North of Berkeley

The Pagan Preacher: Imbolc Sermon

2012-02-26T16:11:00.003-08:00

Once the Maiden Goddess has appeared at Imbolc the Season of

Outward Growth begins. Both God and Goddess are on the land. Now

we have an active part to play in the world around us.

The Maiden brings forth Her waters, and dresses Herself with

green leaves and flowers. She will flaunt the potential wealth and

abundunce that She has to offer.

Soon the heat of the God will begin to make itself felt. He

instinctively reaches out to the land and warms the body of the

Maiden for the time to come. Like any boy past the cradle but not

yet full grown, He is headstrong and makes Himself more evident

each day.

Not sure what He is to be, He reaches outward, learning more

and more about Himself and what His Magic truly is.

On the mundane level the time has come for all of us to act.

If we were in an agricultural environment the fields would have to

be prepared for the planting.

In whatever environment we are, figuratively if not

literally, we must do our part without hesitation, so that when the

"planting" time comes the "seeds" will be sown in time to grow to

their fullest.

In the herds and flocks, New Life is born. Calves and lambs

are appearing and We must assist in the birthing so that the herds

can give us all that we will need.

It is up to you to see the application of this metaphor to

your own life and universe.

Now there is work to be done while the Goddess adorns Herself

with finery and the God grows and warms the Lady with His presence.

The climax of this is His puberty celebrated on The Day of the Wild

God, otherwise known as;

OSTARA

from Dyffd ap Tower

Fire Tide

2012-02-04T10:58:00.001-08:00

At Candlemas the Fire Tide flows, and this season until the Spring Equinox is called the Time of Change. In this time the God born at Yule grows to manhood, and that mystery of change informs all others. It is a time of great creative power, when all projects of art and making, will and change, are carried forth on their most auspicious tide.

Nighmares

2012-02-04T10:45:00.000-08:00

Children dream of monsters in the dark.

Normal, the experts say.

The self fears its new and undiscovered growth,

And so screams out.

In middle years, the anxious dreams of threatened self-importance;

Naked in the street, speechless before a theater,

Assigned to teach a class where you are ignorant,

And the students have no patience.

But in old age, I find, nightmares are of confusion and loss;

A wrong turn somewhere, a missed connection,

The wrong off-ramp by mistake, and no return on the other side.

You seek the way home, but there is no way.

There are people, but they do not help;

They are mute, or indifferent, or in the worst dreams

Mad with some irrelevant obsession.

When you finally understand that here you must remain

You wake to your accustomed bed,

Relieved and hoping

That you have not foreseen the realm of death,

Christian Morality

2012-01-27T19:01:00.000-08:00

I have a very hard time grasping this. Many right-wing Christians, with their "family values," apparently don't care if somebody like Gingrich has a sleazy past. Now, if such a thing as a Pagan candidate were possible, one with Newt's past adventures would, I'd hazard a guess, be too sleazy even for most Witches and Pagans. Cheating on wife #1 with wife #2 while wife #1 was in the hospital dying of cancer. Cheating on wife #2 with wife #3 while pretending moral outrage with Clinton, whose only transgressions were a) accepting a blow job from someone who enthusiastically threw herself an his feet and b) agonizing too much when he had to explain it later. (He could have just said, "She threw herself at me, I didn't handle as well as I should have. Next question?" Or being a Christian, he too could have said "I sinned and Jesus forgives me.")

Because, as it seems, if you are a Christian Jesus forgives you, then everything is OK and you can still be president.

If you are a Pagan, the best you can do is be sorry, hope to do better in your next incarnation, and probably forget about running for president in this one in the unlikely event that it was ever an option to begin with.

At the Dark of the Moon

2012-01-24T11:27:00.001-08:00

Introspection, trance work, self-evalution

Dream work

Fast or eat sparingly

Don't overwork

Wrap yourself in a covering or veil of some kind, arranged so you can breathe properly (oxygen deprivation is not an essential part of the experience.)

I especially like some slow and evocative sound for this--Tibetan temple bells, for example.

Close your eyes and go into a cave. As you go deeper in, the light becomes fainter and fainter, and you have to feel your way with your feet and hands.

The passageway becomes narrower, and more difficult to negotiate. You go deeper and deeper into the earth.

Then after a time you will suddenly lose your footing and go floating in free fall, around and around, down the passageway, until you land in a cavern deep inside the earth.

There you may find something, or you may meet someone.

You may be told something you need to know, or you may be given something to take back with you.

Perhaps you will find or be given something that must remain in the cavern, but which you can return to again.

When you are ready to leave the cavern, you will find that you can float up and out the passageway, by the same way you came.

Then you will find your footing, and make you way along the passage, feeling with your feet and hands, until you return to the mouth of the cave.

Wolf Moon

2012-01-08T16:49:00.000-08:00

This is the moon that falls in Capricorn. On the Wolf Moon, work for protection and preservation.

Wolves share many attributes with humans, and so provide us with certain lessons about this.

http://www.wisdomofwolves.com/

Winter Solstice

2011-12-10T18:48:00.000-08:00

from the Pagan poet Gwion:

We are only concerned with light.
We have given up on warmth,
Have abandoned discernment
Of color and brightness and shape.
We are only concerned with light,
Because the sky, wide vessel
And disperser of radiance, is dark.

We tend our sparkles of fire
In the calendar's frosted eclipse.
We have come to the Season of Man.
This single night
The only light is our own
For all the lands and seas and skies.

The log must blaze!
And every quick branch bear candles,
Not to suffuse us with a cheery glow,
But to ensure that no gust of winter
Will snuff it out.

We are only concerned with company.
We have frozen standing quarrels,
Have abandoned distinctions
Of preference and propriety.
We are only concerned with company,
Because the sky, Great Hall
Of perpetual companions, is empty.

We gather our kind
From withered prairies and crusted shores,
We have come to the Season of Man.
This single night
Ours is the only company
For all lands and seas and skies.

We must be merry!
We must raise a common voice in any song.
We must pledge ourselves without reserve,
For no other rampart stands against extinction
But our bonds.

This single night, this Season of Man,
We are the only gods; the universe is ours.
Behold our magnificence!
If we are diligent
And sacrifice all lesser concerns,
We may keep the light from dying
And our hearts from growing still
Until dawn,
When the gods return
To take the year from our narrow shoulders
And hurl it toward a season bright and fertile.

Oak Moon

2011-12-10T18:44:00.001-08:00

The Oak Moon falls in Sagittarius, usually as the Earth Tide rises and the dark and cold increase. It is a known as a time for fellowship, for renewing the bonds of friendship and kin. By now we know who they are, the dear ones who will get us through the night. It is a time touch them, and to understand them.

Reality Check

2011-11-11T10:39:00.001-08:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/11/two-shootings-occupy-oakland-camps

Around here, we inhabit a different reality than the news stories describe.

One of our local certainties is violence, unfortunately. Oakland had its 101st homicide of the year last night, typical of the ones that take place every three days on the average, with many familiar elements to the typically garbled story. Young guys, drugs, an altercation, a gun.

There is a Catholic church I drive by on my way to work where they put up white wooden crosses each year for every Oakland homicide. The churchyard is empty of them each New Year's morning, and then they begin to accumulate. I suppose they are stored in some closet back in the parish house, along with holiday decorations, perhaps, to be used year after year. Now, in November, there is a small forest of them out front, joined by another one this morning.

Last night's shooting happened to occur nearby the Occupy Oakland encampment. The news people make significance of this, rather like amateur seers with a personal agenda reading their own story into the tea leaves.

Closing down the Occupy encampments will not make troubled young people stop shooting each other over drugs. Nor, for that matter, will it stop severely depressed veterans from committing suicide--another event that the constructors of reality on the evening news have somehow worked into their narrative.

The only thing that might prevent those things from happening, or perhaps make them happen less, would be what the protesters are calling for-- forcing the fabulously rich to give their fair share for things like education, job training, job development, and health services.

And the main reason why these protests are now happening is that a whole generation of young people are finding themselves corralled into a dead end like that ones where inner-city youth and damaged war veterans have been hanging out for a long time.

The Earth Tide Flows

2011-11-10T21:26:00.000-08:00

At Samhain, the Earth Tide flows. This is a time of certainties. The Witch in this tide is seer and not sorcerer.

It is not always a certainty of stillness. It may be a certainty of change. But the tide will move by its own power. There is little to do now but see, and ride.

It's a Will, Not a Want

2011-11-05T17:14:00.000-07:00

We will enforce fairness and decency in the places of power.

We will deny to the wealthy few the privilege of lives outside the law.

We will free ourselves of the burdens of wars we cannot afford, and of parasites who take with both hands and give nothing.

We will remove our energies from the causes of death and greed, and give our energies to the causes of life and hope.

We will do this in many ways; some will march, some will occupy, some will teach, some will heal; some will simply do what they have always done, fairly and decently, but also speak truth to power.

We will do these things as a creative and joyful community. There will be no need for violence.

After we are done, there will be time and place for all the various things we might want.

2011-11-05T17:08:00.000-07:00

Now, at the eve of the astrological cross-quarter, is the time of a Witch's greatest power.

The water tide is at its farthest ebb. Things that normally are hidden are revealed.

It is a time to wander the mudflats, take hold of what you find and make of it what you will.

2011-10-26T11:45:00.000-07:00

I guess it’s not too surprising that the first Occupy actions to make the authorities really nervous have been in cities with mild climates and therefore large homeless populations.

Perhaps we need to think through what kind of protest action works best in different kinds of communities. Camping out to draw attention to the issue of unemployment may not be the most effective action in cities where thousands of unemployable people have been camping out for years.

One of the issues we have to confront as a society, of course, is the blurring of those categories. Thirty years ago, one assumed that anybody living on the streets was probably on booze or drugs, or had some other kind of problem negotiating reality. Now all kinds of people are homeless, and many of us who are employed and look relatively comfortable are really only a few paychecks away from it.

Another obvious long-standing issue is why thousands of people who belong in hospitals or rehab or halfway houses are sleeping on the streets, getting sicker and wierder and angrier all the time.

But in a place like Oakland, an Occupy encampment rapidly gets occupied by the endemic homeless population, creating an excuse for the cops to move in and deal with it, in a hyped-up version of the way they have always dealt with an ongoing "nuisance."

Time to get creative about some other effective actions. I’m for boycotting banks, for instance. Just use credit unions, and explore other alternative systems like the old-fashioned and now disappearing British building societies.

It also could be entertaining to identify the homes or neighborhoods of some of the more egregious 1%, and go hang around in some irritating but legal manner. I am not sure specifically what I mean, but if I keep thinking about it the ethos of my gentle Quaker upbringing might suggest something.

The Water Tide Ebbs

2011-09-25T17:07:00.000-07:00

After the Fall Equinox, the Water Tide ebbs.

The Tides of the year influence the kind of magic that will be most effective in addressing a given issue, and the magical purposes for which work is most effective.

Generally speaking, events in the flowing Tides are less responsive to active, instrumental spells than events in the ebb Tides. When a Tide flows it is a force of nature that carries the time along with it, and when this happens the Witch's best policy is divination to determine how things are moving and how best to move with them.

On the ebb tide things become more fluid and uncertain, and the Witch's power to mold them increases. Sorcery has its greatest effect at a full ebb Tide, just before a new Tide flows (the days leading up to each of the Cross-Quarter Days--Samhain, Candlemas, Beltane and Lammas).

