The New Not Normal

"You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it."  -- Maya Angelou.

Not Normal At All

We settle into the new not normal. The state of the union is not normal and must remain unsettled until things are set right again.  So what have I been thinking about this week?  Information literacy, understanding the other side (or not), and listening. 

Information literacy is critical.  And I think this election has shown just how far away from information literacy we have in this country right now.  Both sides are polarized by fake news, it's all over - Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others are pledging to try to reduce the fake news sources passed through them.  The echo chambers have grown, and people seem to be more interested in what's going to engage their outrage than they are in understanding what's actually going on with any sense of nuance.  Some of the conspiracies are really outlandish.  The polarization means we're talking past each other because we're not only not on the same page, arguing the same thing, we're not even reading the same book.  

How do you identify a good resource?  How do you read to understand bias, both in your own bias as well as what's against your bias?  How do you identify who to trust in this world when truth can and often is stranger than fiction?  Why should we support newspapers when we can get the news on tv and the internet for "free"?  So many questions.  So many things that require just enough more effort that it seems a lot of people would rather let outrage filter take over.  

One of the things I've heard a lot over the last two weeks online is the exhortation to 'try to understand the other side.'  I even linked one of those articles here, as I was trying to process what was going on with the disparity in perspectives before the election.  And the more I hear 'you have to understand', and the more I see what the president-presumably-elect's actions are, the more I think that I *do* understand and I understand the common ground between me and anyone that I "need to understand" is tenuously thin. 

The argument seems to be that there's a large group of people who feel like their way of life is being lost and... I understand that because they're not alone in that.  They think everyone else is getting something they're not getting, but that's not the case. And they think because their way of life is disappearing that... everyone's way of life should disappear to support their idyllic fantasy nostalgia?  Nah, bro.  And honestly, with the outrage coming from the republican side of things, it seems a lot of people didn't really want a return to some economic stability, they wanted a world in which they could use slurs, get away with  lynching and rape, because... because why?  Illusions of power they never had in the first place.  And don't get to take now... but only if we all step outside of our civic comfort to read all the guidelines and not just do easy things like wearing a safety pin (wear it, I don't care, but it's not nearly enough effort towards the change we need for anyone to allow themselves to feel good about). Call, write letters, petition, show up in person, have difficult conversations, listen, and think about whose voices you are prioritizing.

Listening is hard. Echo chambers, by their nature, echo  the voices of those who surround us.  These voices become loud and drown out other voices.  This in combination with the inclination to favor outrage and emotive reactions rather than facts and reality - where reality is what happens, not what someone is trying to create by manipulating the present - means it's almost impossible to hear other voices.  For me, this has been playing out in two ways.

One is the first which I've already talked about - "you have to understand the other side."  As someone that leans left, but is also pretty finicky about information literacy as a matter of professional necessity, the ugliness and extremity that I see sends me into near shut down.  As they say, you can't reason with crazy.  And you can't really have a transformative conversation when you can't expect good faith or best intent. In the best cases, having a conversation seems to take an approach that is closer to hostage negotiations than anything else. The patience to return, time and time again to common ground, working from there to convince...  These voices we're being told we need to prioritize to understand are white, mostly men's voices.  Which... don't we already prioritize those voices? Is this a demand that we continue to only prioritize white men's voices?  Because that's sort of what this feels like... 

The second way this has been playing out is that I have been consciously trying to prioritize the voices of my friends of color, my lgbtia friends, and my alternatively faithed friends.  Which brings me back to the safety pin for just a moment.  Part of what I was thinking about when I was pulling apart safety pins as a sign was the voices of my friends for whom it was just another sign of ineffective white allies.  The people of color on my facebook thread on the topic were the ones who were the ones agreeing wholeheartedly with my concerns about the safety pin.  White people were the ones who were really defensive about how they were gonna wear it because it might comfort someone.  I think maybe because I've been trying to prioritize non-white, etc voices for a long time, I have a different perspective on the effects of colonization as well, and how people who have had to exist with the effects of colonization feel obliged to act in a particular way to signs of power.  One of which is now a safety pin - it's a signifier of privilege that may, or may well not, be of assistance in any given situation.  But hey, if it makes you feel good, or you think it's going to help someone else, go for it.

