My Grandmother’s Blanket
I’m not sure why we called it a blanket, it was a rug. An enormous, once-beautiful piece of hand woven Native American textile. Although faded and sta
Dinosaur Buddha
I knew my neighbors lived in a very different world than I did from the day they moved in across the street from me. I was working out in the wood yar
The Amazing Popiel Pocket Fisherman
“My goal in life,” I crowed, “is for it to be okay if I’m reincarnated as any of the animals I encounter during this lifetime, including those I rely
To Travel Well, Travel Light
An Adventure Memoir of Living Abroad and Letting Go of Life’s Trappings: Material Possessions, Cultural Blinders, and a Patriarchal Christian Worldview. By Mary Coday Edwards
A book review by Terryl Warnock.
“Christian Feminist” had long been a perplexing term for this non-Christian feminist, rather like a mathematical equation in which complex terms on bot
Element of Balance – Ostara 02025
A pagan contemplation of equilbrium at the Vernal Equinox.
By Terryl Warnock
Balance is fluid.
Energetic,
adventurous,
and dynamic.
Balance descends,
like a skier playing with gravity.
Element of Earth.
Balance soars,
like a musician ascending octaves.
Element of Air.
Balance shimmers,
like a sunbeam toying with leaves.
Element of Fire.
Balance ripples,
like a dolphin frolicking with waves.
Element of Water.
I played, and soared, and frolicked, and shimmered.
And, at that fleeting moment of equality that is Ostara,
prayed for balance I could be still in.
A balance that was not my nature.
Ancient wisdom cautions that we take care what we pray for.
Now I am dragged behind long years.
My prayers have been answered,
the stillness I once prayed for
is imposed upon me now.
From the wreckage of this wake I look back
and yearn for the playful, the musical, the ascending,the shimmering, and the frolicking.
The balance of stillness may be peaceful,
it can also ossify and become brittle.
Element of Earth.
The balance of stillness may be quiet,
it can also blow away on a breeze like dust.
Element of Air.
The balance of stillness may be warm,
it can also burn down and smolder to ash.
Element of Fire.
The balance of stillness may be smooth, like a glassy pool,
it can also stagnate and choke with decay.
Element of Water.
Balance is a meditation,
Solid, unmoving, and static.
May take itself too seriously,
stuck reflecting on what has been lost.
Ostara is the pagan celebration of the Vernal (Spring) Equinox, one of only two days out of the three hundred and sixty-five when daylight and night are perfectly equal. As spring marches on, days will become longer and nights shorter until the cycle turns around at the Summer Solstice and starts back.
We wish you all the blessings of the season, and pray that you are gaining in strength as well. May you find your way to a happy, healthy balance.
Follow Terryl's work and give her feedback on:
| Mastodon | https://mastodon.sdf.org/@wordsbyterryl |
| mailto:moonlitpress@proton.me |
Gratitude list:
| Graphic design by AJ Brown | https://mastodon.sdf.org/@mral |
| Phptography by AJ Brown | https://mastodon.sdf.org/@mral |
Terryl is grateful always to the Life in Pieces writing circle for their invaluable feedback on an earlier version of this piece. She is also grateful beyond words to the spiral of time and the long, wonderful years she has lived. She has been taught at last what true balance is in her own life and on her own journey.
AL(not AI) and Terryl are both very grateful, always, to the people who read our work. You are what makes all this worthwhile.
Terryl Warnock is an eccentric with a happy heart who lives on the outskirts of town with her cat. She is known as an essayist, proof reader, editor, maker of soap, and proud pagan. A lifetime student, she has pursued science, religion, and sustainable communities. This, plus life experience from the local community service to ski instructor, from forest service worker to DMV supervisor, from hospitality to business owner gives her a broad view on the world.
Terryl is the author of:The Miracle du jour, ISBN-10: 0989469859, ISBN-13 : 978-0-9894698-5-2
AJ Brown, in a past life, was an embedded systems engineer (digital design engineer). He worked on new product designs from hard disk controllers, communication protocols, and link encryptors to battery monitors for electric cars.
A few years ago he surrendered his spot on the freeway to someone else. Now he is more interested in sailing, building out his live-in bus for travel, and supporting the idea of full-circle food: the propagation, growth, harvest, storage, preparation, and preservation of healthy sustenance. He is a strong supporter of Free/Libre Open Source Software[F/LOSS] and is willing to help most anyone in their quest to use it.
Together, we are MoonLit Press.
The Prophet
The serious face in the mirror of the employee bathroom didn’t look all that bad, I decided, except for the red, puffy eyes. My hope was that this com
An Imbolc Invocation
Me and My Shepherd
The patriarchal smackdown of women who dared might have been a tired old story for other women, even then, but it was new to me. The story of women wh
Poetry by Jurell Cloward
MoonLit welcomes you back from a nice, long holiday break with the first of what we hope will be many Guest Stars. One of the principles MoonLit Press was founded on is service to the writing community. We are very happy to welcome the poet Jurell Cloward to the MoonLit family,
Graphviz Notes
updated: 2025-01-20 pro-tips for general users
Graphviz is a package for drawing diagrams. Its big claim to fame is the automatic layout of nodes and edges. Graphviz main tool is dot;Dot is a language for describing graphs. The “dot” compiler will process the graph description into many different image formats (.svg, .pdf, .png, etc). Graphviz is not a WYSIWYG graphic editor. For that see “inkscape” or “dia”.
Documentation
The dot language documentation is at https://graphviz.org/documentation/
Factlets
- When adding a color to a node, it is required to specify the style as filled in addition to specifying the fillcolor.
{
node [shape=note, fillcolor=green, style=filled]
body ;
}
Terryl Warnock is an eccentric with a happy heart who lives on the outskirts of town with her cat. She is known as an essayist, proof reader, editor, maker of soap, and proud pagan. A lifetime student, she has pursued science, religion, and sustainable communities. This, plus life experience from the local community service to ski instructor, from forest service worker to DMV supervisor, from hospitality to business owner gives her a broad view on the world.
Terryl is the author of:The Miracle du jour, ISBN-10: 0989469859, ISBN-13 : 978-0-9894698-5-2
AJ Brown, in a past life, was an embedded systems engineer (digital design engineer). He worked on new product designs from hard disk controllers, communication protocols, and link encryptors to battery monitors for electric cars.
A few years ago he surrendered his spot on the freeway to someone else. Now he is more interested in sailing, building out his live-in bus for travel, and supporting the idea of full-circle food: the propagation, growth, harvest, storage, preparation, and preservation of healthy sustenance. He is a strong supporter of Free/Libre Open Source Software[F/LOSS] and is willing to help most anyone in their quest to use it.
Together, we are MoonLit Press.