Walk Past that Eagle Feather?

Some of the people who sell items made with wild-animal parts know the law, and some do not, based on what I have seen at festivals and on websites.

So here is a reminder. Possession of raptor parts in the United States is federally regulated, and possession of eagle feathers or parts are highly regulated.

Basically, unless you are a registered member of an American Indian tribe, you can’t have it. And for them there are rules, summarized at the article linked above.

If you find that feather on the ground and you pick it up . . . just don’t say that you were not aware.

(Somehow this train of thought reminds me of one of my big sister’s favorite sayings: “Don’t forget to put a quarter in the parking meter before you go in to rob the bank.”)

 

Kennewick Man Was Buff

How buff? Five foot-seven,  170 pounds, and all muscle, according to recent skeletal analysis. He also had eaten a lot of seal meat.

(Hat tip to Peculiar.)

Following Up the Hint of Jesus’ Wife

The  recent announcement of a bit of Coptic writing that apparently referred to Jesus’ wife has stirred up plenty of controversy. Was the inscription really as old as claimed? Was it a forgery? Did it really mean “wife”?

At the Bulletin for the Study of Religion blog, Ian Brown will bring you up to speed.

But whether or not GosJesWife was written in the 4th century or the 20th century is not actually all that interesting to me (for the record, I suspect it is 4th century, although here I defer to the papyrologists and paleographers who have also drawn that conclusion). Yes, I do Christian origins and am always happy with more data. But I am more interested in the ways in which the initial story was taken-up by the media, particularly the conservative reaction arguing it to be a modern forgery. Regarding the former, it seems we are still standing in the shadow of the Jesus Seminar. Popular interest is focused almost exclusively on the possibility that the historical Jesus was married, and not at all interested in the fact that, assuming its authenticity, people in the 4th century were telling stories about a married Jesus—a detail which I, for one, think is pretty neat! Regarding the latter, well, we are still in the shadow of the Jesus Seminar, only here we feel echoes of the conservative reaction against its version of the historical Jesus.

At Heterodoxology, Egil Asprem passes along some more commentary, focusing on the paleographic questions.

And the reaction of the Vatican is predictable.

Tempest in a Pointy Hat

Organizers of this year’s Pagan Pride Day in Denver, Colorado, want to set a Guinness World Record for the largest number of people dressed as pointy-hat witches.  One of the organizers posted to a statewide mailing list,

I think that we should let witches in non-black hats participate, too…I was thinking we would have the black hat witches as requested per the Guinness guidelines for our official count, but then in the front row we can have witches wearing other colors of hats—holding a banner that says “Real Witches Come in All Colors”. This way, we would be combatting the stereoptype rather than supporting it, and maybe we can persuade the Guinness folks into dropping or renaming the “dressed as witches” category—as a wise witchy lady pointed out, this is really just as offensive as having a “largest number of people dressed like Native Americans” or “largest number of people dressed like Jewish people” category…Definitely NOT what we’re going for with the Pagan Pride message! So please spread the word that the hat does not have to be black after all. We all know of course that not all witches even wear pointy hats, but let’s ease the Guinness folks into it slowly and start this year with our hats in many colors to help get the point across.

I am a little confused here, because I searched the Guinness site and cannot find anything about witches in an existing category—please let me know if I overlooked it.

Of course, someone else immediately replied,

I still think this is offensive.    The last thing I would think we want to do is to promote the stereotypical image of the classic wicked “witch” in an event that is trying to promote us to the public. . . .  My spiritual path is far more sacred to me than trying to break a world record for pointy hats.   I don’t see where that is honoring the Lady and Lord at all.

So will witches-in-pointy-hats end up in Guinness next to the “world’s fastest toilet“?  We have a long way to go to catch up with “Sikhs in turbans” or “Orthodox Jew with sidelocks,” after all. Is it worth the bother?

It’s Called “Occult” Because It’s Hidden

In my professional life, I am currently in the middle of Major Drama that I cannot talk about right now. I think that it will be all for the best, but the details will have to remain occult for a bit longer.

Plus I seem to be getting some kind of equinoctial crud (this happens) that leaves me feeling tired and achy. Thus I observe the Turning of the Wheel.

