You can just do things!

A long-expected party

The Ecosophian community is an informal collection of people who follow the books and blogs of John Michael Greer. There is no formal organization; nobody collects dues, or organizes formal events, or publishes meeting minutes. But if you check out either of his blogs—Ecosophia, or Toward Ecosophy—you'll find many of the same people commenting over and over. And of course there are plenty of people (I'm one of them) who rarely comment or post, but who read the materials regularly.

For a few years now, there has been a social gathering of ecosophians in Providence, Rhode Island, on or around the summer solstice.In the past, this gathering generally took the form of a big potluck. I remember seeing the announcements and thinking, "Gosh, wouldn't that be fun!" Of course I never went, because I don't live anywhere near to Providence. There was no simple or easy way to pop over and bring a contribution to the feast, so I didn't think about it beyond that.

You can just do things.

Last year, Greer traveled to Glastonbury, England, in early June. He announced his plans the previous November, and in the end his visit turned into a kind of impromptu convention. People gave talks and workshops. There were (by all accounts) good food, good beer, and good conversation. Of course it sounded like a delightful time in the run-up before it happened; and it sounded even better afterwards. But I'm an American, after all. Glastonbury is a long ways away. I toyed with the idea of going there, but I didn't take it very seriously. So in the end I stayed home, and read about it after the fact.

You can just do things.

Then after the 2025 potluck, the man who regularly organizes the events in Providence proposed that "next year" (meaning 2026) he wanted to change it up a bit. Why not hold a convention in Providence, just like the one in Glastonbury? Surely we have people on this continent who would like to give talks on some ecosophian-related topic? Or workshops? It can't be that hard. So he put out an announcement in July of 2025, for the following year, to get people's attention and start them thinking.

You can just do things.

Wife's view of her move

This evening after dinner, I was sitting at my computer browsing through some old posts and trying to get up the energy to write you about my trip last weekend. In the process, I realized that I used to inject a lot more drama into my posts than I do today, by the simple expedient of quoting Wife's perspective on whatever was going on.

Of course, mostly I don't interact with her any more. I drive to visit her at Son1's apartment a couple of times a year (see, for example, here and here). And even when I find something funny to email her, she very rarely responds.

But back in late May I sent her some information about a Japanese cat, who was made station master of a local train station, and who (after dying) was enshrined as a Shinto goddess. You can find her story here. This email triggered a response (though very little of it had to do with the cat). Writing to me the same day that I got this phone call from Son2, Wife told me all about her thoughts on Son2's upcoming marriage to Beryl, and about her fears related to moving. Here is what she said about the move.

Dream with Father

This will be short, because the dream happened in the middle of the night. I woke up to pee and repeated the core bit to myself but didn't write it down. Now, in the morning, that core bit is all I remember.

Anyway, somewhere in the middle of a dream about something else I saw Father. He was at a moderate weight, which means he was thinner than he had been for most of the time I was alive. He saw me and moved to get closer, which I interpreted as wanting a hug.

I gestured to stop him, and then told him that if he hugged me, I'd have to kill him. He backed off without complaint, though he looked very disappointed. 

At the time, I thought of it in terms of setting and enforcing clear boundaries between us ... which I suppose you could say it was.

Without context, that sounds like an incredibly harsh way to set boundaries. But I realize I have talked about my relationship with my father in posts before now, and in context—also considering that this was a dream—I don't feel like it was so crazy. You can find some of those posts at the following links: from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2023.  

           

Fearing for your children's future

Tonight in the UU Sangha I attend, we started reading a new book for our dharma study, a book by Thich Nhat Hanh about Fear. So during the discussion period, people began discussing their fears. And I heard several of them express fear for their children or grandchildren.

Debbie, for example, is afraid for her grandchildren because her daughter Mattie, and her son-in-law (Mattie's husband), are such martinets, and always yell at their sons (Debbie's grandchildren). Debbie said she's not afraid of dying for her own sake, but she's afraid of the consequences for her grandsons if one day suddenly she's no longer there for them. (To be clear, there's no imminent threat. Debbie's in her early seventies, and she has various ailments that are consistent with her age, including periodic bouts of long COVID and atrial fibrillation. She also has celiac disease, that seems to be slowly morphing into a more generalized autoimmune sensitivity. But she's not on a timeline, with "X years to live"!)

But then another member is worried about his children, too. (I'm pretty sure I haven't given him a name yet.) His kids—a son and a daughter—are legal adults but just barely. They were both adopted out of a dreadful situation, spent their whole childhood being oppositional, and regularly make terrible decisions. So their lives aren't going well, to nobody's surprise. And he's deeply troubled by this.

I think there was someone else too, but I forget the details.

Of course this is common. At some level, everyone who has kids wants those kids to have a wonderful life, free of the spectres that so routinely blight the lives of Other People. That's why I was so upset at the idea that Wife was going to live with Son 1: I wanted him to be able to have adventures in his life (if he wanted them, of course) and I figured there would be no adventures if he were looking after her. As a secondary concern, I feared that living with Wife would ruin his relationship with Wife, although I figured that he was honorable enough he would never throw her out on the street. (Turns out that I called that secondary concern exactly.)