But you know, I’m not scared by any of this. I regret the suffering, I know it’s big trouble — but it promises massive change and a massive change was inevitable. The way we ran the world was wrong.

I’ve never seen so much panic around me, but panic is the last thing on my mind. My mood is eager impatience. I want to see our best, most creative, best-intentioned people in world society directly attacking our worst problems. I’m bored with the deceit. I’m tired of obscurantism and cover-ups. I’m disgusted with cynical spin and the culture war for profit. I’m up to here with phony baloney market fundamentalism. I despise a prostituted society where we put a dollar sign in front of our eyes so we could run straight into the ditch.

The cure for panic is action. Coherent action is great; for a scatterbrained web society, that may be a bit much to ask. Well, any action is better than whining. We can do better.

I’m not gonna tell you what to do. I’m an artist, I’m not running for office and I don’t want any of your money. Just talk among yourselves. Grow up to the size of your challenges. Bang out some code, build some platforms you don’t have to duct-tape any more, make more opportunities than you can grab for your little selves, and let’s get after living real lives.

Go read the whole thing.

I really admire what Mikey and Wendy are doing at Green Acres.

I went to hear Natalie Goldberg speak at our local bookstore today. A few weeks ago I “discovered” her classic book on writing, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within and have been reading it. I was surprised when my friend TJ told me she was going to be in town promoting her new book, Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir.

I jotted down some quick notes and quotes from her talk:

“A writer has to be willing to be disturbed.” She went on to say that a writer can’t control the reactions of others. This is a big issue for me personally…what will they think if I tell the truth? And of course, anything less than the truth is unsatisfying. Goldberg said that she lost a lot of friends with The Great Failure, and “I also grew up and became my own authority with that book,” which of course made me interested in it.

She noted that “Writing is an act of compassion” because it’s an act of where another person feels what you have felt.

On how she has changed over the years since Writing Down the Bones, Goldberg said that she no longer believes that writing will save her. She also notes that you can’t tell people this when they’re starting out writing.

Someone asked what books she liked, and she named several; here were some I thought sounded interesting:

The Song Of The Lark (Signet Classics)

Stoner (New York Review Books Classics)

Waiting for the Barbarians (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)

Giovanni’s Room

It’s a great treat to be able to walk a couple blocks from home and meet up with friends for something like this…Copperfield’s is a jewel of a bookstore. I’m thinking about buying tickets for a benefit they’re hosting where Thomas Moore will speak about his new book, A Life at Work: The Joy of Discovering What You Were Born to Do. How could I not go to something with a title like that?!

On product placments:

On watching movies on your phone:

The accompanying article, Beyond the Limit, has more choice bits.

When told Bradley planned to train inside a meat locker or some frozen compartment at a grocery store, Wade thought that environment wouldn’t produce optimal results.

“He would do better,” Wade said, “if he went out to the beach and pulled a sled. This race really tests the calves.”

So when Bradley heard what Wade said, he grabbed a sled and started dragging it across Doran Beach. Ain’t no sled too heavy. Ain’t no idea too goofy-hard.

I’m speechless. via O’Reilly Radar.

www.flickr.com terriem’s Thunder Mountain Monument photoset

Posted to Flickr:

Thunder Mountain Monument is perfectly
set in the desert along I-80 near Imlay,
Nevada. It’s the life work of Frank
Dean Van Zant, born in 1921 in Okmulgee,
Oklahoma. Van Zant considered himself a
Native American member of the Creek
Nation and later became known as Chief
Rolling Mountain Thunder.

Van Zant served in the Civilian
Conservation Corps in his early teens
and later served in World War II. After
the war he studied theology and became
an assistant pastor for a Methodist
congregation, turned to law enforcement
for two decades as a sheriff’s deputy,
and finally became a private
investigator before retiring. (And, I
would add, beginning his
"real" work).

Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder wanted
to memorialize the plight and suffering
of Native Americans. From a sign at the
memorial, "I don’t have the
financial means to do anything other
than build with what the Great Spirit
has provided to me. That is the junk
that has been cast away by the white
man. The Indian used everything and the
white man is wasteful. I will build a
Monument to the Indian people from the
refuse of our white society."

The main monument began as a travel
trailer that was continually built
around. Among the structures that
survive today are a glass bottle house,
inspired by the bottle house in Rhyolite, NV, near Death Valley.

The sculptures and structures of the
monument are striking and ghostly.
There are fences built of junk, ladders,
and sculptures of women and warriors who
look as though they’ll come to life in
your dreams. Steve visited here in the
1970’s, a decade when the site became a
popular destination for the counter
culture…I’m grateful that he thought
to stop on our trip this time. Steve’s got excellent photos here also.

Dan Van Zant, Chief Rolling Mountain
Thunder’s son, is working to keep the
monument alive. You can read more about
it, and the history of the place and its
creator’s life, at thundermountainmonument.com.

I found the monument to be very moving, even haunting. And it was inspiring to me as a symbol of what can be accomplished when one follows oneself in the process of creating from the heart.

Laika and I walked around to the front of the main monument while Steve circled around another way. She stopped, stared into a spot inside the fence where I could discern nothing, and barked…looked at me, looked back at the spot, and barked again.

Steve asked me later, “What was she barking at?”

“Ghosts.”