Readers Studio 2015

I try to go to Readers Studio every year. I don’t always make it but I was fortunate to be there this year. Led by Ruth Ann and Wald Amberstone, this gathering of Tarot readers is truly a team effort to produce. It is distinguished by its format of three main presenters, different every year, who challenge the attendees with new ways to look at tarot readings, new techniques and fresh ways to see old cards. In addition, for the last few years, an extra day has been added focusing on Tarot and Psychology to highlight the uses of Tarot in therapy.

Readers Studio starts a little earlier than that for me. For one thing, I sign up early and pay for tuition on the payment plan. So I’ve already signed up to attend next year as part of the nearly painless monthly payment plan. I attend several conferences a year. As much as I seek the funny and sunny side of cartomancy, I’m serious about Tarot and Lenormand.

No matter what style of deck suits you, Rider Waite Smith and its many clones and offshoots, Thoth, Marseilles-style, Minchiate or truly original beauties like the Mary-El Tarot, 78 cards (or so, per the Minchiate) come together in what can become a full course in Liberal Arts and more. Even the strictly fortune-telling oracle decks can bring up the waters from deep in the well of human experience. Whether you feel the “woo” factor in cartomancy or use the card images to start off important conversations, there is a world of fresh perspective we get participating in conferences like Readers Studio.

My first big treat this year was Robert Place’s talk at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bob is serious about his Tarot too. He’s the author of The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination. I love his laser-beam concentration, his decks like Tarot of the Sevenfold Mystery, The Alchemical Tarot and his collaboration with Rachel Pollack, the Burning Serpent Oracle among others. I also have a few of his wonderful pieces of sterling silver jewelry.

Too excited and too afraid I would somehow be late for the program, I arrived some three hours early with the firm intent to study the museum’s examples of Joshua Reynolds’ work, one of my personal questing beasts. I was waylaid immediately as I looked up from the ticket booth and my eye was snagged by the words Medieval and Byzantine. My cell phone camera and I wandered into another world. Time and space fell away. Before I knew it, it was time for Bob’s talk. I groused that the museum does so little to provide cots and showers to the people like me who would stay there night and day if it weren’t for a small thing like closing time, etc.

Bob’s spent enough time at the museum’s Print Room that he’s the “civilian” who gets special access to work with their tarot collection, a breath-taking trip through the history of cards starting with a set of woodcut prints of a deck that dates from approximately 1475-1500. Still stunned that I shared the same air as this beauty, I resisted the urge to touch knowing my hands could destroy this marvel and, reluctantly, followed directions about no photography. Then, deck after deck, Bob spoke of the techniques, geography, materials, context and after a while just pure lust for this eye-popping collection. At the end of the presentation, Bob asked me to stay and read cards for the museum employee who is the only person who can handle the cards. An honor and a treat, we both later agreed that team-reading was fun. We were shooed out of the museum at closing and found a diner a block away that served breakfast for dinner, just the thing to talk over Tarot, self-publishing, travel and future projects. And this was just the first day.

The next day was the longest of the week. The Tarot and Psychology day stretched into the evening and by the end of three meaty and challenging sessions I was pretty sure my jet lag was in full bloom and I was “Junger” than springtime. I had flashbacks to management training back in 1990 when I had an exercise in determining my highest values by bargaining them away in order to escape imaginary drug lords in South America. I had been traumatized by how easily I had let go of some truly noble values to save my skin but ultimately could not let go of either of the last two; my imaginary self is still on the tarmac in a forgotten jungle trading other people’s values for their tickets to safety. It’s quite a flashback.

Then, Readers Studio opened officially. Aside from the top-notch line-up of speakers—and they really were!—I was so happy to reconnect with my Tarot buddies from all over. For Tarot Psych Day, Nancy Antenucci and I sat at a table of old friends and new and quietly cut up by diagnosing the sound problems with the speakers’ microphone by drawing cards. Naturally, our predictions of the issue, its location, the personnel involved in the fix and the source of the problem happened to be right!

Speakers Ellen Lorenzi-Prince, Theresa Reed and Carrie Paris gave us new and fun things to think about when we consider reading. Carrie’s challenge in the four elements forced us to be concise about the cards we selected from each element. My 3 of Swords final entry was something I liked well enough to remember: Reason and the heart are delicate enemies and violent friends.

Rana George and Dame Edna

And yes, in my dedication to keeping the Fun in Dysfunctional, I transformed into Dame Edna Everage in the guise of the Empress, bellowing, “Hellooooooooo, Possums!” to her adoring, if snickering subjects. My favorite Dame Edna moment was coming up behind Wald the second time and having him tell me that he had not recognized me at first. Dame Edna’s Moment of Triumph!

The dinner show featured Dan Pelletier, Rhonda Lund and Nancy Antenucci and a knock-down-drag-out slow-motion fistfight staged between Death and the Tower that had everyone rolling. Back in civilian clothes, I joined the newest addition to Readers Studio, The Ravers Studio Nightclub with flashing lights, glo-sticks, some dedicated dancers and even a few lookie-Lous from a group of guys apparently selling tools. We all felt the beat.

