When Sherman Marched

It seems that the American people have no more stomach for intervention in Syria's civil war than the Germans had for intervention in 1865 when General Sherman marched from Atlanta to the sea.

 

Sherman, if you'll recall, cut a 40-mile path of devastation in which he left nothing standing except the burnt-out shells of some plantations. While I'm not sure that children writhed in agony and died on cold hospital floors, I'm quite certain that women and children -- civilians all -- suffered terribly from Sherman's actions, probably mostly from the (?) less ruthless (?) tactics of starvation and disease. General Sherman put his feelings on the matter out there for the world to see in a letter to the citizens of Atlanta that included the infamous phase, "War is hell." Then he proved it by burning and sacking Atlanta.

 

Where was Germany during this conflict? Well, it was a pretty big empire. Where was British sentiment about the suffering and death in Dixie? The sun never set on the British empire in those times, but England did nothing to alleviate the dire situation in Georgia.

 

But, ah. We are America. We are, to quote our most recent Fearless Leader, "the anchor of global security."

 

The anchor of global security? Really? I think it depends on who you ask. Someone in Kansas might feel that way. Someone in Afghanistan might have a different opinion. (Just to be on the safe side, I wouldn't poll a single African nation on the whole "anchor of global security" thing, even though our president has African ancestry.)

 

We are the anchor of global security. How very ... Roman.

 

Far from being the anchor of global security that we might have been in, say, 1944, I would say America is the bully of the globe right now. Mark my words: I'm on the left, and I do sincerely abhor the images of children writhing in agony and dying on cold hospital floors. But when do we holler "uncle" in the Middle East? (I guess when those fracking wells are cranked up and spitting out natural gas and poisoning our water supply, that's when.)

 

I am bitterly insulted by the man I voted for, who feels he can challenge my commitment to suffering children. I'd like to tell him about suffering children. My students don't writhe in agony on cold hospital floors, but they subsist on diets of potato chips and Pepsi, get mowed down in drive-by shootings, and watch their siblings die from improper or inadequate medical care. America: the anchor of social indifference.

 

This man who is running our country is not the person I thought I was voting for. Fit him for a Darth Vader mask. He's gone to the dark side. And all the worse, because we soft-hearted lefties thought he would actually care about the inequities in our own nation.

 

War is hell. Our nation should stop engaging in it. We can't save every baby in some other country while cutting food aid to the ones who live here.

 

Why don't we let Norway handle this Syria thing? It's their turn.

The Job I Wish I Had

Eulogy for My Favorite Uncle

My uncle Foggy died yesterday. He was not born with the name Foggy, but after a bully called him that one day in his youth, he and my dad and his friends liked it so much that it stuck. Even my grandfather called him "Fog."

He was the product of a teenage indiscretion that led to a hasty marriage ... the marriage lasted almost 60 years. He grew up in Appalachia and was part of what I call the Appalachian diaspora. At about age 20 he married and moved to Cleveland, Ohio. There he raised a family and worked a series of white collar jobs until he was the age I am now. Then he got laid off for the last time. He moved back to the mountains, moved in with my grandparents at the family farm, and helped out as they got older.

In an era not known for six-footers, Foggy was 6'4". He towered over everyone in the family. Maybe that's why the nickname stuck, because we always teased him about what the weather was like up there. When I was a little kid, he would lift me up on his shoulders, and it would be like riding a giraffe.

Foggy and I had tons of fun together. He was my favorite uncle, and the one I spent the most time with as a kid and young adult. Because he was living at the family farm, I saw him frequently. He was always a talkative person, and as he spent more and more time alone after my grandparents died, he became extremely long-winded when I would visit. Still, I loved him. He was quick to laugh and had a keen wit. He loved satire and had no problem poking fun at Appalachia. He was a good cook.

When Foggy left the workforce, he did some pretty rigorous hiking with my cousin. Stuff that I sure would be hesitant to do at this point in my life. He backpacked the Appalachian Trail and hiked along the shoreline of Lake Superior. He traveled across the country numerous times, by car and rail and plane. In this picture he is already well into his 50s, maybe flirting with 60, and he sure didn't get to that spot by some tourist tram.

Most of all, he was self-taught. He attended less than a semester of college, but he was very well-read. Okay, so he specialized in the Civil War and read all those Louis Lamour Westerns, and all that James Michener stuff, but he always had a book in his hands.

I have an old journal here in which I recorded some of our adventures at the family farm when I was in my late teens. We had some rip-roaring good ol' times, especially when we were lubricated with vodka gimlets.

After my grandparents died, my dad and his brother got all of us nieces and nephews to agree to let Foggy live out his life at the family farm, rent free. There was never anything put into writing. It was what I thought of as a blood obligation. Foggy's work history was spotty, and he took his Social Security early, so he had a very limited income much of the time. Even so, he kept up the house and the property. He mowed more grass than my grandfather ever did, and between him and my cousin, the place actually improved instead of rotting, which is what many other similar properties have done.

It was such a fabulous feeling to be able to go to the family farm, see it so neat and well-maintained, hike its woods and fields, and have a cocktail and chat the night away (or, actually, listen the night away) with Uncle Foggy.

There were plenty of kinfolk up in those hills who would have welcomed his company, but for some reason, voluble Foggy didn't socialize much outside his immediate family. In his loneliness he listened to talk radio, and that habit led him to Rush Limbaugh. He fell under Rush's spell, and that became a game-changer in our relationship. I found that it wasn't as much fun visiting the mountains if I had to hear about welfare deadbeats and feminazis. The "Rush-talk" about the social safety net was particularly galling, because if not for that Social Security and our good will agreement regarding the farm (and his own children's generosity), he would have needed far more social support than he got.

Old age closed in on Foggy, and once again he was lucky. I have an able-bodied male cousin who was able to care for Foggy at the family farm, thus lengthening the years that our family held onto the farm. It was only two years ago that the situation became untenable, and wowsa, my sister and cousins closed in to put the farm up for sale and grab the ducats post-haste. I didn't have enough money to buy the place, since some local fellow had been eyeballing it for years and was willing to shell out our asking price, in cash.

The last time I saw Foggy was in November 2011, just a few months before the closing on the farm. In farewell I gave him a huge hug and tried to hide my tears, because I knew it was the last time I would see him in the apparent world. By that time he had drifted into deafness and away from Rush, so he was more like a benign elder version of the rip-roarer he'd been at 60.

Foggy was a very talented cartoonist, and if any of us had known how to get into that business, he might have made something of it. I've shared one of his best pieces here before, but my sister had one that she put up on Facebook that I'd forgotten about. I wrote the poem, and he did the drawing. The artwork is a nod to both me and my sister, since she likes Canadian geese and has a favorite yellow sweater. I can date it to 1981 or thereabouts, so it's pre-Rush, and very un-Rush, in its sentiments.

The poem reads:
We Johnsons are a merry clan
Who seem to lack a Master Plan.
Ambition's made of sterner stuff,
Although folks find us smart enough.
A day of rest's a day well spent.
Just getting by makes us content.

May the Gentry of Sidhe welcome his spirit. May he have found the Summerlands. May he play forever as a happy child, with my father and the faeries of Pan. Now my ancestors have all departed, and I am the elder. It's daunting.

But there's some rip-roar left in this gal, yep.

Floyd H. "Foggy" Johnson, 1926-2013.

I Love a Parade!

What is with me? I love parades. Do you?

I'll take a parade either way. I'll watch it, or I'll march (or strut) in it. Both are amazing.

Next weekend, Heir, Extra Chair and I will go to see the Miss America parade. It's been a long time since the last Miss America Parade in Atlantic City. I'm totally stoked to see one!

I've never had a problem with beauty pageants. I don't think they are demeaning. A pretty woman who is proud of her body ought to have the right to display it for people to appreciate. No one is using coercion here. The contestants look like they're having fun. And they are pretty.

Back to the Miss America parade. It's traditional, as the various state winners pass in their convertibles, to shout, "Show us your shoes!" And most of the contestants have really fancy, campy shoes that somehow artistically represent what's best about their state. For example, a Miss Florida might have shoes that look like orange trees. Other contestants just have the most over-the-top footwear you can imagine. Now, don't think I was born yesterday. I know the idea is to show off legs. Again, who has a problem with that? If a gal is proud of her legs, she should flex 'em!

If I remember correctly, the Miss America parade also has some good bands and drum corps in it too. It's on Atlantic City's boardwalk ... I got western-side seating so we'll see waves crashing on the beach in between the action. Oh, I wish you could join me! Fun, fun, fun!

But it only gets better.

Thursday night we had a very important meeting of the Two Street Stompers, my Philadelphia mummers comic club. In addition to finding a home for multiple cans of Coors Light and announcing the theme for this year, we learned that we will be marching in a Halloween parade! I. Am. So. Pumped! I literally jumped up and down when they announced it.

Not only do I get to wear this peerless suit again, in all its golden glory, I will be participating in the deepest tradition of mumming -- you see, it's done at the New Year. Except to the Celts, the New Year was November 1! So being a mummer in a Halloween parade is reviving an extremely ancient and holy tradition!

