agreed that for a sword to be useful, it needed to be pointed up and ready for action. How do we turn our sword around? So we moved our #5 card to the space above the #1 card to get the outcome closer to the issue and added our #6 card.

6. What is the best action to take to get to the best outcome?

The spread changes to this, the Sword of Action!

……………6………….

……………5………….

……………1………….

………..2……3……….

……………4………….

So, if you’re looking for a spread to help you get past that linear thinking, try The Sword of Action and make logic and intuition work for you.

Best wishes!

Diablo’s Backside

2011-05-09T11:59:00.000-07:00

Remember how I told you I wasn’t a birder? I’m not. Really. I don’t keep a list of the birds I’ve seen in my lifetime. OK, I own a bird book and I can whistle like a Mockingbird imitating a Western Meadowlark. It doesn’t really count. That whistling thing was an aberration of adolescent boredom while I was riding my bicycle. And there really wasn’t that much to do at the time in eastern New Mexico besides watching the fenders rust.

It’s like my introduction for each birding class: “Hi, I’m Marcia. I’m not really a birder. I just like hanging out with birders because they are generally quiet and don’t want me to fix anything to do with a computer.” It sounds like a joke but the truth can often be pretty funny.

Nevertheless, my friend Ronda and I like to go to birding workshops and give each other the gift of a trek outdoors looking for our little feathered friends or whatever lands in our path along the way. Birding is generally a slow moving activity because sudden movement and noises make them fly away, spoiling the effort. We thought this year we would go somewhere we hadn’t been before, Mitchell Canyon on the “back side” of Mt. Diablo.

We figured we would see different birds from the ones we’ve seen before in Marin, Sonoma, Solano and Yolo Counties. And the description of the class had the tempting line, “…an easy stroll.” Ronda’s back has been bothering her but she’s recently made some excellent improvement with exercise. I have a bad knee from a scooter accident in 2001. I would call it a trick knee, but that sounds like more fun than it really is. Essentially, we birdwatch at approximately the same pace.

We had no idea how hard we would have to work for this “easy stroll.”

The first obstacle in our path was the paperwork.

“Did you see the form they want us to fill out?” we pinged to each other at approximately the same time. It was a medical history form. They wanted to know our complete medical history, what prescription and over the counter drugs we took, what our preferences were for lunch and dinner, all in case the emergency medical technicians had to be called.

“Does this mean the EMT’s are bringing our lunch?” Ronda quipped hopefully. The last time we had to call an EMT to one of our events, he was very entertaining eye-candy and right handy with a band-aid for our friend’s cut thumb. We paused in the vision of a well-made fellow in a uniform with a tray of our favorite snacks.

“Should I say I like unsweetened iced tea with extra lemon?”

But in all seriousness, this form was out of line with the current HIPAA medical privacy rules. There was no mention of who would have access to the information and what would be done with the records once the class was over. And there was the interestingly implied conflict between “an easy stroll” and the need for a med-evac by helicopter. We were smart women with long experience in business and technology, we reasoned. We’re pushing back. This form was like nothing we’d ever seen. They were asking questions my doctor wasn’t interested in and my husband probably didn’t know the answer to. And it seemed like they were discouraging the less than Olympic fitness crowd from attending. How’s that fit into the “easy stroll?”

We contacted the director’s office. He was on an excursion to Antarctica, the kind of trip on which I expect you might need to tell the EMT’s your menu preference, nothing like the little walk in the woods looking at the birdies we had in mind. After much back and forth with the organization, including mention of dropping membership, citing HIPAA laws, mentioning the federal funding they no doubt receive which could be looked upon with disfavor if the Americans with Disabilities Act folks should misunderstand their benign intent, I finally distilled my position on this ill-designed form with its invasive and ill-conceived questions with the ultimate sentiment from the parking lot scene of Fried Green Tomatoes: we’re older and we have more insurance. Basically, I told them, we’re just two old broads with bad knees and good cameras who won’t be giving them our money. They changed the form.

After this victory, we felt we had to attend. Fortunately, the day proved to be beautiful for being outdoors, although not ideal for birding. It was clear and sunny and that wonderful in-between temperature that requires your light jacket in the morning. It was also windy. The two ways you find a bird is by sound and by sight of movement. On a windy day, all the trees, branches, leaves and critters are moving. But we were surrounded by a concert of beautiful birdsong. We were a big class and I feared any self-respecting bird would flee in terror from a parade of binoculared grey-hairs traipsing around with lists, scopes, cameras and a class leader who believed he was making attractive bird calls. Doubtful as we were, we saw birds. I was jazzed about the golden eagle, my first. The coolest bird however was this lovely swimming-pool blue juvenile Lazuli Bunting, a blue like I had not seen on a bird except perhaps parakeets in the pet stores. Here's a fantastic photo taken by Steve Zamek featured in WhatBird.com http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/204/_/Lazuli_Bunting.aspx. At that point in the path, that had been the high point of my day. Some bird!

I’d say it went downhill from there, but strictly speaking we were walking uphill and at a pace that Ronda and I couldn’t sustain. Of course, I like to take pictures of everything that isn’t moving too fast, so I have some yummy wildflowers currently in peak bloom in Mitchell Canyon and a rather unfortunate yet interesting dead mole on the trail, still in good enough condition for final viewing, RIP.

Our loud-birdcalling trip guide plunged forward at a breakneck pace, promising that our lunch stop was just around the next corner. About the fourth time he made this empty promise, Ronda had left “happy” back on the trail something like an hour previously and I was beginning to whine. Checking my watch, I noted quietly, so as not to start food riots or other insurrection among the birders, that we had three more hours of this trudging and the sun was rising high in the sky. “Easy stroll,” I muttered, both my bad knee and good knee singing louder than the birds. I had worked hard for this torture session but I was long past the point of caring if I saw one more bird even if it was roast chicken on a nice whole grain bread.

“OK,” the devil…I mean Dave the guide announced proudly as he dashed down the steep bank of the creek, tip-toed across a couple of unstable rocks and bounded up the steep bank on the other side. “Here’s where we’re stopping for lunch!”

Ronda and I looked with dismay at the impossible physical obstacle and the tick-infested clearing beyond. No. Way. If we got down, we knew we wouldn’t get up again and I didn’t relish walking back through the creek, including culverts, until we got to a flat spot to get back onto the trail.

