There is no year of my life that has not, at some fundamental level, been wrapped up in the academic calendar.
My father was a university professor: our family vacations ran on his schedule.
Then there were my years of pre-school, elementary school, junior high, high school, and boarding school (a new and different schedule, that, but still, in principle the same.) College.
Working for my college for the year after graduation. I had very little to do with students, in general (I was doing web and project design for faculty), but you could still feel the ebb and flow of the school no matter what else happened.
I moved to Minnesota, for one year *not* working for a school - but in graduate school myself part time.
And then I began my current job, where I’ve been since fall of 2000, working in an independent day school. There are many things I love about it.
One of them is how often I get to pause and reflect on how much I love it. Every year, the last week teachers are around, there’s a parade of special lunches, ceremonies, in between the meetings. Some of the process gets a little tedious - but many of them help me remember just how fantastic the people I work with are, how neat the kids are, why I enjoy getting up almost every morning. (Almost. I *am* human, after all.)
And then there’s the part we’re in right now. The beginning of the year.
It’s unusually exciting this year. We’ve moved my desk (in the hopes being in the office will make noise-distractable me a) less stressed and b) more productive). We’ve negotiated some new duties that make my salary manageable, but that give me some significant challenges. And we have new carpet (the original, from the early 70s addition, was in place until last week) and a little new paint.
We come back a week before the faculty (who will be here next week.) They’re already trickling back to look at rooms and have initial meetings with colleagues, and it’s hard to go an hour without someone stopping by to chat about their summer (always too short!) and what they have in mind.
I’ve been sorting magazines (we get about 50), a process that always brings the news of the summer back in rush. Later this week, I get to start updating our patron database (something that has to be done manually.) And next week, we’re back to meetings and faculty gatherings. The week after that, students.
All of them remind me of cycles and new beginnings, and new possibilities. I love that.
But it’s also sometimes a little weird: it’s obviously (and for some historical reasons) off kilter from the traditional agricultural busy points. Just when my religious life is telling me to go be introspective and reflective, my work life is getting hectic with major projects. Just when my religious life is telling me to work hard on goals and projects, my schedule drops out from beneath me, and I often find myself somewhat adrift as summer vacation hits.
Now, there are advantages to some of this: four of the eight Sabbats fall in my vacations generally, so it can be easier for me to prepare in an unhurried way for ritual. I get a natural sense of ebb and flow to my schedule: things build and then diminish. I’m constantly turning from project to project as cycles shift and different things become easier to work on. I’m never bored.
But at the same time, it does give me a strange perspective on the Wheel of the Year. And one I think I’m never going to quite shake, even if I eventually end up working somewhere that isn’t a school.
A post on a local list about a library filter blocking the Covenant of the Goddess website got me making a lengthy post about the issues of freedom of information access, libraries, and filters: I thought I should duplicate my comments over here.
My background:
First, a quick note on my background. As I mention elsewhere, I’m a relatively recent Master’s in Library and Information Science graduate (I finished around this time last summer!) with a strong interest in online interaction, freedom of information access, and in particular, how libraries can better support minority communities (and in particular, minority religious communities) despite limited resources.
I don’t link my common usename (Jenett) online with legally identifying details, but if anyone’s actually in need of verifiable details for some reason, I’m glad to provide them privately. (’some reason’ is basically anything beyond curiousity: if you’d like to re-use some of my comments here for a discussion elsewhere, for example. Or if someone reading this would like me to come talk to other librarians about this issue, or something like that.)
Among other things, my work in these areas has included
- Classes in Public Library History and Theory (with a particular focus on how the Library Bill of Rights affects information access issues) and on Information Policy (including how we design information policy to protect access to information and deal with censorship requests)
- Projects in grad school about providing library resources of interest to Pagans, and a project I’d like to get back to on how Pagans actually use library systems, and how libraries could do better with this. (I have a lot of theories to test, but am stuck at the ‘figuring out how to do data collection’ stage.)
- Presentations to three different classes at other schools (and two as part of school projects) about providing fair and equivalent information access to minority religious members, and how to find resources that represent the community, not from outside the community. In all three cases, I got a lot of “This is fascinating and important!” feedback - everyone in those discussions was very supportive of the need to provide service to everyone, not just majority religions. I love my profession, sometimes.
My current workplace (an independent non-religious school) has a firm policy about filtering: we don’t. Period. (We do log where both students and staff go on the web, but these logs are only checked if there’s an actual problem. Quite honestly, who has the time to read through every teenager’s Facebook and MySpace URL? Also, I think schools are a somewhat different issue than public libraries: we also occasionally use these logins to block access for students who abuse online access or use it for harassment/etc.)
What are filters, and why are they there?
Many public libraries and schools have filtering software installed on their systems. Why, since the American Library Association thinks they’re firmly against the Library Bill of Rights?
Simply, Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This act was intended to give libraries and schools some financial help and relief in bringing technology (computers and internet access) into these spaces.
Nice idea, but one of the requirements of the related Children’s Internet Protection Act (passed in early 2000) was that all systems that took advantage of the Internet Access or Internal Connections e-rate funds (or some specific grant money) had to make use of filters.
Many libraries and schools have turned down these two areas of funding, in order to keep control over their own systems. Some places, though, are working on severely limited budgets, struggling to keep afloat, and simply can’t afford to turn down (fairly significant) funding options that will bring a lot of good to people.
12 years later, we are, however, still stuck with some issues. There’s currently a decent Wikipedia article on content-control software (their term of choice) that highlights some of the other issues and concerns and history. (As always with Wikipedia, apply grain of salt and keep reading beyond the site.)
What’s the problem with filters?
1) They don’t work.
Really. They don’t. Every filter out there misses some stuff it really should catch, and catches stuff that is totally legimate. There is no way to do this kind of filtering manually (especially now, with the number of blogs, free hosting sites, and other resources out there.) All of the filters use various methods - keyword matching, searches of text or images on the page, etc.
Plus - and this is the one I note at work when talking to parents - an intelligent teenager can find ways around at least 90% of the pure technology solutions. Sometimes that’s as simple as using the computer at a friend’s house.
