U.S. Groundhog Day, pre-Celtic Candlemas Focus on International Rewilding/Reuse of Old Farmland w/Solar Assist
U.S. GROUNDHOG DAY, PRE-CELTIC CANDLEMAS FOCUS ON INTERNATIONAL REWILDING/REUSE OF OLD FARMLAND w/SOLAR ASSIST
First Wednesday Creative (& Insecure) Writing Celebration of Indo-Euro-Brit Support for Rewilding Old Spaces w/Solar Panel Technology
Getting Carried Away by their own Animal Festivities
Americans do seem to take Groundhog Day a little too literally sometimes—Pres. Biden’s staff getting rather more worked up about holding the poor animal (ground squirrel/marmot) on high for the cameras this year, rather than low for the (poor beast’s fodder) grass & wood-fiber—beaver cousin pictured below top left). And it is the magical creature’s flat-tailed beaver cousin, that Europeans (bar a few Scots purists) think will save the Day—or at least some of our blessed days in the immediate future of the planet and for all of us grateful inhabitants—if we’re spared!
In U.S.A., February 2nd is usually reserved as a fixed date for the miracle animal’s so-called peep out of his underground hideaway—very similar to us obscure writers, hidden away in our Muse-bower or whatever serves to give us undisturbed solitude with our keyboard—before he theoretically pronounces the weather forecast for the coming month [traditional six week gap]. This year’s Candlemas-Beaver-Groundhog Day got a little complicated by Chinese New Year’s being celebrated early with the beloved #Wabbit—aka Hare—coinciding with the last week in January 2023—so they can celebrate a candle-on-water floating ceremony; but the end results appear to come together as February—ancient Candlemas—begins.
Candlemas, as we learn repeatedly from our ancestors, is traditional Feast Day of Bride; Bridei; old British Brigantia; Forest Maiden & Earth Mother—identifying with Ancient Egyptian ISIS [‘Eset’], above far rt., Egyptian Queen of Heaven & Mother of the World. As Patron of all women, she has in recent years (with feminism rising) become world icon for International Women’s Day. It’s crazy in the Shetland Isles as they, too, are celebrating Up-Hellya amid gale-force winds!
It’s Brazil & S.American Carnival time also—traditionally an end to winter with street parades taking over every town.
Chinese New Year tradition—in nations like S.Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, mainland China, Burma & Philippines include a prayer-float from shore towards the open ocean, pictured left.
Hawai’i, particularly in winter months, is dominated by an increase in numbers on the southern route of migrating Whales—most vivid & entrancing, the Humpback whales, who often give birth in these tropical waters before returning to their northern grounds in the Salish Sea(B.C.) to overwinter.
Mid-Pacific technology appears already to be able to outstrip Western thinking—perhaps increased hours of sunlight have something to do with it—a Hawai’ian farming project, given Local Government funding & support, are offering farmland acreage on Oahu, HI, complete with installed solar panel-covered roofs—like glasshouses w/built-in sun—so their solar panel technology will be used to maximum, gathering rays while simultaneously covering useful greenhouses.
British Weather Used to Max for Windpower
As a Scots ex-Pat—grateful for no longer having to endure the rigours of the wintry North Coast [Aberdeenshire, Banffshire, Moray Firth], I’m proud to see, not only restoration of my personal tree glade outside my walled garden, pic top rt. but the continued appreciation of the stand of hazel, wild & domestic cherry (gean; morello; pear & alder, bottom 2nd l.) to supplement plum, birch & previous century’s copper beech. Foregound Redwood [Sequoiadendron Giganteum] planted to celebrate the birth of my son there adjacent to/obscuring the two-century-old Douglas Fir [Pseudotsuga Menziesii; gifted by David Douglas as a seedling to the then Minister in residence in 1827 at the Old Manse who was designate Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Edinburgh, at that time. Scots pine aka Caledonian Pine abound.
It is also truly amazing—and fairly Scots in nature—to know that the little kirk below the Manse in the farmland of the Kirkton continues to celebrate a Sunday service once every two weeks!
Nevertheless, weather & human nature being relatively constant—although increasingly wild conditions appear to be taking hold, the winds of the North are being harnessed—following a lead by radical innovator Burnett of Williamston family, led by daughter ‘boss’, with their Culsalmond/Colpy windfarm. Now wind & wave harnessing is occurring through the Glens of Foudland as far as Maggieknockater in the Buchan peninsula to electric generator power centers in the Black Isle, Cromarty; reaching into Sinclair territory in the Far North.
Easter Island Facial Traits Show Influence on Other Pacific Island Residents
Many Europeans may not notice, but there is a noted characteristic in Hawai’ian, and other mid-Pacific island residents like French Frigate Shoals, Guam, resulting in a less-circular “Caucasian” round-headed appearance, and more flat-backed, almost sheared-off shape for which Easter Island’s gods, below—and presumably their ancient resident population—were known. It is remarkable that the Hawai’ian Royal House, headed by King Kamakameha whose statue stands in downtown Hilo, HI overlooking Lilli’ewa Bay, (bottom rt.) took pride in this trait.
Last of the Royal Hawai’ian line, Queen Lilliuokalani, died last week, aged 90. Her hand-sculpted coffin made of local koa wood is currently lying in state in the Royal Palace, Honolulu. She was the daughter of Queen Lydia Kamakameha (1838-1917) who was the ultimate sovereign of the Islands and who lived during the annexation of Hawai’i by the United States in 1898.
Hawai’ians are not only proud of their facial characteristics and unique Pacific heritage, but on special occasions—during hula dance festivals or fire & light ceremonies, they dress with leis (orchid garlands w/mix of tropical blossoms-frangipani, plumeria, hibiscus-in their hair) usually tied in a “topknot”, shown above left. Easter Island topknots were a feature of all the gods aligned on the island’s shore. They were carefully chosen from local volcanic rock, sculpted into the topknot shape.
Many are now lost.
Hawai’ians are not only expert hula dance performers—using hip movement which Europeans take years to learn. But their body shape—maybe considered large to Britiish eyes—in particular with current mountain-climbing madness gripping a (mostly male) muscle-bound population.
Body movement, however, reveals a supple quality within waist & hip gyration that Caucasians are hard-pressed to emulate. It takes years to learn.
Access 2 balmy ocean temperatures have a lot to offer, & many Hawai’ians bathe once or twice daily in local pool. Pictured here rt. within a literal stone’s throw of downtown Hilo, is fave Lilli’ewa Bay. Its easy shallow sandy beach makes it popular not just with locals, but w/Oldies visiting who may have found volcanic black rocks difficult to negotiate elsewhere!
It’s also the single most sought-after go-to pool for that Pacific anomalous practice of Doolah-tending: South Seas (Bali, initially) assist within water to help young mothers prepare for giving birth.
Hawai’ian Paradise Wins Hands Down, Despite Weather Woes
Bottom Line:when all else is said, locals may complain about the weather; Californians about drought alternating with hurricane disruption; New Zealander Kiwis about people raiding their carefully-guarded environmentally-protected reefs, but it’s relative.
Pele—Hawai’ian goddess of fire & ice—continues to reside atop the Mauna, pic above l, holding the world’s largest telescope array [extra-large telescope, ELT] in her sacred grasp, while anchoring her watery toes 29,000ft into the Pacific Ocean’s deepest trench below. She is revered from ocean fringe to Mariana Trench; from coastal California—earthquake roadblock above top rt.—to Bali, Indonesia, Fiji and beyond. Like the Phoenix, ISIS, Egyptian Queen of Heaven, pic top far rt. she may fade but will never die. Even the world telescope symposium atop her sunset summit, above l., keeps touch with local Hawai’ian ‘guardians’ adhering to their policy of no unnecessary disturbance/development at her summit.
It is sacred ground, after all.
Meanwhile, despite record dry rock-bottom water supply (not) in drought-ridden No.Cal (pic 3 above rt.), organic rewilders and other gardening/planting enthusiasts continue to allow the ground around the sacred mountain and its new farmland project in Oahu to prosper—as it will even more when planned solar-panel-roofed greenhouses are erected.
And what about the workers?!
Yes:we writers, IWSGers, NaNoWriMo-ers, Muse-driven regular bloggers, insecure or otherwise, are fortunate to have such a neighborly friendly heritage right on our doorstep. Whether we’re groundhog fans or not, whether we’re just monthly First Wednesday bloggers with a leaf of fresh mint or homegrown lettuce to chew on [lucky us]; let’s agree we are a fortunate lot.
Some people never get past the comic section in their local newspaper—confusingly, Hawai’i’s own is Bahamian (Herald-Tribune) in reverse:Tribune-Herald! See what happens when you let the fritillary (above bottom rt.) out of the chrysalis!
And meantime in authentic Hawai’ian lingo, may I again wish all Hau’oli Makahiki Hou! Happy New Year. Keep on writing!
©2023 Marian C. Youngblood
Social Media Meets its Match—Hackers with Pretend Money Worming Their Way into People’s Hearts
With great sadness I preface this blog with news that Her Majesty the Queen, 96, has died at Balmoral Castle on the Royal Estate, Aberdeenshire. We send sincere condolences and support/love to the Royal Family.
Not certain if as a Brit ex-pat, currently living mid-Pacific, I should announce her death as a post- or ante-script to IWSG & First Wednesday, but a series of unprecedented events this week led me to miss this month’s deadline by 2 days {GMT-1 day PDT}.
My Angelic choir clearly approved/sent spiritual help support my request 2recover from mental & physical violation. Not only did Source aka the Universe send power outage-cum-rainstorm couple hours Weds. evening, but my computah wouldn’t load the blog. Death announcement arrives as the date/midnight changes to zero-day+1 Hence delay, date confusion—didn’t backdate to correct-so here goes Writing Addicts Pic rt. © NewYorker Monarch sits on 11thC Stone of Destiny.
SOCIAL MEDIA MEETS ITS MATCH—HACKERS WITH PRETEND MONEY WORMING THEIR WAY INTO PEOPLE’S HEARTS
FIRST WEDNESDAY BLOG—TIME FOR CREATIVE WRITERS, ARTISTS, MUSICIANS—INSECURE OR OTHERWISE—TO RISE OUT OF OUR DUSTY WRITING CAVERN INTO THE LIGHT OF DAY TO CHRONICLE/COMMENT ON HUMANITY’S SEPTEMBER FOLLIES—BEFORE THE FALL
Hack-Attack: new fearsome enemy on the home front that nobody thought would last
Human memory bank-especially in a child’s 1st, happy, protected, familiar territory with beloved toys, dollies, baby names-rulez!
"I'm gonna buy a paper doll that I can call my own / A doll that other fellas cannot steal / And then those flirty flirty guys / With their flirty flirty eyes / Will have to flirt with dollies that are real" John Mayer
As the Old World [double-entendre] gets demolished around us to make way for the New—below left Cahuenga cut-off where SoCA’s Hollywood “superhighway” (no longer exists) used to link northern end of San Fernando Valley Hwy with downtown Los Angeles Civic Center. Demolished too are downtown Alhambra district Japan and Chinatown, with loss of beloved restaurants like The Far East Café. Korean food trucks replace.
