By Blood

No, this isn’t a vampire story! ‘Tis the season for that, of course, but this is a Columbus Day theme marking the wave of immigrants to what has become the United States of America.

One of the things about being from the USA is that there is always more to that story. Very few of us are actually from the USA, at least when you start the Roots Tour. One of the sad phenomena of our time is that there are people who have forgotten their own immigrant (legal or not) roots who somehow think that other immigrants are not worthy to live here. But I promise not to turn this into a political discussion. No politics, no vampires. That’s almost a theme in itself.

The search for our roots is such a hobby, and for some a religious obligation, that entire businesses have sprung up to facilitate this search with software and websites. College programs sponsor efforts to put cemetery records online. We want to connect to our past and the twisting road where that leads us.

This American obsession with our roots apparently becomes occasionally tiresome. When my husband and I were in Scotland, our innkeeper asked why we were visiting. I thought, Why?? Goodness, it’s Scotland, for heavens’ sake. The land of kilted handsome dudes with that dreamy accent, isn’t it? But of course, I wanted to know more than stereotypes; I wanted full-immersion Scotland. What he meant was, Why would we come to that section of Scotland, a place not classically associated with the fantasies of Highland lassies.

“Well, one of the early mentions of my family’s name is a real estate transaction. They sold land to the Kennedy family,” I answered.

“Oh,” my innkeeper sighed, instantly classifying us as Those People, “a Roots Tour.”

I felt vaguely apologetic for bothering people with my personal interest. But it was my vacation then and I was going to soak up all the Scotland I could get. It was a fabulous trip, complete with the Tor House Ring of standing stones and the ghost in the bathroom.

It turns out, through DNA testing, that my Scotland roots are actually Irish. There always is more to that story! Funnier than that, there’s a good possibility that I’m actually related to my husband, if very distantly. But that’s actually what we are looking for in those roots tours, connections and belonging.

If I said I was Irish, however, that would be inaccurate. I’m an American mutt, like so many of us. There’s something in the patchwork quilt of ethnicities that creates an intricate puzzle for the compulsive researcher. I could amuse myself with English Protestant, French Huguenot, Bavarian Catholic, Austrian, Czech and Bohemian Rom threads to chase. I want to know what they thought, what they liked, what they were good at, what they chose and chose to let go of.

I’m fortunate to have transcripts of the diaries of my great-grandfather Henry who went on an adventure to the California Gold Rush, spent a year or two there selling meat to miners rather than panning for gold himself, then went home “to civilization,” leaving at least one brother in California to be part of the mystique of the cattle business and water rights that are part of the heritage of this state.

Henry went on to be Captain of the 111^th Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War. His diaries of his outfit’s travels through the country include descriptions of playing baseball while waiting for their next orders. His diary also proved to be a life-saver in his case. His book of his first two years of the Civil War stopped a bullet; my cousin owns the remnants of this souvenir of the war along with Henry's other original writings.

The most interesting parts of Henry’s writing are those that make him most accessibly human. When the North and South were trading stray shots across a meadow one evening, not actively engaged in battle but more a game of “chicken,” Henry’s observation, after one bullet went through the sleeve of his coat without touching him was that if these boys don’t watch out, they’re going to hurt someone.

As the company clerk and Captain, he ran the election voting for a fair and secret ballot. The election between Lincoln and McClellan in 1864 was more hotly contested than we are aware, since we know the outcome. But at the time, Henry’s comments on the political scene were fascinatingly modern, wondering if either of the two candidates could pull off what they promised, were sincere in their efforts or were even trustworthy since they were, after all, politicians. We think of “old times” as being idealistic and naïve when people were just as skeptical of leadership as we are in today’s election. Who knows? Will one of the people we elect as President become the legend that Lincoln is now?

I like Henry, a man I never met. My father remembered an old man with a long beard and a Scottish “burr” to his voice. He recounted that as a toddler he sat on this formidable and yet comfortable man’s lap, being in awe of him, listening to stories of the Civil War and of Henry’s little brother George who had been imprisoned in Andersonville, survived, had been a passenger on the ill-fated Sultana, survived and had gone on to become a U.S. Marshall.

These stories and others I would never have known if I had not searched for roots.

I’m on vacation this week and decided that some of it should be a bit of a roots chase. The least documented and documentable thread in my fabric is the Bohemian Romany.

