i talk to plants. and monitors.

jeez...

dori — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:04:56 GMT

i forgot about tribe since it doesn't have a blackberry app. anyone still here? also - how does amazon know? on tribe's front page there's an amazon advertising box - for some reason, amazon thinks i'm interested in knitting and books by ed rosenthal (for those of you in the know, you know who ed rosenthal is - otherwise, investigate). and finally - it looks like Ilianowear is *still* advertising its hideous clothing here - and crawling up to the times - finally getting over that totally-overdone-and-totally-over burning man colored-cowboy-hat glam and moving on to leather and feathers - now someone tell me, since i haven't been on the west coast in quite a bit - is THAT still going on too? what ARE the cool kids doing these days, because i've been isolated from it all, playing with animals both living and dead in the new mexico wilderness. i'm heading west shortly tho for a brief stint in california, before heading to colorado, taos, santa fe, and then back to my little adobe in the woods. i'll miss my own freakin' food harvest but a gypsy's gotta be a gypsy sometimes, and i need another road trip. i'm just totally bummed i can't bring at least one dog. find me on facebook, y'all, as i don't have the internet proper at home, just a blackberry, and facebook is totally sophisticated when it comes to blackberry.

meet Roy.

dori — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:04:00 GMT

so, you know the adage, "If you build it they will come?" well, Michael got a wild hankering to start working on the chicken coop, and then someone he works with had too many... roosters. so, Roy came to join us but he's all alone in his new coop wondering "where my bitches at?" we need some hens. in lieu, we decided it would be kind of fun to see what would happen with a box of chicks. for fun, there are also two baby ducks in that box. We'll have to keep them in the house with us for the next month until they're big enough to start going outside. oh, joy... actually, all that peeping is really rather cute. i even kind of like Roy's big mouth. he's only been at the house for an hour or two and he's already started announcing his territory.

oh poor sweet tribe...

dori — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:58:35 GMT

do people still hang out here anymore or have we all started sending each other stupid requests for being girlfriends, sending plants and balloons and passing off drinks over on facebook? i hate facebook, but at least it saves me a lot of time since i don't fart around on it nearly as much as i did here. anyway - in case you're wondering where i've been and where i be, and somehow missed it - above this block is an RSS feed for my blog, Squeezing Time, and whenever i post a new entry there (http://www.squeezingtime.com) it will appear here. or you can just go there cuz i'm not really using my tribe blog anymore due to its lack of features... i still love you.

a face pretty much anyone could love.

dori — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:23:44 GMT

my new friend, Sicily, aka Sis, Sister, and whatever else... C'mere works just as well.

some photographs...

dori — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:03:45 GMT

i've posted a bunch of new photographs (finally) in a photoset. http://www.flickr.com/photos/gr00vy/sets/72157610561191127/ - there are photos from Quartzite, Arivaca, Silver City, Mimbres, the Gila National Forest, and Truth or Consequences... there's also one of me pretending to be a total badass now that i know how to use a plasma cutter. you at least have to go look at that one. ;-)

we're in.

dori — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 21:51:24 GMT

michael and i decided to go for the rental - january first, we're moving in... our amazing "landlords" have given us free reign to experiment with solar things, gardening things, water things, whatever, just as long as we don't burn the house down. if'n you're feeling like a vacation, it's a bit out of the way, but it IS warm and sunny here, at least in the daylight hours. we could use some help getting our green starts going. lots of other news, of course, but right now i'm in the middle of a break from a welding class at Holy Scrap Hot Springs here in Truth or Consequences - imagine, if you will, what happens when you unleash a buncha new yorkers on a small new mexico town... booyah! this little gathering keeps getting more and more amazing as people show up - there are a total of 25 of us here from all over the country (not just new york), all either getting ready to or currently homesteading and most who are planning to do it in the land of enchantment (entrapment! - apparently we, so far, have been the most successful, lol - considering we just walked into that, i'd say it's more serendipity than success, but hey...) there's a couple here traveling across country via two welded-together recumbent bikes, shooting a movie about sustainable communities they visit. i'll have lots of URLs etc. at some other time. suffice it to say, after quite a long time of "what the fuck am i going to do i need a passion" angst, here it is. god it feels good. i might have forgotten to mention that crystals shoot out the sides of mountains here, so add rock-hunting to your list of things to do when you come visit. anyway, sorry if i haven't returned phone calls, as i've been severely rapped up in the present state and location. i promise to be a better friend once i get settled into my isolated country life. today i've discovered this - i'm totally in love with the plasma cutter.

