MOVIE MONDAY NEWS!

Hey there Felipe-
There is no real brand new news today, although we have gotten into a few more festivals we cannot announce those until September.
Oh, wait, there is news!
As of last week, we have officially made our submission to the Academy to be considered for the 89th Academy Awards in 2017! Our Oscar category is Short Documentary. Yay!

Closer to home, I am getting ready, with the help of Carol Sorvig, of course, to submit all the names for the rooms we will be reserving at Ft. Worden. It is very important that you let us know ASAP if you would like a room there. The deal is a flat fee of $125 for a room from Thursday night until Monday morning. As I understand it, because they are offering Team PHIL’S CAMINO such a great deal, that is the flat fee, even if you don’t stay the entire time.You can let me know at [email protected] if you would like to reserve one of those rooms. FYI, that is where Phil and Rebecca will be staying, and also CO Producer Denise Williamson, and Executive Producers Maggie and Bill Lynch. Executive Producer and Supervising Editor Doug Blush will be around, too!

I will be announcing a mini fundraising campaign for September and on into the Fall shortly. Still fine tuning that one 🙂

Anyway, how wonderful it is to be walking together on this beautiful day we have been given.
Love you.
Peace-
A

Annie O Neil
Director/Producer: Phil’s Camino www.philscamino.com

Co-producer and Pilgrim: Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago www.caminodocumentary.org

Author: Everyday Camino with Annie www.everydaycaminowithannie.com

310-403-4228

“The first man who actually measured the earth was a poet. The very idea of any man going out and taking the girth of the planet he lives on (and sometimes gets lost on) is in itself poetic. Wherever did he get the notion it could even be done? And just how did he do it? Didn’t it take a lot of apparatus, higher mathematics, and celestial engineering? Here if anywhere scientific curiosity mixes with poetic wonderment and they become the same thing.”

I remember vividly browsing in a secondhand store and opening a book randomly to that paragraph. How in the world could one guy be so lucky as to stumble across something like that? It doesn’t say much but it says a lot.

This is the way chapter three opens in Mapping by David Greenhood. He is writing about Ptolemy who was a resident of the ancient city of Alexandrea. He got it in his head that he could do this thing, measure the diameter of the earth and he did it with amazing accuracy, sort of in his backyard, well in 500 miles anyway. The book goes on to explain the method and calculations but we aren’t going there fascinating as that is, read the book.

What is important here is the idea, the fact that an individual can have a vision and act on it and accomplish something quite amazing. And not really an ego sort of thing but maybe closer to a contribution sort of thing. How do we rise above all the commotion of our lives and neighborhoods, so full of drama, to find a vision that is creative, different, helpful, inspiring. Are we capable of coming up with things on our own? Doesn’t it take organizations with resources, facilities and backing?

This whole notion of this possibility has been immensely inspirational to me. It is the sort of spirit of how Phil’s Camino came to be perhaps. There is a line in a Mary Chapin Carpenter song, “Couldn’t it happen?” Well, couldn’t it?

All this really got started this morning with reading Sabbath Moments blog by Terry Hershey my neighbor and buddy. Last week he had a story about a young Iraqi woman who competed in an Olympic swimming event and came in 28th. Yea? Well, she recently escaped from Turkey across to one of the Greek islands with a group in a small motor boat. Along the way the motor conks out and she and a few others jump in and swim the boat to Greece. And this week he had a story about a Iraqi man, a cellist who came out on the street and played shortly after a car bomb went off and killed a bunch of innocents. The swimming to Greece to deliver the boat and the playing the cello even while the dust settled were beautiful examples of this ability to envision and act.

OK, 471 words, long winded. Thanks Terry, thanks David, thanks Ptolemy, thanks Iraqis for inspiring us. Love you all out there in the big world, Felipe.

As we walk along on Phil’s Camino we are past the city of Astorga. We past the town of El Ganso and we see Rabanal in the distance. God willing we will be in Rabanal this evening.

Our schedule:
Monday 0900-1000
Tuesday 1600-1700
Thursday 0900-1000
Sunday 1600-1700

Come and walk with us, love, Phil.

