This past long weekend I attended the Summerland Festival that is put on by Sixth Night Grove, ADF and held in the Dayton OH area.  This year was a year of records attendance with a bit over 100 people attending... The only higher attendance was the year Isaac Bonewits died and his memorial was held.  The camp itself a 4H camp and has very reasonable accommodations, especially when compared camping at places like Brushwood or Wisteria.

This past weekend, I made a trip down to the NYC area.  The main reason for going down was to visit my grandparents, as my grandfather was in ill health a few weeks ago... he's doing better, and isn't really in bad shape for being 96, but it was good to visit them.  I then spent the night with my friend Sharon down in Raritan, NJ.  This gave me the opportunity to meet a few of the Grove of the Other Gods, ADF druids.  Really great people, and great conversations over dinner.

Last week I was able to help out the Saint Paul's Center by doing rune readings during one of their fundraising events.  I did this event last year, and summer period remembered me, and told me I was right on.  As a person who does divination, positive feedback like that is always appreciated.

It has been another horrible week in the news, and it is upsetting to see how many innocent lives have been taken.  This week, we had a truck run into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille day in Nice, France killing 84, and injuring around 100.  There was no reason for this, and from what I have been hearing it was more of a depressed man with nothing to loose than any kind of coordinated terrorist attack.  It is sad that such things could happen.

This past week, hell the past month, has been a heartbreaking time.  We have seen senseless killings all over the world.  The shootings in Orlando, bombings in Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and I'm sure many other places around the world.  These deaths were due to perverted, extremist ideology.  

This morning, I awoke to hear of the death of 50 and hospitalization of 53 people in Orlando Florida.  The mass shooting happened at a gay night club at closing, during gay pride month.  Whether or not the people that have been killed and injured are gay, or allies, it does not matter.  Their deaths and injuries are senseless, and a tragedy.

Many years ago, I was introduced to a meditation technique by Diana Please as part of one of her intensives.  I can't recall if it was her trance or her seidhr intensive, but that doesn't matter.  The technique has stuck with me and been adapted a few different ways ever since.  The technique is best described as doing meditation or trance through another object or being.

While I may be in a vacation for myself right now, the thought of free time has been on mind.  There have been major changes my life over the past week or two and I now have no long term projects I'm working on.  This means I have a lot of free time I'm going to have to fill with something.

What follows is what I submitted as my report as Information Manager for the annual meeting.

This past year has been a good year for the web team. There have not
been any major issues that have come up and we have been able to
maintain what we have been providing. A few things I want to point out
though.

The last 48 hours or so have been a very difficult time.  ADF saw the resignation if it's newly elected advocate... after only 23 days in office.  His exit was in part inflammatory, but it was revealing some of what he went through.  The response from the others on the mother grove have been predictably dismissive and trying to lessen the impact.  I know how this goes, I have been on their side and had to make statements for the purpose of unity that I have not agreed with, or which were a selective telling of facts.