The Comet - July 2021

EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE

EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE everything will be fine

editor: Ron Evans publishing assistant: Sarah Sims contributors: Cory Calhoun, Sarah Sims, Kristen Acesta, Dan McConnell Nick Carlo, Holly Thorpe, Christopher F. Hart thecometmagazine@gmail.com

COMET HEADQUARTERS

Little warm out there yet…

While we all hunker under shade and AC (except you insane sun-worshippers out there all ON PURPOSE and stuff) it’s fun to look at the weather app and see sweet, sweet relief coming in a few days. Relief in this case is 99 degrees, but we will take it after this brief vacation inside the very butt of Satan.

On that poetic note, welcome to our very first 40 pager! This little rag has been locked in at 32 pages for the bulk of its life but as the written content grows, the art has sort of become...miniscule. And since this is an arts magazine, that simply won’t do. So, pages have been added to let some of this art breathe a bit more. More full or half page images and less stamp size galleries is the hope.

Still no events page but that will likely change by August’s issue. June seems to have had about two years worth of events in one month and July is looking pretty hoppin’ as well so it appears there will be a need to put all the good stuff in one place again. Some folks have been asking about the return of First Friday and from what I can tell there seems to be interest in reviving a concerted art walk around September but that may change. As soon as there’s an art walk, we will have coverage of it.

We were glad to see more submissions for the Withinder page this month. These self-aware dating bios are something we strongly advise you trying for a laugh, or maybe a painfully revealing examination on self-outlook. And then send it to us! You can change your name if you want. We’d like to keep this feature going, and who knows...maybe you will find love the hard way. Through honesty.

Well, that’s some blowhard shit right there. Speaking of blowing hard... I’m gonna crawl back into my cave and lay in front of the AC. Because it blows hard. See, we can still have fun even when it’s 117 degrees out. Right? Haha.

HahahahahaWAHHHHHHHH!

Happy Trails, Ron Evans Editor of The Comet

It’s almost never coffee...

CORY CALHOUN'S PUZZLE CORNER

Crosswords & more made exclusively for The Comet

THE 3RD META CROSSWORD CONTEST of 2021!

Enter for a chance to win a coolmysteryprize by solving 2021's 3rd meta crossword! HOWTOENTER:1. Solve the crossword below. 2. Solve its meta puzzle (instructions at tinyurl.com/corymetas). 3. Email just the metapuzzleanswer for the hint (don't send the solved grid!) to cscxwords@gmail.comby12amPT, July 24,2021 (One submission per entrant, please.) We'll randomly pick a winner from the correct entries, and announce the winner and puzzle answers in the next issue. Good luck!

"EARN POINTS— JUST FOR JOINING!"

HINT: The meta answer is a musical instrument.

ACROSS

1. Influence

5. Unpaid TV ad

8. What surfers oftennavigate between?

12. Scotch ___

13. 1700, on cornerstones

14. Prefix with -pad

15. Deadly biters

16. Days ___ Lives

18. Metal that turns to 37-Across due to 35-Down

19. Ersatz

20. "Pretty neat, eh?"

22. Disability advocate Keller

24. Creepy feeling

25. Baker's dozen?

28. Treat a sore spot, perhaps

29. Murmur

30. Made noise like a 68-Across

33. Urbanalert type

37. Reddish-browncorrosion

39 Disentangle

41 Lyft alternative

42 Jazz players' locale?

43 Checks, as an ID

45. Blotto

46. Did a marathon 49. “For have angeredanyheart alive / To hear themen deny ‘t"

ANACROSTIC CHALLENGE

>>> For solving instructions, visit tinyurl.com/coryanacrostics <<<

(from Macbeth)

51. Military brass

56. Cook veggies, perhaps

58. Hit the road

61 Chessending

62. Crowning

63. Preserves

64. Passing mention?

65. Old Peruvian currency named for anIncan sun god

66. Palmfruit

67 ___ gin fizz

68 Graywolf

69. Angstypunkoffshoot

70. Be inclined

DOWN

1. Squirrel away

2. Exhausted

3. Horse breed with aspotted coat

4. Toadies

5. Certain digital files

6. Teatime treat

7. Intense

8. Least substantial, as an excuse

9. Cliffside dwelling

10. Voting groups

11. Math functions

13. "Who, me?"

CLUES: ANSWERS: CLUES (cont'd): ANSWERS (cont'd):

InfluenceItmaybetakenonstage 11211432312

Chameleon'scousinCamerafeature 103341824135172722

SushibarsoupTypeofprint,briefly 283937306140916

Trendy digitalasset: Abbr. ___Lanka 321534251931

17. "Umbrella" singer, to fans

21. Behavioral quirk

23. Pencil stump

26. Fraternity letter

27. Lip-

29 Grand (winedesignation)

31. Pilot's announcement, briefly

32. Scandal fodder

34. Always ready to get seriously hammered?

35 Processthatcauses37-Across

36 "Hit the road!"

38. Golden Star Wars droid, to Luke Skywalker

40. Queen Eliz. II's youngest son

44. "Help!"

47. Know-how 48. D.E.A. agent 50. Maximum

App with a multicolored envelopeicon

52. "Jack Sprat could ___ fat..." 53. "Step by Step"80s boy band, forshort 54. Summa cum ___ 55. "Hit the road!"

57 Parceled

59. Trendylow-carb diet

60. Atlanta-to-Miami dir.

SOLUTION TO LAST ISSUE'S CROSSWORD

BRAHMAIRSAWFUL OSGOODTAURHINO STONEOVENSCONDO ENNEDAMASCUS SPRYINURNEDHEE IRANSUPDES REDUBSTOLITAKE TITOFOLICAJAX TACHLHASALANE LITHOYENTLARTS ALOELTRLOG PYREAREAMAPLAC RITACABARETS ANTISEPTICQUASI ZEROESRNAUNPEN TEASETEGOESSAY

SOLUTIONS TO LAST ISSUE'S DOUBLE ANAGRAM CHALLENGE

Theme of new words: Types of cheese CAMERA - A = CREAM, STINGER - E = STRING, FIBER - F = BRIE, MANROOT - T = ROMANO Leftover letters A, E, F, and T anagram into FETA

I CRAVE FEEDBACK! Thoughts? Suggestions? Lemme have it. CSCXWORDS@GMAIL.COM

FEATURING: @jasonlimon

Favorite Band: New Order, I’m stuck on 80s electronic music, but I do like all sorts of music.

Favorite Movie: Saving Private Ryan.

Favorite Book: Foundation by Isaac Asimov.

Favorite Quote: “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

Dream Collaboration: Something with Guillermo del Toro.

Item you can’t live without: A pencil.

Favorite Destination: Espada Aqueduct, here in San Antonio where I live.

by holly thorpe

Write on the River presents “Book Promotion for Indies (and tips for traditional routes, too!)” Best-selling author Anthea Sharp will share her experience with indie publishing on Sunday, July 25 from 10 a.m. to noon. Register for the workshop at writeontheriver.org.

About the workshop

“Writing the book is the easy part…” At least that’s what they tell you, once your novel is finally out there in the world. Now, whether you’re publishing yourself or are with a publisher, it’s time to face the daunting task of getting the word out about your new book (a task increasingly left up to authors, even in the world of traditional publishing).

Never fear! Promoting your book doesn’t have to be a horrible exercise in self-shilling. In this workshop, we’ll cover the many different ways authors can find and connect with their readers, regardless of who holds the publishing reins.

And while there are a million things you can do to promote your book, you don’t have to do ALL of them! We’ll explore the various promotion options out there, and go over the pros and cons of each. Some of them will feel easy and doable to you, others won’t – and that’s fine. Here’s a quick look at what we’ll cover:

Making sure your product is the best it can be – including cover and book description.

Effectively using your direct presence as an author, via your website and newsletter, as well as social media. How to successfully cross-promote with other authors.

Leveraging loss-leaders for visibility.

Advertising, including CPC (cost-perclick) and sales newsletters like BookBub.

Tips for making the most of the retailer platforms to get some momentum behind

your book.

Plus, plenty of time for Q&A!

Join us and come away with real, actionable items that will help you reach the next level in your book-promotion quest.