Thanks to everyone who worked long hours to make this year a success, too many to name all, but all appreciated. I came home with a treasure trove of new decks, new friends, new ideas and a shared love of this wonderful Tarot Tribe.

Of course I’ll be going next year! Best wishes, Possums!

Reading for Myself

So many tarot readers say they cannot read for themselves. In fact, in the many Tarot “myths” abounding, one of the more popular ones especially about 40 years ago and persisting today is that a Tarot reader “shouldn’t” or “can’t” read for themselves.

In an effort to bust myths about Tarot, Mary K. Greer wrote a classic called Tarot for Yourself, published in 1984. It’s still available and a good workbook for Tarot readers who want to do the work, the real work of The Hermit’s introspection. There are exercises, meditations; we’re talking homework here. But like some of the other best Tarot exercises, when you can feel those muscles at the end of the workout, you know you’ve learned something. And you probably can read for yourself.

I’ve taken a trip through older books lately, so I can’t really classify Mary’s book with the oldies from the 19^th century, but in the 1980’s, Mary’s book was trailblazing as part of the modern Tarot movement. We give “props” to Mary for this and her many other books and contributions, perhaps not enough props!

I thought I’d draw a few cards for myself about my Tarot experiences over the years.  I drew three cards.

Before we get to those, I should say that I started out first reading regular playing cards as a child to amuse myself. I particularly liked the Queen of Clubs. When I bought my first Tarot decks, like most other people I stuck pretty closely to the little white book that came with the Rider Waite Smith deck and David Palladini’s Aquarian Tarot. It took a while for me to let go of the training wheels. One of the features of most of those earlier Tarot instructions was a large spread called the Celtic Cross.

Even the name sounded like mystical powers! Ten cards in a spread started out, “This card covers you,” signaling the topic of the reading and perhaps noting the quality of the card that could help you; then, “This card crosses you” went on to represent the challenges and hurdles to be overcome.  The Celtic Cross proceeds card-by-card with each position of the spread representing a unique aspect of your situation.

I probably used the Celtic Cross spread for the last time about 30 years ago, maybe more. The items covered in that spread can be a pretty good comprehensive reading but I quickly found that, reading for myself, I may not care to go through each position and ponder, say, the past influences on the current situation, or what other people think about it all in my reading. For instance, if the topic were my cat’s health, I really didn’t care if people thought I was an insane Cat Lady. Bless them all, each and every one, but the topic was what are the best things I can do all around while my cat is ill. Peer pressure had very little to do with that.

I think it’s this comfort zone readers come to when they realize they probably don’t need a 10-card spread to tell them what they need to know. Many professional readers will use 2- to 7-card spreads for just about everything.

There are exceptions of course. My friend Kristine Gorman (catch her weekly radio show Visionary Woman Tarot with Kristie Gorman on Mondays, streaming live on KSVY FM http://sunfmtv.com/) uses variations of the Celtic Cross and 3-card spreads, dealing cards on top of cards as the reading unfolds. She’s a great intuitive reader and someone I go to for readings when I want a second opinion.

Robert Place showed the Readers Studio attendees a mind-blowing spread of three cards per chakra, so do that math there and you’ve got a bunch of cards on the table. While listening to Bob’s explanation and instruction, I realized that this reading could take a good two hours done properly. I wondered if I had the attention span to last through it, let alone one of my clients. But, remember, we can use the Tarot for multiple reasons and a long meditation on chakras and blocks could be just the ticket.

Still, I’m more inclined to use fewer cards now and go more deeply into those fewer cards. One of the temptations of using more cards or a large spread is to ignore the cards that aren’t making sense to you at the time. To me, that’s the Big Signal that I need to Pay Attention in a reading. Glossing over a message is so often what we do in everyday life. I don’t do a reading to get the same perspective that ordinary observation gives me. If it doesn’t make sense right away, it’s like the thing I need to know.

So I pulled three cards: Page of Cups, 3 of Swords, The Emperor.

From David Palladini's Aquarian Tarot

The first two cards made me think of all the experiences I’ve had as an intuitive reader. My earliest experiences so often brought the sense that something bad or difficult was going to happen. The Page of Cups receives messages and learns from the realm of spirit and emotion, the essence of the intuitive reader. The 3 of Swords signals sorrow, actually just one of its interpretations.

I’ve been thinking lately about the way intuitive readers or psychics in the news almost always make the sensational headlines with predictions of big, scary events. I remember a Tuesday night when I was restless and could not settle down. Finally, I drew three cards with the question (poorly worded and certainly not recommended for a good reading), “WHAT???” The cards I drew were eye-poppingly terrible and I realized something really awful was going to happen. I followed up with a question about who is affected and finally got the sense that it was no one I knew personally; a few days later the tsunami hit Japan. Now, this would, of course be a much better story if I had put that reading out in some public forum with a clear date/timestamp. I didn’t. It was, after all, a reading to help me figure out why I was restless.

One of the things I maintain is that Big Bad News is one of the easier things to predict because if you sense the news coming, getting the message that something Big and Bad is going to happen is a lot like saying you could hear someone screaming in your face.

