He Has Obstructed The Administration Of Justice

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Happy Independence Day

The Ophelia Cantos By Theodora Goss

Lilies tangle in her hair: green stems

Like water-snakes.


A disembodied hand

Floats on the surface. So much has been lost

Already: toes, the lobe of her left ear.

But this remains, a damp, immaculate

Sign, like a message saved from the dark current.


She wandered through the courtyard in her tattered

Dress distributing wild violets.

She called us whores—your son ma'am, not your husband's

I think—and knaves—the taxes sir, your cellar

Is stocked with sweet Moselle. We called this madness.


Indicia of her innocence: to be

A maiden floating dead among the flowers.


She will become an elegant and mute

Image: the sodden velvet coat, the sinking

Coronet of poppies, virgin's bower,

And eglantine. The replicable girl.

(A blob of Chinese white becomes a hand.

The artist puts his brush in turpentine,

The model pulls her stockings on.)


And yet,

Surround by the water-lily stems,

Her face appears an enigmatic mask:

A drowned Medusa in her snaking hair.

The lilies gape around her like pink mouths,

Telling us nothing we can understand.


Her eyes stare upwards: dead and not quite dead.

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

We're heading for the harvest, the time of dead things, the time when alive things are cut down dead and used to feed alive things. It's all (the Dark) Goddess pouring (the Dark) Goddess into (the Dark) Goddess.

Image and lovely patterns here.

The Hokey Pokey

Deborah Oak explains what it's all about:

I have pleasant encounters with people I love, I've gone forward and gotten stuck, something dramatic happens, it costs me, and somehow, eventually, I go forward again, with plenty of slowing down and breaking/braking to eat good food and enjoy the company of those I love. And, through it all, the sun or moon is high above, and there’s beauty all around.

Chas Clifton offers the on-shrooms version:

(You sit on the curb in front of the liquor store until a guy wearing a wizard's hat and driving a van with California plates comes along and says, "Hey, want to eat at an Ethiopian restaurant?")

The "Street of the Idol-Makers" was shorter than last year's version, due partly to Sacred Source now being owned by the same people as Maxine Miller Studios, or so I'm told.

The emphatically Pagan switch plate on the right was at Dryad Design's booth. Paul Borda has also designed a Green Man version, where the switch forms his tongue.

Hecate adds: I had dinner at Iron Gate Inn. The grape vines were bearing. I watered herbs. I read G/Son some poems. It's all good. It's all Goddess pouring Goddess into Goddess.

Why I Am A Witch And Neither King Nor Pope

Carol Christ has a post up that explains, better than anything else ever can, what it was about feminist Wicca that called my name, kicked my ass, slapped me sideways, fed me spaghetti, and called me "Shirley":

The world renowned historian of religion Mircea Eliade said that religion originates in the desire to escape what he called “the dangerous and chaotic flux of things.” This view makes it nearly impossible to appreciate a Goddess whose female body symbolizes the creative and transformative cycles of birth, death, and renewal. Eliade’s thinking is dualistic because it arises from the attempt to escape the changing world, the world in which minds are part of bodies and bodies are part of nature. Dualistic thinking posits a realm of immortal and unchanging truth which is said to be the true of home of the rational mind which, it is said, can separate itself from the body and nature. Change is feared because things that change eventually decay and die. Dualistic thinking became foundational in western thinking through the influence of Plato. Here is Plato’s description of the Good: “This beauty is first of all eternal, it neither comes into being nor passes away, it neither waxes, nor wanes. . .” For Plato, the Good must be eternal. If it were not, like all other things it could decay or die. There is a clue here to why this kind of dualistic thinking is inherently anti-female. Plato also says that the good does not come into being which is to say: it is not born. Thus for Plato to deny death is also to deny birth. To deny birth is to deny the honor earlier cultures offered to the mother who gives birth. The denial of death is rooted in the belief that birth through a female body into a life that ends in death is neither acceptable nor determinative of the human condition.

Image found here.

First Of The Month 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.

Merci!

And, here's a video demonstration of a BSE.

Called To Serve

You know, I think I warned people about this:

Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans that would expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — support their ability to hire and fire based on faith.

Obama was unveiling his approach to getting religious charities more involved in government anti-poverty programs during a tour and remarks Tuesday at Eastside Community Ministry in Zanesville, Ohio. The arm of Central Presbyterian Church operates a food bank, provides clothes, has a youth ministry and provides other services in its impoverished community.

