The Seminary Of Praying Mantis

On the path to Senior Punk Advisory from the world of a past nobody punk

Recently I was approached by Dave Grohl who is putting out a documentary about traveling bands. His media person approached me very forcefully. She wanted to license material that I may or may not be able to license. She did not want to take no for an answer. So, for fun I gave them the run around stating if they interview me in the documentary, I could talk about the image they wanted. They have not gotten back to me. Again, they want the material and not my experience or friendship.

This is my dilemma. Currently I find filmmakers, documentarians, and authors approaching me for information from my past. They seem to want to approach me as a friend, but often are only interested in sharing my history, licensing past material that was my hard work. I see it as they want to gather as much information from me, squeeze me like a lemon, and then push me aside. They put out the documentary, book and may exclude me as a source, edit me out or not pay me anything. I see them promoting their documentaries and books, yet they do not invite me on the expertise promotional panel. I feel like their gopher.  

I am perplexed on how to own myself from this process by saying no to them now. I have come out with self-published books to tell my story. The same people who want my information do not seem to want to support my products.

I consider my ten years of experience in the underground music world as valid. It must be because I was just approached by three people this week. I already documented the material they want years ago.

I just do not want to give myself and my information away so freely anymore. I have been burned and devalued a few times.

Yet there is also the part of me that wants to share in the full story that they are pursuing. I do want to promote my books. Yet the material they ask me for, may or may not be, copyrighted. I cannot give them permission to license some of the material they are asking me for.  Many staph people contributed to the work I was involved with. I did co-own a past publication, Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine that included records and live music video tapes and radio DJ tapes…. but at the time we did not believe or practice copyright laws.

I am perplexed and overwhelmed and simply do not know what to do. I do not want to hide my head in the sand I like sharing my story.

Do I state clearly that I charge a fee for all my words no matter how and where they are used? Can I consider myself as a Senior Advisor with publishing rights for all my shared material? Can I, is it feasible, set up a legal form stating that if you include my work that you must also include me as a credited source and have me on your promotional panel of experts?

Here at The Seminary Of Praying Mantis we grieve Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death and we hope she inspires other women to her high and noble real life ideals of living justice.

She was not the first woman justice, but she was the first voice for women’s justice.

On leadership

“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

~Ruth Bader Ginsburg

https://www.cmnh.org/ginsburg

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I remember when the Woolsey Fire hit our neighborhood. It was terrifying and I was so afraid. The lovely Santa Monica Mountains were raged by a wildfire to such a terrible degree. I thought it would never end but it did. Nature is slowly recovering.  Our communities are still feeling the loss…. Yet holding on to our thread of life makes what we endured meaningful. One cannot deny that nature can be a powerful monster. The elements can take away our sense of balance and hope. Yet again we can not let go of the thread of life because we are part of this, and we will go on regardless of life lost and how nature is damaged. Bless us all.

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Michael Meade speaks of a thread that we need to hold onto in these changing times. It is a sobering podcast that shares hope. He does not look away from our individual or collective shadow either. We must acknowledge and not deny what we are facing now during a pandemic, wildfires, and political rage…

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Michael Meade Podcasts, Three Pieces of Wisdom

https://www.mosaicvoices.org/podcast

Here are two posts I did a few months after the Woolsey fire…. I know in my soul that nature never lets go of the thread.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolsey_Fire

https://hudleyflipside.com/2018/12/18/a-restoring-appeal/

https://hudleyflipside.com/2019/08/25/resilient/

Listening to David McCullough speak about American history is very fulfilling. He is so knowledgeable and gifted at telling history through stories. He says that the documents he studies are usually personal journals, letters, or other such material. He still only types on a typewriter and does not use the computer.

McCullough says that written letters and writing in general is becoming a lost art and feels we should continue to educate our children on the skills of writing. He feels that in the future there will be no personal journals for further historians to pull from.

I understand his perspective, but I think has underestimated the internet and computers in general. He is not looking at the work that we bloggers do. We write. Our blogs are the journals of the future. I always tell my kids that if anything happens to me here is the little black book with all my passwords. You can enjoy my writings or not. I am thinking of my grandchildren or great grandchildren and beyond as well.

So, to join Mr. McCullough’s perspective and mine I will most likely start to pull my seven years of writing and art and put them in little books. Gather it all and have them available. I was so charged with enthusiasm when he encouraged people to write and write journals. I know I will get the expected criticisms. Everyone is doing that, the good old days, what you are doing is a waste of time etc., but I enjoy it and that is what history is all about. David McCullough gives me the inspiration to be a writer and that it does matter.

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“Overhead he heard the cry of what might have been a melodious owl, but it wasn’t a melodious owl. It was a flying saucer from Tralfamadore, navigating in both space and time, therefore seeming to Billy Pilgrim to have come from nowhere all at once…” Pg. 75, Kurt Vonnegut / Slaughter’ House-Five

As Billy Pilgrim I feel “unstuck in time.” Isolation is snuggling at home with my memories. It is the special moments of time when I do go out that I go back in time for memories. Such as the Napoleon pastry.