The mention of Bohemian, notably without the Rom, at least gave me a season pass to my first husband’s Polish family. I went no further with the description of my many-hued personal fabric without realizing that had I finished with the “Rom” part, I might have been thrown out. In the USA, we romanticize Gypsies as carefree, musical travelers who may fix your pots and pans in exchange for a stop at your farm and perhaps tell your fortune by firelight. Like so many fairy tales, the more difficult parts have been omitted. The Romany people have not been so well-received, in fact.



Victorian Trade Card Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

In the mid-1800s in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Roma were forbidden by law to marry each other, an earlier “benign” attempt at eliminating them as a people. My great-great-grandmother complied and married a Gadjo (outsider who is not Romani) even though in her culture it meant that she was no longer one of her own people. Their red-haired son, Franz, left Bohemia to come to the fresh start that was America and with his knowledge of farming, his father’s profession, started a grain company in Kansas. I have a tantalizing photograph from the 1870’s taken just before Franz departed the old country, never to return. Records say my great-great-grandmother was Marie but show no last name. Tragically, the Bohemian Romany, speakers of a specific Rom dialect, were all but wiped out in the Holocaust. Thanks to Franz and others like him, vestiges remain. But I have no children and neither does my brother.

I did not grow up with any Rom cultural customs. I laughingly say that my former “unibrow” which has naturally thinned over time to two fairly normal eyebrows could be my only physical characteristic on an otherwise straight-haired blonde and blue-green décor. When I started reading regular playing cards when I was 7 or so spontaneously, my mother simply did not stop me but said it must be my Gypsy heritage.

So, for my vacation, I’m doing a little Gypsy roots tour. With a Tarot buddy, I’m going to seek out a local Roma hangout and have dinner there for people watching and good food. And I am delighted to have found tickets to a Gypsy jazz concert this weekend. Something about the rhythms, the chord progressions, the emotion of that music stirs my blood, inspires me like an Ace of Wands, to seek both roots and connections and move forward to my peculiar, personal and satisfying creativity.

Best wishes!

Chasing the Wheel

One of the versions of the Merlin and King Arthur story is that not only was Merlin a wizard, he lived his life backwards. He started out as an old and wise wizard emerging from the magical hills, advised Uther Pendragon, then taught Uther's young son Arthur, hidden away, how to be the once and future king. At the end of his time, Merlin fell giddily in love with a woman who loved him for what he knew and what he was, but perhaps not who he was. He made a young man’s mistake, chasing after beauty and things on the surface after a lifetime of being a visionary of the depths.

His sense of time was different from the rest of the world and yet his job as spiritual, magical, moral and even athletic coach to young Arthur was to teach the king the importance of seizing a moment in time. Sometimes, like Arthur, we have one chance to do the right thing.

In the legend of Arthur, the once and future king, Arthur dies. Or does he? He is taken to the misty Isle of Avalon apparently mortally wounded. He tried to show the local “kings” that working together was more beneficial than fighting each other. By giving those in local power an equal place at his round table, he indicated to them that he would exercise no positional power over them. By granting them dignity, respect, affirmation, acceptance and their own voices, and by appealing to their sense of honor, he allowed them to believe with him that Right Makes Might.

Yet, also in the legend, old mistakes, however brief or blameless, came back to haunt Arthur. Merlin tried to help, but by then he was in his youthful indiscretion, no longer the wise old wizard who had changed young Arthur to a fish so he could learn to swim or to a bird so that he might fly. The wheel of time had turned and it was a time of change.

Arthur was taken, wounded, to Avalon. Merlin was frozen in a cave. An important theme, no matter which version of the Arthur story you like, is that once there was a time when the imperfect world of human beings actually worked. It worked until it didn’t. Another theme is that Arthur will return. The other thought, although it is seldom mentioned, is that Merlin is likely to return too. Maybe we'll get a second chance.

From the way our world works now, sometimes I think we could both of them. A returning hero with his wise counselor-magician, both cured of their human vulnerabilities, would be a nice change of pace. If only it were so easy.

Dealing with change is never easy. And yet, that wheel is always moving. There are some days when I hate all surprises, even good ones. But the Wheel of Fortune refers to larger changes in our lives, not the little surprises.

The planet Saturn is entering Scorpio again. Saturn’s path goes in 29 year cycles. Think of your birthday each year as your “solar return.” The Sun returns to approximately the spot where it was the day you were born. Of course, this movement is relative and the earth spins and goes around the sun and not the other way around. But in an astrological sense, the sun comes back to you, your spot, each year. Each of the planets—yes, I feel sorry for Pluto because he got demoted—takes its own amount of time to pass through the Zodiac. The Moon moves fastest, then Mercury, etc. Instead of a year, like the Sun, Saturn takes 29 years.

