Green Frog Cafe

Spring Break 2009

2009-04-12T13:10:00.000-07:00

Spring Break (from Hofstra University) 2009 was enjoyed in Pine Hill, New York, working on various projects designed to make the property more like a homestead. Friends Morgana and Kenneth Toglia and their son Tristan came to visit from Erie for several days. Tristan, 12, is a mime. Kenny worked with us on planning the layout of plantings and beds, and we discussed future projects and plans. A big step was to create and install the signpost for our bookstore sign, the "Pine Hill Book Bunny" as we presently envision it. We excavated some areas of the terraced area on the steep slope behind the house, moving soil down to the new raised beds in the front of the house where the sun is best, and prepared to build retaining walls out of uncovered field stones to frame the new terraced beds we are creating on the hillside (ala Peru and Indonesia). We more or less decided on the location of the soon to be built chicken coop, and thought about whether we should get some goats and bees. Chelsea is enamored of Mirabelle Plums which are a specialty of the Alsace-Loraine region near Metz, France, where some of her (Merovingian??) ancestors originated. Kenny suggested that we ring the property with a hedge of black and red raspberries, and put in a whole orchard of Mirabelle plum trees. Ideas, ideas!!

After the Toglias headed back to Erie, I returned to my procrustean bed, building bookshelves for the thousands of books now occupying the living room floor.

Today, Easter, I took my tradition Easter hike in the woods. It is nice at this season of the year when it is not so cold, and the forest is open since the leaves are not yet out. I hiked up the mountain behind the house, following the ruins of an extensive network of stone fences, built at great labor sometime in the past 300 years, and now apparently not in use. We found some bear scat in our back yard, so I was acutely aware that I might run into a bear at any moment.

I just finished reading the third volume of Elizabeth Cunningham's "Maeve Trilogy" last night , so I have been thinking a lot about Easter and early Christianity in a highly emotional way today. I thought of Maeve (Mary Magdalen) living out her life in a mountain cave in southern France as an old woman as I climbed through the forest on the mountainside with the cold spring wind blowing through the trees.

When I named myself Mae 15 years ago I did not even realize that Mae is a form of Mary, which was my mother's first name.

Family Christmas Photos

2009-01-07T11:05:00.000-08:00

David and Colin decorated this Christmas tree in their place on 16th Street in the South South Slope (Park Slope, Brooklyn) which they shared with the immediate family. David had a job which included the decoration of Christmas trees when he first came to New York, so the tree had a very nice aesthetic aspect. The rest of us added a few ornaments which were new or old family traditions, and put our various gifts to each other under it. Amanda, Gabe, and Caleb flew in from New Orleans, Caleb's fourth Christmas, Chelsea and I came down from the Catskills, and Jonica was already close by in her place in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

We had our traditional Christmas eve party before a subset of the group went to the candle light service at the Park Slope United Methodist Church. Old friends Amber and Rahmin came over as usual, and Colin brought some new friends from the Institute of Culinary Education.
One of the nicest decorations was the adorned dressmakers form which David uses in his work as a costume designer/maker for off-Broadway shows and his own performances. Caleb took a series of shots from his 4 year old perspective which were interesting. Similar to many families these days, baking cookies, cooking in general, and taking pictures are all past-times shared widely.

The man in the Santa Claus hat is Gabe Soria, the father of Caleb, and the co-author of the vampire oriented graphic novel entitled "Life Sucks." Amanda, the mother of Caleb who teaches sustainable food topics in a charter school in New Orleans, is sitting on the piano bench in the picture next to Amber (her high-school chum). In the background on the walls on the right you can barely see the portraits of Amanda Milan and Sylvia Rivera, which have hung in this house for years.

Dress forms make wonderful decorative props. Every time I come into the space from my in the tranny cellar below I am fascinated by the various costumes worn by the dress form.

2009-01-07T10:49:00.000-08:00

This is a forest scene taken near the Pine Hill Lake in early January 2009. Gina and I had just walked under the old Delaware and Hudson Railroad trestle, and were looking up the mountain at the beautiful winter scene. Spending winter vacation in the Catskills reading books on local history makes me wonder at how the residents in the 18th and 19th centuries were able to get through the cold winters. It is a heat wave when the temperature goes above 32 F at the warmest part of the day. Yet our rabbits are able to survie just fine in there hutches under the spruce trees on the hill behind the house. Many days are so dark and misty/snowy that we cannot even see the mountain across from our living room window. At the same time there are hours when the winter sun is delightfully bright, making everything glisten. I like it best when we are in the midst of a snow storm, and the snowplows are the only intrusion on the soft silence as they appear out of the storm with their flashing yellow lights before they disappear again.

Applying to College at 67

2008-12-09T09:02:00.000-08:00

I have been going through retirement angst for the past several years. I have also been searching for alternatives for post-retirement employment with increasing concern in the past year, and especially since the collapse of the economy in recent months. This morning I was searching the web for information on teaching distance learning courses, and then switched to looking at the course offerings of schools near Pine Hill to see if they offered things I could teach. I checked out the SUNY-Delhi website, and found that they have little in the business area, certainly not international business. But I did find that they have programs in cabinetmaking, construction technology, and architectural technology. It suddenly came to me "hey, I could actually get a certificate or a degree in architecture.

During the process of designing and building the Green Frog Cafe over the past 34 years I have been aware that this project is the single most enjoyable work I have experienced in my life. I have often thought ruefully that I should have been an architect rather than an economist. That I did not go to school for certification as an architect is a testimony to my lack of imagination and self-knowledge as an 18 year old person.

I have just sent off an application to SUNY Delhi to take AECT 100 "Introduction to Architecture, Engineering, and Construction" in the Spring 2009 Semester as a non-matriculated student. I hope the timing works out, because I will still be teaching 3 courses at Hofstra in the Spring, but who knows, I may be able to work something out.

I have had several friends and colleagues earn extra degrees while on the Hofstra faculty, but I never have been motivated to do this as I had no strong interest (or perhaps I had no gumption). But this morning I am excited to think of actually studying architecture.

I wonder how this will turn out.

Retirement Anxiety

2008-11-23T13:25:00.000-08:00

I am often surprised when I talk with friends and family around the country and abroad to find that some people actually read this blog. For the past year various people have said to me when I see them after an absence that “I wondered what happened to you, I checked your blog but you have not posted for a long time.” This always makes me feel sorry and a little bit disgusted with myself, because the truth is that I compose paragraphs for the blog all the time. The problem is that I usually move on to other things before I actually sit down to write. This is probably an example of the tendency toward attention deficit which older people sometimes exhibit. This morning, having struggled for hours to penetrate the simple instructions of Google on how to reclaim my blogs, I am finally in the position to write a new entry. Actually I already did: the one about agreeing with Chelsea to get married. Now I want to make a more general post.

Just about everyone these days is taking stock of their lives and wondering what the future will hold as we enter a worldwide recession. I am among those people who have been especially upset to have financial meltdown occurring just as they approach retirement. The past year has been one in which my mind turns constantly to thoughts of how I will survive after August 31, 2011, which is the final day of my employment at Hofstra University, roughly two months before my 70th birthday. Writing today 4 weeks after my 67th birthday I have various alternative plans, but no certainty as to which way to go.

One of the changes in attitude which have come to me in my 60’s is that my vision of my future life course has become so foreshortened. He sense of the contingency of life has come to the fore or thought. Long range planning may be needed, but then again it may be irrelevant since there will actually be no long term. The current economic miseries afflicting the economy will go away someday. Property values will rebound, employment will increase, commerce will once again be buoyant, but no one knows when. In the great depression of the 1930’s things did not come back until around 1941, coincidentally the year of my birth. There was a decade of hardscrabble and human hardship in spite of Roosevelt’s “New Deal”. Is this what we face today? If we do, what will it mean personally as we try to cope?

Here are some of the things I am considering as I try to plan my future over the next years. Becoming a journalist, a novelist, a writer of children’s stories, a junk dealer/recycler, landlord, operator of a bed and breakfast, maker of ornamental detail for Victorian houses, proprietor of a bookmobile to go with our existing on-line/flea market bookstore, opening a bricks and mortar bookstore, a part time college professor, purveyor of second hand bicycles, writer of economic/market studies, writer of history/biography, organizer/leader of educational tours, creator/operator of a micro-homestead, renovator of things (furniture, buldings), beekeeper, and so on and on. Some of these things I do now, but probably not at a professional level in some cases.

As I wrote the list above an idea occurred to me that a journal on the possibility of creating a micro-homestead would be a project with magazine article potential as well as an eventual book. I am already committed to growing more food on the .81 acres we have in Pine Hill. This would inevitably lead to doing some canning. I do not know what the potential for raising food our place has. We are envisioning something on the order of a Victory Garden approach. Chelsea wants to acquire a burro to live in our backyard ( a steep slope upwards from directly behind the house for about 150 feet). What would we do with a burro to make money, we ask ourselves. I am more oriented toward raising a few goats or sheep. We already have rabbits, for companionship, not meat.

Thinking about it, I realize that I have never commented n the blog abut the place in Pine Hill, New York, which we “bought” last March with the help??? of the Ulster Savings Bank. Pine Hill is a dull and peaceful hamlet located along the Route 28 corridor about 35 miles west of the Hudson River, Kingston and the NYS Thruway, and 20 miles west of Woodstock. The culture in this area traces back to the Revolutionary War, Dutch Colonial period, and earlier native periods. It has been the home of the “Hudson River School” of art in America. It has been affected by serving as a vacation spot for people from New York and New Jersey for 150 years. Today there is a strong cohort of 1960’s counter culture people (The Woodstock Generation) mixed in with the local people accustomed to living in an economy dominated by tourism. Local agriculture has died off in the past 50 years, but the local food movement, the CSA Movement, and general concern for food quality has suggested the possibility of a rebirth of farming in the area. The farmers market and farm stand economy is great during the summer.

Our house is an 1890 Victorian “cottage” with 5 bedrooms, two baths, and three porches. It lies along the “new” Route 28, which cut through the front yard in the 1960s. When we tell local people about where we live they say “Oh, that’s a nice house.”

The house has a very good feeling, and we hope to avoid destroying this in the way we affect it during our stewardship.

Chelsea runs our bookstore out of this house, and also does Tarot readings.

Adjusting to living part time in Pine Hill, about 3 hours from Brooklyn and Long Island, has dominated our lives in the past 8 months (actually for the past three years). Commuting weekly between Brooklyn and Pine Hill is a strain. I am usually in Brooklyn (while teaching at Hofstra on Long Island) on Sunday through Wednesday nights, and then in Pine Hill on Thursday-Saturday nights. This life-style is actually easier than the one I lived in 1974-79 between Manhattan/Brooklyn and Paddy Mountain (Central Pennsylvania). The flow of traffic and transportation is so much easier between the Catskills and New York City than it is between Union County PA and New York City. The Trailways Bus from New York City stops right in front of our house. The Right-Wing Christian influence is much less in the Catskills than in Central Pennsylvania. But no Amish. The Hasidic Jews take over Fleischmans, the next town west of Pine Hill, during the summer, so that it almost looks like the set from Fiddler on the Roof. Our family room/dining room looks out on the ski trails at the top of Belleayre Mountain.

I am trying to figure out if a retirement life is possible for me in Pine Hill. Employment seems to be much easier to arrange in NYC than in the semi-prosperous Catskills. My mind is in a fever about this which ebbs and flows.

I always remember the saying from Arabia which goes something like “we say that a person who tries to see into the future is either insane or irreligious…God will determine the future.” Or impersonal chance in the course of nature, say I.

Engagement and Rights of Citizenship

2008-11-23T06:11:00.000-08:00

Gay Marriage is a human rite
Gay Marriage is a human right
Gay Marriage is an American right
Love and Family Values
Loving Partners Rights
Resonance With the Cosmic Ecosystem

This is a little poem, or is it a T-shirt epigram, which occurred to me this evening as Chelsea and I hashed out Thanksgiving, Christmas, and our respective approaches to our respective families. Along the way I agreed to get married with Chelsea. We have been together 17 years in February, and we feel that our relationship deserves the same social and civil respect and status as all other marriages. We have been talking all day about how my children do not take our relationship as seriously as marriages which are currently sanctioned by the state.

The passage of Proposition 8 in California has raised the energy of the queer community and allies right across the country. NYC City Council President Christine Quinn wrote in a message to the GLBT community that the demonstration last Sunday in front of City Hall amazed her. She said the crowd (estimated by the police at 20,000, which means it was closer to 50,000) stretched in all directions from City Hall as far as she could see. The vote on proposition 8 (which outlawed “gay” marriage in California) has been a wake-up call to people that full-fledged American citizens are being deprived of their civil rights by a vote taken in the largest and most progressive state in the union. We are not going to stand for it anymore.

I was not able to attend the rally. One of the organizers was Rev. Pat Bumgardner of the Metropolitan Community Church of New York, of which I am a fallen away member. My old friend Sylvia Rivera is the patron saint of the MCC-NY. Her ashes are placed on the altar each Sunday, and her memory burns brightly in the congregation’s commitment to social justice. I am sure Sylvia would have been there in the flesh as she was in spirit.

I am not anxious to remarry, after two failed attempts over a span of 25 years. Nevertheless, it is the right thing to do. I have written elsewhere that Chelsea and I are living one of the great love stories of the ages. Certainly it begs to be commemorated in a marriage sanctioned by the state and recognized by all of the myriad religious and spiritual believers of all the myriad beliefs out there in the universe.

sorry

2008-02-08T11:01:00.000-08:00

I pushed the wrong button. The last post should have appared on my blog, Commissioner Straight Jacket. Sorry. Chelsea

letting go

2008-02-08T10:45:00.000-08:00

The rest of the previous post would have gone on to talk about the seventies and the so-called 'me' generation.
Perhaps the most appealing and apalling thing about the feline person who finally is moving on was the way she constantly challenged 'me" ism--the whole idea of putting oneself first. Carried to one extreme it is the philosophical position of the Anton Levay school of "Satanism" Put another way it is the basis of so much pop psycholog from "Looking Out for Number One" to the song "The Greatest Love of All" which can be anything from an Anthem to an all time low in self indulgent camp
I am thinking a lot about forgiveness. I feel that there has been a lot of abuse going on around me, from my father's abuse of my mother and myself, to the abusive relationships that I've been in (my ex wife, her boyfriend my ex best friend from high school who was physically abusive, an alchoholic transy ex navy seal, the feline, the cult leader, etc. etc. etc. I realise that I need to explore what it is about me that up to the present moment left me prone to falling into abusive relationships, while at the same time to start right now to forgive and let go.
I thought that my friend who has as many personalities as Howard Johnson has flavours of ice cream was a little bit beyond reason with her unrelenting critique of "borderline' thinking which is to say the idea that there are good guys and bad guys and that it always makes sense to take a side. There are times when I still feel that it is right and necssary to take sides, but also things are always more complex then they seem. I am a recent survivor of a war between two people each of whom has accused the other of abuse and both of whom who are quite guilty. I've seen them do terrible things to each other, and they've both done terrible things to me and to other people around them.
And now it is time to start to put the whole thing behind me. I need to detach myself from both of them and to allow the process of understanding to lead to the kind of forgiveness which does NOT say that what these people did is okay, but rather that I do NOT have to let the pain and anger keep me bound to people from whom I need to be truly FREE. In my father's case I did this when I realised that I was older than he was at the time he died, so that rebelling against him any further would be pointless.
It seems that there is a trend of making an identity out of victemhood. So-called "survivors' of everything from various so-called "addictions" to various kinds of real and imagined abuse, etc. seem to get stuck in the moment that a particularly grievious insult or injury occurred. I have been known to carry grudges and to never let go of anything myself. I need to make today the day I resolve to just let go of stuff. The past two years need to end. Now.