Arizona has a Stupid Hiker Law which says approximately that if you wander into the wild and into a situation that you know you can’t get yourself out of, you ought to pay for your rescue. Of course this was California, but the point was well considered. Wise women that we are, we turned back. That croning ceremony wasn’t fer nuthin’. About 30 minutes back down the trail we found a log to sit on, ate some of our lunch, rested our aching joints and admired the microcosm of nature within our immediate view. We actually saw a few birds on the way back that we hadn’t seen on the way up and attributed that to our being fewer in number and quieter than the large class. I brushed a tick off Ronda and to our credit we both suppressed our bug screams. We made it back to the parking lot, the bathroom, the water fountain, the nice ladies in the visitor center and gratefully to Ronda’s SUV. A couple of ibuprofens later and by the time we were in civilization again that awful grating noise in my joints had stopped and we were treated to the best bird sighting of the day, a mommy mallard duck and her four baby ducks crossing Clayton Road in the crosswalk. All traffic had stopped for the little parade and we rejoiced as the last little straggler ducky hopped the steep curb from the road to the sidewalk.

We need something duck speed next time, I thought. “So, next time,” I suggested aloud, “maybe we pick a botany class.” After all, plants don’t move too fast.

Later that evening, while I was selling drink tickets at the church spaghetti feed, I felt a tickle on my back. A tick! Grateful that it hadn’t yet found a good spot to bite, I quickly flung the little devil on the floor of the church hall and smashed it with the metal cash box from the drink ticket sales. There. I fixed it.

Best wishes!

Uranian Holiday

2011-05-04T12:57:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Readers Studio 2011 in New York and I’m still recovering. I’d like to stretch it out as long as possible to preserve the glow. It was a weekend of Big Things. As it turned out, there were many more Big Things than I had bargained for!

Thinking back, the last bit of really confident control I had over the weekend was packing for the trip on Tuesday. I had an early flight on Wednesday and did my typical pack bags until 11 pm dance. And oddly, I remembered everything: the costume for the parade of trumps, the decks people said they wanted to pick up in New York, the boarding pass, the shoes, the whole catastrophe. I was ready. Or so I thought.

The alarm went off at 4 am and I was up like a shot, jumped into my clothes, grabbed my bags, kissed the cats and dog goodbye and we were off for the airport. The line to check bags at the curb was proof positive that horses aren’t the only ones who can sleep standing up. After a pleasant exchange with my skycap, lumbering through the security line, being x-rayed head to toe (best done when you’re asleep and not thinking about it), I was grateful my gate was at the top of the escalator. Before I knew it I was on my way, and with only a slight delay in Chicago due to what turned out to be a Presidential visit, I had spent the day asleep in the air, grateful for my tendency to go “lights out” the instant my seat belt buckle is snapped. There is such a thing as a calm before the storm.

First, I want to send my heartfelt sorrow to those who lost loved ones, homes, etc in the tornadoes that ravaged the South last week. I have just a few phobias and tornadoes are in that slot; I don’t really consider it a phobia if you define phobia as an irrational fear. I’ve been close enough to tornadoes in my life to feel assured that my fears are quite rational. Of course the first thing I found out after getting into my hotel room was that there were tornadoes reported in the Hudson Valley. I immediately started thinking about which would be better shelter, the bathroom or the hallway. Luckily for everyone in Queens, the tornado warnings/watches lifted and it just looked like an annoyed sky rather than a vengeful one. I talked to my husband John and he joked that I was not to call him at 6 am the next morning just because I thought it was 9 am and was having fun.

The Tower is a card indicating a change that is like a lightning bolt from the blue, something that resets your thinking, reprioritizes your life, makes you realize the good news or bad news that you have based your assumptions on some shaky ground and they are falling. It can be the “Great ZOT!” of realization but it also has its traditional “scary” meaning of something really big is going to happen, something you have minimal control over, something that brings your plans down in a sudden collapse of rubble. The Tower is tied in astrology to the planet Uranus, a surprise party planet that will be dancing in my sun sign of Aries for the next 7 years. Little did I know that my choice of Trump costume as Strength was going to be necessary in more than one way.

The call I got early in the morning on Thursday was a Tower call.

“Hi, Dolly.” He calls me Dolly.

“Hi, Sweetums.” I call him lots of things. “I thought you didn’t want to talk to me so early in the morning?” It looked at my watch. Was it 3:30 am or 4:30 am in California?

“I’m at the emergency room.” The hotel room spins. And as it turns out he had emergency surgery later that afternoon. There was no way for me to get a flight back. Besides the weather delays, the President had made New York his next stop after Chicago. I called friends. I called in favors. I hoped my cell phone charge would last. I hoped I had remembered to take my blood pressure meds. Thank God for William, Nancy, Rosie and Derek and all our friends who tag-teamed to make sure John had someone there when I couldn’t be. Thank God for our family who tried to be there as best they could too from a long distance. Thank God for the surgeon and nurses and medical care performed with excellence and humanity. Thank God John is OK and home.

I should know better than to ask, “Good grief, what else can happen?”

Knowing John was safe, I stayed at Readers Studio and had a most excellent time. Thank God for all the Readers Studio folks who knew my story and sent healing and love and shored me up. I went to the wonderful classes on romance readings with Wald and Ruth Ann Amberstone who are the Readers Studio organizers. I zipped over to the Aeclectic Tarot dinner and had a great time meeting people for the trade train. I had brought some copies of my decks to sell or trade and they went fast. The next day I talked to John all throughout the day, violating my own rule of having my cell phone on while in a class or meeting, but dashing for the door when it rang. All was good. The lovely Corinne Kenner’s class on astrology and the tarot hit the mark especially for those new to astrology and gave us different perspectives on the cards. “Cupcake” Barbara Moore helped us develop our own spreads with her effervescent charm. My group of three was proud of our new spread, the Sword of Action, and eagerly submitted it for Barbara’s compilation of the RS11 new spreads. I listened first with skepticism and then with awe and finally joy to Caitlin Matthews as she explained how she, once skeptical of using significators had learned their value. James Wells led a roundtable with our tarot stars. And my dear Thalassa provided wit and humor throughout, especially as organizer of the Parade of Trumps. And I fell in love, utterly head over heels with Lon Milo Duquette’s musical interlude, no less than the Pete Seeger of tarot!

My roomie Beth Seilonen stuck close to her vendor table and sold both her many luscious hand-crafted limited edition decks and my few offerings too. We agreed we were ready to take the bus to the diner with Marcus, Tali, Mike, Paul and the gang. I had the “lob-stah” and it was delish!

Oh, and I shopped. Wow, did I shop. I had seen Aaron Rathbun’s leather tarot cases at past tarot events and drooled. My goal this year was to get one or two. GOAL! My special orders will be shipped at the end of this month, pictures to come. There were cases made of antique sari material, cases made of recycled felted, quilted and embellished sweaters, cases knitted by the esteemed Mary K. Greer. There was jewelry and I indulged in pins made by the encyclopedic Robert M. Place, a cat, a mermaid and a wyvern, all at the hand of the alchemical master himself. And I sacrificed my checkbook at the table of the Tarot Garden, falling under the spell of a few goodies of rare and careful nature (Dan Pelletier was aptly cast as the Devil in our Parade of Trumps, tempter that he is).

