RFD Issue 12 Summer 1977 by RFD Magazine Gay

RELIGIOUS FANATICS DESCEND CONTENTS 2 Staff Statement 4 Letters 8 Spirituality Section Introduction 9 When the Sun Stands Still--Larry Hermsen, CA 10 Wholeness--John Steczynski, MA 13 We Circle Around--Jada Joyous, CA 15 Peyote Spirit--Sean Mariposa, OR 17 Help--RFD Fair>’ 18 Poetry The Seeress--John Calabrese, NJ Pan--Lou Hamburg, KA Invocation of the H o m e d One--Arthur Evans, CA Untitled--Clare Marie-Femia, CA 20 Politics and Faggot Spirituality--Howie Zowie, CA 22 Footing a Foundation Alone--Clarence Englebert, TN 23 Faggot, Shaman, Poet, Butterfly Dancer-Stephen Abbott, CA 24 Electric Consciousness--Gary Lee Phil lips, MI 25 Sharing the Mysteries--Caradoc, CA 28 Photographic Centerfold 29 Untitled Poem--Jeremy Momingstar 30 Spirituality Soapbox 34 The Clarity of St. Therese--Chenille Crow, OR 35 Passages from the Hebrew Scriptures-Chenille Crow, OR 36 Poetry On Finding Something Left--Shaundel Moonrose, CA Untitled--Clare Marie-Femia, CA 37 Weather--Robert-Iris Fox, WA 40 Healing with Herbs: A Basic Guide-Satya Littlebear, AZ 42 Confessions of a Kitchen Queen--Lou Hamburg, WA 43 Kind of a Drag--Howie Zowie, CA 44 Behind Bars Prisoners' Section 46 Poetry A Swinging Barrier--Ken Anderson, GA Cornflour--R.A. Bums, MO Pump--David Sanseri, CA Untitled--Jon Franck, CA 48 Ass-whole--Dan Dickmeyer, CA 52 Blind Michael Image Requests Untitled Poem--Lucas Wickham, OR 53 Contact Letters 56 Info

GRAPHICS Steven DiVerde, OR--cover, 21 Larry Hermsen, CA--inside front and back cov ers, 9, 15, top 19, 22, 25, 31 Jada Joyous, CA--13, 32, drawing 43 Jamal Redwing, CA--8, 12, 18, 23, bottom 26, 30, 34, bottom 52 Ger. Brender a Brandis, Ont.--top 26, top and bottom 40, right middle 41, bottom 47 Richard Wilson, CA--4, top 5, top 6 , 7 Candor Smoothstone, 0R--1, bottom 17, 29, bot tom 36, 42, top 52 John Steczynski, MA--10, 11, 48 Mystery artist #1--bottom 5, bottom 6 Mystery artist *2--photo 43 Allan Troxler, OR--14 Mark Morris, WV--16, 46 Richard Oreiro, CA--top 17,40, prints 41 Kim, IA--lower left 19 Damien, MA--20 Dimitrios Serafimides, CA--24 Nemo, CA--27 Kip, OR--28 Michael Ford, OR--35, left 53 Tim Speck, CA--top 36 Landon, OR--45, right 53, 54, 55 Sean Mariposa, OR--top 47 RFD is published 4 times a year by RID, 4525 Lower Wolf Creek Road, Wolf Creek, OR 97497. Second class postage paid at Wolf Creek, OR 97497. Copyright © RFD 1977. RFD is a non profit corporation. Donations tax deductible. Subscriptions: $4 a year 2nd class, $6 first class, $5 Canada and abroad, $8 institutions, $15 sustaining, free to prisoners, bookstore discount 32% (85$).

« At the faggots and class struggle conference in Wol. Creek last fall some of us talked about having a faggot healers celebration. So some of us in the Bay Area started meeting together to talk about it. By February the oroup had become a circle of three, and the fantasy of a healing conference died. Jada, Howie and Larry visited a lesbian tribal home in the country___ feeling tribalness...interconnecting circles...seeing nurturinn lovina struggle, politically involved, not isolated...pushinq for changes but holding each other up so we don11 fall. Back in S.F., feeling real high?Cheni1le arrived from Wolf Creek and was invited to join a circle of 10 faggots and lesbians for Candelmas/Briqid's day celebration...an opening, Jiaririg time for us. Some days later, up on a roof top we (Jada, Howie, Larry and Chenille) recognized the tri bal connections between our Bay area community and Wolf Creek... tried to connect the two circles. Conference fantasies were abandoned for more personal connections...So why not come toqether around the next RFD issue on spirituality. We decided to spend a week-end together to get a better sense of each other's spirituality. Problems arose...other S.F. faggots feeling excluded, their wanting to have input in RFD not taken seriously. A circle was called to clear these feelings and it ended with Jamal being included with those of us wanting to go to Wolf Creek. Meanwhile, Steven from Wolf Creek was in S.F. and he and henillo got together...Cheni1le brought up that he had invited the Bay area men to Wolf Creek. Ste a m was excited with the possibi1ity...but warns Chenille about making plans before clearing them with the RFD collective. Chenille left S.l . promising to write the Bay area four about the collective's reactions to his inyitat ion.

• t.henille comes home to iso1J Creek paranoid and era y, fearing criticism around his misuse of power. 1he hit hit the lan...much mess...others in the collective felt mistrustful... resentful... having to decide about worki ng with 4 new people...fearful about whether the RID circle and the bay ai a circle could mesh,..a lot ol confusion about what people real'lv wanted, but the feelings seemed favorable to all oJ us workinp, together. Chenille wrote to the Bav area circle expressing this but emphasizing that a final decision was still to come. •When Chenille's letter arrived, plans beqan to be made for the journey north to Wolf Creek. We Bay area faggots continued meeting weekly...ritual plans, what to wear, who wo'd sleep with, sleeping bays, food, where we'd camp on the way up...friends to say goodbye to, jobs to leave, rent to pay...basic emotions were aroused about leaving our homes, community, commitments. We wrote Wolf Creek saying we were looking forward to coming.

• Sack in boll Crook, there were further problems. Some of the real fears and reserva tions begun surf acini...the collective begun to realise they had to vivo up their expec tations and bey in a new process of deciding about work ini; with the Bay area men, based on their real toolings at the time...nobody was poing to pot exactlv what thev wanted, but everybody realised that the}’ft'11 good about working together and that compromises would have to be made...two of the Bav area men would come. A letter was sent off.

• This letter arrived in San Francisco and we were plucked! Anger, anger, why did they lead us on for so long...it was only weeks before we were supposed to leave...why are they so afraid of us? A group of city sissy ex-Catholic anarchafeminists were so threatening to them? Oh! now we felt scared to meet them, too...all our feelings and plans seemed discounted and Howie was angry at the Creekers and the San Franciscans for being grouped with the Catholics (he being Jewish) and with city faggots, having just moved to Berkeley from the country. We couldn't imagine breaking up our circle so that just two of us would go...no one wanted to be one of those two., i we wrote that it was all of us or none, at least for the first week, then make a decision collectively...call us as soon as you know what you want from us. *

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• Steven arrived hack in hoIf Creek and ex pressed interest in working on the spirituality issue, he got the angry letter from S.l'.... freak out...fear, ioy in some quarters., we capitulated in the best interests of RFD. We saw the need to share the power held in our being so connected to the magazine.. Chen ills* cn 1led S. F., "Come for a week, w o 'i1 see how we do." The

Bay area men arrive. The circle opens. The four an* greeted enthusiastically by some and with stony silcnce/fcar by others. This is the history of the coming together of the spirituality , collective. Needless to say we had much to work through. Khat follows is an attempt to relate some of the magic, pain, joy of our living and working gether during the four weeks of RJT) production. r A s‘ ow beginning, time to feel each other's energy...the Bay area men and Chenille slept in his tipi the iirst week...developing, among other things', a sexual dynamic fdvnamic sexuality.) — the cuddles...morning centering ritual...and general dish session: attractions, roles, fantasies and nurturancc issues. Personal history circle starts us off, talking about our spirituality..."the way we feel the spirit"...political differences...discovering our unities. As the Bay area men merged more and more into the day-to-day inner workings of the group here tilings got pretty heavy. By the end ol the first week, we need a feelings circle...it was called. \ Hearts oi stone. Hearts, hearts, hearts...heart images had been everywhere all week...people wearing red heart jewelry, talking about the sacred heart, about bleeding hearts, opening our hearts, about giving...but now it was hearts of stone. Chenille had found a stone shaped like a heart...passing it in the circle it felt cold...difficulty speaking from our hearts. Chenille began a litany that came to him lrom the spirit ol some bones he came across in the woods--wolf bones?...heart of the wolf have mercy on me...heart of flesh, have mercy on me...heart of harry, have mercy on me...heart o f L e n ...Steven...Jada...the tears began flowing, the stone heart grew warmer as it was passed around and worked its magic on our hearts. The next day...Mayday...ritual musical procession to the Big Maple Tree...the May-pole Tree...w< circled around as musical intensity built...we passed the magic herb...consecrated the holy altar at the base oi the tree, to theAztec Sun Mother- Our Lady of Guadalupe...then danced like a snake, our hands joined...to the spring to visit the shrine that Jada created...Faygele arrives at Magdalen to live and to tyjie this issue. Another personal dynamic to integrate into the process. hork begins with a short meeting to divide tasks up among ourselves. Smaller sub-groups to work on articles, poetry, graphics. Struggles around our politics and spirituality became intense. The RID work took over our lives...barely enough time to deal with our sexual tensions, sexual poli tics; but not willing to let them be neglected either...plagued from the start with colds, crabs ...scabies and pinwonns...poison oak, syphillis, and just when we thought w e ’ d had it all, the clap. It put a damper on some people's sexuality___ Ke occasionally needed time to be in some other space...a different form of release... there was a party...others irom nearby came...cake and wine, tequila and dope. Lots of dan cing. ..time to expose different sides of ourselves...time to play...one of us missed the last part oi the evening...too much tequila...we got to play nursemaid. Layout began...as did the late nights. Many worked until 4 and 5 a.m., a good time to be centered in the work...rain, rain, rain, ten of us together in a one-room house ...craziness, tension. As layout began to draw to an end and three of the Bay area men started to think about leaving, we saw the need to circle to evaluate our time together, to write about it for these pages. We came together on a sunny after noon in the meadow...Faygele has a lock oF hair cut by Chenille to pass as a ritual object and we begin...some of us write while others talk...about hav ing grown, about resentments, about the historical details of our coming to gether to work...peeling back layers ol ourselves and finding more to struggle with than we imagined. Fhree days later, Jada, Howie and Jamal left for San Francis-

t ile m a o a z i n e f n t h e i v r i n t n r in IW rfl'in,! Written and transcribed by the #12 lay-out crew, translated into linear americanese by Steven and Larry RFl) ffl2 production staff: Howie, Chenille, Jada, Steven, Len Faygele

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I was reading your Winter issue today and came to the reprint of your correspondence with Mother liarth News. I was shocked to see that you did not even mention in your angry reply the sexism and ageism in Nancy Bishop's letter to you--the "little old ladies" crack. Could it be that you were so preoccupied with your own point of view that you failed to notice that homophobia is not Mother liarth News' only objectionable attitude?How can you ostensibly anti-sexist men expect feminists to ally with you if you don't acknowledge our struggles as well as your own? In hopes of solidarity, Mary Anne, .Amazon Reality Co., P.0. Box 95, Fugene, OR 97401 There are several areas of your spring issue I wish to react to. On pages 2-3 where the RED workers expose themselves: surely you could have used or made some photos possessing a degree of warmth and sensitivity--Candor must certainly have more than just legs and feet. The main body--on machines--was dry, re petitive and possibly of little use to most country gays. It had only a remote connection to living (or learning to live) as a happy-healthy--self-nourishing gay person. What ac tual information it contained is duplicated in so many publications available to everyone as to make it a poor use of space in an otherwise very special magazine. I like the 'Behind Bars' section. It's an ongoing issue for me, and one that most clearly polarizes the liabilities of being gay. Rights for gay prisoners (all prisoners) is a real challenge— -considering the oppression that is rampant thruout society. With the love and essence of Spring, Bob Pinel, Gemini Farm, 6441 Fern Flat Rd., Aptos, CA 95003

I enjoyed the winter issue, and I like the direction of RFD, becoming an expression of a new developing consciousness. I think this direction will be greatly helped by your idea (and your request for articles) of being a forum for rural and rural-appreciative fag gots and gays who are at many different levels of thinking. It is in the spirit of this direction that I submit this criticism. The ethical confrontation of William Mor ton of Toad Suck Farm, by Landon and the staff who wrote the Country Survival intro, seemed to me to lack insight into the fact that dif ferent people are coming from different spaces and thus apply their ethics in different ways. If the confrontation was based on this insight, it did not come across in the way it was com municated; there did not seem to be an attempt to ascertain what Morton's ethics might really be, given his opportunities for consciousness'. If we are to produce an alternative polit ical consciousness, we do indeed need more and more ethical confrontations. But if confronta tions are to really stimulate people to radi calize their ethics, then those confrontations must be made without discounting people, and the confronted person must know tnat he or she is not being discounted. We do need to remove ourselves from the influence of those people who are unalterably anti-life, but this can only be ascertained by a degree of character analysis, without which we may discount people who may be good and helpful. If any of us have reached a higher level of consciousness, we are no more worthy of heaven than the rest. /And I suggest that most of us, probably all of us, have not progressed to a higher level of consciousness--we have only progressed in different areas. The areas of political ideology and utopian, or libera tion, thinking (in which we still have a long way to go) must be united with practical ele ments of lifestyle, communication, and skills enabling us to survive despite the system and to work within it against it. It is not the anger, evident in your in dictments of Morton, that I object to. One's personal anger at oppression needs to be fully felt and openly expressed, and can be an ele ment in honest confrontation. But we must also feel an element of nurturing if we are to pro ductively confront, whether we are dealing with a person face to face or through mass media. Mass media is very, very dangerous. Lack ing the direct human contact that can enable communication to be worked on at many differ ent levels simultaneously, it is more open to playing symbolically on the irrational desires and fears of the messenger and the recipients. We'd like our mass media to be a part of our radical alternative, to be a useful communica tion tool and an inspiration. But 'since our degree of communication is only just beginning to be developed beyond the normal, we need to

be aware of the pitfalls that exist in the present nature of mass media, and we need to concentrate on creating new ways of expressing a unity of our thoughts, intuition, emotions and actions, through an understanding of others’. Yours with wans loving affection, Bill Hol loway, 620-A Dundas St. W . , Toronto, Ont. M5T 1H7 Canada

Thanks for your nice letter! My comments about appealing to the widest possible readership reflect some feedback I've gotten from gay people in the course of my movement work and travels. I've had chances to talk with gay people who aren't active in the movement, and I get a lot of letters from gays many of whom have barely heard of the movement. (The letters are so fascinating that I read excerpts from a sampling of them in many of my speeches.) I hear two main messages: these people are lonely and isolated--even in the big cities!--and they want to meet and talk with otter gays; and they want the bigots off their backs. They look to the movement to help them meet other gay people and for relief from objective problems with iob, family, church, etc. They are not looking to themovement for utopian theories about restructuring society, or for analysis of their oppression, or to purify all gay people or all society of all bad -isms, or to advance political/social dogmas of any stripe. To the extent that some elements in the movement dwell on these ef forts, however worthy they may be, there's that much less energy to meet the survival needs of many gays. In my view, the movement as a whole fails to reach out to large num bers of gay people because it often gives the impression that you have to fit some kind of mold in order to belong. Haven't you ever won dered why, 26 years after our movement started, there are still fewer than a hundred thousand of us out of our supposed 20 millions who are in any way connected with the movement, in cluding those who just subscribe to gay per iodicals? Recently I said these things and much more in a talk on "Gay Unity and Separatism" at a gay conference. (By separatism I meant primarily how the movement tends to separate itself from the mainstream of gay people.) Naturally 1 expected criticism for my criti cism and I got it. But I was amazed at how much favorable response there was, especially from people who told me afterwards they hadn't felt free to say within the movement the kinds of things I said. Thanks for listening to, and really hear ing, my views. I do wish I could meet you some day! In gay spirits, Barbara Gittings, P.0. Box 2383, Philadelphia, PA 19103

I've just read most of the latest issue and feel rather discouraged. I tried to read between the lines of your personal/collective comments and articles, trying to figure out just what has been really going on up there in Oregon. I think you've made a partial attempt with your article "Wolf Creek Journal." But I'm left unsatisfied with this highly personal and mid dle-class biased piece. Without making a polit ical analysis and by letting only one faggot tell the story, you are once more dishing up the same old middle class story of how hard it is to live on the land with/without lovers. I am afraid you have reverted to RFD's traditional privileged-class perspectives. -As a poor faggot, struggling to combine my visions of fairyland with my visions of class revolution, I feel left out once again. I criticize myself for not sending my sup port and love earlier, especially to London for his response to Toad Suck. I, personally, thought it was very right-on to present opposing class views side by side. It gave me some affirmation for my own opinions: meaning, I didn't feel quite so crazy and QUEER, knowing at least one other faggot had feelings like mine. In love and struggle, Charlie of Mulberry House, 458 W. Lawson, Fayetteville, AR

After 3 yrs of curt, impersonal rejec tions from straight mags you can't imagine how refreshing it feels to get a human response, let alone the warm acceptance $ support you of RFD, Gay Sunshine, 5 Mouth of the Dragon have recently given me. The Vietnamese had a custom that praise given to one member of the commun ity was given to all. In this spirit, I ap plaud yr applause, for I do not write 5 sing poems just for myself but for everyone. Poetry needs to come down from academic towers 5 specialized journals 5 be given back to rural folk. In the 3rd world, farmers sing Lorca $ Neruda's poems as they work the fields. Yeats 5 the rural Irish revolutionaries em braced. We need this here fi what better place to start than RI-'D. For me, to win the heart of the back country would be a greater honor than to win a Pulitzer Prize (not that I myself de serve either yet). The whole Spring issue, incidentally, was fantastic, the way you're not afraid to let it all hang out (e.g. Webb's journal § the let ters). Graphics really top notch too. I hope you never let political/personal struggle over whelm you (important tho it is) because RFD's continued existance, in itself, is so impor tant 5 revolutionary'. If I didn't have the re sponsibility of raising a 6 yr old (school, etc) I'd be up in a flash to visit if not join you. Hopefully a visit will someday be possible In solidarity, Stephen .Abbott, 67 Albion St., San Francisco, G\ 94103

I received the latest issue (spring) and was surprised by all the furor over "Landon's Response"--I didn't remember it rating quite all that much fuss. So I went back to the Win ter issue and re-read 'Toad Suck Farm" and the "Response" and the letters of No. 11 again and decided Landon needed some positive feed back and support. It seemed to me that those who accused Landon of being an unprincipled and heedless attacker of the American dream are the ones who attacked most viciously. Which is to say I really don't see the fangs in the "Response" that others apparently feel, and that what Landon wrote seemed done honestly and without personal venom being directed at William Morton. For me, the most difficult part of coming’ out was seeing the gay community playing the same patriarchal/dominance games that made mainstream America so unpalatable: no way did I want to pull out of one mad game only to end up in a different version of the same old mind fuck. It took too long for me to realize that being gay did not necessarily mean that I had to buy into all the violence and shoddiness that I found so repulsive in mainstream .Amer ica, and that there are gay brothers and Les bian sisters who also want to create a loving alternative, rather than a re-run of the hor ror we grew up with. What is most urgent/important at this mo ment is that we struggle to create a world in which love and justice reign, in which all people can grow and be fulfilled as humarTbeings; I feel that gay people have a unique contribution to give that struggle. But if we are going to go on repeating the same old cli ches, and chasing after the same tired myths of money, fame and competition, then we are cheating ourselves and our sisters and bro thers who need our gifts and talents to com plement theirs. It seems that our only real alternative these days is the one Sandy Lowe points to in his letter--we need to explore and experiment with truly collective means of ownership and production, which will be especially difficult for those of us who have been able to reach a comfortable level of consumption through our facility at playing the game. It's harder to let someone else in when you feel you've put a lot of sweat into getting what you've got, even if a few toes did get stepped on in the process. What saddened me most in reading the let ters in No. 11 responding to the "Response" was the anger and bitterness of so many, es pecially since I felt that Landon had tried not to fall into that morass. True, it might have been better to put your response in No. 11 as a letter, but it was not done so. Perhaps the row that has been stirred up may lead to cleaner waters for all of us! With love in struggle, Hank Skrypeck, 1157?s Forrester Ave. NW, Albuquerque, NM 87104

