2006-11-23

What a gorgeous Thanksgiving Day we had today! It was incredibly pretty; the kind of sunshiny day that hits 70 degrees and shares quirky, balmy breezes. After Morning Offering, Jim and Gary went out to deal with a Jim’s Lawn service emergency. Jim’s trailer has just gotten new tires. Apparently they are not the correct tires. One of his wheels has lost all but one lug nut. Jim found that the other four lug nuts were sheared off inside the holes, preventing a homemade repair. So Jim carefully drove the limping rig to the repair shop. AND THEY MADE IT! Now, we shall have to discover whether they can drill out those shorn bolts and repair the trailer. Here’s hoping!

We had had our feast day last Sunday with our treasured company for official Thanksgiving, so today was a work day for us. Gary worked some time at the Inbox for L/L Research before taking some time off for Thanksgiving. Jim worked all morning, knocking out one chore after another. I think he is at his happiest when cleaning up the chore list. Jim is an extreme case of a very masculine, cowboy-type man who likes his bunkhouse neat and clean – a wonderful combination of male and female energies that create close to a perfect mate. As far as I am concerned, the man hung the moon. So many men leave it all to the little woman. Not my Mick!

I spent the morning fiddling further with the footnotes in Chapter Two until the text of them read consistently. Then I printed the finished chapter out, finalized the footnote pages and put Chapter Two to bed.

We had a good lunch together and did our stretching routine before Jim headed out to clean St. Luke’s gutters. Now that is a hard job. On most residential houses, the roof is pitched at an angle upon which one can walk. From that vantage point, Jim can use his mighty blower, Huff Junior, to take the leaves out from above. However, St. Luke’s is steep-pitched of roof and mighty tall as a building, being a typical sacred space with a high, arched ceiling in the nave and chancel and a steeple. So Jim had to go up the ladder, take leaves out by hand as far as he could reach, then climb back down the ladder, move the ladder, and start all over again in the next position.

He reports that the roof gutters at the back of the church, where there is an outside staircase, is impossible to reach with a 24’ ladder. So he did not get those leaves – and so he had told Fr. Joe previously. Fr. Joe promised to find Jim a 32’ ladder, but did not. Jim says that’s OK since he cannot handle that size ladder by himself. He shall have to arrange with Gary to rent a big ladder and get that part of the job done for St. Luke’s as a duo.

In the afternoon, I worked first to apprise the Hays of what little Jim and I had discussed previously on funding for L/L Research. There were two previous suggestions made to us. Jeremy W, a seasoned volunteer who has done much good work for us, had suggested that we try to set up a pledge drive and encourage people to make pledges, with either their credit card or their bank account, so that we could have an actual income stream. At present we have only two such monthly volunteer donators.

Carol C, a new activist within our folds, just started talking with me about the possibilities of getting grants for our work. I know there is a lot of grant money out there. I never have had the slightest idea as to how to go about asking for it. Carol does this grant writing professionally and would like to help us. Those are our two avenues of fund-raising discussed briefly, so far.

When the Hays do call again, they can start from what we already know, which as you see is not a lot! I know they are far more sophisticated in raising funds and so forth. I am a babe in the woods, as is Jim. I hope we can come to some plan together which addresses this need.

After thanking some e-buddies for their holiday wishes, I sat down with correspondence concerning the Book of Days project. To my delighted surprise, Ian has gotten far enough along with the production that we must discuss final details, a real joy! In one e-mail, I discussed the size of the book. Ian had suggested a 6x9” book, a standard size but one which was larger than I had anticipated using for this little pocket companion. So I asked him if there might be a standard size smaller than 6x9”.

In another note, I thanked him for the footnote glitch repair of yesterday, letting him know there was still one mystery design in the footnote space, though it was not any longer holding a footnote, thank heavens. And I assured him that I would not make the choices of how to present text and end notes in the finished book.

In another note, we talked about the background fill for the front cover. He does not think the black background on Michele’s diamond cross design will print well. I suggested changing the fill color to indigo. If he thinks that is still too dark for safety in printing a clear, true cover, we can go to a gold or white cover. However I like the idea of a darker, more indigo-hued book. We’ll see if that is practical.

Our last correspondence had to do with the Book of Days’ appendices and my Preface. We also talked about getting comments for the back cover from clerics whom I already know. It would be good to have that. He tells me I will have time after he gets the basic manuscript together for me to show it to some candidates and ask for their reviews.

Then I tackled Rick C’s correspondence on the remastering project. That’s run into a serious glitch. His present tape deck is having trouble running the C-90 audiocassettes accurately and so errors are showing up in the CDs. Rick tells me he will need to dig up his big Technics deck for this work. The problem with that is that he moved house recently and his very large amount of studio equipment and finished projects are all still in a myriad of boxes in what is supposed, one day, to be his home studio. Right now, he says, it is a storage room. So he shall have to get ambitious in there and dig out the right box.

Oof! That is a huge job. Fortunately for his volunteer project with us, he lives Down East and winter is coming. While the cold winds of Maine blow, he will have some idle hours at hand for the work. It is wonderful of him to do the work for us! Without our volunteers, none of the internet-available material would be out there. And so much more! We have the greatest help in the world!

I also checked into whether he wants me to get hold of my brother Tommy’s original tapes from our music CDs. Rick says they are very unbalanced and he’d like to make them better! Well, me too!

And finally I asked him how he would feel, sometime down the road in warm weather, about setting up for a project of recording my singing in a cave. I love that idea and hope he does too. Caves are wonderful sacred spaces and I want to sing in nature.

Work for the day was done as Jim called bath time and we settled in for relaxation, football (Jim) and reading (Gary and I). We had so much to give thanks for, and a sweet time together. Jim offered the ending prayer at the Gaia Meditation and then he and I came upstairs to snuggle until bedtime.