BIO BELOW FROM: http://www.patricia-monaghan.com/

Visionary poet Patricia Monaghan celebrates the mythic in the ordinary, the spiritual in the mundane, the sensuous in the scientific. An impassioned teacher and performer, she has won awards for creative nonfiction as well as poetry. Her highly crafted work remains accessible to ordinary readers interested in spirituality, peace, and environmental issues. Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at DePaul University, Patricia is also Founding Fellow of The Black Earth Institute, a think-tank for artists seeking to connect social justice, environment and spirituality.

Patricia is also one of the pioneers of the contemporary women's spirituality movement and the author of classic texts in that field. She is vice president of the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology and a lecturer for the Women's Thealogical Institute. She also advises students in women's spirituality and mythology through The Union Institute and University. Her research in mythology focuses especially on the myths of Ireland; she holds Irish citizenship and returns to her ancestral homeland annually.

Patricia was raised in Alaska and lived there for many years. She earned her BA and MA in English from the University of Minnesota, her MFA in creative writing from the University of Alaska, and her PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies (science and literature) from the Union Institute in Cincinnati. In addition to her many published books, Patricia has published essays and articles in national and regional publications including The New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor . Her work has been featured in Best American Spiritual Writing and many other anthologies. She has been honored with a Pushcart Prize, the Paul Gruchow Nature Writing award, and the Friends of Literature award for poetry.

With her husband, Dr. Michael McDermott, Patricia is also an organic farmer and winemaker with an acre each of garden, orchard and vineyard in southwestern Wisconsin's Driftless Area. They are restoring seven acres of native prairie there and also enjoy harvesting native grapes, berries and herbs from the steep hillsides.

MARY MILLER is an internationally known speaker and educator. She was born and raised in the Boston, Massachusetts area. Mary received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1971 from Boston State College and went on to obtain a Masters degree in Social Work (MSW) in 1973 from the University of Connecticut. Although now retired from clinical social work, she has many years of experience as a psychotherapist in community mental health centers and in private practice.

Mary began her social work career in 1968 as a counselor and youth worker in a cutting edge youth rehabilitation program called Adolescent Counseling in Development. As a counselor she obtained over a thousand hours of training in Gestalt therapy. She also studied Transactional Analysis, Rebirthing, Bioenergetics, Re-evaluation Counseling and Psychodrama. In 1975, Mary founded an alternative mental health center called the People Place, which she directed for several years. In 1982, she founded a second alternative health service called OffSpring that provided support services to families who had lost young children. As a result of that work Mary authored two books:

Transitions Through BirthandEnded Beginnings. From 1984 to 2006, Mary worked with John Miller as researcher and teacher at the Gentle Wind Project, examining alternative pathways to good mental health. The Gentle Wind Project was a good will nonprofit that offered free mental and emotional support to anyone seeking help. The Project researched and developed balancing instruments that were known throughout the world for their effectiveness. The instruments were available on a donation basis. The Project also donated stress relief instruments to impoverished and war-torn countries as well as places that were affected by natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes. In 2003, Gentle Wind became the target of a cyber smear campaign, and along with an unethical government official who joined forces with the cyber smear group, they set out to destroy the efforts of this nonprofit. After years of litigation, Gentle Wind finally closed its doors in 2006 at the hands of the unethical government official. The Gentle Wind Project left behind records showing that thousands of people had benefitted from this company's efforts. The story can be found in Mary's book, Caught in the Act of Helping.

Mary Miller continued in her quest to find alternative, reliable pathways to alleviate mental and emotional distress. She is now the director of https://www.ichingsystems.net/ an alternative mental health group that uses the I Ching Hexagrams in the development of their personal balancing instruments. Mary's new book,The Magic of the I Ching: Ancient Symbols To Soothe the Soul, will be available next year, in 2012.

Amorah Quan Yin is author of: The Pleiadian Workbook: Awakening Your Divine Ka, The Pleiadian Tantric Workbook: Awakening Your Divine Ba, Pleiadian Perspectives on Human Evolution, published by Bear and Co. She is channel for the Pleiadian Emissaries of Light, Sirian Archangelic League of the Light, Andromedan Emissaries of Light, Ascended Masters, Intergalactic Federation of Light, and others, and founder of Pleiadian Lightwork - Dolphin Star Temple.

