Maebius Musings

I’m not usually one to pander to mass-marketing and commercial interests… nor will I fully ascribe to the Dairy Conglomerate as I fully realize cow’s milk is not as good for us as other sources of calcium, especially for those lactose intolerant… but you simply must see this to believe it.

“The most amazing rock opera ever made – about milk.”

I’m completely serious.

Turn down your speakers a bit for this…

http://milkquarious.com/#/trailer

…and here’s the official website, which is scary.

http://www.whitegoldiswhitegold.com/index_wg.html

And here’s White Gold himself singing a rockin music video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF4CoQSYprc

All I can say is.   WOW.

Not sure if it’s a good Awe-kinda Wow, or a bad Awe-ful kinda WOW,  but WOW.

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It’s been a while since I posted here, but I have not had any deep personal musings, or awesome personal anecdotes to share lately.   Sorry about that Oh Great and Gentle Readers. 

Lately, it has been pretty average around here.  Working on cleaning up the place,  finishing the porch out back before winter (pictures eventually once completed) and doing the school-work thing have pretty much taken up our time.

Nothing horridly bad.  Nothing horridly good.   Just fair to middlin, as some would say.

Otherwise, there’s a bit of a gloominess around town, the usual autumnal “sniffles that doesn’t quit”, and such, which I am trying to break out of.  This has resulted in some interesting and unfinished spiritual musings and a somewhat failed re-connection with Faerie-stuff.  I’ll be blogging about that once I get my head wrapped around the topic better.

So for now, this place may be quiet for the next few weeks.   Once the seasonal shift happens en-force, I hope to feel more stable and Muse a bit more.  Until then, eat some soup, drink a mug of warm cider, and enjoy the changes.

-Maebius

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Unfortunately, my first day of college in over 10 years was canceled due to too few people registering for it.  How sad!   Still, I heard from the teacher that she may offer the course at her home or elsewhere for the remaining interested people and will re-schedule asap.

So, instead of classroom learning, I will recount some soup we made earlier in the week while I was home to help cook.   It was the kid’s “Amazing Soup” and I am proud to reveal the ’secret recipe’ below.

The nice thing about this was the hands-on approach the kid took with this meal.  I gave him free range to make whatever he wanted, and offered myself as ’sous chef’ in charge of such things as sharp knives and hot stove-pans.   Whatever ingredients were added, were chosen by him.  (I made one suggestion to add some mushrooms, at the end just for my own selfish delight, and to allow him to use the Magic Bullet to powder-ize them himself)

We do this kid-cooking from time to time and while we ALWAYs make what he suggests, there have been times we secretly made a small pot of Mac&Cheese or Paste&Sauce as backup for when we know it is going to taste nasty.  I’ll have to post his “awesomeberry pie” recipe (which is actually more a  fruit crumble).

All ingredients, with the exception of the mushrooms, and the bouillon, is from our garden, or roadside veggie cart near our house.  Details of some ingredients after the recipe.

*** Maebius Jr’s Amazing soup ***

• 1 pan of water (approx 1 quart)
• 1 ear of hybrid sweet/’indian’ corn.
• 2-3 green beans, broken into 1/2 inch bits.
• 1 heaping Tbl of beef bouillon (more or less to taste)
• 1 dash of “spice mix”.
• 1 carrot, sliced thin.
• 3/4 yellow onion, “Whopper Chopper‘d” finely.
• 1/2 small Aubergine cut into ‘chunks’.
• 1 big leaf Bok Choy, ’shredded’
• 1-2 small dried portabella caps, powdered in food processor.
• (optional: handful of pasta, as Rotelle or mini Farfalle)

Add all ingredients except Bok Choy to the pan and bring it to a boil until carrots are soft and onions are starting to dissolve.

Toss in the chopped/shredded leaves (alternately,  Lambs Quarters or Spinach) and continue boiling for another 10-15 minutes until suitably wilted.

At this point the soup should be slightly thickened.  If not, boil it a bit more with the lid off, or add pasta and simmer until done.

Serve in bowls with a clover flower garnish, and a side of bread or crackers & cheese.

The corn, we planted sweet corn along with a row of decorative ‘Variegated maize‘, and they have cross-pollinated, resulting in the sweet corn being sweet, but rather tough and having a few purplish/red kernels on each ear.

