Mom's Padded Room

http://wildhunt.org/blog/2009/11/final-winter-pledge-drive-update.html

http://wildhunt.org/blog/?p=3779

To say that I’m deeply moved and overwhelmed by the generous support you have shown during this week would be an understatement. I won’t go into numbers at this point, but many of you not only gave but gave generously to keep The Wild Hunt open, non-commercial, and operating on a daily schedule. The commitment to this project shown by some of you has been nothing short of inspiring, like author Lisa McSherry, who gave generously despite dealing with some major medical and fiscal issues at home.

“Jason Pitzl-Waters is honest and makes every effort to be objective while retaining a uniquely Pagan perspective. The Wild Hunt is one of the few community resources that remains fresh and ever-vibrant. Even a small donation is a show of support, and I urge everyone I know to donate something. I am, and I have major medical bills. That is how important I believe The Wild Hunt is.”

To everyone who gave, no matter what the amount, I thank you. I wish I had the time to call each and every one of you personally to express my sincerest gratitude. Know this, you have not only helped this site, but you have succeeded in crumbling and eroding the old complaint that modern Pagans won’t fiscally support anything of importance. I now know first-hand that this is false, a meme born of frustration and past failure, and one that is past due to slip away entirely. Pagans will step up fiscally for what they think is important. They stood up for SJ Tucker when she was in trouble, they stood up for Pagan troops serving overseas, and they stood up this past week to ensure that quality Pagan journalism and commentary that keeps them informed sticks around for the long-term.

The Wild Hunt isn’t just some guy and his blog, it’s a community of people. A community of support, debate, and information-gathering that is nurturing a long-term investment in the future of Pagan news. My goal is to not only make Pagan journalism my full-time job, but to eventually make it possible for other people to follow in my footsteps. All of you have helped to make that future possible.

There will be future pledge drives, and this blog will try to develop over time a robust non-commercial funding method that can be adopted and emulated by other Pagan media outlets. I will also be exploring different ways of funding with other Pagan journalism projects, but The Wild Hunt will always remain open, reader-supported, and non-commercial. Again, this is due to all of you. Thank you.

It’s still not too late to donate! If you’ve been meaning to participate in the Winter Pledge Drive now’s your chance! You can either make a one-time donation, or you can commit to a monthly subscription fee of $5.00 or $10.00 per month. In addition, you’ll be able to access donation-information year-round, as well as find links to the groups and organizations that have chosen to help underwrite this project, at the Affiliates page.

http://wildhunt.org/blog/2009/11/the-new-religions-crusade-against-art.html

http://wildhunt.org/blog/?p=3774

• Reminder: We are in the midst of our first annual Winter Pledge Drive! If you value this blog, its mission, and its content, please consider making a donation to keep The Wild Hunt open, ad-free, and updated daily. Spread the word, and thanks to all who have donated so far!

The Nigerian newspaper NEXT runs an editorial by Tam Fiofori that reminds us that the Pentecostal fervor in Africa that is feeding the horrific witch-hunts against women, children, and the elderly, is also waging a larger cultural war that brands indigenous and tribal-inspired art as demon-possessed.

“Sometimes the righteous attitudes of ardent followers of the ‘new religion’ border on the ridiculous. Take the case of artist Tony Akinbola who is doing a wonderful job of creatively rebranding Calabar through indigenous-related monumental art. When he put up his work of huge Ikom monoliths as a monumental tribute to artists who about a century ago demonstrated that they could portray vivid human facial expressions on stone carvings, ironically, members of the same Pentecostal faith he belongs to, saw the huge monoliths as an affront celebrating devil-worship. Soon after the monumental monoliths were put up at a strategic roundabout in Calabar, members of his faith held a prayer session around the monumental art piece “casting and binding the demons” supposedly inhabiting the monoliths.”

Fiofori points out that by contrast the local Catholic church is actually quite tolerant of indigenous themes in art and culture being incorporated into a Christian context, but not the “new religion” of Pentecostal Christianity, and as it spreads it is destroying the artistic culture of the countries it infects.

