People Keep Doing It; I'm Going to Keep Complaining About It

Here's a news article, admittedly written by a student (a freshman, one hopes, given the lack of organization), that manages, once again to demonstrate two of my pet peeves.

First, the author seems genuinely confused about the rules of capitalization. Take, for example:

As Shayne drifted away from Christianity, she learned more about paganism when she was in college.

or

Shane says 'paganism' is the general term for a variety of different religions, just as there are many denominations of Christianity. Paganism predates many of the monotheistic religions, including Judaism and Christianity.

Yet, at other times, we get:

Many holidays were originally Pagan-based. Halloween is called Samhain by Pagans, which represents the end of the year and is the shortest day in the year, Shayne explains.

If you're going to capitalize "Christianity," which is the name of a group of religions, then you should capitalize "Paganism," which is also the name of a group of religions. Simple.

And, then, of course, there's this:

Shane Camp, the president of the Pagan Alliance Club. He created the club because he says paganism is given a bad rap.

and

"There is a misconception that Pagans are Satan worshipers," says Lawhorne. For instance, the five points on the star, in Hollywood, represent evil and the calling of evil spirits. But Shayne says according to Pagan traditions, it is the calling of the five elements that make up life: water, air, earth, spirit and fire. It is a nature-based symbol.

As I've written many times before, this practice Pagans have of shooting themselves in the foot has got to stop. Shane, tell the reporter that you created the club so that campus Pagans could get together and discuss their religion, could organize the blood drives on campus that the article finally discusses, and could volunteer at the animal center. And there is NO reason to discuss the "misperception that Pagans are Satan worshipers." When you negate a frame, you invoke it. Besides, the main source of quotes about Pagans and Satan these days seems to me to be coming from -- Pagans.

Just stop it.

Picture found here.

Why Magic Works -- And Why It Takes Work

[The Second Law of Thermodynamics] has been simply summarized as follows: "The more complex a structure, the more energy it must dissipate to maintain all that complexity. This flux of energy make 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."

~Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Prize Winner, quoted in The Possible Human by Jean Houston.

Picture found here.

Saturday Garden Blogging

In Autumn, the leaves take over and it doesn't matter what color scheme you've worked on for your garden. And, it's wonderful.

Kali Fuck

Yes, they'll know we are xians by our love, by our love. And they'll know we are xians by our love!

Hecate

Lady of the Hounds

Hekate, Lady of Hounds
Dark-haired haunter of the crossroads
Threshold-crosser, Boundary-walker
Protect my home from all evil influences
From those who would wish me harm
And those who would harm me unwittingly
Dark-haired Goddess clad in spidersilk
The wolf and hound at Your side
The dark of the moon belongs to You
Hekate Triformus
Keeper of Keys and Walker of Ways
Let my partake of the secrets of the night
Let me speak with the animals at Your side
And share in Your khthonic wisdom
Let me return home to sleep in my bed once more,
To teach others of You, fierce Goddess
Let me be of Your wold,
Yet remain in mine.

~Amanda Sioux Blake in Bearing Torches; A Devotional Anthology for Hekate by Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

Picture found here.

Hey, Cindy, Go Talk to Your Old Man

Not Easy

Back from listening to the insightful and entertaining Janet Kane discuss levels of expression of each sign of the Zodiac.

You know, it's not easy to be a Pisces in this culture.

Based upon my 54 years of experience, I'd say that's about right. But like the YouTubes for gay teens, I would say that, "It does get better."

What's been the biggest challenge of living your sign?

Picture found here.

Wednesday Poetry Blogging

Autumn by William Morris

Laden Autumn here I stand
Worn of heart, and weak of hand:
Nought but rest seems good to me,
Speak the word that sets me free.

It's ok to be tired. That's what this season is for.

Picture found here.

Not Complicated

Can, we, however, please quit calling them the Bush "tax cuts" and call them what they really are: "The Bush Welfare for Paris Hilton Program"?

"No, But I've Thought It"

Oh, I hear you, babe.

And, Lately, There's a Lot to Be Bored By

Being in Relationship with Nature

The newsletter from G/Son's Montessori school (sent via paperless e-mail, the better to be shared w/ loving Nonnas!) has a wonderful article about helping each child to find a "sitting space" outside, someplace the child can go to to feel safe, alone, in nature.

Did you have a place like this, as a child?

When I was young, my sitting space was under a giant, old forsythia bush, big enough to have multiple rooms inside it, where you could crawl in under the branches and feel that you were, indeed, in your own little world. I made tea-sets out of sycamore leaves, stitched into little cups with their stems, crawled in there to read without being bothered, lay on my back and learned more than I knew at the time by watching how the sunlight filtered through the leaves and golden flowers.

When I got a bit older, I graduated to a secret cave made by three ancient pine trees, off in the far SouthWest of our yard, sappy branches for climbing and all. The needles made a fragrant bed and no sunlight penetrated here. I went there to "play Indian," "Indian" being about the only model I had for living in relationship with nature. I hid treasures there, watched the ants make colonies, and climbed up higher than my parents would have liked.

