Fresh Ink

I took the plunge Sunday and got a tattoo, fresh ink. I was nervous about it, I'll admit. I couldn't tell The Hubs about it until after I had come home. I don't know why. I didn't want to talk about it before I had it.

It reminds me of more than 10 years ago when I was a manager of programmers in San Francisco. I had a great team of programmers, most of whom had come to the USA from the former Soviet Union. They had tested me in the first few weeks, passed me then told me that they wanted to find out if their new boss was fair. I was honored to have passed. I wanted to be a fair boss, not one of those dreadful nightmare managers who get some workplace equivalent of a Darwin Award for Boss Awfulness. I've had those bosses and knew I didn't want to be one. I couldn't make up for all those dreadful bosses, but I could try to be a good one.

One of my programmers was a tall young man who spoke very little, very precisely and was known to be an excellent technician. There was some speculation that he was arrogant, but I thought he was a combination of self-confident, truly talented and introverted, making him something of a cipher to the chatty managers and administrative staff. I learned quickly that he was reliable and quick, things a manager grows to like in computer programmers. I trusted him and perhaps more importantly I learned to let him be an introvert and not to try to bombard him with my extroverted chit-chat that other extroverts know means, "I LOVE talking to you and being your friend!!" but introverts tolerate, barely, with polite scorn.

One day The Strong Silent Type came into my office and said he wanted to talk. Very uncharacteristic, I marveled, and cleared my desk and mind to prepare for his message.

He told me that he was going to need to take a couple of weeks of vacation very soon but he did not know the exact dates. I checked the schedules for the team and while I was checking, he went on to say that he must have this time off.

I looked at him a moment and said, "Well, yes, of course." And I waited.

He shifted uncomfortably in his chair and made the rare eye contact.

"My wife," he started and stopped. "My...we are having a baby." He smiled a rare smile.

"Oh, wow! This is fantastic! This is fabulous!" I bubbled. "It's our first team baby! Can we have a baby shower for you? What do you need? Do you know if it's a boy or a girl? Do you have names? This is so exciting."

He drew back, horrified, blanched and set his jaw.

"No."

"No?" I stopped short and resumed being a "safe" extrovert.

"No. My wife...," he studied the top of my desk for inspiration in the wood grain. "We do not talk about the baby before it is born."

"No?" I repeated, sure I was in too deep culturally or something.

"No," he sighed. "It is...what? Bad luck to talk about baby before it is born."

"Oh." Well, of course. I mean it was their first baby, my first team baby, a tense situation and all. My Aunt Manager visions of fashionable baby clothes and adorable stuffed toys started to fade in the distance.

"Well, then," Marcia Manager resumed her dignity, "you'll tell me when you need to go?"

"Yes. Thank you."

The baby was born and we had a shower after the happy event when everyone was comfortable talking about the Little Darling, safe arrival assured. I checked with my female team members to find out if this were a common thing, not talking about the baby before it's born.

"Oh, no!" They laughed out loud, their teammate safely on Daddy leave. "His wife is just nervous."

I thought of that time when I was about to get my tattoo and realized I was nervous like my programmer's wife. I didn't want to talk about the tattoo until it was "born." The tattoo represents a lot of things, the way we cling to life and fight with it at the same time, the nature of love-hate relationships with just about anything or anyone, my DNA recently confirmed by a well-known genealogy website, and even the 2 of Wands. The 2 of Wands is the comparison between what we have and what may be. It is the process of learning and the need to embrace new things in addition to what we already have. It's a forward-looking card that expects that the future has possibilities, the past has lessons and the present is a tender moment that may tilt the universe one way or another depending on our choices.

I want to thank my tattoo artist Shotsie Gorman, who is a famous tattoo artist (and I admit I am ignorant of such things). I want to thank my dear friend Kristine Gorman, his wife and excellent Tarot reader for talking to me while I was mid-tat. Together, they have the T.A.T. Gallery in Sonoma, California, with beautiful works of art to sell besides Fresh Ink. Check it out, seriously.

