Artwork, Health and Healing, Rites of Passage

On Not Being a One-Trick Artist

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This past weekend, I listed the first big bunch of animal hide headdresses that I’ve posted in about a year over on my Etsy shop. Traditionally, headdresses have been a mainstay of my artwork; I made my first one in 2002, and have continued with it ever since. They’ve become one of my signature offerings, and I’ve made hundreds of them in the past decade and change, both on spec and as custom orders.

Last year, during the summer when I was doing temp work full-time at my old internship site, I was also struggling to keep the Green Wolf going as a business. I knew the day job was only going to be a few months, and I needed something to come back to once it was done. It was really exhausting, as you might well imagine, and during the latter weeks of this experience I found myself feeling quite pent-up creatively. I only had the time to keep making the most bare-bones fundamentals of my shop and booth, and there wasn’t a lot of time for what I call “me art time”, which is where I get to experiment with creativity, try new techniques and materials, and so forth. It felt pretty stifling.

So by the time October rolled around and I was free to be self-employed again, I found myself being completely unwilling to go back to my old rotation of “Today I’ll make this sort of thing, and tomorrow I’ll make these, and the next I’ll get some more of those going…” I wanted to shake things up a bit (while also making sure I kept paying my bills!) So I dove into some new artistic territory, doing more assemblage pieces and other experiments.

One of my newest pieces, "Deer Fern".
One of my newest pieces, “Deer Fern”.
Along the way, a few of my old stand-bys fell to the wayside for a bit. Some of this was sheerly circumstantial; I just didn’t make the time. But the headdresses were deliberately shelved. I’d spent so many years making them, and they were such big, impressive pieces, that the rest of my work often got overlooked and I felt like maybe I was just becoming “Lupa the headdress artist”. It’s not that I didn’t love the ones that I made; I’ve always enjoyed creating them, and dancing with my own. But I needed a break from them.

So other than a few headdresses for my vending booth and whatever custom orders came in, I stopped making them a regular part of my art. I kept experimenting with new media, and pushed myself out of my comfort zone. I began feeling that I didn’t just want to not be known only as “Lupa the headdress artist”–I also felt corralled into the label of “Lupa the hide and bone artist”. So I spent much of the winter trying to reinvent myself and my artwork, not throwing out the good things, but adding on more good things, if that makes sense.

I really needed it, too. One of the things about being an artist for a living, rather than as a hobby, or having someone else financially supporting you while you make art, is that there are certain popular pieces that will replace your day job as your primary form of income. It’s easy to get stuck in a rut with them, too, and I realized that art had stopped being as much fun because of it. I needed to be able to get back to my roots as a creative person, that busy, somewhat crazed immersion in possibilities melded with opportunities serving as brief snapshots of where I was with regards to skill and inspiration.

And I think I felt I needed to prove something to myself and to others–that I wasn’t just a one-trick artist, that I didn’t just make headdresses (and a few other things). Moreover, at some point making headdresses became trendy, and more and more people started trying to cash in. I didn’t want to get lost in the masses, but I didn’t want to define myself by just making yet another variation on the headdress.

A blank book I made with shells and handmade paper.
A blank book I made with shells and handmade paper.
So that’s where a lot of my experimentation came from. And it worked. I felt a lot less stifled creatively, and more motivated to make both my old stand-bys and shiny new things, too. I got good response from people with my newer pieces as well as the classics. I got the rejuvenation I needed, and became a better artist as a result.

It wasn’t until this month, though, that I felt ready to go back to the headdresses. I missed them, really, and while I really enjoy making custom pieces for other people, it’s not the same as getting to create them on my own time, with no restrictions. So I pulled out a few hides I had stored away and spent a couple of weeks stitching up tears and holes, reshaping ears and faces, adding straps, and getting them ready to wear.

And then I went out with my friend Julie to Laurelhurst Park where she graciously modeled the new headdresses for me while I took photos. As I did, I felt my old enthusiasm for the headdresses coming back. Watching another person take on these spirits, even for a few minutes, and enjoy connecting with them reminded me why I started making them in the first place. I wanted to see them go to new homes where they could have that kind of attention more often, and teach someone new how to dance and shift and return to their animal selves. I wanted them to have the same opportunities my own headdresses had, and make those new relationships happen.

It led to a sense of completion, like the last piece fell into place–for the moment, anyway. No doubt I’ll want to shake things up again before too long. But for the moment, I think it’s going to be a good summer for headdresses.

You can see some of my headdresses, present and past, in my portfolio and my Etsy shop. I am also available for custom work; feel free to contact me with your ideas and requests.

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Animal Totems, Cosmology, Rites of Passage, Totems

Red Fox as Animal Totem

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Most of my totems that I’ve written about here and back at Therioshamanism are ones I’d consider rather uncommon. I talk about the totems of plants, lichens and fungi because I want to reinforce the idea that they’re out there and are every bit as important as their animal compatriots, and even the animals I’ve written about, like Dusky Arion, aren’t the big, popular totems. This time around, though, I want to talk about one of the more ubiquitous totems that I’ve been working with for a decade now: Red Fox.

As I mentioned in a previous post, 2004 was kind of a rough year for me, but it also produced a great deal of growth. During this period of chaos, I was going through a lot of internal changes and realizations, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. Some of my worst traits came out under the stress; as is common with primary totems, I identified quite deeply with Gray Wolf, and all too often under stress my fangs were showing. I’ve talked about secondary totems as those that enter into our lives to help us through a particular period of time or teach us something specific. And that’s where Red Fox came in.

