Following the Moon: Like the Heartbeat of the Universe

Journal Page, Drozda, media blend, 12x9", 2011

Welcome to Following the Moon and the Disseminating Cycle which extends through the early morning of Wednesday, January 26. The Disseminating Phase is the place to be for sharing what you have gained thus far. Since the New Moon was January 4 you have only to look over your shoulder to reconnect to what you've learned, and now, in a way that reflects the energy of the Natural Wheel, discover your own way to express this learning out into your Art/Life.  Demonstration can relate to any area of the Art/life and generally provides you with the chance to be reminded what you're up to, what interests you and how you would move this information out into the world. What's your platform?

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~Thank you so much for being a Luna-tic with me~


See you next Monday

Come to my Heart Work Retreat weekend of the Spring Equinox

To subscribe to the monthly Luna See

To read the full length article for 2011 The Year of Heart

Following the Moon: Sympathetic Magic

A Deep Hunger #8, Drozda, 2006, Acrylic/board

Each spring I set an intention for the year. This past April I put my focus on increasing my ‘techno-communication’ skills. Shortly thereafter, six months ago, I broke two bones in my painting arm.


It was a very fine day. I had just emailed off a proposal that I’d been working on for nearly 9 months. An exciting collaboration between my studio, a local community economic development department and our major state art museum (It has since been accepted).

Out for a bike ride to celebrate the day, that Friday afternoon in May, I stopped for a moment. Turning to get back onto my bike, I watched in slow motion as the handlebars slipped toward the concrete pavement. The back tire caught my leg taking me down with full impact onto the curb, landing me on my right wrist. Crunch. Uh oh. This is bad....read more

Following the Moon / Growth of Courage

'When I Was Born', Drozda 1992

8.5 x 15 inches

Acrylic on wood

Welcome to this week's 'Luna See'. 'Luna See' provides a model for lookin' up and feeling time (and your movement through time) with a calm and focused flow. I present 'Luna See' to you as an instrument for gentling through your art/life day. You may also subscribe to the monthly 'Luna See' newsletter.



Let's begin by taking a deep calming breath. The planet may be cranked. Your life may be feeling the pressure... yet let's BE the artists that are filled with courage. Courage means to have heart. Right here, right now, with what's happening, you can calm down and trust your individual growth process.

Here's a reminder... it fits so beautifully with this point on the year's wheel:


Wild Geese


You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.


Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.


Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.


© Mary Oliver.

'Mandala', Sarah Myers

cellphone photo

Creativity Salon Participant and Dear Friend

Between today, Monday, July 19 and next Monday, July 26, the moon's phases (First Quarter, Gibbous, Full) continue to provide you with creative focus points. They are: take action, analyze and realization.


The First Quarter Phase offers three days to be about expressing the growth that's bringing forth your new sense of identity. Until Wednesday night, July 21, be active by feeling and moving. Active is the idea, dancing toward your goal for this cycle. Perhaps you can't dance in body at this moment...if that's the reality then dance in spirit. Be shamanic. Joseph Campbell relates this: As a Native American Elder giving advice to a young one said,

'As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm.

Jump.

It is not as wide as you think.'

This action phase offers an excellent opportunity to S T R E T C H ... then take time to write in your journal, make the call, send the email, communicate with your tribe. Choose a way to anchor what you've manifest thus far. Can you feel the sense of celebration for what you've allowed to percolate and grow since July 11? Maybe. Maybe not.

When you wake up July 22, Thursday morning, reconnect to your vision from July 11. If you made a mind map or collage during the New Moon go back now to check in with those images and ideas. Actively analyze and prepare to be the uniquely qualified artist at life that you are born to be. You are the artist who has the courage to express a new view and a true heart connection. You transport us. If you read that and say, 'Who me?' that's OK. The beauty of the natural wheel is that it will bring you around to this point again next year. You will be given the opportunity to grow further into who you truly are. I love that about the wheel...it keeps on turning.

Late on Sunday, July 25 (I'm working with EST) the phase shifts to Full and we have all the way until Friday, July 30, to reflect on what Growth has taken place since July 11. Next Monday we will visit what the Full phase offers.

