My first effort at sticking a toe in the water was unimpressive. Ron and I played with it and as far as we could see at firstglance it was a chat tool, which is rather boring and unimpressive.  I’ve since read that’s a common experience, so if you find yourself there, don’t give up. There’s more, much more.

It’s reminding my somewhat of ye-olden-days, when there was not very much to be found online, but those who were looking could sense what one day might bring. But this is now, and we have so very much more experience.  We have tools, concepts, things we are used to having and doing, so those things either exist or are on the way.  It’s the digital goldrush, who will be first, to do anything.  But the rushing has a different feel, it’s open sourceish, people have learned to work together, it’s less about ownership, more about the end result. This too reminds me of ye-olden-online-times.

There’s lots of buzz floating all over the internet, so I’ll skip a full explanation of what Google Wave is and offer my short version: If we were to take all the tools we are used to and were to create them today, using what we know about their usage, their flaws, their advantages, what would they be like ? Our technology communication tools (for example email, discussion and collaboration tools, social networking apps) have grown like wild weeds in a vacant lot.  What if instead of wildcrafting, we were to plan and plant a garden ? Google Wave is attempting to do that.

It’s not fully public yet, so if you don’t have an invitation you can’t play. But even if you have an invitation it’s not fully finished yet, so if you aren’t willing to sink some time into getting wet you may want to wait anyway. Finding the information on what you can do, and how to do it, is still rather like a treasure hunt.

So far I’ve been able to begin to learn the lingo… waves are the containers, the rows (or not – for those of us who plant companions in circles;) in the garden. Blips are the individual plants. (ditching the metaphor for now)And there are extensions in two varieties : bots and gadgets.

Bots do things like Translate into different languages (aunt-rosie@appspot.com) or offer options for autolinking.  Hyperlinky (hyperlinky@appspot.com) for example will allow you to create a link to wikipedia or thesaurus.com. So if I want to add a link to my discussion on Incantations to wikipedia I’d type w_incantations, or a link to thesaurus.com would be t_incantations.  Yes, there are ways to link to amazon, twitter etc.

Gadgets allow you to do things like add an interactive map, a conference call or video conference, a mindmapping or whiteboard like tool.

The point of the whole wave thing seems to be not just communication but also collaboration. And that’s what I find exciting. Really really exciting. What would you do with amazing tools for collaboration with others ? And since it uses an open API and anyone can create new extensions: what tools can you imagine ? The possibilities are tsunami stunning.

A Hindu River Goddess known as “the one who flows”. She is a Goddess of knowledge, words, music, and creativity. Mother of the Vedas associated with the color white for purity of truth, She sits in a white lotus flower with Her Sacred Swan nearby. In Her four hands She holds:

• The Vedas (sacred texts)
• The Vina (Her musical instrument)
• A crystal mala (similar to a rosary)
• A kindi (vessel of holy water)

On the first anniversary of 9-11 there was a gathering in a local park, billed everywhere as an interfaith vigil of commemoration.  I took morgan and it was one of the most frightening scary events we’ve been to in this city.  Interfaith my ass.  It was so full of scary conservatives spouting vile beliefs cloaked in religious language that we left, but even leaving was a frightening event.  The mean people were blocking exits, we did a quick dance back and forth and sideways, we were actually running by the time we broke out of there. Pat McCrory was there and spoke (led prayers) and he was the most liberal of the speakers.

So my city has been one where a vigil  promoted as  interfaith means a blend of moderately frightening and completely freaky zombie scary, where city business begins with prayers that are offputting to anyone not in that range, where whiteguys one-up-each-other with references to god. Pat McCrory couldn’t have created all this by himself, but he has been the posterboy for it.

And my city, voted for CHANGE.

An african american democratic Mayor with an overwhelmingly democratic city council, I don’t think that’s ever happened here before. And honestly I’m surprised as hell. Even as the election returns started coming in I figured it was early and there was plenty of time for them to turn. Foxx did win narrowly, and it was my area that turned out solidly for the-other-guy, but he freaking won !

Wow am I ever pleased.

I can’t go, it’s one helluva long way for me, so I bought a ticket for my Ancestor: Lila Mae Anderson Reifel. How cool is that ? You should do it to ! (for your own ancestor, Lila’s already got a ticket). Go here, http://reclaimingspiraldance.org and our ancestors might just be holding hands dancing the spiral dance tomorrow night !

And if THATs not reason enough for you…

The Spiral Dance is the main fundraiser of the year for all the wonderful work that san fransisco reclaiming does throughout the year.  And two days ago the darn bay bridge lost a chunk or something, so it’s closed !  That means that a whole huge bunch of people who would ordinarily go might not be able to.  And THAT could be financially devastating for san fransisco reclaiming.

Go on, you know your Ancestors want to hold hands with Lila, she’s HOT.

Queen of the Gods, Mistress of written language. What  we know of Her is difficult to tease out from the many cultures who added their own twist and interpretation.  Some will say she is a version of Hathor, no Astarte, no Lilith… So I’ve painted Her to reflect the jumbled herstory we have. The setting is a mixture of a temple at Byblos with a Phoenician fresco of papyrus.

The veil combined with nudity ?  A reflection of my own obsession with veils right now, it’s that time of year.

