{"id":836,"date":"2007-03-14T03:30:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-14T03:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=836"},"modified":"2007-03-14T03:30:00","modified_gmt":"2007-03-14T03:30:00","slug":"banning-pagans-on-aesthetic-grounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=836","title":{"rendered":"Banning Pagans on aesthetic grounds"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Australian reporter dumps on tacky (to him) Pagans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pagans infested my university, were constantly pulling out ouija boards at parties and could often be found in the bush near my home, dripping candle wax on one another and swapping Tori Amos albums.<\/em><\/p>\n

And the commenters dump on him, although signing yourself “Shining Wolf of Indiana” might just be playing right into his hand, you think?<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, my university is not what you would call trendy. We are heavy on “non-traditional” (over 25) students, and even a surprising number of the “traditionals” are working full time and\/or are married and\/or have a kid.<\/p>\n

So imagine my surprise at spotting my first (apparent) furry<\/a> in an English composition class next door to my office, wearing some kind of loose top, a short skirt, and a long, racoonish fake fur tail hanging over the skirt.<\/p>\n

We are already wild animals, as Gary Snyder points out<\/a>. But some of us want to be cartoon animals.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: Bad link fixed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Australian reporter dumps on tacky (to him) Pagans. Pagans infested my university, were constantly pulling out ouija boards at parties and could often be found in the bush near my home, dripping candle wax on one another and swapping Tori Amos albums. And the commenters dump on him, although signing yourself “Shining Wolf of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[5,22],"class_list":["post-836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-paganism","tag-weirdness"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-du","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3811,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3811","url_meta":{"origin":836,"position":0},"title":"Thought Crime in the Writing Classroom","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I taught writing for twenty years. I heard some shocking stuff\u2014especially in the \"Creative Nonfiction\" class, which occasionally produced some, shall we say, highly confessional material. And there was one outright psycho student who, lucky for me, fixated on a different professor as the cause of all her problems\u2014not to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7932,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7932","url_meta":{"origin":836,"position":1},"title":"Assessing a New Book on Jesus’ Wife","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 24, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I used to think that of course Jesus was married \u2014 what normal 1st-century small-town Jewish man would not be married? Answer: most of the Essenes, to name one group. The perennial interest in an actual bloodline of his descendents is periodically stoked by books like Holy Blood, Holy Grail,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"books\"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=soutrocknatub-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1605986100","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13593,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13593","url_meta":{"origin":836,"position":2},"title":"Spiritual Drama and the April 8th Eclipse","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 6, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Religion scholar Bron Taylor, University of Florida who has worked mostly in the non-theistic side of nature religion, a.k.a \"dark green religion,\" is interviewed about spiritual interpretations of the April 8, 2024 solar eclipse. To him, it's partly about re-enchantment: \u201cPeople are on their own pilgrimages, and they\u2019re trying to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"astrology\"","block_context":{"text":"astrology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=astrology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/BronTaylor-269x300.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10319,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10319","url_meta":{"origin":836,"position":3},"title":"Texas Witchcraft Murder Archive Finds a Home","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 3, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"I have diversity right here in the trunk of my rental car, officer. The first problem on any university campus finding a parking spot. I pulled in behind the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum, which is part of West Texas A &M University, and all the faculty spaces were full. There\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/diversity-sign.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/diversity-sign.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/diversity-sign.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/diversity-sign.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/diversity-sign.jpeg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":912,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=912","url_meta":{"origin":836,"position":4},"title":"The Fall of an Intellectual Thug","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 25, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The University of Colorado has fired Ward Churchill, plagiarist, pseudo-American Indian, and intellectual thug.In case you have not guessed, I am happy about that.If a student had committed as much plagiarism as Churchill did, he would flunk the course. (My course, at any rate.)Some people will try to argue that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":747,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=747","url_meta":{"origin":836,"position":5},"title":"Outed by ‘the chair’","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 27, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"My department chair (that's how we say it in Academia to avoid the sexism of \"chairman,\" even though it makes him sound like an ornate piece of furniture) recently invited me to speak to one of his classes.To establish my credentials, he handed a copy of my book Her Hidden\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}