Archive | Country Matters

Excavating Bella Abzug (and Other Leo Moons)

So you know how you fall into video clip scavenger hunts when you should be doing something else? I was really affected by the death of soulful, rumpled John Heard, whom I loved in Out On A Limb, the crazy and I mean crazy TV miniseries he made with Shirley Maclaine based on her memoir about transchanneling, reincarnation, extraterrestrials and best friend Bella Abzug. So I watched the whole series, which was even better than I remembered, and it led me to watching the feminist state rep’s entire 1998 memorial service, at which such lady luminaries as Shirley, Jane Fonda (pictured in one of Bella’s more conservative hats), Fay Wattleton, and all of Bella’s activist besties from 1930s Hunter College spoke. Continue Reading →

Maahes for the Rest of Us

The intuition sessions I conduct in mid-summer are so lush. Everything we love most about July comes through–spirits we’d never otherwise meet; a sweet, wild verdancy demanding that we love and be loved without limits. Today I had a client who was awash in really beautiful leonine energy. She was of female body but, as our culture is finally learning, this did not preclude her highly evolved masculinity. We did our work and by “we” I do not just mean me and this beautiful lion person but also my familiar, the tiny cat known as Grace. As this client left, a lion-spirit came through so clearly that I went online and found an image of him. Meet Maahes, the Ancient Egyptian solar god who only fought in the name of social justice. One translation of his name is “True Before Her.” A gentle warrior who defers to the divine feminine? So grateful to meet him, especially as it seems he’s already befriended my permakitten. What is channeled in my office is never just for the people who enter it. Today it’s for everyone seeking a different model for male behavior. For Americans, in other words. Earthlings.

The Church of Thoreau

All day I’ve been writing about Henry David Thoreau, whose 200th birthday would have been July 12th. I am shocked by how much I have to say about him and the other Transcendentalists. It’s as if, growing up within miles of Walden Pond, I picked up their combination of puritanism and unadorned joy through sheer osmosis. “Something in the water,” indeed. But more than that, Thoreau’s less-is-more” self-reliance and environmental philosophy is so, so precious in this moment in which we’re being held hostage by more-is-more maniacs.

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy