On the seventh day after the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, the sun rises above the the highest point in the East, a snow-capped volcano named Wy’east and Hood, when viewed from the ridge named Cooper in the Tualatin Valley on this planet called Earth we are born of.

At first, when we began our residence on this ridge, we were not aware of the icy, brooding peak beyond the green Tualatin Mountains, until the skies cleared that Spring. It may have been the following fall, or the next spring that I first noticed the sun crossing Hood near the equinox. It was another equinox or two later that I discovered the deep and steady rhythm of it.

We live on an astral clock, Mt. Hood the style on a planetary sundial for this particular location. Upon first discovering the division of sunrises, spring and summer north, fall and winter south of Mt. Hood, I dubbed it Nutriahenge, for the furry denizens of the wetlands and streams of the valley (and the triliths of Wiltshire).

The equinoxes mark the points in the earth’s orbit where the its tilted axis is perpendicular to the sun’s rays, and the days and nights are equal. As we swing around the ellipse of our orbit now, the northern half of the planet is tipping away from the sun, sliding us into longer nights and shorter days.

This year, I’ve declared a new sacred festival, in my personal church of the universe, in honor of nutriahenge, a week-long observance of the sun crossing Mt. Hood. Beginning sunrise on the equinox, Nutria-henge-quinox week culminates eight days later with the sun rising over the summit of our nearest volcano.

This first official Nutria-henge-quinox week was marked with a special celestial alignment, the rising of the fully eclipsed super moon above Mt. Hood on the Sunday midway between the two Wednesdays of equinox and nutria-henge-quinox.

The week started with some broken skies and the sun beginning its approach to the northern slopes of Hood.

The universe painted with a full pallette encouraging us to join the celebration of light.

(The universe doesn’t care about you and me, that’s just a literary device. It’s called personification. We humans do a lot of it and shouldn’t take things so literally. This is a basic tenet of my nature church.)

Then, on Sunday, the moon rose red out of the haze, and soared above Hood.

Our planet cast its shadow across its satellite, but the fleet moon was soon revealed in its former brilliance.

In the days before the crossing, the rising sun causes Mt. Hood to cast a shadow in the haze, up and to the south, betraying the sun’s position beneath the horizon.

By the morning of nutria-henge-quinox, the moon had regained its brilliance, but was losing its shape to its drifting phase, revealing mountains and crater walls in the shaddows.

And then the sun rose, the closing act of the festival, a breathtaking dance of earth, moon and star.

We’re just specks of self-aware stardust, hydrogen and carbon and oxygen, wandering the surface of this wet rock looking for meaning. I say look up. See yourself as an infinitesimal piece of this infinitely beautiful universe. That’s all you need to know. That’s all there is. Peace out.

I love mountains and forests and alpine meadows and lakes and streams and wilderness backpacking and backcountry skiing. But this inland-bred landlubber is pretty high on maritimas vitae right now. This past weekend stands out as one of my favorites at the coast so far.

Saturday we saw a bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) flying over Highway 101 with breakfast in its talons (species unknown), closely chased by a western gull (Larus occidentalis) looking for table scraps.

Then we took a walk on Taft beach and had a gander at the local harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) colony across the mouth of Siletz Bay at the end of Salishan Spit.

Later Saturday, at low tide, I rode my bike north up Salishan spit to the end of the road. Great blue herons (Ardea herodias) are in abundance around Siletz Bay; I saw three on wing and one fishing in a lagoon.

I had planned to ride to the end of the spit on the beach, but there was a stiff north wind blowing. Since I’d already said hello to the seals from across the bay, I decided to just head back south on the sand. The north end of the spit is in its natural state, with dunes, beachgrass, no riprap and only limited human presence. Even the southern, built-up end of the spit is quiet, since it is a gated community with no public access except by foot (or bike).

All the way down the beach on Salishan Spit I saw just one other house ape (Homo sapiens sapiens). This common invasive species was in much greater abundance once I got to Gleneden, but not enough to harsh my nature church mellow.

The tailwind made the four mile beach ride home a giddy pleasure. My face started to hurt from so much grinning. I made the four mile sand ride in 22 minutes, including a stop to pick up a nice chunk of amber agate. At the end of my ride I picked up a pocketful of smaller agates.

Sunday we got up early to watch the full moon set into the sea, but were fogged in and instead treated to a minus-tide walk on the sea bed and a sunrise from behind the shore pines (Pinus contorta contorta).

Later in the day, we saw a number of California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) heading north out beyond the breakers. (Apparently they’re back from their annual spring/summer mating party trip to California. What a life.) Then we saw a couple of our resident gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) lazily swimming south a little further out, spouting as they went. They were too far out to get a picture of, but here’s a little video from last spring of what I now believe to be two mothers and two calves feeding and frolicking in the shallows.

