Back from an outdoor ritual, wet through!

This evening the New Moon devotional group I belong to packed up our cars and headed one hour north-east of the city, heading for a deserted beach where we hiked out and created our temple in an isolated grove. As we were preparing the altar it started to rain, and the entire ceremony was conducted as a minor thunderstorm passed over our heads. It was a tremendously powerful experience, out in raw nature honoring our Gods, but when it was over we were all pretty much soaked through!

We trekked back to our cars (it was heading into middle evening, which with the cloud cover equalled about 40% light levels, and in the dark all Wiccans are grey!) and drove back to the city in worsening rain, where hot tea, egg salad sandwiches, potato salad and various desserts reinvigorated us after our adventure. Trudging back through the cold sand as rain pounded on my hood, carrying various ritual paraphenalia on each shoulder, I briefly considered becoming an Episcopelean -- a religion that holds its ceremonies in warm, well-lit churches with ample parking close by...

Hell, no! Nothing I'd find in a church could ever equal the magnificence of spreading my arms and raising my face to the sweet rain and feeling the energy of the trees and earth and sky flowing through me. Utterly magical...

From the Department of They Aren't Even Trying To Hide It Anymore, Are They?

Picked this up off of Witchvox.com, an article from the Daytona Beach News-Jounal... Holy shit, Batman! I'm SO glad I live in Canada!

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Hard lessons from poetry class: Speech is free unless it's critical

By BILL HILL

Last update: 15 May 2004

Bill Nevins, a New Mexico high school teacher and personal friend, was fired last year and classes in poetry and the poetry club at Rio Rancho High School were permanently terminated. It had nothing to do with obscenity, but it had everything to do with extremist politics.

The "Slam Team" was a group of teenage poets who asked Nevins to serve as faculty adviser to their club. The teens, mostly shy youngsters, were taught to read their poetry aloud and before audiences. Rio Rancho High School gave the Slam Team access to the school's closed-circuit television once a week and the poets thrived.

In March 2003, a teenage girl named Courtney presented one of her poems before an audience at Barnes & Noble bookstore in Albuquerque, then read the poem live on the school's closed-circuit television channel.

A school military liaison and the high school principal accused the girl of being "un-American" because she criticized the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's failure to give substance to its "No child left behind" education policy.

The girl's mother, also a teacher, was ordered by the principal to destroy the child's poetry. The mother refused and may lose her job.

Bill Nevins was suspended for not censoring the poetry of his students. Remember, there is no obscenity to be found in any of the poetry. He was later fired by the principal.

After firing Nevins and terminating the teaching and reading of poetry in the school, the principal and the military liaison read a poem of their own as they raised the flag outside the school. When the principal had the flag at full staff, he applauded the action he'd taken in concert with the military liaison.

Then to all students and faculty who did not share his political opinions, the principal shouted: "Shut your faces." What a wonderful lesson he gave those 3,000 students at the largest public high school in New Mexico. In his mind, only certain opinions are to be allowed.

But more was to come. Posters done by art students were ordered torn down, even though none was termed obscene. Some were satirical, implicating a national policy that had led us into war. Art teachers who refused to rip down the posters on display in their classrooms were not given contracts to return to the school in this current school year.

The message is plain. Critical thinking, questioning of public policies and freedom of speech are not to be allowed to anyone who does not share the thinking of the school principal.

The teachers union has been joined in a legal action against the school by the National Writers Union, headquartered in New York City. NWU's at-large representative Samantha Clark lives and works in Albuquerque.

The American Civil Liberties Union has become the legal arm of the lawsuit pending in federal court.

Meanwhile, Nevins applied for a teaching post in another school and was offered the job but he can't go to work until Rio Rancho's principal sends the new school Nevins' credentials. The principal has refused to do so, and that adds yet another issue to the lawsuit, which is awaiting a trial date.

While students are denied poetry readings, poetry clubs and classes in poetry, Nevins works elsewhere and writes his own poetry.

Writers and editors who have spent years translating essays, films, poems, scientific articles and books by Iranian, North Korean and Sudanese authors have been warned not to do so by the U.S. Treasury Department under penalty of fine and imprisonment. Publishers and film producers are not allowed to edit works authored by writers in those nations. The Bush administration contends doing so has the effect of trading with the enemy, despite a 1988 law that exempts published materials from sanction under trade rules.

Robert Bovenschulte, president of the American Chemical Society, is challenging the rule interpretation by violating it to edit into English several scientific papers from Iran.

Are book burnings next?

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But to honest... didn't we see this coming?

*sigh* I feel genuinely sorry for most Americans. They made their bed out of fear and unwarranted trust in their government, and now they have to lie in it.

Oh, and you can see the comments that folks on Witchvox.com have been making at

http://www.witchvox.com/wren/wn_detail.html?id=9926

And you can find the poem that started it all in the lj-cut below

( Revolution X )

("The girl's mother, also a teacher, was ordered by the principal to destroy the child's poetry. The mother refused and may lose her job." Polish up your jack-boots, folks, and start marching for the Motherland! History repeats itself... unfortunately.)