Dog Days, Button Making and The Garden

My daughter's Tibetan terrier Samo has been visiting

For the past 15 years, I haven't had any pets, so when little Samo came to visit me for a month, it was a big adjustment. She is an endearing, playful and dear little gal, but I find that having to care for a puppy has cramped my style, in terms of my usual self-care, spiritual and recreational activities. I have been to the Y only once rather than my usual several times a week. Swimming at the hotsprings has suffered a similar fate. It's been hard to go to spiritual practices at Tashi Choling, the Tibetan Buddhist center I belong to. Going to the movies or a dance class likewise. In fact, though I am fond of Samo and like animals in general, I will be so glad when on July 19th she ends her visit chez moi. Then there will be no more chewed egg cartons and toys strewn on the floor and much less cleaning both of my house and her own silky easily matted hair, which takes constant grooming. A puppy resembles a toddler in many ways. She needs a lot of care and attention. You cannot leave her for long at her own devices. In fact, being with Samo reminds me of those years when I had little kids and knew that very little of my time was my own. I have grown accustomed to more freedom. I am not a woman who longs for a pet.

Instead, I seem to be a woman who wants to make positive aging buttons, which I was able to do the other day, thanks to my old friend Carolyn Myers, the conveyor of a small, heavy and somewhat greasy button-making machine that her theater colleague Terry Baum acquired last year when she was running for mayor of San Francisco on the Green Party ticket. In that campaign, wonderful buttons were created that said "TAX THE RICH. DUH."

Carolyn knows the peculiar ways of the button making machine and she did most of the work while I cut out the rounds that bear the messages AUDACIOUS AGING, for a playful and festive little button with some fireworks in the background and BOLD, a button Carolyn declares "brilliant."

I will be interested to see people's reactions to both of these buttons, which we'll be using as donor perks in our upcoming IndieGoGo fundraising campaign. I like them both.

 While we were having a button-making party, we revisited the popular topic "What would you do if you suddenly came into a lot of money?" What constituted a lot of money was not defined but it certainly included not having to work at a job just to bring in the bacon. Beyond that arose great fields of potentiality.

One could be generous, we mused as we made the buttons, one could be very generous. Both Carolyn and I would make great philanthropists. We appreciate generosity. We like being generous, and we are generous each in our own way.  

What would you do if you suddenly received a lot of money? At least half a million, let's say for a modest starter. How about a million? It is a great exercise in expanding one's view to contemplate receiving a big windfall. 

  Would your life change a lot? Would you use the money to fulfill some dreams that you've been holding back on? Travel? Helping family members? Would you start a school? Buy land?

I can't say for sure what I would do. I think of helping my children, friends, the Tibetan Buddhist center I love. I think of land and travel and community, of fulfilling more of the vision  of Sage's Play.

I am going to have an opportunity to engage in this business of receiving money soon, because of our fundraising campaign on IndieGoGo. I have been reading about people who've raised a lot of money that way. It's really fun to know that people are achieving their artistic and social change dreams and raising money for medical care through IndieGoGo and Kickstarter. In fact, it's completely inspiring to realize that thousands and thousands of people, most of them complete strangers, are supporting each other's lives and work in this way.

The IndieGogo campaign is an exciting way to reach out to many more people with the story of positive aging and our musical revue A New Wrinkle. 

Being bold is something to live into at any age. To me being bold is taking risks, doing new things even if they are somewhat scary. Being bold is also having the courage to be very still and relax into what-is, letting go of everything and resting like a mote of light in the sky.

The magnet I made awhile ago is up on my refrigerator reminding me of the real alchemical work of aging, a time of summing up, harvesting life's meaning, sharing one's gifts with others, and practising the art of letting go. 

Youth is a gift of Nature but Age is a work of Art.

Audacious aging--pull out the stops!

 Meanwhile, it's the height of summer and the flowers in the front garden are profusely blooming, changing each day in their display. These love-in-a-mist are sharing their beauty in delicate constellations.

All the yards of compost I dug into the soil has had results. Roses, daisies, lavender, feverfew, daylilies--this is the most wonderful garden I've had in my life. It's vibrant, old-fashioned and filled with lovely surprises. Bees and butterflies move from one plant to another. The big old lavender plant is vibrating with bees right now.

