To solve humanity’s problems, we need well-functioning brains…eating and living well with kindness and awareness…always compassion…building our brain architecture.
Tending body is tending to the self, and tending to the self is tending community, tending community is tending country.
[On Being]
J
O
Y
“The joy of life is to put out one’s power in some natural and useful or harmless way.”
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
Valerie Kaur
Oh my loves.
“They’re going to keep killing us.” This was my first thought after the news broke about the shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo. Terror and fatigue.
I’ve organized around white supremacist hate for 21 years, since before this gunman was born. The killings have become more frequent, more effective, and more efficient at taking life. I got the news while working on a memorial video on the white supremacist mass shooting in Oak Creek 10 years ago, revisiting all that pain. How to feel fresh grief when we are already in grief? How does the heart expand, instead of shut down?
Revolutionary love is the choice to labor for others, opponents, and ourselves. What is your role right now?
Will you focus on others? Grieve with Black people, show up to local vigils and gatherings, listen to the stories, fight for anti-racist policies, build new relationships of solidarity. Do one thing in your sphere of influence — your school, workplace, house of worship, or home — to stand in love.
Will you focus on opponents? The gunman cited “replacement theory” in his manifesto, a theory that nearly one in three Americans believe. Reach out to the colleagues, neighbors, relatives in your life who subscribe to this dangerous and racist belief. Open a channel for deep listening, share stories, stop the spread of misinformation.
Will you focus on your body and your people? If you can feel how this shooting touches trauma in yourself and in people you love, this is the time to make space for healing. Grieve and rage, wail and scream, rest and breathe. Be with people who make you feel safe. Let in softness and love into the places that ache. Together, we survive this.{And what is yet inevitably to come. -dayle}
[1,000,000 + have died from COVID. 1 in 3 U.S. citizens believe the plague has ended. It has not.]
More from Valerie:
Where do you notice feeling grief in your body? What is the quality of that grief? What is the shape of grief inside of you? If it feels uncomfortable, take another deep breath and stay with it. Breathe through it.
What does your body need to be brave with this grief? What do you need to feel it and to move through this energy? What rituals are you called to? Who do you need by your side.
Who have you not yet grieved with? Whose story have you not fully let into your heart? What community’s struggle have you not fully taken in? Notice what is happening in your body. If your fists tighten, or your heart beats fast, or if shame rises to your face, it’s okay. Breathe through it. Trust that you can. The heart is a muscle: The more you use it, the stronger it becomes. You don’t need to know people in order to grieve with them. You grieve with them in order to know them.
What do you need to do to be able to grieve with them? What vigils or marches need you? What houses of worship are you ready to visit? What phone call are you ready to make? You can begin where you are, with a simple text or email, saying to someone “I’m here for you.”
“Loving someone means that one day, there will be grieving. They will leave you, or you will leave them. The more you love, the more you grieve. And so I invite you to honor your grief: it’s a sign of how deeply you have loved.”
-Valerie
Community, then country.
Coronado Times
Meet Brian Trotier
Triangle Project, located in the East Village of San Diego, just across the bay.
“The Triangle Project is a pilot program created to help improve the lives of unhoused people. Brian has been helping out in this area for about fifteen years and has developed relationships with many of the residents. A huge issue has been the trash in the area. The residents, mainly living in tents, don’t have a place to dispose of their trash which is unsightly, unsanitary, and demoralizing for them. Richard Aaron Horton, 64, a longtime resident, started improving the area by picking up trash. Brian Trotier knows Richard well and has expanded the effort by securing funding from the Lucky Duck Foundation. This local foundation focuses on the homeless and has contracted with EDCO for a dumpster to collect the trash.
The concept is simple, and the results so far have been amazing. Brian reported that, as of last week, the Triangle Project had collected in the previous 20 days, 3,794 bags of trash weighing a total of 23.89 tons. It is likely that much of this, including plastic, would have found its way into our bay and ocean. Here is how it works: every Monday and Thursday, EDCO drops off a dumpster at 8 am. Brian brings bags, gloves, and a stack of cash. Volunteers walk around the area greeting residents and asking if they’d like trash bags. For almost all, the answer is an enthusiastic “yes!” Residents get to work cleaning up their neighborhood. For every full bag of trash they bring to the dumpster, Brian gives them $2. The roughly two-block area goes from being very littered to being very clean within an hour.”
