Author: katborealis (Page 12 of 28)

I take a yoga class on Wednesdays on a beach near my lab. Yesterday we finished our class and meditation in time to sit and watch the sunset. 

I am packing for another set of trips, and that got me thinking about what other spiritual/magical people take with them. So I asked! Before I share the responses I figured it would only be far to share what I do. I don’t take much. I have a travel ring (I never travel with jewelry), and that is about it. However, I do spend as much time outside as I can! Even on a work trip I tend to always find a way to sneak off and have some personal time out in nature. I do however have a specific pencil that I NEED for taking notes, Dr Bronner’s soap, a kindle, and a travel alarm clock (because you never know when the power is going to go out!). I also tend to take my personal things as a carry on and check my work tools.

On to the list!

Velma: I keep a blue tigers eye in my car and have a protective spell bottle hanging from the mirror. Also have taken amethyst and hematite as pocket rocks and I usually have a ‘lucky charm’ coin that I keep in my wallet. I don’t fly with herbs or oils unless I’m checking a bag, because I do not care for airport security cavity searches (just in case).

Polly: umm.. usually my tarot and books, oh and my little read book of doom.. *nods* 🙂

Saturn: Usually a stone, for connectedness, this goes for any trip.  Depends where I’m traveling to and what I’m planning for anything else.  I let magic happen in the moment on trips so I let the circumstances of the place become the altar. and a deck of tarot is pretty typical

Fire Lyte: Mercury dime for safe travel? But my car has charms in it already, so I don’t have to add much if I’m driving.

Meical: Gonna make me one of these for my travels starting next week..

Natalie: My Jeep. It can take me to places where I don’t have to bring an altar.

Sophia Catherine: I have a tiny little travel altar in a painted Altoids box. It has teeny tiny representations of Land, Sea and Sky, plus a candle so I can do a devotion wherever I am.

Sparrow:  I carry something in my purse all the time. I also have some altar coins that I often bring. They have many different symbols on them and have a number of uses.

Pagan Homeschooling: I carry a travel alter I bought from Mazer Creations on Etsy

Jen Rue: Salt, stones & lavender e.o. (in the suitcase.)

Silver Shadow: blessed saint Christopher medal, dressed silver dime. I anoint my car and self with safe travel oils. Mojo bags sometimes too.

Ava: Incense, but books mostly, I always think to catch up on reading spirituality-wise. But then on a vacation I mostly enjoy direct undiluted contact with nature (forest, ocean, plants) my inner thoughts and dreams.  I packed a mini-altar once for Beltane. That’s when I decided to not bother with ‘instruments’ when I’m away.

I love how different everyone’s response is! All the mini alters reminded me that I also have an Altoids tin sewing kit that I always take. What do you pack!? Join the conversation! 🙂

Ok, that title is a little misleading, but the plant is not what was advertised!

I had an experience recently that I thought would be perfect to share on the blog (and most likely in a future podcast as well). I have a plant in my front yard that I thought was citronella. It smells like citronella and I was told when I moved in it was planned there to help deal with the mosquito problem in the yard. It was in need of a pruning so I decided to make some citronella oil from the clippings. My intention was to try and make my own citronella candles, or tiki torch oil to be used outside the house since we still have a mosquito problem.

My first try ended badly, as it turns out my stove top was a little too hot and I ended up burning the clippings!

I had much more so I went for another try. Here is where I am going to add in the lesson. Now how could I get a lower temperature when I burned the clippings with my stove on the lowest setting? Well when water boils, it stays at its boiling temperature (it does this when it freezes as well). So as long as I have water boiling it can’t get hotter than 212 degrees F or 100 degrees C. I made a contraption that involved a big pot with water, a glass bowl and a pie tin so I could have the oil heated by the water and not the stove.

The oil I was using can reach a much higher temperature, so the water boiling under it will help keep that temperature at or below 100 C. This totally worked!

While I had my contraption set up and my oil brewing I looked up the plant online. To my horror I discovered that this specific plant is NOT where citronella oil comes from!

This plant is sold as “mosquito plant” and looks like this:

Before I begin, I want to state that I do not have any answers. I know this is a hard topic to write about, and talk about. So please, I don’t mean to offend anyone. However, this is something that has gnawed on my insides for years and I would love to get it out there, and see what others think.

I would request that you first listen to this radio lab episode.

I want to talk about culture and race. Wow, I know right? Now I am specifically going to talk about these questions in the context of Native Americans, but I think the ideas can be applied beyond my specific example. I want to start with some context for my struggle with the following question:

What makes someone “Native American” and when is it ok to practice the culture?  In the context of cultural entitlement, cultural misappropriation and white guilt.

I am sure I have already offended some of you. But that is exactly why I wanted to bring it up. It is a loaded question steeped in a painful history. So, my specific context. At some point in my early life I became aware/was told that I had a small bit of native american in me. I thought this was AWESOME! I wanted to be an Indian Princess for Halloween and put feathers in my hair and run around outside and get dirty (my kind of princess). I know all of that is totally offensive, but kids don’t always know what is, and what isn’t. Later in life I had a tribe name, and hints that I have native heritage from both sides of my family and possibly the same tribe (still more like 1/16th (~6%) max and more likely 1/32nd (~3%)).