And then the Tower proved not to be complete. As we were packing up after the certificates had been handed out and many of the hugs and email addresses had been exchanged, our hard-working Ruth Ann fell from the stage and landed hard and painfully. She broke her collar bone and a rib. I called 911 and handed the phone to a guard when they asked for the address. Those of us with her rushed to her side to provide what we could in Reiki, prayers and support, making sure that she was as comfortable as possible until the EMT’s arrived.

After a delicious meal at Uncle Peter’s with our enormous Sunday night group where I was fortunate to sit near some of our Australian attendees including none other than Annie Dunlop, former president of the Tarot Guild of Australia, we returned to the hotel. Invited for a nightcap and asked if I had one more copy of one of my decks, I dashed back downstairs to the lounge in time to see the stunning announcement by President Obama: Osama Bin Laden was dead. Yet another Tower moment for this amazing weekend! And we were all curious about the future once again.

Thanks to all of the wonderful people who were there, who were my partners in the classes, who were charming dinner companions, who purchased my decks and who made even the most Uranian of holidays a delight!

Best wishes!

Eggshells

2011-04-23T12:59:00.000-07:00

The funniest thing I’ve seen on Facebook recently is a woman telling the story of how a conversation with her 8-year-old daughter about a school lesson on eggs, tadpoles and frogs quickly slipped out of the realm of simple answers. I laughed until I cried. I won’t go into “overshare” myself but it’s the kind of funny that makes your coffee come back up your nose. It reminded me of the probable reason I didn’t have kids, which had little to do with biology or perfect timing and probably a lot more with the universe realizing I would have a difficult time keeping a straight face.

Mom had trouble keeping a straight face but it wasn’t the same problem as mine. Hers would collapse into abject horror or disgust or despair instead of hopeless giggles like mine. It wasn’t that I couldn’t be shocked. I could. I was. But my reactions to life ranged more from the funny-peculiar to the funny-“haha.” Mom’s were of a higher pitch and decibel level. For an introvert, she could be loud. When she let loose, it was an “everybody duck” situation. I knew I was different from my mother. We all knew to step lightly around her and my father put a lot of energy into the entire dynamic of “Don’t tell your mother.” Damaging as that was, there was a practical aspect to a little peace and quiet when things were quietly slipped under the rug.

She took pleasure in crafts and decoration as an escape. She took us to ceramics class when we were little. We worked on little things. I made an ashtray for her with pink flowers and light green grass and scratched an inscription on the back with the date. She gave it back to me when I was in my 20’s. I was glad she kept it but sad that she gave it back to me, a little rejected.

While we worked on our little projects, she experimented with different glazes and created a magnificently and complexly colored rooster which earned her a blue ribbon at the county fair. It was clear that blue ribbons were the only ones worth earning. I broke it one day horsing around with my brother, knocked it over with a swing of my hand onto the thick sand-colored marble top of our round kitchen table. Daddy tried to hide it, to glue it back together so she wouldn’t notice. But Mom had sharp eyes. She was devastated. She screamed and cried over her lost masterpiece and threw it in the trash. It was tragic for her that the rooster was broken but so much worse that my father had tried to cover it up, to make it better. We were all lost that day.

The process of creation for her could be soothing though. I loved Easter egg day which was usually Easter Saturday, just like today. We would get our Pas Bunny kits with the wire egg holder that never seemed to fit the eggs and the cups with vinegar and tablets of color in each. We all wanted the blue one, so light like a robin’s egg that with layer on layer could go towards teal. I experimented with the dyes to create different effects, most of them coming out somewhere between “camo” and mud. Every once in a while, I’d get something I liked, a pink, white and yellow striped one or something and set it into the cardboard holder to dry.

I loved eggs. I liked them boiled, scrambled, over easy and especially sunny side up. My favorite treat for starting out a vacation was to stop at the Royal Castle for a breakfast of sunny side up eggs, grits and French fries. It was the south. It was the fifties and sixties. We didn’t know what cholesterol was. We didn’t know why people had heart attacks. Things like eggs and grits and potatoes were good for you then.

“Mommy, baby chicks come from eggs, right?”

She stopped in dread. She did not want to have this conversation, not with a 5 year old. The Ace of Wands, the essence of life, growth, new projects, the beginning of beginnings had sneaked into the conversation and was there blazing before her like a torch held by angry villagers pounding on the door of the fugitive. She had been chased down before she was ready to be caught.

“Yes,” she said slowly, stopping whatever housework she was doing at the time and turning to me. I could tell she was afraid. I couldn’t tell why. Baby chicks weren’t scary. They were fuzzy and yellow and cute and peeped and had bright black eyes.

“Not all eggs have baby chicks. Some of them are just eggs, right?” After all, I’d eaten a lot of eggs by then and never once found a baby chick. Wouldn’t that be a surprise? It would be the jack in the box of nature, to find a baby chick as a surprise in your Easter basket one morning.

“Yes,” she said, a little more confident, hoping we were just on the topic of baby chicks.

“And the mommy chicken sits on them and keeps them warm until they hatch.” I had a vision of a clean wooden crate with nice clean straw, a box just high enough for a chicken to step into in a clean dry place, sheltered from rain, safe from predators.

“Yes,” she said, a little more relaxed. At least we were going forward with the nice, caring mommy chicken and the fuzzy baby chicks and not backward to the origins.

“Did I come from an egg?”

I had in mind something like an Easter egg, something with a pretty shell with lots of colors, not just pink like my Mom always picked out for me. I wanted yellows and blues and greens and oranges too. I was pretty sure I wasn’t boiled first because then, well, I wouldn’t hatch.

On guard again. “Yes.” Her eyes opened wide with their storm-cloud blue sparkling a little with laser beam focus. We were suddenly in dangerous territory again. She inhaled one long deep breath and held it.

“Did you sit on me, too, like the mommy chicken?”

She looked at me and blinked and suddenly laughed. “Yes,” she said. I laughed too. I couldn’t imagine my mother sitting on a box with hay in it. She was much too proper to do that. Her dresses would get hay on them and get dusty. How she must have suffered so to have me! But she had kept me warm until I hatched so that must mean she loved me. I was satisfied.

“I think I’d rather have a baby duck instead of a baby chick, Mommy.” And I went back to my stuffed toys and the stories they told. My mother resumed breathing normally.

My day was sunny side up, and I was satisfied with my origins.

Best wishes.

