Mything In Action

joy? Joy

2008-06-10T15:49:00.000-07:00

i thought the title of this blog would be JOY!!!

i have EXTREMELY eclectic musical tastes. i love almost all music that can not be heard on a m radio. music from any culture,time period or location.

one of the reasons i moved back to berkeley was to have access to a wider verity of music but money and mobility have been in my way.

this past week has been the berkeley early music festival,expensive, and the related fringe fest ,very affordable. with my new found mobility i planned to go to lots of concerts and managed to get to 3.

i expected the concerts would lift my mood. some brought joy,some unexpectedly brought sorrow. the wild rose concert 'roses and thorns, had sad songs that brought up lots of unprocessed grief and tears.

i managed to keep the tears to a minimum and sniffle hard during the applause. ironically if i hadn't been on my scooter i would have left and let the tears flow but wheeled access, i'v come to discover, requires someone to let you in and out of the 'accessible ' entrance, so leaving early causes a commotion..

when the concert was over i left as quickly as i could and scooted down the street to the next church.the campus area has lots of churches with lovely grounds,.
i pulled in out of the way and let the tears flow while listening to a group jam in the colonnade ,it was all in all a good experience just not as joyfilled as i had expected.

looking forward to lots more music in my life.

noted in passing

2008-06-10T08:12:00.000-07:00

i had a piece about (bruce) utah phillips in the que and then i heard yesterday that paula gunn allen was gone.

altho i did not know them personally both were influential people in my life

because i have been writing so infrequently i felt i wanted to note their passing now and come back and say more later.

noted in passing

2008-06-10T08:03:00.000-07:00

FREEDOM

2008-06-03T15:11:00.000-07:00

recently i received an anonymous grant for a mobility scooter, here's my response.

dear grant givers

i can not begin to express the magnitude of change having a scooter has brought to my life.

i would compare it to when i learned to ride a bike at 12 or drive a car when i was 26,

the freedom to go almost anywhere almost any time.

from the simple things like going to the drug store or grocery store to the ability to participate in political and cultural events.

the ability to cruse around the neighborhood on a warm evening and smell the roses and and enjoy the beauty of peoples gardens.

to feel he fresh air on my face ,the breeze in my hair.

to be able to go to several concerts of the early music festival this week and the world music festival on telagraph ave. next saterday

in addition to my work on the board of abc i'm looking forward to finding a place to be more active locally outside of the work i do with my neighbors to improve conditions in our apartment building.

i'm also looking forward , if my health permits to go to the open space conference in s,f. in july and if i can get donated air miles, the national coalition on dialogue and deliberation in austin in oct.

with much thanks and appreciation

remembering the spirit of judi bari

2008-02-12T17:27:00.000-08:00

last week a occasion to go past downtown oakland to the far end of lake merritt,a place where i always get lost. so coming home i opt for the easy way out ,driving straight up broadway ,something i rarely do,and whenever i do i am always shocked when i come to the intersection where judi and darryl were bombed.

no one was ever charged with this crime.

judy was a labor organizer before she was a forest activist and became a target for her work being able to connect with loggers and mill workers.

they didn't manage to kill her than altho it wasn't the first time they tried. she died 7 years later of breast cancer that the fbi claimed she was faking.

being an activist can be dangerous . i know from my early experience .

her passing in 1997 left a gape that grows. her memory inspires me to keep on trying to learn the skills it takes to build bridges

altho i sometimes give up and despair of ever learning to be truly affective, hope eventually reasserts its self.

holiday feast

2007-12-24T12:11:00.000-08:00

general food bank dec. 19

2lb.beans

2lb.white rice

1 can corn

1 can tomato sauce

1 can apple sauce

1 can of pringles

senior food bank dec 21

4 lb. pinto beans

2lb. white rice

i loaf breab

1 can corn

1 can apple sauce

4 onions

4 pears (yeah!)