When I was in college, a then-teenager named Bennett Hasleton started an organization called Peacefire specifically to focus on freedom of access issues for the Internet among teens. While I’m not sure how active the organization is currently, they did do a tremendous amount to get the basic issues recognised (including testifying as an expert in Congressional hearings), and their site highlights some of the basic issues with filters.
I particularly like this quote from the CIPA FAQ I already linked to: “It is important to note that the law states that filters must protect against visual depictions outlawed by the legislation. The filter does not have to prevent access to all such depictions. (No filter is 100% effective in preventing all such access.) In developing the CIPA regulations, the FCC declined to further define the filter requirements or to adopt any type of definition or certification on how effective a filter must be, beyond the very general protect language of the law. Thus, there is no such thing as an FCC certified CIPA compliant filter.” (a little less than 2/3rds of the way down the page)
2) On many - probably most - filters, you don’t get to see the specific sites filtered.
In some cases, you can choose categories. Pagan sites, for example, often fall into either the Occult/Esoteric category, or sometimes into others. On these filters, a library or school could decide to enable the entire category.
But on some filters, there’s no category control, no individual administrator override, or a process that only removes specific challenged URLs from the filter. The problem with the last one, of course, is that it doesn’t do anything about similar sites blocked by the same filter.
3) Whose values are we talking about?
One other problem is that a number of the filtering companies - not all, but enough - come from specific backgrounds that often feel it’s appropriate to limit some kinds of information (which has included sites about non-Christian religions, sexual health material, political groups they don’t agree with, etc.)
These choices are not required by the clauses in CIPA (which is pretty much only concerned with minors seeing obscene content within some definitions) but if you don’t know what’s in the filter, how can you tell what’s getting blocked?
What to do?
1) Individual disabling:
In most cases - as is true for the particular library that got me talking about this - the library policy will mention that the filter can be disabled on request for any adult. (Sometimes computers in the children’s or teen’s area are filtered all the time.)
I’ve had this done in the past - LiveJournal caught the filter at the St. Paul public library a few years ago when I wanted to print some stored information off my journal there: I couldn’t log into the site until I got someone to disable the filter.
This works great for an immediate answer, though it doesn’t answer either the issues of ‘what about people who feel intimidated/don’t know they can ask’ and the issue of what happens to teens who are looking for legitimate info (teen-appropriate sexual health content, religious content, etc.) who don’t have the option to have it disabled.
2) Look at the library’s policies.
In this case (and again, not mentioning the library directly), they did in fact have a quite complete set of library policies linked from the library front page. Many parts of it would have been held up as excellent policy examples in many of my classes: it’s clearly that library staff have given a lot of thought to dealing with censorship concerns, and have put policies into place to minimise problems for their patrons.
But it was also clear from skimming it that it’s a library struggling with financial stresses, whose physical collection was less than they wanted it to be, and who were probably dealing with both cost-of-provision issues, and quite possibly staffing issues. (How can I tell? That’s a question for another post, if anyone’s interested.)
3) Talk to the library:
Why do your research first? Because if you come in saying “I really care about this access, and it’s clear from your policies that you take freedom of information issues seriously.” you’re going to have a much more pleasant conversation than if you start with “You’re censoring me!”
I’ve done my time answering really upset people about policy issues (mostly in a non-library setting: I was on the Abuse/Terms of Service team for LiveJournal for about 18 months). The people you’re talking to are human, with a bunch of stuff on their minds. As humans, they’ll do better if they don’t start on the defensive. And they’ll probably be willing to give you a lot more useful information that can help both you and them, if you’re pleasant to deal with (even if you end up disagreeing.)
(I could go into a long theory of how this also plays into the magical concept of ‘act as-if’, but due to length, am just going to handwave at it here. Will expand on request.)
Also, on a purely practical level, it is probably not the reference librarian who set the policy. It’s almost certainly not the circulation desk person. It may not even have been the library director (who may have been overruled by their board on some point, though at least they have more input.) Getting mad at people who can’t actually change something doesn’t usually help, on a purely practical level.
4) Be aware there may be invisible practical concerns:
- As already mentioned, the filter chosen may not allow the library to turn off specific categories or unblock specific sites.
- Many filters work on a yearly subscription model: the library may not have funds to change filtering services until the next budget cycle.
- It may take a couple of days to get the right combination of people in the same place to talk about a longer-term fix for an issue, especially if the library has multiple branches. (Librarians also have vacations, sick days, and varying schedules to contend with.)
5) What’s your actual request?
Consider volunteering a little time to help: it’s obviously going to be a larger amount of a problem if a filter blocks a wide range of sites (a wide range of religions, not just Pagan ones, political candidate websites, health websites, etc.) than if the blocks are few and far between.
Your local library is probably understaffed. Consider seeing if you can volunteer to run some further tests for them on what’s blocked and what isn’t, or asking what else you might be able to do to help them make a better case for different options for their filters.
Part of this might also be asking what their policy is for book donations: libraries have different policies about this for a wide range of practical reasons, but one way to get more material from a wide range of viewpoints available is to donate it! Arranging a book donation drive of books on less common religions might be a great way to help out a lot of people in the community at once.
Some final notes:
I know there *are* religiously biased librarians out there - but honestly, I have yet to run into one. Everyone I’ve talked to about Pagan materials in libraries has been thoughtful, engaged, and interested in the practical issues, regardless of their own religious beliefs.
However, it is important to note something many people don’t realise. There’s a difference in the profession between those people who have a Master’s degree (generally considered the ‘entry level’ degree for professional jobs) and those who don’t. The two common degrees are a Master’s of Library Science or a Master’s of Library/Information Science.
The MLS/MLIS degree includes information on professional ethics, freedom of information issues, providing library service to diverse communities, and other topics related to privacy of information and freedom of access. People with the degree generally have responsibility for collection development (what items are included in the library), setting policy, and managing the collection and staff.
In a public library setting:
- The library director probably has a Master’s.
- Ideally, so do the reference staff - though due to budget issues, this is not true in all libraries.
- Circulation staff, shelvers, and pagers may have extensive experience with the library, but they probably haven’t gotten the professional ethics training described above.
Small libraries (especially in very small communities) often hire a librarian who does not have a MLIS: this is largely a financial decision (though, honestly, it’s not like jobs with the MLIS necessarily pay all that much more.)
