Done for the Week: Missing the Essential

Why does it feel like last week was so busy?  Because it was? 

Why does it feel like I'm avoiding the most important work?  Because I am?

Done for the Week:  Nov. 21-27, 2011

1. Biked twice--nursing undiagnosed injury--shin splints?  tendonitis?  DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness--it's a runners' thing)?
2. Walked my dog three times, with various family members 
3. Read Love Invents Us, by Amy Bloom; Called to Freedom, by Stephen Boehrer
4. Continued to work my two part-time jobs
5. Published 3 blog posts
6. Continued significant work on current clients' projects
7. Attended Jobs Prayer Vigil
8. Attended Town Hall for proposed city Jobs Act
9. Continued to collect recall petition signatures
10. Celebrated Thanksgiving with my family
11. Had my daughter and her growing family over for day-after-Thanksgiving dinner
12. Babysat my new granddaughter and her four-year-0ld brother twice
13. Refinanced our house
14. Watched one episode of Boss with my husband
15. Scheduled weekly volunteering at Recall office for the duration
16. Continued reading Elizabeth George's A Traitor to Memory aloud with my husband
17. Watched one episode of Eureka with my son
18. Replaced broken toilet seat
19. Cleaned the kitchen and sunroom/dining room
20. Cleaned out entryway closet
21. Started cleaning my study 
22. Scheduled car repair appointment
23. Scheduled doctor's appointment
24. Ordered birthday present for my mom
25. Ordered replacement part for the dishwasher
26. Got new running shoes
27. Tried new turkey leftover recipe
28. Scheduled piano repair/tuning appointment
29. Went to Happy Hour with my husband
30. Did laundry

I didn't spend the last week just spinning my wheels, but I did, as this week's quote says, "not do the one thing [I] ought to do."  I don't exactly feel that I am wasting my life, because most of what I am busy with is important to me.  But I am coming to realize that it is time to get back to work on my novel.

I have been experiencing some noticeable muscle/joint soreness lately and, in true hypochondriacal fashion, registered a fear the other morning that I might have bone cancer.  While it is much more likely that I have merely overdone my training, and underdone my sleep and necessary self-care the last couple of months, that moment of anxiety was enough to clarify some things for me. 

Like everyone else, I do not have unlimited tenure on this planet.  And like most of us, I do a fairly good job of ignoring that fact most of the time.  But when I was staring it in the face that morning, I thought of my novel.  And I thought that its unfinished state would be my deepest regret if I were suddenly to run out of time.

And thus, my focus goal for the coming week is to resume work on my novel.  And in service of that goal, I plan to employ Neil Fiore's Unschedule--subject of the single-most viewed post, hands down, of my blog.

As to last week, my most important accomplishment was refinancing our house.  Not single-handedly, of course, but in cooperation with my husband and my credit union.  This act matters because of the thousands of dollars and years of financial freedom it will reclaim for us, so that we can keep it together that much longer--provided we don't die of bone cancer sooner.

Last week's focus goal was "to continue the effort to get to the gym," and to "try to walk my dog on days when I don't work out."  Because of the whole fake-bone cancer thing, I was forced to take it easy workout-wise.  But I did manage to make it to the gym twice, and to walk my dog three times--twice at the dog park, from my house to my daughter's and back, a short drive but a forty-minute round-trip walk.


And now, in the interest of keeping some time for (gulp) my personal n-word, I'm declaring this post done.

Done for the Week: By Tempests Tossed

More irregular time this past week.  Family difficulties.  National holidays.  Unforeseen work emergencies.

This obstacle course required me to continue working on agility, while I got the following things done:

Done for the Week:  May 23 - 29, 2011

1. Continued training for triathlon; biked once, swam once, ran twice
2. Ran twice with my training partner 
   
3. Finished A Weekend to Change Your Life, by Joan Anderson; Recovering From the Loss of a Parent, by Katherine Fair Donnelly
4. Attended search committee meeting
   
5. Did extra babysitting for my grandson
6. Held jobs action
7. Met for debriefing
8. Completed major annual project for my organization
   
