Eastwind

I want to backtrack a bit and give some impressions about Eastwind.  The people at Terra Nova in Columbia MO, are ex-Eastwinders.   They left because they wanted to start their own housing on property that Eastwind had acquired.  Thus the name Terra Nova.  But the Eastwind community couldn’t come to consensus on that, so these people moved away.  They told me that Eastwind looks like paradise, but look closely.

I wasn’t sure of what to think, but I tried not to let that color my view of the community.  I got to Eastwind early afternoon.  Sabrina showed me around.  The first place she showed me was ‘Fillmore’.  This is the little room named after Millard Fillmore, who was the last president to have an outhouse.  There was the five gallon bucket, with a toilet seat (much appreciated) and the bucket of sawdust to put on top of the doings.  Sabrina had not heard of SPERMFLOW, which is the Society for the Preservation and Enhancement of the Recognition of Millard Fillmore, Last Of the Whigs.  Of course, not many people have.

You aren’t supposed to pee in the poop bucket.  The ammonia in the urine makes the stench even worse.  But Sabrina said that old ladies, like us, have dispensation to use the bucket or pee in the shower.  Peeing in the woods can be a challenge for those of us whose knees don’t work as they should.

The other room she showed me was where I would stay.  But she wasn’t sure if someone was staying there, since there was a back pack in the room.  As she showed me around, she asked different people if ‘Sunburst’ was vacant and whose back pack that might be.  No one knew.   I would just have to find out later.

There is a long walk from the office area to RB, which is the kitchen/hangout area that they call Rock Bottom.  Along the path, I met a young man and introduced myself.  I asked him, “What brought you here?” 

He answered, “My mother.”  So, he grew up here. 

“Do you think you will stay?” 

“Oh, yeah.”

I mentioned that I heard there was a lot of turnover in the population, but that things seemed to work.

“Thing work.  Not well, sometimes, but I don’t want to go into that.”

I understood.   You don’t share your dirty laundry with strangers.  Just like any family.

I heard people talking about work assignments.  I think that people sign up for what they want to do, but I’m not absolutely sure how it works.  I do know that they have a list of HTA duties.  Sabrina defined it as “Hard to Assign”.  Stuff like cleaning the Fillmore. 

RB is one of the hangout spots for folks to talk.  It has a fan overhead, so is one of the cooler places to sit.  I mostly just listened, although some folks were interested in who I was and where I came from.   That’s where the guy who had been there since the 80’s asked me to summarize Tocqueville in one sentence.   The others were all under 30, I think.  At least they all looked very young to me.  Even Sabrina seemed young to me, even though she claimed to be 50.

Some say you are only as young as you feel.  Some say you are as young as who you feel.  Well, I didn’t do that, but I did feel like I shed some years there.  That evening a resident put up a notice for a karaoke party to celebrate his return.  I don’t know where he went, but I’m glad he came back, because I do love a karaoke party.  Sabrina brought some of her homemade mead and filled up our mason jars.  It was a strange feeling of being old and young.  There were about 8 or 10 of us, with some coming and going.  To do what, I’m not sure. 

A lot of songs were from the 80s.  “I Love Rock ‘n Roll”, “Walking on Sunshine” It was odd, since I thought of them as new songs and everyone else there thought of them as oldies.  Sigh… 

However, I felt vindicated when “Born to Be Wild” came on and they handed me the microphone.  No one else knew the lyrics.  Woo Hoo!!  Return to the 60s!!

I’ll deal with my knees tomorrow.

Steppin' Out

Well, I am still on the ledge and will be until at least after the general election.  That’s in November, in case you don’t follow that.

To show my involvement, here is my latest attempt to remain engaged in the political system.

I am, however, dangling one foot off the ledge.  I am now officially a member of an intentional community.  We just purchased 19 acres of forest on the southern edge of the Olympic National Forest and are in the process of watching the land before placing any structures on it.   Not that I intend to live there. 

I think I was the only one at the communities conference who did not intend to live in an intentional community.  This drew a question from one of the men I slept with (in Aurora Group House.)  He asked ‘Why I was putting money and energy into community when I wasn’t going to live there?’  Good question.  I thought about it and came back the next night with an analogy.  I don’t have children.  I have never wanted children.  I don’t really like to be around children.  But I feel that education is vital and will give my time and energy to support it.