Creative exercise: Until late Wednesday make a stretch and be brave. Take a leap of faith in the area of your art/life projects. Find that place within you that will give you the feeling that says, "YESSSS... I can do this!" At the Gibbous Phase, late in the evening on July 21, create a conscious connection to your support system.  Anchoring what it is your art/life is manifesting right now. Make notes. That's what anchoring is. After you leap, you anchor. You honor it all by putting the experience down in writing or some chosen creative medium.  Then you call on a trusted witness and tell them about the abyss you've flown over. You rejoice.


Above all BE your fearless Self. Remember that July brings with it the keyword of Growth.  Growth implies development. The idea is to continue tapping into your vision for the 29.6 days of this cycle taking you to August 9. In August the keyword turns to Trust yet you can be actively growing toward that quality now.

Each of the eight phases, in turn, brings a focus point that you can utilize in tandem with your Muse. Your Muse is yours alone. She helps you in doing the inner work of connecting with your on-going guidance. Her joy is to craft an experience that is uniquely yours....ever preparing the way for what's next.


You are the artist who has the courage to express a new view and a true heart connection. This is the year to be about forging a deeper and truer sense of Self. This year's global energetic field impacts us all. A renewed sense of identity requires that you know how to persist and carry on. You may find inspiration by visiting a completely courageous artist  here or by relaxing into a healing meditation here. As you practice conscious fortitude you grow stronger and more capable...year by year.

I recognize July as the 'push point' every year. Notice the opposite point too: how and when you feel like stopping. Then pay particular attention to where you feel the 'safety net' that gives you the stamina to, as my dad always said, "Carry on".


"Sometimes I wonder how all those people who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in a human situation."


Graham Greene

'Don't Stop the Dance', Drozda 2006

60x60 inches

Media Blend on Unstretched canvas

 Share the Growth of your 'Luna See' and...

~May your heart gently sing the days

Following the Moon

'Healing Heart for Tim', Drozda 2010

8x10"

Media Blend

Sold today

Welcome to the New Moon. Growth is the keyword through July. Keep in mind that the New Moon on July 11 brought a Solar eclipse. Sandra Mosley  offers some interesting points of reference for your creative path. 

In the 21 days remaining in this month I invite you to:
Pause a moment.
Close your eyes.
Take a deep calming breath.
Simply imagine the creative possibility before you.

The idea is that you can choose to slow down a bit even in the midst of the most active time of the year. You can recognize how you intuitively align, or you can start now, to become more consciously tuned in to the eternal rhythms of the lovely lunar patterns.
Note: 'Luna See' is presented as an artist tool for looking at time and your movement through time. It is offered as an instrument for gentling through the day.

'Earth Calendar', Drozda 1995

Ink and Prismacolor on Bristol

"...the light of the moon waxes and wanes, giving an endless succession of full moons and new moons. Think also of the continuous rising and falling of the planetary tides, inseparably linked to the invisible pull of the moon's gravity, as the earth spins and the moon moves more slowly than the earth turns. Without these eternal rhythms, our ancestral forms of life would never have emerged from the sea to find dry land.

You and I, being physically composed of more than 70 percent water, are moved and touched by the same powerful and invisible forces of the moon. " Joel and Michelle Levey


Between today, Monday, July 12 and next Monday, July 19, the moon's phases (new, crescent, first quarter) continue to provide you with creative focus points for visualization, research and action. Until Wednesday morning be setting your intention for this cycle. What do you choose to Grow during time? What are your studio projects and how will you allow time and space for them to come into being?


At each New moon you can give birth to the next piece of your vision. You don't have to start from scratch. Think of a spiral that unwinds through the year. Visualize where your over-all sense of creative identity is at this time. How's it growing?

Creating a Mind Map or a vision page collage between now and August 9 will bring clarity to this segment of the year's spiral.

July brings with it the keyword of Growth. Think about creative expansion. The idea is to continue tapping into your vision for the 29.6 days of the cycle. Each of the 8 successive phases that unfold from New (July 11-14) through Balsamic (August 5-9) provides a focus.
What are you now growing within the ground of your creative soil?