Badu

2007-11-10T10:41:00.000-08:00

Badu is the mommy cat. She mothered 12 to 15 kittens while living at Transy House, including "Streaky" who was given the Mtribe, and Cleo the Palsied One, who was given to Jamie. The last of the kittens to be with Badu is Zona, who has been living with her in the Catskills at Central House for the past year. Badu loves Central House. She lives outside much of the time, but has been sleeping inside with Jamie in recent weeks. Badu is very fearless even though she is such a delicate small cat. When she first arrived at Transy House there were two active dogs there, Sophie and Kiva, who liked to chase cats. They had driven out several other cats who had been brought in to hunt the mice. The dogs pounced on Badu, who was then practically still a Kitten, and she was fearless in confronting them and setting them back on their heels. Eventually they worked out a modus vivendi. Today Badu and Kiva treat each other like old friends. At Central House Badu has become a hunter, leaving dead mice around on the doorstep so often that it is bothersome. It is beautiful to watch her moving stealthily through the grass and weeds as she stalks prey. Some people think that she is abandoned because she is outside so much, but it is actually just that she is so sociable. Whenever something is going on on the Central House grounds she sticks her nose in and participates. The people living at Central House want her to stay there, and take good care of her, even though I am considering taking her back to Brooklyn as I write this. They have know Badu for a long time, and love her. She is the best cat I have ever known.

Zona at Central House, Summer 2007

2007-11-09T22:49:00.001-08:00

Zona lives in and out of Central House in Palenville. She was born in Brooklyn about six years ago. She is a sister of other cats which have been at Central House, including "Streaky." Zona likes to be free to room outside the house, and sometimes eats at the neighbor houses as well. She is taken care of by all the people living at Central House, who knew her when she was a kitten in Brooklyn.

Kiva, October 2007

2007-11-09T20:12:00.001-08:00

Here is a picture of Kiva at 15, peacefully back home at Transy House after eight difficult months of semi-homelessness in the Catskills. He actually ran away one Sunday due to dissatisfaction with being left out of the house, and was found by the dog catcher about 4 miles away in another county. We were lucky to get him back. He now has an Ulster County dog license.

He is much happier to be back in the center of things with people around.

Crone Witch of the Blackthorne

2007-11-09T19:59:00.001-08:00

The Crone Witch can be very stern, but she loves a good joke..

Dagobert II

2007-11-09T19:43:00.001-08:00

The wizard, Dagobert II reading cards at Massacre Mansion

The Crone Witch of the Blackthorne

2007-11-09T19:40:00.000-08:00

For the past 5 weeks I have been assuming an identity as the “Crone Witch of the Blackthorne” at the Massacre Mansion in East Durham New York for about 16 hours per week. This has been an extraordinary experience. Massacre Mansion is a haunted house on the grounds of the Black Thorn Resort in the Catskills near Windham.

My role was to be the “guide” for the second floor of the old Victorian house which had belonged to the Fear brothers. These gentlemen had been eccentric gentlemen scientists who experimented with genetics and psychic phenomena. One of the brothers had disappeared under mysterious circumstances back in the 20’s, and the other (Angus) had been buried in the vicinity.

My partner Chelsea was the star of the second floor, reading tarot cards in her persona as “Dagobert II.” I would inroduce her to the tourists as a great black wizard from Europe who had been brought to the Black Thorn as the visiting psychic in the Séance Room of the House of Fear. My other friend Gina started out as a “come from the dead” screamer, and evolved into providing four singlehanded “scares” in the middle of the second floor tour. She reminded me of the Wizard of Oz as she worked the mist machine, buzzed the buzzer, shot off the air pistol, and grabbed people through the hidden window in the hallway in rapid sequence. Then she would scare me as I walked back through the house after sending a group on to the next attraction. Those scares worked every time, and made me laugh.

The people would go through the downstairs of the House of Fear, then climb some stairs on the outside of the house, stopping at a closed door at the top. They were told to knock three times to gain admittance. I opened the door after hearing three knocks and introduced myself as the Crone Witch. In the beginning I was stern and bossy, but over the weeks I evolved into a crone witch who was a happy and friendly good witch. I was not really surprised at how easily I could scare people. Some people touched me to see if I was real.

I took the people into the Séance Room and introduced Dagobert as a black magician, psychic, wizard, and/or card reader saying the she would “do some real magic for them.” Dagobert would read the cards of at least one person, and then I would take the people on through the rest of the second floor. (Sometimes I would say “Dagobert the second, from Metz, France.”)

Chelsea was amazing. She read the cards of hundreds of people coming through, and had an extremely high percentage of “right on” readings based on the somewhat awed reactions of the people in the groups. She really was doing “real magic”. By the end of our run up to Halloween people were coming to Massacre Mansion just to get the reading from Dagobert. Chelsea read the cards of a lot of children, but also mothers and fathers, girlfriends and boyfriends, grandparents and everyone else. Beligerent drunks would come into the room laughing, and would leave silenced and a bit apprehensive after seeing a reading.

Gina kept the mist in the house at a high level. It was so thick that sound transmission and perception was affected. It was a great assist to opening the mind to the possibility of Halloween magic.

The first day we went to the Black Thorn for Chelsea to audition Gina made the comment that “they never saw anyone really scary until they saw us.” The rest of the actors were friends of the family running the haunted house, or junior and senior high school kids for whom working in the haunted house was a traditional rite of passage in East Durham and environs. The three of us each have a sense of having tapped into some sort of psychic energy. I would consider Chelsea and Gina to be witches as I understand it in my limited experience in the pagan community. They joke that I am a witch, but I do not take this too seriously as I have no discipline in my sense of spirituality. If anything I am oriented in the way of Yeshua.

I was repelled by the lack of a sense of the deeper content of the haunted house on the part of the others involved in the project. They saw it as good fun, and enjoyed the experience of scaring people and playing roles such as “Little Dead Riding Hood”, “Werewolf,” and “Gorlag the Alien.” They told Chelsea that she could work the Séance Room by pretending to read palms and telling people that they were going to die.
No one dreamed that Chelsea would actually be able to read the Tarot cards and reveal thought provoking readings to the people filing past night after night.

I invented my name as the Crone Witch of the Blackthorne, and resolved to raise real spiritual issues in the course of the tour. I blush to admit that at times I really got into feeling myself as the Crone Witch of the Blackthourne, especially in the intense times from make-up at home in Ulster County, driving 38 miles to East Durham across the Schoharie Creek valley and down the face of East Windham. We would stroll into the
Entrance to the mansion just a few minutes after groups started through the lower floor. The grassy orchard before the house would be full of people. A ripple would run through the crowd as the three of us walked in.

Some children noticed the Pentacle dangling from my neck. It is beautiful, made by Gina. I asked the children if they knew what the Pentacle stood for, and one said “the devil.” I informed him that it represents the path Venus takes around the sun from the perspective of the earth on an eight year cycle. Venus represents many things, but I did not go into them.

Before the first night the director’s assistant had called me up to say that they had purchased a wig and witch costume for me to use. But when I got there that night they took one look at my own dress, hair, make-up, Royal Stewart plaid cape, black witches hat, with a little plaid Mexican bag and wearing black combat boots, and said “forget the costume, you look better in your street clothes”.

Dagobert wore leather trousers, a leather vest over a black turtleneck, a long black leather duster, and combat boots. Gina wore tight jeans, combat boots, and a black velvet top, with a choker made of bones.

The main effect of this experience as an actor playing a witch was to make me think about the magical traditions which have affected me in my life trip. Today I read a long article on Wikipedia about the Covenanters. These people were the community from which my oldest direct family knowledge comes. The Covenanters were a group in 16th and 17th Century Scotland which struggled to establish the Church of Scotland in a “Presbyterian” form, and at one point included the majority of Scots. By the 17th Century the seat of the Covenanters was in Ayrshire in the western Scottish lowlands. Many of these people emigrated to Ulster in Northern Ireland, and later to the US, where they are know as the Ulster-Scots or the Scotch-Irish. I am sure that some of my ancestors were still Covenanters after coming to the US because many McGeorges are buried in the “Reformed Presbyterian Cemetery” outside of New Galilee, Pennsylvania. My immediate relatives, however, had relaxed their discipline to a degree, and were simply United Presbyterians or simply Presbyterians by the time I came along.

My own life is not exactly one which would be acceptable to conservative Presbyterians. I feel often that I have betrayed my heritage in many ways, one of which is to forsake the Christian churches (although not Yeshua), and to embrace the view of Hermeticism. Lately I am even being vilified on at least one pagan website as a pagan “heretic”, which may seem like an oxymoron.

My quest now is to learn more about my spiritual roots from the time before Christianity. I suppose that this means learning more about Celtic and Norse spirituality. I have had dreams of my spirit in those earlier time.

Driving Up To The Catskills From Park Slope

2007-11-08T18:44:00.000-08:00

Chelsea and I have been basically living in the Catskills for the past 15 months. I have been commuting back and forth to Brooklyn almost every week, while Chelsea has probably averaged every third weekend in Brooklyn. Right now I am thoroughly sick of the weekly commute. It’s not that the drive is so bad. It takes approximately three and a half hours to make the trip, which is mostly on the New York State Thruway. I you travel on the off hours, say after 10:00 PM both ways, it is a breeze as long as there is no car trouble and E-Z-Pass is working. The hard part is packing at each end so that you do not forget essential items related to household management and academic work. I am sick of this.

Today we left our house at about 3:45 PM (rush hour), drove across from Park Slope to Clinton Hill, and got on the BQE to the Grand Central Parkway and the Triboro Bridge by about 4:00. We were waylaid along the way by a call of desperation from our lawyer in Hudson New York who is handling a divorce case for one of the members of our family nest. She is preparing to go to trial, and wanted to set up a phone conference with us.

Traffic was slow on the BQE over the Kosciusko Bridge, a fast bumper to bumper, but the Triboro was moving well, and the Deegan North was a fast heavy steady. Traffic was still heavy but moving well after we passed the exit to the George Washington Bridge off the Deegan, and we moved right along. Chelsea and I had been bickering all day, and the time just flew by. I was suddenly on the Tappan Zee Bridge across the Hudson before I knew it. The Thruway up to about Sloatsburg is clogged and relatively slow at the evening rush hour, but we made it to the Sloatsburg Rest Stop by about 6:00 PM. It had taken about two hours to make the first 50 miles out of Brooklyn. We did not eat, but just went to the rest room, put in 5 gallons of gas, and pulled back out on the highway with Chelsea at the wheel now. I was tired after the two hour stint through the New York and Westchester and Yonkers rush hour, and glad to let my mind drift.

We were able to pick up Radio Woodstock almost as soon as we left Sloatsburg. My heart lifted after the days of focusing on managing three courses, and the issues of making a new home in the renovated Transy House. I could feel the transition happening between my New York frame of mind and my Catskill frame of mind. I was feeling happier as I mentally planned my weekend. I did not feel like bickering any more, and I reached over to rest my hand on Chelsea’s leg as she drove. I can be a real bitch.

I have gone up and down the Thruway to the Catskills about 75 times in the past year and a half. The road is very familiar to me. It is always nice to look at the scenery flowing by. The Thruway up the Hudson Valley from the Bronx to the Canadian border just south of Montreal is an absolutely beautiful drive. This slice of New York State has a special beauty, with green mountain vistas, and glimpses of the Hudson at the core of the valley.

Certain places are markers of progress to me: the intriguing stone silos just before Sloatsburg, the well groomed apple orchards on either side before Newburgh, and the sign that says “Catskills Exits 18-19-20-21” before New Paltz.

At Kingston, exit 19, we turn West on state route 28 in the direction of Pine Hill and, eventually, Oneonta. As we go down this road we are fully back into our Catskill mode, thinking about what to buy for dinner, what to cook for Gina when she gets home from work at 12:30 AM, and whether Kat was able to straighten out a problem with her card. I am planning a weekend of grading papers and paying bills.

We pass the turn off to Woodstock on Route 315, roll by Kate’s Lazy Meadow Motel in Mt. Tremper, and pull into the 24 hour farm stand. There are a lot of people from the City up here every weekend, and they all need to stock up on local food as they arrive. We bought local organic apples, local pear cider, local red potatoes, asparagus, yellow squash, loaves of artesanal zucchini and banana bread, brussel sprouts on the stalk, local milk and cheese, and picked up a Phoenicia Times. We drove on past the Catskill Railway where we go with Caleb, and the giant eagle statue at the entrance to Phoenicia, and knew that we were almost home. Soon enough we turned up the road in the Village, and felt joy that we had just five more miles to go.

The weather was at least ten degrees colder than in the city, and I had forgotten my down vest and coat. Chelsea commented as we drove the last miles “this is a really long way to ride a bicycle” (meaning the five miles from the Village to our little place), and I commented “it sure is a long way, but I was younger then.” Chelsea said “that was just last week.” I said “that’s what I mean.”

It was good to see the Grand Wagoneer parked outside the driveway, and to be home. Chelsea said “don’t you have just a little bit of a feeling of being home?” I grudgingly said “yes.”

Masonic Values Handed Down to Me

2007-07-04T16:40:00.000-07:00

It has become fashionable in recent years to study the values of freemasonry which were a strong influence on many of the founding fathers of the Unites States, and which have been shared by many people in the UK and Europe. When I was in the Mirabai Bookstore in Woodstock several days ago I was struck by how many books are on the shelves which purport to impart the secrets and the wisdom of the masons. I have never been a member of a Masonic organization, and actually resisted some suggestions from family members that I should join up when I was in my teens. My resistance to masonry was part of my youthful rebellion, subtle as it was. In later years I came to regret that I never took the opportunity when I had it. I have been surprised at the attention given to masonry since the publication of the “da Vinci Code”, as I always saw the Masonic organizations I knew as a child growing up in a Western Pennsylvania steel town as a variety of social club which sometimes held interesting events. My favorites were the Easter Breakfast held by the Beaver Valley Commandery of the Knights Templar in Beaver Falls, the Childrens Christmas Party held by the Blue Lodge in Aliquippa, The Shrine Circus at the Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh, and best of all, the Shriners Picnic at Kennywood Amusement Park near Pittsburgh in August every year. I liked the Shriner’s events because I thought their fezes were neat, and I got to wear my father’s sometimes. The Knights Templar swords carried by my father and grandfather and two uncles were fascinating, as were the plumed hats they wore. I took it as a matter of course that the men in the family liked to dress up in their knight’s regalia and go off to meetings of the commandery, consistory, and grand encampment at frequent intervals.

The women in the family were masons also. My mother, grandmother, and aunts were all in the Eastern Star, and my Grandmother and aunt were involved in the Ladies Auxiliary of the Commandery. They often participated as the ladies of their Sir Knight husbands as they attended various events. Dinner table conversation at Christmastime usually included a good deal of commentary about who was 32nd degree and who was 33rd degree, and what the difference was between York Rite and Scottish Rite.

My father, Paul Martin Moore, dropped out of the Knights Templar in the late 1940’s because of his heart condition and the strain of wearing the heavy uniform. His brother, James Harvey McGeorge Moore, continued on through the line of state offices to become Grand Commander of Pennsylvania, and my great uncle Paul Miller Moore, made it all through the line to become Grand Commander of the Grand Encampment of Knights Templar of the United States.

Even in my generation there was Masonic involvement. My sister and my two close cousins were all active in the Rainbow Girls as teenagers, but I never became involved in any of the Masonic related activities. Jackie Gleason and Art Carney going of to meetings on “The Raccoons” in episodes of the “Honeymooners” was about the way I viewed the whole proposition. I certainly never had an inkling that the masons had anything at all to do with “hermetic philosophy,” or that Friday the 13th is viewed as unlucky in our culture because that was the day Pope Clement the 4th and the King Philip the Fair of France initiated the campaign to eradicate the Knights Templar in 1307. I never knew that there was a vast “Templar National Treasure”, that the Jolly Roger flown by pirates of the Caribbean is derived from the Templar flag, or that legends of a vast treasure of the Templars in Nova Scotia continue to this day. I was aware that Templars never refuse help to the son of the widow, but I thought this was just due to the generosity of my uncles, not because it was a Templar tradition related to legends of Hiram Abiff. I never dreamed that Baphomet would be a key figure in Masonic traditions.