The Spice Mix is my own creation, which consists of a rotating jar of fairly random spices and dried herbs.  This collection of flavorings is generally ground together in a mortar & pestle, then put in a small jar.  When the jar starts looking half-full, I restock it with what I find around the counter at the time, so it changes and is complex by this point.  Mostly garlic powder, dried chile powder, black pepper, crumbled Dulce, sea salt, celery seed, ginger, nettle leaves, and dashes of other stuff-I-find-in-the-kitchen (basil, paprika, dill, etc).

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There comes a time in everyone’s life when we must step back, take account of our situation, and endeavor to improve it. It’s a natural human way of thinking, to continually challenge and improve ourselves.

Such thoughts brought humanity from the fire-lit caves of ancient times to walking on the moon (and deforestation and pollution, but I’ll discount that aspect for this post).

And so, tonight I will take up my bookbag, hoist a notebook and pen, and step forward into the frightening realm of Academia once more.   I hope you’ll join me later this weekend, as I regale you with tales of higher learning, wrenched from the inner sanctums of Herkimer Community College.

…

Or, more accurately, I signed up for 4 non-credit courses at the nearby college, taught by someone I know and have on my blogroll!

Tonight is the class “Local and Bioregional Herbal Remedies“,  followed by “Herbs of Children and Family” on Oct 22nd,  the exciting “Preparations and Kitchen Herbs” in November, and finally one in December that does not appear to be updated on the site yet. 

I havn’t been to ’school’ for years now, so am just a wee bit nervous. Gotta get my brain in gear to do some Serious Learnin…

Still, I’ve heard the teacher is kinda hot. 

Green blessings from my yard to yours.

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I’ve been working night-shift the last two weeks and it’s really odd, sleeping in short doses of 3 hours or so at a time, then being awake to hang out with the kid during the day, then sleeping a bit more, and from 4am-9am to be at work.   Makes you all sorts of foggy yet hyper-alert to subtle nuances of life.  I’m sure there’s a pharmacological alternative that does the same, though I doubt it would be legal. 

The past two days I’ve had a variation on the same dream, and last night’s was so absolutely clear and vivid, with very ‘real’ feelings of touch and taste and sound, that I had to write it down.  (Enjoy, Nettle!)  The first night it ended with catching the thief (see below) but last night started over again with almost no changes.   If I were more artistic I actually can recall with almost perfect clarity many of the images in this dream.  Usually I just remember snippets and vague impressiongs.   So since it still feels “important” to me, I’ll write it all down here for you.

Feel free to comment with your interpretations, as always.  Sorry for some more inside-references to Philly stuff and movies that you might not get unless you know me personally in real life.

It starts with myself, my wife, my son, and Nettle living in a small efficiency-style apartment within some large self-contained structure.  Almost “Star-Trek TNG” or similar setting, as far as the feeling of containment.   Outside, the door opened to a hallway of clean stainless steel that was not quite like a hotel without windows.  (Nettle, very like the bathrooms at that Indian buffet in Philly)  All the ‘dorms’ were in a grid around the outside of the hall, with an elevator or connecting hall to another “grid” of living quarters.    I knew without dreaming it that each ‘grid’ of 18-24 homes was named and themed somewhat, though not strictly.  I also knew the map of this place would map out an online MUD setting with real life as the theme of the game.

Our little area was mainly middle age folks, though some college-age and a larger number of not-quite-elderly.  Everyone I saw in the dining area, which looked like a fancy retirement home cafeteria, was wearing casual clothes and vaguely unconcerned with life.  If you’ve seen “Dollhouse” on FOX, think of the Tabula Rasa state, and it’s a decent match.  Our grid also had a big common room behind frostted glass doors in which people could do yoga or dance, etc.  Very austure yet colourful.  Basically like a Yoga retreat center now that I think about it, without the focus on yoga.

At some point near the beginning of the dream, I returned to my room and met Nettle and my wife stating that some ‘newspawn’ who popped into the place (literally, in this ‘game’ new people pop into Life fully grown) and was running around entering any unlocked doors and stealing things.  He had last gone [west] towards the University (another adjoining Grid of living spaces populated more by smart, attractive,  politically/business motivated young leader-types).

I moved through the rooms+halls quickly and caught sight of the unkept and ragged young man as he ducked into a traditional college dorm-room.  We entered and I grabbed his arm as the occupant of the room pinned him down.  We then found ourselves in the ‘principal’s office’ where a smartly dressed lady in a power-suit advised the thief that his next character should read the manual more carefully.  Nothing wrong with stealing, as it’s in the game mechanics, but he would do better playing nicely at first.

