Year of the Bat

I know. I know.  Bats are not typical New Year topics. And to be fair the article below was published in the Chicago Tribune October 24, 2011.  A much better seasonal article. But it just showed up in the New Orleans Times Picayune in December. So.... given that the United Nations has the Year of the Bat (2 years actually) campaign and given it's a new calendar year and given bats are associated with witches and so beneficial to our environment, I offer William Hageman's article below. 
Do what you can for Bats in 2012.  Even if it is only educating those around you.

Bats - Garden Allies
William Hageman - Chicago Tribune

Let's get the myths out of the way.  Bats are not blind, rabies-infested vermin that will suck your blood and entangle themselves in your hair. What they are, obviously, is misunderstood. And, sadly, threatened.

Rob Mies got interested in bats while a student at Eastern Michigan University almost 20 years ago.
"Over the years I became fascinated with how important bats are and how much people don't know," he says. "If they learn just a little bit of information about them, people become pro-bat. Or just not hate them."

Mies educates folks as founder and director of the Organization for Bat Conservation at the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., where he teaches the importance of bats and dispels those old wives' tales. He has also co-written two books: "Beginner's Guide To Bats" (Little, Brown and Co.) and "Understanding Bats" (Bird Watchers Digest).
"We present at schools, museums, nature centers," he says. "We're focused on educating people."
For the record, he says, bats can see, their rate of rabies is less than half a percent, there are vampire bats but they are small and nothing like you see in the movies, and bats don't dive into your hair.
Here's another fact: They're not just a bunch of pretty faces. Mies says some of the bats OBC uses in its presentations — they are older bats or ones that were injured and rescued but can't be returned to the wild — have learned to recognize certain presenters and will call out, asking to be picked up.
"They're as smart, almost, as some primates," he says. "I know them to be pretty intelligent. They have different personalities as well."
Ask Mies about bats, and he's off and running. Unfortunately, a lot of the news he has isn't good.

The big die-off
North America's bat population is being decimated by white-nose syndrome, a fungus found in 2006 in New York that seems to disrupt bats' hibernation. It has been found in 16 states and three Canadian provinces and is spreading.
"It's going to be devastating," Mies says. "It's going through Pennsylvania, Indiana. In places it has been found — Vermont, New York — we're seeing 90, 95 percent mortality. So, unfortunately, we're going to see a huge die-off."
The disease is largely in the eastern U.S. and Canada right now, but it is slowly spreading west and south. Bat Conservation International (batcon.org), an organization that sponsors research and education programs, says that the bat population across the U.S. is at risk.
"It's been projected that over the next 16 years, they'll be regionally extinct," Mies says. "There was a cave in Vermont that had 16,000 bats. Now, zero."

And what's bad for bats may be bad for people.
"With millions of bats dying — literally, millions — we don't know what the impact will be. A bat eats 2,000 to 6,000 insects a night, and some of them, certain beetles and moths, are agricultural pests."

Bat facts
There are about 40 species of bats in North America, the most common being the little brown bat. There are more than 1,100 species worldwide, according to Phil Richardson in his excellent book "Bats" (Firefly). Some bats can live 30 years or more in captivity. The biggest bat in the world is the giant flying fox, which can have a 6-foot wingspan, and the smallest is the Kitti's hog-nosed bat, about the size of a large bumblebee. Scientists earlier this year announced the discovery of a plant in the Cuban rain forest that has acoustically shaped leaves that work with a bat's sonar, drawing the bat to it and facilitating pollination.

How important are bats?
Plenty. Bats have three main benefits: insect control, pollination and the spreading of seeds.
Bats eat 50 to 100 percent of their weight in insects each night — mostly mosquitoes — and fruit bats can eat 21/2 times their weight. All that fruit includes seeds, which get scattered when the bat does his business. Even their poop, guano, is valuable as a fertilizer because of its high nitrogen content. Bats also help pollinate plants, eat moths that produce caterpillars that feast on gardens, and are part of the food chain — food for hawks, owls, eagles and snakes, while some eat rodents or scorpions.
A study published this year in Science magazine stated that insect-eating bats saved the U.S. agricultural industry at least $3 billion a year, with some estimates of more than $50 billion.

Gardeners, take note
A colony of bats will do wonders if you have an insect problem, Mies says. There are a couple of things gardeners can do to encourage bat populations.
Spray as little pesticide as possible. If you have room on your property and it's safe, leave up dead and dying trees; they're the best habitat for bats. And next season, plant night-blooming flowers, such as the evening primrose (Oenothera macrocarpa), which will attract moths and other insects for your colony's dining pleasure.

Want to be the coolest homeowner in your neighborhood? Or would you like to give your garden a boost? Set up a bat house.
A bat house can be home to a couple hundred bats, females and their offspring usually, from spring through fall. They can be set up on a pole or side of a building — trees generally aren't a good idea — 15 to 20 feet off the ground, in an open location where they get at least 6 hours of sun a day.

"Food, they'll find. But a place for them to live is the key thing," Mies says. "Unfortunately, people often chase them from their house or kill them in the barn, so they need somewhere to go."
Bat houses are readily available, but those sold at home improvement centers often don't meet bats' standards and don't attract the animals. Instead, check out the bat houses sold by the Organization for Bat Conservation, which get up to an 80 percent occupancy rate. Several sizes are available at batconservation.org ($38-$72), or you can buy plans to build your own.

Fear not
Mies says it's adults, not kids, who tend to be spooked by bats.
"There have been a lot of great books, especially children's books, to come out. One, "Stellaluna" (Harcourt Children's Books) by Jannell Cannon, tells a decent story about bats, that they're not bloodthirsty killers. Things like that have really helped kids be less fearful of bats."

bhageman@tribune.com

8 Decidedly Unromantic Facts About Mistletoe

8 Decidedly Unromantic Facts About Mistletoe from Mental Floss.
The information below is not mine; it is from another blog
But as I've said before so many times I find and link to interesting data on the web only to have it disappear.  At least this way it doesn't get lost.  Think of it a bit like having to copy your own Book of Shadows.  If the links wouldn't disappear I'd be happy to JUST link.  But ... well... you know.

1. Mistletoe, not unlike some you may have smooched beneath it, is a parasite. The plant sucks water and minerals through a sinister-sounding bump called a haustorium that forms on the host tree. It might make you feel better to know that, technically, mistletoe is only partially parasitic: The plant is capable of photosynthesis, unlike true parasites that take all of their nutrients from their hosts. So while mistletoe doesn’t pay rent, it does occasionally do the laundry or whip up a nice soufflé.

2. Candle companies love to peddle holiday scents labeled “Mistletoe” –- you can even buy mistletoe-scented air fresheners for your car—but the plant, says mistletoe expert Jonathan Briggs, has no scent at all. Briggs, who hails from Gloucestershire, England, debunks all manner of mistletoe misinformation in A Little Book About Mistletoe and on his wonderful mistletoe blog.

3. Throughout the ages, mistletoe has been used to treat a battery of ailments, from leprosy, worms and labor pains to high blood pressure. In Europe, injections of mistletoe extract are often prescribed as a complementary treatment for cancer patients.

4. A time-honored southern tradition for fetching mistletoe out of a tall tree is to blast it down with a shotgun. Let’s hope no one’s kissing under it at the time.

5. In medieval times, mistletoe wasn’t just a Christmas decoration, but one perhaps better suited to Halloween: Hung over doors to homes and stables, it was thought to prevent witches and ghosts from entering.

6. According to some accounts, the name mistletoe means “dung branch,” a nod to the seeds’ ability to stick to tree branches when pooped out by birds. The viscous middle layer of the fruit is so sticky that the seeds get glued where they land post-digestion, which starts a new mistletoe plant. Mistletoe goo is so sticky that trappers used to smear it on tree branches to catch birds, which would land and then be unable to fly away.

7. The Roman historian Pliny the Elder told how druids revered mistletoe, recounting a ceremony where they gathered it with a golden sickle, then sacrificed two white bulls. The ceremony still takes place each year, minus the bull-slaying, at the Tenbury Mistletoe Festival in England.

8. In Norse mythology, mistletoe is a god-killer. Balder, the son of Odin and Frigg, was felled by an arrow made of mistletoe, the only material that could hurt him. Oddly, this may have been the origin of the kissing tradition, as some retellings say that Frigg revived Balder and was so happy, she commanded anyone who stood under the plant to kiss as a reminder of how love conquered death

Winter Soltice.... BEST MESSAGE for a new Solar Year.

