Imbolc 2010

It snowed several inches last night, but today's sun, and temperatures in the low 40s, melted much of it. An almost perfect day for astrological Imbolc. I slept in and did conference calls and answered emails and read cases from home, my snug little cottage in the Potomac watershed. I'd gone out last night and hung suet and peanuts and sunflowers from my euonymus bush, so that the birds could calorie-up before being snowed in. I needn't have worried. I was able to go out on the deck this morning without slipping and pour sunflower seeds on a cleared-off surface for the birds.

And, after the conference calls, I decided to set my altar up outside, albeit that I have a lovely, cozy room set aside in my cottage for ritual. It was sunny and the snow was melting and I figured that, with a sweater and a shawl, I could be comfortable outside for the better part of an hour. My wonderful circle of amazing women did our Imbolc celebration over the weekend, with the full Moon, but this afternoon was just for me, the Witch of this Place, as I announce myself before calling the Quarters and beginning to do the work of a priestess who helps to turn the wheel. I did what witches do and I called to Brigid the Bright and, as I always do on Imbolc, I started my datura seedlings. Datura's poison; don't handle it w/o gloves or some other barrier and always wash your hands afterwards. But the flowers are pure white, and they smell of lemon drenched in vanilla, and, in the late summer, they open in the moonlight. The seeds take a long time to germinate; you plant them and water them and give them light and then you always think: this batch is a dud; they're not going to germinate, nothing wic here. And, then, long after you've given up, the first green sprouts appear.

I did what I do in circle and I charged the tiny peat pots and the lovely little seeds and I planted the seeds in the peat pots and charged the whole thing and then I looked up. On the deck, were about a dozen birds of all sorts, including both the cardinal and the blue jay, who never show up together. They didn't mind me and they didn't mind my iPhone playing music and they didn't mind the pinon incense and they didn't mind the 7 different candles burning. They were just there to help to turn the wheel because, well, because the wheel needs turning and they live here, too.

May Spring begin in your heart and move outwards from there into the world. May the beautiful poison thing in you bloom and perfume the world. May all the winged dragons of your special place attend you. May you become the priestess of your own bit of Earth.

This is my will. So mote it be.

Photos by the author. If you copy, please link back.

Poetry On Imbolc

If you grace my blog even occasionally, you know that I love poetry. I love the way that words -- "mere" words -- can transport us. I guess that some of it is my Ascendant in Gemini, which loves wordplay, and some of it is my Sun in Pisces, which craves ecstasy, which I find, more often than almost anywhere else, in poetry. Some of it seems to be my memory of past lives when poetry, especially spoken poetry, was one of the few available art forms and ways to honor the Goddesses and Gods. And some of it is just capital-P-Poetry, itself, which is, well, for me poetry is both oxygen and lagniappe. When our ancestors developed grunts and squacks to mean, "Give me that stick," and "The baby needs attention," and "You can have some of mine," who knew they were laying the foundation for the author of the Song of Amerin, for Blake, Shakespeare, Crowley, Cavafy, Levertov, Akhmatova, Mary Oliver, Rumi, Dylan Thomas, Charles Williams, Peake, Burns, Gibran, Robin Morgan, Dorothy Parker, and so many others? I'd love to think that, someday, eons from now, any of my quotidian efforts would evolve into anything even remotely resembling poetry. May the Goddess guard that first great, great, many-times-great grandmother of mine who grunted the same way every time to mean, "Seeds," or "Meat," or "Danger" or "Comfort Here." That was a v good idea that you had, Lady.

And, so it is that Imbolc, when we give special homage to the Goddess Brigid, Goddess of poets, is a special Sabbat for me, one that I spend almost, well, not almost -- one that I spend all the way drunk on poems. I have a lot of books and, when I moved into this little cottage and catalogued all of the books, carefully by the Library of Congress system, onto Stickley bookshelves, the poetry books went into the kitchen, on the breakfast nook table, where they are most accessible. There are people who find it weird to walk into the kitchen and find poetry and people who love the poetry in my kitchen. It's a v good sorting device. So, it's v, v, v difficult for me, as you may imagine, to choose just one poem to post for Anne Hill's Poetry Slam.

I have a few poems listed in my will to be read when they push a button and send my body into the fire. But there's one of them that always makes me cry, raises goosebumps, sends me into the realm of the divine. And I am more grateful to Doreen Valiente, for channeling it, than I can ever say. So here's my contribution for this year's Imbolc Poetry Reading. It's old, and well-worn, and it never fails to send me. Others will post newer poems, edgier poems, poems that delight with their uniqueness. But, for me, capital-P-Poetry is this one, the one I want someone to be reading to me when I transit from Autumnals, etc.


Traditional by Doreen Valiente, as adapted by Starhawk:

Listen to the words of the Great Mother, Who of old was called Artemis, Astarte, Dione, Melusine, Aphrodite, Cerridwen, Diana, Arionrhod, Brigid, and by many other names:

Whenever you have need of anything, once a month, and better it be when the moon is full, you shall assemble in some secret place and adore the spirit of Me Who is Queen of all the Wise.

You shall be free from slavery, and as a sign that you be free you shall be naked in your rites.

