Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Peter Coyote, actor, writer, says, "Like all good humorists, Francesca De
Grandis has a radical and subversive agenda ..." Francesca is a traditional
spiritual healer who gives folks tools to both fulfill their dreams and make
a difference in the world. She teaches through international teleseminars
(classes by telephone) and provides psychic counseling by telephone for
people all over the world. August 2004, she will transplant from San
Francisco to Meadville, PA and continue her work surrounded by trees.

Francesca is the author of "The Modern Goddess' Guide to Life"
(Sourcebooks), "Goddess Initiation" (HarperSanFrancisco), and "Be a
Goddess!" (HarperSanFrancisco). Contact her via her website at
http://www.well.com/user/zthirdrd/WiccanMiscellany.html or call
415-750-1205.

Leading the conversation with Francesca is David Finacom, AKA <keta>. David
has been on the WELL since 1990. He often calls himself Rip Van Winkle
however, because he only logged on once or twice between about 1995 and
2001, which is a good few decades in Internet Years.

Having worked on a Whole Earth Catalog (Essential), led a crew in a
salmon cannery, run a small business, studied Political Theory, sold
jewelry off a blanket at Dead shows, and written three (mercifully
unavailable) socio-political satires, he is currently a bureaucrat and
mystic.

Welcome, Francesca and David! 
  

    
Thanks Cynthia, and welcome back to the WELL Francesca!

Since most of our readers don't have your book (yet), I want to start
off by describing the cover.  It's pink.  There's a drawing of a pink
princess goddess holding a sparkly wand and looking straight at you. 
Maybe she looks a little like Jeannie from the TV show I Dream of
Jeannie.  The title is below her (on pink): the modern goddess' guide
to life.  And it looks like she's saying, "how to be absolutely divine
on a daily basis."

Bear with me - there's a question coming here...

So yesterday, I go into City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco,
thinking I'll buy a second copy of the book to give to a friend.  I
hold up my pink book, and ask, "Where will I find this?"  The woman
behind the counter takes one look at all that pink and SELF HELP, and
says, "Oh, we don't carry anything like THAT here!"

"But it has a radical and subversive agenda and Peter Coyote endorses
it," I don't say, substituting, "Thank you" instead.

So Francesca, what were you thinking?  Who did you write this book
for?  Who do you hope reads it?

So, Francesca, what were you thinking???  
  

    
There's an echo in here.  You can ignore that second "What were you
thinking?" unless you have two answers...
  

    
Hi, Cynthia, David, I am so excited about being back.

Dave, your question deserves two answers. I mean, what WAS I thinking?

There is a difference between being radical n' subversive and trying
to appear as such. A friend once said to me "I would rather be a wolf
in sheep's clothing than a sheep in wolf's clothing" and I never forgot
that. Writing a humor book is an opportunity to do more than preach to
the choir.

The book's pink n' pretty n' girl and you can give it to guests at
your wedding shower. It's a book of games and quizzes that you can play
AT the wedding shower. (This is the point where someone interjects
"But marriage is patriarchial!" Well, that's only true sometimes and if
you DO want to change the institution of marriage, you can't if you
won't talk to people at wedding showers.)

Answer #2: I like pink.

Answer #3 b/c I'm on a roll here: I usually write serious spiritual
books in hopes of supporting folks to enjoy life, be more empowered,
and effectively serve community. But fun 'n humor have to be part of
that process. Without that playfulness, the end result is not much fun.
After all, the means is the ends. So I also wrote the book for myself
and folks like me who work hard to make a difference and need some
radical fun now n' then to keep inspired. 
  

    
Oops. In case it's not clear, I don't want folks confused: the book is
a self-help humor book. 
  

    
Yes it is (although something about that phrase makes me giggle).

And, really, it belongs on supermarket book racks, at wedding showers,
as much as anywhere.  These modern goddesses aren't liberal or
conservative, rich or poor, religious or not.  It's fun to see
goddesses everywhere, not defined or separated by divisions we commonly
cultivate or assume.

