Driving Audhumla

Yes, we wear the pentacle!

When U.S. Army Sgt. Patrick D. Stewart died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan in September 2005, his widow had one simple request. She asked that his tombstone in the veterans' cemetery bear the symbol of his religion. It didn't seem terribly difficult because, after all, the Department of Veterans' Affairs has a list of 38 different emblems of belief permitted on veterans' tombstones. They include the three Abrahamic faiths of Islam, Judaism and Christianity; Buddhism, Hinduism. Sikhism, Sufism, Eckankar, Soka Gakkai and Humanism. And to give lie to the old aphorism that "there are no atheists in foxholes,"there's even an emblem approved for those who profess to be atheists. In other words, the federal veterans' cemeteries comprise a big tent with room for the military dead of all religions and their symbols.

Except one, that is. Patrick Stewart lived and died a proud Pagan. And like many of us, he wore the five-pointed star known as a Pentacle. However, the Veterans Administration is "still reviewing" the application for the use of the Pentacle, and has been doing so since 1989.  Meanwhile, other emblems, such as the Sikh khanda have been fast-track approved, with the Sikhs receiving authorization for the use of their emblem in 2004.

Perhaps the problem is political. Back when he was still governor of Texas, the present occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue said that in his opinion, Wicca--the variety of Paganism to which Stewart was an adherent-- was not a religion. Undoubtedly the boycott of military enlistment called for by a number of fundamentalist Christian groups in the wake of Pagan enlistments and permitted Pagan religious rituals on military bases has played a part.

Last weekend in Minnesota, a large group of Pagans held a public demonstration aimed at moving the Veterans' Administration to permit the use of the pentacle. You'll find some photos here.  And a video of the Pentacle Song shot at the 2006  Sacred Harvest Festival is receiving thousands of hits on www.YouTube.com.  If you'd like to learn the words and spread the song throughout the Pagan community, you will find the lyrics here.

Meanwhile, Patrick Stewart's widow, together with a second military widow and the well-known Circle Sanctuary group have joined with Isis Invicta Military Mission  to file suit in federal court in Madison, Wisconsin, charging that the VA's failure to act violates Pagans' freedom of religion. Here's a video about the litigation. Other supporters of this project include the Lady Liberty League, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State.   

Last week at Pantheacon, I shot photos of just a few of the hundreds of festival-goers who were wearing pentacles. I had planned to fill up my camera's 500+ image photo card, but apparently the fact that Mercury was in retrograde temporarily banjaxed my camera, which froze up after my shooting only about 25 mug shots.  I asked everyone to sign a photo release and to give me identifying information. In the interests of space, I'll list names, occupations and hometowns first and then will upload the photos. Suffice to say that these photos represent a pretty good cross section of what, in  her presentation at Pantheacon,  Margot Adler called "high-functioning Pagans."  Here's the list:

Todd Bentson , author/filmmaker, St. Paul, Minnesota; Valley High, manager, Berkeley, California; Sue A. McCullough, computer programmer/military veteran. Oakland, California; Jennifer Robinson, environmental specialist, Fremont, California; Tim Bolyard, construction worker, Florida; Elizabeth McNally, Importer of Lindisfarne Mead, California; Kelley E. Montford, college humanities professor, Overland Park, Kansas; Michael George Lange, military veteran, Buena Park, California; Tina Nettleton, teacher, San Leandro, California; Vicki Solomon, retired engineer, Oakland, California; Alison Miller, student, San Francisco, California; Eric Montford, Communications technician, Kansas City, Kansas; Anne Hill, writer, Bodega Bay, California, Aneirys, poet, San Jose, California, M. Macha NightMare, writer and priestess, San Rafael, California; Gary Suto, fashion designer, Brooklyn, New York, Kevin Roddy, librarian, Honolulu; Kirk C. White, president of Cherry Hill Pagan Seminary , Bethel, Vermont; Amara, writer, Tracy, California; Patrick McCollum, chaplain and writer, San Francisco Bay Area, Rowan Fairgrove, librarian, San Francisco Bay Area; Ariana Firedragon, receptionist, Antioch, California; Crystal Blanton, Walnut Creek, California. (The names and the photos are not in the same order).

This list of proud Pagans and witches who have kicked open the door to the broom closet could have been so much longer, had my technology cooperated. Here are the smiling faces of those I did manage to photograph. (And yes, I wear a pentacle myself all the time. You can find a photo of my pentacle in an earlier posting I made about trolling eBay).

