Woodstock at Weedie’s Place

Don’t call Susun Weed that name, it’s reserved only to friends of long, long standing. Like thirty years. I’ve called her Weedie for a long time out of sheer affection for this wild woman who walks the green walk. Her place is near Woodstock, it’s set outside in the green rocky fields, trees and millions of singing frogs.

When she picks me up at the airport, after 12 hours of grueling transit, I am tired. Its usually late, she takes me for an hour drive and installs me in that little house in the Nettle Patch. It has turned into Tulip Patch of hot red and yellow flowers.

My room is decorated with just some flowers, a good bed, and there I can exhale at last.

As the night grows deeper I can hear the Leopard frogs begin their rehearsal. They just bring out the first singing section from their extensive choir for a trial run. While the peepers keep up a strong rhythm section. All day and all night long, the leopards come in with just one streak of their song. They hit a perfect note, and hold it more then a minute or two. It sounds like one single note, but it’s comprised from millions of small voices. Then they drop a half a note below perfectly harmonizing. Then one more, higher note. Then they take a break.

I am lying in bed and listening to this beloved concert. I have discovered them one spring, just like this one, but later into May. A little warmer, and their choir already jelled together. I heard them, and tears came down on my cheeks. It was the music of the spheres. It was the harmony of the Universe. It was a moving rich animal culture from which I have never recovered nor do I want to.

After a good long break the Leopards are back. This time they had worked out the kinks from their first run, and now they try even better. Out flows that long singular clear note, very unfloglike, and held much longer then a human being could hold the breath.

I am listening in awe. They worked and reviewed their act in the break they have taken. This time the note is sharper, and the half note drop is held longer, and the higher note afterwards is clearer.
These frogs are artists with high taste in music. After they have sung for a few minutes, once again they go silent. I guess now they are reviewing their performance, there must be some criticism, and corrections. Who conducts them? The Goddess herself?

I fall asleep. I dream of green fields, blooming tulips.

Next day my students are waiting for me. It’s a good section from all over, some drove in from neighboring states. I greet some old friends, meet the new ones. We are a cross section of middle-aged to in-their-twenties women, from practicing witches to first-timers. I teach from the Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries, first we discuss the Manifesto of the Susan B. Anthony Coven Number One. There are 15 different points in it, and we take them one by one. Politics for this generation is not as immediate then it was for us who lived in the Heroic Age (seventies) of our youth. But the issues are still burning, many points have not lost their importance at all.

We take a break. I had them in the studio for almost four hours, I am tired too. I give them some homework, they have to memorize the Invocation to the Star Goddess. Interesting how Americans don’t like to memorize poems. I grew up with poetry recitals and poetry by-heart homework’s. We made some progress.

Weedie is asking me, what nothing tonight? No circle tonight?
--They are not circle ready yet. Let what I thought them marinate.

Friday night . The Leopards started at nine pm precisely. The rain is not bothering them at all. They sing this time with two section of their large choir. It’s building slowly. They each hold one note which all are harmonious. They both vary half a note, one up and one down. I get goose bumps. Their harmony is all encompassing.

An Old Friend

An old friend came to visit today. Such joy. An old friend who knew me when we both were young. She scaled the stairs a bit slow this time, not the old Olympic contender swimmer as before. Her joints a bit achy. She arrived, but not out of breath. We embraced.

You look so much better than the last time! I confessed.

Thank you, she said.

We sat on my couch. She was once in love with me. I thought many of our contemporaries didn’t make into the third destiny. We called out the names of friends who passed away. It made us feel very special suddenly, like survivors guilt, how come we are still standing? After all we are still in the sixties, pushing seventy. Not so old if you think about it. Sixty-eight must be the new fifty-eight. Who knows? Doesn’t matter. We are here. Big smiles.

We must have more missions to accomplish, I remarked.

Yeah, I am not done either, she said.

We both had two sons, about the same age, it was great. We had play day, plus we had a date. The boys swimming in the pool at UCLA, and we flirting with each other on the terry cloths beach towels, doling out change to wet little boys to get something to drink, eat from the machine. Then back to our flirting.

Time flew so fast, she said.

Her two boys have spawned a clan of more Scottish grandsons for her, all shades of blond, blue-eyed happy little kids. She showed the picture to me.

