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Keeping current in wellness, in and out of the water
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Twelfth Month
November 26, 2012
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Twelve is a perfect mathematical way to look at everything. There are twelve of everything important because this is a simple, even way to divide any whole. The twelve astrological signs are found in twelve houses that represent different aspects of life and parts of the heavens. The twelfth house is the one that rules the unconscious. By keeping the public from seeing the contents the owner of this house reviews the risks and benefits of the unknown parts of the self. In the heavens, the twelfth house is the one just above the horizon at sunset, the last one visible before darkness. There are twelve Chinese animals that rule the years and hours of each day, passing in a slower, but even pace. These animals rule a year rather than a month, but it is all still divisible by 12.
We have a practice of creating a list for the first day of the first month known as resolutions. These are widely discussed and abandoned in short order until the following first month of the next year. By observing the universal failure of this practice I have devised a new one. By using the last month of the year to review and discover the deep, unconscious meaning of the 11 previous months, we may be able to make significant progress. By facing the shadow, the unknown, the undiscovered that we glaze over with overactivity on a regular basis, we may find wisdom and useful knowledge. You do not need to analyze all of your past to know that important emotions and facts have been swept under a big busy rug of quotidian fuss. You don’t need to meet all your demons, addictions, or delusions of actions past to make progress on taking good care of yourself. You simply have to be willing to consider that the darkness of your own heart may be the only thing blinding your vision. You need to be able to reverse all your assumptions for a while.
Saturnalia is the party time dedicated to Saturn, the ruler of Capricorn, and therefore part of December. Romans reversed all rules and authority during the celebration. After the darkest day of the year, the light returns, reversing the visibility available each day until the summer solstice. The celebration of the darkest time when the world is reborn in the form of seeds and saplings is a universal need through all of history. Here we have some present day Brits dressing up like Romans and getting down for Saturn in December. The beat goes on.
Greeting the Season
November 25, 2012
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The feasting of Thanksgiving behind us, we are hurdling down the holiday barrel of laughs toward either a cheery/jolly time or a close encounter with debt and depression. Which do you have at holiday time? Since much of the shared consciousness of holidays takes place on screens now, rather than in person, we can more easily show a public facade of festive fantasy while freaking out in deep desperate disorientation. I personally am neutral. I don’t drive much any time of year, but for the next 5 weeks I will be in my car even less. I do not like all the high anxiety and consumer madness in the streets. There is more distraction than I would like on the road, so I stay home.
My parents used to send out letters in Christmas cards to establish a contact with people they knew around the world and basically mislead them about how happy they were. This copying and addressing by hand, then stamping and sending the revised versions of their lives was an important way they stayed tribal with all the accepted norms they wanted to keep. They lived in a time when the exterior show was of the utmost importance. Not sending Christmas cards would have made them uncivilized. I still have a couple of cards printed with my name on them that I sent to people when I was in elementary school. They are kind of non sectarian, with a picture of a fawn and Happy Holidays. I have never felt the need to send cards or give gifts as a social imperative. The big build up, the relatives crashing at the house, the decorate and mandatory clean up was not my style.
I like to cook special treats that remind me of winter to give to friends and neighbors at this time. I make some spaghetti squash latkes for Chanukah, and all kinds of ginger concoctions. This year I am featuring nuts and everything that I can buy at the Caravan Market. This specialty foods shop right down the street from my home has all manner of goodies and spices from the middle east and north Africa. I can bike there and bring back exotic extreme foods and spices in minutes. They have pistachio baklava, halvah, and Swiss chocolate for sweets. My own version of holiday cheer is a little extra money and effort spent on food and drink. Shopping local for me is fun and easy. I prefer supporting my neighbors in business to trying to find my car in the parking lot at the mall.
