How Was Your Week?

Greetings to all my friends at Readers Studio 2014 and all my friends who aren’t there, too! It turns out that it’s probably a good thing I didn’t come this year because I would have spent a great deal of what should be an utter blast (and from the pictures posted on Facebook so far, it is a blast) working for my Day Job.

I haven’t pulled an all-nighter in some time now but I did Thursday night. It was the usual world-will-come-to-an-end-if-this-stuff-isn’t-done-at-exactly-the-right-time sort of thing. Perhaps you have that kind of thing somewhere in your lives? Even a wedding or a birth can be a little flexible in its schedule, but not computer stuff that has regulations and oversight and other Important Factors.

I thought I would describe my week in terms of my Art Postcard Tarot.

Art Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

One thing that’s really accurate in this reading is the addition of a new floppy-eared fellow named Louie to my household. He arrived “after hours” one night in February and after trying to find his owner for a month, the Animal Control folks declared him officially mine. There’s some hunting dog gene in this pooch, a natural pointer, particularly in the assignment of blame phase of household disaster discovery. Louie points to the cats. The cats point back.

Louie’s best friend is Lizard, a soft squeaky green fellow who hasn’t got a lot to say unless he’s being chewed on by a little brown dog. Lizard has been part of the household since before Louie’s arrival, but only Binket paid attention to him and that only when she was working out her Puff Baby drama, a play of meller-drammer not yet available on Broadway.

Besides the accidental acquisition of an enthusiastic puppy, I have also purposefully acquired a new camera lens and have been going hog-wild with close-up photos of the flowers in my yard. It’s a “macro” lens that will just about let me count the hairs on an aphid’s nose. For those of you who are really photographers, I apologize but goodness this is fun!

I've been such a poor correspondent lately that my friend Sally, bless her heart, had to track me down and call to see if I were still alive. Oops. I've been busy. I had this birthday thing and, well, it's a long story. All of my stories are long stories.

I’m still planning on reprinting my decks later this year but currently have a few copies of the Dust Bunny Lenormand still available. To those who have asked, my Off-Center Lenormand will not be reprinted until my partner in that venture, Dan Pelletier of Tarot Garden, gives the signal. Dan tends to like collectable decks to be collectable and likes the idea of that deck being limited to its original 100 copies. Sorry to disappoint, but unless you see Off-Center up for resale on an auction, you are likely not to find a copy.

On the list are the Picture Postcard Tarot, the Art Postcard Tarot, the Victorian Trade Card Tarot and the Tea Tarot, again in limited quantities, later in the year. I’m gathering contact information from those interested in these decks, so stay tuned.

I will attend BATS again this year in San Jose and have a few other events in the works in the San Francisco area, and perhaps a new deck or two! Stay tuned for more fun!

Best wishes!

It Ain't Braggin' If You Really Done It

In the words of the Immortal Bard, Dizzy Dean, "It ain't braggin' if you really done it."  In that spirit, I want to share my contributions to the recently published very limited edition (restricted only to the contributing artists) 2009 Tarot Collectors Forum Collaborative Deck.  I am so excited to have some of my work published, and, since I retain the copyright to my own work in that deck, I wanted to post my cards and tell you about them.  Remember, this deck isn't for sale.  I don't have extra copies.  Part of the agreement we all made as contributors was that we did not want this deck for sale commercially.  It was a labor of love.

When I first saw the posts on the forum about the 2008 deck, I was eager to get a copy and crestfallen when I was told it was not for sale.  Only the artists had copies.  Then, the threads started up about the 2009 deck.  I pinged a friendly contributor, expressing my inhibitions and inadequacies as an artist.  Sure, I stitch, but it's a grid.  And sure, I took art classes in college, just enough to realize that my kindergarten dream of becoming "a artist" was not to be.  I actually walked out of a college art class when I had one of my Tower moments:  Kiddo, there is a big difference between appreciating art and creating it.  I resigned myself to being a big appreciator, not famous or rich, just big.  By the way, thanks to Dr. Acker for giving me a grade in that class instead of an incomplete.  I think he gave it to me as credit for an artistic fit of pique.

Thanks to the encouragement of gregory, who uses a small G in her name on the boards, I contributed anyway using my own photographs and a little post-photographic magic courtesy of Photoshop to crop and in a couple of instances enhance reality.  Thanks also to skad1 and BlueToy for turning all the contributing artists' efforts into a real deck of cards, complete with LWB (that's Little White Book).  This has been one my favorite Christmas presents this season!  The following are the entries from our LWB and cards I contributed.

