Welcome to Godsil’s site for the Milwaukee Renaissance.

”My Child the Self Reliant Family/Clan Food Grower”

Dear All,

Sweet Water Organics has sparked the creation of the Sweet Water Foundation(SWF).

The Sweet Water Foundation has a vision of providing training in the harvesting of wastes
into resources, especially our food and leaf residues into compost for the worms for black
gold soil that allows nutrient rich tasty abundant backyard/front yard/school/spiritual community
vegetable farming and aquaponics systems.

“God willing and with our work, our children will someday provide a high portion of our family protein sources, e.g. fish(someday chickens), and vitamin packed produce!”

It may take many years before Sweet Water Organics can produce fish that compete price wise
with fish from agriculture as usual.

But we are starting right now taking the first of billions of steps eye on the prize of training our youth
to raise their own fish and grow their own fruit and vegetables, for themselves, their families, and,
for some, the community.

Meeting This Thursday re “Milwaukee As the Vermiculture City of America” at Inland Seas School.

Brainstorming such visions at the Sweet Water Night School every day 5 to 7 p.m., but not on Fridays!

Send me an e-mail or call 414 232 1336 for more of this.

Godsil

to be continued

Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual

By JANE E. BRODY
Published: NYT, February 1, 2010

In the more than four decades that I have been reading and writing about the findings of nutritional science, I have come across nothing more intelligent, sensible and simple to follow than the 64 principles outlined in a slender, easy-to-digest new book called “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual,” by Michael Pollan.

Mr. Pollan is not a biochemist or a nutritionist but rather a professor of science journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. You may recognize his name as the author of two highly praised books on food and nutrition, “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” (All three books are from Penguin.)

If you don’t have the time and inclination to read the first two, you can do yourself and your family no better service than to invest $11 and one hour to whip through the 139 pages of “Food Rules” and adapt its guidance to your shopping and eating habits.

Chances are you’ve heard any number of the rules before. I, for one, have been writing and speaking about them for decades. And chances are you’ve yet to put most of them into practice. But I suspect that this little book, which is based on research but not annotated, can do more than the most authoritative text to get you motivated to make some important, lasting, health-promoting and planet-saving changes in what and how you eat.

Reasons to Change
Two fundamental facts provide the impetus Americans and other Westerners need to make dietary changes. One, as Mr. Pollan points out, is that populations who rely on the so-called Western diet — lots of processed foods, meat, added fat, sugar and refined grains — “invariably suffer from high rates of the so-called Western diseases: obesity, Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer.” Indeed, 4 of the top 10 killers of Americans are linked to this diet.

As people in Asian and Mediterranean countries have become more Westernized (affluent, citified and exposed to the fast foods exported from the United States), they have become increasingly prone to the same afflictions.

The second fact is that people who consume traditional diets, free of the ersatz foods that line our supermarket shelves, experience these diseases at much lower rates. And those who, for reasons of ill health or dietary philosophy, have abandoned Western eating habits often experience a rapid and significant improvement in their health indicators.

I will add a third reason: our economy cannot afford to continue to patch up the millions of people who each year develop a diet-related ailment, and our planetary resources simply cannot sustain our eating style and continue to support its ever-growing population.

In his last book, Mr. Pollan summarized his approach in just seven words: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” The new book provides the practical steps, starting with advice to avoid “processed concoctions,” no matter what the label may claim (“no trans fats,” “low cholesterol,” “less sugar,” “reduced sodium,” “high in antioxidants” and so forth).

As Mr. Pollan puts it, “If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.”

Do you already avoid products made with high-fructose corn syrup? Good, but keep in mind, sugar is sugar, and if it is being added to a food that is not normally sweetened, avoid it as well. Note, too, that refined flour is hardly different from sugar once it gets into the body.

Also avoid foods advertised on television, imitation foods and food products that make health claims. No natural food is simply a collection of nutrients, and a processed food stripped of its natural goodness to which nutrients are then added is no bargain for your body.

Those who sell the most healthful foods — vegetables, fruits and whole grains — rarely have a budget to support national advertising. If you shop in a supermarket (and Mr. Pollan suggests that wherever possible, you buy fresh food at farmers’ markets), shop the periphery of the store and avoid the center aisles laden with processed foods. Note, however, that now even the dairy case has been invaded by products like gunked-up yogurts.

Follow this advice, and you will have to follow another of Mr. Pollan’s rules: “Cook.”

“Cooking for yourself,” he writes, “is the only sure way to take back control of your diet from the food scientists and food processors.” Home cooking need not be arduous or very time-consuming, and you can make up time spent at the stove with time saved not visiting doctors or shopping for new clothes to accommodate an expanding girth.

Although the most wholesome eating pattern consists of three leisurely meals a day, and preferably a light meal at night, if you must have snacks, stick to fresh and dried fruits, vegetables and nuts, which are naturally loaded with healthful nutrients. I keep a dish of raisins and walnuts handy to satisfy the urge to nibble between meals. I also take them along for long car trips. Feel free to use the gas-station restroom, but never “get your fuel from the same place your car does,” Mr. Pollan writes.

Treating Treats as Treats
Perhaps the most important rules to put into effect as soon as possible are those aimed at the ever-expanding American waistline. If you eat less, you can afford to pay more for better foods, like plants grown in organically enriched soil and animals that are range-fed.

He recommends that you do all your eating at a table, not at a desk, while working, watching television or driving. If you’re not paying attention to what you’re eating, you’re likely to eat more than you realize.

But my favorite tip, one that helped me keep my weight down for decades, is a mealtime adage, “Stop eating before you’re full” — advice that has long been practiced by societies as diverse as Japan and France. (There is no French paradox, by the way: the French who stay slim eat smaller portions, leisurely meals and no snacks.)

Practice portion control and eat slowly to the point of satiation, not fullness. The food scientists Barbara J. Rolls of Penn State and Brian Wansink of Cornell, among others, have demonstrated that people eat less when served smaller portions on smaller plates. “There is nothing wrong with special occasion foods, as long as every day is not a special occasion,” Mr. Pollan writes. “Special occasion foods offer some of the great pleasures of life, so we shouldn’t deprive ourselves of them, but the sense of occasion needs to be restored.”

Here is where I can make an improvement. Ice cream has been a lifelong passion, and even though I stick to a brand lower in fat and calories than most, and limit my portion to the half-cup serving size described on the container, I indulge in this treat almost nightly. Perhaps I’ll try the so-called S policy Mr. Pollan says some people follow: “No snacks, no seconds, no sweets — except on days that begin with the letter S.”
Back to top

Bring a Date, Perhaps Meet Your Mate, At Sweet Water’s Worm Spa

Location: Sweet Water Night School Store and Agora, 2151 S. Robinson, Bay View
Time: Every Night 5 to 7 p.m.(but not Friday)

Dear All,

I am seeking worm casting stories to help us promote our Sweet Water Vermiculture Fertilizer and Compost Tea. Please send your stories our way. Here’s part of ours:

Worms Are the Heroes of the Urban Agriculture ®Evolution

This January, I and volunteers have been harvesting 8 months work by $500 worth of red wriggler worms purchased last June from Growing Power. The worms worked smart more than hard eating and thereby transforming about $600 worth of Growing Power compost, to which we added lots and lots of bananas, avocados, grapes, and other mushy fruits into their bins during the summer months. This extra source of radiant nitrogen came from the Pic n Sav store on Holt Street.

The power of $75 worth of Growing Power compost on Josh Fraundorf’s Hacket St. driveway was key to the Sweet Water start-up. Josh’s farmer relatives and his wife Jamie’s garden store family were astonished at the taste and size of the tomatoes Josh grew at his raised bed driveway garden.

The worm castings are an even more powerful growing medium, since the worms secrete a chemical compound, methinks calcium carbonate, into the compost soil as it goes through their system, which doubles the beneficial bacteria, nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, and more. We used some worm castings from my back yard worm beds to grow glorious micro greens, e.g. sun flower and radish sprouts, in 6 days.

People tell me that compost tea, made by soaking the casting in a painters bag in 5 gallon bucket of water, is great as a natural fertilizer and insect repellent.

New Jersey’s Terracycle, developed by a few Princeton University students gathered compost material to make into compost tea fertilizer, which is sold in recycled bottles.

http://www.terracycle.net/products/36-Tomato-Plant-Food

Come Buy Our First Worm Casting Offerings at the Sweet Water Night School Store and Agora

Open 6 nights a week, 5 to 7 p.m.

Every night but not Friday

2151 S. Robinson
Bay View Milwaukee
one block west of KK, one block south of Becher

But Can He Cook?

Now that Mother Earth and the most active citizens
Have declared radical homemaking a noble calling…

How about some cooking classes in community kitchens
In sister neighborhoods.

Let’s teach our sons and daughters, ourselves,
How to cook!

Maybe we should mix in tai chi or yoga(why not?)

Worm tending, for that matter.

How about Polish Falcon Hall for Riverwest classes,
And Sweet Water, the Green Room, or the Tulip Complex
For Bay View.