As fuel prices soar, superhighways aren’t getting the traffic. Windfarms and environmentalists rulez.
A ‘stay-at-home work-from-home’ preference shown by majority of employees during our enforced two-year isolation period—using video meetings instead—has begun to rub off on businesses around the globe, with outdoor walks, recreational gardening and a work-at-home-ethic becoming the norm. Remarkably, Saudi desert’s THE LINE, recreational ‘outdoor living’—a feature of old hippie times—is likely to catch on with the new wave—nouvelle vague—of iGen/Generation-Z of youngsters finding joy, pleasure and fulfillment in simple pursuits.
This shorthand version of ‘happiness’ is the wavelength accomplished hackers beam in on. But it’s the oldies—but goodies with a kindly trusting heart—who get spammed.
Decline… and Fall—Call Center Consciousness
There are many spaces between Earth and Heaven and in between are The Doors
misquote Wm.B.Yeats by Jim Morrison & The Doors
In the ‘Fifties when Baby Boomers were ‘in’, English-speaking nations commissioned call centers in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Pakistan using [cough] “English-speaking” local labour at a fraction of cost of a similar outfit at home in the West. They died pre-internet revolution, with onset of mobile phones, but seem to have raised their head again in this latest phone-related scandal.
In the ‘Sixties and ‘Seventies, nobody gave a thought to such strange remote telephone exchanges. An antiquated (but cheap) method of communication did survive the noughties’ boom. But now, surprise surprise, not only is the hacking empire privy to your personal information, but it has resuscitated the old call-center theme—this time in Nigeria, South Africa and Midlands England.
To a veteran ex-pat Brit with octogenarian comfort zone, a Manchester accent even in text—dahling—is a whole lot less intimidating than a voice on the line in broken accent telling you to hang up already.
The little lady from Manchester—so short of breath you can hear her gasping between texts—but so inner circle—in the know about it all—she has time and patience to chat (text)with an oldie—usually a safe bet as we Booomers & beyond less likely to baulk at bottom line when the money chat comes up.
iGens & Millennials are decidedly wary creatures; have little time for subjects that need a long-winded explanation. Often the shortest answer—no—can take Boomers and vintage grannies a very long time to unearth from their verbal repertoire. So they/we say yes instead and then wonder why our friendly social media accounts no longer belong to us.
Cleverly, the technique works in the hackers’ favour: soc.med. sites like Pinterest and Facebook aren’t equipped to handle breakdown. Restoring isn’t an option, either—your site no longer belongs to you. One has to start all over at the beginning; ask to join Insta, send a new photo—the newbie approach.
Meantime—every day since—my poor iPhone jumps and splutters, beeps and cajoles me from mine- no-longer Insta account telling me fifty-two messages from the hacker to all of my followers. Some of my followers still think it’s me. And until I have the strength to initiate a new account, I’m unable to correct that. Thankfully some (young, bright minds) figured it out & challenged the chat-monkey.
Monsieur Musk Plunges into Twitterdom
Most brilliant of all events, however, unfolding in this cyber-saga of crazies, and because I managed to (sortof) get my Twitter page up and running again, albeit with no files or explanation to friends: I asked Elon Musk to look into security risk and hacking potential of his new acquisition.
True to his image as Humanity’s Saviour, not only did the dear billionaire listen, actually read my text, give it some thought, respond! and follow up but my stats on that day hit the ceiling. Bless you M.Musk
Warning to oldies who get targeted: at first it feels friendly, ‘why not help her? I’m old, what harm can it do?’ Loads. Don’t mean losing friends. I mean losing one’s mind. Constant texting-even when I didn’t reply- sent me to cloud cuckoo-land. More below.
I believe in Musk. I believe he will actually make the change which wraps all this garbage up into a spaceball and flings it into orbit to join all the other spacejunk circling ever circling out there till it falls…
In 40% of hacking cases, the target is older, newcomer-friendly, artistic, feels socially responsible to help humanity and therefore, almost invariably will respond to the long-reaching arm of a complete stranger asking intimate personal questions with a view to “helping out”.
Generation Gap Plus Factor—More Oldie+Goodie Vibe
The older the target, the greater likelihood of receiving off-the-wall personal questions amicably. This sole fact of difference in age producing a different response on a thorny subject has been a miracle catalyst in the whole “false-coin” issue. Hackers already know who the best targets are: they’ve usually well beyond middle years. They’ve had their life. It’s okay to help another out, especially if they’re only just past the starting gate.
One pill makes you larger / And one pill makes you small / And the ones that Mother gave you / Don’t do anything at all
Go ask Alice when she’s ten feet tall
And if you go chasing [White] Rabbits / And you know you’re gpin’ to fall ——— Tell them a hookah-smokin’ caterpillar / Has given you the call
When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead / And the White Knight is talking backwards / And the Red Queen’s lost her head / Remember what the dormouse said:
Feed your head / Feed your head
courtesy Gracie Slick 1967 & Jefferson Airplane/Starship White Rabbit
‘Advice from a Caterpillar’ from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll illustration by Arthur Rackham d. Sept. 6th 1867-1939 (71) via his dau. Mrs B. Edwards
‘Sixties: Biggest, Most, Best, Weirdest—all the Superlatives
Sample text (below right) received by new Insta ‘followers’, with emphasis on revealing your own pet project, so that #superfriendly lady hacker from Birmingham or Wolverhampton can encourage a ‘sale’
If you were assured a sum of 50 thousand [take your pick, Euro, Yen, Roubles], how would you spend the money?
- New car
- New house
- Cruise liner vacation abroad
- Help relatives
- None of the above
I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality by not dying
Woody Allen
Music holds the space as underlying influence in all 20thC generations. The earlier the group, the more likely are they to be controlled by addiction of choice. Twenties and Thirties: booze, including illegal venues. Forties: war-restricted, but booze and cigarettes. Fifties & early ‘Sixties: heroin, cocaine, opium. Late ‘Sixties: everything including hard drugs, heroin, cocaine, synthetic and natural coca, ayahuasca, methamphetamine, opiate morphine, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) & recreational ganja.
Closing the StarGate: Full Harvest Moon ends Twin Flame Month
So what do the ‘Sixties and 21stC 2022 Full Harvest Moon post-8/8-Lionsgate Twin-Flame month have in common?
For several generations of moviegoers/big screen watchers, film production invariably features as a growing-up medium. Less so is the attitude of Millennials, 16-year old Gen-Zs and 20-year old iGens to anything that smacks of Media, television news, man-made hype. They are, as a rule, only interested in one person aka self.
This generational trait surfaces in art, film, media presence, social interaction, text and creative identity.
Google the first of the bigtime internet-friendly outfits has warned Google Chrome users of the security risk posed by “friendly” hackers.
Twitter, as we’ve seen above, is responding to the threat with appropriate action.
Writing All the Way to the End
For us (Insecure) Creative types, writing fills the gap between empty memory Muse-infused hippie cabin in Redwood country and 21st Century internet wobble from a system of bots who will control our cyber-future.
Stargates are familiar. We’ve all been here before. As all the best ‘Fifties & ‘Sixties beat generation know, Reggae and Boyband Dance Moves are just playful repeats of an age-old message. This one’s REALLY the last time round, this time. Maya gate-keepers confirm.
p.s. Rainstorms over Pacific and gates of Balmoral; yet HM managed to hold an audience with new Tory PM Liz Truss to form a goverment, before she died Weds/early Thurs—like her daddy Geo.VI— in her sleep. Royal Family members William, Charlotte & George had flown north from Norfolk to Ballater and Balmoral on Monday, to be by her side as she rested on advice of doctors. She asked Tory appointee Liz Truss in her official capacity as Monarch to form a government Tuesday. Died peacefully in early hours of Wednesday a.m.
Ticking all the boxes, Your Majesty. Stay cool, Ma’am. We love you.
Like Her Majesty, tapping her riding crop with an impatient dig at the Almighty B4 the Pearly Gates: Open the Door brother: Immortality here we come.
Or words to that effect. Writers write. Bloggers blog. Gardeners plant gardens and the rest is in the hands of Fate. Go ask Alice. She knowz. ©2022 Marian C. Youngblood
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Ancient Calendar More Accurate Than Ever—Harvest Lammastide—When Nature and Heavens Sparkle & Entice
ANCIENT CALENDAR MORE ACCURATE THAN EVER—BACK-TO-THE-LAND ETHOS—MOTHER EARTH GUIDES US HOOMAN (Insecure) WRITERS, ARTIST-CREATORS, MUSICIANS, COPS, HOSPITAL & CONSTRUCTION WORKERS & esp. FARMERS
FIRST WEDNESDAY BLOGMOBILE ROLLCALL from COSMOS for WRITERS to EXIT LAVATUBE HIDEAWAY & GREET ANCIENT LUGHNASADH/LAMMAS & HER PERSEID METEOR SHOWER SHOOTING STAR PARADE
SIRIUS Summer Dog Days Predict H2O, PERSEID & η-AQUARID Meteors💥
There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more
George Gordon of Gight, Lord Byron, died 1824 aged 36
August has traditionally had pride of place in European culture. Normally frozen like Juneau, AK at same latitude 58ºN, this year northerners join Mediterranean nations basking in unaccustomed warmth of Gulf Stream marvels carried relentlessly from Florida and Bermuda to reach beyond Iceland, Faroes, the Baltic, to Archangel & Nordkapp.
Sunspots Kindle Britain/Europe’s Hottest-Ever Temperatures, Pacific El Niño
An unusually large CME—coronal mass ejection—caused when a large sunspot curves round to face Earth during solar maximum—featured first week August in Washington State’s far NorthWest territory bordering Canadian Vancouver Island’s whale migration route—folk memory or consciousness trigger?
Mud Lake, WA rt., unusual Aurora latitude 47ºN—same as St.Michael’s Glastonbury tor, Newport, Bath, Somerset, Glamorgan & Roman market town Caer Gwent Chepstow, S.Wales—all with music festival Severn-estuary-related connection2 subterranean faultline hotsprings in Somerset & Brittany—seemed to send a signal last week from the Heavens—Aurora Borealis usually a feature of winter skies—to festival party-goers excited to return to mask-free music in Britain, Berlin, Monte Carlo, Miami, Santa Cruz, Mendocino, Monterrey, London’s SouthBank Centre and NYC’s Central Park.
Stormy Times Call4 Stormy Measures—Can WiFi Forestry Replace Corn Dolly-Clyack Sheaf
All along Scotland’s North Coast—Aberdeenshire, Moray Firth, former Banffshire, traditional inshore fishing boats like this oak vessel in Gamrie Bay plied waters from Peterhead to Elgin, Black Isle, Highland Fault-Glenfeshie-Caledonian Canal ©G.Robertson
From birth in the Ocean on ancient Pictish Burghead Fortress’s North Shore beach, STORM is daughter of a long tradition of Clavie-burning crew of Fire Festival-every-Quarter men & youths who shoulder a burning barrel of tar, below rt. around the coast town dispensing gifts of charred oak to residents, then hoist it to Doorie fire altar on fort’s highest rock to smoulder and burn, saving one ember for next time.
