Witches Brew

Wow, the FTC may be monitoring this blog! On Monday 10/5, the Federal Trade Commission announced that its “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials” will cover bloggers. Effective December 1, 2009, bloggers who review a product must disclose any connection with the producer of that product and reveal if they received “compensation” for their review. Reportedly, if the blogger fails to disclose, s/he can be fined up to $11.000.

Now this would be understandable if we were talking about fancy-schmancy Yahoo bloggers, who dispense all manner of advice on exercise, dieting, and improving your lovelife, but it seems to be seriously off the mark when it relates to book review bloggers, and it’s just plain overkill for little folks like me.

The FTC assumes that a book publisher sends an ARC, an Advanced Reading Copy, of a book to me in expectation of a good review. And if I actually keep the ARC after the review, I have been “compensated.” And Goddess forbid that I should provide a link to Amazon or even make a few cents off the purchase of said book as an Amazon affiliate. I must return the ARC to the publisher to be free of guilt. Because–again, Goddess forbid!–I could sell that ARC and make money.

These regulations do not apply to traditional newspaper and magazine reviews because–and I am not making this up–the books/products are sent to the publisher who assigns the book/product to a reviewer. The reviewer is compensated by his publisher. The publisher keeps the book/product. If you have ever seen Andy Rooney’s semi-annual report on all the “goodies” that have been sent to him for review, you know that nationally known reviewers get car loads of unsolicited books every year.

To understand the depth of the FTC ’s delusions, read Edward Champion’s “Interview with the FTC’s Richard Cleland.” Warning: take your Dramamine, because Cleland’s reasoning may make your head spin.

The sentiment among health care advocates in Washington is clear:

Congressman Schock must be moved to vote in favor of health insurance reform.

The vote in the full House is scheduled for October 12th, and this date is rapidly approaching.

In Peoria, we will hold a rally on October 6th and kick-off an action to call Health Insurance Companies as well as Rep. Schock and Senators Durbin and Reid. See more below

As a community, we MUST send a loud and clear message to Schock:

“We, the people, want you to vote for health insurance reform with a strong public option! Are you complicit in insurance company crimes? Or will you finally stand up for your constituents?” ___________________________________________
STATEWIDE DAY OF ACTION: BIG INSURANCE MAKES ME SICK!

PEORIA AREA RALLY AND CALLING ACTIONS

Congressman Schock, Whose Side Are You On?

When: Tuesday, October 6th from 4:30pm – 5:30pm

Purpose: To pressure Congressman Schock to support his constituents, NOT the insurance industry, by voting for a health insurance reform bill with a strong public option!

Bring homemade signs or use ours!
Possible Sign Messages:

1. Big Insurance: SICK OF IT
2. Congressman Schock: Whose side are you on?
3. Support the people! Support the Public Option!
4. Honk for Health Care Reform!

We will also have informative leaflets to distribute-

Come, bring friends and family, and show community support for health care reform!

PLEASE forward this email to all of your contacts, make calls, organize your network.

MORE TO FOLLOW
______________________________________

NEW TWIST TO MAKING A CALL

We are sick and tired of the abuse that we endure because of big insurance wanting to use our lives for big profit.

The week of October 5th, we will start our Calling Campaign to a Health Insurance
Company Executive.

Call #1:

It is time the Big Health Insurance companies starting hearing from you on health insurance reform. We will provide the Executive’s name and phone, plus some sample scripts.

Call #2:

We will provide phone numbers for Rep. Schock and Senators Durbin and Reid. Let them know what you think of your call to the Health Insurance Executive and that they must support people over health insurance company profits. We need a strong public option with health care reform.

Together, we can do it! Let’s make this happen!

For Information: Joyce Harant,Community Organizer, JHarant@cbhconline.org

Campaign for Better Health Care
Helpline
1-888-544-8271
Website: www.cbhconline.org

I am so not prepared to do a ritual. I’ve been gone all weekend. I’ve had very little sleep, the house is its usual mess, I have nothing for offerings, the candles are all full of dust… However the moon is full, and CIPS needs a home for the sabbats. It needs to be cheap, cheap, cheap and hold anywhere from 10-40 people. We want a small kitchen space for potluck, and I want indoor plumbing and handicapped accessibility. Ideally it should be centrally located for our members who are in Pekin, Bartonville, Eureka, Wyoming, etc, etc. Oy!

