Hekate
Hekate's JournalCommon decency generally asks that we wait till the body is in the ground.
May I point out how viciously hated by the RW our heroes are? How would you like it if FOX "assessments" began as the last breath was drawn, and continued apace throughout the next week, overriding eulogies by colleagues and family?
Susan, a disbelieving granddaughter, fights with her grandpa over Santa Claus...
Just my contribution to DU's annual spat over Santa, currently going on in LBN.
Susan comes from an unusual family. Her grandfather is the anthropomorphic personification of Death. Susan has chosen to be a schoolteacher.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/66591-all-right-said-susan-i-m-not-stupid-you-re-saying-humans
“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"
MY POINT EXACTLY.”
― Terry Pratchett
The Hogfather
Highly rational Susan fights with her grandfather over Santa Claus (the Hogfather)...
Susan comes from an unusual family. Her grandfather is an anthropomorphic personification of Death, who has spent a long time trying to figure out what makes human tick. Susan has chosen to be a schoolteacher.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/66591-all-right-said-susan-i-m-not-stupid-you-re-saying-humans
“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"
MY POINT EXACTLY.”
― Terry Pratchett
The Hogfather
About time for my annual viewing of "The Hogfather" by Terry Pratchett. HO. HO. HO.
Silly, irritable people out there in DU Land are squabbling over whether children should be told about Santa Claus, and the nay-sayers sound like joyless 17th century Calvinists.
Meanwhile, I am wearing my badge that says "I saw the Hogfather at Crumley's" and enjoying the season.
How about the rest of you?
I have come to count on Barack Obama to say the presidential words for us in moments like this...
God knows, Trump is utterly incapable. I am so grateful President Obama does: you can feel him pausing a decent moment to let Trump have a chance, then stepping forward to do the job.
Schadenfreude Pie: dark, very dark, and delicious...
The link is a must-read, especially for the photos and captions.
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/26/how-to-make-a-schadenfreude-pie/
How to Make a Schadenfreude Pie
John Scalzi
My word, what is this dark and vaguely sinister-looking pie you see before you? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s the world’s first Schadenfreude Pie, the pie to enjoy while you are reveling in the horrible misfortunes of others. Why is there a Schadenfreude Pie? Because after I wrote the headline for this entry, I wondered to myself, “what would Schadenfreude Pie taste like?”
My guess: Dark. Rich. And oh so bittersweet.
And you know what? That’s exactly what it tastes like. Also — and this is really just a perfect but unintentional extension of the whole schadenfreude metaphor — you really only want a small slice; too much of this pie and it’ll sit in the pit of your stomach like a rock of judgment, pulling you down. Small slice? Excellent. Big slice? You’ll regret it. Just like schadenfreude itself.
Want a slice? Sure you do. Here’s how you make it.
Read on, my friends, read on.
Hekate Triformis is one of the many Triple Goddesses of ancient Greece.She stands where 3 roads meet
Where 3 roads meet -- the place of decision.
Hekate also stands at the road the dead travel in the Underworld, holding the keys. In that aspect she was demonized in medieval mythology as "the wardress of Hell," and "queen of the witches." But as an underworld goddess she has a close relationship to Persephone, the queen of the underworld. Hekate can choose to be elsewhere as well, because as one of the original gods she has the capacity to travel in all realms.
I took her name because of her link to Demeter and Persephone, the mother-daughter dyad -- in which Hekate completes the triad as crone. By 2002 (when I signed up at DU and needed to choose a DU handle) my daughter was done dragging me thru the hell of her adolescence and was grown, I had just completed several years of academic study on Demeter and Persephone, and decided it was time to move on.
Way more than you wanted to know, I am sure. Mythology is very rich that way, and one story opens out into another and another and another --
You might benefit by reading Margaret Sanger's Autobiography. She went to prison for teaching...
...CONTRACEPTION. Also known as FAMILY PLANNING.
EVEN TEACHING WOMEN CONTRACEPTION WAS AGAINST THE LAW. Illegal abortion was rampant -- and so was death. A desperate woman could get an abortion, but she could not gain access to caps, pessaries, spermicides, or indeed any info about how her reproductive system worked.