I’m not completely pleased with the end result, mostly because it appears to be a digitally manipulated photograph. It’s not, Baalat herself is painted, but in this context, that gets lost.

I know that brings up a buncha blahblah that I could ramble about, lots of art theory phrases that include the word realism… But really I’m more interested in the Veil right now, in all it’s many forms.

For thousands of years in Egypt, She was honored as the Goddess of Writing, the creator of the written word.  She was known as Mistress of the House of Books, a deity of Wisdom, Astronomy, Astrology, Architecture, and Mathematics.

She was also called upon as “Sesheta” which means hidden things, mysteries, secrets.

I found an amazing chart in Gimbutas’ The Language of the Goddess. It’s a  hand drawn set of symbols that have been found on hundreds of Bird-Goddess figures and objects from the Vinca culture, 5200 – 4000 BCE. Vinca symbols, our earliest proto-writing, predates even Egyptian hieroglyphics and Sumerian cuneiform by thousands of years.

The most amazing thing to me was the chevrons, < > .  I’d been hoping to begin to find a relationship between early written languages and those of code… and if I’d MADE THIS UP it couldn’t have been more perfect ! All of our computer languages use braces (chevrons).  The character < tells a program that a line of code is beginning and the > character ends the function or snippet of code.

I thought I was doing a painting of a Neolithic Goddess, using the Vinca symbols, thats what I set out to do.  But in the end it was a portrait of Marija Gimbutas herself.

Gimbutas fans should also check out the wonderful Signs out of Time.

I sent an email to our school superintendent today, thanking him for his SANITY. He answered me immediately, with a thank you for your support.

Have people gone completely insane ?!? How can there be THIS many ignorant hateful people around me ?

Reading the comments online about this on our local newspaper website has given me a splitting headache. I’m embarrassed for these people, and I’m also somewhat shocked.

There were maybe 600 people there ( maybe twice that many ? dunno) and I only counted a half dozen progressives. All the things I’d read and heard in the news about the conservatives attending these meetings were so very true. The huge vitriol and anger is not actually about healthcare, it was about racism (including some raising of arms in heil hitler manner every time Obama’s name was mentioned), it was about anti abortion sentiment (the blood on the hands of liberal democrats from the murder of unborn babies and old people), lots of communist/socialist commentary, and a HUGE amount of time went to very frightening anti immigrant rhetoric. Death panels and books, bizarre fears about Obama czars and citizen militias, interment camps for conservatives (wtf ??) you name it, I heard every weirdo thing mentioned, all accompanied by thunderous applause and rude awful things being shouted.

I almost took my teenage daughter with me but she stayed home to do homework. I’m now glad she wasn’t there, it felt a lot less safe than I was expecting, even though there was a huge police presence.

There seemed to be some non local orchestrated people present, but that was not at all the whole of it, there were many many local people. All in all it was WAY more frightening than I was expecting, the hostility of that crowd was unbelievable. I did not go intending to speak, but once there in that crowd felt I needed to stand up and be counted.

I stood in line to speak, one of only four non-conservatives who spoke. If there were more of us in the crowd who didn’t speak I understand why, it was a scary scary room ! By the time I was close to the mic in line I realized that the energy in the front of the room was just as bad as it was in the back where I’d been sitting. Fear and intimidation works. There were many things that I passionately believe that I would NOT have risked saying aloud in that environment. I’m no chickenshit, and trust me, I was scared.

I identified myself first as a small business owner and person of faith, said that my support of universal healthcare is because I consider this a moral issue. I made a few other points, but the room was so very hostile and scary, I was way too nervous to remember things that were in my head. One man was escorted out by police when he wouldn’t stop screaming at a woman with liberal views who spoke before I did. I also called the crowd out on their rude hostile behavior, which I actually got a little less of than the 3 liberal people who spoke before me. I tried to be kind and gracious when I spoke, that helped too. There was what seemed to be a stunned silence when I was speaking, at least at first. Ron told me later that when one guy sitting behind him who was yelling at me to shut up and sit down etc. he (Ron) turned and used his best school teacher voice to tell him “that was RUDE” and that guy actually shut up !

I’m still reeling a little, I haven’t seen shit like that in a long time. I also don’t think I’ve ever been present for something like this where there were so very few other likeminded people present. It’s a very different thing to be so alone in that kind of crowd.

When we were at Wilson’s Creek I watched whitewater paddlers navigating tricky and dangerous rapids. Brave, I would never have attempted it. As we watched, the girls climbing large rocks for a better view I saw some of the paddlers noticing the us. It reminded me of the stories of Sirens, if the paddlers paid more attention to the girls than the river they would surely crash and burn. My glee at discovering the modern day white water Sirens stayed with me, so I painted them.

Sirens are an old old concept. Their first incarnation in our collective stories are as old as Bird-Snake Goddess figures and cave paintings. In old Greek stories the Sirens were the sister girlfriends of Persephone, growing wings to search for Her after the descent into the underworld. In medieval times they were referred to as Sirens of the Philosophers, revealers of the mysteries.  There is a great deal of overlap between Sirens and Mermaids, in some languages the word is even the same. Images of Sirens/Mermaids as Goddess exist in multiple cultures and geographies, one of the earliest Siren images is of Freya, there’s also Derceto (Palestine), Yemaya (Africa), Tirgata (Syria), Aphrodite of course, and abundant images in Thailand, India, China…