Blog Topic: Community Life

 I write this for the Woolman blog because my Woolman Semester has led me to this point of my life. I am married to a wonderful woman and I am happy. I never could have expected to be here now, though I am. I think of life as an expanding mathematical equation. Each aspect, each interaction is a number multiplied or added unto each other to create an equation, but the equation is ever changing and if any one number were to be changed, the equation would be vastly different. Such has been my experience at the Sierra Friends Center. It was by chance that I elected to leave high-school and travel North to live in the woods for four months and learn about the world. 

Sharon and her husband had gone to the John Woolman School. They married and had children and their son named Nate had gone to school with me. He is a very close friend and he’s taught me a lot. For that I’m grateful. One day Sharon and my mom were in our backyard picking persimmons with a long device invented for exactly that purpose. I walked outside and watched them take the winter fruits off the branches and it was there and in that space of time that Sharon told me about Woolman. It is to say, that had I not come outside that day, I may not have attended the semester and I probably wouldn’t now be living in Colorado with my wife, Viktorija. 

I lived with Rowan at Woolman and afterwards he went to University in Scotland and I went to college in my home town. I lived without much purpose or intention, but every so often, a seed of knowledge would bloom forth, planted by the hands of those four months. I visited an old Woolman teacher, Ben, in Lara’s cabin, up in the haunted hills North of Shasta. Ben showed me around the woods, told me to watch the deer and the rabbits and the birds. I saw an eagle fly over my head, I saw two birds, for love. Lara’s dog Eva brought me comfort, an escort on my walks. Each evening Ben and I ate with little conversation and then conversation trickled into us and we talked late into the darkness. The great mother Shasta gathered herself against the wind to the South, and Easterly were the Sierras, a foreboding range, though I cannot say for why.  I went because I had to, I had no choice. I drove myself there in search of a purpose and I returned home without.

The next week I left for Scotland and a job I found through WWOOF. I visited Rowan in St. Andrews and I drove a tractor in the Scottish country side. I left for Ireland to sit in meditation and learn Vipassana for ten days of silence. I came back to Scotland in anguish after sitting the course. Something in me was jolted, my axioms unhinged. I met new friends on the farm and for another month we lived in our small reality. But something pulled me North. A discontentment smoldered in my heart, so I ran from it. I had a friend in Norway and I decided to find another farm to work for there. 

Traveling it does one well to find little while friends. I met many with whom I talked to, embraced and I left or they left and I knew them no longer. My friends in Bjorkelangen, Norway taught me how to play volleyball, how to milk a cow and tend to naughty roosters and I thank them and think fondly of them. 

I met my wife in Oslo, Norway, but that’s a story for a different time. I love her more each day, each second, really. Our lives grow into each other as two trees conjoin. I haven’t found my purpose yet, or contentment with myself or the world. I appreciate the things I have, but maybe not enough. Appreciation gives me happiness, so I strive to appreciate my health and wealth, the bed in which I sleep, the car that I drive. I appreciate more the blessings of my parents, the love as big as the sea they have for me, the affection of my wife. I live near my brother again, we’re both in Boulder and seeing him gives me satisfaction. My wife and I and him are the Colorado family core, our parents Westwards and Eastwards. I write this because I’m grateful for the coincidences of my life, the numbers in my equation that bring me forth each day. 

If one asks,” How does volunteerism compare and contrast with activism?” it can be suggested that both are services provided for a community, but in terms of appropriating resources into either one, which suits a problem better? Well, I’m going to look at my own experience on the service trip in Visalia, CA.

What I was doing: The service trips are expeditions that Woolmanites venture forward to with the preface that we’re providing a service to a group of people. Half of our class stayed in town, volunteering at a local organic food bank where the students erected a shed and worked on their farm. My group left for Visalia.

We were well accommodated at the Friends Center, a little hub of serenity positioned on the corner of farmland, which in turn housed peacocks and gypsies living in trucks. Outside of our temporary residence danced the sprawl Visalia has morphed into over eons of suburban development. We traveled maybe half an hour to the work site where Self Help Enterprises was located and the donated land which was soon to bear homes. Greeted by Carlos, Ricardo (superintendents), and Dirk (program director), we were briefed on what Self Help was doing and how we could assist families in building their homes.

The days were seemingly eternal hammering nails to connect the measured and sawed timber pieces which would soon be raised as walls. Thinking about how tired I was I remembered that the families working there spent money, but also 40 hours a week on each other’s homes. Then, looking around my gaze landed upon Carlos and Ricardo who had both displayed a compassionate and thorough supervision (which included the brunt of the work). Being there, I was neither an owner, an employee, an activist, but merely a volunteer.

Why I did it: The reason why I differentiated myself among others who were involved was so that I could establish my occupation among so many. All I could do was donate a few hours to Self Help and the families there. I was actively building the homes, but I wasn’t actively changing policies in the United States that promote class discrimination. It is clear that while the need for homes in Visalia, CA was being addressed with my service hours, there was nothing done to affect American society at large, or even greater Visalia.

If it seems that I’m downplaying the importance of volunteerism, I’m not. I believe that my time was well dispensed at Self Help but I can't ignore the American vices reinforced in communities like the ones built by Self-Help. While homes and stability are being provided, what about gardens, supermarkets carrying fresh foods, organic, and affordable alternative products? How far does a family member have to travel between work and home? Where is the nearest school? Will the communities I've helped to build fall victim to consumerism and car culture?