Not to give away too much information for you arithmetically inclined, but I’m approaching my Saturn return. It makes me thoughtful. In my chart, Saturn isn’t particularly a bad thing. It says that older people have been kind to me (true) and while I may not have had as much sponsorship or mentoring as I wanted, it has made me used to living without supervision. Well, being fairly self-reliant has worked for me in many ways, although I clearly admit to loving being spoiled by The Hubs!

When the horoscopes say that I may find myself without some of the support structures I’ve been used to, that’s a characteristic of Saturn in Scorpio. So, in looking at the events in my life that happened when I was born and when I was 29, I try to get an idea what my Saturn return has in store for me.

For instance, I was “accidentally” born at home. I was a couple of weeks early. Dad had flown to California for his Pentagon job, something to do with the Air Force and housing and bases and such. My brother was at the babysitter’s and Mom was alone in our home in the D.C. metro area. Apparently things happened very quickly and in spite of the benefits of civilization and modern medicine, Mom and I had our first mother-daughter do-it-yourself project together. Mom never let Dad forget it either. When I think about it, I’m pretty glad I played the role of the baby in this drama. The other roles were a lot tougher.

“Did you pick me up by my feet and spank me?” I asked, thinking of Butterfly McQueen in Gone With The Wind. No, I did my own little throat-clearing and breathed on my own. So many things could have gone wrong. Better to be lucky than good, The Hubs says.

When I was 29, my mother died. She was 42 when I was born and had lived my entire childhood in terror of dying before I was officially out of the nest. Once I did leave the nest, she was really upset that I had. No, REALLY upset. But since her illness was long and awful, we had had plenty of time to talk, just never enough time. She was in the hospital with no special measures requested and we went to see her. That time, that last moment when we talked, that was like no other. She knew I would be forever unsupervised now and we finally agreed I would probably be OK. I didn’t care about that then. I just wanted to talk to her and have her talk to me. We let each other go.

Now, at my second Saturn return approaching, comically coincidental with the end of the Mayan Calendar, I learned today that my boss was let go. His position was eliminated in that awful “nothing personal” thing companies do when they say thank-you and good-bye. He and I had had a rocky start to our relationship with vastly different approaches to management. He was what many call a micro-manager which so many talented, intelligent workers despise as an insult to all that they are. Saturn is the School of Hard Knocks, the Hard Lesson, Tough Love. When an earlier organizational change had me reporting to him, I took it as an opportunity to learn how to let go of the ego of being a talented, intelligent worker and just concentrate on doing a good job, learning new things, being kind and trying to bring sanity to the workplace. We ended up working well together.

More than the loss of my boss, my vice president made a huge decision to move to a different company so he could spend more time with his family. It’s likely that more changes are coming.

I can bark at this wheel turning, this Wheel of Fortune with its ups and downs, like my first husband’s family dog who chased Volkswagens on their street. BeBe chased until one day she caught one! She rolled around the wheel well while we all screamed in horror. Just that fast she was spat out behind the bug, running around in circles and still barking, completely unhurt. But BeBe never chased cars again.

The wheel of change is going to happen whether I “bark” or not. It’s going to be easier if I adjust quickly, without anger or fear, and adapt to the new circumstances. Of course, it will be just like two Saturns ago. Just take a breath.

Best wishes.

Normal Crime

A Facebook friend of mine just got her house broken into and her purse stolen. She’s dealing with all the feelings of anger, loss and violation. It’s an “everyday” crime that in many overtaxed police departments gets very little attention.

There’s often little chance that the stolen items will be recovered, little chance that they will catch the people who did it. It’s only property, they say. It’s more of course, but so often the thing you lose in a situation like that can’t be brought back, like your sense of safety and peace of mind or your faith in your fellow human beings.

Yes, the police are right of course. It could be worse. She could have been there, been hurt in a much more violent crime. It’s small consolation at the time. Part of the problem is that it’s hard to know where to direct your anger when you don’t know who did it.

Before I met him, the Hubs suffered a similar crime. While he was out, someone broke into the cottage where he lived, stole family heirlooms and, inexplicably, set fire to the cottage. His cats died in the fire. Why set the fire? Why kill the cats? Why not just take the stuff and go? I didn’t even know those cats and my heart aches at the thought of someone doing that in my home, to my little critters. I miss the Molly and Garfield I never knew.

