The Worst That The Patriarchy Has To Offer.

Once again, the catholic church demonstrates how truly anti-woman it really is.

The Vactican is furious over an Italian magazine reporter who "confessed" various sins to Italian priests to find out how closely they honed to the Vatican's line on various issues. The old white men in the silly dresses can rest easy: all the priests condemned abortion. However:

In another confessional box he faked being HIV positive and was told by a priest that whether or not he used a condom in order not to pass the virus to the woman he loved was "a very personal matter of conscience."

I hope, well, I think you know what I hope.

I Have Passed The Test. I Will Diminish, And Go Into The West, And Remain Molly

Farewell, Molly Ivins. May the Goddess guard you. May you find your way to the Summerlands. May your friends and family know peace.

When Death Comes
~by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox:

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Ritual

I find, as I almost always do, that the coming Sabbat is "really" my favorite Sabbat. (This happens eight times a year, every year.) I'm looking forward to the ritual that my wonderful circle of witches has planned for Friday night to celebrate Imbolc.

One of our newest members -- a beautiful, brilliant, and strong woman for whom the term "still waters run deep" was likely coined -- is leading her first ritual with us. I've been cleaning my house and polishing silver, and meditating on her theme for days. One of her themes is Creativity, a very logical theme for Pagans celebrating the feast of the Goddess Brigid, patron of those who create everything from metalwork to poems. And my meditations have helped me to realize that one of my own forms of creativity is the creation of ritual. I suppose that's a bit like saying that one of your forms of creativity is performance art. Ritual is impermanent, transient, short-lived. You can't really control it, the way that you can a quilt or a poem or a song. And yet, and yet, and yet. Ritual is so necessary.

Pagan Godspell has an incredible post up about ritual. You should go read the whole thing. Here's my favorite bit:

“Dwelling is not primarily inhabiting but taking care of and creating that space within which something comes into its own and flourishes.” It takes both time and ritual for real dwelling."

I love this. My Taurus Moon, my dedication to Hestia, my INTJ self adores the notion of ritualing a dwelling into being, of helping the place where I dwell to "come into its own and flourish." I'm within a few months of having the inside of my cottage -- that I moved into 3+ years ago -- just like I want it. And I'm spending hours dreaming, browsing, preparing to hire a landscaper and redo the garden over the next year and a half. The garden will be my next big creative project and it will be, as of course a garden must be, the place where my spirit and body truly dwell. I'm excited about the idea of ritualing it into being. I can't wait to do ritual in it.

What and how do you create? What makes ritual meaningful to you?

First of the Month Bazooms Blogging

Dear Women,

It's the first of the month. Today's a good day to do a breast self-examination (BSE). It's easy; here's how. BSE helps to detect tumors early. Early detection saves lives. Take a few minutes today and do a BSE. If you prefer to do your BSE at a particular point in your cycle, take the time today to calendar a BSE.

Dear Men,

Are there nine women in your life that you'd miss? Statistically, one of those women will come down with breast cancer. Why not offer to do a chore or watch the kids or make dinner so that one of the women you'd miss has the time to do a BSE?

Here's Something For Investors To Consider

From today's EEI newsletter:

New Investments Flowing Into Clean-Energy Technology Sector

Money is beginning to flow at a faster clip into the alternative energy sector than had been expected, thanks to increased global demand for green technology, the Los Angeles Times reported today. Wrote the newspaper: "Courting the state's growing clean-tech small businesses are banks, federal export finance officials and even venture capitalists, who have traditionally shunned the capital-intensive sector. They are focused in part on helping the small companies reach the overseas clients who are increasingly hungry for their technology."

Venture capital investment in clean-technology companies soared 78 percent last year to $2.9 billion, up from $1.6 billion in 2005, the Times reported, citing data released by Cleantech Venture Network. Jason Matlof, a partner at Battery Ventures, was quoted by the Times as saying: "Venture-backed clean-tech start-ups are on a trajectory. In five years people will look back and it will be deemed as one of the big venture trends, similar to the Internet trend." Matlof also noted that Venture capitalists began noticing some of the biggest recent initial public offerings were made by clean-tech companies.
Los Angeles Times , Jan. 31.

Villlage Discovered Near Stonehenge

Interesting archeological news from a site about two miles from Stonehenge.

I love that they can figure out how old the pigs were when they were eaten and, thus, tell what time of year it was when the festival took place.

Happy Birthday, Z

Happy Birthday, Zsuzsanna Budapest!

I regard Z as one of the elders of the modern Wiccan movement. Wiki notes that:

She founded the Susan B. Anthony Coven Number l, the first [specifically] feminist witches' coven, which became the role model for thousands of other spiritual groups across the nation. Her first book, The Feminist Book of Lights and Shadows, was published in 1975 and then re-published in 1989 as The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries. This book served as the first hands-on book to lead women into their own spiritual/Goddess heritage.

Z was arrested in 1975 in Los Angeles for reading Tarot cards to an undercover policewoman. She lost the trial, which resulted in a $300 fine and probation, whereby she was forbidden to read Tarot cards for others. However, she instead began teaching Tarot classes, in addition to courses in divination and witchcraft. The municipal code against fortune-telling (by someone other than a religious leader) was struck down nine years later. Z has led rituals, lectured, taught classes, given workshops, written articles tirelessly, and published in many women's newspapers across the country. She has powerfully influenced many of the future teachers and writers in the Goddess Movement.

Her circles are exclusive to women only, and she prefers an equal mix of heterosexual and lesbian women, which she believes provides balance in her rituals. According to Z, "We have women's circles. You don't put men in women's circles - they wouldn't be women's circles any more. Our [G]oddess is life, and women should be free to worship from their ovaries."

Located in San Francisco, Z sometime gets lost in the light of Starhawk's (well-earned) fame. But her books had a huge influence on my early spiritual development, and I don't know if I would have come to Wicca had it not been for her abillity to clearly tie this religion to feminism.

There's a line drawing in my copy of The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries that shows a crone, in winter, curled up at the foot of a tree, bare feet and long, gnarled toes, which must be so cold, not quite curled up underneath herself. Yet, the crone seems to be dreaming deep dreams and not unhappy with her life. She is, at any rate, a survivor, one who has made it through many cold winters before and who will, you hope when you look at the picture, make it through a few more, if for no better reason than to warm her feet in the Summer sun. That picture got me through some pretty difficult times.

Thank you, Z. Many happy returns of the day.

By Jove, I Think He's Got It

Wherein Attaturk finally figures out of whom this junta reminds him. Perhaps Cheney spends his time in his undisclosed location sewing his gems into his whalebone corsets.

To Be, As Well, A Daughter Of The North

The Bear's Daughter
by Theodora Goss

She dreams of the south. Wandering through the silent castle,
Where snow has covered the parapets, and the windows
Are covered with frost, like panes of isinglass,
She dreams of pomegranates and olive trees.

But to be the bear's daughter is to be a daughter, as well,
Of the north. To have forgotten a time before
The tips of her fingers were blue, before her veins
Were blue like rivers flowing through fields of ice.

To have forgotten a time before her boots
Were elk-leather lined with ermine.

Somewhere in the silent castle, her mother is sleeping
In the bear's embrace, and breathing pomegranates
Into his fur. She is a daughter of the south,
With hair like honey and skin like orange-flowers.

