2007-09-29

Mick and I slept in on this lovely fall Saturday, rising about 9 AM and lazing our way through the paper and puzzles before Morning Offering. The college football season is Jim’s favorite of all the seasonal sports and there is much to enjoy!

After Morning Offering, I took some time off and just fribbled. It was most pleasant to pass the time in recreation. Jim was more productive, doing many errands and creating a double recipe of layered salad for the memorial service’s reception at St. Luke’s tomorrow. A long-time choir member has entered the gates of larger life, and our choir, along with the diocesan Cursillo group, is furnishing the buffet for the reception after the service with its food.

We met for lunch and then the beginning of the new Woody Allen movie, which we did not finish. “Scoop” had funny lines a la Woody from the beginning frame, but the character Woody plays was an embarrassingly accurate take-off on doddering comics who were vital but schmaltzy in the 1950s, and although I was around then to recall the object of his none to gentle lampooning, it got old so fast that Mick asked if we could leave the film early.

So the rest of the afternoon until about 4 PM was spent with Mick watching football and me reading and doing more New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle pages from Mrs. S’s stack of them, which she sent me recently. My twelfth-century heroine was unmasked as a female, scrambled back to England to claim her castle and married the hero at last.

At 4 I came upstairs for an e-mail session.
• Steve M has been stopping by bookstores and talking about our books, and wished to have some books sent to them for consideration. I told him we would be glad to do so. He also wanted them autographed, and I asked, to whom do I make the salutation.
• I had suggested making different categories for listing donors on our “Thank You” page so that we could highlight our more generous givers, and Steve M wisely pointed out that if all is one, then all donations are infinite. We will have just the one list, in alphabetical order. I confess to being a bit service-to-self in devising the scheme of categories of giving, knowing that in some cases we would receive a larger donation from someone who was interested in appearing in a higher bracket.
• Steve had some questions about how we price our books, and I gave him the information I had, referring him to Gary for the order list and the skinny on exactly how we ended up selling through Amazn.com and losing money on every copy of The Law of One, Book I.
• Steve E is thinking about dressing the B4 site now with images and wondered if he could use some photos Gary took at Macchu Pichu. I gave him a pitch to use some L/L photos, of our garden especially, as well.
• Steve E is thinking about writing a book somewhat like “The Celestine Prophecy”, using the principles of TLOO. He asked what I thought – I encouraged him to go for it – and if we could do some Q’uo sessions when he has written enough to know what questions he would like to ask them, in order to have unique material to quote in the book. I said we could do that. It’s just a matter of finding three people for the sessions, which always takes some time to arrange because everyone is busy.
• Wynn F wrote to ask if he and I could do something together. I pointed out that he was already reading Q’uo channelings on BBS daily, so in a way we are collaborating every day. But I also welcomed any ideas for further collaboration he had in mind.
• Judy R wrote to ask if I needed interesting photos and I said no. However I shall have to rethink that! Further conversation with Steve E indicates he really wants mood photos for various parts of our site, not just in-house images.
• I thanked Romi for trying to follow through with Don N of BBS on some questions he had about their broadcasting our channeling sessions and encouraged him to keep trying.
• Lastly, I dropped a line to Maria R, who has recently lost her husband, just letting her know we are thinking of her. With three small children, she has many responsibilities and a busy life. Where does one go with such crushing losses when one must cope?

Mick called bath time and put an end to my useful work for a few hours. We watched more football over dinner. I offered the ending prayer at the Gaia Meditation.

I came upstairs shortly before 10 PM in order to tune myself for the upcoming interview with Lance White, the Zany Mystic, on his BBS show “A Fireside Chat”. Lance called right on time at 10 PM and we had an engaging hour's conversation. He asked about ascension, 2012, polarity and how I started channeling, among other topics. I think it went well. The energy was good.

Mick and I watched yet more football while I decompressed from the interview, and we sought our beds at about 12:30.

It is interesting how my TV’s being broken upstairs in my bedroom changes our habits. We stay downstairs right up until bedtime instead of going up for a kitty snuggle. It’s OK for the cats, though, as they can snuggle away in the living room just as well as upstairs. Dan D. was especially affectionate last night, spending almost half an hour on my lap, cuddling under my chin and purring like a young lion.

2007-09-28

There were still damp spots on our walk as I got the paper! What a novel experience! The weatherman says that barring hurricanes, which often give us backwash this time of year, we are still in a draught pattern. So I must appreciate this special time of visible moistness in our Kentucky earth!

After Morning Offering, Gary joined Mick for their Friday Mowing Extravaganza and had a full morning of it. I edited on the interview I did with Marcia McMahon last June. Melissa came and got me when she arrived and had showered, and we went to Lemon Grass for lunch, then to LabCorp to deliver my lab test blood for the month and to Office Max to get a new mouse.

Back at the house, Melissa went about her many chores while I came upstairs intending to work on Chapter 8. However I could not get my new mouse to work! After trying to work with the old one for a while, I found myself becoming overwhelmed with frustration, as the cursor stuck most of the time, so I allowed myself to quit at 4 PM instead of 5 and do other things. Gary, who was cooking for next week down in the kitchen, later came upstairs, trouble-shot and fixed the problem.

Jim roused me from my reading for bath time, and then we had a date, emerging for dinner, the Gaia Meditation and Jim’s football game du soir. We sought to make official our slumber, sweet slumber, at midnight.

2007-09-27

Wondrous to report, it rained overnight, almost an inch of delicious water from heaven! We are still 9” into a draught, but as Mick said, at least it dampened down the dust!

After Morning Offering, Jim set out on a round which prohibited his joining me for lunch, so I had the house to myself today. I spent the morning editing on an interview which I gave to Marcia McMahon of “The Peaceful Planet” show on BBS Radio this June. She asked all about ascension, so I am glad to get some more material on that hot subject up on our site for our seekers in case they are looking into that topic.

It is tedious work to edit live talk when the people involved have bad verbal habits. Mine are “So…” at the beginning of sentences, where the word is totally unneeded and “You know”, also a sentence starter with no virtue. We won’t get into Marcia’s! That would be rude! So, you know, I whiled away the morning hours.

After a very pleasant lunch, reading on an historical novel set in the 12th century and starring an improbable 12-year-old heroine that goes on King Richard’s Crusade pretending to be a nine-year-old boy, I worked on Chapter 8 for most of the afternoon, completing the section on “All You Need Is Love” and starting the section on blue-ray sexuality. It all feels good!

At the end of the afternoon, I found myself with extra work time as Mick was quite late returning home from his labors – he had run into extra work being asked of him by two of his customers during the day, and he always likes to oblige them if he can, bless his service-to-others heart. So I did some e-mail.

My first send was the following announcement, which I received from Elihu E and passed on to my nearest and dearest, Mick and Gary – and now to you, for a laugh:

“The government today announced that it is changing its emblem from an eagle to a condom because it more accurately reflects the government's political stance. A condom allows for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pr***s, and gives you a sense of security while you're actually being screwed!”

Bob R really likes some of the forum and chat room features on David W’s site and wrote offering to pay for the same software for our upcoming www.bring4th site, so I forwarded his letter to B4 webmaster Steve E. Steve wrote back almost immediately – I must have caught him on his commute – saying that our site already had similar software, and better, as far as he was concerned. He said that he, too, would like to get forums and chat rooms up as soon as he is able to complete the secure-site store.

We’re all set with our store, except that we are waiting to get the CSR handshake completed and Jeremy W, who most kindly is donating his server, is tied up with other things and hasn’t been able to get back to Steve on completing the CSR details.

I shall write Bob tomorrow with this news and thank him for his great ideas and generous spirit.

Jessie H from the Louisville Courier-Journal wrote to give me the phone number of the newspaper's Library, which is where I may be able to obtain e-copies of her articles on Pat Smith. He died in the Comair crash a year ago at Lexington, and his family and friends finished a Habitat for Humanity house he was working on when he died. I thought he’d make a good “Difference Maker” for my UPI series.

I wrote a thought-letter to Gary about our “Thank You” page for volunteers and donors to L/L Research, discussing details of that page. I also cc’d that to Board members Steve M and Bill H, with whom I am in the midst of arranging a discussion about mounting our operational funds campaign for the year.

I also asked those two, in a separate letter, if either of them had access to a conference-call-featured telephone, since a live three-way conversation is so much more flexible than a series of two-way e-mails and/or telephone calls.

My laptop's mouse is dying, unfortunately. My working day was fraught with times when the mouse would not respond. It was as if it got stuck, again and again. I replaced the battery twice, thinking it might just be a bad battery, but no joy there. I also rebooted the computer twice with null results.

And as a final fillip of frustration, somehow the recording feature got turned on. I must have hit some button or other unknowingly. So for a while the mouse would not function as a mouse at all and I had to navigate on my writing of Chapter 8 by directional arrows and the “End” key. It was not until I turned off the computer at the end of the day that I found a little window in which I could turn off the feature. I was never so glad!!

Tomorrow, I believe I will obtain two new mouses, a plug-in mouse for work in the office and a new small battery-driven one for when I am on the road.

Mick rolled in at 6:30 and we gratefully soaked away the frustrations of the day in the bathtub . We came upstairs then, intending to relax with some TV and kitty-patting in my bedroom, but, alas, the theme of the day persisted. My TV broke! It died in mid-sentence. I see a repairman in my future.

So we came downstairs to enjoy supper and watched a block of CSI episodes while we chatted about our day. We offered the Gaia Meditation, came back upstairs for a snuggle with the cats and said good-night at 11 PM.

2007-09-26

'And the days dwindle down to a precious few" in September! Time is fleeing away! After Morning Offering, Jim went to work in his Jim’s Lawn Service hat, improvising as he went to fill his non-mowing days with other work. He’s been extremely fortunate in having a steady stream of odd jobs all summer during this draught, which has slowed his normal mowing schedule by 50 to 75%. The mowing will pick up again as the leaves fall in earnest, though, since he clears leaves with his mulching blade on the big mower, unless a customer asks him to bag them. And those days are coming soon.

I spent the morning editing the next Aaron/Q’uo Dialogue, the third session of the sixth weekend. One more session and I shall be 2/3 through this editing job. It is fine material. I will be happy to see it get out there.