Outside

2011-04-17T17:37:00.000-07:00

I’ve got to get out more often. It’s one thing to have an interior life. It’s one thing to have a day job and an occupation on the side. It’s spring after all and there are roses blooming here, roses, calla lilies, apple blossoms, freesias. And that’s just in my yard. My husband says, “You need to get out more.” Even my tarot buddy Kristine says, “Girl, you’ve got to get out more.” OK, they’re right.

What better opportunity than to watch the Big Match between our rugby Barbarians and, well, those other guys? Maybe they are right. I haven’t been to even one of the games and the Barbarians had a shot at the championship, quite a difference from last year. We don’t want to talk about last year. I think that’s the official story.

Victorian Trade Card Tarot
(c) 2010 Marcia McCord

It takes a lot to manage the field and keep the rugby team going. It’s not just the financial part, which is substantial. I’m the “silent” partner in this although I think the title is just an honorific. I do like to tell people that I’m the quiet one in the family so they get an idea of just how extraverted an extravert can be. This is also a labor of love for my husband. Oh, true, he never played rugby and still hasn’t. He had never seen a rugby game before a few years ago. When Lani asked him if he could help find a place for the Tongans to practice rugby, John couldn’t resist helping. Then Ben came on as head coach. He’s originally from Fiji. Both Lani and Ben fit what I think of as the “typical” rugby persona: big enough to fill a door, laugh loud enough to fill a room and a handy delayed reaction to pain.

That delayed reaction to pain is a good trait. It’s not that rugby is in itself dangerous. But except for the mouth guard to keep your teeth in relatively the same place they started and for some a cap that keeps ears attached to heads (worn by only a few), it’s an elegant, unpadded, fast-moving match typically between two teams of 15 guys who should be able to qualify for the winning team of any cartoon Gothic combat game. It’s a contact sport, perhaps something of an understatement. Sometimes the contact results in arms or collarbones broken. Sometimes there’s a cleating incident. Usually if someone gets hurt, unless there are bones visibly sticking out or a lot, not just a little blood, the game is played around the downed warrior in a gentlemanly fashion. The clock doesn’t stop though. The men address the referee as “sir” and only one player per team is allowed to talk to him. The fans, of course, are free to speak their minds from the sidelines. They do.

Rugby is played in the winter which in California usually means cold mud. They seem to like it that way. One game ended with both teams the same mud-color although they started out with different colored jerseys. In spite of the rain we have in the winter, we have to keep our field watered year-round to make sure there is grass on it when winter rolls around. And there’s a bit of electricity for the lights for the night time practices. And there’s the washing of the shirts, shorts and socks. Usually the uniforms have to be sent through the wash cycle twice to get the ground in stuff, mud, blood, whathaveyou, out. A lot of teams choose dark colors, a practical choice after I’ve seen what it takes to wash after a game. Large commercial washers are best. You don’t really want to put all that in your own washing machine; most of them weren’t built for rugby.

Yesterday’s Big Match seemed like the ideal outing. It was going to be nice, in the 70’s at most, partly cloudy, breezy. I found my sneakers and my Barbarians t-shirt. No question, we were taking the dog. Quincy goes to the field with my husband for every practice, runs up and down the field with the team, collapses in the shade and follows John around like shadow. I know the popular dog among the barbaric nowadays is something more ferocious, but our cocker spaniel is loyal to his “boys.” No question, we were taking the dog.

We drove down to Morgan Hill with our travel cups of tea and forbidden donuts. I had my sugar high and crash and by the time I woke up, we were there. I hadn’t been to Morgan Hill in a long time and remembered that was where I had had my first steak quesadilla, still a favorite.

We paid for our parking at the sports complex, grabbed our stuff and jumped out to find our field. We sat at the picnic tables for a little while waiting for the rest of the team to show up and then started towards field B. A young man stopped me.

“You can’t bring your dog in here unless you carry him. We have a policy. No dogs on the grass. It’s either carry him or leave him in the car.” John and I looked at each other, shifted our loads and he picked the bewildered Quincy up. We got to our pitch, found that there were two metal staircases to a trailer office on the sideline and made sure Quincy’s feet never touched the grass. We were a couple of hours early and the boys started to practice.

I should mention that our boys are not just boys. Oh, sure the team is made up of mostly young men built like fighter robots in a sci-fi movie. But then there are a couple of guys you would not call young. Lani and Ben are on the far side of 40 and one guy reminds me of one of my favorite San Francisco Giants’ catchers named Santiago, a guy who could be knocked down and get back up again and again, a guy who looks like he’s made of barbed wire who is past 50. And then there’s Lovina. She’s Lani’s daughter, in high school, and one of the best athletes I’ve met in a long time. She has an incandescent smile and beautiful long hair. She plays too. She knocks the other team on their uniforms so fast they don’t know what hit them.

Just before the game started, another man associated with the field came up to me. “We have a policy about dogs.” “We know,” I smiled. “We carried him in. He won’t touch the grass. And I understand, sir. We have a field too. We have bags and paper towels to clean up if there’s an accident.”

He puffed up and showed himself to be the bully he had hints of being. “You can’t carry that dog!”

OK, I am only 5’1” and of an undisclosed weight and a certain age. Let’s say I’m older and I have more insurance, OK? But I did have the dubious honor of being the arm wrestling champion of the junior high two years in a row and in spite of my obvious physical decline into the uncertain age thing, I can still lift 100 lbs. pretty easily. Jerk, I thought. I thought other uncharitable thoughts. But being blonde can help and I have been accused of having a firm grasp of the obvious.

“My husband can,” I pointed to John who is over six feet tall and not of a willowy nature. The rude man grunted and I explained that the young man at the gate had said we could bring the dog in if we carried him. We carried him. He wasn’t touching the grass. We were good. Mr. Rude was not happy but went away. Other people and their dogs arrived in various modes of transport.

The match started, the running, the yelling, the ruck, the scrum, the goals by the other team. And another employee of the park came up to me. “We have to ask you to remove your dog.”

John turned the videotaping over to Lovina and carried Quincy out. Since it’s cruel to leave your pet or your child in a car if the weather could kill them and since this was the Big Match and since we had driven two hours to get there, John and Quincy sat two fields and several fences away in the picnic area outside the grass while I videotaped with my camera too. Kenny went down a couple of times hard but got back up again. Lani took a tremendous hit from several of the other team’s players simultaneously. It was a hard game.

At half time, I switched places with John, but not before meeting another woman coming to watch the match carrying her fox terrier. They had apparently let her through. I saw other dogs. It looked like the dogs from our team were the ones sitting in the picnic area. It didn’t seem right somehow. I started to steam. I’d paid thousands of dollars to see this team to this point and even if they were losing, it was the championship. I mentioned the other dogs to the management and asked that in the future they make their policy better known to occasional users, like rugby championships. If I had known there was such a policy, we would have left him at home.

