Blowing Bubbles: A response

Sometimes, the bubble shapes or colors
our perception of the world.

I read a blog post by Teo Bishop, a man I appreciate and admire for his well-though-out ideas and contributions to the Pagan community. This post was called: The Pagan Bubble. I recommend you read it. The following is my response:


One thing that struck me was the assumption that more mainstream groups don't have this bubble. But they do.
I have a cousin in a seminary college. We chat (in a quite friendly manner) on FB about topics. I read his posts. I google a lot of words/phrases when I do this. He is in his Christian seminary bubble, and I don't know all of the language.

Every industry I've worked in
is it's own little world.

In technical trades, we call the language portion of the bubble "jargon". Engineers have jargon. Lawyers have jargon. Doctors and nurses have jargon.

I work in a regulated industry: biopharma. We have jargon, but we also have a "culture", which must be learned in order to effectively operate in regulatory positions. This is known and discussed within the industry.


And, speaking of industries, most types of businesses, particularly technical ones, have "industry standard" procedures and standards. They can be meaningless to outsiders, but are make-or-break for those in the industry. I say this as someone who has argued about the color of signs and material labeling.

Every person has the perception of the world
encased in the bubble of their own experiences.

Everyone lives in a bubble. It is the bubble of our experiences - experiences that, realistically, not everyone has. Whether it's the bubble of culture of the deep south, or the bubble of being "in the know" of talent agencies, rattling off specific colors, textures and fabrics with other designers, or discussing steaming vs blanching with other chefs...

A Little Bit of (Bad) Luck

Today I was discussing some of the issues that have come in to my life of the past few months. I was talking with a Wiccan, who I hadn't seen in several months, so we were more or less catching up. It was at this point that I realized that our spiritual paths and philosophies diverged drastically.

You see, there have been many unfortunate incidences that have occurred in my life over the past several months. Now, the situations that have come up have not been pleasant by any means. However, I never really looked at them as being a form of cosmic punishment or retribution. But that's exactly what she questioned me on.

First, she asked me who I pissed off; then, and she asked who I had wronged. I explained that we don't do that kind of stuff. We're not into hexing; we're not into cursing. We don't piss people off. We're actually really quiet and boring, and we stay home and watch TV.

Then I mentioned that, aside from all of the rather nasty things that have been happening, certain things in my life are actually going really well. I mentioned that I had finally found a serious motivation to work on my writing. I also mentioned that the writing was going really well, and that I had networking and contacts that I'd never even considered before.

She then suggested that we were not making appropriate offerings toward our gods. This is not only patently incorrect, but also rather inappropriate considering our gods do not demand offerings of us.

So she asked what I was writing about, and if that could have anything to do with my bad luck. I mentioned my science-fiction novel, and she said, "no, that's not it." So I said that the only thing I was working on with any kind of potential for offense was the Goddess of Ick. As soon as I mentioned it, she said. "Drop it."

Now, there's something that you have to understand at this point. The Goddess of Ick is an idea that has sprung from the collective experience and belief system of my entire spiritual life. This book is getting written, even if it's just for me. Telling me to "drop it" is definitely the wrong way to go. So I told her that... nicely.

She then suggested that I was being punished for vanity. After some clarification, I realized she was talking about my sense of pride and success in my writing. When we parted ways, I had a disturbing sensation. I was distinctly uncomfortable. It took me a few minutes to figure out why: she was assuming that I had done something wrong.

She seemed to truly believe that a person could only have this kind of general bad luck if they had either been bad, or redirected somebody's karma, or were otherwise being punished.

The thing is, it never crossed my mind that I was being punished. And I don't think that it's because I was being dense about it. Really this entire situation has felt more like fire. As in, the flames of the forge making one stronger.

Could I really be that delusional? Well, I don't think so.

Tragedy and gun control

I love freedom. I love the freedom to get online and buy cheese made in Australia, or fruits that only grow in Indonesia. I hate that I can no longer get cigarettes that taste like chocolate or vanilla.

