 Welcome everybody, all our relations. Welcome to an eco-socialist seminar in memory of Joel Cobell and the special Glover Hasidic choir for his band is going to welcome us. At least partly while he was up here at Bretton Puppet from a book called The Age of Desire and Joel wrote, none can defeat death, but if a life is well and fully lived its ending becomes a rounding off. The dead pass into the lives of those who remain. Like leaves falling from a tree in autumn, their passage is part of a cycle that includes the promise of renewal. Just to put first some things in perspective Joel wrote a book called Lost Traveler's Dream and I'm just going to read a quote that says, Bretton Puppet goes back 50 years to the time that Dee Dee and her three young boys encountered Elka Schumann and her five children on New York's Lower East Side. Many years later the firstborns of each, Tamar and Ezra, now my stepson, having started his playmates in a sandbox in Tompkins Square Park now joined in a life partnership. So the Schumanns and I are family. Long before Dee Dee had begun associating with Peter's workshops in political street theater and after the entourage had moved to Vermont which has expanded pageant with his expanded pageantry and communitarian projects. After 1982 I came aboard and began more extensive contacts in their rural setting. I often contemplated moving there as the Green Mountain State became known as the People's Republic of Vermont. Lee Brownhill is joining us all the way from Canada. I saw Joel first on a VHS long before meeting him in person and I always knew him as a great political actor. I mean literally he was an actor with great politics in the paper tiger role playing both the devil and the angel. So Joel was a great political actor and he always grappled with big questions that embraced rather than shied away from the outrageous contradictions of our times. From the collapse of capitalism to the reemergence of the species being the uniting of every individual with the great history and oneness of the human species. What a joy then years later to meet Joel for the first time in person at a socialist scholars conference in New York. Not dressed in the costume of a devil or an angel but in the plaid corduroy of a professor. He nonetheless invoked demons and gods with his frequent references to William Blake's illuminating critique of the early eight years of capitalism here at the late stage of capitalism. So I jumped at the chance when he invited me to join the board of the journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism and that was some 10 years ago and I've learned so much from Joel as an editor-in-chief as in everything that he put his hand to he was a great political actor. He advanced the theory and praxis of ecosocialism decades ago and carved a path through contentious debates in his usual fashion with humor guided by love and grounded in a sharp analytical capacity able to defeat faulty logic in a single bound and stop speeding trains of cynicism with his power of empathy and compassion. The free life ensemble. The Los Travelers Dream maybe the best book in some way I've ever read. I knew Joel not well but now I feel as if I know him intermittently and I had known that he was an intellectual and a activist I hadn't known he was a mystic and so in in this book I read that he loved Bach so we are going to sing a piece by Bach that's called Sushay Pete Israel lifting up Israel but Sarah Quincy's mom has changed the words and so now it's more Sushay Pete Palestine. When I ran for the U.S. Senate twice because he had been with the Green Party and I was just entering the Green Party after a terrible fight and a bit disgusted with it because we were trying to push Cynthia McKinney of low-term Congresswoman who had stood so strong against 9-1-1 and 9-11 that she was pushed out of actually forced out of the Congress so she ran for president and I came from Philadelphia back to New York where I've been in and out since 1963 to coordinate Cynthia's campaign and was very displeased with the outcome of that in New York obviously we had not expected Cynthia to really be president of the United States but it was a great move forward in terms of talking about the role of a new leadership in politics I'm going to be at the meeting I'm going to be at the meeting I'm going to be at the meeting around the throne all the shopping is over and all this thing is done I'm going to be at the meeting around the throne whenever Africans gather we need to know that we are in the community of friends and I know I'm a community of friends but I need to hear you say it that which is required to be human I am because we are because we are because we are I am I am do it one more time I am because we are because we are because we are because we are I am. Our journey began in Mississippi with a character called Medba Wadi Evers and of course before it's over I would be through King and all of the Giants in that journey called Civil Rights and Journey called the peace movement we've come a long ways in the journey of building a sister's movement called the women's movement we must be committed to being warrior women we must teach our daughters to be warrior women so we have to study every issue we're going to have to write we've got to do art we've got to do drama and music we've got to do whatever we've got to do to build the war against a system that's hell bent on destroying planet earth and we as women are the epitome of mother earth so if she's challenged we are challenged as we talk about environment let us begin to redefine environment to become the place in which we live out our lives and we'll be out here as I was in the early days talking about fighting for civil rights and what I was really fighting was to end the symbols of subordination that was represented in the law and put forward by the law I was really fighting the lack of understanding on the part of whites and white supremacy we will not accept that women are not going to be the