In some ways, Red Fox is much like a gentler Gray Wolf–still a predator, still possessing sharp teeth and keen senses, but not quite as aggressive a totem. My relationship with Red Fox started with her helping me calm down some, finding a bit of focus in these hard times. I did a great deal to invite her into my life more, even dyeing my hair red with henna for a number of years, and that helped to break me out of my usual headspace and introduce me to new ways of viewing the world. It didn’t fix everything, but it helped.

See, I had a very lupine-centric narrative of myself (not at all surprising). There were certain expectations of myself that I had, behavior patterns that I’d always exhibited that weren’t especially healthy, but that I just assumed were permanently a part of me. And Gray Wolf didn’t really have answers for me as to how to fix them. Other totems I worked with didn’t really have a deep enough connection with me to be doing that sort of intensive internal work–except Red Fox. She helped me to learn that I could change, that i wasn’t destined to stay the same person forever, and at a time in my mid-twenties where I really felt I was far behind other people my age as far as life developments went, it was incredibly good for me to be shown that I wasn’t a complete failure.

And the work we started together a decade ago never really ended, either. Red Fox has ridden every shakeup with me, every time I’ve blown my life up and put a new life together from the pieces. She encouraged me to write my first book, and she rode with me across the country to the Northwest. She sat with me through divorce, through grad school, through living alone and moving in with my current partner, through working for others and working for myself. She was one of the totems to encourage me to look beyond the animals and explore the world of plant and fungus totems, and even further into the totemic ecosystem than that. She was there for every crisis of faith and deep realization, and no doubt will continue to witness my ongoing evolution, even as its rate levels out some with age.

I don’t do a lot of ritual work any more, but when I do, I still call on the animals of the four cardinal directions. Red Fox is my South, my fire, my Change. She is the shapeshifting force in my life, and with her, I’ve become so much more than I thought I would be. I am still a Wolf’s child, of course; my name is still Lupa. But Red Fox is right there, working with Gray Wolf and alone as well, adding her fire to the metamorphosis of my life.

If you liked this post, please consider buying a copy of my book New Paths to Animal Totems, or one of my other titles on totemism and nature spirituality. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Activism, Artwork, Environmentalism, Ethics, Sustainability, Way of the Scavenger

Hello, Old Paint

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Today is an art day. I’m bouncing between a few custom orders and what I call “cleaning through art”. That latter is where I realize the back bedroom where I keep my art supplies is a complete mess, and instead of cleaning everything up like a normal person, I pick up the nearest project idea that’s cluttering up the floor and work on it til it’s done. Sure, it only makes the room a little less messy, but at the end I have a completed project and slightly more space!

One of the projects I’m working on is a dance costume made from a tanned horse’s mane and tail that I got from a Washington taxidermist who collects deceased animals from local farms (among other sources). The tail’s going to be on a belt, as I normally do with my horse tails, and I’m adding a pair of decorated belt pouches; the leather’s all from a deerskin coat I got at the Goodwill Bins a while back. You can see one of the pouches as a work-in-progress in the picture above.

My last Bins trip also netted me the paints next to it. Shopping there is less like a regular excursion where you have a list of things you want, and more like a giant yard sale that happens every day and there’s more brought out every fifteen minutes and you really don’t know what you’re going to go home with. In recent trips I’ve hauled out a pillowcase full of pine cones, a vintage Black and White scotch bottle (empty, of course), an empty antique projector case, and a bag full of several dozen partially full tubes of acrylic paints. I wasn’t able to open up the tubes prior to purchase, so I knew it was a gamble, but it paid off–only one was all dried up, and the rest were primarily in the earthy colors I use a lot. Although acrylics are a better paint green-wise than oils, with fewer toxins and a water base, they’re still a guilty convenience purchase (I mean really, I could just be mixing my own paints from egg and pigments, right?) So I was more than happy to keep these out of the waste stream and keep myself from having to buy new paints for a while, too.

We All Fall DownHowever, just because they weren’t dried up didn’t mean all the paints were in prime condition. Most of them just needed to be stirred to get the pigment to mix back in with the solvent, but some responded better than others. I hate to waste anything, and so I’ve turned working with imperfect paints into an art all its own. If some of the pigment has solidified and the paint that’s left is thin, it makes a good wash or faux-watercolor. Too thick, but still brushable? Look, it’s a texturing medium! They need to be treated a little differently than when they were new, but they’re far from useless. Even the dried out clumps of pigment can be carved into interesting shapes for assemblage work, or made into flakes to glue in as colored details.

Some artists are really particular about their media; they can’t get the exact effect they want if the chemistry’s a little off, or the texture is wrong. I, on the other hand, love all the wrongness. There’s a certain joy I get as an artist out of using things that were discarded by others, whether it’s old hide scraps or bits of plastic or damaged household items. I love the challenge of making the imperfect beautiful, of watching it transform from refused into rejuvenated.

And I think, as a society, we might do better to fall in love with imperfection a little more. I know people who won’t shop at a thrift store because “That’s where the poor people go”. The classism of that statement is a whole other rant in and of itself, but I will point out now that this attitude ties right in with what I was talking about a few weeks back about saving only the best for ourselves. We waste so many resources, artistic and otherwise, because we turn out noses up at the imperfections, the challenges in making something work.

But that’s why I’m a Hyena Artist following the Way of the Scavenger. Their loss is my gain, and few things thrill me more than digging into the Bins and seeing what goodies I come up with to make stuff out of. And now I’m going to go back to painting with my old paints, on the secondhand leather pouch, because it’s going to be awesome when it’s done.

*By the way, the assemblage piece a few paragraphs up is made with one of those aforementioned pine cones, along with other reclaimed materials. You can find out more about it here.

Activism, Anthropocentrism, Cosmology, Environmentalism, Ethics, Meaning, Skepticism

Yeah, I Don’t Like “The Secret” Either.