“Aino Oni-Okpaku – member of the Board of Trustees of the Ben Enwonwu Foundation and a Swedish-born Nigerian art-lover and owner of the Quintessence outfit in Falomo Ikoyi – has depressing stories of how the ‘new religion’ has literarily poisoned the minds of Nigerians towards their traditional and contemporary arts. She tells of a collector who had bought an artwork from an exhibition at the Quintessence Gallery and had gone on to prominently display the artwork in his office for pleasure and inspiration. His wife visited his office, saw the artwork, took it away in anger and burnt it because it was demonic…”

This newly instilled anti-traditionalism also marred an art show held in honor of the recently passed Suzanne Wenger, the Austrian-born iconic Yoruba traditional religion devotee who helped win protection for the Osun-Osogbo sacred grove. With many refusing to enter on the grounds that the pieces were “demonic”.

Sadly there seems to be little to stop this trend at the moment, the popular “Nollywood” film industry has regularly made traditional African religions the enemy, and some local indigenous religious leaders have bleak outlooks concerning the future.

“Christianity has destroyed our culture. The people have lost faith in our ancient gods and values. The pastors go to church in the morning and preach Christianity, and in the evening they come to me and speak with their forefathers. Christianity cannot compete with our ancestors. Your God is impotent against Shango, the god of thunder and lightning. That’s why the Christian pastors in Nigeria all die so young. Oh well, that’s how things are nowadays. Nothing’s free in life except death.”

The issue of art and culture may seem trivial in the face of an international epidemic of witch hunts, but in many cases that is where the poison of intolerance enters the cultural system. If you believe that all manifestations of your traditional culture and religion are actually demon-haunted and evil, it changes the way you think and feel. We overlook the plight of artists, storytellers, and writers in these situations because they (understandably) don’t have the same human dimension as the now-ongoing horrific tragedies often perpetrated in the name of the “new religion”, but the more culture is remade, the more permanent the damage done, and the more remote the chances of reversal.

http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2009/11/system.html

http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2009/11/significant-update.html

http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2009/11/nw-washington-gets-hit-againand-unusual.html

http://wildhunt.org/blog/2009/11/a-few-quick-notes-12.html

http://wildhunt.org/blog/?p=3768

• Reminder: We are in the midst of our first annual Winter Pledge Drive! If you value this blog, its mission, and its content, please consider making a donation to keep The Wild Hunt open, ad-free, and updated daily. Spread the word, and thanks to all who have donated so far!

I have a few news items to start off your Saturday, beginning with a story that’s spread like wildfire through the political and religious blogospheres gaining mainstream coverage, and its all about prayer. Specifically its about “imprecatory prayer”, the Christian equivalent to malefic “black” magic (you’re basically asking God to kill, maim, or trouble some person). While there have been a few high-profile imprecatory prayer stories popping up lately, the most recent centers on a meme and line of merchandise urging people to “pray” for President Barack Obama, invoking the biblical Psalm 109:8 “let his days be few; and let another take his office”. It seems rather harmless as imprecatory prayers go until you read the rest of the psalm in question.

“It was, most likely, intended as a joke.  But it isn’t really very funny.  Especially since the next verse reads, “May his children be orphans, and his wife a widow.”  The passage goes on the same way--asking God to pulverize this poor fellow--that he lose all his worldly goods, that his orphans be abandoned, that his father be remembered as a sinner, and finally, that “his memory be cut off from the earth.” Thus, the “Prayer for Obama,” does more than anticipate that he leaves office; it entreats God to destroy the president.”

Supporters and opponents of this prayer are battling it out at Cafe Press, with stores being removed and reinstated. Meanwhile, pundits are split on whether this is harmless fun, or yet another sign that far-right Christianity is coming unglued and “trawling for assassins”. How should Pagans and occultists, many of whom believe in the power of magic and intention, react to these sort of stories? Harmless? Or the beginning of a particularly nasty egregore?

Turning from prayer to more material conflicts over belief, Chas Clifton reports on a Russian Orthodox priest who was recently murdered in his church. 34-year-old Daniil Sysoyev was missionary who bragged of converting 80 Muslims personally, and wrote several books critical of Islam, gaining many death-threats in the process. But while this seems a rather open-and-shut case of a Russian Muslim taking revenge against a firebrand converter of Muslims, authorities are also looking at other groups, like Russian Pagans.

“Sysoyev also worked with former members of religious sects and wrote a book on Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovahs’ Witnesses. He also spoke out against nationalists and Stalinists, whom he criticized on his blog for ignoring the murder of innocent people.”