There's been a lot of populations who have been telling us that things are real bad.  And when Trump was elected they were all, mmm, yeah, so here we are again.  They weren't surprised. It's just another day with more of the same.  Maybe a lot more of the same, but it's the same America they've been living in and telling us about.  It's just about to get worse for a bunch more of us. Whose voices do we choose to prioritize? And how do we do it? Do we actually ask them what they need or do we decide and tell them what we'll provide?  I say we in this case, as a white woman with recognized privilege, as someone who is being asked to talk to "my people" because you don't ask the victim to educate the victimizer (bullies tend not to listen so well to their victims, as it turns out).  

Not that I was immune to surprise - I truly want to believe that most people are operating from best intentions... and that faith has been deeply shaken. However, I think that despite being shaken, it's also the only way to step forward through to change, by recognizing, and asking others, to step into their best possible being. 

The story that comes to mind about some of this is the story of the stone soup.  A stranger came to a very poor town.  The harvest had not been kind and tensions were running high.  The stranger was very hungry and asked, for a while, person to person, "can you spare some food?" No, no, no, no. Finally the stranger asked someone who said "Yes, you may borrow my biggest pot."  In the center of town, the stranger set a fire, put the pot on the fire and put a stone in some water to boil.  Someone came along and asked what was happening and the stranger said, oh, I'm making stone soup!  It'll be the most amazing soup *ever* if only I could get an onion or two.  Well, that wasn't a big deal, and the stranger got a couple onions.  Pretty soon someone else came by and asked what was going on.  The stranger said, making stone soup!  I've got a couple onions, but you know what would make it amazing?  Some carrots... and well, that wasn't such a big deal and so now the soup had onions and carrots.  This continued all afternoon, and the scent of the soup drifted all through the town attracting people who would find well, it wasn't such a big deal to contribute a....  anyway, dinner time rolled around and the stranger had way more than enough for everyone in town to eat.  For some of the townspeople, this would be the first solid meal in a while.  

Society is requisitely communal in nature.  People are meant to take care of each other.  As Melanie Dewberry says, "We belong to each other."  Maybe our tribes have grown too large and we haven't grown from the small territorial mentality of our ancestors to the hive mentality of a city.  But for us to succeed as a nation, we must take care of each other.  Destroyed fabric of society and culture benefits no one.  

So time for us to step up and figure out how to effectively take care of each other. 

In solidarity & curiosity,

-- Susan

So that happened...

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
-- Anne Frank

What To Say?

I'm so disappointed after the progress of the last 8 years (and yet with so far to go).  We haven't done enough, there was so much more to do and now this.

As we face the work that remains to do, we must keep telling the stories that need to be told. Civil Rights, the Holocaust, Stonewall & the LGBTQIA movement, Standing Rock, and the history of this nation.  

These are terrifying stories.  I am afraid it will get a lot worse for people before it gets better.   So listen to what we're being told, and then need we step up and figure out how to do this work that needs to be done.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Maya Angelou, 1928 - 2014

The Transformation of Silence Into Language and Action (excerpt) by Audre Lorde

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect.

I was forced to look upon myself and my living with a harsh and urgent clarity that has left me still shaken but much stronger. Some of what I experienced during that time has helped elucidate for me much of what I feel concerning the transformation of silence into language and action.

In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality, and of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light, and what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed could have meant pain, or death. But we all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will either change or end. Death, on the other hand, is the final silence. And that might be coming quickly now, without regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said, or had only betrayed myself into small silences, while I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone else’s words.

I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.

What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am a woman, because I am Black, because I am lesbian, because I am myself — a Black woman warrior poet doing my work — come to ask you, are you doing yours?

And of course I am afraid, because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger. But my daughter, when I told her of our topic and my difficulty with it, said, “Tell them about how you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don’t speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.”

In the cause of silence, each of us draws the face of her own fear — fear of contempt, of censure, of some judgment, or recognition, of challenge, of annihilation. But most of all, I think, we fear the visibility without which we cannot truly live.

And that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength. Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak. We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid.

Each of us is here now because in one way or another we share a commitment to language and to the power of language, and to the reclaiming of that language which has been made to work against us. In the transformation of silence into language and action, it is vitally necessary for each one of us to establish or examine her function in that transformation and to recognize her role as vital within that transformation.

For those of us who write, it is necessary to scrutinize not only the truth of what we speak, but the truth of that language by which we speak it. For others, it is to share and spread also those words that are meaningful to us. But primarily for us all, it is necessary to teach by living and speaking those truths which we believe and know beyond understanding. Because in this way alone can we survive, by taking part in a process of life that is creative and continuing, that is growth.