Connected by a $2 twenty minute bus ride on the #11!

Call 414 344 6711 and use easy automated schedule robot voice.

Some great royal red or red batavia Sweet Water lettuce
For first new bus rider on the #11 for a Sister Neighborhood
local economies transaction.

Stop over to the Sweet Water Night School Store and Agora
5 to 7 p.m. 6 days a week(everyday but not Friday)
if interested.

Olde

3rd Sweet Water Perch Auction Party, January 20th, 5 to 8 p.m.

2151 S. Robinson(one block west of KK, one block south of Becher)

We will also be pre-selling “perch in the round” for $5 per fish, and

Showing off our lovely fish, plants, and worm enhanced soil.

Consider Renting Parts of the Tulip Complex Adjoined Next Door!

We’ll share visions for persons/groups who might profit from renting parts of the
Tulip Complex immediately to the North of Sweet Water.

• Howard Lewis Embedded Reporter Music
• Good food and drink

$5 donation at the door

Call 414 232 1336 if questions

See www.milwaukeerenaissance.com front page stories(please scroll down a bit)
for more information regarding our auctions.

May 1st Timbuktu Sweet Water Bus Party Haiti Benefit

Dear All,

May 1st is the day Catholics celebrate the miracle of Mary Mother of Christ.

May 1st is the day progressives celebrate the miracle of people’s movements these past 150 years.

May 1st is the anniversary of the Bay View Massacre, which involves a moving ceremony at the historic marker for the event, organized by union people.

What say we focus on a Timbuktu Sweet Water benefit for Gigi’s Haiti project on May 1st, and connect the two events with a bus party?

Godsil

The Bay View Massacre (sometimes also referred to as the Bay View Tragedy) was the culmination of events that began on Saturday May 1, 1886 when 7,000 building-trades workers joined with 5,000 Polish laborers who had organized at St. Stanislaus Catholic Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to strike against their employers, demanding an eight-hour work day.

By Monday, these numbers had increased to over 14,000 workers that gathered at the Milwaukee Iron Company rolling mill in Bay View. They were met by 250 National Guardsmen under order from Governor Jeremiah M. Rusk to “shoot to kill” any strikers who attempted to enter. Workers camped in the nearby fields and the Kosciuszko Militia arrived by May 4. Early the next day the crowd, which by this time contained children, approached the mill and were fired upon. Seven people died as a result, including a thirteen-year-old boy.[1] Several more were injured during the protest.

Thanks wikipedia!

Youth Haiti Project linked With Rumi and Hafiz Presentation?

Dear All,

Gigi Pomerantz has worked miracles with wastes through compost toilets in Haiti,
And she is has deep roots in Milwaukee and Haiti movement enterprise and circles.

http://youthaiti.org/

Would anyone be up for an on-line brainstorm, along with appropriately timed meetings
Eye on the prize of helping Haiti now with a Sweet Water and Timbuktu benefit, but also learning from Gigi
How to help ourselves and Haiti with the lessons she has learned turning wastes into resources.

Maybe a bus party from Timbuktu to Sweet Water to connect events at both places?

Godsil

P.S. Karen Kolberg and Sky Schultz will be visiting the Sweet Water Night School Store and Agora
this coming Monday at 5:30 p.m. to talk about an evening with Hafiz and Rumi. Perhaps some drum circles,
music, and Haiti slide shows of Gigi’s project might make the Rumi Hafiz gathering extend to a longer
time, with earlier arrivals or later departures. Join in!

Eco Village Urban Agriculture Aquaponics 100 Worker Projects

I’m trying to create a document that offers guidelines for growing “eco village urban agriculture aquaponics villages employing 100″ in our transitioning industrial era cities.

Here is the start of my effort to outline how 10 jobs in the vermiculture/soil building piece might be grown.

Growing Clean Rich Soil for Urban Agriculture

Start with One Organizer and Volunteer Teams for Composting Piece

Here are some tasks for the organizer:

develop a volunteer work team(s) to organize the program

• find a site for medium to large scale composting
• design the compost site to control leachate(sp?) and avoid problems with officials or neighbors
• introduce composting to households in the target area through churches, schools, community organizations, barber shops and salons
• recruit and help some local householders to begin their own backyard composting
• develop materials and tool list for compost projects, sources for the tools, facilities and procedures to store, maintain, and repair tools
• establish relations with large, medium, and small sources of nitrogen, e.g. groceries, breweries, restaurants, institutions, households
• establish relations with large, medium, and small sources of carbon, e.g. landscapers, tree trimmers, cities with leaves and wood chips, local farmers

develop volunteer work team(s) to harvest nitrogen carbon for compost piles

• develop partnerships and contracts with sources of nitrogen and carbon
• purchase, store, and maintain a pick-up truck, 50 gallon and smaller barrels, pitch forks, and, for larger sites, occasional use of bobcat or other earth moving equipment
• training for delicate social/physical challenges of picking up nitrogen at various sites, more complex and delicate the larger the source
• training in mixing and tending of compost ingredients

monitoring of organizer’s progress with an eye toward providing paid workers to support/advance composting piece

Adding Vermiculture to the Project

to be continued

Sister Neighborhood Bus Parties for Fun and Growing Local Economies

Hey Bill,

Do you know of 3 others who might consider joining you and me,
assuming you are amenable, in brainstorming the crafting of
bus parties b/t Bay View and Riverwest, eye on the prize of
having fun while forging local economic connections?

It is so easy to go by bus on Howard and/or KK to Riverwest,
takes 20 minutes and the ride is very, very interesting and
even inspiring, given all of the new good things along what is
actually something of a river route, e.g. KK and Milwaukee Rivers.

Maybe we should also connect with Shorewood, Eastside, Harambee,
and Brewers Hills citizens and small business workers.

:)

Sweet Water Sunday Night School Focus on Internet Empowerment of Aquaponic Projects

David Johnson of Friedens Pantry and Bucketworks’ IT Man back in the day is ready to work with people to set up some state of the art internet work stations at Sweet Water.

Stop over to the Sweet Water Night School this Sunday 5 to 7 p.m. if interested.
Tuition: You gotta buy a $5 fish.

Sweet Water Saturday Night School Focus on Worms and Rain Forest Projects

Dear All,

It has dropped from the 50s to the 40s at Sweet Water,
And I’m hoping for some help to move the worms from
inside bins lacking adequate nitrogen carbon “fire”
to the giant outdoor compost piles.

I’m hoping someone will volunteer to read aloud as we
sift through the 23 worm bins at Sweet Water, separating
the worms from what is now close to 90% castings,
gloriously powerful growing medium I would barter for
with those who will work upon “Little Red Hen” principles.

I also would enjoy sharing some rain forest project possibilities
With anyone so inclined.

Please call me at 414 232 1336 or e-mail godsil.james@gmaiil.com.

Tuition: You gotta buy a $5 fish.

Grateful,

Announcing Godsil’s Sweet Water Night School, Store, and Forum

Become a Mentor, Vendor, and/or Soap Box Orator

I have decided to moonlight during as many evening hours at Sweet Water as is appropriate. Most evenings from:

5 to 6 p.m.

9 to 10 p.m.

Call me at 414 232 1336 to set up a time for your visit.

Buy a Fish and Come on In!

To be welcomed at Godsil’s Sweet Water Night School, Store, and Forum requires you pre-purchase for $5 a perch or tilapia “in the round,” i.e. you bring a chest or ice bag, we bag the fish for you(and teach you how to fillet it), and you take it home.

I am looking for people with things to sell at the store; bodies of knowledge to teach; and causes to promote either at the soap box corner or on-line with help, if you need it, from our internet empowerment mentors.

Please send an e-mail to godsil.james@gmail.com if you would like to brainstorm this concept or join with me others at the auction tomorrow night to advance this project.

Sweet Water Night School and Store’s First Two Artists: Muneer Bahauddeen and Jeff Redmon

Ceramic Tiles by Muneer Bahauddeen

Here’s a bit on Muneer from the Story Hill Newsletter:

Muneer Bahauddeen is a Milwaukee-area artist who is well known for his work in ceramics. Muneer has taught ceramic sculpture at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, the University of Wisconsin-Madison at Rhinelander, and at the University School of Milwaukee. He has also participated in a number of area public art projects and has worked with Artists Working in Education, Inc. to bring art enrichment programs to children in Milwaukee.

Bahauddeen has led the creation of adinkra symbols in ceramic tiles for Walnut Street bridge parapets. He worked with selected students from the Roosevelt Middle School of the Arts, which is located just east of the overpass to design and create these tiles. The ceramic tiles are colorful
symbols selected by the students and will represent the proud heritage of Walnut Street and its residents and merchants. There will be 78 ceramic tile art pieces created - 39 on each side of the bridge.

Bahauddeen’s total contract amount to design and create the ceramic tiles is $67,320, including materials cost and delivery. Installation cost of the ceramic tiles is $36,000.

