I don't know if anyone is still here and reading, other than a few.

I'll be succint. Life is very difficult, and I'm not good at reaching out.

It's not that I haven't had anything to say, but rather that I've everything to say and none of it is comfortable or happy or encouraging. So I've been silent, and that really is very close to death.

There isn't much left of me, anymore; I've lost a lot of my "Woo", and son't see how I'll get it back. I do have one new waltz, my only composition from the last twelve years. It's not enough, but it's something.

I still need a lot of help. I still need management. Not much, really, has changed, although so much has, indeed, changed. I wanted my *species* to be in a better place by now, and I'm terribly disappointed with the forces working so hard to keep so many of us so miserable.

Managed to get a few tunes up, over on the Bandcamp site. The new ones are labeled under "Tunes for the Goddess Naomi".

http://thatharpguy.bandcamp.com/track/quarrel-with-the-landlady

Dear Santa;

I'd like us to entirely abandon fossil fuels and the infernal combustion engine this year.

I would like a Space Elevator, for my species. I would like a way for us to move off the Profit Motive and into the Community of Humanity. I'd like us to cease our ancient quarrels, and observe our one (possibly) fit place as Guardians of the Few Remaining Species in our little petri dish of a planet.

I'd like us to take responsibility for our resource usage, and begin aggressive campaigns to utilize energy from photons (be it solar, or wind, or, preferably, *solar wind*).

Thank you for your past gift of getting most of us to agree that we don't eat one another anymore, and the still burgeoning work on the issue of us not owning one another anymore. This year I'm asking for your help in getting us all to agree that we don't kill one another anymore. Agreement that we won't harm each other in any way is for next year's letter (prior planning helps, I know).

Thank you again, Santa, for the joy in reading you brought me as a child, when you gave me Heinlein and Asimov, Aristotle and Plato and Epicurus, and McCaffrey and Niven and LeGuin and Clarke to read, all of History to learn others' mistakes from, and the chances these readings opened to my imaginings. I'd like you to share these, and others - David Brin, Margaret Atwood, Gavin Menzies, for instance - with my species, this year, and hope that they get a dawning sense of their inter-relatedness and interdependence with each other and their environment - backyard, local, global, and galactic.

Could you possibly spur a species-wide interest in Astronomy again? We don't need a comet overhead anymore; just a bit of enthusiasm for what's out there and what we can do with it and where we can go, provided we look at these things as a species, rather than as nations.

Sometimes, Santa, I wish that I could still ask you for tangible, personal things. I do know it would make it much easier. These transpersonal things, however, are much more important to me than any item I could "possess". Thank you, Santa.

Yours &c.,

~Gaffer~

Oh, Universe, please help me find a spot to record tomorrow morning that has no car traffic, no airplane noises, and no unhappy people asking me not to play harp there.

If it doesn't happen tomorrow, I think I'll have run out of patience (and here, I thought I had a nigh inexhaustible supply).

Buddha say, "The only way to achieve disappointment is to maintain expectations." Yup. He's darn right.

I am moving. I am therefore trying to minimize my eclectic library. I'd love to see the books I don't *need* to keep end up somewhere they'd be used, loved, appreciated. Jimmy, at Reality Kitchen in Eugene, Oregon, would love to have any books I can send him.

But... I'm moving. I've got rental deposits and moving costs and pizza and former apartment cleaning to cover.

Would anyone like to sponsor shipping costs to send a box of books to Reality Kitchen? It will cost about $13 to ship each 25 pounds of books. Any help would be appreciated (by both me, and Reality Kitchen!).

While away on my May Tour, I got word that I've finally hit the top of the "Section 8 Wait List".

My current lease goes 'til July 31st. I must find and settle all details of housing, store stuff somewhere, get the old place cleaned, go on tour, in late July, moving in once I'm back, somewhere around August 5th.

Wee, fun!

(Plus, Andy Cohen has gotten me hooked on a *Jazz* tune. Can ya believe it?)

The schedule of my May roustabout through the Pacific NorthWest is finally up.

This is gonna be fun.

Go ahead. Comments are screened.

Please read this..

Thank you, Ace, for pointing me here.

Sniffle arrived on Day 2 back in Boulder. It's only now easing. I'll be back among the living in a day or two.