Friday Cat And Decoration Blogging

Friday Decoration Blogging

May It Be So For You

In a life of unearned joys, being able to live in a circle of amazing women is one of my greatest joys.

I've slept, in Stevie Nick's words, with poets, legends, priests of nothing.

I've been mother to a kind, good, sly-humored young man who has turned out to be, all unmentored, the most amazing father, a great writer, a v. good cook, a wonderful person, and a better son that I ever deserved. I've been lucky beyond luck to have a good and brilliant and kind daughter-in-law with whom I love to spend time. I have a G/Son whose picture I show to my dentist and to strangers on the train and who I knew immediately that I would love beyond imagining. I've lived past breast cancer to hear him say "Nonna," and if that's all that chemo bought for me, well, then, it was cheap at the price.

I've spent a lifetime reading poetry and seeing art and attending the ballet and walking in the gardens and the parks of some of the most amazing cities in North America.

I got to study law and to work for one of DC's best law firms and to handle fascinating, precedent-setting cases in great courts for a fantastic client.

And, yet, I count myself in nothing else so fortunate, in the words of the The Bard, than as a witch, in a circle of women. Tonight, a full moon under a rainy sky, was a confirmation of that for me. Wonderful, unearned things have been happening all my life, but having a circle of women sitting in my living room, eating dinner, drinking wine, relaxing from magic, sharing lives -- that's a gift from the Goddess that I never really expected to receive. Women applying for new jobs, sharing information about obtaining security clearances, renovating homes, going through pregnancy, watching their family members die, dealing with middle school girls who get called "easy," and coping with law firms where the chairman tells sexist jokes -- I count myself so lucky to be inside this swirl of energy.

May it be so for you.

Take Those Nooses Down

Code Pink Completely Rocks

What watertiger said. More here. Code Pink rocks.

And Then, It Rained

It's been such a long dry summer. I've watered, and watered, and watered my garden and my trees, getting a water bill that's double last year's. But that's only been to do triage, to try to keep alive my oak trees that were here when the American Revolution happened, to keep the expensive new toad lillies and the ancient rhododendron alive, to keep the moonflowers that Ruth sent to me, and the roses that I bought, and the gardenias that scented this entire Spring, alive.

But this morning, at about five o'clock, I woke up to the sound of rain on the roof. What an amazingly lovely sound. It's been so absent, lately. And, wonder of wonders, this evening, it was still raining. On Wednesday evenings, I get together with some amazing witches and we do ecstatic dance and eat a healthy potluck meal to which we each contribute. Tonight, after dancing and catching up with each other, we had collards and mustard greens, Susan Weed's cancer prevention cabbage and sea weed, garden squash and kashi, and cheese. We ate out on my screen porch and I kept interrupting the conversation to say, "Wow. I love the sound of the rain." My sisters indulged me. The rain is as if the Goddess just kept saying over and over and over again, "I love you. I love you. I love you."

Tomorrow, I'll gather with the women in my circle to do magic for two of us who need magic. Next week, I'll dance on Tuesday, instead of Wednesday, because Wednesday is the high holy day for my circle: Samhein. On Wednesday, we'll eat a dumb supper to honor the ancestors and do divination for the coming year. Magic matters, in my life, and my life is full of magic.

I wish that you could hear this rain, hear the thirsty earth drinking it in, hear the oaks and the datura and the thyme and the sage and the basil and the bee balm and the budelia drinking their fill for the first time in months. I wish that you could smell it through my open windows, dance in it with me under the full October moon, as we move from Libra to Scorpio, I wish that you could see, moment to moment, what it's doing for the thirsty plants.

What If They Invaded America?

My New Name For A Blog

What Diane Said.

Pretty Much

My New Name For A Blog

What Sir Oolius Said. What Natasha Said. What the NY Times Said:

Scientists have warned of impending disaster.

And life, for the most part, has gone on just as before.

The response to the worst drought on record in the Southeast has unfolded in ultra-slow motion. All summer, more than a year after the drought began, fountains sprayed and football fields were watered, prisoners got two showers a day and Coca-Cola’s bottling plants chugged along at full strength. On an 81-degree day this month, an outdoor theme park began to manufacture what was intended to be a 1.2-million-gallon mountain of snow.

By September, with the lake forecast to dip into the dregs of its storage capacity in less than four months, the state imposed a ban on outdoor water use.



To which, I'll only add: Too. Many. People.

How Your Cat Wakes You Up

This, right up until the baseball bat, is EXACTLY how Miss Thing wakes me up every morning, including the nails in the archival fabric of the bedspread. And, although Son says that I'm mistaken, this is EXACTLY how G/Son says "meow," which is his word for cat. I'm not sure, however, that the artist accurately rendered the "dance of the kitty paws upon the full bladder" which Miss Thing has completely perfected.

/Hat Tip to plum p in coments at Eschaton

Oh! Shiny Things!

Like Lunea Weatherstone, I'm a huge fan of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. The amazing thing is that their scents do smell exactly as described. And I can read the descriptions all night long. Here are some lovely new ones:

THE GHASTLY GARDEN
Overgrown oleander, marshy water hemlock, the sugared nectar of carnivorous blooms, putrefying wet greenery, oozing sap, crushed rosary peas, withered climbing roses, and nightshade berries.

