Friday Cat Blogging

Miss Thing

Good Decision

The local Fox station is reporting that:

Rutherford County Commissioners Say No To Bible Theme Park

Early Friday morning, Rutherford County Commissioners said no to a proposed bible theme park. That means nearly 300 acres of farmland will not be rezoned, at least not any time soon. The county commission meeting began Thursday evening and wrapped up around 1 a.m. Friday. Hundreds of people came out to have their voices heard. Residents waited more than a year to get a vote on the project that would have transformed 282-acres in the Blackman community into a bible theme park.

Supporters were looking forward to the number of jobs and revenue the park promised.
But opponents were dreading what it would cost them. After the vote, both sides were still divided. County Commissioner Trey Gooch, a theme park opponent says, "I've been dealing with this for a year and it's come to fruition now and we're ready to move forward. We're certainly happy that the development failed in Blackman."

County Commissioner Anthony Johnson, a theme park supporter says, "People's feelings, just being scared, get in the way of real true thinking sometimes." The rezoning issue was voted down by a vote of 12 to nine.

After the meeting, Bible Park USA developer, SafeHarbor Holding LLC, issued a statement saying other proposed development of the land, such as warehouses, would not be as "friendly" to the Blackman community. SafeHarbor could still reapply for rezoning to the county.

Of course, what SafeHarbor Holding LLC didn't mention is that warehouses, even if built with tax dollars as the bible theme park was going to be, aren't likely to drag the county into an expensive First Amendment battle. It's nice to see the Christianists lose this one.

Oh, Yeah, The County Commission Should Definitely Spend Tax Dollars For This. No. They Should Not.

Rutherford County, Tennessee, County Commissioners are set to vote tonight on a proposed bible theme park:

The plans for the park call for multiple sections — each with an anchor attraction. Among them: The Bible Land Fly-Through, an IMAX-type experience which would take visitors on tours of the Holy Land; Bible Dark Ride, an indoor ride aimed at teenage visitors and based on Revelation; the Exodus Experience, an indoor experience featuring the parting of the Red Sea with high-tech standing 25-foot waves and image projection; and Stories from the Bible Theater, a Broadway-caliber theater with Bible stories.

The park would be built with tax dollars. Nope, no First Amendment issues, there. Nope.

(Love the "Broadway-caliber theater".)

You Ass

How many days has this traitor spent on vacation? Now, watch this drive.

More here.


Update: Of course, the Freeway Blogger says it best.

UpdateII: Adventus, via Olberman, says it most succinctly: Shut the Hell up.

And If That Which You Seek, You Find Not Within Yourself

Final Curve

When you turn the comer
And you run into yourself
Then you know that you have turned
All the corners that are left.

~Langston Hughes

Ouch!

The truth is that it's difficult for me to have them digging in my yard, even when I know that the result will be a lovely herb bed, with Arts & Crafts masonry, that will spread blessings and health all over my small yard. But every shovelful of dirt tugs at me and I can feel the ditch dug for the foundation of the raised bed in my own depths. I think that this is part of what the Earth demands. You can dig me, but you must dig and be dug in return.

/Bonus points for the reference.

My New Name For A Blog

What ellroon Said.

Native Plants

Many, many heartfelt thanks to all who responded in comments to my question about Wiccan landscaping. I've really enjoyed following links to altars and articles, and I've jotted down a lot of good ideas and book titles.

One point that several commenters raise, and that I've spent a significant amount of time thinking about, is the notion of using only native species plants. The idea has an almost obvious appeal and it certainly makes sense not to try and grow plants that require unnatural (for the area) amounts of water or that will need pesticides in order to thrive. Similarly, one doesn't want to grow plants that can become dangerously invasive (around here, bamboo can quickly go wild and become impossible to eradicate completely; we will not speak of the weed that must not be named (k-u-d-z-u)).

But, I am going to grow a number of non-native plants. Angelica, for example, a native of continental Europe. Dill, which, although it has now naturalized in, inter alia, North America, originated in the Middle East. Wormwood, a native of Asia and Europe. Artemisia, both vulgaris and dracunculus (mugwort and tarragon), a native of southern Europe. (Plant origins found in New Book of Herbs by Jekka McVicar, a practical guide that my DiL gave to me and that I highly recommend). I could go on and on listing the herbs that I want to grow, none of which originated in North America. Many of the arisaemas that I love were originally collected in Japan. How long does a plant need to grow in an area before it's native? Did it have to be here in North America before the Europeans came, both bringing new plants here and exporting North American plants back to Europe? What about plants that are spread by birds or animals; are they ok because their method of migration was more natural than that of my arisimeas? Is it "ok" to grow a plant once it has naturalized, as dill has done?

I've done two things to help me decide which non-native plants are ok to grow here. First, I try v. hard to listen to the land, both by observing what works here and by trancing and talking to the spirit of the land. Second, I'm consulting with my landscape designer, who grew up and went to school in this part of Virginia and who understands my concerns about working with the land, its genius locii, its spirit. He's been a good source for information about what will grow well here, what trees this land appears to willingly receive, and what to avoid.

Lately, too, I've been wondering what the carbon footprint is for a project like landscaping my little yard. I'll be adding a number of trees to the ones already here and I'm looking speculatively at the roof of my garden shed and thinking about green roofs.

Grounding

My New Name For A Blog

What Digby Said.

It's nice to hear a little bit of sanity, perspective, and maturity introduced into the macho nonsense that passes for liberal discussion on this topic.

The Old Man Is Snoring

It's pouring.