Especially in small isolated systems (not a branch of a larger system) it can happen that the library and librarian forgets about smaller parts of the community, or they get a lot of pressure to go along with the majority view on some issues. Unfortunate but true, but something I file in the “humans are humans” category: libraries are supposed to respond to their communities, and the line between appropriate response and going too far is sometimes a little hard to tell when you’re in the middle of it without direct professional support.
I got a comment on my Critical Reading and Pagan Books article today that reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to post. Namely - why I have trouble recommending books to people who ask “I’m new to Paganism, where do I start?” (The nice commenter had asked for suggestions, and the next tab over is with going to make a stab at that - but before I could write that, it made sense to write why I’ve got trouble with it.
My background:
A large part of this is because of my professional training as a librarian. In the library world the question “What should I read?” is called ‘reader’s advisory’. There’s a reason for this. It’s not meant to be me sitting there and saying “These are the true great books” - it’s meant to be suggestions and ideas.
Note the ’suggestions’, not ‘recommendations’. There’s a difference. As a librarian, I may be suggesting books I’ve never read (because, as much as I read, there’s no way I can keep up with everything. Or even a tenth of everything!) Since I’ve never read them, I may not be sure whether there’s something that might be objectionable to the reader (or just plain not what they’re interested in. I don’t want to put my personal weight (and recommendation) behind a book I only know from “If you like X, you might like Y!” or reviews.
There’s another part of this: it’s supposed to be a conversation, not a monologue. Different people look for different things in books, and what they need at a given time may not be what first springs to my head. If I want to give them really *useful* suggestions, I need to talk to them. I need to ask them questions.
Here’s the thing: most people don’t know how to talk to other people about their reading, and what they look for. Some people do, of course - but often, people want books ‘like’ some other kind of book, but don’t have the detailed language to describe that. Mostly, this is because it’s not something we do all the time. (Well, unless you’re an author or librarian or just like geeking about different types of books. Lots of my friends do, but I’m well aware it’s not the way most people function.)
In fiction…
There are different ways to break this down, but I like Nancy Pearl’s approach - what she calls the Doorways to Reading. There’s a nice summary of her presentation on this as it applies to fiction over here, but basically, she breaks it down into four different doorways. Different people have different doorway preferences (they’re listed with the most common ones first)
- Story. What happens. These are the “I couldn’t put them down” books, the ones where you keep reading until 2am because you want to know what happens next.
- Character. These are the books that appeal to people who like fully-rounded or three-dimensional characters.
- Setting. These books create a very strong sense of place and time - including historical fiction, historical mysteries, and historical romances.
- Language. These books are often award winners: they’re a joy to read for the sheer way the author uses language and description.
People often have more than one preference: I’m about equally divided between character and setting, in many ways (and this is arguably why I read the science fiction and fantasy I do, but also a lot of historical mysteries.) But I also enjoy books with large doorways to story and language, when I’m in the right mood
Books also often have more than one doorway - they’re just somewhat different sizes. I’d argue, for example, that one of the reason that the Harry Potter books were so successful is that they basically manage to hit all four doorways in some way. You have a very engaging and fast-moving plot. You have interesting characters whose motivations and histories can be endlessly analysed. You have an unusual setting, and one that captures people’s imaginations. And you have - through the use of created words - some interesting entry points for people who appreciate language-centered books (though Rowling’s prose style is not similar to a lot of books that language-doorway people usually prefer.)
How this applies to Pagan stuff:
Really, a lot of the same issues apply. When someone says “Hey, an you recommend some books?”, I end up feeling stuck, because all of my professional instincts are saying “Not enough information!” When I’m on a forum discussion board, it’s generally fine, because I can ask them some more questions.
There’s also the tricky part: to ‘recommend’ a book means that I’ve read it myself, and read it recently enough that I recall any potential issues or considerations for the person I’m suggesting it to. There are books where this is easy - but there are also books where it’s trickier.
I read a lot (somewhere between 200 and 300+ books a year plus a lot of online reading), so between now and the last time I read a particular Pagan book, there might be quite a lot of material that’s gone into my brain. Remembering the specific details of what a given book said, and whether I had significant concerns about it often doesn’t stick well without some review. I’m working on improving that, by rereading things, and taking notes, but it’s a slow process, and fairly far down on my priority list
Now, I have done a bunch of thinking about this, since going to Nancy Pearl’s workshop last March. One of the things that’s clear to me is that people look for Pagan material in specific ways. I’m working on a write up of that, but in the meantime, have a couple of links to other material:
- Helpful things to tell people when asking for book suggestions
- Book recommendations index
I’ve been quiet for a few days, because I was busily off at the Fourth Street Fantasy Convention (I had a fabulous time and I am already looking forward to next year: many excellent conversations with interesting people about books and thoughts and the world in general.) It’s also sparked some thoughts about some things I really want to change in my life, and more on that in the coming days.
Today, though, a short post on something I was discussing else-net. One of the panels I was at this weekend was about the issue of message in a story: is it a good idea to be deliberately push buttons in your readers to make a point?
Emma Bull (one of the panelists, and one of my favorite authors to boot) made a comment I’ve been thinking about ever since: that all stories have your assumptions about how the world works. This comes through in the story, no matter what else you do.
This got me thinking. Ritual is, in many ways, a story.
Rituals are also stories, in their own way. Not in the sense they always have a plot, mind you - but in the sense that they have a context they exist in (what’s in their world), that stuff happens (there is a change between the beginning state and the end state of some kind), and that the successful ones have some kind of desireable emotional effect (because otherwise, we would eventually find them boring and never do them again.)
It’s that context (and my assumptions) that defines a ritual. And it’s how it works out for me that makes a ritual satisfying or meaningful (or, when it doesn’t work, frustrating and unsatisfying.)
And, likewise: if I do a given ritual only once, it still has a context: there are reasons that make sense to me that are why that ritual was that way. When I am done with the ritual, those reasons do not fall out of my head and cause a state of ritual experience amnesia: they continue to be part of my understanding of ritual experience, and how I’ll experience other rituals in the future, for good or bad.
