29 October, 2007 – Fresno, California

But I won’t need it when I reach the end

It was good that we were rested, as we were headed for a storm.

The train rolled from Emeryville toward Fresno, heading first North, then East, then South through the San Joaquin Valley. We got off in Madera (a little early, if you can believe that) and soon enough, there were our next organizers and hosts, True and his father John.

We went to their home, where they showed us to our room, then took us on a tour of their beautiful and extensive vegetable and flower gardens, their walk-in cooler and water tanks, their greenhouses and watering systems. They make their living farming, selling their produce and flowers at the farmer’s market in Fresno, and are following an approach they call Whole Systems Agriculture, with True studying permaculture to add to that. As we toured we munched on carrots and beans and various leaves and marveled at the variety and the healthy glow of these plant allies. It was a sane, inspiring and peaceful space.

After a nap and a shower, we had a great dinner of beans and greens and flatbread. then packed up and headed toward Fresno for the screening, our first-ever outdoor event. Our venue was the Vineyard Farmer’s Market, a huge domed trellis of a space, with vines overhead, and mosaic-covered columns and strings of Xmas lights. True’s brother John was there to help set up, as was his friend and fellow compatriot in Post Carbon Fresno, Darren, who was there with screen and projector and DVD player and speakers to take care of the tech. While Darren put picture and sound in place, the rest of us lined up chairs and got the space ready.

And then the Western sky darkened…

I love thunderstorms. I love to see the sky wide awake and wildly alive, to feel the wind on my face, the electricity in the air. I remember watching storms as a kid, watching as they would bear down on us from miles away, marveling at their power, feeling their power in my body. This was like that. The only problem was, in thirty minutes or so, we were expecting a bunch of people to show up and watch a movie under the open sky.

I walked out to where I could better see the growing mass of dark gray and purple and flashing yellow-white. I thanked the storm for coming and explained what we were doing. And I asked it, not to spare us, or to turn away, but to do what it needed to do, trusting that the Earth knew best what was needed to serve the greater good. Most agreed that this storm, at this time, was both rare and unusual, and many commented on the irony of its appearing on the one day we’d planned an outdoor screening. There’s nothing the gods find quite so amusing, I think, as human beings making plans…

We watched the storm approach. A few early audience members arrived and we spoke with them as the lightning and thunder neared. At some point John hauled out some EZ-Ups and set them up. And as the raindrops began to fall, we grabbed the screen and rolled it back down, hauled speakers and projector and chairs under the shelters, and grabbed hold of the poles to hold them in place against the wind. The wind strengthened and the rain increased and soon we all huddled under the shelters, ten or fifteen of us by then, laughing at our predicament and enjoying the storm.

We decided to proceed with the screening, to honor the diehard spirit of those who had come and stayed. The rain slacked and we set back up under the three EZ-Ups, one for projector and screen and two for chairs, making a little covered theater space under the dripping vines and unsettled sky. John and True and Sally and I said a few words each, then Darren hit play and adjusted the volume and we were off.

Somewhere in there Sally made a couple of phone calls. I found a latte at the strip mall across the road. We walked to a Sprint store in our ongoing and unsuccessful search for a data cable. And I wandered around the grounds, peering through the windows of a Halloween store and watching as families came back to the pumpkin patch after the rain. I made my way back to watch the second half of the doc. The end credits rolled. Of the twenty-two who had arrived to watch the movie, seventeen remained, and nine of us stayed for the circle, passing the talking stick and sharing our feelings and reactions.

We spoke of sadness and disgust, of fear and relief, of gladness and anger. We spoke of dying honeybees and drug abuse and farming, and wondered just how humans would one day live, and what level of technology and economy would help to form minds that could live peaceably with the rest of life. At last it was time to stop. We packed up chairs and equipment and collapsed the shelters and loaded off into the night, making our way back to our room and crashing into a fitful sleep, as unsettled as the sky had been.

In the morning we sat with True and his father John, his brother Emmanuel and Emmanuel’s girlfriend Maia (I do hope I’ve spelled these names correctly!). We broke fast with eggs and toast and onions and greens freshly picked, and spoke of court systems and school systems and natural systems and the end of the Age of Experts. Needing to find a data cable for our computers, we packed up and headed out with True and John, to Fresno, where we could find an electronic store before catching the train.

Our old data cable, which allowed us to use our cell phone as a modem, which allowed us to get online and be in touch pretty much anywhere we could catch a Sprint signal, had gotten lost somewhere along the line. With outgoing mail now three days old (wifi being harder to find than we had supposed, and often blocking our outgoing mail) we were feeling out of touch with our various peoples and support systems and were feeling a great need for that cable.

Radio Shack did not have the cable we needed. Best Buy may have had one that would have worked, but it was packaged with half a dozen other cables, the so called “universal kit”, one of the more absurd and insulting marketing scams we’ve encountered lately, as if we actually had half a dozen different brands of cell-phones and computers for which we’d need all of these cables. Sneering at the $70 price tag, we left the store disgusted and still without a cable.

Getting back into True and John’s van, I pulled the sliding door closed in some unusual way and it came off its tracks. We were unable to horse it back into place, so True called his mother for help. While John went into a store to get some duct tape, with the idea of taping the door into place so they could drive home, True’s mother’s fiance, Pedro, drove to where we were and picked us up and whisked us into downtown Fresno and to the train station, getting us there in time to catch the train. Thankfully, the train was running an hour late. Had it not been, we may not have made it.

The train came and we boarded. On to Bakersfield, then LA, then Albuquerque, where we would rent a car to drive to Silver City. A good thirty hours of travel before our next stop.

Our thanks and best wishes to True and John and Darren and John and Emmanuel and Maia and Pedro, and to the few who braved the storm, to sit with us and look at the world situation for an evening.

And please join us in a group raspberry for the marketers and advertisers and manufacturers and salepeople and big box store honchos who think it’s OK to package a bunch of shit we don’t need together with the one small thing we do, in an insulting attempt to rip us off, while ever more quickly destroying the planet. I sure do wish we could find data cables at the thrift store!

Peace, all,

Tim