May Day! May Day!

Ah! The lovely month of May! A blessed Beltane to each and every one of you! This is the time of year when the blood quickens, when the land springs back to life, and when all good and nourishing things go into the ground as seeds to be harvested when the cold winds blow.

It's also the time for making love, and more making love, and having happy, healthy, nourishing sex with someone you love! Remember, the poet Walt Whitman counted as a miracle "sleeping in the bed at night with someone I love." What greater miracles are there?

This is also the weekend of the May Day Fairie Festival at Spoutwood Farm, the annual revel that Spare and I enjoy so much. This year's festival will feature the Celtic band Cu Dubh ... I can hardly wait.

I just want my three readers to know that I do read each and every comment. I don't respond usually, but I will start. That's how we can get a dialogue going, and, after all, a blog should be about give-and-take.

So, happy May! Do a little dance, make a little love ... get down tonight!

From Anne

Leader emeritus, Spoutwood Mountain Tribe

Tape Recorder

I'm sure you've noticed that the modern-day yard sale is chock-a-block with VHS tapes for movies you'd just love to own if you had

A. the space to store them
B. a device that plays VHS tapes easily
C. the time to watch movies
D. all of the above

For instance, I just had a yard sale, and I have an entire set of Shirley Temple movies that I inherited from my mother and just can't bear to put at the curb. When I say a set, I mean every doggone thing Shirley ever appeared in, including a collection of "Baby Burlesque." That little girl worked her butt off!

But this is beside the point.

Another item I have in abundance is audio cassette tapes. Oh, not "The Best of Dean Martin" or "Elton John's Greatest Hits." I have video cassette tapes my sister made in the 1970s ... of my grandparents talking.

My maternal grandmother had a memory that would rival any elephant's. I have a tape full 90 minutes long of her reciting poems and stories she learned as a young girl, back in the days before radio, out in the country where vaudeville never penetrated. Some of the songs on the tape are ancient ballads that came over on the wooden ships.

One problem: I didn't have an audio tape player.

Or so I thought.

Yard sales are marvelous things in that you root through the house looking for stuff to sell. In that process of rooting, I found a beautiful, wonderful audio cassette player that I didn't even know we had. I also found the big stack of photographs that went missing!

Back to the cassette player. Gifted with this relic of a bygone century, I snapped in the tape and started listening to Grandma saying her poems and singing her songs.

Ah, the abundant "r" sounds of the Appalachian accent! And the casual double negatives, the abundant use of "ain't," the additional syllable at the beginning of a phrase that has disappeared from our tongue. ("And when we went a-huntin', my father led the way.")

My daughter The Heir asked me to turn off the tape. She never met her great-grandmother, but Heir said she could hear my voice in the elderly Appalachian lady.

I pressed Heir: Was it the accent? No. What, then? The spirit.

My grandmother loved to recite poetry, she threw her whole joie de vivre into it. So do I.

Bardic grandmother, I salute you. Thank you for the gift of poetry and ancient song. May I be worthy of the gifts you have given.

And may the tape recorder never break down, because I don't have a clue how to transfer this aural wealth of history into the new media.

More Captivating Information about High School Choirs

You know who you are. You are the survivor of high school spring music programs.

Yes, either you played in them, or you went to them as a parent, or both. A pleasant experience? Speaking only for myself, no and no! Hated playing in them, and hated listening to them.

When my daughter The Spare walked across the stage and grabbed her high school diploma, I thought to myself, "Ahhhh.... no more spring music concerts!"

For those of you not in the know, most high schools combine all their musical acts (band, orchestra, choir, and dance) into one springtime program. It's uniformly long and mostly excruciating, except for the singing. It's easier for voices to hold a proper note than instruments. I've never heard a single high school orchestra, most notably the one I performed in, that could produce anything that remotely sounded like pleasant sound.

Last night I went to a spring music concert at Boniface VIII High School on behalf of my exchange student, whose mama is halfway around the globe. This concert reminded me painfully of the parental obligation of attending high school performances. But I stuck it heroically. If you read yesterday's post, you'll know I had an agenda.

I wanted to see if a parochial school larded its spring music concert with religious music, which was a given at Snobville Public High School.

Turns out, the parochial school musical fare was, with one exception ("Come On, Get Happy," a show tune), resolutely secular. Not a single syllable of Latin. My student, Extra Chair, was completely correct.

So after the painful ordeal evening concert, E.C. and I unwound over a sandwich at the local diner (her first diner visit ever). She explained why the spring musical program had no religious music in it.

Silly me. The Boniface VIII choir sings at Mass once a week! So of course they blow all the Latin into those entertainments. Actually, however, E.C. says they don't sing any Latin. It's all English or Spanish. No matter the native tongue, the religious music goes into the religious venue, and the pop music get spread upon the parents, teachers, and siblings.

The moral of this sermon is, if you have to keep going to high school spring musical concerts, it's always nice to learn something new about them. Clarinet, please give me a B-flat ... on key.

On the Fascinating Topic of High School Choirs

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," entertaining two or three people somehow since 2005! My name is Anne Johnson, and my home has suddenly grown to include another young lady. Since I have an Heir and a Spare (daughters), I call this young lady the Extra Chair, because we have to pull one up to the table when everyone's home to dinner.

But I digress.

When my daughter The Spare attended Snobville High, she sang in several excellent school choirs. Like everything else in Snobville, Spare's choir was chock-a-block with kids intending to major in vocal arts in college. You can't avoid this in Snobville. Give a kid a ball, he or she becomes an Olympian. Give them instruments, they wind up in the symphony. Give them a good camera, they become George Lucas (that's you, Spare ... get it done!).

Spare's choir teacher came to public school from a distinguished career as a church choir director. And so, inevitably, the Snobville Public High School Choir always sang at least two Christian numbers during the public school concerts. (Generally one was in Latin, one in English). During the Christmas holiday, a nod would be given to Judaism with some blast from the Old Testament.

And this boiled my blood. Not because the music wasn't pretty (it was), or well-done (it was), but because a public school choir should be held to the same First Amendment standards as every other aspect of public school. Music should be secular. It's not like one has to search dusty archives to find  chorus music with non-religious themes.

I used to complain about this to Spare. She would fix me with a disdainful eye and say it's no big deal. But to me it is. No one thinks about the First Amendment violations in school choir music. Suppose one or more of the singers were Pagans? Hardly seems fair.

If I ever go to a Snobville High choir concert and hear "Cantata in F Major for Flying Spaghetti Monster," I'll be satisfied.

Tonight is Extra Chair's annual high school choir performance. She attends the local parochial school. Now, you would surely expect a boatload of Latin-based Christian music at such a do ... and that's where it belongs. Extra Chair tells me that the program will consist of non-religious fare! Granted, E.C.'s English isn't perfected yet, but if I go to listen to a concert at Bonifice VIII School and there's no Latin, I'm going to be flabbergasted ... and more irate about Snobville High than ever.

The last time I went to a parochial school was when I was doing my night classes for teaching, an experience so wrenchingly foul that it still lingers like the last poison ivy blisters after a long bout of itching. Whew! Different school! Bring on the musty auditorium!

We'll see if the First Amendment prevails where it need not do so. What a world.

Church of the Holy Yard Sale

April is yard sale season. I'm sure you've noticed. Some places have town-wide yard sales ... multi-family yard sales ... fundraiser yard sales. To me, these things smack of religion. Or, at the very least, they shed some light on human praise and worship.

Okay, now you think I've finally gone around the bend. Well, maybe ... if there's a yard sale around the bend. Otherwise, I'm on the mark, I think.

First, let me differentiate between an estate sale and a yard sale. Estate sales happen when people die or move, and pretty much everything goes. With yard sales, you just go through your house and get together stuff you want other people to buy from you. You're not dead, not even sick usually. You've just bought a lot of stuff at other peoples' yard sales, and now it's time to send it on down the line.

A few weeks ago I went to a banquet, and the woman sitting across the table from me described in great detail her weekly forays into yard sale Nirvana. She begins the week before by examining Craigslist and the local papers minutely, noting every yard sale in a 20-mile area. Then she makes a map. She gets up before dawn on Saturday and follows her map. She makes thrilling discoveries. She's proud of her yard sale acquisitions. This lady regaled her hapless hostages fascinated listeners with a long, long list of things she has gotten at yard sales, which included just about everything except her toenails (and for those she got a pedicure kit, unopened, for a quarter).

