Giving Thanks 2016

Today is a day of rest and reflection. After a full day yesterday, Susan and I have a gloriously unscheduled Friday with her son, Jamie (up from St Paul). Family time.  

This stands in sharp contrast with yesterday, which was completely orchestrated. I had infusion therapy in the morning followed by a full-court press in the kitchen as soon as I got home, to continue prepping a Thanksgiving feast for eight, the cooking for which started Wed night. Don't get me wrong: I love cooking in general, and celebration cooking in particular. Even better, it's something on which Susan and I are totally sympatico. 

Our biggest challenge is dancing gracefully through the choreography of two busy chefs in the kitchen at the same time. The prime prep spot is a bit too close to the sink, putting wayward arms and hips at risk when the rhythm of wielding sharp knives and sweeping away detritus are executed in the vicinity of quick rinses and sudden tool extractions. But we're figuring it out.

I find 6-8 is the perfect size for a dinner party. It's hardly any more trouble than cooking for two, gives you more latitude to try out dishes (while at the same time honoring de rigueur menu items such as turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, and cranberry relish), is easy to divide between two accomplished cooks, affords us a suitable opportunity to bring out the fancy dishes and linen, and you can fit everyone around one table, holding a single conversation. What's not to like? Talk about slow food, dinner yesterday stretched from 4-9. All the way from hot-out-of-oven crab-stuffed mushroom caps to coffee accompanied by pecan pie topped with whipped cream.

• • •

As I happened to be at Susan's for Thanksgiving last year, this is a great time to take a snapshot of all that's unfolded for me in the past year, enumerating the wealth of things that I have to be thankful for.

o  Last Thanksgiving I was experiencing steady back pain, but the worst was still ahead. I was three weeks away from it deteriorating to the muscle spasming hell that would make it almost impossible to travel or even get out of bed for six weeks, ultimately leading to hospitalization and the discovery of my multiple myeloma. I almost died.

o  While contracting cancer would never be on anyone's wish list, from that grave nadir many wonderful things have emerged. By incredible good fortune, my breakdown occurred in Duluth. Not only did I receive irreplaceable emotional and logistical support when I most needed them, but it turned out that I received superb medical attention once I got over the hump of accepting that I seriously needed help.

Duluth is not a large city (pop 86,000), and has only two hospitals (St Luke's and Essentia). Yet they both have invested in their oncology departments and I could hardly have picked a better place to have discovered my cancer. I was morbidly sick and went to the St Luke's emergency room Jan 31. Within hours I was accurately diagnosed (in contrast with the cancer being missed when I was tested for it in Missouri in December 2014), admitted to the hospital, and started on treatment—my kidneys were barely functioning at 20% capacity, I had been leaching calcium from my skeleton to the point where I was in imminent danger of fracturing something, I had three collapsed vertebrae, and my bone marrow was producing a plethora of unwanted plasma cells. I was one sick puppy. I was thankful for excellent medical care and a loving partner—as the reincarnation of Florence Nightingale who unstintingly jumped into the role without any clarity about their being a future for our relationship beyond nurse/patient.

o  Since bottoming out last winter, I have steadily responded to the protocols laid out by Dr Alkaied, my oncologist. It turns out that multiple myeloma is a variety of cancer for which there there has been tremendous recent progress made in understanding the disease and how to treat it. Not only is Alkaied current with the literature and research, he was able to consult with the rest of his cancer team (seven in all) and he had immediate ideas about how to proceed. I was thankful that of all the cancers I could have had, it was one for which there was hope for containment.

After some judicious experimenting with various protocols, we hit on a chemotherapy mix that my body responded to well and that drove down the cancer. I was thankful for having a strong enough heart and lungs to handle the strain of my recovery. (All those years of healthy living and good diet at Sandhill Farm were coming into play).

o  My gradual recovery was in service to a master plan that called for an autologous stem cell transplant at the Mayo Clinic this summer. It's a procedure in which they are world experts, and my case was overseen by Dr Buadi, a hematologist who specializes in treating multiple myeloma. I was thankful to have access to top-drawer treatment in state. (As Alkaeid necessarily treats all kinds of cancer, he only occasionally sees my disease; Buadi sees patients with my illness day in and day out.) I was also thankful for Ceilee, Jo, Alison, Annie, and (of course) Susan who comprised my indispensable on-site support team during my five weeks in Rochester.

o  Happily, the stem cell transplant was a full success. My cancer is currently in total remission, I have been given the green light to resume my consulting/teaching career (within reason), and I am starting a maintenance course of chemotherapy where I receive a lower dosage of Kyprolis, one of the drugs that was effective in containing the cancer last spring. I am thankful that there is a drug that works well for me and that I tolerate well (which is not everyone's experience).