She is a nightingale's song in the olive groves.

And her daughter, wandering through the empty garden,
Where the branches of yew trees rubbing against each other
Sound like broken violins,

Dreams of the south while a cold wind sways the privet,
Takes off her gloves, which are lined with ermine, and places
Her hands on the rim of the fountain, in which the sun
Has scattered its colors, like roses trapped in ice.

Some people, and I think that they are well-meaning people, will say that Imbolc, the Pagan holiday that's coming up this full-moon Friday, is the "beginning of Spring." They talk about watching for the "first signs of Spring," although they have to stretch rather far to find them, noting buds on trees that were there at Yule, as well, or pointing out that the days have, as, in fact, they have, become a bit longer since Yule, when the night far outlasts the day. But if they thought more about it, these people would, I think, agree with me. Imbolc isn't the first day of Spring. Imbolc is the deep, deep, deepest deep middle of the Winter. Imbolc is as far into Winter as you can be. Yule was the beginning of Winter and the first day of Spring will be Eostara, the Vernal Equinox on March 21st. Imbolc, which falls between them, truly is mid-Winter.

And, here, at least, where I live, in the middle of the Mid-Atlantic seaboard, that feels right. From mid-January to mid-February is when we have our coldest weather and best chance of snow and ice. By February, it's been grey too many days and there are still, to my mildly-SAD-affected self, too many grey days still to come. Trees, hard tiny buds notwithstanding, still look bare, not yet having gained the vague pink aura that they'll acquire shortly before turning that amazing color of Spring green that they turn once it's really Spring. The squirrels are now digging up holes all over my yard here in the oak grove, desperate for a few buried acorns to carry them through. "My" fox comes round, too, too hungry to worry about staying out of sight, hoping she may catch an already-nearly-dead rabbit or, even, proud though she is, a squirrel. The ground is too hard, and even when it's not too hard, it's too wet and cold, to do much of anything in the garden, although this mild winter I've managed to pick thyme and rosemary and a bit of parsley as recently as this weekend.

Imbolc, in my mind, is all about two things: (1) getting through and (2) doing wild things that require a leap of faith. I think, and your mileage may differ, but I think that deep Winter calls on us to take the same walk as the Bear's Daughter takes in Theodora Goss' wonderful poem:

And her daughter, wandering through the empty garden,
Where the branches of yew trees rubbing against each other
Sound like broken violins,

Dreams of the south while a cold wind sways the privet,
Takes off her gloves, which are lined with ermine, and places
Her hands on the rim of the fountain, in which the sun
Has scattered its colors, like roses trapped in ice.

Take off your ermine-lined gloves, the habits and beliefs and carefullnesses that cover your hands and keep you from feeling -- the cold, yes, but also everything else. Touch, with the palm of your whole hand, the icy rim of the fountain, and reach for the sun, reflected and refracted like roses. Touch it even though it freezes your fingers. There are times, lots of times, when the only way "out," the only way "there" -- is through. Deep mid-Winter is like that. If you make it through, you'll see Spring and Summer, but first you have to make it through. And sometimes that means taking off your gloves and plunging your hands into the ice to grasp the fiery roses, to feel something, anything, even if it's pain. It's the only way to find roses in mid-Winter's "empty garden."

What wild thing can you do between now and late March? What warm ermine-lined gloves do you need to pull off? What will help you to make it through?

From An Environmental Issue To A Business Issue -- Good

From the January 23rd EEI newsletter:

Companies Speed Disclosing Climate Change Risks to Shareholders

In response to possible coming emission reduction laws and a push by socially conscious investment funds, more 10-K reports being filed with the SEC are likely to include a disclosure statement about the risks of climate change, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported. The Carbon Disclosure Project, a group of big institutional investors, said a record number of shareholders' resolutions relating to climate change could be filed this year.

The newspaper quoted Mike Lufkin, an associate with the environmental law firm Marten Law Group, as saying: "The handwriting is on the wall that this is going to be a huge issue for companies in the long run." Law firms are creating climate change-oriented practices to capitalize on the focus on climate change, and two attorneys recently sued oil, utility, and coal companies on behalf of Hurricane Katrina victims, claiming climate change warmed the Gulf of Mexico and contributed to the ferocity of the storm, the newspaper reported. Lufkin added: "There was a fundamental change in the discussion. It seems like climate change went from an environmental issue to a business issue, more so last year than at any time in my recent memory."

Avista said climate change could alter the availability and timing of hydro power and increase or decrease demand, the newspaper reported. Climate change regulation could also put constraints on coal-based plants.
Puget Sound Business Journal , Jan. 22.

The Role Of Religion In Politics

Starhawk on the emphasis on religion in political campaigns

Campaigns Need Values, Not Media Images
. . .

Voters have the right to know that any candidate is honest, honorable, moral, and will not abuse the public trust and power we invest in her or him. But today’s political campaigns, with all the professions of religiosity, all the sound bites, and talking points, and carefully crafted images, succeed mostly in obscuring our ability to tell if someone is simply a decent human being.

. . .

I would love to see us change the way we do elections. If I were making the rules, anyone who ran for public office would have to complete a qualifying course that included a week living on the streets with the homeless, a month living on a welfare budget, six months of volunteer work in an inner-city classroom or emergency room or post-disaster cleanup, and an anonymous week in jail.

This would weed out the merely power-hungry and egotistical, and those who become public servants might make laws and policies that embodied the values of compassion, caring and inter-connection that all religions teach.

Right on.

And, as great as the march to end the war this weekend was, few speakers managed to avoid inserting the xian god into their speeches. Jesse Jackson and Tim Robbins, I'm looking at you. By the time that the very good hip hop artist got around to reciting his poem "One" that included the line: "There's only one god," I'd had it and yelled out, "No, there's lots of them. And Goddesses, too!" Some folks around me cheered, some smiled, and some looked at me as if I had three heads (insided joke). Does it ALWAYS have to be about the xian god and to we HAVE do have him shoved down our throats EVERYWHERE? Can a few people recognize that not EVERYONE here is a member of an Abrahamic cult?

Sunday Akhmatova Blogging

Imitation from the Armenian


In the form of a black ewe my ghost
will straggle through your dreams
on faltering, withered legs,
bleating: "Shah of the Shahs,
blessed in Allah's eyes,
how well did you feast?
You hold the world in your hand
as if it were a cold bright bead . . .
But what about my boy,
did you enjoy his taste?"

Endgame International Film Festival * 2007

Nearing the endgame.

What A Lovely Way To Honor Brigid

Deborah Oak has a lovely idea for celebrating Imbolc, the Pagan holiday on February 2nd that honors Brigid, patron goddess of blacksmiths and poets:


Second Annual Brigid in Cyberspace Poetry Reading

WHAT: A Bloggers (Silent) Poetry Reading

WHEN: Anytime February 2, 2007

WHERE: Your blog

WHY: To celebrate the Feast of Brigid, aka Groundhog Day

HOW: Select a poem you like - by a favorite poet or one of your own - to post February 2nd.

RSVP: If you plan to publish, feel free to leave a comment and link on this post. Last year Reya put out the call and there was more poetry in cyberspace than she could keep track of. So, link to whoever you hear about this from and a mighty web of poetry will be spun.

Feel free to pass this invitation on to any and all bloggers.