My lover and I have just returned from a cross-country trip of several months--an op portunity to camp, hike, and backpack in some fine wilderness areas. After so many months away and isolated from any gav community, we were pleased to have back issues of RH) wait ing for us. This isolation helped me realize how essential the gay media are to ray con sciousness; it is an integral part of the sup port system which helps me to feel good about myself as a gay man. .Also I see more now how iuportant a magazine such as RFD is in com batting some of the loneliness and alienation gay people feel who do not live near urban centers. What contact my lover and I did have with the smaller towns of the mid and north west was chilling--machismo with a capital M, the sound of a revved motor sending most every body into orgasmic ecstasy. But luckily for us nature isn't homophobic (I can't tell you the number of contented bulls we saw humping each other.) I very much enjoyed reading "Letters from the Forest" by Carl Wittman in the Fall issue. Having spent a good deal of the last five months in the woods I could appreciate both the effort and the feelings: "The forest it self with that strength shaping our innermost dreams and feelings..." The painful struggle and dedication of the group was so vivid but yet so heartening. Such articles document the

fact that "rural gays" are not necessarily the escapists they are frequently accused of being. Far from it. Carl and his friends willingly chose to have their serenity disrupted in or der to challenge the thoughtless destruction of nature. Best to them in their struggle and my thanks to you all for printing the article. David Chura, 59 Church St., Greenwich, CT Ya know as a once country---now suburban-gay male, I think you've got one of the best things going. (Our area was raped by the pro gressive m o d e m america movement, but we like to think of ourselves as country' stock.) Being out, living in a gay collective, and living the good gay life is a lot of work, but the rewards are great. You're one of them. Want to send you some photos for the vis uals in the winter, and am looking forward to every’issue of RFD. We used to fight over it when the mail cajne, but now we share, by read ing it to one another. It seems the political hassles are all a part of the growing, but we're doing it and it's more fun together than it ever was apart. Don't get discouraged and keep up the fine job. Love, Solidarity §Unity, Bari, 3002 Mari etta Ave. Lancaster, PA 17601

The International Society of Master Astrologers is doing a research pro ject on the astrology of gavness. Send your birth date, place and time, specifying male or female and gay or bisexual. Write: I.S.O.M.A. Inc., 299 Main St., Northport, NY 11768

Indians have lost vital properties and privileges because they don't have the money to fight against an army of legal experts hired by mining groups, corporations, and too often the U.S. Gov ernment. They need lawyers and money to protect their future and right to live and worship as In dians. Please mail the Native .American Rights Fund whatever you can give. They need your support desperately. Native American Rights Fund, 1506 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80302 We are going ahead with plans for our third gay liberation anthology. We wish to organize it around the theme of culture. We expect many of these essays to be infused with political comment. For information, write: Karla Jay, 2785 Broadway, Apt. 15, New York, NY 10025, or Allen Young, R.F.D. 2, Orange, MA 01364 Karla Jay and Allen Young have compiled sexual sur vey questionaires for les bians and gay men. If in terested in participating write: Survey, Box 98, Orange, MA 01364

The World Family Healing Gathering will be held July 1-7 in the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. For information, write: P.0. Box] 5577, F.ugene, OR 97405

Our theme for this suiuner issue of RFD is spirituality--faggot spirituality...ways we have found and express our spirit, our inter connectedness, strength, awareness, visions... traditional spirituality, native religions, personal magic, and all sorts of combinations of these. The response was great: a lot of material was submitted for this issue. Much more than for past theme issues. We feel that this indi cates the importance of spirituality in our lives. Having this amount of material to work with was exciting, but it also created a lot of hard work and struggle. It made us all ex amine how we felt about our own and each other's spirituality when it came to deciding which articles to print, and what writing we needed to do ourselves to fill in some gaps. Usually priority went to writing which dealt with per sonal experiences, rather than writing which was in agreement with our own spiritual feel ings. Mien the selection of poetry, graphics and articles was completed, we found we had more material than the usual 48 pages could hold. So we were faced with making a choice between not using some of the material we had already chosen, or expanding the number of pages in this issue. Adding more pages became a financial consideration, because RFD already had to borrow money to print this issue. Our consensus was to increase the number of pages for this issue and to use a lower cost paper, newsprint. So the cost of printing this issue was a little less than #11. In the near future the RFD collective will have to make decisions regarding changing to a lower cost format, and the possibility of increasing the price of the magazine. We hope a dialogue will begin among RFDers around what we print in the theme section. So send your comments, and written and graphic contributions for future themes, which are listed on the information page of this issue. Larry and Steven

At this point we haven't decided where the aging issue will be put together. We'd like RFD to travel and be conceived in places other than here at Magdalen Farm. If you're interested in working on it and can offer us space write me (Steven) at the RFD address with per tinent and personal information about yourself and your space. It would be at least a three week commitment starting .August 1st.

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B.SJLrfLieil Much of my spirituality is based in the physical world and universe around me: nature, the earth, and the cycles and patterns created by the sun, the moon and the planets. The cy cles and patterns of my own life and my own body are reflective of this greater whole, and are expressions of it. Nature, the moon and the seasons go through changes, moods, and phases that often resemble or correspond to my own ex periences. If the weather is grey, so am I. This past February and March, just before the beginning of the new astro logical year, I felt real ly spent and unmotivated. Certain of my physical and s emotional needs, like sex, '• seem to correspond to cy- y cles of the moon. Oftentimes, I feel two separate energies op erating in me which I identify as feminine and masculine. One way I think of this personal energy being reflected in the seasons is through NightForce and Day-Force. At certain times of the year, the Night-Force and DayForce are more or less powerful, or equalized, depending on the length of the night and day. The moon is to me the significant symbol of the Night-Force. From mythol ogy, I’ ve found that the moon has been deified into goddesses by many cultures and was worshipped by mat riarchal societies. The moon has also been associated with magic, in stincts, witchcraft, lunacy, dreams, uncon scious motivation, and other non-rational ways in which people act. Using these images, and through trying to develop a feminist view about feminine energy and strength, the moon has become for me a strong symbol for those ways of expression that women in this culture have developed as a means of having some power in a male-dominated society: intuition, emo tional openness, collective methods, recep tiveness. The Day-Force symbol, the sun, has usu ally been seen as a male god in mythology, and was worshipped as the primary' deity by patri archal societies. Qualities that I associate with the Day-Force and the sun are rational thinking, individualized consciousness, per sonality, hierarchal structuring, egoism, and other male-attributed ways of expression. At the Sumner Solstice, the point of the

year of the longest day and the shortest night, the Day-Force is strongest, and the Night-Force is weakest. But this solstice also marks the beginning of the decline of the Day-Force, and the birth of the growing power of the NightForce. Cfti this day, June 21, I celebrate" the opening of myself to the influences of the Night-Force. The sun enters the astrological sign Can cer at the Summer Solstice. Traditionally, the sign Cancer has been associated with, among other things, motherhood, marriage, home and family. This association seems like a heterosexual response to the time in a person's life when they feel the need to integrate their personal, individual experiences into a societal whole, .is a fag got, my response has been different: I came out to a radical faggot community, which has become my family. I am struggling to relate to my’brothers in nurturing and collective ways, and I am working to change this society, rather than inte grate into it. The connec tion I feel between mothers and Cancer comes from real izing that it was from my mother, and other women, that I learned the NightForce qualities that I have come to value highly. While the Night-Force in me and in the world is part of a continuing cy’ cle, I feel the need to empha size the Night-Force now, to counteract all the masculine conditioning I have had, to let out the Night-Force that I had to suppress in order to fit the male sex-roles I thought I had to conform to. So at the Summer Solstice, I celebrate the awakening in my life of my femininity, my magic, my collective spirit, i celebrate the excitement of that discovery’ , and the painful reversal of my emphasis on the Day-Force to the Night-Force. At that point, my life stood still, just as the sun seems to in the summer sky. It is the same eerie, excited, scared feeling of a hot, midwestem summer afternoon when the air goes deathly still and you know a tornado is coming. Maybe it will be the tor nado that will sweep away the old and make way for the new. A midsummer night's dream. Larry Hermsen, 6 Sharon St., S.F., CA 94114

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I do not like the word spirituality. It divides me fromTnyself. If I am a spiritual person, I am not a physical person. If I am a spiritual person, I am cut off from my sexu ality. I do not like the either/or implied by the word spirituality. There are two basic paths for the person who cares for more than his immediate practi cal life. The path of perfection and the path of wholeness. From the point of view of perfection, there are irreconcilable opposites: good and bad, light and darkness, spirit and matter, the masculine and the feminine, etc. I must choose. It is either/or. To choose the good I must cut off the bad. From the point of view of wholeness, I am essentially indivisible. I do not cut off; I integrate. "Opposites" are points on a contin uum. Spirit and matter, masculine and feminine, are poles that generate energy and tension, so that there is a flow between them. Most people think our culture is mater ialistic. Some try to transcend it through spirituality. But a culture of disposables and built-in obsolescence and paper money does not love, respect, or value matter. The appropriate response for me is not to focus on my spirituality. If anything, I should focus more on my physicalness. Better, I should focus on the flow between my physicalness and my spirituality, so that this physical-spirit ual are in balance and become whole. My sexuality is an integral aspect of

this process. I like symbols. In an either/or situation, there is real ity and unreality, truth and falsehood. If something is a symbol, it cannot be true or real. If it is true or real, there is no need for the symbol. But I experience realities I cannot wholly and simply express. It is the mystery of things. Sex is like that. In orgasm I am most wholly myself, most wholly outside myself, experience my life most intensely and at its most intense, experience a dying. Sex is sex. And it is much more. The masculine and the feminine are sym bols . They are experienced most simply as man and woman. But man and woman becomes a reality vaster than men and women. In most cultures reality participates in the characteristics of man and woman. Sun and moon, sky and earth, mountain and valley, plow and furrow: each enlarges the understanding of the masculine and the feminine. This enlarged image is in turn projected back onto man and woman. Gender is among the first things we no tice about a person. It is among the few things we never forget. It determines the most basic and profound patterns of a person's life. It is of such deep importance not for any functional reason, but because in a woman we expect to find the embodiment of the feminine, and in a man the embodiment of the masculine. .Ambiguity is one of the characteristics

of symbols. Earth may be masculine in relation ship to the sea; it is maternal and thus fem inine in relationship to plants and animals. American Indians refer to Mother Earth and Father Sky; the Egyptians saw the earth as the god Geb and the sky as the goddess Nut. Either/or people cannot accept this ambi guity. They codify symbols or reject them al together. Yet precisely this ambiguity is necessary'. A symbol is and is not what is sym bolized. For this very reason, they are dangerous if they are not taken as symbols. The mascu line tells me much about myself. But being a man, I am not the embodiment of the masculine. Neither am I only masculine. Men and women are each masculine and feminine. Perfection tells me that as man I must embody the ideal of the masculine. Wholeness tells me that I must re vere and reveal the masculine and the feminine within me. These symbols and myths express this reality for me. The simplest symbol for this wholeness is the circle. Mandalas are elaborations on the circle as symbol of wholeness. 'The uroboros, the serpent eating itself, is another variation. "It slays, weds, and impregnates itself. It is man and woman, begetting and conceiving, devouring and giving birth, active and passive, above and below, at once." The Tao is the pri mal force. It is express ed as the yin-yang. It is a dynamic form, a polari ty in which one is becom ing the other, in fact already has the germ of the other within itself. These polarities are most often seen as masculine-feminine. The sun-moon is another such polarity which is also seen as masculine-feminine. In some cultures the sun was seen as maternal, and the moon as the c o m god, who is planted, springs to life, and is reaped. More often it is the sun that is masculine, and the moon with its association with the menstrual cycle, that is feminine. They have been seen as opposites, with the sun being the true light and the moon the false reflected light of deception. They have also been seen as comple mentary forces, together ruling day and night. j The Egyptians had a fertility • god called Min. He had an import ant cult center in Koptos. Large predynastic sculptures show him masturbating. Related myths indi cate that he was seen as the pri mordial god, and his masturbating as an act of creation. Later he was associated with Horus, and stil'U later with Amon-Ra. He continued to be shown ithyphallically (penis erect--F.d.) though not explicitly mas-1 turbating. He presided over the har- 1 vest as well as human fertility.

There is a Hindu myth about Vishnu and Brahma. Each of them is a primordial god, so that each is amazed at the existence of the other. While they are quarreling, a lingam (penis--Ed.) begins to grow out of the void and grows until neither divinity can find ei ther end of it. Finally the side of the phallus opens, and the lord of the lingam is revealed as the origin of them both. Cultic images of this lingam sometimes reveal a god and some times a goddess. I personally find flowers like this. Of ten in bud they jre phallus-like. When they open they are vulva-like. Within the womb they reveal the pistil and stamen. The image is doubly androgynous. The horn seems to have been used as a symbol since paleolithic times. It is associated with virility and power. Multiple horns are at tributes of many Assyr ian deities. But the horn is also hollow and used as a container. Its virility becomes fruitfulness. Instead of a phallus it be comes a womb, the horn — of plenty, the source. There are votive images from Pompeii. They show Priapus, a fertility god. He is de picted ithyphallically, holding up his garment to carry' fruit, and simultaneously revealing his phallus. There are of course other images attempt ing to define a positive wholistic relation ship between the feminine and the masculine. Among them are cult images showing the sexual union of male and female deities, and androg ynous cult images, half man and half woman. Part of the power of symbols lies in how we understand them. Our understanding of them is inportant because it determines how they affect us. In an either/or world we have masculine/ feminine. I am a man or I am a woman. There are symbols used to support this. In a wholistic world we have masculinefeminine. I am in some real sense a man-woman. I have tried to show how the symbols I selected support this. The uroboric serpent is androgynous. The yin-yang are each becoming the other. The sunmoon coup lenient each other. Min is androgynous in that he performs what is more often por trayed as feminine acts through his masculin ity. Things are b o m from a womb, not a penis. In the legend of the lingam, the phallus act ually becomes a womb. The same with the horn.

Priapus, like Min, is s h o w with what are nor mally feminine attributes, fruit, as produce of his virility. Gender is generally understood as an either/or in our culture, hither I am a man or I am a woman. If I am a man, certain actions and attitudes are expected of me. If I do not follow them, I am not a man. The wholeness which is expressed symbol ically as the union of the masculine and the feminine is taken literally. Man embodies the masculine; woman embodies the feminine. Whole ness is the union of man and woman. Two men uniting is not wholeness; if it is, it must be because one of them lacks masculinity: a woman-like man who is expected to assimulate many of the superficial characteristics of women. Hither way we have what appears to be an abnormality. Interestingly, the ancient Greeks thought that spending too much time with women made men effeminate. Among some primitive peoples, it was precisely when men felt an ebb in their masculine energy that they sought male relationships, in order to strengthen their masculinity. Whether I respond to a cultural defini tion of gender by aggressively asserting that I am a man, or by accepting and internalizing the fact that I am not a man, I am accepting the system of those who in the first place define man as an opposition to woman.

On the other hand, if I see my manhood as incorporating both the masculine and the femi nine, then my doing things which are generally associated with women will not qualify my man hood, because it is not an opposition to wom anhood. It is a part of the whole which is me, a man. Homosexuality/heterosexuality is also seen as an either/or. Homosexuals accept this as much as heterosexuals. Yet it is thirty years since Kinsey graphed sexual preference along a continuum. Cultures that incorporated homo sexuality into their structures normally as sumed a heterosexuality as well. The men in ancient Greece had male lovers, but it was also a civic duty that they had wives and children. Homosexuality and heterosexuality were exten sions of each other, not a denial of the other. Gay ideology rejects the oppressive mas culine symbol of our culture. But in its place it often tries to set up a feminine symbol. It rejects the Father-god and re-establishes the Mother-god. It rejects masculine values and accepts feminine values. The need for wholeness which brought me to accept my homosexuality does not allow me to do this. It leaves me not whole. I am no more the embodiment of the feminine than I am of the masculine. Replacing a woman-god for a man-god remains either/or. It is not the gender of the god that matters. The god should neither enforce what is only a part of me, nor compen sate for what I am falsely taught I do not have. The god should be an integrative force. For me, a man, this works best as a man-god who manifests the feminine within him. Min copulating with his hand to create the world is within me. The uroboros, the yin-yang, and the 1ingam help me discover the feminine within myself, within my very' masculinity. This mas culine and feminine are not an opposition. They are an energy that swells within me and makes me abundant. John Steczynski, Sunnyside Lane, Lincoln, MA 01773

For the past year, I've been trying to write about my spirituality and how it is de veloping within my faggot community. I feel like my spirituality is becoming a beautiful and strong and inportant part of my life: a new sense of faggot religion is be ginning to emerge from the dialectical struggle of living among a small circle of like-hearted comrades here in San Francisco. We are sim mering in a heady brew of feminism and sissy consciousness, socialism and anarchism, pagangypsy/trippy-hippie love-power, wholistic health and meditation, with Catholicism and Judaism, witchcraft and voodoo thrown in for spice. It's getting real tasty. First we've been learning to live together, in collectives and in friendships and relation ships: to let our feelings out, to nurture and be nurtured, to give 14) male posturing (defen sive, stiff, intellectual, scared, mean, and I say all those from too much experience), to simply let loose. We have to let go in our

bodies, for example, being together in a cir cle or the energy simply can't go around, much less the fun and truth and love. Even as we are developing inner strength and vision, we ai'e also gathering our forces for each other and our community. It's finally becoming OK to take care of each other, to be nice and kind and good, and also to struggle, to push for the truth, to fight back and de fend ourselves against attack, and indeed to feel part of a revolution, together. It is hap pening slowly, pushing itself into our day-today city reality like weeds cracking through concrete. A sense of loving tribal connection blossoming forth. We do rituals together, to celebrate our selves, and to bless what feels good to us: getting high, singing and dancing, energy cir cles, invoking spirits, feasting, and snuggling. The material reality of our spirituality na ture, the seasons, the weather and the orbiting planets--is the tapestry on which our day-to-

day lives weave themselves. Although natural tine and space don't always correspond to the nine-to-five reality, and there are a lot of us who haven't been able to break out of that, we usually manage to come together when it's right. Sexuality can be one real inportant key to the other worlds. Just as we are liberating the social view of sexuality beyond procreation, family, and manipulation by the corporate state, we are also learning to let sexual feel ings flow naturally from loving and nurturing feelings. That we have been so incredibly pro grammed into such artificial boundaries between us, especially among men, is still an outrage. And the more open we become in sex, the more we let in amazing energies. Feminism and female-attributed feelings have been for me a real inportant link to the natural spirit-world and to righteous political anger. The harmony and simplicity of the woods echo feelings within me of wholeness and nurturance. Feeling the Goddess within and around me everywhere--in the whispering green of plant-life, in long quiet looks between kindred spirits, in the powerful cycles of the moon, in hands held softly, in gentle strength--is heavy inspiration for my spiritual feelings.

