Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth

In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.

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Kittinger's Jump

Sometimes pagans not only have different answers. Sometimes even our questions are different.

In 1960, Col. Joseph Kittinger leapt from a hot air balloon some 20 miles above Earth's surface.

“I said a prayer and jumped,” he told NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro.

Kittinger was part of the US Air Force's pre-NASA studies of upper-atmosphere flight. At the end of the interview about that historic jump, Garcia-Navarro started the set-up for the question I wanted to ask myself.

“So, just before you jumped, you stood on the edge and said a prayer.”

“Yes,” said Kittinger.

“What did you say?” she asked.

I was surprised. That's not the question I would have asked at all.

You're about to jump out of a hot air balloon 20 miles above Earth, hoping that your parachutes work as they're supposed to. The nature of your prayer seems pretty clear to me.

 

What I really wanted to know was:

Who did you pray to?

 

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Poet, scholar and storyteller Steven Posch was raised in the hardwood forests of western Pennsylvania by white-tailed deer. (That's the story, anyway.) He emigrated to Paganistan in 1979 and by sheer dint of personality has become one of Lake Country's foremost men-in-black. He is current keeper of the Minnesota Ooser.

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