Just a note here, for those of you who read this blog but not BardicBrews.net, I am hosting a Mead Workshop with my friend Daniel Vitalis coming up on 16 November:
I’m greatly looking forward to this. Mead has become a very important part of my reality as of late and I look forward to sharing what I’ve learned with others. Furthermore, it’s always a treat hearing Daniel Vitalis speak.
The Neopagan community is losing one of its pioneers and Elders. Isaac Bonewits is nearing the end of his journey with cancer.
I never met him, but I really loved his writing. His book on Druidry was the first one I read on the subject, and I loved the humor lurking behind each sentence. It was a great introduction to this branch of neopaganism.
I don’t have much else to say, other than I’m thinking of him, and those close to him, and sending energy for a peaceful and inspiring passing-over.
Also, his medical bills are piling up, so head on over to neopagan.net and support them, either by purchasing products or simply making a donation.
UPDATE: Isaac passed on around 8am on August 12. He indicated that he wanted his memorial to be a good party, with “Into The West” (from the LOTR movies) to be played in his honor. I’ll raise a glass of mead to you tonight, Isaac.
I haven’t written much about brewing yet, probably because I’ve only gotten into brewing since I moved into this house 3 years ago, which coincidentally is when I stopped posting to this blog with the same regularity as I once did.
I started off brewing beer, and learned quite a bit about how to make good clones of popular kinds of beer. Some of the brews were quite delicious, but it never seemed quite right to me. Hard to explain. I had been sitting with this thought for a while when I saw this video of Daniel Vitalis talking about the health effects of hops, which in a way sealed the deal for me:
After I saw this video, I started experimenting with herbal beers, brewed with herbs other than hops. I started to feel better about drinking these beers, but honestly they just didn’t taste as good. Daniel has since become an even bigger influence on my health strategy, as well as a friend, and we did some experimental brews together.
Then I re-discovered mead. A friend of mine has been brewing mead for many years, and hosted a workshop on how to do it. That was it. From the moment I tasted my first batch of mead, I have yet to brew a batch of beer. I’m just not interested.
I’ve set up a website to chronicle my brews, and other interesting brew-related data points I encounter at BardicBrews.net so if you are interested in more detail about what I’m up to go check it out.
In the meantime, I’ve set myself up that I can have several batches of mead going at once… and in a few weeks I’ll have the beginnings of a good variety of mead that will be in constant rotation.
One difference between mead and beer is that mead (like wine) gets better with age. So far by the time my next batch is ready to drink, the previous batch has been gone! Hopefully the new setup will mean I can actually have a respectable mead cellar within a few years.
I’ve migrated this blog over to WordPress! It contains everything from both the old Blogger edition of JWL.Freakwitch.net, as well as my first blog at JWL.blogspot.com, all hosted locally. These old blogs will continue to be hosted on blogspot (the old JWL.Freakwitch.net blog is now here).
I will be tinkering and reconfiguring this blog moving forward, both in terms of apperance and content. You have been warned.
UPDATE: The banner image is from a shot I took at the ruins of Glastonbury Cathedral, looking up at the Tor, when I was in the UK in 2005.
I’m still on moveon.org’s mailing list, and I just got an intriguing email from them. Apparently, they are outraged that Visa is collecting their customary 3% fee for Haiti donations:
… when Americans donate to charity with their credit cards, the credit card companies get rich. In some cases they keep 3% of the donation as a “transaction fee,” even though that’s far more than it costs them to process the donation. It’s outrageous and wrong—and it needs to stop.
I completely agree with this sentiment. Where we apparently disagree is that I think it is ALWAYS wrong for people to profit from the infrastructure of our economy. The fact is, Visa (or another credit card) is used as cash by a huge number of people. This means Visa gets a percentage on EVERY SINGLE TRANSACTION. This amounts to nothing more than a tax.
It’s funny to me that people only get outraged over profit happening around sanctimonious causes, ie, “think of the children” or “relief for the latest disaster.” Just because a Haitian needs medical attention because of a hurricane, it’s not OK to profit, but if some kid in south Portland gets hit by a car and needs medical attention, then profit is not only accepted and normalized, but encouraged.
Makes no sense to me whatsoever.
For a few years now, I have joked that my lingering interest in NFL football is one of the last vestiges of my middle-American upbringing. This might come as a surprise to readers of this blog who don’t know me personally, since I almost never write about this facet of my life. The fact is, I really enjoy the game of football. I know the game well, and spend a lot of time reading about my favorite team from my hometown, the Cincinnati Bengals. I grew up a big baseball fan, but my interest in baseball faded after one of the labor strikes many years ago. My interest in football, however, has never wavered. Until now.
