My Birth Moon

Heather is a great friend and artist, her work appears here to point out the abundantly fertile nature of the Maiden, Mother, Crone. In this time of the thinning veil, we must say goodbye to many who have crossed over the river Styx, but we must also renew commitments to honor them in our daily choices. It is the Pagan New Year and as such, we can resolve to improve our lives, daily,  in the new year, relinquishing ties to what no longer serve us or our communities. We only have one freedom left, that is the freedom to choose what we will do next.

Long before I heard that "witches and pagans" celebrated their entire moon of birth, which was for me, during my college years, I had celebrated the entire moon of October. I really didn't have a full concept of either of those prejudicial terms, but I figured that if I had "tuned in" to a perspective inherent in the, message I received, witch and pagan could have been seen as pejorative. Vagaries of chance being what they are, perhaps it was just coincidence. The longer I attend to the issue, the more convinced I am that the derogatory tone taken by my informant, whilst teaching me that fact was because of her own limited perception, not the ways or beliefs, of those who were being taken out of context. Those of us that live by an Earthen Calendar are hopefully not bound by deceptive prejudices, eternal exploitation (like that of missionaries), those who would exploit us, nor the money-lenders who amass fortunes at the expense of others. We believe in relationship with all that is, not just what we have instruments calibrated to detect. I knew that, then, but had no words to capture the depth or breadth of my feeling that Mother Earth was alive, her stirrings were in me, as were those of Father Sun, (son) Sister Sky, Grandma Moon, and the ancient ones who light the night sky. We are one. We are stardust.

October has seen many of my most profound insights, the celebration of the cusp between Scorpio and Libra, for me takes on mythic proportion. As it should, perhaps, because my grandstanding nature and love for the stage are curiously tied to seeking balance and justice, if that is possible in this world. Just once, I would like to be listened to on the subject of Ecological awareness. As we defile our nest, the world, we sow the seeds of pain and mystery, taking lethal doses of carcinogenic, mutagenic and teratogenic substances, often without thought. The Day of the Dead, the Hallows Eve, Pagan New Year, Saturnalia, they all begin after the last harvest. This death of self, sustenance and surroundings has often led me into a learning or health crisis and ultimately to a more humble state, having had the life of eternity wash through me. It is always well to remember, the same noble gasses that waft into our lungs today are the exact same ones that dinosaurs breathed 60 million years ago. The oldest material on earth is about 4.4 billion years. In the arc of time, we humans occupy an infinitesimal small moment. 2000 generations or so.

Late summer yields to early fall in my hemisphere, The days shorten significantly, and thoughts of nesting create a frenetic pace. Like my friends, the squirrels, who are caching as many nuts as possible, I too am tying up loose ends on as many projects as I can, confounded daily as the darkness clamps down earlier each night. The balance point I have found, much to the chagrin of my teachers and elders, lies beyond the domain of capitalism, sexism or classism. I have lived the lives of many people, each one giving a unique perspective. The skeleton key of last harvest has unlocked fifty ways to be hollowed out, fifty times I have cycled through the season of death and honoring the ancestral homeland which we all inhabit eternally but for a brief moment in time, we are blessed with what we call "life".

It is at this time, that I consciously pare down, from the inside, like scraping out a pumpkin, loosing that which will birth the next generation. Hollowed out, however we feel it, (whether by loss, deprivation, depression or death of a feeling of "self") we become a more empty vessel for holding the wealth of the aeons. Some might classify it as the love of god, but there again is a limitation I am not comfortable with. I like to call the experience "Be-ing all that is." What my friend misplaced by definition was the "witch" terminology. What he meant had been contaminated by centuries of hate and fear, what I knew to be true circumvents anger and oppression. If I was born a pagan, how can someone tell me that their limits on eternity are suited for me? Along with that limitation, I would have to give up the infinite now and I cannot abide others trying to dissuade me from honoring the sanctity of the Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Spirit which connects all beings.

I, the man who honors the beasts who become one with my flesh? The "I", who takes the stance that it is my responsibility to the organisms that serve my purposes be as comfortable and abundant as possible? "I", the being that is truly aware of Be-ing Stardust, arranged just so, to be miraculous? What of the human being who is self aware and infinitely humbled by being in touch with their chick side, but also has the experience of fathering several amazing children? Grandfather now, experiencing the stark reality of be-ing over halfway to 100. This transient "I" is not limited by any of the experiences that typically get used to describe our true self. It is beyond borders of experience, and multi-faceted. "I", defies even description by my available intellect, I am truly more than even that. Often in ways that, although explored to my fullest potential seem full of evermore possibility and potential. I'm just not sure how they connect to my future understanding. (yet.)

