2007-07-17

Happy “firethegrid” day! I will be interested to hear of people’s responses to this global meditation. I had to participate late, as I slept much later than usual, not awakening until time to descend and awaken Mick.

After Morning Offering, Mick went into the sauna of the Kentucky summer to mow his lawns while I worked on my UPI article for this week. I decided to do a column on another Difference Maker who is working to improve African people’s access to water. It is a good story, plus there were some corrections Ariane asked me to make on her water-for-Africa story, which I did two weeks ago. This was a good chance to set the record straight.

Where I had gone wrong was in accepting as fact the information provided by her proud Papa. He exaggerated and remembered incorrectly several times and I passed that on as fact. When Aubine, Ariane’s mother, called from Igny, France, to explain that I had got things wrong, I told her that all the facts she said were wrong came from her ex-husband. With a very French and completely un-spell-able sound indicating a fine scorn, Aube said, “Carrrla, you cannot believe Michael! Eet ees eempossible!

Repressing a desire to say, a la Steve Martin, “Well, excuuuuuuse meeeee!” I asked Aubine to have Ariane write me an e-mail so I could get the facts directly from her. There followed a hilarious ten minutes of spelling out my e-mail address. It sounds simple enough, but the French language sounds the letters of the alphabet differently than do we. That royally confused us both! However we persevered and Ariane did send me the corrections needed.

I was not able to finish the article by lunchtime, and after a quick lunch, went to the salon for a facial and haircut. Lee Ann, who works to keep my dry, dry facial skin comfortable, was able to cover what remains of my black eye with concealer and eye shadow on my right eyelid that matched the color of the remaining bruise on my left eyelid, so I looked pretty normal – except that I seldom wear any makeup.

Such delicate procedures take time. I got back to Anchorage, playing dodge-em with various roads blocked by piles of gravel and pipes, to find that Gary needed some consultation time. We now have 28 participants signed up for Homecoming and we needed either to close the meeting or move it to a hotel. After considering what it would take to re-plan the Gathering, we decided to close the attendance at this point, so we can hold the Gathering here at Camelot, where the “home” in Homecoming is a real one.

We had a great time at the 2005 Homecoming at Wooded Glen – but the arrangements for that were elaborate and made months beforehand. And still there were massive logistical problems due to the retreat’s location being some miles away from the airport. While 1/3 of my heart wanted to keep the attendance open and go with the flow to a hotel, given that we can find one at this late date, the 2/3 of my heart that had pity on Gary chose to close the attendance.

If we keep getting requests this year, that will tell us that we need to plan on a hotel venue for next year’s Homecoming so that this does not happen again. I really dislike turning anyone away.

That being decided, I went back to my UPI article and finished it. I was just reading through it to be sure all was well when a storm blew through and knocked out our power. I could not send my copy in. Fortunately, the power came on later in the evening.

Jim took me to the restaurant at the top of the Galt House for my special birthday dinner. The food was delicious but the service was off and the menu was very, very short on vegetables. There was no salad with the meal, although there were a couple of salad-like choices amongst the appetizers. And there were no side dishes with the entrée. Now that’s both tacky and unhealthful. We had a good meal, but won’t go back there. For special occasions, the reigning local place has the unlikely name of Ruth’s Chris Steak House. We had a glorious meal there for our anniversary.

We offered the Gaia Meditation, with Mick praying at the end, and came upstairs to relax and play with the kitties until bedtime around 11 PM.