I won't lie. I'm a school teacher in a severely depressed urban area. It's a stressful job. Not because of the kids. Because of the ridiculous oversight by state flunkies with agendas. But when I get an opportunity to watch a great parade in September and then strut in one in October, well ... stress? What stress?

Come and join "The Gods Are Bored" at the Miss America parade 2013! Section W73-W75. Be there by 4:00.

Come and see the Two Street Stompers at the Medford, NJ Halloween parade! Gonna have a funky good time! Sorry, no Coors Light will be served. It's a family event.

Ready, set, strut!

A Little Up-Catching

Well, howdy! I'm just back from the first day of school, all teacher meetings. Rather than wallow in fury at the bone-headed "school reform" being foisted on our nation's students by numbskulls in consulting firms, I think I'll catch you up on some fun stuff here at "The Gods Are Bored!"

1. The gorgeous red cat has moved in and is now in the basement. He is terrifically affectionate. He's rather nonplussed by the parrot, whose screams could be construed to be a human falling off a cliff. Understandable.

2. A while back I started writing little columns for an ezine called Pagan Pages. On that site I am known as The Neon Pagan. Here's a link to my latest peerless prose:
http://paganpages.org/content/2013/09/the-neon-pagan-3/

I will be writing for Pagan Pages each month.

3. Extra Chair, my Chinese exchange student, has arrived for another year of school. She's suffering through Big Spider Season. Apparently there are fewer, and much smaller, spiders in China.

4. We at "The Gods Are Bored" have a little Facebook page, nothing fancy, but we'd love it if you joined us there. Here's the link to that:
https://www.facebook.com/TheGodsAreBored?ref=hl

5. This is Post 1986 for "The Gods Are Bored." Closing in on 2,000 entries! Also closing in on 200 followers! Invite your friends and family, or worst enemies, or strangers on the street, to follow "The Gods Are Bored!"

6. Autumn is my favorite season. How about you?

Thank you for reading. May the bored gods bless you and keep you and answer your prayers.

--Anne

In Which I Undermine Every Principle

I've spent a good deal of time around shelter cats, and I've always worked under a strong, guiding principle when it comes to homeless felines. You could say I upheld a Cat Commandment:

Thou shall not adopt a cat that anyone else would want.

This guiding principle led me to Alpha, a cat who had been living in a cage for two years. She was homely and skinny, but she was so grateful to be let out of that cage that she was a magnificent companion for 13 years. May she have found the Summerlands.
 
This guiding principle led me to give a home to Beta, a cat who was tamed by The Spare after birthing a litter of kittens in our back yard. I took the kittens to the no-kill (have you paid those surrender fees?) and kept Beta, because she didn't have a knockout personality and was one of the plainest cats I'd ever seen in my life.

I fostered over 70 kittens over a course of six or seven years. I never adopted a single one.

Therefore, you would think I could volunteer at Petco and not throw all good cat sense to the wind in a matter of two weeks.

I caved. I totally caved. The only thing I can say about my seducer is that he's not a kitten.

He's a giant orange longhair with a magnificent plume for a tail, huge and expressive yellow eyes, and a "yes, I'll flop and be petted" attitude about life. In short, the kind of cat that spends a week or less in the shelter, which he has been there a week, because I was there when he came in.

Beta is 11 years old and a cancer survivor. I swore I would not get another cat as long as Beta was alive. Who needs more than one cat? Besides, Beta doesn't play well with others.

But never mind! I have lived long, I have labored in the cat trenches, and by golly, this time I'm going for the good-looking Tybalt of strays who would turn the eye of anyone who ever expressed even a minimal interest in felines! Give me that handsome cat! It's my turn to have the gorgeous one!

And so, having abandoned all of my vows regarding homeless cats, I will be bringing home, on Labor Day, a stupendously handsome cat. His name is Blue.

Freya, you who so love the feline species, please help Beta to adjust to having a new cat in the house. Blue is twice her size, but today he winced when a kitten sniffed him.

Cat Commandment broken. I suppose I will some day go to a Hades where there are only dogs.

Spare in the Square

It was a muggy morning. I had just finished getting a hair cut when I got a phone call from my daughter The Spare.

(For those of you just joining "The Gods Are Bored," we have two daughters: Heir and Spare. This is what the British press called Prince William and Prince Henry back when they were kids, and ... well, it works.)

Over the phone, Spare said, "Mom, I'm having a panic attack. It's only three days until I go to college!"

I told her to come up and meet me at Starbucks.

We live in Snobville, New Jersey, and like every other hamlet on the map, it has a Starbucks in the dead center of town. I've never liked the joint. It rarely wrenches ducats from my hands. But it was nearby, and I was pretty certain that Spare hadn't eaten anything, although it was almost noon.

Quick as a wink, here came Spare on her cruiser bicycle. She must have peddled like mad to get to the center of Snobville from the far side of the tracks. And when she sat down at an outside table with me, she was shaking and blinking. She said she felt sick. Then she closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she said, "I can't see." She closed her eyes again, and when she opened them she said, "I can't see. I can't hear either."

Next thing I knew, she was sliding out of her chair as if her bones had turned to mush. She fainted in my arms. I laid her down on the sidewalk, center of town, and put my purse under her head.

Needless to say, this unusual drama attracted a lot of interest from the locals. One fellow went to fetch the paramedics from the fire house across the street. Another lady went into Starbucks and brought out a cup of ice water, with lid and straw. As Spare came around, another lady hovered, saying she was a nurse.

Spare was lucid again within about 20 seconds, and ten seconds later she remembered to be embarrassed. This was, after all, the square of her home town, and she was lying on the sidewalk with a purse under her head.

The paramedics arrived in the ambulance (from right across the street they had to come by truck). They got Spare seated again and took her vitals. Spare's dad came around the corner and was shocked to see the health care professionals surrounding his pale offspring.

No, Spare had eaten nothing that morning.
No, she had nothing to drink.
No, she had not taken her medication.
Yes, she was wearing a cardigan even though it was muggy.

Spare's blood pressure was a little bit low. We got her some orange juice and a bagel, and she drank both the juice and the water the lady had brought to her. The paramedics stayed for awhile and suggested that Spare go see a doctor, or go to the emergency room.

Spare and I sat in front of Starbucks for over an hour. She inhaled a bagel with cream cheese, an apple, and some grapes, which bucked her up considerably. Then her dad drove her home, while I, Anne Johnson, rode her bike. And it's true. You never forget how.

Long story short, I called the doctor, and we got an appointment. Our usual physician, Doctor Mushroom, was out of town. But he recently got shoved into a multi-doctor practice, so there was another doctor in the office.

We went there. Another set of vitals was obtained, and yet another just in case, because Spare's blood pressure was still low.

I'm sure I've written before about my dear Doctor Mushroom, so named because he would rather rub moss over you than prescribe some fancy drug. (His predecessor used pendulums, so it's all good.) Lo and behold, the lady doctor in this multi-doctor unit is rather of the same mindset. It's refreshing.

Upon ascertaining that Spare's blood pressure was still a little low, this estimable physician did not inundate us with blue prescription slips. She gave sound medical advice. She told Spare to eat something salty. Like potato chips.

There you have it, my dear readers. Under certain circumstances, the very best thing you can do for your health is to eat potato chips. Don't let anyone tell you to take those vitamins! Potato chips are the go-to cure for low blood pressure.

If you're not sure whether your blood pressure is low or not, my advice would be to eat potato chips just to be on the safe side.

And yes, Spare is fine now. She had a hamburger and a milk shake with her potato chips, ensuring she'll live to be 100.

Stronger Than the Storm... OK, Yeah, Right

Day before yesterday, my daughter The Heir and I set out on a little New Jersey road trip. Heir just loves New Jersey. She has done everything she could to win me over to this gritty state, and her sheer enthusiasm for its smoky grandeur is indeed inspiring.

We both like to look for beach glass, so we set our sights on a place we had never been before, a little fishing village on the Delaware Bay about 25 miles south of the nuclear power plant.

It only took us about 80 minutes to drive to this village, and I have to admit, if you like salt marshes, there's a lot of prime salt marsh in that vicinity. You would never know you're in New Jersey down there in the lower reaches of the Delaware Bay.

From a distance, the village sat perched, oh so picturesquely, at the water's edge. When we got up close to it, though, we found a virtual ghost town.

Most of the houses were boarded up or damaged somehow. Some were completely gutted. Others looked okay but showed no sign of recent habitation.

I looked around me at the desolation, and all I could think was, "Whose bright idea was it to build these houses anyway?" The homes in question were almost literally on the water, standing on stilts or right across the street from a sea wall against which the high tide beat dramatically.

There were two nice ladies in the street, and I struck up a conversation with them. Of course we started talking about Hurricane Sandy. The storm decimated the village. The storm surge was 18 feet in places ... way higher than the stilts, vastly higher than the sea wall.

One of the ladies said that everyone (population 400) evacuated when necessary. Upon their return to their hamlet, their furniture was floating in the Delaware Bay, and most of the homes were severely damaged. She told me that grown men cried. Some people lost everything.