9. Called my mother
10. Continued to work my two part-time jobs 
11. Went to see Jane Eyre with my daughter
    
12. Published 4 blog posts 
13. Wrote 1 gratitude journal entry
14. Got my husband and son to the gym with me once
    
15. Meditated 4 times
    
16. Kept my new garden flowers alive, and planted more
17. Contacted contractor to schedule bathroom electrical work
18. Had lunch date with my husband
19. Caught up on laundry
20. Watched two playoff basketball games with my sons and husband
21. Went out driving with learning teenager several times 
22. Finished long-distance support of my mother, during my sister's vacation
23. Participated in driving my newly re-employed son to his job
24. Continued planning for trip to Seattle this week with my husband
    

Last week's focus goal was to "hang on, and continue to meditate, and breathe while I do both." I did manage to hang on.  And apparently to breathe, since I'm sitting here writing this.  I meditated more days than I didn't, but only just.  When I stuck to my mid-day meditation "routine," I succeeded.  When the day got away from me, and I allowed its middle to be trodden by others' agendas--four of seven days last week--not so much.  I made time to meditate (prior to falling asleep) on only one of the four disrupted days.  

I have started reading Martha Beck's The Joy Diet:  10 Daily Practices for a Happier Life , and find that her first "menu item," the one she wants us to begin with, is meditation--though she coyly refers to it as "Nothing."  It seems that most of the nonfiction books I pick up these days, in my relatively undisciplined search for peace, wisdom, self-correction, and amusement, involve meditation in one way or another.  All roads, it would seem, lead to Om.  Either meditation is saturating our culture, or, as The Secret's Rhonda Byrne would have us believe, I am drawing these personally needed messages to me.  But in any case, the importance of meditating is being hammered home to me again and again.  So I will keep on striving to "do nothing," for at least twenty minutes of every day.

And here's a test.  The morning is waning.  I am working on yesterday's post, so that I can progress to today's.  I am trying to get ready to leave town in two days.  I have already missed an important meeting so that I could attend a more important yoga class (I missed both classes last week, in favor of meetings and other work obligations).  And I am due at work in less than an hour.  But it is mid day, my meditating witching hour.  And so I am going to put aside blogging, so that I can do nothing.  For twenty minutes. . .

And now, I've meditated, lunched, and worked.  And I'm ba-aack.

Last week's most important accomplishment, I believe, was holding the jobs action I conceived and helped to plan; and meeting to debrief afterwards.  And for the same reasons that the previous week's most important accomplishment was planning said action:  the potential significance of changes we intend to effect in how jobs are being allocated in our city; and my own desire to graduate from being seen primarily as a techie with secretarial skills in an organization in which I contribute ideas, knowledge and skills outside that narrow realm. The action represented a significant step in our bid to learn more about the barriers to employment, so that we can take effective action to overcome them.


As of Thursday, I will be on vacation until next Tuesday.  I will resume posting on Wednesday, June 8.  Until then, I will focus on meditating, and on relaxing.

Done for the Week: Waiting for the Thaw

I'm slowly coming back from hitting the wall, in terms of my level of activity.  This past week, I had a bit more energy, perhaps because of the physical exercise I got.

Spring is teasing us here in Wisconsin.  After temperatures in the 80s on Sunday, the rest of last week brought a chill wind, some rain, and even snow flurries on Saturday.  All of my outdoor rallies and ventures in petition circulation have taken place in the cold--no friend to my Raynaud's syndrome.  Hence, the whitened fingers with which I have held signs and extended pens and clipboards.  And the frozen toes on which I have marched and stood and walked. 

This morning, I awoke to snow on the ground.

This is what I got done last week, in this inclement season.

Done for the Week:  April 11-17

1. Continued off-season race training; completed Week 7 of C2K--three training sessions
2. Finished Sepulchre, by Kate Mosse
3. Continued significant volunteer support to transitioning nonprofit
4. Attended state Joint Finance Hearing on Governor's proposed biennial budget
5. Attended budget protest rally
6. Circulated recall petition door to door; 3 hours total
7. Attended Board Meeting
8. Attended Issues Night
9. Attended Good Jobs & Livable Neighborhoods meeting
10. Continued to work my two part-time jobs
11. Published 4 blog posts
12. Meditated 7 times
13. Participated in interviews of two finalists for Lead Organizer position, and in hiring recommendation
14. Got one son and husband to the gym with me once each
15. Attended 2 yoga classes
16. Had dinner date with my husband
17. Got my last learning driver to driver's ed 5 times 
18. Shopped for groceries
19. Cooked
20. Caught up on laundry
21. Took son shopping for clothes
22. Drove son to DMV, and signed as sponsor for learner's permit
23. Watched basketball with husband and sons, including first playoff game of one of the two teams we root for
24. Saw my therapist
25. Tracked down and took steps to resolve one son's termination from our health insurance 
26. Paid brief visit to sick grandson
27. Paid our monthly bills
28. Kept my household checking account out of the red for another month
29. Met with website client

