The President Sneaks Out

It's been just about a week since a cluster of men in impeccable suits arrived at my urban public school and ushered me to the White House, where I was asked to serve as the president of the United States.

All sort of sudden, you know? I was still wearing my Vo Tech teacher ID when they escorted me into the Oval Office!

First thing I said was, "Take that painting of Andrew Jackson down! Put it in the attic." And it was done, just like that! Hey, I'm a school teacher. I'm used to spending five minutes just getting everyone to open their books to page 52.

Then some butler type sidled up and said, "Madame President, what would you like us to hang in the place of that painting?"

And I said, "Well, I have a picture at home with a California condor. Send for it, please. It will be the perfect backdrop for when I reinstate Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante as National Monuments in full. Oh, and while you're at it, grab my bedside Salmon of Wisdom that Olivia gave me. It will symbolize how the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will only be drilled over my dead and rotting corpse."

It's really daunting, suddenly being expected to lead the free world. My predecessor was unprepared for the task. As for me, well, if you've ever been able to command the undivided attention of 25 teenagers, you are eminently suited to running a cabinet meeting. That's a handful of adults! Think they're going to be texting in their laps?

Speaking of cabinet appointees, I was all ready to get to work on that when I remembered that this weekend was the annual Phoenixville Firebird Festival! I go every year with my daughter, Gumby. Well, we weren't going to miss this event, no sirree.

Kind of nice that I haven't done many public appearances yet, because the Secret Service gave Gumby and me leave to do our own thing. And it was snowing! Without expending one taxpayer dollar, Gumby and I drove out to Phoenixville, had supper at Speck's Chicken, and then went in the snow to watch the citizens burn down a giant bird they had built out of plywood! It was so magical in the snowstorm! I didn't get any good photographs, because my new government-issued phone had a faulty battery.

It's customary for presidents to keep their families close by as they govern. Heck, I could give Gumby her own office, or even make her attorney general. But not my Gumby. My gentle Gumby is going to live her life completely free from the limelight, a free bird like the Phoenix!

Gumby and I tend to do the same things over and over again, without expecting or wanting different results. We go to the Firebird Festival every year. The only novelty this year was that we spent the night in Phoenixville, so I wouldn't have to drive all the way back to Washington, DC after the bird burned. On Sunday morning, I dropped Gumby off in West Philly. We always have a swell time together.

I did ask her if she wanted to work in national government. She said no thanks, she didn't want to uproot her rescue cat. He gets nervous with any change and starts pulling at his fur.

Feeling the Burn

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Wow, more readers in a week than I had in a lifetime! Can't thank "She Who Seeks" enough!

Every year on the first weekend in December, the charming Pennsylvania hamlet of Phoenixville has a Firebird Festival. Artists in the community create a giant wooden bird (different every year), and at 8:15 on Saturday night, they set it on fire.

For a modest donation, you can put any kind of wish or intention on paper, and just before the burn, the organizers put the wishes inside the bird. Voila! Matter becomes energy.

My daughter The Heir and I always attend this event. Oh, dear Heir! She is an adult now. I don't see her as often as I like, but we make up for that in quality time. The Firebird Festival is quality time.

Someone I don't know named King Arthur took this video of the burning Phoenix.

Pictures and videos don't really do this event justice, because on your computer screen you can watch it without losing your eyebrows. Heir and I always get so close that we come home singed.

I put a wish in the Firebird. I also added some intentions from friends. May they all come true through the energy of the elemental fire!

There's a little Phoenix in all of us, don't you think?

Cyber Monday Offer from The Gods Are Bored

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Cyber Monday: Buy it here, buy it now!

Just kidding. We aren't selling anything. But we are making you an offer.

Every year in December, The Heir and I attend the Phoenixville Firebird Festival. The citizens of Phoenixville work together to erect a giant bird made of plywood. At a designated time, they set it on fire.

This is quite an amazing event.

The best part of the Firebird Festival is that the organizers accept Intentions and put them into a box that is set inside the bird before it is lit.

Dear readers, those of you who checked back in after my long absence, I have an offer for you.

You can email me your Intention for the upcoming year -- anything you wish to affect for better or worse -- and I will write it on a card and place it in the box.

You have two options: If you are a Facebook friend, you can place your Intention in a private message. If you connect to me via this platform and don't want to put your Intention in a comment, you can email me.

My email is a gmail account and runs like this, you get the drift:

annejohnson17211 at gmail dot com

I feel that these are troubled times. Any time we can turn Intentions into energy, we should do it. The Firebird Festival offers one of these opportunities.

I would say meet me in Phoenixville, but look at the size of that crowd! Send me a message, and you'll be there in spirit.

A Lesson in Resilience

Every winter, the town of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania holds a festival based on -- big "duh" here -- the Phoenix. The Heir and I make a pilgrimage to Phoenixville to participate in this event because it has a sacred application to life.

The festival occurred yesterday, in a deluge of rain. I told Heir we would go anyway, so long as the precipitation was water and not something frozen. Phoenixville is a pretty long way from where I live.

What happens in Phoenixville is this: After drumming and dancing by people clad in Firebird costumes, a giant bird sculpture made of wood gets set on fire. How does this happen in a pelting rain storm? Well, the thing is chock a block with accelerant.

Artists and builders work on the phoenix sculpture for months before the event. This year's bird was over 30 feet tall.

Until someone courting a maximum smite of Bored God karma burned it down at 3:00 a.m., the morning before the festival.

Phoenixville held the festival anyway. In a day's work, in pelting rain, its residents built a smaller but still inspiring substitute bird. With the dark ashes of the prematurely immolated bird still on the field, the new bird smoked, caught, and sent bright flames into the night sky.

How inspiring! What a lesson in resilience ... one I needed after a soul-sucking week at my workplace.

One of the traditions of the Firebird festival is that you can pay a small fee to have an Intention for the new year put into a box and sent Heavenward as the sculpture burns. This ritual had to be scrapped when the vandals struck.

But Heir and I are ourselves resilient. Heir made two origami birds while we ate dinner (the iconic Speck's Chicken in Collegeville, PA). We wrote our intentions on our paper birds and committed them, with prayers, to one of the smaller bonfires on the festival site. I brought a stick from that fire home to burn at Yuletide.

There we stood, Heir and I, dripping but unbent while the flames crested a sea of umbrellas. We knew the original bird had burned down before we left for Phoenixville. Like the other people there, we stubbornly proved that all which falls will rise again.

Blessed be the mighty Phoenix, the Sacred Firebird! All hail!