Lets stop there. Remember, I grew up in the 90’s in Seattle. White liberal guilt was the thing. Everyone was “Rediscovering their native roots”. Therefore the white girl “getting in touch with her native roots” was a cliche. It felt cheap to me, and somehow offensive although I couldn’t put my finger on it. I was raised as a white hippy/new age kid. I went to alternative schools, and we celebrated solstices, had home remedy books , and even though we sometimes went to church on Christmas were not very religious. Not a HINT of native culture (unless you count the Native American units in school but those were of the local culture).

Whatever family connection there had been to our native ancestors and culture had been cut before I was born. The knowledge that we were part Native was it, how much is even still a question. Now we get into the question of entitlement and cultural misappropriation. I saw growing up, people around me that seemed to feel entitled to their native heritage. They had grown up white, middle class and privileged and yet THEY WERE NATIVE AMERICAN! The joke was if someone said they were part native, you said “Oh Cherokee?” and then they would tell you about the trail of tears and how horrible it was. To me it always seemed sort of like trying to find some sort of way that you were the victim and not the privileged class. We learned about the trail of tears, and the taking of children in history class, and suddenly it was their PERSONAL tragedy. The “well I’m part Native so…” at some point became so cliche that I didn’t want to tell anyone I was. I am not saying this was everyone, but this is how it started to feel. I don’t think I met someone who was actually what I would consider culturally native until I went to college.

In high school and college I began to feel like, someone who was raised with all the privileges of being white and middle class, and didn’t have any of the disadvantages or have to deal with the prejudices of being a non white, was not entitled to that culture. I began to feel that adopting bits and pieces of that culture, was rude and disrespectful. These feelings lead me to resist researching my own roots. If I started, I would stop. I could find out that there is an alphabet, download it, and the delete it. I felt like a fraud, like I was an outsider trying to take what I wanted from the culture and use it, all the while not suffering any disadvantage. I nailed down my tribe and percentage in high school thinking this would help. Nope. I was outsider and I felt like I always would be.

Recently, I began thinking about this again. I thought about the stories of children taken away and stripped of their culture. I thought about their children and their children. Are they any less native, if their culture was forcibly removed from their life? Do their children become less native if they were denied being raised in their culture because it was taken away from their parents? How do we classify these white washed children?

This came up again while listening to this radio lab episode. The father is a proud Cherokee Culturally while being racially 2%. Does that 2% make him less Cherokee than someone raised outside the culture but who is 50-100%? Obviously a child who is 100% native american but raised in another culture (like white middle class) is still native american. So too in my mind is the child that is 50%. What about a child that is 2% and raised white? What about a white child raised native? Does that make them not native, if the culture they know and grew up in is, even if racially they are not? There is obviously a tipping point in my thinking if at ~3% I don’t consider myself able to identify as native, and I think a child with the same upbringing as me who is 50% is. How much of being Native American is cultural, and how much is racial? For that matter how much of any identity is cultural or racial?

I am not going to talk about the Supreme Court case because honestly, I have NO IDEA where I stand on that. This is an ongoing personal struggle but one I have the feeling it might not be unique to me. I hope I have not offended too many people, and if I have, please accept my most humble apologies.

What do you think?

This has been quite the week, and I have something to say. That something is simply “thank you”.

On my last business trip my Boss and I got into a conversation about service men and woman and first responders. They all have a job where they put the life of someone else besides themselves first. For the service men and women, they will risk their lives for their fellow service people. For first responders they rick their lives for people they don’t even know. We were speaking in the context of the horrible number of drownings and near drownings we have had in Hawaii so far this year. How hard must that be? To no think of yourself and your family and your friends and just put your own life and safety on the line time after time, and day after day. I think it takes a very special type of person, and a very special understanding type of family.

This week, we had a bombing and manhunt in Boston. If you look through the horrific images you will see people running away from the blasts, and people running toward the blasts. Those are the people I want you to think about. What would your response to a blast be? To run towards it!? I know personally mine would be to run away. Those first responders I KNOW saved lives. I know they also risked their own in the process. I also spent Thursday night and much of Friday watching and tracking the man hunt. I was listening to the police scanner while I was at work, and through all the chatter related to the movements I heard some very uplifting things. There was at one point a call for all officers out over 18 hrs to report in for relief. Some of them had been on post for 18, 19 even 20 hrs. That is an amazing statement. To stay on your post for 20 hrs. The men and women in Boston and in fact all law enforcement deserve our deep thanks. They saved lives, worked unhuman hours and even (if you believe reddit) went out and got milk for a small child that was under lock down. Amazing humans every one!

This week there was also an explosion in West Texas. This one makes me very sad. From what I gather from the news, this community has a volunteer only fire department. When a fire was reported at the fertilizer plant, many volunteers rushed in to try and put it out. From what I have heard, many of those volunteers also lost their lives. The majority of deaths in this event were the first responders. They also ran towards the blast, to help others and lost their lives in the process. This community deserves our support, and again we owe a great deal of thanks to the first responders.

This week has also made me think back on the stories my friends told me about their deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan and the simple heroics that they may not have even recognized. And again, I am humbled and thankful.

So this week let us all take some time (in our own time) and in our own way, to thank all those who put their lives on the line for others. To all the fire men and women, Police, EMTs, Lifeguards, Military personnel, security officers, all first responders, and civilians who run towards the blasts. THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART! And a second and equally heart felt THANK YOU to all the family and friends of these amazing people, you will always have my support and thanks!

On a final note, this week I was reminded of this episode of the moth: NYPD Cop Recalls Morning of 9/11
When I first heard it all I could think was “how come he didn’t think of his wife!?” but in reality, if he did, he wouldn’t have been able to do his job. It is a powerful reminder of what these amazing people do.