BATS Foolery

It was hot, too hot for me. And there was not enough air in the room, either. I was backstage with my SF BATS buddies who were part of the Saturday night entertainers for the “stage” that was the area at the end of the hallway at the Doubletree in San Jose. We were waiting for Thalassa and for the start of the show.

Backstage is a funny place for players. We tug on our clothes, never quite sure if they are right and yet quite sure the overall effect will be, no doubt, a Show. David from Texas stood tall in his wizard…or was it swami? guise, a dramatic figure just standing there wordless. The sound man worked on the equipment. Lon Milo DuQuette sat quietly behind all of us in his impeccable white suit. Lon always looks like some deity to me, although the religion isn’t necessarily what it appears.

Peter and Jimmy are backstage with us, Jimmy in the best Fool costume with his yellow tights, green-sunflower tunic and green Robin Hood felt hat, Peter in his always-ready smile in the middle of us girls who were the first act.

Valentina had dressed as fall, and never a more luscious harvest than she with her great, broad-brimmed hat of fruit and whole dress the color of ripened pomegranate, a feast in herself with her dark hair and dark eyes. Rhonda made the most of her signature long white hair dressed in the charcoals-to-whites of winter, looking like the January that would never end, the frost, the ice, the snow, the wind. Beautiful Carrie was endless summer, bright in pinks and reds. And I was spring in my peacock green printed low-cut long gown and golden slippers. “Nature’s first green is gold,” I had quipped, mostly to myself as I had selected my dress. Now I was just hoping it would stay in place on my too-ample frame.

I was like a bud ready to burst in bloom (good) but I didn’t want to burst out of my dress (bad). I had abandoned the double-sticky wardrobe tape that they say Hollywood uses to keep actresses and their gowns in place.

“Duct tape,” I muttered. “I need duct tape.”

An astrologer had once told me that gravity was not my friend, predicting some 15 years before the event that I would suffer a great accident and injury to my leg. Well, I thought, gravity has done me more harm than my snapped knee and broken elbow.

I remembered a joke my friend Alice had told me. As we all fanned ourselves, waiting for the show to begin, I told it.

“At our age,” I began, “when they yell, ‘Show us your….’” And Peter dissolved into helpless laughter for minutes, gasping in horror at the thought of the ravages of gravity on tender lovelies as they drag towards the knees.

I said a few more things to keep the laughter up. It helps to laugh backstage. At least it helps me.

After a while and a few more crazy girl-jokes, Lon spoke up and said, “You know, this is exactly what my wife is afraid I do on these trips!”

“Give us the phone,” I urged him. “We can reassure her that you are safe!” He did not take me up on the offer, although it was sincere. Lon is a treasure of talent, musical and esoteric.

David handed me a plastic sword and I lent Carrie a cane. Suddenly, Thalassa came in and it was showtime.

Nancy, our director and principal dancer, directed covering us with white sheets so that our appearance would be revealed season by season. Lon and his ukulele went center stage, our Music Man. Covered in a sheet, I now could only hear the players move to the stage. And then it was my turn to be escorted to my mark.

Thalassa introduced us. The music started. I could hear Nancy dancing and suddenly, since I was Spring, I was first to be unveiled. I popped David’s plastic sword up like a jack-in-the-box with an equally bouncy smile on my face. Nancy danced. I mugged for the crowd, moving the sword in rhythm to Lon’s singing and playing. Laughter rose from the crowd.

Good, I thought. We all take ourselves too seriously sometimes. It was a relief to play the Fool for a weekend.

My life has been too serious this year. My workplace has been in upheaval. My job, along with all those of my co-workers, has been in question. Will it be there? Will I have to move to the Deep South and make the best of a hot and humid place, likely not to return to California? Will I be forced to get a job somewhere else in a time where jobs are not plentiful or guaranteed or often pleasant? Will I be forced to move all I have to continue to survive? Will I be able to make the most of another Tower event in my life, recreate myself one more time, find the Star in the rubble? Will I be able to rise above? And when will I know?

Finally, an indication of hope without a complete collapse has come. It looks like I will be able to stay in California. I have held back tears and screams and fear and panic since March, since first hearing of the possibility of great change. I know all reprieves are temporary, all respites brief, all comforts passing and all joys priceless. And for that, they are all the more precious.

So I try to laugh and make others laugh, to forget trouble for a while, a brief moment, as is the purpose of the jester, to make others laugh and to make the monarch think or feel. From within me, from my fears and sorrows and pain and anger, can well up the absurdity of our struggle to make things make sense. And from within me, a greater force arises out of love, to hold the plastic sword, to shield the principal dancer as she changes costume, to kiss the troubadour and flee to the stage door to exit, only to find it locked.

The show goes on while I pound on the door.

“Peter!” I cry in my best stage-whisper, my impromptu panic rising. “Peter! Let me in! Open the door!”

I expect it will be like that, knocking on heaven’s door. And Peter, helpless with laughter as gravity has taken its final toll, may let me in. Otherwise, I’m sure I’ll see most of my friends.

