My sister K. gave me a beautiful flowy dress made out of tye-dyed muslin I think. I can't wear it now of course but it will be perfect in the summer. She's really good at presents and so are my firends. I always want to give people jewelry of course because I make jewelry. Other things I got was an album for scrap booking and some of the little packs of scrap booking acsessories. And also two new books, one by Thit Ngo or something like that and one by Starhawk. Its a collection of her political essays and it looks really good. Webs of Power. I think that is the title.

I love birthdays, mine specially. You get to be celebrated for who you are and just for being born one day of the whole year and thats wonderful. Happy birthday to me! Even though it was a week ago.

So I changed the backround on my LJ. I like this. I tried a bunch of other combinations but I ended up liking this nice purple combination.

I don't know why I can't sleep. Anxiety over the New Year, maybe. I feel like I should be making big deciscions about a lot of things and I am not making any deciscions about anything really. Things I need to think about: how to make time for friends, how to keep my apartment peacefula nd relaxing (and clean), keeping work worries at work, and to make a regular time for creative worship where I meditate and also take time to design new jewelry. I will never go on any kind of a diet but I also need to try to find a way to be more active regularly like yoga at the community center. I vow to spend more time with Jenni and Merry and Marsha and with my little sister, K.

Family. I believe in chosen families, and I spend as much time with my friends who are my chosen family as I can but sometimes theres the expectation that you go to your blood relations like Chirstmas. Man. My family is right here in Madison, and its not like I avoid them or anything. But its hard when we all get together and everyone gets annoyed with little things about everone else. Plus there are big issues, too. My aunt is getting early onset Alzheimers. That is horrible for her and for us although right now its still slow and now that she is on meds its not so obvious. I mean lots of people forget where they put things and get anxious and don't remember that they just asked you that same question. NOw that we know whats going on, its a little easier in fact. She's sweet and she was real important to me when I was little. I was the first kid born in my generation and so I was her first niece and she spent a lot of time babysitting me and we had a special bond. What's cool too is that she kind of went through a conversion from her not very practicing Jewish roots to more of a spiritual/Pagan thing in the 1980s, when I was little. She has been a model for me in some ways. So its hard to see her kind of breaking down, now.

Otherwise its all the stupid stuff that goes with the crazy buy-buy-buy stuff that is Chirstmas in the United States. Everyone worries whether people like they're presents and tries to pretend they like they're own gifts. I made jewelry for all the women in my family and that's mostly what we are, since my father is long gone. He left when I was eight. And my aunt and uncle are divorced, so only my aunt still comes, and her daughter and son. So my cousins the only boy. Man, these days. I am never sure what to get or make for him. This year I made a cellphone/PDA holder.

I am so glad I get today off, and don't have to go back to work until Jan. 2.

But you know even though I identify as a pagan and a wiccan, I still like strings of colored lights and christmas trees.

Even though I have my own small apartment or we do, Hazel and me I still want a christmas tree every time I see someone elses christmas lights up or even when I see the holiday tree at the capital. So tonight I bought a tiny little live tree that is about a foot tall. After the holiday I will try to plant it outside if the ground isn't frozen solid. Or I will plant it in a really big pot and transplant it outdoors next Spring. But right now I am putting the tininest little string of lights on it and I am definitely going to buy tiny little ornaments for it too.

Please, oh Goddess prevent Hazel from eating up the tree. Apart from messing the tree up I am pretty sure it will mess up her stomach too.

Man, charliegrrrl, you have the most interesting and varied and cool friendslist. I ran across the phrase "friending spree" and I'm inspired. LiveJournal is really amazing.

In other news (or not news, I am not sure). I am having to think about whether I can keep doing my sales at the Square. I don't go more than once a month in the winter anyway but I am having a hard time making enough money to pay for materiasl and for the rent on the kiosk I share with severel other vendors. And I'm doing this for fun and as an outlet for art not to make a living from it. I'm going to go twice this month because its right before Winter Solstice, or Christmas, and people do like to spend their money then. And then we'll see. Its not like I couldn't find things to do with friends on weekends.

