Farscape - Flying too Close to the Sun

Yes, I'm still ga-ga over Farscape. Just finished watching the season 4 opener, after completing the 3rd season.

( Farscape spoilers for 3.10 to 4.1 )

Welsh Ghost Stories circa 1988

In 1988, I won a college grant to go to Wales and collect mythology. My idea had been to compare the current oral narrative with the old Welsh Mythology of the Mabinogi. Great plan. Didn't work quite the way I expected. Once I got there, I had to sort of revise my plan a bit and ended up collecting over a hundred ghost stories, jokes, and cultural superstitions. Where did I collect them? From the Western Coast of Wales - or the area of the UK that considers English a second language, and most of the signs are in Welsh. I collected from people who spoke Welsh and English both, and ranged in age from 20-85. Most of my tales came from the older set, who is most likely dead now.

As a Halloween Treat, I've decided to post a couple of these stories in my livejournal. Comments as always are appreciated, but please do not repost these anywhere or cut and past them. You can link to me, but do not put them anywhere else. Thanks. Also these will be told in the dialect and exactly as I heard them in 1988 - I transcribed from audio tapes. They aren't really scarey, more anecdotes in a way.

( Bala Ghost from a Retired Clothing Store Owner, Age 75, collected in Bala, Wales )

( St. David's Head, Dyfed, Retired Heamaster and Widower, age 70 )

The Gaun Valley is in Southwest Wales, before you reach St. David's Head. You can't take a bus through it, have to either walk or get a car. Since I didn't have a car - I walked into it and found a bed and breakfast and an old pub.
Where we chatted about politics, and stared at an old picture of Prince Edward, Prince of Wales on the wall. A small one room pub, that had a couch and fireplace and was more a living room than pub. In the Gaun, I collected many tales, before hitching a ride to St. David's with fellow travelers who had a car. (I was 21 at the time.)

Here's one I collected there:
( Farmer, age 67, Gaun Valley nr. Punchstone )

The interesting thing about the tales I collected, was the teller likes to end with a joke or a moral. He likes to make light of it. Much different than the urban horror tales I've seen collected in the US.

Okay must run errands. Work is busy, tedious, frustrating, fascinating, scarey, boring, and pays my bills. It is a completely different field than the one I was in. At times I feel over-my-head, while at others over-qualified. Yet this may be the best boss I've had and the work environment is a friendly one. Not overly so. No going out for drinks or lunch or recreation with my colleagues, like I occassionally did when working for evil publishing company. And I miss that a bit. On the other hand, maybe it's a good thing. Also didn't always do with the other company, sort of sporadic over 6 year period. New jobs, whatever they may be, are tough. Oh found out an interesting tid-bit - the person who was offered the job before me (ie. the reason I got the chance), lost it because he lied. He told the company he graduated from law school. He hadn't. And that he worked for a year somewhere, when it was only a month. Morale? Don't lie. You will get caught. Weird chain of events though.

Political Activism at Work...

I thought I'd share a little good news, after reading superplin entry on the sexuality.

A while back - when the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages was first proposed, I joined others online and wrote my Congressmen and Women, as well as Senators - stating my opposition on this measure.

A week or so later I received a letter from my Congress Woman, informing me that she agreed with my stance and was working hard to protect the rights of gays and lesbians in our country. First off, I'm as straight as you can get. Sexuality is a personal and private thing to me, which I rarely talk about here for that reason. Who you choose to love is your business. Who you choose to marry is yours. Anyone who decides to dictate this - is blatantly and fundamentally wrong. It's not a gray issue. They are wrong. By the way did you know that the first people to have their rights stripped from them, and be put to death in Nazi Germany were homosexuals? And the reason given was pretty much the same one organized religions give now. Think about that one for a moment.

At any rate, that correspondence originally took place way back in February I think. On October 3, I received an update from my Congress Woman, informing me that the ban, otherwise known as HJ Res 106 was defeated by a vote of 227-186, well short of the two-thirds majority necessary to adopt the measure. With the letter, she enclosed a copy of the short statement she made in opposition to the bill which I've reproduced in part below...

Her letter and this statement gave me hope. Just like the under-dog, cursed Red Sox winning this week oddly gave me hope. I think things are changing.

( Statement of Representative Nydia M. Velazquez Opposing a Constitutional Amendment Banning Gay Marriage dated September 30, 2004 )

Ignore my words above, she says it better in some ways than I did.