I mean that water is literally pouring down from the sky and has been, more or less, for days. The result is plantlife so green that it pulses, shines, shimmers. Water that rushes in rippling mini-streams down my street to the storm sewers marked "Chesapeake Bay Drainage." A Potomac River turned deep brown and choppy from the erosion running into it and the wind whipping its surface into waves. Grateful centuries-old oak trees in my yard, drinking their first real full since last summer's long drought. Earthworms flooded out of their homes to make easy pickings for the mourning doves and cardinals and robins and sparrows who will be fine if they don't lose too much more oil off their wings due to the water.

Oddly, for a woman who's been a witch for nigh on twenty years, I can count on one hand the times that the Goddess has shown up in my dreams. As I've recounted before, Brigit is not a Goddess with whom I feel a special affinity -- not like I do for Hecate or Baba Yaga or Hestia -- but she placed herself front and center in one of the central dreams of my life. And in that dream, she stood with me inside a safe, warm, snug cottage in Ireland and put her right arm around my shoulders and made me feel completely at peace looking out a window at a rain exactly like this rain. What she made me feel was the innate goodness of rains like this, the wonderful store that they lay up for us to draw from in July and August, the sweet, sweet safety of tight roofs and thick walls.

May you dance naked and wet in the lovely rain and may you come inside to dry towels and warm fires and hot tea.

Such An Obviously Bad Idea

According to the Murfreesboro Daily News Journal, local residents continue to oppose a proposed "bible theme park" to be built with tax dollars and "incentives." However, this comingThursday, the Rutherford County, Tennessee County Commissioners will likely approve the park, despite the fact that:

[m]embers of the grass-roots opposition to the proposed Bible Park USA have compiled a critique of the claims made by the developers of the $175 million to $200 million theme park in the Blackman community.

The 26-page document titled "Questioning the promises: A Bible Park USA analysis" was released Thursday to rebut the claims of developer Armon Bar-Tur and his team.

It has been distributed to all 21 Rutherford County Commissioners — who will have the ultimate say on the park's zoning and financial plan — as well as County Mayor Ernest Burgess, County Attorney Jim Cope and County Finance Director Lisa Nolen.

The document was written by members of the Bible park opposition and edited by Blackman resident Steve Yaeger.

It questions the credibility and transparency of the developer and his team; the attendance projections used for economic analysis; the jobs and wages used for the economic impact analysis; the economic analysis itself, which they say uses inflated numbers; the use of tax-increment financing (a method of using increased tax revenue to pay for the development); and the impact on the quality of life for Blackman residents.

"When forced to reveal details by an increasingly skeptical public, Mr. Bar-Tur used a PR (public relations) firm and surrogates to carefully control public dialog on the matter," the documents states.

The document goes on to say "essential financial details have been highly suspicious or lacking altogether, presented by people who are being paid by Mr. Bar-Tur or directly connected financially to the theme park."

The chance of this thing tuning into a huge clusterfuck for Rutherford County are increasingly high. Just how stupid are the County Commissioners? Have they set aside money to defend the coming First Amendment challenges to this use of tax dollars? Really, are the schools in Rutherford County so well-funded, the roads so well-maintained, the police and firefighters so well-paid that the county has tax money to throw away on a project that clearly violates the First Amendment?

The report says that:

"When you consider the park's narrow appeal (religious vs. recreational) and its location, well off the beaten path of tourism, it's clear that the proposed Bible theme park will not meet the projected attendance totals," the document said.

No kidding. It's unlikely to ever even get built. But that doesn't mean that it won't suck tax dollars away from needed projects.

Wiccan Landscaping

If there's any literature on this, I'm unaware of it and would welcome links. I feel as if I am in terra incognito, although I shouldn't be. How do Pagans landscape?

I bought this small plot of land (as if one could "own" land) almost five years ago, in Arlington, Virginia, just outside of the nation's capital. In fact, before Virginia got mad, took it's clay, and went home, the place where I live would have been inside Washington, D.C. Due to Virginia's pique, however, I have Senators and a Congressperson, live near enough to the Capitol to do serious political magic, and live in the state named, as my history prof once said, for the alleged state of Good Queen Bess' hymen. The lot has ancient oaks, a pretty old maple, and a ton of other stuff just stuck in willy-nilly. My first year here, I took out a dying tulip poplar and a v. poorly-placed holly tree. I've taken out rose bushes, tomato plants and their attendant wire tee-pees, azaleas. Ivy. Vegetables. I've edited madly and I've tried desperately and badly to grow herbs in shade and rich, acid soil.

This year, in late March, I figured that I'd lived with the land enough, edited enough, gotten an idea of what I wanted. After a long search, I hired a landscape designer: a local boy, someone who's, above all, a good listener. And, now, we've begun.

We've torn up land, buried drainage pipes, turned an ugly alley into a walk through a lovely, cool woodland. In the coming days, we're going to turn an ugly, orange, mini-barn-style garden shed into a charming hobbit home, build walls that will give me the privacy to continue to do ritual in my tiny suburban yard, re-build my front entrance into a welcoming walk into an Arts & Crafts home, and, thank the Goddess, build a raised herb bed out of bricks and river stones in the sunny Northwest part of my yard, sacrificing the spot for the "second" car that I neither have nor need in my driveway and getting sandy soil and sun to grow -- oh, everything. Basil and rosemary and sage and thyme and dill and all kinds of mint and wormwood and woad and angelica and thistle and damiana and feverfew and mugwort and . . . . OK, I may have a bit of editing to do.

Later this year, we'll build a patio of river rocks, ferns, fire pits, fountains, and large, living stones in the back yard and next year we'll tear up the concrete walk from the street to my house, lay down giant flat stones, and plant a bunch more trees, including evergreens and a Japanese Maple in the back around the patio. The final step will be a huge collection of arisaema in the back Southeastern garden.

