blog post

I would like to thank everyone who has visited this site for their encouragement.
As of Saturday, March 25, 2007, apparent changes to the WordPress programming interface make it impossible for me to use the site indendently.
In order for a blind person like me to interact with a computer, software such as JAWS is used to [...]

I’m Free

This past week, I received plenty of lessons as a healer, and, as usual, each built on what had come before and would be useless without my prior experiences.
Last spring, I began making “Soul Essence” pieces, “composing” music that was a sound portrait of a person’s inner being or core. I say “composed” in [...]

Into the Woods: Purple Heart, Yellow Heart, Birch

Frank, the wand maker, calls this wand “Triple Treat”.

I had no intention of getting another wand; it seems I’ve already got quite a collection. But when he said that it hadn’t found a home yet, I heard the words, but didn’t listen right away.
My guides, however, made sure I got the message later [...]

Into the Woods: Japanese True Ebony

I’ve had this wand, already shaped, for months, and it’s still waiting for me to sand and polish it. Right now, it has a dormant feeling to it, as if the polishing reveals it’s true heart.
I already have an ebony wand, but this was wood that captured my attention, and I think, like the [...]

Into the Woods: Little Rosewood with a Twist

“You skipped one,” Ted said to me this past weekend when we were talking about the writing I was doing about wands.
“I did? Which one?”
“Rosewood with a twist,” he answered, but I couldn’t remember any such wand. I was sure he was right; he keeps good records on things like wands, especially if [...]

Into the Woods: Sequoia

The most businesslike of the wands I have is a big sequoia wand.

To me, sequoia embodies collective wisdom acquired over hundreds or thousands of years. Looking out on the world with that kind of long lifespan, a sequoia doesn’t get caught up in all the moment-to-moment things that characterize life on the [...]

Into the Woods: Japanese Boxwood

My next wand arrived from Japan. The woman who had sent the jin dai maple included it in a package she sent us and said it was for me.
It’s the smallest wand I have, and like the maple, it is associated with dreams. The night before the package arrived, I dreamed about a [...]

Into the Woods: Rowan

The second wand I polished myself was made from more wood from Japan. At first, we thought it was Japanese wild pear, but it turned out to be rowan instead.

It was perhaps as different than the blue ebony I’d just done as I could have gotten. It’s soft, light wood, and in its [...]

Into the Woods: Blue Ebony (“But I Don’t Wanna Be a Chopstick!”)

When Ted first met Frank, the wandmaker, it seemed that anything and everything Ted touched that was made of wood could and might be made into a wand.
There’s a Chinese restaurant here called Dragon Buffet. It has the usual all-you-can-eat Americhinese items, like chicken chow mein, pizza, won ton soup, chicken fingers, egg rolls [...]

Into the Woods: Jin Dai Maple

Shortly after being attuned to Level 3 reiki in late September of 2006, a package arrived from Japan. It contained wood, which wasn’t unusual; we’d been getting lots of wood from people in Japan. I always looked at it briefly, but it never really captured my attention.
Well, that changed with the contents of [...]