The elemental influence of a Tide suggests the most auspicious magical aims and methods for the time. The ebbing Water tide is the best time of the year for works of healing. This influence grows from Mabon to Samhain; but when the Earth Tide flows at Samhain, it is overwhelmed by the certainties of nature and mortality.

The God at Mabon

2011-09-21T15:56:00.000-07:00

Now the fires are burning low, and the light I have is dying.

There is more power in the bread than there is in me.

When you have eaten of it, I will be gone.

Things Fall Apart

2011-09-12T22:28:00.000-07:00

The community college district, of course, has a hiring freeze on. Nobody who retires, gets fired, goes off the deep end or is run over by a truck can be replaced. It makes for interesting times, in the ancient Chinese sense.
The competent over-achiever who used to do all the room scheduling has retired, so now there can be no more room scheduling. Your class is probably in the same place it was last year. It works out all right for the most part, since there are no longer any new teachers or new courses. But no changes of venue are possible.
My phone doesn't work. The line has been dead since school started. I printed out and completed a work order, after a bit of hassle finding someone whose computer had access to both the Internet and a printer. Then I took it over to the mail room to place in the box for the "switchboard office," as directed at the top of the form. The mail room guy, one of the key people in the institution who still works there, said that there wasn't any box for the switchboard office because it was only one person, and now she has retired. I wondered where to put the form, and he suggested a few possibilities, none of which seemed like a sure thing to him, or sounded quite right to me. So I choose one at random, and shoved it in.

Fortunately, in the 21st century, phones are no longer essential. My students and immediate colleagues know they get better results from me on email anyway. Since somehow this dead phone line still pretends to take messages, I do worry a bit that somebody higher up, high enough to have a phone that works, will be upset if I don't return a call. Only a bit worried, though--such are the luxuries of tenure.

In the ESL department, we tell each other how fortunate it is that most of us were in the Peace Corps at one time or another. It was good training for what's going on now. Just find a good shade tree, prop up a blackboard, and start teaching something.
Over Irish coffee at the hofbrau tonight with my full moon cronies, we exchanged workday war stories. One friend said that all those alumni fundraisers who are always harassing us for more money than we've got to spare should adopt the methodology of those helpful organizations who market modest, useful gifts for people in third world countries--you can buy ducklings for somebody in Bolivia, or a goat for Nepal. Why not solicit affordable amounts to fund specific things that schools need? She'd be happy, my friend said, to donate what it costs to put in a phone line. People could fund this and that, there would be commemorative plaques on the photocopiers, maybe items funded by little trust funds in honor of departed relatives. Then I could have a cheery, operational phone message ... "Hello, you have reached Sybil Drinkwalter on the McIntyre Memorial Phone Line ..."

Signs of the Times

2011-08-18T19:10:00.000-07:00

I've been going to the Touchless Car Wash in downtown Berkeley for years now. For $20 they take the car through the wash for you (I have a tendency to claustrophobia and really hate doing that) and then four or five people in red Touchless T-Shirts descend on the car to vacuum out the inside and wipe down all the surfaces (I have arthritis and just plain don't do that). While they are busy, you go inside and amuse yourself shopping for junk food and a whimsical selection of greeting cards and gift items.

Today, taking my grimy car in for some attention after leaving it parked out front of my house for much of the summer, I was struck by a shift in the ethnic composition in the staff. For as long as I can remember, the cashier has been a young man from somewhere in the Middle East (not always the same young man from the Middle East) and the grunt workers in the red T-shirts have all been from somewhere south of the border or beyond, and I suppose I always assumed, not thinking about it any more than middle-class white people in California have to think about it, that most of them were probably undocumented. Now, the crew is getting to reflect the ethnic composition of northern California--black, white and Asian as well as Latino.

And then there are the changes on Lincoln Avenue, the street where I grew up back in Amherst, Massachusetts. Lincoln Avenue is about a mile long, and connects the Amherst College and University of Massachusetts campuses. The housing runs a social gamut; four or five huge, gracious mansions in the first block at the Amherst college end, and increasingly modest middle-class homes as you move toward UMass, with a block of apartments bordering the campus at the end.

The top block has not changed one iota in appearance for the past fifty years. From there on down, there are creeping signs of shabbiness and disrepair, first in some of the houses, then in all of them. The apartments down at the end, which used to be tidy and utilitarian, have deteriorated into a little slum.

It's kind of a parable for the times.

This Is Your Old Age on Drugs

2011-08-12T07:01:00.000-07:00

My mom, now 91, has one of those foot-square plastic trays with pills sorted out in lidded compartments by day and time, 28 for a week. (I have a smaller one, still just one little lidded box per day. And the system works better for me because most of the time I can still remember what day it is).

In the case of my mom, whose physical health is remarkably good, most of the drugs are psychoactive. I have not followed what they all are, or which discouraging aspect of her emotions and behavior they are meant to treat, since we have two nurses and a doctor in the family who are much better qualified for this responsibility than I. Just now, my sister was on the phone with the psychiatrist, having a very complicated conversation about dosages and trying more of this and less of that.

The result of all this medication is that my mom is not crazy, exactly, but still quite depressed. And more confused than she should be, given the appearance of a recent brain scan. (She doesn't have Alzheimer's--you could have fooled me.)

Coming from the 1960's by way of California, I of course see the obvious option of trying some really good drugs, if she is going to be on drugs. Primo bud her food, might be a good place to start.

Apparently my teenage nephew recently made a similar suggestion at the dinner table but was quickly stifled (his father the doctor is, like most doctors, quite conservative).

For myself, if I make it past 90, I definitely intend to do it stoned.

Wort Moon

2011-08-06T08:38:00.001-07:00

The full moon that falls in Leo is sometimes called the Wort Moon because its waxing is the auspicious time to gather certain worts, or herbs useful for the leafy part that grows above the ground. (Dried herbs of this type are medicinally and magically effective for only about a year after they are picked, a fact that is ignored by most businesses that market them.) Two herbs traditionally associated with this time were mugwort and vervain.

Mugwort is plentiful in California, and known since Native American times for its power to induce dreams. Drink it as a tea, and fall asleep intending to dream what you need to know. Some herbals give warnings about its possible toxicity, but you would probably have to drink gallons of the stuff to do any harm, and there's no reason why anyone would do that. You'd be up all night peeing, and never get any dreams at all.

Vervain is traditionally used for kidney stones and bladder problems, also to drive away vampires. The Iroquois used it to drive away anybody they didn't want to deal with, but this strategy doesn't seem to have stood the test of time. It apparently works better on vampires than on white people. Vervain has general protective qualities, though, and is also used in divination; you can see the future by gazing into a fire through vervain. Or add some to your mugwort tea for prophetic dreams.

Work in the Time of Harvest

2011-07-31T18:13:00.001-07:00

(The flowing Water Tide, from Lammas to Mabon)

This, like the planting time from Eostara to Beltane, is a period of intense hard work. It is a time when work comes to fruition, and the rewards of past work can be reaped. There will, however, be a lot to do to accomplish this, and it may feel as though the time is too short. It is a time of intense activity, both work and play.

The Mother at this time is at the height of Her power, her breasts flowing with milk at the very sound of a child’s cry. Honor Her with works of healing and compassion, with a portion of each thing you earn or reap.

The Mother of All Living tells us that she demands no sacrifice because she needs make no such demand; a portion of every labor and every love returns to Her by the law of Nature. When that return is brought to her consciously and with gratitude, she rewards Her children by opening to them the storehouse of Her wisdom; the truth that lies there is our own, which she has saved for us from our gifts of past seasons. Thus at this season we eat new fruit and old meat, new achievements and old wisdom.

Love and labor are one in the Mother at this season. Seek to perform all your work with love, and work to sustain your love for others.

Like the Planting Time, this is a season which, in the old days, required the give-and-take of community effort, as large work teams harvested one farm after another. Look carefully and the patterns of reciprocity in your relationships, ask yourself whether they are balanced and fair, and what you can do to improve their equilibrium.

Try to “float to the surface” of the Tide, to take along and broad view of things, so as to maintain your perspective. Take time from your full and busy days to study and contemplate the huge expanses of space and time—the physical universe, karma, your past lives. This is the most productive Tide for trance divination, for traveling in trance and dream the roads that lead to the future and the past.

Wells Fargo

2011-07-22T08:44:00.000-07:00

Wells Fargo has sort of been on my s**t list for a long time, ever since as a new and unwary credit customer, I realized that my debt to them was creeping up because the minimum payment was set at less than the amount required to prevent that from happening.

It's not much surprise now to learn that they also illegally pushed borrowers into subprime mortgages and falsified loan documents.

The penalty for these procedures, which surely must involve multiple felonies, is to pay a fine that amounts to a tiny fraction of the bank's recent yearly profits.

In a free market, business ethics are fostered because a reputation for integrity is good for business, and being caught ripping off your customers is very bad for business. Government bail-outs have removed that natural and internal control mechanism, and token penalties for blatantly criminal behavior now reinforce the message to financial institutions that they are so important that they are allowed to do whatever they like (kind of like the later and most decadent Roman emperors).

Mrs. D. now belongs to a credit union, and no longer deals with banks at all if she can help it.

Pagan Preacher: The Time of Ripening

2011-07-17T15:11:00.000-07:00

(from Dyffd ap Tower)

Here we are in the middle of the year, between the Planting and the Harvest, between the conception and the realization. Here are in the midst of Life. Let us take one day to celebrate and then get back to work.

These are the golden days. Golden because of the presence of the Sun and golden because we have a goal to work toward. This is the best of times.

Now one might ask, What’s so good about it? Here are right in the middle of things, there’s lots to do and so far there has been no payoff.

The “payoff” is not just in the rewards that come with accomplishment, it is also in the experience and the effort.

In our conversation is more worthwhile to talk about what we are doing or what we have been doing rather than what we have. How we got something sounds so much better than what we have got.

The truly creative person loses all interest in what has been done and turns their mind to what is being done or will be done.

The value comes from seeing what needs to be done and liking what we do to reach that goal. If you see a need to drain the swamp, it is worthwhile to not only get in with the alligators, but to like it as well.

So here we are in the middle of Life, and all the things to do that we must to maintain Life and we must appreciate the need to do them.

As mundane as some of these things are, they are important and they are what makes the quality of our lives. Let us enjoy the experience.

IT DOESN’T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS!

2011-07-14T14:24:00.001-07:00

Turkey a la King

2011-06-16T20:53:00.000-07:00

Bobby, here. We got a lot of turkey a la king for the full moon the other night. Mrs. D. writes up all this moon stuff it's some big deal, but what they really do when it's full is go to this kind of Irish hofbrau place down by the railroad station and have a drink, and then have another drink, and then get a lot of food, and I'm in storage in her bag under the table and don't get any. Then they pack up the leftover food and drive down to the marina and look at the moon. I still don't get anything to eat, but she lets me out of the bag so I can pee on a few trees.

They look at the moon, and they sing the same old song about it, and blather on the way they do. Then we all get in the car and go home.

I finally got leftover turkey a la king for dinner yesterday. This morning, I had to make a bit of a scene, but scored some more for breakfast. Tonight she mixed the last of it up with the dumb old kibble, so I had to pick through to get the good stuff, and leave the slimy bits of kibble in a heap on the floor beside my dish.

I realize that you can more or less survive on that kibble if you have to, but it's pretty weird how she thinks I can't tell the difference.