And I like too how it's a participatory book - it's meant to be played
and shared as much as read.
  

    
Today I thought we'd introduce the Modern Goddesses.
  
Bit of a welcoming drum roll please...

...entering from all directions, we have...

Mother Goddess
Girlfriend Goddess
Goddess of Love
Activist Goddess
Bad Girl Goddess
Princess Goddess
Goddess-Just-Wants-To-Have-Fun
Corporate Goddess
Sex Goddess
Out-To-Change-The-World Goddess
Trickster Goddess
Goddess of Wrath and Unintentional Destruction
The Ultimate Goddess

So how did you pick these particular ones, or how did they pick you? 
Care to introduce us to one or two?
  

    
Thank you for your kind words about the "The Modern Goddess' Guide to
Life".

I was casting a wide net when I wrote it but I do realize that most
readers will be liberal to radical left. Like I said above, we need our
fun to keep at our liberal/radical agendas.

Nevertheless, as a feminist, mystic, and healer, preaching to the
choir alone isn't right for me. I spent too many years in my youth
thinking I was changing the world but never engaging in it! Although,
as I say in "The Modern Goddess' Guide to Life", every Goddess has her
own piece of "The Work" she needs to address, and that choir needs a
feminist, mystic, and healer who preaches solely to them. So I am not
equating preaching to the choir with non-engagement. I'm saying that it
took a long time before I realized that for ME being engaged meant
stepping out into different territory.

Moving on: I made the Goddesses up. Or they made themselves up. They
came to me. Then I tweaked and tweaked each one, as well as added a
few, trying to portray modern women a bit.

Mother Goddess: Think your mom! Or the community take-care-of-everyone
woman.

Bad Girl Goddess: enviable trouble! Lives life to suit herself.

David Goddess: virile man which means he's got a feminine side.
  

    
Wait a minute.  That last one isn't in the book.  But, you know, I was
translating some as I read - Father God, Bad Boy God...
  

    
>I'm saying that it took a long time before I realized that for ME
being engaged meant stepping out into different territory.

So, for you, this book is stepping out into different territory?

I disagree with you somewhat that most of your readers will be liberal
to radical left - as I think about who I know who most exemplifies
each of these modern goddesses, they're all over the spectrum.  Maybe
readers and exemplars are two different things, but why do they have to
be?   You mention in your intro that the term "goddess" is mainstream
now.  Won't your book help people on supposedly different sides (of
anything) reach across and connect with each other?
  

    
Re new territory: What I was talking about above was long ago leaving
the safety zone of my youth. First I stopped ranting about the sorry
state of the world to friends in my living room and tried to start
teaching solutions in my living room. First step into new territory.
And it terrified me. I had to overcome a lot internally to be able to
offer classes, but that was only the beginning. Ugh. I eventually left
the relative safety of those classes to approach the publishing world
with what I was teaching. Omigoddess, a whole new level of terror! But
every time, it has been worth it. Because life’s a waiting! And it’s
yummy!

But, yes, this humor book is yet another new arena after texts that
were not only serious religious material but also not so mainstream.
You’re right, it is being read by very mainstream folks, and that is
what I had hoped for. Which brings me to my above remark about who is
reading it: let me try again. Yes, Goddess is a pop culture term now,
and the women in the book are all over the spectrum politically and
otherwise. So I guess it’s up for grabs as to who the readers are. From
the gate, I tried to write the manuscript in an inclusive manner.
Spiritual discussions should include--not exclude--as much as possible.
I hoped that any and every women would read the book. Great sales!
Kidding aside, I did hope that the book would be read by women from
every walk of life, b/c I think there’s stuff in there that could help
anyone. (I am so modest.) 

