Odd Thing To Pay Forward

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Wow, what a busy week! It's so nice to get a spring break. If I hadn't had one, I would have had to create it.

One of the highlights of this week was the visit Spare and I made to the special Van Gogh exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The exhibit focused on Van Gogh's nature paintings, and it was amazing. "Starry Night" was not there, but there were several woodland vista works that reminded me of home. And one haunting canvas of a rainstorm, painted while looking out of the window of a mental asylum.

Van Gogh was also in the mental asylum when he painted this beautiful canvas for his brand-new namesake nephew. It is Spare's favorite, and she spent quite a long time gazing at it.

I know fashions and tastes change, but I just cannot imagine how this artist was overlooked in his lifetime. Maybe if he lived longer, like Walt Whitman (both alive and working at the same time, different continents). Maybe he lacked Whitman's self-assurance ... certainly lacked Whitman's mental health. Say what you will about Walt Whitman, he was supremely happy in his skin.

The same day we saw Van Gogh, Spare and I visited the Magic Gardens on South Street in Philadelphia. This is an art installation created by a local man named Isaiah Zagar. Words and pictures do not do it justice. It's as if the artist went to a landfill full of old bottles, plates, coffee mugs, tiles, and a zillion other things, and just waved a magic wand and turned it into a gleaming, mirrored palace. Here is a place you could go 30 times and never see it the same way twice. And while it was a daunting $25 per person to see Van Gogh, the Magic Gardens (probably same square footage or larger than the Van Gogh exhibit) was $5 per person.

Ha ha! Some day the Magic Gardens will be as famous as "Sunflowers in a Vase," and it will cost $75 per person to get in, after waiting in a long line and being issued headphones so you can hear famous critics talk about it! Yay! Spare and I got there before the fashions and tastes did!

The best part of this week, though, was the magick I performed for my late grandfather.

Granddad spent his entire working life creating machinery that worked on a microscopic level. He must have wondered how he came upon such a fascinating occupation, having grown up on a piece-of-nothing mountainside farm. In his spare time he fixed timepieces of all sizes, from little wristwatches to great, big grandfather clocks. He was an early browser of yard sales, and from them he procured many pocket watches that he fixed and doled out. I have one. Sometimes I take it to school, just to feel its warmth against my hip.

While Granddad was still alive, he kept his watch repair books on a shelf in the family farm house. After he died, my uncle moved the books in order to have room for his own library. I thought the books had been lost, thrown away. But when my cousin cleaned out the house in preparation for sale, he found the watch repair books. I asked him to send them to me.

The books were a motley lot, smelling moldy and broken at the spine. But I could see that they were really great how-to manuals for watch repair. Two of them were published in 1922.

It happens that there is a watch repairman in Snobville who has been in the trade for a long time, certainly as long as I have lived here. I once had him "tune up" my pocket watch, which he said was a good one, well cared for.

Yesterday I walked into the jewelry store where the watch repairman works. I gave him all of the watch-making books. He was like a kid in a candy store. He pointed to my grandfather's name in the front of one of them and said, "Is this the man who owned the books?" And I said yes, that was my beloved granddad, and I know he would want useful books to be paid forward into the right hands.

The repairman said he was in the process of creating a workshop in his home. I told him my grandfather had a table where he kept all his watch books and supplies, and people used to give their watches to him to be fixed.

The only request I made of the watch repairman was to keep paying the books forward, to be sure that someone who worked with clocks would always have them. He said, "No problem!" Then he added: "Wait until my wife sees these!"

It's such a comfort to me to know that those books are in the hands of someone who can understand them, use them, and appreciate them.

The moral of this sermon: Holding onto certain things for sentimental reasons robs them of their essence. Pay it forward. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Rare Post about the Busy God: Did Jesus Exist?

Every now and then someone flings a book at me that is kind of out of my regular line of reading. This is how I came to read Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, by Bart D. Ehrman.

Had to ask myself two questions about this tome before I even opened it:

1. Why should I read about the historical existence of Jesus when I already believe it, and

2. Should I waste my time reading about the busy god?

Just goes to show you ... move beyond those pesky, nagging questions sometimes. This title turned out to be very interesting, and one of those rare books written by a scholar for a lay audience that is actually understandable and accessible.

Apparently there's a largish movement underway to cast Jesus of Nazareth as a mythical being, totally made up from the fertile imaginations of ancient people. Well, as we all know, the best way to discredit a deity is to stick the "m" word onto His or Her exploits.

Bart Ehrman takes on these mythicists and discredits them ... actually trounces them soundly, using logical, fact-based arguments. But in doing so, in establishing the existence of a real historical figure named Jesus of Nazareth, Professor Ehrman doesn't do the Christian religion any favors. As the author notes, "Jesus would not recognize himself in the preaching of most of his followers today."

Actually, the historical Jesus wouldn't recognize anything about himself in the actions of his followers today, because (as this book explains in refreshing detail), Jesus didn't anticipate the future lasting longer than his lifetime. He was an "apocalypse now" preacher who saw himself as the head of the table in the aftermath of a Rapture that was scheduled to occur before he died. Then, counter to all expectations, he died.

Like many a stripling before me, I used to sit in church, through long, boring sermons of which I can remember nothing. I used to wonder how much of the Bible was real, and how much was made up. (Most of it is made up.) But I never doubted that Jesus was a historical person, mostly for the same reasons that Professor Ehrman discusses in his book: There are just too many sources of somewhat-overlapping data about Jesus, from too many different individuals.

Turns out I was pretty good at honing in on the human Jesus, even as a kid. It seemed to me that Jesus held a high opinion of himself (in my view to the point of megalomania), and all that humility and suffering to save the world was grafted onto a slender stalk of reality at a later date. Did Jesus Exist? may not arrive at this conclusion out-and-out, but the scholarly parsing of the oldest texts does give us evidence of a charismatic human being who came to believe his own press releases to the point of reckless public behavior.

So, while Did Jesus Exist was out-of-the-box reading for me, it was a worthwhile endeavor. I'm not surprised that this author has drawn the ire of the fundamentalist movement, because he has discovered what's really fundamental in Jesus' ministry ... emmm ... awkward.

As a postscript I'll add that I also believe King Arthur was a historical figure, or at least a series of historical figures from a particular moment in the history of the British Isles. Believing as I do in King Arthur, I'm glad there aren't texts like The Gospel of Lancelot, written within a century of Arthur's passing and then revised by hidden hands here and there as fashion and necessity dictated. A little knowledge is not always a bad thing when it comes to poking holes in your heroes.

Frank Talk about Sex between Teachers and Students

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," turning to the tricky subject of teacher/student relations of a carnal nature. This will be one of our series of frank talks, so if you're a stripling, go play in the sunshine.

Like it or not (and most kids don't like it even a little bit), teachers are authority figures. Let's see if we can rank teachers in the hierarchy of authority figures:

EXHIBIT A: AUTHORITY FIGURES IN A YOUNG PERSON'S LIFE

1. Parents
2. Law enforcement
3. Pastors
4. Teachers

If a kid doesn't get much notice from #1 above, he or she may or may not wind up tangling with #2 or #3 above. But regardless of whether or not parents care, kids absolutely must deal with teachers. They can avoid cops or preachers, but not teachers.

This is a very, very slippery slope for both student and educator, especially young educators who are only a handful of years older than some of their charges. We hear all the time of newly-minted teachers being respectable and then marrying a student who they have taught for a year or two.

We also hear of teachers of both genders who do the deed with their students.

Go into any high school anywhere and look around. The students there are at a beautiful age. They look great. The boys are handsome, and the girls are pretty. It's very easy for a teacher (who, after all, has the authority) to compliment, charm, and seduce a student. Very often when these relationships are uncovered, the relationship is considered to be consensual. In other words, the student is loving it as much as the teacher.

We at "The Gods Are Bored" don't necessarily discourage sexual relationships between older men/women and younger men/women. It's just the teacher thing that's problematic.

Teachers who become overly romantic with their students are taking advantage of:

1. Their authority over a largish population of people
2. The pool of beautiful youngsters at their disposal
3. The need for young people to attract adult attention, and
4. The many nooks and crannies in every school where trysts can at least be verbally arranged, if not out-and-out consummated.

I'm a school teacher, and let me tell you, even the most rebellious kid on campus, even the senior about to walk out the high school door, yes, even that senior, has a little bit of fear of teachers. Even the students who love you to death and bring you cookies at Christmas still have a sense that you have control. Therefore, as a teacher you should never:

1. Over-exert that control by being authoritarian, manipulative, or favoritism-prone,
2. Under-exert that control by chillin with your pupil-peeps, even to the degree of off-campus friendship,
3. Get romantic with someone whose essay you'll have to grade on the weekend.

The teachers at Snobville High School have their students as Facebook friends. They go on lunch dates and travel together. They talk on the phone at night.

BAMP! Wrong.

Teaching is a profession. Teachers should be professionals. Would you think of friending your dermatologist who you only see for your pimple medicine, or your accountant who does your taxes?

Teaching is a profession. Students are clients. They are sweet, needy clients, but clients nevertheless. A true professional knows there's a line, knows not to cross it, and knows in his/her heart of hearts that when it is crossed, it's wrong.

Guys, you want a young, peppy girlfriend? Go to Wet T-Shirt Nite at the sports bar and fling around some bling. Girls, you want a solid, dependable older guy? Good luck with that. Most of them are married. Which is a whole separate kettle of frank-talk fish.

