RFD 143 Fall 2010

Announcing the Winter 2011 Issue: Divas, Gurus and Other Inspirational Folks

Who says RFD can’t use the internet for inspiration?

A friend on Facebook shared a link to a Diva websiteyes all things gay diva related - Judy and Joni and beyond. It made us think about who inspire us for whatever reason. We’re certainly in a time of reflection with Obama as the US president and the shifts that seem to be occurring daily on GLBT issues.

But we’re asking you, dear readers, for the dirt on who inspires you at present.

Is it an actress, an opera diva, a movie hunk, a porn star...

A politician of the people, a comedian who tells it like it is...

Perhaps it’s a creative artist, a best friend, a spiritual guru, an idea whose time has come...

Of course we’re also interested in places - a forest, a view of the ocean, your first Pride parade...

Old standards in diva-dom are certainly welcome -- so all you fans of Dolly Parton - come on confess “Little Sparrow” makes you cry each and every time.

One of the reasons we love putting together RFD is hearing from our readers and their experiences. Your diva stories will reveal all!

Submissions to RFD are gratefully appreciated - you can send your submission of articles, poems or artwork and photos to submissions@rfdmag.org. For this issue please put “Diva” in the subject line. For all scanned artwork / photos please send them at least 300 dpi and 1 megabyte. If the image is in color scan in color. The deadline for this issue is October 27.

– RFD Collective

Issue #144

Vol 37 No 1 #143 Fall 2010

Recycling Fossilized Drag

Between the Lines

The Queer Sustainability Issue

In these days when themes like global warming and peak oil raise ever-greater concern, we decided that it would be timely for us to explore some queer perspectives on these issues. So, in this issue, we’ve assembled some of our readers’ takes on “queer sustainability.” They range from philosophical reflection to practical advice, from social critique to pointers on maintaining a positive outlook. And since we all know that sustainability begins at home, we’ve included a piece about the importance of loving ourselves and each other even as we stumble through sex clubs, heartache, and insecurity.

In personal terms, we want to thank Mountaine Jonas for his years of service to the RFD community as he steps off the Board of Directors. Working with him has always been a fun ride. His keen eye for detail has been a blessing on many an occasion, and we look forward to his comments on upcoming issues of the magazine and wish him all the best.

Several of the pieces on “queer sustainability” come from outside of the United States. Like a woven thread, our culture has become global, even as we strive to live more locally

with respect to food sources, economics, and environmental impacts. Faeries everywhere are bringing the techniques of personal growth work into the environmental realm, while also striving to increase environmental awareness within the larger LGBTQ community. We’re particularly excited by how these various efforts seem to echo and expand on the goals of RFD’s founders.

In this issue, we also feature the work of several visual artists whose diverse work relates to sustainability, queer culture, and/or our spiritual connection with nature. Additionally, we’re happy to introduce the poetry of Alfred Duhamel to our readers, along with some of his thoughts on composition and content.

Lastly, we’re happy to report that we celebrated our receipt of the MonetteHorwitz award with a festive luncheon at Faerie Camp Destiny in Vermont. With lovely Lammas weather, it was a memorable marker for the start of our thirty-seventh year. We’re glad to have you with us as we begin another turn of the wheel.

The RFD Collective

CONTENTS

On the Covers

Front: “Angel” by Rob Ordonez

Back: “Dean” by Paul Specht Inside

: “Mud” by Matt Bucy Inside

: FaePosium Faerie by Pan

Image Credits

Artist Links

RFD appreciates the following artists whose work appears in this issue:

Rob Ordonez

www.redbubble.com/people/BOBBYBABE

RFD is a reader written journal for gay people which focuses on country living and encourages alternative lifestyles. We foster community building and networking, explore the diverse expressions of our sexuality, care for the environment, radical faerie consciousness, nature-centered spirituality, and share experiences of our lives. RFD is produced by volunteers. We welcome your participation. The business and general production are coordinated by a collective. Features and entire issues are prepared by different groups in various places. We print in New England. RFD (ISSN# 0149-709X) is published quarterly for $25 a year by RFD Press, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA 01035-0302. Postmaster: Send address changes to RFD, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA 01035-0302 Non-profit tax exempt #62-1723644, a function of RFD Press with office of registration at 231 Ten Penny Rd., Woodbury, TN 37190. RFD Cover Price: $7.75. A regular subscription is the least expensive way to receive it four times a year. Copyright © 2010 RFD Press. The records required by Title 18 U.S.D. Section 2257 and associated with respect to this magazine (and all graphic material associated therewith on which this label appears) are kept by the custodian of records at the following location: RFD Press, 231 Ten Penny Road, Woodbury TN 37190.

Mail for our Brothers Behind Bars project should continue to be sent to P.O. Box 68, Liberty TN 37095.

The Pantry at Running Water. Photo by Gary Plouff

ANNOUNCEMENTS, LETTERS, EVENTS AND CONTACT INFO

Dancing in the Moonlight: A Radical Faerie Reader Available this Fall

White Crane Books is proud to announce the fall 2010 publishing date for Dancing In The Moonlight: A Radical Faerie Reader, due out October of this year. Dancing In The Moonlight is a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the first Faerie Gathering in a desert ashram, a convocation called by Harry Hay, John Burnside and Don Kilhefner. It is a collection of essays and commentaries in response to a Call put out by the anthology editors, Mark Thompson, Don Kilhefner and Richard (Osiris) Neely and represents an international colloquy on the birth of Faerie culture. With contributions by new writers, as well as authors Mark Thompson (Gay Body/ Gay Soul/Gay Spirit: Myth & Meaning), Will Roscoe (The Zuni Man-Woman/ Jesus and the Shamanic Traditions of Same-Sex Love/Queer Spirits) and Don Kilhefner (Founder of the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Community Services Center and the L.A. Gay Men’s Medicine Circle), Dancing in the Moonlight is a long-awaited Talking Circle of reflection on the progress we have made as Faeries moving forward, and a critical and loving appraisal of its importance for GLBT people. Contact: Bo Young 518642-8109.

Animate Poems! Upcoming contest

The Big Joy film isn’t one of those ordinary documentaries. We’ve never endeavored to follow a traditional route of reporting on the life of one man in a standard way. That wouldn’t be like us-or James Broughton.

We have always intended to create something beautiful and truly weird in an uplifting and inspiring way, and we believe we have found a key for the spine of our unique film.

Animated or visual poetry.

That’s right. The Big Joy film will bring some of Broughton’s poem to animated life.

This fall we’ll be holding a competition to collect animated or video versions of Broughton poems that may be included in the movie. If we select your

poem, you’ll be paid. If not, you will still receive film credit, YouTube posting, and possibly a prize.

We’re giving away things like Adobe Creative Suite ($2,700 value), signed James Broughton books, “This is It” broadsides hand calligraphed by William Stewart, and

Here’s what to do:

Find a James Broughton poem you love and turn it into a short video (preferably under 2:00) using animation, montage, film, photographs, music, spoken word, special effects, or whatever.

For inspiration check out this Billy Collins animated poetry video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrEPJh14mcU

To be eligible to be included in the feature film, please produce your work in HD, 1080p, 24 fps. (Other formats are welcome in the contest, too, but may not make it into the final film).

Submit your creation by midnight, October 15, 2010 by posting your video to YouTube, Vimeo or any other online video hosting site. Then, let us know where we can watch it by sending an email (including your name, address, email and brief description) to info@bigjoy.org.

Questions? Call or e-mail Stephen Silha at (206) 567-4363, info@bigjoy.org.

For a sampling of James Broughton poems, visit http://www.bigjoy. org and click Enter Flash site and then works - words. There are also poems to download under goodies. James wrote hundreds of poems, so there’s an abundance to choose from. There’s one in this newsletter to spark your imagination. A bibliography of his poetry books are also listed on the Broughton wikipedia page. Contestants will be featured on our James Broughton YouTube channel.

Letters to the Editor

Our former editors share their thoughts on RFD winning the MonetteHorwitz award.

I am proud of our little family journal. When I was working on it in the 80s, I took special pains to get RFD into libraries and literary venues, and was always surprised and pleased that so many people outside our community respected the journal. It does have a unique place

in Gay literature, and is an important voice of our sub-sub-culture. It is one of the oldest Gay publications and still going strong. How it has survived all these years is a testament to the love its readers have for it. So, it is important.

–Ron Lambe

I am deeply honored that we have been recognized for our years of dedication to a queer reader created magazine and will be there with you in spirit. I have sent the six foot RFD banner that the collective carried in the ‘87 and maybe ‘93 MOWs and I used it last year at the Atlanta Queer Literary Festival. William Stewart is bringing it by car to Destiny in Vermont. Our connection after nearly thirty years these last few weeks has been deep and heartfelt and much appreciated.

–Sister Soami

Reduce Carbon Footprint

One step RFD should seriously consider to “reduce our carbon footprint and ecological impact” is to cease printed publication and become an exclusively virtual e-magazine. As satisfying and elegant as it may be to hold a material copy of RFD in one’s hand and leave it next to one’s favorite chair for reading at leisure, the cost in materials, postage and shipping is no longer defensible in an age of rapidly spiraling ecological insults. I’ll be the first to sign on for the on-line edition.

–Bob Fish

Continued on page 42

Support Needed for Lawrence Brose

by Fussy Lo Mein

LawrenceBrose, an important filmmaker and arts advocate, has been accused by Homeland Security of possessing illicit images. The images cited include one hundred prints from his highly acclaimed film, De Profundis (www.lawrencebrose.com), based on Oscar Wilde’s prison letter. Lawrence maintains his innocence and will not plead out the case, for the sake of his own good name and for the well-being of the larger arts community.

The film is a visual and audio experience like no other, which invites the viewer to explore personal liberation in the context of Oscar Wilde’s spiritual awakening while in prison. Several faeries were involved in its creation as actors and on the production team, including Agnes de Garron, Mark Miller, Ken Cooper and Keith Gemerek, and it contains scenes shot at Short Mountain Sanctuary and at Fanny and Keisha’s loft in Brooklyn.

Initial forensic research, commissioned by Lawrence’s attorneys, discovered a backdoor Trojan virus on his computer allowing anyone access. Readers are urged to install and maintain anti-virus software on their computers – this could happen to you!

As can be imagined, Lawrence’s legal defense is going to be quite expensive. His friends, colleagues, and supporters have set up a legal defense fund, and we are working to raise $200,000 for the cause. We’re reaching out for help from you, the readers of RFD, since we know you feel strongly about free speech and the importance of art in our society.

Please visit the website at: http:// lawrencebroselegaldefensefund.com to review the testimonials and the case for support, and consider donating to the defense fund. This is going to be an extensive process and ordeal, but Lawrence’s attorneys feel strongly that they will be able to exonerate him and restore his good name and reputation.

The Lawrence Brose Legal Defense Fund is a Class A Non-Profit corporation registered with the State of New York.

Queer in the Sustainability Movement

by Mouse

I’mwriting here to share some thoughts about how being queer has impacted my work within the sustainability movement. Unpacking such a complex subject is fraught with the perils of oversimplification and inaccuracy – after all, one can’t sum up a lifetime’s experience in just a few words – but I want to give it a try.

In my professional life, I’ve worked as an attorney in the solar energy field. I feel blessed to have been able to build markets for renewable energy, and to increase opportunities for participation within those markets. In thinking about how my queerness has impacted this work, what most readily comes to mind is how growing up with a sense of “otherness” has shaped my ability to accept and value different perspectives and ways of being. I sometimes pity the young straight man or woman who has never followed the beat of a different drummer or taken the path less traveled. The skills one develops as an “other” walking those paths and hearing that drum are truly profound and wondrous.

As a queer man, I’m grateful for my ability to listen both with mind and

heart, to have and share emotions freely, and to see our world as it is without the veil of a heteronormative culture. What’s more, I feel that these sensibilities have served me well in my work. As queer men, we are gifted with the freedom to connect without aggression that is so often denied to our straight brothers and colleagues. Dare I say that even the thick skin needed to survive the slings and arrows of bigots and haters has shown itself to be a blessing in the hearing room? In the end, each of these gifts is the result of my being queer. Each of them allows me to bring a unique perspective to the projects I work on.

Not surprisingly, the renewable energy community is something of a queer space within the larger world of energy interests, filled with faggots, dykes, free spirits, and other odd sorts – people unwilling (foolishly, some might say) to listen to the dominant message that renewable energy will never “save us from ourselves.” These folks, just like the radical faeries, are committed to creating alternatives to the mass consumerism, alienation, and environmental damage that our society currently generates. We now know that our resource use and means of production have exceeded global carrying capacity; and with this knowledge, we are called as spirits within our larger cosmos to create new modes of being – cultural, economic, and spiritual –which recognize that we cannot continue to exploit the earth as we have done. And I believe the gifts of our queerness make us particularly receptive to this call. Carry on, my brothers! Let us march to the beat of our own drum, and help create a sustainable future for ourselves and for our planet as a whole.

WonderTree by Ed Hall

Stewarding the Future

A Radical Faerie Call for Sacred Witness

by William Stewart

Note: A slightly different version of this piece appears in Dancing in the Moonlight: A Radical Faerie Reader, edited by Don Kilhefner, Ph.D., and Mark Thompson, coming in October from White Crane Press.

Twopassions animate my life as I approach my sixtieth year. The first is for connecting deeply with my queerspirit tribe. And the second feels complementary to the first: to embrace the prospect of global collapse, and to engage in collective consciousness-raising about the gift that inheres in it.