Underage Drinking on the Mayflower
November 22, 2012
There was no drinking water on the Mayflower voyage. Every man woman and child was issued beer to drink. This gave new meaning to the word sloshed. It also gives a new reason for the Pilgrims to be seriously thankful to end the trip. Ironically it is the Brits who are celebrating Alcohol Awareness Week while Americans prepare to guzzle all weekend in the name of thankfulness/football. The British are suggesting that the use of an alcohol unit calculator will shock most people. I am sure this is like the food list for eating awareness. Addictive eating and drinking is by definition kept unconscious. Much energy is spent giving holidays the power to force overeating and drunken excess. This illustrates the general state of mental decay we promote. A holiday honestly does not have the power to make you do anything. Turkeys and cocktails are not a force, they are symbols.
How much change can you create by choosing Thanksgiving as the day to begin knowing how much you really drink? This holiday has special meaning to me because it was at Thanksgiving that my dad got so publicly drunk that I was able to convince him to go to Betty Ford. He was 81, and the treatment did not work because he went right back to Texas to his supportive drunken environment. My parents had to be removed entirely from the state to begin to address the issue. This year while you do your holiday bar tending, filling your home with extra cheer, don’t kid yourself. Calculate.
Pilgrim Will
November 21, 2012
Plymouth Colony Seal
This is the will of my 10th great grandfather who arrived on the Mayflower. It is interesting to note how much they had and did not have. Bless the Plymouth colony for keeping good records:
The Plymouth Colony Archive Project[Go to Biographical Profiles • Wills • Probates • Search • Archive] James Bursell October 11, 1676Plymouth Colony Wills 3(2):61#P281The Inventory of James Bursell
An Inventory of the estate of James Bursell of yarmouth who departed this life on the third of October 1676, and this Inventory taken the 11th of October 1676
L s d
Item in Meate Chattle 25 08 00
Item a Cart & wheeles & yoakes & Chaines 01 09 00
Item in barrells & other wooden ware 02 02 00
Item in pailes and seiues 00 10 00
Item in pewter 01 13 00
Item in 1 morter and pestell 00 02 00
Item 1 pott of butter 00 04 00
Item in earthenware 00 02 00
Item in Iron kettles & 2 potts 01 04 00
Item in brasse kettles & other brasse 01 16 00
Item in one warming pan 00 08 00
Item in seuerall sorts of Iron tooles 01 16 00
Item in old brasse and one spitt 00 03 06
Item in tining ware 00 01 06
Item in Cheires tables and trenchers 00 10 00
Item in armes and amunition 01 00 00
Item in a paire of tonggs and old Iron 00 15 00
Item in Corne and meale sackes 01 00 00
Item 1 feather bed & furniture to it 06 06 00
Item in wheels and Cords 00 12 00
Item in flax and linnine yarne and a baskett 02 00 00
Item 1 feather bed and furniture to it 06 05 00
Item more 1 feather bed and furniture to it 05 15 00
Item in Table linnine 01 03 06
Item in pillow Coates 01 16 00
Item in a remnant of Cloth 01 04 00
Item 17 paire of sheets 18 12 00
Item more in bolster Cases and linnine 01 10 00
Item in Cours linnine Cloth 00 11 00
Item in a parsell of linnie Cloth 00 10 00
Item in wearing apparrell and linine 12 18 00
Item a bible 00 03 00
Item in sickells 00 05 00
Item in Cushens and penistone 2 yards 00 11 06
Item in Glasses and a lanthorne 00 02 06
Item 2 Chests & a Case with bottles 00 16 06
Item 1 bull 02 00 00
Item in Mony 09 04 00
Item in debs due to the estate 16 02 06
Item the estate is debtor about 10 00 00
Item in old lumber 00 06 00
Item in an house and land 25 00 00
Item due to estate for laying 02 10 00
[156 17 06]
Iohn Hiller
Ieremiah houes
This 15 of Nouember 1676 Emett Bursell the relict of Iamos Bursell late deceased made her appeerance and Gaue oath to the truth of this Inventory before Iohn Freeman Assistant
James Bursell (1600 – 1676)
is my 10th great grandfather
Daughter of James
Son of Anna
Daughter of Silas
Daughter of Sarah
Daughter of Sarah
Daughter of Mercy
Son of Martha
Son of Abner
Son of Daniel Rowland
Son of Jason A
Son of Ernest Abner
I am the daughter of Richard Arden
He is not a famous Pilgrim. In fact, we do not know who his parents or his wife’s parents are…yet. We do know, however, what he owned when he died in 1676. 17 pairs of sheets seems like the most extravagant thing they had.