And it is never without fear — of visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment, of pain, of death. But we have lived through all of those already, in silence, except death. And I remind myself all the time now that if I were to have been born mute, or had maintained an oath of silence my whole life long for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die. It is very good for establishing perspective.

We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.

The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.

(Originally delivered at the Modern Language Association’s “Lesbian and Literature Panel,” Chicago, Illinois, December 28, 1977. First published in Sinister Wisdom 6 (1978) and The Cancer Journals (Spinsters, Ink, San Francisco, 1980)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

There is much work to do. Everyone is tired of hearing white people say, "We have to do better.  What should I do?"  It's time for us to step up and figure this out for ourselves. Listen carefully to what the people, all the people, are telling us.

--S

Stories, Maps, and Journeys

Going to just start right off with the quote that inspired me tonight that Gwynn Raimondi posted to FB tonight (if you haven't, you should check her out - she's awesome!).

Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here. ~Sue Monk Kidd

It summarizes so perfectly what draws me to stories - fairytales, mythology, and legend in particular.  The narrative that gives shape to our understanding of who we are - as individuals, as communities, as nations.

Stories don't have to be told the same way every time. Sometimes we need to shift and adapt them to meet the needs of evolving times.  I feel strongly that we are in one of those times now.  It is very (well, fairly) clear to me how I go about changing my own stories.  The ones I tell myself when I am recognizing patterns in myself that I like, or that I don't like and want to change.  Those I am slowly learning to change, it takes time.

I look out into the world and I see stories out there, too.  Stories shared time and time again, that need to evolve. The communal archetypes are even stronger than for the individual archetypes we struggle with in our personal lives.  Changing the minds of many is harder than recognizing it's time to change your own mind.  Recent studies have shown that even trying can sometimes cause people to retrench even deeper in the beliefs they hold.  Which is why arguing on the internet rarely (if ever) changes either sides' minds...

The story I see playing out right now in so many ways is the archetype of civil and human rights, the fight between the colonizer who assumes manifest destiny, and the colonized, the invaded, those stolen from their homelands and forced overseas as slaves then "released" into Jim Crow, of women who are just objects that can be used and thrown away with no repercussions.  

There is a shared arc of oppression.  It has played out this way too long. The archetypes are strong because the story has ended the same way, written by the 'winners'.  Representation showing diversity is important for this reason.  Showing alternative endings.  A multiplicity of middles. All the worlds of new beginnings.  

How do we tell the stories of #blacklivesmatter, and Standing Rock so that these stories have a fighting chance of ending differently?  How do we re/tell the story of America so that we don't have Trump as the end of this experiment?

Am I too idealistic for thinking that the stories we choose to tell, and how we tell them influences the ending of the stories?  Maybe.  Maybe not - but I might not be patient enough for the alternatives to surface with enough power to shift the dominant narrative.  Maybe that's the best I can do? Is *not* be patient and continue to advocate for a plurality of endings. A diversification of the stories.

When stories die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.  Another friend posted something about how there's a way of life dying away in 'middle America'.  Multiple articles and analyses are pointing at the culture war about to erupt is not based in race or class, but in urban vs rural (I think it's more complex &, if you will, intersectional than this analysis, but this is how the media is simplifying the message).  This is but one of these articles/analyses from Cracked (I know - but it's actually a good article). 

The rural folk with the Trump signs in their yards say their way of life is dying, and you smirk and say what they really mean is that blacks and gays are finally getting equal rights and they hate it. But I'm telling you, they say their way of life is dying because their way of life is dying. It's not their imagination. No movie about the future portrays it as being full of traditional families, hunters, and coal mines. Well, except for Hunger Games, and that was depicted as an apocalypse.

I believe it's possible for multiple things to be true.  I believe their way of life is dying and there are good and valuable perspectives that are disappearing.  And I believe also that entwined in that is *also* a whole lot of horribleness that really does need to die. How do you untangle those stories so something new can arise? And totally fair to ask - how do we untangle the stories of the city? How do we untangle the stories of the planet?  How do we untangle the stories of ourselves and let go of what we need to let go of?

Evolution is hard.  There's a lot of points of friction.  Maybe those points of friction will change the story this time?

