Alternative Economics

What are you doing to bolster your bank account in these insecure times? Stuffing your mattress with gold bars? Bartering? Toying with digital currencies such as bitcoins? Investing in local currencies? Financing your neighbors' personal debts?

Bring your best practices, "crazy" ideas, or last-minute Googlings and join us for a casual discussion about how to take back power from a financial oligarchy that has crippled our economy. After a short presentation on the current crisis, we will explore practical ways to reclaim personal financial security by moving outside of the system.

Find us this Friday at the Tea House Gallery at 2015 NW 85th Street in Greenwood from 6 to 9. We'll be in the gallery upstairs or outside in the new gazebo. Zen Dog will be pouring his famous and fabulous brews. (A donation for tea is suggested.)

Ancient Pleasures

Ahhhh...sweet chai!

Huzzah! Or perhaps I should say Hafiz! 

The Muse was definitely with us on Saturday as we caroused and created with abandon. We also took time to treat ourselves to some of the most ancient of pleasures: Sufi poetry, honeyed mean, and a big bright bonfire.

My Most Excellent Friend came up from Portland to paint, make tea sandwiches, and rouse our spirits with his delicious honeyed mead. Allie Cat painted her own charming masterpiece and channeled Hafiz for us over chai and naan. FirF the Brave forged some drawings from a book of Alexander Calder’s animal sketches (we won't tell if you won't). And I began my first painting in years, Goddesses Are Not Ectomorphs.

A Master of Abstraction at work

Painting Goddesses with a fairy goblet of wine.

LOOK! I AM A WHALE

We live on the Sun’s playground.

Here,

Everyone gets what they want.

Sometimes the body of a beautiful woman,

Sometimes the body of a beautiful man,

Sometimes the body of both

In one.

We used to play that kind of tag

In the animal world too.

Now a mouse,

Now a tiger,

Look! I am a whale--I got tired of the land,

Went back to the ocean for a while.

What power is it in our sinew and mind

That will not die,

That keeps us shopping for the perfect dress?

We have all heard the Flute Player

And keep dancing
Toward Him.

Hafiz,

You have seen the Flute Player

And cannot help but

Whirl.

--from The Gift, poems by Hafiz

Creative Abandon

Do you have a creative project that’s been languishing under the bed for years? Or perhaps a brilliant idea that’s still just a twinkle in your eye? Well, gather it up, bring it to the salon, and abandon it. That’s right. Let it go. Anything can happen next. Another salonista may be inspired to start it for you, collaborate on it with you, steal it from you, or even spark you to finally launch into it yourself.

All art forms are welcome, however raucous, ungainly, or neglected. 

If this salon wreaks some happy havoc, we’ll be making it a regular.

Creative Abandon Salon

Saturday, August 20, from noon to midnight

The Indoor-Outdoor Chai Palace on Vashon Island

(contact me for directions)