Ten months later, the fishermen cannot put to bay, because the storm shifted sand bars all over the place. At least one in three houses has a "for sale" sign in the front yard. The beach, at high tide, is a yard wide.

"Well," one of the ladies sighed, "We get one of these storms every 50 years or so. It's just the way of things."

You know what the way of things should be? People should have respect for the coastline.

Humans have always loved living on beaches, but the smart cultures of old, the ones who worship the bored gods (and modern Third World folks too), those people respected the nature of the sea and kept all seaside habitation of an impermanent nature.

Permanent structures do not belong on the edge of the ocean. They do not belong at the edge of a bay. nor, for that matter, do they belong in the flood plain of a little ol' country creek. Water is lovely to look at on a good day. On a bad day, it wants your furniture.

This summer, the state of New Jersey has tried to attract tourists with the theme song, "We're stronger than the storm." What a conceit! No one is stronger than a hurricane. No one should be living cheek-to-jowl with the sea. We don't even need global warming as a rationale for keeping a safe distance between ourselves and the surf: barrier islands have never been suitable for development.

If there are any bored deities deserving attention, they are Triton and Oshun. Respect them. Water is pretty, until it isn't. And no one is stronger than the storm.

On Dragon Queens

It's official. I've read over 3,000 pages this summer. I usually gorge on summer reading, but this is a record ... at least since 8th grade.

The lion's share of my summer reading has been the first three volumes of "Song of Ice and Fire," by George R. R. Martin. This is the series of books upon which "Game of Thrones" is based.

I had gotten about 60 pages into the first Martin behemoth when Mr. J brought home a new novel by Carl Hiaasen, Bad Monkey. Carl Hiaasen is my favorite pleasure-reading-author. Having a brand new novel of his in my hands is like Christmas and summer vacation, rolled into one. However, I let Mr. J read Bad Monkey while I surged on with "Ice and Fire."

It turns out that Bad Monkey and "Ice and Fire" have something in common: They both feature Dragon Queens.

You may recognize this Dragon Queen. She is Daenerys, from "Ice and Fire." Through almost 3,000 pages she has evolved from a frightened young teenager into a formidable warrior queen. I won't spoil. Suffice it to say that she is blonde, mirthless, and ambitious.

Bad Monkey's Dragon Queen is a drunken voodoo crone on the island of Andros in the Bahamas. Again I won't spoil, except to say that she will put a curse on a white devil for you in return for good rum and good sex, and perhaps your pet monkey.

Both Dragon Queens have followers, and both inspire a good deal of anxiety. But there the difference ends. If you are considering this a book review, then you decide how you like your Dragon Queens ... and choose your reading accordingly.

Daenerys has not an ounce of humor in her nubile young frame. She doesn't even get to toss out the witty one-liners that are the only stab at humor in "Ice and Fire." Her movements are stiff and respectable, her decisions based on a dragon's share of ambition. See how serious she looks in the photo? That's how she's written. Well, I mean so far. I have another 2,000-plus pages to read. Maybe she lightens up, but the word I would use to describe her is "dour."

Bad Monkey's Dragon Queen might be considered politically incorrect from the pen of a white writer, except that I always get the impression that Carl Hiaasen bases his characters on people he has at least read about, if not actually met. At any rate, this Dragon Queen (that's the only name we get for her) is so far beyond the pale that she cannot possibly have arisen strictly from imagination. She swills rum, she flashes her male customers, she switches loyalties at whim, she makes outrageous demands, and she never seems to practice enough voodoo to make her offensive to earnest Pagans like myself. This character's lines are delivered in a dead-on Bahamian accent that only makes her antics funnier.

In Carl Hiaasen's novels, even the heroes behave badly ... they just have loftier motives than the villains. But two things elevate this writer above the pack. One is that he's funny. The descriptions of character, action, and dastardly deeds are all done with an understated wittiness that leaves me howling and teary-eyed. The other thing is that all of the author's novels are infused with righteous indignation at the rape of the Florida landscape. Hiaasen is a lifelong resident of that state, and I, for one, can deeply identify with his frustration over the rampant erection of strip malls, condos, etc. etc. etc., and the graft and corruption that attend such enterprises. How does this author take indignation and make it funny? Wowsa. His characters actually do what we all would like to do! In large or small ways (usually both), his heroes and heroines are eco-terrorists. We root for them because we all have a gut feeling that only the bad behavior of a few renegades can save us all from the white devils.

As for witty one-liners ... George R. R. Martin doesn't turn as many successful ones in 3,000 pages as Carl Hiaasen manages in a slender 300.

It cracks me up that both of my summer reads had Dragon Queens. As far as Dragon Queens go, I like mine lewd, drunk, flamboyant, untrustworthy, and greedy. I bow a knee to funny, and that's what I got in Bad Monkey. Hoorah for the Dragon Queen on Andros Island!

Postscript to this sermon: If you have never read any of Carl Hiaasen's work, I suggest beginning with Sick Puppy or Stormy Weather. Avoid this author at all costs if you are politically correct or sexually prim. There's a reason his books aren't on HBO. Are you easily offended? Move on to "Ice and Fire." Is nothing sacred to you? Have you got a sick sense of humor? Hiaasen.

Oh yeah, one last thing: While Carl Hiaasen's novels sometimes require a suspension of disbelief, his characters tend to stay dead when they're killed. Most times. And in no case do they return as zombies.

Runnin against the Wind

This morning I had to go to the pharmacy for allergy pills. I saw a school bus in the parking lot that had the name of my Vo-Tech on it. I thought the placement of the bus curious but didn't give it much more thought.

Driving home I have to pass through a county park that has a lot of running trails. As I was driving, I saw a bunch of girls running along the street. "Oh!" I thought. "That looks like Kay'sha!" And then I saw another girl who I recognized.

So, quick as a wink, I pulled over and cheered them on. They were the girls' cross country team from my school, out for a run before it gets too hot!

My girls. The other ones. The ones who don't live in my house.

Kay'sha was out in front. She's the best runner on the team. Last year her brother was shot and killed in a drive-by. Crystal, who stopped briefly to say hello to me, has a sister who is battling lupus with inadequate and indifferent health care.

Last spring, Clarissa had a baby and fell short on the high school proficiency test. We all thought she would pass. She cried. Today she was out running with the rest.

The world is arrayed against these young women. As I prepare for a new school year, in which I will be teaching to a national proficiency test that I have not yet seen, I think about all the smackdowns challenges my girls face. Even their African American president is making the test standards tougher, making it harder if not impossible for them to earn that essential high school diploma.

The new high school proficiency tests are being designed by college professors, based on the skills these professors think are lacking in students who get high school diplomas. My students start lacking skills the minute they walk in the door in kindergarten. They never catch up. In the case of the Vo-Tech, my girls are learning trades like nursing assistance and medical record keeping -- making them employable right out of high school, so long as they get their diplomas and pass proficiency tests in their trades. Yes, you are reading right. My students, all of them, have to take two tests: one for academic high school, another for the trade they've studied.

I would feel more zealous about the new, tougher high school standards if I hadn't been in a group this summer that toured businesses and industries in my area. It is still possible to get an entry-level job with a high school diploma (good attendance, no tattoos) where one can learn the skills necessary for the business in-house and move up through the ranks. My students have done this at the fancy grocery stores too. Even at Home Depot. But they all needed that high school diploma.

This is so blatantly unfair, it makes me want to weep. We expect our most disadvantaged students to be bright enough to compete not with China's worst (Flower Lace Bra; see below), but with China's best. You know what happens in the inner city schools? Kids turn 16 and drop out. "I wouldn't pass the proficiency test anyway," they say.

Stop this madness! Find a way to educate and train all children, without trying to fit them all into a single mold! Does my auto mechanic need to have read Ovid?

I'm repeating myself. Guilty as charged. It just fills my heart with ache to see my girls out running in the park. What is waiting for them at the finish line?

More Embarrassing than Free Porn

The other day, Spare and I found ourselves at the shopping mall. I don't like to go there, because have you noticed? There's nothing at the mall that you need to buy. It's all frivolity.

Spare likes a store called Forever 21. This store caters to a young clientele, so it has sexy clothing at low prices. I saw a rack of denim jeans, priced at $7.99. They were dyed, thick cloth, and seemed well put together. But that price! It's a thrift store price, almost. Like, within a dollar or two of Goodwill, for a brand-new pair of pants.

I was intrigued by the notion that a company could make a profit from an eight dollar pair of pants, so I looked (and looked and looked) for the tag that gave the "made in" information. Found it: Made in China.

Figure that Forever 21 has to pay its executives, its store staff, rents on the mall locations, shipping, and probably some designers or buyers. All of this has to come out of these low clothing prices before we even get to production. On the production side, there's the physical plant and machinery, supervisors, and training personnel even before we get to the individual laboring to make the pants.

All this for an eight dollar pair of pants. Basically, everything in the store is similarly "priced to sell." Forever 21 makes a dollar holler.

When you buy something at Forever 21, the clerk puts it in a plastic bag with "John 3:16" on the bottom of the bag. Forever 21 is a Christian company. They do not try to hide that fact.

Well, honestly, I think they do hide it pretty well. Many of the clothes for sale in the place are, if not daring, at least alluring. It's not the kind of garb you would expect a Christian company to sell. Spare and I found ourselves looking at a long, clingy tank dress that had a Cross on it with the words "Never Break the Rules." It didn't compute. I can't remember ever seeing anything with more of a mixed message in my life.

Forever 21 casts itself as a Christian company, but judging by the style of the clothing sold there, it is not upholding standards of modesty expected of modern-day Christian young women. Worse than that, the $7.99 pair of jeans made in China indicate most strongly that this company operates sweat shops. There's just no other way to account for that price for a brand-new piece of sturdy denim with all the usual pockets, studs, and double-stitched seams. How shamefully deceiving! You throw a Bible verse on a plastic bag, and that makes it okay to indulge in questionable taste in fashion and slave labor?

Another black eye for the busy God.

Which brings me to the next plot turn in this sermon. I got an email from a reader that said, yes, indeed, somewhere there are people being paid to leave comments on blogs by just sitting and typing in captchas, thus bypassing the spam protections. I already knew there are people in China who are paid to play online games for online money that is then sold on Ebay. This is terrible! Can you imagine sitting for long hours, staring at words you can hardly read, and duplicating the blurry captchas just to link to pornography sites?

We all know how bad it is in the Third World, but sometimes, something comes along that just puts the exclamation point on it. For me it's the $7.99 Christian jeans at Forever 21 and the indecipherable comment with pornography links in my comment list. We have one percenters who control most of the wealthy in this nation. Even so, for much of the rest of the world, we are the one percent, even if we struggle financially.

I feel horrible for Flower Lace Bra (see below). I shouldn't have made light of it. I picture some kid sitting in a hovel, cranking out captchas, perhaps being told that it will improve his or her English in hopes of a better job. Probably not even being told that. Just a few pennies to keep some rice in the bowl.

At least I have the grace not to slap a religious verse on this glaring act of inhumanity. But that's not saying much.

Frank Talk : What Flower Lace Bra Said

Hello, howdy, and welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!"

I really don't know who reads the drivel on this site, except for 178 people who are kind enough to follow me. I have been told that my readers number fewer than the colors in a jumbo box of Crayolas, but I've also been told (by someone who didn't like something I wrote) that "everybody" reads "The Gods Are Bored." My guess is that it's a hell of a lot closer to the Crayola number than to the "everybody" number.

I don't get many comments on what I write. I attribute this to my ability to be 100 percent correct about everything at all times. It's a talent. Then again, I might not get many comments because I don't have trolls, and I don't respond to my commenters enough.

My husband just won a major literary award (see below), and I was pleased to get 7 comments on the post. I really do know how complicated that captcha thing is, if you want to leave a comment. Sometimes it takes me three or four tries to get my own comments posted. As an aside, I do have a filter that keeps the comments from appearing automatically, and sometimes it takes a few days for them to show up. I see them, though, and I post them.

One of the comments in the previous post was from someone named Flower Lace Bra. I have copied the content of the comment. Here it is:

"I am consequently happy..it's only the top news at any time..and something point about this e-book..Level by no means quit all of us sensation i am sorry for just about any of these..sad for the children indeed,however never ever does Personally i think i'm sorry for anyone"

This thoughtful commentary was followed by a link to something called Male Masturbators. Flower Lace Bra also was a link.

This morning, looking at my back-dated, uposted comments, I got something similar from a commenter called Sexy Lingerie. With a similar ending tag, Free Porn.

I am wearing a lace bra. Sometimes I wear sexy lingerie. But I think it risky to follow links to such items on the Internet. To me, free porn is a book or some pictures you find in someone else's recycle bucket ... or a mirror on the ceiling. Everything else has a price, even if it's just doctor bills for a virus on the computer.

What intrigues me, though, is how these comments showed up in my thread. How did they elude the captcha? If they didn't, then why did Flower Lace Bra become Sexy Lingerie? The pithy commentary seems to be the work of someone who looked at previous comments on the thread, then either wrote something under the influence of a synthetic hallucinogen or a minimal command of English.

Can it be possible that somewhere, some poor soul is being paid to slap pornographic links onto incomprehensible commentary, then actually post it by completing the captcha, over and over and over again? If so, what a tragic commentary on commentary!

To conclude this sermon, please note the following:

*I wear flower lace bras. I think they're pretty. But I would not link to them. You know where to get them, if you need one. I like Aerie, myself.

*I do not indulge in male masturbation. I'm not a male. I wouldn't link to it because if you are so inclined, you know where to look for that too.

*I love sexy lingerie. By definition of "sexy lingerie," I mean anything that is silk, satin, or minimally lacy that drapes without binding too tightly. Personal preference, I don't like garter belts or stuff that is fantasy-themed. Heck, I wear the fantasy-themed items on the outside sometimes, to the distinct embarrassment of The Spare. If you are in search of this kind of thing, you know darned well you need a fitting room, because lingerie is hard to size! Go to the mall.

I removed Sexy Lingerie but left Flower Lace Bra in the comments below the previous post. Circling back to my previous thought ... how dreary would it be to outsmart captchas for a smattering of ducats! I'd rather fill sand bags.

Thank you for reading.
From

Hot Chicks

More Congratulations to Mark Kram Jr., Winner PEN/ESPN Award!

Well, how do you like that? We were just sitting here with Decibel the parrot and Beta Cat and our new/used Beta fish, and all of a sudden, the Titans and the Valkyries descended together, shouting praises for Mark Kram, Jr. and his book, Like Any Normal Day!

What a loud and fearsome lot! And yet, at the end of two hours, the only thing they had showered upon my chateau was rose petals. And laurel wreaths. They've gone over to Snobville's new artificial turf field now, where they're playing a friendly game of "From the Rubble." (You'd think They would at least give me some cool armor to wear to ComiCon.)

Why did they leave my house smelling all flowery-fresh? Because They just got around to reading Like Any Normal Day, and They loved it! I had to talk Them out of elevating Mark to Titanic status, out of fear that he wouldn't fit through the front door. We are considering the offer of a golden chariot, because that sure would be an improvement over our 1997 Chrysler, so long as we didn't have to stable and feed hungry supernatural horses.

However, the Titans and the Valkyries weren't the only folks doling out laurels today. A little closer to home, Mark's book won the 2013 PEN/ESPN Award for literary sports writing!

PEN stands for Poets, Essayists, and Novelists. For lo, these many years PEN has been recognizing the best literary work in creative genres. It's a big deal to win a PEN award. In certain highly literate circles, it's even better than the Pulitzer Prize. Anyway, a few years ago, PEN (in association with ESPN) began giving awards to sports books that would qualify as fine literature. In 2013, that person is Mark Kram, Jr., and that book is Like Any Normal Day.

There are oodles of sports titles published in any given year, and it's easy for even the good ones to slip through the cracks and be quickly forgotten. This citation will keep Like Any Normal Day from disappearing with a sniff and a whimper, that's for sure.

Mark Kram, Jr. is my husband, and I can tell you, Gods Are Bored fans, this book was a steel-tempering experience for me. (I won't speak for him.) I'm not the same person now that I was before he began writing it. The process of living through the creation of a book, from the first sad interview with a thwarted athlete, to this day of award and acclaim, has been something like being turned on a potter's wheel. The bowl didn't always unfold perfectly under the potter's hands. At times it was a pretty lumpy bad mess. But here it sits, fresh out of the white-hot kiln, blinking at the universe, changed.

Now I'll turn this sermon over to the PEN judges' comments on the book, which you can see yourself at the PEN America Center, or (like you usually have to do), just take my word for it:

"Mark Kram Jr.'s  Like Any Normal Day  is a small tale of great moment, rendered with exquisite understatement and elegant restraint. In telling the story of Buddy Miley, a high school quarterback turned quadriplegic whose life snaps in half with one snap of the ball, Kram compels readers to consider the violence routinely enacted on fields of play, and the actions we'd be willing to take to alleviate its consequences. Each of the characters in Buddy's world -- the mother turned caregiver, the girlfriend who loved him as long and as well as she could, the father handcuffed by emotion, the linebacker whose hit snaps life in half, the younger brother who helps him die -- is treated with humanity and respect.

"... In the hands of a less magnanimous, less gifted author, Like Any Normal Day might have plunged into bathos or unwanted moralizing about assisted suicide. Instead, with his first book, Kram has given us a small, polished jewel that enlarges the world of sports and ennobles the genre of literary sports journalism."

 Yes, I know, I know ... literary sports journalism sounds like something impossible to produce. Trust me, it isn't. I'm proud of Mark. I know what it took for him to write this.

If you're a book collector, I suggest the hard cover first edition. If you just like a good read, it's out in quality paperback. Here's the link to the hard cover:

http://www.amazon.com/Like-Any-Normal-Day-Devotion/dp/0312650035/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1376520640&sr=8-1

The Valkyries are back! They won "From the Rubble!" I'm off to take a free ride, yah yah yah!

