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At left: a very colorful Page of Cups.



Lots of great reading out there, and I can barely keep up.

Here's a sampler of goodies you may have missed:

[] Arkansas Republican endorses death penalty for children (Raw Story) In case you wonder, candidate Charlie Fuqua got this straight from Deuteronomy 21:18-21.

So if you disagree, talk to God about it, okay?

[] Woo hoo, it's Conspiracy Theory time! Elections bring them out of the woodwork as little else does. AlterNet gives us 10 Conspiracy Theories Hatched by Conservative Fearmongers As Election Day Nears, which is entertaining enough that I hope to cover a couple of these on my upcoming radio show.

As a South Carolina Green Party member in good standing, my hands-down favorite is "The Green Plot to enslave the world":

Agenda 21, a little known and non-binding resolution adopted by the United Nations, is viewed by some on the right as an attempt to control the lives of people throughout the world by regulating everything they do. Amongst their paranoid fears is that Agenda 21 will cede U.S. sovereignty to the U.N. and a one-world government. The truth is that Agenda 21 is a set of principles to guide the development of practices to preserve a sustainable environment for future generations. It is entirely voluntary and was agreed to by the U.N. in 1992 and signed by President George H.W. Bush.

But to hear doomsayers like Glenn Beck put it, it will “suck all the blood out of [our communities], and we will not be able to survive.”

[] My friend JW finally had the daughter I foretold for her and her partner in their Tarot readings. Alright! Our hearty Deadhead congratulations go out to both of them, as well as lovely big sister LM (whom regular DEAD AIR readers may recall from THIS photo).

To celebrate, a look back at JW's reading, as well as a popular piece I wrote about the Tarot titled, How I learned to stop worrying and love the Tarot.

In addition, here is South Carolina Boy's post about my reading of his cards.

[] Anti-Muslim subway ads that sparked anger in New York are now popping up in D.C. (Huffington Post)

The ads, paid for by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, are supposed to be posted in the U Street, Georgia Avenue, Takoma and Glenmont stations for one month.

The ad reads: "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad." They have been widely condemned as promoting Islamophobia.

[] Interesting piece titled Nerds and Male Privilege comes directly on the heels of Annalee Newitz's controversial The Great Geek Sexism Debate. BE INFORMED!

[] A heated exchange about disability and abortion starts with Disability, Prenatal Testing and the Case for a Moral, Compassionate Abortion, which brings an angry response from Tiger Beatdown: Lives worth living: Disability, abortion, and slipshod ethics (comments also mandatory reading). Response/Part II: Disability and Abortion, Part Two: Individual moral choices are not categorical imperatives.

Caution: Very heavy, emotionally-wrenching stuff, but it's what we all ought to be thinking about, as science marches on and genetic testing becomes increasingly commonplace and culturally accepted.

[] Historic Number of Women on Ballots Could Lead to Historic Year for Female Lawmakers (Reality Check) Thanks to my California-droog Barbara! (kiss)

Along these same lines, check out some FEMINIST HALLOWEEN COSTUMES!

[] In further election news, our embarrassing Teabagger Senator, Jim DeMint, has decided to join Rick Santorum in backing Todd Akin for Senate in Missouri. I do find it interesting that Chris Christie wants no part of Akin, and has cut him loose.

Translation: Obviously, Christie has his eye on the proverbial Big Tent (higher office), while DeMint is intent on consolidating his power and influence on the right.

[] No list of links is complete without Glenn Greenwald. I especially recommend last month's one-two punch, CNN and the business of state-sponsored TV news (subtitled: The network is seriously compromising its journalism in the Gulf states by blurring the line between advertising and editorial)... and Conservatives, Democrats and the convenience of denouncing free speech (subtitled: Westerners love to decry censorship aimed at them by Muslims while ignoring the extreme censorship they impose on them). Both from the UK Guardian, and required reading for newshounds.