Sweet Water Artist in Residence and Green Room Founder Jeff Redmon

A key element of the Sweet Water “miracle” is the art of Jeff Redmon, whose lovely murals grace many of the towering walls of Sweet Water’s interior. Jeff has also created the Green Room behind Sweet Water, which will be a work station and gathering place for artists and culture creatives. Here’s Jeff’s web site:

http://www.jeffredmon.com/

Hope to see you soon at Sweet Water!

Godsil

Key Urban Ag Workers On Michelle Obama’s Impact

Denver

Denver Urban Gardens (DUG) has a long history of growing community through urban gardens. Michelle Obama reinforced the work and programs of DUG through planting an organic garden on the White House lawn, by engaging youths in the garden, and with commitment to translate the experience for the youths into healthy eating and living. Certainly DUG saw increased interest and participation in community gardens and urban agriculture, as well as an overwhelming number of applicants for the Master Community Gardener Training Program. Moreover, DUG finds that with the heightened visibility in the media of the need for stronger food systems, including urban agriculture, there is growing support among citizens, urban planners, and funders for community gardens and related programs.

Tori Ford
Community Initiatives Coordinator
DENVER URBAN GARDENS
3377 Blake Street, Suite 113
Denver, Colorado 80205
office: 303–292–9900
fax: 303–292–9911
www.dug.org

Kansas City

I think she has given us credibility and gotten some people who hadn’t taken plain old food seriously to think that maybe they should take it seriously! And, all of our hopes are up that she will continue to deepen her support for local, healthy food.

Katherine Kelly

Executive Director, Farmer

KC Center for Urban Agriculture

www.kccua.org

Oklahoma

My answer to your question – is yes! It is absolutely important that our nation’s leaders not only understand the issues concerning hunger but that there are may ways to address those challenges to include a return to the idea of people being more sufficient in growing at least part of the foods they eat through back yard gardening, community gardening and supporting local growers in our communities. It is an imperative that our leaders not only understand that hunger is real in America but that the way we have been growing our foods through large cooperate farming, and reliance on heavy processing or our foods creates:

• Significant health problems from vitamin deficient foods grown in petro-fertilized conditions

• Increasing the ever growing ecological conditions which threatens our planet’s ability to sustain life and our food systems. (nitrogen run off into aquifers, soil depletion, super insects from over use of pesticides, etc)

• Fuel shortages due to the distances we ship our food

Having the example of our nation’s presidential family growing food and consuming the food is a wonderful example to set for everyone – urban and rural. I have noticed a significant increase of people seeking Urban Harvest’s assistance in both Community Gardening efforts and home gardening start ups. More than one person has mentioned that they liked the idea of the garden at the White House. I think it gives our work justification and allows us to point out to others what Michelle Obama is doing and why she is doing it. I really hope to see more people such as governors, and people that hold elected office look for ways to address these issues instead of just playing politics with our health through food policy that favors profit over reality.

If I can be of any other assistance—please let me know.

Bruce Edwards
Urban Harvest Director
Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma
405–604–7108

New York Metro Area

here in NY city, some key players are
Just Food www.justfood.org
East NY Farms http://www.eastnewyorkfarms.org/
Added Value http://www.added-value.org/
La Famlia Verde http://www.lafamiliaverde.org/

Martin’s Helpful List

www.troygardens.org, www.walnutway.org, www.kccua.org, www.noffn.org, www.added-value.org, www.lowernineurbanfarming.org, www.southsideclt.org, www.nuestras-raices.org, www.breakingnewgrounds.org, www.detroitagriculture.org, www.growinghomeinc.org, www.vpi.org/Re-VisionFarm/urban_farm.html, www.seattle.gov/Neighborhoods/ppatch, www.thestop.org/community-gardens, neighbor-space.org, www.apcollaborative.org/growingyouth.htm, www.eastnewyorkfarms.org, www.flatsmentorfarm.org, www.zengerfarm.org

Baltimore

Hi James,

It is great to hear from you. I have put your request into Tony Geraci, Baltimore City Public Schools director of Food and Nutrition Services as well.

For one, the First Lady’s project has significantly fanned the flames of the already growing curiosity around food, farming, and everything in between. We feel this curiosity daily as we engage visiting young people, their teachers and community at Great Kids Farm in hands on work with food. No doubt you well know that one of the beautiful things about the good food revolution, as I’ve heard Will call it, is that once one is curious about it one is sure to be converted. Once one is aware of the joy and nourishment that can be had through growing your own or becoming part of your local food community, one will find a way to bring good food into one’s life.

Others have told me that they sold more vegetable seedlings at farmers markets last spring than ever before, which is no small thing for the well-being of the small farm community. These are not all liberal loving folks, but they attribute this in great part to the publicity around Mrs. Obama’s garden.

This is what first comes to mind. I’d be happy to discuss any of this further with you on the phone at your convenience or via e-mail. Keep on breaking the ice up there in Milwaukee. We love what you do,

Greg
—
Greg Strella
Farm Manager
Baltimore City Public Schools
Great Kids Farm at the Bragg Nature Center
717 350.3730 (cell)
Support us at www.bcf.org/farm

Sweet Water Invite to Donna Schlieman, the Mother of Milwaukee’s Historic Preservation Movement

Dear Donna,

Hope you will come someday to feel the warmth of the low winter sun
streaming into the historic golden thread factory building
Now home to 45,000 tilapia and 3,000 perch, equal numbers of plants,
Millions of worms and billions of beneficial bacteria,
Soon to yield the bounty of sweet water, pure soil, and light!

Inspired by your Mothering the Milwaukee Historic Preservation Movement,

Godsil

Eco Corps Interns Madison Milwaukee Chicago Ann Arbor Detroit Toronto

Some Worthy “Masters” by 2045 for: Congo Ghana Uganda Tanzania South Africa

I hope you will indulge me a vision of our mighty collaborations
Eye on the prize of training ourselves to become Eco Corp Masters
After a 25 year program of urban agriculture aquaculture projects,
Starting with

Madison Milwaukee Chicago Ann Arbor Detroit Toronto

But also looking to Mother Africa, starting in

Congo Ghana Uganda Tanzania South Africa

Over the next 35.5 years.

The UW School of Fresh Water Sciences is looking for
projects that will give their students aquaculture experiences
beyond Milwaukee’s borders. Growing Power’s “From the Ground Up Workshops”
are a place to start!

Here is some Sweet Water information and images for the cause:

The odds are getting better that Sweet Water, aspiring to be a commercial upscaling of Will Allen’s aquaponic systems, will have about 100,000 fish by this time next year, and sales of $300,000 in fish, produce, worms, castings, compost, workshops, installations, and tours.

In the way that you pray for the fish! Pray for the people! It is very complex to transform an old factory into a fish vegetable farm. We’ve a lot to learn and a long way to go before we will imagine financial success. But it absolutely is feasible and we have a decent chance of making it.

Here’s a nice Wisconsin Foodie show on Sweet Water:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSyx0noGpeM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHqyJdXY6Sk&feature=email

Here’s a good Outpost Natural Foods you tube clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBx_LWRd_Qg

Official Web Site:

http://sweetwater-organic.com/blog/gallery/

Godsil Chronicling Sweet Water

http://www.milwaukeerenaissance.com/SweetWaterFishFarming/HomePage

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ourrenaissance/sets/72157622045002814/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ourrenaissance/sets/72157622726096474/

Dr. Dave’s Bay View Wheat Grass Lab in Lamborganics “Hot House”

Dr. Dave and Tony Lambo have teamed up to do winter farming at 325 E. Euclid Ave. in Bay View.

Dr. Dave has a micro green and wheat house “lab” inside a Lamborganics “Hot House” using Lamborgonics worm castings to grow one of nature’s finest medicines, i.e. wheat grass.

Here are some pics:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ourrenaissance/4102214062/in/set-72157622726495797/

Wheat grass trays can be ordered for $15 per tray plus $3 deposit for tray and growing medium.

Open House on Sundays 1 to 3 p.m.?

There may be open houses this and other Sundays from 1 to 3 p.m.
But call first to make sure! 414 232 1336.

---

Grand Alliances Toward a City of Healthy Food Gardeners

Eyes on the Prize of Corporate Community Gardens:

What say we reach out to the sustainability directors of our corporations large and small,
And offer to work with them to set up raised bed gardens in corners of their parking lots,
For the purpose of teaching their employees how to grow healthy, tasty food in
Their back yards or an expanding web of community gardens throughout our fair city?

There is much nitrogen and carbon waiting to be harvested and turned into vibrant soil.

There are many corporations worried about the physical and mental health of their employees,
top ones, middle ones, every one of them!

The day is not far off when corporations will pay less health insurance premiums when they can show
they have food and healing gardens for workers, at the company and in the employees’ home gardens.

Black Brain Book Sharing

I feel much safer with my black brain book in hand.

I rarely lose an important name, fact, number, “idear,”
To do list, inspirational verse, meeting notes, or stories…

I capture them all in my black brain book.

For around $10 or so, a Utrecht hard bound
With wire binder that won’t break.

Milwaukee Returns You Black Brain Book(BBB)

I have collected 35 BBBs since midnight, 2000.
I have mislaid them about 50 times, but only lost one for good.