Jim came home for a very quick lunch, on his way to St. Luke’s for a planning meeting concerning their shrubbery. A couple of parishioners who really disliked the old hedge which separated the upper parking lot and the lower parking lot had taken it down, and that needs to be replaced with new bushes. Jim had prepared a bid on that job, but found out that they want a whole lot more. So he will re-make his bid, factoring in all the work in all the different places on St. Luke’s campus where the committee would like to see new growth.

Before I came upstairs I signed about a dozen thank you letters cum tax receipts for generous contributors to L/L Research, including one donation of $1500.00 from a couple in Holland! Donations have been up lately, and are so very much appreciated and needed.

After lunch I finalized all of Chapter 8 up to where I ended work Monday and struck out into new writing, having my first go at a couple of new sections. It feels great to have gotten past that block that so frustrated me last week. When my thinking cap got weary, I dropped back the gearing to e-mail setting.

I collected a recipe for chicken in orange sauce and sent that to Gary to include in the household’s recipes database.

I wrote Ian and Gary concerning protocol in aiding Mishlin D, who is translating The Law of One into French. It is now agreed that Gary will field the questions first and appeal to Ian and me when he is not sure of the response.

I thanked Elihu Edelson for sending me an article by Stuart Wilde. It was a dandy! I need to look him up on Google and see what else he has written! The essay was most inspiring.

I wrote Gary concerning our developing “Thank You” section. We shall soon have a section on our web site where we thank all our volunteers and contributors. It feels very good to give all of these loving souls acknowledgment and public credit.

And I responded to nine questions Development Committee member, Steve M, had concerning L/L Research’s financial situation.

I had gotten an e-mail from Bill H, the other Development Committee member, which asked me to call him, but I just missed him. I shall have to try again tomorrow.

Jim called bath time at that point, and after a lovely, long soak, we relaxed and watched Democracy Now and Star Gate SG-1 until Mick had to leave to pick up Sandy S, Jim’s old and valued friend from his college days, and I went to choir practice.

We are singing two services Sunday, the usual 11:00 AM choral Eucharist and a 3 PM memorial service for Harry Sladen, much beloved member of the choir for 40 years and a major player in many environments for many years all over town. That service will be packed!

The choir offered to help with the reception, so I got my marching orders to make a layered salad for the event. It’s a very tasty recipe and makes up quickly – you layer greens, herbs, onions, peas, bacon, Vegannaise and finally Parmesan cheese. The secret is to let it set overnight. The herbs marry and the whole salad tastes yummy.

It was lovely to get back home and visit with Sandy. I had never met her in the flesh before, just heard about her many adventures. She has sailed almost everywhere on the globe, crewing for friends. She reports that those days are over. These days she works on her house, being handy with a saw. She’s done most of the renovation work in her home herself, a very extensive job and on-going. I offered the Gaia Meditation very quietly in the midst of the conversation

We talked until late, so came upstairs directly to bed after Mick got back from returning her to her hotel, turning in at 11 PM.

2007-09-25

After making our Morning Offering together, Mick set out for another very full day of gardening, trimming and, yes, just a bit of mowing despite the draught, which has deepened to a ten-inch deficit. I spent the entire day, except for the lunch hour, on the UPI article on the Jena Six.

It was amazing how deep in confusion the reporting was. It took me until 4 PM, using the internet to read article after article from all over the country, to come to a sense of just what actually happened there. I have never before seen such a clear example of how our news is spun and twisted according to pre-existing assumptions and points of view on the part of the reporters.

I believe I finally got the story told correctly, and was able to make my points, thanks to a very good session from earlier this year, which I quoted several times, on the appropriate use of catalyst and the nature of prejudice. But the writing went late, as I had a deadline to meet and could not put it off until tomorrow. So after Mick and I bathed and shared our news of the day, I went back to work and finished the column around 7 PM.

We had dinner together with the Ro Man after I sent the article in to UPI, while discussing BBS broadcasting matters. Romi wanted direction on several points. He intended to call Don N at BBS and straighten things out voice-to-voice, but either Don’s telephone was acting up or ours was. He could not even leave a message. So he sent Don an e-mail instead, and will try again tomorrow to make the call. Don prefers the telephone to e-mail.

Romi offered the ending prayer at the Gaia Meditation, after which we enjoyed a bizarre episode of “House” which was, nevertheless, enjoyable. Hugh Laurie played a bit of guitar in the episode. I had heard that he is part of a rock group in Britain, and he certainly could blow his axe, as my jazz-drummer Dad would have said.

After we said good night to Romi, we enjoyed a sweet date together before saying good night at 11 PM.

2007-09-24

We broke another record for high temperatures that had stood since the 1890s today, the temperature soaring to 97 F. Mick promised to do a rain dance if we get rain tomorrow, and I am holding him to it!

He set off, after our Morning Offering, for an extremely full day of mostly chores – trimming, pruning and reducing half of a tree, with its many branches, to firewood and kindling. The tree had fallen over in the still of the afternoon, the owner said, in its natural rhythm of dying. She heard the creaking and was able to get outside and watch it gracefuly decline to the ground. Jim says the tree is full of heart rot. He was not to return to Camelot until almost 6:30, a very long day for him.

I found some e-mail when I awoke and before I went downstairs to awaken Mick, I had worked with that.

• I wrote a fellow St. Luke’s choir member, reminding him of a payment for one of our choir CDs which he had forgotten to make for the last month or so. I am in charge of the CD monies.
• I wrote Gary suggesting that we include a “Thank You” section in our web site for all of our many loving and faithful volunteers.
• I wrote Ian, thanking him for all the work done on our Book of Days announcement on the Home Page. I also confirmed his wonderful idea of providing a PDF file of the BOD cover for those who would like to download Michele Matossian’s beautiful cover art for their desktop. She is a graphic artist. Her resume is at http://www.ncsu.edu/scivis/lessons/careers/michele.htm and her work can be seen on http://www.lightweaver.com/. Take a look to enjoy mandalas, whimsies and a wide range of moods, textures and colors.
• I wrote to confirm with Carol C that I am expecting Carol and her husband to meet me for dinner on October 4th! She has other business locally and decided to meet me while she was in town, as she is a Law of One fan. I always look forward with keen anticipation to special meals, sensualist that I am.

After Morning Offering I came back to my office to make my Camelot Journal entry for yesterday and also to catch up on the Avalon Journal by writing an entry for September 3rd, when Bob R and I spent the afternoon there. Then I worked on the speech from the L/L Gathering at Mackinac Island entitled “Are We There Yet?” Somewhere in the middle of that work, I broke to enjoy a lunch of Avalon eggs from Dusty Rose and the Comets, which I had made into egg salad last Saturday.

I spent most of the rest of the afternoon on Chapter 8 of 101. I am extremely happy to report that finally, finally, I found the glitch, moved a bunch of material around in the middle of the chapter and now the chapter flows! I still need to write the last section, but by the time I finished reorganizing the middle of the chapter, I was too mind-tired to create one more creative sentence. So I went back to e-mail.

• I wrote Gene P at St. Luke’s about possible names for the newly inaugurated “Hoge House”, a lovely home adjacent to St. Luke’s which has just been opened up for use as the new home of the church staff and choir. I suggested Damascus House, since it was St. Luke who accompanied St. Paul to Damascus, Magnificat House, since the Magnificat is found only in the Gospel of St. Luke, and Covenant House, since making the home part of the St. Luke’s campus was the promise made by Mayor Hoge, who originally donated the property.
• I let Gary know that the Avalon Journal entry was now made and asked him to insert Bob R’s photos from that trip.
• I suggested to Gary that we have an interactive map for meditations, particularly peace meditations, so people on our B4 site could join in lots more times than just our daily Gaia Meditations.
• I wrote him again to suggest that we offer to sign our books on our order blank. I saw that feature on Neale Donald Walsch’s site when I was getting his citation right in a footnote to the Mackinac Island speech and was impressed by its thoughtfulness.
• I wrote Ian about an editing question in Terry H’s channeling session.
• I confirmed with Roman that we can talk about the protocol for our webcasting before the Gaia Meditation tomorrow night and call Don N at BBS, and also thanked him for listening to BBS yesterday evening to be sure that our session was being broadcast as arranged. He says that it is, and that it sounds fine. He also said that it is free! That is a blessing.
• I sent a note to Elihu E, sympathizing with his computer glitch and congratulating him on wading through over 350 e-mails which had accumulated during the time he was unable to work his e-mail software.
• I wrote Jessie H at the Courier-Journal, following up on a story idea for the UPI Difference Makers series. She wrote an article some time ago about Pat Smith, a victim of the Comair disaster last year, in whose memory a bunch of his friends and family built a Habitat for Humanity home. I could not find that story on line and hoped she would be able to send it to me, or tell me where to find it.

Since Mick was late, I used some extra time to gather materials for the UPI article I will write tomorrow on the Jena Six. I found good sources on several sides of this series of events and will follow up on that tomorrow with writing the actual article.

Before I came downstairs, I cleared my desk of mail. Melissa’s book on spiders had come! She will be happy to get that. Bob R had noted on September 3rd that a humongous arachnid hanging from the screen on Sugar Shack’s back porch looked to be a brown recluse. So Mel asked for a book, to be sure before she nukes the bug. I also completed a couple of Publisher’s Clearing House entries. I like to send those in and dream of being able to endow L/L Research and to build our dream home on Avalon as well! It is fun to dream, and this particular lottery only charges the price of a stamp to enter.

Mick’s back was sore as it could be from all the heavy, bent-over work on the fallen tree, so we had a long whirlpool and then a very quiet night, watching a block of Star Trek Enterprise, offering the Gaia Meditation, with Mick saying the prayer at the end, and coming up to bed fairly early. We dozed happily until saying good night at 11 PM.

2007-09-23

The high temperature on this Sabbath day broke a record for the high which had been set in 1891. It rose to 96 F. Our parched land is dusty in this merciless sun. I went to St. Luke’s and fanned my way through a sweltering but beautiful service. We sang “Give Almes for thy Goodes” by Weelkes, and intoned Psalm 15, and Father Ken gave a fine sermon on planning, reminding us that it is the Creator’s plans we are here to further.

