Blithely

We just finished playing the greatest gig ever.

About two years ago, this very nice fellow was in Atlanta for a conference on nuclear energy. He brought his wife and children down for a weekend that corresponded with the local Pagan Pride festival where Three Weird Sisters were playing. They loved our music and bought both of our cds.

Then several months ago we get contacted by this fellow. He and his wife's 25th wedding anniversary is coming up, and he really wants to surprise her by bringing us in to play for the party. "What would it take?" he asks. We tell him, "Gas, food, lodging, and our usual concert fee." Now, that usually makes most folks balk. Not this guy. We're hired, and he even gives us a hefty deposit.

So, this week weirdsister and kiltedwitch drive from Atlanta to Alabama, pick up quadrivium, and head for Indiana. We enjoy a couple of leisurely days at our house practicing, sharing good food, catching up on our lives. Then we hop in the car with all of our gear and drive ten hours to Rochester, NY. Arriving late last night, we rested up from the trip, and scoped out the party digs at a beautiful National Park called Powder Mill. Indoor facility, great sound provided by a wonderful group called Merry Mischief. (Great voices and musicians. He was the concert sound engineer for Harry Chapin on his final tour. Creds!)

It really was a total surprise to the wife, who thought that she was attending the graduation party for a friend's daughter. We traded off double sets with the other band, thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and left the gig with a lot of new friends.

Tomorrow we're heading home via Niagara Falls, which the others have never seen.

What...a....blast!

Kmac posted an update very early this morning. Gwen is back home resting in her own bed now.

"Her heart," wrote Michael, "has lost about half of its pumping efficiency (ejection fraction of 30% instead of 60% or so), and there's no telling at this point how much will come back, or how fast. But while we were waiting for the discharge papers at this hospital, she said that she felt better than she had for weeks before the heart attack. So we will take it a day at a time, and try to build her back to the very best that she can be. I'm quite sure that all the scary moments aren't behind us, and equally sure that this will mean changes that neither of us can see yet. But she's alive, and we're awfully glad to have her back home with us."

Gwen and Michael are ever so grateful for your love and concern and the generous outpouring of pink energy for healing her heart. It looks like a long road with lots of twists and curves that keeps the eye from seeing what's around the bend. I plan to keep a picture of Gwen on my altar for daily dose of the pink stuff.

Got another message from Kmac. Hespent 2 1/2 hours with Gwen this afternoon/evening. They were able to take a little walk around the floor together, and he read to her while she ate her dinner.

The doctors have her wearing a portable monitor and wouldn't let her leave the floor (there's no proper lounge in the cardiac stepdown unit, which is in the old tower at the hospital). Nevertheless, there's a good chance she'll be going home as early as tomorrow. She'll have a year of cardiac rehab, and her cardiologist told Kmac that it will probably be three months before the degree of permanent damage is known. One of the CICU staff told them that Gwen's heart attack had the same etiology as Tim Russert's, so we're all counting our blessings that she is still with us.

Keep visualizing that pink, pounding heart.

I got this message from Kmac today, so I'm passing the word along. Dear Gwen Zak suffered a moderately serious heart attack on Wednesday morning. She was rushed to the ER at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing where most of the clot was dissolved. A stent was placed to help with the rest. They've had some ups and downs over the past few days, but her condition is improving enough that she may be moved from the ICU to a step-down unit today.

Gwen's asking for loved ones to join her in visualizing a healthy pink heart. Send "pink energy" to a battery image of her on the etheric. All love and prayers to her and her family while they hang onto this sweet, wonderful woman.

Recover, Gwen. Do everything the doctors tell you. In the meantime, you're in my thoughts and prayers.

This has been one of the longest roads we've ever traveled, but at 10:45 our real estate agent called to tell us that the Morgan's accepted our counter offer. We close on the house July 7th, with our noses just inches above a very scary water line. And just in time, as our neighbors directly across the street announced that they are putting their house on the market this week at a price considerably lower than ours. Granted, theirs is smaller with no basement and far less yard, but still a very nice house.

