Category Archives: Sociology

Unknown's avatar

Memories

by

What is a “legitimate memory”?  Does it have to be factual?  Is the emotional memory as valid and important as anything else?  If you polled the people effected by an event, would any two have the same memory of it?  I think that highly unlikely.  Everyone has his own perspective.  There must be thousands of different stories about the holocaust of WWII or about Sept. 11, 2001 in New York City.  What do we gain from a memory?  What is achieved by illustrating and sharing it?  With whom should we share our memories?  If you enjoy engaging in someone else’s memories, does that make you somewhat voyeuristic?  Does the sharing of memories help us to become more emotionally intelligent, more empathic?  Does that make it Art?

Andrew Lloyd Weber imagines cats have memories.

We didn’t really talk about these questions in class last night, but Steve asked me sleepily as he came to bed in the wee hours this morning, “So, why do you want to write memoirs?”  He is supportive, but he is much more interested in research and synthesis.  Also, he doesn’t remember much.  Names, anniversaries, directions and details get lost in a blur.  He will remember a holistic sense of something, an emotional reading.   I go the other way; I’m heavy on detail and can’t articulate an emotion.  Perhaps I am trying to teach myself to become more compassionate and empathic.  I typically repress a lot of emotion.  I am afraid of getting in trouble for acting out my passions.  Especially anger.  I completely deny anger.  I like to think this makes me a more pleasant person, but it probably just makes me more neurotic.

Theater, music, literature, art: they’re about communicating emotion, right?  They make us feel human.  We get connected to others and to ourselves through them.  They are marks of culture and civilization. They help us explore a kind of intelligence and understanding about the human condition.  The emotions in art can be immediate and raw or they can be seeds from the past grown into a living reality.  My son tells me that our brains also make memories when we dream and thereby prepare us to have some experience to draw on in a new situation.

So I’m working on remembering repressed emotions, pulling up experiences from the past in detail.  And I’m also trying to be present in the moment, in now.  Going back and forth is kind of a test of sanity.  One of the things Steve said he liked about me when we started dating was that I was “sane”.  There’s a short cut to sanity, which is to remain shallow and functional.  Then there’s the long route, which is to attempt to feel in depth and yet refrain from wallowing.  I want to take that long and winding road and share what I find on the journey.  I hope that results in a learning experience for me and a few others.

Unknown's avatar

Continuing My Education

by

I’m rather innocent in the ways of the world, even though I’ve lived almost 50 years in it.  I married my high school sweetheart before I’d even graduated from college and left my parents’ care completely.  My husband was a fabulous provider and only urged me to seek full time employment after my 4 kids had reached their teenaged years.  So really, I’ve never supported myself entirely.   Well, come to think of it, probably nobody “supports himself entirely”.  Let’s just say that I still have much to learn.

So today, I’m starting a class in Memoir Writing through the UW – Milwaukee extension program.  I am so excited to be going back to school!  I have a BA already, so I’m not embarking on a long term degree program, but I am trying to get closer to a goal I’ve had for about 20 years.  I’d like to be a published writer.  When I was 30, I started writing poetry.  I self-published one booklet, and had one poem published in a magazine.  I didn’t receive any pay for these efforts.  I’d like to see if I can actually earn money with this proclivity to write.  Aside from a few curriculum guides commissioned by my former employer, I haven’t had any paying work since last December.  And now, my car needs repairs and registration plates.  It’s time to go out into the world and seek some income.

You have no idea how neurotic I could be about this.  My kids have much more work experience than I.  I have urged them out into the job market on many occasions with peppy confidence talks, and they’ve always had some measure of success.  It’s part of their skill set.  I kind of freeze up inside and whine, “But I don’t know how to do this!  I wasn’t brought up to do this!”  I’m sure some of you are incredulous.  Let me explain: my mother hasn’t had a paying job since she graduated and married in 1955.  She is a brilliant and accomplished woman with a BA from our nation’s most prestigious institute of higher learning (yes, that one, but the women’s version from the pre-co-ed days).  She’s worked on countless volunteer committees and made important contributions to many communities.  But she hasn’t had a paying job.  It’s actually possible to live without one.  I grew up thinking that employment was optional, not mandatory.  And I’m glad that I did.  I think it allows me to think outside a very pernicious box.  It also gnaws at my sense of security at times.