Now I’m taking pictures of the pages and uploading them
To my flickr account.

I might electronically share my black brain book pages
To the right people at the right time.

The Newburgh Renaissance

Dear Yaakov,

There are a number of people ready and happy to help out!

Viva, the Newburgh Renaissance!

Godsil

On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 9:12 AM, YS <yaksul2000@yahoo.com> wrote:Godsil, that video that Laura sent me on the project Will Allen and you have initiated in the converted factory as an example of urban agricultural possibilitties and fish farming was unbelievable. I would like to work on getting you and Will out to Newburgh, NY with the idea of starting something like this here in one of the myriad of old factories we have in this depressed town.

Across the Hudson from us is the town of Beacon which also has a group of people involved in urban agriculture and of course they are well acquainted with the work of Will Allen. I am going to send them a copy of your video.

I would also like to send it on to our state representatives as an idea of what can be done here in Newburgh. This is really a wonderful thing you are involved with. It has me very excited. Let me know what you think about this suggestion and what you might be able to provide to help it along in terms of videos, lectures given by Will Allen, etc.

Cheers,
Yaakov

Get Pete Seeger into the loop.

His gorgeous boat, docked in Beacon, could carry the first loads of vegetables and fish to the City.

Lots of Golden Thread Factory Buildings in Newburgh

Sam Kass and Emmanuel Pratt Might Check This Out

Will Allen My Vote for Coach and Guy in the Middle

Sweet Water Foundation(2010) Will Pitch In

• Light and green and black are golden.

• Demonstration and Training Programs in Vermiculture Aquaculture

Let Us De-Construct Our Local “Bourgeoisie and Gentry”

I go nuts in the face of monoliths,
Be they of stone or symbol.

I know thought is hard and takes time
And we all have so much to do.

But pause just a moment and
Think on a deeper level for a moment.

None of our words or concepts
Can ever capture the richness of anything!

So, as a working hypothesis, let’s de-construct
Our local bourgeoisie and gentry.

Let’s be as creative in working with the
Progressive gentry, and the
Progressive bourgeoisie, as we are with
Charismatic leaders from a myriad of oppressed groups.

Diversity is strength!
Some of my best friends are millionaires!

And lots of them are poised to use some of their millions,
But more importantly, some of their resources of
Mind and spirit,
To fight the good fight and
Do the right thing!

Let’s start out by working with

Worm Mon

Free My 401K From Wall Street for My Backyard Farm, Garage Aquaculture, and Roof System Energy Harvesting

For self reliance and community building,
For tasty local food and increasing energy independence,
For the cultivation of scientific, artisinal, and artistic skill sets…

Free me to invest a third of my 401K in

• my backyard farm
• my garage aquaculture system
• my rooftop energy harvest technologies

For Mother Earth!
For adapting citizens!

Nurturing Husbander

The British Are Coming!

The British are coming!
As metaphor for empires of wealth and force,
They really never left.

And it will be the species’ task
And destiny…

To continue the quest
For freedom and justice

Self reliance and community,
Beauty and conviviality…

Forever.

On Eve of Bioneer Gathering in Madison 2009

Eat Your Beauty

People are here for you
To learn to grow greens
Lovely to behold and
Available at your window sill
For grazing while craving.

Wheat Grass High

One Water, Laughing in a Thousand Fields(Rumi)

Permaculture Mondragon
Sweet Water Growing Power
Hybrids.

Getting High and Higher on Dr. Dave’s Wheat Grass

Wheat grass makes me high.
As my daily companion, probably higher, higher.

When I see a young person clutching a cigarette,
Or old bar fly sucking up a cheap beer,
I bite my tongue so as not to shout and holler,
Wheat grass, now!
Do wheat grass!

Dope, booze, cigarettes,
Sugar, salt, and fat,
All trumped by wheat grass
If you want to burn and crackle with
love of life!
And fun!

Let us let our youth know
That some of us plan on working to
Inspire sweet healthy addictions to
Dr. Dave’s Wheat Grass!

Lady Bug Man Hooked on Wheat Grass

My Milwaukee 2009

My Milwaukee is
Berkeley,
Brooklyn, a new
Key West!

My Child Working in a Rain Forest?

And some would go to their local county park to learn about the Zoological Society’s
Bonobo work and Congo Bio diversity work, inspiring them to acquire the skills of use
in helping people protect their rain forests and the planet’s glorious pageant of life!

And we would start an eco corps to accelerate this process,
training to start at a very early age.

In primary school children would be provided with visions of themselves
Equipped with skills that would enable them to set up growing systems
in their own homes and cities, but also in the wider world beyond.

They would learn to grow soil, raise plants and animals, build things of wood and stone.
They would learn how simple machines function and how to tend and repair.
And they would learn to work with others with skills different from their own
To create common goods.

Shall the People Make Money from County Park Outings?

Is it polite to imagine the people making money from family County Park Outings?

Would it be untoward to find 1 per cent of the land now called County Park Land
Turned into schools and guilds for skill development in urban agriculture urban aquaculture bio diversity?

Am I daft in having visions of my children and my grand children being taught by zoo keepers
How to raise a goat and a chicken at our county parks?

Can parks become university class rooms and training centers?
Places where people are given occasions to earn while they learn!

Mighty Collaborations

The Milwaukee County Zoo, the Zoological Society, UW School of Fresh Water Sciences,
Growing Power, MPS, Johnson Control, Rockwell International, the Brady Company, Roundys,
Sweet Water Organics, and on and one…

Collaborations aiming to make Milwaukee the urban agriculture, the urban aquaculture…and

The Bio Diversity City of America?

The people would go to the parks to learn how to grow soil
That would enable grandma or grandpa to help the family
grow the sweetest juiciest tomatoes possible.

Juicy Tomatoes For All?

They would go to the parks closest to their homes to learn how to turn leaves and veggie/fruit residuals
into compost, food for the worms, who would then create the richest natural soil on the planet.

A Small Fish Farm in My Garage?

Some families would go to their local county park to learn how to erect and maintain a
fish vegetable farm in their garage or backyard hoop house.

My Child Working in a Rain Forest?

And some would go to their local county park to learn about the Zoological Society’s
Bonobo work and Congo Bio diversity work, inspiring them to acquire the skills of use
in helping people protect their rain forests and the planet’s glorious pageant of life!

What say?

Why not?

Don’t Rake Your Leaves Into the Street!

Mother Earth will be disappointed if you do!

Rake them into a corner of your yard somewhere.
Let them break down for a season, year, or two!

Then mix them in with your daily nitrogen harvest,
e.g. veggies and fruit, never meat or dairy.
Add your less vigorous neighbors’ collection to your pile!

You’ve now become… a composter!

Then keep adding and adding,your leaves, wood chips, and nitrogen,
Over the days and weeks, the months and the years.

Add some worms!

Won’t be long and you’ll have the world’s richest natural soil.
Then use it to plant good food that you will harvest before your meals.

You are not a victim of the system.

Grow you own systems!

Natural and cultural!

Mon upped bio worlds!
In your backyards!

Nation building, Great lakes.
East Coast, West Coast, the South!

Life as Sufi dance
Harvesting sun power for local food
And fun with your neighbors.

Crafting Sweet Water River Valley Bio Worlds in Renaissance Cities

With rich dark soil, moist, teaming with
Worms and soil partners—
Billions and billions of benign bacteria.

River bed pea gravel and plant roots
Host these happy microbes, which
Transform the fish wastes into nitrates
For vibrant plants and sweet water
For the fish!

Some river valley bio worlds in green houses,
Others in hoop houses,
Some in lovely old reborn factory buildings,
Others at your school! Your church!
Your garage! Basement! Backyard!

Let us craft together 10,000 Sweet Water River Valley Bio Worlds
Well before 2045!

Some in your renewing city,
Others for your brothers and sisters
In the wider world beyond!

Olde
Milwaukee 2009

Some Rumi For You

While these come from Rumi,
They belong to us all.

Let Us Dance!

It is the day of great, great joy.
Let us all now, become friends.
Let us join our hands. Let us go the the Friend.
We are all one. We are not two, of one color and hue.
Let us dance! Let us go to the market, dancing!
The beautiful friends are now starting to dance,
So let’s close the shop and dance, idle and free
Today is the day that the souls put on the robe of
Her grace.
To mystery’s side, to the side of mystery,
We go dancing as God’s guests.
All the gods have pitched their tents in the garden,
And to see them, we now go to the rose garden.

The Worms That Made Milwaukee Famous

And the least of us
Shall save us
From(our lesser angels!

Milwaukee is becoming a Holy City
As its humans now nourish the worms.

Radiant nitrogen harvests of
Fruit, veggie, and coffee residues,
Mixed with carbons from wood chips and leaves—
Healthy, tasty food for the worms!

Who in the privacy of transforming bananas,
Make sweet love and rich soil,
And multiply, to become food for—
Our farm raised fish…

In our classic golden thread factory buildings,
Renewing as fish vegetable farms and agora!

