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From a distance it looks like a forgotten old grain elevator in a farmer's field. But come closer. Don't be shy. See the door there, just around the corner? That's it. Step inside, where you'll find Katie May serving up a blog treat, a tarot hors d'oeuvre, a book quote to tuck into your pocket and savour later, maybe even a secret recipe from her stash of famous favourites. No matter the special of the day, you're sure to find something to nibble on.

blogs of merit

Stubblejumpers features blogs from my bookmarks folder.

In real and true voices, people reach out to us with art, with photographs, beauty, humour. Theirs are the blogs on the Stubblejumpers buffet and I invite you to dish up heartily for yourself.

*** To read my blog (of course I have one!), click here.

ask the tarot

Got a question for the cards? Feel like there's something you're not quite getting? Just curious, maybe, what the cards would say about your latest dilemma?

Stubblejumpers Cafe offers free "mini" tarot card readings in response to your questions.

Private readings (delivered via email, and for the cost of a donation or bartered item or service) can be arranged, but you may mail one question to me and the tarot will answer it. When you send your question, you are agreeing to allow it, the reading and your feedback, without identifying details if you prefer, to be posted here at Stubblejumpers.

Please email your question to stubblejumperscafe @gmail.com (remove the space before @). I will do the reading at my earliest opportunity and send it to you, even though it may not appear immediately on the webpage.

I have been reading the tarot since 1984. To find out how I approach the cards, click here.

mockingbird, a portrait of harper lee

Nelle Harper Lee was raised in the sleepy Alabama town of Monroeville during the Depression. She was a feisty tomboy with a mind of her own and the knuckles to back it up, and she wasn’t afraid to use them. When she met a neighbour boy named Truman, also a bit of a social misfit, the two of them discovered a shared love of stories and began to spend their time creating them on a used typewriter given to them by Lee’s lawyer father.
Truman Capote would grow up to write, with Lee’s unacknowledged assistance, the non-fiction novel In Cold Blood about the murder of an entire family in Kansas. Lee would drop out of law school and move to New York to write her novel about two children observing racial prejudice and intolerance in the American south. To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was made into an Academy Award-winning movie, starring Gregory Peck, in 1962.

Lee gave interviews until the mid 1960s, then took her considerable earnings from the book and movie and moved home to Monroeville a wealthy woman. Requests from reporters and other media for information of any kind about her life are routinely and vehemently denied; after the initial flurry of public interest in the wake of the book’s publication and the success of the movie, Lee found interviews repetitive and boring, and decided to have nothing more to do with them. In spite of being Monroeville’s literary celebrity, she lives as just another elderly lady in a small community, going out for tea with her older sister and avoiding the limelight.

Having written one of the most famous and controversial novels of the 20th century, Harper Lee disappeared from the public eye. “How come you never wrote another?” she was asked. She replied simply, “I said what I had to say."

Charles J. Shields has written the only existing biography of Harper Lee. An excerpt from it can be found at his website: http://www.charlesjshields.com/content/book.asp

the baby question

Should my husband and I have another baby? - Karla

Answer: VII Pentacles

Not right away. You have two lovely children and are managing well with them, but another child will bring stress that you don’t need right now. Once you have put your financial house in order, a third child is a great idea.

daniel macIvor's notebook

This guy has got to be one of Canada's most industrious writers. He's a celebrated playwright, whose work is seen on stage (the photo is one of his Dora awards for theatre) and film (Marion Bridge and Wilby Wonderful are two movies that come to mind). He's also an actor.

Daniel is a busy man. He has a hard time getting into his work sometimes, but he's very disciplined. And there's more to it than just the writing. There are play readings, workshops, rehearsals and travel; there are opening nights, reviews, mentoring others; there are friends and family; there is life, and Daniel's notebook lets us in on it all. How he finds time to blog, I'll never know, but I'm glad he does.

Here's a sample:

“Neil Young and the Budgie
I love when this stuff happens. Yesterday morning I was looking for music for “The 83rd”. Something a Canadian soldier might like. I listened to everything from Arcade Fire to Trooper. And a lot of Neil Young. I kept being drawn to Neil Young. Especially Harvest and Harvest Moon. On my way to rehearsal I ran into Rita and our friend Henry who were putting up posters because Henry found a budgie on his balcony that morning. (Henry loved the budgie but said he didn’t have room in his life for a budgie. I said that perhaps the budgie was the Universe saying that it would be good for Henry to make room in his life for a budgie. Henry asked “A budgie is my soulmate?” Perhaps.) As I walked along the street with them I thought to mention I’d been listening to a lot of Neil Young that morning. Just then Henry said “I hope those posters harvest the owner.” I said how funny it was that he used the word “Harvest” since I had been listening to Neil Young all morning. Rita looked at me strangely and said that morning Henry had given her a Neil Young CD and she had it in her bag. We remarked at how odd that was. We stopped off for a coffee. The coffee shop was playing Neil Young. I love when that stuff happens.

