The Artist Presently Known As Ed

Kansas Street

Our place on Kansas was a place we moved to when our previous place fell into foreclosure and we were wary of the landlord's talk about saving the place. We moved in in the middle of October 2009, just a few months after I began facilitating the young adults bunch at church. Kansas St. is centrally located and a charming place built in 1920 in the glory days of handmade but still sophisticated house construction. Even though it was whitewashed in about two shades of white and cream, the charm of the built in features and the wood floors and general appearance and feel was undeniable. We set out to start having a life there.

This was in spite of the fact the place was $1500 a month, and at times it felt to me that we had severely overextended ourselves, particularly when even as we signed up for it, Kelli's residency at a hospital had ended and she was not working, and my job at a produce vendor was well paying but also in a belt-tightening period. At times, it was just my take home wage of about $2300 that floated us. And after that, Kelli had two part time or per diem jobs and I lost my job. It was one miracle or another that filled the thin times.

Amanda the hair straightener

There's a lot of pictures from the day when Amanda came by to straighten Kelli's hair for the first time. Kelli just got a good several inches cut off the day before in the most dramatic change she's made in her hairstyle—ever. Amanda, more into things such as this, and quite the supporter of Kelli's developing professional opportunities, came down to lend her own hilarious form of support.

Kelli gets hair straightened

Being a lass with some curly locks, Kelli was in for a surprise at the effort it takes to straighten hair. I don't think she's done it since (maybe because of the time), but this day was pretty amusing.

Amanda reviews her hair straightening work

I think this was more exciting for Amanda than for Kelli. She was just giddy all the hour or so it took to do this.

Kelli with straight hair

Straighter, shorter hair, lip gloss, hoop earrings... Doesn't she look cute as a button?

Tomatoes on Kansas St.

I worked for a produce wholesaler for three years, and about a year of that was at Kansas St. But I rarely ever brought home cherry tomatoes. It seems it takes just one clamshell of those things to drop a couple seeds into the space near the compost igloo. This one plant determinedly grew and grew from just a tiny shoot up to a behemoth that took over about a 5'x10' area or so, scaling the cages, grids, lattice, and ultimately the fences. It was prolific too. 

I found it to be a spiritual lesson in a tasty and scented disguise. There's something about the fact that one determined little seed just exploded with life in the midst of the decay and detritus near the compost igloo. 

Later on, once that plant dropped all the tomatoes it did over the year of 2011, the 2012 season was found to have dozens of plants sprouting where it was. And to think that only one plant got so big...it might just be surprising if the new tenants actually take care of that corner with all the plants there now.

Compost tomatoes

In 2012, the compost was richer by another year, and the ground around it was the dumping ground of it's parent plant's seeds. During the spring we watched dozens of tiny plants sprouting out of the compost corner. By the time we moved in May, there were some hardy looking plants and several still going for it. It was beautiful.

Saturn Plus Sabbath Saguaro Shindig

My 37th birthday in 2010 was a great one for me. Earlier in the year I had made the drive to Arizona for the Men's Rites of Passage male initiation, and that was a profound time for me. After appreciating Richard Rohr's meditations and books for about year prior to that, I was prepared to get something out of it. 2010 was a year that had some great spiritual overtones for me.

My party was attended a motley collection of folks from church, work, and notably my old friend Sarah (who had been out of the picture for some time) and was themed with imagery from the desert. The cake was from the same woman who made our wedding cake years before.

The name however takes some explanation. It was sort of a strung together bunch of ideas that made 37 into something special, because after 16, 18, 21, and 30, one needs to apply meaning however one can because other dates are sort of unspoken for. In astrology (something I don't really give ear to), there is something called "Saturn's Return" which signifies the kind of life shift that happens in the years from about 27-30. As astrology, I think it's hokey bullshit. But as a matter of experience, I found it true. And moreso, after I found it true from experience, I found that Richard Rohr's men's work accepts that the age of 30 is indeed a time when men in particular start to ask the big questions in life. So that is the "saturn" part of the title, signifying 27-30 years. The "sabbath" part is from the Hebrew experience and ritual observance of time in units of seven. Days, years, groups of seven years... they all mark time in sacred ways. Since I regarded my "saturn return" to have culminated just at 30, I decided that 37 was a sabbath year, seven years from that, and worthy of note, particularly since the Men's Rites of Passage and other experiences put this year on the map for me and was sure to be memorable.

