RIP Ray Bradbury

My 8th Grade math teach read the Martian Chronicles to us (yes, I said math; long story).  That was the start of my love of science fiction.  Having moved on to other authors, it’s been decades since I read his work, but I still remember:

  • the thrill of The Illustrated Man
  • the tag line, “but when the jellyfish called you by name.”
  • shivers while reading Something Wicked This Way Comes
  • the doctor flashing the scalpel and saying, “Here baby, something shiny, something bright.”
  • lost colonies on Mars and their terror at seeing the natives come out of the sand
  • and crying for the little girl who didn’t get to to see the sun the day the rains stopped on Venus.

I guess you could say he was my “gateway drug” to science fiction.  Once read, never forgotten.

Ray, you led us across the solar system, but also explored our hearts.  God bless you.

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Sad information regarding Duchess Sieglinde Syr/Nancy Goforth

Sue Moon just posted the following on Facebook:

Duchess Sieglinde Syr/Nancy Goforth has advanced cancer and is now in Hospice.

If you are not friends with Sue on FB and need contact info, let me know.  They are asking that contacts go through her, Ulsted/John Steelquist, or Crowley/John Stubbs.  Ron is exhausted.

I have many lovely memories of Sieglinde.  Her singing was beautiful.  Her explanation of the importance of swine to the culture she reenacted, therefore the name “Syr,” actually made me look at pigs differently.  My first out-of-town event was the first Coronation of her lord husband and her as King and Queen of Ansteorra.  The scavenger hunt she sent me on to get proper spellings for all the people getting awards on 14 May AS XVIII (1983), as many were Welsh and several had recently changed, only to discover that my AoA was one of the awards that night.  She winked as she gave it to me.  This was the very first Round Table Tournament, hosted by the Shire of the Shadowlands, and it was an event suggested by Sigmund and Sieglinde, I believe.

During King’s College, also at Shadowlands (also AS XVIII, I think), several of us were in a class to learn calligraphy.  The class had already started when Sieglinde strode through the door at the back of the room. She took off her crown, set it on an empty back table, and loudly proclaimed, “The Queen wishes to know how to sign her name!”  Then she sat down and proceeded to learn with the rest of us, with no other airs or pretension.

She was a wonderful teacher, gracious Queen, and gentle lady.  She will be missed.

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God’s Humor

This was received in e-mail from the husband of my college roommate:

While creating women, God promised men that good and obedient wives would be found in all corners of the world.

 And then He smiled and made the earth round.

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Transit of Venus this evening (5 June)

Transit of Venus tonight. Venus will cross the face of the Sun with respect to the Earth starting a little after 5 p.m. Central Daylight Time (Austin, TX). UT is opening the rooftop of one building for viewing with the Astronomy Dept.http://www.austinastro.org/ or you can watch on your computer as it is shown from the observatory in Hawaii by NASA: http://venustransit.nasa.gov/webcasts/nasaedge/.  Next time Venus will transit the Sun will be in 2117.

DO NOT LOOK AT THE SUN DIRECTLY.  Please use recommended protective glass or watch it online.

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A Rant about Grammar and Punctuation, Part 2: The Apostrophe

In the English language, the apostrophe (‘) is used for three things:

  • Marking a word as possessive (Nancy’s cup)
  • Marking missing letters in a contraction (is not – isn’t)
  • And, rarely, marking the plural of something that is not a word (the 1950’s), though many (I am one) consider this incorrect or superfluous.

One point that often confuses people is the difference between it’s and its.  In this case only, the one with the apostrophe is NOT possessive.  It is the contraction for “it is.”  The possessive for something belonging to “it” is “its” and has no apostrophe.  Not sure why unless it is to keep it from causing confusion with the contraction.  In the long run, however, it has caused a lot of confusion.  The simple rule to remember is, if you can replace the word with “it is,” you use the apostrophe; otherwise, not.  I learned this trick in elementary school and to this day I chant it to myself as I’m writing “its” to be sure I’m doing the correct one.

There is a growing trend to add apostrophe-s to the end of words to form them into a plural.  This is not correct and is a constant aggravation to those of us who are literate.  Always interesting to go into a grocery store and see “Grape’s – $1/pound,” especially since they had to hunt down an extra character to make the apostrophe.