I have already seen this, she sent it to me email a couple of years ago. She’d forgotten. I admired them all over again. They deserved it. Very handsome group indeed.

I had not much to show in return. One single grandson. Just one. He lives in Mississippi, dresses very gentlemanish, even though he is only nine years old. He looks like a mini-businessman. But he reads on the tenth grade level, I offered. He is a Gemini. We put away the pictures and pulled out the ideas. Susan was always radical, but only ten years later after radical was already done. But then she took off from there.

With all this big family to show, she is against the institution of family. She says the family was invented to restrain women from shopping around for good quality sperm. Family is a patriarchal invention, and should be reorganized. Men created it to make sure their sperm stays in the breeding pool, and the women must breed them for their immortality. She said, the family is not natural for men. Men will always want to break out from it, and do. Women too she admits. And she wants women who support their families to get higher pay then childless men. She thinks that’s only right. It would soon solve the equal pay for equal work dilemma. Men still get more money on account of them supporting families, which is no longer true. Single mothers support their families, they should get paid more now.

We disagree about the knowledge of the sperm.

Susan says, humanity didn’t know it was the sperm that created the fertility that brought the babies, and after they have discovered the importance of sperm, they have created the nuclear family.

Not so. I stated.

There is no way to avoid the knowledge about sperm when you live in rural areas, you see horses have sex, and you see dogs have sex, and you see pregnancy of the same females that had sex, and then later the birth of the little ones. There is no way to think that all that humping is for nothing. There was knowledge of sperm all right. The matriarchies simply said, do I honor the toothpick because I use it to clean my teeth? Sperm was seen as something like a tool that created the missing link for the egg to travel down and imbed itself in the uterine walls. Everything important was then up to the woman and her body. Her wisdom, and her care. The men had a very fleeting business to do with fertility.

My dog loves to butt in when the energy is high. Zyna expressed a few Puli ideas about the matter. She talks in an unpleasant barkish-way. She tries to sound like women, but ends up disrupting us.

Hush Zyna. Put a sock in it!

She does, she picks up a toy and muffles the sound she makes. It’s the only trick I have taught her.

We go on.

For lunch I took her to Scotts, an old restaurant on the waterfront.
Susan liked the view, slow moving boats back and forth. The sun broke through and we warmed up.

You order whatever you like Z, she said. I got bucks.

Hmm. I was just looking at a lobster dish for 58 dollars, but my emigrant self couldn’t allow it. It’s to much for a meal. I could shop on that for a week.

Order it! Susan encouraged me.

No I would be thinking about the price all along, I just can’t. I ended up ordering something for 28 dollars and was happy with that.

Susan was ravenous. Fresh sourdough bread with fresh butter. We ate with gusto.

Today we eat for the old self! I declared.

But neither of us even thought of drinking alcohol. We drank cranberry juice. Yumm. For desert I had key lime pie, and she had apple cobbler.

Did you know I had a triple bypass?

When?

A few years ago. I am fine now.

She told me she was building a meditation center. A hypnotherapy practice. She was still working on her cohabitation commune, which was flowering, and had a lot of ink lately too.

How can you be one of the first members of the Susan B. Anthony Coven Number One, and you never did any work for women’s spirituality.

I don’t know. I have other great works. She replied. And that was true.

Interesting that we both had recently fallen in love again. She promised to come to my wedding with Bobbie, and I wanted to see a picture of her girlfriend, who was still straight, and Susan didn’t have that killer swimmers body anymore. Didn’t bode well for her. But who cares. Just having a great loving feeling is rejuvenating.

She remembered the first witch’s Sabbath very differently from me.

She claims I made her recite the Lord’s Prayer backwards and how therapeutic that was for her mind. I know I didn’t because I cannot recite anything backwards in English, and that’s a fact. But in her mind and in her telling of the legend it has happened. She always brags about her input into the early stages of the Women’s Spirituality, but she was only part of it because I was her girlfriend for a brief time.

Then she became a lawyer and worked very successfully for the ACLU. Argued well many gay cases, and won. Then she was on her own and made a lot of money. I lost track of her about two decades ago.

The phone rings and its her son. He just bought a house in San Carlos. I performed his marriage ceremony 13 years ago. He remembers it very happily. I chat with him, his voice is deep now, he is doctor, no more the little boy saying every half an hour … Mom, can I have 75 cents please?