STORM, the gigantic puppet robot doll made entirely of environmental waste, is THIS WEEK gracing Edinburgh’s groovy Festival Fringe with her unique presence. Joint Creators Trees for Life, Glenfeshie, Invernessshire original Findhorn Foundation spin-off guru Alan Watson-Featherstone’s 30-yr forest, and Vision Mechanics Storm’s creators, are together spreading the word on #NewAgeConsciousness & tree-planting
Sunspot Triggers Summer Aurora & Pacific Tropical Storm Stevo
Across the pond, Hawai’ians pride themselves—nay boast—of another goddess: higher-than-Everest 29,000ft Mauna Loa (calculated to snow-covered peak from deep ocean floor). She’s a hurricane-buster, famed for side-swiping every ocean impediment that comes her way—Pele-speak for local goddess’s near-miraculous ability to redirect storms north and rain south away from her unique mountain home. Goddess Pele conspires with brother El Niño & volcanic sisters worldwide to spew lava when and wherever possible over machine/mechanical devices to make us (hoomans) wake up!
Ten years ago I was able to post an El Niño video without hassle—they want premium content now 😦
Check out how Pele’s volcanic brethren either side of the Equator are holding our oceans steady in August 2022 on run-up to 8/8 Lionsgate. CMEs turn on a switch. Voilà volcanic mayhem worldwide as Stromboli, Vesuvius, Etna, Sangay Ecuador & Kyushu’s Sakurajima react to Lammas sunspot activity. Twin-sis Mauna Kea spouts from her lava tube in Hawai’i Volcanoes NPS temporarily CLOSED, hoping sunspots & Perseid meteors will slow later in month for reopening. Meantime Big Island virtual pix…
Perseid meteors sparkle to Earth from their vortex in Algol’s binary eye of Medusa clutched in heroic hands as Perseus rescues Andromeda from Cetus, the Whale, below rt. Sirius Canis major rises East to bring breathless Dog Days, the Nile bursting its banks to flood Luxor during hot rainless dry nights.
Appropriately, Guatemalan Elders have known for decades that human ascension predicted by their ancestors has already begun. Daykeeper Hunbatz Men, modern Elder of the Guatemalan Maya, foresees no apocalypse, but encourages deep meditation and generosity to trigger joy & gratitude in a thankless world. Similarly, Islam uses prayer and gift-giving as a discipline.
Signs of the [End] Times or Birth of a New Age?
Judaic scripture [Revelation uses sacred numerology and dramatic descriptions of the Rapture and Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—war, pestilence, famine and death to symbolize the End of Days.
Arab sacred texts repeat the need for constant prayer by the devoted in order to be saved. The Maya believe that sharing their higher understanding handed down by their elders from the time of their Ancestors will save the human race from itself. Maya wisdom says the New Age began four years ago.
Ailkey Brae, above bottom left, is classic example of 5,000 years squeezed into Lammas week: Aikey Horse Fair, held as recently as 1980s on the harvest stance below Aikey Brae Recumbent Stone Circle [RSC] twins with Culsalmond, at entrance to Glens of Foudland—also RSC territory—where on St.Serf’s day in July, tradition held St. Sair’s Fair on the “market stance” field of Jericho next to its [ruined] RSC. Biblical refs aside, St. Sair was patron of Colpy, sanctified annually at neighbouring Williamston well.
Burning Man, Combine Harvesters, Plant New Trees for Old Times
Meanwhile Black Rock in the Nevada Desert, two hours North of Reno, fave tent-city for Burning Man l.above, long before Covid, will run again mask-free this year August 28-September 5th-a post-pandemic event: main tickets $575—$100 more than in 2020. Tents, camping, food vendors festival materials included.
If you are shivering in goosebump land because of Jack Nicholson’s 1980 psychological thriller, The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on the 1977 Stephen King novel, you are wise to keep head down, windows closed as your campervan screeches into high gear mounting 7,000-ft Donner Pass. Kubrick moved King’s Overlook Hotel to Washington state to avoid clash with the real Overlook, which will accommodate late festival-goers as spare camping back-up. Nightmare city!
FIRING-THE-GRID IN FEBRUARY 2023
While we’re staying cool and hydrating hourly through this heatwave, it’s good to plan ahead for a world super-togetherness event, Fire-the-Grid2 February 21, 2023. World meditation focus on that day will peak at the moment of 11:11a.m., so plan to be seated, safe in your comfort zone ready to feel joy—biblical rapture—for minimum five minutes by 11:07. The Universe is giving you four minutes to prepare.
Agriculture Adaptable to ReNew-able/ReOldie-Wayz
Sentimental throwback time, above :agriculture eclipsing summer in winter: Kirkton of Bourtie top, farm steading in winter of 1981 later converted to posh modern (granite) house complex; lower: RSC same farmer’s field with summertime barley bales rolled like missing megaliths against midwinter sunset in S.W. Kirkton of Bourtie stone circle, glimpsed from the Old Manse.
TRADITION LINGERS IN THE OLD WORLD
Traditionalists are still rampant in Europe—nay Colonialism never died. Countries bordering the former “Silk Road” were affected by opening of the Suez Canal, Qanātu as-Suways, 1859, linking the Red Sea & Mediterranean, as 1500 years of travel became a short 120-mile ocean hop, skip & jump between the North Atlantic and southern Indian Ocean.
Egypt is main beneficiary, as water level—Nile linked to SIRIUS rising—became controlled: only loss was having to re-site iconic Abu Simbel temple to higher ground. Ethiopia, Iran and Arabian Gulf nations boomed as the Red Sea dried up.
With such history of drought & water-consciousness, it’s satisfying to watch Saudi ingenuity triumph in the desert. Snaking for 100 miles from Red Sea shoreline, construction on the wondrous temperate-climate-controlled triple level high-rise mirrored city, THE LINE has begun. Two sub-levels house train track & infrastructure, leaving street level for glass-enclosed gardens, theatres, offices, 24-hour restaurants, recreational pools, sports arenas and a 100-mile shopping complex.
No cars or trucks. Completion is due 2030.
All Stops Out for Dream Concepts & Dealing with the HEAT
THE LINE Saudi dream-city makes for interesting contrast.
Proposed as robotic-press-button permanently cool, totally-enclosed 100%-temperature-controlled habitat along a new RedSea-DeadSea highway, The LINE will bring artificial light-cum-air-conditioning where only camels plodded before. Unlike the Saudi rail link which serves Mecca from the coast during annual Hajj for Eid gift-giving after the Ramadan fast, the LINE breaks new ground, heads for mountainous terrain where shopping, walking, pool-dip coffee-klatching become the norm over minaret calls, mosques and touching prophet Mohammed’s A.D.605 Black Stone.
Veteran Song Circle/Fire Festival Traditions Bring Communities Together
If the thought of camping out in mud-soaked portaloo-contaminated rain-drenched fairground conditions in Reno NV, top, gives you goosebumps, think again.
Those running the show have learned from past Music Festivals—Newbury, Glastonbury, Big Sur, Woodstock, to current Leeds, London’s LLCM Meltdown Festival & 4 Scots fans THIS WEEK Edinburgh Festival Fringe— do your own thing—be gentle with the Earth, our Mother—plant a tree yourself—Add your 21stC futurist consciousness—and a donation—2Storm & the Forest
Beyond Uranus or Back Underground in Writers’ LavaTube Hideaway
NASA’s recent launch of its James Webb telescope reveals unprecented images of Uranus, top middle left—in my oldie-but-goodie mind joining V.ger and Spock in that uncharted area beyond the Solar System called the Kuiper Belt—Spock-Speak image top middle rt. Alien Klingon ‘wessel’ ditching in San Francisco Bay, Spock in white, Scotty in charge of whales—movie Star Trek IV the Voyage Home.
If URANUS’ moons and her vertical axis [c.f. Saturn and Jupiter on the horizontal] delight and inspire you to plant another garden in the Earth—from above or below—go for it. Plant up a storm
The gardening Caledonian pine tree-planter in me wants to stay topside all the time. But my writers’ Muse is a stickler for personal discipline—that’s freedom in subterranean #lavatubespeak!
8/8 LionsGate this week & Lammas goes on for another three. Enjoy. ©2022Marian Youngblood
Human Kindness Grows Tentacles—Learning new Migrant ways in CultchaShock of Moving Home—
HUMAN KINDNESS GROWS TENTACLES LEARNING NEW MIGRANT WAYS IN CULTCHASHOCK OF MOVING HOME
MONTHLY FIRST WEDNESDAY EMERGENCE FROM SUBTERRANEAN/SUB-PACIFIC CINDER-CONE TUNNEL for INSECURE WRITERS, FLYAWAY SUPERSCRIBES & WORD-ADDICTS OF ALL AGES
Driving on Right… Thinking on Left
Catherine Zeta Jones‘s experience—a Welsh-born (Sept. 1969 barely a Millennial) star of Glamorgan, S.Wales, then London, Paris, New York and LAX with her hit Chicago (2002, also Renée Zellwegger & Richard Gere) brought her full attention world-wide. Working with and eventually marrying Michael Douglas was a clincher in Hollywood, but she swears her daily quickies to local supermarket or even regular swing-by her hair stylist still cause her palpitations.
You think she’s kidding? Driving on or off the freeway in downtown Los Angeles—or even a leisurely stop off for fries in demure Beverly Hills is not automatic. It causes her to do her “British click-click” as she switches her brain to remember to drive on the right.
It’s no joke.
Back home, on sweet-perfumed winding hedge-lined roads of Tiger Bay rural South Glamorgan—home to Welsh stars Shirley Bassey & Tom Jones, we Boomers, pre-Boomers—Crazee-Oldie Land Girl Diggie Chickies use bicycles, maybe a pony, a horse or two if we’re fortunate, and we DRIVE ON THE LEFT.
This remarkable observation may have escaped the attention of the Greater American continent or in fact most of the Western World and including Oz/NZ & Indonesia; but interestingly NOT Japan. This curious anomaly results in a parking lot in downtown Hilo, Big Island, HI where traffic travels left: entry & exit look left. This teensy weensy change in direction caused chaos on entry to the Suisan marina and dock parking lot—built by Japanese contractor—for the official government-funded multi-glitter rocket-boosted star-filled sky over Hawai’i’s downtown Bayshore—the municipal fireworks display last Monday night, July 4th. Please allow the 4th to be with you. Blatant crib. Sorry Star Wars.
It boomed and popped (superb right-brain chaos thinking) for a prescribed Government-funded fully loaded Fireworks Display lasting precisely 90 minutes. Then all the vehicles drove on the LEFT to get back out on the Highway. Thank you Queen Liliuokalani (last queen) for having us on your shoreline.