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Last week Lon Sarver wrote a fantastic post called The Past is Not Gone, about how the Law of Attraction is utter bunkum. For those who aren’t aware, the Law of Attraction basically says that if you think reallllllly hard about good things, then good things will happen to you. It’s basically the New Age version of the just world fallacy, and I’ve seen it lead to some pretty egregious ignorance, up to and including people explaining away others’ disabilities, poverty, and misfortunes as “well, they just kept thinking negative things!” (Not to be confused with that other well-meaning-but-utterly-clueless claim that “Oh, they’re just paying off karma from things they did in a past life!”)

The great thing he does in this post is outline a number of people and forces in his ancestry that contributed to where he is today. Not all of them are pleasant; he points out where he personally benefited from Manifest Destiny (I can say much the same) and that he is descended in part from people who were once slaveholders. But that’s part of the issue of privilege or the lack thereof–the accident of our birth may confer or deny certain advantages, and not everyone gets to be the hero who overcomes a rough start. And anyone who doesn’t make it out of that hole, no matter how deep, is seen as a failure, and therefore they must have brought it upon themselves.

Here in the U.S., there’s a strong cultural emphasis on individualism (rugged and otherwise). The ideal is of one person in peak condition, able to attend to their own needs, and contrasted against the weak masses huddling together un helplessness. Yet as Rua Lupa, my co-blogger at Paths Through the Forests, pointed out yesterday, we are enmeshed in a complex web of interdependence with people around the world, not out of weakness but out of necessity. Just because we pretend it isn’t there doesn’t really make it go away; that trick doesn’t work any better now than it did when we were young children who thought no one could see us if we just closed our eyes.

We do the same thing with the rest of the world, too, human and otherwise. We consumers are deliberately kept from seeing the sources of all of our conveniences and trinkets, from pre-packaged food to fossil fuels to shiny diamonds soaked in someone else’s blood. In just a few decades, it’s become the norm to not have to think about where your food came from and what living beings (animal, plant, and more) died in its creation, who sewed your clothing together and how little they were paid, and other unpleasant realities.

And it’s that milieu of ignorance that births such codswallop as the Law of Attraction. The lotus-eaters who sit back and bemoan the state of the world and continue to think happy thoughts of manifestation are just another product of our denial. In order to really get things done in the world, we have to get our hands dirty, literally and figuratively, and meet the harsh realities of the world head-on. Action speaks louder than attraction.

At the same time, there is value in keeping an optimistic, if realistic, mindset. If you focus only on the bad news, it’s going to drag you down eventually, and you’ll find yourself unable to do much about anything. That’s why self-care is so important, not just for activists, but for anyone who faces any level of stress. It’s okay to appreciate the beautiful things in the world without automatically thinking “Yeah, but here’s the ugly side”. It’s fine to keep a positive outlook even when you’re in the thick of dealing with (rather than denying) big, scary challenges. We need a respite from the times that try our souls now and again.

The Law of Attraction, on the other hand, is escapism. Worse, it blames the victim. And even when a person really has done themselves a bad favor and made some unwise choices, all the Law of Attraction says is “Just think everything better!” That’s not much preparation for rolling up your sleeves and cleaning up the mess you’ve made.

In the end, it’s people wanting to have a simple answer for complicated problems because they just don’t know how to deal with them otherwise. While I’ve had times where I wished I could just wave a magic wand and make the bad things go away, I don’t try to make a life philosophy out of it. And that’s really the problem with the Law of Attraction–it tells you you don’t need to worry about things like privilege, and environmental injustice, and climate change, and the basic fact that life really isn’t fair and there’s no way around it. I think we all need a better set of coping skills than that to get us through.

Save the cod, not the codswallop!
Save the cod, not the codswallop!
My Books

Books + Free Shipping = Yes!

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A couple of brief but important notes regarding my books and the ordering thereof.

First, I just got a new shipment of New Paths to Animal Totems in late last week, and I still have a small number of my first shipment of Plant and Fungus Totems left (and will be ordering more soon!) While these books can certainly stand alone and you don’t need to have one to read the other, they are nicely complementary. Since I think they make a cute couple, between now and noon PST this Saturday, May 17, if you buy both books through my website–not Etsy, not eBay, not Amazon, just thegreenwolf.com–you’ll get free shipping! (Or, more specifically, I’ll refund the cost of shipping through Paypal once I see that your order has come in, so there may be a slight delay between your order and my refund if I’m away from the computer, sleeping, etc.)And, of course, both books will be signed; put a note in with your Paypal order or email me at lupa.greenwolf(at)gmail(d0t)com if you’d like them personalized. If you are unable to use Paypal and want to send a check or money order instead, again email me and I’ll tell you how to proceed.

Second, in case you missed it in my last book post, I discovered last week that the WordPress/Paypal shopping cart plugin that I had installed when I redesigned the site last March decided to stop working correctly. I have a small number of aborted orders where I have no information on who was trying to place the order, what book(s) they were trying to buy, and no money arrived in my account. All I know is that someone tried to click the “buy it” button and that’s it. I have since reverted to my tried-and-true Paypal buttons, even if they aren’t as pretty, because I know they work. So if you were one of those folks attempting to bring home my writing in dead tree form, the way is ready for you. Also, if you have ordered recently and you haven’t received your book by the end of May, please contact me at lupa.greenwolf(at)gmail(d0t)com with a copy of your receipt and I’ll make sure to put everything to rights.

Alright, this’ll be the last book post for a while. I’ll get back to my observations, opinions and other ocular offerings later this week.

Body Modifications, Health and Healing, Meaning, Memories, Rites of Passage

A Rite of Passage At Both Ends

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See that tiny little bar of metal in my hand? That was embedded in the upper edge of my navel for a decade, the one remaining piercing of a trio I got (navel, both ears) in 2004. These days getting your belly button pierced is a fairly benign modification; here in Portland even facial piercings often don’t register as odd. But for the person I was ten years ago, it was part of a personal revolution.