I wouldn't really say this person has turned yard sale shopping into a religion, but the zeal she displayed is similar to the giddy happiness I've seen in the faces and bearings of some religious people. There's an element of bragging in yard sale disciples that you wouldn't see in most religions, but that look in the eye... it's so familiar. There's bliss in those bargains. There's devotion in their pursuit.

Now let's look at the flip side of yard sales: the sellers. My family is having a yard sale this coming weekend, so I've been pondering the process.

When you throw a yard sale on your lawn, you're inviting the approval or disdain of hoards of strangers. You are a missionary of your stuff, trying to convince others that what you have is of value. If no one buys what you've strewn on your grass, you feel devalued. Worse yet, if someone tries to bargain down your already-low price by noting deficiencies in items, you want to load everything up, take it back inside, and hug it. At least I do.

People are rather like this about their praise and worship. It really hurts when someone belittles you for what you believe and what you value. Likewise, you can't always understand the driving passion some people feel for the process of yard sale shopping. It floats their boat, but not yours. Sound familiar?

Now you're saying, "Anne, I can't believe you're comparing the lowest kind of silly shopping with something as lofty as worship." Well, sorry. I am. It's in our nature to have a set of values (our stuff) which we want to share with others. It's in our nature to study other peoples' values (their stuff) and glean gems from them. It's in our nature to be deeply hurt if people malign our values. Our stuff = ourselves. Which is why many religions inveigh against having a lot of material stuff lying about.

It's human nature that some people go overboard in their worship (hoarders). And there are even the atheists -- the neighbors who roll their eyes and try fruitlessly to get their car through the crowded street, just to go out for a cup of coffee and a biscuit. Why buy other peoples' junk?

So, as I prepare for this weekend's multi-family yard sale on my block,  I'm taking stock of what I have and what I'm willing to display. Faith enters the picture when I continue to believe in my unused cookbooks, even if no one will flip me two bits for them.

In case you're wondering, the collection from this Saturday's holy yard sale will support a deserving young lady as she pursues her college education. Blessed be the yard sale! No early birds.

Extra Chair

Life gives us very curious challenges. I'm sure you have noticed. There's no time of life, even in the womb, that does not deal out a fistful of challenges.

The latest challenge here at "The Gods Are Bored" has been sparked by Mr. Johnson's decision to take a small severance option from his company, which is basically the Titanic anyway. We don't want to downsize, however, because Mr. J needs our home property. He has a convenient and necessary home office within. Heir has a lair at the very top of the stair, where she lives without care. So there. We're trying to hold on, using creative financing.

In that regard, Fate threw us a boarder. She is an exchange student named Extra Chair. She moved in last Saturday.

Extra Chair has the cheerfulness and energy of Tigger. She does not walk. She bounces. She sings. Her happiness level is supernatural. And as an only child, she is absolutely smitten with Heir and Spare. Imagine suddenly having two sisters, just a little bit older than you!

Extra Chair attends the local parochial school, wearing her Buddhist bracelet with her Catholic girl uniform. She sets off every day through our yard full of lawn gnomes and faerie cairns.

Last night, Extra Chair asked me to look at her English essay. I was dismayed. It seemed way too short and under-developed. I queried her several times: Are you sure this is enough to satisfy your teacher? And she assured me it was. This is not a slacker student, so I am now intensely curious about the grade she will receive on this little theme.

If her grade is an "A" or a "B," it is total vindication of my Camden public school, where three-quarters of the students receive free breakfast and lunch, and all are learning trades. Because if she turned it in to me, I would fling it back in her lap and tell her to write more, much more ... and then I would show her how.

For a number of years, the students in my school have been passing the state-mandated standardized English tests with ease. Last year, 92 percent of our kids got proficient grades on the first crack at the exam, and the rest made it through in second rounds.

Extra Chair's theme might be a clue as to our students' abilities, because I'm here to tell you that it wouldn't pass muster in my public vocational school. Not for the grammar, which is easily fixed (her English is pretty good), but for the content.

You know that the move is on to privatize education, and the battle is being led by the parochial schools, which are clinging to solvency by their fingernails. But if conscientious student Extra Chair can be used as an example, I would say that we public school teachers are rockin'. Maybe we actually work harder than you would be led to believe.

Extra Chair is working on her pronunciation of "faerie." And she is learning quickly (and hopefully painlessly) to steer clear of Decibel the parrot.

For updates on the tragic explosion in West, Texas -- by our valient heroine on the scene -- hop on over to Yellowdog Granny. Have some tissue handy.

Freya's Champion in West, Texas

I still don't know how many people read "The Gods Are Bored," but if your eyes are passing over this, please go visit Yellowdog Granny, who lives there ... lives there. A more courageous great-grandmother would be very hard to find. Leave her a wish on behalf of your deity.

Anne Johnson

Accelerated Brutality

By the time I was ten years old, three national figures had been assassinated in my lifetime: John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. These slayings, I think, laid the foundations for a time of turbulence that we see accelerating around us.

Both Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford survived assassination attempts. So that's two more presidents (who we know of) who had to dodge bullets.

But of more concern to me is the trend that, if it didn't begin with the Manson family, certainly became established by the Manson family. This trend is to murder rather random, innocent people in large numbers that draw intense media coverage.

The Manson family, then the Jonestown massacre (which was, in some cases, mass suicide). Those were two astonishing crimes. Otherwise, when I was younger, the trend was to individual mentally deranged serial killers -- in and of themselves a terrible menace.

Since last summer we've had, now, three events in which unsuspecting people have been killed or injured with efficient weapons. A shooting in a Colorado movie theater, a shooting at an elementary school, and now a bomb at the Boston Marathon. In less than a year.

I can't account for this. Maybe the deranged killers are shifting from an individual serial model to a senseless mass model. I refuse to assign any sanity to the people doing this, just as Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer were dangerously insane.

What concerns me (and not for my own physical safety ... I live in New Jersey and drive the Turnpike, so I know where my dangers lie) is that these episodes are accelerating. They're happening more often. No sooner do we turn sorrowfully from one than another explodes. Literally.

So, what has changed since the 1960s? Well, I'll tell you. We now have cable television. We have nightly programs that are politically polarized and strident. We have 24-hour news cycles with networks vying for exclusive interviews and gruesome details. And now we have the Internet, where all the crazies can find the other crazies and learn how to make bombs to boot.

We're offering scant answers here at "The Gods Are Bored." But it just seems to me that the trend toward violence aimed at unsuspecting civilians is accelerating. God bless America.

Job Ecology

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Wow, what a hectic weekend! Extra Chair arrived with her luggage and many lovely gifts from China. I threw a birthday party for Spare ... had all three of her college roomies and her best friend over for dinner. Not a great way to prepare for a week of teaching school. I'm tired!

An anonymous commenter left a very thoughtful response on the post "Closing Gaps." This commenter said the world would be better if we had "job ecology." What a lovely metaphor! Instead of shipping jobs overseas and mechanizing human beings out onto the streets, wouldn't it be great if the goal of business was not entirely profit, but also the continued contentment of workers?

Mr. J and I often talk of Old Mr. Fezziwig from A Christmas Carol. Reading that story, we're not sure what kind of business Fezziwig is running... only that he employs apprentice clerks. But boy, oh boy! Christmas comes and the whole place is dancing and feasting and having a great time -- including Fezziwig, his wife, and his pretty daughters! Even Scrooge loved Fezziwig.

Can you imagine a CEO in these days, dancing and drinking with his or her employees? I suppose it must happen some places. Doesn't happen in my place of employment.

It seems to me the nature of our species to seek to consolidate wealth and power within a small extended family group, and to hell with everybody else. The ecological model would seek to consolidate worker security so that everyone could get out of bed in the morning not dreading a pink slip. This would increase satisfaction, spending, and (I believe, though many CEOs would not) individual performance.

Job ecology would mean that my daughter The Heir would not be an "independent contractor" who finds herself with a $450 tax bill. Nor would her employers be so pressed that they couldn't offer her benefits, because the big corporations that hire them would pay government benefits all down the ladder.

Now I have to run and teach one last class today. Teachers used to have job ecology in the form of tenure. This, of course, is being eroded -- not because there are bad teachers, but just because no one should have job security. No one.

Global climate change? It's not just in the atmosphere. It's in how we're living. The center cannot hold.

