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A look at the digital ruins of a forgotten future called Second Life.
U.S. mints coins for Donald Trump-Kim Jong Un summit that might not happen.
Fewer tourists are coming to the U.S. and experts say that it’s largely Trump’s fault.
Barbie “Shero” doll with a hijab honors Olympian Ibtihaj Muhammad.
Martin Luther King may have been killed by a Memphis police officer, not James Earl Ray.
How white Americans used lynchings to terrorize and control black people.
Laminated jewelry crafted from vintage books by Jeremy May.
The surprising secret to aging well.
New York City has genetically distinct “uptown” and “downtown” rats.
Why the DNC is fighting WikiLeaks and not Wall Street.
How Australia all but ended gun violence.
Stunning images of pagan costumes worn at winter celebrations around the world.
The bots that are changing politics.
December 21, 2017 was the Winter Solstice, which means that it was the longest night of the year. The New Deal Cafe in Greenbelt, Maryland was having an Open Mic night and, well, since it was the Winter Solstice I decided to actually go on stage and try being a performer. A few months ago I purchased this ocarina from Baltimore Comic-Con.
Since that time I’ve been teaching myself using some sheet music I downloaded from various web sites so I decided to try performing it in public for the hell of it. Most of my friends were there that night and they were polite in cheering me on as I performed songs like “Bingo” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” on stage. I hung around after my short set checking out the other performers, doing some socializing with my friends, and editing some photos for future blog posts and social media.
I ended up staying until closing time. I originally intended to just go straight home until I stepped outside and I saw a group of people sitting around a folding table that had been set up with lit candles while they were drumming. I asked them what was going on and it turned out that some people who are into pagan or nature spirituality had decided to set up an impromptu ritual late at night in honor of the Winter Solstice. They decided to wait until late at night because a few of the participants were working at the New Deal Cafe. Sure enough the New Deal Cafe employees and volunteers who wanted to take part in the ritual soon arrived after they did the last bit of cleaning up the place for the next day.
Basically the ritual consisted of some people chanting, some people drumming, and one man playing a didgeridoo. I ended up hanging around despite the very frigid weather that night. I was mesmerized by the lovely candles that were set up. I took a few pictures that night.
The ritual had pretty much ended by midnight due to the cold.
Last Halloween I made a video where I burned a lock of my ex-husband’s baby hair right on October 31, 2014. I had come across his baby hair in an envelope while I was doing some decluttering and things were so strained and hurtful between us that I just didn’t feel like delivering that small envelope to his new home that he now shares with the woman he left me for and subsequently married soon after our divorce was final. (On top of it, she was a friend of mine who had also been open and honest about her struggles with mental illness.)
I read online that burning hair in a Pagan/Wiccan ceremony is supposed to negatively affect the original owner of that hair. For added effect I decided to do that ritual on Halloween while I made a video of myself burning his hair.
Well nothing has happened to my ex-husband. I see him every now and then so I guess he’s okay but I can’t say for sure. (We are no longer on speaking terms and I’m still adhering to my therapist’s advice of not contacting him at all.)
I didn’t get around to uploading that video on YouTube until New Year’s Eve while I wrote a post on New Year’s Day about it. But I think it was the wrong time of the year to publicize it because I didn’t get too many YouTube views.
So here is the original video for you to view at the right time of the year. It also includes a cameo appearance from my American Girl doll, Julie Albright. My video explains why that doll is even relevant to my marital breakup and my ex-husband.
Happy Easter and Happy Passover to all of my blog readers.
The above picture shows my Volks Dollfie Dream doll modeling an outfit that I made myself called “Easter Bunny Lover.” You can read more about how I created this outfit in this blog post I wrote five years ago. In any case, yesterday I came across this interesting link on Facebook that I think is appropriate for today. It describes how the Christian holiday of Easter was originally derived from a pagan holiday that was centered around honoring an ancient Teutonic goddess known alternatively as Eostre, Eastre, Eostra, or Ostara. The title of this page says it all:
Sorry Holiday Christians: Easter is Actually a Pagan Holiday
As you may or may not know, Groundhog Day is actually an off-shoot of the original Pagan holiday of Imbolic. One of my Facebook friends passed along this interesting article about the origins of Imbolic and how it led to later holidays both Christian (the Feast Day of St. Brigid) and secular (the aforementioned Groundhog Day). It’s worth a read, especially if you want an alternative to giving a damn about whether Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow or not.
