Posts filed under ‘Letters From Vashon’
Letter from Vashon Island: Goodbye to the Post-Intelligencer, Vashon Island Real Estate
As an avid reader and news junkie, I have developed a daily routine which includes copious quantities of caffine and newsprint. I have lived in Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Washington,D.C., and Seattle among other great newspaper towns. These communities were distinguished by their support for two daily newspapers. Columnists battled in print, the papers developed personalities, and stories were covered from different angles. The Freedom of the Press was fully realized.
I have also lived in communities in which the newspaper was horrific. During my stay in New Orleans, I came to cringe when I read the daily paper and saw how many articles were cribbed from the Associated Press. In a City that celebrates its artistry and writing, how could the local paper be such a complete rag?
Today the Seattle Post-Intelligencer printed its last issue. The decline of papers across the country is alarming but this hit me where I live. Promises that the news office will remain open and publishing on-line are not reassuring in the slightest. I must finally concede that we live in an era in which solid news reporting has become a luxury.
When did the news media “jump the shark?” I believe it is a consequence of the superficial celebrity infatuation of this country, perhaps best exemplified by the long-running series “Entertainment Tonight,” which followed the national evening newscasts on network TV. I believe that celebrity news became closely linked to solid news reporting and American Culture lost its tolerance for hard reporting.
Now CNN treads a very fine line between entertainment/sensationalism and hard news coverage. Anderson Cooper’s 360has a nightly excreable feature in which staff and viewers assign a “comic” tagline to a topical picture . . . incentivized by, of course, a T-shirt.
Now generations of Americans have been acculturated to the Sound Bite. The internet has become a vehicle for clipped news bites, digestible “news” presented in a headline. Newsmakers have responded by feeding sound bites to “reporters, who parrot them, without analysis, to the public.
I do not believe it is too much to suggest that the loss of newspapers and journalism is a sign of the decline of our society. Absent a demand for investigative journalism, and a product that advertisers will support, comprehensive news and analysis is lost. Pulitzer Prize-worthy journalism, in which reporters might investigate a story for a year is no longer financially feasible.
Thus, farewell to the Post-Intelligencer and the spirit of competitive journalism that made Seattle an exemplary two-paper town. Samuel Clemens is probably rolling over in his grave to think that the newspaper is dying, and with it, an essential aspect of our ability to hold our government accountable for its activities and promises.
I mourn the loss of an editorial page which featured several excellent writers taking sides on issues every day on the same page that readers commented on the same topics through letters to the editor. We will never completely understand the enormity of this loss of information and the power of knowledge, gleaned through the interactive process of reacting to newspaper columns . . . but I am confident we will feel the consequences of a more poorly informed citizen.
One wonders why the papers cannot charge more for an issue . . . if we are willing to pay $4.50 a cup for custom candy coffee every day, why not a sustainable price for the newspaper? My cup ‘o joe will not taste quite as nice in the future.
Chip Lamason ~ March 17, 2009
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Letter from Vashon Island: Community, Activism and Glacier Mining
Blessings All
These thoughts are especially directed towards those who reside on Vashon.
We are in the midst of very serious times and i do ponder daily how the community will rise to deflect harm from those we know and love. Ours is a most apathetic country where those still getting by with remnants of privilege are stymied. Is it fear? It can’t happen here? Am i the only one feeling isolated in the face of what unfolds locally and globally?
For two years, my child and i have found sanctuary on Vashon. In that time, each of us shaped a niche participating in a progressive and unique culture. We came and remain due to family ties and magical connections, otherwise it would be impossible to continue. Perhaps we would be experiencing homelessness which happened in the past when my oldest 2 were small.
In the late ’80′s we traveled the peace path in our homey van parking it along the way in yards of friends or parks for a night or two. Now i would fear much more for our well being as the desperation level escalates and the simmering undercurrent of violence strikes down the most vulnerable, invisible, marginalized. The frontline destinations are crumbling as people resist in isolation or leave traditional lands, disappear into the grind, die, or become addicts. Now all facets of class are impacted. Millions join the ranks of the voiceless. Millions.
