editorial
by Melanie Fire Salamander
With Mercury retrograde for this Widdershins, it's not surprising that your dedicated editors didn't get quite what we expected. We'd been hoping for an issue about technopaganism -- pagans and computers, pagans and the Web -- and our stalwart BlackCat came through with a story on the WitchVox Web site. Lisa's front-page story likewise touches on the speed and thoroughness of the Internet. Elsewhere, Sylvana quotes Anjelica Huston, star of the upcoming miniseries The Mists of Avalon, as saying the psychic communication shown there is sort of like the Internet... yes, that's a bit of a stretch.
That's as far as we got with our theme. Pagans in their free time seem to want to pay attention to something other than computers -- and who could blame them? George Jackson goes outdoors to muse on places of power, and Bronwynn Torgerson follows to describe just such a place, near Mount Pilchuck. For some more light summer reading, we offer Tostito Tramp's ritual on stress, which ought to provide some relief. See too a plethora of reviews, on OLOTEAS's Beltaine at the Longhouse, the Annunaki Project's "Origins" and The Mists of Avalon -- which looks enticing, truly pagan, especially when compared to the Craft lite or wacky we usually endure on television and the silver screen.
We offer too music reviews by a new "Earth Tones" columnist, Genevieve Williams, including word of a trio of local female singer-songwriters that ought to appeal to pagan sensibilities. And we launch a new astrology column by Johanna MacPherson. Take a gander -- this solstice looks intense!
But the height of the sun, the triumph of light that ushers in the half-year of light's waning, always offers us an intensity of contrasts. Litha, the summer solstice, brings us the brightest light and the darkest shadows... and the beginning of summer. Have fun.