some pictures and an update

dori — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 16:46:44 GMT

i'm starting to catch up on photographs - i've gotten as far as Donald's and my trip to Joshua Tree - check out some pics of Donald in action! http://www.flickr.com/photos/gr00vy/ p.s. think we found a great rental down here - it has plenty of fertile soil and a huge garden area, a wood stove, a river (the Mimbres), a big deck, and a ridiculous view - bordering on nature conservancy land, so... no new neighbors either. we're going to stick around for a bit, because we can learn everything we want to learn down here and with fantastic people. i am going to get to do fun things like write, make art, sing harmonies in a band, grow food, chop wood and learn how to build things. also on the list for this year is mapping the constellations (um, there's quite a sky here, holy fuck), learning orienteering (with a compass, not a GPS) and taking a grant-writing class. it's all here, plus the isolation i need to get it all done. sounds over the top? well, when i left new york i had a list like this, too - it involved learning how to shit in the woods and start a campfire, for example. check. nothing is impossible. currently, too, we are without a back windshield due to a misplaced tree. we're looking around every scrap yard in the vicinity but it may be a couple of weeks... we kinda knew driving into this place we were going to get stuck here - so we took that windshield mishap as a sign. we're checking the scrap yards but now it's not so much a priority. we're headed here this weekend for a gathering - http://blog.holyscraphotsprings.com/ - one of my fellow new york refugees and her partner are putting this together. also - you can fly into albequerque and get a teeny plane to silver city, or you can fly to el paso and have us come get you. so, you know, come visit. we'll take you to an infinite amount of hot springs.

the eco-hippie tour

dori — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 21:39:47 GMT

so it appears that we're going to be staying in the Mimbres, NM area for a little while - through the new year, at least. Mimbres is between Silver City and Truth or Consequences, NM. suffice it to say i fucking love new mexico. i've only been here three times, but every single time i get back here there's this giant sense of relief, this calm feeling of being somewhere i really am supposed to be. so, here it is. yeah friends, i'm moving to new mexico. at least, ya know, some of the time. the chain of events has been pushed along by the dream michael and i have of buying some cheap mesa land and throwing up a shelter on it. i never wanted to own property before this, but the idea of having somewhere to get back to and sit down for a while, while still being able to maintain a moderately nomadic lifestyle, well, it makes a lot of sense. so do earth bags here - http://www.networkearth.org/naturalbuilding/earthbags.html. so here we are in the midst of sustainable, eco-hippie heaven. we're being passed around a bit right now, happily, and in between passings-arounds we've been ducking to local sets of hot springs and camping. it's very, very cold up there in taos at the moment, as is usual for this time of year. so, we've decided it's a good idea to stay down here a bit longer where it's tolerable, and where nearly everyone we meet is willing to teach us something if we're willing to offer some sweat equity to their projects, too. since we decided that what we were going to do was go and build a house (yeah we're crazy, thank god there are two of us), the path has been thrown wide, wide open to do it. we're currently on an off-grid property where one of the men has offered his design and educational assistance once we get a patch of land (we're to come here and sweat in return). in a few days we'll be headed back to Truth or Consequences for four days of sustainable living and building education and daily yoga, and when that's done, we'll be returning to Mimbres to housesit over christmas. the house, by the way, is part of a old hippie commune built around, yeah, some hot springs. friends, it's not warm here. it's beautiful, but it is not warm. unless we've been offered a bed (which we have, fairly regularly) we've been sleeping in the truck, mostly, getting up with the sun and going to sleep just after it sets (except for the other night when we wound up spending five hours in a hot pool with the moon overhead). in the Gila National Forest just outside of Silver City, 21 inches of snow happened the other night. we drove in the next night and camped in, oh, about seven inches of it. it's cold, and lord knows i don't really like being cold but fuck, life doesn't suck.

no time right now...

dori — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 23:00:07 GMT

all i really have the effort to say is that we are two angels being escorted by many more. i've been waking up in all sorts of beautiful places and spaces and following one incredible synchronicity to the next. i have been in some beautiful places, remote ones where thank god i have new tires and four wheel drive, and the ground is littered with geodes and military jets fly overhead looking for poor brown people trying to walk across the desert. i have been in the presence of an angel with no teeth telling crazy stories about being married to a prostitute for 14 years, with an 80 year old woman, a writer of children's books who lives in a fairy cottage miles out of town near the Mexican border and drives a 4x4 with a cattle dog in the passenger seat, and loans out some of her land to humanitarian aid organizations. i want to be her someday. she is a mirror of my endeavors. i have talked with young and old alike who walk the migrant trails leaving water and, here and there, picking up a child's shoe left in haste. so many stories, already, so much serendipity carrying us from one place to the next, that i have no time to tell it all at the moment. still in motion, from one national forest to the next set of hot springs and on to more amazing people (many of whom have turned out to be much older than i, and definitely older than the bro - mentors and teachers and inspirations, all - and most definitely angels, each and every one of them). so, stay tuned. i have some real focus right now and a friend who shares the dream, so we're on our way to make it happen. or, rather, we're currently making it happen. and eventually, it will give me somewhere to sit down and tell the story like it should be told.

all that mysterious stuff the universe works with...

dori — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:16:59 GMT

so... last night i did some research on Arivaca, the tiny little Arizona border town where i'm headed... i found this photographer - http://www.livingontheborder.com - his photographs kinda slammed me a bit so i emailed him to let him know he'd done his job photographically. I didn't mention No More Deaths, just that his photographs of Black Hawks and Border Control did something to me I hadn't felt in a while. He wrote back something like this: "here's our phone number, call us when you get here. we let the No More Deaths folks camp on our land as well as other travelers." so, i guess i'm definitely supposed to go there. in just a few hours i will finally roll out of california and be on my way. To Quartzite tonight, to the flea market tomorrow, and then on to Tucson and Arivaca, where hopefully I'll finally be able to do something of use for the world.