Teacher, leave those kids alone.

Good Friday

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," celebrating the very-widely-observed seasonal festival of Eostre!

Here's an important philosophical question that I hope to pose to Eostre after the holy day. Is she bored (because her holy day has been usurped by another religion), or is she busy (because people dress up and celebrate Her holy day each year on the appropriate day)?

It's way past time for another "Gods Are Bored" interview, so hopefully we can get Eostre here next week.

In the meantime: Good Friday.

When you are a public school teacher who hasn't had a break since President's Day, Good Friday takes on a whole new meaning. Sorry for your suffering, Jesus ... really ... but having today off was WAY PAST FABULOUS.

No Stations of the Cross, no hours of mournful Bach cantatas. We at "The Gods Are Bored" slept until 9:00, prepared a simple breakfast, read Time magazine (Santorum: The First Amendment's best friend), and browsed the thrift store for candles and tablecloths. Accompanied by daughter, The Spare.

The sole black cloud on this day was a literal one, from a forest fire in the New Jersey Pinelands. Otherwise, again with apologies to the busy god, this day was good.

I've got my desktop computer back, it's purring like a kitten, and next week I'm OFF EVERY DAY!

Good, Good Friday! My Friday is like a red, red rose that newly blooms in April...

(Sorry, Shakespeare, but global climate change is upon us.)

Happy Eostre! Gods Are Bored busy blogging next week! LUV IT!

So nice to have the computer and the fabulous, wonderful artwork of Thalia Took!

The Very Tragic Tale of Poor Sad Tom

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" I'm here blogging at school today, so this sad tale will be brief.

Both of my daughters attended Snobville High School, a bastion of cutthroat academics and one-upsmanship. The goal of almost every Snobville High student is to be accepted into multiple Ivy League schools. Just for backup, many students also apply to prestige universities like Duke, Stanford, and my alma mater, Johns Hopkins.

Rare is the student who fixates on one particular university and bends all of his or her accomplishments toward admittance to that institution. Poor Sad Tom did just that.

PST has spent the last ten years lusting in his heart for Princeton University and only Princeton University. He was class president all four years at Snobville High, did community service until he dropped from exhaustion (literally he was dazed at last year's Snobville Community Book Sale from stacking heavy boxes of books in the hot sun). He took the requisite accelerated and AP courses and did well on them. He aced the SATs after much diligent practice. He's a polite, sincere young man with just the slightest pinched expression to indicate his obsessive ambition.

Admission letters went out last week. While a few other Snobville High students made the grade and got into Princeton, PST did not. He wasn't even wait-listed.

PST only applied to one other university, the lowly Rutgers, seen as a venue of last resort for Snobville's Ivy-bound egotists. (Can you imagine not being happy about getting accepted at Rutgers University? Me neither.)

Apparently, PST is overcome with grief. He is literally re-living his past four years and looking at the places in his life (sparse though they are) where he wasted time that he could have spent studying. Literally, as Spare recounts it, PST is berating himself for watching some t.v. series that he liked. And he deeply regrets the dating he did. Could have been home studying.

I don't fault PST for this tragedy. It's bigger than him. It begins with the idea that some universities are like diamonds that, once obtained, assure you a magical ascent into the one percent. It extends to the despicable notion that affordable state colleges are beneath contempt because, oh gosh, they admit lots of normal people. It morphs into the idea that your identity is the college you attend, your standing with your peers rests on acing the SAT and pulling in that "on behalf of the ... welcome to ..." letter.

If I knew PST well enough, I would have this sage advice for him:

In two weeks a major publishing house will release my husband's nonfiction title, a real, live book for which he was paid an advance.

My husband has so many award plaques that we have nowhere left to hang them. He's also gotten tropies, framed artwork, been collected in anthologies, and received an effusive blurb for his book from one of the major authors of this era.

Any Princeton professor of writing would cut off a finger for this kind of success.

My husband dropped out of college after two years in which what he mostly did was fail his courses.

PST, weep no more. Life begins at 18. Watch some t.v., take that girl out for an ice cream, and then find yourself a bored deity who will inhabit you, shower you with worth, and help you discover the special you that you've stuffed in some drawer in your bedroom. Don't sit in the lecture hall listening to the Learn'd Astronomer! Get out there in the mystic night and stare at the stars.

What the Frogs Said

What did one frog say to another?

"My, how time is fun when you're having flies."

The faeries love that one.

I pose this silly joke because this week marks the seventh anniversary of "The Gods Are Bored." I can hardly believe it myself.

Seven years ago I was an unemployed ex-writer whose beloved father had just died. I was already a Pagan.

One morning I sat reading the newspaper, and I saw a story about a woman who had gotten her vet bills paid by her blog readers. This blog stuff had already filtered in to my not-so-computer-savvy radar. So I went into my home office, wandered onto this site, and found it unreasonably easy to set up a blog.

What to call it? Would you believe that I didn't even have a name planned out? "The Gods Are Bored" just came to me from ... hmmmmmm ..... oh, golly, it must have been the bored gods themselves! Finally, the voice They needed to get a little buzz on Their sadly downsized Existences!

I've written over 1700 posts. Excuse me if I repeat myself.

Navel gazing, daughter stories, Pagan stuff, politics, rants, revenge, humor. This place has been my funhouse. Wheee!

Tonight my home computer returns from a long stay in the hospital. This means that I'll be posting more pictures again, as always blithely disregarding intellectual property.

It's a special week. Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!"

PS - I don't own a dog.

Room for One, Room for All

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," democratic deity worship in action! If you've got the God, we've got the seer! Remember Miller beer?

Lots of cheer here. Yesterday I had a lovely lunch with Maebius and Nettle, two dear friends that I rarely see. Proof that you can continue to evolve as a Nature Girl even after leaving the mountains: Maebius taught me how to make a really loud whistle from an acorn cap. Who'da thought? I could have been bouncing shrill whistle sounds off the Allegheny Mountains for decades. Alas ... but never too late to learn a new trick.

Maebius and Nettle and I had a little chat beside the Shrine of the Mists. (It was a misty day, interestingly enough.) Needless to say, the conversation turned to the bored gods and our responsibility towards them.

Recently I joined a national Druid group called ADF. The main reason I joined was to undertake its scholarly program, which is intended to be rigorous and thorough.

One of the things ADF asks its members to do is to choose a pantheon of House Gods. These would be the deities to whom you give honor inside and outside your home.

Actually I had already done that by having an altar to Queen Brighid the Bright in my house and a shrine in the back yard. But the "House Gods" idea is somewhat perplexing all the same.

To me, all Gods and Goddesses are my House Gods. The most ancient deities that have long been forgotten are my House Gods. Sometimes I feel the name-forgotten Ancient Ones stirring around, especially by the shrine, but also indoors. When history forgets groups of people, it also forgets their deities. This is a sad and sorry thing.

What will history say some day about our society and our busy God? Will archeologists find multiple relics depicting a man nailed to a tree and say, "What a barbaric culture that was!" And would they be wrong in making that assumption?

Who has the right to declare one deity better than all others? What egotistical deity would make such a claim and require it to be believed by His or Her followers? Isn't this all a construct of human nature?

An atheist would tell you that all deities are constructs of human nature. I don't buy that, but I do believe that we humans sense a Higher Power and then endow It with all sorts of human characteristics (including gender) that It might not have at all.

Therefore, while I will honor Mannanan Mac Lir as my House God of the shrine, I will still invite each and every bored deity to feast at my table, to marvel at my refrigerator (They can't get over frozen food on a hot day), and to inhale the fragrant steam of a cup of tea.

To my friends far and wide, I say ... bring back the Bored Gods! Those whose names are known, and those who have been relegated to the mists of time. How very sad it is to be forgotten.

Fed Up to the Gills

I am sick and tired of the following things, in no particular order:

1. Rick Santorum (well, maybe he really is always number one)

2. Copy machines that malfunction every time I try to use them.

3. Paper in general. My desk is inundated. Feels like a whole dead forest lies in ruins all around me.

4. College courses that abound in busywork that reflects the professor's agenda but teach  nothing.

5. People who ask me how much money I got from the sale of my farm. (This really should be number one.)

6. Keith Olbermann. Painful to watch. The man is nuts.

7. People who don't take my advice and then come weeping to me when their lives fall apart. (This would be a sibling.)

8. "Mean girl" students. Give me a class of rowdy boys any day.


Going out to the Shrine of the Mists now to summon some bored gods whose praise and worship teams got swallowed up by some busy god's missionaries. We will all do a dance to the futility of resistance.

The Little Things You Never Think Of, and the Big Ones that Ought To Be on Your Mind

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," defending downsized deities since the dawn of the day! Mondays are tough, aren't they? Anyone know which bored deity is responsible for this despicable portion of the week?

I had a busy weekend, and it was only today that I caught up with a few of my fellow bloggesses. One of them is Mrs. B, the Pagan Soccer Mom. She's in my sidebar, and if you've never visited her, wow -- you are in for a treat.

One of Mrs. B's daughter's school teachers said, in front of the kid's whole class, "Pagan holy days are an oxymoron." So far Mrs. B has been unable to wrench a true apology from the teacher in question. Said teacher is only "sorry [insert the name of your child here ... and I mean your child] got her feelings hurt." That's a damn far cry from "I'm sorry I said something so disrespectful about your faith."

