Carla’s Niche

Camelot Journal

Copyright © 2006 Carla L. Rueckert

Sunday, July 2, 2006

The trumpet vine was in full bloom this morning, along with our Thanksgiving cactus, which is giving us an extra blooming this summer. We had a lovely, relaxing, lazy day off after Jim cleaned the house and I sang at church.

Jim and I watched three movies during the afternoon and early evening: the slapstick and inanely cartoonish Pink Panther movie with Steve Martin as Clouseau; the muddled and confusing but subtle and topical Syriana and Capote, a star turn of virtuoso acting but little real depth in the script. It was most enjoyable altogether although my critic’s mind was creating mixed reviews all afternoon!

We ended the day watching Lonesome Dove, which was running all night in series. That’s a work Larry McMurtry wrote some twenty years ago and it holds up just fine with anything we have seen lately that was made new last year, especially Brokeback Mountain, which he also co-wrote.

We did not redeem ourselves with any L/L Research work whatsoever except the Gaia Meditation, which Jim, Gary and I offered together before sharing a late supper, with Gary praying at the conclusion.

For my tutorial later this week, Jim took some photos of the yard. Gary will teach me how to get the photos from the camera to the computer. Since I cannot use them today, I will find a picture of the trumpet vine arbor in bloom from our older photos.

Monday, July 3, 2006

This was a day to deserve the word “fraught.” Even “beleaguered” fits this day as I dealt with a computer that seemed to have gone mad. My Outlook software had suddenly morphed into a version which had weather, soccer scores, the New York Times news flashes of the day and everything else under the sun except menus and buttons which I recognized.

I fiddled and poked, after Morning Offering, to almost no avail. Finally I went and retrieved Gary, who was manning the admin desk and clearing the L/L Research Inbox downstairs. He eventually found my task bar, the menus were back and I was open for business, one would have thought.

However Traveller (my computer) was not through rearranging my day. The Explorer software would not yield to me any web sites. Every time I tried to access a likely site for quotes, the black and white page that tells you the page is not available came up. Even within our own site, the Google search function seemed to be unwilling to work. I spent the morning and part of the afternoon trying and failing to access sites. I was stubborn, you see, because I really, really wish to be getting on with this project and getting to the writing!

Finally I accepted the simple fact that today was not a day for working on the Choice books. I tackled the Inbox. By bath time I:

• Wrote Bruce about Shadow, who Bruce says is better off here at Camelot than up on Avalon after he leaves. We talked about tranquilizers and strategies.
• Wrote Bruce about his Grandmother, who is close to death now. I spent some time in prayer with her, asking her guidance system for permission for her to be healed into larger life.
• Worked on a translation question from Terry H.
• Sent Bill H copies of our bookkeeper’s report for the fund which Bill has been kind enough to donate for the salaries of our admin and bookkeeper. We’re running out of funding for those salaries.
• Thanked Gary for a house project which was intended to regularize the flow of cooling into my office and bedroom, which tend to run hotter than the rest of the house. I think it is working!
• Wrote Laura J-K concerning a question her readers had about our association, which was raised by conversation over national radio from David W. it is unfortunate that David should gossip at all, and especially inaccurately. Laura wished for me to gossip about David, who was often difficult to deal with during our association, which ended some time ago. I explained that I see no use in defaming other channels, no matter how deserved the slur might be. I consider that David does a lot of good just waking people up for the first time and getting their attention. I see no use in complicating that with my personal grievances.

Jim and I enjoyed our leisure evening and had a good supper and the Gaia Meditation, with Jim praying. Then we took a work period and he got out books to be mailed to our readers while I finished the project of labeling our two most recent photo albums and scrapbooks.

Thinking ahead to the Homecoming for 2006, I wanted to put in a picture or two from our off-season Gathering on the Archetypes, which we held at Steve F’s home last February. In one picture, you can see Gary with his back to the camera, Eccles, Steve M, Tobey, me and Tiffani. In the other photo we’re in the process of putting our lunch together. Gary is in the foreground and Steve T in the background. I am not sure at all whose head is in the refrigerator! I think the images catch a bit of the very real feeling of community one feels as people who like the Law of One gather together.

Tuesday, July 4, 2006

The Fourth of July! It creates a buzz of excitement just to say the words! We worked on this particular Fourth. Jim had his lawns and gardens to mow and weed and I had the searches for good quotations for the Choice books to do. I got almost halfway through page eight of the combined outlines, a page which had been totally blank of any quotations whatsoever. A good day at the searches!

Gary took me through how to place photos into Growler from our digital camera. It is a complex procedure to me and I doubt I can recall it but that’s OK as we developed a click-by-click protocol sheet for me to use. I uploaded to Growler the photos Mick took of our yard the other day and for today I’ll put in an image of the side of the house where I weeded out that forest of tall wildflowers from in front of the basement window. Now the person staying in that basement guest room can see out of that window, and a person in the yard can see a bit of space between the hydrangeas and the day lilies instead of a wall of weedy growth.

Gary also worked today to create a “send” list for my UPI articles. Rather than just send them to folks, I created a letter for Gary to send out, where if you want to be on the list you just hit reply and put “yes” in the subject line. That’s a big job! Gary and I also talked more about the new order form and he began working on that project today.

I sent a note to Vara checking on the article I sent Planet Light Worker last week. I have not yet heard back from her on that and wished to be sure it was OK.

I headed outside to garden in late afternoon, designating the lemon balm in the top section of the stone garden we call the Herb Garden as The Good Stuff and starting to remove a huge mass of it from elsewhere in that garden. I also trimmed up the rue plant, which Mick and I jokingly call the rewind plant. That needs explanation. My great aunt Lisbeth, after whom I am named, loved to hear me sing and I sent her a tape recorder, back in the seventies. I would sing on to tape and then send her the tapes. She wrote me to thank me for the song tapes and said she loved hearing the tapes but she could only play them once. Then she ingenuously asked me what the button marked “REW” did! How happy she was to discover that she could rewind the tapes and play them again! So I trimmed the “rewind” plant back to make it bush.

The Herb Garden is a fairly large stone garden with several sections to it and I made progress, but there’s a lot to weed before the garden is ready for Jim to place new perennials in it. The skies were darkening and the wind was freshening while I gardened and Jim cleaned his equipment for the night and by bath time it was really raining on us. The parade went by with many an umbrella amongst the marchers!

Jim and I went across the street to Calvin (a woman’s name this time) and Brooks’ party and had a most pleasant supper and conversation with a slew of neighbors and strangers. We came home to offer the Gaia Meditation and enjoy a late-night snuggle before bedtime.

Wednesday, July 5, 2006

It was a very early morning for me as Sedge, who is closed into my room at night so he can eat his special food, as he needs it, without the ravaging Picky and Chloe snarfing it away from him, decided that he was in need of affection and plopped down across my sleeping form at four AM. I fed him and then patted him and we had a good time until 5, when I arose.

In the quiet and hush of raindrops sprinkling gently onto the green and lush landscape I fished out various reminder papers and executed their directions as the rosy-fingered Eos lit the sky in increments of nacreous pearl and also got the Camelot Journal entry made for yesterday.

I used the first of the photos I uploaded from the camera myself yesterday. Little victories! I enjoy adding the photos. It really adds to the feeling of reality and presence in the journal. This journal is my letter to everyone, at a time when I just don’t write the good personal letters I used to pen to a wide circle of good friends. I still think of all these bright stars of personal relationship in my life but the manifestation of keeping up with them personally just isn’t there as time flies away and there’s such a lot of good work to do for the whole of humankind.

After Morning Offering Jim worked at home for a while, doing next Friday’s maintenance ahead and sharpening some blades, until the rain died away and he could garden, which he did first. By noon the grass was good to mow and he got all his jobs done despite the early rain.

Meanwhile I was up against a deadline on the UPI article on the green-ray energy center. I am collecting the LOO quotes pertaining to each center as I go, which is a time-consuming process. However it will serve to make a part of the packet of information we give to participants at the 2006 Homecoming, along with my writing on each energy center. The topic for that weekend workshop is the energy body of chakras and how to work with them to enhance the seeking process. It will be interactive and the crowd this year is still pretty small, about a dozen having signed up so far.

I am always of two minds about the size of a Homecoming crowd. At Wooded Glen last year we had almost three dozen people. It was a wonderful time and rich with so many energies interacting. However with so many folks there, general discussion around the circle was awkward, with the stronger voices using the floor and the quieter participants not speaking so much. I like working with a smaller number of people because each person is more able to get in there and be a part of things. We have discussion built in to the process this year. It will be quite interactive.

I got the search for quotes on green ray done by noon and the article itself written by 1 PM, just an hour late on the deadline. Larry, my editor, liked it and I was able to go down to lunch with a feeling of satisfaction about that.

After lunch I worked to fill in quotes for the topics on page eight of the Choice outline, filling in about half the blanks with good quotes. I only found one from our own archives of channeling today, as the topics are concerning the nature of multi-systems thinking. This is a topic about which we have not fielded any questions. On earth today we need that technique of problem solving as we humans are one system of several that are interacting to create the earth environment.

I ended the afternoon picking up David Suzuki and Holly Dressel’s excellent book, Good News for a Change; Hope for a Troubled Planet. It requires scanning as the index is terrible for my use, naming people and places rather than ideas as topics. So I am simply scanning the first chapter, which is basic and theoretical and touches on quite a few topics I need material concerning.

Before gardening time came around I attended to some e-mail needs:

• Scheduled a channeling session for Andy—again. I had to cancel his session previously due to back spasms—a gardening mishap.
• Scheduled a visit with a new local man who wants to become acquainted and find out whether he can volunteer some time here.
• Sent a photo of myself to Eliahu, who runs a wonderful alternative zine called Both Sides Now. He wants to use some of my UPI articles in his publication, which tickles me. I really admire his little publication. It shows you what one man can do with passion and perseverance. He has run this publication for many years all by himself with a bunch of old equipment and an open heart, picking excellent material and paying for it all himself on a retired vet’s salary. I believe you can subscribe through Amazon.com.
• Responded to Wynn Free, who sent me a copy of the tabloid article on David W and explained why he has been waiting to engage in the proposed book project where he interviews the Q’uo group as Everyman. He’s been busy! He’ll come back to the project soon, he says. He’s undecided whether to interview the Q’uo, generating a body of new channeled material for his book, or whether to use what we already have in the archives. I’ll be interested in his decision. It would be handy if he decided to use the archives!
• Corresponded with Paul C who is transcribing the video material from Wooded Glen. I asked him to work on my speeches next. They are just about the last of the material yet untranscribed and it would be good to have the previous material on the chakras available by the time of the workshop for Homecoming 2006, which is over Labor Day weekend.

Gary reported that he had sent out my little letter inviting people to subscribe to a free send list for my UPI articles. The send misfired on all names starting with K to Z, so Gary had to resend batches late in the day. Almost a hundred folks have signed up already just from A through J, so we’ll have a nice circulation on the articles once Gary finishes that project. And as well, Gary says he’s getting a lot of information that helps him update our contact information.