Sing, feast, dance, make music and love, all in My Presence, for Mine is the ecstasy of the spirit and Mine also is joy on earth.

For My law is love is unto all beings. Mine is the secret that opens the door of youth, and Mine is the cup of wine of life that is the cauldron of Cerridwen, that is the holy grail of immortality.

I give the knowledge of the spirit eternal, and beyond death I give peace and freedom and reunion with those that have gone before.

Nor do I demand aught of sacrifice, for behold, I am the Mother of all things and My love is poured out upon the earth.

Hear the words of the Star Goddess, the dust of Whose feet are the hosts of Heaven, whose body encircles the universe:

I Who am the beauty of the green earth and the white moon among the stars and the mysteries of the waters,

I call upon your soul to arise and come unto me.

For I am the soul of nature that gives life to the universe.

From Me all things proceed and unto Me they must return.

Let My worship be in the heart that rejoices, for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals.

Let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you.

And you who seek to know Me, know that the seeking and yearning will avail you not, unless you know the Mystery: for if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without.

For behold, I have been with you from the beginning, and I am That which is attained at the end of desire.

At the end of all desire, there's the Goddess. That does it for me. Like all really good capital-P-Poetry, this one lends itself to adaptation. This weekend, at my Circle's Imbolc celebration, my gorgeous sister K. adapted the list of Goddesses at the beginning to the list of those Goddesses with whom our Circle has worked each year. It made goosebumps run all up and down my body and reminded me that I was, all unoworthy and unprepared, bathing in the presence of the divine.

I love my life.

Picture found here.

Nobody At Atrios Does "Frist" Anymore. But This Is Still A Good Idea

Tell me in comments why your blog is ripe for a link on February 3rd!

It's Odd, But

that's now how I've ever heard any branch of Wicca described. But what do I know?

(You have to scroll down a bit.)

More here.

Picture found here.

This Is Not The "Age Of Aquarius" I Was Promised

May you live in interesting times.

This is all leading up to the grand square which starts in May 2010 when Uranus enters Aries and will start moving to a square with Pluto which is moving into a square with Saturn. We are talking major social unrest and revolution. Plus Jupiter entering Aries on June 6 will expand all of these energies. Then in July, Mars goes into Libra and is the trigger to kick it all off at the time of a major eclipse on July 11. You will be hearing more about this grand square from me and from astrologers around the world who are closely watching this one. These types of configurations don’t come along very often.

My New Name For A Blog

What Echidne of the Snakes Said.

Picture found here.

Or, You Know, He Can Bite Me

Pope condemns gay equality laws ahead of first UK visit. Benedict XVI says legislation safeguarding rights of same-sex couples violates 'natural law' . . . [British bishops] told him [that] sexual orientation legislation that came into effect on 1 January 2009 had forced the closure of half the Roman Catholic adoption agencies because the law making it illegal to discriminate against gay applicants went against their beliefs.

In his letter the pope said: "The effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed."

It is also thought the pope was referring to the equality bill, which narrows the special exemption enjoyed by churches allowing them to exclude people whose lifestyles do not fit in with the religious ethos of an organisation when hiring staff. The bishops cited it as another restriction of their freedom of religious belief.

Why anyone listens to the words of this pedophile-protecting piece of patriarchial poo is beyond me. And why ANY country would let the pedophiles of the catholic church anywhere near activities such as adoption services is, you guessed it, also beyond me.

Meanwhile, I get that the catholics are hoping to scarf up some of the homophobes leaving the Church of England, and, really, nothing makes me happier than watching these xians cannibalize each other. But try and imagine that the "right" that the church is claiming were the right to discriminate against people with black skin rather than against people who want to love someone of their own sex. Let's try this:

They told him that race discrimination legislation that came into effect on 1 January 2009 had forced the closure of half the Roman Catholic adoption agencies because the law making it illegal to discriminate against people with black or brown skin went against their beliefs.

In his letter the pope said: "The effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed."

It is also thought the pope was referring to the equality bill, which narrows the special exemption enjoyed by churches allowing them to exclude people whose skin colors do not fit in with the religious ethos of an organisation when hiring staff. The bishops cited it as another restriction of their freedom of religious belief.

Go away, catholics. Just go away.

Picture found here.

Ladies! Listen up! Detecting 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.

I know that a recent study indicated that early detection via breast self exams might not be "cost effective." I'm not a scientist, but when I read those studies, they appear to be saying that sometimes women find a lump during the BSE that turns out not to be cancer. Those women have caused some expense and have gone through some discomfort in order to find out that the lump wasn't cancer. I don't know about you, but when that happens to me, as it has a few times since my first mammogram found a small, curable, cancerous lump, I go out and buy a new scarf, take myself out for a decadent lunch, call everyone I know, and call it a good day.

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. If you have a deck, pick three cards and e-mail me at hecatedemetersdatter@hotmail.com. I'll email you back your reading. If you don't have a deck, go to Lunea's tarot listed on the right-hand side in my blog links. Pick three cards from her free, on-line tarot and email me at hecatedemetersdatter@hotmail.com. I'll email you back your reading.

Hope

I'm just about ready to declare that you can't REALLY have a regular spiritual practice that doesn't include reading Phila's Hope Blogging.

