Barbara Ardinger

“Even though they were staring at each other across a busy street, the little old lady and the gang of adolescent skinheads might just as well have been nose to nose. They stared. No one blinked. No one backed down. This little old lady had never in her life backed down before mere adolescents.Her daughter had what was perhaps a better grasp of what was perhaps reality. “Mama,” she said as she shifted her bag of groceries to her other arm, “Come on. Let’s go. They’re skinheads. Probably up from Bircher country.”

“Now hear a new truth. The Great Mother Herself will be forced to hide from those who are coming. She will seem to disappear while they grow strong, but someday She will return. Although our children and their children, perhaps to the thousandth generation, must live in the new world that has forgotten Her, they must never forget. She will return.”