Everyone’s life goes through transformative periods, some longer and/or bumpier than others. I’m not talking the full onset of lycanthropy, of course, but the times that try souls–and personal resilience. Sometimes one event sets off a cascade of effects that brings a person’s whole life crashing down; any built-up stagnation comes pouring out in a series of messy floods. Eventually, out of this slippery mess slides not so much a phoenix reborn as a brand-new foal still coated in amniotic fluid, not quite sure what leg goes where, and in danger of being eaten by predators–but if the cards are right, that foal’s a unicorn and is going to go some great places once it figures those legs out.

That was my 2004, back when I was still living in Pittsburgh. In a space of about eight months I was dumped twice, moved three times, switched from a third shift job to a very early first shift one with a totally different skill set, and had the first really bad spike of anxiety in my independent adult life. Amid all that I decided that I needed to explore all the crazy things I never did as a fairly sheltered teenager years before, when I was isolated and friendless in a small town. I won’t go into too much detail about my much-delayed rebellion; suffice it to say the main things I retain from it today are a better understanding of Things Not To Do, my first tattoo, my preference for classic black high-top Chuck Taylors as everyday footwear*, and a hole at the top of my navel.

Everything but the shoes could be considered rites of passage to one degree or another. The piercing was probably the toughest of all in some ways, and certainly the most deliberate. I am not a fan of needles at all, and while I’m better than I used to be (I no longer panic while having blood drawn), at the time sharp things were a source of great fear. In order to confront that fear, I decided to get my ears and navel pierced. I figured they were the least likely places to experience nerve damage, and I’d already had my ears done once when I was a child (I eventually got tired of earrings and took them out) so the navel would be an additional challenge. Suffice it to say I went into the piercing parlor all by myself and survived the ordeal with nothing more than a chorus of “Ow, ow, ow”, but it was worth it for the adrenaline and the feeling of accomplishment. I had survived something I had thought I’d never do, and I felt pretty damned brave. I used that experience to help me get through other tough times and to challenge myself further; there were literally situations in which I told myself “Look, you had a piece of metal shoved through your skin and got through that just fine. You can totally handle this, too.”

Up until this past Saturday, my navel had the aforementioned (and pictured) little banana bar of steel through it. It was the original piece of jewelry I got when I had the piercing done. I kept it in because by the time it healed completely, I’d already had my ear piercings close up after less than a week of having to take them out at work. I was reading utility meters at the time, and my manager, who had aspirations of being a petty dictator (emphasis on the “petty”) had told everyone that no ear jewelry was allowed, not even tiny studs, in case they got caught on underbrush or other hazards while playing “Find the Meter” in people’s landscaping. My mutant healing factor must have kicked in, and by day three of this policy, I was no longer able to force the earrings back into the holes at the end of an eight-hour shift.

But I still had my navel piercing, and I hung onto it like the last remnant of my freedom. It lasted longer than that job did, longer than my time in Pittsburgh (plus a year in Seattle), even longer than my ill-fated marriage. As I continued to move from apartment to apartment, dealt with divorce and learning healthier relationship practices, survived graduate school, and settled into self-employment, the piercing remained as a link to a younger, more chaotic self. Not in any bad way, mind you; I was quite fond of it, and still appreciated my bravery even a decade later.

It was not to remain that way, though. I’ve been prone in the last few years to assorted problems in my digestive system, some of which are probably genetic and others–well, who knows where the hell they came from? So I got pretty good at paying attention to any pains in my midsection. Every so often I’d have a little twinge of discomfort right around the piercing that would last anywhere from an hour to a day. I never thought much of it; maybe it was just getting caught on my clothing. But this past week I had pain there that, although it registered around a two on my pain scale, didn’t go away, and I decided that in order to help in a potential diagnosis, the jewelry had to be taken out. Maybe I had developed an allergy to the metal, or perhaps my body was just sick of it. But if I wanted to be sure that was all it was, I needed to eliminate the possibility entirely.

Now, I’d been wearing this thing for so long that the ball had gotten stuck on the end; try as I might, I couldn’t remove it. For a moment I had nightmare visions of having to snip off the end with a pair of bolt cutters and then file the edges so it wouldn’t tear me up on the way out–and then I had the brilliant idea of seeing if a professional piercer might have a better idea. So my partner and I headed down to Ritual Arts in the Hollywood District, where resident piercer Shane 7 Wolfe somehow sweet-talked that tiny, stubborn piece of steel into cooperating. (Seriously, if that’s not the mark of a good magician I don’t know what is.)

As it turned out, removing the piercing didn’t make the pain go away, and as it got worse, I made the decision Saturday night to go to the emergency room. I didn’t want to wait until Monday in case it got worse, even though I wasn’t running a fever or showing other serious symptoms; I figured if I caught it early enough that at the worst I’d be sent home with some antibiotics. (The last time I waited on having abdominal pain checked out I ended up in the hospital for two days under IV antibiotics and the threat of surgery if I didn’t get better. Lesson learned.) It turned out to just be a mild intestinal virus from who knows where (maybe I didn’t rinse the dirt off the radishes I ate from my garden well enough?), and I was sent home with nothing more than a prescription to help with the pain if it got worse and instructions to just let it work its way through my system.

At this point I had the option to put the bar back in my navel. And I did seriously consider it for a moment. But then I thought back to all those times that I was worried by pain, and the confounding factor that the piercing entered into any potential assessment of the cause. I’m not likely to have my digestive system miraculously recover its intestinal fortitude (ha!), and it’s almost certain that as I get older (and especially now that the warranty has expired on my body, drivetrain and all) there’ll be more random flareups. So it’s more prudent to not complicate the matter any more than I need to.

