Crooked Mile

I've Moved!

2010-11-24T15:58:00.000-06:00

Come visit me in my new space:

pspirro: unschooling & other persuasions

Does It Improve Upon the Silence?

2010-10-14T20:54:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been inclined to say less and less about more and more.

Maybe you've noticed.

It's not that I have suddenly decided my opinions don't matter. (I actually decided that long ago.) It's that I've taken a certain question to heart, and it's had a profound affect on my desire to say much of anything at all.

A few weeks ago -- and don't ask me to be more specific because I'm too lazy to go back through my feed reader and find the post -- author and 37 Days blogger Patti Digh suggested that we consider this simple question before we speak: "Does it improve upon the silence?"

It occurred to me-- continues to occur to me -- that very little actually does.

What a revelation!

What a relief!

What a nice way to let you know I think I've said all I'm going to say here.

Thanks for sharing your time with me.

Enjoy the silence. I will, too.

A Dispatch from Planet Unschooling

2010-08-19T14:39:00.001-05:00

My friend's daughter just turned four. She does cute four-year-old things, which my friend sometimes posts about on Facebook. In among the happy comments that followed one such posting was the one that always seems to come, the one advising my friend to enjoy her daughter now, because "when she's 14 you'll wish she lived on another planet."

People, let me tell you something. My daughter is 14. And there are times when I wished both of us lived on another planet. As in, together. As in, far, far away from everyone who thinks teens are by nature a subspecies from hell.

And guess what. There are times when, in a manner of speaking, we do.

Last week, for instance. In the mountains of East Tennessee, thirty-three unschooling teens, a half-dozen counselors, a handful of parent-volunteers, and the awesome Laura and Scotty Bowman, director and camp chef, all gathered for the first ever East Tennessee Unschooled Summer Camp at Buffalo Mountain outside of Johnson City.

It was our own private Jupiter. Or moon thereof. An unschooler's moon.

Now, I knew this was going to be a different sort of camp than the one I attended when I was fourteen. The one with the bland meals in the big mess hall, and Reveille at sunrise, and mandatory Vespers on Wednesday, and forced bonhomie, and too-bad-for-you-if-you-don't-like-hotdogs, and adult staff hovering everywhere, keeping the ~~rabble~~ campers in line.

And I was right. This camp was nothing like that.

First of all, there were only a few rules. Like, no food in the cabins, morning and evening check-ins, hiking partners for hikes, quiet hours after 11 p.m.

But no lights-out-by-whenever, so night owls were free to stay up as late as they liked, as long as they got up for morning check-in. And instead of Reveille blaring over the camp loudspeakers at dawn, those who needed help waking up were serenaded at their cabin door by counselors singing Bohemian Rhapsody. And they were free to return to bed after check-in. Take that, Camp Arthur G. Hough.

There was a schedule of activities listed daily on a whiteboard. They were led by the counselors, by the campers, and by Laura. They were all optional. You could go to a few, or all of them, or none of them. But they were all so intriguing, how could you not go? And so the lodge was full of kids taking part in discussions of the Myers-Briggs personality types, of college, of long-distance friendships, of relationships with siblings. They met up for hikes to the waterfall, and kayaking, and swimming, and the zipline. They showed up for a couples-dancing workshop, a belly-dancing workshop, a zine-making workshop, and a two-hour soapstone carving workshop that ended up lasting two days as everyone kept going back to do one more.

And then there was the spontaneous stuff, like the ever-morphing games of Werewolf that grew to encompass nearly the entire camp. And the music jams, the walks along the creek, the late-night conversations in the lodge.

There was good food, much of it locally sourced, almost all of it made from scratch. Muffins from recipes, not from boxes. Lasagne noodles rolled out on a pasta machine. Fresh vegetables. Meals were served at set times, but there was always a big bowl of fruit and chips and granola bars on the counter, and shelves in the kitchen where campers could stash their own snacks for between-meal noshes. The kitchen never closed, and there was a late-night staffer whose job was to stay up until the last camper wandered off to bed.

Parent volunteers had rooms in a building down the way a bit, nearby but not exactly central to the main area, so we could stay out of the way if we wanted to and still remain accessible if our kids needed us, or needed a cool place to hang out or sleep, since our rooms were air-conditioned and theirs weren't. A couple kids took advantage of that option, and nobody shamed them, or suggested they toughen up, or accused the parents of mollycoddling. The kids were hot, the rooms were cool, sleep was needed. Needs were met. Would that the whole world could work so well.

It was an amazingly functional week. People got along, did what they wanted, hung out, tried new things, helped in the kitchen, acted silly, wandered the trails, made music, talked to one another about important stuff and everyday stuff and important everyday stuff.

And when I say "people" I mean all of us. The kids, the counselors, the parents, the staff, everyone. With each other.

That's the gift of unschooling.

I will say with complete confidence that not one of the parents at that camp wishes our kids were on another planet. Not one. Is it because our teens are exceptional? Well, sure they're exceptional. They're unschooled. Which means all of the schooly stuff that comes between kids and their parents, between kids and their passions, all that stuff that gets in the way of kids figuring out how to relate honestly with one another, how to respect themselves and others, and how to respond to the needs of their bodies and their minds and their imaginations, all of that stuff that gets mediated by school and by the institutionalized thinking that supports the schooling paradigm, is absent. It isn't even a part of the atmosphere.

In the words of fellow unschooler Sara McGrath, unschooling "gets schooling out of the way so various unique, dynamic personal, creative ways of growing up, living, participating and contributing to communities can develop." Places like ETUSC are the result of what happens when you do just that: get school out of the way, out of your life, out of your kids' lives, out of your mode of comprehending the world and your own place in it.

You have a whole new world.

And a most excellent planet. Or moon. Either way.

Drawing Bones

2010-08-03T09:12:00.002-05:00

image courtesy University of Washington

Last night I noticed Dragonstar was working on a sketch of a cat skeleton. She was using an online photograph as her model. The image was either an actual skeleton or a realistic recreation. At the time I wandered by, she was drawing a foreleg.

Some time ago she had explained to me how an understanding of cat anatomy helped her to draw better dragons. For example, she'd pointed out how the bones of a cat's hind legs are set at acute angles, even when the animal is standing up, a trait shared by her dragons.

If you want to draw fantasy creatures that look like they could actually exist, it helps to know how real animals are put together, she told me.

Indeed.

She usually wears headphones when she works. Often she's listening to Celtic tunes on Pandora. Tunes are not the same as songs. Songs have lyrics. Lyrics can be distracting, depending on what you're doing. Tunes -- instrumentals -- tend to stay out of the way. But they are very much heard. At one point yesterday she pulled off the headphones and raced upstairs, where a moment later I could hear the trill of her pennywhistle. Apparently Pandora had just played a tune she'd been learning, with a particular passage that had been giving her trouble, and she wanted to commit what she'd just heard to memory before it got away from her.

A few minutes later she was back at her tablet, drawing bones.

I love unschooling.

Update: A couple days after I wrote this, D explained to me that the smaller the animal, the more angeled that back leg joint will be. Which means you can judge the size of her dragons by the set of the back leg. The wider the angle, the bigger the dragon.

I. Love. Unschooling.

Through a Lens, Darkly

2010-07-17T15:09:00.007-05:00

"Unschooling is stupid."

(Comment left on a YouTube interview with Mark Frauenfelder,

founder of BoingBoing and editor-in-chief of Make Magazine.)

A long, long time ago (in my salad days, when I was green with inexperience), I knew a family whose kids weren't going to school. They didn't do school at home, they just "lived." And they seemed very happy.

At the time I was a single woman with an exasperating job and an unsatisfying life. I was not happy, but I hadn't yet made the connection between my unsatisfying life and the assumptions under which I was living. So when I looked at that family whose kids didn't go to school, and didn't really homeschool in any sense of the word, I, dear reader, was judgmental. Yes, I was.

I was sure these parents were off their nut, and equally sure that their kids were going to grow up to be, oh, I don't know... Deficient. Crippled. Damaged.

Life is so ironic.

And here's the thing: I felt that way about that family's choices even though I had longed for release from school when I was a kid, my longing set against my absolute certainty that such release was, sadly, impossible. I carried that certainty with me for a long time. School, I knew, was a given, like teething. Yes, it hurt, but it was necessary. You had to go through it or you'd end up gumming your way through life.

So I sniffed with disapproval at that ridiculous, benighted family. How could they not understand something so basic?

Like I said: ironic.

It's deeply ingrained, this schooling paradigm. When even those who were damaged by school will take up its banner, it's not hard to understand how the system is able to perpetuate itself in spite of its well-documented shortcomings. It's a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, where the captives come to identify with their captors. Or domestic abuse, where the victim defends the abuser. Or maybe it's more like that old Ferengi line, "We don't want to end the exploitation, we want to become the exploiters."

When I write about inculcated norms, this is part of what I'm talking about. When I write that schools are in the business of inculcating norms, this is what I mean. The perception in our culture that school is indispensable is a lens ground to precision by the process of schooling itself. And the notion that individuals can't find their way in the world without that lens is part of what keeps so many really smart people utterly myopic about school.

So when I hear someone say something stupid about unschooling, I try to remember how nearly impossible it is to perceive that we're wearing lenses while we're wearing them. And even when we know we're wearing them, how easily we come to rely on the clarity of the world view they provide.

Even when that world view is harmful. Even when it's shallow and anemic. Even when it's (ahem) just stupid.

Wandering Off Track

2010-05-19T11:01:00.002-05:00

Because that's where all the interesting stuff happens.

The heart and the eye and the earth-dusted boot heel, all are drawn to the places in between

and underneath.

The dangerous ground that is no longer
before and not yet after.

Living for miles upon days
in the liminal world

balanced on the threshold
of a dream.

Go where you want to go

Do what you want to do

Be who you want to be.

Live.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Unschooling and Intellectual Rigor

2010-05-07T08:40:00.009-05:00

Honestly. Can we dump the "how will they learn?" straw-man into the compost pile now, please?

Here's the article: Unschooler Wins 2nd Place in NASA No Boundaries National Competition.

And here is Zoe in action on her Youtube show, Exogeology Rocks!

Unschooling and the Honest Critique

2010-05-01T13:25:00.001-05:00

Dragonstar and I are getting ready to leave for ARGH, and I wasn't planning to write a post until we got back, but then Dave emailed me with a link to Sharon's unschooling post, which led me to her previous unschooling post, and to the comments on both posts, and after crafting a reply to Dave, I thought, well, maybe I'll put something on the blog after all.

So let's blame Dave, shall we, for sending me to the keyboard when I really should be packing.

Anyway.

It's been a tumultuous couple of weeks in unschooler-ville, in case you hadn't heard. And in the aftermath of the original GMA story that got so many people riled up, Sharon Astyk's post on unschooling was one of the more measured, thoughtful, and articulate critiques I've read.

Sharon is the author of several books, including Depletion & Abundance, and A Nation of Farmers (with Aaron Newton), and a blogger at The Chatelaine's Keys. If you want the full thrust of her unschooling critique, please go there to read it. I'm mainly interested in exploring the latter half of her post, where she ponders the limits (as in, are there any?) of autodidactic learning.

Keeping in mind that she isn't comparing unschooling to school, but to other methods of homeschooling, these are a few of the questions that came to mind as I read:

What is the role of the adult in the lives of autodidact children? The answer that springs most readily to mind is that of "facilitator" -- but what are we facilitating, exactly? And how are we doing it, specifically?

What about intellectual rigor and discipline? Is it important? How is it instilled? How does an unschooler gain this rigor in the absence of pressure? What process is involved?

When does guidance become interference? When does gentle encouragement -- or the intentional push -- become a coercive shove? Are imposed structures and routines necessarily coercive?

It's been my experience throughout my family's unschooling years that the answers to these and other questions change depending on the age and circumstances and inclinations of our kids. But in a larger sense, I think the answers are less important than the act of asking the questions and allowing new understanding to surface. The longer I can stay with the questions, the more I learn.

The worst critiques of unschooling -- or anything I hold dear, for that matter -- make me defensive, and I don't learn much when I'm defensive. The best critiques -- those that, like Sharon's, probe beneath the surface and raise honest questions -- make me want to go deeper and come to know more fully what it is I'm doing and why, and how can I do it better and more richly and to greater satisfaction. I would love to know your thoughts.

To Live As If School Didn't Exist

2010-04-09T08:46:00.005-05:00

My new favorite definition of unschooling comes from the slogan of the 2008 Live & Learn Conference:

Unschoolers Live As If School Didn't Exist.

I like this definition because it invites us into a new paradigm. It invites us to live as if.

Entire realities are created by people living as if.

The process of creative visualization depends on living as if.

People love Gandhi's exhortation that we be the change we wish to see in the world. And what does it mean to be the change, if not to live as if, i.e. to live as though the change has already occurred?

It's not wishful thinking to live as if. Wishful thinking is passive. Wishful thinking waits for things to change. Living as if doesn't wait for things to change. Living as if is active. It embodies change.

It creates a new normal. Not everywhere, but right where we are.

We don't have to change the whole world to change the world, you know.

The Curious Stuff You Find in Business Books

2010-04-05T10:53:00.014-05:00

I'd never read a book by business guru Tom Peters before, but a few days ago a slim one called Talent fell off the library shelf and into my hands, and I brought it home. I think I was drawn to the graphics. Lots of black and red and big, bold typeface. (Hmm. Where have I see that before?)

Plus it's short, which is a good quality in a business book. Business theories go out of style so fast, it's nice to finish reading one before its contents expire. Then again, this book was published in 2005, so it's practically a fossil already.

At any rate, in what is mostly a locker-room pep talk for the Brave New Free Agent World (with lots of exclamation points!) Peters has some good things to say about technology and how it behooves the current generation of business leaders to "grovel before the young" -- a reference to the fluency of those who grew up/are growing up on the native side of the digital divide. Plus he talked about freaks, and making sure you have them (us?) on board -- as friends, partners, customers -- when you launch your awesome whatever.

For some reason this reminded me of the "all he wants to do is play video games" lament of parents who worry their video-game-playing children will not be prepared for the world of work -- not realizing that the world of work includes a $20 billion-a-year video game industry that did not exist 20 years ago. Which in turn made me think of this TED talk. And this blog post.

Anyway, I'm not launching an awesome whatever at the moment, but what I got out of Peters' book translates well into Unschooling 101, not to mention Life 101: respect the kids, embrace the freaks, and don't be afraid of the new stuff. Especially the new stuff that's totally old hat to the kids and the freaks.

Unschooling, Collapse and Emergent Culture

2010-03-18T12:23:00.003-05:00

Whenever I read another report about the ways in which schools in the U.S. are becoming more controlling and coercive, I try to remember something Eckhart Tolle wrote in Stillness Speaks:

The dysfunction of the old consciousness and the arising of the new are both accelerating. Paradoxically, things are getting worse and better at the same time, although the worse is more apparent because it makes so much 'noise.'

The current system of conventional compulsory schooling makes a lot of noise. Whether it's the re-working of a failed national policy or the absurd politics of textbook content or the crime of doodling on desks, what happens in the schools reverberates through our culture in ways that make the system seem so monolithic and all-consuming there appears to be nothing it does not ultimately touch.

Kind of like the Roman Empire in its day. Or any empire, for that matter -- an analogy that reminds me of another author's work, and makes me hopeful, actually, in a perverse sort of way that you anti-civ folks might recognize.

In his 2005 book, Collapse, Jared Diamond makes the point that civilizations often go from peak to collapse relatively quickly. Empires, in particular, tend to be "noisiest" -- to borrow Tolle's term -- at their peak, when they are using up the greatest amount of resources at the fastest rate and extending their dominion to its farthest reaches.

School -- that all-consuming empire -- penetrates so deep into our culture, and so far into our cultural mindset, that it's helpful to remember that all that cacophony erupting from the current system masks some joyful sounds coming from a different quarter.

Consider:

The first Autodidact Symposium, held last week in South Carolina and organized by adult unschooler Cameron Lovejoy, offered an inspired three-day glimpse into the world of young adult unschoolers who are beginning to make their way into, and make their mark upon, the world.
The upcoming Life is Good Unschooler Conference in the Pacific Northwest continues to draw increasing numbers of new and returning unschooling families each year.
Small regional gatherings, like ARGH in Eastern Tennessee, MUGs and SMUG in Virginia and Montreal, respectively, and the big Rethinking Everything conference in Texas, bring together the families and individuals who are making those joyful sounds, whose lives reverberate with those joyful sounds, who are reaching out and finding one another and creating lives and livelihoods that have pretty much nothing to do with that seeming monolith known as school.

As Diamond argues, the seeds of an empire's ultimate collapse are sown early on, though it may take generations for the over-extension to play out, so that by the time signs of collapse become obvious it is so far along as to be pretty much inevitable.

There seems to me a certain inevitability about the collapse of our current system of compulsory schooling, though I suspect it will continue to raise a racket for some time to come. Meanwhile, it's gratifying to see and be a part of an emergent culture that's making a different kind of noise, something that sounds to me a lot more like music. People's music. Yours and mine.

Some Thoughts on Getting Stuff Done

2010-03-12T11:22:00.010-06:00

Spring made a showing in these parts this week, and it's about damned time. My cave has become small and crowded and I've been restless. And grumpy. Yes.

But I've nearly finished a new book project -- a zine I've been putting together for the past couple weeks. Details to come. [update: this project got sidelined after much consternation. I'll probably have another go at it this summer.]

* * * * *

A few weeks ago I posted a review of sorts of Seth Godin's latest book, Linchpin, in which I suggested that the business ideas he expressed in it were surprisingly compatible with unschooling (though I don't know his position on unschooling, or if he even has one). I've long felt that way about his writing, which is one reason I read his blog. Yes, it's a marketing blog, and that framing gets in my way sometimes, but if you approach his stuff without any preconceptions you'll find he's really writing about living deep and well and fully and on purpose. All stuff I'm into in a big way.

Anyway, there's a part in Linchpin where he writes about how he gets so much done (a dozen books at last count) and he reveals his secret is doing just one thing at a time.

Yeah, okay, as revelations go it's not exactly Earth-shattering, but still.

One thing.

Reader, I'll be the first to say, just one thing is not my style. I'm a three-to-five projects at a time kind of gal. But you know, sometimes it's good to reconsider one's style. So for the past several months I've been trying out a different style and working on just one thing -- mostly -- for the duration of the month. With deadlines. Real ones.

In January I made an art bra for a charity auction. In February I painted canvases for a show that went up March 1st. This month I created the zine.

And I'm hooked. As in, convinced.