“riangle Project’s results are about double what Brian and Lucky Duck projected, and the benefits have gone far beyond a cleaner neighborhood (and bay). Residents express appreciation for being seen; they get along better with each other. “They have a common enemy—trash,” Brian acknowledged.”
“Keeping the Earth clean. That’s what’s happening in the long run. It’s a domino effect.”
My Carbon Footprint: the rise of the nearly new by, Kate Hughes
“So often, being more eco is inaccurately pinned to greater cost, when actually – especially when it comes to everyday buying decisions – the opposite is true.
This widespread, if subtle shift in the way we shop, including the disintegration of the stigma around nearly new, vintage, and preloved may well have some relationship with the climate crisis but make no mistake, this is largely financially led.
What I love about second-hand too, is that it doesn’t preclude us from layering up further planet and cash-saving approaches.
When the old boy on our street moved into a retirement flat the neighbours bought his lawnmower off him. There’s now one lawnmower between five households, saving space, cash and helping maintain and develop lines of local communication and a sense of community.
More than four in 10 of us gave goods away for free locally in the first few months of the year, while half donated products to charity and more than a third even made financial donations despite experiencing hardship.
Free stuff – everything from haircuts to sofas are also on the rise, the site reports.
So go forth and embrace the charity shop, the quirky apps, the leviathan websites.”
HuffPost
Living With The Far-Right Insurgency In Idaho
A radical GOP faction, in open alliance with extremists, is seizing power and targeting its opponents with cruelty.
Some wonder: Is it time to leave? (Yes. It is.)
Jennifer Ellis, photographed in her home on April 3, 2022, created Take Back Idaho to push back against the right-wing, extremist views and tactics that have dominated the state’s politics.
‘A lot has been written about both the radicalization of the Republican Party and the decline of democracy in the U.S. — about the country being at a precipice. It’s maybe easy for those warnings to become background noise, or to dismiss them as doom-mongering pieces of clickbait. But in Idaho, the nightmare scenario is crossing into reality, as an authoritarian GOP sets about to create a whiter, Christian nation.
These MAGA radicals have gestured at the future they want: no rape and incest exceptions to Idaho’s abortion ban; no emergency contraception; no gender-affirming health care for minors; the banning of books; the jailing of librarians; and maybe no public education altogether.
I recently spent a week traveling across the state, from Sandpoint in the northern panhandle down through the green slopes and whitewater of Hell’s Canyon to the plains of Ada County, and then across lava rock and sagebrush to Blackfoot. In all these places, Democrats and more moderate Republicans view Tuesday’s primaries as an existential affair. Some are considering leaving the state if MAGA extremists consolidate more power. Others are digging in their heels.
The people I talked to were not all that accustomed to alarmism, which made it striking to hear some of their voices tremble when they talked about what’s happening to their home. Their message for the rest of the country? It’s gonna get bad. The GOP really will go that far.
“They have completely rebranded what it is to be a conservative here in north Idaho, and they have literally excommunicated and cleaned house of any rational, regular conservative from their ranks.”
– Shawn Keenan, local Democratic activist
“As much as I want to point to examples of their adverse impact on the legislative process — and there’s many things to point to — part of me, the social scientist in me, the military veteran in me, wants to, you know, not just hate the player, but hate the game,” said Mathias, who served in the Coast Guard and has a Ph.D. in public policy.
A grading system like the Freedom Index makes the often inscrutable process of legislating more accessible to voters, Mathias said, and the IFF is an outrageous arbiter.
Mathias is intimately familiar with the group. Last spring, he watched state Rep. Ron Nate (FI Score: 97%) and other far-right legislators manufacture a racist moral panic about Boise State University indoctrinating students with “critical race theory.” (It was not.) Nate, using talking points lifted from an IFF white paper, argued for cutting part of the school’s budget.
Mathias says he typically likes to “keep his powder dry” in the statehouse — Democrats are such a minority there, it’s not worth the fuss to debate every proposal — but in this case, both as the only Black man in the legislature and as a Boise State alumni, he felt compelled to speak.
Going to Boise State on the GI Bill, he told his colleagues in a speech on the House floor, pausing to fight back his emotions, “provided opportunities I’d never seen in my life. It changed my life.”
