Fuck Disney

What watertiger said. Fuck Disney.

Pelosi! A Million Years From Now, May It Be A Rallying Cry For Women!

I'm old.

I'm so old that, when I grew up, school teachers explained to roomsfull of children that women could never lead the country because they were too unstable, had periods, couldn't handle the pressure. I'm so old that, out on the playground of St. John the Baptist, boys, with fewer brains and smaller balls than I had, teased me on the playground about that, and relied upon the strength of what Sister said to bolster their arguments. What could I say in return? I'm smarter than you and, deep inside, I simply believe that you're wrong? I think that I'm better suited to lead than you are, the words of all the authority figures in our lives notwithstanding? Yeah, right. That works on 12 year olds. No, it doesn't. I just had to dig my nails deep into the side of the cliff and hope, against hope, that time was on my side. That didn't keep me very warm at night.

I graduated Order of the Coif from law school, single-motherhood intact, went to a white-shoe law firm, won billion dollar cases -- and they didn't -- but it wasn't truly until this afternoon that, merci maroon-suited grandma Pelosi, that I felt truly vindicated. I've been half grinning like an idiot and half sobbing like a baby all day long.

Thank you, Ms. Pelosi. It was always going to be someone, but it turned out to be you and, thank you. Thank you for being there, for being the one, for being, when the time came, a grandmother just as I am. It's been such a long slog from the late 1950s to here. Young women have no idea -- no idea -- what's it's cost some of us some from that time. We paid, and paid gladly. We'd pay all over again.

But, damn. Just, damn. They voted in a woman as Speaker of the House, third in line, today, and damn. Just damn. Every protest that I ever went to. Every meeting where I refused to be the one to take notes. Every LttE that I ever wrote. Every time I raised my hand to answer in class (which was a political act, all through the late 80s, believe me). Every man that I ever told, no, thank you, I'm not interested, even if you do have a job/promotion to offer. Every night that I went without sleep wondering if Shirley Chisholm, Robin Morgan, bell hookes, and Pat Schroeder were really going to pull it off. I'll gladly sign off on all of them, declare them little enough to pay, for the joy of today.

Nancy Pelosi! May the Goddess guard you! Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, please guard Nancy; she's your daughter. Air, Fire, Water, and Earth, to her better self, now give birth. Fire, Water, Earth, and Air, make her brutally fair. Water, Earth, Air, and Fire, grant to Nancy her heart's desire. Mother Hera, at the Center, stand by your child and give her mentor.

Booo Yaaah

The Adicts - Ode To Joy

Nancy Pelosi Sworn in as Speaker of the Motherfucking House!

Eat it, sexist motherfuckers. Eat. It.

Hey, G. Felix Allen, Jr., thanks! We couldn't have done it without you.

The Gift

If you've never taken the Myers Briggs personality test, you really should. It's available several places on line.

I'm, according to the Myers Briggs, an INTJ -- introvert, intuitive, thinking, judging -- type. Emphasis on the "introvert." It's not that introverts don't like people; we do. I, for example, am happiest when entertaining people in my home or at a restaurant. I can make small talk like you've never seen and draw everyone, and I mean everyone, into the conversation. For me, conversation is a glass bead game, an art form, the most natural platform for my creativity. It's just that introverts need time alone in order to "recharge" our batteries. While an extrovert will get recharged being out among other people, we introverts get recharged spending time alone, listening to our own thoughts.

I still remember the very first time that I, oldest daughter of five, was ALL ALONE in the house. It was a moment of complete magic for me, a time that I still, forty years later, treasure, a revelation. I still remember the complete and lonely silence of the San Gabriel Mountains, ten years later, the deep, deep, deep longing that this silence filled for me.

It's funny; supposedly only about 2% of the population is comprised of INTJs, but, whenever I'm around a bunch of Pagans, there's bound to be a large percentage of INTJs present.

Which is all a long way to say that I may either post a ton of new posts over the next few days or that I may hardly post. I've blocked out almost four days to be all alone, to go "on retreat," in my own home, to spend some blessed time recharging my batteries. I worked and socialized all through the holidays. I sooooooo need some time sitting zazen at my altar, walking in the woods, listening to my own thoughts, digging in the dirt of my garden, being home alone.

I'm giving myself the gift of time alone. Give yourself the gift that you really need. Do it now.

A Kick Ass Group Of Women And They're Dianic But They're Not All Dykes*

Full Circle News is truly one of THE best pagan blogs on the net. The current posting is no exception.

Discussing dysfunction w/in families and the carryover to pagan groups, FCN notes that: Starhawk, in Truth or Dare, describes four main types of groups; intimate groups, whose purpose is "being"; task groups, whose purpose is "doing"; support groups, whose purpose is "changing"; and learning groups whose purpose is "education." Purposes may overlap, but when they get crossed, such as learning groups who try to make people change, there may be some covert manipulation going on to which members have not all agreed.

My circle is an amalgam of all except for the final purpose. We're an intimate group with a definite task --doing magic, right now, magic related to the Goddess Hygeia and to healthy growth. We also function as a support group; my circle is THE first place I go to announce that I've won a case or to ask for help when something in my life "goes wrong." (Really, things don't "go wrong" do they? They just go different from our plan. But that's a different post for a different time. You can bet that when, a year ago, D-i-L went into the hospital w/ early dilation, the women in my circle were the first people that I called, even before I left for the hospital. "Quick! Do magic! Quick give me a tarot reading! Quick; give me some hope that this will all work out ok." That's what circles of women have done for each other for thousands of years. That's what my circle does for me.)

The one thing that we don't do is train new witches, mentor anyone for a year and a day, proscribe the steps that you must take in order to be considered a priestess. (Although some of us will flog you if that's what you'd really like! :) ) We're a college of priestesses and you'd better come to us ready to priestess, even if you've only just recently learned of Wicca. Maybe someday a true teacher will join us, but, for now, we'll read tarot for you, do Reiki for you, celebrate your successes, commiserate, share what we know, but we won't train you.


Having "non-work" time is replenishing to group energy. Our coven schedules socials once a month in addition to our magical workings. In the Church of All Worlds, non-work time makes us remember why it is we work so hard or put up with this crazy family. It gives us fuel for our work and our vision and the love and bonding to get through the difficult parts when they arise.


My circle has always done this. We get together once a month for what we call Stitch-n-Bitch -- stitching optional, bitching mandatory. It's where we really get to know each other, understand each other's lives, become friends. We haven't been together since Yule and already I'm wondering: what happened when C. was cooped up w/ her M-i-L for three days? What happened when E. told her boss that she was leaving? How'd K. handle the commotion of her family's holiday? Is N.'s daughter over her illness? How did B.'s bridge tournament go? Did B. get some time alone w/ her husband? How's K. handling the new job w/ her boss out of town? Is M.'s foot better? Did R. take the job in Alexandria?

I suppose it's possible to work magic with people that you don't know, but it's not what I do. I work magic with women that I love, women that I know, women who know me, in all my parts. We sometimes treat the monthly get-togethers as less crucial than our monthly lunar magical workings or our 8 Sabbats, but that's really not quite accurate. The monthly brunches (they're usually brunches) are when we discuss circle business, catch up on each other, re-establish the threads of our (sorry, B!) web. I'm bound to these women. They're (poor souls!) bound to me. These are the women who have a key to my house, who know where my journals are and who have instructions to burn them at my death, who blessed my new house moments after the movers (motherfuckers) left, who will go to lunch with me and really listen to my legal theories concerning the always-fascinating Federal Power Act of 1935, the women that my will instructs D-i-L to allow to select their favorite Hermes scarf from my collection. Sometimes it's messy, sometimes it's glorious, sometimes, to quote Hebert, it's melange; sometimes it's bitter spice. But it's always the web and woof of my existence; this circle of women. This college of priestesses. I am so blessed. May it be so for you.

