On the day that Bernie has suspended his campaign, here are some of my thoughts. Instead of just letting it get me down, which it has, I'm also using it as inspiration to do more.

After Trump's election, which feels so long ago, I advised friends to mourn but not despair, and instead take action to help those you think he'll endanger. I didn't have any practical advice on how to do that though.

Yesterday I joined the Board of the Theosophical Order of Service. It's a wonderful organization started by Annie Besant, with the motto, "A union of those who love in the service of all that suffers." My practical advice isn't to join a Board, but go join something. Join a group that's doing some good in your community. The Theosophical Order of Service (TOS) is one such organization that has local groups all over the country, but there are more than we realize.

The way spoiling an election is supposed to work looks like this:

Hillary Clinton is the obvious choice for liberals and progressives to vote for. If there are enough Democratic votes to ensure a Clinton win, but a big enough percentage choose to vote for a third party candidate or a write-in, then she won't get that win.

This view depends on seeing Hillary Clinton as the automatic, "of course" choice. It depends on her already having had enough votes and then losing them to a third party. But she never really had those votes to begin with.

A train is hurtling down the tracks. In the distance is a fork in the track, and the train will have to take one of several tracks. On November 2 it's up to you to decide which way the train goes.

You don't have to be vegan to like the BFG. I went with my nonvegan husband and we both enjoyed it. He didn't even catch the animal rights theme until I pointed it out.

Spoilers below.

My fiance and I have been meaning to go to Kama for a while now. They have one in LaGrange Park where we live, so we made reservations for Valentine's Day.

Before dinner we had hoped to go to a local metaphysical store but saw they were closed Sundays. Instead we wound up wandering LaGrange and driving around Hinsdale, looking at beautiful houses we'll probably never be able to afford. Oh well. If I had that kind of money I probably wouldn't spend it on a house anyway.

Some people say you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. I know that's not true because I make my omelets with tofu. But I might say that you can't break systems of oppression without stepping on a few toes, and you can't always eliminate cruelty in a way that the people who rely on cruelty will like.

Two weeks ago I hit a deer with my car. I drive an hour and ten minutes to work every day and this has been one of my worst fears. It was a rainy night so I was driving slow but I still wasn't able to react in time. The deer wasn't much bigger than a big dog and probably had just barely lost his or her spots.

One of the first things I did as a new Pagan was roam the hills and woods near my home looking for flower faeries. I felt, at the time, like I had seen a few, as well as the faery of the tree in my back yard. When I did my self initiation as a solitary eclectic Wiccan (I don't call myself Wiccan anymore) I used fronds from a local willow tree to form a circlet to wear. Weeping willow is still sacred to me to this day. I'm typing this with a willow frond in henna on my arm, and "willow" remains part of my magickal name.

I've been writing for Pagan Activist for almost two years, and in that time I've barely mentioned Paganism, other than to say that my awe at the cycles of life and death has informed the way I look at Gaia, Demeter, Persephone, and Artemis.

That's because I've always been suspicious of religious ethics. An obvious reason is that it's impossible to prove which, if any, gods are the right ones, so how can we be sure which religious ethics to follow? But Socrates explained the deeper reason better than I can.