mutual seeking, beauty, and love. Meeting Margaret and so many other people who shared the same thirst for spiritual knowledge and growth was inspiring and energizing. Following that gathering, each season, around the time of the festivals, members would come together to share ideas by computer or phone on a conference line made available by the Anthroposophical Society in America. Members would take turns introducing the discussion topic, proving that the best way to learn something is to teach it. “Every 18 years 7 months and 13 days in a human being’s life, the sun, moon and earth are in exactly the same configuration as they were on the day he/she was born. These ‘moon nodes’ are like new beginnings in our life’s journey.” Thus Margaret announced in her last GEMS correspondence, dated April 2021, that she would no longer be continuing regular GEMS work. Instead, she will
be sharing her work with a broader audience online, in some manner and through some avenue. Members of the Anthroposophical Society in America who are not part of GEMS know Margaret by meeting her at conferences or from her music or her lectures on the Foundation Stone, the Spiritual Hierarchies, or the Goetheanum. Soon, you will all be able to share in the fruits of her heroic labors of love, dedication, and study. Stay tuned. Thomas Brantley, Cheyenne, WY Christine Lower, Leslie, AR Renate Kurth, Radburn, NJ Karen Zabriskie, Liberty, TN Anne Saldo, Santa Monica, CA Karl Fredrickson, Radburn, NJ Christiana Williams, Ghent, NY
Hazel Archer Ginsberg Joins the General Council After many years of service to the Anthroposophical Society in America, on staff and on the regional and national councils, Marianne Fieber has stepped off to pursue new initiatives, amid many expressions of gratitude for her artistic contributions and generous spirit. The General Council has now welcomed Hazel Archer Ginsberg as Central Regional Council representative.
Having grown up in the wastelands of suburbia, I found refuge in the wilds of nature which sprung up in the empty lots behind the track housing. Developing a rich inner life, singing, writing plays or poetry, and harvesting plants to make herbal medicines with my grandmother, helped get me through the mendacity of a public school education, graduating high school in three years at age 15. I backpacked around the sacred sites of Europe for a year, and then took my heart to San Francisco on a full scholarship to study Philosophy & Comparative Religion (with a minor in Women’s Studies) at SFSU. There in the dusty halls of dead thinking, I met Rudolf Steiner’s Spiritual Science through fate and the discovery of Owen Barfield, and began to work with the basic books on my own. (It was almost 25 years later when I finally discovered that there was such a thing as an Anthroposophical Society!) Destiny had prepped me through Rosicrucianism which came into play at an early age, (another long story I 52 • being human
would be happy to relate over coffee) but I didn’t officially join the Societas Rosicruciana in America (SRIA), headquartered in Kingston, NY, until I moved to NYC after college. I began applying my Midwest work ethic, and my eclectic blend of teachings in the Big Apple. I became a neighborhood leader working with disenfranchised youth. It was almost impossible for former drug addicts, runaways, and artist types to find affordable housing in Manhattan, so the focus of my community activism was with the “Homesteading Movement.” We became “squatters” renovating several blocks of abandoned city-owned buildings on the “Lower East Side.” Through this community I spearheaded many artistic initiatives such the experiential guerrilla Theatre Troupe, “The Valkyries.” I was also a singer, songwriter,