2021-4-26 Full Moon Zoom . . .
. . . was another meaningful experience for us, full of lots of connections and sharing !
Below are some of the ideas, links and inspiration from the evening together.
Emergent Themes
- Overlapping Synchronicities: Bees, Teachers, especially “Art”. Gentleness & Compassion. Nature and Healing.
- Our Synchronicities & overlapping was like creating a structure bonded together …
- Jack added some “finishing mud to our Zoom hut” – by responding to the sharing of each participant.
2021-4-
Participants: 14 including co-hosts, Deanne & Jack.
Miriam Marcus
- Returned to in-person art teaching after 2-week pause. Brown City, MI (the thumb). Many people are sick and not being serious about what’s happening. Very chaotic in the classroom. High energy (but not from doing art). Getting toward the end of the year, at which point things begin to fall apart, especially for the seniors
- Looking forward to redirecting the energy. Energy is dissipating.
- Hoping for warm weather to draw and enjoy nature at the same time.
- Her students making clay projects, and someone has been making sexual anatomy. What to do?
- Let’s brainstorm ideas for the art class, so things are expressive & in balance for all.
- Inspiration: went into her studio to do some painting. You don’t know until you’re doing it what it is and then when you’re not doing it, you forget what it is you’re doing.
Delta
- Thankful for the positive thoughts and assistance with her potential cob stairwell.
- Self-care, soul integrity. Cancer, breakdowns in the integrity of your cellular structure (or even deeper), integrity in morality. Let’s work for nature, divine nature, the structural integrity of being a cell in this greater world.
- Still working to cob the staircase. Notebook is detailed and colorful.
- Art class was the refuge of my life!
- A penis is a penis. Vaginas too! Sexual education is deficient. Who knows the answer to that? Kids are gonna be kids. Support and embrace them. Let’s laugh with them.
- Creation is an innate ability in every living thing: flowers, caves, mushrooms, etc.
Patricia Kolon
- Connection. Delighted to meet with the Great Lakes Bioneers Detroit committee and share ideas generated from last months’ zoom. They did not quite get to the content of their next community engagement because they were still working on choosing a time and place.
- Just finished distributing compost that had been dropped off at her house.
- Planted seeds on Friday through today (carrots, cilantro, etc.)
- Feeling a bit of sadness because she will not be able to pursue beekeeping. Saturday there was a course “sweet on detroit” and it was the introduction to beekeeping. The cost of beekeeping is pretty expensive. The place where she would have put the beehive would not have had enough sun anyway. About $500 for everything and bees $200 per year. Flowers can attract wild bees! Find the wild honey.
- Massage therapist who hasn’t worked since last March. Financially humbling.
- Okay… what do they need? Re the art clay situation (Miriam) What do those penises and/or the people making them need? What do they need?
Peggy C.
- Gratitude for more understanding and strength. For spring. Grateful for health at 77yo. Doing a lot of interesting reading. Making good connections. Life is engaging right now. The Theatre of War by Bryan Doerries. Through Greek tragedy, anyone can find empathy and can empathize. It becomes easier to understand the trauma that people feel in domestic abuse, war, end of life, etc. There is no duality, rather complexity.
- I have a great life, a great backyard, and seven cats!
RE Hogan
- Outdoors at a picnic table and the birds are singing
- For June, travel to CO (near Pike’s Peak, CO springs, etc.). Ubuntu contributionism, michael tellinger, one small town, project at the southern border in CO (utopian, one small town approach). To AZ, for 2 weeks to the Apache national forest to explore the land ethic Aldo Leopold. The wolf story. http://www.uky.edu/OtherOrgs/AppalFor/Readings/leopold.pdf
- https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-dec-13-la-oe-gibson13-2009dec13-story.html
- https://www.aldoleopold.org/teach-learn/green-fire-film/about-green-fire/
- Solar Roof Technology. Land acquisition and preservation work surrounding regenerating forest and biotopes.
Jubilant Jo Clayson
- Moon is full. The nights have been clear. Some nights it’s gold, some pink, some orange. All the shades of color of the moon.
- Violets, heal-all, mayapples are in blossom all over the forest.
- Mayapples are in their closed-umbrellas phase
- Peepers are making a lot of noise. Jo tries to see them, but they become silent and disappear as Jo approaches.
- Plant sale each spring, and she was able to stop by and get 30 blueberry brushes.
- Stopped at the food co-op. Like many co-ops. Lots of big containers with plastic bags. Jo puts them into glass jars to encourage the food to keep.
- Days down at unity park. Bad leak because of frozen pipes. Shop Vac lost its wand, but Jo got stuck. So she hollered until other folks brought her a ladder.
- Jo has only left home two times this month.
- Unity park sent the email to the architect, mason, et al. and Jo.
- Jo left too many weeds (volunteer plants she likes to forage) in her garden.
- Alternatives to violence project helping inmates, trauma, schools.
- Gratitude and joy even in the things that are somewhat distressing worldwide. There are many like that to be distressed about. Where Jo is now spiritually, physically: every day is a blessing. Grateful to be in this place in her life.
Brenda Rose – heard about us through her sister, Amy Sitsler
- Honored and thrilled to drop in here from another world
- Connectedness, synchronicity
- Portland, Oregon from Erie, PA. Lives in RV since June this year
- when COVID hit, both of her businesses went under.