And there are just two--two--places left available for you to make a last-minute decision to attend this year's SF BATS, the San Francisco Bay Area Tarot Symposium, where the 2 of Wands will be very busy. Kristine will be teaching a class on Tarot and I will be teaching a class on Lenormand. Click on the link and expand your world!

Best wishes!

Striving Artist

It occurred to me how many of my friends are artists of one sort or another. My friend Beth Seilonen just spent ten days’ wonderful summer vacation with me. She spent much of the time in my back yard in the creative process, painting delightful one-of-a-kind boards, pins and boxes into “spirit boards” complete with little planchettes. More than just her own creative mind at work, her spirit of giving was in play too, since these items are all fundraiser items to support this year’s 2014 SF BATS.

We laughed at how I had her chained to the picnic table all week. In fact, my “artist in captivity” effort was a little more participative. We visited Michaels stores in three different towns, all with just a little bit different inventory of omigoshes and gotchas that inspired Beth to spend her days in the shade of my pink crepe myrtle up to her elbows in paint.

The results are heart-warming, too. At the recent SF BATS Fundraiser event, three of the big boards sold, including a masterpiece friendly fruit bat board with a swirling lacy paper background layer. It looks like the whorls and eddies of the depths of divination.  One of the beautiful owl figural boards sold, plus a box (perfect for runes) decorated with bats flying around the sides with the familiar letters and numbers, Yes and No on the top.

Beth Seilonen's SF BATS Spirit Board 2014

Beth has just a few more of these available for sale, still with proceeds split to SF BATS, along with her joyous, jolly, irreverent Compound Tarot, a 78-card black and white deck featuring the denizens of the mythical Compound that is the Mother House for Daughters of Divination’s Facebook group. This Facebook group was recently made a secret group to facilitate its worldwide membership’s postings of fun and lampooning. One new member wondered where the divination was and we all chuckled reading the question. There are lots of social media groups dedicated to serious divinatory queries, business tips for professional readers and practice readings for students. This group, however, is the haven for diviners in serious need of blowing off a little steam. While a dedicated subgroup gets their spectacles steamed up over current favorite hotties like Cumberbatch and Hiddleston, care is taken to assure the whole thing does not go overboard into completely poor taste (although some would dandle dangerously close to the edge of that cliff), all in good fun.

In addition to having my visiting artist-in-residence for the last few days, my back yard has hosted the neighborhood children in their demand for Craft Day. First, I led my Ventura Street Irregulars in a slapdash paint-your-own-mini-birdhouse day with the kids on the block. Even the two-year-old got her hands into the mix, happily making handprints on whatever was in front of her.

Today, I had to work, but that didn’t stop Beth and her daughter Anna from having the kids over for another round of paint-your-own-box and everyone brought home a treasure.

It was little enough for me to devote my old picnic tables and plastic table cloths, a basket full of paint, glitter and sticky foam things to let artistic imagination run loose. Those were the days I loved best as a child. What a joy to give that to someone else!

I’ve always loved the idea of creating something beautiful. As a child, my favorite toys were crayons, Cray-Pas oil pastels, mosaic tiles, my father’s drafting tools, water colors, rubber stamps and stickers, looms and lanyard supplies. If you could make something with it, I loved it and spent hours making anything from Play-Doh ashtrays to troll doll quilts.

When I was in junior high, my father was smug and delighted to be able to enroll me in college-level art classes at the university where he taught. I was pleased to be treated like just another college student and worked hard for the A’s in my courses. While I faced the endless repetition of the same inaccurate history classes year after year during the regular school year, at least my summers were full of stretching my wings artistically. Dr. Acker taught me how to see, not just look at things, but to see light and dark, shape and motion, perspective and just a little abstraction. But there I also found my limitations and realized that as much as I love art, I’m probably not an artist. Perhaps more valuable than finding my limits was learning that I could help artists and bask in the creative glow.