THE TWISTED OAK TREE
Blackened, rotted oak wood blanketed in moss and choked by a cloak of grasping ivy.

ARCHANGEL WINTER
Crystalline, glassy ice whipped by a snowstorm. Piercing ozone, winter darkness. (I really want this one!)

JÓLASVEINAR 2007
The Jólasveinar are the seventy-some offspring of Grýla and Leppalúði, an ogre couple with a taste for chomping naughty children. This impish brood delights in causing discomfort, sowing confusion, and all-out raising hell during the Yule season. Their names are indicative of their malicious intentions -- Strap Loosener, Door Slammer, Window Peeper, Sausage Snatcher, Doorway Sniffer, Icebreaker -- and their creepy natures -- Lamp Shadow, Smoke Gulper, Crevice Imp. The devillish Jólasveinar finally cease their mischief and head for home at Þrettándinn.

Their scent is a mishmash of snow, dirt, Icelandic moss, marsh felwort, and the smushed petals of buttercups and moorland spotted orchids, with the barest hint of the scent of pilfered Christmas pastries.

THE SHIVERING BOY
Cold, cold forever more. A winter storm roaring through empty stone halls, bearing echoes of despair, desolation, and death on its winds. The scent of frozen, dormant vineyards, bitter sleet, and piercing ozone, hurled through labdanum, benzoin, and olibanum.

I'm also a big fan of Elsa Peretti and am lately longing for her heavily-promoted round pendant. Something about her shapes is so modern and so organic at the same time.

And, this Spring, I want to plant about 25 of these bat plants in the woodland garden. Surely next year we'll get enough rain, right? I will, of course, always long for far more books that I have time to read.

In just a few weeks, I'll run to Whole Foods to buy this year's Beaujolais nouveau, which I'll drink all the way up to Yule. Speaking of Whole Foods, they've gotten me hooked on Brown Paper Chocolates. I especially like the dark chocolate, zapped by ancho chiles, almonds and aged tequila and the white chocolate fragrant with Lavender, Pimm's® No.1 and Chervil with a cracked pepper and lavender fleur de sel afterthought. A tiny shaving of one of these is all you need, much better than the cheap stuff.

What are you longing for?

Twisted Fate

It has a certain symmetry to it, and while I have always liked the word rather more than the definition, I may be coming to appreciate the concept.
I'm about to buy a house in the one place I never wanted to live. And I somehow couldn't be happier after being handed life's lemons.
In the scheme of things, it is not that long past that I left the district, the capitol, the beltway boys behind. I spurned the traffic and the emotional gridlock and the fraternity of men who run think they run this country. I intended never to return.
For work and for marriage, I broke the promise. I broke down crying. I broke with personal traditional and I begged my husband in the middle of the night to pledge I wouldn't have to die in this place, where everything seems corrupt, where everyone becomes pasty and gray-eyed with work. I broke.
And in the candlelight, I sat and I faced the shadow in the inhumanity of the tower of white-walled, beige-carpeted luxury apartments. The months lengthened and when my spirit bent and bowed, it was not the goddess that saved me.
I did it. Day by day I learned to live in the body I am in, to inhabit my own self truly at last. I learned to find the women who would stand with me in the face of that fraternity, women who would not settle, who would not give, who would not only hope but act and laugh as they did.
And when my husband asked me what I thought my heart would long to hear, `Do you want to go?' I was almost disappointed. Why should I be chased away by men with a penchant for hostility and their fingers on the button? How could I leave now, when I have so much work to do? Plus, I'll take it as a sign that our realtor runs a Chinese medicine business on the side.
We stayed. We sang. We thanked the wolf and the spider and the symmetry.
The lemonade tastes good here.

Saturday Goddess Blogging

The Banshee

As we came down the old boreen,
Rose and I – Rose and I,
At vesper time on Sunday e’en,
We heard a banshee cry!
Beyond the churchyard dim and dark,
‘Neath whispering elms, and yew-trees stark,
Where our star shone-a corpse-like spark-
Against the wintry sky.

We heard and shuddered sick with dread,
Rose and I- Rose and I,
As the shrill keening rang o’erhead
Where cloud-wrack floated high.
Our two young hearts long, sorely tried,
By poverty and love denied
Still waiting for some favouring tide,
And now! Death come so nigh.

‘Which of us two is called away
You or I-You or I?”
I heard my patient poor love say,
With bitter plaintive sigh.
‘Neither, dear girl,” I bravely said,
‘To Mary Mother bow your head,
And cry for help to Her instead,
Nor heed the Banshee’s cry’.