Apparently, I neglected to record a focus goal for last week.  My intended goal, however, was to complete Week 7 of the Couch Potato to 5K training program, which I did.   

I continue to struggle to find time for the training, given all that's going on.  I am exhausted too much of the time.  Combined with early morning meetings, and other commitments, which push available training time later in the day, I am drawing heavily on my reserves of perseverance.  But I am more consistently in the zone of reaching my minimal goal than I was just a few weeks ago.  For next week, my focus goal will be to complete the C25K Week 8, and to spread the three required sessions more evenly over the week.

Meeting last week's focus goal was, in my opinion, also the most important thing I got done over the last seven days--which is why item 1 on the list above is not only highlighted in green, but appears in red text.

I am certainly not the only one who battles a chronic low-level depression these days.  Nor am I alone in experiencing difficult moods in the spring.  Exercise and meditation are the most effective approaches I have found to dealing with feeling sad, overwhelmed, and edgy, as I have recently.  So I intend to keep making time for these essential remedies, particularly in my currently stress-filled circumstances.

We are living in uncertain, and contentious times.  I would amend the bumper sticker/button/coffee mug saying, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention," to read "If you're not anxious and depressed, you're not paying attention."  But maybe that's just me.  In any case, I'm aiming for tolerable mood and energy, enough to keep me carrying my share of the load and believing in the possibility of a better day, and better conditions for all.  Bliss seems out of the question at this time.  I will, however, be glad to see the sun and some mild weather, when they finally show up.

Done for the Week: Still Crazy After All These Weeks

Last week was beyond busy.  Insane, actually. The craziness extended into yesterday, so I am posting what should have been Monday's Done for the Week today.

Here's the list of what I accomplished, in between obsessive absorption in weirder and weirder state political happenings.

Done for the Week:  April 4-10

1. Continued off-season race training, returning to C25K; completed Week 6--three training sessions
2. Finished The Sunday Wife, by Cassandra King
3. Continued significant volunteer support to transitioning nonprofit
4. Attended open house at new recall office
5. Gathered signatures on recall petition; 9 hours total
6. Attended Get Out the Vote Rally
7. Voted
8. Continued to work my two part-time jobs
9. Published 3 blog posts
10. Meditated 6 times
11. Met with my meditation group for the first time in several weeks
12. Called three references for lead organizer candidate
13. Got one son and husband to the gym with me once each
14. Attended 2 yoga classes
15. Ran with new triathlon training partner
16. Attended triathlon training party with Sally Edwards
17. Had dinner date with my husband
18. Registered for upcoming 5K event
19. Got my last learning driver to driver's ed 5 times 
20. Had dinner out with one son

Last week's focus goal was "to complete Week 6, and two of the three sessions of Week 7 of the Couch Potato to 5K program."   I received some news early last week that gave me a bit more breathing room with respect to the May 1st 5K I am planning to participate in.  So I decided not to push my training, given its less than ideal conditions the past few weeks.  

Instead of accellerating Week 6's completion, and attempting to complete Week 7, I decided to adhere more sensibly to the Week 6 schedule.  I was able to complete the three prescribed sessions, and am feeling more confident of completing the program at this point.  I even had a chance to run outside for the first time in months, when Sunday brought us temperatures in the 80s.  It was a pleasure to begin training with my new partner.  I am looking forward to her return from Costa Rica, and to stepping up our routine. 

I believe that the most important thing I did last week was to turn in 3+ sheets of recall petition signatures.  If we are to stop the assault on programs and people I am concerned about in our state, we will need to act to restore our fractured democracy.  My state Senator has been at the forefront of the ongoing efforts to abridge rights and dismantle the social safety net for our most vulnerable citizens, all the while championing tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.  She and her colleagues have gone far beyond anything the voters were led to expect when they took office.  And they have acted with cavalier disregard for the rules set up to protect the process, and the rights of citizens.  I am hopeful that we are close to completing our effort to give the voters an opportunity to register their reactions to this new reality.