An artichoke I planted just this year already presented 5 beautiful artichokes--what a surprise gift-- and in the back garden, there are knobby reddish kohlrabi which look like little spaceships, beautiful big squash leaves with squash hidden underneath, immense comfrey leaves mixed with the tomatoes, arugula, kale, yarrow, rosemary and other plants, some of which have been here for many years.

The other day I was reading the newsletter of HelpAge, an international organization that works with older people in many countries and cultures. The problems of age prejudice, isolation and diminishment that many older people face in our culture are faced by older people in developing countries, who must also deal with even more physical hardship, neglect and poverty than we have here. 

We are fortunate to have the opportunity, comfort and leisure to meet aging as a rite of passage and a gateway into deeper self-understanding. The more of us that recognize the power of aging and live into our full potential, engaging meaning and purpose, the more influence we will exert to create positive change in ourselves and the world. This is the cultivation of the garden of the soul.

A Visit to My Bookmark Library

I have a large aging bookmark library and I thought it might be fun to share some of those bookmarks with you. I often bookmark articles I find interesting, like this one from Time Magazine on the powers of the aging brain.

That's a subject I find fascinating. There's plenty of reasons why every older person should know more about it, too. Current research sheds light on the positive integrative capacity of the mature mind. Why obsess about senior moments? Instead, engage in the deeper qualities of the mature mind.

I often refer to this link to poetry about aging from The Academy of American Poets. I love poetry and it's interesting to see whose work and what poems are included here. Not all the poems listed have hot links, but if you've the inclination, you can find them online elsewhere. Forgetfulness by Billy Collins and Touch Me by Stanley Kunitz are two that I am very fond of.

I have bookmarks for positive articles about older people, like this one from the Seattle Times about 91-year old  Eileen Allen, who wrote a book titled I Like Being Old: A Guide to Making the Most of Aging. I have not read the book yet. Have any of you?

Since life review is one of the tasks of aging, I have some links that relate to that. This one from Psychology Today is about the healthy qualities of nostalgia. Nostalgia often gets a bad rap. Not in my book. I take pleasure in returning to beautiful experiences I've had in my life. And this article points out why nostalgia can be a tool for wellness.

Here's a link to some of the photographs of Dr. Jeffrey Levine, a geriatrician whose interest in aging has led him to photograph older adults.

This link will connect you to a documentary Over 90 and Loving It.  

All of these links provide positive news, fresh perspectives and pro-aging support. There's a whole lot more in my bookmark library on aging, but that is enough for now, most likely.  Enjoy!

Here at Casa de las Flores, I've been recovering from a badly sprained ankle. Several weeks ago, I fell. It was a surprising fall and something that seemed as if it should not have happened. It occured when I stood up from sitting in a chair in my living room. One of my feet had fallen asleep very soundly and would not hold my weight. Down I went.

I crawled around, used crutches and rested for the first day. Since then, it has been a gradual process of healing, homeopathic treatment, gentle massage and rest. I have been a very healthy person all my life, and the several falls I've had in the past 5 years have occasioned a fair amount of contemplation about vulnerability and limitation. We don't like being vulnerable, but there is a great deal of instruction in it, as far as I am concerned.

I will write more about vulnerability and its uses at some other time. Since that fall, I have gotten into the habit of checking in with my feel before getting out of bed or out of a chair, to make sure we are having a connected conversation. The body is a strange and wonderful thing, isn't it?

I am in the process of developing some workshop and course formats for creative and conscious aging. I will present an introduction to one of these, titled "Playfulness, Pleasure and the Art of Aging" at the Sage-ing Guild conference to be held in North Carolina in October.

I really enjoy working with folks in the workshop and class setting. Right now, though, I have to develop the outline for what we will do together in these gatherings.

In the you never know what will happen next in life department, an old friend from The Gentle Brothers and Sisters, a ministry of healers I have been part of for a very long time, just invited me to be her guest on a Mayan cruise in December. What a surprise! And how moving to  be the recipient of her generosity in this way.

I have wanted to see the Mayan ruins for years! And what a beautiful gift she is giving me. I look forward to spending this very special time at the end of the Mayan calendar with her at the Mayan ruins.

We had a day of rain here yesterday, and it is still cloudy. My nearby neighbor is having a neighborhood potluck this evening. I hope the weather stays clear for that. My fantasy about getting older used to be removing myself from the world to a teepee in the woods and really getting into being a rather unconventional old woman. I am very attracted to living in nature that way. And perhaps I shall have the chance to do that, or to go on a journey in a gypsy wagon. Or perhaps not.