So see Brenda and Bill doing the Happy Happy Joy Joy Dance -- me here in Danville, and Bill in Dallas. We'll celebrate on Friday when he gets home.

Thank you to all the folks who lit candles, uttered prayers, and sent good energy for house-selling mojo our direction. We so appreciate it.

bedlamhouse and I had just stepped off the plane in Orlando when we got a call from Trace (Marcon concom member) wanting to know if we'd heard anything down the Dorsai pipeline about a rumor that Bob Asprin had died. Mental slam.

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For a lark in March I submitted two poems in the Poetry Month contest sponsored by our local library. They called to see if I could attend the awards banquet for all of the people who contributed poems. Lo and behold -- one of my poems won the Adult Division. It was the original inspiration that later became the song "What My Granny Taught Me". I received a nice certificate, a check for $35, and I'm still smiling.

The Nature of Weeding

From the neighbor’s window my yard appears verdant.
Green in a garden is good, right?
Each day I stroll from the porch along the path up the drive.
Each night I return, first sensing then spotting the weeds –
thorns imitating roses, tares hiding near tendrils,
clover cloaked as ground cover.

Spring, summer, and fall spent bending, kneeling.

There’s a right and a wrong way to weeding.
Yank too hard, pull too soon in too-solid clay,
and you’ll feel, then hear, that…pop...when the root snaps.
Don’t cheer over what’s left in your hand – half the harm.
Know that all too soon you’ll be down on sore knees again
tugging at that very same snare.

As in all things, timing, timing, timing...

Enjoy the work. Take a rest. There’s no need to rush.
Dandelions missed this morning, will be removed later
when grown a tad taller, a scosh more conspicuous.
Chickweed occupies patches of turf, but only by your leave.
Grant no mercy, no leniency, no last minute Governor’s pardon.
Expulsion from the garden is immanent.

After all, this is your microcosm.

So pick a dewy morning after water has worked its will.
Push fingers through moist mulch.
Track the trail from stem to root; inch to the base of the corm.
Envelop the unsuspecting invader, then clench the cursed critter
and lift it into momentary daylight.
Toss the sorry remains into a yard waste tomb.

Shed no tears for future compost.

The same sense should apply to folks, to watch them for a while.
Are they flowers? Are they frauds?
Wrap your arms around them. Breathe in their subtle fragrance.
Stay close until intent, the foliage of the soul, reveals itself.
With patience petals and leaves unfurl exposing wastrels,
identifying true shape and shade.

I have such beautiful gardens.

Whenever I had a free moment I've been clearing land, sifting gravel, carting paving stones, creating paths and terraces, fertilizing, turning soil, weeding, seeding, transplanting, and transforming my gardens. That's plural -- gardens. I have three!

Some master gardeners came for a visit to help me split and move a massive number of enormous hostas to their new home in the shady garden of the far back yard. They helped me identify weeds from flowers, as I don't readily recognize them in Indianaland.

The west garden has been terraced for vegetables. At the time I started it, that was the only consistently sunny patch on the property, but the slope was going to make it hard to work, and the run-off would make watering a mess. 120 interlocking wall bricks and many sore muscles later and voila! I now have 9 rows of Kentucky Wonder bush beans, four rows of lima beans, six rows of sugar snap peas, two kinds of onions (green and regular), four mounds of crook neck squash, two rows of radishes and carrots, 12 tomato plants, four cherry tomato plants, three kinds of peppers from cold green to jalepeno in heat, a big rhubarb (that I can't harvest until next year), 32 strawberry plants, and assorted herbs.

I am going to be canning like a mad woman this summer -- and I can't wait!

