Groundhog's Day

Ever not quite know what to say?

That's where I'm at. Two weeks in and just, wow. Keep calling, emailing, faxing. It takes 3.5% (for America that's 11MM people) of a population to peacefully change a gov't. We got this... right?  I mean, 65,844,954 voted for Hillary, so... right?  I mean, even I'm calling and emailing (my reps have publicly stated that they count emails and voice mails both in their tallies, and especially if we have a couple sentence story about how something personally affects us, they prefer email).

'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' -- Nancy Rogers

Sometimes I include music to listen to - well Lin-Manuel Miranda (creator of Hamilton) created a soundtrack for us all on Spotify which is what I'm listening to right now. 

So what have I been thinking about this week?  Besides the creeping orange horror, various things!  Have spent quite a bit of time this week chewing over the last paragraph from this article in Scientific American: How to convince someone when facts fail. 

From my experience, 1. keep emotions out of the exchange, 2. discuss, don't attack (no ad hominem and no ad Hitlerum), 3. listen carefully and try to articulate the other position accurately, 4. show respect, 5. acknowledge that you understand why someone might hold that opinion, and 6. try to show how changing facts does not necessarily mean changing worldviews.

That's a lot of things to remember in the middle of what's likely to be a pretty opinionated conversation, but well worth at least trying to remember in the moment. I feel like the only one I have fairly well down is #2. I tend to shut down hard and fast in conflict conversations when I have to carry the weight of the conversation.  I am much better able to contribute productively and time to plan what I can usefully interject when I have a supporting role.  The more you know...

I've also been thinking about the final point in this article (Autocracy: Rules for Survival) is "Remember the future." As I think about all the different things to fight against, none of them less than the next, I get overwhelmed. Increasingly, my only hope is to fight for the future I want to live in, the future I want you to live in with me, the future I want my children to live in. Which of course will look a lot like fighting against a lot of things. It's important though to keep a clear vision in our minds off the future we are trying to move towards.  When we fight only against the thing we don't want, the only vision we hold clearly in our mind is the thing we don't want.  It's far more effective to hold the vision of, and try to move toward, the thing you want.

And then the other thing that I'm going to tell you about here is the National Parks Service.  What does they say on Tumblr?  Ah yes, here it is - 

First they came for the scientists…

And the National Parks Services said, “lol, no” and went rogue and we were all like “I was not expecting the park rangers to lead the resistance, none of the dystopian novels I read prepared me for this but cool.” - scarlettohairdye

And then other accounts followed.  Like Mr. Rogers always said,

"My mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother's words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world."

There are a lot of really alarming things going on right now.  And honestly, there have been a lot of alarming things going on forever, but in the midst of it all, looking for the helpers, look for the people who are doing the right, compassionate, things... they are out there.  And we have the opportunity too, to be the helpers.  Look for those opportunities too.

Until next week - 

Your ASL sign of the day, your sign of the week, your sign until further notice: “resist.” pic.twitter.com/7K6c5P0YaB

— Mat Marquis (@wilto) January 27, 2017

With love, resistance, and curiosity,
--Susan

Self Care and the Resistance

You belong to each other. -- Melanie Dewberry

Yep.  That pretty much sums up what I've been thinking about since I last wrote a missive to y'all.  As it turns out, Friday I was feeling not great.  Of course, I figured *lots* of people in America were not feeling great and I was probably in good company just feeling really stressed and concerned about the state of the union.  Right? Fair enough?  By bedtime I was shake-y and a few hours later... I was really glad I'd brought a bowl into the bedroom with me.  

My attempt to participate in The March ended up being... lining up my ginger ale bottles, water, and a diet coke can.  Sick solidarity, yo.

Watching my facebook feed this week, I realized that I'm getting sucked into the outrage filter and 'what's coming next!?' panic. Granted, glued to the couch was about where it was at for me for around 48 hours, so not really any lost time there, but then when I started feeling better, I felt absorbing inclination to Keep Checking In and realized it could be a problem.  In the checking in, though, I've started noticing something else as well -- people asking how others are coping. 

