Feast Of The Red Dragon: You Should Go!

What are you doing on Saturday that's more important?

The Red Dragon Feast is an annual magical feast and fundraiser for
healing blood-borne disease. Donations benefit community building and
a local charity committed to healing blood borne disease.

The event takes place in three phases: 1. drumming, dancing and
ritual; 2. feasting and toasting; and 3. a silent and live auction.
We focus our intent by wearing red clothes, eating red food, and
toasting with red drink.

All Hail the Red Dragon!
All Hail the Life Giving Blood

Date: Saturday, April 10, 2010
Time: 2:00pm - 5:00pm
Location: Renaissance Hall, Westminster Presbyterian Church
Street: 400 I St. S.W.
City: Washington, DC
Donation: $13.00
Contact: Eldritch@EldritchVentures.org

The Trustees of the Ecumenicon Fellowship have given the 2010
Infinity Award for "Group Public Service" to the DC Radical Faeries.
"As the sponsors of the Red Dragon Feast for blood-borne diseases, by
this alone you all deserve an award. We also recognize the work of
the DC Radical Faeries as active facilitators in the early years of
the Pagan Leadership Conference; energetic ritualists at several
Pagan Pride Festivals; and wonderful participants in the DC Pride
Interfaith Services." Representatives of the DC Radical Faeries
received this award on behalf of the DC Radical Faeries as a whole.
The Infinity Awards were presented at an awards banquet in Rockwood
Manor, in Potomac, MD on Friday, March 26, 2010. Eldritch, Aero,
Tigre, Scorch and Chanel were present to receive this honor.
Congratulations Everyone!

Picture found here.

May The Goddess Guard Her. May She Find Her Way To The Summerlands. May Her Friends And Family Know Peace.

Wilman Mankiller passed away earlier today. CNN reports:

CNN) -- Wilma Mankiller, the first woman to lead the Cherokee native American tribe, died Tuesday after a battle with pancreatic cancer, Cherokee leaders announced Tuesday. She was 64.
Mankiller served 10 years as principal chief of the Cherokee, the second-largest U.S. tribe, and became its first freely elected leader in 1987. President Clinton awarded her the Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian honor, in 1998.

"Our personal and national hearts are heavy with sorrow and sadness with the passing this morning of Wilma Mankiller," said Chad Smith, her successor as chief of the Oklahoma-based tribe. "We feel overwhelmed and lost when we realize she has left us, but we should reflect on what legacy she leaves us. We are better people and a stronger tribal nation because of her example of Cherokee leadership, statesmanship, humility, grace, determination and decisiveness."

The CNN report is typical in that it calls Chief Mankiller "the first woman to lead the Cherokee native American tribe". I believe those reports should say, "the first recorded woman to lead the Cherokee nation," but I take their meaning. Wikipedia notes that: Mankiller is sometimes incorrectly referred to as the first woman chief of a Native American tribe. In the 20th century, Alice Brown Davis became Principal Chief of the Seminole Tribe of Oklahoma in 1922 and Mildred Cleghorn became the Chairperson of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe in 1976.

In earlier times, a number of women led their tribes.


She once explained that, I've run into more discrimination as a woman than as an Indian.

When I was young and needed some strong female leaders to look up to, Chief Mankiller was one of the women I found to focus on. Back then, the patriarchy made a lot of jokes about her name. She showed a lot of grace under pressure.

Thank you, Chief.

Picture found here.

In The End, Enough

Every day, no matter what else happens, I drive by the Potomac River and we talk to each other. Every day, no matter what else happens, the weeds along the ramp to the T.R. Bridge are growing and leafing out and pulling energy from the soil. Every day, no matter what else happens, I come home, I sit on my rock, and I converse with the trees and plants here, on my bit of Earth.

And, in the end, that is, indeed, enough.

May it be so for you.

Easter 1916 By W.B. Yeats

I

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

II

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse.
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vain-glorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

III

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter, seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute change.
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim;
And a horse plashes within it
Where long-legged moor-hens dive
And hens to moor-cocks call.
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

IV

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death.
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead.
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse --
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Picture found here.

Are You A Native Of Your Landbase?

Joanna's written a post that's quite full of what I've been mulling about over the past few months. Isn't it amazing how this happens so often in the blogosphere? You should read the whole thing; here are a few of my favorite excerpts:


Loren Cruden speaks of this challenge of finding the balance between place and ancestry: “If you are from a race or culture that isn’t Native American, you can still feel a soul connection to the spirit and form of this land. What seems to be emerging in North America is a path derived from the same spirit of place that the Natives tuned to, but that expresses itself through a marriage of ancestry and place. . . . Ancestry gives form and continuity to spiritual practice; place gives immediacy and manifestation to power.”

But there is another, more important reason for becoming native to your place: the earth needs it. David Landis Barrett writes, “[The earth] needs people who live in a native way, who consider themselves people of the land. European-Americans have been so destructive to this continent and its indigenous peoples in large part because we have rejected the notion that we are native to the earth. We have insisted on our transcendence and so devastation has followed in our path. To seek a new sense of nativeness — a slow and stumbling process to be sure — is one of the ways we can begin to live well with the earth and all its peoples.”

How then, as non-indigenous peoples, do we become native to the land where we live?

. . .

Or as Gary Snyder says, “[I]f you know what is taught by the plants and weather, you are in on the gossip and can truly feel more at home.”