An additional problem is trying to make a possessive of a plural and just putting the apostrophe in front of the existing “s.”  It can change the meaning.

Example:

  • dog’s – belonging to one dog
  • dogs – several dogs
  • dogs’ – belonging to more than one dog

This can get even more creative if the root word changes in the plural.

Example:

  • lady’s – belonging to one lady
  • ladies – more than one lady
  • ladies’ – belonging to more than one lady
  • ladie’s – incorrect, but has been seen; has no meaning

While typos creep in everywhere, take a minute to proofread before hitting “send.”  It is always better for you to catch your mistakes that for others to point them out.

Addendum: My website software seems to have decided to use “smart” quotes. All the ones I entered were vertical, both for the apostrophe and for the quotations. When they printed on the page, they’re pointing in three different directions. Not my doing and I’m not sure how to fix it. Aargh!

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Bugs and Features

When I got married, and my husband and I moved into our new home, we had a bulletin board near the kitchen for random stuff. One of the first things he posted was photocopied cartoon drawing of a bug, shaped kind of like the huge ditch roaches we used to get in Houston. Head was up, six legs sticking out, solid black body. I think it was smiling. As I said, cartoon. Underneath the drawing it said, “BUG.” OK. I get it.

The drawing next to it was identical in every way except the bug was all dressed up, though there was no change to the external outline of the bug. I don’t remember if it had on a tux or a pinstripe suit, but it looked really dressy. I think it had a top hat in one front leg. It was smiling. Underneath the drawing it said, “FEATURE.”

Huh?

I studied it and still didn’t get it. Being a seeker of knowledge, I asked. He said, “A feature is a bug that has been documented.” What? He repeated it. So we ended up having a technical discussion about features in the hall. My initial reaction was “How unprofessional. Document the bugs but don’t fix them?” He gave me all the whys and wherefores. How huge projects have multiple programmers and sometimes the separate parts don’t play nicely with each other. How you fix the big things first, and the less important things later or not at all.

I understand a lot more about software development than I did 25 years ago. I even work in that field now as a QA tester. But you know what? I still think most “features” should be corrected before the software is released into production.

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President Obama was born in the United States of America. Get over it.

I am so tired of folks getting press for a conspiracy theory regarding the birth of President Obama.  He was born in Hawaii.  It was a state of the Union when he was born.  Heck, it was a state of the Union when I was born (I’m 20 months older than he is).  It was announced in his family’s local paper when he was born.  Certification has been provided.

Why is this a story?  Why is the Fourth Estate not ignoring this and refusing to print/broadcast any more about it?  It’s making them look like idiots to keep flogging this dead horse.  It’s already inherently obvious that the people who keep bringing it up are either idiots or intentionally ignorant (which is worse).

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Dangerous Misleading Rhetoric

This is a full-page ad printed in Lafayette, LA’s Advertiser. When you look at this ad (click the picture to see a larger image), what do you think is being sold or promoted? Looks like hate, fear, and misinformation to me.


I’m going to take this apart in pieces, because it is too confusing as a whole.

First, the headline saying this is a “Letter to Louisiana and America” and asking, “Will Obama and the Democrats Shoot Catholics and Christians?” Here are my thoughts:

  • My first impression is that this must be coming from the Republican party. I think this for two reasons. First, the president is not referred to by his honorific, which is something that has been consistently done by the Republican party since President Obama was elected and sworn in. I think they keep hoping if they don’t say it, it didn’t happen. Second, the Democrats are lumped into the scary headline. And to top these things off, in the body of the ad, the President’s name and the name of the Democratic party do not have initial capital letters, which shows even more lack of respect.
  • My second impression is that this headline is about spreading hate and fear. Hate against the President and the Democratic Party. Fear that the President and the Democratic Party will do violence to people who are religious.
  • Third, why are Catholics and Christians listed separately? Catholics are Christians.