leadership for the second half of the 21st century so we are here we are prepared we are ready and Quincy can you take us forward we're going to bring to the stage one of the founders with Joe Covell because of Socialist Horizons Kanya D'Almeida wanted to start with a quote from Alice in Wonderland just keeping with the surrealist tradition and this this quote occurs when Alice is talking to Tweedledum and Tweedledee they're watching this king sleeping he's wearing this long night cap with a tassel and one of the characters Tweedledee says he's dreaming now and what do you think he's dreaming about Alice says nobody can guess that why about you Tweedledum explained and if he does talk really about you when you suppose you'd be where I am now of course that is not you Tweedledee you'd be nowhere where you're only a sort of thing in his dream if that king over there was awake you'd go out bang just like a candle and I started thinking about this as I was putting together some thoughts to share with you all um and I was thinking about the lost traveler's dream and it occurred to me that many of us here are part of that dream the dream that Joel had and I can't speak for everyone here of course but you know we just heard from a legendary civil rights activist from Jackson Mississippi we have with us um Wuhundum revolutionaries and equal warriors from Philadelphia you know we have the free life ensemble from from Vermont I myself am from Sri Lanka and and I really feel that Joel's dream kind of brought into existence this collective that I haven't really seen exist anywhere else on this earth in terms of its diversity um and I like to think of Joel of his passing at least as not a passing but a falling deeper into that dream and the closer weaving together of the collective that that kind of came alive in that dream and I actually first met Joel in in 2010 in New York City in a group of artists and activists they were called scientific soul sessions and one of the things that we were committed to doing was bringing about a new revolutionary understanding and practice in the world globally and we were majority oppressed nationality members which meant that we were black and brown and indigenous people you know from the third and fourth worlds however you want to define that and one of our principles was that our collective would follow oppressed nationality leadership and Joel who was by far one of the most advanced thinkers and elders in that collective was a hundred percent down with following the leadership of young black and brown women which is not something I've seen before in other mentors of mine um especially not such accomplished ones as him and he was really ready to stand alongside people and and and lead and be led um in a really collective revolutionary spirit which which as we all know from the history of political movements is not easy so you know I was a journalist at this time I'm at the first conversations I had with Joel was around the world social forum in Dhaka Senegal and he was always very excited about large gatherings of you know radical activists um and he was thrilled obviously by the collective articulation of the enemy capitalism and its attendant horrors of neoliberal economics and neocolonial politics and their combination to create catastrophic climate change but he was also really eager for us to collectively articulate the antidote to that poison to that cancer um and he was fearful that there was a lack of a collective articulation of a strategy forward of saying that another world is possible but but not really naming that and for him that was ecosocialism the seeds contained of a world system of freely associated label that has nature at the center of its understanding and and philosophy you know really bringing back centuries as as Goliath pointed out into the indigenous way of life which obviously changes our entire social relation if we take our starting point as nature and the intrinsic value of nature that was very enlightening for me to to really be at the center of Joel's insistence on clarity and sort of naming not only the problem but also what the solution was I think for a long time that I knew him I kind of took that that clarity that insistence on clarity um for granted because as I said I was working as a journalist and I think there's a tendency in the journalistic world to kind of look for some bites to you know call up your sources and be like okay I need three sentences on this let me plug that into my article and Joel was definitely not down with that human rights watch that come out with this report about the use of violence against prisoners with psychiatric disabilities that was becoming increasingly prevalent about across the US prison art fellow many of you probably know this was one of the areas that Joel studied very deeply which was the wave of the institutionalization of state mental hospitals that went on across the US in the 60s and 70s the turning out of tens of thousands of people onto the streets with no alternative housing except you know the penal colonies and the carceral system the rise of the psychopharmaceutical industrial complex he introduced me to the whole world of disability justice activists and advocates who were creating their own ways and their own systems of healing that had nothing to do with the prison system and you know one of the things he was trying to impart to me as I was desperately trying to write this article like three months later for my editor was that I kept looking at this kind of violence inside prisons as an aberration I kept saying well you know we're collecting all these statistics on the amount of incidents of really deadly violence against prisoners with psychiatric disabilities of dangerous gifts as they sometimes refer to them and he what he really wanted me to take away was that this wasn't an aberration this was a system doing exactly what it was intended to do which was to completely break the spirit of human beings in the in the grand old tradition