To be clear, the cancer is dormant (good) but not gone. It is inappropriate to see myself as "cured." The cancer may return at any time, or it may not. Meanwhile, I am fully aware of living in a state of grace. I am thankful that I get to enjoy these days (years?) of "extended play," with sufficient recovery to do the work I love (cooperative group process) with as deft a touch as I've ever had, and to have a surfeit of friends and loved ones with which to celebrate life and smell the roses (as opposed to interacting with people more or less in passing, on my way to the next thing).

o  While my choice to live in an income-sharing community left me rich in relationships and experiences—for which I'll be eternally grateful and don't expect to ever second guess—it did not lead to financial security. Thus, I was scrambling to handle the staggering health bills I ran up this year. I am thankful that this crisis did not bloom until I was 66 and already on Medicare, and that I had the foresight (and good advice) to buy a generous supplemental insurance policy. 

While that protection meant that I was insulated from the vast majority of my bills, I still had thousands of dollars of liability and was facing the double whammy of not being able to work while I focused on my recovery. I am thankful to the 30 some people who generously responded to my June blog appeal for financial support, effectively bridging the gap between what I had and what I owed. Whew!

o  My bedrock in all his has been Susan (how do people make it through life without a loving partner?). Of all the many things that I have to be thankful for today, none is more precious to me than Susan and the unprecedented opportunity that was opened up from behind the clouds of my health crisis for the two of us to enjoy our latter years in curiosity, in laughter, and in the exuberant exploration of love.

Defining Cooperative Culture

Back in 1974, when a group of four of us started Sandhill Farm, I started down a path that ultimately added up to my dedicating my life to building community. While that commitment has never wavered (the need for community today as more urgent than ever), I've frequently adjusted the lens through which I see what I'm doing.

One of the most potent and enduring ways to frame my life's work is that I am promoting cooperative culture—as an alternative to the competitive culture that dominates mainstream society. But what does that mean, cooperative culture?

While it's analogous to asking a fish to define water, I can at least nibble around the edges.

o  Caring about how as much as what
While there is lip service given to how things are done in the mainstream culture (don't break the law, pay fair wages, and deliver what you promise) there's no question but that the bottom line is king. In cooperative culture you're just as likely to get into hot water cutting corners on process as you are if you deliver slipshod product.

o  Thinking inclusively (no us-versus-them dichotomy)
Not going forward unless everyone can be brought along is quite a different mind set than trying to secure a majority of votes. In the former there should be no disgruntled minorities; in the latter outvoted minorities are collateral damage, and a way of life.

o  Going to the heart (rather than being nice)
Done well, cooperative culture is about plumbing the emotional and psychic depths of topics, not just the best thinking. Wherever there is tension we work to resolve it, not paper it over.

o  Placing relationships in the center
The weft and warp of cooperative culture is woven on the loom of human interactions. The stronger the connections, the tighter the weave.

o  Being open to disagreement and critical feedback
In healthy cooperative groups there is an awareness of how vital it is to establish and utilize clear channels of  communication among members whenever anyone is having a critical reaction to the statements or behavior of another member in the group context. Failing to attend to this leads to the erosion of trust and is damaging to relationship.

o  Emphasizing access and sharing (rather than ownership)
A corollary to recognizing the primacy of relationship is that "things" take a back seat to people. In the interest of leaving more for others—both present and future—cooperative folks work to eat lower on the food chain and consume less. If we share, then access to things can be a reasonable substitute for ownership, and everyone can chase fewer dollars in order to secure a satisfactory quality of life.

o  Taking into account the impact that your words and actions have on others 
Another corollary is the realization that cooperative culture doesn't work well unless it's working well for all of us. That translates into mindfulness about how one's activity lands on others. In the wider culture the model of good decision-making is competitive: that a fair fight will produce the best result (survival of the fittest). In cooperative culture we explicitly reject that thinking—because we know that life is not a zero-sum game where one's person's advancement is predicated on another person's loss.

