Fuck You, Leslie

Michael Moore rips Leslie W. Blitzer a new asshole. It is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Go watch it if you don't watch anything else, all day.

Note how Blitzer doesn't even try to defend CNN's record on the war.

Duckpit. Come the revolution, Blitzer goes into the duckpit.

Sunny Jobs

From today's EEI newsletter:

Solar Said to Potentially Create 123,000 Texas Jobs by 2020

A white paper by the IC2 Institute of the University of Texas estimated that solar generation could create 123,000 jobs in Texas by 2020, UPI Energy reported. The study advocated incentives for solar development as a way to create as many as 11 times more jobs per MW as coal-based generation. It claimed that solar-related jobs in Texas would include solar farms in West Texas, silicon plants on the Gulf Coast, and manufacturing centers in Central Texas.

Study contributor Joel Serface was quoted as saying: "Worldwide, the cost of converting sunlight to electricity is rapidly decreasing. The right public policies, combined with emerging and increasingly efficient technologies in solar power, would create a solid opportunity for Texas to build an economic engine on this non-polluting resource."
UPI Energy via Earthtimes.org , July 6.

Eleven times more jobs per MW than coal. Even that Texas idiot George W. Bush should be able to do the math.

From today's EEI newsletter:

Sodium-Sulfur Batteries Could Boost Grid Strength by Storing Power

The use of room-size sodium-sulfur batteries is seen as a potential way to improve grid reliability by storing power at night for consumption during daytime peak demand periods, USA Today reported. American Electric Power already has installed a $2.5-million, 1.2-MW battery in West Virginia and plans to install another battery with twice the capacity in 2008.

Ali Nourai, AEP utility manager of distributed energy, said the device has allowed a seven-year postponement in the previously planned $1-million upgrade of a substation. The battery scheduled for installation in 2008 will be used as a backup in case of blackouts. Dan Mears, consultant for Japanese battery manufacturer NGK Insulators, said the batteries use a porcelain-like material for bridging electrodes to create a 15-year battery life. He said dozens of utilities may install the batteries.

The batteries also are seen as a way to store wind generation from strong nighttime winds for use during summer demand peaks, when the air is often stagnant. Stow Walker of Cambridge Energy Research Associates was quoted as saying: "If you've got these batteries distributed in the neighborhood, you have, in a sense, lots of little power plants. The difference between these and diesel generators is these batteries don't need fuel."
USA Today , July 5.


Sounds like a great way to deal with the variable nature of wind and solar power. Informative video here.

Air

Mercury finally goes direct. Enjoy better communication, clearer thinking, easier travel.

He Has A Point, You Know

Love's Philosophy
by: Percy Bysshe Shelley

The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In another's being mingle--
Why not I with thine?

See, the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower could be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;--
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

~Shelley

Sunday Akhmatova Blogging

I have learned how faces fall to bone,
how under the eyelids terror lurks,
how suffering inscribes on cheeks
the hard lines of its cuneiform texts,
how glossy black or ash-fair locks
turn overnight to tarnished silver,
how smiles fade on submissive lips,
and fear quavers in a dry titter.
And I pray not for myself alone . . .
for all who stood outside the jail,
in bitter cold or summer's blaze,
with me under that blind red wall.

*****

President Bush has declared that he has a heretofore unrecognized inherent power to seize and imprison any American citizen whom he alone determines to be a threat to our nation -- without an arrest warrant, without notifying them of what charges have been filed against them, and without even informing their families that they have been imprisoned. The president claims that he can simply snatch an American citizen off the street and keep him or her locked up indefinitely -- even for the rest of his or her life -- and refuse to allow that citizen the right to make a phone call or talk to a lawyer -- even to argue that the president or his appointees have made a mistake and imprisoned the wrong person. . . .So a constitutional right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness that we used to think of in an old-fashioned way as "inalienable" can now be instantly stripped from any American by the president with no meaningful review by any other branch of government.

~Al Gore in The Assault on Reason

Too Cute By Half

I'm already tired of Cloverfield. Just saying.

Oh, Just Bite Me.

In the twentieth century, Paganism organized into discrete communities of belief and joined the panoply of America’s religious denominations.

Goddess, does this chick have a lot to learn about Pagans. "Organized" -- hah! "Discrete communities of belief" -- hah! The WHOLE POINT of Paganism in the 21st Century is the disorganization and the overlapping communities of belief.

This week the "On Faith" section of the on-line WaPo has been talking about Pagans and, generally, getting it wrong, albeit in a nice, we like you, we really like you, kind of way. Saying that Pagans are sometimes called Wiccans. Bitching that Pagans won't act like a nice, organized denomination of Protestantism, with clear catachesims and structures of authority. Pretending that Pagans are "organized into discrete communities of belief."

I'm glad that there are nice xians who want to reach out to Pagans and who agree that, yes, going out on a limb here, if there are Pagans in the military then they are probably entitled to at least one whole Pagan chaplin. Really, I am. But this week has been, IMHO, a clear demonstration of just how much the xians "don't get" about Paganism.=

I Dream In Female

When women replace the symbol of the Father with that of the Mother, we, too, are committing a political act. The image of the Mother does not lose its old connotations of earth, intuition, nature, the body, the emotions, the unconscious, etc. But it also lays claim to many of the connotations previously attributed to the father symbol: beauth, light, goodness, authority, activity, etc. . . . What is significant here is that the duality, no matter wich opposite is preferred, gives us only two choices. We may choose the reasoning, observing, dominating ego; or we may choose the annihilation of the personality. But if we learn to think beyond the binary, beyond the given choices, we can honor, equally, the conscious and the unconscious mind.

~Barbara Starrett, quoted in Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler

Saturday Goddess Blogging

Wow. It's hot. And dry. Mercury's STILL retrograde and tempers are short, patience all used up. This evil junta has another 500+ days left to screw the world up even worse than it already has (if you can imagine such a thing) and the wingnuts won't go gently into their good night. Meanwhile, the Dems in Congress are keeping their very precious dry powder very nice and very dry, my Precious.