Full Moon

2011-06-14T12:40:00.001-07:00

Worship and celebration

Dancing and music

Lovemaking

Conception and birth are both likely and auspicious.

MEDITATION:

If possible, sit where you can see the moon. Otherwise, visualize the full moon hanging in the sky. Close your eyes and see the moon grow smaller and smaller, until it is just an intense point of light in the sky.

Then it will begin to grow larger again. As it begins to grow larger, you may say that it has taken a new form---the figure of a Deity, or an animal, or some other image; or it may be just the moon itself.

The image will grow larger and larger, will surpass the normal size of the moon, and will fill the night sky.

Then it will continue to grow larger, encompassing the earth, and surrounding you and filling you with its gravity and light.

Feel yourself in the moon and part of the moon, as it permeates your body.

Then the image will begin to grow smaller and recede, leaving some of its power behind, in your bones and blood.

The image will recede back to the small point of light in the sky. Then the point will begin to grow again, until you can open your eyes and see the full moon again as everyone sees it, hanging round in the sky.

Acceleration

2011-06-12T09:25:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last three days at a conference on "acceleration," our new community college buzz-word. There is some research indicating that under-prepared community college students can do as well or better with less remediation rather than more. There is a push to apply this principle to ESL, my field, which I find counter-intuitive.

Achieving academic proficiency in a second language is not really remediation, for one thing. Thinking of it as such might even be regarded as a subtle form of imperialism, since it is most often required of people from less powerful countries or communities who must establish squatters' rights in a dominant culture in order to improve their prospects. Certainly I couldn't do college-level work in any language but English, and neither could most other Americans. And plenty of long-established research suggests that it takes a number of years to get there.

My French, for instance, is probably more or less equivalent to my intermediate students' English. Suppose that I were a bit younger, found myself in a French-speaking country and wanted to get a university education there. I would have at least a few years of hard work to get ready for that, and would not be in any way served by an attempt to "accelerate" the process from a few years to one.

Anyway, after three days of sometimes inspirational and sometimes annoying pep talks, my conclusion is that, probably unbeknownst to the people actually running this conference, "acceleration" is a characteristically Californian spin on all the devastating budget cuts.

You see, it's actually good for the students to spend less time in school and reach their goals faster, and we can make this happen for them by working really, really hard and teaching really, really well, and oh, yes, spending less of the taxpayers' money, so it's a win-win all around.

People there were boasting about how teaching is their whole life, they need no other.

I tried this "teaching is my life" thing for a few years in the early '80's, during which time I drank a lot (something that was also in evidence after-hours at this conference). Then, throwing up on the compost heap in the back yard one night, I was blessed with a moment of realization that I stood poised in a window of opportunity between heavy drinking and truly addicted alcoholism, a good time to quit.

Without that hazy cloud of alcohol at the end of the day, "teaching is my life" no longer seemed quite so fulfilling, and I was forced to diversify my portfolio.

Waxing Moon

2011-06-04T12:30:00.000-07:00

Magical work for fertility, prosperity, growth and plenty:

Harvest crops and herbs that grow above the ground.

New Moon Divination for the Ailing Economy

2011-06-03T16:42:00.000-07:00

I am a Witch and not an economist. However, the current confusion and cluelessness of economists is giving me confidence in my intuitions.

The economy is not going to get better for any of the fiddling proposed by either Democrats or Republicans. The current economy has reached the hospice stage at which we work not for a recovery, but for an easy passing and auspicious rebirth.

The problem is that while most of us played Monopoly as kids, relatively few of us hung in to the end. Most of us got bored with the interminable length of the game, or frustrated with the older cousin who kept putting up hotels everywhere and charging outrageous rent. So we turned in our assets and wandered off to watch TV, or go for a swim. We never learned the lesson about capitalism that the game aptly demonstrates.

Monopoly ends when somebody like Cousin Dick finally has all the money and all the property, and nobody else has anything to play with, so there's no longer any game.

Now, when this happens, there happen to be options. Karl Marx predicted a proletarian revolution, but he did not realize how many proletarians were going to be distracted by literal interpretations of the Bible and the performance art of Sarah Palin. Another possibility, prescribed in a part of the Old Testament that modern fundamentalists generally overlook, is the Jubilee Year: to continue the Monopoly analogy, this means that you just start a new game. Cousin Dick has to give back all his play money and red plastic hotels, and everybody starts over again with an equal allotment of stuff, as dictated by the rules.

Or maybe, just maybe, there could be an entirely different kind of game that would be more fun.

New Moon

2011-06-03T09:49:00.001-07:00

(when the first sliver of the moon shows in the sky)

Divine the future (this is when the priestesses at Delphi prophesied)

Move to a new house

Trim hair or nails in order to make them grow faster

Sign contracts

Auspicious for:

Consecrations and initiations

Marriages and new partnerships

Major purchases

New enterprises, new investments, starting a business

When you see a new moon for the first time, salute Her by kissing your hand and saying, "New Moon, leave me as well as you found me."

(According to folk tradition, you are supposed to kneel on a rock while you do this, but in my neighborhood it is hard to find rocks large enough to kneel on.)

Tornado on the Connecticut River

2011-06-02T08:13:00.000-07:00

Way east of Berkeley, where Mrs. Drinkwalter originally came from:

At the Dark of the Moon

2011-05-30T18:45:00.000-07:00

Introspection, trance work, self-evalution

Dream work

Fast or eat sparingly

Don't overwork

Wrap yourself in a covering or veil of some kind, arranged so you can breathe properly (oxygen deprivation is not an essential part of the experience.)

2011-05-30T08:52:00.001-07:00

Smithsonian Article

The Air Tide Flows

2011-05-29T12:10:00.001-07:00

This season, between Beltane and Midsummer, is called the Time of Change--possibly because Beltane is one of the two hinges of the year that herald dramatic changes in energy and conditions.

The crops are sown, and now the fragile seedlings must take root and grow. The fields must be weeded and watered, relatively light work if diligently done. But now, the outcome of the past season's sowing depends on the vagaries of chance; the weather, the whims of marauding birds, forest creatures, otherworld spirits.

The veils between the worlds that opened at Beltane still remain thin. Connections are loose. All things are possible. The Lady and Lord, wholly absorbed with each other, leave their children to shift for themselves.

The time is more auspicious for divining than for sorcery. The lot-casting methods--the runes, Tarot, geomancy, the I Ching--will be the most effective ones.

On the Waning Moon

2011-05-29T11:39:00.000-07:00

End projects and relationships
Sell property
Clean house
Sort and throw things away
Prune, weed and cut back
Harvest root crops
Trip hair or nails to make them grow more slowly

Auspicious for:
Vacations and retreats
Evaluations and examinations
Magical workings for cleansing, banishing, warding, protection and exorcism
Surgery (wounds will bleed less)

2011-05-27T20:04:00.000-07:00

GRADUATION EDIQUETTE

1. NO CELL PHONE USE DURING THE GRADUATION

a) No Calls Please!

b) No Texting Please!

c) TURN THE CELL PHONE OFF. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

d) No Talking to Your Neighbor Once You Are Seated On Stage!

2. NO SLEEPING DURING THE PROGRAM

a) Pease Be Alert and Pay Attention Through-Out the Entirety of the Program - Speeches and Presentations.

b) We want our Graduates to Feel Special, and the Audience to SEE That You Believe Them To Be Special, and the Graduation Ceremony as well.

3. REMINDER! IF YOUR NAME DOES NOT APPEAR ON THE GRADUATION PROGRAM, DO NOT APPROACH THE PODIUM/MICORPHONE - AT ANY TIME!!!

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!

This was on the faculty seats on the stage along with our commencement programs, for us to peruse for our edification after we processed in.

We are not in the Ivy League, here. The sound system didn't work, and the keynote speaker was pretty tiresome, a fledgling local politician who was not only boring, which is par for the course, but embarrassingly off-topic. She grabbed us as captive audience for her campaign speech, only acknowledging our new AA graduates for a moment at the end, to encourage them to be inspired by her example. At least so I gathered, through the deficiencies of the sound system.

But the musical numbers were great, in spite of the sound system. We don't worry much about test scores around here, but we have got rhythm.

And our valedictorian was splendid, as is often the case. This year, a middle-aged Filipina with an articulate and radical economic agenda to save public education, which had a mostly black and brown crowd of 1500 standing and cheering. Somebody out there ought to be listening.

Merry May!

2011-05-01T11:13:00.000-07:00

A Tree Song

Rudyard Kipling

Of all the trees that grow so fair,

Old England to adorn,

Greater are none beneath the Sun,

Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.

Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs,

(All of a Midsummer morn!)

Surely we sing no little thing,

In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Oak of the Clay lived many a day,

Or ever AEneas began.

Ash of the Loam was a lady at home,

When Brut was an outlaw man.

Thorn of the Down saw New Troy Town

(From which was London born);

Witness hereby the ancientry

Of Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Yew that is old in churchyard-mould,

He breedeth a mighty bow.

Alder for shoes do wise men choose,

And beech for cups also.

But when ye have killed, and your bowl is spilled,

And your shoes are clean outworn,

Back ye must speed for all that ye need,

To Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Ellum she hateth mankind, and waiteth

Till every gust be laid,

To drop a limb on the head of him

That anyway trusts her shade:

But whether a lad be sober or sad,

Or mellow with ale from the horn,

He will take no wrong when he lieth along

'Neath Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight,

Or he would call it a sin;

But - we have been out in the woods all night,

A-conjuring Summer in!

And we bring you news by word of mouth-

Good news for cattle and corn-

Now is the Sun come up from the South,

With Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs

(All of a Midsummer morn):

England shall bide till Judgment Tide,

By Oak and Ash and Thorn!

Facebook Fishbowl

2011-04-30T14:02:00.000-07:00

I'm taking courses in how to teach online. This is part of my retirement plan, such as it is. (Teachers don't all get big fat pensions, by the way. Republicans lie a lot. But that's the topic for another post.)

Part of the current course has us exploring Facebook as a teaching tool. Apparently this is a great ploy for motivating middle school kids who are more easily seduced into education if it seems like something else. For my community college students, and myself, I worry about conducting class in public to such a degree. You can hide the posts from random googlers, I realize, but not the names of your "friends." Maintaining privacy on Facebook can be done, sort of, with the use of an alias that they don't want you to use and have software to spot. (Sybil Drinkwalter got past their radar, but Grammar as a first name did not.)

But you have to be savvy to stay in control of your privacy on Facebook, more savvy than most of my students, among them people being stalked by vengeful exes, young people with double identities (gay with conservative immigrant parents is one example of the complex scenarios that develop. Or a woman from a strictly traditional Muslim immigrant family whose friends and activities have become a bit more Americanized than others in her family realize). There are people with political and legal histories that provide any number of reasons for preferring privacy. And not one of them will want a prospective employer who googles them five years from now to see what their English is like now.

And I get nervous, too, viewing the spread of photographs on my new Facebook page in my legal name ... "people you might know" ... you betcha. There they all are, lined up in random order, Witches, occultists, community college students, community college administrators, my sister in Tacoma, my born again cousins in Texas, people from my high school class whom I haven't been in touch with for nearly half a century, and if it's been that long there obviously have been reasons why not. Of course, I don't have to friend them all, but if they want to friend me, it seems rude to ignore them. And it's disconcerting to know that there is software out there that can so instantly determine that I "might" know them all.