Every one of these people was wearing a pentacle in some form or another: pendants, pins, tattoos, designs on clothing. And they represent  only a tiny fraction of the Pagan community.

Of course the Pentacle is not necessarily the sole symbol employed in Paganism. We're a wildly diverse group that includes Druids, some of whom use the Awen; Norse reconstructionist Heathens  who are often seen wearing the Valknut or a Mjolnir (hammer of Thor); or Dianics, who might prefer a silver goddess image.  But the Pentacle is the place to start, and I sincerely hope the Department of Veterans Affairs responds to either the rising tide of public opinion or to the litigation.   It only seems fair.

Pagan Paganism pentacle veteran veterans tombstone cemetery grave religion religions religious freedom constitution constitutional litigation lawsuit suit rights civil+rights

Yoni art

I just got home from four great days at Pantheacon, the big annual gathering of the Pagan tribes that takes place here in the Bay Area over the President's Day long weekend. It will require several postings for me to cover the entire conference. So for right now, all I will write about is the art workshop that I offer at Pantheacon every year.

It always freaks out the Pagan guys I know when I tell them I will need to bring irons for the yoni self-portrait workshop. But that's probably just because they don't know very much about the wonders of Wonder Under. I'm not a member of The Chicago School of Fusing, but I might as well be for all the yards and yards of Wonder Under I've used in quilts and all kinds of art projects.  Before I drove down to Pantheacon, I spent about six hours fusing a wide range of fabrics to Wonder Under. I also made up some muslin mini banner shapes to which the women would fuse their yoni self portraits.

This idea of celebrating our female parts in art is certainly nothing new. Judy Chicago's ground-breaking Dinner Party project was completed back in 1979, and goes on permanent display at The Brooklyn Museum beginning in March 2007. I have a print of her powerful image of The Crowning hanging on the wall in my loft. The vulva is celebrated in statues of Baubo, who lifted her skirt and brought laughter back to broken-hearted Demeter after the loss of her beloved daughter Persephone.  Ama no Uzume's yoni-flashing striptease dance that lured Japan's sulky sun goddess Amaterasu Omikami from her cave is celebrated in countless scroll paintings.  And certainly the worldwide success of the Vagina Monologues has transformed "down there" from the body part that dare not speak its name to a major subject of artistic discourse.

In my Pagan life, the first time I ever saw an image of Sheela-na-gig, I recognized that these folk sculptures celebrated the sacred door through which we all enter this world. And I was able to let go of a lot of the guilt and shame that came with growing up a good Catholic girl in the 1950s. I developed this workshop as a way to help other women celebrate this most sacred part of their bodies and to exorcise some of their own personal issues. My kind of magic is almost always worked with a needle and thread, and this workshop is no exception to that rule.

This year, it seemed even more important to do this workshop, given the alarming new trend for genital plastic surgery aimed at "tidying up" women's parts to fit some preconceived idea of symmetry and beauty. I knew, from looking at the colored photos in Joani Blenk's Famalia that we women are all differently made, with many many beautiful variations. 

I suspect that the women who made some of the lovely and magical yoni images you see below will probably not sign up for genital plastic surgery, given the high degree of acceptance and appreciation they expressed for their own bodies. And, in the process, we had great fun making art, talking, sharing the stories of our own lives, laughing together, crying together, and even singing together. We were able to share information about women's mysteries in sacred space.If you missed the workshop this year, I'll be offering it again next year, just as long as Pantheacon organizers make room to keep me on the schedule.

In the past, I've also taught a poppet-making workshop at Pantheacon that honors our grandmothers as the first goddesses we've ever encountered. (It's a workshop I've also taught at the Sacred Harvest Festival in Minnesota and for Gaia's Womb in Chicago).

Last year, for the first time, I had a significant number of men in the workshop, and many of them were moved to tears as they remembered and honored their grandmothers and the unconditional love they received from these so-significant women in their lives. I know the Pantheacon schedule gets more crowded every year, but I really hope there can be room for me to offer this workshop again, too. The guys really seemed to have needed this outlet to honor their grandmothers in sacred space.

Pagan Paganism conference festival workshop women feminist sexuality sex sexual genital art art+making quilt quilter quilting sacred female pregnancy childbirth birth yoni vulva vagina

Off to Pantheacon

Tomorrow I'll be heading off to Pantheacon, which is the big annual four-day Northern California Pagan gathering. About 2500 registrants are expected at the event, which will be held at the DoubleTree Hotel in San Jose.