Gary and I also conferred on the suggested donations list again, deciding to go with arbitrary, even-numbered new suggested costs as opposed to a formula based strictly on cost of production. It’s not as good for QuickBooks, which likes such formulae. But it is way easier for customers to pay even dollar amounts.

I went out to garden around 5 PM, working once again in the Herb Garden stonework’s plantings. The photo today is taken from the standpoint of the Herb Garden, looking from there towards the back of the yard. Our trumpet vine is in glorious bloom in the arbor. It’s a wonderfully shady and cool place in the yard to sit and soak up the good vibrations of Camelot’s angelically blessed location.

After Jim finished his maintenance and ran the bath, he called me in from gardening and we enjoyed some relaxation until it was time for our Jazz Night, a trip to Clifton’s Pizza to hear Kays and Walker—our absolute favorite group in town right now. We had a wonderfully refreshing time listening to old and new songs done with rich musical skill, incredible harmonies and delightfully inventive riffs. We came home to kitty-cat-TV par excellence, as all four cats were in a playful mood and much batting, licking and romping was going on all over the bed and surrounding furniture. I was sorry to see it end around 11 PM. And so to bed.

Thursday, July 6, 2006

It was a full-service Thursday with both Gary and Melissa manning the L/L Research office downstairs during the day. Gary was continuing to work on the project of creating a “send” list for my UPI articles. Melissa was getting out the statements for Jim’s Lawn Service and finishing the books for the month.

Jim headed out early to mow and garden while I came upstairs intending to write an article for Planet Light Worker. However I could not figure out what they wanted from me and had to write to ask for more information.

So I turned back to finding quotes for the Choice topics. I asked for and got a good quote from Bruce on sensing into nature and found several good quotes in the Suzuki-Dressel book. I ended the afternoon lacking only three spaces on page eight to fill in with a nice X when I find quotes tomorrow.

I took some time to clear my desk, which was growing overcrowded with papers, and to deal with some e-mail:

• Sent an expression of sympathy to Bruce, whose Grandmother has entered the gates of larger life.
• Thanked Larry at UPI for asking if I wished to append my e-mail address to the ID tag on my column—I did and he will.
• Edited what we had of the May 28th channeling session, of which we lost the greater part due to tape recorder malfunction, and sent that off to our web guy to put on line. We felt very badly about the loss. It is the first material we have lost in many years.
• Sent encouragement to Dana, who is traveling to Salt Lake City to have the operation to remove the part of her organ involved with cancer cells.
• Wrote my editor at the Louisville Jazz Society Newsletter about my changing duties there.
• Contacted our personal lawyer for help with a name change—I am formalizing my legal name change to Carla L. Rueckert-McCarty. Previously my ID has been split between my maiden name under which I write and my married name. The hyphenated name is a mouthful but it unifies my ID. This is good, in the current climate of security at airports. Each time I travel I have to deal with the confusion of having variant IDs. This move will hopefully end that confusion.
• Sent Jean-Claude my UPI article on the green-ray energy center as he had asked especially for it and I was not sure when Gary would be ready for the first general UPI “send.”
• Let Romi know that we’ll have a channeling session for Andy Friday night and invited him to join us.
• Acknowledged that Bruce would come down to Louisville tomorrow to do some business and would check out our furnace and AC system. I wonder if he will bring Shadow!
• Made an appointment to see my hand surgeon, as my right wrist needs a check. I can never tell whether simple pain means a structural problem or is just pain. Is it signal or noise? An X-ray and Dr. Atasoy’s keen eyes will let me know.

At 5 PM I went out to garden, continuing to work in the Herb Garden. Melissa was working in the yard as well, turning the compost, while Gary strolled through on his day off, headed for Wagner Park, which lies directly behind us, intending to lie out in the incredibly lovely sunshine and get a tan. Jim came home and was cleaning his equipment so for a while there we had quite a happy crowd in the yard. I am beginning to see good progress in that planting’s shape. Soon it shall be ready for Jim’s new perennial plants. What a host of lemon balm I have pulled out of that bed! That herb really romps and takes over a space easily.

After our bath time Jim and I worked on getting recipes together for next week, Jim collecting items to cook for the house and I finding a special cake recipe to fix for my birthday packages to be sent out next Monday. I found an old favorite, a strawberry cake which Jim says is his favorite of mine, ever. I’ll bake two of those, freeze them and then mail them with the presents, hoping they’ll make it OK without spoiling in the summer heat in transit.

I offered the ending prayer at the Gaia Meditation with all four cats sharing our love seat. Today’s photo is not of that precise moment, but of a similar gathering a few days ago.

Jim and I enjoyed a late supper, some good conversation and Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now before saying good night at 11 PM.

Friday, July 7, 2006

The day dawned bright and cool, an Edenic break from heat and humidity. After our Morning Offering, Gary and Jim set out to mow their seven lawns for the day. I came upstairs to search for quotes for the Choice books. I did fairly well, moving into the second third of page nine. My heart sank a bit as I looked through the remainder of what is left to do, as I had thought the whole outline was ten pages long. It’s actually twelve pages long. Page twelve is solid with quotes, but I still have a way to go with the topics on pages nine through eleven. My horoscope in the paper today suggested I had hold of a big project and not to become discouraged. Go figure!

Jim was home for lunch, which is a rare treat. After that late lunch I responded to Vara, who is working for Planet Light Worker, about writing an article for next month’s issue. I also took the time to write Fr. Joe at St. Luke’s, as Jim had told me of an unusual happenstance there which he saw when mowing the place yesterday afternoon. A sunflower has taken root, somehow, in a little nook of the stone roof and is thriving up there in all the sunlight. Jim said there’s a sermon in that! This seed fell on stony ground—and grew anyway! It gives one hope!

I had firmly intended to garden in late afternoon but in the event it didn’t happen. Instead Bruce came by to say farewell, as he is leaving for his ranch out west. He tried one last time to bring Shadow down to Louisville, but that little kitten does not want to be closed into a truck! Unless he can coax Shadow into his truck tomorrow and take him to his ranch, Shadow will have to remain on Avalon and learn to catch field mice, which are in plentiful supply there.

Bruce and I had a good talk about the Choice project, with which he has helped me quite a bit as I expanded from one book to three in outline form. I asked for him to write me some quotable text on multi-systems thinking and a couple of other points on which I have had trouble finding quotes of the proper kind—not too scholarly and also not too mystical. Scholarship will not fill the bill for the regular guy, who wants something understandable without reference books. Similarly, the New Age kind of cliché will not wash, with its marshmallow fluff. Bruce agreed readily to work up the quotes for me but it will take time as he will need to get his satellite dish set up before he’s back on line on his ranch.

I did just a few things around the office before Jim called bath time, ordering him some good socks for his work from a natural fibres catalogue and making a couple of appointments for myself. Then Jim and I relaxed until it was time for the session—a special channeling session for Andy B. He asked good questions about his seeking and aspects of his personal life and we enjoyed sitting for the session together with Romi, who came over to join the circle of seeking.

After the session we offered the Gaia Meditation, with me singing the prayer, and had a late supper and pleasant conversation until about 11 PM, when we all said good night.

The photograph today is of our day lilies, ringing the glorious old double-trunked sycamore in our back yard. It is one of the few things in the yard that was here when we came. In fact, it was here when Jim Wagner, who died last year at a ripe old age, was a boy, living behind our property, as he did throughout his life. He remembers it as a huge tree even then. The Herb Garden planting is off the right lower corner of this image. I shall take a new photo of the Herb Garden when we get it planted, which Jim will start doing tomorrow, as he used his late afternoon time to get more perennials to plant, enough to finish out the front border in striped lariope and to plant all of the Herb Garden in caladium.

Saturday, July 8, 2006

Lately I have tried to take Gary’s advice and have a “day off” each week. However that only works if I allow myself to work on something completely different from my usual work, which is all working with my laptop to create, these fortunate days. It feels great to take a day each week to do the things you’ve been putting off so you could concentrate on the main work at hand.

After Jim’s and my Morning Offering and the Banishing Ritual which we offered for our friend, Dana, as this was her operation day, Jim and I both headed for the kitchen. While he roasted a turkey and made a potato dish with turkey bacon which looks very good, I created two strawberry cakes for my siblings. It finishes up the Birthday Boxes I am sending them. I got the presents wrapped and the cards written last Saturday. Before bedtime, Jim and I had frozen the finished cakes so they will be ready to send on Monday.

Jim went out to do errands and bring back a fast food lunch while I was still working with the cakes. I had made the icing but was waiting for the cakes to cool. So I took a look around the kitchen and saw that somehow the shelving by the back door had become loaded down with things I did not fully recognize. In investigating them I began to clean up that shelving. Vara has a microwave oven here she has never moved to her new place because it lacks power. However she told me the power was going to be extended to all of her house soon when I saw her about six weeks ago, so it’s time to give that back to her. Gary wrestled it from that shelving to the counter by the front door, where we’ll leave it until she next visits here, which will not be very long, as she usually invites me out for my birthday, which is a week from tomorrow.

I also placed our seal-a-meal gear with her oven. It is ours, but I bought that for her and Bruce when they lived here, as they were both fans of that technology. Neither Gary nor Jim ever uses that gear, so it needs to go to Vara, who likes to use it.

With that done, there was much more room to arrange things so all the remaining tools of the cooking trade were easily reached. It always makes such a nice difference to clean up an area! You feel as though your things were your own again.

After lunch Mick went out in the yard and transplanted the new stock, filling the rest of the front border with striped lariope and doing a gargantuan and beautiful job of planting the Herb Garden in caladium. I had been weeding on that planting bed all last week! I’d gotten perhaps 80% done with the job, leaving the violets as a ground cover because of their lovely leaf shape and weeding out all the rest. In one afternoon Mick finished the weeding, prepared the ground and planted all of the stock!

Meanwhile I got together with Gary, on his admin time, and we tackled the basement shelving, as I was quite sure we would find, as I had in clearing the kitchen shelves, items to give to Goodwill, and I was going to make a Goodwill giving run. We had a grand cleaning down there, finding many items to throw away completely and many more to donate.

I then put on my wrist braces and went through my closet, finding a couple dozen garments to move downstairs to storage until cooler weather, a couple of dozen more garments to put in the Goodwill bag, some to clean and some to repair.

Gary moved my long-sleeved garments down to storage while I tallied up our giving to Goodwill, for the tax receipt, then drove the two big boxes of things to the nearest Goodwill center. The oddest item was an illuminated LED water fountain for one’s desk. I have no idea at all who gave that to anyone in the household! Neither did Gary!

Gary was back at the desk when I returned from Goodwill. He worked for the rest of his admin time on my Contacts list, paring about 200 out-of-date entries out of that list and adding people who replied “yes” to the UPI article send list which Gary’s creating. He reports that out of about 900 good addresses, over 200 people sent back a yes response! I think that’s remarkable. It warms my heart!

I went to the basement wrapping center and wrapped the first batch of 2006 Christmas gifts. I collect those all year, shopping sale catalogs and looking for interesting items when I am out on girlfriend time. It’s so good to have most of that done organically and naturally, so that October and November are not made crazy by the Christmas hunting and gathering.

