Drawing in the Light
After a feast of new material, I have not been posting much original content lately, so I thought I’d tell everyone what I’m up to right now. I just finished a short essay with photos for Moon Books Blog … Continue reading →
Hearth Moon Rising
woodpecker
Uggh! I’m doing taxes this week. Not as bad as eating bugs, though.
Continue reading →A Family of Artisans
More from Fannie Hardy Eckstrom: No other bird has so much work to do all the year round, and none performs his task with more energy and sense.…He is artisan to the backbone,—a plain, hardworking, useful citizen, spending his … Continue reading →
A Most Persistent Tree Climber
_ This is the Pileated Woodpecker, in my opinion the most handsome of a very beautiful group of birds. Both males and females have this striking red crown. Fannie Hardy Eckstorm writes in her 1901 woodpecker treatise: … one of … Continue reading →
Spring Tap Tapping
As spring approaches look for more posts about the woodpecker. This is a Gila Woodpecker, a familiar inhabitant of the Sonara Desert, in a saguaro tree. ____ Here is a longer piece posted four years ago about the woodpecker. ____
Continue reading →Raven and Wolf
The Crow Goddess in Ancient Greece
Another excerpt from my book-in-progress. Crows and ravens are conflated in ancient Greek myth. A less familiar goddess who has a link with crows is Coronis. She is one of the Hyades, the seven sisters of light who are rain-makers. … Continue reading →
Germanic Raven Goddesses
The following is an excerpt from my book-in-progress about animal divination. Despite being extremely social, ravens and crows squabble quite a bit between themselves, fighting over food and territory. They even, rarely, perform “executions,” a practice poorly understood though well … Continue reading →
About Last Week…
First let me reassure my readers that my promise to “eviscerate like an Irish satirist” was meant to be lighthearted. Some people didn’t get the joke, but I thought it was hilarious: it would be such a traditionally sound way … Continue reading →
Review: The Morrigan by Morgan Daimler
Following up on my post last month about Celtic raven goddesses, I wanted to review this book about the goddess Morrigan, who was mentioned in that post. The Morrigan: Meeting the Great Queens by Morgan Daimler is another installment of … Continue reading →