Not So Fast...

The news today on my Yahoo feed is that studies show that religious people are not as smart as atheists.

http://news.yahoo.com/religious-people-are-less-intelligent-than-atheists--study-finds--113350723.html#upCr476

Very amusing, actually. There have been 63 comprehensive studies, and 53 of them have reached the conclusion that people with higher IQs tend to be less religious.

If only life really was that simple.

First of all, there's religious as in following some doctrine without questioning it, following it because your parents did and everyone around you does, following it without inspecting it closely, following it because it helps you get through the days of your difficult life.

Then there's religious as in appreciating the underlying philosophy in a particular path or paths, without a comprehensive belief in each and every particular of the path, independent of others who follow the path but sharing affinity with some of those others, and embracing the philosophy as a way to better understand yourself and others.

Then there's religious as in approaching the universe with the humble wonder about the limitations of the human brain, its ability to comprehend the complexities of the universe at this current stage in its evolution. This type of religiosity may lead to experimentation with mind-altering substances. It might also lead the seeker to try to discern symbolic patterns in the collective unconscious that have driven widely varied segments of humanity in oddly similar directions.

Then there's religious as in taking a particular religion and posing and/or answering deep philosophical questions about the nature of humankind based on the tenets of that religion. Your basic Kierkegaard.

Then there's atheism, which is quickly becoming the repository for a number of smug people who are perfectly content to believe they're smarter than religious people. Note that I am not saying all atheists are smug, but we are getting a louder and louder chorus of the ones who are, at the expense of the ones who aren't.

I don't know what criteria these 63 studies used for determining the level of religion in people. Did the researchers just ask, "Do you believe in God?" Which God? Which underlying concept of God? What about the Goddess? Is believing in the Goddess the same as believing in God? How do you define "religious?" What's the difference between religion and superstition? For that matter, is there a simple test that can determine the intelligence of an individual, measuring for all the qualities that go into a member of the species, drawn from anywhere in the world?

"I don't believe in religion. I believe in science." How many times have you heard that? As if the two could never share the same park bench. My father and grandfather were scientists. They both went to church every Sunday. For the love of fruit flies, Charles Darwin was a devout Christian!

It doesn't boil down to whether or not you're religious. It boils down to the level of intensity with which you engage the world.

Want to hear something stupid? Try this one: "I don't believe in God. What's God ever done for me?" Oh, but there's no such thing as a stupid atheist!

Just Say No to Crafting

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored" and another episode of JUST SAY NO!

A few years ago I vowed to say no to volunteering. For the most part I've kept my word. Life has been better.

Now I'm saying no to another pesky thing that never turns out the way you want it to. SAY NO TO CRAFTING!

I can't craft my way out of a Ziploc bag, even when it's already half open.

One of my good friends, who is by the way a peerless crafter, posted a craft idea on Facebook. Here it is:

Aren't those gorgeous? The directions were really, really simple. Elmer's glue, food coloring, and water. Apply with sponge brush.

It happened that I had some old bottles that I scavenged from the old midden heap at the family farm. In the days of yore (oh, heck ... until about 1992) there was no garbage collection in the mountains, so you just threw all the stuff out in the woods. What the critters didn't eat just sat there. Mother Earth swallows it up, trust me. I had to dig around to get some jars that were in one piece.

So! Old jars in the basement, great easy craft instructions... what can go wrong?

The instructions and ingredients can be in the hands of an uncrafty person, that's what.

The photo doesn't do them justice. They look worse.

No amount of stained hands, tweaking, or advice from The Heir (art major) made any difference to these pathetic attempts at art.

You know what I'm going to do with the next wonderful craft idea I see? I'm going to say NO.

Free advice from Anne: If it took you a long time to learn how to tie your shoes, you are never going to be a competent crafter. Say no. There are socks to sort.

The Bill of Wrongs

Yesterday I cleared some English ivy from a big pine tree in front of my house. I used large pruning clippers and some smaller thingy. I cannot find a picture of that thingy on Google Images or the Home Depot web site. So I must resort to words: The thingy is hand-held, about 8 inches long. It has a sharp hoe/trowel side and a sharp three-prong rake side. Like two tools in one.

As I was using this tool to rake back the damned invasive pain in the ass ornamental ivy, I got to thinking about my sister. It seems she has joined the well-regulated militia.

Sis told me that she bought a handgun and is learning how to use it because an intruder might come into her house to rape her. She says this has happened to friends of hers. Her ten-year-old has a shotgun, which he is not yet allowed to use. Sis keeps her gun separate from her ammo and says the kid doesn't know where the ammo is.

This is the self-same sister who has four dogs and three parrots.

Anyway, it's very heartening to me to know that, when the British invade and try to move into our houses and steal our crops, Sis will have at them in defense of this nation. As for the well-regulated part, well ... she's not in any branch of military service, nor has she been. But she is taking target practice.

This brings me back to my little garden thingy.

As I held the tool in my hand, it occurred to me that this simple thingy, strategically placed by a bed, would be far more effective as a rapist deterrent than an unloaded pistol with ammo in some other location. I base this thought on the presumption that someone bent on rape will steal quietly into my home and be upon me before I have time to react. (Also presumes that Decibel the parrot and Mr. J are out on the town somewhere.) Maybe I've been reading too much Game of Thrones, but I'm starting to look at my garden equipment in a whole new light.

School teachers need to assess their classrooms for weapons as well. So far we have not been asked to join the well-regulated militia and carry firearms in our classrooms. That being the case, my students have always asked me, "Miss, what would you do if a gunman shot his way into the room?" Giving it some thought, I would have a moment while the person was blasting in to grab a chair and at least attempt to give the sucker a solid whack with it. And if I was spot on, well, those chairs are heavy. The assailant might actually be staggered. I would sure try.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that people are not paying close heed to the Second Amendment. The Constitution specifically states that Americans have a right to bear arms because we need a well-regulated militia.

We're falling down on the well-regulated militia part.

My sister is 49 years old. She wears glasses. She has no military training. I'm not saying she shouldn't own a gun. I'm just saying she ought to pass the entrance exam for the U.S. Army and then do basic training so that she really is ready to defend our republic in its hour of need. I think that everyone who purchases a firearm should be required to do the same testing and training.

 It would be lovely to have a well-trained citizen army in this country. What we have right now are requirements of gun ownership that are about as strict as what you go through to adopt a ferret.

Alas, the cat's out of the bag. There are so many firearms at loose in America that we will never, ever be able to account for half of them. Which either makes us a country that cannot possibly be invaded, or our own worst enemy. You choose.

The Hardest Thing about Religion

Hello out there! Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Lest we stray from our objective, please remember that this space is dedicated to all the deities who have been lost to recorded history, as well as to their praise and worship teams.

What is a praise and worship team?

Well, I got the term from my sister when she was attending a Pentecostal church. The people who run the show -- the musicians, singers, church ladies who make casseroles, accountants, tithe collectors, ushers, etc. -- are the team. They are the movers and shakers that work their butts off so that you can go right into the church and have a fabulous faith experience. Make no mistake, these people work hard. They are often frustrated, especially by those of us who just sit there, enjoying the view.

If a praise and worship team likes a particular pastor, and that pastor is re-located, the team will often go along to the new church, if at all feasible. Sometimes teams start churches of their own. Sometimes team players will get angry at the voluntary work load and say, "No more. This is unappreciated. Let someone else do it." This is what happened to me way back when I was a Methodist. I got scolded for being late to the diaper baby room where I volunteered. There was a sleet storm raging, but no matter ... a well-coiffed grandmother in stilettos was angry because she was missing the opening hymn.

 Have you gone to a church where you just didn't feel at home, even if you approved the doctrine? Have you tried to fit a shoe onto your foot, religion-wise, because that shoe is the only game in town? Have you said or done something that turned everyone against you? Have you felt uncompensated for all your hard and thankless work?

I'm preaching to my intelligent choir here when I say that these sorts of problems are not religious problems, they are human problems. There's not a religion or a Path on the planet that is invulnerable to the vagaries of the human condition. I'll take it a step further. If dolphins have religions, I'll bet they behave the same way.

Personalities go into the mix of every single Path. Have you ever read an active thread being generated by a Witch War? These can be really dreadful. They can make you cringe. Why is that? Because you are a Pagan, and you intrinsically feel that Pagans should be above such behavior. But Pagans are human too.

I've read many thoughtful essays about how Pagans should find like-minded individuals with whom to worship the gods and goddesses. Oh, if that were only easy! People are people. Someone is going to be frustrated about having to make all the masks for Body Tribal. Someone is quietly judging you for showing up in cut-off shorts. Disrespectful to the deities, right? BAMP. A point of contention for the humans. Bored gods are notorious for loving you in your cut-off shorts, just because you care about Them. Don't try to explain this to someone who has spent eight years and a thousand dollars on Ritual attire.

We really don't even need to go to the extremes. Sometimes it's as simple as not rocking the vibe in a certain group where everyone else is perfectly content. This has happened to me with a Pagan community that is in my immediate vicinity, with members who have tried hard to get me to come and to feel at home when I get there. I can't fault these folks. They were all very nice to me. I pledged membership and regretted it immediately. Just did not work for me.