For a while, before I realized that Mythic Librarian was what I was going to land with, I toyed with a couple of other ideas.  Phix's Curiosity was one of them, just as an outlet to explore all the things I encountered in a day that sparked my interest.  The other was Medusa's Garden which would have been all about self care.  As it stands, Phix and Medusa are sort of folded in here. One of the realizations that led me not to focus all my efforts on Medusa were that self care is wrapped up in gigantic systemic issues.  A great bath is no match for a series of systems set up to defeat realistic life management capabilities.  At best it's an extremely temporary balm, but it doesn't address the root of the issue at all, and only barely addresses any symptoms.  Self care, in a lot of ways, is actually something that can only happen in a supportive community.  Who hasn't had that boss that denied you a day off when you really needed it?  And who hasn't pushed through a cold because ugh, the mess will still be here when I get back, I may as well just keep going?   Not that I might not eventually develop Medusa's Garden bath salts or something, though ("For when you need the world to Stop Coming At You")!

The stories of self care that have been coming through have been similar and I think worth noting.  These are some of the helpful stories I'm hearing.

People are limiting their time on social media.  This makes a lot of sense, it reduces the input into an overwhelmed system.  There gets to be a point where one can reach analysis paralysis, the inability to prioritize because there are so many high priority actions that need to be taken, that one can no longer make a decision about which meaningful action to take.  It isn't about putting your head in the sand and ignoring everything happening, it's about taking time to be more intentional about what sources and how much time you are willing to give to the different streams of information options coming at you.  

After limiting incoming information, finding some way to take action (think calling senators and representatives, attending town halls, donating money or time to supported causes, or learning how to run for office/do political field work, etc). Finding a way to contribute constructively, even if it feels small, is helpful to taking care not only of yourself, but others too.  

Within that, focusing on what actions you can take.  We can't do it all.  The thing I just said about having so many priorities that you end up with decision paralysis is something that we all need to be aware of.  One of my favorite sayings right now is something like, 'you can't do it all alone, but if each of us does a little bit, we can do it all together.'   We can do what we need to do here, but that means we all need to pick a piece to work on. One of the things I see happening often is the 'circular firing squad' and the 'who's more oppressed' oneupsmanship.  We cannot each all do all the things, and trying to diffuses our power.  We can be supportive of things that we are not directly involved in.  I can be supportive of #nodapl and #blacklivesmatter while I focus the energy and time I have on information dissemination (libraries are critical for functioning democracies, especially ones in this condition), for example.  The important thing is to be doing something and not waiting for others. Waiting just leads to everyone thinking someone else has got it covered.

The final thing I think I'll touch on that I'm seeing is people recognizing that they just need to check out entirely for a couple days so they can come back to the fight again.  The lead up to inauguration was a haul. I am hoping that people learned in those three-ish months a bit about stepping out of the stream, and then stepping back into it.  It's going to be a much longer haul from here, and we're going to all need to step in and out, and support each other in taking care of ourselves and each other.  

It's up to us to take care of ourselves and each other.  It has always been up to us to take care of ourselves and each other - and now it is critical.

With love, rebellion, and curiosity,
--Susan

Sickness and Resistance

You are not obligated to complete the work but neither are you free to abandon it. -- The Talmud

So writing this, on the eve of the 2017 inauguration (surely if you know me, you know I'm not getting up in the morning to write!), I've spent the day sitting with and taking care of a sick kiddo.  Puke, aches, the whole nine yards.  Which is a long way of introducing that I have been thinking about sickness and resistance today.  