Critical race theory, he continued, simply recognizes that there are institutional biases — in “housing, health, education, wealth, income,” Mathias said — that have existed since our country was founded. “People of color always come out on the losing end,” he added, his voice breaking. “Always. And I don’t think it’s unfair to acknowledge it.”
Across Idaho, the far right has laid siege to nonpartisan positions, some of which require specific expertise, and made them partisan, installing loyalists with sometimes disastrous results.
A recent Vanity Fair piece, for example, profiled members of the national neoreactionary movement, acolytes of a philosopher named Curtis Yarvin, who is a close ally of billionaire Peter Thiel. This movement, which has buy-in from powerful GOP figures, is explicit about wanting to usher in the end of democracy by purging the current government of its enemies and establishing one-party control — or, put another way, authoritarianism.
J.D. Vance — the venture capitalist and “Hillbilly Elegy” author who recently won the Ohio Republican primary for U.S. Senate — is a follower of Yarvin’s. He positively likened this prospective purge to the deadly “de-Baathification of Iraq.”
“I think Trump is going to run again in 2024,” Vance told Vanity Fair. “I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.”
Vance and Trump might look to north Idaho for inspiration.
Why is the Idaho National Guard interested in repealing this? -dayle
“Militias have risen to prominence in recent years in Idaho.”
The 51st State
‘Way up in the Northern Rockies there’s a sort of mythical 51st state. It’s called the American Redoubt and it encompasses Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and parts of Oregon and Washington. Adherents to its philosophy believe in a kind of theocratic limited government utopia, one with lots of guns. Alex Barron is the movement’s self-appointed “bard” and his rhetoric has all the violence of a Shakespearean tragedy.”What are you willing to kill for?” he asks a crowd of far-right activists wondering about where the line should be when responding to the government with force.Redoubters like Barron talk about their movement like evangelists and in a way they are – they are recruiting people to move there, live off the grid and run for office. And it’s working – they are reshaping their communities in Idaho and surrounding states, and as far as they’re concerned, those who disagree can leave.’
-Heath Druzin, @HDruzin, Boise State Public Radio
#MustListen podcast created and written by Druzin; immensely educational. It’s dark, yet absolutely necessary to unpack what is happening with the growth and organization of militia groups in Idaho and across the country. -dayle
‘It’s about themes of forgiveness, themes about reconciliation, about healing, and physical harm, about connection. Beautiful and shattering film. “The Chicago Reader compared the script to Tennessee Williams, adding it is “riveting, unforgettable.”
‘…the choice of the Wood River Valley as a backdrop for his (Fran Kranz) movie: “Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Hailey is a beautiful red brick church. It’s gorgeous. But it also has this modesty. It has a humility about it. It has an authenticity.”’
‘Just prior to his film opening in Idaho, Fran Kranz visited with Morning Edition host George Prentice to talk about the powerful themes of his film, and his choice of the Wood River Valley as a backdrop for his movie.’
Fran Kranz:
I had my daughter, my first child was born and my only child was born September twenty sixteen. And so she was about a little over a year old when the Parkland shooting happened and I was devastated. And this completely new and surprising way. I remember listening to a parent that day and having to pull over while I was driving. I was listening to this on the radio and I was so overwhelmed and I thought it was strange. I honestly just thought, what’s going on? I’ve never reacted this way, and the obvious answer was that I was a father now and it changed my perspective. And then what? What happened after was essentially just I. I became obsessive and went down a rabbit hole of research reading about mass shootings, school shootings, anything I could find on the subject.
I looked at churches as you know, there’s beautiful churches in Idaho, but I. And look, Emanuel Episcopal in Hailey is a beautiful brick red brick church. It’s gorgeous, but it also has this modesty. It has a humility about it. It has an authenticity about it where it’s not a grand design, you know, and nothing against. The church is in Ketchum, but they’re they’re esthetically sort of magnificent, right, and I thought, No, no, no, no, that’s that’s not what this is.
There was a sort of a mantra to the movie of embracing discomfort. So we’re in we’re in just a plain white room, you know, we’re in a church that we cannot use photography or production design to help us tell this story. That’s not what the story is about the stories about these people in the in the courageous thing that they’re doing by coming together to deal with their pain.
