Colors

My madcap friend, R., was just explaining this Hindu festival to me on Wednesday at dinner, after dancing.

May whatever is holy within you respond with joy to what is holy within the world.

Namaste.

My New Name For A Blog

What Charlene Said.

People worried about those who "become too rich" shouldn't wear Prada shoes.


Razi the Nazi can bite me.

The Seven Of Pentacles By Marge Piercy

Last night, my brilliant friend E. read this poem at our Ostara ritual. I'd forgotten how much I like it. The Seven, Eight, and, especially, Nine of Pentacles cards are v. important ones for me and show up v. often in readings that I do for myself. Piercy has a great way of looking at the Seven card, one that goes beyond the traditional satisfied, at rest, giving things time vs. dissatisfied, introspective, watching the pot boil interpretations of this card.



Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after
the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

Friday Cat Blogging

Miss Thing in the afternoon sunlight.

Handfasting, Alex And Maxine Saunders

He was such an ass. She was so brave.



Stupid. But brave.

Balance. Only Two Days Out of Three Hundred Sixty Five

My circle won't be celebrating until the Full Moon tomorrow night -- insane career bitches, we're huge adherents of the "three days rule" -- but I couldn't let today pass without a post for Eostara. When I was a good Catholic girl, Easter week, and the passion leading up to the crucifixion, was the most important part of my spiritual life.

Today, excommunicate that I am, dark and light hang in the balance. Tomorrow morning, when I wake early to finish preparing my home for Eostara observances and run out early to buy a birthday cake for my brilliant friend, E, the light will, for half the year, begin to win the contest. My yard is already showing that it's Spring, filled with hellebore, crocus, daffodils, bluebells, lilacs, woad, mint, sweet woodruff, grass.

Early this evening I walked barefoot all over my yard, out to the far southwest corner to pick forsythia and over to the southeast corner to pick jonquils. Sun in Pisces, I experience the world through my feet. Through my bare feet. Through my naked, bare feet, walking upon the wet, muddy, spring ground. The muddy ground made of decomposed oak and maple leaves and acorns on top of clay.

The muddy ground upon which I would rather walk, barefoot, than upon any carpet anywhere, in the world. I am a manifestation of the Goddess. May it be so for you. Balance. It's such a lovely trick!

I Am Going To Turn Someone Into A Newt

Kali on a cucumber! There is nothing -- NOTHING -- about Hillary Clinton that the mainstream media won't criticize.

In the 11,046 pages of Hillary Clinton's White House schedules released yesterday, every minute is scripted, down to when she takes her seat on a bench, when she is presented with a gift (1:35 p.m.) and when she makes a speech accepting it (1:40 p.m.), when she is escorted to an elevator and by whom and on what floor.

But not why. Never the why.

This is the briefest outline of a life, all mechanics and no feeling. If there are any insights here into the presidential candidate's interior life, they are between the typewritten lines and the reader's imagination.

If her schedules were sloppy and vague, she'd get criticized for that. If, as appears to be the case, they're detailed, that shows that she's too scripted. But here's the real idiocy. Take a look at your own calendar. Does it tell you why you do things? Does it offer any insights into your interior life? Mine either. For today, mine says: [Agency] meeting: 10:00, Dentist: 11:00, Logistics Subgroup Call: 4:00. All mechanics. No feeling. Guess I'm unfit to be president, as well.

I guess we're supposed to be surprised that her day as First Lady is busy and full. Here's how that plays out:

What must it be like to live inside such a script? It's as close as we mortals can get to being able to predict the future. Walking into a children's hospital, Clinton (or her handlers) would have already known that she would be "escorted to rocking chair by 4 patients who will sit next to her." This is comforting or this is maddening, depending on your point of view. For Clinton, whose poise and preparation are legendary, the bubble might be a lovely place. So cushioned. So controlled.

The bubble? Knowing ahead of time what she's going to be doing and what's expected of her is living in a bubble?

