Where 3 roads meet -- the place of decision.

Hekate also stands at the road the dead travel in the Underworld, holding the keys. In that aspect she was demonized in medieval mythology as "the wardress of Hell," and "queen of the witches." But as an underworld goddess she has a close relationship to Persephone, the queen of the underworld. Hekate can choose to be elsewhere as well, because as one of the original gods she has the capacity to travel in all realms.

I took her name because of her link to Demeter and Persephone, the mother-daughter dyad -- in which Hekate completes the triad as crone. By 2002 (when I signed up at DU and needed to choose a DU handle) my daughter was done dragging me thru the hell of her adolescence and was grown, I had just completed several years of academic study on Demeter and Persephone, and decided it was time to move on.

Way more than you wanted to know, I am sure. Mythology is very rich that way, and one story opens out into another and another and another --

...CONTRACEPTION. Also known as FAMILY PLANNING.

EVEN TEACHING WOMEN CONTRACEPTION WAS AGAINST THE LAW. Illegal abortion was rampant -- and so was death. A desperate woman could get an abortion, but she could not gain access to caps, pessaries, spermicides, or indeed any info about how her reproductive system worked.

There is a passage in her Autobiography (1879-1966) that says it all about how she took up this crusade. She was a Public Health Nurse who visited poor women and their families in their tenement apartments. Passing thru the neighborhood one evening she saw a long line of women with their shawls hiding their faces waiting to enter a door. She was told they were all waiting to see the abortionist, and she was shocked, as this was outside her experience.

One of her patients was a woman with 3 chldren. Sanger described her children and rooms as clean and scrubbed. Their mother was sick in bed with a fever, infected from an abortion. The doctor in attendance was condescending: "You mustn't do this again, Mrs. Levine. Tell Jake to sleep on the couch." When the doc left, Mrs. Levine grabbed Sanger's hand and pleaded with her to "tell me the secret. My Jake is a good man. The doctor knows, but he won't tell me. There must be some secret that rich people know because they don't have so many children. You're a nurse -- you must know."

But Sanger truly did not know herself. She was a nurse but this was not part of her training.

She wrote that the next time she was called to this woman's bedside "she was sick again from the same cause," only this time she died.

There are many lies told about Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood, but one of the most abominable is that is was founded to abort rather than to prevent unwanted pregnancy in the first place. PP clinics did not provide abortions until the Supreme Court legalized the procedure.

Sanger set out to educate herself first, which involved travelling to England and Europe. When she returned she began to educate other women and to set up clinics. She was arrested for obscenity, among other crimes of the time. Telling women (and showing them drawings) that they had a uterus, ovaries, vagina, etc was considered obscene. She mailed educational pamphlets, which was also obscene and illegal. She went to prison.

Bits and pieces of her life story get picked up and twisted -- and while it is true she came to believe in eugenics for awhile, so did a lot of people at the time. Mostly what I can say about that is that she was a hero, not a saint.

Planned Parenthood does not "push abortion," nor have they ever done so. Abortion services constitute about 3% of the medical care they provide.

For further information, please visit the Planned Parenthood national website.

...of being Communists (i.e. against all capitalism) and being The Bankers (i.e. holding all the capital). Her ironic comment was along the lines of "Good trick on our part, eh?"

As for how and why the Jews were made into forever-bogeymen by haters, we watched it happen to Hillary Clinton before our very eyes. She -- a white Christian woman -- was turned into The Other because it was useful to somebody, and they will continue after she is cold in her grave. They did it to "Liberals" as well -- right in front of us.

How much more so the Jews, a whole people labeled as The Other some 2,000 years ago -- so useful every time some despot needs a distraction and/or needs to stir up a mob. All that's needed is to keep a subcritical mass of people simmering and a critical mass of "polite society" willing to keep using or ignoring casual slurs. There you have the poisonous brew waiting to boil over.

It seems to have nothing to do with reason and everything to do with how useful it is to have a scapegoat handy in times of stress.

I used to search for the origins and history of anti-Semitism in an effort to understand how Hitler happened. I still highly recommend this exercise to any who have not done it.

But at some point in the last decade or so I realized it is useful to someone, and started asking instead: Who does it serve?

Mostly it was Steve Schmidt being so very very explicit about the bombs: Attempted assassination of all our top leadership. Worse than the day after Lincoln's assassination. If successful, would be the equivalent of 9-11 happening right now.

By the time Ms Allemany started talking about being at all those rallies on the campaign trail, I could hardly breathe. My reaction -- and my husband's statement that he had not known the extent of the pre-election violence either, based on news reports -- showed up in my OP.

Personally, I believe more bombs are in the mail, still in a sorting station somewhere. I believe they were intended to kill or maim, not just frighten, and that only the maker's lack of practice made them duds.

Someone intended to assassinate our entire top leadership -- they tried to -- and they will try again. With Trump cheering them on.