None of the articles specifically mentions Pagans when they mention “various religious sects”, but the ABC article links the phrase to another report they did on Russian Pagans, so they must know something we don’t. Clifton points out that Russian Pagans do come into direct conflict with the Russian Orthodoxy and “are more likely to have their own line of “blood and soil” rhetoric and to claim that they represent the true spirituality of their people”. All that said, I’m siding with Occam’s razor on this one, so the Russian Pagans and hard-liner Stalinists most likely have little to worry about during the investigation.

In a final note, it looks like “Agora”, which centers on the life (and death) of Neoplatonist pagan philosopher Hypatia, has finally found an American distributor and will hit theaters in early 2010.

“Alejandro Amenabar’s intellectual epic that had sat without a U.S. buyer for six months, has found a stateside home. Newmarket Films has picked up U.S. rights to the Rachel Weisz starrer and is prepping a release for the first half of 2010.”

Distribution deals finally materialized after the film starting doing far better than expected in European markets. So we’ll finally get a chance to see “Agora” on the big screen, anyone want to place bets on if/when it will gain American protesters?

http://wildhunt.org/blog/2009/11/quick-note-university-of-nebraska-settles-with-witch.html

http://wildhunt.org/blog/?p=3764

• Reminder: We are in the midst of our first annual Winter Pledge Drive! If you value this blog, its mission, and its content, please consider making a donation to keep The Wild Hunt open, ad-free, and updated daily. Spread the word, and thanks to all who have donated so far!

About a year ago, I reported on a University of Nebraska employee who was allegedly fired for being a Witch. “Jane Doe”, who is a member of Reclaiming, claimed that once her superior found out about her religious beliefs she was fired and replaced by a non-Pagan. Now, the Journal Star reports that the University has settled the case, though they still won’t admit that her claims of discrimination have any validity.

“A woman who sued the University of Nebraska saying the school fired her after learning she is a witch has agreed to settle the case for $40,000. The university made the offer “solely to compromise the claim … without admitting the validity of plaintiff’s contention or any allegations of wrongdoing by the defendants,” attorney David Buntain said in an October letter.”

The University very likely settled because the Nebraska Equal Opportunity Commission had already ruled that Ms Doe’s rights were violated in the run-up to the lawsuit. So rather than potentially lose a lawsuit, and gain lots of unwanted attention in the press, they settle. Better a lump sum than humble pie. A trend we may well see repeated in the Bath & Body Works and Google firings.

Thanks to Religion Clause for the tip-off on this story.

http://wildhunt.org/blog/2009/11/pagan-news-of-note-27.html

http://wildhunt.org/blog/?p=3759

• Reminder: We are in the midst of our first annual Winter Pledge Drive! If you value this blog, its mission, and its content, please consider making a donation to keep The Wild Hunt open, ad-free, and updated daily. Spread the word, and thanks to all who have donated so far!

My semi-regular round-up of articles, essays, and opinions of note for discerning Pagans and Heathens.

It seems like a given nowadays that if some dead animals turn up, practitioners of Santeria or Vodou will get blamed by a police officer, animal shelter spokesman, or speculative/lazy/bored journalist, even though most of these cases bear little resemblance to the actual religious practices of African diasporic faiths (and it usually ends up being teenagers). Journalistic coverage of these animal killings, and the assumed religious angle, has gotten so bad that press watch-dog blog Get Religion has started asking for some needed clarification.

“Say what? Let’s read that quote again, the one in which it is claimed that the number of ritual animal sacrifices spike at this time of year because of “a lot of high holidays that different groups celebrate.” … what in the world are these words supposed to mean? Are we to believe that there is a wave of beheaded animal corpses because of (a) the arrival of Advent/Nativity Lent, (b) approaching observances of Hanukkah, (c) Kwanzaa festivities, (d) some alleged connection to Solstice? Is the goal to link this to voodoo or something? But before you go there, please note that the story says absolutely nothing that would point toward Santeria and, even if it did, there is no discussion of whether these sacrifices in any way fit patterns of worship in that tradition. You see, it’s wrong for journalists to say, “Behold, beheaded animals. Those Santeria people are at it again.” That’s too simplistic. So let me ask the obvious question and ask readers to weigh in: Precisely what “high holidays” are we supposed to assume are being discussed here? I honestly do not have a clue. What does this strange sentence mean? Just asking.”

