very disappointing

Lawyer: Rove won't be charged in CIA leak case

*sigh* So much for TruthOut's scoop. Ah well.

Still, no doubt there are plenty of skeletons left to unearth in BushCo's criminal menagerie.

random vignettes

I am grateful for my partner and son who together put together a beautiful early father's day present of windowboxes and hanging planters full of beautiful flowers and delicious herbs to hang outside the windows of my new office and on the back deck.

I am grateful for the perfect late Spring day outside -- blue sky and 70 degrees, a light breeze carrying in the most delicious smells from outside.

I am anticipating the arrival of my friend Kiflu, an Ethiopian with whom I'm going to start up a big batch of T'ej, Ethiopian mead (honey wine), using local honey, and imported Ethiopian hops that my friend has somehow procured (for my brewing friends, you boil the woody stems of a Ethiopian tree called Gesho, native to the highlands of Ethiopia, which seems to be related to hazel -- not at all related to the hops vine, except for the similarity in function of being used as a bittering agent). We made a batch last November and it was fantastic, so we're going to repeat the experiment.

I am grateful for the last month of relative normalcy, which is about to come to an abrupt end for at least another month. I am stressed about the fact that my son goes into the hospital on Friday for surgery -- not a highly dangerous procedure, and necessary, but not simple, and painful, and I'll be spending my days in the hospital with him for about a week until he comes home, and my partner will be with him at nights. A few days after my son comes home, my partner goes into the hospital for her radiation treatment (radio-iodine) for thyroid cancer. She'll be in radiation isolation for 2 days, during which I may be allowed to see her for 15 minutes once a day, then she comes home and is in decreasing degrees of isolation here for about two weeks. The hardest part for her, no doubt, will be not being able to hug or be physically near our son for a week, especially during a time when he'll especially want her there. And she'll be (deliberately) intensely hypothyroid up to and during this whole time, so she's likely to be increasingly exhausted and feeling like hell.

I am grateful for my Lovely Housemate Paul, who has researched the low-iodine diet my partner has to be on for the next two weeks leading up to the radio-iodine treatment, and who has come up with a wonderful assortment of recipes which avoid the egg yolks, dairy products, iodine-containing dyes, iodized salt (in almost all processed/purchased foods), seafood, and other typical foodstuffs which are verboten for the next little while. Yes, the rest of us could still eat this stuff, but, solidarity, sister! And I am intensely grateful for the support of my friends and loved ones during this time. You know who you are, and I hope you know how much you mean to me.

I am grateful for having the privilege to teach another of the RTITs (teachers-in-training) classes this past weekend. We're using Rites of Passage as the framework this second year and a day, and it was the best class yet. I am so blessed by the fact that my partner in life is also my very favorite and most trusted magickal collaborator and partner. After 21 years together, we riff off each other almost effortlessly, like good improv jazz. I may write up some of the weekend work if I get a chance -- the core of it was pairs trance work around a modern myth (Robert Holdstock's "Bone Forest" story). And underneath all of the skill-sharing and ritual design and magickal tech we were teaching, I got to more implicitly communicate some of my underlying philosophy about the deep, core work of priest/esssing in a non-hierarchical tradition -- not to indoctrinate dogma, rules and liturgy, or to interpret the divine for others, but in both small and large ways, to step back and take in the big picture, fully engaged in life and in the moment, but also noting the patterns and flows, using magickal tools and techniques not just to take on roles of power in the stories and myths that flow all around us, but to know that we have the power, and the obligation, to examine, and if necessary, re-write those stories, myths and patterns. We can change the stories, re-write them in better, healthier, more constructive ways. And sometimes, we simply must.

I am grateful for the visit of Tracy, a dear coven-sister now living in West Virginia, and for the outing yesterday with Tracy and my Lovely Housemate lylythe_strega for Indian food and a trip to the Hanover Chocolatier...oh my gods. Obscene amounts of excellent Indian food, followed by immersion in chocolate paradise. I could live on the air alone in that chocolate shop. I found I still have my childhood addiction to gummi cola bottles (and the habit of biting the ends off first, like taking the cap off a bottle), and while visiting there we discovered a Massachusetts-made espresso extract, which we used later in the evening for making exquisite espresso "martinis" (sorry, I'm a purist, if it uses Vodka and flavorings, it's a cocktail, not a martini!), consumed along with a wicked assortment of sinful hand-made melt-in-your-mouth truffles from the chocolaterie while watching "Snatch". I fear that the fact that I enjoy bars of 100% cacao marks me as a true addict ;>

I am grateful for the editor who gave me a few more days on a freelance piece I'm doing on trends in K-12 education in the DC Metro area. I was stressed out about the looming deadline, and she told me she'd figured with all that's going on, I might need some extra time, and had padded the deadline a bit. All blessings on experienced compassionate editors with whom I have long-term working relationships :>

I am grateful for all of you.