Two Thirds of the Year

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," Lughnasadh Edition 2014. It is a time of reflection.

Pagan practice centers upon the ancient cycle of planting and harvesting followed by our ancestors. But I have always felt that the Wheel is also a metaphor for our lives, both on a year-to-year basis and on a lifetime basis. This Lughnasadh I am thinking about the fact that my life is probably two-thirds over, and my First Harvest is bearing fruit.

My daughters are grown into level-headed young women. They are my most precious fruits.

My husband still loves me. Can you imagine tolerating my antics for 35 years? Hats off to the guy.

This blog is a nice fruit. It's been a good place to kick up my heels, laugh, and let off steam.

Blessed First Harvest to you, reader. Dip into the John Barleycorn for me.

Ten Things That Raise the Hackles of the Bored Gods

I know, I know ... you're saying to yourself, "How does Anne get an inside track to the bored gods?" Have you no faith? I compiled an exhaustive survey of over 300 downsized deities, and here are the things that they're hating on just now:

1. Fracking. Hades says that if one more drill bit comes through the roof of His bedroom, He is going to send us an 8-point earthquake. You heard it here first.

2. Drones. Even the War Gods categorically detest drones and even guided missiles. Please forgive them for that, reader. It shows how old-fashioned they are, with antiquated notions about being able to visibly identify your enemy before you start randomly killing.

3. Global climate change. Only the gods are supposed to change the climate, and They are really pissed that the human race has figured out how to do this. They say They will issue a few more gentle warnings, and then ... forget it. We reap the oven.

4. Lil Bub. This one came out of nowhere. Just jealousy, I suppose. Or overkill.

5. Genetically Modified Organisms. The bored gods say They gave us some latitude to breed plants and animals in an old-fashioned way, leading to dachshunds and sweet corn. But splicing genes? Evil! Only the bored gods can alter genetics. Again comes a warning from various pantheons with no specific threat attached.

6. The busy god. Other deities claim They have never seen such hatred as this busy god engenders, especially since so much of it is aimed at other followers of the same god. The Aztec pantheon attributes this hatred to overpopulation of the planet, while the Norse deities blame it on global warming.

7. Machines. The vast majority of bored deities see machines of all kinds (except simple ones like the wheel and the pulley) as a threat to the future of the human race. More than one Goddess said that going back to grinding with a mortar and pestle would be preferable to hours spent on Facebook.

8. Greed. Have you ever heard of a deity who liked greedy people? This one is no surprise.

9. Bottled water. A hatred of this is pervasive among the bored gods, with more than one saying it should only be handed out for free, and only where the existing water supply is dirty or depleted.

10. Inconclusive response. Many of the questionnaires came back listing "Amazon" as something the bored gods hate. Our researchers cannot determine whether the deities meant the company, the warriors, or the river. Further study is needed.

Micro Meadow Mangled

We didn't even choose the lowest bidder.

But never mind. The "professional" tree service Mr. J chose to trim our ancient pear tree consisted of a cast of goofs.

They arrived promptly at 7:30 Monday morning, powering up their chainsaws in a way that pays back all of our noisy neighbors for their damn leaf blowers and lawn services.

Mr. J went out to greet them. I heard him tell them to be careful with the garden.

About two minutes later, I heard one of the crew say to the other, "Didn't the guy tell you to be careful with the garden? Look where that branch landed!

It landed in my micro meadow, crushing just about everything.

There was only one flower blooming in the whole patch. They knocked it over.

Not seeing any other flowers, they just tramped through the patch, dragged branches over it ... even after I came out and told them not to. I said that the garden didn't look like much, but that it was just planted this year.

All the plants were doing well, too. The prickly pear had grown ... and there was that one lone purple spiky flower. Now in a vase in the kitchen.

Our neighbor across the way came out in a purple rage because branches (and pears) were falling in his yard.

The proprietor of the service told Mr. J that his crew would arrive with "a million dollars worth of equipment." I don't know where they stored it. They used our step ladder and stood (perilously) on the roof of the garage.

They did not wear hard hats. No brains to protect anyway.

 One would think that wild flowers can bounce back from a bashing. Time will tell. Tree-trimming is an affront to the Green Man. Guess I'll pay the price.

Oh ... I was smart enough to cover the Shrine of the Mists with a good, strong tarp. If they had trampled that, I would have had to join a well regulated militia pretty quick.

Artist of the Bored Goddesses

It's that time of the summer when everything gets a little dried out and brown. Time for some color!

I've never met Thalia Took, but I sure would like to. She has accomplished the amazing feat of getting dozens of bored Goddesses from multiple pantheons to sit for portraits! I'm lucky these days if I can collar them for a spot of tea.

So today you might want to biff over to Thalia's Great Goddess portrait gallery and find your religion. Many of them!

Image: Thalia Took

Briefly the Empty Nest

This day comes for all. For me it's been coming in fits and starts. My daughters are trying to navigate a difficult labor market. Trust me, it's like sewing together a crazy quilt -- part time job here, part time job there, minimum wage because you're doing what you love ... and for poor Heir, one last year before she has to get Obamacare and pay off college loans.

All the same, she has found a room in a house in West Philly. The Heir is going to launch.

The Spare has a less-than-posh apartment in Center City Philadelphia, where she will live while she finishes her final two years of college. She has received heaps of financial aid but will still have five-figure loans to pay off herself.  But that's down the road.

For one month, before Extra Chair returns from China, Mr. J and I will be empty nesters. That will be weird. It's not like my daughters have needed to be coddled over the last few years, but they've been around.

May the Goddess protect them. May they walk in the Old Ways. May they become themselves, "like the tadpole, its time come, tumbling towards the slime."

Where the Lilies Bloom

It's a big, tough world out there, and I honestly don't know how I got so lucky as to live comfortably, have enough to eat, health care, and the age of fifty-plus. There are so many dangers without and within. Ah, but rest assured my time will come. I don't know anyone who has escaped the Reaper.

In the meantime, here's a little bit of mundane happiness. My lilies have bloomed.

The plant lady who came over to help me make a meadow says that these are the only native American lily. All the others are imported. I got the seeds for these lilies from my dad, out in Appalachia. They have grown in my back yard, under pretty plant-unfriendly conditions, for 27 years.

I have more of these than usual this year because I took an axe to my butterfly bush. There's more light in lily-land. And that's the way it's going to be.

The broad leaf in front is not lily, but milkweed. It is having a good year too. As long as I stay here in Snobville, the native fauna will prevail on my little patch of heaven.

Pagan Ministry for Kids

Ahem. Ladies and Gentlemen, may I have your attention please. This sermon will be about ...

ZZZZzzzzzzZZZZZZzzzzzz! Hey, I'm no scholar! This is me, Anne, the Mistress of Mayhem! Time to have some fun!

In today's mail I received a lovely note from my dear friend the Monkey Man. How time flies! I haven't seen the Monkey Man since we went to a Snobville Fighting Wombats football game last fall. However, next week I'll get to see him at his monthly poetry get-together in sunny downtown Camden. I'll get someone to snap a shot of us together. Here he is, in all his Monkey Man glory, with my nephew.

The Monkey Man is a member of the Society of Friends. He also attends Mass sometimes because he helps with the Catholic ministries in Camden. He is not a Pagan and is not interested in being a Pagan.

And yet he has informed my Pagan path more than anyone else.

The Monkey Man is famous and celebrated throughout the Delaware Valley because everywhere he goes, he takes his monkey, Bongo. (You can see Bongo in the picture. My nephew is holding him.) Bongo talks with a high-pitched monkey voice. He makes kids smile.

When I first got to know the Monkey Man, I saw him one night at the local pizza joint. He asked me to hold his monkey while he went to the water closet. I felt honored. I peppered the monkey with questions, but the loyal chimp was mum until his owner returned. Nowadays, Bongo and I are tight.