We raised our hearts in fervent prayer,
Rose and I-Rose and I,
Nor knew our troubles ended there,
Our happiness came nigh.
For ‘twas the grim old farmer, he-
My only kin, rich, miserly,
Who, dying left his wealth to me-
For whom the banshee cried.

by Alice Guerin Christ

St. Gertrude

If fate had taken a very few different turns, its v. likely that I'd have ended up in a convent, and I'll admit that, to this day, virulent anti-Catholic that I am, I still sometimes long for the structured life of prayer and community that only Catholic convents appear to provide. Katherine Kunz doesn't help with her current photo essay concerning the Monastery of St. Gertrude. Here's the kind of thing that always pulls me in:

Stability with the Land

Sr. Teresa reflects that, “stability in community is also stability in the whole ecosystem of a place,…of which we are a very small part.” Stability cultivates a sense of groundedness. Almost everyone I talked with expressed the importance of the forest and walks on the land to their spiritual life. Sr. Placida spent an entire year living in a rustic cabin in the forest behind the monastery. Living one quarter mile from the monastery, Sr. Placida would join the community on Sundays for Mass. This time of solitude was extremely important and served to deepen her “inner life.” Many of the sisters come from farming families surrounding the monastery, and the bodies of sisters who have died are laid to rest in the monastery’s cemetery. The sisters have recently started to construct their own wooden caskets to be more connected with the land and to decrease the ecological impact of burial practices.


Kunz quotes the brilliant Joan Chittister, a Benedictine sister and author, [who] urges sisters to live their Monastic Profession through its three dimensions of stability, obedience, and conversatio morum in their present day commitments. “Do what these values demand, in this culture, on this planet, at this time, in this civilization, in the here and now.”

I imagine that's what Wiccans are supposed to be figuring out how to do, as well: Do what our values demand, in this culture, on this planet, at this time, in this civilization, in the here and now. Sweet Kali on a kettle drum, it's easier to say than it is to do. What does that mean to you, to do what the values of Wicca demand, in this culture, on this planet, at this time, in this civilization, in the here and now?

Hint: it has nothing to do with buying a cool athame. And just because you cast a circle, doesn't necessarily make it magic.

Great News!

Mary Oliver begins blogging.

A Woman In The White House

I think that Eugene Robinson makes some good points in today's WaPo article. I've been pretty upfront that one of the reasons that I support Hillary Clinton is that she's a woman. She's not nearly as liberal as I am, but then, I've never voted for anyone as liberal as I am. For my entire adult life, I've voted for white men who had a shot at winning but who were not nearly as liberal as I am. Given that, I think that there's inherent value in having a woman in the White House, at least once every 231 years or so.

And I don't intend to feel "bad" about calculating based, in part, on sex. Goddess knows, there's a boatload of white men who won't be voting for either Hillary or Obama based upon her sex and his skin color. We should stop taking sex into account? You first, Bubbas, you first.

Friday Cat Blogging

Sex By Moonlight

From NYT:

[A]t night, just after the full moon, under warm tropic breezes, the corals dissolve in an orgy of reproduction, sowing waters with trillions of eggs and sperm that swirl and dance and merge to form new life. The frenzy can leave pink flotsam. . . . When I talk about thousands of reefs in the Caribbean releasing their spawn within minutes of each other during a specific phase of the moon, people marvel and ask, ‘How do they do it?’” said Alina M. Szmant, a coral expert at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. “My answer is always, ‘It’s a mystery.’”

My New Name For A Blog

What John Michael Greer Said.

Now Why Didn't I Think Of That?

My Heroine.

Some Sanity In A World Of "Abstinence Education"

Good. Let's hope that other schools will follow. What's the point to denying children the medical care that they need? Who thinks that it's a better option to let middle school kids conceive babies? As for the "parents' rights," parents can exercise their rights by staying involved with their kids' lives and supervising their kids. But they don't have a "right" to foist unwanted babies and sexual diseases onto their kids or the rest of us.

When The Rough God Goes Riding

My New Name For A Blog

As always, my new name for a blog is What Athenae Said

Your Wild Self

This is too much fun.

/Hat tip to Shaw Kenawe.

They Don't Even Try To Be Logically Consistent

It's old news by now that the Republicans and their orc pit of bloggers have taken to attacking the families of kids who benefitted from SCHIP, the children's health insurance program that Congress wants to expand and that Bush has vetoed.

What's interesting about the latest attack is that it's directed against a family that lacked insurance but chose to have a child, anyway. The child had a serious heart condition that required expensive health care. (The mother had insurance years ago at a prior job, but quit when that job became "unmanageable" and has worked for years as a waitress at a restaurant that doesn't provide insurance.) The right wing slime machine is in high dudgeon over the notion that this family shouldn't have had kids if they didn't want to work at jobs that provide insurance.

Of course, the right wing also doesn't believe in family planning or birth control. What was this married couple supposed to do -- abstain from sex forever? What if they'd saved enough to pay for a normal hospital birth for a healthy child, but discovered, while the mother was still pregnant, that the child, when born, would have an expensive heart condition? An abortion at that point would be affordable, out of their savings, but they couldn't afford the health care. In the wingnut world, what should they have done? Remember, wingnuts hate abortion worst of all.

And, of course, there's no end to the "objections" the wingnuts can come up with when they presume to decide how other people should live their lives. What about people who have jobs that provide insurance, have a child, lose that job to "oursourcing" (it happens in George Bush's America) and then their child develops an expensive medical condition? Sure, we could go back and criticize some "choice" they made -- there was that year that they took the family to Disney Land instead of foreseeing that their child would develop cancer and need to be hospitalized for a month. If they'd invested that money in the stock market -- oh, wait.

