Wish List

Last weekend at Pantheacon (which has got to be the best Pagan festival, as well as the largest one, west of the Rockies), someone quoted to me the old saying that, “If you don’t ask for what you need, how are you going to get it?” So I’ve decided to post our current wish list, just in case any of our regular readers might be inclined to help manifest an item or two.

1) An Apple iSight web camera or two, new or used. This is the kind that will work best with our Mac G4s and will enable us to do web broadcasts (and recordings) of live chats, workshops, and seminars. We could even use them instead of flying all over the country, which would save the stress of flying for us and the cost of plane tickets for festivals and bookstores (booksignings can even be done remotely, with special bookplates).

2) More memory for those Mac G4s (one “mirror door” and one “Yosemite” model) would certainly speed up said video activities as well as my PhotoShop and Illustrator graphics work.

3) PhotoShop and Illustrator CS2 software for the Mac. An older version of CS would still work, and would let me upgrade to the current version at a reasonable price.

4) An intern or two who can help with filing, typing, sorting through papers, and other office tasks. We live in Rockland County, about 25 miles north of New York City. Since we have no room for guests, this would need to be someone local who could show up once a week or so.

5) Dover clip art books with CDs would be very useful for several of my graphics projects, including my tarot decks and my cafepress products. I’ve got their Celtic and Norse books, but several other ones of historical and ethnic costumes, art deco styles, ornaments, etc. would be lovely to have.

6) A laptop for Arthur. He’s starting to write his own books now and could really use something that wasn’t a slow-as-molasses, five-year-old desktop.

7) Books. Phae and I both have wish lists at Amazon.com, mostly comprised of books we’d like to have for research purposes.

8) Garlands of artificial flowers and ivy that can be woven into a large circle, for use at Pagan weddings.

9) More sponsors and patrons/matrons. If we had several people who could commit to making donations on a regular basis, our stress levels would go down considerably and more books and other creative projects would get produced. Donors might even get projects dedicated to them!

10) Our red “radar bait” vehicle is now over ten years old and on its second engine. We don’t dare drive it very far and we can’t pull a popup trailer with it for camping at festivals (we’re getting too old for tents). A replacement vehicle would be a wonderful thing.