Council of Gnomes Blog

I wrote the first version of the blog that follows and then sent it to Barbara for feedback. She responded that it didn’t feel quite the same as the others and added this story:  “There was a time Jim was president of CFOI and had many difficult letters to write. When he asked me to read these letters I frequently felt like something intangible was missing. I would ask him, ‘Did you write this from your heart?’ He often went back to the desk and rewrote the letter,…

I have skipped a few weeks of blog entries (our intent is to send one out each Monday) because I’ve been immersed in a moving moving process, slowly and lovingly ending my nearly 7 years in a “hobbit house” apartment in Saratoga. I have lived amid three generations of a wonderful, inspired family that has for years nurtured a magical property. The human relationships and activities (such as Thursday lunch salon and impromptu Sunday afternoon musical soirees in the “great hall”) and the natural ones anchored by giant…

Sometimes, looking back after years, I am startled to see a map that leads to an outcome I would never have dreamed. The route is never the super highway one but is oddly disjointed, with little mapping points popping up here and there and long lapses when the road might seem lost. Perhaps I stopped at an all-consuming job or dallied with divorce, or mixed in a major life map like raising a child. But then I can see how a theme picks its way through the landscape,…

How does one become “The Woman on the Mountain”? I think the important thing to know is that it is a “becoming”—a learning and growing that has brought Barbara over her 85 years to this clear and culminating time in her life. A couple of years ago she broke her leg, and last year she had three operations and pneumonia. These apparent misfortunes had a result that turned out to be beneficial: they kept her tied more closely to home as she recuperated. The other day she was…

 A few months ago, Barbara Thomas asked me if I would help her write a blog about the gnomes she has been communicating with for many years on her property in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I have been visiting her redwood amphitheater, studio and home for quite some time and have been fascinated by her stories and continually inspired by the place.