Updates to the Look/Feel of this Blog

Sorry that I haven't been posting much of late. It's been an exhausting summer and particularly the last three weeks. Oy! Rewarding as all get out, but exhausting, darlings, that's no lie. Now, there is lots of end-of-season yard work to perform, besides the usual rush during the weekend to get laundry, housecleaning, grocery shopping done, plus investment club stuff plus taking care of a TON of Goddesschess business. Whew! Sometime yesterday, I have no clear recollection of exactly when, which is somewhat disturbing, hmmm... I started reading Dan Brown's latest, and after I slogged through a slow start of 100 pages or so it's now getting rather gripping, I must say :) Certainly makes the hour bus ride to and from the office go much faster, but the damn book weighs a ton and slows me down, and I don't need any help these days to be slow, thank you very much (NOT), Dan Brown. Ach! Today I did some modest updates to the blog:

• I added an important link to Sacred Threads with original essays by Tracy Boyd, who has been doing research on the goddess and related subjects even longer than we have, and we're passed ten years now online. Please check out Ms. Boyd's essays, they are very finely wrought, completely annotated, utterly absorbing and written in 'plain English' and not high-falutin' academia language that no one understands, not even the author. While we Goddesschess folks were plugging away at that old Art Bell message board on our particular topic "IS CHESS THE GAME OF THE GODDESS?" way back in December, 1998, Ms. Boyd was doing her own goddess-related research. Those Art Bell posts became The Goddesschess Weave and formed the basis for the beginning of our website, Goddesschess. Meanwhile Ms. Boyd was creating her own wonderful Weave. We highly recommend Ms. Boyd's essays, which will provide a depth of information on the goddess and ancient traditions that we have discovered complements perfectly much that we have discovered and written about at Goddesschess.
• Our list of sponsorships was getting a bit long and long in the tooth, so I cut it off at 2009's sponsorships. Goddesschess is now maintaining a list of our sponsorships, more or less current :)
• I also added a banner created by Mr. Don celebrating our sponsorship of the 2009 Fighting Chess Award for the U.S. Women's Chess Championship. I love the symbolism that Mr. Don has incorporated into this banner. There are the wings, of course, which are emblematic of the winged goddesses of old and also of the United States' sacred symbol of the bald eagle. Wings represent freedom, but also the search for, striving for and ultimately the achievement of enlightment as the winged body strains ever higher toward the Heavens. There is the glistening Pearl of Wisdom/Pearl Without Price in the center, which also represents each of the female participants in the 2009 Championship. The pearl in the center also represents many sacred moon goddesses; and if you shift perspective just slightly, that orb becomes a glistening sun symbol, representative of the rarest and oldest of all mother goddesses - the Sun goddess (who, in later times, became the 'Mother of the Sun.') The blue color represents both the color of the sky and the Heavens and also the 'mare' -- the sea, to which many moon goddesses are closely allied. That 'sea' color, that gorgeous blue, is reflected in semi-official national anthems of the USA: God Bless America and America (the Beautiful), as well as in the blue field of America's star-spangled banner. By the way, those stars represent goddesses :) But don't tell anyone.

Okay, that's it for the night. "The Lost Symbol" is calling my name. My middle name seems to be synchronicity these days, and isn't it just a pip that we should meet up with Tracy Boyd AND Mr. Don creates that lovely banner for the 2009 U.S. Women's Chess Championship AND I should happen to have started Dan Brown's absolutely symbolic-laden tome -- all at the same time.

And it all makes perfect sense. But I tell you darlings, I sure wish I'd stop dreaming about chess - and then waking up at 2 AM and tossing and turning thinking about that last stupid move I made - all the rest of the night. The bags under my eyes now have bags of their own. It's not a pretty sight, and make-up does NOT cover them. Arggggghhhhh!

Oh Goddess, please either make me a real good player real fast, or let me just forget all about it, okay? I can't take this! I do not think you wish to kill off this faithful servant yet - well, unless I did something that really got you P.O.d? But then, join the crowd!