I'm in the process of baby steppin' my way closer to Florida! (I know, sometimes I can't believe it's actually starting to happen!) I notified my landlord that I will be vacating the apartment at the end of this year.
So, once again, the packing begins! Although I do have way fewer possessions this time around, I do think another 'purge' is needed. My strategy this time around is to start packing boxes with the stuff I know I want, other things will go into a different set of boxes.
I'm thinking of doing this Tag Sale my brother told me about. Friends of his put prices on all the things they wanted to sell and on a specific date, opened their house for Cash and Carry sales. Although, if you know me, you also know I don't like people touching my stuff. LOL So, I'm sort of torn about what to do. If you can think of an alternative, post a comment!!
I just joined the Buy/Sell pages for the West Shore and I'm going to start by putting up photos of some stuff and see how that goes. I did not have the best luck when I tried to sell a bedroom suite on one of those pages--60 people posting that they want it and I said, first one to my home gets it. People were crazed and in the end, NO ONE bought it. I donated it to the ReStore. So we'll start baby steppin' into this resale thing. I'll keep you posted.
Where am I going you may ask? Well, a few weeks ago I started asking around for a room to rent and a very surprising opportunity came up that I could not refuse! See this mind of mine kept going over and over expenses and quite honestly, maintaining 2 residences was seriously cramping my style--funds wise. I mean, I could afford both places, I just had to be on a strict budget. So that is why I started thinking about this renting a room thing---SAVINGS and more disposable income--for what else? Travel, of course!!
And of course, this is the absolute perfect time to move---NOT. I am hoping the weather will cooperate because ladies and gentlemen, I am going to have a POD to load. I don't want to be hoicking my sofa outside during foul weather, nor do I want to have to shovel a path to load said sofa.
So what's the plan after that? Ummm... I really don't have one! I would love to keep my current job and just work 'remotely' but I feel pretty certain my current management would not allow that. But, I do know on the insurance side of the business, they do offer opportunities like that. So, I will be on the internal job boards looking for a job!
So another path, down another unknown road for this Gypsy. It doesn't seem like that long ago that I was posting about that last road I turned onto: Turn the Page
That's all for now! Enjoy the link to the music video below!
Your baby steppin' Gyspy!
Credit for the Title of This Post: Little River Band
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bKwRW0l-Qk
Sunday, November 26, 2017
Saturday, November 11, 2017
Vanuatu - Stars and Stripes forever!
As 2017 winds down, discovery and planning begins for my 2018 adventure. One country, with four different stops, on the itinerary is Vanuatu. It may sound familiar because a season of Survivor was filmed there many years ago!
For me, reading a bit of the history of the Islands made me even more curious and excited to visit. Although I will not visit the island of Tanna, I am most fascinated by the God some folks on the island worship. His name is John Frum and his home is the active volcano, Yasur. Today, John Frum is both a religion and a political party with a member in Parliment!! He is worshiped by what is called an "indigenous cargo cult". (a movement attempting to obtain industrial goods through magic)
Here is an excerpt from the article in Smithsonian magazine:
The island’s John Frum movement is a classic example of what anthropologists have called a “cargo cult”—many of which sprang up in villages in the South Pacific during World War II, when hundreds of thousands of American troops poured into the islands from the skies and seas. As anthropologist Kirk Huffman, who spent 17 years in Vanuatu, explains: “You get cargo cults when the outside world, with all its material wealth, suddenly descends on remote, indigenous tribes.” The locals don’t know where the foreigners’ endless supplies come from and so suspect they were summoned by magic, sent from the spirit world. To entice the Americans back after the war, islanders throughout the region constructed piers and carved airstrips from their fields. They prayed for ships and planes to once again come out of nowhere, bearing all kinds of treasures: jeeps and washing machines, radios and motorcycles, canned meat and candy!
But the venerated Americans never came back, except as a dribble of tourists and veterans eager to revisit the faraway islands where they went to war in their youth. And although almost all the cargo cults have disappeared over the decades, the John Frum movement has endured, based on the worship of an American god no sober man has ever seen.
A link to the full article is here and very much worth the time to read!
An excerpt from the article on CNN:
Full article can be read here.
February 15th:
In the morning heat on a tropical island halfway across the world from the United States, several dark-skinned men—clad in what look to be U.S. Army uniforms—appear on a mound overlooking a bamboo-hut village. One reverently carries Old Glory, precisely folded to reveal only the stars. On the command of a bearded “drill sergeant,” the flag is raised on a pole hacked from a tall tree trunk. As the huge banner billows in the wind, hundreds of watching villagers clap and cheer.
