ed-smal.gif (7720 bytes)Electric Dreams Vol 5.6 June 1998

Editors' Notes
Richard Wilkerson rcwilk@dreamgate.com


I was at a local (BADG) dream workers group meeting here in San Francisco this month where one woman said that she always knew a dream person because within five minutes they were telling you a dream.

In this spirit, Electric Dreams has been providing some interesting venues over the last few years for sharing dreams and continues to develop more.

But I would like to widen the definition of dream sharing in the Electric Dreams community. Electric Dreams has remained a non- profit public service that attempts to draw together dream interested folks and projects from around the world. Sometimes we create these projects, like the DreamWheel groups, and other times simply point to the projects of others, like the Planetary Dreaming project of the French based Oniros group. These groups all distribute dreams, ideas and news through 'Electric Dreams'. In this sense, the Electric Dreams community really includes anyone using the community to distribute information and dreams, to network or form projects. In this spirit, I hope you consider yourself a Friend of Electric Dreams.

For those of you who are familiar with this process, I want to mention two items: The first is the Friends of Electric Dreams Web Ring. With the Web Ring you can place on your site a small link area of your own design that will connect with others interested in the same area of dreaming. The nice ~Net Friendly~ aspect of the rings is that anyone with anything remotely dream related can join and it increases the flow of traffic through your site. You can set the link box up on your site to look like whatever you like. We are still in the experimental stage with this Web Ring and are asking for someone who would like to oversee this project. If you are interested, contact Victoria Quinton, mermaid@alphalink.com.au 

We are also about to launch the Dream Site Award. This award will be given out, at least at first, to sites related to dreaming that demonstrate a high level of quality in various categories, such as depth of content, presentation quality, educational excellence and so on. If you have sites you would like considered, send them to me at ed-award@dreamgate.com  Next month we should have a clearer idea on the categories and standards.

For those of you who are ~not~ familiar with the various processes of the Electric Dreams community, I wanted to quickly mention some of our projects and resources.

The ED DreamWheel: A small Email group that discusses dreams in depth. We spend about a week or two on a dream, asking questions about the dream and then commenting on the dream as if it were our own, rather than telling the dreamer what we think it means to them. Very fun and non-defensive. To join the next group, send a note to rcwilk@dreamgate.com  and say "Hey Richard, put me on the list for the next Wheel and send me the instructions on how to participate!"

The ed-core@lists.best.com  :When we get dreams from the Net or wake up ourselves with dreams we want to share, this is the mail list we send them to. The dreams are archived and often commented on, then published in the next Electric Dreams. You can send in dreams or dream comments. Subscribe by sending an email to ed- core-request@lists.best.com   and in the Body of the email put only subscribe your-email (change your-email to your own email address) You can always view the archive of dreams sent in via our backissues, or more recent dreams at the ed-core archive at http://jab.org/mail/ed-core@lists.best.com/  

The Electric Dreams Club House. We have two, but our Australian site is a little out of date, so use the following address: www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams   We have several years of information collected here for you, including dream FAQs, bibliographies, hundreds of links with descriptions, samples of past groups, all the backissues, articles from ED listed by author, how to conduct research, and much, much more.

A special note on the Links page: If you would like your site listed in more than one category, great. Just send me the categories and a short summary of your site. Www.dreamgate.com/dream/resources/online97.htm  

-- News, Events and Bay Area Dreaming. What to know what's going on in dreams and dreaming this month? You can get the news, events, latest web sites and more at Peggy Coats' www.dreamtree.com 

BADG: For local Bay Area Dreamworkers Group members, we now have TWO new resources, courtesy of Electric Dreams, DreamGate and DreamTree. For those of you interested in San Francisco Area dreaming events, we have a new mail list, badg@lists.best.com  which you can subscribe to by sending an email TO: badg- request@lists.best.com   and in the Body of the Email put only subscribe your-email The Archive is at http://jab.org/mail/badg@lists.best.com/   Also, DreamTree has been authorized by BADG to set up a Homepage for the local group, see www.dreamtree.com/badg 

Electric Dreams Illustrated! Yes, we are now offering an illustrated version of Electric Dreams, and it is Free just like our text version. How? Dane Pestano puts the issue into html format and zips the whole issue in compressed format. When you subscribe to our edreams-web list you will get this zipped version once a month. Just unzip and view it in your favorite browser offline for quick and easy reading! Subscribe by sending TO: edreams-web-request@lists.best.com   Put in body of email only: subscribe your-email

You can see the latest issue online at http://wkweb4.cableinet.co.uk/dma/ed/start.htm  

Perhaps with all this dream work you need a dream vacation? Linda Magallon would like to invite you to a dream-in where you can put the intention in your mind before going to sleep to visit with her and the rest of the gang on July 25th. Read all about this from the author of _Mutual Dreaming_ in the Dream Trek Column.

On the other extreme, if you would like to put your dreams to work for the good of mankind, Ann Klein is offering a dream-in for saving the planet! http://www.dreamcd.com 

If you have a hard time interpreting dreams of this magnitude, Australian author Jane Anderson gives us an overview of her process found in "Levels of Dreaming" and "Sleep On It and Change Your Life".

If you prefer to zoom right to the top of the hill and throw open the gates of heaven, Dr Deus is back with Eternal Return and the mythological exploration of spiritually oriented dream interpretation.

For a little contrast, I have included an article of mine on how we might use dreams to respond to the onrush of media in our lives. In Simulations of Reality I continue to explore the use of Postmodern thought in Jean Baudrillard's notions that our culture has slipped so deeply into preferences of simulation of reality over the real thing that we no longer even know the differences. Dreams may offer us some ways to explore the

The staff of Electric Dreams wishes to thank Bryan Smith for his design/image contribution to the cover of this month's issue, 'Mother and Child' and look forward to seeing more of his work here in the future. Electric Dreams Cover Artist: Bryan A. Smith < bryan@thinkpiece.com  > http://www.thinkpiece.com 

Also, thanks to low bandwidth for the new listing: http://www.disobey.com/low/listings/electric_dreams.htm  

Hope to see you all at the dream event - both in cyberspace and dreamspace.



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Richard Wilkerson
rcwilk@dreamgate.com