In the end, it's all just nuts. We're the richest country on Earth. We can afford trillions of dollars for an war of aggression against a country that didn't attack us. Our wealthiest citizens pay ridiculously little in taxes. If we have money for that, we have money to provide health care for working families, people like waitresses and cabinetmakers. The notion that people should have to "choose" between working at the vanishingly few jobs that provide real health insurance and having a child or between owning a home and having a child or between being self-employed or having a child is just goofy. Well, no, it's more than just goofy. It's evil and pernicious and disgusting. I'm looking at you, Republican Party.

It Costs Money Not To Address Climate Change

From today's EEI newsletter:

University of Maryland Study Assesses Economic Effect of Climate Change

The University of Maryland's Center for Integrative Environmental Research has released a study showing the economic impacts of climate change, the Washington Post reported. Wrote the newspaper: "Global warming will strain public budgets and raise the costs of cooling American homes, the authors write, and it will provide only temporary benefits to the mid-Atlantic's agricultural sector. For example, a predicted rise in sea level would require Hawaii to spend nearly $2 billion on upgrading its drinking water and wastewater facilities over the next 20 years."
Washington Post , Oct. 17.

The costs of doing nothing, the costs of business as usual, are staggering.

No. U Can Not Haz Made Bed. Why U Ask? U R Stoopid? Go To Work. Bring Home Fancee Feast

Courreges

Water, Earth, Air

That Soft Landing

My New Name For A Blog

What Freeway Blogger Said.

Black Oaks By Mary Oliver

Blog Action Day

Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary,

or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance
and comfort.

Not one can manage a single sound though the blue jays
carp and whistle all day in the branches, without
the push of the wind.

But to tell the truth after a while I'm pale with longing
for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen

and you can't keep me from the woods, from the tonnage

of their shoulders, and their shining green hair.

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a
little sunshine, a little rain.

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
one boot to another -- why don't you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists
of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money,

I don't even want to come in out of the rain.

May It Be So For You

There's a moment when the Canon and Gigue in D Major by Musica Antigua Koln is on the stereo, Les Heretiques is breathing in the decanter, the Halloween decorations are up, the oak leaves have been raked into the street for the county to turn into mulch, the boeuf bourguignon is on the stove, the cat is asleep on the hearth, the laundry is done, and my altar becons.

That's the moment when I'm happy, content, alive.

May it be so for you.

Just Go Watch

I totally stole this from Feministing, and it has had me in tears for about twenty minutes.

Relevant Poetry Blogging

"Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York,
And all the clouds that loured upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments,
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them,--
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun." -
-- William Shakespeare

All That Is Necessary For Evil To Succeed . . . .

Normally, I'd just provide a link, but I think that what Frank Rich says today is too important. We have got -- all of us -- to stop being "good Germans."

The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us
By FRANK RICH
Published: October 14, 2007

“BUSH lies” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves.
Ten days ago The Times unearthed yet another round of secret Department of Justice memos countenancing torture. President Bush gave his standard response: “This government does not torture people.” Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of “torture” is. The whole point of these memos is to repeatedly recalibrate the definition so Mr. Bush can keep pleading innocent.

By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques have a grotesque provenance: “Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.”

Still, the drill remains the same. The administration gives its alibi (Abu Ghraib was just a few bad apples). A few members of Congress squawk. The debate is labeled “politics.” We turn the page.

There has been scarcely more response to the similarly recurrent story of apparent war crimes committed by our contractors in Iraq. Call me cynical, but when Laura Bush spoke up last week about the human rights atrocities in Burma, it seemed less an act of selfless humanitarianism than another administration maneuver to change the subject from its own abuses.

As Mrs. Bush spoke, two women, both Armenian Christians, were gunned down in Baghdad by contractors underwritten by American taxpayers. On this matter, the White House has been silent. That incident followed the Sept. 16 massacre in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, where 17 Iraqis were killed by security forces from Blackwater USA, which had already been implicated in nearly 200 other shooting incidents since 2005. There has been no accountability. The State Department, Blackwater’s sugar daddy for most of its billion dollars in contracts, won’t even share its investigative findings with the United States military and the Iraqi government, both of which have deemed the killings criminal.

The gunmen who mowed down the two Christian women worked for a Dubai-based company managed by Australians, registered in Singapore and enlisted as a subcontractor by an American contractor headquartered in North Carolina. This is a plot out of “Syriana” by way of “Chinatown.” There will be no trial. We will never find out what happened. A new bill passed by the House to regulate contractor behavior will have little effect, even if it becomes law in its current form.

We can continue to blame the Bush administration for the horrors of Iraq — and should. Paul Bremer, our post-invasion viceroy and the recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts, issued the order that allows contractors to elude Iraqi law, a folly second only to his disbanding of the Iraqi Army. But we must also examine our own responsibility for the hideous acts committed in our name in a war where we have now fought longer than we did in the one that put Verschärfte Vernehmung on the map.

I have always maintained that the American public was the least culpable of the players during the run-up to Iraq. The war was sold by a brilliant and fear-fueled White House propaganda campaign designed to stampede a nation still shellshocked by 9/11. Both Congress and the press — the powerful institutions that should have provided the checks, balances and due diligence of the administration’s case — failed to do their job. Had they done so, more Americans might have raised more objections. This perfect storm of democratic failure began at the top.

As the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin.