"The challenges we face today, from putting people back to work to improving our schools, from saving our planet to combating HIV/AIDS to ending genocide, are simply too big for government to solve alone," Obama was to say, according to a prepared text of his remarks obtained by The Associated Press. "We need all hands on deck."

But Obama's support for letting religious charities that receive federal funding consider religion in employment decisions was likely to invite a storm of protest from those who view such faith requirements as discrimination.

David Kuo, a conservative Christian who was deputy director of Bush's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives until 2003 and later became a critic of Bush's commitment to the cause, said Obama's position has the potential to be a major "Sister Souljah moment" for his campaign.

This is a reference to Bill Clinton's accusation in his 1992 presidential campaign that the hip hop artist incited violence against whites. Because Clinton said this before a black audience, it fed into an image of him as a bold politician who was willing to take risks and refused to pander.

Why anyone is surprised that someone who handed out flyers showing himself in a pulpit and announcing that he was "Called to Serve" and is a "Committed Christian" would throw over the separation of church and state in order to cater to fundie whackjobs who wouldn't vote for a Democrat if jebuz came down from heaven and campaigned for him is beyond me.

Still better than McCain.

More here.

Hat tip: cahuenga in comments at Eschaton.

Two-Year-Old Wisdom

I was estranged from my mother ever since, well, to be honest, ever since the day that I was born. But I was in my thirties when I quit speaking to her, and so, perhaps, her death, when I was in my late, late forties, was less traumatic for me that the death of a parent often is for many adults.

This weekend, as he got sleepy for his nap, G/Son said to me, "I miss my mommy." I said, "Well, Mommy is coming soon to pick you up, and I'm sure that she misses you, too." G/Son asked, "Do you miss your mommy?" Not thinking, and I was driving at the time and calculating if we could get home before G/Son fell asleep in his car seat and whether or not I could put away the groceries before his nap or if I should try to put him down for his nap and THEN put away the groceries, and that's the best excuse that I have, I said, "Well, Nonna's mommy is dead."

That engendered a solid full five minutes -- forever in a two-year-old's world -- of the following dialogue, repeated over and over again:

G/Son: You don' have a mommy?

Nonna: When I was little, like you, I had a mommy. But when I got very old, my mommy got very, very old and she got sick and died. But I have you, and your mommy, and your daddy to love, so I'm not sad.

G/Son: You don' have a mommy?

. . . .

Finally, I said, "Nonna's mommy liked to help poor people and when she got too sick to stay here, she went to the Summerlands. I like to think that she likes the apples and the apple cider."

G/Son: Your mommy died?

Nonna: That's right.

G/Son: Well, Nonna, sometimes, that happens.

Death happens.

In my religion, it's as important as new life emerging in the Spring. I won't, don't want to, refuse to impose my religion on G/Son. Yet, I'd like him to take a more reasonable view of death than do most Americans. And as we head from the longest day of the year, high summer, to Lughnasadh, the first of the harvests, I want to celebrate Death, that great harvest, in my own life and to be honest w/ G/Son about it.

Help A Witch Out

I need to come up with a list of about twenty of the Bush junta's worst lies.

I've got:

*Abstinence Education Works

*Outlawing Abortion Will Decrease the Rates of Abortion

*America Does Not Torture

*Faith-Based Initiatives Do Not Violate the First Amendment

Help me out in comments. I know we can come up with more than twenty.

Bush Terrifies Me

Every afternoon, I go halfway around Washington Circle and I sit at a light and look at this bit of masking tape that substitutes, here in DC, for freeway blogging. Periodically, the "authorities" come along and clean it off. And, then, immediately, it reappears.

It completely rocks.

Where Are Your Women?

Someone, and I'm old so I forget who, once called Sunday morning the most-segregated time of the week. They were referring to the fact that those "see-those-xians-how -they-love-one -another xians" didn't love each other enough to, you know, worship what Obama is pleased to call "a mighty god" in integrated company. Maybe that's changed or maybe xians still prefer their churches racially segregated.

But as Atrios demonstrates Sunday after Sunday, Sunday morning is still the most sexist time of the week.

It's 2008. We are in the frapping twenty-first frapping century of the Common Era. And people wonder why I drink.

The Witch By Adelaide Crapsey

When I was a girl by Nilus stream
I watched the desert stars arise;
My lover, he who dreamed the Sphinx,
learned all his dreaming from my eyes.
I bore in Greece a burning name,
And I have been in Italy
Madonna to a painter-lad,
And mistress to a Medici.

And have you heard (and I have heard)
Of puzzled men with decorous mein.
Who judged--the wench knows far too much-
And hanged her on the Salem green.

