my middlebury education vs. bill and bonnie's house in middleburgh, ny

dare i say, synonymous?

i've read your letters from november 5th and 6th, a few times now. firstly, i shouldn't have said anything about your writing, or lack of writing recently, because if i can guess anything about writers, its that they can be incredibly sensitive about their writing and reluctant to face that silly thing called writers block. i think i have had writers block before. only with push ups. i got to a point in my life where i could do almost 80 pushups at once and i really started to scare myself before i would start. i thought it would be a big deal or something if i didn't hit at least seventy. but who really would have cared? its just that people began to put me up for contests and shit and it would make me nervous. but anyway, thats not really writers block, there is another word for that. but its a sad phenomenon that i try not to think about because its a little bit of what has really gone wrong with sports in our society. something id like to fight someday.

you know, it'd be interesting if you worked at burke, coached soccer and taught english or something. or photography. or pottery. i'd teach social studies and do stuff with the "community". i'm sidetracked, and i think its cause i have soooooooooooo much to say about this letter of yours and dont really know where to start.

i'll start with how it made me feel. first, happy to hear from you. second, enlightened by your observations of rural ny. third, releived that you were still able-bodied enough to write me letters at that point--not too cold, or shot, or something else that happens is scary in rural places like those.

and most of all---i was excited for you. you made me excited. i lived vicariously through your energy (that was really energy passed on to you by bonnie and bill and everyone in their movie, isnt that kinda cool to think about? how it really is the thoughts, the energy and love that people pass on to one another that sustains individuals and leads them to more sustaining ideas, people and places. oh...the spiritual side of emily qi wheeler)

and after transcribing your page entitled, NOTES, or actually during the entire reading of the page entitled NOTES, i kept being blown off my feet a little bit. is that even a phrase? i think i mean something else but you get it, the ground was shaking (not literally) just a little.

because, yes josh, i have in fact heard of some of those names you were spouting. malthus, pimentel, and best of all....james howard kunstler. in hubert language, what a crazy bastard! he swore like a sailor and offended nearly all of Dana Auditorium the night he came to speak. but his ideas! boy were they provacative. urban planning. democracy in buildings. nature band-aids! and his books seemed pretty interesting too. geography of nowhere and some other book that he was promoting that night. and behind all the profanity, he had a hopeful vision. and it was beautiful. it was about urban gardens and mass public transit. and like hubert, his bitterness toward the world seemed to be rooted in this insatiable desire to see the world be a better place. because not all of us can face up to the kind of shit that goes on these days. and our grandparents scoff at us for being so connected and taking the internet or granted. and the truth is that the world we live in, the globalized world of our generation, really takes a toll on our souls. the sheer scope of information that we have in our heads, and infinitely more that we have access to..alot of it is scary shit. and thus makes it difficult to process at times, difficult to untangle. and so we take periods in our lives to go a bit slower. to not make hasty decisions. to just experience for a while until we come to something. i am in that now i think. you are in that now too, to some extent, i think.

but in conclusion, let me review my three points and my thesis statement and try to have a witty las sentance so that you are struck by this blog post in a way that makes you think "emily is smart, emily deserves a positive reaction to this work" and then i can throw up on you if you say that because it will mean that its too late to save your soul from the institution.

alas, no. that is exactly what i came here to write about tonight. the letters josh, the re-confirmed something for me. and that had something to do with education and alot to do with you and how it might just be possible that so many of the facts and ideas that i was fed at middlebury college, are not unique to middlebury college, or unique to college at all. i thought about how if you really took this list that you wrote out for me and really pursued these people or these ideas until you felt satisfied with them, then you may have read nearly everything that i read in my college courses and gotten more out of them.

but in the end this is not meant to be an anti-college post, because as you saw me be so emotional about in the car that day, i am clearly not anti-college. but i just want you to know, and you do know this, but i can tell you again, that i am right behind you in all of this. i am excited for you. you are doing something that i never had the guts to do, nor the will. and eventually it became that i did not have the reason. and maybe you will also find that the reason to leave is no longer. and maybe that day came already. either way, i am excited to talk to you about all of this.