When I was about her age, I came down with the same sort of miserable bug.  As I tended to, I spent the time I was awake reading, and then half dreaming processed those stories into my fevered memory.  One of these stories was Mischief in Fez by Eleanor Hoffman.  It's a story inspired by her travels and supporting herself by buying and selling Moroccan rugs in the early part of the 20th century.  Mousa is a young boy who, in the way of many tales, has lost his mother.  His father meets and weds a new wife and all sorts of troubles start befalling their household, for which Mousa is blamed.  He knows he's innocent, and so goes to the market to consult a wise man about how to figure out what's going on.  There are djinns involved, including one disguised as a tiny fennec fox who helps him.  I've finally found that this is available again and bought it a few years ago and read the entire thing in two hours - lost again in the story.

There was another story in the anthology in which I originally read Mischief in Fez  that I am still trying to find. It was the story of a young princess who ventures into a part of the castle she has been told not to go into and finds a beautiful old woman there.  Turns out it's her grandmother, there's something about a rose... water spray? scent of roses?  and in the end, the King and his mother, are joyfully reunited and the princess is allowed to visit her grandmother.  When I'm sick, I can almost smell the vivid roses from this story.

Stories are important -- they help us explore the range of human experience. They help us understand who we are.  They help us transmit wisdom and knowledge, literal and implied.  And in times like these, they remind us that resistance is important, that it's possible, and that with perseverance and creativity, you can get quite a long way.  In real life there isn't always a happily ever after, but there is always the journey.

Jospeh Campbell posited that there is a Hero's Journey behind all story arcs - there are seventeen stages in his 'monomyth'.  There are, of course, variations on this theme, such as Maureen Murdock's Heroine's Journey, among others.  This can be a useful framing as we move through our own stories as a reminder that we will not always be in 'the ordinary world', waiting for a call to adventure.  That we won't always be stuck in testing and trials (as much as it seems like this part lasts forever and comes up over and over again). Eventually even our stories come around and begin again. And along the way we learn what questions to ask, we learn our lessons or have to relearn them, we learn how to defend our values. And hopefully as we wrap up each phase of our stories to begin anew, we come away with new found strength, and at the very least, a good story to tell about the time when, once upon a time, a long time ago...

Now is the time to look to stories, of real people, and of wild and improbable fictions, to help us find ways to exist, to resist, to find ways big and small of doing the right thing in a time when the world seems turned upside down.  And also a time to remember as a few other voices out there are noting that this too is part of the human experience, history travels in waves and tides.  

As I look towards the next four, eight, ten years, depending on how any multiplicity of variables play out, things will be potentially very ugly, even uglier, or maybe just sort of uglier for some. While the realist in me acknowledges this, the optimist also has some hope that there are now, more than ever before, sane knowledgeable people (that's us), in bigger numbers than ever before who can stay engaged and actively participating in a civic life that is truly so broad that it can be overwhelming. That we can find our meaningful niches, and working together, that we can swing the pendulum away from where it seems to be headed now.  Finding inspiration in the tales we learned as children and in history, in our friends's lives, finding empathy and connection across what seems to be uncrossable chasms.

The world feels sick right now.  May the immune system of the civic body be up to the tasks and trials put to it in this stage of our journey.

With love and curiosity (and resistance and hope),
--Susan

Muckle Sangs and Other Thoughts (Weaving, Spinning, & Music)

I sold my flax, I sold my wheel, to buy my love a sword of steel
So it in battle he might wield, Johnny's gone for a soldier.
- Gone the Rainbow, Peter, Paul, & Mary

So much going on!

And now as always, I find when I'm overwhelmed I turn to spinning, knitting, and weaving, and so while I am trying to keep up with the bewilderment that accompanies these uncertain times, I find that I'm tearing through the roving on hand creating yarn, I actually have a project on the loom that I'm making progress on, and I've knit one pussy hat (pattern courtesy of the Pussy Project), am in the middle of another, with a third possible, though the third is more tentative.

