It has been far too long since I posted here, and I have no great excuses for that..... although I did manage to delete my entire hard drive AND Sense8 was cancelled..... so that was a perfect storm.

Although writing is a long time love of mine, painting is really my thing, although I have to write in my professional career, which also keeps me quite busy. Like everyone watching the national radar, it has been difficult keeping my spirits up, but I am blessed to belong to several communities that show me every day that there is still much to hope for.

In May and June, I had the pleasure of spending a few days with the Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia, working on two community days for a mural project. Under the direction of the Mural Arts Program, Philadelphia has the largest numbers of murals of any city in the world. They have learned that Mural creation is a great way to engage people in their communities, and discourages vandalism.

The Mural in question is being created to commemorate CBS 60 Minutes anchor Ed Bradley. Ed Bradley attended Cheyney University, where I teach art history, and the Mural was one proposed by alumni of Cheyney and members of Ed Bradley's family. The  Mural Arts Program invited Cheyney alumni, faculty, students, and students from the schools Bradley attended in Philadelphia, as well as people from the neighborhood to come out and work on the Mural. It continues to be worked on, and will be dedicated in November. It was a real joy seeing so many people of all different ages and art abilities, working together harmoniously on such a large project. 

july and August were spent gathering information for my Fall courses, and a hefty amount of painting, as I landed two art exhibitions back to back. One will be a solo show at the Grand opera House in Wilmington, Delaware (separate blog post to follow on that), and the second is a group show at the Sidetracks Gallery in New Hope for their annual "Naked in New Hope" exhibition, a show all about artistic' interpretations of the human figure.

At the end of July, I spent a weekend with many friends, old and new, at a weekend hosted by the Grail of the Birch Moon coven, in Wilmington, Delaware. Christopher Penczak was our teacher for the whole weekend, teaching on Gifts of the Goddess: the Thirteen Powers of the Witch. Christopher is truly a master teacher, and it was wonderful to spend so much time learning from him with so many other lovely people. One good thing often leads to another, soooo.......

Finally, I spent last weekend at Templefest, hosted by the Temple of Witchcraft, Christopher Penczak's organization. About 25 members of my tradition, the Assembly of the Sacred Wheel, attended. Everything about the weekend was a pleasure, from the gorgeous location in New Hampshire at the Camp Sargent Center (cabins with plumbing and electricity, be still my heart), the lake behind the cabin in which Assembly members stayed, the many interesting and useful classes being offered, the friendly staff, and the camraderie of fellow witches all intent on listening and learning. 

All of these things are worthy of their own blog posts, so I do solemanly promise to be better about writing. Consider this my "What I Did on My Summer Vacation" Essay, and Impromise there will be bigger and better things to follow. My take away from my summer adventures, if I could sum it all,up, is that beauty and magick are truly all around us, and there are more magical people than we know.