Here's why: this one-thing-at-a-time idea eliminates that debilitating sense I often have of never finishing anything. It's a false sense, since in reality I finish all kinds of stuff, but it's also true in that I never get to rest in that moment of completion because I'm always juggling other things that aren't finished. And since some of those things might never be finished -- because I don't give myself the time to either finish them or make a well-considered decision to let them go -- I'm in a perpetual state of incompletion on all fronts.

Which is exhausting. As you probably know, given that we all tend to do the juggling thing.

Now I know that, in an existential sense, life itself -- Big Life -- is just one long perpetual state of incompletion. I get that. But creative projects are not so much Big Life as they are life's brain-children. Heart-children. Soul-children. They have a gestation period, and then they need to be birthed. And the ones that just get transferred from one year's "stuff I want to do" list to the next tend to drain off the very life force that's needed to get them out into the world.

If you know me at all, you know I'm not into getting stuff done just to be getting stuff done. Productivity in and of itself is overrated. It's factory-thinking. I'm not a factory. But creating the stuff I really want to create? That kind of productivity matters. So I try to choose my projects with care. And given my propensity to juggle, the forms they take -- the books, the canvases -- can occupy space in my head for a very long time. The zine, for example, has been on my list since last summer.

Had I not assigned it its own month, with a hard deadline -- a shipping date, Godin would call it -- it could well have remained on my list through next summer. Or forever.

Instead, it's in print. And I get to have my moment of completion before I launch into the next thing. And that, dear Reader; seems to be making all the difference in the world.

That, and Spring.

Anyway, this is a long way around to saying that most of the energy it takes to juggle a bunch of projects goes into the juggling, not into the projects. And while it makes me feel like I have a lot going on, having a bunch of balls in the air turns out to be far less satisfying -- and far more stressful -- than standing on the pitcher's mound and delivering one ball into the catcher's mitt at a time. And then another one. And then another one. And then the inning is over, and I can sit in the dugout for a bit and watch the crows in the outfield before getting up and doing it again.

And yes, that's a baseball analogy, in honor of Spring Training.

And Spring.

And crows.

Weirdly Homesick

2010-02-18T12:13:00.004-06:00

Dragonstar and I recently watched the Not Back to School Camp video by Allen Ellis that's been circulating on the web. It made us both a little teary-eyed.

What I felt was something like a homesickness, the way an immigrant might feel for the Old Country. Except in our case there is no Old Country. Dragonstar hasn't been to NBTSC yet. It didn't matter. We watched it and knew it was part of us, and we were part of it.

If you follow my meaning.

Sometimes I think of our unschooling journey -- this big life we're part of -- as the opposite of a diaspora. We start out all separated and find our tribe as we go along. Like in The Stand.

I wonder where it will take us next.

Random (with an Action Item)

2010-02-04T10:27:00.005-06:00

We are surrounded by friends at a distance.

Dragonstar and I were imagining a perfect world, where everyone we loved lived within a four-hour drive. Then I realized that things would get pretty crowded if that were to happen. (And isn't that good to know?)

What we really need are transporters. Like on Star Trek. We already have the little communicator devices, and our laptops are much sleeker than anything that ever showed up in Picard's ready room. And the big-screen tv thing, check. So why not transporters? What's the holdup here?

We've never met in person, but unschooler and cafe owner Mary Gold is a friend. She made the bracelet in the photo, and more like it, in memory of (and to raise memory for the husband and daughter of) Serenity Dixon, an unschooling mom and friend who lost her fight against cancer almost three weeks ago. Mary calls the bracelets Serenity Beads. I think she may have sold every last one of them, but you can check her blog to find out.

I have mine on my wrist as I type.

The mug, meanwhile, was created by local artisan Steve Herron and brought home (along with three of its siblings) by the BBPiT from a gig a while back.

The other day I was moodling around, thinking it might be interesting to do something with Mud River Press, the domain I created to serve as an imprint for 101 Reasons Why I'm an Unschooler. Right now it's just a Blogger landing page with a link to the Lulu store. But after Idzie put out her DIY ezine in December, it occurred to me that Mud River might serve a more useful purpose if it were to become a distro for unschooly stuff, books and ebooks and print zines and ezines created by unschoolers and unschooly types. My thoughts are still in the "wouldn't it be cool to do this" stage -- pretty amorphous, in other words -- but the idea interests me, so I'll be thinking more about it. And looking for feedback on the idea, if you've got any. (This is the Action Item, for those of you who wondered. A request for comment, si vous plait.)

In other news...

Author Patti Digh is bringing a new book out this fall, and at least a couple unschoolers (me and fellow blogger Laura Flynn Endres) have submitted art to the publisher for possible inclusion. Yes! Laura is giving a talk at this year's Unschooler Winter Waterpark Gathering in Ohio, as is John Taylor Gatto. I know a bunch of you will be hanging out at the Kalahari Resort next week, raising ~~all kinds of hell~~ your awesome unschooler kids in a spirit of freedom and exuberant exploration.

Meanwhile, Dragonstar and I are saving our nickles for Spring ARGH.

Which is coming. That dang groundhog says it's going to take its sweet time getting here, though. Good thing I got lots of fuzzy socks for Christmas this year.

Life is good.

That's all.

A Business Book for Unschoolers?

2010-01-21T12:31:00.005-06:00

There are several books I know of that describe the essence of unschooling without using the word. Maybe the authors didn't want to use the word. Maybe they didn't know the word. Maybe they didn't know that when they were writing about what they were writing about, they were also writing about unschooling.

I've listed a few of these books in the resource section of 101 Reasons Why I'm An Unschooler. Frank Smith's Book of Learning and Forgetting. John Taylor Gatto's Dumbing Us Down. Daniel Quinn's My Ishmael.

Today I'm going to add another title to the list: Seth Godin's Linchpin: Are You Indespensable?

Seth Godin is the author of a whole bunch of not-your-everyday-kind-of business books, and he writes a hugely popular blog. It was through his blog that I ended up getting an early copy of Linchpin to read and write about.

Reader, it's a business book for unschoolers.

Consider this excerpt from an early chapter on the New World of Work:

We've been culturally brainwashed to believe that accepting the hierarchy and lack of responsibility that come with a factory job is the one way, the only way, and the best way.

And this:

I'm sitting next to Zeke on the plane.
Well, I'm sitting but Zeke isn't. Zeke is two. He spends the entire flight standing, walking around, poking, smiling, asking, touching, responding, reacting, testing and exploring.
Is it possible that you were like Zeke?
What happened?
Somewhere along the way, we baked it out of you. And that's a shame, because what Zeke has (and what so many have lost) is exactly what we need.

And this, from a later chapter:

Great schools might work; lousy schools definitely stack the deck against you. Why is society working so hard to kill our natural-born artists? When we try to drill and practice someone into subservient obedience we're stamping out the great artist that lives within.

And finally,

"Wait! Are you saying that I have to stop following instructions and start being an artist? Someone who dreams up new ideas and makes them real? Someone who finds new ways to interact, new pathways to deliver emotion, new ways to connect? Someone who acts like a human, not a cog? Me?"

Yes.

As I said, Linchpin is a business book. It's about the world of work, and how that world is changing, and how certain forces within our current economic system are struggling to hold on to the old model -- a factory model -- that was never natural and was never designed to serve its human component.

Similarly, as I and many others have pointed out, conventional, compulsory K-12 schools -- which were established to support this factory system, and became factory systems themselves -- were never natural, and were never designed to serve their human components. Yet certain forces within our current system are struggling to reinforce the compulsory school paradigm even as all rationale for it falls away. Promoting earlier entry into pre-schools. Raising the legal age for leaving. Trying to keep the system relevant by force of law, when it is clearly not relevant by force of nature.

Or business.

I'm beginning to think -- after reading books like Linchpin, as well as books by Daniel Quinn, mentioned above, who also writes about the significance of how we make our living -- that, at least in American culture, where work has always been the main driver for cultural change, the radical altering in how we work -- and how we think about work -- will be the driving force in changing the way we think about education -- and, ultimately, in changing the way we choose to live and learn.

To Boldly Go

2010-01-14T08:51:00.005-06:00

I inadvertently posted this to the wrong blog over the weekend. (I really do need to get my blogging act together. It's out of control.) Apologies for the repeat to those of you who are sweet enough to read my other blogs. More apologies to those who left comments, which were lost in the move. Sigh.

* * * * *

Back in 2007, Dragonstar and I went to our first Live & Learn Unschooling Conference, run by the indomitable Kelly Lovejoy.

At that conference, Kelly gave me some advice -- a single word, actually -- that, once I got around to actually following it, helped to dissolve the sense of isolation from other unschoolers my daughter and I felt, and made us happier unschoolers in the process.

"Travel."

Not as in "Go to Europe" or "Visit Machu Picchu," but "Go visit other unschoolers."

At the time I thought, well, okay... but we didn't really know any of these other unschoolers well enough to show up at their homes with our overnight bags.

Did we?

Apparently, we did. And do.

Because here's what I've since learned: that unschooling families are like cells in a geographically dispersed intentional community, little clusters of "people who get it" all over the world. Once you become a member of the community and you put the word out -- in person at a gathering, or on your blog, or via facebook, or through a Yahoo group -- that you're interested in meeting up, you'll get offers from others in the community to come visit.

As in, "Come stay in our home with us."

At first I found this concept hard to fathom. It was outside my frame of reference. But when the offers kept coming, it finally became clear that they weren't "Oh, they're just being polite" offers. They were real invitations.

Chances are, you'll get them, too.

And maybe you'll find them a little disconcerting, as I did. But there will come a day when you tire of your isolation and you get out the map and finally realize that you may not live next door to any unschoolers, but there are unschooling families to the north, south, east and west who welcome visitors. And some of them are within a day's drive.

A day's drive!

Keeping in mind that some unschoolers' definition of "a day's drive" more resembles a trucker's idea of "a day's drive" than a typical family's, let me say from personal experience that spending a day in the car -- even a long day -- in order to hang out with unschoolers is more than worth it.

And getting to hang out with them in their homes? That's worth some serious road time.

Seriously.

If the mountain won't come to Mohammad, Mohammad must go to the mountain.

So it took Dragonstar and I a while to get comfortable with the idea of this kind of travel. But our frustration with our geographic isolation finally outweighed our reticence, and off we went. And we're hugely -- hugely -- glad we did. Kelly's advice was wise, so I'm passing it along to you. If you're an unschooler who finds the time between conferences or gatherings to be too frustratingly long, or if conferences are not to your liking but you crave the company of other unschoolers, I encourage you to try a more personal approach.

Be bold. Put the word out. Then fill the tank, and go.

* * * * *

Note to commentors: Please bear with me while I turn on word verification in the comments for a few posts. I have a very tenacious spammer I'm trying to rid myself of. I dislike dealing with those crooked letters as much as you do, and will make them go away as soon as my spammer does. Thanks for your understanding.

It Isn't Perfect. It's Unschooling.

2010-01-07T09:34:00.008-06:00

Over at I'm Unschooled. Yes, I Can Write, Idzie has started a conversation about the downside of unschooling that deserves continued exploration.

I'm sure a lot of unschoolers wrestle with the drawbacks Idzie describes -- the continual need to explain yourself to those who don't understand, the lack of a local network of support in many communities, the self-doubt that arises from time to time, and the absence of ritual markers of achievement like a graduation ceremony to help unschoolers transition to adulthood.

These are recurring issues for many of us, and acknowledging them doesn't mean we're unhappy with the choice to be unschoolers, any more than seeing weeds in our garden means we're unhappy growing tomatoes.

It just means things aren't perfect.

When people first embrace unschooling, they're often looking for assurances that it can "work." But like any life-process, unschooling unfolds over time, and assurances that help us get past our initial fear of doing something outside of conventional practice don't necessarily serve us a few years down the line, when we're feeling defensive and isolated.

Recognizing that this stuff comes up for a lot of us allows us to see these points of friction as part of the process. It reminds us (sometimes to our frustration) that, yes, we're different. And, no, that (probably) won't change.

The issues Idzie brings up are largely the consequence of our differentness bumping up against conventional culture. And, as she rightfully acknowledges, ""Doing ANYTHING that isn't 'normal' or 'expected' often isn't easy."

But we do it, don't we? We do it anyway.

There may be supporters of unschooling who worry that a discussion of its drawbacks will leave new or struggling unschoolers disenchanted with the whole endeavor. But frankly, I'm all about the dis-enchantment, if the enchantment has been the perception that unschooling is all unicorns and fairy dust --a way of life that will bring nothing but joy and delight to everyone who adopts it.

There is ease in unschooling, yes. There is the ease of coming to know your wacky and wonderful self within an environment of love and support and trust and encouragement. There is ease in living free of the demands of outside institutions. There is ease in learning what you learn in your own way, in your own time.

But just because there is ease doesn't mean it's easy. And conversations about difficulties are as necessary as conversations about joys. My thanks to Idzie for getting this one started.

* * * * *

Update: dearest commentors, please bear with me while I turn on word verification for a few posts. I have a very tenacious spammer I'm trying to rid myself of. I dislike dealing with those crooked letters as much as you do, and will make them go away as soon as my spammer does. Thanks for your understanding.

One Last Dispatch from the Aughts

2009-12-31T11:21:00.002-06:00

A lot of us transition-y types have a foot in two worlds. We might have jobs where we have to comply with one set of expectations, and non-job hours where we're free to let our freak flags fly.

For Dragonstar and I, our two worlds are comprised of Planet Unschooling, on the one hand, and pretty much everything else on the other.

For much of the time, the orbits of these two worlds are reasonably synchronous, and we can maintain our balance and sense of peace. But sometimes, sometimes...

* * * * *

We went to visit unschooler friends in mid-December, and stayed with them in their home. I cannot tell you what a gift -- and a revelation -- this was for us.

We are very aware, Dragonstar and I, that we live differently from pretty much everyone in our immediate proximity. It's made obvious to us every time we spend time among conventionally-parenting, conventionally-schooling families. We can get along, but we have a hard time finding meaningful common ground. We feel weird and discordant. Out of sync.

So we stay home a lot, or do things together, just she and me. Because it's hard to maintain your balance -- your peace-ability -- when you feel different and out of sync.

We're all about the peace-ability.

Which is why we love going to unschooler gatherings. Crowds of different! Orbits in sync! But gatherings are gatherings. They're events. They're not daily life.

Our recent visit gave us a chance to enjoy a brief span of daily life with another unschooling family. It's the first such visit we've ever had. Which tells you a lot about how isolated we've been.

We are so grateful not to be isolated anymore.

* * * * *

At the home of these new friends we experienced a whole new level of tension-free living. Of relaxed relationships between kids and parents. Of the kind of ease and mutual support most families I know would love to bring into their lives, if only it didn't meant giving up a lot of deeply held beliefs about how things are supposed to be.

Here's my bumpersticker summation: Peace isn't compliance. It's concordance.

It's one thing to live this way ourselves, as an army of one (small) family. To see something resembling our own daily life unfolding in someone else's home is another thing altogether. It's like taking a leap of faith and landing foursquare on the other side of the chasm.

Unschooling keeps giving us gifts.

* * * * *

Those gifts help me to maintain my sanity in my other world, when issues like toddler tantrums and willful one-year-olds come up among my conventionally-parenting acquaintances, some of whom believe it's good parenting to bite your child when your child bites you, just to show how much it hurts to be bitten.

Gah.

People who bite (or hit) their kids tend to defend their right to do so with great vehemence. What's up with that? Substitute "spouse" or "employee" into the usual "how will they learn to mind?" rationale and it's obvious (to me, anyway) that the justifications for hitting or biting one's own kids are as specious as they are self-serving.

We have strange, painful ideas of "ownership" in this culture.

And strange, painful ideas about kids.

It doesn't have to be that way.

Ask any unschooler.

* * * * *

Anyway, it's the end of another year. And, reader, it's been the best year ever. Try that phrase on for size. Now go have yourself another one. Counting down in three... two... one.

Unexpected Gifts

2009-12-24T11:10:00.003-06:00

We celebrated and opened gifts two days early this year in order to send Dragonstar off with her dad for a long holiday weekend.

What a strange feeling it is to be two days ahead of the rest of the holiday-celebrating world, with nothing more pressing on my schedule than a shower and a blog post.

I think I'll consider it an unexpected gift.

Like that perfect red Le Crueset butter dish the BBPiT found for us after I broke my little hand-painted dish several months ago and have been searching for a suitable replacement ever since. Nice.

And the not-one-but-two new food-related businesses -- a grocery and a cafe -- that are taking over a couple of the empty buildings in my little town's historic-but-sadly-almost-vacant downtown. Nice.

And the recently-completed section of my town's bike and pedestrian trail that winds along the riverfront, through a wooded grove and across a renovated steel bridge, freshly planked and painted and intended for cyclists and foot-traffic only. Very nice.

There are gifts everywhere. I know they surround you, too.

Have yourself a merry one.

It's the Ministry of Justice! No, It's an Art Space!

2009-12-10T11:39:00.013-06:00

It's been gray here all week, so you can imagine my delight to get up this morning to a bright blue sky and sunshine. The fact that it's 21 degrees is immaterial. Sunshine! Sunshine is good!

Yes, well. Sunshine is lovely, even when it illuminates the layer of dust on nearly every surface in the room I'm in. Hell, dust is lovely. Have you ever noticed how sparkly it is?

That's because it's stardust. As are we. Of course.

* * * * *

Best blog quote I've read this week:

“You think you got problems?” My mom said to me. I don’t think I’d been complaining about a problem, just so you know, but anyway, “You think you got problems?” she said, “I’ve got a vegan coming to Thanksgiving dinner.”

From The Dream Life (via Christine Kane's Word of the Year).

* * * * *

News of the Week: Three friends of mine have rented studio space in what is without question the most impressive (domineering? ostentatious?) public structure in the little city downriver from my little town: the old courthouse that sits foursquare in what was once the center of the city. It's that behemoth pictured above, a huge building built in the time when American cities created architectural homages to the Greeks and Romans, and it's been woefully underused since the '90s, when the entire city and county government moved itself to a new, far less impressive set of buildings a few blocks away.

There was talk last night, at my monthly book gathering, of developing an entire artist's colony in that impressive old building with its domed copper roof and surrounding expanse of green lawn just perfect for annual summer art fairs and plein air events.

And even though I've told myself I'm very much over the notion of working anywhere other than home, the talk kind of made me want to join the effort. Kind of.

The rents are ridiculously cheap.

It's the sort of thing I can talk myself into or out of, depending.

So we'll see.

* * * * *

Did I mention that it was very sunny today?

* * * * *

And Christmas is coming, have you heard? And Solstice. And next week Dragonstar and I will be wandering south for a few days to spend time with unschooling friends, so I may or may not have something up for you between now and Christmas Eve.

Here's to maintaining some semblance of sanity and goodwill toward others in the meantime.