It's much easier to expand one's consciousness to hold all species once you accept that we need to hold all of humanity (no just those living in blue states, those promoting white culture, or those embracing green politics). Once there, it is that much harder to be at peace with people throwing trash out the window of their car (essentially fouling our one nest), or with company CEOs who decide to pay fines because it's cheaper than eliminating pollution from their waste stream.

When seen through the lens of cooperative culture private ownership entails the responsibility to conserve, enhance, and extend—more than the right to hoard, misuse, and exhaust.

What do I mean by cooperative culture? All of the above.

Facilitating by Intuition

Today I'm traveling to Durham NC where I'll be working with a cohousing community (my 61st if you're keeping score at home). I'll be using one of my favorite approaches: a four-day intensive immersion. After arriving Wed evening I'll get a good night's sleep and then begin work in earnest in the morning. 

My time with the client group will divide into two distinct parts:

Segment I: Interviews
From Thursday morning through Friday afternoon I'll make myself available to meet with group members in ones, twos, and in teams. I'll ask questions, but mostly I'll listen.

They'll tell me what they think I should know about the group, or about their relationship to the group. They'll tell me what's precious about the group and what's challenging. They'll share their opinions about how we should focus the plenaries on the weekend. They'll tell me what the objectives should be for our time together.

Taken all together, I'll form opinions about how the group has lost its way and where the points of leverage lay for getting unstuck.

Segment II: Plenary Work
Everything shifts at Friday dinner. Afterwards we'll be gathering in plenary, in meetings that my partner and I will facilitate.

We'll start with my giving the group a summary of Findings: the themes I've distilled from Segment I. This, hopefully, will accomplish a number of things:

o  That I have listened well.
o  That I have a solid grasp of where the group stands, including a concise articulation of its issues.
o  That I have a road map for how to use the weekend plenaries productively.
o  That I have digested the complexities of the group dynamics and am not overwhelmed.
[Aside: This last may not seem like much, but it's common for members of intentional communities to experience what's happened in community as a singularity in their life, and it's therefore natural to project that it will be difficult (if not impossible) for an outsider to grok the sophistication of their reality in a single pass. What they often fail to take into account is that what's unique to them—living in community—is the (rarefied) air that I've been breathing for the last 40 years, and that fact is a prime reason why I was hired in the first place.]

From this starting point the weekend can unfold in a wide variety of ways but I can confidently predict that the elements will be an interwoven mix of:

—establishing heartfelt connections among members
—offering the principles of good process (generally this is slanted more toward introducing new ideas, rather than dismantling practices that are dysfunctional)
—demonstrating how to apply the principles while simultaneously tackling one or more pressing issues that the group needs to address anyway (this yields a double benefit: product on a specific issue and a workable model for how to tackle things more effectively in the future)
—laying out a sequence for tackling topics that emerged in the course of our examination but that we didn't have time to adequately address while I was on campus

Along the way I expect the energy to be up-tempo, I expect to have fun, and I expect relationships among members to be enhanced. What's not to like?

• • •

Having laid all this out, it's only fair to confess that I developed this approach because it plays to my strengths: both in intensity and spontaneity. For those who prefer a much more detailed battle plan my approach comes across as frightfully cavalier and unprepared. While I've been in this situation frequently enough over a 30-year career that I thoroughly trust my ability to "see" what needs to happen in the dynamic moment, I have peers—whose abilities I have great respect for—who would sooner go into a consulting weekend with no pants on than so little clarity about the arc of the weekend on the eve of the first interview. What I see as luxurious, they see as borderline irresponsible.

When I train facilitators I emphasize the importance of developing one's instincts—learning to trust their gut.

Nowhere is this more valuable than when working with a group that's hemorrhaging in multiple planes. Cursory prep work will reveal that there are several legitimate points of entrée and the question emerges, "Where to start?"

In a situation like this experience has taught me that all roads lead to Rome and it doesn't matter that much where we start. So my preference is to follow the juice. That is, find out where the heat and passion are most concentrated and begin there. My absolute favorite way to accomplish this is through on-site interviews.

While it doubles my time on the job (four days instead of two), I know that if I listen carefully I'll learn all I need to know about where people are stuck and what matters to them. I firmly believe that people almost always know the answers to their own problems; they just get temporarily blinded from time to time. My job is not to perform magic (pulling a rabbit out of a hat); it's to pull away the curtains that have been obscuring the answers that were always there. Think of me as a community optician—the guy who's full of options and opticals, though hopefully few illusions.