Recently i participated in civil disobedience with a group of courageous people opposing the Glacier Sand and Gravel Mine. How inspiring to work with so many people of my children’s generation who display such fearless nonviolence and commitment! My prayer is that thousands of Vashonites will participate fully in the call of Gandhian nonviolence with conscious intent and resolve. Our Earth and her inhabitants so need this spirit of life, truth and love. Essential.
Activism has been central to my existence for close to 30 years. As i age in a privileged white male dominated culture, i have been witness to who continues to be heard or silenced. The template laid out by over educated white males is what one is pressured to replicate in order to attain “respectability”. One must conform to a standard that has been the hallmark of death and destruction all over the planet, tho supposedly more benign. The men in suits display the uniform appearance of what is supposed to open doors to success. I always wondered when i saw photos of Nelson Mandela in a suit and tie. My heart sang when i saw him in traditional clothing. Tho a suit may not be necessarily preferred garb, the attitude of superiority in knowledge and experience excludes. The preferred cliques tend to be overwhelmingly white, male and those who can meet certain standards of behavior, style, and articulation.
When will the all inclusive rhetoric be actually activated?
The more roots radical people become, the less such standards matter. Hence the longtime young activists devoted to supporting Black Mesa are more along anarchist lines, more broadly inclusive with a studied commitment to dismantling oppressive behaviors. Yet the struggle of the “isms” that divide us rise to the surface everywhere a frontline of struggle exists. Similar dominator models emerge regardless of political or social persuasion. The struggle to change behaviors is one of life’s hardest.
In 1986, i drove Pauline Whitesinger and her daughter Bonnie, who translated, in the van to the northwest to speak about the impending threats of forced relocation being resisted by her traditional Dine people along with traditional Hopis. Pulling into a remote truck stop in Utah or Idaho, we walked inside to use the restroom. Beefy men stared at her with hostility and she muttered defiantly in Dine Bizaad under her breath.
In Seattle, an educated Indigenous film maker asked Pauline if she wasn’t afraid that her use of the term “Mother Earth” might turn her listeners off. Pauline turned away from that woman and would not talk to her again. To this day, Pauline speaks little english and never deviated from her traditional clothing other than boarding school in the ’30′s and in jail once for defending the Sundance grounds at Big Mountain in 2002. She has never boarded a plane and her first step onto a boat was the Tahlequah ferry when i brought her out to Vashon in ’86. Her ways are of the high desert Black Mesa of northeastern Arizona, where she remains one of the few resisters to corporate driven forced relocation.
All too often, conformity is not the path of conscience, peace and justice. I feel it is an issue deserving of our close examination due to how easily one can slip into the rut of exclusion.
So that brings me to the words spoken to those of us preparing for the blockade by the lawyer. The phone was put on speaker while propped on the floor while he told us the importance of being well groomed, “no piercings, no beards”, not looking like dirty hippies when appearing in court. I found his spiel insulting and addressed it after wards, but few agreed. Most felt his words of value. Many feel the need to fit in order to be heard. Again, if success is attained, such moves are seen as what worked. What does that say for the struggles that are unceasing where people cannot possibly appear any other way than how they always are? Privilege is at play….
I have never taken a lawyer in doing civil disobedience, even when facing felony charges for blocking a bulldozer threatening a burial site at Big Mountain in 1989. I represent myself and will continue to do so. It is the Gandhian way. Tho i do not necessarily adhere to all of Gandhi’s ways, i certainly do to much of his philosophy. Look at his attire when doing civil disobedience. Tho trained as a lawyer himself, his clothing reflected his Hindu roots. There is no shame in claiming one’s culture.
I wish to honor those who do take on the legislators, Representatives and other bureaucrats in the tireless efforts to educate those who have power. I do not judge those who strive to be as effective as they can according to their own hearts. I plea that those of us who are not called to groom ourselves in a certain way are also honored. It is the elevation of one approach over another that must be examined.