I’ve recently made a decision. This is the last year I will spend following the Bengals in particular, or professional football or sports in general. I want to talk about this decision from two points of view.
First, from a “fan loyalty” point of view for the sports fan. I’ve been a Bengals fan for more than 30 years, and anyone who knows this team knows that this is truly a feat of loyalty. The Bengals did well in the 1980s, going to the Super Bowl twice. Then the 1990s, and the first few years of this decade, the Bengals decayed into a run of sports futility only rarely seen in professional sports, losing far more games than they won. Despite this run, I remained a fan, watching games as often as possible, and particularly since the advent of the ‘net, staying on top of what my team was up to.
For the past few years, since the Bengals hired Marvin Lewis as a coach, this tide has begun to turn. The Bengals have won more games than they lost, and in 2005 made the playoffs for the first time since the early 1990s. That didn’t end so well, but it provided hope.
This year seems like a storybook year. It began with the Bengals being featured on Hard Knocks, an HBO reality show that documents training camp for one NFL team. It provided an unprecedented look into my favorite team, and I really enjoyed watching it. The last game of the regular season is tomorrow, and the worst the bengals can finish is 10-6. They have already clinched an AFC North championship and will therefore go to the playoffs.
I remember sitting down to watch the Super Bowl at the end of the 2001 season, when the Patriots played the Rams. The Patriots were heavy underdogs. As the game was starting, I remember turning to a friend of mine and saying: “there is no way the ‘Patriots’ lose this game after 9/11.” Sure enough, the Patriots shocked the world, beat the Rams, became world champs, and launched their “Dynasty”.
I have a similar feeling about this Bengals team this year. Fans got a close look at the team in Hard Knocks (which had the highest ratings ever for the show). The Bengals have dealt with adversity, one of the coaches’ wives died suddenly, and one of their players, Chris Henry, was killed during the season. None of their players made the Pro Bowl (the allstar game for the NFL). It’s a feel-good story, and we’ll see what happens. It will be fun to watch.
So, you can’t accuse me of not being “loyal” to my team. I’ve been a loyal fan to one of the worst franchises in professional sports for more than 30 years. My interest and support in my team and the game as a whole has never wavered. Until now. I will finish out this season, see how the Bengals do, and at the end of this season I’m done following football.
Second, the obvious question is, why? It has become clear to me that there are some fundamental philosophical differences I have with participating the spectacle of modern sports. Here are a few of them:
Ultimately, I think this decision has been in the making for many years now. I’ve known for years that despite any enjoyment I got from being a Bengals fan, it was ultimately a pretty big time sink for me. The fact that there are now many facets of my life that need more of my attention actually made this an easy decision. The fact that I have a hunch that I’ll say “Who Dey” for the last time after the Super Bowl this year just makes this decision all the more resonant.
I just got back from seeing the film Avatar. I enjoyed it greatly, it pretty much instantly propelled itself into one of my favorite films of all time.
Visually, of course, it’s stunning, but I’d expect nothing else from the WETA crew in New Zealand. Great eye candy, especially in 3D. I haven’t seen a 3D movie in 25 years, since Jaws 3 was out. My, how technology has changed. I think Avatar will be regarded as a revolution in filmmaking similar to the LOTR series earlier this decade. Certainly, the computer animation and stop motion technology recalls Gollum but with another several years of refinement.
But apart from the eye candy, I was interested in the plot. I wasn’t really sure what to expect. The main theme, of course, is Soulless Greedy Capitalism vs. Enlightened/Attuned Indigenous Population, or simply an allegory on Colonialism. I wasn’t sure what to expect, normally I don’t like to be spoon-fed which is what allegory turns into all-too-often. But there were some subtleties that I really appreciated.
SPOILERS BELOW. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
The Na’vi, who are the indigenous population, exist on Pandora, a stunningly beautiful moon teeming with unbelievable life. This race of humanoids is deeply attuned to the life on the planet, fully aware of their connections to one another, across species, past and present. Their greeting to each other is “I see you,” where “see” is something akin to “grok” in Heinlein’s Stranger In A Strange Land. It is a verbal acknowledgement that the seeing speaker has fully focused their attention and consciousness on the other individual. This reflects a common pattern with indigenous peoples all across planet Earth: these people often have a way-of-seeing that is much deeper than awareness of resources to exploit so common in our western culture.
