Alexander Stuart

Hudson, Paradise, Charong and I are fortunate enough to have two Elf Friends,  Elgouin and Cargouin , who live in Golden Tunnels deep beneath the Earth,  and who have been a part of our family for four years or more. Every year, we hold a  Woodland Winter Fair  in celebration of them, of their part in the month leading up to the Holidays , and of the magic of Winter itself. A big part of the Winter Fair is singing The Elf Train Song (written by our magical friend, Camila Arnold, and me), heard in the YouTube video above. But Hudson has added an extra element to the legend of the Elves: the month of Devember, a one-day month that spans part of the last day of November and the first day of December - and is the official beginning of the Holiday Season for us. So tonight is Devember Night...and you can be sure Elgouin and Cargouin will be busy!

Photograph by Alexander Chow-Stuart. Here, for those of you wondering what Elgouin and Cargouin look like, is a very rare and ancient photograph of them, captured around Christmastime.

Thanks to the kindness and generosity of Merrilie Reed, General Manager of the Sonora Days Inn at 160 South Washington Street, Sonora, CA 95370, anyone coming to my 2nd Sonora Writing Workshop this Saturday, December 3 2011, may park for free in the Sonora Days Inn parking lot across the road from the workshop's location at the Central Sierra Arts Council   (and opposite the Bank of America building at the intersection of Stockton Street and Washington). This is particularly helpful, since Washington and the surrounding neighborhood can be very busy on a Saturday (or any day of the week!), and since the writing workshop is three hours, it means that participants don't have to worry about feeding parking meters. The workshop runs from 10:00am-1:00pm and is $20 for adults and $10 for students. The address is: Central Sierra Arts Council, 193 South Washington Street, Sonora. Please call 310-383-7562 or email: tranquilbuddha@gmail.com Full details are in my post below. Please

I was thinking about the amazing Eckhart Tolle   today and remembering an event at which I met him and listened - mesmerized - to him speak, a little over two years ago, on Thursday, June 4 2009, at 20th Century Fox Studios. This is a brief blog piece I wrote for my Loving The Wolf blog (still around on the web but superseded by this one) on Friday, June 5 2009. I hope you enjoy it: Friday, June 5 2009 I attended an astonishing event last night at 20th Century Fox Studios: the first gathering of GATE, the Global Alliance for Transformational Entertainment, a creation of John Raatz, Jim Carrey , Eckhart Tolle and others - including the phenomenal Melissa Etheridge and Donovan - dedicated to raising the bar among those of us who create entertainment, so that we think about the impact our work has on people and try to make that impact as positive, meaningful and, ultimately, transcendent as possible. It doesn't mean avoiding the dark side - that can be addressed intell

Alexander Chow-Stuart by Hudson Chow-Stuart. Like most writers, I do not especially like being photographed - in fact, usually, I do all I can to avoid it, unless it is a family snap with our children, when I feel totally relaxed. I do not have a natural love affair with the camera - unless behind it (I love taking pictures) - but Hudson (seven) has had his own camera, and one of our old iPhones, since he was three, and is quite the accomplished photographer - not only taking pictures, but using various apps of his own discovery to enhance them, colorize them, and otherwise have fun with them. I would not usually post a photograph of me here, but this picture - which Hudson took completely unexpectedly, when I was sitting at my desk writing - captures more of who I think I am (which may or may not be close to other people's perceptions:) than most photographs of me that I have ever seen. I think the reason is that when I look at Hudson, I "see" love - or see with