ASTEROID GODDESSES

Hi again Rad,

Great to have the opportunity to continue the asteroid Goddesses thread here.

There are three of the most recent charts published I would like to mention and thank you for your reference. The first is Robina Courtin, a Buddhist nun. This is a soul who truly embodies the practical wisdom of Jupiter in Virgo and I would encourage enveryone to check her short videos on exactly this subjects, every single one is a gift of wisdom. Here is a link to her YouTube and social media (her chart is on page 40 of the thread on the MB) https://www.youtube.com/@RobinaCourtinYouTube/shorts

https://www.instagram.com/robinacourtin/

The other is Camille Herron (MB page 41), ultrarunner champion and personally a soul that makes my soul smile with joy. She is indeed an Amazon example of our times and of course she has Amazon south node conjunct her mars south node and natal Uranus in Sag.

She has a very interesting talk where she blends personal strength with her feminine nature talking about the importance of menstrual health and having run an ultramarathon on day one of her period (and finishing it!)

Here is a link for those who wish to listen

https://womensrunningstories.com/camille-herron-menstrual-health-and-running-western-states-on-day-one-of-her-period

The other is of course Mahsa Amini. What more could be a chant of Lilith if not "Women, Life, Freedom"?

This courageous woman with Pluto new phase mars, nn Lilith balsamic to Pluto, in Sag. will forever be the face of women's resistance in Iran (and with the nn Lilith pluto mars she will be again here for the cause for sure) and with her sun virgo ruling the moon's north node venus and ceres, relative to a pisces Moon/Lilith, a true martyr for the cause. I feel she has been there through this trauma for time and time again with the Uranus south node conjunction in Aquarius, Neptune in Aquarius.

May Goddess bless her soul and all the souls of women and men who keep fighting their regime repression.

Helena

Astrodata Bank lists two birthtimes for Taylor Swift:

Dec 13 1989, 5:17 am, Reading, Pa,(Rodden rating: DD)

and

Dec 13 1989, 8:36 am, Wyomissing, PA

So are first post here will be the chart of Taylor Swift. Below is her chart with a recent article about her, and a link to wikipedia that has the full documentation of her life to date.

**************

Taylor Swift becomes first musician to claim entire Top 10 on Billboard Hot 100 Singer has surpassed Drake, who had held the previous record with nine of the top songs for a week last year Associated Press Taylor Swift scored a 10 out of 10 to become the first artist in history to claim the Top 10 slots on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the US, with tracks from her latest album, Midnights. Billboard reported on Monday that Swift has surpassed Drake, who had held the previous record with nine of the Top 10 songs for a week in September 2021. "10 out of 10 of the Hot 100??? On my 10th album??? I AM IN SHAMBLES," the 32-year-old pop star tweeted. The new album came out on 21 October with both a 13-track standard release and a deluxe version with seven bonus tracks. It has had one of the biggest album launches in nearly seven years. Billboard also reported that Swift now ties with Barbra Streisand for the female artist with the most No 1 albums. The No 1 spot on the Billboard chart belongs to Anti-Hero, whose lyrics "It's me/hi/I'm the problem/It's me" have quickly become a TikTok trend. The other Top 10 songs include Lavender Haze, Maroon, Snow on the Beach, Midnight Rain, Bejeweled and Question ... ? Swift has set a number of new records with Midnights: it had the biggest first week of sales of any album this year, almost doubling the numbers of the previous title-holder, Harry's House, the third solo album by Harry Styles. Midnights also had the highest first-week streams of the year: 72.5m, again beating Styles' figures of 53.9m. On the day of its release, Midnights broke global Spotify records for the most streams of a single album in one day. Swift has also overtaken Madonna to set a new all-time UK chart record for the fastest succession of nine UK No 1 albums of any female artist – although Madonna still has the record for the most UK No 1 albums of any solo female artist, with 12 overall. Swift is now second in that list, pushing Kylie Minogue into third place. But despite her success in the UK she won't be able to replicate her domination of the Billboard Hot 100: after 16 of the 17 songs on Ed Sheeran's 2017 album, ÷, charted in the Top 20, rules were introduced that mean that only the three most popular songs of any album are now eligible for the UK's singles chart. More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Swift ********

In the original thread we focused on the asteroids Lilith and Amazon which for her are listed below. But there are also other asteroids of course that correlate to the Goddess archetype such as Ceres for example. So please feel free to ask any questions you may have, or to comment on what you may see in any chart that we post going forwards from here. Her natal Lilith is 22 Sagittarius, N.Node 21 Sagittarius, S.Node 21 Gemini. Her natal Amazon is 5 Capricorn, N.Node 10 Taurus, and the S.Node 29 Scorpio. Goddess Bless, Rad

Here is the natal chart for Taylor which is based on her actual birth time.

Hi All,

Here is the story of the now 15yr old Palestinian girl Janna Jihad who started becoming a journalist at 11 years old in order to document the reality of the Palestinian people. I am posting an interview with her when she was 13 yrs old, but also posting links to other articles about her at different ages, and a video link as well. This a noon chart.

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Meet Janna Jihad, the 13-Year-Old Palestinian Journalist Exposing the Israeli Occupation

Web ExclusiveAugust 08, 2019

“My camera is my weapon.” Those are the words of a celebrated Palestinian journalist who has been reporting on the Israeli occupation from the West Bank for more than six years. But Janna Jihad isn’t any journalist — she’s just 13 years old. She started telling stories about her home of Nabi Saleh when she was only 7, after her cousin and uncle were killed in her village. She recently joined us in our New York studio.

“I always say that my camera is my weapon of choice, because using my camera, it’s a very peaceful and nice way to resist this occupation,” she says. “By using my camera, I can send a message, and it can be even more effective than a gun, more effective than violence, more effective than killing people.”

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. “My camera is my gun.” Those are the words of a celebrated Palestinian journalist who’s been reporting on the Israeli occupation from the West Bank for more than six years. But Janna Jihad isn’t any journalist. She’s just 13 years old. She started telling stories about her home of Nabi Saleh when she was only 7, after her cousin and her uncle were killed in the village. Since then, Janna has shared countless videos about Palestinian resistance with viewers around the world, on Twitter, on YouTube, on Facebook, garnering tens of thousands of followers. This is a clip of Janna Jihad confronting Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank last year, in 2018.

JANNA JIHAD: From here, as you can see, those terrorist people, humans with no humanity, are coming to our land, trying to kill children and to make children get injured. From here, we’re sending our message and saying that Palestine will be free. From Nabi Saleh, Janna Jihad, occupied Palestine.

AMY GOODMAN: You hear that sign-off: “From Nabi Saleh, this is Janna Jihad, in occupied Palestine.” Janna is the cousin of Ahed Tamimi, the teenage activist who became a heroine to Palestinians after a viral video showed her slapping an Israeli soldier near her family’s home in the occupied West Bank. It was right after she had learned her cousin had been shot in the face by an Israeli soldier.

Janna Jihad is in the United States this month to share her stories about Palestine around the country. She joins us now in our New York studio.

Janna, thanks for making this stop.

JANNA JIHAD: Thank you. Thank you for, like, letting me come here and just, like, to speak more about my issue and, like, about my message as a Palestinian child.

AMY GOODMAN: So, when did you pick up your cellphone to start videoing? And was it your cellphone?

JANNA JIHAD: So, it was my mother’s cellphone. I was only 7 years old when I started doing journalism. It was when I saw that there were not enough journalists to cover things that happened in my village, Nabi Saleh, and also in Palestine in general. Like, when my friend Mustafa was killed, my uncle Rushdie was killed, a lot of things were happening, and the world didn’t know about how we, as Palestinian children living under this Israeli military occupation, are living, how we’re suffering, how we’re — like, how our rights are getting violated, our childhood is not given to us. So I wanted to be the voice of those children and to just be the messenger of their message, which is very important, and to raise awareness about this very important international issue.

AMY GOODMAN: So, at 7 years old, you take your mom’s cellphone, and you start videoing.

JANNA JIHAD: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: And posting those videos.

JANNA JIHAD: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: You say your camera is your gun. What do you mean?

JANNA JIHAD: So, I always say that my camera is my weapon of choice, because using my camera, it’s a very peaceful and nice way to resist this occupation. And by using my camera, I can send a message, and it can be even more effective than a gun, more effective than violence, more effective than killing people.

AMY GOODMAN: How do Israeli soldiers respond to your videoing?

JANNA JIHAD: Of course, it’s pretty hard. Like, for example, last year I got — the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Thoughts made a secret report about me, saying that I’m the next threat on their country.

AMY GOODMAN: Wait, wait, wait. You have to repeat what you just said.

JANNA JIHAD: OK.

AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli Ministry of?

JANNA JIHAD: Of Strategic Thoughts.

AMY GOODMAN: How do you know about this report on you?

JANNA JIHAD: OK, I’ll explain. So, the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Thoughts made a secret report about me, saying that I’m the next threat on their state. And this report was revealed by the Israeli fourth news channel. And after that, I got a lot of threats, intimidations by the Israeli street. And after that, I got registered by the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate. And, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you are the youngest press card-carrying journalist in the world. You just turned 13.

JANNA JIHAD: Thirteen, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: What does that mean? How does that protect you to have that press card?

JANNA JIHAD: So, I’m the youngest Palestinian registered press card-carrying journalist in the world. So, I got registered after this report was revealed. And it was also right after I was stopped on the border. I was only 12 years old and four days, when I was stopped while coming back from Jordan on the Israeli border, and was interrogated for three hours. And it was, of course, illegal, because, like, if a minor got interrogated, in the international law, I have to have my parent or a lawyer, and I didn’t have any of those. And it was pretty hard for me. And after that, I got registered, which would be like a bit of protection, although it’s not really protection, because all of the journalists get killed, arrested and injured in the occupied Palestine. But it helps a little bit, you know? Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to your cousin, Ahed, for a moment, Ahed Tamimi, the young Palestinian activist who served an eight-month term in Israeli prison. She became a heroine to so many Palestinians and many others around the world, when video went viral showing her slapping an Israeli soldier near the family’s home just after Ahed had learned her cousin had been gravely wounded by an Israeli soldier, who shot him in the head using a rubber-coated steel bullet. We got a chance to speak with Ahed soon after she was released from prison, and we asked her about the conditions in the jail.

AHED TAMIMI: [translated] There were women, and there were children. There was one woman who had been detained under administrative detention. Administrative detention means the detention is based on undisclosed files, so the detainee doesn’t know why they’re detained. Administrative detainees only attend administrative courts, and their sentence is always extended. At first, it might be six months, but it’ll be renewed another time for four months. They’ll tell you your administrative detention is six months, but then, after six months, they’ll tell you they’ve extended another four. After four months, they’ll tell you another six. It’s like the prisoner — may God rest his soul — Ali Jamal, who spent seven consecutive years under administrative detention.

There are over 350 children in prison, and three children who are under administrative detention. The conditions children endure in prison are very difficult. Prison isn’t for anyone. And the prison administration puts a lot of pressure on them, so it’s very difficult. I hope for the release of all prisoners, and especially children, as soon as possible.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that is Ahed Tamimi. We were speaking to her in front of her house. She was broadcasting from there to our New York studio, where I got a chance to interview her. She is 18 years old. She was jailed when she was 16, turned 17 in prison. What has Ahed’s activism meant to you? Tell us about Nabi Saleh, where you all live.

JANNA JIHAD: So, Nabi Saleh is a very small village, 500 people living there. It’s like so small. Also, we have an Israeli illegal settlement built on the land in Nabi Saleh, which is only 50 meters far from the village. And there is a checkpoint on the entrance. It’s very small. We’re all one family, which is the Tamimi family. Ahed is my cousin and my best friend. She was always. You know, I am the only child, and she has no sister, so we are always together and stuff. And yeah, Ahed is like — we’re really close. We always have been going to demonstrations and marches and like everything together. And it’s pretty nice, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: And what was it like for you when she went to jail? She went to jail for slapping an Israeli soldier. So, she had just learned that your cousin, her cousin, had just been shot in the head by a rubber-tipped steel coated bullet?

JANNA JIHAD: Yeah. So, if you want, I can tell you Mohammed’s story, which is our cousin who got shot in the head, which was — he was just like literally playing. The soldiers were in the village for a couple of — for the past couple of days. And they were just shooting gas canisters randomly. There were no demonstrations, no clashes, no anything. It was just them raiding the village. And it was like right after Trump’s declaration that Jerusalem was the capital of Israel, and a lot of stuff, like, were happening in the West Bank and, you know, like a lot of demonstrations and stuff. And it was that time.

So, Mohammed was playing with his friends, soccer, on the mountain. And he was just — so, like, you know, shooting, it’s pretty normal for us, and we would play outside, because, like, you know, it’s always happening.

AMY GOODMAN: What’s always happening?

JANNA JIHAD: When, like, the Israeli occupation forces would just like start shooting gas canisters randomly. And then, suddenly, that shooting stopped. So, Mohammed thought that somebody got arrested or somebody got injured. So he was right next to that wall. It’s not a separation well, but it’s a normal wall. And he had a ladder. So he just climbed that ladder and wanted to see if something happened. And in the same moment, he climbed that ladder and just like took a look. The Israeli military soldiers were right under the wall. And one of them just shot him with a rubber-coated bullet, which came right here, right next to his nose, and was stuck in his brain. And he was in a coma for seven days. He lost a whole one-third of his skull. And he was under treatment. He had got arrested even three times while he was treated.

And after that — so, the problem about the world is that they only see the slap, but they don’t see the whole story. So, after that, the same soldiers just came right next to Ahed’s house and wanted to enter, because Ahed’s house is in a, like, pretty high area, so they can pretty much see everyone. They wanted to go to the roof of Ahed’s house and just like shoot.

AMY GOODMAN: Of Ahed.

JANNA JIHAD: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Who, at the time, was 16.

JANNA JIHAD: Yeah. They wanted to go to her house, to her properties, and start shooting more children. And Ahed was pretty much — she didn’t want them to go into her house, pretty much. And then he started pushing her, and then she slapped him. And that’s why she got arrested for eight months.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, you’re sitting here telling us this story. You’re telling us a story of when you were like, what, 10, 11 years old. Your cousin is shot in the face, is shot in the head, and now he’s lost a third of his brain or his skull in the process. How does this affect you as a child? How do you process this?

JANNA JIHAD: So, of course, a lot of difficult stuff for us as children living under this occupation happens. Like, for example, I saw a lot of people in my life getting killed in front of me. I was trying to — you know, we all — like, we get traumatized. We’re humans. You know, it’s pretty hard for us to process all of that. But we always believe that we want freedom, and wanting freedom is not easy. We have to pay the price of freedom. And the price of freedom won’t be that cheap. It’s going to be pretty expensive. A lot of people are going to get killed. A lot of people are going to get arrested. A lot of people are going to, like, get injured. But our main goal is to liberate Palestine, to live in freedom, love, peace and equality and justice, like any other human and child deserves to live.

AMY GOODMAN: You recently put out on Facebook the story of Mahmoud Salah.

JANNA JIHAD: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Who you say was shot in the leg by an Israeli sniper.

JANNA JIHAD: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us what happened to him. What were the circumstances, and what has since happened?

JANNA JIHAD: So, Mahmoud Salah is a child from the village of al-Khader, next to the city of Bethlehem. So, Mahmoud Salah, he was playing after Iftar in Ramadan with his friends. He was playing soccer in the street. And his house is like basically right next to the separation wall. So, he was playing soccer, and then the soccer ball just went right next to the wall, so he went there to fetch it.

And then those Israeli soldiers in the tower shot him with a live munition, for basically no reason, in the leg. And his friends were trying to go help him, but those soldiers were faster than his friends, surrounded him. And they were shooting at his friends and didn’t allow anybody to come close to him — his family, his mom, his dad or anyone.

So they arrested his body. He fainted. He wasn’t even knowing what’s happening around him. And then, like, they didn’t inform the family about anything. After two days, they didn’t know anything about him, where was he, what happened to him. But he was at — he woke up, after two days, in an Israeli military hospital. And he had his leg cut off.

AMY GOODMAN: His leg was amputated.

JANNA JIHAD: Yeah, his leg was — like, he lost his leg, basically. And, like, none of his family was informed. And right now he’s under arrest even, for no reason, no charges. And —

AMY GOODMAN: How old is he?

JANNA JIHAD: He’s only — I think he’s only 14 years old, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: So, how do you cover these stories? Like, you don’t tweet. You’re on Facebook. What exactly do you do with your phone?

JANNA JIHAD: So, I usually try to, you know, cover whatever happens, like, for example, night raids, raids that are happening, when I’m coming back from my school on checkpoints. So, I usually even — like, usually go on live videos, because if I didn’t, if I was usually recording, they would just try to take my phone and try to break it or delete the videos off of it. So I always try to make my reports and just speak of what’s happening right in front of me, and then post it on my Facebook page. I have, like, right now about 300,000 followers. And, yeah.

Meet Janna Jihad, the 13-Year-Old Palestinian Journalist Exposing the Israeli Occupation

AMY GOODMAN: How often do you get to go to school? How often are schools closed in Nabi Saleh?

JANNA JIHAD: So, basically, our freedom of movement is violated. So, we have — me going to my school as a student is a struggle, because I face three checkpoints in my way. And those Israeli checkpoints are basically not checkpoints, but are barriers that block the street and close the whole street. And we cannot get anywhere because of those. So, usually, instead of me like reaching my school in about 25 to 30 minutes, I have to go to another way that takes me about two hours and a half to three hours to reach my school.

And it’s not only me that is getting affected. For example, my grandma started doing kidney dialysis two years ago because of how much tear gas she used to inhale, because, like, they shoot randomly at houses, at people. And, like, she has to go to the hospital three days a week, and sometimes she can’t. A lot of pregnant women gave birth to children in the car on those checkpoints. A lot of patients cannot go to the hospitals. Workers cannot go to their works. And it’s pretty hard, because we cannot go to the places we need to be at, at time. And it’s pretty — it’s a violation of our human rights.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you see as the solution for what is happening in the Occupied Territories and Israel?