Another thing about sensing difficult events as a professional reader means I feel an obligation to help people through some difficult times. And sometimes some of the reasons just defy logic which actually is another aspect of the 3 of Swords. Logic sometimes fails and must come home to the heart.

Finally, here’s the kicker: The Emperor. So I spent a lot of this talking about the easy part, the intuitive reader senses sorrowful subjects. But what’s the Emperor doing here?

There are plenty of possibilities, but one of them is that I need to remember that while I’m walking other people through difficulties, I’m also one of the resources in my own empire that I need to defend with the setting of boundaries. The Emperor is in charge.

I can take a hint. I was blue today, so I took a luxurious bath with bath salts and lavender. That and some enthusiastic adjustment from my chiropractor made a huge difference. Because no matter what the news is, I’m in charge of the choices I make next.

Best wishes.

Think of Me

“You know,” my client said towards the end of our session, “if you ever get a feeling about how things are going to go for me, don’t hesitate to reach out and let me know.”

I was momentarily silent, even in my head. This is not my normal state of course, rendered speechless even unto inner voices.

I searched for the words to express, in the kindest way possible, that I don’t spend my waking hours with my wireless receiver turned on awaiting news from The Beyond about that client, or any other, in fact. Oh, sometimes I’ll get zapped with anything from a static-electric thought to a meteorite explosion that rattles or sometimes smashes my inner windows. Seriously, though, if I paid attention every buzz around me, I’d be, well, I’d be addle-brained. I’d look like Mrs. Beetlejuice or the Bride of Frankie or something. TMI, that (now probably passé) term for overshare, for a card reader translates to something like sticking a house key in a light socket. Kiddies, don’t try this at home.

I have heard and met some people with what I think of as “Open Channel Distress.” Most of the soothing sounds cooed to those people are urgings to “ground” themselves (still sounds like electricity, doesn’t it?) and then to take steps to “shield” themselves (waxing more into a Star Trek-like image). Personally, I drink a lot of water, do breathing exercises and somehow, the way human beings learn to do with other invasive input all through the day, learn to put the constant stream of input into a category of white noise. Otherwise, it’s like listening to all the radio stations at once and for people who are interested that’s probably a good way to kill me! But, I’d prefer to work things out before it gets to that, if it’s all the same to you.


Picture Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord


Nevertheless, I felt the need to say something kind to this person who is obviously in distress, listens to perhaps one tenth of the good advice anyone gives her and is trying desperately to figure out how to make the world work in her favor. She has real problems, no doubt, and the anxiety often clouds her ability to perform triage on her own life. She wants to know the equivalent of the winning Lotto numbers for her own life so that she can bet on them and make things work. She wants the Instruction Book for Success.

Please! If you too are an experienced reader, please stop gagging or laughing or being disgusted. Don’t be angry at my client. She’s a work in progress in her own life, trying to make the connections that there is more than one way to get what you want, what you need than by having the all the answers. She’s an example of someone who needs help, even if she listens to very little of it, who wants help even if she doesn’t realize that adjusting how she views things, rather adjusting those things, will reduce much of her stress and strife, allowing her to focus clearly on her priorities to get out of the hole she’s in.

And please don’t be angry with me for not booting her in the pants. Trust me, I have several times. She comes to me to talk about herself to herself in the guise of friendship. She will ask how I am with no follow up questions on the answer. She’s just not very good at that. She’s got too much going on with herself, plus a pattern of behavior that keeps her panicked and focused on herself. When she runs short of energy, she seeks that of others to buoy her spirits, entertain her, distract her, make her laugh, but only for a short while. The conversation inevitably goes back to her troubles, her life, her situation, her distress, her anxiety. And she cries over her losses and her anticipated failures. She may ask to borrow money.

Debbie Downer, you say? Probably more like Debbie Drowner, the one who would, if rescue should arrive, pull them under with her.

She’s pretty too.

She and other clients like her are the very reason that psychics, sensitives, readers, intuitives, fortune tellers and plain ol’ card readers need to ground themselves and figure out how to shield themselves. Many readers in the professional community will refuse to see people they perceive to be “chronically self-destructive with consistent collateral damage.” Even the people who charge much more than I do for a reading say the drain isn’t worth it, not for someone who doesn’t understand that the burden for change in their circumstances is on them, not on the world or the reader, not on the cards or their mother. It’s tough psychic love.

There are people in the business who seek out such histrionics, who actively look for people stuck in their own distorted hall of mirrors where they see only themselves and their own distress. They pump them for cash, cash in exchange for the fuel of attention that feeds the never-satisfied monster within them. The people who get the money are called frauds, and should be called that and prosecuted.

The people who come back again and again for the attention are frauds too, fooling themselves. They will not be prosecuted, but their punishment of themselves and others will continue until they make the connection, if ever. So, although I have my limit on how much of this kind of soul-sucking I can take, I have a couple of clients like this. (Nope, not accepting applications for more of this kind of client; full up right now.)

The 3 of Swords typically signifies heartbreak, the kind that doesn’t kill you, the kind that keeps going on and on. Practically everyone experiences it from time to time. There are some exceptions. It’s what you do next that counts. If you don’t do anything next, well, there you are, in perpetual torture. To me, the people who stay in perpetual torture get something out of it, some reward.