As I started knitting, like I do, I looked up at M1 and said, this pattern is sort of whack, why didn't they just knit it in the round, then you don't have to worry about getting the ends  even or running out of yarn or... meh. I'm going to just do this in the round... She looked at me and started laughing and said, "This is exactly what you do when you're cooking too!  You can't follow recipes OR patterns without 'fixing' them, can you!?"  Nailed it.  She seems to have been watching me...  As a result I've come to accept that my cooking and my fiber-related projects are all more experiments and process focused rather than result and production focused. It makes it way easier to 'frog' (tear out) a whole knitting project when you aren't attached. Which reminds me, I have a failed felted sweater project that I should maybe create something clever out of.  Something to put on the back burner in my mind for tonight. 

As I've been in the midst of all this fiber work, I sometimes work in silence, using the the rhythm of the work to stabilize my breathing, give my hands something to do, and let my mind settle, and slow down enough to get into a mindfulness practice state.  It's very meditative for me.  I find a lot of similarities in the benefits of working with fiber in the way I do with what I try to accomplish with mindfulness practices -- I'm often more successful with fiber work because it does give my hands (and if I'm spinning with the wheel, my feet too!) something that doesn't require a lot of brain to do, but is calmingly repetitive.  I can easily lose an hour or two or three with fibers.  

Interesting to me is that Gandhi felt that returning to hand spinning and weaving were the way back to self-sufficiency and liberation for the Indian people, to the point that he proclaimed the charkha (a type of spinning wheel) and spinning the symbol of non-violence (A Bizarre Spin on The Spinning Wheel) as an act of deliberation rather than provocation. As such, the portable charkhas, often built into old cigar boxes for ease of portability became quite popular.  I have a cigar box I've been meaning to make a charkha out of and have not gotten there quite yet. All good things in time (unless I just eventually buy one because Reasons). 

Not quite the direction I was thinking this newsletter would veer off into but ties in well nonetheless!

When I'm not working in silence (or often spinning is done while I watch tv with the family), I listen to music.  Often, and lately, this music has been traditional Irish, British Isles, Appalachian/blue grass.  I have always found this type of music to be very resonant.  For Christmas this year, I got an album that had been on my wishlist for a number of years, of some of the Child Ballads by Anaïs Mitchell & Jefferson Hamer, introducing me to yet another version of the much beloved Tam Lin. The Child Ballads are an index of English and Scottish traditional songs (and American variants) indexed and studied by Francis James Child in the latter part of the 19th century.  This inevitably leads me off to the traditional Scottish Muckle Sangs (Great or Big Songs) - the long narrative songs, of which Tam Lin is also one.  I have a couple anthropological studies gathered albums done early in the 20th century, one of Irish music and one of some of the Scottish Muckle Sangs. I find the difference between the polish of current recording musicians and the beloved village singers of the earlier times fascinating. Once song belonged to the people and it is clear in the voices.  I love them all.  I should probably pick a different Muckle Sang but I love Tam Lin and the variations in the story as it comes through the ages is a point of fascinating illustration in and of itself to me, so here's Tam Lin sung by Betsy Johnston from Scottish Traditions 5: The Muckle Sangs for contrast.

I know, I know, what does this have to do with fiber and spinning and whatnot?  Well, in a sideways manner, some waulking songs came across my path again in the past week.  Waulking is fulling (or felting) woolen tweed.  Traditionally women beat the tweed after soaking it in urine saved and gathered from the village houses as the combination of urine and water helped neutralize the oils of melted livers of dog-fish that had been used to dress the wool.  All that on top of the smell of wet wool - even thinking about it makes my eyes water a bit at the smell!  