of the slave catchers and the plantation lockdowns of people in this country that has been going on for centuries and and at one point he very kindly hired me to work with him because as Prince he pointed out I'm a aspiring fiction writer so you know castled along periods of unemployment and really one such he happened to be the child of a search committee at St. Mary's the be not afraid church the St. Mary's a visible church in Harlem amazing radical church who you'll hear from later and Joel hired me as a kind of scribe slash secretary to help them find their new pastor and I have to admit I went into it thinking okay this is really nice of Joel maybe slightly less alienated labor that I'm used to and it actually turned out to be one of the greatest learning experiences of my life you know my father was really happy that I was going back into the church because he's he comes out of the church and he would be like darling you know how was church today I would say you know well I learned all about the Council of Foreign Relations and how they are the most insidious organization that continues to lend legitimacy to the US empirical project specifically in South America but all over the world and the US's tradition of invading interfering with and destabilizing communist regimes and governments and he was like well great I probably learned more about US Empire from Joel than I did from you know four years of an undergraduate education at Hampshire College and and so I just wanted to say that you know being able to walk alongside this traveler he calls himself a lost traveler but but really it has enabled so many other people to find another path I feel like the forces in the world today are really they would love nothing more than for us to be on the well-lit highway with the drones above us police surveillance you know basically leading us right towards the slaughterhouse passing all the mobs and factory farms along the way and to be lost in this world is truly a radical act and in Joel losing himself I think he created a way for us to find alternative destinations and alternative destinations that is not the slaughterhouse and when I think of him now I really love to think about the fact that he had no idea almost as he was lost in this wilderness and the mark of the world and trying to find you know a bright of horizon I don't even think he was aware of how many people are following in his way and how many people that elders like Kolia have been walking you know parallel to him all approaching this horizon from different destinations and maybe we won't even know who we are until we meet on that horizon but it was just such an honor to to walk behind him alongside of him to be lost with him so that we could you know find ourselves in a new formation which is eco-socialism so thank you for letting me share those thoughts. See mankind planted upon the earth like a rock on a summit like a lighthouse on the shore. humanity survives the gauntlet of world war and mass extinction that we're traversing through right now people will look back and say you know this is one of the big great names of the 20th century 21st century and when I read The Enemy of Nature uh the book Joel wrote Emmy of Nature end of capitalism or the end of the world um he brings together this synthesis of Marxism and spiritual traditions and uh you know respect and reverence for indigenous peoples and bringing it into a new theory of value um Marxist value theory with you have use value exchange value but you also have intrinsic value of nature um this is like a paradigm shifting uh breakthrough I think for humanity he persuaded me and I I basically left behind my my sort of uh labor labor movement organizing job and we embarked on this crazy idea of founding an organization in the United States to build eco-socialism here and to connect with movements in the global south primarily Africa, Asia and Latin America where there are mass movements with people using this word it was we were grappling with that how how do we overcome capital and uh we came to some conclusions and we moved on those conclusions and in 2012 we had this gathering in Vermont and founded an organization and in 2013 totally not related to anything that we were doing um in a very unlikely place uh an oil country called Venezuela um declared itself the first government in the world to put to put out a five year plan to to create to dedicate itself to create an eco-socialist mode of production and this is there's a multi-year process here but uh and I know I this is not the place to do a whole I have to do a sort of one of these Joel Covell digress digressions or I should scratch my head and have a little tantrum about the US imperial media which makes it almost impossible to have a conversation about Venezuela because almost all the categories and words we've heard about it are so far out of reality um but just suffice to say that um as of as of now as of about five or five years ago there are tens of thousands of people in Venezuela in the process of building eco-socialist communes explicitly in those terms and um to give one example of the work that they've accomplished in 2015 uh there was this big process multi-year process organizing people by bioregion that culminated in a big march to Caracas and they succeeded in passing the first and I believe only anti-gmo anti-patent seed law in the world and it's written by farmers and it's not only anti-gmo it's also anti-patent which is like even more radical and so throughout this process you know I would come back from these trips and tell Joel about it and you know witness how people from all over Latin America were coming to Venezuela people from Argentina from Paraguay all the radicals from around there are coming there even if they don't agree with everything the government is doing there's more space there than anywhere else in Latin America right now to do radical revolutionary organizing you don't have to be underground and um and you know Joel and I were talking