About the speaker

Anthea Sharp is a USA Today bestselling, award-winning author of fantasy and speculative fiction (not to mention a bestselling romance author under the pen name Anthea Lawson). Originally traditionally published, Anthea jumped the fence in 2011 and began a self-publishing career that’s still going strong ten years on. In addition to indie publishing her novels, she writes and sells short fiction to traditional markets, and most of her books are out in audio via small and traditional publishers.

Growing up on fairy tales and computer games, Anthea has melded the two in her award-winning, bestselling Feyland series, which has sold over 150k copies worldwide. In addition to the fae fantasy/ cyberpunk mashup of Feyland, she also writes Victorian Spacepunk, and fantasy romance. Her books have won awards and topped bestseller lists, and garnered over a million reads at Wattpad. Her short fiction has appeared in Fiction River, DAW anthologies, The Future Chronicles, and Beyond The Stars: At Galaxy’s edge, as well as many other publications.

Anthea lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she writes, hangs out in virtual worlds, and plays the fiddle with her Celtic band Fiddlehead.

An interview with the author

That is a heck of a bio. You say you combined your childhood interests of fairy tales and video games to lead to your fantastical genres fae fantasy, cyberpunk, Victorian Spacepunk, and fantasy romance. Did this happen organically? And did it happen all at once?

I do write a kind of crazy blend of genres, it’s true! And I think I definitely need to add into my bio that my first fantasy

Best selling author Anthea Sharp

love, after fairytales, was The Chronicles of Narnia. As a result, a lot of my books (whether cyberpunk or secondary world fantasy) feature portals from one world to another (usually more magical) world. My bestselling Feyland books were born out of my love of gaming, faerie lore, and magical portals, which all synthesized into a series best summed up with the question, What if a high-tech game opened a gateway to the treacherous Realm of Faerie?

So that one was pretty organic. The Victorian elements come in from my first traditionally published Victorian-set historical romances, but since I am constantly crossing the streams, I came up with a futuristic world blending alien spacefaring tech, Queen Victoria clones, and a British Galactic Empire that spans the universe. These are kind of big, crazy ideas, but the connections between people is equally important to me (if not more so – see, formerly published in romance). I think our relationships with others, that essential human element of craving love and partnership, is a key part of our experience, and I can’t leave that out of my books! Everything I write has a bit of a romantic element to it – though not everything has a happy ending, alas. (Spoiler alert: all the longer works do, don’t worry!)

Who did you think your audience would be? Has your actual audience surprised you in any way?

I’d hoped my audience would be people who enjoy fantasy adventure with strong romantic elements, gamer nerds, avid readers of any age – and it’s turned out that way, I think. I have a broad cross-section of readers, from eleven-year-old girls to SF-reading grandpas, and I’m so glad I can provide people a bit of entertainment and escape, especially during the last year and a half.

When did you start writing with the goal of finishing and publishing a book?

Although I grew up an avid reader, I never thought I could be an author until sometime around 2002. Then I encountered a

book that disappointed all my reader expectations, and so I decided to write my own. My husband jumped aboard, and we co-wrote those first couple historical romances, embarking on a several-years’ study of how to actually make fiction work. I joined RWA, we read books, took workshops, and ended up getting an agent and selling to a NY publisher. That first book came out in 2008. Now I’m on my 17th novel and have written and published numerous novellas and short stories, too.

What advice do you have for writers just getting started?

Try not to let your critical impulses get in the way of the creative work. Just write. It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be written. You can fix things later. I think too often writers sweat blood over making something perfect that might, in the long run, end up being cut from the book – which sometimes isn’t even clear until you’ve finished the first draft. Let it be a rough one, if necessary.

Sometimes it’s hard to know when to put a project to bed - how do you know when you’ve finished something? When the deadline arrives, ha!

You’re a musician, too! Do you think making and performing music influences your writing?

Absolutely. I love incorporating music into my books. Since I draw heavily on Celtic and British Isles folklore, and I happen to play Irish fiddle, it’s a natural fit. Songs and tunes are woven into a number of my books and stories. In fact, I have a collection of short stories out titled Tales of Music and Magic which is entirely music-related fantasy. My Feyland books also draw strongly on music. The Dark Realm, the first book in the series, is a retelling of the Scottish ballad of Tam Lin (which I also can sing). I also draw on my earlier years as a classical musician, and daughter of a symphony violist, in several of my historical romances – most notably Sonata for a Scoundrel and Mis-

tress of Melody. What are you reading these days?

I’m just finishing up the Shadow and Bone Trilogy, and then will be diving into the Muderbot Diaries.

What’s next? Any cool projects we should look out for?

Thanks for asking! I’m working on the third book in The Darkwood Trilogy, which is a fantasy retelling of Snow White and Rose Red, with hidden magic, mysterious elves, and sisters who end up on opposing sides of a battle. Fun stuff! Book 1, White as Frost, came out in May in hardcover, audio, and ebook.

Register for Anthea’s workshop at writeontheriver.org. Discover her books at antheasharp.com.

Stay tuned for more events in August, including a historic fiction workshop and a Four Minutes of Fame open mic. Follow us on Facebook or visit the website to learn more.

About WOTR

To learn more about Write on the River, become a member, or register for events, visit writeontheriver.org. Membership is $35 per year, and offers free or discounted access to all WOTR events. Questions? Contact info@writeontheriver.org.

By Mike Jay

The first recorded mushroom trip in Britain took place in London’s Green Park on October 3, 1799. Like many such experiences before and since, it was accidental. A man identified in the subsequent medical report as “J. S.” was in the habit of gathering small mushrooms from the park on autumn mornings and cooking them up into a breakfast broth for his wife and young family. But this particular morning, an hour after they had finished it, everything began to turn very strange. J. S. noticed black spots and odd flashes of colour interrupting his vision; he became disorientated and had difficulty in standing and moving around. His family were complaining of stomach cramps and cold, numb extremities. The notion of poisonous toadstools leapt to his mind, and he staggered out into the streets to seek help, but within a hundred yards he had forgotten where he was going, or why, and was found wandering in a confused state. By chance a physician named Everard Brande was passing through this part of town, and he was summoned to treat J. S. and his family. The scene he witnessed was so unusual that he wrote it up at length and published it in The Medical and Physical Journal a few months later. The family’s symptoms were rising and falling in giddy waves, their pupils dilated, their pulses fluttering, and their breathing laboured, periodically returning to normal before accelerating into another crisis. All were fixated on the fear that they were dying except for the youngest, the eight-year-old son named as “Edward S.”, whose symptoms were the strangest of all. He had eaten a large portion of the mushrooms and was “attacked with fits of immoderate laughter” which his parents’ threats could not subdue. He seemed to have been transported into another world, from which he would only return under duress to speak nonsense: “when roused and interrogated as to it, he answered indifferently, yes or no, as he did to every other question, evidently without any relation to what was asked.”

The Intruder (ca. 1860) by John Anster Fitzgerald, with a fly agaric centre stage.

Dr. Brande diagnosed the family’s condition as the “deleterious effects of a very common species of agaric [mushroom], not hitherto suspected to be poisonous.” Today, we can be more specific: this was intoxication by liberty caps (Psilocybe semilanceata), the “magic mushrooms” that grow plentifully across the hills, moors, commons, golf courses, and playing fields every autumn. The botanical illustrator James Sowerby, who was working on the third volume of his landmark Coloured Figures of English Fungi or Mushrooms (1803), interrupted his schedule to visit J. S. and identify the species in question. Sowerby’s illustration includes a cluster of unmistakable liberty caps, together with a similar-looking species (now recognised as a roundhead of the Stropharia genus). In his accompanying note, Sowerby emphasises that it was the pointy-headed variety (“with the pileus acuminated”) that “nearly proved fatal to a poor family in Piccadilly, London, who were so indiscreet as to stew a quantity” for breakfast.

Brande’s account of the J. S. family’s episode continued to be cited in Victorian drug literature for decades, yet the nineteenth century would come and go without any clear identification of the liberty cap as hallucinogenic. The psychedelic compound that had caused the mysterious derangement remained unknown until the 1950s when Albert Hoffman, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD, turned his attention to the hallucinogenic mushrooms of Mexico. Psilocybin, LSD’s chemical cousin, was finally isolated from mushrooms in 1958, synthesised in a Swiss laboratory in 1959, and identified in the liberty cap in 1963.