Then I went out and joined Mick in the garden. By this time he was finished with the caladium and was chipping some of the debris wood he has gathered from his customer’s yards. He makes his own mulch this way. I decided to address the lavender patch next, so I was quite close to him, both of us working across the driveway from the house towards the north. I took a slew of weedy wildflowers which looked like Queen Ann’s Lace but were a bit different in their leaves, out of the lavender patch so that the lavender could shine. I could not finish that job because the back of that patch snugs up to the area where Jim stores wood debris waiting to be chipped. But by bath time I had gotten everything done there which I could.

Gardening, or rather weeding, is an ambiguous duty. Every plant one takes out of the ground is alive and attractive in its way. The humble henpet, which some call ground ivy, has a lissome, frilled leaf and the one place in the yard where Jim and I let it vine around at will is just beautiful. It happens to be the place where Jim stores construction materials, out behind the garage, and because we let the vines grow around it all, it is lovely. When Jim needs bricks he just tears into the henpet, retrieves the materials he needs, and lets the vines grow back.

So I always feel a bit apologetic on behalf of the weeds I am removing. They have worth too! But one must choose between letting everything grow naturally and taking everything out except what you intended to grow in that spot. When the weeding is finished and the preferred planting, in this case lavender, is revealed, I am always so happy I weeded. But I do feel tender-hearted about the henpet and other weeds that I root out. It is very redolent of the decision-making process we have in our personal evolution. We don’t let things fall away from our personalities because they are intrinsically evil but because we are allowing better virtues to grow in our garden and they need the space! So we weed to make the room.

I will put a photograph in today of our pretty waterfall in the front yard, a photo Jim took last week. Jim built this waterfall and a heart-shaped fish pond many years ago now and it is a sweet part of our landscaping, one of his best efforts in the whole yard. The other photo Jim took is of the pond itself.

Romi called in the evening to report that Dana was doing well after the operation, although they removed all of her kidney instead of a portion of it as they planned. I suppose it was a decision made when the surgeon saw the revealed organ. Dana will stay in Salt Lake City for a few days before returning home.

Jim and I offered the Gaia Meditation and enjoyed another “issue” of Bill Moyer’s great series, Faith and Reason, before saying good night.

Sunday, July 9, 2006

It was a Summer Sunday at Camelot! A glorious, day-off extravaganza! After a morning spent with cleanliness (Jim) and godliness (me) we settled in to a triple feature—Irresistible, The Yellow Submarine and Casanova. None of the movies was in the excellent category but all were entertaining.

In the intervals we walked around and I took some photos of the yard. Here are two of the Herb Garden, which perhaps should be retitled the Caladium Garden. One of the photos shows the caladium and the violet leaves of the ground cover. The other features the crown of lemon balm and the trunks of the double-trunked sycamore that is Lord of the Yard, ranking as the oldest tree around.

Gary finished detailing Jim’s truck today, the remainder of a birthday present from Gary to Jim on May tenth! Gary had gotten the inside all spiffed up as of the birthday date but events had intervened that kept him from completing the job until yesterday. Jim’s 1990 Dakota never looked better!

We offered the Gaia Meditation, enjoyed conversation and a late supper and sought our beds around midnight.

Monday, July 10, 2006

The Rose of Sharon was in bloom this morning as I went to get the paper. We have a hedge of it across the front of our yard, something which we have worked to encourage for the 20-plus years we have been here. It is not easy growing a good privacy hedge in a forest! Our little village constitutes forest land for the most part. Here’s a shot of that hedge in bloom.

Jim went to work after Morning Offering, intending to mow six lawns and all without his rider mower, which is in the shop. He was tireder than usual when he got home! Meanwhile I spent most of the day finding quotes for the topics in the Choice outline, turning the page by the end of the day! I am now on page ten! It felt great to finish page nine, which topics had been almost entirely blank of found quotes.

I also sent in a request to my UPI editor to make three corrections in last week’s column, as I was reluctant to have it be my first “send” to Gary’s newly formed Send List for the UPI columns with the errata still displayed. What bad luck to have mistakes show up in the very article set for sending out the first time. Bless Larry for fixing the problems right away. I was able to tell Gary to go ahead tomorrow and send the column.

I heard back from my brother, Jim, who had taken his wife, Kai, to Thailand to visit her family. They and their luggage are now back home safe and sound! I sent my new e-address to my choir mistress. And I caught up on some other personal e-mail. It was a good day in the office and I felt really energized as I changed into my grubbies and went out to the garden to welcome in the heat and the damp of the day. With the Caladium Garden all spiffed up, finished by the Master Gardener, Jim, I moved on to start weeding around the twin boles of the sycamore tree across the walkway from the Caladium Garden. Jim came home soon after that and we worked together for a while, he maintaining his equipment while I weeded away. Summer evenings are great for being outside and doing in the yard.

We had an uneventful evening, after enjoying our bath, watching Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now and World Music on Link TV before having our supper and offering the Gaia Meditation. Gary reported that the UPI Send List had well over 200 addresses now. I just hope I am doing the Confederation material we have been privileged to receive in this group justice as I write these articles.

Romi took a couple of snapshots of Jim and me right after the session for Andy the other night, and I thought I’d place those photos in the Journal today.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Often, by the middle of July, there is draught in this area of the country. So far the dry weather has held off. It had rained overnight and was misting a bit this morning, not good news for lawn mowers! Jim hastily rearranged his day to do the gardening and odd jobs first, the shortest and sparsest lawn next and the rest from there.

After Morning Offering I came upstairs to do quotation searches. Gary and I took time out to have lunch with Blaine, a soul who has discovered, firstly, our material and secondly, that we live in his home town. He is off to college soon and appreciated the chance to get to know us a little. We’re in our summer break now, so he cannot join us for Sunday meditations before he leaves for California, college and adventures unknown.

I worked again on quotes after lunch. By the end of the working day I was only eight blanks from being through with the searches for page ten! It was substantial progress and I am a happy girl.

I also wrote a couple of thank you notes to people who had donated time and talent or treasure to L/L Research and caught up with Terry H, who had a translation question on Session 83. Terry’s working on the translation into Chinese of the LOO. I worked with some items from both Gary and Melissa as well.

Gary reported sending out the very first UPI “send.” About 230 people had said “yes” to receiving my column each week. We also had a talk about the new suggested donations list for our books and tapes. There is more to do on that project, but we can get the new retail figures to our web guy, for a start. We agreed to do that. I also got four new letters from Papa, who sends them on CD these days. However I cannot open them. The computer reports that something needs to be installed first. That’s out of my league! Gary’s working on opening that.

I had a lab appointment in late afternoon and that finished my working day. The rest of the evening was distinguished by a visit from Romi, a love-filled Gaia Meditation and relaxation and rest. Jim and I said good night around 11 PM.

I thought I’d share a photo of our little silky inkspot, Chloe Saraswati the Fearless, residing for a moment in the incoming mail basket for L/L Research in our downstairs office. The kittens have enriched our lives with their many wiles and antics and have purred and snuggled with us, their healing energies gentling our stress. We’re lucky to have Chloe and Dan.

It is wonderful to see the four cats play and rest together, a united “pride” or tribe at last. It was, in fact, not at all a tough entry for the kittens, as peace reigned in about three weeks, entirely a normal transition time for new kitties. There is now complete amity amongst all four cats, the two nine-year-old Wick brothers, Pickwick and Sedgwick, and the kittens, Dan and Chloe.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

The fresh, thriving scent of rain met me as I got the paper this morning. It is a blessing most unusual in Kentucky, this July rain. And it promises to continue. While Mick has to dance between the raindrops, the rain means he will continue to mow each week rather than every two weeks, so it’s great for his business. Of course he has to calculate how the heck to get everyone cut between the raindrops but that’s a good thing to have to do!

After Morning Offering Jim was off to do just that while I came upstairs to wrangle a most beloved topic, the open heart. I had promised myself a chance to do it a bit more justice than the first, fact-filled article on the green-ray energy center for UPI allowed. I spent the morning crafting an article on getting into the open heart.

Mick was able to stop by for lunch, a blessing to me. We stretched before he left again. The stretching routine is one we developed together from my experience as a dancer and his as a jock. We were both quite good as kids in those spheres. We have a routine which lasts about twelve minutes and stretches most of the muscle groups quite well while having zero impact in terms of gravitational stress. When we can do this routine we feel so much better!

I came back upstairs to find some more quotes and got through page ten on my outline. Remaining are thirteen topics to search for quotes for on page eleven and only one on the very last page, page twelve. Fourteen to go! This is do-able, as Romi would say! I am much cheered. After the quotes are nailed down and the database printed out, I have only to figure my budget of words for each topic in all three books and I am ready to write on these Choice books at last.

Jim called bath time quite early. He had a wonderful day! He got his big mower back and was tickled to death to have it! We needed to be clean and decent earlier than usual because Romi had decided that he would give me a birthday present by taking us out to dinner. My Earth Day is July 16.

What a wonderful gift it was! We got to hear Walker and Kays at the Jazz Factory and have a wonderful meal, to boot. Our conversation was far-ranging. Romi was especially interested in my thoughts about the future of L/L Research. Jim and I shall not always be here. Yet we hope that our organization will continue to serve the people as long as it is needed. Romi expressed every interest in seeing that this is so.

In Jim’s walk around the yard the other day, he snapped an image of our St. Francis statue. It has been under threat from the renovation efforts of our neighbors to the south, who have been working on their house for over two years. Their lackadaisical style of work, which leaves much rough and undone, has been a trial to the whole neighborhood. All the pretty ground cover around the statue was destroyed in the neighbor’s antics. However, St. Francis remains to bless us all.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Again it had rained overnight and everything was still dripping this morning. Jim rearranged his day so he would garden first and have the time to wait for his two big mowing jobs to dry off, when he left after Morning Offering. I came upstairs to write an article for Planet Light Worker. They like a longer article than UPI, 2,000 words or better rather than 1,000 words or so. The article was a response to an interesting question from a PLW reader who loved the “journey of the soul” and wondered if I could talk about how that worked in my life and what part channeling played in it. I finished it and sent it in a bit before 1 PM, when I stopped for a lunch with the Mick, always a rare treat. The e-address of this publication is http://www.planetlightworker.com/contents.htm.

An even rarer treat is having my nails done, which is a special-occasion item these days. Jim gave me a manicure and pedicure with Tracy, my favorite nail tech, for my upcoming birthday. I took the skirt I will wear for that celebration to match the shade of the polish. That celebration will take place the day before my birthday, day after tomorrow.

After I returned I turned to the searches and got three blanks filled in with good quotes before Mick called bath time. That was my day in the office, except that I received word from Diana at the Thane Company that our Hay Fund money was on its way. This is a special grant from the Hay family to L/L Research for admin and bookkeeper money, which frees me up to do creative work.