A poem and song came to mind while I was thinking about this, the Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott,” set in part to music by Loreena McKennitt. The Lady is cursed to look at the world through a mirror that reflects mostly grays and if she looks away, she will die. But she is tired of looking at the mirror and seeing her world reflected in grays.

"I am half sick of shadows," said

The Lady Of Shalott.

She is distracted by the gleaming Sir Lancelot, who is just passing through on his way home and takes no notice of her. Having looked up, she realizes her fate and her fascination with the world that she cannot have and takes a boat downstream to Camelot. She sings and dies and comes ashore where the people of Camelot find her dead in the water. Lancelot’s comment is that she had a pretty face, a superficial observation expressing his lack of connection to the unfortunate creature.

It sounds so romantic! Fabulous art has been created from this sad ballad, this story of wasted love supposedly based on the story of Lancelot and Elaine, Elaine the girl Lance didn’t love. It’s so pretty; you almost forget she’s dead! It’s one thing to appreciate a sad romance; it’s quite another to pattern your life from it.

What was the flaw? Was it possibly the perception that beauty and happiness are something other than what she was experiencing before she glanced away? Was it that she could not love the life given to her and having left it could not live? Was it that she made herself helpless?

I don’t know who cursed the Lady of Shalott. The poem says she doesn’t know either, or was it that she just did not want to see? I have a feeling that she cursed herself by the reflection of herself and her own life as gray and lifeless, by her refusal to see the possibilities of happiness within herself that needed only a small adjustment of light to reflect a better view, a tilt of the mirror under her own hand.

If she reaches out, even blindly, there may be hope she tilts her world into a better perspective. That's when I will be there.

Best wishes.

When the Worst Happens

I saw an article in the news. I won’t say what news or what article or when or who because, well, because like my other readings, I protect the confidentiality of my clients. But just to give the circumstances, the story was about a death, one that so far seems a little mysterious. It’s being investigated by the right people, apparently. And there’s also something about not interfering with an ongoing investigation. I won't.

Still, I had questions. I didn’t know the person and as far as I know I don’t have any connection to the person other than noting the story and the pang of sorrow I felt at hearing news of someone dying under a cloud, even a little cloud, of mystery.

There’s a lot of discussion in the tarot readers community about the ethics of doing a reading for a third party. You can imagine the kinds of questions that are common among the very young, the very heartbroken.

“What does X think of me?” “What did X mean when they said that?” “What will X do?” “Will X ever leave Y and be with me?”

These are common questions, like I said. And they have the characteristic of being, well, at best, snoopy. Generally, if you want to know what X thinks, ask X yourself. Of course, it isn’t that easy. But at least it is fair to you and it’s fair to X, whoever they are.

My ethics for privacy don’t just extend to my client. Hunting down Ms. or Mr. X, recording their thoughts with a tape-recorder or their actions with a video recorder or just spying on them with a home-made periscope is a violation of X’s privacy too. And if it’s important to you as my client to have privacy, think how important privacy is to your buddy X. After all, you came to me and asked for information in a reading; X didn’t.

I usually try to rephrase the question, occasionally to the disappointment of a client who really does want me to snoop on X’s most intimate thoughts or feelings. After all, if you really knew what people thought and felt, you might change your actions. Since you’re the client, I reframe the question to something like: How will things work out for you or will you be happy if X takes a certain course of action versus another? It’s pointing the focus of the question back on you without spying on the third party.

And really, it’s your reading, so it makes sense that the reading should be about you, not about anyone else. After all, what is the best thing for you to do in case of one action or another? What if the worst thing should happen, whatever scenario that is?

It’s my own belief that you can’t make anyone think or feel anything unless they decide to do it. Some belief systems augment that with a warning message, “…at least, not without some pretty severe consequences.” So, that old R&B song that goes, “I’m gonna make you love me, yes, I will! Yes, I will!” is at worst unrealistic fantasy and at best, well, the wrong response. If you have to make someone love instead of their choosing to do it themselves, is that really love? There’s a point where your fondest wish could be the other person’s feeling of oppression and worse. So, that’s not love.

Garth Brooks’ country song that says, “Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers,” goes a long way. That’s probably the nicest way of putting the warning to be careful what you wish for. I usually say at the very least, next time I’m going to be more specific. Often what we want is our fantasy, and not the reality of the situation for any of the people involved. Fantasies are fantasies for a reason. They are often unrealistic, unsustainable, short-lived. They often serve their purpose and dissolve, the parts rearranging themselves into a new fantasy.

Fantasies serve a wonderful “what-if” scenario purpose for us to imagine outcomes. But you wouldn’t want someone else barging in on your fantasy to take photographs, at least most of the time. Fantasies are different from having a goal and a purpose for yourself. Fantasies are like reading the funnies in the newspaper. Visualizing yourself as achieving your own goal is much more like pre-planning, like figuring out your next steps towards your own changes.