about this and you know and we were considering we had been in Durban, South Africa uh previously and we had had this idea that you know what's really needed right now is is some sort of something more than naming the problem as Kanye was mentioning something more than uh of saying another rule is possible we have to name that world and there was something that that Joel had put in in the first eco-socialist manifesto which as he put it in the form of a question is could we imagine an eco-socialist international um and this goes back to those days of those guys Colia talked about of the Lenin and those guys who found in Marx who founded an international association of the workers of the world and so the idea of an eco-socialist international started percolating we were thinking about this and Joel and I wrote a few letters Joel wrote it mostly I would translate it and we would send them um you know to we sent them to some people in government we sent them to some grassroots people and we were like you know you guys really have the capacity right now to convoke and launch an an eco-socialist international and it's a multi-year process and other people came on board and we found other people who'd already been working on it um and jump ahead uh 2016 we had a big international preparatory gathering and then in 2017 last year in November about 100 delegates from five different continents about 19 countries came together in a maroon three different maroon communities in northwestern venezuela and we deliberated for three days and we wrote this document and we agreed at the end to we we eventually came to agreement and founded the first eco-socialist international I think that this is a hugely hugely important development for the whole world and I've realized that you know it's been a couple generations since an international played a role in people's lives you sort of have to do the history lesson of what is this stuff but this is a mostly very educated and and elder crowd so everybody knows what an international is here um I think in some ways maybe the most important page of this is the last page um I've copies of this to come in come and get it when you're done and all the organizations that participated in this and I had personally never seen anything like it before and it's testament to the the the techniques and of facilitating grassroots democracy that these Venezuelan activists have been working on for years of getting a hundred people to collectively write a document together and we broke up into five groups which were the five elements earth air water fire spirit and or ether and then each group made the idea was to make a plan for the short medium and long term right because it took us generations to get into this mess it's going to take us generations to get out and then we all came together and everything was read out in assembly for anybody if anybody had an objection you could change it it's arduous but beautiful process um so the result is a 500 year plan uh for the salvation of mother earth and uh the old meant something really specific when he talked about um the intrinsic value of nature he was really he was open to a spiritual mystical dimension that many socialists and marxists are not he was also open to a profound he talks in his memoir about his experience with meeting the maroons in Suriname as a as a medical student and how this really impacted him was the first time he'd seen another way of life and it was that kind of thing that made it sort of possible in a lot of people's minds at least for me to say you know what maybe at these maroon communities and benefit that everybody's kind of forgotten about in the modern world are actually this is the best place in the world to take the the step a leap forward um that this is the fulfillment of this maroon indigenous legacy is to be host to this to this vast international uh conglomeration of activists from all all these realms um so i think joe really put together a lot of these pieces diligently at his desk he was sitting there with all these books quietly um and working on this thing and nobody cared when he was running around shouting and going to the next rally and he would go to the rally too but then he would come back to his desk and take his time to fine tune the theory and that um there's a quote from uh thus spoke Zarathustra um where he says you know that the uh the the the uh the world revolves quietly um around the creators of new values that the great events are not the noisiest hours they're the stillest hours and joel and his stillest stillest hours of scholarship and thinking created a groundwork for a world to revolve around at the same time you know all the all the what you're saying is giving a lot of hope but i think that we have to also to point out what all the aggressivity against against uh venezuela come from all uh you know the all all what all what is happening over there that's why there is all this aggressivity against venezuela and also i read that in 2017 almost 200 people activists uh from the eco movement uh there is beta that a lot of people know but in philippines in uh colombia in uh so many places you know people working against the uh uh oil companies are all these things you know died today people working in eco movement are becoming the targets of the system and i think this is important also to say because amnesty international made a list of almost 200 people only in 2017 you know so this is good you know to speak about the hope but also the danger of the of the system will become more and more aggressive uh with a lot of work okay thank you thank you and coli says earlier prepare for war and because it's already here um syria is the future i mean that's the world war three already started over there um and it's and it's going to come home and the degree to which we're going to get through it is the degree to which we're prepared and i i think that this can help i think the joe can help and sometimes it's not the flashy thing out front that needs