On Dumetz Road and Topanga Canyon Blvd. in the San Fernando Valley once was a small-town market. Now a Mermaid fucking coffee hole. Gary’s market had about all the produce a small community needed. When I was a kid, we walked there to fill our pillowcases up with penny candies. That was for sleep overs with my girlfriends on Friday nights before Saturday morning scary movie marathons.  

At the age of 15, I remember seeing my reflection on the bakery deli window. My eyes were red, and the echo of laughter filled the market with the echo of youths, like when we use to fly kites. We were not flying kites anymore. Then we sat outside the storefront on the sidewalk eating our Napoleon. Manna per chance?

What I love about the book The Children’s Crusade or Slaughterhouse-Five is something amazingly simple. Yes, fast flying UFOs. I have had my experiences with them and this novel by Kurt Vonnegut helped me to place my memories in a creative place. The book describes many wonderful elements of so many mysteries of life, death, and war.

Light beaming down from the sky and strange, maybe, Tralfamadorian symbols being downloaded into my brain.  I wondered is this an embellished fictional novel or what?

Seems like every block in West Hills, Woodland Hills, Calabasas, and the Santa Monica Mountains holds a memory waiting to unfold.

“It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string., and that once a moment is gone is it gone forever. “Pg. 27 Kurt Vonnegut / Slaughter’ House-Five

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https://hudleyflipside.com/2017/11/19/penny-candies/

https://hudleyflipside.com/2013/05/10/tralfamadorians/

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As a child I discovered that nature was my ally. Nature is mysterious, receptive, and bold enough to answer my innocent questions. The Praying Mantis is part of this story. I have learned about life, death, and rebirth from the Praying Mantis. A seasonal relationship. Big golden green mamas have come to visit me, after laying their egg sacks, before they die. Males usually live longer lives. Not all of them have their heads bit off.  Then there are the exoskeletons that the Praying Mantis leaves behind many times as they go through their transmutation. If one is kind enough, they leave one upon my path. I then put it upon my hearth. I also take an illuminated picture of the exoskeleton. I have many. It tells me that change is on the way.  On this full moon in Aquarius it could mean an early Autumn is approaching. This is how I celebrate my blessed trinity of the Praying Mantis. As Uranus is, so is this lovely creature…. simply brilliant.  Always with antennae straight up and with an astounding frequency if you take the time to hear it.

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To the 50 million women who are now moving from chrysalis to butterfly

To our blessed Thyroid Gland, body, and soul.

Denied and repressed feelings remain an albatross around your neck until they are given voice and forgiven.

My voice is the vibrational residence of my soul and I will not deny it. That is true power.

Outside in my garden enjoying the afternoon I heard children swimming next door over the fence. I enjoy the sound of children playing. It is a sound that always continues as the sound of the summer birds singing or the crickets that come out at night. Suddenly, a chorus of young children sang this song loudly,

  ”  Ring-a-round the rosie,

    A pocket full of posies,

    Ashes! Ashes!

    We all fall down.”

~ Common American version: Delamar (2001), pp. 38-9.

It was a wake-up call to me out of my summer daze.  As if ancestors were singing the rhyme as a memory of a time long gone by. A time of the Great Plague. I find this ironical that here and now in our modern times we are experiencing a similar plague or pandemic. I wonder if the dead are still grieving. As our generation will be grieving for a long time after the Coronavirus disease has passed. How this all came together as innocent children were playing is not so strange. Yet it felt as if the Realm of the Fay opened and superimposed their song around these children and through them. Dancing fairies swimming through the air as Puck grabbed the moment in a soft breeze.  

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“The invariable sneezing and falling in modern English versions have given would-be origin finders the opportunity to say that the rhyme dates back to the Great Plague. A rosy rash, they allege, was a symptom of the plague, and posies of herbs were carried as protection and to ward off the smell of the disease. Sneezing or coughing was a final fatal symptom, and “all fall down” was exactly what happened.”

 ~[ Opie and Opie (1985), pp. 221–222.. ~Opie and Opie (1951), p. 365.

“Ring a Ring o’ Roses” or “Ring a Ring o’ Rosie” is an English nursery rhyme or folksong and playground singing game. It first appeared in print in 1881, but it is reported that a version was already being sung to the current tune in the 1790s and similar rhymes are known from across Europe. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 7925.”

~ Delamar, Gloria T.

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Delamar, Gloria T. (2001) [1987]. Mother Goose, From Nursery to Literature. Lincoln, Nebraska. pp. 38–39. ISBN 978-0595185771.

Opie, Iona; Opie, Peter (1997) [1951]. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press (Nabu Press). pp. 364–365. ISBN 978-0198600886.