Make a List

2009-12-03T09:44:00.003-06:00

Poor December. So many people have issues with you. You come so fast on the heels of Thanksgiving (especially this year) and we're always unprepared. We've barely had time to enjoy the gourds and Indian corn and now we have to swap them out for wreaths and icicle lights. We're just not ready.

And I hate to be the one to tell you, December, but all those glittery cards and soupy carols notwithstanding, you bring way more stress than peace. Which is not your fault -- we truly don't know how to do holidays well in this country anymore. But still.

Which reminds me. That big blowout party at the end? It usually sucks.

I'm so sorry.

But take heart, December. There's one thing that you're so very good at (besides bringing my birthday around every year.) You're the month of lists. And, honey, people LOVE lists.

Christmas lists. To-do lists. Do-we-have-enough-spinach-dip lists. And all those end-of-the-year Best-Of lists that we pretend to loathe but secretly relish.

Some people love their lists so much, they start them early. Havi offered up her Lentil List on Thanksgiving, and then some of Havi's people shared their own Lentil Lists (one of which was actually an Aleve List.) You can see one of my lists tomorrow over at Out of Hand Art (it's a list in nine stanzas, just because that's how it came out) and while you won't be able to read it until it posts (sometime around 4 a.m.), if you wander over there today you'll get my take on why gentle artful types have a hard time at holiday parties, and what to do about it. Which is pretty appropriate for the season, too.

Anyway.

The Queen of the End-of-the-Year List has to be Colleen at Communicatrix. Every year she posts her amazing 100-Things-I-Learned-This-Year list (here's Part I of last year's) which puts every other list in its category to shame. Truly. And while she hasn't said she's going to do it again this year, she damn well better because I'm counting on her.

Last year I borrowed the idea and wrote my own list of Things I Learned. I didn't have anywhere near 100 items on my list because I'm not a Virgo and I'm kind of lazy. But it was still enlightening, and I'm thinking I might do it again. It's that time of year, people.

December. She's not exactly a secret. We know when to expect her -- it's right there on the calendar. And yet, no matter how many times we travel around the sun, she still catches us by surprise.

It's not her fault. Try to find some reasons to love her. Maybe you can make a list.

Thanksgiving Day

2009-11-26T08:30:00.002-06:00

To be radical
is to be whole
where so much is broken
and grateful for what is
in the face of all that isn't.

Let's be radical today.
And tomorrow, too.
Thanks for being you.
That's all.

A Fridge Story

2009-11-19T12:00:00.011-06:00

For nearly six months the supermarket down the road has been doing most of our refrigeration for us.

It's been an interesting experiment.

Not that it began as an experiment. (Do these things ever?) It began with some cussing. Okay, a lot of cussing.

When the big fridge in our kitchen died this past summer we looked at the hole in our family wallet where the money wasn't, looked at the car repair that we'd just committed to and would be another six months paying off, and didn't see how a fridge purchase was going to fit into the picture.

Fridges are expensive, people. In case you didn't know.

So we decided we'd get creative until our money picture changed. I had a small dorm cube in the garage that I'd bought when I had my gallery by the river, and I brought it inside, and for the last six months, that's what we've used.

Now I realize that not having a great big fridge in the kitchen is a First World problem. And no, this isn't a post about our "sacrifice" and our "making do" and "going without." It's about something else. But I'll just tell the story, and leave it to you to glean any meaning from it.

Anyway.

Anyone who's ever used a dorm cube knows there's not a lot of room in there. Once you add a six-pack and some leftover Chinese takeout, it's full. Also, my cube had no freezer compartment, so at first we wondered what we would do for ice (nothing -- we did without ice) and how we'd manage without a supply of ice cream and those handy frozen insta-meals (somehow we got by). It just took a bit of adjustment. Was it a hassle? Sometimes, but less often than one might think.

And as time went on, some unexpected benefits emerged. I realized that not having a big fridge meant not having a big fridge to fill. Or clean. That it was easier and took a lot less time to think about our food a day or two at a time instead of planning for a week of meals. That it was a lot quicker and simpler to shop for a few items than a whole cart-full.

I know this is not what they tell you when they tell you how to shop, and no, I couldn't make big pots of soup or pasta sauce for use over several meals. But honestly, small pots of soup and sauce -- enough for a single meal, maybe with a small portion left over for someone's lunch -- taste just as good. And go together quicker. I'm just saying.

So we created few leftovers, because there was no room to store them. And when we did have a six-pack in the house -- which is infrequent, but it happens -- only a couple bottles went into that cube at a time. We learned to anticipate our needs. And to simplify our options. Imagine that.

For a few weeks I missed my convenient frozen vegetables. And my convenient frozen pizzas. But within a couple months I'd reconfigured my cooking and storage to take advantage of all the stuff that doesn't need refrigeration. Fresh vegetables would sit on my counter instead of in the crisper drawer, and we'd use them that day or the next. Overripe bananas didn't accumulate in the freezer, waiting for the day I would get around to baking a loaf of banana bread. When they were sitting on the counter, getting blacker by the moment, it was clear that today was banana bread day.

I was concerned that it would be more expensive to shop this way. Guess what. It was not.

This came as somewhat of a surprise, given all we're told about food budgeting and once-a-week shopping. But over the six months of this experiment I've concluded that keeping our fridges crammed full of food benefits the food marketers more than it does us. The truth is, the kind of things most of us put in our freezers -- the frozen pizzas and insta-meals -- are expensive. And a full fridge means that all kinds of things -- leftovers, for example, and vegetables (which are also kind of pricey) -- get lost or forgotten. When everything is more or less visible all the time, very little gets overlooked, and almost nothing goes to waste.

Anyway, the experiment was supposed to end this morning, when the delivery truck was scheduled to bring our new, smallish-but-still-more-standard-size fridge. (It's very hard to find a small fridge of any quality on this side of the Atlantic. Or the Pacific. The Europeans and Japanese have it all over us in this regard.) But alas, the one they brought arrived with a big scratch along its very visible exterior side. They'll return with another one in a few days.

Somehow I think we'll survive.

Interspecies Communication

2009-11-12T10:48:00.005-06:00

We have a raccoon living under the eaves of our carport.

The carport shares a common wall with our laundry area, and two of our indoor cats have taken to patrolling that wall, shoving laundry products aside to sit on the shelf and listen, occasionally tapping at the wall with their paws.

I have yet to hear the raccoon tap back. Perhaps he or she only does so in the wee small hours, since everyone knows that's the best time to send messages to the other side.

It's a very big raccoon, by the way. It makes me a little nervous to know it's living in the eaves of my carport.

* * *

Speaking of sending messages to the other side, here's one I'd like to send: "Is there another planet where all the sane people are?"

Item: On a day set aside for Remembrance, members of our illustrious Congress refused to debate a particular Veterans health care bill because the means by which it will be paid haven't been specified. Never mind that the bills approving the wars in which those veterans serve never seem to come with a "how will this be paid?" clause.

Notice this is not about arguing the merits of the bill. Maybe it's a terrible bill. Maybe it won't do what it's supporters claim it will do. (And what a surprise that would be.) But how will we know? They're refusing to debate the thing at all.

Here's another question I'd like to send to the other side: Why do I have to pay these guys' salaries?

* * *

While we're on the subject of inter-species communication, I hung out with some schooly people last night, my first real socializing since Dragonstar and I returned last week from ARGH. The occasion was a new book group. I've never belonged to a book group. But there was the promise of wine and tasty things to eat, so I figured what the hell.

All of the participants are artists, but aside from that they're all fairly mainstream people, so in between suggestions for things to read, there was a lot of schooly talk about high school sons and daughters and school discipline and extracurricular this and college-prep that.

When my turn came to say something, I talked a bit about unschooling and the ARGH gathering. It was not exactly the conversation spark I'd hope it would be.

Now, I've known most of these women for awhile and I know damn well they don't know what to make of me and this whole unschooling thing. But this is the midwest, and people here are generally polite. Which means they nod in all the right places, and wait until you leave the room to say what they really think.

So they all nodded when I talked of being among our tribe for a few glorious days, of kids moving freely through the campsite, dressed in all their wild unschooly finery, of people grabbing their neighbors for an impromptu porch-sit or a shared meal. I mentioned the sweetness of wandering along the shaded paths among the cabins, feeling satisfied and peaceful and at home.

And then I stopped talking. And the room got very quiet.

And finally someone praised the hummus. And that was that.

I like my fellow artists here. They're vibrant women -- to a one. But especially coming on the heels of ARGH, it's not nearly as fun to hang out with people when I'm the only unschooler in the room.

I was thinking that it might be too self-serving to suggest we read my unschooling manifesto, but maybe the group can tackle Grace Llewellyn's Teenage Liberation Handbook.

It might get them talking, anyway

Four Days in a Parallel Universe

2009-11-05T08:02:00.009-06:00

It wasn't a completely unplugged experience in the Eastern Tennessee mountains. Dragonstar had her tiny netbook with her and I used it to send a "we have arrived, all is well" email message to the BBPiT.

But still.

Days went by without an internet connection. How (unexpectedly) rejuvenating.

Well, just being in the mountains is (not unexpectedly) rejuvenating. And the ones to the east are particularly so.

At least, the ones whose tops are still intact.

Are we appalled by mountaintop mining? Gah. But all of our cabins had electricity and hot water and central heat and air. Where do you suppose that electricity came from? This isn't windmill country we're talking about. And now here I am, back in my cozy warm house, surrounded by my electronic this and plugged in that, all of it dependent on that coal-fired power plant up the river.

Hell's bells. My life is full of contradiction.

* * *

Anyway, in the mountains of Eastern Tennessee I met a woman who played Old Time music and shared her dulcimers and tub bass and guitar and banjo with anyone who wandered into her circle. We strummed and sang through "Skip to My Lou" and "I'll Fly Away" and "Shady Grove" and she made her case for the value of community music.

"It's not show-off music," she told me. "Bluegrass is show-off music. Everybody just waits for their turn to come around so they can show off. Community music isn't about showing off. It's about everybody playing and singing together."

She wanted to make sure we got the point.

"Bluegrass comes from the flatland up north. This is mountain music."

* * *

We were in the mountains for a gathering of unschoolers. We spent our days swapping stories, sharing meals, connecting.

I mentioned to someone before we went that attending an unschooler gathering is like slipping into a parallel universe, where everything is familiar, just a little slant.

Among our group are vegans and anarchists and farmers and lawyers and professionals and two-income families and military families and those who drive SUVs and minivans and those who drive hybrids. There are hippies and video gamers and nerf-warriors. There are blended families and nuclear families and same-sex parents and single parents. There are nurses and midwives and artists and writers and a former school teacher or two.

In other words, we look pretty much like the rest of society. And we live pretty much like the rest of society, in houses, with central heat, and televisions, and computers, and refrigerators.

We just don't do school. And what a difference that makes.

* * *

Ah, well. Today is not a day to draw conclusions. I'm still in re-entry mode. I expect I'll have stuff to say later about difference and sameness.

And anarchy and unschooling.

And music-making.

And mountaintop mining.

I always do.

A Hundred Thousand Others and a Hundred Thousand More

2009-10-29T08:02:00.010-05:00

Homelessness is the worse stigma in America, worse than being fat, than being unemployed, than being a person of color, than being mentally ill or being a criminal. Homelessness is the equivalent of being all those things at one time.

Becky Blanton

My friend Becky Blanton, someone I've written about before, has produced terrific a free e-book called Homeless for the Holidays that offers practical advice about giving to the homeless this holiday season (and year-round) in ways that truly make a difference.

The e-book lists all kinds of things that homeless people actually need (good socks, 12-volt appliances, pre-paid cell phones, a backpack or carryall), 101 ideas for ways you can help that really help.

It's well-designed and includes lots of information about homelessness in America, including Becky's own story of the year she found herself without work, living in her van with her dog. (Three years later she was giving a talk about it at TEDGlobal in Oxford, England.)

You can download the e-book pdf here.

And while I have you, and on a related subject, the ever-acerbic Joe Bagaent has much to say about the American way of work in this post from Ajijo, Mexico.

Finally, because it seems appropriate, and because it's probably first among many of my favorite Woody Guthrie songs, I'll leave you with the lyrics to "I Ain't Got No Home," a song he wrote in 1938 to the tune of a popular Baptist hymn of the time, "This World is Not My Home." Where the hymn counseled the poor and displaced to accept their fate and seek their home in the next life, Woody's lyrics turned that sanguine notion on its head.

Click here for a version of the song performed by Tim McMullen on YouTube.

I ain't got no home, I'm just a ramblin' around
Work when I can get it, I roam from town to town
The police make it hard wherever I may go
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore

I was farmin' shares and always I was done
My debts they was so many they wouldn't go around
Drought got my crops and Mr. Banker's at my door
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore

Six children I have raised, they're scattered and they're gone
And my darling wife to heaven she has flown
She died of the fever upon the cabin floor
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore

I mined in your mines and I gathered in your corn
I been workin' mister since the day that I was born
I worry all the time like I never did before
Cause I ain't got no home in this world anymore

Now I just ramble around to see what I can see
This wide wicked world is a funny place to be
The gamblin' man is rich and the workin' man is poor
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore

I'm stranded on this road that goes from sea to sea
A hundred thousand others are stranded here with me
A hundred thousand others and a hundred thousand more
I ain't got no home in this world anymore

Strong at the Broken Parts? Not So Much.

2009-10-22T08:46:00.025-05:00

My friend Anne had a moment at a coffee shop this morning. She wrote*:

"(I'm) finding it very difficult to be here at the coffee-shop surrounded by LOUD, disrespectful parenting. Time to take my pumpkin spice macchiato and LEAVE, to create my own Shining Bubble of Bliss, where children's Voices (AND the adults' Voices) are Heard, Honored and Respected and Celebrated."

My friend Ren posted this quote from James Bach of Buccaneer Scholar last night*:

"When you speak to your children today, you are also speaking to every day of their future selves. Parenting is outside of time. Take care and take heart in that."

* * *

Separated by the better part of a day, the two posts spoke to me in a single voice. That voice said,

This culture is hell on kids.

And, It doesn't have to be that way.

* * *

The most difficult part for me in Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story was the section about kids being sent to a juvenile jail for offenses such as throwing food. They were jailed in order to fatten the bank accounts of a corrupt judge with a financial interest in the jail.

To the judge, to the entire system, these kids weren't people. They were profit centers.

This culture is hell on kids.

(and it doesn't have to be that way.)

* * *

There was a viral video that made the rounds a week or two ago, a public service announcement reminding us -- for about the ten-gazillionth time -- that kids learn by modeling adult behavior.

Well, no shit.

* * *

I don't go out among the milling crowds anymore. I don't go to places where there is likely to be a lot of conventional parent-child interaction, because so much of it is just too painful to see. I wonder sometimes if I'm becoming a recluse.

I wonder if this is such a bad thing.

* * *

The other day I read a headline that stated that kids who are spanked have lower IQs. Whatever you might think of the whole IQ thing (not much, I say) it doesn't take a genius to realize that kids who wrap themselves in protective armor to shield against the blows of a hostile world aren't likely to come to new situations with the open hearts and minds that serve as markers of intelligence.

And guess what.

Belittling is a blow. Ridicule is a blow. Inattention, lack of respect, threats, manipulation, coercion, withdrawal of affection, these are all weapons against which kids will create their bulwark, their shielding armor that ends up deflecting not just the poisoned arrows but also the beckoning call of the world to engage and explore and interact and grow.

To what end is this violence to the bodies and souls of our kids perpetrated?

What is gained by it?

What is lost?

* * *

Some people understand unschooling to be an educational philosophy. And it is partly that. The root word educere means to draw out. Conventional parenting interprets this drawing out as a teacher-student/dominant-subordinate paradigm -- the adult extracting the correct answers and desired behavior from the child.

But among unschoolers it is more often perceived to be the world that beckons, the world that draws us out, so that we might interact, form relationships, learn, play, contemplate, become co-creators, figure out our place and our way. All of which requires us to be permeable to the world.

Not armored. Not fortressed. Not afraid. But open.

The world needs us to be open to it.

* * *

I love the world. I really do. But the people....

This is a long post. I don't know how to wrap it up, because there is no closure for an ongoing cultural dysfunction. I'll just leave you with the words of one of my favorite bumperstickers and hope that it carries you, open-hearted, into the day.

World Peace Begins At Home
Be Nicer to Your Kids

*posted on facebook

Bless This Online Community

2009-10-15T09:25:00.020-05:00

Dreaming, dreaming.

I've been keeping up with Sharon over at Casaubon's Book, who wrote this beautiful post on dreaming a garden into being. Woebegone gardener tho I am, she almost has me convinced to start digging once more.

And I couldn't agree more with her conclusion:

... without a vision, without a dream, without asking that question “what do you see” we can’t begin to make it into something real.

I have an art studio in my garage now, remember, that came into being on the wings of a vision.

And a book.

And a life.

Which reminds me. I write so little that is specifically about unschooling in this blog and my usual explanation is that our entire lives are about unschooling. But sometimes things come up that perfectly illuminate our unschooling world. Like yesterday, when the house was filled with the lilt of Dragonstar on her tinwhistle, one of the sweetest sounds from one of the sweetest instruments ever created. Her music-making was born in solitary moments when she was left alone to figure things out, and it learned to walk among music-making friends who welcomed her and let her find her way among the notes within the safety of their group.

Not everyone needs or wants formal instruction. Not everyone needs to be told "go practice."

There you go. Unschooling.

Speaking of which, and in tandem with Sharon's poetic vision about gardens, I read some recent posts from my friend and fellow unschooler Ren Allen that gave me not just food but a feast for thought. First was "Wild and Precious." A taste:

Right here under my feet there is earth to till and above me stars to inspire awe. There are children who need parents and trees that need saving. There is more here than we can take in. And people are worried about college?

Then came an article co-written for a German magazine called Unerzogen, in which Ren writes about her son:

I knew without a shred of doubt that therapy and schooling would shatter my child's vision of himself, make him doubt where there was only confidence, create "broken" where there was "whole". I couldn't do it. So on dark days when I wasn't the best mother in that moment, or I wondered if we were indeed doing him a disservice by not seeking out more (more of what I'm not sure) I found that quiet confidence born of tapping into community. Yes, that online community of words and thoughts given by strangers oft times. Strangers who had faith that their child needed no labels, needed no "fix" but needed the same trust that all children deserve.

Do yourself a kindness and read Ren's article and post, and Sharon's vision. If they don't get you ready to embrace the day, I don't know what will.

As for me, I am forever in awe of, inspired by, and grateful to, this amazing online community.

Gratitude + Stardust

2009-10-08T09:31:00.007-05:00

So a bunch of unschooler friends are heading to a Big Unschooler Gathering this weekend on a beach in South Carolina and here we are all Envious in Indiana. Sort of like Sleepless in Seattle without the email thing.