As to your “Won't your book help people on supposedly different sides
(of anything) reach across and connect with each other?” I HOPE SO! Oh,
I so want that of the book. The book has a lot of material to help all
these wildly disparate types of women get along and create more power
for themselves as a result. One of the book’s themes is to recognize
not only your own divinity but also that of everyone else. When we
honor the divine in each other, we sure do treat each other better.
  

    
(NOTE: Offsite readers who have comments or questions for Francesca can
email inkwell-hosts@well.com)
  

    
G'morning all.  Well, it's morning in my internet land.

Before we go on, let me explain a bit to our arriving readers and
participants (welcome!) what we are doing here.  For the last couple of
days, Francesca, Cynthia, and I have been chatting in "hidden" mode,
so there's some There there when this interview is launched into the
world.

Now, we're "live", and the Inkwell Spotlight is going to be on us for
two weeks.

If you are coming in from anywhere on the internet except the WELL,
you post indirectly - like Cynthia said, you email
inkwell-hosts@well.com and a kindly host posts what you want to say
within a few hours.  If you're on the WELL, well, you know what to do.

Francesca, due to her schedule, comes on Exactly Once Per Day.  I, who
will be rambling and roving, show up whenever I can find an internet
cafe or talk a willing friend or stranger into letting me on their
computer.

You, who are the reason why we are here doing this, show up whenever,
and feel free to chat amongst yourselves.  The rule here is equality.

So, now that we're launched, somebody say something.  Somebody crack a
bottle of conversational champaign across the bow of this thing!
  

    
Okay, will do. Ahem: here is my one per day. (Any more and this would
be a treatise. I am, if nothing else, wordy.)

Smash (<--the sound of a champagne bottle breaking across the bow of
my computer. Okay, a fine mess this is now. I have to wipe all this up.
Great idea, Dave!)

Dave is being kindly discreet for me when he says the “one a day” is
due to my schedule. I am disabled. So computer use is a challenge for
me. (Don’t anyone send me a million suggestions for computer aids for
the disabled. I know them.)

Someone just lent me a Nirvana video b/c I’ve never (blush) heard
their music; here is this icon that I, in my little shaman shack, never
heard. (Yes, I am that out of it! I am off in my own world. Don’t
leave the house much. Just write, teach and counsel there. And now,
with the disability, can’t really leave anyway. No sob story in that. I
like my life and am a semi-recluse anyway.) I wanted to know about
Cobain b/c of all I’ve heard and read. 

And it got me thinking about media exposure in relation to our
conversation about subversion. I used to think that people who managed
to publish their books made megabucks, were in it for the money, and
weren’t as deep as those who had no ambition for media exposure. Found
out that: most of the books you see in stores are written by people
with day jobs; unless you’re Stephen King, you’re lucky if you break
even on a book; and you’re nuts to do all it takes to get published.

So my “unpublished me am better that you, you shallow famous author”
thing got turned on its head, and now, of course, I get nasty,
intrusive letters and hear gossip about me all based on my old
erroneous presumptions aka now that I’ve been in the New York Times and
Cosmopolitan, I must not know the real score anymore. (I am going
somewhere with this, bear with me.)

One of my favorite poets, Lew Welch, was an outsider even in the far
out Beat movement that he was such a prominent figure in. One day he
walked into the woods and was never heard of again. Some say suicide.
Maybe not: maybe he just wanted invisibility. A friend of mine still
watches for Lew’s face to appear, disguised, at poetry gatherings.

I’m about to move to “the middle of nowhere” myself, onto a piece of
land where someone I know hunts deer with a bow and arrow. This is in a
Pennsylvania blue collar farming community that is economically
depressed and b/c it is northwestern PA it is nowhere NEAR NY or
Boston. One friend said that where I am going is just someplace she
flies over going from L.A. to N.Y. That is so not true. If you are true
to yourself, then wherever you ARE is “the scene,” where it is
“happening.”