And there is real truth-energy for me within my body, in good sex, in the country and among a circle of loving companions. That the world of the ruling class, on the streets and in the newspapers and TV, stands so heavily against these energies is real cause for struggle and commitment to revolutionary change. And this change must include the highest acceptance and development of life-force/love-energy/the spir it. Feminism then can be seen as a positive driving force of our struggle: sisterhood and sissyhood are powerful, so is love. The twin gods of patriarchy and imperialism have sat on their lofty thrones--built on the rip-off of the people and the earth--far too long for the safety of this planet. The time has surely come to begin dedicating ourselves to the struggle to take control of our lives, to fight for per sonal liberation and revolution, to give so we all can live. Feminism can also be seen as a link to anarchism. I am learning to see anarchism, not just as the old wild-eyed, bomb-throwing ster eotype, but as developing toward a new sense of collective, anti-authoritarian tribalism that responds to local present needs, from the bottom up, not top-down and centralized. As

such, it stands as an important structure to build group spirituality around. For instance, a ritual gets planned by a circle of interested people sometime before a day of celebration, not by a large meeting or a central committee, and each ritual is created for the time and place and the participants of that particular holiday, not pulled ceremoniously from a book. Agreement is usually by consensus and goodwill, often through going around the circle, not by parliamentary democracy or party line. Even Marx and Mao have given us some im portant tools for dealing with each other; particularly class consciousness, dialectics and criticism/self-criticism have furthered our understanding of working and changing to gether. In sharing our backgrounds and con flicts through open-minded sharing of heavy feelings, we are pushing beyond that place of defensive and argumentative stand-off to a sense of collective trust in the ever-changing dynamic of the group. Adding further spice to the brew is a new sense of gay history, connecting us to cen turies of earth rituals (and persecutions) of faggot-witches. We have always been religious people, and have been in positions of religious honor in many native cultures. And even today we stand with the oppressed peoples of the earth against the mad bulldozer of civiliza tion (progress and conquest). 'Hie "hippie" lifestyle has also been a passageway to higher consciousness for me. All those great other realities, like mariju ana and hallucinogens, the new left and drop out consciousness, astrology, yoga, zen, medi tation, vegetarianism, natural healing, etc. have been important ingredients in my spirit ual growth. My body is becoming a wellspring of spirituality for much truth lies within me. But I feel like these new lifestyles have often been co-opted into bourgeois consumerism and individualistic solutions. All I've learned has had to be scrounged and shared outside the confines of overpriced classes and mystified groups. And we must be continually vigilant about protecting our own spiritual forms. We must seize tools of liberation for ourselves and use them collectively to take care of each other and to create new forms of pleasure/awareness/release. Only with our sights set firmly on revolutionary change can we reach for true personal liberation. This article has been basically an overview--from one San Francisco faggot's vantage point--and hopefully will stimulate more thought and discussion and thus further the collective sense of our struggle. Indeed there are no final answers. What else to say but that she is coming, she is coming. We must fight to make way for her. Our revolution, she is here, breathing in our midst like a hungry tiger. Feel it? Jada Joyous, 577 Castro, #201, S.F.,

The following tells of an experience some of us in Wolf Creek had on the past winter solstice through the use of a sacred ritual. In presenting this we of RFD feel very strong ly that some aspects of its origin, the con text in which it is used and how we came in contact with it be understood. First, the ritual itself derives from native tribes of northern Mexico. In attempt ing to use it to come in contact with our own magik we want to be careful not to exploit the originators of this ritual, and thus be ripping off the same peoples who have used it and benefitted thru its inherent power. We feel that the only context in which the ritual should be used is one of respect and sensi tivity to its sacredness and strength. We in Wolf Creek were made aware of it by lesbians and are grateful to them for enabling us to grow thru the use of this and other sac red rituals.

the peyote ritual. One brother picks up the rattle and the staff and begins to explain the ritual. We are all quiet, attentive. He who holds the rattle in the circle has the power of speech and is unchallenged. His brother on his right, for tonight's ritual will hold the drum and beat an accompaniment to the song sung by the rattle and staff bearer. .And the singer may be joined by us others, if we wish or he may sing it alone. Mien he has finished with his song or songs he passes the rattle and staff to his left and takes up the drum to accompany the brother on his left. .And so it goes on through the night until dawn. In addition there are four positions of responsibility correspond ing to the four directions of North, South, East, and West. They are the Road fairy whose main function is to see to it that the ritual is adhered to and that we use it for its magik in a conscious and respectful manner. Then the Fire fairy who is watcher of the fire and responsible for keeping candles lit on thru the night. The Cedar fairy who at different points during the night will light the cedar bough and aid us in staying awake, attentive and in touch with the peyote spirit. .And lastly the Balm fairy who will take care of his brothers with his soothing balms and soft healing touch should we fall ill from the medicine temporarily or need his assistance for other reasons. The rattle passes and feelings are ex changed, doubts expressed along with excite ments, questions on matters pertaining to the ritual and each person's own fears con cerning the night ahead. Finally, as we all feel centered and ready the medicine is passed and we begin. The strength of the peyote taste is awesome, overpowering, bitter and harsh. Almost immediately I have feelings of nausea but I

Quietly, quickly we gather in the pod. The ritual altar is already in place; the candelabra in the center, elevated slightly on a piece of cedar wood, on its sides cedar boughs and the peyote medicine. We bring our selves and a few things to make the night more comfortable. Blankets, sleeping bags, one brother bears herbal cigarettes, another a banana and honey.mix to quiet the peyote taste and to help us take the medicine. The staff with its few adornments of macrame, bells, feathers and madrone berries lies be side the rattle, likewise decorated and the drum. The room is warm with a fire peacefully crackling its tune of heat. We naturally form a circle and wait calmly. Low, friendly talk spreads around the circle. We are all friends here, some for long periods of time, others for short. We are all living together, shar ing community and growing, evolving, changing together, separately and as one. Tonight we shall partake in an old and sacred ritual,

The walls move slowly with their decorations of kaleidoscopic patterns, one brother has me easily in hysterics over his song full of amazing antics and what seem incredible acro batics. My own song pours from deep within and moves me with its clarity, innocence and strength. We are one, we are separate, we are together and strong, free and alive, vi brant, flowing, glowing, warm and radiant be ings... all sharing our songs of feeling as our spirits surge into each other through the web of the ritual. Some of the songs excite me, others liberate me, sadden me and fright en me...but I feel safe, and warm and sur rounded by love and support for whatever hap pens. The peyote spirit is very alive within each of us now, we sense the strength of our bond and of the drug working together. One brother becomes carried-away abit, clowning and laughing and drowning-out the song of the rattle and staff bearer. Calmly, compassion ately, we show him the error of his way--he acquiesces knowingly, lovingly. The songs go on... One brother expresses a need to go deep er, to break through bonds of inhibition, for bidding him entry into his more deeper emo tions, areas of perhaps pain and sorrow. He asks for our help and support. We focus... the songs go on...a scream, a cry of deep pain and anguish and sobbing, weeping, he has broken through, we console him and breathe a sigh of relief...we are deeper now, more in touch with the deeper realms of our beings... the rattle passes...another brother asks for nurturance, to be held like a child and soothed, held and loved softly, motheringly... his brother takes him in his arms, we sing the song, he cries hysterically, releasing deep and almost completely hidden tears and pain... we sing compassion and rejoice. Two brothers express difficulty in com municating with each other, they would like to sing and accompany each other though not sit ting together...they work it out through their song and drumming. The words and feelings get through, they clearly hear each other and the peyote spirit smiles in each of our eyes. At midnight we break and move around, some of us go outside, others lie quietly and some poetry is read. I feel the peyote spirit calmly flowing inside of me and want only to lie back and listen to her message of strength and clarity. This night is awesome in its many messages and insights--I hope only to be able to remember most of them in the days to fol low. I hear the soft hoot of an owl not far off, one brother expresses a desire to re gather and begin again where we left off. We rejoin each other in circle and the song be gins ... More challenges come from each of us, we delve deeper and deeper as we uncover layers of fear and inhibition singing songs of lib eration. .. One brother suggests we experience a means of nurturing one another, giving to each other motherly energy. He suggests breast feeding as a viable way to do this and we agree...quickly I find myself sucking my bro ther's breast and he in turn mine, then going

overcome them and listen to the song of my brother and join him. The song is one we all know and we are joined in a mood of closeness. The rattle and staff pass regular ly and before long my only sense of time is now. Ke sing and eat the medicine, slowly and in harmony with each other and the ritual.

As the need arises the Cedar fairy takes up his flaming cedar boughs, dripping pearls of gold and fuming with their scents of cedar and fans us, giving us strength in face of the peyote taste. Likewise the Balm fairy busies himself massaging our temples and faces with his herbs and balms, cooling, soothing,he quiets the nerves and eases us into a more centered space. The room fills with the scents of cedar and sage while the songs go on ... Slowly I sense the need for myself and perhaps many of us to leave the circle and be sick. I ask to leave and quickly go down to the outside. But the movement eases the feeling of nausea and I am feeling fine. Well, I still sense a group need to break a spell, a fear of puking so I force myself, tickle my throat till I cough and gag and go through the motions of vomiting. The sound is heard and I am joined by others... The spell is broken and we can rid ourselves of that fear--and hopefully through the night of many others as well. We rejoin the others and resume the ritual, singing, chanting, laughing, and crying... before long I become aware of just how high I am feeling and am being affected by the peyote spirit as I am first flooded with waves of spontaneous laughter and then crying and followed by each other on and on. Then entertaining visuals flow before me.

to another brother and doing the sane...I am overwhelmed by the power and feelings of giv ing and receiving associated with the act and the closeness we all find and share through this means of giving and receiving nurturance. The songs intensify... We eventually all become aware of the night waning and feel the coming of dawn. Anx iously and excitedly we press close together, feel our energy reserves and acknowledge our weariness, for the night has been long for some, short for others, revealing, enchanting, de-mystifying, another beginning perhaps...and we sing for the sun, together...slowly, stead ily she edges closer, the ridge-line across the gorge becomes more clearly outlined, I be come joyously aware of sharing this morning's dawn with my brothers, snugly clustered in my usual sleeping space and voice my enthusiasm to us all. We pull together tighter, I sense us bringing her, together with the peyote spirit, pulling gently, hopefully, I am almost brought to tears by a thought of a world without the sun...and alas! As we sing strong ly and with our energy near ebbing she comes grandly, regally, with all the warmth and rad iance of a day being b o m and fills us with the peace and unity of our achievement, of our journey completed. Gladly and contentedly w-e are quiet and fulfilled. The time is com plete and we rest. Sean Mariposa, 3700 Covote Creek Rd., Wolf Creek, OR 97497

>ooo<x>c<x>c><x><x>^ HELP RFD can't live by bread alone. Though sometimes we've tried. Along with the addition of some beans. We have been working to put to gether RFD; that means time away from garden chores, etc. We'd still like some greens on our plates. As of this moment the RFD account lias $900 in it. We owe $650 to the printer towards the cost of RFD #11, and the estimate of printing costs for #12 is $1300. So over $1000, which must be paid back, will have been borrowed to get this issue off the presses. The RFD collective receives only $225/mo. for our labor. That's approximately $30/mo. for each of the seven members, though five of us live together and share our money collectively. The work of this magazine is a year-round job which gets especially intense for six weeks preceding each issue. So please send us your greens. Denominations of $5, $10, $20, $50, $100, all will be appreciated and much needed. And donations are tax deductible! Thank you, RFD Fairy

PAN Someday, when I am very old, I can tell various sundry Great nephews and nieces, How one night I met Pan; Not on the road to Emaus, Or in a Grecian glade, But in a Bar. I suppose inflation even effects The Gods, these days. He took me to where he lived; A feast of visual delights, To feed upon. Aluminum weeping willows in the hall, Shang horses galloping lightly among Shells and coral on a great glass table. A mirror over the bed to watch ourselves, Watch ourselves, watch ourselves.

The Seeress

I could not even ask Pan, To that place where I live, For he would starve for sparsness, of things exotic, collected, Across a millenium or two.

A dimestore crucifix, set on the wall. Old statues of saints,

So, I struck a bargin with Pan. I would worship at his Brushy pubic shrine, If he would promise to Let me view the treasures, Of his temple again, Even without the sacrifice.

bought cheaply from the last condemned church. A candelabra, creates an amusement park mystery.

If I never bow, Before the snake again, At least I have access, To the temple, To drink the experience there, And learn much.

The small house-pregnant, with tense time passers.

4/76

The numerous knick nacks, seem to live there.

Time spun oracle awaits me. Residing in her feined temple. The gods have granted her rent control. I sit opposite her, unpartitioned. With cigarette in mouth, she says, "Cut the deck, honey.â&#x20AC;? John Calabrese

Lou Hamburg

Invocation o f the Homed One Dionysus, with long curly hair and cruisy smile, We invoke your name, for we are all your lovers. Often have we seen you wander through bushes in Buena Vista, Or cl ini) over rocks at Land's End, Or stroll down Castro Street. Whenever we cruise, we are cruising you, And we are in love with every part of your body -Hairy arm pits, Moist ass hole, Inpertinent cock. We are ever on the make for you, And will be till the end of time. Who would think -- from your easy-going, sissy ways -That you are the most feared of the gods, And that whole churches and states stand in dread of you. They have cut your hair, outlawed your passion, denied you. But you are stronger than every forbidding law And every clumsy ideology. Come, lord of the emotions and h o m e d prince of lust, We celebrate you with our madness. Arthur Evans 604 Ashbury St. S.F., CA 94117

i am a wild nun untamed and unrefined i sharpen my claws on stones. i belong to no convent, i follow the exception, not the rule, i eat peyote and lust after men. i get drunk a whole lot and stoned even more, sometimes my veil is red and my black stockings often have runs, i shout and cuss and run around, excess is my only consistency. i am a wild nun, coarse and rough, spitting out curses like tobacco, hearing one voice in the wind and another between the thighs of men. clare mar ie - fernia 577 castro #201 s.f., ca 941.14

I came to Wolf Creek from Berkeley to work on RFD No. 12 because of my special in* terest in spirituality. After talking with the issue collective and discussing possible articles for their inclusion, I felt a need to show spirituality from another perspective. I didn't want the magazine to include 'purely spiritual' articles only. We had great strug gles around which articles we would choose and whether we wanted to make a political state ment. So with the assumption that there would be plenty of submissions from people with traditional religious beliefs, I wrote this. I grew up in New York City in a Jewish, working class home, hating up conanunism in my youth as the only answer to my father's slave work conditions, it was logical that I became involved with the Left and anti-war demonstra tions in the sixties. But I could not get heavily involved with the organizational work for reasons I am more sure of now. These New Left groups were heavily masculist and its leadership came from the middle classes. They spoke a different language and showed little caring and nurturance of each other, finally, and moi'e pertinent to this issue is that 1 found them boring, unfeeling, dogmatic, and lacking spirit. I believe that a'left revo lution in the U.S. without a spiritual revolu tion would fail to unite the people to happily share and work together. On the other hand I see spirituality and religion without revolutionary political vi sion as escapist and selfish. The example of. the Bodhisatva, who refuses nirvana in order to help people, brings salvation to more peo ple than the Buddha, who chooses nirvana, thus leaving the earthly problems for others to solve. Some of the 1.astern gurus, such as Maharishi and Maharaji, espouse meditation as a means to becoming a better student, politician, or businessman. They create smiling, blissful, guiltless corporate robber barons. And the yin/yang proponents separate our masculinity from our femininity. Often our homosexuality is said to be caused by an imbalance of yang or yin, as if we are lacking something. While 1 don’ t want to deny the great strength that traditional religion can give to one’ s life, it also can weaken the fight a~ gainst our oppressions. The ruling classes and religious elites have fed us its belief in "pie In the sky when you die" rather than here on earth. The Hindu belief in dharma (jdiich enphasizes the ideology of "staying in one's place") and karma (which explains your present social position by the deeds of your past life) are tools used to maintain the power of the ruling classes. They blame you for your own impoverisliment and lack of success.

Religious groups have served as competi tors and oppressors of others and have upheld reactionary beliefs. Certainly as faggots we have felt the effect of Judeo/Christian moral ity as restraining our openness to be sexual and loving with each other. Many gay people desiring to share in the heterosexual privil ege seek assimilation and acceptance in organ ized religion. For gay men or lesbians to per petuate a patriarchal (male dominant) religion or god is to deify our oppression. We faggots have been burnt alongside of witches and les bians at the stake. Our sexuality, we've been told, is immoral. We have been alienated from our own bodies, taught that masturbation is sinful. The civil laws against sodomy have their roots in the Old Testament. Even if on the surface we arc accepted by a gay synagogue or church, etc., it is only their liberal "tolerance." Because we are really being rejected in their support of the nuclear, father dominant family. Its sanctity of monogamy leaves us with inadequate models for building emotional and sexual relation ships with more than one person at a time. Many of us have difficulty in getting our sexual and psychic needs met in casual sex be cause of the religious moral atmosphere in which we grew up. The strong anti-feminism that runs throughout traditional religions of the West and East supports sex roles and unequal rela tionships. Women and effeminate men are made to feel inferior because we don't conform to the masculine ideal, especially when we are soft, nurturing or receptive. I am angry at tine New Age Growth Movement such as ESI, Polarity Therapy, Arica, etc. because it only recognizes problems as per sonal and internal. They blame the individual for not being spiritual, skilled or mature enough. By emphasizing individual solutions they don’ t recognize societal caused problems. My personal growth as a gay person cannot be separated from my liberation from heterosexist oppression. Besides the high price tag con nected with their knowledge, these groups show their classism by ignoring the financial and psychological oppression of the working class and the special problems of racial minorities. As faggots creating our own Spirituality we can validate each other’ s religious feel ings in positive, non-oppressive forms. We can take the good from the old, cast out the bad and add new rituals. We can celebrate the specialness of being faggots. Our sexualness and sensualness added to ritual is welcome respite from the sterile hetereligions which consider the body dirty. Spiritual power is real. We can raise it in circles to build our own love, strengths and unity fighting for our liberation!

Tones, music and words have long been part of ray personal spirituality. I loved praying in the synagogue. Part of the magic for me was in not understanding the words of the chants. Then I could concentrate on the exotic, religious tones in this mid-eastern music and allow it to carry me out of my body. Later, in much the same way, I got into Budd hist and Hindu chants. Their sounds set off reverberations in different parts of my body. .And I have become aware of the power gene rated by the repetition of words, especially when done by a group. I still enjoy the feel ings of focused unity, of oneness, that comes to me while chanting "CM" as a circle of friends. I never felt more strength, during ray anti-war activity, than the times we sang political songs together. Then and still now, I get a tingling through my whole body. I keeping with my desire to demystify ritual and to make it accessible, here is my contribution for creating a "RITUAL OF THE HOLY SOUNDS."