Anyone ever done a ritual for this, an invocation of the genius locii, a sacrifice to the land? Of course, the land demands it and, of course, I'm not quite sure what, beyond the gentle talks that we've already had -- the land and the oak trees and the fox and the squirrels and the cardinals and the raccoons and the mourning doves and I -- to do, or, more appropriately, how to do this.

What She Said

Ellen R. Malcolm, founder and president of Emily's List, in today's WaPo:

It's not surprising that low-income working women are the cornerstone of Hillary's success. Many of these women live on the edge of disaster. A pink slip, a family member's illness, a parent who can no longer live alone, a car that won't start or a mortgage rate that goes up -- all are threats that could devastate the family. And yet these women do what women have done for ages. They put on a confident face, feed their children breakfast and get them off to school. They don't quit. They suck it up and fight back against whatever life throws their way.

They see in Hillary Clinton a candidate who understands the pressures they face. As they watch her tough it out against all odds, refusing to quit and continuing to compete against whatever the media and her opponents throw her way, they see a woman as tough and resilient as they are. They clearly want her to win. Her victory, I believe, is their victory.

So here we are in the fourth quarter of the nominating process and the game is too close to call. Once again, the opponents and the media are calling for Hillary to quit. The first woman ever to win a presidential primary is supposed to stop competing, to curtsy and exit stage right.

Why on earth should one candidate quit before the contest is finished? Democrats need not be so fainthearted. Both of the party's remaining candidates have raised tens of millions of dollars. Both have the respect of Democrats nationwide. Each has a progressive agenda that stands in stark contrast to Sen. John McCain and his adherence to Bush administration policies.

So why are some Democrats so afraid? We simply need to count every vote, let the remaining states have their say and see the process through to its conclusion.

Hillary Clinton certainly has the right to compete till the end. But I believe Hillary also has a responsibility to play the game to its conclusion. For the women of my generation who learned to find and channel their competitiveness, for the working women who never falter in the face of pressure, for the younger women who still believe women can do anything, Hillary is a champion. She's shown us over and over that winners never quit and that quitters never win. We'll cheer her on until the game is over. And we hope that when the final whistle blows, we will have elected the first female president and the best president our country has ever had.

You know what they'd be saying about a guy who was as close behind the front runner as Hillary is and who wouldn't quit: He's the come-back kid! A real competitor! This guy just won't quit; he's got a lot of heart and a lot of guts. You've got to admire him; he's courageous and, win or lose, he's reminding Americans what it's like to fight to the finish, yadda, yadda, yadda. Hil, becuase she's a woman, is so egotistical that she's willing to "bring down" the party, should quit before she hurts Obama any more, is letting her ambition run away with her, blah, blah, blah. Liberal male bloggers, I'm looking at you.

My New Name For A Blog

What Jamison Foser Said.

Friday Cat Blogging

Emerald City

It absolutely poured last night and into this morning. We had such a dry summer last year that any rain is welcome rain. And I love the sound of it when I'm snuggled warm in bed. Everything is the color green that is the universal symbol for: ALIVE!

What's growing in your life this Spring?

Quench!

Thirst is Mary Oliver's book of poems written after the death of her beloved partner, Molly Malone Cook (there's a name for a poet's lover if ever there was one!). It also chronicles Oliver's flirtation with xianity. I'm biased, but I find a number of the explicitly xian poems below Oliver's usual standards; that said, you've got to love an established poet who takes the kind of risks that Oliver keeps on taking. She opens with one of my favorite quotes from early xianity:

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, "Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?" Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, "If you will, you can become all flame." You know that Rumi would have said the same thing.

Oliver's first poem, Messenger, works:

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird --
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium,
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

So does her paen to Cook, Those Days:

When I think of her I think of the long summer days
she lay in the sun, how she loved the sun, how we
spread our blankets, and friends came, and

the dogs played, and then I would get restless and
get up and go off to the woods
and the fields, and the afternoon would

soften gradually and finally I would come
home, through the long shadows, and into the house
where she would be

my glorious welcoming, tan and hungry and ready to tell
the hurtless gossips of the day and how I
listened leisurely while I put

around the room flowers in jars of water --
daisies, butter-and-eggs, and everlasting --
unlike our lives they trembled and shimmered
everywhere.

Isn't that how you'd describe every real lover you've ever had: my glorious welcoming, tan and hungry and ready?

She's less successful, IMHO, when she becomes explicitly xian:

The Vast Ocean Begins Just Outside Our Church: The Eucharist

Something has happened
to the bread
and the wine.

They have been blessed.
What now?
The body leans forward

to receive the gift
from the priest's hand,
then the chalice.

They are something else now
from what they were
before this began.

I want
to see Jesus,
maybe in the clouds

or on the shore,
just walking,
beautiful man

and clearly
someone else
besides.

On the hard days
I ask myself
if I ever will.

Also there are times
my body whispers to me
that I have.

It's not a bad poem, it's just not up to Oliver's typical standards. You never get that ice-pick-in-the-guts moment of: "Oh, my, YES!" that she so regularly delivers when writing about Nature. And, of course, Oliver's had so many real encounters with the God:

The Place I Want to Get Back To
is where
in the pinewoods
in the moments between
the darkness

and first light
two deer
came walking down the hill
and when they saw me

they said to each other, okay
this one is okay,
let's see who she is
and why she is sitting

on the ground, like that,
so quiet, as if
asleep, or in a dream,
but anyway, harmless;

and so they came
on their slender legs
and gazed upon me
not unlike the way

I go out to the dunes and look
and look and look
into the faces of the flowers;
and then one of them leaned forward

and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life
bring to me that could exceed
that brief moment?
For twenty years

I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
Such gifts, bestowed
can't be repeated.

