2007-06-09

Spotty rains had cooled us off overnight and today was a sheer delight! After Morning Offering Jim put on his chef’s hat and cooked the remainder of next week's menu, baking a turkey and creating a wonderful-smelling asparagus side dish to go with the mashed potatoes and glazed carrots Gary had prepared before leaving for Ohio. I came upstairs to my office and completed my search for relevant quotes in Dana’s material for my final UPI article on her.

Jim went out for errands, returning at 1 PM with our fast-food treat for the week. Afterwards, I sat and read while Mick napped. He awoke eventually and set out to work in the yard, joined by Carmen, who had come over to volunteer some gardening time. Eventually I will get her going on another literary project, since she has finished transcribing my poems and songs, but for now our garden plantings need her more than the formatting project on my writings on prayer does!

I intended to work on the Yellow Ray chapter of 101 but fell asleep in my chair instead, awakening in time to do a bit of e-mail before Jim and I bathed. I wrote Gary A of Great Britain, who has worked with Dana on the strange symbols and language that children all over the world are expressing. I knew about this aspect of Dana’s work but until I found her reference to Gary at the end of the "Link" book, I did not know who to ask about it. So I wrote Gary at length, explaining who I was and about the Alphabet Mosaics project. I asked him if he would consider writing a commentary on this work he and Dana shared for inclusion in the "Midrash" section of the on-line version of the book.

I wrote Romi, thinking he had said that he was going to go up to Avalon and prepare for Melissa’s arrival today, but he said that he is going next weekend. By then, she will have arrived and will have done all the setting up by herself. Oh well!

We also arranged to meet at Volare Restaurant for a dinner to which Jim and I are treating him next Tuesday as thanks for all the work he has done lately on our computers, trying to repair my old laptop, helping me initialize my new laptop and repairing routers that I seem able to damage by my energy.

Morris wrote to thank me for the Board member sketches I sent him. He feels it will indeed help him, when we have electronic meetings, to “know” the other members better. He surprised me by saying he was not “forty-something” as I had described him in the thumbnail sketches but a ripe old 53! What an astonishing moment for me, as when I first met Morris, he was 9. How could the man be 53? I am starting to sound like an Old Codger!

I also passed by Romi a sentence I had found at the end of “Link” which I think will serve well as her dedication for the Alphabet Mosaics book, when I was collecting quotes. She had not chosen a dedication before she died.

It’s amazing how much energy there is around this book. I have told people that I need to finish editing the Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues first, but material keeps pouring in. By the time I get to working with Dana's book, I should have a bushel-full of Dana’s drawings and material for the expanded, on-line version, as she sent different things to different people, which they are now sending my way.

Jim and I bathed and then Carmen and I read and chatted wile Mick cleaned the kitchen, doing it early today because the Anchorage Street Dance is tonight. Carmen joined us for dinner and then said good night, deciding not to attend the dance. Mick and I walked through our back yard to Wagner Park, where the dance was held, and enjoyed the music and danced several times.

It was a heavenly evening, with low humidity and clear skies. Venus shone serenely above, but we never did see the moon rise. I so enjoyed sitting and watching the skies turn from sunset gold and pink to the gloaming to deep indigo and finally to full midnight blue, while the human tribe gathered beneath the vault of heaven to laugh and play. I felt like Omar the Tentmaker, enjoying the cosmic bowl, as he saw the skies.

We toddled back across the park and into our back yard very carefully, as I have no night vision - birth defects of my eyes - and the night was moonless. We also have no street lights in Anchorage, so when it is a dark night, it’s DARK! Away from the park’s lighting, I was night-blind! But Mick steered me safely home, where we patted kitties, snuggled and watched some bits of junk TV before saying good night around midnight.