Alina's Adventures

Our America is better than this: My hopes, fears, and HOPES.

Inspired by local PRIDE celebrations last month. 

It's been a difficult week for this country. It's been a difficult week for our children as well. For the first time, my kids watched the presidential debates as part of a homeschooling exercise. The Eldest was horrified by Trump's bullying body language and the girls could not believe a man like that would be elected to represent what they believe is the greatest country in the world.

On election night, as they looked at us in horror, we sent them to bed and promised it wasn't going to be as bad as it looked. Then the man and I stayed up and realized it was. We held our breath and gnashed our teeth and stumbled our way through a 10th wedding anniversary. 

The good news is that we are coping and learning more about how to save our communities. The bad news (at a micro-level) is that my kids don't think America is great anymore. My kids think America is mean and nasty and what it takes to lead America is even meaner and nastier. 

And so I find myself arguing with my kids about what makes America great.

And realizing (again and again) that no politician makes America great-- what makes it great is the diversity of its people.

For the record, I'm not going to engage any discussions on how Trump doesn't mean what he said. If he didn't mean what he said, then everyone who voted for him knowingly elected a liar. (Even though polls report that what voters held against Clinton was the belief that she lied.) Somebody is lying. Many are lying to themselves. There is a lot of lying going on and it's pretty ugly. I'm not going to be part of those lies. I'm not going to bring those lies into my house and foist them on my children. 

Again: I'm not going to lie to my kids to explain why friends or family voted the way they did. I think it's best done directly, person-to-person. That's your job, not mine. You can tell my kids why and let them ask questions.

I will not be an apologist for your vote.

I will not tell them that you didn't mean all the racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, classist, sexist, cruel things he said.

If I do that, I will lose their trust. They heard his words. They believed him. That has become a national problem. 

And then there is life, itself, which leads children to draw their own conclusions based on experience.

Today, between ballet lessons, the kids wanted to do something to tell all the people who are scared and hurt and suffering that this is still their America. Their urge was inspired by a faith which holds all persons equally and considers every human to be equally deserving of life, liberty, and opportunity. So we got a small box of chalk and sat near the Bama Theatre in Tuscaloosa where teen beauty pageant contestants were prepping for tonight's event.

The kids wanted to draw on the white, unbumpy sidewalk but I urged them closer to the street so we wouldn't interfere in photos and poses. The message was simple-- to assert love and solidarity with all the persons threatened by Trump's election. That's what they wrote.

And yes, pageant queens whispered and muttered things like "snowflake" and "crybabies". Milla wanted to know why they kept walking past and taking pictures of us. I told her they were curious.

One mother (who walked past at least four times glaring at me as if I was a demon) said to her daughter that "they must not be Christians". 

Because we wrote "This is all of our America. We love you." 

 

And so it went.

Later, as I waited for the kids outside the ballet studio down the street, aware that several "homeschooling friends" had recently de-friended me because I did not vote for Trump, trying not to make things awkward for those persons whom I see every week, a beauty pageant boyfriend tried to erase the words with his shoe as the beauty pageant contestant giggled. 

I did not cry. 

In the car, we talked about voices and democracy. Milla liked the idea of being a snowflake and Micah was annoyed at being called a crybaby while not even crying.

Because everyone in my family knows I'm the crybaby.

I'm the one who cries in church or at movies or concerts or sunsets or a luna moth drying its wings on the wall. 

But the love letter made them feel better. It gave them a voice, however tiny. If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit we don't give kids much of a voice in this world which surrounds them. We pretend they can't hear what we're saying and then-- if they ask-- we say, "Oh, nothing honey. I was talking to Daddy." Or maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm the only one that tries to be a parody of fair-and-balanced. Which fails. 

Despite my fear and discomfort and sadness at losing friends-who-weren't-friends to begin with, I'm holding out hope that our voices can make a difference. 

I want to encourage everyone to get some chalk and some hope and hit the streets with love. Write some neighborhood love notes to counter the messages. Don't get bogged down in arguments about safety pins. Don't sit around and entertain the mansplaining events which have become rather prodigious. Attend protests.

Get involved in local activist groups and DO STUFF.

Do more. Don't stop.

Don't debate whether it's too small an act or too fancy or too whatever.

JUST DO IT. Keep doing it.

This is going to be a long walk. Don't bail out or burn out or get consumed by your anger. Be angry and let yourself experience it but don't let it own you.

Trust love, justice, and solidarity to lead you. 

I repeat: love, justice, and solidarity are companions you will never regret. 

Don't worry about what people say. It's not your problem or my problem.

Our problem is this: showing love, creating safe spaces, and fighting through activism and engagement to make America great. Guess what? No one else can make America great EXECPT US. 

Claire Datnow's wonderful, Alabama-based eco-mysteries for middle schoolers.

Pond Slider Turtle, Limestone Park, Alabaster
(photo taken Boris Datnow at bioblitz in Alabaster, Alabama)

At the Alabama Writer's Conclave last month, I had the exciting opportunity to attend a workshop on eco-Mysteries and ecological fiction sponsored by the amazing Claire Datnow. I learned about how her love for Alabama's ecology led her to write eco-fiction for middle-schoolers in order to empower, inspire, and educate them about ecological principles. And then I bought all the books in the Adventures of the Sizzling Six for my children.

The first book in this series, The Lone Tree, is only $2 on kindle and $7 for print. Here's the synopsis:

They thought it was going to be a boring summer. It wasn't! When six determined teenagers decide to save a magnificent old white oak their adventures begin. Can they save their tree and the animals living in it? Will they get to build their secret hideout in its great branches? What could go wrong? The Sizzling Six will have to reckon with a ticked off neighbor on the city council, an unusual teacher, a thickheaded bully and his ditzy girlfriend, a mysterious dreamtime eagle, and an awesome night bat.

Given the extent to which young people (especially young females) are bombarded with advertisements and media which celebrate looking "cute" and trying to "make boys like you", Claire's fiction provides a counter-narrative in which the heroines are driven by eco-fascination and the desire to preserve something they love. 

Because what Claire writes is not likely to be bestseller Y.A. material, we have to ask ourselves more about this amazing woman that spends her time reaching out to Alabama's youngest citizens. Claire in her own words:

Born in South Africa, I immigrated to the US having lived in California, Minnesota, Alabama and Canada. I am a mother, grandmother and wife, and my family is the core of my life. All that I see, feel, experience feeds and inspires my writing. What I have learned in college and through wide reading informs my writing. I earned MA degrees in education of the gifted and talented, and in public history.

The series of YA Eco mysteries for 4-8 graders, The Adventures of The Sizzling Six, reflects my passion and awe for the natural world. With the trusty aid of Boris Datnow, my technological guru, the third book in the series uses QR codes to transport readers from the printed word on the page to video clips that let readers see and hear what the characters in the story are seeing and hearing! My memoir, Behind the Walled Garden of Apartheid, drew inspiration from a beautiful country scared by the iniquities of apartheid. The Final Diagnosis: What The Autopsy Reveals About Life and Death is a tribute to my husband, an autopsy pathologist. My historical novel, The Nine Inheritors, pays homage to my grandmother and two aunts and all those killed in the Holocaust.

What's next? On my trip to Australia, I found inspiration for the fourth book in the eco mystery series for middle grades, The Adventures of The Sizzling Six: Who Kidnapped The Koala? My newest books are published as Enhanced e-books as well as electronic books.

On her website, Claire offers an incredible amount of resources and activities for home educators. In her words:

Each time I write a new eco-mystery for the series, The Adventures of The Sizzling Six, I am amazed at what I learn about the species central to my story. I have developed this unit to share the excitement of learning with students. It is my hope these lesson plans will inspire them to take action in their own communities, and, ultimately, become wise stewards of the earth’s precious natural heritage.

Feel free to download and print the curriculum unit How to Become and Eco Detective. Lessons can easily be correlated to the Common Core State Standards Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science and Technical Subjects. You can also print up the Role Playing Cards and the Driving Questions for use in your classroom.

I would be honored if you would share your students’ work with me at: cldatnow@me.com

Free handouts and teacher activities including Eco-mystery Writing Contest. But my favorite by far is the printable Lessons for How to Write Eco-mysteries, a free printable PDF packet. If you take nothing from this, print a copy of this packet and plan a roam school today. 

Since Max enjoyed Claire's mysteries so much, he did a little email interview with her. I am so grateful that she took the time to answer his questions. 

MAX: Did the oil spill from the Canyon Gulf really happen, or was it based on the Deepwater Horizon spill?

CLAIRE: Indeed, the oil spill in my eco mystery is based on the Deepwater Horizon explosion that occurred on 20 April 2010. NOAA continues to assess the fish, wildlife, and habitat harmed by the spill along the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Alabama, and Florida.

MAX: What Functions do Diamondback terrapins have as a keystone species?

CLAIRE: So why all this effort to save one species? If terrapins no longer live in the marsh the eco system will become less stable. These terrapins can be considered a keystone species—if you take them out, certain invertebrate species, like snails, will keep on increasing, and they will eat more and more of the marsh grasses that many other species need to survive. That will cause a shift in the important balance of living things in the eco system.The terrapins help to maintain a healthy salt marsh that is a nursery for crabs, fish, oysters, and a large variety of aquatic life. (Max, you will find the more answers to this question in the eco adventure.)

MAX: Is Shelley Island a real place?

CLAIRE: Yes, the island is based on the site of Cedar Point along the Alabama Dauphin Island marsh where the female terrapins come to lay their eggs in summer. (For more information Google Cedar Point along the Alabama Dauphin Island marsh.)

MAX: Are all your stories set in Alabama? 

CLAIRE: They are all set in Alabama with the exception of The Adventure of The Sizzling Six: Who Kidnapped the Koala, which is set in Australia. The inspiration for that book came while I was visiting my family in Australia.

MAX: Why did you choose southern ecology for the subject of your books?

CLAIRE: To do research for my eco mysteries I need to visit the habit of the species I will be writing about. It’s easier for me to explore Alabama as I live in this state. I also interview and consult with conservationists and wildlife scientists who live in Alabama. 

Claire and her spouse, Boris, are currently traveling in Greenland, Iceland, and Labrador. Anyone who knows Claire imagines her explorations are probably sparking new ideas for eco-mysteries to come. 

I am deeply grateful to Claire for the time she took to speak with me and with Max-- even more grateful for the beguiling, ecological stories she writes, stories I can share with my children to inspire them to be the change they want to see in the world. 

Facebook Author Page

Claire's other eco-mysteries, including one about the Cahaba Lily

Faith without works and the people of Syria.

A fascinated Gnome.

Today I made it through communion without crying. It's the first time I've done so since Mom's death. Granted, I cried in during the final hymn as we sang the word "perish" because perish is such a heavy, impossible word from which there can be no relief or reprieve.

So I hold quantum theory against human words like "perish"- words that lack the humility of what we cannot see. I hold science and faith and poetry and beauty against words which end what we can neither control nor explain. I realize this is a personal preference. I understand there are others who need to believe Christ's love is something they have earned by saying His name.

Church is always a comfort, a place when the words in my head stop bustling for privilege and paper. I listened without worrying about what I should take away. Listened without holding an ear open for the teachable moment.

The Eldest bumbled through an extended rotation of hiccups while Gnome copied words from The Book of Common Prayer on the back of a blue prayer card. She wanted me to see- and the sight was a succor of soothing verses. 

My mind kept coming back to the reading from James 2:1-26. This is an uncomfortable passage for many who believe once-saved-always-saved doctrines but much less threatening to those (like myself) who believe Christ's love and mercy includes every single human being without regard for class, style, dogma, creed, or religious belief. 

Syrian refugee children (via Peacechild.org).

14 What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

How many ways can we read these verses in light of the desperate political and economic refugees at our doorsteps? 

How many ways can we throw money at a problem without opening the doors of our spacious homeland to those in need?

How many times can we smile, sign a check, and then say, "Um, I did my part and see you later"?

How many excuses can we formulate for our selfishness? How can we say people envy our freedom when the only freedoms we exercise include the right to carry guns and go nuts over football? Surely there are some who envy our foolishness and hubris but this is not the same thing. To give someone a Bible and then refuse them entry into your home is a defamation of what we've been taught.

Surely at some point we must choose between two opposing principles- the preservation of our vapid consumerist lifestyles and love for all the world's human beings. We must choose between this world and the world of Christ's love. We must choose between materialist Mammon and spiritual brotherhood.

There's no middle ground, I'm afraid. We MUST choose, knowing deep inside that the decision to keep refugees out is a choice we make out of fear, mistrust, and selfishness. It is a choice that reflects our lack of faith in love. It is a choice that reflects our love is limited by the heat we pack to protect it. And it breaks my heart to know Christ's love is used to sanction self-defense against innocent victims of war in this world we have created.

Reading an essay by Wendell Berry with flowers in my head.

Prophet and Gnome cozy up to what they call a dandelion gigantosaurus.

I came across an old essay by Wendell Berry in which he dissects the challenges of poetry and language in the present. His regard for history and tradition has much to admire in it- much I wish I could emulate (if it weren't for the unrepentant revolutionist within). 

Our past is not merely something to depart from; it is to commune with, to speak with…. The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.

Wendell's respect for the past is ecological. He respects the past as we respect heirloom seeds over Monsanto-generated GMO versions. We cannot improve the present unless we acknowledge the past and build upon it. We cannot end slavery until we acknowledge the social and cognitive mechanisms by which persons were made to internalize the possibility of a human as personal property. 

….our malaise, both in our art and in our lives, is that we have lost sight of the possibility of right or responsible action. Publicly, we have delegated our capacity to act to men who are incapable of action only because they cannot think.

Wendell mourns the extent to which politics has evolved into an act of professional strategizing- responding and reacting to polls and events rather than reflecting upon them. 

Putting exclusive emphasis on a world of words has the same result as putting exclusive emphasis on heaven— it leads to, and allows, and abets, the degradation of the world. And it leads ultimately to the degradation of art and religion.

What I take from this is not where Berry leads in the essay but another place altogether- a place which has been returned to my life over the past three years. A place where my soul rests easy in mystery and awe having forsaken the practice of piecing apart the Bible, word for word, pronoun for pronoun.

As Protestants, we have been accused of worshipping the word, the Scripture, while losing sight of the Spirit.  The result is that one line about same-sex love or masturbation (i.e. onaism) can undercut the entire vision with which Christ animates the Bible— a spirit of love, empathy, tolerance, compassion, mercy, and complete disregard for social or conventional hierarchy. In worshipping the word, we become prey to literalism, our eyes abandoning the mysteries of art for the brisk verbiage of advertisments. 

Yellow Goat's Beard seed head
(Tragopogon pratensis)

I remember the scent of the moist, cool cathedrals in France. I remember how the silence and beauty made me hungry for prayer. I remember wishing the tourist groups would pick up a pamphlet and walk the stations of the cross on their own rather than guffawing and blabbing with their habitual irreverence. I say habitual because reverence is a habit we pick up as children. Reverence is a way of observation which a child either learns or learns to disregard.

I say habitual because we attend a church where the service is liturgical and habit-forming, the habit of silence and rapt attention hatched early in young hearts. My husband and I value this together. We admire not what we see in shopping malls and amusement parks but what covets our attention in sombre wooden icons, stained glass windows, the red vein of late summer leaf.

The decision to attend a more traditionally-liturgical church (an Episcopal church) was rooted in our desire for self-discipline as well as the belief that faith is only a costume without a deep sense of reverence. Both of us have worn the costume. We taught Sunday school together and hosted small-groups at our home. We pitched verses like footballs on sterilized stadium grass, stadiums being America’s version of cathedrals, places we go to wave holy symbols and fabrics and worship some vast and nameless corporate franchise together. 

Musk thistle
(Carduuas nutans)

I remember the rise of the megachurch in the early 2000s. I remember wondering at which point at which altars became stages for self-promotion. Certainly this is a modern development, a far cry from the creekside baptisms of the previous century. The church of Northpoint in Atlanta comes to mind— church of rock concerts and cafe latte counters, daycare dressed to resemble an entertainment park, endless cycles and promises of nonstop fun. An extravagant warehouse geared towards consumers of current Christianity where the walls are covered with hashtags and trends, a place where everyone can be entertained with the enjoyment of modern convenience, and nothing permanently exquisite is built because who knows when you need to expand and who knows what people want next, maybe even a bowling alley.

Musk thistle is a member of the sunflower family.

There is an aesthetic dimension to reverence— it is simple as the soft velvet underside of a magnolia leaf, complex as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It is a line which connects us to the past, the soil beneath our feet and the challenges of human history.

The reason we need to have our certainties shaken is so that we may see the possibility of better orders than we have.

 

I do not believe we can become better people without an awareness and engagement of this past. I do not believe the incessant amnesia of Christian pop or strobe lights enables us to make a habit of forgiveness though it certainly leaves us with memory and salience issues, certainly leaves us prone to forgetfulness. We must un-know as often as we know, but we must do this with wisdom rather than the need for fun, immediate gratification, or convenience. Perhaps a revolution can be wise after all? Perhaps the revolution is poetry.

Handmade holidays and sewing callouses.

What the Eldest stitched for his friend, Erin

I love handmade holidays-- despite the incessant tug to stitch as I speak, walk, sit, wait, or daydream. So many beautiful things to make for people we love and admire. This year, we've been rummaging through the huge box of decorator fabrics donated by Pamela.... and all sorts of critters and creatures are coming to life.

The Eldest models his creation

The King spent at least an hour last night learning how to embroider from the Eldest. It's the first year in which the King has decided to participate in handmade holidays and I love hearing their husky voices bicker over thread techniques.

Miss Meow tries out Gnome's chair. 

Little Isla took her ornament home on Friday...

though the box interested her more than the ornament itself.

"Mom, I really want to make something for Josiah's family...."