If you want to talk about this
come to visit. I live in the house
near the corner, which I have named
Gratitude.

Going every day for twenty years to the same woods, not waiting, exactly, just lingering. That will suddenly set you alight, all flame. Before enlightenment, chop wood carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. But the wood and the water are something else now from what they were before this began.

Derrick Jensen On Demands Of The Land

Rhododendron In Bloom In The Woodland Garden

(I promise to quit playing with the new toy soon!)


Music: The Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams, Adrian Boult conducting the New Philharmonia Orchestra on: Vaughan Williams, Suites, Seranades, Fantasias

Ruh Roh

A co-founder of the investment company proposing a biblical theme park in Rutherford County was a prolific photographer for Penthouse magazine in the 1970s.

Amnon Bar-Tur shot cover and centerfold photos of nude models for the soft-porn publication, according to Web sites that sell back issues of the magazine.

. . .

U.S. Bankruptcy Court documents show that C2 Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Oct. 10, 2001. The company was in debt for about $71 million ? equal to its assets at the time. Amnon Bar-Tur served as the "executive chairman" of C2's board since May 1999, and prior to that had been the chief executive officer for about five months in the company's infancy, according to the court records.

According to the bankruptcy affidavit filed by co-founder David J. Manning, C2 Media executives attributed the company's downfall to a softened economy and "by a dramatic fall-off in business following the World Trade Center disaster."

The company's inability to pay off the debt also stemmed from the collapse in 2000 of the initial public offering market, which allows a private companies to sell its stock to the public. Without the IPO, the documents said, C2 could not pay back what it owed.

What a great use of Rutherford tax dollars! No, it's not. And it will cost even more to defend this stupidity against the inevitable First Amendment challenge. Is Tennessee really that stupid? You do know that the rest of America is laughing at you, right? Mayor Burgess, I'm looking (and laughing) at you

More here.

Look What I Did! Look What I Did!

Music: Crowning of the King by Blackmore's Night from the album Fires at Midnight

Our So-Called Liberal Media

From Media Matters:

Summary: In 2004, the editorial pages of The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal called on Teresa Heinz Kerry to release her tax returns. But both have yet to call on Sen. John McCain's campaign to release Cindy McCain's tax returns or even note that the campaign has refused to do so.

Cindy McCain's wealth is reported to be about one hundred million dollars. IOKIYAR.

Good News!

Desiree Fairooz was initially charged with two counts of assaulting a police officer and one count of disorderly conduct for telling Condoleezza Rice,"The blood of millions of Iraqis is on your hands!"

Judge Ringell honored her actions by referring to Thoreau, Gandhi, and Dr. Martin Luther King, all models of resistance, and explained how they understood they would eventually spend time in jail for their acts. He told Desiree," Some day you'll have to accept the consequences of your acts, but not in this forum [his court]."

He found her guilty of "disorderly conduct" and could have given her 90 days in jail, but instead he sentenced her to 5 days suspended sentence, 3 months of unsupervised probation, and $50 for a mandatory victim's fund. Thank you Desiree ... and thank you Judge Ringell!

Jack-in-the-Pulpit and Roses

A Pict Song - My Pipple!

Rome never looks where she treads.
Always her heavy hooves fall
On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads;
And Rome never heeds when we bawl.
Her sentries pass by and that's all,
And we gather behind them in hordes,
And plot to reconquer the Wall,
With only our tongues for our swords.

Chorus:
We are the Little Folk--we!
Too little to love or to hate.
But leave us alone and you'll see
How we can drag down the State!
We are the worm in the wood!
We are the rot at the root!
We are the taint in the blood!
We are the thorn in the foot!

Mistletoe killing an oak--
Rats gnawing cables in two--
Moths eating holes in a cloak--
How they must love what they do!
Yes--and we Little Folk too,
We are busy as they--
Working our works out of view--
Watch, and you'll see it some day!

Chorus
Although maybe we are not strong,
But we know Peoples that are.
Yes, and we'll guide them along
To smash and destroy you in War!
We shall be slaves just the same?
Yes, we have always been slaves,
But you--you will die of the shame,
And then we willl dance on your graves!

Chorus

~Original poem by Rudyard Kiplling

Sexiest Line I've Heard In A Long Time

"My love rode by with sun-stained feet"

~from the song, The World's Wedding, sung by Emerald Rose

Bad Idea

The Queen Of All Argyle

Lines On The Land

We have no prairies
To slice a big sun at evening –
Everywhere the eye concedes to
Encrouching horizon,

Is wooed into the cyclops’ eye
Of a tarn. Our unfenced country
Is bog that keeps crusting
Between the sights of the sun.

They’ve taken the skeleton
Of the Great Irish Elk
Out of the peat, set it up
An astounding crate full of air.

~Seamus Heaney

Save Tara!

Beltane Bazooms Blogging

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

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

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

Send me an email after you get your mammogram and I will do an annual free tarot reading for you. Just, please, examine your own breasts once a month and get your sweet, round ass to a mammogram once a year. (Mattsmom, email me! I owe you a reading!)

Merci!

And,



here's a video demonstration of a BSE.

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

Cora Anderson, elder of the Feri Tradition of witchcraft passed over to the Summerlands early this Beltane morning. What a perfect time to slip between the whisper-thin veils. More here.

Blessed Beltane

That's What I'm Taking About

In addition to Beltane, or, actually, because of it, but that's a long bit of history for another day, May 1st is also known as a day for the world's workers to protest working conditions. You could spare a moment of Beltane magic tomorrow in support of America's longshoremen.