Chief Isaac Wan, a slight, bearded man in a blue suit and ceremonial sash, leads the uniformed men down to open ground in the middle of the village. Some 40 barefoot “G.I.’s” suddenly emerge from behind the huts to more cheering, marching in perfect step and ranks of two past Chief Isaac. They tote bamboo “rifles” on their shoulders, the scarlet tips sharpened to represent bloody bayonets, and sport the letters “USA,” painted in red on their bare chests and backs.
John Frum Day, on the remote island of Tanna in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu. On this holiest of days, devotees have descended on the village of Lamakara from all over the island to honor a ghostly American messiah, John Frum. “John promised he’ll bring planeloads and shiploads of cargo to us from America if we pray to him,” a village elder tells me as he salutes the Stars and Stripes. “Radios, TVs, trucks, boats, watches, iceboxes, medicine, Coca-Cola and many other wonderful things.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another fascinating thing about all the islands of Vanuatu is the consumption of Kava. I didn't really know much about it until I started researching the islands.Kava is a plant with calming properties.
Here is what Wikipedia has to say about it:
The roots of the plant are used to produce a drink with sedative, anesthetic, euphoriant, and entheogenic properties. Kava is consumed throughout the Pacific Ocean cultures of Polynesia, including Hawaii, Vanuatu, Melanesia and some parts of Micronesia for its sedating effects. Its active ingredients are called kavalactones. A Cochrane systematic review concluded it was likely to be more effective than placebo at treating short-term anxiety.
And from what I've read, you only want to consume drinks made with "noble" kava. Vanuatu's most popular noble strains are "Boroguu" or "Boronggoru" from Pentecost Island, "Melomelo" from Aoba Island (called sese in north Pentecost Island), and "Palarasul" kava from Espiritu Santo.
Kava is prepared by either chewing, grinding or pounding the roots of the kava plant. Grinding is done by hand against a cone-shaped block of dead coral; the hand forms a mortar and the coral a pestle. The ground root/bark is combined with only a little water, as the fresh root releases moisture during grinding. Pounding is done in a large stone with a small log. The product is then added to cold water and consumed as quickly as possible.
Fijians commonly share a drink called grog made by pounding sun-dried kava root into a fine powder, straining and mixing it with cold water. Traditionally, grog is drunk from the shorn half-shell of a coconut, called a bilo. Grog is very popular in Fiji, especially among young men, and often brings people together for storytelling and socializing. Drinking grog for a few hours brings a numbing and relaxing effect to the drinker; grog also numbs the tongue and grog drinking typically is followed by a "chaser" or sweet or spicy snack to follow a bilo.
How does Kava make you feel:
When the mixture is not too strong, the subject attains a state of happy unconcern, well-being and contentment, free of physical or psychological excitement. At the beginning conversation comes in a gentle, easy flow and hearing and sight are honed, becoming able to perceive subtle shades of sound and vision. Kava soothes temperaments. The drinker never becomes angry, unpleasant, quarrelsome or noisy, as happens with alcohol. Both natives and whites consider kava as a means of easing moral discomfort. The drinker remains master of his conscience and reason.
I may have to report back on my personal experience with Kava!
But here is the most important reason I wanted to visit Vanuatu:
For me, reading a bit of the history of the Islands made me even more curious and excited to visit. Although I will not visit the island of Tanna, I am most fascinated by the God some folks on the island worship. His name is John Frum and his home is the active volcano, Yasur. Today, John Frum is both a religion and a political party with a member in Parliment!! He is worshiped by what is called an "indigenous cargo cult". (a movement attempting to obtain industrial goods through magic)
Here is an excerpt from the article in Smithsonian magazine:
The island’s John Frum movement is a classic example of what anthropologists have called a “cargo cult”—many of which sprang up in villages in the South Pacific during World War II, when hundreds of thousands of American troops poured into the islands from the skies and seas. As anthropologist Kirk Huffman, who spent 17 years in Vanuatu, explains: “You get cargo cults when the outside world, with all its material wealth, suddenly descends on remote, indigenous tribes.” The locals don’t know where the foreigners’ endless supplies come from and so suspect they were summoned by magic, sent from the spirit world. To entice the Americans back after the war, islanders throughout the region constructed piers and carved airstrips from their fields. They prayed for ships and planes to once again come out of nowhere, bearing all kinds of treasures: jeeps and washing machines, radios and motorcycles, canned meat and candy!