The Na’vi have a sacred tree, called the Tree of Souls. The scientist characters are intrigued by this tree, apparently it has a network of intermingling roots not unlike a neural net, with a complexity on the scale of, or superior to, a human brain. This network reminded me a lot of the mycelium network that mushrooms create in forests, acting as the “brains” of the forest, and shunting nutrients from one part of the forest to another as needed. The Tree Of Voices also allows the Na’vi to commune-icate with their ancestors, and even to transplant consciousness from one body to another.
Of course, the capitalists don’t care about this sacred neural net. They wish to destroy it to intimidate the Na’vi and get them to abandon the Tree, so that they can mine for the (horribly-named) Unobtainium that exists in abundance near the tree.
This is the central part of the conflict in the story: the military/capitalists (mechanized thinking) wanting to exploit the ineffable natural resources the native people have attuned to over thousands of years (organic thinking), all in the name of short-term profit and without regard to the damage this exploitation will cause.
The Na’vi, of course, resist. They are portrayed as the “white-hat good guys” in the story, and the militaristic capitalists are the clear bad guys. The Na’vi have a Mother Goddess called Eywa, and when the protagonist prays to her for help “defeating” the Evil Greedy Capitalist Fuckers, he is told that “the mother doesn’t take sides, she protects the balance of life.”
This statement got me thinking. Let’s assume the Gaia hypothesis for a moment, here on Earth. If this is true, then Gaia will understand that our present system of Capitalist expansion and Colonialism is completely unsustainable; all Gaia must do is wait it out until “victory” occurs and the Capitalist Empire crumbles under its own weight. Once this occurs, in a planetary blink of an eye (a few generations in human terms), the planet will reclaim the earth to Nature.
Of course, this is a Hollywood movie, so the good guys always win. On Pandora, the Colonialists are defeated, despite their superior technology, when Eywa hears Jake’s prayer and sends the various denizens of the forest to fight the Capitalist Machine. Apparently in this world, set about 150 years from now, Capital has lost its ability to morph and adapt into a new role able to exploit each situation as it changes and evolves.
Not coincidentally, tonight I got into a “comment discussion” on Facebook with a Democrat. There I said that I believe our current system of government is broken, probably irrevocably, and the only way out is for more people to wake up and abandon capitalism as an ideal.
Hopefully, a few people will get their head cracked open by this film, and begin to see Capital for what it is. Ironically, Capital (and more specifically, James Cameron and the Hollywood MegaCorporations) has already profited $400 million within a week of this film’s release.
What was it I said about Capital morphing to profit from any situation it finds itself in?
Apparently, this blog is now being “followed” on Facebook. Thanks to whoever set it up that way. :-)
Obviously, I haven’t been posting here as much. I have, incidentally enough, been Facebooking somewhat regularly and posting the occasional burst of neural activity there.
Life pretty much continues as it has; keeping busy with work, building my studio, playing music with my guys as often as our schedules allow, trying to find time to finish our album.
Politically, I remain suspicious of the Obama administration, the bailout package, the War On Terra, etc. etc.
Personally, I have been undergoing a fundamental change. My HealthQuest is a big part of this, stepping up and putting things I’ve learned over the past few years into regular, disciplined practice. This is already bearing good fruit.
How that when it is widely believed that Ahmadinejad stole the election, there is mass protest, chaos in the streets, and hardcore police suppression.
Yet, when it was widely believed that the Bu$hites stole the election in 2000 and 2004, Americans sat in front of their televisions and computer screens, and whined a bit (yes I include myself in this)?
Just sayin’. I find this fascinating.
I haven’t been writing in this space much as of late. Part of this is because this blog has become largely political; my other writings (such as they are) have gone elsewhere, although the trend of me not writing as much has continued.
While I work, I’m listening to Obama’s speech in Cairo. As always, I’m struck by his eloquence, and by how in his speeches, Obama really seems to get it, he seems enlightened. For instance, the assertion that we must speak our truth from our hearts in order to get anywhere, is an obvious truism for me.
However, he turns to America’s occupation of Afghanistan, resting squarely on the 9/11 attacks, and the myth of al-Qaeda, as the basis for said occupation. This is unfortunate, because the conspiracy theory that 19 boxcutter-wielding al-Qaeda operatives (most of whom are known to still be alive) is a lie, a myth. Therefore, it is no basis for a foreign policy.
Hope, as we know, is tenacious, and it is my hope and prayer that this myth will be widely seen for what it is: a lie designed to allow very wealthy, powerful people increase their power and wealth. Clearly, my hope in this matter is audacious.