And in the meantime, I will continue trying to find a balance I can live with as we go "Forward, not backward," to borrow one of our movement's chants, this one based on Wisconsin's state motto.

After a Horse Race, Back on My Own Horse

I made up a new life rule this week:  

Anytime I 

1) put in a full day shift collecting recall signatures at a polling place for a "spring" election (that's what they call this chilly, needed-my-gloves-and-long-underwear season);  

2) then stay up way too late waiting to learn of my candidate's narrow (204 vote) victory (for whom I, of course, did not electioneer while collecting recall signatures); and 

3) do so while continuing to put in hours on my two paid jobs, I am allowed to put off blogging until I have recovered.

So invoking that new rule, I did not blog Tuesday or yesterday, when all my free time was spent glued to the horse race for Supreme Court Justice in Wisconsin.  

My obsessive self worries that, having broken my year-plus string of weekday blog posts, I will have weakened my commitment to being a serious blogger.   But even my two youngest kids, who take the usual young persons' stance toward adult preococupations, have exerted some energy to encourage me to slack off, and to lighten up about the possible downward slide.

I may attempt to make up the missing posts--and I may not.  Time, and personal energy, will tell.

This is not going to be a season of "business as usual," whatever that was.

One for the History Books

 













On this dark day in Wisconsin's history, I am in mourning.   

In the last twenty-four hours, Republican legislators rammed through an alternative bill, after weeks of an impasse over the Governor's exceedingly unpopular proposed budget "repair" bill.  Because of the blitzkrieg nature of the passage of this bill, which stripped public workers of rights proudly held for over fifty years, no one seems to be entirely certain of what else is in the bill.  It seems likely that many of the things I care most deeply about and have worked hard for will be taking a serious hit.  Like health care for the poor and uninsured.  Like public transit, which would give low income workers in my community access to jobs.  Like health care for seniors, and the disabled.


When I woke up in the middle of the night last night, too angry and said and frustrated to sleep, I found a fellowship of the sleepless on Facebook, where we raged and commiserated and plotted.  Today I set a personal record for the number of separate demonstrations attended in one day--three. 


The next few days will bring more rallies, more work, and my first involvement with a recall effort.  In the course of this struggle, my state senator has hewed firmly to the Republican party line, going along with every quasi-legal maneuver, and mouthing the standard arguments.  On a recent radio program, I heard her say that she had never been more certain that she and her party were on the right course.  This, despite a process now ringed by police in riot gear, and a citizen in a wheelchair being forcibly removed from the building where she sought to be heard by her elected officials on a matter so important to her that she had been there for several hours.  This senator and I need a divorce.  Our differences are beyond irreconcilable.

It is hard not to be drawn into the pitched battle going on around me.  Yet I am uncomfortable with how we seem to be thinking and feeling about each other in Wisconsin, and beyond.  I am not really the Braveheart type.  I am clearly a partisan, but a quietly critical one, as I observe the contradictions within our patchy coalition.


For tonight, I need to retreat, to rest, to quiet the chants reverberating in my dreams.  Tired, but not defeated yet, is what democracy looks like tonight.

Done for the Week: Life in the Midst of Change

This is the beginning of Week 4 of the movement in Wisconsin to resist implementation of the new conservative agenda; to turn back the effort to crush organized labor and dismantle the social safety net for our most vulnerable citizens.  Again, not much time for everyday matters.

Here's what I got accomplished, somehow.