When I got even older, my sitting space was down beside a local creek, where I could watch water dance and play with stones, where I could project myself into dragonflies, skimming over the water, where I could put my hands on the sandy bank and believe myself home.

The newsletter from G/Son's school makes the point that ensuring a child a "sitting space" helps the child to develop a relationship with nature, especially as it changes from season to season. There's no program or structure. There's just a child, a special place, time, and nature.

I was thinking today that the concept reminds me of the speech that Le Petit Prince makes to the Earthly roses:

You are beautiful, but you are empty. One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you — the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose

.
Except that, I think that the opposite thing happens. When one learns to enter into relationship with one particular bit of nature, when one learns to communicate with the genius loci of one place, one comes, somehow to a deeper appreciation of all nature.

But I do think it is Le Petit Prince's practice that is important: watering one's rose, protecting it, sheltering it, killing (some of) the caterpillars for it, and listening to it, even when the rose grumbles (every rose I ever tried to raise did), boasts, or says nothing. And, that, I think, is the value, for both children and grown-ups, of a sitting place. Do you have one? Does the child in your life?

Nowadays, my sitting place is in my woodland garden, near my magnolia trees, beside the ferns, just near the spot where I make Hecate's depinion on the Dark Moon. And, of course, I can't go there w/o reciting to myself David McCord's wonderful poem:

This is my rock
And here I run
To steal the secret of the sun.

This is my rock
And here come I
Before the night has swept the sky.

This is my rock
This is the place
I meet the evening face to face.

If you don't have a "sitting space" how could you find one?

Picture found here.

Outside

When were you last outside?

"I believe that one of the greatest causes of the ecological crisis is the state of personal alienation from nature in which many people live. We lack a widespread sense of intimacy with the living world. Natural history has never been more popular in some ways, yet few people organize their lives around nature, or even allow it to affect them profoundly. Our depth of contact is too often wanting.

~Robert Michael Pyle

Sunday Ballet Blogging

Protecting Time in Nature

Writing about children, Richard Louv says:

It takes time -- loose, unstructured dreamtime -- to experience nature in a meaningful way. Unless parents are vigilant, such time becomes a scarce resource, because time is consumed by multiple invisible forces; because our culture currently places so little value on natural play.

What's true for children is, I think, true for all of us. It's difficult, for example, to head out to a park on just the Dark and Full Moons and expect to have a deep experience of nature. It's different if, in between the Moons, you've had what Louv talks about: time -- loose unstructured dreamtime -- to experience that same park in a meaningful way. Then, when you rush there from work on the Friday night of a Dark Moon, and hurry to the tree that you've come to know on a first-name basis, a few minutes of grounding may find you ready to practice your nature religion, to have a deep and meaningful experience with the object of your religion: nature, your landbase, your watertable, the Goddesses/Gods/Spirits of your place.
And as Louv says of children, we have to be vigilant about protecting our spiritual practice, about ensuring that we have loose, unstructured dreamtime out in nature. Otherwise, a million different "shoulds" encroach upon the time. Otherwise, you look up and realize that you spend hours a week watching tv and no time at all in nature. And the next thing you know, you say that you're practicing a nature religion, but you don't have a regular, intimate relationship with any specific part of nature, you just kind of like Capital-N-Nature in a vague, general way. Which may be OK, but it's a lot less than you're entitled to.

Picture found here

Saturday Poetry Blogging

TO LIVE IS MIRACLE ENOUGH

To live at all is miracle enough.
The doom of nations is another thing.
Here in my hammering blood-pulse is my proof.

Let every painter paint and poet sing
And all the sons of music ply their trade;
Machines are weaker than a beetle’s wing.

Swung out of sunlight into cosmic shade,
Come what come may, the imagination’s heart
Is constellation high and can’t be weighed.

Nor greed nor fear can tear our faith apart
When every heart-beat hammers out the proof
That life itself is miracle enough.

~Mervyn Peake

Picture found here.

Pretty Much

Dark of the Moon, New Beginnings

Dark Moon tonight. New beginnings. Dark of the Moon, plant a seed tonight. Dark of the Moon. What we envision, will come to be in the Full Moon's light.

What new thing are you working on?

What do you envision that will come to be in the Full Moon's light?

My goals for the coming Moon are pretty prosaic: I'm going to add two workouts with weights a week to my now-already-pretty-well-established-daily treadmill walking. (I'm an old woman. Suddenly, that whole weight-training-can-fight-inflamation-and-thus-stave-off-arthritis-stuff (given the pain in my hands from knitting the last couple of cowls) is starting to sound pretty good to me.) If I don't show up this same time next month and tell you that I've done 8 sessions at the gym, well, now that I've made it public, no worries, I'll do it. I'm working, too, on a commitment that I made a while back at an important ritual: I'm going to get out more and do more "fun" stuff, even if it is getting cold and even if I do have a ton of get-ready-for-Winter stuff to do in my garden. (Yes, fun can be very important. Especially if you're the oldest-daughter-super-achiever-type-A-introverted Queen of the To-Do List.) This weekend, I'm debating between this, a trip to one of my favorite places, a browsing (and, OK, a yarn-for-Yule-projects-buying) trip to my favorite yarn store, and listening to Congressional staffers gossip about the new Congress at Hawk & Dove.