At any rate, I am finding it more and more necessary.

Picture found here.

Oh, This Should Be Interesting

A British film competition will include an examination of the life of "Arthur Uther Pendragon."

Kyoko Miyake, 33, concentrated on Arthur Uther Pendragon, a motorcycling druid whose real name is John Rothwell. Mr Rothwell claims to be ‘the living embodiment of King Arthur’ and is preparing to stand in the general election in Salisbury. He lives in a caravan near Stonehenge paid for by supporters.

Picture found here.

Bonus Brigid Poetry Blogging

Stardust, Hope and Longnecks
for LD

I just read, to a friend today,
a poem about dust on the moon.
Funny thing is, and he'd even say,
a particle of that is in my room!

No, really. Believe me, i'm not lying.
The fodder of astronauts' is here, and beer!
Right here, by the wine bottle and the dead pipe,
in the basement where he showed no fear.

~Chicago Dyke

Picture found here.

I Thought We Learned This Stuff In Fourth Grade

So I was all set to rag on the Air Force Times over capitalization issues,

The Air Force Academy will add a worship area for followers of “earth-centered religion” — pagans — with a dedication ceremony scheduled for March 10.

A stone circle located on a hill overlooking the Cadet Chapel and visitor center will join Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist sacred spaces at the academy in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Tech. Sgt. Brandon Longcrier, a pagan who worked with the chapel to create the circle, said he did not encounter resistance to the idea.

“There really haven’t been any obstacles for the new circle,” he said in an Air Force news release. “The chaplain’s office has been 100 -percent supportive.”

But then,

Longcrier said earth-centered spirituality includes traditions such as Wicca and Druidism. Wicca is the largest religious group in the Air Force after Christianity.

So apparently their theory is to capitalize specific forms of Pagan spirituality, such as "Wicca" and "Druidism."

But there's still a problem. "Christianity" gets capitalized and that's an umbrella term for a variety of spiritualities, such as Methodists, Episcopalians, and Baptists, just as Paganism is an umbrella term for a variety of spiritualities such as Wicca, Druidism, Asatru, etc. Similarly, Judiasim gets capitalized, although that's an umbrella term for Hassidism, Reformed, Orthodox, etc. forms of Jewish spirituality.

It's not that complicated, people. Either capitalize all the umbrella terms or none of them.

Meanwhile, this new worship space is an important step forward for Pagans, especially at the Air Force Academy, which has recently been in the news as a bastion of the fundification of our military. And, wow, Pagans are the second largest group in the Air Force? Who knew?

Amazingly enough, The WaPo, which has a horrible record reporting on Pagan events, shows how it's done.

CSA Cookery.

This week, the CSA delivered an abundance of broccoli, along with some carrots. I added ginger, garlic, onions, and tofu. Stir-fried up in tasty peanut oil (there's now an organic brand that can handle high heat) and flavored w a bit of Balducci's ginger plum sauce. Enough for lunch today and some to pack for lunches this week.

Sunday Poetry Blogging

Directive

Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry—
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there’s a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods’ excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone’s road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.
The height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other. Both of them are lost.
And if you’re lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.
Then make yourself at home. The only field
Now left’s no bigger than a harness gall.
First there’s the children’s house of make-believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad.
Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny’s
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.
(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it,
So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t.
(I stole the goblet from the children’s playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

~Robert Frost

Picture found here.

Sunday Poetry Blogging

Design

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right.
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall? --
If design govern in a thing so small.

~ Robert Frost

PIcture found here.

With Nature

Vows At Imbolc

Brigid is such a complex Goddess -- patroness of both poetry and smithcraft, of both fire and wells, of both healing of the body and the creative spark -- that it's not surprising that she is so beloved by such a wide variety of Pagans. One tradition in some covens is to make a vow to Brigid at Imbolc.

If that's part of your practice, allow me, please, to suggest that you consider a vow to become more connected to, to enter into a deeper relationship with, your own specific bit of Earth. Not "Nature," in the abstract, but your own landbase, watershed, yard, bit of Earth. Especially today, when most Pagans live in cities, this can present a serious challenge. Concrete does not lend itself to relationship nearly as easily (which is not to say "not at all") as do trees, rivers, meadows, mountains, beaches. But you can start, and it's a good place to start, with a pot or two of flowers or herbs on your balcony. You can start with the quality of light and how it differs in the morning when you are walking North from home to work from the evening when you are walking South from work to home. You can find some weeds that grow along the side of the interstate ramp where you slow to a crawl every morning in traffic. Those weeds have a lot to say and would love for someone to notice them every day. You can start with the same aggressive pigeon who shows up every day when you eat lunch in the park and wants a bit of your lunch. You can start with the homeless man at the stoplight or the young woman who still doesn't have much English who sells you a latte every morning.

As E. M. Forster said, "Only connect." Forster also said, Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership. How can you work with that this year?

Picture found here.

Fifth Annual Brigid Poetry Festival

It's almost Imbolc and that means that it's time for Anne Hill's Annual Brigid Poetry Festival, honoring the Goddess of poetry.

This is the now annual Silent Poetry Reading in honor of Brigid (Saint or Goddess, as you prefer). And while the first invitation was for a single day’s blogging event, watching the misty full moon tonight got me thinking of a favorite line from a poem that I want to offer, so I will simply declare that this year’s event has begun!

