So have you heard of Kickstarter? If you haven’t, you should check it out. A funding platform for creative projects, Kickstarter helps artists, writers, and filmakers raise money for projects that might otherwise languish in obscurity. I had my first experience with the site today, when I donated $14 to Tom Tom: A Magazine for Female Drummers (and can I say how freakin’ rad it is to now be part of this illustrious group now that I’m drumming for the 50/50’s?!?!)

Anyway, my friend Beth Winegarner, a Sonoma County native who now lives in San Francisco, is using the site to raise money for her current book project. It’s about heavy metal and video games and parenting—so you know it’s going to be interesting and thought-provoking. You can check out her site below, and I hope to be writing more about her project in the near future!

I’m starting to realize that writing a book is a process that could potentially go on forever. I met my deadline, finishing a draft of my short story collection by August 19. That said, I’ve realized that this still remains a draft, and that in fact, these stories need much more work.

I’m preparing to go on a zine tour this weekend. As part of that preparation, I’ve been reading some of the stories from the collection outloud. And man, do they still need work. I’m finding typos, missing words, bad transitions, all over the place. It’s enough to make me want to crawl under a rock, but I won’t. I will keep going. Editing, editing, revising. Get the draft out to a few trusted readers. Get the draft back and make some more revisions. And then? That remains to be seen, and will entail a blog post of its own. For now, I will glory in the fact that I do have a (somewhat) finished story collection on my desk, waiting for the next step, waiting to finally be let out into the light of day.

I’m taking a break from blogging, Facebook, etc until August 15 in order to focus on finishing my short story collection. See ya on the other side!

As some of you may know, Petals and Bones is now in full-effect as we just had our second writing workshop this weekend, and man, it was good times.

Here is a blog post that I wrote about the workshop, as well as my experience going to Marcia Donahue’s amazing experimental garden in Berkeley the following day.

Shakah brah!

In a recent article posted to the Orion website, Derrick Jensen rails against the shift towards thinking that personal change is more important than activism.  Titled “Forget Shorter Showers: Why Personal Change Doesn’t Equal Political Change” Jensen effectively castigates the 21st century movement towards simplicity,  driving less and consuming less. He claims that these are only props that make us  feel like we are doing something, without actually doing anything that will truly lead to real change.

Jensen states:

Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance.

I want to be clear. I’m not saying we shouldn’t live simply. I live reasonably simply myself, but I don’t pretend that not buying much (or not driving much, or not having kids) is a powerful political act, or that it’s deeply revolutionary. It’s not. Personal change doesn’t equal social change.

Let me be clear, I am still thinking out my response to this essay, which is basically a call to action. The question is: What kind of action? Jensen at one point says that we can rehabilitate streams, remove dams, and disrupt a political system tilted towards the rich, destroy the industrial economy. While the first one is a totally clear and doable action, the ones that follow, including removing dams are nothing short of daunting. I for one am not ready to go out and blow up a dam, since that would probably end up with me in prison, where I don’t think I would do much good, and frankly, which is a thought that terrifies me.  My great- great-grandfather Anselmo Figueroa went to prison at McNeil Island for  revolutionary actions in 1915 (he was the publisher of a newspaper established by Mexican activist Ricardo Flores Magon). He contracted tubercolosis in his dank, gloomy cell.  When he got out, he returned home to Yuma,  Arizona, and died soon after.

So basically, the question I want to address is: How do we disrupt the political system? How do we bring down the industrial economy? I’m all for it. I don’t want any more oil spills, any more unjust wars, anymore killing of kids in Africa so that I can have coltan for my cell phone. But aside from controlling and lowering consumption of the items that lead to these atrocities, what is to be done?  What are forms of activism that really work?  Voting? (man, even hearing that word makes me tired), street protest?  Looking for answers, not giving answers at this point.

Is Jensen correct in his assertion that personal change does not equal political change? What are ways to keep the activism flame alive?

I have a cover story in this week’s Bohemian all about the joy of having less, working less and earning less.   This story is also featured on the Metroactive website, which covers the entire South Bay region. Whoopee!  Feel free to comment here about your thoughts on this story. What do you think? Should we be working less? Consuming less? Any thoughts on the health-care conundrum? I’d love to hear from you!

