The News from Four Quarters

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Building, planting and planning. Sharing ceremony and good, home raised food.
Oddities in the weather and how the orchard did.
Observations on the Global Crisis.
Earth Spirit and Earth Living.
These are all parts of the News from Four Quarters. Enjoy.

December 8, 2019

Winter Work

The Farmhouse, November 2018 - The work moves indoors, to workstations, office desks, and kitchen tables.

After a long and busy Spring and Summer, the festival season at Four Quarters peaks during Labor Day weekend's Stones Rising, when we perform the inspirational community work of adding stones to the Stone Circle, the "beating heart of Four Quarters" since that very first day over twenty-five years ago. As the Autumn days grow shorter, the festival season winds down with Samhain followed by Yule and the Winter Solstice. The arbors are put away. The sweat lodge is put to sleep for the winter.

But the work does go on, it merely turns inward. We turn to the planning of the coming year. We reflect on the season past and meditate on the year to come. We also look at the numbers, always a process that can bring a... sobering perspective. And always, planning, planning, planning. For most of our major events, planning the next year's typically starts even as we're putting the candles, drums, and shovels away.

November 8, 2019

Call For Articles

Producing the Wheel of the Year in Adobe Indesign

It’s that time of the year again! New Stones are Risen. Samhain has passed. Solstice and Yule are on the horizon. So once again the Board of Directors, and captive Art Director and Designer Kurt Griffith retire to their monks cells and engage in the annual ritual of cobbling together the Wheel of the Year for 2020. We have our pencils, calendars, event planners, astronomical tables, and even a crystal ball, bonds, tarot decks focused on eighteen months out.

So once again we are calling out to each and every one of you for your articles, prose, poetry, brilliant photographs to fill out yet another edition of the Wheel of the Year. People approach us and say, “I have this idea…. ” We have some news for you; you don’t need our permission to write an article. JUST WRITE and get it to us. Material that we have, we can review and choose to use. Stuff that we don’t have, however brilliant the idea, we can’t use!

October 1, 2019

Crossing the Bridge - Stones Rising 2019

By Etain Preston & Beth Thomas

“In the curragh and off we go, o’ver to Scotland’s shores we row,
To build a chapel there, for the Stone.”
- Steve McDonald

So goes the words from the song Stone of Destiny. It is my traditional go-to song for hitting the road to Stones Rising. This year was special, this was Year 25. My 24^th year with Four Quarters. Having been to many Stones, I know that each year has a different flavor, a different vibe. The people are different, the energy they bring is different, the theme is different. Yet in many ways there is continuity, familiar faces, familiar rites and rituals that have been created over the years. There are things we do from just plan tradition, whether collective or private. So, when the time came, as in years past I over packed the car and set out for the 4.5-hour drive with anticipation for what Stones held in store this year.

August 20, 2019

Designing for Stones

There are any number of Universals in the Art of Design. The Golden Ratio of 1.61 through which your belly button divides your body or the sides of a piece of paper. Logarithmic spirals generated by exponential growth, ie: Life. The 120 degree angle and it's complement of 60 degrees. All of these are ratios found throughout nature, and our neuro-systems are optimized to find within them a quality that we call beauty!
There are other fun factors that a designer keeps in mind about how we perceive visually. Our eyes track and accentuate light/white, and less saturated colors. And important to the fine art of shaping and placing stones, we emphasize the visual weight of concave silhouettes, and de-emphasis the convex. Consider the Great North Stone.

August 18, 2019

Dressing the Stones

How do you dress a stone? Well, first you have to get it to the dress shop!

It helps if you happen to have two backhoes handy.

August 18, 2019

Surveyor's Tape

Consider the lowly surveyor's tape. Spun off at high speed somewhere in South China. Packaged in the darkness of a card board box to be shipped who-knows-where. Unused, unloved, unappreciated in a ware house shelf.
Then suddenly unboxed and into the light! A brief blaze of glory in the sun, wrapped around a tree, adorning a stake, fluttering in the wind. Free, Free. Free at Last !!!!
But then....

Tape

August 16, 2019

A Stones Rising Update

Planning proceeds, with lots of work too, for this years very ambitious Rising. What are some of the ingredients you ask?

Well... with the Rainbow Bridge fundraiser currently at about $7,000, we purchased the +$2,500 in materials to install the handrails. That's 250 feet of steel pipe and the same number of fittings... most of which had to be custom machined in our shop. It took days to prep and position all of the materials, but just 4 hours to assemble the handrails on the bridge. We think it looks spiffy!
There is lots more yet to do. Over 1,000 board feet of toe and hand boards to install. The long ramps to allow golf-cart access. And more lighting! Stay tuned.

The News from Four Quarters

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