JANNA JIHAD: OK, yeah. So, that’s a good question. We have the two-state solution, and we have the one-state solution. So, let’s start with the two-state solution. The two-state solution is basically dead, because, as a question, where are the borders of Israel? It was supposed to be the West Bank and Gaza for the Palestinians. But 68% of the West Bank is basically illegal settlements. And it’s pretty — it’s pretty much dead. And even like Israel doesn’t want it and is not working on it at all. Even, like, they signed on it, but it’s pretty much bad.

And then we have the one-state solution. For me, the one-state solution is the solution that would work. It can be that all of us could live together, same rights, under one government, getting exactly the same rights, me like the same as any other person. And all the refugees could come back to Palestine. All the people could live in peace, just in equality. And I have no problem with living with anybody, but a person that has — like, I would live with anybody that has a good mind, that they want peace and love and equality. And we have basically no problem. Like, welcome to our land, if you believe in peace, because it’s a land of peace, that never saw peace before. So, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you have a particular message for Israeli children?

JANNA JIHAD: So, Israeli children, I believe — we’re not the only victims, but we are freedom fighters as Palestinian children. But the Israeli children are, for me, a victim for the occupation. Because why would an 11-years-old child be holding a weapon that is even taller than him, and walking with it in the street? Why would they —

AMY GOODMAN: Have you seen that?

JANNA JIHAD: I’ve seen it. And I’ve seen children having —

AMY GOODMAN: You mean you’ve seen a settler child.

JANNA JIHAD: Uh-huh, a settler child in even like Jerusalem and anywhere we would go, like the children would be holding guns and like holding weapons. And why would a child hold that? Why would a child be raised on that mindset of killing people and on that like mindset of Zionism and really bad stuff, that we don’t want any child in this world to be raised on?

So, my message to the Israeli children is that we are all children, and we are all victims of that occupation. So, we have to stand up [to] the occupation. And, you know, the problem, I was debating that yesterday, that, like, the problem the Israeli youth are that, like, they’re going more to the right side of the government and stuff, and they’re more like a 17-years-old child would just like go and serve in the IDF. They’re supposed to go when they’re 17 years old. And it’s pretty bad, you know? And I believe that we all, children around this world, have to all unite to make this world a world of peace, love and equality and justice, because we’re the leaders of the future, and we’re the leaders of today, and we have to make a difference. We don’t have to just like repeat the mistakes of the adults right now, where they’re all separated and where, like, they’re all divided. And they just — like, we all want to live in peace. And we’re just tired of all of that, that’s happening around us.

AMY GOODMAN: Would you say that’s your message to children of the world, overall?

JANNA JIHAD: Yeah, that’s my message to all the children around the world, because we can make a difference, and we have to.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you so much for being with us. Janna Jihad just turned 13 years old. She is a Palestinian journalist, one of the youngest journalists, card-carrying journalists, in the world. She lives in Nabil Saleh in the occupied West Bank. And she is the cousin of Ahed Tamimi, who was considered a heroine to so many around the world, served time in an Israeli prison when she was 16 years old, turned 17 in person. You can go to democracynow.org to see our full interview with Ahed in Nabi Saleh. It’s been so great to have you in our studio.

JANNA JIHAD: Thank you. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Thank you so much, Janna. This is Democracy Now! Thank you very much for joining us.

More:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janna_Jihad

https://thespectator.com/life/meet-janna-jihad-palestines-new-pin-up/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1mMgWji6r4&t=11s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN6XwiIgop8

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Her natal Lilth is 21 Libra, n.Node 9 Capricorn, S.Node 1 Gemini. Her natal Amazon is 14 Scorpio, N.Node 13 Taurus, SNode 5 Sagittarius.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad

HI All,

Here is the story of Charlene Richard who has been called the 'cajun saint'.

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The Miraculous Life and Afterlife of Charlene Richard

She died in 1959, at age 12. But for Catholics in her Louisiana community, that was just the beginning of her incredible story — and a decades-long fight to make her a saint.

By Nathaniel Rich

Dec. 20, 2022

NYT

It took 60 years but a postulator from the Vatican finally came to Richard, a lonesome patch of boggy farmland in southern Louisiana’s rice belt, last December. He arrived at St. Edward Roman Catholic Church, which stands at the closest thing the community has to a town center, cater-corner to Richard Elementary and opposite a pasture more than large enough for its dozen cows. He was greeted by the young parish priest, diocesan officials from Lafayette, a medical examiner, gravediggers, a pair of police officers and several siblings of the Richard family, whose sister he was there to see.

The postulator followed his hosts to the cemetery. Near the end of the first row, past plots of Thibodeaux and Babineux and LeJeunes, lies the raised tomb of Charlene Richard, who died of acute lymphocytic leukemia at age 12 in 1959. Each year as many as 10,000 people visit Charlene. They know her as the Little Cajun Saint, though the Roman Catholic Church has not yet recognized her as one. To accommodate the visitors, St. Edward sets out beside the grave, loosely arranged as if around a campfire, a pair of weather-beaten wooden prie-dieux, an iron garden bench and a tilting patio chair. Behind the tomb stands a discordant mailbox, painted over in black, on which is shakily written in chalk, donations removed daily. A long plastic container atop the tomb is the repository for handwritten prayers. Petitioners leave plastic flowers, votive candles and children’s toys: a Poppity Pop Turtle, a stuffed Elmo.

Everything was cleared for the exhumation. When the gravediggers lifted the eroded marble ledger, they found a simple wooden coffin, nearly covered by water. They hauled in an electric vacuum pump, but it wouldn’t turn on. After some tinkering, it finally hummed to life, spurting the grave water through a hose beyond the cemetery gate. Without great strain the men carried the coffin into the church. They removed the skeleton, laying it on an altar cloth for the medical examiner’s scrutiny. A rosary had been entwined around the finger bones. From the collarbones there hung a plastic sacred heart that, to the observers’ astonishment, had retained its coloration.

The medical examiner snipped off Charlene’s hair and handed a clump to her big brother. The postulator collected Charlene’s fingers for preparation as relics. He ordered the skeleton to be laid into a new steel coffin and returned to the vault, which was resealed with concrete.

The postulator made certain to attend to one final task. He folded the dampened altar cloth and, with great care, sealed it in a Ziploc bag. Before leaving town he would mail it to the president of the Charlene Richard Foundation, an invariably gracious, soft-spoken and patient (but not infinitely so) 68-year-old woman named Bonnie Broussard.

The emissary from Rome would never have come to Richard were it not for the ceaseless efforts of Broussard, who for more than three decades has dedicated her life to making Charlene Richard a saint. Why Broussard has pursued this laborious, expensive and thankless goal with such single-minded determination cannot be grasped from the basic biographical facts of her life. She never met Charlene, is not directly related to her and does not live in Richard. She is a devout believer, but that is unremarkable among the population of Acadiana, the French-speaking region of Louisiana that has one of the highest concentrations of Catholics in the United States.

If Broussard had to isolate a single quality that explains her intense commitment to Charlene Richard, it was her profound, lifelong desire to dedicate herself to a cause greater — nobler, grander, more permanent — than herself. What she could not have imagined, what she did not understand until just this past year, was that she was fighting for something even larger than a sainthood. She was fighting, in her dogged and self-effacing manner, for the soul of the church.

As Broussard approached 30, having yet to meet a partner, she began to suspect her calling in life was to become a nun. “I knew I could not be a single person in the world,” she says today. She was drawn to the local Carmelite monastery, a cloistered community practicing silence, fasting, manual labor and continual prayer. She had been making plans to join the order when her sister surprised her one Friday night by inviting a mechanic, the divorced father of an 11-year-old boy, to their grandmother’s house for gumbo and several rounds of the Cajun card game bourré. Within seven months they were married. “An instant family,” Broussard describes it. And the family instantly grew: They had three more children in the next five years.

During this period, she was dismissed from her job as a religious educator at the Diocese of Lafayette. Broussard had done nothing wrong. The diocese had. In 1985, it agreed to pay $4.2 million to victims of Gilbert Gauthe, a priest from Napoleonville who had admitted to molesting at least 37 children. This was the case that began the global scandal of sexual-abuse allegations against Catholic clergy, a crisis that has become the greatest threat to the church’s legitimacy since Julian the Apostate. After the Gauthe settlements, the diocese laid off much of its staff. Broussard was distraught, and furious. But she soon found a new teaching job at St. Genevieve Catholic Church in Lafayette, which was led by an exuberant, charismatic priest from Philadelphia named Joseph Brennan.

By the mid-1980s Brennan had become a celebrity in Catholic circles. He was a close friend and spiritual adviser to Mother Teresa, who opened a local chapter of her order in Lafayette and, in 1986, led a Mass at the sold-out Cajundome. (Mother Teresa made occasional incognito visits; Brennan would pick her up at the airport in New Orleans and chauffeur her into Lafayette under cover of night.) Brennan had also become a national expert during that decade’s satanic panic, leading workshops sanctioned by the diocese that advised how to detect cults, publishing a book on the subject called “The Kingdom of Darkness.” But locally Brennan was best known for having ministered to Charlene Richard on her deathbed.

Broussard had heard about Charlene since childhood. Despite the church’s reluctance to entertain the possibility of canonization, Charlene had served as Acadiana’s own guardian angel, as firmly entrenched in the cultural firmament as Meche’s King Cakes or the adventures of Bouki and Lapin. Notices regularly appeared in the classified pages expressing gratitude for prayers answered; schools chartered bus tours to her tomb; and prayer cards embossed with her sixth-grade yearbook photo were passed around on occasions of personal tragedy. But it was not until Brennan began telling Broussard about the final days of Charlene’s life that she began to grasp the force of the dead girl’s power.

Charlene Richard was born on Jan. 13, 1947, nearly seven years before Broussard and about 10 miles northwest of Lafayette, in Church Point. She was the second child of Mary Alice and Joseph Elvin Richard, two years younger than her brother John Dale. Eight siblings would follow, half of them after Charlene’s death. Mary Alice was a nurse’s aide for homebound patients; Joseph was a sharecropper and later a dragline operator for the state highway department. The Richard home had a pair of bedrooms, each of which held two large beds. The boys slept in one room, the parents and the girls in the other, the youngest child in a crib. They lacked electricity but kept the house clean and orderly. They drank from a wooden cistern and used two outhouses in the backyard. The children were forced to speak English in school, but they spoke French at home; Charlene’s father never learned English.

In Brennan’s 2009 “My Name Is Charlene,” one of a half dozen books published about the Little Cajun Saint, the priest emphasizes that her childhood was indistinguishable from that of any Cajun farm girl. The Richards attended Mass on Sunday and three other days a week. Sons were altar boys, daughters sang in the choir. The children attended Catholic school until Charlene was in second grade, when they moved three miles away to their grandparents’ property in Richard. (As is obvious to anyone in southern Louisiana, and few outside of it, “Richard” is pronounced “REE-shard.”) The community was named after Charlene’s ancestors who, with the Broussards, were among the first Acadian families to settle in Louisiana.

When the Richards were not in school, and often when they should have been in school, they worked the fields. They grew cotton, corn and sweet potatoes, raised hogs, cattle and sheep and fished for perch in the property’s cypress swamp. Joseph barbecued on a grill he jury-rigged by stretching chicken wire over the drum of a scavenged washing machine. In high summer, the children picked cotton until 2 in the afternoon, when a fluttering towel tied to the porch beam announced that it was time for prayer.

“It was a very simple life,” says Charlene’s older brother, John Dale, today. “We were at peace.”

Charlene was exuberant, loyal, generous. At 12 she stood five feet tall, not counting her bob of brown ringlets. Large dimples popped when she smiled. Girls were devoted to her and boys had crushes on her. She wrote musicals with John Dale, usually assigning him the role of “priest.” She rode horses, danced to Little Richard at sock hops and doted on babies. In fourth grade she won Richard Elementary’s Math Award; in sixth grade she was the captain of the basketball team, which lost only one game. Her mother told a reporter from The Morning Star, the diocesan newspaper, that Charlene “hated to lose.”

By 7, Charlene had memorized the rosary. She recited it nightly before an altar she assembled on her bedside table of a crucifix, an old Bible and a rose that she picked each morning. After a teacher lent her a picture book about St. Therese of Lisieux, “the Little Flower,” who died of tuberculosis at 24, Charlene declared that she wanted to be a saint. “If I pray like St. Therese,” she asked her grandmother, “will it happen?” In early 1959, when her grandmother recovered from gallbladder surgery, Charlene massaged ointment into the incision wounds. It was during the spring of that year that, while playing in the backyard, Charlene saw the lady in black.

The woman — or at least a figure “shaped like a woman,” as Charlene would tell her mother — stood before an oak tree. She was tall and wore a black bonnet that covered her face. Though her eyes were hidden, her stare burned.

“In the name of God,” Charlene screamed, “what do you want?”

The woman flew into the sky. Charlene sprinted back to the house and fell, shaking violently, into her grandmother’s arms.

Charlene had another vision the next evening. She was emptying laundry tubs in the backyard with John Dale. “I see her again,” she said, turning pale.

John Dale couldn’t see anything, but he believed his sister. “Many holy people have been visited by Satan in different forms,” he says, 60 years later. “Was it that? I have no idea.”

Around this time Charlene began to bruise easily and complain of a sore hip. The family doctor suspected growth pains. He prescribed radiation therapy. It didn’t help. Charlene bled from her rectum and suffered nosebleeds so severe that she passed out. After receiving the results of blood tests, the doctor handed Mrs. Richard a sealed envelope, addressed to a specialist at Lafayette’s Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital. “He’s going to explain what needs to be done,” the doctor assured her. John Dale remembers driving in his grandfather’s pickup truck on dirt roads to the city, Charlene on her mother’s lap.

When the specialist finished reading the letter, he called for a chaplain. The priest on duty that day was a young Joseph Brennan, who had been ordained three months earlier. Once Brennan entered, the specialist explained that Charlene’s condition was terminal. “It was pure chance that I was the priest in the room when the news was told to Charlene’s parents,” Brennan writes in his book. “The shock was as expected when her parents were told, ‘Your 12-year-old girl has two weeks to live.’”

The Richards asked Brennan to tell their daughter. “I was numb,” he writes. “We never had training like this in the seminary. What was I going to say? As the elevator reached the fourth floor, I still had no answer, even though I was praying very fervently.”

Brennan met Charlene in Room 411 of Our Lady of Lourdes. “A beautiful lady is going to come to take you home,” he told her.

“When she does,” Charlene replied, “I’ll say, ‘Blessed Mother, Father Brennan says hello.’”

Charlene spent the next 13 days in unthinkable agony. When the pain grew acute, her eyes rolled back in her head but, Brennan writes, she never complained. During their meetings, Brennan introduced her to the Catholic doctrine of redemptive suffering: the yoking of one’s pain to the suffering of Jesus to help others.

There began an informal daily catechism between them. “OK, Father,” Charlene would ask, “who am I to suffer for today?” Brennan proposed a candidate, typically another patient, such as a terminally ill woman who refused to accept her fate. Charlene beseeched God to use her pain for healings.

“Without her witness, and her devotion,” Brennan said later, “her suffering would not have served any purpose.”

On the 12th day, Charlene kissed Brennan and told him that she would be praying for him in heaven.

On the 13th day, Aug. 11, 1959, she died. But as Bonnie Broussard likes to say, that’s just the day that Charlene Richard’s story began.

It was not easy, in 1959, to make a saint. A Cause for Canonization, as a formal candidacy is called, could not even be opened until 50 years after a candidate’s death. The growth of Charlene’s cult coincided, however, with a movement within the Vatican to reform the sainthood process. An Apostolic Constitution issued by Pope John Paul II in 1983 shortened the posthumous waiting period to five years. (John Paul II himself was made a saint in 2014.) The old juridical model, in which a proponent debated a “Devil’s Advocate” on the merits of a cause, was abandoned for a process that more closely resembles the preparation of a doctoral dissertation.

The making of a saint typically begins in the candidate’s diocese. Supporters begin a promotional campaign for an audience of one: their local bishop. They must persuade the bishop that a candidate is not merely virtuous, but heroically so. If successful, the bishop declares the candidate a “Servant of God,” officially opening a Cause for Canonization.

The cause is next taken up by a postulator, a supervisory figure licensed by the Vatican. The postulator acts in the deliberate manner of an appellate lawyer preparing a case for the Supreme Court. His client is not the church but the candidate’s petitioners, who are responsible for his fee and any expenses he incurs. The National Catholic Register has estimated that the cost of preparing a cause for papal review can run more than a quarter-million dollars.

The postulator reviews evidence, witness interviews and supposed miracles. (Catholics believe that a saint in heaven can intercede with God, improving the likelihood that a prayer will elicit a divine favor.) After years or decades, he presents an account of his investigation, the positio, to nine theologians who review the case. With their approval, it advances to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of the Saints, where a body of cardinals and bishops decides whether to submit it to the pope.

Ultimately the pope makes one of four determinations. He can decline to act. He can decree the candidate a “venerable,” affirming a life of heroic virtue. Beyond venerable lies “blessed.” To earn that status, called beatification, it must be proved that the candidate has interceded in the granting of a miracle — an event, typically a healing, unexplainable by science. Beyond beatification lies sainthood.

For all the reams of evidence and historical research and liturgical debate, the saint-making process comes down to the authentication of miracles. A saint must have performed miracles. Two, to be exact.

Over the years Broussard had heard rumors of miracles credited to Charlene. Though Father Brennan did not, for decades, speak publicly about his encounters with Charlene, he did confide in a fellow novitiate, Floyd Calais. Father Calais dreamed of one day becoming a parish priest; two weeks after praying to Charlene, he received an appointment from the bishop to serve as a priest — at Charlene’s own church, St. Edward. Calais, now 96, still gets goosebumps telling the story.

Calais began traveling around Acadiana, telling Charlene’s story to solicit donations for a new church. After he raised the full amount in just two years, he began calling Charlene “my little money girl.” During his term at St. Edward, Calais claims he witnessed Charlene perform countless miracles, including for members of her family. Mary Alice, her mother, prayed to Charlene, asking for another daughter; she became pregnant with twin girls. A former schoolmate of Charlene’s named Lorita introduced Calais to a man she wanted to marry. Calais didn’t approve and prayed to Charlene. Two weeks later, the wedding was off. Six months later, Lorita was married — to John Dale, Charlene’s brother.