In other news, there's a new map out of Japan that corrects for the varying warping that happens when you take a spherical object and flatten it.  More about the The AuthaGraph World Map. How we portray the places we live is a part of our stories.  What remains unmapped also is a part of our stories.  How we treat those we find in far away lands... Someone commented that one of the many things they may have liked in the judging of this map was the fact that Japan is in the center of the world instead of  off to the edge.  And maybe it was, but then, why should it not be given the creator and the audience?  I've always wondered why not have maps where Australia's at the top.  I mean, there's no real reason other than apparently north is "up" that the north pole appears at the top of the map. It's just one of many possible interpretations.  When one looks at the maps of the USA, county by county who votes for who, there's a lot of land mass that appears to vote for Republicans.  And when you break it down by population, less land mass often controls the outcome, because more dense urban locations. How does this distort perception of what is "right?" I like looking at different ways to literally map information - the insights are endless.  

Maps, like stories, tell us where we've been, and where we can go.  Sometimes we're creating the map for ourselves as we try to create new stories for ourselves -- a call to adventure, a journey.  Sometimes it's trying to find a nearly forgotten path that once we knew well.  As we go along our journeys, map or no map, distorted or true, as Kurt Vonnegut said,

At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind.

Read the diverse stories.  Raise the diverse voices.  Create kind alternate endings that honor thebestof what we can be.  We can no longer afford to excuse the worst.  We must learn together to evolve and change our collective stories.   

With love and curiosity,

--Susan

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Yes, it's almost Halloween!  So many stories of things that go bump in the night, and masquerades, and frights!  Today's newsletter covers some about Tam Lin, the Ancestors, and mushrooms: 2016-10-28 The Halloween Edition!

Great Expectations...

Don't Make Me Get The Flying Monkeys.

Weather is notoriously difficult to predict in the Pacific Northwest. Oceans, multiple mountain ranges, even the smallest change in trajectories means weather could land quite a long ways away.  And also because of all the variations in land masses, we have microclimates.  What's going on in one spot, might well be very different only a few miles away.  I've been too snowed in to safely drive at times when only a few miles away the roads were bare and wet.  All of which to say... The Big Storm barely even caused my wind chimes to move.  Thursday, and even parts of Friday were way more stormy.  The rains preceding the supposed "event" on Saturday morning had us preparing right up until... nothing.  And so we stayed home safe and sound and cozy and enjoyed a quiet weekend.  

Now that's out of the way...
Three things to cover this week: a seasonal diversion, the election (I know, I know, bear with me), a happy distraction, and exciting news!

For the seasonal diversion, Halloween is right around the corner now!  In our house this is the most exciting, fanciest season of the year.  The girls have traditionally started asking to decorate in late July.  We are usually able to hold them off until early September before bats and skulls and pumpkins start appearing. I don't think it's just the promise of candy that they get excited about.  It's when Claudio joins us, Claudio is a nearly life-sized skeleton that hangs out in the living room.  We have a cat skeleton we got at the same time as Claudio last year, right after our beloved (but very old and very smelly) 19 year old cat went to join The Ancestors.  I gave it a sugar skulled face and we named it after smelly cat.  Now she sits in the window all year 'round.  We have a leg & arm that often live under the couch... it's pretty humerous... There's the Medusa Lisa (Mona Lisa as Medusa) that lives above our fireplace.  Skulls, skeletons, gravestones, glitter skulls...  

But why?  I think it's the dress up and the masquerading as someone else.  Every year by November 1, they know who they'll be next year.  In fact, M2, my youngest, already knows next year and is contemplating the following year.  When else do you get to try on another costume?  Or to try on a new persona, if even briefly?  Or combine two into one (zombie Amelia Earhart?  Oh yeah!)?  This is the only time of year, and in this culture the only time in life where there is explicit cultural permission to experiment so obviously.  Yeah, it doesn't stop all of us from embracing "every day is Halloween", though maybe we tone it down a little, but... we are in the minority...   

With regard to the election: Short and sweet.  Nasty Women Vote.  And then we hold our candidates to their campaign promises and advocate for them to do the right thing rather than the convenient thing.

Ok - that's srsly enough about that!  And after that last debate, we all need something distracting.    I *strongly* recommend putting on your favorite chill out album and meditate on these adorable pictures of kittens for at least 15 minutes...

