Peter Dybing has released his Top Ten Pagans list for the year! As many of you know, Peter has been a friend not only to the show, but to most of our individual members. The wonderful thing about friendship is that when all the hubbub that was caused with his post on calling attention to the health of the pagan community shortly after Dave’s death, we could talk about hurt feelings that came about. We’ve never been in a position with Peter to consider cutting ties to him just because we disagree with his approach, or maybe a point of view. All of us view Peter as a tremendous asset to the Pagan Community, and love him for who he is.
But Peter’s post seems to have spurred a bit of Dave drama all over again. Someone seems to think that they have some super insight to the mind of Dave Grega (and it seems Peter Dybing as well). In Star Foster’s new blog, Pink Beyond Pink she writes about the “Legacy of Dave”. Most of her writing came as a bit of a shock to us.
We had thought that this misconception was cleared up in the beginning, but we shall restate: Nobody but his close friends and family know everything that encompassed Dave’s passing. Dave went above and beyond to keep a lot of his health issues private for the most part, and we (his friends) find there’s no reason to spread out his dirty laundry in some misplaced cry for attention.
None of us know what Dave would say now. He was always a surprise, even to those of us that were close to him. Though, seeing as how he started PHAT (Pagans for Healthy, Active Tendencies) we don’t really see him being all butthurt over a talk of health in the community. If you listened to the show in the past, Dave was not exactly for the “love yourself the way you are” kind of mentality. Maybe he would have called Peter out, maybe he wouldn’t. The world will never know, though for some reason there are a few that feel that they should continue to speculate. Is it that difficult to leave the dead in peace without using them to further imaginative stories?
Dave had his faults and one of them was a bit of paranoia; randomly burning bridges without a valid reason wasn’t. All of us will be the first to say Dave was an asshole, he made it into an artform. But those of us who knew Dave also knew that those he held closest and in the highest regard were those he could not only take his cynicism, sarcasm and snark but those that also have enough intelligence to retaliate and not set the proverbial bridge on fire because they were too busy being offended to continue the conversation with some type of dignity. He didn’t bend moral compass to allow for behavior he didn’t approve of. Dave had a love of truth, no matter how inconvenient. Dave would often try and work things out his own way, which seemed be just more abrasive than the average person. He didn’t care if anyone approved of his choices, and THAT was part of what he was proud of.
While there is a lot of talk about Dave being lost amid the “fat shaming”, there was no loss among those of us that were close. We cried, talked, laughed, shared memories, and mourned. I can’t count the number of messages and phone calls that we have received that continue weeks after his passing. There were a number of individuals, a few of which Dave had rubbed the wrong way at one time or another, that offered their condolences and any help we may need. Unfortunately there continue to be a select few that share their grief out of one side of their mouth and spew lies and trash-talk out of the other.
There are a very small number of us that were privy to his thoughts on death and life. It’s hurtful to see someone putting words in his mouth as if they had some deep connection. Whether anyone else thinks so or not, the fact that the Pagan Community has shifted is part of Dave’s legacy. The fact that there are so many podcasts still in going and new ones popping up is part of Dave’s legacy.
So in traditional PCP fashion, we’d like to share this little tidbit
9 thoughts on “The Dave Grega Controversy???”
THANK YOU.
Aside from the fact that Peter doesn’t deserve to be trashed, I think what really chaps my ass about Foster’s petty pissfest was her assertion that “the things Dave built didn’t survive him and are all gone” (paraphrased). The rest is pretty much what I’ve come to expect of her.
Nice of her to speak on Kat’s behalf like that. Or for anyone else who has been part of reincarnating PCP. And I think she owes Dave’s perfectly live daughter, Mallory, a fairly huge apology, since she’s the thing Dave “built” that he was most proud and happy about.
She won’t care about any of that; she’s devolved into nothing more than a troll pimp with an unoriginal, juvenile “Asshole & Proud Of It” M.O.
Go fuck yourself, Foster. I’m tired of your chimp act.
I think what is most hurtful is that if someone is unaware of the circumstances it does seem like a heart felt post. There are some good points that she made about facing one’s own mortality. But it is saddening to see lies told about their interactions to make it seem as if she was an innocent victim in the whole situation.
There were flaws on both sides, but it is bothersome to see Dave used as a means to an end. A post on death and facing mortality could have easily been done without using our recently deceased friend as plot fodder.
I wrote this in reply to a comment someone made on Star’s article and said it was thoughtful article. I’m posting this here before it gets deleted there so that when someone looks up Dave and Star, they still have a chance of reading this.
‘Not if you actually knew Dave or what really transpired when “he suddenly began attacking”. Dave had his reasons and wasn’t afraid to tell them to those involved. Highly distasteful is the backhanded musings of a dead man’s actions and the pretended ignorance of his reasons.
“Dave even went to the trouble of analyzing my blog to detect a monthly cycle. When finding a monthly pattern in the writing of a fertile young woman, Dave ascribed it to Machiavellian machinations rather than the unflattering but more reasonable and obvious fact that women experience monthly hormonal changes with the menstrual cycle. Usually the simplest answer is correct, but Pagans love their conspiracy theories.” Yet, had he done so, Star and others would most likely be calling him a male chauvinist attempting demean women, demeaning the divine feminine vicariously. It’s interesting to me that I don’t notice this same pattern with other women when their “time” occurs, and that this post, a post that once again stirs up nothing but controversy and bad feelings, was posted right around the end of November.
“My cycle isn’t monthly (TMI, I know) and if Dave had cared to ask me I could have told him why my writing changed at the end of the month: I didn’t know if I was going to be able to pay my bills. Every month my anxiety and fear would ratchet up as I waited to see if and when I would be paid. I never intended that to have an impact on my writing, but it did. No advertising or traffic quotas, or anything as crass as that. Just my stark fear that I might get evicted even though I was working my ass off.”
So then this has nothing to do with a menstrual cycle? But you just said it was in previous paragraph! Now you’re saying it was because you were anxious and afraid? That’s no excuse to draw up needless drama in an entire community. If you want that, send your resume to the National Inquirer, because we don’t need that here. What is a common way to judge performance? Page views. What goes into that payroll check? Investment and advertising dollars. First you say it’s nothing more than biology, an unintended result of a natural process. Then you directly contradict yourself and try to justify your actions. Don’t insult the intelligence and comprehension of your regular, and not so regular readership. It does you no credit. (By the way, I just checked episode 214 where this was discussed and it wasn’t Dave who brought up the menstrual cycle).’
To much stupid is happening in life Lets pop our heads out of our ass’s get some fucking perspective and act like half the adults we think we are.
Drama does not help community
IF you wish to be great in life, be of service,
Doesn’t that comment also fuel the insulting style into drama instead of creating the style of interaction that is implied? *ducks*
I just don’t like it when people think they can use blatantly faulty logic and not have someone notice it.
And now she’s completely disappeared from the internet…
I worked with Dave Grega on the Fluffy Free Podcast years ago. He had his moments of brilliance, but, eventually, those moments were overshadowed by some really…ummm…interesting character traits.
Yeah, we never said he didn’t have interesting character traits. I think all of us had our issues at one time or another. It’s not so much the issues that bother me, it is more the fact that now that he’s passed it seems like some have considered it open season for figuring out why. I find it distasteful. Fair?