The quote referenced above, from an AP story, and left unexamined, is from another representative of an animal cruelty center, making me wonder what kind of workshops on ritual killings (or horror movies) these people are attending. I’m very glad to see the issue of the horrible reporting concerning mysterious animal deaths and their alleged connection to Santeria or Vodou is being picked up on by more religion-news watchers. Maybe now we can finally inch away from pure sensationalism whenever a dead animal turns up.

Over at the Times, Cambridge classics professor Mary Beard visits a famous Clootie well near he village of Munlochy and wonders if the practice of tying rags to branches for healing really is an ancient pagan custom.

“The notice nearby, put up by the Scottish Forestry Commission (for like most shrines it’s a tourist attraction too), claims that this tradition goes back to pre-Christian times, and is a reflection of the power of water in pagan Celtic religion. It is, in other words, an amazing survival across the millennia. I found myself thnking that this was really rather hard to believe. If most other customs are invented in the nineteenth century, then why nt this pagan one too. How far back does it really go, in this form. Does anyone have any real hard evidence?”

I’ll leave it to my Celtic reconstructionist readers to look into the matter and let me (and Mary) know. While we’re on the subject of Ms. Beard’s skeptical nature, she also takes aim at the theory that ancient Greek temples were deliberately built to face the rising Sun. I’ll leave it to my Hellenic Pagan readers to weigh in on that one (I’m quite the delegator today).

Author and techgnostic Erik Davis has posted an essay adapted from the introduction to the new photography collection “Tribal Revival” that deals with the West coast neotribal festival culture.

“Every summer, tens of thousands of participants descend upon dozens of festivals and gatherings, great and small, that occur on the West Coast of North America: Shambhala, Oracle, Moontribe, Lightning in a Bottle. The names of these clans and crews are legion: hippies, ravers, pagans, crusties, free spirits, burners, seekers, travelers, eco-warriors. They gather together to dance, to escape, to hold ritual, and to craft a visionary culture based on community, creative self-expression, and a celebratory earth wisdom. Labels are always dangerous, but an honest name for the scene is neotribal. These are the new tribes, recreating and reinventing patterns of organic culture that are inspired by the premodern past but designed for a high-tech planet hurtling through a period of unprecedented global change.”

Something of a neotribal himself, Davis waxes Utopian about the the “festival [as] foundation of world renewal”, and the “earthy communion” these interweaving groups partake in. Whether this subcultural phenomenon will truly equip us for an uncertain future remains to be seen, but I’m certainly open to there being more festival, “feral joy”, and liminality in our lives.

Turning briefly to pop-culture, the io9 blog has a clip from the upcoming Percy Jackson movie “The Lightning Thief” featuring Uma Thurman as Medusa. I’ve written about the pagan-ness of Percy Jackson previously, which follows the adventures of young Greek demigods. “The Lightning Thief” is due out in February. Meanwhile, the highly literate/geeky indie rock band The Decemberists is putting out a full-length animated film of their recent myth-drenched pagan-y concept album “The Hazards of Love”.

“…next month, Colin Meloy and co. will push The Hazards of Love to full-on The Wall status, releasing the album as a full-length video. Here Come the Waves: The Hazards of Love Visualized premiered at a show in Los Angeles on October 19, and on December 1, it’ll be available exclusively via iTunes. Filmmakers Guilherme Marcondes, Julia Pott, Peter Sluszka and Santa Maria created animations to accompany individual sections of music from the album.”

That trailer looks pretty cool/trippy. If you want to acquaint yourself with the music before considering the movie, you can download it at Amazon.com (they also have it in vinyl for those that want to kick-it old-school).

In a final note, no matter how much I deplore the idea of sparkly vampires, if Vatican spokesmen and evangelical anti-occult book-peddlers don’t knock it off soon, I’ll have to see the darn things just to spite them.

“Monsignor Franco Perazzolo, of the Pontifical Council of Culture, said: ‘Men and women are transformed with horrible masks and it is once again that age-old trick or ideal formula of using extremes to make an impact at the box office. This film is nothing more than a moral vacuum with a deviant message and as such should be of concern.’ ”

Man, if sparkly celibate-till-marriage Mormon vampires are a “moral vacuum” I’d hate to hear what he thinks of “True Blood”.