There are so many awesome unschooler meetups these days. Sandra Dodd is having a small one in November and a larger one in January. Dayna Martin is hosting an unschooling cruise to Bermuda at the end of October. For our part, Dragonstar and I are counting the days (23!!) until we leave for ARGH, the Autodidact Radical Gathering of Homeschoolers that happens every spring and fall in eastern Tennessee.

We are so ready.

Dragonstar would like to move to eastern Tennessee. There are Good Reasons why we don't, but they will be Good Reasons only for a few more years. After that...

Meanwhile we're grateful to be here in Indiana, which is among only ten states that do not place restrictions on homeschooling. (Yes, that's one of those Good Reasons.)

In the city down the road they're midway through the celebration of one of the largest and oldest street festivals in the country, the Westside Nutclub Fall Festival. Carnival, street fair, music, and the strangest food this side of Quark's bar on Deep Space Nine. (Chocolate-dipped bacon, anyone?) It's not my thing -- I don't take to milling crowds -- but I like that it happens. It's so very local. All the food booths are run by local organizations and schools and churches and civic groups (there is a long waiting list to get a booth) and the whole thing has a distinctive nowhere-else-but-here vibe. More gratitude: I don't have to love going to it to appreciate what a rare and valuable community thing it is.

In other news...

Things seem to have calmed down somewhat with the passing of summer, though I'm not so optimistic to believe that sanity will gain a foothold in this world anytime soon. Case in point: this report about the police response to the use of Twitter by activists at the meeting of the G20 in Pittsburgh last month.

Not to go all political on you, but we took Iran to task recently for doing that very thing, did we not?

Yes, I think we did.

In light of that last item, and given likelihood of continuing insanity as the world wakes up from history, I'll leave you with this gem from Joanna Macy (from the Gratefulness.org website.)

Act Your Age

Since every particle in your body goes back to the first flaring forth of space and time, you're really as old as the universe. So when you are lobbying at your congressperson's office, or visiting your local utility, or testifying at a hearing on nuclear waste, or standing up to protect an old grove of redwoods, you are doing that not out of some personal whim, but in the full authority of your 15 billions years.

We are stardust, people. Go shine.

Fall Cleaning

2009-10-01T09:02:00.006-05:00

It's a flannel shirt kind of morning. Dragonstar, the BBPiT and I have been watching old episodes of Northern Exposure on dvd, motivated (perhaps) by a desire to acclimate to the increasing chill.

There are bakery croissants on the counter and a mug of tea cooling on the stove, and a house to make ready for winter.

Ambitious, that last item.

When I was a kid my mom used to do "fall cleaning," a thorough, top-to-bottom effort that involved piles and piles of dust rags and a lot of moving of furniture. It took two weeks to get it all done. And ours was not a large house.

Personally, I thought it was a little much. All that taking down and hanging up. All those tools on the vacuum cleaner put to constant use. I vowed I would never be so seasonally manic about cleaning.

And I'm not.

Oh, am I not.

But the other day, in the spirit of the changing seasons, I did take a broom to my multi-purpose front room, and yesterday I dusted bookshelves.

I see you snickering. But really, I have a lot of bookshelves.

Anyway, as I swept and dusted, I realized (after a mere five years of living in this house) that energy collects in one certain corner of my front room (as evidenced by the copious dust bunnies hiding there). And where energy collects, things can stagnate. Creative efforts can stall, just like the dust bunnies, unable to circulate, clinging to the underside of daily routine.

Hmm.

The front room is where I do my "indoor art." Fabric work and journal pages and other relatively tidy stuff (as opposed to the messy stuff I do in the garage. Studio. Whatever.) And I have a pile of this indoor art to finish in time for a holiday fair next month.

And I've been procrastinating.

Hmm.

We used to snark about my mom's need to rearrange the furniture twice a year (there was spring cleaning, too), but in the days before any of us had ever heard of feng shui, she was putting it into practice.

Pretty smart, that woman.

* * *

While I have you here, and speaking of creative efforts, I finally relaunched my art blog, Out of Hand Art, on a new blogging platform and with a new emphasis on creative adventure. Come visit when you have a chance. There will be tea. And maybe even croissants.

Equilibrium

2009-09-22T07:54:00.004-05:00

It's easy to love the autumn. Are you sighing with relief, too? It's been an unsettled year. Unsettled, unsettling. Summer brings out the worst in us, I think.

But now it's fall, when things come back down to the ground.

The other day I saw a squirrel going up a utility pole carrying an unshelled walnut as big as its head. Pretty adorable. The funny-looking winter squashes are in the supermarket, soup is on the menu again, pumpkins are showing up on porches.

It's all so reassuring.

Yes, yes, it's a passing thing. The arrival of autumn means winter is coming. And winter is a tougher love. But everything's a passing thing, and we'll get to winter in due time.

Meanwhile, leaves are falling, just like embers, as Rowland Salley wrote in "Killing the Blues," a great autumn song that doesn't have much to do with autumn beyond its opening line, but has everything to do with changes. John Prine does a great version. Shawn Colvin, too. (Robert Plant and Alison Krause, not so much.)

Anyway, autumn. The bittersweet season. Find some balance while you can.

That's all.

Arrr, The Day Be Sunny and Pleasin' to Me Eye

2009-09-19T10:08:00.008-05:00

And if I had a sailing ship, I'd be on it, matey.

For those of ye needin' to tune up yer Pirate dialect, hoist yer main sails and set off for Savage Chickens for some Talk Like a Pirate Day chicken humor. Arrr.

A Peek At My New Art Space

2009-09-14T19:58:00.006-05:00

It's not very organized yet and everything takes three times longer than it should because I'm having to dig through boxes looking for that one thing I need that I know is in there someplace... but after working in the corner of my dining room for the past two years, it's groovy to have a bit of room to spread out.

Sprawl space.

I'm still calling it "the garage" tho. What's up with that? It's my s-t-u-d-i-o.

Lower right in the pic you'll see my new mosaic table. The tabletop -- standard white veneer over particleboard -- and its rusted chrome base came to me in two pieces from my very cool neighbor Vicky, who knew I liked playing with broken tiles. And I do. And I was delighted.

But then the thing sat on my carport getting cruddier and rustier through two winters and a summer before I finally got around to doing something with it. Now it's a table again. A pretty one, even.

The three book covers on the table are for art journals. They're recycled from kid's books. I rip the pages out and replace them with signatures of art paper and sketch paper and such. I've got a bunch of them to make for an upcoming art fair. It's taking me forever to get them done, once again because I'm looking high and low for that one dang thing I know I put away for exactly this purpose and now it's nowhere to be found.

O well.

This is me feeling very productive, nonetheless.

And how is your September going?

Hello Random My Old Friend

2009-09-04T09:21:00.007-05:00

Back from August hiatus. Stumbling into September, the awesome month of transformation, tipping into shadow with the equinox, the long slow in-breath of the coming winter.

Hello!

I took a survey from my power company this morning. Would I be willing to spend $x to save $y? If only all of life's equations were that simple. We are in coal-burning country here. Lawmakers are beholden. Workers are beholden. Hell, we're all beholden.

Yes, I'd like to use less energy. Yes, I'd like a programmable thermostat that will display my cost-per-kilowatt. Yes, I'd like to have clean air and halt the progress of climate change. But the only number that will assure a no-emission future is zero. Everything else is just rearranging deck chairs.

Don't the umbrella tables look nice by the railing?

In the better-late-than-never department, I finally turned my garage into my art studio. It only took 18 months of procrastination and three days of "damn, there's a lot of junk in here."

What is it about getting started that is so difficult? Yes, yes, it's all in the physics. Overcoming inertia.

And laziness.

And mosquitoes. (Helpful tip: a garage fan works amazingly well.)

Reader, it's been a buggy month. Tiny mosquitoes everywhere. The little swallows that live in the apartment-on-a-pole by the river are pinwheeling about at sunset. They are a joy to watch. And they're eating well.

So there's that.

Speaking of September, there's a new unschooling carnival up at The Expanding Life. It's the Not-Back-to-School Edition. Good carnival. Good blog. Good life.

That's all.

You Thought It Was Just About Pepsi in the Cafeteria?

2009-07-29T13:49:00.005-05:00

(note: original link appears to be inoperative as of 8/7, so I've replaced it with a cached link to the same story. Sorry for the hassle, and thanks to Niels for bringing the broken link to my attention.)

Yet another reason why school is no place to send a kid.

It's all madness.

Madness.

Farming For Artists

2009-07-23T09:40:00.003-05:00

The answer to my gardening woes (if only I lived in Maryland): I could go to the Maryland Institute College of Art to learn how to be... a farmer. How cool is that?

Says one graduate (who entered the college intending to become a sculpture and graduated a farmer):

"Artists are already practiced in perception, in awareness. Growing food involves so much looking and observing and just awareness."

Farming for artists. So there is hope for me, after all.

In Which I Flunk Gardening, Again

2009-07-15T10:09:00.007-05:00

I've said it before: I'm a crappy gardener.

I love plants. I love digging in dirt. But I'm a total flop at getting edible things to grow in my backyard.

My lettuce bolts before I can harvest more than a handful.

My squash plants flower and never fruit.

My cucumbers never even flower.

When things do grow they do so on their own with no help from me. Like the blackberries, which were here when we moved in. And anyway the blackberries don't feed my family because just as they approach glossy ripe perfection, the neighborhood birds swoop in and claim the entire crop. (Have you ever seen how fast a few birds can clear out a patch of brambleberry fruit? Amazing.)

I don't begrudge the birds. We all have to eat. I'm just saying, I haven't figured out a way to make this grow-your-own-food thing work for me.

So I'm kind of frustrated.

That's all.

Can Unschooling Change the World?

2009-07-10T06:09:00.004-05:00

(This is a bit of a piece I posted earlier this month on my Wordpress site. In case you haven't visited me there, or didn't know I'd taken up dual residence, consider this an invitation to come on over.)

* * *

I spend a lot of time thinking about the ways in which the industrial economy might give way to a natural economy.
I wonder what will it take to move from a culture of exploitation to a culture of reciprocity. To move from a culture of abuse to a culture of care for people and places and living things.
What will have to change? Everything? All of us?
Probably.
We’re certainly going to have to learn to think differently. And what do you suppose the chances of that are?
Okay. It’s Going to Take a Miracle.

(click here to read the full article)

When Things Get Noisy

2009-07-04T20:55:00.004-05:00

Fourth of July, Midwest, USA. My normally quiet (and recently very quiet) neighborhood is exploding all around me. My cats are hiding under the beds.

The city ten miles down the river spends about $60,000 on fireworks every July 4th. Last night the BBPiT played a private party out in corn and soybean country where the hosts spent more than $5,000 on fireworks. Crazy.

I don't like the sound of stuff blowing up. I guess that makes me a pinko or something. O well.

When Things Get Quiet

2009-06-30T19:23:00.007-05:00

A couple days ago my vacuum cleaner decided not to work anymore. Yesterday, my refrigerator quit.

Here is what I thought as I swept my floors and contemplated a fridge-free life: I could get used to this.

Late this afternoon, the power went out in my neighborhood. For about 30 minutes, everything inside and out was so very quiet.

I am re-reading Derrick Jensen's Endgame, the two-part, thousand-page exploration of civilization and its ravages.

Here is what I thought as I sat in the stillness, with the afternoon sun on the pages of my book: I could get used to this.

And: I will probably have to.

And: one way or another, it will be okay.

Who's Your Tribe?

2009-06-19T11:36:00.005-05:00

My tribe is a question, an open door.

My tribe is a story. We are all stories. We tell and tell again.

My tribe is discernment. We wonder what belongs. (Do I? Do you?) We ask what helps, what hurts. (Do you? Do I?)

My tribe is a path, a line of desire. So many desires. So many paths entwined.

My tribe is holy. (Everything is holy.)

Are you in?

Co-Housing - Why is it "Left"?

2009-06-11T11:20:00.003-05:00

(cross-posted from Over the Wall)

The Rag Blog has re-posted a piece from the New York Times about co-housing that makes the idea sound positively... mainstream.

“For a long time we’d always be referred to as ‘communes for the ’90s’ or ‘the new commune,’ ” said Mr. Ragland of the Cohousing Association. “But increasingly people are seeing that it’s really just a new type of neighborhood.”

The piece is a snapshop, a brief examination of what co-housing is and why it may be appealing -- or not. (Pets are an issue. Surprise.) But what caught my eye was the headline:

"To Your Left, a Better Way of Life?"

So... Neighborly interaction, a village-like setting, kids playing outside, these represent a leftist agenda?

Maybe it was the idea of communal kitchens and gathering spaces. Because we all know that only liberals like to cook together and hang out together. Or maybe it was the decision-making process, which in some communities is based on consensus. Because we know that only liberals like to have their concerns, desires and opinions taken into account before critical decisions affecting their daily lives are made.

Co-housing seeks to ameliorate the atomization of contemporary, post-industrial culture by creating -- or re-creating -- functional, human-scale neighborhoods. To characterize this as leftist is to misrepresent what is at root a basic human desire for interaction and socially-satisfying living arrangements. In fact, the article's author, Chris Colin -- who is presumably not responsible for the headline -- made mention of the "Norman Rockwellian" appeal of these communities.

And we all know what a Red he was.

Adventures with Lulu (Part III)

2009-05-28T07:46:00.005-05:00

This is the third and final post in my brief series, Adventures with Lulu. Part I offers some thoughts on why I decided to publish my book with Lulu, the online print-on-demand company. Part II gives you a glimpse into the process I undertook to create my book. In this post, I share some last thoughts on design issues and what happens after you hit "publish."

* * *

When last we met, I had left off with a (more or less) completed book in need of a cover. Let me say a few words today about covers.

We Have Issues

I had a wonderful cover illustration in mind when I first began my Lulu odyssey. It did not survive the cover design process. The cover design process was, shall we say, a royal pain in the ass.

I'll preface by admitting I have issues with Lulu's book covers. They're glossy. I don't like glossy. The boilerplate templates are insipid. The instructions will get you through the process, but if you're looking for more substantial cover design help from Lulu, you'll have to pay for it. And honestly, you might want to do that if you have your heart set on your book looking a certain way.

Because otherwise...

I've seen some gorgeous book covers in Lulu's marketplace, so I know people can and do produce them. I just wasn't up to the task. And I'm such a bull-headed DIY-er that I didn't want to turn any of the process over to someone else.

So apparently my issues are not all with Lulu.

The good news is, by the time you get to this point in the publishing process, you will have either learned to accede to Lulu or you will have given up. I think they plan it that way.

My advice when it comes to designing your book goes double for designing your cover: know your limitations. The process of converting original artwork into a cover that looks great on your book is best left to those who know a lot more than I do about digital design.

As you can see from the photo in the sidebar on the right, I ended up creating a very simple cover for my book. It consists of text and background color. Nothing more. It's not at all what I originally envisioned, but I've come to like it well enough. It's black and red, my favorite color scheme. And it's simple and straightforward, which suits the simple, straightforward contents of my book.

And Then I Hit Publish

But was I finished? I was not. There were still a bunch of decisions to be made. Mostly they had to do with money and publishing rights and ISBNs and such. I waded through it. It didn't kill me.

I had fun playing with the price calculators. My original hope was to be able to price my book at $10, but that was too low a price to allow me to sell it through Amazon -- between Lulu's fixed charge and Amazon's markup, I would have been paying them to carry it for me. So I had to bump the price a bit, but then I added the very-low-price download option, and that made me feel better.

I had fun making my storefront.

And I took particular delight in getting my first sale, a download to my friend (and fellow unschooler) Kris.

In Sum

Lulu has its problems, and its detractors. It is, first and foremost, self-publishing for amateurs -- people who want to be authors, not those looking to establish book-publishing empires or see their books on the shelves of the local big-box merchants. There is nothing wrong with either of those goals -- it's just that Lulu is not the best way to achieve them.

Lulu's pricing structure leads to a higher per-book cost than you'd find with, say, CreateSpace, though it's much less than online publishers xlibris or iuniverse, which follow a different business model.

As it irons out bugs and correct problems, Lulu sometimes leaves old information in the archives and the faqs, which can lead to no small amount of confusion. And it can be precipitous in its policy changes, as it was recently when it made books available to Amazon Marketplace without first informing its authors that it was doing so.

That said, I found the process of publishing with Lulu to be pretty damn satisfying. The company markets itself as a simple way to get your book into print and available for purchase, and it pretty much delivers on those promises. It lived up to my expectations. I would do it again. And probably will soon.

* * *

101 Reasons Why I'm An Unschooler is available in two versions through Lulu. One is a relatively inexpensive print version that will come to you in a handy, reusable shipping box. The other is a ridiculously inexpensive digital download that's extremely readable and very kind to trees. You can visit my Lulu store here.

Adventures with Lulu (Part ll)

2009-05-19T09:58:00.005-05:00

In Adventures with Lulu, Part I, I shared some thoughts on the self-publishing process in general and why I decided to publish my book with the online print-on-demand company, Lulu. Today, a bit of the nuts-and-bolts stuff of how that process worked for me.

As always, feel free to share your own experiences or ask questions in the comment section.

* * *

Okay, then. In order to publish a book on Lulu, you need three things:

1. a manuscript
2. some idea of how you want the interior of your book to look
3. a simple cover design

All three of these things can -- and probably will -- change as you go along. Change is good. This is a learning process.

The Manuscript

Once you've said all you have to say, and you're happy with how you've said it, you have a manuscript. Show it to people or don't show it to anyone. It's up to you. Get someone to proofread it or do it yourself. That's also up to you. Just know that if you proofread your own work, you can expect to find mistakes even after your 27th time though it. The more familiar you are with the material, the less likely you are to notice mistakes. I speak from experience.

I also speak from experience when I say that you might decide, somewhere around the 14th time through your manuscript, that you've written a boring piece of crap that no one will want to read. Never mind. Ignore yourself, and proceed with your publishing.

The Interior

Now that you have the words you want, you have to decide where you want them. In other words, you need to imagine your manuscript as a book. Here's where you will either kiss Lulu or curse her, depending.

The difference between a book and a manuscript is in the design. A book is an arrangement of elements -- a title page and other front matter, headers and footers, page numbers, text, artwork, etc. When you publish with a traditional publishing company, they take care of all of this for you. When you self-publish, you have to attend to it yourself.

Lulu helps you, somewhat -- they'll happily take a chunk of money from you to do the design work for you, and you may find that comforting, especially if you're easily frustrated and expect to get things right the first time or two you do them. But if you're more of a DIY kind of person, and you're willing to spend some time and learn as you go, then by all means give design a try.

But first...

