Finding the courage to dream

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“If we want to survive and give our children a chance for survival, we have to have the courage to dream.” - E. F. Schumacher

A notebook about how we work, learn, love and live.

Like the old bumpersticker said, "Don't Let The Bastards Wear you Down."

The sentiment is even truer today. As bell hooks reminds us, “Hope is essential to any political struggle for radical change when the overall social climate promotes disillusionment and despair.”

And this social climate sure does promote disillusionment and despair. But Schumacher was right. We need the courage to dream. Hope is a radical act, and to give up hope is to let the bastards wear us down.

It's even got a name: radical hope. Look it up. We need radical hope like never before.

Happy Friday.

Personal Empowerment
"Karma means we are empowered to be part of the solution."

The Buddhist nuns of Drukpa Order, or the Kung Fu Nuns, practice martial arts as a means to instill physical and mental confidence, breaking centuries of tradition.
Image via Wikimedia Commons

"In my religion, we believe in karma. Many people misunderstand the concept of karma. Karma is not a pre-determined destiny. Karma does not mean we accept injustice or inequality. Karma just means cause and effect. Karma means we are empowered to be part of the solution. Karma gives us a method to combat fear, terror, injustice, and inequality. Karma means that we are not defined by our situation but rather by the choices we make.

"As a believer in karma, I encourage the world to choose courage and compassion. Far too often we wait for leaders and governments to bring us peace. But think about it: it is individuals who build peace. And when individuals build peace, it is strong, it is lasting, and it is genuine. That does not mean that we sit nicely on a meditation cushion and enjoy our own inner peace. Peace requires action. Peace requires a real sense of urgency. Peace requires courage and hard work. Peace means that each and every one of us has an obligation to build mutual understanding and an obligation to reject fear. Peace requires us to not only accept but to celebrate the differences among us. Fear needs us to reject differences. Peace encourages us to embrace differences." - Gyalwang Drukpa

Article: How to Combat Fear

Come Together
Moderation is a magnetic idea that can help build civic bridges. But it needs a better brand.

"WHY NOT MODERATION? Letters to Young Radicals, the new book by political science professor Aurelian Craiutu, is a valuable, important, and timely contribution to the pressing debate over the future of liberal democracy in the United States. It addresses three distinct questions: Do we need moderation today? What does moderation demand of individuals and institutions? And can moderation be cultivated in the US? Craiutu gives thought-provoking answers to these questions in a gentle and accommodating style, which makes his work a very welcome corrective to the highly polarized spirit of our times."

"...He offers two pieces of practical advice: moderates ought to seek 'leverage' inside the two main political parties, which requires that they 'build a compelling political brand.' Were this to happen, Craiutu concludes, moderation would be perceived for what it truly is: a 'magnetic idea' that can 'help build civic bridges.'" - Rahul Sagar

Review: Can You Reason with a Radical? On Aurelian Craiutu’s “Why Not Moderation?”

Economics
In 1973 Small is Beautiful anticipated the problems we are experiencing now, and pointed to solutions that will last.

A particularly prescient book about economics turned 50 this year. EF Schumacher’s classic Small is Beautiful predicted that our push for endless growth was doomed to fail and a fundamentally different orientation is possible, beneficial, and essential.

Coming of age in the early 70s I was influenced by a small but influential group of thinkers who channeled the promise of a new age into realistic practicums. EF Schumacher was on the foundational reading list. This week my friend and colleague, John Abrams, wrote a good appreciation of a book from which we are still learning.

John quotes Schumacher's warning: "Ever bigger machines, entailing ever bigger concentrations of economic power and exerting ever greater violence against the environment, do not represent progress: they are a denial of wisdom. Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful.”

And John makes a succinct summary of the learning and work still to be done: "Transitioning to a just and sustainable economic system has become the fundamental long-term challenge of our times. Fifty years ago, Fritz Schumacher gave us a framework to help us with this world-changing work."

I'm with you, John. We've only just begun. Let's keep going.

