But I’ve found some good things online during my time away from here, so I thought I’d share.

As you may know by now if you’re a regular visitor to this blog, I’m deeply interested in both J.R.R. Tolkien and Carl G. Jung, so I was delighted to find some lectures at Gnosis Archive about both, sometimes even mentioned together.

J.R.R. Tolkien: An Imaginative Life is a series of three lectures by Dr. Lance Owens in which he covers Tolkien’s biography including a bit about his experiences with the Silmaril, and even goes into a little Tolkienian analysis of Jung (as opposed to the other way around). I found this series positively fascinating. Not to mention, the drawing on the linked page (if you scroll down) that Tolkien titled “End of the World” reminds me of a Tarot card, namely the Fool card in the Rider Waite Smith. Although Tolkien drew it in 1912, just three years after the RWS was published, I suspect that Tolkien came up with the image independently. He seems to have spent a lot of time tapping into the Collective Unconscious, before Jung even had a chance to apply that name to it. In fact the drawing reminds me of Jung’s description of “dropping down” in order to engage in Active Imagination, which Jung didn’t write about until at least 1913 and then only in his Red Book, which wasn’t available to the public until last year. Of course in the interim Jung wrote about Active Imagination in his published writings, but not before Tolkien came up with the drawing and, it seems, did some Active Imagination of his own.

Various synchronous connections between these two men have left me pondering long before I came across these lectures. One that stands out is that Jung created his Red Book as a result of his experiences with Active Imagination and a guide he called Philemon, and in Tolkien’s fiction, which he created as a result of his own wanderings in another realm, he mentions a Red Book of West March that contains the history of many Middle-Earth people (Hobbits) and their adventures.

Another lecture series, or rather one long lecture broken into three parts, that I’ve enjoyed is Stephan Hoeller’s C.G. Jung and The Red Book.

In between other things I’ve also been continuing my reading of the John the Lord Chamberlain mystery series by Mary Reed and Eric Mayer. I’m now near the end of book six, Six for Gold. These are great fun to read when I need a break from heavy hitters like Jung and others who, although they have a lot to say, can take some doing for me to assimilate, especially late at night when my brain is tired, which is when I tend to read.

We’ve also had a sick friend to take care of. Our black cat Raven became quite ill with a serious infection a few weeks ago. He’s been on antibiotics and forced feeding since then, a little over three weeks, and this has taken a lot of our time and energy. He’s gradually recovering, but we’re still uncertain what the outcome will be when he comes off antibiotics, so we’re just hoping and doing the best we can for our little friend. He is finally eating a little on his own and acting more like a normal cat again, so we are more and more hopeful for his full recovery.

Recently I’ve been enjoying seeing the Big DIpper hanging from its handle in the northern sky at night, but last night Ken noticed something odd in the western sky, a kind of brilliant planet with a tail, and today I came across an article explaining what it was – a close alignment of four planets, Saturn, Mars, Venus and Mercury. It should be visible again tonight, and if you go out to take a look be sure to look for the Perseids too.

One for Sorrow begins with a rowdy May festival commemorating the founding of the Empire’s capitol. The public entertainment includes a trained bear and a lovely female bull leaper who reminds John, Lord Chamberlain to Emperor Justinian, uncannily of a former lover. The evening’s continuing street revelry results eventually in the escape of the bear. In the chaos that follows, John finds his friend Leukos dead in a back alley near a house of ill repute. John is ordered by Emperor Justinian to investigate the death, since Leukos was the Emperor’s Keeper of the Plate and he appears to have been murdered.

John questions his friend Isis who operates the brothel, as well as an innkeeper with a shrewish wife, a knight from King Arthur’s court on a Grail quest, a stylite or “pillar saint” living on top of a column, and the ancient wandering soothsayer who was consulted by the victim shortly before his death. John even looks up the beautiful bull leaper, partly to satisfy his curiosity and partly to appease his young friend Anatolius who declared he was in love with her at first glance. When the Emperor abruptly calls off the investigation, John, for reasons of his own, continues his sleuthing against the Emperor’s wishes, risking the emperor’s deadly wrath.

All these colorful characters and scenes are wrought in realistic and believable detail. Interwoven are John’s reminiscences of his years as a mercenary, his enslavement and subsequent mutilation (John is a eunuch), as well as his grief for his lost relationship with a Cretan woman.