I do feel like group worship is a good thing, though. So it was with special pleasure that (thanks, Facebook!) my first Grove re-united for a Lughnasadh Ritual. This is the weird thing. I just like this Grove. I like where we meet. I like the Ritual. I love the people. We have no dues, no ties to any national or international organization, and no leadership. So yeah, being small in numbers and meeting in a fairly remote location, it is hard for us to get together. But when we do, it's a high and holy moment for the bored gods.

The moral of this sermon is simple: If you cannot find a group, a Coven, a Blot, a Grove, where you feel sympatico, I think it's perfectly fine for you to rock on solitary. I would even offer this advice to Christians. Go praise Jesus alone in the forest! He'll hear you.

Take Your Vitamins

When I was a tot back in high school, my biology teacher told the class that, if we ate a balanced diet according to the food pyramid, we would never need to take vitamins. Teacher said that the amount of vitamins and minerals we need are pretty much covered in an average and varied diet.

Since I've never liked swallowing those mammoth daily vitamin pills, I've opted for bio teacher's advice. Basically, except for one notable season at band camp, I've steered clear of the All-Gummy-Bear Diet.

My sister just finished a visit here at Chateau Johnson. She comes to every meal with a little baggy full of pills. I mean full of pills -- more than a dozen, three times a day. She claims that the aluminum pots our mom used destroyed her body's ability to absorb vitamins from food. Sis has thyroid problems as well.

She takes two zinc tablets each day to keep from getting the flu.

As she spread the tablets out across her place mat, I asked her what they were for, and there was actually one -- pretty big one, too -- that she couldn't identify. She took it anyway.

Sis says she is going to start taking Alzheimer's medication when she turns 60, even if she shows no signs of the illness. Just in case.

Geez, I don't know about all this. I ate from those same aluminum pans, and I feel pretty doggone good. I get tired after a long day's work, but isn't that how I'm supposed to feel? As for getting Alzheimer's, I think I'll wait for the symptoms. What if taking Alzheimer's medicine when you don't need it makes you remember too many things that you'd rather forget?

I'm no doctor, and I don't know what Sis's doctor has told her regarding the fistfuls of vitamins and minerals she takes in pill form. It does seem alarming to me, though. Isn't zinc something we should only imbibe in tiny amounts? And, why take it in the middle of the summer? Heir caught a bad cold a month ago, but it wasn't the flu.

In case you're wondering, I did mention my biology teacher to Sis, suggesting gently that she ought to look closely at her ingestion of pills. Seems to me she needs one pill that she isn't getting -- the medication that would eradicate fear.

Do you take vitamins? Is there a good rationale for it? I haven't ever met an American with scurvy ... even the ones who eat Big Macs every day.

Blah blah blah

My sister is coming for a visit today.

We should all love our siblings. After all, they are blood. I guess I do love my sister, but she reminds me of bad times. She also reminds me of the responsibilities I had as a kid to take care of her, in fact often to be her mother.

Sis goes through acquisition phases, but she is always acquiring something. Right now she has five dogs and three birds. I don't know how many cats she has. I guess I'll find out. The only stated objective she has for this visit is to go shopping. At least she likes thrift stores.

Snobville's annual sidewalk sale starts today. This is always an amusing adventure ... except, for a refreshing change, it's pouring (sarcasm -- it's been raining all summer). I always get a kick out of what constitutes a "sale" in Snobville. Fifty percent off of ridiculously expensive is still ridiculously expensive. The teddy bears and Christmas decorations are set out at semi-affordable prices, but trust me. I'm not thinking Christmas right now, and I'm between teddy bear phases.

We've had several fish come and go here at Chateau Johnson lately. Spare wanted a ghost shrimp as a pet, so we got her one, and three others (one donated). Of that cohort, only one remains, the others having gone to King Neptune's Fish Heaven. Ghost shrimp perished, alas. With me, it is always thus with fish. Then a friend of Heir's gave her a Beta. Now this is an interesting fish. It begs for food and makes rings of bubbles, and it lives in a large flower vase.

My business luncheon went well. The professor was very intelligent, and he asked probing questions, but in an affable way. He thought my proposal worthy of the university's Project-Based Initiative program, which is free right now but will soon cost money.

Sunday there's a little reunion of my former Black Oak Grove members. I have missed them dreadfully. It will be great to see them again! I don't think we'll have numbers for a proper ritual, but some hiking and meditation will be nice.

That's all the news that's fit to print from this Pagan in New Jersey. If you have any advice on how to raise a Black Molly, please send it. If you need water, I'll put a bucket out for you. Feels like it's been pouring nonstop since April.

Peace,
Anne

Message Sinks In

During the past three weeks, I got a good eyeball into the manufacturing world. Our teacher group visited two power plants, a large-scale baking company, a factory that makes different kinds of floor coverings, a product shipping company, and two plants that make stuff that makes other stuff.

Yes, there were people working in these factories. But not many. Nowhere do you see the human-heavy assembly lines that were so prevalent a generation ago.

We teachers were told that there are plenty of jobs out there, but you need engineering degrees, math degrees, mechanical engineering degrees, or at the very least some post-high-school course work. Not to mention this great, new modern work ethic that has all of us working 12 hours for an 8-hour wage.

Many of the people who spoke to us talked about how the future workforce will have to move from job to job, and keep up with every twist and turn in the technology, in order to keep food on the table. When you think that part of this technology is ever-increasing robotics that eliminate even more human tasks, I would say the work world is about to become a land mine.

It has not escaped my notice that school teachers no longer have job security. String together a few years of illness, find yourself working for an administration that doesn't like you, and ... uh oh.

With that in mind, I had the audacity to approach a college professor of entrepreneurship who spoke to our teacher group. We are having lunch on Tuesday to discuss a possible area of growth in the American economy-- i.e., a new business.

 I am nervous. I know nothing about entrepreneurship, and even though it's summertime, I hate to waste anyone's lunch hour.

On the other hand, when he spoke to our group, the professor said that if someone has an interesting proposal, he talks over the idea at the water cooler. If someone has a very interesting proposal,  he has lunch with that person. If he's ready to apply some ink and legal, he goes out to dinner with that person.

I got lunch. It's a land mine world. Might as well exert some audacity.

For Strong Stomachs Only

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING BLOG POST CONTAINS TOO MUCH INFORMATION ABOUT CANINE BODILY FUNCTIONS, AS WELL AS LANGUAGE PERTAINING THERETO. You may want to caution your children or other sensitive adults before proceeding.

I have always liked dogs. I don't own one. I do have a cat, a parrot, and (currently) three fish.

It is my experience that people who don't know each other very well will strike up friendships by talking about their dogs. Most people can keep such talk in perspective. Some can't.

I've been spending the last three weeks on a school bus with 16 other teachers, riding to companies and manufacturers far and wide across the lower tier of New Jersey. It was inevitable that, in captive audience of fellow teachers on long bus rides, talk would turn to family pets. I call it "dog talk."

Yesterday, as our school bus pulled out of the parking lot for a quite long trek to the extreme tip of southeast New Jersey, the teacher in front of me and the teacher behind me began a conversation about their dogs. This was a continuance of several other lengthy conversations about their dogs.

This time the chat began innocently enough, with detailed descriptions of what they feed their dogs. Teacher A, a person with insufficient filter on both the sound level and subject matter of her conversations, detailed how she prepares supper for her Great Dane, Zeus. (My profound apologies to this bored deity for perhaps the worst use of His name known to humankind.) If you really need to know, she browns some ground turkey and adds a can of mixed vegetables. No lima beans. Apparently dogs are not fond of lima beans. Any other kind of canned vegetables will do, though. You can give Zeus peas, carrots, even mix some celery into the ground turkey. He even eats pumpkin. Yes, in the fall he often gets pumpkin in his food, since that's pie-making season. You see, Zeus weighs 175 pounds, so he can eat a 30-pound bag of dog food in just a matter of a week. That's a lot of money for a teacher, and it's really cheaper to do some short order cooking for him. If you think about it, that's a balanced meal: ground turkey and vegetables, with vitamins and all that good stuff, and it's much cheaper than big bags of dog food.

Spread this conversation over 15 minutes, and you've got the precede to the shift in gastrointestinal point of interest.

After Teacher A and Teacher B had exhausted the topic of feeding their pets, the conversation then went something like this:

Teacher A: Oh, boy, when Zeus has to do his business ... you just would not believe how much comes out of him! I mean, it is huge!

Teacher B: My Fido is so small I can pick his up with a Kleenex. I don't really bother, though, since my yard is so big.

Teacher A: Well, I have to bother, because you should just see how much shit he puts out! It's not even flushable! Really, he can drop a gigantic load every day! I'm always amazed by how much comes out of him!

Teacher B: Well, you said he weighs 175 pounds, so I guess the size of the dog makes a difference in the size of the shit.

Teacher A: BOY, THAT SURE IS TRUE! ZEUS CAN REALLY SHIT BRICKS!