It’s this, I think, that make public rituals so tricky: people bring such different experiences and contexts to them, that planning for all of their past experiences and buttons and such is just as complicated as writing a story (or novel, or whatever) that everyone will like. It is, however, a way I haven’t looked at writing ritual, and I think I’m going to keep it in mind for the next public ritual I do (probably for this year’s Pagan Pride, since the board traditionally does the opening ritual, and sometimes the closing one.)
I have very mixed feelings about Father’s Day, for the very simple reason that it is logistically tricky to celebrate a father who has been dead for more than half your life. Especially if one is bound into the Hallmark holiday sort of model.
Not impossible, of course, and as I am a Pagan whose path includes a certain degree of ancestral honoring, certainly something I do include. Just not on random Sundays in June.
It does make me think, though. My father died when I was just over 15. We knew it was coming - the good thing about a terminal cancer diagnosis is that at least you have time to prepare. Long before the last moments of high school, or of college, I had long experience with a series of ‘last moments’ with my father.
Our last family trip together (to Quebec City and Montreal, the previous Christmas and New Year’s.) The last horse show. My last birthday (also a horse show, and a day I still consider the single most perfect day of my life.) The last time he had me help him proof the bibliography of one of his books (I got a very early introduction to academic citation). The last time he corrected my homework (a French project: Mom still has it in a scrapbook.) The last dog walk.
One thing I cherish is having been able to have those, to be deliberate about them, to know they might be the last, and to be careful to hold them deep in memory, just in case. It’s something that, I think, has shaped every relationship since: if I never see someone again in this world, I want to know we didn’t end angry, we didn’t end broken and jagged.
But I’m also aware - always, consciously, deliberately - that I never got to know my father when I was an adult. I grew up in the year he was ill - incredibly, deliberately - but 15 and very mature is not the same as 18. Or 21. Or 32. I wonder how much of my memories are accurate - and how many are an idealised image, a perfect shape brought on not by what really happened - but by the mists of half-remembered glory.
I know he loved me. I know he doted on me (I was *oh* so much his pet.) I know that his students, his colleagues, teachers and professors, actors and designers, adored him. But I don’t know - not well enough - the parts that made him human, not something on a pedestal of memory, with the rough edges rubbed smooth by time.
My siblings were lucky, in this way: they were in their early 30s when he died, old enough to have adult lives, adult relationships. My sister got married, shortly after his death, but my father never knew my nephew. And my brother’s wife and my nieces were not even a glimmer in anyone’s eye, I think. But my brother was already working on part of his own passion, and my sister was working on part of hers, and many of the individual pieces were there.
I never got to talk about Ancient Greek (his field, or rather, ancient Greek theatre was) with him: I took courses in it only after his death. I never got to discuss mythology with him, with an adult’s mind, not that of a six year old, walking to school, hanging on every story told in his rich, deep, Oxford-accented voice. I wonder what would have happened if I’d gotten good enough at French to speak it with him, rather than listening to him translate Asterix from the original books, pausing to look up idioms.
Would I even have dared to take Greek if he’d still been alive? For a long time, I couldn’t walk into a Classics department somewhere without someone recognising the name (and thinking I was as brilliant at the languages as he was.) I know my own worth: I could manage competent, but rarely brilliant when it came to translation.
There are times I remember that his death changed my life. I was not a very rebellious teenager, but I suspect my later teen years would have been rather different if he had been around. He was fiercely protective, too much so, sometimes, even when I was 13 and 14. There were things I did not tell him, because I knew he’d worry.
I would not, I think, have gone to boarding school for my last two years of high school. I might instead have graduated high school early, and gone somewhere to college - not Wellesley, probably, either, the place where so many of the patterns of my cherished adult friendships were formed. It was at Wellesley I learned to have truly deep friendships, and to talk about my emotions, and to share in ways I might never have done at other schools.
There’s only one person in my life now, outside my immediate family, that I talk to at all regularly who knew him (and she knew him as her friend’s father, someone who gave rides, and who was loved, but who was generally ignored as backdrop, because that is how you view parents when you’re that age.)
There are also the mysteries. On the grave stone that is my father’s, and that will be my mother’s, some day, there are four lines of poetry. They’re the very end of T.S. Eliot’s Little Gidding. They’re beautiful. I know they were chosen deliberately. But I do not know - and have never managed to ask - exactly why. There are things I do not want to pry about, with my parents.
On the anniversary of his death, just after Samhain (and, in fact, on November 3rd, just after the Catholic All Saints day, and then All Souls, so that he might have a day all to himself), I do take time for him. I read something that reminds me of him. Some years it’s Eliot. Some years it is old and fading Asterix or Tintin books. Some years it’s Shakespeare, or Euripides, or 1066 and all that. I do a Tarot reading, just to ask if he has any wisdom for me, anything I should pay attention to. I don’t pry - he died as a devout Catholic, had been considering a production of Everyman, if he’d lived. But I welcome his presence, even if where I am now, where my religious life is now, is something he might never have forseen.
But I also keep in mind a very dear experinence. You see, before my father died, the summer before, I went to a church camp. They asked our parents to write us a self-esteem letter, to be given to us at camp. My father took the opportunity to say things that he - as he said - were hard for him to say in person. I still have it, and treasure it, and reread it at least yearly. It’s filled with his humor, his turns of phrase - and his handwriting, which was gorgeous and personal and unique - I’ve never seen its like elsewhere.
In my first Samhain ritual with the group I was to spend more than 5 years of my life with, I found myself there, hearing the last paragraph quoted back to me, not quite word for word, but concept for concept. The priestess involved had no idea of this - I think she knew my father had died, but certainly none of the details. I’d think she was picking it up from me - but I was not particularly thinking of it, or remembering specific text, or anything like that.
It was that that simultaneously convinced me of polytheism, and that convinced me that my new path was where I needed to be. And that, as I’d been a constant surprise to my parents throughout my life to his death, perhaps this was just another step along that road: not such a change as it first appeared. And that was something he treasured about me, and encouraged, even when the surprise was a bit startling.
That’s the bit I want to take away with me. I do my best to live by that letter - not because I feel I need to, or because I think he will look badly on me if I don’t. But because he saw in me, in the very tentative first steps of adulthood, so many things that I do, indeed, value. Integrity. Commitment. Willingness to take risks on specific things I value. High *high* standards for what I do. They have their challenges, but I would not give up on these things for anything in the world.