Hailey Emanuel Episcopal and Hailey was the last church I saw actually on that trip, and it was really, really came down to Leah Koval, Reverend Leah Koval, who (ran) that church. I spoke with her that day and it sort of turned into a therapy session, which made me really uncomfortable. She said to me, listening to my story and the story I wanted to tell, she said, I I hope you can start to enjoy being a father. And I thought I was just, it makes me so emotional, just even saying that today it just it just penetrated. It just hit me when I wanted to get out of there. But I also knew this is it. This is the church. So we, we we got gearing up for an Idaho production.
The conversation between both of these writers is one that starts in the artistry of their work and includes questions about the imagination, and power, and about what constitutes liberative transformation. And the scope of history they focus on is wide: “These threats we live subject to… are the grotesque and perverse ends to which a nation founded in shame has gone in order to avoid atoning for its crimes.”
The conversation between both of these writers is one that starts in the artistry of their work and includes questions about the imagination, and power, and about what constitutes liberative transformation. And the scope of history they focus on is wide: “These threats we live subject to… are the grotesque and perverse ends to which a nation founded in shame has gone in order to avoid atoning for its crimes.” -Pádraig Ó Tuama
It wasn’t until I saw an episode from The Watchmen that I learned of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre. A dysfunctional childhood took me to 16 schools in nine years, and not one teacher, not one, taught this history. -dayle
For events in Tulsa, Oklahoma beginning on May 31st follow the link for more information and to join virtually.
Greenwood.
The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission will leverage the rich history surrounding the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre by facilitating actions, activities, and events that commemorate and educate all citizens.
“The projects of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission will educate Oklahomans and Americans about the Race Massacre and its impact on the state and Nation; remember its victims and survivors; and create an environment conducive to fostering sustainable entrepreneurship and heritage tourism within the Greenwood District specifically, and North Tulsa generally.”
“Join us for the official unveiling of Greenwood Rising: The Black Wall Street History Center at 11:29 a.m.”
Jun 2, 2021
Stacey Abrams Announced as Keynote Speaker for Nationally Televised Commemoration
“Local Tulsa company, ONE Gas, invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in historic Greenwood District through the ONE Gas Foundation. This donation will create a long-lasting generational impact in the Tulsa community, and we could not be more grateful.”
The Tulsa Tribune inflamed the massacre and then wrote a scathing editorial in the days that followed. -dayle
#journalism
#media
Black Wall Street 100 and the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
‘On May 25th, The Community Library in Ketchum, Idaho and the Idaho Humanities Council welcomed Hannibal B. Johnson, author of “Black Wall Street 100: An American City Grapples With Its Historical Racial Trauma,” for a virtual conversation about the history and continuing implications of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Johnson was in conversation with David Pettyjohn, executive director of the Idaho Humanities Council, and Jenny Emery Davidson, executive director of The Community Library. The discussion can be viewed at the link.’ [1:05:00]
“Black Wall Street 100: An American City Grapples with its Historical Racial Trauma, endorsed by the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission and the 400 Years of African American History Commission, furthers the educational mission of both bodies. The book offers updates on developments in Tulsa generally and in Tulsa’s Greenwood District specifically since the publication of Hannibal B. Johnson’s, Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District.
Black Wall Street 100 is a window into what distinguishes the Tulsa of today from the Tulsa of a century ago. Before peering through that porthole, we must first reflect on Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District in all its splendor and squalor, from the prodigious entrepreneurial spirit that pervaded it to the carnage that characterized the 1921 massacre to the post-massacre rebound and rebuilding that raised the District to new heights to the mid-twentieth-century decline that proved to be a second near-fatal blow to the current recalibration and rebranding of a resurgent, but differently configured, community.
Tulsa’s trajectory may be instructive for other communities similarly seeking to address their own histories of racial trauma. Conversely, Tulsa may benefit from learning more about the paths taken by other communities. Through sharing and synergy, we stand a better chance of doing the work necessary to spur healing and move farther toward the reconciliation of which we so often speak.” [Amazon]
Nancy’s Christmas stocking was the biggest. When we three little girls hung our stockings from small hooks in the fireplace mantel each December, my middle sister’s stocking unfurled an extra turn – it was at least two inches longer and wider than either my own or my youngest sister’s – and it therefore always stirred some controversy. Everything else was equal across all three: each woven of the same green, red, and white yarns; each with a Santa dancing on the front; each with our own name stitched in block letters at the top. But Nancy’s stocking was undeniably bigger, and the other two of us fretted that Santa would be tricked into giving her more. (And we worried that this proved she was the favorite.)