The same with intentional communities.  I am learning more and more about how vital these communities are to our nation and the world.  They are models of co-operation.  They bring back a lot of skills that are in danger of being lost.  I want to foster these ideals and to spread the word of their existence.  It surprises me how many people haven’t heard of intentional communities.  Or if they have, they think of hippie communes from the 60’s.  While that may apply to some, it is by no means the whole.  Intentional communities are as varied as they are in number.  Each community defines itself as intentional.  They range from the Amish to the dreadlocked ones at Eastwind.  They range from young people looking for a home to elders sharing their retirement. 

We all live in community of one sort or another.  We have places we shop, we have families we visit and we may even have neighbors that we wave to.  But to take that a step further and say, “Yes, we intend to share our time, resources, meals and/or lives” is to form an intentional community.

Am I ready?  Not yet.  But I am glad I have that freedom to choose.

Push Me Off the Ledge

I am home now, but still on the ledge.  I told the women we stayed with in Albuquerque that I had a blog called Talk Me Off The Ledge.  Later, she asked me for more information about it and referred to it as Push Me Off The Ledge.  It got me thinking.

There are two things that put me on the ledge.  To refresh, the ledge is whether I want to stay involved in politics and this toxic culture or to drop out and go tend my garden, as Candide did. 

About a year ago, I read a study, which showed that when people are confronted with facts that disprove a closely held belief, then they will cling to that belief even tighter.  This was disturbing to me, since I work with facts, examine facts and, often, will rely on facts.  What other tools do I have to convince someone? 

I teach a logic section to my students and study the fallacies that have to do with the appeal to emotions and the appeal to pity.  These appeals to emotion run rampant in the political ads, especially in an election year.   Appeals to fear, mostly, but not entirely. 

There is also a huge misuse of facts and statistics.  Again, I teach a section on statistics and use, as a reference, Huff’s How to Lie with Statistics.  A neat little book, even if it is over 50 years old.  Understand simple things like the difference between mean, median and mode can go a long way to help interpret facts that are thrown at us.

My mother had a post card that we used to laugh about.  It said, “My mind’s made up.  Don’t confuse me with facts.”  I am heartbroken and discourage to find out how true that is.  If I can’t convince people with facts, well, why not just give up?

The other thing that has nudged me toward the ledge is the Law of Unintended Consequences.  I know a lot of people who vote their conscience.  Voting for a third party helps them make a statement and register their dislike of either candidate.  The consequence is that the candidate they like least is the one to get elected.  Another example is just what The Suz talked about with ranked choice voting.  It is a mechanism to be able to vote your conscience, but the consequence of that was to have someone elected that no one really wanted because people didn’t understand that they didn’t have to mark his name at all.

So, what would be the consequence of achieving the current political aim that I have?  I am active in the Move To Amend – Tacoma affiliate.  We want to amend the Constitution to say that corporations are not people and money is not speech.  It sounds good to me.  So far, I can’t see any downside to it.  It would allow corporations to be regulated so that we can make some environmental changes as well as allow us to get corporate money out of our elections. 

But you never know, do you?  Maybe some are right when they say let it all go to hell, tear it down and start over.  You never know. 

Is it time for me to jump?  Or will I get pushed?

New Things

Since I got home, people have asked, “How was your trip?”  A fair question.  I could just say ‘fine’ and leave it there.  For those who really don’t want details, that would be OK.  But the answer I have come up with is “It was like visiting another planet.” 

There were a number of things I learned.  Some of them you may have heard of.  Some, I’m sure you haven’t.

Gritonese:  This is the language spoken by someone raised on grits.  You have to listen very hard to understand and sometimes, that doesn’t help.  Asking them to repeat it doesn’t help, either.  For example, Ananda wanted some local food in the middle of Arkansas.  So, we stopped at Craig’s BBQ.  That place was held together with plywood and duct tape.  And not new plywood, either.  The door to the kitchen had a hole burned into it.  The tables were shimmed with old newspapers that had been mopped over until they were a gray wad under the table leg.  But the place was packed.  It only had 4 tables, but still, it was jumpin’.  Lots of people there for take out  So, we ordered.  I am a real wuss when it comes to spicy food, so I always tell the waitress I can’t eat much spicy stuff.  I asked if there was something not too spicy.  She answered, “Ah lahke uh mawel.”  I wasn’t sure what a mawel was, but I figured, what they hey, so I said, “I’ll have that.”  She replied, “An’ wha’ you wan’?”  Still unsure of what she was saying or even what was on the menu, I chose something that I knew would have bones that I could identify the species it came from.  I said, “Ribs.”  It wasn’t until Ananda ordered that I figured out what was going on.  The waitress asked her,  “You wan’ uh mawel, too?”  Ananda answered, “No, I’ll have it medium.”  Ananda is much better at Gritonese than I am.