My first introduction to waulking songs was in library school.  I took a solitary "fun" class that was selfish and just for me rather than looking towards any direct career path I had at the time.  I took the storytelling class, taught by none other than Dr. Margaret Read MacDonald.  Combining my fascination with the stories carried by the traditional music of Britain and Ireland, as well as America (somewhere I've got an album of Revolutionary War era songs too), and being not far before rewarding myself for surviving a different adjunct's course on Content Management by buying a spinning wheel, I thought I'd look up songs associated with spinning, weaving, knitting... anything that came up?  O hai, waulking songs!  As graduate school goes, and then so life, I dug in, found some lovely songs and then the demands of the day-to-day get in the way.  So it was a lovely synchronicity as I've been listening to the Child Ballads and the Muckle Sangs again to see a post come through my Facebook feed incidentally on waulking songs! Including this lovely song by Karen Matheson - My Father Sent Me to the House of Sorrow. 

And just to wrap things up, the song, that sticks in my brain as the first song that I can recall tied to spinning - originating from Ireland as Siúil A Rún (in college I discovered the gorgeous Clannad version) but in America found as early as the Revolutionary War era sung by Peter, Paul, and Mary as a variant of 'Johnny Has Gone For A Soldier/Buttermilk Hill' called Gone the Rainbow and I have no memory of the first time I heard it - it's one of those songs that seems to have always been there in my memory.

This interweaving of music and people's work and life experiences is something that brings me back to folk music time and time again. Today was entwined with fiber work that I also enjoy, but perhaps future newsletters will cover some of the other areas that have also captured my interests and attention.  

With love and curiosity,
--Susan 

Animal Stories

We're off to a running start.  The last few days, I've been thinking about animal stories.  As part of the world around us, they figure in as characters in their own right in a lot of stories -- Aesop's Fables, The Odyssey (check out this article about the monsters in the Odyssey!), and countless mythologies.

We have been anthropomorphizing animals for a long time - reflecting our humanity into their actions and reactions.  It seems to be one of the ways that we relate to the world around us.  Or, sometimes we take the Cartesian model and then we end up with factory farms... 

*Spider warning* (I'll tell you when I'm done with spiders!)
I think one of my favorite animal stories is Charlotte's Web.  I'm not sure how many times I read that story when I was little.  And now I'm the person who generally lets the spiders be in the house, except the really ginormous ones who run *toward* me when I'm getting into the bath.  Those ones get a shriek and get taken outside (as soon as I can find a robe).  There's one that lives under our bottom step going downstairs.  That's Jaq.  

Because we live where we live in the middle of a bunch of trees, in the Pacific Northwest, we get a lot of spiders August through early October.  In late August, sometimes our yard is coated in webs.  You might not notice it so much in the afternoon, but in the morning when the dew is still out, the webbing really stands out eerily.  And sometimes in the early evening when the sun hits just the right position, you can see all of the webs that are strung between tree and fence, or tree and tall piece of grass, etc.  They build webs across door ways, on screens, and windows.  And horrifyingly, the big Giant House Spiders (yes, there are pictures on the linked page).  On the upside, these are the spiders often used by arachnologists for spider education and phobia reducing because they are incredibly gentle and prefer not to bite (and their bite is harmless to humans and pets).  These are also the spiders that compete with the also local hobo spiders which do bite and whose bites can be quite harmful (though it seems that there is some debate on that topic).  And of course we have other spiders of all sizes including the beautiful orb weavers.  So I just had to go look at spiders of Washington and I think I've seen most of these around here, which makes sense because they're local spiders. They are mostly harmless, but something about the way they move just brings out the shrieks involuntarily when they're big. 

Ok.  I'm done talking about spiders.  

