Marie Cartier – Page 2 – Feminism and Religion

Long Live Queer Nightlife! by Amin Ghaziani – Book Review by Marie Cartier

I was invited to be on a panel for the Pacific Sociological Association (PSA) in San Francisco this past March for a new book by Amin Ghaziani, Long Live Queer Night life (Princeton University Press, 2024).

Since I wrote Baby, You Are My Religion – Women, Gay Bars, and Theology Before Stonewall and have discussed aspects of this work here I thought the FAR family would also enjoy this conversation on where queer nightlife is now.

The book is interspersed with visits to club nights, something Ghaziani says helps widen the possibilities for communities—different communities can have their own nights and these chapters where he visits these various hot spots are exciting and first person.

“Not Like Us” by Marie Cartier

I walk my dog at night—usually after midnight I walk in my neighborhood with my dog, Zuma, a dead ringer for Toto from the Wizard of Oz. We are both quiet. I have a small flask of chardonnay I keep in my breast pocket. I might photograph the moon. I might do Wordle and send my result to my wife. Answer a few emails, but I don’t stay on the phone.

I say my “gratitudes” out loud – at least ten of them before I even look at my phone…I say, “I’m grateful for…” (fill in the blank)—the fact that my truck has a moon roof, and I opened it on the way home; My wife is cooking chicken soup; I saw a former student at the coffee shop; I wrote the web footnotes to chapter 12 of the 2^nd ed. of my book; due to the publisher this spring – these are all real gratitudes I said out loud yesterday.

Oh, California, My California by Marie Cartier

Marie in the Pacific Palisades, circa 2000

This is my home—California…I moved here from New Hampshire, Boston, upstate New York, Ohio, Colorado…why did I move here? I kept moving West…I used to say I came as far as I could without falling into the ocean.

California. My wife is a native Californian. She says people come here for “the California promise.” And we’ll say it often –what is that? Oh yes, the California promise. The sunset drops into the ocean. A true orange ball of spreading colors into pinks, reds…and then it slips into the ocean.

I take my dog Zuma, named after a California beach…to Huntington Dog Beach where she can run two miles before she even has to turn around. A life “other dogs just dream about” says travel mags. I make a wish on every sunset I see that slides into the Pacific. Past the edge of my world into the deep ocean…A moon will rise. A waxing gibbous, a full, a waning gibbous, a new, a dark, a crescent…and I will walk under those, too, and make wishes, too.

From the Archives: There Is No Santa-The Antlered Flying Goddess With Gifts by Marie Cartier

Moderator’s note: This marvelous FAR site has been running for 10 years and has had more than 3,600 posts in that time. There are so many treasures that have been posted in this decade that they tend to get lost in the archives. We have created this column so that we can all revisit some of these gems. Today’s blogpost was originally posted December 25, 2015. You can visit it here to see the original comments.

*Marie bringing in Elen of the Ways*
*photo by Tony Mierzwicki*

One of my colleagues at Feminism and Religion recently wrote of Xmas and Feminine Wisdom. My blog, for Christmas Day continues this exploration.

Elen of the Ways is a figure primarily studied by scholar, Carolyn Wise. She wrote two core articles available on the web here and here. Wise writes that in order to “track” and find Elen of the Ways she had to peel back the layers:

…to the earliest track ways, the migratory tracks of the Reindeer and Elk. Elen moves across vast tracts of time, and land, cloaked and masked appropriately for each age.

From the Archives: America, The Beautiful by Marie Cartier

This was originally posted August, 2018

There is a very white woman in a Lexus.
I could say her license plate number, but does it matter?
She’s that woman you’ve heard about—yelling at a brown woman
holding a sign, “I’ve lost my job. I have two kids. Help.”

The white woman leans out of her Lexus, “Go away! Go away!”
She will not move as other cars pile up behind her and the brown woman
does not “go away.” Where could she go at this point?
She’s surrounded. I watch from my car as I’m about to leave. I
take the yelling white woman’s picture. I get her license plate number. Continue reading “From the Archives: America, The Beautiful by Marie Cartier”

An Incantation for 2024, USA by Marie Cartier

-please repeat and/or use in ritual, if needed

There was a time (there was a time)

We were waiting for something (we were waiting for something)

We were wanting something (we were wanting something)

We needed it to be different (we needed it to be different)

We were. We are. We are here: this is it.

We want something. We want something. We need something. We need something.

There was a time when we could make something happen.