The, I was able to walk around the University area helping return a pile of small trinkets and wierd code-objects we picked off the thief, who was left in the principal’s office to be ‘educated’.  All this was more behind the scenes and had a vague sense of spookiness with an over-militarized sub-text.   No ill-feelings or sense of this group being enemies or opposed to my own Grid, just an awareness that different areas had different mini-cultures and I really didn’t fit in here.

I was suddenly back ‘home‘ and found my rommates gone to dinner, which happened to suddenly be the same common-room as my home-grid, but now hugely expansive and open  like a food court and having many little sections with different trees or seating areas with various little touches of decor.

I didn’t see them, but did step up to a large table of middle age folks chatting over tea and trading sewing tips or photos of their trips.  They had the casual air of my home-grid, but were unfamiliar faces.  On the pillar next to the table was a fancy wall-hanging consisting of a chuck of driftwood with a few silk flowers and ribbons on it.  Nothing too fancy, but a step above the type of paintings in a hotel lobby.  

I felt myself drawn to the chuck of wood, thinking it was the wrong shape and missing a peice that had broken off where a knot was, so I traced my fingers across it and did some kind of mindless and quite natural twiddling of my finger, and re-shaped the wood to look more correct.  Nothing major, in my mind.  

Yet suddenly, one of the occupants of the table seemed quite agitated and called a nurse over to help her out.  The table, and myself, was now back in a more sterilized nursing-home-like setting of our Grid, and a kindly assistant pulled me aside and warned me that such displays were quite frowned upon and should be reported to the Captain before any silly rumors start.   I was midly worried to meet the ‘Captainr’, which is the wrong word, but I can’t remember the term used in my dream yet felt like ‘Captain of the ship’.

Then we (me, wife, & Nettle, kid was not there) were back in our ‘home’ and preparing for a big event that evening.  I mentioned my woodshaping ability and was told matter-of-factly that random talents like that were fairly common, but usually not manifested so easily unless I inhereted both genetic mutations.  Most people had to create quite a few characters before they got one like that, and most had more direct-stat real-life applications such as strength, or inltellect, or reduced training costs for skills.  Again, the sense of being a character in an online MUD was there, but not fully formed in my head during the dream. I knew in that strange dream-logic that this was a game, but was also Life, and felt a bit more relaxed knowing it was a dream now and the University and Grid lifestyle were probably archetypes of something.  

 Nettle then had a presentation on stage for her sorority (more a sisterhood of young pagan scholars than a standard college sorority).  She was nervous about speaking in public, and worried that her (Valedictorian?) speech to the assembly would be ignored or some-such.  She magicked herself into a fancy new outfit, and looked stunning. (An evening gown kinda like this but more risque in shimmering electric blue with black belt, deep V-neck and open back, long dark-blonde wavy hair with diamond barettes, high HIGH heels, etc.  )  My wife and I also dressed up in more “business Casual” attire.  Myself, black slacks and a really nice silk or linen shirt with a nicely embellished suede vest.

As we left, my wife and I exchanged a wordless glance to acknowledge we’d support Nettle and I lightly traced a big flowery R in the inside of our home’s doorway.   The wood grain shifted to form the letter, complete with extra vine swirls and “illuminated Capital” frills. Nothing too fancy, but definitely stood out when seen in the correct light.    I felt a bit of worry or axiety for using this Talent so selfishly, without telling the folks in charge, but it was also felt to be “good” in the sense of an act done not in rebellion of rules, but in spite of them.

We then found ourselves at a large dinner-theater style setting, with immensely high ceilings and more ornamental trees arranged throughout the tables.  Each table was more a circle-bench like the booths in a corner of a restaurant, and the stage was in the center of the room, with the tables scattered nicely spaces around the perimiter.

At the first table we passed, my friend Varulv was there, who smiled to me as he sat with a Fraternity group of upwardly mobile friends.  They were all socially engaging people, actors, student government types, and such.  They were all the types of people who were financially successful and socially at-ease.  Simialr to the University Gridsters, but without that sense of Boarding School Overlording from earlier in the dream.   They all were drinking from a huge wash-basin-sized bucket (called a pitcher) of beer or something, using immense twirly straws.  This struck me as the coolest thing ever, to have in the future society, where everyone shared the drink.

