"Today, you people are no longer maggots. Today, you are Marines. You're part of a brotherhood. From now on until the day you die, wherever you are, every Marine is your brother. Most of you will go to Vietnam. Some of you will not come back.

But always remember this: Marines die. That's what we're here for. But the Marine Corp lives forever. And that means YOU live forever."

             --Gunny

In the OBOD Bookstore

Blood & Mistletoe - The History of the Druids of Britain - Professor Ronald Hutton

Crushed by the Romans in the first century AD, the ancient Druids of Britain left almost no reliable evidence behind. Because of this, Ronald Hutton shows, succeeding British generations have been free to re-imagine, reinterpret, and reinvent the Druids. Hutton's captivating book is the first to encompass two thousands years of Druid history and to explore the evolution of English, Scottish and Welsh attitudes towards the forever ambiguous figures of the ancient Celtic world. Highly recommended.

Available from the OBOD bookstore

More about the author, Professor R. Hutton.

Ronald Hutton (born 1954) is a professor of History at the University of Bristol, author, and occasional commentator on British television and radio.
A leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs. Also the leading historian of the ritual year in Britain and of modern paganism.

The Order is now a subject on the new UK GCSE curriculum.

Teacher's Resources

In the UK in 2009 the Order was chosen as a subject for Religious Education with the Oxford Cambridge and Royal Society of Arts examination boards for students at GCSE level (This is the General Certificate of Secondary Education taken usually around 16 yrs). A number of RE teachers are members of the Order and with their help we now have a set of educational materials on Druidry and the Order available for download from this website. These include lesson plans, teachers’ notes, and source materials such as readings and video files.

Anyone is welcome to access this material. If you are an RE teacher in the UK and would like any assistance please email teachers@druidry.org

To download lesson plans, teachers’ notes, and source materials (1.7 mb) click here.

The same resources, but including videos, are available here (48Mb) click here.

 

All that talk about new orleans "coming back" after Katrina?  

yeah, about that....   they've got 180 square miles under their jurisdiction with infrastructure to maintain... but only 1/2 of the previous population to support it.  Oopsie. 

Down in the heart of things, at least half of the french quarter is boarded up/ for sale.   vacant.   Prime locations, right on Decatur st. in the heart of tourist country.   There's just too many businesses for the level of demand.    In most of the quarter, getting dinner after 6pm is a challenge:  the empty shops simply close the doors.    Sure, bourbon street soaks up the remaining demand, and is a hopping party -- and one street away its a ghost town.   That's not a "French Quarter", its a street. 

The city will have to shrink radically to stay solvent -- i'd say by 2/3 of its current size, if not more, and simply stop providing services to the remainder.  Otherwise, they'll default on all their debt, and have no cash for payroll, within just a couple more budget cycles.  If you're holding their bonds, you're screwed.  Financiers know this, and are running for cover.  

There will always be a new orleans here, of some kind.   But fast change is in the air.

Ho-Hum:  pirates on lake erie

Coming soon to a highway near you:  pirate checkpoints.  
 

There's lotsa good food in new orleans... and lotsa bad food, too.  I'll go easy on 'em, in light of their commitment to the delights of Cheesy Grits, red beans and rice, jambalaya, the beignets, and damned fine dutch process cocoa.  I've always loved french and creole indian culture, anyhow.

meanwhile, much of the french quarter is full of bullshit tourist traps, and embarassing bloody marys.   but then, locals don't much hang there anyhow.

As is my custom as a macroeconomist specializing in public finance and infrastructure, I can't help but look around at the things that make a city tick.  Result: this city will be here for a long time, in some fashion.     A radically altered, severely diminished fashion, certainly - but with access to water and land, and the LOOP, it'll be here for awhile.   Much of the surrounding suburbia will revert to... something interesting.  Fortune favors the prepared and nimble.    

Lotsa great window shopping to do, some ghost tours, mebbe get out onto a steam ship for dinner.   And I'm on the quest for the perfect gumbo.

Halloween is coming up, i'll likely spend it at the House of Blues and seeing old friends at the New Orleans Voodoo Temple.   Typically back home we host an annual Dumb Supper, but, being away, that's not possible for us this year.    Next year, I hope to resume that ritual. 

Off to New Orleans, for a week in the French Quarter.   

Halloween in the Big Easy, baby.   good stuff.