Done for the Week:  Feb. 28-Mar. 6

1. Continued off-season race training, continuing to be distracted by earth continuing to shift beneath my feet in Wisconsin; biked once, ran once (supplemented by lots of walking in demonstrations)
2. Finished The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder, by Rebecca Wells
3. Gave significant volunteer support to transitioning nonprofit; major I.T. contribution
4. Worked my two part-time jobs
5. Published 5 blog posts
6. Meditated 4 times
7. Got my husband and one son to the gym with me, once each
8. Attended meeting of committee to hire new organizer, and convened subcommittee to finalize interview questions
9. Met with UU Coming of Age mentee
10. Had a lunch date with my husband
11. Watched our 2 teams play 2 basketball games, with my son and my husband
12. Attended 2 demonstrations, 1 locally, and 1 in Madison; two large local rallies; and one breakfast with Jesse Jackson
13. Attended two yoga classes
14. Spent way too much time online, following political uprising in my state, "working" Facebook, Twitter, and political sites, and updating my organization's website to reflect on-the-ground scheduling 
15. Took one daytime nap, and got to bed "early" twice

Because we are going to be engaged in this project of democracy for the foreseeable future, I believe that the most important thing I did last week was to recognize my fatigue level, and to begin to address it with more rest. 


I did not do as well with my focus goal for the week, which was "to meditate daily, no matter what."  I continue to struggle with making time for meditation.  Applying last week's wisdom, I want to acknowledge my progress, however.  This week's number is one better than last week's.

Next week's focus goal--again--will be to meditate daily, no matter what. 

Done for the Week: The Revolution Ate My Agenda

We are living in amazing times, in Wisconsin, and in so many other places in this country and in the world.  Not much time for business as usual.   

This past week, I managed to squeeze the following in:

Done for the Week:  Feb. 21-27

1. Continued off-season race training, still distracted by earth still shifting beneath my feet in Wisconsin; biked once, ran once (supplemented by lots of walking in demonstrations)
2. Finished How to Calm Down:  Three Deep Breaths to Peace of Mind, by Fred L. Miller
3. Gave significant volunteer support to transitioning nonprofit
4. Worked my two part-time jobs
5. Published 5 blog posts
6. Wrote 2 Gratitude Journal entries
7. Meditated 3 times
8. Attended Issues Assembly
9. Attended Social Justice Committee meeting at my church
10. Celebrated quasi-anniversary with the man I married on Leap Day
11. Had a lunch date with my husband
12. Watched our 2 teams play 2 basketball games, with my son and my husband
13. Attended 4 demonstrations, 1 locally, and 3 in Madison
14. Attended one yoga class
15. Spent way too much time online, following political uprising in my state, "working" Facebook, Twitter, and political sites, and updating my organization's website to reflect on-the-ground scheduling 
16. Continued emailing with my brother

It seems to me that the most important thing that I "got done" this last week was to participate in democracy, in defense of social justice.  Sounds quite lofty, when in fact I was only one of tens of thousands in my state alone mobilized to resist some devastating proposals and powerful corporate interests.  But my actions represented a huge investment of my time and energy, and claimed a priority reflective of the magnitude of things at issue.  


As this struggle goes on, as it appears that it will for some time, the challenge will be to develop some kind of maintenance strategy, spelling ourselves and keeping our strength up for the long-term, tending to our lives and our common dreams.  That is a lesson I am ready to learn, one that I've needed for a long time. 

Last week's focus goal was "to meditate daily, no matter what."  For some reason, some Blogger glitch-of-the-day won't let me highlight item 7 above, but even without green highlighting, it is easy to see that I fell short of that goal.  Again, I learn that I have the most difficulty making time to meditate when it is the most important, and most needed.  


Someone close to me, who shall remain nameless, is currently in the midst of quitting smoking.  Living in the penumbra of this epic battle provides me the object lesson I need.  One day at a time, and give ourselves credit for progress, no matter how small.  So I'm concentrating on the fact that I meditated three times last week, not zero times--rather than three times, not seven, as planned.  My meditation cushion is (nearly) half occupied, not half empty.

Next week's focus goal will be to meditate daily, no matter what. 

This (Too) is What Democracy Looks Like

The revolution is seriously messing with my to do list. 

In the last six days, I have been to the capitol twice, and spent two late afternoons in our city's downtown, carrying signs and yelling with others who share my outrage at our Governor's far-reaching proposals supposedly aimed at dealing with a budget "crisis" that some have called "ginned up."  As the world watches, and momentum builds, many of us living at this epicenter of would-be Republican world-changing are experiencing our own "new normal."  It looks like this.