Thank you, Reya, for beginning what I hope is now an annual event.

*Artwork found here.

Stop Debating Distractions. Cut Off Funding Now!

Back from the march to end the war, where one of the best speakers I heard was Tim Robbins who said, "We're here today for the same reason that you're here. It's our job. We're Americans."

He then told a story that I can hardly credit, but it must be true. He said that on the train this morning he'd talked with a young woman whose 20-year-old brother had just been sent to Iraq. In order to implement Bush's escalation, however, he'd received not the standard 12 weeks of training but A MERE TWO WEEKS. Are we really sending American soldiers into harm's way with a mere two weeks of training? Apparently. That makes no sense to me. That's the sort of thing that you do when the enemy is two or three weeks from your border; you round up the farmers and the teen-age boys and you show them how to aim and fire and you send them off to defend their homes. That's not what you do when you're the United States of America engaged in a war of choice millions of miles from home. There can't be a single serious general who thinks this is good practice.

How do you even learn how to fire a gun in a mere two weeks? Surely there's NO time for training concerning the Iraqi culture so that you can understand the people you're supposedly going to be simultaneously "liberating" and fighting. Why should we be surprised if green, untried soldiers sent into a horrific war with only fourteen days' worth of training crack under the pressure, massacre Iraqis, torture, rape, and generally act the way any scared teenager with no training would act in such a situation?

Shame on the Bush junta and shame on every Congressperson who doesn't vote immediately to cut off funding for this exercise in insanity. Bring our troops home now. Stop the escalation immediately. Clearly, we don't have the (trained) troops for it.

Spocko's Log - Supplemental

Oh, and fuck Disney.

Early Saturday Goddess Blogging

Freedom. The Goddess Freedom stands atop the dome of the United States Capitol.

Come see how lovely she is tomorrow while we march around her to end the war.

I'll see you there.

Cheney lashes out at Wolf Blitzer

Look, Wolf, this is not that difficult. When Cheney says: "You're out of line with that question," you say: "Was Focus on the Family out of line with their statement?" You don't blubber about how much you like Cheney's daugher or try to justify yourself. For the love of Loki. Did you go to journalism school? Make him either shit on Focus on the Family or accept their premise. How difficult is that? It's what a real newman would do.

Can You Help?

I've posted before about the amazing farmers' market here at Dupont Circle. Now, they're in need of an LCD projector.

FRESHFARM Markets needs an LCD projector for our FoodPrints program. FoodPrints is our local foods program in the DC schools; it is a collaborative project with DC Ag in the Classroom, American Institute of Wine & Food's 'Days of Taste' program, Warner-Hanson Productions and the National Youth Garden. This year, FoodPrints is at Rudolph Elementary School. We have scheduled some of our farmers to come into the classroom and talk to students about what is happening on the farm. We also have chefs who share their passion for local foods. Once spring arrives, we will start planting the school gardens. If you have a projector that you don't need, we'd love to have it for our school program. Send an email to info@freshfarmmarkets.org. Thanks so much!

HERETIC HEARTS

Elders.

Farewell To The Highlands

It's Burns' Night in Scotland, and in the heart of everyone who loves a good poem or song. Robbie Burns wrote quite a few. Here's one that i like:

My Heart's In The Highlands


1789
Type: Song
Tune: Failte na Miosg.

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.

Chorus.-My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.

Farewell to the mountains, high-cover'd with snow,
Farewell to the straths and green vallies below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.
My heart's in the Highlands, &c.

And, here's some spoken Robbie Burns, which is really the best way to enjoy him. He'd write a poem about anything. About a mouse or a weed he'd turned over with a plow. Or about his "illegitimate" daughter.

So raise a glass to Robbie and to poets in general. You may want to pass on the haggis, Burns' Night tradition though it may be.

Witch Wars

What a delightful DC blog I've just discovered! With wonderful pictures, too!

I'll add as an aside, given the lead post on Reclaiming, that I've taken all four of the basic Reclaiming classes, but I completely don't understand the witch-war that seems to always be raging around Reclaiming. That's kind of by choice. My wonderful Circle does a fanstastic job of mostly flying below the radar of most of the rest of the Pagan community.

The witch wars just seem so -- odd -- to me. Is that what you became a witch for? Hive off a coven if you don't like what's going on. This is a completely eclectic religion, for Goddess' sake; that's a huge part of its charm. However, chacon son gout; if you want to have witch wars, at least enjoy them as Reya seems to have done.

The Nervous Propagandist

Via the Wild Hunt, here's disgusting xian propaganda against witches.* I won't even start trying to refute the lies and inaccuracies I'll just note that I've never seen any similar Wiccan propaganda against xians.



*Obligatory acknowledgement that not all xians believe this crap.

Impeach Cheney First

Chuck Hagel (R-Conscience) is talking and Sinfonian has the story.

Hagel sounded to me, yesterday, very much like a man who really doesn't care whether he stays in the Senate or not. The junta better look out because freedom really is just another word for nothing left to lose. Meaning, once someone decides that they don't care what they lose, they're free and Hagel could be the one to draft articles of impeachment. I think he's angry enough to do it.

Here's a bit more Hagel from yesterday:

These young men and women that we put in Anbar province, in Iraq, in Baghdad are not beans. They're real lives. And we better be damn sure we know what we're doing, all of us, before we put 22,000 more Americans into that grinder. We better be as sure as you can be.

And I want every one of you, every one of us, 100 senators to look in that camera, and you tell your people back home what you think. Don't hide anymore; none of us.

That is the essence of our responsibility. And if we're not willing to do it, we're not worthy to be seated right here. We fail our country. If we don't debate this, if we don't debate this, we are not worthy of our country. We fail our country.

Hagel's quite a bit more conservative than I like on domestic issues, but credit where credit is due.

The Conjugation Of The Paramecium By Muriel Ruckeyser

This has nothing
to do with
propagating

The species
is continued
as so many are
(among the smaller creatures)
by fission

(and this species
is very small
next in order to
the amoeba, the beginning one)

The paramecium
achieves, then,
immortality
by dividing

But when
the paramecium
desires renewal
strength another joy
this is what
the paramecium does:

The paramecium
lies down beside
another paramecium

Slowly inexplicably
the exchange
takes place
in which
some bits
of the nucleus of each
are exchanged

for some bits
of the nucleus
of the other

This is called
the conjugation of the paramecium.

Ad of Men In Kilts

Oh.My.

Coming To The Craft

I've been a witch for more than twenty years, so you young'uns will have to excuse me for recounting some ancient history, but there was a time (strangely enough, about twenty-some years ago) when it was difficult as heck to learn much of anything about Wicca. This was back before the internet made access to information not only easy but anonymous and during a time when asking your local librarian to search the inter-library loan system for books on Wicca would have resulted in a call from the librarian to your boss in the school system pretty darn fast.

So, and especially because I lived at the time in a fairly rural, isolated area, I would find a book, read it, write down all the books in the bibliography, wait for my next trip to the bookstore in the big city, find a book, read it, write down all the books in the bibliography . . . . I managed, in this manner to read a number of fairly meaty books: everything from "When God Was a Woman," to "The White Goddess," to "Drawing Down the Moon," to "Aradia," to lots of Bachofen.