I love freedom.

Children being guided from their
school in Sandy Hook, CT, after
a shooting that killed 21 kids

But I hate what people are willing to do with their freedom. I want cheese and flavored cigarettes. But some people want to lash out their rage, and they lash it out on children. Whether those children are the direct victims, such as during the recent tragedy in Sandy Hook, CT, or the sons and daughters of the victims, as happened earlier the same week with a shooting at a shopping mall in Oregon, children are the victims.

Outside the Aurora theater shooting

One of the victims of the shooting in Oregon had a step-son, 13, who suggested that the reason she was shopping that day was for a gift for him, a gift he had requested. Is it right that a 13 year-old be burdened with that guilt? What about the survivors of the school shooting? Survivor's guilt is extremely common in mass shootings.

As a mother of two, you can't convince me that the kids near to each of these victims isn't riddled with guilt. My son, a cancer, cries if he even THINKS that something he did MIGHT result in someone's death or harm.

Now the debate is, already, turning towards gun control.

I have a very middle-of-the-road view of gun control. Living in rural Nebraska, guns are a way of life around here. It isn't "do you own a gun?" It's "how many guns do you have?"

We hunt a lot out here. I like the idea of DH and the kids learning to hunt. I learned to hunt and I regret not having more experience with that. I like the independence of bringing home food.

We also believe in protecting our own. Our friends, family, home and land - these things can and will be defended with a bullet, if necessary. But this can be done with the same rifle or shotgun used to hunt large game.

However, I don't agree much with handguns or assault rifles. I can understand handguns to an extent - in the city, you don't often defend your home and body with a four or five foot long rifle- but anything that has "automatic" or "semi-automatic" in the description is a little much for me. Essentially, hunting animals, good; killing people, bad.

The problem I have is this: the more that guns are available, the greater the need to defend oneself from guns. So then you have to have a gun, also. But that means that someone out there might perceive your gun as the threat and get one of their own. It's a psychological arms race, right here in America.

Some of the more recent shooters

Now, I have heard, and I understand, the idea of the 2nd Amendment and a militia. But a militia is a trained and organized group. Random people walking around with multiple high-powered handguns is not a militia, and never will be. And let me be perfectly clear, I do not believe in gun control that eliminates ALL gun ownership. Nor do I believe that any such law is even on the radar for any governmental agent or agency in the United States.

That said, this whole problem comes down to two things.

One, each person who owns or deals with guns needs to take responsibility for themselves. If you go out and "rid the world" of someone who you don't like, you have justified your actions to yourself, but not everyone may agree with you. Even worse is when someone else's justification results in the death of someone close to you, or someone like you, racially or religiously, physically or philosophically.

Take responsibility for what you do with the freedoms that you have, because freedoms can be abused, and no one believes that they are the ones abusing them.

Two, we need to work more towards solving the problem of violence that this country has. I don't mean locking more people up. That only results in more violent violence.

We need to start addressing the economic, social, and even psychological problems that lead to violence. The people who have committed these crimes have a reason for it. That reason may be dramatic or illogical to you or me, but they are valid to the perpetrator, and that's why people are dead.

Love is the cure

Some of the causes of violent crimes, just off the top of my Psychology-minor head, include: mental illness or depression, poverty, a feeling of hopelessness or bullying, a feeling of frustration or revenge, unfulfilled sense of entitlement, fear of the way the world is changing. There are so many more.

These are the problems that need fixing. The isolation that so many of us feel, the pressure to be more and more successful in the face of rising inequality, the hopelessness that many of us have in trying to better ourselves with a rising wage gap and higher costs of living and education.

Every little bit helps. Even a smile could be the difference in someone's life, and you would probably never even know it.



Related links:
Mother Jones - A Guide to Mass Shootings in America
A Timeline Of Mass Shootings In The US Since Columbine
Eleven facts about guns and mass shootings in the United States

A Question of Sustainability

Are we on an unsustainable path?