One of my early “discoveries” was a young man in Illinois named Gerard Erley. He showed pastels in the summer sidewalk art shows. I loved his work. I bought lots of it. I knew he had “it” whatever “it” is. I gave him my sage advice, as a collector of art: “Gerry, you may do any kind of artwork you like, but if you want it to sell, you need to sell it to people who have not had the art education you have. They may not see the nod to Sargent in your portrait. But, if you paint landscapes and still life, something they understand, people will buy them. Because you make Illinois look like someplace someone would want to live.”

I think he laughed at me at the time. But I like to think something I said may have meant something to him. He grew in his artistry and now is an esteemed professor whose breath-taking work commands high prices from eager collectors. He makes this world look like someplace someone would want to live. And I am “house proud” of my collection of “early Erleys”.

Over the years, I’ve found wonderful friends in the arts. Sallie Evans is an artist and miniaturist whose impossibly tiny needlework has graced magazines and shows. My friends Kristine and Shotsie Gorman are both artists in multiple media, now living in Sonoma, California with their latest opening blending tattoo, tarot and painting to create a vibrant and open atmosphere for the arts in a beautiful place, a resort within a resort, Shotsie & Kristine's T.A.T. Gallery. Rebecca Wrigley, a former Disney illustrator, had the seed of an idea for a Tarot deck and while that project is still “in the works,” the spurt of creativity gave her one of the boosts she needed to complete her first novel. And my friend Nancy Truax is the art teacher at our local Catholic high school, leading her honors students to create lasting community art works such as mosaic picnic benches in a nearby public park, a mural to give community youth hope and inspiration and becoming Teach of the Year. And I have countless talented friends creating Tarot and Lenormand decks with their unique points of view, their special vision of the world and understanding of its signs and meanings.

What can I do? My own talents fall short of my wishes, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. I can provide that creative space for others, sponsor their efforts, showcase their beautiful results, and plant the seeds of possibility in the hearts of artists and their champions all over. I can be the Ace of Wands, the inspiration to keep going and growing, encouraging artists of all ages to flower in the expression of the human spirit.

You can too. Sponsor the arts. Turn your favorite starving artist into a successful striving artist today.

Best wishes!

Get Your BATS On!

This week’s blog is brief, but meaningful, somewhat like yours truly. OK, true, I am brief in stature, not words. Nevertheless, I’m here to urge all those with an interest in Tarot or other Oracles like Lenormand to attend this year’s SF BATS August 17-18, 2013.

This is the 22^nd year for SF BATS, the oldest continuous Tarot symposium led by the always entertaining and erudite Thalassa Therese. This year SF BATS will be held at the DoubleTree in San Jose.  The DoubleTree is near the San Jose airport and close to some fascinating attractions like the Rosicrucian Museum and the Winchester Mystery House, so come early, leave late, and have a fabulous time. Want details? Click here to go to the Daughters of Divination website. There is still time to sign up for the best deal in Tarot, so click away.

You can probably guess that it takes a lot to put on an annual event like this. So the Daughters of Divination are launching an Indiegogo campaign to help raise funds for SF BATS. SF BATS could use your help, even if it is small. Please go here to contribute and help all of us make the San Francisco Bay Area Tarot Symposium happen!

I am thrilled to be among the presenters at SF BATS this year and happy to share my timid knowledge and fledgling experience with others who are dipping a toe into Lenormand. To lure my unsuspecting attendees, I promise door prizes, humor, patience and a little fun. While it won’t be the purpose of my class nor will it be featured by any more than a note of introduction, The Dust Bunny Lenormand deck will be available in a limited quantity at SF BATS in the vendor room.

After a bit of a rough start at WooFest, I now feel certain I am able to use my laptop and projector in concert (!) for a presentation that will feature some of my antique Lenormand decks. My thanks in advance to Fortune Buchholtz and Malkiel Rouven Dietrich for their assistance! If you come and you sit in the spitwad section in the back row, you will need to bring your own spitwads.