Picture found here.

This Is What Classy Looks Like: Obama Picks NH For His First Appearance With Hillary Clinton

HRC: It was spirited because we both care so much.



You completely owe it to yourself to listen past the introductory remarks.


/hat tip to pie for the suggestion

Saturday Goddess Blogging

You could do worse on a lazy Summer weekend than to visit the Temple of the Forgotten Goddesses.

My wonderful circle of amazing witches selects a different Goddess every year upon which to focus. Or, perhaps I should say, every year a different Goddess selects us. Because we wouldn't otherwise, as we did the year before last, have chosen an obscure and almost-entirely-forgotten Goddess such as Hygeia. Spending a year with Her, I was struck, over and over, by the fact that this Goddess, who once had many temples built to Her and thousands of devotees, is now almost completely forgotten. It's as if the text of the catholic mass had become completely lost, as if the xian bible had completely ceased to exist anywhere on Earth.

It certainly took a determined group of fanatics, with a huge motivation to capture power, and centuries to devote to the task, to (almost, but not quite) erase the memory of so many female representations of the divine.

And, yet, in the words of Chrissy Hinde:

She will always carry on.
Something is lost
But something is found.
They will keep on speaking Her name.
Some things change,
Some stay the same.


Picture, and more by this amazing artist, found here.

Friday Cat Blogging

My frapping cleaning people let my neighbor's cat in and then locked up and left. Miss Thing, she no likee the other cats. She's still one unhappy deity.

What Russ Feingold Said

This is what a patriot looks like.

Why Every Pagan Should Be A Card-Carrying Member

WaPo says:

The American Civil Liberties Union is threatening to sue the U.S. Naval Academy unless it abolishes its daily lunchtime prayer, saying that some midshipmen have felt pressured to participate.

In a letter to the Naval Academy, Deborah Jeon, legal director for the ACLU of Maryland, said it was "long past time" for the academy to discontinue the tradition. She said the practice violates midshipmen's freedom to practice religion as their conscience leads them.

The Naval Academy rejected the ACLU's request that the prayer be eliminated.

"The academy does not intend to change its practice of offering midshipmen an opportunity for prayer or devotional thought during noon meal announcements," the university said in a statement. It said that some form of prayer has been offered for midshipmen at meals since the school's founding, in 1845, and that it is "consistent with other practices throughout the Navy."

Nine midshipmen have complained to the ACLU about the practice, Jeon said yesterday. Some have since graduated. One recent graduate, an agnostic who objected to the chaplain-led prayer, said she felt pressured to take part in it.

"Everybody else is participating with their heads bowed and their arms crossed," the midshipman said in an interview. "It became very obvious that you aren't participating."

The midshipman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she feared her military career might be affected, said she went along with the practice at first because she didn't want to stand out. But she stopped in her third year and stood at parade rest instead of bowing her head and crossing her arms.

Those who want to pray during lunch "have the option to pray on their own," she said. "There's no reason they should subject everybody, including people like myself, to this prayer."

Academy spokeswoman Jennifer M. Erickson said that the prayer does not refer to a specific religion and that participation is voluntary. Prayers are led by Catholic, Jewish or Protestant chaplains.

The debate over whether to pray at U.S. service academies and colleges is several years old.

When the Air Force responded in 2005 to accusations of proselytizing at its academy in Colorado Springs, it issued guidelines that discouraged public prayer at most official events.

And in 2003, a Virginia appeals court struck down the Virginia Military Institute's mealtime prayer as unconstitutional. The ACLU and the Anti-Defamation League have asked the Navy to stop the lunch prayer at the Naval Academy based on the VMI ruling.

The Navy is "ignoring the law," said T. Jeremy Gunn, director of the ACLU's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. "The government shouldn't be deciding what kind of prayer is the right kind of prayer and then coercing people into accepting their preferred kind of prayer."

What We Need Right Now

Radical feminism is a "current" within feminism that focuses on patriarchy as a system of power that organizes society into a complex of relationships producing a "male supremacy" that oppresses women. Radical feminism aims to challenge and to overthrow patriarchy by opposing standard gender roles and male oppression of women, and calls for a radical reordering of society. Early radical feminism, arising within second-wave feminism in the 1960s, typically viewed partriarchy as a "transhistorical phenomenon" prior to or deeper than other sources of oppression, "not only the oldest and most universal form of domination but the primary form" and the model for all others. Later politics derived from radical feminism ranged from cultural feminism to more syncretic politics that placed issues of class, economics, etc. on a par with patriarchy as sources of oppression.