Each time I come through a learning opportunity, each time I recalibrate my awareness, I find that part of me thinks that this is the reality I will be confronted with forever, then things begin to shift and areas newly illuminated, become more clear that had existed behind a shroud. Like the idea of a sailing ship to the earliest humans confronting their first oppressors. They could not know what future awaited them. There are those among us who will forever learn and change their perspective. Some feel more comfortable knowing only one true thing, disbelieving all else. I beg the people of the world to begin to piece together a new way of thinking, of being and of relating what it is that we see, staring coldly into our eyes. Re-thinking what is plausible under the constraints of modern times, has to take center stage in political debate, in social justice circles, in the world religions and amongst the proud pagans who have been here all along. Our freedom ends where the next person's nose begins. When we reach out, into community, we always want it to be from a place of love.

My regular readers know that I often say, "Ultimate freedom requires infinite responsibility." The infinite abundance of the planet relies on the ability of each of us to interface with our ecological niche  as gracefully as possible. Building, throughout October I feel my blood run through the ages, perhaps my own soul links with many of the old souls who have learned far more than I ever will, but for moments and weeks I cultivate relationship with the elders who brought me life, murmured and spoke stories of all that was know in their time, and graced me with my time on Planet Earth. The old me that I shed each cusp of my birth, informs the next "me", yet the truest nature of who I am expands further, inhabiting a more joyous and fecund harmony. As I age, I continue to find way to lessen the negative impacts on the planet, while enriching the community. I pledge my existence to sharing this belief in the future, this utter giving of myself to the moment, relying on cosmic eddies to carry this impetus  of love and affection through The Universe unbound by time.

I honor and respect the circles of life, of time and of water, nutrients, energy, all of it, but the circle of our own days is as far as many of us need to go to find a time-signature of life that resonates with our soul. Birthdays, or Birth Moons are often a great time to plant trees, especially if you were born in Spring or Fall. October is usually a busy time for tree planting and spreading seeds. The time signature of this form of give back might take twenty or thirty years to mature, but millions of collateral benefits will accrue to all humans and animals who inhabit the environment while the benefit increases.

Harmony can be seen by others, but can only be felt by individuals, mine comes from honoring and respecting the cusp during which I made my first appearance in the world. One show stopped and mine started during the Cuban Missile Crisis, so many years ago. Each year my transformation has been as complete as caterpillar to butterfly, although not in a physical way. One year I saw clearly a triad of competing interests, another I was deeply and profoundly changed forever by friends who were deeply worthy of respect, another year it was the death of the "savior" that I had felt the need to become. Each October, my costuming of that person I call myself, has released another part of me, taking a rightful place amongst the discarded images that fail to capture who I truly am.

Some may want to look down their noses at me for my beliefs, I will always honor the sanctity of all living things, as well as Gaia (if you want to call it that), but the realms that I take in stride are perceived as alien minefields to many, who turn off their perceptual apparatus. I cannot say for sure that I am on the "right track" but I can say truthfully that I have never felt a need for much of and many of the things that people claim as their doctrine. Many rituals and rites do for me something that would be scary to them, to me they are physically linking me to the energies of place, grounding and cleansing my perceptual apparatus. In fact, the most powerful rites which I have participated in of other "religions" were wholesale lifting of pagan traditions for their use. Especially if we have pretty much the same rites and rituals, can't we just all get along? Justice demands that we make sure not one of us gets hurt by the other cavalierly running over our rights. I will attempt to make sure that my reverie during this moon hurts no one.

The Heart Box

I have had a propensity throughout my life that borders on the miraculous. Things find me. Objects. Many of these things are of little use, but others are extremely useful and frequently border on the mystical. For instance, when I lived in downtown Green Bay, the driveway used to change phase at lead\st twice during each winter, from relatively firm frozen dirt to mud and back again when it either dried out or froze thoroughly. About the same time, I discovered an old hippie commune that I spent time at when I was a child, was being torn down. They had a spring house that was getting buried under fill dirt and so I rescued enough stone slabs from the foundation to pave the driveway.

