My Blog

Welcome to my website. I’ve given a longer welcome elsewhere, so here I would just like to say that this is the blog part of it. This is where I will be posting, from time to time, interesting but short accounts of things. At least they are interesting to me; you are free to draw your own conclusions. They may be facts, factoids, links, opinions, and disjointed ramblings. Watch this space; I hope to update it frequently.

June 7, 2008
If I ever write a memoir, I have the beginning:

The earliest thing I remember was, at age three or so, standing on the edge of a cliff in my backyard, where it joined the next one. Everyone was telling me to jump, including my girlfriend Valerie. But I couldn't; instead I walked over to the step that led down.

If this were a novel rather than a memoir there would be some great significance to this story. I only know that when I went back there as a grown-up I saw that, as I've said, there was one step, and the drop was about a foot.

June 4, 2008
New ritual, Great Blue Hill Ritual. It's one my grove did a few years ago. The idea was to perform one with minimal props. We used two plastic bags per person, and a single bottle of soda water. Not bad.

June 3, 2008
I saw a bluebird today! First one ever.

May 24, 2008
I've added a Hearth Goddess Ritual.

May 15, 2008
I've added some prayers, and also a short essay to my Miscellaneous Thoughts on Ritual section.

My "c" key is sticking. God, that's annoying.

May 13, 2008
Just back from Desert Magic Festival in Arizona. If you've never gone, please consider it for next year. Their hospitality is justly famous.

I gave a presentation there entitled "Law and Order East of the Asterisk," which was about the Proto-Indo-European beliefs surrounding different kinds of law and order, and also the structure of PIE society. I hope to turn it into an essay to post here.

There was a roundtable there on the training programs of the ADF training programs. Looking good. Also, Ilious was passing around a draft of an ADF song book, which will be expanded before going to print. Finally an ADF hymnal! Yee hah!

Apr. 25, 2008
I've added a lot of material to my Proto-Indo-European Deities and Proto-Indo-European Ideology pages.

Apr. 21, 2008
Busy few weeks. My wife had some business trips, to conferences, and I tagged along. The trips were to Disney World and Las Vegas. Tough gig she has; all she had to do to get it was pass ten actuarial exams and work twenty years.

So, Disney World. Not as much fun not staying in the Animal Kingdom Lodge. I had to drop by there for the gift shop and the buffet. The gift shop is the best one at Disney World. Much of what it sells is made in Africa, including a lot of percussion instruments. (Secret: Disney World is a great place to score percussion instruments.) The buffet is one of my favorite things, too; lots of African foods. Tip: don't ever go at a time of year when the park is particularly busy. We had no choice, but if you do, use it.

Went on the new roller coaster at the Animal Kingdom. Very disappointing. There are much better coasters there, especially the Rock and Roller Coaster at Hollywood Studios. That's my favorite in the world. You gotta try it.

I learned I hate Las Vegas, but love the south-west. Oddly enough, my wife, who hates the heat, loves the dessert. Go figure. We've even discussed a second home there someday. I'm especially attracted by the Indian cultures down there. The katchinas are particularly interesting; they have such a mystique to them that they definitely look like sacred beings. Love them, and am trying to be inspired by them. Saw some pictographs while I was there too. Nothing special, just hands, but still cool. There was a Titanic exhibit at the Tropicana. Spooky stuff, lots of it recovered from the wreck. There was a chunk of ice there that was slightly warmer than the water would have been. I'm surprised anyone survived any wetting for any length of time at all. You could buy coal that had been recovered from the ship. I bought some, of course.

I've decided for certain that I don't like to gamble. I can spend the same amount of money in about the same amount of time shopping for books and, when I'm done, I have books to show for it. I just don't get the appeal.

I've been productive lately. I finished a dawn goddess piece that I've been working on for a few months, the time mostly due to having to start over again after numerous mistakes. I made some Great Rite images from shells and stones, and have started on a Cucullati image. Eventually these will be for sale on this site, along with a cool Lugh image I made from tools. Not much writing, though. Maybe I'm going to shift from writer to artist. Makes sense, artists make even less money than writers.

Feb. 21, 2008
I've uploaded a story, The Voyage of the Dawn Shredder. It's a parody I wrote for a class in college. It's a bit raunchy.

Feb. 17, 2007
Kosovo has declared independence. It has a new flag, "a bright blue banner featuring a golden map of Kosovo and six stars, one for each of its main ethnic groups." A map of the country? Really? New rule: no region can declare independence until it has a flag that doesn't suck.

Dec. 7, 2007
New poems and new prayers.

Oct. 19, 2007
A new essay, Other People's Myths

Oct. 17, 2007
I've added my Dedicant's Oath. Those interested in how I came to be a Pagan, and in the twists that have brought me to where I am now, will enjoy it.

Oct. 16, 2007
Have you seen the commercials for "Frank TV?" It's supposed to "literally change the face of television." Is it possible to literally change something that's figurative?

Oct. 15, 2007
Aol had a sample of the new citizenship test, so I took it. Out of twenty questions, I got two wrong. Problem is, my answers were right. Aol had the Bill of Rights including "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and the Constitution being based on the Federalist Papers. I hope to God this was aol being idiots, and not a case of these being the actual answers.

Sep. 24, 2007
I'm going to be giving presentations on Ancient Pagan ritual, and on Cernunnos, at the Southern New Hampshire Pagan Pride Day on Saturday, Sep. 29. I'll have copies of my book there to sell, and will also autograph ones you might already own. Here's your chance to tell me I'm wrong about Cernunnos.

Sep. 6, 2007
I've added a whole new section, my Dedicant's Program. This is a training program for Ar nDráoicht Féin that involves work in a number of categories. I had to write reports on each of these and submit them for approval. My package was approved a few months ago, and I thought I'd share it with you. Even if you're not interested in ADF, you might want to take a look at it. It includes my take on such subjects as why certain virtues are important and what the nature of the Divine Beings is. There are also pictures of my home shrines. Check it out.

Aug. 25, 2007
Lots of changes to the PIE ritual, Nemos Ognios Basic ritual, and suggested reading sections.

Aug. 16, 2007
I've added a lot of prayers.

Aug. 15, 2007
To be dishonest is to live a life that isn't one's own. It's a form of slavery -- a dishonest man isn't his own master; he has given his freedom to his lies.

July 31, 2007
Overheard on the radio:
1. recognization
2. literally almost

Jan. 25, 2007
I've added a fair number of small jottings to the ritual essays section.

Jan. 3, 2006
Things your English teacher told you that are wrong, number 4: Don’t say “he’s younger than me,” say, “he’s younger than I.” The argument here is that what’s actually being said is “he’s young then I am,” with the last word left out. Don’t get me wrong; if that was what has been said, I would completely agree that your teacher was right. But that isn’t what’s been said, is it? So is there a way we can analyze the sentence so that “me” is not only correct, but required?

The question revolves around what kind of word “than” is. Your teacher, in analyzing the sentence as “younger than I [am],” is classifying it as a conjunction joining the sentence “he is younger” with the sentence “I am.” If “than” is acting like a conjunction, then “I” is the only correct option, because it has to serve as the subject of the second sentence. But if there is actually no second sentence because we’ve accepted the entire sentence exactly as it’s been spoken, then putting the pronoun in the nominative case (using “I”) is no longer required.

Is there a required case? I would say there is. Without the “am,” “than” can no longer serve as a conjunction. But there it sits, in a sentence that everyone understands (even those who insist it’s wrong), so it must serve some function. It must fall into one of the categories we call “parts of speech.” If it can’t be a conjunction (because there’s no “am”), what part of speech is it?

Let’s look at another sentence: “He’s different than me.” Even the most diehard prescriptivists wouldn’t say that it should instead be “he is different than I.” (I suppose the argument could be made that what is meant is “he is different than [the way that] I [am],” but that would be taking things a bit far. What “than” is doing here can be seen by replacing it with “from”: “he’s different from me.” This can’t be a shortened version of “he’s different from I am.” This is because “from” isn’t a conjunction, so it can’t join two sentences. It’s a preposition, and prepositions take the accusative (objective) case, so “me” is the proper pronoun.

Since “from” and “than” are interchangeable here, and since “from” is a preposition, then “than” can serve as a preposition. And not only can it, that’s exactly what it’s doing here. Prepositions define relationships between nouns, which is what’s going on. Since prepositions take the accusative, “me” is the correct format of the pronoun, so “he is younger than me” is correct.

Further, since prepositions don’t take the nominative, “he is different than I” is wrong. Not only no preferable, but downright wrong. And this is by the same rules your English teacher used in their argument -- hoist on their own petard.

There’s a even better argument, though: no one, except for English teachers and their fellow travelers, would say, “he is younger than I.” Any form of a language used by 99% of its speakers is de facto correct. That’s just the way languages work; they don’t have to make sense. Perhaps we can make the English teachers happy by pretending the usage is “irregular,” just as the plural of “ox” is “oxen,” not “oxes.” But the rest of us will know what’s really going on.

November 23, 2006
Thanksgiving is the greatest of American holidays. My wife and I have had troubles explaining it to people from other countries. "So what do you do on Thanksgiving?" We get together with our families, eat a big meal which includes a turkey, talk, and maybe watch some football. "Yes, but what do you do?" "Well, technically the day is to give thanks for all we have, and most families probably say a prayer before the meal to do that, but mostly we get together with our families, eat a big meal which includes a turkey, talk, and maybe watch some football. Some people do some decorating, and of course we use our nicest dishes, but there aren't any presents or anything much public, except for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. It's basically a day to get together with our families, eat a big meal which includes a turkey, talk, and maybe watch some football.

What a lovely day! Happy Thanksgiving to all Americans, and to all non-Americans who appreciate the specialness of getting together with families, eating a big meal which includes a turkey, talking, and maybe watching some football.

October 7. 2006
Cernunnos has arrived! He's in Cernunnos: Looking a Different Way. There's still some work to do, mostly on pictures -- don't try downloading this on a dial-up, it's big -- to make things prettier and smaller, but I figured that putting it up will make me do those little things instead of putting it off some more.

October 2, 2006
I finally got around to putting my Proto-Indo-European Cosmology Meditation up. Lemme tell ya, it's not much fun putting that much PIE in HTML -- changing real accents, long marks, and superscripts into HTML ones. But I did it, and now you can see it.

September 23, 2006
First, Blessed Equinox! May all the dark in your life be a source of wisdom, and turn again into light.

From my new book, Speaking of the Sacred, due out in the new year:

On one side the light, on the other the dark,
we stand in this moment of balance.
I would prefer the light, but the earth begs to differ,
and, turning, about the sun, turns her half on which I live away,
away into the dark.
I can’t help but grant you the power, what use would it be to resist?
I will go with you then, complaining as little as I can,
into the dark period of the year,
believing your promise that your turning will go on,
and return my half of the world to the light.

Second, something I received in my e-mail on religious liberty and Paganism. I'm truly surprised the fight to allow a pentagram on Veterans' graves has gone on as long as it has, but at least Nevada's wised up. I've found military chaplains to be cool dudes, fiercely dedicated to protecting each service member's right to practice their religion, and I'm happy to see that it's bureaucracy, not the chaplains, that are holding this up, and that the chaplains are helping.

LIGHTS OF LIBERTY CANDLELIGHT VIGIL
Monday, September 25, 2006
7 pm local time
Worldwide
Join in this worldwide spiritual support vigil for the Veteran Pentacle Quest on the one-year anniversary of the death of Sgt. Patrick Stewart, the first Wiccan to be killed in the War on Terror in Afghanistan.

On Monday, September 25 at 7 pm in your local area, kindle at least three candles as Lights of Liberty.

