There's really nothing that earthshaking here. 
Still friends only.
Just stories, and tales, and bits I don't want drifting all over the aether without an escort .
Say hello here to be added...

Clearance to leave here at 20:15. Got my list. Should be able to pack the car in 15 minutes or so. Get two hours sleep before I set wheels to pavement.

Angels above me, angels below me, angels behind me, angels before me, angels to my right and to my left, carry me to safe harbor, keep my Princelings warm and safe and happy until I return, and gods bless us all.

Here I go.

For some reason, I've been referred to as Cap'n for many, many years. That doesn't tell you much, so since I found this old bio, figured I'd better update it. It'll keep me from doing a political or economic post today.

Since many of my icons are of women, most of which feature Rory or Lorelai Gilmore, Inara, Kaylee ( though more Mal finally!) and the like it is about time to head off the inevitable gender confusion at the pass, as well as post some general background for the hell of it. More than once someone has had to ask me my gender because I don't post like a typical guy. Even though it is set out in my profile... I'm chromosome pair 46,XY myself, so yep, I'm a  man, though a man with a 14 year old girl for an inner child. My two youngest children, the Princelings' mother (and my very soon to be  former wife) A is a woman, Eldest, my 20 year old is a man training to be a Green Beret, Prince Bear is a 5 year old boy going on 35 and Princess Sparky is a 2 1/2 year old girl. I can tie a bow tie, fold and wear a kilt properly, I've drummed and danced at festivals, worn early Anglo-Saxon to as late Elizabethan as I could by SCA guidelines garb, but prefer to dress in clothes for the outdoors, from old army surplus to LL Bean. I can carry off dress and bearing in any social setting if need be. Dress me up, and you can take me anywhere.Sometimes it is pinstripe shirt, blue blazer and grey flannels. Foxes are good at camouflage. I have a beard. It is more grey  and white than brown and has been since I was pretty young. I wear glasses. I finally broke down and got pogressive lenses.

There are some stereotypical guy things I can't abide. I despise watching football, basketball and other such sports. But I love golf, enjoy tennis, canoeing, kayaking, sailing, backpacking and camping. I am a pretty good shot with a bow and a rifle (though after reading fearsclave, nowhere near that league) and I can swing a sword. Not expert, but with practice I'd do fine.  My wage-slave job is working nights in insurance, but I try to write when I'm not doing the day shift with the kids. I've done many jobs, from working in offices to doing legal research to selling Oriental rugs to fixing fire extinguishers on site in factories to 3 different bakeries. 

I'm a pagan with Buddhist and shamanic leanings, and I know about the Abrahamic religions pretty well too. Could probably outlast most of the men I know on my own in the woods, especially the fancy car, trophy house, trophy wife (well, I had one of those myself) can't find their way in the woods without a GPS, rich ones around here.  I've spent plenty of time outdoors and working on the farm. Don't care much for the company of most men, though when there is someone who is a well balanced gentleman with more than half a brain I enjoy hanging with them, and my *brothers* are true brothers. I really enjoy interesting beautiful intelligent witty resourceful women, and I have many strong female friends, though they aren't your average women either. Though I would do everything I could to protect an innocent, I don't have much use for many children other than my own, who rock, btw. There are a few children of my friends though who are a constant delight. Them I like.
 
I write as much as I can, read excessively, spend as much time as I can outside, shoot a decent game of pool, drink Woodchuck, Guinness, Corona and Bushmills as much as is fitting, and love good beers when I can get them. But I also garden, enjoy watching birds, caring for animals, and bake bread. I can cook, especially over a campfire. I like nice clothes, good food, fine wine, travel, history, philosophy, debate, and good books. I can sew, paint, draw, hammer nails and put on a roof, dance, drum, ride a horse, foal a horse, grow and can my own food, and do a whole mess of other things that might be traditionally considered associated to either gender. My flist got together and outfitted me to fly fish, so I'll be posting about that in the spring. Right now I'm living in a *cabin* my friend named Serenity, driving a Blazer named Firefly, and writing on a laptop named Kaywinnit. Joss Whedon fans, notice a trend?

If I consider you family, I'll literally do everything in my power to make sure nothing bad ever happens to you, or if it does I'll help you out afterwards and hunt down whoever hurt you. My family is mostly chosen family, who I refer to as my Fremily, and I love them to death. In fact, I'm in love with one wonderful woman on my flist, and just a bit crushed on several others, as well as getting to know more and more of my flisters IRL. I really, really enjoy the people I know on LJ and meeting them in RL is always a great adventure. Everyone here is finest kind, great people to know, and each and every one is a lifesaver.

That's what I know. Did I forget anything, anyone? Anything to add? Questions?

ETA: Do you realize my mood theme has no choice  for expository?

Why be pagan clergy?

The story I ran across about bees vanishing got me thinking about my goal of becoming pagan clergy. Why bother? Either we're all screwed, because G-d will someday destroy the Earth, or we'll finish ourselves off through mismanagement of the environment, or with our entirely electro-chemical monkey brain awareness and through science we will fix everything and we'll all get shiny immortal robot bodies and last forever. How does practicing a basically Buddhist philosophy and holding to a shamanic spiritual practice fit in with any of those scenarios? I get very riled up when people assume science can, or will in time be able to explain everything about the universe. Anything that doesn't fit in the current scientific model is discarded, dismissed, devalued. I get pissed off as well when someone says a collection of books is the infallible revelation of an all powerful god and all who do not submit are doomed.

What is wrong with science? 

Science is a way of describing the processes of what is going on with the universe, or multiverse. It is relatively new by anyone's timescale. I think it is handy for many purposes. Maybe it is an evolutionary strategy for getting life off the planet and into space, perhaps it is merely a very valid by-product of  our growth as a species. It might even be though, a way of keeping us in check. Religion is the opiate of the masses. That is a given. Well, so is science. Think about it. In our culture, aren't we promised that science can fix anything? People are kept in line through dogma, and also with better living through chemistry.

Why talk of Mystery?

I accept Mystery. I'm a fan. I can sit on a freaking hilltop on a paleolithic settlement site, overlooking a creek where 5,000 years before or more someone else sat and worked flint, leaving points and shards for me to find, brought up to the surface by the roots of the tree that shades me now. The connection between past and present is palpable. Mystery. I grok it. I can't explain it necessarily, but it isn't dependent on science or dogma. It is part of me, it is me, and everything around me.

What about the future?

Personally, my view of the future is that we're all going to need each other a lot more and in a more face to face, know who grows your food, weaves your cloth, throws your pots kind of way. I'm pretty sure we learned what plants were safe, what strategies for tool making would work, what animals might make good partners in the compact of life were through listening. To Mystery. We paid attention, we were aware, respectful, and we remembered what we learned. In the future that is already manifest but that we have yet to experience, I'm willing to bet that a person with Buddhist leanings, shamanic, Judaic, and Druish approaches to the world, who can grow his own food and make things to help out his clan and his neighbors might be a useful member of a community. Am I right? I don't know. It's a mystery.

Why that icon?

I chose Father Mulcahy over Shepherd Book, or a Buddhist monk or a Rabbi or any other image for my clergy icon. Why? Well, in M*A*S*H he was the chaplain, and though he was RC he was able to effectively minister to people of any faith who needed him. Because my experiences and studies touch on so many spiritual and religious practices, even though I identify mostly through the term pagan, I am basically a student of Mystery, which touches all forms. More like an army chaplain than priest of any specific church or temple. If you see that icon from here on out, you'll know what I'm speaking from is my take on Mystery. Or I needed a masculine icon instead of a Rory or Lorelai for a comment. :)

No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn. - Jim Morrison