Wake to an alarm set an hour or two earlier than usual.  Dress in layers, to accommodate indoor and outdoor protest venues, in the alternating blizzard and thaw conditions of late February in Wisconsin.  Drink enough coffee to wake up, but not so much that nature will call inconveniently while you are manning the barricades.  Travel light.  In my case, this has meant turning my many-pocketed down coat into a Captain Kangaroo-style purse alternative.  Cell phone.  Driver's License (in case of arrest).  Credit card (in case of starvation).  Cough drops, to sooth the chanted-out throat.  A small book fits in one outside pocket.  I have not yet had time to read it.

To sign, or not to sign?  Using mittened hands to defend a placard from the wind and constant jostling can compromise circulation.  If you need a sign, and cannot afford (the time to make) one, a sign will be provided for you, courtesy of the many groups supplying ready-made slogans, or those who have abandoned theirs in order to enter the capitol, where signs on sticks are prohibited.  But if you do make your own, you want it to be worthy of the competition.  Sign witticism is a spinoff art form of these "days of (out)rage."

On some days, you determine that you can't be spared from your appointed rounds, and they start the revolution without you.  You might as well be there.  You steal whatever time you can manage to indulge your new obsession, scrounging scraps of news from Facebook, Twitter, political sites, email, TV video feeds, blogs and online magazines and newspapers.  You pass on what you learn, posting "scoops," "breaking news," useful information, and the occasional opinion or snarky remark.  Your eyes glaze over, and your head hurts.  You fall asleep watching the interminable assembly debates on amendments, substantive and otherwise, conjured by Democrats desperate to halt the process and to salvage what they can from the expected eventual outcome.

You wake with a tension headache, to add to your protest-related maladies--aching joints from uninterrupted standing, hoarseness, etc.  You cram your former life into the spaces between rallies, abbreviating workouts, grabbing meals on the run, turning a blind eye to the domestic disorder resulting from neglect.  You field Facebook messages like this one:  

Share! We'd like brief emails NOW from WI residents, especially
non-Madison residents, who've made the trek to the Capitol to protest
this bill. Submit your brief message tonight sharing what you'd like
Assembly Republicans to hear & know as they prepare to vote on this
...bill. Your message might be read outloud from the Assembly floor!See More

or this one:

If you've been in the Capitol this week...

...You Should be Heard!   Assembly Democrats have been fighting around the clock to defeat the Governor's budget "repair" bill. Since Gov. Walker & legislative Republicans have shut down the public's opportunity to be heard on this unpcredented bill, Rep....

or this one:

[friend's name] knows its really hard - but please, if you can, keep going to madison and get your friends or family or someone to go too! We need to replenish those intrepid protestors!!!

[all spelling/typing original to Facebook!]

You burn through hours signing online petitions, calling and emailing legislators, and making contributions to the "Fab 14"--whose paychecks are being withheld, whose homes are being dogged by state troopers, and whose personal and campaign resources must be dwindling as they enter week two of their enforced "vacation" in balmy northern Illinois (where one legislator today suggested they should be subject to Illinois state income tax while sojourning in the Land of Lincoln.  The state nicknamed after our illustrious 16th president who, as everyone surely knows by now, once leapt from the window of his 19th century Illinois statehouse to avoid a vote.)  You meet with church members to craft a statement against the proposed legislation.  You are assigned to draft a statement for your employing social justice organization.

Much is happening, in this new normal state, but not much is getting done.  Both sides are dug in, it would seem, for the long haul.  I imagine we'll get better at this as we go.

This weekend, my husband and I plan to celebrate our anniversary at a sleepover in the capitol.  New, certainly.  Normal?  Hardly. 

Procrastinating 101--Postponed Until Tomorrow

I have been up for 16-1/2 hours.  11-1/2 of those hours were spent travelling to Madison and back and participating in demonstrations there.  Another 3 were spent travelling to my church and back, hammering out a statement opposing our Governor's budget bill and planning a teach-in on the bill.  Another hour was spent catching up on news of the day.

No time and no energy are left to write my intended post today. 

Tomorrow, I will consider what Joseph Ferrari says about how we procrastinators are our own worst enemy.  Tonight, I feel that if this is so, Scott Walker and his cronies are giving our enemy selves a run for our money.  

Actually, they are easily expressing more enmity for my fellow citizens and me than we could possibly summon up against ourselves.  

As I will need my energy for the struggle ahead, I am going to bed now.  Tomorrow--that best friend of the procrastinator--is a good time to do today's other work.

