Screenreader greenpane News and Extras
News (click)
House of Danu Lughnasadh Festival weekend (July 30 to August 2), Santa Cruz mountains north of Watsonville. 2nd Annual Gorsedd. All Bards, Ovates, Druids and Neopagans welcome!
In October 2009, Isaac Bonewits was diagnosed with cancer—he has a good prognosis but feels crappy due to treatments. Send Isaac and Fay prayers, healing vibes and cash.
from Storycatcher (click)
pages 18-19
written by Christina Baldwin
of Peerspirit, Washington,
reprinted here with author's permission
I have read a story of a tribe in southern Africa called the Babemba in which a person doing something wrong, something that destroys the delicate social net, brings all work in the village to a halt. The people gather around the "offender," and one by one they begin to recite every thing he has done right in his life: every good deed, thoughtful behavior, act of social responsibility. These things have to be true about the person, and spoken honestly, but the time-honored consequence of misbehavior is to appreciate that person back into their better part of himself. The person is given the chance to remember who he is and why his important to the life of the village.
I want to live under such a practice of compassion. When I forget my place, when I lash out with some private wounding in a public way, I want to be remembered back into alignment with my self and purpose. I want to live with the opportunity for reconciliation. When someone around me thoughtless or cruel, I want to be given the chance to respond with a ritual that created the possibility of reconnection. I want to live in a neighborhood where people don't shoot first, don't sue first, where people are Storycatchers willing to discover in strangers the mirror of themselves. I want to be surrounded by a story-based culture that itself remembers story is essential to human survival.
Screenreader Where is Gilroy?
Map: Where in the World is Gilroy?
where we are headquartered
5 January 2010
Gilroy is situated in an enchanted, magickal valley, bounded by the Santa Cruz Mountains to the west and the Diablo Mountains to the east. It gets really hot between July and September, similar to a good deal of California. We have December, January, February—and summer. Usually around July, the hills that border Gilroy turn beguiling shades of ochre, like THIS, THIS and THIS. Hence, the name. The bad thing is that the mountains block off locations to the east and west, including preventing cooling from the ocean's moisture from reaching us in summer. The good thing is that the mountains would prevent a tsunami from drowning us. Somehow would rather get the cool ocean moisture arriving on breezes. Gilroy is far enough away from San Jose, Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Salinas and Monterey making it a community unto itself. Historically, Gilroy was a town travelers stopped overnight while passing between San Jose and Monterey. Hence, this site.