And that choice became a rite of passage in and of itself. Whereas a decade ago the message was about bravery and facing scary things head-on, now that I’m well into my thirties I have more experience with those scary things. Rather than leaping in to engage them in battle, it’s a wiser choice for me to prepare for them if they make an advance. I’ve proven to myself time and again now that I’m more resilient than I sometimes think. I don’t need to look down at that little piece of metal to remind myself of that any more.

But I did hang onto it as a memento. It has a safe place in my home, and I’ll run across it every so often and remember. It’ll be a while before the hole in my skin closes up, too, and there’ll always be a scar to remind me of my brave act. I must admit that I prefer not having that constant feeling, ever so small, of something being there, moving around., filling up space. Even with today’s challenges, comfort has become more of a priority than ever, and I’ll take this little bit of comfort that moves me a little more into a new stage of life.

* I’ve been trying to find a sweatshop-free alternative that’s available consistently in the U.S. ever since No Sweat Apparel discontinued their lookalikes a few years ago and went wholesale-only. I’m aware of Autonomie’s Ethletics, which are a good option, except none of the distributors seem to ship to the states, and gods know how much that would cost even if they did. Suggestions are appreciated.

Activism, Environmentalism, Fungus Totems, My Books, Plant Totems, Sustainability, Totems

Books, Blogs, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium

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Lupa news round-up! Here’s what I’ve got for you dear readers:

–My newest book is out! Plant and Fungus Totems: Connect With Spirits of Field, Forest and Garden is a continuation of my spiritual explorations the past several years. In it I focus on what fungus and plant totems are and how they’re unique from their animal counterparts (and each other!), different ways of working with them, and how to give back to them and their ecosystems, among other topics of interest. As with all my books, this is no mere dictionary stuffed with page-fillers, but instead a versatile toolkit to apply to your practice. You can read more about it and buy a copy here.

–In a similar vein, I just today discovered that the shopping cart feature on my website has not been working since I switched it over in March. The back end showed that a few people tried to buy books, but I got absolutely no information other than a date and time, and no money was received here. If you were one of those people (or if you still want to order books from here instead of at my Etsy shop), I have reverted back to the old Buy Now buttons which, while not a pretty, are proven to be effective. My sincerest apologies for the inconvenience.

–If you’d like to sample even more of my writing for absolutely free, one of my co-writers at the now-defunct No Unsacred Place, Rua Lupa, has teamed up with me to offer you all a new blog at Patheos, Paths Through the Forests. We’ll be continuing our thoughts and conversations on nature, bioregionalism, spirituality, and more. While I’ll occasionally post a link round-up here, you can get more frequent updates on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus. Rua Lupa’s already posted there, and my first official post is due out Thursday of this week.

–Finally, thanks to sales at Faire in the Grove this past weekend, I was able to make a donation to the Monterey Bay Aquarium! They are a world leader in research on marine biology and ocean health, as well as the developers of the Seafood Watch pamphlet, website feature and phone app, which allow you to look up which seafood choices are sustainable, and which to avoid. Plus they always have an amazing array of sea creatures on display at the aquarium itself, well-cared-for and healthy, and accompanied by plenty of information. You can find out more about the Monterey Bay Aquarium and their work at www.montereybayaquarium.org/

Activism, Animals, Book Reviews, Environmentalism, Ethics, Food, Sustainability

Review of The Compassionate Hunter’s Guidebook

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Earlier this year, I preordered a copy of Miles Olson’s new book, The Compassionate Hunter’s Guidebook: Hunting From the Heart. I promised you all back on Therioshamanism that I’d review it once it arrived, and so it has as of last Friday (it was a quick read), and so I now shall proceed.

Now, let me preface this by saying I am not a hunter, have never hunted (though I have fished), and don’t intend to take up hunting any time soon. I am, however, an omnivore who occasionally is able to indulge in some wild game meat when others see fit to gift me with some, and who otherwise is concerned with where her meat comes from. Furthermore, I feel that one of the great failures of this society is that we have become so detached from the processes by which our food–animal and otherwise–is produced. It’s allowed us to enact a great deal of abuses upon ecosystems and their inhabitants, and I believe strongly that we should be educating ourselves about our food’s origins so we can make better decisions going forward. It’s in that spirit that I bought this book. Even though I do not hunt, I wanted to know more about the actual process of hunting and the aftermath thereof, with the added bonus of an author whose ethics seemed to be pretty well in line with my own.

Suffice it to say, I was not at all disappointed. Within these pages is a step-by-step guide of how to prepare for a hunt, how to find game, how to get a clean kill, and what to do once you’ve made that kill. Olson is concise but thorough, and I was impressed by how much information he was able to pack into less than two hundred pages. While I’m sure there are other hunting manuals with more information on things like how to attract deer, or how to sneak up on game birds, for a basic point-A-to-point-B overview of the hunt, this is a good one, accessible to the layperson as well as the seasoned hunter.

If you don’t think you can get anything practical out of this book because you don’t hunt, think again. Killing your deer (or pheasant, or rabbit) is just the first step. A large portion of the book is dedicated to explaining how to butcher the animal (with multiple options), ageing and preserving the meat, and even some recipes thrown in for fun (try the deerskin gelatin!) Probably the most valuable chapter in that regard is the one in which he virtually dissects an animal for you, explaining each part and how it may be used in alphabetical order, from the adrenal glands to the windpipe. This doesn’t just hold true for wild game, either–buy a whole free-range pig or cow or chicken, and you can apply the same basic concepts. This goes well beyond making stock out of a chicken carcass; he really does explain how to use every part of the animal!

