Art Food Soul

A California abbey keeps Benedictine traditions alive

My mother was a badass before anyone ever coined that word. My mother and I used to volunteer with Brother Benno when we lived in SoCal my first couple years of high school. He delivered food and other aid to undocumented migrants who slept in the fields they worked in at night. We’d pick squashes and other cold weather crops and I remember how chilly those moonlit nights could be. Under the current regime I wonder where that would’ve landed the three of us. Brother Benno was legendary, as was his work, and while his homemade bread was delicious, we’d pass on the creamed bologna.

Not in the mood to howl into the void today, but I have been doing things like reading up on alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo, browsers like Brave and Opera, and other possibilities out there as I try to slowly divest my time and attention away from Big Tech. It’s slow going as I am no techie, but I can say I like DuckDuckGo so far. Haven’t missed Google at all. I’ve been using a computer since the early 80’s, and much as most of us are plugged in nowadays, I feel like many of us are now in that space of trying to figure out just how much time we want to be here in a digital world and where we want to hang out when we are here. Someday my presence here will just be another ghost in the machine, captured for all eternity, but in the meantime I truly do want to be a Spirit living in the material world.

“Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover’s Corners… Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking… and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths…and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.” Thornton Wilder, Our Town

How could I possibly resist this today? The beach walk was divine, the swing sublime, and I feel fine…just a reminder to remember to play, so we can live to fight another day.

My thoughts have been zinging, pinging, reeling and squealing since Tuesday morning. Monday I focused on Dr. King’s legacy, honoring his work, and that of his wife and family. Tuesday was another story, a lot of doom scrolling, toxic for anyone’s health and wellness. I was nauseous and exhausted by the evening. Wednesday and Thursday I did better (with deliberate effort), listening to audiobooks, reading, baking, socializing IRL via phone calls and in person. Writing’s been tough, so I doodle and draw. Look at art. Make art, since my words have been failing me.

Do I even want to talk about the election? No, I do not. Figure I’d write about a morning back in 2017 when I got a call at work from Marty. Must’ve been a Friday cuz Fridays were his day off back before the pandemic. “You’re not going to believe who just showed up at our door. A couple, a man and a woman, and the way they were dressed, I figured they were Jehovah’s Witnesses.” They weren’t. They showed him their badges, they were from ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They asked him what he knew about our neighbors. Rather laughable in a way because what made them even think he’d say anything? He did exactly what I would’ve done — can’t help you, sorry, not sorry. They were our neighbors for several years. A working couple with a 4-month old and a five-year old when they moved in. They worked opposite shifts in the service industry so one of them could always be with the kids. It was a happy-sad moment for us all four years later when they told us they finally bought a house. They tried to buy the three-unit they lived in, but the absentee landlord wouldn’t sell to them. A bummer, because we still miss them. I think the thing that bothered me more than ICE coming to our door, was when Latrice (not her real name obvi) came over, sat at our table, and apologized for it. Her beautiful, big brown eyes with the to-die-for lashes teared up as she told us she worked hard, she was a good mother, she’d been a teacher where she came from, and it was an issue with her green card that she was working on. She did get it sorted out, but what bothered me about it and still does, is that she felt she had to explain herself to us, and apologize for the harm our government does to people, all of us, pitting neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother, sister against sister? I mean really? Asking us about our Neighbors? Isn’t there something somewhere about loving your neighbor as yourself? No one should have to explain to anyone why they matter. Why they have a right to exist without fear of deportation or incarceration. Why they have a right to sanctuary. Why they are a good person. That was seven years ago that ICE came. And here we are again. If it’s not the Orange Men, it’s the ICE men.
(**For more on the Orange Men, check out BBC News article, July, 11, 2012.)

Sitting in a window seat at Coffee O in Falmouth, feeling detached and subdued, a calm I haven’t felt for a while. I need to get out of my house more, out of my neighborhood, out of my town actually. Not necessarily permanently, but certainly regularly. It was a pleasant drive out here, mostly what’s left of decent back roads, unencumbered by the hi-speed, erratic drivers that seem to rule the roads more and more here in recent years. It’s like everyone’s in a rush, to keep up, get ahead of the next curve, whatever, and the constant exposure to that constant rushing has taken its toll on me, on my spirit. I’m a human designed for a slower, more thoughtful and deliberate pace. 
I come from rural roots, farmers and laborers mostly and I grew up in the analog era of the Industrial Age before Big Tech and instant tele-connection made dial-up telephone connection virtually obsolete — my dad grew up in a city, yes, the son of immigrants, but within Boston’s smaller sub-urban“neighborhood” cities before they became plastic, boxy, uniform sprawl. He remembers when Somerville still had woods when he was a boy. His parents came from Irish farm folk, a housemaid and a formerly imprisoned member of the IRA.
There was no interstate, Mass Pike, and all the other highway systems that carved up the land — supposedly in the name of what? Convenience? To separate us from each other? Cutting through our neighborhoods, they’ve certainly accomplished that. 
I’ve been doing more armchair navigating, looking for my North Star, and finding it in the books I so love to read. I’ve been doing a lot of reading — and “listening” to what people have to say — dreaming of a world of possibilities, of hope, of light — despite what feels, at times, like a relentless encroaching darkness. 
I find so much encouragement when I look to historical worker and class movements from past eras, as well as present-day initiatives, creatives, outliers, and other changemakers that are already shining  light and hope in what can otherwise feel like ever-looming gloom and doom. I’ve been learning about the Black Panther movement, Murray Bookchin, the Greek Solidarity movement, municipalism, confederal systems, mutual aid, Rojava, and a whole lot more beyond the narrow frame of a capitalist “democracy” always teetering on the edge of some form of totalitarianism, be it right or left. I’m seeing light beyond a seeming tunnel of darkness. Perhaps you too would like to chase some of these light workers, follow the glimmers of distant beacons. They’re out there, and I aim to find as many as I can. Here’s a few I’ve been plugging into lately to keep my own light charging.

