On the home page of the Green Egg (now free for download), see a list of “departed Pagan pioneers, founders, and elders.”
I do not think that Dorothy Clutterbuck belongs there, however. She was the unwitting victim of Gerald Gardner’s Gemini sense of humor, I think. But aside from her, these pioneers deserve to be remembered.
Last night after walking the dogs I spread an old blanket on the ground and lay watching the stars.
The Perseid meteor shower is under way, and in 15 minutes I saw five meteors.
One was just a blip of light, two were quick, and two left long streaks.
I had felt emotionally low all day. Isaac Bonewits’ passing was part of the cause, but only part, I think.
We were friends at a distance, but rarely saw one another. He moved East, and I have attended only one festival there in my life, and it was not one that he came to.
The time of year is part of it. After all those years in the classroom, mid-August still seems like the end of summer.
Last week I was talking with a friend at the university library. She mentioned that university convocation, which is followed by college and department meetings, comes next week. She said that I flinched when I heard that—even though it no longer affects me, even though it no longer means the end of summer break.
Back when our ancestors chopped with stone, they no doubt watched the night sky much more than we do. And they saw falling stars, of course, and no doubt they made analogies between meteors and human lives.
Isaac’s was one of the long streaks—at least so far as we Pagans are concerned. But there is so much black between the stars.
Still, watch the sky-show if you can. It is all that there is.
Would you see this actual television commercial in a race for parish coroner?
(Via Talking Points Memo.)
I noticed a couple of instances in the past month where Colorado Pagans seem to be getting fairer coverage in the news. One was the item about the Pagan Student Alliance at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
(But as a former university professor, I have seen clubs come and go. Only clubs with strong support from a department or a particular professor last more than a year or two, typically.)
A Denver Post story today describes the work of a hospice chaplain and contains this paragraph:
Her patients come from all spiritual traditions and have included a Buddhist priest, a Druid high priest and a Sufi spiritual leader. But end-of-life spiritual care, she emphasizes, isn’t necessarily about religion.
So the Druid is one of the exotic Others, but at least the Post did not put “high priest” in quotation marks.
And Tina Dowd sounds like a true priestess herself.
UPDATE: Here is one description of running a university Pagan students’ club.