All my life i have taken a stand for my own unique way of being in the face of family disregard and social bigotry. I do claim my culture as Hippie and have been living the principles of simplicity, creativity, nonviolence, organic planet for 40 years. It is precisely this way of life that made me useful to the traditional Dine and Hopi people i have known for so many years. Working with those whose way of life is the ongoing struggle to demand an end to genocidal policies has been my greatest inspiration.
As i became closer to the struggle of Pauline and her relatives, i also became aware of how totally silenced such traditional people are all over the Americas. It is a lifetime commitment to be of service to their ongoing stands for sacred lands.
Early drive around the back lanes hugging the hills above the west facing island the other morning brought many scattered realizations into a bouquet of reality; each critical experience a separate flower. So i assess relationships and what is silenced in a setting such as this treasure of the Puget Sound. Each human has hidden gems of wisdom and inspiration to contribute to solution in these potentially terminal times. What unfolds as trust is nurtured defies the control of agendas. We must find the time to deeply hear each other. This is critical to success. We now have everything to lose. The old growth is dying; dead zones spread in the seas; genocide has infected humanity, unkindness eats away in small, yet deadly ways and we seem blinded by reality’s toll upon fragile portals for the future.
Several Native American friends were visiting the other night, including my best friend, LisaNa. She was picking her dog up i cared for the preceding week while she had installed her art at the WSU gallery in Pullman and gave a lecture about her philosophy and work.
LisaNa’s good friend is a Nisqually man, who has told me about the operation Glacier has in the Nisqually Delta and in the town of Dupont. He also told me about the connection of the Muckleshoot people, then Nisquallys, to the Chinook of Vashon and the area where Glacier is doing it’s damage. He said what Glacier has already destroyed and plans to destroy can never be replicated.
He told me how the fish hatchery on the Nisqually reservation carefully places the salmon eggs in boxes with water from a particular stream that is used all along as the hatchlings grow big enough to be released into the stream itself. He said that hardly any of those fish return, becoming lost because what has happened to them is not natural. It just is not working.
My friend calls himself a “renegade” Indian. He knows all about his people, the fish, the corruption of the allowed voices, the Tribal Council. He knows few care to hear what he has to say about the destruction of land, life, water and the fish. He gave the name to me of a man who is “qualified” to speak of these things. I called that man, but he has yet to return my call, tho i will try again and again.
I wonder if in calling to the Indians of these waters who care deeply about the Chinook, we could form a critical, unprecedented alliance in defending this fragile region. The people i feel will be most supportive will not fit into any neat category. They will fully be themselves. We need them as much as we need the Orcas, the herring, the smelt, the sand lance, and the Chinook salmon.
In peaceful struggle,
swaneagle harijan
A Common Mother and Grandmother
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Letter from Vashon Island: Community Service in Troubled Times
On Sunday, February 1, more than 50 Vashon Islanders convened at the Vashon Presbyterian Church for a Stone Soup discussion of meeting the needs of our neighbors during these difficult economic times. The gathering was organized by Vision for Vashon as part of their continuing efforts to organize and create resources for the community.
Inspired by the story of Stone Soup, Vashon Islanders each brought a contribution to the evening’s meal. The organizers then created two delicious pots of soup to enjoy while we discussed the ways in which the “Deep Recession” has affected us, what our fears for the future might be, and what we might do as a community to buffer the ill winds that blow over the Island.
As the organizers emphasized, the economic crisis is like a wildfire on a windy day . . . there is no way to know which way the wind will carry the fire. Therefore, those impacted by the economic crisis should avoid feelings of guilt about their situation. In view of the non-responsiveness of the economy to the Federal Bailout up to this point, the wildfire analogy is particularly apt.
The community forum was extremely successful in creating a venue that allowed neighbors to overcome traditional cultural inhibitions about discussing their financial situations. Perhaps this is the most important step in creating an opportunity for the community to pull together to find local solutions to the global problem. Neighbors related their experiences with humor, honesty and integrity. There appeared to be a commonly shared deep appreciation for the opportunity to tell individual stories.