Why Easter Is So Late

2011-04-17T17:00:00.001-07:00

"Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or after the day of the vernal equinox."

And what is an ecclesiastical full moon, I hear you ask?

The web page I got this definition from, (http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/easter.php), does not explain except to say that an ecclesiastical full moon is not quite the same thing as an astronomical full moon, but that they are pretty close. I am sufficiently annoyed by the presumption of Christian ecclesiastics in setting up their own full moon, different from everybody else's, that I have not pursued the matter further.

Anyway, this year the moon was full only a few days before the Equinox, and will not be full again until the wee hours of the morning tomorrow, which is a Monday, putting off Easter until April 24th.

Easter is actually a perfectly good word for either holiday--ask your Christian ecclesiastics where the word comes from. Don't ask our fuzzier-brained Pagans, actually, many of whom are pretty sure it has to do with Ishtar. That similarity in sound is apparently pure accident, English and ancient Semitic languages not being very closely related. "Easter" does derive from a Germanic Goddess of the dawn.

The Christian scheduling strategy was to give their God the last word in the days when people were still talking to more than one. However, I think it was a miscalculation on their part to allow for quite so much lag time. This way the Pagans get the last word with May Eve, one of our real blockbusters, less then a week after.

And it is an inconvenience for us when the Spring Equinox and Easter are so widely separated in time, because Safeway doesn't have Easter candy for Pagan children.

My schoolteacher problem is that the spring break is always the week before Easter, even though probably no more than ten percent of my students celebrate it (most of them being Buddhists and Muslims). I am accustomed to a spring semester rhythm in which we do midterm exams just before spring break, take a week off to reflect on the implications, then come back and really get down to business. This year it looks as though we will be getting down to business far too late.

Kathy Mar has a wonderful song called "Everybody's Moon." For just $.99, download and listen to the whole thing.

Cookies

2011-03-04T20:28:00.000-08:00

So, a bank CEO, a Tea Party activist and a public employees' union member are sitting together at this table. In front of them is a plate with twelve cookies.

The CEO grabs eleven cookies and shoves them into his briefcase, then turns to the Tea Party member and says, "Look out for that union guy, he's gonna try to get some of your cookie."

The Reluctant Immigrant

2011-02-13T12:56:00.000-08:00

Every once in awhile one of my students' immigration stories starts to haunt me. Prakesh's maybe has the makings of a novel.

(Prakesh is not his real name--I Googled a list of common Nepali names.)

He stayed after class to explain why he had come in late and didn't have the assignment done, and little by little the story unfolded.

He is from a working-class family in Kathmandu, and never seriously thought about leaving. One time, as a passing lark, he and a bunch of his friends all put in applications for the U.S. immigration lottery. By one of those random twists of fate, Prakesh won.

After that, he didn't have much choice. The family pressure to go to America and make money was overwhelming. He had no contacts in the U.S., but picked San Francisco as a place that sounded good, got a job driving a cab all night and signed up for school during the day. I had him in another class a few years ago, and remember that his work was pretty good, but often late. Apparently he then got overwhelmed with loneliness and homesickness, and decided to give it up and go home. But after he got back to Kathmandu, his father became sick and money was needed for his medical care, so Prakesh had to return to America make more.

So here he is, living out a lonely and exhausting adventure that sprang unexpectedly from a long-ago joke.

Eating the Seeds

2011-02-12T09:23:00.001-08:00

Work is depressing these days, watching and even being expected to participate in the dismantling of the California public education system. In traditional agrarian societies, everyone knew that in times of famine you should not succumb to the temptation to eat next year's seed corn. By doing that, you delay starvation for only one more year, and then your death will be inevitable. If we jettison public education to save money, we only delay for one more generation the collapse of our civilization.

Political Uncorrectness Alert--Cultural Stereotypes Ahead

2011-02-10T21:06:00.000-08:00

Every semester we read Jack London's "Love of Life" or rather, this being quite a low-level ESL class, an ESL adaptation of it.

In this story, a gold prospector in the Klondike becomes injured, separated from his sidekick, and lost. He comes very near death--in his exhaustion and confusion, losing all his possessions, his gold, and his tools. He and an old, sick wolf stalk each other for days, each hoping the other will die first. Finally, summoning his last strength, he kills the wolf with his bare hands and sucks the blood to stay alive. Eventually he is rescued by a scientific expedition and cared for on their ship, where he is a bit of a nut case, hoards food and cannot believe he is safe.

For a writing assignment, I always ask the students to imagine this man a year later--where will he be, what will happen to him ("what will have happened to him" being too advanced a verb structure for this class.)

Well, most of the Asian immigrants like to see him safe at home with his family, his health regained and his trauma left behind. But the Mexicans and Central Americans, the male students anyway, say he goes right back to the Klondike to find his lost gold, or to prospect for more.

Maybe gives you a clue what the U.S. Border Patrol is up against ...

Fire Tide

2011-02-01T16:09:00.001-08:00

The Essay Contest

2011-01-29T15:18:00.000-08:00

Fred Nakamura was a California nisei who did time in a detention center during World War II as a teenager, and from there signed on to fight in Europe as soon as he was old enough.

Many years later, he earmarked a pot of money to sponsor an annual ESL essay contest at my college. Every spring I have worked there, we have held the contest; we decide on a topic, generally something to do with the immigrant experience or education or the American way of life in general, and give out beginning, intermediate and advanced prizes. The winning essays are often moving and original. We have a beautiful awards ceremony in the college theatre, the college newspaper takes pictures, and I often tear up.

This year, there was talk of not holding the contest. Everybody is stressed out, over-extended and exhausted, Fred Nakamura is no longer living, and nobody can think of an uplifting topic.

I volunteered to coordinate it, without the elaborate ceremony that really is what takes most of the work. I do think that if Fred could slog through Manzinar and World War II, we should be able to slog through funding cuts and a recession.

But we're still having trouble with a topic. Probably about the economic mess, since nobody around here can think about anything else. (They just laid off most of the support staff in disabled students' services, for example, which I actually think must be against the law.) But how to continue the tradition of positive thinking that attaches to the event?

The Ebbing Earth Tide

2011-01-16T12:36:00.000-08:00

The Earth Tide that flows at Samhain hardens to a standstill, bringing the time of Death when nothing moves. It is time of resignation, when we understand and learn to live with what we cannot change. At that time, a Witch feels the limits of her power. At the Winter Solstice, the Earth Tide ebbs and softens, and the powers of magic return. At this season, it is possible to move and change the hard things--rocks and bones, pain, anger, time. Like cold clay, you can hold the thing in your hand and let your body heat seep into it, working it, working it, continually, even without thinking as your mind moves to other things. Slowly and inevitably it will soften, and begin to yield to your will.

Awakening

2011-01-16T12:15:00.001-08:00

The God is an infant just starting to grow, and we must start growing as well, within ourselves.

The Goddess would still seem to be a sleeping Crone who has left us only Her wisdom. What must we do now? Let us use that wisdom.

We must prepare, not only in our minds but in our skills and tools to be used when the time comes.

We must put into our minds what will have to be done in the future and how to do it ...

This is our part: what is to be must first be foreseen, so that when the Goddess and God are ready, we are ready ...

Dyffd ap Tower

Not so happy New Year

2010-12-31T14:06:00.000-08:00

Honey the lab went after my piece of kibble. Not like I wanted it at the moment, I'd just got done playing with it, but maybe I might want it later, and anyway it was mine. So I went after her, then everything went black and I was screaming and Mrs. D. was screaming, and we went to two vets and the second one said I was a very lucky little dog. Lucky means that I have to stay in my crate a lot and get medicine rammed down my throat, one kind that tastes of chicken, which is OK, and another kind that tastes of bubble gum, not so much. And my shoulder hurts, hurts, hurts. Mrs. D. asked what's the long-term prognosis and the second vet said usually pretty good, just keep him quiet. Like there's anything much I want to do right now. Mrs. D. seems to be happy about the whole thing for some reason. A couple of people have said maybe I will learn something from the experience, but I don't know what's to learn. It is still my kibble.

Winter Solstice

2010-12-24T09:47:00.000-08:00

Greet the Light that is born in Darkness,
Greet the sun that is risen in the sky,
Greet the Lord returned to Earth,
Greet the king who is born to die.

Praise the living, praise the dead,
Praise the grain that makes our bread.

Hail the child newborn this morning,
Hail the turning of the Tide.

School's Out Again, Time to Pay Attention to the News

2010-12-19T10:53:00.000-08:00

The Dream Act-- talk about no-brainers.

750,000 young adults who are here, didn't choose to come here, most of whom aren't going anywhere, many of whom have nowhere else to go.

Now, which is the better plan?

a) Give them a choice between military service and college

b) Give them a choice between low-paid illegal employment (i.e. grunt work for cash under the table) or better-paid illegal employment selling crack.

However, this may be part of my weak grasp on economics. Perhaps Republican senators are profiting from plan b) in ways that I can't quite figure out.

Insights from the Community College Front

2010-12-19T09:31:00.000-08:00

Every semester, I make it a rule to learn something myself.

Lessons from Fall 2010:

1) Although adding a website is great resource for a face-to-face class, online learning is not a viable alternative to classroom learning for any but the technically savvy and academically experienced student; in my classes, such students are about one out of twenty. At this point, I have tried as hard as I could for a year, done everything I can think of--I've taken courses in how to do it, I've spent hours with my "hybrid" class in a computer lab showing them how to do it, I have spent more hours setting up a website than I have ever devoted to course prep in my life, I have roamed Google and U-Tube, searching out ways to make the website entertaining, at least as far is is possible for a 60-something teacher to entertain a class of mostly 20-somethings. At the end of the day, most of the students are not entertained, don't do the work, are confused about what to do and don't send me emails to tell me they are confused. A third of them don't pass the course, a figure I have never confronted before. The powers that be who want us to do these hybrid courses are always pulling out studies that show students learn as well or better online. Well, the subjects of these studies either aren't the same students I'm teaching, or aren't learning the same kind of things my students need to learn. Or the teachers who are doing it know something I don't, which I really wish they could explain to me.

2) Another class, the one where I teach them how to write a college research paper, was very successful this semester, apparently as the result of a change in textbook from one I really liked to one that kind of bored me. Instead of exploring the American cultural landscape through luminous writing from the likes of Langston Hughes, Anzia Yezierska and Amy Tan, we plowed through pages on pages of textbook passages from various disciplines, interspersed with sample research papers. When they came to write their own final research papers, it turned out that the class had benefited a good deal from all this "scaffolding," to use a current education buzz word. I also found out that many of them are more interested in ecomomics than I am, and actually understand it rather better. Counter-intuitive moral: what bores the teacher can be right for the students.

2010-12-19T09:16:00.000-08:00

It's been a long silence. After suggesting an intention to guide readers through the wheel of the year, Mrs. Drinkwalter then abandoned them in the Dark Time. The wheel of the year tends to do that, but next year she will try to provide more information.

Now the nights are long but full of expectation. The Tide of Earth that flowed at Samhain is reaching its deepest extent, frozen and hard. We wait for change.

The Season of the Hag

2010-09-23T22:34:00.000-07:00

Your God has left you, and your Mother Goddess, too, has her own child in her, and her own concerns.

For the season to come, you are left in my care, and things are going to be a little different.

Do not come to me for food, or shelter, or comfort, for these I have no power to give.

I have no power to save you, from anything at all.