I think we could all use a good laugh. The kind of laugh that releases endorphins, relaxes all your muscles, floods your immune system with antibodies. The kind of laugh that makes you feel comradly and warm towards everyone laughing along with you. Sacred laughter. Healing laughter. A good long belly laugh.

We could invoke Uzume, Goddess of Laughter.

Amy Sophia Marashinsky writes:



Before the Rock Cave of Heaven
where Amaterasu Omi Kami, the Sun Goddess
had hidden her radiant face
where all the assembled Gods and Goddesses had tried
and failed
to lure her out
I stepped up to the Cave
with utmost seriousness
with grave determination
with proper decorum and a lofty mien
and with a bump and a bump and a bump bump bump bump
lifted my kimono and revealed myself in ways
that caused the mouths of the exaulted ones
to water and fall open.
Then I played puppet with my labia
and paid myself a little lip service.
I heaved my breast over one shoulder
then the other over the other
and landed on my ass
with a bump and a bump and a bump bump bump bump
amidst the explosions of laughter and merriment
of the esteemed crowd.
With breasts tied in a knot
my legs spread like a welcome mat
I called in the Spirits
and offered them my body . . .
but they refused to take it.
The crowd howled and laughed as I continued my dance
till Amaterasu Omi Kami couldn't stand it any longer
and rushed out to see what was what.
And thus did laughter
win the Sun Goddess from her dark cave
and bring light and warmth back into the world.

Art found here, here, and here.

This Is Simple And It Will Help

You've probably read about efforts to wean America off of those godawful plastic bags that you get every time that you buy anything from a book, to a loaf of bread, to a bottle of aspirin, to a pair of jeans. Good Magazine reports that:

Each of our featherweight plastic shopping bags carries a hefty cost: Americans use 100 billion plastic bags each year, and toss the majority of them after a quick trip to the store. Since the bags take nearly a millennium to break down in landfills, they'll be haunting the planet long after we tote home the groceries. Today, local governments pay to have wind-blown bags plucked from trees and telephone wires; in San Francisco, cleanup efforts run as high as $8 million a year. Plus, more than a million sea birds and a hundred thousand marine mammals suffocate from plastic litter each year. [Co-founder of California's Green Party, Ross Mirkarimi says,] "Long before I was elected, I've thought the plastic bag was emblematic of what our country and planet have been suffering from." Mirkarimi authored a bill banning the use of plastic bags in San Francisco and estimates that the plastic prohibition will save 450,000 galllson of oil and prevent 1,400 tons of trash from ending up in a landfilll.

Of course, net and cloth bags that you carry with you and re-use over and over are best for the environment. But paper bags, which biodegrade and are easily recyclable, are better than plastic. Many times, you really don't need any bag at all. You can slip the book into your purse or put the bottle of aspirin in your pocket. You can carry the gallon of milk by its handle and put it straight in the fridge when you get home. But if you're buying enough things that you need a bag, you know what to do the next time the clerk asks: "Paper or plastic?"

Fire

Earth

Or, The Vatican Could Bite Me

Vatican finds Seven Wonders list biased

VATICAN CITY, July 6 (UPI) -- The Vatican suggested an anti-Christian bias in the short list of candidates for the new Seven Wonders of the World.

Only three Christian sites made the list of 21 -- the Christ the Redeemer Statue in Rio de Janeiro, and two Moscow cathedrals, St. Basil's and the Kremlin.

Bernard Weber, a Swiss photographer, began working to create a new Seven Wonders list after the Taliban destroyed giant statues of the Buddha in Afghanistan. The short list was drawn up by a panel of architects.

Archbishop Mauro Piacenza, head of the pontifical commission for culture and archeology, found the omission of the Sistine Chapel, with its frescoes by Michelangelo, "surprising, inexplicable, even suspicious," The Times of London reported.

He pointed to other world-famous Christian sites, including the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and the Sagrada Familia Church designed by Antonio Gaudi in Barcelona.

The short list included such acknowledged marvels as the ancient Cambodian temples at Angkor Wat, the city of Petra in Jordan and Stonehenge, a pagan religious monument in England, The Times said.

Rosemary, That's For Rememberance

Go listen to the Furious Spinner talk about harvesting lavender and rosemary. My v. creative friend K. is working on a Summer Solstice ritual that involves harvesting rosemary. I love that it's a friendship plant.

Last weekend, in the hot, bright sun of 3:00 pm mid-day, I went out and transplanted Datura from my back deck to the sunny west of my yard, near the planters, out where the sun shines so bright that it gives you a furious, viscious headache. And every day since then, I've been taking the water from the sump pumps and pouring it on the Datura seedlings, telling them how much I love them.

It's diffucult for me to grow rosemary because my yard is so shady and I simply can't grow lavender at all in this shade. My brilliant friend E grows rosemary in her backyard which gets lots of good afternoon sun. I hope soon to have raised planters with sandy soil where I can grow rosemary and lavender in my front yard, which actually does get a bit of sun. This is my will. So mote it be.

The Beckoner by Theodora Gos

The Beckoner

She rises at night with her robes all around her,
Rises just like you rise from sleep,
In a fairness of heavy unbound tresses
So rich they could make you weep.

The moon is a pale and a horrified witness,
The cypresses moan as they sway in the dark,
And even the grasses lament in whispers
As she surveys the park.

Then she is away, and soon we will see her
Reaching her hand like an alba rose
To tap, so lightly, upon our window,
Holding an elegant pose.

Beauty is deadly – how well we know it –
Her cheeks have a treacherous living stain,
And we will kiss them, and come to her beckoning,
And never return again.

Necropolis Now

S'easy to see why she's the hot young thing in Pagan Blogistan.

You want to add her to your daily list.

How To Be A Witch

I get this question over and over in e-mail.