The theme of this issue of RFD is sustainability, and it’s a subject that it behooves us all to think about. But to focus solely on changing behaviors and developing more sustainable technologies, without acknowledging our powerlessness over the larger momentum of planetary breakdown, is to collude with the denial that has brought us to where we are today.

So, while I welcome the conversation about tools and strategies, I personally feel more drawn to invoke our community’s psychic and spiritual resources in anticipation of the travail ahead. For I am convinced that collapse is inevitable, even if there is an unforeseen dramatic increase in society’s willingness to change course, and I believe that we as queer people will have a vital role in holding space for this global disintegration to unfold.

Perhaps, if the converging crises of fossil-fuel depletion, climate change, environmental degradation, overpopulation, and political and financial dysfunction were independent of each other, the high-tech quick-fix approach might be adequate to address them. But even though the prevailing paradigm insists on seeing such phenomena in isolation, in fact they’re all manifestations of the same self-amplifying system of beliefs and behaviors that threatens the very foundations of planetary life. It’s no accident that climate change is beginning to spiral out of control just as fossil-fuel scarcities approach a tipping point, or

that languages, species, and entire ecosystems are disappearing at similarly accelerating rates. These and an endless list of other meltdowns – ecological, economic, social, spiritual – are all ultimately the result of human ingenuity run amok, acting on the disastrous misapprehension that the world’s natural resources can be exploited without negative consequences and essentially without end.

kind discovered the secret of concentrated energy, the genie was out of the bottle. Expansion on a previously unimaginable scale became possible, and naturally, as a species determined to maximize control over everything around us, we took advantage of the opportunities available.

It’s not hard to see how this error arose.

Until recently, all the evidence suggested that it was true. Beginning with the development of agriculture some ten milennia ago, we as a species have been manipulating our environment with ever-increasing effectiveness, enabling a trajectory of exponential growth. It’s only in this unique historical moment, when for the first time we are able to view the entire human experiment as a single episode in the context of planetary time, that the inherent unsustainability of the growth model has become apparent. From this perspective “civilization” is an anomaly of breathtaking proportions: never before has one species so completely dominated the planet, capitalizing on the evolutionary edge of its large brain size and taking advantage of an unusual interval of climate stability to drastically increase its numbers and power through plant and animal husbandry, resource extraction, and social control.

It’s an open question whether this pattern of human development would have been sustainable without the additional factor of fossil fuels. But once human-

This one-time unrepeatable raid on the strongbox of petrochemicals has fueled a binge of mind-boggling proportions. Burning up eons of stored sunlight, we have exhausted most of the readily accessible sources of these substances within just a couple of centuries, enabling us to briefly, grossly, exceed our planet’s carrying capacity, with unheeded environmental consequences accruing all the while. Even those aspects of petroleum-driven growth which may seem the most benign – I am thinking of things like modern agriculture and medicine, which have made possible massive global population growth and, for some, a better quality of life – can now be seen as deeply problematic, because they have increased the burden of global unsustainability.

Immersed

as we are in this era of overextended carbon-leveraged growth, our natural inclination is to experience it as “normal,” and a significant effort of consciousness is required to discern just how far removed from any previous reality our current situation is. But in truth, we are in dangerously uncharted territory. And this is precisely where we queer folk come in – for who better than we, with our outsider status and our multifocal vision, to see beyond the insidious trance that holds society transfixed? While the “well-adjusted” sleepwalk through a world of material glut and anomie, we walkers-on-the-edge are already ahead of the curve in our ability to comprehend the spiritual bankruptcy and potentially catastrophic consequences of the Western way of life.

I don’t mean to suggest that this take on our global predicament is uniquely ours. Many provocative thinkers unconcerned with sexual identity have argued that we’re heading for collapse, and their

For who better than we, with our outsider status and our multi-focal vision, to see beyond the insidious trance that holds society transfixed?

AWAITING CALLIGRAPHY IMAGE

Song lyrics by Charlie Murphy Calligraphy by William Stewart

conclusions are no less valid just because a queer perspective isn’t part of their analyses. But as mediators between the multiple dimensions of reality, we are well-equipped to see the essential spiritual nature of the coming global crisis. Our window reveals how it’s the psyche of the modern world that is fundamentally out of balance; all the other imbalances are tied to this disease of the soul, and nothing short of a revolution of consciousness will be enough to turn the tide.

Likeaddicts generally, our culture is hugely invested in denial. We grasp at the delusion that solar panels and clean coal and carbon-trading protocols will allow us to continue on our current path with only minimal sacrifice, as if the whole superstructure of modern life were not built on the myth that we can always spend our way out of trouble. Like mediaeval sinners buying indulgences, we imagine that we can trade up to an ever-grander fantasy while ignoring our everlarger debt – fiscal, environmental, psychological, and spiritual. Hooked on the rush made possible by fossil fuels, we insist that we can maintain increasing population and resource extraction without courting disaster; and we eagerly devour the media blandishments proffered endlessly for our consumption by commercial and political power-holders who pander to those beliefs out of venal self-interest, since that’s where their short-term profits lie.

I do not claim for us queer visionaries a messianic calling to turn the world from the error of its ways. We may have some insight into what’s happening, but even in conjunction with our many allies in awareness, I believe that we are powerless to stop it. The momentum of uncontrolled growth and its destructive

impact is simply too great to be reversed, no matter how many of us in the vigilant minority put our shoulders to the wheel.

No, only collapse will break the cycle. We could, perhaps, use our trickster ways to marginally hasten it along – but destructive energy most often backfires, and in any case, the process will follow its own trajectory, so intervention would

ally endless, and chaos in any one of them could trigger a domino effect among the others. We can only hope that the process will begin sooner rather than later, since the longer current patterns prevail, the more brutal the ultimate debacle will be. Even a high bottom will create enormous suffering for our own and our kindred species, while a few more centuries of heedless consumption could condemn all life on earth.

This is why I put my faith in collapse. The sooner the growth model crumbles, the greater our chance of salvaging some measure of human culture, some fragments of viable ecosystems, some potential of spirit from the wreckage. In breakdown lies our last, best hope of redemption.

And then, my fellow faerie shamansin-waiting, the world will need us as never before. In those dark days, if I read the omens right, a mighty and solemn task will be ours, provided that we can accept it. In short, I believe that our calling as queer spirit folk will be to midwife the death of the world.

serve no meaningful end. Just as the addict must hit some sort of bottom before recovery can begin, so the requisite shift in consciousness will become possible only when global expansionism falls apart under the weight of its own overreach.

It’s unproductive to speculate about how, exactly, the coming crisis will play out. The points of vulnerability are virtu-

For who knows better than we how to face the dark? Throughout history we have embraced the shadow, challenged denial, flirted with death. We dance close to the fire; many of us have gotten our wings burned, and not a few have gone up in smoke. Unlike the bulk of humanity, stupefied by falsity and averse to any psychic travail, our queer tribe knows how to meet the demons – our own, and also those of the dominant culture, which cannot see that it is about to be consumed by the unacknowledged shadow within. And thus are we tempered: because, while the collective

Photo by Matt Bucy

Staking the straw bales in Destiny’s kitchen.

psyche of modern society will have no bulwark against disintegration when its material scaffold crumbles, we have the tools to hold the sacred circle, even as everything around us falls apart.

We have done it before. We kept the flame alive during the plague years, when our own gay world was turned upside down and shaken to the core. And perhaps our experience with AIDS was just a foretaste of the work that lies ahead. Perhaps what we did for our own immediate kin – tending them, bearing ritual witness, calling on the ancestors to ease their passage onward – is what we will be summoned to do for the planet itself in its hour of mortal need.

Our strength lies in our heart-energy. The essential truth we know is this: in a world of endangered resources, the one inexhaustible resource is love. With mineral and bio-wealth exploited and abused to the point of near-terminal depletion, with oceans dying and a suffocating shroud of toxins enveloping the globe, where else to turn but deep inside, to the pure well of our hearts? Compassion, insight, imagination – these are assets which are not depleted by use, and should be squandered lavishly, because they’re actually self-renewing. We’re creators of magic and ritual, and we don’t need tinsel and Christmas lights to do it; the key ingredient is spirit, and we have it in abundance. Sacred keening, ceremonial rites and intercessions with the

gods, sexual trance and boundless tenderness, heart circles and wild play and daredevil laughter in the dark night of catastrophe: these are some of the skills we’ve assembled that will allow us to undertake the shaman’s journey on behalf of our imperiled Mother Earth.

growing season, ritually carrying nature’s grief, welling up with heartache joy that love and play and magic still live on.

Yes, windfarms must be built, wetlands restored, patterns of living reinvented. None of these efforts are wasted. What better way to spend a lifetime, in the shadow of incipient doom? Regardless of the outcome, it makes karmic sense for us to do what we can, here and now, to minimize the damage we have done.

So gaze into the fire with me now, let it take us far into the future, a thousand years hence. See a time when all our current social and technological infrastructure is gone, when the biosphere has been convulsed by loss and countless humans and other species have died in the fight for what remains. Find some little resilient band of queer-spirit men, determined despite everything to bring an element of grace to a desecrated world. And what are they doing? Holding a dying child perhaps, or telling tales of songbirds gone extinct; stretching the soup a little further, invoking rain for the

But material remediation alone will never turn the tide. Like the addict, we as a species need to recognize the extremity of our sickness, and surrender our egodriven will to the deeper wisdom of animals and plants, of stones and seas and stars. Of course we resist this reckoning, because we instinctively know how painful it will be. But face it we must, since cataclysm will confront us with the results of our hubris, and the suffering will be great.

And in anticipation of that moment, to my fellow beings I say this: we, your two-spirit servitors and intermediaries, will hold you in your anguish. We will not flinch from our responsibility to witness the planet’s despair. Indeed, in the coming epoch of collapse you will see us emerge into the fullness of our being, in strength and humility and heart. This, I believe, is the sacred task awaiting us queer-spirit folk: to steward the end of the world, and to hold space for its rebirth.

Photo by Matt Bucy

Timber Framing Destiny’s Kitchen Porch

Communion

Art

and Photographs by Eric Rhein

Sebastian

Eric Rhein spent his childhood summers in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky. This instilled in him a love of nature and mountain traditions that have an ongoing influence on his work. Rhein has lived New York City since 1980 when he received a full scholarship to attend School of Visual Arts. He returned to School of Visual Arts to obtain an MFA degree in 2000, also under full scholarship. Reviews of Rhein’s artwork have appeared in Art in America, Interview, The New York Times, Time Out New York, Village Voice, Metrosource, POZ, Dutch Elle, and Vanity Fair. Grants and fellowships include the Pollock/Krasner Foundation, Adolph and Esther Gottlieb, and The MacDowell Colony. An exhibition of Rhein’s work will be presented at BCB Art gallery in Hudson, New York in October 2010, with an opening reception on October 2nd, from 6:00-8:00. BCB ART is located at 116 Warren Street in Hudson. Gallery hours are Thursday through Sunday 12 noon-6pm. Contact the gallery at 518.828.4539. Contact Eric at www.ericrhein.com or Studio 223, 2nd Ave, Apt. 3-H, NY, NY 10003, 212-995-8326, ericrheinart@gmail.com.

Communion

Heathcliff

Faerie Sustainability in Australia

by Spider-cutie

Havingfled, over thirty years ago, from the Australian countryside of my childhood to the hoped-for haven of city life, I never imagined that someday I’d return to my rural beginnings. However, after I discovered the faeries in the early 1980’s, a way to reconnect with country living opened up for me.

The faerie community that I discovered is a far cry from from the high, cold, right-wing Christian, sheep-and-potatoes tablelands I grew up in. It’s located in northeast New South Wales, in the sub-tropical town of Nimbin, home to communes, cannabis, and counter-culture – a stark contrast to the rural life of my youth!

The Faerie community has been here for nearly eight years, and I’ve lived here for nearly four. We’ve begun lots of small-scale projects aimed at increasing sustainability: solar electricity and hot-water systems, a vegetable garden plus fruit and nut trees, composting toilets and grey-water recycling. Faeries have used recycled timbers in building their houses, and the most recent dwelling is straw bale. We dabble in making our own yogurt, hummus, ghee, wine, jams and pickles, and sometimes we even gather our own honey. But my own primary focus has been on three larger sustainability projects that happen outside our immediate community.

Biodynamics

I was a bit surprised to find no local biodynamics group in the area when I first arrived. The brainchild of natural philosopher and mystic Rudolf Steiner, biodynamics has spread all over the world since he gave it impetus in the 1920’s. A queer group in Europe has reportedly suggested Steiner was gay, and I’ve seen quite an overlap between his

ideas about how to “know” the natural world and Harry Hay’s concept of subject-subject consciousness.

Biodynamic agricultural practices rapidly improve soil quality, plant health and resistance to pests and disease. Biodynamics also permanently eliminates the farmer’s dependency on agrochemical companies, instead showing gardeners how to make all their own fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides from natural, renewable materials easily found in the local area.

vegetable seed, seedlings, or market vegetables that don’t ultimately come from one of the giant transnational chemical companies – Monsanto, DuPont or Syngenta. Increasingly, food seeds are hybrid (which means that they don’t breed true, so you have to buy new seed each year) or have been genetically modified. So, saving our own non-hybrid seed is critical to keeping us beyond the reach of this kind of insidious control, and means we’re not ultimately dependent on overseas multinational chemical companies for our food. Faeries from our community have helped organize and sustain a local seed savers group. At our last gettogether, other gardeners practically swooned with delight (or was it envy?) at my luminous lilac heirloom eggplants!

