The theme for the seder this year turned out to be “family.” Three guests, who dearly wanted to come, could not due to family obligations. Of the seven guests we had this year, six of them (once enough wine was consumed) shared trials and tribulations associated with their family. Yes, I was one of the six. The one who didn’t share a family story came to my seder for the first time, and didn’t know most of the people there; they may have kept quiet.
According to David Pogue, the latest version of Dragon Dictate is capable of transcribing interviews. Based on the example in the article, the results are limited. Still, it offers hope that by the time I'll need it for the biography, there'll be some form of software that will let me turn 100+ hours of interviews into text…
In the past few years, modern pagans have started to reclaim their history. As Ronald Hutton points out, pagans have always had a strong sense of “history” (an interest in past events), but not always in “historicity” (understanding what actually happened, as opposed to what you wish had happened).
Hutton’s Triumph of the Moon traces the factors that led to the founding of the modern Neopagan Witchcraft movement. Philip Heselton’s Witchfather focused on the life of one important individual: Gerald Gardner. In other words, Hutton told us about the times, Heselton told us about a life.
Michael Lloyd’s Bull of Heaven: The Mythic Life of Eddie Buczynski and the Rise of the New York Pagan does both. It does it a way that’s engaging to read. I’d never heard of Buczynski before Margot Adler recommended this book to me; now I understand his impact on the Craft.
For about five years, I’ve used LiveJournal to post my meandering, over-footnoted, and over-semi-coloned thoughts. It’s also been an important tool in organizing my work on Isaac Bonewits’ biography.
...on the biography. I've exchanged a couple of e-mails with Michael Lloyd, author of Bull of Heaven. He was kind enough to share some of his process in approaching the biography. As I read BoH and composed the e-mails to Lloyd, I had an insight: I need to find some narrative thread(s) to make the story of…
I spent most of this weekend working on Isaac's biography: - I interviewed Stephen Abbott, an old friend of Isaac's from Berkeley. - I sent out messages to a couple of other folks I want to want to interview, to (re-)establish a connection. - I wrote to Michael Lloyd, author of Bull of Heaven, to ask another…
Folks are coming for a ritual this evening. I have to mop the floor. The WetJet isn't working. I can't find my mop. There's nothing else to do but get on my hands and knees, and scrub with water and Pine-Sol. As I'm doing this, I'm humming: Of course, the title of this post has nothing to…