They thanked me for being so nice. Apparently they were grateful I didn’t pull a knife on them. Cocker spaniel owners are known for that in the south bay, perhaps. Or maybe it was the word Vallejo on my shirt. I had a knife in my desk drawer at home. Oh, there are some in the kitchen too. I really had little sharper than my wit to pull on them. And I felt that was a waste of time and wit.

Lovina played. The only injury was a concussion on the other team. We scored a kick at least but lost. When the match was over, we headed for the car. I was warming up to the after-match verbal explosion of the things I would have told the rude man if I too had been rude. But Quincy said it all for me. On the sidewalk in front of the parking lot, well outside the fence and the grass, he sniffed a lamp post base rising out of the concrete walk and relieved himself. Not a drop was on the grass.

“Good dog.” I smiled and walked to the car.

Best wishes.

They’re Here … Again

2011-04-11T18:47:00.000-07:00

“Oh, good grief!”

I opened Kaye’s passenger side car door, mumbled, “Just a minute!” and huffed and puffed up my front stairs again. I was so much in need of this getaway and yet so unready. Just one more thing it was that I had to bring with me on our Spring Goddess Weekend. Good thing my head was sewn on tight. I apologized to the cats and the dog again for leaving them with my husband for the weekend, not a sad prospect by any means. Mr. Softie is very fond of the furry ones and they often come to snuggle up against, on or around him. But he was away at the San Francisco Giant Opening Day at the Ballpark baseball game, a tradition he is unlikely to break for any reason. I was taking off for the Russian River to meet my friends. Well, I was after I found just one more thing.

Finally in the car, house locked, cats and dog fed and consoled, dressed, packed, repacked and in a dither, we made our way slowly towards the edge of town.

“Wait!”

Kaye, so patient with me, asked, “Do want me to turn back?”

“No, just pull into the high school parking lot. No one is here now. Just pop the trunk.” I did not have that visual memory of putting my toothbrush in my overnight bag. I rummaged through the trunk (that’s “boot” to you folks who speak alternative English) and realized that the reason I didn’t have a visual sense of putting it in my overnight bag was that I had put it in a different bag, one that was, at least, also in the trunk. I sighed with relief and a pang of guilt.

We drove a few blocks further and Kaye’s phone rang. You can’t talk on the phone and drive in California any more, not without risking a fine and of course much more importantly your safety. Kaye pulled over again into another strange parking lot and spoke on the phone a while. Then she shook in sobs of what I was soon to find out was relief; her sister’s diagnosis was so much better than they feared. I offered to drive. Kaye declined. We were both good now, Kaye I think much better than I was, having been so recently much worse.

We made it as far as the Sonoma Market, a wonderland of good grocery shopping worth every penny of the slightly higher prices. The deli, the bakery, the cheeses, the fish counter! We zoomed around the store to pick up provisions for the weekend, all the while sure that we would have too much food. We always have too much food. It’s what we do. It’s who we are.

“I forget, Kaye,” I called to her, my grocery cart behind hers as we headed in search of hummus. “Do we still drink wine?”

“Yes,” she laughed over her shoulder. “And we eat meat, too.”

A young man passing us in the aisle snickered. Kaye is younger than I am. I knew she would remember. The Giants won their home opener in extra innings while we were at the checkout counter and I breathed another sigh of relief. My husband would be elated at the win.

“Do you like Pete Seeger?” Kaye asked when we were back in the car, “Or Art Garfunkle?” Both, of course, and we listened to Angel Claire and then sang along with Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie.

     “Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
     Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
     You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
     All they will call you will be "deportees."

As we sang, I watched the vineyards, the oak and laurel woods and coastal hills green with the heavy winter rain.  The crumbling with little landslides had not completely collapsed onto the two-lane winding roads. I began to let go of technology in the specific, letting automotive and MP3 technology lull me to our favorite spring getaway spot with our friends of 20 years or more.

We had just hauled our bags and groceries into the house at the river when Julie arrived, then Ronda, then BG and we all sat at the round oak table, not my new one, but the one in the river house owned by my friends Al and Alice. We snacked on all the forbidden things, the wine, the brie, the chips, the salsa and a couple of token pears to ease our collective conscience. We traded our stories. I cooked the pasta in pesto with shrimp and it turned out all wrong but it tasted all right. We watched Tangled on the DVD player and howled and cried. I squirmed recognizing so much of my mother in Rapunzel’s “adoptive” mother who never, ever, ever wanted Rapunzel to leave the tower. It was midnight all of a sudden and I went to bed. The girls stayed up and talked more. I didn’t mind. I love these free-form weekends we get together, slumber parties for the older who have more insurance.

Ah, I settled into bed with my book A Discovery of Witches. Al and Alice must have gotten a “memory foam” topper for the bed. It was like sinking into comfort. I didn’t read. I turned off the light.

Bounce. What now, I thought. Someone had sat down hard at the bottom of the bed. "I’m sleeping," I mumbled. Two more bounces on that lower left side. Seriously. Another bounce on the end of the bed on the right side, then the bound of someone reclining on the right side next to me. Fine. Whatever. They all know I snore so enter at your own risk, I thought. And then I realized that these weren’t my friends. Well, they weren’t the friends I had intended to spend the weekend with. There were 8 or 10 of them. One of them looked a little like Bella Abzug without her hat. She seemed to be in charge of the “tour.” Another pushed a stroller. And they were upstairs and wanted to talk.

“No. Seriously, people, I’m sleeping. I’m off duty,” I grumbled. I would have put my foot down if I had not been lying down already. “You all have to go away. You’ll scare my friends. They think ghosts are scary, not just annoying or needy or whatever you are. Just go. Make an appointment next time.” I thought I recognized one of the departed members of the Football Pool where I met Al and Alice. They were confused a bit but Bella or whoever she was led them back downstairs. And out. Good grief.

I slept in a bit the next morning, showered, dressed and padded downstairs.

“You’re dressed,” my friends said, suddenly aware that they weren’t ready for the day. They kvetched and cooed and kitchened and changed into casual day clothes.

BG asked around the breakfast table, “Did any of you have a weird night?” She recounted being awakened by someone she didn’t know and kicking the wall beside her bed. I wasn’t going to say anything about the Tour Group but since BG had been disturbed I confirmed it.

“They’re gone now.” Kaye made me check for sure. Suddenly, I was the Knight of Swords, banishing evil, well, not exactly evil, more like uninvited guests. There was no evil there.

Victorian Trade Card Tarot
Now in its 2nd Edition
(c) copyright 2010
Marcia McCord

“Did you look under the beds?”

“No,” I said. “Everyone knows there are monsters under the beds and I don’t want to look at them.” We all laughed.