But somehow, Hillary is to blame for the fact that her calendar doesn't reveal all of her feelings and emotions and show us some deep revelation about her psyche:

As a matter of fact, there's a difference between being transparent and being scrutinized. Clinton is one of the most studied figures in public life, but she's also one of the most opaque. This is why the release of these documents seems like much more of the same. Just paper. [Of course, she was an evil, secretive bitch for not having already released this document, and now that she's released it, it's her fault that the document is -- horrors -- "just paper."] We know what she did on any particular day -- we might even know where she stood -- but not what she felt. Not what she said to her husband, the president. Not what she thought about it all.

All mechanics.

That cold, unfeeling bitch! Why, it's as bad as "Dentist: 11:00." No one would know how I FELT about the dental appointment. No one would have any insight into what KIND OF PERSON I AM! All mechanics.

You know, I'm going to take a wild guess here and suggest that George Bush's schedule and Laura Bush's schedule are as detailed, tightly-scripted, and as unrevealing of their true feelings as was Hillary Clinton's. The schedule of every CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation that I've known has also been as detailed and as scripted. The details are often there as much for the benefit of their staff (who get printed copies of the daily schedule) as for them. But I guess it's ok for them to have busy, tightly-scripted schedules.

It's amazing to me that the mainstream media can't find anything actually worthwhile to discuss about Clinton's released schedule. She's claimed to have gained experience in the White House that makes her a better candidate for president than her Democratic rival, Barack Obama. Any evidence of that in her schedule? Either way, that would be something interesting and worthwhile for voters to learn about. Or maybe the "reporter" could at least report. On the day that she visited the hospital, did Clinton adhere strictly to her timetable or did she stop along the way and chat with parents concerned about their child's medical bills? If you listen to her campaign speeches, she somehow has managed to talk to a lot of people about their medical bills; did any of that happen on the trip that this article singles out? The fact that a person's calendar is different from their Dear Diary is hardly instructive. But it's sure a cute way to bash Hillary Clinton and continue to stereotype her as a cold, unfeeling, mechanical bitch, living inside a "comforting bubble."

Bah!

Oddly Unlike The Witchcraft I Know

Honestly, I don't know anyone who, as far as I know, was initiated like this. Not that there's anything wrong with this initiation (OK, the fact that it came after three months of training -- far less than the standard "year and a day", strikes me as a bit off, but maybe they were an intense three months), but watching this clip, I was just struck by how different the Dianic Wicca that I practice is from the witchcraft depicted here -- which is not all that long ago. Having recently read Maxine Saunders' biography, I found this clip, and some others that the same person has posted on YouTube, really interesting.

Blogswarm Against The War

So it's the fifth anniversary of the day that George Bush, with the acquiescence of a Republican Congress and a Fourth Estate that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican Party, took my country to war against Iraq -- a country that never did anything to my country. I've tried all day to think what I could say about this war that hasn't been said.

I could say that it is immoral, as all wars are immoral. I could say that it is illegal, as it quite clearly is, and that nothing in the shameful resolution authorizing Bush to "use force" legalized it. I could say that, like all wars, it has caused untold human suffering and that much of that suffering has been inflicted on women and children and young men who were completely innocent. I could say that, like all wars, this war has been fought by the poor and the poorly-educated and has profited the already-rich and the powerful. I could say that this war, like all wars, has caused grievous harm to the Earth, which is already harmed almost unto death. I could say that this war, like all wars, has created and will continue to create many more problems than it will "solve" -- not that there was ever even a problem for this war to "solve" anywhere outside of George Bush's Oedipally -twisted morass of a soul.

But I think that what I will say is that this war, like all wars, is a symptom of a larger problem. This war, like all wars, would be impossible to imagine in a culture that actually valued life, women, children, the Earth, consensus, negotiation, nonviolence, diversity, empathy, sustainability, and the rule of law over the power of might. In short, this war is a symptom of patriarchy, of what Riane Eisler called the Culture of the Blade, rather than the Culture of the Chalice. And I will say that, until we address the root cause, we may end this war, or run out of credit to finance it, but my children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will have to be out in the streets, marching to end future wars as I've marched to end this one.

