For legal purposes, the girl’s next door need to come up with a new name for their shop. The owner, Lee Anne, approached me, asking me to stretch my imagination. I wrote down a few suggestions, and then drove off to deliver some chairs. On my drive, I remembered a dream I had a few nights back, about a farm my sister and I were sitting in, visiting. A rather large chicken / grouse like creature started aggressively clucking around. It soon became clear that this creature was extremely intelligent. Then, as it frenzied about, the chick-grouse started mouthing aloud anthems; This Land is Your Land, The Star Spangled Banner, etc. I turned to my sister and then realized that this galliforme had occurred to me in dreams twice or thrice before.

Believing this to be a power dream of some sort, I looked up ‘chicken’ in Ted Andrew’s Animal Speak. The index said, ‘also study quail’ - so I did. Quail mentioned ‘bob-white’, which speaks its name. From the book: “This distinctive call has been associated with the mysticism of names. It is a bird which can help you to learn your soul name, the name that stays with you lifetime after lifetime. It has knowledge of the power of names and the naming process.”

Along with some suggested names I had scribbled while driving along, I carried these thoughts back to Lee Anne, who has cultivated an interest for the types of things animals (and minerals) can teach us if we listen close enough. We talked about gemstones in general; how they are said to heal -and things like that. I mentioned that the Animal Speak author, Mr. Andrews, also wrote a book about crystal balls, so we briefly touched on crystal balls and then crystal skulls. Lee Ann proceeded to look up prices for crystal balls and they were less expensive then I imagined. As she spoke something very nice about the inherent healing power in the gemstones we were in the presence of; I felt a slight jolt, as if something in the gems held a special awareness, of what she was relaying.

Lee Anne, Heather and I then played around with some potential names for the store: Sunniest Jewelers, Something new under the sun jewelers, Twinkle-Sun Jewelers, Elan & Jewelers (anagram of Lee-Ann), Valley Sun Jewelers, Serenade Jewelers and Sparkleson Jewelers.

It felt like we were getting close, but the ‘Eureka’ moment has yet to come. Several of us are working on it tonight, hoping to focus on the answer. I’m toying around with anagrams of Lee Anne’s first & last name (Doty) and being located in Sun Valley, we might want to keep the ‘Sun’ shining in there somewhere.

I also suggested that the jeweler who is threatening to sue her over the current name they are using, ought to consider changing the name of his store to ‘Felonious Monk Jewelers’