1 cabbage

dec. is the cruelest month for regular food bank users the majority of food goes to the showcase distributions, the ones you see on tv and for which you usually need an invitation or the ability to stand in line for hours.

i have know idea what qualifies one to be invited clearly being a senior on disability is not enough.

oh yea, and 2 cans of mystery meat.

winter soltice

2007-12-21T17:10:00.000-08:00

walking into the dark

dancing in the dark

trancing in the dark

hoping i'll be in the light when morning comes

in memory

2007-12-11T16:58:00.000-08:00

Aidan Paul WilliamsCraig

Sept.23 2005 Dec. 12 2006

now i lay you down to sleep

and you die before you wake

Cerridwen your soul did take

into the cauldron of rebirth

we will never know

WHY???????????

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE HAG PRAYER

Goddess of death,
You are a mystery
And I do not understand you.
You give great gifts
And snatch them away.
You are cruel joker
With a warped sense of humor
And I hate you.
You give life to those
Who don't deserve it and take it from those
Who do.
You may no sense, Goddess;
You are not logical,
Or if you are, it's a logic we cannot follow.
You are not fair.

Hag, hag,
Ugly old hag,
You clam that if we embrace you
You will turn beautiful,
But getting close to you
Is like embracing sharp knives --
And I don't believe you,
I don't believe you.

Something has happened here
That is wrong, wrong, wrong,
And there is no way
To pretty it up
And make it be okay.

Mother of lies
Mother of false promises
Mother of tremors and pain
and the loss of vision as we age
Mother of confusion and memory loss
Mother of stink and decay
Mother of vermin
Mother of viruses
Mother of parasites that eat
the living bodies of their hosts

You are the Goddess of the bloody face
Who eats her own child
In the night.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WHEN THE HEART

When the heart
is cut or cracked or broken
Do not clutch it
Let the wound lie open

Let the wind
from the good old sea blow in
to bathe the wound with salt
and let it sting

Let a stray dog lick it
Let a bird lean in the hole and sing
a simple song like a tiny bell
and let it ring

--Michael Leunig

unthanksgiving

2007-11-22T08:20:00.000-08:00

i'm sitting here looking out my window at alcatraz..........

on monday morning i started writing what i thought would be a long piece about the native american liberation of alcatraz in the early 70's.

than a friend called and asked if i could take him to the hospital,where it transpired he had a ruptured appendix, so my energy has willingly gone to being with him and not to writing.

but i didn't want the day to go entirely unmarked.

hopefully next year i will write about alcatraz.

preparing for samhain

2007-10-27T17:55:00.000-07:00

samhain in celtic culture is the beginning of winter and the new year and the new year begins with death.the plants are dying the leaves are falling,things go underground into the dark to await the suns slow return after winter solitce

thursday i stated buying alter food,something i usually do in the beginning of the month buying things like dried beans corn meal oatmeal black eyed peas. food that my relatives,friends and the people whose land we live on liked.

but it was hard to get started this year.i have 'lost' more than a few friends and altho some were relatively young they were all adults.

but this year there is aidan. i have had an alter for him since dec.13

but it has been for him alone filed with his favorite toys and juice and cookies

now comes the time when he must share it with my other beloved dead thou if truth be told none was nearly so beloved

over the year his alter has morphed and changed and now will under go a major change where it will not stand alone

or be so large after samhain every one else will go away till next year and aidan's space will be smaller and less central and even saying that makes me cry but i must let him go, let our ties stretch as thin as he needs them to be just as it would be if he were alive and growing more independent . he has his own life to live wherever that is.

and i must find a way to move (on?)

as usual my samhain alter will slowly morph into my winter soltice alter

in between now and then lies dec 12, how will i get from here to the returning light?

i realize how much i haven't said. maybe i'll say more later maybe not.

autumnal equinox Sept.23 2007

2007-09-23T10:30:00.000-07:00

a day for thanksgiving, of celebrating the harvest but,

today there are no celebrations. i can harvest only grief.

i can not remember what to be thankful for.

all equinoxes are not equal

for 9 months now i have avoided writing about grief.

