Date: 2009-08-27 19:42 Subject: What a week. Security: Public Mood: stressed

Went straight-up incommunicado for about four days there. Suffice to say it's been a hell of a week. My own doing, mostly. Sorry to shajoni , especially -- I was really looking forward to seeing her off. But alas, it could not be. Just trying to pull myself together and deal with multiple crises coming fast to a head. Hopefully I'll get to where I can pick up the phone in the coming few days. Stranger things have happened.

Be well,

xeltifon

Date: 2009-07-31 18:29 Subject: Woot! Security: Public Mood: excited

Score -- FTW!

It ain't furry, but I can't bring myself *not* to share it. Yeah, it's just a single page, but -- here's the obverse recto:



and here's the reverse verso:



I don't know for sure, but I believe it *may* be a single page from Jacobus Locher's 1497 translation into Latin (Stultifera Navis) of Sebastian Brant's Das Narrenschiff, or "Ship of Fools". Yep -- the world's first international bestseller, illustrated partly by Albrecht Dürer in what was his first commission, as an artist.

If I *am* right in determining what this is, it's a page from one of the most important books ever written -- when manuscript culture was changing to print culture -- when works were translated into Latin before being translated into other vernacular languages. Absolutely *pivotal*.

It's a fascinating piece. Lots of unusual letterforms -- the ligatures and "f"-shaped "s"s are only the tip of the iceberg.

So, yyyeah! Rent comes due tomorrow, and I've got no more money to my name than will allow me to pay rent -- so what do I do with my paycheck? What else! I buy a single 500-year-old piece of paper, don't look back, and say that I've got no regrets.

:) :)

Be well,

xeltifon

Date: 2009-07-17 18:32 Subject: Requiscat in Pace... Security: Public Mood: sad

...Walter Leland Cronkite, MCMXVI-MMIX.



The first newsman to ever be called "anchor".

Another of Ed Murrow's boys, gone.

And that's the way it is.

# 30 #

Date: 2009-06-12 18:08 Subject: BB posting again. Security: Public

Weird but powerful day. Motel fire 1 block away knocked out power to 40 businesses on Central including the bookstore. Met more small business owners. Lights came back, "Wrapped Reichstag" book sold, bringing in $300. Am going to the club later for Pride but waiting now on local furs and others to show; haven't seen in a while. This place where I'm sitting is incredibly obnoxious;don't understand how anyone can think of this environment as appealing. But it's been too long to flake out.

Date: 2009-06-12 08:05 Subject: Pride weekend... Security: Public Mood: bonkers

...dead ahead -- hard to Starboard, full reverse.

How many days has it been since I've stopped moving, now!? Made a new freind last night. One of those nine-hour conversation type of deals. We *anchored* the bitches' corner at the club. People were *listening* to us, until it just got *so* busy we had to go elsewhere to talk. Wish I'd had a recorder, but some things are better left etched into a furson's memory. Took him home, came directly to the station, did the news and the weather and now going to try and find my glasses before heading home for a much needed shower (I smell like a musty old bookshop) before going to work in the store. Wheeeee!!!!!

Date: 2009-06-04 20:11 Subject: Finally! Security: Public Mood: xecretive

I have job where I'm, not only allowed, but actively encouraged to have a *handful* of secrets. I believe they're called "trade secrets", under current US law.

Here's the photographic backdrop I created for photographing the four-volume book in question, in the store's back office:




Special thanks go out to Christo and Jeanne-Claude for inspiring me to wrap the shipping desk in used matte board.

Needless to say, the book obtained today, and being photographed today, was rather unusually large. Four volumes worth of large, in fact, any single volume of which, alone, would be considered extra-large.

Since it's been recently declassified by the US Department of Defense, I have no worries about photographing it, or listing it, or buying it, or selling it.

But by buying it we *did* do what we could to help a woman in tears get her dog the surgery he needed to survive.

There's a backstory there, too, but I'm not sharing it openly, because -- you know -- "trade secrets".

Come to think of it, I kinda *like* this whole "permissible secrecy" thing. I could get used to it, in time, and in limited circumstances.

