June 1, 2014.

I can’t believe it’s been almost a month since I returned from my fantastic 2+ month European Tour. The adventure continues. No rest for the weary. I hit the ground running when I returned. So much had backed up on me.

I don’t think many people realize all the things I get myself involved with:

• Always some stage of research papers happening with Tom Kelley;
• being involved with a very exciting grant through the Center for Sustainable Change for veterans, to be researched with a control group;
• interviewing George Pransky about the early history of Syd Banks’s understanding getting out into the world;
• compiling and getting feedback on an Appendix for that interview on a chronology of important historical events in Three Principles development and dissemination;
• being asked to edit a book by Lori Carpenos and Christine Health on relationships;
• still trying to bring my screenplay on Modello to life;
• responding to requests and answering questions people ask of me;
• private coaching and counseling, when asked;
• working with Frank Gerryts to try to make the T-shirt of my Tour actually come to be (if you can believe that!);
• supposedly working on a book with Rudi Kennard compiling the best parts of 3P Interviews but that’s had to be put on hold a while;
• and probably a whole lot more that I can’t even think of right now;
• not to mention trying to write my own new book;
• and now writing this.

Plus, after being in a different time zone for so long, it took me quite a while to adjust—I kept going to bed in US Eastern time but waking up in Greenwich Mean Time. But it’s been good to be home.

I was asked to do an intensive coaching session with a couple in Maine. I had met with them last year. This meant they could have come to me, or I could have gone to them.

I chose the latter because for a few years now I have been worried about Lisa, the main character who started off Somebody Should Have Told Us!. I haven’t heard from her, her phone number is no longer in service, her email address no longer works, I had written to her P.O. Box Number but never got a response. None of this was like her. So I have been wanting to track her down.

I had been to her house once many years ago but couldn’t remember where it was. So on my way over to Rockland I thought I would try to find her in the small town she lives (or lived) in, but like a fool I had left my maps in my own car when I got a rental car, didn’t have a GPS, and was not careful enough writing down the MapQuest instructions. So on the back Maine roads I took a wrong turn, which took me out of my way a half-hour before realizing I was wrong, then had to back-track another half hour, so soon the 5½ hour journey was a 6½ hour journey. So I was tired when I got to Lisa’s road, which I’d had to track down (because I only had her P.O. Box number), but I had no street number. I knew her house was set in the woods back off from the road, so I turned into a couple of places that looked like possibilities, but none were right (in fact, some were unnerving), and after searching a while I no longer had the fortitude. Plus I was still an hour away from Rockland. So I gave up.

Lisa is still among the missing.

At least my intensive with the couple seemed to go well, although I wasn’t so sure in the middle. What was strange for me was I thought the first day went really well, but the woman came in the next morning and said she didn’t want to go where we had gone and had felt uncomfortable. Was this me not listening well enough? But I could have sworn she left the night before saying she felt pretty darn good. Nonetheless, the session seemed to recover and end well.

The other nice thing was I met the curator of the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland—a really nice museum, filled with beautiful artwork, especially gorgeous seascapes by Andrew Wyeth and others.

But the real thrill for me was they were putting together a major exhibit of the Shakers (the Shaking Quakers), having trucked in artifacts from Shaker sites from all over, including the site where I spent the two best summers of my teenage life at the Shaker Village Work Group in New Lebanon, New York.

Apparently, there are only three Shakers left in the world. This is what happens when a religion doesn’t believe in sex. But their architecture, furniture and inventiveness remains historically brilliant.

Brought back a lot of memories, including a whole bunch of Shaker songs that I couldn’t get out of my mind. I had lived and breathed that culture for two summers, not to mention met my best friends of my youth (including falling in love for the first time), learned folk music and how to play the banjo. It was truly the fondest memory of my teenage-hood. Plus the curator was so kind he gave me a beautiful book he put together for the exhibition.

The Shaker exhibition will be up until next winter, I believe, and I recommend seeing it.

Oh, and I also had the best turkey burger of my life at the tiny Owl’s Head General Store. It tasted just like the best juicy hamburger (which is wonderful because I usually try to avoid red meat). I loved it so much I went back the next day to have another, but there was a different cook and, while still good, it wasn’t nearly as great, proving once again that you can never go back.

I will not be blogging on my site a lot—only when the spirit moves me. I’ve got too much else to do, especially write my new book. But when the spirit does move me—watch out!