Palm Springs and my upcoming itinerary...

dori — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:16:15 GMT

Palm Springs is where gay men come to open galleries and old people come to die. why am i here? dropping my friend off at the airport tomorrow, picking up little bro, and then here's the itinerary, with maybe (probably) a few stops in between: Quartzite, Arizona - i've always wanted to go here, for a few reasons - rockhounds abound, and i like rocks, and there's a big honkin' legendary flea market and i love sifting through junk. plus, it's on the way from here to the Taos area, where i'm supposedly going to end up. Also, a good place to stop for the day/night so we can drive the rest of Arizona during the day and hit up things like the Saguaro National Monument and stuff. Tucson, Arizona - mostly i'm stopping here because i need a pair of new Chaco sandals and they were out of everything in my size here in Palm Springs. If you've got any friendly contacts in Tucson who could put two people up for an evening, that would be awesome. we will have plenty of smokey treats and dinner to cook for the favor. Aravaca, Arizona - this town lies between Tucson and Nogales. I had some really lovely campmates in Joshua Tree who told me about this town (when the campsites in Joshua Tree get full, people often ask if they can share with you. We said yes, and got REALLY lucky). Aravaca is home to a group of workers from No Mas Muertos, aka No More Deaths - check them out here - http://www.nomoredeaths.org/ - this is an organization that offers humanitarian aid to migrants on the Mexico/US border, and those crossing through the Arizona desert. I'm especially touched by the work that this organization is doing. Los Cruces, NM - because duh, dude, it's the lowrider capital of the United States. This I gotta see. Besides, if any of those vatos get too fresh with me I know how to curse 'em out in Spanish. Silver City, NM - surrounded by nature, hippie communes and hot springs. Worth checking out since it's on the way. Truth or Consequences, NM - I've got a friend here doing fantastic eco-work. I wanna say hi and see what she's up to. Plus, more hot springs and all that... Santa Fe, NM - mostly to toss it out there that i've arrived; Santa Fe has a really great community of freakfolk and more opportunity for finding work than the Taos area. Arroyo Seco, NM - my little spot outside of Taos where the beautiful, freaky people gather. that is, at the moment, my little southwest tour, as by the time i get to northern new mexico it will probably be time to get a little hustle going to feed myself... also, i am putting it out there to the universe and who knows, perhaps some friends of friends - what I really need in my life right now is four walls to call my own for a while, at a rate of free or dirt cheap. Ideally this place would be close enough to my friends and an internet connection that I could deal with the world when necessary but not at home. In the MOST perfect situation, it would come with a friendly dog (a crazy res mutt or blue heeler, or a hound that howls at the moon) that I'd need to take care of for a while. and that, my friends, is as far as i've gotten for now...

where dori at.

dori — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:07:14 GMT

so, a quickie - i'm in joshua tree being a dirtbag. i'm climbing rocks (or learning how, at least, and god it's amazing). i don't have phone or internet access unless i come into town (which i had to do for water and firewood today). i don't care, really, but i needed to let a few people know i was alive, tan, freckled, mostly sunny and not nearly sore enough, so i'm headed back up tomorrow to kick my own ass. also - i've decided to syndicate my "other" blog here - as i'm discovering just how unimportant most of my internet time actually is, i'm consolidating a bit. in a week or so i have to make a decision as to where to go next, if anywhere. it's pretty damn warm here, and it's pretty damn cold in taos.

the minor perks of Facebook.

dori — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:03:05 GMT

the TRULY nice thing about facebook is that i don't feel compelled to spend much time there.

a road trip is taking shape.

dori — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:19:51 GMT

so, i'm here in sebastopol taking a breather and adjusting to civilization again. then it's on to joshua tree. after that i was planning to head straight to new mexico but thanks to facebook i'm making a stop in marfa, texas, along the way, to visit an old friend, a woman i used to work on a magazine with back in new york. texas - yeah the very name gives me the shivers, and not in a good way. but i get little vortices of weirdness surrounded by hell - i've been to a few of them. now i'm going to another one.