Many people believe that education is primarily a pre-requisite for being more competitive in the job market.  A smaller percentage believe that education is simply engaging with life; it needs no framework from society and no economic impetus.  It’s the joyful occupation of people with brains.  (That would be all of us.)  A Buddhist might look for a Middle Way between the practical and the ideological posture of learning.  That’s where I want to be.  I don’t want to be defined by my wage-earning potential.  I don’t want to be so high in an ivory tower that I can’t find a way to feed myself, either.   I am sure that I can use the skills I have, and new skills that I can acquire, to secure my basic needs.  And I’m pretty sure I can do it in a way that doesn’t enslave me to something I resent.

Maybe this is the meaning behind the statement made by the founder of my Alma Mater: “The paramount obligation of a college is to develop in its students the ability to think clearly and independently, and the ability to live confidently, courageously, and hopefully.”

All that, and they give you a coffee mug, too.

Corny?  Elitist? Profound?  What has your education developed in you?

Unknown's avatar

Living Heroically

by

Discipline without coercion.  Is it possible for individuals?  For communities?  Dare we believe that without obligation, people will make efforts to do their best and work toward the common good?  Are people who do that “heroes”?

We dangle punitive measures and capitalistic rewards in front of the masses and hope that will encourage us to be model citizens, and then we have to deal with the greedy monsters that evolve wondering “What’s in it for me?”  If I am of the 1% and super-wealthy, what incentive do I have to share?  And what is the percentage of the 99% who hope that one day, they will become super-wealthy also and so feel no inclination to put restrictions on the rich?  How many people are likely to come to a sense that they have “enough” all on their own and turn their surplus over to others?  And when will that sense of “enough” kick in?  What standard of living do we feel entitled to?  What would it feel like to say, “This is all I need.  I am not afraid to trust that I have enough”?  Would it feel like freedom?

How do you discipline yourself without feeling a sense of obligation?  Do you eat healthy foods because you want to?  Or because some outside influence is holding up a consequence or reward?  Do you make music because some authority is telling you to practice or for the sheer joy of it?  Do you do what you do out of passion or fear?

On our first date, Steve played a kind of “twenty questions” game with me.  I was trying to guess his three heroes in order to get to know him better.  He maintains that each of these inspirational figures have a passion for something and demonstrate it joyfully.  The first one is David Attenborough of the BBC Natural History Unit, groundbreaking writer and presenter of nature programs.  The second is Julia Child, The French Chef.  I was in total accord to this point, and also loved that they are easy to imitate in voice and mannerism to add levity to any undertaking (and we do this frequently).  The third one was rather tough to guess, mostly because he wasn’t human.  “An athlete” was about as close as I got.  Finally, Steve led me to thinking about equestrian athletes, and I immediately thought of Secretariat.  I found that rather a head-scratcher, though.  How could a horse be a hero?  And then he showed me the youtube clip of the final race in the1973 Triple Crown.  It still makes him cry.

A horse cannot be coerced by the promise of fame and fortune, can it?  There was no whipping, no carrot on a stick.  Secretariat ran for the pure joy of running, it would seem.  Feeling the power of his legs, the wind in his mane, the freedom of doing what he was born and bred and loved to do that day.  Did he have a reward afterward?  Did he develop a taste for winning?  I suppose you could debate the emotions of a horse forever and never learn anything conclusive.  You could also debate whether or not his race was something that created “good”.  Many people were undoubtedly uplifted; just listen to the audio on the tape.  His grace and beauty are captivating.  And maybe a bunch of people were making money off of it, but the horse wasn’t.  For that reason, it seems rather pure to me.