REMEMBRANCE: Kindle a candle of Remembrance to honor Sgt. Stewart and the 4 other soldiers of the 113th Aviation, D Company Mustangs, who were killed in action on September 25, 2005 when their Chinook helicopter was shot down by enemy fire in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. Remember and honor their service and sacrifice in the name of Freedom.

THANKSGIVING: Kindle a candle of Thanksgiving to celebrate that the State of Nevada officials took action last week and ordered a plaque with a Pentacle to honor Sgt. Stewart and his religious orientation in the same fashion as those of other religions who have been honored by the US Department of Veterans Affairs, which still has failed to do this for Wiccan veterans.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: Kindle a candle of Religious Freedom to bring a successful conclusion to the quest to have the US Department of Veterans Affairs add the Pentacle to its list of emblems of belief that can be included on the memorial markers, headstones, and plaques they produce to honor deceased veterans. Call for religious freedom for all.

After kindling the candles, meditatively send support to those who are working for equal rights for Wiccan veterans and their families in this Quest, including Circle Sanctuary, Lady Liberty League, Aquarian Tabernacle Church, Covenant of the Goddess, Correllian Nativist Church, Nomadic Chantry of the Gramarye, Sacred Well Congregation, Isis Invicta Military Mission, Military Pagan Network, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, American Civil Liberties Union, and others.

Call on Lady Liberty and Lady Justice to aid this Veteran Pentacle Quest and to bring victory. [Don't forget to honor as well Minerva, patron goddess of the Constitution and protector of those who fight for their country. CS]

VIGIL IN FERNLEY, NEVADA

Rev. Selena Fox, senior minister of Circle Sanctuary, will be facilitating a Lights of Liberty Candlelight Vigil at the Northern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Fernley, Nevada from 7 - 8 pm on Monday, September 25. Joining her will be Sgt. Stewart's widow, Roberta, and Rev. William Chrystal, the US military chaplain who has been providing support to her and her family since Sgt. Stewart's death last year. The vigil will be held at the Wall of Heroes where Sgt. Stewart's plaque is to be installed once production is completed.

The Lights of Liberty candlelight vigil in Fernley is open to the public and the media. If you wish to take part, please bring a white votive candle in a votive glass to kindle.

The morning after the Lights of Liberty Candlelight Vigil there will be a rally and press conference in nearby Reno, Nevada:

AMERICAN FREEDOM RALLY
Tuesday, September 26
8 - 8:30 am
Powning Park
Site of the new Veterans Memorial
in Downtown Reno, Nevada
Speakers include:
* Roberta Stewart, widow of Sgt. Patrick Stewart
* Rev. William Chrystal, Pastor of the First Congregational Church of Reno,
Nevada and retired US Army chaplain
* Rev. Selena Fox, Senior Minister of Circle Sanctuary, Barneveld, Wisconsin

Staff from offices of elected officials who have helped in the Veteran Pentacle Quest also plan to be present.

The Rally will begin with a tribute to Sgt. Patrick Stewart and the 4 other soldiers who were killed in action in Operation Enduring Freedom on September 25, 2005.

This Rally will publicly congratulate the State of Nevada for doing what the US Department of Veterans Affairs has failed to do -- to provide a plaque with Pentacle on it to honor the service and sacrifice of Sgt. Patrick Stewart.

Although Sgt. Stewart will soon get his plaque, the Veteran Pentacle Quest continues. Therefore, this Rally also will issue a public call to the US Department of Veterans Affairs to add the Pentacle to its list of emblems of belief that can be included on the memorial markers, plaques, and headstones it provides for deceased veterans and their families.

At the conclusion of this Rally, Rev. Selena Fox and Roberta Stewart will issue a statement from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which speaks to the next phase of their efforts in this quest for equal rights for Wiccan veterans and their families. Selena and Roberta will then be available to answer media questions and give interviews.

For more information about the Veteran Pentacle Quest and how to help:
www.circlesanctuary.org/liberty/veteranpentacle

Circle Times: Friday, September 22, 2006

September 22, 2006
Still more links, still more reorganization -- I've added a Beatles section. I've also updated my calendar.

September 9, 2006
More links, with a bit of reorganization. I've also started to superscript the labials in the PIE section.

September 8, 2006
A letter in Dear Abbie today was signed "Too angry for words."

August 31, 2006
My favorite TV show is Gilmore Girls. That's right, Gilmore Girls. Guys, check it out; it may be largely about a mother/daughter relationship, but it's not a chick show. Or at least it doesn't have to be. It has two of the best babes on TV, plus the coolest guy on TV. It's also that rarest of beasts, the intelligent show. Those who've IMed me will have noticed the oddity of my away messages. That's because most of them are lines from the show, taken completely out of context. The fact that these could make any sense in any context, and be funny as well, is a tribute to the show's writers.

So now, the Zen of Gilmore Girls:

She knew far too much about sushi to be from Kentucky.
Four hours later, Sniffy was dead.
58 seats and 62 Koreans.
I defy you to read a Finn.
He was buried with it. Yep. He loved that musket.
Oy, with the poodles already!
I haven't been strafed in years.
Paul Anka! Mommy's got your broccoli!

July 26, 2006
Some new poems, a rearranging of parts of the meeting opening ritual, and some inserted blather.

July 6, 2006
I've updated the following:
Ritual; theory; miscellaneous thought on ritual. Some new comments.
Ritual; practice; Nemos Ognios Meeting Ritual. I've updated the Proto-Indo-European, and reversed the order of the purification and the offering to the hearth goddess. It occurred to me that of all ritual acts, an offering to the goddess who is the purest of all should be preceded by purifcation, not followed by it. I may make some other small changes shortly.
And the rest; poems. I've added some.
Calendar. Old stuff removed, but unfortunately nothing new to add.
Nuit; Poems to Nuit. One or two new ones.
Proto-Indo-European; Proto-Indo-European Deities. I've removed Meitros, because I now believe that he was only an Indo-Iranian deity who grew from an aspect/title of Xaryomen.

There will be more to come, especially in the PIE section, and there especially in the prayers that are in PIE. I've learnd a lot.

July 4, 2006
Time to rededicate ourselves to Liberty, "that these honored dead shall not have died in vain." Time to show that "we support the troops" by supporting the Constitution they swore to defend.

June 29, 2006
Much has been happening which has been talking up my time. I'll be trying to catch up. One of the things that took my time was a trip to Paris. I'll be writing some comments on that trip when I can. The big news for now:

My daughter has been accepted to grad school in social work. She's so bloody smart. She starts in the fall. She's been working in the field for a year and a half, and has decided she want to advance further into jobs that require a master's degree.

My wife has been promoted to full vice president at her company. It comes with a big raise, and of course greater prestige, but most of all it represents validation for all the work she's put in through the years. Her company is lucky to have her.

A new book of mine has been accepted for publication. It's a sequel to A Book of Pagan Prayer, this time solely a collection of prayers. The ones in the section on prayer on this site will be in it. (As I write more after the book is in final format, I'll be replacing the ones on this site with the new ones.)

May 18, 2006
Patrick Henry: "Give me liberty, or give me death."

Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up ESSENTIAL LIBERTY to purchase a little TEMPORARY SAFETY, deserve neither LIBERTY nor SAFETY"

Thomas Jefferson:'And we solemly declare that we will preserve our liberties, being with one mind resolved to die free men rather than to live slaves.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts: "I am a strong supporter of civil liberties. But you have no civil liberties if you are dead."

May 14, 2006
Ted Kennedy's plane was struck by lightning recently. No word yet as to whether it followed a sentence beginning, "So help me God, if I was responsible for Jo's death...

Mar. 22, 2006
I've finally updated my calendar as it currently stands, all the way through July. I'm hoping to add a book signing or too, but I've posted dates for grove meetings, rituals, and Desert Magic, a gathering I'm going to in early May.

Mar. 10, 2006
I received an e-mail today from someone in Stoughton, MA, objecting to my entry of Feb. 10. They rightly pointed out that the town manager had no business putting up the Danish flag on the town's flagpole, since it wasn't his own. I had thought I had said that in my entry, and was disappointed with my self to discover I hadn't. I've edited the entry to make that clear.

My apologies.

Mar. 4, 2006
If you love freedom, you need to at least see what the fuss is about: Danish Cartoons

Shame on the newspapers who have refused to carry them.

Feb. 21, 2006
I'm looking forward to Bryant Gumbel's attacks on the NBA for not having enough white players.

Feb. 15, 2006
I've just added a bunch of writings that have been sitting around without being uploaded, so I recommend that my readers (do I have any? I've gotten e-mail about a number of the articles, but not about the blog) take a glance through this page to see what they haven't read. Wouldn't want to miss out on any of my brilliance.

Feb. 14, 2006
If we want to have an image of the goddess Liberty that's both updated, in the sense that it fits in with modern concepts of beauty, and traditional, in the sense that it's the old-fashioned young, beautiful, vibrant woman, it might be fun to look at female celebrities who fit that category. She'd also have to look good in a liberty cap. Any suggestions? My personal choice would be Parminder Nagra.

Feb. 10, 2006
In Stoughton, Massachusetts, the town manager of the town hall decided to fly the Danish flag under the American one to show solidarity with the Danes at this time when the Muslim world is showing that it doesn’t think much of freedom of the press. (At least, they don’t think much of freedom of the press when it offends them; it’s find to publish anti-Semitic cartoons). All hell broke loose. He certainly didn't have the right to do that, since it was the town's flagpole, not his, and he took it down once that was pointed out to him,

There were some some objections that were less justifiable, however. A veteran complained because he had taken the POW-MIA flag down to attach the Danish one. (I wonder when the whole POW-MIA flag thing will finally go away. It has its origin in the conspiracy fantasies of POWs still being held by North Vietnam, and should have been gotten rid of long ago. Why not honor the dead instead? But veterans groups are far too strong for politicians to take the risk. But I digress.) I’m disappointed to see a veteran feel that a symbol is more important than the values he served for.

Scarier still was that there were those who opposed it because they were afraid it would make Stoughton the target of terrorists. Let’s put aside the absurdity that terrorists would be interested in Stoughton, MA. Instead we should concentrate on the most appalling aspect: people were more concerned about their own safety than freedom of the press. I probably shouldn’t be too surprised, given the willingness of most Americans to give up their privacy to “fight the terrorists” and “keep the American people safe.” But freedom of the press? The very way that the government is kept honest, that we can prevent the rise of tyranny?

Maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised, though. I haven’t heard enough of an outcry against Bush’s contention that opposing his ideas is helping the terrorists. If we aren’t willing to defend freedom of the press in our own country, why should we be expected to defend it elsewhere?

Feb. 9, 2006
Books and articles on how to be an Urban Pagan are generally written from the point of view of “how to be a Pagan even if you live in a city.” We are told of ways in which Pagans can feel connected with nature; by going to parks, for instance, or communing with weeds in sidewalk cracks. The approach comes across as desperate: “My gods, how can I still be a Pagan when I live in a city?” It can even seem patronizing: “There, there, maybe you can’t be as Pagan as those of us who live in the country, but we’ll help you be Pagan enough.” What comes through clearly is that Paganism is a Nature-oriented religion, and that “Nature” is the opposite of “city.”

Is this a legitimate position, though? History tells us it can’t be. If Pagan is “Nature-oriented,” then the lower-class ancient Romans who lived in apartment buildings weren’t Pagans. Those who lived in Athens weren’t Pagans. The inhabitants of Babylon? Not Pagan. And most shocking of all, the Iron Age Celts, who lived in oppida, towns bigger than the Rome of their time, weren’t Pagan.

What’s going on here? Clearly our definition of Paganism as a “Nature-religion” is wrong. Or perhaps its our definition of “Nature” that has to change. I want to look at the second and see where it leads.