Amorah's fourth book, AFFINITY: Reclaiming the Divine Flow of Creation is now in print and available at most bookstores.

Pleiadian Lightwork is the name given to the healing, spiritual activation, and ascensions techniques which are part of the Dolphin Star Temple Mystery School. This mystery school system is essentially the resurrection and contemporization of the ancient Lemurian, Atlantean, and Egyptian systems. Its chief purpose is that of assisting in bringing about the second coming of Christ en masse, when a minimum of 144,000 humans attain to Christ consciousness on Earth. This will trigger an enlightenment wave through the Earth and all her people, and planetary ascension. The time of the great planetary spiritual awakening is now. By learning to live impeccably, anchoring Higher Self in our bodies, restoring our souls, and aligning multidimensionally with the Great Central Sun, the Source of All That Is, we shall be victorious!

Ron Ball is one of America's foremost public speakers. He has spoken in front of packed crowds of as many as 75 thousand people, presenting live business seminars to more then 8 million people in 21 countries. With 12 books on financial and life management to his name, he's also a prolific bestselling author with book sales topping nearly two million copies.

As president of the Ron Ball group, Ron Ball is a recognized business turnaround expert, teaching aggressive success strategies to hundreds of thousands of business people. He's spoken his words of wisdom alongside such figures as Zig Ziglar, former President Ronald Reagan, John Wooden, Charles Stanley, John Maxwell and many others.

Tens of thousands of business professionals have attended Ron Ball's special seminars on problem-solving. Ron's unique jump-start techniques can help any business or person get going and growing from the very first day.

Make Ron Ball you're personal success trainer. His amazing information can immediately improve your success odds for everything from your finances to your relationships; from your business to your spiritual life.

Walter O Grotz, Hydrogen Peroxide Use Advocate, Researcher, and Educator.

BIO BELOW FROM: http://thespanishhour.org/candice.php

Listeners know broadcaster, live concert host and voice-over artist Candice Agree from her 25-plus years on the New York and Washington, D.C. airwaves, most notably at 96.3FM WQXR, WNCN-FM and WETA-FM. Candice produces, hosts, and distributes The Spanish Hour to radio stations around the country and the world.

Candice has hosted broadcasts from Instituto Cervantes New York, the Kosciuszko Foundation, and the Bronx Botanical Gardens, to name only a few venues. She's served as broadcast announcer for programs for many of the classical world's most prestigious performing arts institutions: the Boston Symphony Orchestra, UBS-Verbier Festival Orchestra, and Music from Trinity Church Wall Street, among them. Candice has written and/or voiced special promotional packages for the Austrian Tourist Board, the Tourist Office of Spain, and the tourist boards of the Spanish regions of Andalucía and the Kingdom of Navarre. She's been interviewed on a variety of cultural and musical topics — in Spanish and Catalan -- on RNE, Cadena Ser, Catalunya Radio, COPE Cantabria, and RAC1.

Candice was heard regularly on Sirius Satellite Radio's classical channels: Classical Voices, Vista Chamber Music, Sirius Pops, and Symphony Hall. Candice also was on air at SW Networks' Classic FM, WNCN, WNYC, and WAXQ, was a producer of Talk Radio Weekend for ABC Radio Networks, and interned at WNBC-AM. In Washington, she was heard weekends on WETA-FM, and wrote, produced and/or voiced features for both the Russian and English language services of Voice of America.

The Foundation for Iberian Music, Westchester Conservatory of Music, Faust-Harrison Pianos, Steinway Hall, Yamaha, and many other organizations have invited Candice to host benefits, galas, and concerts. She's narrated Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf throughout New York City and Westchester County, presented the Guarneri String Quartet at New York's Town Hall, and introduced Michael Tilson Thomas' From the Diary of Anne Frank, narrated by Audrey Hepburn, in a special invitation-only concert held in the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations.

