Several months ago a good friend was telling me about this series of Rites he was getting. They came from an ancient Inka group in Peru and this whole new adventure had changed his life drastically. At the time, I was really interested but due to prior commitment on that night, I just couldn't become involved in it.
I kept hoping that the teacher of the class would change the night so I could attend but that just didnt seem like it was going to happen so the middle of January I went to the Free Introduction and decided there and then to sign up for the nine week program!! Several of my drumming friends and two of my very good friends signed up too... it was like my whole family decided to do this at the same time.



MUNAY KI SITE
there are also three videos that explain EVERYTHING about this--- so be sure to view them if you go to the site ----there is a lot of info here so be sure to use the links on the right side of the page to gather more information

this is an AWESOME experience--- life changing for sure--

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this to everyone-- -i am sure if you live in a fairly large city, there will be a someone who is teaching it--

I am fortunate in that Debra Kruljac, who has studied under Alberto Villoldo and shamans in Peru lives here in Melbourne and offers the courses.


Rather than try to explain this in my words here is the intro from the Munay-Ki site--
The Munay-Ki are the nine great rites of initiation of the medicine way. The word munay means “I love you” or “BE AS THOU ART.” The Munay-Ki are the nine gates that heal us and transform our human energy field into that of homo luminous.

The prophecies of the ancient Americas speak about a new human appearing on the planet – one who lives free of fear and resides in his or her transcendent nature. The Munay-Ki are the codes for the new human. They are delivered in the form of energetic transmissions. The ninth rite, the “Creator Rite” was transmitted for the first time in the summer of 2006 at the Holy Mountains in the Andes. The nine initiations of the Munay-Ki have only been available until recently to the high wisdom keepers of the Americas.

THE FOUR WINDS
this is Alberto Villoldo's teaching site-- lots of information here too

Recommended Reading:

Dance of the Four Winds: Secrets of the Medicine Wheel

By Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D. and Erik Jendresen. In this riveting narrative of spiritual discovery Alberto Villoldo journeys to Peru to investigate the practices used by Indian shamans to access the four paths of the Medicine Wheel.
Soft Cover - $16.00 available at the four winds site and also amazon

Island of the Sun

By Alberto Villoldo, ph.D. and Erik Jendresen This book describes Villoldo's initiation into the secrets of the Inka Medicine Wheel as he prepares himself for the Journey to the North, to understand the wisdom teachings of Inka shamanism.
Soft Cover - $16.00 available at the four winds site and also amazon

I came across this video today on another web site and it touched me deeply....maybe we all need a reminder every now and then of what we have and how very fortunate we are to have it........

I cant believe my last post was in November--but Life has taken me on a wild and exciting ride and i have been going in a million different directions on this new path!




December 5th was my VERY FIRST ART GALLERY SHOWING! It was an awesome, magical, night that will be etched in my memory forever.







Pam, the gallery owner kept telling me that it was going to be an emotional night but i had NO IDEA just how emotional it was going to be.... the turnout was amazing-- all my friends came...people i didnt know came and actually bought my work!!!! My good friend John made a DVD of my digital work complete with music and it played on the TV in gallery all night!!! How cool is that????




Journals, spiritmen, spirit masks, handmade paper items went flying out of the gallery... the air was electrified with such joy, excitement, emotion-- wow it was so awesome!!!

At the end of the night Pam presented me with the framed advertisement for the show that everyone who attended signed! It was a huge surprise!!









To see more photos of the show go here

Whew things have been so hectic and busy-- a weekend trip to West Virginia [Oct 19th]to see some friends turned into a much longer stay....but it was a good time to just relax and get away. The leaves were beautiful, the weather cooperated by not being too cold, and I got to meet some great new people too.
Once home November 4th..I had tons to catch up on and had to begin working on the art for the gallery show December 7th....yes a local gallery-- DEMOISELLE'S( French for dragon fly) wants to have a showing for me...it was supposed to be the first Friday in November but since my stay in WV was longer than anticipated, Pam postponed it until December!!
I am really excited about this...and have been working extremely hard to get my work ready. I will have my spirit men, spirit masks, decorative bottles, new collages on canvas, handmade paper bowls, wall hangings, journals,angels, and maybe some digital work! The time certainly is perfect as the Holiday buying season is first and foremost so I am hoping to sell many items.
ok break time is over-- gotta get back to art--

Oh where does the time go? Here it is September already!! The majority of August was spent attempting to repair all the lightning damage and thankfully all has been taken care of.... A whole house surge protector was installed (Aug 22nd), the pump timer replaced,and sprinklers repaired so all is back to normal as far as the lightning strike damage.

