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.