In April 2004, Stars and Stripes first reported that our troops were using makeshift vehicle armor fashioned out of sandbags, yet when a soldier complained to Donald Rumsfeld at a town meeting in Kuwait eight months later, he was successfully pilloried by the right. Proper armor procurement lagged for months more to come. Not until early this year, four years after the war’s first casualties, did a Washington Post investigation finally focus the country’s attention on the shoddy treatment of veterans, many of them victims of inadequate armor, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other military hospitals.

We first learned of the use of contractors as mercenaries when four Blackwater employees were strung up in Falluja in March 2004, just weeks before the first torture photos emerged from Abu Ghraib. We asked few questions. When reports surfaced early this summer that our contractors in Iraq (180,000, of whom some 48,000 are believed to be security personnel) now outnumber our postsurge troop strength, we yawned. Contractor casualties and contractor-inflicted casualties are kept off the books.

It was always the White House’s plan to coax us into a blissful ignorance about the war. Part of this was achieved with the usual Bush-Cheney secretiveness, from the torture memos to the prohibition of photos of military coffins. But the administration also invited our passive complicity by requiring no shared sacrifice. A country that knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch was all too easily persuaded there could be a free war.

Instead of taxing us for Iraq, the White House bought us off with tax cuts. Instead of mobilizing the needed troops, it kept a draft off the table by quietly purchasing its auxiliary army of contractors to finesse the overstretched military’s holes. With the war’s entire weight falling on a small voluntary force, amounting to less than 1 percent of the population, the rest of us were free to look the other way at whatever went down in Iraq.

We ignored the contractor scandal to our own peril. Ever since Falluja this auxiliary army has been a leading indicator of every element of the war’s failure: not only our inadequate troop strength but also our alienation of Iraqi hearts and minds and our rampant outsourcing to contractors rife with Bush-Cheney cronies and campaign contributors. Contractors remain a bellwether of the war’s progress today. When Blackwater was briefly suspended after the Nisour Square catastrophe, American diplomats were flatly forbidden from leaving the fortified Green Zone. So much for the surge’s great “success” in bringing security to Baghdad.

Last week Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq war combat veteran who directs Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, sketched for me the apocalypse to come. Should Baghdad implode, our contractors, not having to answer to the military chain of command, can simply “drop their guns and go home.” Vulnerable American troops could be deserted by those “who deliver their bullets and beans.”

This potential scenario is just one example of why it’s in our national self-interest to attend to Iraq policy the White House counts on us to ignore. Our national character is on the line too. The extralegal contractors are both a slap at the sovereignty of the self-governing Iraq we supposedly support and an insult to those in uniform receiving as little as one-sixth the pay. Yet it took mass death in Nisour Square to fix even our fleeting attention on this long-metastasizing cancer in our battle plan.

Similarly, it took until December 2005, two and a half years after “Mission Accomplished,” for Mr. Bush to feel sufficient public pressure to acknowledge the large number of Iraqi casualties in the war. Even now, despite his repeated declaration that “America will not abandon the Iraqi people,” he has yet to address or intervene decisively in the tragedy of four million-plus Iraqi refugees, a disproportionate number of them children. He feels no pressure from the American public to do so, but hey, he pays lip service to Darfur.

Our moral trajectory over the Bush years could not be better dramatized than it was by a reunion of an elite group of two dozen World War II veterans in Washington this month. They were participants in a top-secret operation to interrogate some 4,000 Nazi prisoners of war. Until now, they have kept silent, but America’s recent record prompted them to talk to The Washington Post.

“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an M.I.T. physicist whose interrogation of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, took place over a chessboard. George Frenkel, 87, recalled that he “never laid hands on anyone” in his many interrogations, adding, “I’m proud to say I never compromised my humanity.”

Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.

Saturday Goddess Blogging

Confusing 1950s Culture With Scripture

Prior Aelred directed my attention to this post from The Carpetbagger Report, which makes, I think, some v. good points.

The Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, for example, is offering courses on homemaking — in which women are taught that “men make decisions; women make dinner.”More moderate Southern Baptists disagree, and counter with their own biblical references. When Jesus dined at the home of two sisters, he praised Mary, who spent the evening studying his teachings, above Martha, who did chores. Elsewhere in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul writes that “there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ.”

“We’re confusing 1950s culture with the teaching of Scripture,” said Wade Burleson, a Southern Baptist pastor in Oklahoma. “I nowhere see where the Lord Jesus places limitations on the role of women in our culture.”

That said, I think the Baptists have a right to do this, with their own (not tax) dollars. Just as I think that Moslem women have a right to wear a head scarf, even though I don't agree with the notions upon which that practice is based.

I sure hope the young woman discussed in the article, who is sewing a pink-and-brown polka-dot dress for herself and who says, “It really doesn’t matter what I think. It matters what the Bible says,” never finds herself widowed or divorced with a passel of kids to feed. In those situations, it's useful to know how to do something beyond sewing polka-dot dresses and it starts to matter a whole lot whether you can think.

Congratlations To The Man America Elected President In 2000

Early this morning, Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize.

He certainly deserves it, as every environmental disaster prevented likely prevents another war, another group of refugees, another tragedy for countless species.

And I'm getting a lot of pleasure out of how pissed off that stinking non-entity in the WH is this morning. Hide, Barney! Hide!

No one would have blamed Al Gore if, after having the election stolen from him by SCOTUS, he'd gone off to his farm to drink himself into an angry oblivion. He didn't do that. As a grandmother, I'm v. grateful for what he's done with the last 7 years.