With two cats in the house, there's never any end to the animal stories in our house.  The box turtle has a modestly quiet life, as does the solitary remaining fish, but the cats are our constant hilarious and occasionally helpful companions.  Today as I was working in my office, GregTheCat pushed the door open and started talking to me and flopped down in the middle of the floor.  This is, of course, the room we try to keep cat free for our occasionally cat allergied guests... So I walk over to him and he hops up and scoots back out, then turns around to see if I'm following, I catch up, pick him up, give him some pets and go back into my office.  He pushes the door open again and repeats the talking and flopping and scooting back out of the room and waiting to see if I'm following.  So I follow him.  In the room with the printer, he looks to see if I'm following him still, I am, so he heads for the stairs.  Again he waits to see if I'm following him, and when he sees I am, he goes up the stairs, pausing half way to see if I'm still following him, which I am.  It goes on like this, through the dining room, until he hops up on the buffet where he and LissaTortilla watch the squirrels in the back yard, and perhaps more interestingly, the hummingbirds at the feeder just on the other side of the window.

It's been very cold here, so the hummingbird food is frozen solid.  GregTheCat looks at the feeder, and then back at me as if to say, "Look -- I can't watch them because they keep flying away!  DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!"  And this is how I ended up making fresh hummingbird food and pouring boiling water on the bird bath in the front yard today.  The steam rising off the ice looked really cool, so I thought I would take a video of it. Then the sun got in on the act and made everything extra super fancy!  I couldn't have staged that shot even if I knew how, I think!  

LissaTortilla likes popcorn.  She's a ridiculous little cat, very food driven.  Enough so that we had pondered whether or not we might be able to train her.  Possibly not but it's entertaining to try.  Lately we've been trying to teach her 'sit.'  Tonight I made popcorn.  She came running into the kitchen, totally unfazed by the sound of the popcorn maker and sat directly behind me as I was tending the popping and butter melting, staring me down through the back of my head.  She sat there the entire time, getting up only once to examine and then nom a piece of popcorn that had flown past me out of the popper.   And then she sat there.  It sort of takes away from the fun if you don't have to request "sit!" because she's already sat and just staring with *that* look, like, 'look -- I'm sat, so give me popcorn already.  And make them some of the buttered ones!'  Cats.  She was rewarded and I could see her little walnut brain rolling its eyes as I repeated "sit!" to try to associate the sound of the word with the action she was performing and the reward.  LOLhuman.

So no long stories here, just bits and pieces of the things that catch my attention and entertain me through out the day.

With love and curiosity,

--Susan

It's Time To Boot 2016 To The Curb

TO THE CURB.  You know what I'm talking about.  We're done here.  I genuinely hope that 2017 (and '18, '19' & '20) doesn't leave us pining for the good ol' days of 2016.  I know I have some exciting things ahead in 2017 for me, I hope you have some exciting things to look forward to in 2017 as well.

“Let go of what was and embrace what to be.” 
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind

As the year ends, I have my year end reflections and year ahead goal setting stuff that I like to do.  2016 was a strange year, so it should be interesting to work on the reflections.  I am still in the midst of the changes that started in 2016, and anticipate more changes in 2017.  It's weird to feel so in the midst of things while I'm trying to wrap up the year and put it to bed.  I'm ready, so ready, but... there are some things that are still dancing around wearing lampshades that I can't put to bed just yet!  And so it will be.  

I hope the final couple weeks of the year have been treating you kindly, fortifying you for the coming year.  

Errata from last week's newsletter: Hanukah has *eight* days, not seven. I knew that and it still slipped through. <facepalm>

With that may your hogmanay & your new year be fabulously wonderful & I'll see you in 2017!  Thank you for joining me in 2016! <3
 

May you go forth under the strength of heaven, under the light of sun, under the radiance of moon;
May you go forth with the splendor of fire, with the speed of lightning, with the swiftness of wind;
May you go forth supported by the depth of sea, by the stability of earth, by the firmness of rock;
May you be surrounded and encircled, with the protection of the nine elements.
- Traditional Celtic Blessing of the Nine Elements (source)

With Love and Curiosity,
—Susan

'Tis The Season!

This time of year, more than almost any other time of year, is associated with stories and mythology, and mysteries.  I recently got the HiveQuest Gratitude Cards.  One of the things we do at the beginning of team meetings is we take a breath together and draw a card as a way to help us come together and center in on our work together and find the day's shared inspiration.  