Which is one reason why I undermine the patriarchy every chance I get. I get a lot of chances. We all do. Let's use them.

How Shall I Live My Life: On Liberating the Earth from Civilization By Derrick Jensen

Environmental author and activist Derrick Jensen has a new book, due to be released this Friday, March 28th. How Shall I Live My Life?: On Liberating the Earth from Civilization, includes interviews with David Edwards, Thomas Berry, Jan Lundberg, Steven Wise, Carolyn Raffensperger, George Draffan, Kathleen Dean Moore, David Abram, Vine Deloria, and Jesse Wolf Hardin.

The blurb at Amazon says: Derrick Jensen discusses the destructive dominant culture with ten people who have devoted their lives to undermining it in this collection of interviews.

Whether it is Carolyn Raffensperger and her radical approach to public health, or Thomas Berry on perceiving the sacred; be it Kathleen Dean Moore reminding us that our bodies are made of mountains, rivers, and sunlight; or Vine Deloria asserting that our dreams tell us more about the world than science ever can, the activists and philosophers interviewed in How Shall I Live My Life? each bravely present a few of the endless forms that resistance can and must take.

I've pre-ordered my copy and hope to post a review early next week. I'm especially delighted to see Jensen including neo-Pagan* author Jesse Wolf Hardin. Jensen's concept of the Earth and our relationship with her has long struck me as fundamentally Pagan.

Meanwhile, have you read As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial, yet? If not, why?

*I'm not a huge fan of the term "neo-Pagan." Are today's Jews "neo-Jews" or today's Catholics "neo-Catholics"? Are today's Hindu's "neo-Hindus"? Hardin's wikipedia description lists him as neo-Pagan, and I believe that's how he has described himself, so I use the term here. It's all just the Goddess pouring the Goddess into the Goddess.

Art found here.

Because Actions Have Consequences

Really? No one can figure out why the Chinook Salmon have disappeared? You've got to be kidding me. You can't dam their rivers, pollute their ocean, overfish them, and then stand around scratching your head and wonder why they've disappeared.

This weekend, I was reading G/Son one of his favorite stories, Uno's Garden by Graeme Base. In the story, Uno finds a lovely forest and moves there. Others follow, delighted by the wildlife, including the ever-present snortlepig. G/Son delighted in being able to find the shy snortlepig in every picture; this is an often-read story. Eventually, the forest disappears as people overbuild and overpopulate. A day comes when the people move away, longing to live with trees, rather than concrete. Only Uno remains, providing a safe haven for the snortlepig in his tiny garden. And then, one day, the aged Uno and the aged snortlepig die. Although Uno's children and grandchildren and great grandchildren remain, living sustainably on the land and gradually noticing the return of many of the wonderful animals from before, the snortlepig is gone for good.

Nonna: No more snortlepig.

G/Son: Why?

Nonna: The snortlepig became extinct.

G/Son: 'Tinct?

Nonna: Yes, extinct. No more snortlepigs.

G/Son: Why?

Nonna: Overdevelopment. Too many people not taking care of Mother Nature.

G/Son: Read it again.

Look, if a two-year old can get it, I think the grownups can figure it out as well.

As Derrick Jensen says (and has been saying, for some time), Why is it bad that certain species go extinct? Is it because all species have an inherent value and right to existence, or is it because they are useful to the ecosystem, and it’s their utility that we’re losing?