Sunday morning and Mass is over. The temperature has fallen about twenty degrees, heavenly. Time to get in gear and do a few chores and clean up before company starts rolling in this afternoon. So, this blog is going to be really really short for these important reasons.

Not that I don’t enjoy being with you. Not that I don’t enjoy blogging. Not that there aren’t great things to talk/write about.

Th best to you all, love, Felipe.

Three o’clock in the afternoon and cookin. I might be tempted to go and see how hot it is but not today. Chemo fatigue is heavy on me too.

The good news is that I found a good book to read and that is about as athletic as I will get today. Catalina recommended it and I picked it up at the Paulist Book Store in San Francisco. The he title is Jesus, a Pilgrimage, part history, part travelogue, part personal discovery. Nice blend and lively enough to be a fun read. Catherine has it when I am done.

I am going to go and pick enough corn for dinner tonight, pretty exciting. The first of the three varieties is happening. I know Europeans generally don’t eat corn on the cob but Americans are bananas over it.

OK, that’s it for me, love you, Felipe.

Back on the deck in the shade of the cherry tree after trip to the hospital in the city. Hot in there. Now I am going to finish this off and catch a short nap before supper.

Tomorrow need to clean up around here as we have more pilgrims arriving on Sunday for a walk and tapas. Pilgrim Farmer John has a best Marine Corps buddy Ken and Ken and his wife Tori will be here. They are from Oklahoma. And we have Dave showing up from Austin, Texas who we met at the film festival there. So major fun.

My brain is pretty fried so think that I will say goodbye for now. Tomorrow is another day, love, Felipe.x

We had a great walk this morning with Bill and Janeen and their two Rhodesian Ridgeback dogs. The weather is warm and the berries are on their way out and the corn is on it’s way in. Fresh corn on the cob is the high point of the harvest season in late summer.

Yea, the deer are all over the place and the cougars are moving in for the kill. We plan on harvesting a few deer in September and October, should be some leftovers. qWild Kingdom all over again.

My Rebecca is treating the whole family to dinner this evening in town. Then I am back to the hospital tomorrow. Sunday have two parties from out of town coming to walk Phil’s Camino. Then Bill and Janeen will be here too. Big get together for us. One party is from Oklahoma and the other from Texas. They want to walk the trail and do tapas with us. For sure!

My nurses Annie and Mary on Wednesday were interested in film news. I gave them the latest and received two movie tips in return. One is Happy Gilmore with Adam Sandler. The other is Whiplash a movie about a teacher and student relationship. Well, we can check those out.

Time to catch a shower and find my dinner jacket. Hope things are going smoothly for you there, love, Felipe.x

We have been talking lately about The Doors Of Mercy but today I had to get myself through the Doors of the Cancer Treatment Center. I know that I talked about this before but it is a massive challenge for me to get my brain wrapped around another treatment. Each time it’s the same story, how do I get myself through that door to this place.

One of the things that make it easier are all the people that I have fun with here. Doctors, nurses, assistants, receptionists are my friends and fellow walkers on this trail. We have great conversations and buoy each other up. If it weren’t for that I would be in trouble.

I was just laughing, yea see. And I have corner room this day. There is a cloudless sky over Seattle today out the window. What a beauty of a day!

Well, that’s what it seems like today. I wish that I would have something brilliant or earthshaking to report but it doesn’t seem like it. I was joking with Dr Gold earlier about the fact that I was a boring patient with nothing new to report. Well, of course, boring is a good thing in this situation. It means that Doc Gold formula was working.

I told him that the challenge these days for me was keeping my head together. Physically I am in reasonably great shape and that’s the boring part now. We have that solved. Now keeping the mind and spirit going was the challenge. Not too different from running a distance race.

Well, a couple more hours should get me finished up here. Then I’ll make it back to the Island. Best to you today, love, Felipe.x

“It will all go around.” That’s what Catherine just said, talking about all the beans that she and Dana grew and they were up to their armpits in. Yea, it’s tapa time here at Phil’s Camino and we are sharing and laughing.

I’m going to pass the IPad around the table and people may add or subtract. On the Camino in Spain I would pass the computer around at tapas to see what folks had going so we will try again. Felipe.

wonderful evening, light on the miles, long on the tapas. thinking how blessed is this on-going party that is life, eventually everyone has to go home, but the party goes on. tonight here on Phil’s Camino we are grateful for the warm light of evening, our mutual pilgrimship, the new tapas Table, good food and sweet wine. Buen Camino. Catherine.