Jim and I had a most pleasant evening with Democracy Now and World Music before our supper and the Gaia Meditation. Then Mick worked on getting recipes together for the week’s cooking over the weekend while I read on Papa’s letters. Unfortunately my latest batch of his profoundly helpful teaching is untranslatable by my computers. Gary has not yet been able to print them out either. This may be a job for Romi or Vara, the next time they come over.

I am still posting photos taken earlier this month, and this snapshot is of Dan D. Lion, who is sprawled in boneless kitten fashion over our corner table between a recliner and the couch in the living room in which we hold the meditation meetings for L/L Research. We are enjoying their sweet presence so much!

Friday, July 14, 2006

Once again it was all asoak outside when I got the paper this morning. It had rained overnight. However it was drying out nicely and Jim and Gary set off after Morning Offering to make a day of mowing. I came upstairs to tackle the Choice searches one last time. By the end of the day I had concluded my hunt and declared the searches done, finito, over, ta-da! It was a large job and I am most thankful to have it done. As it happens, this was also a milestone for Jim. He has now completed nineteen weeks of his mowing season, coming exactly halfway! It was an evening for rejoicing.

What is left for me to do before writing the Choice books is to estimate the wordage needed for each and every topic and topic group, so I can write not only well but to the length desired for the books. I have a tendency to keep talking! That’s fine for some books but not for these. I hope to do that estimation tomorrow.

I had the happy job of writing thank you notes for generous contributions from Bill H, Morris H and Don C as well as thanking Romi for my birthday bash at The Jazz Factory the other night. Cards and gifts are arriving in the mail. I love birthdays, absolutely and unabashedly! What wonderful anniversaries! Trips around the sun: that is what years are. We’re all sailing through space at a marvelous speed and sailing through our thoughts and experiences just as quickly.

Then I caught up on as much e-mail as I could finish before Mick called bath time, writing:

• A cheering note to recuperating Dana R.
• A thanks to Vara for liking my article for Planet Light Worker and also for perfectly stunning images of the chakras which she designed for the L/L Research 2006 Homecoming.
• Thanks to UPI editor, Larry M, who sent me a new tag for the ending on my articles, now that the “Religion and Spirituality Forum” has become “Religion and Spirituality”, no forum name appended. Somehow this helps Larry in getting people to find our work. Apparently searching surfers do Google on “religion and spirituality.” They do not Google on “religion and spirituality forum.”
• Thanks to W. J., who wrote in with appreciation for my latest UPI article.
• Encouragement and thanks to Michele M, who is designing illustrations for the Choice books. She sent in a sample chakra drawing which was perfectly beautiful. Unlike Vara’s chakra designs, which are imaginative, Michele is rendering precise drawings of what the Ra group described for each chakra. For the book, we need simple and straightforward, not fanciful and playful!
• Thanks to Elizabet Sahtouris, who gave me permission to use her material in the Choice books. Her work is wonderful! Her web site address is http://www.ratical.org/LifeWeb/.
• Thanks, cheers and jumping up and down to Rick C, who has agreed to remaster the tapes we offer in our “store” over to CD format. Rick spent his career working for Glen Glenn Sound out in Hollywood, garnered an Emmy for his good work, and I cannot think of a better person to do this project.

We could not find Democracy Now on TV after our bath, so we conversed for a while and then went out into a pouring rain—we got five inches in about an hour—and had the store all to ourselves while choosing my birthday present—a new mattress. Mick loved his “sleep number” bed so much that I decided to get the same kind of mattress for my bed. He claims much improvement in his sleep and especially in how his back feels in the morning. Now guys, if you decide to check this kind of bed out, mention my name! I get store credit for referrals.

We got so totally soaked on the mad dash home that we just changed clothes completely when we got home! Here it was in the nineties out there and I got chilled to the point where I was drinking coffee to warm back up! What a downpour that was! However our power stayed on. We rejoiced!

Offering the Gaia Meditation and having a late supper, we enjoyed conversation with Gary until coming up to bed around 10 and saying good night around 11 PM.

For today’s photo, I chose one of our little triangular patio. Jim designed it many years ago to accommodate a fallen cherry tree which has since rotted to nothing. For years it was a design feature in our garden! The patio is made of creekstone with no mortar, an unusual type of construction with which Mick was experimenting. The Sweet William is in bloom now.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Our little glade got soaked yet again overnight and the world felt vital and happy as I got the paper this morning. It also felt hot! We’ve settled in to a true hot spot that apparently will last the week.

After Morning Offering Jim and I both went to the kitchen, Jim to cook and me to clean. I tackled the pantry and the spice racks and worked all morning consolidating the supplies we have, tossing out extra containers, finding air-tight canisters for open bags of flour and such and in general straightening that part of the kitchen. Saturdays have become my day for doing something totally non-book-related, an attempt to balance my life better from the standpoint of varied activity. When I first got the chance to work full-time on creative things, that’s all I did. So now I am getting a more balanced regimen going, one in which I have plenty of time to be creative with the writing, but in which I also do the many other things which need doing or which I just feel like doing.

I finished the pantry clean-up just as Mick came back from his errand run for lunch and we enjoyed dining together and stretching. Then he was off to do yard work and I came upstairs to write Papa. I spent the afternoon doing that. It was a most enjoyable exercise. I needed to ask him to write some text for me to quote on points of history in the Choice books and so satisfied myself with the letter I could write in one afternoon. To respond properly to Papa’s epic teaching letters I would need to write a novel a month!! So I never do get to respond properly, although I am certainly grateful for his wisdom and his efforts on my behalf.

After our whirlpool Mick and I dressed in our best and went to dinner at the top of the Galt House, my official Birthday Dinner—the Galt House is closed tomorrow which is my actual Earth Day. It was divine food, a picture-perfect evening and a glorious view of the Ohio and all of the downtown.

We were in bed by midnight, having offered the Gaia Meditation with Gary just after returning home.

The photograph today is from the group I took on July sixth. Jim is standing on the steps of the meditation hut he built at the back of our property, which now backs up to Wagner Park. We did not have the Avalon Farm back in 1985 when he built this, and rock is expensive. Jim built the hut out of the cheapest rock he could find, what they call “riprap” or “zeroes”, stone that is blasted out during highway building and is saved as debris. It is generally used to control erosion. The rocks are shaped crazily because of being created by blasting. So the sweet little gazebo is a minor miracle of careful construction.

To the right of the image is the corner of the yew tree Mick and I planted when Don died in 1984. It was tiny then and very crooked but we wanted a yew, as Don was so Christ-like a being, and it was the only one we could find. These days it towers over everything in that part of the yard and grows straight and true.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

My birthday dawned hot and full of sunshine. After I wrote the journal entry for yesterday I came downstairs and did my puzzles early. Jim and I shared our Sunday treat, Krispy Kreme donuts, and then I was off to church to sing the service while Mick did the cleaning. I was amazed when I returned home to find that he’d also trimmed up the yard with the weed whacker. The man’s a marvel of speed!

I opened about a dozen cards and a lovely couple of gifts: a new book from Eckhart Tolle from Mike M and a handmade pillow from Mom McCarty. I am writing on it at this moment, as she made it for my laptop to sit upon in my lap, and it is perfect for the job! It also goes with my office rug and everything else in here. Jim, of course, gave me the new mattress. He also offered a stunningly delicate and elaborate card with all the sweetest words in the language.

Then Vara came by to give me a couple of books and a bag of my favorite brand of potato chips! The cats went nuts trying to smell all the country odors on her clothes, as she lives in the country with two cats and plenty of horses. We had a good chat while she was here. She is looking well and much more vital and rested than previously. Good news! Anyone would have been exhausted dealing with the primitive conditions she was facing when she first started seeing to the renovation of Steve’s farmhouse. And they had a shyster for a repairman, at first. Now things are much better there, the shyster gone and the remaining workmen doing well.

Jim and I watched a triple feature on our home screen: Crash, The White Countess and Matador. Crash was an accurate indictment of the fear base in our urban society, tough to watch but with the ring of truth. The puzzle for us about that movie was that it did not contain the Oscar-winning song for which we were waiting. It may be hard out there for a pimp, but the song about that was nowhere in the sound track. So how did they win the Oscar?

The Matador was a witty movie and fun to see. The White Countess had a kind of Thomas Mann feel to it, stylish, historically based, slow and cerebral for all the violence of the setting. Ralph Fiennes did a tour de force turn as the blind anti-hero. Gary got back from his work in time to take in the latter movie with us, during which we had our supper and after which we offered the Gaia Meditation, with Gary praying at the end.

Mick and I came upstairs for a romantic birthday snuggle before saying good night at midnight.

I am still sharing pictures from the garden taken on July sixth. This one features one of our one-of-a-kind day lilies. When we were adding the day lilies to our yard a decade and more ago, we were looking around for special ones and found a wonderful breeder who lives quite near. She sold us for a cheap price her “failures”, species she had created but decided not to pursue further. They are all unique and wonderful! She might not have wanted them but we thought they were perfect! This particular lily is growing on our Ruins Garden.

Monday, July 17, 2006

The heat has set in for a summer stay, I found as I woke up to a sweltering bedroom. I got the air conditioning going and was I glad! After Morning Offering Jim set out for a very full day of mowing, water drinking and gardening and I went upstairs to deal with all that was hanging, hoping that, by the time Romi can print out my new database on Tuesday night, I will have a clear agenda.

My first task was to apprise Romi that I was ready for the print-out. He does not visit on Sundays in the summertime, as Jim and I hive in for a day off during the afternoon and evening hours—our version of a mini-vacation. Now he knows!

Then I sat down to work on a letter to a volunteer which needs to be written. I have felt that it needed doing for some time, and had taken the entire summer to pray and ask spirit for help with this. I am not yet satisfied with my effort, but I did spend a good morning getting to my heart and starting the task of clear and loving communication.

It is so important not to confuse people’s personalities with their soul’s worth. If there is one thing I have learned in several years now of active work in community living and service, it is to focus on the person’s soul, not what he/she is doing. It is no way to run an efficient, worldly organization. But then this is a labor of love, not a for-profit business. So keeping the heart open while affecting positive change for all concerned is my goal here, not being right or being smart. It takes longer but it is worth the effort.

On the other hand, I do wish to find resolution and closure soon, as this kind of issue is a time-consumer. I hope to find the very best way to do that. I have not found it yet. I will know when I have done my absolute best.

After a quick lunch I went over to our family lawyer’s office. When I started the effort of unifying my identity, I had no idea that the process would be so complex or take a lawyer’s help. My first level of effort was just to change how my name read on my credit cards, bank accounts, health insurance cards, passport and driver’s license. When I got to the driver’s license change, they told me I had to go to the Social security Administration office first and change their records, which I did.

With all this in line, I thought that was it, but no! There is a name change form which has to go through the court system for the change to be legal. So I saw Mr. Cato about that. It took a good hour to get every I dotted and T crossed! And I still need to appear with Mr. Cato in court sometime soon, when he has all his paperwork done. I would guess that before the days of heightened security this would never have become an issue for me. However it radicalized me to be halted in security for a very long time, worried about missing my flight, the last time I flew outside the States. The problem was that some of my ID was under Rueckert, some under McCarty and some under Rueckert-McCarty. At the end of this process my official ID will all read the same. And travel should go far more smoothly.

