[Oe List ...] trying hard to get real - On Corporateness

[Janice Ulangca]

David Zollars writes:

Now if you would like to get together and look forward to what we can do from now on, age be damned, I'd be willing to sign up. 

It's an important discussion that is taking place.  I find the above comment by David to be especially appealing, though I don't discount the significance of reminiscing.  Drawing conclusions about the present and future in the context of our past history is what most engages me.  

We have great internet tools now  that can help us share discussion and insights - in addition to, or for some of us, instead of, face to face meetings.  

I do believe that ICA colleagues, in whatever category of Order or ICA friends they consider themselves to be, can have an important role in what is needed at this time in history.  We have been given so much - and just as we are (for example, as David says, "age be damned").  My take is that it would be at least sad and perhaps criminal not to give it as fully as we can, as long as we are breathing.  This is going on wherever we are located, from the clues available from sources like The Directory, the list servs, and the web page.  

Could we be even more effective with new modes of corporateness?

Here is a poem relating to corporateness that wound up two major talks heard in the last 3 days on our NPR radio station.  A fiery one was given by Bill Moyers, keynoting the national conference on media reform that just concluded in Memphis.  The other talk was by the wonderful radical historian Howard Zinn, speaking late last year at the U. of Colorado in Boulder.

With affection for all colleagues, and respect for pain, anger, disagreements,
Janice Ulangca

The Low Road
By Marge Piercy
What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can't walk, can't remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can't stop them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.

But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.

It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again and they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know you who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.



>From "The Moon is Always Female", published by
Alfred A. Knopf, Copyright 1980 by Marge Piercy.



**************************
Janice Ulangca
3413 Stratford Drive
Vestal, NY  13850
607-797-4595
aulangca at stny.rr.com
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  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: cdzoll at comcast.net 
  To: Order Ecumenical Community 
  Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2007 11:12 AM
  Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] trying hard to get real


  I'm afraid that I/we have been out TOO LONG, but my reaction to all of the "hub-bub" about getting together to look back would not be particularly helpful...Now if you would like to get together and look forward to what we can do from now on, age be damned, I'd be willing to sign up. David Zollars
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