Jim had cleaned the house and done some errands when I returned, and we met for lunch and our three films for the day. It was lovely to kick back and relax with “The Pursuit of Happyness”, which starred Will Smith looking mature and doing a terrific job with his role. His son won the audition fair and square and played his character’s son in the film. It was upbeat and fun to watch, with great production values. It was based on a true story of American rage-to-riches success.

Mick made some popcorn and we dove into the second feature, “Archangel”, starring Daniel Craig. The film was a political thriller which posited that Stalin’s son was still alive. Craig was excellent, as was Gabriel Macht as a second-banana character and Valery Chernyak as a supporting character.

The land of Russia was an unofficial star in this hauntingly photographed little gem of a movie. From the grim, soulless, gargantuan apartment complexes of Moscow to the stunning breadth and depth of the Russian countryside in winter, the camera brought home much of what I have read about this enormous country. And the director had kept colors very muted in the costumes, so that the chiaroscuro of the countryside and city was intensified. I loved this film!

After a break for Mick to nap and then work in the yard on our fish ponds a bit and for me to enjoy a round of solitaire, we started, but did not finish, “One Perfect Day”. The film reminded me of “Blow Up”, a Michelangelo Antonioni film starring David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave. In both movies someone dies and that event is very loosely surrounded by a sort of wandering narrative. However, “Blow Up” held my interest in spite of the chaotic filming style, whereas Mick and I finally gave up on the perfect day, which did not seem so very near perfection, after about an hour. While the color values were spectacular, the sets fascinating and the actors excellent, the script itself just did not hold us. Call us un-hip!

We had supper together, offered the Gaia Meditation, with me praying at the end, and came to bed to snuggle with the kitties before saying good night at 11 PM.

2007-09-22

After Morning Offering, Mick and I did a bit of cooking, making bread pudding for the occasion of Sandy S.’s visit next Wednesday night and also making egg salad for lunches next week. Then Jim took off for his Saturday round of errands while I came upstairs to work on e-mail, often my chosen activity on a Saturday.

I had some dreams of getting all caught up, which did not happen. But I

• Wrote a dozen or so e-thank you notes to people who have commented on my UPI articles, letting them know how much I appreciated their thoughts and kind words
• Sent some encouragement to Dianne S, whose personal situation is complicated right now
• Wrote Rick C about politics and told him of our chicken laying a double-yolk egg – imagine my surprise when I cracked it open!
• Thanked Melissa for her photos of the new Avalon chicken coop and run
• Thanked Rho M for sharing a video of a sea gull who steals a bag of certain kind of potato chips each day from a Southern seashore store, which is truly funny to see
• Thanked Romi V for working on the web-casting of our sessions
• Confirmed with Lance W that I am on for next weekend, the 29th, at 10 PM my time
• Talked with Jolyon T about paragraphing – she was wondering how her transcriptions held up in that regard. I encouraged her not to worry, that paragraphing is a personal thing and she can’t possibly second-guess me, nor should she have to
• Thanked Gary for passing on the news that a Russian Law of One fan has now translated the first 15 LOO sessions into Russian
• Thanked Steve E for coming up with the idea of creating collections of quotes for the bring4th web site that bear on FAQ’s and also for his Reiki healing, which he does at a distance and which is having a good effect
• Thanked Bob R for sending me Anna H’s contact information. Anna was an attendee at Mackinac Island, and would like to host an L/L Research event in Norway, where she lives.

In the midst of this The Mick Man and I had lunch and took in some football. U of L was beaten soundly by a team they were expected to drub by over 30 points! So much for U of L being rated in the top 25 football teams nationally. Coach K indicated that the team would be working on a few things! (I am guessing that would be defense!) It made for a good game, if one was not attached to the outcome, as there was lots of scoring on both sides and the ending score had only a three-point spread.

After Mick and I bathed and shared some supper with Carmen, we had our regular public meditation meeting. Gary, Romi, Mick and Carmen attended here locally. There were eight attending from distant locations via our private chat room.

It was a channeling Saturday, and Romi was on hand to do the web-cast. However there was a screw-up and, sadly, the web-cast failed. The problem was that Romi closed his laptop once the session began, in order to get the glare of the screen out of his eyes. He was not aware that closing the laptop would cause the computer to shift modes to “stand-by”. It stopped the web-casting, although the computer did record the session. So we will be able to send the session on to BBS Radio for their broadcast of it, which I believe occurs later today.

Romi felt so chagrined! I assured him that making mistakes is OK around these parts! And I found him a nice big cloth to put over the screen from now on.

The session ran long tonight. It was a good session, I think. It responded to questions about what the difference was between knowing the self and accepting the self and also about how the Confederation sees our “ordinary” days. Romi made his Love Tea and offered shortbread to go with it, afterwards, while we conversed. The party broke up as midnight approached, and Mick and I ended the day with our kitty snuggle and some vedge TV.

2007-09-21

After Morning Offering, Mick and Gary set out on an abbreviated Friday’s work- shortened because not much grass grows when it is so draughty. Jim reports only the crabgrass thrives under these desert-like conditions. So he mowed grass for those few who water their lawns and those others who enjoy the meadow effect and therefore have lots of crabgrass. The other customers got a touch-up, and the guys got home in time for lunch!

I spent the morning working through 12 pages of my second talk at Mackinac Island. I like what I said so far, except for an aside on the Episcopal Church’s virtues that did not have a huge amount to do with 2012, the subject of the speech. Shame on me! I am a passionate advocate for the excellence of my church and that's OK. But I should choose my times to express that better!

Melissa came to town and I took her to Applebee’s, NOT for steak, as my previous steak there was tough enough to make a shoe sole, but for burgers and a planning meeting on Avalon. I learned that Russell Crow is a Leghorn rooster. Of our five hens, we have a Plymouth Rock named Dusty Rose and four Golden Comets. Melissa has made them into a girl-group, “Dusty Rose and the Comets”.

They are all thriving. Russell is a gentleman who never abuses his hens but rather finds food for them and then lets them eat first. All the hens are laying happily. She is feeding them layer's mash and they apparently love it! Melissa brought 2 dozen huge eggs with her down to Camelot.

We eat a lot of eggs around here anyway, and I have a feeling we will eat lots more. Mel said she is contemplating going into the egg-selling business next spring, when she is more organized on other, more basic matters like mastering the tractor, catching up paperwork and doing road maintenance. But for now, we will eat the eggs ourselves and offer them for $3.00 per dozen to meditation group members.

We had a great lunch and talk and then Mel took the afternoon to do town chores and watch a movie. I hung out with an unusually mellow Mick for an hour or so, working more Sunday puzzles from the New York Times while Mick caught up on the media news. I was impressed that they covered the massive march in Jena, Louisiana. As the beautiful, sad and true old song says,

“Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away.
They're tryin' to wash us away.
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away.
They're tryin' to wash us away.”

The saddest part is that,in this case,it is the “good old boys” of Louisiana, themselves, who are flooding the state with hate and prejudice. Amy Goodman, later in the day, gave us more information on the march and on the events that triggered it.

Apparently, there was a big old tree in the schoolyard at the high school in Jena. White students tended to collect there at recess. A black student asked if he could sit under its shade also. He did so. Several of his friends sat with him.

The next day, there were nooses hanging from the tree. Lots of nooses. This led to a schoolyard scuffle and some of the boys, white and black, got hurt. The white parents banded together and got six black students arrested. One has been tried and sentenced, for attempted murder. The others have trials pending. No white student has even been taken in for questioning. No action was taken on the boys responsible for hanging the nooses, either.

I am glad to see people becoming indignant over this. Between forty and sixty thousand people marched on Jena, a town of 3,000. I hope they brought their own food! The Reverend Al Sharpton spoke well of the unfairness and injustice of this chain of events.

It was interesting to hear that they have chopped down the magnificent old tree, as if the tree were responsible for sprouting nooses. I mourn that tree. You know, there may be a UPI article in that! I will think about it.

I worked for a while on Chapter 8, but I confess to being totally inadequate to finding a way to make the middle of the chapter flow. So I gave it up for the day and instead caught up on my mail, a whole folder of dozens of letters from people who have written in to comment on my UPI articles.

I would have expected at least a few discouraging words, but not one did I see. Instead there was such an outpouring of love, affection, gratitude and fellow feeling that my heart just soared. Tomorrow I shall respond to them – Saturday is my day to catch up e-mail.

Mick and I so relish our Friday evenings! TGIF! We watched World Music, then Democracy Now, after our bath, and then came back downstairs for CSI and supper. I offered the prayer at the end of the Gaia Meditation. And we capped the evening off in our usual way, patting kitties and watching TV in a desultory fashion while sharing conversation, dreaming, planning and just soaking up the good feelings of being together.

I love to see the TV screen when Chloe has finished saluting me. There is a pair of shelves at the end of my bed, which hold sweaters and other items. Chloe sits on the shelf nearest the window, right in my line of sight for the TV, and so I see a screen the bottom of which, instead of being a straight line, has two ears and the curve of a kitty-cat back. Of such sweet sights are contentment made.

We said good night at midnight, staying up late because we can sleep late tomorrow. Ah, Fridays!

2007-09-20

The 90-degree sun shone bright on my old Kentucky home today – again – while Mick mowed, after Morning Offering. I spent the morning editing the second of the two speeches I gave at the L/L gathering on Mackinac Island, working from Mike T’s very clean transcript. I hope to make more progress on it tomorrow morning. It is a long talk!

I was able to dine with Mick at the noon hour, always a treat, and to do our stretching exercises with him. I spent a bit of time working with Gary in the downstairs office before coming upstairs again, and in the course of our conversation, found that he had been keeping a file of comments on my UPI articles and other writings and channelings, under the impression that I would not want to see them. I totally see how he would get that impression, as his job involves keeping me free to create. But I do like to see what people are saying, and to have the chance to respond. So Gary will send me that whole folder of comments and I can catch up on what my critics are saying tomorrow.

I ordered a book on spiders for Melissa which she had requested when I got back to my office. I also wrote the Development Committee members, Bill H and Steve M, asking them to start planning an Operating Funds campaign for L/L Research. Since we acquired an admin, a bookkeeper and an Avalon caretaker, we have expenses of about $3,000 per month for their fees. And they are so needed! And they work so hard! Gary and Pam both do the best job in the world in the office. Melissa, also, is the world’s finest farmer! So we need to provide the funds for them, as well as meet the other expenses normal for offices and farms. It is wonderful to be able to call upon these Board members.