Get Acquainted with the Process

First, peruse the forums and faqs looking for tips and tricks to help you along. If nothing else, this will help you familiarize yourself with the issues other people have had, and can serve as a "I know I read about this somewhere" reminder when you run into trouble with your own project. Which you probably will.

Once more with feeling: it's a learning process.

In my case, I had a bear of a time with page breaks. And blank pages. And page numbering. I'm still not entirely happy with the page numbering for 101. It's a Microsoft Word thing, not a Lulu thing, and Lulu does offer helpful suggestions for getting it right. I just couldn't get it to work for me, and in the end I decided to leave well enough alone.

It helped me a great deal to just pull some books off my shelf and look at how they were designed. I looked at the size of the typeface, and what went on the title page, and how big the margins were. I also made ample use of Google to search for design websites and self-publishing websites to learn what went where and why.

Lots to learn.

Lulu offers design suggestions, which will give you a place to start, but in the end, you can pretty much do what you want. It's your book.

Uploading Your Files

You can begin uploading your files as soon as you set up your account with Lulu -- which doesn't cost anything and requires no commitment on your part, as I indicated in Part I. This is good to know, because it means you can take a risk without, well, taking a risk. Think of it as publishing for peasants.

My manuscript was contained in a single file, so uploading was a snap. If your manuscript is made up of lots of separate files, you'll have to upload them individually, in the correct order. This can get confusing, especially when you begin making revisions. You will be tempted to curse the process. Instead, accede to Lulu. Try to limit the number of files you upload. Combine chapters into two or three files at most. It will help keep you sane.

If you have art or photos or tables or charts to put into the interior of your book, be prepared to spend some time getting them where you want them. Again, accede to Lulu. And when all else fails, ask for help.

Always Review

Once your files are loaded, Lulu will convert them to a pdf for your review. Always review your pdf. Always. Every time you revise. It's a slow process. You will become bored with it, and with your book. Never mind. Review the pdf anyway.

Expect to find mistakes. Typos, spelling errors, page break errors, blank pages inserted where you don't want them and missing where you do want them. Go back to your files, fix them and upload again.

Rinse and Repeat

You can revise and upload your files an unlimited number of times. This is a mixed blessing, since you can tweak and polish and edit and rewrite again and again, and never finish your damn project. I'm sure there are lots of people who live in this Lulu limbo -- be forewarned.

In my case, in addition to all the basic errors that had to be corrected, and revisions to the text that I made as I went along, I also changed my book size, twice. Each change required a complete re-formatting, and each re-formatting required several pdf conversions to get right. Oh well.

It's learning process.

Once you're happy enough with your interior files, you can start working on your cover. This is another great adventure, one I'll cover in Part III.

Adventures with Lulu (Part l)

2009-05-09T08:29:00.001-05:00

My relationship with the online publisher Lulu is in its early stages. My book has been available for sale for less than a month. I haven't received a revenue payment yet, since Lulu distributes revenue monthly or quarterly, depending on your agreement with them. I haven't used any of Lulu's extra services, or spent much time in its forums. I've barely got my storefront designed.

So it's all quite new, and I'm not ready to draw conclusions about the relationship beyond the tentative "so far, so good." What I can do is share some details of my experience to this point, from writing and designing my book to getting it ready for print, figuring out distribution, and getting my first sales.

But first...

Why Lulu?

I always knew I would self-publish my book. I didn't want to argue its merits to a publisher and I didn't want to wait a year or more to see it in print, so DIY was always part of the equation. The question for me was, how much DIY did I want to do?

When I began researching the subject, I looked into some very low-tech, very hands-on options to getting my book into print. I considered everything from going the zine route via Kinko's to getting my own book press. I eventually found a couple of useful blogs written by self-publishers and I joined an email group to get some first-hand advice.

None of these sources recommended the Lulu option.

Lulu is, after all, a "middle-man." Like its main competitor, Amazon's CreateSpace, Lulu takes your files and converts them to a print-ready format that it then sends to a print-on-demand printing company -- the same printing company you can work with directly if you so choose. So the cost per book with Lulu is higher than it would be if you skipped the middle-man and did your own file conversions and established an account with the printing company. This is what the independent publishers on that email list do. They don't mess with Lulu. Lulu is for amateurs. These people are pros, and they go right to the source.

So why did I end up choosing Lulu? Because I'm an amateur, and I'm happy to remain one (amateur: from the Latin amare, to love.)

I wanted a simple, inexpensive option. I wanted to experiment with self-publishing without the steeper learning curve, administrative details, or financial investment of a more hands-on approach. I didn't want the project to get bogged down in the not-so-fun stuff.

In other words, I wanted a book, not a bunch of headaches.

About that financial investment.

No matter which way you go, print-on-demand is very inexpensive. If you skip the middle-man, you might have to pay for document conversion software and design software, and you'll need to buy your ISBN. Without the middle-man's "wizards" you're on your own in that regard. But there are plenty of no-cost and low-cost options available -- open source software, free trials, working with a friend who has the software and/or expertise you lack, and so forth -- so it's good to check around before you commit to anything.

Still, with respect to your financial outlay, you can't get much lower than Lulu. There is no charge to open an account, upload your files, design your cover, or even to acquire your ISBN if you choose to let Lulu be your publisher (as opposed to you holding your publishing rights -- Lulu makes both options available.) You can create a digital book, download a pdf and stop right there and you'll have incurred no costs at all. Your only outlay -- and it's pretty minimal -- comes at the end of the process, when you order a print copy of your book for review, and you'll pay for one book (at your author's price, which is about half of your book's retail cost) and shipping (media mail is your least expensive choice, and it's as reliable as the USPS.) And even this one purchase is optional -- you can make your book available for sale without ever seeing a review copy.

Lulu doesn't charge you for any revisions you make, by the way, either before or after publishing, which is nice, because if you're like me, you'll make a bunch of revisions both along the way and after you first see your book in print. I ended up ordering three different review copies of my book before I was satisfied with it.

It helps to know what you want.

I chose Lulu because of what I wanted to get out of the experience: a book. Attaining a skill set for building an independent publishing company, finding the path to the greatest income or the broadest distribution for my effort, these are perfectly fine goals. They just weren't my primary concerns. I wanted to publish a book that people could buy. However many people. Over however long a period of time. No pressure, no worries, just a creative adventure.

When you know what you want, you can sift through expert advice to find the stuff that works for you. When you're not so sure what your real goals are, you can waste a lot of time running after other people's dreams, and getting very frustrated in the process. What fun is that?

My goal was to produce a simple book for a nominal investment, and enjoy myself in the process. And that's pretty much what I did.

Next: me & my manuscript meet the great Lulu maw.

Tuning a Life

2009-04-27T07:58:00.004-05:00

I've been a guitar player since I was a kid. I don't really speak the language of audio science, but I know that when two tones are "out of phase," their sound waves meet at less than optimum points and there is a loss of quality. Things don't sound good.

Musical instruments respond to their environment and to the exuberance with which they're played. It's their nature to go in and out of tune. Out-of-tune strings resonate at incompatible frequencies. They sound bad. They're "out of phase." Tuning your instrument brings its various tones into phase.

So does tuning a life.

When you're playing your guitar, you don't waste time wishing its out-of-tune strings were in tune, wondering how the strings got out of tune in the first place, thinking there is something wrong with a guitar that needs tuning. You just tune the damn thing and get on with your song. It's not a moral issue. The guitar doesn't need counseling or coaching or a 12-step program to help it stay in tune. What it needs is to be played, and listened to.

In other words, it needs care and attention.

And sometimes it needs a new set of strings.

Lives go in and out of tune all the time. Phases shift. Resonance decays. And as anyone who's ever put a new set of strings on a guitar knows, new strings need to be tuned more frequently than strings that have settled in.

Here's what I'm learning: that it's not the change itself that changes you. It's the care and attention you give yourself after you've made your change. Now is the time to listen very closely, and pay attention to the resonance. Because just putting on new strings isn't enough. They'll still sound like crap until they're tuned. And re-tuned. And tuned once again.

* * *

Dave Pollard at How to Save the World wrote a wonderful and thought-provoking review of 101 Reasons Why I'm an Unschooler this weekend, and it rocked my world, let me tell you. I don't know quite how to act, other than with care and attention, and a whole boatload of gratitude. Thank you, Dave.

And thank you, wonderful reader, be you new or returning. I'm grateful for your presence. Now let's tune up, and make some music.

101 Reasons Why I'm An Unschooler

2009-04-16T09:44:00.011-05:00

Now available for purchase

as a printed paperback book
or as a download.

If you wander over to Lulu to take a look, please keep in mind that Lulu's online images aren't great. The actual book -- the one you can hold in your hands -- looks crisp and clean.

I'll probably share some thoughts about working with Lulu at some point, though I might be sharing them over on my other site. I hope you'll come visit there, too. Spare tho it may be over there at present, I do believe it'll feel more like home as soon as I hang some art and cook a few meals.

This Space Taken

2009-04-14T09:31:00.004-05:00

I'm working on a new project. It's taken over the hours of my day, the days of my week. In a good way, but still. All that space I was holding? It's now filled up.

My unschooler manifesto, 101 Reasons Why I'm An Unschooler, should be available for sale in a few days. Or not. As soon as everything's set, I'll let you know where/how to order.

Regular blogging will resume shortly. Thanks for checking in.

Holding Space

2009-04-02T09:30:00.008-05:00

I used to keep an empty wooden frame on my wall, above my work table. It was empty on purpose -- not because I didn't have anything to put into it, but because it was holding space for work as yet unmade. The painting not yet painted, the essay not yet written.

For a while now I've been living within that frame. I've been holding space, getting reacquainted with the idea of empty.

I've been doing it out of necessity. It's been more difficult than I anticipated.

Holding space takes more work than I'm usually willing to do. I like to have stuff going on. I like to have important things to do. I like being busy.

But I've been working at being not-so-busy. At being in-between. At letting things pass by me, and through me, and around me. Life as preposition.

Do I need to tell you it's been a wee bit uncomfortable? I didn't think so. But honestly, dear reader, sometimes this life feels like so much unsettled grit in a glass of water, all stirred up and clouding my perspective, and I need to just let it all settle for a time in order to see where I am.

Sometimes "for a time" takes longer than I expect. Lots of grit. Lots of swirling.

Some of the discomfort of letting things settle comes from identifying too much with the grit -- with mistaking myself for all the crazy stuff swirling around me. I confuse that stuff with who I am and what I'm doing. And then, as I let it fall away, I get anxious, wondering where my life went.

Where I went.

And then I blink, and things are a little clearer, and I think, oh, okay. Here I am, right where I've been all along.

Is it ever like that for you? I'm sure it is. I can't be the only one.

Anyway, as I hold this space and let old things fall away, I've been playing with a new blog on Wordpress, trying out a fresh canvas, seeing how I like their different way of doing things. There isn't much there yet, not even a bonafide post, so if you wander over don't come away disappointed. It's just me, holding space, taking a breath, getting a little clarity before I plunge back into muddy water.

In Which I Get a Cell Phone

2009-03-08T10:38:00.006-05:00

Check it out. That looks like spring to me, those petals open wide to the world like the mouths of newborn baby birds. Could it be time to crawl out of the burrow?

March is the month of the Dancing Hare, tonight the night of the Storm Moon.

This weekend Dragonstar and I will travel to the mountains of East Tennessee to spend four days with our unschooler friends. It's a seven-hour drive. We're expecting rain. I decided it's time to let practicality ride shotgun, and bought a cell phone for the trip.

Yes, I did. So now I have to change my pithy profile in the sidebar again. First we went from red state to blue in the national election, and now this.

Next thing you know, I'll be trading my cassettes for an iPod. And Twittering. May the gods have mercy on my soul.

Notes to Myself and Others

2009-03-04T07:47:00.004-06:00

Things often seem to take longer when you're doing them than when you look back in retrospect and realize what you actually accomplished in a (very) short period of time.

And then there are those things that seem to take a long time because they really do take a long time.

Life, for example. Life takes a long time.

In my house is a box of stuff that contains all the tangible relics of my teenage years. The other day as I worked my way through a closet full of crap I unearthed that box and spent a few minutes (okay, more than a few) poking through it.

I found old journals, newspaper photos, poetry, a scrap of paper with the guitar chords to Only Love Can Break Your Heart. I found notes from old friends and notes from a play I was in when I was 12. I found notes I'd made for a novel I began when I was 15 and never finished, the first of several such novels.

I found a suicide note, which reminded me that even though I chide myself for letting so many of my ideas fall by the wayside, it's probably a good thing I don't act on all of them.

It's good that life is long.

In addition to cleaning out closets and rearranging my life, I've been compiling a list of unschooling links for a new web project and in my gallivanting came upon the mother lode of unschooling blogrolls, courtesy of Frank and Ronnie Maier's Blog of the Zombie Princess. Go visit and scroll down the sidebar on the right to find almost fifty windows into the everyday lives of unschoolers. It's an awesome and inspiring sight.

Meanwhile, my unschooling manifesto has passed through a last round of design tweaks and edits and has gone to print. I'm looking at a release sometime after Dragonstar and I return from a mid-month trip to Tennessee. It feels like it's taking a long time to bring this project to completion, but when I look back through my notes, it's only taken six months.

Or a lifetime, depending on when I begin counting.

Go Be Awesome

2009-02-19T09:46:00.002-06:00

I'm writing a lot in longhand these days, scribbling in notebooks, making rambling lists, old ideas resurrected, new ones falling onto the page like embers from the campfires of the gods. I pull out journals from a year ago, two years ago, five. So many pages, all smelling of woodsmoke.

For the past two nights I've been watching the strange and poetic Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There, a film as inscrutible as a dozen Dylan songs. It has taken two viewings for it to come into focus for me, and I'll probably watch it at least once more before sending it back to the video store.

February: the inscrutible month.

So what will you do today? Will you go be awesome? Will you be remarkable?

Tell me how it goes. I'll be here, with all these pages, and all these bits of ash.

Clearing Out the Detritus

2009-02-12T11:05:00.003-06:00

Dragonstar and I are thinking about our garden. The one I'm too lazy to tend. The one I'm inspired to create anyway.

Last year there seemed little point in planning -- let alone planting -- a garden, since we were renting this house and the owner had just informed us that he was going to move in and we had to leave. But then I gave him a bunch of money and took on a mortgage, and so this year things have changed. Most things. I suspect I'm still a lazy gardener, so I'm trying to take that into consideration.

It's a winnowing time, February, isn't it? I'm seeing it in my friends and in the recent posts on the blogs I read, a desire to release the extraneous, the uninspired, the oppressive, the unworkable. For my part, I passed up an opportunity to submit work to a big art exhibit, and I've stepped back from my involvement in a local arts co-op that is clearly in need of more than I can give it. After the in-breath of January, with its resolutions and words of the year and fresh assessments of what we might like to pursue in the coming months, comes the exhalation, the letting go of what no longer serves.

I don't know about you, but for me, that out-breath is harder. Letting go is more complicated than letting in. Releasing requires more than receiving. This sounds like the attachment that the Buddhists are always going on about -- that stickiness of accumulated stuff, mental and otherwise, that keeps us glued to routines and relationships and work and lives we no longer find satisfactory.

Things we thought we wanted. People we thought we were.

My vision of me as a gardener.

Still, I don't want to make too many assumptions, given that everything is connected to everything else. My lazy gardening, for example, might be nothing more than a reluctance to dig deep in someone else's yard. So we're going to give it another try this year, me and Dragonstar. She wants more herbs for her potion garden. Calendula and goldenseal and thyme.

Me, I want a grape arbor. And a fruit tree. Maybe two.

An Unschooling Manifesto

2009-02-07T09:58:00.007-06:00

Sometimes when I talk to people about my writing life I refer to Crooked Mile as an unschooling blog, even though I don't seem to write all that much here about unschooling, per se. I certainly don't offer much "how to unschool" advice, given that my own inclination toward kids is something akin to that of D.H. Lawrence, who suggested we "give them their dinners and leave them alone."

What I mean when I call this an unschooling blog is that I write as an unschooler. I write from a perspective outside the culture of modern schooling, a culture I see as a first step in the formal indoctrination of our kids into the destructive and dysfunctional worldview that author Daniel Quinn calls the culture of maximum harm, and author Derrick Jensen calls the culture of make believe.

I write because the process of unschooling, as well as my experiences in living easily enough near the margins of this culture, lead me to believe we can extract ourselves from the worst of what we as a civilization have wrought and begin to create pockets of rejuvenation right where we are, even as things seem everywhere to fall apart.

And I write because I think we can learn how to be free in part by raising free kids, and letting them teach us.

In that sense, then, everything in these pages is connected to unschooling.

For those of you who would like something a little more specific to the subject, I have news. This past week I uploaded the contents of my Big Writing Project to Lulu and am awaiting a review copy of my brand-spanking-new book to arrive in my mailbox. Since this is my first foray into Lulu-style self-publishing (I've always used the copy shop and -- in another lifetime -- a ditto machine), I don't know how long this final part of the process will take, but sometime within the next several weeks the book should be available for sale at Lulu and Amazon and from my new website, which is still under construction because I'm taking a turn at being lazy, as we're supposed to be this time of year.

The book is an unschooling manifesto, slim and succinct (the "Big" in Big Writing Project being a matter of perspective, not to mention a mental hurdle of disproportionate magnitude). I'll have more to share soon.

Meantime, to anyone looking for an unschooling blog that does give "how to unschool" advice -- and excellent advice, at that -- may I suggest a visit to Joyce Fetteroll at Joyfully Rejoycing. Pour a cup of coffee. Be prepared to stay for hours. It's that good.

Rule Number Six

2009-02-03T08:22:00.011-06:00

Education itself is a putting off, a postponement; we are told to work hard to get good results. Why? So we can get a good job. What is a good job? One that pays well. Oh. And that's it? All this suffering, merely so that we can earn a lot of money, which, even if we manage it, will not solve our problems anyway? It's a tragically limited idea of what life is all about.

Tom Hodgkinson
The Freedom Manifesto

While I await release of his latest book, The Idle Parent, I'm re-reading Hodgkinson's Freedom Manifesto (originally published in Great Britain as How to Be Free). Hodgkinson is the editor of The Idler, and author of one of my favorite books of all time, How to Be Idle.

The weather outside is frightful. I hope it's better where you are. But if you have the six-more-weeks-of-winter blues (or even if you don't), I recommend getting a good book to read. Something irreverent. Anything by Hodgkinson. Or Vonnegut. Or dig through your piles from long ago to find your worn copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It'll help.

Rule number six? Stop taking yourself so damn seriously. It's from Roz Zander, in The Art of Possibility. There are no rules 1-5.

What Kids Need

2009-01-31T08:04:00.008-06:00

A blank canvas.

A few raw materials.

The freedom to create something unexpected.

