Summer solstice brings out those wacky witches

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Yes sir, nothing like the longest day of the year to bring out the witches and shamans. They used to serve a purpose: their mysterious machinations put a stop to the days getting longer and longer forever. The ancient pagans must have thought that a catastrophic Global Warming was averted every year. By the same logic, my little beagle hound believed he chased the mailman away from the mail slot on the front door every day.

The racket of whipping the folks into a fear frenzy over an imagined impending doomsday, then earning a soft place in society by preventing it, is older than Al Gore. Like my dog thought he earned his keep by stopping the mailman from carrying out his nefarious scheme, modern day witch doctors will grow fat selling us wheezy cars and poison light bulbs.

Some folks, however, view the solstice as a time to take off their clothes in public and get down with some old-fashioned pagan revelry. Others are 'serious' about their paganist malarkey. From the Mercury News:

STONEHENGE, England—Thousands of modern-day druids, pagans and partygoers converged on Stonehenge early Thursday to cheer the dawn of the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere—the summer solstice.

Clad in antlers, black cloaks and oak leaves, a group gathered at the Heel stone—a twisted, pockmarked pillar at the edge of the prehistoric monument—to welcome the rising sun as revelers danced and yelled.

Jeanette Montesano, a 23-year-old recently graduated religion student from New York and a self-described pagan, said she had been saving for a year to make it to Stonehenge, comparing the importance of the trip to the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.

"It's not the hajj, but it is 19,000 people in a little circle. I wanted to experience something like that."

Like the Mohammedan Hajj? Give me a break. You just want an excuse to disrobe in public. Not that there is anything wrong with that, of course.