When I felt the need to make movies, a camera and editing equipment came to me.

When I was a child, we used to do scavenger hunts through the neighborhood, asking for simple things like a rubber band or paper clip. These events always found me to be the first one back with all my items, relishing my good fortune. As one finds relatively quickly, the abundance that can come with this sort of luck is both a blessing and a curse. I kept every stainless steel toaster that came my way for several years. Toaster ovens, toasters and electric rotisserie units seemed to be attracted to me and I covered a wall with them, making quirky retro art of them.

Recently, however, I'm finding that this abundance is worthless if not shared. Like with the electric appliance art, without giving it all away, these objects hold no intrinsic value. For many years, I found silverware. For over a decade before that it was rubber baby doll parts. When I first got to Green Bay, I was amazed at the number of single shoes that I would find, just laying in the street. I often wondered what event, or events led up to someone deciding to jettison just one shoe from their life on a random city street.

Two consecutive years in a row, on Memorial Day Weekend, I found sleeping bags in the same spot along the highway. And several times, while walking, I have found dollars, or fives, once even a twenty. Dumb luck you may say, but when you live a blessed life as I have you know that something larger than mere luck is at work. I have found white gold rings, which were eventually stolen from me, my own lost wedding ring (actually a friend found that one, in one of his garden beds that I had helped him till up the previous fall.) A tiny key fob with only two keys on it in a pile of rocks we had made on the shore of Lake Michigan. I have found two boats, three bikes, two guitars and countless tools, food and materials, just left to rot, blown away or otherwise left for trash. Useful things that have enriched both my life and the lives of countless others.

I do not lack much, except cash, but these things that come to me are either made immediately useful of they go into what I call the heart box. You may have a heart box yourself, but if you do not, I encourage you to start one. These things that go into one are your gifts or blessings. Things that have come to you, often unsolicited that come in abundance but only have value when given away. I'm not talking about cobbing every lighter that you ever touch so that you can have a lighter stash and give them away and the point is not to go buy a bunch of useless crap that you can give away. If you pay attention, there are things that you can share all around and nearly at every turn if you allow yourself to "see" and look for opportunities to share. I love to make wine, but if I were to drink as much as I make, not only my life would be negatively impacted, but so too the lives of those I come in contact with. Sharing my abundance allows me to do what I like to do and enrich the lives of others who in turn may not have had the resources to make their own wine.

Remember, no abundance has inherent value, until it is given away.

Slow Start to the New Year

2011 has brought tremendous change to my world. As busy as I have been, it has been hard to spend any time writing and I'm missing this form of expression more than I thought I might. I thought I had come away from 2010 without having to sit through all those This Is The Year That Was shows. You know, the ones that rehash all the major stories and deaths of the past twelve months. Strangely, I guess they just moved some of them to the New Year. I guess someone must have decided that something major might take place between Christmas and New Years.

Our family has come together to celebrate the life of our patriarch and pay our final respects to my father-in-law, Donald L. Burns of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Between his funeral, the family visits and several days of work out-of-town, the time has just flown by. There have been several newsworthy topics that I could have written about but being away from my computer has made it hard to keep up this blog. I'm sorry if there are folks who read it regularly that have been disappointed.

I have been reading a bit more lately and having great conversations with family and friends, but remarkably, the pace of life seems to have slowed for once. I hope everyone has a chance to take a deep breath and relax a bit in the new year. Blessed Be, Tony C. Saladino

Ring Out The Old, Ring In The New

We stand at a point in time when the Old Ways that deserve respect, honor and preservation are in disarray. Many generations have passed without us paying the attention required to preserve culture that arose from ways that work. Even now these ancient ways contain seeds of truth and practicality that we need at this time. Many of the really old ways have passed silently into time, without documentation, practice or the recognition they deserve. The current worship of the new is a reaction to feelings of loss that are often sub-conscious. The most evident trend toward recovery of these lost ways is the fascination with antiques and retro anything.

The point of time that we inhabit is a fulcrum between past and future. This fulcrum rests on shifting sand for many of us. The victim culture, spawned by psychobabble in the seventies, reached adolescence through constant media attention of daytime television in the eighties and nineties, now flourishes through the overuse of anti-depressants, psychoactive chemicals prescribed for children and young adults, and the rampant number of folks who cannot "feel normal" without one crutch or another. Culture, which formerly made allowances for human tragedy and actual human needs, allowing humans to grow and gain strength from the knowledge of previous generations has been eradicated. Finding our way to health, happiness, even finding a way home is now dictated by commercial interests rather than the individual, shaman, grandmother or tribal elders.

