Fall Farm Bounty
I’ve been getting an organic farm share all summer from Terry’s Berries, actually only half a share because I’m just one person and I’d get overwhelmed! As it is, my refrigerator is full of green stuff! I can hardly keep up with it. I’ve learned how to make more weird vegetables than I ever knew existed and have lost a good 10 pounds. Today was the first day of our fall farm share (no half shares available). Wow – I can feed the whole neighborhood :) For this one week, we got:
apples, cabbage, onions, garlic, mustard greens, frilly red lettuce, green pepper, green tomatoes (lots), beets, butternut squash, potatoes, carrots – and peanuts! I didn’t even know those grew around here.
And for good measure, I also picked up some pluots and artisan olive bread. Now mustard greens I chose from a variety of greens because I haven’t tried those yet. I hear they’re pretty spicy :) I still have carrots from last week, so, I think it’s time to get out a good Thanksgiving recipe I made up one year and have used for many, many years (all of the ingredients are basically however much you want or have to use up):
Squash and Carrot Yum
Bake butternut or other winter squash in the oven until tender (steaming, boiling, or microwaving also works). Remove seeds and scoop out into a bowl. Steam carrots until very tender and drain well. Add those to the bowl. Toss in butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, and garlic salt to taste, and mash until thoroughly mixed and smooth. Place in a pyrex baking dish and top with grated cheese (whatever kind sounds good – I usually use jack). Bake in the oven at 350 until heated through and cheese is melted, about 30 minutes. If you like nuts, you can also top with cashews just under the cheese.
Enjoy!
Tales of the Arabian Nights (the game)
Since I spent all day yesterday at one of my periodic gaming gatherings, I thought I should finally put up a “gaming geek” post :) and tell you all about one of my favorite games. This is one of those old, great board games that came out in the ’80s called “Tales of the Arabian Nights,” published by West End Games (long out of print, but occasionally shows up on eBay).
This is one of the most unique games I have ever played, and if you loved the Arabian Nights, you’ll love this. The board is a mostly recognizable map of the world, stretching from the deserts of northern Africa to Stonehenge, and from Portugal to Tibet. With of course, a few surprises – Aladdin’s Cave, the Valley of Diamonds, City of Brass, Jeweled Fortress. You can choose to play Sheherazade, Aladdin, Ali Baba, Sinbad, or other male and female characters, and choose traits and abilities for them such as minor magic, courtly graces, seafaring, seduction, story-telling, quick thinking, disguise, and lots of other useful skills :)
After that, you set out into the world to complete various adventures. You travel among the cities of Persia and other far-off lands, and along with way, meet with various individuals. Each one you meet, whether it be an angry begger, a sultry princess, or a powerful djinn, must be dealt with in some way – you choose a reaction from a chart of possible responses (for example, you can beat the angry beggar, honor him, steal from him, listen to him, or ignore him).
This leads you to an extensive story-type reference book, where depending on your choices and the skills you have chosen, various things may happen to you – imprisonment, great wealth, learning new skills, being taken to a far-off land, marriage to the princess (not as great as it sounds), becoming honored or reviled, or even a sex-change. The more adventures you have, the more destiny and story-telling points you accumulate, which helps you win the game.
If you ever come over to my house to game, I may try to whisk you off to the land of Sheherazade :) Watch out for the rocs!
More jazz, or the benefits of daylight savings time
Now, normally I hate daylight savings time :) Today, I was supposed to be heading over to a friend’s house for a gaming day – halfway there I realized I was not 15 minutes late, but almost 45 minutes early! I decided to head over to the nearby and excellent Mandolin Cafe. I was listening to jazz on NPR on the way over, and as I walked in the door, I thought they were playing it as well. Except… it was better :) So I was treated to lunch and excellent live music by Gypsy Swing, a band with guitars, mandolins, a drummer and an amazing trumpet player. Really great, and a totally unexpected pleasure – the best present daylight savings time has ever given me.
Nature’s Mood
I’ve been feeling really tense and anxious the last few days – just some personal stuff coming up. It’s been hard to eat, sleep well, or concentrate on work. Then I found out I have to give a deposition in early November – probably my least favorite thing to get paid the big bucks for. By timber industry lawyers even, which in my experience, are the worst. So I’m driving off to the dentist (more fun!) and drop some stuff off at the mail, when I see…
Deer munching apples in my neighbor’s orchard. This is one of those remnants of what this area used to be like – rural, farms, and horses. There is still a little bit of that around my house. There was just something about the deer, straining their necks to pick off the apples, contentedly feasting… I slowed down my car and just stopped to watch for a while. It helped.
