Friday, July 27, 2012

Heart of WIllamette Pagans ROCK!

Well Wednesday night was simply awesome.  I did the first workshop I've done in Salem (Oregon) and what a blast.  The event was an incense making workshop to benefit Salem's first Pagan Pride Day on October 6.  The room was packed with great people and great energy.  We made incense, we laughed, we talked, and just generally got to know one another. 

Aside from PantheaCon in February, this was the first community gathering I've attended since moving to the Pacific Northwest (and definitely the first one in Oregon).  I've done a fair number of workshops at stores throughout Oregon and Washington, but never before a true community event.  I would say that meeting the Salem community was a pleasant surprise, but it actually was a massive shock.  In 3 years I'd not found a group that felt like the kind of community I left behind in Oklahoma.  Now I have.  Everyone was warm and friendly.  There was lots of laughter, which is always a sign of good energy. 

In fact, I was totally thrown off my game.  I expected 4 - 5 people in an intimate little workshop.  Instead I got more than three times that amount.  There was so much positive energy flowing throughout the room that I zoomed through the workshop in about half the normal time, and naturally forgot about half of the material I was going to cover!  Luckily we still had the venue for another hour, so I backed up and covered those topics as well.  It was the mos disorganized I've been in a workshop for at least a decade, but I don't mind at all.

Meeting this group of people felt very much like a homecoming.  The energy in that room was exactly the energy I used to get at gatherings with many good friends in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Missouri, and Arkansas.  I miss those people and those places, but now I know that I have found a true home in my new location.

My thanks to Jade and everyone who came out Wednesday evening.  I hope you had half as much fun as I did.  It was an honor to help raise funds for PPD.  That's something that is near and dear to my heart and I was glad I could help in some small way.  I can't wait for the next time!

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

A Rising Blight on Natural Incense


I'm a fairly upset incense maker today. Yes, the issue of another author plagiarising me is still on-going as my publisher takes the appropriate legal steps to resolve the problem...but it's still upsetting. I'm upset at this moment for a completely different reason.
"Herbal incense". That's what I make, that's what I teach others to make, and what thousands of hobbyists and professional incense makers around the world create daily. That term has been hijacked by a new, and certain to be fairly short-lived, industry. People selling herbal-substitutes for cannibis have chosen this completely FALSE name to market their products. It is a simple case of "gray market" products attempting to "piggy back" on legal, legitimate products.

First let me say that I fully support legalizing cannibis. It is a natural, herbal, gift from Mother that is far less dangerous than alcohol or other such substances. That's not at all what this issue is about. The sellers of this material are, in fact, selling a combination of herbs (and often a variety of chemicals as well) to intoxicate people (almost exclusively minors or very young adults) with very questionable substances. There are tons of mind-altering, legal herbs out there and you don't need to go to a "head shop" to buy them.

A number of states have banned these substances, but in many cases the producers simply change the banned ingredient to something else and it's suddenly legal again - until legislatures go back and add the new substance to the banned list. The simple fact is that NOBODY burns these materials as incense. They are manufactured, marketed, and sold with the express intent that they will be SMOKED. Sorry, but that's not "incense" which is defined as "something burned for its scent". Real incense is never smoked.

Why do I care? Well, for one I am concerned about the safety of those who smoke these materials. Most are very young and ignorant of what they are smoking and what it could do to them. Beyond that, I am very concerned about the long-term impact to legitimate incense makers. At some point, it seems likely to me that state governments, perhaps even the Federal government, will start to put bans in place. If those bans are not carefully written, they could easily result in legitimate incense being banned as well. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is an easy solution compared to the challenge of drafting legislation that would keep our incense legal while banning the crap sold in headshops for kids to smoke.

To that end, beginning next week I plan to begin writing to my legislators, both state and Federal, about this issue and the importance of protecting genuine incense while also protecting our youth from unknown dangers of unregulated smoking products. Once I have a letter drafted, I will post it for others to use if they desire. We are a very small industry in America and have long "flown under the radar" but I now see a huge danger looming on the horizon. Companies like Juniper Ridge and Fred Sol might find themselves without products to sell. Companies like Shoyeido, Baiedo, and Nippon Kodo, might find themselves forced out of North America.

Perhaps it's finally time for our industry to step into the public eye and speak out against these smoking "incense" companies and make our case before blanket bans on "herbal incense" begin to appear.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Pagan Pride Day

I have loved the concept of PPD since I was first introduced to it.  In 2007 (my last PPD in Oklahoma) I was not only the headlining guest (and did not know this until I arrived and read it on the front of the program book) but, more importantly, I was the volunteer coordinator.  The local group who took charge of PPD had decided it was too difficult to get the help needed at the event and were going to shorten it to just a couple of hours in a local park with essentially no events and just a smattering of vendors.

I went to the committee and presented a proposal to provide them with a large volunteer staff if we would maintain PPD as the large (2 day) event it had become.  I was told it was impossible and the effort failed when tried in the past - volunteers simply never materialized.  However, in the end they agreed when I promised that I would bring in my extended family if I couldn't find enough Pagan volunteers!  And I would have too!!

Instead, I applied methods widely used in other communities to get the word out that we needed volunteers, coordinated schedules, called people, recruited at local gatherings, and generally made myself into a pain, but guess what?  We had a huge cadre of volunteers from the first phase of setup until the building was cleaned and we left.  I screen printed identifying shirts for everyone and PPD was awash in those green volunteer shirts that year.

What's the point of all this?  Just a reminder that we still have a lot of growing to do as a community and a lot to learn from other communities.  Pagans didn't create the concept of a Pride Day or volunteer coordinators.  These are good ideas we have seen bring success in other communities.  Had we not brought in experience from other types of conventions and gatherings, Tulsa's PPD would have been shrunk to nothing and would problably have blown away by now (like the misguided organization that tried to tell me that nobody would ever volunteer, LOL!). 

Don't be afraid to look in other communities for solutions that would benefit the Pagan community.  While some Pagans spend too much time bashing other spiritual communities, many others have seen the wisdom of learning from those on spiritual paths that are far different from our own.  Every community has things it can share with others.  Don't let a label (like Christian, conservative, or atheist) stop you from finding the ideas and solutions that can help build the Pagan community into a viable, sustainable community that will last for many generations.

Friday, July 6, 2012

Project Update

In addition to the web site updates you've been seeing recently, I'm doing the preliminary work on my next book.  I've written a little to get the "feel" of the project and have nearly completed a detailed outline.  This book is unrelated to incense, but is something that people have urged me to do for many years.  I feel that I'm finally in a place where I can devote the proper time and energy to such an important project.  I'm really excited to bring this topic to our community and I'll post an update about it as soon as I've got it a little further down the road.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Seal Rock Incense?


It was an interesting few days as I did a series of 4 different workshops at Ancient Light in Waldport, Oregon.  It was very nice to get to do so many different workshops in such a short amount of time.  We did both a basic and an advanced incense making workshop plus Incense of the Pacific NorthWest and Incense with Wood Binders.  Best of all, I actually had the time to sit in these workshops and make incense myself.  It's a rare thing these days when I get the chance to sit and roll incense with students.  I enjoyed that very much.

The next time you find yourself on the Oregon Coast, heading down Highway 101, be sure to stop by Ancient Light as you breeze through Waldport.