Archive for April, 2009

Since in a few moments I will get VERY busy with preparations for my sabbat…I am offering my greetings to pagans celebrating right now!  I may not be un-busy (or possibly not sober) again till sometime on Sunday.  And no, Beltane or Walpurgis is NOT all about getting drunk, but it IS a celebration and can include that once the rites are over with….so any uptightness you have about this, hey unknot your panties and move ON!

Blessings of the Season!  We celebrate this as the start of Summer and call the Elements to wake to the Growing Season.

“There are two sides to every story.”  A lot of us grew up hearing this.  And most of us were taught that the statement meant both sides should be considered earnestly to work for the best outcome.  When did this little bit of common sense become so very uncommon?

Because it seems to have fallen completely away in most aspects of life.  Republicans and Democrats who used to refer to each other in Congress as “the Loyal Opposition” now sling titles like “traitor” “fascist” and worse at each other.  Even on the average street, friendships have ruptured because neither side can agree to any middle ground.

Politics is not the only place where extremes of the pendulum swing reign.  The argument over childhood vaccination rages with hostility on both sides.  My mother had polio as a child, as did two of her cousins.  One cousin died, one lived the rest of her life wheelchair bound and my mother’s arm was withered and weak for life.  I could not imagine refusing the vaccine for my children.   My sister, like the rest of us in the family, had measles.  Her fever burned hot enough that she lost most of her hair.  Yes, years later, my own children were most sick from the MMR vaccinations—-but knowing our family is prone to pyromanic fever responses, I got every shot for them on time.  I understand the fear of autism and the doubts that plague parents about vaccine safety.  But I have to wonder how many of them are so young as to never have seen the ravages these “common” childhood illnesses can inflict?  One childhood friend was deaf from birth—her mother had measels in pregnancy.  A neighbor was sterile after contracting mumps as an adult, his wife ended the marriage when she realized she could never have children with him.  But there is no dialogue—-only polarized screaming from both sides.

And religion?  Oh my!  The all or nothing reactions astonish.  The athiests deride everyone as self-deluding ninnies.  The fundamental Christians happily damn everyone who doesn’t worship at the altar of the Holy Fetus.  Fred Phelps damns EVERYone not in his “church” to hell right along with the “fags.”  The Catholics are beginning to revert slowly to the pre-Vatican II stand that all Protestants are heretics.  The Jews get called names and compared to Israel even when they are not in agreement with the Jewish nation.  Islam tosses the word “infidel” around entirely too much.  Everyone calls pagans like me “devil worshippers” without bothering to note that most neo-pagans do not even believe in a satanic figure at all.  Everyone in America screams about the past theocracy of Europe in the Middle Ages and the theocracy of modern Islamic states, but they don’t seem to notice the threads of it forming in their own nation.  They think it fine to put the ten commandments on the courthouse lawn, or sing Christian songs in public school music class, and to tell the Wiccan girl to hide her pentacle.

Even environmentalists climb up on a high horse and it becomes about orthodoxy of greeness.  And the reaction to even mild suggestions to ‘turn out the lights’ makes one wonder if it will take a massive electromagnetic pulse punch to make people rachet back their addiction to power gobbling gadgets?

And as money grows tight, charities suffer.  Everyone in this oh-so-Christian nation seems awfully close-pocketed. It is doubted that “deserving” poor exist and the homeless are banned even from churchyards.  Laws are promulgated to forbid feeding the homeless, apparently operating on the idea that it is like feeding stray cats—-they will stay!  It is perfectly acceptable now to talk about religion (YOURS is wrong!), sex (YOU do what?!), and politics (TRAITOR!); but don’t mention money!  Or giving it away.

The concept that everyone doing their own little bit seems to have fallen by the wayside.  Perhaps I am as quaintly old-fashioned as the Bush Administration thought the Geneva Conventions were—-but if everyone gave only a couple percent of income to help someone else,  or some issue that mattered to them, if eveyone gave up just a few pleasures so that someone on the other side of the planet could enjoy the most basic needs of life, what changes would be possible?

But no, lines are drawn and everyone crowds at the bitter, extreme ends of the spectrum to point at each other and refuse conversation.  The middle ground of compromise is looked at as some bizarre sell-out.  It is winner-take-all and to hell-with-losers; even if the loser is someone just like you.  Polarization is the new very not neutral.  It might be good if someone could point out that the word comes from “polar” which can refer to the North and South poles of the planet.  Nothing lives there, except penguins and polar bears and they are both losing the battle of survival presently.  Extremes foster life only one the very fragile and crumbling edge of existence.  And yet that is where everyone is choosing to stand.