Tracy Chapman's Heaven's here on Earth

And again in Italian

You can look to the stars in search of the answers
Look for God and life on distant planets
Have your faith in the ever after
While each of us holds inside the map to the labyrinth
Heaven's here on earth

We are the spirit the collective conscience
We create the pain and the suffering and the beauty in this world
Heaven's here on earth
In our faith in humankind
In our respect for what is earthly
In our unfaltering belief in peace and love and understanding

I've seen and met angels wearing the disguise
Of ordinary people leading ordinary lives
Filled with love, compassion, forgiveness and sacrifice
Heaven's in our hearts
In our faith in humankind
In our respect for what is earthly
In our unfaltering belief in peace and love and understanding

Look around
Believe in what you see
The kingdom is at hand
The promised land is at your feet
We can and will become what we aspire to be
Heaven's here on earth

If we have faith in humankind
And respect for what is earthly
And an unfaltering belief that truth is divinity
Heaven's here on earth

I've seen spirits
I've met angels
Touched creations beautiful and wondrous
I've been places where I question all I think I know
But I believe, I believe, I believe this could be heaven

We are born inside the gates with the power to create life
And to take it away
The world is our temple
The world is our church
Heaven's here on earth

If we have faith in humankind
And respect for what is earthly
And an unfaltering belief
In peace and love and understanding
This could be heaven here on earth

Why Solstice Matters

Worthwhile thoughts on solstice...

Give it a read....  I happen to know and trust the source for this one. The blog made it through Katrina and I am counting on it being around for quite some time.

"Anyhow, I am happy to remember and the solstice and celebrate it explicitly. It’s about as universal and natural a holiday as one could ask for. It’s available to everyone, people of every religion or no religion, everywhere on the planet."

Brains, energy, magic

Listen to it all... It has amazing ramifications for how we use our brains and our energy to do magic.
See the transcript here.

Below is the video that made me look up the one above. Autotune ruins modern music but this is the most appropriate and amazing use of Autotune.

Something to think about this Holiday Season

The High Price of Materialism

Now we're talking

It took Katrina to get the people of the region to really stand up to the Corps of Engineers
but finally the RIGHT projects are going through.... we need more...
but at least now there is movement.

See recent article in New Orleans Times Picayune in full below

Coastal restoration projects move forward
Saturday, December 10, 2011 - Times Picayune
By Mark Schleifstein

Construction of a half-dozen major coastal restoration projects in Louisiana took a small step forward Friday with federal and state officials signing an agreement outlining how to design the projects. The agreement frees up the first $20 million appropriated by Congress this year to be spent on pre-construction engineering and design work.

View full sizeEllis Lucia, The Times-PicayuneThe Terrebonne Basin Barrier Shoreline Restoration project will rebuild marshland, dunes and beaches on Raccoon, Whiskey, Trinity and Timbalier islands in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes. Whiskey Island was photographed in October 2002, after it had sustained significant damage from Hurricane Lili.

The first six of 15 projects, proposed as part of the Louisiana Coastal Area Ecosystem Restoration program, will require an investment of $1.4 billion. The federal government will pay 65 percent and the state will pay the rest.
Traditionally, such projects are financed by appropriations by Congress, which may be sparse during the next few years.
But some of the projects may get funded through fines or mitigation costs levied against BP and other companies found responsible under the federal Clean Water Act and the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
The state also hopes to use part of its share of future revenue from federal offshore oil and gas leases, similar revenue from in-state leases, and from past state budget surpluses to pay its share of construction costs.
“These projects will help to reduce the risk from storm surge of a hurricane by supporting the multiple lines of defense system,” said Col. Ed Fleming, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers’ New Orleans District office.
He was referring to a strategy underlying both the federal restoration plan and the state’s coastal restoration master plan that locates land-building projects in areas where they can help protect populated areas from storm surges.
“The LCA 6 projects utilize the three important coastal restoration methods: barrier island restoration, river diversions, and marsh creation and nourishment,” Fleming said.
The first projects will include:

• Amite River Diversion Canal Modification, which will improve the flow of water into the cypress swamp and wetlands to the west of Lake Maurepas in Livingston and Ascension parishes.
• Small Diversion at Convent/Blind River, where about 3,000 cubic feet per second of Mississippi River water will be pumped through a canal near Romeville into the cypress swamp and wetlands west of Lake Maurepas in Ascension and St. James parishes.
• Medium Diversion at White Ditch will allow up to 35,000 cubic feet per second of Mississippi River water and sediment to be diverted near Phoenix into wetlands on the east bank of Plaquemines Parish.
• Terrebonne Basin Barrier Shoreline Restoration will rebuild marshland, dunes and beaches on Raccoon, Whiskey, Trinity and Timbalier islands in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes.
• Convey Atchafalaya River Water to Northern Terrebonne Marshes. This project combines two proposals — routing Atchafalaya water into the Bayou Chene/Gulf Intracoastal Waterway system and designing a gate structure in the Houma Navigation Channel to allow that water to pass into sensitive wetlands.

Federally recognize the United Houma Nation - YOU can help

The United Houma Nation has sought federal recognition for decades. The tribe has been recognized by state and foreign governments as an Indian tribe. In fact, Houma children were forced to attend a segregated Indian school until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Located along Louisiana's Gulf Coast, the Houma Indian culture and community depend on the wetlands. The BP spill has devastated the Houma. However, BP denied the Houma's claim because they are not federally recognized.

The White House promised to review the United Houma Nation's petition for federal recognition if 25,000 signatures are acquired. Currently the petition is just over 5000 signatures.  December 1, 2011 is the deadline.  We can all play a role in making this happen if we ask our friends and family to sign.

As pagan one of the things that we know is that relationship to the land and our ancestors and our history is critical.  The Houma Nation is part of South Louisiana history and America's History.  Federal designation  will  help preserve the Houma’s culture and the lands that are a part of this culture. 

Please click here to sign as a way to be thankful for what we all have and as a way to ensure that we can be aware of an thankful of a past and a culture that is so closely connected to the land.

Please take the time to Honor the past and Protect the Future by acting on this opportunity.

Moonlight Sonata

On Classical Guitar by Eric Henderson

I know it's originally for piano, but I love the classical guitar.

All Soul's Day

Taken directly from International House New Orleans

All Souls/All Saints Day
In heavily Catholic New Orleans, All Saints Day (November 1) and All Souls' Day (November 2) have been observed for centuries through rituals celebrating life over death.

During the Yellow Fever epidemics in eighteenth century New Orleans, death always loomed close. It's presence left the lasting impression on this city and its inhabitants that life is a gift, perhaps fleeting, and should be enjoyed to its fullest each day. And so, on All Saints Day and All Souls Day, New Orleanians honor the lives of their dead loved ones by painting tombs with brilliant whitewashes, placing yellow chrysanthemums and red coxcombs on graves and ringing statuary with immortelles (wreaths of black glass beads). On these days, cemeteries throughout the city are alive with the flickering glow from fields of candles, as death is forgotten and lives lived are celebrated.

It is one of the many rich New Orleans' traditions we observe annually at International House, for we can imagine no other city which has turned such tragedy into such a joyous celebration of life.

Tomb with a View

Life next to a cemetery
Tomb with a View
Chris Rose - Gambit

I see dead people. Every day, I am presented with the physical manifestations of eternity. Or maybe faith is the better term. I live amid the remnants and architecture of ritual. I bear witness to the ceremonial and liturgical transference of the departed from this world to, presumably, the next.

  Fancy talk for telling you: I live next to a cemetery.

  In some towns, that might not be a good thing. It might be spooky or depressing. I don't know anything about real estate, but it seems reasonable to postulate that these little cities of granite, marble and stone, with their solicitations of grief and their constant reminder of mortality — hell, why sugarcoat? With their constant reminder of death! — might not be the curb appeal every potential homebuyer is looking for.

  In some towns.

  They are serene, oddly comforting, the small, quiet gatherings that occur here. There are no more than two or three a month in my cemetery, it seems. They never strike me as depressing. Truth is, I hear more laughter in my cemetery than sorrow. Maybe that's part of New Orleans' curious relationship with death; you know, that "we put the 'fun' in funerals" thing.

  I have lived in New Orleans for 25 years, but only this fall did I move across the street from a cemetery. It is such an iconic neighbor, like living, I suppose, next to a vineyard in France, a Roman aqueduct in Italy, pyramids in Egypt or in the shadow of the Great Wall of China; before the senses have fully taken in the surroundings, the story of these places is already revealed to us. They are not natural wonders by any means, but reminders that man, too, is capable of producing wondrous things.

  That's one way to put it. The terms I generally use to describe living next to a cemetery are considerably less didactic: "It's really cool!" is generally how I explain it to my friends.