I also wrote Tiffani, head of the L/L Board’s Marketing Committee. We have a new book out, A Book of Days. It is a beautiful book, containing much inspiration. However, once the advance orders had been filled and the Homecoming attendees bought copies, sales dwindled to almost nothing. We need to get the word out. I do not know what it takes to get the book reviewed, either. Again, it is wonderful to have her expertise. She has been extremely successful at marketing her own firm’s wares.

I came along, on Chapter 8 of 101, going through the entire chapter again and seeing how to end it. However I am not happy with the middle part yet and will look at that tomorrow to see if I can help it to flow better. I also wrote a couple of thank-you notes, one to Leonard G, who had sent his wonderful little book of poetry and also his CD of songs and poems, and one to Steve M, who had sent us a CD of meditation music called Om Deeksha. they are great additions to our Library and given with such love and affection!

Our evening flowed far better than Chapter 8! After our bath and Democracy Now – a heart-breaking series of interviews with various people involved in school integration from Central High School in the mid-‘60s to the Jena 6 scandal – we took it downstairs. Jim watched Miami win over Texas A and M at football while I worked a couple of the New York Times Sunday puzzles which Eric S’s Mom had most graciously sent me. After offering the Gaia Meditation with Gary, he took off for Valerie’s while Mick and I went upstairs for a kitty snuggle before turning out the lights at 11 PM.

2007-09-19

After Morning Offering, Jim went out into the 90-degree day to mow, water and garden while I came upstairs to my bower office to edit the channeling which Terry H had requested. It was a very sweet channeling, imbued with lots of love. Hatonn even came through, which is rare for the Q’uo.

I think Hatonn was especially present because of the fact that Terry’s group in Taiwan had, together, formed these questions. They seem to be an especially dedicated group which runs on love, and Hatonn is of that vibration. The questions were all over the place – why do the prayers for the Middle East not result in peace; do we have soul mates; what’s a lonely seeker to do. It is a good read. And the beautiful transcription by Jolyon was a pleasure to edit.

The whole day was blessed by an unending trek of huge earth movers up and down our tiny lane, only four houses long. The sewer builders from the power company are through with our street. Our pipes are laid and the personal hook-ups have been placed. However in our little village of Anchorage, nothing runs straight, except Hobbs Park Road. So when the workers need to get from Osage to Hazelwood Roads, they all come through here. I had hoped that we would now experience quieter days, but no such luck!

I sent Terry’s session off to the web site for placement by our inestimable web guy just as Mick came in for lunch. The timing was perfect! I greatly enjoyed dining with that gentleman! When he went back to work, I stopped by Gary's desk to sign thank-you letters, which also function as tax receipts, for people who had donated to L/L Research and responded to some questions which he had concerning various people’s concerns. I am always impressed at Gary’s organizational skills. We do a lot of business in a short time. He reports being almost caught up at the L/L Inbox already! Whew! Monday, he had close to 150 actual pieces of mail to come home to! That’s fast work.

I worked on Chapter 8, which is coming along nicely now. At the edges of the day, I did some e-mail, writing Pupie a thank you letter as she had sent me her very lovely stained glass hanging. It is a piece called “Illumination” and depicts a seated figure in the midst of a bank of flowers. When Mick has strung it with the proper chain, we will put it in my bower office, where I can see it every day.

Pupie had also written about our chickens, as she and her husband are bio-dynamic farmers, working and living on Britain’s Plaw Hatch Farm. She reports, in answer to my query, that chickens are bio-dynamic because of how they are raised and fed. I have passed this information on to Melissa and asked her to obtain the proper B-D preparations, which contain the proper essences for laying hens. I doubt we shall ever bring ourselves to use these chickens for meat. We shall go into the egg-selling business, I imagine.

I sent Gary a request to forward the UPI article on “Who Am I” to the Homecoming attendees whose words I used in that column, along with my thanks and praise.

I sent our web guy an announcement text so that he can put up an announcement on our archive site that the Book of Days is ready to send out.

And I wrote Lance White, the Zany Mystic, to thank him for doing such a great job of offering an introduction to my work on his BBS Radio site. I will have an interview with him at 6 PM on the 25th, I believe – that’s Pacific Time.

Mick and I then bathed and enjoyed Amy Goodman and Stargate SG-1 before I went to choir rehearsal at St. Luke’s. We’re practicing some lovely music! It will be a most enjoyable fall in the chancel, singing these sweet tunes. I came home to find that Jim and Gary had offered the Gaia Meditation already. So Mick and I enjoyed a light supper and then I had a date with Mick, my Prince! We let the kitties in after that and had a good snuggle before saying good night at 11:30.

2007-09-18

Mick sailed off in a cloud of dust after Morning Offering to mow and garden while I came upstairs to write my UPI article for this week. I fear that I have somehow lost some of the “Who Am I” pieces from Homecoming attendees, as I recall seeing pieces from Lorena L and Aaron T, but could not find them, nor could Gary. However I used the half dozen which I had in hand to compose a very nice column. I think people will enjoy thinking about the various answers people offered to that ancient question.

I came down early to attend to office business, writing a check for a bill which had somehow gotten lost in Gary’s mail pile before he went to Peru and which he had just rediscovered. It was a charge card bill for L/L Research of a sizeable amount, so I am glad he found it. I think we mailed it in time to avoid a late fee.

Mick had stopped by home, so I broke early for lunch and enjoyed his company. We did our stretching exercises for the first time in a while, something that is very good for us both, especially as we get older and creakier.

I did a bit of e-mail before going back to Chapter 8 of 101. St. Luke’s is looking for a new name for their “Hoge House”, which is a large home abutting St. Luke’s acres that was donated to the church by Mayor Hoge some time back. The parish had used it, up until this summer, as a rental property. Now they are using it as the staff building, making it a part of the St. Luke’s campus proper.

I suggested three names – “Magnificat House” since the Magnificat is recorded only in the Gospel of St. Luke, “Macedonia House”, since Luke and Paul went over to Macedonia because they needed help, and “Covenant House”, since bringing the house into church use is the promise kept which Mayor Hoge offered when he deeded the property over.

Jim called bath time and we enjoyed all the activities of a quiet evening at home – whirlpool, watching Amy Goodman, having supper and sharing the Gaia Meditation with Gary.

Gary also treated us to a slide show of his vacation at Macchu Pichu in Peru. Gary really hiked a bunch on this trip! He had photos from atop a young mountain which overlooks the site, perhaps 1,000 feet above the already-high ruins! I can see he had a wonderful journey with good company and beautiful scenery everywhere.

Mick and I came upstairs for a snuggle with the cats before bedtime at 11 PM.

2007-09-17

The day was hot, up in the high 80s, with another week-long block of hot, dry weather facing the area, back into the 90s tomorrow. This draught is merciless. We are now 9” low for the year on rainfall. Nevertheless, the grass is still growing here and there, so Mick set out after Morning Offering for a very full day of work.

I started my morning by writing a note of courage to Gary, who came back to his admin desk after two weeks away. He let me know it was a helpful thing to see my message when he got to the L/L work later in the morning. Gary was still working at 8 PM when Mick and I came downstairs for supper! He really put in a full day.

I spent the remainder of my morning time finally finishing the editing on my interview with Marcia McMahon in March, 2006. It was good to get that finished and off to Ian for inclusion in our archives of interviews on the L/L web site. It had been a beast to edit, because of constant diacritical marks of an unknown kind to me that pervaded the copy, and because of Marcia’s style of conversation, in which half-sentences, non sequiturs and unfinished thoughts loom large. I tried to make her sentences whole and smooth out her thoughts for better reading. I edited out a bunch of totally extraneous “you know”s from my own words. I need not to use that phrase so much, you know?

In the afternoon, after a delightful repast with the Mick, I set out to start all over with Chapter 8 of 101, which last week had bogged down. My feeling was that I had not gotten the flow at all yet. I think it was a very good idea to start again, as the afternoon was quite productive and reading through it all again, I felt good about it at last. Halleluiah!

I did a bit of e-mail before closing up shop for the day.
• I sent Gary some thoughts on creating a Bub Hill archive in CD/hard-copy form for our physical library as well as in our computer files.
• I wrote Bob R, catching up on his news and asking for Anna H’s address in Norway. He had forwarded a letter of hers to me, but without her address, I could not answer her.
• I suggested to Romi some changes in our text concerning the webcasts of our channelings, to bring that information up to date and complete on our web site.
• I suggested to Gary some changes on the Homecoming 2007 link on the HomePage to put that to bed, with full information on the curriculum and quotes sections for those who want to review those study quotes. I also requested that he add any remaining photos from Bob R's collection into the Camelot Journal entries for those Homecoming dates.

Jim and I had a lovely, quiet evening watching a block of Star Trek Enterprise episodes, having dinner together and offering the Gaia Meditation with Gary. Mick gave the ending prayer. Mick and I bade good night to Gary as he headed off to Valerie’s for the night and then came upstairs and snuggled with the cats. We turned out the lights at 11 PM.

2007-09-16

Fall has come to Camelot! I wore a jacket to church and really needed it, as the temperature was barely 50 this morning, and did not rise past 68 F all day. I don’t doubt we will have more hot weather before the year is through, but the heat wave is broken. Now if we could only break the draught!

Church was very enjoyable today. The choir sang Byrd’s lovely “Miserere Mei” and we chanted Psalm 51, both pieces fitting into the readings for the service, and Father Joe told stories with his usual effective preaching style at the sermon, urging us to relish being Christians.

I came home to Mick’s newly clean house and we sat down to lunch as we popped “Miami Vice” into the DVD player. I cannot tell you what that was like, as after only a few minutes, during which the piece seemed interchangeable with the old TV series except that Colin Farrell’s “Sonny” was not as interesting a character as the original played by Don Johnson, I fell fast asleep, rousing only at the closing credits.

I did better with “Perfect Strangers”, staying awake throughout the film. Bruce Willis made a good gimlet-eyed villain-turned-victim and Halle Berry was excellent as the victim-turned-villain, but both characterizations existed within a screenplay flawed by an uneven, hectic presentation. It was enjoyable, though.

We paused between movies after this and I did just a bit of e-mail, notifying Gary that I needed some L/L Research Board details so that I could ask both our Development Committee and our Marketing Committee for some help.

