Not So Grounded

Frances Fox Piven

As guest faculty at UC Santa Barbara in 1988, Frances Fox Piven was -- without exception -- my most influential and favorite professor, for her compassion, intellect, integrity and kindness.  Her work and her very presence still inspire me, and despite decades of moves & thrift store donations, I still cannot part with her books.

I guess it's not a surprise Glenn Beck is threatening her.

Maharishi University Here She Comes

Last week, over a 48-hour mind-bending, unplanned chain of events, Maddy applied, was accepted & got financial aid to the Maharishi University of Management, withdrew from Appalachian State, moved all her belongings back home, and is packing to leave Feb 2 for Fairfield Iowa.

She is completely, utterly, blissfully happy.  Finally.  Partly the school (welcoming, great curriculum, innovative, fabulous sustainable living program) and partly 'cause she can Go Away RIGHT NOW. 

She's loved everything about Appalachian, except that she could hike from her dorm to her home, that the cafeteria was across the quad from her preschool playground, that every trail, restaurant & party harkened been there done that ... Try as she might (and she did make a valiant effort) she knew she has to get out of town.

Sure she started a rational plan to transfer next fall.  But the universe seemed to have better plans.

Grounded by the Snow

Anyone else felt utterly  ungrounded this past week?  I called Joanne Williams, of course, to get her otherworldly perspective on my scattered, unfocused, can't-get-a-dang-thing done brain.  Evidently, she had lots of calls from others in Boone with similar frustrations, so she checked in with those other dimensions to which she has access: 

Apparently, the base of Grandfather Mountain is jiggling (as in shifting underground energies not wreaking seismic havoc).  And while these consecutive storms seem normal (as in "Seriously?  More #$%* snow?") they're unique instead.  This snow has a subtle new molecular structure, designed to neutralize and cleanse unhealthy particles around us, particularly where the snow accumulates on the ground.  I'm wigged 'cause in addition to icy driveways and stir-crazy family members, I also have to contend with new energies flying around.

Plus, Joanne added, this snow and a complementary huge cone of golden light she "saw" perched over the middle of town are shepherding our community out of its old reality, modelling what other cities will soon encounter.  Anyone mistakenly expecting a return to normal -- whatever that is -- will be sorely disappointed.  Unsupported, were her words.

Rather than recovery -- from the snow, missed days at school & work, running out of milk ... to bigger things like recession, peak oil, birds falling dead from the sky -- we're supposed to pursue new creations instead.  Somehow blending ancestral wisdom that once nurtured communities effortlessly through snowy winters with present knowledge about nurturing unprecedented diversity of people, ideas, innovations and ways to find joy. 

In other words, turning our community into a place where instead of lost income, isolation, messed up schedules and wrecked cars, a winter snow invites shared bounty stored full from the summer, the slow pace required to incubate spring's creativity and freedom to sled, ski or drink hot-toddies to our hearts content.

Works for me.

(John gave me a new FlipHD for Christmas so here's my very first experiment; PS not a good experiment 'cause I didn't actually want me & the chicken ...)

   

 

 

War Junkie

I just joined goodbooks.com and sharing my first book review. 

Early one Saturday morning when I was ten one of my dad's parishioners rode his bicycle with his infant son over for breakfast.  Apparently I was the only one awake, answering the door in my jammies with sleep still in my eyes, and we talked a good while, watching his son play.  I kinda remember the morning, or more accurately, I remember the wide front porch, the part of our circular gravel drive where he undoubtedly parked his bike and the way the early morning sun cast gold and silver light through the trees.  The man's name was Dennis then, 10 years older, and mostly I remember he hung out at our house a lot for awhile and gave me Stevie Wonder's InnerVisions album (which I still think is brilliant). 

Forty years later my mom forwarded an out-of-the-blue email my parents received from that same man, renamed Jon and the author of this book. He'd found my folks online, and in the course of several emails he described a breathless, jaw-dropping, sometimes horrifying, yet always magically inspiring series of decades.  And he thanked my parents for rescuing him all those years ago from a certain kind of death (whether literal or figurative I'm still not sure).

We are friends now, Jon and I.  I thanked him for offering a richer glimpse of my young parents, when I was too little to see them as real people. And for the Stevie Wonder album.  He replied with the memory of our conversation on that porch.  We keep up with each other, although as a quiet, ordinary, unknown writer I think I get more benefit from his encouragement than he gets from me.  He and his wife share a lovely life beneath an ancient belltower in a peaceful European city.  His novel, The Watchers, is due out shortly, and he is busy writing its sequel.

I cannot read more than a few pages of War Junkie without beginning to cry and returning it to my bedside table untouched for many weeks.  This is the story of global madness.  Jon opens with his own breakdown, witness to one too many tragedies, and in the self-deprecating self-awareness only a saint could posses, he softens the reader's journey through unspeakable horrors by allowing us to ride along more safely in his story as an addict to such circumstances.

But don't be fooled.  He describes his own descent, but he illuminates the world's insanity.  As a result, he may very well be the sanest and most courageous person I know, for he experienced this madness without filters, living events, perpetrators, victims and himself in stark real-time.  Then he wrote about it.  And finally, recognizing that ultimately all aspects of war are merely dangerous and destructive games, he bravely walked away.  He allowed his own being, maybe his own soul, to embody this madness long enough to experience and express its true darkness.  And now having claimed a different life, he's turning that darkness into light.