That’s all I have for now, have a great day!

http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2009/11/why-is-northwest-washington-getting-hit.html

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http://wildhunt.org/blog/2009/11/thursday-winter-pledge-drive-update.html

http://wildhunt.org/blog/?p=3754

“I like your pledge drive season much better than NPR’s!” – Snoozepossum

Things are really moving along in my first-ever pledge drive! To everyone who has given, I want to thank you for your generosity and for sharing my vision of a Pagan new-media model that can eventually grow to support not just The Wild Hunt, but a variety of media and journalism projects originating from within the modern Pagan movement. To all my wonderful readers who haven’t had the opportunity or time to donate to this effort yet, please consider taking a few minutes before this week is done to become a part of the growing community of support that has emerged these past four days. Ask yourself, if The Wild Hunt was a magazine or newspaper, what would I pay to have access to it year-round?

“Thanks for letting us donate, and making it easy. I know that sounds weird, but it’s great to be able to be an itty bitty part of what you do here. So many pagan resources crash and burn and never ask for anything until it’s too late.” – Jane H.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank some more Pagan bloggers for spreading the word, and encouraging their own readers to support my mission here. Starting with author Erynn Rowan Laurie, who not only posted about my Winter Pledge Drive, but also encouraged me to offer a monthly subscription service.

“If you’re so inclined, this would be a great way to support a significant news source in the Pagan community. Jason keeps up with all kinds of things of interest to our communities, from news about Pagans to interfaith to politics that might impact our communities locally or globally. I think he’s very worth supporting in this work.”

So if donating a small amount every month sounds more your speed, click here for a $10.00 per month subscription commitment, and here, for a $5 per month subscription. If you would like to donate a custom amount, simply contact me and I’ll set it up. Thanks to Erynn for her generosity and commitment to Pagan journalism.

I would also like to thank Patti Wigington, the About.com Paganism/Wicca guide, for supporting the Winter Pledge Drive, and for pointing out the differences between an ad-supported model and a donation-supported model.

“It’s no secret that About.com is owned by the New York Times Company, which is why we have advertisers all over the place. Their money helps keep the site free for readers (yes, Virginia, that’s why you keep seeing those ads for the Mormon Church). However, the Wild Hunt, which is one of the best resources on the Internet for Pagan news, runs strictly on donations. Jason Pitzl-Waters has put out a call for pledges, and I strongly encourage everyone to go help him out. Even if all you can spare is $5, every little bit helps keep the Wild Hunt ad-free and running daily: The Wild Hunt Winter Pledge Drive“

I think Patti does excellent work at About.com, but as she points out, the price for her platform can include ads by groups who may be directly hostile to modern Pagan and minority faiths. For that reason, and for others, I want The Wild Hunt to stay non-commercial, whether those commercials come from the Mormons, or from within the Pagan community. That isn’t to criticize those who may want to pursue an ad-based model, I think it can lead to some significant successes, but that I think it is important that we have commercial and non-commercial news sources within our community.

Again, thanks to all who have spread the word and given during this week, we still have days to go, so let’s keep the momentum up!  Please support a non-commercial, open, accessible, and daily Wild Hunt.

http://wildhunt.org/blog/2009/11/quick-note-the-never-ending-christmas-wars.html

http://wildhunt.org/blog/?p=3748

• Reminder: We are in the midst of our first annual Winter Pledge Drive! If you value this blog, its mission, and its content, please consider making a donation to keep The Wild Hunt open, ad-free, and updated daily. Spread the word, and thanks to all who have donated so far!

Even though the American Family Association stumbled from the gate in the kick-off to this year’s skirmishes over religious language and iconography during the Winter holidays (aka “The War on Christmas”), that doesn’t mean other groups haven’t been cowed. Instead it looks like were going to be seeing a rather holy protest at the steps of the United States Supreme Court as Faith and Action and the Christian Defense Coalition stage a live Nativity scene.

“Rev. Rob Schenck, President of Faith and Action, states, “The traditional creche, portraying Mary, Joseph and the Christ Child, along with the angels, shepherds and Wise Men, remind us all of what Christmas is all about. “We like to refer to this effort as keeping Christ Mass in the nation’s Capitol.” Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition, adds, “Sadly, we are seeing an erosion and hostility toward public expressions of faith in the public square.   This is especially true during the Christmas Season. “The Nativity Project and Operation Nativity are reminders that our Constitution provides freedom ‘of’ religion not freedom ‘from’ religion…”

Ah, the old “freedom of” not “freedom from” argument, too bad that commitment to freedom is a mile wide and only an inch deep. As the Green Bay Wisconsin Nativity battle proved, once people actually start demanding real “freedom of”, which means the inclusion of all religions and philosophical points of view on public lands, things start to go a bit haywire for those crusaders for “religious freedom”.