On a sad note I had to put my dear cat Simon down on August 20th. He had been a faithful companion for many years but due to his health problems I just couldn't take it anymore. Although not ill with any life threatening disease, he had not only a constipation problem and had to be given laxatives almost everyday but he also would simply urinate all over my house.

I had tried EVERYTHING...the vet recommended psychotropic drugs almost a year ago which didn't work...pheromones which didn't work, and finally in desperation I contacted a pet psychic who honestly did more to stop the problem than anything else.

The problems just became overwhelming and the stress of wondering where he was and what he was doing, and cleaning up after him took its toll on both him and me....

It was such a difficult decision...however now we both are free.

Farewell dear friend....you will be missed.




On August 25th a major art dream came true! I have been making shrines from Styrofoam packing material and showed them to Pam at Creative Energy-- a metaphysical store here in Melbourne. I had two to show her and she totally freaked out over them and took those two and ordered four more!!!! I have secretly always wanted to have my work in her shop so this is such a fantastic event. She also wants to see my other work so after Labor Day I have made an appointment to see her.

Well I called the UPS people on Tuesday 24th and actually had a pleasant experience with their Tech dept. It took a long time to go through everything and the girl on the phone had never had a situation like mine so we had to go through the Engineering Dept.

Good news is however that they found a fix and it was easy. I am pretty sure it was their last resort....unplug machine and take it in another room and plug it in there.

Once I did that it booted right up!!! So computer is back up and running!!

The insurance company took care of the claim with no problem.

I called the Hyundai dealership after talking to insurance company to see if I could tow the car there but they don't do body work. Recommended Dennis' Auto Body- the body shop that does all of their work so I called there and spoke to Durk who was fantastic. He got my car towed to his shop within about ten minutes and told me to tell the insurance company it was there and he would take care of everything.

I rented a Jeep so now I have wheels and things are looking much brighter!!

After some serious thought I realized that all of this could have been so much worse
The lightning only damage THINGS--its just stuff--- my house didnt get hit...I didnt get hit--- nothing really bad happened-- I just lost a bunch of stuff that can be replaced.

The car accident also could have been worse-- if the car hadn't made that slight curve it might have gone into the house across the street.... I could have been seriously hurt or killed by it knocking me down...

So I am glad that I have put things in perspective and I feel much better about it all now.

Whew things have really been horrible for the last few weeks...Bev's passing, the lightning strike, and Suzie's Mom.....and on Monday July 23rd i had a most horrible day.

I went to install the UPS battery backup I had purchased when I bought the new computer but the software wasnt compatible with Microsoft Vista. So I went on line and wrote the tech dept of the UPS and they sent me a download link so I could install the software. IMMEDIATELY upon installation, the new computer crashed and wouldn't boot up at all!!!!!!!!!!!! I totally freaked out....I tried unplugging it but that didnt help so I called my son but couldn't get him at work or at home.

I didnt have a clue what to do but I knew this was serious and was terrified that the hard drive had crashed and I had lost everything again. The Acronis back up drive software wasnt compatible with Vista either so I didnt have the back up drive connected!
tother slight turn and ended up in my next door neighbors front yard where it stopped THANK GOD!!

I didn't realize the door was totally screwed until I managed to drive it back into my driveway... the door was so sprung it couldn't be closed and there were scratches on the passenger side where it had scraped the mailbox.

I WAS DEVASTED....I HAD WRECKED MY CAR!!!!

