This card is from the Legend: Arthurian tarot deck, and here is its story:

Deep within the earth, Wayland practices his craft.

The Saxon smith Wayland is the Norse smith Völundr who became incorporated into the mythology of Britain. Wayland was the master craftsman to the gods, whose weapons were so fine that they sang in the air. Excalibur is sometimes said to have been forged by Wayland. The coveted work of this god of smiths led King Nidud to abduct him. Nidud hamstrung the smith to prevent his escape and then forced his lame prisoner to work. The art of the smith and magician were thought to be closely related, and it was by magic that the smith eventually escaped the clutches of Nidud, after which he sought a terrible revenge upon the king’s family.

Over time, Wayland has come to be associated with many of Britain’s ancient sites, and appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The Life of Merlin. The spirit of Wayland is said to haunt a neolithic burial chamber known as Wayland’s Smithy in Oxfordshire. Tradition maintains that if one were to leave a horse and coin at the chamber overnight, on returning in the morning one would find the coin gone and the horse shod.

-- from A Keeper of Words, by Anna-Marie Ferguson

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I saw what I think is bear scat on the road I walk on each day. It was full of saskatoon berries. Some say coyotes eat saskatoons so it could be theirs. I don’t care. I’m taking the dog with me next time I go, even if it means I have to struggle with a big German shepherd pulling against the leash the whole time. Farmbeau said bears have been known to sit down in a field of oats and strip the stems. There is an oat field nearby.

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Some people’s thought turns to writing so beautifully, and Jill’s is like that.

We look at ourselves and our own (very different) lives with a kindred comprehension and way of seeing. I would be hard-pressed to explain that, except that she often says what I think, only she says it better and in a more sophisticated way. Reading Jill’s elegantly worded description of her life often helps me make more sense of my own. In the same sort of way that a Joni Mitchell song does, come to think of it.

And her writing is a pleasure to read. Try it. It’s like skating on a river of white ice under a sunny sky: crisp bracing breaths and sharp flashing silver, accomplished and easy at the same time, with a confident lope, the inevitable popsicle toes (as the song goes) of life, and a hotly beating heart under a cosy wool sweater.

[Well, if *you* can describe it more accurately, please do!]

I have read Jill’s journals from their very beginning, and for quite a number of years now. I am constantly reading Jill’s entries and thinking “This deserves one of those diary awards. It’s a standout.” I mean, constantly.

The following is an excerpt from Jill’s new journal, Debut:

Being honest is easy at first. It is when you have too much at stake that it becomes difficult or impossible.

But it is important. It works for couches and it works for relationships. You look at something with clear eyes and a focussed gaze and you assess it and you say what you really think without trying to protect other people from your opinions as if they were something corrosive or foul-smelling.

It can easily coexist with sensitivity and empathy and all of those other kinder expressions, but it has to exist or the rest of it is a sham.