Claim Your Acronym
November 12, 2012
To enhance communication of any kind it is necessary to address a specific audience, even if it is digital. In the book Impact Equation I have been presented with a concept that I have been living for the last few years. Brother Brogan proposes that for an idea to evolve and be refined the qualities that cause audience to be interested in your message must be considered. He mentions that presenting in public with instant feedback from direct observation is entirely different from the digital world of presentation. This is the understatement of the decade as well as the theme of my study and effort for the last 3 or 4 years. I have always taught in person to groups and individuals. If I say so myself I have done this so much that I do instinctively know how to teach and drive a message home to people I can see and hear. However, my in person methodology involves much humor and stealth to distract and weave fairy tales of deep lessons. With real live people it is easy to stop when you are bombing, change course, redirect. It is digitally difficult, since we are communicating blindly with no visual of our intended audience. We now have no idea why or how anyone pays us attention, but need to fill in that blank in some cohesive way.
To plant a memorable seed in the digital arena that is both considered and spread by evangelists, there must be an easy way to evangelize. This is exactly the point at which I, as the charismatic in person snake oil saleswoman, completely failed to execute my core beliefs to what I know to be a very large audience wanting to feel good and feel healthy at the same time. I always look to the ancestors for deeper meaning. My parents were extreme acronym adopters in the 1950’s. The created codes such as SUS ( sit up straight) and COP (chin over plate) to give me orders in public and at home about how to enjoy dining with them. Like many other of my parents’ futuristic practices, virtually nobody else I knew did such a thing. My giant aversion to all acronyms can be directly traced to eating with my parents. This does not serve me at all and can not hurt the feelings of my dead parents. OMG, is it ever time to stop boycotting the acronym.
Starting from scratch, one would have acro’ed in initially before going out and getting and international trademark, if one had been aware. Since I was in the less than aware group, and only recently liberated to appreciate the beauty and power of the acronym, I must start where I am. Floatli is my trademark and my invention for water exercise. It is for those who like to feel good while moving, and appreciate the fact that they can move. Today I step into this century and happily debut the Floatli acronym:
- First
- Love
- Own
- Ass
- Totally
- Like
- It is
This means that taking care of your own body for the most pleasurable healthy outcome will involve radical acceptance of what is. The sensual pleasure of water as an exercise medium is empowering. It can be a haven for injured athletes, a playground, and a social bonding agent. If your first ( and maybe only) consideration is the flawed appearance of your bathing suit look, the good feelings stop before they begin. I am an evangelist for loving your own ass, because if you don’t nobody else will.
British Bible Belt
November 11, 2012
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William and Lucinda Jane
My great grandfather, William Ellison Taylor, was a farmer and a preacher in the Church of Christ in Texas after the Civil War. He had beautiful handwriting which I have in the form of his Confederate pension application. He was shot in the knee at Second Manassas, but still had to get back to Selma, Alabama. He survived to marry Lucinda Jane Armer, who ironically is a descendant of the Plantagenets. They moved to Texas along with Lucinda’s parents after the war.
The place and time Lucinda and William lived was an echo of the dramas of their ancestors who had Bible issues of biblical proportion back in their homeland of England. Lucinda’s family was playing music in the court of Henry VIII when he killed some wives and made himself the head of the new Church of England. Other members of her family were Plantagenets, being royal.
