My aunt Jean Millay passed away August 2nd, 2017. She called it her “graduation” from earth school. She was 88 and had many fabulous adventures, but cancer took her home. She was like a 2nd mom to me, as she and my mother, both divorced in the 1960’s, combined households. We had two moms with six kids, and they moved us all to Los Angeles and took us to Love-Ins. They went to the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and invited The Grateful Dead to come play on the roof of our house in Venice Beach. Jean had a life-long fascination with the power of music. Her first job was for Starks Furniture in downtown Fair Oaks CA, She talked the owners into opening up space to inventory records (to sell with the furniture sized record players). They let her borrow them and she and her mother, Grace, enjoyed listening to them together at home. In 1948, Jean’s painting of her dad’s hands holding a gold pan, won an honorable mention at the California State Fair. Her teacher, Tarmo Pasto, called her a genius in 1949 due to her painting of overlapping planes, similar to Picasso. She received her AA (Sacramento City college) in Art and English focusing on Shakespeare, then moved to San Francisco and got a job working at Gumps for $1.50/hour. She worked nights painting wallpaper for Williamson Mayo (a renowned artist himself). He became her husband in 1952, and then, father of both her children, Mara Mayo, born in 1955 and Mitchell, born in 1957. Jean was a member of the Beat generation art scene in San Francisco and hosted parties attended by renowned artists, including Beniamino Bufano, David Park, Elmer Bishoff, Richard Diebenkorn and others. After her divorce, she moved the kids across the bay, and got her degree from UC Berkeley in 1962. During this time she was famous for her many large murals of San Francisco — she painted all the players of the San Francisco Giants in 1959 and became an honorary Giant herself. She and my mom, Marjorie Beers King, went to Asilomar to hear two young professors from Harvard speak about a new way to expand Consciousness— LSD. These were Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. My mom and Jean bought their latest book, and they ordered peyote buttons from Texas when it was legal and we dried them on the roof. Later, Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) dropped by with the book he had just written called, "Be Here Now." Bear Owsley came and gave out LSD. Mom could always get us in backstage at Grateful Dead concerts after that. Jean got a job teaching art at a private school in Los Angeles and the kids were so uptight they couldn't do art. So she got out big pieces of paper and just let them scribble, getting their arms going in circles, letting art flow through their arms, the kids were so happy & excited to be free, they took the art works home to their parents that night. The parents were horrified. The next morning the principal called Jean into the office and fired her on the spot. She made a prize-winning movie in 1965 called "The Psychedelic Experience," narrated by her friend Timothy Leary, with custom music by Ravi Shankar. It won the Film as Art Award at the SF International Film Festival that year. Wavy Gravy hailed my aunt has the inventor of the Color and Light show, which she created at the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test when the Grateful Dead played. She had a hand-crank strobe light that I got to crank. Jean conducted the first bicoastal ESP experiments, in which images were successfully transmitted from California to a receiver in New York. Jean was always ahead of her time! Jean was lovers with many brilliant men, including, Indian Tabla Legend, Alla Rakha. She later earned her Ph.D. in parapsychology. She was the host of the Washington Research Center in San Francisco and I got to go see Yuri Geller bend spoons with his thoughts, while scientists tried to figure out what was really happening, (she gave me that bent spoon). She worked in biofeedback creating a light box with color sensors that lit up with the waves from your brain, (alpha, beta, theta, and delta). The brain wave analyzers were designed and built by her life-long friend, Tim Scully. She exhibited her work at the New York Museum of Modern Art. She was a shaman and traveled the world leading groups in healing work and guided imagery. She was an accomplished author, a pioneer in the field of parapsychology research and the use of psychedelics for therapeutic and spiritual enrichment. She published several books, still available on Amazon. Her most recent, (she completed when she turned 85), "Radiant Minds—Scientists Explore the Dimensions of Consciouses." Jean reported the amazing contributions of fifty-five scientists (all personal friends of hers as well), detailing their years of research in Parapsychology. Jean was so happy to find out, mere weeks before she died, that her book "Multidimensional Mind: Remote Viewing in Hyperspace," had been selected for use as a college textbook! For the last several years she taught a class at the Truckee Meadows Community College, teaching a class called "Dimensions of Consciousness." Included in the course were "near-death" experiences, and the "shamanic way of communicating with spirits." She taught her last class at age 87. Also at age 87 she was included in a television show where clips of her famous movie, "The Psychedelic Experience," were shown, along with a wonderful profile of her long-time partner Darrell Lemaire. (Vice.com Hamilton's Pharmacopeia) Jean was also a matchmaker, preformed marriages for friends, and did messages too. She led many on guided meditations, helping to solve long-standing issues. She was incredibly intuitive. She was also terrific at making new friends. I endeavor to be more like her. She finished her days out with another brilliant man, her partner Darrell Lemaire. For 25 years they lived together in a small mountain cabin on a property fed by a spring and run on solar power. They named it "Birdsong Meadow." I watched them sit together in their gorgeous front yard, holding hands for hours, enjoying a 50 mile unobstructed view across the Great Basin. They didn't need to talk, they were totally in love, enjoying being in the moment, admiring mother nature. Jean's big joy was all the little animals that came into their yard to nipple at the salt lick, or peck at the seeds she threw out. All manor of dear, birds, squirrels, chipmunks and lizards danced around their yard, it was like a Disney movie every day. This is where Jean has requested to have her ashes scattered. My brother Forrest actually found this property for Darrell, and his ashes are scattered there too, as will be Darrel's someday. Jean was also our family chronicler. I have a cupboard full of family CD's and photographs she took over 70 years, starting with her first Brownie camera. She was tireless in rounding folks up for pictures. She even made videos of her parents (George and Grace Beers, and her uncle, Herb Penrose) telling canonical family stories and then transferred those to DVD format later in life, and she made sure the kids all got copies. She made sure I got copies of my brother Forrest singing his songs on cassette, and my mom's appearances on TV demonstrating biofeedback equipment. She kept in print articles my mom wrote about her experiences of using biofeedback in her high school classroom, and included mom's article in her book. She worked hard at saving all the old 3/4 inch video tape, and digitizing it, saving it for future generations to enjoy. "Thank you Aunt Jeanie for leaving behind a treasure trove of my families history!" Aunt Jean Millay and I were both named after our cousin, heralded as the greatest female poet of the 20th century, Edna st. Vincent Millay. Her famous couplet: "My candle burns at both ends, it will not last the night, but ah my foes, and oh my friends, It gives a lovely light." —Edna st. Vincent Millay Ms Millay won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1923. Her poems were printed in newspapers across the country. Jean was born in 1929. My great grandmother, Lillian Millay married Howard Beers. Their son was George Beers, my mom, and Jean's father. "I love you Aunt Jeanie, and I will miss you and I hope you continue to drop by my house bringing gifts (like you always have), and I know that you are still watching over me from the other side." —Scotty Millay King