The Throes (Lynn Kerstan)

The Fourth of July has washed over our small “island” town like a tsunami. If I dare to drive anywhere, on my return I’ll have to park in an adjacent county. Bunting and flags and red/white/blue spinwheels are everywhere. Coronado is a military town, with the Naval Air Station at one end and the Naval Amphibious Base (where the SEALs train) at the other. It’s also a casual, laid-back So-Cal beach community, so our celebrations feature local residents, the military, clowns, and (redundantly) the ubiquitous politicians. It’s a throwback to an earlier time, really, and rather a lot of fun.

I could be in the long, long parade. A club to which I belong is actually leading it (after the requisite honors guard and politicians) this year. A club barbeque will follow, and I’d dearly love to be there as well. But I cannot, because I am in The Throes.

After 16 months of Bad Illness (including a few months of slow recovery), I’m about to re-enter a world I’d thought I would not again experience and see friends I never again expected to see. So naturally, I became obsessed with clothes. In my defense, I’d lived eight months in oversized fleece. I’d given away most of my own clothes when my prognosis was: Death, Soon. And for the first time in my existence, the clothes I still had after recovery–from underwear to outerwear–were too large.

So I was pretty much starting from scratch, and between medical bills and my inability to work, bargains ruled. That meant long and frequent slogs through stores and much rummaging through sales racks, with less frequent bursts of pleasure when something I liked actually fit. After weeks of Shopping Throes, my wardrobe is now assembled (meaning hanging randomly in the closet), each piece bought for itself and not for how it relates to anything else in the closet. The only thing most of them have in common is this: they are blue. Nearly all the rest are black. Not sure how that happened.

Anyway, since I’ve no idea how to put them together in anything resembling an outfit, I shall be forced to bring them all with me. The Packing Throes. These are the suitcases I will be traveling with next Thursday. You’d think I was taking an around-the world tour, not a flight to Memphis, a six-day “tourist” drive to Washington DC, and four days there at the Romance Writers of America Conference. But I can’t leave anything behind. If I don’t bring it, I’ll wind up wanting it. The same way I finally get rid of something I haven’t used for years, only to desperately need it shortly after it’s gone.

Besides, I couldn’t get a coach-class Frequent Flyer ticket, flights out of DC on a summer Sunday being at a premium. So I had to expend nearly all my accumulated miles to fly in the front of the plane, and we “elite” flyers needn’t pay for extra suitcases. You can bet I’m taking advantage of that perk! Not sure how we’ll get all that stuff into Pat’s car, though. Not with all the wine. Oh, dear.

There are hair-Throes as well, as in, I have very little of it. About an inch, some of it wanting to stand straight up, other bits lying flat as paint. Not much to be done about any of that. But around my ears and at the back of my neck, I was getting fairly shaggy and unkempt. So this morning I went to Island Barbers, specializing in military buzz cuts and head shaving, for a trim around the edges. New experiences abound.

Next Thursday night, I’ll be at Pat’s Memphis home, hopefully enjoying a night swim in her pool after a long day of travel. My ride to the airport is collecting me at 4:15am! Friday morning we set out across Tennessee, heading for our hike along the Appalachian Trall.

Okay, we won’t be hiking, or on the Appalachian Trail, because we’d rather be in an air-conditioned car on the Blue Ridge Parkway. And anyway, so I am informed, no one can now speak of hiking on the Appalachian Trail without implying something quite different. And so are metaphors born.

I’ll take lots of pictures along the way and will post whenever I can. All of us, except for Suz (we’ll miss her!) will be at the Conference, so we StoryBroads may not be as organized as we usually are(n’t).

Meantime, back to The Throes. How many shoes should I take? How many will I actually wear? Good looks vs. comfort. Decisions! And honestly, no one really cares. They’re all in their own Throes...except the sane ones. I try to learn from them.
But I never do.

Another country heard from...
The Can-Opener is leaving me again. Does she think I don’t know luggage when I see it? I suppose Thea will come feed me and clean up after me. She’s good that way. But she doesn’t live here, so I’ll be alone most of the time. Of course, I sleep most of the time. And no one will turn on the vacuum cleaner or clean my ears or clip my claws. Maybe this won’t be so bad. Note to Self: Look pitiful when the C-O gets back. That usually leads to petting and cat treats.