During the nineteenth century, the liberty cap took on a different set of associations, derived not from its visionary properties but its distinctive appearance. Samuel Taylor Coleridge seems to have been the first to suggest its common name in a short piece published in 1812 in Omniana, a miscellany co-written with Robert South-

ey. Coleridge was struck by that “common fungus, which so exactly represents the pole and cap of Liberty that it seems offered by Nature herself as the appropriate emblem of Gallic republicanism.” The cap of Liberty, or Phrygian cap, a peaked felt bonnet associated with the similar-looking pileus worn by freed slaves in the Roman empire, had become an icon of political freedom through the revolutionary movements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. William of Orange included it as a symbol on a coin struck to celebrate his Glorious Revolution in 1688; the anti-monarchist MP John Wilkes holds it, mounted on its pole, in William Hogarth’s devilish caricature of 1763. It appears on a medal designed by Benjamin Franklin to commemorate July 4, 1776, under the banner LIBERTAS AMERICANA, and it was adopted during the French Revolution by the sans-culottes as their signature bonnet rouge. It was these associations — rather than its psychoactive properties, of which he shows no knowledge — that led Coleridge to celebrate it as the “mushroom Cap of Liberty”, a name that percolated through the many reprints of Omniana into nineteenth-century British culture, folklore, and botany.

While the liberty cap’s “magic” properties seemed to go largely unacknowledged, the idea that fungi could provoke hallucinations did begin to percolate more widely in Europe during the nineteenth century — though it became attached to a quite different species of mushroom. In parallel to a growing scientific interest in toxic and hallucinogenic fungi, a vast body of Victorian fairy lore connected mushrooms and toadstools with elves, pixies, hollow hills, and the unwitting transport of subjects to fairyland, a world of shifting perspectives seething with elemental spirits. The similarity of this otherworld to those engendered by plant psychedelics in New World cultures, where psilocybin-containing mushrooms have been used for millennia, is suggestive. Is it possible that the Victorian fairy tradition, beneath its innocent

exterior, operated as a conduit for a hidden tradition of psychedelic knowledge? Were the authors of these fantastical narratives — Alice in Wonderland, for example — aware of the powers of certain mushrooms to lead unsuspecting visitors to enchanted lands? Were they, perhaps, even writing from personal experience?

The J. S. family’s trip in 1799 is a useful starting point for such enquiries. It shows liberty caps were growing in Britain at the time, and commonplace even in London’s parks. But also, the trip evidences that the mushroom’s hallucinogenic effects were unfamiliar, perhaps even unheard of: certainly unusual enough for a London physician to draw them to the attention of his learned colleagues. At the same time, however, scholars and naturalists were becoming more aware of the widespread use of plant intoxicants in non-western cultures. In 1762 Carl Linnaeus, the great taxonomist and father of modern botany, compiled the first-ever list of intoxicating plants: a monograph entitled Inebriantia, which assembled a global pharmacopoeia that extended from Europe (opium, henbane) to the Middle East (hashish, datura), South America (coca leaf), Asia (betel nut), and the Pacific (kava). The study of such plants was emerging from the margins of classical studies, ethnography, folklore, and medicine to become a subject in its own right.

The interest in traditional cultures extended to European folklore. A new generation of folklore collectors, such as the Brothers Grimm, realised that the migration of peasant populations to the city was dismantling centuries of folk stories, songs, and oral histories with alarming rapidity. In Britain, Robert Southey was a prominent collector of vanishing folk traditions, soliciting and publishing examples offered by his readers. The Victorian fairy tradition, as it emerged, was imbued with a Romantic sensibility in which rustic traditions were no longer coarse and backward but picturesque and semi-sacred, an escape from industrial modernity into an

ancient, often pagan land of enchantment. The subject lent itself to writers and artists who, under the guise of innocence, were able to explore sensual and erotic themes with a boldness off limits in more realistic genres and to reimagine the muddy and impoverished countryside through the prism of classical and Shakespearian scenes of playful nature spirits. The lore of plants and flowers was carefully curated and woven into supernatural tapestries of flower-fairies and enchanted woods, and mushrooms and toadstools popped up everywhere. Fairy rings and toadstooldwelling elves were recycled through a pictorial culture of motif and decoration until they became emblematic of fairyland itself.

This magical allure marked a shift from previous depictions of Britain’s fungi. In herbals and medical texts from the Renaissance onwards, they had typically been associated with rot, dung-heaps, and poison. The new generation of folklorists, however, followed Coleridge in appreciating them. Thomas Keightley, whose survey The Fairy Mythology (1850) exerted much influence on the fictional fairy tradition, gives Welsh and Gaelic examples of traditional names for fungi which invoke elves and Puck. In Ireland, the Gaelic slang for mushrooms is “pookies,” which Keightley associated with the elemental nature spirit Pooka (hence Puck); it’s a term that persists in Irish drug culture today, although evidence for pre-modern Gaelic magic mushroom use remains elusive. At one point Keightley refers to “those pretty small delicate fungi, with their conical heads, which are named Fairy-mushrooms in Ireland, where they grow so plentifully.” This seems to describe the liberty cap, though Keightley, like Coleridge, focuses on the physical appearance of the mushroom and appears unaware of its psychedelic properties. Despite its ubiquity, and occasional and tentative association with nature spirits, the mushroom that became the distinctive motif of fairyland was not the liberty cap

but rather the spectacular red-and-white fly agaric (Amanita muscaria). The fly agaric is psychoactive but unlike the liberty cap, which delivers psilocybin in reliable doses, it contains a mix of alkaloids — muscarine, muscimol, ibotenic acid — which generate an unpredictable and toxic cocktail of effects. These can include wooziness and disorientation, drooling, sweats, numbness in the lips and extremities, nausea, muscle twitches, sleep, and a vague, often retrospective sense of liminal consciousness and waking dreams. At lower doses, none of these may manifest; at higher doses they may lead to coma and, on rare occasions, death.

Unlike the liberty cap, the fly agaric is hard to ignore or misidentify, and its toxicity has been well established for centuries (its name derives from its ability to kill flies). One could argue then that this aura of livid beauty and danger would alone be enough to explain its association with the otherworldly realm of fairies. Yet at the same time its mind-altering effects were becoming more widely known, not from any rustic tradition in Britain but from the discovery that it was used as an intoxicant among the remote peoples of Siberia. Sporadically through the eighteenth century, Swedish and Russian explorers had returned from Siberia with travellers’ tales of shamans, spirit possession, and selfpoisoning with brightly-coloured toadstools; but it was a Polish traveller named

Joseph Kopék who was the first to write an account of his own first-hand experience with the fly agaric, which appeared in an 1837 publication of his travel diary.

In around 1797, after he had been living in Kamchatka for two years, Kopék was taken ill with a fever and was told by a local of a “miraculous” mushroom that would cure him. He ate half a fly agaric and fell into a vivid fever dream.

“As though magnetised,” he was drawn through “the most attractive gardens where only pleasure and beauty seemed to rule,” beautiful women dressed in white fed him with fruits, berries, and flowers. He woke after a long and healing sleep and took a second, stronger dose, which precipitated him back into slumber and the sense of an epic voyage into another world. He relived swathes of his childhood, re-encountered friends from throughout his life, and even predicted the future at length with such confidence that a priest was summoned to witness. He concluded with a challenge to science: “If someone can prove that both the effect and the influence of the mushroom are non-existent, then I shall stop being defender of the miraculous mushroom of Kamchatka.”

Kopék’s toadstool epiphany was one of several descriptions of fly agaric use by Siberian peoples that were widely reported in various learned journals and popular works throughout Europe in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Such ac-

counts began a fashion for re-examining elements of European folklore and culture and interpolating fly agaric intoxication into odd corners of myth and tradition. This is the source of the notion that the Berserkers, the Viking shock troops of the eighth to tenth centuries, drank a fly agaric potion before going into battle and fighting like men possessed, regularly asserted not only among mushroom and Viking aficionados but also in text-books and encyclopaedias. There is, however, no reference to fly agaric, or indeed to any exotic plant stimulants, in the sagas or Eddas: the theory of mushroom-intoxicated Berserker warriors was first suggested by the Swedish professor Samuel Ödman in his Attempt to Explain the Berserk-Raging of Ancient Nordic Warriors through Natural History (1784), a speculation based on the eighteenth-century reports from Siberia.

