2008-10-21

Having overslept badly, I spent my time after Morning Offering writing my journals and taking some chapel time. I fell asleep over that task and awoke near lunchtime. Let’s hear it for goofy senior citizens!

I rallied and took off into the glorious, cool autumn sunshine with Melissa for some wardrobe-hunting. We went to Margaret’s Consignment, where I happily found a crystal-pleated black skirt, floor length, for tomorrow’s Glenview Trust bash at Vincenzo’s Restaurant, as well as a purple suede jacket. Add a lavender sweater and a purple turtleneck and you have a very successful hunting foray.

Back at Camelot, Gary and I conferred over the upcoming 2009 L/L Research Operating Funds Drive. He departed to get our e-mail and snail-mail mailing lists ready and I spent the rest of the afternoon creating a request letter. We did not get out a request letter last year, to our detriment, and we fell short in gaining operating funds for this year. And in late summer of this year we hit the wall and had to appeal for funds to carry us through.

People such as Terry H of Taipei and Bill H of California went all out to help us and we pulled through. With two Gatherings this fall, the Homecoming and the upcoming Channeling Intensive, with special donations to help with our printing of 101 and with our royalty check for the last six months coming in, we are limping through to Christmas. Hopefully our letter will create a balanced budget for 2009!

I had a good time detailing the many things we do with our donations. Nothing is spent for advertising or management. The bulk of our funds is spent on the fees for Melissa, our Avalon caretaker, who is performing miracles on Avalon Farm, Gary, our incredible admin, and Pam, our bookkeeper. They all receive far less than they could get elsewhere for the same work, and they all do a fantastic job with much love.

I, freed from having to perform Gary’s and Pam’s work this year, have brought two manuscripts to the last stages before publishing, with The Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues at Hampton Roads being considered, and 101 just waiting for blurbs for the back cover before going to blitzprint for self-publishing. I’ve been able to travel and speechify at the International UFO Congress and have enjoyed getting back to writing weekly UPI articles.

Gary has produced three Gatherings this year, and will soon have number four under his belt. He answers an amazing volume of e-mail and helps me out in a thousand ways that keep me productive. His kind and humor-filled voice on the phone and over e-mail is a wonderful one to represent us to the world and he does an incredible job.

Melissa’s work was exciting to discuss, as she has single-handedly reworked our very steeply hilly, winding, falling-off-the-edge-of-a-ravine half-mile-plus of access road at Avalon, using the box blade on the tractor, a pick-ax and a metal rake to put in water bars, beef up the eroding ravine-edge roadside and take down the crown of the access road all the way down.

I also mentioned her mushroom farming and the complete repainting of the interior and the roof of Sugar Shack, the tumble-down cabin in which she manages to live well on Avalon. Her works in progress I could not find space to mention, since I wanted to keep the begging letter at one page. But she has put in huge numbers of hours on selective tree clearing, following our Kentucky Forestry and U. S. Forestry agents’ advice for helping the farm’s good trees to thrive. She works incredibly hard and earns less money than I earned per month in 1966!

I love and respect our team so much! And that includes our wonderful volunteers. We have generous transcribers, skilled web-masters and people such as Romi, who keeps our computers going, and Michele M, who just created a wonderful book cover for 101, who get absolutely nothing for their labors of love. We are beyond fortunate. But we do need the funds to continue. I ended the letter by saying, if you like what we do, then please help!

We’ll have a page two which will consist of a breakdown of our income and outgo for 2007 and 2008. I want our donors to see that we are serious about using their funds wisely.

Here’s hoping that our letter will be effective.

Mel was busy after we got back from shopping, cooking sweet tea breads, two loaves of banana bread and two loaves of mango bread. The house smelled wonderful all afternoon!

Romi came over for a visit at dinnertime and enjoyed the feast Gary had created as we watched episodes of the TV show House, one new show and two older episodes. At 9:00 we sat for the Gaia Meditation, with Melissa offering the closing prayer.