Another World is Possible

The U.S. Social Forum has begun!

For the last two days there have been nearly 13,000 people gathered here in Atlanta under the slogan “Another World is Possible; Another U.S. is Necessary.”  And I have been one of those many folks, who are still trickling in on buses and planes and caravans of cars.

Monday, I drove down from Humboldt county with the majority of the DUHC crew. That evening after we arrived in San Francisco we went to Axum Cafe, which serves Ethiopian food. I had never eaten Ethiopian food before, and I liked it quite a lot. Everyone has these spongy, soft pieces of flatbread (which taste a little like sourdough) and then there’s a large platter and you just scoop out the food with your pieces of bread. We had a vegetarian platter, so there was a spicy chickpea dish, and yellow lentils, a sort of cabbage/potato mix, a mushroom-based dish, and a nice sort of spicy spinach dish that we all shared.

Then, Tuesday, I spent a decent time in the San Francisco airport before my flight, and then quite awhile afterwards in the Atlanta airport discovering that the flight just about everyone else from DUHC was on had been extremely delayed because of bad weather in Texas. At this point, we still don’t have a large amount of the supplies everyone was expecting to use in presenting in their workshops, or a lot of the material we were hoping to hand out while tabling. But thankfully, all the people are here, which is good (they came in some time around 6am this morning).

The first day of the Forum was interesting, but mostly dedicated, for me, to helping out with the Democracy Track Tent (read: handing out a lot of copies of the Democracy Track workshops and tabling for DUHC). The big feature of the afternoon was the Opening March, which went from the Georgia state capitol building to the Atlantic Civic Center. It was a really fun march, with lots of drumming groups dancing their way through, as well as amazing art displays like this puppet made by a coalition of groups here at the Forum:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today, the second full day of the Forum, has been really fun and I’ve learned a lot.  But at the moment I’m a bit too tired to write about it… all of this was supposed to go up yesterday, but there were some wireless problems at the hotel.  But hopefully I’ll get more details up about everything tomorrow.

pushing ultimates

I had a fun and unexpected encounter Sunday afternoon, when I went out for coffee to Old Town Coffee and Chocolates. While sitting at one of their outside tables, an older man (in his 50s, maybe early 60s) sat down at the table closest to me. After a little bit, he began asking about the book I was reading, Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice by Cormac Cullinan. “Wild law?” he said. “Isn’t that kind of an oxymoron?” So I started explaining Cullinan’s idea that human law needs to take into account the patterns of order that appear in the natural world, and that we need to understand human law as part of a greater system of laws or order (physical and ecological laws, as well as patterns of moral and social values) if it is ever actually to be effective in ordering human relationships with the Earth. This launched us into a conversation on the growing ecological awareness of the U.S. at present, and whether or not we will reach some sort of ‘cusp’ in which we really do begin to reorganize social relations, not only to benefit other animals and the land, but also to provide greater social and spiritual possibilities for people: to create deeper individuals, stronger communities of people.

After awhile, he says “Hold on. I want to get you something,” and hops up from the table (he had moved over to my table by this point) and goes down the street to an old, faded blue VW van. He opens up the back and pulls out a book and brings it with him, and asks for my pen. A moment later, he hands it to me, and it turns out that he is the author of said book, and he has signed it and added “For Megan: To read in your contemplative moments. – Lew Paz.”

We didn’t talk too much more after that (it was nearing dinner time) and eventually he took off. But now I own a copy of Pushing Ultimates: Fundamentals of Authentic Self-Knowledge, written and self-published by Mr. Lew Paz (you can check it out at www.plumbell.org). It didn’t necessarily jump up the ranks of my reading list (Paulo Freire, Shulamith Firestone, and C. Lummis easily made their way into my bag for this trip instead) but none of these authors bear the distinction of having kissed my hand at the end of a conversation with them. (I offered mine to shake his, and was pretty downright surprised to have it kissed instead!)

pancakes and oysters

Saturday I had the opportunity to check out both the Arcata’s Farmers’ Market as well as Arcata’s annual Oyster Festival. While oysters aren’t necessarily my thing, I do like outdoor festivals, so I thought I’d check it out. I did try both “oyster rockefeller pierogi” as well as a grilled oyster with lemon juice and butter (cooked as shown below). Oysters have officially been relegated to “eh, not bad, but don’t really care about them” status in the Megan culinary scheme.

 

 

The farmers’ market, incidentally, was pretty cool. Instead of just one or two booths with organic produce, nearly everything was organic and grown on small farms. I had some fresh cherries, which were delicious.

The festival itself was also fun. Good live music, and lots of folks crammed, but not too crammed, into the one-square-block of the Arcata plaza. People really chilling, kicking back, some folks freely dancing. The whole thing made me remember how different just the whole cultural atmosphere of the Pacific northwest can be. Take this, for instance: six hours in the middle of hundreds of people, and I don’t remember seeing anyone on a cell phone the entire time. (What think you of that, all you Chicagoans?) That, and I still find the mixture of (left-over? neo?) hippies (old guys with long hair, women in flowy skirts in lots of colors), lumberjack-type guys in flannel and boots, and kids with dreads kind of appealing.

 

I also kind of like the mixture of palm trees and coniferous trees that you get around here. The palms keep kind of surprising me; it’s not too hot here, and you get used to seeing all the evergreens and then suddenly bam, there’s a giant palm in sight. Also, I was pretty amused by the number of people at the festival drinking out of paper bags (see the bottom right corner of the second picture above). There was beer for sale, but folks were obviously interested in bringing their own. (Furthermore, check out this guy’s kid brother, toasting with his water bottle: Cheers to the paper bag!)

