:: halloween 2011 ::
This isn't actually the day of Halloween, October 31, but for us it's a season, and a favorite holiday. Tara got some time off school to come home and bake (part of our Blue House curriculum).
We took our bikes down to Peoples Coop, where I had a gigantic bag of lentils on order, keeping the memory of Teresina and Joe Havens alive, some really Together Friends that we knew.
Teresina was deeply into Buddhism, had cleaned public toilets in Tokyo as one of her services.
Joe started our Quaker Economics Study Circle, which blossomed, and in my case led to closer ties with the Henry George School.
We also procured pumpkins suitable for baking into pies and Tara has spent a good part of her day on that project, following The Joy of Cooking. She also went to the gym (no, not 24-Hour Fitness anymore, which we'd joined when it was still a Gold's in this town).
Lindsey was through for a pit stop. She's mostly roaring her engines (metaphorically -- she's against wasting peak oil) around Occupy Portland. Her picture is in this week's issue of Willamette Week as a part of a photo montage.
I bought her beers at Angelo's last night and pumped her for information. Her analysis tends to be influential on mine, though where spin doctoring goes, we do it differently, have our respective weaknesses and powers. She headed back into the fray just a few minutes ago.
She liked Notes from the Occupation in Willamette Week as it seemed an allusion to Notes from Underground, and Dostoevsky has been her theme recently, especially The Idiot, a role she alludes to in her own character in Privileged Dignity Village (she loved this picture, as I reviewed what I'd stashed so far).
I need to return to Fred Meyer's, where we shop most frequently. The evaporated milk we were going to use in the pies is like a solid paste and a funny color. Kind of too old, too evaporated. No wait, it's condensed. I need to replenish our stocks.
I'm sharing storyboards of what an organized camp would look like, something the city might be proud of, in solidarity with camps elsewhere. We wouldn't go the steak and lobster tails route, like in Afghanistan, nor would we be so hazy on our mission, like in Iraq.
We could experiment with hexayurts, take and send "away teams" through Ft. Lewis. There's no law against civilians getting to use some of the same toys the military does, for humanitarian purposes. We could also showcase more bizmos and vegan food carts running on biodiesel provided by Asian restaurateurs and fellow travelers.
This is not about shutting down the OPDX campus so much as about providing a more planned and thought-out response to Portland's most desperately needy. Released prisoners, returning vets, other homeless, are flocking to OPDX seeking relief from the bully club and involuntary treatment wards.
There's an opportunity here to let a thousand dots of light show us a kinder, gentler America, what used to be the presidential rhetoric when I was between Lindsey's age (36) and Tara's (17).
We remember what happened with Rajneesh Puram, when they tried to address social ills in a more remote setting. Keeping OPDX from being spun in that direction by the press is not going to be easy, even though there's no Bhagwan.
The movement has a cultic flavor, thanks to various branding choices. Not saying that's bad. The pumpkin I carved was that Vendetta guy, as suits the season. I put that upside-down A, our Victory sign, on the back.
Tara found Lisa Randall on The Daily Show. We watched from her Holdenweb laptop in the kitchen. Patrick should be over soon, for nog 'n rum, yar! I was Facebooking Daily Show earlier tonight, sharing some links to that Bank of America story.
:: Ma Sheela, from The Oregonian ::