What I did get from my Masonic family was a day to day education in applying Masonic values. I list them here from memory: support spirituality and religion, help people in need, be honest, work hard, be sensibly frugal, take people for who they are, use a practical approach to problems, be generous, be pragmatic, be an active citizen, pay your bills, keep up your family ties, be active in civic associations, strive for success, be supportive of parents and children, and be politically realistic on the conservative side.

Today I am touched to find that my father, who died in 1951, is still listed online as a Past Master of the Blue Lodge, and that my great uncle Paul has a DeMolay Chapter in Butler Pennsylvania named for him. I will never be a mason, although I have been reading a good deal about them recently, and find them highly interesting at this late date in my life. Maybe my own son, or my grandson will carry on the tradition someday. Certainly I have a great deal more respect for masonry than I did as a youth, and I observe the contemporary renaissance of the craft with great interest.

Yemanja and Marilyn

2007-07-01T09:42:00.000-07:00

I was a party to a legal proceeding in the Town Court of Catskill last Thursday as a result of my role as Treasurer of the Maetreum of Cybele, Magna Mater, Inc. and as a legal resident of Central House in Palenville. The MCMM Inc. owns Central House, which serves as the physical base for the “church” of which the corporation is the legally registered temporal entity. All of the residents of Central House had been served with an eviction notice by one of the Green Country Deputy Sheriff’s 10 days earlier, and had spent the subsequent period in an intense activity of collecting the legal documents necessary to fight the eviction. The eviction action had been brought by the person who had previously been the Battakes of the church (and one of the founders) as well as the first president of the corporation which owned the residential facility. This person had been replaced as president of the corporation by a special emergency meeting of the Board of the church on January 20, 2007, then replaced as Battakes and given the honor of being Battakes Emeritus at the regular annual meeting of the church on March 24, 2007, and then removed from church membership at a special extraordinary meeting of the Church Board on May 31, 2007. The three aforementioned actions of the Church Board had been taken very reluctantly, after many attempts at compromise and reconciliation, and with due deliberation by the Board. (I have used commonly accepted terms for some of the church bodies mentioned above instead of the true nomenclature of the MCMM in order to facilitate understanding of non-members on the off chance that anyone ever reads this blog.)

The Catskill Town Court is a special court designed to resolve relatively simple legal issues without forcing them into the clogged channels of the higher levels of the court system. One of the issues commonly addressed by the Town Court is landlord tenant disputes.

All of the above explanation is merely to set the stage for a description of the emotionally charged yet anti-climactic scene which ensued in the Catskill Town Court.

The four of us affected by the eviction notice, plus a friend who had formerly been evicted, met with our lawyer 45 minutes before court at the Muddy Cup coffee house on Main Street Catskill, across from the Town Offices. The atmosphere among us was tense, as most of us had never been through anything like this before. At around 2:10 someone said “she just drove past,” meaning the person bringing the eviction action against us.

At 3:25 we walked across the street to the courtroom, following docilely behind our lawyer like kindergartners on a class outing. As we walked into court we passed alongside our former friend, sister, Battakes, and President, sitting in the second or third row of folding chairs of the theater-type setup of the courtroom. The judge and the clerks were not yet present. Sitting beside our opponent, and in solidarity with her, was Marilyn, a friend of mine since early 1995. Marilyn is a young woman in her late 20’s, who arrived at my home in Brooklyn at the age of 18 or 19, and “came out” over the next two or three years before moving on to other places. I was not surprised to see Marilyn there, and a part of me was even glad to see her there. She did not look toward me as I walked past.

Marilyn is a person with a spiritual vocation. Over the years I have learned a great deal from her, and at times have been inspired by her. During the period when she was first living in my home she was experimenting with spirituality oriented toward Santeria, the syncretic admixture of Roman Catholicism and traditional African and Native American spirituality. Our house used to be replete with little shrines, images and altars set up by Marilyn in the course of her religious practice.

My first experience of being in the Albany Capitol Region was when I drove with Marilyn to see her mother and stepfather to acclimatize them to the fact that Marilyn had come out of her shell and was an independent woman. In the course of that visit Marilyn and I stayed overnight in the home of one of her grandmothers, and I got a glimpse through her grandmother’s eyes of the person she had been as she grew up.

Sometime around the turn of the century, after Marilyn had been living elsewhere for some years, she called me to say that she was homeless, and wanted my advice on where to buy a good backpack in which to keep her things while she lived in the New York subway system. At first I recommended Paragon Sporting Goods, and then I realized what I was saying, and invited her to come back to Transy House, where I have always considered her to be one of the core spirits even if not in residence. She stayed for several months, and then moved on again.

On one of her visits she took all the artifacts which I had placed on my altar in the dining room and carefully cleaned then before replacing them in proper order. It made me feel good that she respected the altar assembled by me, when no one else in the house ever took it seriously. This altar was dedicated to the Goddess in her form as Yemanja, Queen of the Seas. My first exposure to Yemanja had been on a visit to Santos, Brazil, with Amelia Stefani, a Brazilian friend, in 1967. Amelia led me through the crowds of believers on the Santos beach at midnight on the “Festival de Yemanja”, looking out at the beautiful image of the Goddess rocking gently in a small boat about 100 meters offshore, illuminated by the lights of the bars and cafes ringing the beach. In Brazil Yemanja is respected by all, and especially the maids and hookers and travestis and all the women living a precarious life on the edge. As I have gradually become more open to pagan spirituality over the years since that time it has been through focus on Yemanja that I have found my point of access to a sense of contact with the magical realm and spirit worlds. Learning from Marilyn about Santeria, the more Hispanic oriented versions of Candomble and Macumba, I felt that I gained in understanding and strength.

Many of us walking into the courtroom in Catskill were very sad that our community had been riven, and friends had been pitted against friends. The person who had brought the eviction action against us would have been alone in court had Marilyn not been there beside her. I felt a sense of appreciation for Marilyn that she was there, even in support of a person who felt aggrieved by me, and who was in opposition to me and the people with me as well as to the broader “church” which we represented.

When the judge came out he called the person who had brought the eviction action up to the bench along with the attorney who was representing our church and the people directly being evicted. The judge dismissed the petition for eviction “without prejudice”, saying that it had not been properly notarized. It could be reintroduced in the same court when revised. He mentioned that the issue being brought were not, strictly speaking, landlord-tenant issues. He also dismissed “without prejudice” the counter petitions presented by our attorney, saying that he felt that the issues involved were not of the type which should be dealt with in the Town Court.

Marilyn and our opponent left the courtroom immediately, followed soon afterward by our contingent. The blackness of conflict, fear, and uncertainty continues.

I hope I shall have the opportunity someday to talk again with Marilyn. I miss her, and as always, respect her right and duty to herself to stand up for what she believes.

My Grandfather's Shovel

2007-03-07T14:59:00.000-08:00

It snowed lightly this morning, and the temperature was 15 degrees F. The boiler was off when I awoke and the house was very cold, leaving me with a fierce all pervading sinus headache. After two hours of steaming my head with the teakettle my sinuses had released enough for me to rush out the door to work, taking the risk of fine and imprisionment for not shoveling the public sidewalk in front of my little Brooklyn townhouse. (This is the New New York of Giuliani and Bloomberg, where things work better, the streets are cleaner, the sex clubs are shut, and scofflaws are prosecuted). When I returned from my office on Long Island in the late afternoon I learned that I had slipped by with no fine. I rushed around searching for my shovel to see if I could still get something off the sidewalk even though by this time it was well packed by the heels of pedestrians. At this point I paniced. Someone had stolen my shovel. I cursed the people who have been walking off with all of my things since I have been emptying the house for renovation.

Now you might think it odd that I became upset at a missing shovel, but that would be because you do not understand my youthful formation. I grew up in a shoveling family, at least the people working for the family did a lot of shoveling, and I as a youngster often joined in for the shear pleasure of it. There is a satisfaction which comes from filling a shovel with snow, or gravel, or soil, and throwing it neatly six or eight feet so that it falls in a well contained pile. My family was in the builders supply business, and someone was always building things around our homes or the businesses. Later, when I was in high school and college, I became a professional shoveler, working on the labor crews in the family business. We would empty the hopper cars full of sand or gravel or slag brought on to our tipple by the Aliquipa and Southern Railroad as well as ashes from the Jones and Laughlin Steel Mill furnaces and ovens. That's where my grandfather's shovel comes in. We used short handled, square bladed shovels of an industrial weight. It was great exercise, and I loved the way my body felt after a summer of shoveling in the sun. Years later, when we were emptying my grandmother's house after her death I ran across one of those shovels in the garage. My grandfather had been in charge of the tipple for years during his working life, and the shovel had survived in pristine form in his garage. I took it as a small inheritance, and have carried it with me to every home I have had ever since. Usually I carry it in my car in the wintertime just in case I have to dig out. It is a real shovel, not a new fangled el cheapo version of a shovel made out of plastic, aluminum, or thin steel. You need a heavy shovel to really deal with ice and snow in the days after a snowfall when the flakes turn to frozen chunks. I have had many people come up to me in the street and try to buy my shovel on the spot for big bucks, but I would never sell. It is a fine tool, apart from reminding me of my grandfather, my youth, and the family business which has long since disappeared. So I was distressed when I could not find it today. I searched through all three floors of the house and finally found it near the downstairs door to the back garden. Pop Pop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it was. I put on some work gloves and hit the sidewalk, making short work of the 18 linear feet which falls under my responsibility as one of the disappearing small home owners in my neighborhood. Then, in a nod to advancing age, I sprinkled some blue chemical crystals given to me by a gentleman friend who buys in bulk over the icy spots. I felt the satisfaction of a job well done, and the small pleasure of knowing that for another day I had unheld my responsibilities as a citizen of New York City.

Katryshka's Plight

2006-12-22T14:25:00.000-08:00

I want to tell a story about my friend Katrushka's situation.

Katruschka is a 32 year old transsexual woman who lives at a pagan spiritual collective in the Catskill Mountains. She came there via a short stay in West Virginia, having gone there as a refugee from Mississippi. Pantera, as Katrushka is called fondly by her friends, is struggling to regain functional stablility in the face of the horrible pain which she experiences because of being cut off from her 5 year old daughter, Sweetie Pie.

Katrushka acts as the Information Technology and Communications coordinator at the spiritual collective. She used to be a pilot on a regional airline, before that a Greyhound bus driver, and before that a professional online game player. She is six feet four, with a guitar shaped body, long black hair, face like Bones in the current TV series, and prehensile toes. She is a self identified vampire, and dresses only in black, featuring black combat boots and a long black trenchcoat. For some reason she speaks with a soft panther-like accent.

Katrushka is like many trans people in that she has a child. Sadly, she is also like many trans parents in that the state has taken her parental rights from her. The state ignores the rights of the child to know and grow up with the nuture and admonition of their blood parent.

Sweetie Pie's mother has a history of mental illness, and the state has also stripped her of her parental rights.

Sweetie pie lived happily with Katrshka for years. The the state became aware that Katrushka was the de facto custodial parent and intervened in such as way as to destroy Sweetie Pie's family.

One morning before dawn a twelve person SWAT team descended on the apartment where Sweetie Pie and Katrushka were living. Katrushka did not know what was happening as the door was kicked in and men poured into the little apartment holding guns and blazing lights. Katrshka put Sweetie Pie on the floor and covered her with her body. The large men from the police tore Sweetie Pie from the arms of Katrushka and took her out of the apartment. They forced Katrushka to the ground, where they proceeded to kick and pound her with their clubs until she lost consciousness.

Katrushka was naked when she awoke, lying on the cold concrete floor of a three by eight foot cell. A flourescent light glared from the ceiling. The light was an affront, but Katrushka later learned that it would only be on for one hour a day during her recreation period, and that she would lie in total blackness for the other 23. They offered her the option of remaining in the solitary cell, or being transferred to the general (male) population. Since she is a beautiful woman, Katrushka had no option but to opt for solitary. Her only means of communication for a month was to write on paper illuminated by the light filtering under the door.

Katryushka was never charged with anything, but was kept in jail for 91 days, which meant that underMississippi law she lost her rights to have custody of her child.

A lengthy court case ensued between Sweetie Pie's parents and the Mississippi Office of Child Welfare. Eventually the case came before the famous judge Jefferson Campbell. This was the judge who had the laws of Leviticus printed in summary form in a pamphlet which he gave to all visitors to his courtroom.

Judge Campbell officially labeled Katrushka an "it" in court documents because she is a transsexual. This treatment was in the face of the fact that all of Katrushka's documents indicate that she is female. The judge ruled that Katrushka and the other parent would have no parental rights whatsoever, and were never to be allowed to have any contact with Sweetie Pie ever again. Sweetie Pie was to be settled in a foster home, and eventually put up for adoption.

This whole ordeal put Katrushka into the tailspin from which she has not yet recovered. Her room in the Catskill home is replete with reminders of Sweetie Pie. There is a large butterfly on the wall, and large stuffed toys on the bed which were part of Katrushka and Sweetie Pie's family life together. These things are sacrosanct to Katrushka. They are the most tangible evidence she has of her beloved daughter, and the little family they used to have. It is as if the most important part of Katrushka's life has been frozen in time.

This story horrifies me. I was lucky that I never lost contact with my own children, partially because they were old enough and ornery enough to be unlikely to go along with attempts to keep us apart. Their other parent did not try to come between my children and me. Nevertheless, it was my worst nightmare that there would be legal intervention between my children and me to take away our legal right to hang out together.

Katrushka has helped take care of Caleb, my two year old grandson when he has been with me sometimes. She is such a good person with children, sweet and fun, but also firm and teaching correct behavior. It breaks my heart to see her with Caleb. Caleb likes to be with her.

This story is about what some good Christian people do to some loving people to better serve their Lord. There may be another chapter to the story someday. What will be in that chapter?

Merry Christmas

Reflection on Spiritual Meaning of Gender Conforming SurgeryTransition

2006-12-16T16:13:00.000-08:00

I wrote a response to a discussion on the yahoogroup at . I have copied and pasted it here as I sent it out on the list http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Gallae/.

Brooklyn, 12/15/2006

Dear Helen,

Welcome to this group. I am also a relatively new member, and participate rarely in the discussion although I read all posts. I am very interested in the discussion on handling "transition" from the standpoint of spirituality and rituals. The discussion seems to focus on the time of SRS, which to me does not encompass the commonly accepted definition of transition, which focuses more on the transition of social perceptions. Nevertheless, a key time in my transition was having what was then called SRS in Brussels in July 1995. I was 54 at the time. I was only vaguely aware of the historical Cybele at the time, although I had a sense of trans spirituality and spiritual calling related more to participation in Wiccan ceremonies, and reading about Two-spirit people among the indigenous people of North American.

I went through the SRS experience jointly with my partner, Chelsea Goodwin who at that time already had a long formation in pagan thought and practice. I cannot recall that we did anything that was conscious ritual during the period immediately before or after our SRS, although Chelsea may have a better memory about this than I. There were, however, many aspects of the days immediately before and after our operations which had a powerful spiritual content.

The first thing to mention is that Chelsea practices tantric sex magic (raises magical energy through lovemaking). We made love many times in the days before our surgery, lying together in our little hotel in Brussels, and during our quick trip to Paris before surgery. In Paris we naturally went to the Louvre, and there stumbled upon the famous hermaphrodite sculpture. We stayed near the sculpture for about an hour, thinking about what we were and what we were about to go through, and listening to the comments of the crowd filing past the work. We both felt a tremendous visceral affinity to "our" hermaphrodite.

Later we went to the Pere Lachaise cemetery and communed at the graves of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, whom we have always felt to be our role models and spiritual sisters. We also spent many quiet moments at the grave of Oscar Wilde. The height of our sense of connection with the spirits was at the grave of Jim Morrison, where Chelsea went into a kind of otherworldly trance at the graveside: the crowds fell back, the wind suddenly gusted fiercely, wild thunder clapped. The crowds, the guards, and I looked on in awe as the wind whipped Chelsea's diaphanous dress around her slender body, and her hair whipped behind her head. For a moment she seemed to be a towering bird of prey speaking directly to Morrison's spirit. Torrential rains suddenly inundated the cemetery, and we all dispersed among the grave markers, where Chelsea and I huddled together in a powerful embrace as the rain washed over us.

