It was a particularly cloudy February day in San Francisco when I unloaded the sound system for Bay Area Hoopers, wondering if others would brave the weather to join me at the Civic Center across from City Hall to hoop. For the past two years my friend Suzanne had been battling cancer and losing. At the start of the year we'd moved the woman who had been an incredible adoptive mother to me since moving to the city in 1990 into hospice care. She had taken another turn for the worse. A romantic relationship was turning sour. Vera had decided to move on to new things. Ariel was enjoying success in her new endeavors since leaving hooping.org. The prospect of continuing the site alone, while already feeling overwhelmed by life, seemed somehow preposterous.

I stepped into the hoop, listening to the music, feeling it surround me, feeling the movement. The slightest misty rain fell moistening my face as a ray of sunlight broke through the clouds to highlight a flock of seagulls that had entered the civic center high above my head. The hoop circled me and centered me as I thought about my life, moving me out of my head and into my body, moving me out of fear and the future and back into the here and now, struck by all the beauty of the world, the wonders that surround me when I take time out to notice. I thought of how often the power of hooping had transformed my day, my attitudes, my relationships, my life - and I knew hooping.org had to continue. What a gift it is to be able to share something so wonderful, so transformational, so silly and fun with the world.

Sitting on a blanket later that day I was talking with someone who asked me a very important question. "Now that it is just you, what is your vision for hooping.org? What have you always wanted to do or wanted the site to be?" I considered the idea over the next few weeks while dealing with problems with our hosting company, technological failures, bringing in assistance from hooping.org's long-time friend to fix a problem that baffled me and the whole support staff of our hosting service. She did just that while I thought about color and energy and excitement and enthusiasm and music - how could a site about hooping not have music! The process continued to evolve and grow and even if it wasn't on my time table, it was definitely on one set forth by a power greater than me.

On Monday, March 19, Suzanne passed away and I remain incredibly grateful for her friendship and for the joy and sadness and wonder we were able to share over the past seventeen years, and particularly the past few months prior to her passing. One of the last things she said to me, turning her attention and her frail body and face from me towards the wall, "Look, can you see it? It all opens outward. You have to really look, but if you do you can see. It all opens outward. Do you see?" I told her I did. And now there are no more trips to hospice, laundry to do, errands to run, now she is at peace - and hooping.org has returned in its third incarnation.

There is still more to do behind the scenes. While the comments aren't at all running smoothly right now, they are actually functioning and will eventually appear if you leave one. While it remains to be seen how our server handles a site that has been streamlined for faster loading on all browsers, the new iPod sound component presents new challenges for our server. There's more to do in the archives in bringing back the past while we kickstart the future - and it is my most sincere hope that you will join me in creating this project of love and light by contributing your writing, your vision, your photos and videos, your input. You are truly the most amazing community I could ever hope to be a part of. With all that is wrong with the world, there is still so much that is right, and so much of it can be found inside the hoop. Welcome to Hooping.org 3.0, a reawakening. For me, it has become just that.