The term radical in radical feminism (from Latin rādīx, rādīc-, root) is used as an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the root or going to the root. Radical feminists locate the root cause of women's oppression in patriarchal gender relations, as opposed to legal systems (liberal feminism) or class conflict (socialist feminism and Marxist feminism).

More here.

Picture, and more from this amazing artist, found here.

Shiny Things

I really love Lunaea's evocative tarot deck and often direct others to it.

I want her new her hew rosary madly.


Art found here.

If I Can't Dance In Your Religion, I Don't Want To Be A Part Of It

Carol Christ makes an important point:

The great scholar of the history of religion Mircea Eliade defined religion as the attempt to escape or transcend what he called “the chaotic and dangerous flux of things.” This definition--while allegedly not indebted to any particular religious tradition and claimed to be the universal essence of religion--is in fact rooted in a particular if widespread view that finite embodied life in a finite world cannot be accepted or understood as valuable or holy. From this perspective the recurring cycles of birth, death, and renewal in plant, animal, and human life cannot in themselves be seen to be sacred, and any religion based upon celebrating and preserving them does not fit the definition of what religion is.

Christ's point relates to my general and increasing distaste for the term "people of faith." First, there's just something squicky about it, but, second, and more importantly, even though the term purports to be inclusive, it defines my religion out of the picture, In fact, it's primarily only Abrahamic religions that require "faith" of their adherents and, if you mean Abrahamic religions, it's dishonest to pretend that you're being inclusive. The Craft, however, does not ask faith of its adherents. I'd say, as would many witches, that Wicca is a religion not of faith but of experience. Either you've experienced the unity of existence, the immanence of divinity, the presence of the Goddesses/Gods, magic -- or you haven't. If you haven't, you can still be a witch, but no one will ask you to take those concepts on faith. If anything, they'll show you methods and practices that can lead to those experiences.

For a long time, male-dominated religions and male-dominated schools of thought have been defining religion in ways that make what I do seem "less than." Christ does a good job of pointing out how they do this. If I can't dance in your religion, I don't want to be a part of it.


Picture found here.

Disagreement: I Can Not Haz It

Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.


Henry James (1843 - 1916)

Where Are Your Women?

They Skipped Her When They Wrote History

Female Back Breaking Labor

Listen Up!

I have said this before and I am going to say it again. I am going to vote for Barack Obama for president, here in the contested state of Virginia. I am going to stand outside metro stations and farmers' markets and hand out literature for him. I am going to donate money to him. Any woman who does anything different is, well, wrong.

That said, this article in Salon goes a long way towards capturing how many women feel. I especially endorse the comments concerning Dr. Dean, whom I am unlikely to ever forgive.

They are mad at Howard Dean.

Not simply for allowing the massive befouling of the Democratic process that was Michigan and Florida but for addressing issues of sexism only once Clinton was out of the race. Seriously, the anger at Dean may be some of the most unexpected and intense. At the recent EMILY's List conference, during a panel on gender and the election, Dean's name was the only one that got booed.

Keep it up, asshole. I have a long memory and a big checkbook. I choose where and when to write checks. Fifty states, my sweet, round ass.

And, um, yeah, including the stereotype of my religion:

They are mad at their party and its leaders because they feel this race has opened up a door, allowing people to rag on white women -- as irrelevant and buffoonish, as ambitious and preening, as old school and boring and nagging and hectoring -- in a way that demonstrates that women have a questionable place in liberalism and progressivism. Since when is the party supposedly interested in social justice not interested in the advancement of women to the highest office?


It was, in fact, remarkable, the success with which hoary stereotypes about second-wave feminism got so enthusiastically embraced 30 years past their sell-by date. Who knew how eager the American public -- and more critically, the American left -- was to wholeheartedly embrace the image of Hillary supporters as sexless, humorless, bitter, hysterical old crones. It was simply acceptable -- in a way that was a brisk eye-opener for a lot of young women, even those who didn't support Clinton -- to talk derisively about Clinton and her supporters as whiny, cackling, emasculating witches.

Of course, the ease with which these kinds of stereotypes were bandied about suggests that it is women -- about to take your jobs and your college acceptance letters and your seat in the Oval Office and probably your penis! -- who are the most threatening to the established white male power structure. But it seems that that was rather cold comfort when Clinton women were being steadily assailed with images of themselves as unappealing, pruney old harpies who did all their political thinking with their ovaries.