I hope!

Grinning to myself at the screwy times in which we live, I drove home through the sizzling afternoon and tackled my desk work, which had accumulated as it always does! I got two sales catalogues perused, my Christmas Gift List consulted, and a half dozen really nice and thoughtful gifts found for just the right persons—at seriously sliced sale prices! That felt great! Thanks to the excellent occasional sales in catalogues and on line, I seldom have to go out and shop the stores at the retail malls. I count this as a great blessing.

I responded to my brother, Jim, who reported that they had brought back Kai’s son, Fluke, with them from Thailand and he will go to school in Denver this fall. Jim is a man in love! He is so happy with his new bride. He and I talked a bit about Christmas plans, as he is hoping to plan a get-to-know-the-States trip across country either to Louisville, to Falls Church or to Duck Island over Christmas this year during the Rueckert family reunion. Tommy, our other brother, owns the houses in Virginia and Carolina. I suggested we either go to Falls Church—so the always busy Tommy and Mary will not have to travel at all—unless T and M choose otherwise. I sent that suggestion off to both brothers.

Gardening time found me back at the big double-boled sycamore, fishing weeds and spent daffodil leaves out of the glorious day lilies. I thought we had a volunteer stand of lariope there, a blessing if so, but Mick, upon consultation, declared them merely weedy grasses so out they came too. I am about halfway around that huge trunk now. It begins to look loved and cherished again!

That’s the only woe in having such an abundant garden. With all our plantings and the blessing of good rain and sunshine, we cannot keep up with the weeds. So our yard always looks, to me at least, a bit on the neglected side. I think I finally catch up with the weeds sometime around Christmas! Oh well—we love our little piece of earth and cherish it all we can. We certainly enjoy it! There is a life and vitality there which is supernal.

The rest of the day was sweet and normal—Amy Goodman’s terrific news, which generally can hold much tough news in it, hard things to hear but things we need to know, about Lebanon today, World Music and some junk TV for total relaxation. I consulted Mick on the letter on which I’d worked all morning. He said he felt it was excellent but would not create the good feeling I intended when it was received so I knew I needed to pray on it some more. Maybe there is no way to do this better. But I can work with it some more and try.

For the photo today I chose another view of Mick’s triangular dry-work patio, with my Dad’s ancient marble table-top off to the left and our Sweet William—I think—in bloom across the back of the patio. This garden, which we call the Secret Garden, has quite a few older ferns that have flourished through the years and some elegant, mature hostas as well. I have not gotten over there to weed this summer! Grape vine is insinuating itself everywhere. I shall have to get my pruners out! And the wisteria is falling off the garage again! There’s always good work to do in a garden!

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

After Morning Offering Jim entered the sauna of the Kentucky summer to mow while I came upstairs to my bower office, turned on the air conditioner and set to work to find the relevant quotes from the Law of One material for the article on blue ray for UPI tomorrow. It took me until lunchtime to find them all and the selection is most thought-provoking. I shall enjoy collecting my thoughts tomorrow and writing the column.

Then I drove the thirty miles or so to Shelbyville, where my ex-mother-in-law, Mom DeWitt, lives in a nursing home. She was wonderful to me when I was married to her son and was the very best thing about that marriage, which ended after four years in 1968. I retained custody of Mom!

Mom is dying. It was tough to see. I greatly admire her fortitude. She may be well up in her nineties but nothing gets past her. I asked her what her evaluation was of her condition and she said that she was spoiling for either a heart attack or a stroke. She asked me to pray for her as she is ready to die. As badly as she is suffering, with chest pain, arm pain, stomach and bowel woes, a cough and pneumonia always threatening, I am ready to pray for healing whether it is back into this present life or into the larger life of eternity.

We still found ways to enjoy the moment; to laugh and remember good times. I love her so much. It was good to be with her.

I had several calls to respond to when I returned home three hours later, including a call from my prep school, The MacDuffie School, which asked me to be the class captain this year. Since my class was graduated in 1961, I imagine we’re fewer than we were when we left high school, but I said yes. I remember MacDuffie with extreme affection. After being pretty beaten up by the social climate in my home town schools as a kid, prep school, with its emphasis on getting into college and the desperate need of many of the students to meet their parents’ expectations, was a wonderfully supporting and encouraging environment for me. I was glad to help the other kids in my class and we had study groups almost every night. We all got better grades and I loved being helpful - and well liked, for the first time in my life, school-wise.

I had another try at the letter on which I was working yesterday. It is now much shorter and sweeter. I will sleep on it again and see if I can get it to shine even better before sending it out.

Then I tackled the last editing job which is in my Inbox, a speech I gave at Wooded Glen last August on the first three chakras. It’s really nifty that Paul C. has managed to transcribe that, as we will be working at Homecoming with the chakras interactively this year and it’s good to have the material up on site for reference. I got a good start on that before Jim called bath time.

We’ll apparently have a smaller group at Homecoming this year. About a dozen people have signed up so far. I trust the energy of people who decide to come and do not care much about numbers. I love a small group as you can really have the best discussions with a smaller number of participants. I am excited about having the chance really to get into each chakra and talk about the issues involved. And with a smaller group we should be able to have the time to wander off into whatever special questions the participants may bring with them.

After Mick’s and my bath we watched particularly riveting Amy Goodman news broadcast. Lebanon has been bombed terribly in the last few days. Nine hundred thousand people have had to leave their homes. I cannot even imagine that level of devastation. The Israelis have targeted civilian infrastructure like bridges, water supplies and roads. People cannot be taken to hospitals. And meanwhile, reporters there say, the television shows reruns of American comedies and game shows rather than reporting the war. A very surreal attitude seems to exist of deep denial.

The Israelis have taken a page out of the Bush Notebook of foreign policy and say they are merely attacking Lebanon because that country is harboring terrorists. Of course if they were after terrorists they would be making covert incursions and taking out selected targets, not carpet-bombing the civilian populace. It is far easier to see the errors in logic when neither nation-state in such a transaction is our own beloved USA. I keep telling myself that this is precisely why we are here, to love this people, this situation and this planet, right here and right now. Judgment has no part in this love.

Pete Seeger gave a marvelous talk on Goodman’s show the other day about what we regular human beings can do in the face of this kind of warlike atmosphere. He said we all have teaspoons. There’s a load of heavy rocks on the warlike side of the world seesaw. There’s nothing but an empty box on the other end. Pete said that loving and caring people have been filling that empty box with teaspoons full of the sand of love and light for years now. The box is getting fuller by the day as millions of regular people use those teaspoons to smile at strangers, do good deeds, serve the greater good in their communities and share their love. We just have to use those teaspoons.

Romi came over and we enjoyed some blues on the radio and good conversation until the Gaia Meditation, with Romi offering the ending prayer. Then Romi and I went to the quotes database and got it printed out! I am ready to roll now on writing the Choice books except for calculating my target length for each section of each book. Once I get that clearly envisioned, here we go! I hope to get that done tomorrow afternoon, or at least start that delightful task.

The print-out took until almost 11 PM, so we said good night as soon as that was done, and Jim and I bade each other farewell for the night soon thereafter.

Still sharing the photos taken July sixth, here is an image from our nightly relaxation at supper. Jim and I are in the living room with me out of the picture to the left. Pickwick is licking Dan D. while Chloe heads towards Jim for a good scritching. You can see my beloved old Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition and the media nook in the background. Our kitties give us untold joy and add greatly to the quality of our daily life. Bless their little, furry bones, their big, loving hearts and their wonderful purrs. They are very good to their humans!

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

After Morning Offering Mick packed up his water and his mowers and set out to get his customers’ lawns looking good and, in the afternoon, to cut up a bunch of cherry and oak wood for a customer who wants the firewood from her storm debris. It is a huge job! And on another steambath day.

Meanwhile I dedicated the morning to writing the UPI article for this week on the blue ray. These higher chakras are such a joy to write about! Or even to think about! Like most seekers, I enjoy the atmosphere of the higher chakras a lot.

After lunch I had short planning sessions with both Gary and Melissa, working on the myriad of details that come up in the normal course of things. The 2005 tax return for L/L Research finally came from our tax accountants and I got that ready for Jim to sign and send in. This return goes to Utah! Go figure. The nearest big tax office is Indianapolis but perhaps it does not deal with non-profit corporation returns.

I got the Wooded Glen speech Paul C. had sent me and continued to edit it, getting the first part of the speech edited and sending it on to our web guy.

Then I started on part two of that speech, which was on the first three energy centers. The first part of the speech was more about underlying points concerning the whole chakra system and the world it lives in. the second part gets more into each chakra. It will be good to have this material available and I am most thankful for Paul’s transcription work.

Gardening today was still at the old sycamore, whose perimeter takes up a lot of real estate in the back yard. I am perhaps three-quarters done now and can see that we can put in about half a dozen more day lilies as some of our older ones have turned up their toes, er, bulbs. I also found that our delicate white-pink peony, a small bush which we added recently just by the sycamore, had been invaded by what I undoubtedly erroneously call bamboo grass, as that’s what it reminds me of. So I liberated that little bush. It took some time as that grass is very clever, rooting in as close as possible to the favored planting. That and ground ivy are the two most common weeds in our yard. Ironically, they both have a real beauty to them. But when everything grows so bountifully, one must make decisions so as to avoid everything getting overgrown. It’s the kind of ethical dilemma that has always fascinated me.

It was fun out in the yard, as Jim was maintaining his equipment and Melissa was turning the compost and rescuing a fence designed to hold in composting materials which had been overgrown by vining honeysuckle. The honeysuckle smells wonderful but can be very destructive and take fencing right down.

Jim and I spent a very informative evening listening to Amy Goodman’s news, which focused again on Lebanon. I greatly admire her ability to find good people to interview. She had Robert Fisk, Jim’s and my favorite Middle East correspondent, who writes for the London Independent, on tonight. He lives in Beirut and is, of course, quite distressed that such an elegant, civilized and cultured people are being systematically bombed for terroristic activities about which they are helpless to do anything. His discussion gave a lot of depth to the situation, offering insights as to Lebanon’s governmental deficiencies, it being a small, poor, resource-poor and naïve governance compared to the massive juggernaut of Israel.

Jim signed the tax return on behalf of L/L Research and I weighed it and put first-class postage on it to mail tomorrow. It is good to have our governmental paperwork caught up at last. Our accountants have taken their time, getting every detail just so, on this return. It is their first year to do the L/L taxes as well as our personal taxes. I suppose they wanted to be sure of everything. So we got an extension on filing and they went to town on the details. Melissa worked so hard to satisfy all their requests. But now, blissfully, we can call it done! Kudos to Melissa for all the hard work, most of it unpaid, volunteer hours.

The photo today shows the Caladium Garden with its crown of lemon balm and the double-boled sycamore behind it. I’m working between that garden and the sycamore right now.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Overcast and cloudy, the morning still sizzled with very high sultriness but the temperature was down to ninety, a good ten degrees cooler today than yesterday. What a blessing for Mick!