But I am the shadow that will never leave you, the sum of all that you truly know.

Be still and listen, and you will hear me speak.

For this time, shelter, comfort, feed and save yourselves and each other, as best you can.

My season is no more eternal than any season.

The world will grow bright again.

Your Lady return to you a bright maiden,

Your God will come as a newborn child.

Until that day be still, wait, listen, take care.

The Blood Moon

2010-09-23T22:06:00.001-07:00

The full moon that follows the Fall Equinox is called the Blood Moon. This year they fell over each other, I don't know which came first, and I am a bit behindhand for both.

The grain harvest done, the harvest of blood begins. In the old days, this was to choose the breeding stock to feed through the winter, and kill and salt down the rest.

The tide now is one for setting priorities, and making hard choices.

At Mabon we hold a feast with grain, no meat, for the killing time has not yet begun. With the Blood Moon, the eating of meat begins.

There is a traditional prayer for meat, to honor the animals that feed us:

By the Power that slays you, I too will be slain,

And I too will be consumed.

The law which delivers you until my hands

Will deliver me unto other hands.

My blood and your blood run together

In the sap that feeds the tree of life.

Life comes from Life, and mine from yours.

May my life be worthy of your death.

Fall Equinox: The Grain Harvest

2010-09-18T17:38:00.001-07:00

Breath and spark of life, Sun born in darkness,

Who brought light and fire to the land;

Who warmed the Maiden and danced with Her,

Leading Her to Motherhood of all;

The King we crowned on a summer’s day

As he rose to his throne in the sky;

All that He gave Her, she brings forth many-fold.

That we and our children and our children’s children

May take their gifts and go forward, beyond the farthest hill, across the farthest sea,

Even to the stars.

Now His fires are burning low and what light He has grows feeble.

There is more power in the bread than there is in Him,

And when we have eaten of it, He will be gone.

The fields are bare, it is almost time for Him to go.

Together They celebrate the Gift of Life, one last time.

from Dyffd ap Tower

Harvest Moon

2010-08-26T19:26:00.000-07:00

"All the moons are beautiful, but this one is a little older, a little wiser..."

The Moon is the mirror of the Great Mother, and like her, at this season, the moon gives and takes.

She gives light for the harvest; I remember once driving over Altamont Pass at the time of the August Moon, at dusk, with the moon and the sun both shining in the sky, and all the windmills turning. She takes the fatigue at day's done, and transforms it to wisdom.

2010-08-25T22:04:00.000-07:00

The moon is full. Mrs. Drinkwalter did not ignore this, but didn't have time to write about it. Flew back to California last week, went back to work right away, classes started this Monday. More later.

New Mosque on Park Place: Another No-Brainer

2010-08-15T18:45:00.000-07:00

Traveling broadens one's perspectives in more ways than one. It's when traveling that I end up watching random bits of FoxNews, and find out they are currently talking about over in right field.

This morning, over breakfast with my niece at a Holiday Inn in Manchester, New Hampshire, I learned that “controversy rages” over a Muslim congregation's plans to build a new mosque a few blocks from Ground Zero. What's more, Obama is “under fire” for observing that they have a right to do so.

If indeed there is actually some kind of controversy over this project, Obama, being an expert in constitutional law, probably felt called upon to provide some sort reality check.

There is no point wasting effort on a “raging controversy” or putting Obama “under fire” over this. People who want to prevent a congregation from building a place of worship should be saving their energies for the far more challenging project of amending the Bill of Rights.

Lammas Tide

2010-07-31T18:38:00.000-07:00

Lammas marks the time when the ebbing air tide turns, and the water tide flows in.
The ebbing air tide has been a time of waiting, patience and paying attention.

When the water tide flows, it will bring a time of ripeness, of completion; a time to gather the fruits of your labor, and a time for truths to be known. This is the first of the three harvests, the harvest of fruit. With the Fall Equinox comes the harvest of grain, and with Samhain, the harvest of blood.

This, like the planting time from the Spring Equinox to Beltane, is a period of intense hard work. It is a time of intense activity, both work and play.

The Mother at this time is at the height of Her power, her breasts flowing with milk at the very sound of a child's cry. Honor Her with works of healing and compassion, and by with a portion of each thing you earn or reap. The Mother of All Living tells us that she demands no sacrifice; she says this because she needs to make no such demand; a portion of every labor and every love returns to Her by the law of Nature. When that return is brought to Her consciously and with gratitude, she rewards Her children by opening to them the storehouse of Her wisdom; the truth which lies there is our own, which She has saved for us from our gifts of past seasons. The first fruits of harvest are come, and stores saved from the last harvest may now be safely eaten since we are now assured that they will soon be replentished. Thus, at this season we eat new fruit and old meat, celebrating new achievements and old wisdom.

Love and labor are one in the Mother at this season. Seek to perform all your work with love, and work to sustain your love for others.

Like the Planting Time this is a season which, in the old days, required the give-and-take of community effort, as large teams harvested one farm after another. Look carefully at the patterns of reciprocity in your relationships with those love and care about, ask yourself whether they are balanced and fair, and what you can do to improve their equilibrium.

Try to float to the surface of the Tide, to take a long and broad view of things so as to maintain your perspective. Take time from your full and busy days to study and contemplate the huge expanses of space and time--astrophysics, karma, your past lives. This is the most productive Tide for trance divination, for travelling in trance and dream the roads that lead to the future and the past.

The Lammas Queen

2010-07-31T18:05:00.000-07:00

Come to me now, in the first hour of harvest,
Hour of falling wind and sun,
And the sweet rushing in of the salt sea tide.
Now I am fruit, moist and heavy before it falls.
Mine is the milk that lets down and flows
To the sound of a hungry cry.
I claim as sacrifice the first fruit of your labor,
And return to you from my golden store,
The fruit of your labors in seasons past.
I bare my breast and the world spills forth;
Joy and loss and flame and shadow.
Drink and be whole, for the joy will last

Thunder Moon

2010-07-25T15:00:00.001-07:00

The hot, humid days jostle and bump up against each other until, every few days, there is a small eruption of thunder, lightning and rain. The weather seers always predict a wilder storm than ever occurs. We hope for the storm to break the heat, but it doesn't much, or for long.

The old idea was to pray to the Thunder God for mercy and safety in the storm.

But at the moment I'm praying rather for a great breaking storm to relieve the tedium and lighten the heavy air.

The Time of Ripening

2010-07-20T11:12:00.001-07:00

(The ebbing Air Tide, between Midsummer and Lammas)

This is a time, most of all, for attention and care. Things are growing close to fruition, and the only thing to worry about is that ill luck and carelessness may be the ruin of all you have gained. There is little to be done now in the way of strenuous work, but much need for watchfulness.

Take reasonable precautions against accidents and natural disasters. Trust your own wisdom and intuition, but also seek out the advice of those wiser and more knowledgeable than you.

Take stock of uncompleted jobs and unfinished business in your life, and give yourself to the possibly tedious or emotionally demanding tasks of wrapping things up, bringing things to closure, or polishing and perfecting.

Set yourself the exercise of striving for perfection in some piece of work. Seek also to perfect knowledge, skills, and relationships. Marshall your energy and organize your resources for the busy and demanding Harvest Time to come.

The Goddess and God at this time are the mature Mother and Father of creation, crowned Queen and King. They are Titania and Oberon, recovered from their Midsummer mischief and confusion, ruling together reconciled and fulfilled. Let their joy and playfulness lighten the mood of a serious time

Heat Wave

2010-07-18T20:25:00.001-07:00

Let's hope it's a heat wave, anyway, and not the new summer.

Mrs. Drinkwalter and Bobby are not North of Berkeley for the summer, but way way to the east of Berkeley. Every summer, they leave one of the few parts of the U.S. that is comfortable in July. Mrs. Drinkwalter does this because blood is thicker than water. Bobby goes along because he is a very small dog who is zipped into a mesh and canvas carry-on bag and given little choice in the matter.

When the temperature is slightly above 100 and the humidity slightly below 100, lassitude and depression take over.

My friends in Texas deal with similar weather, but live with high-powered air conditioning that is always ready at the flick of a switch. Here in New England we endlessly fiddle with fans and cranky window AC units that have to be hauled out of closets. We experiment with, and argue about, when to open or close which windows and doors, when to draw the curtains, how much time can reasonably be spent in the town pond.

Everybody's weak points get wobblier. Sad people get sadder, crazy people get crazier, the kids squabble, the dogs behave badly.

Nothing much is accomplished.

The Case Against Healthy Living

2010-07-05T17:16:00.000-07:00

My mom, at 90, (that's microsoft clip art on the left, I do respect her privacy), has more or less lost her mind. She has gone from crabby and forgetful, to nasty and clueless, to weirdly paranoid. She believes that there is a conspiracy afoot to use her for medical experiments and collect her money. We, her children, are required to answer trick questions to prove that we are who we say we are, and not part of this plot. My sister flunked because she couldn't remember her birth weight.

My parents are cousins, and the traits they share emerge in all their offspring. Many of these traits are actually kind of cool. Good skin. High HDL. Verbal intelligence. A sense of humor. One of the not-cool traits, it now appears, is a decline into disabling dementia in the late 80's. My dad suffered only a year of or two of vagueness before he died of a stroke at 87. My mom, who has lived the healthiest life imaginable in every way, still has nothing life-threatening wrong with her at all. Her heart is fine, her lungs are fine, no diabetes. She has the blood pressure and lab results of a 30-year-old. She has arthritis, and she is mad as a coot. People in her family have made it past 100. This could go on for years.

I hope very much to follow my father's model. I am revising my ideas about healthy living. I want that stroke or heart attack that will finish me off before the paranoid delusions set in. I figure that by eating enough doughnuts and not exercising too much, I might be able to time it about right.

Honey Moon

2010-06-25T18:34:00.000-07:00

This full moon, the one following the Summer Solstice, was the auspicious time to collect honey for mead.

And because June is traditional for marriages-- a prudent necessity given the way Beltane was celebrated--the period following was the time of the Honey Moon.

It's a warm and beautiful time. Enjoy.

The Turning of the Tide at Midsummer

2010-06-19T16:54:00.000-07:00

Midsummer marks the time when the Air Tide turns and begins to ebb. The Air Tide began to flow at Beltane. The past season has been one of change; things have been in transition, and there has been an element of chance in everything, as some seedlings took root and others were stillborn.

With the turning of the Air Tide, the season of ripening begins. Now we know which of the seeds of time have taken root and will grow. It is a time for dedication, patience and awareness. The work of the coming season will be watering and weeding, watching and protecting that which has taken root.

Midsummer Hymn

2010-06-18T17:13:00.000-07:00

(Sung to the tune of the Gaelic song "Samradh, Samradh")

Summer, Summer, milk of the heifers,
We have brought the Summer in
Golden Summer, Wind and Water,
We have brought the Summer in,

Hail to the God, who brings us His blessing,
Hail to the sun a-rising high
Hail to Him now in his hour of crowning,
Hail to the King who’s born to die.

Summer, Summer milk of the heifers
He has brought the summer in
Sowed the corn and wisely tended
He has brought the summer in.

Hail to the bridegroom, love of our Lady,
Hail to the plow that tilled the ground
Praise to him now for all he’s given
Bringer of life to wear the crown.

Summer, Summer milk of the heifers
He has brought the summer in
Sowed the corn and wisely tended
He has brought the summer in.