I found myself identifying with John, and I found the story line intriguing, with just enough historical detail to keep me turning pages and looking forward to my nightly forays into Byzantium. I especially liked the way the authors handled the conflicting belief systems, the early Christian church with its internal dissent and imperfect leaders as well as followers, and the outlawed but persistent paganism. All in all, this is a fascinating mystery. I was impressed with the interweaving of the various story lines, and the care the authors took to do careful research without weighing down the story with unnecessary material or emasculating its fictional elements (John’s condition notwithstanding). It held my interest and kept me in suspense to the harrowing climax, all the while feeling as if I was there in that distant time and place, uncertain what would happen next, but also with a little time to explore the scenery. The pace was very well balanced in that regard, which made this a fun read for me, in which I could savor each chapter.

As an added bonus, the book includes a glossary in the back with helpful historical details that aren’t necessary for enjoyment of the story, but are nice to have. There’s also a map of sixth century Constantinople in the front.

While I highly recommend One For Sorrow, I want to point out that it was only the first in a series of eight mysteries so far. I’ve read a couple in the series now, and the other, Four For A Boy, was every bit as good. The eighth book in the series, Eight for Eternity, is available now (see the Amazon link in the first paragraph above or visit your favorite bookstore), and I was very tempted to read that before this one. After all, it got a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, and my experience with two of the series titles so far convinces me that these are readable and enjoyable in any order. So if you’re anxious to delve into the latest first, I doubt you’ll be disappointed.

If you’re interested in this series and its authors, you might also find their web site fun: Mary Reed & Eric Mayer. You can also find a link to Eric’s Byzantine Blog in the right margin blog list here.

One For Sorrow
Mary Reed and Eric Mayer
Poisoned Pen Press 1999
ISBN 1890208426

I’ve been busy, but with what I’m at a loss to tell you. I have not been writing, not fiction at least. I have become somewhat addicted to Facebook and at least one game there. If I’m spending a lot of time there, though, I would have to blame it more on their slow site than on avid interest in what’s on offer, except for keeping in touch with some special people, and well, yeah, workin’ my farm. Ahem. My name is Barbara and I am a FarmVille addict.

I’ve been reading a little. Right now I’m in the middle of The Interpretation of Fairy Tales by Marie-Louise von Franz. Before that I enjoyed Sepulchre by Kate Mosse.

I started knitting a pair of socks.

But spring is here, and it’s so beautiful outdoors that one can’t help but spend a lot of time gazing out windows when indoors, or being outdoors enjoying our spring weather. The hooded orioles arrived in from Mexico in March this year. March! I don’t remember them ever being here so early. The weeds arrived early, as usual, with our several deluges of rain late in the season. Flowers, flowers everywhere, and birds. We’ve spotted a goldfinch or two. A pair of red-tailed hawks honored us with a close encounter a few days ago. Raven (the black cat) added a few more head counts to his distinction in the neighborhood as a gopher hunter. It’s a ghastly business, killing gophers, but as a result of his eradication efforts my poppies aren’t getting eaten as soon as they bloom. Aloe vera blooms, in a spray of soft orange flowers, outside the nearest window as I write this, and hummingbirds hover frequently there to take sips of nectar. This is way too much distraction from blogging for me. But I’ll try to return here sooner next time.

It’s a strange feeling when both your parents have passed, a kind of changing of the guard between generations. And yet, immersed in memories at the moment, in many ways I still feel like a child.

I think my parents were two very lucky people to get to be together so long, and they gave lots of love to others, especially their children, their grandchildren, and great grandchildren, as well as foster children they cared for before their own came along. They lived most of their married life in California, except for several years in Oregon, where my three older siblings were born, and a few weeks that I barely remember in Arizona. Our vacations when I was young were road trips, with my dad at the wheel.

For most of his working life, in fact, my dad was a truck driver, mostly driving cement mixers. Concrete lasts quite some time, so it’s possible there are remnants of his work remaining all over parts of Oregon and Southern California. But the most important legacies he leaves behind are the memories that we, his offspring, family, and friends, hold dear.

In 2006 I wrote my dad a Father’s Day letter that touched him so much he read it to numerous people, including his and my sister’s dentist. That’s the kind of guy he was. He had friends everywhere.

I’m sharing that letter below, along with a photo I took of my dad at a family reunion in 2007. (As usual, click on the thumbnail image for a larger view.)

In remembrance:

Dear Dad,

Some of my earliest memories are of waking up on cold mornings in Oregon in the secure knowledge that you already had a fire going, that you’d ventured into the cold morning before anyone else to warm up the house. Then there were those fish ponds that froze over one winter, and the big aquarium in the living room.