It isn’t just roadside waitresses that I have difficulty understanding.  Going through Missouri, listening to the radio, I heard a news item that said some woman was being prosecuted under the Arkansas Hot Chick Law.  OMG!  I didn’t know that was illegal.  I was worried that I might be breaking some laws, so the next time I was on the internet, I googled the Arkansas Hot Chick Law.  Whew!  It was only about passing bad checks.

Rolling Roadblock:  This is where two vehicles drive side by side and neither of them is going the speed limit.  Either one of them is trying to pass and can’t quite make it, or they are having a nice conversation with the windows down.  I ticked a motorcyclist off by doing this.  I was passing a vehicle, but not fast enough.  Even though I was going 5 mph over the speed limit, the biker passed me on the right, pulled in front of me, and pointed with his thumb to the right lane.  At first, I thought he was giving a thumbs up to my van, as many people did during this trip.  But, no.  He thought that if I wasn’t speeding, I should be poking along.  At least he gestured with his thumb and not a different digit.

Dreads:  I had heard of dreadlocks, so this wasn’t too much of a surprise.  I just hadn’t heard the shortened version, which seemed to be filled with trepedation.  Wren worked on Colin’s dreads as we traveled from Missouri to Virginia.  She would roll his loose hair between the palms of her hands, like making clay snakes.  She would take scissors and split a big mat into two or three strands.  I heard her say once “What’s this?” as she did something to his hair.  I didn’t ask what she had found in there.

BBQ Gluten:  I almost don’t want to describe this, since it brings back things I would rather not remember.  Just think of wallpaper paste in the form of a slug covered with some red stuff.

Couch-Surfing:  I knew this by the term ‘crash pad’ in the 60’s.  But now, with the internet, you go online and look up who has a place to crash in the city you want to be in.  Ananda raved about it.  I wasn’t so sure.  She talked me into couch surfing in Albuquerque, and by that time, I was just going with the flow.  We stayed the night with two lovely, intelligent women and had good food and great conversation.  They were the ones who recommended the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center.  They also had a meditation group in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh.  I didn’t sit with them, since I was so exhausted, I didn’t want to fall asleep and snore, as I am inclined to do.  But I did stretch out on my bed (and it wasn’t a couch), and listen to the bell and do my own form of meditation.

So, for now, couch-surfing has a thumbs up from me.

Home…and Hit the Ground Running

While I was catching up on the backload of emails, there was an invitation to a campaign BBQ for Denny Heck, candidate for Congress in the 10^th District.  As in the primary caucus, I wasn’t sure what to expect.  But I made myself presentable and dove once again into politics.

The gathering was at a private residence, so I figured there couldn’t be too many people.  I was right.  I counted about 35 in attendance and I was able to talk with Denny one-on-one.  He was excited to hear that I went to the Democratic Convention and only a bit less excited to hear about the huge numbers of people I met who will not vote.  He gave a short stump speech, focusing on the infrastructure and strengthening the middle class.  Most of the time was spent with him answering questions.  I found him to be easy to talk to and very responsive.  He will be easy for me to vote for.

What excited me even more was a chance to talk with Yoshi Wong.  She is challenging Mike Carrell for State senate in the 28^th District.  A long shot, but I like her concerns and experience with education and her stance on the rights of women.  She asked a great question about subsidies to big oil companies.  When I talked with her one-on-one, she was interested in what I do for a living.  She told me that her friends had a small dog that was ‘spoiled’.  Here was a dog that was fed all the right delicacies and carried around on a pillow, yet the dog had an ulcer.  I smiled and said that we can never know what might cause stress in a dog.  Maybe that dog was afraid of heights.