The Empress:  My Empress is a photo of the Sheela Na Gig that still guards the eastern wall of the castle at Ballinacarriga, Co. Cork, Ireland.  While in later years, sheelas were used as religious instruction on the "evils of women," there is an earlier tradition that a sheela placed on the eastern wall will protect the castle from harm.  The story goes that when invaders sought to destroy a community, the old wise woman confronted them by exposing herself.  Whether through shame of fighting with their mother or terror of divine retribution, they retreated and the village was saved.  Sheelas are found throughout Ireland and the UK usually on the eastern wall if still in situ.

My husband and I had a wonderful time while we were in Ireland and I took thousands of photos, thanks to the miracle of digital photography.  The next three cards are also part of our trip to Ireland.

Page of Cups:  A foam model of Shakespeare's head floats in the Mall River in Co. Mayo, Ireland.  In the bright September sunshine, he gazes into the water while his reflection, a bit darker but no less clear, gazes back.  The Page of Cups dips into the subconscious for a message.  Shakespeare looked into the soul and reflected it, good and bad, funny and sad, great and small, for our understanding of what it is to be human.

The City of Westport in Co. Mayo, Ireland, where this photograph was taken is a frequent winner of the "Tidy Town" award and for good reason.  During our stay, there were perhaps a dozen Shakespeare heads floating in the Mall River and they all looked like fun...and a little spooky.  It's a lovely place to visit!

Four of Pentacles:  4 Celtic-style triskeles on a stone column, Balintubber Abbey, Co. Mayo, Ireland.  While these triskeles aren't pentacles, this set of four struck me as the ultimate "can't take it with you" gracing the abbey ruins.  The more you hang onto the material world, the more likely you are to notice that it slips away.

Our friend Vince met us in Westport, Co. Mayo, where he has a home.  Our quarters looked over the peaceful Mall River where the days were just a little warmer than we expected.  While in Westport, I made an emergency purchase of good walking sandals to keep cool.  They turned out to be an excellent buy because Vince gave us a wonderful tour of ruined abbeys, pilgrim paths and prehistoric stone markers.  What a treat!

Page of Swords:  A face melted into the stone ruins of a gothic window at the church at Aghagower, Co. Mayo, Ireland behind Croagh Patrick is revealed.  The observer, the spy, the messenger whose trust is in question.

Just to show that my whole contribution wasn't that one fantastic vacation in Ireland, this next section shows another favorite place of mine, the American Southwest.

Eight of Pentacles:  A display of native American baskets from the Arizona desert.  Baskets were essential technology and this display shows the diversity of size and decoration, plus a brief glimpse into the mind of the master craftsman.

Knight of Wands:  A true relic of the old west from the 1800's, this portrait of a man and his horse is part of the precious heritage of the Pueblo peoples of the American Southwest near Mesa Verde, Colorado.  Card meaning:  Action and energy, perhaps too rash, exemplifies the Old West and while the "fire stick" firearm here is implied, the vitality, glory and grit of the armed man on horseback lights the fire of our imaginations even today.  The Wild West at first seems romantic, but look closer and find a common theme of "ready-fire-aim" so much a part of the settlement of any frontier.

We've been lucky to find the most interesting people and places while on vacation.  Certainly a favorite was our trip to the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation where our native guide introduced us to the many aspects of life there.  Besides this relatively modern "knight" from Ute times, we saw much more ancient Pueblo petroglyphs.  In them were the stories of creation, hunting, travel, astronomy and horticulture.  One is even a solar calendar that marks the winter solstice and the return of the sun.  If you have the urge to travel back in time, take a road trip a bit off the beaten path.  Visit www.utemountainute.com and check out the Tribal Park.

Six of Cups:  Children's toys at the Borland Home which is also home of the Martinez Historical Society in Martinez, California while on a ghost hunt.  In a departure from the rest of my relatively "straight" photos, I wanted to show that memory, especially of childhood, is always enhanced.  Some things are not part of the picture, some things are perhaps not exactly as they happened.  Or, are they?  Is a step back into the past just like a step into an alternate dimension?

If you collect tarot cards and you aren't a member of this informative and fun online forum, I highly recommend it.  Visit http://www.tarotcollectorsforum.com/ and enjoy!

Best wishes for a bright New Year!

copyright 2009-2010 Marcia McCord

Hard at Work in the Toy Shop

This starts the time of year when I combine my own High Priestess with the Eight of Pentacles. OK, so what does THAT mean?