And as for the saguaro, the image within this poster was of a dead saguaro cactus in Arizona. I saw so many while there, but never a dead one, and never one with the form that hauntingly evoked a crucifix, and that somehow spoke of life and death in one figure.

Tie it all together and you get my 37th birthday, aka The Saturn Plus Sabbath Saguaro Shindig. It was a big time at Kansas St. 

Bye Bye Black Sheep

For my 38th birthday, I was under the influence of an experience that complemented the Men's Rites of Passage the year before, and in some ways surpassed it. A trip to New Mexico kept nagging at me. Richard Rohr's Center for Action and Contemplation is there. I have a momentary but pivotal bit of personal history there from when my mom lost custody of me, and various voices emerged that suggested I should pay the place a visit.

What emerged was a spring break option to go to the Red Mesa ranch where the CAC had about 200 head of Navajo-Churro sheep that were part of a breeding program to bring back the nearly decimated population of those hardy and economically valuable sheep. They are also a major part of the Navajo (Dine') lifeway.

While looking at the weeklong program at Red Mesa, it occurred to me I might as well investigate two other things: Trinity nuclear test site where the first atomic explosion was, and the Very Large Array of radio telescopes. I extended my stay at RM for 10 days then went to the Albuquerque CAC facility for a day and then launched into a final day seeing Trinity and VLA.

The Black Sheep part of it was a reference to my being the black sheep of the family on my mom's side, with estrangement being the default relationship. Just weeks before this party I learned of my brother's death in March. No one told me about it until I just happened to go to my mom's house on a totally drop in basis in September. My nephew Joey mentioned it and I did a double take. I told him I was tired of the estrangements and wished for another reality, and said I'd be seeking it (bye bye to the black sheep status) however I could.

The Girls

Strictly speaking this is not from Kansas St. but our friends Nichol, [Kelli], Amanda, and Margie are faces that made the Kansas St. scene what it was. (Here, we are all helping Amanda move to Washington.) All three were from MHUCC and were fixtures on the young adults group scene. Kelli and Amanda knew each other from chaplaincy settings but Amanda and I joined the church on the same day, and just weeks later, Margie and Nichol arrived and began diving in to everything we did. Over time, we've become good friends, hosted dinners at our places, dog- and house-sat for each other, and even moved house. The three of them moved us first into Kansas St., then later on we moved Amanda out of her place in Carlsbad (she was in our area when we moved there, then soon after her job took her northward like we later found was a better plan when we chose Escondido). And when it came time for us to move again, all three of them chipped in to help.

The line between "in church" and "out of church" blurred with all of us. We just had our community. And that was really what made Kansas St. special for us.

Turkey

While working at a produce company, I developed a fondness for cooking, something partially inspired by the ability to get free produce that I might not have tried before. First it was at our old house on Nashville St. for Suzanne and Kelli as they were doing their respective education and professional preparatory work. Then at Kansas we got a real kitchen with space and capacity to do some good community building dinners. Thanksgiving 2009 was the first time we did a half potluck Thanksgiving. This turkey is from 2010 and is the first time I cooked a turkey. It turned out well but by far the winning part was working all day serving my people.

Thanksgiving 2010

Serving my people was my own kind of act of love, I guess. The young adults group at church became in some way a new family to me. In fact the whole experience at Mission Hills UCC was like that. And yet it was a better family that was far more supportive and cooperative. Our first dinner at Kansas was with that group, which in 2009 was just gaining strength in the months after I got the reins handed to me. So I cultivated it and helped offer a vision for it. The Thanksgiving dinners were held a couple days before the main holiday so that we could celebrate together before everyone went their own way. We did that three years in a row, and that was a nice bit of continuity, and to add more richness to it, the second and third years added some faces from outside the young adults community. Suzanne, our roommate at Luna and Nashville streets, was here for some of that, as was Joe, Margie's boyfriend who otherwise was not interested in churchy activities but repeatedly joined in on these more special occasions and who joined in on moving us up to Escondido.

Thanksgiving 2011

The community at our dinners, birthdays, and New Year's tables was rich. At various times, the demographics ran the gamut of color, abilities, sexual orientations, ages, professions, marital statuses. Here, Lee and Juanita get down to a meal with Tim, who with his partner German, were often part of the young adults meetings on Tuesdays for 2011. It was also nice to have time to celebrate with Lee and Juanita so we could put some walk behind the JEM talk of community, cooperation, sharing.

The house itself had its own kind of richness in its features, even if they had been whitewashed. Those old craftsman style houses are charming and just feel like home, not just boxes.