Thanks to Calais’s speaking tours, Charlene’s legend grew. In 1989, when Brennan and Calais organized a mass at St. Edward on the 30th anniversary of her death, an estimated 4,000 people came, surely the largest crowd ever to have gathered in Richard. Bonnie Broussard had planned to attend, but she woke up with morning sickness — she was pregnant with her third child — and gave her tickets to her mother. It was the last time she missed Charlene’s anniversary Mass.

The success of the Mass encouraged Steven Vincent, a prosperous oilman from the southern Acadian town of Gueydan, to commit himself to Charlene’s canonization. With his wife, Barbara, he founded the Friends of Charlene to publicize Charlene’s story, raise money and organize gatherings. But he needed an editor for what would become the group’s most critical function: a newsletter that published accounts of answered prayers. Over time, these collected testimonies would fill an archive that could be used to secure Charlene’s canonization — a library of miracles.

When asked by a church colleague to edit the newsletter, Broussard initially declined. She didn’t know the first thing about newsletters, and between her teaching obligations and raising three children under age 5 and a teenage stepson, she had no time. But she could not refuse a call to duty. Within a few weeks, she would conclude that it wasn’t her colleague who called her to Charlene but God.

Working from her kitchen table on a typewriter, Broussard found herself serving as a Miss Lonelyhearts for the cult of Charlene. A couple of dozen letters arrived a month — at first.

I have always had bladder trouble, developing an infection at least once a year. … In February of 1988, my husband and I traveled to Richard, La., to visit the tomb. … From that day on, I have not had any bladder infections. … I now can wear nylon pantyhose … and have a feeling of well being that I have not felt in a very long time.

A woman wrote in 1991 of traveling to Charlene’s tomb from Massachusetts after reading about her in American Airlines’ in-flight magazine; Charlene, she believed, cured her father’s prostate cancer. In the July 1992 newsletter, a correspondent credited Charlene for protecting her father from permanent lung damage after sustained asbestos exposure. In October 1992, Broussard published a letter from a Pine Bluff man who read about Charlene in the Arkansas Catholic:

My wife works at a poultry company in town and developed what the doctor called overused muscles. At that time we did not know what was wrong, because the company could not send her to a doctor and we were bound by an agreement to only use a company doctor. … I promised Charlene if she would help my wife by her prayers, I would write a letter to the Bishop … to speedily grant her sainthood. … there is only one explanation for her muscles to have healed. … Mary is still working, although we are praying for an easier job.

The accounts worked on Broussard. She began to reflect on her own past. In a 1992 editor’s note, she wrote about a health condition that sent her to the emergency room on her 38th birthday. “As I lay on the hospital bed waiting for the doctor to come and take care of me, I could not think of anyone else but MYSELF and MY PAIN. … Looking back on the event, I realized that God had given me the opportunity to experience intense physical suffering and pain just as Charlene must have felt. … Now I really know how special Charlene is and will be able to tell others about a lesson learned in humility and suffering.”

When Radio Shack transferred her sister’s husband, a store manager, to Texas that year, Broussard prayed daily to Charlene to send her sister home. On the eve of their move, Broussard’s brother-in-law was offered the chance to work in Lafayette. “That sealed the deal,” Broussard says. “Charlene was going to be my friend.”

Broussard grew convinced that sainthood was inevitable, though she didn’t know whether it would take decades or centuries. Steven Vincent, the oilman who founded Friends of Charlene, expected that they would not live to see it. Broussard was undeterred. She regularly drove to Richard, where Charlene’s immediate family, her childhood friends, Fathers Brennan and Calais and the local parishioners had become a second family to her. “If you’re an outsider in that community you know it,” Broussard says. “But over the years, I became one of them.” She had found, in the rice fields of Acadiana, her own cloistered community.

Broussard delivered every testimony she received to the diocese. A priest assured her that he would keep them in a special file, though he never failed to point out how each fell short of the church’s rigorous standards for authentication. Discouraged, Broussard stopped sharing the testimonies. But she didn’t dispose of them. She moved in with them. She stored the documents in a filing cabinet and later, when that filled up, in banker’s boxes that she stacked next to her boxes of stationery, prayer cards and prayer cloths. She installed the library of miracles inside her own bedroom, beside her bed.

The reforms of 1983 yielded an unprecedented bonanza of saint-making. During his pontificate, John Paul II recognized 1,338 beatifications and 482 canonizations, almost 15 times as many as the previous record-holder, Pius XII, who died in 1958, and more than the cumulative total of the five previous centuries combined. “We’re becoming a factory,” lamented a historical consultant to the Vatican, in “Making Saints,” Kenneth Woodward’s authoritative account of canonization in the Roman Catholic Church.

But the immoderation was the point. “In the hands of John Paul II,” Woodward writes, “the saint-making process has become a very powerful mechanism for advancing his message” — a message of a popular faith, accessible to all who believed. Saints were one of the most effective advertising tools the church had. They boosted recruitment, enabling the church to tailor its gospel to local populations and specific demographics. And the copyrighting of a saint’s name and likeness allowed the church to sell paraphernalia. Benedict maintained John Paul II’s pace, and Francis has outdone them both. In his first canonization ceremony he recognized 815 saints.

During this sainthood boom, the United States, which has the fourth-largest Catholic population of any nation, has been left out. No U.S. cause was opened before the late 19th century, and only one native-born citizen has been sainted: the Philadelphian heiress Katharine Drexel (1858-1955), canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2000. Three naturalized American citizens have been sainted, Saint Mother Teresa was an honorary citizen, and several “American” saints were born before 1776 or were foreign citizens living abroad, but this wider draw only emphasizes the scale of the underrepresentation. Canonization is, quite explicitly, a symbolic gesture, meant to draw attention to a heroic virtue, an act of martyrdom, a community. Symbolically speaking, American Catholics have been shafted.

Though there are currently more than 80 American candidates for sainthood, the Acadian community has a special claim to Roman sympathies. Its Catholic population descends from what Cajuns call “le grand dérangement”: the British Army’s expulsion of about 7,000 French Catholics from Nova Scotia in 1755 during the French and Indian War, tearing apart families and killing more than half the population. One of the largest bands of refugees arrived in Southwestern Louisiana in 1765, led by Bonnie’s ancestors, the brothers Joseph and Alexandre Broussard.

“Sainthood links the local church to the universal church,” says Kathleen Sprows Cummings, director of Notre Dame’s Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, who wrote “A Saint of Our Own,” about the more than century-old campaign for a patron saint of the United States (leading contenders include St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and St. Kateri Tekakwitha, though each was born before the country’s founding). “The story of the Acadians is the story of how a persecuted minority was transplanted here and created a new culture. Charlene’s significance extends beyond the world of sainthood. It’s a profoundly American story.”

Since 1985, however, the Acadian story has endured a different great derangement. In May of that year Jason Berry published in The Times of Acadiana and The National Catholic Reporter his investigation into pedophilia charges against Gilbert Gauthe. Berry would later extend his reporting into a trilogy of books that tracked a series of pedophilia cases in the Diocese of Lafayette into the innermost sancta of the Vatican, revealing widespread patterns of abuse and corruption. According to data from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, more than 7,000 clerics have now been “credibly” or “not implausibly” accused of sexually abusing minors in the United States alone.

The evolution of Broussard’s relationship with the church corresponded to a broader shift that occurred in Acadiana during the 1990s, as the Gauthe case spurred dozens of other allegations within the region. Though Broussard grew disenchanted with the corruption of the clerical hierarchy, she did not consider abandoning her faith; instead she redirected her devotion to the angelic child who, she was certain, sat at the foot of God.

The diocese, during this time, showed little interest in Charlene. Even the local clergy tended to dismiss the phenomenon, despite the efforts of Brennan and Calais, who continued to ferry parishioners to Charlene’s grave, use her story in fund-raising pleas and give interviews. “In my eyes and in the eyes of many, many people, Charlene Richard is already a saint,” Brennan told The Catholic Digest. “We’re just waiting for the church to catch up.” Calais still struggles to understand his peers’ disinterest. “There were priests who thought me and Father Brennan were crazy,” he says. These included, he said, his successor at St. Edward, the Rev. Stanley Begnaud, who has been labeled a “known pedophile” in church documents and is the subject of a lawsuit filed in 2020. (Begnaud died in 1985.)

With no foreseeable path to canonization, the Friends of Charlene held meetings less often, then not at all. “Nothing had happened for 10 years, and people just wondered whether anything ever would happen,” Broussard says. “That was the hardest time, just to keep it going.” By 1999, the only remaining founding member of the organization, the oilman Steven Vincent, told Broussard that he was leaving, too. He asked her to take over as president. She accepted without hesitation. “I felt that there was something here,” she says. People traveled to the annual Mass from all over the world to testify to miracles Charlene had performed from beyond the grave. “That’s what kept me going,” Broussard says. “All these people came for a reason.”

Broussard set about professionalizing the organization. After reading “Making Saints,” she came to understand the process better than any of the local clergy members, including, it would become clear, the bishop. She learned that it was not enough to answer letters and archive testimonials. Successful causes tended to be run like political campaigns, with an administrative office, a public relations arm and a reliable funding stream. This is why most saints were clergy: the orders to which they belonged had the resources necessary to elevate a cause to the Vatican. What Broussard lacked in money and clout, she tried to make up for in effort. She transformed the Friends of Charlene into a tax-exempt organization, established a website and a bulk-mailing operation, assumed the responsibility of planning the anniversary mass and organized a weekly knitting circle, led by a pair of retirees, Louise Giroir and Lydia Babineaux, who together would produce hundreds of thousands of prayer cloths. The work was its own reward — at least that’s what Broussard told herself.

Then, suddenly, in 2002, three blessings seemed to arrive in short succession, as if ordained. Michael Mouton, a Lafayette businessman nicknamed Big Mike, had a vision of Charlene Richard while undergoing open-heart surgery. A former programmer for Apollo 11, determined to raise money for an orphanage in Thailand, opened his Bible and a Charlene Richard prayer card fell out. And a local priest, Michael Jarrell, a native of Opelousas, was named bishop.

Big Mike had developed a successful business shipping radiography machines across the Gulf South. While under sedation, he saw Charlene standing at the foot of his bed, a beatific expression on her face. When he awoke, the operation a success, he vowed to dedicate his life to advancing Charlene’s cause. He told Broussard that he would devote his offices, administrative staff and $1 million of his personal fortune to the effort. “We’ll run it like a corporation,” he told her. If most causes were managed by religious orders, Charlene’s could be headquartered out of Performance Medical Group of Lafayette.

The NASA programmer, Reggie Bollich, did not know much about Charlene and had no idea how her prayer card had gotten into his Bible. But his wife, Dottie, had heard stories from her pastor at St. Genevieve, Father Brennan. It occurred to Bollich, as it had to Father Calais, that the Little Cajun Saint might be a prolific fund-raiser — his own little money girl. Within a year Bollich raised more than $45,000, including considerable donations from Big Mike, and the orphanage, Charlene Richard House, was built in a jungle clearing near Nongkhai.

With the opening of the orphanage, and the growing international attention it drew, Bishop Jarrell seemed persuaded that Charlene was ready for canonization. In 2007, Jarrell designated Msgr. Richard Greene, who 30 years earlier edited a major series of articles about Charlene Richard for The Morning Star, to gather information for the opening of a cause. At that year’s anniversary Mass, to the thrill of the assembled, Greene announced that he was going to begin the sainthood process. Broussard was euphoric. “I thought, this is it!” she says. The unimaginable appeared inevitable.

Greene held a series of round-table meetings with interested parties, among them Broussard, John Dale Richard, Reggie Bollich and Big Mike. Broussard recalls that Greene listened intently to their stories and took dutiful notes.

Someone asked how long it would take for the bishop to respond. Two or three weeks, Greene said. He’s a busy man.

What happens if he doesn’t approve the cause?

Then we’ll just go over his head, Big Mike interrupted.

Several petitioners gasped at the brazen display of hubris in the presence of a diocesan official.

“And that,” John Dale recalls, “was the end of that.”

They never met with Greene again. Bollich recalls that when the subject of sainthood later arose at a church ceremony, Jarrell said they could not treat it like a corporation — an obvious reference to Big Mike.

In 2012, in an interview with a local writer named Carolyn Thibodeaux for a self-published book titled “Saint Charlene Richard: Her Continuous Consecration to God,” Jarrell described the process as “kind of stalled”:

Thibodeaux: Is there anything we can do to help?

Bishop: No, I think that at this point, the ball is in my court. It’s not like you can just write a letter.

Thibodeaux: How exactly does the Canonization process work?

Bishop: I don’t know. But there are books on it.

Thibodeaux: Yes, I’ve read up on it on the internet.

Bishop: Then you probably know more about it than I do. I’m serious when I say I don’t know ... 

Thibodeaux: In writing my book, I already knew Charlene was special. I received so many healing stories. She is so deserving of the title, “Saint.”

Bishop: Well, I’m glad you judged that. If you were the Pope, it would be done.

Thibodeaux: Are you considering reviewing Msgr. Greene’s report?

Bishop: For what purpose, to help you with your book?

Thibodeaux records the bishop’s laughter.

“That was a big disappointment,” Broussard says of Jarrell’s inaction. “A major letdown for everyone. We kept waiting, thinking maybe, surely, he’ll take the next step — but he never did.”

Broussard nevertheless continued to prepare for a day when some future bishop might champion Charlene. She had learned from “Making Saints” that, as time passes, it becomes more difficult to gather the necessary evidence of a miracle: Witnesses die, memories weaken, documents are lost. It was not enough, she would explain to fellow devotees, to show that a prayer had been answered, even if a stunning reversal had occurred — a sudden recovery from a terminal illness, say, or the conversion of an unrepentant sinner. The Vatican’s bar was much higher and seemed to rise each year. The pope could not be embarrassed by modern science. As forensic technologies matured, so did the Vatican’s evidentiary standards.

Finalist miracles had to satisfy three primary criteria. They had to be rigorously documented. They had to be verified by objective experts. And they could not be explainable except by supernatural intervention. Father Brennan believed that the story of Tara Roy fulfilled all three.

Tara’s parents were parishioners at St. Genevieve. When Tara was diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer at age 21, in 1992, Brennan drove them to Charlene’s tomb. They returned every weekend, while Tara endured rounds of chemotherapy. Eleven months later, on the anniversary of Charlene’s death, Tara visited the tomb, emaciated and hopeless. She traced the engraving on the headstone and caressed Charlene’s portrait. “It seemed electricity ran from the tomb through her fingernails and into her entire body,” her father told the journalist Barbara Gutierrez. “She had been transformed before my eyes from a washed-out and despondent rag doll into a vibrant and energized young lady with color coursing through her cheeks.”

Three months later Tara was free of cancer. Her oncologist at Our Lady of Lourdes testified that her recovery was unexplainable by science.

Broussard was not convinced, however. “I thought it was a great story,” she says. “But I didn’t know if it could meet the standards of a miracle. She’d had surgery, after all. She’d had chemotherapy.”

The other miracle commonly asserted as proof of Charlene’s sainthood came from outside the diocese. In 1987 Jean Marcantel was diagnosed with a high-risk pregnancy, and arranged to give birth at a hospital in Lake Charles where she could be attended by a prominent obstetrician.

When the baby was born, the delivery room fell silent. “This is a mongoloid child,” the obstetrician said finally, using the jettisoned term for Down syndrome. He indicated the newborn’s prominent forehead, flat features, the ears set below the eye’s lateral canthus, the single crease across the palm of her hand.

The nurses moved the baby to a darkened isolation room. Jean was brought to the recovery room, where she was surrounded by other mothers and their healthy babies. She began to pray for the strength to raise a disabled child. She thought back to her own childhood in Richard, where she was friends with one of Charlene’s sisters. She did not believe in miracles, but after praying to the patron of lost causes and the patron of childbirth, she prayed to Charlene.

Jean awoke to the sight of her puzzled pediatrician. He told her that the baby showed no signs of Down syndrome. When her obstetrician was summoned, he burst into tears. Finally the child was brought in, her features transformed. Jean didn’t leave her daughter’s side for six weeks, fearful that her condition would reverse. Today that baby, Angelique, is a nun in Tanzania.

The Marcantels did not tell anyone what happened at the hospital except, belatedly, their priest. At his suggestion, Jean sent a confidential account to the diocese, stipulating that it should only be used if it helped Charlene’s cause. Broussard was not sure it would.

While Broussard culled her library of miracles, the cult of Charlene Richard continued to grow. Reggie Bollich, the NASA programmer, who in his retirement was ordained a deacon, helped to open Casa Charlene, a homeless shelter in the Colombian Andes, funded by Cajun parishioners. The Charlene Soup Kitchen in El Tigre, Venezuela, followed. Pilgrims, not all of them Catholic, began traveling to the St. Edward cemetery from Brazil, France, the Philippines, Australia. The canonization of Charlene Richard had become a global concern.

Still Broussard worried she wasn’t doing enough. She had kept the organization alive, preserved every testimony and mailed tens of thousands of prayer cloths, but Bishop Jarrell would not be moved. If she couldn’t convince him of Charlene’s cause, how would she convince a postulator, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints or the pope?

In 2016, after 14 years, Jarrell resigned. His successor, the Rev. J. Douglas Deshotel, was born in Basile, 20 miles west of Richard. Months after his consecration, Deshotel accepted an invitation to Charlene’s 2017 anniversary Mass — the first bishop to attend since 1989. These were promising signs, but Broussard was wary. Like so many of his predecessors, Deshotel was soon engulfed by the church’s scandals, as priests in the diocese were charged, arrested or convicted of serial sexual abuse of minors, possession of child pornography and the molestation of an altar boy. In 2019, after resisting calls from journalists for three years, Deshotel released the diocese’s list of known sex offenders (though withheld the names of accused nuns, religious-order priests and schoolteachers). Deshotel did not attend another anniversary Mass, and Broussard heard nothing from the diocese about the prospect of Charlene’s canonization. But at the 2019 Mass, Monsignor W. Curtis Mallet, the diocese’s vicar general, pulled Broussard aside in the sacristy of St. Edward, just before the ceremony began.