Friday Cat Blogging

No, Really. This Time I'm Serious. Come On. Really. Don't Play Games. It's Me, Your Many-Times-Great Grandaughter. Talk To Me. Seriously. Guys?

Driving home this evening from pizza w/ Son and G/Son, while my beautiful DiL was at a meeting at G/Son's school, I finally felt it. The thinning of the veil. It won't be complete for another few weeks, but it's beginning. Perhaps it was waiting for our first blast of true Fall weather to usher it in. Whatever triggered it, it's here. You can feel it, smell it, almost see it, as the darkness comes earlier and earlier and as the acorns hitting the roof tap out a message from the Isle of Apples.

This is the time of year when I have conversations with my ancestors -- the farther back, the better. (No, really. If you knew my family, you'd agree. The farther back, the better. Some other poor witch, born centures from now, can try to hold a conversation w/ my parents. Blessings and good luck upon you, Dear Descendent. It will help if you can speak Crazy.) I talk about whatever's on my mind, what's worrying me, what I plan to do for the next year, what I think about the year now ending, about anything that I need to talk about. I talk, well, my rising sign is Gemini, so, I talk a lot. I have a lot to say.

Son once, as a v. little boy, maybe three years old, was fascinated with a National Geographic story about the Vikings. My mother told him, "The Vikings were your ancestors." Son asked what an "ancestor" was, and my mom explained that they were his relatives, but that he'd never meet them because they were already dead. It made Son inordinately sad. I've always found that, first, very endearing, and, second, very true, in the "larger truths" sense of the word.

Most of us do long to know that we are part of a line, part of a clan that transcends time, someone with, not only a past, but also, the possibility of a future. And, of course, we are, each of us, someone with a long, long line of ancestors stretching back to African Eve, each of us the result of a long line of people who, no matter what else they did, or failed to do, managed to survive and to pass their mitochondrial DNA, the cleft of their chins, some archetypes, and the will to live down, down, down, through the centuries, through the Ice Ages, and wars, and droughts, and cracking of ice walls leading to floods, and long migrations, all of it passed down to -- us.

To today's survivors. To the ones who will, one day, feasting in the Summerlands, drowsing on the Isle of Apples, notice the Veil getting thin and peer across to see someone who looks, and smells, and sounds . . . familiar, in the original sense of the word. Someone who seems insistent on reaching across the veil to touch our hand, hear our voice, get some kind of important message from us. When that time comes, may we be kind.

I'm reminded of one of my favorite passages, ever, from Ursula LeGuin. A woman importunes her ancestors for help. "Oh, it's That One. In trouble, again," the Ancestors chuckle to each other. It's what I imagine some Viking thrall saying to some settler from ancient Rus and to the barefoot old crone, the one who died lighting fires at the edge of the cave to keep the winter wolves away from the smell of placenta and mother's milk. "Oh, it's That One. In trouble, again."

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

Update: A point made in comments reminds me that I should have noted that I often talk to many-times-great aunts and uncles. I don't think that a lack of direct progeny prevents one from hearing calls through the veil once in the Summerlands. We're all related somehow.

Wednesday Poetry Blogging

SEKHMET, THE LION-HEADED GODDESS OF WAR, VIOLENT STORMS, PESTILENCE, AND RECOVERY FROM ILLNESS, CONTEMPLATES THE DESERT IN THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

He was the sort of man
who wouldn't hurt a fly.
Many flies are now alive
while he is not.
He was not my patron.
He preferred full granaries, I battle.
My roar meant slaughter.
Yet here we are together
in the same museum.
That's not what I see, though, the fitful
crowds of staring children
learning the lesson of multi-
cultural obliteration, sic transit
and so on.

I see the temple where I was born
or built, where I held power.
I see the desert beyond,
where the hot conical tombs, that look
from a distance, frankly, like dunces' hats,
hide my jokes: the dried-out flesh
and bones, the wooden boats
in which the dead sail endlessly
in no direction.

What did you expect from gods
with animal heads?
Though come to think of it
the ones made later, who were fully human
were not such good news either.
Favour me and give me riches,
destroy my enemies.
That seems to be the gist.
Oh yes: And save me from death.
In return we're given blood
and bread, flowers and prayer,
and lip service.

Maybe there's something in all of this
I missed. But if it's selfless
love you're looking for,
you've got the wrong goddess.

I just sit where I'm put, composed
of stone and wishful thinking:
that the deity who kills for pleasure
will also heal,
that in the midst of your nightmare,
the final one, a kind lion
will come with bandages in her mouth
and the soft body of a woman,
and lick you clean of fever,
and pick your soul up gently by the nape of the neck
and caress you into darkness and paradise.

--Margaret Atwood

Who Would Jesus Frag?

Jason Pitzel-Waters, at the Wild Hunt, covers the disturbing story.

Terrifying

OMFG, just go read this First Draft post. What a psychopath, to be handing out souvenir coins.

Two Hundred Species A Day

We Can Do Way, Way Better Than Empire

Happy Samhein

La Revolucion Is Dead. Long Live La Revolucion.