*How an outsider recently described our circle.

Would You Do Something Really Easy To Save The Earth?

Yesterday, we had an interesting discussion over at Eschaton concerning what sacrifices we may need to make in the coming years in order to deal with global climate change caused by greenhouse gases. The Toronto Star recently ran an article that shows how easy it would be for many of us to cut our greenhouse emissions significantly. Lots of these suggestions aren't new; you've heard them over and over. Why not make a new year's resolution to implement these simple steps right now?

To demonstrate how easy it would be for each of us to make a difference, we have prepared a list of 10 simple, inexpensive things residents could start to do over the holidays. For a typical middle-income family of four in the Greater Toronto Area, these small steps could cut emissions of greenhouse gases by up to 25 per cent without causing any big lifestyle changes.

1) Lower the thermostat on your water heater from 60 to 55 degrees C. All it takes is a screwdriver, but if you are not sure how to change the setting, have a professional do it for you.

2) Replace the shower heads in your home with low-flow models, and install faucet aerators on all of your taps.

3) Run your washing machine with cold water to both wash and rinse your clothes instead of using hot or warm water.

4) Install a programmable thermostat for winter heating and summer cooling, setting it to automatically lower than the room temperature in winter by 1 degree C during the day and 2 degrees C at night.

5) Run your air conditioning system in the summer with the thermostat set to 24 degrees C.

6) Replace the five light bulbs you use the most in your home with compact fluorescent bulbs, which, unlike incandescent bulbs, do not waste energy by creating more heat than light.

7) Turn off lights in rooms that are not in use, or install sensors that do the job for you in bathrooms, hallways and utility rooms.

8) Maintain the pressure in your tires at the appropriate level at all times, which will improve your gas mileage. Because your car is the source of most of the greenhouse gases your household produces, such simple measures can make a big difference, especially if you drive to work.

9) Follow the regular maintenance guide recommended by the manufacturer of your car, and

10) Drive the speed limit and you won't waste gasoline.

According to Environment Canada, such seemingly insignificant measures would actually produce a 24 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions for our representative Greater Toronto Area household, which would make for a good start in the fight against global warming.

Why not get started now?

Thank You, Al Gore

From the EEI newsletter:

Arlington County, Va., Launches Plan to Reduce GHG Emissions

Arlington County, Va., a Washington, D.C., suburb, has announced a plan to reduce GHG emissions by 10 percent by 2012, a goal that could cost the county $6 million to improve energy efficiency in public buildings, plant 1,200 trees, buy more wind-generated power, and hand out more than 2,000 fluorescent light bulbs at fairs to promote energy conservation, the Washington Post reported today. The Post reported that Arlington County Board Chairman Paul Ferguson (D) said "he was moved to launch the plan after studying environmental theories and seeing former vice president Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth."

Ten percent isn't much, but it's a start! And if we could get even more county boards to see An Inconvenient Truth, maybe we could get more counties to take these important steps. Planting 1,200 trees in Arlington will be great for wildlife, in addition to soaking up carbon dioxide.

Go Gansler!

From Today's EEI newsletter:

Md. Attorney General Focuses on Coal-Burning Plant Sites as Civil Rights Issues
Incoming Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler said he would use a new approach to tackle the issue of the environment – focusing on how coal-burning power plants "tend to be in less-affluent areas and are responsible for respiratory ailments that disproportionately affect African Americans," the Washington Post reported today.

Gansler, a long-time Montgomery County, Md., county prosecutor, said that he would focus on the issue in an innovative manner, indicating that the "prevalence of those ailments should be viewed as a civil rights issue, one that could presumably be addressed in court," wrote the Post. Gansler also vowed an "all-out assault" on Chesapeake Bay polluters.
Washington Post , Jan. 3.

Ursula LeGuin, She's Like A Goddess To Me

CARMAGNOLE OF THE THIRTIETH OF JUNE

I will grow fingernails
to scratch the scab
that stops the sore’s lips on the scream
the pusty whistle of escape
EEEEEeeeooooooo steamboat annie comm roun the bend
I will grow fingernails
ten feet long and walk on them like stilts
& breathe steam out my nostrils
& split boards with my eye
HAI!
don’t get near me with your martial arts
unless you want to get split right down between the balls
neat as a colonel’s chicken
I got Real Bad Vibes
I have been talking to my father
who died in 1960
he’s 101 years old not feeling very perky
he gets left out of things
locked out.
I will grow fingernails
and claw down the Lubyanka
stone by stone by stone.
Yeah. Sure.
Listen, my vibrations are so bad
they’re Richter 87
look out down there in Daly City.
My toenails are growing too.
I can dig up graveyards with them
and dance on the burning ground.
I use the urns for footballs & my tongue hangs out a yard.
I am WUMMUN, ta doody boo-bah,
but even worse than that I’m me
and feeling mean
God’s stomach
rumbles like a drum when I jump on it
when I dance on his chest he snores
when I dance on his gut he farts
when I dance on his cock he comes
when I dance on his eyes he wakes and all the stones fall down
ashes, ashes
all fall down.
Get up and dance, creation!

Pagan Rome

Whatever. By this time, the Kurgans had pretty much infiltrated everything. But all hail Hestia!

Like Lions After Slumber

Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Throw off your chains, like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many they are few!

-Percy Shelley
The Mask of Anarchy

A Forced Shove Into A Distant Unknown Shore

This is such a lovely post that all I can do is to beg you to go read it in its entirety. Honestly.

It is a common human failing- what Wulf the Seidman from Brian Bates' work "The Way of Wyrd" calls the "fungus" that grows in our minds: we assume that we all have so many years left to live, so much so that a dream-life takes over in our brains. We put off today what we assume we'll be able to do later, even though there may be no "later". Death is our constant companion, and the sorcerer, as well as the warrior, must accept that death may come for us today, any day, at any moment.

It's one thing to say it, but something else to really put your whole mind and body into it. This isn't a clever mind game; this isn't just some line of wisdom you read in a book or see on a screen. This is death, the sometimes violent destruction of our lich or our bodies; it is the end of our dearly loved and familiar routines and activities, a farewell to our friends, and the release of the fetch and the mind into the vast and mysterious reaches beyond this world of animals, growing things, and human beings. It is a forced shove into a distant, unknown shore, and we can lose our wits easily in such a radical change.

I'd like to make this totally clear, to remind myself as much as to remind you- and you can't be reminded of this enough: the time to be alive and truly aware is now. Wyrd only gives us this moment, right now. It may truly seem like it, but there is no future out there somewhere, waiting for us. What you have- what everyone has- is here and now, wherever you are, whatever you are. Do not trust in a hope for some fantasy future that you have dreamed of in your head. Do not assume that your friends and family will be there with you, one day far from now, to discuss with you about the good times you had long ago. Let the future arise as it will; we don't live there. It is impossible to live in a place that doesn't yet exist.