“I want to let you know that the bishop is considering opening Charlene’s cause,” he told Broussard. “But we have to move quickly.”

The bishop wanted to make the announcement soon, he said. If Broussard could produce a formal letter of petition, the bishop would designate Charlene a “servant of God”: The sainthood process would finally begin. Mallet warned her not to tell anybody.

Before she could respond, Broussard was called to the pulpit to give her introduction. As she gave her customary speech about Charlene’s exemplary suffering, she tried to disentangle the emotions that overwhelmed her. She realized what she felt most of all was not joy or relief. It was fear. She understood immediately that what had been, for decades, a work of private obsession, would be taken from her.

“For all this time,” she says today, “I’d been alone. I’d had the support of the community, but as far as the association, I was secretary, treasurer, president. I did everything myself, so that I could make sure that it was done right. But I knew once Charlene becomes a servant of God, she no longer belongs to the community. She becomes the property of the diocese. I would have to relinquish control. The church would be in charge, absolutely.”

At a ceremony at the diocese’s Immaculata Chapel on Nov. 17, 2021, in an unprecedented spree of canonical enterprise, Deshotel opened the causes for Charlene Richard and another candidate, August Pelafigue, an Arnaudville schoolteacher known as Nonco who embraced a life of rural poverty. (The cause of a third Cajun candidate, Ville Platte’s J. Verbis Lafleur, a World War II chaplain who gave his life to save fellow prisoners of war, was opened a few months later.) “Our culture needs a young saint,” Deshotel said. “Now more than ever.”

Broussard calls Charlene’s designation as servant of God the high point of her life, though even in the moment her elation was tempered by a profound sense of loss. “I knew it was coming to an end for me,” she says. “I had the satisfaction that I had done everything that I had been asked to do, just to keep it going. But I knew I would not be able to see it through.”

After the ceremony she turned over her entire archive. The diocese sealed it from public view. The postulator, Father Luis F. Escalante, directed Charlene’s siblings to sign over possession of their sister’s corpse to the church. In June, St. Edward’s Facebook page advised parishioners that Charlene’s tomb had come “under the protection and stewardship” of the diocese. Any item left on the tomb would be reviewed to determine whether it honored “the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.” Broussard was not invited to attend the exhumation of the corpse, nor were any community or family members, apart from immediate siblings.

After the exhumation, St. Edward’s young pastor, the Rev. Korey LaVergne, called Broussard into his office and told her not to tell anyone what had happened. “If anyone asks you why the grave looks like it does, it’s because we’re just doing improvements,” he told her. “It’s technically not a lie, because we are going to do improvements. But you cannot tell them about exhuming the body.”

One thing was plain: After decades of apathy, discouragement and belittlement, the Diocese of Lafayette had developed a very serious interest in Charlene Richard’s successful, and expeditious, canonization.

Bishop Deshotel confirmed as much. The Diocesan Chancery, a compound of four brick buildings arranged around a simple courtyard at the eastern fringe of Lafayette, was once a seminary where he attended high school (Gilbert Gauthe was his classmate). Deshotel’s wood-paneled second-floor office was his sophomore study hall. With its potted ficuses, leather couches and broad, tidy desk, it could stand for a judge’s private chambers or a senator’s regional headquarters.

The bishop has an amiable, unprepossessing manner, with a slight stoop and a twinkly smile. He served as a priest in Dallas for nearly four decades, long enough to lose his accent but not his Cajun sympathies; his closest friends are his old high school buddies from Lafayette. Deshotel is as circumspect about miracles as are most high church officials. “There are many kinds of miracles,” he said in an interview. “It’s not all spectacular physical healings. There are also miracles of a change of heart or a conversion.” He noted the miracle of accepting the human condition: of making peace with the implacable cruelty of suffering. What is more miraculous than reconciling oneself to the certainty of death?

“A person who starts looking into Charlene’s story might ask what inspired her to be able to do that,” he said. “They might think, Maybe I should look a little bit deeper into what faith is, and what was behind her being able to accept her illness.”

St. Charlene would help the church too, Deshotel acknowledged. A Cajun saint, particularly a lay saint, would “validate the rich faith of this Acadiana community.” More important, it would serve as “a catechetical tool for me and for the priests of our diocese.” Charlene would help the church “appeal to the youth in our diocese, who are called in all kind of directions by secular society.” Charlene would serve as an excellent recruitment tool, Deshotel maintained, especially for the young people of Acadiana.

With the young people of Acadiana, the church needed all the help it could get.

Several months ago Bonnie Broussard received bad news from Rome: The postulator had rejected the top two miracles from papal consideration. Tara Roy’s cancer cure was thrown out because, as Broussard had feared, the fact of her medical treatment meant that a scientific explanation could not be eliminated. Angelique Marcantel’s miracle was disqualified by a genetic test. The Tanzanian missionary had traveled by bus 18 hours to a clinic in Dar-Es-Salaam that analyzed her DNA. To the postulator’s disappointment, no extra chromosome was detected.

This finding did not surprise the Marcantels. Of course there wasn’t an extra chromosome — why would God, in His perfection, leave it behind? But they have taken it well. The Vatican’s validation “is not necessary for me,” Jean says. “It doesn’t change my belief.”

The postulator is pursuing a new tranche of miracles, among them a miraculous Covid cure and the case of Troy Hebert, a real estate broker in Lafayette whose childhood cancer was cured after he and his mother met a stranger at Charlene’s grave who they believed to be an angel. But discussions of forensic investigations only accentuate how far the ecclesiastical class had traveled from the true believers in the rice fields, who require no expert witness, no genetic test to prove Charlene is a saint. There is nothing the Vatican can do to strengthen their conviction, or weaken it.

“I’m a scientist,” says Bollich, the Apollo 11 programmer. “I’m always skeptical. I need facts. But you reach a point where factual becomes irrelevant. I believe that prayer can make a difference in whether a person lives or not. Does it happen often? No. But there are people who have been healed through prayer to Charlene. That we know. We’ve seen it.”

Father Calais found the whole process embarrassing. “The guy from Rome doesn’t know anything about Charlene Richard,” he says. “I was not impressed by him at all. I didn’t see any enthusiasm in him.”

As Jean Marcantel puts it: “It’s more important for the hierarchy of the church to have these proven miracles than for the people who experienced them. You know what they say: If you don’t believe, no proof is sufficient. If you do, no proof is necessary.” She laughed. “I wouldn’t want to be in Father Escalante’s shoes.”

Broussard herself has moved on. After turning over her life’s work to the diocese, she announced her resignation as president of the Charlene Richard Foundation. She has dedicated herself to caring for her young grandchildren. “I will always love Charlene and will do whatever I can do to help her cause,” she says. “But the fire for me has been put out.” Having spent decades battling indifference and dissuasion, waiting for the diocesan hierarchy to embrace the cause, she can’t bring herself to hang on as a junior functionary.

Besides, Broussard believes that she has already achieved her goal. Charlene won’t be forgotten. She is not yet a saint, not officially, but she has attracted a global cult that transcends not only Acadiana but Catholicism. She inspires faith, devotion and acts of healing so profound that they appear miraculous. What the Vatican wants, what the diocese desperately needs, Bonnie Broussard is powerless to give them. She gave them her papers, but she can’t give them that.

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlene_Richard

Her natal Lilith is 27 Capricorn, N.Node 28 Sagittarius, S.Node 0.19 Gemini. Her natal Amazon is 5 Virgo, N.Node 3 Taurus, S.Node 5 Sagittarius.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad

HI All,

Here is a story about Maria Alyokhina of the Pussy Riot. This is a noon chart.

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Interview: ‘We have a new Hitler in Russia’: Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina on Putin’s crimes and her years of resistance

The musician and activist has escaped her homeland – but its repression still torments her. She talks about being beaten and jailed, nuclear threats and the dangerous power of women

Zoe Williams

Guardian

When Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina left Russia in April this year, she went to Iceland, essentially a political refugee. She had been repeatedly arrested since early 2021, on specious charges – “violation of sanitary and epidemiological rules”, social media activity, attending a demonstration in support of the imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

She is no longer in Iceland, and speaks to me, as her fellow Pussy Riot member Nadya Tolokonnikova did earlier this year, from an unnamed location. But she resists any phrases that dramatise her situation – persecution, flight, exile, escape – preferring a hard-boiled statement of the facts. “I was arrested, many times – and not just arrests. I was under a travel ban, I had a red flag on the border for two years, I had to find a way to tour. The heads of the political Moscow police were quite often trying to go to my house, speak with my mother, catch me there.” She describes the trigger event for her departure: the news that she was about to be moved from house arrest to a prison.

So she hasn’t fled; she has found a way to go on tour, living in a van, raising money any which way, through spoken word, performance art, merchandise, NFTs. “I understand there was a big noise about my so-called escape, but I don’t have any plans for emigration. I just want to help Ukraine and that’s it.” She made €10,000 selling T-shirts and sent the money to a Ukrainian children’s hospital. Alyokhina and her girlfriend, Lucy Shtein, also from Pussy Riot, have made an NFT using the ankle tags from their house arrest, melted and turned into digital art: “They’re our trophies from the fight with the Russian government. We believe those fetters will be gone.”

The proceeds from that – whether you understand NFTs or not, they can raise vast amounts of money – will be split between Ukrainian charities and Russian political prisoners. “We cannot balance the nightmare which the Russian army and Vladimir Putin have created. But I believe, as Russians, we can do something good. As a human, and especially as an artist, it’s very important to raise up our solidarity with Ukraine and our call to stop this war.”

There is something instructive and depressing about the story of Pussy Riot and the world’s reaction. When they started in 2011, they were a loose collection of female artists, writers, activists and anarchists. Alyokhina was a student at the Institute of Journalism and Creative Writing in Moscow. As well as writing protest songs, the band wore neon balaclavas and taped their mouths closed. Alyokhina’s targets are wide-ranging – the oppression of women, the savage homophobia of the Russian state, the climate crisis, Putin’s kleptocracy – but boil down to one cause: anti-authoritarianism. To the global media, they were just fun, racy rebels.

In Russian activist circles, there are jokes about the west being ‘deeply concerned’: it means they are not going to do anything

So, when three of them, including Alyokhina, were arrested for hooliganism in 2012 and sentenced to two years in jail, it didn’t leave much of a mark on Putin’s reputation, even though human rights organisations such as Amnesty International designated them political prisoners. The protest was deadly serious: it was against Orthodox Church leaders’ support for Putin and the blind eye they were turning to his corruption and creeping totalitarianism. Yet the substance of that, and the harsh consequences it had, was ignored in the service of everyone playing nice at international summits.

Alyokhina rolls her eyes, as if to say that is not the half of it: “We were released on 23 December 2013. A month after our release, we made an action [demonstrated]: ‘Putin will teach you how to love the motherland.’ That was at Sochi, the Olympic Games, and that was the first time we were beaten physically. That was the first moment that I understood: Russia was already worse than when we were imprisoned.”

Two weeks later, Putin annexed Crimea – “the first point of no way back”, she says. “Especially shocking was the very weak reaction of the west. There were slight sanctions, but nations continued to deal with Russian businesses. Germany was selling weapons to Putin’s regime, evading the weapon embargo. A lot of capital from oligarchs went to Britain, especially to London. I spoke at the European parliament, in your parliament, in the US Senate. Everyone was ‘deeply concerned’, but nothing happened. In Russian activist circles, there are a lot of jokes about the west being deeply concerned: it means they are not going to do anything.”

If there had been the sanctions there are now after Crimea and the subsequent invasion of the Donbas, Alyokhina is certain that we would not be in this mess today. “We were calling for a full embargo in 2014 and again in 2015. We were doing street actions. I was arrested 100 times. I hear a lot of discussion in the west that it’s very hard and painful to stop buying oil and gas – well, you guys had eight years. In eight years, it would have been possible. In one month, it’s hard. Maybe politicians were afraid of their voters protesting that their houses were cold. Now Ukrainians don’t have houses at all.”

She lays out in brutal terms what this combination of inertia and self-interest has created. “Money from the west is the basis of our imprisonment, of our poisoning, of political murders and, now, of the war in Ukraine. I really want people to understand this and stop it.”

You can trace Putin’s growing sense of impunity through the totalitarian acts he got away with. And it does bear reflection: how did he manage it with so little censure? The marked, even absolute, absence of women in Russian political life has tended to pass without comment, as a historical or cultural quirk. “All this Russian criminal culture, which dates from the Soviet Union, is very misogynistic,” says Alyokhina. “There is no place for women at the decision-making table. No first ladies, no role for women. Even western journalists trying to write about Russian feminism – who do they name? Alexandra Kollontai. She was living in the 1920s.” Feminist anti-war resistance is stifled within Russia and unobserved outside it. “Propaganda is working like in the Third Reich,” Alyokhina says.

Most chillingly, the persecution of LGBTQ+ people has moved at speed, from intimidatory arrests – you can be prosecuted for holding a rainbow flag – to the creation of what the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta in 2017 referred to as “concentration camps” for gay men in Chechnya. “Russia was protesting all these years – there were streets, squares, full of people, beaten, arrested, imprisoned for five, six, seven years – and nobody cared because it was within her borders,” says Alyokhina. “It has always been this way.”

Even if the west has now woken up, or rather been awakened, have we fully grasped the seriousness of the situation? There is an overwhelming consensus about Putin – that he is a warmonger and tyrant – but still, Alyokhina feels, there remains a reluctance to take his utterances seriously. “He gave interviews 10 years ago and started to talk about his role models. One is Joseph Stalin. The biggest tyrant, who repressed, raped our people, killed our culture, killed all my favourite artists, some of them personally. This is a grave warning. If you listen carefully, you can understand where it will go.”

It’s very dangerous to totalitarianism if the women rise up. That’s another revolution

Commentators desperately cling to the hope that Putin is just one wild man, that around him are people who will eventually find the spine to overthrow him. Remarks were made recently by a representative of Rosneft, Russia’s largest state oil company. “You must have heard it,” Alyokhina says, with frustration, but no, I have not. “He promoted Adolf Hitler. He said that, of all the decisions in the west, the Anglo-Saxons are the most guilty people. The first nuclear bomb must be dropped on Great Britain. This is what we have, in our so-called news. They are speaking about nuclear bombs almost every day.”

The news that does percolate from inside Russia is that the state propaganda machine is extremely effective on the older generation, who take its news as truth, and that this has created irrevocable social and family rifts. Alyokhina describes one member of her collective whose father called her a Nazi for supporting Ukraine. “There are examples of parents reporting it to the police when their twentysomething children go on demonstrations. This is very Soviet Union, teaching people to call the police or the KGB if there is a political difference of opinion. Now, it’s again rising up.”

Alyokhina’s mother, a programmer who raised her alone (she didn’t meet her father until she was 21), isn’t like that at all. “My mum is amazing. She understands that we have a new Hitler in Russia.” The central propaganda line is “to provide the message that everything is complicated” for long enough that the war slips out of the western media “and then they will attack more”. But there is another strand to the state media’s message – that Putin is fighting nazism in Ukraine. This is “very hard for old people, whose parents fought the Nazis. There is almost no family in Russia who didn’t lose their relatives in the second world war. But my mother is very clear, and very sad, about what’s happening.”

‘I’m in a panic, I’m crying every day’ … Nadya Tolokonnikova at a concert in Tennessee earlier this month. Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova: ‘You cannot play nice with Putin. He is insane. He might open fire on his own people’.. Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/mar/08/pussy-riot-nadya-tolokonnikova-interview-putin-nfts-russian

She is absolutely trenchant on one point, which she returns to often and has said on stage, in interviews, online: Putin must be tried as a war criminal. “Without an international trial for Putin, it is just unfair to pretend that Russia can exist like before. There has to be an international judgment for this. Without the understanding that Putin is a terrorist and a criminal, it will just be more blood. More dead bodies. More raped women.”

Alyokhina starts rolling a cigarette, underscoring her nervous intensity. She lights up. The image recalls the smoke-hazed faces of resistance fighters since nazism began. She has never lost faith in resistance movements within Russia, especially from Russian women – “a great power, probably the biggest power in the country”. Totalitarianism – probably all of it, not just Putin’s – thrives on “this concept of women sitting at home, feeding the children and going to church. It’s very dangerous if the women rise up. That’s another revolution.”

Nor has she ever wavered in her belief that activism counts. “I really believe that each gesture, each word, each action is important. All these small impacts are the basis for building something different.” International fellowship is powerful, even when it is expressing itself in despair. “Sometimes, there is huge hope. For example, we were performing in Hamburg and there were two Ukrainian artists singing a hymn after us. We stood on the stage, hugging each other. For several seconds, everyone was crying. I was so shocked that this fellow feeling can exist after all this tragedy.”

I wonder, then, at the immense sadness of being exiled from your country, yet feeling its acts so keenly as your responsibility; of watching brutality unfold when you have warned of it for a decade and paid for those warnings time and again with your freedom.

“I will not talk about my sadness when, even today, there have been two bomb attacks against Ukraine,” she says. “Emotions are not important. We should continue, all of us, because it’s a war.”

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Pussy Riot song protests against war in Ukraine and calls for Putin to be prosecuted

The collective said Mama, Don’t Watch TV – a reference to the words of a captured Russian conscript soldier – rails against the Russian leader’s ‘bloodthirsty puppets’ and ‘war criminals’

Laura Snapes

Sat 24 Dec 2022 09.00 GMT

Pussy Riot have released a new song protesting against the war in Ukraine, Russian censorship and the west “sponsoring” the regime through buying oil and gas from Russia. They have also called for the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, to be tried at an international tribunal.

In a statement, they described Putin’s government as a “terrorist regime” and call him, his officials, generals and propagandists “war criminals”.

