2. Snickerdoodles made with butter rather than margarine or butter-flavored Crisco have about a two-hour shelf life before they get hard and dry.

3. Strawberry Go-Gurt, even the kind with Phineas and Ferb on the package, doesn’t come out of fake fur without a trip to the cleaners.

4. If you take care of your colleagues, eventually even the most oblivious member of the crew will throw you back an opportunity.

5. I will not be allowed to bring rollerblades to work, despite the presence of a new self-propelled vacuum.

6. Men in their twenties can’t tell when a cookie sucks.

7. My grandma doesn’t know a Bluetooth when she sees it.

8. Cops go easier on a woman when she cries a little.

All in all, an eventful week. Here’s hoping the next is a bit smoother.

Normally, I wouldn’t ask for anything from anyone. But if anyone’s willing to chip in for his vet bills, I’ve set up a ChipIn page here. I’m so afraid he’ll get worse and have to have surgery, because that will be another $500 that I just don’t have. I don’t want him to die just because I can’t pay to help him.

Now I admit that my first thought, reading it, was, “What a load of crap!” But upon reading it the rest of the way through, I realized that there are some deeply wrongheaded ideas in the letter that need to be addressed.

First, the Pagan community is NOT trying to curse the NAR. To the best of my knowledge, even those who are directly involved against the DC40 event are only trying to counter what they see as an attack on this country by religious extremists. This isn’t about bringing “light to the darkness.” This is an attack on all ideologies but their own, because they believe that there should BE no other religions. We don’t have the right to exist, apparently. But here’s the thing: we do. That’s the thing about the Constitution (rather than the Bible) as the supreme law of the United States–no matter how many fundamentalist nutjobs manage to worm their way into government, said government still has no legal standing to dictate personal religious beliefs.

Because we are not Christians, we do not view the Bible as authoritative, but rather as another religious text from a religion we don’t follow, just like the Torah, the Qur’an, and whatever other sacred text one might name. So we’re not going to “remember” any particular biblical concept that one points out to us; the reference is meaningless, as is the phrase quoted. The light of every man? What does that even mean? Some dead Jewish guy wants all the dudes to himself? Do the guys not get any choice in the matter? And what about the women, he doesn’t want us? (That’s OK with me–I don’t want any more to do with NAR’s radical Christianity than I do with the 9/11 attackers’ radical brand of Islam.)

“We call you to your right mind through the finished work of the cross.” I call the authors of this letter to their right minds through the power of psychotherapy and basic fifth-grade civics. If there were any real evidence to suggest that they were on to something, I’d certainly consider it. But the thing is, the Bible has nothing to do with the basis of the American government; in fact, the intent of the framers of the Constitution can be clearly seen both in the First Amendment’s religion clause and in Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli, which was ratified unanimously by the Senate (at a time when many of the members of the Senate were also men who had been part of the Constitutional Convention) and signed by President John Adams in 1797. Remember that? No? “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen,—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.” (The bolding is mine; the wording, very much that of the founding fathers.)

“We release the power of blood-covered light over you.” Again, what does that even mean? Basic physics. Light is energy, not matter. Thus it has no physical substance TO cover in blood. Can’t be done. I’m reminded of newbie Wiccans who don’t have a clue what they’re doing, who think that bad poetry is all that’s required for a spell.

Also, my next class starts tomorrow. It’s a repeat of the Intro to Film in which the instructor accidentally/magically managed to misplace my final paper, so even though there was timestamped proof that I turned it in, I got a zero anyway, on a paper that was a third of my grade. And there is no appeal process at this for-profit moneypit I’m attending.

I’ve decided not to do the art school thing. It’s something I’ve wanted for a really long time, but it’s just not practical at this point in my life. I’ve got to get a degree I can actually use right away, and one that isn’t going to cost me $700 per credit hour. This isn’t it, I’m afraid. As much as it kills me, you know what? Art doesn’t require a degree. Everyone I’ve talked to lately says that what matters is the quality of the work and where it gets shown, not what overpriced piece of paper I have to hang on the wall next to it. And most of the art schools that would be practical for me to attend with my crazy nomadic lifestyle are for-profit schools anyway, and I’ve learned my lesson with that mess. So I’m disappointed, but I’ll live. There are only a handful of online not-for-profit schools, but I’ve found one that costs half what it would cost me to attend AAU or SCAD. Not what I hoped, but better than nothing.