And the exciting news!  I have bookplates!  I cannot wait to show them to you!  There was a bit of a learning curve with one design, but other one came out perfectly & is in my hot little hands even now!  The reprinted design is supposed to arrive on Saturday, then it's just a matter of getting pictures of them for my site, and packaging them up!  There are two different designs - one is based on the old library book checkout card and says 'From The Library Of'. The other says 'Ex Bibliotheca Curiosa' (which translates as "From the Magical Library Of") in the midst of a pretty border.  Usually the phrase used is ex libris, which means 'from the books of', I know of my friends though, we don't just have books... we have lots of books.  We have magical, wonderful libraries of our own beloved books.  These bookplates will be $12.95 for 20 (compare 10 for $8.95 or 18 for $18) and you'll be first to know when they're ready to go!  I really could not be more excited about them!

And my parting thought on that topic tonight is this: 

Storm Watch 2016!

“Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...
It's about learning to dance in the rain.” 
― Vivian Greene

I know, right?  Here in the Pacific Northwest, it's the first big storm of the fall season.  A big storm, followed quickly by the dregs of a typhoon (literally), followed by another big storm.  So far it's just been heavy rain.  The wind is likely to start very late tonight or early in the morning.  The remainder of the typhoon hits Saturday.  High winds, more rain, on already drenched, possibly super-saturated ground, destabilizing massive trees.  It would be nice if we didn't lose power, but... we'll see.  It's a watch and wait situation.

So to set the atmosphere for this post (so to speak), a song to start with - The Storm by Big Country.

And what does this have to do with the Mythic Librarian?  Big storms are the stuff of story, legend, and memory.  The story of great great great grampa who made it all the way home in the big storm and then succumbed to the (cold/falling tree/etc) between the barn and the house.  The time when the tree fell and missed the house by eight feet and "just" took out the deck.  The tree that fell and took out the house.  The time the snows came and shut everything down for two weeks, a month, two months.  The laughter and groans of having to find the matches and candles.  Lighting a fire in the fireplace for heat.  Trying to set the candles so that they illuminate the words in the songbook so we can sing songs accompanied by a guitar huddled together in the dark.  Listening to the pinecones and branches and rain pelt the roof.  The silence as big, wet snowflakes drift down.  The wind rushing through the trees in a midsummer surprise storm.  

To go along with the song, at the time that album came out, my brother got the album for Christmas.  That was the year I got Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy.  Which I read in all of two days. It starts out when Merlin is very young, and during a huge storm, there is a village raid.  So with this song and the images from the book melding in my head, the intensity of the storms so well described, the feelings evoked by both music and book - I cannot hear a storm, or that song, or see that book, without remembering the others. An impression, to be sure!

Elemental forces, beneficial and useful in some conditions, are wild and savage under other conditions.  To overlook this is at our own peril.  The shifting climate change that we have started the process of means we'll see more of the extremes of weather, rising oceans, hotter summers.  Finding ways to live in alignment with the elements is ever more important.  To be aware of and opt for alternative sources of energy. To acknowledge and adjust to different regional needs for conservation.  Like sun and moon have been given personalities in stories, so too have air, fire, water, and earth.

Tonight Ursula K. Le Guin comes to mind. Specifically, her poem, A Measure of Desolation: February 2005. 

Again and again    the landwind blows,
sending back the rain
to the house of the rain.
Seeking, seeking,    the heron goes
longlegged from creek
to thirsty creek.
They cry and cry,    the windblown crows
across the sky,
the bare clear sky.
From land to land    the dry wind blows
the thin dry sand
from the house of sand.

Is that what's happening tonight?  The landwind is trying to send back the rain to the house of the rain?  

And another shift - to Shakespeare: 

Blow, blow, thou winter wind, 
   Thou art not so unkind 
      As man’s ingratitude; 
   Thy tooth is not so keen, 
Because thou art not seen, 
      Although thy breath be rude. 
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly: 
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly: 
   Then, heigh-ho, the holly! 
      This life is most jolly. 

   Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, 
   That dost not bite so nigh 
      As benefits forgot: 
   Though thou the waters warp, 
      Thy sting is not so sharp 
      As friend remembered not. 
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly: 
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly: 
   Then, heigh-ho, the holly! 
      This life is most jolly.

If I start going down the trail of songs, this may never end, and so perhaps it's best to end the songs and poetry with this song, that never fails to bring up wandering in the woods on dark and stormy nights -Sit Down By The Fire, The Pogues. 

And how can we discuss storms without acknowledging Storm from the X-Men?  One of the early black superheroes, and first black heroine playing a major role!  

