Donovan at the Rattlesnake Ranch Cafe (photo: Ernie)

"Break cheese with me ... Won't you break bread and have some wine?"

Hello to all my fellow Catch the Wind brothers and sisters, especially those of us who met at the Rattlesnake Ranch Cafe on October 25, 2003! Once again I suspect we all still floating like lemon peels in the starry night, our feet so light so not to touch the grass!

As last year, a group of about 20-25 of us gathered at 2 pm and shortly after for a late lunch/early supper before the

CTW Friends (photo: Ernie)

concert at a local Mexican restaurant, Rattlesnake Ranch Cafe, and Donovan once again joined us for the repast. This year he actually arrived quite early; Mary and I arrived at about 2:15 to find at least a dozen other Catch the Winders already in attendance, and I think Don arrived about 2:30 (I may well be fuzzy on the details, as I only got 2 hours sleep the night before).

In the manner befitting the exalted troubadour, Donovan sat at the head of our long table and seemed quite loose and comfortable to me; at one point Michael came by my seat (about halfway down the loooong table, like a banquet table in some medieval hall) and told me to take his seat next to Donovan for a while, thank you Mike! So I did and had a great chance to talk for a bit with Don, firstly about this little website. I had heard conflicting reports that he has and has not seen it; he told me at the Downtown in July that he had, and liked it quite a bit, but then again, I'm sure he's seen a great many websites in tribute and may not remember this one in particular. In any event, several people told him how nice my site was (thank you all; everyone who has contributed photos and info is a part of this site and it would be much less without your generous contributions). Then Don and I talked a bit about one of my favorite subjects (see my domain name!), the standing stones and stone circles of Britain, and his time in St Albans (which is quite near some of the most amazing standing stones in the UK).

Mary joined us and Don asked us something like if we had seen the sun rise with the stones (someone who was more awake, if you overheard and remember his comment, please let me know!), and we told him that one morning we sat in front of one of the standing stones in the great stone circle in Avebury and chanted the Guru Gita. "Ah, Avebury," Don said, and Mary said "and we realized that the stone circle was much older than the gita [the Guru Gita dates from the 8th century CE, whereas Avebury was erected ca. 2500 BCE].

(photo: Ernie)

Don said yes, but we are far older than the stones, and far younger; being spirits we are older than all the material world and at the same time younger than it all. So beautiful; he has such innate wisdom and such wonderful expression, simple and profound at the same time. I wish I had recorded precisely what he said, it was so moving.

The big news he discussed at the dinner, of course--which has been rumored many times before--is the expected release of Beatnik Cafe. I'm sure we'll be hearing more about this down the line, but Don said that he was heading to LA "tomorrow" to put the finishing touches on it and I gathered that he was then looking for the right label and all that (fuzzy-headed Ernie again, so anyone else, clarify my rambling!).

Anyway, everyone had a chance to visit with Don for a while; he ate his dinner and then signed autographs again and posed for some photos before leaving for his sound check.

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