Been home for a couple of weeks and deep in transition, which means, as is too often the case, crazy running around trying to catch up. With what, of any real substance, I am progressively unsure.

Load shift

Lisa has been carrying the brunt of blogging since we returned to the East Bay. If you haven't checked out her blog lately, there is a bunch of good new stuff there.

Intrepid as always, Lisa has become part of a bike team riding for funds toward MS research.

Her Montessori training moves forward apace and I find the renewed nearness of that pedagogy existentially reassuring in a way that is both pre-rational and post-literate, by which I mean it is a supportive and nostalgic reminder of the innocent world of my childhood and comforts the reflective consciousness of the adult activist working for education and thereby understanding beyond the functional literacy required to read traffic signs and draft notices and calculate and pay taxes to fund empire building wars.

And I am, appropriately, now in charge of creating most of our income while Lisa is in school. I'm back providing some in-home support to Iris (time well spent), working for Jim Shultz from Epworth as he develops his rental properties, working for CRS recording conferences all over the continent and studying the Process Arts as they develop. I'm looking for 20hrs of work at $30-$40/hr in a direction at least parallel to my vocation. Help?

This past weekend in D.C,. was the International Forum on Globalization conference an "IFG Teach-in:Confronting the Global Triple Crisis - Climate Change, Peak Oil, Global Resource Depletion & Extinction." At the breakfast table (in the fabulous Tabard Inn) Richard and I spoke with several ecology luminaries: Wes Jackson and his wife, whose first name I am embarrased to admit I have forgotten, David Korten, and Wolfgang Sachs. I suggested in the middle of a conversation about what holds The Movement back, probably a it too passionately, that the reasons behind people in general ignoring the rather obvious facts about climate change, the end of cheap energy, resource depletion, etc. had to do directly with the story being lived in our historical moment. There is certainly no dearth of people willing to live and die in extremes for their belief about the world. If the primary shared myth were communitarian it would be obvious and obligatory to set limits on consumption, no less certainly than rationing and Victory Gardens were a part of WWII. The difficulty is not in the communication of scientific facts, though that is undeniably important, but in the transmission of a new heroism that values both specific, local life, and that which reaches beyond the tribe, not because it is All of The Truth but because there is survival truth and living beauty in it. David seemed a bit gruntled but also slightly dis- as the theme leaned nearer his regular territory. Also Richard made a joke about smugness and the motor on David's bike, which seemed to irritate him. Wolfgang seemed quite well disposed, as did Wes.

During the conference I felt particularly impressed with

An assistant professor in Community Development & Applied Economics and Public Administration, Joshua Farley is also a fellow of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics (GIEE) at the University of Vermont. His interdisciplinary academic background includes degrees in biology, international affairs and neoclassical economics. Distressed that neoclassical economics ignores physical and ecological principles as well as issues of social justice, Joshua taught himself ecological economics, and with Herman Daly has authored one of the first textbooks in the field. Interested in both theory and applications, he has been involved with a number of problem-based projects around the world. Prior to his current job, he served as program director of the Centre for Rainforest Studies in Yungaburra, Australia, and executive director of the University of Maryland Institute for Ecological Economics. He serves on numerous boards— the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, EarthEconomics, and the U.S. Society for Ecological Economics, as well as the directory board of the Scale Project.

and
David Batker is the founder and executive director of Earth Economics. He completed his graduate training in economics under Herman Daly, one of the world's foremost ecological economists. Dave has taught in the Training Department of the World Bank, and has worked for Greenpeace International, specializing in trade and international finance. He also worked for two years with the Rural Reconstruction Movement, a Philippine non-profit group dedicated to ecologically sound community-based development. David's responsibilities as a member of the board of directors are focused primarily on fundraising, outreach, public relations, administration, budgetary management, strategic planning and board development.

I'll see what I can do about a lengthy podcast featuring these guys.

At the same time as the conference was in progress the huge impeachment march was happening nearby. Hannah Johns returned from it with a harrowing story about a friend being assaulted by the "Gathering of Eagles" (listen to podcast here >>). The vets staging the "die-in" on the steps were arrested, but there was less official (police) violence than expected. To contact Hannah directly email create dot peace at yahoo dot com (permission granted to release contact info).

Glad this gig will pay a month's rent for us. What was I supposed to be doing? Oh, yeah, writing my dissertation.

This week will involve:

Somehow there must be a way to hold on to the feel of "wake up, brush teeth, drive to next destination with loving people, rest, write/adventure, repeat." Since we returned home it has seems more like the familiar "work until power-decompressing with late food and too little sleep, and then repeat." Time-off suggests being long enough between obligations to feel guided from within. Right?

Heading back West