Throughout the long morning I worked on assigning lengths, in terms of pages, to all my topics in the three Choice books. I got well into the 102 volume by the time Mick came home from mowing the Bullocks’ seven acres for some lunch. We enjoyed talking and then stretching together before he went back out to make St. Luke’s churchyard look pretty.

Melissa has been hoping for a trip to Home Depot for a while and we made that today, getting a new pitchfork with narrow tines for the compost—our old one had begun losing its head—a new set of loppers for home, which Melissa immediately put to use on the honeysuckle and even a new set of pruners for me. My good old pair has been somewhat worn by sheer use and neglect—I left them out one day and they got very wet and rusted!

I am happy to say that the letter over which I worked this week was finally just as I would like it. It was sent and it was well received. May all such small troubles be smoothed so well!

I checked the e-mail just briefly, as I am way behind, but no land mines were therein so I decided to end the working day by finishing the editing on my speech at Wooded Glen on the first three chakras from the 2005 Homecoming. It was in two parts and I got the second part finished and sent both parts and the original transcript off to our web guy so he could do his final edit and put it up on line on our archive site with my other speeches.

Then it was out into the sauna of our yard to address the garden. It was so humid that as I walked out to the back yard to begin, round drops of perspiration began to roll down my face. My hat is off to Mick for working in such an intense atmosphere. I found myself drawn to a couple of hot spots in the yard before getting to the sycamore. The edge of the Ruins Garden had gotten overgrown again, hiding the pretty huechera leaves, so I cleaned that up. Then I noticed that the huge stand of lilies along the garage, all of a certain kind of tiger lily, had finished their bloom, so I deadheaded for a long while and in the meantime, noticed that grapevine had taken hold in amongst the lilies and was winding around them insidiously, so I got my new pruners and clipped them out.

Eventually I got back to the sycamore and made some progress at cleaning that up before Mick called bath time.

Amy Goodman’s news show was riveting again tonight, with the focus still upon Lebanon and Israel, since that is where the bombs are falling right now. We had a late supper and the Gaia Meditation and sought our beds after a pleasant conversation with Gary at about 11 PM.

The photo today, from our bunch taken July sixth, is taken from the meditation hut looking out towards the house next door to the south, which is on the corner of Hobbs Park and Hazelwood. You can see across their back yard to the back of their house and Hazelwood. Closer you can see the edge of Don’s yew tree, the cunning walkway Jim made and parts of the cross-shaped patio Jim put in about twenty years ago. The lilies and oak-leaf hydrangea are in the middle ground.

Friday, July 21, 2006

The weather was spoiling for a storm all day as Jim and Gary headed out for their Friday of mowing. After Morning Offering I went upstairs to work on the page assignments for the rest of the Choice books. The goal is to make three 200-page books and so in each chapter I needed to evaluate the proper length for each topic in terms of pages. By the end of the working day I had done just that. It feels wonderful to be getting everything ready to go!

Now I must wrangle the quotes for each chapter into order, as the printer did not order the quotes pages in order all the way through. They shall have to be sorted by hand.

I did not get outside to garden today because I really wanted to finish the page assignments chart. It took every minute I had before bath time!

Amy Goodman had several Israeli and Lebanese sources to interview on her news show today and it is good to begin to see into the politics of the conflict. It would seem that our American efforts to “help” tend to destabilize the resident governments. I truly wish we could allow other nation-states to conduct their own business! Even if they do it otherwise than we would prefer, it is their country!

Jim and I subsided into recreational mode after the news and enjoyed a Stargate block and conversed concerning the www.bring4th.org web site as we dined and then had the Gaia Meditation. We have decided to shut that site down as of August first in order to make some changes.

It was a most enjoyable Friday evening. We sought our beds around 11 PM, very tired and so glad it’s the weekend!

The photograph today is taken from the point of view where yesterday’s photo left off. You can see the extension of the cross-shaped patio to its eastern end where it becomes the arbor and then the path to our back deck. Between the arbor and the house is the Caladium Garden. Jim built every structure and planted every plant in this yard except the very largest of the trees!

Saturday, July 22, 2006

Jim and I had a wonderful Saturday! Jim spent the morning cooking and then running a myriad of errands. After lunch and stretching he worked in the yard, weeding the entirety of it and collecting three large garbage bags full of weeds.

Meanwhile I spent the day working in Jim’s bedroom and bathroom to achieve more of a feeling of order. After I had organized what I could without buying anything, I went shopping and came home with the finishing touches to have a place for everything in those rooms. By the end of the day I’d found a place for everything. The only part of the project left unfinished was a scrapbook for all of the individual mementos which Mick has collected through the years and the framing of a picture of Mike A, a man whom Jim finds a personal inspiration.

This man was injured as a young serviceman. He decided to work even though he had been granted an Army disability and has been a mail carrier for two decades and more. Although he is in constant pain he is involved in mentoring programs in his community for Hispanic children and is a coach for Little League. Mike was a classmate of Jim’s in Nebraska. Jim’s Mom sees his each day, as he brings her the mail. I found a really good frame and will create a nice picture tomorrow.

We had intended to go out and enjoy a jazz set at the Seelbach but we were just too tired, so had a very lazy evening watching forgettable TV and sought our beds early.

The photograph today is of one of our buddleia or “butterfly” bushes just coming into flower. You can see the arbor in the background.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

It was an Edenic Sabbath at Camelot. Jim cleaned and I sang at St. Luke’s. I brought back fast food from Mickey Dee’s and then for the afternoon and early evening we enjoyed a trio of movies with the themes of sex and violence, those two enduring movie favorites. We saw Two for the Money, Basic Instinct II and Match Point. The latter movie won best of series in my opinion, for an intriguing and subtle screenplay. I was impressed by the acting and production values of all these films. Two things amaze me: the number of corporative entities it takes these days to get a movie to video and the banality of the constant violence and casual use of nudity and sexual action. We as a culture seem to have been inured to both and therefore to require huge amounts of it in order to enjoy a film experience. That’s Hollywood’s opinion anyway.

That was the day—an unabashed day off at Camelot! Other than a stroll around our own yard, we hived in and relaxed.

Gary came back from a hard day’s work at Cracker Barrel just in time to share dinner with us. Then he was off again to prepare for his retreat on Avalon. Jim and I shared the Gaia Meditation, with me offering the ending prayer, and we enjoyed some junk TV, romance and conversation until we said good night around 11 PM.

The photograph for today is from the bunch taken on the sixth of July. I thought it would be good to include a look at our ground ivy “garden.” I weed tons of this little vining weed. It and bamboo grass—not its proper name—are the two most common weeds around this area. So in one place in the yard, we let the ground ivy, also called henpet in Kentucky, take over. This is it! You can see how sweetly this weed’s leaf grows, with its frilled and rounded leaf form and its vining habit. Jim’s construction materials are under the henpet! When he needs some bricks or concrete blocks he digs down into the henpet hill and gets what he needs. The weeds cover it back over soon enough and make a garden of it once again!

An interesting point about henpet is in relation to humans and our habitual sins. Some sins are simple, small, one-time things—a misspoken word or a sudden storm of anger. Other sins are covering sins, like lying. Henpet is the latter kind of sin or weed. When you extract a length of henpet from a planting, you uncover a host of small weeds over which the henpet has vined.

You have to weed henpet carefully. It is easy to break the vine. However if you are successful at removing the entire vine down to its root, it exposes a harvest of quickly pulled other weeds and a whole section can be cleaned up quickly. In the same way, if one tells the shining truth, there is no cover in which the small weeds of other errors may hide.

Monday, July 24, 2006

It was a perfect day here, the Rose of Sharon very full in the sunny breeze as Jim went off to mow after Morning Offering. I am dealing with a bad stomach and was hors de combat for most of the morning, but I did get the quotes database which Romi had printed out sorted and placed in chapters. The database software had not followed all my coding system so there were quite a few tangles to sort out, but eventually every quote had its place and now I am officially ready to start on the writing of the Choice books!

After lunch I tackled the build-up of mail on my desk and found that I had business to do for our family lawyer, Mr. C, who is helping me get my name change all legalized. I had to get a statement notarized at the bank and send that back in along with his fee, plus the court’s fees which he will pay for me from his escrow account, having received my check. I did that.

I wrote a thank you note to Marion S, Jr., who has created a book about the principles of the Law of One. He sent it to us in manuscript form to place in our Library. I have not yet seen this manuscript but Gary tells me it is excellent work.

With Gary gone on retreat, I needed to see to the mail, so I went downstairs to sort our offerings from the world. While I was down there I finished up a small project from Saturday, framing one last picture of Jim’s role model, Mike A., and placing it on his shelves. Now that project of spiffing Jim’s room up is all done except for creating a scrapbook out of his various memories, caught in newspaper articles and other bits of paper over many years. I look forward to finishing that project next Saturday.

I filed new papers, took gifts which had come in down to the basement for wrapping later, wrote notes to Melissa on all the items she had left in my Inbox up here, made an order to amazon.com for music CDs which contained songs we had heard on Link TV’s World Music program and made appointments for the kittens to be neutered and declawed. My hope had been to finish the desk and get into the e-mail which has truly stacked to an awesome height, but Jim called bath time before I got that far. No gardening for me today!

Jim and I had a very quiet evening, as I continued feeling poorly. We offered the Gaia Meditation with particular poignancy as Gary is up on Avalon, seeking the heart of self and offering himself for the Creator’s will during this time. We sought our beds around 11 PM.

The photo today is of the little stand of begonias which so resemble bleeding hearts. I love their pink-veined leaves. These were slips from my Pop’s stand in the yard of the house on South Peterson where I lived as a teenager and young woman until I married at age 21. Pop is gone and so are the begonias, there on Peterson Avenue, as the people who moved in after he died did not keep any of our landscaping but redid everything. So I am very glad to have these.

This planting is just by the front porch to the south side of the walk. You can see the variegated ivy behind the begonias, and then the back of the waterfall which offers water to the small, heart-shaped fish pond Jim made in the front yard. Beyond that is Hobbs Park Road, where Camelot lies.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Jim had a cherry tree on his mind today, as he had engaged to cut the large fallen tree into firewood for a customer today. After Morning Offering he was gone all day mowing two very large lawns and then splitting wood. Like George Washington, he did not tell a lie!

I worked in the morning to search the Law of One for quotes on the indigo ray. Tomorrow I will do a UPI article on that sweet subject. This is the penultimate article in this series on the chakras. My goal is not only to create a good series of articles for the column I write but also to create a really good packet of materials for our Homecoming this Labor Day weekend. We’ll collect the columns plus the assorted Law of One quotes for a really thorough look at what the Ra group has to say about the chakra system.

That took me until lunch time. I did some office work downstairs before coming up to my own bower office again after lunch, as Gary is gone for his retreat but the mail keeps being delivered and I want Melissa to have all her papers in order for bookkeeping tomorrow. As I finished that, it was time for me to keep an appointment with Dr. A, my hand surgeon. I had seen another hand specialist earlier this year and he was keen to operate. I was not!