Nneka-The Uncomfortable Truth

Social Studies-Holler Boys

Charlotte Gainsbourgh-Time of the Assassins

Seam-Are YOU Driving Me Crazy?

The Knife-Heartbeats

Grass Widow-Shadow

Harlem-Gay Human Bones

Joy Division-These Days

Recommended Reading:  Reality Hunger: A Manifesto by David Shield

Okay, I’ve gone and done it. I’ve set a deadline of AUGUST 15 for finishing my short story collection. It has been three years in the making–actually, I wrote the first draft of one of the stories in 2003, so maybe more like seven years—and countless bloods, (night) sweats, and tears. And I feel that if I don’t set a deadline for having the damn thing done, it will never get there, and that, my friends, is not an option.

My fabulous friend Katie McCleary recently set up a “The Commaraderie Writer’s Summer Challenge” to encourage a group of us to keep going, and that has helped. There is something about having community, about knowing that others are working towards the same goal, that keeps me going when I want to give up the ghost.

I’m also doing Monday through Thursday check-ins with a friend, who is also working to complete a working draft of a long-term project. I forgot to check-in this past Thursday, but will return to the project with renewed conviction on Monday.

It is a joy to jump in headfirst to these stories. I must remind myself that this isn’t a chore, this isn’t pulling teeth. It is slightly wonderful to work so hard at giving life and energy to these characters who have lived in my mind for so many years. I stumbled upon this tattoo of the “Fox-Head Girl,” by Santa Rosa-based tattoo artist Jared Powell (he created the logo for Petals and Bones, the writing workshops I’m doing with another friend in Santa Rosa) and I feel like this picture encapsulates some energy from the stories I’m conjuring.  Cover art, perhaps?

Do you have a project that you’ve been dying to finish, but unable to see to fruition? What kind of support do you need to make it happen? What bag of tricks have you used to scoot it across the finish line?

Thanks to Lia for this link and a lesson….the Roger Rabbit as cultural bridge….

Okay, gotta go…I’m off to da club to Vaudeville it up with TJ and the gang. Look for me, I’ll be wearing the fringed vest with the daisy dukes over sum sweet black bike shorts, and my hiking boots, of course. Howdy how!

A couple years back my husband tried to get me to watch this short movie he had downloaded off the internet. It was twenty minutes long and it was called “The Story of Stuff.” I remember being uninterested in watching, or not making it through the entire thing (!) and forgetting about it soon after.

Cut to a 2010 and I’ve changed my tune in terms of paying attention to our dwindling earthly resources and the part I play in this whole mess. Annie Leonard, who authored the original video, has turned the ideas into a full-length book. Beginning with extraction and moving through production, distribution, consumption and disposal, Leonard tells the entire story of the “stuff” that inhabits our daily lives. I will never look at a plastic cup the same after reading this book. I will never look at an aluminum can the same. I will never look at a cup of water the same. And who knew that people are dying in the Democratic Republic of Congo so that westerners can have coltan for their cell phones and Sony Ps2 game consoles–ugh. 

But  when things are this dire, ignorance is anything but bliss.    

“My goal with this book (and the film upon which it’s based) is to unpack the Story of Stuff–the flow of materials through the economy–as simply as possible..” says Leonard in the introduction. And she does just that, breaking down complicated ecological and scientific terms and concepts into something even a lughead like me can understand.

Something else I like is that Leonard offers solutions. While the issues facing the world today (compounded exponentially lately with the BP/Federal Government caused oil spill choking the Gulf of Mexico) seem irreversible at times, Leonard argues that there is still time to make change.

“In the face of so many tough challenges, there are many exciting and hopeful developments that I celebrate in these pages and that I see as steps toward a truly sustainable ecological-economic system. Above all, I invite the citizen in you to become louder than the consumer inside you and launch a very rich, very loud dialogue within your community,” Leonard writes. In addition, while she does push for the voting, citizen-action model that I find increasingly useless as the government reveals itself to be completely in bed with the corporations, I do like that Leonard allows space for a critique of capitalism and the idea that the economy (and with it the bloodthirst for resources) can continue growing forever.

I highly recommend The Story of Stuff for anyone who wants to learn more about where all of the things around us come from and why consumption has come to live up to its meaning, as it lays waste to the earth, our minds, and our bodies.