My great-aunt Gloria had knitted each of our stockings, from the same bundles of yarn, following the same pattern for each. She had five children of her own; she knew the necessity of equal measures.
But life does not unfurl in equal measures, and Gloria knitted each stocking at a different time, as each one of her grand-nieces was born. She cast-on Nancy’s stocking in a hospital waiting room while her husband had open heart surgery. I imagine her tiny four-feet-some-inches frame, perched in a straight-back chair, her dark bob of hair falling alongside her tilted head, and her hands clicking wooden needles, again and again, giving shape to her waiting as the yarn unspooled. I imagine the release of her fingers when he awoke.
That stocking made our Christmas row uneven, but it had steadied Gloria’s mind while she created it. I did not recognize as a child that stocking’s true outsized capacity. It has room for heartache, and for hope.
We need this capacity, and stories offer it beyond any stocking: Each turn of a book’s pages can help knit the messiness of our days into a pattern. A string of words can help hold the weight of waiting as another year unfurls. A story stretches our capacity to hold more than we could hold alone.
A letter to Kamala Harris from Cathie Caccia in Sun Valley, Idaho, a revered yoga teacher, spiritual leader, and friend. A beautiful discovery, indeed. -dayle
Dear Kamala
I am a long time student and teacher of yoga. I was continuing to study Lakshmi this morning. You most likely know in the shortest summation Lakshmi is considered the goddess of spiritual and material wealth. Lakshmi is the goddess energy who preserves life. When we consider what it means to live sustainably in this world we are contemplating what it means to incarnate Lakshmi. With Lakshmi’s reappearance, love, generosity, sacred practices, wealth, and fertility return to the world. Another name for Lakshmi is Kamala (lotus-like). This really struck me today!!!! I am beyond grateful the Biden/Harris ticket won the election. There is so much work to be done to restore kindness, balance and right action and more. I am buoyed by the timeliness of Kamala rising. May you embody your name fully and help bring the potent, healing energy of Lakshmi to our country and globe.
Deep bow,
Cathie Caccia
Visit Cathie’s website for yoga instruction (virtual classes during COVID), Shiatsu massage, jewelry, and special events.
Cathie Caccia began her yogic studies in 1984 and was immediately captivated by the physical, energetic and philosophical aspects of the practice. Her most influential teachers include Rodney Yee, Rod Stryker, Judith Lasater and more. Cathie has extensive training in Yoga, Yoga Therapy, Shiatsu, Acupressure and Massage and began teaching in 1987. Cathie’s classes combine her love of Yoga, Chinese energetics and Sanskrit chanting to support her students in accessing their most essential nature. Cathie is registered with Yoga Alliance as E-RYT 500, she teaches public and private classes, workshops and yoga teacher training. Cathie is a licensed massage therapist with over 1200 hours of training.
“In the spirit of Ha-tha, we must learn how to have one foot on the Sun, with our day-to-day business of living in the world, and one foot on the Moon, tending to the world of the psyche and the spirit.”—Bhavani Maki, The Yogi’s Roadmap
The Hidden Life of Trees, What They Feel, How They Communicate
The Community Library virtual broadcast, Oct. 13th, 2020
Ketchum, Idaho
‘The forest is a social network.They maintain an inner balance. They budget their strength carefully. Apparently, the trees synchronize their performance so that they are all equally successful.’
Ketchum, Idaho on Tuesday evening, September 15th. Smoke from the wildfires in California, Oregon and Washington has settled in Idaho.
The Department of Environmental Quality iAir quality is currently ‘unhealthy’ for sensitive groups.
When air quality is unhealthy, persons may experience health effects and should limit prolonged or heavy exertion and limit time spent outdoors. The general public is unlikely to be affected.
Voluntary burn ban for residential wood burning activities is in place.
Power Path
The New Moon in Virgo is Thursday, September 17 at 5:00AM Mountain Daylight Time
This New Moon in Virgo challenges us to get organized with our thoughts and intentions.
It challenges us to focus on clear practical communication and to take responsibility for the details of our lives.
