Tag Archives: blogging

Blog It and They Will Come. But Why?

Real search-engine queries that brought Web visitors to this blog:

Is Depeche Mode synonymous with homosexuality? [I don’t know; I missed the 80s.]

Booty shaking videos of Muslim women

Arvol Looking Horse fraud youtube [he is an American Indian activist on the “cultural appropriation” issue]

make shinto priest hat

food placed in creek for religion
[I have made food offerings at a crossroads, but in the creek??]

intercessory prayer for halloween sacrifice

sex colors for witches

Of course, now the Googlebot will index all those terms here . . .

Blogging Hermits

What is it with blogging hermits—or quasi-hermits?

Would Henry David Thoreau have had a blog? I am sure of it. Anyone who would edit his autobiography so that two years of experience fit neatly into one literary year has demonstrated the capability of self-romanticizing that blogging requires.

Sunday’s Denver Post had a long piece about a man named Daniel Suelo who lives in a cave outside Moab, Utah, never handles money, dumpster-dives, etc.—and blogs about his life, courtesy of the long-suffering local librarians. (Somebody tell him that white-on-black fonts offer poor readability.)

I can see Diogenes the Cynic updating his blog at the public library too: “inabarrel.blogspot.com.”

And there are others.

Lately I have been reading As The Crow Flies, who offers this thought:

If you want to be alone, it’s important to know, you can never get far enough away;  humans and their noise producing machines are everywhere.   One thought that helps me, is to think of myself as an alien dropped off on a planet of apes.   Then I can just sit back and enjoy the show—like going to the zoo.

But the post that sold me on her blog is this one.

I cannot get it out of my mind. Maybe it’s because M. and I often go several days without talking to anyone else in person (not counting email). Without her (and the dogs), I would soon be wondering the same thing.

Cross-posted to Southern Rockies Nature Blog.

The Political Pagan blog

Michael Strmiska has a started a new blog, The Political Pagan. Stop by and visit. He does not mention it, but he is also on The Pomegranate’s editorial board.

Gallimaufry with Ancestors

• From Svartesól, five ways of communicating with the gods.

• Paula Jean West has a round-up of posts on Pagan festival etiquette. But needing a wi-fi hotspot? I thought some people went to festivals to get away from all that. Write some columns in advance–that’s the traditional way of dealing with that issue.

• Caroline Kenner’s guest post at the Wild Hunt on ancestors (i.e., the Mighty Dead) is worth reading. It’s a bit long for a blog post–but as a guest, she did not have the luxury of breaking it into three parts.

• Graduating from college, Annyikha offers her long hair to Artemis and Athene.

• A personal protection spell for handguns. The “witch who lives in the woods alone” probably would approve.

• This week’s best search words that brought a visitor to this blog: “you tube videos secret witchcraft threats.” If they were truly secret, would they be on YouTube? Some people have such trust in the InterWebz. It’s sort of touching.

• Actually, maybe this post is too long. I would look more productive if I made a separate post out of each bullet point, wouldn’t I.

I’m Not Here, I’m There

What would be today’s blog post is over at The Wild Hunt instead.

My First-Draft Paper on the ‘Crisis of History’

My CESNUR paper, “In the Mists of Avalon: How Contemporary Paganism Dodges the ‘Crisis of History,'” has been published on line at the organization’s web site.

It is sort of quick and lightweight, but I want to work more on those ideas in the future.

In the immediate future, however, I need to come up with something for my guest-blogger spot at The Wild Hunt. Warning, it’s more likely to be snarky than deep.

From Abortion to Icelandic Music and Back

So Jason decides that he would rather blog about abortion than Iceland Paganism, which leads me to follow the Icelandic Paganism link, as I have read all the usual blather that followed the murder of Dr. Tiller.

Thus I am lead to the documentary Screaming Masterpiece, about Icelandic music, which is now in my Netflix queue.

Must get back to work now — I have to finish my paper for the CESNUR conference.

Back when I had to teach first-year composition, the joke was that students in search of a topic tended to fall into well-worn ruts: abortion, gun control, the drinking age, etc.

Dealing with the first one was easy, after a while. I just issued a classroom fatwa that only people who had had an abortion could write about the topic.

The real purpose, of course, was to segue into a discussion of pathos and how hard it was to write convincingly about a topic with which one has no emotional connection.

Pagan Travel Blogger

The Examiner blog network, which signed Murph Pizza to cover Paganistan, now has a Pagan travel writer, Paula Jean West.

Are we a niche market, or what?

Gallimaufry with Gray Matter

• Ten myths about the brain.

• Paganistan gets a designated blogger in the Examiner network, Murph Pizza.

• A “prehistoric pin-up”? Archaeological video from the journal Nature.

Patheos’ Pagan Gateway

I have had the privilege of helping to create the “Pagan gateway” on Patheos.com, a new interfaith religious portal site designed to help people find “ credible, comprehensive, easily accessible information on religion and spirituality.”

Founders Leo and Cathie Brunnick are trying to create a site that is comprehensive, academically sound, but accessible to everyone, with all the usual bells and whistles — discussion forums, blogs, etc.

Time’s article on the overall Patheos site produced some picky responses on the GetReligion blog.

Of course Patheos will be compared to Beliefnet.com — from the Pagan perspective, I think it is a lot better. I wrote earlier about my bad experience as a blogger with Beliefnet.

The “Arts & Entertainment” link is not yet working, but will have information on musicians, movies, and so on.

Go visit, see what you think, and stake out a spot on the discussion board. The Pagan Gateway team is supposed to seed them with provocative questions.