15 Jan 2008 20 Comments
I’m signed up for a number of liberal e-mail lists that periodically ask me to send messages to senators and the like regarding whatever this week’s worthy cause may be. The latest, from Move-on, points out that during the last year, reporters have asked the presidential candidates 2,679 questions. The number asked about global warming [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
04 Jan 2008 10 Comments
A friend on an e-list I’m on wanted to know about the Greyhaven New Year’s Eve Ball, and I thought you all might appreciate it too. Other members of my family who are also on LJ are welcome to add their perspectives…. The Annual New Year’s Eve Ball at Greyhaven is partly the fault of [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
27 Dec 2007 7 Comments
My mother and father both came from large families, but I was an only child. I used to envy the big families I read about. Then I had the fortune to marry up with three other people who were also effectively only children and wanted community. Which is how I ended up cooking for 23 [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
14 Dec 2007 21 Comments
There’s been a lot of discussion in the media about whether the new film of Pullman’s THE GOLDEN COMPASS is anti-Christian. What no one seems to have mentioned yet is how heathen it feels. Some Christian groups are up in arms because the villains in the piece belong to the hierarchy of the “Magisterium”. In [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
07 Dec 2007 8 Comments
I don’t know about anyone else, but I have a series of gears, or programs, or some other metaphor for changing focus. When I am writing, I’m focused on that, and have to wrench myself back to consensus reality to go to meetings, run rituals, etc. This state has the advantage that I can ignore [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
23 Nov 2007 9 Comments
Way back in 1969 (two years before we moved to Greyhaven), Thanksgiving was approaching, and I thought we needed something to unify our coalescing family and the people who happened to be living with us that year. We needed a Tradition…. so I wrote a little ritual in which, after some historical perspective, everyone says [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
20 Nov 2007 14 Comments
A number of years ago, Margaret and Kristoph of the music group Broceliande got a bunch of us together to make a tape of songs from the first three Westria books (THE WANDERSONG). Last year, they asked if I wanted to do one of the songs from the four Jewel books as well. This afternoon [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
11 Nov 2007 39 Comments
English is a funny language, a hybrid of foreign vocabulary grafted onto a Germanic original, whose grammatical peculiarities have been gradually dying away over the years. The latest words to face extinction are some of the past tenses of irregular verbs. I have seen them replaced by logical, but incorrect forms in the work of [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
07 Nov 2007 2 Comments
Happy Birthday, Ember! and here’s the Swedish Birthday song! And may she live, and may she live, And may she live for a hundred years, And when she has lived, and when she has lived, We’ll carry her out in this wheelbarrow here!
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
06 Nov 2007 20 Comments
Got back from World Fantasy Con late last night. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this one, it’s a professionally oriented (though not limited to pros) con held on the weekend closest to Hallowe’en that moves around the country. So many writers show up that only the Guests of Honor get more than [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
15 Oct 2007 5 Comments
This afternoon Lorrie and I went to a concert of the California Symphony in Walnut Creek to hear Holst’s THE PLANETS. They had decided to make the opening concert special by having a video by the Adler Planetarium in Chicago that showed a montage astronomical and historical footage about each of the planets as each [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
11 Oct 2007 No Comments
A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed by Steve McEllistrem for “Write On Radio” on KFAI in Minneapolis. They aired the interview today. Anyone who wants to hear more about RAVENS OF AVALON can access it through the KFAI website: www.kfai.org. Either access it through programs and schedule by dropping down to Write on [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
11 Oct 2007 9 Comments
Remember the Teal Party? Well, when some of you expressed discomfort with the idea of following Odin into the fight against Global Warming, Heimdall kindly volunteered. The premise behind this song is the identification of the jotnar (the Norse giants), with the spirits of elemental forces such as fire, frost, earth, wind and sea. So [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
05 Oct 2007 13 Comments