I have a little bumper sticker of the First Amendment on the side of my car. I look at it every morning before I come into school. I have students who are Jehovah's Witnesses and students who openly wear devil-worship garb. And everything in between. For me to make any comment whatsoever about their faith would be out of the question. I am a government employee, and the government does not legislate religion.

So far. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Thank goodness I had a few years of substitute teaching before I got hired full time. In my early school days I talked about faeries and such -- a little too much. Luckily, the students who heard it were seniors who graduated and moved on. Now I work with freshmen and sophomores, and they could not pull a word about religion from my lips if they reached the whole way down my throat.

This is not to say that I don't mention the Bible, and pastors, and all of that from time to time. The Bible and Christian churches are part of my students' valuable prior knowledge (see post below). I offer no opinion, but referring occasionally to the Bible as a piece of literature, or even history (although just about everything in it is fiction) can be helpful to kids looking for something to write about.

Offer an opinion, though? This would be absolutely out of the question. When you are a public employee, you have to be absolutely, positively neutral about religion. I even watch that I don't make snarky asides, or even double entendres that my student population wouldn't understand.

But wait: There's more, Billy Mays! In these days, a teacher needs to be careful about touching a student, even a cheery pat on the back. No terms of endearment, either. Not even neutral ones, like "kiddo" or "my dear." For awhile I was calling my students lieblings, but I've even stopped that. It saddens me that I must address my students as "students" or "ladies and gentlemen," but it is what it is. Best to err on the side of caution.

Can you imagine how difficult it is for a person who has a daughter just about the age of her students, to watch those students file into the class each morning, and not even give them a quick, maternal pat on the shoulder? Or to look over someone's paper who has worked really, really hard, and not pat them on the back? Can't be too familiar. A very tough challenge for a born mom like me.

Mrs. B's daughter has had her First Amendment rights abridged by a government employee. And apparently a stubborn one too. I would even call into question the discussion that predicated the remark.

Teaching is a mine field. The First Amendment is a road map through it. Teachers, read it. Every day.

More on Hunger Games

Isn't it funny how, when you start to pick at a pesky scab, it comes off and real blood flows? Today I've been thinking about Hunger Games, since I suppose some throng of ritual-murder re-enactors is going to descend on movie houses tonight.

In the previous post I mused about the dystopian society that uses a pageant of teenagers slaughtering each other as entertainment. Namely, wouldn't such a society be ripe for picking off by rival nations? (Or, wouldn't its citizens rise up with the help of some sympathetic place like, say, France?)

Today, while busting my brains teaching, another thought occurred to me. There's a huge disconnect in this imaginary society between the technology in the Capitol and the process of energy extraction in "District 12," i.e., Appalachia.

When you think about how dystopian our treatment of the Appalachian Mountains is today, with mountaintop removal mining (MTR) and hydraulic fracturing (fracking), and when you think how few jobs these so-called "industries" actually produce over the long haul, why would there even be a District 12 to begin with? A concentration of technology in the hands of a few heartless individuals would surely leave Appalachia looking like a moonscape even in the here and now. The technology on display in this novel begs the philosophical question of why mining techniques would be so primitive, allowing for a populace large enough to rebel. And fences that can be crawled under in the same world with camera implants? Why wouldn't every child be implanted with a camera? There wouldn't be as many to take the implants if the future society used MTR and fracking for its power.

Now, I betcha the AppalLit folks will pick this one up!

Imagining a dystopian future is extremely difficult. Look at that old war horse The Road Warrior. All these bad guys driving around the Australian desert in their modified vehicles. Where does the gas come from that the bad guys are using? They're trying to get someone else's, but they don't seem to need it much. Nor do they have a supply depot. Doesn't look like there's much water in that landscape either. Big leap of faith, folks. Big leap of faith.

Imagine for a moment that the world nearly came to an end, and 90 percent of the human race was wiped clean off the face of the Earth. Suddenly there would be 1,000 people in Snobville, 300,000 or less in the whole Philadelphia metropolitan area.

What do you think? Would we see cooperation, or competition? Would every person have value? More value than now?

Maybe what we really need is a cataclysm. Perhaps it would lead to a brighter future.

This post brought to you by the gal whose novel was deemed a suitable table covering for a particularly greasy fish fry. Enjoy the show!

Hunger Games

Well, everyone's weighing in on The Hunger Games, and since I hadn't heard a thing about it until a few weeks ago, I girded my loins and ventured into Barnes & Noble for a copy of Volume 1.

This was an intensely dismaying book for me.

Dystopian fiction always bothers me (I couldn't even read 1984 the whole way through; it was too unnerving). This one bothered me too, because some teenagers growing up on this sort of fare will find it appealing for re-enactment -- not a good thing by any stretch.

Last night I was reading some comments from Appalachian bloggers about the book, since the heroine is clearly, explicitly, from a region that was at least once called Appalachia. As a protagonist she fulfills most of the stereotypes of "good" Appalachians, in that she can fend for herself off the woodlands, she's athletic, smart, compassionate, and a good shot with bow and arrow. The bored deities are satisfied with her self-sacrifice and underdog status.

It's not this part of the story that riled me. The part that riled me was the depiction of the society as a whole.

There is a strong tendency in literature to paint the future in the grim grays of failure. Truth is, the human race is an up-and-down species. The excesses of Ancient Rome became so vile to its citizenry and its nearby neighbors that it was overthrown by invasion and religion. As far as I'm concerned, the Nazis and their Holocaust, and America and its atom bomb, represented a new low in human affairs from which we have rebounded.

Will we descend into Nazi hell again? Of course! Will other human beings resist that? Of course! It's never so easy as novels make it look.

And Hunger Games went a bit too far. I simply cannot fathom a country where the entertainment consists of a yearly pageant of teenagers slaughtering each other. There are twelve Districts in the book. A Thirteenth was destroyed because it resisted.

So, when the Thirteenth got its back up, what did the others do?

If the only colony that had rebelled against England was Massachusetts, we'd all be God Saving the Queen. But Massachusetts called on the other colonies, and together this bunch of poorly-fed, poorly-armed, non-soldiers faced down the best military might of the era.

Does anyone remember why the Americans won the war? Heck, they lost almost every pitched battle.

They won because France provided soldiers, guns, money, and a navy. France. "Lafayette, we are here."

As I was reading Hunger Games, I found myself asking, "Where's Lafayette? Where are the Chinese?" Oh yes, and even, "Where's Che?" although the author sort of indicates that Che's type of army would be no match.

I'm predicting that this trilogy will end with a destruction of this evil dystopia from within. It would make more sense if Air France came to the rescue.

But what do I know? I couldn't get a publisher for my book, and this author is raking it in. Call me sour grapes if you will. Guilty as charged. Stomp me into wine.

Teaching to the Pulpit

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," snickering behind our hands since ... forever! If you can't laugh at the world, you're screwed. Now, I don't mean laugh at everything. Just the funny stuff. If your life seems short on funny stuff, force yourself to search it out. Pray to Loki, Anansi, or Coyote. That ought to do the trickster.

Ever since there have been standardized tests, there have been mandates to teach to those tests. Curriculum is built around "passing the test."  Here in New Jersey, this means a lot of answering open-ended questions and a lot of writing the same kinds of essays over and over again.

Of course the students catch on. They did the same thing last year! Why do it again? Good freakin question.

The answer, of course, is that it's "on the test." The students know this. So they begrudgingly pull their loose leaf from their binders and dig into yet another explanatory essay.

The latest test wrinkle here in Chris Christieville is an essay that explains a quote, an adage, or a common emotion, such as the need to overcome fear. It's this quote/adage thingy I'm teaching right now to 110 students from Camden.

(Yes, that does mean that I will have 110 essays to read by the end of March. Yowsa.)

You know how it goes. Sometimes you get a class full of respectful, studious kids. And sometimes you pull a classful of smart-alecks. This happens to teachers everywhere, and if you're not a teacher, then you were a student -- which were you, the nerd or the smarty?

Today my smart-aleck class comes up with the Big Question: "Why are we always practicing this test stuff?"

Not to pat myself on the back or anything, but I can usually finesse these questions.

"Well," says I, "all you're doing in this essay is explaining something. And you do this all the time with your friends. They might say, 'What do you mean?" and you'll tell them what you mean, and then maybe follow it up with a little story about someone who did the thing they can't undersand.'"

This answer was met with derision, some of it in the form of barnyard noises and the rest of it dotted liberally with expletives. I dug into my Phi Beta Kappa brain and came up with ...

Anne: "You know where you hear this kind of essay all the time? At church. I don't know how many of you go to church, but next time you're there, listen to how the preacher structures his sermon. First he'll give you the Bible verse. Then he'll tell you stories that illustrate it. Then he'll end with a call for you to be more like the Bible verse. That's just what we're doing with this essay. So I'm not only preparing you to take the standardized test, I'm preparing you to be a minister."

Only one kid in 25 said, "I don't believe in God." The rest of them tucked into their essays, no doubt dreaming of glory days ahead in which a sea of pious faces will turn their way to hear their wisdom.

Hey. In this job you do what you gotta do to keep those Number Two pencils moving across the paper.

However, if anyone ever comes up to me and says, "Mrs. Johnson! I became a minister because of what I learned in your English class!" I am going to binge on the Coffee Cake Muffins from Dunkin Donuts ... I just read that those puppies have as much fat as a brace of Big Macs.

