Changing Over

I'm starting a new blog called BlumeTimes and will soon be shutting down this one.

Reason being that it seems "The Boycott" is coming to a close.  It was a huge act of resistance to the Bush Administration, and now, like Bush, seems a bit of a lame duck.

The new blog will be a journal of the creation of my new show, as well as ongoing stories of activism in a simutaneously scary and hopeful era.

Please come along for the ride!

- Kathy

Yes, We Can!

It Is That Dream
by Olav Hauge (translated by Robert Bly)

It's that dream we carry with us
That something wonderful will happen,
That it has to happen,
That time will open,
That the heart will open,
That the mountains will open,
That wells will leap up,
That the dream will open,
That one morning we'll slip in
To a harbor that we've never known.

Jefferson Would Be Proud

I'm pulling this straight off of Grist, but I'm so wowed, there's really nothing more to say:

Ecuador approves new constitution granting inalienable rights to nature

Ecuador approved a new constitution this weekend that, among other things, grants inalienable rights to nature, the first such inclusion in a nation's constitution, according to Ecuadorian officials. "Nature ... where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain, and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions, and its processes in evolution. Every person, people, community, or nationality will be able to demand the recognition of rights for nature before the public bodies," the document says. The specific mention of evolution isn't accidental; besides being an activity nature arguably likes to do anyway, evolution as we know it has close ties to Ecuador's territory of the Galapagos Islands, where Charles Darwin formed his famous theory. Ecuador's constitution grants nature the right to "integral restoration" and says that the state "will promote respect toward all the elements that form an ecosystem" and that the state "will apply precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems, or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles."

Been At It For A While...

I just got a remarkable card in the mail.

Right after the attacks on 9/11, I wrote a letter to the editor of Seven Days, our alt-weekly, responding to the situation as if I were the President.  

The card was from a guy who'd clipped and saved my letter all this time, thanking me for writing it.  He said:

You advocated an elemental wisdom needed by both citizens and leaders for our good governance, lacking then and disastrously lacking since.  As we are now being shown, wasteful, selfish, and destructive societies do not endure - they collapse from within.  Seven years have not diminished my awe at your words.  My apologies for taking so long to acknowledge your presidential address.

I'm deeply moved by this.  Mostly because it's rare to have something you do acknowledged at all, much less remembered over time.  

Anyway, in honor of Merlin, who rocked my world this morning, here's that letter.  I hope it helps some more.

Taking matters into my own hands...

Ok, I decided enough is enough with this electoral freaking out on the Left.  So I have recorded my own stump speech.

Enjoy!

Never Give Up - Ever Ever Ever!

I sent the whole Palin conversation to a friend of mine in the UK, and here is his brilliant response:

The trouble with Palin is she appeals to people's reptilian brain; all urge and base instinct with no attempt to reach for anything higher or more admirable [dare I say it, the Republican in all of us if you like!].

So the battlelines are drawn; hope vs.appetite.

Now here's the thing, about appetite, the more you throw at it, the more it eats and grows. By far the best way to deal with appetite is to starve it until it withers. This would be my simple 3-point plan for dealing with Palin:

1.) Keep communicating the central charismatic idea of 'Hope for a better world' you're fighting for and frankly the world wills you to achieve [ideas always win over urges if they're compelling enough]

2.) Focus that message of 'Hope for a better world' at John McCain, who represents everything old, stale, embittered, idealess - a repository for lost hope, isolation and anger.

3.) Ignore Palin! No I really mean it, ignore Palin. The best way to communicate contempt without weakening yourself is to act as if she doesn't exist for you. The more you attack her, the more it shows how much you fear the appetite she represents and the stronger she will grow. She is McCain's best weapon to get the cameras and attention away from his riddled, rankled, wrinkled unelectable self.

Repeat after me; keep communicating 'Hope for a better world', target McCain's as the very embodiment of lost hope and ignore Palin!

Finally as Churchill would say, never give up, never give up, never, ever, give up!

The Hope

My friend Sara Lampert Hoover just wrote on my wall in Facebook: "OK --so we have weathered....Hurricane SARAH....I am afraid!!   Pointers...please.  Giving $$ to Obama is NOT enough!"

Sara's Facebook page says: 

Sara Lampert Hoover

is sad that our politics is still "same old, same old."

Here's my response (slightly expanded since I don't have the character limit of The Wall):

Hm. I was thinking about this tonight. The Work - as Playwright Tony Kushner says, "The Great Work" - is going to continue no matter what happens. We will all continue with it, no matter what. Obama and Biden and the Clintons will continue with it no matter what. And politics may be still "same old, same old," but in many places, there are gigantic movements happening.  Gigantic changes. 

I've been reading a lot about sustainability efforts in the business community, and there is A LOT going on. Most people get it. They get the environmental and social impacts of business as usual. They know how much trouble the planet is in. They know how much trouble society is in.  

Portland and Seattle: curbside composting and massive public transportation and fantastic support for the cycling community. Greensburg, Kansas: rebuilding itself upon sustainable models. Yes, we need solid leadership, coordinated efforts. Yes it would be amazing to have it come from the top. But we don't need to count on it, and we don't need to wait for it.

I'd also say that it's just not worth living in fear. Because we have no idea what's going to happen. Sometimes we need our backs absolutely up against the wall. And, in truth, sometimes the good guys don't win. Sometimes the story ends in tragedy. But there's so much that's happening in the world outside of our control, so many forces that began before we were even born, that there's no way of knowing the outcome of anything. No way of seeing the whole sweep of history.

So we decide for ourselves what's worth fighting for, and we do it because it's the right thing to do. And we have hope, because we have seen over and over that anything is possible. Anything is Possible. We've seen it in South Africa and Northern Ireland. We saw the end of the slave trade, which was THE economic engine for the US and Great Britain.  

We've seen it in Philippe Petit, who walked a tightrope between the towers of the World Trade Center. We've seen it in Wangari Maatthai who won a Nobel Prize for planting trees. We've seen it in the Apollo Program and in the work of Picasso and we've heard it in the voice of kd lang and the horn of Miles Davis and in the left eyelid of Jean-Dominique Bauby. We've seen it in crazy stories of unlikely survival in concentration camps and the killing fields of Cambodia. We've seen it in the insights of Einstein and the inventions of Edison and in pretty much everyone at the Olympics.

I've seen it personally. In Lysistrata Project. In the survival of Vermont Stage Company. In the amazingness of the people in my life.

Anything is Possible. Believe it.