Best wishes from my BATS-termath!

When Presented With the Choice

Back at another company, years ago, I found I was about to get a new boss. I had liked my old boss and he had liked me. You might think of that as a plus. Ordinarily, when manager and subordinate are high-performing professionals and agree about goals and approaches and other things material to the work environment, it’s a good thing.

I thought so. I had moved to that difficult area from a job I had really liked, felt good about, and received awards many awards for.  Shortly after my old work group had done a group exercise with the official MBTI test, I found out something that did not surprise me, that I was a different Jungian personality type from the rest of my management team.

I had realized that and sought to make that difference the difference. After all, my type is called “results oriented.” To my mind, it was a good fit for a technology director focused on meeting the needs of business. I had a great team of programmers and managers who were tops at churning out projects that worked, that built on the future, that mattered in helping other technology teams meet their project goals. I liked my peers and our differences.

As it turns out, I was the only person on my management team who was comfortable with my results-oriented approach. I liked my job instead of groaning under the tremendous workload. I enjoyed the projects we worked on, enjoyed understanding them, enjoyed working with the programmers about them. I was happy. My team was, for the most part, happy.

My peers and boss in this group, however, were pretty sure I was the puzzle piece who didn’t fit. When it came time to shrink the group a bit, I was the one who was selected to move out. In the shuffle of the reorganization, a miscommunication occurred, however. My boss thought he had placed me in a “great” job in a group called “journaling” which was an accounting area. Unfortunately, the management of that group had placed someone else in that position and I was stuck momentarily without a chair. I was devastated and it was a measurable part of my performance not to show it.

Stripped of my team and without a new position, awkwardly I was asked to stay on as my VP’s special projects person, which is corporate speak for that deadly position indicating you should find another job immediately. I chugged away to create extensive documentation of my area for a quarter which impressed my non-results-oriented VP to no end and he gave me a high rating with shock and surprise, his.

An opening came up that looked good. Well, it looked like the only possibility of an opening in my company. I spent 45 minutes talking to Charlie and knew we were going to get along.

Charlie was from Texas and was about as un-San Franciscan as possible. Politics and the occasional thoughtless joke aside, he was a good, smart guy who would listen to reason and take a chance to develop employees. He sent me to an excellent technology intensive course and helped me learn the ropes. It wasn’t easy, but I latched onto it and gained the respect of people within the group.

I was starting to heal from being booted out of the department that I had helped create from scratch. I was deep into the new position, a nearly impossible job with too many customers who all thought they should be number one on my list and regularly were verbally abusive. One difference I made was not to pass this abuse along to my team, knowing that beating the horsie seldom makes her go faster when you’re using a sledge hammer.

That didn’t mean I didn’t have a standard of performance for the team. So, when one team member had an issue, which Charlie dealt with, fairly, I thought, I had respect for him. Charlie had explained what happened after it was complete without revealing too-personal details. I had agreed with his assessment and decision. We agreed, even on difficult topics. It was a good partnership.

I didn’t realize how important it was to understand how well-regarded your boss is in an organization. As it turns out, Charlie’s boss hated him, hated everything about him. I also had misjudged that she would project that hatred onto me because I worked well with him. She hated the decision he had made, assumed it was made with the wrong reasoning. She brought each person on the team into her office for interrogation about the issue. I gave my honest answer based on the facts as I knew them, allowing for the fact that I was not present at the time of the alleged incident but had spoken with both Charlie and the employee with the issue.

Honesty was not the best policy. Charlie’s boss easily spread her hatred of Charlie to me also and in an instant, although I was aware only of her displeasure at my report, my fate was sealed.

Charlie’s was sealed a lot sooner and within a month he had been fired for not getting along with his boss. And now, I was getting a new boss.

Naturally, with the upheavals I had had in the past three years, I was anxious to know more about my new boss. Following my own quipped advice that it is always best to learn from the mistakes of others, I called a friend who used to work for the new guy. She was an intelligent, outspoken woman and I thought perhaps my own experience might in some ways mirror hers.

“Now that you know him,” I asked her, “what would you do differently?”

She laughed. It was a laugh I came to understand was one of grateful escape.

“With him,” she said evenly, “you constantly must ask yourself with his every word, his every action, ‘Is he evil or stupid?’ In his case, always pick stupid.”

My spirits sunk low. It had been my experience that when presented with the choice in bosses between Evil and Stupid, always pick Evil.

I know it seems counter-intuitive. Evil can be appealed to on some level. You can accomplish great good while justifying your acts to the Evil Boss as something that will advance his position or otherwise appeal to his sense of greed. But, as I constantly warned my friends, the depths of Stupidity have never been plumbed.

I worked for the new guy for about six months. While he was geographically appealing to his boss, the one who fired Charlie, he was much more sexist, arbitrary, capricious, customer-negligent and the epitome of what business people fear in technology professionals: He wanted to spend their money to buy cool new toys, not to deliver business solutions. I did everything I could to remain professional, competent and customer-focused. He was openly skeptical of my abilities, my intelligence, my prospects and my gender.