It is time to get ready for the slow but steady crawling out from under intense change and to use the energy for solid transformation as the momentum builds.
It is important to keep your eye on the lofty goals for the future but not to get lost in the illusion or fantasy of what is true right at the moment. Keep your tasks practical and grounded, and keep going, putting one foot in front of the other, no matter what.
This is an important equinox as we ask ourselves, “what’s the plan?”. Instead of waiting for more clarity, work with what you have and set some practical intentions (always subject to change) for yourself. The most important lessons during this time are the ones that show you clearly what you do not want to dream up or manifest for yourself.
Take an inventory of what has not worked for you in the past, what you are complete with in your life, and give it all over to the West with great gratitude for being part of your container up until now.
You may not have the whole picture of where you are headed however you can begin to organize your energy by focusing on what brings you joy right now in these times and go from there. Beware of the mental quagmire of thoughts, anxieties and worries that have you spinning in circles. You cannot manifest a good future from the place of “too many thinking”.
The best way to use the Equinox is to practice gratitude, to focus on love and do something higher centered that gives you joy, preferably in nature.
[And wear your mask.]
The Equinox is Tuesday, September 22 at 7:31AM Mountain Daylight Time (MDT).
“We have got to grab our comfortable shoes, put on our masks, pack a brown bag dinner and maybe breakfast too because we’ve got to be willing to stand in line all night if we have to.”
-Michelle Obama
From NBC:
“Mark your calendars. Everything you need to know about mail-in and early in-person voting, including the first day you can cast your ballot in the 2020 election.”
‘There is only one true flight from the world: it is not an escape from conflict anguish, and suffering, but the flight from dignity and separation, to unity and peace in the love of other [people].’
-Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation
What Dorothy Day called ‘a revolution of the heart’ is blossoming in our streets, where revolutionaries seem confident America can spend less on war and police, make the 1% and corporations pay their fare share and ensure healthcare, living wages, etc., for all. -Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II
NPR
Frederick Douglass’ Descendants Deliver His ‘Fourth Of July’ Speech
How can you watch and not weep? 4th of July belongs to all of us. It must.
‘In this short film, five young descendants of Frederick Douglass read and respond to excerpts of his famous speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” which asks all of us to consider America’s long history of denying equal rights to Black Americans.’
Douglass Washington Morris II, 20 (he/him) Isidore Dharma Douglass Skinner, 15 (they/their) Zoë Douglass Skinner, 12 (she/her) Alexa Anne Watson, 19 (she/her) Haley Rose Watson, 17 (she/her)
Instead of Buying Guns or Hoarding Food, Let’s Feed Each Other
YES! Magazine/Solutions Journalism
by Michele Bigley
From my patio in Santa Cruz, California, I watched a scrub jay deliver a peanut shell to its oak-tree home. My neighbor hollered hello from the street below, explaining that she was afraid to go to the store for groceries. “A person was held at gunpoint at the Target,” she said. “Everyone’s going crazy.”
My grandparents had “war gardens” in the 1940s, and small, potted remnants from that time took root on their patios well into their golden years. I’d often asked them to teach me how to grow veggies. But they argued that because grocery store shelves were fully stocked again, they didn’t think it was necessary to teach me how to put in the work of growing my own food.
Yet now our local farms have waiting lists for their Community Supported Agriculture weekly deliveries.
We can plant seeds that take a little weight off our overburdened food system and grocery store workers.
Inspired by all this generosity, I wanted to go beyond simply planting a victory garden for my family’s sustenance. I wanted the sustenance to be shared, so I sent out a blast on Nextdoor.com. Within minutes, people offered up compost bins, some more seeds and soil, starter pots. My septuagenarian neighbors brought over tools, advice, and veggie starts. Another guy I didn’t even know was scavenging scrap wood from a construction site nearby; when I asked about how to make a garden bed, he lugged over some wood, and constructed one in my yard.
The retired crisis therapist across the street noticed the raised bed and said, “In the news, we’re seeing the worst of humanity right now, but around us we’re experiencing extreme acts of kindness, too.”
Many Americans have been raised with this ethos of individualism. I, too, was taught to take care of my family above all else. With the threats of joblessness and hunger in every community, I get that urge to protect what’s ours, especially when we’re terrified that a stranger’s cough can land us in the ICU.