By the mid-nineteenth century, then, the fly agaric had become synonymous with fairyland. The mushroom had also, in the guise of the Siberian sources, been claimed as a portal to the land of dreams and written into European folklore. Exactly to what extent and in what manner these two cultural journeys of the fly agaric are intertwined is hard to pin down. Long before the Siberian accounts, in both art and literature, mushrooms of all sorts are depicted as part of fairyland. In Margaret Cavendish’s mid-seventeenth-century poem “The Pastime of the Queen of

Fairies,” a mushroom acts as Queen Mab’s dining table, and in late eighteenth-century paintings by Henry Fuseli and Joshua Reynolds, the mushroom acts as a surface upon which fairies, sprites, and similar assemble. Such a presence of mushrooms in supernatural worlds might suggest a concealed or half-forgotten knowledge of hallucinogenic mushrooms in British culture. However, these fungi do not resemble fly agaric (or any other hallucinogenic mushroom) and, of course, for small woodland creatures the large splay of a mushroom would seem like natural furniture. It is only in the Victorian era, post-Siberian tales, that an hallucinogenic mushroom establishes itself so firmly in Britain as the stock mushroom of fairyland.

Let us turn now to the most famous and frequently-debated conjunction of fungi, psychedelia, and fairy-lore: the array of mushrooms and hallucinatory potions, mind-bending and shapeshifting motifs in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Do Alice’s adventures represent first-hand knowledge of hallucinogenic mushrooms?

The scenes in question could hardly be better known. Alice, down the rabbit hole, meets a caterpillar sitting on a mushroom, who tells her in a “languid, sleepy voice” that the mushroom is the key to navigating through her strange journey: “one side will make you grow taller, the other side will make you grow shorter.” Alice takes a chunk from each side of the mushroom

Watercolour depiction of the fly agaric, 1892. Likely painted at an art class near Bristol, England, the writing says “Agaricus muscarius” and “Leigh woods Sept/92”

and begins a series of vertiginous transformations of size, shooting up into the clouds before learning to maintain her normal size by eating alternate bites. Throughout the rest of the book she continues to take the mushroom: entering the house of the Duchess, approaching the domain of the March Hare, and, climactically, before entering the hidden garden with the golden key.

Since the 1960s this has often been read as an initiatic work of drug literature, an esoteric guide to the other worlds opened up by psychedelics — most memorably, perhaps, in Jefferson Airplane’s psychedelic anthem “White Rabbit” (1967), which conjures Alice’s journey as a path of selfdiscovery where the stale advice of parents is transcended by the guidance received from within by “feeding your head.” This reading is often dismissed by Lewis Carroll scholars, but medication and unusual states of consciousness certainly exercised a profound fascination for Carroll, and he read about them voraciously. His interest was spurred by his own delicate health — insomnia and frequent migraines — which he treated with homoeopathic remedies, including many derived from psychoactive plants such as aconite and belladonna. His library included books on homoeopathy as well as texts that discussed mind-altering drugs, including F. E. Anstie’s thorough compendium, Stimulants and Narcotics (1864). He was greatly intrigued by the

epileptic seizure of an Oxford student at which he was present, and in 1857 visited St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London in order to witness chloroform anaesthesia, a novel procedure that had come to public attention four years previously when it was administered to Queen Victoria during childbirth.

Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that Alice’s mind-expanding journeys owed anything to the actual drug experiences of their author. Although Carroll — in daily life the Reverend Charles Dodgson — was a moderate drinker and, to judge by his library, opposed to alcohol prohibition, he had a strong dislike of tobacco smoking and wrote sceptically in his letters about the pervasive presence in syrups and soothing tonics of powerful narcotics like opium — the “medicine so dexterously, but ineffectually, concealed in the jam of our early childhood.” Yet Alice’s adventures may have their roots in a psychedelic mushroom experience. The scholar Michael Carmichael has demonstrated that, a few days before he began writing the story, Carroll made his only ever visit to Oxford’s Bodleian library, where a copy of Mordecai Cooke’s recently-published drug survey The Seven Sisters of Sleep (1860) had been deposited. The Bodleian copy of this book still has most of its pages uncut, with the exception of the contents page and the chapter on the fly agaric, entitled “The Exile of Siberia.” Carroll was

particularly interested in Russia: it was the only country he ever visited outside Britain. And, as Carmichael puts it, Carroll “would have been immediately attracted to Cooke’s Seven Sisters of Sleep for two more obvious reasons: he had seven sisters and he was a lifelong insomniac.”

Cooke’s chapter on fly agaric is, like the rest of his book, a valuable source of the drug lore that was familiar to his generation of Victorians. It refers to Everard Brande’s account of the J. S. family and rounds up various Siberian descriptions of fly agaric experiences, including details that appear in Alice’s adventures. “Erroneous impressions of size and distance are common occurrences,” Cooke records of the fly agaric. “A straw lying in the road becomes a formidable object, to overcome which, a leap is taken sufficient to clear a barrel of ale, or the prostrate trunk of a British oak.” The hypothesis is suggestive, though at this distance of time, it’s impossible to know for certain whether or not Carroll read this Bodleian copy, or indeed any other copy of Cooke’s book. It may be that Carroll encountered the Siberian fly agaric reportage elsewhere — we know, for example, that he owned a copy of James F. Johnston’s The Chemistry of Common Life (1854) which includes mention of fly agaric and size delusions — or it may be that he simply drew on the fertile resources of his imagination. But some contact with the widely reported Siberian

cases does seem much more likely than the idea that Carroll drew on any hidden British tradition of magic mushroom use, let alone the author’s own. If so, he was neither a secret drug initiate nor a Victorian gentleman entirely innocent of the arcane knowledge of drugs. In this sense, Alice’s otherworld experiences seem to hover, like much of Victorian fairy literature and fantasy, in a borderland between naïve innocence of such drugs and knowing references to them. We read them today from a very different vantage point, one in which magic mushrooms are consumed far more widely than in the Victorian or indeed any previous era. In our thriving psychedelic culture, fly agaric is only to be encountered at the distant margins; by contrast, psilocybin mushrooms are a global phenomenon, grown and consumed in virtually every country on earth and even making inroads into clinical psychotherapy. Today the liberty cap is an emblem of a new political struggle: the right to “cognitive liberty”, the free and legal alteration of one’s own consciousness.

This article was originally published in The Public Domain Review under a Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike 3.0. If you wish to reuse it please see: publicdomainreview.org/legal/ C

Benjamin Franklin’s commemorative medal “Libertas Americana”, 1782

Lewis Carroll’s illustration of the caterpillar scene from his original manuscript of the story. There’s nothing here to suggest it is meant to be a fly agaric.

William Hogarth’s 1763 caricature of John Wilkes with pole and cap of liberty.

The Woman Who Was Part Fish

By Loni McKenzie

There once lived a normal, lovely woman. She put shoes on to go to work, brushed her teeth twice a day, fixed normal meals and washed the dishes afterwards. She was kind. She nodded hello to people on the street and made polite conversation with grocery clerks.

The problem is, she wasn’t normal at all. To the world she seemed to be, but in her own quiet heart of hearts, she knew she wasn’t. Her skin didn’t fit quite right, and the sun often seemed too bright. Things that made other people happy made her sad, like dance parties and amusement parks.

But what do you do if you aren’t normal, and your skin doesn’t fit?

She didn’t know. So, on she went, nodding hellos while surreptitiously tugging and pulling at her ill-fitting skin, hoping no one would notice.

One cloudless summer day, when the sun was too hot and too bright, the deep, dark, cool lake called her name. “I’ll be right there” she called back, while hastily pulling on swim clothes and searching for her underwater goggles. She vaguely remembered her skin fit quite well when she swam as a child. “Why, she must be part fish!” the grownups would laughingly say as they waved from land.

If only I were, she thought, plunging into the water. Deep, clear, cool. The loud, bright day quieted, calmed, as she sat under the water, watching bubbles slip from her mouth and float to the surface. Snorkeling along, head underwater, she fell back into the joy of her childhood. The colors! The tiny fish! The world shushed to a muffled gurgle. She swam to her favorite hidden cove where a shade dappled sunning stone stuck out above the water.

