tramping

I'm reading another library-sale find, "Refuge" by Terry Tempest Williams. It's a simultaneous natural and personal history of her life, on the shores of the Great Salt Lake. She reaches a bit into the Mormon history of the state and her own family, and at one intriguing point describes an almost-utopian experiment, in the 1850s, called Brigham City. (She calls it a socialistic endeavor begun by conservatives.) The city's founder settled a few hundred families, with the goal of a self-sufficient, interdependent community whose every practical need was represented in the skill set of its population. Of course it was all a "company store" type of central administration, and Williams writes that the lack of acceptance of diversity (economic and interpersonal) was the town's eventual undoing. But in addition to establishing workers in textiles, metals, carpentry, livestock and agriculture, she records, "The community even made provisions for transients, declaring a 'tramp department' which enlisted their labor for chopping wood in exchange for a good meal."

What a great idea! What a natural aspect for a community of actual human beings to include! Why can't we try this? Other than the fact that we can't collectively admit that transients are among the citizens of all our cities... Of course, I can right away imagine the naysayers (those who suppose that cities only consist of people who've got it all together - and who are happy and fulfilled that way). To them I'd suggest that our visions of city/community already incorporate many other acceptances of less-than-utopian currents (not to mention, less-than-capitalist). Project housing. Shelters. 12-step groups. Walk-in clinics with 3-hour waits, for all those of us without health insurance. Payday loan shops? And all of those have room for creative, life-affirming human faces - well, maybe not the last one - when organized with compassion and imagination...and I've seen it done...

But I'd really like to see a Tramp Department established in a modest corner of any city that calls itself progressive. Not charity but cooperation. The meeting of mutual needs (including dignity). Maybe someplace has tried this, since 1854, and I just haven't heard about it. The closest thing I know of to this idea, in my experience (besides of course all the under-the-radar catholicworker communities, who help many in transition locate work), is craigslist. The "general labor" category there has provided my own transient self with multiple opportunities. I think that was where I found the phonebook delivery that kept me solvent two winters in a row. Almost got a job picking blueberries, from that site. And when I first got to Portland, it connected me with a 3-week gig cleaning out invasive water plants at a marina on the Columbia Slough: one of the physically toughest, but visually most beautiful jobs I've ever had. And that could've led to yet more of the tramping life - that job was where I got the invitation to live on a sailboat in Hawaii for the winter. But that's another story....the vegan Vedic ex-biker who had the boat was a fascinating guy, but with no further context, that opportunity seemed like more senses of "tramp" than I wanted to take on...

toward sharing the wealth

Just got this post from Tryon Farm in Portland: one of my favorite communities out there. They've got a wonderful idea that puts fund-raising, fun, and community-making into the same continuing action. Here's an excerpt from their post:
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donate at least $25 dollars, and you'll receive a fantastic assortment of goodies - including bus tickets, Dave's Killer Bread, free bowling shoe rental, free gelato and more!

What's more, TLC Farm is organizing an "incentive event" soon for everyone who donated through the Give!Guide, to go out and use our incentives together (gelato and bowling, anyone?) and meet fellow supporters of TLC Farm.

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The local indie paper is the go-between, publishing the guide and offering the "incentives". The "incentive package" is an effective, if inevitable draw. Since we humans can't seem to advance to giving-without-getting, all that often. But the event was what really caught my eye. "Go out and use our incentives together" - what a great expression of the potential to transform, starting where we are, even in a consumptive world. Even with our entertainment, yeah. (The catholicworker/IWW phrase that I love: building a new world in the shell of the old.) Every action counts, right? Every person's needed, right? If it is in fact the world we are talking about... And not everybody's ready for, or empowered of, more sweeping actions. And, not everybody having the same kinds of wealth, perhaps those with the tangible and those with other kinds (time, energy, information - the great wealth and privilege of activists) could do a little more exchanging, come down from their "separate" categories. I like how even the most citified of consumers are welcomed to participate in this one. And to the good of a land-based experiment, right in the heart of the city. Tryon's site is www.tryonfarm.org if anyone would like to see more of the beautiful ways they're transforming their corner of the world.

nothing

How bout that. Nothing happened today worth writing about. I'm at the bar, making use of their wireless and their excellent beer, but nothing at all is coming to mind. Nothing at all. How many working stiffs - it's a great term, when we're about as good as dead by the end of the shift - is this out there happening to right now? I just delivered pizzas to about two dozen of them. At least they were being honest about their existential position. Where their circumstances, and their choices, and their lives as they are, have brought them. I'm gonna be honest about mine now, by not trying to write more. I'm empty for the moment, of anything but work.

snow

Snow on the earth of northern NM today. In the air. In the clouds, and in every space between. Every branch, wall, car, building, wears its own shape again, raised higher and lighter. The white equalizes, silences. The streets aren't plowed yet, and we who leave our houses remember what it is to defer to nature's agenda for once. My coffee and internet space is nearby, and it's open, thankfully. Yet to see if the holiday artisans' market downtown will be. I'm due there soon to help sell chocolate, ginger tea and tepache. But if there are more important matters than commerce going on today, great. If we won't seek peace, let the earth seek us out with it. Give us its own peace, from rush and struggle and consumption. From all our needs and expectations of what all these holiday-mirages demand. Let there be peace on earth. If not in the ideal, if not in the whole, at least I give thanks for it here, on this ground: in these most tangible, underfoot and overhead manifestations.

wishful thinking

In which inquiry will be made whether a Worker, engaged and enmeshed in all the everyday struggles for security, stability and validity, can also offer anything to the Good Work of peace justice and bridge-building in the world...

2youtubes

Real politics: for and by the people.
Women of Code Pink travelled to Iran last month to meet and dialogue with Iranians, and to bring messages for us here in the US and for President Obama.
To watch the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxCU9Os0CMY

Also at Code Pink's site, video from their White House shoe solidarity action for Iraqi journalist, Muntadar al-Zaidi:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxCU9Os0CMY
“This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.”