It rarely freezes in Sebastopol.  But ‘rarely’ is far from ‘never,’ and we have been hit with
an unusually cold series of days, with temperatures getting into the 20s and
teens.  My favorite coffee place,
Hardcore, had its pipes freeze. 
Happily Molly, Hardcore Espresso’s  wonderful owner, simply brought up the coffee van, and we could drink Liquid
Life anyway.  Unhappily, she had
been looking forward to a day of relaxation.  (I know many of you snow-buried folks in the east and
Midwest will be filled with sympathy for all our suffering).  😉

Actually it feels colder than zero did in upstate New York,
when I taught there, because up in the North Country  I got used to it, and grew to like
a zero degree day.  Here nobody is
used to it.  It’s a little like jet
lag.  We need time to adjust our
inner thermostats. 

And my heat has been on the fritz, adding to the chill. In a
way, it’s a time like after the death of a loved one, when we are most likely
to focus on what we regard as really important.  I do, anyway.

We Wiccans do not like to start new ventures, particularly
spiritual ones, during this time. It’s that period between Samhain and Yule,
when darkness is still growing and the return of the warmth at its most
distant, with plenty of cold ahead even after the sun reverses course.
Symbolically it’s a time when old ventures that have outlived their vitality or
usefulness need to pass on.  I’m
planning some pruning and discarding, now that my incessant traveling during
the fall and early winter is over and I have the time to think about things
farther ahead than a week. 

Politics will never disappear from this blog so long as I
regard our associates in the religious right and Neocon advocates of America as
the new Rome as being threats to everything decent.  But I hope it’s going to play a smaller role.  Writing about it too often is bad for
my soul.  I cannot promise because
most of what I post on politically is a reaction rather than an initiation, and
like in totalitarian countries, the right has made everything political. But
I’m going to try.

Focusing on the threats and abuses of power is something all
free people need to do, but focusing too much sours the spirit, no matter what
the position.  This was abundantly
demonstrated in the number of sour spirits writing idiotic posts that I deleted
in the last discussion.  They were
incapable of distinguishing between the misbehavior of an organization and
discrediting science and claiming the existence of conspiracies everywhere,
evidenced little grasp of logic,  didn’t
look at the video, and were unwilling to respect their readers enough to offer
reasons for their bile.  They need
to get a life, and even more, a heart.

But like camping in the north woods in early summer draws
black flies, writing about politics these days draws these jokers.  The “Delete” button serves as my insect
repellant, but less early summer camping and more at other seasons reduces
being bothered by infestations.