Things Fall Apart

The community college district, of course, has a hiring freeze on. Nobody who retires, gets fired, goes off the deep end or is run over by a truck can be replaced. It makes for interesting times, in the ancient Chinese sense.
The competent over-achiever who used to do all the room scheduling has retired, so now there can be no more room scheduling. Your class is probably in the same place it was last year. It works out all right for the most part, since there are no longer any new teachers or new courses. But no changes of venue are possible.
My phone doesn't work. The line has been dead since school started. I printed out and completed a work order, after a bit of hassle finding someone whose computer had access to both the Internet and a printer. Then I took it over to the mail room to place in the box for the "switchboard office," as directed at the top of the form. The mail room guy, one of the key people in the institution who still works there, said that there wasn't any box for the switchboard office because it was only one person, and now she has retired. I wondered where to put the form, and he suggested a few possibilities, none of which seemed like a sure thing to him, or sounded quite right to me. So I choose one at random, and shoved it in.

Fortunately, in the 21st century, phones are no longer essential. My students and immediate colleagues know they get better results from me on email anyway. Since somehow this dead phone line still pretends to take messages, I do worry a bit that somebody higher up, high enough to have a phone that works, will be upset if I don't return a call. Only a bit worried, though--such are the luxuries of tenure.

In the ESL department, we tell each other how fortunate it is that most of us were in the Peace Corps at one time or another. It was good training for what's going on now. Just find a good shade tree, prop up a blackboard, and start teaching something.
Over Irish coffee at the hofbrau tonight with my full moon cronies, we exchanged workday war stories. One friend said that all those alumni fundraisers who are always harassing us for more money than we've got to spare should adopt the methodology of those helpful organizations who market modest, useful gifts for people in third world countries--you can buy ducklings for somebody in Bolivia, or a goat for Nepal. Why not solicit affordable amounts to fund specific things that schools need? She'd be happy, my friend said, to donate what it costs to put in a phone line. People could fund this and that, there would be commemorative plaques on the photocopiers, maybe items funded by little trust funds in honor of departed relatives. Then I could have a cheery, operational phone message ... "Hello, you have reached Sybil Drinkwalter on the McIntyre Memorial Phone Line ..."

Signs of the Times

I've been going to the Touchless Car Wash in downtown Berkeley for years now. For $20 they take the car through the wash for you (I have a tendency to claustrophobia and really hate doing that) and then four or five people in red Touchless T-Shirts descend on the car to vacuum out the inside and wipe down all the surfaces (I have arthritis and just plain don't do that). While they are busy, you go inside and amuse yourself shopping for junk food and a whimsical selection of greeting cards and gift items.

Today, taking my grimy car in for some attention after leaving it parked out front of my house for much of the summer, I was struck by a shift in the ethnic composition in the staff. For as long as I can remember, the cashier has been a young man from somewhere in the Middle East (not always the same young man from the Middle East) and the grunt workers in the red T-shirts have all been from somewhere south of the border or beyond, and I suppose I always assumed, not thinking about it any more than middle-class white people in California have to think about it, that most of them were probably undocumented. Now, the crew is getting to reflect the ethnic composition of northern California--black, white and Asian as well as Latino.

And then there are the changes on Lincoln Avenue, the street where I grew up back in Amherst, Massachusetts. Lincoln Avenue is about a mile long, and connects the Amherst College and University of Massachusetts campuses. The housing runs a social gamut; four or five huge, gracious mansions in the first block at the Amherst college end, and increasingly modest middle-class homes as you move toward UMass, with a block of apartments bordering the campus at the end.

The top block has not changed one iota in appearance for the past fifty years. From there on down, there are creeping signs of shabbiness and disrepair, first in some of the houses, then in all of them. The apartments down at the end, which used to be tidy and utilitarian, have deteriorated into a little slum.

It's kind of a parable for the times.

This Is Your Old Age on Drugs

My mom, now 91, has one of those foot-square plastic trays with pills sorted out in lidded compartments by day and time, 28 for a week. (I have a smaller one, still just one little lidded box per day. And the system works better for me because most of the time I can still remember what day it is).

In the case of my mom, whose physical health is remarkably good, most of the drugs are psychoactive. I have not followed what they all are, or which discouraging aspect of her emotions and behavior they are meant to treat, since we have two nurses and a doctor in the family who are much better qualified for this responsibility than I. Just now, my sister was on the phone with the psychiatrist, having a very complicated conversation about dosages and trying more of this and less of that.

The result of all this medication is that my mom is not crazy, exactly, but still quite depressed. And more confused than she should be, given the appearance of a recent brain scan. (She doesn't have Alzheimer's--you could have fooled me.)

Coming from the 1960's by way of California, I of course see the obvious option of trying some really good drugs, if she is going to be on drugs. Primo bud her food, might be a good place to start.