Recipe for Sound Ritual: Gather your faggot friends Adorn in ceremonial drag Distribute four rattles Add two pairs of finger cymbals Add three tambourines Mix with bongo drums and congas in a bowl of green pasture Set temperature at sunny sky Now add voices in different pitches of "ah" Momentum will build on its own--THE SPIRIT WILL GIVE ITS OWN DIRECTION Trust each other--Don't try to lead Variations of recipe: One cup of flutes and/or harmonicas Add wine or joints to taste! Howie Zowie, Berkeley, GA With thanks to RFD No. 12 collective for encouragement and help

I'm buddist and I'm gay and I live alone--when I say I'm buddist I mean that I'm working on myself--I'm bowing with gratitude to those who walked this path before me and most graciously pointed the way.... I've spent too many years searching for something exterior to mvself--some person, place or thing... Now I realize that a seeker is a seeker and a finder is a finder and just as soon as I stopped being a seeker and decided to be a finder, then that was it: I found it. I had the key (my will) all the time, the key to great, lasting, peace is so sinple, yet, so difficult. To al ways have my attention set on exactly what I'm doing at the moment (without attaching myself to wandering thoughts) and to do so with energy, when I am feeling doubts or confusion and my thoughts are tying knots around themselves; I know what to do about it, just bring myself back to what I'm doing, be it mulching the garden or driving a car--the peace that comes from doing this is so powerful that I'm filled with tears of gratitude. This is where my faith stems from--I know it works! Nobody warned me before I started to medi another person, I know better. I can't pretend tate that I was running the risk of being that I don't know better. The "voice of com grabbed by the cosmic buddha--it was only sev passion" is alive within me, I have awakened eral years later that I heard that warning-it by meditation and now I have the constant but it wouldn't have mattered if I had heard choice and constant responsibility of either it at the beginning, it probably would have listening to it or not listening to it, and just spurred me on thru curiosity. Now I know by listening to the buddha within me, the budd what "being grabbed by the cosmic buddha" ha all around me starts to become clearer and means. It means that I just can't do what I've clearer--the fog lifts. done before, it's not the same. G6ing into the "So why am I living alone on this farm?" city and cruising for tight pants romance I ask myself, perhaps too often. The same an doesn't "feel" right (I'm well acquainted with swer always comes from my heart--"because the pleasures and distractions that the cities you've stopped searching, because you finally offer, the momentary thrills are like dew on realized that you were conpletely adequate and the grass, there's no way to hold on to them, that every person who ever became enlightened the mental hell that they create I am also had no more than you--the searching for another very familiar with--I^ don't want it anymore person is a waste of time and you don't have because more than anything else, T~want peace time to waste. "Buddhaism" did not promise me in my mind). It's that "feeling" that tiny happiness, but it did promise me peace. Happi quiet voice in my heart that I must listen to. ness brings with it its opposite, but the The re is no precept telling me: DO NOT HAVE peace within my heart is always there, no mat SEX', but one of the ten precepts I have taken ter how many times I turn away from it, it's is "do not sell the wine of delusion." I must only me looking at the darkness of my own shanot do something that will create karma for dow_, and I'm the only one who can turn me around again and face the sun. This is why I bow with gratitude to whatever happens in my life, to my aloneness and the strength of will that can come from it--the strength of will is what brings the peace. Clarence Englebert, Rt. 3, Fayetteville, TN 37334

"With a quiet mind Come into that empty house, your heart, And feel the joy of the way Beyond the world." Shakyamuni

FAGGOT

At an SOS conference in Kansas I met .Allen Ginsberg and asked him to give a poetry reading at the U. of N. He agreed. Ginsberg couldn't have shaken Lincoln, Ne braska more if he'd been an atom bomb instead of a Gay Poet. Police followed him e v e r y w h e r e as did crowds of students and the news media. Despite this harassment, Ginsberg was the first homosexual I’ d ever met who was unafraid, the first man who seemed totally and joyously open, the first poet who spoke with a true spiritual zeal. Over 5,000 jammed the Student Union for his reading. Many were hostile and carried eggs and rotten vegetables under their coats. An early Christian walking into a lion's den would have been safer. One thousand arms tensed, ready to attack at the first "fuck," the first reference to Gay love. Allen began with his beautiful "Sunflower Sutra." Then a miraculous thing happened. Hat red and violence melted into admiration and amazement. Ginsberg spoke as no one had before. It was as if some God spoke thru him as he nakedly dared to reveal his feelings. Allen spoke as religious leaders should but don't be cause they're afraid to rock the boat. He spoke as if life and language really mattered. Alone against 5,000, he spoke as a Poet, a Prophet, a See-er. At the end of the poem the ballroom shook in a thunderous, standing ovation. I'd wit nessed a miracle of poetry, a miracle of life. Toughs who'd never before given a d a m about poetry sat in rapture for three hours as Allen read.”Regardless of what they'd been taught to think of M i e n Ginsberg the man, Allen Gins berg the poet gave them back the freedom, hon esty and Truth they'd lost in childhood. As we were leaving, a Fundamentalist ac costed .Allen shouting "What about Christ!" Although totally drained from his reading, Allen stopped. "What does Christ say about Heaven?" he asked tenderly. "He says the King dom of Heaven is within you, right? That's what I've tried to give you today--what's in me. Heaven's inside you too, don't you see? It's not just outside and up there; it's in side your body and heart right now. And when I say I love you what I'm saying is that I love God." All this happened nine years ago but it made a spiritual impression on me I will never forget. Substitute for the name of Christ the name of Buddha, Mohammed, the Moon Goddess, the Poetic Muse, whatever. The point is that in his poetry, Ginsberg awakened a whole com munity to the fact that all life is Holy, not because of anything we had done or could do, but simply because that's the way life is. I realized that at bottom, the job of spiritual ity and poetry was the same--to dare to explore one's deepest experience without reference to the guilts and prejudices of religion and so ciety. Consciously or unconsciously, all dicta tors realize this too which is why they fear and hate poets.

SHAMAN .

POET

Stephen Abbott, 67 Albion St., S.F., CA

ELECTRIC CONSCIOUSNESS I used to want to be a saint. Not the or dinary, everyday type of person who now and then gets canonized by accident as it were; but a real, honest-to-deity fire-breathing miracle worker. For as long as I can remember I have been aware of being different, some times painfully and sometimes proudly so. It was about eight years ago that the "difference" finally began to take some recognizable (to me, at least) form. When I began to fall seriously in love with a college roomie and he reciprocated, we first interpreted it all in good catholic terms. We even used to wash one another's feet. But of course, one thing leads to another, and before long we were using only one bunk at a time. And so much for my grand plans. Not that I was exactly overcome with guilt, but who ever heard of a saint who wasn't a virgin? Like Lan celot, I had lost my chance, and once in a while I regretted my foolishness. However, I remained a serious Christian, and even went on to seminary. Never in my life had I been so close to heaven! I was a part of a coniuunitv of men who were allowed to show af fection for each other openly, even to the point of kissing. When my old room-mate came to visit, he slept with me, and no comments were made. It came as a rude awakening when the Dean informed me that my Bishop was withdrawing his support because I was "insecvrdjf in my sexual identity. I exhausted all m routes of appeal and was forced to withdraw. This set off quite a chain-reaction of introspection and study. I really hadn't given much thought to it, but now { began to realize my own gayness. Never did I really feel it as a fault, but gradually I had to evolve a new theology to take it into account. By the time my classmates graduated and were being or dained, I was able to send them all a letter affirming my sexuality and pointing out that when they in turn became bishops, perhap$t&<.. more liberal view would be in order. Meanwhile, in my own life, I have been stacking up failures and successes with great regularity. Finally realizing that the Church was not about to abandon sexism and classism during my lifetime, I bailed out. Loudly. I hope someone felt the waves. The reason for this long story is that I wanted to explain how I arrived at my present state of spirituality. There is a special magick in gayness. It has been recognized in most human cultures at one time or another. We as gay people, both women and men, have provided more than our share of saints and martyrs, priests and nuns, witches and warlocks, seers and prophets. This is not a coincidence. I make no pretense to being an anthropol ogist, but it seems to me that I recall being told that in many cultures the gay person is revered as witch-sacred. Folk knowledge often

proves true, and I suspect that this is one of its successes. Most spiritualities have underlying dual isms. Male-female, yin-yang, good-evil are contrasts which form the basic stuff of reli gion. As gay persons we transcend the mascu line-feminine dichotomy, and it is this gynandry which makes us the objects of superstitious awe. Is there any validity to the assumption that gayness is by its very nature magickal? Certainly my own experiences would support the idea. I am only beginning to explore the mysti cal nature of my gayness. I find that it con veys a sort of intuition for the so-called oc cult arts, such as astrology, as well as an ability to see into the "mysteries" of many traditional religions. My bitterness against the church has not made me an atheist, but it has helped me to distinguish between the institution and the idea. The ideas behind most religions are sound only as long as they are not dogmatized or in stitutionalized. That is where Western Chris tianity has failed while the Eastern religions have succeeded. Gayness gives a special line to the forces of the universe. The masculine-feminine duality is like the two poles of a battery. The energy potential is enormous, if you connect them. Western culture has been working for centuries to insulate the two poles, to separate them in society as well as in each individual. The only connection that can be made is in the heterosexual act itself, thus the overemphasis on this mere physical activity to the detriment of all other aspects of life. "Hie essential gynandry of lesbians and gay men, however, gives us an ongoing link to both poles. If we learn to tap and direct this en ergy flow, like the ancient Rosicrucians, we have "the powers of the universe" at our dis posal. Is this the source of energy that cre ated such persons as Joan of Arc and Leonardo da Vinci? Because of this innate "turn-on" we should be able to take a totally different w’ orld view than that of our heterosexual siblings. We can see both sides at once; and that carries a heavy responsibility to consider all aspects before acting, and to continue to be the mystic guides of the human species, just as we always have been. More and more lesbians and gay men are making the effort to get in touch with their inner selves and to direct that inner en ergy into the shaping of their world. We can mold the cosmos to suit ourselves, rather~tKan letting ourselves be shaped by the external (heterosexist) forces of society. And that is what may yet save the world for everyone. Gary Lee Phillips, P.0. Box 95, East Lan sing, MI 48823

Dec. 19 1976 Tomorrow night is the winter solstice, the longest night of the vear. Tomorrow night the sun-king stands in the Secret House before the Cauldron of Death and Rebirth, the Cauldron of Cerridwen, and receives from the Lady’ s hand the gifts of promise whose fulfillment is spring. Tomorrow the sun is b o m again. he will mark it with a ritual, for it is one of the eight Sabbats, the turning points of the year. The ritual will include an old chant which runs in part:

Queen of the Moon, Queen of the stars Queen of the Heavens, Queen of the earth Bring to us the Child of promise. It is the Great Mother who gives birth It is the Light-Bringer who is b o m Darkness and tears shall be set aside When the sun comes up early. Golden sun of the mountains, illumine the land, light up the world, illumine the seas and rivers. Blessed be the Great Goddess, Without beginning, without end. This is a good night for writing about the Craft, a good night for sharing the Mysteries.

I am a faggot. I am also a witch, a shaman/priest of the mysteries. There, in that unity, is the essential core of my identity. When I stand within the Circle, I am at one not only with myself, but with all those who have stood in the Circle before me. (Before I go any further, there are a few things which must be said: 1) Witches do not worship the devil; 2) the m o d e m Craft ex ists as a number of differing cults referred to as traditions; mine is called the Fairy or Cruithin tradition.) Witch Craft is a shamanistic religiomagical system with roots stretching back through the Celtic Iron Age culture to the neolithic. It is non-dogmatic, non-hierarchic, Goddess-centered, and anti-patristic’ !' It af firms all the varieties of human sexuality as sacred. Its internal organization is collective, a remnant of tribal communalism; the* *against the church fathers or their writings.

basic unit of the Craft is the Coven, a to tally autonomous group of no more than thir teen. The Craft is not a religion at all in the modem, western sense of the word, but a way of relating to and working and living in harmony with the powers of the natural world. It is an active way of experiencing the power of love and joy, of awakening the power that comes from within. If the Craft can be said to have a single paramount message, I suppose it would be some thing like this: All things are alive, all things natural are precious and sacred. There fore, move gently, in harmony and balance. Learn from the earth what She has to teach. Above all the Craft is magic. Not just healing and weather-witching, crystal-gazing and can dle-burning, though they are important, but the great magic tliat is the living earth: rocks and trees, beasts and birds and our own shameless bodies.

I am often asked about the powers of a witch. Tlvey are real. They are really no dif ferent from the powers of a shaman, a brujo, a medicine man. All magic is one in source, learned from the same teacher. Our "powers" arise from our experience and perception of the world as an interlocking, shifting web of energy patterns, and our total acceptance of ourselves and our place as a part of that web. They grow from our ability to direct and mold mana, or psychic energy, and to consciously effect the process of which we are a part. The word Witch is derived from tiie same root as vickes, an .Anglo-Saxon word meaning to bend or shape. Witch Craft means the craft of Bending. One useful technique for beginning to de velop competence for working with power is as follows: Go to the country and sit, listening, watching, feeling the slow pulse of life about you. Let it guide your breath into a slow steady rhythm, and visualize your lungs fill ing with bright blue light as you inhale, then flowing out through your body. After a while you should begin to feel a tingling, and a floating sensation. Try to sense the ways in which you are connected to all around you. If you work at it, you will find it eas ier and easier to raise energy, and will be able to begin directing it through clear visu alization of and concentration upon the process you wish to set in motion. For example, if you wish to charge a pro tective amulet, first think very clearly about precisely what you want it to do, then raise energy and visualize it flowing from your body to the object you're charging, holding in your mind the while the idea of protection and safety until you're satisfied with the result. What our rituals really concern themselves with, though, is the great magic. They cele brate the seasonal cycle and the full moon, and serve to keep us closely linked to those processes. The basic pattern of our rituals is sim ple, though the variations are endless: a cir cle is drawn in some way; those present are blessed by annointing with oil or water or sprinkled with water which has itself been consecrated. Candles may be lit and incense burned and the guardians of the four direc tions invoked. There will be singing and an invocation of the Lady and Lord, frequently taking the form known as drawing down the moon. In essence, a priest/ess takes on the aspects of (is "possessed" by) the divine archetype being invoked. There will be a cir cle dance, and a love feast, usually built around cakes or bread and wine. 'Hie end of the ritual is marked by the breaking of the circle.

During initiations, The Charge of the Goddess is read to the initiate. It Is worth quoting a bit of it here. As a sign that you be really free, you shall be naked in your rites. You shall dance, sing, feast, make music and love, all in my praise. For mine is the ecstasy of the spirit, and my law is love unto all things. For behold, I am the Mother of all things, and my love is poured out upon the earth. I am the soul of the universe; from me all things proceed, and to me all things return. All acts of love and pleasure are my ritu als; therefore, let there be beauty’ and strength, honour and pride, mirth and rev erence within you. Our world is not the dead place we were taught to live in so that we could take our places in the consumer society, a world which exists only to be dominated, exploited, sub dued, a world which can be dissected and ex plained into nothingness. Our eyes are eyes of fire; our language that of myth. They tried long ago to kill us all, church and state alike, because our mere existence threatened their power over people's minds and bodies, because our fi'eedom threatened their puritan authoritarianism. We died by the mil lions, but they failed. They fear us still. In England, witch craft was a crime punishable by one year's im prisonment until 1951. In Kansas two years ago, a witch lost his job and was hounded into suicide by a newspaper's smear campaign. In Southern California, a respected priestess is appealing a fortune-telling conviction, and several witches were hounded from their homes by a terror campaign including burning crosses and shotgun attacks after a television appear ance. The historical connection between gayness and the Craft has been too well documented in Arthur Evans' "Witch Craft: the Gay CounterCulture" in FagRag to require much comment here. It was summed up by one of the witchhunters who wrote, "Sodomy is a crime which leads to witchcraft." We have our own claim to spirituality; it can no longer be left in the hands of straight men, as yet another tool 1 to use against us.

My own odyssey began at 13, when I took up with the first of a series of Yoga schools. I learned a lot from them; unfortunately it included sexual puritanism and a sense of guilt over and hate of my burgeoning gayness that nearly killed me. I withdrew and started on a spiritual personal path of my own, but it was years be fore I was able to put that load of shit to tally behind me. .Along the way I acquired friends who were witches, and eventually real ized I had come on my own to a space mudi like theirs. I began working with them, and in time accepted initiation. I found in the craft a way of sharing my' magics and vision, which are after all the basic function and obligation of a shaman. .And I found in the Craft the ideal vehicle, the glue needed to hold together my long dream, a communal family/magic circle of gay people, living in the country'. That too is well on the way to realization; we have a coven, are run ning study groups, planning to set up women's and men's mystery circles, and land is within ;reach. Central to the working of our tradition and coven, ritually, mythically and in our daily lives, is androgyny. We regard the male/female polarity as fundamental and omni present, and unrelated either to gender or cultural concepts of masculinity/femininity. Maleness/femaleness (yin/yang) are like the North and South poles of a magnet; they imply each other. One cannot be one without also being the other. Our mythic/ritual system includes a fig ure known as the Diana glas (the blue God), who is depicted as a slender youth with bud ding breasts and a hard cock. He is the symbol/patron of the exuberent sexuality of spring and of the Mystery of Love. He is also addressed as "Our Lord of the Painted Fan."

He is the very spirit of androgyny. In a real sense, though, all our divinities, like all people, are androgynous. I see the craft as a process of transfor mation and growth which is at once intensely personal and political, for we are political/ social animals, and we create societies which are mirrors of our basic assumptions and be liefs. There are a few "laws" which all witches by definition recognize and keep: 1) strive to act in harmony with nature, mindful of vour responsibility to the earth and to all of life; 2) respect the right of other witches to be in the closet; 3) never charge for instruc tion in the Craft or for initiation. I'm going to close this with a poem/ blessing written by the mad marvelous old man who initiated me. lou whom all saints revile and sages name Mother of Harlots and iniquities For whom the fruitful bore the rack and flame Confessing vilest deeds and blasphemies By Earth Your fertile body, blessed be, .And by the living Waters of Your womb With air, Your breath that moves upon the sea And sunmons life green-springing from the tomb By Fire, Your Spirit, blessed be with power The children of your love b o m into wrath May light and cleansing in the uiclean hour Shine from your moonwhite brow upon this path Each unto each, eternal in love's way All blessed and illuminated, EVO-HE (Copyright 1970 by Victor Anderson. Re produced by permis sion of the author.) Caradoc, Coven of the Silver Wheel, P.O. Box 2064, Berkeley, CA 94702

---There's a great shaman/sorcerer/wisewoman inside you, more ***** than you can imagine, the key is your gayness. Jam ---There were six of us who chose the articles for this issue. It was a difficult process. Our different experiences and backgrounds around spirituality surfaced and often clashed. What's im portant? Personal liberation, the politics of spirituality, our sexuality, traditional views, our unique faggot contributions. We tried to cover these various aspects and" found ourselves still left with a lot of material. We went through the articles we didn't use and found parts we wanted to include that either seem to speak for themselves or express something we thought of as important and missing from our other choices. We hope this form of editing does not offend the writers and we welcome feedback on this process. Samuel, Jada, Howie, Larry, Faygele, Steven ---Reading through the letters in RFD shows many "faggots who have moved from the country into the city, perhaps seeking the gay community they thought was there (and perhaps finding it!). Never theless, there are as well many city people who have never lived the rural life, who romanticize it but who can’ t make a commitment to it. What does this seem to be saying? Nfy suspicion is that what these readers are seeking is the spiritual aspect of what RFD is talking about. Norbert

— It took me two years to learn to hug and be hugged by a man without freaking out. It also took me two years to realize 1 didn’ t have to stay in a monastery to be spiritual. Stephen — One night as I was fucking with my lover by candlelight he, sighing, threw his .inns over his head. That's magic to me. Jamal — Even when we fuck, we tend to block that strength--to pull our consciousness back from it. Fucking has become a socially per mitted, approved, licensed mechanical jag. in which very little of the ordinary mail's real spiritual essence is put at stake. Only when a lover's body starts to be tasted with whole senses is thei'e the slightest opening to inner communion (the awakening of tantra, if you like). Bob — I was going to say something about the gayness in being gay, about the powerful and healing magick that's our fearsome responsibility. Jam — We must begin now to see the power in our magic. It will take some mighty conjuring to halt the destruction of our world by the machine technology and the men who are running it. Jamal — Each morning, after I've dressed and stretched my limbs a little, I walk thru the alder woods to my meditation bench. The bench sits in a clearing overlooking the mountains and next to my marijuana patch (I always like to send some lovin' energy to these plants during my meditation.) Closing my eyes, I take some deep breaths and let my mind slow down and try to find a quiet place inside. I sometimes focus my attention on a part of me that needs to grow and ask for the light to give me guidance. "0 light, light within me, help me to be more clear, help me to overcome my fear." Focusing on these ideas, I let myself go within to where I feel calm and strong. I stay in this place for as long as feels good. Again, I invoke the spirits to let my heart fly open to those around me, for the light and strength needed to become a more nurturing and positive person. To end my meditation, I will sometimes sing an Indian chant to the goddess/ god Gita Ram, Sita Ram, which I find helpful in centering my energy. Feeling the power of my spirit, the warmth of my soul, I open my eyes to take in the vibrant trees and life all around me. I feel ready for another day. Samuel