The short answer is, “Yes.” We cannot continue to do what we are doing throughout the world. Sadly, this seems to be most extreme where I live: the United States.

There are so many things that people do, particularly in the States, that contribute to this wrong path. This includes the extreme resistance people have here towards anything that smacks of socialism. Unfortunately, socialism is often about combined effort for greater good. The U.S. has acted poorly on the Monsanto issue, the Gulf oil spill and all that goes with it, the Keystone XL pipeline, and so much more.

Additionally, the U.S. missed the opportunity some 25 years ago to push forward the relatively new technologies for solar energy collection (I’m mostly referring to President Carter’s installation of solar panels on the White House, which I believe could have set the stage for a different governmental attitude towards energy, had Reagan not been elected).

The U.S. cemented it’s stance of denial with the Kyoto Protocol. This constant elevation of capitalism (making money) over the future of humanity on this planet has turned the U.S. into something that I believe will lead to the U.S. becoming irrelevant to the world stage as anything other than a military force (if we aren’t already). We are seeing the start of this irrelevance as other countries take steps that the U.S. should have taken a long time ago. As Germany takes a lead in environmental policy, as Amsterdam initiates a public bike sharing program in the 1960s, as India takes a stand against Monsanto's lies.

This leads me to the long answer, which is “Yes, but that isn’t something that we can’t change.” As the Turkish proverb goes “No matter how far you've gone down the wrong road, turn back.”

It is never too late. The point of no return is the destruction of the planet (in regards to human life). Anything else can be fixed, or at least mitigated. We can change, and we can change now. The only thing we need to decide is, how much worse will we make it before we make it better? And when will you (the individual) begin to participate?

Each one of us can do even a small part, because those small parts, those tiny changes are magnified by the sheer numbers of the human population. If the populations of industrialized nations alone work towards sustainable living, participating in creating and supporting renewable energy resources, recycling programs, and personal resource conservation, we would see a huge change worldwide. Each of us has the power. The power to choose:

• to use cloth bags for shopping
• to use non-chemical cleaners
• to foster native plant systems on our properties
• to grow a garden
• to bike when possible
• to protest and educate people on chemicals and GMO foods
• to support those politicians and activists who take up these causes
• to raise our children with this knowledge and the mindset that we can make the difference

Going Mobile: There's an app for that

There's an app for
reading this blog.

This is my first experiment with an app for using a mobile device for posting on Blogspot. Bear with me; it should be interesting. Essentially, this app allows me to post blogs from my Droid.

Now, I enjoy technology, and I mean REALLY enjoy it (I MUST have an Espresso Machine), but sometimes I don't want to use it. It seems to be easier to just use the same old, same old methods. I have hesitations.

But to not grow is to not evolve; and to not evolve is to be left behind. So I proceed forward with these new applications and try to learn the best way to use them.

The Esspresso Machine:
Sadly, it does not make coffee.

I'm staying up with the baby right now. She won't go to sleep. Instead she's climbing all over me while I'm trying to write this.

I've tried distracting her with yo Gabba Gabba, but that seems to be a touch'n'go attention-grabber. I'm hoping she just eventually passes out, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

Snuggled up... my dream.

The biggest problem here is that, tonight, I actually want to go to bed early. I would like to be snuggled up under my blankets with my pillows. But no, no, I am up with the baby.

It's like she knows that I want to go to bed and so she intentionally goes manic. And, yes, I am implying that all children have only the manic side of manic depressive.

No, I'm not going to go the way of my former sister-in-law who drugged her child in order to get him to be quiet. Okay, so that was only long car trips... but still.

On the other hand, baby is teething and that could actually be the way to go. Maybe the pain of growing teeth out of her jaw is what's keeping her from being able to calm down so she can go to sleep, and by extension let me go to sleep, too.

Sleep where you drop, parents,
sleep where you drop.