An arbitrator has ordered the union that represents dockworkers at West Coast ports to tell members they must report to work on Thursday and not take the day off to protest U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A wide enough walkout could cause a slowdown at the West Coast ports — the nation's major gateway for cargo from the Far East.

. . .

Despite that decision, word continued to spread on the Internet of a May 1 walkout by longshore workers and details of protests, including a march in San Francisco. Thursday is May Day, when workers traditionally celebrate the labor movement.

Thank the Goddess someone is willing to protest these illegal, immoral wars.

/hat tip to ErinPDX at Atrios

Blessed Beltane

Remember to wash your face in the dew tomorrow morning. It's an old Beltane charm for staying beautiful.

Sick, Disgusting, Old, Unfit For Office

Just Stop It!

OK, I will say this in little words and short sentences. The Democrats need to quit pandering to the religious right -- which will (are you listening?) NEVER VOTE FOR A DEMOCRAT EVEN IF THAT MISGUIDED RABBI, JEBUZ OF NAZARETH, GETS DOWN OFF OF HIS CROSS AND HOLDS UP A SIGN SAYING "VOTE DEMOCRATIC IN THIS ELECTION IF YOU LOVE ME I DIED ON THE CROSS FOR YOUR SINS YOU WILL BE WASHED IN THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB BLESS MY SOUL IN THE BOSOM OF ABRAHAM!"

I understand. Many of you, are, in fact, devout xians. You see nutjobs like Tom DeLay and Larry Craig and David Vitter and, the xian god forgive us, George W. Bush, getting elected because they appeal to xian whackjob fundies and you say to yourselves, "Self," you say, "why don't I get some of that action?"

The next time that you say that to yourself, go smack yourself in the face with a wet washcloth and get the fuck over it. Stop picking Harry Reid for Senate majority leader because you think that because he's against abortion (and, it turns out, ever doing anything even mildly effectual), he'll appeal to "value voters." He won't. Stop running devout catholics like John Kerry because you think that will inoculate the party against attacks from the little-boy-molesters in the catholic church. It won't; Razi will arrange for Bush to visit Rome and give the sitting pope a medal while releasing rumors that Kerry should be denied communion. Stop running bullshit ads, like Obama's been doing, about how you're a committed xian and are "called to serve." Just stop it.

We're seeing this week how much good it's done Obama (and, yeah, they're all guilty of it, but he's gone way out of his way to assert that he should get elected because he's such a devoted xian and he's getting pounded the hardest for it this week, so I am using him as an example) to play the xian card. He's getting hammered over the head with his xianity and this is WEEKS and WEEKS after he, supposedly, put this entire issue to bed with his "masterful" speech on race in America, which we were all told was such brilliant political ju jitsu. Not.

Religion will NEVER be anything except a hammer to use against Democrats. Democrats need to accept that fact. I am more religious, I am willing to wager, than 95% of Americans. My religion would only be a detriment to me if I decided to run for office. The best thing for Democrats to do -- and, wow, here's a benni, it's also the right thing to do -- is to insist that religion has no role to play in American politics. Refuse to answer questions about your religion because, in America, we have a separation of religion and the State. Change the topic. Assert the principle. Quote John Adams. Move on.

Look, my number one issue is the environment. I'm NEVER going to vote for a Republican, even if s/he talks about "Blue Skies" and "stewardship" and "Clean Forests," etc., etc., etc. First, I don't believe her/him, and, second, even if I did believe her/him, I don't think that she's/he's AS COMMITTED to those notions as is the Democrat. I'm not really any smarter than someone who's number one issue is the rather obscene notion that "America is a xian nation." They don't care how much a Democrat talks about "Called to Serve," etc., etc., etc. First, they don't believe the Democrat and, second, even if they do believe the Democrat, they don't think that the Democrat is AS COMMITTED to those notions as is the Republican.

So Democrats have two choices. They can concede that being a good xian is important in politics, in which case, they can keep losing. Or, they can challenge the basic premise and begin to move the debate off of their opponents' favored ground. It's unclear to me why this is such a difficult choice for them.

Imagine

What If?

Query

In her newsletter, Janet Kane notes that, "Simone Weil wrote, 'The beauty of the world is the mouth of the labyrinth.'" I wonder what Weil meant.

Listen

Poetry For Beltane

As I've said before, I think this is a perfect Beltane poem:

The Swan


Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?



- Mary Oliver

Please?

Angela Eloise! Everytime that I try to comment at your blog, I get a message saying that I've tried to post too many posts in too short a time. Can you fix this?

Beltane

My brilliant friend E reminded me this week of something I wrote a while back about Beltane:

My idea of the perfect ritual involves women showing up to a calm, clean, well-ordered space, where wine is poured, tensions are dropped, flowers release their scent into the ritual air, muscles relax, women remember who they are and from whence they came. I want intent clearly specified, ritual supplies laid out, incense alight, and grounding done right.

Like Anne, I prepare like hell for the strike, and then I let that sword just fall as it will. My Younger Self responds better that way.

But, that's not THE only way to do ritual. I've been reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Dancing In The Streets every day at lunch, four or five pages a day. She talks about how women left their spinning to run into the streets to follow Dionyisis, how ecstacy can overtake even the most repressed, at times. Beltane is all about living in the moment, all about feeling, after a long winter of parsing out the left-over seeds and saving enough back for planting, that it's ok to let go, ok to burn fires on the high hills, ok to have sex in the fields, ok to act without thinking it all through. About finding what Anne calls the "middle ground between worrying and controlling something on the one hand, and ignoring it on the other."