  Most old cities seem to have at least one cemetery that is a source of civic pride and/or historical significance. But I don't know of any other place where every cemetery invokes a sense of place, a sense of pride; in New Orleans, cemeteries are among the most pervasive and visible reminders of our otherness.

  Drop me into a cemetery anywhere else in the country, and I would be at a loss to tell you where I am. Drop me off in New Orleans, and I can tell you immediately: I am home.

  My kids — 7, 9 and 11 — are just getting over their squeamishness about our new neighbors. For a long time, they exuded a determined disinterest in the cemetery; they knew they weren't supposed to be scared of it — after all, the other kids in the neighborhood seem fine with it — but, still, they were pretty freaked out for a while.

  Now, we walk our dog, scooter and play in our cemetery. In fact, I've often wondered about the propriety of that, wondered, as I once watched my children play hide and seek: What are the boundaries?

  Many years ago, a girlfriend of mine took my mother and my aunt — visiting from Maryland — to lunch while I was at work. She picked up some seafood po-boys and sodas at the St. Roch Market and took them to St. Roch Cemetery where she spread their bounty across a stranger's tomb and they ate and visited with each other.

  Needless to say, my folks thought St. Roch was a marvelous, beautiful place to behold. But the story they brought home with them was about the curious girl who took them to lunch at a cemetery! Now there's a story for the folks back home.

  But that's what we do, no? Is that OK? What are the rules, I have always wondered? (And I've no doubt that before this week is out, someone will dutifully inform me.)

  My cemetery is rundown, overgrown and mostly deserted. Tourists don't come here. But I find I have taken a proprietary interest in my cemetery. To me, it is prettier than all the grand Cities of the Dead that make New Orleans famous.

  Funny, I realize: I love my cemetery. From it, I draw a great deal of reflection, serenity and peace. Odd, but from my cemetery, I draw so much life.

Music for the Equinox or a Full Moon

World Premiere of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings conducted by ArturoToscanini

New York on May 11th, 1938

Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings conducted Leonard Slatlin

(who conducted in New Orleans from 1977-1979)

London September 15 2001

What flower are you....

I am a Snapdragon What Flower Are You?

Perfect Cornucopia Advice

Perfect Cornucopia advice... for your garden.... for your life...
What do you need? What is working? What is not? What will you keep? What will you eliminate?

Thank you Dan Gill.

Take stock of your landscape
Published: Thursday, August 11, 2011, 8:00 PM
By Dan Gill, Times-Picayune garden columnist NOLA.com

It's really too hot to do much of anything strenuous in the garden this time of the year.

I would certainly put off labor-intensive jobs such as creating new beds (or even reworking old beds), building structures like decks and arbors or major landscape plantings.

About all I feel like doing now is slowly strolling around my gardens in the early morning or late evening when the temperatures are somewhat cooler. Oh, I'll stop to take care of some weed issues (that never ends). Still, I try to keep the physical activity to a minimum. But, I'm not wasting time.

I'm doing three important things as I ramble around my landscape.

First, I'm enjoying it. I'm appreciating the beautiful flowers and bright colors of summer bedding plants and tropicals blooming this time of year. I'm sticking my nose into the flowers of butterfly ginger (Hedychium coronarium) and devouring the wonderful fragrance. You work hard to create and maintain your gardens -- don't forget to appreciate and enjoy them.

Second, I'm evaluating. I'm looking carefully at how well new plants are doing in this stressful late-summer weather. I'm also scrutinizing new plantings to see if plant and color combinations look as good in the garden as they did in my mind.

Finally, I'm re-evaluating my landscape. I tend to do this fairly constantly to some degree, but this time of the year I like to put a little extra thought into it. This is a good thing for everyone to do.

Why re-evaluate

As landscapes mature, things change. Trees get taller and cast deeper shade, and bushes can become overgrown.

People's lifestyles also change, and that area given over to a sandbox or a swing set may no longer be needed. Or you may have purchased an older home with mature plantings that no longer work well, or at least they don't satisfy you. Maybe the arrival of a new baby limits the amount of time you once had to maintain your gardens.

Whatever the reason, reevaluation is an important part of maintaining a landscape that is attractive and provides for the current needs of a family.

To start re-evaluating a landscape, you have to take a hard, honest look at what you have.

Changes in the garden can happen subtly over years, and you might overlook the obvious, such as an increase in shade or a physical change in your garden, unless you really focus.

Or, there are more sudden changes that haven't been properly integrated into the landscape. Maybe you added a deck, for instance, and traffic patterns have changed, but you haven't reworked the walkways.

Pretend you are the new owner of the house and garden you are surveying, and look at it with as much objectivity as you can.

Trees

One of the biggest changes that can creep up silently on a landscape over time is the growth of trees. They not only grow taller and larger, but they can dramatically influence what can or can't grow under or around them.

If your landscape has been planted for a number of years, you may find that some plants don't perform as well as they used to.

You might notice, for instance, that a bed of azaleas that has bloomed well for many years is no longer doing so, and the plants look leggy and thin. It could be that they need more light. Trees that were smaller when the azaleas were planted will grow larger over the years and cast more and deeper shade.

Lawns also often succumb to shade from a tree that has grown large over the years.

When shade makes existing plants grow poorly and look bad, consider removing those plants and replacing them with something more shade-tolerant. Plant areas where grass will not grow with shade-loving ground covers such as monkey grass or Asiatic jasmine.

In a few rare circumstances, you may decide that too many trees were planted in the landscape (easy to do, since trees are small when first planted). Sometimes it's necessary to make the difficult decision to remove a tree.

Shrubs

Overgrown shrubs can be trimmed back, trimmed up or removed entirely if no longer desirable.

It can be visually unattractive for a while, but a severe trimming can rejuvenate some types of old shrubs.

Hard pruning is best done just before shrubs start active growth. February or March is a good time to hard-prune shrubs that bloom in the summer. Prune spring-flowering shrubs in late March or April after they flower.

Once they begin growing again, you can control their size with regular pruning.

In other cases, if height is not an issue, you can trim a shrub up. To do this, selectively remove the lower branches of an overgrown shrub, training it into a small tree-form. This opens up space under and around the plant, making it less dominant.

Do you find yourself constantly pruning back shrubs that are too large for the area where they are planted? This is a fight you will never win. Often, removing and replacing these shrubs is the best idea. If you do decide to do this, make sure that you select new shrubs that will not grow too large for their location.

Planning ahead

The best time for planting hardy trees, shrubs ground covers and perennials in the landscape is November through March, with fall and early winter being best. That's why now is a good time to start doing this type of re-evaluation.

It gives you plenty of time to rethink your landscape and make plans for what needs to be done when the weather turns cooler.

And it's a great way to avoid working hard out in this hot weather, while still doing something important.

Scents and listening to subtleties

Cooling scents: the right perfume can lift your spirits and cool you down
Published: Tuesday, August 09, 2011
By Susan Langenhennig, The Times-Picayune NOLA.com

Debra Jones-Scie has an old-fashioned trick for dealing with the sticky heat and humidity of late summer in the city.

She keeps a bottle of Verveine, a bright, lemon verbena cologne, in the refrigerator. Before stepping outside, she spritzes a little on her skin, sending a chilling tingle down her spine.

“When I go on a walk, I pull it out and give a little spray,” said Jones-Scie, the “nose” for Hové, the 80-year-old French Quarter perfume house. "It cools you."

Scents are the escape artists of the beauty world. One whiff of the right perfume, and you can be in another place and time — one preferably about 20 degrees cooler and 50 percent less sweaty than August in New Orleans.

I’ve come to Jones-Scie's door seeking relief from the relentless humidity that’s sapping my energy like a tapeworm. She turns to a shelf in Hové’s 19th-century townhouse and her hand falls on a few options.

There’s Elan d’Orange, a surprisingly bracing scent that features orange blossom, but presented in a way that’s not like the sweet floral we often associate with the heady flowers of the bitter orange tree. Elan d’Orange has a pleasant tang, like iced tea with a slice of lemon.

Plage d’Ete is another option, but it’s a little too suntan-lotion-like for me, with those familiar notes of coconut and lime. It conjures thoughts of a frosty pina colada by the pool or memories of slathering Coppertone on your skin.

Hové’s Vetiver, a pure, green, grassy scent, is refreshingly sharp and has a side benefit. “I use the Vetiver on my legs, and it keeps the mosquitoes away, at least on me,” Jones-Scie said.

Perfume blogger Victoria Frolova has a poetic way of describing the cooling effects of certain perfumes: “The effervescence of citrus — be it the bracing sharpness of lime, the peppery shimmer of bergamot, the intense verdancy of petitgrain or the playful sweetness of mandarin — has a refreshing, exhilarating effect,” she writes. “It instantly cools, evoking the delicious sensation of an ice cube melting on hot skin.”

