Thoughtful and Impressive Principles for Everyone

As some of you know, I'm an active member of Pachamama Alliance, an umbrella organization that is working to move the planet and its people into a more environmentally sane and socially just direction. One of our readings is Will Keepin's Principles of Spiritual Leadership, adapted from a presentation at Schumacher College, Totnes, England. Will is affiliated with the Satyana Institute in Boulder, Colorado. I found these principles so thoughtful, engaging, and yet so simple. Here, the first principle:
The motivation underlying our activism for social change must be transformed from anger and despair to compassion and love. This is a major challenge for the environmental movement, for example. It is not to deny the legitimacy of noble anger or outrage at injustice of any kind. Rather, we seek to work for love, rather than against evil. We need to adopt compassion and love as our foundational intention, and do whatever inner work is required to implement this intention. Even if our outward actions remain the same, there is a major difference in results if our underlying intention supports love rather than defeating evil. The Dalai lama says, "A positive future can never emerge from the mind of anger and despair."

Say what?

The look says it all--taken in Jaipur, during my India trip

OK, I admit: these phrase origins came off the Internet, so take them with a grain of salt ("tastier and safer to swallow thanks to salt's preservative properties")...If these aren't authentic, there are some very creative liars out there (but you knew that)! When in doubt, make up your own!

They used to use urine to tan animal skins [and set dye], so families had to all pee in a pot. Once a day it was taken and sold to the tannery. This is still happening in India, as I found out firsthand; see above and 1woman1world1year.blogspot.com. If you had to do this to survive, you were ‘piss poor.’ But worse than that were the really poor folks who couldn’t  even afford to buy a pot. They ‘didn’t have a pot to piss in’ and were considered the lowest of the low.

Most people got married in June because they took baths once a month or less; if bath day happened to be in May, they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they were starting to smell, brides carried  a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom of carrying a bouquet when getting married. 

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of nice clean water to bathe in, followed by the other males, then the women, and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, ‘Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water!' [I sincerely doubt this one, since the phrase means "don't throw out the good with the bad"; maybe it was originally a clever metaphor in a forgotten book]

Wait a second--this thatched roof cottage has boards and rafters. Only very small bugs can slip through.

Houses had thatched roofs with thick straw-piled high and no wood underneath [obviously erroneous]. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof.
When it rained, it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying, ‘It’s raining cats and dogs.’

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That’s how canopy beds came into existence. [I am not so sure about this one, since canopies and curtained beds were necessary for warmth well before the middle ages]

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the term, ‘dirt poor.’ The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence, ‘a thresh hold.’

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day, they lit the fire and added things to the pot.

They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, ‘Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.’

Butcher at work from my culinary school days: http://chefjocooks.blogspot.com

Sometimes they could obtain pork.  It was a sign of wealth that a man could ‘bring home the bacon.’ They would cut off a little to share with guests, and all would sit around and ‘chew the fat.'

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the ‘upper crust.'

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial.

They were laid out on the kitchen table and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a ‘wake.’”

In old, small villages, local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave.

When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside [!!!!--I don't THINK so], and they realized they had been burying people alive [whoops]. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.

Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (‘the graveyard shift’) to listen for the bell. Thus, someone could be ‘saved by the bell,’ or was considered a ‘dead ringer.’

Begin Again

I've been busy doing what a lot of writers do: goofing off. Of course, my travel blog, 1Woman1World1Year.blogspot.com has been kept up because I continue to travel, and my Facebook Author's Page (AuthorNews) gets a little of my attention, but my writing blog has limped off into the corner and is currently licking its leg in disgust.
I don't think I'm alone in this, but I often don't enjoy writing. Yes, there is, sometimes, supreme satisfaction when some goal or accomplishment has been reached. There is also the terror of the empty page, the swirl of too many or too few ideas about what happens next in a story. The lure of the laundry, the happy hum of an open refrigerator door. Temptations abound, rewards few.
It's tough when you're fairly skilled at something, but it doesn't offer much of a payoff. One of my favorite short stories (by Poul Anderson, I think) was about the author Herman Melville. In life, Melville found modest success as a writer, though his great work, Moby Dick, met with little acclaim. In the story, he comes back and gets to see all the people he's influenced, the popularity of his work, the admiration for his efforts.
I don't pretend to be a Melville, though we all feel the tug of  practicalities continually competing with art for one's attention. But thinking about that short story led me to a different place. Writing stories puts reality in the hands of the author--the end can be glorious, beastly, or bittersweet (my personal favorite). We may be able to influence our outcomes in life, but how often can any of us create exactly what we want? Only on the page, in our stories.
Writers--what do you say?

