genvieve-of-the-wood

[genvieve-of-the-wood]

Long Live the Prince of Darkness Himself- Ozzy Osbourne

Thank you! And if you want a song to embody what’s going on in the USA- “Crazy Train” is perfect.

See you in the liminal spaces to come.

[genvieve-of-the-wood]

For a Regime That Is Supposed To Love Its Military and Veterans They Have a Strange Way to Show It

When meeting a racist immigrant kidnapping quota is more important than the military you claim to fully support. Explain the logic of kidnapping people from performing their fully legal right and due process of becoming a citizen to “going after violent criminals, but not really, we just want to show racist constituents numbers and wreck the economy and double down on racist and incredibly stupid policy that has no real plan other than buying their way into this country.”

Ya wonder why the military parade was so squeeeeeaky tank and meh marching from the soldiers? This is one of many reasons. Way to get that support! What next? Lower their pay? Get rid of more VA medical mental health care for veterans? Break up their families?? That will build up morale on the bases and ships! Look what you have to look forward to. A regime that sees you as props or disposable pawns will ask more while they take more.

[genvieve-of-the-wood]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

June 13, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Jun 14, 2025

Two hundred and fifty years ago, on June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress resolved “That six companies of expert riflemen, be immediately raised in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia; that each company consist of a captain, three lieutenants, four serjeants, four corporals, a drummer or trumpeter, and sixty-eight privates…[and that] each company, as soon as completed, shall march and join the army near Boston, to be there employed as light infantry, under the command of the chief Officer in that army.”

And thus Congress established the Continental Army.

The First Continental Congress, which met in 1774, refused to establish a standing army, afraid that a bad government could use an army against its people. The Congress met in response to the British Parliament’s closing of the port of Boston and imposition of martial law there, but its members hoped they could repair their relationship with King George III and simply sent entreaties to the king to end what were known as the “Intolerable Acts.”

In 1775 the Battles of Lexington and Concord changed the equation. On April 19, British soldiers opened fire on colonists just as Patriot leaders feared they might. In the aftermath of that deadly day, about 15,000 untrained Massachusetts militiamen converged on Boston and laid siege to the town, where they bottled up about 6,500 British Regulars.

The Battles of Lexington and Concord made it clear the British government endangered American liberties. The Second Continental Congress met in what is now called Independence Hall in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, to address the crisis in Boston. The delegates overcame their suspicions of a standing army to conclude they must bring the various state militias into a continental organization to stand against King George III.

With the establishment of the Continental Army, a British officer, General Charles Lee, resigned his commission in the British Army and published a public letter explaining that the king’s overreach had turned him away from service in His Majesty’s army and toward the Patriots:

“[W]henever it shall please his Majesty to call me forth to any honourable service against the natural hereditary enemies of our country, or in defence of his just rights and dignity, no man will obey the righteous summons with more zeal and alacrity than myself,” he wrote, “but the present measures seem to me so absolutely subversive of the rights and liberties of every individual subject, so destructive to the whole empire at large, and ultimately so ruinous to his Majesty's own person, dignity and family, that I think myself obliged in conscience as a Citizen, Englishman, and Soldier of a free state, to exert my utmost to defeat them.”

After they established a Continental Army, the next thing Congress members did was to name a French and Indian War veteran, Virginia planter George Washington, commander-in-chief. To Washington fell the challenge of establishing an army to defend the nation without creating a military a tyrant could use to repress the people.

It was not an easy project. The Continental Army was made up of volunteers who were loyal primarily to the officers they had chosen, and because Congress still feared a standing army, their enlistments initially were short. Different units trained with different field manuals, making it hard to turn them into a unified fighting force. Women came to the camps with their men, often bringing their children. The women worked for the half-rations the government provided, washing, cooking, hauling water, and tending the wounded.

After an initial bout of enthusiasm at the start of the war, men stopped enlisting, and in 1777 Congress increased the times of enlistment to three years or “for the duration” of the conflict. That meant that the men in the army were more often poor than wealthy, enlisting for the bounties offered, and Congress found it easy to overlook those 12,000 people encamped about 18 miles to the northwest of Philadelphia in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, for six months in the hard winter of 1777–1778. The Congress had no way to compel the states to provide money, food, or supplies for the army, and the army almost fell apart for lack of support.

Supply chains broke as the British captured food or it spoiled in transit to the soldiers, and wartime inflation meant Congress did not appropriate enough money for food. Hunger and disease stalked the camp, but even worse was the lack of clothing. More than 1,000 soldiers died, and about eight or ten deserted every day. Washington warned the president of the Continental Congress that the men were close to mutiny, even as a group of army officers were working with congressmen to replace Washington, complaining about how he was prosecuting the war.