King of France Louis IX (1215 – 1270)
is your 21st great grandfather
Son of King of France
Son of Philip The
Daughter of Charles
Daughter of Jeanne
Son of Philippa
Daughter of John of Gaunt – Duke of
Daughter of Joan
Son of Duchess of York Lady Cecily
Son of Henry
Son of Henry
Son of John
Son of Francis Gabriell
Daughter of John
Son of Elizabeth
Son of Richard
Son of George
Son of George
Daughter of David
Daughter of Minerva Truly
Daughter of Sarah E
Mary Tudor disrupted the reign of the Plantagenets and made martyrs of William E Taylor’s ancestors. The big problem was the way everyone felt about the Bible and who should read it. William Taylor may have been named for his 8th great grand uncle, William Tyndale, who was burned at the stake for translating and publishing the Bible in English. His niece Margaret was married to Rev. Rowland Taylor, also burned at the stake for his religious convictions. The British Bible belt was worse that just burning crosses…..they actually burned the people they found to be heretical.
William Tyndale (1507 – )
his 8th great grand uncle
Father of William
Daughter of John
Son of Margaret
Son of Thomas
Son of Thomas
Son of Col James
Son of John
Son of John
Son of John
Son of John Nimrod
Son of John Samuel
Certainly William and Lucinda lived the Bible belt philosophy. I went to the Church of Christ a couple of times with my cousins when I was visiting in Houston as a kid. It was very foreign to my church experience, being fully stripped of all remnants of fancy dressing. No pipe organ, no choir, no stained glass, very austere, and they went there twice on Sunday and again on Wednesdays. I did not relate to the whole thing. I grew up in Pittsburgh in a post industrial country club culture with cocktails. I never understood the cousins and all that Bible stuff because my parents did not do it. I think I am starting to know why they still had that in the Taylor family. Once somebody dies for something, the least the family can do is go along with the belief for a few generations.
Pilgrims, Puritans, and Politics
November 6, 2012
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Alice Carpenter, Pilgrim
There is some gross generalization presented in the Thanksgiving spectacle/history lesson of the colonies. There was turkey, lots of lobster, and headgear similar to the hats and feathers in school pageants, but the Pilgrims and the Puritans are not the same group of people. If one traces carefully the two thought forms still exist in America, but they are distinct. Pilgrims came from Holland on the Mayflower to bring their biblical faith to another part of the earth. They believed they were sojourners on the earth destined for the holy city, and only subject to worldly law when it did not conflict with religious directives. The Puritans, as the name implies, had been working in reformation to purify religion through political action. Puritans arrived after the Pilgrims in the Boston area. They had a different attitude toward the native people, since they were not sharing a divine sojourn with them, but making a political state that they believed aligned with pure reformation ideals. Both groups shared biblical Christianity as their standard, but in practice Pilgrims sought peace while Puritans sought to dominate through harsh purifying authority (think Salem/witches). None of this would have ever been done if the Bible had not been printed, causing Europe to become politically violent about reforming, restoring, separating, and purifying. Before printing presses political power and religious power were so obviously entwined as to cause…the Reformation.
Thomas Southworth was born a Pilgrim in Holland. His father died there. His mother, Alice Carpenter , sailed from Leiden on the Mayflower with her second husband, Gov. William Bradford. After Plymouth was established as a Pilgrim colony Thomas joined his mother and stepfather. William Bradford was a shoe merchant, and many other Mayflower Pilgrims were also in clothing, hat, and fashion trades. They had spent years in Holland being influenced by the fancy colorful costuming of the Dutch. It was politically not cool to starch your ruffs (ruffles like QE I wore up around the neck). The large collar draped rather than stiff said you were so New World 1620. That explains the white scarf look we see in costumes. Almost no real Pilgrim clothing remains from the period, so the current stereotype is not accurate. Black and grey may have been worn, but were not standard. These Pilgrims were fashionable religious adventurers (with stylin’ footwear) bonding with the natives in the new commune/colony of Plymouth when the Puritans arrived. Thomas spent his career as a (well dressed, I am sure ) politician.