Obama and the thirty-something male bloggers can keep on choosing to not "get" this (we know you get it). We realize exactly how eager you are to "move beyond" this issue. You're making that disturbingly obvious. We also realize why you're in such an all-fired hurry to "move on" to the "more important" issues. We get it. It does not reflect well on you.

The ERA would be a good place to start. I am just a 50-something old woman with the checkbook and address book to prove it. Just saying.

Hat tip to my brilliant friend, E.

Art found here.

Tarot

I've got too many tarot decks and I've gotten v picky about which I buy. But I'll buy this one as soon as it's finished. And, would someone please reprint the Greenwood Tarot????????

Hat tip: Lunaea.

Mark Warner Is Going To Beat Jim Gilmore Like A Dirty Rug On A Clothesline

Listening To The Earth

As I go into the Earth, she pierces my heart. As I penetrate further, she unveils me. When I have reached her center I am weeping openly. I have known her all my life, yet she reveals stories to me, and these stories are revelations and I am transformed. Each time I go to her I am born like this. Her renewal washes over me endlessly, her wounds caress me, I become aware of all that has come between us, of the noise between us, the blindness, of something sleeping between us. Now my body reaches out to her. They speak effortlessly and I learn at no instant does she fail me in her presence. She is as delicate as I am, I know her sentience I feel her pain and my own pain comes into me and my own pain grows large and I grasp this pain with my hands, and I open my mouth to this pain, I taste, I know, and I know why she goes on, under great weight, with this great thirst, in drought, in starvation, with intelligence in every act does she survive disaster. This earth is my sister, I love her daily grace, her silent daring and how loved I am how we admire this strength in each other all that we have lost, all that we have suffered, all that we know: we are stunned by this beauty, and I do not forget what she is to me, what I am to her.

~Susan Griffin, in Earth Prayers From Around th World, 365 Prayers, Poems, and Invocations for Honoring the Earth, ed. Elizabeth Roberts & Elias Amidon, Harper, San Francisco, 1991

As I'm landscaping my yard and planting new plants, replacing old ones, putting up structures, I've been spending more and more time listening to this tiny piece of land. I started doing that because I wanted to let the land tell me about herself, to make sure that what I did was in accord with her desires. What I didn't expect was how much she's been waiting to tell me about myself.

Picture found here.

Remember. And, If You Cannot Remember, Watch.

Friday Cat Blogging

Miss Thing is not paying attention to you.

Solstice Sunrise, Stonehenge 2008

The BBC has pictures from this year's Summer Solstice at Stonehenge. A bit cloudy, but still lovely. Also, today's Google logo has a big, bright sun.

Even more, here.

Another Poem For The Longest Day

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
Or many gods.
I want to know if you belong – or feel abandoned;
If you know despair
Or can see it in others.
I want to know
If you are prepared to live in the world
With its harsh need to change you;
If you can look back with firm eyes
Saying “this is where I stand.”
I want to know if you know how to melt
Into that fierce heat of living
Falling toward the center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing
To live day by day
With the consequence of love
And the bitter unwanted passion
Of your sure defeat.
I have been told
In that fierce embrace
Even the gods
Speak of God.

~ David Whyte ~
(Fire in the Earth)


Art found here.

Little Summer Poem Touching The Subject Of Faith

I read, well, this is an understatement, a lot of poems. I've never found a better poem for the Summer Solstice than this one. When you read it, it helps to know that Oliver's talking about corn, although corn is not the subject of the poem.

Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun's brass and even
into the moonlight, but I can't hear

anything, I can't see anything --
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening their damp pleats,

nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,

the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker --
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.

And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing --
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet --
all of it
happening
beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
is sure to be there.

From West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems, by Mary Oliver. Published by Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston. Copyright 1997 by Mary Oliver.

Picture found here.

When The Moon Hits Your Eye Like A Big Pizza Pie, That's An Illusion

There's a full moon tonight and it's going to be giant! Go see it!

The full Moon of June 18th is a "solstice moon", coming only two days before the beginning of northern summer. This is significant because the sun and full Moon are like kids on a see-saw; when one is high, the other is low. This week's high solstice sun gives us a low, horizon-hugging Moon and a strong Moon Illusion.

Sky watchers have known for thousands of years that low-hanging moons look unnaturally big. At first, astronomers thought the atmosphere must be magnifying the Moon near the horizon, but cameras showed that is not the case. Moons on film are the same size regardless of elevation. Apparently, only human beings see giant moons.

Are we crazy?

