Here is a list of the songs that have most consistently haunted my headphones in 2016.
Favorite voice: Valerie June
Favorite songwriter: Gregory Alan Isakov
Bon Iver- Skinny Love
Riptide- Vance Joy
Astral Plane- Valerie June
Rivers and Roads- The Head and the Heart
The Stable Song- Gregory Alan Isakov
Lonesome Dreams- Lord Huron
Colorado Blue- Alela Diane
February Seven- Avett Brothers
Mykonos- Fleet Foxes
Real Love Baby- Father John Misty
Elephant Revival- Elephant Revival
Paint- The Paper Kites
You're The One I Want- Chris and Thomas
Josh Garrels- Never have I Found
The Be Good Tanyas- Waiting Around to Die
Here is to music!
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Dear ones.. following on the thoughts in my previous entry Firoze reminded me of what Eduardo Galeano said at least a decade ago:
Let us postpone our pessimism for better times.
And yesterday I discovered an inspiring article from another great man whose wisdom and example are still present with us, Howard Zinn. He wrote it in 2004.
"The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
This article was adapted from The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear (Basic Books, www.theimpossible.org). Parts of this essay also appeared in You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, in On History and on www.zmag.org.
In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy?
I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.
There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people’s thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.
What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. A revolution to overthrow the czar of Russia, in that most sluggish of semi-feudal empires, not only startled the most advanced imperial powers but took Lenin himself by surprise and sent him rushing by train to Petrograd. Who would have predicted the bizarre shifts of World War II–the Nazi-Soviet pact (those embarrassing photos of von Ribbentrop and Molotov shaking hands), and the German Army rolling through Russia, apparently invincible, causing colossal casualties, being turned back at the gates of Leningrad, on the western edge of Moscow, in the streets of Stalingrad, followed by the defeat of the German army, with Hitler huddled in his Berlin bunker, waiting to die?
And then the postwar world, taking a shape no one could have drawn in advance: The Chinese Communist revolution, the tumultuous and violent Cultural Revolution, and then another turnabout, with post-Mao China renouncing its most fervently held ideas and institutions, making overtures to the West, cuddling up to capitalist enterprise, perplexing everyone.
No one foresaw the disintegration of the old Western empires happening so quickly after the war, or the odd array of societies that would be created in the newly independent nations, from the benign village socialism of Nyerere’s Tanzania to the madness of Idi Amin’s adjacent Uganda. Spain became an astonishment. I recall a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade telling me that he could not imagine Spanish Fascism being overthrown without another bloody war. But after Franco was gone, a parliamentary democracy came into being, open to Socialists, Communists, anarchists, everyone.
The end of World War II left two superpowers with their respective spheres of influence and control, vying for military and political power. Yet they were unable to control events, even in those parts of the world considered to be their respective spheres of influence. The failure of the Soviet Union to have its way in Afghanistan, its decision to withdraw after almost a decade of ugly intervention, was the most striking evidence that even the possession of thermonuclear weapons does not guarantee domination over a determined population. The United States has faced the same reality. It waged a full-scale war in lndochina, conducting the most brutal bombardment of a tiny peninsula in world history, and yet was forced to withdraw. In the headlines every day we see other instances of the failure of the presumably powerful over the presumably powerless, as in Brazil, where a grassroots movement of workers and the poor elected a new president pledged to fight destructive corporate power.
Looking at this catalogue of huge surprises, it’s clear that the struggle for justice should never be abandoned because of the apparent overwhelming power of those who have the guns and the money and who seem invincible in their determination to hold on to it. That apparent power has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities less measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination, unity, organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, patience–whether by blacks in Alabama and South Africa, peasants in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Vietnam, or workers and intellectuals in Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union itself. No cold calculation of the balance of power need deter people who are persuaded that their cause is just.
I have tried hard to match my friends in their pessimism about the world (is it just my friends?), but I keep encountering people who, in spite of all the evidence of terrible things happening everywhere, give me hope. Especially young people, in whom the future rests. Wherever I go, I find such people. And beyond the handful of activists there seem to be hundreds, thousands, more who are open to unorthodox ideas. But they tend not to know of one another’s existence, and so, while they persist, they do so with the desperate patience of Sisyphus endlessly pushing that boulder up the mountain. I try to tell each group that it is not alone, and that the very people who are disheartened by the absence of a national movement are themselves proof of the potential for such a movement.
Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don’t “win,” there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope.
An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places–and there are so many–where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
Monday, January 23, 2017
For many
weeks now I have been composing a message in my head in the spirit of the
thread that Jasper, Darby, Ben, Tara and others started before Christmas.I wanted to chime in with my admiration and
awe at the ways you all were sharing your hopes and fears and ideas for how to
live, for what to do with what Mary Oliver calls our « one wild and
precious life ». It was inspiring
and challenging to read those exchanges.
The sharing
itself is important and nourishing. I don’t think we need to seek consensus or
sameness of choices and options.Each of
us is making paths by walking that teach us all something about the territory
to be explored, the struggles and the dreams.We are blessed to be in such good company during our journeys and when
we return to campfires (and our blog!) to share our stories, our questions and
dilemmas -- and to celebrate and sing our songs.
