another performance under my belt

Well, well, well..Ms. Strega has completed another performance with my troupe, Dancers of the Crescent Moon, today in San Jose. This was held at Hoover High, next to the Rosicrucian Museum. Click on the link to see last year's picture of the troupe; we posed at the Rosicrucian Museum (there are three pictures of me, but I leave you to guess at them). This year has been particularly challenging for me because I elected to do the "floor work" with the troupe's sword dance. This involves basically gliding down to the floor, onto my knees, doing a couple of balancing moves, then literally lying down on my stomach (in basically what would be termed in yoga the Sphinx position), and rolling all the way over, a full body roll with the sword still balanced on my head the whole time. There's no gimmick to keeping the sword on--it sure ain't glued there; it's all done with balance, and is so taxing physically that I am often out of breath after doing this dance. The problem is getting my costume arranged so I can roll over gracefully--the belt to the costume is a major arrangement of tassels and it is extremely bulky when it gets underneath me. Mr. Strega said I looked a little awkward today for a moment or two because I was trying to maneuver around my tassel belt. Ah, well, c'est la vie. My adventures in dance are sure a far cry from making annotated bibliographies in grad school all those many years ago (actually, I liked making the annotated bibliography).

I am happy to say that I am making more leeeway into a difficult part of The Strega's Story and, like putting patches together for a quilt, I feel that it is all starting to come together. Isabel Allende once said that a book is never finished; the writer just gives up....I think that's sort of how it feels for me.

I wanted to take a moment and express my gratitude to my faithful readers--I like to do this periodically because I am very grateful that people come here to read these words, as non-earth-shattering as my daily life really is. It keeps me coming back here to record my thoughts, knowing that perhaps what I say might be of interest to someone else. So thank you!

review of Lover of Unreason on Blogcritics

Not to be a shameless self-promoter, but click on the link if you wish to read my rather long review of Lover of Unreason for Blogcritics. It was a really difficult book to review, and I didn't feel I went quite to the depths I wanted to go with it...but I'm still new at this. God knows, I have plenty of books in the household library to review.

Not much else to report around Stregaville, except the usual nuts-and-bolts life of writing. I have promised myself I will not buy Seasons 1-9 of the X-files until my book is done (or else I'll disappear into la-la land and never come out). It is a good carrot in front of the old nag. I had a marvelous couple of writing hours in downtown Santa Cruz today, at Gelatomania (I highly recommend this place, as the weird smell from the oxygen bar seems to be under control now--they have great music, free wireless, and good food. I wrote nearly fifty pages of my book there a summer ago, in the breezeway outside).


And so it goes....

I Promise

I want to tell the world that I will refrain from doing the following things until my book is done and sent to the person who has been waiting with the patience of Job for the manuscript:

1) I, Ms. Strega, will NOT buy the full set of Seasons 1-9 of the X-files from Ebay, for it will become a major distraction. I did not have cable when the show was in prime-time, as I've said before here, so I missed lots of episodes and when my son Riff described the last show to me, I thought he was kidding. I WILL fork over cold, hard cash the second my book is in the mail and immerse myself for awhile in nostaliga for the days of Mulder and Scully.

2) I hereby swear that, though our regular desktop Internet computer is down, I will NOT surrender my Macbook to those who wish to get on the Internet every five freaking minutes to look at Myspace. This puts me on the level of Captain Bligh at times, but I have to get some work done. They can wait until I am done.

3) I will NOT let every household crisis blow to bits my ability to get something done for my writing every day, even if it's just a page in my journal.

It takes so much

Pink Umbrella Man: The Movie!

For those of you who would like a bit of diversion from the recent news full of diapered astronauts in love and speculation as to what led to poor Anna Nicole Smith's untimely death, and for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about when I discuss my friend Robert the Pink Umbrella Man, click on the above for the blockbuster YouTube film about him, the scintillating, yet strangely misspelled, "Inigma in Pink."

Robert, whom I actually like (occasionally, he'll have a short conversation with me--he's a very nice person and always waves at me and says hi, though I have to say hi first), was in his "shrugging" phase at the time of this movie. That is, if I asked him how his day was going, he'd shrug. My Peets writing-and-Russian Caravan -tea experience on Wednesdays in Santa Cruz (if there's ever a seat) would truly not be the same without his smile. My son Riff knows Robert quite well, as Riff goes to school near downtown Santa Cruz, and Robert told him that he didn't create the myspace account which the movie discusses. But you never know if Robert is just being mysterious, as he is, after all, the "Inigma in Pink!"

So relax and enjoy the show (and remember, if you see Robert walking along, be nice to him, because he's a kind and gentle soul, and he cheers a lot of folks up around our humble town).