Farmers’ Market

Our most ambitious project so far has been working with a few nearby farmers to set up a farmers’ market. I’ve taken on being market secretary and Shamus is treasurer. It’s been weekly meetings for the last five months and, finally, the first market has happened!

Setting up a local biodynamic group was easy. In fact, each training day we run we have to turn people away, such is the interest. There’s now a solid core of local biodynamic farmers and growers and, since our first Field Day in April 2008, more than one hundred neighbouring residents have had basic handson training in biodynamic techniques and principles.

Seed Saving

After Biodynamics, a natural next step towards increasing sustainability is seed saving. Nowadays, you’d be hardpressed to find any commercially-grown

Farmers’ markets give a whole new meaning to the word “food” – just compare tomatoes grown in good, chemicalfree soil, naturally ripened and picked one hour before you buy them, to the usual supermarket fare. I’m eating some tangy “Black Russians” (never seen in supermarkets) as I write this, and they’re about 500% better than the rock-like commercial ones.

And consider “food miles.” The energy consumed in getting one smallish basket of groceries, light enough to carry easily in one hand, to a Sydney supermarket in Australia would fuel a heavily loaded car for 30 km. The newspaper team who calculated this disturbing fact also deter-

Seamus at his market stall

Photo by Spider-cutie

mined the individual food items in this typical basket had travelled a total of 80,919 km – twice the circumference of the Earth! This seems unbelievable until you examine the items more closely: 8,000 km for garlic from China, 1,247 km for Queensland mandarins, 10,000 km for tinned fish from Canada. The washed potato’s journey of 450 km was the shortest in the basket. Contrast this with our farmers’ market food, some of which had travelled only 1 km, with the rest of it coming from within a 20-km radius.

An underlying theme for all these sustainability projects is building community. All of them involve local people coming together, working, learning, and staying in touch after the initial phase or project is complete. People in the biodynamics group, for example, get together at each other’s farms and help build compost heaps. Community is a central, but often ignored, part of sustainability. The greater and more diverse the connections between people, the stronger a community’s resilience can be in the face of change and challenge.

It’s been revelatory for me to see how we faeries have been essential to all these projects. If our faerie community migrated tomorrow, I believe that the wider regional community would be the poorer for it, and a bit less sustainable, too.

by Jimmy Rose

Allright, sustainability – one of the buzzwords of the 21st century. Let’s break it down.

First step: the ability to sustain…what? My breath? My erection? This is going nowhere. Not my erection…I mean… let’s start over. Yes –

First step (take two): the ability to sustain something. (See, I’m good with this stuff, even though I never took Latin – hey, it’s a dead language anyway.)

Okay, so now I’ll define “something” (this should be easy). Something –some…thing. Shit, this is going nowhere, again.

Well, we all know what sustain means: to keep something going. Sustained heartbeat, sustained breathing, sustained effort, sustained erection (yep, used that bit twice – I mean, like a comedic bit, a big bit, not a little bit, well that’s okay too, I mean, shit! Can you unsustain something – like my mouth?)

I got it – sustainability means the ability to keep something going. Whatever that something is will be defined by the… Sustainer (sounds like a wrestler – “In this corner, weighing in at 700 pounds – the Suuuss-taaaaaaaaaainerrrrrr!!!”

I guess that’s me – the Sustainer. And what do I sustain? Oh hell, nothing – at least, not alone.

You see, it takes a village. (And it takes me to recycle that old line…) Really, it does. Community. Look at Mother Nature, the big MN – she’s really a gigantic incomprehensible super-organism. (And in this corner…)

I grow food. I help steward Short Mountain Sanctuary. I teach young people critical thinking skills using theater. I’m a theater artist. Not one of these things can I do alone. The Great MN helps with the food (you know, water and stuff). Short Mountain is a consensus-based community (oy, those family meetings). My class would go nowhere without the students (and my boyfriend who affirms me in more ways than one…). And as for the theater, well, all I have to say is, a self-directed, self-lit, self-costumed, self-managed, self-produced one-person show would be a party of one without the audience. (And even with the audience it

probably would still be a party of one!)

So, where am I going with this? Sustainability takes a community (more than one entity) because sustainability is (drumroll…) an event.

Let’s forget what we’ve learned in our Modernism-Programming-Centers (schools) about nouns being things. (I mean, imagine – if you were, like, talking to someone from another planet about wanting to have sex – roll with me here – and they asked you what sex was, and you were, like, you know, it’s a thing. Mmmmmm, a thing! Right here, right now! Okay, hold on…)

Back to nouns. I, personally, in my postmodernish perspective, now propose an amendment to that limited (I’m being nice) definition of nouns to include…events. I mean, really, if you want to get philosophical, all things are events, their existence brought about and sustained by physical inertia – whoa, brakes…too much.

Let’s just focus on events. To me, sustainability is an event that keeps something going.

Get your head away from verbs. To sustain, sustained, sustaining – yes, they’re eventful, they create events, but the actual situation wherein the verb occurs is a noun – an event.

Events happen outside of time, they are momentous – all things coming together at a certain moment and then – whoosh –gone, a new event, and then another. If we try to recreate an event, so much chaos has to be reordered in such a perfect way that to do it perfectly takes magic. That’s why documenting them is so futile, like getting the feel of a play from a videotape or photograph, getting the feel of a song from a recording instead of being there.

Which is why sustainability is messy, vague, ineffable in its definition. Because sustainability involves the art (and magic) of eventing.

Eventing – sustaining an event through time (deep breath.) Now, some events are easier to sustain than others. Eventing a fire, for example – just feed it fuel and give it oxygen, once it’s started, i.e., catalyzed. Other events are much more complex. Some events involve billions of people (culture), other events in-

Shhh! She said the S-Word!

Midgen Berry (Mij) and Sparkle at the Faerie’s market stall

Photo by Spider-cutie

volve hundreds (Beltaine at SMS), and others seem to involve just one person (a breath) – but it took my momma having me, and all them plants creating that oxygen, and…you get the idea.

Events that bring about a critical mass of change are sometimes called paradigm shifts. A paradigm shift involves a critical mass of people creating enough momentum to interrupt cultural inertia – in other words, to change the culture. Again, let’s take off the modernism goggles and release the valence of the paradigm shift, take away its endpoint. To shift the paradigm is to sustain cultural change, no matter where it’s headed.

The stakes are now high. To understand sustainability is to understand how to consistently change the world (your world, my world, some smaller, others larger).

Recap: Sustainability is an event in which events are consistently evented.

Impossible, if you ask me – I mean, maybe in a vacuum in an objective universe…but (newsflash) we don’t live in a vacuum, and we sure as hell don’t live in an objective universe. Everything is connected. Which means the only way sustainability is possible is to involve everything.

Sustainability is an event in which events that involve everything are consistently evented. Oh – and don’t forget the ability part. Something has to be able to event this stuff.

Well, according to this ragtag diatribe (coming to a close, I promise): to be sustainable means to be able to involve everything (which takes holisitic awareness) in an event (which takes a community of at least two, but – come on – more like a whole bunch of folks and MN and maybe some plastic) and to consistently catalyze that event (which takes endurance and resources) which results in an eventing, a happening, a meta-event, a space for paradigming (which will only stay free as long as we practice non-attachment to the outcome – I mean, everyone knows that the process suffers when the product is more important than the process).

So, what does sustainability entail? Holistic awareness – and, since we can only go so far in that awareness, humility. A bunch of folks. Endurance. Non-attachment to outcome. And resources.

Oh yes, resources. Here’s one of the places where the awareness of the 21st century differs from that of the 20th. We’ve come to accept the falsity of the concept of unlimited resources; hence the idea of renewable resources, recycling, reinvesting, reusing, conservation of resources.

No wonder sustainability is one of the buzzwords of the 21st century! The 20th century was abuzz with words/phrases like specialization, instant gratification, and product-driven. We are rebelling. Well, some of us are.

Anyway and after all, this is my definition (i.e. naming event) of sustainability:

With fellow human beings and nature, to catalyze a process of consistent events while not only keeping everything in mind but staying attuned and open to the chaotic input of the unknown, keeping in mind the need to maintain endurance and a steady source of resources preferably in a cyclical system, moving towards an attached defined end that may not come but one to which we should not become attached.

I’ll leave it up to you how to fulfill the needs of endurance, resources, holistic awareness, a practice of non-attachment, and of course, above all, community.

P.S. Leave your baggage at the door because your biases will only get in the way.

P.P.S. It’s got to be fun even if it’s hard work.

P.P.P.S. This essay will self destruct as soon as you stop reading it.

Tom ‘Dot’ Schmidt

Tom ‘Dot’ Schmidt

Faetopia

Visions of future eco-topias blossomed at the EcoHomo Action Center, part of the Faetopia Festival during all of Pride week in San Francisco. Creating a unique space in the Castro, EcoHomo brought together local artists, community-led workshops, urban greenspace and hands-on exhibits to explore the connection between our actions and the environment around us.

The Center opened Sunday, June 20th with “Crude Boys” oil wrestling (pictured here), a fundraiser for Gulf Coast organizations working to rescue wildlife affected by the Deepwater oil spill. Oiled-up, muscled studs slipped and slid against each other to raise money for the Gulf while learning cute sustainability facts.

Photos by Dan Nicoletta

AsI write this, the news from the Gulf of Mexico is bleak. Today’s reports mention the potential for a collapse in the ocean floor, which could create a massive methane bubble, tsunami wave, firestorm, or extinction-level event. Ouch. But even if the ocean floor doesn’t collapse, we’re headed for difficult and possibly lifethreatening times. With the interaction of massive global problems such as peak oil, climate change, and economic depression, we are likely looking at the loss of many things we’ve come to depend on, or maybe even the collapse of the entire human ecosystem, the only home we’ve ever known.

This possibility may be new for some of us even to contemplate. Nevertheless, I have been finding more and more mainstream media coverage of the “c-word.” A number of books on the theme of collapse have appeared in recent years, and I have read and studied some of them, which in some people’s eyes makes me a “collapsnik” or a “doomer.” It’s a difficult topic to talk about, but at least in private, more and more of us are beginning to think that systemic breakdown is inevitable. Am I the bringer of unacceptably bad tidings, or are you feeling some of this already?

Here is the big question that I hope we can ask ourselves and start discussing out in the open: how can our faerie community respond to the challenges and opportunities of peak oil, climate change, and economic crises? This of course opens up even more questions, but it is well past time that we begin talking about it.

I find that most of my friends aren’t ready to talk about this in any serious way. I personally seek out others who share my perspective, so that we can explore potential collective responses that might help us move forward. But some of us just aren’t ready. There is often a sense of either complacency or fatalism in the face of concepts like ecocide and collapse. Complacency shows up as: the government, or big business, or science will solve the problems, or maybe the problems aren’t even real, so I

Greening the Queer

by Nuggets Galore

don’t need to change my lifestyle. Fatalism shows up as: it’s all going to hell anyway, so there’s nothing to do except get depressed or have a lot of reckless fun.

I know about these two states of mind from personal experience. They often keep me stuck in the muck. I can’t change what I know about the world and its systems, so I become lost, confused, and unable to act. When I can’t act due to either complacency or fatalism, I really suffer. When I can’t act, the forces of destruction of the industrial age win out. The despair can be

• Localize! Seek out local food, local craftsmen, local expertise, local governance. Keep your money circulating within your local community.

• Begin to eliminate destructive practices that pollute, use excessive energy, or harm the spirit.

• Learn practical skills! We need to reclaim the basic craftsmanship that has been lost to cheap imports, profligate energy use, and consumerism.

• Repair, reuse, recycle. Mend a pair of jeans instead of buying new ones. Help build a culture that conserves resources.

• Grieve what we know has been lost. Grief work can release tremendous life-energy.

• Learn the principles of permaculture. These ideas can be applied to any human endeavor.

Practice the gift of compassionate communication.

overwhelming, and sometimes I feel like I have nothing to contribute to the solution other than to take myself completely out of the picture. But I do what I can to stay engaged, seeking motivation and firm resolve.

What follows are some ideas and practices that have helped me as I try to focus my actions and keep myself sane in the process. I hope you will find something of value for your own growth and understanding here too.

• Educate yourself. There are some great books that explain the logic of collapse and outline possible responses.

• Share what you’ve learned with others, but don’t expect that your ideas will always be embraced. You are planting seeds, which may or may not germinate.

• Visualize engaging in two kinds of action simultaneously: resisting or blocking the dominant industrial age, and designing, building, and celebrating the new culture of life that we want for ourselves and fellow earth travelers.

• Grow some of your food. Replace energy-intensive imported and processed foods with home-grown or locally-grown produce. Eat less meat. Know your sources.

• Have fun, go dancing, socialize, brew some mead, bake some cookies.

• Remember, one day at a time. Make the best of the here and now. Give yourself time for contemplation and relaxation. Take care of yourself.

• Pray, if you’re so inclined. Ask your god, or Gaia, or the whatever spirits you’re comfortable with for the guidance, support, and resources to stay engaged.