But in the 1930s and 1940s, 20 million Americans stepped up in a time of great global terror. They planted gardens in abandoned lots, on patios, and on rooftops. Today, too, we have the potential to shift how we engage with our world. In fact, social distancing requires it. We can broaden our perspectives and open our hearts to people with whom we might share nothing more than proximity. They will be the ones there for us in crisis. They will deliver chicken soup if we’re sick. They will check in on us if they don’t see us out and about. And they will let us know when the grocery store finally has some Clorox wipes.
Now six weeks into our shelter-in-place, the spinach and strawberries, tomatoes and kale, cucumbers and peppers are sprouting. When I called my neighbor to revel in these tiny green victories, she told me to look on my front stoop. There, I found a pack of toilet paper
Blaine County IDAHO Local Food Alliance
sunvalleyinstitute.org
DIGITAL FOOD GUIDE
Help us connect you with farms and ranches, farmers markets, and restaurantsserving locally grown food! The new print version of our 2020 Wood River Valley Locally Grown Guide will hit local magazine stands, visitors’ centers and other regional venues in a matter of days. Now, we are updating our online food guide to include all the same business and non-profit listings, visuals and links, so community members and visitors can find local food with a few simple clicks.
Wise, compassionate brilliance from Sara Gorham at Light on the Mountains in Ketchum [Sun Valley], Idaho.
When I was in my twenties, I did a lot of living and traveling in the far corners of the world, spending the better part of that decade improvising one adventure after another, generally without itinerary but always open to whatever showed up. In those days you couldn’t Google where to stay in Calcutta before you went to Calcutta. You just went, trusting that things would work out and generally they did. To be honest, that youthful boldness and assurance amazes me now, but at the time it seemed unremarkable, just a way of being.
Now, with all that is going on in the world, the daily challenges, the unknowable future, I’m starting to think it might be time for me to dust off that youthful assurance and the skill sets and assumptions that went with it. It would appear they could be useful in our current moment when none of us can Google what’s ahead. Instead, the road to what’s next is being laid one brick at a time, just ahead of our footsteps. So, what can we do to best prepare for the novelty of our unfolding future? If I were to take another tip from my younger self, I might suggest we pack light, for it isn’t stuff that we’ll need, but rather the skills and mindset that will help us land well, wherever we land. Here are three things we might consider, things that never failed to serve my younger adventuresome self: curiosity, adaptability and optimism.
We can be curious about the possibilities available to us, about what we might learn and what we might create as the old assumptions of separation fall away. Instead of casting about for what was, we can learn to be adaptable and open to the new “what is,” remaining centered in the moment as things change and evolve. And if we can hold an optimism in our hearts, an expectation for good, we can carry ourselves, not just forward, but upward, buoyed by our knowing that we are at our best and our truest when we are led by our love and caring and not driven by our fears.
We are being gifted with a common experience. It is not an easy passage. We do not make light of the grief and suffering that is part of this experience, but it does afford us a view of our unmistakable unity, of our commonality of being. Let us not waste that realization. I have no doubt that the seas will eventually calm and that the ship we’re sailing will once again right itself, but I suspect that when our ship makes landfall, we will find ourselves on an altered shore, a new horizon. The good news is that our role is not just to arrive at our new horizon, but to co-create it. To best do that we need to be aware and intentional, mindful of our mindset and ready to use our best skill sets, so that the post-pandemic culture we create reflects the heart of our shared humanity and the very best within us all.
100% of your donation will go to those who are approved for assistance with basic living expenses that cannot otherwise be deferred or negotiated!
Thank you for generosity during this particular world wide crisis. We hope to provide the runway for individuals to be able to not have to make rash decisions and gain courage to advocate for themselves when it is time.
WHO WE ARE
We are a group of volunteer Blaine County community members who would like to support the most vulnerable individuals in our community during times of crisis. Motivated by the closing of local schools and businesses in response to COVID-19, and knowing those that already live on the edge of being financially secure will suffer the most, we hope to facilitate financial assistance now and in future times of crisis.
WHAT WE DO
We provide assistance to individuals who live and/or work in Blaine County and are experiencing financial hardship due to unanticipated crisis. We will award small grants to individuals and directly pay identified living expenses that cannot be otherwise deferred or negotiated such as rent, insurance and medical expenses. We also hope to direct those in crisis to resources in our community in order to insure non-duplication of services.