Send me good thoughts, universe. I guess I'm waiting for some kind of sign from you about what decision is best for me. I'll know it when I see or feel it.

I dont even know if it counts as drama if it happens at work. I was afraid that my supervisor saw me typing my LJ, and she was acting funny and review time is coming up and so I deleted the journal. I don't have dsl at home so I mostly only do this at work or else its really annoying. I don't think she did see the journal thought because she never said anything and my review was this Monday so I think its all cool. I don't surf any non work safe sights, so she wouldn't see anythning bad in my folders if she even happened to look. Whatever, the review was good anyway so Ithink I can write in here as long as I meet my targets for responding to office stuff.

Anyway it looks like some nice people who'd been reading me for a while have taken me off there friends list and I'm sorry about that. Maybe I'll have to go and find people all over again?

Brrrrr it's cold here. That's my mood. COld. But I'm leaving soon, so yeah for that. I love this time of year. Winter Solstice really is wonderful. I'm going to walk down State Street on my way home and stop and get a hot cider at my favorite cafe. It was just pay day so I can live a little. Maybe Jenni and Merri will want to spend top dollar to go to the new Harry Potter movie? I've heard different things about it... but I don't know what else I want to go see and I want to go to a movie. You can tell the paycheck is burning a hole in my pocket. I think I'll go on a free friending spree, though, too. That doesn't cost any money and is free entertainment, too.

No, I have no clue what that title means. I just wanted to say something. Rainbow Books is putting on an antiwar study group. Marsha is running it, I think, and Merri says she'll go with me but Jenni can't go on Thursday nites and thats when it is. I think one thing we are gonna look at is the whole counterrecruitment startegy. This occupation is so wrong and it seems like this is finally a war where you realy KNOW people who are over there and who get stuck going back again and again. I have at least two friends who habve brothers in Iraq right now. And yah, they joined the Army on there own, but in some ways what choice did they have.

I just reread Starhawks The Fifth Sacred Thing. I always want to write the fifth sacred element because of that movie, I guess. It's an amazing book especially the part when the older woman describes how the uprising is started by urban gardeners in the streets. They just start to dig up the streets to plant gardens so people can eat and people help them by uncovering the underground streams or creeks and breaking down highways. And so tanks can't get through and people get together in housing collectgives and work collectgives and build a new society in San Francisco. The rest of the book is about the threats to the new society form the old one, and how the old womans grandaughter goes to southern califnornia (I think) to rescue an old friend. The kind of grounding magic she describes in the the book is exactly what Reclaiming is about and its really cool to see how it works in this future society where every body takes it like its normal.

Wow, she was excellent. I'm not totally sure her politics were the best in the entire world but its pretty hard to actually combine GOOD folk music with GOOD politics. Like me and that antiwar symbolic jewelery I wanted to make, I just couldn't. The peace symbol was the best thing I could think of and its already pretty cliched. And this womans music was amazing. Tracy Jane Comer. She reminds me of Richard Shindell a little. I bought the CD Quietly There.

Things are crazy busy at work. I don't usually even post from here, but today my boss is out and I feel like I have a little bit of slack. And now I don't know what to say.

I've started looking at journals that aren't from local areas I mean not the Midwest. The Bay Area seems like a place that is a little bit like Madison. It's hard to figure some of it out though like if theres and East Bay is there a West Bay? It seems like maybe they just mean San Francisco for that, and the East Bay is where everything else is. But I can't picture the geography of it like where the peninusula is or the directions of stuff people write about. On the other hand, Reclaiming is really rooted out there and Starhawk lives there and it seems like the activism is real widespread.

I can't imagine moving from here but if I ever did I think it would be to the San Francisco Bay Area or to Portland or Seattle.

Merry and Jenni and this older woman Marsha and I are going to see Tracy Jane Comer this Sunday at Wil-Mar. She's supposed to be excellent acoustic folksinger-songwriter, and political. Hope so.