We discussed going to Armstrong Grove and visiting a friend of BG’s who had a table out at Duncans Mills. Duncans Mills won and the drive there and out to Jenner satisfied our outdoor needs; we stopped a few times for the stunning vistas. We shopped in Jenner and I found a couple of sweaters to take to Readers Studio. I asked the antique dealers if they had old tarot cards; no luck.

We returned to the river house and Ronda cooked her pasta, much better than mine, squash ravioli with walnut cream sauce and another salad. We were stuffed. And then we had Julie’s cupcakes. Oh. My. Goodness. Was chocolate like this even legal?

All the while we chattered at dinner, BG never suspected that some of our scurrying around was that we were getting ready to celebrate her recent milestone birthday with a croning ceremony. We welcomed her to wisdom, pretty sure she had brought some of her own with her, and told BG stories. BG had named the Cecile Brunner rose I had given her “Marcia Cecile.” I had never expected to have a rose namesake, so sweet of her! We made plans for the morning and retreated to bed, this time uninterrupted by visitors.

After our French toast and bacon breakfast a la Julie, we decorated our backpacks for our emergency kits. Japan’s earthquake and tsunami had inspired us to be mindful of preparations for The Big One. We had a long list of good ideas for things you will wish you had in an emergency, even a small one, and had exchanged gifts the night before. But that morning it was all about the bling: the fabric paint, the sequins and the personalized stickers. Fabulous, dah-ling!

I read everyone’s cards, even my own with Kaye giving her learner’s permit interpretations (and not too shabby, either) using my Art Postcard Tarot. We zoomed through the house like five tornadoes, dishes, laundry, trash, packing, closing, latching, settings, double-checking. And we left for home, humming the songs we had listened to and shrieked at the tops of our lungs in the woods, happy to be blessed with yet another spring of friendship.

*** *** ***

And guess what else is here? The Tea Tarot, the 2nd Edition of the Picture Postcard Tarot and the 2nd Edition of the Victorian Trade Card Tarot. Available now! Click on the link on the right just under that yellow bird, easy to find; it’s the one called Tarot Decks.

Best wishes!

Coffee with Chip

2011-04-03T11:51:00.000-07:00

“Marcia!”

I turned toward what I expected was a nearby playground as my husband and I were trudging up a San Francisco hill. I thought I had heard a child call my name but shook it off. It didn’t happen again and we were only half a block from the Queen Anne Hotel. At the time, I was convinced it was a vertical block. At least I had worn the right shoes. You have to have the right shoes in San Francisco.

This was my big treat after a dreadful week at work, battling the dragons of misunderstood requirements, bad data, numbers that did or didn’t add up and one annoying typo that I can fix later at least. It had been days of long hours to right a wrong that crept into one of the computer systems and get it done in time for the end of quarter processing. And I made it. My rewards were a hum-dinger of a stiff neck that flowed like broken glass down across the top of my shoulder and of course my delicious evening with Chip Coffey as a “Super VIP.”

Based in Atlanta now, Chip is a famous psychic who has appeared on Paranormal State and Psychic Kids. I especially love his work with psychic kids and their parents to help them reconcile the sometimes scary world of experiencing things that others do not with everyday living. Chip has been called a cross between John Edwards and Dr. Phil for his tell-it-like-it-is way of dealing with paranormal phenomena and psychic sensitivies. He is at once humble and flamboyant, feisty and caring.

I had written him a quick note once to say how I admired his work with young people coming to grips with their psychic tendencies. While my mother never specifically discouraged me from what I did and was curiously accepting of my studies and card reading despite her own personal devotion to Doubting Thomas and believing in nothing she could not see and touch, it was clear that this was one of the Topics Never to Be Discussed. So we didn’t, of course. Her only comment had been, “Well, your great-great-grandmother was a gypsy, after all,” as if that explained anything. She considered it in the category of Not Yet Proven, where she also put all things religious, the relative fashion value of the color beige and the existence of extra-terrestrial life.

Luckily, when I was 15 I had met an elderly psychic, a volunteer at the hospital where I also volunteered. I was also lucky that in spite of all the possibilities, I actually had never been afraid of any of the encounters I had had as a child. I thought they were all normal in my earliest years, then realized other people didn’t experience those things. And like so many things in my family dynamic, we just didn’t talk about it. It was so refreshing to meet one kind person who understood, however. Even though we talked only a few times, I held onto that example to anchor me when things became turbulent or even downright freaky.

Chip’s Psychic Kids went a step further. Not only did he and Edy, the psychologist who worked with him on the show, help to make the kids feel good about being themselves and calm down enough to be able to distinguish startling or annoying encounters from those truly frightening. They also helped those kids speak openly with their parents about what it was like living in a world where most other people didn’t get all that extra information. Interesting to me was the realization that, in my own life, my “crisis” about being this way, even a little, was completely intertwined with my age. My own abilities seemed to accelerate when I was in my teen years, just at the time when kids all want to look alike and be accepted. The kids on Psychic Kids were all in the throes of that, and so while the show was about psychic kids, it had the universal appeal of trying to be yourself and fit in with everyone else at the same time, the essence of teenage angst.

After pulling my husband away from what surely must have been a fascinating real estate sign across the street from the Queen Anne Hotel, we puffed in, got our badges and slid into our seats in the last row of the Super VIP section. We had made a lovely evening of it so far, dinner in Japantown and a miraculous 15-minute massage by a diligent girl with strong hands and bad teeth, resolving my pain in the neck for the evening (best $15 I had spent all week). And now we were ready for the Big Event.

Chip’s Coffey Talks are a part of a multi-city tour that sounds like an exhausting schedule. Tickets are still available (see the link at the bottom) for other cities. With him at the Queen Anne were two of the kids and their mothers from Psychic Kids. They talked about their experiences on the show and how their relationships have improved. Chip took some questions from the crowd and I got a chance to ask my question.

I wanted to know if, in his work with psychologists and psychic people, not just kids, he had found a strong correlation between those with psychic abilities expressed and those reporting a curiosity called “synesthesia.” You can look that big word up in Wikipedia for a lot more information, but basically it means that your senses blend so that numbers have colors, shapes have smells and all those things that the more mystical discussions of the “music of the spheres” and numerology talk about. There are several different reported types of synesthesia and I have three of them. The empirical ear, for instance my mother and Doubting Thomas, would say that a statement like “smelling something angry coming” was utterly nonsensical. But that kind of statement seems to make utter sense to the synesthetes like me who get information in ways that, well, often defy description.

