Category: announcements

Upper Midwest Pagan Alliance Cleans Up! – Editorial

The highway cleanup on Interstate 35E, sponsored by the Upper Midwest Pagan Alliance (UMPA),  took place Saturday June 4th. The cleanup had been delayed by the storms that swept through the Twin Cities the weekend of May 21st. A cheerful group of seven met,  and after going over safety and procedure concerns, hit the road by 11am.  It was a beautiful summer day!

UMPA sign view headed South on 35E

We split into two teams and also had vehicle support with water, bars, and sandwiches nearby. With no adjacent fast food, the pickings were light with the exception of a few with a taste for “Ice House’ beer making frequent deposits!  By about 2pm the ending overpass was in sight, and it had heated up a bit.  On cue a generous breeze made the remaining cleanup feel much easier. This was the first spring cleanup of this site near Hugo, MN., after the move from Coon Rapids. With three on a side, we had just enough volunteers to cover it in one pass. The site could easily accommodate seventeen volunteers (8 per side,  4 teams working to the middle, and support people) and make the service a less demanding two-hour task. The site feels very rural and we always find something naturally beautiful or interesting along the way.

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Announcements

Over the past few months PNC-Minnesota has received a few questions about if we publish social announcements such as handfastings, birth or Wiccaning announcements, job changes, graduations, initiations and other life events.  The short and full answer is “Yes!”

If you have a social announcement you would like PNC to post, just send us the information on the happy event and a photo (photo is optional).   For announcements, please email me directly at schulzcaral (at) gmail (dot) com.

Local Celebration of International Pagan Coming Out Day

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From a formal High Tea to a rally on the White House lawn, Pagans across the globe are celebrating Pagan Coming Out Day on May 2nd with local events and rituals.  The Twin Cities celebration includes cocktails, desserts, and the screening of American Mystic – a movie that the Wild Hunt called “the best documentary involving modern Pagans that this generation has seen.”

The event takes place May 2nd at the Sacred Paths Center and is open to all Pagans and Pagan allies, no matter if you have been ‘out’ for ages or are not yet able to be open about your Pagan spirituality.  It directly follows the usual Monday night Pagan Potluck and the event is offered as a free gift to the community.  An opening Hellenic-style libation to Hestia, a Goddess that strengthens the bonds of family and community,  kicks off the evening, with champagne cocktails, non-alcoholic drinks and desserts to follow.  Once everyone has their treats, the movie American Mystic will be screened for the first time in the Twin Cities area.  The documentary opened at Pantheacon to rave reviews. More about the movie below.

Pagan Coming Out Day Twin Cities
May 2nd – Sacred Paths Center
7pm to 9pm

Pagan Coming Out Day is an international movement created to be complimentary to Pagan Pride events. It’s a day when individuals, deciding on their own terms, stop actively hiding their religious identity to someone in their life. It’s also a day when our religious community comes together to support those coming out to a person or group and celebrates the more public emergence of their Pagan identity.   The not-for-profit organization behind Pagan Coming Out Day says they are “working to achieve greater acceptance and equity for Pagans at home, at work, and in every community.” To learn more about Pagan Coming Out Day you can go to their website or friend them on facebook.

Chuck, a Lakota sundancer in the badlands of South Dakota

Morpheus, a Pagan priestess in southern California

Kublai, a Spiritualist in upstate New York

AMERICAN MYSTIC is a documentary about three twenty-somethings, each a member of a fringe religious community, who have separated themselves from mainstream America in order to live immersed in their faiths. Kublai, a Spiritualist in the former revivalist district of upstate New York; Chuck, a Lakota sundancer in the badlands of South Dakota; and Morpheus, a Pagan priestess living off the grid in old mining country in southern California. Rather than an analytical, journalistic approach, AMERICAN MYSTIC takes a personal, visually lush approach, immersing the viewer in the subjects’ experience of their controversial faiths through their own words and worship.

Editor’s note:  Cara Schulz, editor at PNC-Minnesota, Chairs the Executive Committee of International Pagan Coming Out Day.  Jason Pitzl-Waters, Project Coordinator of PNC and author of the The Wild Hunt, also serves on the Executive Committee.

PNC Goes International

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The Pagan Newswire Collective, which PNC-Minnesota is a local bureau of, has expanded internationally. The main site for the news organization has also been redesigned to better serve its readers.


The newest bureau of the PNC opened a bureau for South America, featuring writers from several South American countries and a Canadian bureau is preparing to launch. Jason Pitzl-Waters, Project Coordinator for PNC, said he has also had inquires from Spain and other European nations. “We were approached by Yoko Galkan, a writer and journalist from Uruguay about starting a bureau, and decided to expand it to news and views from Pagans all across South America,” Mr. Pitzl-Waters said of the new bureau, “Modern Pagan religions have been growing at a quick pace in South American countries like Brazil, and I’m excited to establish local sources for stories emerging from that region.”  This brings the total number of PNC bureaus up to ten worldwide.

This expansion also necessitated a site redesign for the main PNC website.  PNC Technical Coordinator, David Dashifen Kees, was tasked with the redesign, “The real goal is to specifically highlight the blogs’ and bureaus’ content.   To that end, we figured out a way to pull in the bureau and blog content on the homepage and link back to them to try and act as an information broker helping people find their way to stories that they want to read regardless of where those stories are.”  Mr Dashifen Kees says that although he is pleased with how the redesign looks and functions, there is still work to be done on it, “There’s a lot of work to be done on the pages that aren’t the homepage.   A list of all the bureaus and blogs on their appropriate areas, a better page for special coverage.  While we’re well on our way to a solid web site, there’s quite a bit of work left to do.”

Between the growth of the bureaus, going from zero to ten in about as many months, the addition of International bureaus, and the organizations website redesign, the PNC has made significant progress in its mission to “promote primary-source reporting from within our interconnected communities.”  Pitzl-Waters  says, “My main vision is to grow our network of bureaus as quickly as is sustainable. The faster our bureau network grows, the faster we’ll be able to knit them together into the first international Pagan-focused newswire. I think we’ve been making tremendous progress.”

If you would like to be a part of PNC-Minnesota as a writer or contributor, or if you have stories ideas or announcements, please contact Cara Schulz or Nels Linde here.

TV Docu-Reality Looking For Pregnant Pagans

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“I’m Pregnant And…” features expectant mothers facing medical challenges or part of unique lifestyles.

Sirens Media is producing a new season of the TV docu-reality series, “I’m Pregnant And…” which airs on the Discovery Fit & Health network. Topics covered in the series vary from medical conditions to alternative lifestyles or unique circumstances.  The reality show, in its second season, is a six-part series, and each 30-minute episode follows an expectant mom through her day-to-day routine while dealing with the ups and downs of pregnancy. For an upcoming episode, Sirens Media is looking for Pagan women who are currently 6-8 months pregnant.

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