What would you do if you had promised to go do something just for fun?

Picture found here.

Air

Art, especially sculpture, has always spoken so deeply to my Younger Self. And I've long been a huge fan of Andrew Goldsworthy's work. Lately, I've been getting a lot of inspiration for things in my own life from two artists whose works contain echoes of Goldsworthy. One is Patrick Dougherty. Here's a short video about how he creates interesting spaces from tree branches.



Dougherty has an exhibit at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden that I'm itching to go see; like most sculpture, his work doesn't translate all the way into two dimensions.

The sculpture at BBG is woven from nonnative woody material that was collected from Ocean Breeze Park on Staten Island. The harvesting site was chosen by BBG's director of Science because of its proximity to the Garden and its large population of nonnative willow (Salix atrocinerea), which is designated an invasive species in New York State. Removal of saplings of this species helped protect the site's excellent assemblage of herbaceous plants. The park is owned by the City of New York and is targeted for restoration under the City's PlaNYC sustainability initiative.

. . .

When asked about some of the words that came to mind as he contemplated what he wanted to build in Brooklyn, Dougherty smiled and said "lairs; a place for feral children and wayward adults."

Maybe I can borrow G/Son and we can go one weekend this Spring.

The second is Sally J. Smith who blogs here. I especially like how Smith's work honors the changing seasons. Here's a short video showing some of her works for this time of year:



And here's another, with ice sculptures for the coming Winter. I love the way that Smith intentionally incorporates the Sun and Moon (yes, the real ones! and she's not alone) into her work.



What inspires you right now?

Picture found here.

My New Name for a Blog

What Athenae Said.

So there's going to be a lot of ink expended over the next couple of weeks trying to figure out how this happened, as if it's a goddamn mystery. This economy blows goats, and instead of being out there every day yelling HEY WE TRIED TO FIX IT THOSE FUCKERS WOULDN'T LET US ALSO BUSH BAILED OUT THE BANKS NOT US, Democrats pretty much figured the midterms were gonna be a bloodbath and hunkered down and hoped it wouldn't hit them too hard. Because that works. That always works.

Here's the problem, you gutless fucks. You had majorities. And I KNOW, okay, but all America sees is that you had majorities and you wasted them. Because that's what the GOP told them, and you said, "buh buh buh" and couldn't point to anything you did right, not even with the unwashed hippies holding your arm up for you. You had majorities, and you had Harry Reid, refusing to be mean to Republicans by shoving stuff through. You had majorities, and you had Barack Obama acting like he was already an ex-president and could be gracious and social with these pricks. You had majorities, used them to do some stuff, and then sat back and acted like we should be grateful when we can fucking count.

We can fucking count, out here. We know what 51 means. We know what 257 means. We're not morons. And all the procedural whatsit you argue today, about ConservaDems and Blue Dogs, doesn't mean shit. You had it, and we worked hard to give it to you, and we see you calling things impossible which are just very hard, and we get fucking annoyed, because we don't get to get away with that shit. Not at our jobs and not in our lives.

Now, I'm not excusing the Party of I Hate You or these teabagging excuses for human beings who think education is vaguely homosexual in some sinister way, but I am saying that the lesson we're all going to take away from this is that America just isn't a Democratic nation and we should all tack to the right and us hippies should just die in a fire already, which is bullshit. The lesson we should take away from this is that America doesn't like [wimps], doesn't like whiners and it sure as fuck doesn't like parties that pretend to be able to do less than they can do just because they don't want to work that hard or have Chris Matthews call them mean.

You had majorities. You had power and you told us you were powerless. Why would anyone reward that with more power? Why would anyone think that's a good idea?
Schmucks.

Go leave her some love.

Also, Rahm Emanuel and Tim Kaine better never run into me in a dark alley. Way to fuck up everything Dr. Dean did, you two worthless, dipshit, running-dog, mercenaries.

And:



Besides:

Remember that the real work of change is always going on—if not in Washington, then in thousands of towns and neighborhoods and communities, if not in the halls of power, then in the streets. Don’t be complacent, but don’t despair. All around us are allies working for more justice, more freedom, more ecological balance, more peace. This is not a time to fall back, but to step up, to be bolder, braver, louder, funnier, more inventive, more outrageous, more committed. Political winds blow back and forth—hold to your deepest values, and we’ll stay the course.

~Starhawk

Finally, here's Digby, quoting Hillary Clinton, quoting Harriet Tubman:

I thought that Hillary Clinton had it right when she said at the Democratic Convention in 2008:
"My mother was born before women could vote, my daughter got to vote for her mother for President. This is the story of America, of women and men who defy the odds and never give up.

So how do we give this country back to them? By following the example of a brave New Yorker, a woman who risked her li[fe] to bring slaves to freedom along the underground railroad.

On that path to freedom, Harriet Tubman had one piece of advice:

‘If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If they’re shouting after you, keep going. Don’t ever stop, keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.’

And even in the darkest moments. That is what Americans have done. We have found the faith to keep going."

Keep the faith. And anyway, what choice do we have?

Picture found here.