Another day in the classroom, another pathetic attempt to wrench meaning from test prep. Coyote, take me away!

On Marmosets

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Another Monday, another jammed copy machine. Thank goodness I don't need the copies until tomorrow. (Ain't I the optimist that the machine will be working tomorrow?)

One of the favorite things I do with my daughters is go to the Philaelphia Zoo. We go at least once a year, and sometimes more. It's even sweeter now that they have two turkey vultures that can't be released into the wild.

Our favorite zoo exhibit, by far, is the pygmy marmosets. Full grown they are about the size of baby bunnies. And yet, the eyes that stare back at you through the glass are so doggone human. Or perhaps I should say that our human eyes are so doggone marmoset. Yes, I like that second one better.

Whenever the daughters and I have a favorite activity, I always attach an anticipatory line to it. When we go to the thrift store, I always say, "Life is short."  It used to be, "Life is short. Let's thrift." Now all I have to say is the first part, and they grab their second-hand coats in a jiffy.

My anticipatory line for the zoo is, "When I say pygmy, you say..."

If daughters answer, "Marmoset," off we go to the zoo!

Philosophically I don't particularly like zoos, but if you consider their role in keeping certain species viable in the wild, I suppose they're a necessary evil. One of the nice things about the pygmy marmosets is that, being small and social, they seem to enjoy being at the zoo. Three hots and a cot for them! The breeding program is very successful.

So, below, is a little ditty my daughter The Spare discovered on the Tube. We all howler monkeyed over it ... hope it's not an inside joke.

Have a good day. Treat a bored deity to an offering. Something tasteful, like a well-upholstered settee.

The Marmoset Song

On Probes and Jelly

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," now with 1730 + posts and 165 followers! All followers are cordially invited to the "Gods Are Bored" picnic, June 23 at Cooper River Park in Pennsauken, NJ. Hopefully some big family will be having a reunion that day, and we can crash it for leftovers and listen to the DJ. RSVP by comment thread.

I thought we had left behind the notion that American women should be breeding machines, but apparently I was wrong. Recent legislation requiring ultrasounds, recent comments by an opiate-addled radio blabbermouth, and recent panels consisting of only men leave me wondering -- what is the future direction of human rights in this nation?

This requirement for an ultrasound prior to an abortion is not only courting fiscal disaster in the very states where it is being enacted, it's also a terrific insult to women, right out of the gate. The implication is that if you see a little heart beating inside you, no matter what your circumstances, your little motherly heart is just going to melt and go gooey, and you'll call the whole abortion off. Yes, that might happen sometimes to certain morons of the gender. But that tiny heartbeat grows into a raging ball of need that can sink you like a stone, even when the child grows to adulthood. Maybe you thought of that when you scheduled the procedure in the first place.

And what do you do with your life, with this child's life, after the jelly dries and the probe gets sanitized for its next victim? Well, it depends on the circumstances, I guess. This much I do know. Unwanted children usually grow up without at least one parent, and maybe without both. Often they are abused, neglected, bullied, or ignored. Who picks up the tab when they are sick? The very state that wanted them while they were little blips on an ultrasound screen, but sure doesn't want to see them in the emergency room with lacerations or multiple broken bones.

We have huge and debilitating social issues in America just now. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to see how this whole abortion thing acts as a tool to distract attention from what is really wrong. Which is the fact that a very small group of citizens is cashing in on the backs of the rest of us.

I have an idea. Unwanted kid? Send the bills for upkeep to the one percent. All this jelly and probing will cease promptly.

Here's another "Gods Are Bored" theory. There's a push-back against abortion because we have forgotten the days of yore when unwanted babies were carried to term and then quietly murdered and buried, or left in boxes at the gates of orphanages, or just dumped in a ditch. That used to happen. It happened a lot. Throughout history. Don't trust me on this, ask a bored deity. They all remember the days when the only kind of jelly was something you pulled from a beehive.

Education Reform

What a boring topic! You can stop right here, and I won't even bat an eyelid. Except that this is "The Gods Are Bored," and we like to poke stupid things with sharp objects.

Education in America is quickly becoming "one size fits all," and the sizing is coming from a new national curriculum. The new curriculum for Language Arts (aka English) includes reading history texts like the Gettysburg Address. But this national standard stuff goes farther. It aims to use Language Arts class to analyze historical documents over the entire period of American history ... or, at least up to the Civil Rights Era.

Someone, somewhere concluded that since people don't read novels in their jobs, they shouldn't waste time reading them in school. And forget poetry. Poetry? Ha! A Shakespeare play here or there should do it. More important to read "seminal historical documents, e.g. George Washington's Farewell Address."

Okay, so I just tried to read Georgie's farewell address, and it was duller than the dirtiest dirt on the bottom of a honeydipper's boot. Calling it boring just doesn't suffice. I love to read, and I couldn't get past Page 1. Heck, Page 1 and Paragraph 1 are pretty much one and the same, and I couldn't finish either.

This same national curriculum lists Little Women as a "recommended" novel. If you have time to read a novel, that is. Gotta cover those seminal American documents!

The good news is that when the administrators come to evaluate me, they won't have to look for "student engagement," because I'll be so bored that I'll be the one with my head down, asleep in class.

News flash: I will never teach George Washington's Farewell Address. And I would rather be hoisted on my own petard (whatever that means) than teach Little Women. Boredom between bookends!

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. I'd say America's students just got a thick new shot of asphalt.

Heavenly Livestream

Buzzard Central, as usual today!

Over the weekend, my dear fellow bloggess Yellow Dog Granny alerted me to a live feed from the San Diego Zoo. One day before my birthday, a new baby California condor chick hatched in a nesting cavity at the zoo's "condorminium."

Each day, during daylight hours in San Diego, the camera is recording the condor parents as they care for their newborn. Depending upon how long the zoo leaves the baby with the parents (ideally it won't be removed until it can remove itself), this live stream will become more and more ... well ... lively.

What's most touching to me is that the father of this chick, Sisquoc, was the father of the first captive-bred condor chick ever born at the San Diego Zoo. I had the pleasure and privilege of seeing Sisquoc (from a distance) when I went to write a newspaper story about the condor restoration program back in 1983. I suppose Sisquoc has done him some breeding over the past 29 years. He seems to be quite the doting father.

If you watch the stream, Sisquoc, the dad, is the condor with the tag. The mom doesn't have a tag. They work in shifts, and right now the best chance of seeing the hatchling is when they switch duties. Eventually the baby will grow and be more visible.

I was watching when the chick hatched.

Now here's some free advice for all of you out there who are looking for one of the following things:

1. Proof that someone loves you no matter how weird you are

2. A method to rid yourself of a pesky in-law/co-worker/clingy friend

3. Enlightenment

Visit the Condor Cam frequently and at length. Point it out to any of the people above. Meditate on the parenting you see and on the slender recovery of this magnificent vulture species.

And ask yourself: What is so special about the human race?

Here's the link to Condor Cam. Get used to seeing it here:
http://www.sandiegozooglobal.org/video/condor_cam

When Everything's a Line

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," voracious voluptuous vulture-viewing since 1974! If you find vultures offensive, you are on the wrong website. Go to the canary page, if that's how you roll.

Where I live, the seasons change. The Earth goes through a great Wheel, year after year. This time we had no winter, but all the same, the spring flowers are coming out, and they are a welcome splash of color on the drab landscape.

I like to think of life as circular, like a farmer looks at growing seasons and harvest seasons and planning seasons. However, there's at least one day a year when that circularity becomes challenged: on one's birthday.

We celebrate the anniversary of our births in this culture. It's a big deal. Awhile back, I went to a big party for Mr. J's grandmother when she turned 90. Still eating cake and opening gifts at age 90!

There's a whole industry that thrives almost completely on birthdays. Little kids love birthday parties, both their own and others'. My daughter The Spare has engineered some whoppers over the past decade, and her efforts were rewarded with a splendid Sweet Sixteen that cost us next to nothing.

Spare will be 18 next month, and already her affection for birthdays is lagging. No bigI plans this time. She's just keen to get a voter registration application. Another blue voter for the ages!

I'm not keen for birthdays at all. Today is mine. I've had many. I don't like tacking a higher number to my age. I don't like being reminded that I'm mortal ... well, not exactly that I'm mortal, but that the challenges of old age are inching ever closer. I'm a pretty youthful fifty-something, but I've got a titanium hip that has a clock of its own. Nothing about me is as energetic as it used to be.

Well, with age comes wisdom. At least that is true. No one is ever too old to learn something or to be challenged by novelty. Just take this blog, for instance. When my only way to write was a pen and paper, I couldn't keep a diary to save my life. Now, "The Gods Are Bored" is almost to its 7th birthday!

You know the other thing about birthdays? When you've had 50 or more, they aren't very special anymore. There's laundry and housework to be done. Cat chores.

I don't mean to sound so blue. Actually I am starting a whole new course of study today. And it could be worse. Thanks to a Yahoo article, I calculated the ages of my felines. Alpha is 84, and Beta is 68. Time is a line for them, too.

Early birthday gift

My dear friend Yellowdog Granny sent me this link as an early birthday present. Looks like my day is complete, I need not stir from my chair.

http://www.sandiegozooglobal.org/video/condor_cam

Is Reform Needed?