Now, I think, I am going to take myself off with my copy of the Ancient Greek translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and see how utterly tangled I get in the language. (Probably quite a lot: I’m rather rusty.) It seems fitting.
I finally finished (to the point I feel they should be posted) two long essays I was working on. They are:
Finding Others: Where to start looking:
This essay is based on a post I did a short while ago, when someone was frustrated by a group search: I’d been meaning to pull together a large portion of my standard advice when group seeking. It’s focused more on finding smaller groups or those focused on a specific defined path, but there’s useful ideas in there for most people seeking group Pagan interaction.
Questions when searching for a group:
Related to the above post, this is a list of questions (practical, practices, approaches, etc.) that might be useful for people who are looking for a group, but not quite sure what they’re looking for.
Please let me know if anything’s confusing or if you have other comments/things to include.
They’re both linked from the ‘pages’ tab at the top of the page, as well.
I spent Tuesday evening at a retirement party.
I currently work in the library at an independent school, one that’s been around for over a hundred years. The party was for two teachers (in different departments) who met and married early in their careers at the school - who have both taught here for well over 30 years. They are core to the school, and it’s going to be a very different place next year.
It was an excellent party - good food, and laughter, and people who’d retired in previous years coming back, and stories, and good humor. It also made me think.
We talk in the Pagan community about community elders: the people we look up to, the people who help us frame the conversations in and around and about our lives, the people who offer thoughts and wisdom and advice - but who don’t push their answers on the person asking.
It was clear, at this party, how many incredibly intelligent, capable, wonderful teachers looked up to these two, in so many ways. I work with really amazing people (it’s one of the main reasons I’ve stayed with the job so long), and when they all think someone else is amazing? You pay attention. Close attention.
One teacher told a story of when she was department head, of asking one of these teachers (a former head of that department) for help on how to figure out a staffing issue. She came up with plan after plan, and would go and ask for advice, and get back the answer “You’ll figure it out.” After a number of revisions, she came up with a really good plan, one that solved all the problems, and tried again - to get a smile, and a “I knew you’d get here!”.
It’s teaching without being patronising. It’s guiding, but treating your colleagues like the mature, capable, competent, intelligent adults that they are, and standing back and seeing how they solve things, not how you’d solve things. It’s being a resource, without doing all the work for someone else. It’s sharing the cool stuff, without competition or fear of losing your own value. These are people who *know* they’re good teachers, who know how many lives they’ve touched - but who also know they can always improve, and who were, up until the very end of the semester, both looking for new ways to teach material, to engage their students, to share their wisdom and knowledge.
That was part of it.
The other part is about community. Both children of these teachers were there, and they spoke about what it was like growing up as part of the community, having many of the teachers in the room as family friends. And from that came stories that I’d known but not quite pieced together.
These are teachers who are very careful about how they spend their time. They invested incredible time outside the classroom in grading, designing assignments, or creating new courses. They spend their time thoughtfully: they’d rather travel to an interesting place, or see a specific, chosen film, than have the TV on or watch whatever the summer blockbuster is. They read in a way that awes and amazes an extremely literate and well-read community. They’ve been active in their community - in politics, in community service, in service to the school - in all sorts of ways.
But they’ve also done a host of other things. One teacher there spoke of how she’d worried when her husband began working at the same campus - what would it be like to work with your spouse? These two retiring teachers invited them both over for dinner, not just once, but regularly, to talk about how it worked for them and what mattered. They’ve done similar things for other teachers at various times in their lives: reached out in small and quiet ways on a personal level - and been quite active in discussions about school structure and administration on a more public one.
These are all things I’ve been thinking about. How do I spend my time? Where do I spend it? Are there places I could spend less time? How would I improve that? What would make my life qualitatively *better*? How can I make my community better? How can I do the equivalent of those kinds of dinners? What would happen in our Pagan community if more people did small things like that? I don’t have any immediate answers - but I do have some ideas for the summer that I want to try out.
As some of you might know, I’m also a casual World of Warcraft player (I play on Hellscream, and like playing priests. Hypatia - Disc/Holy - is almost level 62, and Thalassa - Shadow - is 32 right now).
I read posts on the WoWInsider site regularly (they’re a good fit for my interests), and my attention got caught by a comment on this post.
First: should anyone find this post via my referencing the WoWInsider link
Hi! Part of why I’m a (very) casual WoW player is that most of my spare time and energy goes to my religious life, specifically something close enough to Wicca for most people’s purposes. I’m in the process of forming my own ritual group after several years of training and work in another group, and this blog is about a lot of that process. Feel free to ask questions: I’ll answer anything that’s not outright insulting or abusive.
That said, almost everything I do gets funneled back into the religious work somehow - especially group dynamics and interaction concepts, which are a major interest of mine.
A quick guide for non-online gamers
Many of these games have guilds (or some similar term) that are formed for all sorts of reasons - social interaction, but also to take on larger challenges in the game world. In World of Warcraft, a significant amount of endgame content requires at least 25-40 characters to do, thus at least that many individual people.
I’m in a small, informal guild of longtime friends (it’s my chance to spend social time with friends from the East Coast), but almost all of them are associated with a larger raiding guild that plays endgame content regularly. I don’t have time for that, but I happily putter around the edges and do things when they have time, and chat, and so on.
Back to that post…
The comment that particularly caught me was Rational’s comment (the first one) where he/she says: “Sadly, guilds are tiny. They can’t afford to have someone vet new recruits.”
Which made me go “Hmm.” Because, after all, your average coven is not large (far smaller than your average raiding guild), and this is something that most covens do as a matter of practice (and, in fact, can’t afford *not* to do). I wanted to explore it the parallels a bit. What do I see?
1.) You need to know you have enough in common.
Not everyone is going to fit into every guild. And not everyone will be a fit for every coven. Finding out some things early helps a lot in wear and tear on *everyone* involved (applicant and existing group members alike.)
- Do you want to do the same things?
- Are you available at the same times?
- Do you have compatible approaches to getting things done and communicating?
- Do you have enough goals in common?
There are obviously many variations - a guild, for example, is going to care a lot more about whether a particular person fits a specific in-game need than a coven is likely to. (And be more willing, probably, to take a chance on someone who fills a major need.) But the basic questions? Still really useful.