Every year since junior high, in the dark of the winter solstice I retreat to my cave and tackle a project. I have ceased wondering why I do this other than to classify it as the possible good effect of some variation of seasonal affective disorder syndrome. I think it started when the teachers began assigning me research projects. I was that kid who actually didn’t hate research projects. Footnotes, yes. Somewhere there’s a formatting god who points his superscript at me and laughs without mercy. But the project and especially the bibliography that were the results of my efforts, no. I love research in winter.

One early year the subject was astrology. I dug out all my books, including my trigonometry text (yes, sweetums, this was BEFORE there were personal computers) and cranked away with the A to Z Horoscope Maker and Delineator. The result that remains to this day is a pair of bell-bottoms with my chart stitched in colorful embroidery on the leg. Of course they don't fit!  They're a valuable piece of folk art.  Or something.  Mercury rising. Gemini Moon. She talks, fer goodness’ sake!

Another year, later, after personal computers were available to the masses, I created a database from my latest Wilds of Missouri catalog and data collected the whole thing so I could find the daylilies that were open in the evenings (after I got home from work), very fragrant and reblooming. I gained an appreciation of data collection and the transient nature of floral inventory. I still like to order from Wilds, though. http://www.gilberthwild.com/  I’m usually a rose nut but it all started with daylilies. I wish they’d bring back “Date Book” but I guess it wasn’t that popular.

Another year it was soups, another cookies, another postage stamps, another it was memorizing the price list from the latest antiques price books and another genealogy. Several years my topic was American Brilliant Cut Glass.

I have to confess most of my history classes left me cold. After all, in days of olde when knights were bold-e, I probably wouldn’t have been some guy sitting around the decision making table fighting or writing a writ or insulting my betters or peers or worsers. (Is that a word?? I’ll have to look it up to see). I would have been some merchant or teacher’s daughter with a little too much learning for practical purposes, a little too much of an opinion for good health and length of days. But I really love studying the artifacts of people’s lives.

So, by accident of the study of antique glass, I learned a little about labor relations and good and bad management. For instance, while cut glass was being produced in the eastern US in the late 1800’s, some of the bosses were not as considerate of their workers’ situation as they might have been. Think of the burns from molten glass, the early deaths from lung disease from glass dust, the cut hands from a slip of the grinding wheel or explosion of glass that resulted in devastation and poverty. One glass cutting shop decided to go on strike because their boss was a jerk and wanted another shop’s workers to go on strike with them. The other shop considered the proposal and rejected it because their boss was a nice guy and didn’t cause the hard feelings the first shop had for their boss. That’s something to be said for good management. The working conditions were nearly identical but the boss in one shop treated his workers with genuine kindness.

That’s genuine kindness, not fake kindness. There are some things you can’t make in a workshop.

Many years, my learning retreat has centered on antique samplers and embroidery, the techniques, the materials, the process and evolution of styles of stitching, the availability of materials to certain economic classes and the social impact of educating girls. Schoolgirl samplers in the early to mid-1800’s were something more like, “My kid made the honor roll” instead of a reference book of pretty patterns for future clothing and linen décor as they were in, say, 1700. Check out Betty Ring’s wonderful books Girlhood Embroideries and American Needlework Treasures at your nearest library or old book store.

And many years my learning retreat has taken me into some aspect of the tarot, a deeper dive into symbolism and cultural archetypes. Even I tell people to put down the books and just read cards when they ask the best way to start reading. But I have some goodies saved up for my solstice reading this year, nice thick ones with meaty topics that challenge my thinking and enhance my feeling for the tarot. Last year, for instance, one of my retreat activities was to read The Encyclopedia of Tarot (vols. 1-4) cover to cover. Good stuff. Also fuels the urge to buy old decks. (Mr. Kaplan, I’m sure that’s not what you meant it to do, right? =)

This year, since we have determined to have a merry little Christmas, my solstice retreat will take a familiar theme of making handmade gifts. First I made a list of who gets what. This year the "whats" are ornaments all hand made.  Then I figured out if I could actually make that many “whats” in time for Christmas, sorting by earliest mail-away date and taking my planned stay-cation into account. You’re bored with this, I can tell. But, that’s my Eight of Pentacles pounding away at the workbench, planning, selecting symbols and cloth and thread and beads and up at all hours.

The approach of the winter solstice or the “Dark Days of Christmas” as an Irish friend of mine used to call them always signals this Santa’s Workshop Elfin frenzy in me. Somehow the bright colors, the warm smells of good cooking (or bad, depending on the experiment), the planning and execution all serve my inner High Priestess well. She studies from a quiet distance the Inner Child hard at work on the Spirograph or Slinky of the season and smiles. There is inner work going on here too, the kind you can’t reach with needles or patterns or light or a color wheel. It is all preparation for the spring of life but it is also celebration along the way.

Best wishes.