Why I Love Festivals

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," silly and serious and sensitive Pagan blogging since 2005! I'm the fast typist brilliant authoress, Anne Johnson. I thought of giving myself a pretty Pagan name, but nothing has ever stuck for long. I'm thinking of taking out "Buzzy" for a spin to see if I like that one.

There's been some discussion on the Web lately about varieties of public worship, with many Pagan authors advocating group rituals. A few writers like large festivals, but most don't. So, always the contrarian, I'm here to send in a vote for festivals.

Can't speak for anyone else, but I'm a nervous person. Perhaps I'm the only nervous person in the whole world. Could be. You don't hear many people admitting to being nervous ... like it's a failing or something. HEY! I'M NERVOUS! It's not a failing, it's just what is.

Small groups don't work well for me because I'm always second-guessing myself. It's very hard for me to ground and center within a small group. *Am I doing it right? Did I say (or do) the wrong thing?* On and on. I don't see this as a failing. I see it as my own personal internal mechanism. Then there's my other interior dialogue, which I do consider a failing. I've been to one small group where I kept asking myself, *Are they doing it right? This is not the way I like to do this!*

I'm not the ideal candidate for a coven or a grove, or a blot, or even a Methodist congregation.The one grove I was in that I liked broke up due to size (small). Loved those folks, but even there I was a bundle of nerves. Whereas the Methodists would have found me scathingly critical if I'd opened my trap.

Festivals are a much better place for nervous Pagans. A large festival with a widespread religious representation allows the nervous person latitude to enjoy things anonymously (thereby avoiding the *Am I doing it right?* pitfall). Also, at a festival, if you don't like the way it's being done, you can jolly well slip away for a nap or some quiet meditation elsewhere. People at festivals tend to be friendly but not looking for deeper bonds -- the kind that make me nervous.

I attend two festivals in the warm weather. the first is the http://www.spoutwood.org/fairie-festival  May Day Fairie Festival at Spoutwood Farm in Glen Rock, PA. This festival celebrates faeries and Beltane, first weekend in May, and is convenient to Washington DC, Baltimore, Harrisburg, and Philly.

The other festival I attend is http://www.4qf.org Drum and Splash at Four Quarters Farm in beloved Artemas, PA. Artemas is not convenient to anything, which makes it a deep woods with swimming holes and mountain vistas. Well worth the long drive.

While Drum and Splash -- and Four Quarters in general -- is considered religious, Spoutwood is more about having fun and slipping in a little Earth Worship like a spoonful of sugar into iced tea.

For those who think festivals are "religion lite," just recall that praise and worship is a personal thing -- some people, some bored deities, just like it big, loud, boisterous, and relatively anonymous. Don't fault the solitary Druid who throws on her tribal and goes to drum and dance with people she doesn't know. Maybe that's the one way she feels comfortable, at home, and at peace with herself.

Thus endeth today's sermon. Thanks be to Vulture.

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A Blessed Moment for Buzzard Worshippers Worldwide

I don't have to write today because

http://blog.sandiegozooglobal.org/2013/04/09/the-next-chapter-in-the-adventures-of-saticoy/

*tears of joy*

Also, I can't recommend enough that you get your daily dose of California condor cuteness from the web cam focused on Saticoy's new baby sibling!

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

The word of Vulture for the people of Vulture. Thanks be to Vulture!

Closing Gaps

I send you greetings from many wonderful deities! The weather has suddenly warmed, and they are having a lively chat by the Shrine of the Mists. I can hear them back there teasing the neighborhood tom cat.

The Great State of New Jersey wants to close the achievement gap between the highest scoring students and the lowest scoring students. It makes no sense to Governor Christie and his chums that poor kids don't perform well on tests, that they don't learn as much, and their futures are therefore grim.

Well, there are gaps, and there are gaps.

If you close the educational gap, you might well close the expectation gap. Don't know what the expectation gap is? Read on.

My students struggle to achieve a high school diploma. Armed with that diploma, they go get jobs at Whole Foods, Wegman's, Home Depot, and Target. My students are thrilled to find work at such places. They get decent wages and work hours, and some of these businesses offer health care (at least minimally).

College graduates who enter the work force consider themselves failures if they have to work at Home Depot. Is this what they went to college for? To shelve paint samples? Whole Foods. Is this what they went to college for, to chop up eggplant all day?

I had a student come visit me last week. She was all dressed up and supremely happy. She had found a good job cutting up vegetables at Whole Foods. She was in hog heaven.

Along with the educational gap goes the expectation gap. There's the expectation of a "better" job -- better than Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

My question to the Powers That Be, then, is this: If everyone gets an equal education, and everyone goes to college, who will be happy working at Dick's Sporting Goods? Shouldn't America have different calibrations of happiness?

I'll muddy the water even further. Is it possible that, armed with her high school diploma and some ambition, my former student will stride happily into Whole Foods and work her way up the chain of command? Isn't that how America is supposed to work, especially for the immigrant generation?

Call me old fashioned, but I believe in the self-made person. Maybe I'm too 20th century for this new world. But one of my grandfathers had a college degree, and the other one an 8th grade education, and they both had white collar jobs that they loved. Is that not possible anymore?

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Should Teachers Pack?

To: National Rifle Association and Others Who Believe the Best Defense Is a Good Offense

From:  Anne Johnson, Public School Teacher

Re: Carrying a weapon in order to protect my students

Considering the fact that my classroom is the very first door on the front center hallway, literally the first door any visitor to the school sees, I can rather confidently predict that I would be directly in the line of fire if an insane gunman came into the school building. I might have time to lock myself and my students into the classroom whilst said insane gunman blasted his way into the door (which is usually locked). But after that, where would he go? Straight to Room 105. That's me.

In theory I agree with you that it would be wonderful for me to have a loaded gun of my own that I could unsheathe, aim, and fire with deadly precision.

In fact, the only weapon I've ever used effectively is a fly swatter. Even then I am only partially proficient.

Back in the 1960s when I attended day camp, I shot BB guns at targets. I missed. Every time. I have hit the sides of barns with Super Soakers, but never a moving human being.

Therefore, even though I would love to be part of your happy solution to random gun violence in public places, I fear that by the current tools of evaluation, I would not satisfy the requirements of the position; namely, public school teacher.

This is not to say that I could never be trained to wield a firearm effectively. I'll bet after 100 hours of professional development on the community firing range I could perhaps pull a trigger without knocking myself down. From there, considering the intelligence of many gun owners, I ought to be able to figure the weapon out. But if there's some assembly required, all bets are off. I'm an English teacher. Assembling things happens in math and science classes. I can hardly assemble a peanut butter sandwich. (I can understand Shakespeare, though. Everyone is skilled at something.)

See this fine female? She's not me. I'm not her.

I brake for squirrels. When I play Monopoly, I let people stay in my hotels for free. Back in the day, I hid from the food fight in the middle school cafeteria. Once my grandfather asked me to bring him his squirrel gun. I had to drag it across the floor, because I couldn't lift it.

So if some assailant tries to shoot my students, the best I can hope for is to be a meat shield while they scramble under the desks. I have given this long, hard thought, and that's pretty much the sum total of my capacity to protect anyone.

Sorry to disappoint you. The militia will have to be well regulated without me.

Respectfully,
Anne Johnson

An Extra Chair

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where we are never always prepared for a new adventure!

Today's sermon: Chinese buying American

Did you take the SAT? I did. It was expensive, so my father told me to do the very best I could on it, so I wouldn't have to take it a second time.

On the day of the test, I woke up feeling healthy and alert. I ate breakfast. I wore my most comfortable clothing. I took the test in my favorite classroom at my high school, and it was administered by my favorite teacher. He supplied abundant #2 pencils.

Nervous people don't necessarily do well on standardized tests. It's that clock ticking. You have this feeling of a guillotine, hanging by a fraying piece of twine, ready to chop if you're not finished when the buzzard sounds. (Ooops. That would be buzzer.)

When I took the SAT, I happened to finish a longish Language Arts section with about three minutes to spare. I looked back at the dizzying array of little gray penciled-in bubbles. And then I saw it.

I had skipped a line, early in the process.

I had to rush like a commuter to get all those bubbles erased and re-positioned in the next line up. But I did it. Whew! And when the scores came back, they were decent ... even the math.

Now, suppose that I woke up that morning with a migraine, or with heightened anxiety, or with cramps, or with the flu. Suppose I didn't catch that missed line in a crucial Language Arts section, which was my strength area. Suppose I was in a strange hall, with unknown proctors, surrounded by people I didn't know.