Summer, Summer, milk of the heifers,
We have brought the Summer in
Golden Summer, Wind and Water,
We have brought the Summer in.

Hard Stuff: War

2010-06-13T08:45:00.000-07:00

Of course, BP is indispensible because they have not just any old government contracts, but big, fat defense contracts. Without them, we might not be able to conduct the war. Wars, rather. Most unfortunate.

It’s a tough issue now, of course. But Mrs. Drinkwalter could have told them there were probably no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The U.S. and other western powers had been selling arms to Saddam for years, and were in a position to know pretty much what he did or didn’t have.

Mrs. Drinkwalter could also have explained the folly of going to war in response to the terrible events of 9-11. The things that happened that day, however tragic and horrifying, did not constitute an act of war. They were crimes. The way to fight crime is with police work. Careful, well-organized police work that uses under-cover investigation, builds community support, waits, watches and connects dots, and moves in to make arrests as soon as there is enough evidence to stand up in court and hopefully before the suspects realize they are in trouble. Simply put, the kind of police work that might have stopped 9-11 before it happened.

Just after 9-11, the U.S. had an unprecedented opportunity to lead the world community in an international police effort to combat crimes of terror. But what did they do? (Note: it is customary to use the pronoun “we,” not “they,” to refer to the actions of one’s government, as indeed I did through the Vietnam war and various other misadventures, but under the Bush administration I made a decision to opt out of this rhetorical “we.”)

They gave everybody to understand that somehow we had been invaded by Iraq, easily done because of the weak grasp of world history and geography produced in America’s public schools, and sent in ground troops. Apparently with fantasies of being welcomed as liberators like GI’s marching through the streets of Naples at the end of the Second World War.

Obama has taken the position that the U.S. needs to be in Afghanistan, but not in Iraq. This is perhaps an expression of his centrist philosophy, a stupid, pointless war being the obvious middle point between two stupid, pointless wars and none. But stupid and pointless it is, nonetheless. For awhile, it looked as though Afghanistan was Russian for Vietnam. Unfortunately it also appears to be Vietnam for the U.S. all over again, as well.

And, of course, quite aside from questions of effective crime-control strategy and international law, the really dumb part of these wars is that they cost a whole lot of money that we never had, with obvious impact on the economy.

The problem for the Cocktail Party platform is constructing any kind of policy proposal out of "I could have told you that all along. What the **** are you going to do now?"

For starters, they can stop raking in more profits from government contracts..

2010-06-05T12:22:00.001-07:00

The EPA, apparently, has the authority to impose a sanction known as "discretionary debarment," which bars an agency from receiving government contracts.

I'd say BP is a prime candidate for this sanction, starting right about now. These guys don't seem to be in nearly enough trouble yet. Do they need to be handled with kid gloves because they're the ones who own the equipment needed to clean up the mess? Or are they just another of these companies that is too big to fail?

ProPublica seems to be a good source on the topic.

Sarah Palin, of course, can be counted on for comic relief. It's environmentalists who are actually responsible for this spill--let her expain it.

OK, School's Out, Now to the Hard Stuff...

2010-05-31T15:55:00.000-07:00

What do about the oil spill? Or more to the point, since apparently nothing can be done about the oil spill, what to do about BP?

The position of the Cocktail Party is that BP, as a company, is finished. This is not the first time they have been caught violating maintenance safety regulations in the interest of more profit, but it should definitely be the last. Now their bankroll has a lot of bills to pay—not just the clean-up operations, which will take years, or damages due to the families of the men killed on the oil rig, but damages, unemployment benefits, relocation, job training and job placement services for all those folks who can no longer make a living in fishing and tourist industries along the Gulf Coast. And when they get done with that, they can support conservation efforts to re-establish the marine and marshland species that are probably going to be driven extinct.

However, the people now in charge of BP should probably not be trusted to oversee these projects. Some responsible non-profit needs to take over the administration of the funds, while those guys do some jail time and then start over with entry-level jobs in retail.

Wheee!

2010-05-31T08:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Mrs. D. graded the last term paper, and then she went online and put in all the grades, just a few days overdue. Then she checked her email and there was this one from a guy who just got a "D," sending her all his missing assigments, or some of them anyway, and explaining how they were late because his Internet connection was down, and she just laughed.

Then my brother came over and we went to the little-dog park. My brother ran around and chased girl dogs, since he is really into that kind of thing. I met my dog park friend and fellow-eunuch Bobo the poodle and we sat in the sun together. Then we all took a little walk and went back to my house and sat around and barked at stuff from the windows.

Today Mrs.D. and I are going for two walks, in the morning and again in the afternoon. I love summer.

Sun Moon

2010-05-25T14:46:00.000-07:00

Sun Moon, Dyad Moon, are names for the Full Moon that falls in Gemini. (Incidentally, the "moon falling in Gemini" is a different matter from the Moon being "in Gemini" in an astrological chart. When I talk about the Full Moon that falls in Gemini, I mean the Full Moon that falls sometime from May 21 to June 21.) The Dyad Moon will be full on Thursday, May 27.

It's a time when opposites attract; magically good for working on relationships. It's a time when differences can turn from a liability to an asset.

I think this applies more to personal differences than political ones. The Moon is not very political.

But we can hope for the energies of the night to lend themselves to some less than deadly resolution to the differences on the Korean Peninsula.

Guns

2010-05-24T20:59:00.000-07:00

I've been musing about the Cocktail Party platform for a few days. I made the mistake of starting with the hard stuff, like war and the economy, but have realized that those issues will take awhile. Both of these debacles could easily have been prevented if I had been consulted earlier, but the people in charge rarely think to do that.

Guns, I think, will be an easy issue. They seem to be very important to a lot of the Tea Party folks, so they could be a handy bargaining chip. I used to believe in gun control, but that was before I did a stint teaching drug smugglers out at my local federal prison, where I learned more than I had previously known or really even wanted to know about the extent and resources of the criminal underworld. Guns are probably one of those things like mind-altering substances and abortions, which can't be stopped with laws. Prohibition just creates inconveniences for the affluent, dangers the poor, and a lot of income for outlaw profiteers.

So, it's a deal. In the cause of freedom, we will have legal abortions, legal marijuana, gay marriage, and no state religion. They can keep their guns.

Cocktail Party

2010-05-21T08:37:00.000-07:00

A good friend of mine has been going to Coffee Parties, and last night I Googled the topic. It seems to be a rational response to the Tea Party, but the more I think about it, the more I'm for polarization. Being reasonable sometimes does little but honor your opponents with more seriousness than they deserve.

A Cocktail Party sounds like more fun. A wide selection of colorful mixed drinks, a shifting cast of characters, more or less intelligent conversation, well-oiled laughter and the faint possibility of things getting a bit wild.

Maybe the Cocktail Party is kind of socialist. However, the fact is that we have been living in a socialist country for quite some time now. Socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor. And this system has recently written some of the biggest welfare checks for some of the biggest welfare frauds in history. But let's leave aside the word "socialism," since it seems to upset everybody. Maybe all we need is free enterprise for the rich and compassion for the poor. Or maybe it's a bit more complicated than that. The party is far from over.

However, freedom and compassion will be the starting premises. Stand by for planks in the platform.

Term Papers

2010-05-19T19:01:00.001-07:00

They are in, at least the ones that are in on time, in a heap that will dominate my life for the next week. The students are (theoretically) advanced English language learners who can take the freshman comp transfer course next semester if they pass mine.

This moment at the end of the semester always reveals my teaching mission in its full array, sublime to ridiculous. I teach immigrant kids who have spent a few years in Oakland high schools, learning very little except how to text, how to highlight, copy and paste from the Internet, and how to be rude to teachers. Also rich kids who have washed up in the academic systems of their native countries, whose parents send them to America with the idea that if at least they can learn English, they will be employable at something. ("I call home, my father ask me how is your English?" wrote one, poignantly, in the first paper of the year, the personal experience assignment. "I say, good enough get a job in China, can I come home now?") Some of these actually turn out to be late bloomers or kids with learning disabilities who blossom in the more flexible and forgiving environment of an American community college.

I also teach people who will be in graduate school at UC five years from now, Japanese journalists seeking out a gritty, authentic American setting in which to hone their English, Tibetan monks so they can minister to California Buddhists, and the people who may one day be running Burma, if the democratic change of government they hope for allows them to return.

One of the lows this semester is the kid who turned up for his student-teacher conference with a "draft" of his final paper that I could see at first glance was copied from somewhere, and Googling the first sentence found to be from the Huffington Post. We talked about what he might have enough interest in to write his own paper about, and came up with basketball. My office mate, overhearing us and moved with sympathy, found and printed out an interesting article about how cultural differences affect basketball and the U.S. in China. My student and I agreed that he could find some more information and write a paper about that. At a second conference a week later, he hadn't been able to find anything. Setting our sights lower, since time was getting short, I suggested just finding out about the Chinese players in the NBA. This morning, the due date of the paper, I clicked open my email at 7:25 to find an email from this student, sent at 12:20 a.m.; since he hasn't been able to find any information about Chinese players in the NBA, he proposes to write his paper about "Animosity between China and Taiwan." It wasn't one of the papers that came in today, but the title was copied and pasted from somewhere, retaining its original font, so I am not very optimistic.

But then I have the student from (former Soviet) Georgia who connects current American approaches to education to their philosphical roots, Hirsch and his Core Knowledge curriculum to Locke's empiricism, the intentional learning movement to Plato's dialogues, in prose that is all the more charming for its occasional quaintness of word order. And a paper dear to my heart, I didn't tell this student my opinions on the matter, honest and truly, about how high-stakes standardized testing encourages dishonesty at all levels of an educational system, arguments backed up by research and some entertaining Chinese anecdotes.

So now, to work.

Things to Do With a Ball

2010-05-18T22:44:00.000-07:00

When my brother comes to play, here’s what we do.

Make Mrs. D. throw the ball and see who can catch it first.
The dog who catches it brings it back and gets kibble.
While he’s busy eating, the other dog grabs the ball and makes her throw it.
Repeat steps 1-3.
Sometimes we hide the ball and bark so she has to come get it. Here are some good places:
a) In the magazine rack
b) In one of her shoes
c) In the kitchen wastebasket
d) Get into the bag of recycling and find a good box, so you can hide the ball in that. Spread all the other paper and cardboard across the kitchen floor.
Find another ball and get two games going at once.
Settle down and chew on the balls for while.
When that gets boring, start all over again.
If skateboarders go by outside, stop everything, jump up the sofa where you can see them, and see which one of you can go more completely berserk.

2010-05-14T11:23:00.000-07:00

Astute Pagan followers might have noticed that Beltane went by without comment on this page. This is because my job grows more voracious with budget cuts that do not threaten my tenured position, but load it with work that used to be part of other people's job descriptions. The Job ate up Yule long ago, since Yule is right about when fall semester grades are due, and until they are in there is nothing to even think about celebrating. Now the semester endgame seems to have eaten Beltane. There is also a certain vagueness about how tired, overworked old people should best celebrate this particular festival.

There was a delicious breakfast at a friend's after the the Morris Dancers danced up the sun on Inspiration Point in Tilden, and later the short, sweet, darkness of the Witches' Sabbat. Then the next day, some of us had a somewhat less than delicious brunch at Denny's (affordable and convenient, don't ask) and paid a visit to the free book exchange, a suitable mark of deference to the flowing of the Air Tide.