There's this incredibly kind and incredibly magical thing that the universe does for me and I'd love to hear if it does the same for you: suddenly some word on concept that I've never heard of before or that I've completely ignored keeps jumping up in front of me. For me, suddenly, it's "blot," and "seid," and "heathenry." Expect more posts on these concepts as I explore them this year.

Tort Cases -- What Happens When Regulation Is Absent Or Doesn't Work

From the December 25, 2006 edition of Inside Energy:

[G]reenhouse-gas-emitting power companies must be held legally responsible for fueling global warming and the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, according to papers filed recently in a federal court in Mississippi.

The 11-page motion, filed December 14 in the U.S. District Court in Jackson is the latest salvo in a novel lawsuit brought by Ned Comber and other people who own property that was damaged when Hurricane Katrina roared ashore on August 29, 2005.

Comber and other plaintiffs maintain that [companies that generate electricity] bolstered Katrina's destructiveness by pumping millions of tons of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases into the environment. These emissions warmed the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and caused Katrina to grow larger and more destructive than it otherwise would have, the plaintiffs maintain.

Comber and his colleagues are seeking millions of dollars in compensatory and punitive damages from the energy companies. In all, some 21 electric utilities and numerous oil and coal companies are named as defendants in the suit, which is referred to in some legal circles as the "Katrina case."

. . .

The Katrina case is one of several global-warming-related lawsuits targeting power companies and other greenhouse-gas-emitting industries. In another closely-watched case, a group of states led by Connecticut is seeking to force . . . large utilities to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions on the grounds that they are a "public nuisance" that is fostering global warming. A ruling in that case, which is lodged in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, could come any day. ~Brian Hansen

It's been too long since I took Torts to remember how liable you can be for helping to cause the situation that led to someone's damages. The defendants argue that everyone pollutes so that, if they're liable, so is the dad firing up the grill or the mom driving the SUV to take the kids to soccer. The danger here is that the Katrina case or the nuisance case in the Second Circuit may result in bad precedent.

Hopefully not. But I don't view either of these fora as particularly favorable.

Bow Before the Power Of These Amazing Crones

Crones rule.

A group of anti-war grandmothers gathered Monday to call attention to the growing loss of lives in Iraq by reading the names of the dead -- a day after the American death toll in Iraq reached 3,000.

About 60 people from the group Grandmothers Against the War and their supporters read the names of the war dead from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut in Manhattan's Rockefeller Center as curious tourists took their photos.

And yet, In New York, a group of counter-protesters said the grandmothers were insulting U.S. troops, who need support during the Iraq war.

The granny group later walked to the military recruiting center in Times Square.

Fuck the counter-protestors. Just fuck them. Fuck them.

Where Do We Place The Levers, The Fulcrums?

Are the fulcrums spiritual? Perhaps we should attempt to desacralize power for power's sake. Perhaps we should attempt to break down the divine right to science, the divine right of corporations, the divine right of production, the divine right of nation-states. Perhaps we should attempt to help people to remember that spiders who live in their bathrooms are sacred, as are salmon who spawn in rivers outside their homes, plants who push up through sidewalks, salamanders who live high in the hollows of ancient redwoods, their own bodies, their own experiences, their own sexuality, their own flesh free from industrial carcinogens. Where do we place the levers, the fulcrums, to help people remember that they are humans living in a landbase, that they are animals?

~Derrick Jensen, Endgame, Vol. I

For One White, Singing Hour Of Peace, Count Many A Year Of Strife Well Lost

Barter
by Sara Teasdale

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things;
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children’s faces looking up,
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell;
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And, for the Spirit’s still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Give all you have for loveliness;
Buy it, and never count the cost!
For one white, singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost;
And for a breath of ecstasy,
Give all you have been, or could be.

********

My father, who went to his grave singularly unimpressed by anything that I had ever written, was visibly moved by my ability to recite this poem during a meteor shower at the beach. More than a decade later, I'm less impressed by the value of the bargain than I was at the time. At least as it pertains to the "many a year of strife well lost." I'm still willing to trade, for one breath of ecstacy, all that I have been, or could be. Does anyone ever approach ecstacy with anything less in hand to trade?

At any rate, I think it's very good advice for the New Year.

And, I'm a passing writer, if, in Dorothy Parker's words, passing grade is minus D.

PS I learned of this poem through a series of short stories that the first-ex-Mr.-Hecate left with me called: The People: No Different Flesh. I spent 17 years in education on the strength of those stories.

New Years Bazooms Blogging

Dear Women,

Today is a wonderful day to make a resolution for better breast health. Resolve today that you will do twelve or thirteen breast self-examinations this year and that you will have a mammogram! Go to your computer's calendar right now and schedule them! The first of every month is good. The day of your birthday is good. A day calibrated to your period (if you still have them) is good. Anything is good as long as it's regular! Reward yourself by scheduling something that you like -- a massage, a pedicure, a lunch with a friend, some quiet time -- for the same day. Do the BSE and then reward yourself. It helps to make BSE become a habit.

BSE is easy to do. Here's how. Breast self-exams save lives because the earlier that you find a breast cancer lump, the greater your chance of survival.

Dear Men,

Can you think of 9 women that you really like and would miss if they were gone? Mother, Sister, Wife, Lover, Daughter, Niece, Granddaughter, Best Friend, Secretary, etc.? One in nine women will get breast cancer. You can help. Calendar for yourself a time to relieve those women for an hour or so -- give them the gift of time for a BSE. Take their kids to the park for an hour; pick up the dry cleaning and the groceries; or fix and clean up dinner while she does a BSE. We need your help!

Can You Find Even One Fulcrum In 2007?

In cases where it's not the individual CEO, but the position -- where social framing conditions make it so that most people who would take up that position share the same deadend worldview that would cause them to commit the same atrocities -- where[,] then[,] do we place the levers and the fulcrums? Do we go CEO to CEO, "removing" them one by one? We always hear that the machine-like characteristics of corporations mean the CEOs are simply cogs -- albeit large ones -- in their community-destroying institutions, and[,] so[,] it would do no good to remove them. It's an odd argument to make . . . . There are few who suggest that simply because arresting or killing one rapist does not stop other men from raping, that this means we should not stop whatever rapists we can [--] through any means necessary. Yet when it comes to CEOs[,] the argument seems to hold: Someone else will just take this one's place, so we must not stop this one personally. In fact, we must allow him [it's usually a him] to continue to be rewarded with millions of dollars per year in salaries and stock options. Where are the fulcrums to stop these people, these institutions? Where are the bottlenecks?

~Endgame, Vol. I by Derrick Jensen.

2006

2006 was quite a year. It will always, for me, be the year when:

I turned 50;

Grandson was born: hale, healthy, redheaded, and blue-eyed -- I am with my mother's mother's mother and my son's son's sons.

My circle decided to add new members in a serious, deliberate manner;

I had a wonderful crop of violets for Beltane;

My circle took Pagan Pride week by storm;

I won two big cases in the Ninth Circuit and Jeff Skilling went to jail;

All year long, I didn't get to the mountains. I mean to fix this in 2007;

The oak trees masted;

I began blogging for real;

I saw Son develop into THE most amazing father, ever;

A baby dove got caught in my rosebush and then got free and lived;

I read Derrick Jensen;

A one-sentence essay: "I am Macca," won a UVA student a seat in Larry Sabato's grad student course;

E, D, and I had the "mad hat" tea at the Mayflower;

My black iris flowered;

America stepped back from the abyss;

I pulled Baba Yaga from the Goddess Oracle to guide me through the coming year. This will be interesting;

I carried the amazing Michael Kors bag that, all summer long, got so many compliments;

I didn't buy even one single Hermes scarf, although I have my eye on the one that shows the roofs of Paris;

Son, D-i-L, and Grandson came to my circle's Yule party.