For some people involved in community work, there is this tension,
this constant dialectic, between wanting to get away to quietly embody
the life you are trying to help make for everyone, and this need to
stay engaged, whatever the cost, to create that world. In my soon-to-be
home, in the middle of nowhere, I can still write, and I do all my
counseling and teaching by phone anyway. (I teach teleseminars—classes
by phone. And counsel folks by phone all the over the world.)

Hmm, I guess the most extreme form of this is the bodhisattva—I hope I
am using the right term—people who have reached enlightenment yet
reincarnate anyway just to help the rest of us poor saps along. But for
we who are not bodhisattvas, we have to face it on our own level.

Lew talked about this, so did Henry Miller now that I think of I.
Somewhere Miller wrote that we should not preach but demonstrate,
otherwise we are totally sacrificed. That was his solution. But there
is no simple answer. It is a constant evaluation of my moment-to-moment
life: how do I serve community yet not go nuts, become seriously ill,
etc?  

This is not just theoretical for me. In fact, I am already ill. My dr.
doesn’t want me working b/c of my health. He said that most folks with
what I’ve got going on climb into bed, get on disability, and never
get back out. I am not trying to sound pathetic and brave--I don’t want
to be a poster child for disabled people, b/c with all my whining I
would be a lousy one--I am just trying to express how very real this
question is for me, and show the particular way the realness express
itself in my own life. Everyone has a different way it expresses.

I just thought of another place I've seen this theme discussed: In the
book of Lord of the Rings, at the end Frodo leaves the shire saying
that saving the wonderful Shire life for the Hobbits meant that he had
to sacrifice it himself. I sobbed when I read that. Sacrifice is a
reality for activists, healers, and other community workers. But how
far do you go?
  

    
"Begin where you are.
Use what you have.
Do what you can."
--Luisah Tiesh

Here I am.  On the road.  Getting on a computer did involve patience,
good manners, and strangers.  Thinking of a children's book called Toot
and Puddle, about two pigs, one who travels and one who stays at home,
and both who see the world.

Something I wonder tonight.  We're "supposed" to be talking about a
humor book here, and were talking about bravery and sadness and
sacrifice.  And yet it feels right.  Do you think that the path to
humor leads through sadness?  Or what is the relation?  We're in a
desolate time as a country too.  Is someone somewhere suddenly going to
break out laughing one day and we'll all start joining in, and
something will start to get better?
  

    
I have not read the book but from your description Toot n' Puddle seem
a perfect example of the premise that wherever YOU are is where it’s
happening. And I think your questions answer themselves. All I need to
add is that, after 9/11, I decided to
a) keep focusing on service
b) wear more pink (it keeps my spirits up and is a sort of psychic
protection for me personally, bland as pink may SEEM spiritually)
c) write a humor book.
  

    
Dear Francesca, merry meet. May the peace of the Goddess be ever in
your heart. I'm Sicilian too, named for Giordano Bruno, and was forever
intrigued by something I read a guidebook to Sicily when I was a boy. 
The first thing it said about the prehistory of Sicilian culture was
that the Goddess was supreme for the ancient Sicilians.  That statement
has haunted me ever since, and now that I've become a Goddess person I
have hoped to reconnect our ancient Sicilian Goddess heritage with the
present.  

I think of the very old Goddess sites built underground in Malta, and
like to speculate that the prehistoric Goddess people in Sicily shared
the same religion as in Malta.  My sister gave birth to a stillborn
daughter and named her Persephone.  By this she paid homage to the
best-known Goddess myth of Sicily, a story which I think is extremely
old and probably predates the Greeks. 

I look forward to reading your other books, and hope to find out if
there are any survivals of ancient Goddess lore in stregheria that you
could tell us about. As for the color pink, it makes me think of Code
Pink, the most vibrant and energetic feminist movement currently active
in America, inspiring and giving me hope; I think of Code Pink as
energizing in the political sphere the feminist ideals stimulated by
Goddess religion. So I agree with you that pink is a great color for
us. Even for guys like me.
  