As we pass the torch to the next generations, we need to show them through our actions that there is something here worth being our best for. The planet deserves respect and compassion. Her people, no less so, need to become a focus of our attention. Not their "earning potential", not their "gross national product", not the "natural resources" that lie under their feet, in their pocketbook or over their heads. In these times, there are myriad ways to get grounded, affirm what matters and humanize our culture. I would hazard a guess that there are nearly as many ways to relocate our fulcrum to stable ground as people to traverse them. What has worked for me will most assuredly not be your path, but the realizations that have come to me because I was looking for them, and the routes that helped me find ways out of dangerous belief systems may shed light on a path that has significance for you as well.

Getting out in nature really helped me to understand what is possible, and important in this world. Seeing the profusion of life, the endless accommodation, the abiding harmony between each element, lack of malice (even in carnivores during the stalking and killing of their prey) and the endless expressions of perfection led me to see this as a possibility for human-beings as well. I jokingly tell people that the best evidence for extra-terrestrial life having made contact with humans (and interbreeding with us) is our utter inability to live as all other animals on the planet do. We need to start with the basics, creating no waste, cycling energy and nutrients rather than hoarding them. Taking our place in the web of life, instead of hacking off the threads that support our fellow inhabitants. The lofty arc of the Eagle and the skittering about of the mouse are the shorthand that allow us to remember what is truly important. Appreciation of this deep ecology has the power to change us from exploiters to co-inhabitants. We just need to slow down and pay attention.

Understanding food policies, technologies and systems that make our way of life possible has helped me to see the fallacy of "feeding the world"(through the green revolution), "higher" standards of living that supposedly come from mechanized agri-business, and the myth of increased leisure perpetrated by technocrats. Every calorie that fires our metabolism has to come from somewhere. Knowing where your calories come from might surprise you. It did me! Realizing the morally bankrupt approach that we have taken to Tobacco, Wheat, Corn, Beans, Squash, Sugar, Wheat, Meat, Milk and Eggs as well as a host of other "commodities" has changed the way that I eat and in turn has changed who I am in significant ways. A hopeful trend in this respect has been the tremendous rise of the Farm Markets, subscription farms, and the buy local movements, which honor the fact that science and technology can never find a substitute for Home-grown Tomatoes. Backyard Chickens, Victory Gardens, and Food Co-ops offer some of the surest ways to find a path to sustainability that I have found. Each of these small changes in lifestyle will teach us volumes about how to care for people and the earth, respect natures cycles, and discover a path toward a future that we can be proud of and that matters.

Looking at our housing choices and commercial buildings has taught me a great deal about our estrangement from the earth, her people, and the communities that we destroy in the pursuit of the almighty dollar. More importantly, it has shown a way to a sustainable future as well. It seems that everyone wants the perfect view. Regardless of where the sun rises and sets in relation to the house or where the cold winter winds come from. If you drive through the countryside, look at old buildings compared to newer ones. The greatest number of passive solar homes (having most of their windows facing South) were built in the early nineteen thirties. Have we forgotten that when we need the heat of the sun it is winter and in our hemisphere, that means that the sun is low in the Southern sky? Massive East, or West-facing windows assure our addiction to summer cooling as well. When a lifestyle based on what matters is achieved, one finds that there is much more need for a small window with a nice view over the kitchen sink. My grandmother knew this, her grandmother knew it as well. When did we forget this basic human need? What we love most about Frank Lloyd Wright was his ability to blur the lines between inside and out. To invite nature into the home and blend human lives with their environment. This urge, rather than being new, is universal and has been with humans since the dawn of time. This urge can be the impetus needed to rebirth a culture of nature-loving people who respect one another and the planet.