My woad flowered but my dill was abysmal and my black hollyhocks had rust.

We had a bad drought in July and August and I tried desperately (we'll find out this Spring) to keep all the arisemea that I planted in the Spring alive.

D-i-L looked me straight in the eye following Grandson's birth and said, "I had exactly the birth that I kept envisioning. I kept saying affirmations and, you know, those things really work."

I am blessed. May it be so for you.

2007 Tarot readings for the first 10 readers who post their three cards in comments. Check out Lunea's website, in my blogroll, for a lovely on-line tarot.

Sunday Akhmatova Blogging

Cleopatra

She had already kissed Antony's dead lips,
she had already wept on her knees before Caesar . . .
and her servants have betrayed her. Darkness falls.
The trumpets of the Roman eagle scream.

And in comes the last man to be ravished by her beauty --
such a tall gallant! -- with a shamefaced whisper:
"You must walk before him, as a slave, in the triumph."
But the slope of her swan's neck is tranquil as ever.

Tomorrow they'll put her children in chains. Nothing
remains except to tease this fellow out of mind
and put the black snake, like a parting act of pity,
on her dark breast with indifferent hand.

~1940

Saturday Goddess Blogging

Aphrodite, Kallipygos

Aphrodite was the Greek Goddess of beauty, sexuality, lust. The Romans knew her as Venus. Wikipedia notes that her feast day was known as the Aphrodisiac (also referred to as Aphrodisia), which was celebrated all over Greece but particularly in Athens and Corinth. In Corinth, intercourse with her priestesses was considered a method of worshipping Aphrodite. She was sometimes referred to as Aphrodite, Porne, meaning: Aphrodite, the Temple Prostitute, although, as noted above, temple prostitutes were priestesses who helped worshippers to find communion with Aphrodite, so the expression was one of sacredness.

She was also known as Aphrodite, Kallipygos, or Aphrodite of the Beautiful Buttocks. It is in this form that I worship her, as she shows how healthy it can be for women to love their bodies and to enjoy themselves. There are several famous statues of Aphrodite, Kallipygos. Wikipedia tells this story to explain how she came to be worshipped:

"The people of those days were so attached to their sensual pleasures that they even went so far as to dedicate a temple to Aphrodite of the Beautiful Buttocks, for the following reason. One upon a time a farmer had two beautiful daughters. One day these girls, getting into a dispute as to which one had a more beautiful backside, went onto the public street. And by chance a young man was passing by, the son of a rich old man. They showed themselves to him, and when he saw them he voted in favor of the older girl. And in fact, falling in love with her, when he got back to town, he took to his bed and told his younger brother everything that had happened. And the younger brother also went to the country and saw the girls, and he fell in love with the other daughter. And so when the boys' father tried to get them to marry someone of the upper classes, he couldn't persuade his sons, and so he brought the girls in from the country, with their father's permission, and married them to his sons. And so these girls were called fair-buttocked by the citizens, as Cercidas of Megalopolis says in his Iambic Verses: "There was a pair of beautiful-buttocked girls in Syracuse." And so these girls, when they got wealthy and famous, founded a temple of Aphrodite and called the goddess the Fair-buttocked, as Archelaus tells us in his Iambic Verses."

The fact that there was a religious cult of Aphrodite Kallipygos at Syracuse is also mentioned by the Christian author Clement of Alexandria in a list of erotic manifestations of pagan religion. Clement cites the poet Nicander of Colophon, and generously quotes the alternative term (kalligloutos, "with a beautiful bottom") that Nicander used.

Hail Aphrodite, Kallipygos!

What Are You Doing To Get Ready?

I took a class from Thorn Coyle this Fall and it SUCKED. She sat on her ass and did no teaching at all. She let a couple of folks who love the sound of their own voice (with little justification, trust me) talk, and talk, and talk. I mean, if I take two evenings out of my life to take a class from Thorn Coyle, who presumably spent all the time that I spent in law school learning from Victor and Cora Anderson and thinking about Pearl Pentacle concepts while I was learning to write briefs, I'd like to hear what Thorn has to say, at least before she starts in with the Socratic method crap that I hated wasting my time and money on in law school. I talked to a friend of mine who's taken Thorn's intensive Faerie training and she said, "Well, Thorn's bright, but she's an uneven teacher." No duh.

And, yet, there are times when Thorn hits it all the way out of the ballpark. I think that her post from today deserves to be repeated every day, all year long, throughout 2007:

I went to the market, to realize my soul. What I need, I just don't have... - the Clash

What is your capacity during crisis? What is your capacity during sustained crisis? Do you rally, do you push forward, do you organize, do you grow numb, does depression grip you, do you escape into the brightness of fantasy?

I'm asking because I've been trying to think of ways in which we need to prepare. In the midst of the glories of life and all the things I am truly grateful for, there is a persistent current of impending doom. It could be that I listened to too much Shriekback, Crass, UB40, and Sisters of Mercy as a young lass, or it could be that all my psychic friends keep having ominous visions. My Traditional Jewish Christmas of Chinese food and a movie didn't help, either, because the movie was "Children of Men." No, I'm not Jewish, just culturally omnivorous, and the pan-fried string beans were very tasty, thank you.

See, in case you haven't noticed, the US is creeping further and further toward fascism and inching ever (possibly - I'm no economist) closer to complete economic collapse. The current trade deficit of 4.5 trillion dollars, coupled with the rising appeal of the Euro as a new trade standard, coupled with the fact that the US is dependent on cheap goods made abroad (by workers who probably aren't too happy about their conditions) coupled with the fact that foreign countries who have been happy to buy US debt are getting tired of it... Coupled with the visions of gloom by my personal Psychic Friends Network and from most economists... Coupled with a soupcon of global warming (so long, Ayles Ice Shelf)...

I just want to make sure we are prepared. Hopefully the doom won't come to pass and we all will be able to only focus on the things that make us feel happy, wealthy, hopeful, and in love. But if times harsher than these are in order, at least we will be strong. And heck, how bad is being strong in any case? Strong people make better lovers.

And yes, in the larger scheme of things - say five billion years - none of this may matter. But I am part of a non-transcendent religion, and I like living in this material plane very much and don't want to see things further messed up than they already are. And the polar bears likely agree. Now, I'm preaching in this forum to a lot of "alternative culture" people who are already doing most everything they can to live closer to some anarchist ideal, but the words still need saying sometimes.

So: How are you in a crisis? What are you doing to get stronger? Are you doing more yoga? Lifting more weights? Are you looking at your propensity to explode or to hide? Are you figuring out how to bolster your alternative communities into more viable networks of support? Are you learning to govern yourself? Learning to garden? Buying less? Re-using more? Are you learning not to always place the blame on other people? Are you telling your friends how much you appreciate them? Are you crying when you need to and laughing when you wish? Stopping to smell the flowers? Are you spreading beauty as far and wide as possible? Pick two from this random list, or add two of your own. But do them. Two of them. At least.