Just in case the client’s question is about another person and that situation dissolves into something less meaningful than it might have been had things turned out a different way, well, it’s just plain rude to snoop. I have to respect their privacy as much as I respect my client’s privacy.

But when an event is reported publicly as part of the news and, filtering out speculation from facts, you might ask yourself why? There is no way to know first hand what that stranger in the news story was thinking or feeling that led to what appears to be a tragic end. At least, not for me.

I was still moved to wonder what happened though. Since I read tarot, I shuffled my deck and drew three cards. And my first reaction to them was, “Ah.” Ah, I see the sadness and heartache, the realization of truth that was so difficult but taken to heart.

I drew the 9 of Swords, a realization, a wake-up, a truth revealed that dispels all illusions, both good and bad. I drew the 10 of Swords reversed, an inability to end a train of thought or to bring a situation to its logical conclusion, and often with a sense that the truth has somehow betrayed rather than released. I drew the 3 of Swords, three swords of truth piercing a heart in the rain, sadness, sorrow, the need for comfort and succor in difficulties.

Taken all together, I hear the cry of the unhappy person who realizes that in fact this sorrow was not going to end, which renewed the sorrow all the more.

I don’t know if this person’s life ended by their own choice, by accident or at the hands of others. For one thing, that’s what other people are paid to find out and are much better at doing than I am. But in my reading, I read for myself in the end. I wanted to know what happened here and got an answer that was, for a tarot reading, the equivalent of the 2x4 between the eyes.

They’re gone, is the answer. They’re gone. And I’m sorry about that, for a stranger I never knew.

Best wishes.

The Secret of 738

“Wait, I’m getting something!” I looked more intently at my EMF (electromagnetic field) meter as I stepped slowly past jail cell number 121 on the section of Alcatraz prison they call Broadway.

The needle started to bounce rhythmically up into the “interesting zone” of readings around a 4 or 5 and I started counting, one, two, three. It bounced seven times. It paused. My friend Beth’s son Dylan rushed over to watch. It bounced three times, then paused again. It bounced eight times and then resumed its usual baseline reading of about 1.5.

“738. I can remember that.” The prisoners were called not by their names but by their numbers. I wondered who number 738 was.

Dylan had been looking forward to this night tour of Alcatraz for months. When I first found the night tours, I was hoping for a ghost-hunting theme. I think that was seasonal and this wasn’t quite the season yet. Never fear, ghost-hunting itself really has no season. So we came armed with my EMF meter and a couple of cameras knowing that we wouldn’t be able to do a real investigation with the 300 or so other visitors who had joined us for the evening tour.

We had found easy parking about a block away and walked to the Pier 33 Alcatraz Tour Snack Bar. In the hubbub, Beth, my husband John and I lost Dylan for a very tense few minutes and found him again, doing just what he had been told to do.

“If you get lost in the woods or in the City, just stay where you are so we can find you,” John had reminded him. And there he was just outside the snack bar door, waiting to be found while he took in the sights dockside San Francisco.

The adults all nearly collapsed in relief and we discussed the relative merits of pigeons. One had walked into the snack bar near our table. I sneaked a bit of the soft brown roll from my ham sandwich to the floor. “Rizzo” our pigeon (named for the character in Midnight Cowboy after the inevitable “flying rats” attribution) found the morsel immediately and gobbled it up. I figure Rizzo must be a regular in the snack bar because she looked up at the tables nearby to see who had sent her the offering. I launched another crumb over her head and she chased it down. A sullen teenager imprisoned by his cheerful family sitting at a table across the room frowned in disgust. Well, that would get better in time. Or not. The voice over the loudspeaker announced something official and we all got up to get in line for the boat. We declined the opportunity for a group photo, knowing we weren’t going to buy one. We had some different souvenirs in mind from The Rock.

Out on the water, I reminded Beth, who was a little concerned about sea-sickness, that the ferry ride we were on was smoother than the train ride to Sacramento a few days before. She pointed out the 4-ft swells and I noted that we really could barely feel them. I didn’t want to tell her I had been on San Francisco Bay in storms from time to time when I commuted by ferry, pretty exciting each one of them. Dylan speculated there might be sharks; I said it was pretty rare to see a shark in the Bay since they don’t like the fresh water. We disappeared into the fog.

The fog that night wasn’t the cute little cat-feet fog playing over the hills and into the City and the Bay. It was The Fog, Stephen King fog, Twilight Zone fog. It was fog where the rest of the world disappeared from view so that midway between we could see only ourselves and water but neither Alcatraz nor the bright lights of San Francisco. And then a wall of rock appeared and the voice of our guide told us more about how this remote and inhospitable spot had not been populated with Native tribes, who had the good sense to stay where food was plentiful and the winds didn’t howl, only a mile and half away. The Rock had appeared then white-washed with bird guano (which, if you aren’t into the “nice” names for ooky stuff is bird poo) further “un-hancing” the livability of this high spot in cold water.