I am not living in a teepee, long hair wild or in dreadlocks. Now I have to laugh at this notion.  How would I cook? What kind of heating would I use? What about bathing and the toilet? I've lived in schoolbuses, yurts and cabins but now I am living in a charming somewhat rustic house on a beautiful block of old houses in a small Oregon town called Phoenix.  I am surrounded by really nice neighbors. I have a gorgeous garden full of roses, daisies, herbs, lilies and many other flowers in the front yard, and a fine collection of greens growing in the back yard gardens. I am content with this style of living for now, and with my engagement in the art of aging. Not self-satisfied, but content. And being content is a good thing. I can't claim to be content all the time. There are hours and days when I am filled with what Isadora Duncan called a "divine unrest." Which has its own delights.

Some Talk about My Walkabout with Aging

Walking and dreaming in the dark,
trusting, feeling my way around

I am inspired thanks to Betsy Lewis' new venture The Walkabout Woman Project (on Facebook) to view my journey of the past 15 years as a walkabout. 

Walkabouts mean different things to different folks. A walkabout could mean a trip through the bush/wilderness, something with the feel of a a rite of passage, undertaken in order to explore new territory both outer and inner. 

Some people look at a walkabout as a walk with no particular goal, something that brightens one's perceptions with its freshness and openness. Even an informal stroll by a public figure or royal family to display themselves to all and sundry is sometimes called a walkabout. 

I have not yet done a walkabout in the wilderness. That remains to be done. This walkabout I've been on has often taken place in the territory of my imagination, then spilled out into the outer world.  I have to say that in my experience the territory of the imagination and the unconscious is quite a potent, mysterious, and unpredictable wilderness, sometimes bestowing richly illuminated insights, sometimes terrifying in its weather and the conditions of its revelations. 

I began doing this walkabout with aging because I wanted to make sense of the events, patterns and meetings of my life. I have been writing about this for years. In the process, I realized I was doing what gerontologists call life review. This life review is a walkabout on its own. I highly recommend it as a tool for deeper self-understanding and integration. An article I wrote about life review and one essay titled The Fruits of Life Ripens are available as pdfs at the Sage's Play website for any of you who wants to read more.

A few years after I began the journey of life review, I started working for Medifecta Healthcare Training, a company that develops and markets training materials for caregivers of elders, both family and professional. I still work part-time for them developing scripts and other written materials. This work exposed me to the field of aging. I became fascinated with the topics and issues, the thought leaders, the perspectives and assumptions that fueled those views. 

I began to do a lot of reading and independent research. I realized that my view of aging as a powerful time of life was a rather minority view. Media and the popular imagination often frame aging as a dispirited time of decline and loss --or at the other extreme, as a time when one must continue hyperactively imitating youth in order to pass for young. 

For years, my walkabout was rather solitary. During those years, I continued to develop my thinking about the importance of aging as a stage of human development and to look at the importance of spirituality and creativity in the later years. Several years ago, I decided to start a venture called Sage's Play as a vehicle for programs that focus on creative and conscious aging. 

Deepak Chopra talks about breaking free of the hypnosis of social conditioning in an essay he wrote in Audacious Aging, one of my favorite anthologies. That book contains 33 essays about aging that will knock your socks off, turn on the AHA! lights and give you inspiration to fulfill Auntie Mame's injunction to "Live, live, live!" Remember Auntie Mame? She was a dramatic example of an adventurous older woman.

For me breaking free of the hypnosis of social conditioning is an ongoing commitment. 

Playfulness, wordless, spontaneous
swimming in the waters of the
unconscious

As an artist and as an older woman,  I value freedom.
And playfulness. To me, playfulness is something
many of us could have a lot more of. Don't you agree?

I am in the process of developing a workshop format
that will give free rein to playfulness. I am excited about that because I like to play, and I really enjoy playing with others, too. I am calling it "Playfulness, Pleasure and the Art of Aging."


My walkabout led me to sign up for a big vision. I decided I wanted to write a musical revue to catalyze a new paradigm on aging. That was over 3 years ago. I began to write songs, or should I say they poured out of me as if they had been standing around waiting for the chance to be expressed.

I decided to name the revue A New Wrinkle. One day I thought to myself, "I need a composer!" Following an intuitive hunch, I called artist Gaelyn Larrick (whom I did not know well at all) and asked her who she could recommend to write the music for the 12 songs in the revue. At first Gaelyn hesitated, but then she said, "Well the only person I know who could do that is Laura Rich."