    



GentleOak writes:




this is an interesting forum.  does one have to pay the 15 a month to
continue to post is this a tease?  being  disabled and on ssd broke i must
choose carefully how I spend those pennys.

Yes I too have a disability that I crawled into bed and gave up.  One of
those Goddesses pluncked me down on a piece of land called annwfn for 3 days
I slept on the earth and somewhere I found the life force to get up and get
going.

Certianly I am transformed but it is not always an easy path this spirit
walk.  It demands of me total honesty and commitment to the things I have
chosen as important and sometimes being willing to grab hold of new things
like walking again, literally, On my wedding day I walked substancially for
the first time in 7 yrs.

Today I grieve my rage and anger roll though me like a summer storm in Iowa
yet the whole of my comments above are part and parcel of walking in spirit.

Right now today it hurts  cant always live at annwfn or at my wedding day
those moments I hang onto for hope but life is in this moment.  I rage
  

    
 
Jordan, I am so sorry to hear about your sister’s loss. Being a mother
and spiritual counselor to mothers, I know that the loss of a child is
something a mother never really gets past.

As to Italian witchery, check out “Aradia” by Leland. Best source!

When I first heard of Code Pink I cracked up. So many people are
turning to that color right now, whether it’s for spirituality,
politics, or fashion!

Gentle Oak, far as I know, no $15 fee to keep posting. But I don’t
work for inkwell.vue so am not the authority on this.

Thank you so much for sharing about your physical challenges. I want
to address our disabilities. (I hate it when people pretend that
disabilities are not part of life, on a daily basis.) But then I need
to move past it as a topic in this conversation. I think it was Helen
Keller who said that she hated that to many people her story stopped
once she learned to talk and that what was important was what she had
to say once she COULD talk. With that, here’s my two cents.

I truly understand about it taking so long to walk. I can’t remember
but it was an outrageous amount of time before I could sit. 1 & ½
years? In the meantime, I lay there and dictated words to get my humor
book written. Actually, I wasn’t supposed to even be talking much. Too
debilitated. I push way past what I should. It’s nuts, often very
painful, but you laff or go down! I’ve learned that, at least for me, I
have to keep going no matter what. At least for me, there is no point,
otherwise. And I knew if I got on SSI or something--this is just for
me, not others--I would stop and stop forever.

This latest round--these past 2 & ½ years of being really
crippled--taught me so much, gave me so much. It’s made me finally go
for my dream of rural living. I too will be able to lie on the
ground--every day--and let Gaia love me into peace. 

No matter the cost, I have to go for my dreams. Being disabled since
childhood has taught me that. And the challenges I meet? They’re
jumping off points for jokes.

Having said that, I repeat, I don’t want my work and life being about
disabilities but about what we manage to do despite them. Besides, as
said above, I would make a lousy poster child for disabled folks. So I
need to move on to other topics. Of course, I don’t want to tell anyone
what to do. And it’s important to talk about this stuff, sometimes for
hours and hours. So of course you talk about whatever you want, for as
much as you want. But right now I need my focus elsewhere. So I’m onto
other topics. Oh, except to say: Gentle Oak, I commend you for using
physical challenges to walk the spirit path!!
  

    
Welcome Jordan and Gentleoak.  I only have 5 minutes on this computer
right now, so i will print your posts and read in a bit.  

Responding to Francesca's comment about Lew Welch - the examples range
all the way from Spalding Grey (walked into the East River) to King
Arthur (hanging out in Avalon).  I think of Jung commenting (roughly)
that the more you understand a symbol/archytype you are living, the
less you have to carry its implications to literal physical
conclusions.  Are these goddesses archytypes in jungs sense?  how does
understanding them help one to avoid the grim literal fate?  And/but
aren't they also all about GETTING TO physical conclusions, getting
embodied, not being so abstract?

hope to see you all this evening - the computer owner is
hovering...carry on!
  

