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So: a jury of twelve regular janes and joes had the courage to do what Mitch McConnell and his nithing Senate Republicans did not: to find the Criminal Trump guilty of his crimes.

Whatever the future may bring—stalling appeals, a corrupt and partisan High Bench, denial of a second loss—we have at least that much: twelve regular Americans, striving to do what's right.

When we moved into this neighborhood some 35 years ago, it was dying. The storefronts on Lake Street were mostly boarded up.

Call it the American miracle. Immigration from Mexico, Central and South America, and Somalia turned this neighborhood around. Little ethnic mom-pop shops resurrected Lake Street.

Now every single one of those businesses is gone. Over the course of the past four nights, I have watched my neighborhood be systematically dismantled around me.

Last night it was the white kids' turn.

Hundreds of angry white kids—let me be nasty and say trust-fund anarchists from the suburbs—defied the governor's curfew orders and marched through a largely ethnic and immigrant neighborhood already traumatized by three nights of fires and looting.

I live just a few hundred feet from the epicenter of last night's destruction. More buildings and businesses—virtually all of them Latino-owned—were pillaged and torched. Four of them are still burning as I write this.

Truly, a mob is an organism with many legs and no brain.

“Why don't these kids all go back to the suburbs and leave us alone?” my next-door neighbor said to me as we stood on the sidewalk and watched the noisy march. Penny, who's African-American, is the block matriarch; she's lived here longer than anyone else.

If it weren't for the violence that accompanied it, it all would have been kind of funny. The whole thing had a defiance-for-the-sake-of-defiance “I'm not going to bed and Mommy/Daddy can't make me” feel to it.

Eventually, of course, the trust-fund anarchists went back to their apartments in other (quiet) neighborhoods, leaving behind them more burning buildings and more mayhem in a neighborhood already traumatized by its own destruction.

I have not the slightest doubt that the vast majority of those folks last night honestly want justice for George Floyd (1974-2002), an African-American man brutally murdered on Memorial Day by a white policeman only blocks from here. Believe me, so does everybody in this neighborhood.

According to the Merriam-Webster website:

Our Word of the Year for 2018 is justice. It was a top lookup throughout the year at Merriam-Webster.com, with the entry being consulted 74% more than in 2017.

October 8.2018  - New Moon in Libra 

It is truly beautiful!
There is a certain aura
Of refinement and grace.

The craftsmanship is expertise
And one can tell that
Great skill and thought
Went into its creation.

You know, they say
That the finest of gold
Was used and each pan
Was polished and leveled

Its inner workings were
Calibrated to the most
Exact measure.

As I think on it and if, I pause
Too long on either extreme
Of matters the agility of my
Mind usually steps in to set
The course straight and bring
The tangential stream back
To center point.

Although, if I linger too long
In the comfort of my mental
Landscape that brings its own
Downpour of disequilibrium.

Yes, it is beautiful this state
Of affairs and the rarest and
Most refined of thought
Is poised and balanced
In its beauteous state of chaos

My justifiable grace is asway
On the luminescent and
Polished scales of mind’s
Elegantly created obelisk.

The world we humans have created is unfair, and yet we have also seeded within our societies the paraphernalia and parameters of justice. It would seem that we have attempted to move beyond nature and the natural world—a world in which fairness is not a relevant concept. No judge and no judgment, only predator and prey within a complex set of relationships that make up life and living. 

Yet within our created world, justice is deemed a virtue. We strive to be fair and argue over concepts of fairness. Justice in practice is a challenge, however, to the relationships in which we find ourselves and to many of the systems we hold dear. As just one practical example, the realm of public education brings to light myriad instances of the struggles for justice because of inequities in how school systems are funded, with students’ race and socio-economic status a key indicator of whether they receive a quality education.

I stand on the wooden bridge on the way to the ritual circle where I can already hear the drums calling me to join.  I am once again with 120 Reclaiming Tradition witches of all genders at California Witchcamp. I hear the water ripple and flow beneath me. The creek is stronger this year, after four years of drought the land has found reprieve with a wetter Spring here amidst the redwoods.  It is the last week of June and the extra water also brings extra mosquitos.  My physiology is such that they rarely bite me, and when they do I hardly welt or itch, so when one lands on my forearm, I simply watch as it feeds off me.  It turns into a small glowing ruby before flying off to become food for the bats and other beings.  I can afford to leave a little blood offering here in the woods for the continuing cycle of life.

This year's theme was Social Justice.

Sunday, January 25