What have you learned? How do you cope with the bad news, and prepare for the work ahead? Please share your thoughts online at the google group created to discuss these issues at http:// groups.google.com/groups/sustainablyFaerie

I gain strength knowing that I’m not alone with these concerns. The faeries are my tribe because we already know and apply much of this already. Let us walk the path together, knowing that we are all stronger when we share the journey. Blessed be.

Tom ‘Dot’ Schmidt

Earthfields

for Ha, whose ashes lie scattered in the earthfields of Short Mountain Sanctuary

We do not, here in earthfields, pray for partial resurrection, saved from necessary care, only human incarnation here in earthfields where seeds are.

We who love here never count on pure, angelic grace, or commandments not our own here, caring rather for each other here in earthfields, face to face.

We who live here by this mountain cherish life beneath these stars, seeing all that matters ever is that here where waters flow in fertile earthfields, leaves unfold.

Let no mortal born among us guess that, though we hope, we dare to prophesy. Faith’s inarticulate and fine here in earthfields, undefined.

Know that here too in the still-now like a country crossed by care, endless calm ends our thriving, day on turning, trying day; down in earthfields here we lie.

Know that living shall continue, incarnated under sun into heart and nerve and sinew; say it marvels, it becomes here in earthfields more divine.

–Dawn / Don Perryman

Melting

6 July 2010 for Rob

these days have been warm & empty the things in winter we pine for yet, I miss you as you pulse in the sun watching the breeze in Saratoga Springs

I’m sifting through possessions looking for cool things finding lemons in the fridge & some sugar

You’re puffing away at a pipe the clouds here seem to never move they are at idle, in your same repose

the icebox is full of small cubes they jingle in my lemonade but I am still thirsty

as usual these days you are set out like a dowager on the back porch a movement in your own time

as I swab the tears of sweat from my face is it the heat or are you melting away from me

in the rapid waves I sense your manic energy throbbing in place without me

it seems the ice has melted too sweat pouring down the glass like the salt of my memory on my face

somewhere I am hoping in that breeze in Saratoga will come your autumn harvest

& your cool hand returned in mine as we walk

–Bambi Gauthier

Renewable Energy for a Sanctuary

by DeeTale

Whenwe founded FolleTerre five years ago, we were all buzzing with ideas and dreams. Many desires were sparked among us, and of course some of these were contradictory. Some people wanted to renovate the place right away, and felt that we should take advantage of an existing link to the power grid for that purpose. Others wanted to experience and connect with the spirits of the land first, before doing anything else.

One faerie in particular did not want to rush into the typical energy addiction that we all suffer from, and effectively blocked consensus on any form of electricity until we all agreed on what we wanted to use it for, and what not. And so it was decided not to have any electricity at all for the first years.

All I can say is, I’m very happy that it worked out that way. We all started to realize that we could do without electricity altogether if we chose, and furthermore, our decision forced us to pay more attention to the rhythms of nature.

At the same time, though, we were throwing away a lot of flashlight batteries, and we had some dangerous moments with forgotten candles in wooden barns and the like. So, slowly, we began to consider the alternatives. Through a stimulus program I had been able to buy some solar panels very cheaply, and I was happy to donate them to the land. Still, there was a debate as to whether we should use them in a grid-linked system, or whether our generating capacity should be completely off the grid.

Technically it would have been more “green” to connect to the grid, because a grid-tied system doesn’t require the user to install polluting lead batteries on-site. Instead, the grid itself functions as the battery, absorbing power from smallscale renewable systems such as ours when they generate a surplus, and supplying it when the solar panels or other alternative source aren’t producing as much power as desired.

We saw a couple of problems with

on the other hand, it would take a decision from a control faerie to shut off the power whenever we couldn’t meet our needs from our panels, since otherwise we would be using energy from the grid. This was clearly a situation we didn’t want, since our goal was to become increasingly aware of what the earth gives to us, and to avoid falling back into the kind of abusive patterns that we inherited from western society. So we opted for batteries.

As one of the more technical faeries involved, I thought it was important to make the system as foolproof and simple to use as possible, so that “any faerie” could deal with it. But still, working with it has been quite a process, and always will be. With new faeries coming all the time, frequent explanations are needed, and it takes time for residents and visitors to learn how to sense when we are approaching the system’s limits.

this approach, however. For one thing, at that time France offered no option to buy “green energy,” and since the majority of French power plants were (and are) nuclear, it would have involved relying, at least in part, on nuclear power. Also, how would we deal with our electricity addiction, given our dislike of rules in faerie space? Simply speaking: with a self-contained system, if the batteries are dead, everybody has to accept that the the system’s limit has been reached. With a grid-connected system,

As FolleTerre grows and matures, we’re slowly working towards making our sanctuary habitable all year round, and some time soon we hope to have our first permanent residents. The solar panels do fine in summer, but in winter they produce less than ten percent of their full capacity, and winter is when our electricity needs will be greatest. So we’re considering options for generating additional power.

A windmill wouldn’t really be practical on our land, since we’re surrounded by forest. But we’re lucky to have a little stream that flows during the winter, run-

Faries at FolleTerre

ning down quite a steep hill. So one of our next projects is to lay a long plastic hose in the stream and link it up to a small-scale water turbine. It won’t produce a huge amount of electricity, but unlike the panels it will operate twentyfour hours a day, and it will help a lot with with winter lighting. In fact, it will probably generate more electricity in winter than our panels do in full summer. So, bit by bit, we’re figuring out our energy future.

Speaking for myself, I think I’m pretty hardcore in wanting to use only natural resources from our own land. It’s one thing to buy a piece of property with a crazy group of folks, but for me it’s a very different thing to want that place to become a sanctuary. To me, a sanctuary is a place where people feel a sense of homecoming, where healing happens and dreams re-emerge.

What’s more, I think that the first brick we must lay to reach sanctuary is mutual respect. Respect for each other, and also for nature, which lets us live. It’s something we’ve completely lost contact with in our western society. For sure I did! It’s quite a journey, to find our way back to a life in harmony with the natural world. I think that not only I, but

most faeries, go through a phase of fear when thrown back into the “old lifestyle,” for instance, literally having to find your way in the dark. Experiencing this fear and finding that you can get through it is part of the healing process. And living a self-sufficient cycle, harvesting from the land and giving back to the land, has a very powerful effect on every faerie that comes here. I think that when this really happens, you have to be grateful. It’s a pure gift. Look! Nature is not our enemy. She gives us everything we need, if we live in respect and balance with her!

Practical Pointers

If you get a solar charger with “MPPT” technology, it will get up to 30% more energy out of the same panels. These chargers are more expensive than others, but the cost is minimal compared to the price you pay for 30% more panels.

Often there is wind when there is no sun and vice versa, so it can be very useful to have a mix of solar panels and a windmill. But don’t be too optimistic about small-scale wind power. Even where I live, on a lakeside, only half of the time does the nearby windmill run fast enough to produce electricity. For

Radically We

by Ghost Ranch

Our sustainability is ourselves, our ability to change our ways and provide for one another. In a dusty arid land, we find life and water, and with them we grow, sometimes together and occasionally apart. We all have our roles in supporting this small but growing radical community. We have our alchemists, holistically healing our bodies and expanding our consciousness. We have our shamans, sitting at cafes or on mountaintops. We have shelter, furnishing queer spaces with shabby tables, well-worn books, and a roof to give a break from the sunshine. We have sanctuary: an A/C-less, electricity-less, plumbing-less sanctuary nestled in the high desert. We grow within our

means, recognizing the gifts given and taken from the environment. Our relationship to ourselves, our kin, and the earth keeps us alive. Our food, herbs and medicines grow between the cracks of suburban strip-mall hell. Our dishes are spicy and loving. Our entertainers give us music, art, stories, and magic, and make life vibrantly alive. We embrace and fuck underneath wide-open skies and in not-so-wide-open spaces. We have our connection, our web, the sometimes-brittle yucca fibers that connect us to one another for safety, love, touch, need, and friendship. Our community is one of transition, a harsh drop-off, a stepping stone, a space in between two lives or an existence, alive

that reason, it’s more important to see whether a particular design of windmill can produce electricity with very little wind, rather than just looking at how much it produces at its peak.

Even a very small stream (like 1 gallon every four seconds) with enough head (say more then 30 ft) can produce enough electricity for a basic household!.

It’s very useful to have not just an inverter to make 110/230 volts, but rather a clever inverter/charger in one. If you have a good one, all the energy from a backup generator will be used to charge your batteries. With some you can even add the power of the generator and the inverter to run extra heavy loads (like during construction work) So, for instance, with a 1500W generator and a 2500W inverter you can run machines of 4000 watts. When you stop using that machine, the generator will immediately charge the batteries again.

If you have questions as to how you can harvest energy from your land in a sensible way, don’t hesitate to contact me at Deetour@gxm.net. I love to help out with these challenges!

DeeTale’s email is deetour@gxm.net. He welcomes questions and comments on renewable energy issues.

in the desert, thriving. Our bodies are variations, reflecting similarities and the obvious differences. In each of us, two or more spirits live, and we visit spaces most will not. A changing planet brought us to this place, and nurtured those already here. Past radicals felt inspired by the unrealistic heavens, the rule-breaking geology, and a life that somehow manages on the fringe of viability. Community is our sustainable space. We are much more than a monkey-wrench in a tractor, we are a utopia in the making. Community makes us sustainable; community makes the world sustainable. We, radically, live in the present and regress thoughtfully into the future.

Wikipedia describes sustainability as “the capacity to endure.” While the definition is neat and convenient, how it translates into reality is highly subjective. What you consider to be sustainable living might be quite different from what I think it is. Furthermore, I find it a common capitalistic affliction to know what sustainable living entails, and yet consciously not live that way.

All the submarine and terrestrial volcanoes in the world produce roughly 200 million tons of CO 2 annually, whereas humans, through fossil fuel use, cement production, and gas flaring, produce 30 billion tons annually. According to the United States Geological Survey, this is equivalent to adding 8,000 medium-sized active volcanoes like Hawaii’s Mt. Kilauea to the planet.

As a marine and environmental scientist, I see daily how the natural world is viewed and used as an infinitely forgiving resource or a place where you can dump your trash. I have to work in my own life to break out of old habits and develop more “sustainable” ones. From a global perspective, I have a very high carbon footprint, but from a national perspective, it’s low. It’s easy to get lost in the computations of carbon footprints, and to justify consumption with “I try to be a locavore,” “I buy organic,” or “I conserve” – but we are still left with the questions: is it really sustainable? am I doing enough?

Mostly my answer is, “Hell, no – it’s not enough.” We need to take our love of this planet and each other to the next level. Of course, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the cynical drama of “we’re all screwed” – and sometimes it does seem like no one wants to conserve or recognize that America’s carbonaholic lifestyle is transforming our biosphere…but then I let go of the cynicism, and transform my despair into action, channeling the sadness into love for humanity and for the other animals that share this planet.

Queering the Green

by SeaLion

What’s great about being a radical faerie is that we grant ourselves permission to live, love, and play without boundaries, arguably more than any other culture. A small group of faeries here in Santa Cruz, California took on “greening” this year’s pride celebration, and it was a treat! Connecting with the straight community and enrolling their support, we introduced composting and solar power, got most

Dressed in our faerie finery, we turned trash to treasure! We even came up with a name for ourselves: “F.R.E.S.H.,” for Faeries Rallying Everyone for a Sustainable Humanity.

of the vendors to use biodegradable materials instead of plastics, decorated the bins with eucalyptus garlands and flowers, and educated the public about what’s waste and what’s actually useful as compost or recyclable material.

For me, sustainability means not only shifting from consumer to conserver, but also shifting from resignation and despair to playful faggots making a difference. We don’t have to look far to see that there’s a lot of work to do; there is a lot of work to do. But we have great passion and vision for what’s needed in these times. If we source ourselves from this passion and use it to connect with the larger community, we transform life. As faeries, we can draw on each other and lead the way to a brilliant new reality. We’ve cultivated a rich culture grounded in Mother Earth and developed in heart circles. Now it’s time to empower our visions and take them to the streets, to our workplaces, to our festivals. When we dressed for fun, connected with others, and decorated those compost bins in downtown Santa Cruz, I found that the community was nourished and delighted – and for me, this is what sustainable means.

What’s great about being a radical faerie is that we grant ourselves permission to live, love, and play without boundaries, arguably more than any other culture.

SeaLion and Bernd

N.I.M.B.Y.

Now In My Back Yard

Photos by Tom ‘Dot’ Schmidt

The sun and wind raced across our skin, as the gentle lapping of the waves lured us to peace. Laughter, light, smiles and skin, we leaped into the Ocean’s arms She welcomed us with pain in her heart, a great sadness. We were connected to the entirety of the Ocean. Our minds brought it, as surely as our actions had. Plastic everywhere, tangling you, choking you. Then, the smell. Pure death, we gagged and swam for shore. The waves were brown and orange now, thick sludge clinging to our skin. No breath. No sight. Energy fading, we clawed our way to shore. As blackness closed in around us, one thought was left–how could we have let this happen?

Appreciating Mountaine

by middle

middle: When did you first become aware of RFD? When did you first become involved with faeries?

Mountaine: I was living in Miami in the 1980s. I’m not sure when I first heard of RFD, or when I began to subscribe, but I think it was probably around 1988. The interesting thing to me is that despite enjoying the magazine, and being thrilled to know of the existence of faerie sanctuaries, I didn’t feel the need to travel to a gathering until friends of mine went to Short Mountain in 1992 and called me on the phone to tell me how much I would love visiting.

middle: As I recall, you’ve been adamant that the faerie movement had multiple beginnings that created parallel and then merging histories. What role do you feel RFD has played in clarifying and portraying a clearer picture of the truth?