If I were brand new to the Craft and wanted to learn about Wicca, I'd start by reading The Spiral Dance by Starhawk. I'd follow that up with the newly-revised edition of Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler. After that, I'd check out Twelve Wild Swans by Starhawk and Hillary Valentine to learn basic techniques and Witchvox to find some local public rituals. (If you have time, read Charlene Spretnack, Robin Morgan, Zuzanna Budhapest, and Circle of Three by C. Bird.) You can show up at a public ritual, leave early if it's too weird, stay and participate and then leave, stay, participate, and make local contacts. Many areas have Pagan Nights Out; Witchvox will know. I'd see if there were an Elements of Magic class run by local pagans and if the first one that I attended sqished me out, I'd try another one run by someone else.

After that, I'd go outside under the almost-full moon, and say three times: "I am a witch, I am a witch, I am a witch." Then, I'd start to grow herbs, study Tarot, ground (as per Spiral Dance) and do the Ha Prayer ( as per Evolutionary Witchcraft by T. Thorne Coyle), and start looking for womyn who want to form a circle. Then, I'd sit back and enjoy the show.

Once in a while, I'd look up, realize how blessed I am, and pull my head back into the hood of my magical cape. It's the easiest thing in the world to become a witch. It's the work of an entire lifetime to earn the title: witch.

I Assure You That It Made Sense At The Time

The Chance To Love Everything

So, more than I believe almost anything else, I believe that the entire purpose of being alive -- the entire point to the amazing gift of having been in-car-nated (made into meat) in this charming and mad little node of the space/time continuum -- is to be aware, in every single moment, of the way that Divinity permeates through and shines through and breaks through and illuminates and connects everything.

I think that the real point of being given the gift of existing at this time (still eagles, still oaks, still jack-in-the-pulpit, still wheat, still citrus-and-other-bee-dependent-sex-organs-cum-fruit, still air, still water, still glaciers) on Gaia's surface is to be AWARE every single minute, with every single breathe that you draw, that you live infused with divinity, carried on the pregnant stomach of Mother Earth, interconnected to everything -- everything, everything, everything -- from Coyote Trickser to orchids to viruses to molten lava at the Mother's very core. If you were truly aware, with every breath you take, that this is what you were living, you could never waste what Mary Oliver calls your one wild and precious life. You'd use it for your higher self, for the greater good, for your highest purpose.

And, for some reason, today, of all days, I wake up aware that the fur and claws pawing at me is Goddess, and that the roses and gardenias outside my breakfast porch are Goddess, and that the cold-brewed gift of the first drug of my day -- coffee -- is Goddess, and that the river -- Potomac -- that I drive along on my way to work, all pearly pink and gold, is Goddess, and that the trees and vines and mad green growth on Roosevelt Island are Goddess, and that the music that I hear on the way to work, both Wynton Marsalis on the trupmet and T. Thorn Coyle singing about Seven Evening Stars, is Goddess, and that the chance to explain to young lawyers how to write pleadings is Goddess, and that the chance to read blogs is Goddess, and that my by-now-dear-old-friend Robert, who does my hair, is Goddess, and that Clydes' crabcakes and a martini are Goddess, and the that e-mail from my idiot co-counsel trying to fuck up my petition is Goddess, and that my chance to go back to my office and do what I do best in all the world -- write and edit -- is Goddess, and that my ability to mange everyone's emotions is Goddess, and that getting to read a perfect ritual proposed by my brilliant friend E. for my genius friend B. is Goddess and that a half an hour -- a whole half an hour -- alone in the car with the gorgeous man-Son-Scorpio lawyer that I bore and raised all by myself -- a whole half an hour with Son -- is Goddess, and that his beautiful, kick-ass, wonderful mother of a wife is Goddess, and that, more than anything else that has happened to me all week in a week of living with witches and brilliant litigators and my garden and interesting policy issues and all of my own spiritual issues, more than anything else in the world, getting to hold my Grandson IS Goddess --

well, that is simply an amazing day.

I am more blessed than I deserve to be. I am more blessed than I expected to be. i can work hard night after night at my altar, pursuing a spiritual practice, working hard to become my Better Self. And then, out of nowhere, as pure Grace, comes the realization that, every moment that I am alive is like walking at the edge of the surging surf, feeling my ankles washed and bathed in foamy water, bathed unexpectedly in grace. Grace is a gift. Grace isn't earned, or worked for, or deserved. Grace just happens. Grace is the giant sting ray that doesn't eat Son's finger. Grace is the priestesses who surround you and call you to your Better Self, with gifts of chants about bread and roses, green stones for Lilith, chicken and eggplant, mad Tarot. Grace is the gift that guides a gorgeous, brilliant woman into your family. Grace is a Grandson that you never deserved, all alive, and all Id, and all smooth blushing skin, and all brave-beyond-brave toddling, and all new. Grace is the chance to work at fun and interesting and important work that you know in your core that you can do. Grace is, in Mary Oliver's words, the chance to love everything. Grace is what happens when you are expecting other things.

May it be so for you. May Grace break through the clouds, and ceilings, and hard slate rooves and flood into your lives. May Grace be the crack in everything that is how the light gets in. May Grace show up as unexpectedly in your life as does your Shadow and may Grace fill your every waking and dreaming moment with the realization that it's all real, it's all metaphor, there's always more.

This is my will. So mote it be.

Go Find Three Things That You Can Turn Off, RIGHT NOW

The article in today's NYT sounds just like the stories from this time last year:

A heat wave sizzling across the West showed little sign of letting up Thursday, with Las Vegas forecast to tie a record high and even northern Idaho expected to top 100 degrees.

''You can become dehydrated really quick before you know it. You step outside and, 'wow,''' said Charlie Schlott, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas was expected to hit 116, which would tie a record for the date set in 1985. Near-record highs were also forecast for Southern California, where the mercury was expected to top 115 in desert.

A high of 101 was forecast Thursday in Spokane, Wash., and nearby Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, which would exceed the record of 100 set in 1975. Friday's forecast didn't hold much relief from the nearly weeklong heat wave, either.

