Girl on Bear

The Furious Revels are ON!

Hello DW/LJ buddies!
For those of you who are attending PantheaCon this year, I wanted to let you know about an event I'm leading. I'm putting together the Furious Revels, a parade in the style of the Perchten/Krampus parades, with the intention of using an old tried & true ritual method from our European ancestors to cleanse the conference/hotel of ill-meaning wights. I would LOVE it if any of you who may be at P-Con this year would participate!  The parade will happen on Friday night during the dinner hour, so as to not interfere with other rituals & workshops.  Here's the program description for more info:

In communities throughout Europe stretching back over 2500 years, folks have gathered during the dark season, donned grotesque masks and bestial costumes, and wildly cavorted through their towns to drive out evil spirits and the doldrums of winter.  Let’s prepare the hotel for PantheaCon properly with a good, thorough and time-tested European cleansing tradition.  Bring your furs, antlers, horns, masks, grotesque costumes, rattles, drums, bells, and brooms. Join the Furious Revels for a wild cavort, and let’s cleanse the Doubletree from evil spirits and ill-meaning wights the old fashioned way!

I've even gotten a horse skull and will be crafting a very old-style "hobby horse".  I am really excited about this and would love for you guys to join me.  Programming asked if I could give them an approximate ball-park figure of how many people I think will be joining me, so if you are thinking of attending, let me know!  I am so incredibly excited about this - I've been researching these types of parades/revels for weeks!  I've commissioned this awesome artist to make me a pair of amazing huge wearable ram horns, and the hobby horse should be amazing.

Here's a video of a Krampus parade, I think in either Germany or Austria: http://www.youtube.com/watch?featu…

More resources! (this is as much for me as for anyone else... this way I have my links in a common location)
Alpine country traditions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-C…
Perchtenlaufen in Austria: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perch…
Zvoncari traditions in Croatia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zvon%…
Kurentovanje traditions in Slovenia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuren…
Old mask found in Dorset, shows similar ritual elements: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorse…
More on Dorset Ooser: http://www.darkdorset.co.uk/ooser
Bulgarian traditions, going back to Ancient Thrace: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kukeri
In Bulgarian but the pictures are amazing: http://www.surva-bg.com/
Hoodening: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoode…
Hungarian version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus%C…
In Croatian, but has amazing slide show of masks & costumes: http://www.buso.tk/
Mari Lwyd from Wales: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mari_…
The Golowan festival is a Cornish midsummer festival but has similar structure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golow…
Hobby horse customs throughout Europe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby…

Girl on Bear

More client hilarity

I just got a call from a client asking if I could let her know what protein powder her daughter had been taking, because they want a refill and the daughter is out of town. She said it had been "a little while" since the daughter had been in to see us.

I went into the daughter's chart to see if I could figure out which protein powder we'd recommended. The daughter did indeed take a protein powder from our clinic - back in 1999.  *sigh*  seriously? we don't even carry that product anymore - it was THIRTEEN YEARS AGO.

I love my job.
Girl on Bear

My profession, not helping. Again.

Grrr and sigh.

So being a nutritionist, I'm on a bunch of email lists etc for work. I got a message today that one of the big supplement and education companies I work with (who generally do really fantastic continuing education, actually) is having a "functional medicine study group" in my area. This month's topic is on "weight loss resistance" - basically, when a client is doing "everything right" and they're still not losing weight, what other things might a practitioner try to get their client's weight loss kick-started.

I am really really really tempted to attend the meeting, and basically announce "you leave them alone and let them be the healthy size their body is happy being".  This crap makes me incendiary-level mad. If a client is HEALTHY according to standard lab markers as well as  having a felt sense of well-being/being free of symptoms such as pain etc., and is EATING WELL and is EXERCISING REGULARLY, then the only reason I can think of for insisting on extraordinary weight loss methods is fat-phobia and some warped sense of fashion.  Which are NOT GOOD EXCUSES for potentially putting someone's body/health at risk. I mean sure, if there's an underlying blood sugar imbalance (diabetes or pre-diabetes), or an undiagnosed hormone problem like hashimoto's thyroiditis, then yeah improving someone's overall health is always a good idea. But even once you get their blood sugar more calibrated, even if you get them on a thyroid supporting protocol, while they might lose a few pounds, they also might not. And there's a strong possibility that your client/patient is still going to be larger than what is considered desireable in our fat-phobic culture.  Also? They may be currently perfectly healthy, and if you start trying to aggressively get their bodies to be smaller, you may actually be taking a healthy person and make them sick, or increasing their long term health risks.  Seriously. It is simply NOT TRUE that thinner always equals health improvement/reduced health risk.

I really shouldn't go to this meeting. I will just yell and alienate a room full of people. I already have Opinions on this, and it will only be disruptive if I attend. And I will leave even angrier than I was when I got there, most likely. This is not a useful way to spend my time. But BOY HOWDY am I tempted to go anyway...