This weekend I'll be working with María Silvia from Chapel Hill. In addition to being a close friend, for the last seven months of 2015 I lived on the third floor of the house she owns with her partner, Joe Cole. I'd happily still be there today excepting I fell in love with Susan and moved to Duluth to follow my heart, about which I have no regrets. María is highly talented and it's a treat for me to mentor her in group dynamic work. (Joe, by the way, is also talented and I'll be partnering with him to offer an all-day facilitation training as a pre-conference offering at the national cohousing conference in Nashville, May 18.)

As much as María loves me—and I know she does—it drives her nuts how little I map out before arriving on site. To be sure, she knows that plans need to be adaptable in the face of emerging conditions and is not a slave to them; she just doesn't like to arrive on site with nothing up her sleeve. The irony here is that María is a passionate Latina and there is nothing she needs to learn from me about following the energy. She just needs to increase her confidence that the ground will be where she needs it be when she commits her weight forward before the ground is in sight.

It's a dance.

Democracy Does Not Have to Be Majority Voting

In response to my most recent post, The Mourning After, Frands Frydendal wrote:

Can democracy be wrong?

I think it can, meaning it has its weaknesses, and the recent election—in the nation that is supposed to be the vanguard of democracy—shows that a serious update is long overdue. Fortunately new knowledge to create updates has recently become available. 

The election of Trump as the President of the United States is only part of the evidence that democracy as we know it is obsolete. Clinton as the final counter-candidate and the whole process has denounced democracy's claim of being the final solution to the questions of state. 

Versions of democracy differ a lot, but they all rotate around majority decisions, and all the possible ways to influence the majority, including ways that allow for manipulation and collective folly. Of course majority voting is not used for decisions about scientific evidence, neither is it used (much) for business. 

The recent US election is only one out of many democratic decisions leading to questionable, inferior, or even disastrous consequences. Think of the democratic triumphs of Hitler, Brexit, Putin, Assad, Erdogan, and other examples of democratically re-re-elected despots.

Why is it that so many believe that democracy with majority vote is the best decision-making system for a nation or state? It all comes down to the lack of a better alternative. Winston Churchill said:  “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” Maybe it is time to try something new. Otherwise democracy will indeed be the end of that chapter of history. 

I think it is an important task for community workers to locate and inspire communities that have the wish and potential to develop better, alternate versions of democracy, to a point where we can say it has been tried at least on a local scale. 

The bits and pieces to replace majority voting are evolving fast in the circles of sociocracy.

[As English is not Frands' first language, I have lightly edited his statement—hopefully without altering its meaning.]

In the face of our recent US Presidential election, Frands has made an impassioned plea to expand our thinking about what's possible with democracy. In particular, he questions how much practicing democracies have relied on majority vote to make decisions—offering up the recent US election as prima facie evidence of the folly of relying on the current system to yield reasonable results—and makes a plea for experimenting with other forms of democracy to liberate it from the manipulation we just witnessed.

By definition democracy means "rule by the people"; where every eligible citizen has a say in how things will go, and there is no presumption that some people have superior wisdom to others. At larger levels (nation, state, or even municipal) this generally translates into some form of representative government where decisions are made by a majority of elected officials or delegates. This adaptation is typically done to reduce to manageable levels the time it takes to hear from everyone. In a direct democracy—where everyone who cares to is given the chance to speak to the issues at hand—there just isn't enough air time to get it done.

Of particular interest to me, Frands hints at the direction he'd like to see experimentation take: some version of consensus, which stands in sharp contrast with majority voting. From this point forward I want to respond in two parts: a) consensus in contrast with voting; and b) sociocracy in particular.

Contrasting Consensus with Majority Voting
Consensus has two major historical threads that I'm aware of: 1) The Religious Society of Friends; and 2) Native American cultures. In the case of the former, Quakers developed consensus (which they style "sense of the meeting") as a way to conduct religious meetings. By creating a contemplative meeting environment with plenty of spaciousness in which members of the congregation can speak as moved, Quakers believe that they are nearer to God and that that is the best way to evince God's intentions.

This version of consensus was adapted to secular groups in the '60s and '70s, with the Movement for a New Society leading the way in the context of anti-nuclear protest groups making decisions at action sites. From there it blossomed into the most commonly used decision-making process among intentional communities—a position it's held for at least the last half century.