Wet Fall Week
Milwaukee

A Floss After Every Meal Kind of Guy

I aim to become a floss after every meal kind of guy,
Without losing my soul or my friends!

How would it be to wake up to my me
And see that I’d made of me…

A floss after every meal kind of guy!

Yanek and the Polish Nation

Witnessing Yanek prepare a final meal for his friends in America,
In his modest and clean south side apartment
Next to the imposing Church in the increasingly Latino neighborhood
Will forever remain a vivid image in my minds eye.

Yanek’s Milwaukee story, for me, captures much of the secret of
The Polish nation’s majestic endurance in the heart of Europe
Lacking natural boundary protection from aggressive neighbors
In all directions: the Russians, Vikings, Germans, Austrians,
Mongols, Tartars, and Romans, to name a few.

Yanek’s Milwaukee story also contains some of the secret of
The Polish nation’s glorious refusal to bow down before the
Mighty Soviets, and resistance galvanized by a
Modest electrician and gentle Pope, widening the crack
That eventually crumbled the Berlin Wall and ended the cold war.

Yanek came 5,000 miles in hopes of earning American citizenship
And liberating his family from the poverty of rebuilding Poland,
As a carpenter of prodigious work capacities and an eye for fine detail.
He lived alone without wife and children, including a newborn babe,
And gave Americans fine workmanship and inspiring example.

I wonder if he ever complained?

I tried to become Yanek’s sponsor, committing my 25 year old roofing company
To provide employment for this eminently employable man,
Whose workmanship would have taken my company to a higher level
Of historic home restoration capabilities.

That company is now 35 years old, and has tripled its annual sales
And launched a path breaking fish farm in an old factory
But an obscure bureaucrat judged my company
Too small and insignificant to guarantee against Yanek’s becoming
An unemployed burden on this nation’s budget—a decision so absurd
And cruel in its implications that I flee from remembering.

So Yanek will leave America and return, after 18 years, to his ailing wife
And children, who have missed their father’s most vital years.
But I have no doubt that Yanek, like the great Polish nation,
Will gracefully capture every good aspect of every moment he encounters
In his remaining years, in Poland, denying America a nearly perfect son.

A Small Business Owner’s Plea for Public Control of Water

Sacred Waters

My Milwaukee,
Our Milwaukee…

Is among…

The best runs cities
In the Land.

And our Water Works…
Are world renowned!

Our leaders have given
Inspired support,

To our citizens efforts,
To renew Milwaukee…

To fix our eyes on the prize,
Of some kind of post-industrial
Renaissance, of Old Milwaukee,
Our Milwaukee.

Key to this Renaissance,
Is Will Allen’s Growing Power
Urban Agriculture projects.

And the work of
The Great Lakes Water Institute…

Both partnering with Milwaukee Government,
To make Milwaukee…

The Urban Agriculture City of America…

As well as…

The Urban Aquaculture City of America.

I feel far more secure,
As a small business owner
Of a start-up urban agriculture/aquaculture
Enterprise…

With my civic leaders,
Supported by my fellow citizens,
In local control of…

Our sacred waters.

We the citizens
In concert with
Our civil leaders…

Must own and operate,
Our public goods, and especially,
The very source of our lives…

Our sacred waters.

With public ownership
Of this public good,
I am much more confident in…

Our water’s quality.

Fair pricing.

Long term structural
Integrity and sustainability.

Social and environmental
Justice impacts.

I hope to operate
My small business
In a city with control of..

It’s sacred waters.

Water of, for, and by the people…

For the generations.

Peddling Charismatics

My charismatics
Are the very finest!

Pick of the litter!
Top of the line!

And we can very easily
Keep them honest!

The Freuds Are Often Pissed Off With the Junges

And I can’t be your Peter or
Your Paul,
If you lose your Christ!

Hubris On The Court

We’ll run you ragged,
Foul you out, and
Shoot the eyes
Out of the basket.

Must do better than
Two handed set shots!

The Age of Industry Is Over

More is demanded of us,
Now.

Be Careful, Or

I’ll tell
Grace on you!

Frozen in Charisma

The inspired
And wonderous eyes.

Can freeze
Charisma.

The Land, the Water, and the Commons

In Europe, the lords and ladies
And their sheriffs and executioners,
Took the commons for commerce,
And herded the people into
The factories satanic.

In America, Wall Street and technocrats
Lulled the people into believing
The mall and fast food
Were commons sufficient.
And the Leviathan’s food
Is slowly poisoning our children’s bodies,
The mall our children’s spirits.

And now we should cede our waters?

Sweet Water Olde

The Liberation of the Cubicle People

Alas!

Ten thousand years of
Lord, priest, and warrior
Diminishing the power and the glory,
Of our honest and noble artisans.

But a case has now been made,
For working with our hands,
Celebrated on the pages of…
The New York Times!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine

Vindicating Working Class

Worker Gentry City Farms: Partnerships of Younge and Olde

A Sweet Water Olde, among other
Worker Gentry City Farmers,
Partners with Sweet Water Younges
And fixes eyes on the prize of rich fish vegetable farms,
Some in our old industrial buildings,
Some at our old school buildings,
Others on the grounds, of spiritual communities,
And small villages of elders,
Others in backyard garages and/or greenhouses,
In all of our city’s
Worthy neighborhoods.

Some, perhaps, God willing,
With healing and inspiring veterans,
At the Soldiers Home.

Or next to the site,
Of the Bay View Massacre.

Sweet Water Oldes, while not working,
Are sometimes practicing their
100th birthday party dance,
Or learning how to grow and cook.

Composting Oligarchies

We no longer need remain victimized
By the iron law of oligarchies,
Which explains why every human institution…

Even our glorious movements, e.g.
Political parties, unions, peace, civil rights…

Even our sacred spiritual communities, e.g.
Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Hindu, Islamic,
Except, perhaps, the Sufi and B’hai…

Even our closest political champions,
Alderman, mayor, governor, whatever…

All collective human enterprises
Find tiny groups coming to control
The flow…
Of information!

No information, no organization.
No orgnaization, no power!

With our modern information technologies,
From e-mail to yahoo groups,
To wiki web sites, facebook, now twitter…

All of them are helping us compost oligarchies,
Large and small.

We needed the resources, i.e. the carbon and the nitrogen,
Of these old oligarchic institutions.
They have given us much!

And their de-composition creates cleansing heat,
And the breeding ground for
Swarms of beneficial bacteria…

Us!

Doing our best, groping, stumbling,
Stammering, and sometimes
Brilliantly chanting…

Truth and beauty to power.

Wormon

God, The Gods, and Surplus Suffering

Suffering in this mortal realm is inescapable,
But surplus suffering can be incrementally diminished.

Never make a vow, say all the great books,
Without adding “God willing.”

Sometimes neither God nor the Fates
Will allow your words materialization in deeds.

Consider denying your neck
That hangman’s noose…

By concluding your commitments
With some simple words, like…

“I’ll be there at 9, God willing,” or

“I’ll call you tomorrow, unless
My mind runs away.”

You might also co-create the events,
And cover your “self,” with…

“Spare me shame if I’m 5 minutes late,
My cell phone is 414 232 1336.”

Surplus suffering is an especially onerous
Burden on your sacred body.

Our minds release toxic chemicals
When we are ashamed of ourselves…

Weakening our immune systems
And diminishing our spirits!

Mon

Should “man” become “mon?”

Should “woman” become “mon?”

Should “persons” become “mon?”

Hey Mon, the way Bob Marley said it,
Is very easy on my mindbody.

What about ycurs?

WormMon

Dodging Bullets Riding Whales

Dodging bullets
On the way up the mountain.

Dodging bullets
Down deep in the sea.

Dodging bullets
Riding whales.

Spirit trumps bullets.

Rainy Spring Weekend Morning

With cover artist of “My Milwaukee” and “Forbidden Pleasures of Permaculture in the Holy City of the Sweet Water Seas,” Shelby Keefe, April 14, 2007, at benefit for MilwaukeeRenaissance at the venerable Coffee House, for 30 or 40 years in the basement to Holy Redeemer Lutheran Church on 19th & Wisconsin. The benefit featured the music of Howard Lewis Hinterthuer, poet/singer/songwriter, founder of the Embeded Reporter music group, always looking to do benefits for environmental and bio-diversity movement projects, including one for Growing Power in December, and the Bonobo Project in January. Send e-mail to godsil.james@gmail.com for more information.

Bio sketch is here

Poetry and Prose Winter 2009

Reggae Dancing In The White House!

How good it feels to witness
This brilliant and loving
Son of humanity!

And his queenly bride!

At last!
At last!

Time now for…

Reggae dancing in the White House!

How long will it be
Before we dance
In the streets
Outside…

The Reggae in the White House?

Worm Mon, Chicken, Junk, Fish, Food, and Love Mon: Good Mon

Worm Mon

“Worm Mon” and “mon” is, for me, gender neutral.
If you would prefer “worm man” or “worm woman,”
We can oblige.

Worm Mon raises worms.

Chicken Mon

Goes to the forum to suggest chicken farm industry for Milwaukee.