Even our relationship to water can offer clues to who we once were are and who we have become. A dear friend of mine only drinks Fiji Water. Another only drinks Perrier. My protestations have, thus far, remained unheeded. Back in the seventies, I told people that one day, water would come in single serving bottles and cost more than soda-pop. For this, I was ridiculed, labeled crazy, and scoffed at. Now, at a theater where I work, they charge four dollars per 16.9 oz. I recently purchased a caffeine and sugar laced beverage for $3 per two liters! (four times as much liquid for 25% less cost!) Is it any wonder that our bodies, in fact, are mostly water, yet we cannot grasp where our water comes from, it's quality, true cost or value? Long ago I became obsessed with trying to find clean water to drink that would not exacerbate certain health problems that I had been experiencing. City water was definitely out, because of the Chlorine. The last thing my body needed was to be sterilized by the residual chlorination process that would take place by imbibing the essential fluid.

My city water comes from Lake Michigan, thirty miles away, requiring massive electric pumps to raise it out of the lake and over the Niagra Escarpment. Since I first researched it, contaminants that had not been developed yet have made their way into that source anyway, so unless you want a micro-dose of everything from heart medication, birth controll pills and Viagra to psychoactive drugs, anti psychotic drugs and a variety of other pills, City Water here is not for you anyway. Studying the various ways that we use to "clean" water was an education in and of itself. Filtration, distillation and reverse osmosis all have extreme costs associated with them. In the end, I had to resort to finding natural artesian springs, and hoping for the best when it came to farm chemicals and other pollutants. I would make a monthly sojourn to one of several sources nearby, fill several dozen glass jugs, and use that water for cooking and drinking. My health slowly began to improve.

We all rely on Earth, Air, Fire, Water & Spirit. This is elementary. I have taken the bold step, some say it is crazy, to expect my life-support system to be clean, abundant, and protected. In this period of time, perhaps it is unreasonable to expect these things as a birthright. My desire is that in the future, rather than seeming to be ridiculous, these things again become normal. Our gifts from the Great Spirit have been defiled to the point of not being recognizable to the "primitive" cultures who once enjoyed them in a non-threatening way. In modern times we have forgotten that one person's freedom ends where another person's nose begins. My needs need never impinge on another's right to be happy, healthy or well-cared for. As we enter the new year, please put to bed the useless tools of oppression. We can no longer be distracted by the fallout of hatred, misogyny, misunderstanding, misplaced trust in the "powers that be", fallacies such as "boys will be boys" or the endless toil of "keeping up with the Jones' ". Use this time to re-kindle the spark of humanity that makes us social animals. Find out what really matters for yourself. Don't let me (or anyone else) make up your mind for you. Research whatever interests you, look hard and don't take anyone's word for anything. Get the facts, even though some may be hard to find or scare you to death! In the midst of all of this, don't sell yourself short, live your life as if it matters, because it truly does. Let the deep and abiding love that is evidenced by Creator through nature be mirrored in your life through actions and daily rituals that affirm life, rather than blindly tearing at the web of life on Earth. Remember, a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link. Don't cop out, all life depends on your participation in the greater scheme of things.

Climate Destabilization-Not Global Warming

We got our call from Texas on Christmas this past week.
Houston was 31 F, here in Green Bay, Wisconsin we were at 39 degrees. In the hours leading up to the phone call, the news was reporting nearly two feet of snow in Texas, but here, in the hours before the phone call, many hundreds of miles North, we had received two inches of rain. The topsy-turvey world was participating in Saturnalia right along with her human inhabitants! I have studied Meteorology since childhood back in the sixties. Normally, we were taught that High and Low pressure cells were relatively small, compared to today where we have had a few in the past few years that cover the entire continent. We also learned that cells of relatively low pressure were almost always interspersed with cells of relatively high pressure. This is not the case anymore. Recently there have been more and more ridges of pressure that align several low pressure cells in groups, but no highs to speak of.
Wacky yes, unpredicted, no. Climate destabilization was the name for the effect, even before Ronnie Reagan gort into office. The term Global Warming was used successfully to obscure reality. It sounds good to me too, but the truth is more troubling. The Climate has changed. What we are experiencing is aberrant. The question now is how do you plan for and adapt to constant change? Hotter, drier, wetter, colder, windier, etc. we will all face this together and it is past time to decide together what we are going to do about it. Like the alcoholic in denial, we get mad, point fingers, act like there is no problem, but the facts keep staring us in the face. Luckily, one of the things in our corner is all life's ability to adapt. Let us hope evolution will aid us in our change, but also let us get the words right in spite of the the global media interests that want us to remain uneducated consumers with an insatiable apetite for business as usual.