i will try my hardest to make it tomorrow. can we turn on the fire in the barn?

love,
me

for your birthday, i got you:

something very deeply connected with this:

and this:
and together, that is something to look forward to...

i love you joshua and am proud of you for reaching this milestone acheivement. Also, I just deposited $500 into your account. holy jesus!

your dad is onto something...

and this definitely qualifies as a 21st century love letter:

If You're Into It

Love,
emily

your apple cake is superior to mine

just a few other things i wanted to tell you before i head out for the weekend:

your cake was gone within an hour of coming out of the oven, mine is sitting on the table being graced by house flies...oh yeah, we have had a proliferation of house flies! you probably think that is cool or something, but i think its kindof annoying!

i am taking friends to the kindgom, and its supposed to be chiiiiiiiilllllllllllllllly but clear this weekend. i can't wait for the next time we go there, maybe in January...and we will go nordic skiing! lets not be planning to far ahead now though.

lastly, i was listening to BBC World with Marco Werman last night and one of the first stories was about a 95-year old granny from Spain who has her own blog! Another is from Australia and is a 108-year-old great-grandmother! Now, does that make you feel better about embracing this technology? You can listen here,

The World's William Troop tells us about her.

Listen

And if you couldn't get that, go to this page to listen:

http://www.theworld.org/?q=node/13885&answer=true

It's hilarious!

free will astrology (is eerily accurate!)

in case you have not been able to stay up on the most-important of 7 Days wisdom, allow me to impart:

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Last week, my STARmeter ranking on the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) shot up 56 percent. I don’t know why. Maybe the movie I helped make in the 1990s finally got distributed in Eastern Europe or something. Even if you’ve never been involved in the motion picture industry, Aquarius, I’m betting your unofficial STARmeter will soon zoom up, too. The astrological omens suggest it may even be time for your 15 minutes of fame. At the very least, you’ll find yourself in the spotlight or rising in the popularity polls or gossiped about twice as much as usual.

and i wouldn't typically do this, this being a post to you on our blog about love in the 21st century, if i didn't think that something was relevant here. by relevant, i mean potentially accurate!! If you read carefully above, you might have noticed that the aquarius is due for stardom this week, and i just think that is crazy because i did have my proverbial 15 minutes of fame just 3 nights ago!

More like 15 seconds, but did you see this clip of me becoming famous yet?

http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/washington/news.aspx?id=68263

They didn't catch me in my most articulate state, but I have gotten many a thumbs-up from my fellow powershifters for that one. My parents missed the show, but apparently Lindsey's parents were just watching the VT news during dinner and I came on!!

I don't want to put the entire spotlight on me now, so I want to copy your 7 Days horoscope too. I would love to hear what you think of it, and are you still getting those astrological text messages?

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): I believe that doing the challenging assignments I’m about to describe will put you in alignment with cosmic rhythms, and make it more likely that you will attract grace and synchronicity into your life. You are, of course, under no obligation to carry them out. That’s because you have free will, and are always at liberty to choose a path that leads you away from grace and synchronicity. With that as a caveat, here are the roles I believe you should play in the coming week if you’d like to thrive: a catalytic X-factor; a tender wild card; a friendly shocker; a nonviolent bombshell; an agent provocateur who loves all you survey.

"An agent provacateur who loves all you survey." That sounds so sneaky-but-sexy with an underlying Gandhi-like agenda....May you love all that you survey, but make sure there is some left for me by the end of it all. Thank You.

the fine line between selling ourselves short and being so crazy that we forget to enjoy the slow, simple way

joshua, my dear friend and frequent lover...
it has now been more than twenty-four hours since i first read your most thoughtful of words, the most deep but positive of reflection that i have ever heard. this time, you have instilled a sense of liberation, or at least the beginnings of it, the recognition of the need for it. and how different that feels from the letter i received that morning in concord, the one you stayed up almost all night to write, it was july 3rd in fact, and we were both in a different world then. a world of confusion and contraint, one of simultaneous opportunity and limitation. but for now at least, that moment has passed and we have arrived at a new one, a new intersection per se, of thought and ideas, and i feel that intersection (between the invisible lines of internet connection) between you and i for the first time in a long time.