After that, she actually listened when I explained my thoughts about the parallels of canine behavior modification and politics.  There is an authoritarian model and a nurturing model.  Control through fear or guidance though love. She asked if I had a card. I said no, but I would give her my name and number, and wrote a check for her campaign.  I think she might remember me now.

Epistle from Oz

My next blog entry will be from home, sweet home.  I am so close to home, I can almost taste it.  There are a lot more things I want to write about this trip.  Should I keep it up on the blog?

As I intimated, I have developed a case of homesickness.  It started in Vegas.  When we went out walking, I had put my hair in braids to keep it out of my way.  There was a street theater person who was making a living having people take their pictures with her in her golden get-up.  She called to me, "Hey, Dorothy!"  I did a double take, then realized that I must look like I came from Kansas.

But it got me to thinking.  There's no place like home.

9-13-12 Sin City on a Shoestring

It is actually 9-14-12, but internet connection has been sketchy and I am only now able to post.  I am used to hotels providing free wifi connection.  Here, at the Flamingo, they want $13.49 per day.  So, I have been using Ananda’s 4G connection, but it keeps shutting down.  Go figure.

Ananda and I have been doing Vegas on a shoestring.  Really odd in a town that is determined to take whatever money you might have.  Our room was from a comp ticket a client of hers had and that she wasn’t going to use.  We brought some food that Ananda had bought with her food stamps.  Entertainment was walking around and looking at all the different people and, well, Vegas.

Driving in, I saw several signs that combined the sacred and the profane.  There was Kokopelli on the side of a panel truck, but rather than a flute he held two pipe wrenches.  A big billboard had the symbol of Tao, advertising a bistro.  The caption read “Always a Happy Ending”.  Nice, but the photos was of a female backside.  Lovely, yes, but with a not-so-subtle subliminal message.  Then there was the Parthenon, a symbol of Greek cultural worship, but perched high atop a skyscraper, so that it looked like a toy house.  A large (I’m talking 100’ tall) sign underneath read “Veni, Vedi, Whoopie!”

We spent the morning sitting outside the pool area in wooden chairs that rocked.  We had canned coffee and peaches and nuts from the grocery store.  We could watch the swimmers, although no one really swam.  We then walked around to some of the nearby casinos.  I liked Paris, with the Eiffel Tower rising through the throng of slot machines into a fluffy-clouded sky.  Caesars Palace had a Hindu shrine in front near one of the fountains.  The Flamingo actually had flamingos. 

We got caught by a dabchick.  For those of you that don’t know, my definition of ‘dabchick’ comes from a game of Fictionary, where you have to come up with definitions for obscure words.  Someone defined ‘dabchick’ as the woman in a store that wants to give you a dab of something.  Well, there was a dabchick at a kiosk we walked past.  She stepped in front of us and gave each of us a packet of face cream and started talking.  Ananda, social butterfly that she is, answered back and the next thing I know, this woman is putting some goo on my face.  She asked me what I used on my face and I paused.  “Soap and water?”  She was shocked, shocked, I tell you, that I didn‘t use any ‘product’ on my face.  Boy, did I get a lecture.  I knew that I wasn’t going to buy any of this stuff, and neither was Ananda, but the saleslady wouldn’t stop with her dabs and mirrors and wait-I-have-another-free-gift-if-you-buy-today.  Since I didn‘t have the 500 or so dollars that she wanted, I kept inching away and taking pictures of the ceiling.

Las Vegas bills itself as ‘Sin City’.  But from my point of view, it is not the sex, booze and gambling that is the sin.  People doing those things are, for the most part, having fun.  And fun is a good thing.  The sin, for me, is the waste.  Water for all the people and fountains is pumped in from Lake Mead, but it is dropping below the level of the intake pumps. It takes an enormous amount of electricity to power all the neon.  It is not a sustainable city.  But the worst waste is of people.  A lot of people begging.  One sign said, “Help me get drunk” and another “I won’t lie.  I want beer.”  Now there are beggars in every city, I know.  But the stark contrast between the passing stretch limos and surrounding glitz with these despairing people is a microcosm of our nation.

So, it occurred to me, that there are way too many Sin Cities in this country.

