The sixth anniversary of one of the saddest days in the history of The Cauldron is almost upon us. If you were a member of The Cauldron any time from about 2003 to early 2006, you will remember Chavi (aka Storyteller Cat and, in offline life, Cathlene Patricia McKenna) and starting in early 2005, her ever positive reports on her battle with a rare form of cancer. (Some of these posted used to be available on our 2005 Archive Board -- but the software it ran on does not support modern versions of PHP.) The odds were against her from the beginning, but that did not stop her from fighting hard to try to be one of the rare survivors. And for a time it looked like she really might overcome those long odds. Unfortunately, it wasn't to be so.
Elspeth, one of the founders of this board passed over on April 19, 2010, after years of fighting congestive heart failure and other medical problems which kept her offline except for generally brief spells over the last five or six years. She was a major participant here in the early years of this board and her posts can be found on our old Delphi forum. Some of her poetry and other writings can in old issues of our newsletter and in the Samhain section of our web site. The Cauldron would have never started if Elspeth had not wanted a forum to replace a small mailing list, The Grove, which she ran.
Sunday, April 1, 2012, marks the sixth anniversary of Chavi's passing. It's been six years now and TC is still not the same without Chavi. Since the first anniversary of her passing, we have honored her on April 1st with 24 hours of candle burning. Last year, we stated honoring Elspeth on this day as well. We will be continuing the tradition this year. We are asking all Cauldron members who knew Chavi or Elspeth, knew of Chavi or Elspeth, or who did not know either Chavi or Elspeth but just want to help honor two wonderful people who meant a lot to many members of TC (and wish to participate) to light a candle in honor of Chavi and Elspeth at 8pm your local time on April 1st and let it burn for at least an hour. The object is to have 24 hours of candles burning for them -- one hour at a time around the world. Given things like oceans and the like, this may not be completely possible, but I'll bet we can come close -- especially as some of us let our candles burn for longer than one hour.
If you log in on April 1st, you will probably notice that many longtime members of this board have changed their avatar for the day to either an avatar of a hat or their regular avatar wearing a hat. These hats are usually somewhat silly. We do this in honor of Chavi who had a thing for silly hats.
If you want to participate, please post in here. Everyone, regardless of religion, is welcome to participate. If you can't participate at 8pm your time, feel free to pick a different hour, I can promise you that neither Chavi or Elspeth would have been sticklers about the time.
- Message Board: Join in our discussion