“Would you like to hear a story?” Asked the lake, as she lay back and arranged her hair in a fan about her to dry. “Yes, I would,” she replied with surprise, as she’d never heard a story told by a lake before.

“Once, a long time ago, there lived a woman who was part fish. Or maybe she was a fish who was part woman. Either way, she lived beneath the surface of the water, where it was deep enough to quiet the sounds of above, but shallow enough to see the

sun sparkle. Her people had been there for generations, secure in their place. Most of them stayed and lived out their lives in their ancestral waterways, but lately there had been a calling. Not everyone heard it but for those who did, with it came a deep yearning to explore. The woman who was part fish was curious. What could make anyone want to leave? She was so happy there.”

“Early one morning, she awoke to the call. She had expected it might be loud, but she couldn’t even hear it with her ears, only deep within her bones. And, just like the others, with it came a deep yearning. For what? She didn’t know, but it moved through her with a ferocity she’d not known before. Her mother saw it in her eyes before she’d said a word. Hugging her close, she whispered, “I knew you’d hear it” and swam with her to Wise Seer.”

“My dear, your path is new” Wise Seer said. “Your work in this life is to live above the water. To learn what it is to be human and walk with your feet upon the earth. It will be hard, it might be loud and hot, they may not understand who you are. Come back to the ancestral waters often, submerge yourself completely. These waters will absorb your newfound wisdom. In this way, we will begin to understand the world above the water. Through you, the land-walkers with sensitivity might begin to understand the stories of our depths.”

“With that, she became the first Woman Who Was Part Fish to exist among the people who walk upon the earth.”

“Am I the Woman Who Was Part Fish?” the not very normal woman asked the lake.

“I don’t know,” replied lake. “Do you think you are?”

“Yes. My skin doesn’t fit quite right, the sun is too bright, and the world is much too loud.”

“Then you may be. Sit near wild water and listen for its wisdom. Be sure to listen with your bones, not your ears, for they hear wisdom more clearly.”

The woman still is not normal because she is, after all, part fish. To walk upon the earth still feels overwhelming sometimes; the sun is too bright, sounds can be sharp and loud. But to know who you are is a gift, and she carries that gift with her. It seems her skin fits better now.

paper cuts: regional collage show

“City Life” Lydia Selk

The Pacific Northwest Collage Collective (PNWCC) is hosting its first regional art exhibit at Collapse Gallery in Wenatchee, July 9-31. 55 artists from Washington, Oregon, Alaska, British Columbia and Idaho were accepted into the show from an open call on Instagram. Many of the featured artists will be attending the exhibit’s opening on July 9th.

From the curators~

The work ranges from abstract to visual storytelling - showing the best collage work of the PNW. All are welcome to attend and it’s suitable for all ages.

In May of 2021, the PNWCC teamed up with Chad Yenney of Collapse Gallery and Laurie Kanyer of the Doug + Laurie Kanyer Art Collection to create this open call called Paper Cuts. The main goal was to exhibit the great works in collage and bring artists of the PNW together after a long hiatus due to the pandemic. The only requirements were that the work is analog (handcrafted, not digital) and they reside in one of the states mentioned above. Each artist could submit their best piece with no theme as a requirement. We have artwork using vintage images, embroidery, to experimentation in ink processes. We have artists that have followings on social media of over 200K like Howie Wonder, artists that are in an international collage club like Cheryl Chudyk, Tess Ettel, Anna Maddox and Lydia Selk. Our show represents a diverse group of artists from students in college to professors that have spent many years on their practice like Clive Knights. Paper Cuts is a playful name because of the kind of artwork they create. The work on display will all be the original artwork, so you will be able to see each paper cut, rip and tear created by each artist. You will be able to see the hard labor and heart that went into each piece.

Co-founders of the Pacific Northwest Collage Collective, Kellette Elliott and Laura Weiler organized this exhibit. Kellette Elliott is an art educator and working artist who has been published in

magazines across the world, books and numerous freelance projects. Laura Weiler is a freelance artist with a college degree in the arts. She has used her skill in collage for album covers and large scale public art installations.

Funding for the Paper Cuts Open Call has been provided by the Doug + Laurie Kanyer’s Art Collection. Based in Yakima, Washington, the Kanyer’s mission

is to be involved in the advancement of the medium through private acquisitions of fine art collages, underwriting publications, and holding open calls, exhibitions, grants and events.

Opening Reception: July 9 4-9pm - all ages welcome. Collapse Gallery

115 South Wenatchee Ave,Wenatchee

Open Fridays and Saturdays, or book appointments privately online.

For more information about this art show: On Instagram: @pnwccollagecollective @collapse_gallery

“Korova (The Caw)” by Maria Michurina

“You went to bed last night” by Clive Knights

“Sphinx Wolf” by Sarah Best

ANCIENT LAKES THEATRE FESTIVAL AT STAGE B

by ron evans

Theatre returns to the region in July with the world premiere of the musical “How Can I Love You” at Stage B. Located adjacent to Cave B Estate Winery in George, Stage B will be home to the Ancient Lakes Theatre Festival from July 15-25 with live performances, food and wine tasting.

“How Can I Love You” is written by retired neurosurgeon and Cave B founder Vince Bryan, directed by Eric Ankrim and composed by Rand Bellar. The musical deals with the subject of memory loss as experienced by three families. Despite the serious subject, the musical’s creators say it’s ultimately an uplifting story of love and acceptance with a powerful backbone of pop music and choreography.

“Obviously, as a retired neurosurgeon Vince Bryan has some unique insight into the world of memory loss,” Stage B Operations Manager Rhia Foster said. “It’s a

very personal story, but one that will resonate on many levels.”

Foster says the musical is the launch of what will be a larger focus on theatre at Stage B.

“The owners of Stage B wanted something like what the earlier days of The Gorge were like,” she said. “Smaller, more intimate productions with a wider variety of performances.”

Vince and Carol Bryan founded the amphitheater that would later be known as The Gorge in 1986. It began as a 3,000seat venue for their Champs de Brionne winery. In 1993, the family sold the venue to MCA who expanded the grounds into one of the most famous music venues in the world. It is currently operated by Live Nation.

“After they had planted this winery, they kind of stumbled upon this amazing space. Vince was standing at the top and his wife was down to the bottom with family members and was like ‘I can hear

every word you’re saying. That’s crazy.’ So in order to sell some wine, they decided to start hosting music there and you could say it took off pretty well,” Foster said. “And while everyone loves The Gorge, the Bryans also loved the days when you could have events going more frequently and every night it would be something totally different. They are huge supporters of the arts.”

With the sale and growth of The Gorge, the Bryans were forced to close their Champs de Brionne winery to create more storage for the venue. In 2000, they created Cave B winery and boutique nearby, and in 2017 they added Stage B to the grounds with the idea of returning to some of those more intimate events.

“There have been orchestral performances, tons of live music and a pretty fantastic open mic on that stage,” Foster said. “The stage itself is actually the same size as The Gorge stage by square footage, so you can do quite a lot with it.”

Stage B organizers have expressed interest in bringing in more theatrical performances along with collaborating with existing local theatres and troupes. They hope “How Can I Love You” will help launch that plan. It’s fitting that the inaugural musical premiering in July was actually penned by one of the creators of this impressive venue.

Along with live theatre, Stage B will be host to an upcoming dance festival, touring local and non-local bands and musicians and a few things that are still in the works. Foster has her own ideas cooking concerning what would be a good fit for Stage B down the road.

“It’s the perfect environment for a big jazz festival,” she said. “Wine, amazing food and the beautiful location. It’s a nobrainer.”

Ancient Lakes Theatre Festival: July 15-25 - tickets, packages and information can be found at ancientlakestheatrefest. com. C

withinder:dating bios for the self-aware

Real locals sharing their real dating bio. We think it will be...illuminating.

Ali, 34

Do you like to feel emasculated? Are you up for some hard labor with little-to-no reward? Are you comfortable feeling like a third wheel to goals and projects you support but receive no credit for? If this sounds like your kind of fetish, then I’m just the workaholic for you.