The Eldest and I collaborated on a ornament for our neighbors, the Blankenships, whose oldest daughter was born with Rett syndrome. If you haven't heard about Rett syndrome, it's probably because it is a rare congenital disorder. The Eldest designed the purple ribbon himself and wanted very much to make this gift-- which warmed my heart because it came without prodding or poking. The gift of life is a beautiful one, and if you're looking for a gift to give friends and family this year, consider donating to the Rett Syndrome Foundation. Research and cures cannot emerge from the woodwork-- and rare congenital disorders are not high on the research interests of any drug companies whose interest in profit rules the bottom line.

And so the stitching continues.... with every stitch, I consider the gift of friendship and family, sew love in between seams, backstitch with a kiss.

Let's Tango For Romania.

Rodica Mai, Angela Szasz, Alina Voicu, and Delia Mai

If you live in the Birmingham area and haven't been involved with Music4Romania, you are missing a handful of stardust.

Back in 2011, a few students at Indian Springs School in Indian Springs, Alabama decided to collect music materials for Romanian orphanages. Their initiative evolved into a project and finally an internationally-active nonprofit based in Birmingham. Today, Music4Romania includes "a community of volunteer musicians and music-lovers who believe in the power of music to inspire and affect the lives of all people". 

On November 9th at 3:00 pm, you can attend the Music4Romania fundraiser at ​The Episcopal Church of Saint Francis in Indian Springs, Alabama and discover the provocations of a mysterious instrument, the bandoneon. For a preview of what to expect, here's the Bandoneon in the skilled hands of Raul Jarena, who stirs the lost tango in me. 

More... The Arrhythmia Quartet was founded in 2010. The mission of the ensemble is to perform and promote both standard classical and more unusual repertoire. The ensemble's first tour, during the summer of 2011, included concerts in Chisinau (Moldova), Cluj (Romania), and Sibiu (Romania). Guest artist bandoneonist and Latin Grammy-winner Raul Jaurena joined the quartet in performing tangos from South America. 

Please purchase tickets online prior to the event. Children and families of all ages and stages are welcome. By purchasing a ticket prior to the event, you help even if (for some unexpected reason) you decide on the night of the concert that getting dressed and being social is the last thing you'd like to do. 

November 9th Flyer (PDF)

Do your Amazon shopping while helping...

Become a supporter 

Think of all the beautiful ways in which people around you are helping others across the world. This is one of those ways. Join it.

How we learned about the Girl Riders Organization (GRO).

Prophet and Mary climb the ramp after co-skating.

Why not wander around a park in Silverthorne and spend those last minutes of daylight surrounded by local chatter? Before you could say lickety-split, the Eldest made a playground friend. 

The Eldest and his friend climbed rocks around the skatepark before daring one another to race through the ramps between skaters. I tried to warn them that watching out for little folks reduces the flow state of skating for the folks on boards.

Just as I was about to launch into my lecture, a nice girl wearing kneepads asked if the kids would like to try skating.

Mary takes Gnome for her first skating spree.

Having watched her skate for half-an-hour or so, I felt confident in her skills and abilities.

"Sure. Why not?" I replied.

Prophet couldn't get enough.

Mary told me about a national group in which female skaters teach young females how to skate. Meanwhile, Gnome and Prophet begged for "one more ride" and "one more try". 

I'm so grateful to Mary for extending a hand, inviting the kids to try her skateboard. Mary is affiliated with the Girl Riders Organization (GRO), which hosts regular free skating clinics at skateparks across the country. Check the GRO Facebook page for details of a skate session near you. 

Silverthorne Skate Park is located at 430 Rainbow Drive right next to the Silverthorne Rec Center in Summit County, Colorado. Though more land sits and waits to be added to the park, the city of Silverthorne has not put this land to use yet. 

If you're interested in putting your skateboarding skills to use to make the world a better place, you MUST check out Skateistan, a nonprofit that teaches Afghani kids to skate. 

Human rights on our back porch: Immigration now.

This is all I have to say about the multiple news reports documenting the horrible immigration conditions of Latin American children trying to rejoin their parents in the USA.

Tell true stories. Tell stories of families like mine. Learn the language so you can translate true stories. And stop lying to yourself about immigrants being a lesser form of life than you.

We are all immigrants. No one has earned the right to be sick, oppressed, hungry, or silenced.  

The liberating habits of compassionate men.

During my first pregnancy over ten years ago, I devoured books on the topic of raising boys. As with every new terrain, it made sense to cross-reference the maps made by those who came before me.

The most important conclusion from all my reading and research resulted in the taking of a vow. I vowed never to make the Eldest feel that he was only allowed to be half a human- that half currently recognized as the prototypical American male.

Having best friends that were guys taught me how much men suffered for the way we raise them to be caricatures of angry, sarcastic, beer-chugging brutes with "natural drive" for rape, destruction, and violence. Honestly, I've never met a man who fits the bill- though I've met way too many who lived like zombies for trying.

We treat men like they are naturally too insensitive, ego-driven, violent, and lusty to leave with out daughters. Then we wonder why the number of nuclear missiles in our arsenal continues to rise. The truth is that men and women are born with similar emotional needs and emotional expression.

According to various studies, around the age of four, the average American boys realizes that daddy (and his preschool buddies and favorite cartoon characters) doesn't like it when he talks about feeling sad. "Take one for the team," laughs the dad. Or, "crying is for girls- boys don't cry". Some variation on sarcastic disregard for what a boy is feeling and some form of withdrawal that teaches him to detach himself from any feelings lest he lose the affection and regard of his daddy and male peers.

The word "sad" is quickly removed from a developing boy's emotional vocabulary. But the sad feeling persists. Eventually, he learns that boys are allowed to get angry. He understands that winning makes fear and bad feelings go away. He agrees not to name all the complex congnitive emotional states he can no longer acknowledge. Instead, he does what "big boys do", namely, keep his eye on the prize and aim to win. Whether he is winning a soccer game, a promotion, a card game, a bet, a dare, or one of those emotional objects known as females, his develops only one response to losing- the response of fear and anger. Under these two words, entire worlds are submerged.

Men are not from Mars. Women are not from Venus. Both co-exist as human beings on the planet known as Earth. Books which promise to reveal why men and women can't understand one another usually fall back on the self-fulfilling prophecy of claiming that women are super-emotional and have emotional needs, while men are rational and lack complex emotional needs. Seriously, sitting in the stands of a college football game will quickly reveal the extent to which men and women are equally irrational and equally emotional.

Rarely do such pop psychology books acknowledge the cause for these differences is not God or "nature" or interplanetary travel. Rarely do they mention all the scientific studies that show these differences are largely due to the way in which males are socialized to ignore, project, or suppress their emotions. At no point does John Gray admit that male emotional illiteracy is normative but far from natural or even "normal". He's built a galaxy of cash on maintaining the stereotypes that keep men and their partners from being able to live life in its full variety of cognitive colors.

Reading one of my favorite magazines today returned me to the trenches of the old "unemotional male" sophistries. Describing five habits of "highly compassionate men", Kozo Hattori begins with the truth of the past- the early socialization against compassion in a culture that tells men "emotions" are something the other sex does.

Hattori remembers "being a very compassionate child"- the kind that "cried his eyes out" during the film version of "The Little House on the Prairie". By the time he became a young adult, however, Hattori's identity stayed firmly within what he calls the “act-like-a-man box”. Fitting popular conceptions of masculinity failed to equip him with the sort of self-knowledge that enables us to navigate the tight corners of fear and frustration:

Although I was what therapists call “high-functioning,” my lack of compassion was like a cancer that poisoned my friendships, relationships, business affairs, and life. At the age of 46, I hit rock bottom. Unemployed and on the verge of divorce, I found myself slapping my four-year-old son’s head when he wouldn’t listen to me.

At this point, Hattori questioned the self he had become and whether it served the spirit and soul of his body. Like many wise men before him, Hattori started seeking. He began with empathy. After workshops and seminars and hours of meditation, he grew into compassion. Or maybe compassion grew, naturally, from him. Either way, he discovered that the more compassion he felt, the "happier" he became. 

Like anyone who discovers an ineffable and life-affirming truth, Hattori felt driven by the need to share what he had learned and, of course, continue his own journey of learning. So he interviewed a number of individual experts in an effort to determine what, exactly, makes a compassionate man. Or, how a compassionate man is made.   

Interviewees included Dr. Dacher Keltner, co-founder of the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center; Dr. James Doty, founder and director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University; Dr. Rick Hanson, author of Hardwiring Happiness; Marc Brackett, director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence; and Thich Nhat Hanh, the Zen Buddhist monk nominated by Martin Luther King Jr. for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967.

The conclusions were as simple as the feeling of compassion to an unbridled, open heart:

1. Learn to see compassion as strength.
2. Cultivate compassionate role models.
3. Strive to transcend gender stereotypes.
4. Cultivate emotional intelligence.
5. Practice silence.

Hattori's happiness is contagious. I look forward to his research and encourage him to keep probing the depths, tackling difficult and onerous topics that assist fellow humans in resisting cultural influences against compassion.

The opportunities to make the world a better place for boys and men abound. So, the next time your son honors you by trying to explore and express his complicated heart, dive into the depths with him, rather than forcing him to tread water on the surface. Being born a boy should not relegate you to being less of a human being.

MY FAVORITE RESOURCES ON CULTIVATING COMPASSION

"Can mindfulness help kids learn self-control" by Sarah Wheeler (Greater Good)
"The way we socialize boys man harm them as men", a documentary must-see (All Voices)
"No more Steubenvilles: How to raise boys to be kind men" by Kim Simon (Yes!)
"Boys have become emotionally illiterate" by John Amaechi (BigThink)
"Male and female ability differences down to socialization, not genetics" by Robin McKie (Observer)
"I'm not socializing my kids- I'm humanizing them" by Kimberly Yvette Price (Home Education)
"Nervous Nellies" by Taylor Clark (Slate)
"How to deal with mean people" by Christine Carter (Greater Good)
"His hidden needs" by Nara Schoenberg (Chicago Tribune)
Barbie vs. Batman: The socialization of children's toys (Paula vs. Patriarchy)
"Creating a new generation of compassionate and sensitive men" by Dr. Ted Zeff
"We must look at how we teach our boys what it means to be a man" by Neil Irvin (Time)
"Strong men don't hide their emotions, they show them" by Jack Fischl (PolicyMic)
"The man who couldn't feel" by Contessa Schexnayder (Brain World)
"Helping men to help themselves" by Lea Winderman (APA Monitor on Psychology)
Understanding and Raising Boys (PBS Parents)
Peace In Relationships, Kozo Hattori's blog and counseling 

RELATED STORIES FROM THE CASTLE VAULT

The Eldest's first soccer game.
Why I homeschool.
About love.
Cross-stitching with boys.
Home-schooling and socialization: The heart of the matter.
Is technology narrowing our perception of life?
A date with Adrienne Rich.
Mining a fallow field for stories.
Radical home-makers of all stripes.

Finding the shelter of each other.

I burned the candle reading on the stoop outside our backdoor last night. The biblio-love with whom I communed, Mary Pipher's The Shelter of Each Other, resonated as clearly as the song of the barn own which visits our backyard at least once a week, the barn owl whom I have come to believe is divided between a past which took place somewhere in the woods behind our yard and a present which resides down the street from us. 

The social construction of reality and the idol of Progress

Pipher, like Wendell Berry, dismantles the idol of "Progress" to which so many mega-churches and self-help groups are now dedicated. Just because science advances to give us the atomic bomb does not mean that this technological progress makes the world a better place. Like many, I am in the thralls of this consumer myth in the places where I least expect it.

We are, after all, one of those crazy families that gave away their TV set this year. That's right- we don't have a TV. Our kids are clueless about the latest exploits of Dora the Explorer or the how the Bratz feel about halter tops. 

"Choose your books as carefully as you choose your friends," warns a grandmother in Pipher's book. For a woman who treats her books like lovers, the admonition is clear- my neural pathways are constructed by the books and media to which I am exposed. Ultimately, as an adult, I am responsible for creating the architecture of my own brain. As a parent, I am responsible for protecting and encouraging only the best and least harmless materials in the construction of my children's brains. 

We all have our blind spots. Boys are one of them. Pipher writes about the challenges faced by boys in our mediated culture- the tension between messages given by the media and the voice of their conscience, as nourished in their homes. When a boy tells his parents, "You just don't understand," he is absolutely right. How can we understand what it's like to grow up in a culture that sets a standard of "cool" for men in which scoring is always the goal, whether in sports or in human relationships? How can we honestly confront the mixed messages given by media that glorifies killing without remorse and consuming sex as if it were a supersized McValue meal? How can we unravel the unspoken double standard that tells boys to kill and screw without warning them of the cost, whether jail, pregnancy, or emotional detachment that leaves them lonely, lacking the very friendship and intimacy which led them to try and impress others in the first place?

To confront this mixed messages requires us to admit the ways in we are complicit in their formulation. We tell our boys what is right and wrong, then we hand over the remote or iPad that reminds them the extent to which right and wrong are glorified abstractions and unrealistic expectations. We pat them on the head and refuse to acknowledge the way in which their kindness and empathy will be held against them in peer groups. 

"Gentle boys who respect girls are at best ignored and at worst brutalized," writes Pipher. "To be accepted they must do things that are wrong and harmful", things which their peer groups will encourage and reward yet fail to assist them in coping with the consequences. The problem is compounded by the way in which our culture discourages kids from looking to their parents for help with complicated emotions and needs.

"We don't give teens permission to love their parents.... We teach them there's something sick about being close." 

This is tantamount to denying the deepest and most essentially human need of all- the need to be loved and nurtured, the need to find meaning in the way we relate to one another.

Encouraging fatalism and despair

"There is nothing is new under the sun," we promise, when our children express despair over bullying or the images of dead civilians, mothers with children curled around them, on the television set. So our kids learn to keep quiet about the things that shock them. Rather than empower them with tools to make the world a better place, we establish a rationale for passivity. There is nothing you can do. Life sucks. So keep playing that video game. At least you have a chance of scoring. 

Albert Einstein said that our theories determine what we are capable of observing. Rush Limbaugh doesn't see struggling single mothers trying to juggle two jobs and parenting- he sees only evil, selfish women trying to steal taxpayer dollars. If you listen to Rush Limbaugh, chances are you will see things the same way. Like it or not, he educates you and creates your worldview. He tells you what to think and what to care about. He lights that fuse beneath your bottom that makes you angry every time you see a young man wearing a hoodie. Worst of all, he convinces you that the world is nasty place where the ballots are rigged against anyone who considers themselves an "honest American".

I would argue that anyone who considers themself an "honest American" needs to take a step back and do some critical thinking and deconstructing of the phrase itself. The honest American is the one who admits what his lifestyle costs the world and all the children of developing countries. The honest American is one who repents of any "Americanisms" that allow him to justify the desecration of our natural world and its non-American residents.

To argue that change is inevitable is to say that planning and hoping is impossible. Its serves to deprive us of personal agency and identity, to sweep individuals into a dustpan where all are just undifferentiated dust flurries. Telling your kids that "that's the way the world goes round" as if it were a truism rather than just a funny song equips them with a sense of helplessness in facing life's challenges. 

Offering a rather un-erotic sex education

Rather than provide our kids with a rich, compelling sex education, we skim over the technical details and allow the culture of porn to do "the dirty work" for us. Perhaps, deep down, many of us still believe that sex is dirty, something that contaminates those who speak of it. So children learn to have "McSex", to just do it and get it over with and consume it as quickly as possible. The difference is not so much in the people with whom you do it, but in the presence of specific condiments- ketchup, onions, anal, etc. 

Honestly, are you surprised to see teens discussing sex as if it were banal, blase, and possibly even boring? Pardon my excitement, but if the coolest experience in the world (namely, sex) has become run-of-the-mill, what on earth is left to words to like "yearning" and "longing" and "hope"? I like words that represent feelings based on delayed gratification; they give us something to anticipate; they add texture and richness to everyday life. 

Human development occurs within the context of real relationships. We learn from whom we love.

The poverty of consumerism- that feeling of never quite having enough- commodifies things that might otherwise be created, hand-made, seeded between people and allowed to bloom, grow, and blossom in unspeakably beautiful ways.

We're stuff-rich but oh so very soul-poor.

We're theory-laden and yet still desperate for love. All the books which punish people for living as if we truly loved others- for living our way through our loves- throw us back on the market in search of the next book or pill that might fill in the emptiness.

Cars before conscience

I admire the courage it takes for Pipher to say that character has more influence on our longterm happiness than the momentary notion of "self-esteem". To define "will as the ability to act on the basis of one's values". To bemoan the extent to which "cynicism is king". To point out that most teens see conscience- not a car- as a luxury they can't quite afford. 

I wonder how we got to a place where kids feel more comfortable raising money to help pets or animals than fellow human beings. Have we made human-kind as unspeakably dirty as sex? Have we made it easier to show affection for an animal than a fellow human being? Have we made it harder for young folks to determine what they, as individuals, want as opposed to what they have been programmed to want? Have we extolled human nature above and beyond the power of human nurture? And do we really want to live the sort of world that exists as a result of these choices? 

These are important questions to ask- as individuals, as parents, and as families. Relieving kids of the opportunity to participate in discussions about the challenges posed by our culture only disempowers them. Many of us (myself included) are better at teaching our kids to be rebels than helping them understand precisely what they are rebelling against. 

Prophet brings me a bowl of flowers. I put down my pencil for long enough to remember why those books I take as lovers must remain, somehow, as side shows to the real show that unfurls everyday in our home.

In a world that tells us it is "safer not to care", the most daring thing we can possibly do is keep caring. And teaching our children to care, in spite of the cost to their "cool factor". If life is worth living, it must be worth engaging. We must agree to fight battles we can't possibly win just because it is the right thing to do. We must agree to be enthralled and delighted. Perhaps these are the best lesson to impart from our temporary, fragile nests.

Meditations on the uses of anger- and the uselessness of despair.

Still, you cannot believe in uprisings without believing in some possibility of social change, and you cannot believe in positive change without believing that some things are morally preferable to others.