Bongo the monkey inspired a magical creature who came into my life in 2008. That creature is Big Red.

Unlike Bongo, Big Red doesn't talk out loud. He whispers to me, and I translate for him. Other than that, he's pretty much Bongo.

Big Red has gone with me to the Spoutwood Fairie Festival for six years. There he helped me to recruit for the Mountain Tribe. Mostly, though, he greeted little kids and accepted hugs. Lots of hugs. Lots and lots of hugs. The number of hugs every single stuffed animal everywhere dreams about all the time.

This past year, I was somewhat distracted at the Fairie Festival. On Friday and Sunday I didn't take Big  Red. So, in order to make it up to him, I took him with me to Four Quarters Farm. He was a huge hit at Four Quarters. I wouldn't say he got hugged there. He got mauled. Tossed. Peppered with questions. Passed from hand to hand. He got flown across a glen and landed nose-down in mud. He also got to march in the Fourth of July parade there. And he danced with me -- and with lots of happy little girls -- around the fire.

My goodness. I'm the Monkey Woman. Except I don't have a monkey, I have a dragon. This is appropriate. Pagan kids love dragons.

So if you see me at a Pagan event where there are children, chances are I'll be holding this dragon. It has been my privilege to study puppet politics at the knee of the great and renowned Monkey Man, and I am now ready to take my place amusing kids and adults with the help of my friend, Big Red.

Love me, love my dragon.


Final photo from Facebook page "365 Days of Fairies"

Open Invitation

I will be sojourning in sunny Baltimore for two days in order to visit my mother-in-law. This is a good time to issue an

OPEN INVITATION

To a Lughnasadh ritual hosted by Grove of the Black Oak

Area 14, Ridley Creek State Park, Media PA

Sunday, August 3

1:00 p.m.

Bring some eats and beverages for yourself.

Free of charge


This is a beautiful wooded setting. Our group is easy-going, egalitarian, and funny. The ritual is not aligned with any particular Pagan path ... all are welcome.

I would love to meet you.

Oh yeah ... we do this rain or shine. Once it hailed on us. Hoping for a sunny day, but we take what we get.

No Surprises with Hobby Lobby Family Agenda

What, you were expecting them to stop at Plan B?

I stumbled across a print version of Time magazine in a doctor's office earlier this week. Wow! Are those getting thin! Striplings, when I was your age, Time magazine arrived in the mailbox, chock-a-block with advertising of all sorts and running more than 100 pages. Now they have a website. On which I could not find a copy of the print article about the Green family, owners of Hobby Lobby.

The article is called "The Contraception Countdown." It appeared in the July 7-14 print issue.

In the absence of the link (sorry), let us here at "The Gods Are Bored" give you a rundown. Same thing, right? That's what blogs are for!

The article profiled the Green family, evangelical Christians. Here's a family portrait:

The Greens believe that America has lost its way and needs to return to good Christian values. Nobody would care much, except -- as you see from the portrait -- they're well-heeled and powerful. They have the clout to bring this country back to God as they see Him.

There's little argument that our nation has drifted from fundamental Christian principles that are clearly delineated in the Bible.

As the Greens see it, one way to rectify this falling-away from faith is to teach the Bible in public schools. Mind you, the course would be an elective, but they have sunk tons of money into developing a technologically advanced, kicky curriculum for their elective on the Bible as a historical and philosophical textbook. Needless to say, this has been a goal of many Christian Americans for a long time, and damn that pesky Constitution!

Since they more or less roll in ducats, the Green family has amassed a formidable collection of ancient Bibles, scrolls, and relics. Well, this is not the kind of stuff you heave into a temperature- and humidity-controlled vault, just for creaky old scholars to peruse. No! The Greens are funding a Bible Museum that will open in 2017 ... five blocks from the Capitol of the United States of America.

Come on, now. This whole "separation of church and state" thing is really bad. Historically, Christians have been shown to be open-minded and compassionate, modeling themselves after Jesus. Christians have a long and exalted track record of kindness to their own as well as to those of other religions.

This nation needs discipline, the kind that only Christianity can provide.

I'm sure the Green family would be waving their hands and shouting, "Oh, no no no no! This is not what we mean by bringing faith back into the classroom! This is not our vision of a unity of Church and State!"

*When you tell someone what they can and can't do with their own body, that's slavery.

*When you teach a religion in a public school, that's indoctrination.

*When the government favors one faith over others, that's discrimination.

*When a moral code from a religious text is applied piecemeal, rather than in its entirety, that's dishonesty.

Ooooops! I turned a perfectly lovely Time profile of a morally upright family into a screed. Shame on me! But you see, like the founders of this nation, I've read my history books. I know about the Crusades, about the persecution of Protestants during the Reformation, about slavery, about the Holocaust, about the creation of the Church of England, about popes who murdered entire families in vendettas. I know that our country is filled to the plimsol line with atheists, with Jews, with Pagans, with people who are just indifferent to religion, and with numerous Christian sects (large and small) who all have their own slightly different take on the faith. Putting Jesus into our government would only work if you could actually get Him, the actual Jesus, to run the government. And then ... oh golly! Within a heartbeat we'd lose our military industrial complex and find ourselves facing the death penalty for divorce.

I'll bet you're wondering what that new Bible museum in Washington, DC is going to look like. Here's an artist's rendering:

Theocracy is a marvelous thing. Ask any Pharaoh.

Friends of the Cherry Hill Library

Oops! I did it again. I volunteered. I broke that most sacred of vows, to never ever volunteer to do anything for anyone. And as usual, I got my bitch slap. Happens every time.

It's hot as Hell here, and muggy as a sauna, so when Mr. J  suggested I help him set up for the semi-annual Friends of the Cherry Hill Library book sale, I said yes. Mr. J has been lugging boxes of books for these Friends for about twelve years. He is a collector, and he does quickly peruse the boxes as he stacks them on the carts ... but he's there to work.

So was I. On a hot day it's good to have a workout with meaning.

We got to the library at about 10:00. I am not exaggerating one bit when I say that there were 40 pallets, each with ten to twelve boxes full of books. Think of a banquet hall filled end-to-end with books, VHS (why?), CDs, and DVDs. The task was to move all of these books out of the storage area into the selling area, which was two long hallways away.

When Mr. J and I arrived, there were five people loading boxes onto carts: a woman about my age who was having back trouble, another lady I recognized from many book sales, an elderly man, and a guy of about 60-65. We all set to work.

I'm very spry for my age, but I know my limits. I lifted whatever I could safely lift. Whenever I had a chance, I opted for the paperbacks. I was moving fast, but I was on the lookout for young adult books that my inner city readers would like. Of which there were nearly naught  -- Cherry Hill is a snowy white suburb of keen snobbery.

About midway through the morning, a woman came up to me and said, "I don't know you." Well, that was true. This is the first time I ever helped Mr. J at a sale. So I said, "I'm Mrs. J," and nodded toward Mr. J, who was laboring like Hercules.

Readers, my hands are numb and my arms are tired. I worked my butt off in there. When I'm tasked with something, I do it to the best of my ability. I took one bathroom break. I found one precious Paul Volponi title. (Ever tried getting a 16-year-old boy who hates to read to actually do it? The author Paul Volponi is one of my go-to guys for this difficult demographic.)

Time passes quickly when you're moving stuff around. It was just before noon when the same lady who said "I don't know you" came back to where we were still stacking books. In 90 minutes we had reduced the number of pallets from 40 to 6. There was little left to do.

Nevertheless, the lady said to us, "You need to stop looking through the boxes and hurry up. I have corporate volunteers out there who are leaving at 12:30."

Mr. J, who never suffers a fool easily, pointed out the obvious. "We're volunteers," he said.

To which she replied: "I know you're volunteers. Hurry up. Stop looking at the books."

