Etcheonda -- home

Hello! Rob LeBlanc, dit White, alias Captain Jason Redbeard here, though perhaps that name might be changed to greybeard as I look into the mirror. Join us, please. Pull up a chair by the potbellied stove and listen to a yarn or two, then add your own tales to the "mix."
You're invited, you friends, writers, artists, poets and philosophers of the Universe --drop in and share your stories with us. You'll find there's always a friendly ear, eager for a new idea. Let us know how you're doing:. Send me a word or two at: rwhite@wesleyan.edu

A Place For Dreamers

For a while I searched through scrapyards
Finding artifacts of yesterday:
chipped bathroom tiles and twisted bicycle wheels
Cast off parts of broken lives...
Fragments of Eternity among the piles
Of weary dolls-eyes and battered limbs.
Sometimes I salvaged what I could
But mostly there was nothing left behind
Though, occasionally,
One thing or another climbed out of the pile
and escaped, for a while . . .

In "Basquerie" by Eleanor M. Kelly her romantic Estaban talks of the "Etcheonda". . . "the etcheonda is our home, our abiding place, no matter how far we come to it. . . In Germany it is called the Stammhaus; in America it is not called at all . . . the etcheonda is the home to which one of our families belongs from generation to generation; where all the sons may bring their wives to live when they are done with roving; to whose shelter every member of the family has his right, and to which all pay tribute . . ." But if you don't have an Etcheonda then there's always The Shop For Dreamers where you're alway welcome.

The Buttonwood Tree: A Shop For Dreamers in Middletown .

Here at A Shop For Dreamers we hope you feel "at home". Rest and relax. Please take off your shoes and pour yourself a warm cup of tea -- Early Grey is always on the stove, or something stronger, if you can find it. You're safe here among friends and relatives.

Think of the "etcheonda" as a village of sorts, having a central commons with rough hewn buildings and pathways leading into the hills. Our main street wanders a bit wavery, snake-like, down the center of our small town.

There are side roads with houses and shops, craftsfolk places where you can find a variety of services. In one place you might have your horse shod. There's an apothecary shop, a clockmaker, a tinsmith, a bookshop, craft-place, tea house, a magicians lodgings, a resident poet. There's a tavern over there, and lots of comfortable houses; some galleries too wherein live a variety of strange and interesting folks...

Down there, near the center of town is a comfortable, but plain lodging house. The LeBlanc Family Inn by name.

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In the hills to the north are ruins of ancient villages, inhabited once by people long vanished from these lands; now they are legends. Down by the ocean to the east is the Acadian village still occupied by descendents of the original residents who have returned after being exiled. Further down the coast, in the western hills, starting at a prominatory by the sea, are rumors that you can find artifacts of the legendary "dragons" or dinosaurs of yesterday.
.

There's one road leading out of town, but immediately as you leave our village the road forks off into several directions with signs pointing to "A Gallery For Dreamers" and another road leading toward "The Lone Willow Farm."

The Gallery is a place much like Lord Dunsany's "Shop On GoBy Street" where almost anything can be found on its cobwebbed shelves. You might enjoy the adventures of two small girls as they try to outwit the witch of the grandfather clock in "Time Enough For All." Or by following the "Footprints of the Exiled" you might wander in the direction of those Acadian exiles of yesterday, to their history and genealogy. And yet there are many other trails branching off like the arms of an old tree -- Yggdrasil perhaps -- the tree of life, reaching far into the past of our ancestors, your own ancestors, or into the future. You can find the way, your way. You have only to discover the right path.

Go to:

BlackGlass by Richard Emond
or

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