So writes Episcopal priest Garret Keizer in The Enigma of Anger. I console myself with his words as often as I hold his words (somewhat angrily) against others. 

Speaking to my dad or to my in-laws about current events and history only reminds me that the presence of facts does not diminish the prevalence of fictions. We tell ourselves stories based on a compendium of characters and then refuse to accept that any story apart from the one we tell ourselves can matter. 

I’m not good at discerning the precise place where patriotism turns into idolatry. My personal manner of reconciling myself with the mass-murdering apparatus known as the nation-state is an ascetic one. I refuse to add the saccharine of patriotism to the bitter drink, lest it lull me into revisionism.

The drink stays bitter so I’m not tempted to lie about it. 

So why is this drinker of bitter-draughts, the girl who declines to make the drink taste sweet, the idealist? How can we explain the fact that she is the one who believes in hope- believes in the value of protest and picket, finds comfort and fellowship in speaking truth to power- while those who sip from the sweetened tea recline and declare, “That’s just the way the world is….”

“Ever since Eve tasted the fruit,” they declare.

“Eat, drink, and be merry,” they reassure, “for tomorrow we die”.

Or, my personal favorite, “Humans sin and only Jesus is perfect”.

Hallelujah. Amen. Someone pass me that gun so I can take a shot at that hoodie-wearing scoundrel who’s looking for trouble. 

For all my sadness at the human condition, I understand that the American Revolution was not (as some armchair theologians might claim) an act of God but an act of human beings. I understand that human beings are capable of great things and awful things. I cannot understand attempts to mitigate or downplay the difference. 

"The feeling I dread most is not fear but despair: the dim, oppressive sense that the more things change, the more they stay the same," writes Barbara Kingsolver in the first essay of the captivating book of essays aptly titled, Small Wonder. It's a book to which I return often.

The persistence of evil and cruelty is not a sound reason for denying the way in which evil changes shape and form over time. In fact, the extent of this change is usually the reason we fail to acknowledge the most recent form of evil colluding in our daily lives. 

The Boy Scouts now "allow" gay members to scout, but the institution still refuses to permit gay "troop leaders". So a gay father can't lead his scout's troop.

Behind this decision lies the sort of shameful thinking we rarely confront. In this case, the rule is maintained by the unspeakable fear that a gay man is the victim of his own "disturbed" sexuality- a sexuality from which young boys must be protected, one that must never be allowed in a position of leadership. Imagine if single mothers were not allowed to leader Girl Scout troops for fear that their divorces or lack of marriage would "contaminate" young girls. Imagine if skin color determined one's access to leadership positions.

Don't tiptoe around "No"- say it. Set it in stone.

Black Americans are no longer slaves. Things do change. But those Americans who wanted to keep their slaves resorted to the same excuse that "things stay the same"- that change is ultimately impossible, that humans can't help but oppress one another and then validate such oppression by calling it "natural".

What if it is despair- that feeling that nothing you do can make a difference- that keeps us from doing the right thing? Rabid, irrational fear might explain bombing innocent civilians, but it is despair which keeps from acknowledging the horror of what we have done and facing it with courage and humility.

21st Annual Friends of Hurricane Creek community creek clean-up this Saturday.

You can play a part in keeping a local natural resource clean- and enjoy the beautiful spring weather and budding blossoms along the banks of Tuscaloosa's Hurricane Creek. This Saturday, folks who plan to canoe and walk through the park will meet at the Highway 216 Bridge entrance to Hurricane Creek Park. Activities and learning crafts for kids will be available. 

Then, at 1:30 pm, the festivities at Watson's Bend will commence with the bridge dedication followed by a potluck meal and good times with neighbors. If you'd like to bring a dish to the potluck, just add your name and dish to the Facebook page (where you can find what others are bringing as well). 

If you need help getting around, this map should tell you where to go at what time. 

There will be a ticket raffle fundraiser for various wonderful prizes as well as a mulch fundraiser. You can purchase your bags of mulch from FOHC representatives at any time during the day. If you drop by and we haven't met, please take a minute to introduce yourself to me- I love meeting new people, especially those who have a soft spot for preserving the wonder of the natural world.

Will D. Campbell, a man unlike any other.

The first time I heard Will D. Campbell's name was in the context of a conversation with an elderly neighbor whose voice churned confetti and fireworks as she described her favorite "bootleg preacher". I was intrigued- but all that breastmilk-induced oxytocin erased the name from my memory until I ran across it again while reading a book of conversations with Walker Percy. And then again when researching the life of Clarence Jordan.  

Like Clarence Jordan, Will knew what he was up against in racism- a form of excusable disgust and hatred which preachers sought to justify using scriptures and traditions. For Will, it would not be enough to decry the hatred for other races. Instead, he would have to learn to love even the most unlovable human beings.

"I have seen and known the resentment of the racist, his hostility, his frustration, his need for someone upon whom to lay blame and to punish," Campbell wrote in his first book, Race and the Renewal of the Church. 'With the same love that it is commanded to shower upon the innocent victim of his frustration and hostility, the church must love the racist" Therefore, in 1969, on the night before Bob Jones, the Grand Dragon of the North Carolina KKK was shipped off to federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, for contempt of Congress, Campbell was there in the Dragon's Den to celebrate communion with a bottle of bourbon. Later, Campbell talked with James Earl Ray, the man who had murdered Campbell's friend Martin Luther King. When people asked if he really expected to save the souls of such men, Campbell allowed that that would be presumptuous: "They might, however, save mine." (Source: Lawrence Wright)

Given his extensive career in the Christian church, Will often surprised people by confessing that his faith came to him much later than his memorization of scriptures. Though a preacher, Will claims he actually became a Christian when his friend, Jonathan Daniel, was murdered in 1966. Daniel had come from his Episcopal seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to register blacks to vote in the notorious Lowndes County. After walking into into a country store with a white priest and two black friends, Daniel emerged holding a Moon Pie and a soda pop. A sheriff's deputy named Thomas Coleman found this Moon Pie to resemble a threat and decided to resolve the matter with the help of his shotgun. Daniel gave his life for the civil rights movement.

When Campbell heard about Daniel's death, he was visiting his friend PD. East, the colorful and defiant editor of the Petal, Mississippi, newspaper called The Petal Paper.

It was East, years before, who had badgered Campbell into giving him a definition of the Christian message in ten words or less. “We're all bastards, but God loves us anyway," East recalled. “Let's see if your definition of faith can stand the test. Was Jonathan a bastard?"

Campbell was still in shock and deeply grieving for his friend. Mainly to get East to shut up, Campbell admitted that Jonathan was a bastard. “Was Thomas a bastard?" East asked. It was easy enough to agree to that.

Then East pulled his chair around, put his bony hand on Campbell's knee and, staring directly into Campbell glistening eyes, whispered, “Which one of these two bastards do you think God loves most?"

This was the turning point in Campbell's life. He describes it in his memoir, Brother to a Dragonfly.

I walked across the room and opened the blind, staring directly into the glare of the street light. And I began to whimper. But the crying was interspersed with laughter.

He was laughing at himself: ”At twenty years of a ministry which had become, without my realizing it, a ministry of liberal sophistication. An attempted negation of Jesus, [a ministry] of human engineering, of riding the coattails of Caesar ... of looking to government to make and verify and authenticate our morality, of worshipping at the shrine of enlightenment and academia, of making an idol of the Supreme Court, a theology of law and order and of denying not only the Faith I professed to hold but my history and my people - the Thomas Colemans."

I never got over Campbell's Brother To A Dragonfly, which I read en route through the entire opus of Walker Percy. Unlike Percy, Campbell didn't need to play dress-up in order to reveal the nakedness of modern man. Like Wendell Berry, Campbell's sense of "place" oriented his characters in a way that is familiar to anyone who was born in Romania and raised in Alabama, between one place and out the other.

Passages like this one found a nook, a place to sit and simmer, in my mind:

I said something about Hitler taking over the world and none of us being free.

"Brother, nobody is free. Freedom is how much you're willing to do to get people to leave you alone."

"And patriotism? That's just something they sold us. How can you love a country? A country is nothing but a big piece of geography. I love that eighty acres of land up there in Amite County where we were raised. But I can't love three million square miles."

As a piece of southern history, Will's book is unsurpassed. It breaks the heart while mending it. Though Will passed away several years ago, his influence continues to ripple outwards. Here are a few selections from those who knew him...

"Rev. Will D. Campbell, Maverick Minister in Civil Rights Era, Dies at 88" (New York Times)
"Bubba to a gadfly- remembering Will D. Campbell" (Ken Carder)
"Reverend Will D. Campbell, southern racial reconciler" (Southern Spaces)
"The first church of rednecks, white socks, and blue ribbon beer" (Rolling Stone)
"The tragedy of the redneck" (Joel Rieves)
"Apostle to the rednecks" (Phillip Yancey)
Brother to a dragonfly (The Contrary Goddess)
"Brother to a dragonfly" (Paul Greenberg)

One quick way you can make the world a better place right now.

I had big plans for the weekend- massive plans involving backpacks, a tent, the King and myself narrowed by the weather to still-grandiose plans involving the kids, the road, and a visit to Newbern. Ultimately, the plans were abandoned, replaced by the surprising deliciousness of my husband's Red Cabbage Borscht and those notebooks covered in meaningful scribbles which I keep hoping, one day, to revise in a manner worthy of publication.

 

On the unexpectedly lovely side, we made it to Sunday morning services early enough to warrant a stroll through the budding trees on campus.

As I sit and sift through dinner preparations tonight, even the day's beauty fails to distract me from the sense that there was something I should have done- a tiny kernel within those well-wrapped plans that might have made a difference in someone's life. It's the demise of our planned visit to the Newbern Public Library, a current project undertaken by Auburn's Rural Studio, that sticks in my mind. 

Image of library vision from Rural Studio tumblr.

So I return to the website, calculating a way to squeeze the roadtrip into our planned activities for the coming week. It is gazing at pictures of the work in progress that leads my eye down to a tiny link reading "Newbern Library Wish List". Lo and behold, the possibility of books we can donate to the kids of Newbern suddenly appears on my screen, accompanied by the following request:

Select the "ADD GIFT" option and indicate your name as book donor and/or to whom you wish to honor with this gift. By purchasing from this list, you are helping to found a library collection for the community of Newbern, Alabama. The library organization is recently formed with an emphasis on children's learning. Thank you for your support!

Is it silly that I felt a flood of happiness as I purchased Iggy Peck, Architect from the Newbern Library wish list? Such a tiny, little action- and the opportunity to acknowledge Mr. Peanut's hospitality- whisked the mislaid plans from my mind and returned my mind to the dinner at hand.

Sometimes those extra-big plans of the monumental kind can be husked to expose the kernel, the tiny little seed of action which made the plans so exciting in the first place. The plans were first formulated because I wanted to pay tribute to the Rural Studio students building this library for the kids of Newbern. At the heart of the hope was the way in which the little people growing up in Newbern are being honored by this project. We couldn't drive to Newbern this weekend. Yet I could help build their book collection by purchasing a book from the library wishlist.

Why put off until tomorrow what we can do today? Have a look at the Newbern Library Wish List and see if there is something simple that you can do today- right now, this very minute- to help build the Newbern Library. Get little people involved by encouraging them to pick which book your family should gift or the wording of the gift message. 

25 extraordinary people from Alabama for whom I am thankful this Thanksgiving.

The first of 25 extraordinary people from Alabama who made a difference

I am thankful for people who give chunks of their lives out of love and concern for others. In creating this list, I aimed to skip over the sentimental, day-to-day thanks and head straight for the gray matter. Forgive my lack of attention to formal titles- none of these people would be any less significant without added titles and degrees. Their contributions surpass any professional accomplishments to which they may lay claim.

These twenty-five exquisite human beings inspired me, educated me, and gave me the courage to do more than aim for the perfect lawn or household appliances.

In no particular order, here's the first of my twenty-five extraordinary people of Alabama.... The remainder will follow in the coming weeks as I look over the past year and make plans for the year that lies ahead.

1. FAYA ORA ROSE TOURE

Faya Ora Rose Touré is a Harvard-educated Civil Rights activist and litigation attorney who has worked on some of the highest-profile civil rights cases to come before the courts. Touré—who spent most of her career as Rose Sanders until she decided to step away from her "slave name" in 2003—was the first African-American female judge in Alabama and was part of the winning legal team in Pigford vs. Veneman, the largest civil rights case in history. This case led to the payment of a billion dollars in damages to black farmers by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. In addition, Touré is founder of the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma, Alabama, and a founding partner in the law firm of Chestnut, Sanders, Sanders, Pettaway & Campbell, LLC. She uses her many talents to further her message and is a prolific songwriter and playwright, as well as the host of a weekly radio show, Faya's Fire.

Touré was born Rose M. Gaines on May 20, 1945, in Salisbury, North Carolina. Her parents, the Rev. D. A. Gaines and Ora Lee Gaines, taught their six children to conserve so they would have something in life to give back to their community. Training the children by word and deed, Rev. Gaines didn't always adhere to protocol, but he got the job done. "He was a trained minister who didn't always fit the image of what society expected," Touré said in an interview with Contemporary Black Biography (CBB). She notes similar traits in her own personality. Touré has the courage to follow her own drumbeat. She speaks frankly on controversial matters of race, injustice, and education, but said in her CBB interview, "I'm not fearless. I just won't let others define me."

Here mother Ora Lee's ways have rubbed off on Touré as well. For 30 years Ora Lee's strength and support helped Touré run the McRae Learning Center, a private community school Touré founded in 1976 to raise children's reading levels. "My mother made the greatest contribution to that school as she traveled back and forth from Birmingham for over 30 years," Touré told CBB. "People always approach me to say how much my mother's work helped their kids. We had them reading at 3 and 4 years old. Many were starting in the 27th percentile. We raised the level to the 74th percentile. We know the kids' greatness. I'd like to see other schools around the country do the same. That's the challenge."

Touré's community work began at an early age when she organized kids in the neighborhood. Through her teens, however, she remained unsure about what she wanted to do with her life. After graduation from George Clem High School in 1962 she entered Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, graduating Summa Cum Laude in 1966. Still unsure where her career path would take her, she completed a law degree at Harvard in 1969 and was awarded the Herbert Smith Fellowship. That led to an assignment the following year at the National Welfare Rights Organization and the Columbia Center on Social Welfare Policy and Law. In 1971 she worked briefly for the Legal Services Corporation, and opened the law firm of Chestnut, Sanders, Sanders, Pettaway & Campbell, LLC the following year along with her husband, Alabama State Senator Henry Sanders. In 1973 Touré became the first African-American female judge in Alabama, serving as municipal judge until 1977. In 1982 Touré was hired by the Emergency Land Fund for the Department of the Agriculture to conduct a study of black land tenure and document land loss by African Americans.

Through the years Touré's legal skills led her to several major cases. In one important case she teamed with noted attorney Johnnie Cochran to seek reparations from corporations who profited from slavery. Seeking academic reparations for African-American students for what she calls "400 years of miseducation and discrimination" is one of Touré's latest projects. She is also preparing a case on behalf of black women who suffered sexual abuse during slavery. It challenges current laws that, Touré said, "do not offer equal justice from sexual assaults and misconduct towards black women." 

Touré's day job never kept her away from her extensive community work. In 1982 she co-founded the Black Belt Arts and Cultural Center, an arts-based community organizing group. She founded the National Voting Rights Museum in 1993 to tell the story of the Voting Rights Movement and founded the Bridge Crossing Jubilee in 1965 to commemorate the Selma-to-Montgomery Civil Rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. She co-founded the Coalition of Alabamians Reforming Education (C.A.R.E.) in 1993. In the 1990s Touré spearheaded a movement against the practice of "tracking" in Selma public schools, a controversial system that can limit education and career opportunities. Touré founded the 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement in 1985. The group educates young people about the political process and encourages their involvement. It has chapters around the United States and in Mali and Senegal, West Africa.

Mothers of Many (MOMS), a group Touré founded for low-income women, has opened three businesses under Touré's direction. Touré founded the Replacing Inequities in School with Excellence Network (R.I.S.E.). Their mission is to fight the practice of tracking and work for better education nationwide. She co-founded the Africans in America Renaissance Project. The organization provides land for purchase and development by African Americans in South Africa. Touré also founded MAAT Leadership High, an all-male school.(Source)

Faya Rose Toure spent this past Tuesday night in an Alabama jail for trying to speak out against the city of Selma's decision to donate land for a monument to General Nathan Bedford Forrest. 

After losing the Battle of Selma, Forrest returned to Tennessee and resumed his successful business activities. Along the way he also helped to organize the Ku Klux Klan. Members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans view Forrest as a hero of the first order, a brave leader known as the "Wizard of the Saddle." Critics say "wizard" was an apt description, as in Grand Wizard of the Klan.

For those unsure of what the Bedford monument represents, Occidental Dissident speaks fairly clearly for his supporters. Responding to Toure and others, he says that "Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest is best remembered for the manner in which he dealt with the Black Undertow". He elaborates: 

How would the real Nathan Bedford Forrest have dealt with the likes of Al Sharpton and Faya Rose Toure? Would he have responded to such an insult like Connie Chastain or the Virginia Flaggers in Richmond? White Southerners can learn a lot from Nathan Bedford Forrest. Foremost among these lessons is how we should have responded to Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement.

Note: If there had been more Nathan Bedford Forrests and fewer Connie Chastains in the last generation, Selma wouldn’t be an uninhabitable Black Undertow city today.

The loss of this bronze bust of Forrest is less important than the loss of Selma, Dallas County, and the whole Black Belt region to White people, not to mention Birmingham, because MLK succeeded in getting the Voting Rights Act shoved down our throats.

It's hard not to cringe when I read this. In the same way that the statues of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu were offensive to Romanians that lost friends, family, and hope under his totalitarian regime, a monument to Gen. Forrest should not be housed in a public space. If a man wants to build a monument to a person who used his power and authority to oppress other human beings, he should do so in the privacy of his own home or backyard. No one should be forced to participate in this particular fetishization of historic nastiness.