Reading the news on the internet about the swine flu pandemic in the making is a rather odd experience.

Some of it is frightening on a very personal level: I have a beloved relative and many friends in Mexico, just across the border from Arizona, in the Sonoran Desert.

Some of it is intensely stupid: an Orthodox rabbi in Israel announcing that they will NOT refer to it as “swine flu” because swine are not kosher creatures.  Seriously?  Disease has to be kosher now, at least in name?

Some of it is aggravating: Apparently, the GOP members of Congress will have to stop stone-walling and approve Gov. Sibelius as Health Secretary now instead of continueing to filibuster to kiss the asses of religious right wingnuts.  Grow the frak up, you twits.  You lost the election because you are behaving like cultish dumbshits.  Representative democracy, not theocracy, remember?

Some is baffling, sort of: The WHO says travel restrictions won’t work.  Well, yes and no. Simply banning planes and ships from Mexico won’t work.  Obviously, people go from Mexico to the United States and elsewhere, and then infected folks there could take plane to Cuba or anywhere else banning Mexico-launched travelers.  But, serious enough travel restrictions COULD protect places like Australia: don’t let ANY plane or ship land.  Unfortunately, that is not feasible, is it?  If this is going to be a pandemic like 1918, then that kind of restriction might be a last resort—but almost certainly already too late.  But, so far, it is not killing on that level.  Cross your fingers, wash your hands, consider masks.

Some of the coverage is very sad: stories of doctors said to have to turned away patients in fear.  Panic is what could make this moderately serious outbreak into a real killer.  The flu originated in swine, took flight a bit with avian virus, and has landed in humans with bits of that viral history, too.  None of that means we need act like maddened swine going over the cliff like lemmings.  Be human…and more important, be HUMANE.

Some is maddening: There are suggestions that this illness may have originated at pig farms run for Smithfield Hams.  So, corporate farming may have created this mess, the better to make profits?  I have purchased exactly TWO products of Smithfield in my entire life; those are likely the last if this turns out to be the fault of sloppy stewardship.

Personal worries:  Air travel is likely helping this spread.  Air quality on jets is notoriously poor….one sneeze is recycled over and through the entire jet.  My husband has to fly next week.  He is SO wearing a mask saturated with tea-tree oil.  He just doesn’t know it yet.

I don’t believe this illness needs to have a death count like the 1918 pandemic.  Most people being diagnosed now are being treated so as to not develop killing pneumonia.  I will go out less than usual, I will be more careful if I feel ill to seek help instead of avoiding doctors as if they are the plague.  I will wash my hands more often, I will possibly invest in masks to wear in crowded places.

I believe good information and courage are the weapons of choice and may avail us even better than Tamiflu.  The media will flog this to the maximum level of bloody sodden panic.  We must now all be better than that!

The first spring weeding of the Labyrinth began yesterday.  It is always a long task, involving a good deal of time crouched on my knees on stone, or duck walking around the spirals with a weeding tool in hand.  Yesterday, I “duck walked” in a whole new way: accompanied by a tiny black duckling.

The Labyrinth has been an evolving piece of art in terms of plant life there.  I tolerate many wildflowers there, such as the sweet violets.  Wooly thyme and moss live side by side and California poppies sprout on the larger outer rings.  But a local weed pest known as “shotweed” is my Garden Enemy #1.  It grows from a pretty rosette of leaves, sending up a stalk with non-descript white flowers very early in spring.  Before the last frost is over, long thin seed pods hang where the blossoms were a week before and the merest touch of the plant sends them shooting like a biological Claymore mine.  So, while I pull many weeds, I really do search and destroy for the shotweed before its blossoms can go to seed.

The little duckling, Daffy, was an impulsive purchase at the feed store—alone in a cageful of buff ducklings, I suspect he was a Easter duck that parents talked the feed store into accepting just to be rid of it.  Daffy is unusually fond of humans, far beyond the incubator raised human imprinting of other ducks we have known.  He is small enough to sleep in my hand and yet keeps up even as I stride from Labyrinth to compost bin, peeping frantically at me.  Daffy is companionable, staying close and pecking speculatively at the weeds I pull.  Tiny fluff that he is, he uses a water filled plant saucer as a bird bath; and when I find and drop an earthworm into said saucer  a madness of peeping, pecking and gobbling ensues.  When a big raven or a few crows go overhead, Daffy dives between my knees or climbs UP my knees to shelter in my shirt.