Called JP told him I wouldnt be coming to drum class(!) my son,Scott who still wasn't home, my next door neighbor to tell him that there were tire tracks in his lawn..he came right out and the tracks werent bad at all but I felt like I should tell him about them anyway. He was more concerned about me than his lawn. The mail box neighbor just moved in and I hadnt met him and he wasnt home so I left a note on his front door telling him to call me and I would pay for the damage(which again was minute)to his mailbox.

I was totally lost....no computer, no car...trying to get my brain to work to figure out what I had to do to report to insurance company.... it was just awful.

My son called later that night -- totally freaked that I had been hurt.... and was relieved to know I was ok. He couldn't come and check out the computer so we made plans for later in the week for him to come and take a look at it.

Computer less and car less --plus no TV!!! So I cleaned the garage!!!

It is hard to loose an old friend-- Bev passed away on Friday July 13th...

we had been friends for over 30 years and there is an emptiness in my heart that will take a long time to heal.

In the last couple years we had drifted apart due to a total misunderstanding on both our parts really...but it caused a rift that simply tore a major hole in our relationship.

She had fought a long, hard battle for over ten years with cancer...but it finally took over almost her entire body and there was no chance of recovery, or remission.

I got the call Saturday morning just as I was leaving to go drumming with JP. He had a job with a store in town that was having a big side walk sale and they wanted him to drum both Friday and Saturday....

I was the only other person he had asked to drum with him and I didn't feel comfortable not supporting him so I basically ran away from my sadness and spent the day in the unbearable heat,drumming.

Sunday my dear friend Suzie's 89 year old mother was rushed to the ER with heart problems. I didn't hesitate to get to the hospital as fast as I could..Mom is so dear to me and I knew the situation was grave. Her heart would simply stop beating for several seconds and then start again --it was very scary and each time it stopped beating we all weren't sure it would start again.

We spent several hours in the ER but there was finally a bed available for her on the floor so we made sure she was comfortable and stayed with her for another couple hours.

By the time I got home I was totally drained and exhausted both physically and emotionally.

Monday was the viewing for Bev at the funeral home...my son Scott was good enough to take me...it was very hard-- Bev was cremated but seeing all the pictures of her simply broke my heart and I realized just how empty my life had been without her presence the last couple years. Our misunderstanding seemed so damn stupid now...

There were tons of people at the funeral home-- old rugby friends I hadnt seen in ages.... it is weird how a death brings people together...

Tuesday was the funeral... I honestly didn't think I would make it through it. So many memories flooded over me....so many good times....she was always "there" for me-- I could ALWAYS count on her.... and now she's gone forever and I didnt even get to see her or tell her goodbye......

Holy Cow...on Friday July 20th while sitting in the studio talking to JP on the phone a huge lightning bolt hit so close to my house that I actually thought it had hit the house!! The noise from it was deafening and I hung up the phone and immediately searched the house for the smell of smoke or fire!

I discovered my cable was out so called Brighthouse right away...they said there were no other reports of outage from my area so they would send a tech out tomorrow between 1-2pm.

It was really weird to be with out computer and tv...so I worked in studio and caught up on some art and worked in my journal.

The tech arrived right on time and just as he rang the doorbell another huge storm came complete with driving rain, howling winds, and of course lots of lightning. He braved the bad weather, however, donned a rain suit and umbrella and fixed the cable.

We then discovered that the lightning had fried basically ALL of my Tv's, two phones and answer machine, computer, dvd players, refrigerator in garage, and washing machine!!!!

I was totally freaked out and overwhelmed -- what no computer????? I could live with out TV but not to have my computer was simply too much to bear.

Called my son, Scott, and we decided the fastest thing to do was simply to go buy another computer rather than have him try to build one for me. So that afternoon I met him at Circuit City and I got a HP Pavilion computer,VTech Answer Machine with speaker phone on handset, and a UPS Battery Backup unit.

I had packed the fried computer in the car so Scott to both machines to his house, added a DVD drive, and copied the files from the zapped computer to the new one.

Don't know what I would do with out my wonderful computer wizard son-- he has saved me so many times!!!

I picked up the new computer on Sunday...got it all set up and it worked great with the exception that Microsoft Vista is NOT compatible with my external backup drive- -Acronis software--- which I am not at all happy about as I discovered I have to buy the new version which is another $50.00..... total bummer.