And so the magic of my collaboration with Laura began-- because there is plenty of magic in the universe, if we open up to it. Laura has created a wonderful score for A New Wrinkle. Not only that, but she is a delightful person and friend.  All the song lyrics and mp3s of 4 of the songs are available at our website.

Okay, so I have no idea what the universe has in store for A New Wrinkle and its own walkabout out in the world, but I do know what great learning curves, new friendships and collaborations, dark nights of the soul, and exhilarating creative experiences I've had on the journey to birth A New Wrinkle. 

Right now, we are launching a fundraising campaign to raise $15,000 to produce a staged run and film of A New Wrinkle. I just finished creating a 6 minute video to use as an introduction for the campaign, which will be launched on IndieGoGo in a few weeks. 

Some days, I get motivation when I read the messages on this lovely poster below, which is the manifesto from coach Laurie Foley's Courage Studio. It takes courage to create and share art.

Left brain details, structure, organization, planning
leading to creative expression and growth

I never dreamed where my walkabout in the fields and forests of my own aging and my commitment to shift our society's views of aging would take me or the challenges it would present.

And this is a walkabout that is not completed yet. Its mysterious surprises continue to unfold.

Here's a beautiful way of looking at the walk, from the Navajo Blessing Way Prayer.

"In old age
wandering on a trail of beauty
lively
may I walk."

May it be so. To all Walkabout Women and men too, love and support on your journey.

P.S. My essay "Aging as a Profoundly Creative Act" is featured at The Wayfinder Post!

Gray Haired Ladies AND A New Wrinkle Update

Ashland, Oregon boasts a great many beautiful women with silver gray hair. A local band NAKED IN PUBLIC posted Gray Haired Lady, a playful song about them on YouTube.

Actress Jamie Lee Curtis

According to some of their PR, "NAKED IN PUBLIC is the brainchild of bassist/vocalist/songwriter Doug Fergus, whose passionate hobby is heating and air conditioning." Okay Doug!


Take a look and listen. The song is a lot of fun. I have seen many of these gorgeous women around town, and always admire their hair, confidence and beauty. What a neat tribute to older women who choose not to dye their hair.






And photographer Vicki Topaz has created a beautiful gallery of photos of older women titled SILVER: A STATE OF MIND. It's well worth it to take a look at her beautiful images.  It is on exhibit now at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California.

Model Cindy Scarf

The majority of older women do dye their hair. According to Anne Kreamer, 51, author of “Going Gray: What I Learned About Beauty, Sex, Work, Motherhood, Authenticity and Everything Else That Really Matters,” statistics show that 65 percent of women over the age 40 color their hair. Many women feel that they need to color their hair to maintain their status in the workplace and compete with their younger colleagues. Some feel that in order to be hired for a job or be promoted, they cannot have gray hair.

Last year, I posted a link to Dominique Browning's article for the New York Times on older women with long silver hair. The article elicited an enormous amount of reader responses--1,253 to be exact! I enjoy Browning's writing and observations, and if you have a few moments, you will enjoy reading what she has to say on the subject.

A NEW WRINKLE UPDATE

We re-filmed the video for our upcoming IndieGoGo fundraising campaign, which we hope to launch in a few weeks.

We still have to put together some fun pro-aging donor perks. Our fundraising goal is $15,000 which will allow us to produce a staged run and film of A New Wrinkle, our paradigm-shifting musical revue on aging.

Enjoy this beautiful holiday weekend! I plan to go see the Marigold Hotel movie, and expect to enjoy it! Bring on more pro aging flicks that deflate stereotypes!

It takes longer to develop things than it does to imagine them

Of course it takes longer. What kind of dumkoff is she? She is the kind who even at 71 years wishes that creative projects Would happen more quickly and easily.

(In fact, I will leave this blog layout just as it decided to configure itself despite my most valiant efforts-- because this crazy mess will give you a taste of what I mean. Is this new Blogger program wacky or what? Maybe it's just the Universe trying to teach me some new lesson. Grrr... Do you ever feel this way? )


Often things take a long time. People shake their heads empathetically and say, "Yes things always take longer than you think they will." And of course it is the journey, not the goal they remind you. A saying that trips off the lips so nicely. "Just keep at it and enjoy the journey," my dear friend Frannie advised me the other day. I like enjoying the journey. Just that the glitches sometimes get in my way. She not only gave that good advice, but being a nurse, she surmised that part of my headache/muscle ache/fatigue problem might be a severe allergic reaction. She gave me some meds to take to see if she was right. She was! I feel much better--even though the glitches that insist on appearing on this blog are rather annoying. Being irritated must be part of the journey, hey?

