Traditionally, this is time to relinquish the hold of the past year and begin to dream the new year.

Good timing.

There are all sorts of performative enactments to help you to let go of all the things that you want to discard, and envision – or open yourself to a vision – of how you want the new year to be.

It will be very dark tonight, a good transition point. New projects and new thoughts emerge from darkness.

It works for me today. I’m such a mystic anyway….

Jan and I decided to meet at the Visitor’s Center instead of the Witch Museum. Once I saw the outside, I didn’t really want to go into it either. Reminds me of Watchtower covers… So, she was running late, and I started to bop around some of the shops. Later, we explored together (more on that in the next post).

I dropped a ton of money in that town – but I love what I got. I’ve got them all lined up next to me. In my humble opinion, the best shops are Nu Aeon, Crow Haven Corner and New England Magic.

So, here’s what I blew my cash on in Salem:

• A silver moonstone triple-moon ring for the middle finger of my right hand
• Another silver ring – a contemporary interpretation of Celtic-style knots and spirals – for the ring finger on my right hand
• “Invocation” Mysteries soap by Crow Haven Corner
• A Bright Blessings Incense Sampler
• An abalone shell incense holder
• Lotus crystals by Sacred Spirit Products – and charcoal to burn them on
• Egyptian recipe “Abra Melin” frankincense and rose resin incense by Nu Essence
• A Blessed herbal “female energy and wisdom” Moon candle (“made when the moon is right”) by Coventry Creations
• A Samhain (Halloween) “Spirit Wheel of the Year” candle by Cypress Moon
• A small, perfectly weighted pendulum by Xeonix.
• “Wise Woman #52 Goddess Potion” essential oil aromatherapy vial (lavendar, mandarin lemongrass and bergamot) by Aromatherapy of the Goddess

Last but not at all least, I really did get a magic wand. I looked for one everywhere I went. The metal wands were very pretty, but somehow not me, and there were a lot of clunky gem-based wands, but again… not me. The one kind that tempted me (in spite of the really quite outrageous price) was a cherrywood “live wand” that took years to make. Honeysuckle had been wound around it to make spiral grooves in the wood. It was too thick and blunt somehow – although it made it to the “final two.”

For me, the purpose of a wand is as a tool of energy direction (like a very precise mouse pointer). It’s amusing that I had held a teacher’s pointer in mind, because that’s pretty close to what I got. It’s about three feet long, made of white ash – not a straight line on it and wonderfully grooving to my hand. It’s the right weight and balance to be an extension of my arm. There is at least one interesting kind of energy surrounding it already, but I’ll do a full “cleansing” of the wand a bit later – to symbolically rid it of the touch of others – and then “infuse” it with my own spirit/energy. I’m uncomfortable with the magickal kind of language for this – I have my own understandings of what I’m doing. But hey – I’m an eclectic anyway.

I walked into the kitchen because I could hear John ranting. I took one look and choked on my coffee.

Who thought it was a good idea to open an international competition with Liza Minnelli belting “God Bless America” from a red carpet on the tennis court? I think fondly of Liza. She’s not the most centered woman on the planet, but whatever can have possessed her to participate in this?

I gagged when I saw men in uniform rolling out an obscenely huge American flag over the whole court while she roared – so totally vulgar and inappropriate. I’ll bet they weren’t entirely happy about it either.

So how was the choice made to open one of the few truly international events that American hosts with such a nationalistic ritual?

What next? Do we all goose-step into our seats? Everybody hails the flag?

This country is whacked. We deserve every word in any overseas editorials that might be written about this – or maybe they’ve just given up on us. How is it that when we see this kind of thing in North Korea everybody gets it, but not when we see it here?

The top players aren’t even American! (What, we can’t take not being the winners?)

Arrogant. Self-centered. Unwelcoming. Boorish. Rude. Disgusting. Stupid.

You can email the United States Tennis Association to register your opinion with them. You can email Liza too.

I’m back. In case anyone might have noticed, this may have been the longest time I’ve gone without blogging in months.

We went to a family gathering in Florida in honor of my grandmother Evelyn’s 89th birthday. In addition to my little family, my mom and uncle, and my two brothers and their families were there.

I went into the situation with some good advice from a dear friend: Let adults be adults, no matter how strange it seems. A hard lesson for me, since I tend to try to fix things and mediate and all that kind of thing. Actually, it turned out that almost everyone was fine. One glaring exception seemed (very unfortunately) beyond any mediation or healing from me or anyone else. I hope whatever was going on resolves itself. Perhaps I’ll write about it some day, when I’ve gained some kind of understanding or perspective. It’s beyond me today.

One thing seems worth mentioning here. It has been some time since my father died, but there had been no chance since then for his three children to scatter his ashes. Not wanting to take anything away from my grandmother’s birthday, we (semi-secretly) went off by ourselves to do the deed at last.

We shared some memories and anecdotes, cried a little, and ended up in a big three-way hug that felt utterly comforting and good. We each tossed a handful of ashes, then my youngest brother threw the rest just as far as he could. The lighter ashes rose into the air like steam, bending light to suggest a rainbow. A wide swath of what looked like some kind of sage was covered in white, and some few bits of metal that remained from his implants clattered against the ground. It wasn’t an ideal place, but it was very peaceful and open and clean and in the midst of nature. He wouldn’t have preferred Florida – but it was better than behind his mother’s old house, and it was the best we could do. If there is an afterlife, I hope that he is pleased. It was just the sort of informal but heartfelt occasion that he had wanted.

On the way down, we got a chance to spend a night with my friend Sharon at her house in Jacksonville, and John was able to get at least a little time with his friend Bob. Sharon offered her vacation house on St. Simon’s Island as a stayover place for the trip home. We arrived there by midafternoon Sunday, had a good meal, and – utterly exhausted – fell into deep slumber by 9. The trip back was uneventful, and I am very very grateful to be home.