— Sharing,loving,showing kindness, caring for others, living in harmony with other people, other species and the planet--these values which some might call spiritual are for me the essence of my political beliefs. — Some of the nicest, warmest people I know define themselves spiritually. Such human warmth means more to me than any pol itically "correct line." And it is only when the spiritually minded begin spouting their own correct lines that I really close up to them. .Allen — Mien we circle about the fire, holding hands, sharing our hearts with our open eyes, we are by all our collective memories, a self-conscious cell in the body of the Divine. Jamal — Just a tree! You know many people once respected trees, spoke to them, worshipped them, learned from them. Jam ---The spiritually-minded can love the purity of nature all they want, but something needs to be done about "those who look at the land and see neither beauty nor spirit but only the almight dollar. Allen — I exercised my option to drill a well be fore buying, and contacted an oldtimer who agreed to witch for water. He walked back and forth, rod in hands, and as the rod repeatedly dipped over one spot he said, "there is water right here at about 100 feet deep." And a week later, on that very spot, the driller began to get water at 90 feet. David — Jewish culture was all around me then, and I still accept much of it affectionately, but Jewish religion? Too much praying (in a for eign language, no less), miracles (who believed in miracles, except the ignorant?), the "chosen people" (I was taught to believe all people were equal), and the omnipotent god (who I never did get to see). Allen

— Haven't you ever felt it, felt something special about being gay? Something lurking tnere, a knowledge, a power, some secret strength, pride, insight, genius, magic. Deep down, dark, hiding, so elusive, so vague, rooted underneath in some strange other place. Look for it, feel it. Summon it. Jam — Magick's a funny thing: like the treeness in the tree, it's there and again it isn’ t. Depends on what you want to see. If you believe that a tree is just bark and leaves, that's all you'll see. If the world to you is all day flatness of mundane 3-D, then so it is. If gayness to you is being a same-sex erect denied minority rights/normal, then you've been co-opted. Jam — I once knew of someone who was heavily into macrobiotic diet, with its yin-yang structure, as a method of "curing" his homo sexuality... Occasionally, he'd go off his diet, eat a hamburger and end up in bed with another man. He'd blame the hamburger. Allen

— Every day seems full of exciting events as I use a simple exercise I developed for my own awareness through meditation. Combining my readings of tire I Ching, the Moon phases with the planets and my own personal bio-rhythm chart. This exercise takes anywhere from 4-6 hours a day. 1 have been using my Taoist Book of Days; Calendar Diary as an instrument to record my daily experiences in eight words or less, Amazing events are now coming my way naturally. For many years I would hurry up and go no where. Now I take my time and I seem to be go ing everywhere and doing many more things I want to do without pressures from others. I find myself having more and more spiritual ex periences each day. My life is filled with rituals. I find the clothes I wear to play an important part in my awareness because they are "ceremonial drag" in relation with my personality. My clothes are as free as I am. This way I am not putting energy into doubt, but have more room in my life to extend good positive energy around to others. Another important part of my life is the use of colors. I have noticed how certain colors affect my personality. I see how colors affect and blend in with my emotions. I am also convinced that everything in this world is related in a sexual way to some de gree. I know I am happy and at peace. Hoti — I went to the School of Metaphysics in Kan sas City one evening in November of '75 to at tend "Sufi dancing." My experience that night was one of Divine Ix>ve flowing through me and through my "others" as we danced singing: Allah Allah Allah Allah Er Rahman (Most Merciful) Er Rahim (Most Compassionate); Ya Fattah (You are the Opener of my heart); Hare Krishna; Shalom Aleichem; 'Tis a gift to be simple, 'Tis a gift to be free; Sri Ram, Ahura Mazda, Buddha, Yahweh, Eleison, Allah, Toward the One; Ishq Allah Ma'abud L'illah (God is Love, Lover and Be loved.) Now, many days and nights of dancing later, I'm a mureed (disciple) in the Sufi Or der: I'm a student-seeker still with very much to learn. Yet I do know I have experienced Joy and Divine Ix>ve and Pain and Understanding and growth along my spiritual path. I've been given some insights into "life's Great Question1’and have felt something (Something?) touch my heart' and surely open it. Mumtaz ---Gently, they introduced me to meditation and to myself--my inner center--and the beauty of my existence. I knew that this was the begin ning of my change. Tho' the next few weeks were filled vdtn continued feelings of inade quacy and hopelessness, I was able occasionally to connect with a deep, nearly hidden sense of well being. Many times I wanted to return to old familiar spaces, but the changes were irre versible. Bob ---I have experienced Lord Jesus, my first spiritual guide, and know and understand Him better through my Sufi studies. Mumtaz

— It is inportant to see that for many people there is a comnon source of interest in relig ion or politics--this source is the discontent with the earthly status quo. Ter often, however, religion projects the solutions inward; too of ten, politics projects the solutions merely in an outward direction. Spiritual expression as we have seen it in the past and as we now see it is not uniform. Clearly there is an inward looking escapism that runs from social reality, but there is also a heightened self-awareness that understands reality both inside and out side ourselves, Allen — I think of my spirituality as awareness; connecting with and understanding myself and what's around me. I stress the understanding aspect because I think spirituality gets used as a dump for ignorance; attributing phenomena in our daily lives as the work of a mysterious celestial force, for instance. I am seeking to understand myself and my surroundings with these guidelines: 1) all that is real is ra tional; 2) everything changes; 3) change is not necessarily smooth or steady, and 4) ev erything is connected. Really, I can use a lot less I Ching and a lot more thinking. Iris ---Religion is in, and I am having a terrible time with it. Allen ---My parents turned me off to the sectarian politics of tire left, having already gone thru it themselves. They likened tho strict devo tion to catechism ; I have a similar aversion to opening ip to "spiritual" people. Therefore it was a new contradiction for ie to be told I was "too spiritual" to be a part of planning for the "Faggots and Class Struggle Confer ence .’1 Faygelc ---Talking about spirituality is rather like trying to nail a ghost. Anthropologists tell US primitive man saw all life as Holy (see Mircea Eliade's books). No division was made be tween the Sacred 5 Profane. The whole community participated in magic dance 5 song rituals so as to stay integrated with the Oneness of Life. Dualism developed with the advent of more com plex social organization. The universe was seen as hostile. A separate, specialized priest clan arosia to propitiate hostile gods who were nowseen as above §beyond life. Common people la bored at agriculture 5 took what the priests said on faith. Philosophy 5 religion, especi ally in the West, extended this dualism into a mind/body split. Capitalism fragmented spiritu ality further still. Now the worker was alien ated from his work $ art was alienated from life. Stephen — "Communist" countries which supposedly dis courage religion utilize many of the images and trappings of religion. Thus, the appeal of the portrait of Chairman Mao in China is hardly different, on an emotional level, from the por trait of the Sacred Heart of Jesus found ubiauitously in the Catholic countries of South America. The monumental architecture of Stal inism bears an uncanny resemblance to build ings erected in honor of a deity. I wonder what it means that there is such an obvious connection between the emotional aspects of religion and politics as, for example, in the many left songs written to the tunes of old hymns. Allen

---Part of ray caning out as a sissy has been the realization of ray past life as a woman. I was about eighteen and had a small child when we were both killed in an air raid in Japan during World War II. I'm never going to let that happen to me again. If they shoot me down, I'll be screaming in the streets when it comes. Jamal ---When I could stand it no longer I decided to precipitate some type of major change--to let go of something--something I had always carried. I could not cope with any of my in ternal burdens yet, so it would have to be ex ternal- -yes, of course, my material possess ions. Besides the sheer burden of owning far more than I needed, it had become clear that I was more involved with the things I owned than with people. I reasoned that by letting go of these objects, the space they had occupied would then be available for people. Bob — Women §homosexuals attack traditional roles as spiritually limiting and dehumanizing. Stephen — My spiritual rebirth after the tragedy of a Catholic childhood was originally very' hetero sexist. Seeing Mama Moon and Papa Sun as polar principles. Now I feel like I'm all the space between them. I like it better this way. Jamal — Those of us who are Gay, I think, have a special opportunity to build an impressive poe try out of our experience. Gay love is not nec essarily better or more poetic than heterosex ual love but it is different. This returns us to my original assertion that all good poetry is b o m of conflict and that one main hinge of societal conflict today is sexism. As outcasts in the heterosexual mainstream, in conflict with all societal institutions without, and our uncertain identities within, we've been thrown into tune with the voices of the Wilder ness, the Old Testament prophets, the saints of the Dark Night of the Soul. We've been forced, often upon pain of death, to examine what love,

sex and spirituality mean in a far deeper and more excruciating way than most straight poets could imagine. We write with our feelings and our blood out of necessity, not with our minds out of idle, clever speculation. So long op pressed, so long invisible, we ache to hear our soul's songs sung. Stephen — Back in the 1950s, when I was growing up, one thing I learned it wasn't nice to tell people--it voould shock them or upset them or make them dislike you--was that you didn't be lieve in God. In the era of McCarthvism, "god less communism" was one of the scare tactic cliches. "Atheist" was a dirty word. The world of atheism then, in fact, was not unlike the world of closet homosexuality I also inhabited in those days. Inside me, I wore four badges of martyrdom: Jewish, communist, atheist, homo sexual . Allen — Religious experience tells us that a key to this sharing is being in touch with our basic myths. Interestingly enough, the basic myths of the Jewish and Christian traditions are those of the Exodus and the Death/Resurrection of Jesus. Interesting, because both are free dom myths -- the accounts of how the Lord of life entered into people's oppression and lib erated them. When we see the power of libera tion myths, isn't it natural to ask what the great myths of our spirituality might be? What are the stories we have to tell one ano ther of how we have discovered liberation within ourselves? Norbert — Who among us hasn't suffered a lifetime of oppression/indoctrination? What about me, who am I to say? Many loving people have helped me, and I've learned to pay attention. But I'm very unhappy; I see too many chains on others, on myself. I see everything's a great whole, one pattern: I hope more of us will wake up more/ soon 8 thus expand all our freedom. My wanting to remind you is so you can help remind me, breaking free, so hard, so good. Jam

— Jam, 640 Clayton St., S.F., CA 94117 — Hoti, 533 Castro St., S.F., CA 94114 — Bob Pinel, Gemini Farm, RFD Box 6441, Fern Flat Rd., Aptos, CA 95003 — Allen Young, RFD 2, Orange, MA 01364 — Rev. Cherag Mumtaz Kammerer, 2480 N. Mar tin Ave., Tucson, AZ 85719 — Samuel Lebow, 3700 Coyote Creek Rd., Wolf Creek, OR 97497

---Norbert Brockman, P.0. Box 1283, Dayton, OH 45401 ---Jamal Redwing, 164 Beulah St., S.F., CA 94117 — Robert-Iris Fox, Rt. 3, Box 1708, Port An geles, WA 98362 — Faygele ben Miriam, 4525 Lower Wolf Creek Rd., Wolf Creek, OR 97497 — Stephen Abbott, 67 Albion St., S.F., CA 94103

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in converting to computer printed labels we made a coupla mistakes, so if you didn't get the spring issue, #11, let us know, also we forgot to credit norm lent of santa cruz CA for the photo on page 23 and for the graphic idea used on the table of contents page, #11.

ft? o clarity and i had an awful time, she wouldn't come to the milking room, she wanted to stay with her recently-born kids. li it was a fight all the IN. way from the woodshed, i kept ^ trying to be reasonable. "you got mastitis and i've some herb medicines to make you better, clarity, come on. clarity! CLARITY! push pull, naa--aa. scream, swack! it took us, i'm sure, at least ten min utes. by the time we reached the b a m milking room i hated both her and myself, i felt so ugly, hitting her and pulling her. she was pant ing real hard. i shut the door and sat down first i told her how jealous and angry i was that she didn't want to share her milk with me. she wandered around the room, not trusting me one bit. i was pissed that she had mastitis, too! i had looked forward to her milk so much, and now maybe she wouldn't have even enough for the kids, her whole udder was hard, she never get better! "i'm gonna sell you if you don't have milk" God! i felt like a slave trader, she was my friend, she was b o m blind and i had fed her herbs to heal her. her sight returned and i named her clarity, no. actu ally the name had come to me before she was healed.

my relationship with her had helped me survive the most fiery pain of my life, and now i was so freaked i wanted to sell her! not live with her anymore! aah. aah. i wanted to cry. no tears came, i sat. miserable. after a while a softer voice came out of . "i'm really freaked out by your mastitis, i'm sorry i got so mad. but it would be real hard to have to take care of you with no milk, especial ly since personality didn't get bred, please, help me to get you better." clarity finally moved towards me. i rubbed her neck and we bumped noses and foreheads a bit. the storm was over, i mixed some oats with cut cabbage (both good healing food for the udder) and added lots of sliced garlic, garlic is a strong anti-biotic which enters the milk quite easily, so it's great for mastitis. N\ she started eating, i started to mas1 /) sage her udder with a warm rag. i used hot water with a few drops of eucalyptus oil. i had spent the night before reading a very help ful book, a frantic night-time reading of juliette de bairacli levy's "herbal handbook for farm and stable." so by mix and match (matching what she said you needed with what i had available) i came up with this treat ment. as i was washing and mas saging clarity's udder, i

realized i had confidence in the herbs, but ~ not in myself, i didn't really believe i could love her well and wisely enough so that she could get better, i certainly wasn't feeling loving toward my brothers either, the begin ning process for rfd layout for no. 12 had started, the men from san francisco were here, i was wanting love, wanting to give love and my heart was a stone, i was stuck and didn't know how to move thru, to break thru, to tear the heart, my heart, open, i was chanting lit anies a lot, "heart of flesh, have mercy on me." my hands were massaging clarity's udder but i felt so distant from it. i had objecti fied it in my fear into 'a diseased udder.' i snapped out of it and started rubbing gently my good friend clarity's udder. clarity turned toward me. i started cry ing as i realized that i was a good and loving person, i could help heal my goat friend and my people friends, the love was in me if i would only touch their real flesh with tender ness and clarity. oh! so much fear and self hatred left me at that moment. i then milked her into the bowl, i was so grateful! i turned to the picture of the god dess of mercy over the grain barrel (known, in one form, as ste. therese of lisieux, she sends red roses from heaven). i raised the bowl of milk and started to sing a thankful wailing. "oh mercy mercy mercy, show me mercy, show me how to have mercy and love, thank you for your mercy, thank you for your milk." i drank most of the milk, i stood up and leaned against the grain barrel, i took out my cock and spit on it and started rubbing it. clarity wasn't quite used to this form of religious devotion, she quietly stared. i came on the floor and in my hand, i saw the milk bowl, i scraped the rest of the come into the milk bowl, i mixed the milk)' white liquids together, i licked my hands. i turned to the saint of red roses, i screamed and howled and smiled, amazing grace in falsetto, kyrie eleison, done basso profundo. i raised the bowl toward the image and then to my lips, i drank the new milk. i looked at clarity somewhat shyly (i embarass easily), she was anxious to rejoin her kids, i let her out of the milking room, i knew both she and i would be healed. her mastitis cleared up in four days, my congestion was released in tears in a staff circle a few days later. chenille crow, magdalen farm, wolf creek passages from the hebrew scriptures, quoted from the catholic little office of the mother while the king was at table my spikenard yielded a sweet smell, i am black and beautiful, therefore the king has loved me and brought me into his chamber, (antiphon: before this virgin's couch sing us again and again the sweet songs of the play.) his left hand is under my head and his right hand shall embrace me. a flower shall rise up out of his root, lift up your gates, o princes, and be ye lifted up, o eternal gates, and the king of glory shall enter in.... and in the morning you shall see his glory. ^ ^ w r w r T B f T j r r r B i M M i n i Tr-»i ■ r r f i f T r r ' w i t r f — -r-r-r-r t-i- tt f» » •-v-ii 1 r i | | Ml— ^ ^ ^ A ft—A « ft-------4ft 4ft. 4V 4 . A ^ 4ft___________4 ^ f t

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this poem is dedicated to my grandmother, maria concetta femia

this is a curse. this is a true curse. this is a sacred curse. a curse against the enemy of our people. who you are must die. you must embrace death lovingly. everything will be revealed. everything will be seen in the light. you will learn not to fear ecstacy. you will crawl out of the death shell that you carry with you long after you should have abandoned it. your clawing and clinging will cease, your senseless attacks upon us, mere symptoms that they are will stop. we we we we to

call upon call upon call upon call upon bless our

ourselves, snakes and lightning, pluto and pallas. diana and mars battle against you.

we call upon the four directions to lead us we call upon earth, air, fire and water the flights of birds and the sound of our holy mother the ocean, star of the sea that shines on in our battle.

on finding something left they brought me your cloven hoof today, it still smelled of wild flowers and moon pipes, they said it was the only remnant they found-when you were consumed by the final birthright: like a nova unfettered at last from the crazy myth of flesh, and finally your own fluids baptised into the blood nectar of legends, somewhere, it was the phoenix madness.

this sacred curse is mere prophecy justice is being administered, nothing nothing will remain unchanged. Clare-Marie Femia

my silly lover, i hold it like i would pray. an amulet against your absence or perhaps my killing. reeling and soaring where i stand i am lost as a child without shadows. the air is pure shard, my breath is on the verge of phospheresence. so believe me somebody when i clutch this the rind of a world beyond me i do not understand i will not lament the undefinable, but i will remember. shaundel moonrose

Weather satellites sweeping across the Northern Hemisphere have come up with a surprise: The permanent snow and ice cap has increased sharply...in creased by 12 per cent in the Northern Hemisphere in 1971 and has remained at the new

Dust from a severe and pro longed drought in Africa has been blowing across the Atlantic for the past five years and is polluting the air over the Caribbean.... Denver Post Feb. 10, 1974

Albuquerque Journal May 15, 1974 o---------------------------- SNOW IN MIAMI Seattle Post-Intelligencer January 1977

"...It's been so dry that occasionally I look out and I think I'm living 'The Grapes of Wrath'...." -excerpt from a letter from my mother, Marjorie J. Perns Bakers field, CA, April 25, 1977

In case you haven't noticed, the weather has been weird lately. Washington, Oregon, California and the Rocky Mountain states have been experiencing a prolonged drought. The Midwest and Fast got frigidaired by severe chills only to be subjected to floods during the spring defrost. San Francisco is ration ing water. Washington state is asking indus try and citizens to trim their electrical addictions by 10 per cent because the water that pushes the hydroelectric generators is dangerously low. Competing with the weather for headlines has been the energy crisis. Gas shortages in the Fast. Gas taxes. Conser vation and coal. Nuclear madness. Honey, I don't know about you, but I'm starting to get a little paranoid. Maybe it's time to give my toaster to Goodwill, hock my blender and stereo and head for Bora Bora. Before I nuke any fast moves, I think it's wise to understand what's going on so that I may nuke an educated decision about what to do. Who knows, maybe a giant iceberg is heading for Bora Bora. For my research I went to the library and read three books, The Weather Machine by Nigel Calder, Forecasts', Famines and Freezes by John Gribbins, and Climate and the Affairs of Men by Nels Winkless and Iben Browning, plus numerous maga zine articles. 1 found out some interesting things. What I want to do in this article is to 1) show that the weather has had a pro found effect on people historically; 2) ex plain how the weather is changing; 3) what is affecting those changes, and 4) analyze the