In the hours before surgery back in Brussels I wrote letters to each of my three children, telling them that I loved them dearly. Chelsea and I kissed, and we prepared for my death (or possible new life) by holding hands in quiet conversation.

On the day after my surgery, Chelsea, alone in the hotel, prepared for hers by writing to me plighting her love, and giving me instructions for her funeral.

When I awoke from surgery Chelsea was there waiting to give me a kiss. When she awoke I was bedridden, but we lay together in our hospital beds, side by side, and laughed with each other.

As I awoke I had the distinct sense of being born again.

I feel that my "day of blood" as we call it was not a sacrifice in any sense, but rather a movement toward the goddess by aligning myself more in keeping with my nature as I was born into this world. Spirituality to me is involved with centering and finding the sweet spot of alignment with the natural flows of the universe.

Rhona McMahan

--- In mailto:Gallae%40yahoogroups.com, "Helen Metzger" wrote:

QUOTE>> So I was curious. I am aware than many of you are not transgendered, pagan or priestesses, but I am also sure that many of you are (probably all three). I have had a burning question on my mind for a few years now, but I am not sure how I will ask it. Here's a go at it: How do many of you ritually handle the issue of transition? In the past people have done this many ways; either though days of celebration ending in the inevitable deed, or though prayer and devotion to the goddess leading to the swift blade of the midwife and spiritual union with the Mother. I am sure the methods used in days past are vast and cannot easily be accounted for, but I think the Truth shines clearly. In modern times the process is entirely regulated by our system of allopathic medicine. I feel that this system severs us from our spiritual roots and makes us another "diseased" patient and in need of their "cure". I could probably go so far as to say that our current medical system goes out of its way to remove all traces of anything that could be construed as Spiritual.

How do you integrate this? We follow a divine calling, I do not need to research anymore to know this much. How is this manifested in our ultimate change? How do we integrate the profound change of our world, with the physical change of sex and our spiritual calling?

A teacher of mine once told me that the things around us and in the world are merely reflections of all that is in the heavens and that all that is in heaven is a reflection of worldly things. I feel that our challenges have a very clear reflection in the Mother, but I am curious if anybody has found a way to reflect the process of change itself?

Helen [END QUOTE}

Colin's Rejender on Goinder

2006-11-24T08:21:00.000-08:00

My son Colin also has a blog, at http://melancolin.blogspot.com. Once in a while he posts statements that refer to things he has read on this blog. Such is the case with my post on an aspect of gender perception concerning different labels from the infinite universe of gendered space, (ie. gender should not be viewed on a two dimensional continuum). I found it interesting to read his comments, as our face to face conversations are typically sluggish.

My comment on his comment is that he has an amazingly redneck attitude toward trans people for someone who has spent a lot of time with trans people. I am rather tense right now, so my comment is probably overly waspish (can I help myself?), and probably the tipic should best be dropped.

2006-11-10T14:04:00.000-08:00

(L-R) David and Colin in a recent picture published on Colin's blog.
Rhona McMahan

Drag Queen Violet

2006-11-10T10:20:00.000-08:00

My son Colin's partner of the past year or so is also known by his mother as "one of the top five drag queens in New York." David, as Violet, currently works as a waitress and bartender at Lucky Cheng's, a large and well known restaurant in the East Village where all of the waitresses are trans people, and the Go-Go boys are handsome and bitchy. He is also, the costume designer for an Off-Broadway show in New York, runs his own party nights at at least one Brooklyn bar, and in his spare time he lectures college audiences on the perils of queer life. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence in 2004 with a double major in Theatre Costume and Queer Studies.

I do not say too much to him, but listen a lot as he and Chelsea talk. I find his take on gender in human life to be interesting, and I am trying to learn. While I suppose one could classify him as a trans person due to his public persona as sometime Violet, he also seems to have a clear identification with himself as a man.

What I do not understand about David and people who have a gender orientation similar to him is how or why they are committed to female drag. For me female drag is one way to indicate to the world that I should be considered as female. I am happy if no one makes any association of me at all with any aspect or behavior associated with maleness. This is not to say that I deny my transgender nature, nor that I reject the insight and spiritual power which is mine, but that I feel immensely more comfortable living in sociaety and in personal relationships as a female. One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was living in society at the same time as a male to some people and a female to others. I could not stand the strain of doing male drag as I went through transition to living as a female years ago. David's way of being which he seems to be comfortable with is precisely the way of being that made me feel as if I were being torn apart.

My approach may be old fashioned. There is a strong evolution taking place in our society with respect to gender identity and expression. The younger generations are more open to gender non-conformity, and comfortable with ambiguity. But I also think that the difference between David and me is just another example of the infinite varieties of gender expression.

The current expectation is that David and Colin will be living on the upper duplex in our newly renovated house. It will be nice to be sharing the house with them, although Colin assures me that he will keep the basement stairs locked so that I will not be able to get upstairs to pester them. Should they ever have children, however, I am sure that Chelsea and I will get a chance to do some baby sitting.

2006-10-20T15:49:00.000-07:00

This is Central House in Palenville, New York, in June 2006. The house was built in the mid-1800's, and was one of the first "artists's houses" in the Catskills. It is currently owned by the Maetreum of Cybele, Magnamater, Inc., a religious organization dedicated to the following of the Great Mother, Cybele.
Rhona McMahan

2006-10-20T08:28:00.000-07:00

(Left to Right) Rusty (64), Chelsea (46), and Katrina (32) watching "Deadwood" at Central House, July 2006. This was a Sunday night tradition until the show ended.
Rhona McMahan

Turning 65: Installment One

2006-10-20T06:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I received birthday greetings from my Sister Sue, who is on the way to visit her daughter Carolyn and family in Beaune, France. Sue reminded me that I have not updated my blog for wuite a while. It is not that I have nothing to write about, it is just that so many things are going on in my life that I have found it difficult to write about it in a coherent manner.

The dominant process in my day-to-day life right now, as it has been for the past four months, is to pack up everything in my house in Brooklyn in order to move out temporarily. My son Colin, 23, is buying a 28 percent share in the Brooklyn townhouse, with the funds to be used for a total "gut" renovation of the 100 year old building. Colin and his partner David will live on the top two floors after renovation, and I will have a 1 bedroom "garden" apartment on the bottom floor (which is partially below grade level although not exactly a basement). This deal is attractive to me because it gives me a nice place to live as a semi-retired person in the congenial urban environment of Park Slope. The burden of managing the building, including the role of chief maintenance person, now passes to Colin, and I am freer to be elsewhere when I wish. The value of the property will also be enhanced considerably, as the neighborhood has gone through gentrification in the 12 years I have lived here, and my house has been in need of renovation for some time in terms of basic mechanicals as well as cosmetic aspects.

This real estate deal has ruffled the feathers of many people with whom I have been associated. First of all, daughters Jonica and Amanda had the initial reaction that I was favoring Colin over them. They now seem to be resigned to the deal because it seems to be what I want. Chelsea, my partner for the past 15 years (homophobic/transphobic/queerphobic America continues to discriminate against basic rights for all its tax paying citizens, so we are not legally married) has been very disgruntled by the disruption of our lives which our "downsizing" is causing. Chelsea and Colin have never gotten along with each other. The three queer people who have been living in the house with us are expected to find their own places. Two of the three have never paid me any rent in the several years they have been my "guests" (and it is time that they get on with their lives). They have been sending bad vibrations my way because of my betrayal (what have you done for me lately?), even though I promised them that I would lend them the money to pay first and last and security in order to get into their own apartments. They have had 4 months advance warning on all this, but have just started to get serious about moving out since I posted the November 2 date for the moving truck arrival 10 days ago.

Beyond the people currently living here who will have to move, I have also felt a wave of disapproval from all the people who have lived here or who have been associated with Transy House over the years. This place has been a kind of cultural, political, and social center over the years. To some there has been a sense that Transy House was a bit like the home of their queer family, the one they intentionally if informally joined after their birth family was less than accepting of the way they are. The closing of the house has seemed something like the end of an era with the closing of the family home.

It continues to be a slow slog to be doing end-of-life triage in the midst of people who do not want it to happen. On top of the humans, there have been three and sometimes four dogs and two cats to deal with underfoot.

I am reminded of the times when Susan, Cousin Ruth Ann, wife Sara and I disassembled the possessions in Grandmother Olive Moore's house in the late 1970's, and the later time when Susan and I and the Carr family disassembled the household of my mother and Dr. Carr in the late 1980's. It makes me wistful to see old pictures of family and friends, old projects of my children from an earlier time, and to see unfinished remnants of various things I have started to do over the years. I am glad, however, that I am the one doing the triage and diassembly rather than leaving the whole mess for my children. When I told Colin where my lifetime collection of personal journals are located he commented "no one is interested in them anyway." I do not write journals for him. I write them for children in future generations who might be interested in the personal thoughts and experiences and images from the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. I have felt frustrated that my own ancestors were so inarticulate, at least from the standpoint of leaving no written expression of how they felt about things. Everyone (in a family or not) does not have a feel for history. Some in every generation down through the generations do have this interest, and I am leaving something for them, which may or may ot ever get to them.

In the midst of all the moving out turmoil there is one last videographer making a documentary on Transy House. He is a film student at SUNY Purchase. As I step over and around him as he tapes and interviews I keep remembering the tone of Chekov's "The Cherry Orchard."

Chelsea and I have been integrating into a pagan religious collective located near Catskill, New York, during the past six months. This group was founded by people we have known for many years. The group is based at a 150 year old hotel named Central House, located in the Village of Palenville, just below the Katerskill Falls and the ruins of the famed Catskill Mountain House. I have enjoyed getting to know the Catskill Mountain area, which is replete with a sense of American history, and is a beautiful natural habitat. Palenville is about 40 miles from Albany, 20 miles from Woodstock, 15 miles from Kingston, and 10 miles from Saugerties, which may give a rough position for any reader with a knowledge of the Hudson Valley in New York State. It is about 2 hours from Brooklyn by car, and there is a bus connection to the very front door of Central House leaving from Port Authority.

Chelsea was elevated as a Priestess in this cult last April, and has committed herself to spending more time there since then. I have been commuting back and forth from Palenville and Brooklyn fairly regularly since then, with Chelsea spending two or three times as much time there. In June Chelsea announced that she had taken up with a young woman living there, and that henceforth she would be in a polyamorous relationship with me. This was a total surprise to me, and put me through months of the sorts of feelings one has when they have been betrayed and abandoned. My children were also rather negative about the idea of polyamory for me at 64, even though they are aware that polyamory is a minor trend among queers and, evidently, the Mormons.

I have tried to be as flexible as possible about this relational development, and the three of us have been sharing a small two room space in Central House. Naturally we all have free access to the common rooms and facilities in the house. Chelsea, Katrina, and I have maintained a cordial relationship, and life goes on.

One positive thing is that Katrina is very interested in living at Paddy Mountain eventually, which pleases me. The idea is that we would have a small energy efficient house built using the latest in energy saving technology. This project is seductive to me, although I have also continued to work on my 30 year Green Frog Cafe project, and have almost completed the project of putting heavy wooden shutters on all the windows to discourage vandals.

I have been on sabbatical since May, and will not have to teach again until February. The stuff remaining from the Brooklyn townhouse will be trucked to a self-storage facility near Paddy Mountain, from which things will be eventually move back to Brooklyn (very few), to the Green Frog Cafe, or to further disposal in some form. I hope to be able to move into my new apartment in the Brooklyn house by next September, after the period of long-distance commuting from Palenville during the Spring semester.

Longer term, I am still weighing whether I should continue to teach fulltime, part time, or no time. Right now I know that I will at least be teaching until January 2008. My social security will not start until May 2007 anyway.

So that is a quick update for now. I will add pictures and more interesting things later.

My Son Without Compassion

2006-08-13T11:41:00.000-07:00

I discovered this morning that my son, Colin, has posted a passage on his blog which directly addresses "Rusty."

The text of the post consists of the words of a song which suggest that "compassion" is tiresome and clogs the mind. It is suggested that a higher level of selfishness would be better.

I wonder if this posting on Colin's blog was aimed in my direction.

I found the post to be very disquieting.

I do not know if I truly am a compassionate person, but I do try to be compassionate, and I do not need to hear lectures from any shrink or young whippersnapper about the need for being more selfish and compassionless. Such an attitude goes against my spiritual values.

A person has to be true to themself. If there is one orienting value in my life it is to get in touch with a sense of the center of my self, and to express this center in all that I do. If I am compassionate with respect to others it is an expression of who I am, however imperfectly expressed.

Dogs, Foxes, Jackals, and Wolves

2006-06-04T09:56:00.000-07:00

The fox and wolves in "The Legend of Narnia" are great characters. The fox is hard for me to figure. He seems to be a double agent, with allegiance to the lion (Aswan??) and to the Evil Witch Queen. Both are beautiful characters, but the Evil Witch Queen does not seem to be socially functional with her present behavior. Maybe if she would stop turning people to stone she is less threatening, although her powers are powerful and broad. She makes "Turkish Delight" which is bewitching.

The fox is also brave, and is twice bitten by fierce wolves before he is turned into a beautiful statue of a beautiful fox. I thought that he ultimately had allegiance to Aswan the Lion. I was sad when he died, and he certainly deserves resurrection.

The wolves of Narnia in the service of the Witch Queen are scary, but with a macabre sense of humor. They are beautiful, but their cold killer propensity makes a relaxed relationship with them unlikely. It would be nice to have them transformed into more "civilized" former predators, but still with their essence as wolves. Of course there are the sexy swain zoot suit wolves of 1950's cartoons. Edgy lover boys. Maybe that is the type of personality that comes to my mind.

Jackals have a poor image with many species it seems. But there are some great jackal figures recorded in human history. It seems to me that jackals are very intelligent, but cynical, and coldly ferocious. I am trying to think of positive characterizations of jackals in art.

Dogs are the branch of this "family" that have the greatest variation from small to large, and in other characteristic.

Read the Ethno Biology Series in the New York Times, starting today.

http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=35

Olivia Judson, ethnobiologist, crack journalist.

Translating Gabriela Leite at CUNY Grad Center

2006-05-31T08:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I acted as the translator (Portuguese-English) for Gabriela Leite, the founder of the Rede Braileira de Prostitutas (Brazilian Sex Worker Network). She is part of the Brazilian delegation to the current UN meeting on AIDS, and was part of a panel of sex workers sponsored by PONY (Prostitutes of New York) held at CUNY in the Department of Sociology. Chelsea and I have participated in PONY for many years, and have always adopted the position that the single most important legal change benefiting trans people would be the decriminalization or legalization of prostitution. This has been one of our most unpopular positions.

The PONY panel included women from India, Ivory Coast, and Canada (Montreal) in addition to Gabriela. A woman from Cambodia was also scheduled on the panel, but the was not able to get a visa to travel to the US (or perhaps it was a visa to leave the country of Cambodia).

I learned several things from the panel. The biggest thing I noticed was that sex workers in many other countries are organized and able to have a voice in the political arena, whereas in the US, and in New York especially, the prostitute organization is a semi-clandestine activity. This is yet another area in which, in my opinion, the US falls short. Of course I have always been pro-prostitution, and agree with Gabriela that "prostitution is all about how a culture deals with its sexual fantasies."

The second thing I learned is that the US is seriously intervening in the internal affairs of other countries through its AIDS Funding policies. A woman from India told about how the prostitutes in Sangram, a small town in India, had developed a strong organization growing out of the traitional role of some women in the area as temple prostitutes serving an ancient Goddess. Somehow an American activist arrived on the scene backed by USAID and a US political front group and forced the arrest of more than 50 women. The relationships which had been established by the prostitutes organization with the local authorities was completely subverted. Another example of how we win the hearts and minds of the world.

