Marlies' Creative Universe

I know this is not the page you expected to see, but my site has grown too large for its britches and I am in the middle of making major changes. You can link to the old site by following this link to www.mcuniverse.com.

My website is ‘Sammelsurium’ hodge-podge of subjects. I am a renaissance woman and a jill of all trades. I truly live in my own universe. My interests go from

• Computer Buff
• Grafika (Graphic Design)
• Shutterbug (Photography)
• Inspirado (Esoteric Interests)
• Tapping (EFT, Meridian Tapping)
• Craftmeister
• Shop MCUniverse

Fulehung Mask

Fulehung – The Jester with the Devil’s Mask

Now looking back to my childhood, I realize that I grew up with Swiss Native culture, too. My father was from the Canton of Bern and had a special mask called the “Fulehung”. The mask is worn by the “Fulehung” or chester in the parade that celebrates the annual sharpshooting competition of the City of Thun in the last week of September.

The Story of the Fulehung

The origin of this customs dates back to the Middle Ages. During the ‘Burgundy Wars’ the Swiss captured the court jester. They brought him back to the city of Thun and paraded him through the city streets where the city folks laughed at him. Since then he now does the same thing and chases through the city streets during the last week of September and scares the children. (German text)

More about the Fulehung this time from an English blog.

As a student in Grade 2, the school took us on our annual class trip to the reconstructed “Pfahlbau Dorf” Pile Dwelling Village of Unteruhldingen” in the Lake of Constance. I can remember it to this day like it was yesterday. It made a very big impression on me and I felt like I had come home.

When I first posted this article around 2000 there was not much info available.

Pile Dwelling Museum Unteruhldingen

But now this has changed, but most of the information is still in German.

This is the small article I found in English on Wikipedia:

Unteruhldingen is a small village, part of the town of Uhldingen-Mühlhofen, on the northwestern shore of Lake Constance, Germany. It is home to the Pfahlbauten, an open air museum displaying reconstructions of Neolithic and Bronze Age pile dwellings. The buildings are idealized reconstructions from between the 1922 and 1941, which were designed based on archeological digs of the Wasserburg Buchau at Federsee. After 1945 the museum was led by the controversial but knowledgeable archeologist Hans Reinerth, one of the leading Nazi archaeologists of the ‘Rosenberg’s department’. This museum has been expanded since to incorporate modern research.

• The Lake Dwelling Museum to the reconstructed building (German)
• Lake Dwelling Museum info from Wikipedia (German)

One day the local hardware store had a garage sale and we found that we could get only garbage can lids without the cans. Our lids seem to always crack, probably because of our climate. We bought two kinds of lids and one kind fit and the other didn’t. Now hubby asked if he should throw out the useless one as it had only cost us $1. I told him to hold on as I would probably come up with an idea for a use for it.

1st mask

Inspiration struck and here is the finished result my Rubbermaid garbage can lid mask. Basically I just used the lines on the lid for the features of the face. After basecoating the black lid is painted the design with Acrylic craft paints and seals it all with a coat of varnish.

2nd mask - 2003

Late in 2003 I created another mask. This mask took on more feminine features. Here are step by step pictures of how I made this mask.

3rd mask - 2009

Then in 2009 I was compelled to create yet another mask. This one took on cat like features.

Mal

Welcome to Mal’s Corner. I am Marlies’ husband and I am happy to share my hobbies and interests with you.

I love to play guitar. I own a Tacoma and and Ovation Balladeer. My wife laughs at me when I my guitar lying flat on my back or sitting down or standing up dancing around. I accompany TV programs and it doesn’t matter what’s on. I also play along with the songs I hear in my head.

• I am told that I am quite good at helping people understand their dreams.
• Since I have discovered the Internet I have been entering contests and have one some wonderful prizes.
• One of the prizes I won was a mug for my cyber story “Lucretia McLizard”.

The current weather in Halifax-Dartmouth, Nova Scotia Canada

I love to enter Internet contests and sweepstakes and listen to music and radio stations online. I also am very interested in what’s going on in the world and like to check various Global, Regional and Middle East media sites and online newspapers. My interest in guitar playing lead me to some helpful sites. Living in the Maritimes, our weather is influenced by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf stream and it is handy to check out the water temperatures online.

Here is a list of my favorite links:

Contests

• Canadian Free Stuff
• Contest Canada
• Contest Guide
• Contest Hound
• Family Sweeps
• Planet Goldilocks
• Somewhere in Canada
  

Online Radio Stations

• Accu Radio
• Atlantic radio
• CBC
• Hober Music
• Live365
• European Radio on the Internet
• New York Radio Guide
• RealAudio Sites & Sounds
• Real Guide
• Shoutcast
  

Guitar

• Acoustic Guitar Magazine Web Site
• Guitar One
• Guitar Player
  

Media

• Coast to Coast Am
• Israel National News
• Debka News
• Drudge Report
• Fortean Times Online
• Haaretz
• Huffington Post
• Infowars
• Israel Insider
• Israel Radio
• Jerusalem Post
• Kol Israel
• Little Green Footballs
• The New York Times
• Online Newspapers
• Quickening
• Yediot Achronot
• Whitley Strieber
• World Net Daily
  

Canadian Weather

• Environment Canada
• HRM Weather (Halifax, NS, Canada)
• The Weather Network

Mal created the story for a contest to name the mascot lizard at the Whiptail.com web site in 1997 or 1998. He didn’t win first prize, but was one of 6 second prize winners. Our whole family liked the story and Marlies embellished it with pictures. We thought that travellers to my Corner would enjoy reading the story.