Hecate is usually considered a crone, a Goddess of the Dark Moon, but I relate to her a daughter–a surrogate daughter, who helped Demeter search for the kidnapped Persephone. Like Ruth in the Bible, I hear her saying, “Whither thou goest, I will go…” Hecate carried the torch to light the way. Hecate is the Goddess of the Crossroads; she is the Queen of Witches. And CIPS is certainly at a crossroads on this issue.

Hecate’s alter ego is Baubo, a frog goddess full of bawdy humor. I have a warm relationship with her in that aspect, so I am going to gather up my frogs.

I checked outside. It’s a clear night and the moon is bright overhead. It is my belief that all rituals are improved by the use of chocolate, so I have cocoa in my mug with frogs climbing up the sides. I have a plain white plate for cheese and crackers. I have my green glass frog with a tea candle in it, and I have a wooden croaking frog to summon the four elements. The frog has ridges on its back: stroking downward produces a mating call; stroking upward produces a distress call. I am going to use a plain old kitchen broom to cast a circle and create sacred space, and then I will use the distress call to alert the four elements that I am in need of their aid. I will call Air from the North, Water from the East, Fire from the South, and Earth from the West. Then I will ask Hecate to join me.

I will pick up the broom, and because Hecate is the Lady of the Torch, I chant:

We light the fire, we will feed the spark,
We will rise up, rise up, rise up!

I call the four quarters. Stroke, stroke, stroke, Spirits of the North, Spirits of Air, of the coming winter, of the shimmering aurora borealis, Spirits of inspiration and change, attend me, stroke, stroke, stroke. Spirits of the East, of the ocean, of deep emotion attend me. croak, croak, croak. Spirits of the South, of Fire, of passion and transformation, attend me. croak, croak, croak. Spirits of the West, of the Earth, of the ancestors, of the cradle of life and the land of the dead, attend me. Croak, croak, croak.

I light my candle and call on Hecate. I look into the shining eyes of my green frog. I cup it in my hands and hold it in front of my face. I’ve never noticed that the frog is smiling! I am filled with a sense of deep love, fondness and humor. We share cheese and crackers and mocha cappuccino cocoa. I will chant a while longer, basking in her glow, and then I will thank Hecate for joining me. I will thank the Elements in reverse order. I will open the sacred circle, and then we will see if CIPS finds a meeting place.

So mote it be.

If the Big Three religions–Judaism, Christianity, and Islam–are The People of the Book, Pagans are People of the Library (and the Bookstore). In the early days of the Neo-Pagan movement one had to know someone to find a coven. One had to undergo a period of study, often a year and a day, in order to be formally initiated into a Pagan tradition. These days Paganism is one of the fastest growing spiritual movements in the world, and there are far more students than teachers. In many small communities some people have never even met another Pagan. But thanks to books and the Internet seekers can study and initiate themselves.

So I call your attention to Banned Books Week: September 26th – October 3rd. Here is the top 100 challenged books in the order of their rankling:

Top 100 Challenged Books

1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
2. Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
8. Forever by Judy Blume
9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
11. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry
15. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
19. Sex by Madonna
20. Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
21. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
23. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
24. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
28. The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
29. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
30. The Goats by Brock Cole
31. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
32. Blubber by Judy Blume
33. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
34. Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
35. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
36. Final Exit by Derek Humphry
37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
38. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
39. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
40. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
45. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
46. Deenie by Judy Blume
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
48. Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
49. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
50. Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
54. Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
55. Cujo by Stephen King
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
58. Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
61. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
63. Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
64. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
65. Fade by Robert Cormier
66. Guess What? by Mem Fox
67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
68. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
73. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
74. Jack by A.M. Homes
75. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
77. Carrie by Stephen King
78. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
79. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
80. Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
81. Family Secrets by Norma Klein
82. Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
85. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
86. Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
87. Private Parts by Howard Stern
88. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
89. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
90. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
91. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
92. Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
93. Sex Education by Jenny Davis
94. The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
95. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
97. View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
98. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
99. The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

The pictures from Pittsburgh show police officers hurling tear gas at black-clad anarchists, or police arresting Greenpeace demonstrators hanging a banner from a bridge. I have to search to find Pagans in the streets of Pittsburgh, but I know we are there. If it’s a global economic summit or climate conference, there are Pagans.