Thomas Southworth (1617 – 1669)
is my 10th great grandfather
Daughter of Thomas
Daughter of Elizabeth
Son of Elizabeth
Daughter of Eleazer
Daughter of Sarah
Daughter of Mercy
Son of Martha
Son of Abner
Son of Daniel Rowland
Son of Jason A
Son of Ernest Abner
is the daughter of Richard Arden
This year if you think about Pilgrims, or use little figures decoratively get something historically correct. There was no water on the Mayflower. Every man woman and child was issued beer each day of the trip. Imagine the hangover a child might get from a long sea voyage drinking nothing but beer. As sojourners of the earth they felt it was all part of the mission. Get over the concept that these people (Pilgrims) sailed across the sea to wear black and stuff turkeys. They came here to tune in, turn on, and drop out of the religious struggles in the old country. They were all about debunking the folly of corrupt authority posing as religion. Pilgrims were the big proponents of separation of church and state. They believed that they had a personal connection to providence that was more important and powerful than any civil institution. Puritans, on the other hand, had interest in reforming civil institutions. Can you link these beliefs to today’s political landscape?
Dreaming of the Dead
November 1, 2012
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As we prepare for the dead to visit earth over the weekend I daydream about all my relations. In the study of my family tree I become infatuated by the various ancestors as I learn about their lives and times. I love it when they have left a picture of any kind, even of the grave they occupy. I also become excited when I see the handwriting they used. All original documents or photos of their homes give me a connection to their styles. I am a huge enthusiast of all that I discover and learn through the study of genealogy. It may well be true that I prefer the dead to the living at least part of the time.
I am also studying the archetypes that play in the dramas of our lives, interior and exterior. We know that our unconscious is influenced by the books we read, the shows we consume, even the conversations we enter. I don’t work on my family tree each day, but there is not a day that passes without thinking about some of my dead peeps and their adventures on earth. My conscious and unconscious is involved in the ghost of everything past. I never have the urge to join the DAR or reenact battles, but have started to plan travel around the dead peeps who lived in the areas I will visit. This month I am focused on my Pilgrims, the beliefs, the hardships and the failures they encountered. At the moment I am discovering Jeremiah Rhodes. He was a wild thing of a Pilgrim.
Zachariah Rhodes (1603 – 1665)
is my 10th great grandfather
Son of Zachariah
Son of Malachi
Daughter of Malachi
Daughter of Dorothy
Son of MARGARET
Son of Benjamin
Son of Paul
Daughter of Valentine
Son of Sarah LaVina
Son of Jason A
Son of Ernest Abner
I am the daughter of Richard Arden
He drowned in the river near his home after all kinds of major adventures, which included founding Rhode Island. He was opposed to the law in Massachusetts that obligated citizens to support preachers financially. He was thrown in jail briefly for making public statements about this conviction. This fabulous rebel archetype had the right circumstances and energy to live out his ambitions without abandoning his beliefs. He married Benedict Arnold’s sister, Joanna Arnold. I can picture my own fantasy movie of the lives of these early settlers. As I turn my attention to dreaming I hope to be visited this week by these and all the other relations who contributed to my existence. I invite all these saints to come marching through my dreams. I am wishing for some period costuming of a dreamy nature, but am okay if you decide just to visit as a ghost.
The Personal Service of Farming
October 31, 2012
scarecrow
What are the personal services you use in daily life? You may not be aware of all of them. If you buy prepared foods, that preparation has been done for you. You know if you hire a child care helper or manicurist that you are buying personal services. It is hard to find all the ways others contribute skill and time to our daily lives. Compared to primitive self reliance our modern lifestyle is comprised of paying more for labor and transportation than we pay for goods. Many have lost the skills needed to make anything from scratch. Farming in the US is a prime example. We are running out of people who know how to grow food as this profession declines rapidly in young people. If we don’t train or import some people to do the service of farming we will face serious problems.
My grandparents owned a farm when I knew them so I was exposed to the milk cow, the beef cows, the pigs, the gardens, and even to the butter churn. I lived in the city of Tulsa but considered the grandparents spread in Arkansas where was assistant farmer on the weekends to be extremely romantic. I rode a mule and shot a rifle. I thought of myself as very Annie Oakley when I was about 5. My parents had grown up without modern 1950’s conveniences and liked the idea of jet setting rather than farming. They enjoyed the country club and the University Club, and garden club, and host of other urban activities that Tulsa and Pittsburgh offered them. They did not seem lazy to me, but they certainly had a different style when it came to personal services than my grandparents had. There was no way they would ever own a mule or live next to a barn. They were over all of that. They were urban, upwardly mobile, and believed themselves to be super liberated. I suppose they were.