There will be many wonderful people attending, a few informal get-togethers, vendors with delicious goodies to tempt you and a lot of good information. And I hear my dear friend Beth Seilonen has a new deck in very limited quantities! Come and indulge and enjoy!

I am looking forward to seeing everyone at SF BATS, old friends and new. Please bear with me now while I have the tiniest of swoons in anticipation!

Best wishes!

Working Vacation

I’m back to work after a “working vacation.” I volunteered to be a minion at SF BATS this year and it was fabulous. If you are a tarot-enthusiast, it may help to know that BATS stands for the Bay Area Tarot Symposium, celebrating 21 years of bringing tarot goodness to tarot lovers. The star of the show is Thalassa, the talented, funny and formidable organizer of the bee-zillion things that need to be done behind the scenes and on stage to make it all come together.

My BATS weekend actually had started almost a week earlier. Not only had I received a box of goodies from Ellen Lorenzi-Prince for the Millard Fillmore Memorial Spiritualist Temple Garage Sale, but also few precious decks of the Cirque de Whimsy Tarot from Carol Hartman DeVall, plus an enormous box of “mystery costumes” from Nancy Antenucci. I treated it all as “do not open until…” well; at least we didn’t have to wait until Christmas. SF BATS is scheduled for the last weekend in August.

Not only was I the shipping destination for a few BATS buddies, but I had my own stuff to prepare. I had just received the second printing of the Dust Bunny Lenormand and was busy making the colorful cases for them. People had been asking for more so I figured it would be good timing, especially since Thalassa had scheduled two BATS classes on Lenormand, one with Melissa Hill and one with Mary Greer. Both sounded interesting to me and I hoped I could fit them in with my volunteer duties.

Not only did I have my own decks to get ready, but I had also been inspired to make a little treat for my BATS buddies who were also members of a Facebook Group called Squeelandia. The group was created by none other than Thalassa, a critter-fancier with a soft spot for bats (of course!), baby sloths and other wiggly-nosed young un’s.

In Squeelandia, there are commonly posts sharing photos of baby animals, the kind that make us all say, “SQUEE!” and fall over from “teh kewt.” And with all of them, we “Squeelanders” are tempted to reach out and touch their little nosies and say, “Boop!”

Yeah, revolting, I know. Like a cup of tea with half a cup of sugar. But, look! A baby hippo! It’s that kind of thing that the Squeelanders go for. For Squeelanders, nothing is too sweet. So I made Boop! buttons with cute animals. I made too many, of course. Sometimes you just can’t get enough Boop!

All this took almost all week, except of course we did go to the Bay Model in Sausalito (by the way, that’s free admission and free parking, great for kids and groups), then to Book Passage in Corte Madera where I snagged a couple of delights like Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness and Lev Grossman’s sequel to The Magicians, The Magician King. Hey, a girl’s gotta read, right?

People have asked me, “What’s the difference between Reader’s Studio and BATS?” Certainly BATS is less expensive for me because I can sleep at home. Travel expenses are a huge consideration. Seriously, when you are face-to-face with all the goodies from Tarot Garden, which would you rather buy, airfare or #43 of 300 of a limited edition woodcut Marseilles-style Italian tarot? Just in case you wondered, yes, the tarot deck is cheaper than the airfare. Really.

I do love Readers Studio but there are differences between it and BATS. At RS, the main event is three half-day classes. If, for instance, one of the half-day sessions is not something you are interested in or is aimed at a different level from your own, you’re unhappy with approximately one-third of the experience. There are unofficial activities that are organized around RS; the best ones cost extra. Airfare, plus hotel, plus the conference, plus the early bird class, plus the field trip to the museum and it adds up. And you haven’t even bought that limited edition deck yet. That said, I’ve learned how to manage a little here, a little there on the RS easy payment plan to pay for things along the way and I LOVE seeing everyone. RS is well-attended and generally has a larger vendor room.