Blessed Beltane.

As you prepare this week for Beltane, for the fire festival on the high hills, for our religion's most important celebration of acts of love and pleasure, I hope that you feel free to let go. Goddess knows, I mean to.

Blessed, blessed Beltane.


Art found here.

Good Thinking

[Nature on Earth continually cycles itself through the use of energy, which comes] from outside the system in the form of perpetual solar income. Not only does nature operate on "current income," it does not mine or extract energy from the past, it does not use its capital resrves, and it does not borrow from the future. [Designers must begin to use these same principles.]

. . .

[Discussing a day care center built for the City of Frankfurt:] Because of the solar hot-water collectors, we asked that a public laundry be added to the program so that parents could wash clothes while awaiting their children in school. Because of advances in glazing, we are able to create a day-care center that requires no fossil fuels for operating the heating or cooling. Fifty years from now, when fossil fuels will be scarce, there will be hot water for the community, a social center, and the building will have paid back the energy "borrowed" for its construction.

~William McDonough, Centennial Sermon: Design, Ecology, Ethics and the Making of Things, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Feb. 7, 1993~

Life, Life, Life, Life, Life

I left work early yesterday to go to one of my favorite sit-and-watch places alongside the Potomac. This was obviously the day that the caterpillars burst forth from their nests. They were ALL OVER the place and they crawled all over me while I was taking pictures. Ducks on the river swam over to see if I'd brought them anything to eat.

Cradle To Cradle

[I]f what we make with our hands is to be sacred and honor the earth that gives us life, then the things we make must not only rise from the ground but return to it, soil to soil, water to water, so that everything that is received from the earth can be freely given back without causing harm to any living system.

~William McDonough, Centennial Sermon: Design, Ecology, Ethics and the Making of Things, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Feb. 7, 1993~

The witches say: We all come from the Goddess./And to her we shall return,/Like a drop of rain, flowing to the ocean./Corn and grain, corn and grain,/All that falls shall rise again./Hoof and horn, hoof and horn,/All that dies shall be reborn. McDonough's trying to ensure that what we create -- buildings, shoes, carpet, textiles, toys -- follows the same principle. His ideas remind me, in a way, of what the Arts & Crafts movement was trying to be about, although they didn't have the ecological awareness that exists today.

My New Name For A Blog

What Jane Said About What Digby Said.

Maybe it's nothing more than the fact that it's been sunny and warm, with the daylight extending almost to 8:00 pm. Maybe it's the lilacs and woad in full bloom in my back yard (For the last few days, I swear that I've literally been able to hear the Earth thrumming: Beltane, Beltane, Beltane!) Maybe it's the win Hillary pulled off in Pennsylvania due, in large part, to those old women in boxy blazers. Or maybe there's more, but, in any case, I'm lately feeling quite hopeful about almost everything.

As Jane notes that Digby said:

To me, this primary is actually a good thing for the fall. All this hand wringing strikes me as typical Democratic nervous nellie-ism. A huge increase in Democratic voter registration, building of strong ground operations in most states, new technologies being beta tested, lots of media coverage and battle testing for the nominee are of benefit to the nominee in the fall. Meanwhile, the Democrats stay at center stage while McCain wanders around in obscurity, failing to raise money and leaving a trail of gaffes in his wake. As long as they don't know at whom to aim their fire the Republicans can't cement their narrative. In the end, I remain convinced that we are going into an election that is so fundamentally seismic that either of them can win it, even if more closely than we might want, due to the breakthrough nature of their campaigns. The primary continuing on is not going to change that.

I don't think people realize that the democratization the internet has brought to the system is also one of the main reasons why the campaign goes on. If you think superdelegates are undemocratic, back in the bad old days (of a couple of cycles ago) big party donors pulled the strings by pulling the money when they decided that someone had no chance to win. Today, both candidacies are where they are on the basis of avid small donor supporters contributing online and that's prolonged things past the point where it would have in the past. Thousands of Clinton supporters keep sending her money-- ten million since last night, apparently. So, if you don't like the fact that the campaign continues, blame the internet. It wouldn't have happened under the old paradigm.

Obama supporters could do themselves and the party a big favor if they'd quit crying about how that eeeeevvvvvvvvvviiiiiiillllllll woman needs to shut up "so we can speak with one (man's) voice!" and step down before she "destroys" the guy who is supposedly going to be able to stand up to the Republican slime machine. I didn't like it when Sandra Day and her Gang of Four shut down democracy in Florida and I don't like it when Obama's supporters try to do it in the Democratic primary. I am just saying. Have a little faith -- in your candidate and in the process.

As Digby explains:

the fact that Clinton is still winning big primaries and getting campaign contributions makes it ridiculous to expect her --- or any politician --- to quit (no matter what the NY Times editorial board says.) She has a legitimate constituency (nearly half the voters) in the party that wants her to see this through. As Somerby says in response to Maureen Dowd's typically daft (and equal opportunity insulting) column this morning:


This year’s campaign has shown what can happen when a party has two closely-matched candidates. There are potential downsides for the party, as anyone can see. But journos like Dowd think it’s their role to demand that the person they hate should just quit. Those million-plus Democrats [who voted for her yesterday] don’t exist in Dowd’s world. In Dowd’s world, Dowd wants Clinton to quit. And so, by the laws of childish dreams, “the Democrats” must want that too.


Since I don't think the Democratic Party will crumble from the stress of finishing up the primaries (or even a brokered convention for that matter) until Obama officially wraps up the number of delegates and superdelegates to go over the magic number, I think she has a right to continue.

Wouldn't It Be Nice To Have A President Who Believed In Science?