Frolova has a technical nose that gives an insightful edge to her fragrance observations at BoisdeJasmin.com. There’s a reason, she said, why some colognes are particularly appealing in warm climates.

“Neroli and petitgrain oils share the same pungent component as perspiration and allow it to become masked by the bright, green freshness of orange flower,” she writes in a post highlighting summer scents.

The bitter orange tree — the variety that gives marmalade its bite — is like “the pig of the fragrance world,” Frolova said during a recent chat by phone from her home in New Jersey. “Every part of the plant is used.”

Orange bigarade, an essential oil, comes from cold-pressing the fruit, while sweet neroli oil is derived from the orange blossoms. Petitgrain, another essential oil, comes from distilling the twigs, making for a green, woodsy smell.

“Neroli is less floral and more citrusy,” Frolova said, “while orange blossom absolu is richer and sweeter, more seductive.

“One of my personal favorites is Annick Goutal Neroli, a blend of orange blossom and neroli,” she added. “It has so many facets, but when you put them together, you end up having an accord that’s very fresh.”

Orange blossom fragrances can be boldly feminine, like Serge Lutens’ Fleurs d’Oranger, which leaves a lingering sweetness to the skin.

Or they can be darker and brooding, as in the case of Narcisse Noir, a scent launched in 1911, said Barbara Herman, who blogs about vintage perfumes at yesterdaysperfume.typepad.com.
“Narcisse Noir has amazing orange blossom, but the predominate character of that perfume is dark and sexy,” she said. “It’s mixed with incense and in a musk base, which makes it very interesting.”

Herman has been living in New Orleans this summer while writing a book, with the working title “Scent and Subversion: A Century of Provocative Perfume.” She doesn’t subscribe to the idea that hot months call only for simple scents.

“Just as you probably don’t want to eat beef stroganoff in the dead of summer when it’s 96 degrees out, you don’t generally want to wear heavy perfumes in the Oriental family either,” she said. “Lighter and fresher scents in the floral and chypre perfume families act like olfactory air conditioning to lift your spirits and cool you down. They may be light, but they’re not lightweight. Some of these are complex beauties.”

Chypres (pronounced “SHEE-pres”) are that lovely family of fragrances with notes of citrus mixed with oak moss, musk and, often, patchouli. One of Herman’s favorite summer scents is Clarins Eau Dynamisante, a chypre she describes as “citrusy, woody, herbaceous, spicy. Prozac in a perfume bottle.”

Some of her other warm-month favorites include Estee Lauder White Linen — “as elegant and fresh as a starched white shirt; smells like summer to me” — and Hové’s Vetiver — "peppery, dusty, salty, wild. One of the best vetivers out there.”

But Herman has a special affection for Christian Dior Diorella, which she describes as “fresh, funky, fruity, mossy, like citrus perfume spilled inside a suede purse.”

The first time she smelled it, she was on a lunch break from her office job in San Francisco. “I sprayed it on and just got a funny look on my face,” she recalled. “I walked around, sniffing my arm for the next half an hour.

“I think perfumes are really visceral experiences. You feel more connected to yourself and your senses.”

Sitting around a coffee table last Friday in the back of Avery, a new niche fragrance boutique in the Warehouse District, Lauren Lagarde was having a perfume moment.

We were discussing summery scents when Shannon Drake, director of marketing for the company, opened a bottle of Nuda, an intense jasmine fragrance by Nasomatto, a line created by perfumer Alessandro Gualtieri. The fragrance is derived from jasmine blossoms picked at night by gloved workers on a farm on the Cote d’Azur.

Lagarde closed her eyes and shook her head. The scent didn’t bring her to the Cote d’Azur.

“We used to have jasmine growing around our house in Bay St. Louis. This takes me right back there,” Lagarde said. “When I smell this, I’m seven years old again, and it’s summer.”


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I found this post on Herman's blog particularly interesting:
"The more you smell and categorize what you're smelling, comparing one scent with the next, etc., the better you get at recognizing aspects of perfume, even being able to conjure it up in your memory."

Which is exactly why ritual and smells and bells are so important to our practice.

Teacher's Homestead... Lovely View

Raven on blogspot & recent history

I'm so glad to see Raven on blogspot!
and, as always, his insights are worth sharing.

Ignored on the Internet

For the past 3 months I have been doing 2 jobs for the company who pays my salary:
- my regular job, in which I wear no less than 4 hats on any given day
- and project lead for an activity, now completed, that has locked in half a million dollars in savings annually.
(I work for a really big company)

Anyone who is a mom, knows that you never stop being a mom, no matter how crazy the rest of your life gets.   Managing a household doesn't go away either unless you are willing to live in squalor; I'm not. As a postKatrina neighborhood leader, there are times when it feels like I'm working at this and the response time and dedication to neighborhood issues needs to be as good as what the people who pay me get. It can't be or I wouldn't have a job.

Why do I post this?   Because posts to this blog, to the neighborhood blog, and responses to email other than those at work have been sporadic at best.  And because I read an article in the newspaper today, over a cup of coffee and my quiche made by my own hands, about how not responding to "the ether" that is eMail is potentially rude.

The article quotes another author saying: "the No. 1 complaint is that 'people feel they’re being ignored.' "

And I can respect that.  I have 4 eMail accounts that I manage: the one a work, my own personal "Nola as mom" email account, the one for the neighborhood organization (and thankfully I have help here), and my email account as a Strega.  Sometimes the last 2 don't get as much attention.  Is that rude? I can see how those who only communicate with one aspect of "me" might think so.  But it's not rude; it's the physical limitations of being human and not virtual or electronic.  There is only so much "resource sharing" a human can do. It's not that I don't love you... it is just that there is only so much of any one person to go around. And the eMail associated with work and the capacity to get a pay check will *always* win.  Is this an excuse? No, as a trained scientist I can say, this is supporting data for the effect noticed.

My beef with the author is that he mixes professional-they are paying you-eMail with personal.  It is so NOT the same.  Like it or not eMail as work is a tool. When responses are required there is no excuse. And if you can't get to the task or need more time then the *only* professional thing to do is reply with *when* you will be able t o accomplish what the email has requested. And for inside the company mail, there is always the "return receipt" option if it is really, really important.

I think the real reason that people don't respond as fast as some would like is that we are overwhelmed with communication: Voice mail messages on office phone, on cell phone, on home phone; Multiple email addresses (by necessity); And then there is texting... and facebook and now Google+. Overload doesn't begin to describe...  It seems the people who are most likely to be annoyed are those individuals who have one life, one job, one, for lack of a better word, "identity".  Those of us who have more facets to our lives have it harder and this can manifest itself as non-responsive. 

The only other option is to constantly have you face in your smartphone and respond to all the electronic communications and tune out face to face communications.  You tell me... which is "more rude"?

You could be Basque?

Bruce Eggler article from New Orleans Times Picayune
Few New Orleanians would identify themselves as of Basque heritage, but according to one of them, that's only because they're unaware of their families' origins a few centuries ago.

Ellis Lucia, The Times-Picayune

Michel-Antoine Goitia-Nicolas was photographed in 2003, with a Basque flag and coat of arms.

From Abadie and Alciatore to Yzaguirre and Zatarain, says Michel-Antoine Goitia-Nicolas, dozens of longtime local families can trace their origins back to the Basque region that straddles the border between France and Spain. Most of them, he says, are aware only that their ancestors emigrated from France or Spain, not of their exact ethnic background. But, he says, whether Barbe or Begue, Chachere or Charbonnet, Gayarre or Goyeneche, Lacombe or Lemoyne, Mandeville or Marigny, Sapir or Soraparu -- all have Basque origins.

Goitia-Nicolas, 46, who was born in Canada and has lived in New Orleans since 1984, founded a nonprofit group, the Louisiana Basque-American Society and Cultural Organization, or LABASCO, in 2003 to promote awareness of the state's Basque heritage. He has ambitious plans for the group, though so far its list of accomplishments is confined mainly to numerous speeches Goitia-Nicolas has given around Louisiana and the Gulf Coast to raise awareness of Basque history and local families' connection to the region.

The group will hold a dinner meeting today from 5 to 8 p.m. at Galvez Restaurant in the French Quarter. Goitia-Nicolas will speak on Basque history in Louisiana and announce a fund to raise a monument to Jean Lafitte and other local Basque worthies.