2.) You need some kind of process.
It can be elaborate, but it doesn’t have to be. A lot of guilds use a simple online questionnaire, followed by a face to face interview and a trial period. My first experience with something like this was applying to Harper Hall on PernMUSH way back when (1995), which used pretty much exactly that method. (More on that below.)
In many cases where the cost if someone doesn’t work out is not huge, this is a perfectly workable system. You can give someone an initial (often limited) membership, and as they demonstrate they’re reliable and competent, they get more responsibility/access/resources (very common in gaming situations).
Covens tend to be far more involved processes, because the costs are much higher if you get it wrong. If you’re inviting people to your home, you want to make sure that they’re not going to abuse that or become stalkers or anything like that. But even then, it’s not all that hard for one or two people to be the ‘front’ people for the process, and bring others into it only once they’ve weeded out people who are obviously unsuitable.
Most important part of the process? Know what you’re looking for. The more specific you are about what you’re seeking, the more important your process design is. If you’re fairly flexible, you can generally weed out the people who’d be a dismal fit with a few simple questions, try everyone else out, and go from there.
3.) Your front person or people need to enjoy what they’re doing.
I get a huge kick out of reading initial contacts/applications. I have for years. I’m fascinated by what people share about themselves, how they phrase it, and how they approach the questions that a group asks.
It’s much better to have someone like me doing the initial read through (assuming they’re competent) than someone who hates doing it: someone who thinks it’s a necessary evil that gets in the way of the stuff they would rather be doing will procrastinate, grumble, and otherwise drag their feet eventually (and burn out) and that’s no good for anyone.
4.) Your initial contact person has to have a good idea what their job is.
Is it their job to weed out certain things? Be really clear what those things are. Is spelling a big deal for the whole group, or just a pet issue of the gatekeeper?
Be clear what the next step is. In some groups, the initial contact point just passes everything (except the truly misguided apps) along. In others, they do several more steps - checking to see if requirements are met, or even an initial interview to make sure the applicant and group are on the same page, before passing along someone as a serious possibility.
5.) Backups are your friend.
If you’re dealing with a lot of applications, or there’s a chance your gatekeeper may disappear (even for the best of reasons), it’s good to have a backup. Again, limit your failure mode. In online settings, this usually means the officers (or guild leader, or whoever) also having access, even if they rarely or never use it.
(In coven situations, this is much less of an issue: if someone is that seriously out of contact, you generally know where they live and what’s going on, and so on.)
6.) Finding the right process makes everything easier.
It’s easy to over-engineer it: to make it very complex or have lots of steps, or add bells and whistles. (I have temptations this way myself.) The problem is, it doesn’t always improve things.
My solution is to look at the process, and ask myself: “What am I looking for with this question?”. Not “What should their answer be.” but “What am I trying to learn.” - they’re two different things. Figuring out your best questions for what you really want can save your time, your applicant’s time, and everyone’s energy.
Let’s compare a couple of variations. If I want to know what someone’s goals are for their time with a group, I can ask that in several ways.
If I ask
What are you looking for in a group/guild/whatever right now?
I’ll probably get a list of goals or desires or intentions. This may be all I need, and if the rest of the application is short and simple, this may be fine. But what happens if I ask something different? If I ask:
After reading our website/info, what makes you particularly interested in us at this time?
Most people will answer that with something about their goals - but you also will quickly weed out anyone who hasn’t actually looked at the information you’ve already provided. In a longer more complex application, this can be a great way to combine questions, and it’s also a great way to sort things out if you’ve had a recent history of people not reading provided info (and that’s particularly important to you.) There are other ways to get at this kind of information, too.
7.) Consider length and commitment.
I tend to think that the initial questionnaire should take 10-60 minutes to fill out (depending on how tightly you want to filter your applicants). Much shorter than 10 minutes, and people won’t take it seriously or will do it on a lark (which wastes the time of the people who respond.) Too long, and most people won’t bother, even people who might be a good fit.
I think most game/fun/hobby related forms should take most people 10-30 minutes to fill out initially. (Not including background/informational reading, etc.) On the other hand, I’m aiming for the initial coven questions to take about an hour. One of the things I’m deliberately sorting for is people who are sure enough we might be a fit that they’re willing to spend that time. That said, it might need adjustments down the road…
8.) Refine the process:
Once you’ve had a few people go through the process, see what works. If you point 50 people at the application, and only one submits it, you’re probably doing something wonky somewhere - maybe the page is glitched, or it’s way too long, or it’s unreadable, or something else. Look at it closely yourself. *Do* it yourself, for that matter: it can give you a good sense of how long it takes.
Also, as you get applicants over time, look and see how the patterns shift. Some patterns may change as the surrounding environment shifts and changes. Others may mean that you want to adapt your process. If you find that you weed out a lot of people on your first person-to-person chat, maybe you want to do that first, and then have them submit an application for everyone else to review.
Some examples:
I’m still working out the details for my shiny new coven application - but I know it’s going to be a pretty detailed process, and it needs a lot of fine-tuning.
Why? Because we’re talking about a small group (probably no more than 8-10 people total) who will be meeting in people’s homes for significant amounts of time and doing emotionally intimate work together. Any one person we take potentially bars other people in future, so we want to make sure that we find the right fit. Also, any changes in the group affect the whole group significantly.
On the other end of the spectrum is something like what I did on PernMUSH (a text-based role-playing game set in Anne McCaffrey’s Pern universe). When I took over as Masterharper, we’d been getting a bunch of really lousy applications from people. (Lousy how? Badly written, showing little understanding of the game world, with assumptions that would limit or mess with other people’s enjoyment, etc.)
Often, the people who did bad applications disappeared 2 weeks later, having taken up a lot of time and energy (from their interviewer and the masters discussing the application) with no real benefit for anyone. That leads to burnout.
The revised version worked like this: we started with a 5 question application in email. This showed us:
- Whether they could read the background information we provided in multiple forms.
- Whether they follow basic directions/instructions.
- Whether they were familiar with the game world and setting, or could work around what they didn’t yet know.
- Whether they paid some attention to the application (we wouldn’t rule someone out for a couple of typos, but constant spelling issues or incomprehensible writing are a big deal on a text-based game.)