on my way

dori — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:35:30 GMT

i'm spending the day in the sun today, running around collecting things, washing things, etc... the harvest is now over for me - tomorrow will be my last morning shitting in a hole for a while, or driving twenty minutes away for a lukewarm shower, or flirting with other dirty-fingered, ratty-haired workers getting a moment of internet in the coffee shop. yesterday was my last day cleaning black, sticky, stinky goo off my fingers and marveling at the way the world could be if it decided to become more like northern california (one can hope). what a nervous, delicious feeling - how much i love jumping into the unknown, even if i might cry and stamp my foot about it here and there. i'm not saying i am a lover of change - it's just that i thrive on it and it keeps my ability to quickly adapt primed. the process, as most of us know, isn't always so pleasurable tho, although in all honesty, cruising around california north to south without a schedule isn't all that much of a curse, really. i sure do miss portland family, my god - but the scary thing is that i have the very, very distinct feeling i won't be living there again for a while. all i really want out of portland are continuous hugs, quality time with the people i adore and maybe the chance to go back on tour with march fourth, lol. here's what i'm dreaming about, quite frankly - traveling around barcelona and blowing the last of my money sounds really wonderful but so does a couple of acres on the mesa, and an adobe shack with the nearest internet access at the coffee shop a few miles away and a healthy dose of freaks and hippies in the near vicinity. and maybe even a really crazy looking mutt for a friend. mind you - this is what the universe has mapped out for me for the upcoming months - like i said i'm willing to accept it but fuck it's cold in taos right now. i saw myself somewhere a little warmer, i sure did, but it's this sort of shit the reminds me of higher power in effect.

what i look like as a stoned, skinny hippie...

dori — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:01:14 GMT

this arrived on facebook with my name tagged to it. i'd forgotten all about it. it's from when i lived in guatemala. funny how a few layers can make your hair look a foot shorter, and a knock on a tooth can set it crooked for two years (i'm working on that - next financial windfall is a mass of dental work, including resetting my tooth straight cuz i know some of you think it's real cute and all but ya know... to me, i'm starting to look a lot like many of the original residents of the area up here, if you know what i mean). anyway, i'm renovating my house today - it's in the shop getting new tires and a tune-up. i'm getting really excited to hit the road again, too, though apparently i'm going to have to do a far more thorough cleaning of my car before i leave. even after dragging it all out of there on the property and tarping it up, then picking out every leaf i could find, i still walked in there with one in my hair. god only knows what else is in there - the fog is so thick it's nearly rain and my hair is about the size of montana because of it. in just under a week, i'll be able to climb some nice big rocks. one more thing checked off the list of shit i always wanted to learn. i can add that to the list of checked off items that include taking a shit in the woods and starting a campfire. i'm pretty much downright pro at those things at this point. my ex-boyfriend would be shocked and awed for sure, considering i once asked him, as we were headed to rural upstate new york for the weekend, whether there were any nightclubs in the area for something to do. when i was young and my mother would get excited about things like a new vacuum cleaner for christmas, i never understood it. it took me 35 years and a new set of tires to understand this. but now i've got another 80,000 miles.

i've gone abo...

dori — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:45:11 GMT

two dollars is what it costs to get a shower here - i have to drive ten minutes down a dirt road and ten more into town to get to that shower, which resides at the town fairgrounds. so far, i have spent six dollars on showers this month. i'll be heading back to civilization soon, at least somewhat. i have to drive into oakland to pick up a friend at the airport. i will not be leaving the car, except maybe to help him get his luggage in the back, and then we are peeling the fuck back out and heading down to joshua tree for two weeks, where i'll be learning to climb my first real rock. in the meantime, new tires on the truck tomorrow and yet another failed attempt to get the black shit out from underneath my fingernails. the coffee shop in town, not so subtly named "Northern Delights" is full of harvest workers this morning. i'm apparently the only one who's had their weekly shower. well, me and my little bro, who made it all the way from asheville to trinity county on a '78 yamaha motorcycle. for fuck's sake, i created a monster when i took that kid to his first freak festival. a monster and a damn good friend (he's also drop-dead gorgeous with the most perfect male physique ever - the only reason i haven't gone there is because he's only 22 - i'm waiting until he's a bit more seasoned, ha ha - tho his last girlfriend was, no joke, 42 years old). but anyway, little bro's the one that talked me into heading back to taos after i leave joshua tree. there are no more details to share, but i will when i have some. it will be another week, probably, before i see the internet again. or a shower.

backtrack...

dori — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 21:14:21 GMT

so, a friend of mine decided to google me and came across a post on my old roommate's blog, where he introduced me to his online community at large. he did so by reposting something i'd written about Transformus, the Asheville regional burn. man, time flies. it seems like so long ago that i spent a summer in Asheville. funny to think that as i packed up my truck, i completely thought I was going back. I never really gave Asheville that much of a chance. the town itself is so cool and the community is amazing (though sorry guys, it just doesn't rival Portland for me). i went back and read that and am now left wondering where i went. what i mean by that is that i no longer really write like that. can it be, perhaps, that my life is no longer as interesting as it used to be? that's what happens when i settle down i guess. my life here sure has been interesting, but then again... it's been on a much more personal level. and now, as my truck's packed for yet another long drive, after reading that i hold this minor fear in hand - what if i don't make it back for a good long while? (ginberry, don't worry, lol - i always find a way to take care of my crap).

thank you.

