Author: Allyson

  • Tuesday Tunes

    Guest entry by Allyson/Hagar: A couple of decades ago, I was volunteering at a pagan festival. Among other things, my then-boyfriend and I were doing some singing and entertaining (he played guitar, and my voice was still not too bad, back then). We were attending the planning meetings, as one does, and offering ideas. The…

  • The Weekly Feast – Gazpacho Soup

    The Weekly Feast – Gazpacho Soup

    There is nothing I love more than gazpacho soup on a hot day. It’s refreshing and cool, flavorful and filling. This is a recipe that I adore, and I hope you’ll enjoy trying it out over the hot August nights. I like to serve this with fresh salad shrimp just popped in, right before serving.…

  • Being Presidential

    I’ve talked in the past about how I didn’t feel that Trump was “presidential” in his first election bid and term. I stand by that. He lost his temper a number of times, was rude and unruly, and generally was not the sort of person I wanted to hold up proudly as “my country’s leader.”…

  • Making Fire

    Making Fire

    I wanted to talk about fire, today, because it’s one of those ubiquitous things. It’s just there. We don’t really think about it, in our world of Bic disposable lighters and all-weather matches. But fire is one of the prime things that makes us human. We harnessed it. But if we lost access to our…

  • Ren Faire Politics

    Ren Faire Politics

    This past weekend was the end of Maine Renaissance Faire. It’s the last big fair that I’m involved in for the summer season, though I sometimes do short stints at others and I still have events at the Fort which are ongoing. Maine is a huge fair, and it’s a lot of fun to work…

  • The Weekly Feast – Hungarian Goulash

    The Weekly Feast – Hungarian Goulash

    My father’s side of the family is from Communist Hungary. I grew up on Hungarian foods, and learned several recipes that I have passed on to friends and family today. This recipe is straight from my Nagymama’s (that means “grandma” in Hungarian) kitchen, this recipe has the flavor of Hungary throughout it. The meat is…

  • Taking Heat

    Taking Heat

    I know that “taking heat” means something different to 2A people, but I’m talking about temperature heat today. I’ve heard a lot of people whining (and yes, I’m using that term on purpose) about the heat, of late, and I want to address it from a prepping perspective. So, over the past several weekends, I’ve…

  • I’m Secretive…

    I’m Secretive…

    I had an interesting interaction today (I wrote this on Tuesday, July 23). An acquaintance posted this: Now, I don’t know that much about Vance. I knew he was a vet, and that he wrote a really popular book, and that he was very against Trump until relatively recently. Being me, I went and looked…

  • Cognitive Distortions

    Cognitive Distortions

    AWA talked about cognitive dissonance (“…when two opposing thoughts reside in the same mind, generating inner conflicts and psychological distress…” — PC), but I want to talk about cognitive distortions (“Error in the thinking process, automatic thought, erroneous thought pattern. Different from logical fallacies.” — ibid) in relation to the Left. So I was at…

  • A little funny

    https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNu7YoQ5/ This made me laugh out loud and scare our bunny!