We settled into our third film of the day, “Shadow Boxer”, over supper, welcoming Gary home halfway through. Gary says he had a great time in Peru and confessed to taking so many photos that he will have to thin out the lot before giving us a slide show. It was so good to see him back in Louisville safe and sound after his adventures! He promised to hit the L/L admin work tomorrow with great enthusiasm.

“Shadow Boxer”, for all of its odd subject matter, turned out to be by far the best film of the day. Cuba Gooding Jr. and Helen Mirren offered believable and touching performances as two assassins whose personal relationship was created by murder. Their love was beautiful to see, caught somewhere between the mother-son wash of affection and the energy of lovers’ passion. I was especially struck by the quality and aesthetic of the cinematographer’s eye. It was a beautiful film, if decidedly perverse in its message and theme, which was “When in doubt, kill!”

Mick and I are greatly enjoying these meeting-free Sundays. I think the change to Saturday meetings will be very good for our morale, giving us one day of pure R-and-R each week. For Jim especially, who works so very hard physically, this is a good thing indeed.

We offered the Gaia Meditation with Gary and then called Mom McCarty for a good chat with her before coming upstairs for a kitty snuggle and bedtime at 11 PM.

2007-09-15

Our draught continues, but with far cooler temperatures, the high today barely reaching 70 F. The sad thing about some of the leaf fall is that the coloration is missing. The dry ground is not nourishing the trees, and the leaves are simply turning a dull brown and dying. We have watered faithfully all summer, and our little acre is fairly happy. Along the expressway especially, though, one can see the cost of this extended desert period. I fear we shall see trees dying.

As well, we have seen far fewer bumblebees, wasps, yellow jackets, honey bees, butterflies, dragonflies and tree toads. All the sounds of summer have been muted. I read in the marchforpeace.org blog that the marchers had encountered a vast number of dead butterflies en route.

After Morning Offering, Jim roasted a turkey and cleaned the kitchen, then took off for errands while I batted away at my e-mail, a traditional Saturday pursuit for me. I spent some time working with questions from Steve E, as he has been wonderful at moving plans forward for www.bring4th.org. I am in hopes that the site will open, in a very limited way, sometime this week, holding only the on-line store and the link to our BBS broadcasts at first. It will be a signal blessing to have a secure site where people can buy our books and other products on line.

I also asked our web guy at www.llresearch.org to update the Home Page paragraph concerning our public meetings in order to reflect the new time of the meetings and also the rearrangement of the channeling sessions to the second and fourth Saturdays.

Football called, and feeling very weary still, I decided to go with that lazy feeling and take some time to relax and enjoy. So Mick and I watched the Wolverines over lunch and a variety of other games as the afternoon waned into evening. Meanwhile I read an interesting book by Charles de Lint about dream-stealing vampires and the world of faery.

It was especially apropos as the heroine, a “true dreamer”, ran into writer’s block because without her dreams, she could not create her stories. I happen to be having a mini-block working on Chapter 8 of 101. An odd coincidence! Here’s hoping that Monday sees me back in the flow I usually enjoy when writing.

Mick did some chores in the yard while I napped, and then we met again for supper and the U of Louisville versus U of Kentucky football game, an annual rivalry of local interest and, this year, of national interest since the quarterbacks for those teams are ranked first and second in the nation. They both did well, but errors on U of L’s part made the difference and gave U of K the well-deserved victory. It was the best game I saw all day. I am sorry for U of L, though, as the National Championship is now denied them. One must have an all-win season to aspire to that.

We cut the game short to enjoy a silent meditation with Romi, a sweet time of resting in the powerful silence together. Afterwards, Romi shared his Love Tea and we conversed while finishing the game up on TV. Romi flitted about for a while, maintaining the computers and checking the network, and we talked more about going deeper into “Who Am I”.

We bade the Ro Man good night around 10:30 and snuggled with the kitties until about 11:30 before turning out the lights.

2007-09-14

Steve E wrote to say that he was ready to launch our on-line store, so after Morning Offering I set about doing what I could to help him finish up the details. I purchased an SSL certificate – do not ask me what it is, except that it is necessary for an on-line store – and fished out the latest price list I have on our products, which now include 11 books, plus our tapes and T-shirts.

I spent the remainder of the morning trying to discover whether the bank at which L/L Research has its account or its Merchant Service has e-banking services. I never did hear back from National City, but I did connect with our agent at TermNet, and she was able to give me a rundown on the costs involved in e-banking with them. Having satisfied myself that the best deal for e-banking was Steve’s choice, I got him the information he needed to know in order to set up an account with them.

Both Steve and Jeremy W are to be praised for collaborating on getting the new www.bring4th site so far advanced towards launch! A whole lot of work goes into such enterprises! Kudos, Steve and Jeremy!

My afternoon was taken up with going to Baptist East Hospital for a mammogram. “Did it go well?” asked Jim at bath time. “It went really well, if one accepts that closing one’s boobies in a door is a good thing,” I replied. What torture! However I tolerate the tests yearly as a favor to my G.P., Dr. Aboud, an earnest woman who wants to be sure I don’t get surprised with breast cancer. There’s no chance of that IMO, as neither my mother’s nor my father’s family has even a single instance of any kind of cancer. In my family history, it is always the pump which conks out, or the vascular system.

After our whirlpool, Mick and I enjoyed a sweet date together before going downstairs to dinner and the Gaia Meditation, with Mick offering the closing prayer. There is a delight to Friday nights, a quiet glow which stems from our knowing that we can sleep in on the morrow. We lingered long with the kitties and finally bade each other a most fond good night at midnight.

2007-09-13

Another day in the “barely-80s” greeted Mick and me as we made our Morning Offering. Jim set out for a full day which included taking down a tree which had mostly been felled by the last storm we had, perhaps a month ago. It put us and the whole area out of power for over a day, as, in its experiment in gravity, it had bundled itself to a telephone pole. The power company had removed enough of the tree to free the downed pole, but had left the rest in a heap. Jim took away almost everything but the living trunk, which he had not bid upon removing. He has just an hour or so to finish up there, which he will do tomorrow.

Meanwhile I continued cleaning up the files in my recipes database and then got some good work done in editing the interview Marcia McMahon and I had in March of 2006. It is fun to see the questions come, and wonder, “How am I going to get unconditional love into that answer?” Hopefully I shall finish this beast sometime soon! It’s only beastly because of the pervasive round markings, all of which must be deleted by hand.

Melissa was in town for chores and also for a farming class tonight at 6 PM. We had arranged to lunch together and then do errands, and at 11:30 I collected her and we went to Ruby Tuesday’s, home of a seriously great burger called Triple Prime. We indulged in those, YUM, and then shopped at Garden Ridge. The household is hard on its dishes and I was looking for really inexpensive dinner plates, dessert plates and side plates. We use one-of-a-kind ware, as I have never identified with having sets of anything and setting a fine table. I just want enough plates so everyone in the crowd can have one!

In the end we found one dinner plate, the entire six dessert plates we needed and zero small plates at a terrific price. They had the right sized small plates, but they were all saucers, with a central indented ring to hold a cup. I am looking for plates with a smooth surface. I shall need to look further.

We also found pretty napkins and dish towels at deep discount, 25 cents and 50 cents, and I replenished our supplies of those. We use the napkins to dress our dinner trays, rather than using cloth napkins per se.

Then we stopped by Sam’s Club to replenish my supplies of liquid minerals and vitamins. I browsed the clothing section, hoping to find a good deal for Melissa’s winter work clothes, but nothing was on sale, so no joy there.

I am thinking of placing, in the "if you want to help" section on our llresearch web site, a place where we give people the chance to offer donations strictly for Melissa's work. She exists on a tiny stipend and works 24/7 to harmonize and develop Avalon's sweet acres. Her ministry is one of deep devotion. She always has a project going, and the cost of construction materials is always more than it appears when she makes her budgets. And she needs work clothes and tools. She deserves abundance there.

Arriving home around 3 PM, I used the rest of the afternoon to work on Chapter 8 of 101. My doldrums had lifted nicely and I was able to move forward and write what is probably some of the final material in that chapter. Nothing is finalized yet, though, except the first section. I look forward to picking up this work next Monday. Tomorrow afternoon will be devoted to my going to the hospital for a mammogram.

Melissa had much movement to report on the chicken coop, which is all but finished now. She will receive her five hens over the weekend. It is exciting to see Melissa’s project completed. She has built a small house! She gave the chickens a window, for light. She has installed a door. It is quite an achievement that it is square and tight, all without a blueprint. She said it took a whole lot of thought! And she has done this virtually with no help.

She is a genius at thrift, and told me of salvaging a lot of lumber and other materials from the ruins of an old two-story house on Avalon. Our chicken coop has some century-old yellow poplar in its make-up, a testament to the enduring qualities of that tree’s wood. The coop sits near the creek, across from Sugar Shack.

After a quick whirlpool, Jim and I met Romi for his birthday dinner at The Grape leaf, a Mediterranean restaurant on Frankfort Avenue, near his home. We wanted to give him a nice gift of a dinner out because of all Romi does for us all the time. He volunteers countless hours keeping our house network and its five computers maintained. He offers the web-casts to our very small network of people all over the world who tune in to our private chat room to hear it and now has arranged to send those on to BBS Radio for broadcast.

And he is a most faithful attendee at our channeling meditations. Through the years, there have been many public meetings at which he was the third member of the sitting circle. Three in the circle is the minimum number for receiving outer and universal sources such as Q’uo.

We talked about the future a bit. Jim and I, we told him, still plan to live at Avalon. We do not have the funds to build our passive solar house there now. We are going on faith that the future holds our receiving abundance when the time is right. We have a dim sense that perhaps five years or so from now, that will happen. Romi hopes to follow us there at some point, but for now he is looking at small houses and condos in Louisville, in the neighborhood in which he now lives, which is convenient to downtown and a thriving yuppiedom, with lots of charming shops in the beautiful old renovated homes/storefronts along Frankfort Avenue.

And we talked a bit about why we want to farm bio-dynamically. To us, it is important to live the Law of One, not simply to teach it. Life-style then becomes a valid choice. And we would both choose to live at one with the earth, our little bit of earth at Avalon Farm. Bio-dynamics, a theory and practice of agriculture, was devised by Rudolf Steiner, the creator of the philosophy of Anthroposophy and the human healing ideas of Eurhythmics as well as the founder of the Waldorf School educational structure.