By February 1778 a delegation from the Continental Congress had visited Valley Forge and, understanding that the lack of supplies made the army, and thus the country, truly vulnerable, set out to reform the supply department. Then a newly arrived Prussian officer, Baron Friedrich von Steuben, drilled the soldiers into unity and better morale. And then, in May, the soldiers learned that France had signed a treaty with the American states in February, lending money, matériel, and men to the cause of American independence. The army survived.

By the end of 1778, the main theater of the war had shifted to the South, where British officers hoped to recruit Loyalists to their side. Instead, guerrilla bands helped General Nathanael Greene bait the British into a war of endurance that finally ended on October 19, 1781, at the Battle of Yorktown in Virginia, where British general Charles Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington and French commander Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau.

The Continental Army had defeated the army of the king and established a nation based on the principle that all men were created equal and had a right to have a say in the government under which they lived.

In September 1783, negotiators concluded the Treaty of Paris that formally ended the war, and Congress discharged most of the troops still in service. In his November 2 farewell address to his men, Washington noted that their victory against such a formidable power was “little short of a standing Miracle.” “[W]ho has before seen a disciplined Army formed at once from such raw materials?” Washington wrote. “Who that was not a witness could imagine, that the most violent local prejudices would cease so soon, and that Men who came from the different parts of the Continent, strongly disposed by the habits of education, to despise and quarrel with each other, would instantly become but one patriotic band of Brothers?”

With the army disbanded, General Washington himself stepped away from military leadership. On December 23, Washington addressed Congress, saying: “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action, and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.”

In 1817, given the choice of subjects to paint for the Rotunda in the U.S. Capitol, being rebuilt after the British had burned it during the War of 1812, fine artist John Trumbull picked the moment of Washington’s resignation from the army. As he discussed the project with President James Madison, Trumbull told the president: “I have thought that one of the highest moral lessons ever given to the world, was that presented by the conduct of the commander-in-chief, in resigning his power and commission as he did, when the army, perhaps, would have been unanimously with him, and few of the people disposed to resist his retaining the power which he had used with such happy success, and such irreproachable moderation.”

Madison agreed, and the painting of a man voluntarily walking away from the leadership of a powerful army rather than becoming a dictator hangs today in the Capitol Rotunda.

It is the story of this Army, 250 years old tomorrow, that President Donald J. Trump says he is honoring with a military parade in Washington, D.C., although it also happens to be his 79th birthday.

But the celebration of ordinary people who fought against tyranny will be happening not just in the nation’s capital but all across the country, as Americans participating in at least 2,000 planned No Kings protests recall the principles American patriots championed 250 years ago.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[genvieve-of-the-wood]

I Have Always Been Silver

Hey, little girl

by the creek,

tongue pushed out

between my lips

as I stared at sun dapples

on rocks and fish,

a wolf girl

devouring words,

a silver girl

writing what she tastes

in the air,

a poem, a spell

and now I am the owl

wheeling midnight silver

weaving in and out

of the moon bathing trees,

snake and rat crunching

in my beak.

Now my silver flash of belly

blinds a bear from a river

as I become salmon

that must find

the spawning grounds;

I must create

and then die.

I am a silver woman,

by a cast iron cauldron

I fill with intentions

and accidents

and failures

and I transform

willingly and

unwittingly.

Dig deeply in the ground,

tangled with the roots

of an oak grove.

My bones

are clean,

pulled here and there

by time and creatures.

In this full moon

tonight

I reflect a silver glow.

A silver girl

lives her shining life.

If she comes back,

she will never be trapped

in jewelry or coin;

look for me

in feather,

in soil,

in starlight,

in scale.

Promises are held

in silver,

a dagger for revenge,

a ring for an oath,

a payment for a deed,

a bell to invite magic.

A silver girl

is only bound

to the Earth and its moon,

and the closer

she fulfills her destiny-

the more silver

she grows

in her crone’s crown.

@genvieve-of-the-wood June 11, 2025

May La Luna shine on us all, and give us a reprieve of peace and influx of strength in the days of fire to come.

[genvieve-of-the-wood]

This is how you know your country is quickly becoming what one puts in a doggie waste bag and sets it on fire, and the citizens are stuck stomping on the mess to put out the fire.

Guess who shit in the bag and set it on fire? The current oh so edgelording wanna be fascist regime and its circle jerk of billionaires, oligarchs, christofascist cult members and jackbooted gestapo thugs.

Please read one of the best documentarians to current history, Heather Cox Richardson.

[genvieve-of-the-wood]

Grieving in the ashes of Beltane (family death and what my country has become) but from ashes rise seedlings, tiny inconsequential living things, like hopes and dreams dismissed and buried.

I seek the sun,

the moon a balm

from the pain

of growth.

Let all witches and pagans

and seekers

unfurl

power upon justice,

upon peace,

upon love.

Fertility is found

where futility

died,

now bring about

a fire of action,

the roaring, deeply felt

bone melting tide.