Doom only spells doom if we let it. We should throw parties in the coming year and go dancing. We should also sit longer spells in meditation and at our altars. We should make it into a wild space at least once, and support those who are defending the last of our wild spaces. We should feed strangers. We should get as physically and mentally healthy as we can.

Have what you need and need what you have. A cold wind may blow, but we can keep each other warm.

Kisses - Thorn

I am part of a non-transcendent religion, and I like living in this material plane very much and don't want to see things further messed up than they already are. And the polar bears likely agree.

I tried, badly, to express this point a month or so ago in comments at Eschaton. I don't care that the Earth, in some different form and likely with less life, may still be here billions of years from now. I care that the salmon are dying today due to damns, and that the nature spirits (fairies) who live in trees are dying at an alarming rate, and that humans have entire industries devoted to sucking up energy to produce things designed specifically to be used once and then thrown away. I care about the real worms who live right now in my back yard and the black squirrels and grey squirrel who are right now engaged in a fight for territory in the oak forest where I live. I care about the arisaema that I planted last spring in my woodland garden. I care about the real water in the real Potomac River that looks pink some mornings and brassy green some mornings and misty grey on other mornings. I care about the climate that my grandson will live in 50 years from now, when he's just the age that I am now.

What are you doing to get stronger?

Thorn's question is one that all of us must ask ourselves. Now, at the end of one year and the beginning of another is as good a time as any. We can see, right now, that we're heading for choppy water. What are you doing to get ready? Turn off the tv; its only purpose is to drug you too long for you to veer off the road to extinction. Turn it off and do what you need to do to get stronger.

We Are So Fucked

Shit. Fuck. Damn.

Meanwhile, we distract ourselves with war. It's what patriarchies do.

From Greenpeace

Welcome to the World Below

Sleeping in the Forest by Mary Oliver

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

Pan's Labyrinth

The Wild Hunt links to a review in The Guardian of Pan's Labyrinth.

'Pan's Labyrinth is a movie about a girl who gives birth to herself into the world she believes in,' del Toro continues. '

Now this is a movie that I want to see, even if del Toro ended his sentence with a preposition.

The review quotes del Toro as saying that, A maze is a place where you get lost. But a labyrinth is essentially a place of transit, an ethical, moral transit to one inevitable centre.

That's an interesting way of thinking about the difference between the two; for some reason, I've always liked mazes better than labyrinths. But several friends have convinced me to try labyrinth-walking over the past few years, and I see what del Toro is saying about a labyrinth as a place of transit, although what you find at the center can vary from one walk to the next and may be less inevitable than del Toro says.

The Wild Hunt also reports that: author Stephen King has made [Pan's Labyrinth] his number one movie pick of the year.

"I happened to see this in July and was completely seduced by its beauty and emotional ferocity. Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Mimic, Blade II) directed, and to call this his best work isn't enough. I think this extraordinary R-rated fairy tale for adults is the best fantasy film since The Wizard of Oz. And while it's much darker than Wizard, it still celebrates the human spirit.

I am so there.

Calling All Creative Types

Completely kickass.

Government of Occupation

What WOULD you do?

Rick Benjamin

We trust what we've buried in the ground. Damn, that's good.

The Lark Ascending - Ralph Vaughan Williams

Maybe there's a lovlier piece of music. But I've never heard it.

When You Sent Him Off To War, You Didn't Care What He Believed. Now He's Served You With His Blood, Grant Him His Dignity.

Via Witchvox, we have several articles on the continued quest. on behalf of slain Wiccan soldiers, to get the Veterans Administration to allow their religious symbol -- the Pentacle -- to be placed upon their memorial markers and gravestones. I've covered this story throughout the year and I'm going to continue to cover it until the courts force the VA to do the right thing.

Since 1978 the armed forces have recognized that they need to make accommodations for service members who are Wiccan. Wiccan soldiers have served in the armed forces at least as far back as the Korean War. Jill Medicine Heart Combs, a member of the National Board of CUUPS (Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans) and a National Board member of Pagan Pride Project International spoke about her husband, Gerwin Dee Combs. "My husband is a Wiccan veteran. For the last two years he has been in a VA hospital. He is in a coma and his medical records reflect that he is in a persistent vegetative state. I know at any moment my husband could die and I know he would want a Pentacle on his headstone and as of now, he could not have one."

Jill became visibly more emotional as she spoke, "Congresswoman Jean Schmidt of Ohio's 2nd District wrote a letter to me this summer stating that the VA is concerned about the "legal and moral aspects" surrounding VA approval of the Pentacle. The First Amendment of the Constitution protects freedom of religion. It is not the job of the VA to determine the morality of any particular religion, but for the record my husband's religion is moral. I will tell you what is immoral. It is immoral for the VA to deny religious freedom to veterans who have served their country in the fight for freedom."

What's doubly ironic, and sad, about this is that the VA has a list of "approved" symbols -- something that no self-respecting government with a First Amendment should ever have -- and those symbols include religions of which I'm willing to bet you've never heard. The VA even approved a symbol for atheists. But not Wiccans.

If you are an American Wiccan and you volunteer to serve your country and are killed doing so, tough shit. No marker for you.

The State of Nevada, home to slain Wiccan soldier Patrick Stewart, has behaved more honorably than the VA, providing his widow with a plaque engraved with a Pentacle. [T]he Governor of Nevada, Kenny Guinn, intervened and provided a memorial plaque with the Pentacle on it, saying that Sgt. Patrick Stewart had died for his country and that was all he needed to know. At a ceremony to bless the plaque, retired military chaplain and Christian minister, Rev. William Chrystal . . . led a group of Pagan veterans in a salute to Sgt. Patrick Stewart, and then described his own relationship with Sgt. Stewart. He honored Sgt. Stewart's Wiccan beliefs when he said, "I wear this uniform proudly, as Pat's Chaplain and as a Christian minister. I think it was Red Cloud the Sioux who said that there many paths to the Great Spirit." If you haven't watched the video of this event, you owe it to yourself to do so, box of Kleenex in hand. Rev. Chrystal did a lovely, respectful job. I honor him.

Senator Reid's office and the Governor's office were also present. a representative from Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid's office, delivered the following statement, from Senator Reid, "This day is long overdue. Ever since Sergeant Patrick Stewart's death, his wife Roberta has worked to ensure he is properly recognized. I commend the Nevada Office of Veterans Services for making it happen. All of our troops deserve nothing less that to be properly recognized. I will continue to work closely with the US Department of Veterans Affairs to ensure that the issue is addressed at the federal level."

Nicholas Vander Poel, Regional Representative for Nevada Governor-elect and Representative Gibbons also spoke at the Dedication: "I remember standing in Rancho San Rafael, telling Roberta if there was anything we could do, please do not hesitate. We did not want to let her down. We were constantly in contact with the VA and we wanted to make sure that Sgt. Stewart was recognized." Following the Dedication, Representative Gibbons released this statement: "Sgt. Patrick Stewart made the ultimate sacrifice defending the freedoms we enjoy, religion being one of them. Sgt. Stewart defended a constitution that said he had the freedom of religion and it was only fitting to see him receive a plaque honoring his beliefs. Our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to Roberta and the family."