When the next round of layoffs came, we talked the evening before. He finally loosened up talking to me, saying that he knew he had given me a hard time in the last six months and frankly he was pleased, so pleased with my performance, that the only flaw he could find with me was that I was “too nice.” He said he thought I had all the makings of a vice president, and he wanted to start work on that once all the layoff stuff was over.

I remembered what I knew of him from experience and from advice. I knew what I had read for myself. I told him that if he needed to tell me that I was laid off, please do me the favor of coming for me the very first thing in the morning. He was shocked that I thought that might happen. I smiled. We shook hands and parted.

The next morning at 7:15 am he came to my office, shame-faced and flustered. To this day, I honestly do not think he knew that the conversations he was having with his boss would result in my being let go.

In the Tarot, “stupid” might be represented by The Fool and “evil,” The Devil. If those are your choices, I urge you to draw another card! Neither one makes a good boss. Just don’t be convinced that those are the only two cards in the deck.

Best wishes.

In Appropriate Humor

“Don’t try anything funny.” This has got to be one of my favorite lines from television or movies. I figure just about everything I’ve ever tried was funny in some way. Not everyone appreciates a joke, though.

Take my first husband, please, with apologies to Henny Youngman. I figured that there had to be some common ground for us somewhere because he was a famous, no, more like notorious collector and teller of Polish jokes. He’s Polish, so it was hard to argue with self-deprecating humor.

After all, I’ve made short jokes (“I AM standing up,”) and blonde jokes, too many to cite, for years. So I figured that even though HUBS-1 was a Virgo with all the most retentive and compulsive needs for order, down to alphabetizing his socks, fer goodness’ sake, (“black comes before blue, left to right”), somehow my devil-may-care random housekeeping habits—OK, fine, sloth—could somehow be overlooked with well-placed jokes. So, we all know THAT didn’t work out. So much for the power of optimism: It will get you into things that can be really expensive to get out of.

Still, one of the things I actually liked about the guy was that he kept a visual gag prominently displayed in the living room. It looked like a crafts-class trophy at first glance until you realized it was a pole with a lock.

I figured someone with a good enough sense of humor to display such a trophy had to have some redeeming features in there somewhere, in spite of the tendency to wipe a gloved finger over the doorway trim to prove to me that, after a day’s diligent housekeeping on my part, the house was still dirty and we could not, after all, go to the movies. I reiterate: I only divorced him. For those of you who find these traits attractive, I think he’s remarried for the third time too and not available. Hail and farewell, I say. This isn’t kiss and tell; it’s dust and tell. He should see my dust-bunnies now!

When things are funny to you and you laugh, sometimes people think you have a sinister ulterior motive. One of my co-workers from our former employer was pulled over by a notorious Machiavellian reptilian and demanded the back story on yours truly.

“What’s Marcia’s game?” he whispered to her urgently with sidelong glances. It was a scene straight out of The Borgias.

My co-worker laughed out loud and told him that she had known me for years and as far as she could tell I didn’t have a game. I worked hard, was results-oriented, was a good manager and wanted everyone to win, genuinely. He wouldn’t buy it.


Art Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

 How could I be The Fool and plan intelligently for successful outcomes, again and again? Plainly it’s a Fool reversed.

Comedian Bob Newhart had a routine that I thought encapsulated my predicament well. He was superb at his comedy routine where he let you hear just his side of a telephone conversation. He’s talking to his boss, apparently a stern authoritarian, when he says, “Yes, sir, I do have a sense of humor.” He pauses to listen to the imaginary telephone in his ear. “Yes, sir, I can keep it to myself.”

But sometimes, I have to laugh.

I agree, it’s not always helpful. For instance, I considered my biggest handicap when I was studying for a career  teaching junior high English to be my height. I had thought, in error, that I had half a chance of being taller than the little sweetums, but, no. Genetics and American nutritional standards have conspired so that there was no way on earth I could sit at a teacher’s desk and be Teacher and still see over the first row. I had to stand all day. My feet were like pizza at the end of each day. But what I really underestimated was the trouble I would have keeping a straight face. They were relentlessly funny, usually unintentionally, making the need for self-control all the more important. After all, I didn’t want them to think I was laughing at them and hurt their feelings. That would be horrifying.

I’m lucky enough to have had jobs in the corporate world that provided plenty of fodder for laughter. When the emergency phonecall starts out with the preamble, “First, I’ve gotta tell you that they did not fire this girl,” I had to sit down to laugh.

Then there are the corporate disasters I could only stand back and admire. The dress code violations and redefinitions by a particularly conservative company trying in vain to be hip were a constant source of amusement and anguish in the 90’s. As a manager, I had to translate and enforce whatever the latest definition of what a wardrobe malfunction was among a group of programmers who were more likely to come to work with their favorite Birkenstocks duct-taped together as the permanent fix. I sought assistance from my war-weary director.

“Just a few questions about the new dress code,” I ventured into her office.

“Oh, no. Now what?” She didn’t really want to know.

