Update

by Joan Margaret
This is the mother of all Labrys Update articles, covering six years. We last published Volume Eight in September, 10,002; in patriarchal years, that translates as 2002. Although we’ve not published Labrys Speaks, we have been working joyfully in the Labrys Healthcare Circle to bring our services to our clientele.

This year my dream of resuming publication of Labrys Speaks has morphed into a new web site, labryshealthcarecircle.com. Again we can fulfill our mission to increase our understanding of our natural healing abilities and demonstrate that we are our own healers. Using this new, flexible method of communication we can teach the healing arts of our grandmothers to nurture and care for ourselves and each other. I can feel all of our grandmothers’ smiles beaming with pride.

The wimmin working in the Labrys Healthcare Circle have changed as our lives grow. Kristi Matthews is our new office goddess, replacing Lenn Keller, filmmaker, who for a year followed Deb Paschke, massage therapist, who had worked here for six years. Kristi is in her third year at the front desk, managing my scheduling and collections, plus the hundreds of details of keeping my business running smoothly and the office environment beautiful.

Rainbow and I met at the Northern California Women’s Music Festival, where we help staff the event in Laytonville each August. Rainbow promotes wellness in all forms from diversity facilitation and teaching conflict communication skills to filling-in for Kristi several times per month as office goddess.

Back office work includes cleaning the offices regularly and is performed by Juliane Barner, who is also a healing arts practitioner. Joan’s bookkeeper is Tia Paquin, who replaced Gina Zeller when she left for Switzerland a year ago.

Our newest member has rejoined us: JB. With occasional issues of Labrys Speaks designed by Jessica Bucciarelli and Kathryn Bader, our primary designer has been JB. And now she designed our new web site, enabling us to resume publication for Associates for Community Education and also expand outreach for the Labrys Healthcare Circle. Her business name is DRAGA design.

We now have three healing arts practitioners with separate businesses: Laura Knoff, nutrition consultant; Juliane Barner, Jin Shin Jyutsu practitioner; and Joan Margaret, chiropractor, Applied Kinesiologist and practitioner of Nambudripad Allergy Elimination Technique and Bio Geometric Integration.

Cait Cain, a student in her last year at Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine College in Berkeley, has been my apprentice for five years at the Labrys Circle. She is currently working with clients at the acupuncture school clinic and with a few clients under my supervision, using Nambudripad Allergy Elimination Technique and basic Applied Kinesiology.

Janis Irvin joined the Circle three years ago as a technician offering Meridian Stress Assessment sessions, using a computerized instrument to determine the health of 14 systems of the body. Janis will assess your meridians and give you a colorful graph chart of your current health. During your next office visit with Dr. Margaret, I will explain how this information helps us determine the direction of your treatment plan. By avocation Janis studies nutrition and is trained as a chemical dependency counselor.

Although no longer a member of the Labrys Circle, Deb Paschke, aka Morgan, is still a massage therapist and has moved to a west Berkeley location, selling jewelry as well. Juliane works as both paid and unpaid staff at the Charlotte Maxwell Complimentary Clinic for women with cancer in Oakland. Laura teaches wholistic nutrition education at Bauman College in Berkeley. And Joan works full-time at the Labrys Circle offices.

As many of you may remember, we tried to buy the three building complex in which our offices are located. That was equinox, 10,000: Thyme Square. Mama Bears Bookstore and Café had just closed as an Oakland gathering place for wimmin and we wanted to build an East Bay wimmin’s center with A Room of Our Own for meetings and dances, martial arts and a small café. You may even recall the three fundraisers there featuring performers: Out On a Clef, Voices: Lesbian Choral Ensemble, the Tribads and Alix Dobkin, singer and songwriter.

But, alas, the finances didn’t pull together in time, another buyer won the chance to buy the property and he has been a fine landlord. Spring Friedlander, Laura Knoff and I who were the board members of Associates for Community Education, our 501 (c) 3 non-profit, returned the unused donations and continue to be involved in the women’s community in other ways.

Now that we are getting web savvy, we will be writing articles and publish them here on our web site Each time we add or change the educational material, we’ll send a fe-mail notice to those of you who want us to do so. Just e-mail us to give us permission to send notices to you irregularly. No promises, but perhaps as often as twice a year on the equinoxes.