Van Pelt Psychiatric Help Ward

Kansas St. provided me proximity to Jubilee Economics Ministries' office just a mile away. I initially offered to volunteer four hours a month on Mondays doing boring stuff like data entry so Lee could write and be productive with ideas. But then it became that I realized their media ideas were quaintly limited to what they knew about. I offered that podcasting would be a good way to move the message. I said that not having much of a clue what it meant, and especially what it meant to me as the guy who got into the place where I've totally recreated their working model and all.

I replaced my computer with podcasting in mind, and the house emerged as "the studio" and as a second office for JEM where we could meet and do things. But always, it was most notably the recording facility for the podcast, and where our guests came and sat on the couch.

The sign was something I found (without my extra photoshopped text in white) at Mesa College when one of the instructors was giving away a bunch of junk in an office cleanout.

Buber the Producer

For several episodes of The Common Good Podcast, I credited Buber Dog as the executive producer. Being the photogenic chap that he is, this does show him in his producer's role.

Ed at control room

During the Kansas years I replaced my computer and audio interface in tandem with developing the podcast. And along with that came learning so many new apps, terms, practices. The podcast itself was able to launch with better sound than many novices will achieve since I had only to open my mic box and use the good mics I used for music years ago. It took sorting out what programs to use, and certainly all the web site and social media stuff was far more than I bargained for.

Ed and Lee

Lee and I made a quick little video in the first month I had the iMac. It was enough to say that we were launching JEM's new website and the first social media accounts in summer of 2010. It seems so naive now. Lee is far from comfortable with this stuff, so he does his best to recall what I tell him we're doing, and why. But usually he blows it. It's kind of quaint, actually. And in the video that this came from, it's mostly out of date by the time we finished it, since it was done right in the transition period.

Juanita Van Ham

After doing five episodes on our own, Lee's wife Juanita came by to tell us about teaching composting to the kids at their grandson's school.

Richard Lawrence & Anastasia Brewster

We had these folks over for an episode on Community Land Trusts. Richard, an ordained pastor in the Methodist church, had direct dealings with Martin Luther King, Jr. and is in a picture with King that Lee has on his office wall.

Nancy Cassidy

Nancy is the manager of the Ocean Beach Peoples' Food Market, a cooperative.

Jan Schalkwijk

Jan is an investment advisor who deals mainly in green and socially responsible investment options.

Harry Watkins

Harry is a professor of business and marketing at Point Loma Nazarene University where he teaches a course in sustainablity and the "triple bottom line" in business.

Andrea Deerheart

Andrea is Eric's business associate and she too told about her work as a "death doula."

Rick Zemlin

Rick was helping JEM for a while and he used to come to do some porch summits with us. Before that he came and did a podcast and told us how he decided to live a quite simple and budget aware life, usually on about $10,000 a year.

Eric Putt

Eric Putt was one of two guests who came to talk to us about alternatives to the default funeral arrangements industry.

Lauren and Lee

Lauren is a chaplain with a particular love for nature, so she's called herself an EcoChaplain. She's Lee's daughter too, and lest we get busted for nepotism, it's really true that she's quite accomplished in her fields. She's also led sustainability workshops for Wal Mart.

David Miller

David Miller is and ordained Unitarian Universalist minister who went to seminary with Kelli for much of the same period of time. He came by to tell us about his work, trying to establish an interfaith presence in the then-active Occupy movement.

Lane Van Ham

Lee's son Lane was in to tell us about his experience doing graduate level work in Tucson, AZ, learning the motives and stories of people who do humanitarian aid efforts to at least be humane to the daring souls who cross the Sonoran border into Arizona.

Trish Goedecke

Trish became a new friend of JEM who we asked to ask us questions for our podcast. Not too long later, was asked to join the JEM board. She helped us move house too, and then she had to move herself off to Memphis.

Deb Mitchell

Deb Mitchell is an ordained Presbyterian who works in an urban ministry office. She came by to tell us about the eye opening, paradigm shifting experiences there that stripped any of her usual sense of comforts and distance away.

JEM porch summit

The house was sort of the alternative JEM office. While Lee's office was one mile away at a church, it could be noisy there, and the office was quite small. For a while in the summer and fall of 2011, Lee, Kyle, Rick, and I met a few times on the porch and took on some business and also got to know each other better by Lee's intention for us to keep in touch with our reasons for doing the things we do in support of JEM.

