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She has been a Wiccan for twenty years, but now she complained,
"Witchcraft has become trendy. I mean, ever since Buffy the Vampire
Slayer . . ."

At the festival, on Merchants Row, there was an inviting banner over
one of the booths: "Stop by for a Spell." A positive perspective on
witchcraft was a theme at this event, along with such workshops as
"Privacy Rights and Drug Policy," "Cultivating Consciousness in Your
Child," "Live Meditations in Drumming and Dance," "The Supreme
Court and the Free Exercise of Religion, "A Procession to Honor the Earth
Goddess," "Safer Sex" and "Dark Ecstasy: The Ritual Use of Pleasure,
Pain and Sensory Deprivation as Psychedelic Experience."

When I walked on to the outdoor stage, my opening line was "I' m
gonna start with two words that have been thought year after year at
these festivals, but which have never actually been uttered out loud, and
those two wards are: "Nice tits." The audience hesitated a second,
because in that context this could be a politically incorrect observation—I
had deliberately taken that chance—but then they laughed and
applauded, because they knew it was true.

I was invited back to perform at Starwood again in the summer of
1998. The previous month, two Amish men had been arrested for

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