Mountaine: Oh my. It’s way too easy to rewrite history. There is no question that Harry Hay played a crucial role in this movement. But I’m disturbed whenever I hear him described as our “founder,” and in the last few years I’ve made efforts to educate people about the faerie circles that existed in the Bay Area and elsewhere long before the first “Spiritual Conference for Radical Faeries” in 1979. I think consciousness has been raised somewhat around that, and RFD has taken the lead in acknowledging that the modern faerie movement emerged at many places around the same time.

middle: Do you think having a print publication to record some of our fey culture has been important? Is it still?

mation online is not the same as holding a printed magazine. Personally, I enjoy having something in print to read when I’m having a meal alone, or when I feel like spending focused time reading.

middle: Is it important to create a historical legacy? What other legacies can or should we create?

Mountaine: As the years go by, RFD’s continuous publication since 1974 seems ever more important to me in documenting the alternative queer culture. So much has changed, but so much has stayed the same – the themes of RFD issues and articles are amazingly similar to what they were in our first years. Other legacies? Definitely web-based archiving is invaluable.

middle: I know your energies are spent pursuing various interests. What are you still passionate about and what do you see on the path ahead for you?

Mountaine: Many people continue to say they discovered the faeries by reading RFD. With the rise of the Internet, and the closing of most independent bookstores, this may not be as important a function for the magazine today. But it’s still a factor in continuing to publish. And for many of us, gathering infor-

Mountaine: My main passion and creative outlet since 1995 has been playback theatre, in which audience members are interviewed spontaneously to gather stories from their lives, and a group of actors and musicians enact these stories. I teach playback forms and techniques as much as possible. Beyond that, I’m in a phase of questioning (yet again) what’s important for me to do with the time I have on this planet. Definitely this includes taking time for myself to rest more than in the past. And my involvement in faerie sanctuaries, gatherings, and the Naraya ceremony are very important to me.

This issue of RFD marks Mountaine’s retirement from the magazine’s board. Here, to express our thanks for his contributions, I offer a conversation that I had with him about RFD and its role in our community, along with an essay that I wrote, inspired by his sixtieth birthday.

In January of this year I traveled to Asheville to be part of Mountaine’s sixtieth birthday celebration. Afterwards, as I drove alongside the French Broad River through the North Carolina and Tennessee mountains, I wondered how this glorious weekend could help me construct a more balanced vision of living fully. The result was this fantasy of how one faerie elder and his tribe came to enjoy a weekend-long celebration of life – a sort of recipe we might use to find our own similar paths. This essay was condensed from “A Blissville Weekend in Asheful” which appeared on the lifelube.org blog and can be read at http://bit.ly/92uG6E.

ater event or show (better yet, pick one in which you’ll be performing). Go for something that’s thought-provoking, entertaining, and interactive, preferably something basically experimental and therapeutic. There should definitely be lots of laughter and maybe a few tears.

On Saturday, have a potluck. Your fabulously fey friends will make sure the meal and libations are delicious and full of wild surprises. How about not one, but two unique chocolate cakes: the first devilishly spicy and the second radically raw and vegan?

Have the dinner in your home (wherever you live, but a rustic cabin nestled in the crook of a gorgeous Appalachian mountainside is an excellent choice.) Relinquish control of decorating the space to others who’ll make sure there is lots of

mage sale postcard, and someone two decades older will read a James Broughton poem.

On Sunday morning, invite everyone to dance. Gather in a hardwood-floored auditorium (or in a woods-wrapped pavilion, or wherever!). Shed shoes (and socks if you dare) and while daylight and

How to Have a Fabulously Fey Sixtieth Birthday

First, live an amazingly free, radically queer, open life, spreading joy, (yes - that “joy” too!) happiness, wisdom, and music. Love your queer self, revel in learning, embrace and engage with counter-culture, practice varied rituals of your own choosing and creation, be an activist, create and share music, and contribute to others’ and your own healing. Travel, exploring and adventuring in your region, your country, and the world. Experience the loudest and largest metropolis, the quietest rural hideaway, and everything in between. Make a gluttonously diverse multitude of friends, have lots of lovers, love and be loved. Be both student and teacher, mentor and apprentice, without prejudice or bias about who plays which role.

Start celebrating on Friday with a the-

candlelight and sparkle. While you’re at it, let them help you assemble at least two divinely decadent outfits for the evening. Invite those present to take turns entertaining with a song or reading. If you’re truly lucky, someone will croon a romantic ballad to you, someone will wow the audience with found prose from a rum-

fresh air stream in through the windows, collectively release your body to a ninetyminute “wave” of movement. The music mix should deny genre-fication, maybe starting out with a slow blend of various world beats, building to a peak that includes club music, possibly branching off into folk or bluegrass before deftly relaxing into more meditative airs.

Meet afterwards in a locally owned eatery for an affordable gourmet brunch. Cluster around tables with a still different mix of friends to share eggs and chorizo and grits, arugula and asparagus and trout, lattes and juice and tea. Talk more. Share. Laugh still more. Say your good byes to the travelers amid rounds of hugs and kisses.

Most importantly, breathe deeply throughout the weekend and give humble thanks for the many blessings of your life, for the blessing of your many friends, and most importantly for the blessings of this moment.

Remember to continue cultivating the joyous source that was the weekend’s origin by pledging to:

Learn more. Love more. Play more. Live more.

Most importantly, breathe deeply throughout the weekend and give humble thanks for the many blessings of your life, for the blessing of your many friends, and most importantly for the blessings of this moment.

Metta Meditation for Hot Male Action or, How to Practice Love in Sleazy Bars

by Jonathan Mack

Thisis an essay about meditation. Which is maybe something you plan to do once you get your act together. On the list with getting sober, settling down, eating oatmeal and removing all the porn from your computer. Personally, I suspect I may be dead before I ever get myself all buttoned-up and presentable. But, in the meantime, I still practice meditation.

Metta means loving-kindness – and loving-kindness is just a fancy word for love. The Buddha taught metta meditation 2500 years ago. I’ve found it to be very useful in even the most scandalous places, the most low-down situations. Even when I am completely nuts.

I’m looking to incite a queer metta craze. Metta is a perfect accessory for our gay lives, like techno, poppers, and fetish gear, like water-soluble lube, like manhunt and gaydar. Leaving your apartment without metta is even worse than neglecting to moisturize or put gel in your hair. Metta is essential. It cannot and must not wait.

If it’s only noon and you’re on beer #4 already, if you’ve spent the last six hours jacking-off online, if you’re reading this hurriedly on the way to the baths – honey, it’s metta time. Trust me, I’ve tested this myself. Repeatedly.

I’m not sure I have a right to talk about meditation. I have zero credentials. Okay, I did live in a Buddhist monastery, about a century ago. I was always the one chosen to answer questions about masturbation. I’m not exactly radiant with virtue. Nonetheless, here we are. Someone has evidently neglected to lock up the computer, so here are a few notes on the practice of metta in sleazy gay bars.

Of course, I’m sure that metta would also work at, say, a piano bar, or one of those places where gay businessmen gather to drink a very dry martini before going home to their husbands to, uh, assimilate some more. Personally, I prefer sleazy bars. Spectacularly sleazy, if available. Places where you can get blown standing at the bar. Places where there’s

a fist-fucking party on the first Sunday and watersports on the last Thursday. Transgender working girls, lurkers at the urinal, free condoms, a sling. What a wonderful place to meditate!

Like most guys at the bar, I often sit alone, staring into space. Macho cruise mode: trying not to slouch, trying to look tough and hunky. Do you ever do this? This is a perfect time to meditate. You can keep the same posture and change what’s in your mind.

If it’s a bar that shows porno, pry your eyes off it. (For now – we will return to this point, and to porn.) And please don’t worry – if a man comes up to you, begging to be ravished, you may interrupt your meditation at any time.

If you’ve spent the last six hours jacking-off online, if you’re reading this on the way to the baths –honey, it’s metta time. Trust me, I’ve tested this myself. Repeatedly.

Give yourself a minute or two to breathe. Notice whatever is going on in your mind: complaints, desire, fog. Usually what’s going on in my mind is: I want him. He doesn’t want me. He wants me. Do I want him? Am I good enough? Shouldn’t everyone be paying more attention to me? Is it too late to do something about my ears? Whatever it is, just notice it.

Traditionally, it should be said, meditation is done without beer. Which is worth trying – but perhaps not in the beginning. Sip slowly.

To start, think of someone you’re fond of, someone for whom you have a soft spot. Imagine that person in your mind. Maybe it’s your mom or your best friend. Or maybe your mom is a bitch twothirds of the time, and your best friend just spilled red wine on the only decent

pair of white pants you’ve ever owned. Maybe Grandma?

Sometimes it’s easier to start with a stranger. That guy at the Seven-Eleven who winked at you and cheered you up. The coffee lady who slipped you a free muffin. Honey, there are no rules. Kylie Minogue or your dog will do. The point is just to get some love percolating through your sad heart.

When you think of someone, address them in your mind. May you be happy. May you be free of suffering. May you be healed. May you be at peace. These are all phrases commonly used in metta meditation. Use phrases that work for you. Just think of a person for whom you feel tenderness, and love them in your mind.

It’snot really so different from getting turned on. (The Buddhist police are coming for me now.) Maybe you weren’t thinking about sex at all until you saw that guy at the gym, the one who struts around with his towel slung over his shoulder, his long floppy penis practicing hypnotism. Then you started checking out random hot pedestrians. By the time you got to the bar you thought, whoa baby, I better have something on the rocks because I am feeling damn friendly toward everybody.

Metta is like that. You want your loving-kindness, which started with one person, to overflow and spill toward other friends, then random people, then to the bar regulars you tired of years ago, and finally even to the guy you gave your number to – but the bastard never called.

Sitting right there at the bar, looking cool and bored, slowly look around the room. Find someone who has been kind to you, or someone cute, and in your mind offer him loving-kindness. Think of it as cruising with a purpose. Maybe start with the bartender, if he ever slips you free shots. Is he doing all right? Does he look tired tonight?

If it’s a weeknight and the task doesn’t seem too overwhelming, try to offer lov-

ing-kindness to every man in the bar. One by one. Be specific – what else do you have to do? A typical night at the bar: you’re there with your vodka cocktail, watching a bareback gangbang video, being totally ignored by the guy that you want most. It’s meditation paradise.

Remember that, just like you, all these men want to be happy. Yeah, and just like you, they’re probably doing a pisspoor job of it. Make a wish for them to be happy. Deeply and truly happy. Wish for their healing. Remember that they’re going to be dead soon, just like you. Ever come to this bar ten years ago? Who’s left?

Even if your meditation stays mechanical, don’t worry. What would I normally be doing? Watching Big As They Come for the ten-thousandth time, sneaking hits off a bottle of poppers. Keep practicing metta, even when it’s just words. The point is to end up a friend of the whole world. (However, it is not actually necessary to sleep with everyone. I often forget this. Sleeping with people everyone is optional.)

By the way, don’t forget to include the beautiful men in your meditation. Personally, I have this handicap: I think the gorgeous don’t suffer. Ridiculous, I know. But I keep thinking that, if I had a perfect face, a perfect body and, most of all, an uncut porno mega-dong, all my problems would be solved. When in fact it does not work this way. The horsehung bubble-butt washboard-abs crowd is also suffering. I have to re-learn this nearly every evening. This man I see now, posed beside the bar, who looks like he fell off the box cover of Real Hung Straight Marines, Volume Eleven – if he was so freaking happy would he really be on coke and using steroids? Would he really have this face like sucking lemons?

self, I wouldn’t be kneeling in this dark room offering myself as a urinal. If I really loved myself, I wouldn’t be having safe sex just, oh, well, maybe 80% of the time. Allow yourself to be skewered by these thoughts. Send loving-kindness to yourself. And please feel free to change your life.

Often I hear: first, get sober. First, stop fucking around. Then meditate. I wonder, where is the love and sanity required to make these changes supposed to come from? I assume you already know it would be better to just stay home. Eat dark leafy greens and go to bed early. Those smart people staying home, I hereby refer to the 700,000 books and articles published every year on Buddhism for Respectable People. These notes are intended as company for those of us headed out. I wish I could buy you a beer. Hell, I wish I could play with your nipples. All I can offer is this typing. Hope it helps.

One by one, send metta. For the vicious queen: may you be full of lovingkindness. For the leather daddy who’s been on retrovirals forever: may you be healed. For the jittery dealer: may you be at peace. Be careful not to skip over the guys you don’t know so well, or the ones who are kind of nondescript. Middleaged in guy blue jeans: may your heart be flooded with joy.

Extend your loving-kindness toward the entire bar, toward all the bars you know, all the drunks and depressed folks, all the addicts, the whole city, the country, the world. May you be happy. May you be healed. May you be safe. May you somehow be remotely all right at the end of this long night.

If it starts to seem mechanical, don’t worry. Go back to someone you really care about, someone who was kind to you. For me, it’s those folks at the soup kitchen, who always called me a volunteer, even though I chopped carrots maybe once a month, but ate there every day.

