I just had more sleep than I’ve had a Loooooooong time. And I’m pretty darned tired. Does that happen to you? Does that mean I got too much sleep? Or is it a sign of addiction?
Astrological Get-Together - “Texas Retreat 2008″
For those of you who don’t know, I’m a founding board member of the Austin chapter of NCGR - National Center for Geocosmic Research, one of the largest non-profit associations of Astrologers in the US. Our local chapter is called Astrological Society of Austin (ASA for short) and I maintain our website, http://www.astrologyaustin.org along with being Secretary. I’m an NCGR Level 1 Certified Astrologer.
I guess in other words, I could have said “Hello, My name’s Wayne, and I’m an Astrologer” (your part is to say “Hi Wayne” and show me acceptance)
Our chapter co-hosted Texas Retreat 2008: Weekend of Hellenistic Astrology with author Joseph Crane over this past weekend. Originally I was just going so that my wife could enjoy her time with the retreat and I planned on taking the time to rest, sleep, watch movies, play with my computer and basically be free of all obligations for a day or two. But as fate would have it, I had dinner with the group and as I prepared my wife’s area for comfort (she still has a hard time walking due to the injury 1.5 months ago) I listened to the author’s introduction and overview of the weekend. That was a mistake. I got sufficiently hooked enough to want to stick around for the rest.
The speaker
Joseph Crane has a wealth of knowledge of Ptolemy, Vettius Valens, Antiochus, Paulus Alexandrinus and tons of historical significators of astrology such as the Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and he knows how to tie them all together. It was amazing. We obtained some very worthwhile content on Hellenistic astrology (aka “traditional” vs modern astrology). We also picked up a signed copy of his new book (we already have another of his books, A Practical Guide to Traditional Astrology, which we got signed as well)
The food
So the speaker’s content was great. But even better than that was the food. Catered by none other than “The Gumbo Girl” Elizabeth Rojas herself, it was truly superb. This person has experience catering huge events of more than a thousand and here we were, 13 or 14 of us, getting some of the most scrumptious organic and vegetarian and vegan-friendly food I’ve ever had. Fortunately for me, not everything was vegetarian - it was “friendly” to the vegetarians because it was easy to pick what you wanted. The breakfasts, lunches and dinners were all fabulous. One of my favorites was the “adult mac and cheese”. Elizabeth also told us of some of her work on Richie Sowa’s Spiral Island, a floating island made out of 250,000 soda pop bottles.
The place
Topping even the food and the speaker was the retreat center itself, the Margaret Austin Center. A big 40-acre commune-style former vacation home of Margaret Austin, it can support 30+ folks, has a professional kitchen, a comfortable zendo as the teaching area, tons of campground area if interested, bamboo forests, a labyrinth, pleasant walkways, a 1 mile trail, good tap/well water, a sweat lodge for spiritual ceremonies, and great wide-open skies with very little light pollution so you can actually see the stars.
We had a great campfire and stargazing session Saturday night. It was not without it’s political discussion (you can imagine how it went, with one Republican and 13 liberal astrologers) but it stayed civil. Guess who the Republican was? It’s important that people be able to debate politics and remain friends afterwards, and we had that kind of debate. Politics shouldn’t permanently polarize people, and fortunately we all agreed on that point.
Everyone did their own dishes after each meal, and I half-jokingly daydreamed to myself starting off Friday night announcing that I would be glad to be the designated dishwasher for the weekend (I don’t mind doing dishes, especially if I have my favorite music to accompany me) and let everyone else have a more relaxing time. Of course, this was actually an extremely selfish act, because my goal in offering the help was to potentially cause some of them to go back to their homes Sunday night and be able to say “You know what, the strangest thing happened… I met the nicest Republican over the weekend… he wasn’t hardly evil at all!”
Dallas is just alright with me…
No, it’s not a new Texas rendition of the Doobie Brothers song about Our Lord and Savior, it’s the announcement from Bossy herself that although she can’t make it to Austin Proper, she is going to make a Texas stop in Dallas. This comes as mixed bitter sweet news for a lot of Austinites - mixed because we don’t know how to feel about it (are we not important enough? *sniff*), bitter because it’s a 4hr drive (why do you taunt us so? *sniffle*), and sweet because well, it’s BOSSY! IN TEXAS! (we’re so glad you’re in our area of the US *hugs*).
Clearly I didn’t donate enough or pimp out the donation jar enough to help fund the trip to make Bossy feel like she needed an Austin stop. Maybe Bossy doesn’t see how much easier it is to drive from Baton Rouge to Austin than from Baton Rouge straight to Dallas. She’d have a place to stay in Austin, could knock out seeing a few more bloggers who can’t make it to Dallas, and she could gamble in Lake Charles along the way. Heck, she could even hit Planet Houston mid-day to knock out a few more there.
So here’s my plan. LISTEN UP PEOPLE!
I bet if a bunch of people sent some money Bossy’s way ($3, $5, something small that you wouldn’t miss much but would mean a big deal to Bossy if done in large numbers) and tagged the donation “think about Austin whydoncha”, then she might change her mind! You can witness the paypalathon of wordsmithing on my post about her coming down here and then click the donation link.
Come on people. Vote for change. And send your extra change to Bossy to change her road trip plans. We can try to make her feel both awkward AND loved at the same time!
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