THIS ISSUE'S FEATURED AUTHOR:   GARY A. KOWALSKI

GARY KOWALSKI has served as a Unitarian Universalist minister in Memphis TN, Seattle WA, and Burlington VT, since graduating from Harvard Divinity School. He has written on behalf of animals for many years, with the best of his sermons published in 1989 by Harper & Row, Best Sermons. He is also the author of The Bible According to Noah - Theology as if Animals Mattered, The Souls of Animals, and Goodbye Friend.

In his latest book, Science and the Search for God, Kowalski suggests that science and faith compel us now to move beyond materialism toward an understanding of the world that includes the realities of consciousness and spirit.

Whether writing about the souls of animals or contending that science and religion do not need to be mutually exclusive, Kowalski writes both gently and persuasively making his theories thought-provoking and worthy of consideration 

Thank you, Gary, for your work in animal advocacy and opening our hearts and minds to the souls of animals.

SHIRLEY MACLAINE  Oscar winner, three-time Emmy winner, and ten-time Golden Globe winner, has appeared in more than fifty films, has been nominated for an Academy Award six times, and received the Oscar for Best Actress in 1984. A longtime outspoken advocate for civil rights and liberties, women's rights, and spiritual understanding, Shirley MacLaine has sold more than twenty million copies of her nine international bestsellers, which include her most recent success, The Camino. 

For more information, please visit the author's Web site at: www.shirleymaclaine.com or visit writtenvoices.com.

BETSY WHARTON is a writer and nurse whose work has taken her into many cultures including the Navajo Indian Reservation, an AIDS hospice and a refugee camp on the Pakistani-Afghan border. She currently resides in Port Angeles, Washington with her husband and two children where she works with young families at First Step Family Support Center. She is the recent co-author of Daughters of the Desert: Stories of Remarkable Women from the Jewish, Christian and Muslim Traditions, published by Skylights Path Publishing, available at www.skylightpath.com

ROSS TURKUS relates to the animalistic instinct to mark its territory with his own propensity to stake claims in his environment in "Marking Territory."  Ross writes to us from Port Angeles, Washington.

DAVE SHREFFLER and Ann Soule have traveled in fifteen countries since 1990, when they did their first expedition together—three weeks of sea kayaking in the icy wildness of Glacier Bay, Alaska. Writing Equatorial Crossings gave Dave the opportunity to mesh his varied interests in travel, natural history, and photography. As a fisheries biologist specializing in ecosystem restoration, Dave derives both personal and professional satisfaction from restoring rivers and estuaries in the Pacific Northwest. He has published more than 40 peer-reviewed reports and journal articles, and he has a life-long zeal for natural history. His photographs have been featured in the Northwest Exhibition of Environmental Photography, Time, newspapers, and various scientific journals. Ann has previously done illustrations for the book, On Celtic Tides, winner of the 2000 National Outdoor Book Award. Equatorial Crossings is their first collaborative book project. 

Foreign travel continues to inspire this couple and they relish any opportunity for improved understanding of the world’s disappearing cultures. Dave and Ann are also deeply committed to better stewardship of the world’s threatened natural resources. They live with their daughter, Waverly, near Sequim, Washington in the foothills bordering Olympic National Park. 

Website links:
www.equatorialcrossings.com
www.trevelrie.com

CHRIS DUFF has traveled more than 15,000 miles by sea kayak since 1983, when he paddled 8,000 miles around the eastern third of the United States and Canada. With the completion of his Irish expedition in 1996, he became the only person to have soloed the entire British Isles. In 2000, he completed the second ever 1,700-mile solo paddle around New Zealand's South Island. He is currently planning a team circumnavigation of Iceland, which will be promoted by his sponsors in the spring of 2003. 

Chris has been a guest speaker at many national sea kayaking symposia and has given talks and slide presentations to school groups, civic organizations, and outdoor recreation and paddling clubs. He was the keynote speaker at Canoecopia in 1999 and 2002. 

Chris has written articles for Sea Kayaker magazine and was a contributing author to Seekers of the Horizon (Globe Pequot, 1989). His first book, On Celtic Tides, was published by St. Martin's Press in 2000. He lives in Port Angeles, Washington.