I'll be teaching the yoni self-portrait workshop on Sunday, and will also be one of the priestesses for the Brigid ritual Sunday night. Also, I'll be at the Cherry Hill Pagan Seminary  presentation, given that I am one of the seminary's faculty members.

I do love this annual gathering of the tribe, this huge diverse and occasionally dysfunctional Pagan family to which I belong. Every year I make new friends and see many old ones, learn more about Paganism, participate in some great rituals, and just generally leave the mundane world far behind. It's so ironic that this event is held in Silicon Valley, which is so strongly identified with technology and capitalism. But then, Pagans are definitely not Luddites, and, in fact, many are early adapters of new technology. 

Pagan Paganism meeting technology Silicon+Valley ritual feminist feminism women

Finally connected!

I am now finally online with my own Earthlink connection. It had been 25 days without connectivity and I was readly to throw in the towel. As it turns out, the problem was with the AT&T phone line between the street and the phone company headquarters. Apparently some sort of filter had been installed that was very effectively filtering out the DSL signal.

It took the Covad technician about three hours to find the problem, but it is apparently solved. Now all I have to do is get hold of Earthlink's customer service and get some sort of financial adjustment for the 25 days of no connectivity. 

And yet more

So I finally got a call from an Earthlink tech support person this afternoon. No new modem is coming.Earthlink doesn't have any different modem. It's got to be the modem they already sent me three times. Whoever told me a different brand of modem was coming didn't know what she/he was talking about.

We did the "unplug test" again. And then I sat on line for an hour while a technician allegedly ran some test on my line. And got disconnected.

Finally the tech-support guy called me back again. Said Covad has to come out to the house to check the line again.  So I need to be at home half a day tomorrow for that.

Boy, is this ever getting old. Mighty old. And still no connectivity.

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Day 24

with no connectivity. I have heard every imaginable excuse from Earthlink and then some.

Earthlink ISP connectivity technical+support customer+service excuse incompetent incompetence

Oh no, it's Earthlink again!

This morning a long-awaited UPS package arrived. It was the new modem that is supposed to solve my connectivity problem. The last five Earthlink technicians with whom I have spoken in the past weeks have acknowledged that the brand of modem they sent me initially does not work.

Guess what? They just sent me the same identical modem all over again.This is the third identical Zyxel p-600 modem Earthlink has sent me. And, just like the other two, it does not work. Earthlink has even acknoweldged to me that there are "issues" with this modem. I cannot imagine why in the world they'd send me the same thing all over again.

For now the only way I can get online is to hitchhike on an unsecured wireless connection belonging to some unknown person. And this unknown person shuts down his/her connection on the weekends. Which means I will have no connectivity of any kind until Monday unless I schlep my laptop over to the public library.

Presently I am sitting on Eartlhink tech support's musical hold again. I sincerely hope that I can talk to someone before my phone battery goes dead, the way it did last time, because I was on hold for so long.

You want to know what's really ironic? Over the musical hold they keep making an announcement that according to JD Power and Associates Earthlink leads all other ISPs in customer satisfaction.  In their dreams . Meanwhile, today is February 9 and the last time I was able to get online with my Earthlink connection was January 19.  It's not like I live out in rural Alaska. I'm in Oakland, in the heavily wired Bay Area. I cannot understand why this is such an difficult problem to solve.

Earthlink is supposed to partner with Google to bring universal wireless to San Francisco. Boy do I ever pity the folks across the Bay. And this video is all about Earthlink tech-support hell.

Earthlink ISP tech+support DSL VOIP modem Zyxel connectivity incompetent incompetence

Another fun day with tech support.

My friend Thalia says there's money to be made in selling a bumper sticker that says "Friends don't let friends talk to tech support." After my past three weeks of non-connectivity and tech-support hell, I agree 100 percent.

Of course I still don't have connectivity. Of course the modem that Earthlink promised would arrive in 24 hours is not here. Of course there's still static on my phone line.

I just got out of online chat with Earthlink tech support. Is it possible to grovel in a chat room? I think that's what the Earthlink tech-support person did after I said I was giving up and would go shopping for a new ISP. I am sick of groveling and expressions of sympathy for the "inconvenience" Earthlink's incompetence has cost me.

The other thing that was funny was that I received a dunning email today, demanding the return of the two no-good modems they sent me.  If I don't send them back post haste, they will charge me for them. Like I want to hang on to two non-functioning modems? Gee, maybe I could attach french hooks and I'd have a pair of really oversized earrings.