And then suppose this was my one-and-only chance to take the SAT. If I didn't do well this one-and-only time, I might not be able to go to college.

This is basically the plight that Chinese students face. They have a national collegiate test, once a year.

Can you imagine the anxiety that students must feel in this situation? And parents, who have only one child, upon whom their future financial security somewhat rests?

We're doing a lot of imagining here today, but it's building up to an explanation.

Increasing numbers of affluent Chinese parents are sending their only children to America for secondary and higher education. Most of these parents work through agencies that pair Chinese students with Christian and parochial schools. South Korean parents are doing the same. This is a bonanza for struggling parochial schools, as they wait for that coveted, Constitution-busting voucher system to materialize. You see, the parents who send their kids abroad to America can afford to pay the ticket price at the parochial school, as well as a monthly stipend to a host family for room and board. These same parents will be able to write a check for full tuition, and room and board, at a college. Ergo, what a windfall for struggling liberal arts colleges! Motivated foreign students who can pay in cash! Wowsa!

It was quite by chance that I discovered one of these student placement groups, coincidentally within a week of Mr. J taking early retirement. There's a 16-year-old girl from northern China who attends a Catholic school on the edge of Snobville who is working within the group. She will be moving into Chateau Johnson next weekend. Her current host parents are a couple in their early 30s with no children of their own.

This young lady, who will be called Extra Chair (in keeping with Gods Are Bored policy of considering offspring as commodities), came for a home visit a few weeks ago. She has so much energy that she wore me to a frazzle within 24 hours. But I'll give anything a try in these uncertain times. We have about eight weeks until the end of the school year, and if all goes well, Extra Chair will re-join us in September. She is currently a sophomore.

Extra Chair misses the home cooking of her native land, of which I know nothing. American Chinese food bears little resemblance to Chinese Chinese food. However, recognizing that most Chinese cuisine is healthier than American vittles, I'm willing to experiment. There's a Korean market nearby, full of weird vegetables and tofu and 50-pound bags of rice and seaweed and sauces with no English on their packaging. Mr J, Heir and Spare have expressed their complete and utter refusal cautious approval of tofu-and-seaweed suppers, so we'll see how it goes.

As befits Catholic school, Extra Chair has to take religion classes as part of her curriculum. This course of study baffled her at first and produced the first "C" she ever got in her life. She is adapting but is not interested in converting to Catholicism. Nor will I try to convert her to Druidism. Vulture worship won't be on the map until the time when Extra Chair is completely comfortable here.

It's like this. The nest Mr. J and I inhabit is just too large to be empty. Heir still lives here. Spare has graciously ceded her bedroom to Extra Chair. In order to stay in a home where he has ample space for his enormous book collection, to say nothing of a private home office in the garage, Mr. J is willing to take in another teenager.

Me, I spend my day around kids exactly the age of Extra Chair. The idea of coming home to one, especially such a lively one, doesn't really appeal. But I'm a fun, nice person with lax rules so long as good grades are maintained. We'll take it a day at a time.

The first problem looming ... we have only one cat (Beta), and Extra Chair fell head-over-heels in 20 seconds. Ahem, Beta is Spare's cat. Spare tamed Beta and, as much as anyone can control a cat, Spare controls Beta. Hoping this doesn't evolve into a sister-like power struggle.

Spare's a trooper, though. She'll be bunking in a room with cinnamon-colored paint and bookshelves from floor to ceiling, all stuffed with Mr. J's library. She has already planned out how to imprison include Beta in that space.

So, what do you think? We've sent so many jobs to China, and now they're sending the job of parenting and educating back at us. I'm still totally confounded by this new twist in the global economy and how it will affect our lives here at TGAB. Wish us luck. We need the job.

In closing, here's a reminder to like "The Gods Are Bored" on Facebook! It's so much easier to converse there, no tricky captchas. And we'll be posting some different content there. So, join the party for an extra daily dose of laughs!
https://www.facebook.com/TheGodsAreBored

Now We Are Eight!

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Eight is great! I ate on a grate. Hate being late. Bait the gate!

Ah, dear Puck. He's just one happy faerie, stopping by to celebreight the 8th anniversary of The Gods Are Bored!

My goodness, how thyme fries! (Thanks, Puck.) It's hard to believe that this little site has been active and re-active and radioactive since April of 2005.

For those of you who don't know the story, I started this blog after reading in the newspaper that a woman got $525 towards her vet bills by dog-blogging. I don't own a dog, and I haven't yet had to put adverts up here, but the idea of starting a blog appealed to me.

I figured there was enough serious stuff about Pagan paths, ancient and recent, already. So (rather by osmosis and personality) I decided that laughter is the best medicine ... so I opted for funny. You don't see "Pagan" and "funny" in the same sentence very often. Voila! My niche.

Still, there's a serious intent to The Gods Are Bored. I like to think of it as a respect issue.

All of the ancient deities that we know of have been relegated to the "m" word: myth. To me, that's just not respectful. People worshiped those deities. Our ancestors worshiped those deities. By heaving the "m" word at Zeus, we belittle those who have gone before. We suppose a progress in human worship that, frankly, I don't see.

If you think that humankind has made progress by worshiping deities that are nonviolent, how is it that we have gotten the Holocaust and 9/11? Superior and inferior deities? I'm not buying it.

Anyway, la di dah, the old TGAB archive is massive -- 1800 posts and counting! Don't congratulate me on my staying power. I just type fast.

Some highlights:

*Interviews with bored Gods and Goddesses, sometimes over tea and crimpets, sometimes far less civilized.
*Druidic praise and practice
*Interviews with the self-pitying Satan, who always wants to be called "Mr. Applegate."
*The strange and wondrous (and ongoing) saga of the mysterious Monkey Man ... who is now one of my best friends.

*Fond moments with my daughters, The Heir and The Spare.
 *Political rhetoric, shading oh so very slightly to the left ... especially in matters of organized labor.


*Mummers, faeries, snobs, kittens ... not necessarily in that order.
*And, saving the best for last *drum roll* Vulture worship for the masses! All hail the Sacred Thunderbird, Golden Purifier, Almighty Bald Buzzard!

Terms of engagement:

*I don't usually link to other sites in the middle of a sentence. It ruins the flow of the narrative. Also, I suck at computing.
*If it's a photograph, and it's on Google, I snatch it. It's a bad habit. Not my only one.
*Comments are always welcome, unless your name is Billy.
*The Gods Are Bored is now a Facebook page! Like us and get extra bonus silliness! https://www.facebook.com/TheGodsAreBored

Future goals and aspirations:

*I hope to broaden the scope of Vulture worship here in America and abroad.
*I want to make you laugh. You can already think for yourself. So let's chuckle together.

Puck says, "Onward and upward. Awning and upswing. On board and cupboard. Stop, stop! Hop on Pop!"

He's a pip. With pep.

Bright blessings to all of you who've been on this merry ride with me!

--Anne

Image: Puck, by Seitou ... original to this site! Monkey Man, Heir and Spare ... original to this site! Yeah, sometimes I do it right. Good night.

Proof That Faeries Exist: A Little Poem

Hello, faerie weather friends! It's only four weeks until the May Day Fairie Festival at Spoutwood Farm! If you live within 100 miles of Baltimore or Washington, DC, Google this puppy -- it's a great way to introduce young children to Faerie, so that they will grow into fun-loving, risk-taking adults. I've seen some of my TGAB friends there, so if you plan to go, drop me a comment or a note so that we can connect in the apparent world!

I'm cleaning off book shelves in preparation for a new resident in the Johnson household. Tucked away in a corner, I found this poem from a 1936 magazine. I only have the page, so I don't know which magazine printed it. But what a lovely little poem for a spring day!

There Are Fairies
by Elizabeth C. Wherry

We thought there weren't such things as fairies
And often we'd said "pooh!"
But Becky said, "Oh yes there are."
And told us how she knew.

"Why, I'm sure that there are fairies," said Becky with a smile,
"For I see the things that prove it every little while.
There's a cliff beside the creek that is old and strong and gray,
But it's full of cozy cavelets where fairies hide by day.
Sometimes they trim the doorway with drooping columbine,
Sometimes across the gateway there's a trailing bit of vine.
And who else but a fairy could coax fronds of ferns to sway
Across the railing of her porch in such a graceful way?"