Giving Mr. J the props here. He said, "What the fuck?" He put down the box of books in his hands and walked out the door.

I tarried. You see, the Paul Volponi book I found (a library discard) was about inner city boys in a basketball tournament. I had never seen this book before. Darling Amazon does not list it as a "people who like this also liked" under Paul Volponi. And as for looking through the boxes, they've already been sorted. It's easy to find the young adult lit. And of course I fully intended to pay for the book. THE book. The ONLY book I had set aside.

Luckily, the other lady helping load the carts was a good ol' regular. She said I could give her the money for the book, and she would pay for it. So I handed her the ducats and hoofed it with Mr. J, the precious Paul Volponi library discard in my trembling hands.

When I think of being poorly treated as a volunteer, I have to go way back to my days as a United Methodist Church Lady before I find the kind of rudeness I got in spades today.

Free advice to people who are coordinating volunteers: Treat them kindly. After a thorough upper body workout lasting 90 minutes, I just didn't want to hear, "Hurry up." As for the "I don't know you," I've thought of about 25 witty responses that I should have used on her -- and would have, if only I had known she wasn't through cracking the whip.

With friends like Friends of the Cherry Hill Library, who needs enemies? Sermon over, sweet Pagans.

Lessons from the British Isles: The Salmon of Wisdom

For many years I had a maid service. It started with one enterprising Ukrainian (got her citizenship) and moved to a force of young ladies who could whoosh in and clean Chateau Johnson in 90 minutes.

Today I cleaned Chateau Johnson. It took me more than six hours. And I forgot to vacuum the carpet in the living room.

There's something about unhurried housework that makes you think. And I got to thinking about all the cool deities and characters who inhabit the history of the British Isles. And the places! Then I got to thinking about the totemic meaning of the various deities and heroes and heroines. I ought to clean house more often!

Here are a few, and I think this will be a nice "Gods Are Bored" series!

My favorite Celtic spirit is the Salmon of Wisdom.

The Salmon of Wisdom lived in a pool into which fell the hazelnuts that were full of wisdom. As the Salmon consumed the nuts, he became the wisest being in the world.

I suppose I love the Salmon of Wisdom because I myself can never seem to learn enough. Are you that way? There's always another book to read, there's always another celestial event in the sky, there's always a new person you want to know all about. Wisdom is a treasure. And what I love the most about the Salmon of Wisdom is that he had no agenda for his smarts. He wasn't going to take over the world, or win a contest, or any of that. He was content to sit in his pool, growing ever wiser.

We can learn a lot from this fish without eating him (which was his sad fate). Knowledge comes to us as a tasty hazelnut. We digest it and ponder it and use it to craft our conclusions about the world. There's nothing quite so pathetic as a person with lots of opinions and little knowledge to support them.

So, take a message from the Salmon of Wisdom and learn what you can about anything and everything. Wisdom engenders good decision-making. And if you learn just for the joy of it, without a particular egotistical agenda, you're going to be a wonderful companion to anyone you're with.

I think I'll do a few more of these posts. They're fun!

The whole Salmon story is here.

Blogging Is Weird

This Tiki...

Appeared in my neighborhood in 2008, stayed about three months, and moved on. One of my friends says it's a free-range Tiki.

It didn't look like a particularly friendly Tiki, so I gave it an offering of a fifth of hard liquor. You can't be too careful with a fierce Tiki.

About a week ago, the numbers on my blog skyrocketed. People are looking at this Tiki in droves. I don't know whether It has made Its way into a meme, or what. However, I am glad that I took the photo myself. Anyone who wants to use it can use it.

The Internet is a very peculiar entity. Sometimes I forget that everything I write goes out there and stays out there as long as there is an Internet.

I have written over 2100 posts for "The Gods Are Bored." If it was a newspaper column, they would have wrapped up fish and gone to the landfill. Here they are immortal, unless I delete them -- and even then I wouldn't be sure ...

And so the free-range Tiki begins a new life roaming around the Internet. I hope the people using the image have some hard liquor on hand that they can pour onto their keyboard or pad. Just saying, I found this Tiki to be bad ass.

I Am Petty, Hard-Hearted, and Haunted by My Past

Yes, yes, that's right. No sugar-coating on old Annie. Her current resentments and old baggage combine to create a pungent potion of pettiness!

I've had three readers for almost a decade, but I recently added another ... so here's an old story:

My sister arranged my dad's funeral and told me that her pastor would deliver a homily. At the time, Sis was attending a Pentecostal church. Long story short, Dad's funeral turned into an old-time revival meeting, with that abominable pastor preaching from the pulpit that Heaven was like Hershey Park (a local amusement park). You had to have money for a ticket to get through the turnstile. If you get to the turnstile with no money, you're going to be sent away.

I was a Pagan at the time of that sermon, and my sister knew it. There I sat, seething, while a man I didn't know used my dear agnostic father's funeral to warn me that I was headed for Hell.

Over the years, Sis has just kept bringing up that sermon. Over and over. Sort of seeking forgiveness from me, I suppose. But hold on! I'm petty and hard-hearted! I'm not going to forgive that.

Well ... sure I would have, except that Sis brought it up again at the Spoutwood Fairie Festival, the last place on Earth I would ever want to talk about that. On this occasion, she said, "Pastor John was very proud of that sermon. He told me, 'Oh, wait until you hear it!'"

During the course of the Fairie Festival (Sis stayed in my hotel room, gratis, and let it be known that we needed to keep to her schedule), I said a few things about Drum and Splash, and Four Quarters Farm in general. Yes! I am petty and hard-hearted! I let her know, in a roundabout way, that there was a Pagan campground within an easy drive of her McMansion.

No surprises from my sister. About six weeks before Drum and Splash, she sent me a message: "Have you ever been to a Moon Ceremony at Four Quarters Farm?" She could only have found out about their Rituals by checking out the site.

So I unsheathed the rapier and let her have it.

Petty Anne #1:
I told her that I didn't mind having her in my hotel room for the Fairie Festival gratis until I saw her outfit herself in about $600 worth of costuming over three days.

Petty Anne #2:
I told her that I work overtime, long hard hours in November, to pay for Drum and Splash, and I did not want to be her cruise director there or see her arrive with a $400 djembe.

Petty Anne #3:
I asked her why she would want to go to a Pagan gathering, given her religious background. What would her husband and son think? What was she looking for that her community of Christians might not be providing? Was she ready for the consequences? Which led to.....

Petty Anne Maximum Ride:
What would Pastor John say? Would she be squandering her Hershey Park ticket money on a different amusement park? And while on the subject of Pastor John, Annie never wants to hear about him again, EVER. He's a despicable man who knowingly stabbed at me at a time when I was grieving. Maybe he had the best intentions, but even so, in all my life, I had never heard a message like that at a funeral. And I have been to Mennonite funerals. (They mostly sing.)

Petty Anne's Baggage:
When Sis and I were kids, my mother was mentally ill. From about age 8, I was expected to parent Sis, entertain her, and give her whatever she wanted from my possessions. Until some children her age moved into the area, I was completely hamstrung by caring for her. Therefore, when she dogged my every step at the festival I save for all year, I felt that same childhood frustration. And when she asked me about Four Quarters Farm, I saw the writing on the wall. She wanted more entertainment from me. She saw another opportunity to re-enact a childhood that was pretty happy for her, and absolutely miserable for me.

Long story short, Sis is not speaking to me. I blame myself, petty, hard-hearted Anne.

On the other hand, it feels good to let her know that childhood is over, and that she can't cry poverty in May and visit the Grand Canyon for the third time with her family in June.

I honestly don't mind at all if she starts going to Moon Services and becomes a Pagan. But I'm not going to hold her hand and show her how.  Sis can't help how our childhoods mapped out, but she's a grownup now. Time to find her own way and pay for it too.