Lafitte -- or Laffite, as he spelled it -- is remembered by most as a successful pirate or privateer and smuggler who operated out of Barataria Bay and New Orleans and helped Gen. Andrew Jackson defend the city from British invasion in 1814-15. Goitia-Nicolas, however, refers to him as a "man of mark," as in "letter of marque and reprisal," an official government licence authorizing a private vessel to attack and capture enemy vessels.

Why July 23, and why Galvez Restaurant for the dinner? Because, Goitia-Nicolas said this week, this is the birthday of Bernardo de Galvez, the Spanish military leader who served as governor of Louisiana from 1777 to 1785. Himself of Basque descent, Galvez "brought both Cajuns and Islenos to Louisiana," and both groups contained large numbers of people with Basque heritage, according to Goitia-Nicolas.

The easiest way to recognize a family's Basque origins, Goitia-Nicolas said, is by a name that means nothing in French or Spanish but shows origins in the Basque tongue, which is unrelated to any other language. "Garcia," he said, is automatically considered a Spanish name, but it really means "wheatfield" in Basque. "Lafitte," he said, is Basque for "blackberry."

Because his family spoke Basque, Goitia-Nicolas said, he quickly recognized names such as "Soraparu" and "Zatarain" on street signs and grocery shelves when he arrived in New Orleans, and he realized the city had a strong Basque connection he had not suspected. He began studying records of immigration to New Orleans in the 1700s and 1800s. Even before the city was founded in 1718, he said, most of the early Spanish and French explorers and colonizers in Louisiana were Basques.
Goitia-Nicolas' said LABASCO's other goals include publishing a book about Basques' role in Louisiana history, establishing a Basque cultural center and creating an endowment to promote awareness of the state's Basque heritage. He said the center and endowment could appropriately be based at either Loyola or Tulane universities -- both, he said, named for people from Basque families.
Goitia-Nicolas said he had about 30 reservations for tonight's dinner but was hoping for many more.

The price is $50. Reservations can be made at 504.595.3400. The restaurant is at 914 N. Peters St.
Goitia-Nicolas can be reached at grecetbasque@aol.com.

Full Moon Effects

Listen to this article on PRI's The World about how the Moon impacts life on earth.

It's specifically talking about lion attacks and how the waning moon makes for a greater chance of lions being hungry and attacking people as they look for other prey.

The article says that people are safer when the Moon is full.
And most dangerous when the moon is waning.

Now think about how the moon affected our ancestors and therefore our practices.

Interview with Raven Grimassi

A 2009 Interview with Raven Grimassi on PaganPages.org

Don Quixote - Barataria

Re: "Did Don Quixote inspire Barataria name?" Your Opinions, July 8.
Records show that early French colonists named a swampy region south of New Orleans "Barataria'' after an episode in Cervantes' "Don Quixote de la Mancha.'' As Spanish literature teacher Mary Jo Brown explained in her letter, Don Quixote's sidekick, Sancho Panza, received an imaginary island on dry land named Barataria.

As early as 1732, French maps show the "Isle Barataria,'' encircled by Bayous Villars, Barataria, Rigolettes and Perot and Lake Salvador. The colonist Le Page du Pratz stated in his "History of Louisiana'' that the area was named for the fictional Barataria "because it was enclosed by these lakes and their outlets to form almost an island on dry land, as was that island of which Sancho Panza was made governor.''
Claude Joseph Villars Dubreuil, who was the king's contractor of public works, claimed to have named the Isle of Barataria. It was part of his extensive "Barataria Plantation'' that he acquired about 1730, partly for the extraction of timber and shells for construction work. Jean-Baptiste Massy, who received his land grant across the bayou in 1726, also named his plantation "Barataria.''

The labyrinth of bayous that served as a hideout for pirates and smugglers may have been responsible for the sense in which the name was applied to the whole region.

"Barataria'' is a Provencal equivalent to the 15th century French words "baraterie,'' meaning deception, and "barater'' meaning to deceive, to exchange, to barter. The English equivalents of "baraterie'' is barratry, one meaning of which is fraudulence or illegality at sea.

Betsy Swanson
Harahan

It's so easy to lose the past...Thank Besty for saving some of it for us.

Solstice Magic

Nature is speaking to us. Some are listening.

Thomas Friedman says the Earth is Full.  He bases his NY Times article on the work of Paul Gilding.

As we approach the Summer Solstice, we are charged with doing magic to protect the earth.

But magic must always be *informed* . We must watch...we must listen... before we can know how to act.

Personally... I'm thinking cool, wet thoughts.   We have been in serious drought for at least 2 months.
The weather has been, dry and warm. In the afternoons and early moring the humidity is so, unnaturally, low that it feels like Colorado instead of Louisiana.  I know there has been too much snow & rain in the Mississippi Watershed.  We watched the river gauge hoover at flood stage, while we waited for the Corps to send the water into the floodplains where it would flow naturally if not leveed for our protection.  And we had to water our gardens to stop them from drying up at the same time.

The earth is speaking to us... we need to listen before it's too late.

Benevento

I am a mostly silent member of the Traditional Stregheria yahoo group...

One of the members, Myth, does significant research and graciously posts to the site.
She often reposts things she has researched and written in the past.

A resent repost on Benevento was quite interesting.

Who are the real Strega?

Raven Grimassi answers this question on his new blogspot blog.

Stormy Weather - Start of Hurricane Season 2011

Hurricane Season starts June 1st and ends November 30th.

I'd like a 2011 Hurricane Season a lot like 2009 or 2010. Just enough to keep the Gulf cooled off... storms far enough away from New Orleans not to make any of us crazy.

Listen to Lena and hope that we don't have Stormy Weather. I know it's been more than 5 years but we're still sad and mad and we don't want a repeat any time soon. And too many families are still apart.

A description of the Estrucans

I found The Etruscan Chimera - an archeology mystery by Lyn Hamilton in a coffee shop where I regulary leave my magazines and unwanted paperbacks. It was free for the taking.

The following excerpt is from p. 27 - 30 (paperback version)

"What I found interesting was how much, yet how little, we know about the Etruscans, or the people we have come to know as Etruscans. It is unlikely they ever referred to themselves that way. That name came from the Romans, who referred to their neighbors, occasional allies, and in the end, intractable enemies, as Tusci or Etrusci. The Greeks called them Tyrrhenoi, after which the Tyrrhenian Sea is named. The Etruscans called themselves Rasenna or Rasna.

Their language, a rather unusually one that, unlike almost all other European languages, did not have Indo-European roots, has been deciphered to a large extent, but when it comes right down to it, there is very little to read, other than inscriptions on tombs and such. They may have had, indeed must surely have had, a rich body of literature, but it is lost to us, so what we know about them comes from archaeology or the writings of others: Greeks and Romans for example, whose own particular biases are reflected in their accounts. They also must have had a complex ritual and religious life, because we know that long after the Etruscan cities came under the domination of Rome, Roman citizens were still calling upon Etruscan haruspices, diviners, to aid them in important deliberations and decisions. The number and elaborate nature of their tombs indicate that there was a social structure, including a wealthy elite, but that also they believed in an afterlife. What exactly they believed, however, is, to a large extent shrouded in the mists of time.

What we do know is that people who shared a common language, customs and beliefs, dominated a large part of central Italy, what is now Tuscany - the word itself speaks to its Etruscan roots - part of Umbria and northern Lazio near Rome between about 700 B.C.E. until their defeat and assimilation by the Romans in the third century B.C.E. Their territory was essentially bounded by the Tiber River on the south and east, and the Arno to the north. To the west was the Tyrrhenian Sea. They lived in cities and used rich metal deposits along the Tyrrhenian shore to develop extensive trade by land and sea. In time, a loose federation of twelve cities, the Dodecapolis, grew up. The ruling elite of these cities, city states, really met annually at a place called Volsinii, to elect a leader.

During their heyday, before the birth of the Roman republic, there were Etruscan kings of Rome - the Taquins - who, between 616 and 509 B.C.E, were instrumental in building the city that would ultimately defeat them. The last king of Rome was Tarquinus the Proud, who was explected from Rome in 509 B.C.E. From that time on, Rome and the Etruscans were enemies, fighting over every inch of ground.

In the end, the Etruscan federation could not hold against the might of Rome. For whatever, reason the cities did not band together to protect themselves, and one by one, they fell. Their cities were abandoned, or fell into ruin, or were simply replaced by others, until they were reborn, in a different form, as medieval cities, some of the loveliest in Italy: Orvieto, Chiusi, Cortona, Volterra, Arezzo, and Perugia amoung them.