On Monday The Three Rivers Climate Convergence launched a week of action, education and organizing to protest, first, the International Coal Conference (Sept 20-23) and then the G20 Summit. Monday night Pagan Cluster, an activist group, held an “Equinox Ritual calling for the Sequestration of Greed and the Liberation of Abundance” at Schenley Park Overlook. Their manifesto reads, in part:

We gather to honor the carbon cycle that holds the energy of birth, growth, death, decay and regeneration, enacting the world we want in the midst of the one we have.

Our intention is to interrupt the cycle of despondency and destruction by:

— Honoring all those who have died and all that has been lost from years of greed: extraction, pollution, racism and war.

— Awakening everyday solutions for sustainable transformation to a radically different culture.

— Sowing seeds for an abundant and healthy future rooted in clean air, energy, water, land and food.

Our ritual will celebrate the Equinox to bring balance back to our relationship
with the earth. We plan to build altars throughout the city to empower our
intentions and reclaim sacred space. We do this political magic as part of our spiritual commitment, to shift the energy in the streets and offer grounding to the larger mobilization.

Workshops were scheduled for this morning and tomorrow morning at the Park with marches scheduled for the afternoons. However, the Convergence website is reporting:

CONVERGENCE UPDATE: Pittsburgh’s Department of Public Works has confiscated our tents, chairs, tables and other materials at our Schenley Park Convergence Space. we have moved our workshops to the G20 Artspace at Carnegie Mellon’s campus lawn.

Note that parking near CMU campus is difficult today, since may roads are closed and all CMU parking lots are closed. Check back later for updates.

The Pittsburgh Tribune has pictures of Pagans peacefully leaving a demonstration on Tuesday. –Hardly the kind of drama that is going to appear on network news… Luckily we have the blogosphere.

The Wheel of the Year rolls on. This is Harvest Home, also called Mabon, the second of three harvest festivals. Lammas or Lughnasa is the first one at the beginning of August. It’s the Festival of First Fruits. For me, as I said in “Lammas 2009″, Lammas is fair season: gigantic vegetables, prize-winning pies, truck-pulls, the midway, the beer tent, and the politicians tents. Harvest Home is the corn harvest, and Samhain or Halloween is traditionally the meat harvest

Being a City Witch, I will not be celebrating a silo full of grain, nor will I be slaughtering hogs in October–although I do have a book that tells me step-by-step how to do that. (If you ask nice, I might dig it out and outline the procedure for you.) I’ve had to re-interpret Harvest Home for my reality. For me the corn harvest means investing for the future. Now that the Stock Market is looking up, I’ve rebalanced my pitiful 401K. I’m looking at refreshing my job-hunting wardrobe. I am getting ready to winterize the apartment.

For me Harvest Home is also about investing in the next generation. I’m a little sad that Woodruff High School is closing–I’m an old Averyville girl, and my parents graduated from Woodruff two decades before I did. Kingman Grade School is gone also. But I think the school board has made the right decision. I think Manual and Peoria High School should survive.

I think health care reform is a crucial investment in the next generation. It’s been 100 years coming. I think it’s a crucial investment in my generation. I couldn’t afford Cobra when I lost my job–not even with the federal subsidy. I currently have Aflac “if I’m hurt and can’t work” and I bought into the catastrophic illness package, but I doubt if i can continue with the catastrophic.