Our planet needs the artist who has the courage to express a new view and a true heart connection. This whole year is about feeling what is happening 'in the gut' as you forge a new sense of identity.  A renewed sense of identity requires that you know how to endure. When you practice conscious endurance you grow stronger and more capable.

On my studio wall for 19 years

My Short Story:

Each year at this time I have the anniversary of one of my art/life's most defining moments. We all get those and it's useful to be clear on what they are.

It was this point in the summer calendar when, as a young and trusting woman, I arranged to visit a house full of my artist friends on the campus of Case Western Reserve University. I recount that story in my graphic memoir published starting here last summer.

Telling that story, even though I've gone through decades of healing, was a profound and emotionally creative experience. I used a new medium, the Sumo paint program. I put this intense story of violence 'out there' by placing it into a blog format.

 I'll never forget how anxious and exposed I felt sitting here alone in my wonderfully tranquil home feeling every cell of my body recounting the experience as the simple Sumo images emerged.  It was chilling and empowering simultaneously.

By writing/drawing the memoir I was facing my fear of being seen at a very deep and a brand new level. I had echoes of demons reminding me that: being seen is very dangerous. Those voices tried to stop me. I felt possessed. I could watch the part of me that tried to convince me that if I did this, if I continued to work on this graphic memoir, something very bad would happen to me again. I didn't stop.

In creating those weeks of blog posts... I grew. It felt like the last vestige of reclaiming my authentic power. It required decades of growing to reach that point and it was a monumental creative event that no one even needed to see....and very few did. Growing can be like that. Private. Monumental.

I had told this deeply personal, yet universal woman's story, over the years to intimate friends and in women's shelters. I'd given a keynote address at a symposium on sexual violence. I had once been 'raped by the pen' when a reporter asked where my art is sourced and I told him the story of that summer "off the record".
He and his editor then proceeded to betray my trust when they went ahead and published my private journey in the popular arts monthly magazine that carried my 'whole story' thus 'exposing me' raw and naked to my community. I didn't know.... but my Muse knew... I was ready to endure and grow.

I have tremendous power and authority for my art/life as a result of these woven story lines. They don't control me, they remind me.

Be awake. Be conscious.

Have a pattern that provides the qualities you are choosing to grow in your precious art/life.


Don't have a goal? Don't know what this remaining 21 days of the July 'Growth' cycle is about for you? No problem. Your Muse knows and is gently, silently waiting for your engagement. Ask for guidance.
Isn't it lovely how, when we move into August, growth will gently place trust at our feet, lapping like a gentle soothing wave.


Be certain of this: When honest love speaks, when true admiration begins, when excitement rises, when hate curls like smoke, you need never doubt that creativity will stay with you for a lifetime.

Ray Bradbury



~May you sing your day~

Following the Moon

'Bodhicitta Heart', Drozda 2009

24x20"

under painting on canvas

Welcome to Monday's brief opportunity to look-up and recognize your beautiful 'Luna See'. The keyword for this moon cycle is Illumination. The New Moon started on June 12 and extends through Tuesday afternoon. This is a great span of time to refresh the brilliance of your creative vision:

The world needs us to be balanced in creating and communicating.  What's possible through our collective brilliance? During this week illuminate your heart/mind and reconnect to your creative vision. Remind yourself daily of the importance of your talents and skills. Do your very best to stay close to your heart. Remember, as you may have read in the Luna See newsletter, that the last time our planet felt this level of collective global energy (for a full year) was in 2001. You may feel terrorized in new and different ways right now. Be aware and have courage.

In the five years (1990-1995) that my studio was located on the top floor, high security lock-up ward for women, in the former Fairhill Psychiatric Hospital in Cleveland I learned a great deal. I learned, in this raw unrenovated space, more (I'd previously learned a lot) about loss of power and loss of voice. I could feel, as a sensitive and member of the scar clan, the desperation left behind by the former occupants. The powerful residual deposits of  fear and agony were embedded in the walls and literally carved into the broad wooden window sills. I was there in that cavernous space alone. I could feel the pain and isolation of the women who had been there. I spent many a morning doubled over in heaving sobs.

