24 August 2007 – State College, PA

Leaving Vermont, we headed south into Massachusetts, to meet with some of the people who had attended our screenings in Northampton and Amherst, for a follow-up potluck and circle. Jim and Torie again played host and organizer, giving us a comfortable place to sleep and bringing together a wonderful group for further discussion and sharing. If memory serves, there were fourteen of us, most of whom had been to a screening, but a few new souls, and we spoke of community and action, of place and commitment, of our power, and of our fear and grief. It was a sweet and soulful time, and it was gratifying to see this local group make moves to form some sort of ongoing dialogue. We wish them the very best in that effort.

From Northampton, we headed up to Maine for a few days of rest and relaxation. We landed in a quiet little mom’n’pop hotel in Camden, where we holed up for a couple of nights of sleeping and reading and catching up on email. We took a long hike up a mountain and gazed out over the bay. The extra sleep was glorious.

Time came for us to head on to our next screening. Leaving our rental car in Amherst, we trained into New York, where Tom and Philip again took wonderful care of us for a night, whisking us away from Penn Station and feeding us some marvelous meatloaf and corn and salad (all local and organic, of course). The next morning we ventured into Penn Station via the subway on our own, caught the Amtrak Pennsylvanian, which left exactly on time (it helps when you catch the train where it originates!), and made our way to Lewistown, where two of the organizers for the State College screening, Paula and Kevin, picked us up.

We drove the thirty minutes to State College, to the Stone Soup Connective, a great little cooperative marketplace for locally produced goods, foods, and services, but also well described as “an idea masquerading as a business”. That idea is to bring people together, to get them connected to their place, their food, and each other. At Stone Soup we met Sally and Mary, the other two screening organizers. We all made our way to Sally’s home, where we would be staying with her, her daughter Dagney, and her partner Andy. We ate pizza and drank a superb local hefeweizen and talked until one in the morning. It was really comforting and inspiring, to hear their stories of triumph and struggle and connecting, and to tell our own story.

The next day we slept in, had breakfast, had a phone call with Andy and Stacy back home, who are handling “the business” while we gallivant around the country, then hung out at Stone Soup for the afternoon, catching up on more email, helping to set up, and eating great local cheeses and jams and crackers and tomatoes.

Evening came and people filed in. The audience grew to forty-nine, larger than had been expected. So large, in fact, that we ran out of chairs! We found places for everybody to sit (including the counter top) and hit play. The screen was a bit wrinkly, as many old movie screens are, but the sound was great, and the audience laughed, always a good sign.

Afterwards, twenty-eight or so stayed for the dialogue, pretty much our largest circle, I think, and certainly so as a percentage of the audience. On a hot Friday night, and in competition with the nearby Grange Fair, we sat and spoke until nearly eleven, sharing the sadness and anger and relief and shame and fear that seem to come up everywhere when we look squarely at the world situation. Many in the circle said that the movie helped them to feel some hope, and some relief, to finally be amongst people willing and able to look at the world straight on and talk about it. That’s what it will take, to find effective actions to take, and to navigate our way through the future changes.

The next morning, this morning, ten of us got together for a follow up circle. We spoke of what we’d need in a group to have us join it, how an ongoing group could serve the community, and what that might look like. It may be that some sort of ongoing circle will come out of this event. We spoke more of community, and of action, of objectification and e-prime and connection with the universe, of our kids and grandkids. As always, when we speak from the heart, and seek to listen, when we face fully into the world and share our thoughts and feelings about that, when we use the simple structures of circled chairs and a talking stick, when we agree to suspend our assumptions, people step into great possibilities, and begin to re-discover their innate abilities to form community and connection. We find that we are all in this together, that we are not alone, that we are not crazy, and that community and connection are real possibilities, even here, even anywhere, even in the heart of Empire. Sweet.

We head now to Pittsburgh, to link up with the Tribe of Anthropik. Back soon.

Tim