dori — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:25:40 GMT

here it is, my last night or two in portland for a while and believe it or not, it still hasn't registered. i suppose it will once i pack the truck but even then - i've still got a day or two before departure while i wait for a package. i woke up this morning to a mostly empty room. it no longer feels like mine, which is going to make it a lot easier to leave, again. god i love this city, i do, but it's time to take a break, move on to some other things i have to take care of. as i am so well aware, i can't be here without a way to make it and i still don't know how. thank you to everyone who ever bought me a drink during my broke and unemployed winter. thank you to those that offered work or support or a way to pay my rent thank you to the one that kept me warm so many winter nights, whispering sweet nothings in my ear. thank you, to shambo the cat, who kept me warm on those other winter nights. thank you to my roommate and landlord, who dealt with a few months' late rent understandingly. thank you to autumn, for your exquisite taste, afternoon walks and culinary education. thank you to ginberry, who, among a million other wonderful things, let me store my stuff in her storage unit. thank you to matty voth. thank you. thank you to everyone who let me pay back karmic driving debts by carting them around until my plates expired. thanks to everyone who's kept up with my blogs over the years. i suppose i'll have to start a new one elsewhere. thanks to tribe, for trying to keep your head above water. thank you to lila for thinking of me when you hit up the hot tub. thank you to those that got me into festivals. thank you to everyone who gave me music. thank you to all those who worked so hard to create beautiful things for me, and so many others, to enjoy. thank you to tito, for getting rid of the aches on the spot. thank you to sherry, who is so strong, and proves you can make a living as an artist thank you to faith jennings, for talking me into coming here and then handing me her world on a silver platter. thank you to march fourth marching band for slammin' music and an amazing time on the road. thank you to dan stauffer for making me laugh through tears and being such a considerate friend. thank you to aaron and christina of reworks, for employing me for the majority of the summer on their beautiful dream home. thank you to donald for being you and one of my closest friends. thank you to mah brilliant, gorgeous bitches, who reminded me that having fun is not a crime and looking hot is mandatory. thank you to Liz, who introduced me to NIA. thank you to Lori, who introduced me to pole dancing. thank you to Melissa, who joined me in that endeavor and smiled that incredible smile through all of it. thank you to Blessica for being incredible as a woman, a writer, a witch, and a friend. thank you to Natasha, you know what for (granted that was cali, not oregon, but hell - we're both here now). thank you to David Rolin, who inspires me to keep to this crazy path. and of course thank you to god, the universe, or whatever, which continues to shower me with challenges and blessings and keeps me in a state of gratitude and, at least most of the time, humility. thank you, portland, for being so full of amazing people - the trees and all, they're part of it, but what keeps us all coming back, even if we keep leaving, is the community. as we're all so well aware, nothing else exists like it does here. i continue to be wowed, awed, impressed and inspired by your creativity and your hard work. one of these days i hope i find my own shtick, because that's what it really takes to be here. there's a whole world out there, and lots of beautiful places i haven't been yet - i look forward to discovering some new ones and returning, once again, to some i've already been to, like Portland. I couldn't stay away from you forever. i love you.

here we go, yo. aren't you glad we're all pretty self-sufficient? thank god for community.

dori — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:05:21 GMT

i'm frankly amazed, but actually hopeful in some sense - i know a lot of people will be directly affected by this but we all know my radical thoughts on things like bailing out greedy corporations (i say "eff you, Wall Street, you do nothing for me, anyway, and the idea of me having to pay to bail your rich, greedy ass out makes me ill.") Um, if it's that important to you, GW, stop spending trillions on a useless war. Oh wait, someone's already mentioned that. anyway... a few months ago i cleaned out an old IRA - it was at JP Morgan Chase (and thus, for the moment, "safe"), but I'd hit a point where that little bit of dough would cover the last few months of my rent and alleviate stress on both me and my landlord/roommate. Now, quite honestly, I'm glad I yanked the majority of anything belonging to me out of a bank. I've always thought Bank of America evil as well, but when I returned from Mexico I needed a new bank account. While living in Guatemala, someone tapped my Washington Mutual account and cleaned out the last few hundred dollars (this happened to several people via an ATM machine in Antigua). Anyway - at that point I was living on Guatemalan currency and spent a day's wages calling WaMu's customer service to deal with it. Nothing I could say to the poor guy on the other end of the phone would convince him that Guatemala wasn't a state in the lower 48 - he just kept telling me I'd need to come into a branch to fix it. I finally got permission to have my mother deal with it instead, but then we discovered there wasn't a WaMu anywhere near her. So, I joined the evil empire - there are Banks of America on every street corner, as ubiquitous as Starbucks. I keep a low profile, just enough to continue to pay my bills. Should I wind up destitute or with issues while traveling abroad, it will be a lot easier to deal with (all while my pittance goes to funding evil endeavors around the world). Washington Mutual had, over the past three years, continued to bother me about money i supposedly owed THEM for being robbed. were it thousands, I would have hired a lawyer to get it back. Well, WaMu, guess what? I got a big fat middle finger for ya. Gloat gloat gloat gloat. Here's to keeping it all in a can under the mattress. Thank god I was raised by a grandmother who lived through the Depression.