At Beltane I handed over my portion of responsibility as Oak Spring's High Priestess to my successor, Lady Arsinoe merry Ma'at. It was a picture perfect evening, filled with friends and music and food and fun. The poor woman was immediately put through trials by fire, with one Initiate's emotional meltdown, the death of another's father, and the second physical break-in in three months at the covenstead. (Nothing was taken. Doors broken in, fridge left open, desk drawers jimmied. They didn't touch the altar, or the computers, or the locked cabinets, so our mojo is still working.)

During all three instances, my first impulse was to jump in and handle, handle, handle...it's been my mode for so long. It was very hard to hold myself back and let the new HPS do her job, but I did refrain -- and she proved herself to be the capable, intelligent, compassionate leader we knew she would be. There's no need for me (or anyone else) to fret on that account.

I'm grateful for the experiences I received these past years. I'm equally grateful to have followed the lessons of my Elders and the Old Laws, and followed my bliss in setting it aside when I did. This was a good move for everyone.

I know... I've been out of touch. I've spent two separate weeks in Atlanta, staying with my daughter in Dallas, GA and driving 66 miles round trip each day to do yard work and paint three rooms of the house in Marietta. (Yes, it's STILL on the market.) There's a song in the making detailing how, in an astounding feat of comedic buffoonery, I spilled a half gallon of paint on the new carpet not once, but twice!

I also tried to combine tasks during these trips, and so I drove the distance with my entire music kit to complete my parts of the next Three Weird Sisters CD, Third Thyme's a Charm. Those days log another 60+ miles to Lawrenceville for record sessions with Greg Robert. I've really missed recording, and we got quite a lot accomplished. At least one, maybe two, more sessions for me.

My current favorite music is the opening tune for the HBO mini-series John Adams. Unfortunately, the website uses only a smattering of the soundtrack, so you can only hear it if you actually tune in on Sunday nights to watch the show -- which I heartily recommend. I've been reading the book by David McCullough while watching the series, and they've done a brilliant job translating it from print to film. HBO is running a marathon with all four of the previous episodes some time this week -- a definite recording event.

Thanks to loads of good advice from Maya Bohnhoff, I've landed my first major freelancing job ghostwriting a "Tell All". I don't think that it would be ethical for me to divulge the details, but it's going to be a juicy tale filled with haute cuisine, sex, the misappropriation of funds from a major Catholic parish, and lavish lifestyles in totally inappropriate settings. I'm stoked!

Now I just have to pull it off.

Wish me luck...

My last paycheck from Mythic Imagination Institute was my last paycheck. The company can no longer afford to keep me on as a full-time employee. I have only good memories and great friendships there ... no hard feelings, and I'm going to continue working their website and publishing the Mythic Passages e-magazine as a volunteer. In the meantime, though, the house in Atlanta still hasn't sold and I must find another job here in Indiana. I've been putting out applications, and was in the second-stage interview process to be the next editor of Creative Knitting magazine, but they ended up choosing someone else. So...

I'm venturing into the exciting world of freelance writing/editing. My experiences over the last 25 years have left me with a wide variety of skills that I can apply to any number of areas. I've written and edited articles, essays, reviews, presentation packages, brochures, catalogs, web content, resumes, sales letter, plays, radio plays, skits, instructions, scripts, speeches, PowerPoint presentations, newsletters, query letters, editorials, press releases, media kits, travel logs, production books, poems, short stories, novels, lyrics, jokes, greeting cards, blogs, flyers, signage, menus, children's stories, bios...

I've written a lot. I love writing. I've gotten spoiled working from home. Now, thanks to some excellent advice from Maya Bohnhoff, I'm out there pitching and promoting my writing skills, hoping that I can turn them into a full-time career as a freelance writer/editor. (I don't know if I have it in me to be a ghost writer. I have no problem writing for other people, but my brain go "boing" at the idea of someone else putting their name on my words and pretending to have written them.)

I've already received two good responses from the nearly 20 job postings to which I've responded in the last couple of days. So keep your fingers crossed for me.