Passing It On

I hope you weren’t expecting any early Saturday morning blogging, faithful Hecate readers.

I’ve been having an interesting experience at work this past couple of months. A new hire joined the team and was put my office that I share with another person. Officially the office is supposed to be for three, but in reality it’s damn tiny and at least to this introvert, less private than a cubicle. G was born a year after I graduated from college. I’m friendly cheerfully showing her the ropes at work, but expect this lovely young women more interested in clubs and stuff that like rather than spending additional time with a quiet slightly eccentric 45 year old. I’m agreeably surprised when she keeps asking me to get lunch. When time permits join her rather than eating at my desk with my newspaper which had been by habit. She talks of boys, uncertainties, changes, moving to a new place, all the drama of being 22. I remember those times, and draw on those experiences.

I start feeling a call from the Goddess and my ancestresses in spirit telling me that she is unsettled and I can help. So I do, I think. I tell her stories of my wonderful circle, since I feel oddly comfortable telling her about that part of my life which I normally keep quiet. I do not tell her to recruit her to my circle since that isn’t our way but to tell her of the strong, accomplished, independent women I am fortunate to know since I know she is on her way to be one. I tell her of the careers, wild hobbies and adventures, loves, some choosing to be alone, others marrying and having children, trying balance out the responsibilities. I tell her about the circle rallying around a former sister stricken with breast cancer and even those not particularly acquainted providing aid and comfort because that what women do. We talk about relationships and when do you work on saving one and when do you decide to walk away. I’m amazed sometimes as the wisdom that comes within. I see in her eyes that while I haven’t given her the answers I give her a lot to think about.

Sadly she has decided to move back to more familiar ground, though I support her, since that’s strong women do. I wonder if the reason she came here was that so we could meet and connect. She talks of getting together this summer and maintaining our friendship, visiting. I certainly hope so since we are both the better from this friendship. So Mote It Be.

When Witches Dance, the World Changes

One of many things I love about Hecate is that for the past year, we get together with our friend R. on Wednesday night, and do an ecstatic dance DVD from Gabrielle Roth. No worries about looking bad or doing it wrong. You just close yours eyes and do what you can, shaking what you can.

Sometimes the energy is high and we collapse on the floor out of breath. Sometimes the energy is low and we sway gently as we talk in the spirit of something is better than nothing. Sometimes Miss Thing braves the scary basement to see what her crazy mom and friends are doing. We laugh and give her cat treats as part of the dance. We use the energy we raise to heal our bodies and minds and send the excess to the ground to add to the pool of energy and protection to Hecate's home.

After we finish the DVD, we go upstairs to do another type of dance in her kitchen, chatting and moving around each other as we put the finishing touches on our healthy potluck dinner, opening a bottle of wine, setting the table, firing up the blender to make smoothies. Once everything is ready, we sit, preferably on Hecate’s back porch when the weather is nice and look out on her backyard which is almost as beloved by R and I as it is to Hecate and watch as it changes through the year.

When we remember it, we start by reading the daily reading from Meal by Meal: 365 Daily Meditations for Finding Balance Through Mindful Eating
And we talk about among other thing our lives, politics, our circles and practices, gardening, growing up, healing, magic, cooking, nutrition, sometimes serious, sometimes with laughter. We are mindful of work we need to do next day so try to leave at a reasonable hour but sometimes the conversation gets so intense we lose track and wind up our dragging our asses the next day.

As with the larger of women we belong to, when our little group gets together, I am honored and humbled to be part of this group. All the chick movies, and “Sex and City” knock offs are pale imitations of this sisterhood and I am grateful for my good fortune in finding these women.

Hail and Welcome!

I'm K. and I will be your guest blogger for today. I will admit though I do blink a bit in suprise when Hecate refers as being her "v. creative friend K." given the wonderfully crative women in our circle, but I strive to live up to the moniker.

Normally when Hecate is away, I'm in charge with making sure Miss Thing gets the attention due her. Since Hecate is sheltering in place she asked me to do this instead. I'm not sure whether it is a promotion or demotion.

This is actually my very first blog. It's odd though, even though my current work incarnation is as a technical editor/writer and I've been editing and creating television series for a online production company, I've never been into journaling even before advent of blogging, live journals. Actually most of my fun downtime writing has been slash as well as het fanfiction. I promise to keep it clean here, though. I don't want Hecate coming back to a mess.

Guestblogging

I'm going to be out of commission for a day or so (purportedly nothing serious). My v. creative friend K. will be guestblogging for me until I'm off the really good drugs and back at the keyboard.

I know that you'll enjoy whatever she has to say!

Spare some nice thoughts for me tomorrow if you're so inclined. Merci.