BATS, on the other hand, offers three separate classes for each class session. If you aren’t interested in something in the main room, there’s every chance you’re going to be excited about what’s going on in one of the other classrooms. There are classes suited for beginners and for more advanced students.

Readers Studio’s conference charge includes some meals, water and coffee. BATS provides coffee, tea and water throughout the day, a cocktail party at night. This year’s cocktail goodies were easy to make a meal of or just pick at as a snack before adventure dining in San Francisco.

Readers Studio has a unifying theme with an emphasis on education and audience participation, an exercise at the beginning, the three large classes and an exercise at the end, with some entertainment and some special short programs included. For instance, this year I hosted one of the breakfast round table wake-up sessions and had people playing Tarot Bingo.

BATS presents information but the participants are free just to soak it up. Those who have classroom performance anxiety exchanging readings with their new friends are relieved of obligation to prove to themselves they have learned something. At BATS, you soak it up. And of course there are lots of informal activities!

Because I was working behind the counter at the Garage Sale, I attended most of the presentations in the main room where the vendor tables were. But, I tag-teamed with other Core Daughters of Divination and caught both of Mary Greer’s classes, one each afternoon. I’m drawn to the historical talks and Mary’s got the goods. One day she talked about her historical tarot tour of Northern Italy. OK, skip what I said about airfare and lodging; I want to go on a tarot tour of Northern Italy. The second afternoon she talked about the history of the Lenormand. And how cool! Apparently “tarot bingo” is actually an historical tradition. I blushed when Mary gave my Dust Bunny Lenormand a plug and sent people from her class back to buy a deck. Wow! Thanks, Mary!!

The days were long and fun and yet, when it was time to pack up and steal into the night, I was sad it was over. Nancy Antenucci and I helped Dan Pelletier push the cart of boxes of Tarot Garden decks, significantly fewer than at the start of the weekend, up the hotel parking garage ramp and laughed again over the skits they performed with Rhonda Lund and Thalassa at the breaks. I still am not sure how Dan got out of that straightjacket; practice, I expect.

I am so grateful to Thalassa, her husband, her daughter, and all the DOD’s who worked so hard to make the 21^st SF BATS so full of tarot goodness. And for Thalassa herself who weathered this year's personal tragedies, job search woes and behind-the-scenes snafus resolved without a hair out of place, BOOP! The Show Must Go On!

Best wishes.

Date Night

“John!” I hollered to the Hubs. “Get out your calendar. You’re busy next Wednesday night, OK? We’re going on a date!”

We have busy schedules and sometimes it’s hard to get just a little you-and-me time with Mr. Popularity. He’s been a little disappointed with the rugby pitch lately with people saying they were going to use it and not showing up. That sounds like a small thing until you realize that the Hubs waters the grass, mows the grass, arranges for trash pickup and porta-potties and makes sure the field is configured for whatever sport is using it at the moment. It’s a bit of work and more than that a bit of expense. So having events book the field and then evaporate without a trace is exasperating.

It ranks right up there with the group that used the field vigorously as planned and never paid, then sought to “rent” the field again. It ranks up there with the group who accidentally made off with the scoreboard controls only to have those same controls sold back to my dear husband. Yup, the same controls. Nope, that wasn’t a long time ago. Yup, just this week.

My husband is a gentle man and a gentleman. He seeks to remain friendly with the weasels and ne’er-do-wells who pull these stunts. He tries to soft-pedal these stories with me because he knows they upset me and he doesn’t want to have to deal with my annoyance too, even if it is clearly directed in defense of him and not against him. After all, he just wanted to have a place that was a positive venue of good fun for the community, one that gets bashed by its own residents as much as it does by people who feel they are too genteel to live here.

I’m not saying my own little town is suddenly a Garden Spot by any means. It is, however, no longer ranked as the 7th worst city in the USA. The city is no longer in bankruptcy, for instance. I make my own jokes, saying that we never did have martial law like everyone thinks. After all, we couldn’t afford it. But there are people out there who are making huge efforts for their communities all over, not just mine. I think they must be tired and discouraged the way my sweetums gets sometimes.

