Peregrine Lake – A Weekly Webcomic Written by Trae Dorn and Drawn by Ethan Flanagan

Ever since I started making witchcraft content online, I started using a phrase “I’m not in your head, I’m in in your house.” It’s kind of a tag I end up adding on to a lot of other stuff, but I thought I should explain what I mean when I say that because I think it’s something maybe more people should keep in mind.

The first part, “I’m not in you head” should be pretty obvious — I don’t have your experiences. Like, I haven’t felt what you’ve felt or seen what you’ve seen. There’s so much in witchcraft that ends up being internal, and I don’t have the ability to truly have that shared experience with you. I’m not here to delegitimize those things, but likewise you shouldn’t assume those things can be pushed on other people.

The second part, “I’m not in your house,” is simply that I’m literally not in your house. I’m not going to smack that white sage out of your hand and wag my finger in your face. While I might tell you that I think you shouldn’t do something or that what you’re saying is ahistorical and wrong, in the end I cannot stop you from doing anything. I am not in charge of you or what happens in your home.

And for some reason some folks… act like I am?

So if you follow me on social media, you know that I sometimes end up in weird arguments that if you think about them for more than five minutes make no sense. Like I’ll make a post saying “I think this is a bad idea” and I understand people initially giving me push back, sure. Like that’s normal human instinct.

But as the conversation continues, with a few of them (not all — just a few) it becomes increasingly clear that for some reason they think I must be in charge of them. Like that I can somehow stop them from doing anything. Because let’s be clear, I can’t.

So yeah.

I’m not in your head.

I’m not in your house.

View Comments

So anyone who follows me on social media already knows I’ve been having some issues with the Apple Podcasts entry for BS-Free Witchcraft. For some reason, the main Apple Podcasts page for the show is missing about a full quarter of the episodes. Like there are some random ones missing (like episode twenty-nine), but also like the entirety of July 2022 through February 2024 are just… gone. Even though they’re still in the feed, Apple just doesn’t have them listed anywhere.

And, like, these episodes appear fine on Spotify and Amazon and any platform where you just plop in the RSS feed. It’s only Apple Podcasts where this is happening.

And I’ve gone through everything I can think of to try and fix this. There is nothing within my power to correct this.

Of course I’ve since reached out to Apple’s support (and they assure me they’re looking into it — though who knows how automated that email was), and I’ve created a work around. Using the Nerd & Tie Network backend, I’ve made an alternate Apple Podcasts feed for the show I’m calling the “White Logo” feed (as I’m having it display the old white version of the show’s logo instead of the current green one). Both the White Logo and the classic “Green Logo” pages will get the new episodes, but the White Logo version has the full archives for anyone who wants to use Apple Podcasts to listen to the show.

For some folks this would be satisfactory. Like there’s an alternative route for listeners to get the show, and Apple is working on it. But my brain… it just won’t stop thinking about it.

And this is not helpful. I literally can’t do anything I haven’t already done. Literally everything within my control has been tried. I’ve made sure there aren’t any weird settings in the feed, and that there aren’t any major errors. I’ve tested the feed in multiple podcatchers, and even looked at weird ones online that no one uses and found that they’re working fine. There is literally nothing I can do but wait for Apple Support to fix it, and hope that it gets resolved.

My stupid, obsessive brain just won’t shut up about it though.

It’s so frustrating. Why am I wired like this, where it’s so hard for me to let go of an unsolved problem. I fixate until I find a solution, and when there is no available solution it just stews in there, rattling around.

Ugh.

View Comments

So I talked about it briefly in my entry earlier this week, but when I was in Wauwatosa last weekend to see family, we went out to dinner on Sunday night. Because it was Sunday, options were a bit more limited, so we ended up somewhere none of us had ever eaten at before: Buckatabon Tavern & Supper Club.

Now, if you know me, I’m a sucker for a supper club. I’ve spent my whole life going to various supper clubs across Northern Wisconsin, and the idea of a new place recreating that vibe in the Milwaukee suburbs sounded appealing. But here’s the thing… this place is not a supper club.

Sure they have a relish tray on the menu (which has disappeared from most current operating supper clubs, but what the heck), but you’re going to pay $15 for it. Most real supper clubs will provide at least a soup or salad with an entree (and in some cases, like the Fireside in Rhinelander, both), but you’ll be paying extra for that experience.

There isn’t even a French Onion Soup on the menu.

And look, the place is decorated in a kitschy way that somehow sits between the now-shuttered Al Gen in Rhinelander and maybe the Clearview Supper Club in St Germain, and the staff was friendly… it’s just not a supper club.

And the thing is, if it hadn’t advertised itself as a supper club, I might have liked it. The food was mostly good, but it wasn’t perfect — my burger was excellent, but several of my family members ordered their steaks medium rare and had them show up almost well. The broccolini that came with the pecan crusted trout was just… not good. All of it could be forgiven for just being a busy night, since it was Father’s Day.

But they promised a supper club.

And it wasn’t.

Like this is the Epcot version of a supper club — it looks a lot like the thing, but it’s all surface and in the end you’re spending way more money than if you had just traveled to the real deal. I wanted to like this place, I really did. But it just misses the whole point of the thing it’s trying to be.

I liked the pride stuff at the bar though. As a queer person it did make me feel relatively safe there.

I just wish it had been a supper club.

View Comments