This writer found the discussion among neighbors fascinating. There appears to be a consciousness that a fundamental change is afoot in our consumer-based economy. One member at our table, who lost his home to a medical crisis several years ago, offered that he had learned “just how little” he needs to get by. Others in our discussion group shared their real fears that they may lose their homes to missed mortgage payments, or the lack of health insurance, or increasing difficulties finding work in the area due to a more stringent ferry schedule.
Despite the vivid description of shared hardships, there was a strong sense of optismism arising from the shared commitment to community solutions to the problems people were facing. Perhaps the most important contribution made Sunday was the willingness of people to offer information to their neighbors on resources that are available. Vision for Vashon is working to publicize those resources.
While we at Go Vashon have established links on this site to several of the resources that exist to provide food and shelter, we have decided to take another step and use the power of this website to link people with specific needs to people who have the resources or knowledge to contribute. For example, if a person needs to have some work done on their car, we will publish that need under our Living Green category and search for a contributor on that topic. Think of it as a Good Samaritan’s Craig’s List. Eventually we hope to develop a deep reservoir of resources for our community which will sustain our lives independently of the faltering economy.
As always, remember that subscriptions to Go Vashon are free. We encourage our readers to write in with skills, knowledge or other resources they might offer or to describe specific needs they may have. And tell your friends about this service!
Chip Lamason, February 2, 2009
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Letter from Vashon Island: Glacier Mining and Civil Disobedience (cont’d.)
GoVashon has received a number of interesting responses to our essay on Civil Disobedience and the blockade of the Glacier Mining site several weeks ago on Vashon Island. Today we received the following post from Swaneagle a.k.a. FrontlineMom and reprint it with permission. We hope that other interested members of the community will take the opportunity to write in and express their views on this important issue. This dialogue underlines the unique value of the Blogosphere as an unfiltered forum for free speech in the community!
“Along with an inspiring group of mostly young people, I was part of the road blockade (. . . at the entrance to the Glacier Mining site . . . ). I feel it was a sacrifice to lock down from 5:45 am to 10:30 am even tho we were not arrested. Personally, I prayed for the relief of arrest due to the pain of being locked down so long in steel tubes. Once work started, we decided our point had been made. It is important to bring attention to what we face out here on Vashon.
THIS IS A WORLD CLASS ISSUE OF DESTRUCTION FOR PROFIT THAT MUST BE ADDRESSED AS SUCH. THE PROPOSED MINE MAY BECOME THE LARGEST SAND AND GRAVEL EXTRACTION OPERATION ON EARTH.
For many years I have been working on the human rights of traditional Dine (Navajo) and Hopi impacted by the largest coal strip mine in the US. Over 16,000 people have been forcibly relocated with over half of relocatees already dying. The land is dead, barren and useless. The Dine people have not benefited from this fiasco, only corrupt officials and Peabody have profited.
Many other similar issues have been part of my work. I am willing to do all I can to stop this insane destruction. It is undisputed that our future is grim and our children will be left with a hideous situation. How can we ignore this and keep ourselves safe when they will be left with a nightmare beyond our comprehension?
Voting works for those content to live in a rapidly eroding illusion. Oh, many voted for Obama, but he supports the death penalty and as well as “clean” coal and nuclear power. If one is marginalized and voiceless in this country, no visible representation is permitted.
The Native American voices who have vested interest in the health of the Chinook salmon have not been included. Too many are ignorant of the first peoples who still have heart and spirit invested into these lands taken. Such missing perspectives must be included if we hope for any kind of real solution.
Finally, I wish to say that i am willing to do all in my power to stop Glacier’s insane destruction. Devoted to deep nonviolence, I have exercised that several times already including on the water with courageous youth and other true-hearted activists. Some of us face felony charges if we kayak into the work perimeter again. How easy it is to become a felon in these times of well protected corporations.
We must hear our hearts and act accordingly. All over the earth people are losing their lives, land, community in the name of resource extraction greed. This cannot go on. We have much more freedom to resist on Vashon than the people of the Congo, in Chiapas, Mexico and certainly those remaining resisters at Big Mountain/Black Mesa in Arizona.
Nothing less that soul force courage will do justice to the highly endangered future our children are being handed. We must do our very best to do so much better than that. It is our sacred duty.