Life is hard enough; why shouldn’t we take all the full moon weekend leading up to February 2nd to celebrate this patroness of the arts and healing, and read her a poem or two?

So post a poem, a couple of poems, as many as you like, and then post a link to your poetry post(s) in the comments section at Anne's blog.

Many people enjoy Kipling's poems who would be confused by Keats; others delight in Burns who would be utterly without sympathy for Blake. The people who like Tennyson do not, as a rule, care much about Walt Whitman, and the admirers of Poe and Coleridge may find Wordsworth unattractive, and again his disciples might feel antagonized by Rossetti and Swinburne. It does not matter, so long as one finds one's own sustenance. Only, the happy men who can enjoy them all are the richest. The true test of poetry is sincerity and vitality. It is not rhyme, or metre, or subject. It is nothing in the world but the soul of man as it really is. Carlyle's 'French Revolution' is a great epic poem; so are Trevelyan's three volumes on 'Garibaldi and the Italian War of Independence.' That they are written in prose has nothing to do with the matter. That most poems are written rhythmically, and that rhythm has come to be the great technical fact of poetry, was, primarily, because men under stress of emotion tend to talk in a rhythmed speech. Read Lincoln's 'Address at Gettysburg' and 'Second Inaugural,' and you will see.

Nothing is more foolish than to say that only such and such forms are proper to poetry. Every form is proper to poetry, so long as it is the sincere expression of a man's thought. That insincere men try bizarre forms of verse to gain a personal notoriety is true, but it seems not very difficult to distinguish them from the real artists. And so long as men feel, and think, and have the need of expressing themselves, so long will their modes of expression change. For expression tends to become hackneyed and devitalized, and new methods must be found for keeping the sense of palpitant vigour.

~Amy Lowell

Picture found here.

PS: If you are one of those people who think that you "hate poetry," think: "song lyrics." I bet you have a set of song lyrics that speak to you. I won't upset you by suggesting that they are poetry. No, no. Just post your favorite song lyrics. ;)

Any Movie With The Line: "The Gods Are Real," Is On My List

Looks like a must-see.

More about how Hera is portrayed here.

My New Name For A Blog

What She Said.

For me, Imbolc is the Pagan Season of Hope – as we anticipate the Spring Woman who rises in the green veins of trees and tulips, come to lift us out of our dark night. (Hey…there’s a whole soteriology waiting to happen…Kore as Pagan Messiah…hmmm…of course, Feraferians have been saying as much for years.) Some may find, in this story, a metaphor. But for me it’s deadly literal. Without the knowing in my body that the ground will melt, that flowers will bloom, and that the wind can be again my friend…well, I simply don’t think I’d make it (I grew up in Texas and Colorado. And while I thought that my experiences in Denver and Boulder had prepared me for what it meant to live in a winter country, Mother Lake and Brother North Wind learned me right out of that notion). I imagine my ancestors may have had similar thoughts. And this movement is, deliciously so, outside of my realm of control. The earth spins and the seasons turn, and these things are greater than I, and I am a firm believer in the Mystery of Maybe Not Tomorrow – so I do not Make Spring, but I hope, and this Hope is born of my body – both Faith and Fact.

Picture found here.

May The Goddess Guard Him. May He Find His Way To The Summerlands. May His Friends And Family Know Peace.

J.D. Salinger, who, in the quote below, explained existence better than anyone else, ever, has gone to the Summerlands.


"I was six when I saw that everything was God, and my hair stood up, and all," Teddy said. "It was on a Sunday, I remember. My sister was a tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, if you know what I mean. ~J.D. Salinger, "Teddy," 1954

It's been a long, hard January.

May The Goddess Guard Him. May He Find His Way To The Summerlands. May His Friends And Family Know Peace.

Howard Zinn has gone to the Summerlands.

Reading his book was an education and a revelation for me.

Picture found here.

Wassail!

I offer this fun article about the revival of an ancient Pagan tradition mostly for the sheer enjoyment of seeing expressions such as:

Andrew Fear, who owns Budgens in Mountsorrel

and

Thirsty Farmer Cider in Sutton Bonington.

I spend all day working -- as hard as I know how -- to write legal pleadings in good, strong, understandable, Anglo Saxon, English. So I can be forgiven, I think, for coming home and enjoying "Budgens in Mountsorrel" and "Thirsty Farmer Cider." (Also, Geminii ascendent. Just saying.)

The apple trees were wassailed by the group led by Leicester Border Morris Dance troupe Bakanalia and a traditional incantation was then made to the trees before the wassail queen, 16-year-old Eve Mason, of Mountsorrel, led a procession through the orchard to music.

May the Goddess grant much happiness and long years to Eve Mason of Mountsorrel, who may as well have been named Rosie Cotton. And here's wishing Farmer Fear (I love this language!) an abundant apple harvest.

Picture found here, along with some fun recipes.

For Imbolc

My New Name For A Blog

What Cornell West Said.

