February 2025 – Tricksters Road

I started to make a post on Bluesky, but then realized that it would probably be better to write a blog post about it. So here I am.

Look. Everything has been terrible lately. This is probably going to continue to be the state of things for a while to come. Not much the common folk can do about that except yell. And oh gods, have folks been yellin’.

Unfortunately there’s also a tendency to yell at everyone and everything. There’s a whole lot of folks screaming at people for “how dare you talk about___ , when___ is happening?!?”. Which is…not helping. Bread and roses, my friends. Bread and roses.

There’s also a lot of folks talking about revolutions and guillotines and all that and I want to ask something….

What does the world you want actually look like? In detail.

Fighting against evil and injustice is a good thing. A necessary thing. The problem I’m having is that I don’t know what a lot of y’all are fighting for? Freedom, justice, and community are all excellent buzzwords to shout and write on signs, but what do they look like in practice? What is your plan to care for the vulnerable while this fight is going on? What is your plan for reconstruction? WHAT DOES YOUR BRAVE NEW WORLD LOOK LIKE?

You see, if you don’t know what you’re fighting to build, the only thing you’re doing is fighting to preserve the status quo. You can’t tear something down without having an idea in place of what you want to replace it with because, let’s be 100% clear, here. If you don’t know what you’re putting into the hole after you rip out the rotten tree and have it ready to go in, something is else is going to take root in it, and you probably won’t like what grows from that, either. Historically, what moves in after is just as rotten and damaging, if not worse, than what was there before.

What are you planning to grow after you rip out the tree? How do you plan to grow it? Do you have the seeds ready and in place? What are you doing to prepare the soil for planting? What does your garden design look like?

When all is said and done, what world are you fighting to build?

Tell me about it.

Bread is good, my loves, but we need roses, too.

Bread and Roses

As we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing, “Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses.”

As we come marching, marching, we battle, too, for men—
For they are women’s children and we mother them again.
Our days shall not be sweated from birth until life closes—
Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses.

As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient song of Bread;
Small art and love and beauty their trudging spirits knew—
Yes, it is Bread we fight for—but we fight for Roses, too.

As we come marching, marching, we bring the Greater Days—
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler—ten that toil where one reposes—
But a sharing of life’s glories: Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses.
— James Oppenheim, 1911

Sometimes I write folktales that never were. This is one from the archives.

Rattlesack Road cuts through a marsh in northeastern Massachusetts, not far from the coast. Folks who live near it will tell you to stay out of the marsh and to avoid the road that cuts across it between sunset and sunrise. Most won’t say much more than that it’s a bad road, and leave it at that, but if pressed, there are some who will tell you it’s because of old Rattlesack Jack, who the road is named for.

Some say Jack’s a ghost, the spirit of some farmer who died badly out in the marsh. Some say his is a stolen story, reskinned over an older Indigenous tale, or historical recollection twisted out of recognition (not uncommon in New England, sadly). Others say he’s an urban legend told to scare off tourists, since the road serves as a shortcut to a local beach and year-round residents aren’t keen on having every possible road blocked up with traffic. Others still say that he’s something someone brought with them from the Old Country that made itself at home. Personally, I’m inclined toward the last, myself, given how similar the stories are to old Irish or Scottish tales of boggarts and bogles.

Conflicting origins aside, the tales are always the same, and have been for as long as anyone can remember. Local historians have found references to him in journals that date back as far as the old Colonies. Tales of traveling through the marsh after dark and having a horse throw a shoe, or a car breaking down, and hearing sounds like bones being rattled and laughter, or seeing a short, heavy-built man with long, spindly arms and legs watching them from the trees while they changed a flat tire, grinning and shaking a leather bag whose contents made a disturbing rattling sound at them until they hurried away. Even in the days of cellphones and cell towers everywhere, signal’s notoriously hard to come by in the marsh, making it all but impossible to reliably call for assistance if one finds oneself broken down, despite strong connection at either end of the road.

There are also darker tales and a centuries-long record of abandoned horses, wagons, and cars whose owners are rarely found again that’s higher than it should be for a road as out of the way as Rattlesack Road.

The thing with boggarts is that they aren’t always dangerous, generally speaking. Capricious and something to be careful of, sure, but not that much of a threat. However, giving them names? They don’t like that, and that’s when they turn malicious and become dangerous, and that sounds an awful lot like Rattlesack Jack.

(If you liked what you just read, please toss a few coins at your mostly friendly resident word-witch to help keep her little monsters fed!)

Month: February 2025

Bread and Roses: What Are We Building?

Rattlesack Jack