I haven’t pursued my quest to find out if someone is voting.  For one, I always hesitate to start a conversation with someone.  For two, people here are always going someplace or concentrating on their drink or a gambling machine.  And for three, it is LOUD.  Booming music inside and roaring traffic outside.  I left Ananda early to come to the room and just feel the quiet.  An intense desire to be home is building in me.

Was Columbus a terrorist or an illegal alien?

In Albuquerque, the Pueblo nations have built a beautiful Indian Pueblo Cultural Center.  A large, two-story circular building, with a large interior courtyard, made out of adobe, of course.   The first exhibit was on 100 Years of State and Federal Policy: The Impact on Pueblo Nations.  Large displays of the legislation enacted that moved them out of their homes onto reservations, that criminalized their spiritual traditions, including their dances and that took their children and forbade them from speaking their language.  It showed the progress on reversal of those laws and how the Pueblo have revived their traditions. 

But it brought back to me all of the injustices that Native Americans suffered from the invaders on their land.  Not only stealing the land, but systematically killing them off with smallpox infected blankets and forcing them to relocate.  It was only about a decade ago that I learned about the Trail of Tears.  I always thought the Cherokee were from the Dakotas or Oklahoma.  I was shocked when I learned that the Carolinas were their home.   This filled me with guilt for just being of the white race. 

I have always felt uncomfortable with what I felt was an intrusion on Native culture.  I never played cowboys and Indians.  I never wanted to adopt Native symbols or totems.  When I received all those Macaw feathers, I did not make a headdress, since it might co-opt some Native meaning.

I felt as if I were trespassing in this country, especially in the Southwest.  I wanted to leave.  I felt unholy.

Ananda pointed to a room down the hall.  “They’re going to be dancing.”

I was reluctant, since I didn’t want to intrude anymore that I already have.  I didn’t want to feel as though I was gawking at them.  But she disappeared into the room and so I went after her.  The leader of the program was wonderful.  He spoke about the meanings of the dances we were about to see and explained that it was not just their cultural tradition.  Their culture and their spirit are inseparable.  I sat there, listening, but still feeling out of place. The costumes and dances were nice, but even though he explained what the dances were for, I knew that I could never understand all the symbolism underlying meaning.  I was not Pueblo. 

But the best thing he talked about was what he termed “Indian industries”.  Mostly the casinos.  This has become the basis for the re-emergence of their culture.  They are gaining economic and political power.  They are a large voice in stopping the uranium mine at Mount Taylor.  They have become a major employer, with 90% of their employees non-Native.  But the thing that made me sit up and go ‘Wow’, was when he said that they were proud to share their traditions with us and that these dances were a blessing from them to us.  As he spoke, I felt truly welcomed and a wave of relief washed over me.  I felt absolution.  And now, I feel much more free to explore and participate in Native culture.  I may not get it right, but it will be with a respectful heart.

Aho!  Mitakuye oyasin!  All my relations.

Back in PDT

Got into Las Vegas after dark tonight.  A long haul from…where was I?  Tennessee was my last post.  Saturday day/night was drive, sleep, trading off driving with Ananda.  Sunday night was spent in Albuquerque, NM, which I will talk about in a separate blog article.  But now, I am back in the Pacific Time Zone and feeling much closer to home, even if I am in the crazy adult Disneyland of Vegas.  Talk about Babylon!

I figured out that to post a comment to this blog without a profile, you can use the pull down ‘select profile’ menu and click ‘anonymous’.  That could make this blog a lot more interesting.

We stopped for breakfast on Sunday morning at a small family-owned café in Santa Rosa, AZ.  It was on Route 66 and had old car pictures, jukeboxes, old 45 records hanging from the ceiling, and family pictures on the wall, including a memorial to her father who passed away on 11/27/06.  As we ate, one of the waitresses was in the parking lot, reading the van.  I went to the front to pay and she said she had been looking for a sticker form the café for me, but couldn’t find one.  We chatted a bit, something that I don’t generally do, and she told me about her father and showed me his picture.  I saw a dollar bill on the wall with PEACEWALKER written across it with a Sharpie.  I asked her about it and she said this fellow came in and gave it to her and asked for a meal.  She then said, “My father told me that if anyone ever came in hungry and couldn’t pay, that I should feed them.  They might be God.”  I left her a big tip.