Most of all, though, I appreciate the spirit in which he writes this book. Throughout the entire thing you can sense his regard and compassion for the animals he hunts. Using all of the animal isn’t merely a practical tactic–it’s almost a sacrament of sorts, meant to honor the life taken to sustain another. Like me, he decries the tendency in this culture to take the animals, plants and fungi that we kill to live for granted, and invites us to have a more mindful approach. In speaking of how hunting is one activity that brings us to face face with the reality of these deaths, Olson writes:

…when the hunter eats the animal they have killed, it becomes part of them. A death becomes a life; the predator and prey become one and the body of the dead, in a sense, lives on. This gets to something else that can be shaken through connecting with our food: our separation from the living world. When you kill and eat a creature [Lupa’s note: or plant, or fungus], you are very literally integrating its body into yours. You are also integrating the land which that creature came from into your body, since their body was entirely a manifestation of that land. This is amazing, a dynamic that I think lies at the very heart of most people’s desire to connect to the land, whether it be through gardening, hiking, foraging, crafting or hunting: shattering the boundary between self and other, human and nature; piercing the illusion that in many ways defines our culture. (p. 16)

We don’t just eat because we’re hungry, or to stay alive. We eat to incorporate the tissues of another living being into our own. We are descendants of the earliest microscopic beings that first evolved to engulf others rather than subsist on sunlight and fragments, and we’ve been eating our fellow beings ever since. The thing that struck me the most in the above quote was the assertion that we’re really eating the land our food grew up on; for a deer it may have been open fields and forests, while for a factory farmed cow it could have been a grassy pasture for the first several months of its life, followed by a crowded feedlot in which everyone was given corn grown hundreds of miles away. That, to me, illustrates how utterly broken our food system has become. We can no longer identify the land we’re eating through our food.

We can all learn from Olson and his compassionate hunting, even if we don’t hunt ourselves. By considering the sources of what we eat, we can start to pick apart the unseen industries that bring us our food, and assess the real impact on the animals, plants, and ecosystems affected by them. We can learn to have more compassion for all the living beings that die for us to live, animal and otherwise. We can be more conscientious in not wasting our food, and making the most of every scrap, even down to tiny bits of meat and vegetable for soup stock. And we can make more responsible choices in our diets while still respecting our personal health and dietary needs, time and financial restrictions. It is perhaps a shorter book than, say, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, but it is just as elegant, and even more primal, a look at the same challenges that all too many of us blithely ignore at every meal.

If you would like your own copy of The Compassionate Hunter’s Guidebook, you can order it directly from Olson’s website here; it is also available through Amazon and Powell’s, and you can ask your local independent bookstore to order it if they don’t have it in stock.

One final postscript: I am rather excited that I won a copy of Olson’s other book, UNLEARN, REWILD: Earth skills, Ideas and Inspiration for the Future Primitive at the recent fundraising event held by Rewild Portland. I’ll get a review of it up here once I’m done with it, though at the very least I want to finish up the gigantic book of prehistoric life I’ve been chewing my way through for a few weeks now.

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The Tragic Treatise of the Teacup Tauntaun: Part 2

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Note: This is a piece of fan fiction I wrote for a booklet accompanying my Star Wars-themed altered taxidermy piece, the Teacup Tauntaun. You can see more pictures of this piece and find out more about its construction here. Part one of this written piece

Also, a quick shout-out to Cory Doctorow BoingBoing for sharing this critter in a post–many thanks!

A Victim of Its Own Success

Vordon was never particularly good at promotion, and although he sent a few dispatches out regarding the availability of new litters of Teacup Tauntaun, few visitors came to see his stock, and no one made a purchase. It is said by those who survived the experience that the normally noxious scent of the Tauntaun was concentrated even more greatly in this smaller version, which led to suspicions that Vordon had a particularly poor sense of smell, even for a Hutt.
Irrationally and desperately hoping that supply would create demand, Vordon continued breeding Teacup Tauntauns irresponsibly and only with an eye toward what he thought would be fashionable, with frequent inbreeding and little care for the animals’ health. He purchased more caves in which to keep his animals, and redoubled his meager promotional efforts, all to no avail.

By 68 ABY, even Vordon had to admit that things were not looking good for his scheme. The very traits that he had selected had become so exaggerated as to become harmful—sometimes even lethal—to newer litters of Teacup Tauntauns. The large pair of horns, meant now to be more ornamental than practical, had grown so long that they often extended far beyond the muzzle of mature animals, making it impossible for them to eat without assistance. Even the smaller horn buds had become hazardous; as the average size of a Teacup Tauntaun’s skull shrunk with each generation, the horn buds became more crowded, until one pair was routinely located so as to interfere with the animal’s ability to move its ears properly.

Sometimes this skull shrinkage would outpace the downsizing of the brains of Teacup Tauntauns. After several generations, some unfortunate animals would be born with skulls too small for their brains, leading to sometimes severe and painful neurological problems that eventually proved fatal. Others had such badly malformed hip joints that they were unable to walk properly. The list of health problems goes on and on: spinal deformities, missing teeth, and a disease that progressively robbed the animal of the ability to absorb nutrition from its food, leading it to slowly starve to death—or die from a burst stomach from overeating in desperation. The normally social Tauntauns at times would resort to killing their own suffering offspring to end their pain, displaying more compassion and intelligence than their breeder apparently showed.

Worse, a famine struck the region of Hoth where Vordon’s operations were located after the lichens that composed an important link of the ecosystem were stricken by a periodic bout of lichen blight. Wild stocks of Common and Glacial Tauntauns died of starvation, and the Teacup Tauntauns in their relatively flimsy pens became repeated targets for hungry Wampas. In the space of a year, the number of Teacup Tauntauns dropped to less than a dozen.