Apparently my teenage nephew recently made a similar suggestion at the dinner table but was quickly stifled (his father the doctor is, like most doctors, quite conservative).

For myself, if I make it past 90, I definitely intend to do it stoned.

Wort Moon

The full moon that falls in Leo is sometimes called the Wort Moon because its waxing is the auspicious time to gather certain worts, or herbs useful for the leafy part that grows above the ground. (Dried herbs of this type are medicinally and magically effective for only about a year after they are picked, a fact that is ignored by most businesses that market them.) Two herbs traditionally associated with this time were mugwort and vervain.

Mugwort is plentiful in California, and known since Native American times for its power to induce dreams. Drink it as a tea, and fall asleep intending to dream what you need to know. Some herbals give warnings about its possible toxicity, but you would probably have to drink gallons of the stuff to do any harm, and there's no reason why anyone would do that. You'd be up all night peeing, and never get any dreams at all.

Vervain is traditionally used for kidney stones and bladder problems, also to drive away vampires. The Iroquois used it to drive away anybody they didn't want to deal with, but this strategy doesn't seem to have stood the test of time. It apparently works better on vampires than on white people. Vervain has general protective qualities, though, and is also used in divination; you can see the future by gazing into a fire through vervain. Or add some to your mugwort tea for prophetic dreams.

Work in the Time of Harvest

(The flowing Water Tide, from Lammas to Mabon)

This, like the planting time from Eostara to Beltane, is a period of intense hard work. It is a time when work comes to fruition, and the rewards of past work can be reaped. There will, however, be a lot to do to accomplish this, and it may feel as though the time is too short. It is a time of intense activity, both work and play.

The Mother at this time is at the height of Her power, her breasts flowing with milk at the very sound of a child’s cry. Honor Her with works of healing and compassion, with a portion of each thing you earn or reap.

The Mother of All Living tells us that she demands no sacrifice because she needs make no such demand; a portion of every labor and every love returns to Her by the law of Nature. When that return is brought to her consciously and with gratitude, she rewards Her children by opening to them the storehouse of Her wisdom; the truth that lies there is our own, which she has saved for us from our gifts of past seasons. Thus at this season we eat new fruit and old meat, new achievements and old wisdom.

Love and labor are one in the Mother at this season. Seek to perform all your work with love, and work to sustain your love for others.

Like the Planting Time, this is a season which, in the old days, required the give-and-take of community effort, as large work teams harvested one farm after another. Look carefully and the patterns of reciprocity in your relationships, ask yourself whether they are balanced and fair, and what you can do to improve their equilibrium.

Try to “float to the surface” of the Tide, to take along and broad view of things, so as to maintain your perspective. Take time from your full and busy days to study and contemplate the huge expanses of space and time—the physical universe, karma, your past lives. This is the most productive Tide for trance divination, for traveling in trance and dream the roads that lead to the future and the past.

Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo has sort of been on my s**t list for a long time, ever since as a new and unwary credit customer, I realized that my debt to them was creeping up because the minimum payment was set at less than the amount required to prevent that from happening.

It's not much surprise now to learn that they also illegally pushed borrowers into subprime mortgages and falsified loan documents.

The penalty for these procedures, which surely must involve multiple felonies, is to pay a fine that amounts to a tiny fraction of the bank's recent yearly profits.

In a free market, business ethics are fostered because a reputation for integrity is good for business, and being caught ripping off your customers is very bad for business. Government bail-outs have removed that natural and internal control mechanism, and token penalties for blatantly criminal behavior now reinforce the message to financial institutions that they are so important that they are allowed to do whatever they like (kind of like the later and most decadent Roman emperors).

Mrs. D. now belongs to a credit union, and no longer deals with banks at all if she can help it.

Pagan Preacher: The Time of Ripening

(from Dyffd ap Tower)

Here we are in the middle of the year, between the Planting and the Harvest, between the conception and the realization. Here are in the midst of Life. Let us take one day to celebrate and then get back to work.

These are the golden days. Golden because of the presence of the Sun and golden because we have a goal to work toward. This is the best of times.

Now one might ask, What’s so good about it? Here are right in the middle of things, there’s lots to do and so far there has been no payoff.

The “payoff” is not just in the rewards that come with accomplishment, it is also in the experience and the effort.

In our conversation is more worthwhile to talk about what we are doing or what we have been doing rather than what we have. How we got something sounds so much better than what we have got.

The truly creative person loses all interest in what has been done and turns their mind to what is being done or will be done.

The value comes from seeing what needs to be done and liking what we do to reach that goal. If you see a need to drain the swamp, it is worthwhile to not only get in with the alligators, but to like it as well.

So here we are in the middle of Life, and all the things to do that we must to maintain Life and we must appreciate the need to do them.

As mundane as some of these things are, they are important and they are what makes the quality of our lives. Let us enjoy the experience.

IT DOESN’T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS!