Ouch!

Sorry folks...

Years ago, I had a very serious back injury. I've been OK for a number of years, but recently re-injured it. I've had to devote all my energies to healing. The good news is, it seems no serious damage was done, and I'm on the mend. So I should be back to form in a few days.

The Goddess Visits USA

In a City of Power Brokers, a Young Visitor Who Is Truly Worshipped

In Nepal, The Goddess Kali is believed to incarnate in certain chosen young girls. Sajani Shakya is one such 10 year old Goddess, and she's touring the USA to promote a documentary called "Living Goddess":

...WASHINGTON, June 13 — Even by the standards of the luminaries who sweep through Washington, the little girl in front of Lafayette Elementary School almost six miles north of the White House was special. Politicians, power brokers and the occasional celebrities who come through town hope to be respected and maybe, in a childlike place in their grown-up hearts, genuinely liked. Sajani Shakya, 10, is worshipped. In Nepal, Sajani is a living goddess, one of about a dozen such goddesses in her homeland who are considered earthly manifestations of the Hindu goddess Kali...

...Devotees believe that the goddess Kali inhabits the girls, though they do not exhibit unusual behavior, and then the goddess leaves them when they reach puberty. After that, the girls retire with a small pension. They are free to work and marry.

“...The idea of virginal, premenstrual purity, it does seem like a contradiction with worshipping a feminine divine,” said Rachel McDermott, associate professor in the department of Asian and Middle Eastern cultures at Barnard College, “but in all this, there is the devotion to purity....”


One school boy asked if there are boy Gods. Apparently there are, but they are not worshipped like the girls. Ishbel Whitaker, director of a documentary about the girl Goddesses added:

"...And one day year, all the girls are worshipped as goddesses..."

Smart people, those Nepalese!

Kabala, The Game

Kabala: The Game that Foretells the Future
I wish I had this game when I was a kid! Not only could it foretell the future, it glowed in the dark! It must have been light years better than the Evolution vs Intelligent Design game. I mean, with Kabala, you are trying to predict the future--not reinvent the past! Glow in the dark games such as Green Ghost and Kabala had their heyday in the 1960's. One thing I love about the Kabala game, is that the centerpiece on the game board reminds me of the creature in Atomic Submarine.

Liberty U Student hits Big Time

Virginia: Liberty University Student Held

It's pathetic how the MSM is ignoring this story. At the risk of pointing up the obvious, if he was Muslim, I'm sure the media would be all over him. But since he's an Absolutist Xtian attending a Dominionist University, he gets a free pass. But not from this judge:

...Troubled by testimony showing support for Nazis, gang connections and plans for violence, a federal judge ordered a Liberty University student held without bond on a charge of possessing a napalmlike bomb...

NY Post insults Wiccan Veterans

How does a right-wing propagandist rag--that passes itself off as a newspaper--mark the veteran's victory in the Pentacle Quest? With typical right-wing idiocy, that's how. I could just imagine what would happen if they pulled such a stunt on a mainstream religion! It's a sobering reminder that intolerance is alive and well and we still have a long way to go.

It goes without saying I don't read the NY Post, so I sure won't link to it. But the article that accompanies the insulting picture is just the straight-up AP article. I want to thank Democratic Underground. They have some good comments on it there.

Laura Mallory sentenced to dunking!

Judge Upholds Harry Potter Books

A dunking? Wishful thinking on my part, but it would have been poetic justice. Loopy Dominionist Laura Mallory lost her fight against Harry Potter:

...For an hour, Laura Mallory tried to convince a judge that the Harry Potter books should not be allowed in the public schools because the books promote a religion. What's worse, she said, when the books are read in class, they often convert school children to that religion -- to witchcraft -- Wicca. Judge Ronnie Batchelor ruled right away, saying that Gwinnett County's decision to allow the books into the schools was made properly...

I wonder if there will ever come a day when I'll cross paths with that mythical person who actually became interested in Wicca through the Potter books. Btw, it may be news to critters of Mallory's ilk, but converting, evangelizing, and proselytizing is not something Wiccans do.