Gabriela followed with her story from Brazil which involved the USAID AID's Division offering US$48 million HIV-AIDS prevention money to the government of Brazil if they would adopt the principles of "fidelity, condoms, and no support of sex worker organizations." The Ministry of Health in Brazil met with Gabriela's organization and agreed to refuse the money. They said in effect "the prostitutes organization is a part of Brazilian civil society, we support them, and no money for AIDS will be accepted by any Brazilian organization because of the US conditions." The AIDS office for Brazil was subsequently closed by USAID (otherUSAID programs continued, unrelated to AIDS).

I sequentially translated all of these stories in Portuguese to Gabriela, and in English from Gabriela's Portuguese to the audience. It was exhilarating to me to be able to translate, since Colin my son is always telling me that I speak terrible Portuguese, and my own fear that time and age are dulling my language ability.

The third thing I learned was that the movement against trafficing of women for sex work has had a tendency to go overboard into an unthinking PC orientation against sex work period. Gabriela pointed out that many third world sex workers immigrate of their own accord precisely to increase their income. Chelsea and I well know this through our conversations with trans women in Brazil who have returned from sex work careers in Europe and the US with capital to buy homes, support their families (especially mothers), and live a comfortable life in retirement.

Gabriela's basic view is that people don't "fall" into prostitution, they choose prostitution from among other options. The Christian church is behind the idea that prostitutes are fallen women, and this attitude is an oppression of women. Gabriela feels that prostitution is a job, a profession, and is pushing draft legislation in Brazil to give sex workers legal status as workers in Brazil.

Chelsea and I are aware that a traditional role for trans women in many cultures has been ritual prostitution in service of a (the?) Goddess. In fact, the Cybelene priestesses in Rome in the 500 years or so before Christianity was made the state religion had this role. You can see this in certain episodes of the TV series "ROME" if you look for it. It is in the history books in any event.

Inana, one of the great Goddess figures coming out of the Middle East, is also known as the "whore of Babylon" by the Judeo-Christian-Moslem patriarchal monotheistic religious traditions. Study of this Goddess tradition clarifies my thoughts. The Christians have given the "whore" role to Mary Magdalene, underlining the fact that Mary Magdalene is a part of the divine feminine figure which has been grafted into the Christian myths. Of course orthodox Christianity, Catholicism and its protestant offshoots, ignore the parallel line of Christianity in which Mary Magdalene is seen as the first disciple and the companion of Jesus. This line is well documented in the documents and books held by the Hermetic Philosophy Library in Amsterdam, where Chelsea and I study every chance we get.

Gabriela's organization in Brazil has started a fashion line called Daspu to raise the level of discussion surrounding the stigmatization of sex workers. It comes out of the old saying "she was dressed like a whore." They have a line of kick-ass T-shirts, one of which is Maria Magdalena "She who many love."

Another of their shirts is also attractive to me. It is for the World Cup, in green and yellow (Brazil's colors) and says roughly "to be a Brazilian is not for amateurs." This is a phrase coined by Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Rosa Marie Muraro published Gabriela Leite's book "Eu, Mulher da Vida" (I, a Woman of the Life). Gabriela told me the sad news that Rosa is very ill. This makes me want to go to Brazil soon to see her.

2005-12-30T10:20:00.000-08:00

It has been sometime since I have written. Today is December 30, and we are frantically preparing to leave for Holland tomorrow evening. I wish all of the readers of this blog a Happy New Year! I am working on my New Year resolutions right now, focused, as usual, on more exercise and healthier eating. I hope to have a good year in 2006, my 65th year of living. I hope to be awarded a sabatical from the university where I have been teaching for 28 years, to develop a greater understanding of the technology needed to prepare lessons useful in on-line learning, and to spend significant time at the Green Frog (for a change). Grandson Caleb has already experienced Christmas for a second time, daughter Amanda will complete her formal education in the culinary arts during the year, son Colin seems ready to complete his final year of college at Tulane, and daughter Jonica seems happy in her new apartment in Brooklyn, and in her photography. Son-in-law Gabe is a wonderful father to Caleb, and and a joy to get to know. Chelsea my beloved partner in most things for the past 14 years continues her studies in theology and philosophy, as well as our joint study of the Dutch language. Out on-line book retailing through Abebooks.com as Direct Link Marketing has actually been doing well, even though our home is beginning to look like a book warehouse. The dogs, Kiva (12) and Maisie (7) are getting along well for their respective ages. All in all we seem to be in decent shape as we move into the new year.
Rhona McMahan

The Road to the Magick Circle

2005-09-24T12:13:00.000-07:00

The Road to the Magick Circle
Originally uploaded by Fulana.

The old logging road leading past the Green Frog out along the side of Paddy Mountain to the Magick Circle. I yearn to be at Paddy Mountain. Events of the past two months relating to the health of me and my Grand Wagoneer, as well as turmoil in Transy House, have conspired to keep me from getting out to the country. I calm myself in my state of frustration by thinking how all things happen in their own time.

Caleb at 8 months in Holland

2005-09-24T10:42:00.000-07:00

scan0020
Originally uploaded by Fulana.

Gabe and Amanda and Caleb came to visit Chelsea and me at our apartment in Rotterdam during the second week of July, 2005. Chelsea and I took care of Caleb a lot while Amanda and Gabe saw some sites and sights. Caleb was such a happy little fellow. He sat in the kitchen eating his vegetables with a smile on his face, with just two teeth in his mouth. We took him to see the deer every evening in Kralingse Bos, near our apartment. Nothing changes the pace of your life like a baby, even if you are mere grandparents. Chelsea tells me to appreciate Calab, he is the one carrying on my wonderful DNA. I do not know about that, but is does feel nice to be with a new generation of the family, and wonder at how so quickly I became the oldest rather than the youngest generation. My head is still spinning from this.

Destiny Goodwin, age 10 months

2005-09-18T06:22:00.000-07:00

scan0012
Originally uploaded by Fulana.

This is Corine Goodwin's doggie, a long-haired Chihuaha. Destiny is wearing special doggie goggles which Corine says are to help protect the eyes. The pants are also good for the dog to wear. Corine is a great dog fancier. She raised and showed Shelties (Shetland sheepdogs) for many years. She also raises parrots. Corine lives alone in a small town near Allentown, in the house she grew up in, surrounded with family antiques. Her father was a blacksmith, country guitar player, antique car restorer, small plane pilot, and Lene Lenape descendent, who was a great influence on Chelsea Goodwin's life.

Chelsea Goodwin and Mother Corine Goodwin

2005-09-18T05:36:00.000-07:00

Chelsea Goodwin and Mother Corine Goodwin
Originally uploaded by Fulana.

This is a nice shot of Chelsea and mother Corine which I took when we were on the way back from Paddy Mountain in April 2005. Corine seemed happy to see us. She showed me family scrapbooks which included pictures of Chelsea as a baby, child, adolescent, and teenager. I most remember Chelsea's high school yearbook picture. Such a callow youth. Life has been hard for Chelsea. It is difficult to be extremely intelligent and spiritual in a crass world. Corine and Chelsea have a better relationship now than they had 10 or 15 years ago. She seems to like me.

Vandalized LR in Green FrogApril 05

2005-09-16T21:10:00.000-07:00

Vandalized LR in Green FrogApril 05
Originally uploaded by Fulana.

I was shocked to see the brutal vandalization of the interior of the Green Frog Cafe when Chelsea and I visited in April 2005. I have been working on this place for 31 years, and it is a repository of many memories of my children as they grew up, to say nothing of the things which were destroyed. I was devastated. I have struggled all this time to painstakingly assemble this building, hauling found windows from New York, carrying 2x12-16 ft. oak floor joists, working in every spare moment which I could find in the small periods between my career and family responsibilities. If I had been there when the vandals were there I would have been enraged, and would have confronted them fiercely. It is so frustrating to have faceless cowards destroy my painstaking handiwork. The windows and their frames were all smashed, but the basic structure of the house was not damaged. I shall carry on doggedly until I cannot carry on anymore.

look at those matching noses

2005-09-12T17:21:00.000-07:00

look at those matching noses
Originally uploaded by amanda zug-moore.

The middle daughter on her 27th birthday, Amanda Lee.

Smile Squared

2005-09-12T17:19:00.000-07:00

Smile Squared
Originally uploaded by Cat Whisperer.

I really like this picture of Jonica and me taken at Amanda's 27th birthday party at a bar in Red Hook, Brooklyn. My first born child at 35, Jonica Melanie.

Helping A Refugee Start Again

2005-09-12T17:14:00.000-07:00

Originally uploaded by jambonchampignon.

Today Colin and I drove to Hofstra to see if he could set up a schedule for the Fall semester. He received good treatment (what else), and by the time I was out of my meeting of the GLBT Scholarship Committee he was admitted as a visiting student, had a course schedule set up, and was ready to get a Hofstra ID and a parking sticker. We were out of there by 3:30, with things all set up for him I learned today that his friends from Tulane, spread around the US, are feelingdepressed and disoriented by the aftermath of Katrina. Colin said that he is even felling relatively better than most. I had not realized that even people who have family support and who have landed on their feet still feel displaced by being put out of their homes in New Orleans. I hope the Hofstra semester turns out well for Colin. We will be going to the university together, as I teach and he goes to classes on a Tuesday-Thursday schedule. I Am meeting him at Jonica's tomorrow morning at 7:15 AM, after I cycle for 20 minutes from my home in Park Slope, across Brooklyn to Jonica's place in Clinto Hill. We shall see how this works out. I noticed today how easy it is to ride to work with someone else driving, even if it is in a Mini rather than a Lincoln Town Car.

3 Generations

2005-09-12T16:39:00.000-07:00

3 Generations
Originally uploaded by Cat Whisperer.

Jonica took this picture last Sunday in one of our favorite haunts, "Tacos Nuevo Mexico" on 5th Avenue and 12th in Park Slope Brooklyn. This is one of the most authentic Mexican restaurants I have experienced outside of Mexico. Everyone in the family goes there fairly frequently. Yesterday I walked in alone after church at the Park Slope United Methodist Church, with Sunday New York Times in hand, ready for a solitary brunch reading the New York Times Magazine article about Osama Bin Laden, when I heard "Rusty, Rusty." I thought "who is this going to be now," since I run into people who know me in lots of places, being a teacher and all. I looked up and there was Jonica, with Amanda, and Caleb sitting in a high chair just scarfing down the last of his squash and green beans. Jonica snapped this "three generation shot" as they were going off to meet Gabe at the Smith Bar, watching the New Orleans Saints prevail in their first NFL game since Hurricane Katrina. I took a four generation shot once with my grandmother, mother, and Jonica when she was about 3. I hardly expect to be around long enough for Caleb to catch me with his three year old. I like the picture Jonica made. I also liked the perfect huevos rancheros I munched (washed down with a Modelo Negro) as I read the article about how the US has aided and abetted terroism in the past four years through ignorance and stupidity.

Stress and Fear

2005-09-11T16:06:00.000-07:00

I just had a huge argument with Sadaisha. She again asked me for my metrocard, and it was just the straw that broke the camel's back. I have asked her to leave by October 1. She told me back in May that she was leaving in October, but when I showed that I would hold her to it she wanted more time.

This is the person who swore to me last June that when I got back from Europe that there would be nothing here, just ashes, all of my home would be totally destroyed. She was angry at me for giving her a nice room to stay in, food, internet connection, a computer, clothing, telephone access, etc. when she was homeless. She was also angry because I would not put a friend of her's out of the house after she got tired of them.

I have a hard time putting someone out on the street, so I have offered to pay her security deposit and first and last month rent on an apartment, but she wants me to pay an additional three months rent for her. This is a person who has never had a tenant's relationship with me, never paid a nickel of rent, and never done a minut'es work in-kind. She sleeps all day and makes raucous noise all night in the room above mine, listening to hip hop, dvd's, and talking loudly with her entourage a friends which she has invited in to live with her as well.

I feel so drained from the expenditure of energy in dealing with her. Now she is working as an "escort", using my phone line and my computer connection even though I have told her that I want nothing illegal going on in my house. She threatened to bring the police in on me, but I told her fine, I would love to speak with them. She has driven Chelsea out of our home. CVhelsea has been living with Friends in the Catskills for the past two weeks on the verge of a nervous breakdown from this monster. Chelsea is the one who originally took her in.

No good deed shall go unpunished.

Gabe and Amanda in Paris, July 2005

2005-09-11T15:55:00.000-07:00

Originally uploaded by amanda zug-moore.

Gabe says that he loved Paris. It was his first trip, and he seems ready to go back. I love Paris too. It was my first foreign city (if we don't count the Canadian side of Niagara Falls) and I loved it too. This past summer, though, Chelsea and I went to Metz instead of Paris in quest of the Holy Grail. We fell in love witht he smaller city in Loraine, once home of the Merovingian Dynasty.

rusty's house in rotterdam

2005-09-11T15:40:00.000-07:00

rusty's house in rotterdam
Originally uploaded by amanda zug-moore.

Chelsea and I had the top floor of this beautiful house on Rozenburglaan in the Kralingse section of Rotterdam. The house has four floors, and was built in 1913. It has wonderful wood and stained glass details in original state of repair. This is a picture which Gabe took of Amanda, probably as they were heading out to do some shopping or sightseeing.

Living room

2005-09-11T15:33:00.000-07:00

Living room
Originally uploaded by jambonchampignon.

Getting on to another topic of summer activities, this is a shot of me sleeping on the living room floor of Colin's apartment in New Orleans. We drove straight through from Brooklyn to New Orleans, leaving Jonica's place at about 1:00 PM Sunday, and getting to New Orleans around 10:00 AM on Monday. They were just putting the finishing touches on the apartment, which is a cement block building at the back of a traditional two family shotgun house. The levee and the river are about 100 yards away. We got some bedding out of Colin's storage room at U-Haul, and I crashed for several hours. Colin says that this place was not flooded, but he cannot get back to it because the city is closed, and he arrived in Brooklyn this morning, staying again at Jonica's place. He is homeless and clothingless at this point, but not really in such bad shape compared to many.

Indie Rock

2005-09-11T15:22:00.000-07:00

Indie Rock
Originally uploaded by Cat Whisperer.

Here is the band at the wedding. Friend's of Gabe.

Getting Down

2005-09-11T15:20:00.000-07:00

Getting Down
Originally uploaded by Cat Whisperer.

Another shot from the wedding, this one of Ian Bennett and his youngest daughter. It was very nice to see Ian and Andrea and children again. Ian reminds me of the Long side of the family for some reason, perhaps his studious easygoing manner.

Fancy footwork

2005-09-11T15:09:00.000-07:00

Fancy footwork
Originally uploaded by Cat Whisperer.

This is a picture of Amanda Zug-Moore and Gabriel Soria dancing at their wedding in a friend's backyard in Red Hook, Brooklyn, last June. The picture was taken by Jonica Moore, who has become the family photographer of reference. Gabe and Amanda, and their son Caleb, returned from a trip around the US in early June. They visited friends in New Orleans, Austin, Los Angeles, Davis, and elsewhere, some of whom made the wedding, and others who did not. The wedding was quite an affair, with friends doing the flowers, and other friends playing their instruments, and still other friends working to make all the decorations and tables ready in time.

2005-09-11T07:02:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of Caleb, Amanda, Chelsea, and me sitting in a sidewalk cafe near the Boymans-Van Beunigen Museum in Rotterdam taken by Gabe last July. It was wonderful to have Amanda and her family visit us in our apartment there for a week. The big event for Chelsea and me was to have the opportunity to take care of Caleb for a weekend while Amanda and Gabe made a quick trip to Paris. Chelsea and I like Dutch society and culture so much that we are planning to spend much more time there, and possibly emigrate. We particularly like the fact that GLBT folks have full civil rights in the Netherlands, in stark contrast to the pseudo theocratic USA.
Rhona McMahan

Well It's About Time! (That I posted Again)

2005-09-09T21:17:00.000-07:00

I have not written on my blog since April 30, almost five months ago. In that five months another school year has ended, I had my fifth operation for kidney stones, and my third since 1998, my middle daughter (Commissionercoat in blogspot speak) was married, I lived in Rotterdam for the month of July teaching at Erasmus University, came home resolved to empty my house and live like an aging middle class college professor, spent August in an endless round of medical examinations focused on a (benign) cyst on my right kidney, and the stage of the basal cell skin cancer on my face, then my car went out of commisiion and I could not get out to the Green Frog at all before school started again. Now my lover has left for the hotel of friends in the Catskills because of stresses in trying to get people to move on and stop freeloading on us. I made a quick trip to New Orleans in late August to help Colin get settled in his new apartment, and now Colin is coming back to New York as a homeless refugee who may (horrors) have to study for a semester at Hofstra (free) and live in my home.