At Sauvie Island for Saturday Nature Church, we also saw about a million Canada geese, one Blue Heron, two deer, a flock of sandhill cranes, a bunch of smelt, and a really big tundra swan in the rehab pen.

Found a new Nature Church sanctuary in the neighborhood. I’m going there all week. Peace out.

Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them. –Margaret Atwood

When you put it in that light (and as a man, I can assure you the first half is true), it’s not hard to imagine why the altogether reasonable Sandra Fluke making the altogether reasonable case for the inclusion of contraception in health care would send Rush Limbaugh into a three-day conniption fit.

Rush, after all, is a walking, stumpy, flacid little dick who needs Viagra to get it up (prescribed in somebody else’s name, because he’s ashamed of his emasculated state). He’s a hypocritical drug addict and a know-nothing blowhard, who is so freaked out by a confident, independent, well-educated woman speaking up in a public forum, he nearly wets himself trying to discredit her, ultimately resorting to puerile name-calling and bizarre, perverted innuendo.

But Limbaugh is the least of our concerns; just a distraction, really.

It was the Catholic Church, with all their medieval misogyny and repressed sexuality on display, that first emerged to challenge the president on his altogether reasonable requirement that private employers provide comprehensive health insurance policies to their employees. It was Obama who entertained this outrageous challenge from the other side of the bright constitutional line, and offered a compromise. It was the Catholic Church again which expressed its dissatisfaction with Obama’s compromise. (To his credit, Obama refused to give more.)

It was GOP congressman Darrel Issa who called on 10 men, five of them clergy representing retrograde religious institutions, to testify as experts about women’s health policy, and refused to let Sandra Fluke testify… on the grounds that she wasn’t qualified to speak about women’s health policy.

No, this isn’t about Rush Limbaugh. This is about systematic attacks on the most basic advancements of women’s rights over the past 50 years. This is about the rump of the old guard, who want women back in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant, under the control of their husbands.

The Catholic Church is at the vanguard of these attacks (small wonder), but it’s the GOP, in the throes of an existential identity crisis, that’s seizing the moment. It’s the endangered white male all over again, positively panicked at the reality of waning influence unfolding before them.

It will backfire on them, of course. The GOP base is a rapidly shrinking demographic, and no amount of pandering to it can reverse inexorable demographic trends.

It already has backfired on Rush. Varying accounts put the number of major advertisers who have pulled support of his show at as many as 36. His show may or may not survive. No big deal either way.

But for Republicans, who still need at least a few women to vote for them, alienating half the voting public is a very bad move. There’s a lot of schadenfreude to be gleaned as GOP presidential contenders fall all over themselves trying to out-caveman one another, but the unfortunate side effect is that we actually have to publicly re-litigate matters that we thought were settled in, say 1972.

Contraception is not radical to most Americans, even if it is to regressive religious organizations some of them affiliate with. Most citizens of the industrialized world have easy access to it, and it is not a source of the slightest controversy. As a matter of public policy, it leads to lower overall health care costs and a higher standard of living for all citizens when women are provided with the means to control their reproductive destiny.

This is not a matter for the Catholic Church — an organization which has repeatedly shielded child rapists; contributed to countless AIDS deaths with its prohibition on condoms; brought us not one, but four Inquisitions; and which still seems to yearn for a repeal of the Age of Enlightenment — to weigh in on. For them to play this as an attack on their religious liberty is cynical to say the least, as they aggressively try to assert their dominion over the constitutional rule of law.

We can only hope that all this bluster is a last gasp of dead-enders, and a clarion call for women to repudiate the toxic brew that passes for political discourse these days. We’ve come too far to revert to naked phallocracy.

The Right Reverend Chuck Currie

Like a one-legged man eagerly hopping into an ass-kicking contest, the Right Reverend Chuck Currie, Portland’s celebrity spokes-model and Great White Hope for “progressive” Christianity, penned a finger-wagging open letter in response to anti-religious comments on the Portland Mercury’s blog post about an anti-gay church moving in to Southeast Portland.

For those who don’t read the Merc, you should know that it’s an “alt weekly,” with a young and edgy reader demographic. They drop the F-bomb all over the place, so any reader of their blog shouldn’t be shocked to see a few dropped in comments, or by the generally irreverent tone.

In his letter, Currie essentially equates ridicule of magical thinking with actual oppression experienced by gays and ethnic minorities: “…general intolerance and even hatred toward people of faith is just as evil as hatred directed at people because of their sexual orientation or color.”