Soviet authorities have be gun evacuating inhabitants of a remote central Asian Valley threatened by floods caused by a rapidly advan cing mountain glacier. Albuquerque Tribune May 31, 1975

changes in light of the energy crisis. Historically Speaking Remember M a n e Antoinette's big line, "Let them eat cake"? Well, do you know it had something to do with the weather? It did. Back in 1788, France had a very hot summer followed by a severe hailstorm in the early fall which destroyed most of the grain crop. By 1789 there were bread riots all over France. Marie's tacky advice helped spark the hungry peasantry into fomenting the French Revolution and the subsequent guillotining of Marie and her decadent aristocratic cronies. The hot summer and hailstorm of 1788 may have been a fluke, but it serves as a fine example of the role the weather has played in human affail's. In addition to the flukes, the weather patterns spanning hundreds of years also bear interesting correlations in the rise, fall and movement of civilizations. Un fortunately the research I read covered the northern hemisphere only. The warming period that began around 500 B.C. accompanied the rise of major civiliza tions in India, China and Southern Europe. Prior to 500 B.C. the major civilizations of the Mediterranean were located in the Middle Fast and North Africa, which are closer to the equator and therefore warmer. Calder hy pothesized that the North African rivals of Rome may have been weakened by generally dri er conditions prevalent in North Africa dur ing that time. The warming trend that began in 500 B.C. continued until roughly 1500 A.D. Accompany37

ing warmer tenperatures in the higher north ern latitudes wore the invasion of Rome by northern European tribes, Genghis Khan's sweep from Mongolia into China, Persia and southern Russia, and the Viking ventures into the British Isles, Greenland and North Amcrica. After 1300, the weather started becoming decidedly cooler. Heavy rainfalls saturated northern Europe causing widespread famines around 1315 followed soon thereafter by the "Black Death" which devastated half the pop ulation of Europe. By 1450, the Viking set tlements in Greenland had been frozen out and the "Little Ice Age" which began around 1430 continued on until 1850. Whi le the Little ice Age was happening in the North Atlantic, winters were generally milder in China and .Japan because weaker winds from the west allowed them to benefit from the warm Pacific Ocean air. In North America, the farming civilization of the Pueb los was at its peak in 1300, but as the warmth of the liking era waned drought struck and they deserted sacred and cultural centres at Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon and Kayenta (Ari zona). Two centuries later when the Little Icc Age was hitting Europe, redoubled drought made the tribes move again. During the Little lcc Age, Spain and Portugal were dominant imperialist powers in Europe but as the weather began wanning up in the 1800's power shifted to countries in the higher northern Latitudes: England, France, Germany, Russia, Japan and the United States. The wanning trend began in the late 1800's and continued until 1950. During that time, the global air temperature increased approxi mately 'i degree Centigrade, the industrial revolution began in earnest with the discov ery of plentiful energy sources and the rise of capitalism, there were fewer severe win ters, farming was generally easier and there was a staggering growth in human population. la da, here we are. Both Calder and Gribbins stated that we've just passed the wannest period for a long while and that the global air temperature is decreasing faster than it increased earlier in this century. Another Little Icc Age or a prelude to a Big Ice Age? All three books that I read claim it's a distinct possibility. Besides the change in the global air temperature, the Earth's rainfall patterns are shifting. To understand what is influencing the changes in the global air temperature and rainfall pat terns it's time to open the school doors and give a class in basic atmospheric sciences.

of a hemisphere is squeezed or stretched ac cordingly. An expansion of the high pressure system of the North Pole has been bringing on what is called a weak circulation pattern. The weak circulation pattern manifests itself in four ways: 1) westerly winds that circle around the North Pole are more prone to os cillations over a wider range of latitudes;

2) the northern hemisphere weather systems move more slowly giving persistent high pres sure systems a chance to become established preventing low pressure systems bringing rain from moving eastward; 3) the weather troughs extend more into subtropical and tropical lat itudes, and 4) the North Pole system squeezes a belt just north of the equator meaning that monsoon rains cannot extend so far to the north. India, which relies heavily on the mon soon rains, is experiencing her fifth major drought in 13 years. If we want to understand why the high pressure system over the North Pole is ex panding, the cause-and-effect relationships that can provide us with the answers get much less precise. What 1 did in Atmos Sci 101 is lay out how the Earth's weather system in the northern hemisphere works internally. But like people, we cannot understand the wea ther's internal functioning fully unless we also understand the social context. In the case of the Earth and its weather passions, the social context is largely extra-terres trial: the sun, moon, the planets and stars. In Atmos Sci 201, I will briefly lay out how the Earth's weather responds to its social context.

Atmos Sci 10.1 Two basic processes drive the weather system: 1) the equator is hotter than the poles so warm air tends to rise at the equa tor and fall at the poles before returning as winds over the Earth's surface to complete the pattern of "convection"; 2J the Earth is rotating so there is a tendency for winds to blow sideways. Playing a part in the convection cycle is a high pressure system centered on each pole. If the polar high pressure system ex pands or contracts, the whole climatic belt

Atmos Sci 201 The Three Earth Dances: There are three "dances" the Earth does in revolving around the sun. The wobble: The earth wobbles like a spinning top in its orbit around the sun. The wobble time we are currently in is the worst for the northern hemisphere's summer sun shine. The roll: The earth's roll is like a ship rolling on the waves; in the roll cycle the Earth alters the tilt of its axis 21.8 degrees (more upright) to 24.4 degrees (more

tilted). For the last 10,000 years, the earth has been in an upward roll or the summers are becoming less extreme (cooler). One complete cycle takes 40,000 years. The stretch: The stretch means that the Earth departs from a circular orbit. At the maximum stretch, the intensity of sunshine reaching the Earth may vary by up to 30 per cent in a year's course. A conplete cycle takes 100,000 years. Pres ently the Earth's orbit is becoming nearly circular. Die Sunspot Cycle. Both Calder and Gribbins said the sunspot cycle disturbs the Earth's magnetic field which in turn directly affects weather. Both hinted at the sunspot cycle being connected in other ways also. What excited me about the 11 year sunspot cycle is that scientists believe it's caused by the gravitational pull of the planets on the sun. A radio engineer, J.H. Nelson, was able to predict 1960 and 1972's great solar stonns by calculating a specific alignment of Earth, Venus and Saturn. The study of the gravitational pull of the planets upon the Earth is better known as that much maligned and abused science called astrology. Human Beings. Most atmospheric scientists tend to discount the human element as a cause of changing weather patterns. Between aboveground atomic testing, the heat-smogdust generated in industrial societies, and supersonic planes and aerosols destroying the ozone layer, I am not so sure. Volcanoes. Great and prolonged volcanic activity is associated with, and probably causes, ice ages. The controlling factors in volcanic activity are the tidal forces of the Sun, the Moon and the planets and the celes tial forces which influence our solar system. Again astrology will play a role in under standing the effects of relative positions of extra-terrestrial forces upon the Earth. Ice and the Magnetic Field are also involved, but I don1t understand either enough at this time to write about them.

or to struggle to hold onto our energy-con suming, human-controlled environments. An ex ample of the latter is the government's ap proach to tiie current energy crisis. Did you listen to Jimmy’ s energy talk? He said one thing I agreed with: "Americans are the most wasteful people on Earth." I was puzzled, however, when he didn't suggest any thing to change that. Why, I wondered, didn't he suggest using zeppelins instead of jets, studying methane conversion instead of'demand ing increased use of coal, wind energy instead of more nuclear madness, or even subsidies to build more rapid transit? Again, there are reasons. Capitalism demands continual growth in or der to continue functioning. Indeed, creating new markets for new goods is a creed of monop oly capitalism and the way they have been able to push this creed is through the exploitation of resources at home and abroad, especially the Ihird World nations. Federally subsidized cheap energy. Now that America has become ad dicted to snowmobiles, Winnebagos, hot water on demand, toasty houses by setting a thermo stat, flushing smelly things down the drain, being able to hop in the car and escape, be ing able to turn on the IT and escape, and use enough electricity to feed all the gadgets, the joy ride demands we continue on as long as possible. The people who run this country, the ruling class, are not going to say, "Look, we were greedy, insensitive to people and the Earth, and we made a terrible mistake." My dear, that would mean the end of capitalism. Instead it's coal (the major oil companies own most of the major coal companies), nu clear power, higher prices and happy energy days are here again. Do you know who is going to pay for the increased prices and the con version process? Yes, the working class and the poor are going to eat shit again through higher inflation, higher unemployment, re duced services, colder houses, expensive food (the high yields of .American farms are due to petrochemicals, not soilbuilding) and a dan gerously polluted environment. We'll have to rename America "Cancer Country". Link up this disastrous energy policy with the weather changes and we have the makings of a real madhouse. Even with this potential madhouse on the horizon I have de cided not to go to Bora Bora. I can see the Rockefellers mouthing Marie .Antoinette's words, "Let them eat shit," and I recognize an opportunity for a revolution is here be fore us. Let's seize the time and power to build a sane world - it might just be the last chance we get.

Synthesis: The Weather, The Energy Crisis .And Us To summarize the material we've covered so far: the Earth is cooling down after an unusually warm period earlier this century; the major rainfall patterns are shifting; the weather has had significant effects on human beings; and there are concrete reasons for why the weather is changing, even if we don't have the knowledge to understand them fully at this time. The changing weather in itself is frightening, but my big fears come from the responses of the industrialized nations. As the use of non-renewable energy resources has increased so has the attitude that humans are exempt from, if not in control of, the laws of nature. It's easy to think we're masters of the Earth since we spend most of our lives removed from it in our homes, offices, cars, domed stadiums, restaurants, theaters and airplanes. As separated as this culture is from the Earth and natural forces, it's no surprise that our response to the weather changes has been to try to control them (cloud seeding in the drought states, for instance),

C redits: 'Hie Weather Machine by Nigel Calder, Forecasts, kiminos an’J "Freezes by John Gribbins, Climate and the~AtTaTrs ~of~ Men by Nels Winkless and Iben Brownfng, 'TVanii ng: Water Shortages Ahead," Time magazine, April 4,

1977, "California: Scorched Earth," Newsweek magazine, April 11, 1977. Graphics from Cli mate and the Affairs of Men. Robert-Iris Fox

Rt. 3, Box 1708

Port Angeles, WA 98362

It's also nice to hang sprigs of herbs around the house for the visual effect and for the nice smell. And so many herbs (even medicinal ones) taste so good that you can make big jars of them and drink them instead of plain water (comfrey, peppermint and red clover are good for this). If you are in a sunny area, put your herbs in a large glass jar, and let them sit in the sun all day (in water, of course). By the end of the day, you have a "Sun Tea", a beneficial brew containing healing agents from both the sun and the herbs. The basic way to prepare an herbal tea is: Boil the water (one cup of water per teaspoon of herb in most cases). Turn off the water. Add herbs. Cover and let steep for 20 minutes. En joy. A half dose of herb for children will be fine. All the herbs which I mention here are safe for both adults and kids. If you are collecting your own herbs in the fields (a joyful way to spend one's time), this is how you dry them for future use: Hang the sprigs upside down in a shady place. Thin ner herbs (leafy) will take about 3 days for the moisture to leave them. Thicker herbs (stems) may take 5-6 days or longer. Simply watch each herb to see if it has dried out. You'll leaxn by doing and experimenting. Many people put a paper bag around their hanging,' drying herbs to collect any bits that might fall off. The object of drying is to remove water, but not essential oils and nutrients. After drying, herbs can be stored in glass jars, plastic bags, or paper bags. By the way, freshly picked herbs are the best. We dry them simply because fresh herbs are not always available. Also, try to use plants from your own area whenever possible. The six plants I'd like to talk about now are: comfrey, red clover, golden seal, garlic, chamomile and sage.

HEALING WITH HERBS: A BASIC GUIDE So inany of us would like to use Nature's medicines, the herbs, but we're not quite sure how. This article will discuss six basic plants which are essential to any herb collection and will tell you how to use them. First of all, let me say that herbal heal ing is most definitely NOT a fad. If anything will be short-lived, it will be m o d e m western medicine. Throughout history, every culture has healed itself with herbs. And even though there were those who specialized in healing, the average person knew how to use herbs. Americans are finally realizing this. Besides being used as medicines, herbs can be used everyday for a variety of things. For example, you can bathe in the loveliness of fragrant flower blossoms. To do this, sim ply put your favorite herbs (chamomile, rose petals, lavender) right into your hot bath, and let it steep for 10 minutes before getting in. Or put the herbs in one of those metal con tainers and then into the tub. Your skin will absorb the healing powers of the herbs, and your body will relax. 40

COMFREY: Comfrey is one of those pleasant-tasting teas that can be drunk anytime. The plant itself is a beautiful addition to anyone's garden, and may live 8-10 years. It can be propagated by cutting a piece of the

of added vitality to your body. Remember, even if you are eating well now, the accumulated junk from past years may be clogging your sys tem, and all of today's nutritious food may not be getting absorbed.

root and planting it. Comfrey is a tonic herb which means that it revitalizes the whole body. Mineral rich, the tea is especially good for lung problems such as asthma, coughs, and phlegm. It is also the only known plant source (besides soybeans) of coiqplete protein and Vitamin Bi?* Vegetarians sometimes acquire a B 12 deficiency, so comfrey is your solution. B12 is destroyed above 125 degrees, so eat the leaves raw (they're great as salad greens too). Comfrey tea is good for stomach aches, diar rhea, and fever. Comfrey ointment, which can usually be purchased at natural food stores, is great for hemorrhoids, for reducing swell ings, and for drawing poisons from sores.

CH4MCMILE: Another one of those "you-candrink-it-anytime" teas, chamomile is a fine tasting yellow flower, pleasing to the smell. It is good for healing the liver, and is highly recommended for those with hepatitis. Make a tea of chamomile and yellow dock twice a day for a few months after hepatitis to help your liver return to health. It is also used in tea form for colds, toothaches and as a soothing bath.

RED CLOVER: One of Nature's blessings to humankind, red clover is a purifier of the blood system. It's great to bathe in, and to drink anytime. For those with skin problems and sores, this herbal tea can be used both internally and externally. For anal and rectal inflammation, take red-clover enemas. Soothing to the nervous system, red clover reduces spasms and aches.

•tenet#?#

GOLDEN SEAL: Usually sold in powdered form, this herb is a veritable miracle in com bating infection. It can be used both intern ally as tea (or in capsules, since many do not like the taste) for infections such as bron chitis, hepatitis, prostatism, or externally (use a mixture of the powder and water) di rectly on cuts and sores. Though it is a tonic, I wouldn't recommend golden seal as an everyday herb. Use it for the tougher problems. Golden seal can be put directly on hem orrhoids to help reduce swelling and infection. It also alleviates gum problems temporarily, but removal of the oral irritant by a dentist is necessary for penmanent health. This herb is also useful as a laxative and as a gargle for tonsilitis. Women say that small but fre quent doses during pregnancy will stop nausea.

SAGE: Sage is used by many native American tribes as a cold remedy. It clears out the si nuses, reduces fever, and acts as a tonic. An all-purpose herb, sage eliminates gas, cuts mu cus from the lungs, and can be applied locally (in tea form) for stings. Inhalation of the tea's fumes is an excellent asthma remedy. It is also used as a gargle for sore throat, a wash for wounds and cuts (it is an astringent), and as a rinse for dandruff. Finally, it helps get your circulation flowing, and is soothing to the nerves.

GARLIC: A world-wide remedy for colds and intestinal problems, garlic eliminates poisons and parasites from the body. Build up your body's resistance prior to traveling to coun tries with dysentery problems (Mexico) by chew ing on some garlic every day starting a few weeks before you go. Continue while traveling. The smell may bother some people, but as the Russians say, "When it comes to your health, to hell with the neighbors." A fine use of garlic is a liver flush. The liver strains poisons from our blood $tream, and sometimes it needs a rest. Why not, one day a month, start your day with a mixture of garlic, lemon, honey and hot water. Then fast the rest of the day on either water or fruit juices. This will help flush out both your liver and intestines, and provide years

I hope you will start using herbs, and will spread the knowledge of self-healing to other people. Don't expect to understand it all at once, but simply try these herbs the next time you have an ailment. Some, like comfrey, are so powerful that you can feel them working right away. When picking herbs don't pull the plant out by the roots. Take only leaves and stems, and allow the plant to live. As you pick, real ize that it is Nature's gift to you because you are a beautiful part of Nature's scheme. Give thanks in your own way. Satya Littlebear

GROWING PUMPKINS I think of all the vegetables that I planted this year, I learned the most from pumpkins. To me, they seemed the most fascin ating in my garden. Maybe it's the association with that high holiday, All Hallow's live. They seem to carry some of that magic with them, through the year. First, pick a good variety of pumpkin. Avoid the hybrids. If for no other reason than come the end of everything, there may not be large commercial seed growers. Or a U.S. Post al system to deliver your seed, come spring. You'll want to carry over seed from year to year, and hybrids won't breed true. Avoid ornamental pumpkins. Sure, it's im pressive to grow a pumpkin with a 70 inch cir cumference weighing over 100 pounds. But, how are you supposed to get it in the oven to bake? If you're not feeding an army, there would be a lot of waste. Jack-O'-Lantern or Small Sugar are good varieties. Pumpkins are planted mid-May to early June, about the same time as com. The soil should be well composted, but cultivation does not have to be too deep, as pumpkin roots grow rather shallow. I got away with a shovel full of manure with an inch of dirt over it. Then I put in the pumpkin seeds and added another inch of dirt. Also successful was just furrow ing up conpost over hardpan. When the pumpkins start to flower, you will notice that there are male and female blossoms. The female flowers have a green bul bous swelling about the size of a marble di rectly under the bloom. This develops into the pumpkin. The male blooms do not have this swelling. Now the fun begins. Sex in the pumpkin patch! Fantasize you are a bee. Take a small, soft detail brush and pick up pollen from the male blossoms and dust the female blossoms with it. This will insure that you get a maxi mum yield if the bees decide to get a bit lazy. Don't fertilize along the same vines, but be tween vines. This keeps the gene pool larger and the plants are less likely to develop bad genetic traits. For the same reason, when you begin setting aside seed for next year, take seeds from three or four pumpkins off of dif ferent vines. Toward the end of the growing season, start pinching off any flowers, small fruit or even some of the end of the vine. This will enable the remaining fruit to grow stronger. Slip a piece of wood under each pumpkin to keep them up off the danp ground. When you harvest the pumpkins, take about three inches of vine. If you've got some that are still partially green, you can put them somewhere warm and light to orange up. I had three on top of my refrigerator that took about four days to turn color. If they're free from bruises, they shouldn't spoil.

Store pumpkins in a dry, cold area. Root cellars or outbuildings are good. Through the winter, if you've had a good crop, they can be traded to neighbors who haven't, perhaps, grown any, for crops you're short of. What to do with them. Well, they can be used in almost any recipe where squash is used. Pies, of course. They can be used in place of potatoes to make pumpkin bread, rather than potato bread. Try punpkin donuts. Also, the seeds can be eaten (but save some for next year). Recipes for the above are available at most libraries. But I've included two recipes that may be a bit harder to find. PUMPKIN COOKIES

h \

cup shortening cup sugar 1 egg 1 cup flour 2 teaspoons baking powder

teaspoon salt l^i teaspoons punpkin pie spice h cup cooked punpkin H cup chopped nuts or raisins (opt.)

