‘Ghosts’ in print

My essay “Ghosts” has been published in the November issue of Colorado Central magazine. Naturally, I’m delighted that the editors, Ed and Martha Quillen, liked it, even though it is probably more “literary” than their usual editorial mixture.

I wrote it last May, composing parts in my head while driving the back roads of Park County, Colorado, on the way home from the trip to Eagle Rock that the essay describes. In some cases, I found myself on the same roads that Dad and I had traveled the previous December on what would turn out to be his last trip into those mountains.

Errata: In the “Florence 2003” section, “windy roads” should be “winding roads.” And I can explain the discrepancy between the number of musicians in the Pearl DeVere funeral-reenactment photos and the text. Really, I can.

Traditional Medicine versus Addiction

As long as I’m blogging the BBC, let me point out this story on the effectiveness of traditional therapy, including the use of entheogenic (“psychedelic”) plants in a shamanic context to overcome drug addiction in Brazil.

I Have Been Waiting for this News Story

Ever since I heard that Saddam Hussein was draining these wetlands, I had enough reason to hate the guy. And ever since the invasion of Iraq last spring, I have been wondering if someone?American troops, British troops, local contractors–I don’t care who–would show up with some earthmoving equipment and start correcting the situation. It looks like that might be happening, according to the BBC’s website. On the other hand, there’s not enough water in the Euphrates any more.

Maybe Iraqis need to take up the infidel custom of holding Ducks Unlimited banquets and auctions to raise money for wetlands restoration.

I Have Been Waiting for this News Story

Ever since I heard that Saddam Hussein was draining these wetlands, I had enough reason to hate the guy. And ever since the invasion of Iraq last spring, I have been wondering if someone?American troops, British troops, local contractors–I don’t care who–would show up with some earthmoving equipment and start correcting the situation. It looks like that might be happening, according to the BBC’s website. On the other hand, there’s not enough water in the Euphrates any more.

Maybe Iraqis need to take up the infidel custom of holding Ducks Unlimited banquets and auctions to raise money for wetlands restoration.

I Have Been Waiting for this News Story

Ever since I heard that Saddam Hussein was draining these wetlands, I had enough reason to hate the guy. And ever since the invasion of Iraq last spring, I have been wondering if someone?American troops, British troops, local contractors–I don’t care who–would show up with some earthmoving equipment and start correcting the situation. It looks like that might be happening, according to the BBC’s website. On the other hand, there’s not enough water in the Euphrates any more.

Maybe Iraqis need to take up the infidel custom of holding Ducks Unlimited banquets and auctions to raise money for wetlands restoration.

I Have Been Waiting for this News Story

Ever since I heard that Saddam Hussein was draining these wetlands, I had enough reason to hate the guy. And ever since the invasion of Iraq last spring, I have been wondering if someone?American troops, British troops, local contractors–I don’t care who–would show up with some earthmoving equipment and start correcting the situation. It looks like that might be happening, according to the BBC’s website. On the other hand, there’s not enough water in the Euphrates any more.

Maybe Iraqis need to take up the infidel custom of holding Ducks Unlimited banquets and auctions to raise money for wetlands restoration.

The John William Waterhouse Revival

The Neoclassical (or some would say Pre-Raphaelite) painter John William Waterhouse, 1849-1917, is enjoying a posthumous career illustrating books on Paganism.

His painting “The Sorceress” appears on the cover of Witchcraft Medicine — see entry for October 29 — while “Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses” is on the dust jacket of Ronald Hutton’s latest, Witches, Druids and King Arthur, of which I will have more to say soon.

Do You ‘Write like a Wo/Man’?

Paste at least 500 words of your text here, select the appropriate genre — fiction, nonfiction, blog entry — and see what happens.

Comprehending the Great Vowel Shift

I love reading about the history of the English language. If I have 20 minutes to fill in my rhetoric class, I can give an impromptu lecture on that history, which I title (to myself) as “Why the English Language Is Like a Club Sandwich.” But never having formally worked with the International Phonetic Alphabet in a linguistics class, I never felt that I truly comprehended the “Great Vowel Shift” that marks part of the transition from Middle to Early Modern English.

Thanks to the Web, this site, by Melinda Mezner of Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, makes it all comprehensible. Read the IPA text, listen to the sounds. After that, the diagrams might make more sense. Warning: lots of small sound files to download.

Barbie, the Hot Pagan Witch

I am in debt to Mark Morford’s SF Gate column on the latest, must-have Barbie doll. (Mattel offers a dark-complexioned version as well.) She would be just right to look down on you and your plushies while you are reading some of Llewellyn Publications’ latest teen-witch fiction.