I’d seen the new doctor because I had heard that my long-time surgeon, Dr. A, now almost 80, was thinking of retiring. However I called his office and he is still in practice, so I went to get his opinion. Bless him! He saw the same situation as Dr. B, but with his experience with me, he said that my wrist was stable enough, just very crooked. He offered to fuse it, a much safer procedure than Dr. B was offering me. However I suggested the slight movement I still have there was helpful and he readily agreed, saying he could just as easily prescribe pain medication and tell me to keep my brace on. I liked that solution just fine.

Coming home through an incredible maze of slow traffic, I rejoiced that I seldom have to drive downtown! There were bad accidents in a couple of key locations and the city was bumper to bumper all the way home.

Before Jim called bath time I managed to work with the e-mail a bit, connecting with our web guy to consult on changing my Camelot Journal over to a blog. We will be taking down the www.bring4th.org site temporarily as of the first of August and I need a place to post this journal in the interim.

I have felt sad to take the site down at all, but I believe the integrity of the site’s polarity may well have been compromised by the difficulties in communication experienced by the web master and myself. Although it will greatly inconvenience the users of our forums, I feel strongly that we need to do this to create, when we next have the site up, that feeling of unconditional love which is the product of all the work on the site being done with joy. Because of the communication woes between us, that joy was somewhat missing in the work done on the site lately. In my somewhat eccentric way of looking at things, the magic of the site is its most important asset.

Jim rolled in, quite late as he’d rented a wood splitter and was determined to complete all the cutting today. Was he tired! We enjoyed a whirlpool of great and luxurious length and dived into relaxing while watching the Amy Goodman news broadcast and then a History Channel show on the building of the Great Pyramid at Giza. Of course these scholars never factor in the Ra group’s part in that, so the proposals of how they moved the stones are a bit labored and inaccurate! We enjoyed a late supper and a visit from Romi after that.

After the Gaia Meditation we bade Romi good night and sought our own beds around 11 PM.

The photo today is of our smaller of the two fishponds, the heart-shaped one which we saw the back side of yesterday. The torn water lily which a customer’s dog savaged is almost healed now and the two arrow plants on the right have volunteered this year! The plashing sound the waterfall makes is so pleasant to hear! Having water moving in the yard is a real blessing.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

A feeling of anticipation is building up as I finish projects that need to be done before starting the writing on the Choice books tomorrow. I am nervous and feeling like a trotter before the race. However I had one last article to write before embarking on the work—the article on the indigo ray for UPI. I took the morning, after Morning Offering, to outline and then write and edit my column and sent it in before going down for lunch.

I ha the pleasure of Mick’s company and we got to stretch before he went out again to finish his day. He had the unfortunate luck of finding out, most of the way through cutting a fallen cherry tree into firewood in stove lengths, that the tree was termite infested. So he refused to charge the customer. The customer then paid him more than he was charging for the job! She had the feeling, I think, that he had gone to enormous trouble for her, which he truly had. Yet she cannot use the firewood. Jim wrote her a refund check for half the amount and I guess they will settle there. Both people made generous, service-to-others choices. It just goes to show you how, in reacting to what is happening “out there”, there is always the opportunity to polarize and express the radiation of unconditional love.

With the indigo ray discussed, I am only one article from the completion of what I planned, although I am toying with one last article after the one on violet ray, just to sum up and try to create a good environment for thinking about all of the energy body and chakras. I’ll talk to Gary about his creating the packet from these materials after I finish the series in a couple of weeks.

In the afternoon I tackled e-mail. Our web guy had offered the advice to develop a blog to host the Camelot Journal and I took a look at blogger.com, the recommended site. I shall tackle that in the next few days with Gary’s help.

He also explained what the hold-up was on the Book of Days, which I had hoped we could get out very soon. It turns out that his wife has just finished a book. She wants him to produce it. He said that the choice was between doing the Book of Days and eating home-cooked food. Clearly he will need to do his wife’s book first! I told him the love and care he puts into his projects makes him well worth waiting for.

Then I wrote Gary asking for time with him, when he gets back from retreat and is adminning away for L/L, for figuring out the blog software. I also took the time to respond to a long letter he had sent Jim and me before going on retreat, concerning long-range planning. I wanted to support him all I could.

Lastly, I took some time to thank Paul C. and answer some of his musing and penetrating questions. Paul has done a tremendous job volunteering as a transcriber for L/L Research. All the Wooded Glen transcripts up on line are done by him, among many other things. He wants to move o to some other considerations and I wished him well.

Then I plunged into the sauna of the outdoors, where the perspiration is drawn from you before you ever lift a finger by the sheer humidity. I always feel, after a weeding session in these conditions, as though I had had a spa treatment, as all my pores are wide open and my whole body system is flowing with great circulation and efficiency. A bit of time with the earth is a wonderful settler of the body, mind and spirit. I feel so integrated when I come in, as well as weary! I finished weeding the sycamore and started on the rocks around Jim’s maintenance area. Vines had taken that over and I weeded and snipped away until bath time.

I went to choir practice after the bath, returning home in time for supper and the Gaia Meditation. Then Jim and I both fiddled with the amazon.com/advantage vendor software. We have been selling books wholesale to Amazon for years. Unfortunately they “updated” their system and now nothing works. We cannot open our orders to fill them. We’re getting a huge backlog. Jim is in heavy communication with their representatives and I know we will get this straightened out, but what a total pain! We took the time we’d usually relax to try to solve this tangle but were quite unsuccessful. Hopefully letters Mick wrote will bear fruit soon. Most of our orders come from Amazon.

We came upstairs, having taken all the food up since Dan and Chloe will have their declawing and neutering operations tomorrow. Bless their hearts, I dislike putting them through this but if we want furniture with fabric on the arms and a lack of incestuously conceived kittens around the house, it needs doing. Indeed, I have a neck and chin full of tiny scratches where Chloe has been kneading in total affection while licking my ear, a habit she developed very early in our relationship. When she was a baby it was just cute but of late, with her weight increasing and her strength very much enhanced by all the kitty cat food and romping play, the kneading has become an ordeal. We both apologized to them for what was coming up. We have to leave them for two nights during this procedure and will miss them!

The photo today is of the path around the south side of the house by the front porch and the waterfall of the heart-shaped fishpond. You can see one of the little mounds by the pond and St. Francis in the background along with some of the hedge that borders our property to the south.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

This was the morning chosen to take the kittens to the vet for their necessary ritual of getting neutered and, because they are always to be indoor kitties, declawed, so we did Morning Offering and then got the kittens to Middletown Animal Clinic. Jim headed off to mow and I came upstairs for a real treat!

This was the day I got to start working on The Choice! Throughout the day until about three PM, stopping only for lunch, I worked on the Preface to 101—the first volume. I got it finished in its first-draft form. Tomorrow I shall begin the day by taking one more good, hard look before declaring it done. And then, onward to the Introduction!

In filing away my day’s work I found that I needed to re-label the older writing, done when I thought it would only take me one book to do this project. I got the Preface and Introduction written and was working on Chapter One before I faced the fact that with this outline, it would take me 600 pages to tell the story. There followed a couple of months of regrouping and rethinking, new outlines for three volumes instead of one, and then the repair of my quotes database.

It’s so very satisfying to be working on the writing itself at last!

I was expecting to see our bookkeeper today but she could not make it, so I wrote Bruce himself to ask about whether we had responded to his need for settling accounts with the company that moved his backhoe to his ranch from Avalon. And I wrote our web guy a thank you note for letting me know that in spite of incredible jamming of his time with many things, he continues to find bits of time to work on the Book of Days project. That was sweet news to hear, as he’d previously said that it could be months before he got to it.

I had written him back and given him my OK for that delay because of the excellence of his work and the wonderful, loving attitude he has towards our material. To me, that attitude is worth far more than getting a job done quickly. When Ian finishes production on a work, like A Wanderer’s Handbook, for instance, it has that solid ring of being a labor of love. That energy is worth waiting for and so I told him.

I opened the mail, something Gary usually does, and I shall be glad to have him back in the admin’s chair. Then I changed clothes and streamed outside to join the dancing summer devas. I finished the clearing of Jim’s stone pile, where he keeps his inventory of creek stones. It lies at the base of an ancient pine tree which tore itself apart in two different storms several years ago and had to be taken down. The stump sits to the west of the big free-standing stump which Jim uses as a prop for a ramp up on which he runs his mowers in order to get to the bottom side to clean and maintain them daily. On top of the pine stump, in summer, sits one of our two huge, antique ferns—acquired during a fundraiser in 1975, with the other oldie sitting on top of the maintenance stump—and to the west side of it lies a scree of stone and brick bits. Jim uses them whenever he does stone work.

The henpet had rambled all over it and, worse, Virginia Creeper vines, which had infested the old pine, still live on and keep trying to vine their way over the stones, I pulled up what I could and snipped the rest, and by bath time, the area was all cleaned up.

Gary was expected back this evening, but in the event he did not appear. He must be greatly enjoying his retreat and making it last as long as he can! He has called in each day just to reassure us, as conditions there are rough and he is alone there.

Jim and I enjoyed a particularly insightful and informative program from Amy Goodman on the Hizbollah and its actual status in Lebanon. I had not known that it is not only a militia, raised in response to Israel’s invasion and occupation of parts of Lebanon in the early eighties, but also a valid political party and part of the governance of Lebanon. It deserves respect.

Knowing this, Israel’s position seems crazy indeed to me. The Hizbollah was created by Israel’s aggression, which began in the eighties and continues until today. Now Israel wants to stamp out the Hizbollah. However, obviously, as long as Israel continues attempting to occupy Lebanese territory, which it does continue to do on an ongoing basis, natives of Lebanon will rise to resist such incursions. If the Mexicans tried to retake parts of Texas, for instance, the Texans would resist. So there is no possibility of a peaceful solution there with that goal as stated by Israel. You cannot stop people from trying to retain freedom in their own country. Stamp out the Hizbollah and another resistance effort would take its place.

Interestingly enough, a reporter in Beirut, Lebanon, told Amy that she had done a national poll that day and discovered that 88 percent of the Sunni population of Lebanon—the Hizbollah has Shiite roots—support the Hizbollah and feel it is all that stands between them and Israel’s taking over Lebanon completely. That is persuasive.

We had a quiet evening of supper, the Gaia Meditation and a History Channel show on World War Two and sought our beds around 11 PM.

The photo today, taken on July sixth, shows the area on which I finished working today. You can see the ramp and the stumps, and Jim’s stone pile beyond the pine stump, with the ferns on top of the two stumps. In the photo you can also see a bit of the vining I weeded out today! In the foreground are benches Jim built so people could sit, relax and enjoy the yard.

Friday, July 28, 2006

The humidity and heat had the heavens spitting rain all day, but after Morning Offering Jim and Gary went out and got all the big Friday jobs done anyway, working through lunch and finishing around three PM.

Meanwhile I, intending to work on the Choice Introduction, was waylaid by other matters. Melissa and I had a couple of planning meetings and I had a long telephone call from Janet F, a friend with whom I have not connected in several months.

