"Sheer Terror"

Retired University of Colorado professor John Carnes (Philosophy) tells all in an interview:

1. Being a teacher is like being a farmer; your life follows certain cycles. How did you feel whenever a new semester came around?

Sheer terror! Every class constitutes a performance — a 16-week performance — and you have stage fright. I was never sure if I had chosen a text that wouldn’t work, that I’d make a fool of myself in front of the class.

Via University Diaries, who would probably agree that most academics are basically shy people required to give public performances.

Yep, it starts tomorrow.

A Feeling of Accomplishment, Sort Of

I feel all loose and floaty, for I have just completed . . . a book review.

It was all of 1,100 words. It took me three days. That’s sad–I should be able to write 1,100 words just loosening up my fingers.

But it was of a book that I admire and for an academic journal in which I am trying to publish a longer article (not The Pomegranate but another journal.)

So it was almost like writing a response paper: “The authors make points X,Y, and Z. Which one was salient? Which sentences should I quote?” And so on.

Obviously, I cannot post the review here before it appears in the journal, but at some point maybe I can make a link from my book review page.

Not Getting the Whole Blogging Concept

Some people just do not get the concept — in this case, the concept of blogging.

When you write a blog, you either link to a web site you have visited (blog = web log, remember) and you comment on it. Even a Glenn Reynolds-ish “Heh” counts as a comment.

Or you write what amounts to an online diary entry. Those are the two main types of blogging.

But lately, thanks to Google Alerts, I noticed that some Pagan bloggers think that cutting and pasting Wikipedia entries counts as blogging. Examples: 1, 2, 3, 4. There are probably more.

If you cannot link-and-comment, or write about your day (or night), then there is always the Japanese option: Tell what you ate for lunch.

⟨/RANT⟩

Meanwhile, read Doug Cowan’s Cyberhenge: Modern Pagans on the Internet for a broader perspective than I can offer in a blog.

In lieu of doing actual work …

I updated the book review page of my personal web site.

El Niño Fidencio

I first heard about El Niño Fidencio (“Kid Fidencio”) from Davíd Carrasco, my thesis advisor at Colorado, who grew up partly in El Paso.

A 1920s folk healer from the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, he continues to be channeled by present-day psychic healers.

That was the connection for me: the mediumship, which fit with some research in Afro-Brazilian religion that I was doing at the time.

Among the many Web sites relating to him are a Fidencio blog (in Spanish) and a bilingual Yahoo group.

The Scary Countryside

Jason Pitzl-Waters notes an upcoming Guillermo del Toro movie:

The duo will be co-producing Born, a film adaptation of [Clive] Barker’s story about a family who gets more than they bargained for when they move to the English countryside.

The scary countryside is a staple of British–and frequently North American–film-making. Perhaps that cliché is the flip side of the Frazerian notion of the countryside as repository of ancient beliefs and practices.

In movies, ancient practices are always scary. When my book Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America was in production, the first cover design (not used) was referred to as the “Children of the Corn cover” in honor of the movie stereotype.

Urban directors make these pictures for urban audiences — who already harbor odd fears about nature and wildlife, like purse-snatching elk.

In British film, every picturesque village is controlled by a secret cabal of child-sacrificing Satanists, disguised, for instance, as the local branch of the Women’s Institute.

The editor and publisher of our county newspaper came to dinner last night (they are married to each other) and we got to talking about this very cinematic phenomenon.

We decided that the secret cabal in charge hereabouts would have to be the [Blank] County Cattlewomen. Don’t get yourself on their bad side.

Solo Mountain Solstice

“Sunrise” in the mountains is a malleable moment. You rise and dress for the -5 F (-20 C). weather, taking a hiking staff and the drum case.

You walk the trail up the east ridge, then shoulder through a grove of Gambel oak until you can see the Sun’s glow.

Start drumming softly. A Steller’s jay is the only other voice. Faithful Dog snuffles and crunches in the snow. Less Faithful Dog has already gone her own way, following fox tracks through the forest.

Amazingly, not one car is moving on the state highway down in the valley.

The Sun is on your face now. After a time, having thought on what you need for the new solar cycle, you follow your tracks back down. Less Faithful Dog is on the front porch, all wiggly and cheerful.

The temperature has climbed to 0 F.

Best wishes to my readers for a happy and productive solar year.

"Why I became a Pagan"

The advent of the Web has made survey-taking much easier, and so when some graduate students want to interview Pagans, they just post a survey on SurveyMonkey.

This link came to me from a trusted source, so I plan to take it myself once I have the free time.

It is interesting how methodology has changed. No one has to go to festivals and try to cajole people into answering a questionnaire anymore.

Where’s the Wall? I Need to Hit It

Forgive the melodramatic headline, but I have been grading tests and research papers for about six hours. At least “the big class” is done, and what lies ahead will be more pleasant reading–essays by better student writers.

So to make up for the lack of blogging, some odds and ends:

• A web site devoted to iconography of deities and demons of the ancient Near East. (Thanks to Caroline Tully.)

• I am please to announce that the Consultation on Contemporary Pagan Studies in the American Academy of Religion has been upgraded to “group” status, i.e., it is now the Contemporary Pagan Studies group, although their site does not reflect the change. The change gives us more program slots and a longer period before the next oversight review.

• Via Circle Sanctuary, a program for sending “Care Packages” to Pagan military personnel overseas.

• Mainly because it has a lot about Gleb Botkin, founder of the Church of Aphrodite and hence one of America’s Pagan pioneers, I just read Frances Welch’s A Romanov Fantasy: Life at the Court of Anna Anderson. (Reviewed in the The Guardian.)

I really didn’t learn anything new about the C of A., but there is this tidbit, as close as Welch comes to suggesting how Franziska Schandzkowska [Anna Anderson] (1896-1984) fooled so many people into thinking that she was Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the Russian royal family–including Botkin, who knew the real Anastasia when they were both teenagers. Anastasia’s uncle by marriage, Grand Duke Alexander, suggested that Anna was what New Agers call a “walk-in.”

A confirmed spiritualist and table-rapper, Alexander claimed that Grand Duchess Anastasia’s spirit had returned and incorporated itself into another body. His proclamation revealed the extent to which he was impressed by Anna’s memories. ‘She knows so much about the intimate life of the Tsar and his family that there is simply no other explanation for it; and of course it wouldn’t be the first time that a spirit has returned to earth in a new physical form.’

Y’think?

Gallimaufry with Temporal Dislocation

¶ It’s not too late to travel in time.

This one is more for beginners. Basically dress in period clothing (preferably Victorian era) and stagger around amazed at everything. Since the culture’s set in place already, you have more of a template to work off of. (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

¶ Time travel of a different kind: An American soldier in Iraq visits Ur of the Chaldees.

¶ I am a sucker for this kind of thing. For more futures that never happened and dead ends on the road to Now, try Modern Mechanix.