Thoughts, essays, and articles from Terryl's grimoire.
Word Nerd 2: Elusive Fluency
English isn't just my first language, it's my only language. I grieve the profundity of this ignorance because cultural and linguistic diversity is humanity's strength. It's what adds hue and texture to the beauty of the human tapestry we weave together. I have tried to
Resistance to authority can manifest in many ways. I have a friend, for example, who has the need for speed and insists that the speed limit is merely a suggestion. He's angry when he inevitably gets pulled over for speeding and is mean-mouthed with the police officer about it. This, of course, only gets him in deeper trouble.
My own resistance to authority manifests much differently. I seem to be constitutionally incapable of taking good advice or learning from the mistakes of others. I listen to the good advice and observe others making their mistakes, but have a streak of stubborn hubris that deludes me into thinking I can do better. “It won't happen that way for me,” are my famous last words. It always happens that way for me too because, well, it happens that way for everyone (duh).
Until I got big enough to work my own chainsaw, my job was loader. I was to keep the cut firewood out from under Dad's feet and turn big
The word hallow means to sanctify, to make holy. Halloween (Samhain, pronounced sow-en, for pagan folk) in America is a caricature of something that might be, perhaps once was, much more meaningful: a night to honor the dead in recognition of their significance to the living, to celebrate their contribution to immortality.
MoonLit sends you heartfelt Samhain greetings at this October Full Moon. The sun descends into dark during the coming turn and pulls all of us along with it. It is a time for introspection, and a time to remember and honor the dead. It’s also time to dress up and have fun. Happy Halloween to one and all.
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Some images are through Creative Commons License and we would thank all of those creators if we could find their names.
On Shadows was previously published in The Miracle du jour and is reposted here with the permission of MoonLit Press.
On Shadows was inspired by, and is dedicated to, Kari Ann Allrich, Goddess of the Hearth.
Terryl is grateful to the people who gifted her with this beautiful lifetime: her parents, and their parents, and their parents, and so on and so forth, back into the dimness of time immemorial. Samhain celebrates the kinship of human connection so ancient it transcends both human ken and human memory. It is the natural way of things for a community of the beloved on the other side to grow with the years as a human being ages. Halloween offers an opportunity to tell them we miss them and love them still.
Terryl is also grateful to be the batty old witch of her family at last. It took three generations to earn the title, The Bat, and it’s one Terryl wears with pride.
Al is grateful to his little brother Lloyd, he was a good example to us all. He lived a life of service to others and was dedicated to his wife, family, and community. He died way too young.
Terryl and Al are both deeply thankful to the people who read our work. There would be little point in any of this without you. You make it worth doing. We love hearing back from you, and are ever so grateful to you for sharing our efforts with your friends and family.
Terryl Warnock is an eccentric with a happy heart who lives on the outskirts of town with her cat. She is known as an essayist, proof reader, editor, maker of soap, and proud pagan. A lifetime student, she has pursued science, religion, and sustainable communities. This, plus life experience from the local community service to ski instructor, from forest service worker to DMV supervisor, from hospitality to business owner gives her a broad view on the world.
Terryl is the author of:The Miracle du jour, ISBN-10: 0989469859, ISBN-13 : 978-0-9894698-5-2
AJ Brown, in a past life, was an embedded systems engineer (digital design engineer). He worked on new product designs from hard disk controllers, communication protocols, and link encryptors to battery monitors for electric cars.
A few years ago he surrendered his spot on the freeway to someone else. Now he is more interested in sailing, building out his live-in bus for travel, and supporting the idea of full-circle food: the propagation, growth, harvest, storage, preparation, and preservation of healthy sustenance. He is a strong supporter of Free/Libre Open Source Software[F/LOSS] and is willing to help most anyone in their quest to use it.
Together, we are MoonLit Press where words and images matter.
Recap: Our storyteller has shared her four most crazymaking encounters (Reports from Hell) with bureaucracy in Parts 1 and 2 of this series. In Part 1 she shared how a summer job with the Federal government turned her into a thief, and how in order to survive a stint with the State government she became a liar. In Part 2 of this series, she wrote of the bureaucracies she has encountered later in life, how the Hysterical Commission turned her into a cheat, and how the Fire District has left her cynical.
This is the third and last installment in this series. Her takeaway. MoonLit has shared the backstory as context so that you may draw your own conclusions.
Recap:
Last time, our storyteller shared her youthful encounters with bureaucracies. She wrote of the Forest Circus, where she'd been ordered to slaughter thousands of innocent seedlings. The experience compromised her ethically and rendered her an insubordinate thief.
She relapsed ten years later by taking a job with the Motor Vehicles Division. There, she was required to send handicapped drivers to the doctor to be recertified as 'still permanently disabled' in order to renew their wheelchair license plates. She left public service compromised, an insubordinate liar.
We rejoin our story in progress.
This is the first of what will be three posts about bureaucracy and its vagaries. In broad strokes, it is a tragicomic farce in four acts (four reports from hell), plus the conclusions I have at last been able to draw from it all now that I'm a geezer with the luxury of time for retrospection.
Civilized people get up in the morning and make their beds. Mom was adamant and unyielding on this point.
Wild bird populations in North America are a fraction of what they were in the middle of the 20th century. Many species face extinction. A significant factor in the demise of wild birds are domestic cats. Please, please, please keep your cats inside.
Domestic cats kill an
Lughnasadh (loo-na-sa) is one of three pagan harvest festivals that stretch from late summer to the end of the vegetal cycle at Samhain (sow-en, Halloween). Lughnasadh celebrates the first harvest early in August; Imbolc, at the autumnal equinox is the second; and the last is at Samhain, on November Eve, after which the world dies back for the winter.