Dark o Moon, when we gather to determine the course of culture, Caroline welcomes, baratunde thurston
(dedicated to humor, wisdom, and compassion in service to complex conversations.) “Baratunde is an Emmy-nominated host who has worked for The Onion, produced for The Daily Show, advised the Obama White House, and wrote the New York Times bestseller How To Be Black. He’s the creator and host of How To Citizen with Baratundewhich Apple named one of its favorite podcasts of 2020 and for which he received the Social Impact Award at the 2021 iHeartRadio Podcast Awards. He’s also a founding partner of the new media startup Puck. In 2019, he delivered what MSNBC’s Brian Williams called “one of the greatest TED talks of all time.” Baratunde is unique in his ability to integrate and synthesize themes of race, culture, politics, and technology to explain where our nation is and where we can take it.”
Let our craft be our craft navigating the Underworld River…..,
(Max Dashu reminds us that “Craft” means “power from dedication”)
Navigating the grief River…
a hugely great ally friend died on Monday…
I found a wonderful home for her doggie, as my act of love…
Another friend died unexpectedly on Wednesday,
and this morning my Board Op kitty, Ammon Ra, died in the embrace of his loving pack…
I am grieving my Cat, Ammon Ra Mau,
as deeply as with 2 dear friends who died this week…
Abe Lincoln: “I care not for any man’s religion – whose dog and cat are not the better for it.”
And grief of course is love
and it opens the portals to all,
What gets us through when those beings who got us through be gone,
when members of our pack go back-stage into Big Mystery….
Community, hey there Community radio!
Patreonistas!
Dedication be also the rudder
the antidote to depression… go deeper,
deeper
into the realms of irony, and its relationship to compassion…
to be ironic
we be holding at-least two stories at once – what is – and what should be
and
what is – and what people are pretending it is
and to be be compassionate is to cultivate holding more and more stories….
Tis the Dark of the Moon before New Moon Feb 1st (Chinese New year)
a time traditionally when people would gather to determine the course of culture..
(also Moon phase when Baratunde was born)…
that sane reverence and ingenious altruism assume cultural narrative lead…
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And
Gotta mention that b be a Virgo, incarnational agent of Hermes/Legba, language, editing craft (“craft” means power from dedication.”)
dedicated to keeping the community hearth flame glowing….with prodigious eloquence…
that opens portals between worlds…
(Like Eddie Izzard’s Star Trek phaser settings… we need more…response to everything.,..
see B’s ted talk:
diagramming sentences
subject
action
target
activity
be genius….
the 4 levels of the game!!!!!
“Systems are just collection of stories.
Change the stories!”
*power of language, story craft…satire, irony and relationship to compassion
cultivating metaphoric and linguistic agility…
word “privilege” comes from “prive lege” – which means “private law.”
and there we have it…
“respect” means “to look again,” and keep on looking re-re-re…
(and you all probably know this – but tis genius 2 minute 48” on “reverse racism”)
Aamer Rahman (Fear of a Brown Planet) – Reverse Racism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M
(my favorite movie: “Sugarcane Alley” about power of language to allow spirit to arise, Phoenix like, from ashes of oppressive circumstance)
“If you want people to get nothing done but conflict , convince them they are on one side of something, will only get hot conflict, which feeds the dementors…
What 2 needs is 3 – the unifying story…”
The on-going assignment to spiral out of polarity…
“Be jaunty – even though fully informed.”(Wendell Berry)
Everything can be liberating or imprisoning…
to react to anything is not free, but to carry around a portable prison for self and others
v
cultivating an ever expanding repertoire of liberating responses,
is to ally with Nature’s Trickster genius.
Chinese New Year of Tiger, reminds me of Zen Practice, long min jonjin (excuse spelling)..
means to leap like a Tiger while sitting…
Venus Anadyomene Fresco from Pompeii Casa di Venus 1st century AD
Venus be stationing direct on the 29th… retrieving Venusian skills of leadership…
“The shop crossing the ocean – who’s in charge?
Captain? nope
the designer!
And all the issues we face are all design issues.”
-William McDonough
Mercury stationing on February 3rd, exact mid-Winter, when Persephone lights her candle and begins ascending from the Underworld, and we with her…
Tis also the day when Pluto arrives at 27+ Capricorn and begins the Pluto return in America..
Dedication to the re-vitalizing the democratic experiment…
Ah, Uranus at 9+ Scorpio,
the rising sign of my favorite chart for America, birth time derived from the back of $100 bill…
clock tower showing 2:25 pm
The image being “fellowship supper reunites all allies.”
What this country is meant to be.
Uranus 9 Scorpio in Chadwick Boseman’s chart
and abe Lincoln’s…
Sun in Virgo, incarnational agent of Mercury
quintiles Mars in Cancer conjoin Jupiter
exalted in Cancer (“People need stoiries mire than they need bread…” (1,001 Nights)…)
Helas my main board op, Ammon Ra,
just now died snuggled next to me, with the dogs and cat sister
in loving attendance…
Tis after death of 2 decades long friends on Monday and Wednesday…
Busy between worlds…
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WAKING UP
by Jefferson Parson © 2014
I went to the bottom of the deepest dark lake,
Rode on the sole of a moccasin snake,
Prayed the pressure wouldn’t my poor heart break
‘Til I popped to the top, my eyes wide awake.
He spared me his poison all the way down,
But I shuttered to utter all that I found:
Space heaters, tvs and old tennis shoes,
Even an I-phone that’s never been used.
Huge pieces of plastic, to the earth so unkind,
But the scariest pieces were pieces of mind:
Fear for the future, shame for the past,
Fears that each day would be our last.
Facing my fears didn’t drive them away,
But they’re way less scary in the light of the day.
I say what I feel and I feel what I say,
Which is way better than hiding away.
To bring all this up I had to go down
To the bottom of the lake to find what I found,
Down to the bottom of the deepest dark lake,
‘Til I popped to the top, my eyes wide awake.
