Dear Friends,

On this Sunday, January 8th, we will be placing a monument In Andrei's memory at the location here where his ashes are buried on Blue Heron Ranch.
Please join us.

Francesca Gershwin
Andrey's sister

As the days go by, I try to come to some sort of agreement with the other family members who have an interest in the Blue Heron Ranch.
The security of this land and the Zendo and retreat center on it have been threatened these past few months. That's only as far as I have been aware of it, but it may have roots earlier.
I asked my mother and father what plans they have for the land, more than a year ago. And they didn't have any, except to continue to live on it, and hope to keeping. But then my mother bought a house in town, and I thought we really should work out some plan to make a transition to any sort of upkeep or
Anything else that needs to be done to gradually let us kids be more and more regularly involved.
Over the last year I talk to my parents and sister and brother quite rarely.
They blame and shout at me whenever I do.

What I plan:

Dear Friends of the Blue Heron Retreat. 

Over the past 20 years, there have been various events on this property.

Well, we homeschooled here, for one. So that is schooling in an unusual way.

Some of them were child-oriented ( I became friends one summer with the head councilor at Tracker Kin survival camp, they came to do a training camp here. I even made a bow-drill fire for those of you who know what that is!)

Some of them were boring to me as a child, but more interesting to me as an adult woman (Zen Sesshins and Personal Retreat).

And some are in the works!

My dream is that we can all share in the sacredness of this land and partake of the still and quiet it brings, while still having a family-ranch to return to when the going gets rough anywhere else in the world.

I don't know…

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Dear Friends of Blue Heron Retreat:

I am truly upset about an incident that has taken place here this weekend.

I would appreciate your input as regular sesshin-goers and friends of the place here.

While this is long, I am not sure what to leave out in making this story as accurate as possible.

Yesterday, a man who has worked here on the property for years doing various jobs, mostly for Enrico and Nadia, was asked by Enrico to return to work in what I consider to be a totally inappropriate manner.

1. The man, who many of you know, but I will call "J" for now, recently fell deathly ill with a brain infection. He was in the hospital for a month, and just was released few weeks ago to rest at home. 

When I saw him a few days ago, for the first time since…

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