My bet is that most Americans react to this story the same way that Joe Soucheray, writing in the Twin Cities Pioneer Press does. Although Joe doesn't know anything about Wicca, and although he can't write about it without cracking a few jokes, for him the bottom line is this: Sgt. Patrick Stewart of the Nevada National Guard died for his country. That's more than all the lawyers and activists always hectoring each other about religious rights have ever done. I don't care whether Stewart's widow wants a likeness of Mickey Mouse chiseled into his stone, much less a pentacle. . . . But Wiccans? . . . I don't know what they do, or what time their Mass starts. All I know is that they haven't caused the world any big problems.

And if they die for us while wearing our uniform, they certainly should have their own proper markers at their graves.

Dear VA, 2007 would be a good time for you to start to act like Americans.

Happy BlogBirthday To Me!

I started this blog a year ago today. It's been a lot of fun for me. I just want to thank everyone who's read it , commented on it, linked to it, and emailed me about it. What a year!

Throwing Parties -- All Acts Of Love And Pleasure Are Rituals Of The Goddess

I do know that I want to keep imagining a world where conflicts are solved without killing, and one way to do that is to keep on creating a culture of beauty, balance and delight, one party at a time.

Deborah Oak has up a fantastic post about the importance of Solstice parties. I'll admit that I've always believed that my "true" vocation is running a salon. (Sadly, law pays better.) Deborah's description of her Solstice party: I'm happier at my house, which fills with good food, my beloved friends and family, and enough new people to keep things interesting. I take pride that my house is where the children want to be, and last night was no exception. Gingerbread houses were made, too much sugar eaten, and the teenagers talked past dawn, bringing in the new light and the promise of a future.

There was also an 3.5 earthquake and Marion leaned too near the altar and her hair caught on fire. It was put out quickly by my girlfriend, the quintessential butch, and a general prayer went out that these were both portents that the return of the sun would bring small dramas causing no real harm or damage. reminds me of the celebration that our circle had this year at my brilliant friend Elizabeth's home on Capitol Hill. Some time ago, Elizabeth shared how important it is for her that people who come to her home feel welcome, comfortable, accepted. It shows in everything she touches.

I've shared before on this blog how my circle of women has grown this year -- and have we ever -- going from four members to nine. This year's Solstice celebration at Elizabeth's also included two "emeritus" members (women's who've moved on from our circle, but who came back (sometimes with their pets) to welcome the Invincible Sun with us) and -- for the first time ever -- our families. My Son, D-i-L, and Grandson, one of our new members' 16 month-old-son and charming Pagan husband, the members of one of our new members' polyamorous family, N.'s pagan-friendly husband, M.'s five-year-old grandson who is going to rule the world one day given his composure, C's husband who'd never been to anything Pagan before, and tons of family members for whom Elizabeth's discussion, my grounding, my circle casting, our singing of Donna Nobis Pachem, and the magic that we all worked, was their very first ever introduction to what the fuck their loved one gets up to on all those new moons, dark moons, and Sabbats. This was a risk for us -- including familiar strangers in one of our most important Sabbats. Not all of us were wild about the idea. It worked beyond our hopes.

And then, the party. The party in Elizabeth's home decorated with so many gorgeous greens that it smelled like a forest, the party with so many French pastries left over that our emeritus sister, R., of backpack-notices-concerning-Yule-in-VA fame, had to cart them over to S.O.M.E. the next day, the party where strangers hugged strangers, where children ran from loving adult to loving adult, where everywhere you wandered you ran into someone who loved you, hugged you, helped you to celebrate your recent victories.

After a while, the families left and we got down to magic, again, and then slept an hour to two before dawn. Thanks to C. for kindly pretending that, between my coughing and my snoring, she actually ever slept at all.

At dawn, we headed over to a park within blocks of the Capitol (this tickles me) and read Pagan poems, yelled, banged noisemakers, and did everything that we could think of to wake up the lazy, lazy sun. We hung food for the birds on the trees and we drank Irish whiskey from shot glasses made of ice and then broke the glasses. A parkfull of dog walkers studiously ignored us. We headed over to a greasy-spoon and had breakfast before going home to get some "real sleep." A wonderful party. And as Deborah Oak notes, that can be the best magic, the finest act of love and pleasure, of all.

A good party leaves people with healthier immune systems from all the endorphins and connections. It literally does one of the things that I pray every morning that the Goddess will allow me to do: help to repair The Web. It gives children a chance to meet new, supportive adults and allows adults to share food and drink with each other, it creates new connections, establishes a more organized. and at the same time more chaotic, web.

A good party is good magic.

Saturday Goddess Blogging

This time of year seems like a good time to post about the Goddess Lakshmi, who represents wealth, light, wisdom, fortune, and (secondarily) luck, beauty, and fertility. She is worshipped by Hindus, Buddhists, Jainists, and many modern Pagans. May Lakshmi bless you with abundance, luck, and good fortune!

Changing The Present

You know how it is. You've been meaning to shop for gifts, but the thought of the malls this time of year -- crowds, frustrated adults, screaming kids, parking pirates, endless loops of xmas muzak -- ugh.

Here's a better idea, via A Dress a Day: Changing the Present. (It's a pun!) you can choose exactly what you want to accomplish. For just a few dollars, you can protect an acre of the rainforest or fund an hour of a cancer researcher's time. You can provide a child with a first book, an AIDS patient with life-saving drugs[,] or a hungry family with a nourishing meal.

You can find something good here for everyone that you know. Online. Without getting out of your chair.

World Orgasm Day

There's still time. Don't forget to participate.

Watch the video.

Good Solstice

Horn-ed One.
King of the Sun.

So Mote It Be

Solstice in Iceland

This year the Pagan Society in Iceland celebrates the winter solstice for the first time on their own land in skjuhld. A pagan temple will be built there within the next two years.

How cool is that?

“Centuries ago animals were slaughtered at the winter solstice, but we don't do that anymore. Instead we burn a buck or a horse made of straw to symbolize the yule sacrifice,” Hilmarsson adds.

“Welcoming the return of the sun is the real purpose of the Christmas celebration,” Pagan Society member Anna Bergsteinsdttir tells icelandreview.com. “The Christians hijacked this holiday and turned it into a Christian celebration,” she claims.

In the Nordic languages Christmas is known as yule, which comes from old Norse and is related to the word J'dnir, which is one of the names of the Viking god Odin.

“Yule is a heathen tradition,” Hilmarsson says. “In ancient Rome the winter solstice was celebrated with the holiday of Saturnalia, with drinking and promiscuity. But around the year 500 the Romans made a conscious decision to turn the holiday into a celebration of the birth of Christ at the end of December, which had not been celebrated until then,” he explains.

“We don’t mind sharing yule with other religions,” Hilmarsson says. “Some members of the Pagan Society even celebrate Christmas on December 24 with a Christmas tree and presents for the children. But we put more emphasis on spending time together than on commercialism," he adds.

Hilmarsson expects about 100 people to participate in the ceremony of yule sacrifice tonight and everyone who is interested is welcome to join.

I SOOOOOO want to see the Aurora Borealis before I die. I know they can be seen in Iceland. Iceland. I even love the way that it sounds. My mother always told me this story, which may be completely made-up for all that I know: The Vikings discovered Iceland and Greenland Iceland was the much nicer place to live. So the Vikings, being tres clever, called the less-nice place Greenland, so as to get people to go there, and the more-nice place Iceland, so as to discourage everyone else from coming there. And, it worked. At least, that's what my mother told me.