On a sad note, the budgie died. On a happy note, Henry decided he’s getting a budgie.”

To see how a productive person like Daniel MacIvor approaches his craft, his blog can be found here.

scorned and beloved

Nobody turns a phrase like Bill Richardson.

I was first introduced to Richardson’s word gymnastics when he hosted CBC Radio’s now-gone (sadly) "Richardson’s Roundup" on weekday afternoons. I soon discovered that he was an author, too. Scorned and Beloved: Dead of Winter Meetings with Canadian Eccentrics is a whimsical and clever account of his investigations into the worlds of weird and wacky people who have lived from one end of this country to the other. 

There’s the guy who learned to step-dance from a man who visited him in dreams during his childhood. OK, that’s not so far out there. How’s this then: the boy who couldn’t keep his pants on and claimed the devil removed them; he was even a circus attraction for a time. One man lived in a cave dug into a pile of manure, and ate from a pot of hot swill he kept on his woodstove, and yes, the stove was kept in the cave along with his livestock. He disliked women, glaring whenever he saw them, and I don’t imagine they were too thrilled to get a glimpse of him, either.

These and many others come to life under the deft pen of Bill Richardson, whose delight in people’s stories comes through vividly and whose humour and intelligence dazzle from beginning to end.

You can find this book here.

financial situation

Any insights into my financial situation? I am a single mom and have been unemployed (and desperately trying to find work) for almost nine months now. Is there a job at hand, or steady money of some sort? – A, Niagara Falls

Knight of Swords- present situation
XXI The World – why that is
VI Swords – next step
V The Hierophant – end result

Patience is required. You have the ability and the energy to be successful at anything you put your mind to, and once you decide what that is, there will be plenty of opportunities for you. You need to look into getting some training in an area that interests you, rather than taking any job that comes along. Finding work that you love will solve your financial problems, but you definitely will benefit from some schooling in an area of your choice. This is key to changing your financial situation.

Hi Kate,
Thanks for the reading, it was interesting because I really would love to go back to school to get some training for a new job- but that costs money, hence my dilemma...

A,
There are funding programs for education and training, and as a single mom they are available to you. If there is a will, there is a way ... look into it. You can get financial help to take courses in areas you're interested in, and help with child care costs. it's a matter of accessing the resources, which aren't always advertised (which drives me nuts; there are these programs to help people, and hardly anyone knows about them). No one can do it for you, there IS help out there, and if you don't do it ... in five years, things still the same ... so what have you got to lose? Start researching your options; you'll be surprised what you find.

Note the VI of Swords. Someone is navigating a boat, overladen with swords and the burden sitting at his feet. The water is choppy and there is still a long way to go. But there is something worth seeing; the end result is in sight. Effort will be required, but success is assured.

The Hierophant as the end result shows us that you will be acquiring new skill and knowledge.

the farmer's wife

The Farmer’s Wife lives in Kansas, “nine miles from anything.” She cooks, she sews, she crafts, she grouts (though it kills her), and she watches the corn grow. She throws a fine party, flashes back to her salad days, embarks upon little tours of the countryside and photojournals them for us. A few days ago there was a bad storm and her neighbour has a serious cleanup job to do. The Farmer’s Wife is there with her camera.

You never know what she’ll get up to from one day to the next, but you won’t want to miss it, whatever it is. Reading her blog feels like sitting down in her kitchen with a cup of coffee while she tells you a great story or shows you how to make something out of nothing. She’s just like the girl next door (the one who was always good to you), all growed up.

Visit The Farmer's Wife here.

strange piece of paradise

“The sound of screeching tires woke me. It was near midnight, and we had just gone to sleep. A stranger deliberately drove over our tent, then attacked us both with an axe. I saw his torso. He was a meticulous cowboy who looked like he had stepped off a movie set.”