The book The Cracker Factory (Natalie Wood starred in the movie) had been written by a patient. Reading her pithy stories about heavy medications, electro shock therapy and isolation deepened my resolve. I could stand for greater strength and self expression in my own life. I could honor those broken women in the name of the creative spirit that does no harm.

Within two months of moving into the Fairhill studio I became Artist in Residence for The Art Studio: Center for Therapy Through the Arts, now renamed Art Therapy Studio. I opened my doors and began holding many workshops and studios including the all day first Saturday Creativity Salons. Each Salon had a focus...the keyword for the current moon cycle gave twelve artists a 'way in' to discover fresh levels of self expression. We forged great friendships and shape-shifted the energy of a heavy, dense and foreboding space into a gathering place of tremendous healing and joy.

'Creativity Salon', Drozda 1991

Fairhill Studio

I share this story intentionally. I ask today that each of us consider all the ways we can deepen our commitment and resolve. This is the Illumination moon cycle. I am hoping that each of us will turn on our brilliance and contemplate the strength of the heart. Feel the depths of what your heart can create.

I know about brilliance from my recovery process. I know from my years in my Fairhill studio, how very powerful each brilliant creative step we take is for the whole.

'Bodhicitta Heart', Drozda 2009

24x20"

mixed media on canvas

There are so many exciting ways to engage your creative energy. Choose one and place it into the brilliant light of your imagination. Your imagination is like no other on the planet...celebrate that radiance.

What I have come to appreciate since 1989 when I started working with time in this natural 'follow the moon' way is the awareness that there is space for addressing what's most important. Find what that is for you. Then move through the year, following the moon, with a vibrant yet quiet focus.

Before we meet again for our Monday 'Following the Moon' we'll have moved through the first three phases of this cycle. That gives us from now through Tuesday afternoon to create our vision for this four week cycle, Tuesday through Saturday we can research the vision, Saturday through till next Tuesday we can take action on that vision. It would be lovely if you would tell your vision to someone who will honor you.


~May your heart find its song

Happy New year

I send along to all the very best wishes for a new year filled with the wealth of the creative spirit that allows life to flow with beauty and peace.

May we howl at the moon and fly free. And may the Earth Mother be the better for our having walked her paths and rowed gently down her streams.

Angels Surround

The evenings in the late summer garden are intoxicating with the scent of the Angel's Trumpet swirling in through the window's on the night breeze.

I am saying thank you to All That Is for the ability to look back using the art form of the memoir. It allows a space for the gaze into what was without being pulled away from the preciousness of the moment. I love reading, writing and taking classes in memoir.

Here then is a short Afterward to the Memoir in Two Chapters that ran between June 8 and September 11.


AFTERWORD


I was raised to believe in Guardian Angels. And believe in them I did. I had a trust in life, a naivete' that caused one person important in my life to refer to me as "unassuming".

Mother always said, "Give them the benefit of the doubt." and this particularly odd one "You'll catch more flies with honey than you will with vinegar."


I was house sitting in 1982 and I read an essay in my host's college journal that was titled 'Rape as a Spiritual Experience'. I was enraged and outraged. I became 'beside myself' the same way I did when I took rape crisis training and learned of the documented post traumatic stress (PTS) syndrome that is no different than that visited upon veterans of war.


It took me years to realize that the Hells Angels were, for me, 'The Angel's from Hell'. These Angels took be into the Underworld and showed me a cavernous dark.

Like any demons worth their salt will do they tried to make me small and of no use.

Like any monsters, dragons or strange beliefs that we invite in either consciously or unconsciously they tried to strip me of all dignity and worth.

Like any demon they brutally lay in ambush.

They preyed upon my Innocent state of being. And from them I learned that when brought face to face with what we believe we cannot endure we do indeed. We do indeed. We endure. And more than that, much more than that, we rise above...individually and collectively...our true spirit, beyond the Beyond, lifts us away from danger. We float with effortless ease above the battlefield. The body may be battered upon return, or we may not return at all (transcending the body), yet our sweet strong empowered creative spirit lives on.


This is a Big ol' School called Earth. I learned that at 19. I wouldn't have been able to comprehend that or assimilate that without a model. Immediately Life sent me that model, my mentor, my guide...my guardian Angel in Alice. She offered me an example of what Life could be. She demonstrated a life of lightness of being employing yoga, art making, gardens, gentleness, laughter and balance in all ways...even in the midst of her own severe loss and heart break.