“So just as a point of clarification,” I went on. “Is khaki a color or a cloth?”

She groaned.

“And I know it says here that there will be no après ski wear. I consider myself to be, by choice, permanently pre-ski.”

She shook her head low over her desk.

“OK, you guys,” I chirped later in my team meeting with my lovable misfits, “you’ve all seen the new dress code, right?”

They rolled their eyes with the appropriate fervor and reverence as only people so rooted in logic can do. I looked around the table and nodded.

“Don’t make me talk to you about this stuff, OK?” I turned the sheet over and we moved on to more serious topics.

My favorite, however, was one experience at the hospital. John, “The Hubs”, The Only Good One, the Precious, was set to have a little patch-up job. With one too many serious abdominal surgeries in his youth, he had, as a mature man of action, an umbilical hernia. We joked together about it (viz., only good one) and I told him that I had dragged him up and down the stairs too many times like a teddy bear so that his bellybutton had fallen off. Now they were going to sew it back on. He was so relaxed about the whole thing that they had to wake him up to give him the sedative. I was more tightly wound.

The anesthesiologist, with her clipboard, started checking down the usual list of repetitive questions prior to surgery. She must have been a little tired. While at the top, she had read aloud, “umbilical hernia,” by the time she got to the bottom of the long form of questions, she looked up at us and asked, “Which side?”

I knew immediately that she’d grasped the hernia part without the navel feature but I could not help myself. Being tense before my sweetie’s surgery will do that to me. I broke my husband’s cardinal rule: Never, ever be funny in front of a doctor.

I placed my hand on top of his very relaxed tummy and looked up at the doc with all seriousness and answered.

“We prefer the front.” I blinked sincerely.

We all burst out laughing and I turned to John and said, “Well, THAT was close, huh? They might’ve sewn your bellybutton back on the WRONG SIDE!” Well, what if, you know?

Best wishes!

Do Alligators Dream?

"Over there on the opposite shore," our guide pointed the very few feet away as we tender morsels perched on our inadequate flotation devices in the largest airboat in Florida, "is Fred, our resident alligator."

Fred smiled. At least I think he did. It's hard to tell when alligators smile. It was daytime, warmer than usual for this time of year at Myakka State Park. Alligators snooze in the daytime, digesting what they've eaten in the night.


Fred
Myakka State Park 2012


"What do they eat?" the guide prompted us. "Anything that moves." We sat especially still, smiles frozen on our faces at the joke that was not a joke.

We were headed out on Myakka Lake to see more wildlife. Our cheerful guide went on to explain that there had been no officially documented alligator attacks at the lake, citing the lack of documentation provided by successful alligators. Those little keys on the computer are particularly difficult for 8-12 foot long reptiles who are, ok, let's just admit it here, illiterate. How would the alligator begin to report the attack? As a description of gourmet dining? Certainly the person involved would not report it.

'Wiggly, jiggly, with some crunchy parts marked 'Canon'. Thrashed a bit and made a fuss. Tastes a bit like the javelina although more tender once you get past the annoying textile coverings. Not a snack but a full meal. On the whole, however, I prefer the anhinga for its bite-sized portions.'

I doubted Fred was the food editor for the Myakka Alligator Herald somehow. I wondered what alligators dream of during the day. Food, I figure.

Fred continued to smile as we left the dock and moved out into the lake.

We begin now the Chinese year of the water dragon and it was not lost upon me that I was hoping for an alligator encounter of the photographic kind, only, at the Water Dragon time when Fred and his family are my closest representation.

My husband and I have traveled to Florida to spend time with his cousin Margaret and pursue wildlife photography. Margaret is the self-proclaimed family matriarch, formidable herself without the least bit of comparison to dragons or alligators. She has survived much in her life. She is deeply religious. She cooks killer breakfasts and dinners. She will pass on wildlife of any kind.

"I like people," Margaret says. "Is it so awful that I don't want to hear stories about your cat or dog?" Margaret does not come with us on our wildlife photography forays.

Florida is one of my favorite places to visit because of its natural beauty. True, my idea of nature and beauty is skewed because my childhood was spent there in the oaks, pines and palms, the veils of Spanish moss, the birdsong and abundant water. There seems to be less and less of the Florida I knew as a child since that joke about selling swampland in Florida for housing developments isn't really a joke. It's a good thing Margaret likes people. Good grief, they are everywhere! Little grey and white haired people having a wonderful time in their retirement in deed-restricted communities have taken over the swamplands with their houses and condos, many of them also lovers of the natural beauty of the place. But it's still not as crowded as California and the yards are often long, the yards uncurbed and rimned with sand, the driveways filled with fossil seashells dug from the interior quarries. It is still a place I love despite its changes.

Myakka Lake, Florida

I used up batteries and storage chips as we floated past the ibis, roseate spoonbill, bald eagle, pairs of sandhill crane, wood stork, pelicans, grebes, egrets both great and snowy, herons blue, tri-color and Great Blue. The wild boar, let loose by early settlers, rooted by the lakeshore while deer clung closer to the edges of the clearing. Another alligator, this one in the water, appeared. We circled it. It swam under us. We were properly horrified and fascinated at the same time. Towards sunset, all of us seemed to be looking for a drink. We putted back to our "crash landing" at the dock, Fred still in full snooze.

