We are looking for a happy couple to be the Green Man & May Queen for the Asphodel Beltane ritual. We have, unfortunately, a bit of a shortage of fertile, gender-normative, heterosexually-coupled folks in our group. We're fairly serious about this as an act of fertility magic, so for just this one ritual role, we do need specific about your gonads matching your gender identity. You don't need to be heterosexual or monogamous - just in a happy, committed, sexual relationship between a "fully functional" man and woman. (Birth control is fine - irreversible sterility isn't.)

The role includes participating in the Maypole ritual, Saturday afternoon, April 30. In addition, we ask that you have sex with each other at some point afterward. (In private - We'll take your word for it.)

For more detail about the requirements, please see:
Green Man & May Queen Checklist

Please pass this along to anyone who you think might be interested. If you want more information, you can call Raven at 978-928-4198 or email him at cauldronfarm@hotmail.com .

-- Joshua

Bella cam in this morning to report that the goat water de-icer was gone. Not destroyed, but entirely missing. The first thought is, "Did the goats eat it?" I doubt it... The de-icer is a sturdy 4" disk of metal, about 1/2"-3/4" thick, on a thick wire-wrapped power cord. Raven said, "They aren't robo-goats! They can't eat that much metal."

I could imagine them unraveling the wire-wrapping and chewing apart the cord. Unlikely, but possible. So I check the whole pen and rake through the loose hay on the ground - no signs of chewed cord fragments. I check the water trough. No signs of the metal disk. I am unwilling to believe they ate the entire thing - ten feet of wire-wrapped heavy electrical cord, plus the plug, and a thick 4" metal disk - without leaving a single scrap of it behind. So... what else could have happened to it? Did thieves in the night hop our goat fence to steal it? Well, that is highly unlikely, but marginally more possible than robo-goats.

Then Bella mentioned that the cord had previously been dangling over the sheep door, which seemed to spook the sheep, so she'd hung it on a nail. Maybe it fell off? Okay, well that explains it. I found the heater at the far end of the sheep yard. They must have gotten tangled in it and pulled it loose.

But thank god. I was worried about those robo-goats.

-- Joshua

Asphodel Yule is 4pm. (There was a problem with the website - sorry about that.)

-- Joshua

Regarding comments to the last post - I completely agree that learning a language strictly through the Rosetta Stone method seems impractical. At the very least, it seems needlessly arduous to attempt to deduce the rules of grammar by the examples provided. If I wasn't already familiar with the genders and cases in German, I'd be so lost. I can't image figuring that out from scratch, especially because some of the forms are the same in seemingly unrelated cases.

However, it might be good for you if you get heart palpitations at statements like "The direct object (accusative case) functions as the receiver of the action of a transitive verb." And I think it is a good second or third choice - it might work when learning the language by more "normal" methods have failed. Especially since then you will have been exposed to the trickier aspects of grammar, so you potentially have some context for understanding why it is "die Frau" in almost every context, and then suddenly they say "der Frau".


I do like using Rosetta Stone in addition to other methods. My memory is terrible, so I benefit from being exposed to the words and grammar in multiple different contexts. The combination of speaking, reading, and listening is good for me, and the multi-cultural oddness of many of the images helps me remeber things.

The other down-side of Rosetta stone is the choice of phrases is biased towards what can be easily shown in pictures. Pimseleur is entirely conversational - you learn how to make small talk. In Rosetta Stone you spend a lot of time on comparitively useless phrases like "the cat is under the table" and "the chair is far from the door". And apparently, the choice of phrases in Rosetta Stone is the same for every language, so it is not geared towards illustrating particular features of the language. (Which makes the task of independently deducing the rules of grammar even more unlikely.)

-- Joshua

In preparation for our trip to Germany (among other places) in May, I've been studying German. I'd studied it a bit in High School, and spent a few weeks in Germany, but I didn't remember much. I've gotten a bunch of different books and recordings, and I want to give a plug for the Pimsleur language tapes. (I'm going to keep saying "tapes" because I actually have cassette tapes from the library, which works out well, because I don't have a CD player in my car.) If you think you suck at learning languages, or just have lousy study skills in general, these are the tapes for you. Most of the materials I've found require that you apply some kind of effective study skills to the material. They present some vocab, some grammar, a few dialogs, and maybe some questions, but it is up to you to figure out how to learn the material.

The Pimsleur tapes do it all for you. You just listen to the 30 minute tape and reply to the prompts. (Prompts are mostly in Engish in the earlier lessons, and move to being more in the target language at the end of Level 1.) If you got confused, listen to it again - but not right away. Give the material at least an hour to digest. If it is really tricky, pause it between prompts to give yourself a chance to think, but ideally then do it a second time later without pausing. (Because with a language, you really haven't "learned" it the material until you can reply at a reasonable conversational speed.) You really and truely just listen to one 30 minute tape a day, and that is it. (I looked up some additional information on the grammar, just out of curiosity, but if you aren't curious, I don't think you'd need to.) Each level is 30 lessons, and unless you are an exceptional language-learner, I doubt you'd find any other method that gives you better command of the language by less than 20 hours of effort over one month. I'd guess that the full series of three levels covers about what you'd get in a "German 1" textbook, but without the reading & writing. They have little booklets with a bit of practice reading, but it is almost entirely oral.