Is reform needed? is it through you?
The greater the reform needed, the greater the Personality
   you need to accomplish it.
--Walt Whitman, "To a Pupil"

Well, it's a doggone good thing Walt Whitman is safe in the Summerlands, reading his poetry to the Gentry. No one was quite so giddy about the bustle of America, its workers and its thinkers, as Walt Whitman. He was a defender of democracy, even when it led to a civil war. Even after that war, he could still see fit to re-publish this poem, which was written prior to the conflict.

Today, some reforms are in dire need of Personalities to accomplish them. It seems like all the Personality lies with moron blowhards like Rush Limbaugh. The "reforms" are enacted not through Personality, but through committee, through political donation, through backroom deals, through public inertia.

I emphasize the latter. Voter turnout was abysmally low in New Jersey's last gubernatorial election. Just look what that wrought. The Chris Christie menace, elected by the lowest voter turnout ever when the governor's mansion was the prize.

Where are the Personalities we need? Who is standing up for the workers? Who is guarding the land?

I would love to see the Occupy movement survey its most dynamic members and choose a few to give old-fashioned speeches. Not bytes for Olbermann or CNN. Real speeches. Not canned political nonsense spewed from a teleprompter, penned by a hired hack. Real words. Stuff from the heart, not the pocketbook.

Mr. J says that if politics stays as it is now, we will truly have class warfare, because the one percent will corner so much that the rest of us will literally begin to starve. Before that happens, could someone please speak up? Isn't there anyone with Personality?

If things are still like this four years from now, I'm going to pat my daughter The Spare on the head and send her out there to accomplish some reform. She has abundant Personality, and she cares about the land.

Of course, she could be killed for her passion. Ain't that America?

(From Anne, wrapping up MLK week with her students.)

Dad's Bugs

There's nothing like a good Vulture Festival to perk one up. I was so blue in the previous months that I had no enthusiasm for the event, to the point where I almost forgot to order the costume. Ahhhhh. Feathers restored. All's well in the roost. Wherever it may be.

When my dad was in college at the University of Maryland (G.I. Bill, Class of 1948), he took an entomology course. No doubt he was inspired by my grandfather, who also took one (Shippensburg Normal School, 1923).

Prior to beginning the entomology course, Dad got a note from the professor. This was in the spring, for a class beginning in the fall. His assignment was to collect and mount a few insect specimens from where he lived and bring them to class the first day of school.

Well, Dad lived in the Appalachian mountains. It was sort of like letting a hungry kid loose at the candy kiosk in the mall. With very little effort, he filled two 18 X 18 boxes with the local six-legged buzzers, clickers, biters, chewers, and fliers. He had the Dobson fly in every stage of its existence, all chronologically in one corner of one box. He had a Luna moth the size of your hand and the minty-green color of a J Jill t-shirt.

The professor wanted to keep Dad's collections, but he wouldn't let her have them.

Dad was very protective of his insect collections when he was alive. Even though insects are tough and skeletal, they're also delicate if one bustles them about. However, as Dad got older, he got a little more adventurous. In his last visit to my house in Snobville, he brought both boxes and showed them to Heir's kindergarten class.

When he died, I brought the insect collections to Snobville for good.

My motto is "production for use" (which is why I don't own a firearm). Several times I have brought Dad's bugs with me to school to show my students. Mind you, I teach English. It just happens that there are several stories about insects in the English textbook.

Have you ever noticed this phenomenon? Every time I open those insect boxes, it's as if I'm immediately transformed back into my childhood, looking at them for the first time. Since I don't open the boxes very often, the novelty has never worn off. I still go "AhhhhhhAAAHHHHHH." So do my daughters.
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Well, there's no denying it. The insect collections are starting to show their age (which is in excess of 60 years, after all). The Luna moth is gone, replaced with a newer Monarch butterfly. There are a few basement crickets from Snobville that he added way after the fact for his granddaughters. Still, with the lugging to and from school, and the tendency for viewers to want to touch, legs are starting to slide across the interior, antennaes are bent or gone, some pins have become unmoored.

What am I going to do, sit the closed boxes on a shelf and say, "Don't ever touch those?" Forget it! People wear their diamond rings! Bugs on display, whether or not they can withstand the onslaught.

At the end of his life, Dad expressed regret about collecting insects. He felt bad that he had killed them (chloroform in a box or pill bottle). This, to me, shows his drift toward Druidry. He began to consider the fact that he had violated Nature for no good reason. This is why his collection will stand with no further additions. "Live and let live," is what I say -- even to that pesky yellow wasp that stung me five times after it had the bad judgment to crawl up the inside of my pants leg.

Seems like most people must take the "live and let live" philosophy these days, because insect collecting pins are themselves collectible. You can't find them anywhere. Not that I'm looking. Maybe you have a big box of them at home. If you do, hang on to them ... bugless and benign. The Dobson flies will thank you.

Taking Dad's bugs home from school now. See you soon.

Another Year, Another Vulture Fest

I have to laugh at Facebook and its Timeline. We Druids see life as circular, not linear. My daughters are grown, my husband and I enjoy looking at each other, and therefore life goes round and round and round. Hopefully for awhile.

The first weekend in March is always the East Coast Buzzard Festival, at which I serve as Shaman. I am winning young hearts and minds for the worship of the Sacred Thunderbird. What a noble calling!

Here is the fabulous photo of me bearing witness to the children of Wenonah in my Shamanic attire. Please don't try to take my place! I love this day, this activity, and the bird that I hereby portray.

For purposes of navel gazing, here are the highlights of Buzzard Fest 2012:

*I finally got to hear and dance to the buzzard songs written for the festival by Jim Six. Sometimes in the past, Jim has performed inside the building. It was good to see him unplugged, with just the acoustic guitar.

*Some delightful little tot roared with laughter as he tried to feed me popcorn and I shoved it against my beak. Could have been a YouTube viral if someone had been recording it. Funniest part was, the tot was so young that he had never had popcorn before himself. Once he tasted it, he stopped feeding it to me and started eating it himself.

*A teenager gave me a buzzard paper airplane he had crafted at the craft table. Destined for my altar.

*A little girl hugged me and said, "I love vultures. I will always love vultures! They aren't ugly and scary, they're really nice!" And so the buzzard worship flock grows, cute little tot by cute little tot!

*Another little Cindy Lou Who would not leave my side when it was time to go home. She didn't cry, she just stood there. Her parents couldn't coax her to leave the bird. (Didn't help that I was petting her soft little head.)

Best part:

*This year the Wenonah Elementary School Band played in all its ten-member glory. Actually the kids were pretty good for beginners! I've heard a lot worse. Once the music teacher noticed that the big buzzard mascot had rhythm, the big buzzard got offered the honor of conducting the final number! It was classic. I'm such a ham. I felt like Snoopy doing "Long Road to Tipperary."

Unfortunately, the buzzards who inspired this annual festival have seemingly moved on to a more rural roost, about three miles away. Last year buzzards were everywhere ... I mean, over 100 kettling in the sky at the end of the day. This year I saw two lonely wretches on the water tower ... that was it.

Oh well, I think the Vulture Fest is here to stay. Time after time, the kids would say, "See you next year, Buzzy!"

When the wheel comes around to this time again, I hope it will find me at the Buzzard Festival.

So might it be, so might it be, so might it beeeeeee.

Do Fairies Really Exist?

A long, long time ago, when "The Gods Are Bored" was very, very young, I wrote a post about the existence of fairies. I suggested that some fairies could be accounted for by legends of "little people" who lived on the edges of civilization. Skeletons of diminutive humans have been found on islands and such. In my unproven-yet-credible opinion, Great Britain probably had a race of "little people" somewhere in its forests.

"Little people" are not the same thing as fairies.

Fairies exist in another realm, a dimension that we can see only with the sixth sense. If your psychic powers are heightened, or if you are very open to the notion that there are fields and plains that humans aren't programmed to see (at this time in evolution), you will experience faerie.

Some children have a heightened psychic sense, to such an extent that it makes me believe in reincarnation. I myself had out-of-body experiences when I was young. And I saw fairies.

The fairies I saw didn't even look human. They looked like a combination of dog and deer, with frontal eyes, pointy ears, and bristly fur. Their teeth were like deer teeth and their heads were shaped like deer heads. They were the size of full-grown humans, but they could make themselves smaller if they wanted to.

Now, you can call me an imaginative youngster if you like, but when I opened The Notebooks of Brian Froud (you can get it from Amazon), I found the very creature I had played with when I was a kid, right there drawn by Brian in the book! I knew immediately that I was looking at a portrait of my fairy friend. Again, let me say that not all fairies have human forms. Some look like creatures. It's a whole world out there, my friends. We just can't see it.

My father met my husband's grandmother one time. I assure you that they did not talk about fairies. And yet both of them, on their deathbeds, described red-headed "children" standing in the doorway and beckoning to them. In my father's case, he identified the being as "Peter Pan." In Grandma-in-law's case, she saw a red-headed little girl who asked her to "come along." She said she wasn't ready. Within a week she died.

As we step off this plain and onto another, the fairies become more clear to us. You don't necessarily have to be dying, but if you're not dying you have to be open to all possibilities. Fairies can be scary. Proceed with caution.

To those of you reading the May 5, 2005 post and asking me to help you find fairies, all I can say is, try to remember your deepest childhood to see if you have some memory of them already. If so, concentrate on that memory. If not, spend some time in the most cluttered room in your house, telling jokes and riddles. This is what They like. Oh yes, the woods are fine and dandy, but you don't have to sit by a stream. The fairies are amongst us. They are in us, in our memories and in the sections of our brains that we don't use yet.