Today I got a family newsletter from cousin Dorothy Sipe Mull, who also had the wedding of a child this summer, and who also informed me that she is using a pseudonym in some on-line communication which employs my last name. THAT makes me feel good.

Both my digital camera and scanner are out of commission, which is one reason why I have not posted for so long. I am reduced to cadging pictures from the flickr sites of my children if I want to illustrate my own blog.

Speaking of Blogs, my daughter Amanda has a great blog, when she finds time to write. I am amazed that people even comment on it. Amanda was going to law school, but then she had a baby and now she is going to culinary school. She seems much happier. I could never image going to law school, it always seemed to be one of the dullest things a person could do.

I am very happy that Colin will be in New York. We never got much done on the dark room over the summer, but maybe we can get it going this Fall. Colin seems to be much happier now than he was last year.

Our back yard has taken a large amount of work this summer, but is actually in a pleasing state for once, with many pretty flowers, thriving grape vines, a jungle of tomato plants, and even some peaches off the ancient peach tree. We have been sitting in "the garden" quite a bit, and I find it pleasing to water the flowers and other plants, and wish them well as they grow. We have a lot of tomatoes this year.

I worked all day today to put a door back on the living room, and then to install locks on it. If Colin lives here this Fall he will have to use the living room as his room, since all the other rooms are occuppied by "guests."

Now that I have actually written something I will go into various topics in more detail in future posts: the wedding, the quest for the holy grail in Metz, France, deciding to emigrate to Holland, studying Dutch, the feeling of doing something for the last time after doing it for many years, and other topics.

2005-04-30T10:16:00.000-07:00

This is Uncle Paul's house on Decoration Day (Memorial Day) ca 1949. It had been built in the 1850's as a country club house. It had farmland, a brick smokehouse, a housekeepers house behind the main house, a two story 6 car garage, a quonset hut, large greenhouses, a harvest shed, a barn, tennis courts, swimming pool, riding paths, picnic house, orchard, and two holly trees side by side, male and female. They are still there in 2005, although the house is gone. Uncle Paul always had a large family pot luck picnic on Decoration Days. Both the Moore's and the Christie's were there, with the Saxers from up the hill during the 1950's. We had a noon meal with grace by Uncle Orr, with everyone sitting at a long u shapped table in the garage. More than 50 people were there. I forgot to say also that the couple cooking and keeping the grounds for Uncle Paul were also there with their families.
Rhona McMahan

2005-04-30T10:04:00.000-07:00

This is the entrance to the "Tipple" operations of the P. M. Moore Company in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania circa 1980. Aggregates were brought by the Aliquippa and Southern Railroad from the Dravo sand and gravel barges on the Ohio River. The aggregates were dumped into bins below the hopper cars, or elevated into the bins used for charging the mixers. The cement was brought in by truck and elevated into the cement silo behind the aggregate bins. Ashes from the coke operations of J&L were also brought here for sales or trucking to the ash dump in South Heights. I worked here during various summers from the time I was 16 until I was 20 or so. I worked on labor crews atop the tipple which emptied the hopper cars, using shovels and 20 foot long metal pipes inside the car. Once Dave MacKenzie, the Tipple Foreman, came to me as I went back to school in the Fall and said "well you certainly proved that you were a man this summer." I was in great shape then, and I tried my best to do better than Bill, the 40 year old Greek immigrant, Ernie the 50 year old Greek immigrant, Frank the 55 year old former steam engine threshing crew driver kind of man. Various truck drivers would work there when things were slow, but they were more for shooting the bull than actually working effectively on the Tipple. The entrance to the South Mill of J&L (LTV Steel at time of picture) is at the left. The picture is taken just after passing "through the tunnel" at the "Y" end of Franklin Avernue, main street of Aliquippa. Woodlawn had become Aliquippa, a booming steel town of the first half of the 20th Century. Aliquippa was named for Queen Aliquippa, and Iriquois Chief who was know by George Washington from one of his early surveying expeditions into Western Pennsylvania (Beaver County).
Rhona McMahan

2005-04-30T09:47:00.000-07:00

This is a rough chronology of Uncle Paul Miller Moore's life, 1978 -1966. He grew up on a farm in New Concord, Ohio, home of Muskingum College (on the Muskingum River). He played football and was a Stag Club member at Muskingum, working his way through because his father was unable to work. He moved to Pittsburgh to seek his fortune in the steel industry, worked for B. F. Jones, came to Woodlawn to prepare the land for the Aliquippa Works of the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company, founded his own builders supply business with a sweetheart arrangement with "the mill", and became a staunch civiv leader, churchman, and extended family head. He married Jesse Christy in ca. 1927, but she almost immediately contracted polio or tuberculosis, and died after only 3 or 4 years. They had no children. He never remarried, although he was a favorite with the ladies. My father Paul Martin Moore and his brother James Harvey McGeorge Moore were as his sons, and their children were as his grandchildren. The same was true for Jesse's family to an extent. My grandfather, James Russell Moore, was his dear younger brother who worked with him as a junior partner for 60 years, and who shared his sons and grandchildren with him.
Rhona McMahan

2005-04-30T09:35:00.000-07:00

When I was in New Orleans over Spring Break this year my thoughts turned frequently to my great-uncle Paul Miller Moore, who was the head of the extended family which I will call the "Moores of Aliquippa." I have been thinking of him more because Chelsea has been studying the merovingians and the Knights Templar. Uncle Paul was the epitome of the good solid Knight Templar, and everyone in the family participated in his masonic activities to a greater or lesser extent. He was the Grand Master of the Grand Encampment of the Knights Templar in the United States ca 1961-1963??, which Chelsea tells me is somewhere between a Cardinal and a Pope in the other side's parlance (whatever that might mean).
Rhona McMahan

2005-04-29T19:53:00.000-07:00

Here is the initial bill or materials for the Dark room. The big item is the enlarger.
Rhona McMahan

2005-04-29T19:52:00.000-07:00

Here is the first plan for the dark room which Colin and I drew up today (April 29, 2005). The area to the right of the dark room will be storage initially until Colin gets a place to live.
Rhona McMahan

Firming Up Plans for the Darkroom

2005-04-29T19:23:00.000-07:00

Colin came by this afternoon after lunch with Ellen at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. We discussed the details of the photographic darkroom Colin is going to build in the "shed" at the back of the garden at my house. We are going to limit the dark part of the space to the current 5 foot by 6 foot closet space already framed out. We will put in insulation and sheetrock in this space, as well as a rooftop ventilator fan. We will add counters on three of the walls of the dark room which will hold an enlarger and five 8 inch by 11 inch aluminum trays to hold chemical solutions. We will also put in a wet sink in the lighted are with windows immediately outside the dark room. Colin will build a drying rack in the area as well.

We will also insulate and add sheetrock to the walls in the rest of the shed.

Unfortunately, for the time being, we will have to store many things in the "free" area of the shed, so the photographic part will be just about half the shed rather than the whole shed. Eventually we will be able to have an area for portrait shooting which can alternatively serve as a guest space.

We will also have to put on a new roof covering this summer as leaks are appearing around the skylight in the 10 year old roll roofing.

We made up a list of items which will have to be procured. The watch word is low cost with high functionality.

Colin is very serious about this project, and I am excited about learning how to develop film. It was fun to be planning the project. There is a lot of work involved in this.

I have to go to Paddy Mountain next weekend to meet with a company which is assessing the fair market value of property in Union County. They valued my property at 43,000, and I think they are over-estimating. The lower the Fair Market Price the lower the taxes due. I will take as must stuff as possible to Paddy Mountain from the shed.

I worked in the shed moving things and performing throwout/save triage. I am exhausted. And I have papers to grade. We watched the Spider Man movie tonight. Tomorrow is Chelsea's big day at the Beltane celebration.

Chelsea's Beltane Presentation on the Da Vinci Code and the Merovignian Tradition

2005-04-23T13:03:00.000-07:00

Chelsea has been reading voraciously for months to prepare for a presentation on "The Da Vinci Code and the Merovignian Tradition" for the big Beltane Celebration on Long Island next weekend. She first volunteered to do this at a meeting of Long Island pagans at the Scottish Rite Masonic Temple in Rockville Center back in February. All the people jumped at her suggestion, saying that it was a great idea. Some people at that first meeting thought Chelsea was Marilyn Manson.

Chelsea is quite nervous as the big date approaches. I feel as if the best thing I can do to help her is to ask the questions which occur to me on this subject. I have read the Da Vinci Code, and grew up in a masonic family, but a lot of these perspectives are new to me. I have heard of gnosticism once in a while in a lifetime of attending Presbyterian, Methodist, and Episcopal Churches, but neither clergy nor laiety seemed to take it seriously in the circles which I knew. I remember when the Dead Sea Scrolls were first found, and how there was a great deal of worldwide interest in them, but I never was interested in finding out why. I am not a person with a bent toward thelogical or philosophical speculation, although I have an intuitive sense of spirituality.

We were just talking about the Knights Templar at lunch. I mentioned to Chelsea that my (great) Uncle Paul, Grand Master of the Grand Encampment of the Knights Templar in the United States, was seen by my mother (who was quite close to him, she a widow, he a widower) as a sort of knight who was in the world helping widows and orphans. He had a code of moral conduct which involved being democratic and fair with all people, and helping them when he could and they were hard workers. Chelsea immediately said that she saw herself as a knight, following the code of the knights templar. I didn't say it, but in my mind I thought that I too actually had an attitude much like uncle Paul's. In fact, he has in many respects been a prime role model in my life.

As I understand it, getting back to Chelsea's talk, the Merovignian tradition places Christianity in an organic relationship with many earlier pagan traditions. The Merovignians believe that Mary, who the orthodox Christian Church calls "Magdalen", was actually the wife of Christ, and that they had a daughter. This bloodline continued through history, and through emigration, was carried by certain families such as the Stewarts of Scotland, are carried through to this day.

The da Vinci painting of the Last Supper shows the figure of a woman next to Jesus. Da Vinci was a Master of the Priory of Sion and a Merovignian. The painting is one of the codified representations of Merovigninan (ie. matriarchal) Christianity which you only see if you know what to look for. It is a part of the parallel universe of the Merovignians which most "Christians" are not even aware of, but which the "Da Vinci Code" has revealed to tens of millions of people.

Articles of faith for the orthodox Christian Church (both Roman and Eastern) such as the virgin birth of Jesus and the resurrection after crucifixion are not parts of the Merovignian and gnostic traditions.

It seems that Roman Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion of Rome as a strategic manuvre for the empire. He later called the Council of Nicea, at which the definition of the books which constitute the Christian Bible was agreed upon. Only four out of dozens of gospels were included in this "Bible". Paul, who never knew Jesus face to face in the flesh, was given a prominent representation in the Roman Christian Bible as an interpreter of the faith. The Council of Nicea took place 400 years after the death of Christ. The Nicean Creed is a codification of the basic orthodox (East and West) beliefs.

Gospels which were left out of the "Bible" were systematically denigrated and suppressed in subsequent centuries. The Roman Church in some sense can be seen as all about earthly power.

The Priory of Sion, and its related military arm the Knights Templar, came into existence at the time of the first Crusade to the Christian Holy Lands. These groups became the protectors of the bloodline family of Christ, and of the Merovignian tradition, through the ages up to the present time. The Roman Church brtually repressed the Knights Templar in the 1200's and continues to see the Masons as bitter enemies to this day of Pope Benedict the VI.

Most of the mythology (religious feasts and holidays and practices) of orthodox Christianity was lifted whole cloth from earlier "pagan" religions going back to the time of the Goddess Cybele, Mother of Life, originating in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey). Cybele, the great earth mother, had a son, Attis, who was a god-man in his own right, and who was eventually executed by hanging from a tree.

The Merovignian tradition follows the Cybeline and other traditions of matriarchy, rather than the orthodox Christian tradition of patriarchy. The Holy Mother as the origin of life is a tradition which draws more and more people in the 21st Century.

The above is beginning to make sense to me, but probably is very incoherent to others at this stage.

The Knights Templar were brutally repressed by the Roman Church in the 13th Century, but have continued to exist up to the present time as a secret society, understood by the general public as the equivalent of the Elks, Moose, Raccoon and Oddfellows Clubs.

A Day From Hell

2005-04-15T06:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was your basic high stress day from hell.

It started off with the pressure of going to the bank at 6:00AM to get the final $300 to pay for the dumpster to be delivered later on during the day. Then there was the effort to block off a space in front of the house where the dumpster would go. Then there was the stress of arguing with Chelsea, and Sadaisha, about receiving the dumpster, paying for the dumpster, and loading it with what I wanted in it rather than what Sadaisha wanted in it. Sadaisha and Chelsea had a fight before I left for work at 7:00AM.

On the way to work the car stopped dead in East New York. I opened the hood and found that a wire to the coil had broken off. The only tool I had in the car was a small vicegrip plier. I was able to get the insulation off the wire with this and wind it around the terminal on the coil. Of course I dropped the terminal into the black deep reaches of the engine before I realized that the terminal was the only way to attach the wire. Fortunately I was able to find it and fish it out. Then I discovered that the large wiring harness was solely supported by the wire to the coil which had broken. I jerry rigged a support to release the pressure on the coil wire by using some electrical tape I found which had been left on the hood support for who knows how long by who knows whom. The car fired up, and I resumed travel to Hofstra with grease enccased hands and stains on my shirt.

I stopped at a parts store and bought wire and a wire stripper, with which I improved my temporary fix, and went on to Hofstra without incident, except that now the traffic was slow. I didn't get to Hofstra until 9:00AM, later by 45 minutes to an hour than usual.

Part of my tension was that I had to prepare an extensive geography test for my European Business class, prepare other handouts for the other two classes, and confirm new classrooms for units of simulation on the French referendum on the European Constitution, and for another class, the OPEC negotiation simulation. I also had to prepare the handouts for an in-classroom simulation of exporter/distributor negotiations over a distribution contract in a third class. I kept telling myself to avoid lashing out at the students because of my stress. As the day wore on I was able to accomplish everything by working as if possessed every second up until the end of the class day at 6:00PM.

I went to a meeting of the Gay Club focused on "God and Gays," featuring a speaker from the First Presbyterian Church of Manhattan. This is the church in which Sara Zug and I were married in 1979. The students attending were so intelligent that it was enjoyable to be there. In addition, my own intervention in the middle of the meeting sparked up a lot of energy. I stated my position that the liberal church has to pull up its skirts and split from the conservative wings of their congregations or else nothing will ever be accomplished. Everyone seemed to find this a good idea.

One of the students present mentioned that she is going to speak on polyamory at the national convention of the Unitarian Church next summer. This confirmed my understanding that the cutting edge of queer people today is polyamory, while the society is back in the old issues of accepting gay ministers and allowing gay marriages.

I felt uplifted as I drove home at 8:30PM after the nice religious discussion.

I got home to find the dumpster half full, and Chgelsea still carrying out blocks of hardened concrete which we had not used when we poured the new floor of the shed in 2002. I changed clothes and started to carry out concrete also, although I did feel some pain on my right side which told me that it was not a great idea to carry hardened bags of concrete. Fortunately there were only a few bags left. About one-third of the loose gravel had also been loaded into the dumpster, which was good. I was a bit angry that everyone had ignored my instructions that only gravel and concrete should be put in the dumpster until it was all loaded, and then wooden things could go in. Oh well, I was just the one paying for it all.