The fire tide began to ebb at the Spring Equinox. This has been the sowing season, when seeds have been planted physically, spiritually and emotionally. When the air tide flows, it brings the Time of Change, when the new plants must be nurtured and protected while miracles of growth and transformation take place. It is also the time when the Goddess and God come together in love, and humankind should do them honor by following suit-- either with one another or in solitary fashion, uniting the powers of the Goddess and the God within the self. It is well to begin this season with the wholeness and balance of this union, since the Time of Change is an unsettled and unpredictable time, when seedlings are tender and vulnerable, and things can go one way or another as the wind blows. It is not a season responsive to the works of magic; it is a time when the outcomes of our efforts are subject to the winds chance, to the flights of marauding birds and the whims of otherworld sprits. The veils between the worlds which opened at Beltane still remain thin. Connections are loose. All things are possible.

The Lady and Lord, locked in passionate embrace and wholly occupied with each other, leave their human children to shift for themselves.The most important work of this time is not work at all. Seek out the pleasures of the season and take joy in them; in lovemaking, in song and dance, in the joys of all unions and the joys of the mind and spirit. Take advantage of the vagaries of fate to which you are subject, seeking pleasure and new knowledge wherever they take you. In this season, honor the Lady and the Lord in the beauty of the world around you, and honor them in others and within yourself.

Malcolm X Day

2010-05-14T11:12:00.001-07:00

I work at the college where the Black Panthers got started. Well, technically, the college where the Black Panthers got started was then moved by the District from the border of Oakland to Berkeley to the Oakland Hills, in an attempt to calm things down. There it has languished from low energy and enrollment ever since, while the radicals just moved down 880 to my college instead.

When I tell people in other parts of the world that we have a Malcolm X holiday, they roll their eyes--how Berkeley can you get. However, Malcolm had the good foresight to be born just before finals week, when a long weekend endears him to students and staff alike, and gives me time to post to my blog.

Rose Moon Rose

2010-04-28T19:37:00.000-07:00

By surprise, in the cold and rain,

the moon of a fertile love

long past,

with only a little vigilance and care,

The Rose Moon Rose.

The Problem with Those ******* Tests

2010-04-25T13:17:00.000-07:00

I had an interesting box lunch at a state-wide teachers’ conference yesterday; English teachers of high school students on one side of the room and of students entering college on the other. On each side of the room, teachers were divided into small groups and each group composed a list of four or five things their students needed to know in order to succeed in their respective courses. Then each group joined with a group from the other side of the room, and compared notes, and finally there was a whole-group sharing of results

The results were both illuminating and disturbing. The high school teachers’ responses focused on specific skills and information apparently required to prepare for standardized testing; identifying genres, terms, vocabulary, even test-taking skills. The college teachers did not answer this question in terms of specific knowledge at all. In the final discussion, it became clear that our side of the room we are actually quite flexible about what, specifically, we are prepared to teach; if they don’t know the difference between an argumentative essay and a cause-and-effect essay, we are ready with numerous examples. At the same time, we expect resourcefulness and initiative from our students that the high school teachers do not; we want them to go look up things they don't understand and to ask us if they are still confused. Our responses to the question of student success had largely to do with what might be described as student identity: taking responsibility for their own learning, asking for clarification, knowing how to find and evaluate information, willingness to examine and evaluate conflicting information and points of view, and (curiously not mentioned by the high school teachers) understanding that they need to come to class, come on time and do all the assignments, and that not doing those things throughout the semester leads inevitably to a low grade.

Responses from these two groups of teachers were apples and oranges. High school teachers are forced, because of the high stakes of the standardized tests, to focus on knowledge specifics. Success in college depends less on what, exactly, students already know than on how willing and able they are to find out. Whatever it is those tests measure, it isn’t college readiness.

Perhaps a better test of college readiness might be a sort of individualized information scavenger hunt. Each student gets his or her own randomly selected list of questions, and an hour or so in a library to find the answers.

2010-04-08T15:11:00.000-07:00

Bobby, here. Mrs. D. finally figured out how to get me an email address and get me onto this blog. A few false starts, including figuring out that she can't sign me up for an email account using my real birth date, duh...like I said before, not the brightest chipmunk in the tree. I'm about 45 in dog years, but they don't know how that works at Google.

We went to Texas for Spring Break, where things are not going especially well. We're staying with the folks who have a pet pig I'm not allowed to chase, and now they have a new puppy with no manners that I'm also supposed to get along with. This puppy thinks I am a puppy, apparently. I'm not.

The humans seem to be enjoying themselves, however. They think the puppy is cute, and they think the things they say to each other are important and sometimes even funny.

I am hunkered down and hoping for better days, but just thought I'd let you know I'm hooked up.

Wind Moon Waning

2010-04-02T19:33:00.000-07:00

The Moon in Aries, after the Spring Equinox, called by disparate names—magic moon, seed moon, wind moon. Why this one should be more magic than any other, I don’t know. For the best Magic, I would favor the Harvest Moon, the one that falls in Virgo, in late August or early September, but perhaps that’s because I’m a Virgo myself.

Seed Moon makes sense, because the Spring Equinox begins the Planting Time, when the ebb-tide of Fire makes the earth ready for the powers of humankind to sow it.

But this year it was most of all the Wind Moon, blustery and wet. Monday night we met at the accustomed bar and hofbrau down near the shore, with our long-standing plan to go down to the water to greet the Moon after dinner. But one friend was sick, another exhausted, the weather impossible. Three of us drank, ate, felt kind of old, and called it a night. It felt like a defeat of sorts.

The work week has passed, the wind and rain continue. Hard on the old joints. A flyer from the teachers’ union in our mailboxes at work urges us to consider retiring now, before the current contract expires, because after they negotiate a new contract our retirement benefits may look rather different. However, I think my Magic for this season will be to just keep doing what I do, wind or no wind.

2010-03-21T15:15:00.000-07:00

The story behind the way of things runs in a circle, and can be entered at any moment of the year.

This is the time of the God's transformation from child to man. He beholds the Lady, now a mature maiden, and is overwhelmed with love. She is ready for union, but knows that he is not yet ready for her.

Some say that there must be a swift, secret mating at this time, because it is nine months from now that the new God will be born. But there is really no need for the Gods to conform to the biological time frame of humankind, or any other species.

Be that as it may, the Lady sends him away, into the Greenwood. She gives him work to do, to prove his manhood; mysterious tasks, secret gifts--it is whispered between them, what is to do be done.

She sends him away, to live wild in the Greenwood until time and work are accomplished. She promises that if he does all that she requires, she will meet him on May Eve in the Greenwood, and become his wife.

Equinox

2010-03-20T19:25:00.000-07:00

At the Spring Equinox, I was told by by first teacher of the Craft, the Fire tide reaches its height and begins to ebb. It marks the coming-of-age of the young God, who was born at Yule and will be crowned at Midsummer. With the ebbing of the fire tide comes the season for sowing; seed is sown for new life, new workings and new endeavors. Fire has the power to destroy and create anew, and now, in the ebb-tide, I have found that a Witch's power grows--the tides flow at the Great Sabbats, ushering in times ruled by the powers of Nature; the ebb-tides are more susceptible to the influence of human magic.

This, and the time of Harvest between Lammas and the Fall Equinox, are the two most demanding times of the year.

There may be hard work on many levels--professional, emotional, and magical. Projects to start, new developments in your relationships with others. Magical work that you undertake at this time may have far-reaching implications. All this work will use to the utmost the resources you have been mustering during the past few seasons.

You may well have feelings of pressure and urgency about all that needs to be done during this season, and you may find that you have little or no leisure time for a while. Be sure that you get enough food, sleep, and rest to sustain your health. Pay conscious attention to time
management, and do not get swept away by the feeling that you are too busy to be organized.

Seek out companions in your work whose company gives you pleasure and who share your values and goals. Such friends will make the work more enjoyable, and mutual-assistance arrangements can help get jobs done.

This is a time for sharing resources and tools, as in the old days a team of oxen and a plow could be shared around several farms until all the fields were sown.

The Bottom Five Percent

2010-03-17T17:13:00.000-07:00

It’s good to hear that the Obama administration has taken notice of the failures of No Child Left Behind—beginning with the cruel irony of its name, because it has been leaving so very many children behind. (The ones I know best are the teenaged immigrants of Oakland who were abandoned in a weird triage program that funnels a strapped urban school system’s limited resources into the intensive coaching of the kids haven’t passed the test yet, but might. Fifteen-year-olds who turn up not speaking English aren’t going to pass the test any time before the age of 18, so just provide some kind of nominally supervised space for them to hang out in for a year until they can drop out. Then, if they or their families still have any aspirations for them, they will turn up in a community college where we do, in fact, have classes and teachers for them.)

But to return to Obama’s proposed renovations. Now, I wanted Obama with all my heart, but when it comes to education, which is what I do, I’m starting to feel like what Tom Lehrer described, in another context long ago, as a Christian Scientist with appendicitis. First we heard about competitive grants and a “race for the top.” A race is by definition something that most people lose. It is not a good paradigm for public education. To get a competitive grant, you need a good grant writer. Good grant writers cost money. I’ve worked in inner city schools where nobody had the time or energy to fill out the forms for the most obvious non-competitive funds, let along any hard-to-get grants.

Here in California we lost this race, being too broke or too disorganized or too union-ridden or something. (California schools have a very high proportion of English language learners, and we who teach them have an unreasonable tendency to resent evaluations made of them, and us, based on tests administered only in a language they don't yet know very well.) But I think in fact that failling to qualify for this new game plan may be a blessing in disguise. Now the idea is to target the lowest five percent of the low-performing schools, and be very, very tough with them. Fire teachers and principals, who are obviously the culprits who are responsible. Give their jobs to creative and enthusiastic people who are waiting in the wings, just dying to take over. You snooze, you lose.

For several years, I worked as the coordinator of a family literacy program, funded by a competitive grant won by Catholic Charities, which can pay grant writers, which operated out of the lowest-performing elementary school in California. For a year or two it was second to the bottom, edged up by another one down in the LA area. But then we slipped down to the place of honor once again. It is probably a lot like the lowest-performing elementary school in most other states.

There is a lot about this kind of school that Obama does not seem to know. For one thing, before you go firing the staff, many of whom who are either recent college graduates rapidly recovering from their idealism or genuine saints hanging in there from dogged dedication, be very sure that you really have figured out who else wants to work there. It's not like casting a Broadway show, or anything like that. The jobs were very hard to fill, as I recollect. Perhaps in the present job market people are more available, but they won’t be any more creative or enthusiastic.

And please, before you blame the school for those low test scores, have a look at the community it's sitting in. The school where I worked serves two communities, living side by side in more or less equal numbers, with no love lost between them. It is an inner-city African-American neighborhood devastated by the drug epidemic. Kids damaged by drugs before they were born, kids surfing sofas, kids raised by impoverished and exhausted elderly relatives who do their best while the parents are off somewhere burning up the welfare checks in their crack pipes. The neighborhood also serves as a landing pad for recently arrived immigrants, mostly undocumented Mexicans, a more hopeful community, partly because their involvement in the drug scene is more peripatetic and more profitable, and partly because they tend to go find somewhere cleaner and safer to live around the same time that they start learning English, so that if the kids do eventually pass the Star test, it will be somewhere else.