MEREDITH YOUNG-SOWERS, D. DIV.  An internationally acclaimed spiritual teacher, intuitive healer, counselor and author, Meredith has published six books, two of which have become best-selling classics: Agartha and the Angelic Messenger Cards. Meredith lectures, leads workshops and offers teleclasses all over the world, bringing her special gracious blend of warmth, wisdom, intimacy, insight and encouragement to her students. In her teachings and writings, she draws on the spiritual lessons found in the ordinary experiences of daily life and shares her ability to see the miraculous in the mundane. Students and participants in her classes, workshops and retreats say she empowers them to overcome the difficult challenges in their lives.

Founder and director of the Stillpoint Institute and School of Advanced Energy Healing, and co-founder of Stillpoint Publishing with Caroline Myss, Meredith is considered a pioneer in the development of energy diagnosis methods. Her work, a new path to healing that brings greater love, joy, and comfort to people’s lives, is considered a significant breakthrough in the field of energy medicine.

An alumna and a recipient of a distinguished graduate award from Centenary College for Women, she holds both a Masters and a Doctor of Divinity degree from the Universal Brotherhood University. Meredith and her husband live in rural New Hampshire.

RUDI RICHARDSON is a recovering addict and child abuse survivor.  His published poems can be viewed on http://www.poetry.com.

" I obtained the story from my experience. All of it is based on my life."
- Rudi Richardson

JUDITH PENNINGTON is a writer, musician and spiritual teacher living in the hilly countryside of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Judith is an internationally published journalist and the author of a national award-winning coffee table book on Baton Rouge, Louisiana, her hometown. Her second book, The Voice of the Soul: A Journey into Wisdom and the Physics of God, is a trail-blazing story of transformation which gave rise to her workshops, e-newsletters and her web site, eaglelife.com.  

DR. ASOKA SELVARAJAH is an active author/researcher on personal development and esoteric spirituality. Asoka's work helps people achieve their full potential, deepen their understanding of mystical truth, and find joy in their true soul's purpose.

KENNETH P. GURNEY lives west of Port Angeles where he enjoys being between the mountains and the ocean.  Some years he is a poet who works at a bookstore.  Other years he is a bookstore clerk who writes poetry.  He is the editor of a poetry web site, http//:www.tmpoetry.com.

ANDREW PELL is the Sydney MMA (Middle Market Advisory ) Document Co-ordinator, KPMG, a published writer and accomplished musician.

Pell has been a MMA Document Coordinator in Sydney for over four years and he finds document management a creative career. He is also a long-term member of the RMAA (Records Management Association of Australia).

Pell has been interested in music since he was 8 years old and is currently the Director of Music at the Historic Holy Trinity Garrison Church at the Rocks, one of the oldest churches in Sydney.  His other passion is poetry and he has had several poems published in magazines and websites. One of his favourite poems is "The Inner Light" which has been set to music by Internationally renowned Composer Dr. Eric Gross, AM.  Pell has always been interested in metaphysics and one day plans to set each tarot card drawing to music.

PATTIANN ROGERS was born in Joplin, Missouri, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA from the University of Missouri in 1961 and she received a Master of Arts from the University of Houston in 1981. She has taught at the University of Texas, the University of Montana, Washington University of St. Louis, and Mercer University as the Ferrol Sams Distinguished Writer-in-Residence. She taught in the Creative Writing Program during the spring semesters, 1993 to 1997, at the University of Arkansas. Summers, she has several times led workshops at the Centrum, Port Townsend, Washington Writers' Conference.  She is the mother of two sons and a daughter-in-law and lives with her husband, a retired geophysicist, in Colorado.

"Elinor Frost's Marble-Topped Kneading Table" is from her sixth book, Firekeeper, New and Selected Poems.  It was chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the Best Books Published in 1994 and was one of five finalists for the Lenore Marshall Award given by the Academy of American Poets for the most outstanding book of poetry published in the United States in 1994. It also received the Natalie Ornish Poetry Award from the Texas Institute of Letters.

Thank you, Pattiann, for your continued support of our webzine.

ELEANORA SCARPETTA makes our mouth water as she paints a picture of her family's Christmas eve traditional meal in Winter and Holiday Foods.  Eleanora is taking pre-orders for her new cookbook to be released in 2004.  To order her fabulous cookbook or download some of her free recipes visit eleanoraskitchen.com.

Thank you again, Eleanora for being a part of our webzine!

RON RUBIN,  the "Minister of Tea," is Chairman of the Board of The Republic of Tea. He keeps a permanent residence in Clayton, Missouri.