Eventually, however, Llewellyn began to publish lots of books on Wicca and I'd buy whatever I could get my hands on. I've recently spent some time going back through many of those early Lewellyn-type books, some of which I can remember pouring over for hours and hours and months and months and - wow. There's so little "there" there. Now, I realize that I'm not saying anything new here. It's become almost cliche in the Pagan community to talk about the dearth of books that go beyond "Wicca 101."

But what really got me thinking was the fact that, at the time, I really did build a serious, active spiritual life on those books and, remember, this was during a time when, for years and years, I'd never met another Pagan (that I knew of). And that wasn't as unusual as it must sound today. So what WAS in those books that fulfilled my spiritual hunger, that kept me coming back for more and more?

I think two things: the pictures and the general leitmotif of a life lived in ecstatic harmony with nature. I never cared very much for tables of correspondences or for pre-determined generic words to say on given Sabbats. But I adored the line drawings of women as priestesses (and the few photographs of "real" witches, generally British Gardnerians and skyclad) and the intimation behind all the cookie-cutter spells and silly, archaic ritual incantations of a life lived in communion with an animate world.

Today, I think, things have changed. The internet allows an interested teen-ager to pull up more information on Wicca than I could have accessed in a year. Witchox, ten years old and may the Goddess grant them many happy returns, allows even someone living in a conservative rural area to find out where Pagans are gathering and to head off to a festival or witchcamp. Amazon.com will deliver the entire Llewellyn library to your door, and all the Llewellyn-wanna-bees, as well. And you're far less likely to get fired if anyone "finds out" that you're a witch (although, it still happens).

But I think that many Pagans still at least start their quest reading whatever they can find on the shelves of their local Borders or B. Dalton's and that's more likely to be "Celtic Magic" or "Wheel of the Year" than anything else. And I think that's ok. Those books have pictures and those pictures are worth a thousand words.

Picture by Joanna Colbert. More of her lovely work is available here.

Senator Jim Webb Responds to the President

That's my Senator, bitches!

Thanks, Sandra Day!

Amazingly enough, the NYT gets it just exactly right:

Neither broken promises nor failed policies changed Mr. Bush’s mind. So the nation has been saddled with tax cuts that have turned a budget surplus into a big deficit, education reform that has been badly managed and underfinanced, far-right judges with scant qualifications, the dismantling of regulations in order to benefit corporations at the expense of workers, and a triumph of ideology over science in policy making on the environment and medical research. All along, Americans’ civil liberties and the constitutional balance have been trampled by a president determined to assert ever more power.

February

Still lie the sheltering snows, undimmed and white;
And reigns the winter's pregnant silence still;
No sign of spring, save that the catkins fill,
And willow stems grow daily red and bright.
These are days when ancients held a rite
Of expiation for the old year's ill,
And prayer to purify the new year's will.


- Helen Hunt Jackson, A Calendar of Sonnets: February

When Our Troubles Began

Ken McLeod has some interesting things to say about the Bush junta's desperation for war with Iran:

I'm not saying that doesn't add up to a lot of things that could go wrong, any one of which could flip the world on its back, but hey. It could work. The Islamic Republic could fall, or fold, and the US bestride the Middle East like a colossus.

That victory would be the moment we'd some day look back on, and say, 'And that was when our troubles began.' Fortunately for America and its allies, such a victory is unlikely. What is far more likely is an ever-widening catastrophe across the Middle East if not beyond. But if a US victory does come about, the rest of the world would find itself facing a lone superpower that had successfully carried out an attack, perhaps even a nuclear attack, on a country that had no nuclear weapons and that had not attacked or threatened it. From then on we would all be living in interesting times; and on borrowed time. The time to do what we can to stop this is now.

Lots more here.

Sacred Spaces In The Modern World. Who Owns Sacred Space? Who Gets To Control It?

The Wild Hunt has the story about Greek Pagans who have been fighting for the right to worship at ancient Greek temples. (The story has recieved a fair amount of attention, but the reporting suffers from some of the usual flaws. For example, one widely-quoted AP story says that: A woman who called herself the high priestess said, "We are Greeks and we demand from the government the right to use our temples." Yes. And every xmas, a man who calls himself the pope gives a blessing from the balcony of St. Peter's.)

The situation raises some interesting questions that remind me a bit of the squabbles that Virginia's Episcopalians are going through: Who "owns" church property? Who owns sacred sites throughout the world? And who gets to control what goes on there?

Many Pagans claim that we are the heirs to various ancient Pagan traditions. To what extent do the places of worship attached to those traditions belong to modern Pagans? And, even if ownership isn't in question, to what extent can the government deny Pagans access to such sites? What if I want to do ritual at Lascaux? Perhaps more interesting, what if i want to do ritual at many of the sites that were originally sacred places of Pagan worship that were stolen by the xians? Can I make them take down their church so that the sacred spring of my foremothers can once more bubble free, surrounded by a grove of trees? I imagine Native American readers can provide plenty of examples of losing control over their sacred sites and their fights with the American government for the right to worship where their ancestors worshipped.

England has allowed Druidic and other Pagan groups limited access to Stonehenge for some time now. But my understanding is that British Druids and other Pagans would like much more access than they have, while the government worries that the site will be damaged by continued use.

Xians have skated around some of the more difficult questions that face Greece and the Greek Pagans. Notre Dame de Paris, an important French tourist and cultural site, for example, is open to tourists (and the catholicchurch profits from that - perhaps Greek Pagans are entitled to the entrance fees to their temples, as well?) but also used for religious ceremonies.

To make clear: my sympathies here are with the Pagans. And there can be tremendous power in worshiping the old Gods and Goddesses at the old sites. Governments are going to have to adjust. We're here and we're not going away. It would be wonderful to see a world where sites sacred to various religions were shared and enjoyed by all. (Seems as if there are one or two places in the ME sacred to several Abrahamic cults that could be better shared, as well.)

On another note, not everyone is adjusting well at all. I admit that I take the most perverse pleasure from this quote over at the Wild Hunt:

Obviously, officials from the Greek Orthodox Church were apoplectic.

"They are a handful of miserable resuscitators of a degenerate dead religion who wish to return to the monstrous dark delusions of the past" - Father Efstathios Kollas, the President of Greek Clergymen.

Father Kollas can bite me.

Talking Self And Younger Self

So may things fail to interest us, simply because they don't find in us enough surfaces on which to live, and what we have to do is to increase the number of planes in our mind, so that a much larger number of themes can find a plane in it at the same time.

~Ortega y Gasset

Whenever we refuse to be knocked off our feet (either violently or gently) by some telling new conception precipitated from the depths of our imagination by the impact of an ageless symbol, we are cheating ourselves of the fruit of an encounter with the wisdom of the millenniums.

~Heinrich Zimmer

both quote in The Possible Human by Jean Houston

How Magic Works

The more complex a structure, the more energy it must dissipate to maintain all that complexity. This flux of energy makes the system highly unstable, subject to internal fluctuations -- and sudden change. If these fluctuations or perturbations reach a critical size, they are amplified by the system's many connections and can drive the system into a new state -- even more ordered, coherent, and connected. The new state occurs as a sudden shift.

from Brain/Mind Bulletin, May 21, 1979, as quuoted in The Possible Human by Jean Houston

Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap

Here's what I have to say about this post-abortion trauma bullshit.