Letter from Vashon Island: Glacier Mining Protest and Civil Disobedience
In “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849)” Henry David Thoreau argued that the individual, who grants the State its power in the first place, must follow the dictates of conscience in opposing unjust laws.
On Sunday, January 4, approximately five hundred residents of Vashon and Maury Islands rallied in opposition to the operation of the Glacier gravel mining project. The community turnout was extraordinary on several levels. These protesters, young and old, interrupted their lives and spent their precious time to come out into the cold to demonstrate their dismay with Glacier’s exploitation of the Island’s environment.
The turnout was a response to a last minute call via a network of email and telephone lists by the Backbone Campaign and Preserve Our Islands, among others. With the total population of Vashon-Maury Islands at approximately 11,000 residents, a turnout of 500 intrepid souls, roughly 5% of the Islands’ population is a dramatic showing of public opposition to the Glacier operation.
It is a rule of thumb that legislators gauge public support for or opposition to an issue by multiplying the number of actual letters received on a topic. In this case, the representative interest of rally participants who came out in person on a January afternoon is worthy of a much greater multiplier. On Monday 14 legislators sent a letter to Governor Gregoire asking her to suspend and possibly overturn the state lease issued by the Department of Natural Resources.
It was heartening to see King 5 news cover the rally with a significant and sympathetic item in the evening news. Further, King 5 noted pointedly that Glacier officials refused to comment on the ongoing opposition to the project. This writer has found that a “refusal to comment” frequently means that there is no reasonable response available.
“If you are a young person looking at the future of this planet and look at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience. . . . ” – Nobel Peace Prize Winner Al Gore
On Friday, January 2, a number of Vashon and Maury Islanders, young adults, mothers with babies, seniors, performed an act of thoughtful and peaceful civil disobedience by chaining themselves across the main entrance to the Glacier site, obliging Glacier employees to park their cars and walk down to their work place. These young protesters were warmly applauded during the Sunday rally . It is clear that these demonstrators, who risked incarceration and other adverse consequences by directly confronting Glacier employees, were strongly supported by their 500 community members.
Which brings me to this. On the heels of the revelations of outgoing Commissioner Doug Sutherland’s acceptance of a $50,000 contribution to his re-election campaign by Glacier interests, the December 31 issue of the Beachcomber ran an “analysis” of Governor Gregoire’s continuing connections to players in the Glacier lobbying team. As pointed out in the Beachcomber, Gregoire’s voice has been noticeably absent on the issues at hand other than communicating through intermediaries that she wants the permit to be procedurally valid. Between Sutherland and Gregoire, Washington’s laws against State officials engaging in acts that have the “appearance of impropriety” appear to have bearing.
The question that comes to mind is whether and when the non-responsiveness of elected officials to the will and welfare of the people justifies an escalation of civil disobedience to prevent a further insult to the people and natural resources of Puget Sound.
There is certainly evidence that Glacier’s permit to operate was a sweetheart deal, if based on nothing less than the fact that their barged equipment was in place a scant few hours after Sutherland issued the permit. The logistics of placing that barge require much more time. Reasonable minds cannot disagree that Glacier was tipped off in order to facilitate their obligation to finish construction prior to the mid-January construction deadline. Further, the permit to operate costs Glacier a mere $1500 per annum.
Further, the absence of Gregoire’s official presence in this controversy, along with the evidence of adverse political interests, has created a vacuum in the policy debate. For a Governor who created the Puget Sound Partnership with the mission to protect and restore the natural resources of Puget Sound, her absence from this debate is unconscionable.
This writer believes that thoughtful and peaceful civil disobedience is justified when the decisional processes of the government stops making rational sense or is completely absent in a public policy debate pertaining to the welfare of the people. Further, where the application of government power is contrary to the best interests of the electorate and flies in the face of independent science, civil disobedience is the last available recourse.
“The Maury Island Blockaders” have invited others who care about this issue to join them.
“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”- Mohandus Ghandi.
Chip Lamason
“Civil disobedience is the inherent right of a citizen to be civil, implies discipline, thought, care, attention and sacrifice”. – Mohandus Ghandi.
