This is Daniel James Hansen, whom I knew and married as Rusty Elliott back in the 70s. He has a very severe infection of his right arm and shoulder muscles going down to the bone. Current location (June 2009) is Hayward California. He is extremely psychic, so feed healing energy gently.
That’s the title of an article in today’s NY Times, that “coincidentally” appeared at the same time I was writing yesterday’s post about this blog. It explains a bit and puts this blog’s lack of activity into perspective.
According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled.
While I never expected to make any money or become famous with this blog, (key blogger motives, according to the Times), I have been disappointed by the lack of reader comments. Yesterday’s snarky comments over at the Wild Hunt blog are actually an ironic reprise of a pattern I’ve seen: we get more responses from readers of other blogs than we do from our own first-hand readers.
Indeed, perhaps the major attraction of the social networking sites for me has been the actual feedback and conversation from others that appears almost instantly whenever I post anything serious or silly. If I want to post longer bits, I suppose I should use Live Journal more.
So now I ask you, should we bother continuing Views from the Cyberhenge or let it die a dignified death? After all, you can always follow us on Facebook and MySpace, etc.
Fans of this blog (there are a few of you, right?), may have noticed that I haven’t been posting here much. That’s because I’ve been spending most of my time on Facebook, which is where I post bits of news that don’t seem worthy of a full length blog announcement. I’m still a bit unclear as to what a blog is really for, if one doesn’t have something important to rant about day after day.
This weekend (June 6-7) I’m doing interviews for two Pagan internet radio shows: Pagan FM on Saturday about my music and Hex Education on Sunday about magic, witchcraft and everything else. Both interviews are from 10:00 pm to midnight, EDT, and will be available as downloadable podcasts.
I promise, I’ll get to my MySpace, Live Journal, and other networking sites Real Soon Now. I just have to finish this Facebook game called Hammerfall…
At the Beltaine festival last week, I re-met the lovely Vicki Bloom, owner of Little Pagans, a website filled with Pagan-themed t-shirts, onesies, and more for Pagan babies, toddlers, and older kids. Here’s one of my favorites, which I’ve given to a couple of friends for their kids:
She also has shirts showing toddler or baby versions of the Green Man, Anubis, and other deities from a variety of pantheons. One of my other favorites shows the Venus of Willendorf and says, “My mama is a goddess!”
I’ve updated our Schedule Page to reflect appearances I’m making at the Beltaine/Spring Festival in Cornwall-on-Hudson NY on May 2nd, the ADF Wellspring Gathering in Sherman NY on Memorial Day Weekend, the Liberty Spirit Gathering in the mountains of Arizona on July 4th Weekend, and the OBOD Lughnasadh Gorsedd in Monterey CA on the first weekend in August.
I’ve also listed the venues where I’m reading Tarot and teaching ongoing classes in the Hudson Valley NY region.
Organizers! Weekends are filling up! Go to our Fees and Arrangements Pages to see how you can get myself and/or Phaedra at your next event.
I’ll be there reading cards, singing rowdy Beltane songs, signing books, and giving a workshop. I’ll be leading a Druid worship ritual in honor of the Dagda and Danu the night before. Contact me if you want to attend the ceremony.
Saturday, May 2nd, from 10:30 am onwards.Admission: $20, under 8 free!
Come and celebrate spring with us! Dress in your renaissance faire best! (fantasy, pirate, renaissance, fun)
Tarot readers, Dance the Maypole, Live entertainment, games of chance, classes, music, belly dancing, tons of shopping and food from our fine vendors, and so much more!!
Where: The Grail, 119 Duncan Avenue, Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY 12520
Sponsored by Bernadette Montana of Brid’s Closet (845) 458-8726.
Interested in vending or performing, or to place an ad in our keepsake program booklet? call her at (845) 458-8726.
I’d love to meet some of the Hudson Valley Druids and other local Pagans!
Don’t forget about Earth Hour tonight:
Earth Hour (www.EarthHourUS.org) is a global initiative of WWF in which millions of people around the world will cast a vote in favor of action on climate change by turning off their lights for one hour on March 28, 2009 at 8:30 pm local time. By voting with their light switches, Earth Hour participants will send a powerful, visual message to their leaders demanding immediate action on climate change.
(Stolen from the front page of The Daily Kos.
Phae and I will both be out working tonight from 8:30-9:30 pm, and we always turn the lights out when we leave the house anyway, but tonight our little bit will add to the rest.
We know how hard the economy is for everyone, not just in the Neopagan movement, but the whole world. Twenty-eight years of lowering taxes for the obscenely wealthy, eliminating regulations on the financial industry that were put in after the greedheads caused the first Great Depression, and pouring tax money down the endless rathole of the military-industrial complex, have led us to the mess we are in today. Eight years of national leadership by incompetent morons and chickenhawk sociopaths, all cheerleaded by the traditional mass media, wasted trillions of dollars we could have used to fix the mess, not to mention fixing our bridges, highways, and educational system.
Now, we’re stuck trying to clean up the damage. I have faith that Mr. Obama will give it a good effort, even if he isn’t as progressive and bold as I think he should be, but he can’t do it all by himself. Everyone has to work harder, plant victory gardens, and lower prices for our brothers and sisters when we can.
As the economy has sunk into the Bush Depression, we have seen the size, number, and budgets of Neopagan festivals and stores dwindling away. Our income from speaking gigs has almost completely dried up and other Neopagan speakers and authors are reporting the same. Therefore we have decided to lower our speaking fees to their 2006 level! We can’t tell other speakers what to do, but this is our idea to make it easier for festivals and stores to hire us. Who knows? Maybe it will catch on.
If you visit our other sites, Hudson Valley Civil Ceremonies and Unusual Ceremonies, you will see (if you’ve been there before) that we’ve lowered our fees for weddings as well. These steps are pretty much all we can do to help our fans and friends in the Neopagan movement, since we can’t lower the costs of plane tickets or caterers (or our books).
For safekeeping, I stored my response, complete with added hyperlinks, on my blog today.
Well I feel better now!
(Kudos to the original author of the “The Forces of Good™ vs. The Forces of Evil™,” by the way. Are you responsible for that one, Isaac?)
On Thursday, March 12, 2009, from 2:00 - 3:30 pm EDT, Isaac and Phaedra will be interviewed on the Ascending Way internet radio show. This is a Blog Talk Radio show on various new age topics. Be sure to watch/listen!