But That Sure Was A Cool YouTube, With Will.I.Am & Scarlett Johansen, Biting Her Lip And All

How to Squander a Presidency:

He does not lead. Americans, especially in times of crisis, want their daddy-president to pick a point on the horizon and lead them to it. Often - especially in the short term - they don't even care that much which point it is. They will happily follow a president whose policies they oppose if he will but lead.

* And if he will demonstrate some conviction. I have never seen a president so utterly lacking in passion. This man literally doesn't even seem to care about himself, let alone this or that policy issue. He doesn't seem to have any strong opinions on anything, a sure prescription for presidential failure.

* He has therefore let Congress ‘lead' on nearly every issue, another surefire mistake. Instead of demanding that they pass real stimulus legislation - which would have really stimulated the economy, big-time, and right now - he let those dickheads on the Hill just load up a big pork party blivet of a bill with all the pet projects they could find, designed purely to benefit their personal standing with the voters at home, rather than to actually produce jobs for Americans. And on health care, his signature issue, he did the same thing. "You guys write it, and I'll sign the check." Could there possibly be a greater prescription for failure than allowing a bunch of the most venal people on the planet to cobble together a 2,000 page monstrosity that entirely serves their interests and those of the people whose campaign bribes put them in office?

* Well, yes, now that you mention it. If you really want to bring your government crashing to the ground, why not spend endless months negotiating with vicious thugs, who will never vote for your legislation anyhow, because they are so entirely devoted to your destruction that they're willing to call you a granny murderer? What a great and winning strategy!

* Another possible strategic move even stupider than deferring to Congress to write major legislation is to cozy up with the least popular people on the planet - including, in fact, the real-life granny killers. Got an economy that is so raw it's leaving thousands in literal peril of losing their lives? Why not draft some legislation to bail-out the people who created that mess and guarantee that they retain their multimillion dollar bonuses?!?! You know, the same folks who are always talking about how great capitalism is and how important it is to take risks! The same ones who are always telling us how awful the government is - the same government that saved them from extinction. Those folks. That's right, bail out with outrageous bonuses the very people who need it least and who caused billions of people around the planet to suffer, while leaving everyone else to fend for themselves! That'll raise your presidential job approval ratings every time! And while you're at it, bring in the much beloved health insurance and pharmaceutical corporate lobbyists, and negotiate a deal with them to craft your high profile health care legislation! What voter can't get behind that?

* Another brilliant presidential tactic is to be such a Mr. Happy Nice Face that you acknowledge no enemies for the country, or even yourself. Not the health care corporate vampires who suck the blood out of Americans from San Diego to Bangor, providing absolutely no value-added health service whatsoever, while denying treatment to deathly ill human beings at every opportunity, all to rake in billions more in profits. Not the reckless pirates on Wall Street who bet all our money on insane gambles that wrecked the global economy, took government bail-out money to survive, and yet are still drowning in bonuses as rewards. Not the Republican Party who spent three decades downsizing the middle class, plunging the country into wars based on lies, deregulating every protection in sight, fattening up corporate cronies, wrecking the environment, trashing the Constitution and polarizing the country politically. And not even a catastrophic climate disaster speeding toward the planet with relentless determination. No! We must all be happy and talk nice! No bad guys. Not even the bad guys can be bad guys.

* While you're at it, if you're trying to run the most failed presidency ever, a really good idea is to campaign in the grandest terms possible, and then deliver squat. You know, talk about bending the arc of history. Invoke Martin Luther King's dream and his struggles and even those of the slaves. Ring the big bells of generational calling. Remind voters every thirty seconds that the country badly needs "Change!". Then get elected and turn around and continue the policies of your hated predecessor in every meaningful policy area. Only with less conviction. People will love that.

* A related brilliant move is to mobilize a giant army of passionate volunteers dedicated to putting you in the White House, and then do nothing with them once you get there, other than taking them completely for granted and never calling upon them to do anything in support of your agenda. Be sure to deflate their enthusiasm in every way possible.

* Even more importantly, if you're trying to run your presidency into the ground you'll definitely want to avoid mobilizing the general public behind your agenda. To make sure that you don't repeat the great legislative victories of FDR or LBJ or (unfortunately) Reagan or (really unfortunately) Little Bush, never use their method of appealing directly to the people. Never express your legislative program as a moral imperative, a great calling to the nation. Never attempt to rally the public behind your cause. Never express any urgency. And never call upon them to demand that Congress pass your bills. Then, you can rest assured they won't!

* And let's take it up a whole ‘nuther level, while we're on the subject. A successful president is one who articulates a strong and compelling narrative for the nation. So, in your quest to avoid rising even to mediocrity, be sure to leave a great big gaping canyon where that whole narrative thing is supposed to go. No New Deal, no Great Society, no New Frontier or War on Terror for you. Nope! Just a thousand little projects with little non-solutions to big problems. Hey, why not inject yourself into Cambridge, Massachusetts community police politics while you're at it! Or the New York State Democratic Party gubernatorial primary! Or you could deliberate for weeks about which breed of dog to get for your kids! That's a great use of the president's political capital!

* As long as you're walking away from the grand narrative, why not let the opposition define you as well? Let them say anything imaginable about you, and never respond. You're a socialist! No, you're a fascist! No, you're both! At the same time, no less! You're a granny killer! You're not really even an American! You're taking over the US for the Muslims! You're a massive taxer and spender! You're running around the world, apologizing for America everywhere you go! No worries. Just remember the golden rule, and your presidency is sure to sink: Never engage, never respond, never preempt, never attack, never fight back.