Fish. Fish dinners. Fishing. Pictures of family members and friends with fish they’d caught all lined up on the front lawn. Wading in a river to fish. Standing on a pier to fish. Waiting under a full moon for the grunion to run.

I remember drives, too. Lots of long drives to places I never would’ve seen any other way. Stopping by the side of the road sometimes to sleep with eighteen-wheelers whining past in the dark. Mattresses on the floors of motel rooms, long freight trains keeping us awake. Watching the road out the window in the upper bunk of the camper. The other day I saw a DVD player for kids to use in a car, and I felt sorry for any kids who don’t just look out the window and actually see where they’re going. Watch a movie while Dad drives? But there’s so much of the world to see out a car or camper window.

Fishing. The fire fall at Yosemite. Weekends in the desert at Red Hill or Salton Sea. Camping in the redwoods and listening for bears at night. Almost getting struck by lightning in Cuyamaca, but not, because somehow Dad knew. Finding wild roses growing along a creek. Attempting to camp with a cat. The night at Virginia Creek, after a day spent fishing, when we heard the rumble of a big herd of dusty sheep that came down to drink, then rumbled away leaving another cloud of dust and muddy water. Succulent fresh trout for dinner outdoors. Fishing.

I wrote a book in which a man whose son had died regretted that he hadn’t fished more with his son. That’s certainly not a worry in our family. We did lots of fishing. Funny thing is, in all those years I don’t think I caught a single fish—but I sure had a good time.

Thank you for giving me so many pleasant childhood memories.

It’s been a good Saturday to spend indoors watching DVDs, even though there was work to do in the yard. (Yeah, right.) Right now I’m watching “The Kid” again and wondering why Lily Tomlin hasn’t made more movies. She’s the best part of this one.

We’ve been lucky, with fairly bearable weather most of the summer until now, so I don’t have all that much to complain about — provided this heatwave ends soon. Please?

From Botticelli to Rembrandt, many people before me have felt driven to seek out a higher power responsible for flowers, and to give thanks. Rembrandt painted his Floras as plump women who appear pregnant. Others have painted her with one bare breast. Always she’s surrounded by or bedecked with flowers.

Botticelli’s Flora (above) looks a bit gaunt to me, and worried. Does she fear Mellona will be late sending the bees this year? (Mellona was the Romans’ name for the protector of bees.) Flora needn’t worry if she’s in my neighborhood. The bees are out in force, ecstatically worshiping flowers all over the place.

Note: The photo of the bee is by Jon Sullivan and made available by him to the public domain via PD Photo.org. Thank you, Jon! Thanks to Wikipedia, too.

Our home office is in the second bedroom, where we’ve removed the closet doors and added storage shelves. As soon as she was big enough to jump that high, Tara began insisting that one particular spot, on a shelf at about my eye level, was hers. She started pushing things out of the way, and wouldn’t leave it alone. Finally I gave in and cleared a space for her. (The shelf doesn’t really sag, that’s a trick of the lens.)

She’s asleep there right now, so shhh!

Cats always know their place. Humans can only get out of the way.

Thanks to Sarah for the post prompt.

I would’ve titled this post with the name of the actual festival we had here in town today, except that I’m going to criticize it a little bit, and I don’t want to cast a shadow over that particular event for any locals who otherwise enjoy it. My criticism isn’t about just our Avocado Festival.

The positive side is, I’m eating a strawberry. That’s always a good thing. In fact, I’m rich today, with three little baskets of strawberries and a good week or two’s supply of avocados. Not only that, we got some of the avocados for free, from a local business near one of the avocado packing plants. Presumably they’re cast offs from the preparation for the festival, since they aren’t very pretty ones. But they’re still delicious, and dead ripe, so I already got to enjoy some for breakfast. My favorite way to eat avocado is mashed with salt and pepper and spread on toast. Since I live with my favorite bread baker, this is the ultimate easy (for me) and delicious breakfast.

My rant is not about the immense crowd that will be there later today, even though I’m not a crowd person. I can handle crowds, and even enjoy them, in small doses. My rant is not about the local vendors who show up each year. It’s not even about the non-local vendors who show up there. After all, everybody’s got to make a buck, right? Some of the vendors are wonderful.