Unfortunately, each level is $350. Over $1000 for the set, and that doesn't get you past basic small talk. Way more than I'd be interested in spending. But I actually feel pretty confient about the material, without stressing out or trying too hard, and I'm pretty language-impaired. You do have to actually do the tapes nearly every day for it to work, but that is more a matter of actually making the commitment to do it than any actual effort. So while I can't say I'd recommend spending that much money, I totally recommend looking for the tapes through inter-library loan.

After that wonderful experience, I found a copy of Rosetta Stone German 1 software at Mike's house. That is a whole different thing. They have an "immersion" approach - no English translation, no explanation of grammar. No explanation of anything. (Pimsleur offers occasional bits of explanation of grammar, though not much.) They have pictures, and you just have to guess. They do a lot of multiple choice where only one answer makes any sense if you understood any of it. (Like picking which picture matches "The woman has three plates." when only one of the images contains a woman, plates, or three of anything.) The lessons combine reading, writing, speaking, and listening - not strictly oral like Pimsleur. The voice recognition is not perfect, but it is very cool.

Judging by the pace of the first few lessons, I suspect the full set of five programs covers approximately the same ground that the three Pimsleur sets cover. I could be totally wrong on that - Maybe they pick up the pace later on, but the early lessons cover extremely little material. The full set of five programs is $750 (on sale for the holidays at $600), but you can get the previous version of the software (which is what I have) for under $200 from other retailers. I might actually buy that.

Third recommendation is for the "Before You Know It" (BYKI) flashcard software. Memorization is my downfall with so many learning endeavors. BYKI is strictly flashcards - often with pictures and audio. They have a free version, which is quite good. You can download user-created vocab lists, which are very good for popular languages (less good for obscure languages). The deluxe version is $50. It gives you more porfossionally created content, the ability to create/edit lists, and a few more activities. For straight-up vocabulary cramming, it is great. I've mostly used it for Sanskrit, but I'm now checking out the German material. Highly recommended.

-- Joshua

I just got the December edition of Yoga Journal in the mail, and one of the cover articles gives the stories of five people whose lives have been changed by their yoga practice. One of them is a transgendered woman, whose meditation and hatha yoga practice put her deeply enough in touch with her body and mind that she came to terms with her need to transition to a female role. It was 100% respectful - absolutely no complaints about how they handled the subject, no wording that made me cringe. How cool is that?

-- Joshua

Here it is, our tribute to the Nine Sisters and their parents:

http://www.northernshamanism.org/shrines/ninesisters/information/welcome.html

You can even light virtual candles to them.

Raven has a whole list of other shrines planned to go up very soon as well to other Gods and spirits.

--Joshua

So, an appendectomy may be the worst birthday present ever (although it is better than the alternative) but I'm getting a wonderful birthday present as well. A brand new refrigerator! It is actually new. Really new, not just "new to us" (our last few have been secondhand). So tomorrow we will say goodbye to the Fridge-berg forever. Yay!

-- Joshua

Oh fuck. I just took the first dose of the two antibiotics they prescribed for me, and I feel so nauseous I want to pass out. Plus I'm terrified of vomiting with fresh stitches in my belly - even a small cough or hiccup is very painful. Blegh. But I'll eat my yogurt and drink strong ginger tea, and hope for the best.

-- Joshua

I came down with cripplingly bad gut cramps last Friday, reluctantly went into the hospital Saturday because I'd developed a fever, and that combination is often very bad news. Well, it was moderately bad news - massive intestinal infection leading to appendicitis. It didn't rupture, so they just did a laproscopic appendectomy and gave me heavy antibiotics. It took me a little longer than expected to recover, but I came home yesterday and I'm doing okay. The pain is under control, I can (carefully) get up and down the stairs, and I can eat (bland soft) solid food. The folks at Heywood Hospital were really great - I didn't even get any wildly invasive irrelevant questions about my gender. (Well, the one ER doc may have been a little extra invasive, but since pelvic inflammatory disease is one of the things they have to rule out, I suppose questions about sexual activity were relevant. Maybe. But one slightly weird doctor out of the dozens of docs, nurses, and aides that could have potentially been weird at me its pretty good.)

In any case, I seem to be recovering well. No idea how long until I can resume normal activity, but hopefully within a week. Prayers to Ganesha, as well as any other healing intent, are greatly appreciated.

-- Joshua