After the revolutions of 1989, Romanians removed all monuments to Ceausescu. Residents of Selma should ensure that no monuments to vulgar racists are funded and erected in the first place.

 

The spirit of Selma is alive in efforts to keep the KKK from being honored in local history.

Faya is married to Alabama State Sen. Hank Sanders. When she's not being arrested by hyperactive local police, Faya serves as the co-founder and chair of the Direct Action Committee of Saving Ourselves (S.O.S.), a Movement of 32 organizations for Justice and Democracy.

Her lack of complacency serves as a reminder that we must insist on our dignity as human beings first and foremost- that we cannot rely on our elected officials to do the daily ethics for us. Alabama is a better place as a result of this woman who refuses to take complacency- "That's just the way things, are honey... You can't change the world"- for a serious answer. You can, of course, sign this petition against the erection of a disgraceful monument in Selma. 

More to explore

C.A.R.E. 
Faya speaks to Selma City Council (Video and news report)
Article on "Moral Mondays" and Toure (Greene County Democrat)
"An African American Manifesto on Education" (Faya Toure)
"An Opinion on the Death Penalty" (Faya Toure)
"View from Selma: Can Obama Debate Be Colorblind?" (NPR)

Help the Friends of Briarcliff Park win their battle against the DeKalb County machine.

Green space at the former Briarcliff Branch of the DeKalb County Public Library is shown on Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013, in Atlanta. A neighborhood coalition is gaining momentum to turn the county-owned property into a community center and park rather than rezoning the facility for commercial investment, as proposed by the library. Photo credit and caption: Friends of Briarcliff Park.

My in-laws are knee-deep in the grubby, exciting, and sometimes frustrating activity known as community activism. It is a long and sordid story of the typical backroom-deals-with-private-cronies sort; the details made me feel like I needed a shower. I am proud of Suebee and Pops for fighting to leave a lasting positive land-use choice in their community. Yet I know how discouraging the fight can become when you realize that your local representative actually only represents a few wealthy developers (as opposed to all those voters to which he owes his election). 

In a brief essay from The Impossible Will Take A Little While, activist K.C. Golden ruminated on how environmentally destructive choices become what we call "inevitable". His thoughts reminded me of Vaclav Havel's insistence that you do the right thing not for the sake of winning but for the sake of living as a free, moral agent, in spite of what seems socially acceptable. Golden believes the chilling effect of inevitability....

"....starts when the people who will benefit from these choices simply begin to assert their inevitability. People seem especially receptive to inevitability right now. We're comforted by the notion that amid all the uncertainty and confusion- the restructuring and rightsizing and layoffs and insecurity- some larger forces are at work toward a predetermined outcome. We're sort of relieved to hear that something's inevitable, even if it's not necessarily something we like. It clarifies things. It's more pragmatic to be resigned to the inevitable than to chart a new course through the chaos. So the myth of inevitability spreads and the prophecy fulfills itself. "

Charting "a new course through the chaos" is precisely what the courageous Friends of Briarcliff Park are doing. They are fighting the myth of inevitability tended them with slick smiles and well-pressed suits by the men and women who realized long ago that serving the people didn't pay cash dividends. 

And this is exactly what their Commissioner is trying to do- he wants to make the citizens believe that everything was decided long ago and there is just nothing anyone can do about it anymore. He wants them to understand how he feels their frustration, but, again, his "hands are tied". And this is exactly what the Friends of Briarcliff Park must refuse to believe. Not even when the bulldozers arrive and sit idle on the site. Because, as Golden writes:

"If the proponents of a particular course of action can get a critical mass of folks to believe that it's a foregone conclusion, pretty soon it will be."

"Inevitably we do have choices to make. Failing to make them consciously isn't failing to make them at all: It's just falling for the inevitability trap. It's just giving ourselves an excuse for allowing the wrong choices to be made... Among all the reasons for making the wrong choice, I think the least satisfying, the least noble, the hardest one to forgive ourselves for is: 'It wasn't up to me'."

This is what it means to be an active citizen. Winning or losing matters, but it matters much less than the community you engage and enable by stepping into the arena of local politics. If you live in Atlanta or would like to support the community-building efforts of a motley Atlanta neighborhood crew, mosey on over to their Facebook page and give them a Like. In their own words:

The Friends of Briarcliff Park is a grass-roots neighborhood organization that formed when concerned residents learned that county officials wanted to re-zone the closed neighborhood library from residential to a commercial status. Children, families and senior citizens lost their cherished local library in 2009 and the building and it's beautiful property have been closed since then. The area is perfect for an outdoor playground and park, with a community center for all to enjoy. We envision a bright future for this neglected facility.

Hey Friends, keep up the good fight for local democracy. That's what I was taught the United States of America was all about. 

Lamenting the post-tornado development of Tuscaloosa.

The plan for Tuscaloosa's future.

Since the tragedy of the 2011 tornadoes, Tuscaloosa has been rebuilding itself in accordance with the Tuscaloosa Forward Plan, a visionary document filled with the trendiest and most attractive aspects of sustainable development. Only the gnarliest curmudgeon would find the plan's designs unappealing.

The description of a winding greenway, lined with trees and sidewalks, connecting various parts of the town, opening the possibility of increased pedestrian and bicycle transport, was thrilling. Alas, areas previously designated for the greenway are now being sold to developers in the process of building yet another fancy Melrose-Place type apartment for university students. While it's nice that today's college students will have the opportunity to live in what could only have been sitcom-style luxury during my college years, all the massive new buildings and apartments are edifices of transience- a tremendous outlay intended to make fast money from temporary residents of what no longer feels like a town. 

Of course, "community" is not much of a concern to outside developers. Orlando's Pat Chisholm threatened the City Council with what might arise in the stead of his plan for a Hilton hotel in a heart of downtown Tuscaloosa. Unfortunately, Chisholm's one-track mind fails to see the costs of more hotels for local hotel owners- he has only to drive a few miles to see at least four abandoned hotels and lodging areas along McFarland Boulevard. And, of course, why should he care? Chisholm just wants to "develop Tuscaloosa", to "help recovery", to "provide consumers with the best possible product" and maybe to make a little money on the side. 

Filed as an LLC in the state of Florida on October 14, Chisholm's "The Balcony Tuscaloosa" promises to add nothing that does not already exist- except money that will flow into Florida, of course. And maybe a little cash for local contractors over a brief period of time. 

“The only true and effective "operator's manual for spaceship earth" is not a book that any human will ever write; it is hundreds of thousands of local cultures.” 
                        Wendell Berry, What Are People For?

But it's complicated, this rebuilding process. Part of the complexity comes from the very fact that Tuscaloosa needs to be "rebuilt" in the first place. All the associations and memories related to specific places- all the insider landmarks and pieces of local history, all the evocations- must be reforged as well. In addition to the horrors of physical destruction, natural disaster tears open a hole in our sense of community and shared history.

Walking through the treeless streets of east Tuscaloosa where the ground was covered in power lines and homes turned to rubble, we were all disoriented- nothing we knew stayed the same. It was hard to recognize our "place" amid the turmoil and destruction. So many brave people, groups and individuals, struggling to find and create a new context in which the stories of Tuscaloosa lives could continue. So many humans fighting despair with a unassailable, generative hope. So many community activists finding ways to serve people outside their social circles and economic milieus. It was all the more stunning because the sentiments, undergirded by this fantastic hope- were genuine.

So it is all the more disturbing to see the endless assortment of lifestyle apartments and condos lining the streets. All the more wrenching to see the plethora of empty lots in Alberta City abandoned by businesses who can no longer afford to build or rent there. All the more disappointing to discover that, well, it's just business as usual here in Tuscaloosa, Alabama- and business as usual, of course, explains why the wealthy and the poor inhabit different parts of town.

Our values rub shoulders with our personal desires. A better way to express this would be to admit that we are so rarely ready with our recyling box that we find ourselves having to drive it to the drop-off rather than putting it out for the waste management companies to pick up. And that's on a good week. We are less perfect than we presume. Teaching my kids about sustainable living is a constant reminder that we could be living more sustainably. While we've managed to get rid of paper towels and napkins, we still can't get our act together on recycling. No one is perfect. If you catch yourself thinking that you might be the exception, sit down and read some Howard Zinn with your kids. That ought to clear your mind real quickly.

The inequality continues. The uneven distribution of educational resources diminishes the likelihood of the neighborhood schools which would require less cross-town traffic and less air pollution. Those who aren't zoned for Rock Quarry set their hearts on the Tuscaloosa Magnet School. Again, there are no easy answers. Every parent wants the best for their children. Every parent hopes their child will do "better" and accomplish more. Yet some children, born into families without money and time, are trapped by the inequality of opportunity. Every time a child hears adults complaining about "welfare moms" or "single moms", he is taught that kids from families on welfare are worthy of his scorn. Few parents say this directly, but no child is so dumb as to misunderstand the difference between what we say publicly and what we mutter in the privacy of our own homes.

"Being considerate of others will take your children further in life than any college degree."
                Marian Wright Edelmen

Marian Wright Edelmen, one of the most inspiring Americans that comes to mind, has always argued that being born into money is a matter of luck, not value. We agree in theory, but our actions often contradict our beliefs. It is living among other people- some richer, some poorer- that weaves a web of shared concerns and identity. We live in communities. Sometimes these communities prevent us from loving others in the world. 

Sometimes those communities require rebuilding. Sometimes those communities are torn in half by special interests who see dollar signs where others see a park for their grandchildren. And sometimes the profitable option is not the ethical one. 

As more condos and apartments sprout up to replace the trees torn down by the tornados, I wonder why not even tragedy teaches us the value of a tree. The homo sapiens sapiens has left a legacy of destruction and devastation across the planet. Just say the words "improved property values" and everyone will leave their ethics at the door. It's hard to be hopeful when I look around at where the post-tornado planning has left us in East Tuscaloosa and Alberta City. One thing is certain- the hope always returns. And the way in which it returns has nothing to do with the promises of local politicians and everything to do with the way my kids gobble up everything still beautiful in our world.

OUR KOINONIA EXPERIENCE: Discovering our spiritual footprints.

We ventured out along the dirt road the meadows near the pecan orchards, back towards the creek and the reknowned Picnic Hill. The roosters had their say amid the chirps and the steady sound of hammers in the hands of a few volunteers from the Fuller Center for Housing. I found myself chasing the little people, lamenting their joie de vivre which often felt more like lack of self-control or obedience. Again, the old question- why can't they drop everything and obey me? Again, the sharp answer, also a question- why do I need to feel this sort of power over them?

The king created a lovely parting gift- a journal filled with verses, photos, poems, and daily meditations. I longed for the free time to sit down and pore through its pages. Stealing moments and glimpses only to find myself conscious of the way Milla's shrill shrieking (a new habit) strangled the soft sounds of nature and creation.

The ugliness within- here it comes- the true test of my faith, the way in which I allow myself to feel that the little people grate every available nerve. My hands lay idle, yet filled with the care and nurture, the possibilities of need to which I must continuously tend. I found myself distracted by the barriers within my own heart to accepting the mystery of life. It seems I would prefer it to be a pretty picture that I have designed and painted without any input from Max, Micah, or Milla- a picture of my own making which I can then encourage everyone to admire. 

Does it seem silly that I thanked God for their heedlessness and disobedience at that moment when I most wanted them to sit down, plait the grass, and obey?

The little people collecting fallen limbs from the field.

In an effort to make ourselves useful, we picked up fallen tree limbs and branches from the soccer field. Max stacked them around the base of a tree- with Micah and Milla quickly joining him. Then the kids had a contest to see who could snap the largest number of branches into kindling. Watching them break twigs, arguing and laughing, building tiny piles of tinder in a race against each other, even their competition offered a truce of sorts- a moment to stop, breathe, and appreciate the lives we've been given to live and love. 

After carting a few bags of kindling over the the bonfire pit, Max returned just in time to find Milla crying over a recent foray into a fire-ant hill. Her tiny plump feet were covered in red welts. I made a practical discovery with vast implications for future fire-ant incidents. Iodine, applied heavily with a cottonball, works wonders on fire-ant bites. After an hour, Milla's welts dried out, removing every trace of the white bumps that characterize a fire ant's vicious communication. The little things should never cease to fill our hearts with gratitude.

Another source of gratitude came with the development of a more other-regarding awareness. There's a consciousness that comes from sharing a house with six hard-working interns- a house that is open to us whether we have money to donate $30 a night or not. I found myself watching my voice and its volume, standing to walk into the adjacent room in order to talk to the kids rather than shout across the rooms. By facing them up close, the way in which I communicated also changed- my words and language softened by the tenderness of flesh and proximity. 

Alongside this re-humanized way of relating, I was struck by the way in which communal property earned a sort of respect from me that private property rarely evokes. Oddly, it mattered that we put the chairs back in the way we had found them. Knowing that everyone draws water from the same well, we took short showers and shared bathwater to make minimal use of this precious resource. Micah reminded us to turn off the lights and the fan. 

We became conscious of our footprints not just on this world from an ecological standpoint but on the lives of others around us. A loud song from our room might keep others awake in the room next door. A yell might jar someone's prayers. In a community where residents live nearby, there is an implicit understanding that one must honor the humanity and spirit of other persons. The way we express our grievances ripples in circles around us.

That second night at Koinonia, on our starlight walk, all four of us talked about our newly-discovered "spiritual footprints", or the way in which our spirits impress and affect the world around us through through words, thoughts, and deeds. It was a heady and beautiful revelation, one with which I am still reckoning.

And yet I would lack the honor of this reckoning if it weren't for the spirited excitement of the little people that share this space under the stars with me. Perhaps this is because the things I think I want are not those which allow my spirit to grow. Instead, the things I want (i.e. peace, silence, obedience, control) encourage spiritual statis, keeping things as they are, exposing me to familiar delights and comforts. Being broken can be beautiful thing.

OUR KOINONIA EXPERIENCE: The first day at the farm.

Milla chases a kitty towards the herb and vegetable gardens at Koinonia.

Having been raised in a home where the basement often served as temporary residence for an Eastern Orthodox monks, nuns, and artists, my heart holds a special fondness for monastic communities and their devoted denizens. As an intentional community, the days at Koinonia follow a deliberate pattern which soon feels like a flow- a rhythm subject to changes in volume and tone yet unfluctuating.  

There is a daily discipline. For the residents and interns, communal life begins at 7:45 a.m. with silent meditation and prayer at the chapel, followed by morning devotions at 8:15. On weekdays, after chapel, everyone stands in a circle on the dew-covered grass and discusses daily work assignments and service. 

“Faith is not belief in spite of evidence but a life in scorn of the consequences.” 
                Clarence Jordan, The Substance of Faith: And Other Cotton Patch Sermons

We woke up the first morning to a room bathed in light and the unmistakable sound of roosters crowing nearby. Still tired from the drive, I lingered in bed with the kids, listening to the roosters and trying to decide if we could get dressed quickly enough to make it to chapel.

My long-haired Max, still flirting with sleep, observed, "Hey, maybe the roosters are like church bells here..." Clearly, we were being called to chapel by the combination of ethereal morning sunlight and rooster bells. Groggy and hungry, I followed the kids out the door just a few minutes too late. Before the guilt set in, the little people started gallivanting through the bright green grass, sniffing flowers (and weeds), exclaiming over spectacular "fire ant castles", and befriending a couple of very friendly kittens.

Clearly, we were being called... to life.  So we set out to explore the farm. The seasonal interns that shared suites and rooms with us in the Jubilee House were returning from chapel. Clad in rubber books and carrying coffee cups, they stopped to greet us warmly before setting off on their assigments for the day. Lacking an assignment, we set off down a path following the kittens.

Max keeps an eye on the ladies who lay the eggs.

Lo and behold, the henhouse awaited us. Max tried to classify the feathered friends while the girls avoided a rather startled turkey that lumbered around the corner of an old wooden shed. 

And then we discovered "three little piggies", to borrow Milla's phrasing.

Soon all three kids found themselves enamored of pigs.

Milla carried our cardboard butterfly book from path to path.

The Koinonia bell rings three times a day for a moment of silent meditation and prayer. Whereever you may be working or studying, whether in the fields or in the bakery, the bell rings at 10:30 am, 3:30 pm, and 8:30 pm. As the days slipped past, I found myself listening for the sound of the bell to divide the morning and afternoon, to make me aware, again, of the rhythm behind everyone's actions and intentions.

At the 10:30 ringing, folks congregate in the coffee house to brew a couple of pots and share their thoughts with one another. Coffee creamer waits in the pitcher of fresh milk coaxed from resident cows at the first crack of dawn by Brendan; something about the coffee (probably the creamer) tasted sublime. We introduced ourselves to a couple of Koninians, though names and faces still tended to run together at this point.

A charming intern named Susie shared her own experiences as a home-schooled child. As we chatted, I found myself thinking (probably contrary to her own impressions) that her independent spirit and openness were exactly the sorts of qualities I treasure in Max, Micah, and Milla- the qualities I hope to honor and cultivate, the qualities that may one day lead them to choose the sort of journey that brings them back, as interns, to Koinonia. 

My restless desire to help somehow rubbed against the three little people who needed my guidance and care. In my imaginary world, of course, I could volunteer while somehow juggling the needs of three kids (one still potty training). But reality intervened to put a kink in my plans. Trying to avoid the sense of annoyance- "I came here to help and then but for the small folks"- I reminded myself that I was here to serve and to learn; and that the two did not have to take the form I imagined.

I closed my eyes, counted to ten backwards, and vowed to stay open to what the surroundings, and the spirit that filled them, wanted me to learn. Even if it was something as unexciting as the realization that my own impatience and eagerness often stands in the way of my humility towards the daily tasks and demands of life. 

Milla stares down a goose outside the dining hall.

We camped out at Jubilee House sharing Clarence Jordan stories and writing (or coloring) poems and hymns until the lunch bell rang. Then we wandered over to the dining hall for what would be our first communal meal- an experience that truly merits a post of its own, one which I look forward to sharing later this week. The short version is that the shared meal time transformed my understanding of communion and fellowship. The meal took two rituals which had managed to stay separate and brought them together with all the force and power of an intergalactic collision. 