I NEED A TINY LITTLE BIT OF HELP tomorrow or tuesday.

dori — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 19:39:33 GMT

thanks to ginberry, i've got my stuff safely stored away until i return in the spring. i don't have a lot of stuff - in fact, i've moved most of it myself already, but i've got a futon that's unmanageable alone, one big box of clothes and a few smaller items. a car load. i need someone to help me with the futon, ride with me to the storage unit and then help me stack and organize the stuff so the space is utilized to its best advantage. this will take about two hours of your time. i will buy you whatever meal is appropriate (breakfast, lunch or dinner) or a six pack, or whatever. can ya help me? DO NOT RESPOND VIA TRIBE or i'll never know. it's stopped sending me notifications in my email. call or email me at girlgr00vy@gmail.com

it's easier because i'm leaving.

dori — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 17:48:54 GMT

four days and counting... it still doesn't feel completely real but as the days go by and the see-you-laters pile up, they also get a little more intense.

Collapse and Elections: My Lessons from Katrina (by Starhawk)

dori — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:53:50 GMT

i'm reposting this here, because no one, yet, has really summed up how i feel about Obama, and about politics in general, until she did. as i may have mentioned here and there, my politics, and my ideals, are a lot more radical than voting a president into office - but i'm not without clarity here - radical change is a long way away. regardless - Obama represents a first, big step - has singlehandedly inspired hope and made the need for change obvious and even possible for many people. In white, liberal, educated Portland, it's easy to understand why we'd back Obama. Back in Brooklyn this past summer, I saw entire neighborhoods mobilizing, small businesses with signs in the windows and people canvassing the streets of their neighborhoods, getting people registered to vote - that much focused intention can only be a good thing. Imagine what can happen if we can get this man into office - for many, it will be the first time they've ever seen their own actions create change. It's a step in the right direction. this is a long read, but a good one. enjoy. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- I’ve been meaning to write this essay for three years, since I went down to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to volunteer with a grassroots organization called Common Ground Relief. I went to New Orleans because for decades I’ve been part of groups holding a few key beliefs, among them, that this current system is unsustainable and will eventually come crashing down, and the other—that small scale, directly democratic grassroots organizing is the most empowering and effective way to take action. I wanted to see what it was like in a place where the crash had come, and to see if our grassroots, do-it-yourself mode of organizing could work in that situation. Now, with the Gulf Coast battered by a new round of storms, Wall Street deconstructing and capitalism in meltdown mode, that prediction is coming true. It seems a good time to review those lessons. In New Orleans, the crash had come. Not just the devastation left by the storm—every major system that was supposed to offer protection, succor or relief had failed. Starting with the faulty levees built by the Army Corps of Engineers, moving on to an evacuation plan that was no plan at all for those without means, to completely inadequate shelter facilities for those who remained, to disorganized and punitive responses for those who survived, nothing official was working. What I arrived, a month after the hurricane, the only systems that were functioning were the decentralized, autonomous relief efforts. Common Ground Relief was started by a local organizer, Malik Rahim, who lived in Algiers, a neighborhood that had not flooded. He sent out a call that made its way into activist circles. And people responded. Nurses, doctors and street medics who had honed their skills setting up emergency clinics for street actions went down and set up a functioning clinic long before the Red Cross arrived. Others helped set up distribution for relief supplies, and later, as residents began to filter back, organized groups of volunteers to gut houses contaminated with toxic black mold and to offer other forms of service. I worked on a bioremediation project, using natural methods to decontaminate soil. The experienced deepened my commitment to decentralized, grassroots organizing. Our ability to move swiftly, without being hampered by red tape, to respond to immediate need and to call on thousands of people to volunteer their time, efforts and money was impressive. But I also saw our limitations. I remember sitting in one early meeting where we were discussing whether to send supplies across the river to the main part of town, still without power, or out to Houma in the bayou country, or to focus where we were. “What about Mississippi?” someone said. “I hear there’s no relief in Biloxi at all!” The discussion spun down a vortex of overwhelming need, and I remember thinking, “There should be someone or something who could send a team into every county and parish, assess the need, set up distribution…”and then…”There is an agency that’s supposed to do that. It’s called FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or failing that, the National Guard.” The National Guard was partly in Iraq, partly in Florida moving military equipment out of the way of the storm. While the military had searched every house in the city for bodies in the aftermath of the flood, they were providing more harassment than relief to those who remained. FEMA was under the control of a Bush political appointee who has become a famous symbol of utter mismanagement. And I couldn’t help thinking, “There are people dead today who would still be alive if we had had somebody even minimally competent in charge.” Our grassroots efforts were effective, but they couldn’t begin to match the enormous need. Eventually, Common Ground Relief had centers in several different neighborhoods in New Orleans, and along with many other relief efforts, drew on thousands of volunteers who came down over the next year. College students came down on breaks, communities sent down convoys of supplies and helpers, but there was no way we could respond on