These questions seem more related to “America” as we know it instead of the preferable community that would have included the input of residents. Indeed, I think that the time spent at Self Help was valuable, but in the long term it will only service families partially in that it lacks the freedom set aside for wealthier classes. I believe that is where activism is useful. Activism affects a system of governing bodies and people's worldviews which in combination can achieve a wide variety of social and political objectives. These might include readjusting food subsidies, reinvesting in infrastructure and public education. What matters is that voters influence their elected representatives in a way that demands their attention.

Where I find myself: With the prefatory question in mind, I think I directly experienced the difference between activism and volunteerism. I think the most valuable thing I learned from the Visalia trip was through the observation of different people’s determination in finishing projects. This includes students, Emily, the interns, Carlos, Ricardo, and the families who own the homes. Without that trait which enveloped all who were there, I believe those houses wouldn’t get to be built.

The misguided loss of common ground in the agricultural world is scaring me as I enter the adult world. Vandana Shiva said during her speech that we are at war with Monsanto, to me implying conventional farming is evil and that we (the local organic farmers and supporters) are righteous and have the right to austricize other practices of farming. The negatives of conventional farming are too great to be able to discuss and the only solution is to destroy all the technological advancements in agriculture in the past sixty five years and revert to traditional agriculture with no chemical fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, genetically modified crops and major corporations running the market.

 Up until this trip and having the opportunity to see farmers on different sides of the same respectable trade, I never made a true connection with the material that I was been learning in school and outside school as an involved citizen. It was all in my head so to speak; I know a lot of important facts, numbers and possible solutions to the issue but didn’t connect it to my own personal life. It seemed as though I knew everything about how awful and evil the agricultural system is. However, when we talked to the men at UC Davis the first day, I felt a familiar connection resurface and a spark of pity for myself. Why was I not pitying them? These fools who did not see the animals and the industry like I did, the young idealist that I am. I realized that the pity for myself was the connection between conventional farming and my interest in farming goes back to when I was growing up with my farming family.

 When we talked to the man at the slaughter house, he spoke about his history and sense of place in the building; his dad had worked there when he was a a child and he grew up visiting the facility. Also the man at the feedlot had a story connected to feedlot cattle. His last job was at his own ranch in Nevada, raising beef for slaughter. The memories of my grandfather’s and uncle’s cattle ranches, the extensive land in my family planted in genetically modified corn and soy beans  as well as the time I spent there. I thought about how deeply flawed it is that I am focusing on changing the business that my family is invested in, that I just read how the industry is terrible, when I have a thriving family who lives on that system.

 It seems easy on paper to have a change of heart and convert your business to an organic and sustainable one, however just like seed, once it is sown it is difficult to transplant. I want to continue being a local and organic advocator, without being an elitist against something that is still on the same issue. I feel it is important for both sides to agree that both are working towards a common goal: to feed and sustain life. Even though Monsanto creates loopholes to take advantage of non-gmo farmers through lawsuits, the man we visited at the seed geneticist lab concluded the reason he was working there was to feed the 2000 children who die every day due to starvation. That is not an evil reason for advocating something that has bad history, but the biases I hear are still very against it. I believe there must be a way for both groups of advocators to work together and make it work. I love living on a healthy earth and want to restore it to its former vigor, but I also love my family who supports a food system that goes against that judgment, There must be a way to mold the two together before its too late, before the war really starts. 

With the students away on the Food Intensive, four intrepid interns have stayed behind with one thing on our minds: food. Preservation, that is. This week we’ve kept ourselves busy with preserving our bounteous harvest while the students have been away, resulting in cans upon cans of tomatillo salsa, tomato sauce, and blackberry jam.

Our mornings this week have begun with harvesting in the garden, before the heavy heat of midday hits. We then weigh the produce and load up the newly repaired garden cart (thanks Lewis!) and walk barefooted across the grass to the Dining Hall. There the processing and preserving blitzkrieg begins. We bombard the kitchen haphazardly, and yet somehow after a few hours we’re lovingly placing another armful of sealed Mason jars onto the shelves in the pantry. Other adventures this week have included catfish wrangling (Doug and Red have been draining Mel’s Pond), eggplant carving, melon taste-testing, garden class with local six year olds, and several blissful trips to the Yuba River. We’ve experimented with eating produce straight off the plant after being inspired by two-year-old Althea’s no-handed, ruthless cabbage eating in the garden. Verdict: strawberries really are better on the vine. We’ve also at last come to a decision on the name for the newly formed contra band, made of banjo player/cow-op intern Alice, mandolin player/community intern Aaron, guitarist Graeme and bassist Colman, both of whom are current students. The band has been affectionately dubbed “Brosenberg” after the much-discussed founder of Nonviolent Communication.

Between the backpacking trip and the food intensive, it feels like this semester has been more adventure than routine. Regardless, we’ve developed a strong sense of community here on campus, and it feels strange to have the students gone. Yes, we’ll miss the peace and quiet—and immensely available West Side bathrooms—but it’ll be nice to have them back. We’re also excited for classes to resume again: as refreshing as it has been spending long hours in the garden and dreaming of eating salsa in the winter, it’ll be great to continue delving deeper into the larger-world issues of social justice, peace and sustainability.