Near the beginning of Strange Piece of Paradise, author Terri Jentz describes the life-changing event that occurred in Cline Falls Park in the Oregon desert in 1977. Shortly after embarking upon a cross-country bicycle trip, two university students are chopped up and left for dead. While both girls survive, their close friendship does not. While her partner represses all memory of the attack, Jentz is driven to revisit the crime scene 15 years later. She retraces their steps leading up to the night of the attempted murder, and then follows a trail of clues that the police, for some inexplicable reason, have not followed up on. No one has ever been charged, and yet everyone in the community near the park has a pretty good idea who did it. And he’s still around.

There was “a series of subtle yet persistent omens that led up to the night of June 22,” Jentz writes, in hindsight. It’s enough to make one wonder how often all of us have walked into nasty situations that could have been avoided had we known how to read the messages given by the world around us.

This densely written personal account also examines the horrible nature of psychopathic violence toward women in North American society and around the world, and the very little that is done to stop it.

Terri Jentz’s webpage contains audio excerpts from the book as well as ordering information. Find it here.

where is the passion?

From K in New England:

I feel like I'm waiting for something. The next step? Where do I go now? I want to feel passionate about doing something. Why do I feel like my life is in a holding pattern?
 
Hi K. I have restructured your several questions into one, as follows, and drawn a four-card layout so that we have the "next step" card. The Fool represents the going ahead and doing of things even when we aren't sure where they are leading to and even when others are telling us we're being irresponsible or silly (or maybe we are thinking it ourselves), with faith that we will find our way and that the outcome will be positive.

Question: What do I most need to know right now about the place I am at in my life?
 
Answer- V Pentacles
Why that is - XIV  Temperance
Next Step – 0 Fool
Outcome – XV The Devil
 
You are expending your energy keeping your life balanced and orderly, and you’re doing a fine job of it, but there is something you haven’t made room for, and that is fun and excitement. Allow yourself some play time. It doesn’t have to be a great passionate undertaking or a noble cause for the good of humankind; you just need to let yourself do what the child in you enjoys doing, without always having an end in sight or a practical outcome in mind.
This is something that is not going to come easily to you. You will find that you give yourself a hard time about it. You will feel guilty because you have left things undone around the home in order to indulge yourself, and this does not sit well with you. You will have to keep reminding yourself that if the spark of joy is not nurtured, none of the rest of your accomplishments really matter. You are a person who works first and plays only if there is time left to do so. Retrain yourself to play first, because then you will do the necessary tasks with vigour and spunk.
Suggested, for you, is the weekly “artist’s date” that is recommended in Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. Once a week you have a standing engagement —with yourself— to do something that has no practical outcome in mind, but is solely for pleasure, for adventure, and for discovery. Maybe it’s browsing in a bookstore or flea market or going to a movie or a coffee shop with entertainment. Maybe it's sitting down and fingerpainting, or lying in a scented bath. Whatever you choose to do, and it may always be different, pick a day of the week and block off several hours of pure “you” time.
In this way you will get in touch with your passions again and, although you will struggle with the idea of putting your happiness before the completion of the duties you daily set for yourself, eventually it will be proven that if your spirit is cared for first, you will have more energy and strength to deal with all the rest of it and you will be even more productive than you are now.
But best of all, you will begin to feel passionate about your life again.

 I am posting the Fool card, which is your next step. Imagine it as a large poster tacked to the wall next to your bed, to remind you to let your child self, your inner self, lead the way a little more.

Hi Kate -  Thanks so much for doing this, it was right on the mark.  I have however in these past months begun to indulge in more 'me' time.  In fact doing the very things that were suggested here.  At least I know I'm on the right path by listening to my inner self.
This was fun.
Thanks.
K in New England

K, Then the cards seem to be telling you to continue on exactly as you are. 

kitchen logic 2.0

Also known as K-Lo, the artist formerly known as Ms Kitchen Logic is the keeper of Kitchen Logic 2.0. Her suburban home in Minneapolis serves as headquarters to a family of four and a new puppy, whose antics have been giving K-Lo some light  relief from the angst her oldest son has been putting his parents through. Ah, teenagers … ya gotta love ’em, but sometimes it’s hard to like ’em.

Still, K-Lo keeps on working at her recently acquired part-time job outside the home, all the while creating beaded jewellery in her basement for her business Kitsch in Art, sipping alcoholic beverages with her friends, and wearing funny pants. In Kathy, we find the kind of person everyone wants to know – a girl who loves to have fun. I dream of sitting at a backyard barbecue with her one day, wearing my own funny pants and guzzling my own fancy margarita.

Kitchen Logic 2.0

I'm going to give her new margarita recipe a try. I have fancy glasses, too.

