Happy belated Yule and New Year to everyone! I celebrated solstice Alaska-style with wonderful conversations around a big bonfire outside a cozy cabin, surrounded by glowing snowy mountains, with glimpses of an almost-full moon through scattered clouds... Truly beautiful! And when we woke up, the world was blanketed in fresh snow, and I discovered some fairy-friendly nooks in the nearby snowy-mossy woods... I'm pretty much in love with this place... (And maybe one or two people here as well...) I have to admit, I'm actually rather sad that it's getting lighter again; I've enjoyed the winter immensely! But spring is still a long way off, and I'm sure I'll enjoy a few more wintry outdoor adventures with the growing daylight in the meantime. And I'll try to post some photos soon!

Anyway, I'm off to see a friend and her baby, and am less than thrilled about driving through the snow storm -- it would be infinitely nicer to be walking/skiing/mushing through it! But I'll be doing that in a day or two and will be quite satisfied. :) Basically, life is good, and I just celebrated the happiest New Year I've had for quite some time; I'm hoping it's a good omen for the rest of the year too!

Hope everyone else is doing equally wonderfully well!

love and light,

Jem 

Also, while looking at the Writing and Consciousness M.F.A. program Kathryn's thinking about applying to at the New College of CA, I noticed their M.A. in Women's Spirituality and was intrigued... Check it out at: http://www.newcollege.edu/womenspirituality/

And linked to that was "Metaformia: A Journal of Menstruation and Culture" at http://www.metaformia.org/ -- which of course sounded right up our Collective alley, so I had to share! (Haven't time to explore it much at the moment, but if anyone else does, leave a note!)

Hello all! So here I am in Anchorage, finally taking some time to be online and properly post stuff... It's been a crazy-busy, amazing-wonderful couple weeks -- month, almost two actually! -- since I returned from my MHC/Boston/Seattle trip, and much has been going on...

First of all, I'm working 6 days a week: 4 at my awesome restaurant/bar/micro-brewery/independent theatre, and 2 at a funky new lesbian-owned chocolate lounge/art gallery, which I love. Most of my time not working is spent cooking, being outside (except that I twisted my knee skiing a week ago, so that's currently at a minimum), reading, meditating, petting my 3 cats, and having interesting conversations and meals with various intriguing people around town -- and thus am not often online. Nevertheless, I do occasionally make an appearance, and am happy to have a bit of pagan-cyberspace. :)

Second of all, I'm VERY excited about our Gathering of Gaias in the spring! It will be lovely to see everyone, and wonderful to engage with such empowering, beautiful pagan women again. Although I had a great time at our local Pagan Pride Day, I don't have the best schedule for getting very involved with the Anchorage pagan community -- and I miss the PWC! But all sorts of pagans have been coming out of the woodwork here, and I've recently had some truly beautiful experiences and conversations with pagan men, which is kind of a first for me... I had a really powerful Samhain ritual for myself, and ever since have been developing a new appreciation for masculine energy -- which is fortunate, as Alaska is full of it! So this is proving to be a very interesting, surprising, productive, healing year, and I'm definitely enjoying the Alaskan wintry darkness and the revelations it inspires... Alaska's such a beautiful, powerful, transformative place to be, and I welcome any visitors who might like to make the trek to find out for themselves! 

That's all for now; i'm off to dinner, and next week I'll be off to San Francisco for 10 days to visit Sarah and celebrate Kathryn's 21st birthday -- any recommendations on places to visit/eat would be great!