I could address these issues at length and ad infinitum but I prefer to recognize that the 'Angel's from Hell' made me a life member of what Clarissa Pinkola Estes brilliantly refers to as 'the scar clan'.


Like my friend Indigo Girl decided, I hope that you will pull Estes' work off the shelf and read again this concept. You'll find the treasure of her wisdom on page 374 of Women Who Run With the Wolves.

You too may discover that we are each indeed much stronger, far wiser and certainly more capable than much of the mass consciousness cultural out picture would have any of us believe or subscribe to currently.

Notice the manner in which you have faced your demons and faced them down. Celebrate your ability and your capacity to thrive rather than survive.


This Life is all so temporary and precious.


Rumi says it so well: Let the beauty you love be the work that you do there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Leaving the Farm

After a week on the road with the band and my two transcendent weeks with Alice my travel companion mildly twists her ankle. We must depart.

I dissociate.

It is unfathomable to imagine not being in the company of Alice. She has folded me under her wing. She has wrapped me in a quiet and calm acceptance.

We are driven back to the bus station. I wear the sandals made by Sam, and carry his gift of the Tao Te Ching. Invisible to all, my spirit and my soul have been stamped with the imprint of Alice, the natural earth mother/artist.


The sky high corn stalks create an impenetrable corridor. The car crunches gravel and throws up a veil blocking any backward look. It weaves down the narrow canyon of a driveway. I stick my hand out the window so the large slender leaves can slap against my palms in an extended mournful goodbye. As the flashes of cool green chant their rhythmic farewell I make a silent promise that I will attempt to walk in the footsteps of Alice, my model of sanity, to the best of my ability, for the rest of my days.

As we move on down the road I randomly open the treasure of the Tao:

6
The breath of life moves through a slender valley
Of mysterious motherhood
Which conceives and bears the universal seed,
The seeming of a world never to end,
Breath for men to draw from as they will:
And the more they take of it, the more remains.



An artist's memoir in 2 chapters
Graphic done using Sumo

The Farm

Following a week on the road the bus brings us back to the farm. Ths 300 acre Twitchell Farm is my opportunity to discover that something serene exists in the world beyond the chaos.

For the first few days I wander. I hike the land until tired and then find a tree to lean against. I sit for hours watching whatever happens by...a snail, spider, butterfly, rabbit, hawk or doe.

Morning and evening are linked by my work of collecting a portion of the eggs laid by a flock of 1500 Rhode Island Reds.

Days flow with a nourishing rhythm.

This is an artist's memoir chapter 2
The graphic's done using Sumo

After Midnight

We arrive at a bus station. Stepping off the Greyhound I notice a country store and a place for horses to be tied to a rail in front of it.

A little car is waiting.

A fellow, very friendly and happy to see us, drives us into the deep dark countryside.


This is a memoir tracing early art influences. The quick graphics are done using Sumo.
On August 21 this chapter will close.

Lucy in the Sky

He can tell immediately that I am in trouble; injured. Traumatized.

He is kind. Places his arm about me.

There is no concept of time.

He helps me.

I clean myself up.

After a while he opens a briefcase that he placed inside the door when he entered. He finds what he's looking for and extends his hand offering me a cube of sugar.

I am exhausted and scared.

He says, "This will help you to forget everything."

I ask, "What is it?"

He says, "Trust me, it will help."

He smiles softly and says, "Take it. You have two hours before you'll feel the wave. You will be so grateful to me."

The sweetness dissolves into my swollen, burning tongue.

Someone is Approaching

This memoir began with the June 8 post and this chapter will conclude August 21.

As I sit at the table giving myself time to prepare for the long drive home I hear footsteps approaching the back door.

I sit stock still.

The door opens.

A man walks in.

I don't know him.

This drawing done using Sumo.

I'm no angel

Being raised Catholic I now know that I will be burning in hellfire for all eternity.

I am clearly no angel. I have been dragged into the bowels of darkness and am lying in the aftermath.

Deeply damaged.

Changed in all ways.

