Not so happy New Year

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

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

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

or

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

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.

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

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

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

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

"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.

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

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

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

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

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

(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

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

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

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

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

(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

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..

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...

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.