It Makes Me Happy

The Unconquered Sun. Merry, merry.

Completely Cool

NYTimes has an article about a very cool work of art in Antarctica:

[S]culptor Lita Albuquerque decided to craft an environmental work near this icy outpost meant to be in full bloom for just one day.

Her ``Stellar Axis,'' on a site about 600 feet in diameter, consists of 99 blue fiberglass spheres of varying sizes in a pattern mirroring the paths of stars at the austral summer solstice.

Since the sun shines around the clock here at this time of year, no stars will be visible, but their courses were plotted by astronomer Simon Balm, who also worked on the project.

All the spheres will be in place only on December 22 and must be removed after that.

Among other reasons, the Antarctic Conservation Act prohibits pollution of the continent.

The work's creation is being photographed day by day and the completed piece will be photographed from a helicopter. Its dismantling will be recorded, until there is nothing left but the blank white snow field the artist started with.


More info on the project here.

Pagans Are The Reason For The Season

WaPo seems to have mastered the art of talking about Winter Solstice religious festivals without ever mentioning, you know, Wiccans, Druids, Pagans, or neo-Pagans. It's as intellectually dishonest and as cowardly an abdication of the truth in favor of placating the xians as I've ever seen.

Atrios' New Quarters

Eschaton, which for many of us is as necessary as air, light, coffee, and sleep, has a new temporary home. Go here. Thanks, Tena for the heads-up!

Winter Solstice

Merry Yule. In your longest, darkest night, may you still see the stars, the Moon, the guideposts that you need. May you walk through the dark knowing that Spring WILL come, the nights will get shorter and the warm days longer. Turn the wheel. Merry Yule.

Tag

Knighterrant tagged me. Here are the rules:

The rules:
1. find the nearest book
2. list title and author
3. turn to page 123
4. go to the fifth sentence
5. copy out the next three sentences
6. tag three more

*****************

Federal Civil Judicial Procedure and Rules, pub. by Thomson*West.

"Subsection (g) is new. It responds to the reality that the selection and activity of class counsel are often critically important to the successful handling of a class action. Until now, courts have scrutinized proposed class counsel as well as the class representative under Rule 23(a)(4)."

**********************

Well, there you have it. That's how boring my life is.

I'll tag Katrina, Ninth Raven, and Moonbotica.

Well Then What The Fuck ARE We Doing, You Moron?

As he searches for a new strategy for Iraq, Bush has now adopted the formula advanced by his top military adviser to describe the situation. "We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. The assessment was a striking reversal for a president who, days before the November elections, declared, "Absolutely, we're winning."

So if we were absolutely winning in October, WTF happened between then and the end of December? Nothing.

So were you lying to the American people -- again -- when you said that we were absolutely winning? Were you, for mere political expediency, lying to the American people about a war where their children are dying? Just as you admitted that you lied about keeping Donald Rumsfeld?

Are you lying now? How would we know? Oh, that's right; your lips are moving, you mass-murdering, psychopathic, venal, mean, nasty, narcissistic, worthless piece of shit.

Hah!

Dear Jeff Skilling,

Bite me.

No, really, Just bite me.

Oh, that's right. You can't. You're in jail.

Bwhahahhaha.

Yule

In 2006 at precisely 7:22 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on December 21 (00:22 UTC on December 22) winter begins in the Northern Hemisphere and summer begins in the Southern Hemisphere.

The longest night of the year.

What will you do? How will it affect you?

Real Energy

Isaac & Phaedra Bonewits have a new book out that I'm planning to read, entitled Real Energy: Systems, Spirits, and Substances to Heal, Change, and Grow.

We had no idea how much we had bitten off a year ago when the publishers first came to us with the idea, “How about a book about all the different kinds of energy that people work with? You know, mana and prana, orgone energy and odic force, reiki and crystal power, chi and ki, divine power and nature spirits, etc.? It would make a great book!”

We wanted to compare all these different sorts of “mystic energies” with what mainstream physicists know about energy, so we could make a stab at determining which of the mystic energies, if any, were properly called “energies,” and which were just relationships between ideas or even metaphors. We thought it would take us about six months to write—hah!

I generally tend to assume that, you know, energy is energy no matter what different names people give to it, so I'll be interested to see what the Bonewits say. And, of course, there's energy in "just relationships between ideas or even metaphors."

I Am So Going To Buy A Bunch Of These

Arisaema fargesii.

The catalog says: This striking species bears large, heavily textured leaflets to 15 inches in length and an intriguing black-purple spathe showing white tranlsucent lines in its throat, plus a long, wiry spadix to 2 feet in length. Truly a captivativng species. Plant in groups of three.

The Climate Is Changing And I Have To Change Along With It

It's a blanket, the deep, early darkness of this time of year. Here we are, just days, really just hours, away from the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, and I am wrapping all of this darkness around my shoulders like a big, warm cape. I've been sitting zazen at my altar early and going to bed early, dreaming really significant dreams.

Maybe it's the warm weather that has me loving these weeks so much. Today it was in the upper sixties and, when the lawn crew came to mulch my beds, you could smell the heady scent of mulch from my screen porch -- where I ate breakfast and lunch. Yesterday, I worked in the yard all day in a t-shirt, happy for the extra yard time, telling myself that I'll wait for a cold, rainy day in January to go into the garden shed and "organize." I've decided that the shed, here when I moved in, is one of the things that will have to change the most in order for me to have the garden that I really want. What fool thought that barn-style doors, reminiscent of a stable, would fit in this tiny yard? I want a hobbit hut, a fairy cottage, something much more fey than what I have just now.

On the one hand, it alarms me, this warm weather at Solstice time. And, on the other hand, maybe it's the "new normal." Maybe the daffodils and irises that have pushed up from the ground will die in a cold, February frost. Or maybe they'll bloom in February. I don't know; I am going to find out. I still have green herbs in the herb bed -- sage and parsley and rosemary and rosehips -- that I'm going to pick for my xmas hostess. I once saw the cherry blossoms bloom on a full moon in mid-March across the pool from the Jefferson Memorial. It was one of THE most magical nights in my life, a life that, for whatever else has been wrong with it, has been blessed by magical night after magical night.

I won't hate the warming planet. I won't cry over the lost plants. I will love this Earth in whatever stage she finds herself, however she changes, whatever she does to try and balance things out. Last night I sat at my altar and charged Yule gifts for the women in my circle. The chant that I used is, by now, an old one: "She changes everything that she touches and everything that she touches changes." The climate is changing. In the words of the song, "Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love? Can the child within my heart rise above? Can I sail through the changing ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life? Well, I've been afraid of changing 'cause I've built my life around you. But time makes you bolder, even children get older. And I'm getting older too."

Looking at these warm December days, at the plants that have pushed above the ground "too early," at the predictions for climate change on a scale no human has ever seen, not even our Ice Age ancestresses, I'm reminded of a wonderful story that I read when I had breast cancer. The story was about a gay man, dying of AIDS. His friends kept exhorting him to fight, to, in Dylan's words, "rage, rage against the dying of the light." He asked them to stop. He said, "Please. Don't force me to make an enemy of my own death." That sentence changed my life. I plan to make an ally, a friend, a teacher, a gift of my own death. Perhaps Mamma Earth is doing the same. If she's that brave, then, damn it, I will have to be that brave, will have to match her gift of bravery with my own.