I came across this listing in a newsgroup and checked out the site where it came from and decided to place the info here.

The info is from the book “Earth Medicine, a Shamanic way to Self Discovery” by Kenneth Meadows.

Find your sign in the Native American Zodiac

Falcon People

Beaver People

Deer People

WoodPecker People

Salmon People

Brown Bear People

Crow People

Snake People

Owl People

Goose People

Otter People

Wolf People

buffalo

There was a long time where I hardly every thought of native American things until suddenly in early 92 I was ready to learn more again. I bought the book "Buffalo Woman Comes Singing" by Brooke Medicine Eagle. I just loved the book and when in 94 a white buffalo calf was born in the USA I got goosebumps. The native story of white buffalo calf woman.

The Story about the White Buffalo

I found this posted by Raina as stationary for outlook express at a stationary newsgroup quite some time ago.

white buffalo

"The white buffalo was believed by the Plains Indians to be the child of Father Sun. The Indians would hang a white buffalo robe outside in the sunlight near the medicine man’s tee-pee as an offering to the sun.  Indian Chiefs carried a white buffalo robe into battle believing that it would shelter them from any harm.

The Cheyenne, Mandan, and Pawnee Indians worshiped the white buffalo. They believed him to be "good medicine." When a white buffalo was slaughtered, great care was taken so as not to anger the gods. Some of their medicine men used white robes in ceremonies to cure illness. The Pawnee would often keep white robes as part of their medicine bundles or would wrap the bundles in a white robe.

The most famous white buffalo of all time was born in captivity at the National Bison Range in western Montana in May of 1933. He had blue eyes, and the only normal coloring on the animal’s whole body was a woolly knot of brown hair between his horns. By the time he was two years old, he was becoming a well known tourist attraction on the National Bison Range, and he had become known as "Big Medicine." In May, 1937 the white bull’s mother, bred by Big Medicine, her own son, gave birth to a pure albino calf. The calf was completely white with white hoofs and pink eyes but was totally blind. At the age of six months he was shipped to the National Zoo in Washington D.C. for public display where he remained until his death in 1949. Back in Montana the calf’s father, Big Medicine, developed into an extra ordinarily fine animal. Thousands of tourists came to view him every summer until his death in August, 1959 at the ripe old age of 26. Bob Scriver of Browning, Montana spent two years mounting the remains of Big Medicine for posterity. Today his figure remains as a popular tourist attraction at the Montana State Historical Society Museum in Helena, Montana."

Thanks to Bear Woman (who sent me the following email on June 28, 2003), I have fixed an error in the above story. I have replaced the word ‘God’ with the word Father in connection with the word ‘sun’.

I hope you do not find this email to be offensive but I just wanted to comment on your white buffalo article. However you make reference to worship and the sun god….In the plains indian’s beliefs there are no gods. The sun is refered to as Father Sun…like an ancestor. There is no worship…We give thanks to all of the Creator’s (Great Spirit) creations….the White Buffalo being a Sacred animal.

Just my 2 cents. Thank you
Bear Woman
(Cree) 

In August of 1978 I gave birth to a pair of twins, a boy and a girl. Once the children were around half a year I needed something to take my mind off taking care of them while they were napping. That’s when I remembered a page from a magazine I had cut out in Canada, where I had seen native american designs embroidered on a grey utility blanket.

Native Design original utility blanket embroidery

Originally I had felt very drawn to it and now had the urge to do something with it. I sat down with graph paper and drew the design,  translating it to be used with a cross stitch. Then I bought rug canvas and thick, heavy wool and a thick sewing needle. I don’t remember how long it took me to finish the project, but I am very pleased with the finished result and I have always proudly displayed it, suspended on a curtain rod from the wall.

Native Design Cross-stitched wall rug

Now it is 1998, twenty years later and again I felt drawn to this design. This time however I have recreated it with the computer using Microsoft’s Image Composer.

Native Design computer graphic

Pierre Brice as Winnetou

My association with ‘Native’ was ‘Native American’. I had seen movies and read books by Karl May and had watched his movies where Pierre Briece, a French actor who played Winnetou (text is in German), the famous character from the May books.

Here is a link to the website to have Karl May’s books promoted in North America.

Karl May, Winnetou and more:

• Google video links
• YouTube links
• Wikipedia

This is the trailer from Winnetou II is in German, I am going down the memory lane.

The article below appeared in today’s newspaper (Canada National Post). I thought it would fit perfectly here on this page.

A Wilden Westen Time by the Rhine

Karl May’s tales keep Germans Coming to Canada

Cleo Paskal National Post
Saturday, June 14, 2003

Karl May wrote on the Wild West but never got past Buffalo, N.Y.