I think we ate a few of these delicious flowers at lunch in the salad.

Our explorations took us to the town of Americus and then back to the farm, where we read, wandered, chatted, and played before meeting everyone again at dinner. I kept finding funny stories- tales of Clarence- in books and magazines, stories I read to the little people over laughs and giggles. Stories like this one.  

Once when he was being given a tour of a new church building, the pastor pointed to the cross on the steeple. The pastor said something like, "That cross alone cost $10,000."

Clarence said, "You got cheated. Times were when Christians could get them for free."

"Clarence was a funny farmer," Micah declared. 

The sun set without a sound. As Micah and Milla changed into their pajamas ande debated whether or not to brush their teeth, I read the free copy of Koinonia Farm Chronicle laying on the table in our room. Just reading it made the world feel like a better place- the kind of place in which it made sense that I never once locked a car door or a room door during our stay. Once everyone finished their pre-bed preparations, we changed our minds about the bed and set out on one of our "starlight walk", a tradition quickly started under the vast, starlit Koinonia skies. 

"Mom, we're really just tiny things," said Max, staring upwards from the center of the meadow where we settled and snuggled in the tall grass. 

"No Max!", replied Micah, huffy as always. "Milla is tiny but I am big- my feet are big too!"

The lull left a space for me to speak, maybe to soothe the misunderstanding by reasserting the hierarchies of big, small, and in-between. Older, younger, wise- all the known quantities- felt too heavy to handle in that open field. Something about the beautiful night skies always steals the words from my lips.

Making sense of language pales next to the mysteries of existence- the wonder of all that remains ineffable. So we talked about the word "ineffable" instead. And then we sat together, all four on the verge of a shiver, and paid a silent tribute to the ongoing ineffability of things.

Previously, I blogged a little bit about the history of Koinonia. Stay tuned for the next post about our Koinonia experience...

OUR KOINONIA EXPERIENCE: The arrival and introduction.

What we saw when woke up at Koinonia Farms and the dew soaked our shoes.

A few weeks ago, we took a little trip that may have changed our lives. The kids and I drove down to Americus, Georgia in search of Koinonia Farm, an intentional Christian community started by Clarence Jordan way back in the 1940's. We didn't know what to expect of the experience- only that it had been on my list of hopes for a long time and calendars finally cleared to make it possible.

Since the king had to keep up appearances of having a "real job" during the week, he remained in Tuscaloosa then drove down on Friday and joined us for the weekend. This left me and the munchkin-heads driving alone at night along the winding backroads of Georgia looking for a tiny slice of history that managed to live its way into the present.

Koinonia first came to my attention a few years ago while planning and preparing the Local History Workshop for homeschoolers. Trying to find local notables for the kids to "reenact" at the final gathering, I discovered that Millard and Linda Fuller, founders of Habitat for Humanity, once lived in Tuscaloosa before they sold their fancy lives and moved to Koinonia in search of meaning over money.

Millard Fuller's relationship with a former Baptist preacher by the name of Clarence Jordan played a significant role in the founding of Habitat. I caught a whiff of tantalizing details. The skeleton of story never left my mind, though the flesh of it needed filling. I vowed to learn more about this Baptist pacifist preacher who managed to anger ever respectable, success-craving social group in the town of Americus. 

Finally, I learned.... through immersion. For almost a week, we wandered around Koinonia, chatting with members, interns, and volunteers, as well as reading every book I could find on the topic. When we weren't gobbling down cinnamon pecans, we were asking questions and devouring answers. I wanted to understand why Clarence founded a separate community rather than work within the existing nearby town of Americus. I needed to see what sharing meant apart from cliches and abstractions. The kids, of course, spent the week roamschooling the history of civil rights movement and life on a permaculture-based farm. 

In the early 1940's, Clarence and his wife Florence Jordan set about to change their world alongside Martin England and his wife, two missionaries with a similar frame of reference.  The Jordans and the Englands established Koinonia Farm as a communal, interracial farming community. Their model came from the verses of Acts 2:43-47 and Acts 4:32-36. The two couples envisioned a community whose members would eat and work together, sharing their property, their labor and their lives. The act of breaking bread together- communion- took on a special significance as they sought to develop a racially-integrated community based on love and fellowship. Soon, Sumter County residents began to criticize Koinonia residents for having been conscientious objectors during World War II. 

From where we stand, it's hard to grasp how radical Koinonia seemed to its fellow Georgians. At its founding, the civil rights movement hadn't yet gained a threshold. For the first decade after 1942, Koinonia grew slowly. The hard work of racial reconciliation and building trust with local black neighbors took a fair share of time. After all, a black man or woman invited to share a meal with a white man or woman back in those days had every reason to suspect a ruse. Segregation was enforced through social conventions and norms- the force of the law wasn't needed to keep whites from forming intimate, true relationships with blacks. But the Jordans and the Englands keep sowing their tiny seeds, nurturing buds where they blossomed and tending to the growing network of human beings in what was becoming a special part of "the beloved community".

Soon, select Sumter County residents began to criticize Koinonia residents for having been conscientious objectors during World War II. In 1950, the Rehobeth Baptist Church, the place of worship for most members of Koinonia, voted to remove the names of six Koinonians from its membership roll because church members believed that the Koinonians were trying to integrate the church. The "integration" in question occurred when the Jordans brought a visiting Indian Hindu friend along to observe worship services. Perhaps having had so little exposure to members of other races led the church elders to confuse an Indian with a black American. 

Meanwhile, in nearby Americus, the Ku Klux Klan was enjoying a cultural renaissance among the middle classes. For professionals and hoighty-toighty types, the formation of the national White Citizens' Council in 1954 proved a boon. With the WCC, local segregationists and racists found a vehicle to act as a political and economic lobby for their darkest sentiments while maintaining their positions of leadership as Rotarians and citizens. Unlike the KKK, the WCC rejected violent tactics to maintain segregation. In the place of cross-burnings, Council members used economic boycotts and social stigmatization to maintain white privilege in towns across the South. 

By 1956, Koinonia had 65 members, 15 of which were black. For the first decade, Koinonians managed live without much interest from the town of Americus. By the 1950's, however, the rising power of the WCC and the beginning of the civil rights movement drew unwanted attention. A persistent campaign of drive-by shootings, bombings and other forms of terrorism and violence began. The work of farming was complicated by the daily fear of reprisal. Koinonia members worried about attacks on their children. 

In 1956, Clarence's unsuccessful endorsement of the applications of two African Americans to Georgia State University in Atlanta precipitated two years of vandalism, legal investigations, and violence, as well as a decade of economic boycott against Koinonia Farm. The successful farming enterprise halted. 

Always on the look-out for a way in which to "serve" their fellow man, the Klan bombed Koinonia's little roadside nut stand. Undeterred, the group rebuilt the stand only to have it blown up again. Having gotten the message, Koinonia switched to selling nuts by mail order, with the slogan: "Help us ship the nuts out of Georgia!" Thus Koinonians adapted by developing a mail-order pecan business, which depended on purchases from people across the United States who had learned of Koinonia's plight from the national news media.

According to Cotton Patch for the Kingdom by Anne Louse Coble, a band of men from the popular Ku Klux Klan showed up one night with some news for the Jordans and the Englands. "We understand you been taking your meals with the nigger," said their spokesman, "and we're here to tell you we don't allow the sun to set on anybody who eats with niggers."

Clarence couldn't resist. With a smile, he turned to the KKK spokesman and replied:

"I'm a Baptist preacher and I just graduated from the Southern Baptist Seminary. I've heard about people who had power over the sun, but I never hoped to meet one."

The Klansmen, one of whom had a Baptist preacher for a father, understood that Koinonia would be a thorn in the side of their attempts to keep Americus (and America) "racially pure" through segregation. Maybe the only thing Clarence could have done to further infuriate them would have been to start whistling "Jesus Loves the Little Children", a Baptist Sunday School staple. 

It was these little things, like the lyrics of "Jesus Loves the Little Children", alongside obvious big things, like Clarence's understanding of the New Testament after earning his doctorate in Greek, that made it impossible for him to play by the rules of his culture. And it was his unabiding commitment to love and fellowship that drew pilgrims and wanderers from all around the world to this small farm somewhere in Georgia. I found myself comforted at being just another pilgrim in a long line of names and faces drawn by the dream Clarence left behind.

Jubilee House, where we spent our days and nights in a cozy suite complete with kitchen and all the settings. 

We arrived around 8 or 9 p.m. with restless little people and their excited, nervous mother. A young intern greeted me- there was a group of five or six reading aloud and chatting on the front porch of the Jubilee House when we arrived- and showed me to our apartment. A big part of me wanted to go jump into a chair and chat with the interns, learn their stories, but the other part of me knew the singing and dancing that follows me wherever I go might be disruptive. It was a peaceful scene- and we four were sounding anything but peaceful.

Koinonia was the birthplace of so many amazing social projects and nonprofits, including Habitat for Humanity, Jubilee Partners, Prison Jail Project, and Fuller Center for Housing, among others. I found myself wondering if those conversations had taken place around the table at Jubilee House. Walking through history demands the ability to inhabit the mystery of "place"- to see how even a wobbly nightstand offers signficance and inspiration. We whispered and hugged, happy to begin another adventure, this one in place imbued with unseen wonders and whys.

 

 Max explores the playground castle across from Jubilee House.

So we settled into our apartment, slipped on some pajamas, and then ventured out the back door to sit in a field and stare at the amazing moon and her sister stars covering every square inch of the sky. Milla marveled over "all those stars" while Max and Micah invented new constellations from the myriad of twinkles. 

The sign above the screened-in porch.

The easiest way to keep up with the latest at Koinonia is through the Facebook page. If you are in the Americus area this weekend, Koinonia is co-hosting an event with Tree of Life, an interfaith group that seeks to provide conferences and educational opportunities to help make this a more just and peaceful world in which to live. Four Koinonians traveled into the Holy Lands with Tree of Life- and they will share what they learned in their peacemaking efforts. Contact information is available at the FB link.

Stay tuned for the next installment of our Koinonia experience....

Handmade Holiday event to benefit Books 2 Prisons Project.

Though I'm not going to have a table this year, it's a wonderful group of people whose actions benefit the community at large in silent, unassuming and very important ways. Mark your calendars and bring family or friends to do a little holiday shopping that supports local artisans as well as the Books 2 Prisons Project.

Honoring Jon Daniels' life and love.

Pilgrims in Hayneville hold an icon of Jonathan Daniels on this year's pilgrimage.

If you do a quick online search for the name "Jon Daniels", you'll find multiple links to the manager of a major sports team. What you probably won't find, however, is a link to the "Jon Daniels" that made such a difference in the world as we have come to know it.

Jonathan Myrick Daniels (March 20, 1939 – August 20, 1965) was an Episcopal seminarian, killed for his work in the American civil rights movement. His death helped galvanize support for the civil rights movement within the Episcopal church. He is regarded as a martyr in the Episcopal church. The wikipedia entry offers more facts and details. Now I'll offer my own shrivelled synposis.

While Jon was studying at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the spring of 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. put out a call for students and clergy to come to Alabama and participate in a march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery. The students debated how to respond to a call from the dark- a darkness made more palpable by its social and intellectual distance. Tim Abbott shares his father's own encounter with King's call, as well as with Jon Daniels:

Dad describes his own growing activism and the late night conversations with his fellow seminarians in which "we were honing our positions and our hearts on what had to be done."  He remembers his classmate Jonathan Daniels as a complex man, and totally non-violent. "I was in a very different place than he was, in terms of active activism and spirituality" he told me.  "In his liturgical way he could sing the Magnificat and feel as if that was his calling, a true Epiphany, and I wasn't there yet.  I was studying religion rather than living it the way he was.  I was much closer to the activism, on the verge, but there were too many easy rationalizations for not going down to Selma.  They weren't about self-protecting - I was not as concerned about personal harm, though perhaps I should have been - but felt I had obligations at school...When he went to Selma with the 1st wave, a couple of seminarians went with him..."

Thus Jon answered the call. And then he missed his bus back to Cambridge. Feeling pulled by the social breakdown he witnesses in Alabama, Jon stayed behind in Selma the rest of that semester to help the civil rights movement.  He returned to Cambridge for his final exams, and then went back to Alabama in July. Because something unspeakable kept pulling this highly-disciplined, non-flamboyant, dedicated young seminarian back...

There was a moment, of course, when Jon’s commitment to the beloved community became clear. This moment came prior to his time in Selma at a time when he was working in Wilcox County, specifically in the town of Camden, where sharecropping remained the primary industry for blacks. In Camden, Jon first experienced tear gas and came to see the ribald fear of blacks to become a casualty of the march for their own freedom.

He found himself inhabiting his own "existential moment". To have an existential moment is to become aware of the fact that our lives have signficance and that we exist within them- that we are responsible for them and to a spiritual sense of self characterized by a concern for integrity. An older man who lives on my street likes to call those moments "epiphanies"; I'm inclined to follow his judgement. 

The impact of this epiphany on Jon's faith was life-giving. He wrote:

My hostility really lasted until last week. I think it was when I got teargassed leading a march in Camden that I began to change. I saw that the men who came at me were themselves not free: it was not that cruelty was so sweet to them (though I’m afraid sometimes it is) but that they didn’t know what else to do. Even though they were white and hateful and my enemy, they were human beings, too. I found myself feeling a kind of grim affection for them, at least a love that was real and ‘existential’ rather than abstract….. Last week in Camden I began to discover a new freedom in the Cross: freedom to love the enemy. And in that freedom, the freedom (without hypocrisy) to will and to try to set him free.

On August 14th, Daniels was arrested for protesting against a "whites only" store, and he was sent to a county jail in Haynesville, Alabama, along with several others.  After their release on August 20th, Daniels, along with a Catholic priest and two young African-Americans, went to a local store to get a soft drink.  They were met at the door by the store's owner, Tom Coleman, who was carrying a shotgun.  When Coleman aimed the gun at 17 year old Ruby Sales, Daniels pushed her away, and he caught the full impact of the blast in his chest, killing him instantly.

The story of his murder was reported nationally in the immediate aftermath of his death, and once again after his killer was acquitted by an all-white Alabama jury.

Jon completed his college education at Virginia Military Institute, where he was a valedictorian, before deciding to attend seminary. This is his VMI class photograph.

As a seminarian, Jon struggled to continue his studies while fulfilling his spiritual calling to serve the torn communities of our state. Soon, his experiences in Alabama began to inform and supplement his theological education; the abstractions of theory rubbed shoulders with the reality of love in an angry, selfish world. It became hard for Jon to separate the texts from the people he encountered along the way. For his theology Professor William J. Wolf, Jon submitted a paper he’d prepared during the summer entitled “Theological Reflections on My Experience in Selma”. In it, he described his experiences as the source of a "living theology", a faith lived anew in each day of one's life, a love lived with immanence and resolve:

All of this is the raw material for living theology.  And yet in as deep a sense, from my point of view, it is the product of living theology.  The doctrines of the creeds, the enacted faith of the sacraments, were the essential preconditions of the experience itself.  The faith with which I went to Selma has not changed: it has grown.  Darkening coals have kindled. Faith has taken wing and flown with a song in its wings. 'My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my Spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior...'

I lost fear in the Black Belt when I began to know in my bones and sinews that I had truly been baptized into the Lord's Death and Resurrection, that in the only sense that really matters I am already dead, and my life is hid with Christ in God…

The point is simply, of course, that one’s motives are usually mixed- and one had better know it. It occurred to me that though I was reasonably certain that I was in Selma because the Holy Spirit had sent me there, there nevertheless remained a fundamental distinction between my will and His.

This paper was read at Jon's funeral as a eulogy. I read it now as a testament to the message of love he left behind. How many of us know the saints that live just down the street? How many times have we encountered a love so certain that we find our fears and anxieties dissipate as the urge to share this love becomes a central part of our lives.

The signs of the times- the signs Jon prayed would disappear, and take with them, the paralyzing fear felt by many blacks in Alabama.

Jon Daniels is a model for all of us who lose sight of the way in which love demands that we respond with unconditional love in the immediate, absolute present. Carpe diem is not a slogan that urges us to throw back as many beers as possible during a football game- it's a slogan that reminds us no love and no faithful action can be postponed to a "better time" or a "better place". The only time we can be sure of is this moment. The only acceptable time to do what is right- to honor the image of God in every life- is the present. Living in the moment means loving in the moment. Nothing is a greater, more worthy challenge.

The life and ministry of Jon Daniels is remembered on August 14th every year by the Episcopal Church. In this context, the role of the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity (ESCRU) played a pivotal role in eventually integrating southern public institutions. Members of ESCRU felt that Daniel’s alleged murderer, Tom Coleman, was acquitted wrongfully and that white juries would continue to fail to convict those that should be found guilty of race and hate crimes. In response to the acquittal, ESCRU launched Operation Southern Justice, a campaign and lawsuit undertaken in conjunction with the National Council of Churches and other groups to integrate southern juries.

The Episcopal Diocese of Alabama supports an annual pilgrimage to Hayneville to honor Jon Daniels' sacrifice. 2013 marked the 15th annual Jonathan Daniels Pilgrimage. Though we missed it this year, our calendars will keep this date open for August of next year. I was especially inspired by a 2010 pilgrim's post about how the experience impacted her life and spirit....

For more on the life and death of Jon Daniels:

Outside Agitator, the wonderful biography written by Charles Eagles (and published by the University of Alabama Press) that led me to Jon Daniels' life
"But My Heart Is Black," an article by Jon published Oct. 29, 1965
"A Burning Bush", an article by Jon written in April 1965
Jonathan Daniels lectionary 
Jon Daniels (Encyclopedia of Alabama)
Daniels' 1961 Valedictory Address (Virginia Military Institute)  
Daniels' Yearbook page (Virginia Military Institute) 
Memorial plaque for Daniels in Hayneville, Alabama 
White House tape transcripts of Pres. Johnson's response to Daniels' murder 
Liturgical lesson plan for "A Love That Forgives" 
Bishop Fisher's blog post about Jon Daniels 
"The Journey of Jonathan Daniels" (Sentinel Source) 
"Memory and Denial Are Kissing Cousins" (Greensleeves) 

Merton and the mint family.