They called Мама, не смотри телевизор (Mama, Don’t Watch TV), which comes 10 months after Russia invaded Ukraine: “The music of our anger, indignation, disagreement, a reproachful desperate cry against Putin’s bloodthirsty puppets, led by a real cannibal monster, whose place is in the infinity of fierce hellish flames on the bones of the victims of this terrible war.”

The collective, in this instance represented by Maria Alyokhina, Olga Borisova, Diana Burkot and Taso Pletner, said the chorus is based on the words of a captured Russian conscript soldier who told his mother: “Mum, there are no Nazis here, don’t watch TV.”

“Russian propaganda daily poisons the hearts of people with hatred,” they wrote. “The law on foreign agents is used to silence opposition activists and journalists, to stop the activities of the last independent human rights organisations.”

Pussy Riot release song protesting against Putin’s war on Ukraine – video: https://youtu.be/W4IsdnlbOr8

They outlined the consequences for anyone who defies the regime. “Those who oppose Putin are imprisoned, poisoned with military poisons and killed,” they said, drawing attention to the “tradition of political poisoning” represented by Russia’s Lab X, a poison factory that helped silence the Soviets’ critics and that is believed to play a similar function today.

“Opposition figures of anti-government movements became victims of the ‘experiments’. Putin and the FSB are proud of this “tradition” and continue it: Alexander Litvinenko, Sergei Skripal, Vladimir Kara-Murza, Pyotr Verzilov, Alexei Navalny.”

The group said that the money the Kremlin receives from the international community conducting business with Russia is converted “into Ukrainian blood”.

They issued a three-point demand, calling for an embargo on the purchase of Russian oil and gas and the sale of weapons and police ammunition to Russia; the seizure of western bank accounts and property of Russian officials and oligarchs and personal sanctions against them; and an international tribunal to try Putin, employees of Russian state propaganda, army officers and everyone responsible for the genocide of the Ukrainian nation.

They asked the Russian people to ignore propaganda and not to participate in the war, take mobilisation notices or go to the military commissariat.

“Every action against this war is important,” they said.

Alyokhina is one of the three members of Pussy Riot who was sentenced to two years in jail for staging a performance inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in February 2012. She and Nadya Tolokonnikova were released in December 2013.

In July, Alyokhina told the Guardian: “We have a new Hitler in Russia.” She outlined how she had left the country in April disguised as a food courier, after repeated arrests. She went to Iceland, where she has been raising money for Ukrainian charities and Russian political prisoners, and staged an exhibition about Pussy Riot’s history, Velvet Revolution, at the Kling & Bang gallery.

She recently toured a Pussy Riot musical, Riot Days. In August, Tolokonnikova released an album as Pussy Riot called Matriarchy Now.

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Beaten, jailed, exiled and still taunting Putin: inside Pussy Riot’s filthy, furious show

‘A seven-year sentence isn’t enough – give us 18!’ …members of the collective are attacked by Cossack militia in Sochi, Russia, during the 2014 winter Olympics.

They fled Russia disguised as food couriers. Now a major exhibition is celebrating the collective’s punky protest art, from a urine-splattered portrait of Putin to the cathedral gig that landed them in prison

The first thing you see is a framed portrait of Vladimir Putin propped against a table. The Russian leader looks like a secular icon, like Lenin in his mausoleum, seemingly incapable of human expression. But this being a video installation, there is more. Standing on the table is figure in a long gown and orange balaclava, like Rasputin in women’s clothes, or a very unorthodox priest. The figure raises their skirts and a jet of urine spurts over the portrait.

Welcome to Reykjavík and to Velvet Terrorism, an exhibition tracing the decade-long history of Russian art collective Pussy Riot. “Is that you?” I ask Maria Alyokhina, AKA Masha, pointing at the masked urinator? The Pussy Riot co-founder has been showing me, over a video conferencing app, around the exhibition she and members of Icelandic art collective Kling & Bang (Dorothee Kirch, Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir and Ragnar Kjartansson) are installing. Kjartansson, who earlier this year helped Alyokhina flee Russia, holds the phone and gives me a view of Alyokhina at work. “It’s not me,” says Alyokhina, thin smile below intense eyes. “It’s a new member of Pussy Riot who joined earlier this year.” By way of context, she adds: “Putin’s Russia has no women in power. Putin surrounds himself with men. The women are to stay at home and accept their role, which is to be protected. I don’t want to be protected by him. I’d rather piss on him.” Kjartansson, unseen, chips in: “It’s such a great take down of the patriarchy. We were assembling a very slick exhibition, tracing the history of Pussy Riot in the past decade. Then Masha arrived and made it very rock’n’roll.”

‘The Orthodox religion is a hardened penis’ … Pussy Riot singer Maria Alyokhina at The Junction in Cambridge this month. Photograph: Chris Radburn/Reuters

Photos are stuck to the wall with coloured electrical tape. TV monitors howl footage of the various performances and beatings the collective have undergone, such as the time in 2014 when Alyokhina and other members were whipped and pepper-sprayed by Cossacks for protesting at the Winter Olympics in Sochi. The look of the show now has a punk sensibility fitting for a collective whose first songs, 2011’s Ubey Seksista (Kill the Sexist) and Osvobodi Bruschatku (Release the Cobblestones), sampled two late 70s British punk classics: the Cockney Rejects’ I’m Not a Fool and the Angelic Upstarts’ Police Oppression.

When I first meet Alyokhina, she is scribbling text on the gallery wall with what looks like a sharpie. She is writing, in English, an explanation of video footage showing Pussy Riot’s breakthrough performance in January 2012 in Moscow’s Red Square. That day they played a song called Putin Zassal (here rendered as Putin Pissed His Pants), which included the lines: “The Orthodox religion is a hardened penis / Coercing its subjects to accept conformity.”

The next exhibit documents what happened the following month inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Russia was then embroiled in the so-called “snow revolution” against electoral fraud. Alyokhina and four other women smuggled a guitar and amp into the cathedral, donned balaclavas and coloured tights, and performed their Punk Prayer, with lyrics including “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, chase Putin out”, and “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, become a feminist”.

Alyokhina and other members of the collective were later jailed for inciting religious hatred after the prosecution – incredibly yet successfully – argued that feminism when proclaimed inside a church is heretical.

During Alyokhina’s 21-month incarceration in a penal colony in the Ural mountains, Putin’s ally and head of the Russian Orthodox church, Patriarch Kirill, explained what was expected of women in Putin’s Russia. “Man has his gaze turned outward – he must work, make money – and woman must be focused inwards, where her children are, where her home is. If this incredibly important function of women is destroyed then everything will be destroyed – the family and, if you wish, the motherland.” The message was clear: difficult women like Pussy Riot needed silencing to save the Russian motherland.

Alyokhina won’t be silenced, though she balks when I suggest that western artists aren’t as tough nor as political as she. This is a woman, after all, who while awaiting sentence released a single defiantly proclaiming: “Seven years isn’t enough – give us 18!” Later, while in jail, she organised impromptu uprisings and would go on to say: “This is what protest should be: desperate, sudden and joyous.”

This spring, after being arrested six times since last summer for protesting against Putin and suspecting another spell in jail was likely, Alyokhina, with girlfriend Lucy Shtein and other members of Pussy Riot, fled Russia disguised as food couriers. Shtein is now in Israel, while Alyokhina and other collective members are nomadic, and have spent much of their time since leaving Russia touring Europe to raise money to support Ukraine and sanctions on Russian oil and gas.

‘I miss my home’ … Alyokhina in Porto, Portugal, in June. Photograph: Estela Silva/EPA

Kjartansson calls me later and we speak alone. “I couldn’t say all I wanted about how great Masha is,” he says. “It’s like talking about Elvis in the presence of Elvis.” A longtime Pussy Riot fan, Kjartansson met Alyokhina last December at the grand opening of billionaire Leonid Mikhelson’s GES-2 art space in Moscow, which for a few months was hailed as a symbol of a new Russia.

Kjartansson’s recreation of the US soap Santa Barbara was the gallery’s inaugural attraction. It was a project inspired by the idea that Santa Barbara, the first US soap opera to be screened in Russia, had a powerful impact on post-Soviet culture. To that end, working with a professional film crew, he planned to stage, shoot and release about 100 episodes of the soap in Russian, on an insanely tight schedule of one episode a day performed in the gallery.

“But then the invasion of Ukraine started,” he explains, “and I didn’t want any part of what Russia was doing. So I withdrew.” He wasn’t alone. Teresa Iarocci Mavica quit as director of GES-2.

Kjartansson has since put his energies into this Pussy Riot exhibition. He wants to show the chutzpah of the collective in turning the power of the oppressors against them, making Putin’s thugs and lackeys part of their work. “Be it prison, novichok, whips, ankle tags or exile,” says the show’s publicity material, “Pussy Riot turn every violent action of the state into art material, shifting the power balance.”

I ask Alyokhina when she will go home. “A good question,” she smiles sadly. “I don’t know. I would like to be there. I miss my home. But not what Putin has done to it.”

• Velvet Terrorism runs until 15 January

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Her natal Lilith is 29 Leo, N.Node 23 Sagittarius, S.Node 19 Gemini. Her natal Amazon is 27 Virgo, N.Node 28 Taurus, S.Node 13 Scorpio.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad

Hi All,

Here is the story of Samantha Zwicker. This is a noon chart.

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Samantha Zwicker is a Ph.D. student researching ecology and conservation at the University of Washington in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences while pursuing separate Nonprofit Management and International Development certificates from the UW Evans School. She received her bachelor’s with honors from the UW in 2012 and her master's in June of 2015 after being awarded the College's Graduate Student of the Year.

In addition to teaching environmental studies and environmental science courses at the UW, she is President of Xi Sigma Pi Forestry Honors Society, a term member of the renowned Explorers Club, producer of Seattle's Inspiración del Perú, and co-founder and President of nonprofit Hoja Nueva. Samantha’s fieldwork is based primarily in the Amazon rainforest along the Piedras River in Peru, where she is working with remote communities to establish more sustainable farming methods while concurrently assessing the effects of land use change on cats and their prey using in-situ observation and camera trapping.

Hoja Nueva is led by novel, practical research in conservation and agroforestry. Their mission is to work with local communities to make sustainable agriculture a success in the Piedras and all remote rainforest environments like it- firstly by creating a sustainable cacao marketplace with direct, just trade values.

The urgency of conserving the earth's rainforests now goes beyond cultural and wildlife preservation. As a component of the recent Paris accord on climate change, protecting the Amazon rainforest is vital and of high potential, but more in-situ research is necessary in coupled human-environment systems in the Amazon's most biodiverse and healthy forests. Hoja Nueva consults and cooperates with local agricultural associations and other nonprofit organizations to ensure reliable food production while maintaining healthy forests, creating a future where both humans and nature can thrive.

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‘Wildcat’: A vet with PTSD finds healing with help from a baby ocelot

Nature documentary follows the stories of three trauma survivors in the Amazon jungle: An ex-soldier, a wildlife rehabilitator and an adorable wildcat

Review by Kristen Page-Kirby

Healing is a tricky business, for people and animals alike. What that looks like is the subject of “Wildcat,” a documentary about a young military veteran with PTSD, an orphaned baby ocelot that needs to learn to survive on its own, and a woman, also a trauma survivor, who wants to help them both.

The first is Harry Turner, who joined the British Army at age 18, served in combat in Afghanistan, and was given a medical discharge due to depression and PTSD. (As far as the movie shows, he wasn’t given much else in terms of support.) Harry left England and traveled to the Amazon, intending to end his life — which he didn’t want to do where his 13-year-old brother would find him. Instead, he stumbled onto a wildlife rescue-and-rehabilitation center run by American Samantha Zwicker. Harry begins working with the animals and is eventually entrusted with the care of Keanu the ocelot, a spotted wildcat about the size your house cat thinks it is. Keanu, we learn, was probably orphaned by mining or logging operations.

“I’m going to teach him how to become a killer,” Harry says.

It’s one of the clear lines that connect him to his four-footed charge: For Harry, learning to kill was the key to his survival, but it has left him damaged. Keanu also must learn to kill for food, but if he learns to do that, he’ll have to leave Harry behind. It’s a lot like parenting: The measure of Harry’s success will be how easily Keanu can live without him.

If you’re looking for lots of footage of Keanu growing and pouncing and being otherwise adorable, there’s plenty of that. And while Keanu is not a pet — which is the fate of some orphaned ocelots, popular among a certain set of rich people — any pet owner can relate to Harry’s affectionate exasperation with Keanu’s antics, especially since Let’s Bite Dad seems to be one of his favorite games. More compelling, though, are the moments when Harry steps back and lets Keanu make his own mistakes. A run-in with a spider and a later one with a caiman are nerve-racking, since “helping” Keanu now means hurting him down the road.

While Harry and Keanu’s connection is the film’s central dynamic, Harry’s relationship with Samantha is also prominent. The daughter of an alcoholic father, she admits that she’s not one to give up on people, possibly to her detriment. Harry’s mental state is not always a good one, and Samantha is sometimes at a loss to know how — or whether — to help. Any viewers who have found themselves in the role of caretaker for someone with mental health or substance abuse issues may find some of the scenes featuring Harry and Samantha scarier than those featuring large arachnids or toothy reptiles.

First-time feature directors Trevor Beck Frost and Melissa Lesh use a variety of footage to tell the story: home movies, their own camerawork, and some scenes shot by Harry and Samantha. It mostly works, with one catch. “Wildcat” doesn’t quite hang together, both visually, which is forgivable, and narratively. The film’s human subjects are a bit too removed from the camera, resulting in a loss of intimacy that makes the best documentaries so compelling.

Maybe Turner and Zwicker didn’t want to let the filmmakers in. Maybe Frost and Lesh should have pushed harder. Either way, it’s a missed opportunity, especially considering that the four pretty much lived together for months in the jungle. The film’s under-two-hour run time leaves just enough minutes to tell the stories of two subjects well — with the kind of depth and care they deserve — or the stories of three subjects at a surface level. Clearly, the filmmakers went for the latter option, which simultaneously gives the audience too much and not enough.

Still, for fans of wildlife documentaries, “Wildcat” is at least as good as, say, a rerun of “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.” (Google it). That is to say: It’s enjoyable while it lasts but fades from the mind soon after, all except for that little piece of a viewer’s heart that holds out hope that little Keanu — and the people who raised him — will one day find the lives they deserve.

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Samantha Zwicker: Where is Head of Hoja Nueva Now?

Kumari Shreya Kumari Shreya

December 30, 2022

In Amazon Prime’s ‘Wildcat,’ viewers are taken on an eye-opening journey in the Amazon rainforest. The amount of effort put in by the featured conservationists to save wildlife and biodiversity is commendable and motivates the public to focus on crucial issues surrounding us. In the documentary, we are introduced to Samantha Zwicker, who leads Hoja Nueva and plays a massive role in saving rescue animals in Peru. Her journey with wildcat conservation depicted in the film is fascinating and has made many people curious about her current whereabouts. Luckily, we are to explore the same!

Who is Samantha Zwicker?

Hailing from Washington, US, Samantha Zwicker is a well-known ecologist who graduated from Bainbridge High School in 2009. From a young age, she had been interested in working towards wildlife conservation, though it had been wolves who were her primary concern in her initial years. Samantha has gained multiple degrees from the University of Wahington to further her expertise, including a Master’s Degree in Wildlife Conservation Ecology. Additionally, she has a diploma in Nonprofit management.

In the past, Samantha has had the honor of being a Panthera Small Cat Action Fund Grantee. In addition, she has earned the titles of a Wild Felid Legacy Scholar and an NIH Global Health Fellow. Rather than conventionally going through her doctorate, Samantha decided to work with animals in their natural habitat and provide a unique perspective in her dissertation. Soon, she was deep in the Amazon rainforest and was trying to safeguard as many animals as possible.

For Samantha, rescuing and rewilding Khan, her first rescue ocelot, was a monumental task. The success of this mission would have helped her organization, Hoja Nueva, to gain much respect locally. Interestingly, she and her team members could not find any protocols surrounding how ocelots should be educated about surviving in the wild. Hence, Khan’s presence was an uncharted territory that she was eager but cautious to explore. Khan’s passing greatly impacted her and her colleague Harry Turner, yet the duo soon had a new ray of hope after Keanu’s arrival.

Where is Samantha Zwicker Now?

As of writing, Samantha Zwicker serves as the Founder, Co-Director, and Ecologist for Hoja Nueva. Since Keanu’s rescue, the organization has kept up its good work and has saved 13 wildcats, including Kleo, their first-ever female ocelot. Interestingly, Hoja Nueva is the first-ever team to reintroduce a margay to the wild. To date, they have saved 119 animals, out of which 101 were apparently rescued in 2022. In the same year, they also reintroduced 65 animals to the wild.

The ‘Wildcat’ star is quite excited about the release of the documentary featuring herself and Harry Turner. Initially, the two had decided to make a self-filmed movie documenting Khan’s reintroduction. This was mainly not to expose him to unnecessary human contact. However, during Keanu’s rewilding, the number of cameras increased, though Harry remained the primary person to have any interaction with Keanu.

Trailer for Wildcat:

https://www.youtube.comresults?search_query=trailer+for+wildcat

According to Samantha, she knows that the movie leaves a person in emotional turmoil, which she considers to be a good thing. “I just hope that people harness that emotion and put it toward a cause, maybe improving relationships in their lives,” the ecologist shared with The Seattle Times. “And, hopefully, people want to reach out and support what our cause is now and what we’ve been able to create at Hoja.”

Currently, Samantha is pursuing her doctorate in Quantitative Ecology from the University of Washington. Apart from the Amazon rainforest, she is working with the communities of Madre de Dios, Peru. Furthermore, the skilled ecologist investigates neotropical felid population dynamics and the human impact on threatened mammals; she uses camera trapping to get data. As for Samantha’s romantic life, she seems to be in a happy relationship with Dylan Joseph Singer, co-director of Hoja Nueva. The two have been together for about three years and share a love of wildlife preservation.

