A few weeks ago, I wrote about the idea of having guest bloggers write to the original three questions of EX:Change and the 100 Voices. (EX:C blog, “These Questions Belong to You Now,” 10-22-2011) When you say the word change what do you mean? Alongside change, what is important to have remain the same? What would be concrete signs that positive change was occurring? Then I got email from Marsha Cuyjet – voice #48…. Read More
Love is encouragement. Kindness is not weakness. Freedom is scary because, if I am truly free, I can’t blame anyone. These three statements came as small gifts over coffee and tea this morning with my friend Jim. You may recognize him from earlier blogs. Sayings like these are as natural, even essential to Jim as heartbeats. This morning we were talking about being people in relationships – love partnerships, friendships, kinships, acquaintanceships… Read More
Halloween. Perfect. A day when we let ourselves be a bit less in denial of the fact things both are and aren’t as they appear. Change is change is change. This is the storefront I wrote about in May. My new friend Justin is the botanical artist who recently took over the space 6 months after the Barber Babes had to call it quits. Over the past few years Justin has followed… Read More
It’s 9-10-11. I just landed in Washington DC National Airport. Tonight my niece will be married on the banks of thePotomac– first of that generation. Wow – turn-turn-turn and all of that – change, for sure! Constancy, too. Expense, distance and daily matters of consequence set aside as all the family that can gathers. This is what families do. It’s one way we love each other, taking these opportunities to cinch up… Read More
There’s a spirit of listening – an inclination to learn – and for all but the most shy, a powerful desire to make social contact, to communicate, to hang out. EX:Change and the 100 Voices book (www.loudmouthpress.org) turn out to be living records of this spirit. I thought I was starting a project to learn about change – about what a popular word in a particular time meant to the people using… Read More
There are threads that run through a life. There’s the vague story of birth – the shifting shadows and bright spots childhood – the teen years, every one of them – and what came next and next and next. There are memories of scent and touch and sound. Images of faces and bedrooms and meals and travels. And there’s the land where you were raised. Today the ashes remaining from the 56-year-old… Read More
I just got e-mail. I’ve been writing e-mail back. And crying. My friend, Murry Owen, died last night. His body just couldn’t manage to breathe anymore. Yesterday I started this week’s blog. I called it “Big Changes.” I wrote about how I got to spend time yesterday morning with my friend Jim. Jim is the friend who found out 7 months ago that he has Rheumatoid Arthritis (EX:C blog, “Chronic Pain,” 6-4-2011). … Read More
If we’re ever going to begin to grapple with the problems we have collectively,we’re going to have to move back the veil and deal with each other on a more human level. Wilma Mankiller (1945 – 2010) Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation Today I sat with two Elders in my community – two Grandmothers. Both of these designations, elder and grandmother, carry ambiguous valence in a culture (mine) so taken with… Read More
I’m not sure the first time I realized this day, March 4, is the only day of the year that doubles as a poem. Poetry is, by nature an illusive combination of feeling and fact. It is mysterious, powerfully so. It is anchored in words, also pretty imprecise when it comes down to it. There is certainly reality in it; otherwise poetry would never catch our attention at all, but it’s bigger… Read More
Most Februaries I spend bemoaning rain, rain, rain, while walking around my everyday life in Portland, OR. In February 2009, I was on the EX:Change road trip – cruising down the west coast and taking a left so that by Valentine’s Day, on the interstate from Tucson to Albuquerque, I was pushing 80 mph behind an 18-wheeler named for that very day (really…see EX:C blog photo, 2-18-2009, Cattle Trail). Now it’s February… Read More
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