Dodona Update
Zip Dobyns
All is well in our corner of paradise. Our rains did start earlier than usual, as predicted by a local nursery, so the hills and valleys are already green and gorgeous! We have not had enough to get our stream to run, but a rain nearly once a week has saved me a lot of time watering the orchard, and has also saved on the electricity to run the pump. I picked up a bag full of macadamia nuts after a major wind storm, but there was no serious damage. A piece of the roof on the pump-house was partly pulled loose but just needed to be nailed back down. Mostly, the weather has been mild enough so my tomatoes are still surviving. I picked 21 ripe ones when I got back from the early December trip to Laguna Beach, another half dozen a few days ago, and several more are nearly red enough to pick. My chili peppers are also still producing. Since they are now over two years old, having survived last winter, I have hopes they will continue. However, if the freezing weather in the rest of the U.S. manages to work its way south, they may have a problem. One of the five avocado trees I planted did not survive my trip to Chicago last July, but I am hoping the rest will start producing soon.
I’ve enjoyed being home since the July ISAR conference in Chicago, though I did spend a couple of weekends in Laguna Beach with a long-time but newly rediscovered astrologer friend. I also attended the Whole Life Expo in Los Angeles in early November, listening to a range of speakers and inspecting an incredible array of more-or-less new age products. One of the speakers was Dr. Joel Wallach, creator of the amusing tape on colloidal minerals. One of his comments will not be appreciated by our readers who are vegetarians. He said he had recently heard about a study in Colorado which located all individuals in the state who were over 100 years old. They found 415, and the only thing they all had in common was that they ate meat every day. We are all individuals, so we have to discover from personal experience what works for us.
1997 is shaping up to be a year of more travel. So far, I am scheduled to lecture in Maui in January, to return to Laguna Beach in February, to speak at a conference in Paris in March, another in Kansas in April and another in Michigan in May. If any of our readers are in those areas, write me for information. The Michigan conference will be in Lansing and ARC conferences are always great fun.
It is too late to wish anyone a Merry Christmas but all of us hope that all of you will have a wonderful New Year in 1997!