But… but… but… Christians don’t get the shit kicked out of them by gays just for being Christian, or have laws passed infringing on their basic human rights! (Can I get an amen?) This is patently offensive, of course, and it was immediately called out with a chorus of hoots from Merc readers.

Commenter Graham, who probably writes more copy on the Merc blog than any single Merc staffer, nailed it right away: “This idiot is confusing acceptance with tolerance. I have to tolerate that religious people are idiots and live in my city, I don’t have to accept their stupid fucking drivel.”

I decided to jump in, using a bit of the Merc lingua franca (cussing), ending with and invitation for “all believers to shut the fuck up about their Gods, no matter how just and merciful they may imagine them to be. ” (I can’t help it; I’m a little sensitive to all the godliness being trotted out on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary.)

I ultimately questioned Chuck’s beliefs, quoting from his denomination’s “statement of faith,” which talks about Christ as savior. This pissed him off, and he responded in delicious fashion.

First he basically renounced John 3:16 (“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”) with the Universalist statement “there are different paths to God….” Having brushed aside a perfectly legitimate logical query into his take on the fundamental tenet of Christianity, he turned on me, showing his true colors.

“Your problem, with respect,” he wrote, “is that you lack any real understanding of the great diversity within Christian tradition. And you are a jerk.” (Emphasis mine.)

I gave him some jazz for being a charlatan and cherry-picking from the bible, which he countered with more ad hominem: “You are letting the Religious Right define Christianity for you. You’re letting them set the terms of what is acceptable thought. That’s dumb.” (Emphasis mine, again.)

I closed with this:

No, Chuck, I’ve let the history of Christianity define Christianity for me. Despite you calling me “dumb” (another badge of honor!), I know a thing or two about that history. Modern fundamentalists do not aberrate from this historical arc. The real “fringe” elements in the continuum of this ancient faith are those few who reject the basic tenet of Christ as savior.

My final word here, just to wrap it back to your original sin in writing this ridiculous, sanctimonious, finger-wagging letter: You want us to tolerate bigots, and equate ridicule of their magical thinking to bigotry.

Modern human society has no responsibility to tolerate retrograde thinkers who advocate categorical infringement of basic human rights based on irrational beliefs. In the public policy sphere, whether domestic (basic rights) or foreign (religious wars), we have a responsibility to oppose them at every turn, for the good of human civilization.

If you can’t handle ridicule of your faith, don’t talk about it in public. Instead, “enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret.” (Matthew 6:6)

I have heard that Chuck is a real nice guy total asshole (I’ve never met him). But for somebody who is very public about professing his magical thinking, he sure has a thin skin. And a lot of damn nerve equating intolerance of bigots to bigotry.

The giant Asurindarahu wanted to see the Buddha, but was reluctant to bow before him. The Buddha, while lying down, presented himself as much larger than the giant. He then showed him the realm of heaven with heavenly figures all larger than the giant. After all this, Asurindarahu, the giant, was humbled, and made his obeisance to the Buddha before leaving.

This month marks the 5th anniversary of this blog, and the sixth anniversary of Wacky Mommy. We started Internet publishing back in 1997 with a little-known literary arts magazine, before anybody had heard of “blogs” and when Mark Zuckerberg was 12 years old. Around 1999, we started another site that morphed into something blog-like after veering through a number of different styles, and in 2005, when blogs were just taking hold, we started writing and hosting our own. In 2008, we started an influential public policy news and opinion site which we ran for two years in our spare time.

Now that Zuckerberg owns the Internet and all your personal data, to be sold on the free market to advertisers, blog traffic is way off. Many, many people don’t venture outside of the walled garden of Facebook… unless there is a link posted there.

Who remembers RSS feeds and readers? (I do!)

The thing is, this technology still works great, and there is great potential yet to be realized. We shelved our New Media networked journalism meta project almost a year ago, but now we’re thinking of dusting it off.

Now, here I go to link this post on Facebook.

From a family member who shall remain nameless (unless he wants credit, which I would gladly give):

Ah Christmas,

A time to wander blindly into the house of an angry, vengeful god who will fill us with the spirit of righteousness and vengeance for any whose doctrines contradict our own. The best part is never being wrong and treating others as inferior. What could be wrong with an institution that has roots nourished in the blood of heathens, infidels and homos?

As we consume the wealth taken from the less deserving and delivered rightly to our tables, let us not forget to cast severe judgement on any who disagree.

Let us not forget the lost art of smiting and in this time of giving, delivering the wrath so badly needed today.

Truly it is a magical time.

Merry Christmas

and a very

Happy New Year

What he said.