You can get the best local tacos, tamales, and burritos at our Avocado Festival that you’ve ever eaten, and there’s always a nice supply of fresh avocados, of course. Then there’s the standard fair fare, funnel cakes and lemonade and . . . well, the list goes on. We don’t buy most of that standard fair food, so I’m not even aware of what it all is. We usually go for the Mexican food. Some of it’s not available year round, even here, because it’s from groups or businesses that put out a special effort just for the festival. It’s a rare treat, and one of the great draws of the festival for us in the years we attend.

In the years that we attend, we’ve learned to walk there early, as soon as the booths are opening. That way we avoid the biggest crowds and the worst heat.

I’m not sure why, but the day of the Avocado Festival is always hot, even though we can get some pretty cool weather in April. Three days ago we had a high of something like 67 degrees Fahrenheit and the nighttime temp dipped into the low 40s. I wore long sleeves all day, and sometimes a sweater. Yesterday the high was over 80, and today promises to be at least that. (Update, it got up to 93 in town today!) But as usual, of those two weather patterns, the festival happens to fall on the warmer day. Or should I say the warmer day happens to fall on the festival day — the festival was planned well in advance.

Because of the heat and the larger size of the crowd later in the day, and some combination of those factors that seems to make everyone tired and cranky by afternoon, the feeling of the late day crowd changes in a way that becomes distinctly unpleasant for me. So if I don’t go early, I’m not likely to go at all. In fact, I’d just as soon the booths opened at six in the morning rather than nine.

What bothers me about the festival is now fairly universal, I suspect, to local festivals and fairs all over the country. There are very few locals selling handcrafts and artwork anymore. Many of the vendors that sell non-food and non-produce items — and some of the food vendors as well — have traveled from other places. Some of them make the rounds of, possibly, every local festival and county fair in the state, and maybe more than one state. Some are from industry, manufacturers’ representatives selling things like secure mailboxes and automatic sprinkler systems, the sorts of things you expect at home shows and trade fairs, not unique to an Avocado Festival. Some are selling manufactured clothing and home decoration items that I can buy at a department store or a swap meet. The traveling vendors have always been around, but lately they seem to be the only ones. Where are the locals? To me this trend of increasing numbers of non-local vendors is like finding the same chain restaurants everywhere you travel. That used to disappoint me when traveling on business. If there’s any perk to having to take business trips, it’s discovering local eateries that are unique to the city you’re visiting. But if you travel to another place only to eat at Outback or Chilis, you might as well have stayed home. Why go to the local festival to buy the same items that will be sold at the county fair two months from now? More importantly, why go to find items you can buy at the department or hardware store? The point of a local festival, I thought, was to find things that can be found in only one place, to celebrate that location’s unique qualities and products.

I’m glad that we still have some local businesses that sell food and a few other items there. In the years I attend, if I go early, I can pick and choose which places to visit, and I usually enjoy myself. But I miss the kinds of things we used to see more of and that I always loved festivals and fairs for: handcrafts, local artists’ work, and those really unique and unusual items that once were only found at local fairs. They seem be rare these days, almost extinct.

I’m sure there’s a reason for this. Perhaps it has to do with the process of arranging to sell at one of these events, that it’s become so business-oriented that it shuts out local artists and craftspeople. Perhaps people don’t have time anymore to make things themselves and arrange to sell them locally unless that’s their full time business. If it is their full time business, they likely have to travel from fair to fair to make it pay off year-round.

We see some of those traveling vendors selling beautiful things, like handmade herbal soaps, stunning hand-carved gourd art, and some unique pottery. It’s great stuff, and I’m glad it’s there. But, whatever the reason it’s not there, I still find the lack of local handcrafts and artwork at these events sad. I know some of the vendors hate it when I ask, “Are you from around here?” But I continue to ask. It doesn’t mean that I won’t buy what they’re selling, if I love it and can afford it. But I can’t help being more enthusiastic about finding local goods that I love at our local festival.

The only other rant I have is, where are the hats? This is the time of year our warm weather sets in. In the past I’ve arrived at the festival only to wish I’d brought a hat. I can’t be the only one. There used to be hats for sale all over the place there. I usually bought my hat there to use for yard work or walking around in the sun for any reason, because it was the right time of year and they had a nice selection for good prices. Last year I hardly saw any hats. Maybe they were there and so few that I never came across them. I hope at least the hats were back this year.

Last year, too few local handcrafts, too few hats. This year I’m not going to the festival. Can anyone connect the dots?

Maybe the real problem is that I’m not like other people who attend. Maybe most people prefer mass-manufactured, universally available things. Who knew that would become the major draw of a local festival? Maybe it’s just me.

In any case, I’m happy for the strawberries and avocados. It’s a good day.