to be done it's the quiet thing radical theologian liberation geologist extraordinary girl cooper camp we haven't been silent i heard a hell of a lot of words today we've been saying a lot and it's been uh really good so i'm gonna say a few more words because i'm a preacher and that's what we do but but as i was thinking uh coming here uh you know a very wise woman anna monta writer uh writes uh in christian faith death is just a major change of address and uh with that major change of address i have a hard time uh since uh uh when joel died uh you know really talking about him in the past tense because i really feel that spirit uh you're still here with us and so i want to say that uh joel is a revolutionary mister that's what he really taught me being a revolutionary mister i first uh met joel covell back in the late 70s uh in his book white racism and uh for a young man who'd grown up uh down in jim crow uh in kentucky uh that was just literally uh talking about a revolution it just like uh brother ghani said uh the brain cells exploded they were just haul over the place um because it really uh began getting into the nature of what white supremacy was about and the real need to begin to fight that on all fronts and how to turn that over that revolution that has to happen around the white supremacist history of this nation and throughout the world all the other things that that that caused also uh then it was uh later on when actually uh in that wonderfully uh incarnational way that we have in christian faith actually met joel in the flesh when he came uh came to saint mary's church uh at the invitation of one of our members jim white to just finish the enemy of nature uh was having a little bit of a tussle with the authorities at barb college and so uh began looking for some new ways and uh heard about this little church in west harlem where he was invited to to begin talking to us about eco socialism and it really uh i have to say that's where there was a whole another uh revolution for me that eco part of it the oikos the household it's about coming home it's about living in our home and it's about how we are home together those relationships that we have with each other establishing our home and making sure we take care of what that home is and joel could do that in that wonderful uh long run uh a vision that still is with us all today even uh even in death that spirit could be so present for each one of us joel with that untiring curiosity that he had that incredible uh indomitable uh analytic uh mind that was always putting together this great synthesis he arrived at what eco socialism was i think very much intellectually put his heart indeed his soul i think he arrived at it right in this sacred space because this was a sacred space for for joel this was coming to church even before he set foot to say berries this was really coming to church uh that the cathedral aspect of uh all that goes on here the creative aspects uh continued to feed his spirit but i think it touched his soul in a way that he knew that indeed what we were doing uh the path that we collectively were going down was so wrong that this began to show him the possibilities and what needed to be embodied in all of our lives in all of our spirits bringing that revolutionary mysticism together and that's why this is such a sacred space and this is such a sacred time out of time as we come together to do this that place beyond words where he could touch the eternal touch that spirit that was so deep and i i he never could quite put it in the words even joel covel couldn't put it in the words other siblings except for esra who's there um are not able to be here but they are all immensely grateful that this ceremony was able to happen and and that the pine forest can be a place for the memory of our father this really was very hallowed ground for him in in the most profound way there couldn't be any more fitting place and tribute to him than this spot and um this book which was made by my brother toby he's a blacksmith he lives in delaware county new york and uh he forged this with some assistance out of some sheets of steel and it is entirely forage this is all folded steel there's no welds at all so everything that you see there was just a flat piece of steel and he uh and a long piece of pipe you know steel flat and then a rod against the steel and was all made in um a coal forge uh by hand with him and if you put your hand on it you can smell the coal it's going to rust it's going to have a nice patina probably this time next year will be all red and orange if any of you are familiar with richard sarah's sculptures it'll look a little bit like that and then we'll plan to kind of oil it to stop the rusting process um at that point you should read the book nolly right everybody should read the book because it would say everything you wanted to say can i go for a song that would be great we give thanks to the breeze which carries the spirit of the ancestors we come to give thanks to the ancestors it has a reverberating effect and it's singing to everyone's ancestors oh maybe this is a good time to talk about joe's movie career joe performs uh stellar he delivers a stellar performance in my all-time favorite movie born in flames in which he plays um a conservative right wing pundit who is opining about these revolutionary women and he plays the role with such zest and glee and like that's like every time i watch that film i revisit it from time to time because it's my favorite movie and every time i come to joe i find myself clenching my hands like this and watching leaning in towards the screen with a little grin in my face and every time i see this he was a fantastic movie star he was in another movie called sigman freud's dora in which he plays freud with a very big cigar and and it's a very famous case the dora case in which freud probably made quite a few mistakes and uh joel doesn't let on but it's um it's a critical film made by a collective feminist collective in the early in