Feng Shui, personal directions: Feeling lucky?

By Courtney Nelson | Straight Talk

My last column, "Feng Shui for life," encouraged readers to pick a space that needed energy work and to clear the clutter and grime, inviting prosperity with Feng Shui. This second part will touch on personal directions, bad "sha" energy and adjustments.

Lucky numbers in the east and the west ideally, placement of a building, rooms and furniture should be based on best directions. A personal kua number, stemming from the Feng Shui Eight Mansions and determined by year of birth, determines individuals' luckiest directions, the way sleeping heads should lie, office locations, and oven and front-door placement. When it's not possible to accommodate all household members, place the major bread winner in their ideal locations first.

Determining kua numbers is simple but different for men and women (www.trustyguides.com/feng-shui4.html). For women, add the last two digits of the year you were born (subtract one year from your birth if your birthday is between Jan. 1 and Feb. 20) and keep adding the digits of the sums until there is only one digit. (For example, a person born in 1983 would add 8 plus 3, which equals 11, then add 1 plus 1, to get 2.)

Now add 5 and continue adding until there's one digit. On the last step, men should subtract 10 instead of adding 5. Whala - your kua!

One, 3, 4 and 9 are east people and 2, 5, 6, 7, 8 are west. To complicate the matter, the numbers also have water, earth, wood and fire element associations and trigrams.

Start with bedroom basics

The head of a bed should be placed against a wall to reinforce security. Avoid placing it under a window. Ideally you can use your kua number to determine the top four directions your head should face. If those directions aren't practical, then do sleep experiments to determine where you sleep best.

There should be only one door to a bedroom so chi energy can be absorbed instead of continuing through another door. Mirrors should not be visible from the bed. A-frames should not pass over the bed because stagnant chi accumulates in them. And don't hang lights or pictures over the bed head, because they are subconsciously threatening and reduce sleep quality.

Most importantly, upon waking, do you see an inspiring painting or breathtaking view or do you see a pile of clothes that need to be darned and a cluttered dresser? Adjust to inspire.

House compatibility

What direction does your front door face? If it faces southeast, northeast, southwest or east, then it's an east house. If it faces north, south, west or northwest, it's a west house. If you and your house belong to the same group, then your basic house Feng Shui is in your favor. Some people instinctively use another entrance that's more compatible with their direction.

Inside the house there are lucky directions associated with people's lives. Recognition and fame in the south, marriage prospects and marital happiness in the southwest, children in the west, mentors in the northwest, career prospects in the north, education in the northeast, family relationships and health in the east, and finally wealth and prosperity in the southeast. Determine your room direction placements and try to arrange accordingly.

Secret or poison arrows

"Secret arrows," are unseen energy lines that create disharmony. They are strong attacking energy in the form of pointed or sharp edges, pointing at your personal energy field. A neighbor's satellite dish can be a secret arrow if it's directed at your house or your most vulnerable spot: your front door. A church steeple, electrical pylons, roof lines or any set of parallel straight lines can cause problems. Furniture and framed photos can create disruptive secret arrows.

At the intersection of Egan Drive and old Glacier Highway is a huge radio tower creating secret arrows. The arrows are directed directly at the spot I, and many others, have lost control of our cars. I ping-ponged from the guardrail to the ditch when I entered the secret arrow energy line and was shaken to the bone. I'm just sayin' ...

Many secret arrows can be softened or deflected quite easily with mirrors, plants and crystals. Take a look outside your front door. Can you see any secret arrows directed at you?

"Killing Breath" - too much of a good thing

If chi is off balance in either direction, the life force energy can turn into a destructive element called "sha," or "killing breath." This can happen in your home or in the larger city.

I looked at accident locations in Juneau over the last 10 years and found Back Loop Road, Mendenhall Road, Egan and Glacier Highway are accident hot spots likely due to long stretches of road where chi moves so swiftly it turns destructive.

Gentle meandering Old Glacier Highway along Twin Lakes for example might be a better travel choice.

Stagnation

Stagnation is created by sharp corners and angles and the United States designs things on square grid patterns which is problematic. Juneau recently put in the roundabout on Douglas Island to improve the flow and ease of traffic, which is more in line with Feng Shui's circular patterns.

Round objects are also good inside the home as opposed to sharp angled furniture. Angles can be softened by plants or other elements.

Avoid the "T"

If your house is positioned at the top of a "T" with cars driving toward your front door, consider an adjustment. This is practical because if they don't brake or turn adequately, they will end up on your property. Consider moving or protecting your house with a fence or row of trees.

Buckingham Palace, for example, is placed at a "T" intersection but has a statue and roundabout that deflected the channeled energy flow coming down the mall. That is until they "pedestrianised" it, and energy flowed directly into the palace. Some people believe the popularity of the British Monarchy went down after this, and Prince Charles and Princess Diana broke up as well as all the Queen's children's marriages.

•••

Feng Shui can be used as a tool to access the mysteries of the universe by studying the environment, seasonal changes, tides and vibrations of nature.

And it's a fun way to look at your environment.

• Contact Juneau resident Courtney Nelson at nelsonfamily@acsalaska.net">nelsonfamily@acsalaska.net if you would like a part three to the series covering Trigrams, elements, sexagenary year, the 12 earthly branches and more.

Disclaimer: Courtney Nelson is not a Feng Shui master, so take this column with a grain of salt and a shot of tequila.