Junk Mon

Hopes to figure out good uses for all of creation, starting with what some call junk.

House Mon

Learning how to mother and father and shepherd increasingly lovely homes.

Fish Mon

Partnering with Milwaukee yeoman urban agrarian in efforts to transform industrial slums ito fish and vegetable farms.

Food Mon

Working with family and community gardeners to advance locally grown, intensive, natural, urban agriculture.

Love Mon

Enjoying conversations with Rumi, Hafiz, and the mystics of all people’s most authentic spiritual traditions offering food for thought
on creations most dazzling mystery—

Us!

Back to top

Water and Weed Your Visions!

I swear it’s true that
Hope tends to quite often
Somehow materialize
That which it contemplates!

Not always, but often enough
That I water and weed my visions.
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Gargantua’s “Depression” Stirs Primal Powers

As humans pause
‘fore gargantua’s gaspings…

Gasping themselves
In all that foul air…

Forced to meta reflect,
And explore new daily rounds.

Good anti-dementia exercise.
Fresh and happy neural rhythms.
Back to top

Boomers’ Children: The Greatest Generation

Stocks tank,
Boomers keep working.

Forced entrepreneurship and victory gardens,
Small businesses and barter networks,
Co-ops and small is beautiful solar architecture.

Our young become…
The greatest generation!
Back to top

I Want To Be a City Fish Farmer

I’ll feel safer for our bodies’ futures
If fish are farmed in our ‘hoods.”

Our children and our elders
Will be joyful
While visiting our fish farms,
And eating our fish.

I have no doubt that Mother Earth
Prefers protein for humans from fish
More than from cows and/or pigs.

And I’ve a better chance
To lose my bulging belly’s shameful girth,
On a diet of baked fish
In virgin olive oil and fresh garlic.

Home Depot Paint Desk, 3/7/09
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Give God a Morning Kiss

Give God a kiss,
While walking
Out your door.

Give God a kiss,
While walking
Through new doors.

Give God a kiss,
While walking
On this floor…

We call…

Earth.

Inspired by Karen Hafiz Kolberg
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Bonobo Mamas At Heidelberg Gardens

Bonobo Mamas at Heidelberg Gardens
Surrounded by East Grant Boulevards…

Getting that tree ready for my nest…

After my 100th.

Sitting up there…

Mixing my mushrooms…

With my Avalon breads…

My Gardening Angel greens…

My King Solomon Baptist Church honey…

Communing with Grace and Starhawk.

Happy.
Back to top

Climbing Out From The Second American Civil War

I think we’re climbing out from a second American Civil War,
Not as manifestly bloody as the first,
But bloody still and more blurred in boundary.

We’ve a long way to go.
We’ve a long way already come.

Hang in there!
Hang on!

The best parts…
Yet to come!

Thank you for working toward this day!
Back to top

Bounty Once Thought Waste

What gift, the bounty
Once thought waste!

No Imperium’s edicts
Could approach
The benign effects

Of so luminous an…

Appreciation.

Olde
Back to top

The Story of Loaves and Fishes From the Holy City of the Sweet Water Seas

First.

It began in earnest when the kid from the hood,
Just 15 years old, shot in the stomach,
A fine Riverwest, gay, pub worker/owner,

A few weeks after an intemperate leader
Gay-bashed rogue cops

Rather than thoughtfully, powerfully,
Seize the reins of justice.

‘Second.

This outrageous shooting, plus
A rash of thuggery that summer, 2005,
Brought forth a community gathering,
Which I attended, at the Art Bar on Burleigh,
Across from old St. Mary’s,
Where the shooting had occurred.

I had the same sinking feeling in my stomach,
As during the 1970s and 1980s, when I and friends
Had done our best to inspire thought in things better
Than racist scapegoating at community meetings,
Following notorious crime events and moments
In struggling Milwaukee.

Third

But when I arrived at the Art Bar, there was a
Spirit of graceful, powerful…resolve.

A succession of strong and warm people,
A polyglot, rainbow melange,

People with deep roots in the neighborhood
And the movements of our times,

Expressed thoughts and feelings aiming to heal and renew,
To draw upon our deepest imaginations and
Sources of resilient endurance…

To keep our eyes on the prize that
Ghandi and King, Rosa, John, and Bobby,
Mandela, Grace Lee Boggs, and many more,

Had blazed in great visions in our youth.

Having spent much time alive
In the dark, dank tombs of pharaohs,

While not witnessing manifestations of bestial hate
Aimed at minority “others”

I was overwhelmed by these
Bursts of warm light
Coming from everyday people.

I had to leave early,
Lest I lose my composure,

And while driving home
Along sacred city trails,

Alongside resurgent neighborhoods
And cleansing rivers,

The notion of finally meeting Big Will Allen,
The legendary urban farmer already renowned

In awakened circles for his avant-guard
Permaculture and urban agriculture innovations,

Innovations agricultural and “biological,” e.g. vermaculture,

Agriculture ecological, e.g. gloriously productive
Simulated indoor river valleys with sweet water
And fat, healthy, tasty fish,

Innovations social and cultural, e.g. farmer training youth programs.

And when I got out to Growing Power, on 55th and Silver Spring,
More than one incredibly exuberant persons,
Starting with Miss Karen, greeted me with a warmth and generosity
That continues to inspire, and even, startle me.

Later on I learned that I had experienced my first moment with…

Growing Power Magic!

That’s what Miss Karen calls it.

And it’s true!

Fourth

I returned home to fine an e-mail
Sent from Harvey Taylor, Milwaukee poet and stevedore,
Which contained a song he’d just written
About Big Will Allen and Growing Power!

And then at my 60th birthday party,
Sally Leiser, whom I’d never met, showed up
At the Kern Park “country club,” out of the blue,
And shared the Growing Power story,
In perfect pitch!
Back to top

Information Age Movement Organizing!!

There are those among us who would gladly
Make money at a regular job,
And craft a life focused on raising families
And creating the good life…

And there are those who don’t quite fit this mould.
Back to top

Squeezing the Bad Out of Life

Let us pray we improve
Our skills
Squeezing the bad out of life!

Exhale that bad in your life!

Dance it out!

Laugh it out!

Cry it out!

Do it!
Do it!

It feels good!

Get hot!

Get loose{!}…

Squeezing that bad from your life!
Back to top

Poetry and Prose 2008

Apple & Raspberry Harvesting in Bay View With Your Honey

Imagine a Sunday morning stroll to a city farm in Bay View
Some Saturday or Sunday morning this coming Fall…

Where you are invited to harvest sweet ripe raspberries,
And, red cherry tomatoes from a rooftop farm.

And arugula!
Power packed green
Our Movement’s Best Organizer enjoys.

You are also shown how to mix radiant wastes
With wood chips and leaves,
Let that alchemize a while,
And feed the rich humus results
To your red wriggler worms.

The worms casting then are rightly called
Black Gold!

The kind you give to your soil,
So seeds planted yield great harvests.

For you and your honey to enjoy,
Every Summer and Fall…

At Gods Hill City Farm,
Or, your farm,
That’s just around the bend!

Contact godsil.james@gmail.com
Back to top

A New City of New Orleans

Good mgrning, America, how are you?
Don’t you know me I’m your favorite child.
I’m the people of the city of New Orleans,
I was down but now I’m back
Let’s move it on.

I was down but now I’m back
Let’s move it on.

There’s a train they call
The City of New Orleans
Stops at cities great along the way…

Detroit, Old Milwaukee, and Chicago,
St. Louie is the last stop of the day.

And on that train a rainbow throng is gathering,
With eyes fixed on the prize of freedom,
And on that train a global village’s bloooming,
Visions of the new dawn that we’re growing,
Knowing, the human race is one.

Good morning, America, how are you?
Don’t you know me I’m your favorite child.
I’m the people of the city of New Orleans,
I was down but now I’m back
Let’s move it on.

I was down but now I’m back
Let’s move it on.
Back to top

Freedom Train Brings Milwaukee Lincoln Brigade to Great City of New Orleans

21st Century Milwaukee can help the world feed itself,
With gifts of worms and worm casting methods
To grow soil, food, and square foot farms
Tended by urban villagers with
Green collar, blue collar, and white collar training.

Viva Eagan seed money and support!

Hot Summer Day
Milwaukee 2008
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21st Century Milwaukee Helps the World Feed Itself

Not Vast Wheat Farms But Square Foot Backyard/Rooftop Worm Depositories & Food Gardens

19th century Milwaukee may have been the port
From which went forth more wheat to the wider world
From the Great Plains and Great Midwest
Than from any port heretofore in the history of humanity.

There is a lovely poster with a beautiful women
Casting wheat to the world entitled…
“Milwaukee Feeds the World.”

Perhaps the image for the 21st Century
Which may find Milwaukee helping the world’s cities
And their immediate water basins and bio-regions
Re-learning how to feed themselves…

With the help of worms and radiant waste,
Growing the finest soil for the healthiest plants,
Animals, and Humans,
Growing backyard mini-farms, community gardens,
City farmers, and liberating convivial communities.
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Yes! Sweetheart...Of Course... It’s All About Me!

