The Star Tribune, which has found Michele Bachmann's brand of Lutheranism radical and outside the mainstream and rarely misses an opportunity to take a swipe at the Catholic Church, today features a glowing article on the virtues of Minnesota Wiccans and neopagans:
Long before Elysia Gallo identified herself as a neopagan, she felt drawn to mystical, magical things.
"From the time I was about 8, I loved crystals and charms," she said.
Gallo, 32, of St. Paul, eventually channeled her passion into a vocation as acquisitions editor at Llewellyn Worldwide, a Woodbury company that publishes Wiccan "spell-a-day" almanacs, tarot cards, love-potion recipe books and New Age spirituality guides.
The elegantly coiffed Gallo, who said she practices some Wiccan rites without embracing the Wicca religion, was part of a colorful group of about 150 who came together last Saturday in St. Paul to decry the absence of the pentacle on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) list of approved emblems for military gravestones.
Young and old women with flowing hair and bright capes; old men in graying ponytails, animal skins or faded military duds; young men in outfits that looked like something out of "The Lord of the Rings"; families in flannel, jeans and feed caps carting kids in snowsuits, and an occasional teenager with purple hair or a funky-smelling cigarette: The group defied definition except, perhaps, as a feisty, friendly, decidedly countercultural crowd.
Oh, I think I could come up with a couple of apt adjectives.
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