What That Grail Story Can Still Do

[dr_pretentious]

One evening at festival, George and Cat were watching the children from our camp playing. Cat turned to George and said, "If we as a community were really thinking about the future, we'd be up setting a college scholarship fund to help these kids out."

And George, being The Man Who Gets Things Done, got to work right away. Now the Free Spirit Alliance offers a college scholarship, which will soon be renamed in his honor.

Once the legal and bureaucratic details were in order, he borrowed a fundraising strategy that Dan had come up with--George promised to get a tattoo, and invited the community to decide, at a dollar per vote, what tattoo he would get. After a year of collecting votes and dollars, he invited everyone at the next midsummer festival to see him get inked at Sacred Mark Sanctuary's tattoo pavilion.

His Ink-the-Elf campaign was a wildly successful fundraising drive. I suspect his passing will, as a side effect, be wildly successful in that way, too, since his family has asked that, in lieu of flowers, people send donations to the fund. Three hundred people came to his memorial, as predicted. We filled that hall. George's obituary is the lead story at Witchvox today, and it ends with the same request. The Free Spirit Alliance is going to have a very full post office box.

Many of the people at the memorial service had read his Grail story here, and they urged me to consider publishing it. The only way I could bear to do that would be as a tribute to George, with all proceeds going to the scholarship fund. The thought of revising that particular story while asking myself how I could make it more marketable to magazines...impossible. But getting it printed and selling it at festival--that I could do.

It's a project that will have to wait until January. I haven't bought any Christmas gifts for my family or Dan's, and hardly any Yule gifts for anybody else, so I need to run around and take care of holiday things for a while. But when there's some progress to report, I'll mention it here.

Comments

[sligoe.livejournal.com]

A wonderful Idea. Let me know if I can help in any way. I'll have a bit of free time in January as I recuperate from my next eye surgery.

Hugs---good luck with getting holiday stuff done!

[evilbunny.livejournal.com]

Would you mind posting the Grail story in geomemories? Or at least the links to it.

*hugs*

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

This is awesome, Sarah.

[travelingtim.livejournal.com]

If it was going to be published it might need some more details so people outside the inner-circle understood it. Some art could be helpful as well. Either new drawings or old style Authurian art photoshopped with modern images. Wouldn't need much, maybe one image per chapter

Let me see if I can make some pictures that are worthy of your words.

[jr0124.livejournal.com]

Rather than change the core text, perhaps an introduction with some background might be helpful or some notes about the nature of "myth". I think I'd also be okay with allowing the story to be a legend of its own. People can fill in the missing gaps.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I want to leave the story itself as is, but in the story, George has only one line. I've been starting to compose the foreword in my head.

Art is tricky. Alas, I have no talent for illustration. I agree that one image per chapter would feel about right. The awkward thing is that many of George's friends do have talents for pictorial representation, and once I put the word out that I need some pictures, I'll be deluged with more than I need, and I won't be able to include them all. I'm not really sure about the best way to handle that, under the circumstances.

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

in the story, George has only one line

Ah, but what a line. >:-)

[vgnwtch.livejournal.com]

Let me know if/when this comes to fruition. We will pay for a copy + transatlantic post.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Rest assured that when the project comes to fruition, I will spam you relentlessly.

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

I was already formulating plans to take the text and make a "pretty" version for people who wanted it to have a shrine-worthy copy (with your permission, of course, I just hadn't gotten around to asking you yet). If you're actually talking about selling it as a fundraiser, I'd be happy to volunteer the design-work, and make it BEAUTIFUL.

(Although I'd be overjoyed to have help on the artwork and such, fresh art would be so much better than snagging images of Percival out of old books and such. :-)

Once you have time to think about it, let's put our heads together and see what seems feasible in terms of reproduction. Lulu.com springs to mind as a service that could create lovely perfect-bound chapbooks for not very much money, and we could really up the donation factor.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking along these same lines since vgnwtch first insisted that I should publish it. It must be perfect bound. It must be beautiful. Above all, it must be something that will make people feel comforted when they see it on their Samhain shrines for the year's beloved dead. Lulu looks promising. I'll see what my local printer can do, once the holidays are over, just to be able to make a comparison.

I remember that gorgeous cover mock-up you made for Sabrina's book. I would love to see what you come up with for a design.

George knew a lot of people with talents for illustration who are going to want to send artwork. My big concern is that there be a way to honor the intent of the illustrations we can't use.

Lulu's minimum is 32 pages. That feels about right, even if we go with some other printing option. It should give us room for a short foreword about the man himself, an illustration for each chapter, and a page or two about the scholarship fund, with plenty of white space. The foreword is starting to write itself in my head.

I have this notion about thick, creamy paper, and I suspect that Lulu can't accomodate such a notion. When I have some numbers, I'll think more seriously about the notion's viability.

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

If you let me play with real paper, I'll be even happier. :-)

One possibility for the artwork... include everything that didn't make the actual story section, in a section in the back? A few extra pages won't make much difference, probably. "Other Windows, Other Visions" or something.

Or, if that doesn't work for you and/or is cost-prohibitive, you could put them online linked to a memorial page on the FreeSpirit site or the Balefire site, and/or whatever site you use to promote the chapbook.

Overall tone of the look-and-feel is your call, of course, but I'm imagining something very elegant and beautiful, styled like a collector's edition Arthurian sort of thing. Not overblown and tacky, but with more design and beautiful typography than most poetry books get. Once you're ready to start discussions, I can mock up some sample pages.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Sounds good. Feel free to play with sample pages as the spirit moves you. I'll be traveling until January 2nd, but at that point, many things become possible.

[akrissy.livejournal.com]

it would be beautiful for any shrine.
I wonder if there is a way to make it available, or appealing, to non-pagans. To support getting the message out about the risks of smoking. Your story could touch many in a community beyond our pagan one.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

I don't recognize your lj handle. We seem to know a bunch of people in common, but I can't tell if we've met. How did you find me?

I don't know exactly how to make the book widely available, but I think it would not be difficult, especially if we end up getting it printed through lulu.com. I'm working on the theory that, if the quality of the writing, the illustrations, and the design is high, then the result will be appealing beyond the circles George traveled in. I would hesitate to try to disseminate the chapbook as an anti-smoking manifesto, because people who know far more than I do about persuading populations to change their behaviors have been trying for a long time to get that message out, with very little success. I can make the chapbook work well as a memorial and as a fundraiser, but the moment I start trying to make it an anti-smoking message, the project loses focus. A small book needs a tight focus.

2nd try to respond

[akrissy.livejournal.com]

Hi Sarah, I'm Krissy. I believe we met at the memorial, but for how I'm connected; I'm directly connected to Lee who was up there for support during the memorial and then also to Cat as a friend from the DC area(pagan & poly). My husband, Todd, probably would have been more recognizable at the memorial since knows more people than I do. I would consider us kind of like cousins on a family connection since we only occasionally catchup with the Blue Star community and Blue Star folks are more than welcome in our Circle rituals.

Your story is strong in the message of what 'family' goes through when someone is battling a life-threatening disease. So maybe not an anti-smoking manifesto. But something supportive for those that are in the midst of the struggle which could help others understand why it consumes all a family's energy, focus, and love during a time of crisis. "The Grail was still full". I have no idea if, or how, it could be shared. The fact that it became a top hit on Google is evidence that it rang strong in the hearts of many.