The place to start is to ask, “Why do people build cities?” For economic and administrative purposes, of course. But there is something more going on here. Dar Williams gives us the answer in her song, “The Mortal City:” “People built cities because they love other people.” We are social animals by nature. We have evolved that way, so that our gathering in groups is one of our survival techniques; it makes up for our lack of physical strength.

This goes strongly against the modern myth the individual against the world. It particularly goes against the American myth of the rugged individual taming the wilderness. It’s odd that we can keep this myth in our heads along with stories of barn raisings and wagon trains. Or even with itself: “taming the wilderness.” This was beautifully put in an episode of Taxi, where the men go to a cabin in the woods to “get in touch with Nature.” Hey, they were men after all, so surely they would know how to survive. When a bear makes off with the food they had cleverly placed outside to keep cold, they are faced with the prospect of starving until they’re picked up in a week. One of them says they had to think of the pioneers; what did the pioneers do in this kind of situation? Alex Reeger gives the right answer immediately: “They built cities and moved into them.”

People build cities. It’s what we do. We build cities like beavers build dams. And we need to build a Paganism that doesn’t look toward the countryside with Romantic fantasy. We need to create, or recreate, if we keep in mind Rome and the oppida, a version of Paganism appropriate to where the majority of Neo-Pagans, to cities. If Paganism is about recognizing one’s environment, we need to start with our own. If Paganism is about recognizing nature, we need to start with our own. We need to look at the city and its gods.

Jan. 24, 2006
Bush thinks he can break the law if it's necessary for national security.
Bush thinks he can decide what's necessary for national security.
Bush thinks he can do this without telling anyone or without explaining it if people do find out.
Bush thinks that criticizing his policies endangers national security.
Scared yet?

Jan. 7, 2006
If tolerance is a virtue, how should we treat those who are intolerant? If everyone’s values are to be seen as valid in some sense, what about those whose values say that ours is wrong? If we take tolerance to its extreme, we find ourselves in a very distasteful position, and if we don’t take it to its extreme, we find ourselves in the equally distasteful position of having to decide what values are to be allowed and what ones aren’t.

I believe the way out of this dilemma is found in the same distinction as is found between freedom and liberty. Freedom is when each person can do whatever they like. Liberty is when everyone is as free as possible. For instance, in a state in which there is no law against murder, each person is free to kill each other person. But to kill someone is to take away their freedom, so a truly free society isn’t free, because it allows individuals to take away the freedom of others. When there is a state of liberty, on the other hand, there are limits on each person’s freedom, but only such limits as to ensure as much freedom in a society as possible. When killing people is outlawed, we have limited each person’s freedom to kill. However, life is vital to the exercise of all freedoms. Thus, by limiting one freedom (to kill) we protect all the freedoms there are.

So what does this have to do with the question of tolerance? Just this: we may say that there is a state which allows for the greatest tolerance possible. This state, however, requires a degree of intolerance; just as liberty requires some limitations on freedom, so too that state requires limitations on tolerance. I call such a state “civility.” The analogy is freedom:liberty::tolerance:civility.

The questions that come up, of course, are what limitations are necessary to have a state of civility. This is something which will cause a fair amount of discussion, which will sometimes be acrimonious, dare I say intolerant? But that’s OK, because seeing civility as the virtue to be sought rather than tolerance we allow for disagreement, if civil of course. At the very least, however, I would say that the most basic requirement of civility is that no one try to force another to believe something they don’t, and that someone trying to change someone else’s mind doesn’t count as force. So chill, people; when I disagree with you, and try to change your mind without coercion, I’m not oppressing you, I’m being civil. Doesn’t that sound nice?

Jan. 5, 2006
Pat Robertson's hitman God's punished Ariel Sharon for wanting peace. My guess is that when he heard of the mine explosion his first thought was, "Damn; if only it had happened in Pennsylvania so I could have blamed it on the Intelligent Design decision in Dover."

Jan. 3, 2006
Thoughts While Reading Hume:

Why do we say that the watch has to have been made by human hands? It is not because its many parts work together in such a complex way. Rather, we infer that it was made by humans because we have seen other things made by humans that we view as similar to this watch in significant ways, and we have not seen items that we know were not made by humans that are similar to this watch in significant ways. This immediately causes a problem for the universe, because there is nothing significantly similar to it that we can make a comparison.

It’s useful to look at a category of things that can be either be crafted by human hand or not by human hands. Let’s choose patterns in beach sands as an example. We can tell instantly whether a pattern has been made by nature or by people, even though both are complex. We know this not because there is anything inherently human-like in one and non-human-like in the other, but because we have seen patterns we know were made by people and ones we know weren’t, and can compare our sample to those.

If we now look again at the analogy between the watch and the universe, we find the problem that although we can point to a category of objects into which the watch might fall we can’t find one into which the universe might fall. Is the universe like the watch, or like the wind-created sand patterns? We simply can’t say, since the universe is, by definition, the only thing in its category.

In the case of wind-patterns, we could easily sort each example into human/non-human categories. In the case of the watch, we can easily put this one example into a category which includes other watch-like objects.

We aren’t justified in saying that the universe must be divinely created, because we again have no category of divinely created objects with which to compare it.

Dec. 19, 2005
Watched Bush's speech last night. I was surprised that he didn't address the spying charges (which he had earlier admitted to, by the way). I wanted to shoot the TV a few times. Like when he praised the establishment of a constitutional government in Irag, something which he's opposed to at home. Or when he said that the terrorists didn't consider themselves bound by the rules of war, which he's also not fond of. I wonder how many people he fooled.

Dec. 18, 2005
So Bush authorized spying on American citizens without warrants. And the beat goes on. Of all the unconstitutional acts he's committed, this is surely the one most obviously so. Mr. President, read the Constitution you swore to uphold. I recommend starting with the IVth Amendment:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
The Vth Amendment might be of some use as well, in regards to "enemy combatants":
"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger ... nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

There is strong suspicion that the Administration has established secret prisons in other countries into which people can be "disappeared," as it was called under the dictator Pinochet. I think that at this point we could say that Bush is responsible for enough violations of not just the Constitution, but of the standards of liberty as believed in and expressed by the Founding Fathers, and of the consensus of nations,that he can properly be called a dictator himself. Way to go, guy.

Time for impeachment hearings. If Clinton could be impeached for perjury about a sex case, surely a trashing of the Constitution should qualify. Maybe the Republicans in Congress will finally realize how seriously their core beliefs have been violated by this Administration and do something about it. At least it's messed up the renewal of the Patriot Act. Not worth it happening, but great that it was revealed at this time.

President Bush, may the God by whom you took your presidential oath take retribution on you for your false swearing. And may all the gods of oaths, justice, and liberty join in.

Dec. 17, 2005
Bill of Rights Day was celebrated recently. A really cool thing happened -- I was listening to the 80s channel on Sirius satellite radio (hey, I usually listen to the Underground Garage, on which I've heard everything from the Monkees to the Ramones, with occasional forays into several alternative stations and a bluegrass one, so don't judge!), and the DJ not only mentioned the day, but went through the rights guaranteed by the Bill. I was surprised and impressed. It's a shame I had to be surprised, but still great.

Dec. 5, 2005
No entries lately, I've afraid. We've been having our house painted. This means moving things from room to room, and then back again. The painters did a lousy job, so we've also had to redo a fair portion of it. Today we're finally getting some of the stuff back in the rooms it belongs in. To make up for not having the time to write anything new, here's something I posted to the Religio Americana list:

Most of you know that I'm not very fond of the Statue of Liberty. One reason is that she's become a thing in herself, rather than an image of the real thing. Another is that she's become so canonized that it's hard for Americans to think of portraying her any other way. And there's the babe question; we don't see so many examples these days of things like Liberty and the Rocket, Liberty and the Cannon ("calling Dr. Freud!"), or Liberty and the Bomber. But here's a version of Liberty Enlightening the World that breaks her free: Jim Warren

Great symbolism; Liberty freeing herself from being a statue to become a young and beautiful woman.

Nov. 11, 2005
Have a blessed and reverent Veterans Day. Remember.

Oct. 30, 2005
A guest comment today, from Karen Dutton, one of the movers and shakers on the ADF American Paagnism list, and on the Religio Americana one. This is taken from a post to the ADF list, but could just as easily have been on RA.

"This is a place to exchange ideas, test out things, help folks clarify in their own minds their vision of what being an American Neopagan in the IE [Indo-European] tradition means, what an American Neopaganism might look like (and these two things might be different), etc. It isn't about setting up an American Neopagan orthodoxy, though, by any means."

Oct. 29, 2005
OK, this time I have an excuse. My computers died. Both of them. On the same day. Not a virus, though; one's hardware and the other software. The software one, on which I had my FTP, was fried to the point where the Circuit City people couldn't even get anything off it. We'd been thinking of getting a new one, anyway, and it finally gave me a chance to buy one of those cool thin screens. It would have been nice to get all of our files off, but in between the first one dying and the second one's demise, we copied the important ones. Since I now had to get a new FTP, I had something else to procrastinate about. Then I had to remember my user name and password. This was about two weeks ago. Sorry.

I have been doing some minor work, though. I added a few links, and cleaned out some old and dead ones. Right before the crash, I made some changes to my "What is Mithraism?" page -- I found some images that pretty much confirm my theory. Yay! So I invited those interested to take a look; the important bit is at the end.

I promise I'll be posting more soon. Really.

Sep. 9, 2005
Just a reminder that I'll be speaking at the Southeastern Massachusetts Pagan Pride Day tomorrow. I'll be given workshops on Mithraism (based on the essays on this site) and Cernunnos (based on a paper I gave at the Harvard Celtic Colloquium a few years ago).

Sep. 8, 2005
Here is a beautiful ritual written by Jenni Hunt for the victims of Katrina: Roman Litany for the Victims of Hurricane Katrina. Members of ADF will be performing it on Sunday at 6:00 PM Eastern Time. All are invited to join in, wherever they are.

Sep. 7, 2005
A wonderful Christian litany for the victims of Katrina: Monastic Mumblings. I recommend its reading to non-Christians as well. The site as a whole is very thoughtful and thought-provoking, definitely worth a look.

Sep. 5, 2005
I haven't set up my page on America yet, but I've put a number of Liberty images, which I don't think include any from my links page, here: Liberty . I also have a number of images of Cernunnos, or related to the question of what Cernunnos is about, here: Cernunnos . None of these are labelled, but they still might interest some.

Sep. 3, 2005
They did not go to sea, Divine Twins,
but the sea came to them.
Diwó Sunú, saviors at sea,
preserve the lives and health of the people of New Orleans,
and return them to happiness and prosperity.

Lugh, you who protect from storms,
repair the damage of this one.
Lugh, you who maintain the order of society,
repair the chaos of this one.
Lugh, you who are the true ruler,
show the mercy of the righteous king
towards those impoverished by this disaster.

Sep. 2, 2005
I've updated my calendar (finally).

August 29, 2005
I saw a car today with a bumper sticker reading, "It's One Nation Under GOD, or bite me and leave." Has it really come to this? Is there really so much anger from Evangelicals? Are people really this ignorant of American ideals, or, worse, this willing to give them up?

I have a question I want to ask specifically to those who think the Pledge of Allegiance should include the words "under God." I doubt anyone who thinks that is reading this blog, since they probably would have given up on it long ago. But if any of you are, could you tell me this: I know you think that we are "one nation under God," and I understand your wanting your children to believe it as well. But why do you think that other people's children should say they believe it as well?

August 27, 2005
Actually, something more important happened yesterday, by daughter's birthday. She's living in Cambridge (Massachusetts), and has both a car and a job. Why anyone would rent an apartment, sell a car, and give a job to a four-year old is beyond me.

Happy fourth birthday (for for the twentieth time)! I love you, kid.