I'd tell you that once again I touched history itself, but then, that might be compromising secrets.

Be well,

felix

Date: 2009-05-25 19:24 Subject: The bear went over the mountain... Security: Public Mood: sleepy

...and let me tag along. Excruciating details (with four pictures) of the furry expedition to Manzano Peak

( behind the cut. )
Thanks to the wariors who gave me this weekend.

I can't imagine what you've been through.

Be well,

xeltifon

Date: 2009-03-02 22:42 Subject: More garden pics. Security: Public Mood: impressed

As usual,
( behind the cut. )

Date: 2009-03-02 17:59 Subject: Teh furry gardener. Security: Public Mood: contemplative

Figure I'm always talking about the garden, but never post any pictures.

Soooo -- here are a couple of shots of the central courtyard, in bloom.



Dwarf Japanese Irises set inbetween flagstone with moss around fountain. Pansies and violas in background.

Three more pics ( behind the cut. )

Date: 2009-02-19 09:27 Subject: Farewell, my beloved shampoo. Security: Public Mood: sad Tags: shampoo

Goodbye forever.



Although I never knew your name, you have been a part of my life for so long that it hurts me to the core to see you go.

You cost a mere $3.65 at the Chinese grocery store where we met. I turned the aisle, and knew at once I had to have you. I do not even know from where you came. We've been together for so long. I never knew that I could make it last between us for so long -- but you brought out in me the need to hold onto you forever.

Alas, it can not be.

You've been there for me through the years. Through good times and bad, through three presidential administrations, through our living together in three different states. I shaved my very head in order to spare you. To make the special bond between us endure. It's simply not enough, and now you're leaving me forever, and I know it.

It rips my heart out that it must be so, but all things come to an end. And now I see I have so little left of you I must -- I have no choice -- but let you go.

I will forever miss the creamy feel of your silky texture on my skin. The look of your translucent pearly blue, mysterious dyes. The sweet delicious floral scent fused to my very hair and skin throughout the day, reminding me always that whatever else happened, I had you to come home to. How very many times the smell of you made life worth living, I can never say.

It pains me deeply but there is no other way. You are now gone to me. But if you'e out there, somewhere, not on my body or down the drain, but someplace better, hopefully, and you can hear me, please know this.

You'll always have a special place locked deep within my heart.

Date: 2009-02-17 13:03 Subject: The Furry Chaco Canyon Expedition of 2009. Security: Public

Visiting Chaco Canyon National Park is, for many people, one of those life-changing experiences where everything else gets relegated to "before" and "after". For me, in 2003, my first adult visit to Chaco ultimately led to my moving to Albuquerque, where it happens I'll probably spend what remains of my life.

Guerilla fursuiting (coinage: albear ) with sabotlours probably counts as a similarly pivotal experience for those lucky enough to get the chance to do it.

Combine the two, and well, that's what I did this weekend. Sabot's already posted pictures here.

sabotlours and carol_kitty  treated meowth5o5 and myself to a trip to the UNESCO World Heritage Site yesterday. It was a *bit* long for a comfortable day trip from Albuquerque -- a fair amount of time was spent driving, much of it in the dark. It would definitely be worth leaving early for, though. Chaco never fails to leave a deep impression, even if you only spend a few hours there.

We started off inside the park taking the trail from the Visitor's Center up to Una Vida. Carol waited at that smaller of the several Great Houses while my boyfreind and Sabot and I went up the short trail to see the most famous of the petroglyphs at Chaco. Then back down to nom on a picnic lunch.

From there we visited Hungo Pavi -- a sizeable unexcavated ruin. My boyfreind was enthralled by the sheer cliff-face behind the ruin, and we all adored the increasingly sophisticated masonry, which is exquisite.

Thence to Pueblo Bonito -- the largest (and most famous) of the Great House ruins. That compound alone is roughly the same size as the Colliseum in Rome. It was planned on astronomical lines, and built over the course of three centuries by successive generations of a civilization that had no written language and no blueprints, using only wood, stone, and bone tools, with no pack animals and no wheels to transport rock and lumber from up to sixty miles away.

