Word is out that Ann Craig (once a blogger, always a blogger) needs our good wishes, good thoughts, good vibes.
And so I conjure mine — a healing blue bindrune for skin diseases (coincidentally configured like an “M”) contained by a conch shell whose center radiates harmony and healing and whose root grows life-affirming green.

a full moon on the 13th
and magic from the sea
signs life to sisters
under the skin
Meditate on this and be well, Ann.

I’m getting ready for my one and only grandchild’s vist this week to celebrate his first birthday, and I can’t imagine loving any grandchild any more than I love him.
At the same time, I’m having this odd thought: the female lineage of my family ends with my daughter. Her one and only child is a boy. The generations of my family’s genes that have been passed down from mother to daughter for centuries ends with her. She is past forty and will be having no more children. No daughters.
Our last photo of four generations of women was taken when my daughter was about six months old and I was in my twenties and my mother was in her forties and my grandmother was in her sixties. No more passing down of family genes and secrets and stories and myths from daughter to daughter to daughter….. Something I’ve always taken for granted is gone.
Well, I might not someday be watching Alexander bounce around in a tu-tu, but I sure will pass along to him our family secrets and stories and myths, and I’m sure even a few of my wayward genes. Maybe he’ll even let me teach him to ballroom dance.
In the real world, the end of this female line doesn’t really make much difference. But in my mythic one, it feels somehow important, and I’m sure that there is a poem to be written about this after I let the feeling simmer for a while.

Outgoing Oregon Symphony conductor gave a graduation speech recently that all Americans need to hear.
Artists are truth-tellers, and, as an artist, James DePreist began his address with the painful truth of today:
Graduates, the world in which we live is a mess. Myth masquerading as truth, our beloved United States in crisis, many of its fundamental principles under assault. And yet, a goodly number of your fellow Americans seem oblivious…sleepwalking through these alarming times, heedless and gullible beyond belief. Our country simply cannot afford this and our hard won freedoms cannot long bear the weight of an unenlightened citizenry. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the unspeakable horror of September 11th or the very real menace of world terrorism. History has clearly shown that the ultimate weapon of mass destruction for any society is ignorance.
His poetic and passionate plea to confront “the tragic bittersweet chasm between dream and reality, between a nation’s words and its deeds…beauty in the wings” urges us to accept our Constitutional responsibilities as American citizens:
You must find the ideas that our society needs to hear and make your country heed your words. At the 1964 Republican convention Sen. Barry Goldwater let fly this provocative clarion reaffirmation: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Could the senator have been thinking of the Declaration of Independence and our revolutionary war led by that ragtag band of left-wing extremists like Washington, Jefferson, and Patrick Henry? Just imagine the list of those who today could rally ’round the banner emblazoned with Goldwater’s words. Over here