In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered the opening of state cooling centers in 13 counties, and the operator of the statewide power grid ask Californians to try to conserve energy to avoid brownouts.

Turn off all of the electrical appliances that you don't need. Pay special attention to so-called "vampires" -- appliances that use electricity even when they're "off". These include many chargers such as cell phone chargers, mp3-player chargers, Blackberry chargers, etc. They also include tvs, for example, that display LED clocks even when the tv is turned to "off". Every electron that you don't use means less greenhouse gasses and less chance of blackouts.

Stars,Stripes, and Pentacles

Stars and Stripes has a respectful, heartwarming story about the dedication of at least the third pentacle-engraved headstone at Arlington National Cemetery.

On Wednesday [Reverend Selena] Fox, members of her congregation, and other pagans held a consecration ceremony at the grave site of Jan Deanna, a Wiccan minister who passed away more than two years ago.

Her husband, Army Capt. William O’Rourke, passed away nine years earlier and had the Christian cross engraved on his tombstone. But Deanna’s side was left blank, because until May the Department of Veterans Affairs had no symbol to recognize her faith. Several weeks ago, the headstones of Wiccan Rosemary Koolman and her military husband were engraved with the pentacle and dedicated. As Stars and Stripes explains, Wiccans have been fighting for some time to have their religious symbol on their military headstones; the Veterans Administration recently settled a suit by Wiccans, caving completely when embarassing e-mails came to light indicating that the VA was dragging its heels on the Wiccans' request because George Bush doesn't consider Wicca a "valid" religion.

The Stars and Stripes article is objective and well-written. It avoids the "let's get a xian to provide a negative quote about Wiccans" ploy so often used by the press when reporting on Wicca. Oddly, when the press writes stories about xians, they don't go looking for a witch to provide "balance"-type commentary.

The article also mentions that Amy Staff Sgt. Frederick Twombly, a member of the 63rd Engineer Support Battalion, helped set up a Wiccan worship community in Baghdad during both of his deployments over to Iraq.

“We had guys from all over, all different units, all different ranks,” he said. “People would look and say, ‘Wait, he’s a major and he’s a Wiccan?’ And then they’d understand that it’s not just some hidden thing.”

Bravo Stars and Stripes!

Pardon Her, For Pete's Sake!

The Telegraph repots on efforts to secure a pardon for Anna Goeldi, a Swiss woman executed as a witch.

The execution of the last European witch to be sentenced to death by a court of law has plunged Switzerland into an unlikely political debate over whether she should now be pardoned.

Anna Goeldi, a housemaid, was executed by decapitation after being found guilty of witchcraft in the small Alpine town of Glarus in 1782.

Now, 225 years later, a group of local and federal MPs has prepared a parliamentary motion demanding the full rehabilitation of Goeldi, who was tortured into confessing to being a witch and was subsequently beheaded. Campaigners claim she was the victim of a conspiracy between the eastern town's juridical and Protestant church authorities.

Of course, A spokesman for the Swiss Protestant Church said: "History has made its judgment on the case and we need to move on. It would be better to focus our energy on the more acute problems of today." Yeah, what a surprise that you'd say so. Ass.

The Stupid! It Burns!

It's true. Jonah Goldberg is, in fact, the stupidest man in the world. His father, after all mated with Lucianne.

Pagans To Rally Tomorrow Outside The White House

From Associated Content:

Chesapeake Pagan Community [has] been working for months to arrange a Pagan Religious Rights Rally and Ritual, to be held on the Fourth of July 2007 in Lafayette Square Park, in front of the White House and catty-corner to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Originally, our intent was to support the Veterans' Pentacle Quest. Now that we have won the Pentacle, there are many other issues to put forward. Advocating a military chaplain in the U.S. Armed Forces is one of the most pressing issues. Adding the symbols of more Pagan denominations to those religious emblems approved by the Department of Veterans Affairs is another vital issue. Even the mere act of demonstrating publicly for Pagan religious rights is empowering.

And so, we invite you to join us on the Glorious Fourth of July! Meet us in front of the White House to listen to our leaders articulate a further agenda for Pagan Religious Rights.

. . .

Diana L. Paxson, acclaimed author and Pagan Elder, will lead us in circle as we invoke the Founders of Our Nation. This will be the first public Pagan ritual in Lafayette Square Park, in the President's front yard. Diana has been invoking the Founders for some years now. . . .

Diana describes the Fourth of July ritual this way: "We will honor those who established our fundamental freedoms, especially Washington and Jefferson, and those who built on their ideas, from Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt and FDR, offering our energies to preserve the liberties they fought for and the land they loved. We will offer our will to carry on the work of our Founding Fathers and Mothers, and to help America become what they hoped it would be."

To do such a ritual on the Fourth of July outside the White House will create a very powerful resonance, and have far reaching consequences. We invite you to co-create this ritual of religious freedom with us, and help us further the intent of universal religious freedom and free expression for all. Please join us in meditation or trance, or in ritual where you live, if you cannot be physically present at the Washington ritual.

More info here.

Lyra, Lyra, Compass On Fire

I sure do want to ride that polar bear like that.

Hope Of Deliverance

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

Beverly Sills is dead .

Water

Blog Against Theocracy July 1st through 4th, 2007

Holidays

In Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, Barbara Ehrenreich writes about the sharp decrease in holidays (days off) between the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution.

[T]he repression of festivities was, in a sense, a by-product of the emergence of capitalism. The middle classes had to learn to calculate, save, and "defer gratification"' the lower classes had to be transformed into a disciplined, factory-ready, working class -- meaning fewer holidays and the new necessity of showing up for work sober and on time, six days a week. Peasants had worked hard, too, of course, but in seasonally determined bursts; the new industrialism required ceaseless labor, all year round.

. . .