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Her natal Lilith is 9 Taurus, N.Node 26 Sagittarius, S.Node 17 Gemini. Her natal Amazon is 12 Taurus, N.Node 28 Taurus, and the S.Node is 27 Scorpio.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad

She cares for 24 pigs, 20 goats, 210 cats, a skunk and 345 other rescue animals — and that's not even her day job

Laurie Zaleski, who lives with 600 rescue animals, talks about her work, her life and her new book, "Funny Farm"

By Nora Krug

WA Post

1/4/2023

MAYS LANDING, N.J. — For nearly a month, a blind lamb named Bradley has been sleeping in Laurie Zaleski's living room. Also sharing her humble two-bedroom abode: 11 dogs, 4 chickens (in diapers), 23 cats, several kittens, a baby duck and a very loud cockatoo. Yes, says Zaleski, author of the just-released memoir "Funny Farm," she is overdue for a home expansion. But she would never consider the alternative: fewer animals under her roof.

"I have a hard time saying no," Zaleski explains without needing to, as we walk around her 25-acre Mays Landing, N.J., farm one recent sunny afternoon. There were animals popping out everywhere — and no wonder. Currently on the premises are, give or take, 11 dogs, 15 horses, 131 chickens, 210 cats, two cows, 22 peacocks, four alpacas, 24 pigs, five donkeys, 20 goats, four sheep, 160 ducks, two emu, seven turkeys, two llama, several geese and one skunk. They're here to take refuge, to escape abuse, recover from injury or sickness or simply to experience being wanted. Even the skunk — whose scent glands had been removed — was once someone's pet.

The story behind Stella, the first 'talking' dog. It's not as far-fetched as it sounds.

This is the Funny Farm, double-entendre intended: "Because it's full of animals, and fit for lunatics," Zaleski jokes of the sanctuary that she built here, some 20 miles from Atlantic City, more than two decades ago.

Zaleski's love of animals was born of personal misfortune. "It was a happy accident," she writes in "Funny Farm" (St. Martin's), a chronicle of the hardscrabble childhood that sparked her devotion to all creatures great and small. Don't be fooled by the whimsical cover: This is a tale that's heartbreaking and uplifting in equal measure. (Think "Educated" meets "Dr. Dolittle.")

The story begins in the early '70s in Turnersville, about 30 miles from the Funny Farm. There Zaleski lived in a well-appointed suburban home with her parents and two siblings; they had a nanny and a beach house and cocktail parties. But Zaleski's father had violent outbursts. One day, after being threatened at knifepoint, Laurie's mother finally had enough. She drove off with the kids and settled into a new house, a ramshackle one-bedroom in the woods that, when they arrived, had no electricity or running water and was strewn with garbage. "Its few windows were broken or cracked, and one of the wooden sills hung down, as if someone had stepped on it to crawl inside. If there once had been steps out front, they were long gone — it was a straight drop, five feet from the doorsill to the ground," Zaleski writes. Soon after the family moved in, vandals tried to run them out, trashing the place and stealing valuables the family could barely afford in the first place.

Five-year-old Zaleski was terrified. But her mother, "unwavering in her cheerfulness," found a way to protect her family: a dog. Zaleski's mom got their first animal, a German shepherd named Wolf, in 1973 through one of her three jobs, cleaning cages at the local animal control. Wolf was meant to scare off the troublemakers, and for a while it worked — until Zaleski's father figured out his family's whereabouts and terrorized them.

Zaleski's mom, Annie McNulty, had a weakness for difficult men and needy animals. The former nearly got her killed; the latter saved her life. Shortly after Wolf's arrival came other animals, each with its own sad story — a baby horse with a broken leg, a runaway pig, a discarded dog. "Every time I turned around, the menagerie seemed to grow. Two by two, four by four, as if Noah had parked his ark in the woods near Turnersville, dropped the tailgate and said, 'Welcome home,'" writes Zaleski in the same matter-of-fact style in which she speaks.

Zaleski has her own biblical ship here, though sometimes she has to send some animals elsewhere — reptiles, amphibians and wildlife — where they can be cared for by specialists. "My bathtub and sometimes kitchen sink become a trauma center for animals that get hit by cars or wildlife before they get transferred to a local wildlife rescue," she says. Zaleski may be generous and patient, but even she has her limits. "It gets me so angry," she says of people who abandon pets when they move. "I think to myself, I'm glad I'm not your child. Are you going to leave them behind, too?"

The animals on the Funny Farm seem never to want to leave Zaleski behind. As we walk, a trail of critters follows, including a tall and surprisingly fast-moving emu named Connor. Zaleski, dressed in full-on cowgirl gear, flashes her long eyelashes as she greets, kisses and feeds her furry and feathered friends. For her beloved German shepherd Tucker, who has a malformed esophagus, that means propping him up in a special dog highchair so he can lick a bowl of liquefied puppy food.

Zaleski bought the farm in 2000 intending to give it to her mother. Two weeks before the sale closed, though, her mom died of cancer, at 52. "I used to joke and say I was going to live in Philly and have cappuccinos with my friends, but I ended up at the Funny Farm," she writes in her book. "Mom always said everything happens for a reason."

"Funny Farm" — the place and the memoir — serve as a kind of tribute to McNulty. "My mother was a shining example of someone who would literally stop at nothing to save an animal and in a way, helping them took our minds off our horrible situation living in poverty," Zaleski says. McNulty, who grew up in Philadelphia, followed her instincts and learned animal care from friends and neighbors and library books. One book helped her figure out how to butcher goats, a practice she put to use — to her family's horror, and despite her own heartbreak — when the animals were accidentally poisoned by wild berries and the family needed to eat. "It was a biology lesson like no other," Zaleski writes. She's been a vegetarian ever since.

Zaleski is not a farmer, a wrangler, a vet or a formally trained writer. She works 30-plus hours a week at Art-Z Graphics, a photography and graphics company she owns that specializes in government contracts. She has hundreds of volunteers to help run the Funny Farm, a 501(c)(3) charity that relies on donations; two days a week it's open to the public, free of charge. "My only time to myself is when I go to sleep and even then, there's a pile of animals on top of me," she says. Needless to say, she doesn't have the time or energy for human children.

An armchair therapist might have some theories about why Zaleski and her mom became such ardent animal saviors. But Zaleski is too no-nonsense — and too busy — to delve deeply into her psyche. "We never really spoke about what saving animals meant to us. We just saw the real effects of our efforts," she says. "Saving animals was just our way of life." And despite the human mistreatment that, paradoxically, gave Zaleski her calling, she doesn't hold grudges: "The majority of people are good."

Nora Krug is an editor and writer in Book World.

Funny Farm

My Unexpected Life With 600 Rescue Animals

By Laurie Zaleski

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How my mom’s escape from a violent marriage inspired our animal rescue farm

By Barbara Hoffman

Some honor their loved ones by planting a tree. Laurie Zaleski went a lot further: She founded an entire animal sanctuary, just as she’d once promised her mother.

Her mom, Annie McNulty, was a spirited beauty with “impeccably bad taste in men,” she writes in “Funny Farm: My Unexpected Life with 600 Rescue Animals” (St. Martin’s Press), out now. That led her straight to Richard Zaleski, a blue-eyed charmer who gamed the stock market and brutalized his wife. Laurie recalls the many times she and her brother and sister cringed, terrified, as he beat her. Then, just before Christmas in 1973, he threatened all of them with a carving knife. The next day, Annie, 26, bundled the kids into a borrowed car and headed to a rundown farm in the South Jersey woods. 

With few marketable skills, Annie started cleaning cages at the local animal control, taking home the hard-luck cases no one else wanted: neglected dogs, discarded kittens, orphaned goats. When her car broke down, she rode a horse to the supermarket.

Nevertheless, as much as she loved animals, she felt no compunction sending the occasional chicken or goat to the butcher. “We gave that animal a happy life,” she told her distraught daughter, a vegetarian who opted for mayonnaise sandwiches whenever meat was on the menu. “Now that animal is giving us food. Fair exchange.”

Her children may have been impoverished, but they weren’t poor: They had acres to roam through, and plenty of pets to play with. Young Laurie dreamed of becoming an artist, if only to make her mother’s dream come true. Someday, she promised, she’d buy her mom a bigger and better farm.

Even after her siblings moved away and Laurie started a graphic-design firm, she stayed behind, helping her mother care for whatever animals came their way. At one point, they teamed to rescue a pair of neglected potbellied pigs. Only after they wrestled them into a crate, hoisted it onto a truck and hit the highway did they realize they’d picked up a male and female, “and they were very excited about being rescued!” Zaleski writes. “At the sound of squealing, I turned around to see them humping like crazy, in full view of other motorists.”

Some four months later, the farm welcomed six baby piglets.

As Laurie’s graphics business flourished, her dream of a bigger farm was in reach. But Annie, diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1995, wouldn’t live to see that dream become reality: In 2000, just two weeks before Laurie bought the 15-acre farmstead that would become their new home, her mother died.

Ever the optimist, Annie had bought a set of dinnerware for her new home. “I wasn’t born in a barn,” the embossed plates read, “But I got here as fast as I could.”

And so, Laurie vowed to build the farm in memory of her mother. It’s there that she assembles a memorable cast of characters, including the mysterious figure she calls the Chicken Man. Now and then, he would arrive at the farm, in shabby clothes and saying nothing, with a chicken under each arm. Only later does she realize he works in a poultry-processing plant, and is smuggling whatever fowls he can to the safety of her sanctuary.

Some of Laurie’s rescues develop touching, interspecies relationships, like the blind kitten befriended by a duckling who serves as its seeing-eye companion. Laurie, struck by how animals grieve for their lost companions, struggles to find a new friend for a 50-year-old donkey named Jethro. “Older donkeys get fat pockets on their butts that look like Kardashian ass implants,” she observes. After several misses, she lucks out when she introduces Jethro to Lorenzo, a llama.

With word of mouth comes more animals and, to Laurie’s relief, help. Now, 22 years later, what started as a one-woman operation in New Jersey’s Pinelands boasts 100 volunteers, who open the farm to the public twice a week — admission free, donations welcome.

Even so, Laurie sometimes hesitates to take on yet another wild goat. That’s when she remembers the woman who started it all.

“Well, Mom, here we go again,” she thinks. “What do you think I should do?”

“As if I had to ask.”

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Her natal Lilith is 4 Capricorn, N.Node 3 Sagittarius, S.Node 6 Cancer. Her natal Amazon is 12 Gemini, N.Node 9 Gemini, and the S.Node is 4 Scorpio.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad

Hi All,

Here is the story of Madonna. The birth chart below reflects her actual time of birth.

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Madonna’s upcoming tour will defy society’s limits on female pop stars

Perspective by Robin Givhan

Senior critic-at-large |

January 17, 2023

Madonna's upcoming tour will mark 40 years of pop-culture greatness as it defies generations of stereotypes about gender and age. (Steve Sands)

Madonna has announced the North American and European dates of her concert tour, during which she will perform her most popular, era-defining songs. That’s 40 years worth of club dancing, provocative shape-shifting and sex-positive proselytizing. Madonna was one of the foundational female artists of the MTV dance pop genre, and this tour will be a testament to that legacy and a test of cultural boundaries. In “Madonna: The Celebration Tour,” the performer will be pushing against timeworn assumptions about gender and age at a moment when public dialogue can be very mean and very unforgiving on those very subjects. Godspeed, Madonna.

She announced her intentions on social media in a video that features a game of truth or dare — a reference to her 1991 film of the same name — with a clique of pals including Jack Black, Amy Schumer, Judd Apatow and Lil Wayne. The video is shot mostly in black and white and at times looks out of focus. Everyone appears a bit scruffy and like they’ve had a long night of loopy carousing. The effect is a video that is raw and self-consciously, gleefully transgressive, which is Madonna’s favorite kind of story to tell.

At the height of her fame and influence in the 1980s and ’90s, Madonna managed to offend pretty much everyone who considered themselves part of the establishment or who believed themselves to be charged with setting moral codes of conduct and defining social acceptability. She rankled the sensibilities of the Catholic church, Moral Majority and evangelicals. She made a career out of punching up at the powerful and the privileged. She stood on the side of outsiders. And for this — and her danceable beats and keen sense of aesthetics — she was beloved. She was especially vocal in speaking up for the LGBTQ community and celebrating elements of their culture, including ballroom and drag.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBUpN99s1Hg

Most everything that made Madonna such a compelling cultural figure now has become a test, a challenge, a question. When she incorporated ballroom culture into her video for “Vogue,” she was applauded for shining a spotlight on this dance style created within the Black and Latin LGBTQ community. Now, there are conversations about cultural appropriation and whether she did enough to elevate the originators.

Harry Styles gets all the applause

As a performer, she was always moving forward, always latching on to the next thing simmering just outside the mainstream. She altered her look to mark each new chapter, and her audience applauded her. But the culture is less likely to applaud the looks of a 64-year-old woman unless she is perceived as somehow defying the march of time or aging gracefully — which is to say walking quietly into the sunset wearing expensive cashmere and sensible shoes.

And Madonna has not been quiet. She recently caused a kerfuffle on social media for making note of how, with her book “Sex” in 1992, she paved the way for performers such as Cardi B and Miley Cyrus to sing freely about their sexuality; she’s been taken to task for wearing the traditional attire of people from North Africa; she likes to craft social media videos of herself in extreme close-ups that make her look ghostly and imperfect rather than glamorous and flawless. She continues to provoke. Her admirers applaud her for maintaining the same edgy sense of indiscretion that she had in her 20s. She is also admonished for still having such audacity. Madonna hasn’t changed, and the culture is conflicted about that.

It will be quite something when Madonna takes the stage and all the familiar beats begin to play. Fans won’t be coming to see her stand behind a microphone and belt out a ballad. The performance, in all its sweaty and sexy athleticism, has always been the draw: the voguing, the bullet bras and, of course, the look. She was the club-hopping ragamuffin, the Marilyn Monroe doppelganger, the dark-haired heretic, the platinum sex goddess. Her look has always told her audience something about how she sees gender and sex at a particular moment. Her body has been a statement about the politics of sexuality.

What will that look like now in this seventh decade of her life? Surely, it can be wondrous and engaging and tantalizing. But it can be hard to convince popular culture of that. When the 50-something actresses returned to the “Sex and the City” revival with all the familiar outré costumes and melodramatic storylines, they were practically pilloried for having the nerve to have aged.

Society has been terribly begrudging of women as they get older. Each milestone brings new rules and limitations related to appearance. At 30, women are expected to be womanly rather than girlish. At 50, they are to aim for sophistication or elegance. After 65, there are no rules because women basically become just a head on an invisible body — exceptions are few.

Madonna is the MTV godmother bringing her personal playlist and bump-and-grind aesthetic back to the stadium crowds. There’s something exciting and unnerving about the prospect of this high-wattage video star returning to the stage with such bravado. Her brand of exhibitionist feminism put the female body directly in the spotlight, and that became fundamental to her public identity. As she goes back and performs her catalogue now, how will the music change? When she sings “Beauty’s where you find it” from “Vogue,” will it resonate differently?

One wants her to be as dynamic as she was decades ago. After all, there’s a good deal of nostalgia embedded in this tour. But the reality is that no performer can ever go backward. (Most probably don’t want to.) The excitement isn’t in a repeat performance of “Vogue” or “Like a Prayer.” The thrill is in the possibilities of what those songs can become.

The anticipation is not merely in hearing a fresh take on the old tunes. It’s also the exhilaration of this Madonna, still disruptive and full of swagger. Just by stepping onstage, she gives popular culture a new chapter in the female story.

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Madonna Will Never Go Gently

Why would we even want her to?

By Vanessa Friedman

Jan. 19, 2023, 9:13 a.m. ET

Madonna has once again infiltrated the pop culturesphere. The 64-year-old singer announced her 12th world tour — a spin across 40 cities and through four decades of hits entitled “Celebration” — via a five-minute black and white video that shows her hosting a dinner party with an assortment of famous friends that was as attention-demanding as you might expect.

She is resplendent in Heidi braids and Jocelyn Wildenstein face, body winched into a corset, shorts, fishnets and zip-up jacket as she and Jack Black, Lil Wayne, Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer, among other guests, play “Truth or Dare” (get it?), mime “Sex” (get it?), sing along to “La Isla Bonita,” and otherwise offer a brief referential whirl through one-time shocking Madonna moments before the big reveal.

To coincide with the news, Madonna is also on the cover of three different issues of “Vanity Fair” (Italian, Spanish, French), in the guise of the Virgin Mary, complete with black and white lace veils and a bleeding heart; inside the magazine she appears in a re-creation of “The Last Supper.”

And to coincide with all that, Piers Morgan, avatar of outrage, is predictably up in arms. How dare she presume to shove herself in our faces yet again, flaunting her body; her smutty jokes; her plastic surgery; her totally, incredibly, no-holds-barred age-inappropriate self?

Duh, because she always dared — that was her truth, more than the dancing, the OK singing, the documentaries, the ad campaigns channeling a sexy housewife for Dolce & Gabbana and a power C.E.O. for Versace. Why should it be any different just because she’s reached Social Security age?

Madonna was never going to go gently into that good night, even if she did have a brief phase living as English landed gentry (that was after her period as a hippie earth mother, as preserved on another cover of “Vanity Fair,” and her period of being Marilyn Monroe). She has always danced on the edge of absurdity and self-caricature, ever since she started actually dancing around the New York club scene in ripped lace petticoats, crosses and fingerless gloves with her belly sticking out. Even when she falls over, as she did at the Brit Awards in 2015, she does it with gusto and no apologies. We need someone to show us how. She’s not so much a train wreck as the train that wrecks the stasis of smothering politesse; the best woman for the job.

Just imagine what it may bring. Not much has been revealed except that Bob the Drag Queen of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” will be a special guest on all the dates, but if the theme is greatest hits, you have to expect that means not just the songs — “Like a Virgin,” “Vogue,” “Ray of Light,” etc. — but also the schtick. The cone bras. The simulated sex. The harems of sweaty ab-full young men. Maybe a surprise planned smooch with a guest star or two and some tongue. (Britney, where are you?) Perhaps a backstage film moment or two. Ascending from hell and descending from the heavens. Fashion-tastic costumes involving bondage, body-baring. Campy historicism and religion. The whole kit and kaboodle of Madonna-isms.