today i find it unavoidable

a year ago today we were all in the park celebrating Aidan's 1st birthday.

today there are no celebrations.

today like every day i wake up and look at your picture on the wall and i miss you

today i find i still can not write about grief,but just saying the word is a start.

all equinoxes are not equal

today i stand on the threshold and welcome Lugh the sun king as he becomes the lord of shadows,

maybe in this cycle of darkness i will process this grief

maybe at spring equinox i will ,like Kore find my way out of the labyrinth. maybe.

maybe on the next cycle of the wheel i return. maybe.

all equinoxes are not equal

empty hand

2007-07-17T18:54:00.000-07:00

i have so much knowledge so much information so many ideas, that they are coming out my ears.

but the words to express them are jumbled in my mouth like tangled barbed wire. and childhood traumas continue to cause them to come out at all sharp and jagged and bitingly painful and leave me sounding/feeling inarticulate, unintelligible and unintelligent.

what is the use of knowledge if if it is locked in a cage and despite years of looking i can't find the key

but i can't stop trying i can only stand here mute terrified and empty handed.

please except my open empty hand

good nutrition strikes again

2007-07-06T12:25:00.000-07:00

good nutrition strikes again

mercy seiner brown bag july 6

2 jello cups

3 16 oz protein water

4 chocolate bars

1 nameless foil packet-which when opened contained some thing indecipherable but it didn't look or smell edible to me

6 packets of cinnamon & apple oatmeal crunch

i rice-a roni

1 lb white rice

1 can of peas

i can tomato sauce

2onions

3 potato's

july 4th

2007-07-04T11:09:00.000-07:00

the day we celebrate the fact that we stole someone elses country so that we could have 'freedom and democracy'

2007-06-22T17:59:00.000-07:00

recently.because i was spending a lot of time being supportive. my friendship with someone was called into question with the words i didn't know you knew her that well ,i never heard you mention her.

for me the friend ship is measured by the quality of the connection not how frequently i see them or talk about them.

for me one definition of community is any group of people who are there to be whit you thru the hard times. even when they are people who never new each other before .

i have soooo much more i want to say about this but the longer i wait the less it seems i write

trying to figure out how to change that.

summer soltice

2007-06-21T10:10:00.000-07:00

in the celtic calendar summer starts on may 1, june 21 is not the beginning of summer but mid summer.

at the mid summer it's not at all the healing summer i had hoped, imagined it would be.

but there's still the second half.

more and deeper blogs still simmering. can something simmer stilly?
i keep putting them off cuz it's hard to say the meaning full things .

a good companion

2007-06-03T10:35:00.000-07:00

when i am alone in the dark a good companion says may i stand beside you and hold your hand while we travel thought the dark

a good companion is one that says i am willing to share the dark with with you ,

about a good companion holds your hand while you feel the edges of the darkness until you find some thing to hold on to familiar to hold onto

a good companion walks with you to the edge of the cliff and sits beside you while you dangle your leg over the edge but never wavers in their attention or loosens their grip

the good companion does not cut you with the shape edges of sunbeams by flinging them around in an effort to remove the darkness

a good companion asks are you willing to accompany me into the light?

i my not want to go but i may be willing.

or not

just gotta keep on keepen on

2007-05-10T09:00:00.000-07:00

ok so i got discouraged and i haven't written in weeks but talking with a friend yesterday made me realize i needed to keep trying

the trouble with writing is it steals the heart and spirit from of my words. so every thing that is so alive in conversation is flat and lifeless in written words.

which is why i just have to keep doing it till it gets better, but i'm afraid by the time it gets
better anyone who stumbles across this blog will have given up cking it out.

siiiigh! oh well .i can only do the best i can do at any given time.

speaking of time if you have any free to give i'd be glad to have it. there's always something i need help with.

blogging with training wheels

2007-04-07T11:33:00.000-07:00

i have dyslexia /learning disabilities and never learned to type .writing has always been a challenge .having a blog without spell ck means writing it in gmail remembering to to hit save before i cut and paste-lost a lot of the first food bank blog that way.didn't have the heart to try to reconstruct it.

i have great conversations that folks say i should blog but mostly the take too many words to do them justice. so for now my commitment is to blog something,anything at least twice a week till it becomes a habit and less intimidating.then maybe i'll start saying more of what i really want to say.

food for thought

2007-04-06T17:59:00.000-07:00

first friday senior mercy brown bag food bank

3 natural flavor purified water apple drink 0% juice lots a sugar

1 lb dry beans

1 can tomato paste

2 cans mixed vegetables does anyone ever wilfully buy these?