Rachael Juzeler takes us inside the historic home that inspires her art

By Courtney Nelson | For the Juneau Empire

Rachael Juzeler, multimedia artist and Quality Assurance Analyst for the Alaskan Brewing Co., knew she wanted to buy her home before she'd set foot inside.

"The realtor hadn't shown up yet so I walked underneath the house and I saw the post and beams were all original, old-growth timber and that's when I knew I had to have it."

According to articles from 2003 in the Douglas Island News, Willette Janes, who has since passed away, determined the house was built as early as 1910, making the historic home a landmark, 100 years old this year. Sitting on the upper corner of St. Ann's Avenue on the Treadwell side, it was one of only three houses that survived the Douglas Island fire of 1926, during which St. Ann's Hospital, schools, businesses, private homes, and Tlingit Alley on Sandy Beach all perished.

The location of the home has been a source of inspiration for Juzeler's art, which covers a wide range of media and often incorporates unusual materials. Rusty nails, for example, are featured in many of her art pieces.

"I've always been drawn to the color of rust - my whole life," said Juzeler. "I really like decaying organic patterns."

Her Sandy Beach location bordered by the Treadwell mining ruins has lots of decaying and rusting things from gold mining days.

"Pots on the beach, rusty gates, old tricycles - they all inspire me."

Preserving history

Juzeler bought the house in 2001. In the 91 years prior to her purchase, there were only three families associated with it. It was owned by the Brown family from Scotland as early as 1914; David Brown started the annual Robbie Burns Day. Brown was married to Agnes and they had three children, Etta, David Sinclair and David Alfred.

As early as 1920, Etta Brown married the head linotype technician for the Empire Printing Company, Arthur Bringdale.

To Juzeler's delight she found some Empire newspapers from 1923 under her kitchen floor when she tore up carpeting.

"There was obviously a kitchen fire that left a hole in the floor, and they used newspapers as insulation along with a tin and some plywood for a quick fix."

Brown worked for the Treadwell Gold Mining Company, the biggest in the world at that time. In 1917 three of the four Treadwell mines, tunneled to depths as low as 500 ft. below sea level, flooded and then caved, causing a splash that shot over 200 feet in the air. Brown went to work for the Alaska Juneau Gold Mining Company (AJ) after that and eventually moved.

In 1925 the Alaska Douglas Gold Mining Company sold the house to one of their managers, Englishman Frank Pearce and his wife Margaret, for $1. Pearce also worked for the Treadwell mine and then moved to the AJ mine. The couple had two daughters, Margaret and Mary Ellen. Margaret lived there until she died around 1990, and her husband Donald Murray lived there until about 2000.

The hills in Treadwell were nicknamed for the majority of nationalities that lived on them. Juzeler's house sits on "Belgian Hill." The Treadwell post office used to be directly across the street.

Juzeler has discovered many exciting clues that help paint a picture of the home's history.

On her woodworking room wall she found the signature of the man who built the home.

"I knew what it was right away - the calligraphy, the lead pencil, the placement," said Juzeler. She framed the signature in the builder's honor.

Wallpaper left over from a two-room addition and remodel done by the Pearce's in 1926 was left on the wall for nostalgic reasons, Juzeler said.

"it was similar to my grandmother's, in her home in eastern Washington."

Burning and building

Juzeler creates art all over her house but her primary tool is her fire-pit. "I burn big pallets in my front yard fire-pit, collect the burnt nails in a bucket, soak them in water until they're rusty, and extract them with a giant magnet."

"I'm always building things," she said.

She also uses a kiln, cooks wax on the stove, and works with felt on the floor. Last year she had a solo show at the Juneau-Douglas City Museum that features large-scale textile projects, felted vessels and resin-covered shadow-box style three dimensional works that incorporated metal objects such as bullet casings. This year she was featured at the Plant People with a new series of work that incorporated paper, wax, wood and wing nuts.

"I usually try and contain the work to one room, but before a show, I take up all the rooms."

This is fine with Tiffany Rutherford, who rents a room from Juzeler. "It's exciting because the house is full of energy, and Rachael is being creative all over the place. Every time you come home a new piece of art is done and you can sit and listen to her brainstorm about her new projects."

This is the first time Rutherford has lived in a 100-year-old home and she loves it. "It's quirky - the wood creaks. There are little hidey holes like under the stairs. It would be a great place for little kids to play hide and seek."

Sometimes Rutherford feels like she's not alone. "Every once in a while a presence is felt - the room will get really cold - sometimes when I'm home alone at night something is moving around and it isn't the sleeping cat and dog."

Rust-colored beer

When she's not at home creating rusty art, Juzeler is assuring the quality of rust colored beer based on a Gold-Rush era Douglas City Brewing Co. recipe. That beer, brewed up by Marcy and Geoff Larson in the 1980s, has turned into the flagship beer of the Alaskan Brewing Co., Alaskan Amber. Juzeler also comes up with her own flavors, such as the original rough draft, Ginger Shandy.

Juzeler's realtor said there was rumored to be a still in the basement that had to be dismantled before the Murray family could get a loan.

Juzeler plans on restoring the home as close to the original shape as she can. She's currently rebuilding the front porch so it looks like the original structure and color.

"That's why I painted it red with green trim, but I'm taking a little liberty with the tone of the color," she said. She is also in the process of placing it on the national historic register.

Her wood floors are original and the worn patterns on the floor also tell a tale of life in the house: Gold miners picking up mail from the post office across the street and heading back to Belgian hill to have a beer.