Go find your way

before they try

to take it from you.

In the dark

or in the light,

the Beltane fires

are the signal

to fiercely love,

and to fiercely fight.

@genvieve-of-the-wood May 1, 2025

Some Fires Are Set With No Fuel

Some fires are set

with no fuel,

Some of us can drown

with no water,

Some earth is loose

yet solid with no stone,

Some things blow away

with no wind.

My heart still burns

of flammable stuff,

My mind overwhelmed,

flooded, so I must float.

My will a sinkhole

until my spirit settles,

My trauma memory

a canyon solid, smooth-

the jagged edges worn down.

All the elements are present

tonight

as I feel the peak

and the decline

of my life,

old

partners leading me forward

to the next phase.

Do not bring fear

to this incarnation,

they say.

It must be left behind,

new fertility awaits.

And you, witch

of the sacred, hopeful heart,

the mind that is master

of its arts,

the will deep and grounded

at home with roots and bones,

and now what no longer serves you

cuts you no more, for it flows

out of the source

to serve your sorcery.

I am not magical,

you may think.

But who can explain

the power of change,

from atomic elements in stars

to embracing your true cosmic age,

without wonder and awe

as we gaze at the fires

tonight,

our ancestral habits

and rites

insisting on life,

and those old ways

die hard

even in a suburban

fire pit.

@genvieve-of-the-wood April 30, 2022

Happy Beltane, to those who partake!

[genvieve-of-the-wood]

Please pass this video on, especially if you live in the USA.

It’s a very good question/answer session about what a dictator is, what fascism and other types of dystopian governments are.

Do this before they start banning EVERYTHING they don’t want out to the American public.

When your leader refuses to be held accountable by a federal judge, (checks and balances in a normal democratic government)deports people who are legally here but have done nothing to be a terrorist and annihilates the departments who would hold him accountable- and that’s just a few examples, you have a dictator wanna be who will very soon be an uncontested dictator.

Make art to protest, know your rights, find others to support each other in the hardship to come. Go on venues that will not be held under his cadre of billionaires who own social media.

Help the vulnerable who are going to be deeply affected by the cruelty- immigrants, queer communities, disabled, low income, especially low income elderly, POC, indigenous, etc.

Empathy is a fine blade to cut thru cruelty- you don’t see it coming and it can cause mass damage to a movement thickened by apathy and playing on fear and willful ignorance.

They may have said “yes in advance.”

We do not have to.

Find ways to resist now, without violence.

Because if things continue- within at least 2 years unless midterms are even legitimate and results are as well (untainted by authoritarian meddling) it will get ugly, especially if the economy continues to get worse.

No one is interested in muzzling the rabid and greedy dogs in power, even among the opposing, deluded Democrats.

We have to help each other now. Find your community and organize.

Do not let the bastards grind you down.

[genvieve-of-the-wood]

the trees you grew up with have not forgotten you. their branches still whisper your name in the breeze and their roots remember the paths your feet once traced through their shade.

[genvieve-of-the-wood]

Sleepy Head, Time Is Just a Construct

And with a wave of

government approval,

an hour vanishes

from my life.

It’s dead,

buried in the catacombs

with all the other

lost hours.

I have wasted time before,

and will probably

do it again

in the future

and it won’t always feel

like I threw the time

away or shredded it

no, it will be

like a winning scratch off

or a day

you find a missing twenty

dollar bill in an old purse.

But I mourn my 2 am

little hours,

many I slept through,

many I wrote poems to.

We must stop

this atrocity,

and wake up

with the sun

and those hours

padding our cheeks,

so we can waste away

the time

at our own risk

instead of the farmer’s.

@genvieve-of-the-wood March 10, 2024

[genvieve-of-the-wood]

Do you read your poems aloud to the trees?

It depends. If it’s windy, no. It’s rude to shout.

[genvieve-of-the-wood]

Happy Winter Solstice, or as I tell many like myself wandering in metaphorical and literal darkness- “This too shall pass.”

@genvieve-of-the-wood December 21, 2023

Solstice Animal

The clock at work reminds me,

“Today will be

a long cold night.”

I can only see how little

time I have

to take dreams,

still icy on my tongue

and melting on

my eyelashes,

and see their individual

designs crystallize

and fall from

my desire,

the atmosphere unstable,

looming with no end

to the gray,

no certainty of the sun

shines through.

Will I dream this

longest night,

or do my hopes

hibernate,

surviving on fat promises

and everything I

could scavenge in the short hours

after work?

I will kill a man

who awakens me

in my slumber,

who interrupts

the metabolism of the purest

energy.

We must reflect and create

in the dark,

in the sleepwalk of a job

or

a stretching solstice shadow.

Do not approach me-

I am snarling as I’m snoring,

and when the dreaming

is done

and all the dreams melt away,

I will awaken,

extremely hungry.