Letter from Vashon: The Vashon Maury Community Food Bank
I have always preferred to live in a small community where, if I did not know a neighbor’s name, I knew their face, and always felt comfortable starting a conversation. Perhaps this is due to growing up in a small town where neighbors were treated as part of an extended family. Perhaps it is also due to my parents’ efforts to bring our community together several times a year to share stories and keep in touch.
Today, December 31, the Beachcomber, our weekly paper, reports that the Vashon Maury Community Food Bank’s shelves are fully stocked again, after a precipitous drop in their supplies several weeks ago, apparently directly related to the economic turmoil the region and country is facing. The paper reports that support has been “creative and community-wide.”
The recovery of the Food Bank is one of the reasons I am so proud of this community. There is a shared culture here of taking care of our neighbors in need, and despite the economic pinch we are all feeling, the willingness to give is uplifting.
I write business articles on the state of the economy and particularly the housing market. A continuing theme has been the pandemic of fear that permeates the country, resulting in consumers hoarding assets even when they have the means to participate in our consumer-based economy. The health of the Food Bank belies that emotional fear and gives me hope that these troubled economic times will be met with determination and compassion.
Chip Lamason
Letter from Vashon Island: Doug Sutherland and Glacier Northwest Mining Insults Puget Sound
The tragic sell-out by outgoing-Public Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland to sign off on Glacier Mining’s lease to install a dock and pierhead for mining operations is stunning in its audacity and cynicism. Shame on you, Commissioner Sutherland, and may your legacy resound as a battle cry for people who actually care about the environment and our children’s future. Kinky Friedman coined the phrase, “Taking a Nixon.” Dan Savage coined a similar phrase for Rick Santorum, and now I am proposing the name Sutherland for unconscionable acts of environmental disregard by a public official who should know better.
Sutherland’s self-serving letter to this week’s edition of the Beachcomber attempts to pawn off his personal role in this sad affair to other governmental entities, reminding me of childhood’s “everyone else was doing it” excuse. What a shining example of personal integrity from an elected official.
And did all the officials in those other government agencies accept a $50,000 campaign contribution from your “good friends” at Glacier?
Why am I not surprised that your “explanation” fails to mention the recent death of SEVEN Orcas and the existing ecological stress on the whales’ food system.
Hey Doug, what part of the federal chinook recovery plan that stated the Maury Island near-shore “cannot be overestimated in its value toward the recovery of endangered Chinook” and that this area should be protected from development at every level of government oversight DID YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?
This writer attended the flotilla rally organized by the Backbone Campaign, and attended by the People for Puget Sound and Preserve Our Islands, held at the edge of Galcier’s Sandy Shores site and was heartened by the number of attendees who braved the cold and dark early hour to express their outrage with Sutherland and Glacier. The Beachcomber, sadly, underreported the number of our neighbors and friends who attended and who will form the revitalized nucleus for opposition to Glacier for as long as it takes to realize a new environmental ethic.
This writer wonders whether the presence of off-Island security guards at every corner of Glacier’s operation will cause Islanders to pause and consider whether something is fundamentally wrong with this scenario, that it is so illogical and wrongheaded as to require a private militia to protect corporate interests. How can Sutherland defend a public policy decision that requires a militia to defend it from the people he was elected to serve?
Thanks, Doug, for the new entry in my lexicon: Sutherland: verb, for a politician to sell out the environment and people and run away at the end of his mercifully short term.
Chip Lamason – 12/12/08
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Letter from Vashon: Raising Children on Vashon
The rural Pennsylvania of my childhood slowly developed into a mega-suburb of Philadelphia, replete with ubiquitous strip malls, congested traffic, and decay in the quality of life. However, before all that, my early years were filled with outdoor activity, long walks through woods and fields, and a sense of security that gave parents confidence to let their kids play outdoors without supervision. Neighbors actually knew each other and the children of the neighborhood.
Of course, this led to my brother and me returning home at suppertime with such treasures as snakes, dessicated fish we had caught miles from home, and incapacitating doses of poison ivy. We developed a sense of self-sufficiency with our freedom to explore the world which grew through our childhoods. Eventually I developed the self-confidence as a young man to go wilderness backpacking for weeks on end.