Computer chain

Kansas St. was our fifth shared residence in less than eight years. Moving a lot has done some things to pare back some material stuff, but at Kansas we had no garage or storage facility to hide stuff away. We had filled closets and corner spaces. One of the things that needed to be dealt with was a collection of old computers. But we also had to get the data off some of them, and that took the computer chain you see here, from Kelli's old word processor to her old PC, and then to my old G4. It was arduous stuff at the word processor level, where files had to be converted one by one, about 700 times over. And then the leapfrogging from machine to machine.

I ended up taking all the hard drives out and putting them in enclosures and scrapping the word processor, PC, G4, and Kelli's old iBook too. And prior to all this, my other G4 had died and was sent away. So we got rid of five computers while here and kept just our contemporary Macs.

We're not in Kansas anymore

May 15, 2012 began our move up to Escondido. First load was a truckload of junk and low priority stuff that could be left outside for a while so as not to clutter things up.

Stripping the computers

I gathered a total of nine hard drives from four computers that were sent off to digital heaven before our move. Not moving this stuff is a big space saver of course, but it also gets me off Kelli's case after years of lugging things around only to keep much of it in closets.

We're not in Kansas anymore, Buber

Buber Dog has only moved with us twice now in the five years we've had him. Poor pup. He's gonna miss all his girlfriends who visited him (and he has many). He takes his dog bone cookies to the rug to eat them. As the moving went on, the rugs got taken away and there were times he was clearly confused about where to go so that he might eat his bones.

3967

This was taken as we were mid-move, on the 20th of May, the day of the annular eclipse. It was also the day of our friend Amanda Kersey's ecclesiastical council that gave her the green light to get ordained finally. Amanda, even a friend of ours from the young adults group, and a chaplain peer of Kelli's (Kelli got Amanda's job when Amanda left for Washington), stayed with us for a few days even as the household was disintegrating around her. It was a good time. She helped us move in back in 2009, and all the other ways we've helped each other were evident too—Amanda helping Kelli get ready to be professional and Kelli helping Amanda get into the UCC and on her way to ordination (and plans for her to preach at the ordination service) so the circularity of it was really satisfying.

Kelli and Buber, eclipse

On May 20, 2012, during our move and while Amanda was still in town, we stood outside awaiting the annular eclipse. It was a big day for many reasons. See the following pix for notes...

Kelli and Buber don't want to leave Kansas

Here's my thousand words.

Amanda pirouettes

On the day of the eclipse, Amanda had just emerged victoriously from her UCC ecclesiastical council where she was given the green light to get ordained. It was a huge day for her. And it was the day of the eclipse too, so we were making some jokes about how this ex-Southern Baptist's successful move from that boy's club (that would educate her but not ordain her) to a more tolerant and welcoming UCC world was signaled with the cosmological event in the eclipse. She totally stunned the people at her council, eliciting no cross examination questions after her spoken summary of her life, call to ministry, and theological understandings. She mowed the place down, and after all the fretting that went into her preparation, she was pretty surprised none of it was put to use!

Her reception was at the church but she had a flight to catch at 7, so she left only an hour after her big victory. She dropped her rental car off at the lot and headed for the gate. Kelli and I were just a block from home when we got a call from Amanda, asking us if we could pick her up. Her flight was the next evening! So we did. It was a far more satisfying close to her big day. We waited for the eclipse, and she called a friend and did some cute little spontaneous dance in the nearly empty living room. Then we went to dinner and had some drinks and carried on with the stories.

Buber lost in Kansas

Buber's habit is to get his treats and to take them to the three rugs we had in Kansas St. Moving house of course meant the rugs were taken up and out, and poor Buber Dog was left utterly confused in the last few days, pacing the place, not knowing where to take his treats so he could munch.

Cleaned out

Moving house was a community effort that drew on the help of our friends and church buddies in much the same way as when we moved in. Cleaning house, on the other hand, in the second week of overlap with our new place, was not so glorious a party. It was the week of Memorial Day and other things that kept most people busy and gone. So I did a lot of the work of cleaning the place myself. It took about six days to clean it to the spec that I understood was going to get my deposit back. I've never cleaned such a big place from top to bottom, and with the entire floor being either wood or linoleum—hard floors that take more than a good vacuuming.

Lee Van Ham was my last guest there, and after all the times he'd been there to do podcasts and to be "the man," this time he was here, literally on hands and knees, shining the studio floor. What a dude. What a way to show gratitude for the work we did that gave his own mission a new lease on life.

And yes, this is taken just minutes before my final exit from the place.