Temperatures have hovered near freezing all week, so as you can see, our snow and ice are lingering.

Yesterday Dragonstar's dad called. He and his wife live across town in a cabin tucked back in a hollow. Their power has been out since Tuesday. They have a wood stove for heat, and they have water -- though no hot water -- so they've been able to stay put while utility crews work to get power restored to the one-third of the city that's been without it all week.

It was supposed to be a cabin weekend for Dragonstar, but he wasn't sure she'd want to come, given the (ahem) rustic conditions -- no Wii, no internet, no dvds, cooking food in a pot on the woodstove and eating in lantern-light. Plus, her step-brother was away with his own dad, and wouldn't be around to play.

She barely hesitated (and only because she was concerned that, with the BBPiT off on a road trip, I'd be home alone all weekend.) Hell, yeah, she wanted to come.

Here's what she told me after she hung up the phone: no step-brother meant she could play with the dog without constant interference. (Her step-brother is a wee bit possessive of the family border collie.) And no electricity meant no one would be on their laptops. They would be interacting with each other instead of with machines. And that sounded like a great weekend to her.

When her dad came to pick her up, he told her they'd have to shower at the Y in town, since there was no hot water at the cabin. She lit up. "We get to go to the Y, too?"

Kids need a whole let less of what our culture says they need, and a whole lot more of what is so often denied them: time spent in the company of the people they love. Dragonstar didn't give a damn about the Wii. She was looking forward to having her dad's full attention for two days.

And dinner by lantern light sounded pretty cool, too.

Snow Day

2009-01-28T20:44:00.007-06:00

If I'd known it was going to snow this much I would have bought some boots.

The forecast was for less than an inch. From the looks of Yard Kitty, we got considerably more than that.

I was not prepared.

So it's a Snow Day, and the neighborhood kids are happy. I see them trudge up the street with their sleds, on their way to the hill overlooking the old lock and dam. One little boy pulls a white plastic laundry basket with a rope. Resourceful.

Power is out all over the city, including most of the houses in our neighborhood, but ours is so far unaffected. Either it's a miracle, or that charm I placed on our little bungalow last year when we went on vacation is more powerful than I realized.

Next door my neighbor wrestles with a generator. He and a friend pulled a little red wagon down the block to retrieve the generator from the friend's house; with all the fallen branches it was easier than driving. He has already lit a fire in his fireplace. He invited us to come over and share the warmth. I felt almost guilty telling him my furnace is still operating.

The day's plans are tossed aside for a snowball fight and digging the van out of a drift. We'll return soon enough to our regularly scheduled lives, and so will all the neighborhood kids. But for the time being -- through the end of the week, at least -- it looks like we're all unschoolers.

Everybody say Amen.

Ten Sites Worth a Visit

2009-01-24T09:37:00.006-06:00

Kivyn at Tangled Hill has included Crooked Mile in a roundup of ten blogs with "great attitude or gratitude," bestowing a Lemonade Award upon the lot of us. I'd not heard of this award before, but a lot passes under my radar. I like the cute logo. Makes me think of summer and a nice tall glassful.

Tangled Hill is an unschooler's blog, and it occurred to me as I browsed her list that I haven't written much here about unschooling lately. (Dave at How to Save the World gave me a similar nudge in a comment on this post.) I am writing about it elsewhere, but that hardly helps us here and now, does it?

Okay. When the universe taps you on the shoulder (twice, in my case) it's a good idea to pay attention. So beginning next week you can expect some unschooling posts to be cropping up along the Mile as I finish that Big Writing Project and turn it into something you can hold in your hands. Meanwhile (because I know you don't have enough to read already) here is my own list of ten blogs and websites worth a click, a wildly divergent assortment for wildly divergent minds. (Like yours.)

1. The Art of Nonconformity. Chris Guillebeau's adventures in unconventional living.

2. The Communicatrix. Where does she get the energy?

3. The Cassandra Pages. Go now and read her series on the inauguration of President Obama. If you couldn't be in D.C., she'll make you feel as though you were.

4. Pace and Kyeli. Living, thinking, writing (and unschooling) in Austin, Texas.

5. Ornamental. Nina Bagley creates astonishing art and soulful writing from her perch in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

6. Crossroads Dispatches. Evelyn Rodriguez's (altogether too) infrequent posts are well worth the wait.

7. Passing Thru. Betsy Wuebker's writing, Peter Wuebker's photography. These two get around.

8. Be Nurtured. Spirituality and mindful parenting, and a site that just exudes warmth and peace.

9. Learning to Love You More. Go get your assignment. (A great site for unschoolers, by the way.)

10. How to Save the World. Linked to in the text above but worth a second mention. I've been reading Dave for years. Go give him some love.

So there you have it: my Lemonade List. If your blog or site isn't on it, it's not because I don't love you, too. You can brag about your site in the comment section, and one of these days I'll update that woefully overlooked blogroll of mine and put you there, too.

Where Are You Going?

2009-01-21T09:36:00.007-06:00

We are three weeks into the new year. Plans have been made, goals set, folks I know are headed toward some fixed point on their mental map. Me, I don't know.

Yesterday, the new President headed off to work as soon as he'd been sworn in to office. I fiddled with a painting, made greens and mashed potatoes, watched the last season of Alias on dvd.

We've cruised through Capricorn, crossed over into Aquarius. Time passes, and more time. And still, when I ask myself for a plan, the only answer I have is the one I imagine the cat who prowls my back yard might offer.

Where are you going?

This way.

What are you doing?

This.

A Disturbance in the Force

2009-01-16T09:18:00.006-06:00

"The dysfunction of the old consciousness and the arising of the new are both accelerating," writes Eckhart Tolle in Stillness Speaks.

"Paradoxically, things are getting worse and better at the same time, although the worse is more apparent because it makes so much 'noise'."

I want him to be right about this. Tolle. I want him to be possessed of the clarity and perspective I lack.

I want to believe.

The guts of the world are twisting and anxious, Zeus and Hera are fighting in the kitchen, pots are thrown, dishes break.

If only it were pots and dishes.

Stay Hungry

2009-01-14T18:03:00.004-06:00

A friend of mine is standing on the cusp of a life-changing opportunity, and I'm coming up for air long enough to ask you to do something quick and easy to help her cross the line.

Here's the story: Author Daniel Pink's latest book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: the Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need, offers six lessons for success. After reading the book, inquiring Bunko fans wondered what a seventh lesson might be.

Imagine a contest, a winnowing, a final three. Imagine a chance to vote for the best one of the three.

Imagine the prize for the winner: an all-expenses paid trip to the 2009 TED Global Conference in Oxford, UK.

Enter my friend Becky. Her entry is one of the three finalists. According to Becky, Lesson #7 is: Stay Hungry.

You can visit the Lesson Seven website she created where she makes the case for staying hungry. You can check out (and download) this free Stay Hungry e-book, put together and made available by Becky and a few of her fans/friends.

Most important, you can vote to send this amazing woman on her first trip across the pond to one of the most inspiring, creative, talked-about conferences ever launched.

But you have to do it now. Voting ends on January 15th. That's either tomorrow (if you're reading this Wednesday night) or today (if you're reading this Thursday. ) If it's after Thursday by the time you read this... I'm too late in asking.

And in case you're wondering who this Becky person is, you can go here to read about her and here to read a bit of her work. And go here to read what another of her friends has posted.

And then go here to vote. Thanks.

It's Almost Done

2009-01-10T09:22:00.005-06:00

Do you remember that Big Writing Project I told you about a couple months ago?

It's almost done.

It's going to have a new site to go with it, with its own domain -- a big step for me, even tho the whole endeavor is remaining on Blogger for the time being. One learning curve at a time.

I'll still be hanging around here on the Mile, too, so there's no need for you to wander off, tho once the new digs are all pretty and useful I'll post a link so you can visit me there, too.

It's good to have a project in January, which is otherwise a tough month for those of us on the Northern Tilt.

Scatterlings

2009-01-05T07:55:00.008-06:00

Flocks of birds have been peppering our skies lately, great avian ribbons that pass like swarms of bees over our heads, crossing the highway and scattering across the cornfields that line the main route in and out of town.

One by one the cornfields they glean are given over to construction projects: a subdivision, a new retail plaza, a strip mall just like the dozen other strip malls that languish a few miles up the road, already faded and backfilled with nail parlors and check-cashing outlets.

I thought these cornfields would be spared, given the state of things, but developers seem to be chasing their losses here, marching ever onward even as houses go unsold and office space goes unleased.

We don't build pretty in these parts anymore. The gothic structures and mansions of the old downtown mock us as we sprawl our way to inconsequence.

But the flocks of birds are beautiful, sensual, undulating on the currents of cold air. I can't take my eyes off them.

15 Things I Learned in 2008*

2008-12-28T08:56:00.013-06:00

I don't always want what I think I want. For some reason I keep learning this one over and over.
Buying a house is like renting a house. You just have a different landlord.
Even with a reel mower I don't like mowing the yard in August.
Traveling by train could be awesome. I hear it's awesome elsewhere. The Amtrak from Flagstaff, Arizona to St. Louis? Meh.
Gas at four dollars a gallon will still get me where I need to go. Turns out I need to go to far fewer places than I thought I did.
I'm a lazy gardener.
Scottsdale, Arizona, has an amazing Art Walk.
You can make a great tomato sauce by roasting canned tomatoes with onions, garlic, olive oil and basil. Toss everything in a glass baking dish. Be generous with the olive oil. Leave it uncovered. Put it in the oven at 300 degrees or so. Give it a couple hours. Stir it once in awhile. Puree it in a blender when it's done. Delicious.
Meeting cool people -- online and in real life -- is one of the best things about unschooling.
It's also one of the best things about blogging.
I miss working in community radio.
Sometimes problems are so intrinsic, or so intransigent, they're not problems anymore, they're just facts.
Sometimes I'm the problem.
Sometimes there is no problem, just a set of mind-forg'd manacles.
Whoopie cushions make outstanding Christmas gifts.

* with a tip of the winter-weather sock cap to the awesome Communicatrix, who posts her list of 100 (!!) such things at the end of each year, and has been doing it since 2004, and puts my meager attempt to shame...

On the Longest Night

2008-12-20T08:57:00.007-06:00

The world needs you to go where you want to go and be who you are meant to be.

The world needs you to shine as you were born to shine.

The world needs you as you stumble and fall, it needs you as you rise up, it needs your hands to hold on tight, it needs you to let go.

The world needs your laughter and your power and your grief.

On the longest night of the year, the world needs you to be the light.

Enough

2008-12-07T09:30:00.006-06:00

In The Original Affluent Society, anthropologist Marshall Sahlins proposed that members of hunter-gatherer cultures worked far less than members of our own culture, making their living in only three to five hours a day. The rest of their time was leisure. Hours upon hours of farting around.

Can you imagine being that free?

What would happen if making your living took only a few hours a day instead of 40, 50, 60 hours a week? What if you could earn enough money to live well in only three to five hours? What would you do with the rest of your time?

What would enough money look like? Would it be twice as much as you have?

Can you imagine it being half as much?

Or less?

I'm wondering these things as I read the dire forecasts for our economy, resonant with the drumbeat of retail woes and massive job layoffs. The latest figures for unemployment are unnerving. How can there be so many people without jobs when there is so much important work to be done?

Do you feel the disconnect? We're trained to make money and spend money. Everything depends on it. But the cat is out of the bag, the secret's revealed, the emperor is buck-naked. Our capacity to earn money is largely beyond our control, and our ability to spend is problematic. Shopping itself has become a moral issue. We know we can't continue to consume the planet, but what happens when we stop consuming? Our economy falls to pieces.

Well, sooner or later the economy has to fall to pieces. It's inevitable. Nature bats last.

Still, there is plenty of shopping going on this holiday season. Parking lots around town are full. Maybe we can't help ourselves. Maybe it's vestigial, a leftover from those hunter-gatherer days. We're born to glean, drawn to shiny.

I just wonder how we'll take to the paleolithic work day, once nature has her ups.

Broken

2008-12-04T10:15:00.005-06:00

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig wrote something to the effect that the Buddha can be found in the workings of a motorcycle as surely as on the mountaintop.

By the same logic, is the Buddha present in the guts of my dvd player? Can the Buddha be found in a cluster bomb? In a land mine?

Is the skyscraper as natural as the beehive?

The guts of my dvd player are unlovely, but I've seen the guts of deer spread out on the highway, and they are not particularly lovely, either.

What makes something holy? Is this a quantum question, the answer residing as much in the observer as in the thing observed?

What does it mean to be broken? Are we broken? Are we in need of redemption? And why does salvation, if needed, come not in this life -- where it might actually be useful -- but only after one is dead? Of what use is that?

We have a new dvd player. The old one is now salvage. Copper wire, resistors, circuit boards. Ashes to ashes.

That One Small Thing

2008-11-26T09:42:00.006-06:00

When you find that one (small) thing that you do really, really well, don't think of it as one small thing. Think of it as your perfectly jigged piece of an infinite puzzle.

When you fit your piece into the whole, the whole becomes seamless, and your part of the universe becomes part of the Great Art of life.

If your piece is missing, the empty space where you belong is the only thing you notice.

The powerful play goes on, says Whitman. Show up. Make your mark. Contribute.

Five Things (Including Spoons)

2008-11-23T08:17:00.009-06:00

The artful and talented Mary Buek asked me to play tag and share with you five unusual things about me. My blog posting has been limited while I work toward completing my Big Writing Project offline, so I'm happy to play, if only for a change of pace.

I don't know how unusual any of these things really are, but here goes:

None of my spoons match. When Dragonstar was younger (and really, even now) she would use the spoons in the flatware drawer as digging implements. Out the door they'd go, never to return. So I began buying handfuls of assorted spoons at the thrift store. Now we all have our favorites, which is really much more fun than having every spoon the same. Maybe I could encourage her to dig with our forks next.

I played the role of Hamlet in a school play. Alas, poor Yorrick.

I used to be on the radio. I did morning shows in Southern California and played cowboy music in Phoenix.

I was president of my junior high student council. One of my campaign promises was to get the doors on the women's restroom stalls re-installed. They had all been removed years before, in a rude display of administrative authority. I was a notorious student, a known pot smoker and class-skipper whose locker was searched on a regular basis. The students didn't care about that. I won the election and got those restroom stall doors replaced. (Can you tell this is still a point of pride for me?)

I like the smell of gasoline and the smell of old tires. There's a story there. I'll share it sometime.

Since this is a game of tag, if you' d like to play, consider yourself tagged, and link back so I can visit you and see just how unusual you are.

Six Things to Do in the Recession

2008-11-20T10:55:00.005-06:00

Stack stones.

Paint your shoes.

Make a sand sculpture.

Doodle on a napkin.

Doodle on a business card.

Learn to love beans.

Dragonstar's Dragon

2008-11-19T10:49:00.004-06:00

I meant to put this up sooner. She's been 13 for almost three weeks now, and we're just getting around to sending out the thank-you notes to her two grandmas (yeah, we've been remiss in many areas) and I put a copy of this picture into the notecards and remembered I wanted to show it to you, too.

We didn't arrange the candles in any particular way, we just stuck them willynilly into the cake, lit them, and took the picture. The flames and the camera did the rest.

Pretty cool.

How to Get What You Want

2008-11-15T16:20:00.002-06:00

Most people aren't thinking about what you want. No, really. It's not that they don't care about you, or don't like what you do. It's that they're busy. Like you. Or preoccupied. Like you. Or in their own private Idaho. (Maybe also like you.)

If you want people to do something, it's good to ask. In big letters. Right up front.

The BBPiT reports that tips are up since we made this sign for him. He lights it with a little battery-powered lamp, sets it up right in front of the band. People are happy to oblige.

When you want something, don't assume people can read your mind. Ask.

Let Them Fall

2008-11-14T08:04:00.005-06:00

I don't know diddly about investment banking, but I know when I've been handed a shit sandwich.

The "economy" they want to stabilize with an ever-growing government bailout? It's a mirage.

The "credit" they insist we need to keep the thing afloat? It's dirty magic.

Can we "afford" to let these lunatic financial institutions fail?

Yes we can.

On Fear

2008-11-12T19:13:00.008-06:00

Years ago, in the days of LISTSERVs, I participated in an email discussion that focused on the intersection of feminism and ecology. The posts were intense. We were writing about matters close to our hearts, and things would get very heated.

I got to the point where I dreaded opening my email because the criticisms that landed in my inbox felt so personal. And sometimes they were personal. After a few weeks I quit the list. It was too much for me.

Maybe you’ve gone through something similar.

I live an unconventional life. I hold some unconventional opinions, and sometimes I like to write about them. I don’t want my fear of harsh judgment to stop me from writing.

I know that fear can't be conquered, not really, that all I can do as a writer is put fear in my pocket and carry it along with me. But sometimes I don’t do that. Sometimes I let fear stop me in my tracks.

Maybe you do that, too.

For the past several weeks I’ve been working on a piece of writing that scares me.
The subject matter is, again, close to my heart, and again I hear the harsh voice of criticism every time I sit down to work. But this time it’s not in my inbox, it’s in my head.

The voice demands to know who the hell I think I am, tackling this subject. The voice tells me I’m no expert, that I lack credentials, that I have no business expressing an opinion. The voice is like a shadow on the wall that swells to monster size the more I duck my head and try to ignore it.

I don’t know how to silence that voice, how to vanquish that shadow. So I’m writing about it here, in the hope that by shining a light on it, it will shrink back to a manageable size, and I can get some work done.

And maybe, knowing you’re not alone in feeling similar fears, you can take heart, and get some work done, too.

Okay, then. Thanks for your indulgence. Carry on.

The Fine Print

2008-11-10T20:28:00.005-06:00

This arrived in my mailbox today, tucked in with the rest of the flotsam accompanying my phone bill.The page measures 14" x 7," folded to create four panels of 3.5"x 7" each. It's printed front and back in a point size approaching nil. It is nigh impossible to read, which is, of course, intended as well as ironic, coming as it does from a communications company.

Its purported purpose is to inform me of my privacy rights with respect to my telephone and internet accounts. It's actual purpose is to obfuscate, frustrate, and irritate. So far it's succeeding wildly.

Change is Good

2008-11-05T13:52:00.007-06:00

Leaves were falling just like embers

in colors red and gold they set us on fire

~Roly Saly, Killing the Blues

Sometime in the middle of the night, the leaves on the trees turned from green to gold, and Indiana turned from red to blue.

Not since voting for Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential election has this state awarded its electoral votes to a Democrat. I had to change my blog profile. I'm no longer blue in a red state.

I think the citizens of the United States surprised the world yesterday. I think we may have even surprised ourselves.

It's good to know we can still do that.

