2007-12-31

We began New Year’s Eve day by sleeping late and celebrating Morning Offering at a leisurely pace. Then Mick went on a morning-long tour of delivering a mower to be repaired, a trailer to be repaired and a vacuum cleaner to be repaired. After lunch, he spent his afternoon thoroughly scouring his 5’-cut riding mower, Thetis, using a strong grime remover to take off the accumulated grass stains of the whole season from her wheel wells and other smaller parts; detail work that does not get done in the press of the mowing season. By dusk, she was looking sparkling clean, bright orange and ready to go next spring.

Meanwhile I poured my whole day’s work into attempting to corral my e-mail Inbox. I wrote a total of 32 letters, answering everything from Ian, Gary and Steve E and catching up with a lot of friends. Some of the issues involved were:

• The B4 web site. We are working towards launching it.

• The proposed book made up of a compilation of the first 25 years of Light/Lines Newsletters. I wrote Hana asking her if she would like to tackle the cover art. I wrote Ian concerning the format and I asked Romi whether he would prefer I write the Introduction to that compilation first, or get Dana Redfield’s “Alphabet Mosaics” manuscript in shape to send to the printers first. It’s his call, as I promised him that I would work on the AM’s after finishing the A/Q Dialogues editing.

• The A/Q work – I wrote Barbara letting her know that I planned on laying the rest of the work, the Introduction and so forth, aside while Judy R. takes the time to read through the finished, edited manuscript of all the A/Q sessions. Ba immediately wrote back to let me know that this worked well for her, as she was headed to South America and John of God soon. I wished her well with her continued healing.

• The issue of links – we plan to move all links from our archive site to B4 as soon as it is launched. I asked Ian to create a suggested first draft of a links policy, since he has been dealing with links and quotations requests for 15 years on www.llresearch.org.

• Our price list – I am not sure if we have finalized all our prices for the secure-site, on-line store, and wrote Gary requesting an update on our status there. We want all in order for when Steve is ready to launch B4.

• L/L Research’s prisoner newsletter – Loren L is planning to start a prisoner newsletter, an outgrowth of her volunteer work of corresponding with the prisoners who write in to L/L Research. I suggested a possible title for the newsletter and thanked Lorena for her beautiful ministry.

• The UFO Congress – I assured Nicole B-I that all my paperwork was on its way and that 8:30 in the morning on February 28th was OK for my speech. Naturally, I lied, as I would prefer to speak later in the day, but I am glad to speak there at all, so it was only a white lie.

I wrote personal notes to
• Pupak, who is off to India

• Vara, who just got married to her soldier, Sean

• Melissa, who is collecting information on raising llamas and alpacas

• Denise and Bill H, who had sent me a lovely e-card

• Elihu E, thanking him for Christmas cartoons and a fascinating couple of articles by Sam Smith (The Progressive Review: www.prorev.com) and also for his recommendation that I add the Daily Ray of Hope (subscribe at http://sierra.convio.net/site/PageServer?pagename=Signup_DailyRayOfHope&JServSessionIdr012=kji3bmlzn2.app23a) to my daily e-worship. I looked it over and it really is a lovely offering by the Sierra Club. They give you a beautiful photo and a very short thought by someone whose words are worth reading. I signed up.

• Rick, commiserating with him regarding the loss of good sacred Christmas programming on television

• Lisa, my Choirmistress at St. Luke’s catching her up on my situation

• Janet M, who was part of the Mackinac Island gathering

• Marcia M, assuring her that she was now on the send list for our newsletters

• Linda P-S, letting her know when my speech would be at Laughlin

• Terry H, thanking him for translating my biography of Don Elkins into Chinese and congratulating him on a beautiful presentation

• Wynn F, thanking him for a link to a band which calls itself “Social Memory Complex” (http://www.myspace.com/socialmemorycomplex) – gotta be a connection there!

• My brothers, Tommy and Jim, offering New Years’ Greetings and apologizing for being out when they called on Christmas day

I also asked Gary to send me a hard copy of our corrected Christmas Card List so I can have that with me on trips to Nebraska, when I may want an address fast.

After Mick called bath time, I checked to see how I was doing with the Inbox and found that I had responded to a little over half my e-mail. So tomorrow I will see if I can get completely caught up. Of course, people have already started writing back, which screws things up!! Ah well, e-mail is like housework: never done.

Mick and I enjoyed a bath together and then a romantic tryst, coming downstairs around 8:00 p.m. to welcome Melissa, who had come down from Avalon for New Year’s Eve. We enjoyed dinner together and the victorious U.K. bowl game. It was fun to see the Wildcats cream Florida State! Then we took in a particularly interesting CSI and ended our festivities with a marathon Trivial Pursuit game which lasted until 2 in the morning! We know how to ring in the New Year!

It was good to see Dick Clark at Times Square for the televised dropping of the ball at midnight. His speech is halting, but his spirit is still that of the perpetual teenager and I am very happy to see that the television suits have kept him on as part of things. So often, the media try to keep us from seeing anyone who is old and disabled, drowning us in youth and glamour as if that were all that there was. Three cheers for them and for Dick Clark, who entertained my teenage years with his “American Bandstand” and courageously sought out black performers for his show in an era when segregation was the norm. God bless the man! He is good, good people and I love him dearly.