A lot of writers use recorded music as a soundtrack for writing. Most of the story I just finished for the upcoming anthology, LACE AND BLADE (edited by Deborah Ross for Norilana Books) was written to Villa-Lobos’ “Bachianas Brasileiras” (SF Symphony with Michael Tilson Thomas), but live music does even more. A few years ago, [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
27 Sep 2007 5 Comments
Lately I’ve mostly been talking about GOLDEN HILLS, but since RAVENS OF AVALON is my most recent publication, I really ought to be focusing on that one, and give it what help I can. I recently learned that the publisher is doing a full-page ad in the program book for World Fantasy Con, to be [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
21 Sep 2007 3 Comments
So, the boxes of books have arrived. They are the hardcover, beautifully produced, with nice paper that will not turn yellow in 20 years. You can order them for $20.00, postpaid, which is less than list price. Send the check to me at 90 El Camino Real, Berkeley, CA 94705. And when you have read [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
28 Aug 2007 6 Comments
Thanks for all the sympathy, folks, and the interest. I think this is the paperback, so the cost will be $5 or $6 plus postage. I’ll know how much that is when I mail the first one. In the meantime, I think it’s still available on Amazon. I find the whole situation frustrating, as aside [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
23 Aug 2007 14 Comments
So last year sometime I got contacted by someone doing a book about magical places in California and they wanted to talk to me about Greyhaven. That seemed reasonable. Visiting Greyhaven has been accused/described, as entering a visionary state/going to Elfhill/meeting up with the witches often enough. Eventually the photographer arranged to come by. He [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
20 Jul 2007 13 Comments
John Muir once said that he was very fond of earthquakes because he liked to see people acting in earnest, and during an earthquake, everyone is very much in earnest… The shake that awakened us this morning at 4:42 a.m. was a 4.2 quake. Clearly the meaning of life is an event that makes everyone [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
09 Jul 2007 No Comments
lwood posting here, as Diana and I are both a bit wrung-out from all of last week’s excitement and jetlag. Anyway, you can find a record of the interview Barry Lynn, head of Americans United for Separation of Church and State had with Diana, Selena Fox of Circle Sanctuary, and Caroline Kenner of Chesapeake Pagan [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
04 Jul 2007 3 Comments
Lorrie is letting me use her laptop for my own comment on today’s events. I’m still pretty jazzed by how well the Pagan Religious Rights Rally in Lafayette Square Park (across from the White House!) came off.
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
21 Apr 2007 8 Comments
There once was a planet called Earth, A place of both sorrow and mirth. But when Global Warming Became quite alarming, We discovered the need for rebirth. I know limericks are supposed to be funny, but, well… My good deed for Earth Day will be to deliver a carload of old computers and peripherals to, [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
10 Apr 2007 No Comments
In anticipation of Earth Day, the environmental activitists are sponsoring nation-wide rallies next Saturday, April 14th to demonstrate for swifter action for Clean Energy. I’m too claustrophobic to feel comfortable at demonstrations and rallies (I managed to get through the entire decade of the 70′s with no more than a whiff of tear gas), but [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
06 Apr 2007 9 Comments
Last Tuesday evening, I held down the Eastern Quarter for the graduation/final ritual of Arbor Vitae, a Kabbalistic study group sponsored by the Fellowship of the Spiral Path. It was particularly interesting because the Spiral version of Kabbalah studies started with a group I led back in the 1980′s (a tradition that I used to [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
23 Mar 2007 No Comments
I could hardly resist the drawing personality test, but I must admit I cheated and used the graphics pad. On the other hand, I think the test was interpreted from the answers to the questions. [edit: the image of the drawing no longer exists] The results of your analysis say: You tend to pursue many [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
15 Mar 2007 11 Comments
So last night at Hrafnar we were honoring Heimdall, and as usual, I throw in a guided meditation to let people talk to him inside as well as outside. As for myself, I was asking him to continue to keep an eye on the jotnar, especially the unbalanced ones. The sense I got was that [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
09 Mar 2007 61 Comments