Good Old Fashioned Witchcraft (Maggie)

You know how I am. I like to keep things positive, happy, upbeat and not focus on anything negative. But lately, it seems like a lot of people are attacking, and while I'm sure I've attracted this in some way, I also know how to fix it, and I'm about to do so.

I'm not even going to talk about specifics, because that's not where I want to focus. I'll think about good things, like that my guy is upstairs and in a few minutes, I'll be joining him. =)

So, while I'm aware that my vibration must be a little off, to be allowing this stuff in, attracting this stuff to me, I need to get rid of it instantly and powerfully and in a satisfying, fun way, in order to get my attention on fun, positive thoughts even about this particular set of events.

There's a spell that is so perfectly in keeping with my philosophy about positive thinking, it's perfect for this! It takes any negative energy being directed at you, and transmutes the energy into something positive. The more people who are out to get you, or take advantage or whatever, the more energy you get to use! And it takes something that makes you angry and defensive, and turns it (and your entire focus with it) toward something wonderful that you really want.

The Spell is one that was published in one of the Llewellyn Annuals by Dorothy Morrison several years back, and while I don't have a copy on hand, and don't remember everything precisely as she wrote it, I'm pretty good at this stuff too, and we Witchy types are always tweaking these things.

So, from Miss Dorothy as interpreted and recalled by Miss Maggie, here's what you do.

Take a cookie sheet and line it wiith tin foil.
On it, place a black candle, a gray or brown (neutral) candle
And a white candle, centered on the sheet, with the black one furthers away, brown center, white nearest you.

Take a little piece of paper and write something you really, really want on it. Visualize it. Use a picture of it if you can.

Place the paper underneath the white candle.

Now, take some salt, and pour it to draw a line from the black candle to the brown.
Draw another line from the brown candle to the white.
Draw an arrow at the end, pointing to the white candle.
Draw a circle around the white candle, paper and arrow.

Light the black candle, and see all the energy being weilded against you, being absorbed by that black candle.

Then as you light it and watch it burn, focus and SEE that energy moving along the path of salt, and into the brown candle. Trace it's path with your hand and feel the power in your palm, pulsing. Light that middle candle now, and see that energy is just energy. It's the sender who makes it good or bad. The energy is not good or bad. The brown candle is removing the sender from the energy, so that it's just energy again. Not good, not bad. The sender's intent has been removed.

Now, see the purified energy zooming from the brown candle, into the salt highway, and speeding into the white candle. Trace it again with your palm. Light the white candle. See that energy all being contained now within the circle of salt, and directed into that image of the thing you desire on the piece of paper.

You must see it adding to that goal, making it more real, bringing it closer to you!

Now let the candles burn until the go out on their own. If they do, don't relight them. If they burn all the way down, that's fine. Either way is fine. Before the white one burns all the way out, take the piece of paper and light it from the flame. Let it burn to ash within the circle of salt.

When that's done, and the candles have all gone out on their own, gather all the bits of the spell by wrapping them up in the tin foil, and take them off your property. Bury them. Return home. Wash your hands. And it is done.

I don't do as many spells as I used to, but I think it's a good time for this one. And I thought I'd share it with you. It feels to me like it will be cathartic, and instead of worrying me, these things of late will just stop pestering me at all. All their energy will have been sent toward my heart's desires, so they won't have any power left in them to worry me, even a little bit.

I'll let you know how that goes!

Enjoy!

Maggie


Maggie

A Tribute (Tara Taylor Quinn)

With July 4th only a couple of days away, I'm in the place I go every July 4th. It's July 4th, 1982. I'm in the kitchen of my tiny apartment preparing food for the cookout that I'll be hosting later that day when I get home from job at a tourist retail store. Specifically, I'm mixing batter for a chocolate cake. My older brother (you see him there to the left with my mom) was in the other room - about three feet away - lying on the floor watching Wimbledon. It was Jimmy Connors against McEnroe that year. My brother, a tennis player, wanted Connors to win. He insisted, intensely, that Connors had to win. On a commercial break he came out to the kitchen to dip his finger into the bowl of batter - a habit he'd had since I first learned to bake when I was a little girl. He knew it drove me crazy. As usual I swatted him away, yelled at him, told him to get out of my batter. (In years past, I'd tattled to Mom.) An hour later, Connors won.

