Bee GoddessWe came back early from our trip to Amherst with Kitty. She had a nice time at Hampshire with a sleepover and the ability to attend a few classes. She was so enthusiastic about the courses, the way they were taught, the reading, the topics (seems genetics rank very high these days). She loved the courses and was talking about how much she would enjoy the classes as well as many of the articulate and opinionated students she had the chance to meet. We were thrilled to meet many of the professors with a few of them with links to Trumansburg, Ithaca, Cornell. We all were inspired by the "toy farm" that is on the Hampshire campus using the agricultural experience as a lab for animal husbandry, for a student run CSA, for cheese making, for cider pressing, for maple sugaring (the trees were all tapped on campus). Leslie Cox, the Farm Manager and his wife, Elaine, made us feel very welcome and opened our eyes to questions we had about the process surrounding Hampshire's singular program and how it works. It would be handing our dear and darling girl off to friends who approach learning and problemsolving in a very open, why not environment--valuing individuals, ideas and opportunities that fall in our paths throughout life. Our trip was very affirming and positive. Now, we just need to dive into how to finance and move forward to make this a reality.

We came back to go have dinner at the Pourhouse. I was beckoned over by a nice person who I did not recognize. She was effusive about the valentine I sent her (she explained she had bought a print from me...thus her being on my mailing list). She proceeded to expound on her love of bees and how I should get into Bee Shamanism, "did I know about that?". Oh. MY GOODNESS. As Murray The Mentor, King of Illustrators suggested, I have to ride the wave. The way is a god damned sunami and I better get paddling. Then, totally out of the blue, Kitty tells me about this thing that bees do that link the site of nectar with the hive, along with tail wiggling and a figure eight. I need to get real science on this...but this too is amazing. The term "Lemniscatic walk" comes from this figure eight that bee shamans walk in a form of meditation. But as I said before, the journey has just begun. More later.