Every generation acquires some new skills and drops others that no longer serve the moment. It is a great idea to stay abreast of technology, move with the times, and accept the reality of now. In some phases of life, however, it is healthy, good, and indeed necessary to play a creative skillful part in carefully designing reality. If one chops no wood and carries no water the disconnection from source becomes disabling. The spirit has no dwelling in a world that offers only convenience. The soul requires art, and the spirit creates those artful moments that last in memory. One’s own self realization can’t be purchased, downloaded or installed. There is no service that can impart the satisfaction derived from self expression. Once practiced, polished and realized each one of us has a gift of powerful personal charism to offer to all the sentient beings. We can only hope that some young Americans find a vocation in farming.
Alchemist Archetype
October 29, 2012
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fermentation at home
In my study of the archetypes I have procrastinated badly around the character of the alchemist. I have homework that involves writing to the archetypes and tracking them in my own life. When I arrived at the second house of my own chart and found this character I stalled. Maybe I stalled, or maybe I needed a few months to consider what the alchemist does. Doing the journal project I found a few people in my past who represent this aspect of life, some of whom had not come to mind for decades before I asked myself to find them. I readily accept that this is part of me, but the definition of what it is and how I use it became a blank and a mystery. This requires great discipline. I must handle it with great respect or drop the entire curriculum. The distillation of time and space is the realm of the alchemist. I have been involved in it all my life. I still have a big interest in all the mystery schools and twirling Sufis in all of history.
If we look at all the ways magic and nature have been combined the most common use is to cure. Medicine has included alchemy, which was derived from basic observation of nature. If you go into an 800 year old pharmacy in Europe you will see the astrological signs on the wall, and the snake delivering the water used to take your pills. The unbroken tradition of magic linked to medicine thrives in places where the folk medicine still uses native plants and elements to cure. Indigenous peoples around the world do this without referring to alchemy in the European sense.
Since I am also interested in the DNA, the contribution made by the ancestors to my composite, I notice the few doctors or pharmacists who appear in my tree. On my mother’s side before 1400 a couple of generations of nice Jewish doctors lived and worked in northern Spain during the time when Jews, Christians, and Arabs all thrived in a multi cultural party of intellectual delight. Joshua ben Ibn Vives al Lorca was my 15th great grandfather.
IBN VIVES AL-LORQUI (OF LORCA), JOSEPH BEN JOSHUA: By : Richard Gottheil Meyer Kayserling Spanish physician; died before 1372; father of Joshua ben Joseph ibn Vives al-Lorqui. He revised Tibbon’s translation of Moses Maimonides’ “Millot Higgayon” and dedicated the revision to his pupil Ezra ben Solomon ibn Gatigno. He wrote also the “Sefer Yesodot.”G. M. K.
His son Joseph was also a famous physician in Spain. These ancestors qualify as alchemists for many reasons. They had the presence of mind to move to Sicily before the Spanish Inquisition. Due to their great talents as musical instrument makers and musicians, Henry the 8th imported Anthony (1511-1574) from Venice to England to play in the royal court. They used the wisdom they had to use time and space to their advantage. They turned danger into survival.
Joshua ben Joseph/Joseph ben Joshua ibn Vives Al Lorqui (1370 – 1408)
is your 15th great grandfather
Son of Joshua ben Joseph/Joseph ben Joshua
Son of Joshua ben ibn
Son of Julus
Son of Santo
Son of Maestro Jeronimo “DeDasi”
Daughter of Anthony
Son of Lucreece Lucretia
Son of John Thomas
Daughter of Sampson
Daughter of Elizabeth
Son of Martha
Daughter of David
Daughter of Minerva Truly
Daughter of Sarah E
Son of Lucinda Jane
Daughter of George Harvey
is the daughter of Ruby Lee
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