Thank goodness for the support and caring of good friends, including Artist Conference Network, the motivational coaching community I belong to. And thank goodness for the garden, so full of beauty and nourishment.

Peonies are such glorious flowers.

Even the mechanics of writing this blog provesmy point about things taking longer and raising difficulties,
like right now, when the type decides to be the size of
the caption rather than the general text.

One has to be flexible, patient, and it also helps to have
a sense of levity.

My work right now involves rewriting the script for
what I will say to introduce A New Wrinkle on
our IndieGoGo fundraising video. I wasn't
content with my presentation style or the overall
length, so here I am back at work to edit it down and
rehearse it so that it goes easily.

Difficulty provides learning  and motivation. It can be useful
to take that up as part of the game plan.



Meeting Malcolm King Fontana, the videographer we are
working with, gives me hope for the future.

He is such a great person--mature, professional, humorous,
respectful, centered.  I hope he achieves all of
his life dreams and goals.


I spend a lot of time thinking about social and political
issues and topics about aging. Meeting Malcolm has made
me realize that I want to spend more time around
young people.

The separation of the young and old is not good for any of us.

I want to share the link to my monthly Sage's Play newsletter. I
just published a great issue yesterday.Time for a Paradigm Shift on Aging! - http://eepurl.com/lKMJ9

Red mustard greens and chard 

This is the videographer Malcolm King Fontana

It's wonderful to take a break from my work on A New Wrinkle and Sage's Play by playing  out in the garden.

It's more reliable than this danged blog technology!

And so I bid you adieu for now, with the wish that your work and play flow ever so nicely. Or that you have a good sense of humor when the glitches tangle things up.

As for me, I am going to make some tea and rehearse my rewritten script.

P.S. I never can get the link to my monthly newsletter to work as I am a sincere Luddite. So please go to www.sagesplay.com to subscribe to it.

Moving Pro-Aging Messages out into the Culture

No photos this time. Sorry. Feeling very basic and unadorned at the moment.

This week was a busy one. Medifecta Healthcare Training, the company where I have worked for the past 12 years (now part-time) developing educational materials to train caregivers of elders was sold last week. We've been getting oriented to the excellent, upbeat new management and its dynamic programs. That feels really good -- and this kind of transition is also something that really gets your attention. There's a lot of new information, people and goals to learn about. Stirs things up.

Sage's Play was busy, too. Moving the pro-aging messages of A New Wrinkle out into the culture for me means not only being an artist, but also engaging in social change, fundraising, public relations and program development. Right now it's all about our upcoming fundraising campaign on IndieGoGo, which is an Internet-based crowdfunding platform. Our goal is to raise $15,000 in order to produce and film A New Wrinkle.

On Tuesday we got together with a videographer. He filmed us for a video that will introduce our IndieGoGo campaign. Before we met with him, I spent hours writing the script for the video, locating still shots and identifying music files to include in it. I am certainly curious to see the finished product. Will it be everything I hoped it would be? Even 80% satisfaction is good. Suspense. Curiosity.

Now I have to write the text that viewers will see when they visit our campaign site on IndieGoGo. I mulled that matter over while I pulled weeds and planted some snapdragons in the garden. But it will take more than mulling. I will have to sit down and write it. Very soon.

This week I also met with Gary Einhorn, my business advisor, and he helped me develop an action plan for the IndieGoGo campaign. It has a lot of items on it. Of course. It's an action plan. I've already done a few of the items on it, just to get a feel for all that action.

Gary and I met at the university library. When our meeting was done, we passed an old woman who was dragging her coat along. She seemed terribly tired. Her walk was slow and a bit erratic. I wondered if she was about to faint. I spoke to her and mentioned that her coat was dragging.  I asked if she was okay. She said she was though I had my doubts. What a lovely old face she had.

Later I realized that she had been a neighbor of mine when I lived briefly on Morton Street. I would see her ripping down the hill on her bicycle. Wow, I thought to myself then watching her fly down the hill, her helmet firmly on her head and a look of rapt enjoyment on her face. What a wild old woman. Now here she was all bedraggled, having gone on the bus to nearby Medford and then come back on the bus to Ashland. "I live five blocks away on Morton Street," she told me. "I'll just sit down here for a minute then go the rest of the way."

