Occupying our Local Governments

This article lays out some of the basic strategies of the Community Right's movement. One of them is to create local laws that end up breaking state and federal laws. As it stands right now state and federal laws create a ceiling in which citizens who wish to improve upon those laws by making better laws at the local level cannot because, well, it's against the law. In other words, state and federal law trump local law. It's governing from the top-down instead of from the bottom-up. That's not how I imagine democracy. And that's why we fought the American Revolution: The central authority (The King) refused "to recognize local laws enacted as an exercise of the people’s right to local self-government."(Mazda)

"We must use our cities and towns to drive upwards against state and federal frameworks of law that protect decision-making authority by the one percent. It means that, in each of the cities where we live, we need to start working together to define the rights we need and then use those municipal structures to obtain them."--Thomas Linzey

Bucky Fuller and Breaking The Law

Buckminster Fuller once said, "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

Under our current system of law you have to break the law to build the new model Fuller is talking about. In other words, they've made sustainability illegal.

The Box of Allowable Activism

This is a very important video describing how We The People can step out of the box of allowable activism, quit participating in what Jane Anne Morris calls our Democracy Theme Park, and stand up for our right to govern ourselves at the local level.

You're The Only Daddy That'll Walk The Line

It's close to 8 P.M. We just got done having dinner. The Beatles are playing through the Bose. Most of the lights are on in the house. And Hayden (5 yrs. old) is performing is usual evening ritual; he's naked, making every sound imaginable, and spinning like a whirling dervish in the middle of the kitchen. As I pass by him on my way to the sink with a handful of dirty dishes he stops in mid-spin, looks up at me, and says, "Dad, pick me up." I'm physically tired. Just like the night before that, and the night before that, back as far as I can remember. I say to him, "you're getting too big to be picked up, H. Pretty soon I won't be doing this anymore." He stands there undeterred staring at me in silence with his arms raised. He won't take no for an answer. So I set the dishes down on the counter, reach over and put each hand under each of his armpits, bend my knees, and heave him up into my arms. He looks at me and says, "You're the only daddy that'll walk the line. I love you." Then he gave me a kiss on the cheek. I smiled, told him I felt the same way, set him down, and he went on spinning.


When the kid has got something to say he says it.

PUSSYWILLOWS!?!?

My phone chimes letting me know that I have a new message. I get the car stopped, put the mail in the box, grab the phone off the dash, and open the message. It says, "PUSSYWILLOWS!?!?"

It's Saturday, so we're both working the mail-route. She's got the smartphone and I've got the measily tracfone. What takes me seconds to type a sentence on the former takes me minutes on the latter. I respond with, "wow." Hoping she doesn't send me another text. A minute later the phone chimes again. I get the car stopped at the next box, reach up on the dash, grab the phone and open the message. It says, "Nature is out of balance...:-)"* I laugh out loud.

If you've seen The Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp you'll understand why I laughed. And if you know anything about my wife's sometimes unexpected subtle sense of humor you'd see that it came out in that moment. And that's one reason out of many why I love her.

*The pussywillows usually don't flower around here until some time in March.

Is That Oak?

I get home from work. It's late. I'm tense and tired. It's been a long day. I've got to get a fire going in the masonry stove before we sit down to eat. So I get the doors open to the stove. Turn around and reach over to grab a stick of wood. Standing there is Sophia (2 yrs. old). Before I can ask her for the stick she fires three quick, rhythmic questions off at me:

"Is that oak? Is that oak? Is that oak?"

It sounded like bird song, it was that rhythmic. I smiled proudly knowing that I didn't know what a stick of red oak firewood looked like until I was atleast 18. She's ahead the game in that regard. And damn cute in the process. Needless to say the tension lifted.

Under a Government?

This morning my teenage son and I started out with a question. Do we still imagine ourselves as living under a government? I know that we used to live under a King. He was granted authority to rule from the divine. And our Revolutionary War of Independence was fought to get rid of this idea. And now our government receives its authority to govern not from the divine but from us, the sovereign. But do we still imagine ourselves living under it like we once did under the King? I want to say it doesn't seem that way anymore. The tyrant is no longer the King or The Government but the ideas of the mind perhaps. Perhaps a good move for us is to get clear who the real tyrant is.

I don't know, just rambling. Feel free to add thoughts.

Lucky Pieces of Mud

My teenage son and I have a daily ritual in the winter: We split firewood together (except when I'm called in to deliver mail). He does most of the talking and I do most of the listening while splitting. Over half the time the conversations are focused on myth, philosophy, religion (This is a guy thing, I think) or whatever he's reading at the time. The other day, he broke the silence between us with this statement: "Dad, did you know that all we really are is just lucky pieces of mud that got to sit up." He chuckled. I laughed my ass off.

Thank you Kurt Vonnegut.