So what would it mean for you and me to be the heroes of our own lives?  To be the best we could be not out of obligation or fear of reprisal or for monetary gain, but just for the joy of living out our own passion and interest, for the love of it?  What would it be like to allow that to be our reward, our life work, and not ask fame or fortune from it?  Would we share any surplus of our efforts?  What if we all lived like that?  Would we be able to balance the table top, enjoy sustainability and equality, as a community and perhaps as a planet?  Is this a utopian ideal and totally unrealistic?

Probably.  But I would love to feel the wind in my hair, too…

...like her. (My daughter, in France, living her passion.)

Unknown's avatar

I’m Afraid So…

by

I’m afraid so…often.

I’m afraid, so I get surges of adrenaline, tense shoulders, a rather breathless feeling, and I give off a vibe that Steve notices right away as “ungrounded”, even before I’m aware of anything.  Yesterday, I wrote in a comment to my blog post that I have a fear-based outlook on the world.  This morning, it showed up in a small-scale episode of anxiety.  I was driving to a park to do a Kindergarten program when I noticed my engine temperature indicator dipping into the HOT zone.  I wasn’t going more than 8 miles away, so I just continued to the park.  Driving home, the needle stayed on the cool half of the dial.  I called my local repair shop and made an appointment for Monday.  Now, this does not present a real problem for me at all.  I don’t have a job I need to get to, and Steve has a car I can use for errands and whatnot.  But something inside me escalates things into a sense of “OMG!  There are things that I need to FIX RIGHT AWAY!”, and suddenly I’m making mental lists of everything I am responsible for or slightly dreading in the next month.  Subtly, of course, so that I don’t notice, but Steve does.  “Are you OK?” he asks.  And suddenly, I am aware that I am not quite.  I am a foot or so off the ground.  Tense.  Not confident.  Addled.  Alert, but not trusting.  So I take a break, sit in the sun on the couch, take off my glasses and breathe.

"While the storm clouds gather..."

Why don’t I trust myself?  The things that I have on my mind are tasks that are well within my range of skills or conditions that I can survive.  I notice that this kind of “crisis” happens in the weeks leading up to the first snowfall.  Perhaps it’s a biological trigger for preparedness.  Perhaps it’s a feeling of dread brought on by the many memories I have of emergencies that happened in winter.  My husband was in the hospital a lot in the winter months over a period of about 5 years with pneumonia and kidney dialysis issues.  He died in the middle of February.   I also have a lot of automobile-related dread triggers.  I hate driving in snow.  I visualize car accidents all the time, probably because of the accident I was in that claimed my sister’s life.  I can never go to that default position of “it’ll never happen to me”.  I gasp at the slightest jerk of the steering wheel. (Just ask my kids!)  So maybe I have “reasons” to be fear-based.  But I don’t want to be.

I’m afraid, so I’ll “invite my fears to the dinner table”, make friends with my demons, try to look at them head-on and learn from them.  What do they tell me about life?  What do they tell me about me?

Life is unpredictable.  We humans have a biological mechanism to get us hyped up to respond to emergencies.  “Fight or flight”, they call it.  Adrenaline flows into our veins and speeds up our breathing and heart rate.  It’s useful at times, and seems inappropriate at others.  What do you do with adrenaline when you’re sitting in a hospital waiting room?  There’s no physical outlet for it!  So perhaps this response was designed for a more physical lifestyle. I’m afraid, so I should exercise more.

I’m afraid, so I should be compassionate with myself.  Slowing down, allowing my heart rate to come back to resting range, I can concentrate on my thoughts, my breath, my emotions.  “Are you OK?”  I want to check in with myself more often and take the time to get grounded.  The stuff I need to fix isn’t usually immediate life-or-death stuff.  I can take it easy.  I have a frightened child with me – myself.  How would I care for her?

I’m afraid, so I think I’ll write about it.  Maybe one day I’ll come up with a picture book about being afraid.