Teacher B: Wow, this is ladylike! We're sitting here talking about dog shit.

Teacher A: (laughing) Yeah. Look at us!

Reader, I will admit that the motor on a school bus is loud. But you'll have to believe me when I say that these two people were speaking louder than they had to. As for me, I was sitting alone in my seat, grateful for the sunglasses that permitted my eyeballs to roll dramatically during the feeding portion of the conversation, and then bug out when the topic turned to end-of-the-line digestion. Sitting directly in front of Teacher A were the well-dressed and highly professional Chamber of Commerce executives who organized this whole three-week conference. One can only hope that they were immersed in other important tasks.

This morning, Thursday, we teachers heard our last speaker of the conference. Before the workshop began three weeks ago, we were all told to dress professionally. You're probably guessing what I'm about to say, reader ... today Teacher A arrived in denim capris and flip-flops.

This workshop was otherwise one of the most interesting things I've ever done with my summer vacation, and I'm not finished writing about it yet. But most of what I've had to say has been really serious, so I thought I would offer you a little vignette that says less about teachers than it does about human nature. Some people are not properly filtered. I'll bet you know a few.

Ancient Fires

For the past three weeks I have been part of a teacher summer program where we tour businesses and industries with an eye towards two things:
1. Where the jobs are, and
2. How to prepare our students for them.

Today we toured a coal-burning power plant that supplies electricity to 225,000 households in Atlantic County, NJ.

The good news is that the pollution controls on these plants (at least here in the US of A) are pretty damned dependable.

The bad news is, we're still building and running these things, fueling them with ancient fire from the ground.

There's no shortage of coal in America. But getting to it has always been a problem, in lives lost and wages paid, in health ruined, and now -- traumatically -- in the mowing down of mountains.

The men (and trust me on this, it's 95 percent men) who run power plants are quick to point out that solar and wind are statistically insignificant in their support of our needy power grid. The guy today at the coal plant put it this way, "Oh sure, it's great to have wind turbines, but if you're getting prepped for surgery and the wind stops blowing, what then?"

On a related note, one can still get hired at coal-burning power plants without a high school diploma.

As an environmentalist, I have concerns about wind-generated power. I think the turbines can be dangerous for migratory birds. Migration patterns should be studied carefully for a number of years before wind turbines are placed off the Eastern Seaboard.

But once those bird paths are mapped, gosh. Correct me if I'm wrong, but does the wind ever stop blowing out over the ocean? Please tell me! This seems ludicrous to me. Not that I'm any experienced sea-goer, but the shoreline has never, ever been wind-free when I've been there. In fact there's a breeze at the seaside even when not a blade of grass is stirring on the mainland.

Coal-fired power plants are efficient and running because people make a profit from the digging of the coal, the shipping of the coal, and the burning of the coal. And yes, that means jobs (rare ones that do not require a high school diploma). But once a windmill is up and running, it may not need as many humans to feed its maw, but I don't think it will lack the breeze to push it around. It just won't be as profitable as the fossil fuels we use now.

Anyway, I got to look into the furnace at the plant and see the amazing jets of fire that create the steam that run the turbine. It was a fascinating sight (needed a face shield and protective clothing). What I really hope I was looking at was a fossil. Not the coal, but the generator. We can do better.

What Druids Think About #2: Hypocrisy

I'm typing this blog post on a netbook. When the netbook runs low on batteries, I plug it into the wall to juice it up again.

Outside the temperature is flirting with 100. I have central air conditioning. It's running. There's a refrigerator keeping my food cool and fresh, and a heater in the basement that warms water for my showers.

The electricity that makes all of this possible for me is generated at the Salem Nuclear Power Plant. It is the second largest nuclear power plant in the USA.

Nuclear power plants generate energy through the fission of radioactive uranium. As the fission process occurs, high heat is produced. This heat turns water to steam, and the steam drives turbines that create electricity. The Salem Nuclear Power Plant provides electricity to 3 million households in New Jersey. My house is one of them.

I have always looked upon nuclear power as a really, really bad accident waiting to happen. But this week I got to tour the Salem power plant, which is not surprisingly staffed by people who think nuclear energy is fabulous. Did their unbridled optimism cure me of my anxiety over nuclear power? Not really. Do I have any right to criticize this form of energy generation? Not really. Not unless I take my little pink hairless behind off the grid.

There are silos of dangerous spent fuel on the power plant site, because no place in the nation is willing to accept nuclear waste. So I, Anne Johnson, am responsible for the existence of endlessly toxic chemicals, sitting around in a reinforced bin.

Although there are actually a few nuclear power plants being built right now here in America, the highest hopes for unlimited domestic energy come from the collection of natural gas from deep shale drilling (also known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking.") A great many people oppose fracking because of its environmental dangers. As for me, I'm beginning to see all of these protests as a kind of hypocrisy.

We Americans could severely curtail the nuclear power industry, fracking, and our need for Saudi oil, if we just started living like pioneers again. Pa and Ma and Laura and Mary didn't have electricity in the little house in the big woods. It seemed like a lot of fun for them until Mary went blind from a fever and Pa couldn't get his crops to grow.

The truth is, our entire society, including our levels of health and our technological innovations, depend upon electricity. Once again we find ourselves in the Body of Humanity. We can ease off our usage of electricity, but we can't live without it. Not life as we know it. That's why the power industry scoffs at the protests against fracking. If it's something that turns turbines, we Americans need it. Doesn't matter how dangerous or toxic it is to produce. Heck, it's no more toxic than food poisoning, after all.

Yes, yes, we have wind and solar. Both hold the possibility of greener energy production. But both are in very formative stages, and until someone figures out how to make tons of money off them, the fossil and chemical fuels will prevail.

I don't much like the fact that my power comes from a nuclear plant (although, damn ... up close those things are sure a monument to human ingenuity). But I'd be a hypocrite to protest the building of nuclear power plants. I like my safe food and my pure water. If someday everything just glows and blows, well ... it's the chance I took to live this long. There's nothing in this world that is given to us without a catch. Just ask the seagulls that flew into the wind turbines at Atlantic City.

What Druids Think About #1: Stem Cell Research

Hello and all hail! How is your summer going? It's hot as all get out here in the Smokestack State.

For those of you just joining us, my name is really Anne Johnson, and I am a Druid.

If you read up on Druids, you'll find that there's not a whole lot of solid source material. Even the name comes from the Greeks and/or Romans. But I have always thought of the Druids as a social caste. They were not rulers or warriors, nor were they growers and hunters. They were the educated people who gave advice, sang songs, performed religious rites, conducted legal business, and taught the next generations. Mind you, no one Druid did all of these things! They were just the educated caste.

I'm pretty educated myself, which is why I accept the mantle of Druid without completing a great deal of religious study.

This week I have been touring all sorts of large businesses here where I live in Southern New Jersey. I'm doing this as part of a teacher group. It was an honor to be chosen for this three-week workshop, and I'm learning a lot.

On Monday, our group went to the Coriell Institute, a research lab that collects and stores genetic material for use in curing diseases.

The good news is that stem cell biology has reached a phase in which they need not use human embryos for stem cells. They can take a cell from your skin, reader, and re-program it back to stem. Then they can tell it what kind of cell to turn into. Then it turns into that kind of cell.

Coriell also collects genetic material that scientists use to pinpoint the less than one percent of DNA that varies from person to person. These are the markers that predispose you to certain syndromes, or certain adverse reactions to medication, or mental illness ... the entire spectrum of hereditary diseases. It is already possible to get a scientist to analyze your personal DNA to find all the predispositions you have in your genetic code. (Coriell collects DNA and analyzes it, but they're not doing any further collecting from the likes of you and me, ever since they got permission from the Air Force to use its personnel and no one else. We'll call this Ethical Conundrum A.)

 All over the country, researchers are using stem cell research to try to find cures for cancer, Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's Disease, and a laundry list of rare genetic disorders that cause suffering and early death. Some day in the future, when you and I get sick, doctors will be able to make stem cells from our skins that will be re-programmed to get in there and fix what ails us. Heartbreaking diseases like Alzheimer's will be as gone as polio.

As we were leaving the Coriell lab (where we all got to see specimens stored in liquid nitrogen, like something out of science fiction), some of the other teachers were joking about how great it would be to get those stem cells cranked up until we could all be 13-year-olds again.

I was thinking the opposite. I was thinking, where's the end game? Let's call it Ethical Conundrum B. Are we going to have Americans who live to be 150, 200, or longer, while the rest of the world starves to death? And what if the rest of the world doesn't starve to death? What if new methods of water purification are found? What if GMO plants make deserts tillable?  Will we stop having babies, because everyone is living forever?

Does this stuff ever bother you?

This is what Druids should think about. We should think of ourselves not as individuals, but as members of the Body of Humanity. It is imperative that we die. Don't think for a minute that I'm one of these cocksure religious people who fully expects eternal life/reincarnation/alternate reality. I dread death. It very well may be the end. But we need to do it.

Can we afford to upset the balance of life on this planet more than we've already done? Can we even keep going at our current pace? When does curing a disease become worse than the disease itself?