"Oh, I know that there are fairies," said Becky with a nod,
"For the birds use pathway patterns that fairy feet have trod.
Though I cannot see the patterns of their curves upon the air
I can tell by every spiral that the fairies made them there.
And who besides a fairy princess could use, do you suppose,
Such lovely satin dress goods as the petals of a rose?
And who besides a fairy singer could teach a wren its song?
And surely none but fairies could drive butterflies along."

So we're sure that there are fairies
Since Becky told us so
And we wrote this poem to tell you
That all of you might know. 

Visitor, Hiding out on Easter Sunday, Whining As Usual

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Dole out those chocolate bunnies, those awesome peeps, the plastic grass that is impossible to pick up! It's Easter, yet another holiday brought to us by the ancient Romans!

But, like so many other holidays, Easter has been co-opted, and not even Sunday School teachers know why it is named "Easter." I never thought to ask that one when I was a kid.

This is the day when many C&E's come out of the woodwork. (C&E stands for "Christmas and Easter," as in the number of times most people attend church in a year.) Needless to say, the fleeting renewed interest in righteous behavior has sent the slacking whiner, Mr. Applegate, into my living room, where he threatens to leave sulfuric residue on the rattan. So I'm yanking him out of there by agreeing to yet another interview. This guy never gets tired of hearing his own voice.

Anne: So what's it today, Applegate?

Applegate: I'm so worried about future generations of Americans! Your children and grandchildren, Anne!

Anne: Why? Are future generations of Americans going to dump you as a worthless relic of a medieval mindset?

Applegate: Of course not! It's that government debt. This huge government debt that your children will have to pay some day. It will take them broke!

Anne: Excuse me, you fire-breathing idiot. My daughters are already broke! One already has enough college loans to pay back that she'll never own a car. The other one is still racking them up by the fistful. Four years of college, honor roll, and The Heir doesn't earn enough to rent an apartment. Tell me when, exactly, I should worry about her being broke. I think it's now.

Applegate: It's going to get worse, I tell you. Worse! Big government spending ... curb it!

Anne: Have you been dining with Dick Cheney again?

Applegate: Every Friday night. He has an excellent chef. And he is deeply worried about future generations of Americans.

Anne: I'll bet he is. *cough*

Applegate: Well, take this minimum wage thing, for instance.

Anne: Don't go there.

Applegate: It should be reduced! How can businesses flourish when they have to pay their employees such high wages?

Anne: Oh, I don't know. Cut hours? Don't offer benefits?

Applegate: Excellent stop-gap measures, but they don't go far enough. Can't you understand? Rich people have worked hard to get where they are! Why should they help the people who don't work hard? It just creates an entitlement society, where the government rubs your feet even when you haven't been standing on them.

Anne: I'll bet Dick Cheney's chef is cooking up a nice Easter feast. Why don't you biff off...

Applegate: Going to. It starts at 7:00. Until then I just want to lay low, if you know what I mean.

Anne: I'm whistling in the wind when I tell you that Dick Cheney and his big-business buddies are greedy villains...

Applegate: Tee hee! That's why I love them so much!

Anne: They want to grab the last dime out of the fossil fuel industry, even though we could be getting our power from green energy sources. You want to worry about the future generations of Americans? Try this one. They will have to deal with global climate change. And genetically engineered food with such a soup of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides in it that even sturdy honeybees keel when they eat it.

(Editorial pause while Anne awkwardly links. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/science/earth/soaring-bee-deaths-in-2012-sound-alarm-on-malady.html

Applegate: Well, now, we don't want famine, do we?

Anne: Famine! So it can only be one of two things -- carcinogenic tomatoes or starvation? How about sensible farming practices? How about an apple that tastes good, worm and all, instead of one that looks good and ships without bruising?

Applegate: Fuss all you like. Genetically engineered food is a done deal, and President Obama signed into law a measure that sees to it that you can't sue if you get cancer.

(Editor pause while Anne awkwardly links. http://www.salon.com/2013/03/27/how_the_monsanto_protection_act_snuck_into_law/

Anne: Oh, I see the whole thing now! You were behind this, you evil Devil! While everyone was distracted by the Supreme Court debating something that should be a given, you got a sneaky farm bill passed that protects Big Ag as they fix to kill us softly!

Applegate: *studies fingernails happily* The timing was impeccable.

Anne: Well, guess what, Mr. Bad? You've got a new enemy out there. It's called Facebook. Know how I learned of the "Monsanto Protection Act?" I got it in my feed, from a friend. Go ahead. Shut Facebook down. Double dog dare ya.

Applegate: My hackers are working on it. Any day now.

Anne: Oh, look! Easter Mass has just ended at the Catholic church down the block! Yo! Children of the One God! Come and get your damn Devil and banish him back from whence he came!

Applegate: They don't scare me. I dine with their leadership every Tuesday.


Anne: All right, then. Yo! Thor! Mars! Bel! Valkyries! Escort this Devil to the perimeter, and don't be gentle about it!

Applegate: Oh, no no no! Not necessary! There's your neighbor, the lawyer who works for Exxon. I'll go chill with him for awhile!


Anne: "Chill." Oh, brother. Anyway, good riddance of bad rubbish! Someone should lock the door so that Mr. Applegate has to rot in Hell. As for my neighbor -- he's wearing his church clothes. A guy who won't even buy a box of Girl Scout cookies probably spent the morning pretending to pray for the poor. What. A. World.

The New Slavery

I read a newspaper article in the New York Times this week about internships.

Don't ask me to link to it. This is a blog! Let's just say I read something and leave it at that.

Well, I've not only read it, but I'm watching it being played out in the lives of the young people I know. Many businesses, nonprofits, museums, galleries, and especially media outlets, are taking advantage of a free pool of motivated labor: college graduates who can't find jobs.

Oh, the internship! What a great way to get experience you can put on your resume! How can it have a downside to work at the Smithsonian Institute as an intern?

Here's the downside. It's uncompensated labor. The job prospects are so dim for educated people that they have become slaves. They are working long hours, stressful jobs ... for free. Not even living expenses. Many, many kinds of businesses are taking advantage of "internships." Why buy the cow?

What's worse is that most of these internships do not lead to compensated employment ... at least not in the intern's chosen field of endeavor. Basically kids are coming out of college, working for free, and then racking up more educational debt in graduate school. Or they're working as interns and then finding a job somewhere else. Like Home Depot.

I had an internship at a newspaper in Baltimore when I was an undergraduate. I was paid minimum wage. On Friday nights I had to take down the scores and highlight notes for about 30 high school football games. Over the telephone. And all the gods forbid I misspell a name! The next day, Saturday afternoon, would be the racetrack results. These also had to be keyed in by hand.

I published one single story in the newspaper during the eight months I worked there. Then I was told that, as a female, I lacked the qualifications to be a sportswriter. So I quit.

If not for that small paycheck I got for my hours, I would have felt royally played.

The saddest part of this is the fact that interns, once their slavery ends, may never be as happy again in a paying gig. Our economy is so sour that they might never find real work in their professions. I never worked a single day as a journalist after my internship ended, and quite honestly I think I would have been a good sportswriter.

It's easy to say that there ought to be a law. But truthfully, the reality is that colleges are graduating too many people, especially in the creative fields. I don't have an answer for what to do here. I just think it's a shame that my friend's daughter is working at the Smithsonian for free ... for a year ... and then she'll be ... out of a slavery. To make room for another slave.

How long can this last?

Stuff

When I was about 18, my grandmother started giving her things away. When I would come to visit, she would open her chiffarobe and fish something out -- a vase, a little ceramic dog, a faux Japanese tea set -- and just hand them over. This was very distressing to me. I felt like Grandma's things belonged with her. But she was insistent.

This divesting of stuff didn't make sense to me at 18. It sure makes sense now.

Over the weekend I earned a few extra ducats by helping my friend Celeste run an estate sale. The estate in question was a posh place -- near Princeton, big two-acre lot, heated swimming pool, barn with a two-car garage. The residents of the house had lived there for 48 years and were getting ready to move to South Carolina to be near family.

Both residents, the husband and the wife, were in the house during the sale.

Promptly at 8:30, people started arriving to peruse the kitchen stuff, and the China plate stuff, and the collectible dolls and stamps, and the stuff that sits out on display, and the framed pictures, and the pictures without frames, and the frames without pictures. And the linens, aprons, teddy bears, garden tools, DVDs, VHS, Christmas stuff, Easter stuff, and on and on. Every inch of every table was covered with stuff.