In the tarot, the Fool is without preconceived notions or plan. He is not particularly prepared for what's around the corner. His attention is likely on what is just under his nose and not necessarily what is just beyond his feet. There is information all around him. If he is fortunate, he learns something on his journey. If he is more fortunate, he has a helpful companion to warn him of danger and encourage him along the way. If he is even more fortunate, he experiences the terrible beauty of the world and all its wonders. He is subject to surprise.


Victorian Trade Card Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord


I expected to see all the wonderful birds and hoped to photograph them. I had hoped for some alligator shots and was delighted when we had lots of opportunities. What I didn't expect was the warning handed out at the Myakka State Park entry.

Apparently, the black vultures (not the same bird as a turkey vulture with the red heads) are particularly fond of snacking on anything made of rubber particularly towards sunset. They eat your windshield wipers and edges around your car windows. The park cannot be responsible. They just want you to know.

We speculated on how we would word the insurance claim. We weren't sure our account and the warning provided by the park would be enough to explain the situation. I took a photo of the vultures waiting for sunset, perched in a tree, seemingly selecting their car from the shady parking lot. I felt vaguely like a dupe on a snipe hunt but animals do some pretty crazy things. They are almost as crazy as tourists.

Best wishes!

Fool’s Jamba Juice

What a huge weekend! I was so glad to be able to take Friday and Monday off my regular work. I didn’t realize how much I would need it.

The Tarot Collectors Forum 2011 Collaborative Tarot decks arrived from the printers mid-week last week. Andrew and I made plans to set up our little shipping and handling factory at my dining room table for Friday. A lot of people have paid but a few people haven’t so we wanted to make sure we had the list and addresses correct.

Apparently mail from the USA to New Zealand gets pounded to a pulp and my New Zealander asked for extra wrapping. We can do that! I’m always amazed at mail delivery anyway. That may be why I based two of my own decks on postcards. Can you imagine it actually got there? I have one of my 1903 picture postcards on my desk right now, my favorite Argentine gypsy card which is the cover card of my Picture Postcard Tarot. Her tinted scarf and heavy silver earring and beautiful profile tell more of a story than her August 26, 1903 postmarks in Buenos Aires. Someone thought of someone that day and reached out.

And one person no longer lives in France so we made sure we had the right address and the right country. We packaged, we boxed, we taped, we addressed, we filled out little-box customs forms, and we piled them into the colorful African woven market baskets I bought as my Ft. Bragg souvenirs. We did all this until well after the Post Office closed.

But I had a deadline to stop that Friday night, too, because I was scheduled to read tarot at a Halloween party here in town. The Halloween House was not too far from own house on a street I had never driven down before. It was a steep hill and I, dressed in my long black lace dress with my frog-handled cane, stepped carefully out of my car in the darkening nightfall. I made it to the house with my tote full of cards and walked up the luminaria-lined drive. Robin had gone all out with turning her front and back yards into a Halloween Haunted House, a benefit for Bay Respite Care this year. She’s been doing this for years to bring Halloween to her daughter who has a fatal form of multiple sclerosis.

By the time I was barely settled in the gazebo with the comfy wicker couch and chairs, shabby chic décor, incense and candle light, I had readings booked to last nearly to midnight. I met wonderful people, drank a gallon of water and read tarot in the flickering candles. It was a perfect evening and I was glad to be able to be part of it.

Saturday was busy too. The Berkeley All-Blues women’s rugby team hosted two rugby matches out at our rugby pitch. John wanted me to bring my tarot cards there to read too and had set up my favorite Italian-style tile-topped table and my two good folding chairs under the trees. Wine tasting! Now there’s a benefit of Northern California! A winery had hoped to ply us with their whites, reds and a lovely muscat. The white was buttery, the Zinfandel robust and I cut it off at two tastes. I don’t like drunk tarot reading any more than I approve of drunk driving. I had just one “customer” for my complementary readings, a career-path discussion that showed promise. There were happy dogs and happy rugby players, but I had to go at 4:30 pm if I were going to do everything we had planned for the evening.

Each year the last weekend of October, our local Catholic high school holds a Trivia Night. My friend Nancy asks us to come because John and I tend to know a strange and diverse bunch of factoids. Along with our trivial minds, we were also to bring goodies to share and wear costumes. This year, the theme was Hawaii.

I’ve never been there. I know muumuus, leis, Hawaiian print shirts, flip-flops (as opposed to thongs and You Thong People Know Who You Are), grass skirts and flowers at your ear. I figured that this is what everyone else knew about Hawaii too. As I drove to the grocery store to get the pineapple pieces and Hawaiian Kettle Style Potato Chips and anything else I could think of as island food, a picture began to form in my mind. Boy, was John going to be surprised when he saw my costume!

