culture is not optionalI really dig this one.

Cool Websites I found while looking up Radical Christianity
TheOoze - Conversation for the journey
Ship of Fools

a case of curiosities - fine art taxidermy & assemblage
If you haven't noticed already, I am at times drawn to the morbid, freakish, bizarre. To me it's all life, and if there weren't so many Walmarts in the world, more people would find some of my interests more mundane. But no, you can't generally find violent or incestuous folk ballads at Media Play, and you can't get a large tattoo at the ear piercing kiosk at the mall. And you still have to find a locally owned taxidermy shop to get a bull's horn to make your gemshorn. And this is a good thing. You have to go to your neighbor's locally owned store to find these things, and you have to talk to people to find out where to find the best of these curiosities. Walmart is not your neighbor. Walmart, no offense to my parents who *love* Sprawlmart, is the enemy of the neighborhood as we know it.

Okay, excuse while I climb off my soapbox. My knees are a little stiff. Anyway...Check out this refreshing and non-morbid taxidermy website. Bring your sense of humor and enjoy!

ha a falling out with my cousin. She's been mad at me for years, so what else is new, I might say. Well she finally told me exactly how she's been feeling about me, dredged up shit that happened (and some stuff that did not happen) when we were teenagers. I hate to say it, but I think I'm done with it. I'm so tired of worrying about whether or not she's going to be friendly to me when I see her at family gatherings. When I asked her to be a maid of honor, apparently she was mad at me because I asked my other cousin to be another maid of honor. Well, the angry cousin never returned my phone calls, was obviously mad at me for half the year. So I asked my not-mad-at-me cousin to do more stuff. Well this made the angry cousin angrier and she filed the incident away in her why Parthenia is so petty, judgemental, and drawn to the negative. That's what she called me. I think it doesn't need to be pointed out just who is being petty, because I guess that would be petty and I'm not gonna go there. Anyway, I'm done for now. I had no quarrel with her, but give me a few minutes and I'm sure I can think of things. Not a good way to patch things up. I've handed this over to God.

The same weekend my cousin was getting more mad at me, I met my friend Heather for our 20 year date. On June 7 1983, when we were 12 and 13 we made a pact to meet each other in front of Bischoff's in Teaneck, NJ on June 7 2003. And we kept our date. It was so cool! Kind of surreal. It was wonderful to see her again. It had been 10 years since I'd seen her. More later on the way we got back in touch after a couple of years (no we didn't get mad at each other.) We then went to the Met. Museum of Art, and walked around with our husbands and LLL. Heather doesn't have kids yet. I looked for an Artemisia painting that I know the Museum has, but I didn't see it. Maybe it was in storage. Saw lots of reliqueries and medieval art, tho. Oh well. My friend Marni met us there, too. Maybe too many people. I'm going to try to go down to New York and spend a weekend with Marni and catch up more with her. Overall it was a really fun trip. We also went to St. Patrick's Cathedral, but they were having a service so I lit a candle, bought some prayer cards and a chaplet, and continued on. I promptly lost 2 of the cards (Joan of Arc and Raphael the Archangel). I hope someone out there (in the Port Authority) will benefit from them. I was going to keep the Nurses' Prayer card I managed to hold onto, but I'm thinking that the signs point to giving that one away, too. I'll keep the chaplet.