Earthlink ISP tech+support incompetence

A letter I just mailed

It's been another long and frustrating day  and here's the letter I composed at 8 p.m. tonight, after all these hours of waiting for Earthlink's tech support.

Robert M. Kavner
Chairman of the Board
Earthlink Incorporated
1375 West Peachtree Street
Atlanta, Georgia 30309

Dear Mr Kavner:

About two months ago I received a phone call from Earthlink suggesting I sign up for your new voice over Internet telephone service. I was promised that if I bought this service, I would also receive a super-fast broadband Internet connection. This sounded like a good deal, so I signed up.

In mid-January I received a new modem from Earthlink for the faster broadband service and, as directed, hooked it up. Guess what? I totally lost all connectivity. Additionally, my telephone line began to have an unacceptable level of "noise," sounding like someone was scrunching up cellophane all the time.

Since then, I've spent hours and hours--sometimes two and three hours at a time--on hold, waiting to talk to your tech support people. Each time we finally connect, we go through the same script with endless expressions of apology and understanding. But meanwhile, I do not have connectivity and have not had any since January 19. It is now February 6.

I have been told by the Covad technician Earthlink sent to my house that I received a brand of modem that did not work. But then Earthlink sent me another one just like it, and it didn't work either. So the technician with whom I spoke on January 26 "escalated" me to a new modem of a different brand. That modem has never arrived.

Yesterday I spent much of the day in the online tech support chat room and finally was told a new modem would be sent to me overnight and that I would receive it in less than 24 hours. Those hours have passed and then some, and no modem has arrived. Meanwhile, I waited  for nearly four hours now for a phone call that was to have come "immediately" from a senior broadband tech support person. The call never came, but finally, in the live chat, a technician acknolwledged that for some strange reason, the new modem had never been ordered. So we are starting all over again.

Additionally, an Earthlink charge of $138 was placed on my credit card for some mysterious reason. There was no explanation given for these charges. When I called customer service, and, after a lengthy period on the "hold" queue, I was connected with someone who told me that this is what this new phone and fast broadband service would now cost me per month. This is ridiculous, impossible and unacceptable, particularly when you are advertising your VOIP product on your own web site for only $24.95 per month.  Believe me, when I signed up, I was never told this would cost me $138.

So now  your company has charged me $138 for what's starting to look like an entire month of no connectivity and a lower quality phone service than I had with AT&T. What part of "this is unacceptable" does Earthlink not understand?

I am a journalist. I write for a technology-oriented publication based in the UK. Because of the time zone difference, all my communication with my editor is via email. Much of my work involves intense use of online government archives. But I have not been able to do any of this for almost three entire weeks.

I didn't call up Earthlink to sign up for this service. Earthlink solicited me. Why are you selling this service if you can't make it work? One of the tech support people with whom I've spoken in the last three weeks acknowledged that Earthlink doesn't have enough tech support people for this new VOIP and enhanced broadband service. So why did you launch it if you don't have enough support people? 

As you will be able to see by my email address, I've been with one of Earthlink's predecessor companies for a very long time, well over a decade. And over the years, my Earthlink email address has become well-known to my sources and journalistic colleagues. Otherwise I would already have dumped your company, given my current level of frustration. Frankly, I don't want to have to go to the trouble and expense  of getting new business cards printed, and notifying my huge source list of new email address with a new ISP. But I am at wits end with your company. How can things be so bad and go so wrong? Aren't you one of the biggest ISPs in the nation?

Please let me know as soon as possible what you're doing to remedy this awful situation.

And by the way, I have listened to the Pachelbel Canon at least 1000 times on your musical hold in the last few weeks. I really used to like this piece of music. No more!

Earthlink Internet tech+support complaint incompetent VOIP broadband ISP

Well into the third week

And I still do not have connectivity. Spent four hours today having a meaningless relationship with Earthlink tech support. The new modem they said they would send has not arrived despite its having been promised to me on January 26. My credit card has been billed $138 for service I have not received. And my voice-over-Internet phone line sounds like someone is scrunching up cellophane.

I have to admit that today I was rather rude and yelled at several of the Bangalore or Mumbai-based technicians with faux American names. They are all obviously reading from a script and have to spend about 10 percent of the time apologizing for the inconvenience and understanding why I might be upset. As I shrieked to one of them today, if I want understanding, I'll go see a therapist. Me, I just want connectivity.

The only plus side is that they have some new tune for musical hold. I guess they wore out their Pachelbel tape.

Earthlink connectivity modem tech+support Internet incompetence