And every day is my birthday...

...

...

And yours too!

Lovely Summer Sunday Morning
Milwaukee 2008
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Tim Russert: A Child of Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis of Assissi, and Virgin Mary

Tim Russert

I have been deeply moved by the outpouring of
Love and respect showered upon the spirit of
Tim Russert upon his far too early return to
The Spirit.

Part of his love and glory
Came from his early mentors
Devoted to the teachings of
St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Francis,
And to the “Sacred Heart of Mary.”

The Roman Catholic Church as an institution
and the Catholics as a “culture”
Have many things to answer for.

Tim Russert and people like him,
Who number in the thousands in Milwaukee,
Offset some of that shadow side
Of one of the great religions of “The West.”

Perfect Summer Day
Milwaukee 2008
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Sissy Roofers Love Wild Women and Free Range Chickens

Sissy roofers have to very carefully tend the fires
Upon encountering wild women and free range chickens.

The taste is so rich
They fear collapsing…

In gratitude.

Perfect Summer Saturday Morning
Milwaukee 2008

Fire Arcs Spark Divine

Janine’s response to my favorite sissy roofer on the planet (any planet):

free range chickens and wild women
dance in exuberance
in the company of sissy roofers
knowing they each share
the spark of the divine…

tend your fires carefully,
magical sissy roofer
of the sweet inland seas

in each fire
arcs
the
sparks
of
the
divine

Square Inch City Farms To Change the Way We Live: Permaculture Cities!

Will Allen rightly booms forth during most of his glorious Growing Power tours…

It’s not how green is your thumb!
It’s how fertile is your soil!

And then…

Just start growing something, anything,
In any kind of pot. See what good will happen!

Community Growers Recruiting Square Inch City Farmer Apprentices

With Will Allen compost or homemade compost following Will’s methods,
A network of artist/artisan/urban farmers is giving people small hanging pots
To grow arugula for their family and friends, and, if they are ambitious,
For one of Milwaukee’s most revered family grocers, e.g. Seneks on Downer,
Which put out the call for “local organic arugula” this week.

From Pots to Plots

The hypothesis is that 100 such pots will yield one or two
Apprentice city farmers,
Once the magic is experienced.

It will also yield returns for those offering the pots,
Intrinsic and otherwise. And…

Hastening the Emergence of 10,000 Mini City Farms & Roof Top Gardens

In each of our venerable industrial cities
Becoming, by necessity, something new…

Say…

Permaculture Cities!

What say?

Godsil
Apprentice Urban Farmer
Back to top

Family Therapists and Surplus Suffering

It is my studied opinion, based on
Living through many an ocean of sorrows
And witnessing my sweet ones
Gasping for air in their own such seas…

It is my studied opinion, and my
Deepest intuition…

That a considerable portion of human suffering
Would be reduced were more of the people
Connected with competent family therapists
To help them untangle…

Family knots!

If it is the case that the earth is the insane asylum
Of the universe, a plausible hypothesis derived
From reading any newspaper, high brow or pulp…

If that is true, then family therapists are surely
Worthy of our spending some time with,

When the inescapable imbecilities and
Constant provocations of those we live with
And/or love

Begin to make us…mad!

Family therapists are a noble few
And in Milwaukee very, very well trained.

Family therapists are as valuable to our evolution
And survival, as roofers, artists, urban farmers,
Doctors, lawyers, and teachers,
And any other worthy trade or social role.

Family therapists reduce…
Surplus suffering.

Unnecessary suffering.

Avoidable suffering.

Not all suffering
In this highly painful
World of being.

But enough to warrant
Googling…”family therapists, Milwaukee,”
Before popping your cork
When a family member
Is totally out of line, obnoxious,
Or even…noxious.

Viva, family therapists!

Cool Spring Day
Milwaukee 2008
Back to top

Viva, Hillary Rodham Clinton!

We owe this great day in the U.S.A. to…
Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Hillary and her family will offer much to the movement
Growing across the land
To welcome egocentric old men
From dominant families and cultures
Into the compost pile of history.

She and her movement will play a decisive role
In this historic movement.

Great energies, community building, and mindful public policies
Are ours to look forward to in the face of
Life’s tragedies,
With new leaders in D.C.
Who shame not the nation nor the species.

Viva Hillary Rodham Clinton!

Hot Spring Saturday
Milwaukee 2008

Dancing in the Streets of the U.S.A.

In my mind’s eye, we’re dancing the in streets today.
What a great gift we’ve offered ourselves and the world!

Perhaps the world’s oldest political party
Has chosen a fine son of the best
Of the movements of our time.

The dreams of our visionary leaders
From days gone by,
Are in many inspiring ways
Taking shape, manifesting.

The Obama movement
Has enormous possibilities
For peace and reconciliation,
For justice and harmony,
For some kind of transcendence.

He and his team have loosened
Some rich soil and
Connected with many new sources
Of nutrients and energy!

May Obama live a long life!
May he inspire and advance
Our movements!

New Day, Milwaukee

Crafting My Many Selves

I love crafting my many selves!
This work is never complete,
Nor an easy task!

I am so vast and so complex,
So filled with contradictory voices
Even naming myself becomes a game.

Who am I today?
Which identity to present to whom?

I’m exultant when I pick
Just the right name
For the person, place, or day.

What self, what culture
Will I choose on the morrow?

I sometimes swim through my selves.
Other times I simply float down
Those luxurious rivers.

Don’t dare tell me who or what I am!
That is my choice to make!

I’m coming to love my many selves!
Even their quarrels, battles,
And intractable impossible
Glorious contradictions.

Perfect Spring Morning
Milwaukee, 2008

Floating Down the River Through My Backyard City Farm

It’s really quite easy to float down the river
Running right through my backyard city farm.

I never was one to sit still enough
To float down that river
Through my mind’s eye.

Backyard, and frontyard(!) city farms
Are practical, and divine, in other ways as well.

No burning fossil fuels
While digging with one’s worms!

No burning bridges
Since everyone knows
You can’t argue politics
Or religion while planting
Those incredibly tiny oregano seeds.

Glorious Brisk Spring Saturday
Memorial Day Weekend, 2008

Wrestling With My Vanities

I can barely stay upright
When you let me talk!

I love your attention!
I love attention!

I once ran from
Its thrill.

But a cascade of follies
Throughout my adult years
Calls for good news
For my well weathered soul.

Your kind attention to my words
Is very, very good news!

Thank you!
Thank you!
Thank you!

Overwhelmingly lovely Spring Morning
Milwaukee 2008

Grandpa Knows Very, Very Much About Some Things

Grandpa knows very, very much about some things,
And very, very little about others.

Satisfied Young Elder
Bracing Milwaukee Spring Day, 2008

Charismatic Friends and Families

I wonder if we should reflect upon the custom
Of public accolades for charismatic citizens.

We are our relationships, n’est-ce pas?

If a family member’s social practice
Suggests an astonishing “gift of grace”…

Does that gift not reflect directly upon
The family which has nourished them.

The family of origin.
The family of this life’s construction.

Let’s bring that partner(s) spouse(s)on stage!
What about Mom and Dad?
Brothers and Sisters?

And the children!

Look at how well they have lived
With the inexorable and inescapable
Imbecilities and deviations from perfection
Of their charismatic parent!

Viva, the families of our great and modest beings!

Bracing Spring Day, Milwaukee 2008

From Culture Consumers to Culture Creators in Old Milwaukee

It is now well within our reach to
Create our own culture!

We now can be our own “Le Monde” and “Les Tempes Modernes!”
How about a Great Lakes Times,
All the news we’re fit to create!
Let’s be our own “Guardian!”
Let us create a “Milwaukee New Republic!”

The Milwaukee Renaissance
(On Line Magazine and Movement Resource)
Is ours to craft!

Even as we grow perfect red cherry tomatoes
In our Milwaukee three generation hamlets…

And sing new songs and bellow barbaric yawps
From roof tops and glades
In the Holy City
We appear to be making.

Peddler 2008

I Love My Peddler Prowess!

I love my peddler prowess!
Give me a worthy “idear,” person,
Or even practical
Goods or services…

And watch me fly!

Rather Chilly Spring Sunday
Note: “Idear” in honor of Ted Seaver

Earth Poets 20th Anniversary Offerings

Some Children Are Better Taught by Their Parents

Some children are better taught by their parents,
Like it’s been for the previous 3,000 generations
Of village life.

It’s only in the past 3 to 5 generations, in the main,
That children have been thought to acquire more
From formal educators than their mothers and fathers,
Aunts and uncles, grandmas and grandpas.

Certain kinds of children, the more spirited,
The more sensitive, the more exuberant ones,
Might be especially deprived by the lack of parental mentors,
And the presence of employee teachers in bureaucratic settings,
Who really are not meant to “deal” with these kinds of youth.

A lot of our so-called ADD kids would do just fine
Working with their parents in certain kinds of
Personalized work study dramas
Tailored for each unique child,
As only a parent can do!