i mean, to be honest, you were putting me in a hard place for many months. but i was aware and prepared myself, not always to the extent that i needed to, but i understood. and i even think i understood why you were being like that, and i think anyone from the outside could have guessed that you were being affected by so many factors. i mean, i think you can rightfully say that the situation with your parents gives you a constant reason to feel unsettled and an occasional reason to feel angry, frustrated, scared, lonely and a million other emotions that then become restraints on what you perceive as your own self, and your ability to be that self and explore and change as that self. and that is why these thoughts you are having now, the recognition of how you were feeling and how you dealt with those feelings is incredibly empowering. and, like the idea that hate comes from love, hate presupposes love, i think that what you are about to experience will only be possible because you have passed a certain point of self-awareness that will now allow you to shed what it is that is limiting you and break that down in a way that gives you satisfaction.

not selfishly, but in a self-serving sort of way, i am thinking about the next few months and hoping that you will not see your growth as a person requiring you to shed all things that you have in your life, even the really good ones, in order to really engage yourself with the world in a way that feels right. but that would be so paul farmer of you. and i dont think you would be that silly. "I reached the point of accepting our situation, and believe that all this emotion and love for you that fills me will still be there even if I focus on my own endeavors, adventures, and passions." I agree, and in fact i think that our own endeavors are entirely necessary and that seeking those will also allow us to understand better where our endeavors, where our adventures, can be one and the same. i will end on that note, thinking about our future together, but i think for now we should be talking in the spiritual-physical-future and not the nuptial-future. agree?

i miss you, but i am enjoying this way of communicating our thoughts. last night i had a dream that hubert bought gigantic bags of coffee beans, as big as our bed at 11 elm street. i swear i dream in the world imagined by charlie kaufmann, which reminds me, when is he going to release another movie?!?

can i get a date for 8 weeks from today?

Ooooooooooh, how I am looking forward to experiencing some culture with you upon you return home. Saw this today and thought you might want to hear about it. (Had you already?)

December 21st - December 23rd
December 26th - 27th
Friday - Sunday; Wednesday - Thursday
*No Show Xmas Eve or Xmas Day

PETE SEEGER: THE POWER OF SONG

PETE SEEGER: THE POWER OF SONG (2007, U.S.) 93 min. (PG) Director: Jim Brown (THE WEAVERS: WASN’T THAT A TIME; WE SHALL OVERCOME). Appearing: Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, Tom Paxton, Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie, Peter Yarrow, Mary Travers, Julian Bond and Bonnie Raitt.

“I don’t know if Pete Seeger believes in saints, but I believe he is one. He’s the one in the front, playing the banjo, as they go marching in. This film is a tribute to the legendary singer and composer who has always thought that music can be a force for good, and he has proved it by writing songs that have helped shape our times (‘If I Had a Hammer’ and ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’), along with popularizing ‘We Shall Overcome’ and Guthrie’s, ‘This Land Is Your Land.’ Over his long career (he is 88), Pete has toured tirelessly with song and stories, never happier than when he gets everyone in the audience to sing along. Pete invented a new kind of banjo, did more for the rebirth of that instrument than anyone else, co-founded two folk-song magazines, and with Toshi, his wife of 62 years, did more and sooner than most to live a ‘green’ lifestyle, just because it was his nature. On rural land in upstate New York, they lived for years in a log cabin he built himself. ‘I like to say I’m more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax. I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.’ With access to remarkable archival footage, old TV shows, home movies and the family photo album, film director Brown weaves together the story of the Seegers with testimony by admirers who represent his influence and legacy: Springsteen, Dylan, Tom Paxton, Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie, Bonnie Raitt and others.” Ebert, ROGEREBERT.COM.

powershift, a first attempt to process

buen dia, mi amor. como estas? estoi bien. tres tres bien. yo quiero mi camote, ci?

