dinner with Alison

On the 31st, at 7 pm I sat down to dinner with my beloved friend,  teacher and mentor, Alison Harlow. As I shopped for this dinner the previous day, picking out the foods she loved the best and finding new things I felt she might enjoy, I realized with a start that I had not eaten a meal with her since May of 2004, a month before she died.
I had spoken with her, called her into circle and asked her questions through a Witch Board ... yes ... but dinner, not until 3 weeks ago. She was quiet at first, with that lovely, slightly wicked glint in her eye as she accepted the plate I offered and I seated myself opposite her in silence. There were two other living friends having supper with one of their beloved dead at the same table, but as we served our friends and sat it seemed that we each went into separate communion with our dinner partner. There were few instructions from Alison, save that I prepare and eat dinner with her at this time of year until I join her on the other side of the Veil. Our communication seemed to come through the food we ate and the deep silence that surrounded us. I still miss her in this world almost daily, but I know that any time I feel drawn to make her a favorite meal I will not eat alone.

Magic words

Magic Words

In the earliest time,

when both people and animals lived on the earth,

a person could become an animal if he wanted to

and an animal could become a human being.

Sometimes they were people

and sometimes animals

and there was no difference.

All spoke the same language.

That was the time when words were like magic.

The human mind had mysterious powers.

A word spoken by chance

might have strange consequences.

It would suddenly come alive

and what people wanted to happen could happen--

all you had to do was to say it.

Nobody can explain this:

That's the way it was.

- - after Nalugiaq

Edward Field, 'Songs and Stories of the Netsilik Eskimos

Great Days!

I am really excited about all these connections being made this summer. I have had the pleasure to get a bit closer to several Feri initiates I admire; I have begun to use LJ and Facebook (still learning); I have created several blogs and had personal responses from several well-know authors I admire; I have hosted a few new events here at Dragondale with great success....what an interesting change for me ... after 'hiding out' in the forest and only peeking out at Pantheacon. Wow, feels really different! 

this is me at 30, peeking out!

When Graphic Artists get bored

this is very visually stimulating ... take a peek ...
Wytchwood Art Reviews: When Graphic Artists get bored

Happy Birthday, Dominic

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO DOMINIC ELEMIRION!!!!

Marley's Ghost - One Love

Here they come! Marley's Ghost!!!!
Appearing August 7 at 7:30 PM in Monterey at Monterey Live (831) 375-5483
Appearing August 8 at 7:30PM in Berkeley at Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse (510) 548-176

Here's a little taste of them at Strawberry on Gospel Sunday...

Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot

A dear friend posted this on a list and I just had to proliferate it! It says nearly all I can think of to say about the human community and where we can 'go' from here.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994