One of my heroes.

http://www.globalonenessproject.org/video/Jayesh-Patel/1

This links to a video of Jayeshbhai's everydays. I worked with him closely in India, and am so very grateful that people like him exist. Hope and humanity exemplified.... in people form.

A quick way to help the environment

https://www.environmentillinois.org/action/protect-lake-michigan/no-bp-gas

One day...

.. this guy was sitting at this bar in Chicago and looks over and sees this guy that looks exactly like him. He says to the guy, "Hey you look just like me!"

The other man agrees and asks, "Where are you from?"

The first guy answers, "Chicago."

"Me too!" says the second guy, "What street do you live on?"

"Forty-Ninth Street," answers the first guy.

"Me too!" says the second guy, becoming increasingly excited. "What's your address?"

''951."

"Me too! Wow, this is incredible! What are your parents' names?"

"John and Cathy," says the first guy.

"Me too!" shouts the second guy. "I wonder if we're related!?"

Meanwhile, the bartenders are changing shifts and the guy coming on asks if anything is new.

"No," says the first bartender, "just the Smith twins, drunk again."

_____________________

I have found life an enjoyable, enchanting, active, and sometime terrifying experience, and I've enjoyed it completely. A lament in one ear, maybe, but always a song in the other. --Sean O'Casey

What today taught me

While you have a thing it can be taken from you... but when you give it, you have given it. No robber can take it from you. It is yours then for ever when you have given it. It will be yours always. That is to give. --James Joyce

"For the past five years, Dr. Stephen Post has been funding research projects that test how altruism, compassion, and giving affect people's lives and well-being. He has sponsored more than 50 studies by scientists from 54 major universities. In a wide range of disciplines – from public health to human development to neuroscience, sociology, and evolutionary biology – the studies have demonstrated that love and caring expressed in doing good for others lead people to have healthier, happier, and even longer lives. "

I had a terrific, terrific day today. I got a chance to do something really above and beyond for someone I love, which led to a mess of great people wanting to help, which led to a lot of people becoming happy by association when the pieces finally fell into place. The whole process made the entire day glow.

I want to try to be ridiculously unselfish. I want to be more like Hardee when I grow up.

Molting and whatnot

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. "Which road do I take?" she asked. "Where do you want to go?" was his response. "I don't know," Alice answered. "Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter." - Lewis Carroll

People say, "Change is inevitable." I wonder if evolution is. I have this super-unhealthy tendency to coast, and bury myself in the work I take on, which is probably pretty common. I just need to make more an effort to sit with myself and my choices, and really think about what I'm building towards.

I just had a birthday. Quite honestly, this past bday has been one of the hardest transitions I've ever had to work through, right up there with GraduatingCollege. (Most of y'all know why, involving an age-old promise to my grandfather). It took about 4 or 5 weeks of living under a relentless black cloud - but I'm climbing back. Somewhat like the scene in Homeward Bound, where the old dog finally claws out of the deep and lonely hole. Between this one and my next birthday, I feel myself getting ready to make whatever big decisions come my way and take on the changes that come along with them (though it is still, as always, ever so scary).

We generate our own environment. We get exactly what we deserve. How can we resent a life we've created ourselves? Who's to blame, who's to credit but us? Who can change it, anytime we wish, but us? --Richard Bach

-------------------------------
And HAPPY BIRTHDAY VISHODUSS!!!!!!!!!!

Rules For Being Human

Rule One:
You will receive a body. You may love it or hate it, but it will be yours for the duration of your life on Earth.

Rule Two:
You will be presented with lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called 'life.' Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or hate them, but you have designed them as part of your curriculum.

Rule Three:
There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of experimentation, a series of trials, errors, and occasional victories. The failed experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that work.

Rule Four:
A lesson is repeated until learned. Lessons will be repeated to you in various forms until you have learned them. When you have learned them, you can then go on to the next lesson.

Rule Five:
Learning does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

Rule Six:
'There' is no better than 'here'. When your 'there' has become a 'here,' you will simply obtain a 'there' that will look better to you than your present 'here'.

Rule Seven:
Others are only mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.

Rule Eight:
What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you.

Rule Nine:
Your answers lie inside of you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.


--Cherie Carter-Scott, From "If Life is a Game, These are the Rules"

Here's why I love Tina.. and why you should too.

y'all, i've got a fever. i dunno what happened. ima come thru tonight, but fyi, i am in bad shape. maybe that's why i was so out of it yesterday, the germs were attacking my system like white imperialists. fuckers.

sorry.

peace.
t.