HOW WE DO IT
We accept donations that will be granted to individuals who have applied and are approved for assistance. The Board of Directors of Blaine County Charitable Fund will attempted to meet weekly during times of crisis, and monthly thereafter, to evaluate applications and distribute funds. 100% of our funds will go to grantees.
WHO WE ARE
We are a group of volunteer Blaine County community members who would like to support the most vulnerable individuals in our community during times of crisis. Motivated by the closing of local schools and businesses in response to COVID-19, and knowing those that already live on the edge of being financially secure will suffer the most, we hope to facilitate financial assistance now and in future times of crisis.
WHAT WE DO
We provide assistance to individuals who live and/or work in Blaine County and are experiencing financial hardship due to unanticipated crisis. We will award small grants to individuals and directly pay identified living expenses that cannot be otherwise deferred or negotiated such as rent, insurance and medical expenses. We also hope to direct those in crisis to resources in our community in order to insure non-duplication of services.
HOW WE DO IT
We accept donations that will be granted to individuals who have applied and are approved for assistance. The Board of Directors of Blaine County Charitable Fund will attempted to meet weekly during times of crisis, and monthly thereafter, to evaluate applications and distribute funds. 100% of our funds will go to grantees.
~
Blaine County Charitable Fund
PO Box 265
Hailey, ID 83333
‘…love your solitude and bear the pain of it without self-pity. The distance you feel around you should trouble you no more than your distance from the farthest stars.’
The local celebration actually started during Hailey’s Fourth of July Parade.
#WomenVote
STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
‘The Idaho Women’s 100 Kickoff Event will take place at noon Friday, March 13, in downtown Hailey. Another will take place in Ketchum at the same time.
The event commemorates the 100th anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving most women in America the right to vote.
The Ketchum event will start at noon at Ketchum Town Square.
Hailey’s event will also start at noon. Participants will gather in front of the Hailey Public Library and march to the Old County Courthouse where a Governor’s Proclamation celebrating Idaho Women’s Day will be read.
Speakers will also speak to the occasion.
At 12:30 p.m. participants will ring bells, including the large bell at Emmanuel Episcopal Church. The bell ringing is a symbolic gesture that unites all Idahoans in commemorating the right of women to vote.
“This is a big day for our country and for all the women who make it great,” said organizer Bob McLeod, president of the Blaine County Historical Museum. “We hope everyone takes a moment to join us in ringing a bell to celebrate.”
Numerous events commemorating the passage of the 19th Amendment will be held around the state during 2020, organized by the Idaho Women in Leadership and the Idaho State Historical Society. Among them exhibits on Idaho’s “First, First Family” and “Miss Fletcher’s Botany Expedition” in the Idaho State Capitol.
Questions? Call the library at 208-788-2036 or the museum at 208-788-1801.’
If you attend, please remember pandemic social distancing guidelines and keep three feet apart from each other. -dayle
And if a storm should come And if you face a wave That may be the chance for you to be saved.
-Cat Stevens
Fr. Richard Rohr:
The spiral feeds upon itself. The individual zealot tries to rise above “the rotten, decadent system,” [2] as Dorothy Day called it, by attempting solutions that usually attack the symptoms. That attempt may make the individual and the state feel moral, but it rarely touches the underlying causes. Think of the policies that led the United States to build a wall at the border instead of honestly asking why people want to come to begin with. Why was a wall terrible in Berlin but salvific in Juarez, San Diego, and the present state of Israel? We criminalize the actions of desperate individuals, but rarely question the global economic systems and untouchable corporations that keep such unequal circumstances in place for their own gain.
In dangerous times like these we have to produce generations of dedicated, courageous, and creative contemplative activists who will join [the conscious collective] to bring radical healing and change to this damaged world, before it’s too late.
We Persist.
If you stick a knife in my back 9 inches and pull it out 6 inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that’s not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made.
“Local Tulsa company, ONE Gas, invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in historic Greenwood District through the ONE Gas Foundation. This donation will create a long-lasting generational impact in the Tulsa community, and we could not be more grateful.”
The Tulsa Tribune inflamed the massacre and then wrote a scathing editorial in the days that followed. -dayle
#journalism
#media