Author Archives

Barbara Ardinger, Ph.D. (www.barbaraardinger.com), is a published author and freelance editor. Her newest book is Secret Lives, a novel about grandmothers who do magic. Her earlier nonfiction books include the daybook Pagan Every Day, Finding New Goddesses (a pun-filled parody of goddess encyclopedias), and Goddess Meditations. When she can get away from the computer, she goes to the theater as often as possible—she loves musical theater and movies in which people sing and dance. She is also an active CERT (Community Emergency Rescue Team) volunteer and a member (and occasional secretary pro-tem) of a neighborhood organization that focuses on code enforcement and safety for citizens. She has been an AIDS emotional support volunteer and a literacy volunteer. She is an active member of the neopagan community and is well known for the rituals she creates and leads.

• Happy Thanksgiving by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on November 1, 2020 • ( 11 )

  

  Will our families gather for Thanksgiving feasts this year? Will aunts and uncles and cousins come from near and far to sit around our dining room tables? Does anyone have a table that’s big enough for social distancing? As I… Read More ›

• The Quality of Mercy by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on October 4, 2020 • ( 10 )

  

  The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes… This speech (Act IV, scene 1) from The… Read More ›

• “We Must Have Music” by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on September 6, 2020 • ( 8 )

  

  In 1936, Sir Noël Coward (1899-1973), one of England’s greatest and most prolific songwriters and playwrights, wrote a song for a play called Shadow Play, which is part of a series of ten short plays gathered under the title Tonight… Read More ›

• Dr. Signature’s Whoopee Pack by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on August 2, 2020 • ( 11 )

  

  As I write this in late June, the news is still pretty depressing. Pandemic. Politics. Corruption. No no no. I can’t write anything current and cheery, so here’s another bit of distracting nonsense from my so-called archive. Back in the… Read More ›

• Practical Lessons in Kindness from the Grasshopper and the Ant by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on July 5, 2020 • ( 8 )

  

  (With apologies to Jean de La Fontaine for significant changes to his fable) Note: I first posted this story in 2016 and posted it again in 2019. As the pandemic drags on and the huge orange Tyrannosaurus Rex in the… Read More ›

• The Eldest, Truest Olympians by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on June 7, 2020 • ( 15 )

  

  Scene: A comfy lecture hall in the temple on the summit of Mount Olympus. The feminist historians have taken their seats. The eldest Olympians rise to speak. Let us attend to their words. I am Hera, Queen of All, Daughter… Read More ›

• Going With the Wind by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on May 3, 2020 • ( 17 )

  

  The wind changed during the night. Even as they slept, the Witch and the Ladies of the Magic Mirror felt it and stirred in their beds. Kahlil the raven, who was sitting on the roof, felt it, too, and as… Read More ›

• “Not If But When” by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on April 5, 2020 • ( 8 )

  

  As I’m writing this early in March, the CDC has recently said of the outbreak of the coronavirus (Covid-19) that it’s a question of “not if but when” the epidemic will strike the U.S. As we know, it started in… Read More ›

• A Modest Proposal by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on March 1, 2020 • ( 14 )

  

  In 1729, the Anglo-Irish author Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), who was already widely known for his political polemics and satirical pamphlets and highly ironic letters to and about the literati of Georgian England, published “A Modest Proposal for preventing the Children… Read More ›

• Let’s Celebrate a God and a Goddess for February by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on February 2, 2020 • ( 7 )

  

  Back around the turn of the century when I was writing Pagan Every Day, I did a lot of research. I had to. I had to write something for every day of the year, including leap year day and a… Read More ›

• Let’s Try Creativity This Year by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on January 5, 2020 • ( 9 )

  

  As usual, I’m writing my post a couple weeks before you’ll be able to read it. I bet we’re all wondering in mid-December if 2020 is really gonna happen. Will we still be living in a civilization? Will there still… Read More ›

• Archy and Mehitabel by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on December 1, 2019 • ( 10 )

  

  Archy the Cockroach and Mehitabel the Cat were introduced to the world in 1916 by Don Marquis, a columnist for the New York Evening Sun. Marquis was more than a mere columnist; he was a social commentator and satirist admired… Read More ›

• Metamorphosis and a Press Conference: A Kafkaesque and Shakespearean Fantasy about an Unreal Individual by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on November 3, 2019 • ( 7 )

  

  Donald wakes up too early. Feeling confused and disoriented, he looks around the room. His bed has disappeared! He seems to be lying on the floor. Why? he asks himself, how’d I fall off my king-size bed? The floor (uncarpeted??)… Read More ›

• Let Us Now Practice Her Presence by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on October 6, 2019 • ( 18 )

  

  I’m giving you a twofer this month: a poem and a ritual. I’m writing this a few days after the latest mass shooting in Texas by a crazy white man and a few days before the next debate by Democratic… Read More ›

• Insect Conversations by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on September 1, 2019 • ( 20 )