Well, it’s all of those. First, obviously salmon and sturgeon and smelt and migratory songbirds, they all… It’s simply WRONG to exterminate them. They are beautiful and wonderful beings on their own. The purpose of salmon is to be salmon. The purpose of forests is to be forests. That’s really critical. Second, forests suffer tremendously without the existence of salmon. Salmon provide a tremendous influx of nutrients into the forest. They put on about 95 percent of their weight in the ocean, and carry this weight into the forest and die. When the salmon come in, it’s time for a feast. In the Pacific Northwest, 66 different vertebrates eat salmon. Between industrial fishing, dams, industrial forestry, and the other ways the civilized torment and destroy salmon, and rivers in the Northwest starve: they only receive about six percent of the nutrients they did a century ago. Natural communities can only undergo so much stress. After that they collapse. . . . At some point the current system is going to crash, and there are going to be people sitting along the banks of the Columbia, which will be glowing from the radiation at Hanford, and they will be saying, “I’m starving to death because you didn’t remove the dams that were killing salmon. God damn you.”

Figure it out people, figure it out.

A Poem For Irish Heritage Day*

I Am Of Ireland by William Butler Yeats

'I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,' cried she.
'Come out of charity,
Come dance with me in Ireland.'

One man, one man alone
In that outlandish gear,
One solitary man
Of all that rambled there
Had turned his stately head.
That is a long way off,
And time runs on,' he said,
'And the night grows rough.'

'I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,' cried she.
'Come out of charity
And dance with me in Ireland.'

'The fiddlers are all thumbs,
Or the fiddle-string accursed,
The drums and the kettledrums
And the trumpets all are burst,
And the trombone,' cried he,
'The trumpet and trombone,'
And cocked a malicious eye,
'But time runs on, runs on.'

I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,' cried she.
"Come out of charity
And dance with me in Ireland.'

*St. Patrick did the Irish no favor, and much harm, introducing them to xianity. Irish Catholicism, in particular, has always been quite dour and Irish Protestantism not much better. So I'll not celebrate any day in his honor, but will gladly lift a glass for Irish heritage.

Why He Sounds Especially Incoherent

Gail Collins dispenses rather easily with George Bush's most recent speech on America's in-the-tank economy:

Watching George W. Bush address the New York financial community Friday brought back many memories. Unfortunately, they were about his speech right after Hurricane Katrina, the one when he said: “America will be a stronger place for it.”

“You’ve helped make our country really in many ways the economic envy of the world,” he told the Economic Club of New York.

You could almost see the thought-bubble forming over the audience: Not this week, kiddo.

The president squinched his face and bit his lip and seemed too antsy to stand still. As he searched for the name of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (“the king, uh, the king of Saudi”) and made guy-fun of one of the questioners (“Who picked Gigot?”), you had to wonder what the international financial community makes of a country whose president could show up to talk economics in the middle of a liquidity crisis and kind of flop around the stage as if he was emcee at the Iowa Republican Pig Roast.

We’re really past expecting anything much, but in times of crisis you would like to at least believe your leader has the capacity to pretend he’s in control. Suddenly, I recalled a day long ago when my husband worked for a struggling paper full of worried employees and the publisher walked into the newsroom wearing a gorilla suit.

The country that elected George Bush — sort of — because he seemed like he’d be more fun to have a beer with than Al Gore or John Kerry is really getting its comeuppance. Our credit markets are foundering, and all we’ve got is a guy who looks like he’s ready to kick back and start the weekend.

This is not the first time Bush’s attempts to calm our fears redoubled our nightmares. His first speech after 9/11 — that two-minute job on the Air Force base — was so stilted that the entire country felt like heading for the nearest fallout shelter. After Katrina, of course, it took forever to pry him out of Crawford, and then he more or less read a laundry list of Goods Being Shipped to the Flood Zone and delivered some brief assurances that things would work out.

O.K., so he’s not good at first-day response. Or second. Third can be a problem, too. But this economic crisis has been going on for months, and all the president could come up with sounded as if it had been composed for a Rotary Club and then delivered by a guy who had never read it before. “One thing is certain that Congress will do is waste some of your money,” he said. “So I’ve challenged members of Congress to cut the number of cost of earmarks in half.”