    

hi,  I'm izzie, and I was away when this conversation started but Hello!!!
and a very warm and loving hello to Francesca - a goddess on the earth, for
sure.  We need to chat, sweet, about where you are living now!  Are you near
my little favorite town in the woods??

Francesca, I loved the book!  I was howling through parts of it,a nd am so
glad it came to fruition.  I liked how your Goddesses are soreal - we can
all, I think, find at least most of ourselves in one of those descriptions.

I'm back now, with access to a computer and time to use it, so I'll be a
more active participant here... thanks, keta, for heading it up!
  

    
Jordan, thanks for pointing out code pink.  That was a connexion that
had not occurred to me - shows how we need many people to see one
thing.  You're right about how it's energizing the political sphere
with feminist ideals stimulated by goddess religion.

I know this isn't what you mean when you ask of survivals of ancient
lore, and of course I'm not the one qualified to answer, but often to
me, I see survivals in current blossomings.  So, putting Code Pink and
ancient Sicily together in the same post, I start to wonder how code
pink is perhaps a straight-up blossoming of ancient lore in itself. 
Does that make sense?  Old knowledge is not always lost simply because
it is hidden, or transformed.  (There is a story of a species of
butterfly in the Black Forest of Germany.  When industrialization
started to really turn the forest black, the butterflies turned black
too - and survived.)  And the corn I plant this year is a blossoming of
all the corn back to mesoamerican prehistory.


GentleOak,
If you join the WELL, which is a fee-based online community, you do
pay $15 a month (or less under some plans i think)  what you get is a
bunch of discussion "conferences" that are sheltered from the WEB -
i.e. your posts can't be scanned by google and show up as search
results.  They can be read by anyone else who is part of the WELL.  For
some special topics there are even "private" conferences that can only
be read by their members.  The conferences vary in their activity. 
Some are wonderfully congenial, others are free-for-alls, and others
are verrrrrrrrry sloooooow.  Cynthia, help us out here with the
official answer.

Inkwell isn't so much a tease as it is a place where the WELL and the
Net meet.  Everything in here stays available, and you can participate
for free as much as you want.  But the guests do usually go away after
two weeks.  unless they're already on the WELL, or are Neil Gaiman!


Francesca,
One thing I would be interested in hearing more about is the
distinction you make between the Activist Goddess and the Out To Change
The World Goddess.  They sound like the same thing, but as you talk
about them, and make serious/playful fun of them, they're actually very
different.

Or, of course, we could just segue right into talking about fashion.
Or sex.  Or tricksters.  
  

    
<izzie> slipped - hi!

Yes, <izzie> another obvious thing that I just kinda missed
registering - they are so real.  Not to say that they aren't also
caricatures.  
  

    
Hi Francesca, thanks for the book!
I just returned from a trip to Vermillion, South Dakota for a
printmaking workshop. It was an awesome gathering of creative forces
smack dab in the middle of corn country. Who could have imagined so
much energy and brilliance in a place so far removed from San Francisco
or New York? Well, I think the place was a key ingredient. And I think
your move to Pennsylvania is going to be a revitalizing force for you.
Something about the air quality, or the pace, or the lack of pressure
and pretense. If I say the wrong thing here, please remember I come
under the Trickster Goddess heading. I appreciate this new definition
as I've been clinging to my old Fallen Goddess image for a few years
now. I think I'll need to create a new woodcut for the Trickster, since
images have powerful transforming magic.
  

    


Penny writes:


First, Thank You 'Rip Van Winkle' for creating this bridge to link us to one
of the most prolific Bards of our time- Francesca De Grandis!

Haven't yet read the new book; I began a third cycle of your first two
teachings (Be a Goddess, and Goddess Initiation)---decided I needed to go a
little deeper, and the core teachings of your methods never let me down.  But
will definately pick up a copy of your new 'child' in the near future.
I emailed you this past March but never followed up with our phone
conversation- hope your move is transitioning as smoothly as possible.