Later today, I was sweeping all the leaves off of my new deck, which is gorgeous and beautiful, as were the drifts of leaves all over it. The leaves were dry and crackly, and all shades of color. The sweeping and piles of leaves, and more drifting down all around me, was peaceful. I’m finding myself wishing there was more daylight right now so I could do more of this natural soothing.
Top 22: Classic Hits of the Major Arcana
I just had to share this with you – it’s an album of ’80s hits my brother and sister-in-law made for me on my birthday last year – one for each of the tarot majors. The songs and artists are listed below :) Now I’ve discovered there’s an ’80s tarot online as well, whose origins may be loosely related. It’s fun – check it out!
0. Fool – Jump, Van Halen
1. Magician – Magic Man, Heart
2. Priestess – White Rabbit, Jefferson Airplane
3. Empress – Material Girl, Madonna
4. Emperor – Macho Man, The Village People (hee, hee)
5. Hierophant – Brother Love, Neil Diamond
6. Lovers – Life in the Fast Lane, The Eagles
7. Chariot – Little Deuce Coupe, The Beach Boys
8. Strength – I am Woman, Helen Reddy
9. Hermit – People are Strange, The Doors
10. Wheel of Fortune - The Gambler, Kenny Rogers
11. Justice – I Fought the Law, The Clash
12. Hanged Man - No Surrender, Bruce Springsteen
13. Death – Don’t Fear the Reaper, Blue Oyster Cult
14. Temperance – Ebony and Ivory, McCartney & Jackson
15. Devil – Sympathy for the Devil, The Rolling Stones
16. Tower – Burning Down the House, Talking Heads
17. Star – Star, David Bowie
18. Moon - Eclipse, Pink Floyd
19. Sun – Here Comes the Sun, Beatles
20. Judgment – Solsbury Hill, Peter Gabriel
21. The World - Imagine, John Lennon
Republicans and Democrats and Independents… oh my
I feel like a traitor to my party. Well, not MY party, since I’ve always considered myself an independent. I guess this election just proves it. I sat down today to fill out my mail-in ballot, all excited since it seems that this year we can finally make a difference and get the R’s out of Congress, and maybe stop this disastrous war in Iraq. But, when it came to the actual Congressional races in my district, I couldn’t do it.
Our Senate candidate is OK, I guess. She’s great at bringing home the bacon, for sure. She spends a lot of time defending stuff that’s important to Boeing and Weyerhaeuser, while still toeing the Dem party line. I just don’t really like her – she’s become part of the political machine, always has been, really. While I’d love to boot the R’s out, I don’t want to just replace them with a bunch of equally dysfunctional D’s. So, there were actually five candidates. I’m reading through them and it just struck me – the Green candidate is really where I’m at. He has no chance of getting elected, but if we don’t vote our values, they have no hope of making it into government. So, I voted for him.
Next, I turned to the House. In my district, we have a pretty independent Republican, who in spite of being first-term, votes his mind. He’s voted against the party line and the president on important things like environmental issues, health and scientific research, and has done valuable things in his first term like get all the emergency responders around here grants so that they can coordinate in a disaster. His Democratic opponent has no political experience, is backed by Microsoft and party money, and has spent her whole campaign trying to paint him (completely inaccurately) as a Bush clone. He’s a good honest man, he thinks for himself, and is not afraid to stand up to his party – just the kind of person we need in Congress, IMO. So, eep, I voted Republican on that one.
I did do some good with my votes. We’re getting a chance to vote down a property rights measure that would gut all the zoning for the last 10 years, protect our sitting Supreme Court judges from challenges by property rights activist candidates backed by out of state money, and various other ill-thought-out ideas. We even have a chance to implement instant runoff voting in our county, which I’d love to see catch on. I’ll just have to cross my fingers on those and hope my votes count.
And on the national level, good luck to the D’s. But each and every one of them is going to have to win my vote on their merits. And this time, that just didn’t happen. SIGH.
New Moon in Libra/Scorpio
The dark moon has been in Libra, and stayed there just a bit before transiting to the New Moon in Scorpio. This seems like a good time to draw a tarot card for the month, as this would be a time when the seed of a new relationship is planted. Indeed something like that is going on in my life, for which both Libra and Scorpio are eminently appropriate – issues of love, relationships, secrets, sex, harmony, power balance and beauty all entwined together. More than that you need not know :)
Ahh… the Fool, reversed. A false start? Chasing after a butterfly that looks beautiful but is really just ephemeral and without substance? Stepping off that cliff to find out there’s no safety net after all, maybe, and the laws of gravity really do apply. Starting down a new road for sure, but maybe better not to do it naively (what’s that expression – getting led down the garden path?). Possibly a new beginning that isn’t really begun yet, just appears that way. Conscious deliberation needed, rather than blind faith and trust.