Besides being incoherent, this is a perfect sign of an utterly phony speech. Earmarks are one of those easy-to-attack Congressional weaknesses, and in a perfect world, they would not exist. But they cost approximately two cents in the grand budgetary scheme of things. Saying you’re going to fix the economy or balance the budget by cutting out earmarks is like saying you’re going to end global warming by banning bathroom nightlights.

Bush pointed out — as if the entire economic world didn’t already know — that Congress has already passed an economic incentive package that will send tax rebate checks to more than 130 million households. “A lot of them are a little skeptical about this ‘checks in the mail’ stuff,” he jibed. Jokejoke. Winkwink.

Then, after a run through of “ideas I strongly reject,” Bush finally got around to announcing that he was going to “talk about what we’re for. We’re obviously for sending out over $150 billion into the marketplace in the form of checks that will be reaching the mailboxes by the second week of May.

“We’re for that,” he added.

Once the markets had that really, really clear, Bush felt free to go on to the other things he was for, which very much resembled that laundry list for Katrina (“400 trucks containing 5.4 million Meals Ready to Eat — or M.R.E.’s ... 3.4 million pounds of ice ...”) This time the rundown included a six-month-old F.H.A. refinancing program, and an industry group called Hope Now that offers advice to people with mortgage problems.

And then, finally, the nub of the housing crisis: “Problem we have is, a lot of folks aren’t responding to over a million letters sent out to offer them assistance and mortgage counseling,” the president of the United States told the world.

But wait — more positive news! The secretary of Housing and Urban Development is proposing that lenders supply an easy-to-read summary with mortgage agreements. “You know, these mortgages can be pretty frightening to people. I mean, there’s a lot of tiny print,” the president said.

Really, if he can’t fix the economy, the least he could do is rehearse the speech.



There's a reason that Bush often sounds like a bored husband pretending to discuss his failing marriage with his angry wife while he's really watching the ballgame and playing with his new X-Box.

He didn't really want or intend to do anything for the victims of Katrina. They're poor black people who aren't in "his base" and his base enjoys hating on them and screaming about how they're lazy looters and should just hurry up and die. (His own mother made pretty clear how the Bush family really felt about the victims of Katrina.) So he gave a crappy speech that did about as good a job of convincing anyone of his concern for people in New Orleans as the bored husband's "Mmm Hmms" and "OK, I knows" do of convincing his wife that he's really interested in saving his marriage.

Similarly, he doesn't really want or intend to do anything about the causes of our economic decline. That's because, like the husband whose refusal to get a job and determination to never do any housework are the root cause of the problems in his marriage, Bush's tax policies, unfunded Iraq war, and full-fleged attack on government regulation are the root causes of our current recession/depression. He's not going to change a damn thing that he's been doing wrong and he's kinda pissed that he has to drag his attention away from the ballgame to even pretend to care.

When pushed to the wall, like many irritated husbands, he blames the victims: Problem we have is, a lot of folks aren’t responding to over a million letters sent out to offer them assistance and mortgage counseling,” the president of the United States told the world, and complains that his wife just doesn't appreciate what he does do: Bush pointed out — as if the entire economic world didn’t already know — that Congress has already passed an economic incentive package that will send tax rebate checks to more than 130 million households. “A lot of them are a little skeptical about this ‘checks in the mail’ stuff,” he jibed. Then, he insists that the problem is really her mother: “One thing is certain that Congress will do is waste some of your money,” he said. “So I’ve challenged members of Congress to cut the number of cost of earmarks in half.”

Besides being incoherent, this is a perfect sign of an utterly phony speech. Earmarks are one of those easy-to-attack Congressional weaknesses, and in a perfect world, they would not exist. But they cost approximately two cents in the grand budgetary scheme of things. Saying you’re going to fix the economy or balance the budget by cutting out earmarks is like saying you’re going to end global warming by banning bathroom nightlights.

It's long past time to throw this bum out.