2008-10-29

The day before Channeling Intensive 3 dawned chilly and fair. After Morning Offering Mick set out on his gardening rounds. I had had a sick and sleepless night, perhaps having taken ill with the 48-hour stomach flu that is going around. I certainly had the symptoms.

Mick ordered me to rest for the day, an order I was only too happy to obey. I did do a tad of e-mail, working with Michele further on 101’s cover art, answering a question from Terry H concerning TLOO Book V and letting my choirmistress know that I would miss choir practice tonight. Other than that I contented myself with reading, collecting a couple of recipes from the newspaper – Wednesday is food-section day at the Louisville Courier-Journal – and napping. I held my own all day and feel a bit better as I go to bed.

Tom C was abuzz with yard work, going all over our little acre with the blower and bringing our current crop of leaves into rows for Mick to mow when he got home. It was lovely to see Camelot's gardens starting to shine again. He alternated that job with folding, not origami but the typical tri-fold, hundreds of our fundraiser letters.

Meanwhile Melissa held forth in the kitchen, preparing two desserts and two snacks for the attendees. The house smelled wonderfully with the mingling aromas of Benedictine, Apple Brown Betty, Neiman Marcus cookies and a Worcestershire Cheese Ball.

Then she climbed a ladder and hid the cookies! Mick is renowned for doing away with any number of those cookies. It is a fun recipe, the flour fortified by ground oats and the sweetness of the chocolate chips enhanced by grated dark chocolate.

Gary took a trip to Bernheim Forest to get his batteries charged and then plunged into cleaning mode and soaked and washed all of the upholstery covers from our couch and love seat which Dan D. had so thoroughly anointed before we changed his address to the outdoors. Gary did an equally thorough job of rehabilitation. Now the furniture smells sweet and is clean again!

We came together at eventide to enjoy a good dinner and an especially interesting hour with Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert. The political season is peaking and so is their humor!

Amy Goodman, too, had a fascinating show, focusing on the disastrously malfunctioning electronic voting machines that, in many states, are now used. These machines were key in flipping the vote, quite illegally, in the 2000 and 2004 elections.

They showed video of how, even when poll workers were fiddling and “fixing” the machines, a vote for Obama would flip repeatedly to a vote for McCain. The burden of the complaint was, why wasn’t the Democratic party staging a McCain Mutiny and demanding that paper ballots be used? I think it’s a dandy question!

Mel had to leave shortly before the Gaia Meditation to see to her chicks and kitty cats. I was sorry to see her go! She is such a huge help! But Avalon was calling her.

Gary had gotten another reading from Leigh Ann L, a very gifted medium here in town, and after the Gaia Meditation, at which I offered the closing prayer, we conversed about his questions to her, and her responses until Mick and I said good-night and left Tom and Gary to their continuing conversation.