Jay Mohler Homepage

Now, not updating here so much, but I AM on facebook.....for my Ojos de Dios

Jay Mohler, of Ojos-de-Dios.com on Facebook

Also find my personal facebook pages at facebook.com/jayfroggy

December 25, 2010 UPDATE

Update, Christmas Day, 2010 I definitely have a lot more to report this year then usual! For starters, I'm writing this from Meherabad India, where I've been staying since mid-August, and am not returning to the USA until mid-February. I became totally clear that now was the time to make my very long time dream of traveling to the home of Avatar Meher Baba a reality when my son Daniel called me up, and offered to pay my way to India "whenever I wanted to go, and for as long as I wanted to stay." I don't know how it happened, but somehow I raised a son with that kind of generosity! Meanwhile, Daniel himself is off on quite an adventure ..... having just started, as i write this Christmas Day, 2010, a four month visit to the Philippines. Daniel and I are both posting photos and information about our trips on facebook, so if you haven't joined either of us there, click HERE to get started. My own privacy setting are set so you don't need to be a facebook member to see my posted photos, or read my posts, so CLICK AWAY even if you aren't inclined to join up with the facebook crowd. To jump right to my facebook photo albums, click HERE.

On the subject of adventuring sons, Kevin on his own adventure .... in this case about to travel down into Mexico to go rock climbing. I forget the exact name of the area, but it's in between Lorado and Hermasillo. Kevin has been bumming around rock climbing for over a year now, and you can also keep up with his adventures by way of his facebook pages. Abel, happily married and trying hard to carve out a career in freelance coding of websites, also posts on facebook. Corey, now in his 5th or so year as a professional spammer, has a facebook page, but rarely posts. He's living in Mt. View, CA, with his asian g/f, and I can't say he keeps in touch with anyone in the family much except Kevin, who he's always been close to. Hopefully Kevin will get Corey to visit me again at some point, as he did in Myrtle Beach, back in 2008.

So, what have I been up to, spending six months in India? Amazingly, I've done almost no traveling, but rather have been extremely happy to hang out at Meherabad, and make daily visit to the tomb of Meher Baba, and enjoy all the music and a few of the other activities here. It's all very informal, casual, and accepting of everyone choosing just what it is any pilgrim cares to, or cares not to, attend. The costs are certainly right. Unlike other places, staying here is not a fund raising project for those organizing events. In fact staying at the Pilgrim Retreat Center here is actually subsidized. Total costs, including all meals, runs between two and three hundred dollars a month, depending on choice of accommodations, meals, etc. In fact, if I were to actually stay in the Hostel, in a bunk bed and with simple Indian food, it would run even less. My social security dollars go a lot further here in India than they get me back home in the USA, I tell you! Really nice apartments here can be had for around $200 a month, but visa requirements are that, on a tourist visa, such as I have, you have to leave India for two months every six month, and also the months of May and June are terribly hot, and the Pilgrim Center I'm in now shuts down until the monsoon kicks in and cools things off again in July.

Another nice things about India, is .... drum roll .... dental work! There are top quality dentists here, and prices run right around 1/10 of USA dental prices. This is very serendipitous for me, as virtually all of my teeth have been coming loose and/or breaking off in the last two years. When I, after two months of avoiding even Indian dentists, got around to having my mouth looked at, it was quickly determined that ALL my teeth had to go, and so, go they did, and as I write this, I'm waiting for a complete set of top quality dentures to be returned from the denture lab in Mumbai. Check those facebook pages for the new toothy smile coming up very soon!

As far as personal work here at Meherabad, it's been divided into two phases .... one, trying once again to finish up a long delayed novel about extreme characters living in the far east end of the Mojave Desert, and, as I've been working on the last couple of years back home in the USA, spinning out some of my Ojos de Dios yarn mandalas. A new phase of my mandala career has also kicked in, which you've already seen if you visited my facebook photo albums ..... holding workshops. Yes, here in India, I'm holding yarn mandala making workshops. The most adventurous is coming up in early January, when I'm holding one in Bangalore, a 18 hour or so train ride to the south of here. If my facebook friend succeeds as she expects to, I'll have 30 students over a 10 day period of workshops. Yes, there WILL be facebook photos posted! And yes, as with the photos I have there now, you won't have to join facebook to see them.