Who brings me to Oyá and Maman Brigitte.  With the terrible Hurricane Matthew hitting Haiti, Haiti, like Oyá and Maman Brigitte seems to stand between the worlds, between life and death, awash in wind, rain, and terrible flooding.  Oyá is the power of the wind to return everything to its original state, blowing away anything that might have been created or changed since the beginning.  She is also the patron of the marketplace, and change to established order.  Maman Brigitte offers healing and justice, and oversees death.  

If you have a few extra dollars, consider donating some of them to Haiti.  Need some recommendations?  Gotchu, fam.  

Haitian-led orgs you can contribute to directly for relief efforts:

• Konbit Mizik,

• Haiti Communitere,

• Art Creation Foundation for Children (ACFFC),

• Sakala Haiti,

• SOIL,

• Fondation Aquin Solidarité ,

• Volontariat pour le Développement d'Haïti,

• Lambi Fund,

• MADRE,

• Sowaseed,

• Konbit Solèy Leve.

Non-Haitian Orgs with proven track records in Haiti:

• Doctors without Borders,

• Roots of Development,

• Partners in Health,

• Border of Lights,

• Nova Hope for Haiti

And perhaps, if you feel called, leave an eggplant for Oyá and some nettles, or rocks from a cemetery for Maman Brigitte, and maybe some rum for both of them - they've been working very hard lately!

Where ever you are tonight, whatever the weather outside, may you be warm, dry, and safe.  

I Love October!

“Your opening phrase is your bridge between the world of ordinary conversation and the other-world of story. This crossing must be both magical and deliberate.” -- Margaret Read MacDonald on the art of storytelling.

Now we enter my favorite part of the year. I love September too, because it's the beginning of it all, but October, November, and December are the cherry on the ice cream cake of the year.  There's something about fall, the shedding of everything old, the creating space for new things to happen, the releasing of everything that's built up.  The weather is turning cool again.  Ever so much more bearable than the heat of summer.  I just don't do all that well with summer temperatures.  

Now that I've got that out of my system (I just had to share because that's what's on my mind tonight as I listen to the lovely rain on my roof), I've been thinking about two quotes this week.  

I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it full speed. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. — Roald Dahl

If you aren't going to be engaged in whatever it is you're doing, why do it at all?  I think that's one of the things I appreciate about the tango classes I've been taking.  There's no one there that half-asses it.  They might be terrible, I might be terrible, but we apologize for stepping on each others' toes, talk each other through figuring out, 'now how did the teacher make that happen again!?' and we are patient as we all realize that we're trying to figure the same stuff out.  There's a real grace and kindness that happens in that class that I really appreciate.  And you know?  Sometimes it clicks and it might be terrible but it's fun!  

I think it helps that I approach it with a sense of "I'm terrible, I'm here to figure it out too, and it's all going to be alright! We'll work it out together!"  Sometimes two follows end up paired together if there aren't enough leads -- as someone who is new to the whole thing, and has enough trouble trying to follow, it's *hilarious* to try to lead!  And yet - it helps me to understand how hard it is to be a good lead.  And it helps me understand how to be a better follow.  So I dive into the mess with glee and enthusiasm because in the end, I don't really care whether I'm following or leading, only that I'm doing the best I can do regardless of which side I'm dancing.  

Tonight was back to school night for one of our daughters.  As we sat in the classes, as I tend to do, I got excited about all the things that she was going to get to learn about.  I think we were half way through physics when I realized, oh, she's going to haaaate having to learn about this, that, and the other thing. And at her age, I think I would have not really been all that into it either.  And sometimes I think I get excited about the possibility of things to be curious about more than the thing itself, so now and again it bites me in the butt in the sense that... the thing I thought I was curious about is actually more interesting to me in theory, and the details are something I'm delighted thatsomeone elseis interested in.  But maybe not so much me.

It took me a long time to figure that it was ok to be curious and also ok with the fact that my curiosity sometimes stopped before where I thought it should stop.  And that it was fine that I could be happy and excited that someone else was interested way beyond the point that my attention could be held. 

The other quote I've been thinking about this week is:

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
-- Widely attributed to Dorothy Parker

I don't think there's any end to the things that I want to learn.  I've said it before, and I'll no doubt say it again, that is why I became a librarian, at the heart of the matter.  No matter what I want to learn, I've developed the tools to go learn about anything I could possibly want to know.  That's also what I love about stories and myths - there is a whole wide world of story, myth, and metaphor that allows us to look at, filter, view, re-filter, re-view, and re-vision our lives.  And creative people coming up with new ways for us to do that every day.  

