Question
I work for an appointed state official charged with drafting regulations for providers who deliver a very controversial health service. Activists from both sides of the controversy are bombarding our office with meeting requests that border on threats, with pages and pages of petitions and handwritten "testimony", and yesterday we had 10 folks staging a three hour vigil outside on the sidewalk! Just yesterday the Governor came out publically on one side without bothering to tell us first. The press is going crazy, activists from both sides are going crazy and my boss is going crazy trying to manage an honest process based on the facts and the law. The only thing I can do is try to be polite to everybody, including the creep from the governor's office who didn't believe me when I said my boss was unavailable at the moment, and keep making more herbal tea. Any advice for my boss, who is worried that the Governor's public statement will make the public and the press cast doubt on our office's ability to make an honest decision based on the facts and the law?
Hecate's Answer
Your boss can't lose anything, not even the job, by going ahead and administering a fair promulgation process. You make sure the office puts together a full public hearing, reads and notes everything submitted by anybody including the handwritten letters and Governor's official testimony. Then the office can make a decision based on the facts and the law, and if the creep from the Governor's office doesn't like it tell him to talk to me, and I'll send him to Tartarus.
Finally, your boss is lucky to have you. Keep making that tea.
Who is Hecate?
Hecate is a Greek Goddess who served as a guide and coach at the crossroads of Hades, where after crossing the River Styx, Greek souls found themselves facing three choices: the Elysian Fields, abode of the great and heroic; the Fields of Asphodel, for all who had led a blameless but ordinary life; or to Tartarus, a sunless land of punishment for criminals.
Hecate's best known role in Greek mythology was guiding Persephone, the goddess of spring, on her annual journeys between Hades and Earth. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Hecate is portrayed as a nurturing and protective guide for Persephone on those annual journeys.