Oyster Fest was just one day, which I’m cool with because this morning DUHC held a pancake breakfast, and I have to say I probably prefer pancakes. And the vegan pancakes we made this morning were particularly good (helping to break down just a little bit more my general skepticism of vegan baked goods). The pancake breakfast is part of the Humboldt County Exchange community currency project. You can pay to attend the breakfast with either regular cash or community currency, and there’s also a space set up for folks to bring things to barter or sell for community currency. Lots of DUHC members and volunteers and friends are invited and everyone sort of hangs out together eating pancakes and fruit and drinking coffee. It was nice. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures.

So the weekend was a fun cap to my first week here in Eureka. I’m feeling fairly settled in and like I’m gaining a good sense of the town as well as what goes on at DUHC and what I might work on there. I think it’s looking like it will be an enjoyable couple of months here.

eureka!

I surprise even myself in realizing that at long last all my criteria for returning to this blog are, in fact, in place. I have no student events to plan; I have responded to really quite a large majority of my emails; I am taking quite a reasonable number of classes (none); and there are even points in my day where I would rather blog than go for a walk (given that currently I’m in a town where everything closes by nine and the streets also get somewhat foggy). And, probably most importantly, I’m away from a lot of folks that I kind of miss, and I’d like to be able to talk to all of you. And furthermore, I have a digital camera for the first time, and by golly, I’m going to use it.

Hence the picture above. I discovered this ‘house’ in my first day of walking around my temporary residence of Eureka, CA. It’s known as the Carson Mansion, currently home of the Ingomar Club (which has hospitably placed a ‘members only’ sign prominently outside).

Eureka has a lot of old Victorian houses, though I haven’t seen any others quite like the Carson Mansion. Many of them seem to be scattered among other much more contemporary, much less notable houses. The Carson Mansion is situated in Old Town, which is an interesting mixture of shops and somewhat old-looking industrial buildings. There’s kind of a plaza-like area next to the water, and in case you’ve lost your way, they’ve helpfully placed a compass for guidance:

Looking out over the water from the compass, one of Eureka’s chief industries is highly visible. The pulp mill, apparently, makes pulp which is then shipped to China to be made into cardboard boxes which are then shipped back over here full of plastic junk. (Doesn’t that just assure you that all of northern California’s logging of ancient redwoods is being done for a good reason?)

Alas

So I finally admit to the (perhaps only temporary) death of this blog.  I think that I will allow its somewhat fractured identity to waste away even more into the cyberspace netherworld until it someday runs into a particle of energy that brings it back to life.  Or until I no longer have any student events to plan, have truly responded to all emails and letters, have become more sane in choosing the number of courses I am going to take, and overall feel that somehow it’s more worth my time to write on my blog than to go for a walk.

However, I’m leaving it up so that hopefully all you who stumble upon here can continue to make use of the various resources that I put together.  Please make sure to check out the  Sustainability and Recycling in Chicago section, as well as the links to the various volunteer and wilderness organizations.

If you’re wanting a new blog to read, for better writing (and photos) than I ever provided here, check out Twisty at I Blame the Patriarchy.  You may not agree with her, but she’s worth reading for her sheer ability to use the English language at a level not managed by many.

National Campus Day of Prayer on Global Warming

Because this blog just isn’t enough (as is evident by my overly abundant posting… or, I guess that is, it’s not evident) I’ve gone and gotten myself another one.  Well, not quite.  I’ve been put in charge of the blog for the National Campus Day of Prayer and Reflection on Global Warming (no, I did not choose that mouthful of a name; but nor am I sure I would have come up with anything better).  What is this event with a name so long you can’t even use its acronym?  (NCDPRGW just really doesn’t work.)  It’s a day for faith communities on campuses around the country to dedicate time to reflect and pray on the climate change situation so that, hopefully, they will be inspired to do something about it.  Or perhaps so God will.  I’m hoping for both, really.

Anyhow, you can check out the blog we’ve put together for the Day of Prayer at globalwarmingprayer.wordpress.com.   And, if you’re part of a congregation or faith community on a campus somewhere, hopefully you’ll take part.  We’re putting together a Resource Guide with information on different faith perspectives on climate change, which you can use to help put on your own service/prayer event.  So if it’s not already happening on your campus, make it happen!

This is Cobb

This post isn’t quite in the vein of my usual stuff, but oh well. At any rate, it’s mostly intended for Jenna and Alec. I at long last rediscovered the poem I wrote for one of SUPs few writing workshops. Our prompt (which was really wonderful) was a children’s book called, I believe, This is Texas. I think this may actually be the only poem I’ve written in the past few years – how sad is that! But here it is.

This is Cobb.

Cobb is that building you have been to.

It’s where your Hum class met before they moved it to Judd.

Cobb is the college’s largest source of English majors and cigarette smoke,
RSO fliers, old Maroons, cheap coffee, long scarves, tweed jackets, Chinese buns, and flooded bathrooms.

At Cobb you might see strange installation art, or obscure Japanese film.
You might eat day-old free bagels.
You might hear lectures on Kant at any time of day.

So many, many things to do at Cobb. So many things to see.

And at night at Cobb, interesting things crawl out from the basement.

UT audition surveys asking if you want to be naked on stage.
Sock puppet fights.
Sorority girls singing.
People who do MUNUC.
And those very odd ones, who study in the same room they have lecture, imagining their professor, still there, still lecturing.

You should be careful at Cobb at night.

But in the day, when there is a long line for stale coffee in styrofoam cups,
when you can say hello to the same people out front all day long,
before every class, after every class,
and when the stairs are too crowded to go down,

then you should go to Cobb and not worry about being careful,
and be happy at Cobb,
the building to which we have all already been.