I happen to love the folklore and tales that have lost their original teller to time, but now and again a new story will cross my path and change the way I see the world, yet again. I love it.  I love that our stories are shimmering mirages that we can tell and retell and shift and repurpose and that they gleam like a dessert oasis, beckoning us towards them, only to shift and reveal something new, or old in a new way, as we close in on them.

I feel like with that, I should have a story to end this on.  Hmm.  So a story I learned just before I started taking the storytelling class in library school is a fairytale.  My teacher, Margaret Read MacDonald tells a different variation of the same tale - I wish I could find where my version came from, it all focused on the fiber arts.  In lieu of remembering my source, I can at least point to Dr. MacDonald as carrying one thread of the story for my source.  So with no further ado:

There was a woman who was tired of working every day, all day long.  As she was walking and knitting and complaining pretty soon a fairy overheard her and said, "I will come and help you, I love to knit!"  So the woman took the fairy up on it so she could do her other work.  Off the fairy went, clickity, clickity, clickity, clickity with the knitting.

Pretty soon she was spinning yarn for the knitting and the weaving, and she started to complain again.  The fairy, who was knitting for her said, Oh, I have a sister who loves to spin, I'm sure she'd come and spin for you so you can do something else.  The woman said, yes!  That would be lovely!  And so soon the sister joined, and the wheel as it was peddled whirred away rhythmically, and the knitting needles went clickity, clickity, clickity, clickity.  

As the woman went about with her weaving, before long she started to complain about the weaving too!  And the fairies said, We have a friend, a lovely friend who can come and help you with that!  And of course the woman said yes.  And before long the fairy sisters had their friend there, and the loom went whomp whomp whomp as the threads were beat into place, the spinning wheel was whirring rhythmically, the knitting needles were clickity, clickity, clickity, clickiting, and there was not a quiet corner of the house anywhere!  

The woman began to be weary of all the noise of these things happening all the time, though she was glad to have them taken care of.  But day after day, the noise became too much.  She said, I will give you three the day off!  They said no, we love doing this, we'd rather stay here!  So time passed.  She tried again, I will pay you to take a day off!  Oh no, we couldn't, we will stay and help you!  So more time passed.  She was at a loss for what to do and the constant noise was wearing at her.  Finally after consulting with the neighboring women, she had a plan.  

As evening fell, she rushed into the house where the fairies were still at work with the clickity clickity clickity clickity, whirra-whirra-whirra- whirra, whomp whomp whomp and shrieked, "THE HILL!  IT IS ON FIRE!"  The fairies yelped and fled to the fairy hill.  While they were gone, the woman pulled out the knitting and tangled the yarn, pulled the spun yarn from the wheel and loom and tangled it all too, put a big stone on the roving, and cut the woven fabric to pieces.  

Soon the fairies were back, banging at her door - you tricked us you terrible woman!  Let us back in to finish our work (which, of course, was never finished because there's always more to do!)!  The woman said, no! I will not - I asked you to leave twice before and you would not and now your work is done!  They said, fine!  Knitting and yarn, come to our aid and open the door, and the knitting said, I cannot come to the door - we are tied in knots!  They called for the roving, and the roving replied, I cannot!  There is a huge stone on top of me!  Fine - weaving, come to our aid!, and the weaving said I cannot I am cut into tiny pieces!

The fairies were so infuriated at this that they said, woman, all your complaining has brought you to this -- we will go and never return and you shall have no more help with your chores.  Good bye!

The poor woman was so relieved, she sat down to untangle the yarn, and refluff up the roving after it sitting under the stone, and clean up and restart the mess she had made of the weaving.  It was so peaceful and quiet, working all by herself. 

After a few days, she was sitting there, knitting and as she sat and knit she started mumbling under her breath about how much was to be done... and, catching herself, said, and I love to do all of it myself, a bit at a time. 

Snip, snap, snout, this tale's told out!

It’s a Mythtery!

What have I been thinking about this week?  I've been thinking about how we use myths and stories to help us understand patterns in our own lives, and what that means for the Mythic Librarian.

I believe stories and myths wouldn't resonate with people if they didn't recognize a piece of themselves, their desires, their hopes, their fears, in the stories.  With the understanding that no one follows a pattern, myth, or storyline exactly, I do think that sometimes it can be useful to see and use stories as metaphors, to provide insight and understanding, to help us answer the question, what is and how am I experiencing what it means to be human.