Next is a photo of the execution of Father Francisco Vera. This took place in Mexico in 1927 as stated, but the history started sooner. The 1917 Mexican Constitution had reduced the power of the Catholic Church by changing all schools to secular schools, outlawing monastic vows and orders, denying the right to hold real estate to religious institutions, and all real estate held by those institutions (schools, hospitals, etc.) was declared national property. For several years, however, these rules were not rigorously enforced. In June 1926, President Calle signed a law which provided penalties for priests and individuals who violated the terms of the Constitution.

The outcome was horrible. Wearing clerical garb, criticizing the government, or performing religious ceremonies in public all became illegal. One priest was shot just because he was overheard agreeing to perform a wedding. Many priests were expelled from the country. The state of Chihuahua enacted a further law that permitted only one priest to serve the entire population of the state. People were dying without last rites, babies weren’t being baptized, and the weddings were civil, not blessed by a priest. In response, the people rebelled in what became known as the Cristero War (La Cristiada). Mexico’s priest population went from 4500 in 1926 to 334 in 1934. While many of the laws have been relaxed, the outdoor mass the Pope held there a couple of decades ago was still technically illegal.

The next paragraph mentions a movie about the Cristero War called For Greater Glory which appears to have been released yesterday (1 June). It asks for intercession from the martys before God, something I personally don’t believe in, though I know there are faiths that do. I don’t need an intermediary to talk to my Lord and Savior. The last sentence in the paragraph was the rallying cry of the Cristeros, “Viva Cristos Rey!”

Now there’s the puzzling line, “IChThUS Imprimis Christ First”. If the first word is supposed to be the Greek word iota-chi-theta-ypsilon-sigma, that means “fish.” “Imprimis” is Latin for “First” as in “Above All.” So they are mixing two languages to get “First Fish.” OK, I looked up the symbology of the word “ichthys,” which is an acronym for (Iēsous Christos, Theou Yios, Sōtēr), which translates into English as “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior”. Augustine is the source for the acronym and he also notes that it has numerological significance since it has 27 letters (3 x 3 x 3) which indicated power. I still have no clue why the author of this broadsheet has mixed it with the Latin, “Imprimis.”

Oh, sweet Lord. It’s a movement. “IChThUS Imprimis” is a movement and may be a radical one at that. Here’s a couple of quotes I’ve picked up from various of their websites:

  • The Judeo-Christian value system is the only viable one. “So we are we left with Judeo-Christian values and secular left values. The latter, as noted, hold sway among the world’s elites. But they are personally so unfulfilling and morally so confused that they cannot work…”—Dennis Prager
  • Back in the 50’s Ohio had the Blue Laws. Nothing was open on Sunday accept emergency services. One drugstore was open for perscription [sic] medicine, and that rotated amoung [sic] the different stores. Sunday was a day of worship. We really need to get back to that and hang the liberal atheists.

The next bit, after dissing the President, as noted above, is pushing a documentary. I found some good reviews of it at Amazon.com. There are a lot of folks who have “drunk the koolaid,” Read a few of the 5-star reviews and you’ll see what I mean. But the 1-star review titled, “A critical review by a conservative Christian,” seemed to give a great description of the contents, which other reviews did not. Short story is that Communist agents are manipulating the government, teacher colleges, feminist movement, Civil Rights movement, and on and on. The “solution” is to “promote traditional morality and ultraconservative politics, in order to save America.” It’s a good read, even if you just read the first screen and the conclusions.

Next: “We must learn from it or we are doomed to repeat it. We must be triumphant over terror—Psalm 11:3.”

The first part is a paraphrase of the last sentence of a famous quote by George Santayana in his Reason in Common Sense. “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

“We must be triumphant over terror,” I can’t find who quoted this. When I try to look it up, all I get is commentary on this ad. Also, it has nothing to do with the Psalm quote, if that was the intention.

Psalm 11:3. To quote the words of Inigo Montoya, ” I do not think it means what you think it means.” Psalm 11 is short. I will quote the entire Psalm from the NRSV.

To the choir leader. A psalm of David.
1 In the Lord I take refuge; how can you say to me,
‘Flee like a bird to the mountains;
2 for look, the wicked bend the bow,
they have fitted their arrow to the string,
to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart.
3 If the foundations are destroyed,
what can the righteous do?’
4 The Lord is in his holy temple;
the Lord’s throne is in heaven.
His eyes behold, his gaze examines humankind.
5 The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked,
and his soul hates the lover of violence.
6 On the wicked he will rain coals of fire and sulphur;
a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup.
7 For the Lord is righteous;
he loves righteous deeds;
the upright shall behold his face.