Nettle sat with my wife and some random friends our age with a similar vat of beverage.  Ours was more orange yet still vaguely beer-coloured, and as I sat next to my wife and son, tasted like orange juice mixed with something sweeter like mango, and also rather alcoholic.  While I didn’t see any pulp, I got a few course chunks of sweet orange flesh in my mouth, and was enjoying it.  I could literally feel the pulp-bits in my dream, as I popped them in my teeth.  

Nettle smiles and asked if I liked the Splogg (the name of this popular beverage) and I agreed that it was good.   Up on stage, another young woman took the microphone to begin her singing and Nettle appeared slightly more agitated since she was to perform her speech after this song.

The woman was dressed similarly to Nettle though in a shimmering green/gold dress.  And started singing “Calling all Angels“  When she got to the chorus (…and IIII’m…) and more voices joined in from somewhere in the shadows, the magic started.  

Across the room, the table of University boys & girls stood up almost angrily.  Elsewhere, a group of older men in business suits knocked over their bucket of Splogg and stared in furious shock at the stage. Simultaneously, a nearby group of little kids let go of unseen balloons that drifted up and popped on the ceiling showing everyone with pixie-dust glitter.  From behind every tree, in the darkness, fireflies twinkled for a moment and vanished in a ‘pop’ of light.  Myself, I felt that tingling in my fingers and heck-hair-raising electricty of Power being raised.  The small potted bonsai on our table (never noticed that before) flexed and danced as my fingers twiddled of their own accord. 

When the singer was “Calling alllll angelllls“, about twenty people rose out of our seets, standing and smiling at one another beatifically.  Myself and my wife at our table.  Nettle and two other sorority sisters at the neighboring table (how’d she get over there so fast?), and others ranging in age from young 20s to late 90s.  All with Wise eyes and happy smiles.

Energy surged, and the song continued “I won’t give up, if you don’t give up“…. I felt a sense of anticipation that something wonderful was going to happen.

Then my alarm buzzed.    I stumbled up, had to make sure I swallowed the last bits of orange pulp that weren’t really in my mouth, and floated to turn it off.  Literally floated, or so it seemed, half-asleep and only recall my feet hitting the floor when I stopped the BEEPBEEPBEEP of the alarm.  It was 1am.

  ***

So, I’m calling all us Angels out there.   Work your magic.  Even if it’s warping wood or singing fireflies into being, use your Talents.  If the Principal gives you detention,  you won’t be there alone.  If you don’t give up, I won’t give up.  

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Another autumn season rolls around.  The air gets that wonderfully distinctive chill at night, and the leaves subtly lose their vibrant green and begin fading into (but not quite showing) a palette of colours. The garden starts to clear out as you harvest the goodies from this past season….

And….

(if the embed below doesn’t work, go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAra6_WxRkU)

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This is a shorter post than I honestly want it to be, but I wanted to toss out a rough-draft for commentary and archival purposes, since I’m doing a bit more on the topic behind-the-scenes.

I’m guilty of it too, but why is it that people are so frikkin afraid of thinking for themselves?  Related topic: why are Debate clubs and such seen is such a negative light by the “cool kids” and harbor suck a “geeky” label?  Heck, in that regard, why are Geeks/nerds shunned so in our younger years when those same types often turn around and be “successful” on the corporate community?

I digress.

As a gamer, I enjoy the playing and discussion of various electronic games in various formats.   Yet all across the internet, stating a preference for one game almost invariably results in hostile commentary in the forms of “Us vs Them” from other game-preferring crowds.  Even among the same game (such as World of Warcraft) one faction is all but universally reviled as “the enemy” from players of the opposing faction.

Tobold makes a few points more related to this topic here: http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/09/art-of-discussion.html

Likewise, the recent speech by our president is shrouded in all sorts of “news-worthy” drama and incidents of blatantly ignorant avoidance. (ignorant in my opinion, which I do also understand follows my own Us Vs Them complaints).

Some schools refused to broadcast the event, to appease protesting parents and avoid in-fighting between the supporters and opposers of our President.  To me, this totally goes AGAINST the message itself.   His message was not controversial, unless I’m just failing to see how “Work hard, do better” is controversial.

