2006-10-15

This entry covers several days, as I departed from Camelot before the end of the day on Thursday, October 12th, returning on Sunday, October 15th. I had no way to make entries until my arrival back at Camelot.

Thursday morning, I arose in distress and consequently moved at a leisurely pace in getting myself packed for Jim’s and my trip to New England to attend my 45th high school reunion. The situation gradually cleared during the day, for which I was most thankful.

After I was packed for the trip, I opened the e-mail and did as much work there as I could. I responded to Barbara Brodsky’s request for a telephone relay conversation – Barbara is deaf. Barbara is the co-channel with me on the Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues and if I ever get caught up with other editing, I will press on with editing the third of nine A/Q weekends of channeling sessions.

I talked with Larry, my UPI editor, about fixing my latest article, on marriage. What I wished to do was center the wedding prayer itself, but their web site’s format does not include that move. Larry bolded the prayer text instead and it worked as well as far as informing the reader that there was a disconnect between prose and prayer, although it was not as aesthetically satisfying to my eye.

The rest of my afternoon was spent working on web issues with our web guy. He is working with the Camelot Journal and the Avalon Journal material from the old B4 site, forming a Carla Niche on the llresearch site for the archives of them. I sent several requests off to Admin Gary, working on his needs. For some reason there were whole months of entries missing from the Camelot Journal at the end of 2005 in the CD recovered as we closed the site. Those originals of the entries are on Maggie, which at that time was my computer and which was switched to Gary when he became the admin and I got my own office. The new office needed a new computer, naturally, since Gary needed Maggie to work on the L/L Research Inbox of e-mail. So I use my laptop, Traveller, up here.

Then there was a problem with the photos on the Avalon Journal. WG wanted fresh images so that he could reproduce them in a new format. There seems to be a problem with moving the images, as the photos’ borders have been worked on in a way which makes them hard to move.

WebGuy is also working on getting the Wooded Glen material together. We talked back and forth during this afternoon’s work and decided to make a niche for the Wooded Glen gathering, which was our 2005 Homecoming, including all the speeches we were able to get transcribed – both men involved as volunteers in this large project have been called away by life and their inner progression, as sometimes happens, so right now that project is in the half-finished doldrums, and I am sorry to say that none of the May video footage has been transcribed, either. After the first of the year, I will reconnect with these gentlemen and see what their situation has become. If they are unable to continue, I shall need to bend every effort to recovering the raw tapes, so that at some point they may be processed into digital information by other volunteers, and also just to have them for their archival value.

The niche will have, in addition to the speeches, a copy of our schedule for the gathering, all the photos we can find from it and Jeremy W’s notes, which he took during all the speeches. He was a hard working volunteer at that gathering, taking the video footage as well as keeping notes of what was said.

Time had at that point run out for useful work, and I shut down Traveller with thanksgiving and a sigh. I have gotten far behind the power curve on the work that does not involve the Choice writing and the UPI articles. It seems quite possible that I shall need to take “housekeeping days” this next week just in order to get the bookkeeping and clerical part of things back in good shape. Doing the books is what has put me behind on my e-mail, but the bookkeeping has to take priority. We got several calls back from our ads for a QuickBooks expert and we shall have interviews beginning next Friday. We shall try to hire just the perfect person this time, although it will be hard to top Melissa.

Jim and I had a lovely journey of it to Springfield, Massachusetts. Being in a wheelchair for the time in Louisville, Charlotte and Hartford Airports, my way was made easy by a courteous airline and the trip was made without any incident. We were lucky in that, going both ways, although we had been given seats apart, the attendants managed to reseat us so we could travel together.

We arrived in Hartford and rented a car after midnight, traveling to our hotel and finally hitting the lights for bed after 2:30. The room was motel-gorgioso, with heavy draperies and bed linens and a sweet down comforter that was especially nice. I have no idea why the decorator had chosen a very large portrait of the cat in the hat to decorate the room with, but there he was, grinning cheerfully over us for the weekend.

Jim slept throughout a lot of the weekend. I was off with my four buddies from high school. Now they have perfectly good names, as do I. However, back in boarding school days one had a nickname, not a name. So it was a time of revisiting being called Beebles, Party, Helena, Betherie and Carlotta. On Friday we spent the afternoon just talking and giggling, until time for Betherie’s presentation to the students. Beth had won the Distinguished Alumna Award this year at MacDuffie.

Betherie gave a very nice talk, with Helena and I introducing her. Beth had asked Helen and me to do this, and we were tickled to do so. However the thing backfired in a way, because what Beth had asked us to do was to tell the students what we did. Beth wanted to make the point that we were so close even going in such different career paths. Helena is a yoga teacher who has done social work – her degrees are in that. I of course am the maverick of the group, being a paranormal researcher and channel who uses her librarian’s degree only within L/L Research’s Special Library.

After the speech by Beth, she opened up to questions. All of the questions were for me. I enjoyed answering the students’ questions – I always love a crowd if they wish to know anything I can tell them – but I was embarrassed to my toes for taking the spotlight off my beloved Betherie. Not that she minded. She thought it was great. Betherie has no ego problems. She has excelled throughout her life and is serenely confident. Nevertheless I felt somehow I could have done better at securing the cynosure so that it shone on her.