I empathize deeply with Catherine—wondergirl to beat all exports from pre-Celtic mystical Wales. I don’t live in SoCal or even get to do a little shopping on Rodeo Drive (long time ago)—no longer desire. But growing up in Scotland, having 30-year offspring period; then zoom All Change—CulchaShock USA here we come. Neither American husband understood. They drove on the right: always; no problem. But neither got it that it was not automatic for me. There’s not a day I don’t forget to remember which side of the street to look out for traffic on: Boom she-bang. Give that woman a ticket.
Olde Times Always There—iGens Tackle Retro-Book-Learning
But there’s hope for us Oldtimers—call us what you will—WWII Land Girls—who wore the dizziest snaz headscarf routine to keep unruly hair out of the pail while milking the cow—or planting kale & cabbage.
May not be quite old enuff to be a Land Girl, but my parents had friends who were and the ethos stuck.
Armed with bucket and spade, sometimes water hose or mechanic’s toolkit, Brit lady volunteers pretty well ran everything behind the scenes, vide HM Queen bottom left, on visit to War Museum to see her khaki wartime volunteer uniform.
Even our language is different. Lingo changes generationally—each new gen a new word. Only now they’re called memes. Don’t ask me. I’m not a millennial. Nor am I an IGen, GenZ or even a Boomer. Ahem. I was born before the Julian calendar change. Well, not quite that old. But…
Onward and upward: pix top above mostly the gorgeous and forever timeless-no-age-looking Zeta-Jones in triplicate counter-clockwise from top left 1. Butterfly nebula to get us thinking aerial thoughts on transformation and transfiguration in this new world 2.&3. trailer for and Catherine’s seminal scene from Chicago starring Richard Gere & Renée Zellwegger 4. July 2022 reconciliation-family reunion of husband Michael Douglas’s estranged son, courtesy selfless Catherine <3. 5. Semi-serious break from Silly Season distractions: Wild boar—contested entrant into human race for environmental regeneration unpopular with some new rewilding charitable institutions; carved stone rooftile found embedded in Chesters fort, Northumberland, part of Hadrian’s Wall abandoned before Roman exit A.D. 420. Sacred wild boar was not only emblem of the 20th Legion Deva Victrix, but important enough for legionaries to hack away at Gordon territorial boar coat of arms in Aberdeenshire [Deva also ancient pre-Celtic name for River Dee—goddess’s victory over sacred water]?
Aberdeenshire is coincidentally target of summertime exit from London heat to pleasures of Scottish country dancing, highland pony trekking, forest rewilding and—later—Braemar Gathering attended by Her Majesty. Formerly part of her holiday from metropolitan demands after she views Windsor Horse Show [fave animal after corgis] & Windsor Royals Polo Match. Unable now to ride because of spinal pain, at age 96, she deputized grandson HRH Prince William to swing his polo stallion around like he’s a professional, good at animal recognition/communication and care. There are plenty horses waiting for them in Balmoral, after touchdown in Scots capital, Edinburgh, to “receive the keys to the kingdom”; a short tree-planting session and (private) passenger train ride later & she will reach Outlander territory allowing rain, wind, trees, river Dee and peace to enfold. She may even get some personal catchup time for reading (and planting more trees) with the children. Lonach Gathering, Strathdon gathers friends of mountain, sky and earth together as the Clans march through the Glen to the sound of the pipes.
Without libraries, what are we? We have no past, no future
Ray Bradbury
Probably most famous of all, the Great Library of Alexandria, Egypt, holding scrolls in its Mouseion—an Academy dedicated to the nine Muses held papyrus scrolls from Nineveh, Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon 605 B.C.; Sumerian, Assyrian, Mesopotamian papyrus records brought into port in ships of Hellenic origin. This aura of cultural academia was created as a royal initiative on impetus of author-historian Ptolemy I Soter c. 320 B.C. with his son, c.240 B.C Ptolemy II Philadelphus, after the death of Alexander the Great, 323 B.C. when the empire collapsed, dividing into three. The Library was built in the Brucheion (Royal Quarter, below l.) as part of the Mouseion building which included living quarters dining facilities and tax-free academic lifestyle for a dozen teachers. Sacred ‘temple’ for an estimated 400,000 scrolls held by royal command the main purpose of the Ptolemaic campus of buildings was to show off the wealth of Egypt, with research as a lesser goal. Library contents were created strategically for the benefit of their royal ruler, with the Chief Librarian appointed as personal tutor to the king’s son Intent was if scholars were completely freed from all the burdens of everyday life they could devote more time to research and intellectual pursuits. Historian Strabo called the group of scholars who lived at the Mouseion a σύνοδος (synodos, “community”). As early as 283 B.C. they may have numbered between thirty and fifty learned men.
The *Place of the Cure of the Soul*
Μουσεῖον τῆς Ἀλεξανδρείας original Mouseion Academy sacred to Goddesses of the Arts, Nine Muses, was established as major part of Ptolemaic plan: academic tax-free community learning institution, shared dining-living quarters, garden walk, botanical zoo, teaching classrooms, lecture hall, a dozen academics including a Head Librarian. Ptolemy II Philadelphus son on father-historian Ptolemy I Soter’s advice, provided a learning environment, lecture halls, shared dining, reading room, meeting rooms, gardens, creating a model for the modern university campus.[32] A hall contained shelves for the collections of papyrus scrolls known as bibliothekai (βιβλιοθῆκαι). An inscription above shelves read: “The place of the cure of the soul.”
You Have to be Both Sexist & Racist to Remember WWII
Perfectionist in personal appearance, HM’s superb timing @QueensCanopy est. 2022 her charity of choice encouraging tree-planting by spade & rake aka WWII WRAC female-backup force technique! Monarch’s war uniform held London Military Museum
Alternate aphorism from Brit Land Girls as reaction to learning of American G.I.s’ rural station as uniformed migrant gum-chewing baggy-pants-wearing khaki bois drinking at the local: “Them Yanks—over-weight, over-sexed and over here”
Remembering to Remember or Forgetting Writing Cues, Deadlines
July stand by! It’s traditionally hurricane season in Bahamas and Antilles—but it’s Silly Season in the Press Office—this grateful not-so-young pre-Boomer still breathing & counting the sacred numbers, despite current trending political Brit. Downing Street news. No.10 Cat is more clued in on that story.
Much more relevant to the wondrous miracle of being present—of hauling oneself by one’s bootstraps out of our Cinder Cone Cave of Writerly Solitude to Face the World for one first Wednesday per month: think NaNo & IWSG who both have summer projects on the slow burner.
Smell Burning? It’s a cloud of leftover dynamite, gunpowder smoke from July 4 Independence Day Weekend+Monday fireworks-to-die-for, sparkler* heaven for Oldie Americans, rocket shower gems for toddlers. All cats indoors, however. Drive ‘wrong way’ down Bayshore & Banyan.
Watch yer feet for S.Korean Enhypen-clone #redsnapper bangers—all the rage.
*p.s. On anti-glitter sparkler campaign, I washed some of my shiny (sixties’) Mendocino abalone shells and resulting glitter scattered on the carpet as I dried them was verrrry sparkling!
Light Beings Call (Writing) Hideaway Hotline by Sacred Numbers
They say home is where the heart is; Deepak Chopra says breath is life; Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh would say breathe in I have arrived—breathe out I am home, Peek out cave take in-breath; write blog post blog tune into madness of human lot. On exhale, the pundits say, we put the world to rights. Happy 4th or as #roaring ‘twenties star Groucho Marx said “plenny mo’ numbers”. Happy scribing. ©2022 Marian Youngblood
Nighttime Chat with Ancestors in Dreamtime Taps Universal Subconscious to Quiet Fear bring Calm
NIGHTTIME CHATS WITH ANCESTORS IN DREAMTIME TAPS UNIVERSAL SUBCONSCIOUS TO QUIET FEAR, BRING CALM—THE UNCONSCIOUS HEALING METHOD
First Wednesday Writers‘ Assignation w/Mother Earth Topside to HEAL post-Emergence from Depths of Subterranean Wo/Man Cave
There are drawbacks to spending writing time predominately below-ground, but then one’s time is one’s own. This has been a boon during our two-year hiatus from #RealLife. Especially if great-grand-auntie Minnie & Co hold forth from their gallery EVERY night in Dreamtime.
Oldies’ #Vintage Gardening Method—Simple Job vs. iGen Virtual or Millennials’ Truckathon Total-Clear Techniques
Let your joy explode your questions. All that matters will fall into place and you will know—without thinking—easily. Drop burdens of separateness and all strivings to gain knowledge and come into the wholeness… All is one.
Let us unite.
Dorothy Maclean message from the Devas in Memoirs of an Ordinary Mystic Findhorn Foundation Press, 2010
While British school/university curriculum continues through June, in U.S. Memorial Day weekend topped teenage graduation ceremonies adding a new virtual voice, as they enter ‘real’ life via their iPhones. Life, they might find, especially one guided by our revered tween-and-twenties iGen-Gen-Z offspring (probably to Millennial parents)—oh dear newest graduates join an almost totally VIRTUAL WORLD—think everything is doable because it can be simulated electronically.
During World Medical Meltdown, Nations Return to Traditional Ways—Summer Music-Fire Festivals—Burning Man 14thC Version
Images below pull heartstrings, coming as they do from another era—a time when the world was safe from rabid disease and the unpredictable destiny of the human mind to conquer it—when masks were something you wore to a fancy dress party or masquerade: from left, Black Rock, Nevada desert giant Burning Man ready to light. Camping out over 3-4 days for music festivals like Woodstock brought out community spirit; music comes in all sizes—staircase in Valparaiso lol. Tarot pick to guide us through. Lower l.secretly all waiting for solstitial moonrise ©MCYoungblood Hill of Barra Kirkton of Bourtie stone circle RSC 6/21/11 extreme moonrise Metonic cycle; lastly— Gustav Klimt‘s golden phase goddess of Health and Medicine, Hygieia—we should know cos she holds caduceus symbol of medical knowledge.
Nations like Pakistan, Japan, S.Korea and most of the former British Colonial regimes have a long history of ‘grow-your-own’. They are geared to help each other manage food production and delivery, when times are hard, with many farming families sharing organic harvests in simple community eating places. Street vendor/outdoor eating is becoming popular in cold countries, too as summer progresses.
Not all countries choose the food-share option, however—some can barely feed their own homeless. While others—more affluent, or like UAR-Dubai-Iranian bloc dedicated to sharing summer festivals and wealth, have led—with European help—to establish secure food-emergency supply chain. Attention via smartphones/instant messaging worldwide, idolizing hospital epidemic docs and medical workers, has elevated 24-hour non-stop dedication to their job to near-angelic proportions—slotting them firmly in the Spirit realm. Health Angel Spirit-Mother figure Hygieia, above Klimt oil & gold on canvas, rules with her [serpent-entwined] rod!
Pure 22-carat Gold symbol of wealth from time immemorial—precious metal mined & worked by ancient cultures: Islam, Assyrian Egyptian, Rome as their ultimate show of power. Left Caduceus Gk.= staff of life, entwined by serpents of pagan spirit world, imparting secret occult knowledge to the initiate. Still used in hospitals. rt. Full regalia: Gold Coach for the Jubilee. Her Majesty hasn’t sprung a platinum one.