Someone, and I forget now who, said that a witch's job is to help to turn the wheel, meaning the wheel of the year. It's my job to help to turn the wheel in these days, not in the colder days of my many-times-great grandmothers in Sweden and the land of the Picts. Here. Now. These warming times on this easternmost coast of North America, under these oak trees, on this acidic soil, near this live spring, on this ground spongy with water. I'll have to figure out how to celebrate the longest night when it's warm, how to drink strong drink from cups made of ice on a morning when it's not as cold as it used to be, even four or five years ago when i first began to wake at dawn with these women and feed the birds, harbringers of the powers of the East, while making noise to wake up the sun. I think that I can do it, that I can rise to the witching challenge of these times, that I can sail through these changing ocean tides, that I can handle the over-warm seasons of MY life.

I adore THIS Earth, even more than some idealized Earth of my ancestors. I am alive on THIS Earth, the one being warmed too quickly and stripped too fast of trees, flora, fauna, clean air. The one where dams kill the salmon, where windmills kill the birds, where nuclear plants make poison that will last so long as to be forever, where we fire bullets made of spent nuclear material and turn children into new monsters in order to allow old men to make money. This is the Earth that I need to bless, to worship, to magic into being, to make ready for my grandson.

Welcome to the dark.

The Aristocrats

Damn, Digby is good.

We allowed them to impeach the duly elected president who beat the father, for trivial reasons. We allowed the father's appointees to settle a dubious election result in the son's favor. We have watched them as they created a presidency insulated from popular or congressional oversight in which they have gone so far as to set forth the idea that the president has no obligation to follow the law. They lowered taxes on the very rich to a level not seen in many decades and created an income disparity between the very, very rich and everyone else that is unprecedented in the modern era. They eliminated the single best means of ensuring that an aristocracy will not truly form --- the estate inheritance tax. The ten year campaign to repeal it was bankrolled by 18 of the richest families in America.

Which Norse God/dess Are You?

You scored as Freyja. You are Freyja! You are the mother of Baldr, and the most loving and compassionate Goddess. You are very spiritiual and caring. Freyja 78% Odin 68% Loki 58% Tyr 48% Baldr 43% Thor 40% Which Norse God Are You? created with QuizFarm.com

Now Who Does This Remind Me Of?

Characteristics of a Psychopath


@ Callous unconcern for the feelings of others

@ Gross & persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations

@ Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, though having no difficulty establishing them

@ Very low tolerance to frustration & a low threshold for discharge of aggression, including violence

@ Incapacity to experience guilt and to profit from experience, particularly punishment

@ Marked proneness to blame others, or to offer plausible rationalizations, for the behavior that has brought the patient into conflict with society.

~From Endgame, Volume II by Derrick Jensen

Sunday Akhmatova Blogging

Your lynx-eyes, Asia,
spy on my discontent;
they lure into the light
my buried self,
something the silence spawned,
no more to be endured
than the noon sun in Termez.
Pre-memory floods the mind
like molten lava on the sands . . . .
as if i were drinking my own tears
from the cupped palm of a stranger's hands.

~1945
Translated by Stanley Kunitz

In Which Our Hera Writes A Letter To The Xians

Dear Xians,

Let's pretend for a minute that you're rational people who simply have a different set of beliefs and who simply worship a different god -- I'd say a different face of the ultimate divine -- than I do. Let's pretend for a minute that we've both of us gotten over the fact that you used to burn my mothers and anyone whom you could possibly accuse of being one of my mothers. Let's pretend that the current translation of your holy book doesn't instruct you not to suffer anyone from my religion to live and that I don't hold your brand of monotheism responsible for much of what's wrong with the world today and that I didn't run, not walk, away from the brand of your religion in which I was raised.

Let's also, dear xians, acknowledge some basic truths. There are a fucking lot of you. No one here in America is persecuting you. You're free to build your churches all over the place (tax exempt, which is more than this society offers to most of the worship groups in my religion) and to worship as you choose. You don't have to work on your religious holidays and you don't have to worry about being dismissed from a job because of your religion, losing custody of your children because of your religion, or not being able to have your religious symbol on your gravestone when you die.

So, with those premises as our starting points -- and I don't pretend to really believe all of them (the notion that you are rational, for example, gives me quite a bit of pause) -- there's something that I'd really like to say to you.

Stop this shit. Just stop it, goddamnit. Standing next to plastic figures of Mary, baby Jesus and Joseph, two ministers and three members of Congress took turns at a microphone this month to announce a new initiative called "Project Nativity."

"Our hope and prayer is that over the next three to four years, hundreds of nativity scenes will begin to dot the landscape of America once again," said the Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition. He said he hoped the temporary nativity scene on a terrace of the Capitol would serve as a "template" for similar efforts.

His project, which encourages Christians to seek permits for nativity scenes in front of public buildings, is just one example of multiple efforts to "take Christmas back." In recent years, there have been rumors of a "War on Christmas" and actual skirmishes over the use of the word in the public square and at the retail counter.

Now, some clergy and devout lay people are shunning secularism and church-state concerns and taking a more proactive stand to remind people of the Christ in Christmas or, as they like to say, "the reason for the season."

Your religious icons do NOT belong all over public property and at public buildings. That's because: (1) you are NOT the only ones here; (2) those buildings don't belong to you; they belong to all of us; (3) not all of us are xian; and (4) the only rational alternative to having no religious symbols/icons on public property is having ALL possible religious symbols/icons on public property, which will STILL be offensive to those who do not believe in any religion nor accept any form of divinity. Put up your graven images in your homes. Put them up on the grounds of your tax-sheltered churches. Put them up on billboards that you rent. Wear them on your own t-shirts. Send them on your own holiday cards. And leave the rest of us the fuck alone.

Your religion has never seemed to care very much what others thought (i.e., to practice even the most basic forms of courtesy and politeness), but I'd like to tell you how "initiatives" such as "Project Nativity" make all the rest of us feel. They make us hate you. They make us feel as if you are bound and determined to stuff your religion down all the rest of our throats, and we don't like it one bit. We don't like it anymore than you'd like it if your tax dollars had to go to support our religious beliefs or if we were always shoving our religious beliefs down your throats. You are not the only religion that celebrates a major holiday at this time of year. Please stop trying to act as if you were. In fact, most of us think that you stole/appropriated/borrowed (take your pick) your xmas holiday from European Pagans in an effort to legitimate your religion in the eyes of the then-majority. And, BTW, most of us get, simply by living in this culture, a whole hell of a lot more of xmas than we can stomach.

Why am I even bothering? You're the people who used to baptize Native American babies, throw them in the air, and shoot them so that they'd "go straight to god." You're the people who are determined to claim my womb for your own feelings of power. You're the people who burn and torture and kill even your own co-religionists who belong to a slightly different sect. You don't care about winning anyone's hearts and minds.

But, if you did, you'd stop this shit. You'd quit pretending to be persecuted when you're in the majority and when you're the ones doing the persecuting and you'd quit shoving your religion (with which, believe me, most of us are already way too familiar) down our throats. You'd practice, for a change, a little bit of the meekness and humility and charity that your purported god purported to teach.

Merry fucking xmas. If I see one of your nativity scenes on public property, I'm going to pee on it and if I can't pee on it I'm going to hex it.

Sincerely,

Hecate Demetersdatter