#midwest

jabletown:

jewishdragon:

ndelphinus:

“I live in the north of England, I’m used to freezing cold temperatures”

Oh honey.  That’s what the pilgrims said.  They mostly died.

please please listen/read the transcript to Neil Gaiman on NPR’s Wait Wait Dont Tell me because he talks about this and it’s wonderful!

Here’s the main piece:

SAGAL: Why did you move from England, reputedly cold and dreary, to the upper Midwest? Was England not cold and dreary enough?

GAIMAN: Nobody had really explained the whole cold thing to me.

SAGAL: Really?

GAIMAN: Yeah.

SAGAL: It was a surprise?

GAIMAN: Well, no. I was arrogant. I was foolish. The English thing where you think you know it all, I thought I understood cold. I thought, okay.

SAGAL: Oh yes.

GAIMAN: Water gets white and fluffy and it falls from the sky. Puddles go hard and slippery. That’s cold.

SAGAL: No problem.

GAIMAN: I did not understand the acres, the depth.

SAGAL: Right.

GAIMAN: How much colder it can be. I didn’t understand what it means to walk out of doors and take a deep breath, the hairs in your nose freeze and you go, “Oh, it’s a little below zero.”

SAGAL: Right.

GAIMAN: And then that thing that you do when you walk out and you take a deep breath and you cough because it hurt and you go, “Oh, 25 below.”

#true#apparently in American gods when shadow moves to the Midwest and almost dies because he’s an idiot and doesn’t understand how cold works#that was a self insert about NG moving to the Midwest and not knowing how cold works

yeah as a lifelong wisconsinite, i had never really seen my state truly represented in media until that scene the first night in wisconsin when shadow tries to walk somewhere at night and nearly freezes to death

there is a not insubstantial scene in the book where shadow winterizes his windows and i absolutely loved it

neil was definitely traumatized by moving to minnesota

Midwest Emo

Midwest exotica

smalltownbigguy:

in the south we don’t say “you’re a dumb fuck” we say “bless your heart” and i think that’s beautiful. 

I need to do this more often. These Midwestern folks won’t get it, bless their hearts.

I spent the full moon cleaning and cleansing bones. I find that winter is the perfect time for it. It’s the season of the Bone Mother, it’s when the Cailleach brushes her bony fingers along the harrowed fields and leaves them frozen and rendered, when Boreas swiftly descends from the mountains of Thrace with the cold north wind in tow.

(Pictured above: Sirius, being 19 years old, is an expert assistant at all things necromantic.)

In my personal practice, as with many others, the nature of my work often coincides with the season. The Light Months of Summer are filled with Life: the chickens and the goats graze in the grass — newborn chicks and kids in stride — and I tend to my witch’s garden of deadly nightshade, datura, castor, yarrow, henbane, mandragora, tobacco, aconite, vervain, mugwort, blue lobelia, American ginseng, black cohosh, and much more. The Dark Months of Winter are ripe with Death: dried herbs from the summer months are worked into charms and poppets, their sleeping roots woken from their black cloths and fashioned into manikins, alrauns, or spirit boxes. Things dead are given new life, and this applies to none more than bones.

Fiyero passed away in the summer of 2018 and was left buried for over a year. For those of you who don’t have the stomach for bucket maceration, or if you wish to give a proper burial as with Fiyero, I recommend the earth. It’ll take longer than bucket maceration for the bones to be cleaned of flesh and fur, but it gets the job done just as well.

The bones were separated and laid out on a cloth atop a butcher’s block. The air was thick with a chthonic and funerary incense of myrrh and juniper tips: Smoke as offering, smoke to mask the scent of moist earth. The din of drums and violins tangled with the smoke, the atmosphere heady and hallowed.

To clean the bones, I add hyssop and burdock root to spring water. Any number of cleansing herbs can be utilized here (sage, vervain, rue, etc.). It’s become a staple for me to also include a few splashes of Florida water — not only is it used to purify or as offering, but the floral notes sure do make a bucket of dirt and decay smell a hell of a lot better. The more stubborn bones are left to soak, while others are cleaned with the cleansing water and a brush. To sing is to heal, so a song to the spirit that resides in the bones is an effective way to appease them, especially if their death was less than pleasant (if they were hunted, killed for sport, or a number of other ways).

The bones can be cleaned and returned to the earth as an act of respect, or if the spirit wishes only to rest. If they’re willing to work with you, then a number of things can be done, from working them into charms or jewelry, made into art or decoration, or if you wish to consecrate them, they can be enlivened as fetiches or spirit houses. As for other remains, such as hides, I often have those made into drum skins for ritual drums.

(Note: I’ve had people ask where I get my bones. The majority of them come from livestock that have passed on our farm. They live long lives, and after they die, they’re treated with high respect and the parts of them that can become something new, do. Other sources include roadkill or humane bone collectors in the area.)

The fog has been heavy here lately; the sea of dead goldenrod seems to be full of prying eyes. Our livestock guard dog, Sylva, barked throughout the night, standing sentry, stalking the fence line. Standing at the edge of the woods, Michael heard something “laughing or crying inside the barn”. He turned to go check on it, but I told him that he knows better than that and to come inside where the fire was hot.

Nothing good comes with the fog.

Skid

© Susan Kramer 2021 All Rights Reserved

North Central Illinois

Back Road Wanderings

© Susan Kramer 2021 All Rights Reserved

North Central Illinois

as a dear friend of mine once said, every exit is an entrance to somewhere else