- Upon giving at brick and mortar home, Brenda comes to realize that she never wants to live in a house again.
- This RV is the queen bee. She has an internet presence as the Queen Bee RV on TikTok
- Planning to make a cross country trip probably into the fall.
- Used to be a master gardener. Life could not be more different. Life can be reinvented as you need to or want to. It’s curious and beautiful and fun!
- Getting to know herself. Photographer full-time for the past 15 years. She was not an artist because she was never vulnerable. Come from a place of joy and gratitude. This has been the lesson from the last nine months.
Sarah Stevenson
- Still on a high from queen bee (Being a housewife and master gardener in NY). Well, Sarah spent her past few days contacting her very closest friends, and she barely recognizes them at all. One friend moved to the middle of the desert without a bathroom or a kitchen. She’s leading dances of universal peace, and she’s learned the guitar. She’s reinvented. The world does not weigh heavily upon her anymore.
- Sarah is half-tree. 45 degree slope hill is in wildflowers. Sarah will be THE master gardener shortly in Pittsburgh. Late to the call because there was a neighborhood coordination to have trees and butterflies instead of lawns!
- Re the Art Class concern…Transform the penis into a bigger idea: a cactus, a salamander. Take a simple form until it grows and differentiates.
- Marshall Rosenberg: create something good and wonderful out of something tacky
Bonnie ~~~
- Deanne gathers such wonderful, lively, interesting people around her. Let’s spend a month with each person individually! It’s inspiring.
- Lesson in vermiculture this year. Looked for a worm-sitter. Vermicompost is lively after potential tragedy with worm-sitter. An easy way to interact with nature.
- Housemate. 7 years ago, Bonnie got a house that accommodates several people. Usually 3 housemates at a time. Housing market is at its peak, but the housemates were there, and Bonnie was not about to kick someone out.
- The nomadic life is very intriguing to her.
- Coming to learn more about blood root.
- Re the Clay art situation: Make it into something more complex.
- Make something creative that is your own life expression.
Kim Patrick
- Awareness since COVID. One woman’s brain injury is another woman’s healing. Being alone in the house. YouTube is wonderful, but to have all human connection be YouTube was difficult. To be secluded caused some healing. She is quiet inside. The anxiety and hurriedness has calmed. Kim has slowed down to an “Amish” level.
- Being in school is helpful too. Really animated → really quiet. Very different classroom environment. Kim doesn’t inspire the students. She lets them inspire themselves.
- To the student who responded that she couldn’t make it to class: Thanks for letting me know that you’re ok. It helps my heart.
- School is not business as usual.
- Medical careers class substitute. Play-doh class. English 9th grade repeaters class. Comprehension C class (low learners)
- No substitutes anymore. She fills in for absent teachers during her prep hour.
- Inspiring: checking the garden every day. All the little orphans on their deathbeds. She’s been doing her best to revive them, and they’re all coming back swimmingly. Kim was late to the meeting because she had to rescue succulents from Lowe’s. Find a way to bring nature inside.
Mary
- Special hello to Deanne. Missing and loving Deanne. Part of Strawbale Studio and stayed with Deanne. Mother (Denise Thomas) invited. Went home to Mississippi at the beginning of COVID. Then returned to Chicago. Since then, moved into apartment building with friends. One of the friends has taken on the task of learning to fix everything in the building.
- Seedlings growing in the basement under the lights brings life. Ground cover and beautiful trees.
- Went down to sit on a bench at the beach.
- So glad things aligned so that Mary could arrive and hear our stories.
- Mother is Denise Thomas.
Denise Thomas
- New greenhouse. Growing things. Growth every day learning new things about the medical field. She is a nurse.
- The little southern lady. She works remotely, so they can’t see her, but they can hear her.
- Denise makes her own humming bird feed. So many hummingbirds!
Marshall Stephens
- Appeared and then disappeared.
Deanne
- This call is alive in me and enlivening me! Enjoying Spring. Where am I going? What am I doing? What’s next? What’s dangerous about this?
- Long walk (couple miles) in a nature area with a friend whom Deanne had not seen in a long time. She is studying spiritual environmental writing. Starting a new part of herself.
- Spotted a pileated woodpecker. Over one foot tall. Bloodroot spotted! Trout lily. Red bud. Dogs and hiking people! Skunk cabbage renamed to spring majesty!
- Tour yesterday for 4 guests….Two people are living on the land in an RV after downsizing their life. Levi invited over a fellow teacher, and her friend & two daughters. It’s a rebirth! It’s a party!
- Lots of foraging. Hop shoots for the first time. Yummy! Daylilies for the first year. Dandelion, mallow leaves, wild garlic.
- Philosophizing along the line of compassion.
- Reflection: Alternatives to violence that Jo talked about. Needs awareness. As negative as things can appear, we meet needs even when engaging in negativity.
- What do the art students need? Empowerment, socialization, procreation,play.
- Also needed is safety and comfort for students & teachers.
Jack
- Classroom Management by Michael Linsin
- Understanding tragedy & trauma through The Greek Drama: Theater of War.
- One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka
- A coordinated cob hut of gratitude
Potential Outcomes:
- A Cob Class – in person / online to help Delta create a Cob Stairwell.
- A form for folks to report their Covid experiences. Who is getting covid?