Then there is a patriotic statement, another ad for the movie, contact information for “Save Our American Republic” SOAR Project, and Acadian Patriots.

Down at the very bottom there’s a blurb about Agenda 21 being un-American with a website. The website is for a conference to be held in Louisiana. One of the speakers is the author of the documentary mentioned earlier. From this ad, I would think that Agenda 21 is some kind of U.S. legislation, but it is not.

I went to the conference website, which very kindly had a link to the Agenda 21 website. Agenda 21 is a plan of action adopted by 178 governments at the United Nations held in Rio de Janerio, Brazil, 3 to 14 June 1992. I haven’t read the entire document, but I read quite a bit of it. It seems to be a plan to help countries develop without negative impact on the environment. It includes provisions for notifying neighboring nations if there has been an environmental disaster that could affect them (think Chernobyl or a chemical spill that could pollute a shared water supply). It talks about richer nations helping to get poorer nations self sufficient. Basically, to me, it seems to be a good neighbor policy with emphasis on keeping the Earth livable.

So, I’m tired of researching. I’ll leave you to make conclusions about the individual pieces, but as a whole, I stand by my opinion that this is hate mongering and fear inducing. I don’t like it. I don’t approve of it. I think they should stop it. But I 100% support their right to print this garbage. I hope they support my right to ignore it.

Thanks to Ms Juanita Jean and the girls at The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc. for bringing this to my attention.

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Ed and Aine

I think Ed was fond of all animals. They were unjudging and were usually quite attracted to him. One of the “Pros” listed about moving in as his roommate was “A roomie who does not mind living with animals since he is one.” He liked telling stories of puppies (and small children) using him for a jungle gym as he sat on the ground.

So, in 2001, we moved into Ed’s master suite. The cats, of course, promptly made themselves at home in every part of the house with an open door.

My husband and I had adopted Catriona and Aine when they were four months old in 1994. Their mother was feral and a private rescue group (I worked with one of them at TXMHMR) had caught the kittens at the Texas Health Department when they were four weeks old, being afraid that when they were older they would never catch them. They were fostered for the next three months while they tried to find a home that would adopt them together as they were quite inseparable. When we divorced, the girls came with me.

To look at Catriona and Aine, one would not think they were sisters. Different body types, different coloring. Catriona has tortoiseshell coloring, black with flecks of fire, except for one buff-colored back foot and her fur is thick and soft, almost like rabbit fur, with a thick cream undercoat. She’s always been a bit plump since reaching maturity, not fat, just round, with bunchy muscles. Aine has a coat like I’d never seen before. She isn’t a red tabby; her coat is buff colored, very light. She has no stripes, instead her coat appears to be tweeded. I finally ran into a cat enthusiast who let me know that she would be described as a “cream mackerel tabby.” She’s always looked delicately built, with long, lean muscles. Truly, the only way to tell these two are siblings is that Catriona’s back foot exactly matches Aine’s coat in color.

Both cats loved Ed. When Ed was home, he would lie on the floor or sit on the rocker and otherwise be still for hours at a time. They’d come and use him as furniture. I have a cat toy which is a stick connected to a rope that has a leather tassel at the end. I heard something strange and came out of my room to discover Ed lying on the floor watching TV. He had the toy in one hand which was flat on the floor and every 10-20 seconds he would flip his hand from palm up to palm down, swinging the cat toy over and thumping it to the ground. When I asked what he was doing he said, “Exercising the cats.” When I pointed out there were no cats in the room, he said, “There were. They’ll be back.” I so got the giggles.

While my cats were perfectly capable of caring for themselves when I was gone for a day or two, Ed apparently made the effort to spend more time with them, either sleeping on the living room floor, or leaving his bedroom door open so they could sleep with him. It sometimes gave them bad habits as I don’t let them sleep on the pillows and he apparently did. When I came home, they would immediately desert Ed to come greet me and he made a comment about one of them “leaping from my head.” When I asked if they’d been good, he said, “Oh, we had a wonderful weekend. We had catnip beer and chocolate mice and surfed the Internet for ‘kitty porn’.” I had trouble breathing I was laughing so hard. The cats just tried to look innocent. “Who, us?”