Remember to include yourself. Send loving-kindness toward yourself. Make a wish for your own healing, your happiness and peace. You at the bar, feeling a little lonely, with all your bad habits, extra kilos and old hurts. May I be happy. May I be at peace. May I be full of loving-kindness. Traditionally, metta practice started with yourself because loving yourself was easiest. (Insert hysterical laughter here.)

I try to sneak myself into my meditation, like a drunk crashing a wedding. Once I’ve thought of lots of other people, I toss myself in as well. Like, oh yeah, and the funny looking guy, whatshisface, may I be free of suffering, may I be joyful, may I learn some social skills which allow me to keep my pants on.

There’s one problem though if I succeed in smuggling love to myself, I start to cry. Which is oh-so-much not the Hot Macho Leather Stud persona I’m aiming for. If at any point you start to cry, massage both sides of your temples with one hand, thus covering your eyes.

At certain points in your meditation, you may find yourself nailed by painful realizations. Such as: if I really loved myself, I wouldn’t be drunk in this bar every night of the week. If I really loved my-

Those of us who meditate in sleazy bars have several big advantages. First, there’s the proximity of suffering – this is very helpful. Most of the time, we’re not neatly bandaged up, with all our wounds disguised. Nope, we’re bleeding all over the floor. Look around: that guy over there started drinking at dawn. Those three are on tina. This one just found out that his T-cells are shit. That one is so far gone he’s willing to get fucked by anyone. Any love you can muster is urgently needed. Things are not going to be all right.

Still, it’s astonishing how often I manage to think that I’m the only one with real problems. When I feel this way, I look around the bar and tell myself, “Yeah, these guys are basically happy. They’re at peace in their hearts. They’re all going to wake up tomorrow with a smile on their face and a song of joy in their heart.” I do this until I giggle. Then I resume metta meditation.

If, while cruising the bar, you notice that you’re suffering, that’s useful too. Whatever it is that’s bothering you – trust me, it’s bothering someone else too. Feeling not hot enough, rejected, queasy from cheap shots, canker sore coming on, sore dick, hemorrhoids, worried about work tomorrow, love-sick, so horny you’re a danger to society? Baby, whatever it is, you’ve got company.

I maintain that, when it comes to practicing metta, sluts have an advantage. (Buddhist police, driving faster

now.) We’ve spent so much time smashing down barriers already. We’ve slept with lovers, friends, enemies and umpteen strangers. Now we just have to learn to share our loving hearts. And actually it’s much easier than sharing your ass.

Another major advantage of sleazy gay bars is the presence of an extraordinary meditative tool: porno. Whenever you’re having trouble meditating, porn is there to help you. When you can’t think of anyone, when you’re distracted, start directing loving-kindness to the boy up on the screen. Think about him. How’s he doing? Is he all right? Look into his eyes: bored, spaced out, or full of that fuck, yeah! fake passion at which I am expert and probably you are too. Send your love to the men in the video, to all the fake lumberjacks and lifeguards, to the leather men and twinks, to the Czechs and Brazilians, the experts and the amateurs. You’ll know you’re making progress is your meditation when suddenly the men on-screen are real.

Actually, it’s very useful, on the nights you can’t find any love at all, just to sit in the bar, looking at the men, reminding yourself, “That man is real. He’s real.” This sounds simple but it may in fact be quite revolutionary, especially if all your thoughts about him previously have been: “Ohmigod, for trolls like that, spandex should be illegal.” Or: “Oh honey, that’s gonna hit the spot.”

Sleazy gay bars are such ideal places to meditate that I fear, if word gets out, we may be overrun by Buddhist meditators. By you know, respectable people. Clutching their cashmere shawls and their meditation cushions handmade in

Vermont. You see, traditionally, Buddhist monks used to seek out places like this for meditation. Graveyards and battlefields – places respectable people avoided. Now we’re in the 21st century, and here we are in the new charnel grounds. If you see anyone at the bar who looks too respectable or, god forbid, holy – no problem. Show them your toys or your piercings. Offer to pee on them.

Actually, this is one of the dangers of practice. You might start thinking, “Oh these poor unfortunate men. And I, I am an compassionate meditator, with love in his heart. Oo la la!” This is to be studiously avoided. We’re all in this mess together. If you start feeling puffed-up, direct loving-kindness toward yourself.

Just like the pretty boys who act offended if you so much as smile in their direction, we’re all scared to death. Therefore, when you screw up, be even kinder to yourself. We have already been punished sufficiently, thank you.

You might think: I can’t walk around a tough, nasty, mean-ass, hard-core leather bar with love blazing in my eyes, like I’m everybody’s aunty, like some cow that’s been grazing on marijuana.

Trust me: you can. I’ve tested it. I promise you won’t get groped any less. Of course it doesn’t help to grin like a happy Jesus poster. Keep your mouth as it is and blaze love out your eyes. If you feel self-conscious, look at the floor or into space. Imagine you are a lovingkindness secret agent.

And remember, love often must take action. The point of metta is not to sit at the bar in a happy daze – beer does that. You are the designated friend of the whole damn bar, whether you’re sober or drunk off your ass. It is your responsibility to help and to prevent harm. This is impossible – and it’s still your job.

Every time you think “somebody ought to” – honey, that somebody is you. Call taxis, hold wallets, make sure the kid about to pass out does not wind up in the sling. Steal car keys when necessary. Always have love in your heart – and half a dozen condoms in your pocket. Little packets of lube are also often appreciated.

Metta – just something else to take along to the bar. Add metta to your check-list. Condoms, lube, butt plug, wrist restraints, latex gloves, tit clamps, poppers and – oh, yes, do I have my good heart? (By the way – I’m speaking to my-

self here – take it easy with the poppers. It may be that your brain is something you will need to use later.)

As I was saying – metta is as essential as a condom. We cannot afford meanness. We cannot afford the petty acts of cruelty we dispense so freely. All the bigotry the straight world dishes out is not

a tenth as bad as how we gay men treat each other. It must stop and you yourself must stop it. Tonight.

Probably you know plenty of bitter queens, eaten up by meanness. Maybe you’re one of them some nights. I sure as hell am. Don’t give up on yourself, but beware: unlike HIV, cruelty does not have a ten-year incubation period. We suffer immediately. The effects of cruelty can be more sneaky than pneumonia and quicker than a brain tumor. We must ditch our petty cruelty like a shit-smeared condom. We must saturate ourselves with kindness. This is an emergency. Metta is essential. This world desperately requires you, and cries out for your loving heart.

Okay, now it’s time to talk about some odd side-effects of metta practice. Which some would call rewards. This is where things get a little weird, a little magicky. Nonetheless, you should be prepared. Because it’s not like you do your metta practice, night after night, forever, and nothing happens. Because – I don’t know, maybe the Buddha was wrong about karma. Maybe rebirth is all a hoax. But metta, gents and ladyboys, tops and bottoms, bears and cubs, metta is for real.

Of course metta should be practiced for the sake of cultivating a good heart, because it is our true nature to be lov-

Continued on Page 42

Recipes from the Heart

by Govinda

Oursis a vegetarian household. Originally, our choice was inspired by the belief that all creatures have emotions and a soul. Also, growing up on a family farm where I witnessed first-hand the suffering of the beautiful beings that ended up on our dinner plates made the choice of a vegetarian lifestyle an easy one. What’s more, there’s no question that a vegetarian diet is more environmentally sustainable than one which includes meat.

We are mainly vegan. I can’t stress enough that it is possible to eat delicious, healthy meals without relying on animal products. But because we do eat eggs and cheese sometimes, I

Govinda’s Chili for Hungry Farmhands (and city folk too)

This chili is a satisfying belly-warmer, and couldn’t be easier. Many a carnivore has left our table without a thought of asking that old standby question, “Where’s the beef?” The entire dish uses just one large pot. And you’ll want to make a lot, since it freezes well and tastes even better the second time around.

Ingredients:

oil for sautéing

am including a recipe that uses them. If you are transitioning to a vegetarian diet, it will be much easier at first to keep these familiar foods on hand.

The recipes I share with you are frequent visitors to our table. Two are easy, hearty, soul-sustaining main dishes, and the third is a delicious vegan chocolate cake to satisfy the sweetest sweet tooth. Except for the cake, these recipes do not require careful measurement, so I encourage you to follow your tastes and use what you find in the cupboard and the fridge. What you create will come from your heart, and will be a sure-fire success at the table.

bell peppers or canned pimentos

large onions

celery

carrots

texturized soy protein, or tofu, or any soy based “meat-like” product tomatoes, fresh or canned kidney beans, home-cooked or canned cooked rice seasonings: chili powder, vinegar, sugar, oregano, black pepper

1. Chop up and sauté one or two large onions in your favorite kind of oil. We use canola. To this, add a chopped bell pepper, or a small jar or can of pimentos. Chop and add a couple of stalks of celery, and one or two large carrots. Continue to sauté the ingredients together until they begin to get soft.

2. Add two or three large handfuls of texturized soy protein, tofu, or any of the soy-based meat-like products now available – our favorite is “Ground Round,” made by Yves Veggie Cuisine.

Photo by Spider-cutie

Mix well with the ingredients already in the pot. You can add a bit of oil or water at this point, to keep things from sticking. It should now be the texture of thick stew.

3. Add two or three large cans of diced tomatoes and one can of tomato sauce, or better yet, use fresh tomatoes if they’re available. Add several cups’ worth of kidney beans – home-cooked if you have them, otherwise, use two or three cans. Add several cups of previously cooked rice – white, brown, whatever you like. It should now be the texture of a thick soup. Add more tomato sauce or water to make it soupier – it’s up to you.

4. Now for the seasonings. This is what makes it chili, and again, it should be completely to your own taste. Hot or mild, sweet or pungent, it’s your choice. First, chili powder: there are some very good commercial brands available (we like Frontier), or you can make your own – but that’s a whole other recipe. Add sugar, vinegar, oregano, black pepper, and salt, starting with about a teaspoon of each. Then stir the pot, and taste. Add more of anything that tastes like it’s in short supply. If you don’t like any of these, leave it out. Of course, if you leave out the chili powder, you may not want to call it chili!

5. Simmer on the lowest possible heat for about half an hour, or longer if you have the time. Slow cooking is almost always better Serve your chili with a green salad and some good bread, and you’re all set. Or serve it alone – it’s really a complete meal in itself.

Better Than Meat Loaf cashew loaf with cheese and eggs

The name of this dish is no joke. We really do think it’s better than traditional hamburger-style meatloaf – and the cows, among the sweetest, most gentle creatures on the planet, are ever so much happier for not being turned into hamburger! Walnuts or peanuts may be substituted for the cashews. You may also substitute nut butter for the raw nuts, but fresh ones are better. When prepared, the ingredients go into a traditional loaf pan, and just for fun, I sometimes squiggle a river of ketchup across the top. Then it really looks like meatloaf!

Ingredients:

raw cashew nuts

raw oatmeal

jack cheese

eggs

mushrooms

onions

canola oil

1. Sauté a handful each of roughly chopped mushrooms and onions.

2. Put into a large mixing bowl 2 to 3 cups of freshly ground cashews (use a coffee grinder, spice grinder, or mortar and pestle). The nuts should be the consistency of coarse flour. Add an equal amount of grated jack cheese. Other nuts or nut butter, and any other kind of cheese, may be substituted if you prefer.

3. Add to the mixture 2 to 4 lightly beaten eggs.

4. Dust the ingredients in the bowl with a handful or so of uncooked oatmeal and mix it in well. Use enough oatmeal to create the texture of traditional meatloaf. It can be wetter or drier, according to your taste. The eggs are the wet factor here, so balancing the number of eggs and the amount of oatmeal you add are what will control this.

5. Mound the ingredients into a well oiled loaf pan, squirt ketchup over the top if you so desire, and bake in a 350-degree oven for about an hour. The cheese will bubble up a little, and the eggs will make for a nicely browned mountain of deliciousness. Enjoy with mashed potatoes and green beans. or any other side dishes of your choice. And thank the cows for the cheese and the chickens for the eggs!

Good as Mom’s Chocolate Cake

Just about everyone likes chocolate, and nothing rounds out almost any meal better than a really good chocolate cake. This one is a delicious vegan alternative to cakes made with eggs and butter. You can definitely taste the difference – it’s lighter, cleaner, and the taste of chocolate rules supreme. If you’ve never done any baking, have no fear – this is a perfect recipe for a beginner. And if you’re an old hand at baking, this might just be the vegan chocolate cake recipe you’ve been looking for.

Ingredients:

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup canola or safflower oil (plus additional oil for oiling the baking pan)

1 tablespoon white vinegar or rice vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla

11/4 cups water

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and oil an 8”x8” square baking dish or an 8” or 9” round cake pan.

2. In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, and salt.

3. In a separate bowl, mix the liquid ingredients – oil, vinegar, vanilla, and water.

4. Add the liquid mixture to the dry and mix until smooth.

5. Pour the batter into the baking pan and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the top springs back to the touch, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

6. Let the cake cool completely before slicing.

There are many reasons for choosing a vegetarian diet. And eating vegetarian really is a lifestyle: it changes your whole relationship to the planet, to the animals we share it with, and to your body. Simply put, it’s a kinder, more gentle way of eating and living. Of equal importance, perhaps, is the fact that this kind of food, to us and to a lot of our friends, really does taste better. You may contact Govinda at markfdenzin@sbcglobal.net.

Mythic Play

Photographs by Wayne Bund

These photographs explore the dynamics of character, narrative, and landscape. Utilizing costumes, timer mechanisms, and remotes, each image was created as an impromptu process between myself and the camera. My work argues for the power of fantasy to compete over knowledge or truth.