1. 1 can of frozen limeade
2. 1 can size of tequila
3. 1 can Sprite
4. 1 bottle Corona beer

a walk on the beach

When middleaged Joan Anderson stepped out of her marriage and her routine to spend a year by the ocean, she was taking a break and hoping to gain some perspective. Strolling on the sand she encountered Joan Erikson, a lady in her nineties, and the two women forged a lifechanging friendship.

The elder Joan spent time every day at the nursing home where her husband of many decades was a resident; he turned out to be the well-known psychologist and author Erik Erikson, and it was clear that they had a very close and loving relationship.
Joan Anderson, on the other hand, was considering how much she wanted to stay married. And during the year they knew each other, Joan Erickson, who had spent many years collaborating with her husband, had some words of wisdom:

After they attended a traditional wedding, Joan Erickson commented: "That's the trouble with these spectacles. They present a totally unrealistic picture of everything. People who live together for a long time inevitably disappoint and hurt as well as gratify and please each other. It's human nature. Then there are all the power struggles."

I copied that into my notebook, not to be forgotten. Perhaps the rough patches are natural after all. When the younger Joan felt guilty about the state of her marriage, the elder Joan said matter of factly, "Love is a risk and divorce is reasonable." For a woman who had been married so many years, she understood that it was not always easy to stay that way.

"Always remember that strength comes from adversity... we grow from these emotional conflicts. Our fate can be altered for the better if only we have the courage to embrace the opposites. That's the paradox. Everyone wants to walk under a rainbow, but it's the negative pulls that force us  to reach a little further, do a bit more, make the extra effort. That's why the toddler, as he seeks conflict and tests the limits, is developing character."

I liked some of the other things she said to Joan the Younger, too:

 "If a baby is held, swaddled, nursed, and sung to, the child will develop trust and hope...You seem to have lots of hope, dear. You must have been very loved as an infant."

And this:

"It only takes one, you know, one person to utterly approve of you and you're on your way."

And now... there is a huge thunderstorm threatening the south and cental parts of Saskatchewan and it is time to turn my computer off.

secretive husband

P:
Oooo, okay, tell me why I feel my husband is hiding something from me! (I think it's because I'm insecure and crazy, but who knows.  Hook me up! Just don't tell me I'm going to die or anything icky like that :)

To answer the question "What's going on with J being secretive?" I pulled three cards:

IX Swords - the answer
X Swords - why that is
King Swords - the outcome
The suit of swords represents problems in life and pulling three of them made me sit up and take notice. According to the cards, P is feeling sorry for himself; he has been through something that wasn't pleasant and has just ended or is about to. He needs to be approachable but it's hard because he's defensive.
To me these cards don't suggest another woman, just a situation P is not happy about.

Does this make sense to you?
(It doesn't to me, from the way you write about J, but those are the cards.)

Kate

Kate, as you know I don't really believe in the occult or fortune-telling or whatever, but huh. That's pretty accurate. J, who like most men ties up a lot of his identity with his job, is going through turmoil in his workplace. He was just one of only 3 people to be chosen to stay with his employer company while the rest of his group is being outsourced to another company and basically are going to get canned. His long-time boss is one of the people who is being sent off to the other company and although J has always had conflicts with him and feels meanly triumphant that he "won," he can't help but feel sorry for the guy, who is doing pitiful things like calling all the VPs to try to change their minds and they won't take his calls.  Anyway, the guy keeps calling him and crying and wanting sympathy and J doesn't deal well with emotional things like that, especially in a work setting. So there you go.
 
And I didn't say "Why is he being secretive?" I said "Why do I feel like he's hiding something?" so if I had to answer the question with reference to your cards, I'd say he's hiding that he doesn't feel 100% relieved that he's retained his job because he doesn't know what it's going to mean and hasn't gotten any direction on where it's going to take him. But he feels like he should be happy because hey! He's got a job and all his coworkers don't!
 
Tarot cards make people examine their feelings, don't they? Interesting.  Love it!
 
Thanks for doing this for me! xoxo K

K,
It's not unusual with the cards that they'll make no sense at all to me, but perfect sense to the person they're being read for. The bloody things blow me away with their accuracy, I tell you. Half the battle in reading them is getting myself out of the way ("Huh? This can't  be right!") and just passing on what the cards seem to be showing. Easier said than done.

reading tarot cards

I received a  deck of tarot cards as a gift when I was about 21 years old. They came with a slip of paper that gave keywords and the brief meaning of each card, and these were applied to a suggested layout of the cards in response to a query. In spite of not knowing what I was doing, the answers given by the cards were uncannily insightful. Reading the cards was a bit of fun, but I didn't take it seriously.