Lost in Space: Lisa Nowak

I have to admit that I am a rather peripheral follower of space shuttle missions. I tend to find myself hoping that all goes well and nothing bad happens on these missions, as I have lived through two shuttle disasters. However, this week, I find that I've been paying far more attention to Lisa Nowak, who was on the crew of the Discovery last July. She seemed such a bright, capable crew member, personable; pictures of her on the shuttle show her sitting like a genie in zero gravity, a huge smile on her face, her joy at being on a shuttle mission so apparent.

All I can say about her latest appearance in the news is, "What happened?" and "Was this guy worth ruining your life and career?" Apparently, on Monday, February 5th, after driving 900 miles from Houston to Orlando, Lisa Nowak confronted Colleen Shipman, an apparent rival for the affections of a fellow astronaut, spraying her with pepper spray in a remote parking lot. Law enforcement speculated that there is a highly reasonable certainty that Nowak was going to kill Shipman, based on the fact that Nowak was carrying, among other things, pepper spray, a steel mallet, a buck knife, and rubber tubing in a duffel bag. Nowak has been released on bail, is now subject to a restraining order, is wearing a GPS ankle monitor, and has lost custody (I believe temporarily) of her three children. Unbelievably, during her 900-mile drive, Nowak peed into diapers so she wouldn't have to stop and make a bathroom break (she was determined to meet Shipman's plane and "talk to her" about her relationship with the other astronaut). Apparently, astronauts on the Shuttle are accustomed to using adult diapers during launch, re-entry, and on spacewalks. This has been made fun of in a lot of the media, but I find this detail strange and sad, an emblem of this woman's plummet from mission specialist on the shuttle to a crazed mission of her own devising.

It's very hard to connect the two pictures I keep seeing of Nowak--her official NASA portrait, where she looks healthy, fit, bright-eyed, radiant, the very picture of physical and mental health, and her arrest photos, where she looks like she's been on a meth run (I am not saying she was doing meth--she just looks so physically wasted, like those horrible "Faces of Meth" pictures on law enforcement websites, with stick arms and a drawn, pinched face, and dull eyes--she literally looks fifteen years older than her NASA portrait). The physical change in just a few months--Nowak was on the shuttle crew in July 2006--makes me wonder if she's had some sort of bizarre manic episode.

None of these speculations excuses Nowak's actions, though--she certainly terrorized the other woman, and I think the charges Nowak is facing are highly appropriate. Still, I wonder about ongoing mental illness in this case, maybe some incipient problem finally triggered by the stresses of the shuttle mission, the letdown after coming back to Earth and ordinary life (that must be a huge adjustment), and Nowak's recent breakup with her husband.

I go back and forth between the two pictures of this woman, so bright and accomplished-looking in one, so sad and dull-eyed in the other, and just wonder about what has been going on in her mind since her shuttle mission. I find myself being shocked by her crime on one hand, and also hoping that she will get some sort of treatment for whatever is troubling her--because I don't think that just being scorned by some guy is the real problem here. I guess I still have a naive picture of astronauts being a lot stronger and more "together" somehow that most folks, but I suppose they can break down like the rest of us. This is a tragic example on all sides of the story.

McClish trial set for April

Michael McClish, Asha Veil's coworker at the Ben Lomond Market who was arrested on unrelated rape charges ,
will go to trial on April 2nd. The current story is in the Valley Press; you might find that the link seems broken when you click it, but the pages are still searchable and the story is on Page 4 in the index. I found it interesting that some documents relating to the Asha Veil case are being considered by Judge Salazar as to their relevance for this case.

I hope something moves soon towards at least some closure or explanation in this terribly sad story. I know that some of Asha's friends and family visit this site for information and I promise to write about it as much as I can, though I frankly have had little to work with so far in the last couple of months. Something will happen, though--I believe the truth really will come out because to think otherwise will feel terrible and discouraging to me at this point. There are unsolved murders out there and people who never come to justice, but I believe still that there will be justice in this case.

Molly Ivins

Molly Ivins has died after a courageous battle with cancer. She had, to say the least, a life fully, richly, and loudly lived. We need more people like her, willing to speak up, to shout, to use humor as a wake-up call. I will miss her terribly. I liked the Washington Post's article on her passing, and have included it here.

Not much else happening around the Ponderosa, except that I am about to put the finishing rows on a pair of fingerless gloves and wrote four pages into my book yesterday--a very simple couple of days, but the weather in Santa Cruz was golden and bright yesterday, Pink Umbrella Man said hello to me as he always does (it is like some kind of strange pink cosmic timing that he always is strolling by Peets on Wednesdays just as I am going in to do my Morning Pages), and life seemed good in that way which I really can't name--nothing really spectacular happening, just a day where things seemed serene and good.