Her timing, as usual, is impeccable. Naked dressing is making a comeback, as worn not to please the eye of the (male) beholder but to advertise the empowerment of the woman inside the skin. So is the era of Indie Sleaze. Seventy has become the new 50. The president is 80. Maye Musk and other “mature” models are getting their cover tries. Mick Jagger is still prancing around in his fancy pants at 79. Madonna is practically middle-aged by comparison.

Besides, something happens when you stick to your guns long enough: You pass through the stages of being in and out and ascend to the status of national treasure. It happened to Queen Elizabeth II. It happened to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. After 40 years of pop culture presence, Madonna has become, Olivier Bouchara, head of editorial content for Vanity Fair France, said in a news release, “a figure as disturbing as she is sacred.” But the truth is, she really isn’t disturbing any more (real life is way too complicated for her to come anywhere close). She’s comfortingly herself.

At this point, we should just be appreciative. It’s probably not a coincidence most of her guests at the announcement party were comedians. It’s a hint (like the career Easter eggs) not to take any of it too seriously. Blowing raspberries at the world is fun. And cathartic. The show will probably be too. And that, as much as anything, is indeed worth celebrating.

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More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna

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Her natal Lilith is: 16 Libra N.Node 2 Sagittarius, S.Node 9 Cancer

Her natal Amazon is: 26 Leo, N.Node 11 Gemini, S.Node 5 Scorpio

Her natal Ceres is: 9 Virgo, N.Node 6 Cancer, S.Node 29 Scorpio

Here is a song by Madonna that is about God/ess: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79fzeNUqQbQ

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Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad

Hi All,

Here is the story of Belén López Peiró. This is a noon chart.

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She wrote books about sexual abuse by her uncle. Now, he’s going to prison

By Paulina Villegas

Washington Post

January 21, 2023

When the verdict came, the Argentinian author Belén López Peiró sighed with relief.

The man who had caused her so much pain, who had sexually abused her as a young girl “when she didn’t even know what love was,” she recently wrote, was finally found guilty.

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The long journey from the moment she first put down in words how her uncle, a respected former police sergeant, used to sneak into her room in the middle night and lay on top of her, until the day of the guilty verdict nine years later, had been excruciating.

On Dec. 26 a local court in Argentina found Claudio Marcelino Sarlo guilty of “grave sexual assault," committed against a minor, López Peiró, and sentenced him to ten years in prison. The judge concluded Sarlo had assaulted his niece repeatedly between the age of 13-17 years in Santa Lucia, a small community in the province of Buenos Aires where she used to spend the summer at her uncle and aunt’s house. The court also ruled that Sarlo will have to pay roughly $78,000 and that he cannot maintain any contact with her.

Sarlo’s attorneys did not immediately respond for a request for comment.

“It’s done," López Peiró wrote in El País newspaper. "That’s it. It’s finished. C’est fini. I am freed.”

In an interview with the Washington Post, the 30-year-old described the “torturous” judicial fight, during which she was forced to testify eight different times, and was subjected to repeated psychological and medical evaluations. The years-long process also shattered her own family, she said, who saw details of their lives made public, she said.

The author detailed her fight to have to uncle prosecuted in two books, earning praise in literary circles for López Peiró's innovative narrative approach to both her own experience with sexual assault and the criminal prosecution process. Her work also helped spark a national debate about child sexual abuse and the failures of the judicial system, becoming intertwined with a national feminist movement that pushed the country to give victims’ testimonies more credence.

Although the legal resolution brought López Peiró much anticipated relief, it came with great personal costs.

López Peiró said she endured the pain of having to run into her attacker at court, the revictimization that came from testifying over and over, of dealing with a callous prosecutor asking her “how does it feel to be abused?” She felt it was her, not him, on trial.

When asked if, in the end, was it all worth it? If justice can actually heal? López Peiró confessed that the answer still escapes her, but the decision to accuse her uncle led to her books.

"In that process I found a new dimension of the power of words that marked my destiny and my literary path,” she said in an interview from Barcelona, where she currently lives.

“And that, I will never regret.”

López Peiró filed the initial complaint in 2014. A few years later, while deep into the trial, she attended a literary workshop and realized how deeply the experience had influenced her own identity. She then decided to reclaim her own trauma.

“After all those years of seeking and not finding justice, of realizing it was in the judicial sphere where I felt the most revictimized and vulnerable, I understood my relief and solace had to come from somewhere else,” she said.

Words is where she found it.

In the books “Porque Volvías Cada Verano” (“Why Did You Come Back Every Summer?”) and “Donde No Hago Pie” (“Where There Is No Standing”), the author denounced not only her uncle, but also her own family for neglect and mistreatment. She also criticized the legal system and the prejudice and social stigma that often surround those who dare to speak out.

“Why Did You Come Every Summer?”, first published in 2018, narrated the abuse through multiple points of view and voices: her mother, a prosecutor, psychiatrists, her aunt and wife of Sarlo, who admitted that although she believed abuse had occurred she would not leave her husband-a literary technique rarely seen in novels or autobiographical nonfiction, where a first-person protagonist narrator is common.

“Writing these books helped me to leave that place of ‘victim,’" she told The Post, "and made me feel I had certain control over something, in this case, words, that allowed me to say exactly what I wanted to say, nothing less, nothing more, and express all that anger and say all those things that embarrassed my family.”

While the books resonated in literary and feminist circles in Argentina, their greatest impact was inspiring other women to come forward.

One was renowned Argentinian actress Thelma Fardín accused Brazilian actor Juan Darthés of sexually assaulting her when she was a minor. Darthés has denied the allegations in an ongoing trial.

In several televised interviews, Fardín credited López Peiró for inspiring her to denounce her alleged attacker, which led to a spike in book sales and stirred a national conversation around the issue, said Leonardo Rodriguez, editor at Madreselva, the book’s publishing house.

“While this was not the first book published in Argentina to touch on the issue of sexual abuse, it was perhaps the first time that a book solely focused on it and went to the very center of it and generated this kind of massive discussion and debate,” Rodriguez added.

Soon, López Peiró found herself invited to speak in public universities, high schools and libraries.

The case also illustrated the shortcomings of Argentina’s judicial system, where victims often "make great sacrifices and are forced to take on the burden to convince authorities to gather evidence and push the case forward, and it’s them who have to keep rowing and rowing,” said María Piqué, a federal prosecutor.

Luli Sánchez, López Peiró's attorney, echoed the criticism and pointed at the nine years it took a court to find Sarlo guilty, a period which, she said, was “although terrible and inhuman, not unusual.”

Sanchez said that in Argentina there are many challenges to prosecuting sexual abuse cases, particularly of minors, because of stereotypes towards victims and the judicial institutions often don’t take these cases seriously.

In a 2022 report by The Economist Intelligence Unit analyzing how countries respond to cases of child abuse and exploitation, Argentina ranked 50 out of 60 countries.

“Not long ago, when a person denounced being victim of sexual crimes, and there was not physical evidence or direct witnesses, prosecutors would easily dismiss them,” Sánchez said.

This has changed in the past decade, according to legal experts, who say prosecutors and investigators have received training on empathy and avoiding victim-blaming behaviors, which are entrenched in Latin American countries.

“There has been a widespread social demand to treat survivors as actual victims of serious human rights violations, in other words, for them to be heard,” Sanchez said. “The neglect and mistreatment were infinitely worse and there have been tremendous strides made but there is still a long way to go,” she added.

While López Peiró recognizes the battles gained by the feminist movement and the significance of pursuing legal justice, the written word has remained her most loyal ally in her quest for self-restoration.

“I want other victims to know that words help, they help process, untangle, and restore -because I don’t think you can heal because this is not a disease, you can restore your memory, your body and your identity which is so often stripped from us,” she said.

As for her, she said she is ready to move on and finally, write about something else.

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Belén López Peiro: "That's it. The term. I freed myself”: the Argentine writer who denounced an abusive uncle in a novel and now managed to have him convicted by justice

BBC News

( translated from Portuguese)

The writer Belén López Peiró denounced her uncle nine years ago and wrote two novels about her experience.When she was a girl, Belén López Peiró spent her summer vacations with her uncles in the town of Santa Lucía, a former agricultural colony in the north of the province of Buenos Aires, in Argentina, where her mother had grown up.While her parents, separated, worked in the city, she had fun with her cousins and friends.But behind those apparently idyllic visits of hers, a terrifying reality was hidden: from the age of 13, her uncle -a policeman who was the husband of her mother's sister- began to abuse her.She suffered rape for three years, until a family member became aware of the situation.López Peiró wrote about those harrowing experiences in her first novel: "Why you came back every summer", published in 2018.And this week, she announced that, after a nine-year court battle, her abuser was finally sentenced to 10 years in prison.

"It's over"

It's over. That's it. It's over. C'est fini. I freed myself," said the 30-year-old writer in an opinion column published on January 3 in the Spanish newspaper El País."After nine years and a complaint. Statements, psychological tests, round trips to police stations, prosecutors, national courts. A file: 500 pages. Two lawyers. A prosecutor. A justice commission. Therapy for 15 years Half of my life! My entire family split in two. A town covering up the abuser. Seven years of writing workshops. Two books published (...) Finally. Finally, on December 19 the hearing of trial. And five days later, the sentence," he wrote."Now I say it well, with all the names that I could not say at one time: Claudio Sarlo, former commissioner of the province of Buenos Aires, political uncle, father of a family, sexually abused me when I was a girl," he said, detailing the crime contained in the sentence:"Seriously insulting sexual abuse aggravated by being the perpetrator in charge of the guardian and for having been committed against a minor under 18 years of age."

In statements to BBC Mundo, López Peiró said that the sentence brought her "in the first place, without a doubt, relief", although she said that what had relieved her even more than the ruling was writing the column and "locating all those emotions in a place"."With the difference that, when I wrote "Why you came back every summer" the word flowed, it was a very deep need. It was like a devastating waterfall, but I let it flow. In this case, the column cost me every word, as if from truth was the last thing he had to say," he revealed.She told there that she had decided to write about the sentence with the intention of "going back to writing to turn the page. Going back to where I found reparation."

Transform Abuse

In an interview with this medium in 2018, when her first novel came out, the author had said that she went through three states during her healing process: first, recognizing herself as a victim, then getting out of that place of victim, and finally, finding the empowerment that it allowed him to move on from that experience.The latter she found when she entered a writing workshop where they showed her "that she could transform abuse into a work of art."López Peiró not only wrote -crudely- about being raped. She also told how she had suffered during her long journey in search of reparation and justice, due to how she was questioned by those who should take care of her and listen to her-from family members, to doctors or judicial officials.Why hadn't she said anything to her before, why did she come back every summer, why did she do this to her family.Her response was to tell everything and make visible what many did not want to see.

In 2021 he published his second novel, "Where I can't stand", which reflects all the difficulties that a victim of child sexual abuse faces when they decide to report and start legal proceedings.The author says that her two novels are "books that I would have liked to read if I had not only experienced a situation of sexual violence and not knowing whether to report it or not, and not knowing what to do and finding a bit of redress, but also for any other person, so that a father, a mother, a brother, a friend, can better accompany the people who experience a situation like this".During the long process that led to this conviction, López Peiró not only highlights the support of her closest family nucleus.She also mentions a major turning point in the case."When I got a feminist lawyer who is Luciana Sánchez, she made us work in the judicial process in a more collective way. In some way she made us involve other lawyers, other communicators, that we go to associations, that this does not remain only about neither on my shoulders nor on her shoulders, but rather it made the work collective", explains the writer.

Write something else"

In her opinion column in El País, López Peiró says that she "didn't know if it was necessary or not to write this."But she that she did it "for all those who could not speak or denounce. For me."Her last sentence is an announcement: "From now on I dedicate myself to writing something else."Asked about this future project, she reveals that she is working on her third novel."It is too soon to anticipate something, but I think that now that I can be a little lighter I will be able to have a possibility that I did not have before, which is to create other worlds, that my head, that my emotionality have enough space to immerse themselves in other possible universes".

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More: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bel%C3%A9n_L%C3%B3pez_Peir%C3%B3

Her books:

https://www.amazon.com/Books-Bel%C3%A9n-L%C3%B3pez-Peir%C3%B3/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3ABel%C3%A9n+L%C3%B3pez+Peir%C3%B3

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Her natal Ceres is 6 Taurus, N.Node 29 Taurus, S.Node 7 Capricorn

Her natal Amazon is 22 Libra, N.Node 6 Taurus, S.Node 9 Sagittarius

Her natal Lilith is 00/18 Capricorn, N.Node 6 Capricorn, and the S.Node 24 Taurus

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad

Hi All,

Here is the story of Amna AlQubaisi. This is a noon chart.

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An exclusive interview with the first UAE female racing driver Amna Al Qubaisi

by Olivia Morris

October 13, 2021

Amna Al Qubaisi knows all about living her life in the fast lane. As the first Emirati female racing driver, Amna is here to inspire women to continue to pursue their dreams.

Can you talk us through your career so far?

I’m a Formula 3 driver working her way up to reach Formula 1. While I’m still only at the start of my career, I’ve claimed many achievements such as being the first female and Arab to win an FIA F4 race in 2019, the first female Arab to win the RMC in 2017, the GCC Drivers Programme, and The Dubai O Plate in 2019.

Where did your passion for racecar driving come from?

It comes from my father, Khaled Al Qubaisi, he was a racing driver himself and he started in 2019. I took inspiration when he would come home and invite drivers over for dinner and they would talk about racing and their favourite tracks so I wanted to take part and I started karting when I was 14.

How has your father inspired you and what advice has he given you for entering the sport?

He always taught me how to be calm and focused in this sport. At first, it was very hard for me to focus due to the fact I get distracted a lot.

There’s also a lot of physical aspects that go into racecar driving. Can you talk us

through this?

We have to work on our necks due to the strong G Force when turning in corners and work on our arms and abdomen as the car does not have any power steer available. And finally, our legs for the strong braking we have to input through our legs.

What does it feel like to have accomplished so much at such a young age?

It feels amazing but I know I can accomplish more. I have made many mistakes that prevented me from reaching my potential but it’s all part of the journey.

Women are definitely underrepresented in motorsports. How do you hope to change that?

I feel like due to the fact we don’t get the same advantages as our male competitors it’s pretty difficult to compete with that. So, I think we just need to spread awareness.

You’re a leader for women in this region. What do you hope others can take from your example?

I hope other women could take the fact that you should keep on persisting despite what other people say about you. I’ve come a long way and I can’t quit now when I put years of hard work in.

What do you hope for the future of women in the UAE?

I hope I get to see more women in a male-dominated field in general not just in sports and breaking that stereotype. We can and we will.

What have been the biggest challenges you’ve had to overcome, to date?

I’ve always had to deal with judgment and people criticizing me to this day. It’s still something new to others and I hope in time it will fade away.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, what are the key milestones?

For sure winning races and the biggest one was F4 in 2019. That was like putting a full stop to those that doubted me.

This is ‘The Renegade Issue’ – how would you define this?

I wouldn’t say it’s rebelling but more standing up for ourselves and be heard. We’ve come a long way and it’s time to become what we have always wanted to be.

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This 18-Year-Old Emirati Race Driver Is Going Where No Arab Woman Has Gone Before

by Shruti Thacker

At 18, most of us were applying for college or trying to get our first internship. But not Amna Al Qubaisi, who is at the forefront of breaking glass ceilings in the Arab world as the first female Emirati race car driver.

In 5 years’ time (when she is 23), she hopes to be participating in Formula 2. And that’s not the end goal. “Formula 1 is the main goal, but it’s not an easy journey — and I’m determined enough to reach that,” she tells me as we chat about the Formula E event that happened in Saudi Arabia last month.

Trained as a professional gymnast, Al Qubaisi took a detour from her chosen path while watching and cheering on her father, Le Mans racing driver Khaled Al Qubaisi, as he toured the world of motorsport. “When he spoke about racing and how he did different tracks around the world, meeting new drivers – that moment sparked [something in me] and I wanted to try a kart,” she reminisces. Shortly after, her father gave her a kart and started coaching her. There has been no looking back since then.

Al Qubaisi — who has already competed in Formula 4 in Europe and won the UAE’s senior Rotax Max Challenge karting series in 2017 — feels a sense calm behind the driving wheel. “Whenever I’m in a car, it’s my therapy. It keeps me focused. It’s like when you go to a therapist, that’s who I am when I drive. The car understands me,” she explains.

Speaking of Formula E at the Ad Diriyah ePrix in Saudi Arabia, Al Qubaisi feels immense pride. Joined by other female racing talent, the young Emirati driver (who is sponsored by Kaspersky Lab) took her place in the Envision Virgin Racing Team Formula E on the street circuit of Ad Diriyah in fully electric cars. While driving on the streets of Riyadh was momentous, she says it was seeing the locals and the energy that made the moment more special. The event had men and women attend the races and concerts in mixed groups, a first for the country. “Seeing so many of the locals watching the race on the stands [was] amazing. We can see how interested these people are in motorsport. That’s already a big step,” she comments.

With a competitive line-up of female drivers, the event proved to be revolutionary and shone a spotlight on the government’s commitment to women driving since the lifting of the ban on June 24, 2018. Al Qubaisi says the number of female racing drivers came as a pleasant surprise, but hopes to see more local faces on the track. “I’m glad to be the first — and hopefully I’m not the last. I have my sister [Hamda Al Qubaisi] following my footsteps. Hopefully in the future we see more Arabs involved in motorsports.”

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Amna and Hamda Al Qubaisi: Emirati sisters driving the family's motor racing legacy into a new era

Khaled Al Qubaisi explains how his daughters have impressed since taking their talents to Europe – and why Formula One is the ultimate goal

Mar 31, 2021

Khaled Al Qubaisi is one of the most accomplished and well respected figures in UAE motorsport, and now his daughters are set to carry the family legacy into the future.

