I was updating someone on recent local activities and posted them the
item below. It warms me more, each time I think of it, so I wanted to
share it with you. I think of the saying: If you want to predict the
future, invent it.
I also think of what I heard Milt Wolff say, last Sunday night. He is
the last commander of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, International
Brigade (the volunteer people's army that gathered to fight fascism
in Spain in the 30s); he's 83. He spoke, then was joined by Clarence
Kailin, a Lincoln and a Madison resident, and a man from the Twin
Cities, for a Q and A panel.
People (capital-M Madisonians) were asking him to talk about what
people can do to work for freedom and a just future. "How the hell
would I know?" he said. "Look for things that need done. Do them.
Expect things to get better and they will. Look, we've [the survivors
of the Brigade] been doing this work a long time. Every goddamn issue
you can shake a stick at, we've been there. So pick one, get out
there, and make a difference, we can't do it all. Sure, you can call
on us for help. We can still make you coffee."
peace
misha
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Tomorrow I will be at the Dane County Farmers Market, held here on
the Capital Square in downtown Madison. (http://www.madfrmmkt.com)
Several students from an atmospheric, oceanic, and space science
class where I give an annual lecture on sustag as an earth systems
topic are doing a kinda Consumer's Guide to Sustainable and Organic
Ag resource display. The students know very little about sustag other
than that they think it's very important, enough so to get up at 4
a.m. two Saturdays in a row to proselytize to strangers about.
We worked out a project plan where they'd collect info from various
sustag organizations and make it available, a networking and
info-sharing project. They are basically acting as disseminators to an
audience that many of us in sustainable ag don't have nearly enough
opportunities to reach.
They are *so excited*----it has been deeply touching and energizing
to work with them. I was pulling stuff off the Web for one of them,
and he was standing next to me--an 18-year-old from near
Milwaukee--saying, "Oh, wow! This is great! Wow, this is cool! This
is so great. This stuff is so exciting! Oh, can we have that, too?
They will love this stuff! I'll bet most people have NO IDEA that
this is available!"
Of such energy is the future made, and I am going to put this on my
wall for the days I'm tempted to forget it. It reminds me how much I
miss teaching.
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Michele Gale-Sinex, communications manager
Center for Integrated Ag Systems
UW-Madison College of Ag and Life Sciences
Voice: (608) 262-8018 FAX: (608) 265-3020
http://www.wisc.edu/cias/
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In the towers of steel, belief goes on and on
in this heartland, in this heartland soil. --U2
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