Halloween

2008-10-31T21:23:00.005-05:00

I bought candy for the tricksters but I forgot to turn my porch light on, so I was bypassed, and now I have a bowl of Kitkats to keep me company this evening. I've put them out of reach in the kitchen, but I know where the step stool is. We'll see how I do.

We're still a couple hours shy of the midnight hour so I'm jumping the gun just a little but I can't wait any longer to wish my daughter a Happy 13th birthday. The cake is cooling on the rack (more chocolate!) and there will be pizza tomorrow. Tonight she's celebrating with her dad. When she comes home she'll be a teenager.

We colored her hair a vibrant red. If I'm lucky tomorrow she'll let me take her picture.

The image above is of a mask she created for me at this year's Live & Learn conference. I wore it to the Masquerade Ball on the last night of the conference, when we all gathered in the big hall to dance to Abba and the Village People.

I miss my unschooler buds. As the nights grow chilly I long for autumn bonfires and stargazing with my tribe. Some of them are gathering in Tennessee this weekend. We're there in spirit.

Tomorrow the BBPiT and I are up early to attend a campaign event with Joe and Jill Biden. Apparently the Democrats believe this traditionally Red State is still up for grabs. We haven't gone blue in these parts since 1964. I remember feeling hopeful on the eve of the '92 election, and silly me, I'm hopeful once more. We'll see.

Have a spirit-filled weekend.

A Post-it Post

2008-10-26T17:35:00.005-05:00

I've got a Holiday Art Sale coming up, along with two shows to hang in the next several weeks, so my work has involved more needle and thread these days than keyboard. But I've got a goal I'm bearing down on in the word-works department, a little book I hope to have finished by that Significant Birthday I mentioned in my last post. (There, now I've told you, so I really need to get it finished or I'll have you to answer to.)

Meanwhile I have a dear friend who has been in and out of the hospital for a month, another who is neck-deep in family issues, a third who is caught by a restlessness of spirit for which she can find no release. Send them your good thoughts, would you? We need to raise each other up right now. Today. Always.

A Dreadful Selfish Crime

2008-10-19T19:50:00.003-05:00

I am guilty of a dreadful, selfish crime.

I have wasted all my precious time.

Robert Earl Keen

On a recent weekend I wandered around the house with my tea mug in hand, looking for a place to alight and do nothing. I found several suitable locations: the comfy chair in the living room, the comfy chair in my bedroom, the comfy chair in front of the desktop computer. I spent considerable time in each of them.

I watched The West Wing on dvd. I re-read Artemis Fowl: the Opal Deception (a young-adult fantasy novel of great creativity and little depth. The perfect choice.) I played computer games. I browsed the web. I found Sheboygan, Wisconsin and decided I had to go there. They have a beautiful art center, which is a good enough reason to make the trip, but really, I just want to tell people I’m going to Sheboygan. I like saying the name. Sheboygan.

Anyway, I’m approaching a Significant Birthday. A milestone birthday. And I’m wondering if maybe I’ve allowed myself a few too many weekends like that one. It’s the kind of thing you wonder as birthdays like this roll around. Am I doing enough? Am I contributing enough? Have I accomplished anything? Am I making a difference? Or am I spinning my wheels, idling, wasting my (all of a sudden very) precious time?

Luckily for me, this past Friday I performed with my guitar at a local Peace with Justice event at a church across the river. I heard the hostess introduce me with words like “published poet” and “artist” and “unschooler.” None of those words applied to me ten years ago, when I first started performing. All of them took some work -- and some time -- to achieve. Now they're a part of who I am, and what I've done. What I do. So really, I have been busy. It just doesn’t seem that way – or feel that way – on a day-to-day basis.

On a day-to-day basis the grass doesn’t appear to grow, either.

Lots of people never have the good fortune of being introduced to an audience and hearing their accomplishments enumerated. But we can enumerate them ourselves. And we should. Even if you’re not staring down a Significant Birthday, you can still take stock. Maybe you’ll realize that you are indeed wasting your precious time -- and you'll get up and get going. And maybe you’ve done a lot more than you give yourself credit for, even as you know there’s so much more to do. If that's the case, maybe you can give yourself a wee bit of a break, already.

Consider: if I hadn’t been wasting time that weekend, I wouldn’t have discovered (here it comes again) Sheboygan. I’m thinking road trip. I hear it’s pretty there this time of year.

Blog Action Day

2008-10-15T10:29:00.003-05:00

Jesus was a man who traveled through the land,
A hard-working man and brave.
He said to the rich, "Give your goods to the poor."
So they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.

Woody Guthrie

Today is Blog Action Day. This year's theme is Poverty. Given the focus of the news media and the world's governments these past few weeks, all I can think is, how ironic.

Okay, Now We're Awake

2008-10-12T14:44:00.008-05:00

We were late. Rushing out the door to get downtown for an unscheduled appointment. Dragonstar wasn't even quite awake. Eyes at half-mast, bagel in hand. She ducked her head and climbed into the back seat of my little two-door compact car.

And shrieked. And flew back out of the car, pale, tripping over the seat belt in her frantic haste.

The eyes were wide now. Very wide. I thought a bee had gotten into the car. She is frightened of bees. No, it wasn't a bee.

"It's the spider."

Not a spider. The spider. This one, who has been sharing our back porch for weeks.

She is perhaps three inches long from tip to toe. Black body, striped and dotted with white and green and red. A garden spider. Her web is large, 18" across, with the characteristic zig-zag down the center. She had originally spun it between two tall bamboo sticks on the porch. But sometime during the night she had left the bamboo, crawled across the carport, climbed into my open car window and made a new web, suspended from the rear window, crossing to the headrest of the passenger seat in front.

Yeah. I would have backed out double time, too. And shrieked twice, just for good measure.

Dragonstar and I exchanged looks. We were late. We had to get the spider out. How was this going to happen?

I had no net handy, but I did have two badminton rackets nearby. Of all things. I grabbed them and was puzzling out how to put them to use when the BBPiT chose that moment (oh, happy day!) to come out on the porch to see what all the ruckus was about. I pointed into the car, handed him the badminton rackets, and prayed. He reached in and carefully caged the spider between the two rackets, brought her out and set her back in the bamboo.

"Roll up your window from now on," he said.

Will do, bucko.

What's Done

2008-10-06T09:13:00.006-05:00

Sometimes the Big Picture gets away from me. I lose my place in line, forget what the point was, digress into the minutia that is my daily life: the spilled ink, the stray bits of thread, the distraction of national drama and dishes piled in the sink. What is all this? I ask, and where did my Big Life go?

I had this Grand Idea a few weeks back, and it was Exciting and Important (well, to me, anyway), and I called upon the winds of Imagination and Visualization to fill my sails and get me out of harbor, and now, a few short weeks into it, I'm back to using my oars and feeling silly out here in the middle of the ocean, bobbing like a cork, no land in sight.

Artists don't dream of making great art, say the authors of Art & Fear, they dream of having made great art. Or, as Dorothy Parker put it, I hate to write. I love having written.

I visualize the end product, but not the daily process. That's my error. Because one page at a time, one sentence at a time, it's the doing that matters. What's done is just... done.

The Truly Gifted Blogger

2008-10-02T08:17:00.004-05:00

.... knows how to keep you coming back for more. Or is that Moore?

(Go ahead and click. I promise it's not the Moore that makes some of you crazy...)

Tip of the hat to Lisa Hoffman for the link.

Credit: sculpture by Kelly Moore.

Thoughts on the Bailout, Interrupted by a Walk

2008-09-28T10:01:00.013-05:00

Thoughts before walking:

What's up with this $700 billion bailout?

* * *

Thoughts while walking:

Aren't you glad your legs work?
Yes. Very glad.
It's warm already. The sun feels good.
I think that bird just wolf-whistled at me.
Can a bird actually wolf-whistle?

Look at that great sunporch.
I would love to have a sunporch.

Perfect blue sky.

Those coffee trees aren't pretty, exactly. More like distinctive.
This is where we saw the bats the other night.
Car coming up behind me. Okay, now I'm self-conscious.
Does my butt look big?
Oh, never mind. Just walk.
That's really loud music coming from that Hummer. Really loud.
Why is it so loud?
Never mind. Let it be. Just walk. And breathe. Breathe big.

Look how they keep their Asian dayflowers from taking over the yard.
They cut them. Smart.
Halloween stuff out already. I like the skulls.
What a funny way to do a sidewalk, ending it in the middle of the yard like that.
Did they do that on purpose?

One more hill. Legs still working.

Oh, that was a bluejay! Where did it go? I thought it flew right into this bush, but now I don't see it.
I hear it, though. It's in there somewhere.

* * *

Thoughts after walking:

So... what's really up with this $700 billion bailout?

This is The Show

2008-09-24T08:38:00.006-05:00

My signed copy of Patti Digh's Life is a Verb showed up in the mail last week, and I've been keeping it close at hand on my writing desk where I can open it at random throughout the day to read a few pages at a time. I'm savoring the art, the wisdom, and, most especially, the stories. One favorite: the tale of 10-year-old Emma at her first auction. (No, sorry, I'll say no more. Go grab your own copy and turn to page 22. If you don't yet have a copy, for goodness' sake get one.)

In the back of her wonderful book, Patti has left us a reading list for further illumination. As if her book didn't offer illumination enough. On the list were many things I hadn't read. Never one to read one book at a time when I could be immersed in half a dozen, it was off to the library for me.

In my defense, look at these titles. They're irresistible.

I've already read through Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, which is 120 pages of kind and practical thoughts about art and art making. Here's one insight I love:

"Art is made by ordinary people."

Yes. Moreover, say the authors, the ideal artist is ordinary, too. Human, flawed. Just like you. Just like me. Here's another:

"What's really needed is nothing more than a broad sense of what you are looking for, some strategy for how to find it, and an overriding willingness to embrace mistakes and surprise along the way."

These guys aren't just writing about art, are they. They're writing about life.

Speaking of which... in the midst of this influx of bountiful wisdom courtesy of Patti, I had what is probably the most obvious of epiphanies, and I'll share it if only to show you that you're never too old to begin to get this stuff. It dawned on me that this thing we're all doing, this daily showing up, this is it. I mean, This is It. This is not preamble, prelude, rehearsal, introduction. This is not training, preparation, rough draft. This is Life. Yours, mine. We're in it. This is The Show.

I told you it was obvious. So how is it I've managed to go so long without really getting it?

This is The Show.

I wrote that in big letters in my morning pages journal. THIS IS THE SHOW. And then, strange things started to happen.

I got a check in the mail for six pieces of art I sold.

I got a call to teach a class.

I got a request to perform with my guitar at a Peace & Justice event, where I will sing some of my own songs and get paid for it.

And I realized that these things, and a million other small things like them, are the substance of my life. They're not what I do while I wait for my life to begin. They're not side jobs. They are IT. They are The Show.

Reader, it is as though I've been dancing around the narrow edge of a great empty space that I've been holding open for the day my life arrives. Suddenly the empty space is full of what was always there. It's solid ground, and I'm free to dance across its entire surface. Has my life finally arrived? You could say that. Has it been there all along? Well, what do you think?

I said yes to the performance, yes to the class. I deposited the check and sent my thanks to the Universe (and to the sender.) And now I send them to Patti, whose book has started something. I'm not sure what, exactly, but it looks like life to me.

Transition

2008-09-17T07:24:00.013-05:00

It happens every year. At the first hint of fall -- the first time I notice the changing light in my workroom, the first night the temperatures drop below 60 degrees -- I start to feel a little edgy, even a little crazy. I have to remind myself: it's September, the ninth month, the birthing month. Whatever has been gestating this year is getting ready to emerge.

Gather yourself, I say. You've done this before. Breathe, breathe.

In childbirth lingo this period of crazy intensity that comes at the peak of labor is called transition. Such a gentle word. Such an out-of-control experience.

So what is it I've been gestating this year?

The other day I dragged out my ambitious projects and works-in-progress that have languished for much of the summer in the recesses of my heat-enfeebled mind. I shook them out in the crisp air of autumn and tried them on for size. Are they still comfortable? Are they too small? Do they feel constricting, or are they so baggy and ill-defined I can't find myself for all the shapelessness?

Yes, yes, yes and yes. (I know: crazy.)

For the past two years this transitional ritual of mine has come on the heels of a five-day unschoolers conference in North Carolina, which has made the process of transition all the more challenging. Both times Dragonstar and I have returned from Live & Learn, I've stumbled through a period during which nothing from before seems to quite align with my returning self. Time spent among a tribe of like-minded souls clarifies my perspective: it's like getting a new pair of glasses after making do for too long with an out-of-date prescription. When I get back home, things look different.

So I'm fumbling along, carried on that wave of transitional momentum, feeling a little out of my element. Like the last few weeks of pregnancy, nothing really fits. My world is suddenly very big, and my work feels far too small in relation.

How did this happen?

As Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes said, day by day nothing seems to change, but pretty soon everything's different.

Including us.

Between Here and Home

2008-09-12T21:09:00.009-05:00

I've been back for days, but I'm not really here. I'm still up there in the mountains... still on that porch, in one of those green rocking chairs, tucked behind the tall trees, listening to the sound of the creek below, and the kids and the crickets and cicadas.

My thoughts have run wild and refuse to coalesce. I trust they'll come together sooner or later. They always do. In the meantime, I'm attending to chores, weeding the overgrown herb beds in my yard, preparing meals. Washing dishes. Drinking tea and more tea. Humming a tune.

Do these things with care, say the trees and the creek and the cicadas, and let that be enough.

The Unschoolers are Coming

2008-08-31T10:46:00.006-05:00

My emailbox has been unusually full this past week, not so much because I’m suddenly popular, but because I’m on an email list of unschoolers who are planning to attend the Live & Learn Unschoolers Conference that gets underway this Wednesday in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

Several hundred of us are about to converge on the Blue Ridge Assembly in the mountains above Asheville, moms and dads and babies and teens and grandparents and life partners and all manner of folk in between. Many are seasoned unschoolers. Others will be new to the whole idea. Some will leave baffled. Others will leave as new members of a joyful tribe.

My daughter has always been an unschooler. I was conventionally schooled. As she learns, I unlearn, relearn. The longer we do it, the greater its implications in our lives, and the greater our influence on those around us. We have changed minds, just by being who we are and doing what we do. And our lives have changed, just by being among other unschoolers.

In the early days, I carried a lot of schooly thoughts in my head. I embraced the essence of natural learning – that we learn what we learn in our own time, in our own way – but I didn’t know at first what would replace the workbooks and curriculum and schooly stuff. I still thought in the language of school: subjects, semesters, “What Every x-Grader Should Know.”

So for a while I measured our lives against the artificial construct of institutionalized schooling, and tried to find ways to wedge our activities into their appropriate “subject” categories. Even though we were quite free of school in many ways, in the beginning I thought in terms of the world as our classroom. Dragonstar -- and other unschoolers -- taught me that, as Grace Llewellyn writes, the world is not a classroom, the world is the world.

What replaces the workbooks and curriculum? Absolutely nothing. And absolutely everything. The world is the world.

At the conference there will be lectures and roundtable discussions. There will be (somewhat) organized activities known as funshops. There will be a picnic. There will be a masquerade ball. There will be kids with painted hair and faces and grandmoms with tattoos. There will be trails to walk and a creek to wade in.There will be five sweet days of letting someone else do the cooking.

The unschoolers are coming to Black Mountain. Dragonstar and I head out on Tuesday.

credit: "Embryo" original pen & ink by ps pirro

Living on Purpose

2008-08-23T20:14:00.011-05:00

Social networking sites on the internet are worlds beyond my ken. And yet in the past several weeks I’ve joined three. What’s up with that?

I’m still not participating very much on any of them, having barely gone beyond introductions and posting a suitable photo. I find them a wee bit daunting, and I’m not sure why I’m there. Yet there I am.

Is that not the question of our time -- why we're doing what we do?

Last week on How to Save the World Dave Pollard had a great list of seventeen questions to consider when pondering one’s life purpose. I love this kind of exercise. And over at Steve Pavlina’s site I found a similar tool in the archives. So many of us are looking for answers, for insight, for guidance, all of which suggest still another question: why do we puzzle so much over why we’re here?

Why is our purpose such a mystery?

I once told a friend that you know you’re living on purpose when time disappears. I no longer completely trust that answer. Yes, time disappears when I’m writing, when I’m making art, when I’m wandering in the woods, when I’m engrossed in conversation, whenever I’m fully present and paying attention. Alas, time also disappears when I sit in front of the television and watch episode after episode of the West Wing. Or play yet another round of whatever computer game has captured my fancy.

It could be that Kurt Vonnegut was right when he said we’re here to fart around. Yet for all his farting around he published fourteen novels and nine collections of stories and essays. That sounds to me like a life lived on purpose.

After all the exercises and all the contemplation, I remain a little baffled by the whole subject. And I’m beginning to think that maybe purpose is like happiness. Like love. Maybe my real task is to become fully at home in my skin and porous to my surroundings, staying attentive and curious and open, so that purpose can reveal itself as I go, and so that I might recognize it when it does. Maybe the recognition isn’t even important. I’m here to Be Here. Could it be that simple?

I spend a lot of time pondering. I wonder as much as anyone about the meaning of life, mine in particular. But I also know that too much thinking about life -- the point, the purpose -- interferes with the living of it.

I suspect that discovering our purpose – if indeed we have one, or even many– is less a matter of figuring it out than of letting it find us. And maybe that's why I’m wandering around in three new social networking sites, and saying yes to new work, and to new opportunities. I’m making myself a little more visible, so purpose will at least have an easier time of it.

Everyday Influence

2008-08-15T12:33:00.006-05:00

Sometimes the doomsday prognostications of peak oil and climate change and the end of civilization as we know it make me crazy, not because I don’t believe them, but because I do, and I don’t know how to act in light of so many seemingly intractable problems.

So I’m grateful to Chris Corrigan at Parking Lot for posting a thoughtful what-to-do list for those of us who are sometimes unsure of our relevance – let alone our influence – in the world beyond our doorstep. And for reminding me that how I respond to everyday things is at least as important as any other single influence I might have.

Do I freak out when the power goes out (to use Chris's example)? I don’t. I'm actually good in a crisis, and I handle most inconveniences pretty well. But when the grass keeps growing and I have to mow yet again, when the food gets eaten and I have to grocery shop and cook once more, when the house won’t stay clean and the laundry won’t stay done, I can get a little testy. Yes, I can. And getting testy does me no good and doesn’t get the mowing, the cleaning, or the laundry any closer to done. Plus it makes those around me testy, and that’s no fun.

So I guess there are a few things I need to work on.

I’m grateful, too, for the link in Chris’s post to an essay by George Monbiot that just about sums up the arc of my entire life as a working girl: do what you love, but don’t expect the money – or the power, or the prestige – to follow. Because it probably won’t. And you have to be okay with that.