LIECHTENSTEIN – In front of Ye Olde West blacksmith shop, there is the requisite horse-hitch and the dance hall-saloon-hotel next door. In the background is a six-metre-high teepee. I am, of course, in Liechtenstein.

The man to blame for this Wilden Westen town by the banks of the Rhine is Karl May.

Say that name to a German and chances are you will elicit a misty-eyed look. Say it to a non- European and you will get a blank stare, even though May is responsible for a healthy chunk of German tourism to Canada.

May is the best-selling German author to date, with more than 100 million copies of his books in print. Stories of his travels in the Old West, the Orient and beyond have been translated into more than 30 languages.

He has been dead since 1912, yet his appeal endures. From 1986 to 1988, about 300,000 of his books sold in Lithuania alone. In Germany, there are two Karl May museums, countless local events, a film series, a television show and an annual Karl May festival that attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors.

Even Albert Einstein wrote: “My whole adolescence stood under his sign. Indeed, even today he had been dear to me in many a desperate hour.”

May also influenced me.

When I was 12 years old, my German-educated grandfather gave me an English copy of Winnetou, carefully inscribed: “Rather pleasant to bridge a gap of 50 to 60 years. G.” As I read it, I visited the same strange lands that entranced my grandfather 50 years before. It was rather pleasant.

May is arguably the most successful travel writer yet. Yet, his first trip outside Germany came well after the vast majority of his books were published. And some of his best pieces were written from jail.

His story begins in Germany in 1842, with his birth into a family so poor that few of his siblings lived past infancy. Starvation and ill health lead to blindness in his early years. He is taken care of by a grandmother who tells him wonderful folktales.

His widely travelled godfather adds his own exotic tales.

May regains his sight as he grows older. His father forces him to study every book he can afford to buy, from out-of-date geography books to scientific texts. He escapes into fantasy by reading books such as Himlo Himlini, the Chief of Robbers in Spain. May runs away from home at the age of 14, but his father finds him and brings him home before he can get to Spain.

He has the soul of a robber. In 1860, he is expelled from teachers’ school for stealing six candles for the family Christmas tree. He is allowed back and finishes his degree. He is fired from his first teaching job when he gets caught kissing a married piano student.

His next job, in 1861, is even more disastrous. May’s roommate accuses him of stealing his watch, pipe and cigarette holder, and he is sentenced to six weeks in jail.

Prison marks him for life. “It was as if I had brought home from the prison cell, in which I spent six long weeks, a whole crowd of invisible criminal characters, who made it their business to settle down with me and make me one of them,” he wrote.

From then on, May funnels his creativity into a life of crime. He poses as everything from an eye doctor to government officials. At one point, he rents two adjoining rooms, has furs delivered into one of them, slips them into the other room, then disappears. He is caught and is sentenced to four years in prison.

After his early release for good behaviour, May tries a new dodge, becoming an investigator of counterfeit money, which allows him to confiscate so-called bad bills from unsuspecting merchants. Sometimes, he claims he is the natural son of Prince von Waldenburg.

In 1870, a new high-tech aid, police photos, leads to his recapture. He is sent back to jail for four years.

Things are not looking good for the 32-year-old con man whose teachers’ licence was revoked, when his novel is accepted for publication. Soon, a publisher seeks him out to write and edit full time. And that is that.

May pours out his fantasies on the page, writing about trips to the Wild West and the Orient. In his books, he is all the things he is not in life — physically strong, morally pure and well-travelled.

There are proud father figures, admiring women, until-death-do-us-part friends. He is a perfect shot (but only to maim, never to kill), a great rider and he can speak scores of languages.

His Old West is populated by evil Yankees, Mormon land grabbers and honourable Natives. Many of the good palefaces are Germans. The West is full of German beer, German songs and German newspapers.

And so he fulfills another dream: The Wild West becomes the colony Germany never had — the one they would have managed with wisdom and grace had they been given the chance. But May’s greatest contribution is his eloquent lament for the treatment of the Natives. He writes of deliberately spread smallpox, ignored treaties and massacres.

One of May’s most memorable characters is Winnetou, the Apache chief, who is (almost) an equal and who becomes an equal after he converts to Christianity on his deathbed.

Winnetou speaks English without an accent and reads Longfellow. He also tells of the plight of his people, finishing with: “Howgh! Ich habe gesprochen.” (How, I have spoken.)

It is because of Winnetou that waves of German tourists head to Western and Northern Canada each year to take part in native powwows. Sure it is wish fulfilment, but their wish is a lot more admirable than the approach most non-aboriginal Canadians take toward Native issues.

A Native dancer I spoke to in Saskatchewan had been on tour in Germany. He said it was a wonderful experience to be appreciated. “They ask questions. They want to know. It was great.”

When May finally visited North America, long after Winnetou was published, he did not make it west of Buffalo. But that does not matter. He travelled the way few people do, into the heart of humanity, into our wishes and dreams. The world he wrote about did not exist. But it would be rather pleasant if it did.

For more on aboriginal tourism in Canada go to: www.attc.ca or www.turtleisland.org; For Karl May-related links: www.old-shatterhand.de/; me@cleopaskal.com