The Witching Well

… and still have a life IRL?

Eric Burns, who is already here, and here, and here, and of course here, and will now be the new editor there, seems to be making it his mission to find out!

Congrats, Eric!!

Four jobs you’ve had in your life:
Door-to-door canvasser; data entry operator; apprentice cake decorator; retail assistant manager.

Four movies you could watch over and over: The Lion in Winter; Casablanca; A Night at the Opera; Romeo and Juliet (the Franco Zeffirelli version).

Four places you’ve lived: Salem, MA; a dorm at BU; an apartment in Brighton, MA,; another apartment in Brighton, MA.

Four TV shows you love to watch:
Firefly, Battlestar Gallactica (the current one), Rome, Lost.

Four places you’ve been on vacation: London; Dublin; Quebec City; Göttingen (where the Brothers Grimm taught at the university).

Four websites you visit daily: Weather.com; the Absolute Write Water Cooler; Websnark; Bloglines.

Four of your favorite foods: Chocolate; pasta with red sauce; roasted garlic; fresh-baked bread.

Four places you’d rather be: London; Dublin; with friends, wherever; on a beach somewhere warm.

Via Making Light

George Bush, once upon a time, made a wisecrack about how much easier things would be if he were a dictator. A lot of people brushed that off as just being in poor taste. Now, as dear old Dubya tries to justify eavesdropping within the US without a warrant, I find myself wondering again just how funny that joke was supposed to be. Was it really just a quip that fell flat? Or was it perhaps a hint at what Cowboy George has really been thinking all along — that his job really would be easier if he didn’t have to obey the rules?

I honestly don’t think this administration has the least bit of respect for the American people, for the rule of law, or for the Constitution. George and his cronies are out for themselves and their goals and their friends, and they will do whatever they think they can get away with in order to get what they want.

I don’t agree with a lot of what PETA says or does, but I find it hard to believe that anyone would seriously consider them a terrorist threat. And how about Greenpeace? According to the ACLU, both of these groups have been under surveillance by the FBI. Remember when they were spying on the Quakers? Things haven’t changed. If you’re not toeing the GOP-approved, corporate-sponsored line, then the administration wants to intimidate you into shutting up.

Don’t do it. Don’t let them take away our right to say what we want, think as we please, and gather in public and protest if that’s what we think is right. Sure, they have a list of names. I’m pretty sure that several people I know are on it. I kind of hope I’m somewhere in there, too.

Friday night was my annual pilgrimage with my Mom to see the Christmas Revels. For their 35th anniversary, they’ve gone back to their roots in Medieval England, but they pick a different place and time period every year (my favorites have included Kalevala-era Finland and Catholicised Mexico). This isn’t their best year — I suspect the passing of their founder, John Langstaff, has put a slight damper on things — but still a good show.

And, well, I simply adore David Coffin. (Note to self: Must remember to give Mom back her copy of his Nantucket Sleighride CD. I think I’ve had it for over a year.)

Saturday, of course, was spent errand-running. Must have a Yankee Swap gift for the office party. Must have supplies to wrap the baked goods in. And must have food other than baked goods in the house (yeah, it’s kind of a rule).

Yesterday was that dreaded event known in my house as Bread Day.

For those of you who don’t know me IRL (all 2 of you), I only make bread once a year, at Yuletime, and I only make one kind of bread: nisu. It’s a traditional Finnish recipe with lots of butter and sugar and cardamom in it, that I inherited from my Finnish-American maternal grandmother. She learned it from her mother, who learned it from her mother, who learned it from her mother, going further back than anyone now living knows, so I consider it my main matrilineal inheritance. And since cardamom is a solar spice, it’s ideal for solstice magick.

Making the stuff is an all-day project. This is largely because, since I only do it once a year, I like to make a lot of it (usually more than 30 loaves). Then you have to take into account that this is one of those breads that needs to rise 3 times before you can bake it (twice before and once after it’s braided). Generally, I start around 6 or 7 in the morning and wrap the last loaf just before midnight. Andy, whenever he can, flees the house on Bread Day, because sometime late in the afternoon, when I’m at the stage where half the dough is braided and the first few loaves are in the oven, when there are no flat surfaces left in my kitchen and there’s flour in my hair and my back is starting to ache… well, you can probably guess how much patience I have left with even simple questions like “What do you want to do about dinner?”

Ah, but it’s worth it! Today my whole house smells of butter and cardamom, and I get to have lightly toasted nisu with my coffee. Yum!

1. Name 1 toy you owned when you were younger, that meant a lot to you.
I have a stuffed elephant named Hephalump, after what Winnie-the-Pooh calls elephants. He’s got no fuzz left, has been sewn back together quite a few times, and the bell in his ear was crushed into silence years ago, but I still have him. Friends of my mother gave him to me my first Christmas.

2. Name 2 games you enjoyed playing as a child.
Monopoly and chess. Yes, chess. My father was a math teacher and taught me when I was about six.

3. Name 3 foods you didn’t like as a child, but do now.
Mushrooms, green beans, onions.

4. Name 4 foods you didn’t like as a child, and still don’t like.
Broccoli, most seafood, lima beans, grapefruit.

Monday Madness

You are The High Priestess

Science, Wisdom, Knowledge, Education.

The High Priestess is the card of knowledge, instinctual, supernatural, secret knowledge. She holds scrolls of arcane information that she might, or might not reveal to you. The moon crown on her head as well as the crescent by her foot indicates her willingness to illuminate what you otherwise might not see, reveal the secrets you need to know. The High Priestess is also associated with the moon however and can also indicate change or fluxuation, particularily when it comes to your moods.

What Tarot Card are You?

Via bunches of folks.

Now, that’s what I call holiday spirit! Sung to the tune of “Good King Wenceslas” (scroll down for literal and metrical translations).

Via Making Light.

I know very little about Stanley “Tookie” Williams, the murders he was convicted of, or the legal grounds that his lawyers were using as clemency grounds. It doesn’t matter that he was a gang founder, or that he wrote books for kids, or that he was nominated for the Peace Prize five times.

None of this is relevant to my argument that Williams’ death sentence should have been commuted, because I am categorically against the death penalty.

If it is wrong to take a human life, then the state shouldn’t have the right to do it, either.

It is mind-boggling to me that the United States is the only “first world” country that still clings to this unconscionable practice.

I’ve added a couple of new link categories — Blogs: Friends and Blogs: Writers. Yes, there are people in the Friends category who are also writers, but I consider the former to outweigh the latter, thank you very much.

New links? Yeah, I added a couple of those, too. Under Friends, we now have Whistling in the Dark, which is the livejournal of my friend and former roommate, Eric, the senior half of Websnark, author of Gossamer Commons and The Adventures of Brigadier General John Stark. You know, the man with his own quotations page.

New under Writers is Dispatches from Tanganyika, by Poppy Z. Brite. She doesn’t write vampire books anymore, but she does still live in New Orleans, so she’s got lots of topical things to say. And she has cats. Many, many, many cats.