 

Unknown's avatar

All Saints and Scorpios

by

Today is All Saints’ Day, a major feast in the Christian tradition.  It’s also Dia de los Muertos.  And it’s also the birthday of two of my favorite people in the world: Steve and my sister.  It’s a fitting festival for fall, colorful and reeking with death and ghosts.  I think that Steve and DKK also have a marvelous blend of color and passion and darkness in them.  And to tell the truth, this scared me about them.  I am a sunny Leo, all bright smiles and pleasing, if a bit manipulative and ego-driven.  Their seething power is something that I can not control or influence, and that used to bug me.

As a kid, I shared a room with my older sister for 9 years.  I used to be frightened of her insistent non-compliance under our very strict father, and so I would nag her and repeat his instructions and try to get her to do what would keep her out of trouble.  I don’t know why I thought my two cents would make an impact when my father’s words were disobeyed.  What do you do with a pestering younger sister?  You beat her up occasionally.  That kept me afraid and convinced that she really hated me.  I did not understand her at all.  She was power and mystery and goddamn smart to boot.  Then we moved and finally got separate rooms.  And we went to the same High School and had some friends in common.  Still, there was a kind of power struggle and competition going on.  She dated older guys I was crushing on.  She was better than me at Italian and spent a summer in Italy — and that was supposed to be MY language.  She was supposed to stick to Latin!  She did me the favor of passing my first love note to a boy in her Senior English class…who became my husband for 24 years until his death.  And I tattled on her and brought the wrath of my father down upon her.  I didn’t see her much for a long time, but I wrote to her, and I prayed for her.

I remember one All Saint’s Day sitting in a church in southern California, thinking about her birthday.  I decided that she was a saint, too, and that I would write to her again.  It was a holy moment, one that I knew might change me, and I was willing.  I think the thing that made me see how much we have in common, how much we really care about each other, was motherhood.  When we both had babies, I had three to her one, and we had lots to talk about.  I began to see her hopes and values and fierce love writ large on her parenting style, and her dynamic became more understandable to me.  She had the same parenting model to work with as I, and we were both fashioning our response to it in our individual styles.  I began to recognize her and appreciate her in a way I never had.  I wish we could spend more time together as we grow older.  We keep growing closer, even though we live half a continent apart.

So that’s today’s version of Favorite Memories of (My Sister), my family’s traditional birthday game.

And now, favorite memories of the birthday boy, still dozing beside me.

I’ve known Steve for 3 years.  Three very important, reformative years.  When we met, I had been a widow for only 7.5 months.  Although sane, I was rather raw and fragile.  So was my family of 4 children.  He’s never been married and has no children.  In the pool of dating possibilities, he was advised against choosing the widow.  But he loves a dark, complex, engaging challenge.  And apparently, he loves me.  So when my youngest daughter, grieving the loss of her father, contemplated the presence of this new man in my life, she became passionately angry.  It terrified me, and I ran away.  My new friend wasn’t scared of her at all.  In fact, he stood up for her saying that her emotions were completely justified.  He cared about her and understood her in a way I hadn’t.  He sat down with both of us and listened as we struggled to repair our relationship.  He offered his observations calmly and honestly and maintained a safe place for both of us.  He made a huge difference in a very critical time, and for that, I will always be grateful…and a bit awed.

Passion is a marvelous hallmark of life.  It is scary in many ways, but adds so much.  I am learning to be open to it more and more.  And I thank DKK and Steve for helping me learn how.  Happy Birthdays, youse guys!

Unknown's avatar

Happy Halloween!

by

Steve and I enjoy an ongoing game of “arcane book ideas”.   Yesterday, it was The History of Halloween.  I wonder if that book’s ever been written?  In our neighborhood, trick or treating was commuted to Sunday.  There was a block party followed by an hour and a half of trick or treating at certain houses designated by orange and black balloons tied outside.  It was a very organized affair.  An informative flier went out a week ago with a tear-off response section on the bottom.  There was even a neighborhood bank account set up to receive contributions.  As far as I could tell, the block party was moved indoors because of rain.  The barricades remain on the parkway and never went up.  But we could hear the children, teens, and parents slogging through the drizzle in the dark.