August 26, 2005
He's ba-ack! No, the gap between this entry and the last isn't due to laziness. If you've tried to access this site in the last few months, you will have gotten an error message. What happened is that I was switching hosts because my previous one had gone out of business. There were lots of complications, ending with a phone call to Australia, but things are finally resolved.

I haven't been slacking off too much since last we met, though. There are a number of new things on the site. New prayers, poems and links, of course, but also a new page of the Nuit one, a mass to Her. There will be more new things to come, including hopefully (perhaps a "things your English teacher told you that are wrong" topic will be why it's OK to use "hopefully" that way) a whole new page on America. I just need to write a few essays and get the format set up.

But I'm back in the saddle again. Hide the women.

May 10, 2005
Things your English teacher told you that are wrong, number 3: English has a past tense which is called the “perfect tense.”

A “tense” expresses the time an action occurs. “Perfect,” however, is an aspect. An aspect refers to the state of an action. The perfect aspect means that something is complete. “I walked” describes something that happened in the past, with no sense of whether it is completed or not. “I was walking” describes something that has the aspect of being incomplete, but still in the past. “I have walked,” however, describes an aspect of completeness. And what is the time of that completeness? It’s the present. The perfect “tense” describes something as being complete right now.

So, bottom line -- the “perfect tense” isn’t a tense, it’s an aspect, and its unmodified form is in the present, not the past.

May 9, 2005
I've added prayers and poems. And the links just keep rolling along.

April 25, 2005
The best solution to the debate over the Pledge of Allegiance is to replace it. Why have generations of children been pledging allegiance to a flag, anyway? Why not to what that flag stands for? We don't even have to write a replacement; one already exists -- "The American Creed." Here it is, something that I can get behind.

I believe in the United States of America as a Government of the People, by the People, for the People;
whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed;
A democracy in a republic, a sovereign Nation of many Sovereign States; a perfect Union, one and inseparable;
established upon those principles of Freedom, Equality, Justice, and Humanity for which American Patriots sacrificed their Lives and Fortunes. I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to Love it;
to Support its Constitution;
to obey its laws;
to Respect its Flag;
and to defend it against all enemies.

April 19, 2005
Two-hundred thirty years ago about seventy-five frightened men stood on a bridge in Concord, Massachusetts and waited for seven-hundred soldiers of the best army in the world to come marching towards them. They started to fall back when ordered to do so by the commander of the British, but then someone fired a shot. No one knows who fired it, or even which side, but it started the American Revolutionary War. Even when the story is stripped of legend, it is myth in the best sense: a story which is true even if it didn't happen. But this one is true. Remember that; when the greatest enemy imagined moves toward you, you may start to fall back, but once the battle is begun, you fight. And if you're dogged enough, and smart enough, and can win the right friends, you just may win.

Concord Hymn
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood;
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps,
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream that seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We place with joy a votive stone,
That memory may their deeds redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

O Thou who made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free, --
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raised to them and Thee.

April 13, 2005
I have an unfashionable taste to confess -- I love Norman Rockwell. He’s particularly unfashionable among intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals. He’s seen as at best depicting a white-bread and mayonnaise image of an America that never existed, and at worst establishing that image as the real America, excluding everyone and everything that doesn’t fit it. Of course, others dismiss his art as being sentimental and manipulative kitsch.

Those who have these opinions may doubt my qualifications to have my own. After all, I don’t have the sort of education in art history and criticism to judge art by the official and approved criteria. (It’s funny how the art community complains that society doesn’t value art, while at the same time creating art they know most people won’t be able to understand.) I’m not just an “I don’t know art, but I know what I like” type, though, since I’m constitutionally incapable of not analyzing things. In the case of art, my analysis is that art’s job is to communicate. If it doesn’t, then it’s the visual equivalence of speaking a language that no one or at best the properly educated few understand. My opinion is that whether art is good depends on how well it communicates its message and the quality of that message. The critics who see Rockwell’s art as kitsch are saying that his message is simple and shallow, or that we only like it because we already know it. In their view, there’s no novelty in it, no way in which he is making us see something new and meaningful. To them, I would suggest a closer look at art history, paying attention to whether ancient and medieval art was intended to make people view the world in a different way, to push the envelope (is anyone else sick of that expression?), or whether it was created to express shared beliefs and experiences.

Rockwell’s art performs this latter function brilliantly. It expresses common values, reinforcing what we already know. That alone serves the purpose of giving value to our everyday; by putting it into art, he has said that our lives are worth preserving in an artistic record. I have to wonder if his critics are criticizing our everyday lives as much as Rockwell.

Rockwell goes beyond valorizing our lives by expressing them for us, though. He doesn’t just provide us with a moment of recognition of our own current experiences. By drawing on our memories, even of a time that didn’t really exist, his art links up to the past, and by making us see the continuity of feeling, emphasizes the universality of human experience. The forms change, but the essence remains the same. When we see a Rockwell painting and see something we have felt, or could have felt, we are less alone. Others feel something that has a meaning to us, we are part of a shared humanity.

My criticism of the critics go beyond this, though. Those who think of Rockwell’s art as safe haven’t seen much of it. Or if they have, they haven’t noticed that many of his paintings present values that aren’t easy ones. In his almost hyper-realistic way, he makes it impossible for us to deny them. Confronted by his paintings, we realize that we don’t hold the values we thought we did, even that we don’t hold the ones we think we should hold. Perhaps through the shock we can be motivated to change that.

Nor is his artistic technique simple. Look at Homecoming Marine. Ostensibly it’s of a soldier who’s returned from the war, telling his glorious war stories. But look closely at his face, look how he holds the Japanese flag. He’s hesitant, gentle; he’s seen things he doesn’t want his audience to hear. He’s tired, and his soul is old before it’s time. Look now at the face of the man at the back on the right. He knows. At first glance he looks proud, happy even. But look more closely. He's gone inside his own mind, and the look on his face -- I just spent the last five minutes trying to come up with the words to describe it. A waste of time; just look at the painting and you'll see. This isn’t the cheerful memory we’re used to seeing from Rockwell.

Sometimes the message is more subtle. Look at this painting: . You can’t say that Rockwell’s hitting us in the face here. But think of the period, and think of what is going on. A black family is moving into a white neighborhood in Moving In (or is it the other way round?). We don’t see the adults who might be upset or afraid about it. We see children. There is curiousity, and some apprehension, of course. There is even a touch of humor; the blacks have a white cat and the whites a black dog. But look at the what the boys are holding behind their backs. We can predict that they will find common ground. How can an adult look at this painting and not see that if children of different races meet each other without our butting in they will grow up knowing that they are essentially the same?

In Scouters the message is more subtle still. There is no confrontation in this one. One of the scouts is simply black.

However, here is one that isn’t even close to subtle, and which is superb in its composition: The Problem We All Live With. This is a painting designed to shame adults who oppose integration into changing their opinions, or least not to act on them. Look at the girl. How can you avoid looking at her; the entire picture is designed to draw you in. Her spotless dress is a pure white; a light seems to come from here. She is innocence itself. Anyone who would oppose her, then, would be opposing innocence.

The only other strong color comes from the tomatoes smashed on the wall. They drip like blood. But they’ve missed the girl. The hate, the intended blood, haven’t touched her. But it has in its own way, hasn't it? She isn't really purely innocent. Look at her face. She's scared. Scared, but determined. She's looking straight forward, and will see this through.

Now look at the wall above her head, where "Nigger" has been scrawled. The girl is carrying school books, she is carrying education, and opposed to that is a scrawl.

Surrounding her we see her guards. We don’t really see them, though, only parts of them. Who are they? Rockwell doesn’t want us to know. If we did, we could relax in the knowledge that the job was being done by someone else. We wouldn’t have to do anything about it ourselves. But instead we have anonymous presences, and we project our own faces onto them. We want to protect that little girl.

There she walks, the only truly human thing in the picture. By comparison with the faceless gray-suited men around her, she is a living human being. She is young, innocent, luminous. We can’t deny it: we have to stand either with her, or with the blood on the wall.

There are many other of Rockwell's paintings with political and, for their time, radical, meanings. Some do it with humor: The Family Portrait of these WASPS includes buccaneers and Indians. But his masterpiece of shear brutal confrontation is Southern Justice (Murder in Mississippi).

Rockwell painted some simple subjects which still served an important function. And he created some complex paintings which have even more important functions. But everything he painted was true. And isn’t truth what art is about?

April 12, 2005
The rituals are in. I still have some essays on ritual to load. Ritual is soon going to have its own page on the level with Mithraism. I've added some a Nuit rosary file, and created that kind of level page for her. There's one more ritual to be put together for that page. I've added to the Wicca page an essay on the history of the Legend of the Descent of the Goddess, as well as a version I wrote of the Legend I wrote a while back. I've put two essays on Paganism on the "And the Rest" page. And, of course, links. I think that in the last few weeks I've at least tripled the size of this site.

March 30, 2005
I've added some pages to "And The Rest." I've added a fair number, in fact. That's because I've been putting them together over the last month or so, and have finally figured out how to add the. So they were all ready to put in at once. I'm going to be turning "Miscellaneous Thoughts on Ritual" into a folder with the name "Ritual" soon, with both those essays and some actual rituals. It's a bit of a pain turning the rituals into HTML, though, so figure a week or two. Tomorrow I may even have some thoughts on the deteriorating shape of models, and then soon one on an unfashionable artistic taste of mine. Stay tuned.

March 28, 2005
For a long time now I've only been adding links to the less important parts of my site, things like Celtic Primary Texts and Linguists. I've now done some work on the more important part, the Unclassified section. Want to know about wombats? Who's dead? When the end of the world is, and what you can do about it? Now you can.

March 24, 2005
I saw a sticker on a pickup that said "Life is Good." It had a trademark symbol next to it. Yes, I know it's a slogan for a clothing et al. company, but come on -- you can trademark "life is good?" I guess if you do it with "Just Do It," you can do it with anything.

March 23, 2005
Sorry for the lapse in entries. I was finishing up a paper to deliver at a Celtic conference, and didn't have time for much else. I'm back, though, so we'll see what happens.

March 11, 2005
I am now selling copies of A Book of Pagan Prayer through this site. The price is $17.00, with free shipping. I'll be autographing them as well. Good deal. I prefer payment through Paypal, but checks or money orders will also work. E-mail me for orders.

March 10, 2005
I've finally added something to "And the Rest." Check it out. There'll be more there very shortly, now that I've figured out how to do it, as well as a new essay on the "Wicca" page about the origins of the scourge in Gardnerian Wicca.

And of course, new links.

Mar. 1, 2005
Score one for the good guy. The US District Court for the District of South Carolina has ruled that Jose Padilla must be charged with a crime within 45 days or released. Well, duh. Does the administration really think it can detain someone for as long as it likes without giving them a chance to defend themselves in court? Apparently they do, and they are appealing. This is something to watch; you can't get more tyrannical than putting people away because you think they're a "danger." For now, though, the administration is on the defensive.

Feb. 15, 2005
Over a month, huh? Some things have gotten in the way -- a trip to Disneyworld (yes, again), a pinched nerve (still hurts; thank God it happened on the way back from Disneyworld), a major research project (I'm writing a paper to be delivered at the Berkeley Celtic Conference in March), and some good old-fashioned procrastination. But I'm back, and I'll be posting some new essays here soon.

In the meantime, I've changed the Nekter ritual to the new version (it's very different, so if you've read the old one you might want to take a peek) and eliminated the old solitary version. I did add the promised section on domestic religion, though, which is a lot more useful anyway. There are also some small changes to the PIE pronunciation guide.

I hope that later today I'll be adding our protogrove's meeting and ritual dates and times to the calendar.

And I've added a bunch of prayers. Busy day.

Jan. 13, 2004
The preparation of the Nekter ritual has been updated. Some more links have been added as well.