A character in Romeo and Juliet observes, "We were born to die." It has been that way so far. Think about a world where death is optional, or prolonged indefinitely. What's a Druid to do?

If It Breaks, You Gotta Know How To Fix It

Hello out there! I hope you've had a good week. Here at "The Gods Are Bored," it has been busy indeed!

First and best, Like Any Normal Day: A Story of Devotion, by Mark Kram, Jr., has been short-listed for the PEN/ESPN sports book award for 2012. If you're a book geek, you know that PEN is the highbrow lit entity (short for Poets, Essayists, Novelists). A PEN short-list indicates that a book is seen as art, not just as entertainment. So congratulations to Mark, and if you haven't read the book yet, you can go see him at http://www.markkramjr.com.

Second, wow! I have seen a lot of stuff this week.

I was chosen to attend a summer workshop for teachers that is run by the local Chamber of Commerce. The workshop lasts for three weeks, and there are only 16 teachers in it from the whole tri-county area. Basically the Chamber has put together a series of very busy days in which we teachers get business tips to share with our students and tours of the local industries. Considering that the state of New Jersey has the sixth highest unemployment rate in the nation (not kidding), I thought this would be of help to my students.

But it's a lot of fun as well.

Earlier in the week, we got to tour the Tasty Baking Company in Philadelphia. For those of you reading this from outside the Philly region, Tastykakes are the go-to snack around here. Hostess went bust and Twinkies disappeared? Tough luck for the rest of you, but here in my neck of the woods, we just went right on scarfing down Tastykakes.

If you have a favorite packaged pastry, imagine seeing the item rolling off an assembly line by the thousands, from the sifting of the flour and sugar to the squirting into the lightly-oiled pans, to the baking, the icing, and the packaging. If there is such a thing as hog heaven, this is it, right?

One downside: There were fewer than 50 people at work in the giant factory, cranking out 800,000 Tastykakes in one day.

Which brings me to another fascinating tour: an oil refinery.

Some of us have driven past oil refineries and stared at them and wondered how the heck they work. That is one complicated landscape. What baffles me about the miles and miles of piping, and the tall towers, and the giant holding tanks, and everything going this way and that, is ... how the hell doesn't shit go wrong? Well, gotta tell ya, the moonscape that is an oil refinery doesn't get any less complicated when you get in amongst it. If anything, it looks even more baffling. And with today's strict environmental regulations, there were a few places where some pipes were letting off steam ... but no fire, no movement of any kind otherwise. Crude oil to high-octane gasoline, and it was even quiet.

And again, in this giant moonscape, I saw maybe 30 people working outside. That includes the fireman that was on duty, who said his expertise had never been needed. (And I hope he stays idle, because this joint is right on the Delaware River.)

The moral of this sermon is that both of these industries, baking and oil refining, used to employ massive numbers of people. Now computers and machines do almost all the work. This is sad, in a way, because there are lots and lots of people who are looking for work.

So of course we teachers asked everyone we met this week (speakers and tour guides aplenty) what skills would be best for the coming century. The answer: keep learning all the time. There's going to be a premium on people who are great with computers and a premium on people who know how shit works and how to fix it when it breaks. The guy at Tastykake said it, and the guy at the refinery said it. They are only hiring people who know how machines work, and how computers work ... and how to troubleshoot when something breaks.

Next week our teacher sojourn through South Jersey's working world continues. I must say, I could be lying on the beach with a book, but I'm glad I'm doing this instead. Never thought I would get an eyeball full of an oil refinery. Or a stomach full of free Tastykake.

Frank Talk on Effective Parenting

Wow, what a boring title! Who would want to read on? Well, reader, give me three more lines and trust that I am telling the unvarnished truth.

The other day I was talking to a woman, a bit younger than myself, who has a 19-year-old daughter, same age as The Spare.

This woman was mad at her daughter. It seems the daughter dropped some Molly. The mother said, "I'm okay with pot and alcohol and mushrooms, you know, natural stuff. But I draw the line at synthetics. I told her if she took Molly again I would take her car away."

It's hard raising children, isn't it? Doesn't get any easier when they hit the late teens.

I wasn't sure how to respond to this woman's parenting struggles, especially after she described a trip she and her daughter took to Peru in which they drank hallucinogenic cactus juice and hiked in the Andes. But I admit that this did sound like the kind of mother-daughter bonding that can lead straight to club drugs.

As it happens, I'm mad at The Spare just now myself. It seems she has bought yet another dress from the thrift store. I said, "I'm okay with last week's shorts and the earrings and the beach bag, you know, the bargain stuff. But I draw the line at dresses. Spare, if you buy another dress, I'm going to take your makeup away."

You see? I'm just as bad a parent as the next gal. I can be angry at crossed lines. I can issue dire threats. And you know what? Spare's issues are my fault, because she and I often go to the thrift store together. This is just the kind of mother-daughter bonding that can lead to bargain-hunting at the mall.

When it comes to raising children, there's no easy answer. Where do you draw the line? Well, as for me, I let society draw the line for me. I know it's a cop-out, but telling my daughter not to smoke pot because it's illegal just makes things so much easier. Ditto for the booze, but in that case Spare has had ample opportunity to watch me partake ... and I made a botch of that often enough that she'll opt for Pepsi.

There's not much margin for error these days when it comes to growing into productive adulthood. Life is a minefield where even the best and brightest sometime get blown up. Sometimes, no matter what you do, your beloved child becomes alcoholic, drug dependent, or dangerously experimental. Why make it easier by showing her how to do it?

As for me and my house, we will follow the Goodwill.

Not Your Typical Vacation Blog

I'm just back from vacation. I went to Four Quarters Interfaith Sanctuary in Artemas, PA. It was very fun.

Is there anything either more boring or more frustrating than hearing all about someone else's terrific vacation, while you were stuck in your dreary suburb mowing the grass and painting the porch? Yeah, I hear you. That's not why you come here to TGAB. You already know what a drum circle is, and you also know about Nature Spirits. What can I add?

It's therefore time for a little free advice. Remember, I have to pay you to take it, because that's the way our economy works these days. Send me an invoice.

FREE ADVICE FROM ANNE REGARDING YOUR SUMMER VACATION

Use maps wisely.


I got on the Pennsylvania Turnpike at Breezewood and drove to Philadelphia. I had $14.00 in my wallet. Surely that would be enough to travel 200 miles?

Imagine my dismay when I rolled into the tollbooth and saw $15.55 come up on the little monitor.

The toll taker, by his very expression, indicated he was unlikely to be swayed by any sort of abject plea.

I had to get out of my car, open the trunk, open my duffel bag, and root through it. Thankfully, there were three whole dollars more in the midst of all the damp clothing, flashlights, bug spray, and underwear. (The latter is really not needed at Four Quarters Farm, so long as every little thing is covered by something.)

A long line of Philadelphia drivers, getting longer by the minute, began regaling me with their car horns. A real Philly homecoming, I must say.

I paid the toll in full and was admitted onto the Sure Kill Expressway, portal to the City of Buzzardly Love.

These highway tolls are getting out of hand! So here's my free advice:

Take the scenic route.

If I had come back to Philadelphia on Route 30, at least as far as York, PA (admittedly through dozens of stoplights and little towns), I could have saved at least half of that robber baron toll.

Next year I will need to expand my already bountiful vacation budget to include more toll money. In the meantime, you can best believe I'll be scouting alternate routes to Four Quarters Farm.

I really hope this post satisfies the person who left the comment that I should travel more. Voila! I traveled. I was gone four days, a whole 250 miles (give or take).

Thank you for reading about my vacation.

Anne

Chac Amok

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Oh, my, for the love of fruit flies! Mr. J went out for a walk, and the sky has just opened up and it's pouring ... again!

We are in a stationary pattern here in the East. Every day, at any time, we could have a cloudburst. It's so humid that, when it isn't raining, it's like walking through Elmer's glue.

For those of you who don't believe that God is the only deity responsible for flooding and drought, you might attribute extraordinary rainy weather to Chac the Rain God, sacred to the Mayan peoples. Chac is a bored god who can be petulant. And let me tell you from experience: If you ask for him to go away, he rewards you with raining-cats-and-dogs deluges.

It is best to make peace with Chac and tell Him what a great job He's doing. I learned this the hard way, so I'm passing a little free advice along to you. (And remember, in this economy, free advice from me means I have to pay you to take it, so send me an invoice.)

It appears that Chac will be accompanying me on my annual binge pilgrimage to Four Quarters Farm Interfaith Sanctuary this week. Yes, Chac and I will be spending four soggy days camping. There are several excellent swimming holes in this sacred space, but the threat of flash flooding, and the reality of high water, might keep me out of them altogether.

All through Four Quarters Farm there are shrines to various bored deities and to the faeries. I think I will erect a shrine to Chac, making sure to place it near the optimum water line at creek-side. Perhaps this will pacify Him to some extent. He certainly will have the company of many and varied bored gods.

All of this is my way of saying that we of The Gods Are Bored will be on retreat this week, so enjoy the Fourth of July! Columbia bless America!