What more do we have to do? Will it reveal itself? I never know. Susan is free floating. It has gotten us this far.

Pretty amazing, I say.

With the key lime pie taste in my mouth still, I think about the rest of my day. A festival coming up, a new book is being built. I don’t want to loose track of Susan anymore. Old friend climbed into her car after careful direction to the freeway, and sped away.

Spring Time for Action

Take my eyes off the computer, take back my feelings from watching the elections, put down my research materials, its spring time!

The main event in my front yard was the blooming pink flowers of the decoration plumb tree. She who enchants me every year by throwing pink petals in my path, falling from the tree like snowflakes.

My front yard is self-planted.

Some flowers are very imperialistically inclined. One spring there were just a few firepoker flowers, ill named for sure, they look more like orchids, in brick red. The next year they have colonized the entire front yard, and a year later they moved all the way down to the sidewalk.

I have noticed that my Morning Glories are also into expansion. I have planted one bush in the backyard to have something nice run up, on my aging old bamboo hedges. I watered it a little. I saw how they took off.

Next year Morning Glory sent out the probes. They ran on the ground all over the place.

They checked every possible way to get sunshine, and I am sure reported back to headquarters.

They did run up on the bamboo but they also overran all the backyards they could reach and colonized all the sunny spots. Now I see them all over the neighborhood, the original bush is not where they feed on. They have worked out other arrangements.

So as women, I think we should take heed from my flora. Let’s expand. Let’s step out from our allotted space.

When we gather in the fall it will be the first time in five years. There are no women’s festivals anymore like they were before in the eighties. Nineties.

All the music festivals from the west coast are gone. Women just don’t come out anymore. It might be age related. The young women don’t do festivals, the older ones feel it’s a little inconvenient.

But this year I was encouraged to produce one more festival, my tenth, that is wheel chair accessible, comfortable, bathroom in the cabins, everything is easy to walk to. We have changed the place to a new camp, Camp Harmon in the redwood forests near Santa Cruz.

There must be a time when we as women gather in nature to nurture our own nature. Women work to hard. We don’t play enough with each other. We don’t circle anymore. Witchy circles have become these mythical special little happenings, hard to find.

Not this time.

Let’s buy our very reasonably priced tickets, move the happiness of our souls. Let’s listen to birdsongs and inhale the free air from the redwoods. No bugs, nor mosquitoes. Simple comfortable beds at night. Good food.

For our minds we have all the Holy Book presenters, and the glorious past from the heroic age, when everything was born for the first time. Women’s spirituality, sisterhood, freedom of choice.

Its nurturing our souls to inform our minds about the women’s whose shoulders we are all standing on. In this case we are still here, in body, you don’t have to read obituaries just yet. Just have to show up.

Second Wave Feminist

I was interviewed today by Jennifer Lee, director / producer, who is making a documentary called Wavelength.

It chronicles the Second Wave Feminist Movement.

Wavelength is a documentary film by Jennifer Lee about the women's liberation movement (1965 - 1977). As clips become available, I'll post them for you.

The Gender Card

Hillary Clinton was buried and laughed out of the race in Iowa. She was dismissed, she was vilified, and menopausal old males danced on her grave. “She has so many negatives!” No wonder she is loosing to Obama. Why isn’t she more Human? (A person with a vagina is not human?) Drop the robot act. (Why not be hysterical so we can put you down on that?) Said O’Reilly whose old face I am also real tired of. Hillary laughing? Oh she is laughing to hard. It’s a put on. Listen to that! Hillary is crying? Well they must have told her she must cry, now she is too emotional, she is desperate, she is going down. Good riddance.

What? What was that again? Oh the polls. The polls are saying she is going down in New Hampshire as well. All nine polls, negatives, not human, Obama is creating better shows, gives more inspired speeches, Obama has a penis, speeches by Obama! CD them, broadcast them, go Obama go. Media loves a good penis show.

Hillary wins in New Hampshire. She is radiant, she is laughing with her toothy mouth, she had a nice festive suit on, and she was emotional and happy. I found my voice! She finally said, it wasn’t so much the winning, but that she found herself in the turmoil and she was great! She cut a picture of a woman who was newly born.