- Whether they cared enough about this particular goal to spend a little bit of time (maybe an hour for most people) on an application: an hour is a tiny percentage of the amount of time they’d spend with us as a player.
Once they submitted that (and assuming it wasn’t totally impossible), they’d also have an in-game, in-character interview, so we could see how they role-played and fit in with existing events in the game spaces.
What did we ask? Again, we were open to a wide number of play styles, types of focus, and interests, but focused on a particular goal in the game (a particular profession, more or less), and a specific in-game community. So we asked questions that would help us figure out whether someone would fit with that.
We were willing to push the time demands for the application a little higher because knowing the setting and enjoying working with words were important aspects of long-term fun (both for them, and for the people playing with them.) Also - while I’m still pretty pleased with these, or I wouldn’t be referencing them, I wouldn’t approach it in quite the same way now (10 years down the road, with far more group experience.)
1) Please tell us something about your character’s background. (Example: Who is your character, where is s/he from, what does s/he want from life, and why)
Goal of the question: Character background is the overt question, but we also wanted to know if they could give us a rounded idea of their character without being asked each and every detail. (Do they need to have their hand held all the way, in other words.)
In Warcraft, I might ask something like “How is your character currently specced, and why?”. In a Pagan group setting, I might ask “Tell me about your religious path to this point.” or even, basically. “What’s your background so far?”
2) Why does your character want to be a Harper? What IC skills and interests does s/he bring to the Hall.
Goal: To weed out the people who said “I’m just curious.” or “I’ve done everything else, why not Harper?”. Sometimes those people worked out - but we’d had a whole run of applications where they hadn’t. Asking people to put in a little thought about what their character’s goals and motivations were solved the problem tidily. In a guild setting, this might be similar to ”
In Warcraft, you might ask “What interests you about [focus of guild].” Or in Pagan settings, “Why this group?” or “Why are you seeking training right now?” or “What do you want from your path in the near future?”
3) In your opinion, what role does Harper Hall play, both in Pernese society and within PernMush as a game?
Goal: To see how comfortable they were with the game setting, and whether they could discuss it briefly. If someone couldn’t answer this one, we’d want to do a lot more talking with them before accepting them.
In Warcraft terms, this is similar to “What does your class/spec do well?” and “How do you feel about doing that?” In Pagan settings, questions like “What have you read?” or “How do you define Pagan/Wiccan/witch/etc.” often get at the same kinds of questions.
4) Do you have IC ties to anywhere on the game? Is your character involved in a romantic relationship? (Weyrmating, engaged, etc)
Goal: Are there any in-character relationships we need to adjust for/work around/might cause some issues for in-game reasons?
This one has less application in Warcraft, but variants apply in my religious life - if someone’s romantic partner doesn’t approve of their study, that can get hairy.
5) Do you have a regular online schedule? About how much time do you expect to be on as this character?
Goal: Basic logistics. And pretty self-explanatory: if someone can’t work on the same schedule as the group, you’re going to have problems. (Broadly applicable, too!)
Also, how much time is this person willing to commit to this? Does that mesh with their goals? With the group’s requirements? (You will likely need to play this by ear in places: someone may say what they think you want to hear, only to struggle with showing up that often once the honeymoon phase is over.)
6) What OOC knowledge might you bring to the game and the Hall? (For example: Have you read the Harper Hall trilogy? Do you play a musical instrument or sing RL? Are you familiar with the PernMush news and +info files? Are you familiar with the Harper information in particular?)
Goal: To find out if there’s any other non-game-specific knowledge that might benefit our shared fun. There’s also a certain amount of work involved with running any group: if someone has interests that’d make that easier, I like knowing early on. Again, not required for membership, but it often meant we could phrase explanations in a clearer way, or let them run with some idea more easily after a brief discussion.
This type of question is less relevant in something like Warcraft (where you’re pretty centered on the game action together) but you could ask about what sites they use for information, or something similar. Shared hobbies/interests/familiarity can make a difference in coven life (though it depends heavily on the group.)
Summary:
As you can probably see, once you actually get the system set up, it’s relatively easy to maintain it and adjust it quickly - but you need to invest a little time up front. My experience, though, is that once you do that, it really *is* very easy to keep up. You get instant rewards in both how quickly you can review applications - and, often, in the quality of applications you get in the first place.
You don’t need to be stuffy or toss an application for every minor thing - but how they answer questions or approach an application can tell you a lot about their overall approach to learning new things, interacting with people they don’t know well, or how they pursue goals that matter to them.
Burnout can be a huge issue for many of us: I joke, at times, with other people doing things, about the problem of Witches Who Do Too Much, but there’s definitely a group of us out there. A recent discussion on an email list about this got me thinking about some things I do.
Now, anyone who’s read some of my ‘day in the life’ posts has the idea that I’m insanely busy. It’s gotten better this year. This year, I’m working full time, actively job hunting, starting a new coven, and trying to have a social life. This time last year, I was working full time, taking two graduate classes, actively involved in my Pagan group’s leadership (rituals, some teaching, and meetings/initiate work one night a week.) Oh, yes. And trying to have a social life/some down time. Both years, I’ve been part of our Pagan Pride Day board, which has some variable time commitments (for most of the year, monthly meetings and in-between work I can do at home.)
So. How to do that?
1) Be aware.
What is burnout? What does it look like for me? Am I doing too much? Am I too frustrated with what I’m doing? Do I feel like what I’m doing isn’t making any difference?
What has helped before at those times? What helps short-term? When do I need to look at long-term changes? If I’m feeling burned out, is the problem what I’m doing, who I’m doing it with, or how it’s getting done?
I try to take time informally every month or two (and definitely when there’s any significant change in my time/energy/focus) to think through these things. Tools that have helped:
- Regular journaling: if I read through my journal and notice a month or two of frustration, misery, or just discontentment, that’s important (especially if there’s no other obvious cause.)
- Friends who notice when I am repeatedly unhappy and stressed (as opposed to really busy, but happy with that, and coping well).
- Awareness of different ways of doing things, and which ones seem to be a better fit for me (both roles and things like meeting and organisational methods, productivity techniques, etc.) This way, if something is frustrating me, I stand a chance of making changes that might help.