As I write this I'm in the process of updating and re-working my long standing website for my Ojos de Dios mandalas, Ojos-de-Dios.com. I gave up on the really extensive work my oldest son Abel did a few years back. Although he made a really nice site, somewhere along the way I lost almost all ability to update it, until the ojos posted there were almost two whole years behind my current work. It's updated now, but as of this writing there are still several changes I'm plannig on completing. I also opened an Etsy.com online shop, etsy.com/ojosdedios, but it's on hold until I return from India, so there nothing to see there of my work at the moment. Between facebook and Etsy.com, I'm turning my online sales into ever more of a serious business. The last year or two, I've actually managed to get by on my meager Social Security income plus online sales of my artwork. YES! Hopefully I'll grow this business aspect of my life even more, and be able to afford to pay for my own trips to India .... where I definitely am planning on returning to pretty much yearly if at all possible. I'm also still wanting to make a trip to Russia where I was invited to co-host a workshop in St. Petersburg a couple of years back. When? How? Only God knows!

Anybody out there wondering about my marital status ..... which I have posted as *complicated* on facebook? Well ..... divorce to Anna, who I married in 2002, finalizes in the next week or so. We've been separated for almost all of the last five years, and totally separated the last two years. When we first split up back in 2005 I posted a collage I made of our times together. HERE it is again, if you care to take a look. For now, I'm enjoying being single, and there are no serious prospects in sight.

I've told quite a few people that when I return back to the USA, I'm planning on returning to my long term home of Joshua Tree, CA. I'm still thinking along those lines, but money may be a problem, so I may well hang some more in Myrtle Beach before heading west once again. If I manage to line up some Ojo weaving workshops though, Jtree here I come! In fact, I'm likely emailing my dear friend Paula Jeane, and asking if she wants to organize a workshop in her Joshua Tree geodesic dome come April ..... As I'd love to be out there in time for the Spring flowering.

Enough! Peace, Love, and all the best of wishes for the holiday season, and the new year ahead,
Jay

UPDATE ~ April ~ 2007

UPDATE ~ January ~ 2006

UPDATE ~ Summer ~ 2005

my BLOG 2006-7

my older BLOG

My main interest in building this homepage originally was to share photos I've taken in the Joshua Tree National Park. Since that time years ago now, this has evolved into a general homepage covering the many and varied stages and aspects of my life.

. . . . .

I've updated my Ojos de Dios web-site , and have a really good selection of my Native American and Tibetan inspired yarn mandalas now.
Check out my latest, which are now twelve sided.

Around Wilmington, NC

photos from my 2002-2005 hometown, starting with houses of the downtown historic district.

~ an ongoing project, as I walk and explore and photograph this facinating city.

The Joshua Tree photo gallery
which includes the new

Jay's Desert Mysteries of Joshua Tree National Park

In the East Mojave National Preserve.

It's said that there is more rock art in the
East Mojave than anywhere else in the world.

Native Americans today

Mt. Whitney
Highest peak in USA outside Alaska.
For lots of photos and up-to-date information,
visit the Mount Whitney portal store web site.
For a picture of me on the summit, click on the picture.

To Follow Meher Baba, Avatar of the Age (web-site)
has been my spiritual path for the last 30 years.
I am more convinced than ever that this is the fast track to God.
click here for an article on Meher Baba from the Encyclopedia Brittanica

I have four sons from a marriage that ended thirteen years ago.

This picture was taken at Christmas, 1988, in Joshua Tree.

click photo for more on each boy

for more recent pictures of the boys, click here. or see above updates

While visiting my cousin, Chloe and Aunt, Grace Ann

in Charleston SC, I learned a lot about my Mohler family history.

Click on this 1893 photo of my great-grandfather Jarome Mohler

for some family photos and history

I ran a (mostly one person) sign business for 18 years in Joshua Tree, named Turtle Signs. Now I'm retired from signs, spinning out Ojos de Dios, and am trying to become a writer of short stories, screenplays and novels.

RELATED WEB SITES:
The official National Park Service Joshua Tree National Park
The Joshua Tree Community Web Site

The Joshua Tree National Park Chat Page

Click here for more of my favorite web-sites

If you'd like to e-mail me, my addy is jay@ojos-de-dios.com

The weather at North Myrtle Beach today

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Jay
jay@yarnmandalas.com