Cream shortening and sugar together. Add un beaten egg and blend thoroughly. Add flour and spice, to creamed mixture alternately with punpkin. Add raisins and nuts (optional). Drop teaspoonfuls on baking sheet about 2 inches apart. Bake 400 degrees about 15 minutes. Makes 2 dozen. CREAM OF PUMPKIN SOUP Bake punpkin. Break down 3h pounds. Boil one quart of milk with 1 bay leaf, 4 slices of onion and three sprigs of fresh parsley. Strain. Add liquid to punpkin. Stir in 1 tea spoon of sugar and a pinch of nutmeg. Cook 3 tablespoons of quick-cooking tapioca in 2 cups of chicken broth or beef consomme and add to soup. When ready to serve, add 1 pint of scalded fresh sweet cream. Lou Hamburg

change my drag and it puts me in a brighter mood. There is also humor in my drag. Mocking our roles through exaggerated dressing up, I see drag as a tool. We have to recognize the symbolism of what we wear and use that to help ourselves get in touch and express different parts of ourselves. I don't feel limited by drag either. Wearing fern drag has definitely helped me to express the fern side of my nature in male drag and vice versa. So what is Spiritual Drag? Have you ever walked into a synagogue or church and seen those rabbis, altar boys, priests and cantors with their talisim, vest ments and robes flowing. Why are they always in dresses? Wearing stars of David, mezzuzahs and crosses, with holy prayers embroidered on their garments to bring them closer to the magick. My spiritual drag is a little different from theirs. Depending upon which magick and spirits I am relating to, I borrow symbols from these traditions. I use things from na ture: feathers and flowers for my hair, clay to paint my body and face and daisy chains and seedpod necklaces. Of course the ultimate drag is the naked body-- skycladl I love colored and drpery flowing fabrics that twirl when I dance, skirts, scarves and finger cymbals transport me to ecstacy! In order to contnue this col umn, send in your idea for the next theme drag!

Drag is anything you wear. Clothes give a message. They make the (wo)man. There are straight businessman drags, working class drags, hippie drags, genderfuck and various female drags. Clothes can tell me how avail able someone is or what mood they are in. But sometimes I have seen sissies hiding in leather drag and I've certainly felt pushed around by men and women in skirts. So what does drag mean to me? I was raised in male drag. Pushed by my family and society to develop into their ideal image of what a man should be. I spent many years suppressing what I'll refer to as the feminine side of myself. After living among a community of strong women, I was able to see the strength in their feminine side. Feeling better about this side of myself helped me let it out. 'Female drag helps put me in touch with the side of myself so long suppressed. Yes, this may sound like I'm talking roles but I played the other role too long. I'm better able to express a softer, more nurturing, loving self. I live more in my emo tions as the feeling side of myself comes out. And I feel much stronger struggling with peo ple in my emotions. Sometimes when I'm in a dress or skirt the butch side of me comes out strongest. Re cently I was talking to a college class about gayness. My apprehensions about being around a heterosexual group was expressed in my being hard and tough though it was tempered by the skirt. Usually when I'm walking down the street in this drag I feel the need to put out the message: "don't mess with me." Sometimes to get out of depression I

Howie Zowie

I want to comment on the picture on the inside back cover of the winter issue. I really enjoyed that photo. I would have rather looked" in the window, but what that picture displayed to me was the loneliness of gayhood, and the beauty of the male youth. I want to bring something to light to the readers of RFD about the way the law works. Take me, a avowed gay brother, loving the young bodies of men and/or boys. They began by put ting me with the very thing that I worship, love with all my heart, and with one that is acceptable to this love. They had two of them with me. One 18 and one 19. I being in the 40's. Well, when they break in on me and think that something is being done, they point their fin ger at me and say, you committed a crime. What crime. What crime did I commit? Bringing satis faction to two peiple that were lonely, giving love to someone. That is the crime that I com mitted. I'm guilty of that crime, yes, but no other. So then they, the jail officials, decide that I have to be punished. So they put me in a 3-man Max cell with no other person for company, until March 17 upon my return to Jackson Prison, Michigan. That was in the first part of January. lh months of solitary confinement for having different sex prefference than they did. I wrote a letter to the sheriff and told him that I wanted to talk to him and that I was in need of a diet, and medical aid. He sent his undersher iff up to see me. The undersheriff was prejudice against me and came up with the attitude there wasn't going to be any action given me. I asked him about putting someone in with me. He told me that he couldn't condone homosexuality. I told him that I wasn't asking him to condone any, that I just wanted to have someone for company. Well, my grant was denied, he told me that I was going to stay alone as long as I was there. I lit into him then. I asked why he was punishing me. He told me he wasn't, and I brought that out as solitary confinement. He denied it, saying that I had my mattress and could order from the store and other things of this nature. Such ex cuses. I was still alone, no matter if I had 50 mattresses, and could eat the whole damn store. Then I asked him if he had sex relations with his wife. Sure." he said, and I asked whas it for pleasure? He had to answer yes. Then that was when I hit him with the homosexual life is pleasure also, nothing harmful when two adults admit that they would enjoy it. He just got red in the face and left, not giving me a chance to push my point any further. I was still left alone. They would move me to the end of the building, to the fartherest from anyone, making it harder for me to even call the other cells to talk to anyone. They didn't even want me to say a word to any of them. But, Oh I won on that account. I'm going to ask you people if anyone lias ever heard of the phone system in jail cells? I heard about it before but had never had used it. Well, you take the comode, push the water out into the drain, and talk through the stool. As long as the water is out of another stool on the same line you can talk to one another. Well, soon the whole jail was talking over the line with each other. This was agrivating to the officials, because it kept a howling through the pipes and they could

In evaluating this section since its be ginning with the Winter issue (#10), we've had to make some decisions about the purpose of this section and its limitations. Our priority is to provide space for gay prisoners to speak to each other and to the outside. Gay prisoners especially need this space because they face a special oppression within prisons, and are usually ignored by both lib eral reformers and radical prison movements. We encourage gay prisoners to send us poetry, stories, drawings, letters and suggestions for the Behind Bars Section. We also encourage RI-'D readers on the out side to write to prisoners who ask for corres pondence. In writing to prisoners ourselves, we've learned a few things that may be helpful and we'd like to pass them on. (1) Your cor respondence may be the only contact a gay pri soner has with the outside, and he will come to depend on it and look forward to it. So when you begin writing, realize that it is a commit ment that needs to be taken seriously, and one that may be long-term. (2) If possible, choose to write to someone who is in a prison near you, so that you can visit them there if a friendship develops. (3) At the head of each letter you write, put your address, the pri soner's name and address, and the date. This will help him locate his mail if it gets opened by prison officials and lost or shuffled about in the mail room. (4) While we feel it is good to communicate on a very personal level, many prisoners resent being asked what they're in for (their "crime"), though they nay volunteer the information later after some trust has been built up. (5) Prisons vary in regard to cen sorship of incoming and outgoing nail. Be care ful of what you say in your letters until you have some sense of what may or may not be harm ful to the prisoner you’ re writing to. (6) Many guy prisoners are held in segregation and can't work to nake money for such things as stamps, stationeiy and personal items such as cigar ettes, toothpaste or soap. If a prisoner asks for stamps or money and you want to help, send only stamped envelopes or a money order made out to the prisoner. Loose stamps are not al lowed through most prison nail rooms. But the most important thing is just to write.

......

bition about writing to another prisoner if you are in prison yourself. Every prison I know of has tins rule but it can be circumvented if the two correspondents use an intermediary on the outside who sends on the letters as if he was the one doing the writing. I have done this for prisoners before. Some deception must be used in writing the letters, of course, but we never got caught and some important info was relayed. Once again, this is another in dication of the need for those of us on the outside to lend assistance to those inside prisons who have so little opportunity to positively affect their own destiny. Sometimes, to make certain that info was transmitted, I rewrote the letter. Yes, it's time consuming.

hardly hear themselves think in the office be low. But they could have never understood what was said. So they turned the radio speakers up louder and made it harder for us to hear be cause of the radio blasting in our ears. Well, we just put our blankets over our heads and kept talking. Headers, I am not asking for charity, as I am to proud for that, but I do want to cor respond with as many of you 3s I can, to give me the experiences that you have had, and lis ten to mine. I have many of them and they may be bold at times, but truthful, and if you like to have that kind of correspondence, please write me. I won't feel hurt though if someone who could afford a little help to help me pay for stamps, for that is about all I have to buy. I don't smoke, drink or use any type of drugs, and please do not send any stands, for they will just send the letter back to you as they do not let stamps come through the mail, and If any of you are in the area of Jackson Michigan, I sure would like you to stop in and visit with me any day of the week. I am not working and making absolutely no money at all.

Ron Larsen, Bly, OR It was 9:00 Sunday evening, March 6 , .1977, and all the inmates were called into the T.V. room for a meeting. We all said we'd like to see things strightened out, So on March 7, 1977 we all got up at 6:30, and went to chow at 7:05. The chow hall was fuller than normal, there were two Guards there, where there usu ally are none. It seemed we all ate more slowly than we usually do, and it was very quiet compared to any otter day. At about 7:45 they called over the P.A. System for us to clear the chow hall. No one moved. They call again for us to clear out, and we all sat. We all called for the warden to come and talk to us. The warden didn't seem to show 14), but cops started to walk into the chow hall, and all over outside. Still we all sat. Yes, for once there were over 400 inmates standing together. The warden did come and talk, we voiced what we wanted. 7 inmates took the sides of the Whites, Spanish, Mexicans, Black,

Bill Bargy, P.0. Box E 93012, Jackson, MI 49204 ... I want very much to read your article (No. 14) on aging homosexuals as I am now 34 and am suddenly hit with the reality of not being a "chicken" or a "kid" the last 5 or 6 years. This is a very hard adjustment to make in our youth-oriented culture.... Sincerely, Ronald I. Hankin (050836), P.0. Box 221, Cell J-51, Raiford, FL 32083 In your Behind Bars section last time you received a letter from a fellow named Carl Harp. In the letter he referred to the prohi PRISON SOUNDS

What are the sounds that echo through the tiers of a prison? What are the sounds that eat at mens hearts and souls? The sound of a man crying in the quiet of the night because he just got the news that his mother died or that his lover is leaving him. The sound of a man hanging himself in the lonliness and solitude of his prison cell because he is too tired to go on living--the sound of a human being giving up. Here I set at this time, In a prison cell at McNeil. Curse this very island, That became my tomb. Your just like a wind, With the great changes of glacial epoch. I cannot see the freedom, A claim I hold so dear.

The sound of a young inmate being raped by an older and rougher inmate, the sound of blood and tears and guilt and shame. And the worst sound of all--the sound of moving steel. The sound of a cell door slamming shut and confining a human being in a cage of cement and steel.

Joey Paveglio 22826-149, P.O. Box 1000, Steilacoom, WA 98388

Ronald S. Endersby Gaycon Press

Indians. We all left the chow hall at 8:15 and went to work. The inmates that went with the warden were in his office from about 8:25 until 4:50. We didn't like being forced to have a cell mate we didn't want. The cops always shaking down a cell, ripping it apart and leaving it for the inmate to put back together. We also didn't like our visitors, such as wifs, childÂ ren, mothers and so on having to go through a sliake down when corrming in and going out. BeÂ lieve it or not a male cop did the shaking down and as of now its come to a stop. So far at this time, Monday eve and 11:00 all is calm, but at 8:00 Tuesday m o m , March 8th, there will be cops all over the place going through our cells from top to bottom. They have closed everything down for the day so all inmates will be in their cells. Yes, More Bullshit. It seems they don't want us to have neat cells, or cells the way we want them, and as of now all our cells will stay as we want them. If they are to be changed the cops can change them. We are all humans, all of us in prisons, and its about time we are all treated as such. I'm only doing 15 years, and have two years in, and I'll stand 14) no matter how many times I'm beat down, I'm still human, not an animal, and don't belong in cages. What has happened to all the people on the outside. I know the same old shit, lie took $100.00 from me lock him up. He's no good. Thats dead, for we are as good as all those people on the outside, and I feel that most of the men and women in prisons all over the world are one hell of a lot better. Sure we all broke the law, but do we have to pay for it the rest of our lives? I say no. The time we spend in these rat holes should pay ior it, but no, you go to get a job or do anything on the streets and you are the lowest fonn of life just because your an xcon. I for one when released from here will do all I can to help inmates get out of prisons, and help fight from the outside to help all that are locked up. Its going to be slow hard work, but I'm sure if we'd all help we'd get some where. So come on and stand up. Be you Stright, Be you Gay, Stand up for us all. Love to all, Idaho State Prison, Ray Barker (MAJ, Box 7309, Boise, ID 83707

A SWINGING BARRIER Doors open. I open doors. You close them. I open drawers and sort papers. You throw papers into drawers and bang them shut. I say, "Do." You groan, "Don't," and zip up your mouth like a pair of jeans. I chatter at you till I am beside myself in a neat little stack. You absorb all my words like cotton. I cannot plumb the white depths of your silence. My heart b u m s like a fireplace. I have swallowed flames like the circus man. In my dreams I unbutton your chest and startle a big rat. It has eaten out your heart and vocal cords and stomach for things. My soul dances and sings and smacks its tambourine! You walk around the apartment like a zombie. I sleep nude. You sleep in your Jockey shorts. Your genitals are sealed up in indifference like relics in amber. I kiss you on the cheek and whisper, "Goodnight." You accept my kiss with a sense of duty.

doin Hands is a gay prisoners' newspaper that is sent free to any prisoner who asks for it: Join Hands, P.0. Box 42242, S.F.,CA 94142

I open doors. You close them. Doors close.

THESE MEN WANT YOUR IJiTI'ERS Ken .Anderson 1445 Monroe Dr. NE, A -8 Apt. a Atlanta, GA 30324

Charlie T. Hunter 018123 P.0. Box 747 Starke, EL 32091 Ray Barker Box 7309 Boise, ID 83707

C ornflour Nobody knowed how Cornflour got bred, But she showed 15) one day with a bellyfull of kittens. Pump

Ten years later they wa'nt a rat or a mouse on the place. Almost they wa'nt no chicks, neither.

all it does is pump

Cats went wild.

pump

Growed big and fat on what they could steal or kill, .And harder to stop than a boar in heat. Cornflour, she died next the stove. Pa gave her milk. Ma cried.

pump H ?0 though not slow

R.A. B u m s Star Route Jackson, MO 63755

from spring to ridge from earth to tank for drinks and washings garden beds and flowers the song is pulse the tune is flow i listen to it go and put an ear to your chest... in rhythmic sympathy you both run clear. David Sunseri 514 Logan Santa Cruz, CA 95060

Yesterday I watched the mountain dawn spread Heather Lake Valley gold leafing the peaks - rare wild flowers everywhere the cedar and spruce twisted to Japanese Court graciousness

the lake of timeless purity - every rock a rainbow every motion of my finger circle-rippling-gyres of rainbow myself an elongated buddah shadow

thinking:

the sun sees me in sense purity excitement

and at this moment sees a boy in Tangiers in sense lasciviousness excitement - all in this momentI

I swam in the water - snowfields still on the bankments - drinking as I swam.

Jon Franck 527 Castro S.F., CA

,on. . tbch ?f tlie f°JlowinS ,1S direct from my anal journal, a special diary about my atempts to get in touch with my asshole. The journal has allowed me to appreciate’ my changes about m> ass This article may be reprinted in other anti-sexist journals, if I am given'credit. I

a°possible fS tl^ hSdbook")

PerS°nal exPeriences f™ other Pe°Ple

assholes for

. . "Th? rectum is a primary sexual organ," said Or. Killian Garard, the gav San Francisco ass hole doctor at a recent men's health workshop of the Bay Area Gav Liberation.

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reali’ i ^ h n v ^ 1^ )Gfrav ^ PartlciPatin8 with 20 other men in an anal relaxation workshop I 2 :®d,n' l Z d £®elinf about my ass are psychologically and socially taught and re-enforced ^ ^ -rhaS fts ™ o£s in heterosexism. Though this article is written primarily for ga> men, I believe it is in the interest of straight men (and women too) to overcome the con-

ditioning about their ass (acquired mostly in toilet training). I believe it may be irr|>ossible for a straight man to totally liberate the sensual/sexual potential of his ass without the ex perience of being fucked or of being a butt-fucker and being able to explore other men's assholes besides his own. 1 even believe that some of a straight man's (.^tightness and prejudice against homosexuality comes from lack of consciousness about his asshole and a fear of being fucked (or being non-dominant in the sexual act, if this is the case). Anyway I believe some of the infor mation here can liberate all of our rectums to a higher sensual/sexual form. Before I talk about specific ways I have learned to love my asshole and other men's, I want to outline one current sexist attitude. I am trying to get my friends and people in meetings (especially gay and movement people) to stop using the word "asshole" as a derogatory epithet for someone who is a "pig." I believe call ing someone an asshole is like calling someone a cunt, a prick or a cocksucker. The word asshole must become one of love and acceptance, not hate and rejection. The following expressions are ALL heterosexist in derivation and I don't want to hear them anymore: "fucking A," "get off my ass," "kiss my ass," "shove it up your ass," "ass licker, ass eater, ass fucker," "blow it out your ass," "you don't have a hair on your ass," "get on his/her ass (about something)," and prob ably "your ass is grass." When I call people on this they say it's not sexist because women have assholes too, or peo ple become embarrassed and agree in an "if you say so" manner or people tell me of the need for an outlet for anger. I would like to suggest that if you want to call someone something you call them a gonococcus (gonorrhea germ) or a "stuck turd." I don't want to be called a "cunt" anymore. If you want to recover your sensations and develop the sexual potential of your asshole the first thing is to find it. I'm 30. It was only a couple of years ago that I gained the courage to soap my finger in the shower and stick it in my ass. I started mastdrbating while playing with my asshole and massaging my prostate just a few months ago. In the series of self-help exercises I am developing to get in touch with my ass the first thing is to just start playing with it more. Wear overalls and slip your hand down between your cheeks when you are walking or standing around. Take w^arm baths and put your legs in the air. Put a mirror on the floor and squat over it. Get a sense of where your asshole is in relation to your body. Look at it. I got an anal scope (like a speculum for a woman) and a flashlight and took turns with my lover looking inside each other. If God hadn't meant for us to have sex with our assholes why did she load the prostate with so many good feelings? The prostate gland is a hard round gland located on the "penis side" of the rectum about one knuckle up on a finger. When pressure is applied to it during sex it pro duces a greater amount of feelings and results in more sensational orgasms. After you have dis covered all the sensations that playing around the rim of your ass can bring, move into the ass hole and learn to enjoy your prostate. Of course if you have fears about sticking things in your ass or can't loosen up then don't do it. The number one rule in enjoying your asshole and/or learning to be fucked is "if it hurts, stop!" Persisting will only cause more anxiety. Loosening up the asshole means learning to control the involuntary sphincter muscle (camera shutter-like) in the ass. Put your fingers near your asshole and gently grunt and you can feel the outer voluntary sphincter relax. The two best ways to begin relaxing and developing control over the inner muscle is to try "flexing it" 15 times, three times a day. To do this try contracting your groin muscles as if you were shutting off a pee or a shit. Hold it tight, and then let go, perhaps even pushing a little like a grunt. Later, when inserting a finger, or penis, you may find it easier if you push out a little at the moment of insertion. Squeezing this muscle around your partner's cock at orgasm is very stimulating. I thought I had discovered the use of candles to masturbate but other men at the workshop were using them already to practice being fucked. Men were using other things too--vibrators and other objects. I am working my way up to larger candles. I round off one end into the shape of a penis. When I feel I have done enough foreplay with my finger I gently begin to push the candle into my ass. Use plenty of K-Y or oils which don't contain perfumes. Don't use candles that have an outer coat of colored wax that falls off. Besides being cheap, smooth and safe, the candle allows me to practice which angles and po sitions are best for me being fucked and which angle allows the best contact with the prostate. I can do all this myself or have a friend help me. I think in the beginning it's important to do it outside of a lovemaking session with someone. I am only just beginning to discover what I like about anal sex. Things I learn about myself I can apply when fucking others, keeping in mind that person has his individual likes. I am trying not to make the mistakes I did learning to masturbate with my penis. I am trying not to be orgasm centered or goal oriented, not to forget the rest of my body and not to hurt myself. The process of getting in touch with my asshole is very scarey. I want to love my ass whether I fuck with it or not. I hadn't intended to do much fucking until I had learned more about myself, but lately T have started having more anal sex with my lover and casual sexual partners and have learned about what areas I still want to work on. I can't overemphasize the importance of taking it very slow and finding a sex partner you can really trust when you first start getting into fucking. Lots of direction giving is important. It must be totally safe to say it hurts or to stop. If you are afraid and want lots of control, have the man who is fucking you sit on a stool or lay flat and sit on his erection at the pace

