In Other News
While Starhawk’s meditation on McCain gets top billing from The Wild Hunt today, it isn’t the only story of interest to our communities happening right now. Here are some links to other stories of note.
New Jersey’s Packet Online looks at the careers of Darlene Prestbo and Hazel Staats-Westover, elders within the women’s spirituality movement, who contribute a chapter to the recently released work “WomanSoul: The Inner Life of Women’s Spirituality”.
“Because of their longtime involvement in women’s spirituality, their professional reputations and friendships, Ms. Prestbo and Ms. Staats-Westover were invited by Carole A. Rayburn, a noted research psychologist who had visited the women’s spirituality groups and been touched by the experience, to contribute a chapter to Womansoul: The Inner Life of Women’s Spirituality. Ms. Rayburn co-authored the book with Lillian Comas-Diaz, also a respected psychologist and educator. The icing on the cake for the two local women was an invitation to the 116th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in Boston, where they spoke Aug. 15. The book explores and advances the concept of “womansoul” — a gender specific way of embracing spirituality. It discusses the personal and professional impact of spirituality in the lives of women from a variety of ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds — Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Native American and more.”
Prestbo and Staats-Westover also co-founded (in 1987), and help run, a Princeton area women’s spirituality group called the Daughters of Gaia.
If you happen to be institutionalized, you have a right to write letters in “Atlantean” undisturbed, so long as it is integral to your belief system.
“DeSimone v. Bartow is a lawsuit by plaintiff who has been civilly committed to a mental health facility operated in part by the Department of Corrections. A Wisconsin federal district court permitted him to proceed with a claim that his 1st amendment and RLUIPA free exercise rights were violated when he was prohibited from writing in his Atlantean language, a practice plaintiff said was central to his religious belief. Officials said it took too long to translate the writings, and untranslated writings posed security risks, even though they did not impose the same restrictions on others who wrote in different foreign languages.”
I can only assume that letters written in Enochian, Theban, Angelic, and Malachim scripts would be similarly protected. I wonder, is the “Atlantean” alphabet he is using the one invented by Disney?
In a final note, Switzerland has exonerated Europe’s last beheaded witch.
“Swiss officials have granted a pardon to Europe’s last beheaded witch – more than 220 years after she was executed. The parliament of the Swiss canton (state) of Glarus decided unanimously today to exonerate Anna Goeldi as a victim of “judicial murder,” said Josef Schwitter, a government spokesman. Goeldi was executed in 1782 for an alleged case of poisoning.”
Goeldi, who is something of a (in)famous figure in Swiss history, had a museum opened in her honor, and the Swiss government is donating $118,000 towards the creation of a play about her life.
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