I like working long hours, responding with a short temper, and holding unrealistic expectations of everyone around me. My dream lover has a secure source of income and self esteem because there ain’t no coddling here, except when I’m sad or lonely from not taking care of myself, in which case I require great amounts of coddling. Just don’t expect it in return.

The benefits? Flexible schedule, paid time

off, public recognition and a sense of accomplishment (for me) and you get the comfort and pride in knowing that this kind of woman for some reason picks YOU. It’s a win for everyone.

If interested, call me! When I don’t answer, leave a message. When I don’t listen to it, text me. And when that goes without a response, show up at my work with my favorite food and coffee. I’ll be yours forever. Or for a while at least. We will circle back in 2-3 weeks for review.

Benny, 35

The facts; I cruise the internet all day; nobody wants to date me. Now look here, kid: I’m Benny G. You cannot resist the power of my mind. I may look like a dime but I feel like a million-sperm march, man, walking right in through the door of this here Starbucks. If you’d just look up from

your tablet for a second or two, you’d see I’m right bloody here. Time just stopped. It wasn’t your imagination. I told you I’d be tall, dark and dangerous to know, the way they used to make ‘em; and lo, I’ve got 2 of the 3 done. Don’t look so confused at my jokes or we’ll never get anywhere. I’m 35, God. And speaking of God, we’ll never do it. I.E. the exact thing that you’re thinking right now that we ought to do, no. We are not going to do that. You cannot resist the power of my mind. They banned me from Twinder and Catch27 ‘cuz I’m just a rebel, full stop, because in my teens I never got to do any of that serious shit that everyone else got to do, nor am I starting now. You help to re-awaken my lost plump-faced inner child and take him out for a spin. He needs fresh air and belly rubs. All my fellow fellas at the YMCA [undisclosed location] will tell ya I’m too old for this shit, and I should be looking for a soul mate, and good for them but they can’t see what I see and neither

can you. One date is all it takes. It can start right here right now. I can write all kinds of numbers on this check.

Assorted random tidbits:

- INFJ seeking SJW

- I want to know WHAT IT FEELS LIKE FOR A GIRL

- needs help with adulting (gag me with a spoon :P)

- please contact this pathetic dweeb with unsolicited offers and chain letters. I need the attention.

- like your autism when it collides with MY autism

- If you keep thinking, “who in the fkkk is this guy,” that’s a perfectly normal reaction.

Considerations on Maslow’s Heirarchy

People talking about Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” popped up in my life more than usual this past week. As no one normally mentions it at all, when I came across it a few times in a few days, it got me thinking. I had heard of it before, but it had been quite some time, so I did some review.

In 1943, Abraham Maslow published a paper entitled “A Theory of Human Motivation,” in the journal Psychological Review. In it he categorizes stages of human needs that, in his theory, stack on top of one another, in a pyramidal structure. In general he seemed to believe that one stage must be satisfied before the next stage of growth can be initiated. The stages according to his classification, from most fundamental, to “higher level” needs are: Survival needs like food, water, air, and shelter; Safety, as in a certain sense of security emotionally and physically; Love and intimacy from family and friends; Self Esteem, an internal feeling of value; Self Actualization, the process and accomplishment of achieving one’s goals. In later years he added on an extra level termed “Transcendence” or the giving of oneself to something greater than oneself, such as in religion or altruism.

Now this all seems to make a fair amount of sense. Humans have needs, and are motivated by them, and perhaps there is some order in which they may take precedence over each other. Granted, it is first and foremost a hypothetical model built to approximately describe factors of human motivation. And, it is unlikely, at least in my mind, that any one model can accurately depict the whole human psyche, but it does at least provide a framework, or lens

through which to consider a society. In the Modern West, at the very least, it may seem reasonable that societies must be primarily motivated by survival before they can be motivated by the need for Love, perhaps, as if survival is uncertain, other needs must be postponed.

In most Western, technology based societies, basic needs such as food and safety are generally satisfied, at least for a majority of the people, and further emotional and psychological needs do seem to be decreasingly satisfied. So, perhaps this model is a more accurate depiction of current western societies, rather than all humans as a whole, or even past societies.

And this is where I started questioning how accurate of a model it is. First of all, it seems, on an individual level at least, that there is not too much of a strict boundary between these stages of needs. Many people are motivated by a combination of these needs simultaneously. Though, perhaps the actual achievement of them may fit within the structure of this paradigm. But does it need to? Is it necessary that survival needs are satisfied before spiritual needs? Historically is this how human societies have functioned or operated? I would argue that this is not the case.

Based on my understanding of a smattering of cultures here and there throughout time and location, I would assert that a more accurate paradigm of past human societies would be a near inverse of this Maslow’s pyramid. We can of course consider as far back as Europe in the middle ages; an entire continent from Portugal to the Ural Mountains, existed in a singular worldview, in a unified religious paradigm. Notions of “self-actualization” and “transcendence,” according to Maslow’s definitions, would have been fundamental

needs, provided for by their society. In such a world, most people would have an understanding of their role and function in their society, and have a clear understanding of the purpose and meaning for their life, while the daily struggle consisted more of the pursuit of more “basic” needs like food and clothing.

We can also consider the United states of the 19th century. Self actualization was rampant. Pioneers manifesting destiny, establishing towns, farms, and businesses across the country seem to me like the autonomy and agency of the individual were in a sense “basic needs” that were encouraged by the social structures of the time. We can also consider the American Indigenous societies of the time, wherein it seems, as in many tribal cultures, everyone knows and understands the particular role they fulfill in the society. This is only possible if the individual members have a strong sense of self. It is understood that man is a spiritual creature on a growth quest wherein spiritual foundations are needed in order for the society to function as a whole. There is more impetus for achievement if we use our strong foundations of “transcendence” or in other words, religious practice and altruism, to motivate further growth, having its culmination in a fruitful harvest, to be worked towards, and shared by, the community.

Then comes the Industrial Revolution. Man, Time, Earth became commoditized. Human dignity became more and more sacrificed for production. The foundations of the society, formerly based in religion and human dignity, were traded out for foundations of “progress” and increased production. We can see the culmination of this progress in the World Wars that shortly followed, wars that saw the obliteration

of no less than 8 kingdoms that had existed for centuries. Such a global revolution left a paradigm vacuum that needed to be filled by new psychological models for a newly ordered world.

In comes Maslow, and the Post War generations. Material production in the 1950’s United States was unprecedented. Sentiments of the old paradigm still existed, however dampened by the enervating effects of canned food. It is my understanding that in the Baby Boomer generation we see the hierarchy mid-flip, the pyramid on its side so to speak, where more of Maslow’s needs were met by a larger portion of the population than before. Survival and safety can now be taken for granted while still maintaining a sense of human dignity and agency. However, the old paradigm’s influence was waning, until now, when somehow, self-actualization is something that we ask the government for, or wait to be given. Even a large portion of the disparity between rural and urban American can be explained by this conflict of paradigms. The former, still holding on to the mere dregs of an obsolete paradigm, in a world progressing ever more quickly away from the seeming paradox of Survival Needs being an end goal, rather than a starting point.

In a sense it seems to me that Maslow and his theory intentionally attempted to cultivate a particular societal paradigm, and psychological worldview, for the generations of societies that would follow WWII. This theory is a prescription for our society, rather than an observation, that organizes what we see through the Overton Window into a particular paradigm that induces a tacit acceptance of a status quo that may not be the most conducive for emotional growth. C

by nick carlo

by ron evans

Saturday, July 10, comedy returns to Mission Ridge with an evening of Stand Up & Suds at The Chair 5 Pub. The show features comedians Ryan McComb and Gabe Rutledge. I reached out to event organizer/ promoter Alex Haley about this show and about the stand up world during a pandemic.

Comedy has been creeping back out into the world as Covid restrictions have eased. Are there any rules or current guidelines that make stand-up tricky right now or is it basically business as usual?

Covid has definitely made everything more challenging for event production this last year. This will be the first show I’ve produced since March of 2020 but since things are opening up I think people are hungry for live entertainment. We just finished the Apple Blossom Festival which had record numbers so I think the people

are ready.

Over the course of the pandemic we have learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t work concerning stand up, and one thing that didn’t really work...virtual stand up. Talk about the challenges of keeping comedy alive over this past year.

