Packaging Problems :( By J. Olmstead

Ok !  Hey this is great.. Saves on finding a container to store your unused portions away until your stomach demands a bit of ham.. Or frozen meatballs...
I seemed to have uncovered a small problem with this wonder technology .
And that is......how to get them unsealed to start with.
Dispite little arrows, dotted lines , clearly visible zippers ,  little  printed tiny fingers pointing  to how to get the package opened.  I seem to fail miserably on achieving a clean open.
My packages often end up stabbed, scissored , shredded . Cursed at.. And occasionally thrown hard on the counter with.. I didn't want to eat you anyways...
 Others are left with Ragged plastic edges that defy any form of closing at all.
So, into another container to store... This one with easy snap on lids..another brilliant invention .

If, one can find the right one in a drawer stuffed with containers...and lids...
All seemingly divorced. Or at least.. In a heavy argument.
There are a few places in the mexican market where I shop.. Mainly on the street.. Where life is very simple.
A round of homemade cheese is wrapped in plastic.. No seals.. And placed in a small clear plastic bag. Freshly made this morning .
Fruits and vegetables.. Fresh fish filleted before your eyes. Shrimp.. Similar .
Eggs.. Fresh baked rolls..  All slipped into an open ended plastic bag. Also  Drinks served in a bag with a straw poking out.
I am more and more enjoying that loose, no nonsense way of bringing things home.
While I may on occasion break an egg.. Or want to put my drink down for a moment...
I am not reduced to a blithering idiot trying to get at the product. Stabbing. Cursing frustrated.
Ok, thank you for reading my lament...
On purpose, I did not put it in a sealed bag for you!

~~ Joy Olmstead

Crone Avatars

 

It’s All Souls, which means that in many Latin countries, people are out in the graveyards, having a cheerful picnic with flowers, Tequilla and food, sitting upon the graves of dead relatives. In Austria at noon of All Souls’ Day, the Church bells are rung in order to release earth bound souls. Gerstermesse is here, time for families and friends to enter the cemetery with lighted lanterns which will stay behind when everyone goes home again.

 The Crone Mother-of-All-Living has many names.

She is the ancient Irish Shela-na-gig, threatening us with the womb/tomb.
She is Hel, Queen of the Otherworld. (To the Norse, this was a place of renewal.) From here, new souls returned to earth.
She is Ishtar The Morning Star who resurrects Tammuz, the green grain, whose body is eternal sacrifice.
She is Sekmeht, who by destruction brings creation, the oracular Sphinx with bloody claws, crouching in the desert with a riddle you’ll wish you’d never answered.
She is Black Kali, dancing upon our inertia, dancing as we burn to ashes, with her thundering necklace of skulls.




She is Oya, Queen of cemeteries, of psychic explosions and violent storms. (She just paid us a visit!)

It's time for us in the northern hemisphere to ponder the Crone, now, while the veil between the worlds is thin, while mother earth tilts away from our fatherly solar furnace.

 

In Mexico, the old Aztec death goddess has returned. Dia De Los Muertos is her special time, her power irresistible. She demands not only total respect but the wildest playfulness from her devotees.
Once she was Mictecacihuatl, who, with her husband, ruled theAztec dead, but her face seems to have never left the national consciousness. Now she has come again to fill the poor and the outcast with pride, offering them kindness and good luck. After all, even the richest, most corrupt magnate in the world doesn’t have the money to buy off Death, the Great Equalizer.   
Her names tell something of her femininity and of how greatly she is feared, for she is often referred to only by nickname. As with The Great Dark Ladies mentioned above, she shouldn't be lightly summoned.  She is The Skinny One, Santisima Muerte, The Holy Girl, Catrina. She is Fortune. She is Change. She is a sudden fire bursting through an earth which we vainly imagined was cold, sleeping--safe!  







 

--Juliet Waldron

 

http://www.julietwaldron.com