Hi all,
What a wonderful afternoon! Weather great and company this afternoon is wonderful. What a break from the nursery. Carole Lynn

What a great afternoon on Phil’s Camino! A great chance to catch up on all the news from Catherine and Dana and Phil’s Rebecca. Not to mention the tapas, oh, and the wine. It’s a wonderful evening, a temperate evening with that allows talking, talking about the children, talking about the best ways to put up plums, talking about life counseling, talking about whatever.

The sun is low in the sky, the blackberries are fragrant. The plums are ripe. It’s summer and we’re sitting at the new picnic table with Phil and Rebecca and Rick and Carol Lynn. feeling pretty blessed for this moment that is our life, our community. How blessed are we. that’s it for now. Love you all wherever and whoever you are. Always travelers on the Way. Dana

Other topics include the fact that drinking 4 ounces of liquor will kill the venom of a bee sting or wasp sting; various types of fruit trees; indigenous mind; environmental projects around the world; restrictions on prison mail in light of mentoring an inmate with writing exercises; and metaphors for life. Just a typical tapas Tuesday. C and D brought margaritas! cheers! Rebecca

Thank you thank you gang. All good in the evening, love, Felipe.x

I was so honored to be at the Rhode Island Film Festival last week as PHIL’S CAMINO continued on its wondrous way. It was a great festival, and I was happy to see an old friend (a filmmaker from deadCenter Film Fest) and make some new friends, too. I learned a lot from the panels, and am excited that a new audience got to ‘meet’ our friend Phil.
What an extra bonus it was then to win an award at that prestigious festival! We won the FLICKERS’ INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN AWARD. We won first prize, and this is the description: Given annually to films or filmmakers who inspire social change and community outreach and strive to better the world in which we live.

We will be at the Middlebury New Filmmaker Festival on Sunday August 28 at 4 PM in Middlebury, VT. Please let everyone you know who lives in that area know so we can have a full house for that screening!

Then all our attention turns to Port Townsend. I have to let them know how many rooms we are going to use at Ft. Worden. If you want a room, which will be a flat fee of $125 for the room from Friday morning until Monday morning then please let John Lauria know ASAP. They have to have a final count by next week! It is gong to be really great, and I can’t wait to see you all there!

Sometimes I can get caught up in the details of getting from point A to point B, which are certainly necessary. But mostly I like to keep my mind on Phil, his message, his heart, and his indomitable spirit. I am as in love with his story today as I was the first day I heard from Phil (February 18, 2014). Thank you to all of you who have supported this film, and continue to support this film. Mostly I feel like I continue to ask for donations, beg for money at every turn, and generally I am afraid I am boring/annoying the people I would never want to bore/annoy. I may forget to say thank you, or share how much this film means to the people who get to see it. I wish you could all be with me when people come up to me with tears still shining on their faces, or falling from their eyes as they say “Thank you.” Phil, and this film, have inspired So. Many. People. I want to continue to bring it to people, right now through film festivals, but soon, through making the DVD available for purchase. I will leave you with this: one of the people who came to the screening in Rhode Island said that it was amazing that PHIL’S CAMINO was the first film that he saw at the festival. He was a filmmaker, and a cancer survivor. He was very moved by Phil, the message, the inspiration. I told him later about the phrase that keeps coming up with this film: we can’t help ourselves. Of course it was the first film he saw! We can’t help ourselves! So I want to be perfectly clear with this: to all the folks who have donated to make this film happen: he got to see this film because of you. Thank you! If you feel so moved to give so that more people can see PHIL’S CAMINO, you can donate at www.philscamino.com A cancer survivor in another town somewhere will thank you. And right now, I thank you.

I am grateful.

Love you Felipe-
Peace-
A
Annie O Neil
Director/Producer: Phil’s Camino www.philscamino.com

Co-producer and Pilgrim: Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago www.caminodocumentary.org

Author: Everyday Camino with Annie www.everydaycaminowithannie.com

310-403-4228