  

  “She’s doing it again,” Mrs. Cockroach is saying to her friend Old Mrs. Spider. “You know? The giant? She’s been blowing on me and telling me to live somewhere else. Like, I’d leave a good home?”        … Read More ›

• Eye of Newt, a Binding Spell by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on August 4, 2019 • ( 8 )

  

  I first wrote this spell in 1994 when a certain Member of Congress from Marietta, Georgia, took out his Contract On America. I sent the spell out on the internet and know that it was used. I rewrote it to… Read More ›

• My Near-Death Experience, Or How I Met the Goddess Face to Face By Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on July 7, 2019 • ( 29 )

  

  Oh boy oh boy oh boy—another June 17 has passed (I’m writing this on June 18) and I’m still here. Every year, this is my day to be careful. And to keep breathing. I have two specific associations with June… Read More ›

• Outtadeway-O: A Found Goddess of Public Transportation (well, you asked for Her last month) by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on June 2, 2019 • ( 7 )

  

  Tall, hearty. sometimes pushy, and usually very loud, Outtadeway-O is easily able to propagate and multiply Herself so that we can find Her in crowded airport terminals, at bus and subway stops, and just about anywhere people are traveling from… Read More ›

• The Highly-Effective, Never-Fail, Magical Parking Space Word by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on May 5, 2019 • ( 16 )

  

  “In the beginning was the Word.” Yes, we’ve all read that. Although I’m not sure precisely what that Word was—does anybody know?—I’m pretty sure that Word started the process of creation. It was an active Word. A powerful Word. A… Read More ›

• Happy Birthday, Dear Brother by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on April 7, 2019 • ( 15 )

  

  Today would be my brother Dale’s 75th birthday. To honor him, I’m rewriting an article I wrote for a business magazine in Orange Co., CA, in 1992. Although I was a regular columnist for that business magazine, I seldom wrote… Read More ›

• Practical Lessons in Kindness from the Grasshopper and the Ant (With apologies to Jean de La Fontaine for significant changes to his fable) by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on March 3, 2019 • ( 12 )

  

  Note: This story was originally posted early in 2016. I’m posting it again because, thanks to the state of UNkindness the Abuser-in-chief has pasted all over the semi-civilized Semi-United States, we need lessons in kindness more than ever before. I… Read More ›

• Seeking Enlightenment? Let’s Try Endarkenment by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on February 3, 2019 • ( 16 )

  

  In the version of the calendar I follow, February 1 is the true beginning of spring. That’s because early February is when we can see the light coming back. We know spring is really coming. February opens with a holiday/holy… Read More ›

• 2019: Hopefully a Happier New Year by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on January 6, 2019 • ( 20 )

  

  We’re nearly a week into the new year. I almost wish I were a prophet and could predict with assurance that 2019 will be better than 2018—less filled with hate, name-calling, lies, and all-round trumpery (pun intended: “trumpery” is “worthless… Read More ›

• Celebrating the Winter Solstice by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on December 2, 2018 • ( 15 )

  

  Even though Jesus was born during the reign of Augustus, first Roman emperor, the empire didn’t celebrate that birth until three centuries later when his birth date was moved to mid-winter to match the birth date of the sun god… Read More ›

• When the Gods Retire by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on November 4, 2018 • ( 16 )

  

  Come with me in your imagination to an old land, a Demi-Olympus, a fabled and possibly invented land to the north of Mount Olympus, home and throne of the fabled Olympian gods. It is to this Other Olympus that the… Read More ›

• What to do with Trump? by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on October 7, 2018 • ( 8 )

  

  The United States used to get some respect. But now, except for the most gullible Trumpeters, people all over the world are seeing the damage the Troll-in-Chief is doing to our nation with his narcissism and corruption. What can a… Read More ›

• A Ritual to Bless Our Children by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on September 2, 2018 • ( 14 )

  

  It was maybe twenty-five years ago that I first got addicted to the Sunday morning news/talk shows. I’d turn on the TV at 7 a.m., watch an hour of local news, then Stephanopoulos at 8 a.m., then MSNBC until noon… Read More ›

• Lessons from Candide by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on August 5, 2018 • ( 13 )

  

  Candide, ou l’Optimisme (in English, Candide, or Optimism) is a satirical, picaresque novel published in 1759 by François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, who was possibly the smartest author of the Age of Enlightenment…but he annoyed so many courtiers and… Read More ›

• America’s Two National Goddesses by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on July 1, 2018 • ( 29 )

  

  I bet almost no one knows this secret: the United States is being watched over by two goddesses! One of them stands on top of the Capitol dome in Washington, D.C. The other stands on an island in New York… Read More ›

• Toil and Trouble (Part 4) by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on June 3, 2018 • ( 4 )

  

  Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. When the Amazons land in the capital city, they find themselves standing on the wide lawn in front of the Golden Tower in which El Presidente lives and rules. And look—El Presidente… Read More ›