All stops are out in London for nonagenarian HM Queen’s Platinum Jubilee parade events involving the royal gold coach, the monarch’s priceless heirloom regalia, with full retinue attending of every member of every Euro royal house from Hohenzollern, Battenberg [now Windsor], Romanov, and Hesse to Monaco, Malta and Gibraltar. Every wearable Guards uniform will be worn, horses shod & cannon & gun salutes performed to the National Anthem over two weeks in June, anniversary of her 1952 coronation.
Typically for the tiny monarch—whose miniature frame can only just hold bucket and spade—focus on her Queen’s Green Canopy features strongly during lockdown, with tree-planting by other royals too. While no longer physically able to ride horseback, Her Majesty adores the outdoors.
Summertime Good Fun Times
British Summertime garden parties—aka dance the night away without a mask ‘good fun-times’ have escalated with relaxed government ruling—stimulating community-led initiatives of outdoor games, theme parks and back-to-nature walks in local woodlands.
New Moon on May 30th clustering conjunct Jupiter-Mars supportive of main moves in Gemini: Mercury direct; sun/moon holding just out of reach of Taurus’s hold on Venus and Uranus—Neptune holding emotional Pisces full-on water no respite, according to lifetime tarot reader and spiritual astrologer, @isispriest David Zunker:
Double or quits: new Moon with Sun exact 11:11p.m.in super-go Gemini-with Mercury now direct-moves a supportive Taurus-Venus-Uranus conjunction, Jupiter-Mars conjunct Aries held trine by emotional Neptune in Pisces:
Watery suggestion—”We open our minds to new connections and ideas but hold on to cherished goals, while remaining flexible to new possibilities. Allow your destiny to pull you through time.” David Zunker
Back to the Land—Bay Area Trustfund Dropouts Move North—Rock Music Follows
The ‘Sixties go down in history as a “Time when if you remember it, you weren’t there”. Liverpool had the Beatles for England, just when New England captured American youth débût performances by new groups at E.coast Woodstock and W.coast Altimont. Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell, Carole King and some unheard of music groups [like the Doors]! were literally getting their act together.
Down in the Jungle Living in a Tent—Better than a Pre-Fab—
No Rent
Down in ?Hackney livin’ in Clover—wait till the landlord comes—All Over
pseudo Haiku take on British Radio ‘Home Service’ wartime humour Spike Milligan, The Goon Show, 1956
Magically, the San Francisco Bay Area was a magnet for music. Even the Brits ended up playing there*, while real hard-core back-to-the-Earth living attracted many groups farther north-exodus from Santa Cruz or downtown Haight-Ashbury to Mendocino and Humboldt redwood country.
As one of those who was actually there 1969-1973—a clear advantage to Boomer/pre-Boomer vintage status—tho’ some of it IS difficult to remember—was hearing groups’ first performances [Crosby, Stills, Nash débût with Richie Havens, Neil Young, Mamas&Papas]. Above pix, courtesy ©London Records owners Deram-Threshold rt. reveal Brit Moody Blues’ wild-west cave-dwelling fire-burning passion for songs “To Our Childrens Childrens Children” [Never Thought I’d Live to be a Hundred, Gotta Make the Journey Out ‘n’ In] set in a fantasy hippie den on a distant planet; clear taste in décor similar to (below) contemporary NoCal group Cat Mother’s entwined psychedelic window on their [mushroom & music] world. Cat Mother ‘and the All-night Newsboys’, seminal album ALBION DOOWAH [Strike a Match and Light Another…]©Polydor photo 1970 ©Chamberlin shows group family portrait outside their Albion, CA self-built shack/living quarters for six-man band+families.Lead singer-songwriter Michael Equine sitting on outhouse roof; Redwood clearing on Albion Ridge. Buckminster Fuller dome-home; skunk under the bed redwood treehouse, Windjammer ocean restaurant.
*Graham Nash—long-serving CSN singer-songwriter—is English ❤ New tour announced for 2022!
Within a Cone’s Throw of…Cairngorms National Park
Scotland’s Moray coast is often overlooked in a search for Britain’s largest national park: Cairngorms NP at over a million acres (1,118,720 to be exact-size of Luxembourg, or 4,528 sq km (1,748 sq miles). Within shouting distance of North Coast dolphin sighting, the coastline boasts other marvels: Brodie Castle, Cawdor (of Macbeth fame), and probably the greatest cathedral “Lantern in the North” Elgin, burned by the Wolf of Badenoch. Forres has its witch lore—Edinglassie hanging tree shows rope marks. And Valiscaulian order Pluscarden Abbey hides in the coastal ridge, keeping monastic time since 1100.
Findhorn nestles between Burghead’s largest northern Pictish hillfort and Lossiemouth military airbase, currently on standby. The spiritual community lies within ancient curtilage of 8thC Duffus Castle.
Rather like the trees and vegetables of Findhorn community’s Nature Spirits, summoned by Dorothy Maclean or Eileen Caddy’s ‘still small voice within’, Nature speaks. It takes a lifetime to hear her. It’s up to us now.
I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality by not dying
Woody Allen
End Times: Fire-the-Grid to Invite Joy, Gratitude, Prayer
Terence McKenna spoke of the Eschaton—a final end-of-world spiritual event predicting human ascension to the Oversoul. He was adamant the human race has purpose toward the symbiosis of man and machine—his hyper-complexification [thinkSpock, LLAP #Mindmeld].
Both he and psychoactive dabbling colleague Ram Dass/Richard Alpert have gone up the sky elevator, but felt the human race was headed inexorably to its Omega Point. McKenna was skeptic but convinced—alongside sacred wholistic practitioners Caroline Myss, Greg Braden, Deepak Chopra, Clarissa Pinkola-Estes, David Spangler/Lorian Foundation, to recharge via prayer & joy, as regular input to Fire-the-Grid. He was adamant the human race is constantly speeding up to meet its own designer future.
Native American wisdom talks of Return of the Bird Tribes (Ken Carey) just as native Wisdom-Keeper shaman Kiesha Crowther/Little Grandmother / Message for the Tribe of Many Colors describe changing times as a prelude to an awakening human condition within this new nature-loving, spiritually-based, sacred commune of souls.
We have help.
‘There is a river flowing now very fast. Some will be afraid and try to hold on to the shore. Feeling torn apart, they will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open and our heads above water.
And I say, look around and see who is in there with you and celebrate’
Hopi Elder Prophecy, Oraibi, Arizona 2000
Angels to Guide Us: Love the [Writer’s] Cave You’re In…
1st Wednesdays come around with alarming frequency when you’re underground—with a bunch of [Insecure] Writers banging on the door to your secret inner sanctum. But it’s worth it for the feeling of gratitude it instills in us humans who’re only just beginners in this new way the Universe likes to work it.
Keep on lovin’ what you do—has to be our angelic motto of the day-week-Mental-Awareness month. And with the trees [and Dorothy’s sweet peas] guiding us, what can we newbies do but acquiesce, go with the flow, allow. By letting (Mother) nature spirit move us where she needs us to be, we learn to be willing children in a brand-new guessing game. Let solstitial festivities begin. ©2022Marian Youngblood
New ‘Roaring Twenties’ Generations Breathe Life into Past from a Futurist Perspective
NEW ‘ROARING TWENTIES’ GENERATIONS Breathe Life into Past from a Futurist Perspective—Create Multi-linguistic Multiculture
FIRST (WRITING) WEDNESDAY OF NEW YEAR NEW DECADE-EMERGENCE FROM (INSECURE) SCRIBE CAVE OPTIONAL
New Multi-linguistix Multiculture Shares Subconscious Synchronicities with Fans
Throughout our human past, future generations were traditionally the ones we ‘prepared the way for’, ‘made allowances for, (Boomers) ‘scrimped and saved for’ (pre-WWII) ‘did without so they could have… Several decades down the line, WWII is a distant memory for Oldies; an historical event for Millennials, iGens, GenZs. Yet, there’s full complement of #NewTweenties totally unaware of its political influence in Vintage-gen lives.
Internationally, from a social-media-altered perspective—fueled by two years’ isolation, health concerns and personal angst—the internet has developed/become a huge market for media, news, entertainment and (crucially) under-age teens’ ‘stuff’—ENHYPEN’s seven-crew member dance moves troupe, above, an ‘influencer’ group that skyrocketed to stardom over last twenty months.
Be Prepared
Be prepared!
One of many new groups surfacing through a (suppressed) creative interlude during world isolation, Korean-born Enhypen speak Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese and English. Their age range is from 16-20.
If you’re a Baby Boomer, you’ll recall the Beatles started playing in Liverpool as teenagers. (Sir) Ringo Starr is Richard Starkey, and Macca is short for Paul McCartney—technically pre-Boom (b.1940) oldies. Both still perform.
If you’re a Baby Boomer, you’ll recall the Beatles started in a local Liverpool skiffle group as teenagers, 1963. Boomer British nicknames were all the rage then: Sir Ringo Starr (rt.) is Richard Starkey; performing with Macca (l.) Paul McCartney in 2019
Tweenties Stage a Visual Revolution in 2022
With medical resources and technology being shared globally in the current situation, culture and language barriers seem to melt: Native American knowledge revealed, Asian multilanguage interchange commonplace. Differences in generations, too, have a chance to cross (former) boundaries.
In this peripatetic iPhone world, communication by visuals rather than text becomes the norm—sacred realm of Social Media kings/queens familiar to iGens, Tweens and some six-year olds.
While Boomers (and even pre-Boomer Vintage pros) may deign to tweet occasionally (biz, professional, sports, less personal, more oldie), hardcore iGens have Twitter accounts. They also dabble in TikTok, Pinterest, Instagram and possibly also have a YouTube account to show their wares, e.g. artwork, meme graphics, cartoon and classic video art, movies, travel selfies and, most recently, drone footage from the world’s classic locations, never-before seen elevations of ancient strongholds from an angel’s view.
“When the Condor of the South flies together with the Eagle of the North, the spirit of Mother Earth—Pacha Mama—will awaken.
Then She will wake millions of her children.
This will be the Resurrection of the Dead.”
Quechua Inca Prophecy
Baby Condor reintroduction Klamath, CA
Prehistoric Landscape Remembered in Folklore Tradition
Newbie selfies are an attempt by tweens to join a venerable bunch of (#Vintage) bloggers like me—tapping out keys since 2009—described in psychiatric terms as ‘essential journaling accessories’ in maintaining mental health, by Columbia University neuropsychologist Sanam Hafeez. Also adequate sleep and ‘happy-feel’ activities, particularly outdoors, promote serotonin which produces calm within.