First a fort, then a military prison, and then, starting in 1934 Alcatraz opened as the prison we think of as the federal maximum security slammer for high profile prisoners. More accurately, it was the place they sent prisoners who caused too much trouble in the prisons they were originally assigned to. Alcatraz is known for some famous names in crime like Al Capone, “Creepy Karpis” and “The Birdman” Robert Stroud, who by the way was not the sweetie-pie Burt Lancaster portrayed but a very scary guy. There were also the less famous but no less creepy, cranky, bad, rotten or just deranged. And three guys figured out how to escape; officially, no one knows what happened to them. Those and other sensational events provide the highlights of the headphones-guided tour where you can feel the cold fog-wind screaming in through the doorway to the recreation area, struggle against the tightness of a 5’x9’ cell and almost hear the instruments playing on music night, trouble piled upon trouble in 3 stories of cells guarded by men in double-breasted suits and red ties and forbidden blackjacks.

There is plenty of old wiring in these old buildings, some of which are in ruins. Those old wires can make an EMF Tri-Field meter go crazy with a normal source of electromagnetic energy. And then there are the things that make you wonder. One of the guides noticed my Tri-Field meter and mentioned that people often get a creepy feeling in the room next to us. No wonder, it’s what they call a “fear cage,” a room surrounded by electrical wiring that creates a constant strong field that registers high on my little machine. Places with naturally (rather than supernaturally) high EMF readings give sensitive people anything from a buzzing sensation to visual effects. And then there’s the argument that perhaps it is easier for a spirit to manifest in places where that energy is plentiful. Proof? I’m still looking but I know I’ve had my own personal experiences.

As to my 738, counting the bounces of the needle as it pulsed its electricity, I thought of tarot of course. Alcatraz inmate AZ-738 was Edward R. Mayberry. Was that you, Ed? At least there was the story for each of the inmates, 7, 3, 8 repeated over and over. 7 of Swords: Tried to get away with it, whether it was robbery or murder or other violent crime. 3 of Swords: The anguish of getting caught and causing heartache for their families and their victims. And finally, 8 of Swords: Bound by the iron bars and iron will of the prison system, wardens, guards and consequences of a bad idea that got worse as it went along. And then there were the three men who escaped: 7 of Swords, did they really escape? 3 of Swords, did they die in remorse and bitter disappointment in the nearly ice-cold currents of the San Francisco Bay? 8 of Swords, are they or someone else stuck in that place, forever playing out the problem of their lives and unhappy choices?

Dylan bought a t-shirt and a hat in the museum shop and we made our way back down the winding path to the ferry to return to freedom. I noticed that the seagulls, who laughed at us as we had walked up the path to the prison, had disappeared into the night. I heard only the sound of the wind lashing the water against the dock and fog horns in the distance calling their warning.

Best wishes.

Over the River and Through the Woods

When we last left my teenage self, I was in the back seat of my father’s car on the way to Grandmother McCord’s house in Alabama.

You have to remember that my husband has concluded I was the only person in my family with a sense of humor. I beg to differ, feebly. To his point, though, I was convinced growing up that I was some kind of genetic anomaly. Optimist, I think they call it.

We had crossed the Mississippi long ago and crossed the Tombigbee River, deep in the pines of Alabama when we arrived in the tiny town where Grandmother McCord lived. Dad had said the land where her duplex was had been a plantation, so I was expecting Tara with Grandmother standing outside as a stern, blue-haired Scarlet O’Hara. That was fairly inaccurate. We turned down a kudzu-infested road and then onto a dirt drive that wound around to a small white concrete-block single storey structure built in the 50’s. That’s 1950’s. There were large trees hung with Spanish moss and a small garden patch surrounded by a high wire fence on the left side of the structure.

We piled out of the car, relieved to be standing and walked the narrow walkway to the wooden screen door. I knocked. Grandmother opened the door. “The better to eat you with, My Dear,” echoed in my head. I had not worn red just in case. Grandmother looked me up and down.

“Oh,” she said, obviously disappointed. My smile froze. “Oh, even you are taller than me!”

I was relieved. At least if my reputation had preceded me, it was the “short one in the family” as opposed to, well, I could think of at least a dozen things that would send her into orbit, just from the letters we had exchanged for two years. I had attended Catholic school. Mother was an antiques dealer. My brother and I are part Gypsy (Rom) on my mother’s side. I shaved my legs (I wasn’t really sure that was an orbit-launching point but my mother had been so upset about it that I thought it might possibly be a Kansas thing, so I held it in reserve as a disqualifier). I was her youngest grandchild. I was the last child of her once-favorite son who had become the Black Sheep of his generation. I did not live and had not ever lived in Kansas. And dear heavens, there was the tarot, dreams and palms thing. My list was longer, but it was such a relief to be disappointing for my towering height, my 5’1” to Grandmother’s 4’11” that I relaxed immediately and hugged her. I think she was startled but she seemed to be pleased.

My father, brother and I came in to her small white living room. We sat and spoke politely as if I were being delivered to a boarding school, all hopeful that the trip was not wasted. Grandmother led us solemnly to the first bedroom down the hall, a cool, dark, white room with a dark Victorian bed, crisp white sheets and a white chenille bedspread. My brother left my suitcase in the corner. We stood a moment.

“Very nice,” I said with the extravert’s need to fill the gap of silence.