Guestblog: Current Administration Scandals, Part So Many I've Lost Count

I don't even have time to go into the whole thing right now, but those of you who care about the state of our country, what's going on in Iraq, our service men and women, and Curious George the Boyking's latest disasters need to check out the Blackwater story:

• Salon.com
• WaPo
• Mother Jones
• Democracy Now

As Al Gore points out in The Assault on Reason: "Our Founders' faith in the viability of representative democracy rested on their trust in the wisdom of a well-informed citizenry...."

So what are you waiting for?

Guestblog: It wouldn't BE guestblogging without a post about music

A few random tidbits:

Best discovery from Jazz Fest this year? Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews. He put out his first album at 17, fronts a quintet that includes two Marsalises (Marsali?), Kermit Ruffins and John Boutte, and founded a band called Orleans Avenue. And he's now all of 21.

After 12 years of classical lessons as a kid, and about 10 years off playing, I've been taking jazz piano lessons for the past year. If you're ever in the DC area, you should definitely check out my teacher, Amy Bormet, at one of her frequent gigs around town. She's awesome!

One of the things Amy has me attempting to do is transcribe recordings. Transcribing is HARD! One of the musicians I'm trying to transcribe is Gene Harris, whose recording of Summertime will change your life. Yeah, I'm definitely going to play like Gene when I don't suck.

Finally, the Tipitina's Foundation is still trying to put instruments back in the hands of New Orleans kids through school music programs, a vital incubator of jazz talent in Crescent City, the USA, and the entire world. Help 'em out.

Guestblog: It's GAMETIME, baby!

I'm still at Hecate's, but at my house, Sunday means football. I know most of you are NOT American football fans...but for those who are, my new name for a blog is: what I wrote (in my other blogging life). Check it out - and trust me, you'll enjoy.

Guestblog: This, Also, Is Poetry

So close, no matter how far
Couldn't be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
and nothing else matters

Never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words I don't just say
and nothing else matters

Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
and nothing else matters

never cared for what they say
never cared for games they play
never cared for what they do
never cared for what they know
and I know

So close, no matter how far
Couldn't be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
No, nothing else matters

--James Hetfield (Metallica)

Guestblog: Jezebel

A little frivolity over your morning coffee:

Jezebel: "Celebrity, sex, fashion. Without the Airbrushing."

Make sure to check out the comments on each entry - they're the best part.

Guestblog: Poetry Blogging

Then an old man, a keeper of an inn, said, "Speak to us of Eating and Drinking."

And he said:

Would that you could live on the fragerance of the earth, and like an air plant be sustained by the light.

But since you must kill to eat, and rob the young of its mother's milk to quench your thirst, let it then be an act of worship,

And let your board stand an altar on which the pure and the innocent of forest and plain are sacrificed for that which is purer and still more innocent in many.

When you kill a beast say to him in your heart,

"By the same power that slays you, I to am slain; and I too shall be consumed. For the law that delivered you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand.

Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven."

And when you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart,

"Your seeds shall live in my body,

And the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart,

And your fragrance shall be my breath,

And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons."

And in the autumn, when you gather the grapes of your vineyard for the winepress, say in you heart,

"I too am a vineyard, and my fruit shall be gathered for the winepress,

And like new wine I shall be kept in eternal vessels."

And in winter, when you draw the wine, let there be in your heart a song for each cup;

And let there be in the song a remembrance for the autumn days, and for the vineyard, and for the winepress.

--Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

Guestblog: Saturday Goddess Blogging

So I'm sitting here on Hecate's screen porch, having just fed Miss Thing, enjoying my second cup of coffee, listening to the acorns bounce off the roof, and thinking that I really need to Goddess blog Hestia, since I seem to have offended her mightily. Which is why I'm sitting here on Hecate's screen porch drinking my coffee rather than sitting at my kitchen table with the WaPo.

This past week, in the middle of the night, a gasket in my second floor bathroom decided that it didn't want to be a gasket any more, resulting in a flood of truly epic proportions chez E. Hecate generously offered to let me stay with her, and, after I realized, on Thursday morning, that my walk-in closet floor had also gotten wet and I was going to have to move all my clothes to the last remaining available horizontal storage surface, MY BED, leaving me no place to sleep, I gladly accepted.

Anyway, Hestia, this one's for you.

Hestia, according to Wikipedia (which Science magazine tested and found to be as reliable as the venerable Encyclopedia Britanica), "is the goddess of the hearth, of the right ordering of domesticity and the family, who received the first offering at every sacrifice in the household." It continues to note, "At a very deep level her name means 'home and hearth': the household and its inhabitants." Hestia is the original home fire that was kept burning. Homer called her the chief among all the Goddesses. To quote Homer:

Hestia, you who tend the holy house of the lord Apollo, the Far-shooter at goodly Pytho, with soft oil dripping ever from your locks, come now into this house, come, having one mind with Zeus the all-wise: draw near, and withal bestow grace upon my song.