Once an unwanted pregnancy happens, there are basically three choices:

1. Have an abortion.

2. Bring the pregnancy to term and arrange for an adoption.

3. Bring the pregnancy to term and raise the child.

The only person who can decide which of those options is the best is the woman involved.

Might she later regret her choice?*

Maybe.

It's easy to regret a previous choice and to forget that the alternatives might well have caused as much, if not more, regret. Giving a child up for adoption can lead to a lifetime of regret and longing. Raising a child is far from easy even under good circumstances and it's easy for the single, teenaged mother to regret not going to the prom, not having a social life, not being able to give her child the benefits that she could have given if she'd been older and more financially secure before giving birth.

But we don't have an industry and a movement devoted to making women feel guilty about adoption or motherhood.

It would be wonderful if we lived in a society where every pregnancy was planned and no woman ever had to experience even a moment's regret over an unplanned pregnancy. Modern birth control, sex education, health care, and equality for women could get us very close to such a world. The same creeps push the abortion-trauma-bullshit do everything that they can to keep us from achieving such a world.

So, abortion trauma people, please, bite me.




*Obligatory notice that most women don't regret their abortions at all. However, even assuming arguendo that a given woman might later regret that choice, it's important to understand that this doesn't mean that, had she chosen differently she would never have had any regrets. That's way too easy to assume when you haven't lived through the other choices.

On Walden Pond

Via Witchvox, here's an article that comes pretty close to describing heaven on Earth to me. Well, ok, I'm old and I need a firm mattress. And an internet connection. But otherwise, heaven on Earth.

Sunday Akhmatova Blogging

Courage

We know what trembles on the scales,
and what we must steel ourselves to face.
The bravest hour strikes on our clocks:
may courage not abandon us!
Let bullets kill us -- we are not afraid,
nor are we bitter, though our housetops fall.
We will serve you, Russian speech,
from servitude in foreign chains,
keep you alive, great Russian word,
fir for the songs of our children's children,
pure on their tongues, and free.

23 February 1942

Bush: No Need For Sacrifice

What NTodd said.

American Gulag

Via Miniver Cheevey, Here's a letter from a detainee in Guantanamo:


At Guantanamo, soldiers have assaulted me, placed me in solitary confinement, threatened to kill me, threatened to kill my daughter and told me I will stay in Cuba for the rest of my life. They have deprived me of sleep, forced me to listen to extremely loud music and shined intense lights in my face. They have placed me in cold rooms for hours without food, drink or the ability to go to the bathroom or wash for prayers. They have wrapped me in the Israeli flag and told me there is a holy war between the Cross and the Star of David on one hand and the Crescent on the other. They have beaten me unconscious.

. . .

I would rather die than stay here forever, and I have tried to commit suicide many times. The purpose of Guantanamo is to destroy people, and I have been destroyed. I am hopeless because our voices are not heard from the depths of the detention center.

If I die, please remember that there was a human being named Jumah at Guantanamo whose beliefs, dignity and humanity were abused. Please remember that there are hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo suffering the same misfortune. They have not been charged with any crimes. They have not been accused of taking any action against the United States.
***************************************************************************

As Miniver Cheevey notes, this-- the creation of a place that has as its purpose the destruction of hman beings, the deliberate attempt to start a war between xians and Moslems, and beating people until they are unconscious -- is done in our name, with our tax dollars, in my name, with my tax dollars. As Miniver Cheevey also notes, the fact that it is still going on shows that I am culpable, that I haven't done enough to stop it.

Let The Conversation Begin

Hillary Clinton's running. I like her list of priorities. First, end the war in Iraq. Second, develop an energy policy that sets America free from foreign oil. Third, address the Bush deficit. Fourth, provide health care for Americans.

I would have liked to hear her specifically include global warming as a problem, separate from energy independence, that must be addressed. One of the few things that could get me to vote for someone else in the primary would be if there were someone else making a stronger case on the need to protect the Earth.

Hillary comes back, in her announcement, to a point that has long been one of her themes: in America, if you're willing to work hard and play by the rules (as, for example, Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling weren't), you should be able to build a good life for yourself and your family. I think that's the whole purpose of a government, what a government is supposed to provide for its citizens.

I've maintained all along that she would run. So today's announcement wasn't a surprise. ( I do imagine that she'd originally planned to hold off a bit longer announcing her bid, but that Obama's early announcement got her to make her announcement now, rather than later. ) It is, though, in its own way, amazing. When you think about how much abuse this woman has taken and about how much abuse will now come her way, aren't you amazed at her steel constitution? I am. I want a president like that, rather than the thin-skinned little man we've got now who can't even sit through a half an hour of Steven Colbert.

I'm 50, almost 51. In all my life, there's never been a woman candidate for president with a real shot at winning. Until today. America is ready for, and, I believe that America can benefit from having, a woman executive. (And, is it too much to hope that her candidacy will give Alito and Roberts pause on their headlong rush to institute a unitary executive (aka dictator)? Go ahead, boys, give President Clinton all that power. Wingnut heads will explode.) What a great year for the little girls of America, who see a woman Speaker of the House and a woman candidate for the Democratic nomination. I'd like to see a woman president before I die.

Cat Head Theatre

Happy Friday.

You're Fired

OK, Technically, it's "impeached." But we didn't think you'd understand all those syllables. Go home to you fake ranch in Crawford.

There She Goes Again

Like the crazy aunt at the family gathering who goes around saying things that make everyone uncomfortable, I'm always going on about the fact that there are too many people here on planet Earth. Whenever I bring it up, there's usually an awkward silence in the room (meat or silicone) and then someone says, "Hey! How 'bout them Yankees!" or something very similar.

I understand the discomfort. Issues related to procreation go straight to the heart of human liberty, of what it means, for many people, to be fully human. No one wants Big Brother in their bedroom, telling them who they can have sex with and when and under what circumstances they can procreate. The potential for abuse is almost 100%, and every minority group on Earth worries that they'll be targeted. Gays worry that as soon as a "gay gene" is identified, no one will have gay children any more, especially if couples are limited to one or two offspring. African Americans can see who'll (blondes) be allowed to reproduce and who'll (people with kinky hair) be edged out. Women just know that they'll be marginalized and controlled as they are everytime that any issue related to sex or reproduction is decided by a society that is (still)patriarchal to its core. Just look at China, where the one-child policy actually meant the one-son policy. And on, and on. I do understand what it is that makes people uncomfortable.

But discomfort won't change the basic fact. There are already too many people on the planet. Yes, Europe has begun, to the consternation of wingnuts everywhere, to reign in its population growth. But we're headed for a cliff and we're headed there pretty fast. This article, which Prior Aelred sent to me, does a very good job of explaining the problem.

The Population Bubble
by David Bacon

In the Roadrunner and Coyote cartoons there is usually a scene where Coyote, chasing Roadrunner, runs off a cliff. He continues on a horizontal line for a couple of seconds, looking increasingly puzzled and concerned, until he realizes his predicament, tries vainly to reverse course, and falls to the desert below.
This is symbolic of the situation ecologists call "overshoot." Overshoot is when a species reproduces to a number that its environment can't sustain.

In 1944, for example, 29 reindeer were introduced onto St. Matthew Island in the Bering Sea. With few competitors, no predators and plenty to eat, the herd increased to about 6,000 by the summer of 1963, consuming almost all available food. That winter most of them died. The surviving population in 1966 numbered 42.