I drew the card Mystery just before the Solstice and realized that, besides the inclination towards extreme hibernation I experience this time of year, it really is a season of mysteries.

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” --Albert Einstein, The World As I See It

From the dawning of Solstice in Newgrange in Ireland (does the sun return?) to the many mysteries of Christmas (virgin birth? stars guiding wisemen? angels? immigrants finding an unlikely place to stay?  All of the above plus more!),  to the mysteries of Hanukkah (how does oil for one night's worth of lamp last for seven nights?).  Then there are the Santa/St. Nick/variations - how do reindeer fly? How does Santa make it all around the world in 24 hours at midnight? And there are other mysteries that I'm not as familiar with and/or am leaving out due to space constraints.  :)  There are so many amazing winter holidays with amazing stories that happen in a really compact timeframe over the winter.

Which makes sense, when I think of it.  The winter months tend to be darker, the days shorter, the harvest has come and gone and everyone gathered inside to tell stories and pass the time.  Now we are not so bound to agricultural schedules, but our holidays remain.  They help us to recognize the passage of time, and find ways to celebrate milestones and memories.  

When I was little, living in Calgary, the winters were obviously much colder than in the temperate Pacific Northwest.  One of the things that fascinated me was the fern frost on the windows, always blamed on little Jackie Frost, coming to paint the frost on the windows at night.  It made my windows look enchanted and I was always sad to see it disappear during the day, only to have reappeared in the morning when I woke up.

Bits and pieces of the poem by Laura E Richards and associated song by Eleanor Smith would be repeated to me about the frost: 

Jacky Frost, Jacky Frost,
Came in the night;
Left the meadows that he crossed
All gleaming white.
Painted with his silver brush
Every window-pane;
Kissed the leaves and made them blush,
Blush and blush again.

Jacky Frost, Jacky Frost,
Crept around the house,
Sly as a silver fox,
Still as a mouse.
Out little Jenny came,
Blushing like a rose;
Up jumped Jacky Frost,
And pinched her little nose.

Another mystery! Who is this little sprite-like creature who paints everything with such delicate and beautiful frost every night!?  

We have had a tiny bit of snow here this winter.  For functional day to day life, it's a significant complicator in the PNW.  We have many microclimates and hills that tend to ice and become impassible.  But in the moments when one can step out of the day to day, when one is home safe, there is no denying the magic of the snow quietly drifting down, and for me, the joy of break from routine.

As much as I love Halloween, I really do love this time of year as well.  In some ways, Halloween is just the start of the end of calendar year holiday season in our house.  I love the joyful lights everywhere, I love the tree in the house, I love the stories, the mysteries, the memories...  as much as life is a journey, it is also the joy, and sometimes discomfort, of uncovering the mysteries along the way.  

Shifting gears, as I come to the end of this newsletter, and return you to your day, I wanted to briefly come back to the cards.  I do work for HiveQuest so I'm not an unbiased party.  I also have two promotional decks that I'm trying to decide how to distribute (more mysteries - do a lottery? just send them to two random people? some other method?). From the description on the site, "The cards are designed to help you explore the practice of gratitude in your own life, using the beauty of nature to catalyze your thought and action. We invite you to pick a card daily (alone or with others) and reflect on its message and what it might inspire you to do."  

May your mysteries this season bring you joy!

With love and curiosity,
--Susan

So Where Was I Before It Started Snowing Last Week? Oh, Right!

Elfreda Chatman's Small World theories of (dysfunctional) information seeking behaviors.  The Small World is one in which people are functionally isolated in some way.  As a result of the insider/outsider dichotomy, insiders develop either an enforced or situationally insulated world.  This insulated, or small, world very often is characterized by a mistrust of information that insiders don't have and often perceive outsiders as having.  Outsiders are not trusted or seen as understanding the insider group, however, and so even though they may have needed information, the association with the untrusted outsiders means the information itself is likewise not trusted leading to an environment of information poverty.  