Meanwhile: 

So much about California is, compared to New Jersey, just ... damned civilized.  Its simple things, like being able to buy wine in the Safeway (prohibited in NJ), being always able to walk onto the public shore without a beach tag, things like that.   Ahh.   Even getting through the DMV was just fine.   Hard-working underpaid folks, just like always -- but they did their job quickly and competently.  

and the best thing so far:  much lower douchebag ratio.  

 to clarify an earlier post: 

Most cops, of various types, are good guys -- just as most military folk are.  My close cousin is a Sheriff in Chicago, and working to go for the Federal Marshals.  I'm from a long line of military myself, with 6 years in the USMC for me, and I'd pit my time in harm's way up against any of the guys in short-sleeved white shirts any day.   I've been at the forward operating base, and I've pulled triggers, and I've swung a baton. 

So, the idea that "i don't get it" is nonsense.    Most cops are damn good guys, doing hard work for too little pay.   Yes, this applies to the TSA, generally.  

But my earlier post regarded that fascist element that exists in many of the security forces today -- it attracts those fuckers like flies, and we all know it.

So, some analogies are in order:  if your unit has a punk cop going around giving the rest of you a bad name, well -- who gets the bad name?  the unit.    If your squad has a slacker or a spy, the whole unit is fucked.   If your steak has a worm in it, how much of it do you toss out?   Yes, there are some damn good people working in the police and TSA.    But when they put up with fascist fucks, then they become part of the problem.

The good news is that groups like the Oathkeepers are growing fast.    These are the good guys, that I'm happy to call friends, and will always be welcome in our home when things go south.      If you're a friend of ours, then none of these declarations are a problem.  Post them around your workplace, and find out who is friend and who is foe.  

When it comes to the TSA and Police, the Oathkeepers are the good guys. 

1. We will NOT obey any order to disarm the American people.
2. We will NOT obey any order to conduct warrantless searches of the American people, their homes, vehicles, papers, or effects -- such as warrantless house-to house searches for weapons or persons.
3. We will NOT obey any order to detain American citizens as "unlawful enemy combatants" or to subject them to trial by military tribunal.
4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a "state of emergency" on a state, or to enter with force into a state, without the express consent and invitation of that state's legislature and governor.
5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty and declares the national government to be in violation of the compact by which that state entered the Union.
6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.
7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.
8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to "keep the peace" or to "maintain control" during any emergency, or under any other pretext. We will consider such use of foreign troops against our people to be an invasion and an act of war.
9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies, under any emergency pretext whatsoever.
10. We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

ah, city life.  

all sorts of drama with the downstairs neighbor -- she'd like us to commit perjury to the State on her behalf, to help her get her preschool license.   oh, and submit to fingerprinting, TB tests, database registration, all because the DSS thinks we live in the same building in which she runs a preschool.   This is a surprise to us, and is not a covenant of our lease -- she just sprung it on us now.    The landlord says if we feel like complying with her request, fine -- but otherwise she gives a damn, loves us and just wants us to keep paying rent.  Says to ignore her.

We'd really love to help her out, but -- actually complying with the paperwork involves stating things like we're 'employees' of the pre-school on the form -- something that is not an option and could get S fired.    F that.   Also, I had a minor indiscretion in college - the charges were dismissed, no conviction occured, and it was expunged.   But the forms ask for me to disclose all of that: if i voluntarily bring that back into the public system, it negates the expungement, and affects my future.   Again, F that.      

The bad news is that (she alleges) that if we don't comply, she'll lose her license.   That's sad, and unfortunate, and we'd love to see her business thrive -- we love Waldorf schools, she's a waldorf preschool.   Screwing over a preschool seems like a bad way to land in SF. On the other hand, the landlord wants her to leave (for other reasons, such as nonpayment of rent) and we all know she wont leave willingly and SF eviction laws are tough.  if she loses her license, she's more incetivized to leave on her own accord, which is good for our landlord.  

However, preschool lady may be incorrect.   Just so happens that we've a close friend who practiced law in SF for 15 years, currently practices in Boston.  Her partner and she also run a daycare in Boston, with a seperate tenant on the 3rd floor of the building.   MA and CA laws are similar, and they've found a way to properly divide the premises into two, such that the tenant is not subject to all the DSS hoops the daycare goes through.  These are extensive -- kitchen inspections, types of locks, heights of chairs, etc.  its a labyrinth , but they made it work.    Of course, our friend is a damn good attorney.    

I suspect that our neighbor simply doesnt understand how to make it work with DSS -- but now that her ass is on the line, she'll have a reason to figure out how to leave us (an upstairs tenant) out of her mess (as a downstairs tenant).   If that involves forcing the landlord to legally subdivide the premises, so be it.    Its not my biz.  
 
Bottom line is that we'd love to help, but I just can't see a way to comply with all the requests without perjuring ourselves, filing false medical charges to our insurance (for the TB tests that aren't required by our jobs or medical conditions), or other legal concerns like stating we're her employees.   So... she may be screwed.   

This is gonna suck.

boy, that warming sure makes for some big hailstones.