All hail Hestia! And, Lady, please smile on me once again.

Guestblog: My New Name for a Blog

What Kate Harding wrote.

Make sure you check out the slideshow on Flickr.

Guestblog: Big Conservative Babies, Part One Million

In case you hadn't heard, Clarence Thomas has come out with a memoir, My Grandfather's Son (which would technically be his father, but whatever). Here's the thing - we all KNOW he sexually harrassed Anita Hill, and likely many others. If he'd come out and said: "I did everything she claimed and more. But I'm a Supreme Court Justice and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Suck it, bitches!" I might, might, have had a little respect for him. As it is? He's a creep, a liar AND a whiner. Stopped my nostalgia for Bush 41 right in its tracks. He was just as bad as Curious George the Boyking. What is it with these two and ruining entire branches of the government?

Friday Cat Blogging

I'm off to show G/Son how the leaves in the mountains turn to gold, and copper, and the color of the sun on water.

My brilliant friend, E, will entertain you this weekend.

I'll be back on Monday, if the mountains let me go.

If It's Monday, I Must Be In DC

Many, many thanks to my brilliant friend, E, for filling in for me. We had a wonderful weekend in the mountains, cold weather notwithstanding. If you haven't had a chance to read E's posts, check them out. From net neutrality, to DC voting rights, to New Orleans, to some very hot poetry, she covered a lot of interesting topics. (Thanks, too, to my very creative friend K. who took care of Miss Thing and my plants!)

Meanwhile, happy second blogversary to The Gods Are Bored -- it's on my daily must-read list.

Also, while he's more sanguine about the Chrisitianists' ultimate goal (coughitissotheocracycough) Jason at the Wild Hunt does the best job that I've seen so far of explaining their current strategy and goals:

[W]hile conservative Christians would love to see a "real" Christian in office, it isn't nearly as important as planning for the future.

Youth movements like the militaristic BattleCry, the baby-machine politics of the "quiverfulls", and the slow take-over of military academies by evangelicals point to a movement that knows it hasn't reached its goal (yet), but hopes that the next generation just might. In the meantime, conservative Christian groups try to push laws on the state and federal level that will privilege the Christian majority without the violating constitutional rights outright. The ultimate goal isn't supreme political power, but massive cultural power that will ensure that any who do rise in politics can't ignore conservative Christian demands.

This is already taking shape. Not a single presidential candidate, no matter how liberal, dares to offend evangelicals (if they want to win). A Muslim congressman swearing in on the Koran instead of the Bible makes national news, and teaching the Bible in school is no longer seen as a fringe issue. What we are seeing isn't necessarily the coming of a theocracy (though I suppose all things are possible), but the makings of an entrenched Christian population that has a powerful influence over our daily lives. No need to get rid of our Constitution, after all, we are a Christian Nation don't you know?


What he has to say is especially scary when you consider that the Bush junta has stuffed the government at every level with Christianists.

Thanks, y'all!

I hope you all have enjoyed my guestblogging over the past few days as much as I have.

I know the topics have been a bit of a change, hopefully an interesting and informative one.

I now return you to your regular programming.

So until the next time Hecate takes some richly deserved personal time, ciao!

A Story for Our Times

On Saturday, September 30. 2006, Luis "Quike" Morales was bartending the closing shift at DC's The Argonaut. After closing up and cleaning up, he walked to his girlfriend's house about two blocks from the bar. At 5:30 am, he and his girlfriend were sitting on the front porch and, in a robbery attempt gone all the way bad, Quike was shot in the head.

Amazingly, he survived. After about two weeks in a coma, Quike woke up and found out that about half of his skull had shattered and would need to be reconstructed. Unfortunately for Quike, he works in the service industry, like about 23 million other Americans. And, in common with most of those people, he lacks health insurance, as our benighted country is pretty much the only advanced industrial democracy in the ENTIRE WORLD that refuses to provide universal health coverage.

Now Quike might be able to finance his expensive medical bills with credit - it's easy to get credit these days. But how long do you think it will take someone who gets most of his income from tips to pay off medical bills that are well into 6 figures? And thanks to the Republican 108th Congress and the credit card companies, declaring bankruptcy won't help. ("Consumer Protection Act" my sweet round booty.)

So what can you do to help?

1. Support gun control. Until recently, handguns were illegal in Washington, DC. Unfortunately, they're not in Virginia, and it's REALLY easy to get them there. And Virginia's only a bridge away.
2. Listen to Quike's story in his own words.
3. Support Universal Health Care. Support politicians who support universal health care.
4. Make a donation (securely, online, through Amazon.com) to help Quike pay his medical bills.