The thing that really jumps out at me is, as Chatman says "These behaviors are meant to hide our true crisis in an effort to appear normal and to exhibit acceptable coping behaviors."  What we are seeing now, as a result of this election, has been the normalization of extremely unacceptable coping behaviors within the small world insider population.  Their information poverty crisis has reached a breaking point where they have fallen prey to a swindler who doesn't even need a coherent message for the insider.  Heavily excerpted from this week's newsletter.

You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. --The Talmud

Elfreda Chatman's Small World theories of (dysfunctional) information seeking behaviors.  The Small World is one in which people are functionally isolated in some way.  Her primary subjects of study were minority groups, prisoners, retired women, workers such as janitors, and the like.  Within the small world, perspectives, norms, and mores are developed and defined within a narrow context of relevance, creating groupings of 'insiders' and 'outsiders'.  

As a result of the insider/outsider dichotomy, insiders develop either an enforced (in the case of prisoners) or situationally insulated world.  This insulated, or small, world very often is characterized by a mistrust of information that insiders don't have and often perceive outsiders as having.  Outsiders are not trusted or seen as understanding the insider group, however, and so even though they may have needed information, the association with the untrusted outsiders means the information itself is likewise not trusted.

This leads to an environment of information poverty.  Looking at this election cycle, it's clear there is (among other things), a disparity of perceived experience creating a group of "insiders," (who may actually perceive themselves as the outsiders). Then we have the outsider group, perceived as 'liberal/urban/elites'. Who is "in a bubble" and what is "the real world" is a matter of opinion...

Within the small world, there are four characteristics that tend to indicate and reinforce information poverty - these are deception, risk-taking, secrecy, and situational relevance.  Most of these are aimed at retaining a sense of control over one's own lived experience and sense of autonomy, protection from unwanted intrusion into personal life,  controlling how others might perceive oneself,  and so on. 

The thing that really jumps out at me is, as Chatman says "These behaviors are meant to hide our true crisis in an effort to appear normal and to exhibit acceptable coping behaviors."  What we are seeing now, as a result of this election, has been the normalization of extremely unacceptable coping behaviors within the small world insider population.  Their information poverty crisis has reached a breaking point where they have fallen prey to a swindler who doesn't even need a coherent message for the insider.  Which isn't entirely true. The only coherent messages that came through were of white supremacy & misogyny. The Republican campaign used (and are continuing to use) deception, risk-taking, secrecy, and situational relevance as methods of gaining the insider group's trust and exploiting their significant information poverty and continue to do so. Deception, risk-taking, secrecy, and situational relevance not only spring up incidentally causing and reinforcing information poverty, but can be and are now 'weaponized'.

So knowing this, and that there is much more in-depth, fruitful discussion and learning to be had from Elfreda Chatman's theories, what potential way forward can we draw from her? We must find ways of increasing trust.

...for people to benefit from information received from outsiders, there needs to be trust associated with this process. What appears to be conditional influences of information poverty is poor people’s desperation to shield the real state of need they are experiencing. I suspect that this is due to their perception that it is too costly to themselves to share and because networks of trust between themselves and others have not provided trustworthy opportunities.

Which means the hard work of having conversations across lines, presenting, as she also notes, as "a person who is honest, careful about claims, and disinclined to deceive," and to try to come to an understanding about what within the small world will be perceived as genuinely newsworthy - i.e., addressing their state of need within the context of having developed a trustworthy relationship.

Some days I despair that this is not an achievable goal, but change starts small and if we can build relationships in good faith, with those who can be reached, perhaps there is some hope.  

For your more in-depth consideration and a starting place with these theories, more from Elfreda Chatman: 

• A Theory of Life in the Round

• The Impoverished Life - World of Outsiders

With hope that we can improve the situation, and curiosity,

--Susan