Bonito is characterized by its half moon shape, built around a central courtyard with three great kivas sunk into the earth. Many more kivas surround the three central ones, and those, in turn, are surrounded by roomblocks rising to four storeys. The architectural and astronomical features unique to this place are simply too many to mention, as are the varied stories told of it by *all* the native peoples in this region. (The "Traditions of the Sun" website provides an excellent, if heavily-scripted, overview if you are interested in anything like that.)

We decided to forego a visit to Chetro Ketl via the petroglyph-rich trail leading to it from Bonito in favour of getting into suit. There's simply too much at Chaco to see in a single day -- or for that matter, a week, or probably even a lifetime. We decided we would definitely return in the future, and focused on the task at hand: fursuiting Bonito -- in particular: the Great Plaza.

I understand how somebody could think of this as sacrelige. "In comes the white man, and not only does he kill most of us off, then take our sacred sites to administer under the rules of an occupying government; he uses 'em as backdrops for his ridiculous clowning around." Fursuiting Chaco *might* be understood, quite reasonably by some, as "adding insult to injury". It might be compared to fursuiting the Vatican -- *if* we just conquered Italy first, in several centuries' worth of bloody colonial wars. (I'd *love* to fursuit the Vatican, btw.)

My own truth, however, is this. Fursuiting is my own personal way of paying tribute to places that I find *very* deeply moving. It's *not* my way to leave prayer sticks and fetishes inbetween the cracks of rocks any more than it is to build shrines and temples to my ancestors, or for that matter, to foxes. I also don't fill lamps with yak butter and make offerings of tsampa to the four noble truths, nor do I slaughter goats for Kali, nor do I burn the bodies of my dearly departed loved ones on the shores of the Ganges.

For me, to do any of those things would be false -- not just an act of cultural appropriation, but a denial of my own identity. Each people who have ever walked the earth have had their own unique ways of interfacing with whatever it is that they consider sacred. You might say fursuiting is mine. I can no more "adopt" a Native American attitude toward Chaco than I can become a Shinto priest. It literally isn't *in* me. It's the same reason I don't "do" yoga, or "have" a lama with a noble lineage, or "go to" mass on Sundays. It simply *isn't* who I *am*.

Say whatever you will of the Park Service -- Chaco is a *World* Heritage Site for a reason. It is an utterly unique manifestation of our shared humanity, as a species. Animals don't build Bonito Houses any more than they build governments, go to war over competing ideologies, invent religion, or develop language to the point of innernets. All people, everywhere, should have some way or another to reconnect to who they are, and what makes them *unique* amongst all the biota on this planet.

It must also be said: Chaco stands as a warning. Nothing that mankind builds is permanent. Like it or not, it all *eventually* crumbles and goes back to the earth. Theories of *why* the Chacoans "disappeared" or "migrated" vary between different peoples, and come into and go out of vogue in the academic circles that study such things. The simple fact remains -- they are no longer here. Their descendants may be -- or they may not be -- the answer to *that* question depends on who you ask. But *they* are not. And their descendents, if they *are* still here, no longer live at Chaco. Again, the question "why" can never be definitively answered.

It makes you think. What will remain of all of this around us now? The human world -- the infrastructure and the housing, the communications systems, all of this -- a thousand years from now? If anyone survives that long, what will they think of what remains behind? Will one group of people say a certain place was a Las Vegas, and another say the same place was a Vatican? It's possible. That is the case at Chaco Canyon. What's undeniable is that the Chacoans had a *very* great civilization, whereas now it's literally in ruins. People continue to fight about their true significance, debating what they mean to us today. A small number of people on the planet are lucky enough to get to see what remains. I'm among them.

I very seriously doubt that any pictures of Sabot and Aldo, or these rambling paragraphs, or even any stray fibres from our fursuits will remain a hundred years from now to prove that we were there. But I do believe this -- there are places with memory. I count among such places Westminster Abbey, the Pont du Gard, and absolutely Chaco Canyon. These are places where the things that people do in them seep into the very stones themselves, accessible or not to whosoever comes after.

Having said all that, I think we gave the stones a pretty good performance.