After all these years, scientists still aren't sure. When you look at the Moon, rays of moonlight converge and form an image about 0.15 mm wide on the retina in the back of your eye. High moons and low moons make the same sized spot, yet the brain insists one is bigger than the other. Go figure.

More here

Hat tip to R.

Image found here.

Blessed Summer Solstice to You II

I said this last year and I'll say it again:

This week, I believe that I can state unequivocably, is my favorite week on the wheel of the year. This is the last week during which the days grown longer. Next week, we come to the Summer Solstice and, immediately thereafter, the days begin to grow shorter and shorter again, leading inexorably to the freezing dawn when I will stand with the wonderful women of my circle, bang pots, shake tamborines, yell, and generally make as much noise as possible to wake the Yule-time Sun. We drink schnappes or whiskey or some other throat-burning booze from glasses made of ice and then we throw the glasses on the frozen ground to shatter into a million diamond shards before heading off to a greasy-spoon on Capitol Hill or a pancake house in Arlington for a v. hearty breakfast.

But, for now, the sunlight pays the world the great compliment of lingering until almost nine o'clock in the evening, the flowers bloom, the grass grows, and the lightening bugs remind me, if I ever forget, that I live in an enchanted forest, full of mysteriously-blinking lights, leading me into shadowy and deep mysteries. The herb bed swells with herbs, the farmers' market bulges with riches from blueberries to tomatoes to cucumbers, the birds flit and float about, and, and, and, there's lots and lots of daylight!!!!

. . .

I know that I should be equally happy to see the beginning of Fall and Winter, and, yet, I cannot help but to rage, rage (a bit) against the dying of the light.

Happy Summer. Happy sunlight. Happy long days of summer. Enjoy. It's everthing. It's all real. It's all metaphor. There's always more.

Art (and more by this amazing artist) found here.

What Is Your Basis?

What lovely poetry.



Art found here.

No North Pole?

Freeway Blogger Rocks. That is all.


Art by J.R.R.T. But then, you knew that.

You Can't Have Him

More. Like. This.

Blessed Summer Solstice to You

From Wikipedia: Bloomsday (Irish: Lá Bhloom) is a commemoration observed annually on 16 June in Dublin and elsewhere to celebrate the life of Irish writer James Joyce and relive the events in his novel Ulysses, all of which took place on the same day in Dublin in 1904. The name derives from Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses, and 16 June was the date of Joyce's first outing with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle, when they walked to the Dublin village of Ringsend.




I love flowers I’d love to have the whole place swimming in roses God of heaven there’s nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and the waves rushing then the beautiful country with fields of oats and wheat and all kinds of things and all the fine cattle going about that would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and flowers all sorts of shapes and smells and colours springing up even out of the ditches primroses and violets nature it is as for them saying there’s no God I wouldn’t give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning why don’t they go and create something I often asked him atheists or whatever they call themselves go and wash the cobbles off themselves first then they go howling for the priest and they dying and why why because they’re afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they don’t know neither do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a woman’s body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldn’t answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didn’t know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the Jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharans and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

What Would A Patriot Do?

The Virginia Coordinated Campaign is the campaign arm of the Democratic Party of Virginia, working to elect Barack Obama, Mark Warner and our slate of congressional candidates. Its McLean office, located at 1575 Anderson Rd, opens today, June 16, and is ready for volunteers. Bring your friends and family and come help take back the White House. For questions, call Bridgit Donnelly at (703) 261-7300.

My New Name For A Blog

What Chidyke Said.

Spade up some grass. Fill a couple of pots. Head over to a community plot, or just create one on some unused land in your ’hood. It’s not too late

Lady, I love you.

Picture: Tarragon from my new herb bed.

Spaces for Foxes

The lovely men doing my landscaping recently put up most of a cedar privacy (I'm a witch, after all) fence around the Eastern, Southern, and Western sides of my backyard.

They left special spaces underneath the Southern fence to allow the fox to visit me in winter, as is her wont.

Wiccan Landscaping.

The Longest Week

So, here it is. Summer. Only a few days away and, as always, amazing.

Young feminists moving in and out of my guest room, lavender and sage and tarragon taking root in the sun-warmed soil of my herb bed. Mints growing in the backyard. A tiny young boy who teases me with the mad teasing skillz that are the surest sign EVER that he's his father's son. Cats thriving in my dining room. Briefs blooming in my office, Magic happening everywhere.

Blue weed flowers beside every road. Sun setting later everyday.

Poems exploding in my inbox.

May it be so for you.