To Steiner, the human was designed to live in total harmony with the land. He would grow food that was native to that land. He would have mammals – cows, sheep, llamas – grazing the land and spreading wildflower and herb seeds all over its pastures, creating a distinct biota. And he would have us enrich the land not with substances alone but with essences, seeing all physical substances as carriers of sacred essences and forces. Melissa already has work in on a large composting pit, which figures large in the bio-dynamic scheme. And we now have a source for ordering their B-D additives.

All of this really resonated with Romi. He said that our Homecoming topic of “Who Am I” had gotten him thinking far more deeply about the topic, and he feels also the urge to live closer to the land.

We had a delicious meal and saw Romi’s card from Susanna Angela in Italy. There is romance in the air there. She will come to visit him and us near the end of this year. I look forward to meeting her! Susanna translates all Q’uo’s messages into Italian as soon as they appear on www.llresearch.org.

I have encouraged Romi to discuss with her the possibility of sharing those translations with our site. We already have Portuguese and Chinese translations of our sessions on site, and would welcome Italian as well. We hope through the years that people of many languages will offer us the gift of translations, making the material ever more available.

After saying good night and Happy Earth Day to the Ro Man,we meditated during the ride home. I offered the closing prayer to the Gaia Meditation as the headlights and taillights twinkled on the expressway. We then spent a happy time with the kitties before saying good night at 11 PM.

2007-09-12

What a perfect, Edenic day! It topped out at 79! Mick only changed T-shirts once today! It was noisy early, as this is the day the sewer people chose to create our hook-up. So for most of the day, the big machines were pounding, digging and backing up, clanking and roaring right outside my office window. At the end of the day, however, our hook-up was completed. I imagine the noise shall back off now, until they are ready to re-pave our little country lanes.

After Morning Offering, Mick went off to garden for a customer while I came upstairs, intending to edit. However I first wanted to enter a recipe into the database. For the first time, I noticed how raggedy my recipe files were up here on Jenny Traveller. So I spent a silly but extremely satisfying morning straightening out those files. Perhaps it is not too silly, as the database represents a good source for an L/L cookbook in the misty future.

Mick and I were able to lunch together and stretch afterwards. What a treat!

I spent a lackluster afternoon writing on Chapter 8 and then deleting what I wrote, ending up with a net gain of perhaps a page. It is humorous that I, a born communicator, am running into a block in describing just how one becomes a blue-ray communicator. Perhaps it is because it IS such a natural, inborn gift of my character. I never have had to work at communicating, except to develop my listening skills. So how can I describe that which I know not how I do? Well, I’ll hit it again tomorrow!

I was very glad to hear Mick’s truck arrive back at Camelot. He had rigged up a way to get up to ten feet so he could trim hedges for a customer this afternoon. His usual ladder is at Avalon, where Melissa needs it right now for chicken coop roofing. So he ad-libbed with a Garden Way cart, atop which he perched a shorter ladder. It sounded shaky to me, but he did fine with it, thank the Lord.

After a lovely whirlpool and Amy Goodman’s interviews with journalists who are attempting to penetrate shady Iraq dealings, interspersed with bits of Stargate SG-1, I headed to choir practice at St. Luke’s. We are rehearsing music from the Tudor Songbook, out of which our anthems for the next two Sundays come. We also worked on chanting the psalm of this next week. I do love the sound of chanting.

We offered the Gaia Meditation and had supper. Then we came upstairs for a tryst, charging our batteries, praising the Lord and having fun indeed. It is a blessing to be sexually active at this late date. I am 64, an age at which many have ceased having the opportunity or the ability to be active. And certainly Mick's and my dates are far less athletic than when we were first together as "kids", almost 30 years ago. But we experience the same wonderful electrical connection now as we always have, and as Yoko said of John, “it’s so good, every time!”

We snuggled with the cats and said good night at 11 PM.

2007-09-11

Our head of state has no eloquence in his make-up with which to describe 9-11, but Roosevelt’s “day of infamy” quote, about Pearl Harbor, does well for this anniversary day. After Morning Offering I spent some time in the office, making labels for some files, getting some copies of A Book of Days ready to mail out when Gary gets home, sending Monica L’s letter concerning my UPI article to the upstairs computer and generally straightening the somewhat disheveled office.

I found a box of items which, when I unpacked it, could be identified as Gary’s collection of items from our sales table at Homecoming. So I tucked away T-shirts and books and stowed some toiletries which had arrived from The Peaceful Company, where I have found the best deals on Dr. Hauschka products.

Dr. Hauschka is a German firm which creates holistic products for face and body and I use their deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, hand cream, nail cream and bath oils, the latter not in the bath but directly on my dry, dry skin. They are the only products I have found in years that work for me and though they are expensive, they are worth it to me in terms of comfort.

I wanted to use Monica’s letter in my UPI article, which was due for me to write today, and in it she referred to a Q’uo channeling in which we answered a question for her last year. I spent the remainder of the morning searching for it, but it took me until lunch time to find it.

So I broke for lunch with the article unwritten and came back to the writing in the afternoon. Fortunately the article almost wrote itself, as I had dream material to include, stories to tell, and the Q’uo’s beautiful words of comfort and strength to share.

I did a bit of e-mail then, letting Ian know that in the “letter tapes” section, it would be good to include Joan’s and Aaron’s names, giving credit to them for the transcription of the 150 or so letter tapes in our archives. Usually we do not give credit to a particular volunteer, as so many volunteers gang up on the transcriptions. However this particular niche is the work of only two people – an outstanding amount of work, patience and loving affection.

Rho M, who is webmaster for Scott Mandelker, sent me a video of a kitty cat eating with a fork, spoon and chopsticks and I wrote to thank her for it, sending it on to a couple of cat-loving friends of mine.

I forwarded to Melissa a notice from Community Farms of America that they will have a gathering later this fall. I offered to attend that with her. I have not been to one of their meetings yet, though we, on behalf of Avalon and L/L Research, are members of the organization.

I spent the remainder of the work day on Chapter 8 of 101, finalizing, for the most part, the second section of text. I will read it through tomorrow and check my work, but it is good to see the chapter taking shape. It always surprises me to see how it shapes up. We writers may think we are in control of our material, but in actuality it has a stubborn shape of its own that wants to come forth, and we can only have the art to cooperate with that, not boss it around!

Mick called bath time after his pleasant day working in 80 F temperatures, and we enjoyed a quiet evening, seeing bits of World Music on Link TV, taking in Democracy Now and conversing before dinner. After the Gaia Meditation, with Jim praying at the end, we thought to see an episode of House, but had seen it already, so we worked a bit in the office, Jim catching up his e mail and I deleting spam from the L/L Inbox so that when Gary returns, he does not have all that to look at as well as the hundreds of e mails he will actually have to address.

We then came upstairs and snuggled with the kitties, saying good night at 11 PM.

2007-09-10

One last Rose of Sharon nodded on our front hedge when I got the paper in this morning. The weather has moderated into the 80s, a lovely change! Fall is approaching. Our leaf fall has started early, brought on by the continuing draught.

After Morning Offering, I worked on editing the transcript of an interview I did in March of 2006 with Marcia McMahon. It is tedious work because the transcriber places a round diacritical mark in her work after each and every sentence which I have to delete. Also, Marcia has a talking style with many half-sentences, and I take the time to amend the text to create whole sentences, because it reads much more smoothly that way.

I did not finish this job, deciding that I’d had enough for one day, and ended my morning’s work catching up the e-mail, or halfway doing so! I seldom get truly caught up.

Barbara Brodsky had written with a suggested change in my part of the Aaron/Q’uo Dialogue on which she was working, and I wrote to OK that – it was a good change, making the sentence easier to understand.

Our web guy wrote to get some dates straight in our site’s Interviews section. I supplied the missing piece of information, which was that I have done not one but two interviews with Marcia over the course of the past year and a half.

Rick’s Maine Report finds him making lasagne. We had tried to make that dish for our Friday night Feast at the L/L Research 2007 Homecoming, but when Gary saw the recipe, he blanched and decided to cook something simpler. Maybe next year! I wrote Rick to let him know I LOVE lasagne and am drooling!

Steve F deserves to have the crystals that he loaned us for the Homecoming back, and since he is leaving town we both have talked of getting together for a farewell dinner. I wrote to ask him when we can deliver the crystals and dine together. I must say I will miss Steve’s gentle humor, depth of understanding and great kindness of spirit at our meditation meetings.

I wrote to thank Bob R for his thoughtfulness in letting us know he made it back to Toledo all right after our trip to Avalon the day after Homecoming. I was concerned because he did not set out on his drive until about 7:30 PM. And he was weary as well. And thirdly, he drives like a bat out of Hades. Halleluiah! He made it just fine.

Poor Gary! When he gets back to his admin helm this Friday, he will find at least a dozen requests from me. Today I wrote him to remind him that we have two newsletters to prepare. For the Light/Lines Newsletter, he needs to bring Jim’s hard-copy files of our channeling transcripts up to date so the Mick can pick one for the next issue. For the Gatherings Newsletter, Gary needs to insert Bob R’s Mackinac Island and Homecoming photos into my Camelot Journal entries so that people who read about these Gatherings can take a look and feel more as though they had been there.

Wynn Free, who has been reading Q’uo transcripts on BBS radio each week for the past two years, wrote to tell me that he is actually broadcasting someone reading those transcripts every day of the week now! It is good to know that people are enjoying these words.

Steve E, webmaster at the future www.bring4th.org, wrote to give me an update and also to ask my opinion on a couple of things. I shared my thoughts with him, and then asked him to consider working next on our on-line store.

Now that we have disconnected from Amazon and Baker and Taylor, both of whom insist on such deep discounts that it costs us money every time they sell a book of ours, we really need that on-line store! I do not know how these companies manage to coax all the book sellers into selling through them. I think the other sellers must triple or quadruple their retail prices, so that when Amazon, for instance, takes off 55% of the retail price, the book sellers still make money. We have always kept a more modest retail price, so 55% off our price means we lose money.