Thoughts on approaching the 3 yr mark since my Indicorps Fellowship

Aug 2004. Committing to Indicorps was a decision among a lot of hard decisions I made back then. It's been a struggle to say the least, but I'm always growing, and hopefully, always learning how to be a better person.

Anyhow, I jumped into it- the Rural Design School fellowship- and something about trying to help empower people through their own creativity really clicked for me. The experience has informed and shaped a lot of what I've done since then. I know I'm committed to this work- community-building and arts activism- but I've had to work through some difficult thought processes. It's such fulfilling work, but I feel like there are so many balls perpetually in the air that I barely have time to recognize the rhyme or reason to my work, let alone the impact of it or the need for it.

For example, from the beginning, I was told that the first rule for community organizing is to immerse yourself in the community with which you work, to try to truly understand the deeper contexts and layers to what you see happening. But, at the end of the day, I've seen too many instances of organizers being unknowingly mocked, played, or (worst case) taken advantage of, by community members because these organizers are so oblivious to the fact that they are outsiders.

One of the most brutal reality checks I got was a conversation in India (while in the midst of 'immersing myself' in the community's lifestyle... living in a hut in the desert in 120 degree weather on the Indo-Pak border, living on less than $25/mo with a 2-hour commute to a hospital or internet) when someone reminded me that, at the end of the day, no matter how bare boned I choose to live, I'm still an English-speaking, college-educated, American-citizenship-holding woman with access and options. I think that one conversation set the course for all of my decisions since then.

I can be one with people in struggle and solidarity, but I have to acknowledge my privilege. It's a perpetual separator, but such a great gift.

I don't know if I have a point here. I am still learning. Working through all these diametric and circular thoughts I have swirling around in my head: guilt-complexes; understanding why people choose hate and anger instead of constructive work; wondering if grad school is a next step for me- and a method to understand how macro-level systems and institutions affect my work- or if it is me, stalling in the work I could be doing; understanding coalition building vs. separate community empowerment; mediating the difference between ground level, grassroots work and working on higher-up, systematic change; how one can begin to define 'effective' or 'successful' work in a space where change isn't quantifiable; how anyone can consistently and sustainably keep pushing forward with work that can be so frustrating and exhausting ...

I feel like I'm in a perpetual storm of wanting to do good while keeping my work, motives, and priorities in check. I guess, when everything is said and done, I'm still trying to figure things out, just farther along then I used to be. But the great thing is that like attracts like, and I'm surrounded by amazingly inspiring and beautiful people that challenge me to keep going and push me to imagine all the good I am capable of- if I can keep my head up (lately, keeping my head up has been one of the toughest obstacles I've faced).

I'm also super grateful that we live in a time of people like this getting the attention and credit that brings good work to the forefront.

as the world keeps getting smaller.

http://flickrvision.com/

beautiful concept. :)

Art Activism

"Art activism is not a service to be bought or sold, but art that defends and agitates towards change, tries to clearly articulate issues, has the ability to remind us of the connections between us, thereby inspiring the people to devise strategies and actions."
—Alice Lovelace in I Was Singing You

Study: 38 Percent Of People Not Actually Entitled To Their Opinion

CHICAGO—In a surprising refutation of the conventional wisdom on opinion entitlement, a study conducted by the University of Chicago's School for Behavioral Science concluded that more than one-third of the U.S. population is neither entitled nor qualified to have opinions.

"On topics from evolution to the environment to gay marriage to immigration reform, we found that many of the opinions expressed were so off-base and ill-informed that they actually hurt society by being voiced," said chief researcher Professor Mark Fultz, who based the findings on hundreds of telephone, office, and dinner-party conversations compiled over a three-year period. "While people have long asserted that it takes all kinds, our research shows that American society currently has a drastic oversupply of the kinds who don't have any good or worthwhile thoughts whatsoever. We could actually do just fine without them."

In 2002, Fultz's team shook the academic world by conclusively proving the existence of both bad ideas during brainstorming and dumb questions during question-and-answer sessions.

--the Onion Newspaper

---------------------------------------------

AND... the link to the Chicago Public Radio recording of our Looptopia performance. If the link doesn't work, go to www.chicagopublicradio.org and search for "looptopia".

http://www.chicagopublicradio.
org/Program_AMP_Segment.
aspx?segmentID=10896

I wished to live deliberately

"I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to
die, to discover that I had not lived."-- Henry David Thoreau

May 11th, 2007

Marks the first performance I have ever directed. :)

(It was recorded for Chi Public Radio; I'll get the link up once I have it.)

