2006-08-17

This very scenic day was a quiet one for me. After Morning Offering I tackled a rewrite of the Free Will section of Chapter One of The Choice 101. By lunchtime I had it in better shape and felt that I had gotten back on track. I changed the opening quote to the section and that helped a lot.

Jim was home for lunch and we had a good stretch afterwards. Then he went to mow St. Luke’s and do some gardening there while I tried to make an appointment with naturopath Karen K, whom I would like to consult about my tummy. We are playing telephone tag.

I also called Gary Falk at Falk Audio to arrange for them to send our audiocassette masters to Rick C, who will re-master them as CDs. Our tapes are all highly imperfect, being recordings of speeches and music which were done only once and not rehearsed, but I know Rick will make them as good as they can be. And it will be good to have CDs to offer our people, as that is the current medium of choice for most, as opposed to tapes.

Scott H wrote to let me know that he had made a Wikipedia entry on Don Elkins. I read it and found that he had gotten details of Don’s last illness wrong, so I wrote him to let him know the actual facts and to ask him to change his entry. His entries for both Don and me are a riot in that if you read them, you get the impression that we are filmmakers who happen to do a bit of other things as well. Scott is a fan of our goofy 1972 movie, The Girl Snatchers. I think he may be the only fan, but he is a loyal one!

I wrote Dianne S a catch-up letter to thank her for all her interesting forwards. She is a dedicated activist in terms of keeping up with what’s happening and she sends me many an interesting article on everything from religion and politics to metaphysics and cute pet pics. I also touched in with Diana D in California.

The rest of the afternoon was spent writing a new edition of our Gatherings Newsletter. Not only do we have the Homecoming soon but we also start our weekly Sunday meetings the first Sunday in September, so it is time to send the word out, although the Homecoming is closed because we are full up. I used some of the report Pupie sent from the British Law of One Study Group to fill out the newsletter and got it ready to send to Gary for his final edit and the actual send.

The house was very quiet today as Gary was on his day off and gone for almost the whole day. As I went downstairs to put on my gardening clothes I had one of those timeless moments where you are aware of all the energies of the house that have nothing to do with humans – not just the cats but all the angels that keep us company here; the devas of all the plant life around us, especially the trees; the house itself, which has a distinct personality. There is such power lambent in every line of this place! I suppose that is true in general, but when you now a place, you begin to feel into it. It was an eerie moment, lost in the energy; delicious of its type.

That lily bed is just about cleaned now, after my gardening efforts today. Another day should see me on the other side of the potting shed door and around to the southwest corner of the back of the garage. A mass of wisteria is awaiting me there. Fortunately I got some loppers not too long ago that should work well as I cut those vining limbs back to what is actually holding on to the garage wall. A vagrant, single wisteria bloom waved at me from the corner as Jim called bath time. I told it, “You’re going to get a haircut!”

After Jim and I had our bath and took in the news with Amy Goodman, we went downtown to the Jazz Factory to hear a set of Walker and Kays, our favorite group. It was a lovely evening, still 90 degrees outside when we came home around 9:30. We offered the Gaia Meditation at our table at the club.

On the way home, we picked up our L/L Research box mail – twenty items from scientology and half that many actual orders and other letters. I tried writing Scientology, years ago, to explain that someone had put us on their mailing list but that we wanted off it. This resulted in their sending us even more mail, so I stopped trying to control the situation and we just throw out a lot of mail from them.

We had a lovely snuggle with the kitties at day’s end and said good night around 11:30.