Even after we met while the Hubs still had his cottage, we went out briefly to shop for our Football Pool Dinner and while we were at the grocery store, someone who wore athletic shoes with a distinctive pattern kicked in the door and stole what little was left of value. At least that time, the cats, the ones who replaced those who died, were left alive.

No one was hurt? Hardly true. My friend lost photographs she hadn’t downloaded. My husband lost his precious pets and family pieces that he would have liked giving to his nephews. I hope the people who did these things get prosecuted for something, even if it isn’t this specific crime.

My own brushes with senseless crimes were thankfully harmless to me physically. My first job out of college had me working in an attorney’s office. Our office specialized in wills, trust and real estate and the most unsavory characters in the office were often long-standing clients with big ideas about a real estate deal. While we didn’t handle many criminal cases, we did enthusiastically read the newspapers and occasionally listen to the radio. When something spectacularly silly happened in the crime section, we hooted with glee and with our honed, imaginative and some legal minds we Monday morning quarterbacked the latest stupid criminal antics.

My favorite stupid crime was The Bank Job. Two or three kids sought to rob one of the local banks in our smallish down in southern Illinois and made a dash for the county line. They never made it that far. They were apprehended with the loot and charged appropriately. It wasn’t that they didn’t drive a fast getaway car. It’s just that it was maroon, with large fins in the rear and had “Devils” painted on it.

If they wanted to be famous, they made it, at least for a week or two. They were famous for being unable to sneak across the county line with any subtlety. As I recall, no one was hurt. You can’t count the stitches in our sides as injuries.

By far the most remarkable stupid criminal encounter was the time I had my wallet stolen out of my car.

OK, I admit, there’s some element of the stupid victim here. So I confess that I left my purse wide open on the front seat of my car with the windows rolled down and the doors unlocked on a summer afternoon. I had run to the back of my landlord-boyfriend’s Victorian house, one last trip while we were finishing up a repair/restoration to ready the house for the coming fall semester and the new houseful of irresponsible and destructive college boys who would nearly gut the house by the end of the college year. While in the back, picking up keys or whatever, the criminals stole my wallet out of my purse.

This all seems normal. Except, of course, that this was Normal, Illinois. It’s a name that sets up false expectations at best.

Stuff happened in Normal that you didn’t expect. While I lived in southern Illinois, I grew used to college students abandoning their pedigreed dogs into packs of roving aristocrats of all shapes and sizes. I grew used to it but could never stomach it. But in Normal, the variation on that theme took a different flavor. The college boys in one of the landlord/boyfriend’s houses abandoned their pet who hid somewhere in the rambling house after escaping his usual quarters. The boys left for home, unable to find it until it showed up on the sofa one day. You just don’t expect a large boa constrictor on a sofa in an empty house.

Another time and at another landlord’s house, the kids having the party on the second floor got into boogying rhythm to Love Shack or whatever and danced the second floor right down on top of the first floor, collapsing the inside of the house. That was Normal.

So in the reddening sunset back at my car I realized my wallet had been lifted and I cursed the idiot who stole it and the idiot who left her purse in her open car. The good news is they caught the guys.

It seems that two traveling Bible salesmen from Texas (nope, you can’t make this stuff up) had fallen on bad times. The older black gentleman had convinced his younger and considerably dumber blond compadre to grab the wallet and while at the nearest gas station they gassed up where Dumbo the Blondie used my credit card and my driver’s license as identification and attempted to forge my name.

These two masterminds got as far as Peoria, due to the quick thinking of the gas station manager who had the cool to accept the transaction without confronting them or pointing out that Blondie sure didn’t look like a Marcia and to write down their license plate. Like the traditional “book meaning” of the 7 of Swords, they thought they got away with it.

After almost enjoying a sandwich and a beer at a motel coffee shop, they were arrested and charged. The older guy got off with time served once they had spent maybe 30 days in jail awaiting trial with no bail to post because he never actually signed anything, but the younger guy had made the error of signing my name to compound his petty theft with a felony, forgery.

They had made phone calls to Alabama on my long distance card and they had tossed my nice wallet and my favorite photos out of the window somewhere between Normal and Peoria. I could never drive that road again without hoping for a glint of brightly colored oxblood leather and the photographs I would never see again.