Among his many motor racing achievements, Al Qubaisi, who has raced three times in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, has won the Dubai 24 Hour twice, in 2012 and 2013, and the Yas Marina 12-Hour Race, also in 2013,

His daughters, 21-year-old Amna and 19-year-old Hamda, are well on their way to emulating their father. Both sisters have graduated from Karting to Formula racing, and Al Qubaisi believes Amna and Hamda will become role models for a new generation of racing drivers.

"They have a bright future," Al Qubaisi, managing director of Abu Dhabi Motorsports, told The National. "Firstly, it is important to acknowledge that we have two great Emirati female drivers in Formula racing professionally and competing at this level.

“That is taking nothing away from them as racing drivers, but they are a great image booster to the UAE, the region and the Arab nations.

“They are not just female drivers but competitive female drivers. They have amazed the motor racing fraternity in Italy, as they were the only two female drivers among the 30-odd male drivers.

“It’s something to be proud of as a country to have such great drivers to demonstrate the talent and success of Emirati females.”

Amna is in Formula-3 and a member of the champion Prema Team that won the Asian team championship by a wide margin when the event was held in Dubai and Abu Dhabi in February.

Hamda is also part of Prema Team and travelled to Italy three weeks ago for a rigid programme of testing and training where she was in the top five in the speed test. She will compete in the F4 Italian and German championship in April and May and will continue with her schooling in Italy until October.

“[Prima Team] won’t take anyone other than those with potential because they want to be the best team,” Al Qubaisi said. “Amna had the privilege of being selected for them. It’s not just about the money, because there are many drivers with big budgets who can pay to be in a top team.

“But teams choose drivers based on talent, personality, character, commitment, discipline and so many other things. So when they choose Amna and Hamda to be part of their team that is a big statement in itself."

Amna's prodigious racing career has involved breaking plenty of barriers. Having started karting in 2014 at the age of 14, she became the first female Arab to participate at the Rotax Max Challenge World Finals the following year.

In 2017, Amna won the UAE RMC Championship – the first Arab female to do so. As she progressed through the motor racing ranks, success followed her, including the 2018 Italian F4 Championship with Prema.

Hamda, meanwhile, has closely followed in her older sister's footsteps. Over two years racing in the UAE, she had six wins – one with a winning margin of nearly 11 seconds – and eight pole positions. In Europe, Hamda has managed three top 10s spots in her first season.

“This has been the most competitive seasons for both Hamda in F4 and Amna in F3," Al Qubaisi said. "They are very talented. I know someone who has been in motorsports for a long time and he tells me ‘your girls have the potential to reach F1 level’."

As for most aspiring racing drivers, Formula One is the ultimate goal for Amna and Hamda. “Otherwise, we won’t be wasting our time and energy,” Al Qubaisi said. “Of course, they still have a long way to go and a lot of support required to get them there.

“I think they have the talent. It’s just a matter of time and a combination of performances and results. They have been delivering it so far and have impressed in whatever was needed from them to take the next step.”

One possible avenue is the W-Series – the all-female championship, which offers winning drivers the chance to race in Formula 2, the traditional stepping stone to F1.

“In the W-series they will be racing alongside F1 drivers, providing them the exposure to compete,” Al Qubaisi said. “The winner of the race gets the opportunity to race in F2, so we are looking at this and talking to them.”

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amna_Al_Qubaisi

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Her natal Lilith is 00/21 Taurus, N.Node 9 Capricorn, S.Node 29 Taruus.

Her natal Amazon is 2 Scorpio, N.Node 12 Taurus, S.Node 7 Sagittarius.

Her natal Ceres is 00/44 Libra, N.Node 2 Gemini, S.Node 11 Capricorn.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad

Hi All,

Here is the story of a remarkable Dalit women named Jhalkari Bai. This is a noon chart.

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What We Know Of Jhalkari Bai, The Dalit Woman Commander Of Rani Laxmibai’s Army

We know of Rani Lakshmi Bai's bravery tales, but we are not aware of Jhalkari Bai, the Dalit woman who helped her throughout, and fought right next to her in the uprising of 1857.

Bhumika Agarwal

India Times

We know of Rani Lakshmi Bai’s bravery tales, but we are not aware of Jhalkari Bai, the Dalit woman who helped her throughout, and fought right next to her in the uprising of 1857.

The stories of our female warriors are rarely told. Can we think of any other female warriors other than Rani Laxmibai and Sultana Razia? Through the ages, women have shown great abilities, playing a crucial role in history. But we rarely hear about them. Isn’t it time we changed that?

Here is a name that is quite disguised in the pages of history. Commander of Rani Laxmibai’s Army, Jhalkari Bai. The attention that is paid to Kings and Queens is appropriate, but even majesty can show courage only when they have good support systems. Jhalkari Bai was that support system to the Queen.

Few people know that she is the woman who overcame every obstacle to save Rani Laxmi Bai and her son. Her uncanny similarity to Rani Laxmibai made it very easy for her to disguise herself as the queen and misguide the British army during the revolt of 1857.

What do we know about Jhalkari Bai?

Jhalakari Bai was born in Bundelkhand on 22 November 1830 to a poor Kori family (an oppressed Dalit group) Her mother was Jamunaabai and her father was Sadoba (E.K. Mulchand Koli), and lost her mother early in childhood, and was raised by her father as an only child. Because of the social conditions of the time, she did not have formal education, but was trained in horseback riding and firearms use.

Since childhood, she was bold and determined. She worked to support her family, supervised animals, as well as collected wood from forests. As Jhalakari once came into contact with a tiger in a jungle, she killed the animal with her ax. Her bravery and courage were outstanding.

Jhalkari Bai was married to a soldier in the Jhansi army, and that’s how she came to be, one day, among the women of the local village, who went to the fort of Jhansi to honor the Queen during Gauri Puja. Jhalkari Bai was an absolutely identical copy of the Rani, and this made the Rani notice her. When she came to know of the feats of Jhalkari Bai, the Rani was impressed and asked her to join the women’s Durga dal in the army. There, Jhalkaribai trained in guns, cannon firing, and other weapons, and later, became the commander of the Durga dal.

Night of the attack in the uprising of 1857

At the time of the rebellion of 1857, General Rose attacked Jhansi on 23 March 1858 with his huge army. Rani Laxmibai fought bravely with her 5000 soldiers. The Queen was waiting for help from Peshwa, but she was not able to make contact with them as Tatia Tope was already defeated.

Legend has it that when the British army came to the fort to attack the Rani, it seemed it may be difficult to save her. Jhalkari Bai (who resembled Rani Laxmi bai) took the position of queen. As the British army mistook Jhalkari Bai for the queen, the Rani was able to escape with her son (successor of the Jhansi kingdom).

She is now honored on Shahid Diwas (Martyr’s Day) by various Koli organizations.

Why is Jhalkari Bai not better known?

There is silence on Jhalkari Bai’s bravery which is intentional because she was from the Dalit community. Rani Laxmi Bai was born into a Brahmin family in Varanasi and married a Peshwa (Brahmin) king named Raja Gangadhar Rao of Jhansi. Tatya Tope, her ally, was also born in a Brahmin family, was similarly born to Ramachandra Pandurang Tope.

To keep the oppressed class as oppressed, history is told in a biased way, keeping them hidden from written records. This has motivated the Dalits in Bundelkhand and throughout UP, to retrieve and bring to light the heroism and sacrifices of Jhalkari Bai.

In India, the upper castes have ignored the many stories of Dalit resistance against colonial rulers and social injustices. Though these stories have survived mostly orally through generations of Dalits, history as we commonly know it has kept it hidden, due to history being written by dominant upper caste historians. There is also the additional layer of her being a woman.

Jhalkari Bai is played by television star Ankita Lokhande in her Bollywood debut in the Kangana Ranaut starrer biopic of Rani Laxmi Bai, Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi. She has been portrayed as brave and loyal, and the narrative speaks of how she sacrificed her life in the revolt.

More: https://satyaagrah.com/sanatan/veer-gaatha/715-jhalkaribai-the-indian-rebellion-of-1857-who-took-on-british-forces-disguised-as-laxmibai

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Jhalkaribai: The Indian Rebellion Of 1857 Who Took on British Forces Disguised as Laxmibai

A prominent fighter during the Rebellion of 1857, one woman driven by sheer fortitude and courage was able to strike fear in the hearts of the British army and leave behind a rich legacy for millions to emulate.

The history of India is full of rulers -- both men and women -- who combined bravery with a strategy to repulse attacks by foreign invaders down the ages. Members of royal families were known to have shown exemplary courage when the situation demanded.

But Jhalkari Bai's saga is a study in contrast. She was the 'double' of Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi, the legendary warrior who fought the invading British army in the first War of Independence. A little known figure in Indian history, Jhalkari Bai lives on in the folklore of the Bundelkhand region.

Jhalkaribai! While she remains in oblivion in the pages of History text books, she is revered as one of the bravest daughters of Bharat Mata from the Bahujan community. She was one of the commanders of /*Durga Dal*/, the women contingent of the *Jhansi army of Rani Laxmibai*. She was also an advisor to the queen. Laxmibai consulted her on

administrative and military affairs. Born and brought up in a humble background, she rose to power by sheer dint of her bravery and her love for the motherland.

Do you know it was because of the defence laid by Jhalkaribai against the British army that Rani Laxmibai could escape from Jhansi Fort? The British felt confused, as they thought she was the Rani of Jhansi. Such was the resemblance of Jhalkaribai with Laxmibai! Jhalkaribai purposefully misled the British army, leading from the front, giving a safe passage to the Rani of Jhansi.

Background of Jhalkaribai

Jhalkaribai was born to Jamuna Devi and Sadoba Singh, a Koli family in Bhojla village near Jhansi on 22 November 1830. The Kolis are a community with many subgroups; they inhabit the central and western mountain regions of India. Jhalkaribai was the only child of her parents. She lost her mother when she was very young. Coincidently her

lookalike Laxmibai also lost her mother when she was 4. Her father raised her as a single parent.

She was different from other girls of her community. Besides taking care of household chores, doing her duties of a lady of the household, Jhalkaribai was regularly involved in tending cattle and collecting firewood from the jungle. She was daring right from her childhood. She often went all alone with her axe to the jungle to collect firewood though she knew she might be attacked by wild animals.

Once she had an encounter with a leopard while herding her cattle. She killed the leopard with her herding stick! This feat of hers brought her fame in her neighborhood and beyond. On another occasion, she saved a village businessman from being looted by dacoits. She challenged a gang of dacoits who raided the house of the businessman and forced them to retreat. The villagers started revering her. The young and the old drew

inspiration from her.

When Jhalkaribai grew of marriageable age, the villagers started looking for a groom for her. They wanted her to get married to someone as courageous as her. And they found a suitable groom in Pooran Kori, who.was known to be brave and trained in the art of warfare. Soon after, Pooran Kori was inducted into the Jhansi army as a soldier. He became a well-known personality in the Jhansi army for his skills and exploits.

Jhalkaribai joined Jhansi Army "Durga Dal" of Laxmibai

On one occasion, Rani Laxmibai invited the women of the villages of Jhansi to attend Gauri (Goddess Shakti) puja at the Jhansi Fort.Jhalkaribai accompanied the other ladies to the fort. Laxmibai’s eyes fell on her; she was struck by Jhalkaribai’s uncanny resemblance with her. She learnt that she was the wife of Pooran Kori, one of the bravest

soldiers of her army. She also learnt about her childhood exploits, how she killed the leopard and her encounter with the dacoits. Laxmibai immediately inducted her into the women contingent of the Jhansi Army called Durga Dal. More women joined Durga Dal.

The Rani herself trained the women army. Jhalkaribai’s learning was fast. She soon became an expert in the art of warfare – horse riding, shooting, using of all weapons used in war, etc. By dint of her courage and her skills, she rose to the power of the Commander of Durga Dal.

Jhalkaribai was also a beauty with brains. Rani Laxmibai additionally appointed her as her advisor. The Rani started seeking her advice in administrative and military affairs and of creating strategies for defending Jhansi from possible attacks by the British and other enemy forces.

Lord Dalhousie

The British under Lord Dalhousie had rejected Damodar Rao’s claim to the throne of Jhansi, as he was adopted. They applied the Doctrine of Lapse and annexed Jhansi to their empire. Meanwhile, in the early months of 1857, rumor about cartridges containing pork or beef fat being supplied by British sparked unrest amongst soldiers and the common men alike. And the first rebellion started in Meerut on May 10, 1857. Indian sepoys with the help of local civilians killed 50 Britishers. This news spread like wild fire and many a son and daughter of Bharat Mata rose in revolt against the British across the country. The news reached Jhansi. Laxmibai revolted against the British and declared independence.

Meanwhile, a group of mutineers, who were supporters of a rival prince claiming the throne of Jhansi, attacked the fort. Rani Laxmibai foiled their attempt, defeating them. The rulers of Orchha and Datiya, both allies of the British, attacked Jhansi in August 1857. They wished to divide Jhansi amongst themselves. The Rani assembled her forces. She set up a foundry to cast cannons within the premises of the fort. Yes! She successfully defeated the invaders. Jhalkaribai and Durga Dal played an instrumental role in defeating the enemy forces.

Laxmibai ruled Jhansi peacefully from August 1857 to January 1858. Towards the third week of March 1858, the British forces, under Commander Hugh Rose, marched towards Jhansi. They ordered the Rani to surrender and threatened destruction of the fort and the town if she refused. The battle between Rani Laxmibai and the British forces began

on 24th March 1858 and continued for 10 days until April 2nd. Jhalkaribai played an active role in this battle. There were heavy casualties from both sides. At last British forces were able to penetrate the walls of the fort and into the fort and the palace. All

because one of the Rani’s commanders betrayed her, opening a well-protected gate of the fort to the British forces.

It was Jhalkaribai who advised Laxmibai to run away from the fort so that she could accumulate a force outside. The witty Jhalkaribai herself offered to defend the fort unto death by disguising herself as the Rani. Disguised as the queen, she galloped in her horse towards the enemy, taking command of the Jhansi army.

Jhalkaribai fought like a wounded tigress

Meanwhile, her husband Pooran Kori died while fighting the British. Jhalkaribai fought like a wounded tigress when she learnt about it, killing many British soldiers, until she was caught. With her adopted son Damodar Rao tied to her back, Laxmibai jumped down several feet from the fort and managed to escape.

The British Commander Hugh Rose and his men were overjoyed, as they felt they caught the Rani alive. Rose asked Jhalkaribai what should be done to her. She said, “Hang me!” Later, they learnt that she was Jhalkaribai, the lookalike of Laxmibai. She was hanged to death by the British. Though the actual date of the hanging is not in records, it was

probably April 1858, as she was caught on April 2nd.

According to Bundelkhand folklore, the British commander was so stunned by Jhalkaribai’s wit, courage, and sacrifice that he said if every Indian woman was like her, the British would be bound to leave India soon.

Jhalkaribai was a Bahujan. But didn’t she rise to power owing to her skills? Jhalkaribai struck fear in the hearts of the British army.Through her role in the 1857 War of Independence and for the freedom of Jhansi, through her valor and sacrifice, she has left behind a rich legacy for millions to emulate.

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Jhalkaribai

Jhalkaribai (22 November 1830 – 4 April 1858)[2] was a woman soldier who played an important role in the Indian Rebellion of 1857. She served in the women's army of Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi. She eventually rose to a position of a prominent advisor to the queen, Rani of Jhansi. At the height of the Siege of Jhansi, she disguised herself as the queen and fought on her behalf, on the front, allowing the queen to escape safely out of the fort.

Life

Jhalakaribai was born to Sadova Singh and Jamunadevi on 22 November 1830 in Bhojla village in a Koli family near Jhansi. In her youth, she is claimed to have stood her ground when attacked by a tiger and killed it with an axe. She reportedly once killed a leopard in the forest with a stick she used to herd cattle.[

After the death of her mother when she was very young, her father raised her. Consistent with the social conditions of the era, she lacked formal education, but was trained in horseback riding and the use of weaponry. Jhalkaribai bore an uncanny resemblance to Laxmibai and because of this she was inducted into the women's wing of the army.

Military service

In the queen's army, she quickly rose in the ranks and began commanding her own army. During the Rebellion of 1857, General Hugh Rose attacked Jhansi with a large army. The queen faced the army with 14,000 of her troops. She waited for relief from Peshwa Nana Sahib's army camping at Kalpi that did not come because Tantia Tope had already been defeated by General Rose. Meanwhile, Dulha Ju, in charge of one of the gates of the fort, had made a pact with the assailants and opened the doors of Jhansi for the British forces. When the British rushed the fort, Laxmibai, on advice of her courtier, escaped through Bhanderi gate with her son and attendants to Kalpi. Upon hearing of Laxmibai's escape, Jhalkaribai set out for General Rose's camp in disguise and declared herself to be the queen. This led to a confusion that continued for a whole day and gave the Rani's army renewed advantage.

In addition, she was a close confidante and advisor to the queen playing a key role in the analysis of the battle, alongside Laxmibai.

Legacy

The death anniversary of Jhalkaribai is celebrated as Shahid Diwas (Martyr Day) by various Koli organizations. The movement to establish Bundelkhand as a separate state has also used the legend of Jhalkaribai to create the Bundeli identity. The Government of India's Post and Telegraph department has issued a postal stamp depicting Jhalkaribai.

The Archaeological Survey of India is setting up a museum at Panch Mahal, a five-storey building located inside the Jhansi Fort in remembrance of Jhalkaribai.

She is referred to in the novel Jhansi ki Rani written in 1951 by B. L. Varma, who created a subplot in his novel about Jhalkaribai. He addressed Jhalkaribai as Koli and an extraordinary soldier in Laxmibai's army. Ram Chandra Heran Bundeli novel Maati, published in the same year, depicted her as "chivalrous and a valiant martyr". The first biography of Jhalkaribai was written in 1964 by Bhawani Shankar Visharad, with the help of Varma's novel and his research from the oral narratives of Kori communities living in the vicinity of Jhansi.

Writers narrating the story of Jhalkaribai. Efforts have been made to place Jhalkaribai at an equal footing of Laxmibai.[17] Since the 1990s, the story of Jhalkaribai has begun to model a fierce form of Koli womanhood, has acquired a political dimension,