It's just about the same thing I expect of my daughters. So maybe I'm not as petty as all that.

Lessons Learned at Four Quarters Farm

Hello, there, chappies! It's me, Annie of the Appalachians, slinging more words your way! Catch 'em, share 'em, collect the whole set!

My three long-time readers will know that the biggest hurdle in my personal life has been the loss of my ties to the Appalachian farm that was in my family for ... oh ... thirteen or so generations. Really. I have an ancestor who died in 1778 whose grandfather lived in those parts.

At just about the same time that the last generation of Johnsons were dying out or moving away from Polish Mountain, a campground called Four Quarters Farm opened at the other end of the Zip code. It was quite a joke at the time, because Four Quarters started out as a completely clothing-optional place. (Options have been scaled back but not abandoned at present.)

It's no coincidence that I started camping at Four Quarters the same year that my family sold the homestead. What is a coincidence is that Four Quarters Farm is for Pagans ... and I had become Pagan.

When I go to Four Quarters Farm, I meditate on the loss of my farm, the lack of Appalachian identity in my children, the loss of family and friends and anchor. This is the Great Work that I still have to do to find peace in my life: I've got to stay connected to the land even with the loss of ownership.

This year at 4QF, my friend Maebius came and was pretty much game for any silly endeavor I proposed. So I persuaded him to go hiking with me off site to a state forest trail that I recalled from my youth. (There are some very gorgeous hollows in those mountains, but they're hard to get into and out of.) We set out in search of a drop-dead gorgeous hollow that used to be easy to find on a well-marked trail. But that was 20 years ago. The trail isn't even marked any more. We discovered this only after hiking into a wicked thicket of new growth woods and stinging nettles.

We weren't lost, but we couldn't find a consistent path back out of the hollow. It was slow going. Thankfully we did have a nice pure stream at our side.

As we made our way down along the stream, back toward where I parked, we began noticing interesting topography. There were ornamental shrubberies grown wild. Rock walls abandoned. Masonry foundations in the middle of the woods. The area had once been populated. Now it's woods.

Maebius said, "Nature has really reclaimed this place."

This comforted me immensely.

The long-gone residents of those long-gone homes were no doubt kin of mine. They're probably buried up in Chaneysville. But their homes, yards, barns, bridges ... lost, all lost.

So, too, will this be with my great-grandfather's land. Once the kinship tie is broken, and the property owners are absentee or foreign, Nature moves in. There's a stubborn grove of locust trees where my great-aunt Belle had her magnificent garden. Carpenter bees have eaten the barn; it was torn down this year. The pastures are growing in because only deer are grazing them.

Appalachia is still under attack by mountaintop removal mining and fracking, but at least in the little patch where I came up, Gaia has moved in and is reclaiming. Now that no Johnsons live along Johnson Road anymore, I beseech Her to expand Her reach.  Let there be trees. Let there be woods. Let the roads grow in and the timbers crumble. Let the mountain forget us all. It was born in the days of the dinosaurs -- what do we matter to it, after all?

Gaia, take back what was yours, and thank you for letting us borrow the mountain for awhile. We didn't leave very much behind. Bright blessings to You.

Drum and Splash 2014

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored Go Camping!"

From Wednesday through Sunday past, I was at an event at a campground called Four Quarters Farm. The event is called Drum and Splash.

Four Quarters Farm has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to swimming holes. The property has three.

It's tough to do justice to a swimming hole in a photograph. And, since this particular swimming hole is under-utilized, you can't get a good perspective on its size. But take it from me, as a born-and-bred Appalachian, this is a quality swimming hole. Five stars outta five.

The swimming holes account for the "splash" portion of Drum and Splash. The "drum" portion consists of classes and seminars built around drumming. Almost everyone brings fancy djembe drums, but this year I was also happy to find dumbek classes for clueless beginners. I mean, I know so little about my drum that the teacher had to show me how to hold it. And when he said that a whole major beat is created with one finger, I contemplated aborting the mission. Instead I'll practice, because drumming is a wonderful thing.

After dark at Four Quarters Farm, the staff builds a bonfire, and there's an open drum circle. People dance around the fire. This goes on until the last person stops for the night, which means sometimes the drumming goes right on to dawn. The fire spinners also come out and practice their moves in the meadow. Elsewhere there's a big tent for guitars and storytelling and singalongs.

The Grand Finale of this event is a celebration that begins with a parade of dragons, bellydancers, drummers, straw men, and stilt-walkers. After they march across the meadow, the fire-spinners come out. After them, big ol' fireworks shoot up into the clear mountain air. Then everyone pours into the drum circle for Masters performances and much more drumming and dancing.

I don't have a single photo of any of it.

Some people can live and take photos of the living as it's happening. I can't seem to do that. Maybe it's because I grew up in the 20th century, and photos were staged ("everyone say cheese").

You know, I would be feeling really geezerish if I could come home and Google this event and find 1,000 vivid photos, but the pictures just aren't there. Drum and Splash is a be-in. People are doing stuff. No one is looking through the lens of an IPhone. Even the teenagers sit and talk to each other. And the place isn't off the grid. My phone worked to make calls. I was just too busy to point and shoot.

I know I have said this before. If you are looking for a Pagan-friendly place to bring your children, or just to chill out yourself, you cannot do better than Four Quarters Farm. Put it another way. Do you have a closet full of tie-dye you can't wear? Shove it in a satchel and go to Artemas, PA.

Holiday

We at "The Gods Are Bored" will be making merry for the next six days. Please re-join the madness next week!

Ten Fun Hobbies You Can Pursue without Going to Hobby Lobby

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," chock a block with free advice in times of need! Look to the bored gods first and forever. They love a challenge!

Today's free advice is aimed at getting you out of that evil super-Christian corporation called Hobby Lobby. I know you shop there for all your hobby supplies. But maybe you don't want to now. If you've been hiding under a rock (a nice hobby for which you need nothing from Hobby Lobby), you might have missed the Supreme Court decision allowing Hobby Lobby to choose what medications it will allow its female employees to have through their health plans. Never mind what those conservative Christian activists impartial SCOTUS judges say about this decision being very narrow.  The Grand Canyon was narrow once, too.

You may be a regular customer of Hobby Lobby. Don't be. Don't darken the doorstep of that place again. Ever.

"But Anne," you say. "Where else can I get latch-hook kits?"

Ditch those dumb hobbies! Here are ten great pastimes that will keep you the hell out of that Christian emporium!

1. Whittle. You need a piece of wood and a knife. It's not even considered real whittling if you get your supplies from a store. Go out in the woods and find a big ol' log. Grab a knife from the kitchen. Remember, the goal of whittling is not necessarily to make something beautiful or useful. It's just meant to modify a big ol' log into something smaller. This was a very popular hobby long before Hobby Lobby came into being. It ought to be revived.

2. Beachcomb. Maybe this is easy for me because I live near a beach. But wowsa, you sure don't need Hobby Lobby! One day I could have brought home a whole dead baby shark. (It smelled kind of bad, so I didn't.) If your beach is pretty much sand and surf, use your imagination! Grab that shiny razor blade sticking out of the sand, or that quaint syringe floating in the rip current. Or wrench that plastic spoon out of the sea gull's beak! Beachcombing is fun. You don't have to collect sea glass. In fact, I would advise against it. There's too much competition.

3. Read a book. I'll bet you can't find a single book worth reading at the Hobby Lobby, but the library has lots of them.

4. Cosplay. The whole idea behind cosplay is to make your own stuff without the use of kits, instructional manuals, or cheap stuff from Hobby Lobby. Must admit I don't know my way around the tools and machines used to make pith helmets with weird goggles on them, or Princess Leia armor, but maybe you do. Or maybe you suddenly want to, just to rid yourself of the Hobby Lobby jones. First stop: YouTube. With this hobby, the devil's in the details.