So the day ended without a stroke or heart attack, and all things on the agends had been accomplished. Not so bad after all.

Chelsea was exhausted but buzzed by all the adrenalin from physical labor. She is getting too old for this sort of thing too. I greatly appreciated her efforts and her loyalty.

2005-04-10T05:46:00.000-07:00

Chelsea fixing to play a piano selection for Amanda and Caleb during a visit to Rusty and Chelsea in early March, 2005.
Rhona McMahan

2005-04-10T05:44:00.000-07:00

Caleb waves hello to the cameraperson during a visit to Rusty and Chelsea in March 2005.
Rhona McMahan

2005-04-10T05:43:00.000-07:00

Amanda jollies up Calbel during a visit to Rusty and Chelsea in March, 2005.
Rhona McMahan

Reflections on Visiting Tulaneville

2005-04-03T06:46:00.000-07:00

I am back from six days in New Orleans, staying in the house of Colin and George. The experience was enjoyable and interesting, underlayed with a sense of anger, depression and foreboding. The good news is that I finally have a sense that I know where Colin stands academically for the first time in the last four years. He even showed me his DAR. The bottom line is that a Tulane degree will take another full year and US$40,000, to say nothing of reasonable personal discipline and responsibility. As usual, Colin will do it when Colin is good and ready to do it. I am glad that he has the personal resources in all respects to get it done.

Colin's circle is very different from that which I experienced in college 40 years ago. They seem to get up between 12:00 and 2:00PM, going to class in the afternoon, then playing games until 2:00 to 4:00AM. The "games" include lots of electronic pastimes. Then there are "daiquiri" Mondays and Wednesday's. Thursday night is the big blow-off. Books and study seem to be worked in around the social schedule.

I will admit that my friends in college thought of me as a nerd, but my basic plan was to study every day, and to spend as much time as possible in a quiet place for study (Westminster House) or in the library. I did have a crisis in my senior year when faced with a "huge" senior honors paper, after I discovered the leisure reading room in the library with the big comfortable chairs. I read novel after novel during the day, usually focused on Russia (things like "Quiet Flows the Don") . I told myself that they related to my honors paper on "Soviet Management." Even so, I was able to make it through. Of course I was also married at the time, so my home life was quiet. We had no TV's, computers, cell phones, or portable music devices, but we did have a high end stero system which I had built on which we listened to classical and folk music.

I enjoyed spending time with all of the people who came in and out from Colin's social group. I am glad that he has friends, and that the memory of these friendships will always be a part of his life.

I am slightly sad now to be back at home facing six weeks of paper grading pressure intermixed with medical procedures leading up to my next operation. I loved the mornings in New Orleans when I would get up between 6:00 and 7:00AM and steal quietly off to the Starbucks on Maple Street, where I would sit for three hours reading Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel." Reading this book was a fine feature of my vacation, and a stimulating, even useful, thing to do. It is lovely to walk through the late March streets of New Orleans near Tulane, with the night chill burning off, the trees green and budding, and the birds twittering. It is tempting to think of living in New Orleans.

I only went to the Quarter once, on Thursday morning, to have breakfast at the Clover Grill at Bourbon and Dumaine. I love the Clover Grill, which is just a 24 hour informal grill, but the grits are wonderful there, and the basic American breakfast is my favorite meal. The personnel at the Clover Grill are queer. Chelsea and I always go there, and the two of us together usually get a response, which I must admit that I like.

After the Clover Grill I went to the House of Marie Laveau to get a remembrance for Chelsea (a Marie Laveau poster and some candles). One of Chelsea's best original songs is about Marie Laveau. Then I popped into the Famous Door bar as I walked back to the St. Charles Street car. I was the first customer of the day. I bought some Camels and sipped a couple of Jack Daniels on the rocks as I listened to Bonnie Rait covers before heading home. I don't miss the Quarter much when I am around Tulane. It is nice to see the side of New Orleans which is not part of the tourist business. Of course Tulane is a part of the "export base" of New Orleans just as much as the tourist business.

What they need in New Orleans is a good harbor tour like they have in Rotterdam. Without the port you really do not see the basis of New Orelans as a City. They should stress the river and foreign commerce angle of their economy in addition of the music and food, and booze. New Orleans is still one of the top five ports in the US, a giant in steel, grain, and oil. I love to be in the middle of port operations, it makes me feel a part of the pulse of the global economy and of history.

Colin and I made two shopping forays to Whole Foods, on one of which I bought some bottles of Sambazon acai smoothies to try them out. They sold for $3.49 each, competing with Odwalla for $2.49. I am writing a case about Sambazon and sustainable development. I love Whole Foods. We bought cheeses, wines, veggies, lamb sausage, breads, and lots of other stuff. My total Whole Foods bill for the two trips came to around $300, but Colin seemed to be low on rations when I got there. It is fun to go shopping with Colin.

Most evening we just stayed home, Colin would cook something up, we would watch TV and talk, and watch TV. A fun thing was to work together doing Colin's taxes. We always get along best when we are focused on doing something. I was glad to do taxes with him because next year he will be more ready to do them himself. Another evening we graded some take-home exams. Colin steeled my resolve to be a hard grader, which is good.

The several visits I have made to Colin's have made me aware of how today's college student is almost attached physically to a cell phone and a laptop (and a cigarette??). Laptops are used to provide information, communicate with professors, and play music.

My depression in New Orleans came from concern over Colin's immediate past and immediate future. The least important part of his college experience seems to be the academic side. He has the social down, but the fact of having a sophisticated university community right there, with all the opportunities for hearing speakers, visiting galleries and performances, taking great courses, and learning, does not seem of interest to Colin and his friends.

I hope Colin gets into some practical activity soon. Academia is not for him, and never has been. He seems to me to need immersion in something which is totally engaging of his mind, body, and senses. Will goat farming do it? Will photography do it?

As I left New Orleans I was aware of how quickly life flies past. These periods with Colin last year in Brazil and this year in New Orleans during my Spring break have been so enjoyable to me, and I treasure the memory of them.

Good news awaited me when I got home. My house was still standing, although shaken by the construction next door. Musa had moved out, hooray, hooray, and Sadaisha is also moving out in May (I Hope, I Hope). This wil mean that only two people are left for me to support.

My thoughts revolved around retirement and Paddy Mountain while I was in New Orleans. I made financial calculations to try to project what my possibilities would be. I still want to move to Paddy Mountain. I am considering full retirement or half time retirement from Hofstra. The half time would mean that I would need a place to stay in New York for about four months per year, but it would give me coverage for medical insurance. It works out that half time retirement would only mean a difference of $1700 per month, some of which would be accounted for by extra living expenses in New York or Long Island. I had originally planned to rent most of my house during retirement, but I now think that renting would be difficult because of the state of the plumbing and electrical systems in the house. Renovation is a doubtful propositions since the value of the house is essentially for the land. The house would be razed and a larger building of condominiums would be built here upon sale to the highest bidder.

I listed all the many things I could do at Paddy Mountain to make money during retirement (adjunct teaching, free lance market research, on-line book/antiques marketing, rabbits for meat or pets, summer produce gardening and canning, antique restoration, bed and breakfast, deep woods honky-tonk shows, dog breeding/boarding, textbook writing, academic advisement at Bucknell/Penn State, etc). I would have a base of $2,000 per month from SS, plus $1500 from my pension, and living costs would be much cheaper. I am thinking that the time to break with New York may be at hand. I have made many life changing decisions in my life, so I do not shrink too much from the big retirement strategy decision. Of one thing I am clear: full time teaching at Hofstra is probably a negative for my spirit at this stage in my life. The money is nice, but getting the money by teaching relatively dull uninterested people is not good for me. 29 years is enough. Especially when my health situation is possibly indicating that I need to break now if I am ever to have just a year or two in the country.

I hate losing my physical and mental capabilities.

The right path will reveal itself when the time comes.

Feeling Down

2005-03-14T16:16:00.000-08:00

I got an email back from my urologist today saying that I probably have kidney stones again. I will have a sonogram this Friday, and see him next Thursday for evaluation. I so do not want to go through this again. Something is wrong with me that no one has figured out. If I have stones again it is the third time in the last seven or eight years that I will have to undergo surgery. How many times can I survive this? When will my kidneys give out? I do not want to live hooked up to a dialysis machine.

I have been thinking in terror of how I felt the last time I went in for the operation. They take away your clothes as you change from a person into a "patient." I remember once again walking into an operating room, getting onto the cold metal table, and going under, waking up in pain and delerium and nausea.

I started the DaVinci Code today. It seemed interesting, but Chelsea took it away to reread it. Oh well, I have other things to do.

Topday was income tax accountant day. I owe another $6,000, after already paying over $30,000. Mr. Bush, where are you with the tax cuts for middle America? At least I feel more peaceful to know what the verdict is.

2005-02-26T12:46:00.000-08:00

Caleb appears in the bible as one of the close lieutenants of Moses in the flight from Egypt. He was one of two surviving scouts sent out to find what sort of people occuppied the land of Canaan. Thereafter his people were called Calebites. His "people" were his family clan which grew into a tribe of Israel. The king of the Calebites wears red boots with elevated golden heels. Mary, Miriam and Sarah were names for the same mermaid sea goddess, long know by some as Yemanja (portuguese), who evolved in mass market America into Aunt Jemima. One of Calebs great grandmother's was named Miriam, and one of his grandmothers was named Sara. Where did Caleb's parents get the nickname Red Boots in the months before he was born? We do know that red has always been the favorite color of his mother. Where did the name Caleb come from when he was born? Chelsea sees a spiritual line for Caleb back through the ages.
Rhona McMahan

2005-02-26T12:34:00.000-08:00

The Fisher Kings were prominent in France prior to the campaign by the Roman Catholic Church to drive thems and Merovingians underground. The Fisher King is described as "lame" (having a dislocated hip). Mary the Hairdresser was also know as Mary of Bethany. She was the keeper of the red and gold tablets of the Arc of the Covenant, which were hidden in a cave near Hebron. Mary is a name which runds through Caleb's family (his great grandmother Mary, his great great aunt Mary, his grandmother Mae (a form of Mary) and so on
Rhona McMahan

2005-02-20T04:37:00.000-08:00

This is the wedding picture of my grandfather, James Russell Moore and my grandmother, Emma Olive McGeorge Moore, in 1905. The picture was taken by N. T. Bell of Cambridge, Ohio. They were living in New Concord, Ohio at the time, where he ran a dry goods store. They met when my grandmother came to New Concord in order to attend Muskingum College.
Rhona McMahan

2005-02-20T04:33:00.000-08:00

This lovely picture is of my grandmother, Emma Olive McGeorge Moore with her firstborn, James Harvey McGeorge Moore. The picture is either from late 1908 or 1909. The picture was made in the Chalfont Studio, Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. Beaver County was my where my grandmother was born (1885) and grew up, but she and my grandfather were living in New Concord, Ohio, at the time of this picture.
Rhona McMahan

2005-02-20T04:28:00.000-08:00

These are my grandparents, J R Moore and Olive McGeorge Moore cutting the cake at their 50th wedding anniversary in 1955. The celebration was held at the Brodhead Hotel in Rochester, Pennsylvania.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-30T15:48:00.000-08:00

This image shows a little bit of information on Caleb Russell Soria's great great great great greatgreat great grandfather Andrew Russell Sr., and Caleb's great great great great great great grand father (James Miller Sr.) and grandmother (Polly Russell Miller). James Miller Sr. and Polly Russell Miller were married in 1792. They lived in Washington County Pennsylvania, southwest of Pittsburgh. James Miller Sr.'s father (Samuel Miller Sr.) was born in Ireland in 1717, where his family had moved from Scotland in 1714 to get away from the insurrection of the Scots against the English. Samuel Miller Sr. arrived in the Americas circa 1748 or 1750.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-30T15:35:00.000-08:00

This is an image of the geneological information on Caleb Russell Soria's great great great grand parents (James Alexander Miller and Eleanor Creswell). They were married in 1837. This is page 39 of the 1931 booklet entitled "The Shillito and Miller Familes".
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-30T15:30:00.000-08:00

This image is of page 40 in the pamphlet entitled The Shillito-Miller Familes, published in 1931. It shows information on Caleb R. Soria's great great great great grandmother, and her siblings. One of her siblings was the noted clergyman of the 1880's to the early 1900's, James Russell Miller. Anna Miller Moore named her son James Russell Moore in honor of her brother James Russell.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-30T15:25:00.000-08:00

This is a picture of Caleb Russell Soria's great great great grandfather (William Moore) and great great great grandmother (Anna Miller Moore) living in New Concord, Ohio, around 1902. The Anna and William's children in the picture are (L-R) Paul Miller Moore, Ivy Pearl Moore, and James Russell Moore.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-30T15:21:00.000-08:00

This is a picture of Caleb Russell Soria's great great grandfather James Russell Soria when he was about 20 years old, while living in New Concord, Ohio.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-30T15:18:00.000-08:00

This is a picture of Caleb's grandparent, Russell Martin Moore, at the age of 20 in 1962 while attending Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-30T15:14:00.000-08:00

This is the cover page of the privately publushed booklet with some history of the use of the "Russell" name in Caleb Russell Soria's family. It was published by an old man, Samuel Miller Smith, who's own name came down to him through many generations.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-30T15:10:00.000-08:00

This is the cover of the privately printed 1931 booklet which has detailed information on the Miller family which led into the use of "Russell" as Caleb Soria's middle name when he was born on October 25, 2005, in Brooklyn, New York.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-28T16:13:00.000-08:00

This is Uncle Paul's grave marker in New Concord, Ohio. Chelsea makes a big deal about the symbol between the 1961 and the 1963. It may be that Uncle Paul should have been running the world because of his down-to-earth directness and honesty, but I do not think that he was.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-28T16:06:00.000-08:00

Chelse has been reading the Da Vinci Chronicles lately, and has suddenly been taken with the fact that my Great Uncle Paul Miller Moore was the Grand Master of the Knights Templar in the United States at one time. This picture is when Uncle Paul was probably Grand Master of Pennsylvania circa 1935, and he stand with my grandfather James Russell Moore, my father Paul Martin Moore, and my father's brother James Harvey McGeorge Moore in full regalia. I never took this very seriously, but some people evidently think that the masons are still trying to run the world.
Rhona McMahan

A Trek Through the Blizzard to Lyndelle's

2005-01-24T16:16:00.000-08:00

There was a classic nor'easter winter storm last Saturday, which ended up being a wicked but manageable blizzard. Chelsea and I walked through the storm about a mile along Prospect Park Southwest to Caton and East Seventh from 5th Avenue and 16th Street in the South South Slope. It was an uplifting experience for both of us. I did not know when I set out if I would be able to do it. My body felt stiff at first, but gradually I got into a comfortable pace. The hardest was going up the slope of the Park from both directions. Once the crown of the slope was reached it was much easier to walk down hill. The snow was powdery on the way over, and heavier when we came back well lubricated. I felt so good to reach Lyndelle's neighborhood without much strain. We stopped in to a riding academy on 8th and Kermit so that Chelsea could help stow some heavy bags. The barn seemed to be run completely by women, and everyone was in a good mood. The snow blew in our faces like spidery icicles. Lyndelle had a homebaked Nebraska cornhusker chocolate cake for us to taste along with our Chilean cabernet. It was a peaceful break from the madhouse at home. Our bodies felt so good as we went to bed that night, the good tired feeling that comes after a day of exercise and relaxation.

Transy House Residents as of January 24, 2005

2005-01-24T11:56:00.000-08:00

The house is very full of people right now. Here are the people aside from me as of today:

Chelsea Goodwin--same as ever, plugging away at outbound telemarketing to make sales appointments for LCS, and practicing the piano. She played in church yesterday when the regular music director did not show up due to the blizzard.

Antonia Camberari--one of the earliest "members" of the house, she has been here for about a month as she seems to be deciding on where she will go next. She is one of my favorites.