Lock your car. Take your keys. And watch out for those Bible salesmen from Texas.

Best wishes.

Gone Cat

My husband just walked out the door with Eleanor. Eleanor is a cat, our black and white long-hair, histrionic, five-pound screamer who is the Omega Cat in the house. Whatever happens, she comes in last and she and all the other creatures of our little forest know this. Eleanor has had the sneezes for about a week but otherwise seems OK. Her eyes aren’t runny or half-closed the way sick cats can get.

Eleanor prefers to stay in the breakfast room which is my husband’s home office. I’m not sure what made him decide to take her to the vet now but I’m thinking it was just one little sneeze too many for him.

Since he didn’t warn me he was going to do this, I quietly had a panic attack.

As he walked out of the door with Eleanor squalling with every breath, he was on the telephone where he has been a great deal of the afternoon working on some work-related issue. And because he was on the telephone, I couldn’t talk to him.

He doesn’t realize what a nightmare this was for me, one that played out over and over again throughout my childhood. And because I was aware of it, I didn’t exactly freak out at him. I did dial his number frantically for about 15 minutes until I could talk to him. But I didn’t totally lose it. I feel good about this. This is progress for me. I’m coming back down from my panic now and my heart rate and breathing are closer to normal.

***

I mentioned recently that my first dog Clementine was my pet for only a brief time and then the dogs had to go away. That was a recurring pattern. We would have pets, cats, dogs, a rat, a snake, a mouse, fish, even the chickens. Then, without warning one day my father would take them all away. He did not do that with my parakeet. He did not do that with my mother’s dog Pierre. But, the losses were nearly unbearable for me.

I would come home to find my cat gone. My father would lie to me and tell me that my cat had been adopted by a family with a little girl. I am pretty sure they thought I would get over it.

But I didn’t, partly because it would happen again and again.

Sheba was such an unusual looking cat for the alley variety. She had “ticking” or tipped fur, no stripes except eyeliner and a butterscotch tummy. She looked like a fluffy mountain lion in a way. She liked hunting a bit and was fond of the small lizards common in our central Florida yard. She was patient with me in such a maternal fashion that I imagined she thought of me as a large homely kitten. In the 1960’s, it was rare for owners to do anything more for a housecat than feed it, so Sheba had at least one litter of kittens and stayed outside all the time no matter how much I begged to have her come indoors. Fleas were common. Ticks were occasional. Cat lives were shorter. I was convinced I was Sheba’s student in learning all things cat.

Then, one day, all the cats were gone. Daddy had taken them all to the pound which was not called a humane shelter because it was neither humane nor shelter. Daddy lied and said a family had adopted Sheba but I knew he had specified they all be killed. Daddy had a certain look when he lied that I knew.

I mourned the loss of my teacher, my friend, my cat for years. She represented my helplessness in the wake of adult power and responsibility.

This scene repeated itself. My little dog Mitzi who had made the “mistake” of trying to bite the man who brought the bottled water for our water cooler was taken away. Suzi who had too many puppies and who, in classic beagle fashion, liked to escape the confines of the fenced yard and run throughout the neighborhood was taken away.

When we moved to New Mexico, our dogs all caught distemper. Because everyone in the family had a favorite dog and the expense of saving them was too high, Daddy decided to save none of them and they all perished, Beau, Ajax, Bill, Jacques and Jem.

Oh, there were other losses, too, that weren’t at the hands of my parents. Cars hit Pierre, Dickens, Benji and Calico. Some budding psychopath stole Misty and tortured and killed her along with scores of other pets. But all of it grew and grew within me, the knowledge that there was a better way to treat these little creatures we brought into our lives. It wasn’t evil cars or junior serial killers that needed fixing.

Finally, one day while I was in high school, I came home to find that Daddy had taken Meph, my long-haired black cat who had a delightful personality, out far into the New Mexico countryside with her latest litter of kittens and dumped her. Daddy lied again: She’s going to be near a barn where there are lots of mice. She will be happy. I knew better. I cried and screamed in frustration for days. My father set his jaw the way he did when he didn’t want to say what he was thinking.

A few days later, Meph showed up, thin, worn, sans kittens. But she was home. My father was astounded. I picked her up and held her, wheeled around and blazed at my Dad, “You. Will. NEVER. Take. My. Pets. Away. Again.”