“We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.”

    Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain    

I am so guilty of seeking the superb stimulations to distract me from the marvels which require me to inhabit and live them, rather than just keep that seat warm on the bleachers of life.

A visit to the Alabama Rural Heritage Center.

 

En route to the beach, we bit back into our royal plan of making a pilgrimage to every Rural Studio construction in the state.  So we stopped and spent some time exploring the Alabama Rural Heritage Center in the tiny town of Thomaston. The wide open spaces combine with ingenious construction innovations to produce the effect that made Rural Studio so famous.

The kids explore the handmade local wares.

Unlike other schools of architecture, the Rural Studio celebrates the story which emerges from every single design and construction. In many cases, the designers create a website which reveals the plans and charts the journey through the project. The ARHC building's story, like the audacity of those who first dared to dream it, is preserved eternally at the project website. 

In August of 2003, the Alabama Rural Heritage Foundation, and the Rural Studio of Auburn University began a partnership helped along by a $400,000 grant from HUD with the intent of helping to stimulate economic development in the community of Thomaston. Using less than half of this grant money, five determined Auburn students in the Rural Studio Program, Abbey Barnett, Melissa Harold, Paul Kardous, Nathan Makemson, and Robert White, embarked on a thesis project to design and construct the Alabama Rural Heritage Center (ARHC).

Free experimental beams made from recycled, compacted trash.

Rather than starting from scratch, the students renovated the Home Economics building of the old Marengo County High School and constructed a new 5,000 square-foot addition which includes a gift shop, commercial kitchen, packaging room, and vegetable cleaning/processing area. A separate grant allowed the students to add an outdoor pavilion/deck intended for use by the community.

True to the Sambo's building philosophy, the students' construction process made use of experimental and eco-minded materials, including the free "trash beams" pictured above. 

On April 9, 2005, The Alabama Rural Heritage Foundation celebrated the grand-opening of the new Alabama Rural Heritage Center. 

Max concurred with the ingenuity of offering free meteorites to little people. Each of the kids selected at least two "Alabama meteorites" with accompanying brochure. I crossed my fingers quietly, hoping that the idea for a "meteorite fight" would not leak from my brain to theirs.

The sense of community is enhanced by the prodiguous pamphlets, signs, and cards announcing the work and support of local artists, artisans, and nonprofit centers. Deeply-rooted communities tend to be those that engage us at multiple levels- from our individual preferences and affinities to our group identities and social concerns. 

The gift shop overflowed with the with the creations of local artists, artisans, and traditional crafters. Since many creators leave a business card next to their creations, it's more like a gallery of local creatives than it is a gift shop. The gourmet Mama Nem's Red Pepper Jelly is made and sold in-house.

Local historian and advocate Foster Dickinson collaborated with Nancy Anderson to birth a book/curriculum guide which is now on my wish-list, Treasuring Alabama's Black Belt: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Teaching Place. If you can't find it in stores, I'm sure ARHC wouldn't mind maling a copy in exchange for a phone call and little mullah. 

Hours of operation for the gift ship are Thurday and Friday from 10 am to 4 pm and Saturdays from 10 am to 1 pm.  You can also make purchases by email (ruralher@frontiernet.net) or by placing a call to 334-627-3388. The kitchen and dining area are still available for rent if you're seeking a special place to host an event in Alabama. 

The kind lady who eagerly answered all my questions at the gift shop (and who even went so far as to compliment me on my "well-behaved children") explained a little project she had started on the back wall of the old school. This project, the Kid's Korner, featured art for sale by young Alabama kids who donate their creations as a fundraiser for the Center.

When she said the project "wasn't going as well as she had hoped", I had a feeling we'd be mailing some art donations from the Coryell Castle before the tomatoes got fat enough to fall from the vines. If you live locally and find yourself staring at that same "feeling", just write a short note about the artists, scoop up the art, and mail the whole cornucopia to Rural Heritage and Gift Shop, 133 Sixth Avenue, Thomaston, AL 36783.

Otherwise, scurry over to their Facebook page to learn more about upcoming events and opportunities.

2 years into congenital hypothyroidism and doing great.

Milla in the car with me on our date. She is "reading".

Last week, Milla and I took a day to visit her endocrinologist in Birmingham. It was our special date- and one of those days when I am reminded how what was once frightening has become "normal" and part of our everyday lives. When we first heard the news, I was dumbstruck- it seemed impossible that my "best nurser" and my most content baby could have been born without a thyroid. Being one of those mothers- and one of those women- who assumes responsibility for educating herself about her kids and their individual needs, I started to study CH. 

The more I learned, the less I worried. And the less I worried, the more I noticed that Milla was a thriving, happy, loving child whose lack of a thyroid did nothing to reduce her zest for life.

Milla shows me the pictures in between "reading".

As Milla sits on the cusp of three years, I celebrate her feistiness and her daily discoveries. She can count anything in the world up to ten, and she peppers her daily requests with words like "actually" and "disgusting"- perhaps the influence of having a big brother like Max.

Since her doctor prefers to keep her hyperthyroid (as opposed to hypothyroid), sometimes Milla gets hot flashes or has a tendency to sweat more quickly than she would if her thyroid levels stay in range. This is only the case because CH is so rare that drug companies prefer not to invest the production of Synthroid doses for infants and children- so we have to take adult doses and half them or quarter them, thus making an inexact science of what is made more exact in adults. For thorough information, you want to peek at the following:

Guidelines for Management of Congenital Hypothyroidism (APEG)
Childhood and Congenital Hypothyroidism (Patient.co.uk) 
"Outcome for Congenital Hypothyroidism" (J. Hulse) 

During our three year journey, we have learned many things about CH, Milla, and ourselves that may have made a difference in her stellar outcome (she has stayed in the 70-80% height and weight range of the development charts). Here's the short list:

1. Synthroid (as opposed to generic thyroxine) works best for Milla and there is little difference in cost between the two. 
2. The medicine pills taste sweet and Milla has not issue with chewing hers up every day.
3. Multivitamins with iron reduce the absorption of Synthroid, so space out the time between vitamins and medicine. 
4. In most cases, a "treated" (or well-medicated) CH child is like any other child with a thyroid. Don't be too quick to attribute quirks or preferences to CH.
5. Being born with a thyroid in Milla's case has not changed the way she "presents" other illnesses. In other words, she still has fever is she has a virus. Don't let inexperienced medical staff worry you (i.e. an ER physician suggests your child may have pneumonia with no signs due to CH thus requiring chest xrays when it is perfectly obvious she has croup and only requires treatment for croup). 
6. Having a child with a rare disease means you have to be informed and prepared to educate others. In our case, both our pediatrician and our local pharmacists had never treated anyone with CH before. We all learn together and communication is critical.
7. Keep your endocrinologists phone number handy and make sure other medical staff treating your child consults with the endo before beginning any drastic treatments or diagnostic procedures.
8. Sharing details and information about your child's symptoms and developments with medical professionals helps increase knowledge about rare diseases. You are your child's lover, parent, and advocate- but you are also the advocate and support team for all the CH babies (and their families) who will be born in the future. The more we know, the better the outcomes for everyone.

The King and I now know that we will never "understand" why Milla was born with CH- and we learn everyday why the satisfaction of an answer matters less and less when little Mills loves and lives life so very very well. Once I stopped thinking of Milla's CH as a problem to be solved rather than a condition to be treated, I realized how much I owed this gradual discovery to all the moms out there who shared their CH stories and who helped me along.

Yes, there are stories we tell to hand one another along. These stories, whether shared in person or through emails, resemble an open hand. Daring to trust that hand and hold it makes our lives richer and full of radiance. So if you have googled "congenital hypothyroidism" and found yourself here, forehead creased with worry and heart made heavy by fear, don't be afraid to take this open hand and email me. We are here for each other- or this entire "life" thing is pathetic.

My hand is here for yours. One day, your hand will be there waiting to warm someone's elses. As John Prine so aptly put it, "That's the way that the world goes by..."

On the grounds of the Alabama beer revolution: Suds of the South 4.

THE KING: I know you love taking care of sick kids, but how would you feel about trying some local beers instead?

HER: Today?

THE KING: Right now.

HER: Don't twist my arm.

7.8 minutes later.

 THE KING: You look like a lollipop.

HER: Perhaps. But I am not actually a lollipop. Don't be superifical.

THE KING: I like your lollipop dress.

HER: Don't get sentimental. Let's run before the chorus starts. 

Run we did. Straight to Wilhagan's, where the 4th Annual Suds of the South was brewing. The entry lines stretched along the street. At one point, even Wilhagen's looked as if it might be too small to accomodate all the eager beer festers.

From Birmingham, Avondale Brewing Company introduced us to the saison, a pale ale that in modern versions is generally around 7% abv, highly carbonated, fruity, spicy - sometimes from the addition of spices -, and is influenced by Saison Dupont Vieille Provision. Then Good People Brewing Company shared insight about the Hops for Honeys, a group for women interested in the study of beer and brews which meets monthly in Birmingham. Something about beer education for women sounds better than a book club (and I'm the girl who adores book clubs).

Hailing from Huntsville and environs, ye Old Black Bear, Straight to Ale prides itself on being southern-born and southern-brewed, Yellowhammer Brewing harks back to European traditions and serif fonts. There's quite a bit of brew-haha going on in Huntsville these days, with a beer fest on the calendars soon. No self-respecting Huntsvillian should miss out on it.

From Gadsden, Back Forty Beer brings kudzu and swine to the tasting table in original, fragrant combinations. Hailing from Madison, we thoroughly enjoyed the company of Blue Pants Brewery folk. And they won our personal prize for the hoppiest brew. In Montgomery, Railyard Brewing Company combines food and good brews for those who care to cultivate the combinations.

Keeping it by our bed....

And then there is Tuscaloosa's own Druid City Brewing Company, whose logo pays tribute to one of Alberta City's classiest no-tell motels, the Moon Winx Lodge. When the King and I first signed those Free the Hops petitions a few years ago, little did we know how beautiful freedom would taste. But, as some folks are wont to say, freedom isn't free, and the beer revolution is still revolving. It's exciting to learn more from the brewers and to begin our own beer education- the kind of education that creates local jobs, builds small businesses, and rewards passionate entrepreneurs that enrich our local communities with their visions and creations.

More to chase in this direction:

Well That's Cool has the requisite spiffy blurb.
David Smith has the vertigo-inducing photo gallery as well as the more fleshy description.
Ben asks Bo a few worthwhile questions about the Druid City Brewing Company. 
Plan a local beer pilgrimage as part of your summer schedule. 

Making tassel necklaces.

Thanks to a little inspiration from Armommy, we made tassel necklaces this morning.

Fabric scraps and twine, a chance to practiee measurement skills.

And then resumed the ceaseless pinestraw-raking, which had a happy ending when the Druid City Garden Project came by with a truck and picked up the piles of pinestraw to use as mulch for their school gardens.

Love letter #89: Center for Ecoliteracy.

Teaching ecology embraces the poetic and visual arts as well as the scientific. One of the reasons I love it so much is precisely this ability to use all our faculties to apprehend and communicate the intricate beauty of the natural world. On that note, the Center for Ecoliteracy has earned a love letter for its marvelous free resources and open-ended methods of investigating lived ecology.

How can we visualize and understand the complex relationships and processes — often invisible to a human eye — of an ecosystem?Students learn to look at an ecosystem — the oak woodland — as a system and, by doing so, become aware of relationships among living things, the processes and patterns that drive survival and evolution, and the importance of abiotic characteristics in sustaining life. The Center's "Oak Woodland" Activity, which includes a beautiful mural by artist Ane Carla Rovetta in 15 panels, 30 information cards for use by students, and instructions.

More to discover and download:

Creating Gardens of Goodness 
Make A Mini Greenhouse from a CD Case 
Excerpt from The Post Carbon Reader 
Center for Ecoliteracy Blog
Food Traditions Interview Activity
Buidling Resiliency at Home Lesson

The handmade feather headdress-headband.

Continuing our frolic with feathers back in the sewing room led me, as usual, to an unplanned place. A simple headdress became a headdress-and-headband combo with a button to boot.

It's always fun to find a way to use natural wood buttons as accessories or flourish on a piece. I felt like an ironwood button would add extra salvo and signify courage for little Micah's headdress.

She cooed and whispered when she saw it- walking carefully across the room as if entering Narnia.

The heart warms by rapid degrees when they love what you make for them- when it becomes something they use in their imaginary worlds of play.

Then she tried it on as a handbead that ties at the nape of her neck, leaving a small fabric "tail" reminiscient of actual native headdresses.

The ironwood button fits perfectly. If you hanker after your own natural, handmade, handpainted ironwood button as a sewing embellishment, for doll eyes, for gift-wrapping panache, or to add to handmade holiday hair pieces, stop by my y.so.str8 shop and and pick up a few. They are made from tornado-tumbled timber which would have otherwise been relegated to our city landfill. 

Handmade dining tables to support a local adoption.

Our lovely friends, Stephen and Susan Norris, are working to raise money for the adoption of two orphan children. As many know, adopting a child is a painstaking and expensive process which is as trying (if not much more) than those 9.85 months of pregnancy. 

To raise this money, Stephen is making custom hand-scraped farm house style tables and benches. Susan writes:

Choose your dimensions and choose your finish. It is gorgeous, very heavy and sturdy (and thankfully for us, indestructible!). If you are looking to buy a table/benches just call or email. If anyone you know is looking to purchase a table and benches, would you forward our contact info to them. If you know any decorators who help people find furniture, would you forward this to them? You can email us at snsquared@gmail.com or call 205-554-0063. We are aiming for a Christmas delivery, but if someone contacted us very soon, we could probably make Thanksgiving! This would make an excellent heirloom quality gift. Stephen is an amazing craftsman and artist in this way.

Pricing is $85 per square foot for the table and $50 per linear foot for the benches. This is comparable with prices for similar tables at furniture stores (although their tables are generally veneer, Stephen's are actual hand scraped wood), but far less than other custom prices. Plus, we have free local delivery, but would certainly try and figure out a way for more distant delivery at a reasonable price. Our benches are not finished yet and are not pictured. If anyone would like to see it in person, just let me know. I'd love to show it off!

It's not everyday that you can get a fantastic table and benches and give two orphans a family at the same time. Imagine that every piece of bread broken over this table would be a reminder of how you helped bring together a family.... I can't think of anything more beautiful.

5 songs and a pastel picture on the theme of a David Brower quote.

"We must begin thinking like a river if we are to leave a legacy
of beauty and life for future generations."
David Brower 

The Dreaming Moon by The Magnetic Fields

Stay a Little Longer by The Prine Valley Cosmonauts with Neko Case

Spanish Pipedream by Avett Brothers (John Prine cover)

Chalk it up to the blues by Big Sandy and The Flyrite Boys

Make Another Tree by Eef Barzelay

How to "deal" with the intractable issues.

The solace.

Being a person who likes to see everyone happy- the kind who runs from one person to another to make sure no one's feelings are hurt- leaves me stranded when it comes to sorting through those intractable conflicts posed by the human ego. The solace lies next to me in bed at night and reminds me, "You can't please everyone, Alina... Some people are just haters. Stay away from them or you'll be hated too." Patrick, our marriage, our family, is not intractable- it's an iterative process, a learn-and-grow-as-you-go, a wonder and a joy.

The truth doesn't suit my hopes. The truth is that there are angry people in the world who get a kick out of being angry and acting as if the world is against them. You can't get anywhere in that kind of discussion- the kind of discussion I've been having far too much for my taste lately. Someone whose identity and self-image is warped by being mad ends up a perpetual victim of their own cognitive choices.

When in doubt, whip out the Kurt Vonnegut. Sure enough, he's got it covered:

I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

Have you confessed your happy moments today? Though most people seem to bond over complaints, especially political ones, sharing happiness seems like a stronger foundation for friendship. So I'll admit it- I'm happy that Orion magazine exists, that poetry still soothes and untangles the stuff too skewed to touch with ordinary language. I'm happy with the little ditty I scribbled in my journal today- a true story still reeking of macroinvertebrates and water. I'm happy to know that the ebb and flow is as much a part of me as of the world, a rhythmn to which I can dance.

Tornado tree chair.

Look at what we discovered at the Georgine Clark Gallery in downtown Northport.... Kudos to Tanya for her creative vision in using tornado wood for good.

Rural Studio Pilgrimage #3: Mason's Bend.

Getting to Mason's Bend

Following the footsteps of Samuel Mockbee and the Rural Studio school around the corners of Alabama begins with a trip to the Pie Lab in Greensboro for us. After polishing off some quiche in the courtyard, I sidled up to the counter hoping to get directions to Mason's Bend. The lady behind the counter didn't know, but she knew someone who did. Before long, I was speaking on her iPhone to a man who provided the following directions:

Take Highway 14 from Greensboro to Sawyerville. Once you pass the only blinking traffic light in Sawyerville, take the next left (might be Highway 15). Follow that road all the way on out until you pass a huge mansion. A little futher, the road will continue as a dirt road or a hard top- stay on the hard top which veers left. 

Grandma Vicki used the spotty cell phone reception to consult Google Maps as we drove. Between the two of us, we balked at the rolling green hills and hot orange dirt while trying to figure out which roads we needed to follow. Max chirped up from the backseat that "This is like an awesome puzzle and we have to find our way with a few clues." The thrill of the chase kept us laughing- it also kept our eyes and ears attuned to the landscape and world around us in which any road might be "the one clue". I'm convinced that we learn so much more from these pilgrimage outings combining verbal directions with slipshod maps than any perfectly-planned field trip. 