If your dreams are leading you down an unconventional path, by all means pursue them. They are leading you toward what makes you come alive, and as Howard Thurman famously said, the world needs people who have come alive. Ignore the advice of those who try to steer you along a more acceptable path. Most of all, beware the velvet handcuffs of the corporate job. Never forget that no matter how loyal you may be to a corporation, a corporation can never be loyal to you in return. It exists to serve its shareholders, and if you work for it, so do you.

So follow your heart. Just be prepared to live frugally. Our society desperately needs radicals and activists and artists and dreamers – it always has – but it doesn’t reward them, financially or otherwise – and it never did. Those of us who are devoted to doing what makes us come alive have to find our rewards elsewhere. We have to recognize our “nested spheres of influence and connection,” to use Corrigan’s lovely phrase, and serve those connections, and draw our strength, and our rewards, from them.

There is great and good work to be done. Yours, mine, and ours. I'll do what's in front of me. And whatever it may be -- writing this essay, folding the clothes -- I have to trust that it will be enough, at least for today.

Credit: Dragonstar in a t-shirt from our old coffeehouse.

(Not) Back to School

2008-08-12T09:16:00.005-05:00

School began this week in our southern Indiana town, the yellow bus rolling down our street at 7:45, the kids pulling their wobbly wheeled packs down the alley.

Dragonstar and I wave at the bus, and continue with our summer. We're not smug (really, we're not) but we truly do love not going back to school.

About a month ago we met some other local unschoolers, which was a godsend for us. For the ten or so years we’ve lived in this area, we’ve known only one other unschooling family, though we know lots of homeschoolers. Now we have the makings of a tribe of our own, a small group of honest-to-goodness radical unschoolers who live as if school doesn’t exist. We don’t use curricula. We don’t follow grades. We don’t break the world down into subjects for study. We don’t want a broken world; we want a whole one, a holy one: intact, interconnected, complex, mysterious, miraculous.

For many years Dragonstar and I have sought communion with unschoolers online, via email lists and web forums. Last year we went to the Live & Learn Conference in North Carolina, the largest gathering of unschoolers and prospective unschoolers in the country. We’re going again this year, in less than a month, and we’re looking forward to being among so many like-minded people once again.

But here at home, finding others like us has been a lean search. And that takes a toll. When you don’t see much of yourself reflected in the world, it’s easy to pick up doubt, to question your path, to second-guess your decisions. And every year, as we see the first yellow school bus roll by, I do question, and I do second-guess.

But I no longer doubt.

Unschooling is a lot like faith – any faith, religious, metaphysical, political. (And if you don’t think politics is based on faith and a belief in things unseen, you probably haven’t thought much about politics, let alone about faith.) If we never probe our beliefs, if we never look deeper into the what and why and how come and who says, our convictions will be thin and brittle, dogmatic, received wisdom at best. Our faith – not to mention our lives – will not be our own. We will not grow. We will not thrive. It isn’t a betrayal of faith to question it; it’s essential.

Dragonstar and I have been unschoolers for many years, and we think differently today than we did a year ago, five years ago, ten. Don’t you? And while we answer criticism and queries about our lives with confidence born of experience, we can’t be afraid to reconsider our path from time to time, to check in with our hearts and hold some open space for new and different choices to emerge. Very little in life is ever really decided “once and for all.” Few truths are whole truths. The world is still big, and we know a lot less than we think we do.

We’re always learning. And we love not going back to school.

You Know You Have Friends in High Places

2008-08-05T08:42:00.007-05:00

…when the owner of John Brown Melons, fourth generation (since 1876) melon growers from Carmi, Illinois, personally delivers a watermelon the size of a suckling pig to the BBPiT on a gig.

You know you have a good man when he hauls the giant thing home to share, cuts it open with a knife the size of a machete and cleans up the whole delicious mess afterward. Sweet sweet sweet.

What if I Had Just 37 Days?

2008-07-31T10:12:00.007-05:00

(Please visit Patti Digh at 37 Days to read what others have written in answer to this question, and to learn of its origins, and of course to read Patti's own wonderful work.)

Here is what I think: that I would have to wade in the ocean one more time. Here is what I cannot know: that I won’t be stung by a jellyfish or step on something sharp. Or eat a bad bit of fish and spend Days 6 through 9 in serious gastric distress.

I would call my favorite people in from near and far, to gather them around me one more time. Here is what I cannot know: that they may all be away for the summer, or not answering email, or on sabbatical, or enjoying radio silence.

Or they may be too broke to travel. I can’t know.

And more:

I can’t know that the basement won’t flood on Day 22, or the dying elm in the back yard won’t pick Day 9 to collapse across the garage.

I can’t know that Mom may die on Day 14, her own 37 days begun two weeks before mine.

The best poem I will ever write may emerge on Day 4. Or it might have been written last year, and sits now in a notebook, awaiting rediscovery. It may wait forever.

I can’t know.

On Day 31 I may drive to the store for cat litter, and wait through two traffic light cycles in order to make my left turn. I may try to not be annoyed at the delay, the ever-so-slight delay that results in my crossing paths with an old friend – someone I had forgotten about, someone I had not called to gather around me. She is coming out of the store as I am going in, and she is delighted to see me, and we stop to talk.

Thirty minutes later, we are still talking.

The encounter fills my heart with great joy. Had I not sat so long at the traffic light, I might have missed her. Had I sent someone else for cat litter – how mundane a chore, with only one week to live! – I would have missed her for sure.

I can’t know.

The ants may ruin my picnic. A hummingbird may grace it. Day 26. The car may get a flat. The car may get me to a Patti Griffin concert. Day 13.

There is a fat check in the mail for me. It will arrive on Day 38.

There is a shape in the clouds: it looks like a bunny. Do you see it? Look now, before it’s gone.

The Work of Local Affection

2008-07-20T11:42:00.004-05:00

One of the best pieces of advice I ever read came from Kentucky farmer and author Wendell Berry, who wrote in numerous essays of the importance of living in a place we love. Unfortunately for me – and for all those places I’ve lived -- I interpreted that advice to mean I needed to search for my ideal home, my one best place in the world. I needed to find it and go there. Then and only then would I be able to live fully, deeply, and intimately connected – which is what I craved.

Until I found that place, everywhere I lived was a waystation: large cities, small cities, rural enclaves, suburban bedroom communities. None of them was my ideal place. When there were things to like, I enjoyed them, but not too much, because I knew I would be leaving. When there were things I didn’t like, I ignored them, because there was little point in working for change in a place I didn’t intend to stay, a place that just didn’t feel right.

Do you see the problem? After many years and many moves, I saw it, too. I was a lazy seeker. I didn’t want to do the work of developing a relationship to a place, learning its nature and giving myself to it with real affection. I valued reciprocity – or thought I did -- but I wanted the place to give to me first. I wanted an off-the-rack experience of home, but love – true affection – doesn't come ready-made. It's a tailored response. It's always specific. It comes with a definitive article: not a home, but this home, beside this road, along this river, on this patch of Earth. I’ve come to understand – belatedly, but finally -- that loving where you are has less to do with finding a place than with staying put long enough to allow a place to know you’re there, to let it grow comfortable with your presence and begin – slowly, and with great patience -- to love you back.

I think it was the character of Phineas, in John Knowles' novel A Separate Peace, who said, “When you love something, it loves you back, in whatever way it has to love.” You care for it, and it cares for you, usually in ways you never anticipated.

That’s true reciprocity.

Loving where you are means relinquishing all those comforting contingency plans that spare you the work of local affection – those plans that allow you to leave half your life packed in boxes in the garage or the attic, half your heart tucked away, and half your imagination wandering the map in search of a better place. Loving where you are means calling your imagination home and putting it to work right where you are: learning the names of the people and trees and plants and birds and creeks and flowers, and letting them speak to your heart – your whole heart -- and show you what needs to be done, right here, right now.

photo: backyard berries, ripening daily by the handful.

Bedside Reading

2008-07-09T12:30:00.006-05:00

Once again evidence surfaces that the Bush administration has censored yet another report on global warming -- this one by the EPA -- deleting references to the health and environmental consequences of climate change. As if erasing the words would erase the problem.

Meanwhile, those of us in my little patch of the Reality-Based Community are getting on with the process of adapting to a changing world, sharing our homegrown vegetables, watching the skies for rain and considering life beyond the automobile.

Dragonstar is traveling with her father this week, leaving me lots of time to read -- which I'm coming to believe is a very mixed blessing. Reading leads to thinking, after all, and thinking too much is not good for one's happiness, or so reports Eric Weiner, author of The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World. I like that Weiner used the plural, places, and most of the ones he visits are unexpected. We've heard of the happy residents of Denmark, and Sweden, and Holland. Who would have suspected Bhutan?

Apropos of the EPA story cited above and the recent testimony of Dr. James Hansen, NASA's preeminent climatologist, to Congress on the 20th anniversary of his 1988 address to that same governing body, I picked up Mark Bowen's Censoring Science and read it in a day. My take-away: the citizens of the U.S. are living under an administration of thugs and apparachiks. Not exactly breaking news, that.

To put an even finer point on it, I read Robert Scheer's The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America. Which put me in mind of the recent movie Ironman, only without the superhero. Or the cute assistant. Or the happy ending.

Mind, Life and Universe is a collection of short conversations with scientists in a variety of fields, edited by MIT professor Lynn Margulis and Eduardo Punset, who hosts a weekly science TV show broadcast throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Never mind the complexity of subjects covered -- from the lifestyles of termites to the obliteration of time. This book is a perfect place to rest one's weary mind after the disheartening assault from Scheer and Bowen.

As is the encyclopedic Back to Basics from Skyhorse Publishing, a compendium of self- sufficiency edited by Abigail Gehring. In it you'll find instructions on raising chickens, building a log cabin, brewing beer, tanning leather, spinning wool and milking cows, along with a whole lot of other stuff you didn't even know you wanted to know how to do. Even if you never actually do it. I like books like this in the same way I like Machu Picchu and the United Nations: I may never visit either one, but I feel better just knowing that they exist.

Happy reading.

Creating Space

2008-07-01T10:10:00.003-05:00

Back in January I wrote about my 12-18 Months of Artful Intentions, describing how I created three pages of dreams and desires neatly categorized and committed to paper to see me though the coming year and a half. This past week I went back through that list and crossed off nearly half of the items. I’d either done them (a small number) or was no longer interested in doing them (the greater number).

As I went through with my pen and lined out one thing after another, it occurred to me that maybe I was cheating by summarily dumping all these items I was so sure belonged on my list back in January. Was it okay to just give up wanting this or that? Suddenly I wasn’t so sure.

So I set up a test.

For each item I asked myself how I would feel if I knew my life was ending and I hadn’t done this one thing. And for about half the items, the gut-check answer was, “I’d feel just fine not having done that.” Those things got crossed out.

For the other half, I got that tingle in my gut that told me this is important. Those things could stay. And for one thing in particular I actually felt heartsick imagining that this one thing had gone undone. That thing had to be addressed NOW.

I suppose it was a good lesson for me to realize that even when I think I’m being very clear with myself, I can still get tripped up. I can still work up a desire for things – experiences and accomplishments -- that I don’t really, really want. And I can spend a lot of time pursuing those things while the real stuff sits off in the corner, waiting for me to get a clue.

Anyway, after I reviewed my list, I went out to my garage/studio (another work in progress) and cleared off a small pine desk I’d stored out there since closing my gallery last year. I carried it into the house and hauled it up the narrow stairs to my (very small, kind of crowded) bedroom. I was determined to find a spot for that desk. For years my place to write has been in a comfy old chair in the corner of the room. It's a fine chair for reading, but as a writing space it's never been adequate. So I shoved my bed over and moved the dresser and cleared a space behind the bedroom door, and I gave myself what I really, really wanted: a place to write.

Once I got things set up, I remembered a stack of notes I’d kept from a Big Writing Project I’d begun awhile back but set aside when it became overwhelming and I didn’t have the space to spread it out without having to pick it all up again when it was time to make dinner and we needed the table. I dug out those notes and brought them upstairs and picked up where I left off, all the while knocking myself for not doing it all much sooner.

Well, I know why I didn’t do it sooner, and I know why all that other junk was cluttering up my list: following a heart’s desire is very scary stuff. It’s so much easier and so much less risky to spend your hours doing things that don’t really matter, to pursue lesser goals, to do the work that others think is important.

When I clear space in my thinking -- and in my physical environment -- and then hold that space open for my own real and true desires, my heart recognizes the opportunity, and slips right in. And the next thing I know, I’m elbow deep in paper and notes and yes, I'm scared, but I'm also full of gratitude. My heart says thank you, thank you.

Somehow I keep learning this lesson, over and over.

My (Latest) Favorite Thing

2008-06-25T09:12:00.005-05:00

Bicycles are not very welcome on the narrow country roads surrounding my little town. Motorists will indulge you as you peddle through our charming downtown, where the speed limit is 20 mph, but beyond downtown, you are an impediment to their motoring progress. There are a few brave souls who will hold their own against an onslaught of SUVs and one-ton pickups, but I am not one of them. Nor is my 12-year-old.

But just down the road, in the next town over, they are in the process of putting in a bikepath along a greenway where no motorists are allowed. The path runs along the Ohio riverfront, then turns to follow Pigeon Creek through town. The section to the north has been in place for several years. The section to the southwest is in the planning and clearing stage. All the sections should all meet up in a couple years, not nearly as soon as we'd like, but never mind our impatience. We're happy to have it, even in its current piecemeal state.

Yesterday we loaded the bikes, drove to that next town over, and rode the greenway. The completed section by the river is a bit too short to make a satisfying ride, so we looped a certain part of it where it crosses the train tracks, rounds a bit of grassiness, and dips under the cross-town expressway. (We did that part four times, whooping each time as we went under the expressway. Can you say fun?)

We're a long way from seeing bikes as transportation in this area. It's not (yet) practical and it's not (yet) safe. But not everything is about getting from Point A to Point B. Not everything has to have a point. Sometimes it's enough to load up the bikes and just go for a ride.

Five Minutes with Mirabelle on a Saturday Afternoon (a poem in prose)

2008-06-22T16:31:00.008-05:00

Mirabelle, I say, come look at this.

She is at my side in an instant, standing tip-toe to squint through the screen. What? What?

I point, and she sees them: two birds hopping across the narrow strip of grass (low weeds) separating one overgrown bed of flowers (tall weeds) from the next.

The first bird, the one in front, pecks at the ground with its sunflower beak, while the one behind waits, impatient for an offering, rushing the first with a flap of wings and an outstretched neck.

Starlings, Mirabelle informs me. Parent and fledgling.

We watch for long slow minutes, the smaller black parent and the fat mud-brown juvenile, one pecking, one open-mawed and in constant twitter: hurry hurry more now more.

Do you think it can fly? I ask, and right then the two are up and gone, disappearing into the neighbor’s tall trees, as if the factory whistle had just sounded to call them back from lunch.

It can fly, says Mirabelle, and she lingers for a moment, then returns to her play, leaving me to stand at the screen, watching the yard, waiting for the next thing to happen.

A Not Too Big Garden

2008-06-17T10:02:00.007-05:00

We're a few days shy of solstice but I know it's summer because we picked our first ripe tomato yesterday. Dragonstar brought it inside and ceremoniously sliced it in half to share. This took some finesse, since it was a cherry tomato, and a small one at that.

She handed me a tiny wedge. We ate. It was delicious.

Pictured on the right: small plum tomatoes, also just coming into ripe red perfection.

We don't grow a large vegetable garden. It's really just a "pick and eat" kind of garden. A snack garden. Four tomato plants, fifteen snap pea vines, and a small section of lettuces I nurse through warm weather by letting the larger varieties bolt and shade the rest of the plants. That's it. Oh, and all our herbs: culinary ones and magical ones. We grow those, too. And blackberries, but we can hardly take credit for those, since they appeared out of nowhere last year and have graciously returned this year bearing loads of fruit.

Ours is not a very efficient way to garden, and hardly puts us on the path of sustainability. But it gives us pleasure for many months, and it's small enough to not become a chore. Which is Very Important. There is no joy in being overwhelmed by bushels of tomatoes or zucchini, or weeding for an hour in the August heat. Where joy is concerned, scale is everything.

A Little Good, A Little Bad

2008-06-13T18:53:00.007-05:00

At the restaurant where we had dinner last night, the man at the table behind me was holding forth on Christians and Muslims and the infallibility of the Bible and the need to bring all the peoples of the world into the Christian family.

At one point he lectured his tablemates on the importance of Christians taking the “orphan Muslim” into their homes, treating said orphan “as one of your own.” It wasn’t enough for Christians to love only their own children. “Even Pagans do that,” he said. Christians had to love the children of their enemies.

No word on loving the enemies themselves.

My Pagan-ish daughter and I exchanged looks. I didn’t know whether to laugh or request a change of table. I almost wish I had turned to ask him who or what he thought was creating these “orphan Muslims” in the first place.

I don’t know how to deal with people like this, people who are so certain they have the answers to all the important questions. They know what is sacred, what is holy, what is good, what is evil. Their moral code is binary: Christian/Muslim, right/wrong, us/them. And their thinking rattles my skull. I prefer the wisdom of people who are not at all certain of anything.

Chris Hedges, in his new book, I Don’t Believe in Atheists, is certain of at least a few things, but I like him – and his book – anyway. He finds the binary code of good and evil to be a childish conceit, simplistic and essentially unhelpful, and I agree: people are far too complex, and much in life requires us to wade into morally ambiguous waters where nothing is certain.

Ambiguity is a concept I can appreciate, being somewhat steeped in it these days.

Here’s an example, one that has been troubling my mind lately: I live in an area that relies on coal for energy. In choosing to live here, I am complicit in – among other things – the ecologically devastating practice of mountaintop mining. I can assuage my conscience to some degree with contributions to the proper organizations and calls to my representatives in Congress to pass laws that would stop the coal companies from blowing up Appalachia, but every time I flip on a switch, I renew my complicity.

Another example: I love animals, and I eat them. Even when I maintained a vegetarian diet, wild animals died and habitat was lost so that fields could be plowed to grow my vegetables. As this blogger writes, farmers are in constant battle with other living things. Which is good, which is evil?

Unlike certainty, ambiguity offers no balm for the ego. You can’t really be righteously ambiguous, and therein lies its value: it’s not the last word, it’s an unfinished conversation. Ambiguity means a little this, a little that. Depending. It leaves things open for continued questions and fresh perspective. Instead of ossified belief, it provides opportunities to ask and ask again, What matters now? And why? And it offers the chance to ask and ask again, Are you really my enemy? And why?

I don’t think that man in the restaurant would get it. But I think you do.

credit: folk art sculpture by southern artist Chris Hubbard