I got a couple of thank you notes written and a get-well card written to Dana, my friend who is recovering from a cancer operation in which she lost a kidney. When Jim and Gary got home, Gary and I had a short meeting also.

Then Jim and I went to visit the kittens at the vet, or so we thought! They were not scheduled to come home until tomorrow morning, but Chloe had misbehaved so amazingly that the vet let us take them on home, upon receiving our promise that we would keep them segregated from the Wick brothers, with whom they might play too roughly and disturb their operation sites—both had been neutered and declawed.

It was grand to get them home. You never saw two happier kittens or two happier humans, for that matter! I left briefly to keep an appointment for a colonic, and then came home, noticing that our Surprise Lilies were up. These Korean lilies are naked; that is, they have no leaves. They are also unusual in that they grow very quickly, shooting up several inches a day until they reach a height of some two or three feet, at which point they blossom with a heavenly pink bloom.

The story goes around Anchorage that a lady visiting Korea half a century ago fell in love with these unusual flowers and brought home thousands of bulbs, which she planted all over this little, forested village. I rather believe it, as they are still in evidence every year at this time all over.

Jim and I hived in with the kittens in his room after our bath, enjoying Amy Goodman’s news, World Music and Mosaic before having our supper and the Gaia Meditation, then heading upstairs to pat our other two cats, Pickwick and Sedgwick. Jim tried, on the way upstairs, to access our Amazon Advantage vendor account. They recently upgraded the software, and we have not been able to access our orders since. They are stacking up. Jim has corresponded with their representatives at length but so far they have not been able to get us back on line. Jim said, “Tomorrow I shall try again!”

While he worked with Amazon I did some e-mail.

• Bruce and I discussed the Reciprocal System, which he will write about for the Choice books. I greatly appreciate his aid, as I am not a scientist or a physicist! Also, Bruce has made further progress in developing Larson’s physics. I look forward to receiving his writing on that.
• Our web guy and I discussed the Book of Days project briefly.
• Terry H asked me a couple of translation questions on Session 86 of the Law of One material, which he is translating into Chinese. The words “inroad” and “overstrewn” were a mystery to him and we discussed their usage.

It was a lovely late Friday night when we did get upstairs. We cranked up Distraction TV and enjoyed Stargate and Stargate Atlantis before seeking our beds at midnight.

The photograph today is still from the bunch taken by me on July sixth. The day lilies were blooming by the large, sandstone fish pond in the side yard to the north of our driveway. Jim built that pond from sandstone which he harvested from a ruined house on Avalon. Nothing was left of the old homestead except the chimney and some yellowjackets. Jim took down the stones, getting stung multiple times and brought his harvest of sandstone back to Camelot, where he created both the large fish pond and four flower beds around it, on the other side of a creekstone walkway he made around the pond, which is above ground. He has also built a latticed parasol to shade the pond, as it takes the most sunlight per day of any space in the yard, and the pond water tends to turn dark green from all the light. It is hard to see our fish, some of whom are now of a handsome age.

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Saturdays are reserved for all those chores Jim and I do not get to during the busy weekdays. After Morning Offering, Jim and I both headed for the kitchen, Jim to create part of next week’s food and I to make brownies and cookies for 150, for church tomorrow. The choir is responsible for the after-church “Lemonade on the Lawn” and I got cookie duty this week. In the event it took me until 3:30 to do the cookies. Then I spent some time getting out platters on which to take them to church and wrapping them up for the morrow.

Meanwhile, after lunch Jim went out to plant a line of arbor vitae trees along the property line to our south. A new neighbor took down a privacy hedge of forsythia that we had when we arrived at Camelot in 1984. They said it was over their property line, so I suppose they were within their rights. Unfortunately for us, we had given them permission to build on to their house, coming our way, and there remains only a small strip of ground between the two houses. This strip, they decided, would be a nice second driveway. So in addition to having their bedroom windows directly looking into our living room, they removed the privacy hedge and added a driveway.

Charming, eh?

Hence the arbor vitae trees. Naturally, as Jim was planting them, the neighbor came out demanding to know what Jim was doing. This is a neighbor Jim describes as a good challenge for spiritual seekers. He works with this guy because if he cannot make things work with this difficult neighbor, what hope have we in the Middle East for peace? Jim told him about the privacy issue and also that if the driveway really bothered us, we would ask them to remove it. However, he said we’d try it first and see if it was a bother. I thought it a very fair attitude.

Jim also planted the lilies we decided to add to the base of the sycamore tree. I ducked out for a while to take a few photographs of him planting. That’s as close to the garden as I got today!

As Jim was planting, I got out all the scrapbook materials from Jim’s room cleaning, done last week, and created a scrapbook of his mementos. That was the last thing needed to spiff up his room, which is a heady, rich blend of all his memories and fun things, collected over a lifetime. I sometimes lie in Jim’s bed in the morning, snuggling before we get up, and just feast my eyes on all the many treasures and memories. They are just rocks, empty wine bottles, an empty milk bottle from Plaw Hatch Farm, gifts he is fond of and photographs of our pussy cats. But they represent Jim’s very individual energy. I love his room!

Then Gary and I collaborated for a while in setting up my blog. The journal entries will go there starting Monday, August first. There is still more information to fill in but I believe I shall be able to post there OK. It will take more research to discover how to move the archives of the Journal over to the blog, but these things take time. My first concern is to maintain continuity on the Camelot Journal. I think we have that done now, thanks to Gary’s good help with the set-up and his design—Gary designed the look of the blog. Its address is http://llcamelot.blogspot.com/

Tomorrow I shall post to all the forums apologizing for the necessity of taking the www.bring4th.org site down temporarily. It was not a decision made lightly. It feels right. Hopefully things will work out so that we are able to re-launch the forums and all else on B4 soon. Meanwhile it is fortunate that Bruce has a good forum up on his Antiquatis site. That is an artifact of his rescuing the forums from the original B4 site which was hacked down over a year ago now. We have had continuing woes with that site! When we have it back up, hopefully it will ring with love and light. That is our true gift! The contents are good too, hopefully, but we start with the love and light.

Jim and I bathed and headed out for an evening of Steve Crews’ piano playing at Park Place. It was a delightful set. Steve is most witty. My favorite musical juxtaposition was the segue from “When My Man Is Gone” to “I’ll Take Manhattan.” Steve plays with great delicacy and has an encyclopedic knowledge of the ins and outs of jazz history. He asked me for my favorite and I selected “All the Things You Are”, a lovely old ballad. Not only did he play it, but he chose to use a version done by Dizzy Gillespie—which he explained to me. What a guy!

We returned home, offering the Gaia Meditation in the car, and subsided into a kitty cat free for all as we let the kittens out of Jim’s room for the first time since their declawing experience. We’d had to keep them closeted because their tender paws might get infected if they used a regular litter box. They’d been using newspaper strips. It was great fun to have all four cats romping around. We sought our beds around midnight.

Today’s photograph was taken July sixth and shows the huechera growing at one corner of our Ruins Garden. I love the leathery leaves. Since I took that photograph, it has come into bloom. It has a small spike of bloom, much like the hosta but smaller.

Friday, July 28, 2006

Bring4th.org will be taken down as of August 1, 2006 for the indefinite future. Please see Carla’s post on the matter for more details. Here is the relevant excerpt:

I have felt sad to take the site down at all, but I believe the integrity of the site’s polarity may well have been compromised by the difficulties in communication experienced by the web master and myself. Although it will greatly inconvenience the users of our forums, I feel strongly that we need to do this to create, when we next have the site up, that feeling of unconditional love which is the product of all the work on the site being done with joy. Because of the communication woes between us, that joy was somewhat missing in the work done on the site lately. In my somewhat eccentric way of looking at things, the magic of the site is its most important asset.

If you have any experience in web site architecture and administration and would like to volunteer for Bring4th please contact Carla. As soon as I’m aware of the new location of the Camelot journal I will post it here.

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Sunday was a true Sabbath today as, after my church service and Jim’s house cleaning service, we settled in for an afternoon of movies, our summer-Sunday treat. It has been a wonderful summer of such Sundays, affording Jim especially a real break from hard, physical labor—and giving me a break from creative thinking! My critical faculties were in full swing, however, as always!

I got a bit of early morning work done before church. I tried to post a note to all the forums on B4, discussing the temporary removal of the B4 site, apologizing for feeling the need to do so and thereby inconveniencing users, and thanking Jeremy for his excellent service as web master on B4. However, somehow, my password had gotten upscrod and I could not get on the site. Happily, Gary has some admin time tomorrow and I will ask him to post the notes for me. I also got the Camelot Journal entry posted.

The rest of the day was relaxation all the way, with three movies to charm us. After the first movie, Jim and I did some mail. After the second movie, we had a good walk around the yard, finding my next weeding chores and talking about the situation with our neighbor to the south.

Jim then created a very just and gentle letter to Lee concerning a conversation Lee had with Jim. Lee’s latest bright idea is for us to move our satellite dish. He finds it unsightly, which is humorous, considering the ugliness of the construction site we have been gazing at in baffled consternation for two and a half years. Jim found that it would cost fifty dollars for the company to move the dish, and informed Lee that when Jim got Lee’s check for $50.00, he would engage the company to move the dish. In actuality the dish is almost completely hidden by our Rose of Sharon hedge.

I loved Jim’s ability to project a gentle and kindly feeling and still create a sense of integrity and fairness.

Gary had scheduled a talk with Jim and me for the evening and we enjoyed a leisurely and probing conversation about Gary’s future plans. Gary is considering his overall goals and is at a point in his life where he needs to make some choices. We think the world of Gary and assured him that we would encourage him in whatever his decisions were, concerning college and his future path within the world and with L/L Research.

Gary offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation which we shared at 9 PM and then it was time for Jim and I to call his Mom in Nebraska, which we did before retiring to our beds for some good snuggling, kitty-cat-patting and good nights.

I shall attempt to post this entry to the Camelot Journal blog as well as to B4, as tomorrow’s entry will need to be posted to the blog only, as the B4 site will come down. It will be good to have a practice run! I shall wait until tomorrow, when Gary the admin is available for consultation, to try that! That address for the journal is http://llcamelot.blogspot.com.

The photograph today is a little vignette of Jim’s Lawn Service, with a rose in the foreground. You can see, from the vantage point of the rose garden between the driveway and the large fish pond to its north, our driveway with Jim’s lawn service truck and trailer, the maintenance ramp and the house beyond. The 10-gallon cans sticking off the truck are Mick’s homegrown method of protecting his weed eaters when they are at home. He does not drive around with those on, as they would certainly fall off. But it protects the weed eaters from the rain when the rig is resting.

I love this little photo, as it rather captures the juxtaposition and harmonization of the worldly and the sacred in the lives of Jim and me and Gary here at L/L Research. We work hard, and yet the perfection of the plan is often evident to us for moments and even hours at a time, as we weave our worldly chores into sacred service and our humble and casual thoughts into a tuned expression of devotion and the offering of our lives to the Creator.