These days I am learning to be “in on the gossip” of my Place — I watch as the Steller’s jays squabble over the sunflower seeds I set out for them and notice the towhees and juncos quietly await their turn at the feeder. I know where the chickaree (Douglas squirrel) hides her stash of seeds and nuts in the autumn, and what part of the woods holds the most luscious mushrooms. I know the slough where the great blue heron lives and when the tree frogs will begin their chorus in the spring. I know where to harvest wild onions in the summer and where to find nettles in the earliest days of spring. I know how far north the sun sets at midsummer, and how low in the sky it rides at noon in midwinter.

This, then, is how we become native to the land: by loving her well, first of all. By observing, being aware, studying, and participating in the life cycle of the land instead of dominating it. We do this by keeping nature journals, by gardening with native plants, by sitting so still the birds forget we’re there. We do it in ways too numerous to list or count.

Being native is not something that we are, it’s something that we do. We are, if we so choose, always in the process of becoming native to the land.

The notion of local gossip ties in with something that I've been thinking about these last few days. What's happening in my world, what's really important to me, but what I can't really discuss with anyone because, well, you know, NO ONE CARES, is that the fox scat from a week ago has completely melted and disappeared into the ground. The butterbur flowers, which are odd in the extreme, have opened up and spread way out. The male cardinal has almost completely seduced the female cardinal and the baby squirrels have begun to peak out of the nest in the crape myrtle tree. The weeds that I worry about on the on-ramp to the Teddy Roosevelt bridge have mostly, but not all, sprung up from this season's snow and begun to leaf out. When the wind blows the branches of the cherry trees on my block, it mostly blows to the East, and the big flock of robins that overwintered here has now gone even farther North.

Where do you "live"? Are you a native of that place? How does that change what you do, how does it change your spiritual practice, how does it change who you are? If not, why not? If not now, when? If it hasn't, are you truly Pagan?



Picture found here.

My New Name For A Blog

What Sia Said.

Gardening

And, so, after a brutal winter, a glorious spring. My neighbors' deciduous magnolia is having a once in every decade bloom, and the perfect scent keeps wafting over to me as I plant herbs, clean up sticks and debris, work on the container gardens.

Years ago, when I lived in an apartment with a sunless balcony, container gardening was all that I could do and I did as much of it as I could. Son and DiL still laugh about the time that I got them to drive DiL's tiny del Sol convertible out to a garden center to buy tons of topsoil. But when I moved from the apartment to my little cottage, I swore that I was through with container gardening, forever. Real Earth, real dirt, real soil for me!

Of course, it was only a few seasons before I began to eye empty space on the deck and think, "Well, mint's actually better grown in containers so it can't take over the whole yard . . . ." And, so, here I am, with a yard of my own all planted in lilacs and gardenias and wisteria and lilies and herbs, and, still, doing container gardening, as well. And today was "Clean up the container gardens and get things planted day." The really good thing, IMHO, about container gardening is that you can accomplish a lot in a short time, can get that amazing feeling of having "wreaked order" on a finite bit of the universe, and all for not too much effort. I've got peppermint, spearmint, and chocolate mint already going gangbusters. I'm about to put in a lemon pot, with lemon grass, lemon balm, and lemon mint all together. I've got violas (psychedelic and Bowle's black, both edible) planted, and some white four-o-clocks just for fun and in memory of my Grandma, who loved to grow them.

The picture above (taken by the author; if you copy, please link back) shows fiddleheads from the ferns in the woodland garden. My mom used to watch for these, pick them, and saute them in a bit of butter. (Warning, some ferns are now considered carcinogenic,) I'm more eager for the ferns to fill out, so I don't pick them, but once in a while I find fiddleheads at the farmers' market and I do pay an outrageous amount for them in memory of my mom, who never met a weed or wild plant she didn't like to eat.

How does your garden (in the words of the nursery rhyme) grow? What parts of your garden harken back to other members of your family?

And Kept On Moving

April 1st Bazooms Blogging

Ladies! Listen up! Detecting breast cancer early is the key to surviving it! Breast Self Exams (BSEs) can help you to detect breast cancer in its earlier stages. So, on the first of every month, give yourself a breast self-exam. It's easy to do. Here's how. If you prefer to do your BSE at a particular time in your cycle, calendar it now. But, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And, once a year, get yourself a mammogram. Mammograms cost between $150 and $300. If you have to take a temp job one weekend a year, if you have to sell something on e-Bay, if you have to go cash in all the change in various jars all over the house, if you have to work the holiday season wrapping gifts at Macy's, for the love of the Goddess, please go get a mammogram once a year.

Or: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pays all or some of the cost of breast cancer screening services through its National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. This program provides mammograms and breast exams by a health professional to low-income, underinsured, and underserved women in all 50 states, six U.S. territories, the District of Columbia, and 14 American Indian/Alaska Native organizations. For more information, contact your state health department or call the Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER.

I know that a recent study indicated that early detection via breast self exams might not be "cost effective." I'm not a scientist, but when I read those studies, they appear to be saying that sometimes women find a lump during the BSE that turns out not to be cancer. Those women have caused some expense and have gone through some discomfort in order to find out that the lump wasn't cancer. I don't know about you, but when that happens to me, as it has a few times since my first mammogram found a small, curable, cancerous lump, I go out and buy a new scarf, take myself out for a decadent lunch, call everyone I know, and call it a good day.

Send me an email after you get your mammogram and I will do an annual free tarot reading for you. Just, please, examine your own breasts once a month and get your sweet, round ass to a mammogram once a year. If you have a deck, pick three cards and e-mail me at hecatedemetersdatter@hotmail.com. I'll email you back your reading. If you don't have a deck, go to Lunea's tarot listed on the right-hand side in my blog links. Pick three cards from her free, on-line tarot and email me at hecatedemetersdatter@hotmail.com. I'll email you back your reading.

Picture found here.