[] And finally, your long-overdue dose of cute: Panda mama nurses her little baby pandas. AIYEEE! SQUEEE!!! (((dead from cuteness)))

Levon Helm 1940-2012

I heard from my friend Blue Heron that Levon Helm had passed, which just broke my heart.

I adored his raspy Arkansas voice. I also loved him in Coal Miner's Daughter and The Right Stuff, which he narrated wonderfully in his trademark twang.

We will miss him so much.

Levon Helm, Drummer in the Band, Dies at 71
By JON PARELES
New York Times

Levon Helm, who helped forge a deep-rooted American music as the drummer and singer for the Band, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 71 and lived in Woodstock, N.Y.

His death, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, was from complications of cancer, a spokeswoman for Vanguard Records said. He had recorded several albums for the label.

In Mr. Helm’s drumming, muscle, swing, economy and finesse were inseparably merged. His voice held the bluesy, weathered and resilient essence of his Arkansas upbringing in the Mississippi Delta.

Mr. Helm was the American linchpin of the otherwise Canadian group that became Bob Dylan’s backup band and then the Band. Its own songs, largely written by the Band’s guitarist, Jaime Robbie Robertson, and pianist, Richard Manuel, spring from roadhouse, church, backwoods, river and farm; they are rock-ribbed with history and tradition yet hauntingly surreal.

After the Band broke up in 1976, Mr. Helm continued to perform at every opportunity, working with a partly reunited Band and leading his own groups. He also acted in films, notably “Coal Miner’s Daughter” (1980). In the 2000s he became a roots-music patriarch, turning his barn in Woodstock — which had been a recording studio since 1975 — into the home of down-home, eclectic concerts called Midnight Rambles, which led to tours and Grammy-winning albums.

Mr. Helm gave his drums a muffled, bottom-heavy sound that placed them in the foundation of the arrangements, and his tom-toms were tuned so that their pitch would bend downward as the tone faded. But his playing didn’t call attention to himself. Three bass-drum thumps at the beginning of one of the Band’s anthems, “The Weight,“ were all that he needed to establish the song’s gravity. His playing served the song. In “The Shape I’m In," he juxtaposed Memphis soul, New Orleans rumba and military tattoo. But though it was tersely responsive to the music, the drumming also had an improvisational feel.

In the Band, lead vocals changed from song to song and sometimes within songs, and harmonies were elaborately communal. But particularly when lyrics turned to myths and tall tales of the American South — like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “Ophelia” and “Rag Mama Rag” — the lead went to Mr. Helm, with his Arkansas twang and a voice that could sound desperate, ornery and amused at the same time.

Indeed it could.

~*~

And here is one of those amazing songs that you tend to hear at apocalyptic moments. Not for nothing has it become an ongoing cinema-staple, usually played as the protagonists are figuring out something important.

I remember a fight with my mother as a teenager, and going out on the stoop to pout. Hearing the song at that moment (coming from somewhere across the street) was a spiritual lesson I needed, one of my first tutorials in The First Noble Truth.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. And Levon was my teacher, in those few moments.

The Weight - The Band



Requiescat in pace.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the Tarot

Left: The High Priestess, from the Rider-Waite tarot deck.

~*~

Can I really tell people's fortunes?

Someone asked me, as I was idly reading the tarot for myself, sitting alone and drinking coffee. I told them: I read the tarot.

Isn't that reading people's fortunes? Telling the future?

At that point, I launched into a rather flaky Philip-K-Dick-inspired explanation of pre-cogs. PKD's particular pre-cogs saw a collection of futures and then, one future would appear prominent and more obvious than the others.* Interestingly, two pre-cogs may not agree. In one of his most famous stories, three pre-cogs are used to arrive at a conclusion and it is discovered that one of them frequently dissents from the other two, and this account therefore disregarded. (This dissent was known as the Minority Report.)

