A short hop and skip in Georgetown

 As you may have heard (since I might have remembered to say so) I take a break from driving every hour. To mainly walk around and make sure my legs are feeling good...but also to slow down and enjoy the areas I drive through.

So my last day of my recent trip to visit Ohio relatives, I was driving along with that sign of doom "check engine" light on the dashboard. I could cover it up with my hand on the steering wheel much of the time, and keep it out of my mind.

Not many people on the sidewalks in mid-afternoon on a cold Sunday. The restaurant shown above probably was attracting most of them.

It had appeared the day before, when I stopped over night in Lexington, KY. I was still 300 miles from home in North Carolina. So I texted or called 2 of my sons, who agreed that I should just keep driving till I could get to my trusty mechanic at home. If it started flashing, or other things happened, they advised me to stay on the interstate highways, where hopefully help could be obtained (I've got road side insurance) if needed. 

I was willing to go through a long slow construction area on I-40 at the Tennessee-North Carolina border. I prepared by stopping before I got to it and taking care of necessities, so I wouldn't have that need plaguing me if it was an hour to go through that area. (Note, Hurricane Helene was the cause of washed out roads, and this area continues to have floods, though construction is actively rebuilding the highway.)

But the evening before, I stopped my ride to Lexington with a short visit to Georgetown KY.

Sadly this shop where I parked was closed on Sundays. You know I'd have loved a treat from there!

It felt like a typical tourist "old towne" with so many cute shops.

Being in Blue Grass country of Kentucky, there was a great mural in an alley of some horses.

I knew my friends who like to go visit places would have loved this shop (though being more than 300 miles from home might make it a bit difficult to schedule!) Miss Behaven, Gifts for the Southern Heart.

Sharing with Monday Murals. 

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Today's goddesss:

Gold signate rings...depicting women in the Minoan attire of flounced skirts... from the Griffin Warrior tomb in Pylos, Greece. The tomb was that of a Mycenaean warrior, who died in his mid-30s around 1500 BCE. 

The Minoan culture flourished from 3100 to 1100 BCE. The more warlike Mycenean culture was active from 1750 to 1050 BCE. So there was overlap whereby a soldier could have worn images of Minoan women, in one view perhaps as a servant. But the important find (for me) is the bull jumper on the bottom ring image. Both men and women practiced this sport as early as Minoan times, as seen in various murals and pottery decorations on Crete.

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13 days till Winter Solstice

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And for phone readers, here's the new header photo!

 I was surrounded by my beautiful granddaughters at Thanksgiving 2025!

Maybe the angry women

Women's Rights - when in 2022 the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade

“I know.

You’re angry. You should be.

You’re scared. You should be.

This is awful.

It’s horrifying.

It’s deeply depressing.

Rage.

Scream.

Mourn the tragedy we know is coming.

But remember this: what we are about to experience is the world our grandmothers and great-grandmothers lived in.

This is what they fought against.

Remember that they won.

Even if the victory was temporary, they still won.

We can win too.

Prepare yourself.

Finish your mourning and get back to the fight.

Yes, it’s awful that we have to have this same fight.

It’s frustrating.

It’s heartbreaking.

But now is not the time to surrender to despair.

Now the work begins.”

~ roaaoife

Can we finally get some level headed representation in our government, instead of the sad fiasco we're living with again and again.

Standing on the side of love...

"A woman is not a basket you place your buns in to keep them warm. Not a brood hen you can slip duck eggs under.

Not the purse holding the coins of your

descendants till you spend them in wars.

Not a bank where your genes gather interest

and interesting mutations in the tainted rain, any more than you are.

You plant corn and you harvest it to eat or sell.

You put the lamb in the pasture to fatten and haul it in to butcher for chops.

You slice the mountain in two for a road and gouge the high plains for coal and the waters run muddy for miles and years.

Fish die but you do not call them yours unless you wished to eat them.

Now you legislate mineral rights in a woman.

You lay claim to her pastures for grazing,

fields for growing babies like iceberg lettuce.

You value children so dearly that none ever go hungry, none weep with no one to tend them when mothers work, none lack fresh fruit, none chew lead or cough to death and your orphanages are empty. Every noon the best restaurants serve poor children steaks.

At this moment at nine o'clock a partera

is performing a table top abortion on an

unwed mother in Texas who can’t get

Medicaid any longer. In five days she will die

of tetanus and her little daughter will cry

and be taken away.

Next door a husband and wife are sticking pins in the son they did not want. They will explain for hours how wicked he is, how he wants discipline.

We are all born of woman, in the rose

of the womb we suckled our mother’s blood

and every baby born has a right to love

like a seedling to sun.

Every baby born unloved, unwanted, is a bill that will come due in twenty years with interest, an anger that must find a target, a pain that will beget pain.

A decade downstream a child screams, a woman falls, a synagogue is torched, a firing squad is summoned, a button is pushed and the world burns.

I will choose what enters me, what becomes of my flesh.

Without choice, no politics, no ethics lives. I am not your cornfield, not your uranium mine, not your calf for fattening, not your cow for milking.

You may not use me as your factory.

Priests and legislators do not hold shares in my womb or my mind.

This is my body. If I give it to you I want it back.

My life is a non-negotiable demand."