I love the Hillary run for President show. I love watching her strength, and I hope Bill kneels down and kisses her slippers every morning.
This woman is hated by the right wingers, most of the old pundits, because she stuck by her man. She didn’t fall on her sword and punish herself for Bills dalliances. Instead she became her own woman, didn’t divorce Bill, and he is now campaigning for her. Work it off Bill!

Gloria Steinem ran a nice piece about Hillary in the New York Times.
If Obama was a black woman, would the media feel so relieved to switch over their attention to her campaign. Even if she gave such good speeches as Obama. A Black woman or white is not seen quite as human. Not human. Negatives. Got negatives. Having a vagina is still a negative. All this almost 4o years after the Second Wave.

Back then I was told, you got to wait. Women waited a half a century before they got the vote after they fought and gotten the vote for the black men. Imagine, a black woman and white woman had to wait for their turn for personhood. After a vigorous 75 years of suffrage movement, the votes for women given. Vaginas finish last in American history.

Imagine all the waste where girls were not educated, in some countries under Shari law its illegal to teach girls to read or write. Much like the black slaves were here. The slave to the slaves, the woman, she cannot lead, she must be ridiculed so others would shy away from her humiliation. And still Hillary took New Hampshire like a sudden surprise. Hillary don’t fear and don’t fall! Go Hillary go, show the world this generation has developed a shining character in Hillary and she will create change.

Twenty million eligible women didn’t vote in ‘04. In ‘08 you go out and vote for your grandmothers memory, for your suffragist sisters now gone, for your little granddaughters yet to be born.

Don’t listen to pundits, turn off Fox news, just go out and use that vote, Susan B. Anthony will be right behind you.

Dianic Wicca

Imagine a spirituality whose essence is common sense. Imagine a spirituality where community building and sisterhood is amongst the women. A culture to live and work in that is vagina friendly. Happy women … joy, joy!

Spirituality is so strong, to dominate the people you have to dominate their inner-life. If this is achieved you can fleece them, sell them salvation, sell them martyrdom, self sacrifice, devaluing their own life. Sell them death.

What is it with our species so susceptible to stories? We are ruled by stories from the far-east, we are dominated by desert-born religions, and they all want to spread the net over larger populations. Expand their influence. Especially the youngest of the patriarchal religions, Wahhabist Islam. (Only five hundred years old, I have family rings older then that). Their contra part we have already experienced, the blood thirsty anti-choice activists marching about with dead fetuses in jars and inciting hatred against mothers and doctors. All this hoopla is not about religions, but using religions to control women.

In the meantime, the women are evolving nicely. 53 percent of them are comprising the majority of the workforce. There is no big generation gap between the Boomers and their grandchildren. (Affinities usually jump one generation). Young women are 72 percent of collage grads. The white collar jobs, technical jobs, sports, sciences, all full force ahead. We even have women running countries all over the world. So what’s our problem?

We lost sweet sisterhood that’s what. Sisterhood which we have tasted and loved in the ever distant seventies. The memory of sisterhood is hunting our dreams, women traditionally shared work together, prayed together, practiced spirituality together. We used to counsel each other and give each other good honest praise. Because what we know is women get praise they get sweet. Praise makes us grow.

Dianic Wicca is a tradition whose faint traces I have found in Jane Harrison’s books, under Women’s Mysteries, along side with Men’s Mysteries. Ms. Harrison was a collage professor in England, spoke dead languages, and translated her own clay tablets she dug up in her digs in Greece. So I didn’t invent Dianic Wicca. But I have revived and adopted it to modern times, practiced it and refined it, then propagated it, and finally been there at its rebirth, our times. What a span of time! Not since the fourth century was there full frontal women’s mysteries, until today. Before the feminist movement such rebirth was not possible. But now it is. And the Goddess has victoriously reborn.

Dianic Wicca means women getting together to study their own archetypes, the goddesses and fill their heart with Mother Nature and her wonders and laws. Diane Wicca can worship the Female Principle of the Universe under any name they choose. It’s not denominational. It’s a organic sprouting of a flower, a creative embroidery on a passed down skeleton of truth.

What is the truth? In Dianic Wicca we review our attitude towards our species, the human species and revalue who are we? Who are the people?

There are only two kinds of people on earth, the mothers and their children. This is a truth you can wrap your mind around.

Hence all Madonna with child is the oldest symbol for humanity. Be it Isis, or Mary, its humanity. Here we recognize us clearly.