And now the species with the unique ability to change the environment on a colossal scale appears on the verge of making for itself a St. Matthew Island worldwide. At the end of the 19th century the human population was 1.6 billion. It is now 6.5 billion.

The food that made this amazing increase possible -- there's also sanitation and modern medicine, but food is the base -- came primarily by boosting crop yields with petroleum. With fertilizer from natural gas, with crops bred to capitalize on that fertilizer and with petroleum-powered machinery and irrigation wells, we can produce huge yields -- more than 7,000 pounds of corn per acre, for example. Just one lifetime ago, corn yields were one-fifth of that. Wheat yields have almost tripled. Similar comparisons can be made for other grains.

But, this can't last. The aquifers, oil and natural gas that made possible a fourfold population increase are finite. Over the coming decades petroleum will become harder and harder to find, extract and put to use, until eventually it becomes unavailable for agriculture in any significant amount. Meanwhile, another 2 billion people are predicted worldwide by 2050.

Increasing attention to the so-called peak oil problem focuses on its impact on airlines, car makers and the stock market. These will suffer, but not on the level of malnutrition and starvation for many, and a continuous struggle over decreasing resources for all.

Is the situation really this dire? Agriculture accounts for a fraction of petroleum use in industrialized countries. We might reduce use elsewhere -- more efficient cars, less plastic -- and use the savings to keep crop yields high enough to feed everyone.

But to make that work, short-term and local self-interest must yield to a long-term, global consciousness -- a tall order. Increased efficiency and alternative fuels might for a time fill the gap left by petroleum's decline. But we have yet to devise an alternative as versatile as petroleum that can fill its huge role -- especially in the face of relentlessly growing demand for energy. And whatever we do to support population growth will only make overshoot worse in the end.

In addition to unique abilities, we have a serious shortcoming. We are unwilling, perhaps unable, to see ourselves as subject to the same constraints as Earth's other inhabitants. But in our dependence on the environment for food and water, we most certainly are subject to those constraints. Without a solution, we will die just as surely as the St. Matthew reindeer.

Given Earth's limits, there already are too many of us for the long run. But the day of reckoning is many years away, and it is notoriously difficult for political leaders to seek moderate sacrifice today to prevent terrible sacrifice tomorrow when there is too little general recognition of the trouble ahead.

Can we be wilier than Wile E. Coyote? It's hard to be optimistic. There is probably no real solution to this problem, only halfway measures to lessen the eventual impact. But every little bit will help.

David Bacon is a physician and retired Army colonel living in Aspen, Colorado. He wrote this for the Land Institute's Prairie Writers Circle, Salina, Kansas.

I disagree with Mr. Bacon on several points. I don't think that the day of reckoning is nearly as far away as he imagines, especially as global climate change makes more and more land uninhabitable and as more and more people (think China) outside of the U.S. demand, as they have a right to do, living standards that equal those of people living in the U.S.

Finally, I disagree that there is no real solution to this problem, although I'd agree that there's likely no ONE solution to this problem. But we could, within five years if we wanted, turn this bus around and get it headed in the right direction.

Free, safe, effective birth control for everyone should be a focus of government spending, even if it means no more trillion-dollar wars. Actual sex education that includes education about the danger of population explosion must replace the nonsense, half efforts, and abstinence bullshit that we currently impose on our children. Tax incentives for those who don't have extra children and increasing taxes on those who have more than one child, in order to stop those people from externalizing the costs of their reproductive choices onto the rest of the planet, may be needed. Large lump sum payments for those who agree to be sterilized, especially after only one child could help. Beyond that, an attempt to change public attitudes, as we've done about everything from smoking to drunk driving to discussing cancer, has got to start now and has got to be a serious social priority -- a Manhattan Project or a race to the Moon level of social commitment is needed.

As the article notes, population problems tend to solve themselves -- it's just that they do so in particularly ugly ways and, I'll note, in ways that hurt children. We can do nothing and then face our own Winter of '63. I'll simply note that the St. Matthew Island reindeer didn't have nuclear weapons. I know what I think we should do and I'm willing to be the embarrassing aunt who makes everyone uncomfortable if that will help us to face this problem. Maybe it's the Bene Gesserit in me, hoping that we'll someday become human beings. Perhaps population overshoot will be our Gom Jabbar?

Save In My Breast

You realize right away that she started as such a Romantic.

Bresson

You don't have to read the whole article, but you owe it to yourself to check out the slide show. He was just.so.good.

A Threat To At Least Half The World's Population

Today's EEI newsletter reports that:

United Nations Head Urges President Bush to Address Climate Change
In his first meeting in the Oval Office since assuming the post of United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon caught President Bush off-guard by pushing for new U.S. policies on climate change, the Financial Times of London reported. In making it one of his top three priorities in his talk with Bush, Ban urged the U.S. to show leadership. The FT quoted a U.N. source as saying: "The president at first was a little surprised, as it was not on the agenda."

In a speech later at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Ban was quoted as saying climate change was "an all-encompassing threat - to health, to food and water supplies, to the coastal cities where nearly half the world's population live. Acting on climate change will be one of my top priorities."

The White House, meanwhile, refuted reports that it was going to reverse itself on climate change and push for a cap-and-trade system, the FT reported. White House spokesman Tony Snow was quoted as saying: "I want to walk you back from the whole carbon cap story . . . The carbon cap stuff is not accurate. What the president has talked about all along is the importance of innovation."
Financial Times of London , Jan. 17.

Heaven forefend that the President of the United States should ever have to think on his feet and deal with something that's not on his pre-approved agenda. He can hardly deal with a topic on which he has been thoroughly briefed. You'd like to think that the leader of the largest, most powerful country on Earth would be ready to discuss "an all-encompassing threat," an issue that threatens the world's "health, food and water supplies, and to the coastal cities where nearly half of the world's populations live." I hope that the new Secretary General is serious and that climate change will indeed be one of his top priorities. I wish that we had a president who felt the same.

Albatross

I think this brief excerpt from Robert Novak's column says quite a bit, especially when your remember that various branches of the conservative movement often use Novak to talk to each other:

Iraq is a black hole for the Republican Party," a prominent party strategist told me this week. What makes his comments so important is that he is not a maverick Republican in Congress but one of Bush's principal political advisers.

As they adjust to the 2006 election returns, Republicans recognize that this was no isolated bump in the road. The loss of about 320 state legislative seats across the country to the Democrats classifies last year's election as a midrange electoral disaster.

The Republicans have a problem. His name is George Bush. He doesn't listen to them; he doesn't care about them. He had his accountability moment back in 2004, when they all backed him 100% and, as far as he's concerned, he'll never have another.

If the Democrats have the brains that the Goddess gave to garbanzo beans, they will tie the Republicans to George W. Bush. Then, they'll SuperGlue them to George W. Bush. Then, they'll weld them to George W. Bush. Then, they'll . . . . Well, I think you get the idea. Someone needs a database right now of every supportive statement that every Republican ever made about George W. Bush and his insane war.

Nice Pagan Ladies

Discussing an interfaith celebration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, M. Macha Nightmare raises an issue that I've struggled with in other contexts.

One of the speakers preached, and as preaching goes she was good, but I don't want to be preached to no matter how skilled the preacher. I feel that preaching is inappropriate in interfaith contexts, even ones that celebrate the life of another African-American preacher.