We returned to the living room. We accepted cold drinks, lemonade, I think. My father and Grandmother spoke a while. And then, my father and my brother left.

“And this is Peanut,” Grandmother said, indicating the tubby black and tan terrier in the low basket near the kitchen door. Peanut wagged his tail hopefully. I jumped at the chance to focus on someone easy to talk to. “Cute doggie!” Peanut and I were off to a good start at least. Grandmother set about preparing for dinner. She sliced some fresh tomatoes from her garden with an old knife, toasted some bread in an old-fashioned toaster and heated some cream-style corn from a can. We had sandwiches and Peanut wriggled hopefully at my feet while Grandmother explained what a naughty little doggie he was to beg at the table. I slipped him a treat.

Grandmother, it turned out, was thrilled to have me as an excuse not to go to her fellow mother-in-law Mrs. Owensby’s church the next morning. Grandmother thought that church was a bit too neon-sign, roll-and-foam for her and she preferred that God and His Creatures be just a little more dignified. Happy to provide a service, I followed her around, admiring her vegetable garden and flowers, cooing over the dog, dodging the fire ant hills and listening with profound interest of the time when Grandmother was attacked and nearly killed by ants. I helped her change the curtains in the living room. We looked through family photos, including my father’s mysterious first family, my seldom seen uncle and aunt and never-before-seen cousins and admired the family pieces in Grandmother’s china cabinet. We talked into the night.

Apparently satisfied that I had been exposed to etiquette sufficiently to display to others, the next day Grandmother set out with me to go shopping in the tiny downtown. I met my cousins’ cousins, delightful people who took to me immediately. They were the owners of the big grocery in town and were, thank heavens, optimistic, talkative, happy people. We made plans for a pool party. I pushed the grocery cart while Grandmother proudly led the way, each time a little louder and a little more confident than the next, “And this is my granddaughter.”

Back in the car, all the fears of not being accepted within my own family welled up in me. I fought back tears and at the same time relished this small time in a small town with my tiny and ferocious Grandmother. I said nothing, realizing that my point of view was so utterly foreign to this woman who had lived through so much. She had confessed that her main emotions when my Grandfather had killed himself were shame and anger. She was mortified when my father divorced his first wife, forever tarnishing her name in their Kansas town. She was helpless to convince my uncle to let her stay in Kansas, a prisoner of circumstances. Even later in my stay, she would hand me a fabulous cut glass bowl, a family piece, saying, “When I’m dead, your uncle and aunt will make sure you get nothing, so take this now.”

But at that moment, we drove through the bank’s drive through to get cash, our huge load of groceries in the back. The teller greeted my Grandmother’s familiar face. Grandmother smiled at her, turned to me and smiled, then said to the teller proudly, “And this is my granddaughter who is visiting me.” I smiled and waved. News apparently travels very fast in a small town. The teller sensed the importance of the visit.

The 3 of Swords can be a difficult card in the tarot. When all conflicts and sorrows and truths however cruel pierce the heart, the heart is not completely broken. The swords of conflict and truth are perhaps blunted just a bit. But the heart remains larger than any truth, stronger than any fight, more lasting than any hurt.

Along with the cash and bank receipt in the drive through drawer was a cellophane-wrapped lollipop.

“Green,” I said. “My favorite flavor.”

And we laughed together at the nonsense of that, not Grandmother and Granddaughter for a moment, but just two girls together, bound by life. I unwrapped my treat and savored the grandchildhood I had missed, making up for it in one good lollipop. I sat a little taller, love towering over my family’s legacy of sad hearts for a moment that lasts forever.

Best wishes.

Molly the Owl is a Mom

Molly the Owl is the sometimes-quiet sensation on the internet right now. Carlos, a bird lover in southern California, built an owl box two years ago. Molly the Owl and her mate, Magee, have set up housekeeping as the first tenants. Real estate has been in a slump for a while, so I’m hoping this means recovery, even if it’s just owl real estate.

Like thousands of other folks, I’ve been following Molly’s progress since I discovered the web cam covering this little barn owl with the big fan club. Molly apparently is a first time mom, having laid six egg and consumed one that was not viable. To a thrilled audience of over 10,000 viewers at once, Molly’s first owlet hatched yesterday and we welcomed pink, bald, bobbling Max to the Owl Box. And no, no one knows if Max is actually a male owlet; he’s a "he" for now and he’s Max for now. If he turns out to be Maxine, that’s wonderful too.

Later in the evening, I watched Molly, who usually bolts her food down, nibble daintily at the rodent brought to her by Magee and offer the first little meal to still blind but now feather-fuzzy Max. Molly clucked. Max peeped a baby screech and took his first little nibble from Molly-Mom’s beak. After you get past the “ewww” factor of the dead rodent being eaten by a raptor, watching Molly follow instructions provided to her only by instinct is something just short of miraculous in our eyes. And there are still four eggs yet to be hatched.