I offered to drive her home.  I thought she needed to drink some water and sit down and rest. She still rides her bike everywhere. She's 81. Ten years older than I am. I've been thinking of her since then, and thinking about how much change occurs in each decade of human life.

Tomorrow is Mother's Day. Two women I enjoy are coming to visit. They are volunteering to help with the IndieGoGo campaign. There are actually three volunteers, but the third is at a conference presenting a paper on women in the global community. I decided to call the volunteers the Sagesse Squadron. They are all marvelous individuals and I am looking forward to our collaboration.

The roses, peonies and love-in-a-mist are about to bloom in my garden. I hie myself to sleep, hoping that some bright dreams illumine the hours. Tomorrow is another day, as my Mother was fond of saying. Bless mothers and mothering.

Full Moon and Mythic Presence

FULL MOON

 The door is open,
the cricket is singing.
Are you going around naked
in the fields?

Like an immortal water,
going in and out of everything.
Are you going around naked
in the air?

The basil is not asleep,
the ant is busy.
Are you going around naked
in the house?
---Juan Ramon Jiminez

We are living two lives at the same time, the inner life and the outer life. This beautiful Jiminez poem speaks to the lyricism and nakedness of the inner life at the time of the full moon. Two days ago, I saw the moon rise big in the sky even before darkness fell. What a beautiful sight it was.

Then two days of rain and clouds obscured its display. I hope that the weather clears and we are granted a sight of its rise and the sweep of its arc tonight and tomorrow night. It is a big moon on both outer and inner levels.

Today we are filming a 4-5 minute video that will be used on Indie GoGo. Our goal is to raise $15,000 to produce and film A New Wrinkle, our paradigm-shifting musical revue. Have you ever heard of IndieGoGo? It  is an Internet-based crowdfunding platform. That's a mouthful of a new term if you've never heard it before. IndieGoGo and Kickstarter are both wonderful ways that artists, activists and individuals are raising money for all types of projects and causes.

We are excited to move toward our own IndieGoGo campaign launch. Once we finish the video, we will be assembling a variety of perks for donors, a great way to say thank you and provide folks with more pro-aging messages. We're in the process of gathering a group of helpers that I call the Sagesse Squadron to support this effort, which will include a local launch event in Ashland, Oregon. I will continue to post information here about this effort as it develops.

I hope that you will be inspired to help us shift the current paradigm on aging with all of its noxious stereotypes and prejudice. You can support our effort to broadcast the pro-aging messages of A New Wrinkle widely. In fact, we are depending upon your help to spread the word and meet our fundraising goal. Your help might also include connecting us with possible radio show appearances and telling local theater companies, philanthropists and elders about our work.

Riding the Age Wave


That's one way I like to think about the aging process.  I like the playfulness and pleasure of the phrase.  I celebrated my 71st birthday the other day. My daughter Sophia brought me this extravagantly lovely bouquet and baked delectable little truffle cakes. She presented them adorned with a few sliced strawberries, a dollop of whipped cream, and a bit of coffee ice cream. We enjoyed each other's company and I thought to myself, "This girl of mine sure does know how to do it up right."

I had a long conversation with my friend Angie the other day. Her birthday is a few days away from mine. Our talk ranged, but its main theme was our engagement in actualizing our work as we age. We've slowed down some, but both of us feel vividly involved in our work. Angie developed Kentro Body Balance, a wonderful system of postural healing and integration. (Visit her website to be inspired, and learn more about how to maintain a healthy back and body in later life).  Angie writes poetry and paints, too--she appreciates the beauty of the artist's life.

In the Works, the Whole Works

I met with another Taurus, Steve Scholl, whose birthday is one day after mine, and as usual got excited by our exchange. Steve is the founder of White Cloud Press, a mid-sized publisher of some wonderful books. Steve told me about A Branch from the Lightning Tree: Ecstatic Myth and the Grace in Wildness, a book by Martin Shaw. I have nearly finished reading it. What a wonderful book! One of my favorite quotes from it is this one:

"The job of the elder is to be nuttier, more curious, occasionally fierce and more connected to the eccentricities of wildness than the youth every dreamed. More than anything,the elder has seen some  rough patches to their life and knows how to express it in a story. This carries tremendous hope with it."