In part, [the appeal of Protestantism] was probably similar to that of much evangelical Christianity today; it offered people the self-discipline demanded by a harsher economic order. Curb your drinking, learn to rise before the sun, work until dark, and be grateful for whatever you're paid. . . . Protestantism, serving as the ideological handmaiden of the new capitalism, "descended like a frost on the life of 'Merrie Old England,'" as Weber put it, destroying in its icy grip the usual Christmans festivities, the maypole, the games, and all traditional forms of group pleasure.

Today, of course, it's worse. It's worse because even when we do get a holiday, we're checking e-mails, answering cell phone calls, watching the "news," worrying about work. Why? Why do we allow this?

The Furious Spinner notes that we have all been coopted by the corporatists:

Today I was moved by the words of Robert Shetterly. He is writing about the social activist Eva Peterson. He is also writing about us.

He writes in "When Does Drowning Mean Drowning," "We are now up to our necks in a culture of programmed complicity. Just as the Hutus in Rwanda made sure that all the men killed someone so all would be complicit, the corporate culture here teaches consumption rather than citizenship, isolation rather than community, teaches that predatory capitalism is democracy. If there is an answer, it must be climbing out together, giving a hand up to the weakest and most vulnerable, reinforcing our virtues, denying the culture that preaches making virtue of vice, heroism of spectacular, unsustainable greed.

"Eva Paterson, when she did complete the quote for her portrait, included this sentence: 'Drowning in silence, we are brothers and sisters drowning each other.' We are drowning, my friends, suffocating in complicity and lies. As surely as trees give life sustaining oxygen to our atmosphere, truth and accountability, fairness and compassion provide the social oxygen for our culture. I’m sure that the epidemic of asthma in our children is attributable in equal parts to environmental and cultural causes. A culture living on lies leaves everyone gasping. The oxygen has gone out of America. The waters are rolling down, but they are not the waters of justice."

I want my holidays back. I want the leisure to stop and think, the time to grow flowers, an end to capitalism-induced Koyanaskatsi.

Real Problems

If the news programs want a world threat that they can report on 24/7, they could do much better than to a few inept would-be-car-bombers in the UK. They could report 24/7 on the fact that the bees are disappearing and we won't have much food at all in another season or two. I'm going to miss honey.

Honey At The Table

It fills you with the soft
essence of vanished flowers, it becomes
a trickle sharp as a hair that you follow
from the honey pot over the table

and out the door and over the ground,
and all the while it thickens,

grows deeper and wilder, edged
with pine boughs and wet boulders,
pawprints of bobcat and bear, until

deep in the forest you
shuffle up some tree, you rip the bark,

you float into and swallow the dripping combs,
bits of the tree, crushed bees - - - a taste
composed of everything lost, in which everything lost is found.



- Mary Oliver

First Of The Month Bazooms Blogging

Women! It's the first of the month; time for your breast self-exam (BSE). BSEs can help detect breast cancer when it's still in its early, easier-to-cure stages. BSEs are easy to do: here's a short video that shows you how to do a BSE. If you prefer to do your BSE at a different time in your cycle, now's a good time to calendar it so you don't forget.

Men! Are there women you'd miss if they weren't around? Mother, Wife, Girlfriend, Daughter, Friend? Why not help them to do their BSEs by taking the kids to the park for half an hour, picking up dinner, reminding them, doing the dishes?

Exactly

The Mad Melancholic Feminista makes an excellent point about empowerment, William James, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

My New Name For A Blog

What Digby Said


Modern Big Business Republicanism has thoroughly entrenched its amoral worldview into politics, which over time absorbed its belief that civic virtues are irrelevant. (The denizens of DC did, however, attempt to cover this worldly sin by adopting the GOP's cynical and manipulative stand-in for virtue --- puritanical sexual morality --- a grotesque and ill-fitting substitute for personal integrity coming from such decadent creatures.)

Sunday Akhmatova Blogging

The Death of Sophocles

That night an eagle swooped down from the skies onto
Sophocles' house.
And the garden suddenly rocked with a cry of cicadas.
Already the genius strode toward his immortality,
skirting the enemy camp at the walls of his native city.
Then it was that the king had a strange dream:
Great Dinoysus ordered him to lift the siege,
so as not to dishonor the service for the dead
and to grant the Athenians the solace of his fame.

My New Name For A Blog

What Athenae Said:

My position is that the "culture wars" are largely fiction. They're the hysterical overreaction of some Christians to the fact that Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Animists and even (gasp!) atheists no longer "know their place." Being denied a privileged position, even if it's a traditional one, is not a form of oppression.

More Like This

Saturday Goddess Blogging

Still musing upon Lilith


SOFT MOON SHINING

My beloved Divine Mother
Dance with me
under the soft moon shining
in the wide open fields
far beyond the toil and trouble
of my busy mind

Dance with me
before the night grows old
while the winds of love
still bow the grasses
and the coyotes howl for you
to step their way

Dance with me my beloved
while the Mystery's Edge
still flirts in the shadow
of your radiant light

From the book Soft Moon Shining by
Ethan Walker III

Art found here.

Go Read The Chalice And The Blade By Riane Eisler

Happy June Full Moon

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

Today's LAT reports that:

Mary Ellen Solt, a poet and poetry critic who often arranged words on the page in a visual graphic, resulting in such works as "Forsythia," a poem that looks like a flowering shrub, has died. She was 86.

Cats

From today's NYT:

Some 10,000 years ago, somewhere in the Near East, an audacious wildcat crept into one of the crude villages of early human settlers, the first to domesticate wheat and barley. There she felt safe from her many predators in the region, such as hyenas and larger cats.

The rodents that infested the settlers’ homes and granaries were sufficient prey. Seeing that she was earning her keep, the settlers tolerated her, and their children greeted her kittens with delight.

At least five females of the wildcat subspecies known as Felis silvestris lybica accomplished this delicate transition from forest to village. And from these five matriarchs all the world’s 600 million house cats are descended.
. . .

Unlike other domestic animals, which were tamed by people, cats probably domesticated themselves, which could account for the haughty independence of their descendants. “The cats were adapting themselves to a new environment, so the push for domestication came from the cat side, not the human side,” Dr. Driscoll said.