The weeding is less onerous with such a tiny feathery friend alongside.  I take breaks more often for the duckling’s sake, to feed him soft food from my fingers or fill his water saucer so he can cool down as the shade of morning vanishes and the sun bakes us both.  Usually, while weeding the Walk, my mind is filled with 21 gun salutes and folded flags; but this spring I am thinking of Easter egg hunts with children, violets in the garden and  the laughter of hide and seek.  And perhaps those for whom the Walk was built would prefer those memories as well?

That time again, another moon quarter gone, soon a bright new crescent moon will rise in the early morning sky.  But long before that….flag draped caskets will have been lowered from jetliners, 21 gun salutes will have sounded, flags will have been put in the arms of weeping women or parents….and all the military personnel below will be gone from us forever.

(As always…a couple definitions may be in order: “non-hostile” listed in cause of death means nothing more than that the enemy did not cause the death—in other words no Iraqi or Afghani fighter was involved.  A “non-combat” cause is likewise unrelated to actual war events, and could be illness, accident or even suicide.  Sites which host pictures of the fallen can be found by hitting the “Links” button on the main page of this site–http:walkofthefallen.com)

U.S. Army Cpl. Brad A. Davis, 21, of Garfield Heights, Ohio, died in Iraq, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.

U.S. Marine Cpl. William C. Comstock, 21, of Van Buren, Ark., died  as a result of a non-hostile incident in  Iraq.

Cpt. Trond Petter Kolset, 30, of Norway, died in Afghanistan as a result of a suicide bomber attack.

U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Ray A. Spencer II, 20, of Ridgecrest, Calif., died  as a result of a non-hostile incident in  Iraq.

U.S. Army PFC Richard A. Dewater, 21, of Topeka, Kan., died of wounds sustained from an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan.

Maj. Michelle Mendes, 30, of Canada died in Afghanistan in a non-hostile incident.

U.S. Army CSM Benjamin Moore, Jr., 43, of Waycross, Ga., died in  Iraq, of injuries sustained in a non-combat related incident.

It was a hectic day.  But I reminded myself of a tradition I began last year at this time…weeing what I found roadside that told me a clue to the future.

The roadside was unusually clear today, and I didn’t have a lot of time to go far; I was almost despairing when walking back into my own driveway.  And then, fluttering in the ivy, I saw it.  A bumper sticker that had washed off the car in ONE piece.

It is a U.S. flag…kind of; it is green and orange and says “Please stand by, Our Democracy is experiencing technical difficulties.”  It had been on the car since Bush’s re-election in 2004.  I found it very interesting that it washed off in one piece and I am hoping it means my Democracy is no longer suffering “technical” or human rights difficulties!

No, what we have now is not perfect.  The economy is sucking, politicians are being political; especially the GOP—they are being spoilt douchbags about having lost.  Obama may not be a perfect answer to every thing facing us.  But I do believe my bit of divination is right—-it is a step forward out of an age that was becoming very dark indeed.

I am a veteran.  Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I was a signals intelligence analyst and linguist.  Most of the job had to do with figuring out where the enemy was and what units and military strength faced us.

In the current wars, I wonder if our side is just composed entirely of imbeciles, or if we are assuming THEIR side is mostly moronic.  I say this AS an analyst.  Anyone who reads here knows I post the names of the dead here, four times a month.  I get those names in email from the Department of Defense.  Anyone with an email address….ANYone, can do the same.

My lists are edited.  I do not post ALL the information I receive, and have not mentioned it til now because it violates every security precaution I would practice AS a military commander.  Throughout the war, certain reporters and photographers have caught hell for mentioning a place name or drawing in the sand—and yet, the DOD news releases do worse.

Each dead servicemember’s name is accompanied by the PRECISE location of his wounding or death in country AND what unit he was assigned to while serving.  So, anyone with half a brain and a map could analyze what units are where in country and what military assets they have based on unit designations (Engineer, Artillery, Infantry, etc).

Just because somewhat medieval attitudes prevail in Afghanistan and Iraq, do not assume they don’t have brains, analytical ability AND computer access.  If the DOD wants to preserve security of units in the combat zone, they might consider not giving it away in these very public notices.  This practice was brought to you by the government that thought anonymous covered caskets were a violation of privacy?  And yet, the DOD basically is telling all comers (on the internet) where each man’s military unit is located in the theater of war?  They yelled at a couple reporters?  Imbeciles.

Imagine…they call us blondes dumb?!

I have been considering my emotional life of late.  It is, to be honest, not my favorite pastime.  But, part of my pagan practice this year is what is called an element attunement.  You see, in Western Esoteric thought there are four archetypical elements of creation: fire, water, earth and air.  I will spend three months meditating and working on each and all the associated symbology and correspondances.

