Today I co-facilitated the first day of a three day workshop in Maine State Prison Medium Unit. We have a fine group of participants. Getting to this point has been like the proverbial herding cats but it is all worth the effort. I’ve learned that it all works out in the end, mostly. I’m not talking about people who are disenfranchised and subject to constant oppression and ridicule. I’m just talking about normative people and their privilege.
On Monday Sam and I drove Rocinante filled with all of his stuff to D.C. so he can start school at George Washington University. He starts this coming Tuesday. I drove the car because it is a standard shift and Sam is not licensed to operate the vehicle. I drove Tuesday morning and we arrived at 5 P.M. We ate dinner with Sam’s host and later I went to bed by 9 P.M. I got up at 4:45 A.M. and left soon after. I arrived back in Boothbay at around 3 P.M. I was exhausted and I had a stiff drink of Scotch on the rocks and I ate dinner and I read a bit and then I went to bed. That was Monday and Tuesday.
I spent Wednesday doing nothing more than getting water and other nutrients into myself. I went to be early and slept through the night. Thursday I ventured into town to go to my favorite place the library where I extended my copy of “Onionhead” and I checked out a new book as well. I went to bed very early and got up today at 7 A.M. I felt rested finally and I drove to the Prison to begin the workshop.
That’s it. Nothing startling or exciting. Just good old fashioned volunteerism and joy in what I do and how my life unfolds. Below is a story that may be a repeat but I picked it to put here for your repeated pleasure. I hope your day was as satisfying as mine.
Peace to all. G.M. Goodwin 25 August 2017
GRAFFITI TO LIVE BY
I was standing outside South Station waiting for the bus. This was in 1981 and I was working in East Boston at a half-way house for alcoholics. I’m not sure why I was there at the bus stop. I only know that I was using the MBTA for practical reasons and I was on my way someplace or on my way back to East Boston from someplace. I was waiting for a bus that would take me either toward or away from East Boston. I was standing on the sidewalk on Atlantic Avenue observing my surroundings. Across the street a building was being modernized. There were four by eight sheets of plywood placed to prevent people from entering the construction site. On the plywood were written several words and phrases; some official, some not. One of the unofficial phrases was more thought provoking. I read it and read it again. I did this several times until I got the phrasing and meter right in my head. I have quoted the phrase often since then and I use it as part of my e-mail signature now.
Boston is a great city for getting around. But, as anywhere else, it helps if you were born there. The Hub is a small contained metropolis that has everything within a few miles of anywhere. If one is healthy and able to perambulate then this is the place to live. I lived in two areas of the city of Boston; Comm Ave out between Hereford and Gloucester and then on the seedy north slope of Beacon Hill. The north slope of Beacon Hill was once known as the West End, a wonderful Italian neighborhood. The West End was demolished as part of a revitalization campaign in downtown Boston. Down came a family neighborhood and up went Government Center. Government Center is a crowd of concrete brutalist architecture for city, state, and federal government buildings. I have trouble with brutalist architecture. It looks like someone didn’t really give a crap about how it looks. It looks simply like the decision makers were not invested in beauty or in pleasing the populace. I would guess that whoever made the call to build these non-attractive buildings got lazy during the final days of city planning and just gave in to the least popular architectural submissions. I have read that the architecture is suggestive of the “honesty of concrete construction”. I think it is a fart in the face of humanity.
The first place I saw brutalist architecture was at SUNY Stony Brook, New York. I was a member of an organization in Port Washington, an anti-nuke affinity group aligned with SHAD and CLAMSHELL. I was in my last year of Navy service and my mind had been awakened by some radical people who owned a bookstore. If you want to get into trouble with the populace-in-general hang out at an independent book store and be part of that culture. Anyway, the affinity group and many others from New York and New England met for several days of protest planning at Stony Brook. I recall during lunch on a grassy quad one of the women mentioning that the buildings there were ‘brutalist architecture’. All of us sitting together at lunch agreed that was a good description. Later that year at the Wall Street protest of 1979 I was arrested 3 times with my affinity mate Emily and on one of those occasions I sat next to Daniel Ellsberg and his son on one of the police buses. (In case you missed it then here it is now.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODCvbn_hUDI
During this protest I met a future reporter for National Public Radio. Margot Adler was working for WBAI an independent radio station in The City. I liked her for her earth-mother persona and beautiful presence. She died this past summer. (Here is her obit.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/28/margot-adler-dead-dies_n_5627883.html
So the graffiti on the side of a construction site near South Station in Boston hit a nerve with me in 1981. Even as I write this short piece in memory of the West End of Boston, Stony Brook, Wall Street protest, and Margot Adler I still am intrigued by the simple transition from word to word of this phrase.
Believe
Be live
Live
Simple, eh?
George M. Goodwin
September 19, 2014
Playing Fair and Being Kind 