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Continue reading →: Your Backpack Is A Portable Laundry Line: Washing Clothes on the Camino
One of the things I’ll have to get used to while walking the Camino is wearing the same thing, day after day. It’s advised that your pack only be about 10% of your body weight, which currently puts my pack’s ideal weight at about 15 lbs. I plan on hiking…
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Continue reading →: Weekly Photo Challenge: Objects & Oddities
I collect a strange mixture of objects and ephemera: vintage and antique tea tins (especially WWII era, preferably Meinl & some Russian brands), watercolor paintings of circus freaks, vintage and antique illustrated copies of Arabian Nights Entertainments and related books, porcelain from West Germany and Czechoslovakia, vintage and antique Asian…
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Continue reading →: Weekly Writing Challenge: 1,000 Words
This week’s writing challenge begins with an image (“Contemplation,” above). As it happens, today’s post was going to be about a spot on the map that seems to naturally reel in those in need of serious contemplation. I’m talking about Finisterre, on the western coast of Spain. There are many…
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Continue reading →: One Step Closer to St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port!
Today a very special package arrived in the mail, made even more exciting by the fact that I thought it would be a few more days before these particular goodies would arrive. Enclosed in the unassuming Amazon packaging were two books that come highly recommended – The Pilgrim’s Guide to…
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Continue reading →: Monthly Peace Challenge: Neuroscience For Peace
This post is in answer to January’s Monthly Peace Challenge, over at Everyday Gurus. I’m coming in a little late with this one, but hey, better late than never, right? This month, participating Bloggers for Peace were challenged to explore (and express) the one thought that they would be focusing…
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Continue reading →: The Camino Plan
After some serious thought, I’ve realized that my (greatly) varied interests can’t all be reflected properly on Compass & Quill. Sometimes it can be hard for me to see where one pastime or interest ends and another begins – I get sucked into wanting to talk about it all here,…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: In Movement There Is Peace – Stumbling 500 Miles Along The Way To The Spirit
There is no shortage of books chronicling the pilgrim’s path to Santiago de Compostela. From travel guide to personal memoir, spiritual exploration to historical documentation, there is something for every armchair pilgrim who wishes to travel the Camino by way of words. This week’s book review focuses on a book…
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Continue reading →: “To The Pilgrim” (A Poem from The Camino)
The following poem was carried by a South African Pilgrim and presented at Refugio Gaucelmo… To the Pilgrim Go from the day of your birth you have been on the journey. Go an encounter awaits you. with whom? perhaps with…
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Continue reading →: Why Santiago de Compostela?
As a marketer, it’s often my responsibility to help clients refine their core message into a short, simple statement that can be easily tucked into a casual conversation. We call it the “elevator pitch”. The basic idea is that the client should be able to approach a target consumer and…
Hello,
I’m Nova
I have no “personal brand.” I’m not a girl boss, I’m not an influencer, and I don’t aspire to be powerful, inspiring, or rich. I probably can’t teach you anything, and there’s a good chance that there’s nothing at all of interest or use to you here. This is just where I come to talk about the random bits and pieces that make up my quiet life as a sober woman in her 40s. I’m engaged to the love of my life, have six (yes, SIX) indoor pets, and spend a lot of time gardening and hunting for thrift treasures. I also study classical voice (I’m a lyric coloratura soprano) and am deeply interested in all things spiritual and paranormal. Right now I’m trying to recover from career burnout and even out my personal energy, but my eventual goal is to become a medium and shamanic healer, using music to remind humans of the things that actually matter: connection, community, and loving all living things as though they were our own children. I may or may not talk about all of these things here (and sometimes all at once). Welcome!
Compass & Quill 