Focus has turned on Mother Nature. Renewed commitment is high priority in Cairngorms to ‘save the Earth’, rewilding and restoring former natural pine, hazel and birch forest lost over centuries of careless husbandry. Scotland in particular has lost 90% of its former ‘wild’ Caledonian Forest—plus rainforest— c.f. Pacific redwood old growth stands sprouting 1000-year-old pine needles; rowans as old as Perth’s Fortingall yew; casualty of the Clearances: guilt added to landowner anxiety=restore, replant, rewild.
Some ancestral memory still exists from that distant time when Scotland’s Highlands, Islands and (even) Lowlands were covered in thick ancient pines (Pinus sylvatica) supporting rich arboreal/fungal understorey. Even before the Herschip o’ Buchan, 1308 burn by Bruce, when people remembered trees burning for 30 years, some isolated villages remain where ancient tree spirits are celebrated and given gifts, respect—offerings in pagan tradition.
Glen Lyon, the longest completely enclosed mountain loch in Perthshire, source of the River Tay, is held sacred by local (prefer anonymity) guardians of the Cailleach(Old Woman) and Bodach(Old Man) stone altars, especially through winter until released to grow wild again on February 2nd, ancient Candlemas.
The Old Woman—Cailleach—original creator deity of Caledonia—Roman North Britain—was celebrated in the Western and Northern Isles (now treeless and devoid of any growing medium but sheep, grouse and heather moor) as an entity disguised as a raincloud (prehistoric rainforest—are rewilders ready for extra rainfall that goes with it?) who flew in anger, dropping lightning bolts into forest canopy, starting forest fires. Shades of Pacific NW forest fires where trees burn for square miles in summer, impervious to H20.
Difficult to imagine the Old Woman gathering her skirts to set the Cairngorms alight—only heather. But time will tell.
Rewilding aka Allowing Nature to Do What She Does Best: Growth
Despite political shenanigans surrounding land ownership, traditional (post Highland Clearances) moor management (burning heather, shooting grouse), some landowners allow access to this treeless land in an attempt to encourage interest in new tree-grow projects. Scotland’s Right-to-Roam Act complicates matters in giving an impression that hiking is legal everywhere—more signs get erected in an attempt to clarify who is allowed where.
Meanwhile back in Rainforest Alley aka Underground Word & Verbage Cavern camouflaged as Writing Cave Subterranean Style, we (insecure) writers have a Plan. Plant More Trees; write more stories; keep the Door (to the Future) Open. You never know who may walk right in.
Angels, Dragons, Fire & Rain, ancient ways to pick up our (writing)skirts and fly. Happy New Year 2022. ©2022 Marian Youngblood
Surprise Benefits of Lockdown: Revealing New Insights in Old—Archaeological—Territory
LOCKDOWN’S SURPRISE BENEFITS: REVEAL NEW INSIGHTS ON OLD—ROMAN—GROUND
MARCH MUSINGS IN THE WRITERS‘ CORNER—INSECURE WRITERLY STYLE—AFTER ONE YEAR OF SOCIETAL DISLOCATION, INNER DISRUPTION & FOLLOWING THE RULES
Writing—especially when done under difficult conditions—can, like many professions—medical, physical, psychological—bring joy, new discoveries, even resolve to beat one’s own record. When our usual comfort zone in the Writer’s Cave is threatened, writers, creative artists and humans generally have the capacity to hunker down and do what it required. We have had TIME to think, to be comfortable with ourselves, sometimes to open new doors we didn’t know existed.
Suggestions from the world of archaeology have indicated that long term study provided by enforced closure and reversion ‘to the books’ and laptop have produced remarkable new insights into what we thought was a locked-up world of Scotland’s Pictish past.
Fierce Pictish ‘beasts’ guard Class II relief slab at former early Xtian site in Conon Bridge, Easter Ross Black Isle. Rescue-restoring a previously-recycled 18thC McAuley tombstone, revealed affinity with larger group of Pictish relief cross-slabs Rosemarkie, Cromarty Firth and inner Morayshire, direct line to southern enclaves of Pictish centres Forfar, Brechin, Meigle. Pink granite stone will be on display after conservation in Dingwall museum.
The new Dingwall cross-slab is a uniquely significant western extension of the prestigious Pictish symbol-bearing relief sculpture of Easter Ross, notably connected with the tall slabs of Shandwick and Rosemarkie Dr. Isabel Henderson
Double disc, Z-rod & horsemen, 7thC similar to reliefs in ‘Kingdoms’ of Fib (Fife), Fotla, Fortriu (Forteviot) & Forgue are dominated by cross-carved interlace guarded by beasts on Christian side of 6-foot Conon megalith
Not so. In Pictland, the former Scotland, that is. With time on their hands, access to drone and digital technology, it’s all change.
So say archaeological field- and National Museum-based historians and archivists who have had amazing revelations on their doorstep appearing within last 24 months. With recent lockdown private time provided to reassess and appreciate collections and individual finds, their vision of North Britain in (1st C) Roman times and following Roman withdrawal in A.D. 420 has changed.
At the close of the 1st Century, when Roman legions were at their most adventurous and conquering best, the Empire stretched from modern Russian riviera in the Caucasus to Scotland’s Ultima Thule. Marching camps furthered the Roman reach beyond what would become Hadrian’s Wall, and while Romans never quite relaxed to enjoy the warm waters of Moray Firth and Cromarty—no lush villas built after Agricola’s seminal campaign, A.D. 83 below, as they did in the South near Bath, Colchester, St. Alban’s or Birdlip Gloucestershire. No swimming pools, games or multi-servant dining in the triclinium until autumn return to Rome. Nevertheless, Roman marching camps (following the few ancient tracks north) were substantially built upon—sometimes like Inchtuthil reworked to become fully-manned forts—Raedykes in Kincardine spanned 93acres/37ha. and was capable of housing three legions, or 16,000 troops.
A marching camp of similar size at Durno in Donside seems more likely to have fueled 11,000 legionaries ‘held in reserve’ at battle of Mons Graupius—on undulating lower ramparts of Mither Tap of Bennachie—in the Garioch*, while 3000 cavalry and 8000 British auxiliary infantry (according to Tacitus) alone decimated the screaming tribes numbering at least 30,000. *pron.Gee-ree
Pictish Placenames come to the Rescue
Cairnamounth pass between the Mearns (Kincardineshire) and Deeside (Aberdeenshire) has also been suggested, but no large Pictish royal centre lies south of River Dee at Banchory. Several Pictish placenames do help, however—Pictish Pitcaple Pet-capull ‘place of royal horse’ gives weight to a location closer to Bennachie. Kintore was built adjacent to a mile-long avenue of prehistoric cairns, circles and carved stone megaliths (Druidsfield, Broomend Crichie, Kintore kirkyard) sacred-ancestral to local tribes. Kintore-Inverurie corridor is lined by Pictish Class I (5thC-7thC) incised carved stones.
At the time of building Emperor Hadrian’s wall to keep out wild pagan Caledonii (A.D.122) Roman presence in NE Scotland followed ancient trackways from conquered territories in S, over the Mounth into Donside and via Aberdeen north to Fyvie, Banff and Moray coast, in order to control gold reserves and pre-Pictish sacred centres in Black Isle (Rosemarkie) and Cawdor
At the height of Agricola’s campaign, 20 years before the end of the 1st Century, according to his son-in-law, Tacitus, Rome could do no wrong. Twenty years earlier, her legions had defeated (tortured and killed) most of the Iceni under their great queen Boudicca, ransacked all the Brigantian gold reserves and sacred shrines they could find, and were on a mission to subdue the northern tribes: Dicalydones (Caledonian tribes in two main divisions) for their rich eastern landholdings.
Caledonians Unsubjugated, Rome Withdraws
By A.D.368, just thirty years before Roman withdrawal from Britain, Ammianus Marcellinus describes tribes of the Priteni [Picts] split into two by the Mounth: northern Dicalydones and Verturiones in the south. To Roman authors, Priteni-Britannii were linguistically just another people of Prydein. By the post-Roman (early Medieval) Dark Age, Caledonians had re-possessed their northern forests, the Fortriu people their rich lands of Perth, Kinross and Fife.
Tacitus was faithful to his father-in-law in the possibly fictitious speech he put in Caledonian chieftain Calgacus’ mouth:
Solitudinem faciunt pacem appelant
They create a wilderness and call it ‘peace’
Following the rout of local tribes by such a small Roman force—not even involving key legions— army ranged from 17,000 to 30,000; although Tacitus says that 11,000 auxiliaries were engaged, along with a further four squadrons of cavalry, the number of legionaries in reserve was iapproxunately 15,000—none deployed.
Caledonian chariotry was charging about on the level plain between both armies, their wooden war chariot wheels getting stuck in mud. Imagine Harthill Castle, Back of Bennachie, Gadie Burn hinterland, leading to Insch, the Cabrach, protective forest cover.
After a brief exchange of missiles, Agricola ordered auxiliaries to launch a frontal attack on the enemy. These were based around four cohorts of Batavians and two cohorts of (paid) Tungrian swordsmen intended to terrorize the tribes who were deployed in a U-shape upslope. Caledonians were cut down and trampled on the lower slopes of the hill. Those at the top attempted to outflank them, but were themselves outflanked by Roman cavalry. Caledonians were then comprehensively routed and fled for the shelter of nearby woodland, ‘relentlessly pursued’ by well-organised Roman units.
It is said that the Roman Legions took no part in the battle, being held in reserve throughout. According to Tacitus, 10,000 Caledonian lives were lost at a cost of only 360 auxiliary troops. 20,000 Caledonians retreated into the woods, where they fared considerably better against pursuing forces. Roman scouts were unable to locate any Caledonian forces the next morning.
Tacitus was succinct in his criticism of Agricola’s recall to Rome in the autumn of 83: having confiscated the Caledonians’ granary harvest—leaving the locals without food for winter—their subjugation was assured. It was a significant victory for Rome. Honors and illustrious awards awaited him, but the frontier he had opened shut down tight. Tacitus’ quote on his account of Roman history A.D.68-98 : Perdomita Britannia et statim missa ‘Britain was completely conquered and immediately let go’, showed his bitter disapproval of Emperor Domitian’s failure to unify the whole island under Roman rule after Agricola’s successful campaign.
Perdomita Britannia et statim missa Britannia was completely conquered and immediately allowed release
Retreat to Writer’s Cave When no Other Avenue on Offer
Given Tacitus’ example of a journalist’s account of an event outwith his area of conttrol (mostly), our suggestion to fellow scribes for March—one year down the line from a time when we had not a (writing) care in the world—must be to hold down that inner knowing that we’ll pull through; that we can (and will) find the words we’re looking for. And to use them as wisely—and with as much human compassion—f not love—as we can muster.
Because we know our writerly Muse has higher [consciousness] ancestral connections, who also look down—like Calgacus—from their virtual mountain perches, wishing us well and directing us—ever so gently—along this new, previously untrodden path. ©2021 Marian C. Youngblood
Sparrow in a Leopard’s World—SpaceHab Man who Lived many [Earth]Lives
SPARROW IN A LEOPARD’S WORLD—Bob Citron was a Giant under the Sheepskin Rug
No Wolf-in-Sheep’s Clothing, He Changed Space Travel Forever
Leopard from triclinium floor, preserved after Vesuvius eruption A.D.79
Buckminster Fuller said: I live on Earth at present and I don’t know what I am. I do know that I am not a category, I am not a thing—a noun. I seem to be a verb. An evolutionary process—an integral function of the Universe.