On another topic, there is something my readers need to understand. When I talk about having Native roots, I’m not talking about some nineteenth-century ancestor, or even earlier. I’m talking about Big Grandma, who, according to my dad, had a hand in helping to raise him. And I don’t say that to make myself look “special.” I say that because issues relating to white American imperialism are personal to me, and this is why. I remember, as a kid, listening to her daughter (whom I knew as Grandma Willis) tell about how the bigotry against Native Americans at that time caused her mother to falsify census records, claiming to be half black in North Carolina during the Jim Crow era, so that her children would not be faced with the stigma attached to being of Native origin. These are real people to me, with whom I connect on a personal level because I knew Grandma Willis and her sister Nellie. I take the issues that have affected my family, as opposed to my Honored Dead whom I respect but didn’t know in life,  rather personally. This is not me trying to be a special little snowflake. This is part of my family’s collective memory, and as such it colors my perception.

There’s been a reaction from certain highly visible members of the Pagan community, calling for counter measures, the elevation of George Washington and other national heroes to hero-cult status, and perhaps most offensively, the veneration of Columbia as a national patron goddess.

Now, I don’t know about you guys, but having Cherokee roots myself, Columbia’s certainly not a patron goddess who’s blessed my family. (Trail of Tears, anyone?) The Columbia mythos is caught up in the ideas of manifest destiny and of the divine right of the white man to subjugate the Americas and all their inhabitants. Paintings show “Columbia leading settlers west” into land previously inhabited freely by Native groups, and the poem “To His Excellency, George Washington,” which many who are advocating her worship are quoting, was written by a slave poet for whom the concept of liberty must have been a bit of painful irony.

I’m as opposed to the idea of the NAR and their DC40 event as anyone. I think it’s presumptuous to assume that such Dominionist principles are not only acceptable but healthy for a nation in which the separation of church and state has long been one of the major pillars of our government system. But you’re not going to see me lighting candles to Columbia anytime soon.

I took the little guy to the vet today to get his health certificate to fly back to the states. (Long, depressing story. Short version: I came down here on a job transfer that didn’t go through, and wasn’t able to get another job before the money ran out.) I meant to take the bus that stops right outside the vet’s office, but the VITran schedule is all messed up. The schedule said that bus would pass at 9:45, and my vet appointment was a little after 10, so it would have worked out great. I got there at 9:20, just to be safe, and found out that it had left at 9. So I took the bus as far as Pueblo and walked the half mile or so to Five Corners, where the vet’s office is. Then after the appointment, once I walked back up to Pueblo, I was hot, exhausted, and though I didn’t realize it until I got home, sunburned. So I went to hang out at the office with Nick while Imbas and I cooled off. Naturally, as soon as he heard Nick, Imbas started meowing to be let out of the carrier. He was less than thrilled, though, when Nick turned him around so that I could get a picture of the two of them.

Then on to the following evening, when I watched Funny Girl, the musical based on the life of singer/comedian Fanny Brice. Now, being a bit of a theater geek, I knew a bit about the life of Fanny Brice. The movie calls her mother “Mrs. Brice,” when Fanny Brice was a stage name, and shows her mother as a woman of fairly modest means, when really her parents were reasonably well-off and their saloon was by most reports pretty successful. It portrays Fanny as a virgin and a newcomer to the theater scene when she met Julius “Nicky” Arnstein; she had actually been previously married to a man she’d met on tour. It portrays Arnstein as a good guy who turned to crime when he couldn’t handle being financially dependent on his wife, even though he’d done a stint in Sing Sing before the two were married. It shows Brice pushing Arnstein for marriage soon after they met, when the two lived together for years prior to actually getting married, and Arnstein pleading guilty to the charges brought against him, when actually he fought the charges for four years on his wife’s money, costing her a fortune. It also cuts the length of his prison term in half and completely ignores the existence of their younger son. Seriously, people? I know it’s a musical and all, but geez, how hard is it to get the facts somewhere close to right, especially in a film adapted from a Broadway show about a Broadway legend?

And don’t even get me started on Braveheart–the clothes were from the wrong century (the kilt didn’t come into usage until the 1800s, and even the belted plaid, which came before, didn’t originate until at least the 1500s, two whole centuries after William Wallace died), there is little to no evidence that the decree of the right of the first night ever existed, Isabella was never Princess of Wales (she married Edward after he was king) and never met William Wallace, because she didn’t marry Edward until after Wallace was dead because she was a SMALL CHILD at the time Wallace died…OK, I’ll stop now.

I guess I really shouldn’t watch historical movies if I know anything about the subject. I’m too much of a stickler for detail for it to work, and the inaccurate details (or in some cases, major plot points that don’t line up with history) just make my brain hurt. From here,  I only watch fiction that’s been made up from whole cloth, because I can’t enjoy it if I know it’s bad history.