Thursday, September 26, 2013


Stories and Cross-Pollination  August and September, 2013

I've been thinking a lot about stories and cross-pollination with this journey.  Traveling has immersed me in multiple points of view, and brought an incredible array of new information and thinking.  

There was quite a bonsai collection at the Chicago Botanic Garden, and the eldest was hundreds of years old.  Wouldn't it be something to know the stories of all the people who have tended it?  Everywhere I've stopped, the stories of the people I've met have touched me, and in some way helped to sculpt MY form and heart as I look towards the future. 



My friend Kristina in Charlottesville spoke of her homeland of Armenia and the depth of community that was there, generations old for her.  Living here now, I see her dedicated to creating that level of connection amongst the people she knows.  


 Elizabeth in Chicago, who grew up in Colombia, has also brought to this country her heart for people, her bone-deep value of living collaboratively and kindly.  


I've already written of the urban-based Eco-village and backyard Community Supported Agriculture I found as the outgrowth of 30+ years of Jim and Eileen Schenks' engagement with their old working-class neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Chicago has a lively urban agriculture program going, too:


The Schweigerts in St. Paul shared a documentary their daughter both lived and produced- a small troupe of inspired young thespians built a raft, floated down the Mississippi on it, and tell of the life and the sickness of the river, the native peoples who continue to hold it sacred, the narratives of small town residents and fishermen along the shores, the power of the current.  At a St. Paul food co-op, I found and loved this discount for shoppers who come by bike:


In the small town of Eureka, Montana, I heard the story of a non-profit that 4 people began and guided by asking what the community needed and how they could fund it.  Today Sunburst Community Service Foundation is responsible for a free Shakespeare in the Park offering and other arts events throughout the year; a network of clinics, mental health and social services for families in Eureka and other small towns in the same county; a greenway and trail that lies along an old railroad bed; and the latest possibility:  a proposal to develop a cohousing complex of 25 apartments serving older people and people who use mental health services.  

Glacier National Park was a study in contrasts:  wild mountain goats, intense tourist pressure, NO recycling program for their water bottles, paper and food containers, a lovely small hostel:





In northern Idaho and eastern Washington, where I've spent my last 5 weeks or so, families and communities are wrestling with livelihood and land-use issues as Canadian coal trains steadily come through en route to export.  It's a hard thing.  Families need better choices!  

There's an organization in Spokane and Sandpoint called Power Past Coal, and the latest estimate is that proposed plans will ADD 16 trains per day hauling through this area… WOW.  All at the same time that we have already surpassed what all international leaders can agree on as a safe CO2 level in the atmosphere, and need to be burning many LESS fossil fuels, not more.   I am going to be informing myself more and taking a professional technical stand this fall on this issue, on fracking, and on tar sands as a Professional Engineer standing for the long haul for all the children, for drinking water safety, for the First World taking responsibility for the environmental havoc we are currently wreaking.

Illustrating local pieces of the environmental puzzle of livelihood and resource management, and all the questions we as a people face now of balance and wholeness and charting a good path towards a sweet future:  here's a native cedar forest I camped in, and the cedar sawmill where Shane is currently working, and whose beautiful western red cedar products I have used and appreciated in years past….  



Residents here are working, too, with the Idaho Transportation Department to increase pedestrian and bicycling options in small towns, implementing ideas of smart growth, and engaging young people, adults, and elders with each other and with their future.

I love that I have found so much alive in each of these communities along the way.  I feel sure that I could be at home and contributing in each one of them.  On every hand I've been inspired and nourished by what Paul Hawken has documented in Blessed Unrest as the largest social change movement ever in the history of civilization:

"What I see are ordinary and some not-so-ordinary individuals willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in an attempt to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world… coherent, organic, self-organized congregations involving tens of millions of people dedicated to change.  When asked…if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same:  If you look at the science that describes what is happening on earth today and aren't pessimistic, you don't have the correct data.  If you meet the people in this unnamed movement and aren't' optimistic, you haven't got a heart."

I am incredibly grateful that so many people are asking what it is that they can do to make a difference  in service to the larger good.