I WAS a student here so I dont know why I can get so bent out of shape when they all come back. Mostly I even like it -- there are more people who want to buy my jewelry for one thing and more women who want to learn about Wicca who buy starter kits and stuff from me on Saturdays at the Square. But theres suddenly SO MANY PEOPLE. And you want to watch wherer you step on the weekend downtown, or at least on State Street. I swear frat boys are the mosst disgusting things on earth. I can't feel peace and joy for them until they are grown out of that faze of there lives. Ughhh.

Anyway though schools in. Most of the time I love the University of Wisconsin and I'm glad I went here, even though working my way through took me a lot longer than four years. I still go to lectures in the Womens studies dept. sometimes, and go sit out on the Terrace on Lake Mendota and get an icecream. I am going to do that this evening after work in fact.

So my trip to Columbia was cool. I took the bus to Chicago and the train from Chicago to Jeff City, and my friend Stacy picked me up, because the train doesn't go to Columbia. Stupid Amtrak. I've been to Columbia once before and it looks the same. All the students are gone (like Madison, but even emptier) and it's much hotter and sunnier and there's this one long main street that you can see used to be all old fashioned looking but they put up some stupid shade walkway in the 1960's or something. There are some good bars and a few cafes, one of which is a gathering place for local Wiccans, so that was cool. The community there is awesome. Strong women. I wish I could have gone to Witch Camp, but I can't afford it this year. Anyway, Stacy will go, and she'll tell me all about it. We drove to this winery (I know: wine? in Missouri? but it's pretty good) called Les Bourgois, on the Missouri River. We sat there all day with two friends of hers drinking differnt kinds of wine and looking out over the river. Then then took me to this little tiny town on the rive (I forget the name) that had amazing antiques. We talked about the war and whether there was any activism in Columbia. Stacy said the same 100 people do everything who have done everything for the past twenty years. She took me to the little store there, the Peace Nook or something like that. It's nothing like Rainbow, but Madison has a long history with peace activism and progressives. It wasn't bad for Missouri, I guess. Oh, man, Stacy also took me to this bookstore south of town in some ugly mall (speaking of which, do you know that the Sam Walton family lives all around Columbia????) that had all kinds of militia books and Ruby Ridge this and Waco that displays. It was scary. The whole tiem I was in there I was sure I was giving off some kinda hippie girl vibe and I just wanted to LEAVE. I'm glad I live in Madison, that's for sure.

Gotta go over to my folks tonight to help set up for my little sister's eighteenth birthday party. She wants to go to MATC, but everyone's pushing her to go to one of the UWs.

Madison summer's are HOT. Like the winters are cold. Our drought's not so bad as around Chicago and northern Indiana, but it's pretty damn hot up here. I feel so bad for all the farmers and all the organic vegetable co-op members in the drought region. You can't see it so much at the Farmers Market here, things seem pretty much the same. But I know its bad elsewhere.

The song I'm listening to is from a folksinger who was out here last year from the southeast I think. Christine Kane. She's awesome and this song seemed fitting.

I guess I got tired of this. But I still want to keep trying it. I just can't think of anything to write right now. I'm going out of town, finally traveling some, down to see friends in Missouri. See ya later, alligator.

Merry and I have plans for this weekend. We're going to go to her folks place in Portage right on the river and do a ceremony for her birthday. Then we're going to walk up to one of her parents neighbors place where they show movies -- like a new-fashioned drive-in -- on the side of the barn. Merry said it will probably be PG-13, but I don't care. Theres just something cool about watching movies outside. We'll make carmel corn and bring enough to share.

May Day is am important holiday, both for the left and for pagans -- for leftists, its the day that is for the international workers after the Haymarket Riot in Chicago, even though we don't celebrate in the US. Some places do. Rainbow always has a display of books and a lecture or meeting. What else do anarchists do but have meetings?

But its also a leftover day from before Christianity, celebrating the turning of the seasons and the coming of Spring. Even in Madison, SPring is finally here.