Che Guevra was executed by firing squad forty years ago today, according to Wiki, in Bolivia, where he was captured in a military operation supported by the CIA and the U.S. Army Special Forces. He had some Celt in him, as well as Basque, and he wrote poetry.

In his notebook, taken when he was executed, he had written the following poem by Cesar Vallego:

The Black Heralds

There are blows in life, so powerful . . . I don’t know!
Blows as from the hatred of God; as if, facing them,
the undertow of everything suffered
welled up in the soul . . . I don’t know!

They are few; but they are . . . They open dark trenches
in the fiercest face and in the strongest back.
Perhaps they are the colts of barbaric Attilas;
or the black heralds sent to us by Death.

They are the deep falls of the Christs of the soul,
of some adored faith blasphemed by Destiny.
Those bloodstained blows are the crackling of
bread burning up at the oven door.

And man . . . Poor . . . poor! He turns his eyes, as
when a slap on the shoulder summons us;
turns his crazed eyes, and everything lived,
wells up, like a pool of guilt, in his look.

There are blows in life, so powerful . . . I don’t know!

My New Name For A Blog

What SarahSutterfield Winn Said:

But if anything, at this time in our spiritual history, it is the darkness that we ought to be cultivating in the gardens of our hours, making pockets of space and time in which the small things can creep back in, restore the old wells, rekindle wildernesses, spark the gift of storytelling, and make safe haven for secrets. If anything, we should be breathing darkness into our bodies and making places of rest in our bones.

Almost Heaven

I was born in the mountains -- Boulder Community Hospital -- and carried home in my mother's arms to a home with a picture window onto Pikes Peak. And so it's no wonder that, to me, the mountains, any mountains, have always felt like home. I live in Washington, D.C., as close to the coast as to the mountains, and lots of my work involves LA, again, as close to the coast as to the mountains. Yet, even when I'm in LA, I'd rather head for the hills than head on down to the coast.

This weekend, Son, DiL, G/Son and I made the two-hour trip up to Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, the closest mountains that there are to Washington, D.C. I love those goddamn mountains. It's been such a hot summer and fall that few leaves have started to change, although there were a few red, red maple trees. All the rest of the trees, and there are a lot of trees there, are still a dull, late-summer green. But the mineral water still bubbles out of the original stream and the woodpeckers are still huge and the trees are still so thick, in spots, that no sun makes its way to the valley floor. Son took us on a brilliant detour through some of the high hills with a lovely view of the small town in the valley and of the wonderful next mountain over. Views like that are a huge part of what I love about mountains.

I'm a witch and a huge part of what I "do" is to ground -- in the Starhawk sense of the word. And all that I can tell you is that when I ground in Berkeley Springs, I sense both a deep beauty and peace and a deep, deep sorrow. The sorrow comes from the Celts who came here and allowed their lives to be ruined. You can see them everywhere in this small, sad town. It surprises me that this much sorrow can pile up in, say, a mere 300 years. But it's everywhere in the ground when you sink your roots down; it's everywhere.

I think sometimes about buying a patch of mountain in West Virginia, probably near Berkely Springs. I could get cell phone reception and log onto wireless with my cell phone, this time, unlike five years ago when I could only get cell phone reception at the very top of the mountains. There are, it's clear to me, witches up here. Could I ever move? Maybe not. I'm really a city witch.

Oddly, When You Spend A Generation Acting Like A Bunch Of Asses, Young People Grow Up Disliking You

Recently, both Atrios and Jason Pitzl-Waters have blogged about a study showing that today's young people (16 to 29 year-olds) have a less favorable view of xianity than did previous generations. The study attributes this change to: a growing sense of disengagement and disillusionment among young people. I assume that means a "disengagement" from xianity and a "disillusionmnet" with xianity among young people. But that's not really an explanation, it's merely a restatement of the results of the study.

I'm willing to take a wild guess and suggest that the change in attitudes is due to a change in xianity, at least in the version of xianity that's been shoved relentlessly down America's throat for the last few decades. That version of xianity is a far cry from the "care for the sick/judge not lest ye be not judged/blessed are the meek" version of xianity that, for example, I grew up with during the sixties and seventies. I didn't like xianity's view of women, but I generally believed xians to be good people who cared for others, tried not to do evil, attempted to convert by example. And, to be clear, there are still many, many xians who believe in and follow that version of xianity. But they're as invisible today as St. Paul wanted women to be.

The only kind of xianity that many of today's young people, especially those in their teens, have ever seen is the "hate on gays/hate on abortion/hate on women/hate on Islam" xianity that's gotten oddly tangled up in some bizarre form of American exceptionalism and mad desire to bring on a bloody Armageddon. They've seen that Catholic priests are pedophiles protected, at all costs, by the church. They've seen xians insist that evolution is a lie, that science is bad, and that the myths of Bronze Age sheep herders are the final word in -- well, in everything. They've seen one creepy minister after another turn out to engage in exactly the behaviors against which he's gotten rich inveighing. They've heard over and over again that it's wrong to have sex, use birth control, have an abortion and they know that none of that works in today's real world. The face of modern xianity is mean, hateful, intolerant, relentlessly anti-woman, anti-sex, protective of the privileged, and spiteful to the downtrodden. It's not surprising to me that just 16% of non-Christians in their late teens and twenties said they have a "good impression" of Christianity. Hell, I'm surprised that the xians got 16%.

