A Question for Saraclark

When should I plant my daffodils?

For Our Bridgett, Though, Maybe Just a Fruit Basket?

Straight from Hard Scrabble Creek, we learn that they’ve been burying offerings in the mud at Saveock since the mid-1600s.

Speculation is

The only valid suggestion we found was that the pits were some sort of offering to St. Bridget or St. Bride the patron saint of brides who has the swan as her symbol. It is said that offerings to her were placed at the branches of three rivers and this area telephone exchange used to be called Threewaters–Saveock water, Blackwater and Chacewater.

Cool.

Emily Dickinson, Immoral Hussy?!

I can only hope a revelation like this—

For example, when Mabel Loomis Todd, the vivacious and talented wife of Amherst College astronomer David Todd, was invited to play the piano for Dickinson and her younger sister, Lavinia, in September of 1882, she received a startling warning from their sister-in-law, Susan Dickinson, next door. The Dickinson spinster sisters, Sue informed her, “have not, either of them, any idea of morality.” Sue added darkly, “I went in there one day, and in the drawing room I found Emily reclining in the arms of a man.

–will mean that Emily can soon be included on the Bad Girl Blog.

Whew, that Sue sounds like a stick in the mud (maybe she should go work for the NSA), but she can turn a phrase.  “In the drawing room I found Emily reclining in the arms of a man.”  That’s actually quite lovely.  I hope the soldier I get to talk dirty to has a fetish for 19th century American poets, so that I can say things like “Sue comes in and finds us in the drawing room, where I am reclining in the arms of a man.”

Edited to add: The only thing that worries me about this whole ‘Dirty Talk the Troops’ thing is that I have the least sexy, sexy voice.  In fact, the only time I sound even remotely sexy on the phone is when I’m sick.  And need I remind you how my last effort went?

Support the Troops!

Now that we know for certain that the purpose of the NSA wiretaps is not to listen in on Al Quaida but to provide bored government workers cheep titilation and entertainment while listening in on the private conversations of our own soldiers, who I am certain are not terrorist, I think it is time for every American to step up and support our troops.

“Aunt B.,” you may ask, “I don’t see how the NSA acting like a bunch of jackasses gives us any opportunity for supporting our troops.”

Well, no, seemingly, not on the surface.  But think of it this way.  Right now, the NSA can listen in on our troops having what they think are private intimate moments with their loved ones because the NSA doesn’t have enough to do and there are relatively few dirty phone calls being made by our troops.

But, if we each vowed to call one soldier overseas and talk filthy to him or her, the NSA would be overwhelmed by salatious phone calls they needed to monitor and giggle about like junior high school children and the soldiers who were having real dirty phone calls would then again be afforded some amount of privacy.

I know a few veterans read this blog and I hope they’ll help coordinate our efforts.

Welcome Folks from La Sierra University!

Honestly, I’m still a little weirded out by this whole “Folks Teaching Tiny Cat Pants” in class, but I’ve decided to buck up and be flattered by it instead of self-conscious.

I am, however, not going to pass up the chance to imagine the looks on your faces when you see that I see you seeing me.

Welcome.

Are you guys allowed to dance, at least?  Can I set up a cross-nation dance between you and the folks at Milligan?  Is it wrong to still tease the Milligan folks? I love you, Milligan folks!  I still feel bad for freaking out on you.

See, La Sierra, it could be worse.  Rather than being friendly towards you, I could have been all suspicious about you and now worried that there’s a whole class of people who think I’m weird and yucky.  Should I send the Milligan folks baked goods?  Should I just let it go?  I don’t know.

Oh, shit!  Baked goods.  I’ve got to get a care package off to Team Tiny Cat Pants running the Baltimore marathon.

Elves

Last night on Destination Truth, they went to Iceland in search of elves.  I wish they’d spent more time talking about elves than looking for them, but what can you do?

I think I’ve told you that one theory is that the gods cannot change fate (because their experience of time is not linear like ours is) and this is, in part, one of the reasons they are so interested in us and invested in us, when they are–because we can change fate, ours and, therefore, to some extent, theirs.

Supposedly, there are two “people” in our world who can change Fortune–us and the elves.  In general, our worlds sit nestled in right together, but we are mostly blind to each other, even though we can often see evidence of the existance of the other.  There are, supposedly, though, thing spots, where we can encounter each other pretty consistantly.