the mid 80s i think and i don't know if it's online but it should be what's it called sigman freud's dora i could throw in a couple of comments about joe's um running for office i'd like to somebody who knows more about that than i do what i remember is that he came up here while he was in campaigning and he did a puppet show of his campaign yeah i was in a little side show with joe giving his campaign speech and you know i was the chorus questioners and i always remember that was such a great way to run a campaign he didn't win maybe because he was running for a new york state or new york senate and i'd just like to say a few words about joe's book the last his last book memoirs of a lost traveler yes and it is it has a beautiful cover of a toddler boy old joe that his father made and painted of him and it's his life story he's such a good writer and it works so well on many levels his different beliefs that he's going from orthodox jewish to to this very passionate anti-zionist to then ending up a christian but many stages in between and all his involvement in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy and all that and it's very intense and lively beautifully written we have a few copies left in the museum store and some those would be gladly loaned out out to whoever wants to read it because it's really worth when i was reading it it was as though he was alive right next to me it was so vivid yeah i want to second that i read the book and just before i go to sleep so i could only read like a few pages but i felt like he was with me for quite some time every night it was really beautiful and i also want to say that there was one point where some palestinian women came and he had a circle and a big discussion with these women who said this is the first time we've ever felt okay about jews because we've only had israelis at checkpoints and we hated them and they were terrible and i just remember this incredible warmth that he brought to this circle which second i can't remember if peter if you did your show first about rachel quarry and then he had this circle of people upstairs in the ballroom and it was quite it was really touching very powerful show came for i don't know a decade and faithfully performed in circuses and pageants and in editing the ah movie there were many shots of a figure kind of wandering off from the group with a puppet inside of it and that had to move like from here all the way across the field and there'd be this one wandering off that you'd hear peter yelling joe because this later was joe and it happened in a few pageants first not in the show but it was just like joe just did the very difficult puppeteering thing he was in the panel he went through it yeah and he was wearing a devil's mask and he had terrible vision even without a mask so imagine in his book joe describes working at bread and puppet and all the creative things and all the little visionary stuff and the biggest part of the longest section is about moving outhouse yes right down to the practical number one volunteer job that everybody wanted i think it was a he was so he had no idea about it and it really implied so he He later wrote a book about anti-communism. The book starts with about anti-communism being the prime mover of the massacre of Indians that they just didn't understand about private property. And that was the one thing about Indians that all the Puritans hated the most. This afternoon when most of you were in the rehearsal in the ballroom, there were such excellent speakers who talked about Joel and the different connections and the different influences he had on his life. And I wish some of them would maybe give a short summary. I think that was meant to happen right now. Can you tell the news story again? Want to hear it again? Yes! I was in prison for 30 years since the age of 15. And I was released eight months ago. And during my time in prison I ran across these words. It was in one prison that I ran across in 2003. And they were powerful then, but it wasn't until I got transferred to another prison called Rader Ford that these words became so powerful and profound for me because these creatures lived in that prison called Canadian geese. And they shared that space with us. Actually, they weren't trying to share the space with us. Again, it was an antagonistic relationship. You know what I'm saying? But again, it was their space before the prison was built on it. And it wasn't until I started reading Joel Corvell's books, well, his one book, Enemy of Nature, where he was talking about dominated, splitting, separating ourselves from the rest of nature, the estrangement of ourselves from nature and so on and so forth that these words really took the gravity of them really started to settle on them. And there's five lessons from the geese. And the first lesson is this. Fact one, as each goose flaps its wings, it creates an uplift for the birds that follow. By flying in a V formation, the whole flock adds 71% greater flying range than if each bird flew alone. The lesson, people who share a common direction and sense of community can get with their going quicker and easier because they're traveling on the thrust of one another. Fact two, when a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of flying alone. It quickly moves back into the formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in front of it. The lesson, if we have as much sense as a goose, we stay in formation with those heading where we want to go, we're willing to accept their help and offer our help to others. Fact three, when the lead goose tires, it rotates to the back of the formation and another goose flies to the point position. The lesson, it pays to take turns doing the hard tasks and sharing leadership. As with geese, people are interdependent on each other's skills, capabilities, and unique arrangements of gifts, talents, and resources. Fact four, the geese flying in formation honk, honk, honk, honk, we hear them. To encourage those up front to keep