So let me direct you to a post at The Teeming Brain on “Haunted by Our Amnesia: The Forgotten Mainstream Impact of the Occult/Esoteric ‘Fringe.’ ”

When one starts to look, it’s as if history mirrors physics, where some hypothesize that nearly 84% of the mass in the universe is composed of dark matter. It seems as if the main historical influences that affect us exist in a shadow realm that few give credence to, yet this realm forms the main source of the ebb and flow that pushes us forward. What the media, mainstream science, and academia consider “fringe” is often at the very heart of the issues we face.

Think of it: both the much-lauded leader Mohandas Gandhi and the common funerary practice of cremation (in the context of American culture) have their roots firmly planted in the Theosophical Society, an organization that most people today know of as a New Age joke, if they know of it at all. (See, for example, Gary Lachman’s forthcoming biography Madame Blavatsky: Mother of Modern Spirituality for a look at the ironic “open hiddenness” of both Theosophy and its formidable founder in today’s spiritual marketplace.)

And there is more, so read the whole thing.

The Multivalent Mothman

Last month I wandered off into Mothman territory, but here is more, from the editorial blog of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion.

There is an annual Mothman festival in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and two entries deal with it: “West Virginia is one big portal!” Reflections on the Eleventh Annual Mothman Festival – Part 1 and also  Part 2

Both are by Joseph Laycock, who is known in my little corner of academia for his work on vampire culture in Atlanta. He muses,

Driving away from Point Pleasant, I continued to think about Mothman and meaning.  Mothman is more than just a mascot for Point Pleasant. It is a reflection of the people and their history.  Scott Poole has suggested that monsters often point to darker aspects of our history. The Mothman mythos connects many elements of the community’s past that are generally not discussed with tourists: The murder of chief Cornstalk, the collapse of the Silver Bridge, and the pollution lurking just underneath the surface of the local wildlife preserve.  Mothman lore also functions as a kind of art form that, as Clifford Geertz notes, can serve to capture the themes of everyday life and more powerfully articulate their meaning.  Mothman even serves as a metaphor for the coal and power industries that dominate West Virginia. Like the smoke stacks and devastated mountaintops, Mothman is a portent of death and future disaster. But it is also a source of livelihood and closely connected to the identity of the people.

Hallowe’en Costume Failures

It’s not too early to be thinking about late October fashion disasters.

I kind of like “Edward Butter Knife-hands” though.

The Most Amazing Psychic Reading Ever

It’s a public service announcement from Belgium, actually, hence the careful alternating between French and Flemish.

Distrust of Mainstream Media Grows, and That Is a Good Thing

It is now 22 years since I worked as a journalist, and about four years since I last taught a class that was cross-listed with the university’s Department of Mass Communications.

I had six years in daily newspapers — not a career, but enough to learn the ropes — plus some magazine work.

The Gallup Organization is out with polling data, appropriate for an election year, about growing distrust of the news media.

The lede:

For the fourth straight year, the majority of Americans say they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. The 57% who now say this is a record high by one percentage point.

A key graf with implications for the business side:

Lower-income Americans and those with less education are generally more likely to trust the media than are those with higher incomes and more education. A subgroup analysis of these data suggests that three demographic groups key to advertisers — adults aged 18 to 29, Americans making at least $75,000 per year, and college graduates — lost more trust in the media in the past year than other groups, but the sample sizes in this survey are too small to say so definitively.

Quite simply, editors no longer totally decide what is “news.” In the old days, they did. The managing editor of one paper where  I worked had written a master’s thesis on that very topic: agenda-setting. He also once pronounced to the staff, in response to some citizen’s complaint that we had not covered Event X, that “a newspaper is not a public utility.”

In other words, we had no obligation to cover an event, a political candidate, or anyone’s activities if we were short on staff or just did not think it newsworthy.

Now, however, you see even the big papers and networks reacting — slowly and creakily — to news stories that germinate in blogs or other types of “citizen media.”

In addition, the exposure of things like the Journolist scandal or other examples of blatant bias get rapidly circulated online.

What New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane said about  the newsroom’s “culture of like minds” is true at many papers. I saw it when I was in my twenties, in both print and broadcast media,  but outside of journalism graduate programs — and maybe not even there — where would I have discussed it?  Who would have cared? Now some people specialize in pointing out media bias.

Where I am going with this? I liked newspaper work on many levels, but I can think of some smug editors and reporters who deserved to have their cages rattled. I like that there are multiple channels of information now, even if some of them are unreliable. (Not to mention criminal.) It’s still better than the alternative.

 

I Rarely Eat Doughnuts . . .

(well, I did have one yesterday at a meeting), but I would go here for doughnuts.