Perhaps I'm just being idealistic. After all, as a parent, do I really actually get to sleep? Sleep is for the weak; there's always work to be done. I think I'll read her a story... a story that explains how I feel about her staying up.

Now she's trying to talk into my phone, thereby participating in the creation of this vocalized blog. Hmmm, definitely time to lay down.


(Next morning.) Shutting off all the lights and handing her her bottle seems to have triggered the sleep mechanism. She slept all night... On to the next challenge. *happy sighs*
*plays with phone apps*

Monsanto: Mother Nature's adversary

On Pagan Musings, we have been exploring Activism as a Pagan Obligation and Healthy Pagan Lifestyles, with an emphasis on exploring GMOs and Monsanto. In case some few of you do not follow every aspect of my life with an avid fascination (say it ain't so!), I've decided to give a run-down, along with some additional information that may not have been addressed in the podcasts.

Monsanto is evil. Let's just start there.

Here's some things I've heard of over the few years that I've been interested in this (and, yes, they are so unbelievable that I have to add links):

1. Monsanto is trying to patent the pig. Yeah, chubby, pink, curly tail, makes bacon... the PIG. If you think I'm joking, just follow the link and read.
2. Monsanto sneaks in to countries to steal native plants and plant breeds, so that it can patent them and then control the distribution of the seeds.
3. Monsanto has targeted people who save seeds using tactics reminiscent of the back-alley gangsters of prohibition. They attempt to shut down farmers because they won't buy Monsanto seeds.
4. Monsanto persistently sues other farmers despite being shut down for lack of evidence.
5. Brazil (the whole COUNTRY) sues Monsanto for royalties fraud. "In essence, Monsanto argues that once a farmer buys their seed, they have to pay the global bio-tech giant a yearly fee in perpetuity – with no way out."
6. India (again, the COUNTRY) sues Monsanto for the same thing as Brazil. The Monsanto patent blackmail (my assessment) is "responsible for a farmer suicide every 30 minutes" in India due to the outrageous cost of dealing with the company.
7.  The UK has fought many a battle with Monsanto and GMOs, including: the infiltration of GMO crops where not wanted; the effects of GMO crop use on other plants used as food by birds, bees, and beneficent insects; and the persistence of GMO crops even when a farmer switches to another crop.
8. France banned GMOs, but later redacted the ban.
9. Sweden destroyed GMO crops unless a permit was obtained.
10. Hungary destroyed GMO crops after making GMOs illegal.
11. Poland banned GMO corn because there are indications that GMO crop pollens contribute to the mysterious colony collapse disorder issues seen world-wide in bee populations.
12. Peru banned GMO crops for 10 years to protect native biodiversity.
13. Russia banned GMO corn due to the link between GMO foods and cancer.
14. Biodiversity, or genetic diversity, is something that the monoculture-loving biotechs don't appreciate. Monocultures have a huge number of problems with pest control, chemical use, soil stripping, and more.
15. Boulder, CO voted to phase out GMO crops due to links to cancer. Oh, and the toxins are now commonly found in human blood due to the prevalence of foods that contain GMOs.
16. Oh, and the major point of using GMOs, to increase crop yields by decreasing weeds or pests, doesn't even work in the long run. The famous b-t corn that prevented rootworms has been getting attacked by, wait for it... rootworms!
17. Here's more info on what countries around the world (including the US) are doing about GMOs.
18. Monsanto sues a farmer, who spent decades saving and breeding his own seed, because his field was contaminated with Monsanto's GMO seeds. The farmer lost all his work. Monsanto won the case. But only temporarily. In a massive coup, the farmer won a settlement for Monsanto to clean up their "environmental contamination" and retained the right to resue if the contamination happens again. This case is featured in a documentary film "David versus Monsanto."

BTW, California has a proposed law, Prop 37, that would demand labeling of GMOs, something the biotech's, led by Monsanto, have fought against a little too hard to not belie their reasoning (that it wouldn't make a difference and GMOs are perfectly safe).

