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 p