As mysterious as these people may have been, I noticed that many had opinions on them. Indeed, I would say that the Etruscans presented a blank slate, in a way, on which later people found a convenient resting place for their own hopes, beliefs, and desires. Cosimo de Medici was hardly the first to use the people's rather vague notions about the Etrucans for his own purposes. A Dominican friar who when by the name of Annuis of Viterbo, determined, in the fifteenth century, that the Etruscans, a noble and peace-loving people, according to him, had helped repopulate the earth after the Flood. To prove his point, he argued that their language was a version of Aramaic Despite his rather outlandish views, Annius's theories may have helped save some Etruscan antiquities from destruction by the church as pagan symbols. The Etruscans could have used Annius a century later, when something like six tons of Etruscan bronzes were melted down to adorn a church in Rome.

Lawerence, of Lady Chatterley's Lover fame, also thought the Etruscans were his kind of people, in touch with nature and their natural selves. He saw phallic symbols everywhere on his visits to Etruscan sites and wrote glowingly of what he saw to be their refreshingly natural philosophy. On the other hand, the philosopher Nietzsche, who arguably kewn something about angst, called them gloomy - schwermutigen - although what made him think that was not clear. The art critic Berensen dismissed all Etruscan art as being non-Greek and therefore unworthy, even though, if I'd interpreted what I'd read correctly, the Greeks living in Italy had been responsible for some of it, and some of the art prized as Greek and Roman had later been revealed to be Etruscan. By the end of my reading, it was pretty clear to me that views expressed about the Etruscans said more about the holder of those opinions than about the Etruscans themselves."

Information in Bb - YouTube Poetry

Information
By Daniel Donahoo (2009)

YouTube Poetry by essforgee

She closes the lid.
And unplugs a device no bigger than her thumb from the computer.
"My life's work" she says.
But it isn't her life's work.

You see we store information like an Escher Painting.
It shouldn't all fit in there. But it does.
And every day we manage to fit more and more into smaller and smaller spaces.
"Until one day, she says, "we'll be able to fit all the information that the world has. Everything that everyone knows and believes and dreams into nothing."

It will all be in there;
stored and filed, tagged with any key words you might imagine.
Our hard drives will be thin air.
It will make nanobots look like elephants.
And elephants will be in there too.
Tagged.
Accessible by search terms like
grey, ivory and the largest land dwelling mammal.
We'll process away at nothing and understand everything.

We'll think of of word and the information will slip in,
not through our ears or eyes but straight through out skin.
Information will breathe in and out of us, permeate our skin.
Our knowing will be as deep as it is wide.

You see our work here is to learn so much, to be so full of knowing,
that there is left is to do is unlearn.
Humanity must get to a point where we let go.
We leave the useless ideas and the spent ideologies in recycle bin:
like an adolescent brain shedding neurons,
like a snake slithering from its old skin,
like an old man who's come to understand so well
the point where reality meets the intangible
that he's able to decide which breath will be his last.
And he will enjoy that breath more than any that he has taken in his entire life.

And Her life's work is more than a 4 meg flash drive
"My life's work", she says, "is the impact that this has.
"This is not about what I produce.
It is all about what others receive."

Saints Joseph, Partick, Big Chief & Spy Boy

New Orleans is such a mash up of cultures that we have

Irish-Italian Parades in 3 parishes (for everyone else in the USA this is the equivalet of 3 counties)

AND

The Indians (Mardi Gras Indians) hold their Super Sunday around the same time, which is intrestingly enough....

The Spring Equinox

Biggest Full Moon in Decades

Moon gazers are in for a treat this weekend when the full moon will appear 14 percent bigger.
Article taken from DiscoveryNews

Once Upon a Time - Mardi Gras

Once upon a time: Mardi Gras a look back at the history of it all
Published: Tuesday, February 22, 2011, 11:44 AM
Updated: Wednesday, February 23, 2011, 12:20 PM
By The Times-Picayune

SOURCE: The Times-Picayune's Mardi Gras 2011 Special Section.

It was the first time for the group of Mardi Gras newbies visiting from out of town. They headed down Bourbon Street surrounded by the kaleidoscopic shock-and-awe that is Fat Tuesday in the French Quarter.

One of them was costumed like a recent headline-making serial killer while her friend's elaborate outfit was designed to resemble a disgraced congressman who was caught with his pants down - literally - in an airport bathroom. Slightly more family-friendly attire included the group's small contingent dressed in "Mama Mia!" T-shirts, which broke into song at the drop of a hat.

Somewhere down the street a stereo was blasting "Carnival Time."

Two scantily attired men dressed up like cherubs hung on to a street pole while pretending to shoot "love arrows" in our direction.

And it wasn't even noon yet.

IN THE BEGINNING

The ancient roots of Carnival can be traced to the Feast of the Epiphany on Jan. 6 - aka Kings' Day or Twelfth Night (as in the 12 days of Christmas). In some places around the world Jan. 6 celebrates the arrival of the three wise men at the birthplace of the Christ child.

In New Orleans, Kings' Day simultaneously ends the Christmas season and fires the starting pistol for Carnival. This festival of fun finds its roots in various pagan celebrations of spring, some dating back 5,000 years. But it was Pope Gregory XIII who made it a Christian holiday when, in 1582, he put it on his Gregorian calendar (the 12-month one we still use today). He placed Mardi Gras (or Fat Tuesday, the final day of the Carnival season) on the day before Ash Wednesday, the first of Lent's 40 days preceding Easter. That way, all the debauchery would be finished when it came time to fast and pray.

Much of the first part of the Carnival season is made up of invitation-only coronation balls and supper dances hosted by private clubs known as krewes. The public portion of Carnival comes to life a couple of weeks before Mardi Gras when the krewes hit the streets, staging more than 60 parades in metropolitan New Orleans.

Mardi Gras arrived in North America with the LeMoyne brothers, Iberville and Bienville, in the late 17th century, when King Louis XIV sent the pair to defend France's claim to the New World territory of Louisiana. The explorers found the mouth of the Mississippi River on March 3, 1699, Mardi Gras of that year. They made camp a few miles upriver, named the spot Point d'Mardi Gras and partook in a spontaneous party. This is often referred to as North America's first Mardi Gras. However, it is just as likely that the weary explorers were simply celebrating the fact that they were still alive.

A couple of decades later, Bienville founded New Orleans and soon Carnival celebrations were an annual event highlighted by lavish balls and masked spectacles. Some were small, private parties touting select guest lists, while others were raucous affairs open to the public. Collectively, they reflected such a propensity for frolic in the local citizenry that historian Robert Tallant wrote in his book "Mardi Gras" that "it has been said that the natives would step over a corpse on the way to a ball or the opera and think nothing of it."

Parades officially became a part of the festivities in 1838. On Ash Wednesday of that year, The Commercial Bulletin read: "The European custom of celebrating the last day of the Carnival by a procession of masqued figures through the streets was introduced here yesterday."

ROWDY EVENT

Over the next 20 years, Carnival became an increasingly rowdy event defined by drunkenness and violence. Eventually, churches and even the press began to call for its demise. In 1857, Mardi Gras found itself on the verge of death (having already been outlawed twice under Spanish and early American rule).

Then along came Comus, a group whose tale actually began 27 years earlier in the wee hours of Jan. 1, 1830 as a group of young men walked home from a New Year's Eve party in Mobile, Ala. They passed a general store featuring an outdoor display of rakes, hoes, shovels and cowbells. Making the kind of decision inebriated young men are apt to, they picked up the supplies and headed to the mayor's house where they caused quite a stir. An obviously patient man, the mayor invited them in, sobered them up and, according to historian Buddy Stall, made the motley krewe's leader an offer.

"Next year," hizzoner suggested, "why not organize yourselves and let everybody have fun?"

Led by Michael Kraft, the group called themselves the Cowbellion de Rakin Society. They paraded the following New Year's Eve and were so successful that the procession became an annual event.

Now, jump ahead to 1857 when New Orleans city leaders were on the verge of canceling Mardi Gras for good. Six Cowbellions now living in the Big Easy proposed forming a new private club to present a parade based on a theme, with floats, costumed riders and flambeaux (torch carriers who lit the way) - an orderly alternative to the chaos that Carnival had become. They chose the name Comus after the Greek god of revelry and coined the term "krewe." City leaders agreed and Comus was credited with saving Mardi Gras.

It wasn't until after the Civil War that the second Carnival krewe made its debut in 1870. The new group chose Jan. 6 to present its parade and ball, giving themselves the name Twelfth Night Revelers. Although they no longer parade, the Revelers ball (along with the Kings' Day streetcar ride of the Phunny Phorty Phellows) marks the official start of the season.

