A Name Change?

Posted on June 3, 2006 by Isaac Bonewits

Phaedra’s been pointing out for a while that “Isaac Bonewits’ Homepage” is a really old-fashioned name for a website in 2006. So we’re thinking of changing the name to “The Bonewits Cyberhenge.” Whaddya think?

Posted in Neopagan.Net changes | 1 Comment

Live! On Your Computer! Isaac???

Posted on June 3, 2006 by Isaac Bonewits

Here’s a thought I’ve been kicking around for a while: doing webcast workshops from my home computer instead of traveling all over the country (or the world), using up fossil fuels and costing my hosts a small fortune in plane tickets, hotel costs, etc.

All I would have to do is get a webcam for my Mac G4 and find out how to set up a web conference. Should I sign up with a commercial service, or could my friends at Drak.Net host it? I’d have to clean my office, at least behind my desk, and remember to brush my beard each time…

Would-be hosts could organize house parties with a computer connected to a large screen TV, or to a digital projector in college auditoriums. They could collect a donation per workshop hour from the participants and split the money left over from expenses between their organization (if any) and myself.

Or would-be attendees could log onto neopagan.net, make a PayPal donation, then be forwarded to the website from which a given lecture or workshop was being hosted.

I could start doing regular weekly classes or once a month weekend workshops from my home, with anywhere from dozens to hundreds (thousands?) of viewers. With some web conference software, audience members could ask questions and converse with me live. Best of all, I could make recordings of some of the events and sell them as DVDs.

This sounds like a win-win solution for me and my readers/viewers. What do you think?

Posted in Pagan Stuff, Products | 2 Comments

An Inconvenient Truth

Posted on June 3, 2006 by Isaac Bonewits

We’ve been advertising it on our front page for a couple of weeks. Today we finally got to see it at our local theater, and we were very impressed. Al Gore manages to alternate excerpts from the public talks he’s been giving for six years (over 1,000 times), all around the world, with powerful computer graphics, still photos, and video of the effects of global warming. Goddess! If only he’d shown this much passion when he was running for President!

Showing charts and lecturing can be boring, as most current and former college students, as well as an independent candidate for President (Ross Perot), know well. D. Guggenheim’s direction, building on the advice Gore was given by video presentation advisors who updated what had been an old-fashioned slide show, slowly but relentlessly builds the argument for global warming as the most serious moral issue of our times.

Sure, the fossil fuel and (American) automobile industries will be able to hire a few science whores to claim that global warming is merely a “theory,” and a “controversial” one at that, but those who have bothered to research it for themselves know that nearly 100% of the world’s scientists are agreed that it’s a fact and one for which human beings are responsible.

We strongly recommend that everyone see this film as soon as possible and then tell all their friends (and foes) to do the same. This is one documentary about a world crisis that ends on an upbeat note, suggesting activities viewers can do to start fixing the mess that human greed, ignorance, and stupidity have created. Go to the Inconvenient Truth website at www.climatecrisis.net for more details, scientific references and political action tips. (Don’t get confused like I did and go to www.climatechange.org instead. That’s a propaganda site for the nuclear industry.)

As the old union activist Joe Hill said, “Don’t mourn, organise!”

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Wellspring 2006!

Posted on June 3, 2006 by Isaac Bonewits

Monday evening I returned home from a fabulous four days at the ADF Wellspring Gathering. The folks at Stone Creed Grove, ADF (Cleveland, OH) did their usual fantastic job of organization and operation of the festival. Worshops on several interesting topics were given, though perhaps I shouldn’t have attended the Brewers Guild one just before my own presentation…

After an all-day seminar on ancestor worship and the making and use of ancestor dolls, Sr. Druid Earrach Canali {and several members} of Sassafras Grove, ADF (Pittsburg, PA) led a deeply moving ritual in the National Nemeton to honor the Ancestors and the Mighty Dead.

At the end of the annual meeting I was privileged to present the first three Founder’s Awards for exceptional public service in 2005 to Awen’s Breath Protogrove ADF (Hollywood, CA), CedarLight Grove ADF (Baltimore, MD), and Three Cranes Grove ADF (Columbus, OH) for volunteer work, food, blood, and financial donations in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I hope to make such awards an annual event.

Wellspring 2006 was four days of fun, scholarship, ritual, and communication with and between the leadership and the members of ADF. I came away from it having learned a great deal about Our Own Druidism and my own carrying capacity for home brewed beer (“What do you do with a drunken founder?”). I am deeply proud of how an idea that a few friends had in 1983 has blossomed into nearly 1,100 members and scores of groves and protogroves across North America.

My special thanks to Bardd Dafydd and Mapf of Red Oak Grove ADF (Mount Laurel, NJ) for transporting me to and from Wellspring. I wouldn’t have made it without them!

{This post originally posted May 31}

Posted in Pagan Stuff, Personal Happenings | 1 Comment