In other fantastic news: I just found out some of my work will be published in an anthology! More word to come...

updates: (brought to you in lazy powerpoint bullets form)

* my dad's bday celebration- went to see the Dalai Lama speak, organized a picnic, and got my dad and dada tickets to his private teaching. :)

* CA was amazing. Rage was fantastic, and the entire experience was worth the trip. QT w/ Hardee and my brother at the concert, planning w/ double oh, and catching up w/ anup. good times.

* work is still taking over my life. but it's great. between the website development, grant writing, market research focus groups, program planning (we are now planning fall 2008!), event planning, recruiting and hiring artistic directors and authors, and editorial work- it's like getting 2349823098 graduate degrees hands-on. with that being said, i am exhausted, and i feel like burnout is always something on my radar.

* vish graduates this year. holy god.

ah, quotes

"how can i go from seeing rage against the machine live to the dalai lama? is it going to be an acoustic set?" -vim

"fine, don't go. hang out with your friends."
"no, i'm coming. i'll feel guilty all night if i don't come home now."
-me and vish, in the moment i discovered i am becoming my mom. :)

"my seester! you up for some cultural learnings this weekend?" -vero trying to get me to go out

Inspiration from Nipun

"I'm a missionary today. I have decided to convert stares into smiles.

It's 4:50AM. A man on bicycle, riding hands-free, is singing devotional songs; I feel a current of positive vibrations as he passes. I smile. A bit later, four guys jogging -- two of them without shoes -- at a 10 kilometer/hour clip; they are easy converts and smile back at my smile. Then, a cow stares. So I smile, fold my hands and do a half bow. Unfortunately, the cow keeps staring. :)

Inviting stares, threatening stares, i-am-confused stares, get-lost stares ... it doesn't matter. I'm going in, head first, to do my job.

Candidate number 17, probably: a semi-toothless man standing outside a Hanuman temple at 6:35AM. I match his stare with a rock solid smile. But he's a tough one to crack. He keeps staring. So I pull out other tricks up my sleeve.

"Kaka, how are you?" I ask him. Still no response. He nods his head, as if too lazy to speak. I wave. Still nada.

Ok, time to pull out all the stops -- "Is this is the right way to Madhi?" Three others are far in front of me by now, and it's a straight road, so it's a really stupid question. But what the heck. Still staring, the old man in his kurta and pajama finally makes a sound, "Hmmmmmmmm."

I smile real big -- and I mean real big -- do a half bow to him and start walking. "I guess you can't win 'em all," I say to myself. But this is good business, because in the worst case, you are left with a smile on your own face."

From http://nipun.charityfocus.org/blog/ar/pilgrimvedchi/000651.html

Poetry in Motion

So when I hear music, I don't hear notes or nuances. I see it in my head as movement, light, color. I hear music in visuals. Same thing when I hear poetry.

I've loved him for years, and I'm finally going to see Alvin Ailey's Company perform. It's the closest thing I've ever seen to the music in my head. The last video is definitely my favorite, and I'm inspired to learn capoeira. :)

Roy on India and Resistance

There is an atmosphere of growing violence across the country. How do you read the signs? In what context should it be read?

You don't have to be a genius to read the signs. We have a growing middle class, reared on a diet of radical consumerism and aggressive greed. Unlike industrializing Western countries, which had colonies from which to plunder resources and generate slave labor to feed this process, we have to colonize ourselves, our own nether parts. We've begun to eat our own limbs. The greed that is being generated (and marketed as a value interchangeable with nationalism) can only be sated by grabbing land, water and resources from the vulnerable. What we're witnessing is the most successful secessionist struggle ever waged in independent India — the secession of the middle and upper classes from the rest of the country. It's a vertical secession, not a lateral one. They're fighting for the right to merge with the world's elite somewhere up there in the stratosphere. They've managed to commandeer the resources, the coal, the minerals, the bauxite, the water and electricity. Now they want the land to make more cars, more bombs, more mines — supertoys for the new supercitizens of the new superpower. So it's outright war, and people on both sides are choosing their weapons. The government and the corporations reach for structural adjustment, the World Bank, the ADB, FDI, friendly court orders, friendly policy makers, help from the 'friendly' corporate media and a police force that will ram all this down people's throats. Those who want to resist this process have, until now, reached for dharnas, hunger strikes, satyagraha, the courts and what they thought was friendly media. But now more and more are reaching for guns. Will the violence grow? If the 'growth rate' and the Sensex are going to be the only barometers the government uses to measure progress and the well-being of people, then of course it will. How do I read the signs? It isn't hard to read sky-writing. What it says up there, in big letters, is this: the shit has hit the fan, folks.