From today's EEI newsletter:

Scientists Report Instances of Political Interference

More than half of the 1,586 EPA scientists who responded to a questionnaire from the Union of Concerned Scientists reported witnessing political interference in scientific decisions over the past five years, the Washington Post reported today. Francesca Grifo, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' scientific integrity program, said: "Things are not as they should be at the EPA. Scientific findings are being suppressed and distorted; 889 scientists personally experienced at least one type of political interference. ... Scientists are being pressured by outside interests."

More than 100 respondents said the Office of Management and Budget was the source of the interference, with hundreds of others blaming industry groups and other agencies, the Post reported. Wrote the Los Angeles Times: "Such allegations are not new: During much of the Bush administration, there have been reports of the White House watering down documents on climate change, industry language inserted into EPA power-plant regulations and scientific advisory panels' conclusions about toxic chemicals going unheeded."

J. William Hirzy, an EPA senior scientist and union official, said scientists also saw political interference during the Clinton administration but "what we're seeing now is ... the favoring of energy interests, coal-fired power plants. That's something different in this administration." Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has sent a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson advising him to prepare to face questioning about the survey findings at a hearing next month. Waxman wrote: "These survey results suggest a pattern of ignoring and manipulating science in EPA's decision making."

As far as I can tell, the survey only includes scientists now at work at EPA, and not the many who have left, disgusted, over the past seven years. If there were a way to include those scientists, the results may have been even more alarming.

A Building Lovely As A Tree?

From this month's VF article on Cradle to Cradle design:

Jefferson . . .wrote to James Madison in 1789. “They were deciding the term of the federal bond,” says McDonough, “and Jefferson’s conclusion was that a federal bond should have a term of only one generation. And his logic was this: The earth belongs to the living. No man may, by natural right, oblige the lands he owns or occupies to debts greater than those that may be paid during his own lifetime. Because, if he could, then the world would belong to the dead, and not to the living.”

McDonough discusses the Industrial Revolution and notes that:

Consider looking at the industrial revolution of the 19th century and its aftermath as a kind of retroactive design assignment, focusing on some of its unintended, questionable effects. The assignment might sound like this: Design a system of production that

• Puts billions of pounds of toxic material into the air, water, and soil every year
• Produces some materials so dangerous they will require constant vigilance by future generations
• Results in gigantic amounts of waste
• Puts valuable materials in holes all over the planet, where they can never be retrieved
• Requires thousands of complex regulations to keep people and natural systems from being poisoned too quickly
• Measures productivity by how few people are working?
• Creates prosperity by digging up or cutting down natural resources and then burying or burning them
• Erodes the diversity of species and cultural practices

Does this seem like a good design assignment?

Even though none of these things happened intentionally, we find this "design assignment" to be a limited and depressing one for industries to perpetuate — and it is obviously resulting in a much less enjoyable world.



And, of course, McDonough's discussion of building buildings as lovely and safe as cherry trees in bloom reminded me of a poem:

Joyce Kilmer. 1886–1918

119. Trees

I THINK that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

The One They Pick. The One You'll Know By.

You know, people who think that:

It's time that we declared a ceasefire on the caricatures and explored the shadows -- not just the silhouettes -- of our differences,

yet who go around saying things such as:

At another university, a woman in a black, boxy blazer took the microphone as she stood up, clearly preparing for a full-on lecture. After talking about the books she'd donated to the women's center, the feminists she'd known in the late 1960s, and the virtues of knowing your feminist history, she said: "I don't want to hear about justice and blogs and food politics; I want to hear about feminism. Is there some common ground that we can all stand on?"

might spend a few minutes being self-reflective. I am just saying. Boxy blazers cut an interesting silhouette.

Atrios, who is as good a feminist as a man can be, directed me to the above post, noting:

I've been reading with some fascination the various intergenerational feminist back and forth going on. I'm not sure how valid that description is for the country generally (aside from the general trend of older voters siding more with Clinton), but it has played out in the media to some extent that way.

I found this bit to be telling:

At a recent pre-panel reception, I immediately connected with a philosophy professor about the difficulties and joys of teaching feminist theorist Judith Butler. But the professor's mood took a 180-degree turn when the issue of eating disorders came up. "I'm so sick of hearing young feminists talk about fashion and body image and work/family balance," she said, rolling her eyes like an adolescent, though she looked to be about 50. "What about the women in Afghanistan!?"

She even approached one of the other panelists, 42-year-old journalist Kristal Brent Zook, with a plea to shut down any conversation about these "frivolous" issues if they should come up during the panel (i.e., shut down me, the silly author of a book on body image). Zook had my back, of course. She responded to the professor, "Actually the entire goal of this panel is to create intergenerational dialogue where all voices are heard. It's not my job to decide what's important to Courtney or any other feminist. It's my job to express my own issues and listen openly to others."


One of the more frustrating, futile, and self-aggrandizing rhetorical games is to tell people what their priorities should be. Nick Kristof has played this game in the past, chastising womens' rights groups for not focusing their limited resources on whatever his pet cause of the week happens to be. It's also global warming concern troll Bjorn Lomborg's trick, saying that instead of focusing resources on combating global warming we should use them for a bunch of other things that aren't going to happen. There's always a more important cause, a more deserving subject, a more downtrodden person. It's essentially a way of undermining all good works while building up the critic as More Serious And Enlightened Than Thou.

But people have different priorities. And to the extent people become involved in issues or causes, they have different skill sets, different abilities, different sets of knowledge. They have different things they can bring to the table. Telling people they should be fretting about the women of Afghanistan instead of focusing on eating disorders is, to put it bluntly, just stupid. More than that, it achieves absolutely nothing.