The Best Game for Writers (and Emerging Writers)

This, by the by, is a "writing spider". I didn't know there was such a thing. 

Oh, this is priceless--so many of the things on this game board happened to me and people I know, from crisis of confidence to book deal. Enjoy--and keep on writing! After all, I scored 42 points, was dubbed a William Shakespeare, a writer for the ages. Somehow, I think everyone gets that score, eventually--go ahead, have fun!
http://graphics.latimes.com/how-to-be-a-writer/?tw_name=Electric+Literature&tw_screen_name=ElectricLit&tw_source=twitter

Yikes! Earthquakes All the Time!

Since an earthquake figures in my book "Shaketown", I was curious as to the magnitude of the earthquakes I clearly remember since moving to California with my parents. The 1906 quake was a 7.8, and it was centered not far from where I live now, in Marin County (you can still see the parting of the ground out there in Olema). The first shaker I remember was in 1957, centered in Daly City, a mere 5.3. My family lived in the valley then, and a few things fell off the shelves, but no big deal. The next big one WAS a big one--7.9 centered in Santa Rosa. I was in San Francisco ushering for the musical "Hair" of all things. Ushers were banished to the third tier of the balcony after doing their jobs, and as the place began to shake, the  giant chandelier hanging from the ceiling began to sway, raining dust on everyone. Panic? Yep. Some clear-headed fellow shouted "calm down", and probably saved us all from a trampling rush to the door. I should add that the actress on the stage continued to gamely sing "Easy to be Hard" during all this. What a trooper!
In 1984, the 6.2 Morgan Hill 'quake caught me on the fifth floor of landfill in Emeryville. Out the window, the tall, thin light-posts in the parking lot were whipping back and forth like silvery licorice sticks in a storm.
I was at work in Sausalito during the 6.9 Loma Prieta, and though it knocked me and a co-worker to the floor and took out all the streetlights and electricity for several hours,  I was surprised at the damage it did, and the heavy, sad feelings that stayed for more than a week. Someone told me "vapors" were released from the earth. I don't know about that, but the collapse of the freeway and bridge, and the poor folks who died there surely affected us all.
But it's shaking all the time; take a look at this if you don't think so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_California
Time to check the earthquake kit...

Something happened....

I'm not quite sure what. After waffling for the last few years about continuing writing as opposed to some other creative outlet, I'm suddenly infused with new life--as a writer. Maybe it was the tarot cards telling me I had not made a sufficient commitment to learning what I needed in order to move forward as a writer (it's a constant growth process, and like all growth, has built-in pain). Or now that the process of getting the novel published and dealing with marketing has subsided, I'm in an easier place. I don't know.
Anyone who has written a novel knows how incredibly dogged the production of it is--and historical novels not only require story-telling, but good research skills (and editing, editing, editing). Since I spent so much time going over and over Shaketown; the Madam's Daughter before its publication, I spent little or no time actually delving into the mysterious activity of letting ideas and memories flow from my brain to the page. Without that, the real pleasure of writing for me--the marveling of the power and beauty of words, the act of actually creating a mental picture using them--simply wasn't happening.
I picked up Ursula LeGuin's book on writing, Steering the Craft, which is a compendium of her lectures on the topic. Is it the best book on writing I've ever read? No, but I love her strong opinions, and there are gems. One of the first exercises brought me back to my senses, literally: a short paragraph using onomatopoeia (words that sound like what they describe, such as "boom!"), alliteration (repetition of sounds), repetition, made-up words, whatever--just be gorgeous. This is what I wrote:
Spring: shimmer, shatter, soften, sink and flow. Icey thin, sun-softened snow responds to pond below. Weakened, web-woven, wanting oneness sinking into sparkle sparkle sparkle land-lapping glow.