I'd like to think, as Jason Pitzel-Waters' commenter, Steve Caldwell, suggests, that: [a] shift in Christian cultural and political dominance is possible based on current demographic trends that [Jason Pitzel-Waters post] highlighted and similiar trends posted on the Ontario Consultants for Religious Tolerance web site:

"By about the year 2042, non-Christians will outnumber the Christians in the U.S."

"14.1% do not follow any organized religion. This is an unusually rapid increase -- almost a doubling -- from only 8% in 1990. There are more Americans who say they are not affiliated with any organized religion than there are Episcopalians, Methodists, and Lutherans taken together."

Source:
Religious identification in the U.S.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_prac2.htm

So Christianity may find itself as a minority faith in the U.S. and no faith group will be in the majority. That would, IMHO, be a good thing. It might put an end to the obvious lie, repeated over and over by people who profess to believe that it is evil to lie, that "America is a Christian Nation." When you probe a bit and ask people what they mean when they say that "America is a Christian Nation," there's just not, in the immortal words of Gertrude Stein, much "there, there." Everyone I've asked has responded that it means that "America was founded on Judeo-xian ideals." Forget how odd it is that they never say that "America is a Judeo-xian Nation," what's weird is what they say when you ask what that means. The inevitable response is that it means "respect for life" (sometimes phrased as "respect for human dignity"). And we all know what that means.

Look, I love the idea of America a whole lot. But America was founded by people who owned slaves, kept women as second-class citizens for generations, massacred the Native Americans, and, practiced early forms of abortion to deal with unwanted children. It was also founded by people who said: As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

Hopefully, today's young people will be more true to the vision of our Founders than are the likes of Fred Phelps, James Dobson, and America's Bishops.

Hmmm. This City Appears Oddly Unchanged.

Richard II, Scene III
I count myself in nothing else so fortunate,
As in a soul remembering my good friends

For absolutely no reason at all, I have been blessed with wonderful friends and a wonderful, loving family.

I spent this weekend off in the fall-touched mountains of West Virginia, up in the highlands that I love, with my rock-steady Son, my brilliant and beautiful DiL (who is just an am-a-zing cook!), and my wonderful G/Son.

We had a lovely time, from the late Friday night dinner at the Wild Woman Cafe with the v. nice waitresses, to the early Saturday morning small-town parade at the Apple Butter Festival, to the late morning sampling of West Virginia (yes, West Virginia!) vineyards, to the late Saturday afternoon massages at Astasia, to the Ina Garten pumpkin soup that DiL made and the steaks and corn on the cob that Son grilled, to the late morning drive through Virginia horse country.

Meanwhile, my brilliant friend E, author of the best football blog you'll ever read, was taking care of my home, Miss Thing, and my blog. The brilliant women in my circle were having brunch in amazing hats. My wonderful paralegals were making it appear as if I'd never left town.

And, sad as I was to leave, it was good to come home.

Guestblog: Current Administration Scandals, Part So Many I've Lost Count

I don't even have time to go into the whole thing right now, but those of you who care about the state of our country, what's going on in Iraq, our service men and women, and Curious George the Boyking's latest disasters need to check out the Blackwater story:

• Salon.com
• WaPo
• Mother Jones
• Democracy Now

As Al Gore points out in The Assault on Reason: "Our Founders' faith in the viability of representative democracy rested on their trust in the wisdom of a well-informed citizenry...."

So what are you waiting for?

Guestblog: It wouldn't BE guestblogging without a post about music

A few random tidbits:

Best discovery from Jazz Fest this year? Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews. He put out his first album at 17, fronts a quintet that includes two Marsalises (Marsali?), Kermit Ruffins and John Boutte, and founded a band called Orleans Avenue. And he's now all of 21.

After 12 years of classical lessons as a kid, and about 10 years off playing, I've been taking jazz piano lessons for the past year. If you're ever in the DC area, you should definitely check out my teacher, Amy Bormet, at one of her frequent gigs around town. She's awesome!

One of the things Amy has me attempting to do is transcribe recordings. Transcribing is HARD! One of the musicians I'm trying to transcribe is Gene Harris, whose recording of Summertime will change your life. Yeah, I'm definitely going to play like Gene when I don't suck.

Finally, the Tipitina's Foundation is still trying to put instruments back in the hands of New Orleans kids through school music programs, a vital incubator of jazz talent in Crescent City, the USA, and the entire world. Help 'em out.

Guestblog: It's GAMETIME, baby!

I'm still at Hecate's, but at my house, Sunday means football. I know most of you are NOT American football fans...but for those who are, my new name for a blog is: what I wrote (in my other blogging life). Check it out - and trust me, you'll enjoy.

Guestblog: This, Also, Is Poetry

So close, no matter how far
Couldn't be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
and nothing else matters

Never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words I don't just say
and nothing else matters

Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
and nothing else matters

never cared for what they say
never cared for games they play
never cared for what they do
never cared for what they know
and I know

So close, no matter how far
Couldn't be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
No, nothing else matters

--James Hetfield (Metallica)

Guestblog: Jezebel

A little frivolity over your morning coffee:

Jezebel: "Celebrity, sex, fashion. Without the Airbrushing."

Make sure to check out the comments on each entry - they're the best part.