well...how is my spanish today? minimal, i know. i'm working on it slowly but surely. so, as i stated above, i am doing well today. i woke without an alarm or anything at 7:20 this morning. taking cue from hubert, i made a cup of tea and went back upstairs to have a slow wake up. after the weekend, i pulled out two old books that i had on the shelf, the first being Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of Freedom and the other, George Lakoff's Don't think of an Elephant. Both books I had purchased at some point during my time in college, and after spending the weekend with so many students...5,500 to be exact...my mind inevitably drifted back to the days when i actually read theorhetical thinkers and i admit that i got somewhat nostalgic.

but not nostalgic enough to really delve into those books, seeing as the first by Freire is incredibly dense and not exactly a page-turner, i mean it has the word "pedagogy" in the title for christ's sake. it's educational theory which i'm inclined to think has extremely valuable ideas, not just because it is ed theory, but because Friere is known for being a very progressive thinker. he is most well known for his book called, Pedagogy of the Opressed, and I just have this feeling that that book has shaped alot of my thinking indirectly, that perhaps some of the most influential people in my life have been guided by his words and ideas, or perhaps they are just similar in philosophy. but i can't read that stuff right now, not yet. im still recovering from an overly-theoretical college education, and i'm enjoying my periodicals and my fiction for the time being. so i am sending them to montreal. alec will appreciate them more right now, and there is no need for them to just sit on the shelf. i was half-surprised to hear his conclusion at the end of the weekend: that because of powershift, he is more excited than ever about getting involved with politics. i couldn't help but wonder, would josh have said the same?

but that is a rhetorical question, of course. because i think that i noticed something in myself this weekend that i have been trying to loose for years, and that is the constant wish that the people who i love dearly can see and experience exactly what i see--in those beautiful moments where you feel like something is really changing inside yourself and all around you. and usually this is just an in-body experience, like a yoga class or a great hike, or maybe an exchange of words that i want to send out to the world for everyone to hear. but the lesson i have learned time and time again is that trying to pass those experiences on to others is incredibly difficult, while not entirely futile, the effect is rarely just as you want it.

so, this weekend, there were moments when i thought of you, i thought to myself, "i want josh to see this, i want him to feel this energy, and this shift of thinking!" because for the first time, i felt very confident in the direction of this movement, specifically the youth movement, because for the first time, the message that this is just as much about equity as it is about the environment, that we are all tired of the misunderstanding that we are here to save the polar bears and the maple trees. were we scared to say it before? did we not know how? i have so many questions for myself and the collective group of us that have been fighting....fighting for what? why were we unable to fully articulate the vision until now? i think it has something to do with these guys.


"superman!" people we shouting at Van, as he left the stage on Monday morning...a crowd of thousands cheering, yelling, crying and calling for more...more Van Jones, more Billy Parish, more Majora Carter....these are quickly becoming the faces of this new..."movement" (for lack of a more accurate word, im still thinking).

but in the end, i did not wish that you were there. i mean, just to be clear, i would have loved for you to have been there, but for you and Em Adler and Olivia and Corinne, all of you great thinkers in my life who are very much "in this" as much as the rest of us but could not be at Powershift, you know what i say, power to you! what the weekend did more than anything else is allow everyone to see that we are headed in a good direction, that we have a vision that is evolving which bridges (not segregates) all of individual visions for what we might want to do in our lifetime, what we think this country and this world could use to make it that much better. i just have a feeling that wherever we all are right now, we are coming to a unified conclusion. or maybe that is just what i am hoping for.

A few more pictures from the weekend...

3 of your favorite people, signing into the conference

Alec and Rea, with the midd kids. Funny that they sortof look like you and me, in certain ways. They are both more stylish than us. People laughed all weekend at how interchangeable the two of you seemed. (But I learned after just 2 days how interchangeable the two of you are not, particularly in my life anyway...)

alec with bobby. is this a strange picture? i bet you never thought these people would all be in the same place at the same time. alec looks like will martin, dont you think?

rallying on Capitol Hill, a view from the crowds.

so much more, so so much more to tell you. but this writing thing is new to me and i'd like to try and be more coherant in the next post. i love you joshua, be well and dig amish country for me!