So, in the spirit of spontaneous entertainment, I took my friend Thalassa up on a suggestion to go to the California Shakespeare Theater’s production of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit. There’s supposed to be an umlaut or whatever we call those two little dots over a vowel in English over the e in Mr. Coward’s first name. If I find out how to do that here, I’ll fix it. Mr. Coward was a wonderfully talented dancer, actor, writer born in 1899 and died entirely too soon in my opinion. His acid wit is sweet as sour lemon drops for me.

Philippa Kelly writes in the program notes, “…he found wildly enthusiastic audiences for his lighthearted plays about shamelessly vain people, the proceedings edged with astringent social commentary….” Well, right up my alley, or more accurately perhaps, my front walk. People are always asking if I could have dinner with someone from history, living or dead, who would it be? Noel Coward would be on the list at least but only if he dominated the conversation!

John and I met well past our college days but we both majored in English literature, both having had some trouble settling on a major at all. John flirted with psychology and sociology, and even for a while engineering, while I had a math scholarship that I didn’t accept, selected English and nearly diverted to a geology degree at the last minute. We both like mystery and humor and find the combination of the two nearly irresistible. And then there’s my penchant for the metaphysical.

Up popped the notice about Blithe Spirit and my credit card sprang into action. Happily enough, there was also a discount “secret code” to enter to make the deal sweeter. Honey, I thought, we are so going to this play!

We gave up an evening of Olympic drama and baseball and trekked the easy distance to Orinda and the theatre. It’s right off Highway 24 with easy parking and, even better, easy access from the BART station. The theatre is outdoors, nestled in the dry summer hills, and there’s a shuttle that picks up the BART people and the lifetime members of the Knee Club (John and I are members). To solve the problem of what to do about dinner in the time between work and the theatre performance, there is a lovely picnic area under the trees.

We stopped in Orinda at the Europa Hoffbrau and picked up sandwiches for our picnic, then found out that sandwiches are available at the snack bar on the theatre grounds. No matter! Our sandwiches were wonderful and we shared a picnic table with a mother-daughter team who had brought an entire basket full of treats. I thought I was going to have to pull the Hubs out of our new friends' home-made guacamole.

The bells rang and we were off to our seats where it was still allowed to finish dinner if you hadn’t quite, as long as you don’t make noise to disturb the performance. Cell phones and pagers off and the magic began. Literally.

Tea Tarot
(c) Copyright 2011 Marcia McCord

Blithe Spirit starts out with a writer hosting a séance-dinner party with the ulterior motive of getting great descriptions and authentic jargon from the medium, Madame Arcati. Madame gives the host and his guests quite a show. We soon find out that a door has opened to allow the spirit of the host’s more-than-a-handful first wife to appear but only to the host, so it seems. Wit and physical comedy combine to show us that ghosts may be just as tired of haunting us as we are with putting up with them.

My favorite performance was Rebekah Brockman’s Edith, whose harried and hurried maid makes you certain that it is difficult to get good help these days. Her hypnosis sequence was snort-your-drink funny. Domenique Lozano’s Madame Arcati was ectoplasmic in her physical comedy and properly sonorous in her delivery, a medium with a mission. Kudos, too, to the set designer Annie Smart whose vision of the Condomine home had its own kind of frighteningly accurate echoes of the sort of interior decoration favored by my mother with those little unexpected special effects.

If you happen to be in the San Francisco Bay Area between now and September 2 and find yourself at loose ends for an evening’s entertainment, this is just the thing for date night, the night with the girls or any other 3 of Cups frivolity, say an extra evening available during the SF BATS, the Bay Area Tarot Symposium, perhaps. A word to the wise, if the day is scorching hot, the evening’s performance is likely to be comfortable with a light wrap. If the day is bearably mild, bring blankets and bundle up.

For more information go here: http://www.calshakes.org/

Best wishes!

PS - That secret code is "seance"...Go! Enjoy!