Granted, Sharon Astyk mentions that perhaps the common school -> college -> consumer-job -> house+car+stuff is not the best option, but I still think that the message from our president was broad enough to work.  Hard work = good results. In today’s society, at least, school is still a very good indicator of opportunity.  What gets my goat is that some schools refused to show it, out of fear or something, in order to appease those who disagreed.

In my opinion, school is about learning.   Learning is more than just 2+2=5 [sic], or that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 14-hundred 92.  It is about thinking bout things, and being exposed to (without being force-fed) concepts you disagree with, in order to figure out for yourself Why you disagree.

Even if your dream is to be a street-corner prophet, having a basic grade-school education will help your plans and influence public opinion more than a being a drop-out.

In my own life, our elementary school cut recess last year. The state mandates Phys-Ed (gym) a certain amount of time per day.  This didn’t fit the schedule so they cut free play-time.  For High-schoolers, this isn’t an issue, but for my own kindergarden child, I and many other parents protested. We lost, since the decision was that Gym was active time too. (I still disagree and the war’s not over…)

Yet there again is the point I’m thinking here.   Did you read any of the above examples and feel either a smug agreement or a trickle of bile at my “wrongness”?

Why is it that many topics, from games, to real philosophical issues, can be so hard to discuss fairly and intelligently?  Do our ape-subroutines kick in that hard, and emotions naturally still rule over rationality?

No wonder we are where we are at.  Such huge strides in some cultural sectors, such slow ruts in others.

Your thoughts?

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Short post,  life is busy (in a fairly good way) …..

The garden is starting to feel autumnal already.   We were in philadelphia last weekend with warm sunny weather, and returned home after a 5hr drive to 53 degree drizzly breezy grey evenings.    Wow,  talk about climate culture-shock stepping out of the car again. 

The beets are dug and canned or pickled, our Chard is starting to fade, and the Hops bine is laden with musky little cones to pluck and dry shorty.  It’s one of my favorite times of the year actually, though I do rather feel sad when the growing flocks of geese are wheeling southward on my way home from work.  The arrival of geese is one of my “springtime” markers, and they will be missed over winter.

Yesterday we made about 3.5 qarts of Elderberry Jelly (in small half-pint and pint jars) and STILL have berries left over to make syrup and cordials.   Yummy, and the purple stains across the stove and counter were kinda pretty until they got sponged up.

…

So, with harvest time in the air, and because I just made a side-dish of lightly steamed leaves last night from our ‘garden’ where they were interfering with the beets….  here’s Susun Weed’s informative posting on Lamb’s Quarters:  Chenopodium Album.

Go now, and eat your weeds!

(and check out Susun’s  Wise woman forum if you’ve never been there.  Good resource for weedy stuff!)

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Short random thought here, while we enjoy canning garden veggies, pick elderberries, and try to keep up with mowing the yard in the midst of rainy weather and quick-to-seed grasses. 

Speaking of mowing the yard and tending the garden, which are both “nature-oriented outdoorsy” activities….

Is it really being truly Harmony with Nature to tend a garden or pull unwanted plants from a patch of wildcrafted ‘weeds’, or is such activity merely a green-washing and rationalized front to an otherwise human need to control our environment?   And then again, is falling into such a pattern of ego-controlling modification of the world just part of our natural human-nature, and thus perfectly “keeping with Nature”?

I can see Pros and cons to the former question, in that a properly tended wilderness area may produce healthier individual results (bigger veggies, healthy grubs, etc) but at the cost of reduced biodiversity in the micro-system.   Likewise, letting a garden go to weeds will produce some of the healthiest weeds due to competition with neighboring species (which may be potentially wildcrafted for other benefits as well).

I also understand that on a larger timeframe and scale, monoculture or even tended diverse gardens and sustainable fallow/crop rotations would not last without continued intervention on our part.   Yet would that be ‘best-practice’ for the ecosyatem of the area itself?  I am considering hte question mianly in the timeframe of a human lifespan, or a generation, perhaps 50 years at most, so that the results can be witnessed by one such as myself.

Allowing it to go fallow might yield a grassland or expanse of ivy that eventually makes way for trees as neighboring ecosystems encroach on the “open plain”, and ultimately (in my limited time-scale) result in lessened biodiversity or productive value.

It’s an interesting ponderence, with many more layers I have not fully considered or researched yet.

Still, as a gut-reaction musing, what are your thoughts?   I’m curious to hear them! 

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