A Letter from Kristie McComb at the American Cancer Society

My dear Fairelanders and friends,

With the closing of another Fantasy Faire, I write to you with heartfelt gratitude and esteem for all that you created, shared, and gave of yourselves these past two weeks. As the American Cancer Society, we stand amazed that you not only met last year’s total, you exceeded it, especially in the tough economic times we’re experiencing. 

Why I Relay, 2022 Edition

A Long Road

it took me thirty-seven years to meet the love of my life. Thirty-seven years that included two bad marriages, a shedload of choices that would be regrets if I kept a tally of things to regret (I used to), one child, one miscarriage (that I know of), reams of making excuses for whichever bad relationship partner I was with that often began with phrases like, ‘He’s not a bad person, really’, a sense of failure, helplessness, and worthlessness, which sadly sometimes manifested itself as ire, anger, and disrespect for people who would have loved me if I’d let them, and the fatalistic surety that my life was hollow and I was worthy of nothing better. I felt unequal to the world.

And then one year (2003), I got almost tricked into going to a party I didn’t think I wanted to go to, hosted by a member of my band with whom I’d had a disagreement (but whom I still loved very much), and I was standing there in this living room with which I was so familiar, surrounded by people who were part of my community, and feeling like a fraud for even being in the room, not to mention hating the clothes I was wearing and the body in side them.

// Relay Means Hope . . .

Hope is a powerful thing.

Wikipedia says that it is ‘an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes.’ Some may call this a wish or even a prayer, but no matter what it is called at some point in a person’s life they will experience hope.

=| Why I RELAY : LET’S FIND A CURE

“Cancer won’t quit. So neither can we.” Those are some of the words displayed on the Relay for Life page from the American Cancer Society.

In 2020 COVID-19 shook the world, bringing with it sickness and death across the globe and bringing life for many to a standstill. What it didn’t stop was cancer. With the medical advances of science and technology a vaccine has been made to fight COVID-19, but for all the years cancer and its many strains have been around, there is still no definitive cure. The best hope is early detection.

See Songs from the Faire from 2020 – and look forward to 2021!

Songs from the Faire by Banshee Heartsong from Saffia Widdershins on Vimeo.

In 2020, Banshee Heartsong decided to create live written poetry for the Fairelands. Her plan was to write on each sim and to be as inclusive of as many people as she could. “This is important,” she says, “because other people and the beauty of the worlds built turn lights on for me that would never occur otherwise.”

Banshee spent the first 9 days writing and illustrating her poems and then created a book that was sold throughout the Fairelands in the last seven days of the Faire, to raise money for Relay for Life of Second Life. She also gave a reading of her poems at the Literary Festival.