the scale of the disaster. Our volunteer efforts were also difficult to sustain over time. While many, many people made personal sacrifices in order to come, and some stayed for a year or more doing unpaid and extremely difficult work, not many people could afford to do that. Efforts like our bioremediation project suffered from lack of consistency. When a person who had enthusiasm for it was there, it flourished. When they left, it died. Volunteer efforts also depend on people getting along well together. Direct democracy means people make decisions together, and that can be tremendously empowering or tremendously frustrating. Stress, trauma and overwhelming need do not further good group process. Common Ground’s efforts often felt the strain of interpersonal conflicts, which also drained energy and enthusiasm from volunteers. I came away from the experience with profoundly mixed feelings. On the one hand, I see even more strongly the power of positive, creative direct action—that is, directly solving our own problems, organizing to provide for needs and to exemplify solutions, and doing it in groups where every person involved has a say in decisions. I feel called to help plant the seeds of that kind of organizing in every neighborhood, town and bioregion of the land, and to help further refine our skills in making decisions and handling conflicts. But I also see the need for big systems. There are problems that need to be addressed on a massive scale, and we face some crucial ones at this moment in history. While my long-term vision is a world of empowered, decentralized communities in charge of their own destinies, there’s a short term problem we desperately need to address: completely transforming our technology, our energy infrastructure, our economy, our food, manufacturing and transportation systems to a zero carbon basis, and doing it in a way that furthers social justice. I call this a short term problem because we need to begin this transition now, not in some distant, utopian future, not even in fifty years or fifteen or ten. Jim Hansen, the world’s leading climate change scientist, says we are already past the tipping point for irreversible, runaway climate change. That means potentially billions of deaths, from drought, from thirst, from increased and frequent storms like Katrina and like the hurricanes currently battering the Caribbean and the Gulf Coast, the potential rise of sea levels, billions more left homeless refugees, major extinctions and huge losses of biodiversity. Trust me, we don’t want to go there if we don’t have to. And we don’t have to. We have the technology and knowledge we need to make the shift—possibly with less personal sacrifice than we think. You don’t have to trust me on this, check out the resources at the end of this post and read the folks who have crunched the numbers for us. But we do need to make the shift on the big scale as well as the small. Changing our individual lightbulbs won’t do it. Organizing our own communities to plan and implement the transition will be a big step, but it won’t be enough. We need massive investment in new infrastructure and major shifts in the policies that have subsidized the current fossil fuel economy along with the failed global casino economy. In short, we need intervention on the scale of government. If we’re going to have government, it should be well-run, honest, and accountable. Its police powers should be limited and it should serve as a way for us to pool our resources and address issues that are too big to solve individually. It should protect the weak from the strong, the poor from the rich, the honest from the greedy, and use its resources to help mitigate the suffering of individuals from the misfortunes of loss, disease and disaster which can afflict us all. Instead, we’ve had eight years and more of the opposite—government that has increased police and military power at the expense of every nurturing function, inflated police power and undermined our freedoms, waged illegal wars, favored the rich over the poor and middle class and encouraged such unbridled greed that the whole system is now collapsing. Unfortunately, in such a crash those at the bottom get crushed under the most weight. We have the Republicans chanting ‘Drill, Baby Drill!” while blocking the extension of tax credits for solar, wind and renewables. If the question is, “Which candidate is more likely to lead us to a solar future”, there’s simply no contest. Let me just say here that, in the circles I run in, the question is not, “Should I vote for Obama or McCain.” The dilemma is “Should I bother to vote at all, when even Obama’s policies are not nearly progressive enough. Won’t he just sell out and betray us, like every other politician?” Obama won’t save us. His policies do fall short, for me, in many respects. But he is headed in the right direction, toward the future while McCain and Palin want to drag us back into a feudal, fossil-fueled, fundamentalist past. If Obama did represent my position, on say, Palestine, he would be unelectable. Asking politicians to take unelectable positions is like asking ducks to sink. If we want those positions represented, we need to build popular support for them. And we need to make that support mean something in terms of votes, funds and volunteers. On some issues, progressives have done that. The fact that Obama is running at all is a tribute to the civil rights organizing over decades. No, we haven’t ended racism, but we’ve moved in my lifetime from being a country where Obama and I could not have drunk from the same water fountain in many states to a country where he can run for President. That is an extremely meaningful change, and his election will have a powerful, symbolic meaning that will shift the ground of racism in ways we cannot fully anticipate. We’ve built powerful opposition to the War in Iraq. Or maybe, the war itself has done that for us. Obama is the candidate because of that opposition. Had Hillary Clinton opposed the war more strongly, she would most likely be the Democratic candidate. Nonetheless, her candidacy, and the fact that conservative Republican strategists turned to a woman to bolster their faltering campaign, are a tribute to the decades of feminist organizing that have changed our collective sense of what women’s roles should be. On other issues, like justice for Palestine, we have not yet shifted public opinion or built enough support for a truly progressive solution even