There is a passage in her Autobiography (1879-1966) that says it all about how she took up this crusade. She was a Public Health Nurse who visited poor women and their families in their tenement apartments. Passing thru the neighborhood one evening she saw a long line of women with their shawls hiding their faces waiting to enter a door. She was told they were all waiting to see the abortionist, and she was shocked, as this was outside her experience.
One of her patients was a woman with 3 chldren. Sanger described her children and rooms as clean and scrubbed. Their mother was sick in bed with a fever, infected from an abortion. The doctor in attendance was condescending: "You mustn't do this again, Mrs. Levine. Tell Jake to sleep on the couch." When the doc left, Mrs. Levine grabbed Sanger's hand and pleaded with her to "tell me the secret. My Jake is a good man. The doctor knows, but he won't tell me. There must be some secret that rich people know because they don't have so many children. You're a nurse -- you must know."
But Sanger truly did not know herself. She was a nurse but this was not part of her training.
She wrote that the next time she was called to this woman's bedside "she was sick again from the same cause," only this time she died.
There are many lies told about Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood, but one of the most abominable is that is was founded to abort rather than to prevent unwanted pregnancy in the first place. PP clinics did not provide abortions until the Supreme Court legalized the procedure.
Sanger set out to educate herself first, which involved travelling to England and Europe. When she returned she began to educate other women and to set up clinics. She was arrested for obscenity, among other crimes of the time. Telling women (and showing them drawings) that they had a uterus, ovaries, vagina, etc was considered obscene. She mailed educational pamphlets, which was also obscene and illegal. She went to prison.
Bits and pieces of her life story get picked up and twisted -- and while it is true she came to believe in eugenics for awhile, so did a lot of people at the time. Mostly what I can say about that is that she was a hero, not a saint.
Planned Parenthood does not "push abortion," nor have they ever done so. Abortion services constitute about 3% of the medical care they provide.
For further information, please visit the Planned Parenthood national website.
My late MIL was Viennese. She said it always baffled her that Jews were simultaneously accused ...
...of being Communists (i.e. against all capitalism) and being The Bankers (i.e. holding all the capital). Her ironic comment was along the lines of "Good trick on our part, eh?"
As for how and why the Jews were made into forever-bogeymen by haters, we watched it happen to Hillary Clinton before our very eyes. She -- a white Christian woman -- was turned into The Other because it was useful to somebody, and they will continue after she is cold in her grave. They did it to "Liberals" as well -- right in front of us.
How much more so the Jews, a whole people labeled as The Other some 2,000 years ago -- so useful every time some despot needs a distraction and/or needs to stir up a mob. All that's needed is to keep a subcritical mass of people simmering and a critical mass of "polite society" willing to keep using or ignoring casual slurs. There you have the poisonous brew waiting to boil over.
It seems to have nothing to do with reason and everything to do with how useful it is to have a scapegoat handy in times of stress.
I used to search for the origins and history of anti-Semitism in an effort to understand how Hitler happened. I still highly recommend this exercise to any who have not done it.
But at some point in the last decade or so I realized it is useful to someone, and started asking instead: Who does it serve?
To the ones who posted, both agreeing and disagreeing: thanks. I just got really triggered today...
Mostly it was Steve Schmidt being so very very explicit about the bombs: Attempted assassination of all our top leadership. Worse than the day after Lincoln's assassination. If successful, would be the equivalent of 9-11 happening right now.
By the time Ms Allemany started talking about being at all those rallies on the campaign trail, I could hardly breathe. My reaction -- and my husband's statement that he had not known the extent of the pre-election violence either, based on news reports -- showed up in my OP.
Personally, I believe more bombs are in the mail, still in a sorting station somewhere. I believe they were intended to kill or maim, not just frighten, and that only the maker's lack of practice made them duds.
Someone intended to assassinate our entire top leadership -- they tried to -- and they will try again. With Trump cheering them on.
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Member since: 2002
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