The Dreamtime

As a child, I received a strange book about the creation of the Outback and the history of Aborigines called The Dreamtime. The book was illustrated with photographs and drawings and went back to the first sunrise, about how the animals were sad that it was so cold and willed the sun into being. But my favorite story was a disturbing little ditty about an old woman and her dingoes. The dingoes captured other Aborigines and brought them to the old woman to eat. Eventually she and her little wicked dingo friends get caught and they are killed. But they don't die. The dingoes turn into snakes and the woman turns into a bird, a bird that is almost never seen in Australia, but still exists.

What interested me the most that unlike the fairy tales I'd read, these had no moral. You kind of got what you deserved, but there wasn't much in the way of punishment or heavy-handed morality. It was the first I learned of the Outback, long before it became an overpriced chain restaurant with an appetizer that everyone loved that had more fat than four large pizzas. (Yes, I had my share of the blooming onion.) That haunted wild world with animals that talked and created the sun and killed for old women. So like and unlike everything now.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Sampson he got his hands around the lion's jaw
And he ripped that beast till the lion was dead
And the bees made honey in the lion's head." Peter, Paul, and Mary

Cocktail Hour
Hey everyone, take a look at Heff's dinner challenge. Might have to get the bowtie pasta out after all.

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Thursday!