While reading the messages posted thus far, I was drawn to the topic of the
color pink.  It occurred to me that it is 'humor' that leads THROUGH the path
of sadness.  Pink will help you along the way.  It is such a light and tender
color, (such as the 'pink onsie' I put on my 7 month old daughter this
morning).  Helps one to tread lightly through the darkness and react in
tenderness, especially to one's SELF, which leads to the wisdom of compassion
and great strength.  Funny how such a light 'airy' color can have such a
powerful punch!  It is a much greater medicine than most people realize.
Much like butterfly medicine.

I've been working lately to figure an idea on how to heal the split community
I live in right now- not only am I smack in the middle of the bible belt,
(which pits christians aganist pagans unnecessarily) but we seem to have a
large split within our pagan community here as well.
(Witch wars--honestly!)
 I, myself straddle the line between both.  Perhaps 'pink' is the seed I need
to try to germinate.
I'll check in to this forum later~ the kiddies are calling!
Namaste~
Penny
  

    

 
Thanks, Dave. Glad to have it confirmed that anyone could post without
paying any bucks.

I love Jungian material. But I could never be a Jungian. Neither could
Jung. So I hear. I hear he refused to create a “Jungian method”
because he wanted folks to not duplicate his methods but do what he had
done. But when told that if he didn’t codify his methods someone else
would, he created his school of Jungian psychology. I don’t know if all
this is true.

I digress.

Dave, as always, I love your questions. (Dave and I met in a Well
interview.) Dave said “Are these goddesses archytypes in jungs sense? 
how does understanding them help one to avoid the grim literal fate? 
And/but
aren't they also all about GETTING TO physical conclusions, getting
embodied, not being so abstract?”

Umm, the book is not meant to help women avoid being Goddesses. (Dave,
I know you didn’t mean that but I couldn’t resist.) I was instead
trying to celebrate--albeit in a wacky way--the power of womanhood, the
fact that women ARE truly thoroughly and without a doubt modern
Goddesses. 

What’s more real than a Goddess of Love or Sex Goddess? From there it
only made sense to start extrapolating and create Activist Goddess, Bad
Girl Goddess, Goddess-Just-Wants-To-Have-Fun, and so on. But like I
said, I didn’t really make them up. They made themselves up via my pen.

On the other hand, the book does show both the up and down side of
each Goddess type so that women can
avoid/minimize/figure-out-how-to-otherwise-deal-with their negative
traits.

Hi, Izzie-goddess. Aren’t you sweet! I’m so happy the book made you
laff so much, I am so happy. I never share my books before they’re
published except with my editor and the like. But one of my motivations
in writing the book was to have more fun. So I made the time to have
that fun. It was actually a spiritual commitment. I would write a few
pages then call up a girlfriend and we’d roll on floor.  Now I think of
it, sometimes I’d call up a guy and we chortled, instead. 

Keta, Don’t you be saying, “I'm not the one qualified to answer”. Blah
on that. Anyone is qualified as long as they are being thoughtful and
coming from the heart instead of being motivated by pomposity or the
desire to control others. 

Keta asked “I would be interested in hearing more about is the
distinction you make between the Activist Goddess and the Out To Change
The World Goddess.” When I wrote the book I realized that if you say
“activist” most folks think political action. So I wanted a second
Goddess--the Out To Change The World Goddess--who represented women who
make a difference in a non-political modality: the woman who raises
funds for a homeless shelter instead of for a political candidate who
will create that shelter. The woman whose home is used to collect
clothing for that shelter. I made up different types of Out To Change
The World Goddesses, then, umm, made fun of them. I make fun of
everything in that book. 

BTW, I think that everyone who can should engage politically at some
level—vote, write letters to congresspeople, try to stay informed, add
political considerations to their career decisions and purchase
choices. 

Oops, in the hour it took to write the above, more posts happened.
I'll print them and respond tomorrow. HIya!!!!!