To be perfectly honest, I kind of took a hiatus from comedy over the past year.

I’ve performed a couple times at Badger Mountain Brewery’s comedy night, but otherwise I avoided the virtual shows because the only thing I can imagine that’s worse than bombing doing stand up comedy is having to watch myself bomb doing stand up comedy.

Have you seen any creative examples of virtual comedy shows/work-arounds that did work?

I didn’t watch many of them but I know they worked for some people and that’s great! I figured I’d just rather wait it out

and see comics in their full glory…I’m such a purist! The one thing I have seen work really well is podcasts. It became necessary for people to do them remotely, which as a byproduct made them more accessible to a lot of people. Not to mention the ample free time some people were forced into.

Is this show at Mission Ridge a one-off or part of an ongoing series?

I’ve definitely learned over the years that it’s better to start small and grow organically if people dig it -cough coughWenatchee Comedy Festival. So we’re going to try this one and see if people are eager for a comedy show with a dramatic mountain backdrop and delicious food to pair. If it goes well, you can almost certainly expect more.

Tell us about the event’s headliner. Gabe Rutledge is always top of my list! He’s hands down one of the best to do it and also happens to live in the PNW - jack-

pot! He’s one of probably three comics I always go to when I’m launching a new show or trying a new venue because he always kills.

What does the future look like for the rest of this year concerning stand-up in the Wenatchee area? And is there anything coming up you’d like to promote? Not too much on the books but it looks like it’s coming back! Really missing the RadarStation right now... I’m hoping to do some outdoor shows this summer though and maybe some private backyard shows, so keep an eye out. The roaring twenties are upon us!

The show is 18 & older only. Tix can be purchased at missionridge.com - $40 plus tax (includes dinner and entry for the show). Dinner will be served prior to the show with doors opening at 6:30 pm and the show starts at 8 pm. C

Gabe Rutledge Ryan McComb

This First Friday, Gallery One in Ellensburg is holding its first ever street art exhibit, “The Writing’s On The Wall’’, curated by Jason Clifton. Clifton himself is an artist originally from Central Valley, California and now residing in Ellensburg. Over the past few decades Clifton has gone from skater, to skate shop owner, new contemporary and street artist to muralist and curator. Lately, he has been running all over the state collecting works for “Writing’s On The Wall” but we caught up with him long enough to chat about this upcoming show and this often misunderstood art form.

How did you get plugged in to the Ellensburg art scene?

I had broken into the Ellensburg 1st Friday Art walk scene because I had run several downtown skate shops and I knew most of the other shop owners. So I was able to call on those connections to put my art up in their stores and bars and restaurants, then I just moved all the art to a different venue each month and continued

to do that for three years straight. With all those new and old connections, word of my work became a regular fixture of the Ellensburg art scene.

Some artists avoid the term ‘graffiti”, is that a bad word amidst some street artists?

No graffiti isn’t a bad word to street artists. At least not me because I do both. Graffiti is the science of letter style and form. The type of styles and forms come from the idea that we are arming our letter against the Christian indoctrination of written and spoken language. We arm our letters with stylized attitude and defensive stances to protect our expression. Street artists owe a lot to graffiti but there are cave paintings in Indonesia that are 40,000 years old that have been made by using hands as stencils and spitting pigments over them so stenciling has been around since before the Egyptians were writing on the walls at Edfu.

Tell us how this show “The Writing’s On The Wall” came to be?

During the course of doing the art walk circuit in Ellensburg and Seattle I met a lot of street artists and graffiti writers, so after I got Ellensburg Downtown Association’s Artist Of the Year for 2019, I thought I could try and use that clout or accolade to get Gallery One to say yes to me curating the first ever graffiti show there. I didn’t know if they would do it. It’s not typically that type of gallery that’s interested in urban art, and to my surprise they said yes. It would be two years away because of the booking schedule. Also a strong impetus is to shed light on a misunderstood form of expression. In bigger cities, street art typically tackles themes like social justice, poverty, economic inequality, police brutality and oppression and it’s like preaching to the choir there. But in rural areas the impact of street art can be greater because the people living there don’t see the realities of these issues in their area, so it’s an attempt to dispel myths, perceptions and stereotypes about our culture and the state of people living in the modern world. “The Writing’s On The Wall” is also a challenge to the idea

that belief equals truth. People can think and believe that graffiti is fundamentally just illegal vandalism but that doesn’t necessarily make that true.

Describe the logistics of this kind of show. Does it involve pieces that will be brought to the gallery or are works being created AT the gallery? Hybrid of both?

The show is almost exclusively comprised of pieces that I’ve collected from other artists and brought to the gallery. Because the Covid restrictions are lifting people are active right now and traveling so we are going to paint in the gallery itself.

How many artists are involved?

The show features 9 artists from around the northwest including; Voxx Romana, Charms Won, Acodd, CCStencil, Dozer, TABS, HEED, Modemoner, and Gaber.

Show opening: Friday, July 2, 2021 AT 5 PM – 7:30 PM. No entry fee. Cash bar and live DJ. c

by ron evans

by sarah sims & ron evans

Amanda Northwind has been creating handcrafted jewelry for almost a decade. An indigenous artist born and raised in the Wenatchee Valley, Northwind manages to find time for her passion and craft somewhere in the process of raising twins.

“I first started creating jewelry after my daughters were born. It’s crazy to look back now and see how much it’s evolved and how long I’ve been making wearable art.” Northwind says.

Wearable art is a perfect way to encapsulate what Northwind is doing with her Mystic North jewelry line. Each piece has a unique form and flow with a delicate touch of a fine painter, fusing metal and stone with softer elements of nature. We reached out to the artist to learn more about what compels her to create.

Can you tell us a little about your brand and what inspires you to make your style of jewelry?

I get a lot of my inspiration from nature. I’ve been hand-hammering and wire wrapping since I first started making jewelry. Most recently I started working with electroforming and it’s been amazing creating items that look like you might find them

out in a magical forest, pulled from an old tree, or out of the earth. Electroforming has been a goal of mine for the last three years and I’m super excited to finally be doing it! Last year I started making handstamped jewelry as well. That was a lot of fun, and a couple of years ago I got into resin work. My daughters and I would go on hikes and respectfully harvest local wild flowers for resin pendants, and it was nice to mesh my passion of hiking and being with my kiddos into making jewelry. I know there are so many people here in the valley who love when the flowers around the foothills and mountains bloom, and I thought it would be a cool idea to have a bit of that all year round. That avenue of work also led me to making cremated remains/memorial jewelry, and working with clients to make one of a kind pieces to remember a lost loved one. It is truly an amazing experience that takes a lot of trust and care.

What led you to this artform?

When I first started really getting into making jewelry, it was right after a childhood friend of mine passed away. He really lived the heck out of life and did what made him happy; traveling the world, exploring, and sharing his knowledge and love for nature. It really opened up my

eyes to what I wanted to get out of life and to follow what made my heart happy.

Some of your work involves electroforming. Can you describe that process a bit, in layman’s terms? And how does this technique feed into the conception phase of your work?

Magic! It’s all magic! Just kidding. It’s quite a process and takes a good amount of time. To break it down, you start with what you’re working with; organic materials: bones, flowers, leaves, sticks, and crystals. I’ve seen people electroform all sorts of things. After figuring out what you’d like to work with, you start the process of sealing it and painting it. From there it’s placed into a bath to electroform the copper to it, the time frame for it to work its magic can range from a couple of hours to 24 hours. Like I said, it’s quite a process. After that, you do your sanding, polishing, and patina if needed, and finally sealing it all to prevent any further tarnishing. It usually takes me about 3-4 days to get items made depending on what else is going on, but it’s been well worth it. The best part is while it’s electroforming I can do my day to day chores/run errands and hang out with my kiddos, or

work on other jewelry like wire wrapping!

Electroforming has definitely opened up a new door of opportunity for what I can work with material wise. Recently my fiancé and I have discussed collaborating on some projects together. He runs a shop called Wicked Wildcrafts. I’m pretty excited to start working with him on stuff.

Do you have any favorite stones or materials that you like working with?

Ohhhhh, that’s a tough one! I’ve always been drawn to labradorite. I love the different colors of flashes every stone has! Moonstones are another fun one to work with. Recently I worked with some blue kyanite to make a necklace and matching ring. I love how those turned out.