As Humanity what would be a most joyous story we like to follow? We would like to have a story of good births, and good life’s, and good deaths. Can that be done in spirituality? It’s done very naturally. But its not very possible in churchy/religion style, where there is a holy holy guy (always some guy) who calls the shots, and its never vagina friendly. Or a sex obsessed and deprived abused youth whose anger can be directed against women to gain male approval (hence a measure of safety).

Women’s Spirituality sustains us in these turbulent times. We are the start of the brand new century. These are the interesting times.

Dianic Wicca gathers the women together, and empowers them with their own stories, no frowning judge can touch them, and in spirituality of the goddess they can reconnect themselves to the divine. Their own divine reflections.

The content of this Dianic Wicca is the wisdom of the natural world, herbals, and then of course the spells and rituals, and spontaneous experiences. But spells are prayers, with candles, and circles are a symbols of equality. The seasons are our lives, and the full moons are making our Earth shift shape, slowing down time, giving us nice days and nights. If we focus on the natural life around us and been part of that reality, we have a truth of the goddess, she is life and Tree of Life hence us.

I have written the Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries (Weiser) all about the Dianic Wicca. I show our ways of celebrations, which the women have adopted, the seasonal holydays, full moons too, but there is a waste treasury of Women’s festivals and celebrations, which have never been reclaimed, still dominated every day life, and its essence was common sense. Those yet to have to unfold into reclaiming, reacting, celebrating such obscure festivals like the purifications in February, and the Bitching Festival in the fall, and the blessings on babies and couples, and on the old and burial rituals to the gave.

Dianic Wicca is a lifelong study. Its main book is Nature and all the knowledge about the planet, it’s an evolving relationship with the Universe, its Temple is portable, all women are her priestesses.

The knowledge of women is ancient, passed down in our DNA. I have a lot more to say, later.

The Horrible - Wonderful Year of ‘07

Here is the time to begin to reflect on the year about to pass. Goddess bless, I had a horrible, wonderful year.

Last year this time I was immobile, my SI joint was inflamed, I was running fever of 101, and none of the docs could diagnose me.

The uncertainty of it all … the humiliation of not being able to walk, the loss of fun and friends, my life was conducted on the phone and online. I had to cancel all obligations. And always, this possibility that they had to open up my hip replacements and redo it; putting me on antibiotic drips for three months, and then replace the hips with new ones. And, I would never walk again normally.

All this because fever in this country can only come from infections. Not so.

I talked to a woman who said she had SI joint inflammations. She ran fevers and it took 2 years to heal. The SI (Sacroiliac) joint doesn’t get blood flow.

This was a time when I could really tell who was my friend and who wasn’t. I had few visitors. My dog had more friends then I.

I watched an extraordinary amount of TV.

The quality of viewing basic cable was abhorrent. I started writing my own TV show. Read many books.

This lasted for 8 months. Only then did my fever started going down. It took even more time to completely be free of it.

But the walking could only happen with crutches. Still I cannot manage stairs.

This part of my life was very disappointing. I thought all was over.

But by May I could travel. Imagine me at the airport. They took way my crutches. I had to go through limping and in pain, the entire airport ordeal.

I went to an esoteric book convention in Denver, where I won a price last year for Celestial Wisdom. This year Summoning the Fates came out via Llewellyn, and I was signing books by the hundreds.

Felt hope return into my heart.

After Denver, I had lots of pain return, spasms of my muscles, searching for meds that worked, only steroids would. One had to be careful with those.

The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries was now on the working table. Weiser Books prepared to release it, and I had some meaningful work out of it, rereading the entire book cover-to-cover. Considering that it was originally written 1975, the book miraculously stood the test of time … still reverent, interesting, lots of information in it still unexplored by the many many women’s groups it has spawned.

Then around Halloween the book was reborn!

The cover art was done by Shakti, a young visionary artist whom I only told to please make an image of Rhiannon, with butterflies flying out of her mouth. She is the goddess of transformations, her words transform, as the butterflies. Shakti got inspired instantly. Took her two hours and she came up with this red haired young goddess, beautiful and fierce at the same time, with butterflies around her coming out of her mouth.

Perfect!

After the Holy Book hit the stores I asked my sisters on my email list to call bookstores for me, and ask them if they carried the new Holy Book. Only about twenty women actually did it … out of the hundreds. Don’t ask me why. I cannot imagine why it’s so hard to give back a little energy to those who have created a space for feminist witches all these years. Really sad, but this is how it is now.