Wayne Bund was born and raised on a farm in Boring, Oregon. He is an MFA candidate in the Visual Studies program at Pacific Northwest College of Art. He comes from a background of theater, and worked as a kindergarten teacher for two years through Teach For America. He has performed internationally, with the Ludlow Festival, and in Portland with PICA’s TBA:09.

The Poetry of Alfred Duhamel

Introduced by Steven Riel

Some of us in the Boston area who have been lucky enough to hear Alfred Duhamel read his poetry in recent years are eager to introduce his work to a wider audience. The following interview and selection of Alfred’s poems is intended to bring a notable poet to the attention of RFD’s readership, and hopefully whet their appetite for more.

SR: When did you begin writing poems? What inspired you to do so?

AD: In the 1980’s and 1990’s I was quite prolific, producing some 50 pieces every year which I read to fond friends at two poetry and champagne parties at my place every six months.

The poetry had replaced an attempt to keep an “artful” diary in “literary” prose, which didn’t work out. I started writing pieces that expressed my thoughts, feelings, wishes, and memories – influenced by spontaneous recall, meditating on books, music, art, and ideas about maleto-male sex. I found it particularly useful in coming to terms with being gay: it made it quite nice to be able to think, write, and read aloud to others about liking men.

Being quite a little un-arithmetical in my makeup, I chose unrhymed work. I tried to achieve rhythm and flow. I was careful in the choice of the sound of words. I opened my mind to as much imagery as it could handle, so that the result might seem sensual as well as intellectual. I hoped my emotions would show through. It seemed important to make it a startling experience if possible for the reader and the one listening, so as to grab my audience’s mind, heart, and bodily senses as well.

I’m writing less these days. Perhaps because I’ve come to terms with so much that I wanted to say. On the other hand, having matured considerably, I feel that when I produce a piece now, it appears to me to be more easily achieved and finished, and more naturally, too, even though it might be even more whimsical than ever.

SR: Who were early influences? Teachers? Which poets did you admire when you began writing?

AD: My first poetic readings were Shakespeare’s plays: A Midsummer

Night’s Dream, Hamlet, The Tempest… and I remember my wonder upon reading T.S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday” for the first time. Then later on, Gertrude Stein’s Stanzas, and Ezra Pound’s Cantos were very satisfying poems for me. And later still, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Frank O’Hara were heroes in my eyes, as well as the James Merrill of Changing Light at Sandover.

wish to have them.

English was the language to excavate for me. I felt handy at using the tool of “high” English and “low” English: scholarly vocabulary, elaborate metaphors, slang, swears, and dirty words, in particular the terms that sexuality uses, both the polite ones and the trashy ones.

Now, classical literature had an influence on my poetic thinking. In the use of mythology, for instance, the name of one hero or god succinctly gathered around itself all the adventures and avatars that are recounted in Ovid, for example, or in The Golden Bough.

SR: Some of your poems contain explicit references to gay desire and sexuality. How do you negotiate the tension between exploring the topics you need to write about and recognizing that some of those topics may be taboo?

AD: Proust has said that his first-person-narrating character is “not I.” The writer writing truthfully about taboo subjects and about himself as a taboo object is usually not, to my way of thinking, accurately biographical. So the writer can play with the first person and even use it as a mask.

But I can’t say that I was influenced poetically by the writing of others. I was more determined to answer my own questions on style and content: how to make the poem look and sound good, how to tell my own tale as my poems stretched out, how to make sure they were imagist and sensory. I wanted them to be like shouts.

SR: You have an academic background in French and classical literature. What impact has this had on your poems?

AD: I never felt I could write poetry in any other language but English. Though I’m steeped in Proust and a fervent rereader of Colette and Yourcenar, I knew I could not compose in French because I was not culturally so. Beckett is a fascinating phenomenon for me, but I knew I didn’t have his bilingual skills, nor did I

I never felt awkward writing about gay sexuality and even identifying the poet as such. It was a way of releasing deeply felt emotion, but also a maneuver to detaboo homosexuality between men. But what I felt I had to say came with “dirty words.” I normally chose not to use unduly graphic terms, but I thoroughly enjoyed embedding a two-sided word, you might say, and surprising the reader with its “taboo” denotation.

SR: Have your poems changed over the years, and if so, how?

AD: I have changed the absolute way I wrote about “absolute nothingness,” preferring nowadays to be more mystical in my thoughts on it, even turning it into a divine presence or person, even though still infallible, in the manner of St. John of the Cross, George Herbert, and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

But otherwise I don’t think my poetry is any different than it was. I have grown older; certainly I have become more skilled. The whole corpus of my work lies behind any new poem I write.

Photo by Steven Riel

MY OWN WOMAN

I dreamed I dressed in laced-up stays, Was horsewhipped by my father in riding boots, Climbed to the hayloft to wait for the farmhand, Sweaty in just a pair of unbuckling overalls, To leave off pitchforking the manure; Later, rustling in sheer muslin, I went in to paint on The china faces of my demure dolls.

SLOW SUMMERTIME TREAD ALONG AN URBAN RIVER

Slow summertime tread along an urban river: Pretty golden boys among the eglantine: Low-keyed, unstructured, listening to my beat: A memory comes to me and an epiphany: In a monastic choirstall, thirty years ago, singing psalms, I reached out to touch a beautiful companion, Who repulsed there my furtive impassioned hand; He later knocked at my cell door, And, shamefaced, I sent him away unheard. Only now, beside the brown-blue waters, do I know He came to respond to my need and his.

WHAT IS A CONFESSIONAL LYRIC FOR?

What is a confessional lyric for Except to tell of a first kiss

Which inaugurates a succession

Yet is a cut-off point as well

For can there be replicates?

It took place in Worcester’s Greyhound toilets

During a rest stop.

The touch of a man’s lips upon mine

Opened the pupils of my eyes

Wide as if at death

Or as if the nostrils of the fetus rolled into a ball

Had commenced to breathe between its knees. And I shuddered and I came.

MAJOR SEMINARY

Walking shinily-wet yellow-leaf-strewn nostalgic streets

After an elegant old film on a moonlit fall night Reflecting lingering blooms, Reciting my rhymeless poetry to myself, I remembered

When we were twenty

How Jerry kissed me

So soulfully I came in my cassock

On the uncrossable sill of his forbidden room

And so awed and quiesced my mind

It knew not (as in the Pauline description of the seventh heaven) Whether it was in the body or out of the body. He had seduced me in the courtyard below While I stood one foot raised upon a stone parapet, Fitting a concealed leg under mind from behind Beneath the flowing folds of our ample sashed soutanes And turned my customary world on end.

Walt Cessna

Photographs and Texts

Walt Cessna is a photographer/writer living in NYC. He spent almost 30 years working as a fashion designer, editor and stylist for publications like The Village Voice, Interview, Elle and Details. For the past four years he has been showing his artwork & performing spoken word in NYC, San Francisco and Berlin, Germany. Inspired by Russ Meyer, Thierry Mugler, Diane Arbus and Andy Warhol, Cessna specializes mostly in portraits and still lifes taken on the street. Check out more of his work at

http://www.waltcessna.blogspot.com/ http://www.waltcessna.tumblr.com http://www.facebook.com/waltcessna

I can hear her high heels click click clicking against the cold tile floor, long before she makes her appearance... Not just any grand entrance, mind you, but one of such immaculate thought and perfect timing, there can be no denying that this is a true vixen, an undisputable goddess in our midst.

slits in my memory, stabs at my mind, decadent delusions, best fun I ever had...slithering through your intentions, burying all the lies, wanting nothing, expecting less, your reaction hardly a surprise...licking at the wounds that spring forth from my flesh, recent abarations spilling blood against the best, eatting my victory without swallowing my pride, almost going the distance, almost but never died...yet I find myself expecting, things that might be to come from you, knowing full well and half hearted that you might turn up empty handed, your love all thats left to dole. so i look into the future and see just what I suspect, a never ending happy ending, both our souls to vet

ing, et cetera. But if that doesn’t motivate you, practice metta because it’ll transform your nights in sleazy bars.

Fill yourself with as much lovingkindness as you can, until you’re as saturated as canned fruit in syrup. Imagine breathing-in loving-kindness like emptying your bottle of poppers in one long whiff. Blast your loving-kindness like a fire hose at the raging fire of misery in the world.

Meanwhile, do not be alarmed if odd things occur. If the bartender suddenly refuses to let you pay for your drinks. If men, with no warning, suddenly embrace you and declare their love. If the creepiest junkie in the place comes up to you and says, “Could you just hold my hand for a little while?” If a man says, “Dude, I am going to get shot for saying this, but there is something going on with your aura.” These are a just few of the things that have hap-

Continued from Page 3

Gathering Guide

This guide was written on the fly by visiting the various community websites but with especial thanks to www.radfae.org. These communities may have other gatherings and events not listed here. So please visit their individual websites or contact them directly.

If you would like your community event listed here please send it in at least two to three months before the event.

September

Autumn Equinox at Folleterre in France, Sep 17-22, 2010

21st Annual Gay Spirit Visions Fall Conference Sept 30-Oct 3, Highlands, NC www. gayspiritvisions.org

October

Fall Foliage Gathering, Faerie Camp Destiny, Oct 6-11.

Short Mountain Sanctuary, Oct 8-17, 2010.

Los Angeles Faerie Gathering, Oct 7-11, 2010

Thanksgiving Gatherette at Amber Fox, Oct 8-11

LumberJanes Gathering at Folleterre in France, Oct 15-25, 2010

Autumn Gathering at Whaley Hall, Oct 2224 (contact Edward Carpenter Community)

pened to me while practicing metta at the bar. Write in with your list, okay?

It can also work the other way. Suddenly the most difficult person in the bar – actually the most difficult person in the entire metro area – will accost you. You had such a good feeling going, a happy metta groove, and now you think, “Fuckin’ A – do I have to love this one too?” Yes, him too, him and his hair gel and his little snide remarks. Keep sending out metta and, when it gets tough, love yourself for trying.

Of course, you are practicing metta for the sake of the ultimate liberation of all humankind, so I hate to admit that metta may also lead to drastically better nights at the bar – fewer hangovers, and, yes, better sex. (Buddhist police, breaking down the door.) If you practice metta, more men will buy you drinks, chat you up, and sometimes even the hunkiest, most desirable, lick-able, dreamy, man-god will abruptly want – you. If this occurs, try not to act alarmed. For goodness’ sake, do not start

Faerie Sanctuaries and Faerie Friendly Organizations

Amber Fox McDonald’s Corners, Ontario, Canada akaamberfox.blogspot.com

Breitenbush (Cascadia Radical Faerie Resource) www.radfae.org/breitenbush

Edward Carpenter Community BM ECC London WC1N 3XX United Kingdom contactecc@edwardcarpentercommunity.org.uk www.edwardcarpentercommunity.org

Faerie Camp Destiny P.O. Box 517 Chester, VT 04143-0517 info@faeriecampdestiny.org www.faeriecampdestiny.org

Faeryland P O Box 495 Nimbin, N.S.W. 2480 02 6689 7070 ozfaeries@yahoo.com www.ozfaeries.com

Folleterre

Ternuay-Melay-et-Saint-Hilaire France info@folleterre.org www.folleterre.org

Gay Spirit Visions

P.O. Box 339 Decatur, GA 30031-0339 info@gayspiritvisions.org www.gayspiritvisions.org

talking about Buddhist meditation (Ugh!). But don’t feel you have to stop practicing metta. Keep thinking: May you be happy. May you be free of suffering. Right on into his arms.

These are just a few notes, based on my experience of meditating in sleazy bars. Please remember: love is not the property of respectable people. Love cannot wait till you pull it together. Love yourself, even the mess you are now, and love the people around you, busy with their own disasters. Do not wait a day or an hour, don’t wait a moment, not even until you get you sober up, or get your pants back on. May you be free from suffering. May you be at peace. May you be happy. May you be healed. May you always be full of loving-kindness.

Jonathan welcomes responses to the thoughts presented here. His email is jthanmack@yahoo.co.in and his blog is at guttersnipedas.blogspot.com

IDA 904 Vickers Hollow Rd Dowelltown, TN 37059 615-597-4409

idapalooza@gmail.com

www.planetida.com

Kawashaway Sanctuary

P.O. Box 581194

Minneapolis, MN 55458

www.kawashaway.org

Midwest Men’s Festival

http://www.midwestmensfestival.com/ Nomenus (Wolf Creek Sancturary)

Wolf Creek Sanctuary

P.O. Box 312

Wolf Creek, OR 97497 541-866-2678

nomenus@hughes.net

www.nomenus.org

Santa Cruz Radical Faeries

www.santacruzradicalfaeries.com

Short Mountain Sanctuary

247 Sanctuary Lane

Liberty, TN 37095 615-563-4397 Messages only

Starland

Yucca Valley CA

www.starlandcommunity.org

Zuni Mountain Sanctuary

P.O. Box 636

Ramah, NM 87321

505-783-4002

zunimtn@wildblue.net

www.zms.org

Corrections? Send them to submissions@ rfdmag.org with “corrections” in the subject. Announcements can be sent to the same address. Please be sure to list “announcement” in the subject line!