Dec. 30, 2004
I've updated the PIE ritual material, except for the Nekter rituals, and most of the deities. The Nekter rituals will be done soon, I think. I'm going to be eliminating the solitary Nekter ritual, because recent research has convinced me that communality is essential to Nekter consumption. So if you want the ritual for yourself, copy it off now. I'm hoping to add a section on the domestic cult to make up for the loss.

I've decided to keep consonantal [y] spelled "y;" I don't see any confusion arising from using it for both this and indicating palatalization. And "Westja" just looked funny.

Dec 14, 2004
I've started to make some changes to my PIE material. Most of these will be because of increased knowledge of the language, others will be because of an increase knowledge of the religion, and some will be just because I don't like the way I said things the first time. An example of the first is that I've decided to include the laryngeals. The laryngeals are PIE sounds that are usually written as H1, H2, and H3. Their pronunciation has been debated, which was one reason I wasn't using them, but I think that there's enough of a consensus now to justify adding them. The system I am using will be H1 = h, H2 = x, and H3 = q. The sound of the second laryngeal, for which I'm using x is the German hard ch, the sound found in "Bach." "X" is the IPA symbol for this sound, so this shouldn't cause any confusion. There are two competing sounds for H3, one [xw] and one which is written with the Greek gamma. The first is a labialized [x], i.e., an x pronounced with rounded lips. The second is a voiced [x]. I've decided to go with the gamma pronunciation, because as Michael Weiss points out H3 causes voicing, so it should itself be voiced. Because a gamma might not show up on some servers, I've decided to write it a "q." By using this notation, not only do the PIE words become closer to what they were in PIE times, but those who disagree with these values for the laryngeals can remove them with not difficulty.

I'll also be making changes in the spellings of some of the sounds. For instance, there are two sounds, palatal [g] and palatal [k] that I haven't been able to indicate (they're usually written with either a circumflex or an accent over the letter). Following the system used by Piotr Gasiorowski I'll be indicating them with a "y" after the "g" or "k." This necessitates a replacement for "y," so, again following Piotr, I'm going to be using "j" for consonantal "y." There will be some other changes, but for those will be explained in the pronunciation guide when I update that.

These changes will result in new forms of some words, including deity names, such as "Westya" becoming "Westja," and "Aryomen" becoming "Xarjomen." The most important change is probably "Artus" becoming "Xartus." For a while there'll be some confusion as I change over to the new pages, but if you see an x, q, ky, or gy on a page you'll know I've made the shift. I have faith you'll keep up.

Dec. 12, 2004
I have a suggestion which could save a lot of people a lot of aggravation: store your remotes under the couch cushions. Whenever they're lost, you spend a lot of time looking other places, and then they usually end up under the couch cushions, so if you stored them there you could just look there first.

Of course, then they'd probably end up getting lost by being on the coffee table in front of the couch.

Dec. 11, 2004
When Marcia got her nose bashed in by the football, she should have dumped the Big Man on Campus and gone with Charlie not just because the BMOC showed that he was shallow and Charlie showed that he cared about the inner Marcia, but because the BMOC showed that he was stupid and Charlie showed he was smart. Marcia would heal and become hot again, so the BMOC either didn't realize this (stupid), or did but thought that avoiding any momentary embarassment was more important than having a shot at her once she became hot again. Charlie, on the other hand, could figure that now that Marcia had been dumped by the BMOC he could get in good with her, and eventually have a hot girlfriend. Smart boy, that Charlie.

Or maybe not. I don't remember seeing Charlie as Marcia's boyfriend in later episodes. Maybe once Marcia was hot again she dumped him.

Dec. 4, 2004
As an aside to yesterday’s entry, I would like to observe that just as men are attracted to women largely for their beauty, so women are attracted to men largely because of their success. Otherwise, how would you explain Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones?

Dec. 3, 2004
Today the words of a song from Hair were going through my head:

I would just like to say that it is my opinion
that longer hair, and other flamboyant affectations
of appearance are nothing more
than the male’s emergence from hid drab camouflage,
into the gaudy plumage which is the birthright of his sex.
There is a peculiar notion that elegant plumage and fine feathers
are not proper for the male,
when actually
that is the way things are,
in most species.

It’s an interesting argument, and one that is often heard for other practices, such as homosexuality: it’s found in other species, so it must be natural; after all, animals have no culture. (May I be quite clear that I’m not advocating any position on homosexuality; as should be quite clear from other entries in this blog, I am a strong supporter of gay rights. However, I suspect that the causes of homosexuality vary, especially between men and women, so that to say that it’s either genetic or cultural is an oversimplification. The question really should receive more research. Unfortunately, this isn’t in the interests of either side of the debate, so what research is going on is limited and receives limited distribution. But I digress.) This is a gross misunderstanding of the word “natural.” If something is natural, then it is to be taken in the context of the species being discussed – it’s natural for birds to live in trees, and we can hardly say that because of this it’s natural for dogs to.

We are human beings, homo sapiens, and any discussion of “natural” has to be placed firmly in that fact. That means that many aspects of our cultures, including morality, as I’ve suggested earlier, are innate parts of being human. That is the context in which we have to argue whenever we are arguing about what is “natural” to human beings.

So what does this have to do with the song in question? It’s relevance is that even so simply a question as whether it’s “natural” for men to wear their hair long or short has to do with what it means to be human. And oddly enough, I would like to argue that even though men are genetically equipped to have long hair, there is indeed a natural reason for certain men to wear their hair short.

Humans have evolved for a certain social structure to be natural. We naturally organize ourselves into groups, particularly ones based on genetic linkages, but also on mutual advantage, such as the increased ability of groups to defend themselves and coordinate activities such as hunting, and on friendship. Friendship is natural because of our social wiring; we simply don’t like to be alone all the time; those who do are rare, and it might be argued that they are a sort of aberration.

Because we live in groups, sexual relationships are extremely important. Further, there is a sort of alpha male situation, not as strong as in such species as lions, but still operating. What happens is that people have a biological imperative to produce children who will survive to the point where they themselves will be able to produce children. For men this means looking for beautiful women, since our judgments of beauty (within some cultural variations) are primarily based on health and ability to bear children. Women we consider the most beautiful tend to be ones that are symmetrical, which we unconsciously associate with health. And despite cultural variations, men tend to prefer women with a particular waist to hip ratio, which turns out to be one especially well-suited for bearing children.

Women are also looking for the symmetry of health, but because in the communities in which we evolved child rearing was primarily a woman’s job, and because not only does a woman looking after a child need both protection and the supplying of food, but a pregnant one even more so, women are programmed to prefer men who can both protect and provide.

But what does “protect and provide” mean? In some cultures, protection is of extreme importance, and those cultures will have developed standards of male attractiveness that tie in with that. When they develop into cultures in which protection is no longer of such importance, there will still be a lag time before the culture adjusts. A good example of this kind of culture is Iron Age Ireland, where male beauty was described in martial terms. Now, in any warrior culture there is actual a minimum of fighting, since that does neither the individuals nor society any good; dead men not only can’t tell tales, they also aren’t of much use protecting and providing. This is replaced by display of attributes connected in some way with power. Luxurious hair is one of them, and so we find the Irish heroes with particularly impressive hair.

In other cultures, however, providing is more important than protection, and this kind of culture the martial displays are demoted and other aspects of appearance become prominent. American culture is of this type. Despite the existence of subcultures in which display is prominent, as we especially find in teenagers, and despite changes in the economic status of women, the ability to provide is most important on a very unconscious level. Female nurses still tend to marry male doctors rather than the male nurses they work with.

In a culture based on providing, since display is less important, practicality rises. A man who spends too much time on his hair has less time to provide. In America there is also the cultural influence of the cowboy; despite the emphasis in movies on his protecting from criminals and Injuns, notice that his very identity as “cowboy” means that he is protecting the wealth of cattle – he is providing. And the cowboy wears his hair short, at least in the cultural image of him. Workers in other fields tend to wear their hair short as well; long hair isn’t advantageous when working with power equipment of any sort, and is even downright dangerous. American providers therefore tend to have short hair.

Even American protectors tend to have short hair. Short, even almost non-existent, hair is useful in soldiers, since that makes hair easier to keep hygieanic, an extremely important concern under battlefield conditions. Long hair can also get in one’s eyes, limiting both aim and the ability to perform tasks that involve bending over. The equation of short hair and soldiers creates an image of the short-haired protector, which is then co-opted by such groups as the police. There is therefore a strong incentive for American culture to value short hair.

So it might be said that neither short nor long hair are “natural.” What’s natural is for human males to wear their hair in such a way that signals to human females the things that they are naturally conditioned, i.e., programmed by evolution, to value, protection and provision. How these are provided, and therefore how signaled, will vary with cultures, and hair length will vary accordingly. Looking at other species can tell us the importance of displays of what is necessary to achieve mates who will carry on our genes. It won’t tell us, however, either what we need from mates to make this succeed, or how we’ll be able to tell those who meet those needs. That’s where culture kicks in.

Dec. 1, 2004
Often found in citations
for the Medal of Honor
or the Victoria Cross,
and unwritten as well
for those who have lived
for those they love:
“Disregarding his own wounds …”

Nov. 28, 2004
I recently added a lot of links to images of Liberty. I found them through Google searches for “Liberty Goddess,” “Freedom Goddess,” etc. There are a couple of things that I learned from the search and the images.

First, I was amazed at how many images there actually are. I knew that before the heads of presidents were put on coins, they used Liberty. I think that that’s a good idea. Although the presidents are required to have been dead a decent amount of time, there’s something imperial or monarchical about that which violates American principles. I suggest that Congress and the U. S. Mint listen to the people and put Liberty on the dollar coins they keep trying to push on us.

I was amazed and disappointed that so many of the images that I found were of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor (the official name of the statue is “Liberty Enlightening the World,” and the poem by Emma Lazarus on its base calls it the “Mother of Exiles”). It’s an amazing statue, but it seems that once it was built few other images were made. Coins still went through a variety of images, but in the popular mind the Statue of Liberty is the only version. I’d like to see a revival of the earlier tradition, especially with younger and softer versions of Her.

It was a bit of a shock to see Her in other countries. That I was surprised makes me a little sad, since it implies a bit that I don’t think other countries are free. I don’t think that’s the case, though; I think that what surprised me was that other countries saw Her as an important image. America didn’t grow, it was invented. Because of this, there is a strong awareness of the reasons for why it was invented. Frequently expressing these reasons by depicting them is therefore natural.

I should have thought, however, that there are other countries who were either invented or reinvented, and some of these use Liberty in their imagery, especially on coins. France wasn’t a big surprise, of course, since it is one of the reinvented countries, whose betrayed revolution was inspired by our own. But Mexico? This isn’t to insult Mexico; I was just surprised that images of Her would be an important part of their culture.

Best of all was the realization of how She had been played around with, especially the New York version. She’s been portrayed in ways from the intensely political to the obscene. For the first, see the photo of the young woman in the part of “Liberty with Eyes of Blood.” I think she’s one of the best versions I’ve ever seen. (If you’re out there and would like to be identified, let me know and I’ll add your name.) The shock here is that people seem to think that Liberty belongs to them. Imagine that.

So check out some of the links. Maybe you, like me, will “take increased devotion to that cause” of Liberty. These days we can use it.

Nov. 26, 2004
One of the things that cause arguments in married couples is how Christmas is celebrated. Because my wife is Catholic, we celebrate Christmas, and even though I’m a Pagan, I have strong ideas of how it should be done. That shouldn’t be a big surprise, since Pagans are traditionalists.

My wife and I were pleased to learn that we shared the most important traditions. The Christmas season begins when the Santa at the end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. OK, so the Macy’s bit is kind of weird, but that the Christmas season starts after Thanksgiving is important, I think. Otherwise, Thanksgiving disappears, being demoted into a day off which precedes a big day for shopping.