So while the  “you aren’t saying Christmas” boycotts have lost their sizzle, the battle over Christmas religious displays in the public square is still heating up. There are already a couple cases that look like they’re headed for the courts, and it seems like only a matter of time before a Wiccan or atheist decides they want a Winter display next to a Nativity on public land somewhere. Then we’ll get to really test the “religious freedom” resolve of the groups currently dressing up like Joseph and Mary on the Supreme Court’s steps.

http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2009/11/windy-night.html

http://wildhunt.org/blog/2009/11/haunted-by-the-third-wave.html

http://wildhunt.org/blog/?p=3741

• Reminder: We are in the midst of our first annual Winter Pledge Drive! If you value this blog, its mission, and its content, please consider making a donation to keep The Wild Hunt open, ad-free, and updated daily. Spread the word, and thanks to all who have donated so far!

Much to Andrew Sullivan’s chagrin, former Vice Presidential candidate and Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin is once again dominating the media. Touting her new book, duking it out with Levi, and chatting with Oprah. But while political junkies are taking bets as to whether she’ll run for President, the media blitz also draws us back into the folks who incubated her political career, and support her to this day. The spiritual-war loving neo-Charismatic, neo-Pentecostal movement known by some as the “Third Wave of the Holy Spirit”. Vehemently anti-Pagan and anti-Catholic, Palin publicly distanced herself from them during the campaign after an embarrassing video emerged showing her being blessed by a self-proclaimed African witch-hunter. Now, Talk to Action’s Bruce Wilson cites sources that Palin not only kept in contact with prominent Third Wavers (specifically Mary Glazier) throughout the campaign, but that they believed a terror attack would kill McCain and place her in the Oval Office.

“On September 22, with the 2008 presidential election little more than five weeks away, Glazier sent a prophetic “Warning of Imminent Attack” out through her prayer network [see 1, 2, 3]. Glazier later released a slightly sanitized version but her original “warning” concerned an “imminent” terrorist attack that could leave American in mourning with Sarah Palin “stepping into an office that she was mantled for.” Sarah Palin has been close to Mary Glazier throughout the entire course of Palin’s political career. On June 13, 2008 Mary Glazier told Christian leaders at a church conference held near Seattle that Palin had joined Glazier’s personal prayer group in 1989, around the time Palin went into politics…”

Who is Mary Glazier? She’s the Palin spiritual mentor who, as I’ve reported before, took credit for giving a Wiccan cancer and driving her out of the state of Alaska.

Mary Glazier is one of two religious leaders (along with Thomas Muthee) associated with Sarah Palin who claim to have successfully fought witches. Glazier has described a campaign of “prayer warfare” which she says her prayer group used to drive a woman, whom Glazier claimed was a witch, out of the state of Alaska. As Glazier told the Christian magazine SpiritLed Woman, for a 2003 article, “As we continued to pray against the spirit of witchcraft, her incense altar caught on fire, her car engine blew up, she went blind in her left eye, and she was diagnosed with cancer.”

So far from being a misguided youthful foray into a radical Christian sect, Palin’s friendship with these extremists is seemingly ongoing, and they believe she’s bound for greatness. So while some think Palin has simply become tabloid-fodder, a joke to be ignored, some will know that she’s haunted by these extremist supporters, and that “terror attack” is simply another word for “opportunity” in their eyes. Especially if you’re going to be stepping into an office you were “mantled” by God for. If in 2012 she does run against Obama, as some think she might, we better keep a close eye on Sarah’s friends.

location: Heading for bed
Current Mood: sleepy

Question:  Should children witness childbirth?

Due to a power outage, only one paramedic responded to the call. The house was very dark so the paramedic asked Kathleen, a 3-yr old girl to hold a flashlight high over her mommy so he could See while he helped deliver the baby..

Very diligently, Kathleen did as she was asked.

Heidi pushed And pushed and after a little while, Connor was born.

The paramedic lifted him by his little feet and spanked him on his bottom. Connor began to cry. The paramedic then thanked Kathleen for her help and asked the wide-eyed 3-yr old what she thought about what she had just witnessed.

Kathleen quickly responded, 'He shouldn't have crawled in there in the first place.....smack his ass again!'

If you don't laugh at this one, there's no hope for you.