Artist in Oils, West Coast Woman

Massage & Body Work Therapist

Shaman, Artist in Oils & Glass, Crop Circle Researcher

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I read my first Ursula book when I was nineteen. I immediately went out and found out everything I could about the author. In some interesting little pop culture rag of the late sixties, I found a picture of Ursula wearing a long black coat and smoking a long thin pipe. The next day I bought a long black coat and a long thin pipe and began striding and smoking and reading, coat wings flapping in the breeze, down the long city greens of Victoria, BC. I strode into bistros and bars, looking for people with whom to discourse on Ursula subjects. In this way I was introduced to marijuana, for everybody thought that's what I was using the pipe for. Meanwhile, I was just stoned on Ursula.

An old sea shanty says,

"Oh I was born on the bounding sea

and a mother she was and is to me."

Likewise I was born in the bosom of Ursula. My young adult mind shaped itself through her words and her stories. I'd grown up in a restrictive, dogmatic household and emerged with a limited world view.  Ursula got me into pacing the roads of my future, asking questions I'd never thought to ask, bending my mind open around the turn of every corner into yet another new reality. I have called her my "other mother" since the day I read the first page of the Earthsea Trilogy.

"The Left Hand of Darkness" shaped my entire relationship / sexuality dynamics at the age of 22. But it did more than that. It told me that darkness has "hands," has beingness, and when I birthed my second child at home on a tiny West Coast island, I threw myself backwards into full surrender to the "Great Arms of Everything" and the "Black Velvet Void," and came home to the Mother.

During the seventies, Ursula was criticized by the Women's Liberation movement for writing too much about males and being too masculine in her approach to women's topics. I found this astonishing and wrote heatedly back to several critics. Ursula had opened to me the fierce and feminine glories of what I called, the "Womb of Becoming." My sense of womanhood, of motherhood was deeply tempered by the force of Ursula's being and perception, and she lent to me a universe in which all of myself was acceptable, and all of myself was required to be present, in order to live life with meaning and grace.

I haven't always understood Ursula's books. I remember being fairly aggravated by a few of them. Now, when I hear a person feeling this way about one of her works, I indulge in a deep and private chuckle. Looking back, it is quite easy to see that I just hadn't encompassed enough of myself and the world to understand what Ursula was saying. And so I read her books again every decade or so, and am always deeply blessed... plus increasingly entertained.

For example, I must be careful about when I choose to read an Ursula book, because it's unlikely that much will get done till I've finished that book. And I'm always running to the keyboard to type out yet another line or paragraph of hers and put it on my wall. When I look through old papers in those dusty boxes and files we all keep, I find everything interspersed with Ursula quotes.

It is a great privelege to experience an author as a mentor, and to grow with that author though the years. Ursula has been my guiding light, and I recommend every word she's ever written.

— aRA Miles

Ursula's official site offers:

Announcements, Calendar

Current & Forthcoming Publications

Maps, Illustrations, & Photographs

Poetry

Personal Notes & Commentaries

Barbara's official site offers:

Biography, Bibliography, Chronology

Special Note by the Author

F.A.Q. & News

Bookshelf & Audio Library

Jean's official site offers:

Biography

Bookstore

Reading Room with excerpts from her books

Rob is also the author of

Free Will Astrology

Astonishingly textured woven fabric of grand story telling.

Alice does not have her own official site,

but this one provides extensive details

about her life and work.

It's called: "Living with Grace."

No other author compares with the depth

and beauty of ancestral knowledge rendered

by Malidoma in his books. Check out my

Amazon store above, for "Of Water and the Spirit"

and "African Ceremonies with CD."

Dan's official website offers:

Access to "Peaceful Warrior"

— the movie, based on Dan's book by the same title

A Bookstore and Audio Library

Newsletter Archives

E-Books

Alex's website, like the man, is very complex

and offers more opportunities than I can list.

His art is phenomenal and his site also

offers his essays and books.

Click on the "Writings" link and

the "CoSM Press" link.

His "Sacred Mirrors" book and cards

are incomparable treasures.

Frank's son Brian has continued the Dune legacy

after Frank's death. The above link takes you

to Dune books written by the father.

Frank was a visionary and a prophet, a deeply attuned voice

offering great wisdom, and real awarenss of altered states.

They've called him a Science Fiction writer,

but like Ursula K. LeGuin, he was simply telling us

much we do not know about ourselves as human beings.

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Contact me for more info.