While incredibly biased against Monsanto, this has some bet-you-didn't-know trivia points.

This video is so cool, I had to include it! Don't forget to take note of the IndieGoGo crowd-sourcing project for a FUN documentary on Monsanto's evil-ness.

Weighing In: Heavy thoughts on obesity

Well, some are cold, and some are lukewarm...

As a fat pagan woman, I have been following many of the various discussions on Pagans and obesity (or fat pagans) with interest. I wasn't going to chime in, but I did - on Z's show and a few comments.

But now is the time; I am making a point: mind your own fat business!

Probably the most common argument I've seen for stepping in when a pagan sees another pagan who is fat is this: "When harm is being done, it is my spiritual/religious duty to step up."

Goddess gets body image insecurity?

Ok, I immediately went to abortion rights on that one.

That's right, I'm saying that that excuse is used for Christians (and others) imposing their values, beliefs and opinions upon the masses, regardless of their own personal beliefs, regardless of circumstances.

I'm gonna say it... proselytizing.

You want to impose your own sense of what is right and wrong for me and my body? I hear there is an opening in the Westboro Baptist Church.


I would argue that most Pagans would consider it MORE in line with their beliefs that, with only the most extreme exceptions, it's our job to TRUST each other to do what is right for ourselves and the rest of the world.

Ruben likes his women with
fleshy goodness!

Yeah, I brought out the T-word.

You should trust me that I am a reasonably intelligent human being with complexities that you prolly don't understand.
You should trust me that I have the same googling capability that you have, and that I am either as informed as you are or have CHOSEN to remain ignorant.
You should trust me that if I WANT to get better, I will do what I can to do so, and if I don't, there is NOTHING that you poking your nose in will do to change that.

You should trust that I am a "grown-ass woman" with decision-making capability and that, whether you are talking about the layer of fatty tissue under my epidermis or the reproductive organs in my lower abdomen, MY BODY = MY CHOICE still applies.

I don't understand how being nosy or pushy is the way you show you care. Personal responsibility is just that: personal AND a responsibility. It is mine to make or break. My body to use or abuse, to trash or treasure.

Gods, if I came even close to
having her body fat...
I'd eat MORE ICE CREAM!

On a similar note, it came to my attention that an Olympic swimming contender was called "fat." Let me clarify: This woman swims. She swims often and she swims fast. She does so to the point that she beat out most of an entire country (Australia) to qualify for the Olympics, an honor most people I know have never even APPROACHED. She has won EIGHT medals during the last 12 years. "Together with Emily Seebohm, Alicia Coutts and Melanie Schlanger, she won a silver medal for Australia in the 4 × 100 m medley relay." Oh, wait. That makes NINE medals. How many have YOU won?

 She's now 26 and has grown a bit of a pooch. To quote, "The question that comes up is: Does it matter? Is it the media's place to question the fitness of an athlete who has already proved herself by making the team in the first place?" Exactly. She's done 4 Olympics and 9 medals more than pretty much any journalist, blogger or commentator who has decided to judge her body (in an unforgiving and less then flattering swimsuit, no less).

To those who did judge her, go win a frickin' Olympic medal and then you MIGHT get to say something. Otherwise, SHUT UP.

Holley Mangold weighs in at 346 pounds (157 kilograms);
she can also bench press a small BUS!
"[Her] personal record in the combined snatch and
clean-and-jerk is 255 kilos (562.2 pounds)."

UPDATE: This was in my YahooNews feed today. The epic quote? Here: "The Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation (WSFF), a UK charity aiming to get more women into sport to build self-esteem and confidence, said only 12 percent of British girls at age 14 were doing enough exercise to meet recommended guidelines. WSFF Chief Executive Sue Tibballs said their research found negative body image was consistently cited as a barrier for girls participating in exercise as popular culture gave out the message it was more important to be thin than fit." (Emphasis, mine.)