You try it....

Am I a Writer?

Eclipse, Berkeley CA, 2012

I've made my living writing this and that (mostly travel, with some fiction thrown in) for a couple decades now, and I'm currently reading books on marketing Ebooks (self-published "Top 250 places to Sell and Market your Book Online", a book that looks as though it was printed directly from a website--lots of CAPS!! and EXCLAMATON POINTS!!--and would have benefited from an editor) and print publication marketing ("Publicize Your Book" by Jacqueline Deval, a classic), since publishers don't seem to do that anymore. So now the art and craft of writing requires that the writer morph into salesman.
I've also learned that I need to narrow in on what I'm selling before I can sell it, and the definitions are narrow indeed: Travel writer? Novelist? Photographer? Artist? I do all these things, and I don't want to limit myself. So what's the definition of that? I should take a lesson from Lady Gaga, and set out to be a "celebrity". Judging from the Kardashians, no evidence of talent is necessary.
I need to make up a name for myself, to make a name for myself--and to distinguish myself from the other millions of writers...(!).
Writing/photographing/drawing are all mediums; what I do is show people what I see.
Does that make me a "shower"? No that one's taken.
How about an Interpreter? No that one's taken, too.
Renaissance woman seems like overreaching a bit.
I'm also following the inspiring progress of my friend, therapist Jan Sells as she markets her non-fiction book "Lost and Found: Healing Troubled Teens in Troubled Times". She's put a lot of energy into getting her book in front of people and marketing her heart out. I'll hear more about her experiences in the next few weeks.

One Woman, One World, One Year. Ulp.

It's happening...and I'm alternating between elation (this is so great! My bucket list, realized!) and terror (holy cow! Will I be safe? Which country requires a visa? Where will I stay?). Through the auspices of my good friend Geri, I'll have access to any and all standby flights on United next year (meaning I may or may not get on the flight, in which case I will perfect the art of sleeping upright in a busy airport). I've already set up an itinerary that may kill me! I'm planning on traveling 10 days a month, with 20 days in between for appreciation, relaxation and planning for my next destination. On the calendar so far: Galapagos in January, Delhi and the Golden Triangle of India in February, and Stockholm and Jukkasjarvi Sweden in March (I'm Ukrainian, I can take cold weather). Only one visa is necessary--for India--the others only require a passport for a trip less than 90 days, plus some sort of proof that you don't intend to become a panhandler in Quito or Stockholm.
I discovered to my horror that my passport expired last month. The US Passport Office makes no promises about when your new passport will make it back to your house, so I paid the extra $100 (including rush postage to and from) to guarantee peace of mind. Money definitely talks: it was here in a little over two weeks. Next, I have to figure out how to get from Quito to the Galapagos Islands, what's the best tour boat to take, and by the way, where the heck am I going to stay?

NYC before the Storm...

It's no secret that I love New York City; energetic, enigmatic and exceptional in every way. As a former Manhattanite, I especially love the way the city can survive the worst and come back stronger than ever. NYC overcame the devastating effects of 9/11, and turned that sorrow and destruction into a beautiful, heart-rending monument. And now, my special city has to deal with the aftermath of superstorm Sandy. My thoughts and prayers are with all the boroughs. I made this video after a recent visit, just before the storm--it's my love song to a city that will never die: http://vimeo.com/51719980

Leaf-Peeping in New York

New York's Hudson Valley is one of the most scenic and historic river valleys in America--even more so in the early fall when the leaves begin their annual show of light and color. There's plenty to see, do and eat in the valley, from NYC to Albany. I followed the leaves south from Albany to the Big Apple, and reviewed a number of eateries, museums, parks and drives along the way. Take a look: http://www.gogobot.com/joanne-orion-miller-leaf-peeping-in-new-yorks-hud