The Fool is usually placed with the Major Arcana but his number is 0, Zero, Null, blank. In the same way that the ancient tarot decks portrayed the Fool as the scary, crazy homeless guy, the picture of the way the unfortunate were treated in the 1400’s in Italy and everywhere else, the Fool is outside of the Tarot “society” and therefore can roam freely if randomly through it. Our more modern portrayal of the Fool is more like a court jester, the cartoon-Kokopelli amusing the court, speaking the truth without penalty, appearing foolish. He is the beginning of the journey, incompletely prepared, without a plan or support structure, save the dog (or weasel or cat-like creature nipping at his heels or a bit higher to tear his breeches). He does not understand consequence and is usually depicted as having benign intent. He is often shown about to step off a cliff and in the Tarot, in spite of his foolish leap before looking, he is protected by the forces of the Universe who are probably amused and nod knowingly as he progresses through wisdom.


Picture Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord


Ah, I thought. In Hawaii, the Fool would be the Tourist, the idiot who came prepared to live a Hawaiian lifetime in a week, despite the impossibility of that. And so my costume emerged: I faked a wet-suit from black tights and t-shirts, wrapped a beach towel picturing a surfer around my middle, put on pearl and seashell jewelry, donned swim-fin flippers and diving mask and I was almost ready. All I needed was Tourist Sunburn. Familiar with decades of my own sunburn and instead of that luscious tropical tan, I faked the Coppertone near-death blistering burn so familiar. Yeow! I grabbed my dip-net, a sand bucket, a bag of seashells and I was ready. All I had to do was walk downstairs in flippers. Right.

I made it in one piece and John was properly stunned. Nancy’s mom Geraldine laughed out loud. I bent and folded myself into the back seat and we were off to Trivia Night. Sadly, we did not win the trivia prize this year; we flubbed the music section but John got some amazing answers in especially the basketball question. During one of the breaks between rounds, I noticed a tall good-looking guy from the next table staring at me in, at the very least, disbelief. I had to acknowledge his unvoiced thoughts. I pointed to my husband.

“Just think how he feels!”

My “fan” laughed out loud. And I won the prize for the women’s costume contest! It’s a gift card at Jamba Juice. Something in pineapple, perhaps?

Sunday was a little more restful although I had evening tarot readings in the back yard. Monday was the main event, though. This year I had help from my friend Andrew and his friend Patrick. Patrick and John put up the tent in the driveway while Andrew and I grabbed some dinner for everyone. The boys set up speakers with a Spooktacular playlist and featured a Deal or No Deal game where the prizes were, alas, not millions of dollars but extra candy for the kids. The Eye of Zohar and my Friendly Ghost papier mache props had survived their year of storage in the garage. The evening was perfect in its weather. I readied my brass cauldron of candies and shuffled my Tarot decks. I warmed up by offering free one-card readings on Facebook. Then, we were invaded! Spidermen, princesses, Minnie Mice, a Baby Bunny Wabbit, Iron Men, teens professing to be nerds, all wanted candy. Their parents came too, some for tarot readings.

“Uh, yer gonna wanna get that looked at by a professional,” I recommended to one dad with fake blood streaming down his chest from a “wound” in his Zombie neck. He laughed aloud. Even Father Steve came by for the entertainment and stayed to talk about travel long after we ran out of candy. It had been a long four days in the weekend, long but fun. We’ll do this again next year.

I Can Haz Jamba Juice!

Best wishes!

Pennies from Heaven

Thanksgiving week is a busy one for most people in the USA, so I promise not to take up much of your time today.

First, applause! applause! to Theresa Reed, The Tarot Lady, for her contest to provide a FREE mentorship prize to some lucky young tarot enthusiast between the ages of 18-28. Here’s a link to her contest:

http://blog.thetarotlady.com/2010/11/21/calling-all-young-tarot-readers/

This is an incredibly generous offer since it is more than a one-time encounter but a full course with individual attention from one of the most respected tarot professionals out there. Thanks, too, to Donnaleigh de LaRose for sharing this link for Theresa’s contest on Facebook.

I feel a deep connection to mentoring because I remember being a confused teenager with so many paranormal and predictive moments. It was hard to know whom and what to trust in my experiences. I had only the briefest experience with a kind adult who recognized my situation and helped me learn how to focus. Most of all, he helped me feel normal at a time when nothing felt normal. Students, take advantage of a terrific chance to grow!

***

The Art Postcard Tarot and Victorian Trade Card Tarot are still available but, I’m pleased to say, going fast. The decks are $25 USD each plus postage. If you are interested, please email me at morganmm@aol.com with your name and address and I will send PayPal instructions. If you’re wondering whether or not to get one or perhaps both, remember The Fool card says, “Just do it!”



The Fool from the Art Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord



The Fool from the Victorian Trade Card Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

***

May you have a blessed Thanksgiving week. If you travel, travel safely. If you stay home, stay home safely. If you get a chance, whether under your breath or to their faces, thank someone for something. If they didn’t do it, you’ll keep them guessing. If they did, you might even make them blush.