The light of the moon is still very dark, and things may not be what they seem. The path is not clear ahead. Watch for pitfalls born of naivete. Wait and see how things look in the light of day. All of these come to mind.
Hmm. Should be an interesting month!
Bringing Peace into the Room
They say that what separates a good mediator from a great one is a quality of self-reflection; an ability to look within and continuously evaluate not only one’s performance, but one’s character. It’s an interesting concept, that after all the training and in addition to all the practice and continuous skill-building, there’s a third element – almost like the “zen” of mediation – that only comes with a great deal of time and thought.
This include qualities like being able to hold two fundamentally incompatible realities in your hands at once and nurture them both, allowing them to co-exist and building bridges between them. Caring for all the participants in the room, even if, or especially if, they are being difficult, uncooperative, angry #*$(#s – after all, something about this situation has caused a perfectly normal person to act this way. Some mediators speak of building metaphysical connections between all the participants through their heart chakras. There’s a wide variation in how each person conceptualizes it, but it really does make a difference. You can feel it in the room and in how people respond to the mediators and each other.
I found this excerpt from a book with the same title as this blog entry, written by Daniel Bowling and David Hoffman, about the personal qualities of the mediator that impact the process of conflict resolution. This is about the nature of conflict and mediation itself:
Conflicts, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, honesty and deceit, passion and surrender, all of which lie beneath the surface and are revealed through a mediator’s questions. Our willingness to answer these same questions ourselves gives us permission to search for the piercing, pivotal, dangerous moments that can change people’s lives, and the courage to seek them out, even in our own lives.
We are privileged observers, intrepid explorers, and in some cases skillful navigators, of the tides and currents, forces and fields, twists and turns that intersect, overflow, and silently meander through the conflicts we mediate. We are better able to hear and help others navigate these tides and currents if we are able to hear and help ourselves.
Just a few thoughts to ponder on this Saturday morning.
Jazz and Spices
Last night I went to the Wynton Marsalis concert in Olympia … oooh yeah. It was great. That band is awesome – hot hot jazz in a very intense style. An amazing piano player and bassist. If you have a chance to see them, don’t miss it. The more time I spend in Olympia, the better I like it – who woulda thunk our state capital would be so interesting. Last time I was there (for a Bo Diddley concert – also very cool), my friend Martha and I wandered around and went shopping :)
We found the most amazing store of exotic spices – like an apothecary shop of old only filled with strange spices, truffle oils, hard-to-find ethnic spice concoctions from far-flung lands, mortars and pestles, tiny little tins of multi-colored salts and peppers with tiny little spoons, dried and powdered mushrooms of every variety, you name it, it was there. Stuff that I normally don’t cook with because it’s an incredible pain to make from scratch, like garum masala or mole. I couldn’t resist the white truffle oil or African curry powder with cashews. You end up walking out with little bags of spicy treasures – and to top it all off, if they don’t carry it or combine it just the way you want, you can send them the recipe and they’ll get it or make it for you. If you’d like to try mail-order, you can find it here: Buck’s Culinary Exotica.
Just down the street, we found an entire independent bookstore selling only mysteries. Not too many towns where such a store could thrive in this day and age. And last night I finally got to enjoy my (usually-sold-out) fave Italian restaurant there, Trinacria. Simple, perfect, olive oil and garlic pasta. Hot crusty little breadlings, perfect salad following the pasta. When asked for Parmesan, the waitress recommends Pecorino to go with that specific pasta instead. Not too much of anything, nothing extra needed. Just right :)
The Cat Walked…
Desolate is the roof where the cat sat,
Desolate is the iron rail that he walked
And in the corner post whence he greeted the sunrise.
- E. Pound, Canto XXXIX
The rest of this canto is about sex as practiced by Greek goddesses and heroes, and maidens dancing to the Vernal Equinox… You’ll have to read it yourself – oh, but maybe just this bit:
Dark shoulders have stirred the lightning
A girl’s arms have nested the fire
Not I but the handmaid kindled
Cantat sic nupta
I have eaten the flame.
Yes, I’ve made it to Canto 42 (out of 117). What’s so odd is that here is this gorgeous canto, and another one (Canto 36) written on the nature of love, plunked down in the middle of poetry – if you can call it that – on the economic and banking structure of the American Revolution, comments on the military campaigns of Europe, and diatribes about taxes, arms-dealers, usury, and the idiocy of the kings and queens of Europe. ???
Never mind that the ATA is in need of rescue again (deja vu), I’m starting a new environmental consulting job tomorrow, and have mediations scheduled all week. As my Friday the 13th cat said to me, “embrace the insanity!” And so I will.
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