Don’t blame the principal and the teachers in this place for the low test scores. Pin medals on them for their efforts to head off violence, scrounge up food and clothes for everybody, and remain calm at the sound of nearby gunfire.

In unrelated news, it's St. Patrick's Day.

"St. Patrick drove the serpents out, and brought the churches in,
'Twas a bloody poor bargain, I would say, be Pagan once again!"

(Lyrics by Isaac Bonewitz, to be sung to the tune of "A Nation Once Again.")

Evangelism

2010-03-13T14:26:00.000-08:00

It’s a curious trait some people have, this compulsion to evangelize. They want to sell you their religion, or their diet. I have a couple of ecologically-minded friends who are always urging others to accept cast-off items for which they can imagine possible uses. More than one woman has tried to talk me into being a lesbian. Then as you get older, people try to get you to have the same ailments they do.

Not long ago, my sister’s friend Marge tried very hard to sell me on sleep apnea. She was sure I must have it.

“Why?” I asked

“Do you wake up during the night?”

“Yes, but that’s because I have to pee, or the dog is barking at the raccoons in the garbage barrels. Then I go back to sleep.”

“You don’t wake up because you need to pee. You wake up from the apnea, and then you feel like you need to pee.”

I think I wake up because I need to pee. I have dreams that ingeniously incorporate needing to pee and not being able to; say, I’m in the stall in a public restroom trying to pee, but there’s a bossy-looking woman standing in the open door, watching me, so I can’t. Then I wake up and go pee. I worry that one of these nights that woman is going to shut the door and go away, and then I will pee in the bed.

“Do you snore?”

“Who’s to know?” I said. Except the dog, of course. I burned out on men some years ago, even before I became uninteresting to them, and the aforementioned lesbian evangelists have not brought me around.

“Virtually anyone who is overweight will have sleep apnea,” said Marge, firmly. “And if you get treatment, you will be so much less depressed.”

“Do I seem that depressed?” I asked, beginning to doubt myself. But as it turned out, Marge was using “you” in the sense of “one,” that is to say “I,” and the depression in question was her own. She discussed it at great length, the various medications she had taken over the years, and I gradually gathered the impression that she was still battling depression and that having sleep apnea had perhaps not cheered her up so very much after all.

Evangelism seems to be based on an assumption that people are more alike than they really are, or perhaps a desire for company in your (one’s) own joys and misfortunes, or perhaps a bit of both.

I remember a conversation I once had with a Christian evangelist, back in the days when I used to have conversations with such people. (I’ve since learned that, like jerks hassling women in public places, they take any sign of notice as a sign of encouragement.)

This woman asked me whether I believed in reincarnation, and I said yes. Seeming to pounce on an opening here, she hastened to explain that Christ offers the promise of eternal life; if you are saved, you will spend eternity in heaven, and you won’t have to keep coming back.

Well, there you have it. She doesn’t want to come back. For her, this life is something to be saved from (I’d always sort of wondered what it was they were being saved from.) I want to come back again and again, to do the things I haven’t done, to repair mistakes, to try things differently the next time. I certainly don’t want an eternity of anything, no matter how pleasant it might be for the first ten thousand years or so. I have never heard any description of heaven that didn’t sound as if it would eventually get on my nerves.

She is happy with the prospect of not coming back, of spending eternity somewhere else. But all my hopes are of this world, and I am happy with the prospect of returning forever.

Paying to Learn

2010-03-07T09:59:00.001-08:00

A traditional Craft information list I'm on again has started up the old thread about charging for training and initiation. We don't do this, and I shot back the reasons why--the Gods choose their own and you must keep their way clear, charging for a service rendered sets up a very different relationship than coven members have with each other, and anyway, what sense does it make to charge for what was freely given to us? Teachers do charge for other kinds of intiation in other places. Different situations, different relationships, different cultural baggage, all beside the point.

Someone contributed a cute story about a high priestess (not a traditional Wiccan one) who charges $180 for her training class, which is refunded if the student is eventually initiated, so that people "won't waste her time."

Aside from the little problem of people going through with an intiation just to get their money back, there is the larger matter of what it is a teacher does. I've been teaching much of my adult life, my day job and my night job. It inevitably involves a great deal of what appears to be wasted time. You are a resource, you set up learning opportunities, and have no way of predicting what, if any, use people will make of them. That's the way of it. This is the basic problem with the idea of merit pay for teachers. As a teacher, you have influence, not control, over what or how much people learn, just as a doctor has influence but ultimately no control over a patient's health--for all the same reasons. But this is another topic, for another post.

But to take a cue from this high priestess who doesn't want her time wasted; how if we were to have all our community college students who say they want to transfer to four-year schools pay triple their current tuition, and then get it back if they succeed? My guess is we could raise the transfer rate a bit and increase the community college budget at the same time.

However, the problem is the same as for the Craft; among the many other things that you cannot predict, you have no way of knowing that the student who is unable or unwilling to pay is not the very one you are looking for.

Marching forth, sort of

2010-03-04T14:55:00.000-08:00

Today at the college we all walked out at 11 to protest budget cuts to education. I took the class out the the quad and told them not to leave the rally until the normal time for class to end, sat on a bench where I could hear but not see, and ate my lunch. Then the events moved to city hall and I met my afternoon class, who had been given the choice of going downtown and writing about it, coming to class and writing their representatives, or just coming to class and doing their homework. Or making up missing work, which some always need to do.

I did demonstrations a lot when I was young. Now I don't go places where I have to stand too long and there's no bathroom. And the truth is that my heart isn't 100% in this one.

Not that I support the disintegration of public education in the state of California.

It's not so awful to have to bring your own chalk and work around the fact that some of the students can't afford the textbook, which I had to do back in the Peace Corps when I was first learning to teach. The strategy and intrigue required to get stuff (like class time in a computer lab for instance), is also familiar from those days, although the specific goals are different now, and back then you could figure out who to bribe and how much--a carton of Marlboroughs from the Navy base commissary often went a long way. Here, in my own culture, I grope to figure this out. Nor do I really mind having to explain to recent high school graduates the difference between the Roman Empire and the British Empire (the history of western civilization does not seem to be prominently featured on the STAR tests). The differences are kind of interesting, quite apart from the time line on the board, and I'm always encouraged when they don't know a thing like this and somebody in the room has the curiosity and gumption to ask.

But public education developed because the founders of our democracy realized that it wouldn't work if too many people were ignorant and illiterate. I am haunted by the idea that public education and functioning democracy may go down together.

At the same time, clamoring for more money to buy chalk and books and all the rest of it isn't going to have any more effect than it would have thirty-five years ago in that dusty little market town on the edge of Sahara. Now, as then, there isn't any money. The question to address here, and now, is why there isn't any money; how the richest country in the world has managed to squander its fortune and now must settle for a third-world education system.

Bobby's First Post

2010-03-02T18:16:00.000-08:00

This is an indifferent picture of me, Bobby. I don't photograph well, being black and all. You can see that I am quite a large and intimidating dog. I started out fairly small, but grew up to be nearly six pounds, more than that if I weigh in wet or just after dinner. You don't need to be scared, though--I don't bite, at least not what you would really call bite. A couple of times I have nipped at dim-witted human puppies who kept chasing me after I'd clearly told them to back off. A great fuss was made over this, but if you ask me I did them a big favor if the experience prevents them from trying the same thing on some pit bull with a short fuse.

I live with Mrs. D., and you can bet she would be D. for Dead by now, if it weren't for me. I keep us safe from passing dogs outside, and the raccoons and other urban wildlife that raid the garbage cans under the bedroom window at three in the morning. I chase away the vacuum cleaners and skateboards. I even keep a sharp eye on boys who look like the type to ride skateboards, even if they aren't doing it at the moment. All this keeps me busy a lot of the time, and when I get a break I like to play fetch or tug, or hide things and pretend I can't find them so Mrs. D. has to come get them for me.

People sometimes ask her if I am her familiar, which apparently means am I somehow involved with what she does in the back room sometimes, or what they get up to when people come over and they start moving furniture around and putting different stuff on the coffee table. I give no attention to any of this, however. It simply diverts her attention from its right and proper object, me. They like to stick me away in the crate or the bedroom for these events, but I've figured out that if I lie low and hide while things are getting started, they are likely to forget about me and leave me alone. I generally do come out when they start on the food, but they don't seem to have anything very tasty on these occasions. If she wants me for a familiar, she should lay in some chicken or something.

Mrs. D. is not the smartest chipmunk in the tree. She can't hear well, for one thing, and she can hardly smell a thing. She also has a lot of very dumb ideas about leashes, and that crate, and little outings to vet. But she's the one who dishes out the food around here, as well as most of the other comforts and diversions, so as a general rule I just go with her program. She does most of the talking, but I may be checking in now and then if I think any of her remarks require back story or clarification.

2010-03-01T20:39:00.001-08:00

I see that it was still February when I said it was the Full Moon in March. But there is a three-day orb for the full moon, according popular Pagan custom, so it should not matter much which day I noticed it. Although the old man who first taught me the Craft did not believe this. "Either the moon is full or it isn't," he said.

There technically is only a precise and fleeting moment when it's truly full, not nearly enough time for all the things Witches do about it. I suppose he meant either it looks really full or it doesn't, but that is a subjective and variable perception, like the quickening of a child.

I found Yeats' "A Full Moon in March," though not my paper about it. Here is the end, which I remember having to deliver in a monotonous atonal chant. The director wanted to do it the way Yeats intended it. Yeats was not much of a playwright, and even less of a director. And even for poetry, he did considerably better on many occasions:

Why must those holy, haughty feet descend
From emblematic niches, and what hand
Ran that delicate raddle through their white?
My heart is broken, yet must understand
What do they seek for? Why must they descend?

For descecration, and the lover's night.

I cannot face that emblem of the moon
Nor eyelids that the unmixed heavens dart,
Nor stand upon my feet, so great a fright
Descends upon my savage, sunlit heart.
What can she lack, whose emblem is the moon?

But desecration and the lover's night.

Delight my heart with sound; speak yet again.
But look and look with understanding eyes
Upon the pitchers that they carry; tight
Therein all time's completed treasure is:
What do they lack? O, cry it out again

But desecration and the lover's night.

So it's about descration, not purification. Or maybe that's just one of the things that Witches turn inside out, along with darkness and light, God and Devil, and with black cats and toads and spiders all being good luck. And thirteen a fortunate number, a full coven. Which Jesus of Nazareth had, actually. It only came to be thought unlucky because there was one who betrayed him, which is not our problem. Purification and desecration could be the same thing, depending on who you ask, and when.

The Full Moon in March, 2010

2010-02-28T20:18:00.000-08:00

The full moon that falls in Pisces, Maiden Moon, or the Chaste Moon, good for spells of cleansing and purification, and an auspicious time for initiations.

Also the name of an obscure verse play by William Butler Yeats, in which I acted when I was in college a long time ago and then wrote a paper about. I turned this paper in with only slight modifications for three different courses, something I ding my own students for now if I know they did it. I don't remember what the paper was about, and I don't think I ever really knew what the play was about, but I got an A all three times, and Mrs. Drinkwalter went to college in the days before grade inflation, mind you, when an A was up there in the narrow right end of a bell-curve.

Be that as it may, tonight's a good night for a cleansing bath in burdock--wrap bits of the root in muslin and make your bath into one big tea-bag. And if any unwanted entities or energies seem to be hanging around, clean house and leave onions and garlic about to discourage them.