Took the opportunity to catch up on my friends’ list and saw the lwood post sequence about rating oil compananies and the like. I was pleased by the requests to be on a TP mailing list (is that a bad acronym? It does relate to recycling ). However Lorrie’s comment that posting on various venues [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
27 Feb 2007 19 Comments
Should have watched the Oscars– I missed Al Gore being amazed that AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH won Best Documentary and another for the song. Bet that’s one award he never expected. But he’s not about to miss an opportunity. He wants to present Congress with a room full of messages when he testifies before Congress on [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
26 Feb 2007 8 Comments
The Electric Beavers actually finished their work in one day, although they left several things non-operational behind them. One set of faucets are too antique to mate with the contemporary pipes and will have to be replaced. The outflow from the downstairs antique porcelain sink, which was apparently held together by faith and habit, was [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
24 Feb 2007 4 Comments
Well, alas, there’s one down– A friend just sent me the following: “Vilsack Drops Out Of ’08 Race: Cites Better-Known, Better-Financed Rivals Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thenewswire/archive/../../2007/02/23/vilsack-drops-out-of-08-_n_41937.html Vilsack left office in January and traveled through states holding early tests of strength. … Read the rest at HuffingtonPost.com ” I’m sure that the California Conservation Voters and all the [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
23 Feb 2007 8 Comments
So, as those of you who also friend Ian already know, Greyhaven has been invaded by half-a-dozen Electric Beavers, who are hammering, sawing, and generally chewing open the walls in order to insert new copper pipes. Every time the floor vibrates I twitch. But it was time. Anyone who has visited here is probably aware [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
20 Feb 2007 18 Comments
Recuperating from Pantheacon and my birthday dinner (with many thanks to my daughter-in-law Elisabeth for a yummy caramel cake and Lorrie for selecting, planning and serving while simultaneously performing arcane operations on all our computers). We had salmon, green long beans with mushrooms, wild rice, carrots and celery heart roasted with chicken and of course [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
10 Feb 2007 12 Comments
So, a year and one day after THE GOLDEN HILLS OF WESTRIA appeared in hardcover, a box of the paperbacks was deposited at my door. On the exact day scheduled for publication, yet. Remarkable speed and organization for a publisher. This is the Westrian revival book that picks up 25 years after the end of [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
02 Feb 2007 11 Comments
For the past two weeks, I’ve been going to Sarah-Rachel’s apartment to tackle the job of clearing it out, aided by several blessed friends, some of whom knew her, but others who are just plain helpful people (thank you, Catherine!). You may think your place is a mess, but most of us at least attempt [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
29 Jan 2007 41 Comments
Every January, I throw a devotional in honor of Odin, to which we invite those of my kindred and the Umbanda House who are interested in possessory work with the Norse gods. This year, things got rather…interesting. For those of you who were *not* at the party, it’s like this… I have long held the [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
25 Jan 2007 15 Comments
Several afternoons this week have been devoted to going through my friend’s apartment, sorting her stuff into things to throw away,give to the GoodWill, and save for distribution to friends and family. I am deeply grateful to the several friends, some of whom did not even know her, who have volunteered to help me. So [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
18 Jan 2007 10 Comments
Yesterday morning, at about 4 a.m., I woke up, and as I sat wondering whether to go make myself a cup of hot milk to get back to sleep, the hospital called to tell me that my friend had passed away. My fear was that she would have to spend an indeterminate amount of time [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
15 Jan 2007 25 Comments
Wow! Word sure gets around. I’ve been flummoxed by the flood of friends (eek, attack of the killer alliteration bug). Thank you all– I’m still trying to sort out which user-name is whom, so if I haven’t responded properly, please forgive. In any case, I appreciate the welcome. Today’s task was to finish revisions on [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
14 Jan 2007 47 Comments
Some are born bloggers, some achieve blogdom, and some have blogging forced upon them…. Kicking and screaming, or at least meeping and moaning, I have allowed lwood to drag me into the great wide blogosphere. Wish me luck, everyone. So as I understand it, this is the place to let friends know what’s going on [more...]
by dpaxson in Uncategorized