* In general, you'll also want to take the most important power the president has - the bully pulpit - and totally piss it away. Appear everywhere at once, all the time, saying lots of nice words, about a thousand different issues. But never with passion, never with compelling simplicity, never with repetition, and never with urgency. Pretty soon you'll turn being everywhere into being nowhere. Everyone one will tune out your ubiquitous self. Give up the high moral ground which is the most important asset of the office you hold, and you'll make sure that no one ever listens to you anymore. You will persuade the public of nothing. Except that you are irrelevant.

* But you can do better still. Help your enemies, so that they can crush you more effectively! Start by not even realizing they are your enemies. Then, treat them with greater respect than your friends, even though they've run the country over a cliff. Defer to them at every opportunity. Consult with them even as they insult you to your face. Allow them to run Congress, even though they have small minorities in both houses. Never force them to vote against simple, popular legislation. Never call their bluffs. Never associate them with the destruction they've caused. Never label them the treasonous hypocritical liars that they are. Help them to resuscitate the comatose near-corpse of their political party, just before it's about to die, so it can rise up and savage you.

* Another great trick for crashing a presidency is to pick all the wrong priorities to ‘fight' for. Imagine, for example, if FDR had substituted for his ‘Day of Infamy' speech right after Pearl Harbor a ringing call for an American revolution in cobbler technology! Yes, that's right, in response to the devastating surprise attack by the armed forces of the Empire of Japan, what if the president urgently called upon us all to start making really amazing shoes?! Before it's too late, and we all get blisters on our feet! Similarly, Mr. Obama, your spending the last year on (jive) health care and jetting around the world dipping your toes into foreign policy problems while Americans are losing their jobs and their houses is a fine way to kill your presidency. Guaranteed to work every time.

* And, finally, perhaps the most important thing one can do - and the thing that helps explain many of the other items above - is to adopt really, really pathetic policies. If you're doing a stimulus bill, for example, make sure that it's too little money, not targeted at real stimulative levers in the economy, costs a lot, doesn't kick in for a year or two, gives away about a third of the money to ineffective pet projects for Republican while none of them vote for it anyhow, and leaves the unemployment rate stuck at a miserable ten percent. Or, if you're doing a bail-out of the banks for the purpose of producing the liquidity essential to restarting the economy, let them take bonuses as big as they want, and don't actually require that they loan out to anyone the money you've given them. Or, how about spending nearly all your political capital on ‘health care' legislation, which is really an insurance company boondoggle bill instead? That's really what the people want, eh? No wonder Obama's not out there writing the narrative, fighting the good fight or crushing his enemies. Even he can't get excited about his own priorities, so extraordinarily abysmal are they.

All of this represents the best prescription I can imagine for wrecking a presidency, and Obama has followed it with exacting precision. Indeed, doing so would appear to be his only real passion. It's almost as if he were a Republican sleeper politician in some party politics version of the Manchurian Candidate, planted to arise on cue and destroy the Democratic Party from within.


And the response from the WH is to try and make the Republicans like him by promising to cut spending on social programs (which is what "freeze" really means), while giving the military-industrial complex a blank check. Cuz THEN they'll stop calling him Hitler, a socialist, a Nazi, a Kenyan. Sure. Heckuva job, Barack.

More, here.

/hat tip, the divine watertiger.

Picture found here.

Fire Festival

For Imbolc

"Springtime's comin'," he said. "Cannot tha' smell it?"

Mary sniffed and thought she could.

"I smell something nice and fresh and damp," she said.

"That's th' good rich earth," he answered, digging away. "It's in a good humor makin' ready to grow things. It's glad when plantin' time comes. It's dull in th' winter when its got nowt to do. In th' flower gardens out there things will be sirrin' down below in th' dark. Th' sun's warmin' 'em. You'll see bits o' green spikes stickin' out o' th' black earth after a bit."

"What will they be?" asked Mary.

"Crocuses an' snowdrops an' daffydowndillys. Has tha' never seen them?"

"No. Everything is hot, and wet, and green after the rains in India," said Mary. "And I think things grow up in night."

"These won't grow up in a night," said Wetaherstaff. "Tha'll have to wait for 'em. They'll poke up a bit higher here, an' push out a spike more there, an' uncurl a leaf this day an' another that. You watch 'em."

"I am going to," answered Mary.


~from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Picture found here.

Poetry For Imbolc

Here's hoping that, for the fifth straight year, Anne Hill will be sponsoring the on-line Imbolc poetry slam in honor of the Goddess Brigid, patroness of smithcraft and poetry.

Here's an early start:

February

BY MARGARET ATWOOD

Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.


You've got a week to search for your favorite.

Picture found here.

No, I Don't Think So.

Kali on a cucumber sandwich.

Warlock? A warlock? Is this 1966? The High Priest of British White Witches? Please.

Officers in Dorset have been contacted by a warlock, or male witch, who claimed the plaits are used in rituals by followers of “knot magick”, also known as “cord magick”.

