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Heading out in the morning, my eye falls on the assemblage of items on the table by the front door: a white cotton face-mask with long ties, stubs of sidewalk chalk in various colors, and a mottled black cow's horn, point trimmed for blowing.

Well, that sums it up pretty neatly, I think to myself.

Face Mask

In these months of the pandemic, face-masks like this one have become more or less de rigueur. As Minnesota slowly opens up again, everyone is expected to wear them in enclosed public spaces. Certainly the vehement explosion of protests following the public murder of George Floyd is in some part pressure-cooker effect following the months-long covid lock-down.

Sidewalk Chalk

I don't go to demos myself, but I'm a big believer in sidewalk activism. (Hey, I'm a writer.) The sidewalk in front of my house speaks, and what it says it true.

Murder is Murder, it says.

Justice for George Floyd Now, it says.

Silence = Complicity, it says: Speak Out!

Blowing Horn

My neighborhood has borne the brunt of the Twin Cities' epidemic of riot, arson, and looting. (We were the sacrificial goat that those in charge threw to the wolves in order to buy themselves time to get their act together.) When the authorities don't, or can't, come through, it's up to us to look out for ourselves.

At our Block Watch meeting, we agreed that if you need help, the best thing to do is to make noise. For most of the neighbors, that means banging pots and pans, but I'm a pagan, and we do things with style: pagan style. Hence the horn, just like in the old days.

Continuing this series on my religious insights I gained while writing a novel, that is, novel gnosis. In Some Say Fire, Hel the goddess is called Hela. Hel the place is called Helheim.

Hela, the goddess

Hint, hint...make something and when you do create it with intention. Be conscious that whatever feeling, thought, intention you put into your creation whether it be a pudding, crocheted hat, daffodil bulb that you plant or a painting that if you create with intention that you WILL manifest your vision into the world and learn about life in the process. I painted "Fairy Cat" in this way and it makes her all the more special on a deeper level than imaginable. Try it sometime! What will you create next, with INTENTION?

Kathy Crabbe is a soul reader, spirit medium, astrologer and artist who has devoted her life to spirituality and creativity. She has published three oracle decks.

An empire of the imagination, Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore, the US's oldest (and only surviving) independent science fiction/fantasy bookstore was not only a well-loved local landmark, but a site of pilgrimage for readers all over the Midwest as well.

Now it's gone.

(It also had the grungiest men's room in the Midwest, which—on the evidence of it—had never once been cleaned since the store was founded in 1974. Ah, fandom.)

An unknown arsonist or arsonists burned it to rubble and ash on the night of Friday, May 29, in the arson that has stalked the first George Floyd protests here in the Twin Cities like a withering shadow.

I stand on the sidewalk before the hollow cave of the ruins. Strata of burned books carpet what was once the basement floor.

Touchingly, some people have left flowers. I, however, am here for another purpose.

Heimdall is the Guardian of the Rainbow Bridge. After Odin sculpted humanity, there is a story in heathen Lore that the god Rig then fathered new kinds of humans, and most Asatruars consider Rig to be a name of Heimdall. 

In the Fireverse, Heimdall is partly a participant in a lot of the shenanigans that Thor and Loki get up to in Jotunheim, because he is the one who lets them in and out. He opens the Bridge for them when they go and listens for them to call on him to send down the Bridge for their return. He’s a friend to both of them. There is Lore that Thor does not walk on the Bridge because his mighty footfalls would destroy it, but in the Fireverse he walk on it like everyone else.

A major heart healing stone is bornite, a burnished red rock of copper and iron. Bornite used to be called peacock ore because of its impressive iridescent coloration. It is a very powerful energy crystal. This stone abets overcoming indecisiveness. This is also a stone of justice; as it is Jupiter-ruled. All we lovers of justice should keep this beautiful crystal at hand.  

List for today:

Rescue tadpoles from the evaporating puddle
in the driveway.
Look for pink roses in the field.
Look for wild strawberries
along the road.
Listen to the crows in
the compost pile
and try to identify them
by their different voices.
Plant basil and calendula
and a few more rows of lettuce.
Examine the buds beginning
on the elderberries
and check blackberry canes
to see if the berries have set.
Watch the yellow swallowtail butterflies dance.
Wonder about action and apathy
and what bridges gaps.
Refuse to surrender belief in joy.
Listen for faint echoes of hope.
Feel the tender beat of humanity
pulsing in the world.
Feel the sun on your face
and water seeping
into your jeans.
Remember that even if you have to
move one tadpole at a time,
change is always possible.