5. Drum. Yeah, baby! There's not enough drumming in this world! I can't imagine that Hobby Lobby sells djembe drums, but you can get one from the Internet or from anywhere that sells rock music instruments. I'm living proof that you don't need too many lessons to be able to drum. Just count to four and hit the top with your hand. Keep at it and you'll never miss those model trains.

6. Memorize poetry. This is the best free advice I've ever given.

7. Fix up your house. Yes, I know that cross stitch is more fun than caulking cracks in the plaster and ripping up the old basement tiles. But what good is that cross stitch going to do you in the long run? Trust me, no matter how good it is, your grandchildren will toss it. They'll be far more interested in getting a great price on the old chateau. So fix it up. Be family-minded! As for the stuff you'll need to do the repairs, well, I have lots of that stuff sitting around just gathering dust. Message me.

8. Pole dance. Now here's something I double-dog guarantee you that you won't find the supplies for in a Hobby Lobby.

9. Press plants. I've never been in a Hobby Lobby, but I'll bet they've got those fancy leaf-pressers in there -- you know, the ones with the tightening screws, all those bells and whistles. News flash. Get some leaves. Get an old dictionary. Put the leaves in the dictionary according to words you like. Write down the words on a piece of paper. Stack a bunch of other books onto the dictionary. You don't need Hobby Lobby to press plants! Just use your dictionary. When was the last time you looked up a word in a dictionary, instead of going online? Case closed.

10. Act weird. This is a fun and rewarding hobby. I've been doing it for years, and I just love it! I've never needed a Hobby Lobby to pursue this pastime ... but I may start practicing it in front of a Hobby Lobby. What can they do, arrest me for acting weird? I have a Constitutional right to free speech! Please excuse me now, I have to go practice making fart noises by shoving my hand in my armpit and flapping like a chicken. I call it my "Hobby Lobby Routine."

Bonus free advice for the highly motivated Hobby Lobby hater: You need to actually go into the Hobby Lobby to do this one. Find the most expensive item. Ask a salesperson to explain in detail how it works. Examine it slowly and carefully. Be sure to take it out of the box and ask to see how it is assembled and cared for. Then, when it's lying in bits and pieces halfway up and down the aisle, just shrug your shoulders, thank the kind salesperson, and say, "I'm going to get this on Amazon." Don't forget to smile and wave as you leave the store.

Keeper of a Shrine

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," beginning of summer vacation edition! Is that my pulse I feel, tapping gently in my wrist? Oh! I'm alive! Not yet defeated by my work!

A few weeks ago I took stock of my backyard shrine (The Shrine of the Mists, dedicated to all deities who have been forgotten by humankind). It needed some attention. The pebble base was dirty and hard-packed, a consequence of being buried under snow for five weeks. So I pulled out all the treasures: the crystals, sea glass, marbles, jacks, bits of pottery, minerals, geo-cache trinkets, Marcellus shale from home. All of this I put into a bag.

Yesterday, Mr. J and I went to the Jersey Shore. I got about six pounds of pebbles from the sea glass beach. It was my idea to add the shore pebbles to the base before cleaning the treasures and returning them to the shrine.

This morning when I opened the bag of shore pebbles, I noticed something right away. The color skewed to dark gray. There were tons of dark gray pebbles.

Life is a mixture of light and darkness. We don't want either to prevail. So I sifted the pebbles and removed a number of the slate-gray ones ... but not all of them. Just enough to make the mixture more polyglot. Then I washed the treasures and placed them overtop the pebbles.

Here's the final result. Must admit I don't have a good camera.

This shrine contains rocks from Appalachia, crystals from Arkansas, sea glass from the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, a broken ceramic horse head from my uncle Earl's midden pile, a trident-shaped miniature fork from a beach in Absecon, and marbles from the thrift store. There's a dragon made by The Heir long ago -- that's it on the left upper corner. And a little faerie ball ornament that I bought at a local landscape place. But this is not an inert monument. Mosquitoes lurk in its recesses, and pears fall on it from the tree above.

I've been toying with the idea of solar-powered lights, but just now I light a candle at dusk and place it in the center of the shrine. Depending upon the mosquitoes (who have as much right to the place as me), I say prayers for whoever needs them, petitioning the ancient bored deities and praising Them.

This little shrine is easy to maintain, and if I move I can take it along. It's built on a brick base, and the rocks are not secured. I don't plan to make it any larger. The only expense is the candles, and I get those at the thrift store mostly.

Okay, digressed from the sermon a bit. When I had restored the Shrine of the Mists to its better-than-ever glory, I found myself staring at a smallish pile of very negative-looking slate-gray pebbles. What to do with all that negative energy? I mulled and mulled. Then I flung the pebbles randomly into the overgrown ivy at the edge of the yard. In this way I dissipated the extra darkness in a non-threatening way.

Keeping a shrine is a marvelous thing. There's a place of peace in my yard. It glows at night. The deities it serves are happy with its Neolithic simplicity. May there be peace in all the Quarters. May there be peace at my shrine.

As the Sun Slips Away

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," unable to keep a straight face since 2005! I'm Anne Johnson, and if I had to teach three more days of school, I think I would die. Luckily I'm down to two.

Summer Solstice is always a bittersweet time for me, because it marks the day when the hours of daylight reach their peak. From here the daylight diminishes until December. By that time, the life-giving star sets at 4:45. Right now we have gentle twilight until 8:45. So that's a four-hour difference (well, three if you figure in Eastern Standard Time).

I'm fond of saying that we don't appreciate summer without the chills of winter. The same must hold true of the hours in a day. On those foggy winter afternoons when the darkness descends extra-early, it's good to know that a time will come when an 8:00 dinner is held in the daylight. Likewise, on this long, long day I have the intention to review all the things I love about winter ... most especially the candlelight, the fireplace, the crazy Christmas houses, the possibility of a snow day.

Oh, snow days, snow days! How long this month of June has seemed, because the Vo Tech had to make up five snow days! It's been a perfect eternity since Memorial Day. And yet the time has passed. The Wheel has turned. And on that Wheel are the seasons of snow days and beach days, of festival days and work days, of light and darkness and in-between, when the sea glass collecting is good.

So here's to summertime! Calloo, callay! So what if the days start getting shorter? What goes around comes around. This is the work of the bored gods, and we should be glad in it.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Well well! Here we are at Solstice, and I still have another week of school to teach! It was a very, very snowy winter ... and now we at the Vo Tech are paying the price for all those cold, white days.

I'm already switching into summertime mode, though. I've got the micro meadow planted with good New Jersey native flora. The Shrine of the Mists is undergoing a cleanup and restoration, and my summer get-away is only ten days hence!

Out in south central Pennsylvania there's an interfaith campground called Four Quarters Farm. It's in the same Zip code as the former Johnson family farm, as well as the resting places of my ancestors for 13 generations, going back to the French & Indian War.

Used to be, when I wanted to clear my head, I would go to the family property and spend long days swimming, hiking, and reading. But all the Johnsons have cleared off the mountain now. There are a few here and there, in other parts of the township ... and maybe they would remember my name and face, but most likely not. This makes ambling about a bit of a dicey proposition. The last time I took a hike there alone I came upon a man in camouflage, carrying a hunting rifle, and nothing was in season. (Thankfully that included female hikers.)

Since I need to put the ancestral land beneath my feet, and since Four Quarters Farm is such a grand Pagan campground, I switched my recharge place. Today I am anticipating my five-day sojourn there, to an event called Drum and Splash, July 2 through 6.

Drumming and splashing are the two things you do at this event. There are several first-rate swimming holes on the campground property. One of them is clothing optional. This is delightful. So that's how I'll spend the day... swimming and reading. In the evenings the drum circles begin at dusk and go pretty much all night. I'm a firm believer that drumming is meditation for people who don't want to sit still. At Drum and Splash, I find like-minded souls, including even a few teachers who workshop the whole meditative drumming thing.