Where are the Feminist Witches?

But some women on the email list caught fire. Especially my moderator Tinn. She started talking about a new festival with the Holy Book as theme. Life seemed almost normal again. As you know I have produced about nine Goddess festivals in California, where there are redwoods and sunken earth temples, and no mosquitoes to bite us when skyclad.
A very sad thing happened then when I went to see Shekhinah Mountianwater, battling her cancer. I found her in the last days of her life. As promised I had given her her last rites, anointed her with rose oil blessed by Amma, see my blog about it.

But as the goddess is both death and love, I found my new true love there in Shekhinah’s living room holding energy for her dying friend.

She and I instantly fell in love.

She too organized Goddess-Faery gatherings and knew about my work. We both came from a different kind of loneliness. I was alone now for a long, long time. She was in a relationship in which she felt very lonely as well.

This love and the rest of the year have taken a sharp turn for the better.

Suddenly we are having a new women’s festival … Gathering the Goddess! It’s is going to be devoted totally to the “Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries.” We have set a date September 5-7 in ‘08. Advertising is already out about it, see my website: www.ZBudapest.com. We have twenty-some early registrations as well.

So this part of the year had much love and wonder. Miracles. As love is always a miracle.

Gathering the Goddess is a blessing. The Holy Book are making their way into women’s hands, a brand new generation.

Goddess, let them learn to be activists!

What I wish for Yule?

What a difference it makes when more then just a few women take on a project! Tinn's enthusiasm and hard work got us the new Goddess camp, the teamwork with Cerridwen got us the ads out and my website enhanced.

Its very hard to get good traffic on a website, and even harder to make a living. We are no way there yet. The booksales have been stimulated by your blessed 15 women who bothered to call. Had I had this kind of lukewarm (only 15 out of 800) support when the Holy Book of Women's Mysteries book was first out, we would never have a Goddess Movement today.

We were thinking in my witchy office, what's happening? This list is my lifeline to the world.

If ALL OF YOU CALLED A BOOKSTORE there would have been a SURGE of sales by now. Without the Holy Book Of Women's Mysteries the yearning of many women would go unanswered. It is what was channelled by me to replace the patriarchal religions with meaningful spirituality. We were lucky to see this book reemerge in a stunning new format, and now its a great seller in CANADA! But not in the USA.

What I wish for Yule?

I like to see my Z list come alive. Become a list of feminist activists again. Even if just half would do more than just read posts.

We are the Seeding generation; seeding the new century. We have started and developed the future, at least good part of it. We are blessed to live in the future as many others like our sisters in Islamist countries live in the dark patriarchal past.

We are responsible for each other. The Z list is very good on this issue, generously extending soul energies to each other, each time asked. I bless for your that. Continue the love and empathy.

We have started a new emailing list called Dianic Nation. Here we offer worldwide events to support if you are near them. If you have organized something Goddess oriented, you can list them there for free. We have also created a Dianic Nation website where those listings are posted and a free seasonal publication that you can get at the website.

It reminds you that we are part of a Global Goddess Movement. No small achievement so early in the 21st century.

In the future we are going to call for more action. For example, feminist letter writing campaigns and rituals against women killers, wherever they are.

I know its a busy time for all of you now, so i wish you all the season's best.

Watch for further news on the upcoming Gathering the Goddess festival, my journeys and see how you can tie in. Don't forget next year in the Fall, fly to California. There will be a pick up bus ride for you to the camp.

There we can embrace each other in person at last.

Yule tide blessings!
Zsuzsanna

TV blahs

I settle down after 6pm on my couch, after all I deserve this, I am an Elder, lets watch some mindless stuff. I am never disappointed when I have zero expectations.

Thank Goddess for the clicker! I click madly, let’s see the News, everybody got the News, each network reporting on the very same event, why they think if they are different from each other we’ll miss out on some vital piece of news, like something has gotten blown up, there was an accident on the Bay Bridge, commuters are slowed down into a crawl. Come on!