Jim made it home for lunch today. It was such a treat spending a bit of time with him at midday! He has lost a couple of customers lately because of their moving away, and he was delighted to share with me that these slots were immediately filled by neighbors of people whose lawns he now cuts, both right here in Anchorage, and both of them lawns he really likes aesthetically – it’s much more fun to cut a pretty lawn than an unimaginative one, even though the boring ones are much easier to mow, since there are fewer plantings around which to trim.

The afternoon was taken up with working on Chapter 8 of 101. I am coming along. The first part has jelled, the second part is jelling and the third is promising!

Jim and I had a lovely, long whirlpool and then an evening filled with Amy Goodman’s interview with Jimmy Carter and a block of Star Trek Enterprise. We offered the Gaia Meditation after supper, with me praying at the end, and snuggled with the cats until 11PM.

2007-09-09

It was a quiet Sabbath for Mick and me. I was still feeling below par by quite a bit and did not attend services today at St. Luke’s, so I had the whole morning free to do the Sunday puzzles and enjoy a long round of solitaire. Mick cleaned house, pursued closely by Dan D. Lion, who loves the frequent snuggles he gets by being close by and looking appealing. He has no fear of the vacuum cleaner’s noise at all. Chloe and Pickwick, on the other hand, are to be found under covers, little lumps of “stop that racket” during Mick's cleaning forays.

We sat down to lunch and the first of our most enjoyable trio of videos, “I think I Love My Wife”, starring, directed by, written and produced by Chris Rock. Rock is a funny man and an accurate observer, and I enjoyed the film, with the exception of noting that no man should be his own director. The voice-overs were “off”, being read too slowly. A second ear would have caught that. The best moment in the film was at the ending – a great place to have a best moment – when Rock and Gina Torres, who plays his wife, half-talk and half-lip-synch their way through a “Meatloaf”-like song about marital woes.

Pausing only to make some popcorn, we went into our second video of the day, a film titled “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer”. It was a fascinating, surreal story of a man who could identify the scent of anything and everything and who was so drawn to preserving the most beautiful thing in his world, women in their virginity, that he murders them in order to capture their scent. Naturally, it is an outrageous tale, taken literally, but it accesses a far deeper, mythical level of the pain of being human and evanescent in the world of permanent values. It was absolutely brilliant. Ben Whishaw was appropriately brooding, intense and inarticulate as the perfume maker-murderer. I Googled to see if it had won any awards, since I thought it surely must have, and sure enough, in Europe’s festivals it had garnered a total of nine.

We took a break then while Mick did some errands, getting set up for tomorrow’s work and buying me a new hotpad, as my old one has died. I did a bit of editing on the interview a year or so ago with Marcia McMahon which has now been transcribed.

Then we sat down with dinner and our final film, a beauty of a movie with the unlikely title of “Black Snake Moan”. I am very glad Mick was not put off by the name, for it was a jewel of a film, quirky, fine-honed and true. The sound track alone was worth the viewing. Samuel L. Jackson was excellent as a man troubled in his mind, a respectable church-goer yet full of anger, as were all the characters which inhabit this story. Christina Ricci, an actress whose work I have not seen before, was also excellent as a young woman driven half-mad by sexual abuse as a child and continually abused ever since.

Despite the seeming racial theme, it has nothing to do with race. Despite its seeming Southern theme, it has nothing to do with the Deep South. It is all about how people get off track in this life, in spite of their best intentions, because of the unresolved pain in their souls and the persistent and overpowering energy of past abuse. Particularly effective were two themes: the use of a ridiculously large chain by which Ricci’s character was restrained from becoming lost in delusion and violence, and an image of an old-style cigarette lighter with a fancy imprint of the American flag being flicked open and lit. The lighter had been lit just moments before Ricci’s worst memory of sexual abuse. These two images were brought together in the film’s quietly triumphant ending.

What a tasty day at the movies! We have seldom had such a lucky three finds, all in one day. And this is our first Sunday free from the L/L Research public meetings. Clearly our change was a total success for the Mick Man. The new Saturday night meeting schedule frees Mick up for one day of complete rest and relaxation upon which he can always count. Psychologically, this is just what he needs, working as hard as he does for Jim's Lawn Service.

My amorous swain then asked for a date, after we offered the Gaia Meditation, and so we ended the evening with a time of beauty of our own, offering our shimmering energy to the one Creator and having loads of fun in the process. This was followed by our kitty snuggle and a sweet good night at 11:30 PM.

2007-09-08

Still feeling very sluggish and somewhat faint, I napped in my chair after Morning Offering, listened to a video of Luciano Pavarotti which Rick had e-sent me and collected a couple of recipes before lunch.

Mick and I enjoyed lunch together and did our stretching exercises. Then he gave himself the gift of a Saturday afternoon watching football, instead of going out to tend to our yard and gardens, as he usually does. I sat with him for a while, reading, then came upstairs and worked on 101, Chapter 8, moving into the second section now and talking about what hinders communication.

Carmen came just as I was closing down for the day and asked to volunteer, but the next job on my list of tasks for Carmen needs me to be there too, and that was not a good idea today, so I encouraged her to browse our library and read, which she loves to do. She went out to the arbor and enjoyed the cooler afternoon – only 88 degrees F today – while reading.

Mick and I bathed and dined with Carmen and then set up for the first public meeting of this year. Romi arranged the microphones and did the things he should do on his computer to be sure our little chat room was up and running so people could take part in our session by tuning in. Oddly, we get most of our extended circle of seeking from overseas!

It was interesting that the group question today, asked by Carmen, covered the topic on which I am currently writing in the 101 book. I wish I had the transcript of it right this minute! It is so apropos.

Romi’s brother is in town this weekend and so he did not stay to make his Love Tea after the meditation. Carmen did the honors, and her love tastes good too! We enjoyed Romi’s shortbread and her tea and Carmen and I both read our books peacefully while the Mick man enjoyed the riches of ESPN during the football season. Football is his favorite sport, and he greatly enjoys following college ball. Not so much pro ball, until the play-offs. Both of our alma maters, U of LOU and U of NE, had good weeks. However the Michigan Wolverines, after their worst loss in 39 years last week to Appalachian State, lost again. I encouraged Mick to send a note of sympathy to one of his customers, Sean, whose alma mater is Michigan.

Carmen said good night at about 11, and Mick and I, both wakeful after the channeling, kept the TV on and patted kitties until about 12:30 AM.

2007-09-07

While the temperature continued to soar, after Morning Offering Mick set forth to mow his Friday people alone, Gary being in Peru. However it worked out perfectly for him. He had a good day, even finishing ahead of time. This was due to the draught. He touched up his lawns and made them look pretty, but almost no one needed a full mowing job today. So he ended up finishing the maintenance on his equipment and putting it all to bed for the weekend in plenty of time to do some errands and welcome our guests, Eric and his Mom.

One of the errands was to pick up the remainder of our copies of A Book of Days. We are all set now to offer them for sale. Mick and Eric got them all settled in our basement inventory shelving. They exactly fit in the space Mick had created for them. This book makes a great present, and I am tickled that we have them in good time to offer in our fall newsletter.

I spent the morning catching up e-mail. I tried to solve a persistent problem I have been having e-mailing Melissa. Sometimes her mail goes through just fine. Sometimes it hangs up. I hope I have solved the mystery by deleting one of her two entries in my Contacts software. I re-sent five e-mails to her that have been sent and kicked back over the last week or so. Nothing there is urgent, just FYI items.

I wrote to thank Doris for her extremely positive report on Jim’s work for her sister. She says her sister is ecstatic, and her grand-daughter likewise. Mick took down the overgrown shrubs keeping her from seeing into her next-door, best friend’s window!

I wrote to thank Lorena L for her “Who Am I” document – I asked all the Homecoming attendees to create one for me, reprising their closing talks there and Lorena is the second person to send me one.

I thanked Don N for sending us the right FTP protocol for sending items to BBS for broadcast and let him know that the intro and outro pieces had been sent successfully. We have our first L/L public meeting of the season tomorrow night and it’s good to know that all is ready.

I let MJA know that I last heard from Elihu on August 25th. She is concerned, as he is usually more in evidence. Here’s hoping he is just on vacation!

I sent a thank you note to Steve M, who is going to gift us with a CD, “Om Deeksha”. He offered it in thanks for the Homecoming, and all the work Gary and I put into the preparations for that. What a lovely gift! I cannot wait to hear it.

I sent Rick a Kentucky Report in response to his Maine Report. He just froze 4 gallons of beans after picking, cleaning, frenching and cutting them to bite-size. He also reports planting late crops of bib lettuce, peas and field greens, and starting to see his gourds mature now.

Bub Hill, who channels Joshiah, wrote to thank me for “lending” him my transcribers list so he could ask for help in transcribing his sessions. Bub is genuinely puzzled that people like his work. He says he’s not that spiritual, and the information is already out there from other sources, like our work at L/L. I encouraged him to continue, as each voice reaches its own people. Our web guy, Ian, has also set up a web site for Bub and Joshiah. Its e-address is http://www.joshiahgroup.com/

I thanked the Ryan’s Well Foundation for permission to tell Ryan’s story in 101, and promised that we’d correct grade 2 to grade 1 in the text.

And I wrote Dave G to let him know we were in receipt of his questions for Q’uo and ready to share his session this evening.

That got my e-mail down to manageable proportions. I shall probably answer the rest of the mail tomorrow morning.

I had a good lunch with Mick and then worked in the kitchen, as we do not have enough food for our guests tonight. I scrubbed up some potatoes for baking, got a dip ready for starters, sautéed some fresh zucchini with herbs and made a white sauce for the peas. We have plenty of barbequed chicken. Unfortunately, my body did not react well to the standing work and I had to spend most of the rest of my work time recovering, feeling very faint and ill. It occurred to me that this is one of the ways I get tempted away from my writing – feeling that I need to attend to other chores first. And yet how can it be wrong to put on a good feed for guests? It’s a puzzle.

So I did not get to my writing today. I did have enough energy to edit, however, and so finished another session in the sixth weekend of Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues. I got that off to Barbara so she can edit Aaron’s part of the dialogue.

Our guests arrived at 4:45, and we enjoyed visiting with them. Eric is Jim’s neighbor from when he lived the simple life in Marion County, Kentucky. It is so good to catch up with old friends! And Eric’s Mom is wonderful! She is 86 now, but sharp as a tack and full of fun. She watches C=Span, which I consider the act of a politically minded saint!