Carl Sagan: The Universe is within us. We are capable of so much more than we allow.
Bride put her finger in the River
On the Feast Day of Bride
And away went the hatching Mother of the Cold. — Carmina Gadelica
February 2nd—sacred to pre-Celtic goddess Bride—Candlemas, Americans’ Groundhog Day celebrates Return-of-the-Light as Winter loses her grip. A cross-quarter day six weeks after Solstice, six weeks before Spring Equinox, the Spirit of Earth growth begins. In Scotland they hear first wrens building nests. Groundhog goes back to sleep for six weeks if the sun shines.
The Candlemas season—five days from end January thru first week of February—holds significance not just for our pagan brothers & sisters, but for the Space world—a date when fourteen astronauts, space engineers, orbiting teachers and NASA veterans died.
It is also the time when SpaceHab designer and astro traveler Robert A. Citron, rt. below, took his own rocket ship to the stars.
Man in SpaceHab suit, dinner jacket or archaeological welly boots, Citron sponsored Gerald Hawkins & Aubrey Burl, Argyll EEI expedition, 1974.
After a lifetime of adventure travel on Earth and vicariously in Space, Bob died at home in Bellevue, WA the same year Space Shuttle Endeavour, below left, made its final iconic parade through the streets of downtown Los Angeles. He must have known. Bob had “an intense desire for opening the Space Frontier to humans”, according to former senior advisor to NASA for Commercial Space, Charles Miller. He is survived by his third wife—an author—& children/grandchildren
Space Agencies hold annually January 31st as a multiple Day of Remembrance for the many fatal orbit/re-entry disasters in their Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. Shuttle Endeavour flew over Golden Gate bridge, San Francisco on its way to a home town parade LAX-to-Edwards Air Base 2017
Hawkins, rt. and Burl l. assess Kilmartin Glen stone alignment Argyll, EEI expedition 1974, photo GSHull
With Virgin Galactic‘s planning a launch date in two weeks’ time—February 13th 2021—for its next spaceflight, all eyes are on the skies—well, in places like Edwards’ Airforce Base, Kennedy Space Center, Smithsonian and the International Space Station, that is.
Apollo’s command module—susceptible to the flash fire that swept through Apollo-1 in January 1967—is decades later seen by the Space Agency as a ‘rare opportunity to rebuild with inspired help.’ NASA recalls the Apollo-1 incident every January in an annual Day of Remembrance. It also honors Space Shuttle Challenger, (1986) and Columbia (2003) crews, whose death date was also January. 31st.
Man’s First Footprints on the Moon—1969
On the 50th anniversary of the (1967) deaths of the first Apollo mission crew in January 2017, NASA unveiled a new exhibit at the Kennedy Space Center showing the hatches of the damaged command module’s SpaceHab compartment. NASA continues to hold a Day of Remembrance every January to mark the tragic event.
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin sets up solar wind sail experiment on lunar surface July 1969, photo Neil Armstrong, whose first moondust footprints are visible, right.
2017, on fiftieth anniversary of death of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, NASA honored them. Day of Remembrance now held annually on last day of January.
Space Shuttle Endeavour’s 2017 aerial flypast Griffith Observatory, as NASA’s baby comes home to roost, following a ceremonial honor parade through streets of downtown L.A.
The Apollo program changed forever January 27, 1967, when a flash fire swept through the Apollo-1 command module during a launch rehearsal test at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Despite ground crew’s best efforts, the three men inside—breathing pure enriched oxygen—died. It would take more than 18 months of delay and extensive redesign before NASA sent more men into space. NASA held a special ceremony honoring Apollo-1 astronauts on the 50th anniversary of their deaths in January 2017, which included unveiling a new exhibit at the Kennedy Space Center showing the hatches of the damaged command module. NASA continues to hold a Day of Remembrance every January, to mark the event.
The 2017 exhibit honoring Apollo-1 crew at the Kennedy Space Center displayed the spacecraft’s damaged hatches—release doors on outside of SpaceHab interior human compartment . These release hatches were only discovered on the bottom of ocean floor—along with still-sealed SpaceHab capsule—pictured below left—in 1999.
Historical Picture puts Astronauts’ Life in Perspective
Apollo-1 crew commander, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, was an Air Force veteran of the Korean War. He was chosen among NASA’s first group of seven astronauts, the Mercury Seven. Grissom was America’s second person in space in 1961. On that mission, Mercury’s Liberty Bell 7, the hatch door blew for unknown reasons upon splashdown. Grissom ended up in the water and was rescued by a helicopter (which at first tried, in vain, to pick up the spacecraft; the spacecraft was later pulled from the ocean floor in 1999).
Some in the Astronaut Office were skeptical that Grissom’s reputation wouldn’t recover (many believed Grissom blew the hatch; he swore he didn’t). However, Grissom successfully commanded the first Gemini flight, Gemini-3, and was selected to do the same for Apollo.
Changes made to the design of Apollo spacecraft greatly improved crew safety. The crew’s flammable oxygen cabin environment used for ground tests was replaced by a safer nitrogen-oxygen mix. Flammable items were removed. Rapport developed between astronauts and contractors [SPACEHAB], pictured below left. Design changes used in the next mission series were geared to individual comfort and mobility. Most important, the door hatch was completely reworked so it would open in seconds, when the crew needed to get out in a hurry.
Spacehab crew quarters in Earth orbit 
Space Shuttle launch aboard Saturn V rocket: early missions fraught with anxiety over temperature & design changes
SpaceHab, Diamond Ring, Peruvian Desert Art
Historically, none of this would have been possible, were it not for the ‘single-minded star-struck passion’ of inventor Bob Citron, whose first claim to astro fame was as a young student of aeronautical engineering at U.Inglewood: director of the Pacific Rocket Society’s ‘satellite tracking station’, he succeeded in tracking Sputnik-1 only 48 hours after the Russians’ surprise launch in 1957—the first American group to do so.
Citron worked for the Smithsonian Institution in Cambridge, Mass. for 17 years, establishing satellite tracking stations around the world, and creating and managing scientific field research projects. While at the Smithsonian he built and managed astrophysical research observatories in the USA, Spain, Norway, Ethiopia, South Africa, and India (1959–1968) and founded the Smithsonian Institution Center for Short-lived Phenomena (CSLP) in 1968. Purpose of the Smithsonian Satellite Tracking Program was to track satellites to determine precision orbits, in order to understand Earth’s atmosphere and to define the geodesy of planet Earth. Citron created and managed the Smithsonian Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLP) program for NASA during the Apollo Program (1968–1972) and established the NASA/Smithsonian Skylab Earth Observing Program (1973–1974, disintegrated over Pacific 1979) during the post-Apollo period.
After launching Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Short-Lived Phenomena (CSLP) in Cambridge, Mass, 1968, and Educational Expeditions International, EEI in 1969, he concentrated on space travel—inside his space module. He created SPACEHAB—designed as result of his involvement with CSLP, adding enormous impetus to NASA’s Apollo program and Skylab (earth observatory). After his death the company changed hands, although Citron’s self-operating habitable system is still in use.
By 1983 his SpaceHab pressurized module designed to transport human passengers in the Space Shuttle’s cargo bay, was fully operational. Although NASA was cautious about its carrying humans in the module, it continues to serve the Agency a decade after his death. It carried cargo for scientific experiments, flying over 20 shuttle missions between 1993 and 2011.
Throughout his life he was an adventurer, a discoverer, an expedition-investigator. It is ironic that on the day he died January 31st [quietly at home with his third wife and family in the Pacific Northwest] was the anniversary of so many Space-related events—he must have had a reverse-lens telescope trained (from his cloud) on downtown Los Angeles as Space Shuttle Endeavour flew in on the back of a Boeing 747—or maybe he’ll be watching the skies when Virgin takes off in a couple of days.
Educational Expeditions International—EEI funded Smithsonian’s African total solar eclipse research in Mauritania, May 1973, where first-time hands-on telescopes captured ‘Diamond Ring’, the moment when solar orb reappears after totality.
Educational Expeditions International EEI-funded
One great earthly success in ‘adventure-expedition-learning’ was founding non-profit EEI—Educational Expeditions International—later Earthwatch—in Belmont, Mass., 1969. Ideas man and chairman of the board, he left the running of this groundbreaking group of scientists/students/research wannabes and volunteers to fellow business genius, managing director Brian Rosborough, a Jacksonville, Fla. aristocrat and fellow life-long student.
Brian oiled the scientific works, fueled expeditions and staffed international research projects with knowledgeable guides, on environmental or historical projects which otherwise would never have fledged. His great successes were the Mauritania total solar eclipse, 1973, above left, Tony Morrison’s Nazca Lines and Gerald Hawkins’s Megalithic Britain series of EEI expeditions in 1973-74, pictured top left.
Gerald S.Hawkins had previously been using the Smithsonian Institution’s building-size computer, to calculate and measure megalithic solar and lunar alignments at Stonehenge—his work innovative and now fully accepted. His work with EEI in Kilmartin and Mull of Kintyre was revolutionary and has wide acceptance. Hawkins went on to study crop circles until his death in May 2003.
Aftermath & Fast-forward
A longtime fan of all of the above, I am humbled by how History has dealt with of a group of men who were geniuses in their own way, sharing their passion with us, wannabe learners. And, to passionate teachers and influencers of children in our modern times—end January/festive Candlemas notwithstanding—I thank you. ©2021 Marian C. Youngblood
Mad Dogs & Englishmen—in Solstice 2020 Heat, Invoke Water, Rainbows
MAD DOGS AND ENGLISHMEN…SOLSTICE 2020 HEAT, INVOKE WATER, RAINBOWS and IRIS
First Wednesday Monthly Writing Corner for Writers Unlimited, IWSGs, NaNoWriMoers, Indies et al
They say astro signs show portents of changes before they occur. We humans are often slow to comprehend.
Iris, ancient Greek, Egyptian, Sumerian goddess of the Eye & the Rainbow, daughter of the West Wind (Zephyr), she joined ocean and sky, sending healing messages to earth’s creatures
With a significant lunar eclipse coming to occult the Full Rose Moon this Friday, June 5th, and despite challenging earth changes flourishing through rapid temperature rise worldwide, we writerly brigade feel it necessary to inject a positive attitude—and some long-forgotten traditions—into the pastry mix before we all stir the recipe into oblivion.
Venus, ancient love symbol, lately gloriously brightest in our evening skies, is now retrograde, tonight drowning in the Sun, and about to enter the Underworld.
She will emerge later this month as a ‘morning star’. This is a time of wild emotions, but inner beauty can be expressed, too. Venus, Aphrodite, Ishtar, Isis were all facets of goddess of love capable of helping the human race.