Halloween is a big thing here in the Midwest.  I lived in California for 15 years and never saw more than a dozen trick-or-treaters.  (Okay, spell check didn’t like that term and offered me an alternative: trick-or-anteaters.  Can you imagine?  Love the visual on that idea!)  Maybe people there are just way too suspicious of their neighbors and scared to let their children roam.  We were.  My husband used to reminisce about trick-or-treating in his cul de sac with the parents following doing their own trick-or-drinking.  Candy for the kiddies, cocktails for their parents.  Very Californian.  My mother was the most unpopular Halloween hostess on the block.  She kept trying to think of low-sugar alternative treats.  Most years, it was little boxes of raisins.  One year, it was balloons.  Deflated ones.  This was before choking hazards got much press.  Another year, it was nuts in the shell.  Again, before nut allergies got much press.  I was always so embarrassed (and disappointed) by our “candy bowl”.  She was adamant about limiting sugar for the sake of our teeth long before healthy choices were fashionable.  She was also a stickler for sunscreen before SPF was displayed on every bottle.  Now that I’m almost 50, I should thank her every time I look in the mirror and a full set of teeth and a smooth pair of cheeks smile back.

In my day, Halloween had very few rules.  You went to school in costume, partied all day, and then trick-or-treated all night (or for as long as your mom would let you).  When my kids were young, that was the initial routine.  Then the village posted trick-or-treat hours, usually from 4-7pm.  Then there was the year that parents and teachers decided that too much instruction time was being lost on this dress up holiday with occult overtones.  So they had each grade level run a study-themed costume and activity day.  The third graders were doing a prairie unit, so they all dressed in pioneer outfits and made corn-husk dolls and bobbed for apples and that kind of thing.  The fifth graders were doing a Native American unit, so they wove tiny patches of yarn onto looms, deciphered symbols, and ate popcorn.  I really liked the idea.  They got to dress up and have treats and play games, but they were very creatively centered on specific social studies units.  I was rather a serious mom myself.  But my kids got candy.  Sacks of it.  And I raided their stash every year.  One year, when my oldest was just a toddler and we were living in California, I bought some Halloween candy (Mounds, my favorite) and ended up dipping into it myself before the big night.  I figured we wouldn’t get many visitors anyhow.  Well, we got a few more than I expected, and I ran out of candy.   So when the doorbell rang, my darling daughter ran to the door to see the costumes.  “We don’t have any more candy because my mom ate it all,” she explained.  Well, at least I taught her honesty.

I enjoyed my part at the Nature Center as the witch.  I’m glad we did it two weeks ago when the weather was a bit drier and warmer.  The prosthetic nose and chin were rather a pain.  My pointy toed boots were even worse, though, after three hours on my feet.  But the wide-eyed little tykes in fairy wings and hockey gear were just as adorable as ever.  I will never get tired of playing dress up…or eating chocolate.

Unknown's avatar

Mixing It Up

by

“Politics and science don’t mix.”  “Religion and science don’t mix.”

These are comments posted on an article about a skeptical physicist who researched global warming under a grant provided by the Charles Koch foundation and found that land temperatures are indeed rising.  I read this article not long after reading an MSNBC article entitled “Do Science and Politics Mix?”.  It focuses on some comments made by Mitt Romney and their interpretation by Lawrence Otto, author of Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America.  He says that today’s political framework is based on “values” rather than facts.  In other words, politicians are dogmatic about certain positions that they figure will stand them firmly in the good graces of their constituents and tend to dismiss scientific challenges.

Well, hell, what is science for if not to inform your decisions and opinions about politics and religion and education and health and economics and…everything?  I mean, why bother to make observations at all if you’re going to ignore them?  Why not just walk around blindfolded?  And the same goes for science itself.  Let your political and religious and educational and economic observations inform your decisions and opinions about science.  It doesn’t make sense to be dogmatic in any of these areas.

Isn’t our world an interconnected web of infinite variables?  There will always be more data to gather and look at, and there will always be vast areas where we have no data at all or no conclusive data.  Mystery still abounds.  But the point is, keep your eyes and ears and mind open.  Make your decisions and form your opinions with as much humility and flexibility as you can muster.  Always be willing to entertain and embrace new information and ideas.