But the venerated Americans never came back, except as a dribble of tourists and veterans eager to revisit the faraway islands where they went to war in their youth. And although almost all the cargo cults have disappeared over the decades, the John Frum movement has endured, based on the worship of an American god no sober man has ever seen.
A link to the full article is here and very much worth the time to read!
An excerpt from the article on CNN:
...who explained how the spirit first appeared on Tanna in the form of an American serviceman, who ordered the tribe to reject Christian missionaries and promised boatloads of American cargo in return.
Then came World War II and boatloads of American cargo.
To this day, the Stars and Stripes is a religious symbol for the people under the volcano and their children are shamans in training, learning to talk to the spirits in the trees and shoot birds from the sky.
February 15th:
In the morning heat on a tropical island halfway across the world from the United States, several dark-skinned men—clad in what look to be U.S. Army uniforms—appear on a mound overlooking a bamboo-hut village. One reverently carries Old Glory, precisely folded to reveal only the stars. On the command of a bearded “drill sergeant,” the flag is raised on a pole hacked from a tall tree trunk. As the huge banner billows in the wind, hundreds of watching villagers clap and cheer.
Chief Isaac Wan, a slight, bearded man in a blue suit and ceremonial sash, leads the uniformed men down to open ground in the middle of the village. Some 40 barefoot “G.I.’s” suddenly emerge from behind the huts to more cheering, marching in perfect step and ranks of two past Chief Isaac. They tote bamboo “rifles” on their shoulders, the scarlet tips sharpened to represent bloody bayonets, and sport the letters “USA,” painted in red on their bare chests and backs.
John Frum Day, on the remote island of Tanna in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu. On this holiest of days, devotees have descended on the village of Lamakara from all over the island to honor a ghostly American messiah, John Frum. “John promised he’ll bring planeloads and shiploads of cargo to us from America if we pray to him,” a village elder tells me as he salutes the Stars and Stripes. “Radios, TVs, trucks, boats, watches, iceboxes, medicine, Coca-Cola and many other wonderful things.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another fascinating thing about all the islands of Vanuatu is the consumption of Kava. I didn't really know much about it until I started researching the islands.Kava is a plant with calming properties.
Here is what Wikipedia has to say about it:
The roots of the plant are used to produce a drink with sedative, anesthetic, euphoriant, and entheogenic properties. Kava is consumed throughout the Pacific Ocean cultures of Polynesia, including Hawaii, Vanuatu, Melanesia and some parts of Micronesia for its sedating effects. Its active ingredients are called kavalactones. A Cochrane systematic review concluded it was likely to be more effective than placebo at treating short-term anxiety.
And from what I've read, you only want to consume drinks made with "noble" kava. Vanuatu's most popular noble strains are "Boroguu" or "Boronggoru" from Pentecost Island, "Melomelo" from Aoba Island (called sese in north Pentecost Island), and "Palarasul" kava from Espiritu Santo.
Kava is prepared by either chewing, grinding or pounding the roots of the kava plant. Grinding is done by hand against a cone-shaped block of dead coral; the hand forms a mortar and the coral a pestle. The ground root/bark is combined with only a little water, as the fresh root releases moisture during grinding. Pounding is done in a large stone with a small log. The product is then added to cold water and consumed as quickly as possible.
Fijians commonly share a drink called grog made by pounding sun-dried kava root into a fine powder, straining and mixing it with cold water. Traditionally, grog is drunk from the shorn half-shell of a coconut, called a bilo. Grog is very popular in Fiji, especially among young men, and often brings people together for storytelling and socializing. Drinking grog for a few hours brings a numbing and relaxing effect to the drinker; grog also numbs the tongue and grog drinking typically is followed by a "chaser" or sweet or spicy snack to follow a bilo.
How does Kava make you feel:
When the mixture is not too strong, the subject attains a state of happy unconcern, well-being and contentment, free of physical or psychological excitement. At the beginning conversation comes in a gentle, easy flow and hearing and sight are honed, becoming able to perceive subtle shades of sound and vision. Kava soothes temperaments. The drinker never becomes angry, unpleasant, quarrelsome or noisy, as happens with alcohol. Both natives and whites consider kava as a means of easing moral discomfort. The drinker remains master of his conscience and reason.
I may have to report back on my personal experience with Kava!
But here is the most important reason I wanted to visit Vanuatu:
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