I must admit that when one man sang a song he'd written about 'the Lord,' I just had to walk out for a while. He was a fine singer with a good strong voice, but the song made me so uncomfortable. Daresay it offended me. I know it was meaningful to him. But was it appropriate to all present? I don't think so. Not to me anyway. I returned after he finished.

What should a nice Pagan woman do in such a situation? I felt the only option I had to address my own discomfort was to absent myself for the duration. I did mention to the Director of MIC, who was one of the main organizers, how I'd been put off by such overt religiosity of a particular stripe. Maybe I'm just not cut out for this kind of work. I don't seek it out. It comes to me -- not this particular event, but in general I participate in interfaith activities because someone asks me to. I pass such opportunities to others when I can, and generally I feel I do a credible job, but still -- I'm never sure I'm the best person to be doing it.

We share many values -- peace activism, concern for the poor and homeless, opposition to capital punishment, green concerns -- and when we work together on those problems, I'm just fine. But still I find that the majority Abrahamics tend to slip into their assumption that all the world's population is monotheistic. It bugs me. I feel I should try to bring it up in as constructive a way as I can. How do others deal with it?

I'm on several listserves that purport to be for members of all faiths devoted to liberal causes. Yet, when they need a quotation to illustrate a point, I note that it will either come from the bible or, when they feel very "inclusive," the quoran. Both of those exclude and offend me. It does get tiring to always be the one who emails the author to point out that we don't all worship "God" and that "his Son" is not a major prophet for some of us.

But I think that "nice Pagan ladies," and, Goddess knows, that's how I present, (at least initially!), in my grograin-ribbon Ferragamos, sensible ear-rings, ear-length bob, and Hermes scarves, have to speak up.

I'm on an email list for the local farmer's market and the woman who runs it always posts lovely poetry with her weekly emails. But one week, she made some point about how so many different faiths celebrate around the Spring Equinox, noting that some farmers were coming back to the market after being gone for the winter. She listed lots of faiths, but no Pagan ones. I had to email her back and point out that many of us don't celebrate a religious holiday around the Spring Equinox. We celebrate the Spring Equinox. She emailed back a nice response, but I swear, it was the FIRST time that it occurred to her that some xian, moslem, jewish, buddhist didn't completely cover everyone who came to the market.

Interfaith is supposed to mean interfaith. If we can't be, as I noted below, a religion that's under the radar, then I'm going to insist on our place ON the radar.

The Goddess Weeping

On the one hand, I find that the WaPo's "On Faith" section has a pretty high squick factor and I kind of feel weird about Starhawk giving it legitimate Pagan cred. (Yeah, well, bite me. I kind of liked being a hidden religion, even though I know: things change.) On the other hand, it's the only way that many xians and other Abrahamists will ever hear from a "real" Pagan, rather than hearing from their minister "about" Pagans.

Today, I think she does a good job answering the latest (stupid) question: Is the war in Iraq a "just war"?

The whole thing is good, but here's the money quote: Religion should not be a set of earplugs to deafen us to the cries of children, nor a sedative to ease our consciences as we survey the graves. Religion should challenge us to be more than we are, to deeper levels of compassion and love than we have yet reached. The Goddess, the deep interconnectedness of all being, does not cheer on one team to kill and maim another. She is weeping.

Escalation

The McCain plan is bad for America, bad for Iraq.

For Rynee

Merry Meet And Merry Part And Merry Meet Again

Webb, You Better Fucking Have Meant It When You Said That You'd "Grown" On Women's Rights

Oh yeah, oh yeah. That's my Senator talking, bitches!

Webb's upset victory over former senator George Allen (R) provided Democrats with the sixth seat they needed to take control of the Senate. "In a call echoed by Americans across this nation, the people of Virginia sent Senator Webb to Congress to help take our country in a new direction," Reid and Pelosi said in a joint statement.

Webb serves on the Senate Foreign Relations, Armed Services, Joint Economic and Veterans Affairs Committees. At a Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Iraq last week, Webb chastised the decision to go to war.

"We went to war in Iraq recklessly; we must move forward responsibly. The war's costs to our nation have been staggering. These costs encompass what we hold to be most precious: the blood of our citizens. They also extend to the many thousands more Iraqi people killed and wounded as their country slides into the chaos of sectarian violence and civil war."

Several Democrats said the decision to have two Virginia lawmakers in a row give the speech highlights the party's efforts to continue to make inroads into what has long been a conservative-leaning state. Some political observers believe Virginia could be competitive in the 2008 presidential race, even though the state has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964.

"It's a wonderful recognition of the state of the Virginia Democratic Party," said Del. Brian J. Moran (D-Arlington), chairman of the House Democratic caucus.

Virginia. A blue state. Get used to it, bitches.

Yes.

What Mad Melancholic Feminista says.

Someday, I am going to start a blog called What Mad Melancholic Feminista Says. It will consist of links to the Mad Melancholic Feminista's blog. It will be the best blog ever.

Spinster Aunts Unite!

So by now, when I finally get home from work and can blog, this NYT article has probably been commented upon to death. But I do have a few things to say (my point, and I do have one!) about it.

The NYT reports on the amazing fact that a whopping 51% (well, according to the boyking, that's a mandate) of women now live in -- gasp -- an unmarried state. Full disclosure: I am a member of the 51%. I've been married twice. Both times, it made me fucking miserable. I never, ever, plan to be married again.

The NYT notes that: "[T]here is no going back to a world where we can assume that marriage is the main institution that organizes people'’s lives," said Prof. Stephanie Coontz, director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonprofit research group. "Most of these women will marry, or have married. But on average, Americans now spend half their adult lives outside marriage."

Further, "Although we can help people 'do' marriage better, it is delusionalusional to construct social policy or make personal life decisions on the basis that you can count on people spending most of their adult lives in marriage," said Professor Coontz, the author of Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage.”

I think this article is important because it points out just how wrong the wingnuts are. Continuing to insist that our society is "founded" upon a nuclear family is just wrong. Insisting that "marriage, between a man and a woman," as they always intone, must be "protected" because it is "crucial to our society" is bullshit.

Interestingly, in spite of all the propaganda that our society throws at women insisting that to be an unmarried woman is to be ugly, unfulfilled, unhappy, and a failure, women are slower to remarry after a divorce than are men. The article is replete with examples of women who are quite happy no longer being married. This has got to scare the crap out of the wingnuts who have (I'm looking at you, Elizabeth Edwards) invested all they've got in the myth that an unmarried woman is an unhappy (less joyous!) woman.

I can count on one hand the truly happy marriages that I really know. I'm not anti-marriage. But there are a large majority of us who are not married and who live in this society. It's time for society to take notice. And it's time for us to stop raising girls, from the cradle onwards, as if they were going to spend their whole live married. They're not.

Get over it.

Rain Subpoenas, Rain, Rain, Subpoenas.

Hat tip to KyleasSuch.

Mobility -- And Damn The Cost!

THE SUMMING-UP

When young I scribbled, boasting, on my wall.
No Love, No Property, No Wages.
In youth's good time I somehow bought them all,
And cheap, you'd think, for maybe a hundred pages.
Now in my prime, disburdened of my gear,
My trophies ransomed, broken, lost,
I carve again on the lintel of the year
My sign: MOBILITY!—and damn the cost!