Mick and I snuck in a bath, and then we all had the feast we’d prepared. The visit ended a bit early because of the channeling sessions scheduled for Dave at 7:30. I tuned and we had a good session, I think. He was asking about his grand-daughter, who he feels is an Indigo Child. They confirmed that and went on to expatiate in what I hope are helpful ways to Dave.

Then Mick and I had a sweet tryst, sharing energy that we hope is an offering to the one Creator as well as buckets of fun for us! We opened our door to the kitties and ended the day snuggling with them. We turned out the lights at midnight.

2007-09-06

I awoke on this very hot day still feeling weary and full of sleep. I decided to take the day off and see if I could catch up a bit on physical strength. So after Morning Offering, I engaged in playing solitaire, reading and napping.

After a lunch and stretching exercises with Mick, I engaged in more solitaire, reading and napping.

And that is absolutely all I did today! I was good for nothing! Hopefully this not too arduous task of resting will add up to a peppier day tomorrow!

2007-09-05

With the thermometer hovering at 100 F, after Morning Offering Mick went forth to mow his lawns while I finally got finished with editing the interview I had on BBS Radio with Gina Jones. That was a toughie! There were little circles after every sentence which the spell checker did not remove, so they all had to be taken out by hand. I sent that off to Ian with a sigh of relief. It is good to see that little collection of transcripts of interviews grow. People may find help in those chatty, informal words where they might not in the more formal channeling and writing.

It was a treat to have Mick home for a late lunch! We did our stretching exercises for the first time since before Homecoming.

I did a bit of e-mail before turning to Chapter 8 of 101. I sent to Melissa some farming information which Lorena L. had sent me. I forwarded Romi the FTP information which Don N had sent me. That will be used to send our channeling sessions to BBS for broadcasting. I wrote Levenger, whose products I very much like, asking permission to return a wallet which is the wrong size to fit in my little purse/diaper bag. I forwarded to the March For Peace people a note which my UPI editor sent me about the directions which I had included in my article this week. Renee says there’s no “Arlington Metro Station”. There is an “Arlington Cemetery Metro Station”. As Ra said, “There will be confusion.”

I let our web guy know that we had received the first batch of “A Book of Days”. Also, I had to tell him I did not have any idea what Kelly’s contact info is. This is the fallout from Gary’s being gone on his great adventure in Peru all this week – I know nothing! Gary mans the L/L Inbox these days! And I wrote Teri Brown of the International UFO Congress, asking for the right address to which to send my new book. I hope to snag a speaking engagement at their next convention.

I spent the remainder of the afternoon getting a start on Chapter 8 of 101. I have not yet caught fire on that. Hopefully tomorrow will bring that sense of flow I always look for in creating.

After a most refreshing whirlpool with Mick, I started to get ready for choir practice, but then saw a note from Lisa, our Choirmistress, saying that we were going to rehearse in Harry’s hospital room, at his request, tonight. I am already having substantial discomfort from shoulder and neck problems and I could just see disaster looming if I tried to perch somewhere and hold my music. I always use a music stand at church and sing sitting down, which pampers the sore places.

So I stayed home tonight and instead wrote out the text for the Intro and Outro, to record later in the evening with Romi. Yesterday’s version went by the board when we changed the re-broadcasting date for our channeling sessions from the next day to the next Saturday. My text had been too specific and was now incorrect.

Romi arrived just before the Gaia Meditation, and shared that with us before we did the recording of the new BBS intro and outro. Romi reported that the FTP protocol which I forwarded to him earlier in the day worked fine. He sent the two short new texts to Don using this protocol. Now BBS has all they need to broadcast our sessions. We will send him our first session this Saturday night, which is the opening night of our channeling season. That runs from September through May each year.

We changed our meeting time from Sunday at 4 PM to Saturday at 8 PM, thereby reserving our Sundays for a real day off. We also changed our periodicity from channeling on first and third Sundays to channeling on second and fourth Saturdays. This is to accommodate having Homecoming take up the first weekend of each September. Now we will not have to have irregular sessions in September.

Mick, Ro and I conversed over tea before we all said farewell for the evening. I was glad to see my bed! I am still feeling extremely weary from the psychic and physical drain of the Homecoming. We snuggled with the kitties before saying good night at 11 PM.

2007-09-04

The punishing heat returned to Kentucky as the last attendees left Louisville and today was close to 100 F, which did not stop Mick from mowing a full day. He left after Morning Offering as I came upstairs to … take a nap. I intended to work, but sleep came and got me, sitting in my comfortable office chair, and I awoke only at lunch time, having lost a morning’s work.

In the afternoon I researched and then wrote a Difference Makers article for my UPI column, finishing just as Mick called bath time. This week I chose to write about peace marcher Ashley Casale and her small band of hikers. Their web site is www.marchforpeace.info, if you would like to check her out for yourself. And if you are not on the send list for my weekly articles, write contact@llresearch.org and Gary will add your name and e-address.

Mick and I had a whirlpool and then came upstairs, where my new bedroom air conditioner made it nice and cool for us as we had a date and then meditated together before bestirring ourselves and catching an episode of CSI Miami. We came downstairs for supper just as Romi arrived to do computer maintenance and to record an intro and an outro for the BBS channeling broadcast next weekend.

We caught a good take on the intro the second time and it took only one take on the outro to suit us. Then we called Don Newsom to finalize everything. He decided that, rather than broadcast our Saturday night meeting the next day, he would broadcast it the next Saturday, a week later. We decided that 6 PM and re-broadcasting at 6 AM the next day would be good – the 6 AM broadcast makes it possible for Europeans to hear the broadcast at a convenient time.

The title of the show will be “L/L Research: the Q’uo Communications”. Go to www.bbsradio.com to learn more.

We talked with Don until quite late, and finally rang off about 11 PM, so we said good night to Romi and came upstairs for a fairly short kitty snuggle, turning out the lights at 11:30 PM.

2007-09-03

The Monday after a weekend L/L Gathering held at home is usually taken up with that Gathering’s final needs, and this Homecoming was no exception.

I spent the morning, after Morning Offering, saying good bye to the guests we had hosted in our home, having final heart to heart conversations and cleaning around in the kitchen. It was humorous to me to note that the cabinets I had hoped to get cleaned out before the Homecoming, which held storage containers and paper products such as plates and cups, got cleaned out by me in the process of my putting things away. I ended up on the floor, refrigerating the sodas and beers that had gone unconsumed.

Bob R picked me up for a delicious lunch at Ruby Tuesday’s, where exists my favorite burger of all time, their prime burger. Then we went up to Avalon, where Bob gave Melissa a fish dinner he’d ordered take-out from RT’s and had a tour of the farm. Melissa is about two thirds finished with her chicken coop now! It is all framed up. Bob also pulled out some watermelon and blueberries that he’d kept in his cooler during the weekend for motel noshing as well as some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. Bob and Melissa had a feast! I was too stuffed from my burger to dine further and sank into a most pleasant doze on the breezy back porch of Sugar Shack. Bob went on a walking tour of Avalon, using Melissa's map. And Melissa wielded a chain saw, working on the chicken coop.

Arriving home around 7 PM, I bade farewell to Bob after he downloaded some photos of Avalon he had taken and made himself some sandwiches to take with him on his drive back to Ohio, where he lives.

Jim and I were suddenly alone in the house, after a very people-packed weekend. We enjoyed a small dinner and the Gaia Meditation and spent the evening watching a block of Star Trek Enterprise and snuggling with the cats. We said good night at 11 PM.

2007-09-02

The Homecoming rolled onward with its own excellent momentum. Mick and I made our Morning Offering together with a roomful of attendees. Melissa had arisen early and laid out breakfast for everyone, and the bustle and stir was lively, voices animated in conversations with new friends. It is very heartwarming to see the new connections being made and people moving deeply into honest communication. So many of the attendees at any L/L gathering say that this is the first time they have ever been able to talk unguardedly about their interests and thoughts.

We all strolled out to the Homecoming tent after Morning Offering and took up our study of the chakras. Before lunch we had discussed the blue and the indigo rays. We did not discuss violet ray, as it is not a ray with which one can work.

It was a quieter and broader discussion today. We moved through all the material laid out for reading, and discussion was spread evenly through the material. I love this year’s group for its great willingness to jump right in and speak. There were a few quiet people in the group of 30 or so, but they were not silent because they were shy, only because they were thinking.

After lunch, Mick and I repaired upstairs and took a nap together. What a balm that was. I fell asleep before I got the cover unfolded, which I found when I was awakened by Mick for the afternoon session. For two and a half hours we went back to the tent and talked around the circle, each person addressing the Homecoming 2007’s theme question, “Who Am I?” the beauty and profundity of the answers in the group was stunning and heart-opening in the extreme.

It was so remarkable! I have asked the participants to e-mail me an approximation of what they said. A few had responded to the question by sharing original songs and poems, and I asked them for a copy of their work. It will make an incredible UPI column and perhaps help a wider audience think deeply about this all-important, central spiritual question.

We got into our caravan of cars and sailed back to the Hometown Buffet for our last official communal meal. We had lost a few attendees who had early flights out, but still sat down at table with 22. We were fortunate today to hit a manager who let us all sit at one big table, over in the far corner where no one else was sitting, so it was more festive than yesterday’s supper. Affection and laughter fell like rain.

When I came back, Terry gave me a wonderful Reiki session while Mick built another campfire and started to put away the many parts of our kitchen which we had gotten out of drawers and cabinets so attendees could find things they needed at meal times. It was a lovely, peaceful Reiki session, smoothing out all the rough edges I didn’t know I had. Terry and Leonard, her husband, tell me they are thinking seriously of moving to the Louisville area so they can be a part of our local L/L family. What a grand addition they would make! Leonard was one of the people who offered an original song to answer the question of “Who Am I? It would be good to have another singer in the group!

I wandered out to the bonfire after the Reiki session, enjoying the guitar playing that Jeremy was doing and Tiffani’s occasional drumming. After a half hour or so, I started to doze, and knew it was time to let the evening go. I am such a kid sometimes! I don’t like to miss a party!

Mick and I came upstairs and snuggled with our kitties, who were frantic to be with us after two long days of not seeing us in the house much at all, and said good night around 11:30.