because my son has listening logs for music class and i get to help him pick out songs to write about

with a teacher he is convinced is a fascist dictator of art and music. so much so that he is sure he can only make "state approved" art and listen to "state approved" music in school. now, i don't know about that exactly perhaps fascist dictator is too harsh. frau director? but i do know she has talked to me about his objecting to singing the star spangled banner and the national anthem and how the only other kid who wouldn't sing it was a jehovah's witness, and tbh she kinda sneered when she said it. she also made terrible remarks about fat people. rude inappropriate remarks that had nothing to do with the subject i was asking her about. maybe i should just try and skip talking to her. can i get a witness?








gil scott-heron



nina simone



billy bragg, who uh well i don't have problems with his politics, or rather more specifically that he is a commie. but generally anarchist and communists have a pretty long history of uh, division (see spanish civil war c. 1939. when it didn't work out so well for the anarchist. but we had one good year there.)



sigh. woody guthrie.

and a personal favorite. ahhh...to be young.







the redskins










"he who bleeps nuns will later join the church" greatest song lyrics ever.



the clash. no better band. and because i have both an insane family and a family that rocks (all in the same two or three people...) the clash prolly had the greatest influence on my life of any band. they made me who i am and got me though the years of hell known as high school. and for someone like me that's saying a lot.



"the british army is waiting out there..." maybe today it would be the american army, in almost any other country. which remind me of the billions of dollars the air force is asking for to pay for the
f-22 a loverly airplane THAT HAS NEVER BEEN USED IN COMBAT. but was created to prove american military air superiority during the cold war and has yet to be ended. but if we don't pay for even more of the the airplanes lockheed martin will go out of business the hawks cry. hmmm. perhaps there is a different kind of economy we can create? a different
kind of world?

but i digress.

and finally, i think, because i really really like the video that the poster set up with this song...

This month all the sales from my little etsy store go to help rescue

an Italian miniature donkey found near my dads house. This poor little guy is the lucky one. He survived. His pen mate and life long friend didn't. His pen mate starved to death as a result of being in their corral without feed or water for several weeks. there are pictures in my flickr site of these two wonderful healthy donkeys when we were staying with my dad over the summer. TThe pictures are very safe and not at all of the sick animal he is now. but as he was a wonderful healthy donkey.

The cost of special feed and medical care for this wonderful being is outrageous. I have adopted him although my dad is physically caring for him and he will be joining the herd of donkeys that my dad cares for.
Here is the whole story. beware. it is painful.

Today a man came buy my dad's house and was saying you gotta get to that ranch by woman's name removed. One of those Italian donkeys is starved to death and the other one is about to go. the man whose ranch house it was moved to Florida and left the donkeys in their pen. To starve to death.s o my dad takes the miniature donkey, this beautiful Italian donkey, bred for working in the mines in Italy. He emails the guy (who I think has a special place in hell just for him and had better fucking not ever speak to me while I'm in my dads town cos I will be very mean to him.)
So the emails are:
My Dad:
Do you still own the house and land in Marathon? The brown donkey has been dead for about a week- name changed told me today that he saw it yesterday walking his dogs. The gray one is looking real rough, I jumped the fence just now and gave it a little hay. With your permission I will take it up to my place and put it on special feed until it gets some flesh back. I really wish you would have asked me to check on them. Who was responsible for feeding them? Not one blade of grass in their pen, even the chollas (native cactus, nothing would eat the cactus except if it was starving to death.) gnawed at. Please let me know if it is OK to try to nurse the grey one back to shape. my dad's name.

Guy who is going to hell: Please take, I guess no one I asked checked on them. Thanks Name removed

My Dad: I'll get him on feed again starting tonight. His gums return to color well so he isn't going to need a vet, but his hips don't have any flesh and the ribs and spinal processes are evident to the touch WHO was supposed to be feeding them?

Guy who is going to hell: I appreciate it. I don't think it will do any good to point any fingers. I guess there was some communication problems. I feel like shit this happened. I had about four different people checking on them. No one appears to have done it. What the story with you and your donkeys? What's your plans? I'll be out next month. Thanks my dad

My Dad: Mine are thriving on my own place, new barn and fences. I will take the little guy up there tomorrow morning, I have some therapeutic feed I can start him out on. Pointing fingers is exactly what I would like to do here. I am very tempted to say: "tell me the names of the irresponsible persons that did this, before the sheriff and reporter get here at ten AM tomorrow". that's just how I feel about it.

