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Old women talk about old things: history, myth, magic and their
checkered pasts, about what changes and what does not.

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

SAVE THE ARCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE





I cannot believe that this vandalism of an actual treasure -- drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- is even being contemplated. It's time to ask where the souls of the people now proposing this atrocity are, and in what black hole of greed they dwell. 

This is the only planet we have, and so much of what our grandkids' future will look like depends upon our generation's changing our attitude toward Mother Earth. She's not Ours. We're Hers. We're part of a system, a part that's taken to acting like a virus. here, at the bottom of the sky, we are goldfish in a small bowl, where no one's going to come and change the water.  The way we're being taken by our corporate leaders can only end with the human race dying in it's own excrement. 

There has to be a major mental shift inside the heads of a lot of people if we are to protect such places from the "take paradise and put in...." an oil rig tendency of the guys who have made themselves our masters. 

The sad facts are that's it's just another shell game. The money from drilling is pie in the sky. Someone among our complicit legislator needs to feel the stirring of conscience and put unbiased eyes on the numbers. These show that drilling in the Refuge is the usual corporate scam, which ends with one rich guy (Think The Baron Harkonnen,) a lot of busted folks--and with the bill for the clean-up for the toxic ruin left behind-- as well as for the many "subsidies" the industry will require--all the responsibility of the taxpayer. 

If the peasants stopped staring into the daily electronic Circus Maximus and looked around them, they'd see the shackles being locked onto to their ankles--once again--by the thugs who seem to always-- in this and every other human civilization to date -- eventually rig/bully/steal/murder their way to the top. 

  
From The Audubon Society:
      
"The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge supports millions of birds that migrate through our state and all 50 states to raise their chicks in its pristine habitat. Birds like the Tundra Swan and Northern Pintail return year after year to nest on its coastal plain, while caribou undertake one the world's longest land migrations to reach the coastal plain and give birth to their young.


The Arctic Refuge does not belong in a tax bill. Yet the Senate tax bill, which could soon receive a vote in the House, opens the Refuge to drilling while avoiding regular order and real debate. The numbers don't add up. Leasing is unlikely to meet the $1 billion instructions--more realistic estimates suggest it would only raise $37.5M.  U.S. oil production and exports are at record levels while oil prices are near record lows. Further, the bill makes oil drilling the primary purpose for the Refuge's coastal plain, limiting environmental review in a precedent that puts all of our federally protected lands at risk. The Arctic Refuge is one of our last truly wild places and an iconic American landscape." 


The Arctic Refuge is even more--it's a living, breathing World Heritage site, a vital part of the heart-beat of our planet. 

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Judy Chicago's DINNER PARTY




During 1974-79, Judy Chicago, along with collaborators both male and female in what are patronizingly called “decorative arts,” (embroidery, weaving, painting on ceramic) created a work called The Dinner Party. This was a triangular table with an exquisitely embroidered runner and 39 hand-painted and decorated ceramic plates. Each was made in the shape of a vulva, and decorated in a way which was meant to express the spiritual, artistic and esthetic contribution to society made by a famous woman. 


The Dinner Party Wolstonecraft Plate may be seen, along with the rest, 
at the Brooklyn Museum: 


The work has plenty of critics, some, the usual suspects, powerful old men in high places who loudly declared that it was “pornographic,” but also quite a few feminists. Some criticism has to do with the way certain famous women are represented—for instance, frilly 50's petticoat frills might not have been the best choice for the solitary lady in white Emily Dickinson. Perhaps the inclusion of Georgia O’Keeffe, who declared that her flower paintings had nothing to do with the vaginal, showed a disregard for her often stated opinion. Perhaps Virginia Woolf, a writer who despised the public’s obsession with the gender of authors, is another who should not have been included.  Other female critics have said that The Dinner Party is not only vulgar, a tune with one note, but demeaning to women, reducing these brave and brilliant fore-mothers to a bad-joke common denominator.




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I’m not a visual artist, but it seems to me that while you might find fault with a part of the whole, The Dinner Party accomplishes its purpose, both as a work of art and as a powerful, provocative feminist statement.  It is estimated that 15 million people on three continents have seen it, pondered it, and argued about it.

The installation has been a taking off place for women to think about their obscured history and about their accomplishments, about their historical and mythical power, their works of art and their creativity.  It's a shout-out for the central fact of the feminine. 

Hindu Temple, Goddess gives birth

If the penis has been celebrated as the ejaculator of ideas, why can’t the vulva, too, be celebrated and honored as it once was in pagan times? Let's reclaim that old time pride in our bodies and what they can do. Woman is the portal through which all creation emerges.





Judy Chicago's artwork is ongoing:

Birth Tear, from the Birth Project, by Judy Chicago

Senior curator David Revere McFadden wrote about The Creation tapestry:
“...Casting this archetypal story as that of female fecundity flies in the face of visual, cultural, and religious history. It becomes a metanarrative by implication, reflecting Chicago’s determination to challenge the status quo and to question received knowledge”.


~~~Juliet Waldron


http://www.julietwaldron.com

See all my historical novels and many bookstores where these are available @
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Sunday, July 23, 2017

A Visit to the Fey



I was recently privileged to join in a procession of the Fey--behind no less a personage than the Queen of Fairies, as a part of her entourage. This doesn't happen to a human very often, and certainly not often to elder humans. 

Old people remind the Queen of decay and death, things she does not allow within her realm, her realm which is eternal--ever-green--as they say. She and her subjects do not age; they are forever young and fair. Therefore, to sing to her and walk beside her people was a great honor for this old woman, definitely a bucket list item.

(Not to say I've never danced with the Fey. I, in the days of my youth--back in the now legendary and generally misunderstood sixties, back when I was young and fair, I participated in her rites--rites which raise energy, and all that naturally follows after, those encounters in the dark scented forest, where all celebrants channeled Venus and Mars. Never mind, it's all back of me now.)



Bay Laurel


The Fairy Queen is a lover of high fashion, of flashing sequined quirks, tinkling bells, supple bare flesh, bejeweled dresses woven with spider's web. She even loves kinky boots, so her devotees wore them too.

Her entourage was more than ready to indulge her every whim, and upon this high magical occasion, they certainly pulled it off. I wore the best dress I had, long sleeves, flowing in mauve, in blue and green. A generous member of Her court gilded my cheek with a star. I braided my long white hair and carried a wand taken from the Holy Laurel. At first I held an inspirational leaf between my lips, like the Delphic Priestess.


  The Queen of Elphame, by Fuseli


Oh, how these fairies shone as they walked, fairy lights and fairy dust around them, making music with their sweet voices, a procession through twilight, following the glorious Queen and her tasty Year King! Beguiled, I followed after. When they began to sing, I took the laurel leaf from between my lips, lifted my laurel wand and had the pleasure of joining my still true voice with theirs.

And what did we sing in our ecstasy--again and again in an endless spiral--but one of the songs which captivate mortals and carry them into a realm that is fickle, cruel, and totally enthralling, a song which the fairies will sing even as the silver flash of a sacrificial knife pierces their own cool fairy hearts:

We shall be free
We shall be free
To sing 
And dance 
And make love--
Won't you come with me?



~~ Walker