But Harvest Home is a festival of thanksgiving! I have been relishing fresh produce from the farmers markets, and I’ve been to Tanners and Apple Blossom Farm. I celebrated the New Moon this weekend with a fabulous omlet–onion, spinach, yellow and orange bell peppers, garlic snaps, shrimp and cheese. Major yum! And I am thinking squash tomorrow night with an apple-peanut butter filling–and a nice red wine.

Among the Ancient Celts, the “cross-quarter days”–the solstices and the equinoxes–were springboards for the greater fire festivals six weeks later. So Harvest Home is the launch for Samhain, which is considered by many as the Pagan New Year. This is the one of the times when the Veil Between the Worlds is at its thinnest and we can commune with our ancestors and with the Spirit World. Many people mistakenly think that there was a god of death called Samhain (and that’s actually pronounced “Sow-en”) but the Celtic means simply “the end of summer” or “the beginning of the dark months.” So as I give thanks for the harvest, I will be turning my thoughts toward my departed and the beginning of a new year.

That’s the title of Phillip Pullman’s new book due out at Easter. And yes, it’s

a new account of the life of Jesus, challenging the gospels and arguing that the version in the New Testament was shaped by the apostle Paul.

I’m rolling my eyes here… I love The Golden Compass, but as far as I am concerned, Pullman is sooo last millennium. For decades I subscribed to the belief that Christianity could have been cool if Paul hadn’t screwed it up. But I’m over that, even.

In a review of Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman, reviewer Doug Brown (”The Bible Delusion“) cuts right to the heart of Who Screwed Up. Brown says, “In many respects, the Bible was the world’s first Wikipedia article. So many hands have altered and edited the now lost originals that we will never know for sure what those originals said.” LOL and all that. I’ve never heard it put so succinctly.

Read Brown’s review at Powell.com, and read Misquoting Jesus. If you ever wondered why anyone would want to pass a camel through the eye of a needle, Ehrman will explain it.

“Welcome to the Dark Mountain Project: a new literary movement for an age of global disruption.

We aim to question the stories that underpin our failing civilisation, to craft new ones for the age ahead and to write clearly and honestly about our true place in the world.”

As I wrote in my previous post, The Dark Mountain Project is calling on poets, writers, artists, philosophers, and activists to create a new vision for Post-Industrial Society. Among “The Eight Principles of Uncivilization” the Project states:

We believe that the roots of these crises lie in the stories we have been telling ourselves. We intend to challenge the stories which underpin our civilisation: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality, and the myth of our separation from ‘nature’. These myths are more dangerous for the fact that we have forgotten they are myths.

The Project is creating a “syllabus” for this new age. On the site blog people are encouraged to create a list of written works that challenge these old myths and embody the new. Having a survivalist mentality, I have for a number of years been collecting books on living self-sufficiently. And, as a science fiction/fantasy geek, I have explored many strange new worlds. So here’s my partial list to prepare for “Uncivilization.”

1) Books by the Pagan author Starhawk. Particularly:

Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery (1988)
The Fifth Sacred Thing (Fiction, 1993)
Walking to Mercury (Fiction, 1997)
The Pagan Book of Living and Dying, cowritten with M. Macha NightMare and the Reclaiming Collective (1997)
The Twelve Wild Swans: A Journey to the Realm of Magic, Healing, and Action, cowritten with Hilary Valentine (2000)
Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising (2002)
The Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature (2004)

2) A Reenchanted World: The Quest For A New Kinship With Nature – James William Gibson

3) The Elemental Logic series by Laurie J. Marks. Thirty-five years after Shaftal was occupied by an army of Sainnites, a remnant of Shaftal’s suppressed elemental witches seek to end the occupation and restore the magic of the suffering earth. The books are:

Fire Logic. (2002)
Earth Logic (2004)
Water Logic (2007)
Air Logic (forthcoming)

4) Dies the Fire trilogy and The Sunrise Lands tetralogy by S.M. Stirling. A catastrophe of unknown origin alters the laws of thermodynamics Earth and renders high-energy technologies extinct. Survivors in this Post-Industrial world must band together to rebuild civilization. Pagans are among the Good Guys, and the two series develop a modern Pagan culture. The books in the first series, Dies the Fire are:

Dies the Fire (2004)
The Protector’s War (2005)
A Meeting at Corvallis (2006)

The Sunrise Lands include:

The Sunrise Lands (2007)
The Scourge of God (2008)
The Sword of the Lady (2009)
The High King of Montival (forthcoming)

5) Where There Is No Doctor–by David Werner with Carol Thuman and Jane Maxwell (2nd rev. ed. 1992, updated 2009)
“Hesperian’s classic manual, Where There Is No Doctor, is perhaps the most widely-used health care manual for health workers, clinicians, and others involved in primary health care delivery and health promotion programs around the world.”