My ferocity scared him, I think. He understood, finally, that the way we treat these little ones is so often an echo of how we treat each other. I would have happily taken him out to the countryside and left him in a field that day, lying to myself and everyone else that he would find mice in a barn and live some false fairy tale.

Meph lived another ten years with my parents and then with me after I moved away from home. She had no more kittens because I paid to have her spayed. She had a heated, elevated, insulated house in my backyard and, when no one else was around, she got to come inside and stay with me. She brought me mice each day from her catch and laid them on the front steps of my little house. She hunted chipmunks. She came to my specific whistle. She didn’t mind the dog so much. She died peacefully in my arms when the cancer became too much for her to bear.

***

Eleanor is fine. Dr. C at the veterinary hospital sent her home with some kitty vitamins because she likely has a mild virus, the common cold in the feline variety. Ellie still has the sneezles but she was actually pleased with all the extra attention.

And I kissed and hugged my husband, who, after all, isn’t the monster who took my babies away but the Nicest Man in the World who made the appointment with the vet to make sure Ellie-Bellie would get well again.

My little 6 of Cups in Tarot, memories of childhood, had been set aright and what I vowed as a helpless child to be when I was a “powerful” adult was still intact. I will take care of my critters as if they were the most precious things in the Universe, mostly because they are.

Best wishes.

***

I will be reading Tarot on September 29, 2012 in Petaluma, CA at Halloween and Vine! Click on the link to get directions and take a peek at the other fabulous vendors who will be there like ... Sharon Bloom!

After Clouds Sunshine

My brother had a band in high school, guitars, keyboards, drums, vocals, the whole deal. It was not a “hair band” or a “metal band”. Those concepts weren’t part of the lexicon of youth yet. These were guys who wanted to play rock music with electric guitars.

Dust Bunny Lenormand
(c) Copyright 2012 Marcia McCord

They played at our high school dances and were rivals to the other band in town. It wasn’t a rivalry like New York and Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles; it was something of a sneering truce. Since our little town in New Mexico was blessed with two dance bands, we had dances nearly every weekend.

“Noise,” Daddy said.

We laughed at him. It was our noise. Daddy had played oboe in high school, maybe a million years earlier. Although later famous groups would incorporate more than the rock band basics with stunning success, oboe was a laughable instrument when considered with guitars, drums and keyboards during our high school dance years.

I think those may have been the years when my brother hated having a little sister more than any others. After all, what could be more fascinating than slightly-older high school boys who sky-rocketed to instant stardom, locally of course, to a spirited teen-aged sister? And what could be more distracting during a band practice than a flirtatious and devoted younger fan? So, a lot of band practices happened somewhere else.

My best friend had an eye for the sometimes-drummer in the band, a slow-talking, muscular blond with an easy grin and fabulously restored 50’s sedan with leopard-print upholstery and the latest in technology, an 8-track tape. Steve would take us and half a dozen other kids to lunch in his car, usually the A&W where we would order taquitas and sodas and listen to his 8-track.

My friend was a Scorpio and was perfecting the art of being the Mystery Woman. An Aries, I was hopelessly lost in the concept of mystery and the feminine mystique. For me, yes meant yes and no meant no and if you liked someone, you said so. I was as subtle as a sledge-hammer.

I was never sure the guys liked me because of my grades. No one asked me, but if they had, I would have told them I thought it was just plain stupid to be afraid of me because of my I.Q. Well, OK, in retrospect I can see they had a point. “Don’t-hold-back-Marcia” would be a nickname I gained even after I had learned subtlety. But, hey, what would be so scary about a little witty repartee or verbal jousting or mental gymnastics? I mean, what else was flirtation, anyway? I wasn’t trying to win, for goodness’ sake; I was trying to keep up. I’m not sure many of the guys I knew got that about me. It was probably for the best though, like most things that seem like disasters in dating in high school.

I didn’t have a height requirement. At 5’ 1” I considered myself one-size-fits-all. At least I did until I was asked to dance with one tall cowboy one time when my brother’s band was playing. It was a slow dance and the guy was polite and didn’t try anything ungentlemanly. It’s just that he was probably 6’ 6” and I spent the entire song unable to hear a word he said. I was tempted to quip, “How’s the air up there?” Otherwise, I stared at the guy’s belt buckle which, since he was a cowboy, was at least a little more interesting than usual. At that point, I realized I probably did have a height requirement for a guy that was an upper limit of maybe 6’ 1”. No offense to the really tall guys, but when you have Mercury as heavily aspected in your astrology chart as I do, good grief, I want you to talk to me.