For any of our readers who are following the saga of Trixi, my life partner and friend and her ongoing saga with the sic “Criminal Justice System” let me assure you the drama continues unabated. The only assurance we seem to have is that March 26, 2011, at the latest she should be home. With Tennessee absolutely refusing to allow an interstate compact from Connecticut to our home in Tennessee, the focus is now on Connecticut. She remains at Osborn Correctional Facility in Somers, CT, even though she is eligible for a half way house placement.

The bright light in all of this is that after several failed motions to get a sentence reduction, the Habeas Corpus Unit of the Public Defenders office reviewed the latest denial and found a number of problems. There research has found that she actually completed her sentence on the Connecticut charges in 1992 and that the Warrant that she had been extradited under was declared STALE and vacated in 1996. This and a few other problems has led to a new motion filed in Superior Court to effectively declare the sentence fulfilled and she will be able to come home. Failing that the lawyers will take it to a full Habeas Corpus trial. You can follow more details on all of this craziness by checking out her Facebook page under “Free Trixi.”

If you happen to be reading this column for the first time, you may not be aware that RFD Magazine has played an active role in assisting our gay brothers who find themselves in a locked environment almost from its inception over 30 years ago. Initially a listing of short ads appeared in each issue of the magazine. Now with the ever increasing number of ads, these ads are now published separately from the magazine. The ads along with poetry and artwork may be requested by writing Brothers Behind Bars, PO Box 68, Liberty, TN 37095. A donation of $3.00 to $10.00 is requested for a copy of the list. The editors receive well over 100 letters per week and postage mounts up quickly.

It is with sadness that I announce that the Staff for the Brothers Behind Bars

Prison Pages

Edited by Myrlin (Harry Vedder)

program has reverted to the one person that has spearheaded the efforts since fall of 2002. For a few months I had the assistance of another person who did most of the data entry for the program. I had hoped to be able to get a page together and up on FaceBook dealing with the Brothers Behind Bars Program but with the addition of having to process all of the letters along with the supporting data entry this has not been possible. Obviously I need help if this program is going to continue. The problem I am having is that I can’t conceptualize a way to have more than one person handling the data entry part of the work. We use a Microsoft Office Access program from the database and merge with word to produce both the letters and the list. I need someone with expertise in access to help me develop a way to have more than one person making entries into the same database. So this is a cry for help in that area.

We could also use legal help to challenge some of the prison rules that simply forbid any involvement in a pen pal program. I get the impression that some institutions want the inmates to have NO contact with anyone outside the facility. It is exceedingly frustrating trying to meet the needs of those who write us when each institution seems to have its own rules with no consistence from facility to facility. For instance the pen pal list sails through to an inmate on one occasion and is returned the next. This is very frustrating to say the least.

So why do I continue with preparing the list. I think it can best be put this way: Each letter that I open contains the feelings and thoughts of another human being who simply wants human contact, with someone who will simply listen to their hearts and minds, someone who will not judge them simply for being in prison. It is amazing how some will totally share and admit to the crimes they have been accused of and how some others will share a miscarriage of justice in their particular case. In both instances the human soul is crying out for friendship and love. The sad thing is that I cannot become deeply involved in most of

our writers lives or situations. All I am able to do in my capacity as Editor of BBB is to provide a forum for them to find someone to write. As you will see from the ads, the 30 word limit doesn’t allow much of a bio to be presented. Some will try the sexual approach to try and catch an eye, others will mention special abilities such as “graphic artist” or some other attribute.

The Bottom Line Is Loneliness

And we all know that feeling and have had our moments of shedding tears because “we are so misunderstood” or “no one loves me.” It is for these reasons that I appeal to our readers to consider taking a chance and being a friend so someone who may well not see the outside of a cage for a long time.

So Write and Ask for the List and consider a donation to assist with costs. RFD Magazine is generously supporting a part of the postage, printing and supply costs for the program but your assistance is also needed if the program can continue.

Changes in the Crack Cocaine Sentencing Guidelines

It is about time that the injustices involved in these sentences was addressed. I am not going to discuss the rules but want to speculate on the problems this is going to cause for the Prison Industrial Complex. Although I can’t prove it, but I suspect that the various prison lobbies worked very hard at getting these guidelines in place in the first place. How can you build more prisons, employ more guards, create more segregated units, justify more stun guns and extraction devices, unless you have an ever increasing inmate population to need it. It will be interesting to see what happens as the courts have to review more and more of these long sentences and perhaps let some people go. And what will happen to the prison industries or the use of inmate in jobs outside the prison, such as work in the sugar fields or cotton fields or in cleaning up the gulf? My thought

is the lobbies will have to become very creative at finding ways to maintain this source of cheap labor.

GULF CLEAN UP

I was listening to an interesting program the other evening and was struck by their mention that many of the Louisiana inmates are being hired by BP to work on the cleanup. Then the staggering sum of $2,400.00 per inmate was mentioned as a tax break that BP received for doing this. Follow the Money. Then it was mentioned that these same inmates were being paid by their institution a sum of less than a dollar an hour for the work and that the inmate had no right to refuse the work. Who is going to cover their health costs?

I am not offering any documentation for these comments but will mention they came from the Mike Malloy show.

PROFITING FROM LONG IMMIGRANT DETENTIONS.

More than 300,000 immigrants languish in detention centers around the country. Why are they there - and who is

profiting from their imprisonment? This is the heading of a report on Truthout. Org by Yana Kunichoff. Sunday August 01, 2010. I commend this report to you and let you know that it can be found at: http://www.truth-out.org/a-long-stay61888.

I urge you to check this article out as it is quite eye opening and gives an idea of why we have such a growing inmate population and I can guarantee they DO NOT care if a person is guilty or innocent just that they can lend to the bottom line.

Here is the passage”

“Five of the most lucrative contracts CCA has with the federal government have no end dates, and several contain clauses that guarantee a certain amount of revenue regardless of the occupancy rates of the jails, the investigate online publication Business of Detention found. The rate of contract renewal is almost 95 percent.

These steady successes have reaped their benefits: CCA has managed to make a record profit every year since 2003. Their revenue in 2009 was $1.67 billion, the company has been estimated to bill $11 million a month, and between

2004 and 2008 the company’s stock more than doubled, from $12.15 to $26.86 a share.

Who Else?

However, the profit from immigration detention does not end with CCA. Over 300 city and county governments across the country also have contracts with ICE and house the majority of detained immigrants. This acts as an incentive for local law enforcement to enforce immigration law, usually a national-level enforcement duty. This practice is already in place in some cities and states under the 287(g) Homeland Security program.

In addition, Friedmann notes, other industries that benefit from the boom in detention are prison food corporations, medical care, probation supervision, prisoner transportation services and financial firms that provide bond financing for new

Normally I try and give lots of examples of prison art and poetry but I have chosen to include some other rants and requests as they seem quite relevant to this column. Please get involved.

Art by Teddy Drake #1599339, 9055 Spur 591, Amarillo, TX 79107

Billy Anderson (CA) Tracy Corbett (WA) Brandon Day (KY)

Meet some of the fine men placing ads in Issue #143 for the Fall of 2010.

How I feel about you. Sharing my love for you

For once in my life, I have someone who needs me. Someone I’ve needed so long.

For once Unafraid. I can go where life leads me and somehow I know I’ll be strong.

For once I can touch what my heart used to dream of long before I knew, someone warm like you. What makes my dreams come true

For once in my life, I won’t let sorrow hurt me not like It’s hurt me before.

For once, I have someone I know won’t desert me I’m not alone anymore.

For once I can say, this is mine, you can’t take it as long as I know I have Love, I can make it.

For once in my Life, I have someone who needs me.

By: Rueben J. Cruz T-91761 FDB2 204L, California State Prison, PO Bo 4670, Lancaster, CA 93539

By Bob Fredeen #909204, CRCC, I-B-2 PO Box 769, Connell, WA 99326

Brian Alberer, #378763, 1181 Paddock, Smyrna, DE 19977

Matt Davidson (WI) Self Portrait

Anthony Wallace, #725105, 8602 Peach Avenue, Lubbock, TX 79404

James Hicklin #597993/HU 3A-10, Petosi Correctional Center, 11593 State Highway O, Mineral Point, MO 63660

We are still working on the task of counting up the back issues in our storage unit. Please bear with us if you’ve asked for back issues. Once we get shelving in place we’ll be in a better position to do the count of the remaining boxes. We’re three quarters of the way there. So with that in mind, we’re providing you with info on the back issues we know we have on hand.

Generally back issues from the last five years are selling for $5 each while older or rarer issues are going for a higher price.

Back Issues for Sale

Folks can email their requests for back issues submissions@rfdmag.org.

We’re also looking to create a crisp clean complete set of RFD’s for possible use in a scanning project. We have a working set but many of the issues have notations from an early indexing project in them. So we’d like to find some of the missing issues [1 - 10, 12, 13, 16, 18, 24, 25, 27, 29, 30, 35, 48, 49, 52, 53, 74 - 78] which we no longer have in storage to complete this set. If you have copies of the

following issues and want to consider donating them to the Collective we’d be most appreciative and would consider offering folks a renewal subscription for their efforts. We’d also love to create more complete sets to be able to offer them to sanctuaries which do not have full sets. Any help around this will be greatly appreciated. Contact us at submissions@rfdmag.org with “Back Issues” in the subject line.

To order: please make a copy of this page, circle the issues you would like, fill out the form below, and mail it with check* to: RFD, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA 01035-0302, or email the same information to: submissions@rfdmag.org.

*Shipping costs: 1 issue ($3 first class postage), 2 to 15 issues ($6 priority mail)

Edited by Don Kilhefner, Ph.D., and Mark Thompson

August 13th. -22nd.,2010

At this year's Shamans Gathering, a memorial service will be held for Dreamie and a portion of his ashes spread at the Sanctuary.

For More Information: Visit Our Website At:zms.org or call us at:505783-4002 or email us at: zunimtn@wildblue.net or mail us at: P.O. Box 636, Ramah, N.M.,87321

MOUNTAIN SANCTUARY Queer Shamans Gathering

the skinny.....

SUBMISSIONS

We accept submissions via U.S. Mail, or email at submissions@rfdmag.org. When sending electronic files by either method, save the text files as an MS Word Doc, Rich Text (RTF), or Simple Text. Images should be high resolution (minimum one mega-byte (1 MB) in TIFF or JPG. Your work may also be used on our website.

WRITING

We welcome your submission. Suggested length is 500 to 2,500 words. We will carefully edit. If you intentionally mean to vary a spelling, let us know. We will contact you if your submission is selected. Contributors receive one copy of the issue in which their work appears and a second copy upon request. Your may also be used on our website.

ART

We always need fresh drawings and photos. Drawings should be quality black and white. Photos can be color or black and white. Original digital camera files work well. Original artwork should be scanned at 300 dpi or higher. Line art should be scanned at 1200 dpi. We may crop your photo to fit our format.

Advertising Rates

DUE DATES

October 20th for Winter, January 20th for Spring, April 20th for Summer; July 20th for Autumn.

ADVERTISING

For rates, contact us by phone or email or get it from our website.

BACK ISSUES

Recent issues are $7 postage paid. Many earlier issues are available. Call us or email us at business@rfdmag.org for availability.

COPYRIGHT

RFD is copyrighted. Credited material remains the property of the contributor. Non-credited material may be republished with attribution.

MAILING

RFD is published quarterly and mailed around the Solstice or Equinox of the quarter. Second class mail can take a while. Let us know if you have not received your copy after a month. Second class mail is NOT forwarded. Let us know if you move.

Our basic advertising rate is $4.00 per square inch per issue. For repeat issues we offer discounts of 5% for two issues, 10% for three issues, and 15% for a full year (four issues).

If you do not have a prepared ad, the RFD staff can prepare one for you from your photographs and text. We charge $75/hr for layout.

Prepared ads should be provided in PDF format or high resolution JPG or TIF (300dpi or 500KB minimum file size). We will scan ad artwork for a fee of $20. RFD is not responsible for poor reproduction due to low resolution artwork.

Following are some examples to help you size your ad.

Submissions: submissions@rfdmag.org

Advertising: advertising@rfdmag.org

We accept advertising for products or services that we feel may be of positive value to our readers. Repeating ads will be re-run as given unless new copy is provided by closing date. New ads coming in late will be run next issue unless otherwise stated. Full payment for ads is required by closing date for ad to appear in the new issue.

Spring Renewal

It’s the time of year to dust off your spring clothes and head back outside for some new adventures. What have you been waiting all winter to do?

A number of us at RFD are itching for the start of the gathering season, so we can flaunt ourselves across a multitude of continents, making appearances at faerie soirees from Amber Fox to Terschelling to Thailand. But for the rest of us, just eager to get out into our gardens

in the back yard, it’s time to be thinking of seeds and soil, tillage and top-dressing. What are your spring plans?

Let us know what sojourns or projects are in your stars. Or, if you’re feeling reminiscent, send us stories, poems, artwork or images from a spring fling past. Whatever springs to mind, dust it off, polish it up, and see it flower in the next issue of RFD.

We depend on our readers’ submissions for our content, and your contributions are deeply appreciated. Please send all material to submissions@rfdmag.org, with “Spring 2011” in the subject line. Artwork and photos should be scanned at a resolution of 300 dpi or greater, and should be at least 1 megabyte in size. If the image is in color, scan it in color. The deadline for this issue is February 1, 2011.

Issue #145 Spring 2011

a reader created quarterly celebrating queer diversity

RFD Vol 37 No 1 #143 • $7.75