During the Revelers first fete, an innovation was brought to Mardi Gras - a queen. Well, almost. After their tableau was presented, court fools carried out a giant king cake, the traditional pastry of the season, in which had been baked a golden bean. The plan was that pieces of cake would be presented to a group of young ladies and the one who found the bean would be crowned Carnival's first queen.

However, it seems that the fools were quite drunk and instead of presenting the cake, they either dropped it on or threw it at the young women. When the flour cleared, none of the appalled females would admit to having the bean. So, the first Carnival queen - wasn't, until the following year.

By 1872, new troubles were brewing in the city. Postwar carpetbaggery had reached its zenith and rumblings of revolt against the city government could be heard. As Carnival approached, fears of masked reprisals surfaced. Then came the diversion city leaders needed. News arrived that Grand Duke Alexis Romanoff Alexandrovitch, brother of the heir apparent to the throne of Russia, had accepted the city's invitation to Mardi Gras.

A plan was hatched.

A new krewe of prominent citizens from both the government and its opposition would be formed and a King of all Carnival would be chosen. The group would call itself the School of Design and its ruler was to be Rex.

What no one knew was that the duke had accepted because his visit would coincide with the New Orleans opening of singer Lydia Thompson's touring musical, in which she performed a nonsensical ballad called "If Ever I Cease to Love." (Supposedly, she had also sung the number privately for the duke during a Big Apple rendezvous.) When news of Thompson and the duke hit the local grapevine, public interest in the visit grew enormously.

Mardi Gras morning found the duke sitting in the official reviewing stand as Rex, atop a bay charger, led 10,000 maskers in a line more than a mile long. Among them were a number of bands, all of which broke into "If Ever I Cease to Love" as they passed the duke. Alas, the romance was ill-fated, but after 137 years, Rex remains King of Carnival and "If Ever I Cease to Love" is still the official song of the season.

The oldest parading African-American krewe is the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, which first took to the streets in 1909. Not taking themselves as seriously as the staunch white krewes, the group dressed its first king, William Story, in an old sack and a crown fashioned from a lard can. A banana stalk was his scepter. Over the years, Zulu has become a perennial favorite and the krewe's gilded coconuts (painted gold and decorated with glitter) are one of the season's most prized throws.

MODERN MARDI GRAS

By the 1950s, the truck parades, composed of floats built atop flatbed trucks (usually by families), had become well established. The late '60s saw the advent of the "superkrewes" Endymion and Bacchus, which broke with tradition by offering open memberships, larger floats and celebrity kings.

But Carnival faced new foes in the latter half of the 20th century. A 1979 police strike caused parades to be canceled in the city, just to see a number of them pop up in the suburbs. The City Council's anti-discrimination ordinance of 1988 called for krewes to either open their ranks or get off public streets. In response, three of the four oldest krewes - Comus (1857), Momus (1873) and Proteus (1882) - took their floats and went home. Rex remained and the other slots were filled. Proteus returned in 2000 and the following year became the first krewe to parade in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

In 2002, the 9/11 tragedy led to an extension of the NFL season, meaning that the Super Bowl set to be played in New Orleans the week before Carnival began, would now take place in the middle of the festivities.

With some maneuvering, a number of parades were rescheduled to accommodate the game.

Just a few years ago, with the city still reeling from Hurricane Katrina, the Carnival season was somewhat compacted but only a handful of krewes opted out of parading, most of whom returned for 2007.

And in 2010, as the Superbowl Champion Saints added spice to the already joyous season, Mardi Gras seemed more triumphant than the usual celebration of the end of winter.

Krewes shifted days, times and even halted parades so as not to conflict with the events.

Though not an obstacle, the Super Bowl sensation Saints were another layer of Carnival.

So, it seems that in New Orleans, no matter what the obstacle or the celebration, the Greatest Free Show on Earth has always found a way around it.

As Stall writes in "Buddy Stall's New Orleans," "It has been said that the people of New Orleans love Carnival and Mardi Gras parades to such an extreme that if a catastrophe were to occur and only two people survived, at the next Mardi Gras one of them would be in costume marching down the street, beating a drum and holding a banner, while the other would be standing on the side in costume, drinking a Dixie Beer and hollering, "Throw me something, mister!"

SOURCE: The Times-Picayune's Mardi Gras 2011 Special Section.

We are Winning

Listen and watch the lyrics of the Flobots Video on YouTube

If we're dying, it's a celebration: A letter to the editor

This letter to the editor was published in the Times Picayune.
"Once again our mouths are foaming because we can't take it when some "outsider" (at Newsweek, no less) recites facts about New Orleans.

The Newsweek article didn't slam New Orleans for its lack of new industry, an inability to attract Fortune 500 companies, or a lack of professional opportunities. The survey cited facts about population decline and a lack of young people.

Ranting and raving about this just reinforces stereotypes: We are 20 years behind the times; we can't face our own problems; we are a city full of incompetent characters, our best days are behind us.

Perhaps the key is to accept the facts and embrace them. Truth is, the rest of America isn't exactly prospering.

To be a dying city in a dying country actually makes us a loss leader for once. And nobody lives while dying as well as we do. Our food, our family, our joy of life have made us one of the happiest people in America -- even in the face of disaster.

I live in a place where my family and friends know how to live. Perhaps America should come here to see how to enjoy dying. We'll show them a jazz funeral.

Morgan Molthrop
New Orleans

Thank you Morgan.

Also see this article "City gets a mixed bag of publicity"
Saturday February 19, 2011 By Michelle Krupa Staff writer

Spells, Saints, and Streghe: Witchcraft, Folk Magic, and Healing in Italy

A link to the work of Sabina Magliocco

Lip Service

New Orleans Cred
by Chris Rose

What's in a kiss? History tells us it is the mark of love, faith, friendship, respect — even betrayal.

  So: What's that got to do with anything?

  This: I think I speak for many non-natives of New Orleans when I suggest the longer we stay here, the more we look for affirmation that this is where we fit in, this is where we belong, this is where ... we are from.

  Yes, even after 25 years here. And that alone is one of the great things about this town: how she continues, over the decades, to reveal herself to you, how she continues to amaze and delight. (OK, frustrate and madden at times, too — but that's not today's story.)

  New Orleans cred manifests itself in many ways, from the obvious to the sublime: When you hang your first Mardi Gras beads over your rear view mirror; when you finally grow comfortable ordering a sandwich "dressed"; for that matter, when you stop calling it a sandwich.

  You think purple, green and gold actually look good together. In fact, due to the unyielding force of cultural brainwashing, you begin to identify the color yellow as gold. And purple comes in two shades: K&B purple ... and not.

  Other ways: You learn how to pronounce Natchitoches, Picayune, Soileau and Oubre. You stop using your automobile turn signals. Your male cab driver calls you "babe." You think Angus Lind is funny. (OK, this one takes a long time, but it happens. Eventually.)

  The longer you're here, the more subtle the indications become. I had one of those the other day. It was a kiss that gave me a touch of reaffirmation, a notion that I am not only "from" New Orleans, but "of" New Orleans.

  Yes, after 25 years, it still matters.

  I had an encounter that began with a buss on the cheek and, when it was over, as I drove away from the incident, I laughed out loud about it, all alone in my car. ("Another sign of New Orleans-ness?").

  Maybe I make this out to be more than it was. In fact, as I tell you the story, it seems very anticlimactic; it was such a small, teeny-tiny thing, a non-event, unspectacular, lacking drama and mystery. I kissed my mail carrier.

  Well, she's not actually my mail carrier anymore. Michelle is my former mail carrier, from many, many years ago, pre-storm and all that.

  I hadn't seen her in ages. She was always so kind, always filled with cheer, always asking about my kids, always delivering not just mail, but a pleasant interlude no matter the weather or anything else.

  So, when I saw her walking down a street a few neighborhoods over from mine, I hit the brake, rolled down the window and called her name. I got out of the car and we walked up to each other and kissed each other on the cheek and proceeded to make small fusses over each other.

  Like I said, not a lot to it, really. Other than this:

  I have lived in two other places, Wisconsin and Maryland, and I cannot for the life of me ever imagine walking up to a mail carrier and planting a wet one on her (or his!) cheek. The act seems to violate so many tenets of personal space, propriety and all the other social restrictions folks in other places burden themselves with but which we tend to casually disregard in these parts.

  In review, perhaps I am wont to read too much into things. But, in many ways, it is my job.

  For the past quarter century, one of my primary means of employment has been to write love letters to New Orleans. The primary means to do this, is to overstate the implications of almost everything — the slightest of local gestures, colloquialisms and traditions — and blow them into metaphors that speak to the wondrous, peerless, unparalleled uniqueness of this town.