Book Review: Small is Beautiful

Learning, Resources, Cool Tools
Finally, the Whole Earth Catalog and its descendants - over 130 publications - are now available online.

Founded in 1974 by the staff of the Whole Earth Catalog, CoEvolution Quarterly lasted 10 years as a small circulation magazine whose titular founding idea was coined by zoologist Paul Ehrlich and botanist Peter Raven to account for events that neither of their separate disciplines could explain. The moral of the co-evolutionary perspective is its imperative to always look one level larger and one level finer (at least) than where you are, and to see clear through your cycles.

When I was 17 I did two things that would set the course of my life: I took LSD, and I read the Whole Earth Catalog. In the ensuing years the use of psychedelics for learning, healing and spiritual awakening has become mainstream news. But the Catalog, in spite of its similar capacity to open and widen the doors of perception, has all but disappeared, exiled by its form of ink on inexpensive paper, to the libraries of a few and the memories of a few more.

Until now. Last Friday, on the 55th anniversary of the publication of the original Whole Earth Catalog, Gray Area and the Internet Archive made the Catalog freely available online via the Whole Earth Index, a website bringing together more than 130 Whole Earth Catalog-related publications, ranging from some of the earliest Catalogs published in the late 1960s and early 1970s to the 2002 issues of Whole Earth Magazine.

When Debbie and I met in 1982 we both subscribed to the Co-Evolution Quarterly. So that we wouldn't have to tussle over who got to read it first, when we moved in together we decided to keep both subscriptions. Now we can both read it at the same time.

Article: The Lasting Whole Earth Catalog

Website: The Whole Earth Index

Personal Empowerment
Astrology is not a science. Nor is storytelling, depth psychology, mythology, dream interpretation, or poetry.

Rob Brezsny feels that to be humans we need logic, reason, analysis, and discernment. And to be complete we equally need other kinds of intelligence: poetry, dreams, imagination, feeling, myth, intimacy, metaphor, and storytelling. That's where astrology comes in. Image by Ro Loughran, Source Weekly.

I've long sought out Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology column, originally in the alt-weeklies that helped make cool towns cool. Now he's gathered a lot of his observations and learnings into a book, Astrology Is Real.

He says that to dismiss astrology as a pseudoscience we close our minds to a valuable tool. For starters, astrology's best practitioners don't claim that astrology is a science, but a mythopoetic language.

Astrology, he says, is "a symbol system that, when used with integrity, engenders soulful approaches for deepening our connection to life's great mysteries—not predictions of literal events. It liberates and fertilizes our imaginations and encourages us to think less literally."

"As Carl Jung said, it's an aid in understanding and articulating how the psyche works. Like any language, it's both logical and messy; it's useful in making sense of the world, yet full of crazy-making ambiguities."

Like his columns, this book is enormously fun to read, and true to his definition of astrology, uses psychology, story and myth to find the wisdom hiding in plain site.

Article: Is Astrology Real?

Book Review: Imagination Wave. Horoscope Columnist Rob Brezsny Releases "Astrology Is Real," His First Astrology Book.

Visual Identity, Packaging
In addition to making a package reusable, why not make it a collectible work of art?

Bloomingdale's bags. Left: Abstract Lines by Ann Field, 1988. Right: Style Scandinavia by Per Arnoldi, 1978. Photos via Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Throughout the late 70s, the 80s and the early 90s, John Jay was the Creative Director at Bloomingdale's. With the goal of expressing the brand's connection to the global creative zeitgeist, he hired world-renowned designers to create the store's shopping bags. Each became an instant collector’s item.

Rizzoli is publishing a monograph of this creative giant's work. Stephen Heller was asked to write an essay for the book, where he celebrated the iconic shopping bags.

He writes: "Jay’s bags lacked the store name or logo...(instead) Jay commissioned unique artists’ bags three to four times a year, depending on what seasonal marketing events demanded. Holidays were frequent themes, a New Year’s bag, a summer bag, fall 'concept' bags and other cultural treats...