The folks at Four Quarters Farm had to go to county court and prove that they were a religious organization before they were accorded the tax exemptions that all other churches take for granted. That feat has been accomplished. As for the opinion of the regular residents of that Zip code regarding a Pagan campground in their midst, all I can say is that only the very few most ardent fundamentalist Christians have any beef with the place. Growing up in that area, I can tell you that the free spirits outnumbered the Christians, and the badasses outnumbered both. There's a refreshing "live and let live" attitude out there, bolstered in no small part by the shopping the campers do in the area during the summertime. Money talks, and Four Quarters Farm is good for the local economy, without doing any damage to the land.

If I lived closer to Four Quarters Farm, I would be a full member of the church and attend their Lunar celebrations. For now, though, I go drumming and splashing on the deluxe package, with a bunk in the bunkhouse and two meals a day, fires made by experts, and hikes led by guides.

So that is what I'm thinking about on this precious long day of Summer Solstice. Soon I'll be going to pay my respects to my ancestors. Soon I'll be taking the waters. Soon I will walk the land. Safely.

Where Do They Go?

There's a really funny movie called Tin Men that starts in a car dealership. A customer is staring at a gleaming Cadillac, and the salesman says, "She sure is a beauty, isn't she?" The customer looks up and all around and says, "Who's a beauty?" The dealer replies, "Why, the car, of course." To which the customer replies, "Oh. I thought there was a chick in here somewhere." The customer goes on to muse about why people call cars "she."

Not all of my cars have been female. The first car I owned, inherited from my wonderful grandfather, was a male named Brownie. Brownie came to live with me in 1987 and was towed away with a bouquet of flowers on his front seat in 1998. Then we got Silver Flash, a Chrysler 300M. That one was entirely male ... macho, even. That was Mr. J's car.

In tandem with Flash, I owned an economy car, female, named Trusty. She was a 1994 Ford Escort. My daughter The Heir totaled her in 2008, but it was all body damage, so I drove her for another six months until the open windows let in too much cold air. Then I gave her to my school's auto tech shop.

Trusty was the best car I ever had. I loved her. All these years that I've been at the Vo Tech, I've always hugged her in the parking lot.

By and by, Silver Flash needed more and more maintenance, and the mechanic soaked us for plenty, and then the timing belt went and the car imploded. It sailed to a stop, never to move of its own volition again.

For a long time, Mr. J had Flash, and I had a little Dodge Neon (male) named Dusty. I won't say one bad word about the Dodge Neon. When I got him in 2008, he was three years old with 40,000 miles on him. I took him to 100,000 and then some, and he was still running (with some clunking and screechy noises) when we traded him in last week on a brand new Subaru. I kissed him goodbye at the Subaru dealership.

Today, as I was on hallway monitor duty, the auto tech students were using blow torches to chop up a car. The car was my own dear Trusty. The auto teacher warned me and even gave me a little metal ID card from somewhere in her interior.

The students were taking chunks of Trusty and putting her into a big dumpster for metal recycling. I stood there and cried.

Cars are mechanical objects, but don't they also have some kind of soul? I don't know. We do love our cars. At least I loved mine, Trusty especially. And isn't the metal recycling facility sort of like a reincarnation destination for cars? Won't the metal get melted and used in something else?

You tell me.

My dear, beloved Trusty. Comfortable, reliable car. Useful teaching tool. Now a pile of metal. May she have found the Summer Daytona in the Great Beyond. My heart is wrenched.

Milkweed

When I was a kid, I loved playing with milkweed. At the end of the summer, when everything was getting boring, the milkweed pods would dry out and break open, and you could blow the little puffy white seed parachutes around and watch them take to the sky.

This is a picture of common milkweed, requested by one of my three readers:

Trust me, even the most clueless gardener can get these to grow. All you have to do is drop the seeds into some dirt. After a year or two, you'll have a good stand of it.

When my milkweed blooms, I'll post a picture of the blossoms. They smell really good.

I didn't know until lately that monarch butterflies love milkweed. Considering the pressures facing monarchs, I do suggest you plant some milkweed in your yard, if you don't already have it. To grow well it needs full sun, but mine is in part shade. It gets over-tall and falls over, but not until it has produced seed pods.

If you want some certified common milkweed seeds from Johnson Nurseries of Snobville, just let me know now and remind me in the fall. I will mail you some seeds. You can scatter them in the fall or the spring. I've done both.

And remember, a weed is any plant that is growing where you don't want it to grow. So in this case, milkWEED is a misnomer. I want it.

Not Just Another Garden Blog Post

I sometimes think that gardening is a competitive sport. Maybe it's just me. I'm a competitive type person, easily made jealous (like the busy god). Long story short, today a sweet spirit breezed into my garden and made me look at it a whole new way.

The spirit is one of The Spare's professors from college. For years I have been trying to find someone who would help me make a little mini-meadow in my yard with native American perennials. This professor was the first ever to offer her help, and she arrived today with a tray of seedlings and a great, big, beautiful smile.

She brought me asters, and goldenrod, and black-eyed susans, and sawgrass from the shore. She also brought this little charmer. Oh my goodness! I've seen big stands of prickly pear in the cemetery at Lawnside, but I'd never have guessed that they were native to New Jersey. And yes, master gardener, I do know what I just planted -- a spiny cactus that will get stingers on it and spread. Never mind. It belongs here. A cactus in New Jersey!

This story gets better, because it's not all about the plants she gave to me.

Turns out this fabulous woman has been looking all over the place for North America's only native lily plant. You won't believe this, reader, but I swear by all the bored gods that I have that lily growing in my yard. I took some seeds from my parents' garden back in Appalachia, a long time ago, and those lilies have been coming up every year in my yard, literally since 1988. So I was able to promise lily seeds. The professor also does not have the same kind of milkweed I have in my yard. I've got (better than ever this year) a big stand of common milkweed. So she'll get some of that, too.

We dug up a tulip poplar for her, and an autumn-leaf fern, and I even offered the most precious plant in my yard, the bloodroot.

Spare just got home from the beach. When I told her I dug up a bloodroot for her professor, Spare said, "Gosh. You must have liked her.  No one ever dares mess with your bloodroot!

Basically, the kindly professor left with as many plants, and promises of plants, as she arrived with. To me, this is an awesome thing. The tangled mess outside my back door is full of gems!

Now this sermon takes a deeper step yet.

I'm a fan of the blogger Hecate Demeter, who writes frequently about loving the land you're in. It's very difficult for me to bond with New Jersey, and it always has been. But today, as I reviewed the plant life in my  back yard and noted where it came from, I realized something. My garden is chock-a-block with plants from Appalachia. It's a green oasis from home! I brought the milkweed seeds from there, and the lily seeds. The bloodroot grows there, although my particular specimens didn't come from those parts.

I planted Polish Mountain in my yard, and it's growing. I made a shrine of rocks from Polish Mountain, and it's beautiful.

It only took one kindly professor asking me where my milkweed came from to figure it out. I moved a mountain. My plants and I, we have sturdy Appalachian roots. We'll see this through together.

Slender Man Is Real

Last week, two 12-year-old girls stabbed another girl repeatedly. When asked why they did it, the girls said they were trying to appease Slender Man.

This past Sunday, the august New York Times featured an opinion piece on Slender Man, written by an associate professor of folk studies and anthropology. (That sounds just like the New York Times, doesn't it?)

The name of the story is "The Ghosts in the Machine," and the professor states beyond doubt that Slender Man is an urban legend, created by an individual on the Internet and popularized by horror fan fiction and the ability to photoshop images with alacrity.

With all due apologies to author Timothy H. Evans and the New York Times, I submit that Slender Man is indeed a real phenomenon. I have seen him myself, long before personal computers existed.