To those of you reading the May 5, 2005 post and asking me what I'm smoking and where you can get some ... nothing, and I have no idea. Bite me.

To those of you who believe in God and not fairies, how the heck do you explain those seraphim? Just asking.

Party of Woodstock

Seriously. Rick Santorum has called the Democratic Party the "Party of Woodstock." I'm trying to picture President Obama jamming in the mud to "Purple Haze." Ooops! Fail.

I'm old enough to remember Woodstock, and truth be told, much more has been made of it in the ensuing years than was made of it at the time. I do know that the televised images of young people cavorting in the rain, in various states of undress and in various states of altered consciousness, scared the crap out of Middle America. But it took a while for that to happen.

Actually, the fact that we aren't a Woodstock generation should say it all. A true Party of Woodstock would be way left of center, we would have legalized weed, and corporations would be required to smile on their brothers, everybody get together, gotta love one another right now. Does that sound like America to you?

Let me tell Moron Rick and all you young whippersnappers what life was like in the years immediately after Woodstock.

In public school health class, segregated by gender, we girls were told exactly how to prevent pregnancy. We were shown all the different ways it could be done. The teacher passed around an unopened package of birth control pills and told us where to go to get them for free. We passed around a diaphragm and saw a film on how an IUD worked. Many of my friends promptly went to the state-funded free clinic and got their pills. They didn't need to tell a parent about the appointment or the pills.

I had plenty of high school classmates who were sexually active. No one got pregnant.

When I went into college, still in the 1970s, I got free pills from the state-funded dispensary too. I used them. I never got pregnant until I wanted to. One of my friends was not so lucky. Friend's mom found Friend's pills in the medicine cabinet (while snooping) and demanded Friend stop taking them immediately. Within three months, Friend had to get an abortion, which she had to hide from her family. She got it without question (and without ultrasound) at a state-funded clinic.

Why are we going backwards on this? Who are these people, and why do they care what women do with their lives? I don't understand it at all.

You know what I think? I think we need a Party of Woodstock. If I could get family planning classes in 1975, and now I can go to my 35th anniversary class reunion and see photos of plump, smiling grandchildren, I don't think anyone got harmed by learning how to prevent pregnancy.

If there are any young gals reading this here Pagan diary, let me just say that I feel sorry for you. What was easy for my generation has become a struggle for you ... and it looks to get worse before it gets better.

I'll do my part to put things back on track. But girls: It's really up to you. Vote for your autonomy. And above all else, act responsibly ... no matter how hard it is to find those pills these days.

Pagan Backyard Shrine

Day One of the stomach flu, I pretty much stayed on the couch watching t.v. After a day of that, having a job seemed like a great big blessing.

Day Two, I felt better. So I grabbed the Netbook and started messing around.

"The Gods Are Bored" is such a fabulous intellectual property that I thought I'd better secure its name elsewhere. So I fumbled through Tumblr and made one for "The Gods Are Bored." If you have a Tumblr, come and follow me! I'll be posting different stuff there from here ... but this blog will still be your central clearinghouse for all things bored god.

Day Three, it's cold as can be outside, but I took a minute to mess around with the camera in this Netbook. Voila! Here's my Shrine of the Mists, lieblings!

Okay, okay. It's not quite focused. Neither am I.

Most of the rocks on this shrine are from my former farm. I brought a few at a time every time I visited over the last 18 months. There's some Marcellus shale and some brachiopod fossils. Around the flat stone are landscaping pebbles, Marcellus shale,  sea glass, quartz crystals, marbles, various weird stones I've found, sea shells, and leaves from the surrounding trees. At night I put a single candle on the flat stone and shield it with a hurricane globe, but only if meteorological conditions are right. This is the place where I "All Hail" the very most ancient deities whose names have been lost to time.

Some nights I speak to the Green Man here. I have learned to be very careful what I say.

I went back and forth philosophically over whether to post pictures of my shrine, since it is such a personal thing. However, I have had many people ask me how to make one, and what it should look like. Well, here's what it looks like, and if I get enough comments, I'll write a post about how it was made.

Trust me, you can do this. I only worked as a stone mason for part of one summer. And that was a long, long time ago.

Stomach flu navel gaze

I think it's a bit of serendipity that I'm sitting here at home with a case of the stomach flu on the day that my grandfather's property passes out of my hands forever. As I write this, the settlement is being completed out in Bedford, PA on the place I lovingly called Big Rock.

Today would not have been a good day for me to be at school, dealing with 110 teenagers and various adults. If I felt well I would be irritable and snappish, likely to do or say something out of character. Perhaps the bored gods saw that eventuality and stuck me in bed for two days.

Funny thing is, the sale of this land is almost exactly the same situation in that movie, "The Descendants," except that in the movie there are a lot more cousins in the mix. I just have an uncle, a sister, and three cousins. And no George Clooney on hand to save the day.

My sister sent me an email. She and her husband and their newly-adopted 8-year-old are going to the settlement, so they can sign the papers and get their check today. Sis was angry when I held up the sale for irregularities, back in January. Apparently she is desperate for the money.

Sis took custody of two boys back in May of 2011, wards of a private Christian adoption agency from which they were bought (something like $30,000). This agency did not require any parenting classes and did not contact next-of-kin for references. Nor did they disclose that the boys being adopted were born to a mother who was abusing alcohol and crack cocaine while they were in utero. Sis has already "returned to sender" the younger of the two, a boy who has all the symptoms of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, a boy who was shuttled between indifferent Christian foster families and orphanages and a crazy grandmother for the first years of his life. He was in Sis's home for about four months.

In her email, Sis said she was taking the remaining boy up to the property settlement "so he can meet at least a little bit of his family."

From where I'm sitting I think it would be better if the kid had the stomach flu himself today.

I dunno ...  I just don't see a property settlement table as an optimal place for a troubled adoptee to meet and greet the last remaining member of my dad's generation. Two hours in the car one way, a lawyer's office, maybe lunch at a diner in the little county seat, maybe a long back-roads drive down to the house that is being cleaned out ... Long drive home with a vague memory of some tall old man with an odd stare and a white beard. Who may himself be crying today, given that he's signing the papers on the place he has called home since 1978.

This is just another example of Sis's inability to engage the reality portion of life.

I wonder what she will do with the $23,000-and-change portion of the farm that is her due? She says that she and her husband have exhausted their retirement savings. To hear someone admit this at age 47 -- having just adopted an eight-year-old -- is rather frightening.

So. I get $23,000-and-change too. Which is either two years' state and local taxes in Snobville or a year of college tuition for The Spare.

Now, now, readers ... Don't tempt me to blow the dough on a fancy new car or a couple trips to some island. I don't roll that way. Maybe, four years or so from now, I'll buy a couple of acres of land. Or maybe not. It would be better to hear America singing right where I am, close by the ghost of Walt Whitman.

Oh ... one piece of big good news! The East Coast Vulture Festival gave the a-okay sign to the buzzard costume rental! I may be the only vulture at the fair!

I hope you don't get this stomach bug. It's a ripper.

Still Not Believing My Eyes

If you live in the Delaware Valley of the US of A, and you turn the TV on and see Rick Santorum as a serious presidential candidate, you are absolutely baffled. Baffled, I tell you! You want to open a window and shout, "HEY, IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH MY CABLE?"

Since the founding days of "The Gods Are Bored," ex-Senator Santorum has been a favorite whipping boy (tee hee), winner of more "moron par excellence" citations than any other imbicile on the planet. His presence at the top of the political scene proves that all investors, including Super PACS, want to buy at bargain basement prices.

Don't let the sweater vest fool you. Oh, wait a minute. You're reading "The Gods Are Bored!" You learned not to let sweater vests fool you at your mama's knee.

Anyway, it's time to re-acquaint non-Pennsylvanians with the antics of Santorum. Not the ones that made the public stage, like his suggestion that men would want to marry dogs. No, the antics that lost him his seat in the Senate.

Over the weekend, this moron par excellence heaped vitriol on public schools, pretty much calling for them to be abolished. He favors home schooling, because, of course, his long-suffering spouse home-schooled his brood of brats.

But wait. Read the fine print.

The Santorum brood was home-schooled at the expense of the taxpayers of Pennsylvania. Yes indeed, the Keystone State paid for the books, computers, testing ... everything except maybe the copies of Of Pandas and People that round out the liberal education of every unfortunate offspring of a wacked Christian zealot.

Here's the wrinkle:

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania paid to educate the Santorum brood while said brood was actually living in Virginia. This came to be a sore subject on the old home turf around election time. Many citizens felt they had been ill-used. They voted accordingly.

Charter school? Santorum didn't use it. Parochial school? Santorum's kids did not attend. No, folks. The bitty babes may have learned Pandas in the comfort of their suburban Virginia McMansion, but they got a fully funded public school education. Rick Santorum's outlay for this education? Whatever the heck the property taxes were on the little house he called "home" somewhere near Pittsburgh. You know the place. The one where no one bothered to mow the lawn. Why should the grass be mowed when the family was living in Virginia?

I did a little research.

What do Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan all have in common? Oh geez. They all attended public schools. Word! What a hoot!

Ladies and gentlemen, I call your attention to Rick Santorum ... suggesting that his esteemed predecessors in the Republican ranks did not get good educations. Moron. Par. Excellence.