Me talking now, which is what i think he should do. My dad called yesterday afternoon, right after this all happened to ask if I had any money. I am sending what I have. And I am setting up a sale on my etsy store. All the profits to go this baby donkey. So it can stay alive. I don't know what else to do. I am so so so upset. So um pray for this donkey? please? or do a dance? or hmmm.. light candles, move clouds whatever it is you do? please? I am upset about the whole thing, they ate cactus to try to keep from dying. So I am adopting the donkey and if my dad can't find out its given name he is going to name it after me. ftr the donkey is staying with my dad and his herd of donkey's NOT moving to my house. He has a wonderful pen, huge! And a whole donkey family for this lil thing to recover with.

a handmade holiday

i worked for weeks and weeks on having a handmade holiday. the link is a couple of things i made for the kidlets, the book of spells is for my kidlet for his birthday. ftr he loved it! i also gave him a rune stone set (handmade) and several other things. this was an incredible way to gift loved ones with something special. instead of spending money i dont actually have or having to save up for months to spend it all at the holiday (i dont use nor do i have credit cards) i saved up time and creativity. felt quite good too.

i have several toher things i need to take pictures of but just havent gotten around to it. i made conditioning and coloring hair oil, bath salts, bath oil, lower back rice packs, loverly cloth crowns with button jewels, recycled wool slippers, recycled wool arm warmers, and a couple of other things.

if you care about handmade products, family business, kids and the ability of the economy to improve

go here, vote for this. i am not a eloquent writer and will not pain you with pages of reasons you should do this. i will say today is a special birthday and i am taking time away from that to post this. because i want to be able to make a living, i want the mostly women, i know to continue to financially support their families i voted for this http://www.change.org/ideas/view/save_handmade_toys_from_the_cpsia

and this: http://www.handmadetoyalliance.org/it-s-not-just-toys

thanks so much!

these are just a couple of items available from mayamade.etsy.com

MayaMade products
Originally uploaded by mayamade

on the left side of the photo is knight ian's dream herbs. knight ian was given the recipe for these sleeping herbs after he thoughtfully helped a young dragon from an evil wizard. it was an epic adventure. if you order these herbs you childs' name will be used to tell this tale. this wonderful story is written to be gender neutral. using either a fairy princess, forest friend, or a knight, your choice, as the star. printed on fine paper and suitable for framing.
thanks for looking, maya.

the first entry in this blog is something i stole borrowed from frog

75 books i have (or in my case haven't) read, a couple on the original list i removed and replaced with other books i love. one by emma goldman, who was truly an individual. some of these books i wont ever read. some i have read a 100 times.

* The Lottery (and Other Stories), Shirley Jackson

* To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

* The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton

* White Teeth, Zadie Smith

* The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende

* Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion

* Excellent Women, Barbara Pym

* The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

* Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys

* The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri

* Beloved, Toni Morrison

* Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

* Like Life, Lorrie Moore

* Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

* Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

* our bodies, ourselves, the boston women's collective

* A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley

* A Good Man Is Hard To Find (and Other Stories), Flannery O'Connor

* The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx

* You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down, Alice Walker

* Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston

* To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

* Fear of Flying, Erica Jong

* Earthly Paradise, Colette

* Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt

* Property, Valerie Martin

* Middlemarch, George Eliot

* Annie John, Jamaica Kincaid

* The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir

* Runaway, Alice Munro

* The Heart is A Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers

* The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston

* Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

* You Must Remember This, Joyce Carol Oates

* Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

* Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill

* The Liars' Club, Mary Karr

* I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou

* A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith

* And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie

* Bastard out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison

* The Secret History, Donna Tartt

* The Little Disturbances of Man, Grace Paley

* The Portable Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Parker

* The Group, Mary McCarthy

* Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi

* The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing

* The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne Frank

* Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

* Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag

* In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez

* The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck

* Fun Home, Alison Bechdel

* Three Junes, Julia Glass

* A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft

* Sophie's Choice, William Styron

* Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann

* Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford

* living my life, emma goldman

* The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin

* The Red Tent, Anita Diamant

* The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

* The Face of War, Martha Gellhorn

* My Antonia, Willa Cather

* Love In The Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

* The Harsh Voice, Rebecca West

* Spending, Mary Gordon

* The Lover, Marguerite Duras

* The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

* Tell Me a Riddle, Tillie Olsen

* Nightwood, Djuna Barnes

* Three Lives, Gertrude Stein

* Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons

* I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith

* Possession, A.S. Byatt

for the record i do actually read a lot. just not those tomes (no, i didn't just learn that word either) i read books about psychology, anatomy, physiology, aromatherapy, herbalism, arts and crafts, and for a little fun very good mysteries. now i am re-reading the lord of the rings six pack. its going well actually. oh and occasionally i read books on the care and feeding of children, guinea pigs, family, friends and dogs.