Anemone Webweaver

Dorothy Abrams - Anemone Webweaver

Dorothy Abrams is now known as Anemone and by the title Webweaver. She is best identified as a witch, a feminist, community activist, human rights advocate and poet. She has studied women's spirituality, goddess religions and Wicca since 1984. She came to this point in her consciousness after 15 years of study in traditional Christian theology, including receipt of her Bachelors Degree from a Christian college. She is a journalist contributing to PagaNet News and Sage Woman.

Born an Aries Baby Boomer in Skaneateles NY, Anemone grew up in a working class family that highly valued education, books, the arts and conversation. Her mother was a frustrated writer. Her Aunt Betty was a professional singer. Her Uncle George was a professional stage Magician who trained under Blackstone (the elder). She attended school in Skaneateles through high school graduation, except for second grade when the family wintered in Florida. In 5th grade she was introduced to the clarinet which she adored! She was the only high school musician from Onondaga County to attend NYS All State Music Festival in the Catskills in her senior year. An auditioned honor, she was in the 3rd clarinet section. (Those kids from Julliard were really good!)

During junior and senior high school Anemone embraced the family faith of born again Baptists at the First Baptist Church in Skaneateles NY where she came to direct the church choir as a high school sophomore, and to lead the Youth Fellowship Group. These formative years in leadership and Baptist principles of direct access to the Divine without the need for a mediator marked her well for the spiritual work she came to in the Web.

Anemone attended Cedarville College, (now Cedarville University) graduating with a B.A., in English and history with a minor in Bible, and a teaching certificate in a secondary education in 1970. She then attended SUNY at Cortland for graduate study in English Literature, completing all course work and the comprehensive exams but not her Master Thesis. (If only we had had computers in the 70's! I could have finished if I hadn't had to retype and rewrite from scratch!)

From there Anemone went on to Washington DC where she taught English in two different Christian high schools. Because the schools were making do with as little money as possible, Anemone was free to be creative and develop her own teaching materials to supplement the old textbooks much of the time, including the journalism class and school paper. This was a free, flowing creative period in her life when she enjoyed the culture, concerts, museums, architecture, galleries and shops of the nation's capitol, as well as its politics. She directed her church choir. She joined a Prince George's County chapter of NOW where she wrote their newsletter and demonstrated for the Equal Rights Amendment in front of the White House, holding up a 10 foot gold and purple flag that declared "Men of Quality are not Threatened by Women for Equality!" She also joined a solar energy group in Georgetown where she reviewed technical books on solar energy production for their newsletter and educational printings.

Finally disaffected by the Baptist's political turn to the far right, and insulted one too many times as a woman in a man's religion, she left the church and started looking for something else. Still employed by the schools, she attended the guitar mass at the National Cathedral where the women stood and refused communion until women were allowed in the priesthood of the Episcopal Church. She saw political activists there who spoke about peace and justice as part of the church service. She saw a dance troupe celebrate God in dance right there in front of the altar! She learned the gentleness of spirituality under the ministry of Cannon Michael Hamilton and allowed the judgment and fear of the fundamentalists to dissolve.

In 1976 as her own personal bicentennial moment, she moved back to central NY to work as an activist and advocate at the Cayuga County Action Program (now the Cayuga Seneca Action Program) under the tutelage of Gloria Griffin, Executive Director whom Anemone cites as the best boss she ever had. Anemone learned management skills, grant writing, program development, supervision, and evaluation as well as the principals of activism and consciousness raising while she was at CCAP. As Director of Human Services, she was responsible for outreach, crisis intervention, welfare rights, and political activism. She initiated the battered women's program, the rape crisis and sexual assault intervention program (SAVAR) and assisted in bringing in the teen pregnancy prevention program. Together with her friends John McLead, Ann Bunker, Terry DeFelice, Gita Duberstien, Joanne Reddick and AJ Bosman-Moore among others, they re-organized the Harriet Tubman Chapter of NOW in Auburn NY and attended 2 NOW National Conferences in Washington DC, a wonderful education in parliamentary procedure and internecine warfare! The most outstanding moment was working with women developing a ZAP action for the ERA with Sonia Johnson. Johnson was at the point in her feminism where she was holding spiritual circles in her house and discussing the Feminine God as a point of power for women who had been lobotomized by the male dominated churches. She was ahead of her time. Even the radical feminists at the conference were uncomfortable and tried to contain her. For the sake of unity among sisters she postponed her ZAP action so as not to break consensus. Anemone did not understand that then, but she remembered that when she needed it later.

In 1980 Anemone went to work for the Syracuse Housing Authority sharing a job with Eleni Reed, a feminist from Greece. Anemone supervised the youth and family programs while Eleni supervised the senior citizen program. Again, engaged in program development, grant writing, budgets and supervision, Anemone took 2 writing courses from Syracuse University, one in writing children's literature and another in magazine journalism. She also started developing her own writing career.

In 1981 Anemone took a job with the New York State Division of Human Rights in Syracuse NY as a human rights specialist. It was there she met Merlin, together they investigated complaints of discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations based on race, creed, color, sex, age, disability, marital status and arrest and conviction record. They began their life together as committed partners consciously refusing the institution of marriage at Thanksgiving 1984. They, together with a group of friends founded The Web in 1994. Anemone retired from the Division of Human Rights in April 2003. She continues writing and volunteering as The Director of the Web PATH Center.

Taken together, her life work has given her substantive experience in the issues of power, government and personal advocacy as they relate to religion, class, race and sex. She learned the skills necessary to create an organization and guide it through its infancy into full maturity. She understands the necessity of empowering other people to follow their hearts even when it leads them elsewhere. She also knows we survive no matter what by remembering who we are, and that we are One.