And my brother announced that he was going fishing. He was going to ride his Harley. I told him he absolutely was not. It was getting ready to rain. I might have been a year younger and many inches shorter than he was, but I had no problem being bossy when he was going to make a mistake. We compromised. He was going fishing. Didn't matter what I had to say about that. Fish bite in the rain and he rarely did what I told him to do. But, in deference to my panic regarding the rain, he agreed to take my car rather than ride his motorcycle. As he walked out the door I gave him the glass bowl that I'd used to mix the cake batter. The sides and bottom were filled with left over batter. He loved to lick the bowl. With a grin, an acceptance of my unspoken apology, my avowal of adoring love, he walked out the door of the apartment with the bowl in his hands.

Later that year, long before I was published, I wrote a tribute to my brother. It hangs on the wall in my mother's living room. I share it with you here, today:

A brother, a son, a lover, a friend.

So menial. So miraculous.

A life, one small breath among billions.

Too few years, so many experiences.

So many lives touched, so much left unfinished.

Knowledge. Knowledge of people, feelings, handling situations;

Knowledge of music, nice cars, how to spend money;

Knowledge of roles - roles successfully lived;

Knowledge or right and wrong, good and bad.

Knowledge of God. Love of God.

Love.

Love for nice things - only the best.

Love for women, for one woman.

Love of books, of speed, of adventure, of beauty.

Intense Love for mother, for father, for sister and brother.

Love for people, for friends.

Love of music, of life, of Columbus.

Service.

Service to public, to church, to teenagers.

Service to anyone who asked, to sore hearts, many many sore hearts.

And Service to that which meant most, to what came first in times of need - family.

Family - the center of existence.

The security that set free.

Fun.

Fun to be with.

Fun out of nothing.

Fun out of video games and fun out of bad situations.

Smiles.

Smiles at a family dinner when Mom shows signs of getting hot.

Smiles for a tired soul.

Smiles for a scorned woman.

Smiles for an ex-wife, for a cat, a boss, a stranger.

Even smiles for a TV set.

Vulnerable, lonely, easily hurt but strong enough to hide and continue.

Scared.

Scared of sticky situations, of being alone.

Negligent.

Negligent with money, borrowed tools, dirty dishes.

Accomplished...

at fishing, skating, bowling, smiling, selling, helping people feel good, disc jockeying, golfing, playing guitar, spending money, fixing stereos, sweet talking, loving, serving, laughing, making others laugh, tennis, raising fish, riding a bike, lying, being tender, getting out of sticky situations, handing Mom and Dad, dealing with people.

Successful.

The last time I saw my brother, he was walking out the apartment door with a bowl in his hands. A kid, high on acid, sped his Camaro over the center line that fourth of July afternoon. Ironically, while my car was totalled, that glass bowl of chocolate batter, found lodged under the dash, survived intact.

Please, if you're out driving this fourth of July, be safe. And remember, if you're celebrating, don't drive.

And to my young one - I so badly need to be with you tomorrow. Deep breaths and all will be well. I love you.

They Can Read Our Minds (Suzanne Forster)

Seriously, they can. Did anyone see the rerun of the Sixty Minutes segment on brain scanning last Sunday night? One of the men interviewed said there was no such thing as science fiction anymore. Everything that was considered science fiction when he was a kid had since come true.

I don’t remember imagining medical equipment that could read minds when I was kid. But I did write a novel several years ago that dealt with predicting dangerous behavior through the analysis of brain scans. Apparently I wasn’t too far off from what is now possible. New technology uses MRI scans of the brain to detect what you’re thinking, based on how the brain reacts when you look at an image.

The test subject was a Sixty Minutes staff member who’d never had a brain scan. She was shown images and asked to think about them while the scanning took place. The computer program correctly named all ten items based on the woman’s brain activity and without knowing what images the woman was looking at. They didn’t mention all ten images, but there was a knife, a window, a hammer and an apartment in the mix.

