Mushroom Pixie

“DON’T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.”— Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

This song was playing at the time that I heard of Terry Pratchett’s death. I didn’t even register it until the end of the song.

My iTunes has a morbid sense of timing.

I now continue work, a little sad in the loss of such an great and inspirational mind. Wondering what adventures he finds himself in now.

Brigid, celtic goddess of fire

Brigid, the Celtic goddess of fire (the forge and the hearth), poetry, healing, childbirth, and unity, is celebrated in many European countries. She is known by many names, including that of Saint Brigid who is, perhaps, the most powerful religious figure in Irish history.

Born at the exact moment of daybreak, Brigid rose into the sky with the sun, rays of fire beaming from her head. She was the daughter of Dagda, the great ‘father-god’ of Ireland.

In Druid mythology, the infant goddess was fed with milk from a sacred cow from the Otherworld. Brigid owned an apple orchard in the Otherworld and her bees would bring their magical nectar back to earth.

Hormonal birth control for men has been a solved problem since the 1970s, and the current iterations of the technology are actually substantially superior to equivalent treatments for women, demonstrating higher effectiveness, less dangerous side effects, and lower prevalence of side effects in virtually all modern trials. At this point, some forty years on, such treatments continue to be refused certification on the ostensible basis of concerns over the purely hypothetical effects of long-term use.

Meanwhile, a hormonal birth control treatment for women whose known and documented side effects include “sudden death” can go from the laboratory to the pharmacy shelf in under five years.