The thing that causes the biggest arguments is when to put up the tree. The answer to this question is quite simple: you put it up at the beginning of Christmas. And Christmas begins at sundown on Dec. 24. Before that it’s Advent. As a Catholic, my wife observes Advent. It’s a nice tradition, providing a way to prepare for Christmas. Also, if the tree is put up then, its decoration becomes not a question of when to do it, but ritual of its own, associated a special time. Best of all, you don’t get sick of it before Christmas arrives.

The actual decorating ritual involves all of us hanging decorations. Each of them is different, so each of them has a story – where they were bought and why. We tell many of them as each is placed. The last thing put up is an angel on top. This is a rather ratty thing made of colored burlap and yarn glued onto a cardboard base. I bought it for the first Christmas after we were married, on Christmas Eve, just as a stop-gap measure because I realized that we needed one. My wife’s never been particularly fond of it, so a few years ago she bought a beautiful teddy-bear one. As a traditionalist, I was against it, but I agreed to use it if my daughter approved. That was cheating, because I knew how much of a traditionalist she is; even more than me. She was appalled at the very idea of replacing the ratty burlap and yarn angel, and we took it back.

And when does Christmas end? On Jan. 6, Twelfth Night. That’s when the tree comes down. This means that the tree is up for the period of Christmas; not before, and not after. As a result, the tree means Christmas; it provides a central image of the season.

Another Twelfth Night tradition of ours is based on the fact that it’s Epiphany, the celebration of when the Magi reached Bethlehem. We put a creche up Christmas Eve (because Christmas doesn’t start until then and it doesn’t make much sense for Jesus to be put in the creche before he’s born), but the Magi aren’t in it, because they haven’t arrived yet. Instead they’re placed on the other side of the room, and each day they get a bit closer. On Twelfth Night they arrive.

Nov. 25, 2004
Happy Thanksgiving! This is a holiday that people from other countries don’t get. “What do you do on it?” “We get together with family and friends and have a big meal.” “But what else?” “Nothing special, nothing we wouldn’t do any other time we all get together.” “But why?” “Well, technically we’re supposed to be giving thanks for all the things we have, but even though we might say a prayer about that before the meal, it’s mostly about getting together and eating a meal.” A little hard to understand.

Every year newspapers run cooking articles with recipes for new Thanksgiving dishes. They’re missing the whole point: if Thanksgiving is about getting together for a meal, what the meal consists of is important. Few things are more tradition-bound than a Thanksgiving menu. The vast majority of Americans include turkey at the center of the meal, and certain other foods are pretty standard – stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, etc. The fact that these are eaten by so many people is important; that we’re all eating the same sort of thing ties Americans together. There are also variations, though, with different foods being traditional in different families. For instance, my daughter is quite insistent not only on cranberry sauce, but that it be the jellied kind from the can “with the rings on it.”

This all means that although we’re eating sort of the same thing as other Americans, we’re also eating what our own family specifically eats, and sometimes what only our family eats. By eating the Thanksgiving meal, we are defining our family both as part of American society and as separate from it. Maybe this anthropological interpretation can explain Thanksgiving to foreigners.

But that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we get together with family and friends and eat a meal. Enjoy!

Nov. 24, 2004
I’ve added a bunch of links, especially in a new category, “Images of Liberty.” In did a Google image search on “Liberty,” and was amazed at how many coins and pictures showed up. I’ve been writing a lot of prayers lately as well, some of which I’ll be putting on the prayer page. Who knows, someday soon I might even figure out how to add pages, and I’ll put up some material on ritual and set up a section on America; I’m working on an exegesis on the Declaration of Independence and an essay on why America wasn’t founded on Christian principles. Stay tuned.

Nov. 21, 2004
Pine needles in a wind
left behind after a storm
fall on me like rain.

Nov. 20. 2004
I am a huge Beatles fan. I have every album they released, and a fair number they didn’t. It should come as no surprise that I’m also a big fan of the Welsh Mabinogi. So imagine my pleasure when, while reading the booklet that comes with Let It Be … Naked. I ran across Paul’s saying, “Ancient Welsh saying: a Fo bid bont. ‘He who would be head, let him be the bridge.’ It comes from the myth of Bendigeidran, who bridged the Irish Seas with his own body so that his people could cross over.” He even quoted it in Welsh. Pretty cool.

Nov. 18. 2004
Today is my wife’s birthday. She is a truly amazing woman. What I like best about her is her intensity – she cares. Whether it is her heart breaking in compassion for little things that suffer, or her professional ethic furious when someone at work insists on doing something stupid, she cares. She cares so much, in fact, that sometimes she hurts from it. But we all play a price for our best parts.

When we’d been married a year or two, I wrote my first poem for her. I’ve written quite a few since, and I may post them some time, but here is the first:

It I should come upon Thee unawares,
bathing in Thy pool, O Goddess,
Do not treat me roughly.
I am no impious Actaeon,
come to ravish.
Thy nymphs may keep their innocence
and Thy sanctity remain unstained.
It is for Your presence I am thirsting,
come from the great desert.
And if Your hand will not be stayed,
I am still content.
It is enough to have felt Your touch
and to be taken in by You at last.

Nov. 17, 2004
While Googling my name (hey, we all do it), I ran across this site: Cadre: Christian Colligation of Apologetics Debate Research and Evangelism., which links to my Mithraism essay. A link from a Christian apologetics site -- how cool is that? I'm hoping that some of the Evangelicals who follow the link read the rest of the site. If any of you are out there, let me know, OK?

Nov. 9, 2004
Today is the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is a day to be held sacred by all who love liberty.

When I was kid I went to East Berlin. My father was stationed in Germany, and we went to Berlin a few times. And there I saw the Wall – the old wall, with its bricks and barbed wire, and with buildings with bricked-up windows; and the new wall, the one with the gleaming white concrete and an asbestos tube on top, too smooth to grab onto, with the mines, and the tank obstacles, and the ditches, and the dogs, and the machine gunners with orders to shoot to kill, orders they had obeyed many times. I went to a museum with photos of those who tried to escape, those who made it and those who died trying. I saw how they had tried, jumping from upper stories of the bricked-up buildings, before they too had been closed – perhaps to be caught by waiting Westerners, perhaps to land on the cobblestones, injured or dead – or making their way through the sewers before they too were closed off, or tunneling, or crashing through barriers in a car filled with concrete. But I saw more on this trip – I saw East Berlin.

My family took a bus tour there. We went through Checkpoint Charlie, where border guards armed with machine guns ran a mirror on wheels under the bus, to make sure that no one was clinging to the bottom. On the eastern side of the wall, I saw a grey world. I saw a grey city, with grey people. In 1967 I saw bomb damage from WWII that hadn’t been repaired, I saw rubble that had been buildings. I saw East Berlin.

The wall came down in part because of a mistake. The East German government had planned to announce that its citizens would be able to travel to the West with passports and visas, but instead said that the Wall would be opened. When the East Berliners heard this, they went to the Wall in the thousands. The guards didn’t know what to do, calls were made, confusion reigned, and the guards ended up letting people through. What else could they have done; there only alternative was to begin shooting. And the people came.

They came from the East, but then they started to come from the West too. The border had crumbled, and soon the Wall started to crumble too. Hammers, and sledges, and chisels appeared, and the chipping away began. Order was eventually restored, but the Wall couldn’t last long, and the chipping resumed. The Wall fell.

A few years ago I took some courses at UMass, and some days I saw Communists handing out literature, and I wanted to shake them. I wanted to shake them hard, and scream at them, “Have you been to Berlin?” But they wouldn’t have understood.

But I went to Berlin. I went to the Wall. I went to East Berlin. And I know.

So tonight before I go to bed, I will hold a piece of the Wall, and say a prayer of thanks to those who broke it apart. I will say a prayer to those who died at the Wall, thinking that risking their life for freedom was a clear choice. I will say to them that they can rest now, the Wall is down.

The Wall is down!

Nov. 5, 2004
A few days ago, John McCain appeared on the Tonight Show, and as usual made trouble. When asked why he hadn’t agreed to run as vice president with Kerry he said that he belonged to the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. This is a code expression of his commitment to the Republican party that existed before the Neo-Conservatives took over, a party dedicated to freedom, the environment, and keeping government small and out of people’s faces.

Later he said that Bush should appoint some Democrats to his cabinet, suggesting Joe Liebermann for Attorney General. Another bit of trouble-making; a nice way of lamenting the excesses of John Ashcroft.

Give ‘em hell, John. We’re depending on you to keep the Neo-Cons in check.

Nov. 4, 2004
The only thing that's keeping me going is knowing that the Republicans don't have enough votes in the Senate to end a filibuster. Still, these words keep running through my head:

"That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends ..."
"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism ..."

Nov. 3, 2004
Vote for Liberty.


Oct. 24, 2004
My wife thinks I’m mean because of the great glee that I got from Ashlee Simpson’s crash and burn on Saturday Night Live last night. For those who didn’t see it, when she started “singing” her second song it became clear that what she was “signing” wasn’t the song that was on the tape. In other words, she was lip-syncing to a recorded track. After a few moments of confusion and some abortive dance steps, she ran off the stage. The band played on until a fadeout. I swear I saw smirks on their faces. At the end of the show, she blamed it on the band, saying they’d started the wrong song.

My wife thinks I shouldn’t take such pleasure at someone else’s misfortune. I disagree. The whole thing was dishonest in the extreme. There is Simpson was presenting something that she claimed was live when it wasn’t. There is her blaming the mistake on the band (what mistake could there be if she was performing live?). There is her father/manager saying the next day that she was only using the tape because she had a sore throat from acid reflux. (One would wonder why such a tape was so readily available.) There is Simpson saying in an interview that she would never lip sync in a concert. Worst of all, however, it is obvious that there are those around her who keep telling that she can sing when she can’t.

Why does this matter? Why should I not just get a life? The big answer is that truth matters, no matter in what. There are also other impacts. If we are presented with fakes often enough, we not only lose the ability to tell the fake apart from the real, but we may even think there’s no difference. If we start cutting those with no talent slack, we devalue actual talent. If we reward someone with a record deal, concert performances, money, and fame because they are related to another famous person, above those who have done the work (in this case the band) to become good at what they do, then we are saying that hard work is less important than good relatives. So this is not just a pop star crashing and burning. It’s an effect and cause of the dumbing down of our culture.

So sorry, Ashlee. You’re very decorative, but that won’t carry you far. At least it shouldn’t.

Oct. 23, 2004
I saw a card today with a picture of a frog sitting on a skateboard, and I though it would make a good curse: “Frog on a skateboard, are you nuts?” Then I thought of a better idea. A frog has a great way of getting around that it’s perfect at. A skateboard is a great way of getting around, but not for a frog. So I’d like to present the world with a new expression that means “Doing something that works beautifully for someone else but isn’t for you, when you’ve already got something that is best for you.” So “Don’t be such a frog on a skateboard!”

Oct. 18, 2004
A prayer for the presidential election:

It’s not your hands I’m voting with, Demokratia,
so don’t let anyone try to tell you that.
I mean, really, what would be the point?
If my vote isn’t independently given it’s not under your blessing.
It’s only when I don’t ask you how to vote that I can really honor you.
Freedom is your worship.

Oct. 13, 2004
While out driving today I thought I’d try an experiment by writing short poems on random things that I saw. It was a fun exercise, and I thought I’d post them here. I won’t say they’re brilliant, but some might prove interesting.

Driving in October

Above the clouds the sky is blue, they say.
Don’t listen to them,
or at least put them to one side,
and let the rain fall.

The end of a maple leaf is more beautiful that that of a nail.
But the nail holds our houses together.

