M. and I are on the road, looking for books, brew pubs, and botanicals, so blogging will be sporadic for a few days. So far we have covered two out of three.
This interior view is not a brew pub, however, but one of our favorite coffee shops.
Tag Archives: blogging
Blogroll Updates
• Technoccult is now called Renegade Futurist, although the old URL lingers. If you miss the “occult” part, they have suggestions.
• Staying Alive is a blog about academic survival — fictions and realities.
• This Lively Earth is Priscilla Stuckey’s blog on writing, animism, and other forms of nature-based spirituality.
Blogging in Fire Season
My days this week were split between book-editing, another writing project, and fire-fighting — or worrying about fires.
In late January I joined the little rural volunteer fire department, which seems in a way to embody what the Founders meant by “militia” back in the 18th century.
M. and I also signed up as volunteers for the Colorado Division of Wildlife — we have had one training day and no projects yet, but that will change.
Tonight, Saturday, and Sunday I will be involved with more wild-land fire training. That is our main concern — stopping wild fires that threaten structures — rather than structure fires as such.
I have a stack of books to review. It is a lot easier to think about writing on a day like today: cloudy, a wisp of drizzle in the air, not much wind.
On Not Being a Textual Religion
People who think that a “real religion” has holy books often do not understand Paganism, whether old or now.
Gus diZerega, who is now blogging at BeliefNet, takes on that attitude in his latest post, “A Pagan View on Sacred Authority.”
Fundamentally we are an oral and experiential tradition. We Wiccans have Books of Shadows, but they are more like ritual cookbooks that sacred texts along Biblical or even theological lines. Similar texts dominate in Brazil among the African Diasporic traditions. Dogma is not particularly important, compared to ritual and experience. This also appears to have been the case in [ancient] Rome.
Incidentally, it is good to see that BeliefNet has a Pagan blogger again. It used to be me, but I was purged along with other non-monotheists. Now the site’s owners seem to be trying to broaden its blogroll once again. You still have to scroll to the very very bottom to find the Pagan blogger.
A Surrealist Hymn to Aphrodite
Blogger like to write about the weird search terms that bring in readers.
Similarly Sannion turned the subject lines of messages caught in his email spam filter into what amounts to a hymn to Aphrodite Pandemos — through the Surrealist technique of random assemblage.
Additional Ways to Read this Blog
On the right side of the page, you will see links for “Letter from Hardscrabble Creek’s Atom feed and LiveJournal feed. The RSS feed is here.
I have now added links that let you subscribe to this blog on Kindle and to become a fan on Facebook.
I am not sure what the benefits of becoming a fan on Facebook are, so if you know, enlighten me.
Gallimaufry and an Omelette
¶ Twitter, It’s the CB radio of the 2000’s. That’s funny if you remember the CB radio craze of the 1970s.
¶ Green Egg Omelette: An Anthology of Art and Articles from the Legendary Pagan Journal is shipping now — my contributor copy just arrived. Oberon Zell’s layout suggests the original pages, blending different decades into a coherent whole — with lots of Arnold Bocklin type, on the principle that everything old is new again. (Is it coincidence that Böcklin himself loved Pagan themes in his art?)
Anyway, go buy one and dive in.
¶ I share James French’s skepticism about Pagan-Christian dialog but some people obviously think it is worthwhile.
¶ Caroline Tully reprints some cogent thoughts on the role of the priestess–from 108 years ago. “What do we find in the modern development of religion to replace the feminine idea, and consequently the Priestess?”
Is Yours a Boy Blog or a Girl Blog?
Now that you know your blog’s Meyers-Briggs personality type, what about its gender?
Web sites that apply an algorithm to determine whether text is “masculine” or “feminine” have been around for a little while. Gender Analyzer is still in beta-testing. Its results are not always accurate.
For instance, it shows my other blog as having a 69-percent chance of being written by a man. But this blog rated a 90-percent chance of being written by a woman.
Uh, no.
Another writing-gender analysis site that shows you its inner workings is Gender Genie. I have used it now and then as a fun exercise for my writing classes, and its results are usually accurate.
Have fun, and don’t take any of this too seriously, unless you really are trying to be something other than a dog.
Meyers-Briggs and Blogs
At some point I must have taken the Meyers-Briggs personality test, but I don’t remember the result. This blog, however, is ISTP – “The Mechanics,” according to a web site that runs a test on your writing.
The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.
My other blog, however, is ESTP – “The Doers.”
Go figure. (Via Mirabilis.)
Gallimaufry in Traffic
¶ So M. and I are in traffic behind a Cadillac SRX with the vanity license plate “S-N-M” and a custom-painted “Sanguine Addiction” above the license-plate holder. That’s a Colorado metal band, but the driver did not look like any of the musicians. Here is what we were arguing about: Did the big wholesome Denver Broncos logo in the vehicle’s rear window add or detract from the overall effect?
¶ The Colorado Springs Gazette ran an autumn equinox story on the alleged Ogham writing in Crack Cave and other SE Colorado sites. For videos of this and other sites, see Scott Monahan’s video page. (Yep, that’s me in one with Martin Brennan.) Am I a “believer”? Not exactly. I remain perplexed — and perplexed at how Colorado Pagans ignore these sites too.
¶ Anne Hill, on my blogroll at Blog O’Gnosis, is now also blogging about dreams at the Huffington Post.