A Requiem in Four Parts

As I prepare to head to my second Jazz Fest in about 10 days, I wanted to take the opportunity to remind people that New Orleans - indeed, the entire Gulf Coast - still desperately needs our help. You see, Dubya still doesn't care about black people. Large sections of the city and the entire region have barely been touched in the almost 20 months since Katrina made landfall. FEMA's still fucking people out of their trailers. No one (coughcough Federal Government) is putting any pressure on the insurance companies to give people their goddamn money. The local economy is shredded. The three major local industries, shrimping (and fishing more generally), the oil industry, and tourism, are all still struggling to recover. Actually, between the oil-industry facilitated loss of wetlands and the hurricane damage, Gulf fishing may never recover.

So what can you do?

1. Inform yourself about what happened in August of 2005. Watch Spike Lee's excellent When the Levees Broke. Don't close your eyes.
2. Pay attention. For hundreds of thousands of people who are still displaced, whose homes are still destroyed, whose tight-knit families and communities are still dispersed, it ain't over yet. The Times Picayune won Pulitzers for their heroic hurricane coverage, and the paper remains an excellent source of news. And tell other people what you find out.
   
3. Support charities. No, not the damn Red Cross. Spend locally. There are lots of good options: the Tipitina's Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, the Musicians Relief Fund, Common Ground...there's an almost endless list of choices. You don't have to give $1 million (although if you have it lying around...) - many of these organizations can do amazing things with as little as $10.
4. Support wetlands restoration. One of the reasons the entire region is increasingly vulnerable to hurricanes is the tremendous loss of wetlands in the area. Mike Tidwell, founder and director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and all-around righteous dude, has written an excellent book that lays out what's happened to date, the mounting dangers, and the possible solutions, Bayou Farwell. Mother Jones did a great piece on the book, and you can check it out of your local library.
5. Visit. The city - the whole area - is struggling to rise from its knees. You can help, and have a ball at the same time. Jazz Fest 2006 was my first trip back to the city after the hurricane. I had a fair amount of time to hang out in watering holes and talk to locals. I asked every person I met the same question, "What can I do to help?" and every one gave me the same answer: "Tell people we're open for business and to come visit!" And it's true, and you should. You'll get a chance to do good while doing well.

Laissez les bons temps roulent encore et toujours.

Sunday Poetry Blogging

i like my body when it is with your

body. It is so quite a new thing.

Muscles better and nerves more.

i like your body. i like what it does,

i like its hows. i like to feel the spine

of your body and its bones, and the trembling

-firm-smooth ness and which i will

again and again and again

kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,

i like,, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz

of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes

over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big Love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new

-- ee cummings

Saturday Goddess Blogging

Aradia, part the second.

Hymne à l'Aurore

Voici que s'approche la plus belle des Lumières
Le Char Radieux du puissant Roi
La Nuit noire cède sa couche à Aurore
La brillante, la blanche vêtue de rosée
Comme deux sœurs éternelles alternant leurs couleurs
Elles ne se heurtent ni s'arrêtent
Conduites par les Dieux

Aurore éveilles toutes choses
Ouvres les portes
Toi la jeune femme à la robe éclatante
Toi qui règne sur les richesses
Aurore éclatante brilles ici bas
Embrases toi au regard du Soleil
La Déesse a jeté ses noirs ornements
Et brille maintenant sous les portiques du ciel

Dressons nous, l'esprit de vie est en nous
Les ténèbres se sont allés, la Lumière arrive
Chantons cette Aurore qui monte
Et honorons là en allumant le Feu

From the Ring of Exchange on the Natural Magic and the Spiritual Traditions of Neo-Paganism

Translate

I know Hecate blogged Aradia on March 4, but according to Z Budapest's Grandmother Moon, Aradia is the Goddess of this lunation, the Wind Moon. I quote:

I am Aradia, the first teacher and avatar. Welcome to magic, my children, my witches, welcome to the Full Moon's light.

---Budapest, Z. Grandmother Moon. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991, p. 87.

Outside the Charge of the Goddess, Aradia is not well known. Looking in my various reference books, she's barely mentioned.

However, in 1899 Charles Leland published a book called Aradia purporting to be an ancient sacred text of Italian witchcraft. Although its authenticity, as with most ancient sacred books - see the controversy over the recent discovery of the Gospel According to Judas - remains in question, it is, regardless, a fascinating read. And since, as a religious group, Pagans don't run around demanding that everyone recognize that our sacred texts are The Very Absolute Unquestionable Truth As Exactly Dictated By The Big Man In Heaven To His All-Male Secretarial Staff, it can be enjoyed as most spiritual texts should be: as potentially positive and illuminating myths that assist us in understanding and relating to the world around us.

Hail Aradia!