Sitting in a window seat at Coffee O in Falmouth, feeling detached and subdued, a calm I haven\u2019t felt for a while. I need to get out of my house more, out of my neighborhood, out of my town actually. Not necessarily permanently, but certainly regularly. It was a pleasant drive out here, mostly what\u2019s left of decent back roads, unencumbered by the hi-speed, erratic drivers that seem to rule the roads more and more here in recent years. It\u2019s like everyone\u2019s in a rush, to keep up, get ahead of the next curve, whatever, and the constant exposure to that constant rushing has taken its toll on me, on my spirit. I\u2019m a human designed for a slower, more thoughtful and deliberate pace.\u00a0
I come from rural roots, farmers and laborers mostly and I grew up in the analog era of the Industrial Age before Big Tech and instant tele-connection made dial-up telephone connection virtually obsolete \u2014 my dad grew up in a city, yes, the son of immigrants, but within Boston\u2019s smaller sub-urban\u201cneighborhood\u201d cities before they became plastic, boxy, uniform sprawl. He remembers when Somerville still had woods when he was a boy. His parents came from Irish farm folk, a housemaid and a formerly imprisoned member of the IRA.
There was no interstate, Mass Pike, and all the other highway systems that carved up the land \u2014 supposedly in the name of what? Convenience? To separate us from each other? Cutting through our neighborhoods, they\u2019ve certainly accomplished that.\u00a0
I\u2019ve been doing more armchair navigating, looking for my North Star, and finding it in the books I so love to read. I\u2019ve been doing a lot of reading \u2014 and \u201clistening\u201d to what people have to say \u2014 dreaming of a world of possibilities, of hope, of light \u2014 despite what feels, at times, like a relentless encroaching darkness.\u00a0
I find so much encouragement when I look to historical worker and class movements from past eras, as well as present-day initiatives, creatives, outliers, and other changemakers that are already shining \u00a0light and hope in what can otherwise feel like ever-looming gloom and doom. I\u2019ve been learning about the Black Panther movement, Murray Bookchin, the Greek Solidarity movement, municipalism, confederal systems, mutual aid, Rojava, and a whole lot more beyond the narrow frame of a capitalist \u201cdemocracy\u201d always teetering on the edge of some form of totalitarianism, be it right or left. I\u2019m seeing light beyond a seeming tunnel of darkness. Perhaps you too would like to chase some of these light workers, follow the glimmers of distant beacons. They\u2019re out there, and I aim to find as many as I can. Here\u2019s a few I\u2019ve been plugging into lately to keep my own light charging.<\/p>\r\n
Audio and Print Media:<\/b> Substack Essays, Newsletters:<\/b> Let\u2019s start talking to each other again:<\/b> Sitting in a window seat at Coffee O in Falmouth, feeling detached and subdued, a calm I haven\u2019t felt for a while. I need to get out of my house more, out of my neighborhood, out of my town actually. Not necessarily permanently, but certainly regularly. It was a pleasant drive out here, mostly what\u2019s … Continue reading “Subdued”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[631],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2330"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2349,"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2330\/revisions\/2349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Dissent Magazine<\/a> \u2014 municipalism, Union Hall, & more
Trillbilly Workers Party<\/a> \u2014 Podcast
Appalshop<\/a>
Creatives, initiatives, outliers and change makers:<\/b>
Earth Bridge Community Land Trust<\/a> \u2014 I\u2019m a huge fan of community land trusts
Rock Steady Farm<\/a>
Sweet Freedom Farm<\/a>
Soulfire Farm<\/a>
Murray Bookchin<\/a> \u2014 wish I\u2019d known he was a neighbor once upon a time
Firestorm Coop<\/a>
Solidarity<\/a> \u2014 mutual aid can extend beyond disaster<\/p>\r\n
OK, Boomer<\/a>
All We Can Save Project<\/a>
Supernuclear<\/a>\u2014 On co-living and creating communities
Already read, or on my Bookshelf, and in the Queue:<\/b>
Lifehouse<\/a> by Adam Greenfield
The Dawn of Everything<\/a> by David Graeber & David Wengrow
The Garden Against Time<\/a> by Olivia Laing
Believers<\/a> by Lisa Wells
\u2019Hood Wellness<\/a> by Tamela Julia Gordon<\/p>\r\n
The friendliest social network you never heard of<\/a>
Just Launched<\/a>\u2014 A how-to on LOCAL digital community building
\u2026and a perfect example from \u2026 where else? Vermont, of course:
Front Porch Forum<\/a>
<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"