Candice is a Contributing Scholar at CUNY Graduate Center's Foundation for Iberian Music, where she's produced and presented concerts and conferences. Highlights include hosting the Foundation for Iberian Music's presentation of The Songs of Antoni Parera Fons, as part of Balearic Islands Culture Week in New York City; producing an homage, consisting of a roundtable discussion and recital, to the Spanish-born American composer Carlos Suriñach, entitled Carlos Suriñach and the Creation of Modern Dance in New York. Candice moderated a panel that included the dancers Carmen de Lavallade and Stuart Hodes, dance historian Ninotchka Bennahum, and Music Director of the Martha Graham Company Aaron Sherber; presenting Coral Universitària de les Illes Balears Sings Spanish Sacred Polyphony, and introducing the concert with a brief talk on Spanish choral tradition from the Renaissance to the present day.

Other programs at CUNY include: Antoni Parera Fons: A Songwriter's Journey as part of CUNY Graduate Center's Music in Midtown concert series, and moderating a discussion between the Cuban-born jazz great Paquito D'Rivera and Cuban exile author Enrique del Risco in Concerts & Conversations at CUNY Graduate Center in New York.

Outside of her work in radio, Candice has been an off-camera program announcer at CBS News since 1999. She was the off-camera announcer for CBS News The Early Show: Saturday Edition for an unprecedented 11 years, also doing voice work for the weekday edition of The Early Show, and presently is heard as promo and off-camera announcer for CBS News Sunday Morning, hosted by Charles Osgood. Candice's voice is heard from coast to coast on museum audio guides, industrials, documentaries, audio books, and literally thousands of radio and television commercials and promos. Abrams Artists Agency New York represents Candice for commercial voice-over work.

Candice is a recent grant recipient from Instituto Cervantes New York. Her musical education includes three magical summers at Interlochen Arts Camp, and courses in piano, theory, composition, and jazz arranging at the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music. Candice received a B.A. in Russian from Barnard College. Devoted to exploring the richness of Spanish musical life, Candice is delighted to have the opportunity to bring The Spanish Hour to music lovers everywhere.

Judy Campbell

As co-owner, with Mike Campbell, of  Campbell’s Gold Honey Farm and Meadery, we operate a diversified 8 acre farm operation, including an apiary, in south west Abbotsford.  We offer off-farm honey bee pollination services to local growers and focus on honey and honey wine producton.

As retired professionals we set out to have an active and healthy lifestyle in retirement.  We have certainly achieved this goal…and then some!

Mike, who retired from teaching high school after 35+ years, took up hobby beekeeping about 17 years ago, long before he retired.  As retirement approached and in consultation with Judy, the decision was made to combine Mike’s beekeeping and honey wine hobby activities, with Judy’s love of the outdoors, gardening and the arts, to develop what is today a thriving agricultural, agri-tourism business.  Mike has been active in both the Surrey and Langley Bee Clubs and served a term as second vice-president of the B.C. Honey Producters Association.  Over the last 3 years, Mike has participated in research to enhance honey bee health, and results have been submitted for review and publication.

Judy is a retired federal public service manager.  Fear of bees when we first started beekeeping was the biggest obstacle for Judy who reluctantly joined Mike in the beekeeping hobby at the outset.  Mike being the persuasive type, encouraged Judy to take the Ministry of Agriculture’s basic beekeeping course with him. Part of that course had a lab component where participants were a stung in a controlled environment to determine if they had allergies.  It is there that Judy realized that her fear of bees was due to the irrational fear of being stung, and once intentionally stung, she understood that her fear was unfounded.  Slowly Judy overcame her fear of bees, and focused on honey production, product development and sales.

Mike completed the Master Beekeepers Course and Judy completed this same course some years later, as she joined Mike in retirement.

Although Mike is the Apiary Manager and primary apiarist, we work together in our queen rearing and nuc production endeavours.  We are still playing, working, and learning together.