While the "customers" circulated in the house, the elderly couple sat in their den, answering questions as needed. More than one customer wandered into the den, looking for more stuff.

I'm used to thrift store prices, so I thought the stuff was overpriced for bargain-hunters. Sure enough, not much stuff moved out while I was there. And some of the high-ticket items that did go out the door were negotiated to a lower price.

A treadmill that the homeowner bought for $2800 did not sell at $300. The homeowner was baffled.

Celeste has to bring a whole staff with her for these sales. This is because no room can go unsupervised. Otherwise, folks will just palm what they want and saunter out.

I was in charge of the living room, with half an eye on the dining room. The couple were both of Russian ancestry, and they had been to Russia many times. They had beautiful framed prints -- some whimsical, some realistic, some fantastic -- of Russia. Not one of these art works left with a buyer, even though I pointed them out to many browsers.

At the end of the day, after Celeste had totaled up the take and paid those of us who helped, the homeowners got a wad of cash very, very shy of $2,000. The husband in particular looked like a house had fallen on him. Not only was most of his stuff still sitting on tables, he had hardly earned any money for the stuff he did sell.

Free advice: Do not buy collectible dolls. The only person who will ever want them is you. Goes without saying that a used teddy bear is only so much fake fur.

We cleaned up for the homeowners and put away some of the pots and pans that didn't sell. We boxed the fancier stuff for an auctioneer. We left two shell-shocked people, looking at their lives arrayed in cardboard boxes around the floor.

I don't have any grandchildren. Maybe I will some day. Hopefully Heir and Spare will own their own homes in the future. (With college loan debt, it will be awhile before they get to a mortgage.) All I can say is, I sure hope no one in my family needs money worse than they need Grandma's vase. We attach sentimental value to our belongings, and a person without that sentiment isn't interested in having them at eight dollars a pop. Then we feel like our lives have been repudiated by strangers. Who wouldn't want a cute little boy porcelain doll with a conductor's hat and overalls? No one but the person who sat riveted to QVC when the dolly went up on the screen.

My husband is the great accumulator in our home. He likes books. Me, I've always tried to travel lightly. I've got just enough stuff to satisfy grandchildren and Goodwill. May the Gods and Goddesses guard me so that I need never hold an estate sale for any reason, ever and ever, so mote it be.

Delhi 2 Dublin

Have you ever judged something or someone just by a name, and then been pleasantly surprised when your happy prediction proves true? That's how I feel about Delhi 2 Dublin.

When I saw that this band would be performing at FaerieCon two years ago, I thought, "Well. Interesting name. Let's look 'em up." So I checked them out online, and wowsa. Went to FaerieCon to see them, and never had so much fun.

It's hard to describe Delhi 2 Dublin if your principal knowledge of music is in a whole different realm. I can tell you chapter and verse on bluegrass, from Bill Monroe to Trampled by Turtles. But when it comes to Delhi 2 Dublin, I can only say that they will quicken your pulse, and pretty much leave it at that. I do suggest you check them out.

There's one problem with this band. They live in Vancouver, BC. That's a long way from Philadelphia. I despaired of ever seeing D2D live again, because FaerieCon is pricey and not in my neighborhood.

Can't tell you how overjoyed I was to discover that D2D was coming to Philly, and to a dance club convenient to myself and my good pal Nettle. We went, we danced, we had a great time.

Now here is some free advice from an old bluegrass fan. If you like musical groups that don't have boatloads of fans in a particular region, you can actually walk right up and chat up the musicians, and they will be very nice to you. I once had a chummy chat with the legendary John Duffey (may he have found the Summerlands), just because no one else was around to yack with him. Same exact thing happened when Nettle and I went to see Delhi 2 Dublin. Their front man, Sanjay Seran, was just chilling by the stage after the set, and I'm not shy. Lovely chummy chat, delightful guy, and he helpfully translated some of his lyrics for me. (D2D don't always sing in English.)

I have a feeling that this is an up-and-coming group that some day will be fighting their way through throngs of insane fans (never a problem faced by bluegrass musicians until Mumford & Sons). So it was great to see D2D
*in Philadelphia
*in a club
*on the Equinox.

Having recently endured my fourth Residents concert, I cannot tell you how refreshing it was to hear real music, sung by people who don't wear masks and revel in the weirdest shit on the planet.

So hop on over to their site, and turn up the stereo!

www.delhi2dublin.com

Pity Poor Us?

I've just finished reading a very interesting book that has made me take a fresh look at my personal philosophy as an individual Pagan, and one general trend in the Pagan community that isn't good for any of us.

Funny thing is, the book isn't about Pagans. It's about Christian martyrs.

In The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom, author Candida Moss takes aim at the treasured stories of pitiful Christians being fed to the lions for Roman entertainment and (not surprisingly) finds more fiction than fact in the earliest martyrdom tales. Roman historical records show a few periods of persecution of Christians (none more than three decades back-to-back), but nothing like the portrait painted in Sunday School classes ... namely, that in those early times, anyone who dared worship Jesus was putting his or her neck in the noose.

The one thing that early Christians did do was coin the term "martyr." It has Latin roots as a legal term. But in terms of dying for their beliefs ... Christians sure weren't the first ones to do that.

I was always skeptical of the whole "Christians in the arena" thing, even back in my Sunday School days. The Romans were highly successful at wiping out perceived political opponents. If Rome had felt threatened by Peter and Paul and their followers, there would indeed have been a systematic round-up and extermination of the sect. Dr. Moss's book notes two cases where Roman authorities wiped out religious leaders wholesale. One was the cult of Bacchus in 186 C.E. The other, lasting longer but almost as completely ... the Druids.

There wouldn't be much point in writing a book that sets a historical record straight and stops there. The bigger point is how a myth of persecution warps a praise and worship team, making it view the world in the most stark black-and-white terms. Either you're one of us, or you want to destroy us. No wiggle room. And it is this feeling that the world wants to destroy them (and by the world, they mean the world as run by the Devil) that has inclined Christians to admire martyrs and, in some cases, to become martyrs themselves.

There are important lessons to take from The Myth of Persecution. One is that it is important to understand the difference between a perceived threat and a really dangerous situation. I stand accused that I have sometimes pictured a world where radical Christians try to wipe out Wiccans. This is not consistent with the world we live in today. The vast majority of modern Christians are tolerant of Pagan faiths, as the majority of polytheist Romans were generally tolerant of early Christians. It is our responsibility as sensible people to keep Pagan thought from veering into hyperbolic "they're out to burn us" thinking.

And the ball is in our court, folks. I don't think it is necessary for us to forget and bury those who were persecuted and killed for witchcraft. But it is important for us not to define ourselves by that history. The "New" part of "New Age" gives us the opportunity to look for wrong turns made by the major faith paths, in order to avoid the kind of thinking and behavior that leads to dogmatic dysfunction.

The story of the first 400 years of the Christian religion, as examined in books like The Myth of Persecution stand as a good cautionary tale for how not to construct a world religion. Sectarian infighting, undisciplined discourse, paranoia, and an establishment of orthodoxy -- all of these are pitfalls that Pagans can identify and avoid before the ball of victimhood gets rolling.

Dr. Moss wrote The Myth of Persecution to take the Religious Right to task for their claim that they are being persecuted in today's society the way their martyred Christian forebears were in Rome. The deeper message comes through to practitioners of Pagan faiths: Don't buy into the martyrdom complex. It's dramatic, exciting, even romantic -- but it doesn't mature into a healthy praise and worship practice.

Books like The Myth of Persecution show us how perfectly good furniture gets ruinously stained for all the wrong, infuriatingly human reasons.  So my Equinox/Eostre/Alban Eiler challenge to you is this. Light a candle and pray a blessing upon all the good and true people who worship the busy god. They mean us no harm. To believe otherwise is to set our religions on a path to the same kind of orthodoxy we're so determined to escape.

The Big Plus for New Age Religions

I've been doing some reading in the past few weeks about the beginnings and spread of Christianity, and it sure makes me glad to be alive in modern times. First of all, many of us are more comfortable with other faiths and philosophies these days ... but more importantly, our dissemination of information is so much better.

If the only way you learn something is to have it told to you orally, and then you travel around and tell it to other people who filter it through their own existing belief system, the whole praise and worship thing becomes muddy as Hell in no time flat. Now we have idiotic blabbermouths like me highly enlightened and educated writers who help keep the good ideas flowing, and allowing the free-flow of existing belief systems to be part of the process.