This has been a total nerve wracking experience and one I sure don't want to experience again .... The whole thing is really weird as I did have surge protectors hooked up to some of the equipment and they still got fried. Scott told me that they basically don't work that well and he is the one who suggested that I go on and buy a UPS backup.

Now comes the time consuming job of installing all the software- ugh ugh -- not looking forward to that for sure!!

Wow....another dream became a reality on July 10th! My work was actually purchased
by a new store in downtown Cocoa Village called What You Love To Do.



A friend had emailed me to tell me of the store and suggested that I contact them in regard to my work so I called but got an answer machine. It was several days before Kathryn,the owner,called me back and we set up the appointment.

She really liked all of the handmade paper wall hangings and took them all immediately. She also took several Spirit Masks and Spirit Men!!!






"Disconnected" actually hanging on wall in shop!!!!






Kathyrn with my friend Thea who bought a really cool metal dragon wall hanging!



I am so thrilled to have this dream actually come true!! I am anxious to approach
Creative Energy,a metaphysical store, here in downtown Melbourne. I am getting my Gratitude Bowls ready to show her along with some other new items...

A new adventure for sure!!!

Well it is finally 99.9% completed!! The studio is now in working order minus some final tweaking that needs to be done! I have worked like a dog for weeks sorting, organizing, labeling, and throwing tons of stuff away. Its wonderful to be able to actual create again and below are some pictures of the latest project that I have been working on the last couple days.

I love doing assembledge and this project evolved using a broken cork tile that I painted with acrylic paints, burned soda cans, copper tape, rusted ball chain, screws, and a can lid, wire and a handmade paper casted face....

It is called Disconnected







This is a handmade paper bowl-- painted with acrylic and water colors... sticks, and wire.It's name is Shasha which when I looked it up on the net means protector and helper of mankind.
How cool is that?



I am making gratitude bowls now and will post some pictures of them when I get a few completed...

oh here is another handmade paper pic



Going out to lunch with my son today so need to get busy around here-- more later!

Labels: assembledge, handmade paper

Well caught a bug the first part of April and was laid out cold for two weeks..then had to get ready for my friend Theresa's visit-- she arrived the first of May and stayed for two weeks!! We had a good time-- went to Key West and swam with the dolphins at the Dolphin Research Center located in Grassy Key... amazing experience. Highly recommend it...there are several programs to choose from in all different price ranges so if you are planning a trip to the Keys-- be sure to go to the Center...

Theresa and I decided to make paper while she was here but we totally overestimated the amount of pulp we needed and decided to use all the abaca I had--- long story short is i have been making paper every day all day and all night practically since she left.
Here are a couple examples--



this is a sea grape leaf and tree bark in bedded in the paper.

this has coffee grounds, and chrysanthemum tea that i bought in China (it is little round balls of the flowers and smells wonderful)when it reacted with the abaca it stained the paper brown splotches of dyed abaca.


I took some roots and dipped them in the pulp... pretty cool effect I think


this is simply torn dyed coffee filters and splotches of dyed abaca.

Making paper is quite an ordeal -- messy -- with water everywhere but it is really fun to do and its always a surprise to see what develops!

I have made over 150 sheets of paper along with bowls, string papers, and collages..i have even used dryer lint in some of the sheets-- will get some more pics and post them...

Life continues to be super great-- I am back to drumming -- haven't played my drum in over a month and its hard to start over again -- my hands hurt!

If you have Firefox as a browser I highly recommend getting the add-on STUMBLE
it is really cool-- there are several categories you choose and then STUMBLE simply randomly selects web pages to view ..check it out -- but be prepared to spend a lot of time just browsing all the neat sites that come up..There is a bookmark available to save the sites that you like...

ok its almost 2am..gotta hit the hay!! more later....

Labels: --

My heart goes out to the faculty and student body of Virginia Tech...to the families of those young and vibrant beings who's lives were taken so abruptly...so senselessly....

This horrific tragedy will forever be etched in the minds and hearts of the innocent students and faculty..changing their lives forever.