~ Marge Piercy, 'Right to Life'

Jennifer Waterstar Hensiek

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I do not accept the illusion

The dogma or drama

That a man-made rule holds power over this body

I am governed by the earth and the stars

This body is sacred

The truth of my being is untouched

Unwavering

I am a sovereign being of God/Goddess/Creation

With a wave of my hand, your false program crumbles

Truth is ignited by my attention and focus

I shall focus on tasks that are worthy of my being

Photo by Carole Daly

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Women have a right to make their own decisions about their bodies. Not legislators. Not a religious group!

Dec. 6 was the birth anniversary of Congresswoman Patsy Mink, who authored the Title IX Amendment which opened many opportunities in education to young women athletes. See my blog Open Yesterday's Pages for more information.

NOTE: A couple of days ago I posted a lovely goddess on a throne, at Catal Huyeck (Çatalhöyük in southern Anatolia). Here's another informative article about that dig from "Archaeology Magazine"...how it's considered a culture with a matriarchal society. A Feminine Touch

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15 days till Winter Solstice

Some Christmas critters

 

Audrey had on some cute kitty socks!

Most of us have already seen these two, but they still bring a smile for me.

Can you possibly live without lighted reindeer? Oakland Nursery in Dublin OH offered lots of them for you to take home.

Though there were lots of stuffed reindeer, I was drawn to the penguins. since when are they part of the Christmas culture?

The first place cow on which any 2 year old could ride was so cute!

While my car was being worked on by "RT Auto" I got to see their window decorations...what kind of bird might this be?

I'm pretty sure this is a reindeer looking over the cars being fixed.

My son may have paid twice my weekly grocery money for their tree (closer to three times!) but I then spent about twice his tree price to have my car fixed!

Thursday was a real positive doctor’s visit though, where the vascular expert said my blood flow to my feet was better than last year, and so good I wouldn’t need to have it checked at all next year! I attribute it to having climbed stairs to the second floor at my son’s house for a week. By the time I left I could rely upon my leg muscles completely and didn’t have to pull myself up with my arms also on the railing! Of course I still was out of breath.

So now to get those lungs to work at a better level!

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Today's goddess:

The Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük is a 8,000-year-old Neolithic baked-clay figurine unearthed at Çatalhöyük, a Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia which existed from approximately 7100 BCE to 5700 BCE (inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012). It depicts a nude female seated between feline-headed arm-rests. Generally thought to depict a fertile Mother Goddess in the process of giving birth, a handful of scholars now suggest that such figurines (found in great numbers at Çatalhöyük) may represent elderly women who had risen to prominence and achieved status in Çatalhöyük. The sculpture is on display at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, Turkey.

Info from World History Encyclopedia

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Behind the scenes

 

Some details: The table was set for the feast.

The dining room hutch shows some pretty heirlooms.

My son’s father’s mother’s silverware was our flatware for Thanksgiving. 

Lots of goodies while cooking!

These measuring spoons look so decorative next to the celery leaves!

My mother’s china which has a blue floral design, which iPhone camera turns grey. I gave this 12 place setting china to her when I worked at Fox Department Store in Hartford CT in the 1965 Christmas season, and paid a percentage of the retail price. My job was to sales-clerk in costume jewelry…some excellent pieces which I purchased and still have!

And yes, that platter has been glued back together!

Michelle’s father’s mother’s china - she says she  has 18 place settings!

Sharing with Sepia Saturday, where this week I offer some of the things we take for granted! I'll share some needlework later on...

Today's goddess:

Asherah

“Discredited, reviled, and hidden away, we speak your name, Asherah. Our Lost Mother, obscured in the darkness, a piece of the forgotten collective of the human psyche. We shed light upon you and pull back the veil which hides your face. We bring forth your stories to the consciousness of humankind. We are your stewards; we have not forgotten you. Awake our banished mother. Your daughters rise, reclaiming our stolen power as an act of defiance, an offering to you, our maligned earth mother. Empress of the Tarot, your symbolism hidden in art and fable since your fall from favor. Suspicion of your power comes from generational suppression and condemnation of your stories, and your name. Cloaked by time we now reveal you.

You call out to us in the wind, your voice the melodic sound the trees hum as the wind rushes by. You urge us to take up your standard. Your energy is balancing. You are the divine partner, the consort who is feared. Your subjugation from human awareness has produced an imbalance in our world, creating inequality and division.”

-Erika Lopp, excerpt from “Lost Mother: A Letter to Asherah” – featured in our anthology, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree.

Art by Teresa Moorehouse

Thanks Girl God Books FB page

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The jets did some interesting writing below the full moon!

Tree trimming begins

 

First job is to fit the saucer onto the trunk. Then carry it inside. My son got those jobs. 

The "before photo."

Making sure it's standing securely, then cutting the webbing off.

And it begins to fluff back to it's original shape.

A broken branch will go home with grandmama'. I don't decorate.

Michelle begins to water the tree...it just soaked up the first 2 pitchers of water immediately!

Russ tests the lights, and rewires those that no longer work. Seriously, he's an expert electrician among his many talents. 

The second (shorter) ladder of hanging lights. I won't tell that the first string at the top had the wrong end of the string at the top, and then had to be re-looped around so it could attach to the next string! Nope, mothers don't tell! The ceramic angels in foreground were made by that same mother.

The "after photo" which is as much as I got to see before leaving Sunday morning. Two daughters were still home and probably helped put baubles on before they left. One daughter had to catch a plane around 6 am...and her parents took her to the airport early then came home for a nap before the rest of the family woke up.

New header photo (for those who look with phones):

Wishing all a happy holiday!

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Today's goddess:

Art by Arna Baartz