Someone fix my cable box. Please. I can't watch this guy run for president.

Modern Magick

Welcome, as always, to "The Gods Are Bored," coming to you from an undisclosed location in the Middle Atlantic states of the US of A! A bored god-sanctioned web site since 2005.

Don't know about you, but I don't like getting angry and popping off at people. I'd rather sit and stew. Or better yet, go out in the woods and bitch to an indifferent tree.

Technology has made it so much simpler to avoid people you don't want to talk to.

When I was a kid, you didn't know who was on the other end of the line when the phone rang. It could be your best friend wanting to go for a swim in the Antietam Creek, or it could be your nasty aunt, pissed at your mom ... again. You had to take the call. It was like gambling, sort of.

Then came a wonderful tool called the Answering Machine. Suddenly you could screen your calls. No more crazy Mom, ruining your weekend on a Saturday morning. Then again, you still had to listen to the message: (cue Mom, with menacing tone: "Call your MOTHER.")

These days the sweet little cell phone, which also doesn't even ring if you don't want it to, can tell you exactly who is dialing you up. Just look at the screen and make a decision. To talk, or not to talk: That is the question.

We at "The Gods Are Bored" say, damn all tradition, this new phone era is simply magickal! The only human variable in this is your personal self-control. Keep steady, and a great deal of aggravation is funneled into the Message Center, where you can delete without even listening!

There's a generation just older than mine that doesn't know how to text. This is the biggest blessing of all.

Part of the problem with many religions is that they don't bend with the arc of science and technology. Even though Jesus had nothing to say about abortion, people infer what the rule is on that, based on flimsy evidence from an ancient scroll. The bored gods favor evolutionary religions that rely less on hidebound traditions and more on the big, broad, flexible outlook. Bored gods are willing to change -- it's way better than extinction.

Therefore, when I see phone numbers blink up of people who I would just chew out if I spoke to them, I praise all the bored gods for cell phones. And I don't pick up.

The one downside is that I won't be able to identify the Republican pollsters, who I enjoy keeping on the line for 45 minutes, just to keep them from calling someone else (and also running up their phone bills). Oh well. A small price to pay for avoiding the people who will make me shout at trees.

Omens

Do you look for omens, or do you consider them superstitious rot?

If the latter, you might not feel too at home here at "The Gods Are Bored." Go play with your chemistry set.

Farmers are very prone to looking for omens. Heck, they have an Almanac full of them, published every year!

On Saturday I set out looking for an omen.

I live about 50 miles inland from the Atlantic. Even after 20 years, this is still a phenomenon to me. When I was in my formative years, a trip to the beach was an all-day affair that involved the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and a long trudge across the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It took five hours to drive to the shore from where I lived.

Now I can get there in an hour, if I drive due east (which puts me amongst the casinos in AC).

On Saturday, very early, I set out to collect sea glass with a colleague of mine from the Vo-Tech. We had arranged to meet at a diner halfway between my house and the seacoast. From there she was going to take me to her secret beaches in Atlantic City where she finds scads of sea glass.

Driving toward the diner, I asked for an omen as to how I could bond with the beach.

In the past I have never liked the seashore much. Growing up with a bipolar mom who wanted to vacation there, a mom who didn't believe in seasickness or a fear of those rough Atlantic waves, I have always had a slight inner aversion to the coastline. But that is the destination around here. Wanna have fun, yo, go to da shore.

The bored gods lost no time in giving me Their sign.

Arriving at the diner, I discovered that I was expected to ride in the back seat of my colleague's red SUV. On the agenda: sea glass AND five estate sales.

It was a stunning day at the beach, sunny and about 50 degrees. But the sea glass expert quickly (and accurately) diagnosed her choice areas as not being very good on this day. Still we climbed over pilings and over rocks to get to the jetties... not an easy task for a trio of middle-aged school teachers. As I jumped down next to a piling, I got pinioned on it and tore my favorite pair of jeans. I was lucky I didn't get a four-inch splinter in my thigh.

That's all the omen I needed, right there.

The bored gods thought otherwise. They sent that red SUV the length and breadth of Atlantic City and Ocean City, mile after mile of disastrously over-built shoreline, into the homes of people who had died, whose accumulation of stuff was up for sale. Then on into the Pine Barrens, for another pair of homes under similar dire straits.

I went looking for sea glass and came home with three pairs of scissors and a glass salad bowl. And some sea glass -- not much. And an ugly gash in a pair of jeans I have had for a decade.

The bored gods have spoken. I can listen to Quadrophenia as often as I like, but the beach is not the place for me. The omens are clear. Clear as the water running through Terrapin Run.

The Most Horrible and Dreadful Tragedy Yet!

Steer clear of "The Gods Are Bored" if you are sick and tired of the long litany of laments. Today's is the biggest, most mind-boggling of all. It shakes me to the very core of my being.

Every year I rent a buzzard costume from a theatrical outfit in Ohio. Every year the price of shipping goes up. Granted, it's a big, bulky box. But it weighs about 20 pounds, including the box. How can that possibly cost $130 to ship regular rate via UPS?

And so, it was with deep regret that I suggested to the steering committee of the East Coast Vulture Festival that we forgo "Buzzy" this year. Even after I was willing to spend fifty bucks of my wages on the costume, it would be barely a drop in the old bucket.

The costume costs $225. For one day's rent.

Now, those of you with deep pockets -- don't reach out and feed my Buzzard Worship habit! It's a matter of conscience here. I could pay the whole thing from the ill-gotten gains I'll receive from the sale of the farm. I just think it's too much. And the festival is held every year. What costs $225 this year will cost $250 the next.

Gotta draw the line, even in Buzzard Worship.

The news gets worse.

This has been a very mild winter here in the Mid-Atlantic states. It was cold in December, but since Christmas we've been almost spring-like.

This has affected the roosting behavior of the buzzards. They are no longer flocking to Wenonah. They're bunking elsewhere.

Excuse me while I rend my garments!

Heir and I went to Wenonah in December, and the flock was there. Maybe a little smaller than previous years, but definitely a presence. With this warm spell, they've drifted away. Literally.

I've always been concerned that the winter roost in Wenonah would not be a permanent thing. Vultures do like to roam about a bit. They're probably looking for new adventures. After all, they're bored deities under the precise definition offered up here at this handy web site. But ... oh ... oh ... my precious Golden Purifiers! My sweet scavengers! The birds I love and live for! Gone, dispersed, blown away ... perhaps forever.

I'm not much of a drinker, but I hear a bottle of gin calling my name. Go ahead, publishing house -- shove my poor old novel into the storm drain! But the loss of the Winter Flock? TRAGEDY.

The Real Crystal

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," offering sage and thymely information since 2005! My, has the thyme ever flown!

Occasionally I wear a quartz crystal to school. It's on a string. It's not a really big one. I would say it's just slightly smaller than my thumb.

Yesterday afternoon one of my students challenged me on it. He said it was fake. I couldn't convince him it was real ... and as a teacher you know that doing so is wasting valuable learning thyme.

Several of my students have expressed the same skepticism since the beginning of the year. One said that crystals never got that big.

I was thinking about this last night as I played with Decibel.

The student who couldn't believe that my crystal is real probably spends less than one percent of his life on grassy surfaces -- and he plays baseball. The vast majority of my students are entirely bound to asphalt. They walk on sidewalks to the corner store, they jump into the school bus off the pavement, they stay inside at home, and they hang around the basketball court at school. If they aren't in a building, they also aren't in the grass. They are prisoners of the city.

This is so sad.

I suppose the opposite is the case out in the hinterlands. There are probably kids who only hit the asphalt when they get to school. Those kids wouldn't challenge the reality of a crystal -- they might even have seen crystals growing in caves.

One year I had a student named Crystal who had never seen a real crystal. I gave her one.

Personally I would like to give every one of my students a quartz crystal. But that would violate the First Amendment, as quartz crystals impart calm. I would also like to lead my students on a hike.

Oh well. I'll teach them English instead.

Missed Calls

WT TGAB, beginning a unit on acronyms tomorrow in school! Practicing here, in the safety of my blog.

On Friday I signed the papers to sell the family property. If you missed the back story, this was under duress because I was the only person in the family who wanted to keep the farm, and I couldn't meet the asking price.

Anyway, putting those legal documents in the mail is one of the toughest things I have ever done. There's something so doggone final about signing and notarizing a deed of sale. I know the mountain is still there, but it felt dead to me.

About two hours after leaving the Snobville Post Office, I got an incoming call on my cell phone. The number registered as belonging to the soon-to-be owner of my former family farm. He calls at least once a week, usually around 7:00, and at that time he has proven to be so voluble that one can only assume he's had a few.

On that night (and the following as well) I could not bring myself to listen to this guy tell me yet again that nothing has changed. I'm sorry he feels so guilty about buying a property he has wanted for 30 years, but I just can't listen to him absolve himself anymore ... or to make promises that his homeowners insurance salesman would cringe to hear.

Anyway, after missing that call, I suddenly became keen to see what other calls I had missed.

There must have been nearly 60 missed calls.

Six were from New Owner of Farm

Two were from recent hospital tests, seeking further information for insurance companies.

28 were from The Heir

15 were from The Spare

Nine were from Mr. J

As I deleted them, one by one, I had a facepalm moment.

What if there were no missed calls from The Heir? What if I suddenly would no longer get missed calls from The Spare? What if Mr. J never called me again?

My reality check came through the missed calls on my cell phone. There may come a day when I will be able to buy a little sliver of ground somewhere. But I could never, ever replace my family.

Gracious bored Gods and Goddesses of all pantheons, known and unknown, please preserve and protect my husband and children. Land may be sacred, but people are uniquely sacred. Bored deities, let me never experience a single day without the serene knowledge that my people are alive and thriving!

So might it be.

Decibel Sings

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," praise and worship suggestions for No Child Left Behind! New Jersey has been released from NCLB ... I know not why. Since I get most of my classroom's books from NCLB (and since the vast majority of my students pass the demanding high school proficiency test), I'm not sure I'm happy about this. But anything that takes some heat off teachers should be warmly welcomed.

Teaching has been very hard on me. Sadly, it has been harder on Decibel the Parrot.

When I worked at home, I used to be around Decibel all day. Now there are days when I uncover Decibel's cage in the dark of the morning and don't return to her side until bedtime. She is alone, all alone, all day.

Matters have been worse since my desktop computer suffocated (under the weight of parrot dander). Now there's no reason to go into my home office at all, and that's where Decibel has located for the winter months. Her name is Decibel for a reason. She can be heard two blocks away when she gets heated up -- which is frequently.

Lately, when I have found a moment to grade papers or blog on my netbook alongside Decibel, we have been singing to each other. I sing. She mimics. It's adorable.

But I think it should be a swan song.

Unless I get a reprieve from my school teaching, Decibel will be doomed to near-solitary confinement for the next ten years. I wouldn't wish this on an enemy, let alone a poor little parrot.

I am seriously considering putting Decibel up for adoption at the local bird store. She would be "consignment," but I wouldn't want any money for her -- only a home where she could split the eardrums of her family and be around some hustle and bustle.

Decibel is very attached to met, but I am getting older, and she is still young. She bites, but I think that the right owner could get her back into pirate mode.

Just another cheerful thing for me to contemplate at this juncture in my life. When people speak of "empty nest syndrome," they don't usually think about pet birds. I'm thinking about it. For all her love of me, her vocabulary and occasional tunes, Decibel isn't living with the stimulus a parrot needs. It's hard to know what to do. She can speak, but she can't speak her mind.

Going Back to School

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," plowing through the old mid-life crisis one freakout at a time! I'm the crisisee, Anne Johnson. No, I did not make the name up. My mom gave it to me (embellished a bit). I'm named after a princess.

For some time I have been considering my options for continuing education. School teachers are expected to seek master's degrees and such, in order to better their practice. I myself am enrolled in a master's class in teaching right now. And the shoe doesn't fit.

Nor am I particularly interested in trying to shove my creaky feet into a master's degree in English literature. And I literally sprayed selzer water across the keyboard ten minutes ago when I opened my email and saw a message for an online master's degree in creative writing. For the love of fruit flies and first drafts! Can anything be taught online these days? Oh, snap. Not for me.

On Sunday I went to an ADF Ritual. I've visited with this Grove for a few years here and there, but they're sort of hard-core, camping and such, and my camping days are behind me. However, the ADF does have a formal program of study. Reading, writing, reflecting, doing Ritual, improving spiritually.

Voila. I'm going back to school! Requesting ADF study materials. Don't mind doing this online, or even penning the work onto vellum. If I am to pursue continuing education, it must warm my soul in the autumn of my life.

This study will not be undertaken to improve my employment opportunities or to inflate my grandeur. Quite the opposite. It's high time to get serious about studying, in an effort to understand myself, the deities, and other people better.

Don't worry. "The Gods Are Bored" won't go all Druid. There are too many other bored deities who need praise and worship! But you gotta pick from what's out there ... and ADF is out there.

[begin optional edit]

Some of you come here for laughs, so here's a previously unpublished tale from the Annals of Anne.

Back in the previous century, when the Heir was a little girl, I enrolled in a Bible study class, mostly just to get out of the house twice a week. It was part of a large pursuit called "Precepts" that billed itself as being scholarly but, in my observation, was not particularly scholarly in nature. To whit, there was only one correct answer to every question. Nowadays this doesn't even work in math.

The first 90 minutes of "Precepts" was a tedious trudge through a specific book of the Bible. The one I enrolled in was the Book of Daniel, which (thank goodness) is a splendid read. But of course, anything parsed verse by verse in 90 minute trudges is going to get tedious. Can't avoid it.

The final hour of "Precepts" consisted of watching a videotape of some female evangelist. Her name completely escapes me, but she was absolutely fascinating. For one thing, her clothes were to die for, week after week, tape after tape. For another, she was a mesmerizing speaker. It didn't matter that her "one plus one" didn't add up to two (at least in my opinion). She was just dynamic. Didn't convince me, but it was entertaining to watch her try.

Here's the funny part. Sometimes when I'm teaching, and I feel like I'm losing the audience (which is easy to do if they're 15), I tap into the old memory cupboard and bring out that evangelist. She taught with her whole body, lots of gestures. Guess what? It works! Pep is a real asset to a teacher.

Who knows? Maybe I'll be a Druid preacher with lots of pep. I'll ditch that part about only one correct answer, though. Can't build a civilization on that.

[end optional edit]

It's exactly time for me to go to my master's degree class. The class begins at 5:15 and ends at 8:15 ... and it's held in a classroom 15 miles from my house. After a long day teaching teenagers, this holds no appeal.

Pick your battles, pick your books. The time of life is short.

Better Go Give Blood, Because ...

Okay, so I know we are all supposed to be rational, thinking beings, able to calmly and rationally think away everything that makes us feel bad. It's called the Power of Positive Thinking or something like that.

What I want to know is this: Who thought up all this "rational" business? Did that person ever feel anything at all? I'm not Mr. Spock, and damn it, I don't want to be! The pox take rationality! A plague upon its house!

My sister and cousins decided to sell the family farm in Appalachia. I can't stop them. This isn't some George Clooney movie.

And yes, you kind readers have reminded me that I will always be an Appalachian, even if my name isn't on some parchment in the  Bedford County Courthouse.

And yes, the man buying the property has called me multiple times (mostly on weekends at happy hour, when he's feeling particularly garrulous) to assure me that I will always be welcome to come and walk the land.

And YES, Bedford County long ago named the road where the farm is JOHNSON ROAD, so never mind that there's not a single Johnson left on it now ... it used to be nothing but Johnsons. Ergo, the name, Johnson Road. With all the Johnsons gone.

I am a raging beast over this.

What makes me rage is the fact that most rational, educated Americans are just that -- Americans. They may know what country their ancestors came from, but it's a dim memory. So they tell me to ground, center, grieve, and move on.

Trouble is, the rational Americans have gone unglued from their origins. They are blissfully unaware of the agony their ancestors must have felt when leaving the parent country behind. Let me tell you, being a first-generation expatriate is one agonizing haul. The Israelites were Psalming about it back in the Old Testament, when they got carted off to Babylon!

I am happiest now amongst my students, many of whom are expatriated from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, and most of them not completely. They still identify as "Dominican" even if they have citizenship. It's great to be around them, because they have the same pride of place that I have, the same white-hot links to a home land. Make no mistake, Appalachia is the Dominican Republic within America. Many of the people who live in Appalachia consider themselves part of another nation, same as the Native Americans. Same as my Dominican students. Same as the Israelites, who wanted to dash their captors' children's heads against the trees.

I'm not going to dash anyone's head against a tree, but I can understand the passion that propels such feelings in an expatriate. In short, I feel like an exile. Maybe I'm not Dante, banished from Florence upon pain of death. But that's how I feel.

Therefore, I, Anne Johnson, do hereby plan to have the Zip code of Artemas, PA tattooed onto my back. I'm going to use part of the ill-gotten gains from the sale of the property to have this done.

Go ahead and be rational if you like. You might devise a method of purifying water ... but you won't write Inferno.

Imbolc 2012: Free Advice

Imbolc 2012 has begun with rejoicing here at Chateau Johnson! All hail Queen Brighid the Bright, the Great Goddess of creativity!

Today an envelope arrived in the mail for The Spare. It was from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She was accepted. Additionally, she was given a $16,000 annual scholarship. This scholarship recognizes her potential as an artist with a promising future.

Ironically, Spare almost didn't apply to the University of the Arts.

You see, Spare is one of those people who can't dig into standardized tests. Give her a number two pencil and a bubble sheet, and she just cringes. Therefore, when the SAT scores arrived in this household, they were greeted with a great gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. University of the Arts requires the reporting of SAT scores.

Spare never thought she would get in the door of that school when they saw her numbers.

Turns out -- and this will be bitter news to Snobville parents -- the numbers don't always cut it. With little to lose but her fifty buck application fee, Spare took her portfolio and her moxie to UArts for an interview. The lady who talked to her frothed at the mouth. A week later, Spare got her letter,

So here's my free advice to all you young parents out there who are worried about getting your kid into the right college. Instead of enrolling them in the right preschool, let them play in the back yard. Instead of making them do math homework, let them fool around with scraps of old clothing. Instead of parking them in front of a video game, get them outside: snowballs, flower walks, treasure hunts, hikes, fairy festivals.

For more than a decade, Mr. J and I have wondered if we've done right by Spare. First we nagged her about her grades, then we gave up and let her follow her Muse. Turns out the Muse is a bored deity. No big surprise there!

Congratulations, Spare! We may not be perfect, me and your dad, but we love you.