What would you call that posture?

Squirrels are like fiddlers on the roof: light on their feet

Well, the media calls it “flip-flopping” or “waffling”.  The media seems to like dogma and dislike progressives.  People are fed up with the status quo and call for change, but those who embrace change are mistrusted and “hog-tied” by various conflicting structures.  So we get nowhere new.  What a pity.  What a waste.

Have you ever heard the Zen koan, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him”?

If you believe you have the correct image of what it means to be Enlightened, you’re wrong.  Throw it out and keep practicing and meditating.  As applied to our political situation: if you believe you have the correct platform to reform America, you’re wrong.  Throw it out and keep listening to the people, keep observing the environment in the cities and the farms, keep choosing and deciding and recording consequences. Keep moving forward.  Even if something seems to work, things will change.  Review and renew.  Be light on your feet.

Now, who’s got the courage to do that?

Unknown's avatar

My Biology, My Self

by

There’s one question that keeps coming up, begging for my attention.  “Who am I?”  Perhaps this is a Socrates Cafe revolving door.

How much do you identify with your body?  Or your gender?  Or your ego?  How much do you identify with your Big ‘S’ Self?

What’s a Big ‘S’ Self as opposed to a small ‘s’ self (or what I call the Big Ass self)?  Steve describes it like the tip of a pyramid.  It has a base, but sits on top of a much, much bigger base –  The Big ‘S’ Self  – which is all about simply recognizing the world as it is without trying to impose any ego imprints on it.  My question today is “Where does my biology fit in?”  At almost 50 years of age, I certainly recognize how my biology has impacted life as I experience it.  It seems intrinsic to my being.  I couldn’t possibly imagine being a man.  My reproductive cycles, my hormonal moods, my childbirth experiences, my posture of surrender, my physical life and psychological attitudes that arise from that seem to be very much “me”.  And yet, all of that is in flux, changing all the time, even while The Change is looming in my not-too-distant future.  So maybe there’s a Big ‘S’ Self that isn’t affected by all that.  Would that be my soul?

How do I bring my Self and my self into a relationship?  How do I interact with someone else’s Self and self?

Sometimes it seems like it would be so much simpler just to have a body without such a brain dominating it.  Eat, sleep, have sex, die.  Nothing to philosophize about.  Sometimes it seems like I’m trying too hard to live well.  Morally.  Conscientiously.

Sigh.

Steve surprised me.  He bought me a picture book about a baby elephant.  It came in the mail today.  Sometimes the simplest thing is just to accept a gift….like life.

Unknown's avatar

Living on the Land – or a few feet above

by

I am considering bird feeding options.  I would love to have some cardinals visit our small south yard this winter.  They do anyway, but I want to encourage them to linger a while and refresh themselves.  I stopped in at a wild bird and pet shop to look over some of the products.  I was pretty much appalled at the prices.  Suburban homeowners around here spend a lot of money on their yards.  I am only an unemployed renter, so I’m going the DIY route.  We have a weathered old wicker chair frame and a CD storage chest that have been sitting outside for a few seasons.  I’ve decided to try to build a feed station using them.  Recycling, don’t ya know. So I went online to read up on bird feeders and squirrels.  There seems to be a conflict among humans as to the desirability of squirrel activity in proximity to our dwellings.  They are amazing animals who don’t mind being observed.  They also have been known to move in with us humans and destroy property.  I see squirrels in the trees and in the garbage around the duplex, but so far there haven’t been any signs of them moving into the attic and eating books.  I want to keep it that way.  I don’t think the squirrels need any assistance in finding food around here, so I’d like to provide a food that’s not attractive to them but will be attractive to cardinals and other song birds.  I’ve read that safflower seeds may be just the thing.  So this is my goal: to construct a platform feeder using the chair and storage chest parts and buy safflower seed for the winter.  Then we’ll see what the birds and squirrels do.

Do these guys care about Game 7?

