Winter Gathering XVIIII. February 13 – 15, 2026

(poster made by Kadi Franson – www.kadifranson.com)

The theme this year is: Love’s Only Border is Love

Celebrate Valentines Weekend this year with house concerts, nature hikes, workshops, discussion groups, food, and lots of fun!

Once again theillalogicalspoon will serve as “house band”. And many other musical friends will perform to entertain and inspire. Including Railcar Grafitti, Wonky Tonk, Fields of Industry, Lisa Wolf, and more…

For more information email: theillalogicalspoon@gmail.com

We’ll meet down by the riverside

The River

By Jim Harrison

Yes, we’ll gather by the river,

the beautiful, the beautiful river.

They say it runs by the throne of God.

This is where God invented fish.

Wherever, but then God’s throne is as wide

as the universe. If you’re attentive you’ll

see the throne’s borders in the stars. We’re on this side

and when you get to the other side we don’t know

what will happen if anything. If nothing happens

we won’t know it, I said once. Is that cynical?

No, nothing is nothing, not upsetting just

nothing. Then again maybe we’ll be cast

at the speed of light through the universe

to God’s throne. His hair is bounteous.

All the 5,000 birds on earth were created there.

The firstborn cranes, herons, hawks, at the back

so as not to frighten the little ones.

Even now they remember this divine habitat.

Shall we gather at the river, this beautiful river?

We’ll sing with the warblers perched on his eyelashes.

Post Card from Home

“After the first Artist, only the copyist.” – Terry and Renny Russell in On The Loose

“Mauve takes it amiss that I said, ‘I am an artist’, which I won’t take back, because it’s self-evident that what that word implies is looking for something all the time without ever finding it in full. It is the very opposite of saying ‘I know all about it, I’ve already found it’. As far as I am concerned, the word means, ‘I am looking, I am hunting for it, I am deeply involved.” – from The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

The flower in the picture is Spiderwort or Tradescantia ohiensis.