I am currently working on “Water” and one of the main linkages is emotional flow.  This is the hardest mental work I have done in a while and takes me to unexpected places and new realizations about things with which I thought I was already familiar .  And I am having somewhat unaccustomedly emotional responses to what I considered intellectual matters.  Like the book I am reading.

It is not a new book, it came out in 1996 and is entitled “Of Tigers and Men Entering the Age of Extinctions” by Richard Ives.  Of course, it is about the grim fact that tigers, far from “burning bright” are burning OUT.  It is sad reading, and in my unusually switched on state, heart-breaking reading.  In one section of the book, one of his mentors counsels him to avoid bitterness.  He tells him that maintaining an attitude of bitterness kills the spirit.

It got me to thinking; I am often characterized as bitter about certain subjects.  But when I examine the concept, I am not bitter: I am temporarily disillusioned from time to time.  I read a once-favorite blog again recently and suddenly was impressed by what I can only describe as bitterness.  The topic was the recent enthusiasm for Scottish singer Susan Boyle which said blogger labeled “pap” and asked who was “buying” this pap.

I was stunned. Yes, perhaps the style of that song is not everyone’s cup of tea—not mine, to be honest.  But the wonderful range and tremulous power of her voice was what inspired me.  Her ability to take a media-jaded audiance and turn it from jeers to cheers encouraged me that perhaps there is yet something worth saving in mankind.  Why did I find that post indicative of bitterness?  Because it dismisses the whole affair as pointless; and although I often bitch that I’d like to turn off the ‘hope’ switch so as to never again fall from that precipice to reality’s biting rocks, I know that off switch leads only to apathy and nihilism.

One of the “works” I am engaged in this year is examing what in my life makes going forward possible and what drains me of energy to move.  This does not mean I am seeking sunshine enemas,; it means I am looking for what personally lights me up or shuts me down.  The mentor of Richard Ives had it right, bitterness is a stone on your back that crushes.  Life is crushing enough at times; I refuse to carry baggage that makes the journey unbearable.  It is a bit trendy to be bitter and cynical, and I have been as guilty as anyone presenting that face from time to time.  But I drop that mask here—-and mask it is, to hide the tears on a face still moved by passions.

One can be inspired by a voice without being a sentimental idiot, what counts is being human enough to still BE inspired.  To reach…for impossible dreams and other worthwhile quests.

My sympathies to those awaiting the last homecoming.  Not all names are here, some are yet unreleased.  (As always, those hunting pictures should go to the site’s Links page to find them.  Those looking for moon phase info should find the Old Farmer’s Almanac online helpful)

U.S. Air Force Airman 1st Class Jacob I. Ramsey, 20, of Hesperia, Calif., died of injuries sustained from a non-combat related incident in Afghanistan

The following five U.S. Army men were killed in Iraq by a suicide car bomber:

Staff Sgt. Gary L. Woods Jr., 24, of Lebanon Junction, Ky.

Staff Sgt. Bryan E. Hall, 32, of Elk Grove, Calif.

Sgt. Edward W. Forrest Jr., 25, of St. Louis, Mo.

Cpl. Jason G. Pautsch, 20, of Davenport, Iowa.

PV2 Bryce E. Gautier, 22, of Cypress, Calif.

U.S. Army Spc. Michael J. Anaya, 23, of Crestview, Fla., died  in  Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.

U.S. Army  Sgt. Raul Moncada, 29, of Madera, Calif., died in Iraq, of wounds sustained when an explosive device detonated near his vehicle.

Trpr Karine Blais, 21, of Canada died by IED attack in Afghanistan.

U.S. Army Cpl. Francisco X. Aguila, 35, of Bayamon, Puerto Rico, died in Afghanistan, of injuries sustained from a non-combat related incident.

So, NOW you are bitching about where your tax money goes?  May I remind you that the money in the tax bill due today was for LAST year when George Bush was the President spending it?

May I also ask where you pious sons of bitches, who today are saying shit like “Well, we are worried about our kids”, were at while Bush spent us into this frakking recession?  While he pissed away the money in Iraq, an utterly unnecessary war?

And those of you bitching about stimulus money?  Hey, here is a clue, just don’t take any of the money OR the jobs that the money creates.  Act like Bobby Jindal and just say “No” to what might save America’s economic life.

What a bunch of frakking MORONS you all are….eight years of mad spending and lack of oversight on anything that could have made the economy better instead of worse.  Eight years of giving tax breaks to rich bastards who trickled most of it down to foreign and tax free bank accounts.  And you are bitching NOW?  What?  Were you frakking asleep for the last eight years?  NOW you want to scream about where the money went?  Go scream at George Bush.

Go bitch on the site of the Bush Presidential Library, ok? And throw shoes, too.