I’ve learned a lot about owls in the few days I’ve been glued to the Owl Box. First, there are a lot of people who didn’t realize that owls poop. I’m sorry to go all Dr. Oz on you, but everybody does. Owls, however, also cough up “owl pellets,” a sort of owlish hairball that has the fur and bones that haven’t been digested initially. Molly and other mom owls take the pellet apart in the nest and make a fluffy down bedding covering the floor as a soft bed and insulation for the eggs and later owlets. Molly also munches on the bones to break them up and get calcium. Barn owls live only a couple of years and contrary to stereotyping they don’t hoot. They make a noise something like pulling the cat’s tail plus a brief auto accident plus ripping cloth. When my cat Tony heard it for the first time, he dove under the wardrobe. Things that make big noises probably eat overweight, under-clever stripy tabby cats, at least as far as Tony knows. He’s more of a finch cat than an owl cat.

A lot of the chat messages at the Owl Box broadcast focus on our perception that Molly is a good mommy. We attribute human feelings to Molly, especially the kids on the chat and the ol’ softies like me who think anything soft and fluffy must be also cuddly and sweet. As long as we don’t mix up stuffed toys with real owls, honestly I don’t see harm in this.

Watching Molly though does evoke empathy for her situation that perhaps Molly isn’t terribly aware of herself. She’s been in the Owl Box since at least February 16 when she laid the first egg. The moderators reported that she greeted that first egg with what appeared to be shock, surprise and curiosity. If we put ourselves in the Owl Box for over a month without cell phone, DVR, internet access, cable television or even a decent book, we immediately assume that Molly is bored out of her little owly skull. We look at her lovely pale heart-shaped face and her deep dark eyes and think, “Awww.” But I’m not really sure owls get bored; again that’s closer to the human experience than the owl experience. But we do see the significant changes in behavior from Molly’s being a free-wheeling owl-about-the-neighborhood to a Mommy Owl with a purpose.

Molly used to bolt her mice with gusto after Magee left from his evening visits. Now, as I mentioned, she nibbles and offers bits to baby Max. She has more reason than ever to protect her clutch of eggs and her little hatchling from the world and less reason to leave the Owl Box for stretch of the wings. Her expectations of Magee seem to have changed to more specific demands to bring the food on time and just a little extra food because there’s more than Molly to feed now. I can see her also making sure that Magee doesn’t make a misstep onto Max or one of the eggs too. With her shift in focus to the babies warmed by her fluffy reddish and grey feathers, she is, in our eyes making the same kinds of sacrifices that human mommies make for their “hatchlings.”

Owls are wonderful creatures in their own right. The barn owl’s head turns nearly all around while their eyes stay fixed and focused in binocular vision, providing excellent depth perception during prime awake hours in the night. Their flight is nearly soundless because of the shape of their feathers and wings. Their landings, if you watch the Owl Box, are not so silent, but by the time they land, they already have the mouse, vole, gopher, rabbit or rat and the need for silence has passed.

Those bright, gleaming dark eyes of the owl are actually the connection to mythology where owls are associated with Minerva (Roman) a/k/a Athena (Greek). One of the qualities of Athena is “bright eyed” and depictions of Athena often have an owl perched on her head. Because Athena is associated with wisdom, so are owls. The root of the word Athena is attributed to words meaning, “the mind of God,” and the myth about Athena is that she was born from the head of Zeus, giving him a mighty headache. Smart daughters can do that to a dad, so I’m not surprised about this. In tarot, wisdom and thought and even conflict are associated with air and the suit of swords. Athena is shown in armor, the mental qualities of logic and wisdom ever on the front lines of the best battles and arguments over ideas. So the owl’s sharp beak and talons are also the representations of the swords that can make for sharp thinking and sharp words.

If you are a beginner or more advanced student of tarot, I recommend you check out Wald and Ruth Ann Amberstone’s teleclasses on The Cards Complete. Their wonderful classes and information on their Readers Studio can be found at http://tarotschool.com/index.html and at The Tarot School on Facebook.

In last week’s class, one of the cards we studied was the Three of Swords. The Three of Swords can seem a bit shockingly negative on this joyous occasion of actually capturing the nesting and hatching of a barn owl broadcast live at http://www.ustream.tv/theowlbox. And, true, the Three of Swords can mean “sorrow but not destruction.” The swords of thought and conflict come to rest in the heart, a heart which is still intact in the card. With understanding, we adjust and resolve ourselves to realities, to the truth. Our ideas come to rest, like the beautiful, fluffy, ferocious raptor rests in her Owl Box, tenderly lined with the fur of rodents past. The mouse dies to feed the owl and her children. The egg that didn’t hatch was eaten. There is something sorrowful about endings and that’s the reality of it. Molly’s life will never be the same now that she’s a mother. The Three of Swords is a “Mom” card, the mom who endures pain, sorrow, boredom, insult, shocks, and sacrifice, whose love endures beyond thought and logic and conflict. Mom is the soft place to land.

So, for all of you Moms out there, whether your babies are new or grown, human or critter, born to you or adopted by choice, you know the love and pain and sorrow of the Three of Swords. And you’d do it all over again. Be ferocious, fluffy, loud, attentive, tender, proud. Be something like Molly the Owl.

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For more information on Athena/Minerva, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athena. And, yes, the Wise Owls are going to The Readers Studio 2010!

Best wishes.