Chip was fun about answering my question and said that the answer he would give was to read his book which is coming out later this year. We think the title may be Growing Up Psychic but it’s not official yet. Then, I think to make sure that his answer wasn’t flippant or just plain unresponsive, he looked over his shoulder before completely moving on to the next question and said, “Read my book, but, yes, there is a correlation.” We had a break, grabbed a cup of coffee to stay up past my usual bedtime and resumed. He did a satisfyingly long series of readings for people in the audience.

My husband nudged me, “Hold up your hand.” I looked at him and he looked back. “Oh, right,” he whispered. “You talk with your mom all the time.” I smiled and nodded. I wanted others to have their chance. I talk with my mom, my dad, his mom, lots of people I never knew in life. Really. It’s OK. So far the only really weird thing is that house in Cincinnati I keep dreaming about. Maybe I’ll get a personal reading from Chip on that through his website.

One of the few things that disappointed me in the event was that Chip himself seemed angry. But it was with good reason. One of the reasons Psychic Kids is not being renewed for another season is that someone somewhere, not in the audience, accused him of exploiting the kids. Chip is bitterly hurt by this. I don’t blame him. To his point, accuse him of murder and he becomes a celebrity even if he did it; accuse him of hurting kids and he becomes a pariah even if he didn’t do it. And, by the way, he didn't. So what was disappointing about that, besides the fact that someone had accused him when my sense is that he clearly just wants to help people of any age come out of the “psychic closet,” is that Chip’s own defenses were up. There was a lot of energy in the room and Chip was well-prepared. His own psychic defenses were up “wall to wall and ten feet tall” as the CB-radio jargon goes. I wanted to see the relaxed Chip, unfortified. But I understand.

The only other thing that was really disappointing was the woman who, even after Chip threatened to throw her out of the show, continued to text message with her friend during the entire thing. Ha-rumph! Manners, people, manners!

Our evening ended for the Super VIP’s getting a little easy try at communicating with the Senator who built the building that is now the Queen Anne Hotel and the headmistress who ran the girls school there before it was a hotel. It’s the cheapest ghost-hunter tool on the market, a mini-Maglite with the back cap unscrewed just to the point where there is no light, no electrical connection to the battery. And Chip asked questions. And a few times, the light came on. We weren’t sure we were getting either the Senator or the headmistress, but it was indeed a fun way to end the evening.

Best wishes.

*** *** ***

Coffey Talk Tour: http://www.behindtheicon.net/coffeytalk.htm

The Ace of Round Oak Tables

2011-03-29T19:32:00.000-07:00

I’ve been hit with the inspiration stick again. I thought this was just an anomaly and that I had recovered from last year’s overdose of creative juices. But, no.

My new deck, the Tea Tarot, is at the printer now and I hope to have it available at the end of April. My goal is to drag some copies to the Readers Studio 2011 in New York that last weekend.

You haven’t heard of the Readers Studio? I went for the first time last year and was treated like a queen. It did help that my banquet costume was the Queen of Pentacles. Sometimes, if you want to be treated like a queen, you do need to wear a crown. And a regal gown helps too. I was the Queen of Indulgence last year, dressed in my crimson and gold. There were several other Queens of Pentacles last year, too. One of the nice things about fun times with a large group of tarot readers is that we really don’t care if there is more than one representation of a card.

I’m not sure what I’ll be treated like this year, if it’s dependent on my costume. But I know based on the people I met last year and those I know through various social media that the gang is a nice bunch. Some are shy and some are bold. Some read professionally and some read just for themselves. They may be history lovers who crave old images of the Marseilles-style decks. They may be Crowley-Thoth fans. They may love the imagery from the Rider-Waite-Smith decks and their many, many clones. They may be Manga fans, Steampunk-knowledgeable, Lenormand-lovers and there are at least three GO players. Some have encyclopedic knowledge of symbolism, history, color, costume, psychology, metaphysics and beliefs. Some are new to it all. But they all have in common a love of tarot and a thirst to learn just a little bit more.

This year we’re going to have a parade of tarot for those of us brazen enough to be part of the pageant. My fond wish would be that we had a representative from each of the major arcana to echo the procession of triumphs from northern Italy. I was brave this year and determined to be one of the major card characters. I have the dress, the props, the whole catastrophe. I’m ready!

I’m almost ready, anyway. I did make significant headway this evening after work with a brief trip to my local craft chain store where they had what I needed, thank goodness, for both the outfit and the packaging for my new deck. I’m steering clear of releasing details, you notice. It’s not easy when you’re about to bubble over with excitement.

But that’s what happens when I get inspired. It’s that Ace of Wands thing that sets off a chain reaction of all kinds of connections and ideas. It can be like a great big match that sets me on fire with ideas, big and small, details and broad brushes. It usually means that I stay up late and wake up wishing I had not stayed up late.

This is really an Ace of Wands time of year, too, when spring tugs at the earth. Whether you are in a milder climate like mine where my lilacs, calla lilies and freesias are blooming or if you are just now suspecting there are crocus under all that snow, new growth is happening. There will be spring. There will be flowers. There will be green leaves on those trees. The robins and cedar waxwings have stripped all the red berries from the shrub outside my office window. The snowball bush is leafing out. The camellias next door have bloomed and browned. The finches have run out of birdseed twice since Christmas, at least the part the squirrel-acrobat did not steal. There will be spring.

A couple of friends and I got together for what was supposed to be our Christmas get-together last weekend. We had been trying to exchange Christmas gifts and circumstances conspired to delay our good time. But we sat down for a fabulous forbidden Benedict at the counter at Marvin’s in Novato, waiting patiently outside in the not-quite-drizzling weather for a seat. We exchanged presents and hugs and talked about our fast-approaching weekend getaway in the Northern California redwoods.

Like some flowers, some ideas grow only on new growth but some grow only on old stems. We have been friends for 20 years and every year we give ourselves a project, something just for ourselves. This year, the idea stemmed from the terrible recent events in Japan and the knowledge that we all live in an earthquake zone, all under the warnings of “The Big One.” That inspired me to suggest that we all create, and decorate of course, our own home emergency kits. There are some excellent lists of things to put in this kit. We all agreed that we would need to “bling it up” to personalize our kits. To meet the sometimes beer budget with always-champagne tastes, we determined we would let each one purchase her own carrier. I found a perfectly good one at the local drugstore for $6 but I’m sure I may see something far classier than mine. I suggested that along with the requisite sparkly stuff, glow-in-the-dark decorations were likely in order. After all, in an emergency, I’m going to want to find that bag and there may not be electricity.

We turned to thoughts of spangles, beads, glitter and glue-guns and determined that the antique shop down the street could have some elegant old rhinestone pieces or interesting buttons to add to the project. And there I saw it. No, not a sparkly! It was my very own Ace of Wands. It was the round oak pedestal table with the lion paws I had envisioned for years in my dining room, complete with 4 leaves. And while it wasn’t quite a song, it was a price I was willing to pay. Happy dance! I have found my birthday present to myself!