Cats are “indicators of human cultural adolescence,” he remarked, since they entered human experience as people were making the difficult transition from hunting and gathering, their way of life for millions of years, to settled communities.

More amazing history from mitochondrial DNA.

I'm v. grateful to that ancient Near Eastern wildcat, the many-times-foremother of my own sweet Miss Thing.

Unsolicited Advice For Mr. Obama

You know, I think that advice such as that offered today by in the WaPo sucks the big wazoo. First of all, Democrats do not need a class in remedial religion. Every prominent Democrat in America is a member of one of the two main Abrahamic cults. Democrats, by and large, understand, as Michael Gerson, Republicans, Xianists, and (and, sadly, perhaps Obama) do not, that religion has no place in politics nor our government. So fuck off with your insinuation that Democrats need a remedial class in religion. The assholes who are destroying America need a remedial class in our Constitution.

Second, the true pity is that an aethist, or a Wiccan, or a Moslem could not give her version of Hilaire Belloc's speech in America today and have any hope of being elected.

But the bullshit goes beyond that.

Survey research shows that evangelicals under 30 tend to be more concerned about the environment than are their elders, more engaged in international issues such as HIV-AIDS, a little more open on homosexual rights and less attached to the religious right. This should provide an opening for Democrats. But there is evidence, according to Green, that young evangelicals are as conservative on abortion as their parents and grandparents, if not more so. . . . Democrats should emphasize common-ground issues that credit the moral concerns of religious conservatives while calming the waves of the culture wars -- such as confronting the toxic excesses of popular culture, encouraging character and discipline in public schools, and promoting religious liberty abroad. Obama's speech showed little creativity on such matters.

No, Michael Gerson, government should not be involved in deciding what constitutes nor in "confronting" (aka passing laws against, which is all tht government can do) "toxic excesses of popular culture." I dislike most of what's on tv, for example. So I don't watch it. No government intervention is needed. It's too easy for government to decide that, for example, criticizing the government or rejecting patriarchial views about sex constitute "toxic excesses of popular culture."

Further, here's a clue. Fundie whackjobs who "are as conservative on abortion as their parents and grandparents, if not more so" are not going to vote for Republican-lite. Not. Going. To. Happen. Know why? For the same reason that I'm not going to vote for a Republican who makes a few encouragin noises about the environment. Because I really care about the envirnoment and i want an Al Gore in office, not a Christie Todd Whitman. And, you can see what happens when Democrats follow this kind of putrid advice. Obama's speech showed little creativity on such matters. Obama gave his speech at a liberal church, not at a whackjob church. Obama didn't go far enough, blah, blah, blah.

I like Obama and I'd love to see an African American president. But he's listening to idiots on this issue of strategy. Obama, I'm glad you've got a religion that feeds your soul. So do I. Neither of us need to be dragging it into government.

Wow.

You go watch the CNN video at Rawstory of the kids who gave Bush a letter asking him to stop torturing detainees. You go watch it. And if you're not in tears by the end, and if you don't feel some renewed hope for our country -- along with a terrible grief that these young people have so much more courage than so many adults -- well, then you and I are different.

I especially love the young woman who responds to the talking hairdo anchor who asks about their courage in making "such a controversial point" to the emperor. She tosses it right back at him, "human dignity isn't controversial." Dems, take note. That is how it's done.

PS. Man, you know it just torqued the boyking's intestines into a stone to have to come into contact with honest-to-god smart kids (the kind that he always hated) who weren't pre-screened by Rove to include only adoring fans. This is exactly why he tries so hard to appear only in "town hall" meetings full of the Republican faithful. Has anyone seen Barney in the last few days?

The Problem With Biofuels

We have to discard the old-fashioned teaching of both science and [patriarchial] religion and begin to look on the forested land surface of the Earth as something that evolved to serve the metabolism of the Earth; it is irreplaceable. We have already taken more than half of the productive land to grow food for ourselves. How can we expect Gaia to manage the Earth if we try to take the rest of the land for fuel production.

~James Lovelock The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis & the Fate of Humanity

It figures that the Bush junta, which never misses an opportunity to fuck up, has seized on biofuels as their "compromise" answer to global climate change.

Sorry!

Interesting article in today's LAT about some former members of Exodus International, an organization devoted to "curing" gay people of their homosexuality who publicly apologized Wednesday for the harm they said their efforts had caused many gays and lesbians who believed the group's message that sexual orientation could be changed through prayer.

That's great; I'm glad they've apologized. But their harm went beyond those gay individuals who believed Exodus International's snake oil claims. Exodus International also pushes the notion within society that being gay is a "lifestyle choice" and something that one can change if only one will "work" at it. That's complete bullshit and it gives cover to evil Christianists and cynical power-grabbers such as the Bush junta.

An apology to individual gay people harmed by your actions is a nice start, guys. But it's not enough.

Eight More Things

Mad Melancholic Feminista tagged me, so here are 8 more things you may not have known about me:

1. I can recite, from memory, huge swaths of Dorothy Parker's ouvre.

2. In high school, I cooked my way through books in the high school library entitled Austrian Cooking and Greek Cooking. I made my own sourdough bread starter and made sourdough bread every week. I made tea and oranges that came all the way from China. I made mint jelly from the mint in my mother's garden. I made boeuf burgundy from the Julia Child cookbook. I made eclairs. I made Lady Baltimore cake. I made mead. I still make a mean spanakopita. But I prefer to make reservations.

3. I purchased the first edition of Ms. Magazine ever printed and, as a result, had long debates w/ my best friend about why we wear underwear.

4. I count among my best friends at least one domanitrix, one prominent author of slash fiction, several members of polyamorous relationships, at least one sub, and quite a few v. hot babes.

5. I grow gardenias and sage, thyme and roses, jack-in-the-pulpit and mint, caladyia and woad, daylillies and sweet woodruff.

