2026 theme: Magicians Reporting for Duty

Week 3: a response to all the things that are happening in the neighborhood

Beautiful Magicians,

So much has happened in the last seven days, that I had no idea where to start this Notes from the Field. The field is on fire. There’s no pretending anything else. The field is on fire.

It feels like the moment you realize your home is on fire or the hurricane is coming or the waters are rising or the bad guys are pounding down the door, and you have to grab something as you flee. What do you save?

Or rather, what do we, the magicians reporting for duty save?

All week, Cathy Stevens Pratt and I have tried to get our heads around what to say to the members of the six ART intensives who will be gathering this afternoon to hear what we have begun to perceive about the seventh and final witchart gift of Dragon. Creating all the ART intensives has been a profound mystical experience requiring that we enter the morphic memory field to listen, deeply listen, to the ancestors as they help us remember who they were and who we are.

Since March of 2023, Cathy and I and the hundreds of members of the ART intensives, have walked the ancient 7-circuit labyrinth in a state of discovery. Not learning. That’s too linear, too seeped in the information and history of patriarchy. No, we have walked in a state of discovery. It’s been the richest, most creative, most beautiful and surprising three years of my life. Awakening, remembering and trusting these six witcharts has transformed me.

We did not know when we started three years ago, that we were not just remembering our pre-patriarchal birthright gifts, we were in training. In training for the moment when patriarchy would rear up, pound its chest, open its mouth and spew vomits of hate.

We witches recognize immediately what this is. We remember being harassed, rounded up, silenced, put in prison, and executed. We remember what colonial (aka white christian patriarchal weaponized power) did to women, children, indigenous peoples, Black and brown people, laborers…. And to the land, the water, the air…. And to knowledge, art, truth, justice, law, community….

When we look at Minneapolis, precious Minneapolis, our bodies flinch because our bodies remember.

So last night, as Cathy and I finished our preparations, she asked what I would write about in today’s newsletter. I said, I had no idea. It was all too much. I trusted I’d get instructions in the night as I usually do. But this morning I woke with my legal pad blank.

I made coffee. Wrapped myself in my comfy lap robe and started my fun morning project: the New York Times’ Spelling Bee. After forty-five minutes I still hadn’t found all the words the editor had selected, so I clicked on Community to read other wordies’ hints.

At the very top of the Community, there was a poem from “Peregrine from the rocky shore.” Peregrine often posts poems she writes from the previous days’ words. She also posts analyses of the editor’s selections and even has created a website to hold her contributions: LexiConnexxions. I always stop and read her posts. Today’s poem left me in tears. I knew immediately that this was the perfect Notes from the Field for this frightening moment.

With permission, here is her poem inspired by words in the Spelling Bee from January 16. She asked that it be reprinted in this exact form.

When in the Course of Human Events

Things are happening in the neighborhood

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood

The intent seems malefic

We hold these truths to be self-evident

A beautiful day for a neighbor

It's all becoming too facile

Cafes are closed

That all men are created equal

I have always wanted to have a neighbor like you

Leave camellias roses lilies where she fell

Please won't you be my neighbor?

We are advised to stay calm

Certain unalienable Rights

So let's make the most of this beautiful day

Mace and tear gas to the faces of children

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

In cells in detention centers

I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you

Facial recognition is in effect

That to secure these rights

That are so easily effaced

Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers

Malice aforethought and

Bruises: lilac, ebon, sickly yellow green

Would you be mine? Could you be mine?

From the consent of the governed

O people do not be mice

So let's make the most of this beautiful day

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends

Since we're together we might as well say

It is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government

Won't you please, won't you please?
This feels like a poem, a song, a march for magicians reporting for duty. We have to see and hold all the disparate parts. The intent of the Declaration (and yes I know it was written by an enslaver), the Nazification of our government, and the gentle song of Fred Rogers who reminded us to find the helpers. But guess what, we are the helpers. Life is fragile, handle with reverence

Janet

Here's Fred Roger's song

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