The Glass Chapel at Mason's Bend

When I explained to Grandma Vicki that Rural Studio uses "local ingredients", including clays, dirts, salvaged materials, and metals, she expressed the oft-repeated question of how dirt houses withstand Alabama thunderstorms. Little did we know that our adventure would provide a first-hand experience of exactly this building lesson.

The last thing I remember before the zombie apolcalypse is that we turned left onto Mason's Bend Road. Before we knew it, a bright orange dirt road stretched out before us in a curve that could only be called "Mason's Bend". And there it was.

The Glass Chapel-   a transportation stop, community gathering space, chapel for the local choral group, and distribution center for children's summer school meals- made from car windows salvaged from a Chicago scrap yard provide set atop rammed earth walls. Anderson Harris, owner of the Butterfly House, donated the land for the center and before his recent death tended to its garden.

Max and Micah visit the Glass Chapel, a community center in Mason's Bend.

Inside the Glass Chapel, which once held picnic tables.

A close-up of the exterior Glass Chapel walls.

The Basketball Court at Mason's Bend

The Basketball Court was completed in 2000 around the same time as the Glass Chapel. The same rammed earth technnique was used for the court shelter. One difference is in the composition of its creators; the Basketball Court was the first Rural Studio Outreach project which brought together students from different disciplines.

Grandma Vicki poses with the kids near the Basketball Court which is currently missing a basketball goal.

The Butterfly House at Mason's Bend

On the right at the beginning of the bend stands the Harris/Butterfly House, built for Anderson and Ora Lee Harris in 1996. Its name comes from the sharply angled roof structure that collects rainwater and shelters a screened porch. The house is largely heated and cooled passively, with assistance from a wood-burning stove. The roof's "tail" funnels rain into a cistern, which is used for washing clothes and flushing toilets. The house is now occupied by Anderson and Ora Lee's children.

The water spout just barely misses the bird bath, probably intended for less furious showers.

Chance encounters are my favorite kind, and we just chanced upon a young lady standing on a porch with her children. I asked her if it was alright to photograph the Glass Chapel, and she said, "Of course." We got to talking about the Bend, her kids, the basketball court that used to sit behind her house before the balls kept landing in her windows, and her mom, who lived a few houses away in the Butterfly House. When I asked if there was some way we could contribute money for local kids to maintain the Glass Chapel, she called her parents, Daniel and Lori Harris, one of which I presumed was a descendant of Anderson Harris. 

As the kids exchanged cockadoodles with a handsome rooster strutting across the road, Daniel and Lori Harris appeared- warm smiles, welcomes, no concern for the clouds just beginning to shed a drizzle overhead. While the drizzle turned to a shower (my first shower of the week, I confess), Daniel and Lori told me how we could could help the community of Mason's Bend maintain the Glass Chapel and the Basketball Court. They gave their name and number, and Max immediately began drafting a poster to collect money for Mason's Bend- for upkeep and to add a playground/basketball area for the kids. 

The Green (Dirt) House at Mason's Bend

Turning left onto Green Lane will lead you to the Green Dirt House and the Willie Bell House.

The Green Dirt House bore a group of 8 children, possibly Greens, playing on the porch, but the rain drove them back indoors.

The Green (Dirt) House, completed in 2005, was marked by fantastic overhanging eves which protect the dirt blocks from the elements and its inhabitants from the hot summer sun. Experimental blocks made of newspaper and Hale County red dirt molded into papercrete form the exterior wall that bears no load. Papercrete is a construction material composed of pulped paper, clay, and cement and has existed since the early 1920s, but has never been used extensively. As such, the wall is an experiment and consequently is protected by a big roof and does not carry any load.

The central column clad in metal serves as a towering chimney. Based on common African building techniques, the tower is located above the kitchen and creates a natural convective current by causing a pressure gradient — warm air rises and is pulled up and out the column while makeup air is pulled in creating cooling breezes.

The Willie Bell House at Mason's Bend

In 2005, Rural Studio students tried their hand at a more disciplined project using conventional lumber and a standard box frame. The Willie Bell House next door to the Green House was the result. We saw brightly colored bowling balls on the front lawn, but the house itself was very difficult to see in the rain.

The barely-visible Willie Bell House.

What we missed at Mason's Bend

The advent of a torrential downpour kept us from visiting the Harris Hay Bale House, completed in 1994. With 24-inch-thick walls constructed from stacked hay bales enveloped in concrete stucco, this house is a model for sustainable insulation. Hay bales act as a highly effective insulator, economical, and mildew- and mold-resistant. The awning windows pull air off the large front porch and form a natural convective current for cooling the home in the summer. 

The Harris Smokehouse was made from broken concrete salvaged by the Hale County Highway Department. It was built for a total of $40 and now functions as a henhouse. The roof is made of salvaged road signs and beams from a local barn. Glass bottles are embedded in the walls and glow when seen from the inside. Mockbee dubbed the smokehouse style "Alabama Ronchamp". I was hoping to see the special "bricks" up close and nab Mr. Shepard for a chat. 

We also missed the Manor Bryant Seed House, 1999 thesis project for Rural Studio also located at Mason's Bend.

The thunderstorm waltzed across the state with us as we drove Grandma Vicki to the airport.

Topsy-turvy clouds= cheering kids in the car.

If you'd like to help the community of Mason's Bend, please send an email to rainscented @ gmail dot com. Include your name, suggestions, and possible donations for a playground.

Love letter #36: The Brown House and The Blue House.

Photo credit goes to Tuscaloosa News. See corresponding article.

In this love, I must include the Linda who led me to it. The Brown House Project is an adventure or journey undertaken by Amy and Adam Pierce in their home:

We are just plain, vanilla, normal Christians who decided a while ago to share our lives, our love, and our home with the neighbors around us. We live intentionally and deliberately to try to show Christ's love to the world, and we focus on the kids around us that we see each and every day.

The Thursday Night Thing looks inspiring and filled with fellowship. Not far away lies the The Blue House Project involves six Christians in Northport, Alabama who are undertaking "an experiment in Christian living". Telling the stories of the humans investing in other beautiful humans. 

A proposal for Good Growth in Tuscaloosa.

Living in Cherokee Hills means you don’t drive on Loop Road immediately after it rains- the water pours along the street as if it were a creek. It’s no secret that Loop Road has long posed problems in dealing with stormwater management and flooding.

This year, the city of Tuscaloosa secured a grant from the Alabama Transportation Rehabilitation and Improvement Program (ATRIP) to perform “critical improvements” between Fairmont Drive and Woodland Hills, including realignment of the two-lane road, adding sidewalks and curb and gutter improvements, and putting a better storm-water collection system into place. A vehicular roundabout will replace the existing stop sign-controlled intersection of Cherokee Hills Road and Loop Road.

While these changes will make traffic on Loop Road safer, they point to the need for greater citizen participation in the local transportation and infrastructure planning process. The ATRIP grant will fund 50 percent of the $2.1 million total cost with the remaining balance being matched by local funding. This means that the city or county will pay over $1 million dollars for this stormwater issue.

If the local authorities had conducted more research, the financial cost of the Loop Road project on our cash-strapped community could have been eased through multiple grants which fund stormwater projects. Being as time and money are limited resources, local leaders don’t have the time or the human resources to survey all the possible applications of green-friendly growth.

A standing Good Growth Committee for the purpose of advising the regional planning organization on related development grants, opportunities, and knowledge-based investments would open many doors for our regional planners. It would also provide them with free consultations and ideas from local residents on how to tap the economic potential of the beautiful natural landscapes and resources which surround Tuscaloosa. Rather than settle for covering half the cost of the Loop Road improvements, we could have secured a Low Impact Development grant from the EPA for a rain garden project to assist in managing the runoff problems.

On the forefront of low-impact development models, rain gardens reduce the amount of auto emissions and chemicals in our local waterways. Vegetation and soils within the rain garden naturally remove contaminants carried by stormwater runoff, while replacing stormwater into native soils helps mimic natural drainage processes and reduces the volume of stormwater runoff.  Rain gardens keep our local water resources clean by reducing stream bank erosion and the negative effects of road runoff on aquatic communities. Most stormwater drains dump the runoff straight into local creeks, streams, ponds, and lakes, thus imposing greater long-term cleanup costs.

I want my neighborhood to look beautiful- to grow and develop in an attractive way that brings a good return on my investments. Rather than spend $1 million on an unattractive stormwater drainage system that includes hidden cleanup costs, I’d prefer a cutting-edge, forward-looking policy solution that saves taxpayer dollars while making my community more beautiful. The Good Growth Committee would offer our local leaders  funding alternatives and ideas to attract businesses and nonprofits to the area.

It’s time to stop selling ourselves short. Businesses, nonprofits, and individuals should be attracted to the Tuscaloosa area because it is wonderful place to live-- not because it is an easy place to pollute, destroy, or secure taxpayer-funded freebies. Many locals have amazing ideas and thoughts on how to help Tuscaloosa attract investors who make “good neighbors”. If you are one of these people, then consider adding your insights to the Good Growth Committee. Because bad growth is no growth at all.

Here's my proposal for a Good Growth Committee to help our local leaders gain access to new ideas, trends, discoveries, and funding sources in infrastructure and planning. They have absolutely nothing to lose from it and everything to gain. If you'd like to be involved, send an email my way and let me know. The more, the merrier.

Surface mining on beautiful Alabama streams.

Karen's parents weren't planning on spending their retirement days
trying to protect the value of their property and its natural resources.

    In an ideal world, we wouldn't have to weight the costs and benefits of destroying natural beauty for economic quickies. The longterm economic value of green spaces and trees and free-flowing clean streams would be assumed. But we live in the age of the quickie, and our values tend to be arranged in a scheme which places immediate gratification at the top.
    On that note, surface mines are the equivalent of an economic quickie- fast, destructive, and ultimately unsatisfying. Learning that our state is so quick to permit, enable, and solicit the destruction of private and public property in the name of a few bucks makes teaching kids about delayed gratification feel rather tawdry.

    Our neighbors, the Palmers, are facing a surface mine in their parents' backyard in Cordova, Alabama. Don't get me wrong- I understand that coal mines provide jobs and help sustain the fast and cheap American lifestyle to which we are accustomed. And I understand that people need jobs. But I also understand that we spend millions of public taxpayer dollars teaching people not to smoke because it kills them and our government doesn't have the money to pay for all the health costs of smoking.
    Coal mining should be considered in a similar manner. Until our government is willing to pick up the costs to our communities for strip mining (or, better yet, ensure that the coal companies pick up the cost of their profit-maximizing activities), we'd better hold off on inviting more strip mines and do a better job of incentivizing those that currently exist.

    Meanwhile, in the land of newspaper publications and unicorns, publisher Jack McNeely thinks a windfall tax and few jobs will make up for the costs of cleaning up after the strip mine mess. Jack is reassured by the comment that the EPA has approved the way in which the waste will be handled. But Jack hasn't done his economic homework. If he had, he would know that an 8% windfall tax isn't going to cover the costs of clean-up- not now, not anytime in the near future. Looking at the 8,000 foot deep dispersal wells at the former site of Reichhold Industries in Tuscaloosa provides another picture of what EPA approval means.
     Back in the 1970's, the EPA partnered with private industry to drill these wells and dispose of toxic wastes. Alas, no one will touch the wells or the property now. You know why? Because no one can afford to touch them. The cost of making this land- which borders on the Black Warrior River and Hurricane Creek- "usable" exists in no public or private coffers. It is a sunk cost that everyone refuses to pay. But it's not going away. 
    If anyone cares to invite Jack to savor the untouchable mess left behind at the former Reichhold site in a joint project between the industry and the EPA, you can do so  at jack.mcneely@mountaineagle.com. Perhaps he will understand why learning that "the EPA makes certain requirements" doesn't comfort me at all. In fact, I'd love to invite Jack down for an up-close-and-personal visit- it might even affect the way he views the world as much as those dollar signs from advertisers.
    In the meantime, I urge you to write a letter and be part of what Jack describes as an imaginary process of local citizen feedback that "doesn't change" a thing. Despite Jack's cynicism, I have hopes for American democracy.
    Writing a letter to the address below before July 29, 2012 might actually have some impact on the way things unfurl. If it doesn't, then Jack is right and American democracy is as real as the lip colors in a high-school beauty pageant. If it does, then Jack is wrong and July 4th is still worth celebrating. Either way, we can't know unless you write. So take a minute, write a few lines, learn a little more, see a few example letters, and be part of that thing called "freedom". Last time I checked, it was pretty popular in the polls.

 

An evening with Black Warrior Riverkeeper.

Hanging out by the rocks waiting to hop on board.

Last night, Patrick and I took advantage of a night out on the Bama Belle to learn more about the amazing work of the Black Warrior Riverkeeper for our river. We accidentally met a boatload of wonderful people just as inclined to appreciate the beauty of waterways on a perfect early summer evening. I trotted around like a chicken with a petition in hand because carpe diem tastes best when combined with social responsibility.

The music was as easygoing as the ride.

Something about the water makes a harmonica even more priceless than usual. The fresh food from Snow's Bend Farms hit the spot, as did the Sweetwater IPA on tap.

The Bama Belle offers its own testimony to the history of the Black Warrior River.

We left just as the stars began to prance about the sky. My last impression was the sense of insignificance which grabs you when a massive barge filled with cargo passes by- everything is tiny in comparison, including the Bama Belle, which seemed like a river queen prior to the barge's arrival.

The Alberta City Gathering Place: A study in creating beauty and hope.

Just a hop, skip, and jump away from our home, beautiful things are happening thanks to beautiful people who can't help themselves from sharing their talents with the world. The Alberta City Gathering Place is a volunteer opportunity for local residents to pitch in from June 2nd to June 10th. Volunteers are needed from 7 am to noon and from 5 pm to 8 pm everyday.

Officially, the Gathering Place is a community project focused on building a useful and creative gathering space in an area of Tuscaloosa ravaged by last April's tornado. 

The Alberta City Gathering Place Project is a community project focused on building a useful and creative gathering space in an area affected by the April 27th tornado. It will take place in the heart of Alberta, at Jaycee Park. An area affected by the tornado, Albert has been slow to recover. It is our dream that by June 10th, we can provide the residents of this community, as well as the residents of Tuscaloosa, with an artistic and imaginative gathering space. The focal point of the Alberta City Gathering Place will be a small amphitheater seating roughly 80 people. At the center of this amphitheater will be a concrete performance stage. Tall metal pillars will be erected around the boarders of the amphitheater in order to anchor a mesh roof to provide shade. A walking path will meander through the amphitheater, making its way toward a raised observation point. Picnic tables, benches, and barbecue grills will be included in the park.All of these features will include materials salvaged from the tornado. We are limited only by our imagination!

In order to make our vision a reality, we need your help. The Alberta City Gathering Place Project is an effort for the community by the community. We need volunteers to design, plan, and erect this park. On March 8th we are holding a meeting to reveal our building plan to the public, as well as to train volunteers in building and leadership techniques.  

If you would like to be a part of this process, please contact kjpuzinauskas@ua.edu and let her know! Or check out the Facebook page and mosey on over to lend a hand. You can donate to the Pomegranate Center as thanks for their gift to our community.

 

An art event by the Tuscaloosa Master Gardeners.

The Tuscaloosa County Master Gardeners invite the public to a night of “Art Inspired by Nature” featuring works from artist/speaker Barry Graham.

Art by TCMG members Linda Baggett, Bobby Cherones, Judith Rives and Virginia Williams will also be displayed. This meeting / event will be held at the:

Tuscaloosa County Extension Office Auditorium
2513 7th Street - Tuscaloosa County Courthouse Annex
Tuesday, June 12, 5:30 - 7:30 p.m.

To get a sense of what you're going to see, this is a beautiful birdhouse by Barry Graham.

Free podcasts from the Enoch Pratt Free Library.

I first heard of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in a small book about HL Mencken. Supposedly, it was one of his favorite nooks in the world. It might become one of mine, as well. After scouring their free podcasts, what follows are the most savory findings of my virtual feast. 

Chuck Palahniuk reads from his novel, Pygmy.
Gary Marcus talks about his book, Kluge, and the "haphazard construction of the human mind".
A smorgasborg of fairy tales about food. 
Fairy tales about dragons from the Fairy Tale Festival.
Ralph Nader talks about his latest book. 
Sandra Steingraber talks about how chemicals have become a family matter. 
An hour with Andrei Codrescu, reading, talking, barking. I miss him on NPR.
Truth and Reconciliation: A podcast about peace in a community.
Congresswoman Barbara Lee tells her story. 

Next on the list- free audiobooks.

A flurry of thoughts and a moon so vivid I could skip it like a stone over a puddle.

It's late, and the weekend's chaos is winding down. After leading my poor family, including the usual suspects plus Grand Bunicu and Bunicu (who are visiting from Ohio) and Carla and Lesse (visiting from Homewood), on a wild goose chase across Tuscaloosa, we grilled some meat and corn and settled down to discuss the lack of contextual basis for "honor" in our culture while I burned mix CDs for my dad. 

Originally, the day began with a plan to do a little creek cleaning at Binion Creek as part of the Northriver Watershed Festival. But we arrived too late. And then I decided we needed to visit Hurricane Creek in Brookwood. But we never found a piece of public land from which to access the creek. Sometimes the adventure takes the guise of a failure in which grumbles and complaints (Carla is the only one who didn't join the chorus) chip away at our ability to appreciate the mere fact of being able to wander around looking for a spark. For wanderlusty girls like me, the wandering itself scratches an itch. 

A flower Micah picked for me on our stroll today.

Lately, the days roll by faster than I can name them- certainly too rapidly to sit down and claim them by poring over salient details. It is not for lack of action that this reporter-of-the-quoitidien has been absent from her usual perch. So very much has happened, and continues to happen.