The link between Native American cultures (think Iroquois Confederacy in particular) and secular consensus is less direct yet nonetheless helps to establish that the roots of alternative forms of democracy (by which I mean something different than majority vote) are much more deep-rooted than Frands knows. While I am not aware of any instances where consensus in intentional communities has inspired municipalities to adopt it as their form of government, there are plenty of examples of schools, neighborhood associations, congregations, and nonprofits that have been moved to work with consensus. So there is a growing body of work along the lines for which Frands has advocated.

As a long-time consensus advocate and instructor (I've been at this for more than four decades) the main factor limiting the expansion of consensus is that it requires a commitment to culture change and personal work to consistently achieve stellar results. Without it, you're essentially importing competitive conditioning into attempts at cooperative culture, and it's a train wreck. Culture shift takes time and investment, and it's way more sophisticated than memorizing a new instructional manual and organizational chart.

That does not mean I'm giving up on the potential of consensus to be a viable alternative to majority voting, but I'm not sanguine about seeing consensus take over as a popular form of large-scale democracy. It just takes too long to hear from everyone, and requires that too many participants become self-aware about appropriate ways to participate.

Sociocracy as a Strain of Consensus
This particular form of consensus has be around since Gerard Endenburg adapted consensus to apply to his Dutch engineering firm in the '70s and was then imported into the US by John Buck in his book We the People, published in 2007.

While I appreciate that Frands is excited about sociocracy's potential as a robust form of consensus, I've looked at this fairly closely and believe it's substantially oversold. For a more thorough treatment of my reservations, see Critique of Sociocracy Revisited. 

While there is nothing peculiar to sociocracy that I consider a best practice (and thus, I don't see it as a panacea in response the failings of democracy), I think it's a mistake to get hung up on which form of consensus is best. It is huge when a group makes a commitment to functioning cooperatively and attempts direct democracy.

That represents radical change, and, like Frands, I'm behind it.

The Mourning After

Progressives face an important choice today. 

In the aftermath of Trump's triumph Tuesday there is considerable soul-searching and despair among progressives. That's understandable, but it behooves us to not just sit in the corner wringing our hands. The issues haven't changed and neither has their urgency—I'm talking about climate change, LGBTQ rights, universal health insurance, education subsidies, and anti-racism programs. But our tactics will have to undergo some serious revision because the Republicans are about to have their way with us. 

They control the Presidency, the Senate, the House, and a majority of state governor slots. So we're in for a bumpy time.

And you can't blame it all on the Republicans or the bungling of the FBI. Of the 231 million registered voters in this country, a whopping 43.2% did not vote!

The question before us is how will we respond. Will we retire from the field to lick our wounds? Will we become bitter and cynical, talking only among ourselves and reinforcing the us/them dynamics that dominated the political rhetoric of the Presidential campaign? 

Or will we rise above it? Divisiveness and vilification of Other cannot be the answer. It cannot possibly "make America great again." Can we be gracious losers? Can we be the loyal opposition that steadfastly continues to state our concerns and to voice our objections to the suppression of minorities, the gutting of environmental law, and the repeal of Roe v Wade.

Our task is not to overthrow or to monkey wrench the government; it's to change it from within. And that means dialog. It means reaching out to the 63% of white men and 52% of white women (yes, you read that correctly: a majority of white women spurned Hillary and voted for Donald) who put Trump in the White House. We need to know why a majority of white women felt they could support Trump even after the awful misogynistic statements he'd made in the Billy Bush tapes were revealed, and after a plethora of women stepped forward to give personal testimony about his reprehensible womanizing.

It is our challenge to try to find ways to bridge between the fair, just, and sustainable world we crave and the land of dignity and opportunity they feel has been denied them. There is only one lifeboat and we're all in it. As progressives it's our job to initiate these conversations, reaching out to people we ordinarily don't talk with, hungry for the ways in which we're all human and can make common cause. This is not about the homogenization of our culture or bending others to our will; it's about getting along with our neighbors, people with whom we don't always agree or see things the same way.

Though the room just go darker, guess what? We have a light. And the preciousness of its illumination only increases as the darkness grows.

