Crone Chronicles #29(original)
The Journey

The Journey
In this wandering, exploring, musing issue of Ann Kreilkamp's "Crone Chronicles" we are led from one Crone's life-story to the next; always searching for the deeper roots of our experience.

We begin with the story of Esta Feedora, one of the foremothers of modern feminism in Europe, in Ann's interview "Conversation with a Wanderer." We follow Esta as she journeys in both space and time, from her fight for women's rights in 1970's France to her journeys in Morocco, Panana and China to her journey (everywhere) of being a mother, and (in California) of coming out as a lesbian to her current search for "women's land" on which to make her home as an elder.

Next, activist and author Carol Rosin shares her experience taking one final "trip" with psychedelic adventurer, outlaw, and visionary Timothy Leary as she midwifes his dying process in "Reality Shifts." Similar in tone, though far deeper in intimacy, is Jeanne Pudoff’s moving essay "My Mother's Final Gifts."

Journeys can also mean travel, as in Marcia Starck's "The Black Madonna in France," and Louise Schullery-Cox's "While in Rome", but it also can mean finding a new passion, like Stephanie Fauber in "Horse Dreams" or Healey McGovern's acceptance of dream wisdom in "The Old Woman in the Cave."

Perhaps Ann Kreilkamp sums up this issue — and the idea of journeying — best in her encapsulating editorial describing the seven years of Crone Chronicles "Saturn, Crone Chronicles, and the Astrology of 1989." She writes, "As the Crone emerges, she is wild, she is brilliant, she is creative, and she is a hard taskmaster. Focused, full of energy, and furious, she is now here among us and will not be denied."

Explore the Crone in her wide-ranging beauty with this issue. 72 pages, edited and published by Ann Kreilkamp at Winter Solstice of 1996.