  I'll be the first to admit: It can be toxically overwrought, cloying to the point of ennui. Does everything — everything — that happens around here have to speak to cultural significance? More to the point: Can't a kiss just be a kiss?

  Well ... no, in fact, it can't. And maybe I'm blowing this brief incident completely out of proportion, once again getting myself all caught up in the New Orleans self-love thing. Maybe I am reading too much into a kiss.

History tells me I wouldn't be the first to do such a thing.

Link - February in Ancient Rome

See La Vecchia Credenza On Line Feburary in Ancient Rome

FEBRUARY IS UPON US, birth month of great presidents and martyrs, and for lovers around the world, the month of Saint Valentine’s Day. While births of martyrs and presidents may be mere coincidence of time, not so the celebration of love. To explicate the matter, one must search to the very foundations of ancient Rome. When Rome was first founded, wild and bloodthirsty wolves roamed the woods around the city. They often attacked and mauled and even devoured Roman citizens. With characteristic ingenuity, the Romans begged the god Lupercus to keep the wolves away. Lupercus was the god of the wolves, so he was expected to have some influence on their behavior.

This tale begins when Numitor, king of the city of Alba Longa, was ousted by his brother, Amulius. Numitor had a daughter, Rhea Silvia. His wicked brother had her made a vestal virgin to prevent her bearing any offspring with a right to the throne. Mars, the god of war, had his way with her anyway, and she bore twin sons, Romulus and Remus. Afraid of these half-god twins, Amulius cast them into the flooded Tiber River in a basket and set them adrift. They were found by a mother wolf who suckled and nurtured them as her own pups. Later they were found and raised by shepherds, who were grateful for the seeming immunity to wolf attacks on their flocks and the resulting fecundity of the sheep. The shepherds rightly gave thanks to the god Lupercus, protctor of flocks against wolves.

Still later, Romulus and Remus led a shepherd revolt against Amulius and slew him, restoring the throne to their grandfather. They then decided to build their own city, but Romulus quarreled with his brother over petty issues regarding the size of the walls, and killed him in the resulting fight. Thus the city was named Rome over the remaining twin.

As a rite of spring and the oncoming fertility brought to all of nature, the early Romans chose February 15th as a proper day to honor Lupercus, Faunus, and other gods and goddesses of fertility and protection. The ritual was named Lupercalia and involved two naked young men slaughtering a dog (symbolic wolf?) and a goat.

In addition to the blood sacrifice, vestal virgins affixed cakes of grain from the previous year’s harvest to the very fig tree believed to be the spot where Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf. The naked young men were ritually smeared with the blood of sacrifice, then wiped clean with milk-drenched wool. Our symbolic Romulus and Remus then donned loincloths made from the skins and ran about the altar and into the city. The young women of the city proffered their flesh to the young men as they passed, for which they were lightly lashed with goatskin flails made from the sacrificial goat. These whips were named “februa”, and give us the name of our current month. The lashing ostensibly promoted great fertility among the women and it was a joyous moment when the goatskin struck their flesh.

As the years passed and The Roman Empire adopted Christianity, the Pope, in 494 AD transformed Lupercalia into the feast of the Purification of The Virgin Mary, trying to water down the still immensely popular holiday with Christian virtue.

In another of early Christianity’s veiled attempts to embrace the flesh, a certain Saint Valentine was lionized, having his day tied to the former Lupercalia by establishing it the day before, on February 14th. There are three equally likely candidates for the honor of being the original saint, who was either deeply in love with one of his female converts, or very compassionate towards young lovers at a time when such latitude for anything sexual was vehemently forbidden by the church.

In any event, the supernatural fertility of The Virgin Mary and the terrestrial fertility of young lovers around the Christian world are now inextricably linked by having their feast days so joined. So, share some goat’s milk along with the chocolate as you woo your lover on Valentine’s Day.

…and maybe howl like a wolf and give them a few lashes while you’re at it.

Link - An Ancient Etruscan Love Spell

See La Vecchia Credenza On Line An Ancient Etruscan Love Spell

Some people will do anything for love. Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ died for it. Wars have been fought in its name, kingdoms have been won or lost on its account, and many a family has been either blessed or cursed because of a union of love. The ancient Etruscans certainly went through a lot of trouble to find that perfect mate. Last night, I had dinner with a couple who have been unbelievably happy together for as long as I’ve known them. After almost thirty years, they still behave like newlyweds and have shown a bond of trust and caring that is seldom seen these days. When I had the opportunity, I asked if they had a secret.

The happy gentleman said the secret was to be lucky enough to find a woman as kind, loving and courageous as his wife, which he simply attributed to chance. His wife remained silent (at least until I got her alone while her husband was hailing a taxi).

I repeated my question to her alone this time, hoping to hear something really juicy – perhaps a tale of a wild and twisted affair with an exotic bohemian paramour, much like Harold Pinter wrote about in his extraordinary play, “The Lover”. Instead, she said she would email me in the morning with her secret which she has been silent about since she discovered it.

Early this morning, the email arrived. “The secret” was an ancient Etruscan spell designed to attract the perfect mate, which had been updated first in the 18th century and later in the early 20th by her own grandmother. She swears that this ‘love spell’ really worked, and has never shared it with anyone, including her husband. Today, I share it with you.

The origins of this love spell are obscure, but there is a litany in archaic Italian of which I have provided an English translation. It is a ritual that requires a bit of effort and a lot of herbal materials as well as a profound belief in its success. Otherwise (according to my friend), its nothing more than empty words. The materials can be obtained readily in any food store, herb market or metaphysical supply store.

The courage to actually do this? Thats up to you….


Materials:

Frankincense incense (stick or resin)

Herbal Mixture:

3 parts lavender

3 parts damiana

3 parts patchouly

1 part Dragon’s blood resin

13 gardenia petals

4 parts red clover

3 Saw Palmetto Berries

3 parts peppermint

3 parts Rue

13 drops of your favorite perfume

Mortar and Pestle (for grinding herbs)

Small red drawstring bag or square of red fabric with red thread or cord

THE SPELL

Prepare space to work in by making sure the area is clean and the floors swept. Meditate on power, success and love, and begin by slowly grinding the herbs in a clockwise movement in the mortar and pestle. Do not add the oils at this time. Stirring the herbs in a clockwise direction with your finger, slowly add the oil mixture until it is well blended. Hold the bowl in your hand and enchant with the words:

Diana, bella Diana!

Che tanto bella e buona siei,

E tanto ti e piacere

Ti ho fatto,

Anche a te di fare al amore,

Dunque spero che anche in questa cosa

Tu mi voglia aiutare,

E se tu vorrai

Tutto tu portrai,

Se questa grazia mi vorrai fare:

Chiamerai tua figlia Aradia,

Al letto della bella fanciulla

La mandera Aradia,

La fanciulla in una canina cinertira,

Alla camera mia la mandera,

Ma entrate in camera mia,

Non sara piu una canina,

Ma tornera una bella fanciulla,

Bella cane era prima,

E cosi potro fare al amore

A mio piacimento,

Come a me piacera.

Quando mi saro divertito

A mi piacere diro.

“Per volere della Fata Diana,

E di sua figlia Aradia,

Torna una canina

Come tu ere prima!”

TRANSLATION:

Diana, beautiful Diana

Who art indeed as good as beautiful

By all the worship I have given thee

and all the joy of love which thou hast known

I do implore thee aid me in my love!

What thou wilt is true

Thou canst ever do

And if the grace I seek thou’ll grant to me,

Then call, I pray, thy daughter Aradia,

and send her to the bedside of the man/woman

And give that man/woman the likeness of a dog

and make him/her then come to me in my room

but when he/she once has entered it, I pray

that he/she may re-assume her human form

as beautiful as ever he/she was before

and may I then make love to him/her until

our souls with joy are fully satisfied

Then by the aid of the great Faery Queen

and of her daughter, fair Aradia

may he/she be turned into a dog again

and then to human form as once before

Draw a bath, and light fresh incense. Place the herbal/oil mixture into the red bag, or tie it up in the red cloth spuare. Submerge it into the bath water, and let it steep while you inhale the incense and focus on your desire. Enter the bath slowly, feeling the tingling of the bath on your entire body as you do. Take a deep breath, filling your lungs to capacity, and submerge yourself completely under the water. While underwater, exhale all of the air completely out of your lungs, and visualize any obstacles in the way of your success with this spell leaving your body with the air. Do this three times. Let the water run out of the tub while you are lying in it, and do not get out until all of the water has drained. Let your body dry naturally; do not use a towel. When your body is completely dry, dress yourself and apply your favorite fragrance that was used in the herbal mixture. Leave your home and go out for the evening. Within 28 days, you will have attracted attract the perfect lover.