They say that New Age religion is wishy-washy because our deities are whatever we want them to be. Honestly, you could sure say the same thing about Jesus in the first 300-400 years of Christianity.

As far as Druidism goes, I for one am glad that there is a gulf between what we know about the Celts and what we practice as Druids today. A religion goes south for me when it demands a dogmatic "them or us" mentality, an "ours is the only way" philosophy, or a "we HAVE to do it like this" practice. What works and makes sense to certain generations of people, at certain historical moments, will not work as well at other times and historical moments.

The whole point of "The Gods Are Bored" is to be a member of the chorus of voices calling for religious tolerance, cultural understanding, and the ability to evolve beyond the practices of yester-era. We think Christians have always done things the way they do them now because there's been little change in a long time. But at first there was a wide variety of beliefs and practices, all with their charms.

New Agers (silly term!), let's establish one novelty. Let's allow people to say, "I don't do it that way ... I don't see it that way ... I don't agree ... That's not what I was taught ..." without judgment or approbation. You know when something should be written in stone? When it's interred in a grave.

Holidays that Are Not Celebrated by the Bored Gods

Hello and welcome from "The Gods Are Bored!" Sitting here sober on March 15, because this day is one of several holidays that are not sanctioned by the bored gods.

You cannot find a single bored deity in any pantheon who has a good word to say about St. Patrick. From what I can tell, Patrick was as successful as Moses. He started out as a slave in Ireland, wound up bringing in the busy god and spreading Him far and wide in the Emerald Isle. The element of revenge in his Christianization of Ireland is lost on both Christians and Pagans. And let's not sugar-coat the Pagans. If the Celtic Irish had treated St. Patty better, maybe he would have taken Brighid to the monks on the mainland.

Long story short, the bored gods have asked me to pass along this list of holidays that They do not observe:

1. St. Patrick's Day. Wear green because it's becoming spring outside, not because of some saint who routed a whole pantheon of deities.

2. Sweetest Day. Okay, if you're not from the Midwest, you don't celebrate this one anyway. If you are from Cleveland, rock on with Sweetest -- just don't invite the bored gods.

3. Buzzard Day (observed this weekend in Hinckley, Ohio): vulture worship only

4. Fourth of July. Unless we can muster more respect for the Goddess Columbia, this one's a bust.

5. President's Day. Bored deities who work in retail hate this one. Extra hours and busy aisles ... not very holy.

6. Columbus Day. Soundly and widely detested by numerous Western Hemisphere deities of multiple pantheons.

7. VJ and VE Days. Oh, wait. We don't celebrate those anymore. How soon we forget!

8. Boxing Day, even if it is a very good idea.

9. Spring Break. You can't fool the bored gods. They know this one was created for the Florida tourism industry. Spring is planting season!

10. Super Bowl Sunday. Minimal appeal to a few warrior gods, otherwise a bust.

If you feel like celebrating on any of these days, feel free. Just don't expect any celestial participation.

And, as usual, I will pay you to take this free advice, because that's how the economy works. Send me an invoice.

A Newcomer to The Gods Are Bored

Well, it's official. We at The Gods Are Bored will soon take in another young lady under our roof. She is a student from a northern province in China, attending the local parochial school.

So picture this my lieblings:

A Druid, helping an atheist Chinese student with her Religion homework.

And that is my laugh for today.

PS - as I already have an Heir and a Spare, I will call her The Extra Chair.

X Treme Navel Gaze: Heir and Spare

I have become forgetful. I lose things. I'm not even blaming the faeries anymore. They no longer plague me, because they see they will no longer stand accused.

Therefore I am recording the text of my birthday cards from the Heir and the Spare here on TGAB, where they will never become lost ... unless the whole Internet explodes into a cyber black hole.

Birthday Card Text #!: The Heir

"You are a very special part of my universe." -- True!

Mom,
I love you with all my heart. Continue to stay strong. Embrace peace and take care of yourself. Love yourself as much as I love you. Remember how much you are loved and take pleasure in knowing this. I wish you the best. Much love and peace on your birthday. 
Love forever,
Heir


Birthday Card Text #2: The Spare
(Front of hand-drawn card, a vulture sitting on a birthday cake: "This cake is to sweet, just like you!"

Dearest Momma J,
You are incredibly weird, quirky, strange and silly and I wouldn't want you to be any other way. Of all the mothers I have ever had you are by far my favorite. So much of me is a direct result of you. People always ask me how I got the imagination I have and I always answer, it's because my mothers a nut, but a lovable nut ... like an almond or a pistachio. You are beautiful, kind & nutrituring (I know I spelled that wrong. blame my editor). I am so proud of all the wonderful things you do with your life (though you may think otherwise, you dummy). You are the strongest person I know, which is why your my role model (screw Tina Fey, my mom is cooler anyway).
HAPPY Birthday!
Your daughter The Spare & Beta

Any tiger mom who would fling these sentiments back at the writers because of misspellings or brevity should not be allowed to nutriture a child.

Post-Birthday Navel Gaze: Heir and Spare

I've lost a follower! I've lost a follower! Oh, what am I doing wrong? *wringing hands*

Quick, friends, shoot me some more followers so I don't melt down!

Over the weekend I didn't celebrate because the number is distressing celebrated a birthday. At my age these things are really no big deal. But I have two daughters who are young enough to be consumed by the whole notion of birthdays and their importance.

Both the Heir and the Spare wrote me personal notes that spoke of their love for me and what I have done to make them better people. Spare likes my goofiness. She thinks it has sparked her interest in comedy and has filled her imagination with ideas. Heir hopes I'm at peace and relaxed, I deserve the very best of everything because I'm such a great mom.

Folks, my own mother suffered from a dreadful case of bipolar disorder. She was not what anyone would call a mother at all. So it's 100 percent more rewarding to me that my daughters like my parenting. I was flying by the seat of my pants through their whole growing up. The only thing I knew to do was not to raise them the way I was raised.

1. No forced eating of food they didn't want to try. Can't tell you how often I vomited up cottage cheese as a kid.
2. No set bedtimes if there was something special going on.
3. No music lessons! Music lessons, in my childhood, were simply captivity under the brutal heavy hand of a taskmistress who couldn't even play an instrument herself.
4. No all-consuming self-centeredness (which, admittedly, is a symptom of bipolar disorder and therefore hard to control).
5. No choosing their clothing, friends, or boyfriends ... attire guidelines only as needed.

I could go on and on.

Instead... navel gaze ...

On Monday afternoon, Spare and I took a walk in the park. Spare had her IPhone and her camera. She used the first item to geo-cache, which I loved (put that seaglass to use)! She used the other to photograph a stunning wood duck and his mate. And a cluster of little yellow flowers. And a cluster of crocuses. And a cluster of snow drops. I have given birth to my own grandfather ... all he did was photograph flowers!

We had such a nice time together on our short walk.

Not neglecting the Heir, but she's working so hard these days. But I will say that Monday afternoon, when I got home from work and she came out the back door, my heart just leaped with joy to see her.

I was a very reluctant mother. I thought I would botch the job completely. I guess I did something right. It started with love.

PS - Spare's cooking dinner every night this week. Call ahead for reservations, because her cuisine is very popular!

International Goddess Day

Oh, what a beautiful morning, with just a hint of spring in the air! The sun is shining, and the birds are beginning to peep out their love songs. And I, dear readers, am another 365 days older. I feel good, though. The secret to long life is to never act your age.

I'm hearing some rumblings about International Women's Day. Why stop at mortals? Let's call it International Goddess Day!

Recognizing that human beings perceive Higher Powers to have human forms and traits, it really amazes me that so many world religions hinge on male-only deities. The Divine Male is great, don't get me wrong, but at the very least He ought to share His seat with a Divine Female who is His equal.

Having been present at some really contentious D.A.R. meetings, where shrill blue-haired ladies hotly debated the disposition of valuable China plates, I can't say for sure that matriarchal rule in the apparent world would be any better than patriarchy. We don't really have a modern model (at least that I know of), because even where great women are elected to high office, the prevailing government is male-dominated.

The bored Goddesses we know anything specific about don't give us much clue, either. Some are gentle and nurturing, some are powerful and war-like, some are cunning, and some are sexy. Oh, there go those human traits again!

Speaking only for myself, I had no religious role model growing up. Protestants don't give the time of day to the Blessed Mother. It was only after I married a lapsed Catholic and heard his mother and grandmother praying that the idea of Divine Female even occurred to me. But that's how I began my search for the bored gods -- by looking for the Divine Female. What a joy to find so many, both named and nameless, stretching into the very dawn of our species!