Audio and Print Media:
Dissent Magazine — municipalism, Union Hall, & more
Trillbilly Workers Party — Podcast
Appalshop

Creatives, initiatives, outliers and change makers:
Earth Bridge Community Land Trust — I’m a huge fan of community land trusts
Rock Steady Farm
Sweet Freedom Farm
Soulfire Farm
Murray Bookchin — wish I’d known he was a neighbor once upon a time
Firestorm Coop
Solidarity — mutual aid can extend beyond disaster

Substack Essays, Newsletters:
OK, Boomer
All We Can Save Project
Supernuclear— On co-living and creating communities

Already read, or on my Bookshelf, and in the Queue:
Lifehouse by Adam Greenfield
The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber & David Wengrow
The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing
Believers by Lisa Wells
’Hood Wellness by Tamela Julia Gordon

Let’s start talking to each other again:
The friendliest social network you never heard of
Just Launched— A how-to on LOCAL digital community building
…and a perfect example from … where else? Vermont, of course:
Front Porch Forum

I’ve been reading a ton, folklore, labor history, and sex stuff, a little poetry, about Berenice Abbot and NYC back in the days of Deco. Maybe it’s the reading so much that’s exhausting me — all those brain cells, but truthfully, I think it’s because my September allergies have blossomed fully once again for another year.*

I wanted to send you guys something for the weekend, links you might enjoy checking out — to essays, movies, and so on. I’ve been into the art of the essay lately just as I’ve been into revisiting some of the foreign and cult flicks I started watching in my late teens — so many good ones, some with my biggest heartthrob at the time, the Italian actor, Giancarlo Giannini. L-O-V-E-D LOVED him, and some of his steamier sex scenes just about did me in sometimes — talk about desire. I may pop “Swept Away” into the DVD player when I’m done with this, get a little stoned, and just relax and rewatch it since it’s about all I have the energy for at the moment.


https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073817/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tieta
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zln78CcFkA
https://www.filmlinc.org/films/dona-flor-and-her-two-husbands/

https://intimatedistance.substack.com/?utm_campaign=pub&utm_medium=web

https://wvminewars.org

http://emilyehilliard.com

And fall approaching has me thinking about them:
https://www.theroyalfrogballet.com

In closing, while I do have a couple of new series available, I haven’t been much in the mood for soliciting just yet (see allergies above*); however, if you’re interested in the meantime, let me know and I’ll shoot you an invoice. I’m going away on Sunday otherwise, and won’t be sending invoices until sometime the end of next week or so. If you don’t receive one after I return, and you’d like one, let me know.

Okay, off to somewhere in the Mediterranean to be swept away. Maybe you’ll join me.
😉

I’m settling down after today’s photo shoot which I think turned out pretty good. When I really put in the effort, they can take a lot out of me. A cup of chai and half a whole-grain sourdough English muffin with PB & honey, I’m feeling sufficiently restored to focus on another note to you guys — two weeks in a row! Not a bad consistency for me. Let’s see if I can manage another one next week. And by the way, before I forget, after rewatching “Swept Away” last week I started thinking to myself, “if any of these guys watch it, hope they don’t start getting ideas about me,” because I was only about 19 the first time I saw it, and may have rewatched it since, but I totally forgot just how abusive the chauvinism got. There was a lot of stereotyping, generally not okay, but it helps in telling a story about class struggles, sex, and power, and how different it looks when the playing field shifts. At any rate, depending on when we get back from a restaurant on the harbor (tomorrow’s my birthday), I might just have to push for a rewatch of “The Seduction of Mimi,” another Wertmuller-Giannini film.
https://www.siskelfilmcenter.org/seduction-mimi

My latest book of essays is “Appalachian Reckoning” and it’s been excellent so far.
https://wvupressonline.com/appalachian-reckoning

This week’s Intimate Distance newsletter:
https://intimatedistance.substack.com/p/sex-ed-book-club-recap

Tomorrow, besides being my birthday, is the start of National Hispanic Heritage month, and SPLC has some great literary classics on their list.
https://www.splcenter.org/hopewatch/2024/09/13/books-national-hispanic-heritage-month

A short essay from the author of another book, “The Language of Climate Politics,”
here:
https://mailchi.mp/endclimatesilence/the-end-climate-silence-newsletter-climate-in-the-presidential-debate?e=98d13e804f

And one I haven’t read yet, but am looking forward to; I love reading anything positive and encouraging, and the headline grabbed me. (And not by the pussy either.)
https://www.policylink.org/resources-tools/renters-rise-cities-thrive

Now, gotta get ready for a dinner out on the harbor, and eek, I still haven’t managed to get more invoices out today, but they are coming, they’re coming. Promise. I do, I do, I do…

Making pizza tonight. Sometimes I use the no-knead pizza dough recipe, but lately I’ve been using the convent’s recipe that I’ve had for 40+ years now. I think I’ve mentioned I used to cook for a convent once upon a time, about a decade after I’d lost all enthusiasm for a cloistered life (puberty hit, and that was the end of my religious vocational aspiration); cooking for the Sisters of Mercy was the closest I’d ever get to becoming a nun. The convent was their motherhouse in Burlington, Vermont, long gone now, although I imagine, many of the nun’s spirits still linger there, flesh and bone wrapped in shrouds, resting in simple pine boxes among tall pines and evergreens in the verdant glade behind what remains of their former home. And there you have it, food stirs up memories, and before you know it, those memories become the stories we share.