Two Stories

I know I have a lot to contribute, sometimes there's so much in my head informing my opinions, that it takes me a while to figure out what to prioritize.  In group conversations this often means I'm quiet because by the time I've prioritized what I want to say, the moment has passed.  Spur of the moment can be very difficult for me! In email, I can go back and edit to get to the executive summary - it's much harder in real time.  I also have a tendency to "lose words" - I lost "congruent" at the board meeting last Friday and it didn't come back until Monday So annoying! 

Anyway - so a story I've had about leadership has been Moses being asked by God to tell Pharaoh to release the Israelites.  Moses has all these excuses and God's like, "don't care, go do the thing."  The message I had been taking away was - it doesn't matter if you're scared, it doesn't matter if you stutter, it doesn't matter if you need to find a partner, you still have to go do the thing.  Not that that's any less true, it's still true BUT.  

At this point, I need to weave in a related but different story - in 6th grade, our back to school writing assignment was "who are you?"  I had *no* idea what to do with that question. Like - who am I in context of what (mirroring?  Who I am *in context* changes depending on my context. In true form, It was like Alice being asked by the caterpillar - WHO ARE YOU? I think I finally came up with something to turn in, but I wasn't satisfied with the answer and I've come back to it time and time again, never entirely happy with the results. It wasn't until really the last year or so that I've realized that I was trying to answer a 6th grade question with philosophy way outside the range of a 6th grader's reach. 

The shift in the Moses metaphor that happened on Monday after working with one of my amazing coaches actually tells me my desired answer to the sixth grade question was correct.  And the shift was this - Moses also asks God when he sees the burning bush - who are you?  And God answers I AM.  Then God tells Moses to do some stuff for him.  Under whose authority?  I AM. 

Arachne is another story with some resonance in my life for various reasons, so it is with some trepidation being aware that hubris of comparing oneself to a god can be treacherous territory; however, it is possible to interpret God's answer to Moses in terms of who gives him the authority to go to Pharaoh of "I AM" as intrinsic worth.  

Just as God was I AM, Moses IS.  There is no need to rely on external authority to do the right thing.  I AM (intrinsically worthy of being visible, of being heard, etc) is the only authority one needs.  You don't even need to be 2% more knowledgeable than anyone else in the room (though it can be helpful, if they respect expertise which they don't always) for *visibility*.  Moses doesn't need to rely on an external figure at all.  MOSES  IS. That is enough.  And then he still has to feel the fear and do it anyway, but he's doing it from a different place.  He needs to own the right thing authentically, as intrinsically worthy of doing the right thing, to pull it off rather than, 'uh, God told me to do it.' 

So that's been bopping around in my brain. And of course, when one is thinking about I AM, it can be hard not to think of Sylvia Plath saying, "I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am."

Like "No," "I AM" is a complete sentence. 

What does this mean for Mythic Librarian? 
I've been thinking about this. Mythic Librarian is a pretty epic thing to be creating.  Who I want to serve with Mythic Librarian are people who are interested in playing with, using, recognizing stories in their own lives to better understand the patterns in their lives and the stories that run through them.  Enrichment is a word that comes to mind that needs to fit into this. I don't have all the words yet, I'm still working on them.

The buying audience for what I sell here, would tap into things that connect to the mythic stories that run through our lives.  That act as reminders of the values we hold, the people we want to be, and the beautiful and rich metaphors that come from our history as a species.

I have sub-theme (that if you look on my facebook page is maybe actually the primary theme) of librarian as activist and library as life changing well of stories and information.  So, that's another thread that I need to weave in some how... The more clear I get on all this, the more it makes sense how we all fit into it. 

The Prehistoric Fairy Tale
Back to the thinking about myths and stories, it's been in my media feeds a bunch lately that fairytales are old as dirt.  This amazing article in Scientific American actually talks about the science behind tracing myth through time and across geography.

And then there is this fierce librarian:

“Nobody, be it an individual or an agent of the state, should be able to take it upon themselves to silence a point of view simply because they disagree,” Woolfolk informed the Dissent NewsWire. Yet, it would appear that not only is that exactly what happened, but a librarian who tried to make sure that a public library remained a public forum was arrested, as well. (Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Library Worker Heroically Defends Patron’s Free Speech, Is Brutally Arrested in Library Where He Works)

We're not particularly meek or mild people, when you get down to brass tacks.