Back From the Jungle

A week ago yesterday morning, I was on a plane, traveling to my appointed rendezvous with lions.  (See my previous post On the Road Again. . . With Trepidation.)  At the urging of my children (who seem to be doing their share of urging lately, at least of me), I decided to suspend all other commitments and activities while at the three-day Ntosake training, including blogging.  So I have not yet reported on the experience.

As I wrote earlier, the Gamaliel Foundation identifies the term "Ntosake" as "South African," and cites its meaning as "She who walks with lions and carries her own things."  My quick and dirty research reveals some minor disagreement about the word's source, and spelling.  One site claims that the writer Ntozake Shange*, named Paulette Williams at birth, took her chosen name from the Zulu, “Ntozake” meaning “she who comes with her own things” and “Shange” meaning “she who walks like a lion.”  Contemporary American Women Poets:  An A-to-Z Guide agrees about the meaning of her name, but doesn't specify the source.  Black Baby Names.org gives the meaning of Ntosake as "She who walks with lions."  Proz.com:  The Translation Workplace, like the Gamaliel usage, combines both meanings as pertaining to Ntosake alone, and speculates that its origin is Swahili.   

But whatever the linguistic parsing I might be distracted to apply as I work up my nerve to write about my three days with the women of Ntosake, the real question is what happened there, and how it changed me, or didn't.  


I spent a couple of days online searching for "cover" as I pondered what to say.  I ran into all sorts of stories about the Gamaliel Foundation, its ties to Barack Obama, and its supposed "whackjob" politics and ideology.  None of that is of particular interest to me, since I have been working within "the network" for a number of years now, along with members of my congregation, and those right-wing concerns are not mine.


I was, however, intrigued by some fairly deeply buried insider controversy about the training methods of the organization.  And this is because of my reactions to the approach taken with me and the thirty-some women with whom I attended the most recent Ntosake training.


I had managed for several years to avoid "weeklong," the theoretically more comprehensive program in which all Gamaliel-affiliated leaders are expected to participate.  I have a background as a paid community organizer, extending over a four-year period in my twenties.  My social work undergraduate program and my master's in urban and regional planning with a concentration in social planning both included extensive coursework in community organization and the Saul Alinsky model that is the basis of Gamaliel Foundation congregation-based organizing.  And I have been working with my local organization for years, and been in positions of significant leadership.  Additionally, my life circumstances during this period precluded investing the money, and more particularly the time required to travel to attend.  My organizer gave me a "pass."

But Ntosake takes place over a long weekend; my life has changed a bit; I was invited to go along by a good friend.  And I was just plain curious.  I was especially caught by the notion of training designed by women, and for women, to empower us as women.  


My enthusiasm for the event foundered, however, on the rocks of agitation. 

As practiced within Gamaliel, and other Alinsky-inspired community organizing groups, agitation involves confrontation and challenge, in an attempt to draw out an individual's "self-interest," and to push her or him to attain "clarity," as a prerequisite to building a powerful public life.  All good, yes?

In notes for the brochure for the October 2010 Supported Life Institute's 24th Annual Conference for which she was a keynote speaker, Mary Gonzalez, Western Regional Director of the Gamaliel Foundation, and hands-down the best of my Ntosake trainers, had this to say about agitation and its intended fruit:

Frederick Douglass, the famous abolitionist, said: “If there is no
struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom & yet
depreciate agitation … want crops without plowing up the ground, they
want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the
awful roar of its many waters … Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and it never will.” 

The purpose of your path must be to build power and make a
demand that will bend the political will to do what is just.

Rev. Dennis Jacobsen, in his book Doing Justice:  Congregations and Community Organizing, writes of his memorably uncomfortable public agitation by Greg Galluzzo, Gamaliel's director, and how it ultimately strengthened his work, and made him more effective.  But he also points out that

Relationship is a prerequisite of agitation.  I have no right to agitate people I do not know.  If I don't know what their self-interests are, who they are, what potentiality they have, I am in no position to agitate them to live out their vision for their lives. . . An agitator is trying to create community, build an organization, raise up leaders.  

And further,

Agitation does not leave people hanging.  It honors the valuable gifts that they bring.  It summons them to release those gifts in service of their vision for their lives.  And it connects them to a community, such as a church or a congregation-based community organization, where their gifts can be actualized and their leadership developed.