to be on the table. Why not? In part, because for the last eight years trying to organize in this country has been like trying to walk to the left with a gale force wind pushing us to the right. We’ve done well even to hold our ground and make some small headway. I don’t think Obama will be our savior. But if he’s elected, the wind will shift. The breeze will be at our backs, pushing us further and faster toward destinations we otherwise cannot reach. If McCain wins, or steals the election, the right will claim a popular mandate that will propel their destructive programs onward. Progressive causes and movements will suffer. I sometimes hear the argument that it has to get worse before it gets better, that people will become radicalized when it gets really awful. I’ve been hearing that since Nixon was elected in ‘Sixty-eight, and I’ve yet to see it happen. It is already really awful, and we’ll be lucky if we can persuade most of the people to simply not vote the architects of the awfulness back into power. People do not become empowered by constantly having their powerlessness rubbed in their faces. In the United States, at least, where the worst possible thing you can be is a ‘loser’, people like to be on the winning side. Increased repression does not tend to make people more radical—if it did, we’d see our movements growing over the last eight years instead of shrinking. It tends to make people give up, or turn their energies toward smaller efforts where they feel they can make some impact. A McCain win would reward the machinery of lies and corruption and cement the power of the police state. For Obama to win, and to assure that this election does not get stolen like the last two, he needs to win big. To have some hope of implementing progressive changes, he needs to have a supportive Congress and Senate win with him. I hear arguments from some of my dear friends that voting doesn’t matter, that it’s not empowering or revolutionary. But for the vast majority of people in this country, elections are the only place where they interface with politics or attempt to exercise power, and if we sneer at that, we lose the chance to link together and open up broader channels for change. And for the kids I’ve worked with in the Bayview, who have never seen a flowing river and whose career options range from crack dealer to murder-for-hire, voting would be a big step upwards. I’m a registered member of the Green Party. I vote Green often, and on a local level, I think the Green Party can have an enormous impact. I also love Cynthia McKinney, whose policies are much closer to those I hold dear. But I hold no illusions that she can win. A Green Party can provide a counterweight on the left to the many pulls to the center and the right that play on candidates. But I would prefer to see the Green Party concentrate on the local issues and candidates that can make a difference, rather than make a weak showing on the national front. Policy is only one aspect of what we need in a President. A President must be able to garner the power and the backing to get policies enacted. And on an energetic level, a President embodies a national mood, a zeitgeist, an energetic field. Obama has that magic charisma, that ability to inspire a mood of hope and optimism. In spite of all the attempts by both Clinton and the Republicans to diminish his appeal, he retains that great gift. In these times when so much of what ordinary people have depended on is crashing down around us, mood might actually be more important than specific points of policy. Because if we have no hope, if we spiral downwards into cynicism, despair and apathy, we will lose any power we might otherwise wield. Obama may or may not be all we hope. But this election, we actually have a clear choice between candidates who represent very different approaches to the huge crises that we face. For the people who’ve lost their homes or pensions in the last months, for the people under fire in Iraq, for the companies struggling to start up solar or wind installations, for the millions without health insurance, for the billions of people around the world at risk from climate meltdown, the decision we make in the next weeks is crucial. I will continue to work and organize and teach with the vision of a thousand, a million Common Ground-style organizations everywhere. I won’t give up my vision of an ideal world of shared and decentralized power, and the bulk of my efforts will always go into envisioning that world, teaching the skills and understandings we need to bring it about, and agitating to make it happen. But I’m also going to vote, and to encourage others to do so, to engage with this election, to register the disenfranchised, work in the swing states, volunteer to monitor to assure fair elections, and talk to your friends and neighbors. And when I cast my ballot for President, it will be for Obama. Starhawk http://www.starhawk.org (Feel free to forward and repost this—just let me know where if you post it.) This post has been sent to you from Starhawk@lists.riseup.net. This is an announce-only listserve that allows Starhawk to post her writings occasionally to those who wish to receive them. To subscribe to this list, send an email to Starhawk-subscribe@lists.riseup.net. To unsubscribe, send an email to Starhawk-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net. Starhawk is a lifelong activist in peace and global justice movements, a leader in the feminist and earth-based spirituality movements, author or coauthor of ten books, including The Spiral Dance, The Fifth Sacred Thing, Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising, and her latest, The Earth Path. Starhawk's website is www.starhawk.org, and more of her writings and information on her schedule and activities can be found there.

throwing it out.

dori — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:52:23 GMT

i admit to hating this process, but at the same time, i'm loving the purge. thankfully i haven't collected too much additional stuff, but i did get comfortable enough here. at the moment, however, i'm "cleaning out my inbox" as it where - getting rid of all the bullshit, the false words, the unnecessary crap. creating space for more magic to happen. bring it on.

and there were these, too.

dori — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:18:18 GMT

oh seriously, best birthday EVER. March Fourth boys after the Obama Rally in Pueblo, Colorado - September 15th, 2008.