In various of PKD's tales, when the pre-cogs tell the future, that future may suddenly vanish. It has changed, in the telling. It was prevented by saying it aloud; also the intention in Minority Report--to actually prevent what the pre-cogs see from ever truly coming to pass. (It was called the Department of PreCrime.)

And then there is Dickens' version. After being shown his unpleasant fate, Ebenezer Scrooge notoriously pleaded with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come to please clarify: Is this what CAN be, or what WILL be? And the spirit, dressed like the grim reaper (who never says much in fiction, you'll notice), didn't answer but kept pointing to Scrooges' gravestone. The only thing certain is death.

When I read the tarot, I feel I am getting a series of random snapshots from that person's psyche, all measured in archetypes. The best reading is interactive, when I read the archetypes and the person tells me who/what these represent to them and what it means when they see the images and I repeat the words: The Lovers, The Chariot, The Moon, Strength, The Fool. Who is the Queen of Swords? Who is the King of Cups? They will usually tell me, unless guarded and distant (and some are). They unwind their selves for me, confiding and reaching out. I feel then that I truly know them, even if I have just met them. They have shown me their vulnerability and I show them whatever I think they need: kindness, encouragement, reproach (yes, some come to confess their sins; usually at least one card always gives open permission for this to happen), interrogation, an overall lightness, fun. Every person is different. I ask them what they want from the reading and I try to deliver it as best as I can.

Sometimes, as was true for my friend JW, the person invigorates my spirit and helps me see myself better, too. And I know the reading was also for myself.

People know what they want. They know what future they want. They want permission, encouragement, warnings, best wishes. Perhaps in the past, they had kindly relatives living close by, who could offer these. Maybe they had a priest, a rabbi, someone who delivered the periodic warnings and the necessary checks and balances to the ego. But lately, people have fewer spiritual authorities, even as their existential options have exponentially increased. They want to be in charge (and on some level, realize that they ARE), and yet, give some quiet assent to tradition, old ways, the unpredictability of life and fate. They want to go to a grandma-hippie figure and be comforted or upbraided. Their own grandmother might be in another country or on the other side of this one. This is the reason people have psychics, shrinks, therapists, life coaches.

~*~

Left: the Eight of Coins (Craft) from the Nigel Jackson tarot.


I could never have read the tarot when I was young. I just wouldn't have had the nerve to look at a bunch of cards and talk about what they mean. I studied the cards and knew about them, but I don't know when it was that I saw a reading and realized I could do it, too. The first time I read the tarot for another person, I could clearly see that they were trusting me implicitly with their honest life-questions... and it was THEN and only then, that I understood the tarot's purpose; it is a process, an interaction, an exchange of knowledge, impressions, emotions. As I read the cards, it all unfolded before me--my own future too.

During the advertising campaign for Sam Raimi's film THE GIFT, screenwriter Billy Bob Thornton made waves when he said he based the lead character on his own mother, a small-town psychic in Arkansas. More weird shit from Billy Bob, said the press, rolling their collective eyes heavenward. But I heard him when he said that in certain parts of the south, people don't trust educated counselors and professionals the way they would trust his mother. It was also a matter of class, money, motive and overall style. People will either get it, he said, or they won't.

The easiest tarot reading is the skeptical person who has never had it done before. The archetypes represented by the tarot deck freak them out in a big way; they didn't realize they had consented to Jungian psychoanalysis as conducted by a hippie herbalist.

"Who's the Emperor?" I asked one such skeptic. "Your father?"

"You're supposed to tell me that!" he barked, condescendingly.

"Okay, your father."

He grunted.

And let's not forget: Occam's razor works well for tarot, too.

***

*In Ubik, a group of pre-cogs hired by one corporation is neutralized by another. They do this by making all futures (as foreseen by the pre-cogs) equally probable, thus canceling out any prominent ones from manifesting. (Of course, this essentially made them just like anyone else who could vividly imagine a future.)