Pagan Ethics

Nine Touchstones of the Ethics of Goddess Religion

Nurture life.

Walk in love and beauty.

Trust the knowledge that comes through the body.

Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering.

Take only what you need.

Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations.

Approach the taking of life with great restraint.

Practice great generosity.

Repair the web.

More here.

In the ongoing discussion of Pagan ethics, Carol Christ's nine touchstones are a pretty good place to start. I'd forgotten that one of the phrases in a prayer that I pray every morning came from Christ's book.

The breath of my body will bless.
The cells of my being now sing,
With gratitude and reawakening.
Mother, make me a perfect priestess to your service.
And allow me, in all that I do today,
To help to repair the web.


Art found here.

My New Name For A Blog

What Ellroon Said.

Art found here.

Things That Make Me Happy

Sushi at Kaz.

Jeff Skilling is still in jail.

Good jazz that s/one posted at Eschaton.



Mary Oliver.

Days almost as long as they can possibly be.

One Day Early Friday Cat Blogging

Do not start with me. You will not win.

Obama!

Hat tip to Erin PDX.

My New Name For A Blog

What Suzie Said.

There is something to it being class based, as I’ve discussed before and will continue to evaluate – a smug sense that somehow prejudice against [the] lower class . . . is justified, and thus you shouldn’t defend those kinds of people. It’s also not a mistake that the bulk of the people gulping this sewage are white and male. It would appear that the upper class white males of the Democratic Party have more in common with the upper class white male Republicans than they care to admit. It is not a mistake, I think, that the people on the left who responded best to the anti-Clinton spew of this round are socio-economically similar to those on the Right who share their taste in Drudge and sludge.

Water Wars

The stream is shrunk--the pool is dry,
And we be comrades, thou and I;
With fevered jowl and dusty flank
Each jostling each along the bank;
And by one drouthy fear made still,
Forgoing thought of quest or kill.
Now ’neath his dam the fawn may see,
The lean Pack-wolf as cowed as he,
And the tall buck, unflinching, note
The fangs that tore his father’s throat.

The pools are shrunk--the streams are dry,
And we be playmates, thou and I,
Till yonder cloud--Good Hunting!--loose
The rain that breaks our Water Truce.

~Kipling

Getting a little dry out there in Califia's land?

Art found here.

Guess Which Accomplishment Jefferson Listed Second On His Tombstone?

Yeah, But, Even Here, Can You Spot The (Not So) Hidden Sexism

Toxic Mimics

Talking About It Is Better Than Pretending It Doesn't Exist

One thing that I discussed yesterday with the nice young man from Mother Jones was whether any good can come from the intense sexism directed at Hillary Clinton by the press and some supposedly liberal bloggers. I mentioned that Anita Hill went through hell and lost her bid to keep Clarence Thomas off SCOTUS, but it did open up the eyes of a lot of women and it did lead to changes that have made it less acceptable than it used to be to sexually harass women in the work place. (Yeah, it still happens, but, believe me, it's not as bad as it used to be.) My hope is that we'll see a resurgence of feminist thought, of discussion about the issue of sexism, and a move towards getting more women into politics.

On que, the XX chromosome side of left blogistan responds today w some v. good writing.

This week, Laura Flanders said we shouldn't have to elect women to get gender justice (among other things).
I agree. But doesn't gender justice include having women in government? I think putting more women into positions of power will improve society, if only because it opens up opportunities for women. It’s odd that this concept seems to have become controversial among feminists.
I would much rather have Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state than a white man who shared the same views. Her promotion may inspire girls, especially black girls. Having the career she does may make it easier for white men in power to imagine another black woman in that job.
I understand that it isn’t enough to add only a few token women. But it’s a start. We don’t get parity overnight. It starts with a few women, followed by a few more women, followed by a few more. I think women are more likely to change systems if we can get a foothold in them.
I'm writing this before I go on vacation, and so, I don't know the latest in the presidential race. But I have been mystified by progressive women who say gender doesn’t or shouldn’t matter when choosing a candidate. I guess this means that they have no problem with men holding the presidency forever as long as the men have good policies. The same goes for race.
I’m not saying gender or race should be the only things that matter. If you think Obama would significantly improve the lives of women, or the lives of some women, or your life, and Clinton wouldn’t have done so, I understand your vote. If you think it’s important to have an African American in the White House and you like Obama’s policies, I understand your vote. (Mix these thoughts up however you want.) But if you’re a feminist and you say that the gender or race of a candidate doesn’t matter, then I’m floored.