MesoAmerican study of Venus cycles provided help to ancient races transfixed by Venus’s precision in the sky. Modern man could use such help.
We need it. There’s currently no help from the Crop Circle brigade unfortunately—As of June 1st, there had been total ONE Crop Circle in the so-called 2020 Season—and that in Belgium!
So—to Ancient Greece—and pre-Roman, hereditary Arabic star clusters and constellations for inspiration and sky-watching between sporadic bouts of earthbound television [not advised]. There we find hidden in myth, but shining in light elusive Iris who gives us the word iridescent—the word itself brings sparkle.
Brief background on this tiny reclusive spirit:
The goddess Iris, using her rainbow bridge, linked the sea and the sky, and she was allowed to enter the underworld and dive in the depths of the sea. The oldest Greek tradition imagined her as the goddess who supplied the clouds with water she scooped from the seas using a golden amphora or storage vessel aka pitcher, and thus stimulated the rains that brought growth and fertility to the earth. This originated from observing actual rainbows, whose one end can hide deep beyond the horizon, often in the sea or a body of wate, with its other end reaching for the heavens. She is responsible for healthy summer fertility and growth.
In Roman tradition (often similar to Greek), god Mercury is Messenger to the Gods. Not so in earliest tradition in ancient Greece and Egypt:
Iris alone was Messenger to the Greek gods and goddesses at first. Child of the West Wind—father Zephyr— and her mother Electra, a cloud nymph as well as one of the seven Pleiades, she could bring and deliver messages to all corners of Ocean and Sky. The Pleiades themselves were associated with water in all forms—rain, frost, ice, snow, lakes, rivers, and oceans.
Iris was the rainbow bridge.
Maiden Goddess with Iridescent Golden Wings
In some texts she is depicted wearing a coat of many colors. With this coat she actually creates the rainbows she rides to get from place to place. Iris’s wings were said to be so beautiful that she could even light up a dark cavern, a trait observable from all her stories.
Her cult held her as goddess supreme of communication, messages—exterior and intuitive—and her appearance was believed to mark major cultural change and new endeavors.
Though Iris was principally associated with communication and messages, she was also believed to aid in the fulfillment of humans’ prayers, either by fulfilling them herself or by bringing them to the attention of other higher deities.
In some texts she is depicted wearing a coat of many colors. With this coat she actually creates the rainbows she rides to get from place to place. Iris’s wings were said to be so beautiful that she could even light up a dark cavern, a trait observable from in the story of her visit to Somnus in order to relay a message to Alcyone.[9]
Though Iris was principally associated with communication and messages, she was also believed to aid in the fulfillment of humans’ prayers, either by fulfilling them herself or by bringing them to the attention of other deities.
Because no place in Creation was forbidden to her, she was delegated to carry water which she dived to collect from the River Styx [mythological river division between living and dead] and fly with it to Mount Olympus for the Gods to use to swear their oaths by.
Pleiades ocean sky nymphs reflect earth’s fairies/elves in many traditions
In Aboriginal & European mythology the Pleiades are often referred to as ocean or sea nymphs; as water girls and ice maidens. Their relationship with water is multi-layered and multi-faceted and we see numerous connections of the Pleiades with the weather, agriculture, navigation and sailing
Munya Andrews
In earliest Hellenist tradition, Iris monopolized the function of Messenger to the Gods. In early records, like Homer’s Trojan War epic the Iliad, she is the only one allowed to relay messages from Zeus–and, once, Hera–to other gods or mortals, with Hermes being given the much smaller rôle of guide and guardian.
Sit Arthur Rackham, 1867-1939, pictured young Iris as the embodiment of a mystical rainbow bridge between heaven and earth
Like the part of the eye named after her, she was the Kore, Virgin, or Female Soul, a form of the Great Shakti who was both the organ of sight and the visible world that it saw. Her spectrum spanned all possible colors
Barbara G.Walker
It is only in later proto-Roman Greece that Hermes becomes the ‘official’ messenger to the Gods, aka Roman Mercury. By then Zeus relied on Hermes; but Hera continued to rely on Iris because she could manifest, transmit her message and disappear instantly.
No known sanctuary exists where Iris’s cult was held. However, in the lion-ramparted island of Delos, however, annual feasts were prepared in June with offerings of wheat cake, honey and fig delicacies for the youthful idol.
Rainbow appearance and disappearance is still viewed in some cultures as a ‘magical sign’. And many traditions view a double rainbow as double good fortune.
Greek Constellation Cepheus Shelters Iris
Iris appears from Mediterranean skies as far as the Equator as a Nebula within Cepheus, itself a member of the Perseid group. Cepheus is named for mythical King Cepheus of Aethiopia, husband of Cassiopeia and father of Andromeda, all represented by neighboring constellations. Like other constellations in the Perseus family, Cepheus was catalogued by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy in the 2nd century.
Iris used rainbows to travel phenomenal distances at the ‘speed of the winds’
According to Space.com, Cepheus is the 27th largest constellation in the night sky, occupying an area of 588 square degrees. It is located in the fourth quadrant of the northern hemisphere (NQ4) and can be seen at latitudes between +90° and -10°. Neighboring constellations are Camelopardalis, Cassiopeia, Cygnus, Draco, Lacerta, and Ursa Minor.
Cepheus belongs to the Perseus family of constellations, along with Andromeda, Auriga, Cassiopeia, Cetus, Lacerta, Pegasus, Perseus, and Triangulum. Sky Map here.
Almost all this group can be seen close-to-overhead in Northern night sky around summer solstice—even with the full moon.
[Insecure] Writerly Benefits of Lockdown—Keep On Writing
While looking skyward in the next few weeks may just take our (introvert writing) minds off forced re-entry into normal world affairs, I am the first to encourage the habits gleaned from social isolation to get to the old computah—or manifest a brand new one—and write it all out before anyone outside our charmed inner sanctum gets in and tells us it’s all a dream.
No, it’s not a fantasy. Life, writing and speaking daily to one’s Muse are part of the Dream we signed up for, didn’t we? And a little background levity alongside learning never went amiss. Check back here when summer’s over and we’ll see how we all fared. And keep those fans blowing. ‘Cos it’s hot out there.
©2020 Marian Youngblood
Names and Name-Calling—Generational Giveaway
NAMES AND NAME-CALLING—A GENERATIONAL GIVEAWAY
Attempt at Humor in Monthly Writerly Cave, When All Around Are Losing Theirs…
Lavendar’s blue, dilly dilly
Lavendar’s green
When you are King, dilly dilly
I shall be Queen
Don’t Despair—Humor Crosses All Borders
Roland, der Riese am Rathaus zu Bremen… North German iconic past
Roland, der Riese, am Rathaus zu Bremen
Stand er ein Standbilt, standhaft und stark*
North German medieval icon in Bremen marketplace, used to teach ‘correct’ purist pronunciation in Hansestadt accent
Saturn Return (30) and Uranus (86) Cycle
Experiencing the joy of knowing a friend from Old School times—he’s on his third Saturn Return while I am delicately navigating the waters towards my Uranian first; it occurs to me that iGens and their offspriing (yes, it’s happening) may be missing a huge opportunity, nay, treasure trove of centuries, in calling themselves Lavendar or Thyme (‘Sixties and ‘Seventies cool); Bron, Zion or Dwayne (‘Eighties/Nineties) or (Noughties) Star, Elf, Lake.
I met a man the other evening calling himself Vivid. As a token Boomer, I am now almost totally deaf; so I heard him call himself Ribbit. Like the frog, I thought; and enjoyed repeating it a couple times, until a sensitive friend gently corrected me. Guess if you are Vivid, all the world must look bright to you—or at least rainbow-hued. I kept the Ribbit joke to myself.
In 1969, when the Hippie Generation resolved to have only one child—or fewer—world population was 3.6 billion souls. In 2020 we have reached a staggering 7.8 billion. I register astonishment that we have doubled in my lifetime; but wonder how Mother Earth can sustain. [Coronavirus and Gay/Lesbian marriages notwithstanding, perhaps we have some responsibility to curb our enthusiasm for progeny]. Imho.
Days of Week, Months show Opposing Ancient Traditions
Brigantian bronze mirror, AD600-900, found 2019 in elite grave Birdlip, Glos. Brittonic-Pictish women made all tribal and lineage decisions
Name-calling Reaches New Heights
I laughed a little when I first heard that for iGens, Stoopid is considered almost the worst epithet you could use. For us Star Trek generation, it’s like using the F-word continuously, or Mr Spock’s version of a ‘Colorful Metaphor’. I don’t get it. There are some doozies out there—Oxford dictionary, Wikipedia, take your pick—and yet that’s all they can come up with? Nothing personal, but poor show, Drama-ah, Lagoon and Racie: your expletives seem lame.
I’m not complaining. My fellow writers’-cave IWSGers probably agree the English language is a source of untold wealth, maintaining an open door—through time, culture and imagination—to whatever the next generation devises.
What we may be seeing is the cultural influence of Smartphones and, with instant messaging, a dwindling of tradition in the written word.
I hope I’m wrong.
Language has so much to offer—it influences a whole half hemisphere of our brain. Without it, the human race rushes towards what? A bunch of Lefties with Right-hemisphere conceptual retention and overloaded emotion without words?
All this—and what currently serves as World News—may make us Bring on the Budgerigar, top, or any current fave instant laughter-producing image. My fellow generational writing stalwarts*, like Space Capt. Alex, will empathize if I quietly hum the 1948 Woody Woodpecker Song.
*Just happens stalwart is North German standhaft 😉
Spoken so initial ‘s’ is pronounced pure ‘s’, not (lower German)’sch’ Translation:
Roland, the Giant, at the Town Hall in Bremen
There he stands, a statue, stalwart and strong.
Guess what? Maybe they need us Oldies after all—if only for our mental filing system.
©2020 Marian Youngblood
The Stellar Perspective- Time to Tempt Humans to Act like Telosians—Delving Deep Within to Discover our Origins As Star-People
- Canticle for a lost Nation—Pictish Roots Surface in Stone, Royal Forests & Names
- The Janus Effect—Riding into the New on an Old Horse
- Boudicca: Great Queen of the Iceni
- 2020 Backward Take on 2012: Stargate Portal to Final Quarter
- Volcanic Surprise: Take your Toys and Go Home
- 11:11:11 Spark in the Park~ Collective Ascension
- Silver People on the Shoreline Let Us Be
- Event Horizon for the Human Race—Moving Beyond Our Own Boundaries
- Canticle for a Lost Nation—Unlocking Ancient Interlace Woven into Cultural Myth
Solar & Geomagnetic field indicator (NOAA)
From n3kl.orgSolar X-rays:
Geomagnetic Field:
- Derilea’s Dream: Pictish essentials
Shakeout prepared
Picosecond Pulse Ripples Gold on Glass
Vibrational sound in picoseconds
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bumpy ride ahead
‘Phantom’s Child’
Nano 2011 win
SHASTA: backstory
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Enchantment
ShakeOut preparedness
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cosmic consciousness
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