Might Itchy-Twitchy become tempted to move inside?

Even if I didn’ t do a thing, I’d still have cardinals and squirrels as my neighbors. I doubt my project is going to make a difference in their survival over the winter.  I don’t imagine that I have any role as a wildlife manager in this situation.  I could pat myself on the back and say I’m being wildlife friendly, in a way.  But it’s not that big a deal.  I’m really only doing it for my own amusement.  I often wonder at the decisions and efforts I’ve made to be eco-minded.  For example, the online petitions and letters to my congressional representatives urging them to take certain actions on various pieces of legislation.  Does that really make a difference?  So far, I’ve noticed that it only generates more junk mail from Republican officials who write to thank me for my input and inform me that they have no intention of doing what I suggest.  I could take the next step and send money to the originators of these petitions, but I have no income at this time and have therefore decided not to do that. I don’t know what effect that might have if I did.  I have moments when my idealism dares me to hope great things, and then I have moments when my realism admits the futility of my individual efforts.

Making ripples that travel in unknown directions.  Will we contribute to a tidal wave?  Will we send a blessing bobbing toward a distant shore?   We have no way to know.  I do my best to have good intentions.  I hope my Buddha smile makes the world a kinder place somehow.

 

Unknown's avatar

In Search of a Good Life

by

I am reading a book called Back from the Land: How Young Americans Went to Nature in the 1970s, and Why They Came Back by Eleanor Agnew.  I am glad to have found this book at the beginning of my homesteading research.  Many of the reasons hippies started a “back-to-the-land movement” are the same reasons I have for being drawn to that kind of life in this decade.  I, too, am fed up with capitalism, the technologically-driven status quo, agri-business, election politics and the failure of progressive promises.  I have the desire for freedom, natural good health, self-sufficiency, community, sustainable living and a gentle relationship with the land.  If these motivators moved more than one million Americans in the 70s from urban lifestyles into homesteads, communes and small farms, why aren’t they still there?  “A study by the Stanford Research Institute estimated that ‘from four to five million adults were wholeheartedly committed to leading a simple life and that double that number adhered to and acted on some but not all of its basic tenets.”  Economic uncertainly fueled some survivalist rationales in that decade and could certainly be applicable today, right?  What happened in the “Me Generation” that brought these people back into the consumerist culture?

I’m only on Chapter 5, but I’m beginning to see the pendulum of privilege to poverty coming into play.  The homesteading hippies were largely white middle class folk who had no family experience of farming or living on the land.  The longer they stayed out there, the more “improvements” they began to incorporate into their lives.  The authors writes that she and her husband spent all of the capital they had on land ($1,000 for 62 acres in Maine!) and planned to heat their cabin with wood.  Their house in the city didn’t sell until late November, so it was December when they moved into the 34 x 24 foot log cabin heated with one wood stove.  The temperature inside the house was largely unaffected by the one stove, so they bought another stove and stayed with neighbors for 10 days until the thermometer hit 60 inside.

You could say that most of these folks were naive about the realities of nature.  Living more closely with natural surroundings means living more closely to natural processes.  Weather.  Change.  Unpredictable events.  Death.  I suppose being realistic would be to decide well in advance how you would prepare for certain conditions and how you would accept conditions for which you were not prepared.  And then to do the preparing you could do.  Am I prepared to be cold or injured or repulsed by sights, smells and sensations?  Am I prepared to be afraid?  Am I prepared to experience failures and setbacks on many levels?  Do I want the freedom of danger?

Is it all golden leaves and smiles?

There are also pages and pages of first hand accounts that assert that the years spent homesteading were the best years of life.  For many, the positives far outweighed any negative memories.  So the question for our next Summit Meeting is: How do you want to live?  And I want details as well as values.  Do we have electricity? Plumbing?  Do we slaughter animals?  How will we use money?  How will we build community?

I don’t want to say that somewhere out there is a perfect way of life.  I’m not sure that is true.  I want to say instead that in the discussions and efforts and experiences of this process, we will find ourselves living.  Let that be the epiphany we celebrate.