Go read the rest of what Suzie has to say at Echidne of the Snakes

Meanwhile, Digby is, as usual, spot on:

I don't believe Obama's win is [due to the sexist treatment that Clinton received].. He won it fair and square, carrying a heavy historical burden of his own. But that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Acknowledging that doesn't create a "toxic legacy" and neither is it just the sad lament of "lonely people" (translation: lonely old women.) But I'm sure those memes will catch on and we'll all be told that we imagined it all. (Youtube is our new best friend.)

Clinton's campaign ripped open a hole in our culture and forced us to look inside. And what we found was a simmering cauldron of crude, sophomoric sexism and ugly misogyny that a lot of us knew existed but didn't realize was still so socially acceptable that it could be broadcast on national television and garner nary a complaint from anybody but a few internet scolds like me. It was eye-opening, to say the least.

Jill responds to the amazing bullshit that the best woman for the job is a man:

I voted for Barack Obama. I like him a lot. He is very good on women’s issues. But that doesn’t make him the best “woman” for the job, any more than Bill Clinton was “the first Black president.” It erases the realities of being female to argue that a man can be a good enough “woman president;” it erases the fact that “good on women’s issues” is not the same as “woman;” it erases the importance of having women in positions of power. And it discounts just how huge of a milestone it will be when a woman is elected to the Presidency. We can applaud Obama on his progressive stances and keep him accountable on his less progressive ones without attributing to him a characteristic that he simply does not have. We can celebrate the practical and symbolic importance of his run for President without having to make him everything to everyone. And if we want to be as “post-gender” as Walker suggests, then perhaps we should really shift the paradigm and expect that issues of gender, racial and social justice be fundamental in any political system, and not the providence of “special interest groups” like women.

And, over at MyDD Natasha notes that:

Someone was telling me in earnest the other day that Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) should be the VP pick because, and I am not making this up, she's younger and prettier than the other women being discussed, and endorsed Clinton -- so shouldn't that make her a great person to appease the Clinton supporters?

Other points were offered in her defense, but if someone argued in favor of adding a Black candidate to the ticket on the basis of 'well, their skin's a lot lighter than the other people of color that we considered,' that would pretty much be the end of seriously paying attention to what they had to say. And rightly. Not to say the two things are directly equivalent, either. Just that where racist arguments are generally recognized right away, sexist arguments can be slipped by in even progressive circles, among people who insist that they're feminists, without usually causing much embarassment.

And yes, that'd be the Blanche Lincoln, who voted with Republicans on FISA and the estate tax, and was delisted from EMILY's List for casting anti-choice votes in the Senate.

When I argued the other day that people with bad records on gender issues should be automatically ruled out, it was exactly that sort of tokenism I was suggesting should be avoided. I didn't argue that Clinton should be picked, or even that another woman should necessarily be picked, but that someone should be selected that showed respect and consideration towards the issues that are important to her supporters. Issues that include, but are definitely not limited to, reproductive justice.

That's a whole lot of serious discussion about feminism. Let's hope that it's only the beginning.

Art found here.

Garden Magic

I'm a really bad gardener, because I forget what this is. But I like it. I hope it makes seeds so I can grow it again next year.

Just planted morning glory, woad, dill, and French thyme seeds in the new herb bed. The moon, fortunately, is waxing, although I'm not always particularly choosey about that; when seedlings arrive, they go in the ground; I'm not going to wait two weeks for the moon to be in the right phase.

What I do is to meditate with the seeds, breathe with them, let them know how much I want them to grow. I send strength and "wic" to them.



And I do some Reiki on them. Once they're planted, I tend to do some Reiki on the water that I use to water them. The woad seeds are a few years old, so I gave them a bit more attention. Then, I drew a Tarot card to see if there was anything that the seeds wanted me to know. I pulled the Knight of Swords: all those tiny seeds, shouting in unison, "Let's Go!" So I went directly out and planted them, still inside the circle that I'd cast, watered them, and then came inside to open the circle.

Do you do any magic for your plants?

Mother Jones

Yeah, I said it.

A Virginia lawyer who only gave me her blog handle, Hecate, said that Clinton's fight was ultimately thwarted by the forces she was trying to overcome. "Any woman who gets close to a position of power gets treated badly," she said. "The calls to drop out wouldn't have happened if she were a man. The attitude was that she needs to let the deserving man have his job." She added, "This election has ripped the cover off things we like to hide. Lots of young women and female bloggers have had their eyes opened to how sexist our society is."

Update: NTodd says it better than I did.