The last point has to do with which tasks I take on in the first place. I look for things that use my skills and talents, and that play to them or my interests. For example, if I have no interest in fundraising, and dislike phone calls, there are some community roles that so aren’t a good fit. If (as happens to be true), I like lists, and organising people, and sorting out details, and doing most of my communication by email, something like my current Programming role for Pagan Pride is ideal.
The other part of this is challenge - most of us don’t like doing the same thing we know how to do already for extended periods. Having new goals or challenges can really help in keeping you from burning out (if you’ve otherwise picked a general role that’s a good fit.)
2) Keep an eye on the basics:
I’m so not the poster child for this one: I try to cram at least 36 hours of activity into many days. But in general, I work hard to schedule a night or two of down time each week, I get enough sleep, and my home is a place I enjoy being in (chores done, etc.)
If those things go wonky, burnout is pretty likely to occur.
Basics also matter when we’re talking about both what I’m doing and what skills it calls on. For example, I dislike talking on the phone to people I don’t know well, and I’m not good at fundraising. Taking a role that involves these things is more likely to burn me out than a role that involves organisation (something I love) and can mostly be handled through email or face to face meetings.
3) Why am I doing X task?
Am I afraid the task will disappear if I stop doing it? Some kinds of roles have a natural life cycle. When we tie up our identity with the task, it can feel immensely painful to drop it - because we get scared that if it disappears, we weren’t really important in the first place.
Thing is, though, as a witch, as a priestess - never mind as a mature human being - I should be able to see that for what it is. My identity, my sense of self come from far more than if I do or don’t do one specific task in the community - or even five or ten tasks!
There’s also another, more logical part. If I do a task for 5 years, and then stop (and the group in question stops having someone do that task after me), that doesn’t mean that the task was unimportant while I was doing it.
If you spend a year building a house, and then stop (because the house is done), your work was still meaningful, and you (and others) benefit from it. Treating our community interactions in the same way, recognising that sometimes a task is needed, and then isn’t, helps with a healthier perspective. Maybe I did such good work with something that it’s no longer needed as a specific task, or can be split up in new ways. Or maybe the community or need has changed or shifted. These are good things, not bad.
All of these things help…
But they’re not always enough. A future post will talk about what I do when I hit that point, and how to handle it.
Sylvan, whose writing I adore, posted earlier today about ten things she loves about her body - and encouraged those reading to do the same. Here’s mine.
1 ) I adore my hair. It is long (waist-length) and fine. I adore it. It is dark brown, with silver coming in, shot through, but with a silvering strip running back lightly from each temple. I love the silver in the midst of the brown, and I love the two strips that are forming.
I almost always wear my hair up - it’s impractical down, and especially in the winter, it tends to be all static, all the time. But I wear it down for ritual, and for special occasions. I love the feel of it down my back, and twining my fingers in it behind my back. I do hack the end off with scissors every few months to get rid of dead ends, but I haven’t been to a hairdresser in almost a decade.
2 ) I love my eyes. My driver’s license says they are hazel, because they don’t have an option for ‘pale green with a copper-brown ring around the pupil’. But really, that’s what they are: a gorgeous pale green with a rich brown inside. An ex of mine called them topaz, which is near enough to get the idea.
I also love that my eyes work: I wear glasses infrequently for computer use, and they have quirks, but my eyes are what lets me read and learn and experience so much cool stuff in the world. (I read far faster than people talk, so books on audio, while a useful thing when I’m doing stuff where I can’t read, like driving, don’t make up for it.)
3 ) I love my ears. They have a tiny little angled point at the top which amuses me greatly. (I also love how my ears work, because the other thing that really gets me going is music.)
4 ) I love my height. Which sounds a little weird, when I add that I’m 5 foot and a half inch. But really? I love my height, except in crowds. I almost never have to duck my head under anything, and it means I’m often really comfortable in smaller, enclosed spaces. And my feet never hang off the end of the bed, and they’re almost never up against the back seat in an airplane or car.
5 ) I love my feet: they are relatively small, and I have quite high arches, which means I can play with leaving amusing bare foot prints if I’m careful. More than that, the feet work, and they do what I tell them, and it’s all good.
My toenails are almost always painted some shade of blue, too - it’s part of a deity devotion I’ve done for years, as a small personal reminder during my day. (I have a extensive collection of blue nail polish. You can never have too much.)
6 ) I love my hands - they are not conventionally beautiful, being short-fingered, stubby, and small. But they’re mine, and I’m continually amazed by all the stuff they do, and do well. They play harp, and sew, and knead bread, and spin yarn, and type, and draw, and doodle and pet the cat, and braid my hair, and feel all sorts of things.
7 ) I love my curves. My favorite description of myself to people who haven’t met me in person yet is that I come from a long line of European peasants who were good at surviving famines. This is very true. But I love the curves that gives me, especially the one from the waist to the hip.
8 ) My lungs. It’s hard to say, entirely, that I love them, because I have a very complicated relationship with them. Besides the obvious staying-alive part, it’s my lungs that let me sing, and talk, and teach, and hang out with friends, and play music, and so on.
But it’s also my lungs that are my most overt medical issue (asthma) and the one that scares me most. The past year has been a lot better, though: work with a herbalist has helped keep the asthma far more manageable, and they’ve had a chance to heal. (And how cool is it that lungs heal in the first place?)
9 ) My calves. Anyone who knows me knows I almost never wear short skirts - my legs are fairly bow-legged, still. But my calves are very strong, and very much about the muscle, something that started with horseback riding when I was young (and skiing, swimming, and biking didn’t hurt) and that I’ve come back to with walking regularly. I’m amazed by them, honestly, especially when you think about all the different ways a leg has to move.
10 ) My shoulders. My father was required to play rugby when he was growing up (he was over 6 foot, and built for it.) I got his shoulders and build, and Mom’s height, which is not the ideal combination. (I also got his teeth size, and Mom’s jaw size, and some excavator 200 years from now is going to write down that I am 8 teeth short as a result. I digress.)
But I like my shoulders. They carry things well. They match my hips proportionately. And when I was growing up, one of my cats would sit across them. There is nothing more satisfying than a cat draped warmly across your shoulders in the winter keeping the back of your neck warm. (Current feline resident is very much a ’sit next to’ cat, not a ’sit on you’ cat, or she could too.)