6. I record my dreams.

7. I wake up every morning and think, "Ah. Jeff Skilling's in jail and I'm not. I think I'll pet my cat, drink fresh coffee, walk in my garden, and enjoy the day." Fuck you, Jeff. Fuck you very much. She laughs last who laughs best.

8. For years, I meditated upon the Nine of Pentacles card. Wherever you go, there you are.

I tag Necropolis Now, watertiger, NTodd, and Mrs. Morrison.

She Might Have A Point

Air

Fire

A Word To Those Who Oppose The War

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you-
Ye are many — they are few.

~Shelley

Christianist Attacks on Democratic Pagans

Jason, at the Wild Hunt, has a disturbing story of a Pagan politician being singled-out for harassment and intimidation by a group of Christianists.

Rita Moran is the Chair of the Kennebec County Democratic Committee in Maine. She runs a local bookstore, Apple Valley Books, that sells Pagan books, including books related to Pagan parenting, a popular topic among Pagans, most of whom converted to Paganism as adults and are now having families that they want to raise in their religion. Moran is also a member of the Immanent Grove, a gnostic circle.

A group that goes by what I consider to be the unAmerican name The Christian Civic League has put up a web page with information about Moran's political postition and her religious beliefs, including the terrifying fact that she sells books for Pagan parents. The Christian Civic League helpfully provides lots of contact informaton, including Moran's address, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses. We all know the purpose of that.

Moran reports that: My primary concerns are financial. When this happened, I "zeroed out" the donation total on our county Dems website (http://www.kennebecdems.org). There has not been a single donation since I've been "outed". I'm even more concerned about the loss of business here at our bookshop as Michael Hein's attack turns to even more vicious rumors. I guess what I'd ask from the community is whatever support they can offer. Tranquil energy, book orders, donations to our county committee if you wish to recognize that aspect of my community service. Thanks all..."

I don't have much to add to what Jason said in his post. I just think this story needs to get out. This is an attack not only on Pagans, but on Democrats, as well. It's also, as Jason notes, part of a deliberate campaign to make it impossible to hold office in America if you don't belong to one of the two main Abrahamic cults. Fuck that shit.

Send the Kennebeck Dems some love.

The Shock Of Communion

As a scholar of Caribbean literature writes, again of the Vodou rites: "This experience of election [possession trance], its shock of communion, is not evidence of psychic disruption, or proof of pathology, but rather a result of the most intense discipline and study. Not everyone can be possessed, for not everyone can know how to respond to the demands and expectations of her god." So the ecstatic rites of these diaspora religions were not mad orgies, as whites often perceived them, but deliberately nurtured techniques of ecstasy, derived from ancient traditions.

~From Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy by Barbra Ehrenreich.

January 20, 2009 May Be Too Late

From today's EEI newsletter:

Climate Change Forging Unusual Unity in European Community

American Prospect Co-Editor Robert Kuttner, in an op-ed published by the Boston Globe, said the normally fractious politics of the European Union have turned into cooperation on the issue of climate change: "European governments have invested heavily in alternative energy technologies, and induced utilities to rely increasingly on renewable sources. This not only cuts greenhouse emissions, but produces a market for new technologies, making such nations as Spain and Germany export leaders in advanced windmills and solar panels."

The European focus on climate change has sharpened this decade for four key reasons, Kuttner noted: The Stern report on the financial costs of climate change; "the failure of French and Dutch voters in 2005 to ratify the proposed new EU constitution (which) left Europe's leaders struggling to find a common project to restore momentum and unity, and they found that in climate change; the assumption of the rotating EU presidency this year by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a former minister of environment; and the Bush administration's earlier unwillingness to accept climate change science, "where Europe has earned the right to lead and to relish its leadership."
Boston Globe, op-ed , June 25.

Thanks to the Bush junta's hatred of science, Spain and Germany have jumped ahead of us as producers of windmills and solar panels and Europe has seized the lead on issues of global climate change. America has been harmed in so many ways by this junta. We need to get rid of them now.

Everywhere

Plato's Ghost Can Bite Me

What Then?

His chosen comrades thought at school
He must grow a famous man;
He thought the same and lived by rule,
All his twenties crammed with toil;
`What then?' sang Plato's ghost. `What then?'

Everything he wrote was read,
After certain years he won
Sufficient money for his need,
Friends that have been friends indeed;
`What then?' sang Plato's ghost. `What then?'

All his happier dreams came true -
A small old house, wife, daughter, son,
Grounds where plum and cabbage grew,
Poets and Wits about him drew;
`What then?' sang Plato's ghost. `What then?'

`The work is done,' grown old he thought,
`According to my boyish plan;
Let the fools rage, I swerved in naught,
Something to perfection brought';
But louder sang that ghost, `What then?'

~Yeats

My New Name For A Blog

What Jane said.

If you’ve got a blog, no matter how small, please put up a link. It actually takes a ridiculously small number of books (relative to total sales) to push a book to #1 on Amazon and that plays a big part in his ability to get on the NYT best seller list and gain wider notice and recognition for the tremendous amount of work he did to put this book together.

Glenn shows up every day for us. Let’s show up for Glenn

Goddess knows, I've got a small blog and that's ok with me. I'm always going to be a boutique, more appealing to a small crowd of interesting people than to a larger crowd. But if you like what you read here, please go buy Greenwald's book. He completely rocks.

It's what a patriot would do.

Earth

And everyday, you walk around on top of it. And when you ground, this is where you sink your roots into. And, sometimes, if you're like me, you forget just how magical it really is.

Go

But Also Because We Are A Rich Country

From Today's EEI Newsletter:

Zero Emissions, Carbon Capture Highlight Norwegian Planning

Norway plans to be the first "zero-emission" nation by 2050, E&E News PM reported. In announcing a goal of reducing GHGs by 10 percent within five years and 30 percent by 2020, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said: "Norway has a particular responsibility regarding the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in part because we have been producing hydrocarbons, that is to say fossil fuels, for a number of years, but also because we are a rich country."