Art Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord



This led me to like two very different kinds of guys. I had a special affinity for the fast talkers, the Tarot’s Magician types. I loved to be entertained and some of my favorite guys were natural entertainers. I adored them, in spite of their weaknesses, which I would staunchly deny anyway. After all, the show must go on! Little did they know that it was actually the little slips, the betrayals of imperfections that made the performers dear to me.

The other kind of guy who caught my eye was the Cypher, the guys who said nearly nothing at all. It didn’t make sense, unless you realize that we pick our own Devil in the Tarot and life.



Art Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord



See, as my husband so kindly points out on occasion in the gentlest possible way, I made the classic “girl mistake.” I figured the quiet ones were thinking. It was a challenge to get them to open up and talk as they had never done before. After all, they would feel so much better, right?

It took me a while to really realize that my mother wasn’t just in a very bad mood all the time; she was an introvert. But I had used her example as a template and mistakenly applied it to the quiet guys. After all, my quiet mother was always thinking something even though she didn’t say much; these guys must be doing the same thing. It took me many more years after high school to realize that one of the reasons boys are quiet in high school is that they don’t always have a lot going on that would be stunning conversation with a girl they liked, or might like or even didn’t like.

So, like a muddy puppy, I would occasionally pounce on an unsuspecting quiet guy and try to get him to talk to me. Depending on exactly what bait he took, I would go away sooner or later and try to talk to some other more pliable subject. Or someone who spoke at all.

The guys in the band were just the perfect tantalizing snack for me as a mini-man-eater. They weren’t allowed to talk, not while they were performing. Lots of them hold their mouths funny when they are concentrating on guitar riffs or whathaveyou. It was like my own personal arcade, these guys in the band. I tried to get them to talk, flirt, sharpen their minds, trade bon mots, and engage in conversational duels. Most of the time, I found out, they hadn’t heard a thing I said; they were too busy looking at my chest.

Cripes, guys, get over the chest thing, I thought. The real circus is in the mind!

The naming of a band can be a tender thing. My brother’s band’s name was “After Clouds Sunshine.” It was named for a needlepoint motto from the previous century we found in Mom's antique shop and was just nearly-nonsense enough to pass for a band name. As good as any Strawberry Alarm Clock, we figured.

A long gap after school and New Mexico and high school dances were just a memory, I chanced to marry one of the guys in that band. At the time he had been something of a blend, a performer who talked in bursts, who seemed to be a leader of his friends, and who didn’t seem to mind the muddy puppy/talking thing I did. But neither of us was the person we had known when we dated in high school and it was, alas, a mistake to marry.

And yet, like my Dust Bunny Lenormand cards of the Clouds and the Sun, while happiness was not something he and I found with each other, only the memory of ourselves when we were young and full of hope and little understanding, after the clouds of our failed relationship, I did, after all, find sunshine with my adorable Hubs who is both Magician and Cypher and just the right height, a man who brings me laughter every day. And he has the most boring belt buckles.

After clouds, then, finally, there was sunshine.

Best wishes.

Pizza Night

“Let’s treat the kids to pizza tonight,” John said. “They’ve been working so hard moving here.”

“They could use a break,” I agreed.

Aaron and his wife had just moved here from southern California with their adorable 18-month-old son. Aaron had called and asked if he could join the rugby team, a move that utterly melted The Hubs’ heart from the first moment. Aaron is a great blue-eyed freckled giant, a medical intern and former policeman, great rugby material and something of a Renaissance man. His wife is a spunky pixie, hardy and utterly devoted to their son who is a clever angel whose beginning language skills include sign language.

We had helped them find a cute little house to rent near our friend Mimi. John had described nearby shopping and we had offered them a spare refrigerator that wasn’t needed after all. We knew what it was like being young, starting a new adventure in a new place, moving and living out of boxes.

We wanted them to know that our town can be a welcoming place with nice people, support systems. We wanted them to feel they had people they can call on for help. We felt vaguely parental, of course, but want to introduce them to people their own age too. We plotted to have them come to a holiday picnic as our guests so they can meet more people and start to feel that this could be something like home, no matter how long they stay.

