By the time you receive this issue, the Love and Light Conference will probably be under way, or even history. At this time, less than a week before the event, I find myself once again in the crunch of tending to last-minute details, coping with cancellations, finding replacements, worrying about who’s going to show up... If you ever thought putting on a conference was easy, I have news for you. Ask me next week if there is going to a fourth conference. Right now I’d say it’s doubtful. But at the same time I relish in the excitement and activity of bringing something of this magnitude together, because I’ve seen in past years how we as lightworkers have lit up an entire region and changed lives... yes, literally!
If you were hoping to come this year but just couldn’t make it, I hope that for your sake there will be a fourth Love and Light Conference, even if someone else takes it over, because it is really something worthwhile to experience. Bless all of you who have come in the past or the present, and my gratitude to all of you who have made this possible, even if it was just projecting positive thoughts our way.
It has been over a year now since Marcy Beckwith (known to some as Sanni) moved to Colorado. In that time she has amazed both new and old friends by her progress. For instance, she rides a three-wheel bike (named "Wind Horse") downtown (about 10 blocks) and back. She goes on walks every evening with a neighbor lady, and she continues to improve her yard with the addition of plants, rocks and TLC. I just thought I’d mention to the readers how proud we are of our little E.T. Friend who has made the best out of being stranded on Earth!
By the way, Marcy would love to get e-mail from you. Her address is sanniceto@yahoo.com
At presstime there was a burst of coverage from the East Coast over lights in the sky. Here are some excerpts from various news sources, with special thanks to Lady Isis, whose diligent e-mails reach out to so many. Visit her Web sites at http://home1.gte.ladyisis/index.htm and http://Lady_Isis.tripod.com.
Writes Isis: "As you probably will hear, a fireball (meteor) was seen in Maryland just after 6 p.m. July 23. According to Fox 5 News in Washington, D.C. (the only station to confirm the landing), it landed in Salladasburg, Pa., and left a 20-ft. scorch mark. Salladasburg, Pa., is in north central Pennsylvania. They said it was the size of a car. I missed seeing it, but heard about it. Sue Palka, meteorologist at Fox 5, will be going up to Pennsylvani this weekend to view the site. Law enforcement officials are roping off the area until experts can get to the site. They said it went very deep into the earth."
by WNEP News Philadelphia
People from all across northeastern and central Pennsylvania are reporting a ball of fire shooting across the sky. Several witnesses also report hearing a loud "sonic boom" as the object flew by.
The same is being reported in neighboring states from Virginia to the Canadian border. The reports are consistent with a meteor entering the atmosphere.
by David Morgan - Reuters
Reports of a possible meteor shower flooded police and government telephone lines along the U.S. East Coast on Monday, authorities said.
The sightings of what some described as a fast-moving meteor prompted evening rush-hour motorists to pull off suburban highways west of Philadelphia.
Pilots in flight issued reports of similar sightings to federal aviation officials in Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland. Authorities said eyewitness accounts came from upstate New York to Virginia.
"People say they saw what was perhaps a meteor shower, but there’s nothing we can confirm," said Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Arlene Salac.
A Reuters reporter saw a tapered object shaped like a trumpet bell falling diagonally through the western sky near West Chester, Pennsylvania, 20 miles from Philadelphia, at about 6:20 p.m.
The object emitted a lustrous rainbow of colors, ranging from bright yellow on its downward-pointing flared end to light green and finally rust-colored red at the upward-pointing tapered end. Others reported seeing a triangular object or a fireball shooting through the sky.
People living near Montoursville, Pa., a rural community 130 miles northwest of Philadelphia, reported hearing a loud explosion after seeing the unidentified object. A state police dispatcher said one woman reported that the blast broke windows in her home.
There were also unconfirmed reports of people finding debris on the ground. "It was a ball of fire," Mark Barbour of Syracuse, N.Y., told CNN. "It looked like something you would see from the movies."
The National Weather Service reported no natural phenomena that could account for such a sight. Police in Pennsylvania were investigating the possibility of a part falling from a plane from Philadelphia International Airport, which sometimes guides flights across the city’s western suburbs. But sightings were later reported southward through Delaware, Maryland, Washington and into Virginia. There were no reports of aviation emergencies, apart from the nonfatal crash of a single-engine plane in Calvert, Md., near the state’s border with Pennsylvania and Delaware.
"We have no idea what it was, whether it was a meteor or what," said National Weather Service spokesman Curtis Carey.
Fireballs and smoke are reported in Luzerne County and along the East Coast on Monday night.
by Kyle S. Thomas
JACKSON TWP. - Tom Schrama said he was enjoying Monday’s hot weather by reading a book when he heard two explosions.
"It sounded like two quarter sticks of dynamite going off underwater. BOOM! BOOM!," said Schrama while sitting along state Route 29 in Ceasetown. "I didn’t see anything, but I know I heard those two loud explosions."
The loud sound Schrama heard was from one of several meteors that hit the nation’s Eastern Seaboard Monday evening. People reported seeing the flaming meteors in Luzerne and Schuylkill counties, in the Harrisburg area and as far west as Westmoreland County.
"It was just a meteor that entered the atmosphere going east to west and it’s normal," said John Sabia, observatory assistant at Keystone College’s Thomas G. Cupillari Astronomic Observatory in Fleetville, Lackawanna County. "It’s a rare occurrence but this is what you see and it’s a spectacular appearance."
Ron Rome, Luzerne County 911 spokesman, said: "Initial reports came through that there was a possible plane down in the Back Mountain, including several other reports of a fireball zooming through the sky, a loud sonic boom and thick black smoke coming from the ground."
When the first calls came in around 6:15 p.m., Rome said 911 officials contacted the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport and aviation offices to see if there were any planes reported missing. None were.
"At that point, we called in the correct personnel," Rome said.
Within minutes, more than a dozen emergency crews, state police and helicopters searched the area for potential damage, Rome said.
A group of rescue workers gathered near Schrama’s home near the Mizdail Farm on Smith Pond Road in Jackson Township, armed with binoculars with their ears drawn to portable scanners.
"It would be nice to find it and see what it would look like but god only knows where it is. We are just lucky no one was hurt or injured," said Jackson Township police officer James Karlowicz, who said he thought the sound was coming from the western part of the township near Lehman and Plymouth.
Karlowicz said a prison guard saw the meteor piercing through the sky from a watchtower at the State Correctional Institution at Dallas. Karlowicz said the guard apparently saw a fireball and thick black smoke, which triggered rescue units.
Sabia, the Keystone College observatory assistant, said meteors consist of rock and iron composites. The speed of the meteor while going through the atmosphere caused the loud sonic boom.
"The Earth and this object intersect each other in a different orbit, intersecting at the same point," he said. "We were going at the same place at the same time. It’s like two people walking down the street and bumping into each other. The only exception is that people can move aside but the Earth and meteor can’t."
Although Sabia said he didn’t see or hear the meteor, he said it could be the size of a house or as small as a grain of sand.
In Pottsville, James Mennig, 22, and his friend Brian Faust, 21, said they saw the spectacle at about 6:30 p.m.
"It looked like a plane that was totally engulfed in flames. It was about the size of that Jeep Cherokee," Mennig said, pointing across the street to a parked vehicle. He ran inside and told his mother what he saw, he said, but she didn’t believe him.
"His mom thought he was on some kind of nasty drugs or something," said Faust, who was holding his one-year-old daughter, Krista.
Sightings were reported in Easton, Md., in the Wilmington, Del., metropolitan area, as far south as Alexandria, Va., and as far east at Cape May, N.J.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.