For me, this moment is highly evocative of the aftermath of 9/11. While Bush was immediately intent on revenge (striking back at terrorists with deadly force), there was a significant minority that was more focused on the question: why are some Arabs so angry with us that they bombed our buildings, killing more than 5000 all together?

Fifteen years later, I don't want to fuel the anguish and despair; I want to channel the energy of this election into a wake-up call for progressives. There is work to do. As activist and songwriter Joe Hill wrote in a telegram right before being executed in 101 years ago: "Don't mourn, organize!"

Getting Trumped on Tuesday

Tomorrow we'll get to see if a person can get elected President of the United States campaigning on fear and anger—because Trump sure isn't running on qualifications (unless you have a soft spot for bluster and misogyny).

Over the course of my lifetime I've observed the steady erosion of civility in political discourse. (I yearn for the good old days of Humphrey and Dirksen). In this era of extensive polling and psychological profiling, candidates have moved sharply toward vilification (in contrast with discussing issues) because studies show that that has the greater impact on how people vote. Ugh.

What could possibly be a more potent validation of that theory than the viability of Donald Trump's candidacy? He's tall, rich, arrogant, racist, a blatant womanizer, has no experience in political office, and no reverse gear in his demeanor. As a collaborator he makes Genghis Kahn look thoughtful. He is the absolute embodiment of competitive spirit, who will fight until the end and has no qualms about who he climbs over or trashes en route. On top of all that, he's a whiner, graceless, and has minimal self control. In short, he's completely odious and inappropriate. And yet, he's within a few percentage points of being the favorite tomorrow.

Take a moment to let that sink in. That's how far he's been able to ride the tiger of anger and fear. His policy ideas are naive and unworkable, yet he's found resonance with labeling his opponent as Crooked Hillary, and making the pathetic case that his philandering is OK because Hillary's husband did it, too. Are you kidding me??

I wish I were.

I could rail against Trump all day, but he only does his shtick because it works. Rather than focus on the avatar, I'm more interested in what's going on in our culture that such tactics are effective. I believe there is a deep reservoir of hurt and anger in this country. The delineation of its elements are some combination of:

—Life is unfair. We were raised on the promise of the American Dream and it's inaccessible.

—Jobs are being exported overseas or obsoleted. And even if I'm fortunate enough to have one, I'm underpaid, disrespected, and without job security.

—The chasm between the rich and everyone else (like me) is yawning wider all the time.

—There is despair that my individual voice is too weak to be heard, or is ignored when it is.

—Politicians lie, the media lies, and so do doctors, lawyers, and bankers. Who can you trust these days?

These issues have been gestating for decades and will not be solved by tomorrow's election. Nor, I'm afraid, are we likely to see any diminishment of vitriol in political pronouncements—regardless of who wins. It may feel good (at least in the moment) to vote your gut, but lashing out will not rebuild trust. Not ever. What it will take is winners reaching out across the aisle to lend a hand to losers, because the bigger picture is that we're all in the same lifeboat.

Sadly, even taking that first step (which may strain credulity to imagine—Trump offering the top job at EPA to Elizabeth Warren, or Clinton appointing Chris Christie to head a blue ribbon panel on election reform) is susceptible to vicious criticism. (Note how viciously Obama was disparaged for attempting bipartisan dialog during the early years of his administration—it was labeled a sign of weakness and roundly dismissed.)  

What does it mean that Republicans are boasting that if Clinton is elected and they retain control of the Senate that they'll indefinitely tie up in committee any and all of her Supreme Court nominees? Is that just a measure of the GOP's resilience, bouncing off the mat after a knockdown—or a sign that the apocalypse is upon us?

It seems to me that we'll have to start by acknowledging these deep hurts (which, I want to point out, can be done without assigning blame) and taking their measure. There will need to be room for people to express their anguish and a place for that to land. Not because anyone meant to hurt the disenfranchised, but because the actions of the powerful have had that effect, and no lasting bridges will be built unless the abutments upon which they are constructed are secured to the bedrock of open, heartfelt communication (as opposed to posturing and mugging for the camera).

I'm gravely concerned that we may have gotten so inured to mudslinging and slimy behavior that we may have lost our ability to discern integrity, or our will to insist on decency from politicians. And I mean all politicians.

While someone will undoubtedly get trumped Nov 8, will it be Hillary? The Donald? Or the American people?