I was sixteen and in bed. I was not dreaming. The state was between totally awake and asleep. A tall, faceless man in a black suit came to my bed, placed his arms on either side of me, and stood there, looming over me. I could not make out his features.

I wasn't even afraid. I just asked him who he was.

A moment later, the light went on in the bedroom. It was my mother. She said I had been screaming at the top of my lungs.

I was not afraid. Ever. Just curious.

Although I was an avid reader, I had never read anything about Men in Black, and certainly nothing about Slender Man (who ... ahem ... just started existing when the Internet came around, right?). But this experience with Slender Man was a watershed moment in my life. It still remains vivid in my mind, decades later.

Before the tall man in black called in my bedroom, I had minor psychic abilities. I had out-of-body experiences as a young kid and frequently saw flashing lights in my bedroom. After Slender Man, I never had another psychic experience. That was it. He shut it down.

For the record, this was 1975.

After having had this experience, I set out to research the apparition to see if I could find out something about him. This is how I learned about the phenomenon of the Men in Black, who erase the memories of people who see aliens.

And then, of course, we come to images of the Grim Reaper. How is the Reaper portrayed? Traditionally the Grim Reaper is male and dressed all in black, with face either hooded or skeletal.

So, my three readers know me to be honest and forthright, and when I'm serious, I'm serious.

I am serious about this. I saw Slender Man in 1975.

Here's what I think about Slender Man. Choose your explanation below. Note that "urban legend" is not one of the choices.

1. Slender Man is an archetype of the collective unconscious, a harbinger of death or adulthood that appears in many cultures in similar forms.

2, Slender Man dwells on the astral plane and visits people who frequent that plane. This does not mean that he actually inspired those young girls to stab their friend. That action did stem from the Internet. But there's a slender male spirit out there, and he does make visitations to people who have never heard of him. Given his attire, he might be a faerie.

3. Slender Man exists in neural pathways in the brain that are misunderstood or yet to be discovered. He's a bit of rogue biology that also accounts for OBE and psychic experiences. Some day we will understand how this works.

I take Option 2 on this, perhaps Option 3. Of one thing I am absolutely certain, however. Slender Man is not an urban legend. Nor will he be content to be portrayed as such. He holds no blame for stabbings, but he was not created by some clever Internet geek. He's been around, around, around. I can vouch for 1975.

What Did I Do with the Money?

In case you were wondering, here are the Route 70 kittens, named for the highway where they were found. They have survived a fit of something that nearly carried them away, due to my diligence (should have said no).

But this sermon is not about kittens. It's about saving money.

Mr. J and I have always had trouble keeping up with the expenses of owning a home in Sunny Snobville. One place where we've never had money to spare is the outdoors. Around here people pay big bucks (or sweat away long hours) composing perfect front lawns and putting-green back yards.

When I was young I put a lot of hard work into making my house look like the other ones in Snobville. I bought begonias and New Guinea impatiens and marigolds and tomato plants. Nothing ever took. The only year I had a good tomato crop was the year my neighbor had a pony party, and I offered to clean up his yard. I don't like Miracle Gro, and I don't often get near enough to a pony to get good fertilizer.

By and by I got busy, had kids, had more work to do. More recently I've gotten even busier. My back yard has grown up in stuff I only half know. I've got jewel weed and milkweed, but I also have a ground cover that I call "creeping crud" that I think must be native to New Jersey. I also have wild strawberries, which I'm fairly sure are native as well.

Today I took stock of the Johnson landmass in preparation for creating a wildlife-friendly back yard full of native species. Seems like I'm already well on the way. It's not like the place is barren. It's quite brimming with the green stuff.

Tomorrow a kind lady is coming over with seedlings from a variety of native species. I have unearthed all the dirt I could get from my compost pile, and I'm really hoping I will be creating a self-sustaining environment.

The seedlings are free.

I've never spent any money on Chateau Johnson's lawn (except for mowing expenses). I've only minimally invested in annuals and tomato plants. Compared to the rest of Snobville, I've hardly cracked the safe for the green environs.

Wonder what I did with all that saved cash? Maybe I spent it on cats.

Unfit To Govern

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," your first stop for all breaking news and hard facts!

Okay, ahem, maybe not.

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," we get it right sometimes!

No?

One more try:

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" We don't know whether or not we get it right! This is a blog.

That's better.

When the august New York Times ran an obituary about Maya Angelou under the fold, I decided I didn't need the damn daily paper anymore. So now, pressed as I am for time, I get my news from the Internet. Today on my Yahoo news feed, there was a story about how much weight Chris Christie has lost (in the neighborhood of 85 pounds) since he had lap band surgery in 2013. Of course the article was about whether or not the slenderized Christie would appeal to voters as a presidential candidate.

As is often the case with Yahoo articles, the comments section becomes a kind of opinion poll. (Will Gallup be the next company put out of business by the Internet?)

To hell with the stupid article, I wanted to see what The Vox Populi had to say.

Readers, I believe Governor Christie is screwed even if he wakes up one morning looking like this guy.

Out of the 50-plus comments I read on the Christie story, the vast majority said that his weight is not important, he is unfit to govern.

But what I liked even better was the commentary from the red side of the aisle.

It seems the loathsome Mr. Christie is detested by the right-wing fringe. They have neither forgotten nor forgiven his hearty handshake with President Obama during Hurricane Sandy. They think he's too much of a lefty. And that, I hope, spells the end of the despicable bully Chris Christie.

Short sermon tonight. I just wanted to record my glee in seeing CC skewered not only by Democrats and New Jersey residents, but also by people who vote Republican.

This sermon is also abbreviated because the author has become distracted by the photograph and is off to watch Guatemalan music videos.

Green Adventures

"Hate" is a strong word, but when it comes to lawn grass and ivy, I hate. I seethe. Putting greens infuriate me. Ivy-bedecked cottages make me nauseous. If it were up to me, every blade of lawn grass and every leaf of ivy would be plucked from the face of North America, and native plants put back into place.

This is one of those things that an individual doesn't have much control over. I can only do what I can do.

This summer I will be creating a micro-meadow in my back yard. Some damn lawn grass must remain, just so Mr. J can walk to his garage. Otherwise (neighbors are not being asked for feedback), I will be turning my yard over to native plants. I will be helped in this endeavor by a partner in crime lovely professor that The Spare had in college this past year. Turns out the professor is something of a specialist in native species, and she's going to get me seedlings. ..... *evil grin*

I love how many of the local flora that belong here have "weed" in their names: butterfly weed, milkweed, joe pye weed. I told the nice professor that I don't care how high these plants grow or how thick they get, or even if they take over my whole yard. We're going to plant them, and hopefully they'll know the terrain enough to wisely take root and multiply.

Guess who's going to be the most popular gardener in Snobville! Yeah, I know. Not Anne.

So that's my green adventure in the tiny plot of back yard that the Fates have allowed me.

The other green adventure is getting to and from work.

I've been rising at 5:30 a.m. and popping on The Spare's cruiser, and riding it to school. This takes guts, reader. This is New Jersey. The morning commute isn't bad, but in the afternoons, oh golly. I am even challenged on the bike path! I'm so wobbly that a puff of breeze could blow me over (and has). Furthermore, having grown up on a bike without ever wearing a helmet, I have trouble remembering to put one on now. Some mornings I get halfway to work before thinking, "Oh, this breeze feels so good on my hair!" only to realize that I'm missing the essential head protection that all wobbly biking women-of-a-certain-age ought to wear.

Biking to work is only an option in these few spring months when the days are at their longest. But I can always walk home. It's 4.5 miles, one way. I feel blessed to be so close to my place of employment.

Speaking of blessings, today is Walt Whitman's birthday. If my students learned anything this year, it was that an icon who heard America singing now sleeps in their community. May he filter and fibre our blood!