Do you do any rockhounding or have you incorporated any found stones into your work? Where do you get most of your materials?

I haven’t had a chance YET to go rockhounding, but it definitely is a goal to get out and do that! I have used treasures that have been locally sourced by Ty Stevens who runs Crystal Chameleon. I like to source my materials from other small

businesses whether it’s locally or online.

Do you have a favorite part of the creative process? (The dreaming up of ideas, the actual crafting, seeing the finished product, etc).

Probably the creating portion for sure. I did some bead work for a while and I loved the quiet, calming process of everything. It was almost therapeutic. Seeing the finished product by far is always the best feeling. I’m pretty lucky to have an amazing circle of friends and family who have been so supportive of my work. I usually send everyone a picture after things are finished to get everyone’s opinion.

Where can people find your work locally?

Currently I have displays at Ye Olde Bookshoppe which is located down off Wenatchee Avenue, The Bubblery up in Leavenworth, and out at Wenatchi Wears which is located at the north end of Wenatchee. I’m in the process of expanding to a couple of other out of town and possibly out of state locations which is crazy awesome to think about! I feel pretty darn lucky to have these local shops

take a chance on my work and have my displays in their shops, I’m very grateful for that.

Do you do trade shows, farmers markets or fairs to sell your wares? Or strictly boutiques?

I’ve done a couple of booths inside Pybus before, but it was hard with my daughters’ school schedule. Occasionally I’ll do trunk shows at Ye Olde Bookshoppe which are always fun, especially if other artists join in as well. I do sell items online through my Facebook and Instagram pages, shipping items within the U.S. and doing local meet ups as well.

Any shows or events coming up that we should know about?

Yes! I have a trunk show coming up July 17th at Ye Olde Bookshoppe. I’m super excited for that!

Instagram @mysticnorthjewelry

Facebook @mysticnorthhandmade c

July horoscopes.

Aries - Haha, Cancer season means all the feels and you hate those. Logic can’t help you this month.

Taurus - The old, comfortable way isn’t doing it for you anymore. I know it’s unnatural but you’ll need to...try something new.

Gemini - Is it ADHD or are you just a Gemini? Hard to tell.

Cancer - Release that control you pinchy little crab, it can’t save you from your feelings. Also, happy birthday.

Leo - It’s cute how you blame your jealousy on “loving” them too much. Nah bitch, you possessive.

Virgo - Your highly scrutinizing nature makes you fun and enjoyable to be around...

Libra - Your whole mood is like one giant buyer’s remorse vibe.

Scorpio - Stop using intimidation to make friends. We only like you because we’re afraid of you.

Sagittarius - Your word of the day is: TACT. Try it!

Capricorn - You call it “being practical.” I call it being a rude ass, know it all.

Aquarius - Your best motivation to do a thing is to be told not to do the thing.

Pisces - You can’t escape your feelings this month. The only way out is through, or whatever.

Rookie From The 13th Squad from 1918

1) A nine year old girl and her four year old sister are lucky to be alive after they decided to take their parent’s car for a joy ride at 4 in the morning. The young sisters left their Utah home and were determined to make it all the way to California, but unfortunately got into a head on crash 10 miles into their trip. All the people involved in the accident were fortunately not hurt and the girls are now home safe with their family. What did they want to drive to California to do?

A) Meet Kim Kardashian

B) Break into Disneyland

C) Swim with the dolphins in the ocean

D) Get an In-N-Out burger

2) A few months back, residents of a small New Hampshire town were surprised when an explosion went off, rocking their little town. Most people thought it was an earthquake, and some residents even reported cracking foundations and walls in their homes after the explosion happened.

Turns out, the explosion that rocked the town was caused by this:

A) A gender reveal party

B) A redneck TNT fishing competition

C) THREE methlab trailers blowing up in unison

D) A grain silo that was being filled with grain exploded

3) Sliced bread was released in 1928, giving us the expression “the greatest thing since sliced bread.” But few people know that this expression was born from the marketing slogan that launched sliced bread... What was that expression?

A) The greatest thing since home baked bread

B) The greatest thing since baker’s bread

C) The greatest thing since bagged bread

D) The greatest thing since bread

4) I know we’ve all enjoyed a little Kobra Kai. One of my favorite things is watching Johnny try to sell his young students on the ‘80s metal bands of his yesteryear. Johnny is constantly wearing band t-shirts or referencing them.

Turns out this is a real conscious effort by the actor that plays Johnny (William Zabka) and the Kobra Kai costume designer. William will pick out the bands, and then it’s the costume designer’s job to track them down.

However, there’s one band in particular that William said he wouldn’t allow Johnny to wear during the show. What was the band?

A) White Snake

B) Metallica

C) STYX

D) Jane’s Addiction

5) When someone loses weight, how does it leave your body? I’m talking 85% of the weight you lose exits your body in this fashion:

A) Your pee

B) Your poop

C) Your sweat

D) Your breath

6) After Breaking Bad ended, Bryan Cranston, who played the lead in that show, got a piece of fan mail from another famous person. In the fan mail, THIS person told Bryan that his acting in Breaking Bad was simply the best acting they had ever seen. Who sent him the message?

A) Anthony Hopkins

B) Sean Penn

C) Shai LeBeouf

D) Patrick Stewart

1. C: Swim with the dolphins in the ocean 2. A: A gender reveal party. 3. C: The greatest thing since bagged bread 4. D: Jane’s Addiction.

Even though they are big fans of the band, they thought Johnny wouldn’t be because their music is too sophisticated and gent.intelli 5. D: Breath.

Fat is converted to carbon dioxide and water. You exhale the carbon dioxide and the water mixes into your circulation until it’s lost as urine or sweat. 6. A: Anthony Hopkins

brain dump: unmet expectations

by KRISTEN ACESTA

“I know you’re a virgo Cindy, but that doesn’t excuse you from being a bitch.”

I’m not Cindy, but I know how she feels. The bitchiness isn’t a hormonal dysfunction, my raging estrogen molecules with flexed arms as they berate wherever that emotional center in the body is. No, no, it’s not that. It’s because my expectations are too high. Either that or it’s because of the strong female lead thing that threatens frail egos. But I hope it’s not that. I hope our relationship together unfolds the energetic boundaries and stuck-ness that you are resisting emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

Nevertheless, Virgos and high expectations are like peas in a pod. I spent most of my younger years well into early adult life mostly upset with myself and failed expectations. But this article isn’t about my psychotherapy journey, it’s about how viewing everyone as ugly in the world allowed me to bliss out on how good of a person I am underneath it all.

Did you follow that? If not, no worries. Here we go.

I do think there is a way to hold high expectations while letting go of disappointment. That has been my work lately. Construction projects are an easy example.

Oh so you say you will be here on Saturday? But you actually meant Thursday. And how long am I waiting for that part to be shipped from China? And despite all this time you had to organize what you needed, you still managed to do a subpar job? No, no, let me reschedule all those patients who are the only paying thing here currently.

We are victims to the timing of construction workers. Their work habits. And lack thereof. High expectations,

with low disappointment basically means you have to let go of the anger and bitchiness that arises when things don’t go our way. And they rarely will. I’m still working on that daily.

There are benefits to having high expectations though. When coupled with a creative expanding energy it can help beautify the world, keeping people on task to achieve higher societal goals. It also means that one sees the world *better*. I have high expectations because I know you are capable of meeting them, and I can literally visualize this better world.

In fact, my imagination is way better at compiling this perfect, symmetrical, fluid picture of a world we are living in. So much so, that when I was literally blinded to it due to mask usage, I found that I envisioned people prettier than what they turned out to be! Almost horrible to admit, but when I noticed the feeling of disappointment lurking in I had to have a laugh at myself! And then the next breath let that disappointment go while I got to analyze the perfect imperfections of their face.

Think about it. Especially if you met people that you didn’t know before the ‘VID. When you finally got to see their full face, was there a bit of disappointment? And if there was, don’t worry. You just have high expectations.

Dr. Kristen Acesta, ND, RH Naturopathic physician and registered herbalist at Mission Creek & Wellness, co-owner of Salt Creek Apothecary.

becomeyourmission.org

saltcreekapothecary.com