Best wishes!

The Incompleat Workes of Beth the Jester

Oh, wow, I’m breathless! I just received my latest Beth Seilonen decks, among them, the Tarot of the Red Jester. And I also just received the originals of a deck not otherwise published, Owls in the Night. Beth lives and breathes art and tarot in Maine. I would like to say I’m one of her oldest fans, but I think there are people older than I am who love her work too. At least I hope so.

I first saw mention of her work on Aeclectic Tarot where some of her other fans were oooh-ing and ahhh-ing over her decks. I had to see what the fuss was about. And what a delight! Now, I know that there’s a time and place for those bite-you-in-the-neck-scream-and-swoon decks; I have those too, trust me. Even the relentlessly optimistic have a dark side. But Beth’s work fills a gap in the whimsy department like no other tarot artist. So I’ve become one of her frequent patrons of the arts.

Besides those two new arrivals, my collection of Beth’s work is, to my mind, small: Another Way, Arcana Cats, Fishy Tarot (true, I’m a fish-nut but I love these fish), Foxy Arcana, Funky Lighthouse, the incomparable Isabel Snail, the Pink Arcana, Purple Penguin, Home Sweet Home, Split View, Tree Women, Watchers, Whimsy Tarot, Witches II and Jester’s Tarot (not to be confused with Tarot of the Red Jester). It is by no means a complete collection! Yet to be snagged are The Maine, Sun Conure, Symbolically Simplistic, Hues, Sails, Baby of Thine, well, good grief, you guys, just go look at all this lovely stuff! http://www.catseyeart.com/index.html

Beth’s decks aren’t just whimsy and color. Her trees bear messages of the harm we do to the environment, the preciousness of our earth, the delight of life and the enormity of circumstance as viewed by the individual. Take a close look at her Watchers and you’ll start looking over your shoulder. Her Tree Women have deep roots. Even bouncy little Nestor the Jester in the Pink Arcana shows the emotion and ambiguity of the tarot much deeper than his pink rolly-polliness may at first glance convey. The Jester makes us laugh, but stay a moment because he (or is that she?) makes us think too. The Jester plucks the conscience of the king as Shakespeare might suggest. Even slow-moving, unsuspecting, gentle and delicate Isabel Snail can ooze up to rest on the wrong golf ball of life with dire consequences. As in that funny-but-true song, “Sometimes you’re the windshield. Sometimes you’re the bug.”

Beth’s limited edition decks are easy to read with but personally, I don’t usually want to take the risk of ruining them with shuffling and use. I do like to get them out to admire and meditate. Isabel Snail’s Tower feels just like October 2002 for me. I can still feel that *whoosh* of the wind I caught just before life hit me right square in the snail shell. The Foxy Arcana “Yearn” shows we all have dreams, the fox and the chickens: If you have sweet little dreams, you sleep; if you have obsessive dreams, you’re up all night.

Just this past weekend, though, I broke my own rule about reading with Beth’s cards. Owls in the Night is so tiny (most of Beth’s decks are “normal” playing card size, but the Owls deck is a bit smaller) that it easily slips into my purse along with what seems to be several hundred pounds of other stuff in there (the Hubs swears this is where the missing Mr Hoffa may be…gotta love those vintage Dooney & Burkes for durability). I read for a private party, some delightful ladies, one of whom had been the successful bidder on my silent auction offering at the Benicia Vallejo Humane Society’s Barkitecture fundraiser. Our hostess plied me with the always-welcome endless glass of water and a glazed donut, plus treated me to a break between readings with a walk in her backyard full of roses and a glorious view of the Carquinez Straits. As a special treat, each sitter got to pick an owl’s card as their closing message for the day. It ended what might have been a “heavy” session on a light note.

Each of Beth’s decks has come with its own hand-decorated box and usually a little drawstring pouch. They are generally laminated, numbered, signed and easy to hold. Beth’s note cards are nearly as much fun as her decks. And, with Beth’s permission, I wanted to share some examples here with you.

The best news of all is that Beth appears to be nowhere near the end of her creativity with tarot. Her Red Jester comes in two alternatives, true to her tailored to the customer’s wish, in its limited edition. For those who want only to be guided by the image, there is the choice of having the card interpretations printed on additional cards supplied with the deck. For those collectors who want to preserve both her images and words together on each card, there is the choice to have the Red Jester “with interpretation.” In addition, there’s a silk cloth, 11” x 11” in choice of 4 colors. I picked “with” and red, being subtle in my collecting.

I’m quite pleased to note that we have available to us here the (happily) Incompleat Workes of Beth the Jester, a whimsical Maine artist and mom, with wonderful new visions of the funny, scary, angry, sad, joyful and loving world of tarot. Encore! Encore! May your inks and watercolors never run dry!

You can find Beth’s decks through this website: http://www.catseyeart.com/index.html, on Etsy, on eBay and if you’re really nice, she’ll accept your friend invitation on Facebook. Please write to her to encourage her to come to this year’s BATS (Bay Area Tarot Symposium) too!