@genvieve-of-the-wood December 22, 2022

[genvieve-of-the-wood]

Is the baby you? That you’re projecting your fears forward because you can’t resolve them in the now?

Perhaps. I will leave the interpretation up to the reader. Babies in dreams often represent something or someone ( not often a literal baby) we feel very vulnerable about. A baby is helpless, fragile- the very representation of what we put our hope, love and protection into. It could be a project, a relationship, a transformation, a person we have nurtured, including ourselves. The Buddhist kind of outlook is, the nightmare happens over and over because we want to control it, but in all realities, physical and metaphysical, true control is an illusion. So we embrace the now, the shit, the good, ( the baby) and the nightmares begin to taper off, because we live in the moment versus what might happen or what has already happened.

Thanks for your insightful question.

[genvieve-of-the-wood]

Nightmare Fuel

Brains are anxiety

powered cinemas.

The cost of admission

is what this world

can do to us.

Right after my divorce,

years ago

and last night-

I dreamt of an infant

trapped on railroad tracks,

and all I could do

was watch the train

approach

from somewhere up above.

I wept, and silently screamed

and reached for that sleeping baby,

and just as the baby

wakened, cried-

the train

and then I awoke,

feeling so small,

unable to stop

anything,

and then I remembered

I can try again,

I can pick a different seat

in the theater

of my mind.

The baby has come back

in other ways

to comfort me,

only to be taken again

by my monstrous subconscious

script writing

the worst scenarios,

and the most terrifying

feeling in a horror movie

is true helplessness.

For now,

I hold the dream baby

who resembles all babies,

not my sons or nieces or

children I have babysat,

but all of them

in one small, warm body.

I hold the infant heart

close to mine,

and mine races as fast

as theirs.

Our dreams are the same,

the baby and I-

we are helpless

and helping each other

out of our nightmares.

@genvieve-of-the-wood November 7, 2023

[genvieve-of-the-wood]

Happy Samhain, Halloween, Spoopy Time, etc!!

I finally watched the movie “Hereditary!”

Toni Collette’s faces were actually some of the scarier bits in this film, she was so, so good!

I am going to watch “Talk to Me” next- loving the A24 studio movies- I am a big fan of “Midsommar” as well.

Besides the scary, I contemplate the year behind, and the year ahead. Going through the last stages of menopause- it’s not for cowards.

To quote the opening of “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”…

“That’s uh.. gonna be a fascinating transition..”

Poem soon to follow

[genvieve-of-the-wood]

Any movie that shows in a satirical way what a monster Pinochet was and how easy it was for him to come to power with the help of the US and how much Margaret Thatcher( also a vampire figuratively and literally) loved him- I’m all in.

Love my vampire movies and TV series, but this movie is fascinating. I also brushed up on my history of human rights abusers, Pablo Neruda ( one of my favorite poets) who was a friend of Allende, who was the elected leader of Chile until Pinochet’s coup and US history of how our government was deeply invested in propping up certain leaders for fear of socialism/communism.

To see two figures in history I despise played out as not so glamorous vampires- yes, please!

El Conde | Official Trailer | Netflix

Dir: Pablo Larraín Star: Alfredo Castro / Paula Luchsinger / Jaime Vadell

[genvieve-of-the-wood]

Chris Isaak and Climate Change Cocktail

The world is on fire,

no one will save us from

fossil fuel.

Strange how desire for

billions makes

Big Oil so cruel.

I never dreamed

of the sea temp

hitting 102-

And I never dreamed

of the lies

we believed were true.

No, I don’t want to

overheat or drown-

(this world is only gonna

burn or flood)

No, I don’t want to

blow away or starve

(this world is only gonna

burn or flood)

with you.

What a wicked game

to play,

to ignore climate science

today-

What a wicked thing

to do,

to treat the Earth

like a giant loo-

What a wicked thing

to say,

this hellish heat

is just another day-

What a wicked thing

to do-

only oil money dreams

matter to you.

And I don’t wanna to

overheat or drown,

(this world is only gonna

burn or flood)

with you.

Nobody

loves

what we’ll

become.

@genvieve-of-the-wood August 6, 2023

Based on Lyrics to “Wicked Game” by Chris Isaak

[genvieve-of-the-wood]

“I’m Trying to Use the Phone!”

RIP Paul Reubens

My kids and I still yell this line exactly like Pee Wee did in Pee Week’s Big Adventure when we are on a phone call. I adored Pee Wee’s Playhouse and also loved the character Spleen in Mystery Men and his appearances on David Letterman. Paul Reubens has played so many great characters besides Pee Wee. One to look up his role in the movie Blow.

Another line that me and the people who know love to repeat is saying “I’m sorry.” And then “I’m not sorry I took the money! Muhhaaa! Hahahahaha!” If you know the movie put it in the replies.