8 snack size butterfingers granola candy bars

1 box cereal 8 pk cinnamon candy sprinkles oatmeal

1 pk english muffins

1 partially rotted cabbage

5 apples

what more could a person want for the next tow weeks? protein?nutrition?

--
"If you have come here to help me then you are wasting your time, but
if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine then
let us work together."
--Lila Watson (aboriginal activist)

less survival

2007-04-04T15:25:00.000-07:00

actually i first noticed this phenomena at the senior center lunch.the first time i went there i noticed when folks lined up for 2nd helping there was a men's line and a women's line. something i hadn't seen since grade school .i asked the women sitting next to me what that was about and she said it was because the men used to push the women out of the way

this says nothing about the impossibility of the frail elder of any gender having a chance to get more food.

want to say more,say it deeper,talk about it in relation to culture and social change.

ah well slowly, slowly bit by bit i hope i'll gain momentum.i know i'll never learn to spell.
and there doesn't seem to be a spell ck here.

so much to say so little energy

2007-04-03T16:42:00.000-07:00

sooooo little energy -more one of these days -please stay tuned

survival of the fittest how can it change

2007-03-30T12:18:00.000-07:00

survival of the fittest how can it change

the first in a series of rants about being a little older a bit disabled and living life near the bottom and how to make whole system change trickle down to me and mine.

a few months ago they started a new food bank at a large senior apartment complex(not to be confused whit the senior food bank-more about that later)

i've gone a few times with mixed results,but thus day word must have gotten out that there was good stuff to be had. people lined up in droves . while i sat on the side lines,i can't stand for long . i watched a elderly man nearly knock over a women using a walker so he could get in front of her in line.
this treatment of old folks of each other is scary and disheartening and unexpected.

i rarely see folks help each other .

how do we being whole systems change here

as much as i con type for now.

to be continued or not

--
"If you have come here to help me then you are wasting your time, but
if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine then
let us work together."
--Lila Watson (aboriginal activist)

bio bits and pieces

2007-03-13T14:43:00.001-07:00

iris may mcginnis (me) is a human being trying to stay human.

I began looking for and trying to build sustainable community in the Back-to-Land and anti war movements in the 1960's and in the Women's Movement in the 1970's. I began support groups for working class women, started working with Reclaiming on the first Spiral Dance in 1979 at the beginning of that community and participated in a long term affinity coven involved in direct action politics. I worked in various direct action and social justice movements through the 1980's, often living collectively. In the 1990's health issues caused me to slow down and move back to the country where I was involved for a number of years in the Mendocino Environmental Center and Parents For Peace. In 2004 I became involved with the Association Building Community Council and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to be more accessible to trainings in Nonviolent Communication, class, social action, race, etc.

I often have no clear idea how to say succinctly what is important to me. How many characters can I have? How can I estimate how many I's I am? I don't want anyone to read this and get the idea I think I am important. I have more questions than answers and sometimes have responses, but often fewer than I would like.

"If you have come here to help me then you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine then let us work together." --Lila Watson (aboriginal activist)

If you came here from meeting me out in the world (Nexus for Change, ABC event/mailing) to find these few bits and pieces about me, please know that I have memory issues related to my disabilities. I would love to reconnect with the wonderful people I've met recently. PLEASE follow up with me by sending an email to iris at abcglobal dot net or commenting here on my blog, and remind me about our connection. PLEASE don't take it personally if I haven't come to find you first.