We left nothing but pawprints, and took nothing but pictues.

Date: 2009-02-01 01:56 Subject: Carlsbad Caverns trip. Security: Public

Some of the Colorado Furs are planning a road trip to Carlsbad Caverns in April.

grifter_t_wolf reports he and Painless Wolf will depart from Boulder, CO on April 15th, with plans to return home on April 20th. Grifter says it would be fun to have some NM furs attend.

More information's available in Grifter's post on the Colorado Furs LJ community. You can also email Grifter at  grifter_wolf@yahoo.com.

RSVPs are recommended.

(Crossposted to nm_furs)

Date: 2008-12-20 18:37 Subject: New phone. Security: Public

Got myself a nice, shiny, new cellphone today. All my freinds seem to be on Verizon, so it made sense just on that account alone. Have had my current plan with Alltel for over five years now, and I no longer use the phone the way I did when that made sense. Besides which, everyone says Verizon and Alltel are merging, so with *any* luck the whole point of going with Alltel may soon be a moot point, regardless.

My old phone -- Quentin -- has served me exceptionally well, but alas, it's definitely time to let him go.

I think I'm naming my new phone Harvey.

Still just barely getting used to the keyboard with its super-tiny keys. Have barely figured out how to manage contacts and place and receive calls. The new phone's capabilities amaze me when I think back to my treasured 1927 Royal Junior that I used to type out letters on to iamweasel_2112 , back in aught-three and aught-four. Seriously -- it didn't even have a backspace key. But it was, hands down, the single best mechanical typewriter I have *ever* used.

I find myself wondering what Don Marquis' Archy might have done with a Blackberry Curve at his disposal. But -- as the word of the lord sayeth, "sufficient unto the day are the technologies thereof". I'm guessing that if Archy'd had a blackberry, we might have never gotten all those great George Herriman illustrations.

Date: 2008-12-16 17:58 Subject: I can has Quarai in teh snow. Security: Public Tags: guerilla fursuiting, manzano mountains, quarai, trigo fire

If "Religion is Brainwash" is a drive-by fursuiting, this counts as a "drive-out-of-your-way" fursuiting. I love how each situation presents different challenges which are *never* the same from one time to the next.

Quarai -- probably derived from a Tiwa word meaning "bear's place" -- was one of the pueblo mission churches abandoned in the time leading up to the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, if I remember correctly. It's now part of the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument.

Behold the nave in all its glory, the morning after a snowstorm:


I call this one "Furinus Vobiscum".
( Six more pics behind cut... )

Finally on a more serious note -- but still what I consider a lovely one -- here are the Manzanos in the snow. You can see quite clearly where the Trigo Fire burned.



Special scritches to meowth5o5  for taggin' along to take pics. ^.^

</lj>

Date: 2008-11-05 00:41 Subject: Tweets for Today Security: Public

• 10:26 just voted. always vote election day. never had to wait if I go between 9 & 10 AM. #

Date: 2008-11-04 10:47 Subject: Tweets for Today Security: Public

• 10:26 just voted. always vote election day. never had to wait if I go between 9 & 10 AM. #

Date: 2008-10-21 00:11 Subject: Tweets for Today Security: Public

• 22:39 shifting from "party in colorado mode" to "pledge drive week mode". 2 alternate realities. Next up: election! Will the fun never end? #

Date: 2008-10-18 00:09 Subject: Tweets for Today Security: Public

• 17:23 is about to spend the weekend in Colorado #

Date: 2008-10-17 17:09 Subject: The Weekly World News Lives! Security: Public

Obatma!

Date: 2008-10-15 03:13 Subject: Today was a very good day. Security: Public Location: mate's Mood: awake Tags: fursuit

Did a uranium story. Ate at the casino with my boyfreind. Swung by my place just in case a certain package had come just in time for the cold, wet, weather, and whaddaya know! My hundred-dollar fursuit had arrived. Woot!



Meet Aldo, the free-speech lovin' wolf who loves complexity!
( Six More Pics Behind Cut )

Yyyyeeeaaahh -- today was a *very* good day.