I have been
gathering quotes that inspire me at this time of turning of the year, quotes that I hold in my pocket like worry
stones to keep me connected to the larger heart of the world, and the many possible
worlds that Arundhati Roy reminds us are (already) breathing all around us.
After the
US election I found the quote below from the Lord of the Rings that seemed
appropriate and made me think of all of you :
The voice of Frantz Fanon also came to me :
“Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its
mission, fulfill it, or betray it”.
And,
then, from the late John Berger, this quote that Sally used so beautifully in
her NFCB letter:
“It is not that we have hope – we shelter it”.
Last Saturday, we had a world day of resistance that was all about sheltering hope.
Standing up, standing together, embracing our futures and affirming life and
human dignity. Celebrating Mother Earth and all our diversity and beauty.What a cause for joy – even while we know
there are hard times ahead.
Let
us continue to be people who shelter hope. Let us help each other to be the
people we are waiting for.
Meghan got the knitting going!
Jenny, Nina, Allison, and John River in Ottawa
Baby starts marching early!
Rebecca in Seattle!
Fraser and Claire marching in Montpellier, France
Nancy (Fraser's mom- on the right) and her partner Sharon (centre) marching in Edmonton
Our Denver contingent out in force!
Meghan in her hat in Seattle
Molly and Firoze in the pink in Montreal
Tara in Washington!
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Every Year.
Every year is a cavity within our lives,
A microcosm of our greater path,
Every year at solstice we are conceived,
Gestate in the womb of our winter den,
Are born to a fresh world every spring,
Grow wild and free in our days of summer,
Reach our prime as the leaves begin to fall,
Slow and retreat into feasts and memories,
To die at winters doorstep,
Only to be born again,
Our annual reincarnation marks and mirrors,
The endless cycles of our lives,
The eternal linear circle,
Where all ends meet at beginnings.
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Fresh Cracked Maple
Minus twenty with warm powder laden breeze,
Snow dusted maple, sunlight cut, warmth, in rounds,
Winter cracks it open with the effortless tap of the Oxhead,
A man splits, a boy helps, the load is made,
Rosy-amber porcelain cracked faces,
Tasteful non-structurally compromising spalting,
Hearth dried hunks of beautifully imposing density and hardness,
Decomposing into deep beds of luminous embers,
fitful and patient over long hours, with no replacement.
Cozy and warm a boy sleeps, wrapped in family-blankets,
Winds and snow blow silently against the argon filled tripled panes,
The blizzard, intimate while removed,
Like a down comforter, draped over the house.
Critters and boys doze away and dream of summer's light.
Here's what I just sent out to our members in our first newsletter of the year. Thanks to my dear sister Molly for the inspiration and the John Berger quote. I've been thinking about it so much ever since!
"It is not that we have hope, we shelter it.”
John Peter Berger, English art critic, novelist, painter, and poet
(November 5 1926 – January 2 2017)
Sheltering hope is a notion I am filling my mind with as I bid farewell to 2016 and begin my fourth year at the helm of NFCB. For community radio, the road that lies ahead involves going deeper into our communities by reflecting the richness of our local cultures more authentically and daring to engage in uncharted conversations in creative ways.
As I read through the plethora of articles and essays about a variety of major transitions going on around us I am rededicating myself to the specific work that NFCB can do to fulfill its mission of helping community stations better serve their communities.
The day after the election, in an interview by Jann S. Wenner in Rolling Stone (issue 1276/1277), Barack Obama said “People are no longer talking to each other; they’re just occupying their different spheres. And in an Internet era where we still value a free press…. that’s a hard problem to solve. I think it’s one that requires those who are controlling these media to think carefully about their responsibilities, and where there are ways to create better conversation.” How can we create better conversations among the public we serve and amongst ourselves as colleagues in locally based and locally focused public service media?
Our team at NFCB is primed and ready to tackle these tasks and more in the year ahead. We broke new ground with our GiveBig to MyStation Initiative that raised tens of thousands of dollars for participating stations in a year-end giving campaign, we are already designing a national conference with an exploration of what the place called community is all about, we have new tools, resources, and opportunities to share with our growing membership.
I invite you to peruse this newsletter to get a flavor of what is going on at NFCB and in community radio circles. I invite you to engage with us and participate in building a stronger public media community of practice. NFCB needs you and so does your community. I hope you’ll join me in the delicate art of “sheltering hope”. After all, why are we here if not to contribute to making this world a better place?
I had a change in plans that landed me in Oaxaca. This is a mural on a wall at the University of Oaxaca. I was down there with Darby to help him hobble around and see the sites after fracturing his heel in Mexico City. I loved having time with Darby and his passion for architecture led us on some outings that I wouldn't have known about or even thought of. We sat in churches, wandered around structures, he sketched, I stared. We got to see Mom and Kenny for a visit in Oaxaca, again in Zapotitlan, and again in Mexico City. Seeing this mural made we want to see more so we wen to the Palacio national and Chapultepec park to gaze at the mesmerizing murals of Diego Rivera. I'll post more pictures soon and I think I just might deactivate facebook and confine my posting to this blog...you're all my favorite people anyway.
