Brothers and Sisters, let’s have a moment together in a place where music and words of the Spirit and art and technology come together. Brought to you by those whose ancestors were very definitely here first.
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My journey into the history of the Native American peoples began with this book. It was in the library of the father of a high school friend of mine, and it was my first exposure to the knowledge of the cruelty and treachery involved in the early dealings with Europeans.
It was to be the first time, but far from the last, that I felt shame for crimes in which I had no direct part.
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Well, I won’t be watching Cluck’s State of the Union Tuesday night. Why not? Let us count the ways. To watch a pedophilic dotard malignant narcissist rapist idiot read from the teleprompter to a fawning audience of weak-minded sleazeballs … I know that this sounds too attractive to pass up, but I just don’t have two hours that I am willing to completely toss away.
Instead I will watch the People’s State of the Union, which sounds like a lot more fun. It’s being put on by the Meidas Touch Network and Move On.
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I have my own candidates for a new term I’ve discovered, but if you ever have need of it, be my guest.
One of the names for a group of weasels is a sneak. How perfect! Any ideas where the phrase a sneak of weasels might come in handy?
I have several.
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Johns Hopkins is doing a great deal of research in psychedelics, and part of that studying is keeping tabs on people while they are taking full transformative doses. It seems to be important that a nice quiet place without disturbing activity is necessary for a trip to go smoothly. To this end, they have developed the “Johns Hopkins Psilocybin Research Playlist.” It is nearly all classical pieces, and the tunes are grouped like this:
- Opening/Settling
- Deepening/Emotional Peak
- Resolution/Integration
It’s all slow-moving, a little mournful at times, but listening to it does induce a pleasant ‘I believe I’ll just become part of this chair’ sort of feeling. One suspects that the researchers might have taken such care in the selection of the music for their own benefit, for use on their personal psychopharmacologic journeys. This playlist is just under five hours long, so you know that somebody did a bit of work.
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I have an upside-down schedule as far as sleep is concerned, primarily because our old friend Poco keeps really odd hours, and can summon a caterwaul capable of waking the dead if he chooses. Last night, for instance, he was walking around just doing his normal vocalizations and although it woke me up I had hopes of not having to leave the bed. Suddenly he went full throat and there was no avoiding getting up and finding out what was needed to make him happy. Or, if not happy, at least quiet.
But once I am up I have the privilege of watching the night stories being told outside my home. Sometimes it is the red fox padding up the street. Sometimes it is a young neighbor getting home at a scandalous hour. Sometimes it is a surprise wind strong enough to move the big trash containers out on the street waiting for the morning pickup.
Sometimes, although very rarely this winter, it is a snowfall with those big flakes drifting through the beam of the yard light out back. Much of what you find in this blog is written at those hours. I love the night, at least when safe in the house. There are enough mountain lions out here in Colorado to make one cautious, and if you check out the menu at Cafe Puma you will find that humans are on it.
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We started out today with a work by Indigenous people, we’ll close with one as well. I have never seen anything quite like the performance of this woman, Snow Raven. I found it boundary-moving for me, to realize that there is so much more that is possible than I knew.
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Little Home In The Valley 