You once remarked that though you may not resort to violence yourself, you think it has become immoral to condemn it, given the circumstances in the country. Can you elaborate on this view?

I'd be a liability as a guerrilla! I doubt I used the word 'immoral' — morality is an elusive business, as changeable as the weather. What I feel is this: non-violent movements have knocked at the door of every democratic institution in this country for decades, and have been spurned and humiliated. Look at the Bhopal gas victims, the Narmada Bachao Andolan. The nba had a lot going for it — high-profile leadership, media coverage, more resources than any other mass movement. What went wrong? People are bound to want to rethink strategy. When Sonia Gandhi begins to promote satyagraha at the World Economic Forum in Davos, it's time for us to sit up and think. For example, is mass civil disobedience possible within the structure of a democratic nation state? Is it possible in the age of disinformation and corporate-controlled mass media? Are hunger strikes umbilically linked to celebrity politics? Would anybody care if the people of Nangla Machhi or Bhatti mines went on a hunger strike? Irom Sharmila has been on a hunger strike for six years. That should be a lesson to many of us. I've always felt that it's ironic that hunger strikes are used as a political weapon in a land where most people go hungry anyway. We are in a different time and place now. Up against a different, more complex adversary. We've entered the era of NGOs — or should I say the era of paltu shers — in which mass action can be a treacherous business. We have demonstrations which are funded, we have sponsored dharnas and social forums which make militant postures but never follow up on what they preach. We have all kinds of 'virtual' resistance. Meetings against SEZs sponsored by the biggest promoters of SEZs. Awards and grants for environmental activism and community action given by corporations responsible for devastating whole ecosystems. Vedanta, a company mining bauxite in the forests of Orissa, wants to start a university. The Tatas have two charitable trusts that directly and indirectly fund activists and mass movements across the country. Could that be why Singur has drawn so much less flak than Nandigram? Of course the Tatas and Birlas funded Gandhi too — maybe he was our first NGO. But now we have NGOs who make a lot of noise, write a lot of reports, but whom the sarkar is more than comfortable with. How do we make sense of all this? The place is crawling with professional diffusers of real political action. 'Virtual' resistance has become something of a liability.

There was a time when mass movements looked to the courts for justice. The courts have rained down a series of judgments that are so unjust, so insulting to the poor in the language they use, they take your breath away. A recent Supreme Court judgment, allowing the Vasant Kunj Mall to resume construction though it didn't have the requisite clearances, said in so many words that the questions of corporations indulging in malpractice does not arise! In the ERA of corporate globalization, corporate land-grab, in the ERA of Enron and Monsanto, Halliburton and Bechtel, that's a loaded thing to say. It exposes the ideological heart of the most powerful institution in this country. The judiciary, along with the corporate press, is now seen as the lynchpin of the neo-liberal project.

In a climate like this, when people feel that they are being worn down, exhausted by these interminable 'democratic' processes, only to be eventually humiliated, what are they supposed to do? Of course it isn't as though the only options are binary — violence versus non-violence. There are political parties that believe in armed struggle but only as one part of their overall political strategy. Political workers in these struggles have been dealt with brutally, killed, beaten, imprisoned under false charges. People are fully aware that to take to arms is to call down upon yourself the myriad forms of the violence of the Indian State. The minute armed struggle becomes a strategy, your whole world shrinks and the colors fade to black and white. But when people decide to take that step because every other option has ended in despair, should we condemn them? Does anyone believe that if the people of Nandigram had held a dharna and sung songs, the West Bengal government would have backed down? We are living in times when to be ineffective is to support the status quo (which no doubt suits some of us). And being effective comes at a terrible price. I find it hard to condemn people who are prepared to pay that price.

Excerpt of interview with Arundhati Roy, conducted by Shoma Chaudhury of Tehelka.
Tehelka
March 26, 2007

Fruity and Precocious

SamUel, you are too awesome for words.

To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing.

--Raymond Williams

2007 what?

Holy Lord. 2006 was a year of unbelievable learning. Now, 2007. So much has happened, is happening. I'm working full time at a truly inspiring job. Officially, an editor/teaching-artist/program director; unofficially, a facilitator of creating creative spaces for others. It's good. Rewarding, challenging, fulfilling and beautiful. But between that, teaching my class at U of C, the Community Leadership Fellowship and getting into shape, there are too few hours in the day. I had to give up teaching with After School Matters at Senn for the semester. :( Too many balls in the air.