Over the years, Ed had many instances where he’d been stitched up and needed to heal. It made him very restful to be around when I had abdominal surgery. He never said a word when I groaned or “ouched,” no fussing at all, but the minute I asked for help, it was there. I saw many more signs of this empathy, tinged with humor, in 2002, when Aine needed surgery.

Ed was on the floor petting Aine. Instead of scratching her, as was my tendency, he was using his long hands, one on each side of her body, to rub her entire body at once. She was pretty ecstatic. He looked up and said, “Do you know that Aine has a lump on her right shoulder?” It was cancer. Because of Ed, we caught it soon enough to save her life. The vet told me that without the surgery Aine would have been dead in six months and I opted to spend the money to save her as she was only 8.5 years old (she and Catriona turn 18 YO this summer!). She lost her right leg and shoulderblade on the day of a freezing ice storm and came home three days later.

Aine immediately adjusted to life with three legs, though there were bobbles as she learned her new balance point and built the strength up. She was kept in a dog crate for a week to keep her from moving much and away from normal cat litter that might get in the scar. She never liked the substitute. She got away from me one day and made a beeline for her own litterbox and did her business. I let her finish, but scooped her up and returned her to the crate before she started digging. As I returned to the living room, Ed said, in that lovely low voice of his, “I understand, Cat. There’s nothing as nice as doing your business in your own bathroom.”

When we were working in the kitchen, Ed didn’t mind if a cat was on the counter, as long as she wasn’t on the counter where the food was being prepared. Not my style, but his house, his rules, and he was home more than I was.

I’d always heard stories about how quickly Ed could move, if necessary. I’d never been witness to more than his fighting prowess on an SCA field, which was never full speed, quick though it was, until the day Aine tried to join Ed in the kitchen. Ed had just finished making his dinner. He had a plate in one hand, a huge glass of milk in the other, and had just turned toward the living room. I’d been talking to him, so I was still looking in the kitchen when Aine tried to jump up on the kitchen counter, lost her balance because of her new center of gravity, and slipped off. Ed emptied one hand and caught her before she hit the ground. EMPTIED ONE HAND. Put one item on the counter and caught her and he made it look like he was moving slowly. I just said, “Thank you, that would have hurt,” and nothing else, but I knew I’d just seen Ed at full speed, something few had seen in a peaceful setting.

Ed’s home had sliding glass doors that faced south. In the winter, it was customary for us to leave the blinds open to let the sun warm the carpet. You’d usually find one or both cats there, and occasionally one of the humans, too. I was lying there with Aine and could tell she was reaching the “itchy” stage of healing and pointed it out to Ed who said, “I can relate to that.” He leaned a hand down and said, “C’mere, Cat, and I’ll scratch your scars for you.” She hopped across the carpet to him immediately and looked in total bliss as he carefully rubbed her shoulder with the side of his finger.

Again, I’m lying on the carpet with the cats. Ed’s in the rocking chair. He looked at Catriona and solemnly said, “It’s your responsibility to reach high things for your sister now, since she’s a foot short compared to you.” Tears, actual tears, were rolling down my face I was laughing so hard. I hate cruelty jokes, but sweet Lord, that one was FUNNY.

Ed and I were watching TV, each in our respective chairs. Ed’s usual position, if both feet weren’t on the floor, was to sit with one ankle crossed on the opposite knee, and that’s how he was sitting that day. Aine walked up to him and started talking to him. He looked down and said, “What?” She spoke again. “Oh, sorry.” He crossed his legs the other way and she jumped into his lap and curled up. Only thing I can figure is that curling up in his lap only worked one way with the missing forelimb, but to have her ask him to change position – and have him understand – was just too sweet. And honestly, I laughed at him. He just sheepishly grinned and held very still for our girl.