And Then There Was One

In 90 ABY, less than seventy standard years after Vordon began his ambitious project, the last Teacup Tauntaun passed away from a combination of congenital defects. Due to her stench, which was caused by the waste system of a Common Tauntaun being concentrated into the smaller body of a Teacup Tauntaun, and which as a result was repulsive enough to cause even the last two male Teacup Tauntauns to avoid her, she never reproduced. With her death, her species came to an ignominious end. Shortly before the animal—nicknamed “Yipo the Fluffy”—passed away, your beloved author was able to examine her and make a deal with Vordon to purchase her carcass once she had died of natural causes. It was the only Teacup Tauntaun Vordon ever sold.

Her head is mounted on a board decorated with idyllic scenery that belies the harshness of Hoth, her ancestors’ home planet, and reflects the romanticized imagery Vordon used in his sales pitches. She has been preserved with traditional Krish taxidermy techniques to best approximate her appearance in life, and with care this rare piece of history should last for a long, long time. Further, she should be seen as a reminder of our responsibility to our fellow creatures. When most species go extinct it is a tragedy; in the case of the Teacup Tauntaun, extinction was the final mercy.

About the Author

Haali Dendrac grew up in the floating city of Avtuu on her ancestral planet Ithor. From a young age, she knew she wanted to join the Ithorian nature priesthood, and voraciously questioned anyone she could about the flora, fauna and fungi that resided “in the arms of Mother Jungle”. When she came of age, she was made an acolyte of the priesthood and was allowed to accompany them on her first journey to the surface of Ithor, and nothing was ever the same. After the destruction of Ithor, she became one of the strongest proponents for the restoration of the planet’s ecology and continues to act as a consultant in the early efforts toward that end. Her youthful curiosity about the diversity of life on her home planet led her to further explore life on other planets, and she has dedicated her life to documenting her findings for the enjoyment of all. The Tragic Treatise of the Teacup Tauntaun is her fourth publication.

Artist’s Note

This piece is meant as a parody concerning the overbreeding of certain breeds of show dog in our world. While I am not against purebred dogs as a general concept, I find that many breeders, especially of popular breeds, put profits before puppies. There are few pure breeds today that do not have a slew of congenital defects. I have chosen to draw on a few of them in my discussion of the fictional Teacup Tauntaun. For example, it is estimated that over half of all Cavalier King Charles Spaniels have a condition known as syringomyelia, in which the skull is too small for the brain, which is pressed out the back of the skull cavity and causes both seizures and immense amounts of pain. And my own favorite breed, the German Shepherd, is frequently plagued by hip and elbow dysplasia, along with spinal myelopathy, a degeneration of the myelin sheath on the spinal cord which leads to a progressive numbing and eventual failure of the back half of the dog.

It is my hope that this piece will help raise awareness of the problems with inbreeding and indiscriminate breeding without care for these inherited health problems in pure breed dogs. Additionally, a portion of the funds from the sale of this piece will be donated to Multnomah County Animal Services to help them take better care of the animals waiting for forever homes there. MCAS is often overlooked in lieu of “sexier” shelters like the Oregon Humane Society, but when the time comes when I can finally get a dog of my own again, MCAS will be my first choice. I hope you’ll consider them the next time you wish you adopt a dog or cat, too.

Also, if you’d like to see the Teacup Tauntaun itself in person, it will be on display at Good: A Gallery here in Portland, OR for the month of May. The group show officially opens this Friday, May 2, from 7pm – 10pm; here’s more information.

Artwork, Geekery

The Tragic Treatise of the Teacup Tauntaun: Part 1

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Note: This is a piece of fan fiction I wrote for a booklet accompanying my Star Wars-themed altered taxidermy piece, the Teacup Tauntaun. You can see more pictures of this piece and find out more about its construction here.

The Tragic Treatise of the Teacup Tauntaun

By Haali Dendrac

Author’s Note: As a sign of respect to my fellow living beings, I have chosen to capitalize the names of all species of animal described in this book, may Mother Jungle watch over them.

Introduction

On a lonely, frozen planet called Hoth, within the Anoat sector, there is a genus of creatures known as Tauntauns. Several species are native there, to include the Common (or Giant) Tauntaun, the Glacial Tauntaun, and the smaller Climbing Tauntaun. But there is a fourth species—or, rather, there was a fourth species—of which you may have heard: the Teacup Tauntaun. It is infamous for being the only completely domesticated species of Tauntaun, and it is the reason why the name Vordon the Hutt should provoke feelings of repulsion even in the most tolerant of Ithorians.

Vordon the Hutt

Vordon the Hutt was born at an undisclosed location around 245 BBY. Competitive from a young age, he nonetheless lacked the characteristic shrewdness of his kind, instead throwing himself wholesale at any get-rich-quick scheme he could concoct. As a result, he frequently found himself deeply in debt, and soon wore out his financial welcome with his immediate relatives and acquaintances. He showed a particular talent for flattery, however, and was able to talk his way out of more than one potentially detrimental debt collection effort.

Eventually Vordon, in the employ of several members of his clan, was able to pull himself out of debt and amass a small financial surplus. While age and experience helped him to preserve this gain, they had not fully tempered his impulsiveness, particularly when fed by envy for more successful members of his clan. Frustrated at seeing other Hutts of his age beginning to establish themselves as economic forces to be reckoned with, Vordon thirsted for a similar opportunity.

The Teacup Tauntaun

Shortly after the first Galactic War made more sentient beings aware of the existence of Hoth and its wildlife, Tauntauns, particularly the Common Tauntaun, became the object of great curiosity. While Hoth already had visitors in the form of both renegades, explorers, and those with a particularly rugged idea of “leisure activities”, it became fashionable on certain wealthier planets to take ecotours to view the traditional range of the Common Tauntaun, particularly the herd from which came the steed that bore none other than Luke Skywalker.

