December 21st, 2008

>Blessed Winter Solstice to you all!

Cathy’s cast iron cook-stove is now in place and working. She and Helen set and grouted the tiles that Helen made which forms the base that the stove sits on and it’s just beautiful! We still have yet to mount the tiles to the back and side of it, but there is cement board surrounding it to shield the walls from heat and sparks. The stove also works wonderfully to heat the area, just as we’d hoped. We’ll be shutting off most of the house during the winter, and concentrating the heat on those main areas that people will be using as well as where the water pipes are. That means the third floor as well as most of the second will be closed off unless we have people staying with us.

Any readers who live in Palenville will no doubt be pleased to hear that we have started to scrape and paint the building at long last! Due to the sheer size of it we will be working in sections and are starting in the back. It’s definitely not something we plan on having done in the near future, and it will probably be next summer’s big project. Any of you good folks out there care to help us out? We can use donations of labor, paint or cash toward this project. ;-)

We finally heard back from the paranormal investigators, our good friends at Astral Light Paranormal Investigations with the results of their investigation of Central House. Over the years several people have reported having unexplainable events happen to them at Central House. This includes all kinds of things ranging from cold spots to people being locked in rooms to disembodied voices being heard to full-blown apparitions being spotted.

After a thorough investigation, several EVP’s were recorded. One of them sounded like an ominous threat against Cathy, but it turned out to be a restligeist, or residual haunting. This particular EVP came not from the dead, but from the living. It was left behind by a priestess who has since left us and it has since been dealt with. Unfortunately, no ghost photos were taken, nor did any of the investigators have any direct ghost experiences while they were there. For this reason, their determination was “Likely Paranormal Activity”, but they stopped short of actually certifying it haunted. Who us, haunted? Naaaaaaaah. ;-)

We have begun holding the goddess Meetups and we have had a few new people come. We also are now holding open houses on Saturday afternoons for anyone who wants to come.

On a less positive note, we had something of an emergency regarding the property tax bill. We were advised by our attorney to raise the money and pay the Town of Catskill under protest immediately. It seems that the town is NOT required to inform us by certified mail if they are going to foreclose on the property. Since it’s become clear to us that we are not dealing with ethical people, we needed to assume the worst and prepare for it. Basically, the town could have sold it right out from under us and our appeals have been exhausted for 2008 and we missed the deadline for an alternate form of judicial review that could have helped us. A few priestesses helped us out but I myself wound up taking on the principal burden of making sure that these illegal taxes were paid and that we did not lose the property. Now that the taxes are paid, the gloves are off: I DONATED EVERYTHING THAT I HAD AND EVEN TOOK OUT A LOAN OF $4000 TO MAKE SURE THAT WE DID NOT LOSE THE HOUSE AGAIN. Although there is certainly nothing I wouldn’t do to help out, I am very, very upset at having to take out a personal loan in this economy. I had been hoping to get rid of the very last little bit of debt that I had and save up some money but then this came along. Of course, being the optimist that I am, I do look for the silver lining in each gray cloud. In this case, it may just be the much-needed opportunity for the Maetreum to build up a credit rating by piggy-backing it onto mine. We’re definitely going to need it in the future!

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank those of you who donated to us to help us save the property. I would especially like to thank my mother for helping us out. Mom, if more Christians were like you, the world would be a much happier place. I love you so much.