Nathan Schiller--who was recently evicted from his home by his half sister after the the death of their mother last fall. Nathan will be getting his own place soon, probably with Antonia. He is very attentive to helping around the house, which is greatly appreciated.

Tasha LaRue--soon to leave for her home in Tennessee if all goes well. It is time. Tasha is getting back in touch with her life in Tennessee, contacting relatives, and planning to visit old schools and teachers. She gave everyone real nice gifts for Christmas.

Celia Blas--soon to leave for Tennessee with Tasha. She is excited to try out her wings living in a new place outside New York City for the first time.

Musa Watanabe--now moved to the sun porch from the alcove in the office, and much happier. She recently attended a reception of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project at my requests, which shows to me that she is feeling stronger emotionally.

Sadaisha Shimmers--back in the house after a strife-filled parting last July when I was in Europe. It was a huge crisis when Chelsea invited her back, but she was out in the street and living on the subway trains. Things are going better this time around, since everyone is stronger at enforcing their boundaries.

Joseph Johnson--still hanging on because of Chelsea's intervention inspite of doing no work for the house, creating tension, and paying no rent. The first off the island if I had my way.

The big recent event was to get a new refrigerator which will be adequate for our needs, and has state of the art energy saving features. The old one gave out at only 10 years. They do not make them as the did before. Now I get to pay another bill.

I am thinking about getting a new labrador retreiver puppy in the Spring. I realized a few days ago that Kiva was such a help to me when Sophie died. I want to get one while he is still active so that he can train her to be a good doggy. I will get the runt from a reputable breeder, because I want the Lab personality in a small package.

We have a cracked pipe on the water inlet to the boiler, so I have to go call a plumber now. School starts on Thursday, ugh, back to the grind. Two and a half years until I'm qualified for full social security, although Bush will propbably cut the benefits just as I qualify for them. I have been paying in since I was 14.

Wake Up To Global Interdependence

2005-01-14T05:49:00.000-08:00

An unwillingness to accept how deeply global interdependence affects the US lies at the root of neocon ideology. It has been evident for at least the past half century that the day of the independent nation-state was on the wane. World politics, driven by technological innovation and the emerging global market for the products based on new technologies, have been shaped by technological imperatives. Twin trends have emerged which challenge the nation-state: devolution of governmental power to local authorities, and increased reliance on supranational organizations to deal with the problems of global society. Both of these trends weaken the effectiveness of traditional policies based on the exercise of soverignty by the nation-state.
The dominance of the US as a military power has created the illusion in the US that we can turn back the clock on the movement toward solving problems by activity coordinated by supranational organizations. It is clear that the US economy as defined by activities within the US nation-state is incapable of supporting the US dominance of the world through the exercise of military power. Militarization is sucking the blood from US society. The neocons and the many isolationist people living in the US do not accept this fact, implementing head-in-the-sand policies which imperil both US society and the rest of the world. The US is perceived as a "rogue state" by many, and is beginning to feel the collective pressure from world society to change its ways.
An educational effort is needed to explain to people living in the US that they exist as a broader part of humanity, and are interdependent with the rest of the people on the planet. I am not sure how an effective educational effort might proceed. The daily press, and the electronic media, are seemingly ineffective in explaining that gun boat diplomacy was not useful 100 years ago in its heday, and is totally dysfunctional today. We need more support for effective supranational institutions in my opinion, not less.
Many of our most popular politicians, pundits and religious are leading us down a dead end street which is leading to the destruction of the values which made the US seem as if it was a beacon of hope in the world over the past 230 years.
The current campaign to force the United Nations out of the United States, and to force the United States out of the United Nations is only one of the many indications that we are being led in the wrong direction. The anti-UN campaign is insidious. In future postings I will comment further about the concepts of international organization, the hopes for universalistic international organizations, the history of the League of Nations, and the continuing potential for world peace and prosperity based on the United Nations Organization.

2005-01-12T10:04:00.000-08:00

Some people have been calling me asking for more information on Rhona McMahan. Obviously they have not read the liner notes on all the unpublished action stories I have written. To help give a more complete picture of Rhona McMahan I have published this picture of the old McMahan homestead, near Darlington, Pennsylvania. The picture is circa 1895. My grandmother is sitting on the ground in the center of the picture, close to her mother Rhoda McMahan, who is also sitting (wearing a black dress). I find that I am coming to resemble my grandmother more and more as I age, so readers may see a resemblance here.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-11T10:13:00.000-08:00

The New Year weekend turned into an extremely troubling time. The person whom we had sent to Oregon in July called us to say that she was being evicted from a battered women's shelter in Brooklyn because she is trans. This is a violation of human rights law in New York City, but the law is not implemented for trans people. Chelsea and I agreed tro take her back because she is an extremely bright, talented, and loving person, albeit a diamond in the rough. The rest of the people in the house rose in anger against us because they did not want to live with this person. It was extremely tense, eventually leading to a beserko Scottish episode in which I pointed out in a rage that everyone in the house had come here as a homeless person, and they should not be blocking someone from having a safe place to stay. Eventually we all settled down and things have been peaceful for the past 10 days. Then two other friends were made homeless, so we took in two more temporary residents to sleep on a mat in the alcove to the office. This picture shows the three old newcomers. Now we are up to nine, which makes things very tight physically and emotionally. Nevertheless, we are moving into the New Year with optimism and good cheer. Colin is back in New Orleans for the Spring semester, and the baby is developing apace. My New Year's resolution is mundane: get more exercise, eat healthy, and lose 10 pounds.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-11T09:38:00.000-08:00

Here is our friend Joann Prinzivale at the head of the table at our Christmas dinner this year. Later Joann and Chelsea worked on playing some jazz and Christmas tunes, with Chelsea on the piano and Joann on the guitar.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-11T09:31:00.000-08:00

Here are Aunt Jonica and Caleb in Amanda and Gabe's apartment as we opened gifts. Jonica gave Caleb a beautiful pair of red boots purchased in Texas. He will have to wait a few years for them to fit, but we all enjoyed the gift because we had become so accustomed to referring to Caleb as "Red Boots" before he was born and was given a more formal name by his parents.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-11T09:26:00.000-08:00

Christmas Day was a tense hell for me since I had two Christmas gift openings to attend, and a lot of people invited over for dinner. Tasha Larue, one of my housemates, took care of the cooking, along with Cecelia Blas, so that was a relief. Tasha and Celia also did the inside and outside decorations for the house. I cleaned out the dining room so that we could eat family style for the first time in several years (it had evolved into a music room for a while). The Christmas season started with a tree triming party at Jonica's apartment. We went to the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Fort Green for the Christmas Eve service. This was a break with our family tradition of going to the Park Slope Methodist Church, but Amanda lives closer to Lafayette Avenue now, and the minister is an old high school friend of Sara's from Mt. Lebanon. Prior to the Christmas Eve service we had a party at Amanda and Gabe's, featuring kielbasa and pierogies. On Christmas morning I picked up bagels and lox in Park Slope, and went to Gabe and Amanda's for the opening of family gifts. This was mellow as usual, but at 2:30 Tasha called me to say that a friend had arrived at the house from Westchester. We rushed back to have another gift opening en famille with the Transy House people. Tasha had given lots of gifts to everyone as a goodbye present before she moves back to Tennessee. We had Christmas Dinner around 5:00PM. We had a pork shoulder ala Puerto Rico and ham ala Tennessee, with mashed potatoes, pureed sweet potatoes, corn bread muffins, vegetables, and three luscious cakes for dessert. People dropped in all evening who expected us to have a party going on. I got out the good China and silverware for a change. Jonica and Amanda and Gabe and Caleb dropped in around 9:00, and we had a nice little get togther at which Celia presented Caleb with a beautiful knit blanket which she had been working on for several months. It turned out to be less tense than I had expected. We gave an IKEA candle lantern to our friend from Westchester, and she said that it was the first gift anyone had given her in more than ten years. She is a highly skilled lawyer, but her family has abandoned her because of gender issues. So it goes. The picture is of Tasha, who did a lot to make this Christmas special.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-11T08:55:00.000-08:00

Chelsea and I have been attending the Gethsemane Presbyterian Church in our neighborhood this year. This is a small "mission" congregation supported by the Presbytery which is oriented toward support of people "in the prison system," especially women who have been incarcerated, who are incarcerated, or have incarcerated loved ones. This is a rather large populated since the US has by far the largest prison population in the world in absolute numbers and on a per capita basis. I consider this to be a failure of our society (in spite of our focus on "freedom and liberty" as President Bush puts it). This picture is of the children waiting patiently to receive their Christmas gifts, which are in bags on the tables in the background. They even had gifts for Caleb since I had mentioned that my first grandchild had been born. One of the people living with us is recently out of "real" prison upstate, and I have made many trips to Rikers Island Jail in New York City to take clothing to friends who have been arrested. I feel uncomfortable with all this, but I also believe that our society must give new chances to people who have served their time. These children had nothing to do with the fact that their parents have run afoul of the law.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-11T08:34:00.000-08:00

Chelsea loves to hold Caleb. When we visit Gabe and Amanda, in the Clinto Hill section of Brooklyn, Chelsea and I end up squabbling over who gets to hold the baby. I love it when Caleb makes his little baby cooing sounds, and when he goes to sleep in my arms.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-11T08:27:00.000-08:00

Caleb's growth continued apace. This is one of the pictures from Colin's refrigerator in New Orleans. The equipment "needed" to care for an infant these days is truly mind boggling. It is amazing that anyone survived when my children were born, and even more amazing that people of my generation made it through even a few days. Caleb's favorite seems to be a mobile hanging in his crib which runs on batteries. It turns while playing a selection by Mozart (Bach and Burt Bacharach are also available selections), and Caleb loves to watch the little fuzzy animals go by above him.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-11T08:20:00.000-08:00

Chelsea and I went to New Orleans in early November to attend the national convention of the Harm Reduction Association. Chelsea participated on a panel presented by the Medical Marijuana Association of New York, of which she is the Political Outreach Coordinator. My objective in going to New Orleans was to visit Colin (in his senior year at Tulane). This picture shows his apartment mate, George, and his close friends Liz and Genevieve. Chelsea and I had a good time with our friends Kenny, Morgana, Lyndelle and Simon who were also in from the MMANY to attend the conference. It was instructive to attend the conference since we are in the process of incorporating Transy House so that we can apply for grants and receive donations. The Community Law Project of Fordham University Law School has adopted us as a project, and is doing the incorporation work on a pro bono basis. We also attended some sessions at Preservation Hall Jazz, Chelsea's favorites, and visited Marie Leveau's house for spiritual sustenance.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-10T14:45:00.000-08:00

On my birthday, October 25, Caleb Russell Soria was born. Here are the happy parents, Gabe Soria and Amanda Zug-Moore. I was happy that Caleb and I share birthdays, and I was happy that Caleb will carry on the Russell name, passed down since my great great grandmother Anna Miller Moore named her son (my grandfather) James Russell Moore, and so on to Caleb Russell Soria. Someday I will figure out how the name Russell got into the family, but I think it came from an ancestor in the 19th century named Polly Russell. There is a Russell plaid (green) registered in Scotland.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-10T14:26:00.000-08:00

In August Chelsea and I got out to Paddy Mountain and spent about 10 wonderful days without anyone around. We listened to a radio station playing only 1950's oldies, and worked on building the foundation for the hot tub. We needed the peace because all hell broke loose at Transy House when I was away in Sweden, and Chelsea was very stressed. We had to send one young person to Portland, Oregon to try to visit her mother and chill out. (When she got there her mother refused to see her. By December she was back in a shelter for battered women in Brooklyn, which soon threw her out, and we felt strong enopugh to take her in again. Along the way we had also taken in a young woman from Japan who had been brutally beaten and made homeless. We keep trying to empty the house, but the phone keeps ringing and various ministers and social workers implore us to take more people in. We feel guilty to retreat alone to Paddy Mountain, but we need the solitude.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-10T14:14:00.000-08:00

Meanwhile, Caleb continued to develop inside Amanda. We called him Red Boots at that time. It was amazing to see him gow so clearly. Modern technology is impressive sometimes.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-10T14:11:00.000-08:00

In early July I went to Stockholm to make a presentation, chair a session, and recruit for Hofstra at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of International Business. It was delightful to visit Sweden again. I well remembered my first visit, in the summer of 1961 during my first trip to Europe, snappy pictures with a camera lent to me by uncle Harvey Moore. This picture shows three of my collaborators at the main session in which I participated: a marketing professor from Austria, a Marketing professor from Turkey, and the former head of Unilever Europe.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-10T14:04:00.000-08:00

Jonica took a bunch of pictures at the award ceremony. I greatly appreciated this. I also greatly appreciated the presence of Jonica to share in my evening.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-10T13:59:00.000-08:00

We made a big event at the Stonewall Democrats awards dinner. Here is the Transy House group at the event. Left to Right: Chelsea, Jamie, Cecelia, Tasha, Sadaisha, Maureen, and Andrea. Daughter Jonica took the pictures at the event.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-10T13:56:00.000-08:00

In June I was presented with an award from the Stonewall Democrats of New York "for service to the LGBT community for founding Transy House." This picture is a Diana Montford presenting the award.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-10T12:44:00.000-08:00

I jumped ahead of my story a bit. Going back a month, as I motored home in my Jeep I stopped off in New Concord, Ohio, to visit some of the family spirits. I drove around the Muskingum campus, past Moore Hall, and past the Presbyterian Church where Uncle Paul Miller Moore donated the carillion in the late 1940's (one of my earliest memories of family activities). I went to the cemetery to visit the graves of family members. This picture is of the grave of great grandmother Anna Miller Moore and great grandfather William Moore. There were many Moore's in the cemetery, including the graves of great uncle Paul Miller Moore and great aunt Jesse, his wife. New Concord had changed a bit in the 30 years or so since I had last been there. As I drove around the Muskingum campus I thought of swimming in the lake with my sister as a child, and of attending football games with the Moore clan, and of visiting cousins like Olive Dew (Gew?) and Nancy Moore Reilly when she was in college. I thought of visiting Glen and Pearl McConagha (he was one of my father's best friends) in 1954. As a child growing up in Aliquippa Pennsylvania New Concord was "the promised land" for the older generation. I remembered our convoys of cars as we drove there for events at the college, and later for interrments in the cemetery I visited. Now the interstate by passes the town, and old route 40 seems to be on the quaint side. I was in a pensive mood as I drove on past Zanesville and Cambridge, past Steubenville and thoughts of Uncle Kirk, past Wheeling with its Marsh Wheeling stogie factory which is now defunct. Stogies were a part of the image of old PM and JR Moore. Eventually I got to the house of a friend in AAronsburg, Pennsylvania, and up to the Green Frog for a quick visit the next day.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-10T12:25:00.000-08:00

When Colin and I got to Rio De Janairo we visited our old friend Rose Marie Muraro. Rose is now in her early 70's, although she still publishes and continues to travel all over Brazil for speaking engagements. These are some of her grandsons at an Easter get together at her place. I loved the way they think their gransmother is so cool! She says "da banana to Bush." She is one of my most cherished friends, going back to the early 1970's.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-10T12:18:00.000-08:00

One of the nicest days we had in Parati was spent kayaking on the Bay of Parati (with a guide). Colin and I had a two person kayak, so he ended up doing more than half the work. I always find that Colin and I get along best when we are doing something, whether it be kayaking, cooking, packing a suitcase, or driving down the road.
Rhona McMahan

2005-01-10T12:01:00.000-08:00

Having survived the car wars, I went to Brazil to visit Colin in Sao Paulo over my Spring break. Amanda had visited him earlier, and Jonica visited later in the Spring. Colin seemed to be totally in tune with Brazil, and speaks Portuguese very fluently. It was exciting for me to be able to travel with him a bit when we both knew the language and could discuss Brazilian history, society, and economic affairs. Wew rented a car and drove along the littoral from Santos to Rio, spending several days in Parati (a colonial fishing port and Catholic mission which our family had visited several times over the years).
Rhona McMahan