Still,

sine qua non of saintliness.  It is also a difficult skill to be learned by those who enjoy running over other people.  A balancing act is required here.  As Che Guevara said, "One must be hard, but without losing tenderness."

Suffice it to say that some of my experience last weekend, and that of my sisters in the circle, fell a bit short of  Che's standard.  Some of our trainers might do well to review Rev. Jacobsen's text.  And I would venture to say that most, if not all of us, are still digesting what took place.  (See Eric Fretz's overall favorable account of his time at Gamaliel weeklong training for description of typical interactions.) 

The claim is made that this training approach, which some in my acquaintance have likened to tactics abandoned long ago by Marxist-Leninist cadres, the Black Panthers, and Wernard Erhard's EST training, is responsible for the substantial growth of women's leadership within Gamaliel, and in other national organizations. The jury is still out on my cohort of women.  I have reason to question how forthright we will be in sharing our Ntosake stories.

I did bring home a clearer sense of where I want to go in my organization, and what I will have to change in myself to get there.  And a couple of pretty deep scratches from my time with the lions.

* Shange is best known for her choreopoem "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf," recently adapted into a motion picture by Tyler Perry.

Happy Earth Day, Green Procrastinators!

On the first Earth Day I can remember--which was, in fact, the first Earth Day ever--we were already running behind.  Waayyyy behind.   If the experts are right, and Al Gore deserved his Nobel prize, we just might save the planet if all of us started making radical changes in our habits yesterday.  


So why do I have trouble making room on my to do lists for this oh-so-important concern?  Why is the earth itself just one more ball to juggle, in my clumsy circus act?


One problem is that I often feel I am losing ground in the short-run.  When it comes down to choosing what I will concentrate on, on any given day, I have trouble thinking out far enough to take my celestial home into account. 


Another issue for me has been the disconnect between those of us focused on social justice work and the green movement.  Van Jones, author of The Green Collar Economy:  How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems and founder of Green for All, dedicated to "building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty," recognized this divide and has been working to bridge it.  He was the featured speaker at the annual banquet of my social justice organization--before the book, and before his short-lived appointment as Obama's Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation.  He inspired us to begin to work for green jobs as part of the solution to our city's crisis of black male joblessness.  This large-scale green concern made my agenda.


But at home, I am not fully "walking the talk" that has been part of my discourse for decades.  More like crawling, or limping the talk.  I do recycle pretty religiously, and have stepped up my efforts in the last year to include discarded mail.  I keep my thermostat set low in the winter and high in the summer.  I have switched almost all our light bulbs to eco-friendly CFLs, and I energetically fulfill my family role as the light police.  I try to bike to nearby locations, though my increasingly manic schedule has crowded out much of the time I used to give to biking.  I combine errands whenever possible.  I supply my household and wardrobe extensively from resale stores, rummage sales, and the occasional curbside discards.  


But I haven't gotten around to re-establishing the composting effort abandoned when my first husband moved out, a couple of children and several step-children ago.  I still print and collect too much "hard copy."  I am lagging in the default mode of paper bills from too many creditors and service providers.  I bought reusable cloth bags for shopping, but almost always forget to bring them along to the stores.   I leave my computer plugged in and drawing power for a large part of most days.  Ditto my cell phone charger.  I am often too cheap to buy reusable batteries and too disorganized to use the ones I have purchased.  (Why does it feel suddenly like I'm kneeling in a dark curtained space, waiting for absolution and a hefty penance?)


I could go on.  But the point is not self-congratulation, or confession.  I can do better.  At least a little better.  And if incrementalism is all we are capable of, it is preferable to doing nothing, in my opinion.  So today, after 40 years of Earth Day, I am going to commit myself to getting my bags to the store.  Storing them in the car, in plain sight, should help.  When that change is consolidated, I will move on.  There are some decent lists of things we can all do, small and large, available at Planet Green and SimpleMom. 


I'm pretty sure I won't go so far as one green-zealot I read about on a list I was sent.  This passionate planet-saver, in company with claimants to diminished shampooing and shared bathwater, touted his/her reclamation of food particles from dental floss for reconsumption as a green achievement.  In retrospect, maybe it was meant to be humorous, but sometimes we people with a cause can be awfully grim in its pursuit, so I've never really been sure. . .