September 2006 Archives

The other day, I picked up a rather interesting book at Borders. The book is Among the Bears and is written by Benjamin Kilham and Ed Gray -- though I get the impression that Gray's contribution was more editorial while the bulk of the content is Kilham's. It's a fascinating story about Kilham's experiences rehabilitating wildlife cubs near his New Hampshire home.

The book starts with the story of LG and LB (short for "Little Girl" and "Little Boy" respectively), two cubs whose mother abandoned them before they even left the natal den. LG and LB were the first bear cubs that Kilham is asked to care for. Kilham relates his experiences how he worked through the process with very little information to go on -- and the looming knowledge that no one had yet managed to rehabilitate black bear cubs to the point of being able to successfully returning them to the wild. In the process, he makes some fascinating discoveries about black bear behavior and the development of cubs.

Currently, I'm only on chapter 5 and into Kilham's first summer with LG and LB. So in the great scheme of things, I haven't read but a small part of the story. I still have the rest of his experiences with LG and LB as well as the subsequent cubs he's raised to read about. But if the rest of the book is like the chapters I've read so far -- and I suspect there may be even bigger discoveries ahead -- it will be a most interesting book.

As an aside, I'd like to point out the idiot who gave this book a bad review on Amazon. This is clearly a case of someone brainlessly adopting a cause without understanding the issues. Which is a shame, because it's quite clear that they were so focused on their anti-hunting rhetoric that they missed an excellent opportunity to learn about the animals they claim to love.

Saturday, I spent the day at the Rochester Pagan Pride Festival. I had an absolutely wonderful time, and look forward to going again in the future.

Most of the day, I spent hanging out with Wendy and her friends. She was kind enough to let me put out a few fliers for the POC on her table. Quite a few people ended up taking them. With any luck, that means we'll see some new faces real soon.

I didn't attend many workshops, as I was having too much fun talking with friends and what-not. The one that I did manage to attend was the Crystal Singing Bowl meditation, led by the good folks from Singing Bowl Expressions. I've been to one of the monthly meditations that Dawn and Jeff hold at Psychic's Thyme before. While I certainly enjoyed my experience there, it paled in comparison to the demonstration at Pride this year. This workshop involved ten different bowls, each vibrating at their own frequency. While I was not one of the many people who immediately found themselves out of their body, I could certainly feel my own energy channels responding to the experience. I also remember opening my eyes a couple of times and realizing I couldn't focus my vision. It was an incredibly rewarding experience.

I also got a book on Pagan ethics that Patricia Telesco recently wrote under another pen name. As Ms. Telesco was one of the invited speakers at the festival (and I bought the book directly from her), I had the chance to discuss it with her. I told her about my desire to do some research and planning over the next year and put together a local workshop on Pagan ethics. She was quite happy about the idea and encouraged me. I also shared with her about my blog entry concerning the line in the Charge of the Goddess that declares "all acts of love and pleasure" to be rites of the Goddess. She paid me a rather high compliment in regards to how I approached that line and the sentences surrounding it. It was rather encouraging.

I think the person who impressed me most at the festival, however, was someone I never actually got the opportunity to speak to. That's the young man, Adam, who stood about ten to fifteen feet from the entrance to the festival, handing out Christian tracts to anyone who would take them. According to one of the organizers I spoke with later, Adam is a regular "attendee" of Rochester Pagan Pride. And I think he deserves a great deal of credit for the level of respect he showed. Despite Adam's obvious disagreement with the religious views of most of the festival goers and his desire to "save" us, he was able to offer his message in a rather unobtrusive way. He was alwas polite when people refused his tracts (strangely, he never actually offered me one) and never attempted to start an argument. I can totally respect the way he chose to demonstrate his convictions.

In a mostly unrelated topic, I'd just like to say that my friend, Becky, also thinks that the guy who waited on me at the sub shop we bought lunch at was interested in me. I'm not sure I agree with her, but it was kind of nice to entertain the notion. I just wish that if he really were interested in me, he'd have said something.