Howler my Friend

I started using tribe a few years years ago, about the time I met Howler. I see the connections between us all the way through his tribe profile and mine. After i met him at the intention retreat and was greatly impressed by his work to draw people together and share out of each one's truth, I looked through his tribe profile and recognized a friend's back yard in a picture on the album and went and stalked him. We got to be very close friends, even lovers for a while. He wrote comments on my blogs and photos and i on his.

I am aligned and resonant with Howler's expressed intentions and last year, in response to his callout on tribe, we worked on two projects together, a communication board game and a sacred dance floor. We were both really sensitive and, well, ended up angry at each other, also aware of deep love on both sides.

Howler has now moved on to the afterlife. I and hundreds of others are deeply heartbroken by his sudden departure. He was a wounded healer. His influence on my life is enormous.

Friend, our closeness is this:
Anywhere you put your foot, feel me
in the firmness under you.

How is it with this love,
I see your world and not you?

~~Jalaladdin Rumi

b:c:clettes stoking sustainable culture

i rode up the sshcoast to meet my friends who did a one week bike tour of georgia strait. they are an all female dance group that presents an inspiring model of womens empowerment aligned with sustainability and creativity. their dances are all about cycling and they accomplished a tour with four performance gigs on bicycles. some of their boyfriends went along for support and help with hauling a sound system. the group energy is physical and grounded, with good communication and collegiality, the partying, beer based.

the last performance was a free show on the mandala at the beach in roberts creek, where i know some galactic elves. no elves came to see the show. some of the audience were old white people who had sung in zulu harmony together just before the clettes show.

the clettes were most excited about the gig they did at rathtrevor park near parksville. hundreds of kids camping there had bikes and a bunch of little girl campers made a dance troupe too. it is so sweet that they can take sustainability culture out there and inspire regular folks in campgrounds and smaller towns.

i was stoked to hang with them and wore femmy red and black clothes while riding with them.

haircut

the dog had just chewed the ear off my teddy bear. my mother made a big deal about it and moved teddys arms to the top of his head so he looked like a dog or a rabbit. she made new arms out of holey socks. after she died a few years ago i realised teddy was dead too and i cremated him in the fireplace.

note the costume. i still hate shirts and pant legs. other pictures of the budding foss show him shirtless on a trike with a chariot, or playing a tambourine on the trike.

Carmen
The past lives only in the present, not in crippling nostalgia or artifacts. Glad that the Foss remains prone to innovative haircuts!

foss
it looks like i d cut my hair myself. i wanted to match the teddy...?? good thing i didnt cut off my ear.

thriving by thrift

thrift is an old word that has changed its meaning. it used to mean abundance, not stinginess. the british wildflower is called thrift because of its abundant blooms. the word is derived from the verb "thrive" in the same way as "drift" is derived from "drive" or "shrift" and "rift" are from "shrive" and "rive."

this is etymology for a recession. it is hard to have a sense of abundance and thriving when we have to cut back our expenditures. i think the consumeristic culture we are soaked in makes us think that thriving and thrift are almost opposites. it is a challenge to have a sense of gratitude and abundance when we have to say "no" to ice cream. the quaker community has a strong tradition of non-consumerism sometimes called voluntary simplicity where people with abundant resources look shabby because they never show their wealth. if my income falls and i have to cut back on luxuries, i have to work extra hard inside my mind to keep an attitude of gratitude and volunteerism, that i choose to consume less because i really do have all i need, and that not shopping is connected to my thriving.

what's my sign?

this is my hereditary sign. the hand holding a star and moon is like the cosmological alignment that i do, and the motto means that virtue alone is the source of nobility, which represented a very modern ideology when it first appeared in the renaissance. i take it to mean that right livelihood and stoking sustainability brings personal empowerment. the belt means that i am a commoner. my ancestors were peasants and protestant clergy.