Vish is awaiting undergrad decisions, Vim may be moving, Mom and Dad might be moving houses; God only knows what this year will bring for me. But it will be good. And necessary for becoming a better me tomorrow.

2007 resolutions:

*Be more proactive. Get up early and take advantage of my days, really focus on my follow through, be honest with myself on the projects I want to take on. It's ok to say no.

*Make more time to be creative. It's great to facilitate others, but sometimes I need to find spaces for myself. Paint, write, perform. Make time for coffee with the muses in my life.

*Push myself to think long term. In what direction do I want to build my 2007?

*Get into shape. Lose the post-marathon tummy: Angela's and Jennie's weddings are this year. My workouts are now about more than just me. :)

INTERBEING - by Thich Nhat Hanh

(in his book, “Peace is Every Step”)

“If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-“ with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be.

If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. Without sunshine, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see wheat. We know the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. The logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.

Looking even more deeply, we can see ourselves in this sheet of paper too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, it is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. We cannot point out one thing that is not here – time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. That is why I think the word inter-be should be in the dictionary. “To be” is to inter-be. We cannot just be by ourselves alone. We have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.

Suppose we try to return one of the elements to its source. Suppose we return the sunshine to the sun. Do you think that this sheet of paper will be possible? No, without sunshine nothing can be. And if we return the logger to his mother, then we have no sheet of paper either. The fact is that this sheet of paper is made up lonely of “non-paper” elements. And if we return these non-paper elements to their sources, then there can be no paper at all. Without non-paper elements, like mind, logger, sunshine and so on, there will be no paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.”

Re: War

1/10/07

Dear Mr. President,

Thanks for your address to the nation. It's good to know you still want to talk to us after how we behaved in November.

Listen, can I be frank? Sending in 20,000 more troops just ain't gonna do the job. That will only bring the troop level back up to what it was last year. And we were losing the war last year! We've already had over a million troops serve some time in Iraq since 2003. Another few thousand is simply not enough to find those weapons of mass destruction! Er, I mean... bringing those responsible for 9/11 to justice! Um, scratch that. Try this -- BRING DEMOCRACY TO THE MIDDLE EAST! YES!!!

You've got to show some courage, dude! You've got to win this one! C'mon, you got Saddam! You hung 'im high! I loved watching the video of that -- just like the old wild west! The bad guy wore black! The hangmen were as crazy as the hangee! Lynch mobs rule!!!

Look, I have to admit I feel very sorry for the predicament you're in. As Ricky Bobby said, "If you're not first, you're last." And you being humiliated in front of the whole world does NONE of us Americans any good.

Sir, listen to me. You have to send in MILLIONS of troops to Iraq, not thousands! The only way to lick this thing now is to flood Iraq with millions of us! I know that you're out of combat-ready soldiers -- so you have to look elsewhere! The only way you are going to beat a nation of 27 million -- Iraq -- is to send in at least 28 million! Here's how it would work:

The first 27 million Americans go in and kill one Iraqi each. That will quickly take care of any insurgency. The other one million of us will stay and rebuild the country. Simple.

Now, I know you're saying, where will I find 28 million Americans to go to Iraq? Here are some suggestions:

1. More than 62,000,000 Americans voted for you in the last election (the one that took place a year and half into a war we already knew we were losing). I am confident that at least a third of them would want to put their body where there vote was and sign up to volunteer. I know many of these people and, while we may disagree politically, I know that they don't believe someone else should have to go and fight their fight for them -- while they hide here in America.

2. Start a "Kill an Iraqi" Meet-Up group in cities across the country. I know this idea is so early-21st century, but I once went to a Lou Dobbs Meet-Up and, I swear, some of the best ideas happen after the third mojito. I'm sure you'll get another five million or so enlistees from this effort.

3. Send over all members of the mainstream media. After all, they were your collaborators in bringing us this war -- and many of them are already trained from having been "embedded!" If that doesn't bring the total to 28 million, then draft all viewers of the FOX News channel.

Mr. Bush, do not give up! Now is not the time to pull your punch! Don't be a weenie by sending in a few over-tired troops. Get your people behind you and YOU lead them in like a true commander in chief! Leave no conservative behind! Full speed ahead!

We promise to write. Go get 'em W!

Yours,

Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com