But Kevin Carlyon, the Hastings-based self-proclaimed High Priest of British White Witches, told The Argus some plaits or knots could be evidence of devil-worship or black magic.

He said mostly the practice by “white witches” is harmless and intended for the witch to benefit from the horse’s natural power or as a gift or tribute if they see horses as sacred animals.

Mr Carlyon said plaiting has also been known to precede ritual mutilation of horses in black magic.

Give me a fucking break.

Photo found here.

Imbolc Is Coming

If you stop and listen, and dig your toes a bit into the still-quite-cold ground, you can feel Mother Earh beginning to get juicy, getting ready to stir, starting to dream of growth. I saw it all of a sudden when I walked into the dining room.


Picture by the author; if you copy, please link back.

Things That Make You Laugh

What's really sad is that these all made me laugh.

Democrats (who are not named Grayson) suck.

And, fuck you, Tim Kaine. Goddess, could we please have fewer pro-coat-hanger catholics in our party leadership for a change?

/hat tip to Mike, in comments at Eschaton

Image found here.

Oh, Yeah, It's Ours And You Can't Have Any. You Going To Finish That?

Tomorrow is National Pie Day

In 1644 Oliver Cromwell banned eating pie, saying it was a Pagan pleasure and it wasn't [un]banned until 16 years later.


I'll have the bourbon pecan, please.

Picture found here.

A Song For Friday Nights

Ladies, Lots Of Luck.

Interesting article in the WaPo about the strict punishments Rome is handing out to women who dare to question their second-class status in the catholic church.

Shortly after being punished, she attended Mass at her local parish with her sister and mother. She was forbidden to take Communion, but her mother and sister decided to share their hosts with her. Other parishioners dropped pieces of their hosts into her hands. By the ritual's end, her hands were full.

And, you know, fuck that priest. How fucking dare he reduce that woman to standing there with empty hands, filled up with crumbs from others?

Interesting that the WaPo capitalizes "Communion" isn't it? I'm certain that "Cakes and Ale" would get the same treatment. No, I'm not.

Picture found here.

Friday Poetry Blogging

PLEASURE by Diane Lockward

No golden fleece, apple, parachute, or purse,
but that sexy red dress you couldn't afford now on sale,
Cape Cod light captured on the artist's easel,
a bowl of mushroom barley soup to slurp,
and under the sofa the pearl
you thought you'd lost, a rule
broken without penalty, no need to reap
the wild oats you sowed. Each night you ease
into dreams, and while you sleep,
the skin cream you bought really does erase
lines and wrinkles. Outside, goldfinches bright as lemon peels.

Photo by the author. If you copy, please link back.

My New Name For A Blog

What Thers Said.

Go Ground

What I have to say is: go ground.

Yes, Democratic politicians, including those in whom we really, really, really wanted to hope, are timid, corporatist tools. Yes, the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. Go ground.

This was a skirmish, not the war. We're losing the war, too, but that means that you should go ground.

Hey, Harry!

I have a suggestion for Harry Reid. Do the only honorable thing left. No, not seppuku. Seppuku is what you do when there are no other honorable things left that you can do. And, Harry, you still have an honorable choice left.

Announce that you are no longer a candidate for the Senate from the State of Nevada. And then, go all out on health care reform. Let a real Democrat run in Nevada. If they lose, well, no loss, Harry, you're going to lose, as well. Go down fighting.

You used to be a boxer. That takes physical courage that I can't imagine. Now, show us that you've got the other kind of courage, the kind that matters.

Do the right thing, Harry. Seppuku is always an option for later.

I Stole This From Twisty

New Law Requires Women To Name Baby, Paint Nursery Before Getting Abortion

And I'm down with all of it, as soon as guys have to do the same thing before they jack off.

Just Because

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

.

What is remembered does not die.

More here.

Yup, That About Sums It Up.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Mass Backwards
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

True

Witches share with mystics from every religious and cultural background a common insight into the nature of reality. The day-to-day world of apparently separate things -- its tasks and worries, its striving, lonely, consciousness -- is an illusion. Like a veil, it covers an infinitely complex, unified, and joyful dance of ever-becoming, ensouled creation.

~Starhawk in Twelve Wild Swans.

Picture found here.

I'm Speechless

It takes a lot to leave me so flabbergasted that I can't think what to say:

Bible verses inscribed on Marine rifle sights with tax dollars.

I'm going to re-think that whole "drink less" resolution.

Gus has the details.

Daily Practice

On this day when we honor Dr. King, I am reminded of something that Starhawk wrote:

The power of our outer work in the world depends on the depths of our connection to the springs of life that feed us. To make our work effective, and to say sane while doing it, we need a strong, daily personal practice.

What's yours?

Mine, these days, is to feed the birds in my bare feet, even when it's v cold out on the deck, to carry a mug of hot coffee into my ritual room, move my old bones into a sitting position on the yoga blanket on the floor before my altar, ground and connect with this tiny bit of Potomac watershed, light the candles and incense, call the Elements, call the Goddesses with whom I'm in deepest relationship, cast a circle, and say the Ha Prayer. Then, I cleanse my chakras and run the Iron Pentacle. If I have time, or need, I go to my Place of Power and either do magic or get a message. Then, I thank the Goddesses and the Elements and open my circle.