Yes another year has gone by and i am another year older..but who is counting?
Age is all relative -- thats what we say when we are over 60!!!!! It was a super birthday...

Saturday i had been invited to Suzie and Sally's for dinner. I didnt think anything about it because they are always inviting me over for dinner but when i got there and walked thru the front door, there were all my close buddies yelling "SURPRISE"!!

Ya know i am 63 years old and never had a surprise party-- so how cool was that!!!???

The house was all decked out with balloons and streamers,and there were drinks and a bushel of oysters on the half shell on the patio!!! WOW!

Sal had cooked this amazing dinner. Tons of fresh shrimp on the grill, coleslaw, corn muffins in the shape of little fish-- since i am a Pisces the theme of the party was fish-- corn on the cob, and for dessert Thea made this awesome cheesecake covered in pineapple.

We stuffed our selves like little piggies!!

Opened all my incredible gifts and then played Quarters till the wee hours of the morning---too many to mention here-- just know that they were all totally awesome!

(Quarters is a dice game in which you start off with five quarters--no we are way too old to play the drinking quarters game---

roll five dice and if you roll any fours, you pass a quarters to the left,fives you pass a quarters to the right, or sixes you throw in the pot .

so for example -- i roll my five dice-- 2 5's, 1 4, a 6 and a 2...

so i would pass 2 quarters to my right, 1 to my left 1 in the pot...

i would have 1 quarter left for the next round. Anything other than a 4 5 6 is a safe roll. If you run out of quarters you simply loose a turn but depending on how the people to your right and left roll you can be back in the game quickly if they pass to you!!!

the object of the game is to win the pot at the end -- if the final person doesnt throw a safe roll then the pot turns over and the game is started again.

It is a fast paced game that is loads of fun plus you are really happy when you win that pot-- the more players of course the larger the pot!!! )

My birthday was really Tuesday and i went to get the mail only to find a huge plastic HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign in my front yard-- Sal had come over around 1am and put it up!

Since my son and his family were out of town on my birthday we are celebrating this week by going to the Melting Pot-- a fondue restaurant-- yummmmmm

I am so lucky to have such super friends in my life-- they are the BEST and made my birthday so very special!!!

Yes it finally happened to ME!
i cant believe it-- my hard drive crashed Saturday February 17th....

i lost EVERYTHING...all my art, documents...basically my entire life!

The last full backup i preformed was in 2003.... and that helps but i still lost so much valuable info that i am in total shock and bummed to the max!

Here is a tip-- if you turn on your computer and get a dos prompt to "boot from cd"
you KNOW you are in trouble.

Your hard drive is either going or is gone.
If you can get the computer to boot up -- BACKUP EVERYTHING IMMEDIATELY.

if it wont boot up-- you are in serious trouble. The hard drive is gone....

My son was out of town so i had to call Chuck who is an incredible computer fixer -- he said he would try to restore the things on the hard drive but couldn't promise for sure--- and when he called me back on Sunday he had the bad news that the restore just didn't happen!

So i immediately bought an external drive -- SimpleNet 250G which was on sale at Office Depot for $50.00 after two $50 rebates and also got ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE 9.0 as the backup software.

this is a very hard lesson to learn--- so i am telling you IF YOU HAVEN'T BACKED UP YOUR MACHINE -- DO IT NOW

you can use Nero to make backup cd-- windows will back up for you-- i don't care how you do it JUST DO IT..do not put it off one more minute.

I have had computers since '97 and never ever had a problem but damn now that i have had the problem i will NEVER have it again.

Its like having a fire in your home-- so much personal stuff is totally gone and cannot be replaced, or restored.

Things you think you will remember, software you have installed or downloaded off the net, music, pictures, excell and office documents, art, all will be gone gone gone.

thankfully my email is all on the net so i didn't loose any addresses. A small consolation---

BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP!

Check this out...

just listed CREATIVE DISTORTION STORE



Choose from a pin or a small card which would be perfect to plop on some Republicans desk--

Cant beat the price either- only $3.75!!!!

Show your distain for the current administration!!!