Happy New Year, everyone! I finally got around to finishing editing and uploading this video I originally shot on Halloween and I made an allusion about a few months ago in this blog. Well, here’s the video in question.
On Halloween, about an hour or so before sunset, I made a video where I burned a lock of my ex-husband’s baby hair, which was one of the many things he left behind when he walked out on me back in October, 2011. I guess I could’ve dropped it in his mailbox at his current home but I’m still dealing with sour feelings from all those months when he totally treated me like I was little more than a robot who had to obey him or else he would sue me and refused to even treat me like I was his wife. Right now I’m just not inclined to do anything nice for him unless he issues a sincere heartfelt apology for the hell that he put me through and, to be honest, I won’t be getting one from him anytime soon.
The lock of baby hair in question was one that was originally saved by my late mother-in-law after my ex-husband had his first haircut. It was one of the numerous items that we received after her death. Then he left it behind and I really didn’t want it around. I originally thought about just throwing it in the trash but then I came across this entry by Kate Evangelista about the various superstitions concerning hair. I found that if one burned the hair in a ritual, it was supposed to bring pain to the hair’s original owner. (In case you’re wondering, this ritual hair burning didn’t work for me. My ex-husband is still healthy and I haven’t heard any talk about him being sick in any way.)
So I decided to burn the hair in a ritual and film it for posterity. Drawing on my previous experience with rituals (mainly through my Unitarian Universalist congregation and through a sub-group of the Unitarian Universalist Association known as CUUPS), I did one and I burned the hair. I also filmed an intro where I mentioned how my husband abruptly ran away from home, how he cited my purchase of an American Girl doll (Julie Albright, who’s supposed to represent the 1970’s) along with some corresponding books the day before my hip surgery as the reason why he had to leave home, along with brief mentions about how he hooked up with a friend of ours with serious mental health issues and Vikki Stark’s Runaway Husbands book.
I ended not editing it until December because I got diverted by other things. It’s fitting that I waited until New Year’s Eve to upload this video since my husband left me three days after Christmas in 2011 and he e-mailed a divorce petition in a .pdf format on December 24, 2012 (Christmas Eve). Well, anyway, here it is.
By the way, I originally had music accompanying the opening and closing credits. It’s the same tune that I used for the opening and closing credits of My Visit to the Psychic. I originally composed it in GarageBand by mixing various loops. I used it in the previous video with no problem. But when I tried to upload this new video on to YouTube, first it required me to verify that I was a real person uploading this video and not a bot by typing in my cell phone number then responding to a text. Then, after I verified that I am a real person, YouTube was claiming that the music matched “third party content” (without specifying what the content in question is) and I wouldn’t be allowed to monetize this video. I also couldn’t find any links or buttons where I could appeal and say that the music came from my own work on GarageBand. So I deleted the video on YouTube, brought the original video back into iMovie, and stripped out the music. When I uploaded the new music-free video, I had no problem at all. I didn’t have to verify that I was a human being and I could monetize my creation. So I now have gaping silence in the credits where there should’ve been music.
And one more thing, since I mentioned in this post and in the video about how my husband cited my purchase of the 1970’s historical American Girl doll the day before my hip surgery as the reason why we had to get a divorce, I came across this blog entry written by the husband of a doll collector. He seems to be more tolerant of his wife’s hobbies and interests than mine ever was. (My ex was a bit on the tightwad side even though we weren’t poor or financially struggling but that’s another story.) This woman is so incredibly lucky to have a husband like hers. Believe me, I know. If only my husband had been more like that man, we would still be happily married and we probably would’ve ended up celebrating our golden 50th anniversary sometime in the distant future.
This past weekend I wanted to do something fun but there were more fun things to do than I had time for. (I had to deal with both my mother in rehab and more drama regarding my estranged husband.) There was the annual Crafty Bastards street fair for indie crafters and AnimeUSA that celebrates anime and Asian culture in general. I ended up choosing to go to Faerie Con, which was held in Hunt Valley. I’ve heard of Faerie Con a few years ago but, for a variety of reasons, I didn’t get the chance to go until this year.