Just today, I read Rev. Fred Hammond's post about his recent experiences while protesting the shameful HB 56 anti-immigrant law currently on the books in Alabama. Fred's compassion and love for his fellow humans offers solace in these grim times. It is so easy to walk around Tuscaloosa and ignore the fact that there are fewer Latinos in public spaces- that houses which used to be occupied by large families are suddenly vacant, that swathes of faces have disappeared from our daily lives. It is easy to pretend that everything is fine- their misfortune, after all, doesn't directly impigne on our daily routines. But such chosen ignorance is a crime of spiritual negligence and willful neglect.

He [Gov. Bentley] said the law enjoys widespread support in spite of protests. "We are not going to repeal our anti-illegal immigration law," he said.

Gov. Robert Bentley, who signed the law, said that when he was a doctor in Tuscaloosa, he never asked people if they were legal or illegal, but protesters must follow the law.

"If they read what I read in the Bible, the Bible says you always obey the law," he told reporters while attending a National Day of Prayer observance. 

(Source: Tuscaloosa News)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrestled with these same ideas living under Nazi Germany, a democracy in which the law relegated Jews to the status of sub-humans and a systematic policy to remove them was the law of the land. Today, churches celebrate Bonhoeffer as a conscientious objector to the evils of the Nazi regime- a man who broke unjust and cruel laws. But we fail to see parallels between the past and the present because such parallels are disturbing, inconvenient, and obviously "not the same". 

This country was founded on the breaking of laws. Fred correctly observes that the Boston Tea Party and similar events in American history were characterized by conscience disregard for the laws of the time. The civil rights movement, one of our triumphs as a nation promising "freedom and justice for all", occurred precisely because many conscience-driven Americans chose to disregard an unjust and cruel law.

Fred also notes that Gov. Bentley's very own faith tradition- that of the Baptist denomination- was founded in law-breaking:

His own faith as a Baptist came about because people of conscience disobeyed the law. It was illegal to be of any other faith than Anglican when John Smyth declared his Baptist faith. But if Governor Bentley is correct that the Bible says you always obey the law, then his own faith is illegal, twice over because John Smyth broke the English law decreeing the Church of England as the one faith and the Church of England broke the law when it severed ties with the Roman Catholic Church over the doctrine of divorce–another law that according to Bentley’s argument must be obeyed. Remember that church law and civil law were one and the same in the time of the reformation. There was no separation of church and state.

The context of Romans 13 which Bentley refers also includes Romans 13: 6 and following: “This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor. Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not covet,’ and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”

But love, while wonderful as an object of lip service, is certainly impractical as a matter of public policy. Being all-knowing, our God will surely forgive us if we can't take his injunctions seriously because, as He knows, that stuff sounds good in books but just doesn't make much sense in real life. Tomorrow is Sunday. How many local pastors, preachers, rabbis, reverends, or faith leaders will speak about the unspeakable in our midst- the law that punishes those who wish to be Americans for not having enough money to game the process or not having enough power to squeeze through the tiny allotted quota? How many will elect to direct attention to the tornados of past rather than confront the one brewing right in our midst?

Taking Vanilla and Ratpaw for a short canoe excursion along Hurricane Creek.

We had planned to go floating with Carla on Saturday, but nothing went according to plan. So when Patrick finished mowing the lawn yesterday and I noticed that paddle-hungry glint in his eye, we threw the lifejackets into the spaceship and set out for Waston's Bend.

Milla cooed and commented on every fish that passed us by as we paddled.

But Vanilla refused to get out of the van, so we called Gary and told him that Vanilla decided he wanted some father-son time paddling the creek today. Poor Ratpaw was planning to sit, relax, and make an egg salad. Instead, he climbed into the van to accompany us on our adventure.

We got out at Watson's Bend and loaded up two canoes for a paddle down to Roman Nose swimming hole. The entire crew got out to wade, waddle, dip, swim, and splash in the stream.

Max cleans out his shoes while Vanilla and Ratpaw get a sense of the stream.

The deeper segment of Roman Nose makes a perfect swimming hole complete with jumping rocks from which Patrick did not hesitate to cannonball.

An inventory of what we found or saw on our brief paddle and romp:

Hundreds of tiny black tadpoles scurrying across the pebbles in the shallow water

Human critters swimming and sauntering

More sediment on the creek bottom than last weekend plus small human critters throwing stones

A handsome frog surveying the rocks near the Roman Nose swimming hole

A daddy and daughter in the deep portion of the swimming hole while white-skinned folks of all shapes and sizes considered the scenario from the banks.

One very large fish that looked about a foot long (Patrick thought it was a trout) but whisked by too quickly for me to drop a paddle and take a photo.

Dozens of minnows with yellow and black stripes around the lower trunk which consistently led to cries of "Fish, fish!" and "Fosh, fosh!" from the little ones, depending on which little one was doing the exclaiming.

If you haven't signed the petition asking our legislators to reconsider running the Eastern Bypass through our local paddleworthy creek, please do so now. Since it is a federal project, federal tax dollars will be applied, which means that all Americans are involved in funding this fossil project which will destroy our creek.

So many showers.

I know a few people who take 2 showers a day. We all have addictions and compulsions, and using more water to primp and preen than people in other countries use to live for an entire week is something we do without worrying about the longterm consequences. Like credit card debt and retail therapy, we create problems which we then expect someone else to solve for us. Or to save us from. In our view, we are entitled to all the cheap water and gas we can possibly use. This is a new development in our nation's history- those growing up during the Great Depression certainly didn't have such a waste-and-burn frame of mind.

I'll confess to feeling guilty and slightly selfish when I take a shower- I try to take a few baths a week instead. Learning more about water scarcity and the extent to which cities like Atlanta are desperately trying to pipe water from any neighboring state to ensure that they don't have another water emergency is sobering. Reading The Ripple Effect is sobering as well. But I'd rather be sober than clueless these days.

In some ways, I wish I wasn't learning so much about the extent to which water resources are being depleted. I wish I could close my eyes and just keep on washing dishes in the sink and then re-washing them in the washing machine. I wish I could turn on my sprinkler in the middle of the afternoon and let it roll. I wish I could make sure each of my kids got a bath every night and convince myself that I was only doing this for "sanitary" reasons. But I can't do this anymore. And I have to find new things that I can do now- difficult, complicated, and unusual things which make me seem like a "rabid environmentalist", a laughable thought. 

As my generation inherits the credit-based lifestyle (and its attendant consequences) of our parents' generation, my kids will inherit the water-wasting lifestyle of my generation. That's a fact we can't change. However, trying to learn more about water and teaching our kids about the scarcity of certain resources may help them cope with the different world they will inhabitat. Is that the best I can do? I don't know. But I have no excuse not to do it.

Tino may be coming soon to a town near you.

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On his website, Tino explains the purpose of his journey:

I came to this country in 2001, hoping to someday call myself an American. Now, ten years later, I am finally eligible to apply for citizenship. I am commemorating this event by taking a little walk—from my home in New York City, through North Carolina and Alabama, across the Mississippi and the Arizona desert. I'll finish out in Los Angeles.

The day of my naturalization I will become a fellow citizen of over 285 million people who call themselves American. Most have been able to use that label their whole lives, but I have not, so I am trying to better understand what it really means to them.

I will meet hundreds of people along the way, across a great spectrum of ages, races, ethnic backgrounds, and lifestyles that exist in this vast country. I will try to catalog as much as I can, but no matter who I meet, above all, I want to know what being American means to them, and find out what binds us together as a nation. 

What does a 10th-generation New Englander have in common with a first-generation Hispanic in California? What does a descendant of antebellum slave owners share with the granddaughter of Vietnamese refugees? How is the life of a Native American today similar to that of someone whose ancestors were kidnapped in Africa and brought here as slaves?

I will chronicle my journey by writing regular dispatches for Arizona State University's Center for Social Cohesion. I will introduce you to the people I meet, and share with you their stories. And even if I don't make it to your town, I encourage you to reach out and tell me your own thoughts on what being American is all about.

See you on the road, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. 

A photo from Tino's recent travels across the South. You can get a copy here.

If you'd like to be a part of his exciting journey, read about where he is and what he needs right now. Or contribute to his travel costs by purchasing a photo from his gallery of travels across America.

A petition about the Eastern Bypass.

Change.org|Online Petition Template

Your signature would mean so much to those residents of Tuscaloosa who don't have access to the internet in their homes or apartments. It is sad to note that many of those whose property is being taken to build the bypass have already lost everything in Tuscaloosa tornado of 2011.

Artistic inspirations at Canterbury Chapel.

Yesterday, Milla and I took a little trip to Canterbury Chapel, an Episcopal church located on the UA campus. A few lovely ladies were witnesses to Milla's shrieking phase, and their kindness was greatly appreciated by the mom who still sometimes feels guilty when her children don't act like well-tamed, conventional "adults" in public.

The "Our Father" at Canterbury Chapel.

While waiting to speak to Rev. Burnette, we marveled over a beautiful "Our Father" hanging on the wall in the hallway. You could see so many reflections and shafts of light reflected in the holy words- humbling and beautiful. The image of me holding Milla, an un-pieta, speaks strongly to my faith in the love He enables us to bear and share.

I encourage you to visit it and take part in many of the other wonderful programs, including the community garden, offered by Canterbury Chapel to Tuscaloosa residents.

Clean Water is something we can't afford to lose.

Change.org|Start an Online Petition »

Working with local waterkeepers has shown me how much sustained effort and struggle is involved in protecting our natural water resources. I never imagined that I would be asking friends and fellow bloggers to fight for the Clean Water Act, but I am grateful that life has allowed me to learn enough to find myself right here right now asking you to sign this petition.

Falling in love with a longleaf pine.

Today we discovered a hearty old longleaf pine, or Pinus palustris, a few miles away from our home. We were able to identify it right off the bat because our county agent, Neal Hargle, introduced us to a longleaf early this year. 

Longleaf pine grows in open to moderately dense stands of pine with various grasses and shrubs in the understory of a woodland forest. It is most commonly found on well-drained soils.

The thick, reddish-brown, scaly bark of mature longleaf pines trees insulate the tree from the heat of fires, providing some fire resistance, as do the thick, silver-white hairs found on buds when longleaf pine is in its grass-stage. This helps explain why longleafs are one of the few types of trees that thrive under low-intensity forest fires. Wikipedia offered more insight into this uncanny fire resistance which characterizes the longleaf:

Longleaf Pine is highly resistant to fire. Periodic natural wildfire selects for this species by killing other trees, leading to open Longleaf Pine forests or savannas. New seedlings do not appear at all tree-like and resemble a green fountain of needles. This form is called the grass stage. During this stage, which lasts for 5–12 years, vertical growth is very slow, and the tree may take a number of years simply to grow ankle-high. After that it makes a growth spurt, especially if there is no tree canopy above it. In the grass stage, it is very resistant to grass fires, which burn off the ends of the needles, but the fire cannot penetrate the tightly-packed needle bases to reach the bud. While relatively immune to fire, at this stage, the plant is quite appealing to feral pigs, and the early settlers habit of releasing swine into the woodlands to feed was greatly responsible for the decline of the species.

The crown is characterized by the "basketball-shaped" tufts of needles at the ends of stout twigs.

Native to the southeastern US, the longleaf pine grows slowly to a height of 75 to 120 feet. Wind carries the male pollen cell to the female cones. Although pollen is transferred to the female cones in the spring, fertilization does not happen until years later.

Needles are in clusters of three, usually clustered towards the ends of the branches, and are eight to eighteen inches long.

Seed cones are six to ten inches long, and have a prickle at the top of each scale. 

Longleaf pine used to cover much of the US with its splendid, regal crowns. However, they were quickly chopped down when the Navy and merchants decided to use the turpentine, resin, and timber for their ships. They have been cutover since for timber and usually replaced with faster-growing Loblolly pine and Slash pine, for agriculture, and for urban and suburban development. Deforestation and over-harvesting ensured that only about 3% of the original Longleaf pine forest remains, and little new is planted.  

Max observed that "turpentine is some kind of burning agent". And I reminded him that we use it as a paint thinner when working with oil paints. Despite its threatened status, loggers still cut it down and sell it for lumber, since the reddish to yellowish wood is hard and strong.  

Longleaf pines play an irreplaceable role in a woodland forest ecosystem. Pine warblers enjoy feasting on insects which burrow under the bark of longleaf pines. The seeds are an excellent food source for squirrels, turkey, quail, and brown-headed nuthatches. Endangered species such as red-cockaded woodpeckers and indigo snakes are threatened by the loss of the longleaf pine habitat.

Max explained:

"Some kinds of bug larvae are picky and eat only a fungus that grows in dead or dying trees. Black backed woodpeckers come and try to eat the bug's larvae. And I'm not exactly sure about this, but if I'm right, the droppings of the black-backed woodpecker provide a jackpot of nutrients for the black morels."

Alina said:

"Wow, Max."

Max smiled and replied:

"I read it in a book about forest fires. But I can't find the book- I think Micah hid it. It's the same book that explains how American Indians use phagnum moss for diapers because the moss can absorb lots of water."

We decided to make an ecoweb because the longleaf is a threatened species and Max wanted to know what the consequences of the longleaf's decline might be for other forms of wildlife. So Max looked through books while I scoured the web and we came up with the following list of living beings which depend on the longleaf:

Red-cockaded woodpecker
Nine-banded armadillo
Gopher tortoise
Bachman sparrow
Northern Bobwhite
Pitcher plant
Red fox
Pinewoods milkweed
Cotton mouth snakes
Flatwoods salamander
Fox squirrel
Pine warblers
Indigo snakes

The Longleaf Alliance was founded in 1995 by longleaf pine lovers who refused to allow this magnificent tree to disappear. We learned from their website that the red-cockaded is the only woodpecker in North America that excavates its cavity in a living pine tree.  It chips holes around each cavity entrance that causes resin to bleed down the face of the tree. This resin helps to ward off the main nest predator- the grey rat snake. It is sobering and sad to understand that this beautiful bird can only excavate nesting and roosting cavities in old, living longleaf pines. 

We also learned that the Gopher tortoise is considered a "keystone species" because upwards to 360 different species of vertebrates and invertebrates use the burrow of the gopher tortoise. Sadly, the tortoise is threatened and declining due to fire suppression and other forestry practices that degrade open forest conditions. 

Now off I go to explore relationships between the longleaf and a host of other critters with my ever-curious and always-stimulating Max- the little man that makes forest ecosystems and nature life worth preserving. Hopefully, an ecoweb will be the final result. But who knows? I feel like we learned a lot anyway.

(Source: The Longleaf Alliance)

Monroe Beachy and his community: A lesson about reconciliation from the Amish.

Kids from Sugarcreek enjoy their wheels.

I've always held a great degree of respect for Amish and Mennonite communities because their faith in Christ leads them quite naturally to forgiveness, reconciliation, and nonviolence. So it interesting to watch the press coverage of Monroe Beachy's trial and the various slants through which it is described.

It seems the outrage is contagious; perhaps we prefer anger and its attendant self-righteousness to thoughtful consideration and deliberation. The putatively-liberal Huffington Post channels the customary liberal anger and outrage. Fox News has other fish to fry, lest Republican readers start to consider something not easily given to partisanship (i.e. sports are highly partisan and tap into the adversarial vein). CBS sits on the crime side.

Financial Advisor Magazine at least offers insight into what made Beachy's investment fradulent:

He invested it in speculative securities such as junk bonds, as well as stocks, bonds, mutual finds and Ginnie Mae securities. He began collecting money from investors in 1986 under the company name of A&M Investments, and was a registered rep of H.D. Vest Advisory Services Inc. until 2004.He raised money from more than 2,600 investors in 29 states--the vast majority of them being Amish. As part of his Chapter 7 personal bankruptcy protection filing on June 30, 2010, Beachy said he lost roughly $15 million of the $33 million he collected.

The SEC says Beachy did his own books and made his own investment decisions. He mailed monthly statements that showed rates of return and account balances, and never disclosed the incurred losses. Beachy's scheme lasted long enough to where second-generation Amish were investing with him.

Beachy was not charged with running a Ponzi scheme because he did not divert any of the funds to his own use or enrichment; he simply invested in ways that lost almost half of the money invested with him.  He also was not subjected to a monetary civil penalty "due to his financial situation."

But an article in the New York Times paints a richer, less politicized picture- a picture of what is truly noteworthy in this news.

But the most intriguing aspect of Monroe Beachy’s story is how different it seems from Bernie Madoff’s — and from almost every other story with a “Ponzi scheme” headline over the years.
While victims of Mr. Madoff’s fraud, like most Ponzi victims, condemned their accused betrayer in court as a monster, many of Mr. Beachy’s investors have said in court that it is more important to forgive him than to recover their money.

While the Madoff case and others like it have inevitably created conflict between longtime investors fighting to keep their fictional profits and more recent investors trying to recover lost principal, some Beachy investors urged that their own share of his estate should be given to those in greater need.

And while Mr. Madoff’s wife and sons instantly became social pariahs in Manhattan, Mr. Beachy’s wife and children remain at his farmstead here, living peacefully with their neighbors.

But like the Madoff case, the Beachy case has left an indelible mark on the nation’s bankruptcy record.

It became the forum for a rare bankruptcy court battle over religious freedom, with Mr. Beachy’s Amish and Mennonite creditors insisting that the court’s way of dealing with his downfall could not be squared with their faith or with his.

“Monroe Beachy in his time of distress breached the trust of his fellow Amish and Mennonites” by entering an “environment of coercion and self-protection in the bankruptcy court,” a group of church elders told the judge, urging him to put the case into the hands of the church where it belonged.

That would accomplish three worthy goals, they said. It would allow a less expensive, more advantageous financial workout “based on Christian principles of love and care for the poor and needy.” It would create a setting in which “Biblical forgiveness and restoration can be found between Monroe Beachy” and those he is accused of betraying. And it would repair “the tarnished testimony and integrity of the Plain Community.”

It is impossible for me to not admire the moral courage and mercy exhibited by the Sugarcreek Amish community. In fact, I'm going to share this article with Max today because it offers a counter-cultural yet thoroughly Christ-based approach to crime. I stand with the citizens of Sugarcreek in their efforts to live in truth.