The Well-Regulated Militia

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Here it is Memorial Day, and I'm thinking about re-animating dead people.

I would like to re-animate a Civil War soldier, maybe one of those ambitious 14-year-olds who lied about his age, and ask him, "What do you think of guns?"

I would like to re-animate Thomas Jefferson and ask him, "Could you be more specific about who should bear firearms? And oh, by the way, Tom. Look at this 21st century weapon! Who should keep and bear it?"

After all, it took at least 60 seconds to load and fire a gun in Jefferson's time.

The people who died in combat in our various wars were members of the well-regulated militia. They learned how to use weapons from professionals. They used weapons in professional situations. And a bunch of them died doing it. Given a second opportunity at life, how many of them would (as Shakespeare put it), throw their distempered weapons to the ground?

We talk about Big Coal and Big Oil, but we give short shrift to Big Guns. The selling of firearms and ammunition, the rental of target practice facilities, all of that is big business. The National Rifle Association is not a lobby for Constitutional freedoms. It is an arm of a big business.

My sister owns a weapon. She keeps it by her bed, in case someone breaks into her house and tries to rape her. She told me this. Now, she has a husband, a son, four dogs, and three parrots. Who is going to break into that house? And yet she worries about that rapist. This is brainwashing by Big Guns. And its a set-up for misuse of a dangerous weapon under non-rape circumstances.

You know what else I'm thinking about on this sunny Memorial Day? I'm wondering how many psychopaths are out there, behaving normal long enough to build arsenals, that they will then use to kill unsuspecting, innocent people.

Last week one of my most troubled students pulled yet another day in all-day detention. She wrote an essay according to a prompt (this is my standard assignment for "behavioral development program," aka sit in a room all day). The prompt was: "If you could live one day of your life over again, which would it be?"

The student wrote that she wished she could re-live the day of her brother's funeral, because at least she would get to see his precious face one more time. This brother did not die of a horrible illness. He was shot.

We have no well-regulated civilian militia. We have an Apocalypse. There is no solution. The cat is out of the bag. And just as in Shakespeare's plays, we won't quit until the stage is covered in dead bodies, and one or two baffled onlookers have to wipe up the mess.

Spoutwood Fairie Festival 2014

Well! I've had little to say about this year's Fairie Festival! Shame on me, it was three weeks ago!

I consider myself rather past the age to wear a tutu. I associate tutus with dance recitals that occurred back in the 1960s, when I was a tot. However, the Spoutwood Fairie Festival traditionally has a "tutu Friday," so I decided to join in.

One of my students made this extravagant confection entirely out of SAT prep books, with some High School Proficiency Test practice books thrown in for color contrast. I've never seen anything more creative, and as a social statement it was par excellence. I can't think of a better use for SAT prep books!

Now, I know for a fact that two of my three readers are female. So if you want a fantastic STEMpunk tutu for your next cosplay convo, send Miss Annie a message! The darling young lady who made my tutu is a junior right now, which means she'll be a senior next year. I want to help her set up an Etsy account ... so if you know anything about that, help me out here! I may break down and take in foster kittens from time to time, but I will never be able to craft my way out of  paper sack... so Etsy is not a domain I know much about.

Now that I've opened the photo album, what do you think of this one of The Spare?

That one there is by the professional photographer who does the festival. His name is George Skepton, and he's from Baltimore.

We had a swell time with Mountain Tribe this year.

As you can see, we got some beasties to join Mountain Tribe by offering them incentives. This is the lot of them. They couldn't take two steps without being photographed.

We enjoyed the music and the drumming, and the weather was chilly but not wet. I got to see some dear friends I don't otherwise get to see much, and I'm gently bonding with some of the folks there, particularly the Pagan folks. Next year I intend to go to their Beltane fire.

The best thing about the Spoutwood Fairie Festival for me is the opportunity to bond with my dragon, Big Red. Here he is with me, and boy oh boy do I love him! Not sure why that young girl had to muscle her way into the shot, but oh well.

Last one, with Sis and Spare and a lively faerie who just photobombed us ... what fun!

The smiling little fellow in plaid is our Mountain Tribe's very own Sprogling! If you live in the vicinity of this festival, and you have a young child, come and join us!

I love Spoutwood. Ever since I lost the farm on Polish Mountain, that property in Pennsylvania's piedmont has sort of taken some of the sting out of the loss. The people who own the property are incredibly hospitable when 10,000 people descend upon them for a long weekend.

Blessed be!

If It Ain't Broke, Break It

Every time I write a teacher post, I get emails from educational types asking if they can post here at "The Gods Are Bored." One even offered me lucre! But The Gods Are Bored is not for sale. It's proudly free content, just what the author wants to say.

Today I want to say that 96 percent of the juniors at my Title I school passed New Jersey's 2014 High School Proficiency Assessment.

To refresh your memory, the population of the high school where I teach is about 50/50 Black and Hispanic, with a smattering of Southeast Asians. There are three white kids out of over 700. Almost everyone qualifies for free or reduced meals. These kids proved that they could read and write high school level English. Our success rate at my school is equal to or better than any other high school in the state.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we hard-working tech school English teachers were rewarded with a continuance of the reduced class sizes and shorter teaching schedules that produced these results? You bet!

But of course that would be logical.

Instead we will all get larger classes and extra teaching assignments next year. The tutoring that helped so many struggling students has been cancelled, because next year's juniors get the new Common Core national exam. Since no one is sure what is going to be on that exam (even the examiners themselves), we can't teach to the test the way we did with the NJ HSPA.

At a recent teachers' meeting for my school, I received excerpts of the "anchor texts" that will be on the new Common Core test. The only thing on the list that I had read before entering college was Shakespeare. Everything else (except "The Gift of the Magi," which do not ask me why, is a perennial favorite) is college level. The NJ HSPA readings were not exactly Little House on the Prairie, but they weren't Kafka, either. And forget readable translations of such bored-God-approved texts as The Odyssey. The anchor translation was untranslatable.

If you're like me, you're thinking that preschoolers are being expected to be first graders, that first graders are being expected to be third graders, that third graders are being expected to be sixth graders, that middle school students are being expected to be high schoolers, and that high school is now college. Oh, and let's not forget that one size fits all. (Well, maybe it does. Look at our HSPA scores!)

When they roll out the new Common Core standardized testing next year, and the entire nation tanks, remember what you read here today. Almost every single one of my students was deemed high school proficient by the state of New Jersey.

Now things fall apart. I'll get larger classes and a busier schedule, and the students -- faced with a baffling new test that has no stakes whatsoever for them -- will tank alongside everyone else. Then, guess what? My deficiencies as a teacher will be revealed! Yes, I've been hiding behind these great state test scores too long!

The Great Conspiracy To Undermine Public Education is under way.

Yeah, I Know, I Know, I ... No ...

What is Annie's First Law of Volunteering? Oh! My three readers chime back : Say no! You've done enough! You work too hard! You're pulled too thin! Money is terribly tight! No! No! No!

Then someone leaves a box of kittens along the six-lane that runs between Camden and the seashore.

And I take them in.

Being a kitten foster is time-consuming, messy, and demanding. But it would take a far, far harder-hearted person than me to turn her back on any creature left so close to roaring traffic.

Therefore, give a warm, wonderful, Gods Are Bored welcome to Asbury, Brielle, and Neptune!.

Given that one foster kitten is much like another, here's a close approximation of the situation at hand. This is a batch from yesteryear whose names I have completely forgotten.

Cats on the freeway? I couldn't say no.

Maypole

Every year the good folks at Woodstock Trading Company
hold a Maypole celebration. Usually it dovetails with the Spoutwood Fairie Festival. This year it was today.
We had The Jugband playing Grateful Dead and a bunch of happy people on the lawn, wrapping the Maypole. A fun time was had by all.

Here I am with the finished product. Welcome to May, to May, to May!