Whiplash

Tonight, I am in a soft bed in a clean room with a quiet air conditioner.  I am slowly coming back to civilization, as I know it.

I have slept in the seat of my van, on my air mattress, on a plastic covered mattress, on a thin mattress on the floor, on a bunk bed and in a roach motel.  The saving grace was that in each place, I had a fan. 

We (Ananda and I) left Charlotte around noon, since I couldn’t get in to see Obama’s acceptance speech.  We drove 9 hours to Fayetteville, Tennessee, where my sister lives.  But my sister’s house is, as she put it, “way too tiny and filled with crap.”  So, I am more than happy to spend the night in a decadent, capitalist motel. 

I did not listen to the radio during the drive. I have heard enough speeches and analyses of those speeches. Ananda and I have just shared stories, which make me once again, glad that I do not have children. 

It was enlightening for me to go from a world of intentional communities, where few people are engage in the political system, to the hot bed of partisan politics.  I think I got psychic whiplash.  I went from talking with people who want a whole new operating system of government, or no government, or don’t care about government, to listening to slick speeches, designed to move us to vote.  And they were good speeches.  As I mentioned, Julian Castro gave a moving story of his family, struggling to become educated in this country.  My first thought was, ‘What a slick politician.”  Then, as he continued, I felt the emotion of pride in this country that could allow his grandmother and mother to educate him and his brother to this level of national prominence.  I know he will be one to watch, but I somehow think it will be very difficult for anyone over the age of 20 to accept “President Castro”. 

The bottom line for me, is that I will vote.  And I will encourage others to vote.  And as much as I admire Jill Stein, I will encourage progressives not to vote for her.  We live in a 2 party system.  Until we can get public financing of campaigns and/or ranked choice voting, a vote for the Greens is a vote for Romney.  Of course, on the other side of the coin, a vote for Ron Paul is a vote for Obama.

Does it make a difference?  Maybe not.  But where the real difference will be is in the House and Senate races.  These are the people who represent us.  These are the people who we have half a chance to influence.  These are people I have actually seen in person.  This is where our potential power lies.

And right now, my power lies in that welcoming, cushy, soft, cool bed.

Dancing with the Weather Goddess

Back from another day at the Convention Center.  This time, I was an information booth rather than a sign post.  A step up!  And I felt that I actually helped people find their way…to the restroom.

I began today with a visit to Occupy Charlotte.  Pretty peaceful.  Talked with a few people, some mellow, some angry.  Actually, one guy was angry at some of the occupiers.  Personal space issues, I believe.

I have been talking with a lot of people here.  Some are other volunteers and some are just people on the street.  I had my first experience with using a cell phone to check my email.  Now I know I don’t want an iPhone.  Those letters and spaces are way too small for me to target accurately. 

I have stopped a two different people on the street, saying “I like your shirt” and “I like your button.”  It turns out that they were selling them.  So, I added them to my souvenirs.

Masses of people here, kind of like a more low-key Mardi Gras.  No street drinking, but feeling like a fish swimming upstream.  A few oases with fountains, statues and saxophone players.  Ahhhh....

The Weather Goddess has, up to now, looked kindly on me.  I missed the intense heat, but got enough of a taste to appreciate my home climate.  I experienced two thunderstorms, one at Twin Oaks when I really needed it.  I was on a tour of the seed-saving fields when a sudden thunderstorm caught us.  Everyone went rushing to the vans to escape the downpour.  Everyone but me.  I stood in the middle of the field, arms outstretched like Julie Andrews on a mountaintop, face to the sky, blessing every cooling drop.  The other thunderstorm was yesterday afternoon during my shift in the convention center.  I could see the lightening and hear the thunder, all while remaining dry and pointing the soggy delegates the way to the shuttle. 

Now, I’m not sure if this is the doing of the Weather Goddess, or some fearful humans, but the place for Obama’s speech tomorrow was changed due to a fearful weather report.  It was changed from the open air Bank of America Stadium to the indoor Time Warner Cable Arena which decreased the amount of seats by 50,000.  This means that none of the volunteers get to use their tickets to the event.  Which includes me.  Disappointing, yes, but the trip has been so worthwhile anyway, I can live with it.  I am already casting my eyes westward with desire.