I realized one day that Aine could no longer wash the right side of her face. She washed the left side of her face when she was lying down (after a year or so, she could do it by just sitting back on her back legs), but that didn’t reach the other side of her face. Occasionally, when Aine was hip-hopping through the room, he’d say, “Hey, Tripod, come here and I’ll wash your ear for you.” Then he’d lick his finger and stroke her face and ear.

It was May and the first of the June bugs had gotten into the house. It was flying in the living room, not too high. Aine was on it like a shot. She’d always been a mighty huntress, but we held our breaths to see what would happen. Aine was pretty good at jumping up on things by then, but coming down from a height was still a challenge as the remaining front foot still wasn’t taking up all the slack. When she jumped out of my bedroom window onto my bed, for instance, there were still times her face ended up planted in the covers. Well, we got a show that day. It was almost like a dance. She would leap for the June bug, and when she missed it, she would land in a shoulder roll on the floor. As she came out of the roll, before her momentum had even come to rest, she had leapt again into the air. It was beautiful and we watched in fascination until the bug lit up high out of her reach and she gave up. She went and got a drink, then curled up in Ed’s lap for the evening.

In either 2004 or 2005, Austin had a horrible hail storm the evening of Good Friday. I wasn’t home when it happened. I’d been at church, then gone straight from there to the regular game night at Star’s where no hail fell, so I was oblivious to the storm until I went home much later that night. (The storm was so bad in our neighborhood, that on Easter morning, there was still ice in the ditches, and Saturday had been sunny.)

Both cats had been in my bedroom, probably in the window—a favorite hangout. According to Ed, there was a loud crack (later discovered to be a broken cover on the dial of my large thermometer hung just outside my window, probably shattered by a hailstone). Ed said that Catriona “landed in the middle of the living room.” He wasn’t sure she’d touched the ground between the window and the living room, but I figured she got one bounce off the bed. She glanced frantically around, saw Ed in the rocking chair, and leapt onto one leg and buried her face in his belly. Aine came out of the bedroom more sedately, but decided Catriona had a good idea and took up residence on the other leg and also buried her face in Ed. There they sat for a quarter hour or so, until the hail had stopped and the storm had let up. Both cats suddenly looked up, looked at her sister, hissed, and ejected from Ed’s lap in opposing directions. In amusement he told me he was very glad he was wearing jeans and not shorts.

I came home at 10 p.m. one night after being gone all day. When I flipped on the light, there was Ed, sitting crosslegged on the floor of the living room in front of the rocking chair. After greeting him, I asked, “Meditating?” “Yeah.” “How long?” “Since about noon.” “Can you feel your feet?” “Nope.” “Want a coke?” “Yeah.” So I got a coke for him and a drink for myself and lay on the floor as he tried to unwind himself. Once he was reclining, he told me that the cats had checked in at regular intervals, climbing over his shoulder from the rocker, or nesting in his lap. Aine apparently spent quite a lot of time in his lap. Occasionally they would nudge his hands futilely to get attention, then huff off for a while, but they always came back and were either lying on him or next to him, keeping him company.

That was one of the best things about living with Ed. A lot of the time we’d be hanging out together, but we were just being, not doing, not talking. Some might call it boring, but we thought it peaceful.

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Teaching Creationism

Teaching creationism/intelligent design instead of evolution in schools.  I don’t feel this is sensible.

It happened to a friend of mine who went to a parochial private school.  When they got to that part of the natural sciences course on the origin of the universe, galaxy, solar system, earth, humans, they were taught from the Christian Bible.  When the lesson was over, the teacher made an offhand comment to the effect, “Some people believe in evolution instead.  If you are interested, you can look it up on your own time.”  That was the full amount of coverage given to millennia of scientific thought and experimentation in this field, right or wrong.

But if you want to teach creationism in the public schools, I feel you have another problem entirely.  Whose creation story will you teach?  There are so many.