~Stanley Kunitz

I had two very contradictory experiences today.

This morning, I was in a meeting, with two men I consider brilliant, discussing strategy for a rather complex Supreme Court case. And, I had this moment when I realized, removed a million miles from the conversation, this is why I went to law school. This is the kind of work that I love to do, this is the glass bead game I can play for the rest of my life. For this "one white singing hour" of intellectual stimulation, I'll "count many a year" of traipsing up the road to school "well lost." Being a witch, my first reaction was to ground. To dig my roots deep into the Earth, to bind myself and my future to that experience.

But, coming home, I was thinking about early retirement. When I was younger, I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to retire early. I'd read articles in, say, Fortune Magazine about people who did all this mad planning and investing so that they could retire at my age, 50, and I'd wonder what was wrong with them. Why would they want to drop out of life so early??? What I couldn't imagine when I was young was that there would come a time when it would make me very happy to never have to do another day's labor for someone else. It's irrelevant now; I spent too many years in public service. I'll be working until I drop. But now that I'm 50, I understand the urge, which is more than I ever understood before.

So, all in all, I count it a very good day.

Help Us, Obi Wan. You're Our Only Hope.

From today's EEI newsletter:

Ex-VP Gore Invited by Rep. Dingell to Testify on Climate Change

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., has crafted an environmental agenda memo to members of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, which he chairs, making climate change the top panel priority of the 110th Congress, Greenwire reported. Dingell plans on inviting former Vice President Gore to testify in support of new federal climate change legislation.

Greenwire quoted the memo as saying: "It is critically important that members of the committee gain a full appreciation of the scientific and substantive implications of climate change policy so that we can develop and, if at all possible, enact a sound and effective public policy that is environmentally and economically responsible." The newswire said Gore's staff was noncommittal about an appearance.

Frank O'Donnell, head of Clean Air Watch, said the Gore invitation was a "blockbuster way to kick off the House debate," while Phil Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said Dingell was taking a leadership role because he recognized that there was a seachange in the House to push for some kind of legislation. Clapp was skeptical that Dingell went far enough, saying: "There's no commitment here to move legislation. 'If at all possible' distinctly throws cold water on the situation. This actually reads more like an assertion of committee jurisdiction."
Greenwire , Jan. 15.



I hope that Al Gore will agree to appear before the Committee and I hope that he will explain to it, in no uncertain terms, that we can't tolerate the "if at all possible we'll enact legislation" approach. We've run out of time for that approach. Mr. Gore, if anyone can convince the politicians to act now, I think you can. Please, go make it clear to them.

Strega Nonna

Always obey your Nonna.

Before Enlightment, Chop Wood, Carry Water; After Enlightenment, Chop Wood, Carry Water

This year, I'm working (and it is work, hard work!) with renewed fervor on demanding from myself an engagement in daily practice. There are so many reasons to skip a day -- I'm tired, I need to do X, or Y, or Z, I'll do it with real devotion tomorrow, etc. When I'm tempted to pretend that my commitment to my own soul doesn't matter, I pull out this paragraph from Twelve Wild Swans and read it out loud.

When I find myself unwilling or unable to set aside time for my soul-life, I sometimes ask myself the following question: if I had a lively and sensitive little daughter -- say four or five years of age -- who loved me dearly and longed for my attention, how much of my time would I make sure to give her every day? Five minutes of undivided attention? Twenty? Wouldn't i want to plan my whole day and my whole life around her?

But how much of my attention do I [who have no such demands upon my time] give to my own soul-life? Why is it so hard to give myself the love and attention I would willingly give to to others? It's a little sad isn't it? This is a question [that] I have asked many women over years of mentoring, and it is amazing how frequently we are determined to love, protect, and care for an imaginary daughter and yet are unwilling or unable to take the time to care for our own dear souls.

~Twelve Wild Swans by Starhawk andHilary Valentine

Bush & Cheney Are What Impeachment Was Designed For

Digby's right about everything except for this: we do so have the time. And the process of impeachment all by itself might exercise some of the restraint that nothing else has managed to do. Not only that, but it's the right thing to do. And there's a huge power in doing the right thing. And, hell, if we're headed for a Constitutional crisis anyway -- and, one way (implicitly) or another (explicitly), that IS where we're headed -- I'd like to have it while Justice Stevens is still on the bench. (And, BTW, this is what happens when you ignore the Constitution. SCOTUS ignored the Constitution and ordered Florida to stop counting votes -- sticking America with the man who was voted down. Turns out that the Founders were right: it's better to let Americans select their leaders. Not SCOTUS, not Diebold, Americans.)

So the Iranians are after our troops. Condi said so last week. Cheney and Hadley are saying it today. Sounds like CB (cassus belli) talk to me. We can't wait for the Iranians to shoot the American troops with smoking mushrooms. Or something.

I have long said that the Republicans are undemocratic, but now they're just coming right out and saying it: democracy is all well and good until the people and their representatives object to what the president is doing at which point the people and their representatives become a superfluous "committee." They have interpreted the words "commander in chief" to mean that the constitution gives the president dictatorial powers during "wartime" (which the president defines.)

These are two dangerous and selfish men who aren't running for office and so have no political constraints. Not even a 30% approval rating or 12% support for this decision has made them think twice. They are completely confident that history will vindicate them.

They are what impeachment was designed for, I'm afraid, although I doubt there's time to build a case, what with the endless executive privilege claims and stonewalling. (I don't rule it out, naturally --- let a thousand oversight hearings bloom and follow the evidence where it leads.) But whether they are ultimately impeached or not, it's clear that they are rogue executives who are impervious to the normal limits that inhibit decent men and political animals. This can't just be swept under the rug.

Bush made it clear a long time ago when he said to a citizen on a rope line: "Who cares what you think?" And when he quipped "A dictatorship would be a lot easier, as long as I'm the dictator," he wasn't really joking.

Pat Robertson Discovers New Method Of Birth Control

I realize that this may come as a surprise to those of you who believe in, well, biology, but apparently all it takes to keep from getting pregnant is to refuse to believe in the xian god. I know, it surprised me, too, but Pat Robertson says that it's so.

Also, and I realize that this may come as a surprise to Europe, but it's now become "statistically irrelevant" -- whatever that means -- because Europeans are doing a better job than the U.S. of controlling their population. Of course, the birth rate's down a bit in the U.S., but we've, according to Reverend Robertson, "made up" for that with a "wonderful f-f-flood of immigrants." Unlike Europe where there are now quite a few immigrants from places such as India and the Middle East, I guess. Who knows what the hell he's saying? That there aren't immigrants in Europe? That our immigrants are better than their immigrants? Does he start stuttering because he realizes that he's stepped in it and is about to piss off some of the poor slobs who send him their money? He's just batshit insane.

Who lets these people sell batshit on the American airwaves?

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Would Have Been 78 Years Old Today.

We are all so much poorer for his loss.

Sunday Akhmatova Blogging

Reading Hamlet

A barren patch to the right of the cemetery,
behind it a river flashing blue.
You said: "All right then, get thee to a nunnery,
or go get married to a fool . . . ."

It was the sort of thing that princes always say,
but these are words that one remembers.
May they flow a hundred centuries in a row
like an ermine mantle from his shoulders.