It's all real; it's all metaphor. There's always more.

Picture found here.

My New Name For A Blog

What NTodd Said.

Living With Peak Oil

Obama Restaurant Watch -- Birthday Edition

Delighted to see the First Couple enjoyed dinner at my all-time favorite DC restaurant.

I love Nora and have never had a mediocre meal there, ever.

Picture found here.

How Do You Nourish Yourself In The January Cold?

Most of my life, I've felt as if I've been, as Sister Tarsisus used to say, "Cheating St. Peter to pay St. Paul." Spending time raising Son when I should have been studying, spending time studying when I should have been raising Son. Earning extra money tutoring when I should have been home with Son, spending time tutoring when I should have been exercising. Spending time studying law when I should have been grading papers, spending time grading papers when I should have been writing footnotes for Law Review.

This morning, I dropped G/Son off at his home with every intention of heading in to work. But the rain and the mist and the bare branches somehow steered me home and sent me into the kitchen to cook up for the coming week all the bounty that my CSA delivers to my door and all the fruits and vegetables that can contribute to my word for this year: Vitality.

This recipe for bok choy with garlic and ginger* is incredibly simple and v good, either cold for lunch or warmed over rice with tofu, or chicken, or rockfish for dinner. The one secret is peanut oil, which I don't think is as healthy as olive oil, but which adds so much flavor to the dish. I'm also baking butternut squash with cinnamon, roasting eggplant with honey and chili, and warming pineapple and banana in cinnamon butter.

What are you doing to nourish yourself this weekend?


*Cut up ginger and garlic; brown in peanut oil. Add bok choy. Brown for a minute. Add chicken broth or vermouth or a nice Sancerre. Simmer until just tender. Easy/peasey. I found this on the internet, somewhere, and apologize for not remembering where.

Photos by the author. If you copy, please link back.

Why We Have Knights

Yesterday was one of the warmest, driest days we've had in months, and G/Son and I got out in the afternoon and he ran, and ran, and ran. Son was a cross-country runner of some renown in high school and I'm thinking that this apple didn't fall too far from the tree. It's just a thing of beauty to watch how happy it makes G/Son to be out in the fresh air, running hard. His cheeks pink up, his muscles stretch in a way that will bring him deep sleep in the evening, and you can almost literally watch him becoming more himself. We've got a pattern down: he can run like the wind until he gets to the bend in the curve, the bench at the corner, the fountain way up the hill. Then he has to wait for his old Nonna to (almost) catch up. As he takes off again, he often calls back in pure joy, "I'm too fast! You can't catch me!" He's right. But that's a feature, not a bug. He just doesn't know yet that he's, in Gibran's words, the living arrow of my living arrow.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Today, it's pouring rain and the cold goes right through your bones, so G/Son and I were stuck inside. We watched the birds eat suet in the big bush outside the guest room, but we watched through the closed windows. And, we did some fun art with stickers of knights and dragons and valiant ladies and a stickerboard that showed a castle on a hill, a sky, and a dark cave at the end of a road. I was encouraging G/Son to make up a story about the picture he was making, as a precursor to writing down such stories in a month or two so that we can learn to read them. He made up a great story that kept growing and changing as he added more stickers to the stickerboard. As he was working he said, "Nonna. Knights protect other people who don't have armour or swords."

So, you know, I didn't spend a few decades of my life on Authurian myth for nothing. I struck while the iron was hot and said, "You know, you're right. That's why King Arthur created knights. So that men who were strong and had money for things like horses and armour and swords would use those things to protect people who were weaker and poorer. And he was a very important person because he helped people to remember that protection and cultivation are the most important thing for men to do in the world, even at a time when a lot of people were forgetting it." And we went on from there to who King Arthur was, and what "once and future king" could mean, and the original meaning of "husband," and my promise to one day read him a book without pictures that told the story of how Arthur learned so much and became so associated with animals (which reminded me of some musings I'd been having the day before about why it's mostly male xian saints like Francis and Kevin who get associated with animals, but I didn't go into that w/G/Son) and about how sometimes befriending the dragon (at least the blue one that G/Son liked best out of all the sticker dragons) is even better than slaying it and about how a world without dragons needs to go create even worse dragons to take the place of the lost dragons. G/Son said to me, "Yeah, and dragons are like a new creation of dinosaurs, to take the place of the dinosaurs when they all became fossils. But dinosaurs didn't breathe fire, and dragons do."

And then, G/Son had some more oatmeal and Nonna had some more coffee and we curled back up in bed to watch one more cartoon from Batman Beyond. And I was all the way through typing this before "Dark Knight" registered in my left brain and I realized that we'd actually (that's one of G/Son's favorite words: "Actually, Nonna, . . . .") spent the weekend on a single theme. Silly, slow, old woman. There's a lot about the Batman cartoons that I don't like and there's something about them that deeply appeals to G/Son (and most young boys I've known.) And yet, and yet, . . . . I'm still willing to dance the dance between what I want to him to learn and between his need to, in the words of the poet, "learn by going where he has to go."

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

~Roethke


And we saved the story about What Went Wrong and Why Arthur's Idea Didn't Quite Work (Although He Kind Of Realized What Was Missing) for another day.

Picture found here.