So, to be flip, elf teenagers probably go to the same outcroppings human teenagers go to in order to scare the shit out of each other and themselves.

There’s a sense from the Lore that the Aesir and the Vanir, before the war, lived in two separate realms and had customs very different from each other.  And the Vanir, I think it’s clear, had their realm on that other side.  And all those quasi-unseen beings whose presense still makes itself known–the elves, the disir, the wrights, etc.–would seem to fall under the influence (to use the word inadiquately) of the Vanir.

Which is not to say that the Aesir aren’t magical.  But then the lines are so blurry when you start to try to fix them.

You might divvy it up differently, where the Aesir are of village and town, and the Vanir are of the countryside and the Juton are of the wilderness.  Or you might understand it in terms of magic, with the Aesir doing more controlled, deliberate work, the Vanir being more wild and intuative about it, and then the Juton working as if magic were the only law.

It’s hard to make sense of things intellectually when those things are deliberately designed to speak to the kinds of Truth that aren’t understood first with your brain.

Sometimes, I think it’d be nice to have someone to mull this stuff over with, you know?

But who do I know?  The guy with the World Tree on his back is actually Catholic.  The guy who named his children Wolf and Grimm is, I’m sure, just an unrepentant D&D player.  And I don’t want to get to know strangers.

I’m still bone tired of making sacred space with groups of strangers.

Are you reading WitchDoctor Joe’s blog?  It’s new to me, but I’m enjoying it.  It fits in some how with all of this, but I’m not yet sure how so there you go.

Yuri Cunza, Lean Right On Away From Me

I’m torn.  I’m torn about whether to even write this post, but I’m writing it anyway.

See, in general, I don’t care who you, as an individual, vote for.  Obviously, I would hope that you would vote for the person I think would make the best president, but I’m not sitting here sweating about whether you’re voting for McCain or McKinney or Obama.  I expect you have your reasons and, while I might try to convince you otherwise, in the end, not my business.

But I was thinking, what if I found out that Gloria Steinem voted for McCain because she thought the inclusion of Palin on the ticket made voting for McCain the feminist choice?  Wouldn’t that decision undermine her credibility as a feminist for me?

And the answer is–yes, yes it would.

So, when I read that Yuri Cunza is considering voting for McCain, I can only hope this is some terrible joke, some attempt at dry humor gone bad.

But I’m afraid that it’s not.

And I’m really bothered.  At two levels.

One, if Michael Cass was astute enough to realize that it’s interesting that Cunza is leaning towards McCain, where were the follow-up questions?

But, two, and more importantly, what the fuck?  If Cunza were just a private citizen, he could vote for who he wanted and I wouldn’t care.  Shoot, people in my own family, who are soon going to need Medicare, and whose fortunes are tied to the plummeting housing market, are going to vote straight Republican this year, again, like every year, even though this is where it’s gotten them and I still love them and I’m still going to call them on Christmas, and I’m not even Christian, so there you go.

But if there’s a Hispanic issue and a camera, Cunza is there, speaking for the Hispanic residents of Tennessee, advocating for them.  And I respect the hell out of John Lamb, but “McCain can talk the talk sometimes in regard to immigrants” just doesn’t cut it for me.

Talk the talk?!

Then why can’t he be bothered to answer The Sanctuary’s questions about immigration?  Where was he when Immigration and Naturalization Services was changed into Immigration and Customs Enforcement?  Has he spoken at all about the unfair enforcement of 287(g)?  Has he gone to South Carolina to check on the 300 people detained there?  Has he spent time in Postville with the people still suffering from the blunt end of a police state?

Okay, and forget the illegal immigrants.

How is John McCain’s healthcare reform going to help people without insurance?  Or people who are insured but are making $18,000 a year groundskeeping?  Because, let me tell you, you think living on $18,000 a year is tough, try living on $18,000 a year but getting taxed like you’re living on $30,000.

McCain wants to cut Medicare.  How is this in the best interest of the elderly Hispanic people Cunza claims to speak for?

As a businessman, it makes sense that Cunza might vote Republican.

But as a, dare I say it, community activist?

Why would you vote for someone who thinks the thing you’re most visible as is, at best, a joke and, at worst, puts you in league with terrorists?