At age 23 I took a 60-hour "spiritual intensive" course, which culminated in doing a psychic reading for someone never met before (brought to the class by another classmate). After that, what was needed was to practise; the extrasensory muscles needed to be exercised, strengthened. It was only a year later that the class instructor offered a weekend workshop in tarot card reading.

I attended with my brand new Morgan-Greer deck. The instructor provided notebooks, pencils and Tarot for Successful Living by Norma Cowie. We used the slim lemon-coloured book to study the cards. We practised relating them to our lives by doing readings for each other for two days. I still have that book some two dozen years later, held together by Scotch tape and thumb prints, and dip into it whenever the cards have stumped me and a little clue might be all I need to unlock the story within the story.

In her introduction, Cowie says:

"The 78 picture cards, which have been referred to as the 'unbound book of wisdom,' weave many stories. Each one of the 78 symbols has a different picture, and that picture tells you a specific story. By learning to read the story on the card and by developing your own psychic abilities, you are able to go beyond the story in the picture to gain knowledge of yourself about life..."

  "I advise my students that the symbols will 'move' for them. Their eyes will be drawn to a specific part of the symbol. When this occurs, the card is beginning to 'talk' to them. It is always with surprise that they report back: 'Guess what? The symbol moved for me. I actually saw the boat move across the water and I knew very soon everything would be all right' or 'As I looked the cat grew bigger and I knew I had to watch out for my emotions.'

Each one of us has the ability to develop an understanding of the spiritual laws which govern the universe. The Tarot symbology, approached correctly, can help you unlock that aspect of yourself. You too can have the symbols 'move' and 'talk' to you."

Once I began using the tarot cards in my readings, people were captivated by their beauty and mystery. A picture is worth a thousand words, I found. People new to card readings were captivated, their focus on a richly drawn deck of tarot cards helping to put them at ease. Powerful emotions can come to the table during a tarot card reading, and with them can come new perspective and inspiration. Looking closely at the cards and the symbols they display is a treat to the eye, but "looking inward by  looking outward," if I may put it that way, also acts as a balance  for the intense energy that people sometimes bring to a reading.

The tarot cards don't predict your future. Is that what you thought? Well, maybe they do when others read them, but my readings often seem to be about where you are now, where you're going if you continue on exactly the same way, and what you can do to change the destination or at least make the journey easier on yourself.

Stubblejumpers Cafe features a mini card reading in response to a reader's question. Read along and see if the situations and suggestions shown by the cards relate to anything in your own life. My tarot teacher said, "We teach best what we both need to learn," and so it seems that I am often passing on information that is timely for me as well as for the person whose cards are being read. I think of it as a meditation with a friend. We both benefit by it.

a little bit of bread … and no cheese

A blog I've been reading forever is Journal of a Writing Man, now morphed into A Little Bit of Bread ...and No Cheese.
John Bailey writes every day, bless his heart. He lives in England. He's a pensioner. He likes his naps, his meals, and his "plonk," as he calls it. He takes his readers along on shopping trips and walks. He packs up and moves houses every couple years, and is about to do so again. He's got a Maine Coone cat. Or she has him, according to Maine Coone legend. They live with Graham (of the human variety), who is sometimes away for weeks at a time, running the bar for transvestite conferences and accordion festivals. When he's home, he's bound to be fixing, maintaining or upgrading something; thus the frequent transformation and sale of homes over the years. He promises this will be the last move. We'll see.

 John writes poetry and fiction too. You'll find them in his archives.

Go see a little bit of bread ... and no cheese and say hello to Dolly for me. I'd say "Leave your mouse at home" but then how would you get there? Best hide it from Dolly, the great hunter.

bloggity blog

When I discovered online journals, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. People published their ongoing diaries for all to read... why, it was like receiving a friendly letter every day of your life. What could be better than that?
 
At least once a week Stubblejumpers will feature a blog that makes me laugh out loud or teaches me something, maybe makes me think and wonder, offers beauty, knocks at my heart. Three entries on a webpage like this and I feel as if I'm reading a letter from a friend. Someone is speaking to me, and I want to listen.

booklovers

Wouldn't it be perfect if restaurants had reclining chairs and after you'd stuffed yourself you could lie back for an hour? If only I ran the world.

In the Stubblejumpers lounge you will find not only chairs that let you stretch out, but cosy blankets. Take your time, eye up the bookshelf, pick something to read and stay as long as you like.