Welcome!

Here you'll find links to articles, musical arrangements, and more by, me, Jane Valencia, as well as downloadable PDFs, and links to some related writings by others (reviews and an interview, for instance). Feel free to use and share my creations, but please keep my name and web address on them (or add them if they are not there) and please do not change or omit any of the text (quoting is fine). If you want to reprint these for profit-oriented purposes, please contact me. Thank you and enjoy!

Blogs & Articles

Fox Tales - magical nature tales for children young and old, with weekly installments of my children's fantasy novel in progress.

Moms Create Culture - a blog and website devoted to helping the heart-centered mom who strives to create a positive culture for her children but struggles just to make it through the demands of each day ....

Singing Deer Healing blog and website ... intended to nourish you when your heart cries out, when you are spiritually-depleted, or in a health crisis.

Jane's Medicine Tree - started in 2009 and completed in mid-2010 this blog might be very well be called "Jane's magical weirdness". It's where I explore magic, our own 'medicine' ways, dreams, synchronicity, and more.

A Harper's Garden - begun in 2008 this blog details my herbal medicine-making adventures, chronicles some of my thoughts on homeschooling and my family's adventures with raising and adoring chickens.

About Forest Halls - a little background on Forest Halls, its beginnings, inspirations, and dreams.

Island is a web-book I created in 2002. It is a snapshot of my concerns and yearnings back then--my longing to make a difference in the world--and attempting to put my ideals and ideas into words and practice.

Village Nature - an index to a number of articles I wrote for the Village Learning Community, and on living aspects of a true-to-our-nature village ecology.

The Tree Letter - PDFs of the late 2006 to early 2007 run of my newsletter. A more recent run of this newsletter ran as a blog for a few months in early 2008.

Song Community - About singing circles, a Folk Choir, and community singing I've led in the past, and a vision for mentoring song community

Greenwood Nature - a glimpse of a couple of genius-tribe adventures I created for all ages and facilitated when I was living on Vashon Island.

A Magical America - a comic strip

I wrote several newsletters, one of which was The Earthling's Almanac - one woman's musings on the shores of the 21st century
Time Passages - August 2003

Before this website was up and running, the gorgeous and thoughtful Community Threads hosted a Forest Halls web page.

Articles included:
Dragons In The Forest
and May Day/Beltane & the Green Man In Our Time

What Is An Elder? - an essay on the need for elders in our culture, first published in Village Voices - the newsletter of The Village Learning Community of Vashon Island.

Spookytree

In Fall 2001 Deb & I performed a 45 minute version of our Forest show on Vashon Island for the Vashon Allied Arts New Works series. All of our performances are different from one another. Here is a PDF script of that one.

Into The Spirit House is a show Deb and I performed on November 13, 2004 with Celtic harps, voice, and singing bowl. I continue to perform a solo version of this show.

Harp

Bardic Harp Workshop Handout and Teaching Notes - This PDF dates back to my first time teaching this workshop, at the Puget Sound Folk Harp Society's annual Crystal Mountain retreat. Unfortunately, my entire family came down with stomach flu, so I prepared the teaching notes so that my harp partner, Deb, could present the workshop on my behalf. Feel free use these notes and ideas (but please give me credit!) if you plan to use them in a non-profit situation (harp circles, harp retreats, etc.), and if you have any questions about the exercises, etc., I'm happy to answer them. (The Rumi cards referred to in one exercise are a card deck of inspirational quotes from Rumi's poetry.)

A unique music webzine that I co-edited with the (then) young harpist Dierdre "Flippy" White: The Young Harpers Almanac in 1997-1998. I have yet to update the links, but thought you'd enjoy browsing it now!

"a page from The Mystic Harper's Guide to Fun & Magic on the Harp" for December and the Year's End - This article originally appeared in The Reel Fling, the newsletter of the Harpers Hall & culinary society, December, 2000.

Resounding Spring is another "page from The Mystic Harper...", published in The Reel Fling in spring 2001.

Lauda - This PDF is an arrangement of a medieval Italian lauda (song of praise to the Virgin Mary) for nylon- and wire-sturng harps. Deb and I recorded this version on our first album The Harpers Masque. This arrangement also appeared in Ringing Strings, the wire-strung column of The ISFHC Folk Harp Journal

A Note From Forest Halls is an article/letter I wrote to Harpers Hall after performing in their Gifts Of The Harp benefit concert. Published in The Reel Fling in December 2004.

Hebrides Dances - This PDF is an arrangement of three dances from the Hebrides Islands in Scotland, found in Patrick McDonald's A Collection Of Highland Vocal Airs published in the 18th centurly. Deb Knodel and I arranged these dances for wire- and nylon-strung harp, and recorded them (and Lauda) on our first album, The Harpers' Masque. The arrangement was published in Ringing Strings, the wire-strung harp column (then, by Dinah LeHoven) in The Folk Harp Journal

On The Web

Vashon Feature - KotaPress Poetry Journal - August 2002. Some of Jane Valencia's art, music, and song lyrics as poetry were featured artist in this column.

Behind The Scenes - an interview with Jane Valencia that accompanied the above article in the Aug. 2000 issue of the KotaPress Poetry Journal.

An American Harper In Wales - an article by me beautifully displayed on the enchanted website realm Eldalamberon
Note: This website currently seems to be "off-the-air", alas! But I've managed to scavenge the Eldalamberon page, beautifully created by Adam Victor Christensen.

Performance & Album Reviews

Knodel & Valencia, Forest The review begins "Several years ago, I attended a concert by Debra Knodel and Jane Valencia, two harpers from California. This wasn't so much a concert as a magical journey ...."

"Forest" by Knodel & Valencia ... reviewed by Mark Feil The review begins "Deb Knodel and Jane Valencia's new album, Forest is a wonderfully complex musical journey though a mythical, primal forest. The liner notes guide you on ..."