  • In Norse mythology, the Aesir, led by Odin, lifted the earth from the sea and established order in the cosmos, later creating other races, creatures, and man.
  • In Greek mythology, Gaia, the earth, bore Uranus without male assistance, then bred with him to produce the titans.  From them came the gods who ruled the earth giving it light, love, music, and so many other things sunny and dark.
  • Chinese Lao Tsu wrote, “The Way gave birth to unity, Unity gave birth to duality, Duality gave birth to trinity, Trinity gave birth to the myriad creatures. The myriad creatures bear yin on their back and embrace yang in their bosoms. They neutralize these vapors and thereby achieve harmony.”
  • The Maya gods included Kukulkán and Tepeu. The two were referred to as the Creators, the Forefathers or the Makers. According to the story, the two gods decided to preserve their legacy by creating an Earth-bound species looking like them. The first attempt was man made from mud, but Tepeu and Kukulkán found that the mud crumbled. The two gods summoned the other gods, and together they decided to make man from wood. However, since these men had no soul and soon lost loyalty to the creators, the gods destroyed them by rain. Finally, man was constructed from Maize, the Mayans staple and sacred food.
  • The Cherokee creation myth describes the earth as a great floating island surrounded by seawater. It hangs from the sky by cords attached at the four cardinal points. The story tells that the first earth came to be when Dâyuni’sï (Beaver’s Grandchild), the little Water beetle came from Gälûñ’lätï, the sky realm, to see what was below the water. He scurried over the surface of the water, but found no solid place to rest. He dived to the bottom of the water and brought up some soft mud. This mud expanded in every direction and became the earth.
  • One version of the Raven creation story begins when Raven was taught by his father, Kit-ka’ositiyi-qa to be a creator, but Raven was unsatisfied with the product. Raven created the world but was unable to give it light or water. On hearing that light could be found hidden in a far off land, Raven decided he would travel there and steal it. When he discovered that dwelling in the house of light was a young woman who lived there with her father, he played the first of many tricks. He turned himself into a small speck of dirt and slipped into her drinking water and was swallowed. This made the daughter pregnant, and she gave birth to an unusual and fussy child who cried demanding to touch one of the bundles which had been stored hanging from the walls. The child was given one of the bags to quiet him, but when tired of playing with it he let it go, and it floated away from him and disappeared through the smoke hole. Once it reached the sky the bundle came undone and scattered stars across the sky. When the child cried to have it back again he was given the second bundle to play with, and he let it to float away through the hole in the ceiling, and it released the moon. This would happen again with the third and last bundle, which flew away and became sunlight. After Raven’s tricks succeeded in bringing all the light to the world, he flew away through the smoke hole.
  • Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share the creation story of Genesis, found in the Torah, Bible, and Qur’an with few differences.  There are eight acts of creation over six days. In each of the first three days there is an act of division: day one divides the darkness from light, day two the “waters above” from the “waters below”, and day three the sea from the land. In each of the next three days these divisions are populated: day four populates the darkness and light with sun, moon and stars; day five populates seas and skies with fish and fowl; and finally land-based creatures and mankind populate the land.
  • Several of the Native American Indian creation stories tell of travelling through three other worlds before arriving at this, the fourth world.  Spider Woman or Coyote often figure prominently in these tales.
  • In classical, pre-colonial Zulu myth, uNkulunkulu brought human beings and cattle from an area of reeds. He created everything, from land and water to man and the animals. He is considered the first man as well as the parent of all people. He taught the Zulu how to hunt, how to make fire, and how to grow food.

I realize that some of these are no longer practiced today, but many of them are.  I also think this is the point that was trying to be made to the Kansas State Board of Education when the Flying Spaghetti Monster (may you be touched by his noodly appendage) first made his appearance.  But the point is, you can’t pick one as the best, no matter how much you believe it is the one and only.  You can’t say yours is more right than theirs just because your numbers are greater, either.  That’s like saying thieves and drug dealers are better than law enforcement professionals just because there are more of them.

I had a pagan friend who told me once, “Any religion that teaches you to treat other people well is a good religion.”  I agree.  I also think unless the school is teaching a course on religion, religion should not be in public school and especially not in science class.  Instead it should be shared with your specific religious community, not forced on others in your neighborhood/school/town.

I am one of those strange people who have absolutely no problem believing in the Christian creation story and evolution at the same time. But I do not think that every school child in the Texas or any other state should be taught “Intelligent Design” in science class.

I’m starting to wander a bit, I fear. Long rehearsal tonight, and it’s way past my bedtime. The internal jukebox is playing Laudamus Te from the Poulenc Gloria. Blessings on you all.

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