I briefly mentioned Ananda earlier.  I met her on the phone on my way to the communities conference.  She was giving me directions on how to get there when I mentioned that I was from Washington.  Just so happens that she is traveling and wants to go west.  So, here we are in Charlotte, packing up for the journey home.

Her blog is  http://anandaelyce.blogspot.com/

From An Old Fart

The Communities Conference at Twin Oaks, like most conferences, had too many sessions, so that it was impossible to go to all of them.  But that was OK.  The sessions were good, but the most valuable part for me was the one-on-one and small group discussions.  Unlike my usual group self, which tends to hang back, I walked up to people and started talking with them.  Where are you from?  Why are you here?  If I really got brave, then I would ask, What do you think of politics?  And the question was not, Who will you vote for?, but the question became, Do you vote?

One of my plans for this trip was to campaign a bit.  Especially in Missouri, where Claire McCaskill is running for Senate against Todd Akin.  Akin really put his foot in it when he said that women who were victims ‘legitimate rape’ couldn’t get pregnant because their bodies shut down.  I figured I would have some good support in Missouri.  But, as I mentioned in The New Earth blog entry, no one in the communities seemed to be interested in that.  Political engagement, even just voting, was almost non-existent.

I found an exception at Twin Oaks.  A talked with a resident of TO about this issue of unconnectedness with the political world.  He told me that, during one election, he had talked 50 TO residents into voting for county sheriff.  The sheriff won by 8 votes.  So, now the sheriff knows who they are and is interested in their well-being.  This is politics in action.

Tocqueville wrote a number of things that I think are pertinent here.  He claimed that democracy tends to isolate people.  They have a tendency to withdraw.  Remember, he wrote this in 1835, but I feel it is very true today, especially with the advent of TV.  People work hard, come home and the last thing they want is to have intense discussions.   As Don Henley wrote in Little Tin God:

“We’re tryin’ to make a livin’ down here


And keep the children fed.”

Living our lives takes a lot of energy.  Not much left over for writing to Congress.

Tocqueville said that local political associations can, not only counteract that, but are truly the only way democracy can survive.  Organizations not only raise their voices together and allow us to interact with our neighbors, but organizations are harder to oppress than an individual.  He also said that political associations fail because they try to do too much.  I have certainly seen that in my time.

‘In my time’.  Holy jeepers, I sound like an old fart.  But this trip has helped me feel much younger and much more connected.  I now want to hear people’s stories. 

DNC #1

I just got back to the motel from a day at the Democratic National Convention.  At first, I thought I was going to be late for my volunteer shift.  Got a late start, had some errands to do and, of course, got lost.  But it turned out to be a matter of hurry up and wait.  I found the place to pick up my uniform and badge, and they directed me “walk down that street”.  So, I walked about five or six blocks until I found some people who were dressed like me.  I asked where I should be.  They pointed to another group across the street who were dressed like me.  They shrugged and just said they were told to wait here.  Then it rained.  A great cloudburst, with everyone huddled together.  One woman, under an umbrella, was on her cell phone, obviously upset. 

“You said there would be someone here an hour ago.  There are a lot of people here, soaking in the rain.  They spent their time and money to be here, and I wouldn’t blame them if they just walked away.”

Right then, that sounded like a good idea.  But I stuck it out.  I'd come too far to just stop now. Someone came up and said we would go to the convention center.  The umbrella lady said, “We’ve already done that 5 times.”

But I would rather walk than stand, so I followed the crowd the six blocks to the convention center.  Now, the shift I had been assigned was at the Time Warner Cable Arena, so I wondered if I had made the right choice.  But I trotted along, dodging the crowd and trying to keep up.  At the entrance to the convention center, they were checking for badges, so I was delayed and lost the person i had been following.  I wandered into the convention center and asked the first person I saw, who knew nothing.  The second person waved in the general direction of the innards of the building.  So, I went on and on and finally found a sign up table of people who were dressed like me.  They couldn’t find my name on their sheet, so they had me sign a paper and told me to wait over there.  I waited and a few more people dressed like me showed up.  At last someone who couldn’t have been more than twelve showed up with a clipboard.  She gave a run down of a bunch of things I can’t remember, because it had nothing to do with what I did. 