up their speed. The lesson, we need to make sure our honking is encouraging. In groups where there is encouragement, productivity is much greater. The power of encouragement, that is to stand by one's own heart and core values and encourage the heart and core values of others, is the quality of honking we seek. And fact five, when a goose gets sick, wounded, or shot down, two geese drop out of formation and follow it down to help and protect it. Who knew that? They stay with it until it dies or is able to fly again, then they launch out with another formation or catch up with the larger flock. The lesson, if we have as much sense as geese, we stand by each other in difficult times as well as when we are strong, right? So we'll probably, hopefully, never look at Canadian geese the same way, right? Respect these creatures. Because again, even when we were behind prison walls at Greater Ford where the walls were like almost as tall as these trees, where we couldn't even see trees and we were cut off from nature, we still were given something by nature to show us, you know, what it is to work together, to build a community, to keep families together, teams, run organizations and just do what it takes to save our communities, save our family, right? Save our world. Because we can't do it without each other and we are each other's only hope. And I think if we look deeply enough in Joel Kovell's work, we'll see those seeds chopped in there. That's the message. And as Joel's energy, you know, life, every life is an energy and Joel's energy is producing this in this moment, us coming together. You know, and this is the example. So can the Honk Festival live up to that? I don't remember which year we celebrated the anniversary of Marx, Young Marx's early notebooks, which he wrote in Paris. He was 24 years old. And Joel was here and gave Karl Marx classes. You remember that? Pretty amazing. He had an intense knowledge of these greatest writings of Marx. He was very young, just after he got married when he moved to Paris. This is his young wife and he wrote these notebooks. Amazing. We met little postcards of a lot of the slogans, reflections on work and label and money and so forth. And we did Karl Marx nativity. So I'm crucifying him. And Joel wore a Marx mask and had an argument with Mr. Schwartz. I think my first year here was around the time, it must have been the same year that the enemy of nature came out, the book. And I arrived here and we all read the book and the book provided so much text for so many shows for a long time. And then I remember the company toured in that bus which is now retired in Germantown. And that bus like fell apart and then it had to be retired because it was not good in any way. And that bus is actually called the enemy of nature bus. That book was such a big part of being here for me for my whole first few years. I think it's still leaking oil. I could do a brief humorous reading from the memoir about the outhouse detail at Fred and Puppet. After all, what is to happen with the bread and aioli? Eventually Michael Denison became, so to speak, the foreman of the outhouse crew seeing to it that these structures were built, maintained, rehabilitated and cleaned as needed. He would announce whatever had to be done at the morning meeting where tasks for the day were allocated and then meet with the volunteers later on. Now, if we were to take a kind of straw pole here, I warrant that the average person would foresee difficulties in recruiting sufficient numbers of workers for Denison's task. Given the widely recognized fact that latrine duty is pretty much the nadir as so far as the social hierarchy of labor goes. That's what the untouchables are for and as much as cleaning up excrement pretty much defines the bottom of society's pyramid of value. Important philosophical glosses indirectly surround this principle. For example, the notable Marxist-Hedgalean victim that the realm of freedom begins where the realm of necessity ends. There being little bit more combines necessity, displeasure and unfreedom in everyday life than dealing with piss and shit. And who has not heard or even said so, him or herself, that the reason socialism or communism would not work is that we are always going to need lesser kinds of people to do lesser kinds of work like cleaning latrines so that the higher people could do higher things. How strange then that bread and puppet would draw to itself such bizarre folk as would actually want to do Michael's outhouse duty and think of it as a kind of privilege. For they, which to be sure included myself, would volunteer in droves to clean out the waste pits. We didn't just go to clean up, however, but to do so in the presence of others. A presence livened by jokes, laughter and often enough singing. It was another example of the truth that production is first of all a matter of social relations. That we puppeteers went gladly to do jobs considered onerous by a repressive society had to do with the fact that this was freely associated labor. Outside the money circuits that comprise capital's grain, non-hierarchical except for Michael's benign, delegated organizing and collectively carried out. Under such circumstances a transvaluation occurs. Lightning the weight of civilization and its repression of nature and the body, excrements included. The release of which nature provides is highly pleasurable for all the disgust it provokes in so many. It all came down to the quality of the labor as expressed through the relations among those who exercised it. The power of this was shown one summer when compelling obligations forced Denison to be unable to take part in the actual theatrical events. But he would not be kept away, rather hopping into his car for a 200-mile drive to Glover from Maine, arriving just in time to assume the leadership of the outhouse forgave, hoping to get things ready for the performance and leaving when he achieved his goal. It all cut very deep these lowly matters, deep and far back into our lives.