Hazel is my black cat. She is perfect for me. I have always had a black cat since I was a little kid. That is the first pet I can remember, was our black cat Zinger. Prounounced Zinjer, not zinger. My dad called her that. She was sneaky and quite and small and fast. Hazel is the opposite. Hazel is a big solid cat. She's very calm and slow like she thinks about everything realy hard before doing anything about it. She knows her name -- if I call her from across my living room, she'll look at me with her full green eyes and think about it. I will stare in her eyes and blink at her once slowly. She will think about it some more. I will raise my chin and stare again. She might turn her head away, but she'll look back again. Then I will open my mouth like I'm yawning and close it slowly. Then almost 90% of the time she walks over to me slowly and diliberately.

Hazel is my first adult cat. I mean she is the first cat that is all mine now that I am an adult. I think she's very very smart and she helps me in the personal work I do with magic. i can see how women were burned as witches if they had cats as intelligent and interesting as mine. I see a lot of dumb animal owners out there. Of course they would be suspicous of a tight relationship between such independent things as cats and women.

So... so I work in an office job because I have to but I also HAVE to express my creativity because without that I would go crazy. I make jewelry (I always have to check my spelling on that... my spelling is not the greatest but I don't care because I think we are coming to a new age where spelling wont matter so much anymore anyway, like it didn't matter in Shakespearan England... have you SEEN how many ways he spelled things? If spelling does still matter in the future then I think computers wil correct it all and typos automaticly so again it doesn't matter.). Whew, that was a long rant.

I make jewelery, I was saying. Now, it's easyto make jewelry that has Celtic or Wiccan associations there are a lot of symbols I can use and common ideas. But lately I have been wanting to make jewelry for people who want to express there anger at Bush and at this war in some other way then by wearing a button or carrying a sign. Don't get me wrong I think its important as hell to demonstrate against this illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq. But I was thinking that there should be other ways to show your oposition. I know there are tatoos, yeah, but not every one wants to have permanent ink (yeah, their crazy not to, but its a personal decision). So, jewelry. Thing is, I don't want to make only peace symbols. I want our new generation of activists to have some new signs and symbols. But I think I need help with coming up with some. I was talking with Merry and Jenni about it and we were thinking about earth or globe signs... but thats not to antiwar, exactly. The peace symbol is really a lot of ideas made into a small sign. Its kind of amazing, in fact.

I guess I'm not going to write in here too much all the time or anthing like that. But I've been brwosing around other peoples journals and wow are there some cool ones. I found a couple of icons I liked -- related to my username, which comes from the other name for Venice, Italy. La Serenissima. Does anyone who might read my journal know the books by Jaqueline Carey about Phedre No Delauney? Their AMAZING. And I recommend them to ANYONE who likes to read and likes to read about a strong woman and honest sex and passion and intrigue and romance and history where there is no sexual oppresion. Also, if you kinda like bdsm, she's pretty amazing. I'm still amazed that the books got into print. Their titles are: Kushiels Dart, Kushiels Chosen, and Kushiels Avatar.

Anyway, Phedre goes to "La Serenissima" in the second book, and it made Venice seem so even more amazing to me since reading that book. That's why I took that name for my LJ. Or its why I TRIED to!

Does anybody else have good book recommendations?

Madison is beyootiful, but it's also c-o-o-old. I have lived here all my life and I swear, winter lasts longer here than any other season. You think Spring is springing, and then, it's not.

Well, okay, this might not be the most exciting first entry in my journal, but hey I have to start somewhere.

I finally decided to take the cyber space plunge. Huh, that sounds like a ride at a theme park. But really it took me a long long time to decide to start a web log. I write all the time but I like the real feel of writing with a pencil or a pen and real paper. Plus I thought I might end up meeting people "on line". I guess it doesn't make any sence to write about my interests in my first entry because there on the User Info page anyhow.

But I will say that I am an activist woman. I am a feminist, even if some people seem to think that is a dirty word anymore. Not most people here, I mean, Madison is a liberal town to say the least. But apart from friends at Rainbow Books, and involvement with the antiwar group and with my own coven, sometimes I still feel like I want to know more women and people from other places. I haven't travelled in the longest. I haven't seen very much of the United States and I have never been outside of the United States except for one time when I went to Canada, to Toronto. It seems like the internet is a place you can travel with your mind. I hope so.

PS -- I love this music and mood thingie!