Hi Everyone:

Thank you all for joining us at our new location. I apologize for
having been away from the club for several days -- my wife has been
away at a professional conference, my mother-in-law (our usual
childcare champion) was ill, and that left me with my hands full! So I
took a few days away from work and the Web, and enjoyed some full-time
hanging out with my kids. It was great -- a much-needed change of
pace!

Now, Pintu_Bh asks (as many people have been asking) what happened to
the club? Unfortunately, I cannot say for sure -- at best I could only
speculate, and that would ultimately be an exercise in futility.
Devi's club had many devotees and well-wishers, but also -- as seems
inevitable in the surprisingly political world of Yahoo! Clubs and
Groups -- the usual gaggle of detractors.

With Devi's kind grace, the current setup will probably prove more
stable in the long term. As many long-time members know, there was
strife among the founders in the Shakti club and -- as Abraham Lincoln
famously noted -- a house divided against itself cannot stand. Nora
and I worked hard to build the club into a formidable gathering of (at
its height) 575 Shaktas. And the Club was barely six months old! But
without the cooperation and assistance of all founders, the club was a
castle built on sand. And -- I promise this is my last cliched
metaphor -- we were only as strong as our weakest link.

But no matter. We are still here, and if Devi wishes us success, then
we shall have it -- in whatever form She chooses. Fortunately, we're
in a position to help things along. I'm grateful and relieved that we
had all of the Shakti Sadhana club material saved offline as well, so
precious little data was lost -- all Club posts, pictures and so on
are intact and will be appearing here in the group over the next few
weeks. We've also got our membership list, so inviations will issue
and then the group should start growing again.

In the meantime, we'll be gradually filling our new databases -- book
and music lists, etc. -- and adding Shakta links. Most importantly (in
my mind at least) we'll be embarking on an exciting task that I hope
you'll all participate in: The creation of a Shakti Sadhana FAQ! That
should force us to define basic terms, state a club mission, etc. --
and I hope you'll all participate. I'll draft the basic questions and
some suggested answers and then we can all debate what changes,
additions, subtractions and so on should take place.

Lots on the horizon, so let's look forward to the future rather than
cry about the past.

Aum Maatangyai Namahe!