By suppertime Beebles had joined us with her husband, Rafe. Rafe is in his eighties – Beebs chose him for his souls and spirit, not his age! He is twenty years her senior. He is a Spanish – not Italian as I remembered – poet and writer of short stories, with many dozens of books, in Spanish, published. His health is fragile but his accent is wonderful! We parted very reluctantly, and only because Beebles needed us to get up and get going early, as she needed to leave Springfield in mid-afternoon the next day.

Saturday dawned spectacularly, sunny and cool but most pleasant for being outside and enjoying the fall color as we toured MacDuffie. It was a dislocating thing to see the school. The very name has changed from The MacDuffie School for Girls to The MacDuffie School, now co-ed. The dormitory in which I slept, Downing Hall, is gone, not just sold but torn down. So are the dining house, Main House, and our classroom building, Howard Hall. That whole side of the street which the school used to straddle is no more. Not that this is a real loss, as those old mansions were too old to fix on a budget.

Now the school’s campus is 15 acres on the hilltop overlooking downtown Springfield, all on the other side of Central Avenue. It is a beautiful campus and the energy of the school is as I remember it, fresh, idealistic and focused. I loved my year there. And I enjoyed seeing what all had occurred. We toured around, at Beebs’ request. She did NOT wish to go by herself, as she does not want to get on any lists. Some folks who get sent to boarding schools do NOT like their parents’ choices and Beebles was one of them so we spirited her around in the middle of the group so she would not get noticed and asked to put her name on any lists.

Then we went to the cemetery which lies at the bottom of MacDuffie’s hill. Forty five years ago, Helena, Betherie and I spread our skirts out and sat under a tree on a sunny May afternoon, the sunshine dappling down through the young leaves like gold scattered about, and read a book I had just been given by my first love, Don M. He was an artist and I was deeply in love that spring with him. The book was The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran. We read it aloud to each other that sweet afternoon in 1961.

I had brought copies of the book for everyone. Interestingly enough, Helena and I were totally on the same beam, as she had brought her own copy of it with the same suggestion in mind, of recapturing that afternoon once more. We found a delightful row of tombstones, flat on top except for the engravings. After asking permission, I sat on Helen, and probably had her name and life-dates emblazoned on my derriere after sitting there for over two hours and reading.

It was heaven to do this. Our voices, reading those beautiful words, wrapped me around in joy. There is something so precious about the spoken word heard in your beloved’s voice. And these were truly my beloved sisters who have loved and cherished me for so long, and whom I love and cherish right back. Who could ever properly value this experience? It was a sacred moment indeed.

We missed Jim when we went back to the hotel, as the reading had taken long and Jim figured we were out to lunch. While this may be true, we had not eaten. So we left Jim a note and headed to a restaurant only two blocks away – we thought. It was closed. I should have insisted that we go back to the hotel and get a wheel chair for me, or drive, but like a silly person, I did not, thinking that their next choice was only four blocks away. Unfortunately, Springfield’s blocks are not “city blocks” which are ten to a mile, and I walked far too much. On the way back, in my exhaustion, I missed a curb and fell flat on my face, scraping myself up and spraining a couple of fingers and my right knee.

However, Jim was a medical wonder, getting me an ice pack which he made with the ice bucket’s plastic bag and some ice from the machine. I lay down and actually got to sleep for a couple of hours with my hotpad on my back and the ice on my knee. I was so much better after that that I was fully able to enjoy the rest of the night, although I did need to abandon the thought of wearing hose with my pretty banquet dress. I will bet I was the only lady there in knee socks! Fortunately the dress was full length.

Beth received her award before dinner, with Helena and I offering our introductions as before, but this time we talked about reading The Prophet, in 1961 and today, and how the connections mean so much. Beth gave a lovely speech in acceptance of the award and we sat down to an excellent repast, home-cooked by the school cook for us.

Afterwards, we hugged and hugged again in the hotel lobby, as we were scattering to the winds from there. We went up to a room so well organized by St. James that I was deeply impressed. In addition to a festival of naps and football, Jim had repacked everything and we only had to clean ourselves up and seek our beds after a delightfully romantic interlude. For the third night in a row, we offered the Gaia Meditation at the wrong time! But we always remembered it, either early or late. Traveling is hard on doing anything to a schedule.

We rose early Sunday as we had a 10:15 flight and we had to get to Hartford, turn in our rental car, take the shuttle back to the airport and then check in through security. Although we overshot the airport by about 16 miles and needed to turn around and come back to the right turn, we stayed on schedule as Jim, in his wisdom, had built “uh-oh time” into our agenda. Again the trip was smooth, with perfectly beautiful weather, and we arrived home around 4:30.

I immediately sat down to receive cats, especially Sedgie, and spent the rest of the day with him on my lap. I left briefly to take a bath with Mick, and then we sat together for the evening. Sedge has developed a taste for fresh turkey. Gary discovered that, as he was taking care of Sedge and the other kitties while we were gone. We had asked him to go up to my room and spend maybe half an hour with Sedge twice a day, as it seems that he only eats when someone is with him. Gary took his supper sandwich up to spend the Sedgie-rime watching TV and Sedge begged for some of his turkey. When he was given it, he ate it all and asked for more. So now we are feeding him fresh turkey instead of the baby-food turkey.

It was good to see Sedgie and better to see him so happy. He was very playful, going after the plants, trying for the food on our trays and wandering around the downstairs before taking bites of the regular cat food in the kitchen bowls.

Jim offered the prayer at the Gaia Meditation, we had a late supper and a nice discussion with Gary, catching up, and we called Jim’s Mom before going upstairs for the night for a last snuggle before bedtime around 11 PM.