A Wiccan Memorial Day

Wiccan pentacle will finally mark fallen soldiers' graves

Our victory in the Pentacle Quest is marked on this Memorial Day. CNN is covering the event:

...Since Korean War veteran Jerome Birnbaum died in 2005, his grave in a pagan cemetery had been marked with only a pile of stones and U.S. flags. On Memorial Day, Birnbaum's grave and those of other military veterans will be dedicated with government-issued markers etched with a symbol of their religion -- the Wiccan pentacle...

"...I like to see our success literally etched in stone, because it will be," said Birnbaum's wife, Karen DePolito. She said winning the fight is vindication for all Wiccans...

SUNY-New Paltz offers Evolution

College to offer new minor in evolutionary studies

I am so proud of my Alma Mater:

...The State University of New York at New Paltz is pleased to announce the approval of an 18-credit interdisciplinary evolutionary studies minor. According to Glenn Geher, chair of the Evolutionary Studies Program Development Committee, the new program includes classes from many departments and will provide students with an education regarding evolution that is both deep and broad in scope. "In addition to requiring multiple courses that focus on the essentials of evolutionary theory,” said Geher, “the curriculum includes courses that apply evolutionary principles in varied areas – such as anthropology, literature, and psychology – as well as courses that address gross misapplications of mischaracterized evolutionary ideas, including a course from the history department, titled ‘Crime and Punishment in American History’..."

Bravo New Paltz! New Paltz is the town that garnered a bit of fame when Mayor West officiated over a plethora of gay and lesbian marriages. Not only that, New Paltz is where my coven meets (Witches of the Crossroads), and near where my whip club has it's crack fests. (Yup, I'm addicted to crack!)

The chair of Evolutionary Studies adds:

“...Ours is the second such program in the nation,” said Geher....For more information about the evolutionary studies minor, which begins this fall..."

New Paltz is a cool place. I majored in Anthropology. Cut my eye teeth in the Archeology Field School. From the bathroom wall in the Anthro House:

I dedicate these flatulent mists
to all you Anthropologists
And if you don't dig it George
kiss my Olduvia Gorge

(Thanx to Green Ghost for rubbing my nose in this link)

Mythic Beasts, alive and well

Exploring the Nature of the Unnatural
A great exhibit at the AMNH in NYC, “Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids” will open tomorrow and run through Jan. 6 at the American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West and 79th Street; (212) 769-5100 or amnh.org. From the NYTimes article by Edward Rothstein:

...it was a brilliant curatorial idea to devote an exhibition to them. One of the remarkable things about this exhibition...is...by the end you are convinced that these creatures should find permanent dwelling places in such halls, not because they are real but because they allow us to glean something about how humanity struggles to make sense of the natural world. Adrienne Mayor, a visiting scholar in the history of science at Stanford University, explains in an accompanying video how she studied maps where the Greeks claimed to have found the remains of fallen giants and discovered that they coincided with maps of major paleontological finds...The Greeks might have found bones belonging to ancient mastodons and mammoths, which were clearly far larger than human remains but also bore a close resemblance to them...As for the cyclops, such one-eyed giants were said to live in Sicily, where the fossilized remains of ancient elephants have been found. The cast of one Sicilian skull is on display; it contains an enormous central hole where the elephant’s trunk was attached. For the Greeks, more than two millenniums ago, that might have been an imagined creature’s single eye socket. What is left unmentioned here, but still haunts, is the human persistence in creating such creatures. Out of the unknown, out of worlds barely understood, out of glimpses of flesh or bone, in one culture after another, humanity has imagined beings whose bodies are mutant composites of incompatible animals...who violate every taboo and disrupt every sense of natural order. They arise out of our imaginings, offering seductive promises and irresistible dangers, as if they were resurrected fossils from a primal human past demanding tribute — which this fascinating exhibition begins to provide...

How true! Mythical creatures have a great deal to teach us, as this exhibit well demonstrates. After the exhibit closes in January, it moves to other museums: the Field Museum in Chicago, the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney and the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta.

Rachel Carlson's Revenge!

Bird Poops on President Bush

...As President Bush took a question Thursday in the White House Rose Garden about scandals involving his Attorney General, he remarked, "I've got confidence in Al Gonzales doin' the job." Simultaneously, a sparrow flew overhead and left a splash on the President's sleeve, which Bush tried several times to wipe off...

Damn, if it weren't for that uppity Rachel Carlson, all those pesky birds would be dead from pesticides by now!