you feel comfortable being entered. Breathe into your ass. Make sounds if it feels good or bad. If there is pain, withdraw. I find the second entry feels easier. Choose a position that allows you to move a lot. Being fucked on your back can be confining. Try back-to-bellv or bellv-to-belly, or dog-like positions. Cleanliness is important psychologically and for health. Try to shit sanetime before fucking. Wash your ass with soap and water. There aren't any more bacteria in a rectum than in a mouth, but they are a different kind. Symptoms of gonorrhea and hepatitis can't be seen in the ass. Licking and tonguing the asshole is safe. Be careful not to get too rough fucking. The rectum is extremely expandable but fissures can occur. The sphincters can lose their tone if things like fists are used often. Two or three fingers inserted in foreplay are adequate for relaxing the muscle. After fucking someone, try to urinate. The purpose of this isn’ t just to fuck more or have better orgasms. The point is to recover an inportant area of lost sexuality. To love my ass, and other men's asses, fucking or not. To get over my conditioning about germs. I want to be able to relax when I'm having anal sex so I can experience the emotions that come up and enjoy the fucking as part of a total bodv and lovemaking experience. I'm struggling with the possible sexism of the following but I am hoping that at some point I will be able to be turned on by the sight of an ass that seems attractive to me. I know I ex perience sexual feelings (often centered in my cock) when looking at other parts of men's bodies-backs, chests, cocks, etc. Why not a man's ass? Likewise I would'like to feel sexual feelings in my ass similar to those in my cock, when I see a man I want to be sexual vtith and/or want him to fuck me. I want to be enough in touch with my ass to feel these feelings. I want to want to be fucked and I want to be aroused by thinking of fucking someone--just as I do with sucking, rub bing, or other sexual play. I'm struggling with the notion that I may be developing a new way of objectifying men. I know, however, that I just don't want to get my rocks off in "a nice piece of ass"'but I am try ing to recover the desire that has been robbed of me of wanting to give pleasure to men by fuck ing. And wanting to feel pleasure at the thought of being fucked. Anal sex is becoming something I really look forward to. I don't include it every time in my lovemaking. Sometimes my lover and I can't decide who wants to fuck or be fucked to orgasm be cause both sound so attractive. I haye noticed I feel more conscious, awake, less dreamy during anal sex. It could be be cause it is so new. But it's also true I never considered anal sex with men before or after I came out so it seems like "it is what it is”and not so full of fantasv expectations. I tend to not have the romantic "in love" fantasies surrounding this new kind of' sex as I have with other kinds. It makes me think about a free society where people enjoy their bodies and are free to have sex whenever or with whomever they want. American culture has strongly taught me that the ideal sex act should be penis/vagina, should be emotional and romantic, monogamous and jealous and definitely not anal. Experiencing anal sex as I have is helping me recover plain old enjoyment of physical sex free of romantic fantasies or the desire to possess a person until he succeeds in satisfying a perfect expecta tion of love or sex. Dan Dickmeyer, 400A Alta Loma St., Santa Cruz, CA 95062

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THE GREEN REVOLUTION The Voice for Decentralism C hock full o f th e la test d e v e lo p m e n ts in h o m e ste a d in g , land a c c e ss , a lter n a tive e n e r g y , e c o -life sty le s. c o m m u n ity , co -o p s and m ore. T h is is th e m onth ly that th e \ \ h ole Earth C a talogu e ca lls th e " g ra n d m o th er o f th e altern a tiv e p r e ss m o v e m e n t." F ou n d ed bv M il dred L oom is.

Now you can festoon your favorite garments with RFD patches. These multicolored embroi dered PANSY PATCHES cost RFD $1.05 each; any amount you send in greater than that will be donation to RFD lavender cotton /•ground pastel pansy in shiny embroidery

Single copies: $1 . . . . 1 year: $8

The G reen Revolution P. O. BOX 3233 YORK. PA. 17402

green shiny border \ g reen lettering (also embroidered) yellow edging

For your patches, send a donation and a selfaddressed stamped enve lope (important!) to:

Chuck Beckwith Sunny Valley Farm RR 2, Box 101 Mount Horeb, Wisconsin 53572

Discussion Group a> 73 CD

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A Spiffy T-Shirt Yes, an RFD t-shirt! A friend in Indiana will hand screen them on pre-shrunk 100% cotton. His cost(including ship ping) is $4.50. Any thing over that is a donation to RFD. Please enclose at least an extra buck. Help us pay back the $800 we borrowed to print this issue. SPECIFY:

</>

ETf §[w A_gD

lavender, robbin

(212) 675-0143

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ilK

BENN HOWARD

send

L XL spring blue, rose, green

$ 4 .5 0 plus a donation to: Spiffy T-Shirt Co Box 3057 W. Lafayette. IN 47906

BENN HOWARD WRITES THE STORY OF YOUR I.IFF FROM THE INSIDE...CAN'T FAIL TO MAKE YOU SEE YOURSELF... THE POEMS OF BENN HOWARD ARE SENSITIVE, JOLTING, AND THOUGHT-PROVOKING. IF YOU'VE EVER BEEN IN LOVE, IHIS BOOK WILL SPEAK TO YOU.

ACADEMY WEST 1945 WESTWOOD BLVD. L.A., CA 90025

$4.95 EACH $ .50 POSTAGE

ARCHANGEL Blind Michael Guardian of Magdalen Farm

fishinan come from the water removing scales from our eyes

£ Q

(/„

poem by: lucas wickham 2193*5 alder mao house eugene

Wanted: Photos of gardens and things growing; of exceptional light and dark ness; of skin, curves, shadows, sensual eye orgies; of kitchens and cooking; of you or something/one you like. Candor Smoothstone, Magdalen Farm--- 1 got results! But now I've moved and I need still more horse images for my new home. Same qualifica tions as outlined in issue #11. Jai Elliott* Magdalen Farm___ An image' of from your heaven and pics of where you are reading this and of Michael, Magdalen Farm, 4525 Lower Wolf Creek Rd., Wolf Creek, OR 97497

97405 or

youj

Volcanoes erupting, Saks 5th Ave. and Nciman-Marcus advertisements, anything that reveals Emily Dickinson. Tim Speck, 1878 Market, #204, S.F., CA 94102

Send images of John Kennedy Jr. (John John). I've had an obsession with him since I was fifteen for reasons I partially understand anyway. Dennis Cooper, 231 W. Olive St., Monrovia, CA 91016

Adventures, Ho! I've done a lot of travel on my own and it's great. But I want to share it for a diange. This August I'd like to see the Olympic Peninsula and/or Vancouver Island for 5 to 14 days each. I'm seeking serious, but humorous fellow hikers. If you're interested, write and we can go into details. X-citedly! Joe Balestreri 2843 Marshal Way Sacramento, CA 95818

We are Dean, a student studying animal health technology and Greg, a systems analyst. We live on 12 acres Dean owns southeast of Sacramento, where we raise goats, geese, chickens, organic vegetables, roses and’iris. m i s June Dean graduates and we are hoping to move from Sacramento to an area more to our liking. We plan to sell Dean's farm and a house in town I own and use the money to buy elsewhere. We are thinking of moving to ei ther Mendocino County, California or the southern Willamette valley in Oregon, but we are open to other suggestions. Tor economic, political and social reasons we'd like to go together with others to purchase land. Are there any persons, couples or groups out there who'd like to join us in this purchase? Age, race, sex, etc. are not important, but re sponsibility and maturity are. Write if you're interested. Greg Loe/Dcan Hellemansen 8950 Tokay Lane Sacramento, CA 95826

Come July and August, I'm planning to move to Summers County, West Virginia. If there are other gay men and women in that area or folks planning to move there, please write so we can begin communicating. While appreciating the outdoors and peacefulness of the country, I enjoy friends and am not par ticularly wild about involuntary isolation. I find it difficult to write about my self in a general letter of this sort and would prefer to respond with long letters to folks who answer this letter. It'll be good to hear from you. Brad Poston Box 41 Woodville, VA 22749

I live in a rural conmunity in central Illinois. I'm fanning and enjoying it with the long hours, heartaches, and rewards. I'm also doing carpentry, fixing machinery and selling seed. The problem is this is a wasteland as far as gay brothers are concerned, hither they're not here or they're in the closet. It would be great to find a brother I could relate to and possibly share my life with. I'm into camping, swimming, travel, snowmobiling, playing pool, drinking beer and smoking occasionally. Mainly just living life and enjoying it. If that's where you're at or think you want to be please write or visit. A letter will get directions.

We are two faggots ready to leave the city and find a space in the country among loving struggling feminist faggots. We will be on the road with our truck during July and August and want to visit country' faggots in northern California and southern Oregon for exchange of dreams, plans and visions, with no expectations of settling in. Soula and Jamal 164 Beulah St. San Francisco, CA 94117

Randv Mock Box 236 Flanagan, IT 61740

I have just moved to the mountains east of Montreal which are geographically the northern Appalachians. I am living in a summer cabin but am working on an all-year dwelling and gardening. I am into weaving, playing music, vege tarian diet, meditation, etc. B o m 21 Sept. 1947 1:00 PM. I wouldn't mind hearing from people who are into communal or intimate relationships which complement and help each other to grow spiritually, mentally and physically. Namaste, Michael James Mandala I.a Patrie Quebec Canada

I have just moved from Iowa to Eastern Kentucky. I've been here only a week and am amazed at how crazed a week without peers can make me. Due to a need to take a positive step toward buying my land in the Ozark mountains, I packed up my life (minus the people in it) and moved to a rural community in Appalachia. The country here is beautiful. The air is clean and the people friendly. The draw back is that they don't take too kindly to queers. (This is Anita Bryant country.) So, if you happen to have some time on your hands, or if you're just bored try dropping me a line. I'll probably write back, and who knows, maybe we'll become soul mates. Anyone passing thru this area is welcome to drop by. I crave folks whose neck doesn't turn red from lavender visions. With love, Dick Phillips Rt. 40 Star Route Ctry Club Apts. 2B Richmond Village Paintsville, KY 41240 A little about myself. I am a Gay Artist Shaman, working out his visions in videoart. 1 know at first this sounds contradictory, but television as wc see it now doesn't ex press its or our full potential as human be ings. I was a television student in New York City when I finally saw what my acid trips, gay experiences, spirituality and television had in common. Like being in the closet, I finally had to come to the realization that the culture's message was not my own. 1 had my own life to live, with friends or alone, 1 knew it was essentially an inner struggle. I left the city and didn't quite move to a rural area, but a small town in be tween the hills of the Southern Tier of New York, right above northern Pennsylvania, Bing hamton. Don't misread me. I am not trying to ex press a desire to escape. On the contrary. I am trying to figure out a way to have an inte grated perspective of city/country. I guess what I'm dreaming about is a col lective similar to RED. Maybe there’ s a collective which is look ing for new members--or maybe people who want to talk and see what happens.

Since we began our desert place a couple of years ago, it has become a source of joy to us. Gradually and cautiously we have de signed and built a place to live, grow and observe. A windmill, responding often to the mountain breezes, provides water for the gar den and trees. A sturdy shed houses the tools, relics of the past, and an assortment of items that are ready to take their place when the earth block house is built. A recently com pleted wooden bunkhouse now provides a sleep ing area, releasing us somewhat from the con fines of a very small trailer that we have called home for so long. Those familiar with the desert know of its special magic. Dick and I have been able to share in this magic together, but until the bunkhouse was finished we hesitated to invite friends for a stay. So if you are in the area or feel like visiting the desert, please let us know. Peace and love, Charlie Steadman Star Route Box 6260 Pahrump, NV 89041 Last year I had a contact letter in RED in which I described myself as a relationship person currently not in relationship and asked if anyone was interested in connecting. Many really fine people wrote me. I also placed ads in several places, and before I was through I found myself writing to about fifty people! Then I asked everyone's permission, duplicated the entire list and sent it to everyone in the group. Now, many of us are in touch with one another and a kind of loving conminity of friends has begun. I learned from the experience that there are many of us who are really into building lasting loving relationships with others. So I called it The Loving Brotherhood, and I'm now putting together a little booklet that tells what TLB is and what it hopes to become. I'd really like to send any of you a copy. Just send a SASE to: TLB, Box 556, Sussex, NJ 07461. TLB is a commercial venture in that a membership fee is charged. It is the intention of TLB to promote loving brotherhood and en courage the kind of sustaining relationships between loving friends that are often hard to find other ways. We feel that TLB is a begin ning for a solid, viable, growing community. We welcome anyone who wants to meld with the loving flow of our divine energy! Love, Ralph Walker for TLB I am presently an urban-beleagured apart ment dweller and I should like to relocate to a quiet rural cabin because of my writing needs. This would be either just for this summer or for indefinituin; an exchange of residences might be possible. You wouldn't know of any possibilities on the East Coast, would you? Thanks. Bo Erik Bergstrom 1631 'S' St. NW no. 703 Washington, DC 20009

Love to you al1, Isaac Jackson 180 State St. Binghamton, NY 13901

I'm in my spiritual growth, finally, and RFD has helped: knowing that there are ijen who aren’ t city-faggot oriented, that just because I have long hair and a beard doesn't mean I have to be an outcast among "outcasts.” I want to meet more of the gen tle strong men I know are out there in this country’ , and grow with them, and share. Com ing out to love at 27, and learning to live and love in freedom is a real trip, and I'd like to share the voyage. I'm proud to be a gay poet and lover of men, and want to hear from others in RFD land. Peace and love, gentle brothers, Ron Sheriff 716 N. Allen PI. Seattle, WA 98103

We share an apartment on Chicago's North Side. Ke are a conservative coiqile, white and Filipino, who nonetheless share many of the ideals and goals of male lib/gav lib groups. Ke like Chicago, we like cities. We're far from radical. Oar orientation is psychic not political. We share a lifelong interest in psychic phenomena, reincarnation and Spir itualism. Believe in positive thought projec tion, reaching out cautiously and lighting one candle rather than cursing darkness. We do not take drugs, practice yoga, follow’as trology or Indian philosophy. We'd like to speak with a couple or a man within 80 miles of Chicago. Friend has 2 daughters, ages 5 and 7, and we would like them to have more time in the country’(none now). We would like to spend some weekends in the country. Ke are a devoted and domestic couple and could best relate to same.

Gay male, healthy mind and body, 29, in the midst of a metropolis the pace of my life is my own emotional/intellectual/sensual ex perience and development. Looking for healthy, sensitive gays, young and old, who want to discuss building a lifestyle of personal/political evolution; intimate role-free rela tionships of increasing responsiveness and learning about life. Bill Holloway 620-A Dundas St. W. Toronto, Ontario M5T 1H7 Canada

Love, Adrian Ford P.0. Box 4531 Chicago, IL 60680 February 8th I moved to Nevada City. A long way from San Francisco where I previously lived. I'm working here, am twenty seven and am interested in local community gays. I would welcome communications. Later On, Gary Madison Rt. 1, Box 193-A-l Nevada City, CA 95959

I was surprised and pleased in finding your magazine. My first journey in self-discovery had been coming out. That behind me, new directions have emerged, and I'm trying to create a lifestyle that is simple, diverse and most importantly, responsive to my needs. I have moved to a rural area, I'm learning carpentry, mechanics, and any skills that I can to make me a more independent, whole person. I haven't always been confident in my ability to integrate my sexual orientation with these other things, but RFD has provided me with a new source of support. Thank you! One of my present needs is people--gay or straight (but non-homophobic). I would like very much to meet anyone in my area (Amador County, CA) who reads this letter and is interested in meeting me. Of course I will explore any contacts even from a dis tance, also. Your friend, Glen Myers Star Rt. 3 Meadow Dr. #1 Pioneer, CA 95666

Two years ago my lover and I left friends, careers and 8 million neighbors in N.Y.C. to find our place in the country’ . We now have a farm in Parmleysville, KY, population 8 (in cluding us). We bought two old abandoned farmsteads, about 30 acres each, one on top of a mountain, the other on a river. We now want to sell the mountain tract, and would like to have some gay brothers or sisters buy it. We are still very’attached to it and would like to see someone making it grow again. There is one structure on it, a 14x16 two-story’log c o m crib. We know we could sell it through MEN but would like to avoid that. The county is bordered by Lake Cumber land on the west and mountains on the east. If anyone is interested in buying land, please plan on a trip to Wayne Co., KY’ . We got here by way of an RFDer and would love to see others follow. You would be welcome to camp out on our farm while you search for your own place. We know of a few other mountain tracts ranging from 25 to 75 acres for $200 to 250 an acre, and I'm sure there are other kinds of land available also. So drop a line and let us know when you are coming and we'll send you a map. Love and Happiness, Jonathan Croll/Blue Haze Farm Rt. 572, Box 30A Rockybranch, KY 42640

INFO

ADVERTISING: we welcome advertising, particularly from gay owned and orientated businesses and groups, rates: $5 per coluim inch (1" high by 3"). camera ready, black and white copy. SUBMISSIONS: please share your visions and knowledge thru RFD. we especially need good fiction. all published contributors get a free sub to the mag plus 2 copies of the issue in which your work appears, graphics: black and white only, photos should be high contrast, written: fea tures and how-tos (triple spaced, typed if possible), poems, we edit unless requested not to. please enclose a self-addressed/stanped envelope for return. VISITORS: please write ahead if you want to arrange a visit to wolf creek. ADDRESS CHANGE: save us 25$ and tell us your new address, the post office usually does not forward RED. they destroy it. we can't afford to send you a new one. send us both your new and old addresses and zip codes. BACK ISSUES: help us clean out our b a m . issues #3-11 available for $1.25 each, any 5 for $5. BOOKSTORES: bookstores pay 85{ per copy (321 discount), distributors pay 65{ (48% discount), full credit for complete copies returned. NAMES/ADDRESSES: we publish all names and addresses unless you ask us not to. PRINTER: could we use your press to print RFD? could we have your old press to print RFD and small books? COMPUTER: we need a computer programmer who will put our magnetic tape into a computer to make address labels for the mag. if someone could donate their labor it would save us lots of hours of dismal typing. MEN: mother earth news still refuses to print an ad for us. they didn't even respond to our last two letters, their toll-free number is 800-438-7265.

future themes and deadlines AGING, Fall issue, #13 (deadline August 1) What can we all learn from the experiences of older gay men? We need to hear from those of you who are older in order to give you a spec ial voice in this issue. All of us are aging. We can explore our fears, share positive feelings, demystify our unique experiences. What is Ageism? How can we improve the way in which the older and younger relate? What are the special ways in which we are oppressed and alienated because of our age? VISUAL, Winter issue, #14 (deadline November 1) This issue will be images: pictures, photo graphs, drawings, VISUALS of 'RFD faggot' experiences and fantasies. There will be regular features, with the rest of the magazine filled with YOUR visual impressions. So hurry and send any of your graphic series or projects you would like to see on the pages of RFD. SMALL TOWNS, Spring issue, #15 (deadline February 1) The middle ground between urban and rural--villages, towns, suburbs. How do we survive in them? Coming out in the provinces. Escaping to the cities. Going home. Hickism. Change and growth in the hinterland. Needed: articles, graphics, photos, personal experiences, poetry.

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