It's still Sunday.

There are no sounds rising up from the floors below.

It seems I am alone.

This quick graphic done using Sumo.

This memoir began June 8 and this chapter will conclude August 21.

Seeing in the Dark

You know when you're exhausted and you pass out and when you wake up you're disoriented... not sure what day it is or what time of day it is?

It was like that with a lot of burning. Pain.

I lay still. Listening.

There is no sound.



this graphic done using Sumo.
This memoir began with the June 8 post and this chapter will conclude August 21.

When the Birds Sing

I can use encouragement.

While I'm a child mom's sweet voice often sings me awake.
Her voice rises up through the heating column that runs next to the stove and culminates in my attic bedroom.

Her favorite wake up call is:
When the Red Red Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobbin' Along:

When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin' along, along
There'll be no more sobbin' when he starts throbbin' his old sweet song

Wake up, wake up you sleepy head
Get up, get out of bed
Cheer up, cheer up the sun is red
Live, love, laugh and be happy

What if I were blue, now I'm walking through fields of flowers
Rain may glisten but still I listen for hours and hours

I'm just a kid again doing what I did again, singing a song
When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin' along

Funny how at the oddest times (when I most need mothering I guess) this melody and message filters up out of the ethers.

This graphic done using Sumo
This memoir started with the June 8 post. This chapter will conclude August 21.

Angel's Surround

Mother calls me angel. I am her angel baby. She protects me. She worries for me. We cry together when my baby boy is given to Catholic Charities on June 9. Her first grand. My one and only.

Life is changing rapidly and it's still Sunday afternoon. I don't know the date. I don't know the time. It's sunny. It's bright. Summer. July.

The coin is tossed by three large demons wearing leather. They turn and maneuver up and down the attic stairs. Large embroidered patches on their broad leathered backs read HELLS ANGEL.

Dragged bodily into the underworld the soul of what matters floats out into the trees and beyond the beyond.

This quick graphic drawn using Sumo

This memoir began rising up spontaneously with the June 8 post.

Mama Said

I am often too ill to go to school. Mom nestels me into my bed. She lays my sketch book by my knees. She reads me The Ugly Duckling or The Princess and the Pea or The Little Engine That Could. She reminds me to draw. She says, "You know you always feel better when you make a drawing." She says, "This too shall pass."

This quick graphic done using Sumo.
This memoir began with the June 8 post and this chapter will be complete by August 21.

Life Lesson 101

Mom adored me. She encouraged me. She helped me every step of the way. She taught me a special lesson when I was young.

One day she asked me to do something and I said, "I can't."

Hearing the words she softens and calmly instructs me to bring her a piece of paper. She draws the letters C A N ' T.

Taking paper in hand she carefully tears away the ' T. As the scrap floats to the floor she smiles gently saying: "Donna, no matter what happens remember that you can always cut the T off can't...then what do you have left?"

I whisper: "I can."

Now on this particular Sunday afternoon I am floating out beyond the three small attic windows. I am floating above the trees and the Mourning Doves call. I am floating high above the locked attic door.

My body is being changed forever.

I can see my life passing before my eyes.

This quick graphic drawn using Sumo.

This memoir began with the June 8 post and this 'defining moment' chapter will be completed by August 21.

Angel Baby

While I was growing up my mother was always happy to tell me the story about how I was her special one. That I was 'born blue' and that she almost lost me. She called me Angel. She said that she carried me on her hip for the first 18 months and that I slept on her chest at night because I was so cold.


This graphic done with Sumo
This memoir starts with the June 8 post.

Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying

"Ruins are not empty they are sacred places full of presence"

The winding stair opens out into the sprawling attic. A large soiled, bare mattress is in the middle of the floor. Over there, facing out to the park where my friends were supposedly playing a ball game, are three small multipaned windows. They are small and inviting windows just like the ones I dream of being able to lie in my bed and look of. Just like the ones on my sister's side of our atttic bedrom. I focus on the blue sky.

I slip out of my ruined body and float through the glass with effortless ease. I float out into the trees and the brilliant blue sky beyond the soft call of the Mourning Dove.

This graphic created using Sumo.
This memoir began with the June 8 post.