Our passion includes bee education and being socially and environmentally responsible. Both of us have graduate degrees in learning, so in retirement we wanted to continue to learn and facilitate the learning of others. We provide educational tours and activities, and participate in off-farm community events.  Our bee educational tours have involved all ages from 3 yrs to seniors up to 100 years old.  We started a junior beekeeper week-long, summer day camp for ages 10-14, 3 years ago.  In addition to the existing program, for 2012 we are introducing an additional week-long advanced junior beekeepers day camp for those who actually want to start their own hive.  We feel it is critical to encourage future generations to learn about apiculture, an often neglected aspect of agriculture.

The farm is a licenced  Meadery (honey winery),  producing a variety of honey wines, including ancient mead, melomels (honey/fruit wines), pyment (honey/grape wine) and more.

Our on-farm country store opened in 2007 and has provided a location for local consumers from which to buy honeys, honey wines, and other products from the bee hive such as beeswax soaps, candles, and polishes

We also strategically market our honey products to high end markets and stores in the Fraser Valley and in the Caribou.

The honey farm employs 5 employees throughout the year and we attribute much of our success to the group of committed staff, who assist in the apiary and who offer a warm old fashioned country welcome to all who visit the country store.

Mike Campbell

As co-owner, with Judy Campbell, of  Campbell’s Gold Honey Farm and Meadery, we operate a diversified 8 acre farm operation, including an apiary, in south west Abbotsford.  We offer off-farm honey bee pollination services to local growers and focus on honey and honey wine producton.

As retired professionals we set out to have an active and healthy lifestyle in retirement.  We have certainly achieved this goal…and then some!

Mike, who retired from teaching high school after 35+ years, took up hobby beekeeping about 17 years ago, long before he retired.  As retirement approached and in consultation with Judy, the decision was made to combine Mike’s beekeeping and honey wine hobby activities, with Judy’s love of the outdoors, gardening and the arts, to develop what is today a thriving agricultural, agri-tourism business.  Mike has been active in both the Surrey and Langley Bee Clubs and served a term as second vice-president of the B.C. Honey Producters Association.  Over the last 3 years, Mike has participated in research to enhance honey bee health, and results have been submitted for review and publication.

Judy is a retired federal public service manager.  Fear of bees when we first started beekeeping was the biggest obstacle for Judy who reluctantly joined Mike in the beekeeping hobby at the outset.  Mike being the persuasive type, encouraged Judy to take the Ministry of Agriculture’s basic beekeeping course with him. Part of that course had a lab component where participants were a stung in a controlled environment to determine if they had allergies.  It is there that Judy realized that her fear of bees was due to the irrational fear of being stung, and once intentionally stung, she understood that her fear was unfounded.  Slowly Judy overcame her fear of bees, and focused on honey production, product development and sales.

Mike completed the Master Beekeepers Course and Judy completed this same course some years later, as she joined Mike in retirement.

Although Mike is the Apiary Manager and primary apiarist, we work together in our queen rearing and nuc production endeavours.  We are still playing, working, and learning together.

Our passion includes bee education and being socially and environmentally responsible. Both of us have graduate degrees in learning, so in retirement we wanted to continue to learn and facilitate the learning of others. We provide educational tours and activities, and participate in off-farm community events.  Our bee educational tours have involved all ages from 3 yrs to seniors up to 100 years old.  We started a junior beekeeper week-long, summer day camp for ages 10-14, 3 years ago.  In addition to the existing program, for 2012 we are introducing an additional week-long advanced junior beekeepers day camp for those who actually want to start their own hive.  We feel it is critical to encourage future generations to learn about apiculture, an often neglected aspect of agriculture.

The farm is a licenced  Meadery (honey winery),  producing a variety of honey wines, including ancient mead, melomels (honey/fruit wines), pyment (honey/grape wine) and more.

Our on-farm country store opened in 2007 and has provided a location for local consumers from which to buy honeys, honey wines, and other products from the bee hive such as beeswax soaps, candles, and polishes

We also strategically market our honey products to high end markets and stores in the Fraser Valley and in the Caribou.

The honey farm employs 5 employees throughout the year and we attribute much of our success to the group of committed staff, who assist in the apiary and who offer a warm old fashioned country welcome to all who visit the country store.