Vordon had watched his cousin, Filpat, make his fortune on the manufacture and sales of stuffed toy Tauntauns. Not to be outdone, in 23 ABY the ambitious Vordon traveled to Hoth himself to see what opportunities he could find. It was while he was touring a domestic Tauntaun breeding facility that he was struck by inspiration: if people liked cuddling a toy Tauntaun, wouldn’t they enjoy cuddling a real one even more?

Vordon cut his trip short and returned to Nal Hutta. There he procured a high-interest loan on short notice, with which he arranged the purchase of a choice piece of ice cave with a heavy lichen carpet, and two dozen of the smallest Common Tauntauns to be found. These animals, as small as half the size of their normal relatives, came with a warning that they should not be bred, as they were runty and therefore in ill health, but small size is exactly what Vordon wanted.

The Hutt immediately set about breeding his stock, choosing the very smallest animals from each litter and breeding them, even if it meant inbreeding. Because Teacup Tauntauns reached maturity more quickly than their wild ancestors, Vordon was able to breed and crossbreed his stock with alarming speed. Additionally, because of their relative genetic malleability thanks to a few key mutations early in the breeding program, each new litter could display remarkably pronounced changes compared to their parents, for example substantially larger horns or thicker, more extensive fur. Within a few years Vordon was drafting the first official species standards for the Teacup Tauntaun in anticipation of what he hoped would be a glorious unveiling to galaxies far and wide.

Hoth was never considered a particularly glamorous planet, even by those who visited it for cold-weather recreation. But Vordon set out to romanticize Hoth and its inhabitants to a degree that no one else would have bothered attempting. An early advertisement that was drafted but never published described “bright, shining dunes of the purest white snow, flanking crisp frozen seas”, and populated by “vast herds of noble Great Tauntauns traversing the plains under a mist-wrapped sun, while Mynocks flit hither and yon above them”. (Vordon was apparently unaware that Mynocks parasitize Exogorths, not Tauntauns.)

Official Species Standards

These are the newest version of the standards, put forth by Vordon in 61 ABY under the guise of the Intergalactic Teacup Tauntaun Fanciers’ Club, which boasted a membership consisting of himself and Jixi, Vordon’s pet ice scrabbler which he saved from being consumed by his herds in a moment of unusual sentimentality.

General Appearance

At first look, the Teacup Tauntaun is a scaled-down version of its larger Common cousins. However, upon closer inspection it is a much cuddlier beast, with more of its form covered in soft fur. The females are slightly larger than the males, though both give an impression of being sturdy and fleet of foot, with an intelligent air about them.

Temperament

The Teacup Tauntaun is bred to be a companion animal, and so should be quiet but not docile. The young may be playful and rambunctious, but ideally settle into a more stable adult manner. It is intelligent enough to be trained, whether that is to perform tricks for table scraps, or as a casual hunting animal provided the chase is secondary to a place in the home. This species is known for its loyalty to those it considers its herd, so early socialization with the entire family is a must. While the wild Tauntaun may bolt at the merest sight of an approaching Wampa, the Teacup Tauntaun will bravely defend its herd until all are safe, and its natural wariness makes it an ideal home guardian.

Size

The desired height is between twenty-four and thirty inches at the shoulder for a female, slightly smaller for a male. Longer than it is tall, the teacup Tauntaun should ideally have a 1:1 ratio of body length (not including tail) to height (from shoulder to ground), with the tail being as long as the body to provide the proper balance.

Head

The head is more slender than that of the wild Tauntaun, though not delicate. The long, curving horns are retained, and should be of equal length. The lower half of the face is covered in fur, to include around the mouth and eyes; the Teacup lacks the large, unattractive scaly bags around its eyes, and any appearance of these should be considered a serious fault. The upper portion of the face is covered in scaly skin of a beige, brown or gray color, and the nose has prominent ridges leading to the two pairs of nostrils. The ears are also covered in short fur, with longer tufts at the ends. The Teacup Tauntaun has five to ten smaller horn buds upon the top of the skull; these should be arranged symmetrically.

Body

The body should give an impression of strength and speed, but not too much thickness. It is a bottom-heavy animal, with powerfully muscled legs and broad feet. The legs are carried well underneath it, providing a balancing point between the head and the tail. The forelimbs are smaller than the hind, but stable enough to support the animal on all fours for grazing. There should be five toes on each foot, fore and hind, to include the dewclaw. The tail is long and finely scaled, slender but not skinny, and solidly attached to the body with a smooth transition along the spine.

Coat and Color

White is the only acceptable color for the Teacup Tauntaun, though a small amount of beige, brown and gray shading is allowed around the eyes, mouth, and wherever fur and scales meet. The body fur should be long and flowing, while the hair on the face is shorter. More fur is preferential to less, with the exception of the top of the head and the nose ridges.

Movement

The animal should move more gracefully and lightly on its feet than its wild cousins. The gait should be smooth, to include when running, and only the hind legs should be employed when moving any faster than a slow graze.

Unacceptable Flaws

Missing dewclaws
Cropped ears or tail
One set of nostrils
Lack of fur around eyes or mouth
Lack of tufts on ears
Broken, missing, misshapen horns, or horns of different lengths
Broken, missing or asymmetrical horn buds
Coat color other than white
Curly coat
No fur

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So what happened to this beastie? What parallels does its fate have with an animal native to our won reality? And just who is the author, Haali Dendrac? Tune in tomorrow to find out!

Also, if you’d like to see the Teacup Tauntaun itself in person, it will be on display at Good: A Gallery here in Portland, OR for the month of May. The group show officially opens this Friday, May 2, from 7pm – 10pm; here’s more information.