I remember thinking that the apartment must have taken some fairly complex neural activity compared to a knife or a hammer, but the computer picked all ten up in a matter of minutes, including the apartment.

Apparently in Germany, scientists are even learning to read our intentions. Your brain can also be made to tattle and tell investigators where you’ve been. You can imagine the implications of this in criminal trials, where brain activity could reveal whether or not you’re familiar with a crime scene.

It was also predicted that in three to five years, they’ll be able to read more complex thoughts. They didn’t specify what those thoughts might be, but they already know the signature brain activity patterns for certain emotions and behaviors, like kindness, love and hypocrisy.

And if all that doesn’t make you uneasy, how about this? In June 2008, a woman in India was convicted of murdering her former fiance, based in part on her reaction to a verbal re-creation of the crime while electrodes were attached to her head. Apparently an EEG of her brain showed that she was familiar with circumstances involving the murder and ultimately she was convicted. The judge ruled that only the killer could have had such “experiential knowledge.” Yikes. What about romantic suspense writers who create crime scenes so intricate their brains probably think they’ve been there? What about people who just imagine or dream in great detail???

This sort of testing is still highly controversial, but there’s little doubt that it will be used at some point in future trials, though it’s not clear whether the information from the brain will be used as testimony or as evidence, the way blood or DNA is. Just imagine being charged with a crime and having your brain waves testify for you. Or applying for a job and being hooked up to an EEG during the interview!

Perhaps the segment’s most chilling revelation was the possibility of reading minds from a distance, using light beams targeted at the head. This really sounds like science fiction, right? Well, you can relax. It’s not possible yet, but at the rate things are progressing in the brain sciences, it may not take long.

Maybe it’s my teenage issues with authority figures, my overworked writer’s imagination or too many movies like Minority Report, where they arrested people based on criminal inclinations, but I’d like to know exactly what they plan to do with the ability to read our intentions before they can actually do it. The whole idea of reading minds is incredibly cool but it’s also a matter of medical ethics, and given the potential for not just technical error but invasion of privacy, it’s important to stop and consider the consequences. Just because it can be done doesn’t mean it should be done.

What do the rest of you think? Maybe I’m over-reacting. I’m not saying we shouldn’t do the scientific research or develop the capability. I’d just like some reassurance that the contents of our minds will still belong to us. The most basic human rights we have—our thoughts—need to be protected.

Here’s a clip from the Sixty Minutes show, which first aired in December 2008:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/30/60-minutes-mind-reading-f_n_154370.html

And here is one of the many articles on the subject, with warnings about personal privacy invasion issues:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3343929/Mind-reading-by-MRI-scan-raises-mental-privacy-issue.html

Suz

10 Things (Anne Stuart)

My niece flew back to Lake Tahoe on Saturday, and I spent Sunday sleeping. I worked non-stop for the two and a half weeks she was here, hoeing out my sister's home, and this is what I learned.
1. When you see something in a clothing store that you like, there's absolutely no need to buy one in every color. Particularly when you decide you don't like it as much as you thought but you aren't ever going to get around to returning it.
2. If you can't train your Bichon not to pee on everything in sight then get him fixed, get him diapers, get him a playpen. Anything to keep the house from smelling like old dog pee.
3.No one needs that many shoes, especially if you spend most of your life in bed.
4. Everytime you leave a job you don't need to clear out every piece of office supplies you can put your hands on. No one need four boxes of file folders.
5. There actually is such a thing as too many books.
6. QVC is a dangerous thing.
7. Every time your sheets are dirty you don't have to buy a new set, complete with comforter.
8. Gaudy costume jewelry doesn't help.
9. You don't need checkbooks and bills from 1967.
10. I miss her so much. I may never shop again, but I can't stop missing her.

So here's your task for today, guys. Go throw out a pair of shoes. No one wants to wear your old shoes, trust me. Read something from your TBR pile. Shred some checks. It's bad enough abandoning your sister and daughter -- don't leave them with such a humongeous mess.

And tell your sister you love her.