I had worked hard all week and the thought of a Napoli pizza was a treat, a reward for wrestling with software analysis and stubborn co-workers. My work Friday had ended on a quietly happy note. A last-minute request from someone I had met with a few weeks ago came in. Everyone else had gone home for the holiday weekend and we laughed at the thought that we were the only people at work so late. I was pleased she had taken my suggestion for an easy solution and it took just a matter of minutes to update the system so she could track the success of her workgroup’s efforts. It was satisfying to be able to help someone quickly and make her work life just a little easier. I was ready for the holiday weekend.

The Hubs has long declared Napoli pizza as “the best pizza in the world.” He accepts no arguments. His decision is final. Tony and his family run Napoli’s. The one closest to the rugby pitch is the mothership, but there are two other newer locations. We like the old place. We are always interested in who is making the pizza tonight. For instance, if it’s John (not The Hubs) we know we will get the thin-crust, extra-crispy we have in mind. We love Tony too, but typical of any owner, Tony has very specific ideas of what a pizza should be. He has a special mix of sausage that is celestial.

For 15 years we have ordered a “Tony’s Special, thin crust, extra crispy.” It was so predictable, when we called it in, they knew our voices and responded, “OK, one John Kelly Special!” Then last year we changed our order. Now we order pepperoni, mushrooms and double sausage, still thin crust, still extra crispy. You’ve got to keep your pizza people on their toes, right?

We met the kids at Napoli’s and even at 6:30 pm, ok, 6:45 pm it was crowded. We usually order take-out so I was surprised it was so busy so early. But we got a booth and started playing with the baby instead of looking at the menu. After all, we knew what we wanted. So did Aaron’s son, who clearly gestured towards the cup of ice water that he please wanted an ice cube right now.

We ordered our pizzas, a pitcher of beer and I threw caution to the wind and ordered a diet Pepsi. We clinked our glasses together in toast to welcome them to Vallejo and continued talking about their move, the house they rented, what to do with the floors, the old Wedgewood stove, how to repair the space in the fence where the dogs can get out.

Then Aaron’s eyes riveted past my shoulder and an uproar, a hubbub started. Someone yelled, “Get out! Get out!” Someone said, “Gun.”

I turned around and uniformed and padded officers came through the glass doorway with assault rifles and turned through the second dining room towards the restaurant’s rest rooms.

“Get out! Get out!”

I grabbed my purse and turned out of the booth. There was pizza splattered on the floor between me and the doorway. Someone dropped their pizza, I thought. It’s funny what occurs to you in an emergency. I dropped to the floor, thinking if there’s gunfire, it will be about waist-high. I felt The Hubs drop on top of me.

That’s so sweet, I thought. He’s protecting me. But he’s likely to get himself killed doing it.

He pushed me up. I dodged the spilled pizza slices, not wanting to tear my knee up again and slipped out the front door to the sidewalk. I pulled my Pashmina shawl around me and kept walking. There were police cars everywhere. Down the sidewalk, a uniformed policeman beckoned me.

“Come on,” he said urgently, gently. “Keep going.”

Where was my husband? Where were Aaron, his wife and the baby? I couldn’t look back, sure a bullet would find me in the bright twilight if I did. I walked past the barbershop to the fence that bordered the vacant lot next to the barber. I put my arms on the fence and sobbed. A young woman, someone I do not know, came up behind me and said, “Breathe with me.”

“Yes,” I said. Inhale, one, two, three, exhale. And again. She was no longer there. I turned to see she had run across the usually busy street to be with a friend. And John was there suddenly, talking to the men from the barbershop. He hugged me. They asked me if I wanted to sit down. I did. They asked me if I wanted some water. I did. I choked back more sobs.

A thin, tousle-haired young man with his arms behind him lurched in front of the barbershop windows, shouting over his shoulder, another uniformed policeman holding his cuffed wrists. He wore a baseball jersey. Not the Giants, I thought. No, he’s not on my team. He looked at me, agitated but without the wild-eyes of insanity. I was curious, stunned. This was the face of Death, so ordinary, so impersonal.

“He’s gone now,” an officer said. I walked out of the barbershop where John was talking. I thanked them and hugged the big guy who had brought me water. Aaron, his wife and baby were there and Aaron hugged me.

We went back to Napoli’s, sat down in our booth. Our waitress brought our pizzas. One of the officers came around to each of the tables and apologized for disturbing our dinner. I held his hand for a moment. We ate. I tried to be normal again. We joked about the picnic on Sunday being a lot less exciting than this. No one was hurt but I don’t think I will be the same.

On our way home I told John, “I think that was the best pizza I ever had.”

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.