What is this attachment to bad news? You could report on some good news too. Like in most of the world, there is no war. Yes. Imagine this, out of the many many countries, we see Somalia warring, Arabs have taken over, killing the blacks who are the Somalians. Ok. Bad. Iraq? Corner stores blown up, they were selling alcohol. Hmm, a strange place to sell alcohol, but never mind, it’s a corner store on the planet. Does it deserve all that coverage?

But in the hundreds of other places in the world there is normal life, building new things, children are born, and oldsters are dying as they should.

Just once I like to hear the anchor say … A couple of countries are still in the throes of war, but most of the Planet is peaceful at this hour, Celebrating life. They could do this for Christmas for example, to give us a heads-up.

Then there is the weather. Now this is deserves to be reported upon. We see the entire continental USA with the curling Lows and Highs, bringing rain here and sending snow over there. Avoiding California most of the time, we hardly get rain anymore. I think of the Cherry season, please let it be a little rain for them to grow plump, then no wind and no rain because once they bloom, the bees won’t work the orchards if its windy. They are no fools. To me the Cherry season is like an oracle on how the Planet is doing. There was a year when there were no cherries available from the farms where I usually go to pick my 28 pounds of cherries, which then I eat in two weeks, and I send some to my kids.

It was a sad season.

But please do I get a new CSI? It’s Thursday night. It doesn’t seem to.
Come 9 pm, prime time, reruns everywhere. Now I know the writers are on strike. But how long? Does that mean no new shows? Didn’t they shoot ahead of time? What does this mean to me a writer?

While I ponder that heavy question, I click around on my basic cable.
I settle on the animal station.

This is usually very good. I love all animals, but oops, watch out dear Wilder beast! Watch that Crocodile! Ouch! Wilder beast legs are chomped off, blood colors the waters red.

Click!

I am too sensitive. Nature is fair, everybody eats somebody else, especially us humans. We eat everybody. We are the top predators.

I don’t like to know that.

Click!

Oh, the History Channel. Here I still find good stuff to watch. I love the way they build back up the images of the old temples, with the computer originated images. I see how splendid it was back then. Goddess statues, Goddess worship. If only I could have lived back then. Then suddenly the pits where they sacrificed animals to their gods, then taken it home and had it for dinner. Not to gruesome. I stay.

The night is advanced, I yawn.

I go to bed playing in my head shows I would write instead of the current fare. Thank heaven I have a vivid imagination.

Yule Letter to Befana

Dear Befana!

You are the spirit that brings the gifts of life, but you don’t live on the North Pole. You live in the Air, and fly a hefty broom. Salutations to you!

Before Sinta Klaas was adopted from the Dutch and made into Santa Clous, it was you who brought gifts to the children, sweets for the good, and you only knew good kids. Befana! Mother Befana! Granny Befana! The old year opened up her cornocopia, out poured the harvest, the grains, the fruits, the figs and the grapes, the wine, and the breads.

Then you flew off again to fill your apron with more goodies. It was you who bid grandmothers to cook and bake, create huge celebrations around food, which is the basis for all life. You promised continuity, you promised new years, you promised old age and longevity of our species. And you have always delivered. Great old Befana, beloved by all children. Come to us again!

As a good witch I am writing my wishes down to send it to you in a small fire in my backyard. I am writing, “I like to have full good health” Befana, if I may. Last year I suffered a bad injury,which still smarts a bit when I walk . Let that lift from me and be as good as new. Let ten thousand little grandmothers mend my bones together so they can be strong in my old age.

I am writing, You brought out two of my books into the 21st century. Let them find their large audience at last. Let the mouth-to-mouth recommendations bring about plenty of sales, let the Goddess presence be strong this century, through my work and of the other sacred scribes.
“The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries” is stunning in this new incarnation! “Summoning the Fates” has soothed so many suffering hearts, let them find their new audience as well.

Since its ok to wish for three things, that’s your favorite number, dear Befana send me some inspired interns. Interns with the wish to serve the Goddess. Look amongst the Generation Z folks. I am confident that you could find me interns, at least one who would help me with my autobiography and my evolving Femina Nation.

In gratitude I'll put out figs and honey for you in the window, and watch the skies darken for a moment as you decend upon my rooftop.

I shall burn incense in your honor, spill the milk on the good earth, and let my little red squirrels eat the figs. Let the ants eat the honey.

Thank you dear Granny Befana, flying overhead I can hear your fearless cry, the sound of the local silver black crows.

Blessed be and blessed Yule to us all.