Friday night I dropped off my UU chalice bag to my church to be sold at the auction the following evening. I purchased a one-day pass online for the following day and printed it out. (Faerie Con was a three-day convention but, for personal reasons, I was only able to go on Saturday.) Then I packed my lunch for the following day (so I wouldn’t pay any high prices in the hotel restaurant where Faerie Con was held).
So I arrived at Faerie Con by noon the following day. There were workshops on a variety of fantasy-related topics and plenty of muiscal acts playing instruments like harps, acoustic guitars, mandolins, and other types of traditional Celtic folk instruments. There was a fashion show followed by an adult costume contest where prizes were given away to those who wore the best costumes. But the real centerpiece was the marketplace, where you could buy all kinds of handcrafted items including dolls, steampunk items, fantasy creatures of all kinds, clothes, fairy wings, hats, posters, books, music CD’s, jewelry, decorated boxes, and more. There were also plenty of people wearing all kinds of cool costumes. When I first entered the hotel lobby, I was greeted with this large banner.
When I purchased the online ticket, I was instructed to printed it out and go to the "Will Call" line the following day in order to be let in. While I was waiting, this woman standing in front of me was wearing a fantasy-themed dress that exposed a portion of her back, which revealed this incredibly pretty tattoo. I ended up snapping a photo of it.
Once the ticket taker took my computer printout, he stamped the inside of my right wrist with this giant stamp. That was my proof that I had paid the admission fee and I had to show it whenever I had to go inside the show. The stamp was such a cool design that I took a picture of it. The ink began to bleed into the surface of the skin as the day went on and it didn’t look quite as nice as when I took this photo earlier in the day. It totally washed away when I took a shower the following morning.
There were all kinds of interesting items for sale and people wearing all kinds of costumes, outfits, and interesting t-shirts. I took a lot of photos that day.
I saw this one person carrying around Asian ball-jointed dolls. Granted it was a far cry from an anime convention, where you can see several people carrying such dolls, but the dolls were wearing these really cool looking steampunk outfits so I couldn’t resist taking a picture of them.
A high point for me was meeting the famed fantasy artist Jasmine Becket-Griffith, who had a booth full of her art.
I had long heard of her work via publications like Faerie Magazine and I frequently see one of her ads on the right-hand side of Facebook. I found some prints for $10 each and I bought three of them because they are all gorgeous. (In case you’re curious, here are the three prints I bought: Off to See the Wizard, Ruby Moon, and Pink Lightning.) They’ll serve as replacements for some art in my home that either my husband took for his apartment or were wedding presents and they had my name and my husband’s name in a prominent place. I even had Jasmine Becket-Griffith autograph all three of them. They will come in handy in case I experience extreme financial difficulty and I need to raise cash quickly. Here’s a photo I took of her signing one of my prints.
I checked out the fashion show. The master of ceremony was this guy dressed in a dapper steampunk outfit.
His assistant was this guy dressed as the Green Man.
The models in the fashion show wore clothes and accessories that were on sale in the marketplace at the convention.
The fashion show was followed by an adult costume contest. (Despite its name, it didn’t involved sexy skimpy clothing. It was a contest for adults to show off their fantasy-themed costumes.) Authors Raven Grimassi and Stephanie Taylor served as the contest judges.
The winners of the contest stood for the photographers after the contest ended.
Despite the numerous stuff for sale, I was relatively restrained. Aside from the autographed Jasmine Becket-Griffith prints, I only purchased two other items. One was this really pretty yet twisted cameo from Lithia’s Creations that’s similar to this photo. I also bought a novel by Carolyn Turgeon called Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story. At one point I ran into two of my friends from Unitarian Universalist congregation and we talked briefly before they had to leave in order to keep tabs on their sons who came with them.
There was a Bad Faeries ball scheduled for that night but I didn’t go because I was a bit tired from spending most of the afternoon walking around. The convention location was across the street from a Wegman’s so I ate dinner in its Marketplace Cafe. Then I made the short drive to the pet shop where I purchased my pet hedgehog Spike back in January because he needed some more food and that pet shop was on the way home from the convention.
Sagittarius Dolly 
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