The wheel touches the road only an instant before going on.
It the not touching that makes it useful.

How long is the road home?
How many years have you walked it?
“If you lived here, you’d be home now.”
Make the road your home.

These old eyes can’t always read distant signs.
I guess their meanings from the shapes and lengths of the words,
not knowing if I’m right till I’m quite near
If I’m wrong, then I’m lost –
Well, lost isn’t such a bad thing.

The cold metal rails cut the curving land.
The dead wooden ties press down the soft dirt.
The spat-out smoke blackens the clear sky. But oh, the journey!

I’d thought the mewing gulls sounded perfect on the summer’s beach,
but in the leaf-carrying wind I realize I was wrong.

Rough rubs smooth with time.
Grey soft stone walls in the woods
were rocks dragged with curses out of fields being cleared.
Beauty from tired muscles and frustration.
Rough rubs smooth with time.

Today’s clouds will tonight cover the stars.
But if one should shine through a wind-torn hole
how beautiful its sparkles will be!

Leaves move with the wind.
Bare branches move on their own,
writhing in a dance with the grey sky.

Even though the hedge would be easy enough to push through,
the gateway, with white posts and grey lattice sides, is beautiful,
and is used out of courtesy.

Oct. 8, 2004
I had an interesting experience last night. I was saying my evening prayers, and during the one to Liberty I started running through the different images of her – the Mother of Exiles in New York, Armed Freedom on top of the capitol – the versions on coins – and suddenly there was an explosion of light in my head. She was there. I decided to take the opportunity of being in her presence to ask her to open the eyes of Americans to the threats to her, but she refused. She said that she didn’t make anyone do anything. But she promised that when Americans did open their eyes, she would be there for them to see.

So I don’t know who to address this prayer to, but may the appropriate god or gods open our eyes.

Oct. 6, 2004
Be your own manure.

September 19, 2004.
I recently finished a fascinating book, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America, by Garry Wills. It addresses a number of interesting questions, such as what Lincoln actually said there (believe it or not, that’s not completely clear, since there are a number of competing versions), what his literary influences were, what political beliefs lay behind the speech, and where at the Gettysburg cemetery it was made (only recently determined). I was surprised to learn that, despite all the actors who have played him through the years, Lincoln didn’t have a slow, majestic voice, but one which Wills describes as “high to the point of shrillness.” When this is combined with the way Lincoln looked, it’s pretty clear that he could never be elected today.

Lincoln didn’t, of course, write the address on the back of an envelope on the train there, which is no real surprise, based on the theory the more clever a story is the less likely it is to be true. He actually worked pretty hard on it. No one was surprised at how short it was, since the main speech of the day was the one by Edward Everett, and Lincoln was only expected to make a brief statement, which was listed in the program as “Dedicatory Remarks.”

The real star of the day, and the one always intended to be the star, was Everett, who spoke for two hours. By today’s standards that’s unbearably long, and we can’t imagine anyone sitting through it. But in the time of Lincoln, oration was entertainment. People went to speeches for enjoyment. And they were disappointed by neither the length nor the content of Everett’s speech. Wills gives the text, and it’s quite gripping, and would be especially so to those listening there. That’s because of an aspect to it which surprised me. Most of it is a report of both the battle itself and the battle as put in the context of the war as a whole. Many of us today know a fair amount about the battle (although too few; it’s a quite fascinating event, and crucial to the existence of our country), but most of those present at the speech only knew that a big and important battle had taken place at which lots of men died. They were listening to the story for the first time. Even those who knew what had happened there might not have known how it fit into the scheme of things, and would have been pleased to hear that explained by Everett.

One of the sides to being amazed at hearing that Everett’s speech went on for two hours is our reaction that people in those days must have had much higher attention spans than we do. In the age of the sound bite we find it hard to comprehend people could have paid attention to so long a speech. We find no problem, however, with watching at two hour movie. And that’s what speeches were to the people of Lincoln’s time, the equivalent in entertainment level to movies today.

Most pleasing of all was that Wills explains why in his Emancipation Proclamation Lincoln only freed the slaves in territory still under the control of the Confederacy. This has always seemed a bit cynical to me, as if Lincoln were only freeing those slaves that he couldn’t really free; a sort of gesture to the rest of the world that the war was about slavery, but with no real cost. A proclamation that actually freed slaves would have upset the border states in which slavery was legal but which hadn’t seceded.

The truth is far more idealistic than that, though. Lincoln only freed the slaves where he did not because he couldn’t really free them there, but because they were the only slaves that he could free. Under the Constitution he had no authority to free them in any part of the country which wasn’t in rebellion; the Constitution forbids depriving anyone of property without “due process of law.” If Lincoln were to follow the Constitution, he couldn’t free slaves in areas under the control of the Union.

But why could he free the slaves in the Confederacy? He justified this as a military necessity. He compared it to capturing mules from an enemy. It was acceptable to seize property from enemies that might be useful either to them or to the ones doing the taking. It was therefore perfectly legal, in his view, to take slaves, which might be useful to either side. But while you can make a mule work, a man will only work voluntarily.

And there’s the point. He was comparing them to mules insofar as they were considered property under the law, but once freed he was treating them as human beings. He was using the South’s own laws against them in their capture, and then the North’s once they had been taken.

Why, though, did he have to follow the South’s laws at all? Why didn’t he just go ahead and free all the slaves? Yes, I’ve said that he didn’t believe that the Constitution gave him that authority. But the South had themselves denounced that authority, which might be interpreted to mean the Lincoln could free all of the slave in the states which had seceded, even if he couldn’t do that in those slave states which had not.

This is where Lincoln’s view of the war as a whole comes in. He didn’t believe that the South had in fact seceded, because he didn’t think they could. This is a point which has always bothered me; if the southern states had entered into the Union voluntarily, couldn’t the leave it voluntarily? Lincoln’s answer was that they couldn’t, and he had a reason for this that I find so compelling as to be unarguable. The reason is found in the first three words of the Constitution: “We the People.” The Constitution is not a pact between states; it is an agreement among the People. And only the People can dissolve that agreement. The states have no authority to do so.

In this view, the states of the Confederacy were still part of the Union; they hadn’t actually seceded. Their laws were still valid under the Constitution, and as president, sworn to uphold the Constitution, Lincoln couldn’t violate those laws.

The reason why Lincoln couldn’t free the slaves that weren’t under the control of the Confederacy is quite simple then: he couldn’t without destroying the entire justification for the war. To do so would be to say that the war was one of conquest, of conquering another country. But that would be to acknowledge that the South had in fact seceded. He could not do that and maintain his position that the Union was indivisible. He saw the situation rather as being a fight against armed brigands who were attempting to destroy the rule of law. He would defeat those brigands and restore to the land in which they lived the blessings of the Constitution.

This, then, is why Lincoln didn’t free all the slaves. He had to be true to his oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Under those circumstances, he had to do his best to put things right, with the confidence that once they had been the right things would be done.

September 15, 2004
A question for those opposed to gay marriage: Is marriage a right or a privilege?

If marriage is a privilege, then we hold it only at the sufferance of the government. This means that it can be taken away at any time. It also means that it isn’t a sacred institution, the basis of our society (as those in favor of banning gay marriage insist), but is instead something which can be defined at will by any government.

If, on the other hand, it is a right, then it is protected under the XIV Amendment, which reads in part:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.
Those in favor of banning gay marriage want to add two words to this. Their version would read:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities (except one) of citizens of the United States.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think the first version sounds better.

September 13, 2004
I just got back from Las Vegas. Odd town, Las Vegas. People give out quite graphic little cards on the street for strippers to come to your hotel room. The billboards and adds on taxis are virtually softporn. Most of the shows there are topless. And yet, unlike some other cities in Nevada, prostitution is illegal. Odd town; they should just admit what they are and be done with it.

August 28, 2004
I've added a fair number of links to the site. I'm going to be making some fairly drastic changes to the PIE section shortly, but except for the pronunciation of the PIE words (including some of the deity names) the rituals are still fine as they stand; I'm just hoping to make them both more accurate and better ritually.

August 16, 2004
One thing I don’t understand is why companies changed the name of their personnel departments to “Human Resources.” The change was from considering employees as people to considering them as resources, as much as computers and paper clips. Perhaps many companies do indeed feel that way, but to admit it?.

August 13, 2004
The Olympics have begun! With all the cynicism that the world can muster, about such things as the use of performance-enhancing drugs, the Olympics are still sacred. They are a worldwide ritual period, filled with smaller rituals, in which that which is good in humanity can be celebrated. While the torch burns, a little bit of peace exists in the world. Let’s hope that when the torch is extinguished a little bit of that peace survives.

Aug 3, 2004
I saw the Declaration of Independence today. Not the original, mind you, but close enough. I saw one of the copies printed by John Dunlap, which were the first copies ever made. He printed 200, but only 25 still exist. I think that 25 copies of a document printed that long ago is pretty good, however, since it was the sort of thing that would have been like a newspaper, and would ordinarily have been expected to have been thrown out. Obviously people knew this was important.

I found the experience deeply moving. When I reached the part
But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.
I had to choke back the tears, since I am beginning to fear that we are in such a state now. The word “duty” struck me strongly; not only do we have the right to fight those who would take away our rights, we have the duty.

I’ve seen the original, and that is a pretty moving experience as well, seeing what was essentially the death warrant of those men, a death warrant they voluntarily signed. This one had its own reason for being moving, however. This was the document that first told people of the vote for independence. This was the document that made that which had been done in the closed chambers of the Continental Congress public to all, to confirm or deny. I could imagine this exact piece of paper being passed from hand to hand, with people eagerly reading it and being inspired or scared by its words. This very piece of paper was one of the public announcements, to the people of the colonies, and to the people of the world, that something very important was going on, the beginning of a nation consciously founded on the ideals of liberty.

Frank Capra would have been pleased, too. I was there only ten minutes before the exhibition closed, so there weren’t too many people there. It was also at the Cape Cod Community College, an out of the way location. But of those that were there, there were young and old; black, white, and Hispanic; men and women. The policemen guarding it were mostly talking amongst themselves; they had an eye out for any trouble, but weren’t keeping people at a distance. In fact, while I was reading it, two children, around seven or eight, came running in, followed more slowly by their father. One of them, a girl, stepped up to the railing and put her hands right on the glass over it. For a moment I wanted to scream, “No, you might hurt it.” Then it struck me that what was going on here was that the child was claiming it as her own. It might be behind glass, but that was only to protect it. It wasn’t a relic to be put away and taken out time to time to be worshiped. It was a living document, belonging to us as much as it did to those who passed it from hand to hand in Philadelphia in 1776.

Even the location was perfect. The Declaration is travelling around the country, and the previous stop had been at the Kennedy Center for Law and Government in Cambridge. From there to a community college in a small town on Cape Cod. How perfect can you get; the document doesn’t just belong to city folk, and again it isn’t just something for museums. It’s something for all of us.

So as we are continually being asked to give up our liberties for the sake of safety, let’s remember that it is not only our right to say “no,” but our duty. Let’s take the risks. Let’s remember the words of Ben Franklin:

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Aug 1, 2004
Today is my 23rd wedding anniversary. Odd day for a wedding, since it’s Lughnasad, and traditionally marrying on Lughnasad is bad luck. It happened this way:
My wife and I were getting married after she graduated from college. (I had graduated two years earlier.) I wanted the wedding to be on a day I’d remember, so I suggested one of the eight Wiccan festivals. (I was a Wiccan in those days.) That year Midsummers and Lughnasad were on weekends. The next weekend festival was the next year’s Beltane. Beltane was too far away, and Midsummers was too short a time after her graduation to put a wedding together. So Lughnasad it was.