I showed her my assignment sheet that was emailed to me, and she said that everything had changed.  I ended up being a human signpost.  Delegates, media and VIPs would come down the walkway to go to the shuttle for the Time Warner Arena, where the speeches would be.  I stood where there was a ramp heading to the left.  I was instructed that wheelchairs, the media and VIPs could use the ramp, but the masses had to go straight ahead, then go to the right.  Yes, she actually used the term “masses”.  Even though there was security ahead and a sign with an arrow pointing to the right that said “To Event”, I still had to tell people to go straight, then turn right.  That did not sit well with me at a democratic function, and for a while, I told people to “hang a right”.  Then I felt that it was too violent a comment and stopped.

There was a sign I held for a while that said “Ask Me”.  After one guy paused, looked at the sign, looked at me and said, “Will you?” I decided not to hold that sign anymore.

It was interesting to watch the variety of people that passed by.  There were all credentialed people who had already passed one checkpoint and had to pass through a security screen later on.  There were people dressed in suits, saris, shorts, skirts, short skirts and short-short skirts.  High heels, low heels, sandals, turbans, bow ties and hats that lit up.  Long hair, short hair, no hair and blonde dreadlocks. It is truly a big tent.

There was also a large police presence under that tent.  I saw patches from Durham, Fayetteville, Prince William County and Chicago.  One officer stopped and asked me where he could get a foot massage.  I couldn’t help him with that one.  But I could commiserate.  Four hours of standing.  An hour past when they said we would be relieved.  I was for just blocking the ramp so that people would have to go straight.  But no.  The woman who I had been “working” with told me to wait while she went to ask the people at the sign-up table where our relief was.  She came back 15 minutes later and said they were coming.  Half an hour after that, I told my fellow sign post to go home, since she had a long drive.  Earlier, I had remarked to the umbrella lady that the Republicans seemed so much more organized than the Democrats.  She told me that the Republicans hired professional organizers.  The organizers here were all volunteers.

When my relief did show up, I was tempted to just leave and drive back to the motel.  I had heard there was a DNC watch on a projection screen in a big conference hall, but I felt too burned out at that point to go.  I would have left if it hadn’t been for Ananda.

Ananda is my traveling companion for a while.  More on that later.  She amused herself around the convention center while I was playing sign post, and said she would meet me at the DNC watch.  So, I went in and found her and began watching and listening to the speeches.  I became more and more energized. More on that later, too, but all I want to say right now is to watch Julian Castro, current mayor of San Antonio.  

Back to Babylon

Since I last posted, I have been out of touch with Babylon.  Or, in some people’s view, I may have been immersed in Babylon. Sleeping in a group house. Drinking mead. Singing and dancing with hippies.  They don’t define themselves as hippies, but then neither did we all those many years ago.  The road trip from Eastwind to Twin Oaks was….nothing you can describe in a nutshell.  Five people, 3 back packs, three suitcases, 2 duffle bags, 3 guitars, a banjo, a banjolina, a rifle, a fishing rod plus all the stuff I had originally brought along.

It was a tight fit, and each time we had to stop for a pit stop or a puke stop, I had to get out and haul out the suitcases which were stacked in top of each other between their seat and the door.

We rolled into McMinnville, TN about midnight.  Matt’s grandparents were up and waiting and had soup on the stove.  The soup was canned green beans, corn and carrots (the kind that are cut into little squares) and was served with saltines, but it was so good after 10 hours of nothing.  Matt’s grandparents were a caricature of the low-income south.  Sweet as you could want, amazing hospitality, angels and Jesus on the walls, playing Gospel guitar and an accent so thick, all I could do was smile and nod.  Great sense of humor, though.  A cartoon on the cabinet was of two, very large people talking to someone with the caption, “We sleep in separate bedrooms so the trailer doesn’t tip over.”

We went to bed after a bit of chat, since we had to get up at 4:30am to make it to Twin Oaks by the time Wren had to do her work shift.  It was a double wide, but barely.  Sabrina made the observation that if we were to all die that night, the authorities would have a hard time figuring out what was going on.  Grandma and grandson in one bedroom, grandpa and son in another bedroom and two middle aged women and two hippies laid out in a row on the floor.

The next leg of the trip was less crowded, since Matt stayed behind.  I became very aware of sense of smell, which usually is my least perceptive sense.  Peanut butter, jalepenos and 3 different types of musk were predominant.