I have to say that my first reaction was: "Gee, thanks, Atrios, for telling us silly women how to have our debates. What we've really been needing is a guy to come along and straighten us out, tell us that some of us are stupid." But Atrios' post, which, in all fairness is trying to make a larger point about discourse in general and not just feminist discourse, reminded me of Anne Hill's recent heartfelt post about attempts to control acceptable topics of discussion within Reclaiming. Anne recently explained:

One thing I noticed in the course of the afternoon is that the things which drove me away from Reclaiming continue to rub me the wrong way. A case in point is what happened over lunch. I was at a table with some people I have known for a long time, and a few that I had just met. I was enjoying catching up with an old friend, when our lunch was interrupted with a lengthy announcement explaining that every table was now going to have a discussion about the same subject. Each table would take notes, and the results would be somehow digested at the BIRCH meeting the following day. (Don’t ask me what BIRCH is—I may say something cynical.)

The topic we were to discuss was diversity. To wit: why isn’t Reclaiming more diverse, and what can be done about it? I was already banging my forehead against the table in pain, but the intro continued, first singling out my friend Evelie, who got to stand up and wave because she is diverse, I mean Filipina. Then a woman named Rosa got to stand and say her 2¢, to the effect that people like her could be helped by people like us if we only knew how to meet more people like her.

I kid you not. I am dead serious, and by this time it was through sheer force of will that I was not 1) bolting for the door, or 2) standing up and saying something confrontational in the middle of the dining hall. The only thing that kept me from shouting out was the knowledge that if I did so, I would be in the middle of an even worse discussion than the one I was apparently now going to have.


. . .

[T]his is where I can get a good rant going, I have had it with red herring questions like this pre-empting conversations about the real issues that Reclaiming has avoided for years. I am speaking here mostly of Bay Area Reclaiming, but frankly the patterns that have been set here get exported regularly to other areas, and I have seen more than one community plagued with the same issues that we have been mired in here for a decade or more.

The final straw for me on this was when I was still in the Bay Area teacher’s cell—I believe it was in the late nineties—and the group was essentially split in two, with neither side trusting or speaking to the other. It had been months, the group was moribund, and though we had plenty to discuss we were not even able to come up with a date for a meeting, let alone assure that some representatives from either side would attend.

It was a horrible dynamic and finally Thorn and I, who had some credibility on both sides, were able after several weeks of intensive lobbying to set a date and get people to agree to come. With assurances that there would be neutral facilitation, we were going to actually talk about the issues that mattered, and hopefully come to some resolution or at least respectfully agree to disagree.

Then literally the night before the meeting, Starhawk, who had been out of town, emailed saying that we should really discuss fundraising for scholarships so that young Pagan activists could attend witchcamp. Another person on the cell quickly wrote back and said that’s what she wanted to talk about too, and I watched in dismay as months of preparation were tossed out the window.

Disheartened, I could not even bring myself to attend the meeting. That was the turning point for me, the moment where I gave up my years of struggle to change the course on which our local community was set. Now there are virtually parallel Reclaiming communities in the Bay Area, and no encouraging signs that the two will ever be reconciled save briefly, when old friends are able to catch up over lunch or lounging on a sunny deck.

The fragile alliance which had led to that meeting was hijacked by the very mentality that hijacked my lunch table discussion at Dandelion: the insistence that Reclaiming is best served by bringing in new recruits rather than cleaning its own house. Blessedly, I found myself not a lone voice of discontent at the table, and we ended up with some meaningful feedback to offer the next day’s meeting. Then I got the hell out of there before a second discussion topic could be suggested.

In both cases, the attempt to exercise power-over, to control the very questions that may even be discussed, becomes the topic of discussion. Feminism, as a movement based upon the notion that the personal is the political, can't be about shutting down discussion. But, that goes both ways and sometimes, sadly, young women like Martin are as willing to shut down those women in boxy blazers (we all know that's code for "up-hip middle-aged woman") as the women in the boxy blazers are to tell young women to shut up about issues that weren't as important to us when we were blazing new feminist trails back in the sixties and seventies. That woman in the boxy blazer is as entitled to talk about her feminist credentials and hope for feminism's future as Ms. Martin is to talk about eating disorders. That Clinton's candidacy has gotten us -- boxy-blazered old women and young women -- talking about generational issues seems to me like one of the benefits of her campaign. I'd like to think the talks will continue, regardless of who wins the nomination.

The situation in Wicca's a bit different; one can hive off when one gets fed up with attempts to control the discussion, although I certainly understand why those who've invested so much in Reclaiming wouldn't want to do that and I admire them for hanging in there and attempting, as Anne has clearly done, to address the problems rather than just walk away. It's also less clear to me -- out here on the East Coast and living in my own closed, eclectic circle -- that Reclaiming's issues are generational, although I may be mistaken about that. Regardless, it's interesting to compare the two attempts to control conversations. In the case of Reclaiming, Anne and her table did take on the "suggested" topic and used it as a way to address the larger issues that concern them.

Query

Did you do anything vital today?

My New Name For A Blog

What echidne said.

Jane Sixpack, the ignored voter.

Resign Condi

My New Name For A Blog

What Ruth Said

Not all countries on our earth, though, have been held captive by a ruling cabal that eschews good relationships based on diplomacy. Some are advancing their interests.

China has been moving into good relationships that include material advancement. It has trade agreements with Sudan, that it has not used to advance human rights there. It has also a few alliances our media does not usually talk about. I thought it might be a good idea to see what some of them are.

Liar Or Completely Out Of Touch With Reality? You Decide.

When your wife's unrevealed assets top $100 million, it's difficult to understand the problems faced by most Americans.