title: A Year In Sedona: Meeting The Muse At Wisdom's Edge
author: Melanie Lee
description: Melanie Lee is an award-winning writer, editor and the founder of Sojourns Writing Workshops in Santa Fe, New Mexico. As a journalist she's written features, profiles, poetry, book reviews, fables, fiction and business news. At the second half of life she met her muse anew and began painting, writing poetry, teaching yoga and now writes atwisdomsedge.blogspot.com. She lives in Sedona, Arizona with her husband, writer and artist Louis Michalski, and is available for "Meeting The Muse" presentations (atwisdomsedge@gmail.com).
zlib_text: Prologue: The Beginning of the Enlightenment
  1st day, 1st month, 1,547th year, Continental Calendar
  This was the first time that New Year’s Day had come since the Elfrieden
  Kingdom had absorbed the Principality of Amidonia and become the United
  Kingdom of Elfrieden and Amidonia, or the Kingdom of Friedonia for short.
  In the royal capital, Parnam, and the former capital of the Principality, Van, as
  well as any other city that had a receiver for the Jewel Voice Broadcast set up in
  its plaza, there were still a large number of people gathered there. After all,
  today the young king would be using the Jewel Voice Broadcast to issue a New
  Year’s greeting to the people. The people had gathered in order to hear it.
  It wasn’t that Souma was doing anything to force the people to listen. But
  every time he used the Jewel Voice Broadcast, he had kicked off an event to
  gather personnel; or taught them about new foods as a countermeasure against
  the food crisis; or started up a music program... It wa