"...Jay used these retail opportunities to create bags that represented forms and styles from the edge in other cultures. They were always designed to astound—and morph into a completely different idea from one bag to the next."

Article: John Jay’s Audacious Bloomies Shopping Bags

Creativity
"Listen to the birds. That’s where all the music comes from."

Because he was never popularly recognized, and because he had a reputation for making challenging and demanding music, few know that Captain Beefheart's songs were often sweet, soft and inviting. This live performance he did with his band for the BBC in 1974 showcases sensitive ensemble playing at its best.

Why the work of Captain Beefheart was overlooked by the public during his lifetime is a question for the history books. At least his peers recognized his brilliance. John Peel once said: “If there has ever been such a thing as a genius in the history of popular music, it’s Beefheart… I heard echoes of his music in some of the records I listened to last week and I’ll hear more echoes in records that I listen to this week.”

At least his reputation amongst his peers allowed him to attract top-notch musicians from around the world. When Moris Tepper was accepted by Beefheart to join his Magic Band in 1976, the bandleader issued a list of instructions or ‘commandments’ as guidance.

While written for the guitar, this advice is powerful for any creative person, starting with number one: "1. Listen to the birds. That’s where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from."

Article: Captain Beefheart's 10 Commandments of Guitar Playing

One-liners

Article: Six months ago NPR left Twitter. The effects have been negligible.

Article: Researchers have found an inexpensive, sustainable alternative to mechanical air conditioning with refrigerants in hot and arid climates, and a way to mitigate dangerous heat waves during electricity blackouts.

Article: An Alabama library flagged a children's book because the author’s last name is 'Gay'.

Article: Classical music synchronizes the audience's heartbeats.

Article: A new project in the Netherlands employs skilful refugees to mend much-loved clothes – and the idea is spreading fast.

Article: The marketing, media and entertainment industries – central to the manipulation of human behaviors towards resource acquisition and waste – may offer the best way to reorient that behavior and help avoid ecological collapse.

Playlist

Video: Meshell Ndegeocello - The Atlantiques (Official Video)

In June Meshell Ndegeocello released a new album, The Omnichord Real Book, her first in five years, and her first as a leader for Blue Note. As she has for 30 years, she conjurs a sound and style fed by many tributaries of Black music, and one that is uniquely her own.

Writing for NPR, Nate Chinen, describes the album as "a jazz album only to the extent that you need it to be. Even as she makes space for jazz artists like pianist Jason Moran and harpist Brandee Younger, Ndegeocello fashions this music in a language of her own."

"...Ndegeocello's music reliably imbibes from (an) inner world, creating a nearly self-contained universe. Her process on The Omnichord Real Book involves opening it up to some trusted interlopers, inviting them to alter the atmosphere."

Early this month Blue Note released a gorgeous live-in-the-studio short of her band singing and performing the song The Alantiques. I'm glad for Chinen's permission to call it jazz only if I have to. Like so much new music it begs not to be categorized.

Review: Meshell Ndegeocello Opens the Lid on Her Self-Contained World

Weekly Mixtape
If you need to name it, call it jazz. 'Groove' works, too.

Playlist: I am more than flesh and blood.

Image of the Week

"When something is referred to as 'Europe's biggest hole', it's not likely to be a pretty sight.

"The Hambach opencast mine in Germany's Lower Rhine basin sprawls across 85 square kilometers. Giant excavators mine lignite - aka brown coal - at a rate of up to 240,000 tonnes a day. That's about equal to a football stadium piled 30 meters high with coal.

"For photographer Bernhard Lang, who shot a series of aerial photos of the mine in 2014, capturing Hambach from above was the key to conveying its scale. 'Watching the huge machines biting into the barren landscape reminded me of alien planets in science fiction movies,' Lang says. 'It's a really direct image of the human impact on earth.'

"The Hanbach mine is expected to have exhausted its lignite reserves by 2040, at which point it will be converted into an artificial lake, filled with 4 billion cubic meters of water from the Rhine." - New Scientist

Webpage: Bernhard Lang Photography, Coal mine

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