Lately #4: Doing Things Differently
Hi! Here to share some things I've been mulling over this week. Maybe it's due to mid (late?) winter doldrums, but it's mostly been people and ideas that seem radical to me that have kept my mind whirring.
I'm reading a book called The Unsettlers by Mark Sundeen that opens with the story of a young couple with a baby on the way who step off a train in Missouri, assemble their bikes, strap their belongings to their backs, and ride miles in the dark to the (electricity-less) Amish farm they'd bought sight unseen. They proceed to grow their own food, build new structures by hand with natural, local materials, and welcome over a thousand people for free classes, including a multi-week permaculture course with a two year waiting list. They do not want to live within a system that supports the exploitation or harm of others or the environment, so they opt out of rising above the poverty level (in order to avoid paying what they call "war tax"); driving cars and using gas; storing money in banks that invest in questionable companies--the list goes on. I can't wait to read about the other two case studies in this book. The book's epigraph is a Jim Harrison quote: "The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense." There's no nonsense here, just people trying really hard to do what they think is right, no matter how hard.
In The Unsettlers, Sundeen focuses on couples, a choice that, in the book's introduction, he states he made consciously. I often think though about Georgia O'Keeffe, who to me is a prototypical radical--singular--woman. Yes, she was married, and sizable slices of her life and career were tied to her husband, the photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz. But yet: she always strikes me as a solitary and independent figure. In the years before meeting Stieglitz, starting in 1905 as an eighteen year old, she went far and wide to study and teach art either on her own or with her younger sister as her charge. In the years with and after Stieglitz, O'Keeffe repeatedly made the arduous trip to the New Mexican desert where she lived without modern conveniences or her husband, proceeded to cultivate a radically simple lifestyle documented by the likes of Ansel Adams, and, of course, created her own iconic visual vernacular. She lived differently than many, feeding her artistic practice with the hikes she regularly took from youth into old age, the clothing she designed and sewed by hand, the garden she kept, and the land she tended. If you're interested in reading more, I suggest Roxana Robinson's immaculate biography and Miss O'Keeffe, a poetic reflection on the last years of her life.
And finally! Not a person but an idea: I read today that Canada has made it possible for some doctors to prescribe visits to national parks. A radical addition to pharmaceutical treatments, and one that will not only improve patient health, but promote "pro-environmental behaviors" as well.
Thanks so much for reading! Now that I've moved over to substack, feel free to let me know if anything is wonky, or to leave a comment on the site if you'd like.
Until next week,
S