And why did I want the wedding to be on a Wiccan festival? For some deep religious reasons, or as a statement of my beliefs? Nope; it was so I wouldn’t forget my anniversary. I haven’t, either, although I did forget her birthday one year.

July 29, 2004
I always wanted to be omniscient. Problem is, that’s impossible. Now just because something’s impossible doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing, but even so I wasn’t pleased with the results.

Then one day I had a flash of inspiration – it wasn’t completely necessary to be omniscient, appearing omniscient was almost as good. That might seem like a hard thing to pull off, but it really isn’t. First you have to realize that people have a slippery concept of “omniscience.” We hear them say, “Oh, he knows everything.” On one level they know they really don’t mean everything, but on another level they do. So pulling this off is easier than at first it seems.

The secret is not to bother learning the things that everyone knows. Concentrate instead on the things that most people don’t know. When they realize how many things you know that they don’t, they’ll think you know everything, even if you don’t know what everyone else knows. After all, everyone knows those things, so it won’t occur to them that you don’t. Not bothering to learn the things that everyone knows will free up your time for learning the things they don’t. And there’s really no point in learning those things, because if you need to know them, you can ask anyone, because, after all, everyone knows them.

By using this method I’ve come a long way towards appearing omniscient. Of course, wiping people away at Trivial Pursuit helps.

July 28, 2004 Having considered surprising ways in which women can be unexpectedly attractive, I thought I would mention one for men. Now as a heterosexual I can only judge the attractiveness of men in a theoretical sense, but there was one particular attribute that women find attractive that I only discovered recently – women like funny men.

I learned this when I was told that David Letterman was attractive. I mean, come on, he’s kind of geeky-looking. It turns out that his humor (and his intelligence) is considered attractive. Now the line in Roger Rabbit where Jessica Rabbit says that she’s attracted to Roger because he makes her laugh makes sense.

Who’d have figured it? If I’d known this when I was younger, high school would have been a very different place.

July 27, 2004 We learned yesterday that I think that women can be attractive even if only one part of them is. Today I would like to discuss how a woman can be attractive even if her parts aren’t attractive individually, but if instead they work together quite nicely. The examples I would like to use are Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock, and Sarah Jessica Parker.

A close investigation of each of these women, in as cool and dispassionate a way as possible, reveals an amazing fact – they’re not really that attractive. Julia Robert’s mouth is uneven, and one of her eyes is bigger than the other. Sandra Bullock’s facial features are a little coarse, chunky even. Sarah Jessica Parker’s face is very long, almost horse-like. And yet these women are stunningly beautiful. Why?

Some might point to certain particular features, in the same way that I suggested yesterday, and say that those features are important enough on their own. The classic example of this would be Julia Roberts’ smile. It is true that she is one of those rare people who smile with their entire face. But that isn’t why she’s considered so beautiful. She’s beautiful because of the whole package. It isn’t just her face that smile, it’s her entire body. And it isn’t just her entire body, it’s the way that body moves, and the attitude behind it.

With Sandra Bullock it’s that she knows that she is beautiful, while at the same time not knowing it. The knowing means that she is comfortable with it, while the not –knowing means that she can relax about it. That’s a very attractive thing in a woman; if she is relaxed about her beauty, those around her can be relaxed as well. They don’t feel judged, and as a result, since this beautiful woman isn’t judging them, they feel as if they are themselves more attractive.

I haven’t quite figured out what it is about Sarah Jessica Parker that makes her beautiful. I think that it’s partly an attitude similar to that of Sandra Bullock, and partly the way she moves. The odd thing about the way she moves is that she doesn’t always have the perfect “tick-tock” motion of women, although she can certainly put it on. Yet somehow it works for her. I’ll have to keep working on this.

There are two points to this. First, contra to what I wrote yesterday, sometimes it isn’t individual elements of a woman that make her attractive. Sometimes it’s the whole. Second, there are many women out there who think that they’re unattractive who actually are beautiful. Sometimes it’s a situation like yesterday’s observation, in which they are so focused on one particular flaw they don’t see the parts of themselves that are beautiful. More often, however, they may indeed have many flawed parts, and they are focusing on each of them, or rather all of them at the same time, rather than on all of them together. Beauty can come from the way our parts fit together, or even on the way those parts operate together. The key to this last is attitude. It is unfortunate that a woman who doesn’t think she’s beautiful will find it hard to have the attitude that will make her beautiful. Life just isn’t fair sometimes. But maybe knowing that Julia Roberts, considered dispassionately, isn’t very attractive, will startle such a woman into realizing that she too may well be beautiful.

July 26, 2004 One of the things that confuses me about other men is that they will say that they are “boob men,” or “ass men,” or “leg men,” the like. They even seem to feel that a woman who isn’t attractive in their favorite parts isn’t worth looking at. To a boob man, a woman with iffy (which usually translates as “small,” although tastes do differ) boobs but great legs isn’t particularly attractive. To which I say, what a waste. Almost every woman has something about her that is worth looking at. Maybe she doesn’t have much in the boob department, but has a killer bum. So you look at the bum and enjoy yourself.

The odd thing is that I’ve expressed this view to women before, and they seem to think it’s flattering. Women who are uncomfortable with their boobs are thrilled to hear a man say that she’s got great legs, so who cares? What it’s really saying, however, is that I don’t have to look at the woman as a whole, as long as any one part of her is attractive. So it’s a rather sexist thing to say, I think. Still, I’ve never been slapped for it. The world is an odd place.

July 22, 2004
Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday, dear David,
Happy birthday to me.



Not so happy a birthday, though. The Democratic National Convention starts next week here in Boston, and the restrictions put on the people of this area are appalling; essentially the city is being shut down. There are so many cooks in this broth – the city, the DNC, the Department of Homeland Security, the Secret Service, and who knows who else – that it seems as if any idea of any member of any of them is being adopted; the list of closings (highways, public transportation, bridges, train stations ...) keeps getting longer. Even worse is the list of violations of liberty, an example of which will be the presence of the police on the T (our subway system), who will search any bags people bring onboard).

Scariest of all, however, is the “Free Speech Zone.” This is an area set aside for those who wish to protest, conveniently allowing anyone at the convention to know how to avoid actually seeing any demonstrators. (The TV show “The Practice” put it nicely: “I though all of America was a free speech zone.”)

The organizers of the DNC have gone beyond the violation of the Bill of Rights in this case, however. They have shown themselves to be brutal and dictatorial by surrounding the “Free Speech Zone” with a chain link fence, barbed wire, and armed guards. Yes, armed guards will be watching over penned-in demonstrators, who will have been “allowed” to march down a street which is not in front of the convention center, into their pen, like cattle being herded in from the range.

And all of this under the eyes of men with guns. As she watched this, my wife turned to me with a horrified look and said, “Can anyone say ‘Kent State'?” And my daughter pointed out that all it would take is one rock thrown by someone to start the shooting, the shooting of penned-in demonstrators with only a few exits. Those that aren’t killed by the bullets will be killed in the stampede to get away from the bullets.

I don’t want to seem unfeeling about the possibility of bloodshed, but far worse is the destruction of liberty. The gloves have come off, and the government is showing its true colors. They are scared, and they want power, and they don’t care what happens to the rest of us. They’ve found a way around Ben Franklin’s dictum that “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” They’ve traded our liberty for their safety. I don’t think that that’s a good bargain.

The terrorists have won. They have destroyed America.

July 17, 2004
A ritual is a meaningful arrangement of symbolic words, acts, and objects.

But in a good ritual the acts aren't symbols of something, they are that thing – for the duration of the ritual. There is no such thing as symbolism inside a ritual. In a ritual things are what they symbolize. When we say that a ritual act is symbolic we are speaking from outside the ritual.

In order for a ritual to work, then, (we can talk about what I mean by “work” some other time) the symbols must be allowed to be that which is symbolized. For instance, if in a wedding the bride and groom light a candle while it is said that this is done as a symbol of their becoming united, they have just become united in a symbolic marriage. The ritual act becomes meaningless when it is explained as it is done. A participant, even a participant whose main involvement is observing, is ripped out of the ritual by this; they are reminded that what is going on is a ritual, and that puts them outside the ritual. As a result, anything they do while in that state is itself outside of the ritual. It doesn’t count as being part of the ritual.

If you don't believe the acts to be more than symbolic in the midst of performing them, you're wasting your time. Go do something you can believe in.

June 25, 2004 The summer solstice was a few days ago, and I’m sure you heard from the media that it was the “official first day of summer.” I always cringe when I hear that. Beyond the fact that its name is “Midsummer,” I have to wonder how it became “official.” Is there a national Bureau of Seasons?

June 5, 2004
I received an e-mail from one of my readers a while back complimenting me for being able to make things humorous without making them less serious. That was great to hear, but there will be none of that today. Today there is no humor.

Jose Padilla, an American citizen, has been imprisoned now for two years as a terrorist suspect. Not only hasn’t he been found guilty of any crime, he has never even been charged with one. He has only had access to a lawyer since March.

This past week, Deputy Attorney General James B. Corney explained why Padilla hadn’t been allowed a lawyer: “He very likely would have followed his lawyer’s advice and said nothing, which would have been his constitutional right. He would likely have ended up a free man.”

After I wrote this last sentence, I sat here shaking, unable to think of words to express my feelings. Even now I’m not sure they exist. I don’t know if there is any way to express both my contempt for an administration that finds the Constitution inconvenient, and my fear of it. We are being told that if the government has suspicions of someone’s guilt, even if they can’t prove it in court without a confession, they can lock them up forever, rather than risk that the accused might actually invoke the rights guaranteed by the Consitution.

Are any of us safe? The administration doesn’t feel itself bound by the Constitution. It finds the Bill of Rights constraining. They think that they can imprison anyone for as along as they like, with no explanation necessary, with no access to courts or lawyers, if they think they have some connection with terrorists. But they won’t show us in what way these people are connected, of course; we simply have to trust them.

The administration thinks that it can imprison you for as along as they like, with no explanation necessary, with no access to courts or lawyers, if they think you have some connection with terrorists. But they won’t show the rest of us in what way you are connected, of course; we simply have to trust them.

Are any of us safe?

May 24, 2004
Huzzah, Huzzah, Hurray!

My brilliant daughter graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar College yesterday, with honors! It's nice to have it on paper just how smart she is, so now people can know it's not just bragging when we tell them that.

May 18, 2004
Did you hear what happened yesterday? Western civilization didn't come to an end.

May 10, 2004
There’s really nothing to add to the reaction over abuses in Iraq. It has damaged, and perhaps destroyed, America’s efforts to build a viable democracy there; it will prove to be a powerful recruiting tool for Islamic extremists; it has done serious harm to our relationships with other countries, including those who have supported us in the past; and it has, of course, held us up as a country whose soldiers violate the principles established at Nuremberg. All of this has been said, and will continue to be said. I would like to address something else that I haven’t heard expressed, and that shows an important flaw in modern American political culture.

Rumsfeld has taken “personal responsibility” for the abuse. These are meaningless words. People responsible for such crimes go to jail. Rumsfeld won’t even resign. To claim such responsibility doesn’t make things better, but only worse. It deflects criticism from those lower in the chain of command who would be expected to be punished severely onto those higher up who have the political capital to avoid punishment. To take “responsibility” but not punishment is to say that such deeds are not worthy of punishment. It says that actions of this sort are ones that can be committed without consequences, provided one is high enough up in the chain. It says that politicians don’t have to abide by not only law, but by simple human decency. It says that the United States is a criminal nation, run by criminals who take whatever actions seem most profitable to them.

Rumsfeld is either responsible or not. If he isn’t responsible, he should stop saying he is. If he is, he must resign. For such deeds, resigning would be getting off easy.

May 3, 2004
I fear for the republic.

I sometimes say that in a joking manner, or in a h