6) More-With-Less–by Doris Janzen Longacre. (25th anniversary ed., 2000). Recipes and suggestions by Mennonites on how to eat better and consume less of the world’s limited resources.

I believe we can create new, world healing mythologies. These books offer a host of possibilities.

“These are precarious and unprecedented times. Our economies crumble, while beyond the chaos of markets, the ecological foundations of our way of living near collapse. Little that we have taken for granted is likely to come through this century intact.”

To prepare for the coming chaos of the Post Industrialist Society, The Dark Mountain Project is calling upon writers, artists, philosophers, and activists to create “a new literary movement for an age of global disruption.” On the Dark Mountain blog contributors are compiling a “syllabus” of poetry, novels, and nonfiction to inspire and maintain a new “Uncivilization.”

Suggested works include the poetry of Robinson Jeffers and Mary Oliver and post-apocalyptic novels like Mary Shelley’s The Last Man and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Thoreau’s Walden and the short stories of H.P. Lovecraft are on the list.

Also recommended:

A collection of essays by John Berger, Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance

David Cayley, The Rivers North of the Future: a series of conversations with writer Ivan Illich

Anthropologist David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World: “[an] attempt to understand how language and writing shape our relationship to the world starts from his personal experiences among indigenous magicians in Southeast Asia.”

Hugh Brody, The Other Side of Eden: Hunters, Farmers and the Shaping of the World: “[tribal] people making deliberate choices about which technologies they do and don’t wish to adopt: what is and isn’t compatible with the way they want to live.”

If you are looking for something book club selections for the coming winter, you might want to check out The Dark Mountain Project.

For the last two weeks I have been fighting vertigo. From my own experimentation and the experience of other sufferers, I came to the conclusion that I did not have an inner ear infection but something in my neck was out of place After several days of DIY chiropractic manipulations, I finally seem to have my head on my shoulders and both feet on the ground. Yippee!

In the midst of physically trying to keep my balance, I’ve had some mental & emotional reality checks.

I joined Facebook. Ay-yi-yi! I feel like Pinocchio on Pleasure Island. Gaudy! Mindless! Smiling cats and awards for imaginary farms… People whom I barely spoke to at my old job and never associated with after hours are now my “friends.” And you can’t so much as play an online game without committing your personal information and the personal information of all your “friends” to the untender mercy of the data miners. I haven’t figured out how to unjoin Facebook. I expect I will have to be rude and start ignoring people wholesale.

I went to my 40th high school reunion. Oy vey! I went to my 10th. I had nothing in common with these people when I was in high school. I had nothing in common with them when I went to my 10th reunion; I have nothing in common with them at the 40th–except, maybe, that most of us look old. And they barely remember me: I had long hair, I wrote poetry maybe, and I worked on the yearbook (newspaper, actually.) I can’t imagine that I will go to the 45th.

I don’t remember that I wrote much poetry in high school. I do remember a book report or two that had promise. I did begin writing novels. And I have read so much bad science fiction and fantasy this summer that I have finally been driven back to my own prose. And yes, they were Pagan before I was Pagan… I don’t know if I have the courage to begin again, but I have–for the moment–joined a new email group of writers and readers. So who knows? Maybe I’ll post a sample here.

I have been reading the blogs I have listed on my blogroll–and reading the blogs they have on their blogrolls. After almost two years of diddling around with Witches Brew I think I may finally be getting the hang of this. So I may branch out here, do some organizing, and add some new features.

Watch this space…