I’m on the road today to visit family, but here’s a few quick notes for you.

Thresholds of Life: Over at Patheos.com, Star Foster shares her audio interview with Pagan priestess and Death Midwife Nora Cedarwind Young, recorded at this year’s Pagan Spirit Gathering.

“Before Pagan Spirit Gathering I had never heard of a death-midwife but it makes perfect sense. Midwives were healers of body and spirit, they guided people through the transition of birth, death and even marriage by matchmaking. While birth midwives have been making a comeback since the 1970’s, midwives who help families with the transition of death are still uncommon. Along with sharing her stories and thoughts about PSG, Nora Cedarwind Young told us about death-midwives: what they do and how she became one.”

In addition to her work as a Death Midwife, Young is also an activist in the green burial movement, and was part of the initiative to get Circle Cemetery, located at Circle Sanctuary Nature Preserve, approved as America’s first National Pagan natural burial ground and contemporary Green cemetery to be platted and recorded in Wisconsin.

The Allegedly Evil Sacrificed Goats: A Doylesburg, Pennsylvania families four pet goats were killed on June 30th in what some are claiming was a “ritualistic” manner. Animal Control Police Officer Floyd “Buck” Hessler seems convinced it’s Satanists.

“That sounds like a satanic issue,” said Franklin County Animal Control Police Officer Floyd “Buck” Hessler when told Tuesday of the incident. Hessler said he investigated what seemed to be a ritualistic animal killing about three years ago, in Hamilton Township. In that incident, several dogs had been killed, skinned and arranged in a circle. “My understanding is that they drink the blood and put them in all in a circle. I don’t know why they do it, but that’s what they do,” he said … Hessler said that most ritualistic animal killings seem to happen at night and involve smaller, easier to handle animals.

I’m intensely curious as to how he reached that “understanding”. Is there a book I can reference? Case files? Testimony? Or are we once again relying on traveling “occult experts” to provide a “Satanic ritual” veneer to something they don’t understand? I’m truly surprised that this one wasn’t also blamed on Santeria, since they seem to be the go-to culprit for animal deaths lately.

The Wicked Witch of North Bay Village: A rather humdrum case of accused condo association fraud in Miami get livened up by the fact that the property manager accused of mismanaging and embezzling funds is on the advisory council of Association of Independent Pagans, and allegedly cursed tenants in a flyer posted on condo doors.

A group of condo owners at South Treasure Drive’s North Bay Villas want their property manager, Fernando Laracuente, fired. “He has utilized [condo] association resources for his personal gain, and he refuses to give up,” resident Andrea Gomez says … The situation got stranger last week when tenants found a flyer posted on every door and littering the parking lot, declaring Laracuente’s enemies were “annoying bitches” and continued, “All they know how to do is create chaos. Oh, daughters of Lucifer, that ye have been born… only for procreation purposes and to favor evil. We damn our luck for these people joining our community.” Plastered in the middle of the flyer was clip art of a witch’s head … “Laracuente is truly deranged and needs to be committed,” says Adriana Caraballo, a tenant named in the flyer.

Laracuente’s lawyer denies the fiscal mismanagement allegations, saying that it’s just a disagreement that’s gotten out of hand. As the Miami New Times points out, condo association fights are common enough, but what isn’t common is the property manager calling residents “daughters of Lucifer” in a printed flyer (at least I don’t think it is, but I’m not up on condo life). If there’s anyone from the Pagan community near North Bay Village in Florida who has any insight on this, please feel free to speak up in the comments.

That’s all I have time for right now, have a great day!

The St. Petersburg Times reports on the case of a grave desecration in which a skull was stolen. Turns out it wasn’t practitioners of Santeria, Vodou, Satanism, or any other “occult” religion, it was some stupid kids out for a thrill.

“Nick Macchione wanted the skull. On his knees, he reached inside the broken crypt and felt around the bones and rotting clothes until he grasped it. When he couldn’t get it out, court documents say, his friend Seth McCarty grabbed a chunk of broken concrete and pounded until the heavy lid protecting the old wooden casket gave way.”

According to accounts, the two teenagers were inspired by ghost-hunting web sites that portrayed Spring Hill Cemetery as full of supernatural phenomena and spooky ephemera. Not satisfied with taking pictures or recording audio, they instead went for a “souvenir”. Because of this desecration, and other disturbances at the graveyard, the caretakers want to install new lights, and for the perpetrators to post messages to ghost-hunting web sites reminding people that Spring Hill is private property.

“Alyce Walker, the 82-year-old caretaker of the graveyard, which is tucked back in the woods off Fort Dade Avenue west of Brooksville … is more interested in heading off any more incidents. She is trying hard to get security lights and a gate erected at the site. She wants the heavy weeds and underbrush along the rear fence cleared away. As for Macchione and McCarty, she wants them to go online, to the same sites that drew them to the cemetery, and post messages telling other people that the cemetery is private property and to stay away. She wants to see a printout of their warnings. And she wants it done soon. Halloween is approaching, she said, and that attracts vandals and ghost chasers to the graveyard like moths to a flame. All she really wants, Ms. Walker said, is for people to respect the cemetery.”

No doubt that respectable hunters of the supernatural are horrified by the actions of these teenagers, and will no doubt spread the word that this cemetery is now off-limits to further investigations. After all, it’s only good policy to not insult the ancestors of the very ghosts your trying to hunt is it? As to the incident itself, it is just another sign that when some random desecration or vandalism happens, when animals are killed and discarded in non-ritualistic circumstances, chances are its not a practitioner of the occult at work, but a misguided or disturbed teenager instead.

Four recent news reports tie into two larger stories, the first is the issue of Pagan burial space, a matter that will become more prominent as the Baby Boomers travel further into their retirement years. There are already dedicated spaces in Wisconsin and Washington in America, and an Asatru-dedicated space in Denmark. Now we can add at least two more, an Asatru space in Norway, and a Pagan-inclusive interfaith woodland burial park in the UK.