So in honor of spring and inspiration and my new table, which seats 6 comfortably without even using the leaves, I made a card for a deck that doesn’t exist. It’s my very own Ace of Wands, now sitting in my dining room waiting for its first meal, or game of dominoes or tarot spread.

May inspiration grab you by the shirt-tail and swing you around in the spring air so that you soar to new heights and feel the buzz of new life, whether your stems are old or new!

Best wishes!

*** *** ***

Find out more about the Readers Studio 2011 here: http://www.tarotschool.com/RS11/index.html

And for more information about the Tea Tarot and my other decks, visit http://marciamccordtarotreader.blogspot.com/p/tarot-decks.html

The Sign of Four

2011-03-21T22:39:00.000-07:00

No, this isn’t Sherlock Holmes speaking. It’s just me again. Four has been on my mind today. The Emperor is IV and often is said to represent Aries. We just had that Super Moon, meaning a super-close full moon. My thanks to all those people who posted their photos on Facebook. Here we had rain and clouds, so I had to use my imagination. But along with that Super Moon we had the vernal equinox, that day when night and day are even heralding the first day of spring and the first degree of Aries. I’m an Aries fan. It’s my sun sign. I like beginnings of things, along with the middles and ends.

As one of my fours, The Emperor is the guy who makes decisions for the overall good of the empire. Not all of those decisions are popular but the Emperor is the one who makes them. Very recently I made a couple of decisions of my own. Two were to end a couple of affiliations that no longer worked for me. They were very personal decisions. They weren’t entirely popular with the people affected by them. But looking at my own long term stability, growth and happiness, they were right for me.

When I know a decision is not going to be easy, I really like the “Dear Abby” method of arriving at an answer. Dear Abby’s advice usually applies to people stuck in between the decision to leave or stay with a commitment, usually in discussing an abusive, once-romantic relationship. The question is, Are you better off with them or without them?

In both cases, I considered that question carefully. I wanted to make sure I was comfortable with the decision, like the Emperor taking care of the good of his empire first. But I also wanted to treat the topic with dignity as much as possible, including making sure in the process of the discussion that along with being clear and careful of others’ dignity I also preserved my own. I tend to sacrifice that. Maybe that’s part of The Hanged Man being part of my birth cards.

Since part of the lesson of the Emperor is that, when you implement something, like making a decision, you can’t always control everything about it, the “four” part of the Emperor talks about stability and that while a temporary ruckus might ensue from your decision, eventually stability and order and safety and balance are the goals. Sometimes the most important thing to remember is that your own personal empire has boundaries.

Boundaries are a funny thing. Some people view the stretch of territory beyond that boundary to be wilderness ready for annexation. They risk or ignore or perhaps just don’t care that on the other side of their empire is likely someone else’s empire or at least their patch of grass. Boundary issues, we call it.

Sticking to your own boundaries can be seen in another four in the tarot, the 4 of Pentacles. Sometimes this is called the “miser” card but a little more broadly this can be thought of as the prudent use of resources. Not only does it talk about curbing that wild spending streak (Inner Child: Well, THAT’S no fun. Outer Me: We haven’t heard from YOU in a while), but it also talks about maintaining stability with what you truly control and not trying to go beyond those boundaries. So, while I might wish to assuage any hurt feelings caused by misunderstanding my decisions, ultimately the only person’s feelings I really control are my own.

I can still wish no one had been upset by my decisions or hurt by misunderstandings. But like the 4 of Pentacles, there’s a point where going beyond my own scope is not productive to me or to others. Sometimes you just have to sit tight and wait for people to adjust to the change. I owe them that, at least. It’s a sign of respect.

I could actually make things worse if I spoke out further than my original statement. There’s a certain wisdom to the advice, “Don’t apologize. Don’t explain” especially if you have the urge to do it “pro-actively” when someone didn’t actually come to you for the apology or explanation. Sometimes, well meant good will can serve to make the conflict worse. So, another four pops up, the 4 of Swords. Give it a rest. That’s advice to yourself, of course. Saying that to someone else is likely to get neither of you any rest!

One of the two decisions was first very clear. The other party wanted to end the association and left a voicemail with clear instructions. I happened to save it just in case I was listening with too much emotion at the time. But in contemplating the decision and listening again, I had to agree. I was truly better without the association. And then it got confusing. They wanted a face-to-face discussion. I wasn’t sure what that would accomplish other than to make me feel worse than I already did. I agreed with them. We’re done. But I don't need a meeting. We're just done and I wish them well.

And surprise, that made things worse instead of better. Since I’m so much more comfortable with new beginnings than endings, drawing out the conflict can even desensitize you to others’ feelings and it certainly does little to help them understand your own. So yet another four, the 4 of Cups, says, I’ll pass on the drama too. No, I didn’t need to meet. ‘Nuff said.

Strangely, with the parting of the ways in both situations, I felt oddly liberated. Sometimes it’s hard to know when you have a burden until you set it down for a while. Gee, that’s better! Breathe in the good air! The conflict that had been there a while was resolved for me by just letting go. No more trying to figure out a way to make it better without any real hope of it getting better. I love that Russian proverb: When the horse is dead, get off. Simple.

Nope, I’m not going to go into the details of either situation. They were professional associations and not dear personal ones. They weren’t my main source of income, just connections that I had hoped would be mutually beneficial. That little bit of distance helps to make the change easier for me and I hope for them too. Instead, I’d rather turn my energy to something more productive, something worth my time, something with a future, something like the 4 of Wands.

I love the 4 of Wands. It is stability without stagnation. It is energy expended without being dissipated and wasted. I’m Aries; I’m a fire sign. The 4 of Wands is the 4 of Fire and it can be seen as that cozy hearth-fire that serves, warms without burning and welcomes others to thaw beside it. My own hearthfire has taken the form of creating a new tarot deck, something cozy and warm, the Tea Tarot. It soothes. It refreshes. It takes the sting out of the day. It brightens the mind and warms inside and out. It can be the groundwork for a new beginning, a solid foundation and energetic. And I hope you will enjoy it!

Best wishes and calm, warm thoughts to all!

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Pre-orders for the Tea Tarot are available now. Want a sneak peek? Click on the link Tarot Decks in the upper right side in the information bar. Shall I pour?

Please Donate for Japan Relief

2011-03-14T13:07:00.000-07:00

Instead of my usual fun post this week, I'd like to urge everyone to please donate to the organization of their choice to assist the people of Japan. This link will take you to the American Red Cross:

https://american.redcross.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=ntld_main

Some things are just more important than others. This is one of those.

Best wishes.