Set aside an offering for your Goddess today. Help Her to be less bored. I'll handle all the Unknown Goddesses on this end. All hail each and every one of them, so might it be.

Image: http://www.unicorngarden.com

Chris Christie's School Reforms Are a Disaster for Taxpayers

Well, I bet I earn a few stray views from non-regulars with that headline, huh?

If you're here because you think Chris Christie's so-called school "reforms" are a sham and a mockery, welcome! Here's a little tidbit of evidence that New Jersey's governor, hailed nationwide for trying to wrench aging teachers out of the classroom, is costing taxpayers more money than he will save.

This week, the Board of Education of Haddonfield, New Jersey passed its school budget for 2013-14. In New Jersey, municipalities (not counties) pay for the public schools. Haddonfield is a high-rent district that receives minimal support from New Jersey state government.

The school superintendent, when explaining the inflated budget number, said that the district would have to hire a new administrator at $75,000 per year to comply with the new state evaluation system for teachers.

That's $75,000 that the residents of Haddonfield have to pony up. This figure was not in last year's budget, because the administrator was not needed until Christie's evaluation models had to be implemented.

*99 percent of all Haddonfield students go to college.
*Haddonfield students earn the highest average SAT scores in Camden County. (Last June, 1,714. Source: Haddonfield Sun)

So the taxpayers of Haddonfield have to pay an evaluator to tell them ... what? That the teachers are "proficient?"

You know who evaluates the teachers in Haddonfield constantly, relentlessly, and candidly? The parents. There's absolutely no need for a $75,000 bozo in a tie (or heels). Nevertheless, the citizens of Haddonfield must pay this person, and the person must evaluate Haddonfield's teachers the way Christie wants it -- four times a year, twice formally and twice informally.

For those of you in other states, let me just add that all New Jersey administrators must be trained in the new evaluation techniques. This training brings highly-paid consultants into the state to lead lengthy seminars that will consume the time and energy of people who already know how to judge good and bad teachers.

All of this to root out a few ineffective educators.

Haddonfield, if you vote for Chris Christie, he'll fleece you for more needless bureaucracy in your schools. You know the schools I'm talking about. The ones that are falling apart at the seams and are filthy because the janitorial staff has been cut back.

Whose money is Chris Christie saving? Not mine. I live in Haddonfield, and I just hired a new nobody instead of giving the terrific teachers a raise.

Can I make a bold, reform-based suggestion? Let's find an evaluator to look at Chris Christie four times a year. Twice formally, twice informally. Is he proficient?

Troll, the Reformer

Once upon a time there was a little village of faeries. The vast majority of the faeries were good faeries, although they all felt they worked too hard and weren't very appreciated by the gnomes who ran the show. A tiny minority of the faeries were bad faeries who weren't afraid to be bad because they had been in the village so long they knew the gnomes could not chase them away. One of the main duties of all these faeries was being sure there were enough hardy ladybugs to keep the aphid population low.

One day a huge, enormous, really really enormous troll took over the village of the faeries. This troll decided that, no matter how long a faerie had lived in the village, that faerie should not be protected from being expelled by the gnomes. Even though the ladybugs were doing all right with the aphids, the troll thought the bad faeries should go, because the bad faeries were costing too much money in upkeep.

The troll devised a plan. All the gnomes would be carefully trained to watch and evaluate each and every faerie, good and bad.

The system of evaluation was difficult for the gnomes to learn, so the troll had to pay for training. Then the faeries said it wasn't fair that the gnomes knew how to get rid of the faeries, but the faeries didn't know enough about what to do to protect themselves. So the troll had to pay to have the faeries trained as well.

The faeries were to be judged for 88 criteria in a mere 40 minutes four times a year by a trained team of two gnomes. But each team of gnomes got assigned 40 faeries apiece. Now, that was more judging than a pie-taster at a state fair!

The gnomes told the troll that they couldn't spend 40 minutes, four times a year with 40 different faeries and expect to cover all 88 criteria. So the troll told the gnomes to make two of the visits short and just write down whatever they saw the faeries doing wrong.

Even the best of the good faeries looked at this and felt like they didn't have a chance of keeping their homes in the village.

Morale became very low among the faeries. Where they once worked together, they now competed to get the best judging scores. Whatever it took to impress the gnomes, they did ... never mind if it was in the best interest of the ladybugs.

Before the troll assigned the gnomes to this judging thing, the gnomes had other duties. They kept the village clean and made sure all the ladybugs behaved themselves. But once the gnomes got caught up in the judging, they didn't have time to mind the ladybugs' behavior. No surprise, the ladybugs ran amok, causing havoc.

The troll, seeing that the ladybugs were running amok, blamed the faeries. The troll hired more gnomes for training and judging but didn't do anything about the ladybugs.

Then the ladybugs found out that part of the judging of the faeries had to do with how the faeries treated the ladybugs' parents. Every ladybug who had ever had a problem with a faerie went home and told their parents to speak to the gnomes right away. Parent ladybugs swamped the village with complaints, and the gnomes took note.

Pretty soon, every faerie in the village was judged to be a bad faerie, or at very least, a mediocre faerie. The gnomes were worn to a frazzle from the judging, and the ladybugs ran the show.

The troll looked at all he had done and patted himself on the back. He would go down in history as a reformer of bad faeries. And once all the judging began, wow! Almost all the faeries turned out to be bad!

When the ladybugs' parents saw how many bad faeries were out there in the village, they petitioned the troll to find a new way to get their offspring ready to deal with the aphids. So the troll hired his best friend to build a private training center where ladybugs could go outside the village. Of course the troll's friend didn't know much about ladybugs ... but gosh, look at all those bad faeries!

It took quite a few years before the ladybug parents discovered that they had paid a lot of money to a bunch of gnomes to watch the faeries, and a lot of money to the troll's friend for a private center, and none of it made the ladybugs any better at catching aphids.

But by the time the ladybug parents got wise, the faeries had all left for a better village, one that was free of trolls, gnomes, and ladybugs.

Happy ending! Only in fairy tales.

Virtual Vulture Festival 2013!

From humble origins in a small train station ...

Came the renowned and highly original

Dedicated to the most fantastic and singular bird,

The vulture!

With its kicky motto

A festival was born.

This unparalleled event not only celebrated the visitation of hundreds of vultures to a small New Jersey hamlet,

It also raised thousands of dollars for nature clubs, children's education, and otherwise sprucing up the wild spots in the town!

The festival reached its apex of popularity around 2009, with sacred vulture dances

(featuring our friend the Monkey Man, second from right...)

And a fan favorite at every festival was the peerless mascot, Buzzy!

The people attending the festival thought Buzzy was just a cute, big bird. But underneath all that paper mache and layers of old polyester was a Shaman who felt it her religious duty to don the attire of the Sacred Thunderbird.

Of course, this sense of the sacred did not detract from the fun.

Worship of the Sacred Thunderbird spans history and cultures in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. An archeological excavation 10,000 years old revealed that the Zawi Chami people of what is now Iraq dressed in vulture feathers for their rituals. In ancient Egypt, Vulture guarded the Pharaoh's children, and the bored Goddess Maat is pictured with the wings of a vulture.

In both African and Native American traditions, Vulture has interceded on behalf of the human race during times when the Gods were angry. The Goddess Oshun was said to have taken the shape of a vulture and flown toward the sun to end a famine.

But back to being silly:

It's doubtful that this raccoon will get well. What's more likely is that, before it starts stinking up the joint, a kindly and gentle vulture (or several) will dispose of it by eating it right down to the bones. Let's celebrate this wise custodianship of our planet!

I love faeries
and the Monkey Man
and those Pillsbury hot rolls with the orange icing.

I love drumming
and Polish Mountain
and cats that look like Hitler.

I love parades
and puns
and the art work of Thalia Took

But most of all, I love vultures. This is no recent thing, readers. I've loved vultures my whole life.

Whether whimsical like Floppy

Or spooky like my good friend Clem,

Vultures are the best the world has to offer.

If you see one this weekend, give it a howdy and a hearty handshake. If anyone stares, who the hell cares?

VIRTUAL VULTURE FESTIVAL WEEKEND 2013


Artwork by ancient Egyptians, unknown hillbillies, and Thalia Took; some buzzard photos by Bird Chick and Shelly Castorino.