A bright new solar year to you; there are plenty of new things on the horizon with the dawn of the sun after the longest night.
Crane Chatter Returns
I wasn’t sure how this would go, but after the design nightmare that was the last book I wrote (doing it in Photoshop), I reopened InDesign and started working on formatting for the next book project, which is my business partner’s book on conjure and magic. Still early days on that, but it led me to thinking about the other projects I could do in it.
Three Cranes Grove, ADF, had a newsletter back in the day (like, at least 5 years ago, last issue in 2019**) called “Crane Chatter.” It was a casualty of the small baby boom we had in the Grove, with most of our design-oriented folks having kids. But with mine now finding other things to do with their time than spend it with me, opening up InDesign reminded me that newsletters aren’t too difficult to create, and I could set it up so that it just has some content that I need to refresh.
And so I did. Our first new issue since 2019 came out, and I even decided to print a copy of it, and it came out super well. I’m attaching the electronic version to this post for your viewing pleasure.
First issue since 2012, and probably the first print issue in about 20 years!We’ve been reviewing omens in ritual recently, and so keeping a record of them that’s a bit more centralized was the main aim. It’s too easy to have a conversation with the Spirits and then forget to record it, so my idea behind the newsletter is to focus on the omens, plus a few new projects and news items from the community. Right now, that’s all this newsletter is: no articles, no centerfold. It won’t be like our old ones, full of short articles and recipes and things like that, unless folk decide to submit them.
Because this one came out after Samhain, and had to cover a lot of ground, I looked back over the year and added notes about passings, births, and our Grove’s first electoral victory. There’s a sort of joking note on there about “Will we ever mail these?” but I know I’ll at least mail one copy, out to the widow of one of our long-time members who passed this year.
**Edit: I’ve updated this post to recognize that we did have a few issues come out in 2019, so it wasn’t 15 years since it came out last, it was 5! They just weren’t on our website archive!
Travel and Weird Sights
You know me, and you know I like to see weird stuff. We were planning to visit my cousin, who plays college basketball, in Huntington, WV, for a game. It turns out that a trip to The World’s Only Mothman Museum (+ Store) only added 10 minutes of drive time, so we added it to the list. The kids got to get their cryptid on (which was a huge plus for them, as they’re at that age where the world is still full of weird, cool, undiscovered creatures), and I got to pose for a seasonal selfie with the statue.
Yep, Mothman has a red nose for the holidayThere’s more traveling to be done, but the season is shaping up well. I’m looking forward to some time to create and build new things this season, and maybe return to more old projects that need a refresh.