...and the Koch Cabal is not just about money, it is about having a long-term plan and playing the long game. A really long game, like 40 years. It is coming into fruition about now

Democrats don't do that, and way too many Democrats are proud of it. Every time someone at DU smugly quotes the old Will Rogers joke* I want to reach through the screen and slap them about the head and shoulders.

* "I'm not a member of any organized party. (pause. pause.) I'm a Democrat." Sorry, Will Rogers has long gone home to that great roundup in the sky, and his joke reached its expiry date about the time Nixon was elected.

For those who think I'm just being unpleasant, Right Wing Watch and People for the American Way have some very good primary sources linked to their sites. Right Wing Watch is especially good for travelling into primary sources, where you get to read what our opponents say about themselves, how much they are involved in, and how successful they have been in playing the long game while Democrats squabble over whether they are Progressive or Liberal and whether Blue Dog Dems should even be allowed in the tent. Dems squabble over whether Hillary is inspirational enough, but just try to talk about the importance of the SCOTUS and the lower federal courts and hear the crickets.

Sorry to be a wet blanket, really. It was just the reference to the Kochs that set me off. We really will have a blue wave this election cycle -- IF our votes are counted honestly. But even if the GOP loses the House and Senate, the Kochs et al. know it is only one election cycle, while the Supreme Court is forever.

...on the other hand, there is news out tonight that every woman connected with this hearing, meaning female Senators and all their female staffers, are being viciously trolled via phone and email. Susan Collins, though not on the committee, spoke out to say she was "appalled" at Trump's tweet-attack on Dr. Ford -- and now she and her staffers are also being threatened with bodily harm.

I expect Lisa Murkowski began to get the same treatment the very moment she stated she "would not vote" until a real hearing was held.

As of this evening, I finally have some doubts about whether the GOP can cram this rapist through all the way to SCOTUS. Way to go, sexist pigs.

First and foremost for thugs like these, they will learn the negative consequences of their racist behavior include consequences up to and including loss of employment. They will learn to modify their behavior or they will be gone.

For managers and Commissioners in my county (I was a County Commissioner for years) diversity training has devolved from day-long training sessions into a required annual online training course with Q&A, at the end of which the trainee has to electronically sign the thing and print out a certificate which they must ensure ends up at Human Resources.

That is a document that can be referred to in case of disciplinary action. They know you know the rules. Ignorance is no excuse. And in the case of managers and supervisors, they are responsible for their employees.

All employees, from street sweeper on up, get a copy of a manual outlining rules pertaining to their employment. Don't set the building on fire by carelessness, do your particular job well, don't disgrace your department to the public, don't pat the butts of female employees, don't use racial slurs... And they sign that they have received it and understand it. They get some hands-on training. Ignorance is no excuse.

For those capable of learning and willing to learn, diversity training well done is all to the good. It says something about the corporate culture. It's a tool in changing the corporate culture. It's a tool in creating a workplace that is welcoming to all qualified people and aids in their retention.

Committment is not the same everywhere, needless to say. The nation has been experiencing a slow backlash of white resentment for a couple of decades, and under Trump it is measurably worse. But not everyone has given up, and I applaud the Mayor who decided on swift action against the unacceptable racist behavior of these cops. To ignore it would be to condone it, to condone it would be to ensure its triumph.

...Lyndon Baines Johnson, Harry Truman...

It isn't "socialist," kids -- it's been a solid Democratic idea for decades, crushed again and again by the GOP, who love to smear it as a "socialist" idea. You know, the way they turned "liberal" into a smear?

So you (plural, general) can go ahead and keep trying to use the word "socialist" if you want to and waste a lot of time explaining your intentions -- or you can proudly claim and reclaim what is ours, as Democrats.

I've always heard it in religious contexts -- Mormons, Evangelicals, or Roman Catholics who have bowed out of the authoritarian religion of their parents. They have reached some personal breaking point, and can't abide it any more. They cannot bring themselves to sit in the pews any more and be lectured at, to perform ceremonies they no longer believe.

Their parents and siblings don't know what brought it on and to varying degrees are hurt, alarmed, or angry. Explanations don't help.

The "recovering" person still loves their family (absent abuse), and all their deepest memories of love and belonging are wrapped up in shared events that go back to their birth. But they are alienated forever, even (or especially) when they go home for the holidays, Holy Days, for weddings, christenings, and funerals.

I have known folks like that, and the bind is that it hurts to be in that space but it hurts worse to deny your own authenticity and your own conscience, to deny the evidence of your own eyes.

I hear all those echoes when Nicolle refers to her own family, whom she loves. "When I go home for Thanksgiving, it's still Trump-land. They don't get it." And when Steve Schmidt says declaratively that he is no longer a Republican, that there is moral rot at its core and the best thing is for it to be wiped out over the next several election cycles and start over, Nicolle murmurs, "I'm a recovering Republican," I hear the pain of betrayal.

Thus sayeth Hekate; end of sermon.