Recently, a close family friend, a neighbor and a comrade of my Father’s, passed away. I realized that his personality and friendship was completely integrated into my sense of “home” . . . not a place, but a feeling of belonging to a supportive community.
I always wanted to provide my older daughter with a similar experience. But she was born in northern Virginia while my ex-wife and I worked for the government in Washington, D.C., and her world was defined by urban sprawl. We barely knew our neighbors because of everyone’s hectic suburban lifestyle. We made sure she had plenty of outdoor experiences but ultimately she grew up a child of the suburbs. Her world view is colored by that perspective.
After moving to Vashon, I began a new family and we now have a six year old in Chatauqua Elementary School (Go Pirates!) and a six-month old daughter. I cannot be happier to raise children in this wonderful community. The social values of this Island, environmentally, spiritually, and intellectually, will ensure that the kids have every opportunity to develop their interests in a supportive community. Perhaps more important, there is a widely held sense of support for people to pursue their interests as far as they can. What more could I ask for my kids?
Chip Lamason, November 5, 2008
Letters from Vashon: Afro-Brazilian Drum Circle
Jeff Johns teaches world percussion on Vashon. He is a fine teacher . . . amazing in fact, for his ability to develop five percussion parts among his new students and somehow keep them all on track. A student on conga might stray from a Samba beat and Jeff will pull him back into the rhythm. Two sudents, one on shaker and one on tamborim, might head in opposite rhythmic directions and Jeff will call one and then the other back to the groove. It is a gem of non-verbal communication.
On special nights, a group of dancers will gather before the class and add movement to the rhythms.
The students for the class gather from all over Vashon and I am looking forward to meeting them and getting to know them better . . . perhaps an encounter at Thriftway or Cafe Luna will lead to conversation beyond divisions of four beats. For now, we all gather at 6:30 on Monday and quietly follow Jeff’s instruction, laughing as we overload on polyrhythm. As the class ends, stunned by the amount of information we have absorbed, we quietly return to our separate lives.
The music community on Vashon drew me here after Hurricane Katrina filled my house with Lake Ponchartrain. Though I knew Vashon was a mecca for musicians and artists, I never imagined that the offerings would be so rich and deep.
Music has always been an opportunity to communicate non-verbally with people. Whenever I travel I always carry an instrument with me . . . mandolin and fiddle to Sao Paolo, Scotland, Iceland and back and forth across the U.S. Melody and rhythm transcend cultural differences. The connection between a musician and a listener is one of trust and mutual enlightenment.
There is a marvelous (and true) story of the opposing factions in the trenches during World War I stopping their aggression on Christmas Eve to sign a few carols together. The military units on both sides were subsequently disbanded because their fighting spirit had been compromised.
So . . . to my new friends in the Afro-Brazilian drum circle . . . in the band Resonance . . . and those to be discovered, it is a pleasure to meet you.
Chip
Letter from Vashon
The first in an occasional correspondence from Vashon.
These troubled times, corresponding with an election year, draw my thoughts to the meaning of community. From crisis emerges opportunities. We are now presented with an opportunity to reflect on many aspects of our relationship with our neighbors, locally here on Vashon, throughout the country and throughout our global community.
I am watching economic panic sweep the country and through the world, and experiencing a deep uncertainty as to my own financial security. The politicians and policy experts we turn to in Washington, D.C., rushed the country into throwing money at the problem. We have now indebted our children and grandchildren to bail out the corporations which created this problem. And the $700,000,000,000.00 “solution” has not stabilized the slide.
I am blessed to live on Vashon and to experience every day a sense of community that transcends business relationships. From the Vashon Food Bank to Granny’s Thrift Store, my friends and neighbors volunteer their time and energy to imrpove the community without trying to “Take a Profit.” I believe that this is the spirit, the ethic, and the paradigm that must be the source for changing the status quo of our national unsustainable economy.
Until the connection between local ethics and national and international relationships is established, I fear that the road ahead will be arduous.