Elements of the plan include a ban on oil-burning stoves; increasing the use of biofuel by 7 percent by 2010; a quota system for the transport industry, subsidies for green energy providers, reforestation, tolls for city drivers, and a ban on throwing away recyclable goods. Agence France Presse quoted Norges Natur og Ungdom environmentalist Lars Haltbrekken as saying: "In the best case scenario, we will have in 2020 the same greenhouse gas emissions we have today. In the worst, we will be emitting more in 2020."

Greenwire reported that Norway will test carbon-capture technology in 2008 at a refinery in Mongstad, Norway. Statoil will use chilled ammonia to capture as much as 80,000 tons of CO2 each year from flue gases or from a new combined-cycle plant under construction nearby. Alstom Power Systems designed the CO2-capture technology, Greenwire reported, quoting President Philippe Joubert as saying the project "represents our mutual commitment to both the [chilled ammonia] technology and society at large."
E&E News PM ; Greenwire , June 22.

Kind Of Says It All

From today's NYT:

Church leaders say they are frustrated by Catholic politicians like Rudolph W. Giuliani who say they oppose abortion but do not want to impose their beliefs.

Here's a clue, fucktards. This is not Tenth Century Europe. This is Twenty-First Century America and you don't get to impose your evil, woman-hating ways on the rest of us. Now go bugger an altar boy.

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


And for the sake of my blood pressure, we'll just ignore the article's opening line: At first glance, Rudolph W. Giuliani should be an appealing presidential candidate for observant Roman Catholics. Sure, sure, other than, you know, having been twice-divorced and having lived openly in sin with several of his mistresses. Other than that. And his condoning a war that even Ratzi the Natzi says is immoral. Other than that, he's the best Catholic candidate EVER.

Air

Water

Fire

A Matter Of State

Ken MacLeod explains the flaw in Tony Blair's plans for post-prime-ministerhood. Ken's theory might make sense, if the antichrist weren't already alive and well at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And, I think Neil Gaiman already wrote this book.

Gardening In Urban Spaces

Good Magazine has two related articles concerning gardening as a subversive activity. The first, Horticulture Jamming discusses how Cadres of illicit horticulturists, equipped with hoes and shovels, have been venturing into the [London] night to plant guerrilla gardens -- carefully landscaped areas in the small open spaces that cities build to beautify the landscape but then so often leave fallow. The movement, cultivated [cute, heh?] online by 30-year-old Richard Reynolds, . . . has spread throughout the United Kingdom . . . . Missions require reconnaissance, strategy, and stealthy gardening, and each successful planting strikes a blow for a more refined metropolital aesthetic.

The second article, Parlor Park explains that Verde Coalition, a Los Angeles non-profit turns grim scraps of public land -- like bus stops, traffic meridians, or dangerous street corners -- into welcoming public spaces. In Los Angeles, where many low-income communities enjoy almost no park space, a new "living room" cheaply and quickly creates a mini-sanctuary from the fast-paced and sometimes ugly reality of the city. The article describes how the addition of a few benches and flowers to an empty lot induced locals to hang out there, making the drug-users and prostitutes who had been using the space look for other locations.

I'd love to do some guerrilla gardening within the context of a ritual, maybe charging the plants and other objects before doing the actual planting so that they could release peace, healing, pleasure to the surrounding area. Perinnial herbs would be great, as they'd come back year after year, will grow even when neglected, and often provide food for bees and butterflies.

Treason Is A High Crime. Impeach Bush Now.

Two months before the Iraq war began, President Bush received detailed and comprehensive secret reports warning him that the likely result of an American-led invasion of Iraq would be increased support for Islamic fundamentalism, deep divisions in Iraqi society, high levels of violent internal conflict, and guerrilla warfare aimed at U.S. forces.

Yet in spite of those analyses, President Bush chose to supress those warnings and conceal that information, and instead he went right on conveying to the American people the absurdly Pollyannaish view of highly questionable and obviously biased sources like Ahmed Chalabi, a convicted felon and known swindler.

~from The Assault on Reason by Al Gore

Worse, he went ahead with his vanity war, which had no justification other than Rove's desire to make Bush a "war president." If there was ever a clearer case for impeachment, I'm unaware of it.

Sunday Akhmatova Blogging

Some of Akhmatova's best-loved poetry was inspired by her experience of standing in line with other women outside a Soviet prison, waiting to see a loved one -- in Akhmatova's case, her son.

Epilogue

II

Remembrance hour returns with the turning year.
I see, I hear, I touch you drawing near:

the one we tried to help to the sentry's booth,
and who no longer walks this precious earth,

and that one who would toss her pretty main
and say, "It's just like coming home again."

I want to name the names of all that host,
but they snatched up the list, and now it's lost.

I've woven them a garment that's prepared
out of poor words, those that I overhead,

and will hold fast to every word and glance
all of my days, even in new mischance,

and if a gag should bind my tortured mouth,
through which a hundred million people shout,

then let them pray for me, as I do pray
for them, this eve of my remembrance day.

And if my country ever should assent
to casting in my name a monument,

I should be proud to have my memory graced,
but only if the monument be placed

not near the sea on which my eyes first opened --
my last link with the sea has long been broken --

nor in the Tsar's garden near the sacred stump,
where a grieved shadow hunts my body's warmth,

But here, where I endured three hundred hours
in line before the implacable iron bars.

Because even in blissful death I fear
to lose the clangor of the Black Marias,

to lose the banging of that odious gate
and the old crone howling like a wounded beast.

And from my motionless bronze-lidded sockets
may the melting snow, like teardrops, slowly trickle,

and a prison dove coo somewhere, over and over,
as the ships sail softly down the flowing Neva.

~March 1940

The photo above shows relative lined up outside abu Ghraib. One wonders how many women stand in line outside prisons in Iraq and one wonders how many would stand outside Guantanamo, were it not impossible to do so. Akhmatova speak as eloquently for them as she did for the Black Marias and the howling old crone. Send Amnesty International a few dollars in her memory. Say a prayer for political prisoners everywhere.