**

Psst! Registration for BATS just opened and they accept PayPal. The dates are August 28-29, 2010 in San Francisco. It’s loads of fun for tarot enthusiasts and always features fabulously informed experts and a luscious marketplace. For more information and registration, go to http://www.dodivination.com/sf_bats



Best wishes!

The Fool’s Journey

Happily I opened the email from my friend Mike. How long has it been since we talked? It used to be daily when we worked together in now-far away Illinois, fellow technology soldiers in the war against bugs and for a major insurer’s health claims system. How far our paths had taken us! I had enjoyed watching Mike and the other guys from our department play volleyball and win. I was their slightly-past-prime cheerleader. It was a time when there were still two men to every woman in technology. It seems like a long time ago now. Happily we landed geographically a stone’s throw from each other in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our schedules were another thing, though, and we haven’t had that next dinner with his partner and my husband as we keep meaning to. Yet. We will, I’m sure.

But until then a little news was welcome. I’ve always envied Mike’s appetite for travel, not just appetite but resolve and accomplishment. He’s like a National Geographic all on his own. And he makes what I can only call “Killer Brownies” with fudgy chocolate interlaced with ripples of melted caramel. Ah. But I wander off the path a moment.

Mike had an opportunity for me, a connection with a good friend of his who needed a tarot reader for a Mardi Gras Ball in Eureka, about 5 hours’ drive away. Was I interested? I was! After assuring Mike’s friend David, one of the organizers of this event, that I did not expect to be reimbursed for mileage or lodging, I made plans for the long drive and overnight stay. I found my old Mardi Gras beads, selected decks with care and at the last minute grabbed a lamp in case the night club was too mood-lit to see the cards.

The drive was glorious, springtime in the redwoods. We saw horses running in a long field. We saw deer on the hillsides, hawks in the sky, early spring wildflowers near the meadow runnels. I loved my Fool’s Journey, packed light, dog and husband companions, not really knowing what to expect next. We stopped to eat in Willits at Busters and had one of their famous and delicious hamburgers. We revisited our Highway 101. I had not been to Eureka since 2001.

We found our motel and Auntie Mo’s without incident. I met David, found my table and chairs, well enough away from the music and dancing, and within good view of the pool tables, I noted. I met Chad and others helping to make the Mardi Gras Ball possible, helped make signs and got my cards out. I was ready. I did not mind that I was unlikely to recoup my expenses this trip. This was a mini-vacation for me.

Of the readings, one stood out, another Fool on his journey, one longer than mine. Chris was in the first days of his trip and truly the epitome of the card.

Many people interpret The Fool as someone foolish, at best “Baby-Wise” as in The Jefferson Airplane’s song “Lather.” He is not so much that as everyman who has taken steps into the unknown, a leap of faith without clear understanding of what is ahead, ready for the next bend in the road, ready to seek his path for better or worse and happy in the traveling. He is a seeker, perhaps not completely prepared for the journey, but knowing that the journey itself is preparation. There is possibility of fortune. There is danger of a fall. There are twists in the road. It is his Progress we trace in the Tarot. Like the King’s Fool, he may say or do what others in court may not; he may tell the king the truth. He may amuse. He may confuse. He is the leap into the void.

I read Chris’ cards, learning that his journey is as much spiritual as it is physical. Chris has a blog chronicling his journey, http://www.72daysofgod.com/journal/day1.html. So few of us interrupt our lives to go on a vision quest or spiritual journey that I feel his story is remarkable. I wish him well and hope he finds the *Great Zot!* of enlightenment a journey like this can bring.

The last visitor to my tarot table asked to read for me! This isn’t the usual request I get as a professional tarot reader, but I was open to what he had to say. My Fool’s Journey was meant to take me to a road not yet traveled. Or, had I traveled it before? As Justin spoke, I recognized him, not from this life of his but one prior.

A lovely elderly man volunteered at the hospital across the street from my house in New Mexico as I did every Saturday morning. He had a glow about him, more than the red coat, bright blue eyes and brilliant white hair. In the confusion of my teenage years, my imperfect gift often seemed more like a curse. But in Mr Shultz’ tranquil presence, I felt clear. One day, he told me that I would be going to California. At first I resisted the notion. I had no wish to go there. I wanted to go back to Florida, to the wildlife and beaches I loved. It took only a minute to know it was true and to further understand my path. The words fell out of my mouth, “Yes, but first I have to go here,” and pointed to a place on the map I did not know. In fact, I traced my own geography, years later going to Illinois, then moving to California in 1989.

As Justin held my hands, basically asking what a nice old broad like me was doing in a place like this, a raucous and costumed Mardi Gras party, when he saw my readings were serious and not a joke for the celebration, I recognized him again. And he recognized me, delivering a message of peace and love, solace and support. Once again, my Fool’s journey has taken me to the mountain cliffs with little more than a bag of cards, my dearest husband and my dog. Once again, the profit of the path could not be counted in coins.

Fool’s Journeys are like that.

Best wishes.