Dia de los Muertos 2016

Today is All Saints Day. It is also the Day of the Dead, or Dia de los Muertos, when the veil between the temporal and the spirit world is said to be thinnest. In Mexico this is a time to remember those dear to you who have recently departed. Notably, it is treated as a time of celebration. It is neither somber nor macabre. Gravestones are spruced up and altars are festooned in bright colors and momentos. Favorite foods are prepared.

I am especially drawn to this holiday because it addresses a societal need. Overwhelmingly I experience our culture as ritual starved, and I think we have an unhealthy out-of-sight-out-of-mind attitude toward death. Having experienced a long, slow dance with my own mortality this year (in the guise of multiple myeloma), I say bring it on!

This year I've lost two.

Fred Huebner (March 20)
Fred was my uncle, having married my Dad's only sister, June. He was well into his 90s when he died, so he didn't get cheated, and I'm pleased to report that he enjoyed reasonably good health (including golf) right up until the end. 

While we were not close, we were family. 

Sadly, my father had a lifelong enmity toward his sister (June, Fred's wife) and that severely limited contact between the families, even though we lived in neighboring suburbs of Chicago. When my Dad and June's father—my grandfather—was alive, he would insist that the families do things together. But that commitment died when he did, and there were no more joint Christmas or birthday get-togethers after 1972.

June and Fred had two children. Decades ago their daughter, Diane, contracted cancer and predeceased her parents. Their son, John, has suffered from disabilities all his life. He never lived alone (until now) and is currently wheelchair bound. In June's latter years her health was delicate and she required constant care up until her death a few years back. So Uncle Fred's family has endured more than its share of health challenges.
Like Job, however, Uncle Fred was a person who didn't complain about the hand he'd been dealt. Instead, he dedicated his life to being happy. I know that may not sound like much, but it was. Almost always we have choices about how we spin the events around us, and for Uncle Fred the glass was never empty. He would bring a bit of sunshine into any room he entered. Though not an ambitious man, he was a loving husband and father, and a curious man. (One of the last times we communicated he passed along photos of Saturn taken from outer space—he couldn't resist sharing his amazement at what we're learning about the universe.)

We could all do worse than be that curious in our 90s.

Joani Blank (August 6) 
I lost a friend and community lost one of its staunchest promoters when Joani died this past August of pancreatic cancer at age 79. She had lived a full life.

As the cancer wasn't discovered until June, the end came fast, but Joani made the most of it, spending her last few weeks surrounded by friends and family, celebrating their shared lives. She died at home in her beloved cohousing community, Swan’s Market, in downtown Oakland.

I first met Joani at the national cohousing conference held on the campus of UC Berkeley in 2001. Though it was a "home game" for her (as an East Bay resident she could sleep in her own bed each night), it was immediately obvious to me that she was a tour de force who’s energy would be strong in any setting. She was one of the early adopters of cohousing, and worked tirelessly to promote it all the years that I knew her.

Joani and I didn’t always see things the same way. For example, she viewed cohousing as the epicenter of community living, while I saw it as just one of many good choices available under the big top that the Fellowship for Intentional Community has erected for showcasing options in intentional community and social sustainability. Yet, in the end, our differences were minor and we recognized in each other the same burning desire to create a more cooperative and just world. We were fellow travelers.

On a personal level, Joani stood out as someone you could work things out with. As an activist, she was aware that feathers would sometimes get ruffled. Whenever that occurred she wouldn’t necessarily change her viewpoint (or her style) but she’d tackle differences straight on, being willing to hear your side and to work constructively to a mutually agreeable solution. She did not duck the tough questions. While I’d like to tell you that this quality is common in the world today, it isn’t—and Joani was all the more precious to me as a friend because that’s the way she lived her life.

Joan and I crossed paths early on as I helped organize benefit auctions for a number of cohousing conferences and she was a generous contributor, often sending something sizzling from Good Vibrations, the groundbreaking sex-positive business that she started in 1977, with the goal of providing a "clean, well-lighted place for sex toys, books, and [later] videos.” Long before she died, Joani had converted Good Vibrations from “her" business to one that was employee-owned.

While she was undoubtedly better known as the proprietress who started Good Vibrations, I knew her as an icon in the Communities Movement. I last saw her in May at the regional Cohousing Conference on Aging in Salt Lake City, and we had our last exchanges via email in late June after she knew she was sick.

She faced death as fearlessly as she faced life: directly and with her eyes fully open. What better epitaph could one have?