Rainy Day in Milwaukee
March 31, 2008
Back to top

Lovingly Composting The One Dimensional Man

We need not worry to bury
The one dimensional man.

Why not intend him,
Gently, gracefully…
Compassionately,
Away…

Into the compost pile
Of the human race.

Should We Let St. Patrick Rest?

Should We Let St. Patrick Rest?
At least at Timbuktu in Riverwest,

Say, a century’s experiment
In the Holy City of
The Sweet Water Seas?

St. Patrick’s better angels
Would surely welcome Brigid her due,

The Patrick that was a great and modest being
Would gladly cede center stage
To one so wise and lovely as our Brigid.

St. Patrick’s very human failings
Were likely at least in part derived from
His status as a Roman male,
And Church of Rome authority.

Are we not tired of archetypal Romans,
Spiritual or material powers, whatever?

Are the sissy roofers of Milwaukee
The only ones to notice this exhausting hubris?

Patrick in his day may well have expiated sins
In acts of mortification, perhaps even quite pure forms of flagellation.

But retiring Patrick from the reigning icon role
Of St. Patrick’s Day might free him up
For all kinds of new adventures with lots more soul.

Transforming St. Patrick’s into St.Brigid’s Day,
May even pave the way for Patrick’s release
From the agony of purgatory,
Even, perhaps, retroactively,
In defiance of space and time!

Free Patrick! Free Patrick! Free Patrick!
Let Brigid speak! Hear what she has to say!

Let us gaze upon images of Brigid!
Let’s see what that might do!

And what about what St. Patrick’s Day has become?
I can imagine St. Patrick’s shedding a tear
Every time a young Irishmen or otherwise
Drinks a not even fatal, bur rather, a banal beer!

A Spring Like Day, March 14, 2008
Olde

Divine Delusions

Bay View genius Michael Moynihan’s response to Hillary Obama Wisconsin breakthrough…

“A poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more:
It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

Worse than nothing. It signifies a delusion so deep, a denial so unrecognized, and an ignorance so complete, that it makes thoughtfulness, critical thinking and intelligent discourse seem impossible.

Divine Delusions

I love my hour upon the stage!
I adore Michael’s!

I strut and fret less as my hour
Approaches its final strokes.

There is less sound, less fury,
And I’m sure…the sweetest of new meanings.

Possibly to echo through the 7th generation,
Plenty enough for me.

My delusions divine have contributed to Wisconsin
Overwhelmingly choosing a “black” and a “woman.”

A new sensibility quite likely, perhaps
Mixed with the better angels of aeon’s of “white men.”

A new sensibility marked by a certain kind of
Race and gender ambiguity…a more balanced center.

Which our resident surface level nihilist but deep beauty
Michael Moynihan helped grow!

Godsil

Viva Hillary Obama Wisconsin!

Yin and yang.
Black and white.

He and she.
Mind and heart.

Workers and owners.
Men and women.

North and South.
East and West.

Viva Hillary!
Viva Obama!
Viva, Wiscosin!

Obama 650,000
Hillary 453,000

Seventy four per cent!

McCain 224,000
Huckabee 151,000

Hillary voters greater than
McCain/Huckabee combined!

Obama almost tripled McCain’s showing!

Viva Hilary Obama Wisconsin!

The world was watching.
We did our ancestors proud.

Apprentice City Farmer
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Growing Power Growing Food

Toward a Planetary Real Food Movement

Michael Pollen has inspired the nation to “eat real food!”
Like great grandma served her family when times were good.

Milwaukee’s Will Allen and his Growing Power team
Have awakened me to the promise of front and backyards,
School yards, corner lots, old industry leand for reclamation…

For the renewal of home and community gardens,
For self-reliance, community, grace, and beauty.

And now Linn Cohen-Cole and Devinder Sharma
Are stretching my mind to our brothers and sisters
Across the planet, in cities, towns, and rural places,
North South East West…
Small organic farmers
Everywhere!

We all need real food!
We all can learn to grow it!
Or partner with those who do.

Organic farming, permaculture aspirations.

Starting with connections in the “noosphere,”
To ennoble and protect our lives in the biosphere,
To begin with a germinating web of exchanges
On line and in the real,
Theory, practice.
Practice, theory.

Let’s rehearse a future
With an emerging planetary movement
For organic farming and organic farmers,
In the cities
In the towns
In the country.

We’re in this boat together.
We’re on these lands together.

Learning how better to love one another,
Our biosphere,
Our Life.

We now can reach out beyond our locales,
Beyond our regions, beyond state borders.

Internet empowerment for real food farmers,
For real food partners and consumers.

Looking forward to story sharing
And chaordic vision practice.
Intensely.
Very, very intensely.
But with humility, awe, and irony.
And fun!

Growing farms and gardens to the 7th generation,
Of grace, beauty, and justice,
With reverance for mother earth and all creatures…

As the Growing Power vision puts it,

Creating a just world,
One food-secure community
At a time.

Viva, Real Food!
Viva, healthy people and healthy food!
Viva, growing power growing food!

Humanity is One!

Godsil

Sweet Red Cherry Tomatoes From Your Harambee Garden

Have you ever wished to venture forth beyond
Your primal ancestral circles
And see what’s up in the village
Across the river from your own?

Have you ever longed for sweet red cherry tomatoes
So fresh and juicy the old world
Protestant or Catholic in you worries that
Eating them might be some kind of carnal sin?

Have you ever felt the joy of sacred fatigue
At the end of a workout in rich soil
Hands in the dirt, good sweat, and
Joyous work laughter moments with friends?

Have you ever imagined that…

Your nation gave rise to a movement
With other nations you are learning to love,

With an eye, strong body, and heart
Fixed on the prize of
Ten thousand backyard city farms.

With 4 chickens (no rooster) each
(Roosters visit from the early rising towns)

Eyes on the prize of…

Ten Thousand community farms and gardens,
In old industrial city neighborhoods,

Transforming themselves into

Planetary villages of grace, beauty, and health?

And the nation chose a leader
Who could understand all this!

Olde
Too Much Snow and Rain to Roof 2008

Janine Arseneau’s “Delicious Revolution” Starts Poetry Jam Session

dreaming of
a delicious revolution,
from the ground up

cherry tomatoes
in their sweet red summer glory
giving up flesh and nectar

leaving seeds behind
to find their way
back into the soil
to create more
sweet little tomato treasures

softening the earth
opening hearts
nurturing spirits

sustaining us
uniting us

the transformative power
of a tiny cherry tomato

this revolution should be
televised and broadcast widely

Janine

Back to top

Looking Like Bridie’s Found Her Harvard

She has spent about 5 half-days with me this past couple of weeks,
Some of them in bitter cold,
Others requiring some mind/body/hand precision,
Like shooting basketballs,
Which she does so well!

A total pleasure to be with these past couple of weeks in my work rounds.
She has a peddler’s aspect the truck will serve,
E.g. buying, selling, bartering, and delivering things from
Craig’s List Milwaukee Emporium.

Looking like Bridie’s found her Harvard.

Part of her “folk” Harvard adventure will be presented at
www.twogirlsandatruck.com
A wiki web site master wiki gnome Tegan Dowling
Will be creating for Bridie’s 20th Birthday,
The Friend willing!

In the way that I pray, I pray the tragectory of Bridie’s last 3 seasons,
Remains with her for the next 320!

She is one of the reasons I can weep for joy
At an inside table with food and warmth for my babies,
With promise of nice bedrooms for the evening.

Dreaming of 3 generation homes for my sweet ones,
With lots of grand children picking summer raspberries
And sweet red cherry tomatoes.

Olde Godsil

Happy Birthday to Bridie!
Highlights of 20th Birthday Week

Bridie Godsil with Morrey of Crown Hardware and new roofing tools
Rainbow Roofing

Leaning How To Nail Fasten Metal Flashings
And Heat Weld Membrane Seams

----------------------------------------

Two Girls and a 3/4 Ton Truck
Ready to Haul Your Stuff

Viva, Bridie Wines Godsil!

Happy 20th Birthday!

What a great and good adventure
You are making of your life!

What a joy to be part of
Bridie Rose Wines Godsil’s Life!

What fine people love you!

And thank The Friend
That you were born!

Olde Godsil
Back to top

Presidential Campaigns and “Growing Power Awakening”

A “Growing Power” presidential campaign
Starts out with a Will Allen Tour
Of the first organic city farm
Of post-industrial,
Greening Milwaukee.

Nature’s magic.
City farmer work .
Combine to yield small daily miracles,
Astonishingly fresh and healthy
Veggies, fruits, fish, and fowl, and…
City Farmers!

The candidate who awakens to the promise
Of the emerging urban agriculture movement
Will win the people’s nod.

The presidency that will really, deeply matter,
Will go to the candidate who has a “Growing Power Awakening,”
While enjoying a Will Allen Tour, of his teams’
First Organic City Farm of Milwaukee,
The “City of Culture,” sooner than you think to
Offer its bounty of
10,000 city gardens
To the people of
It’s bio-region,
And training,
And inspiration,
To the people of the world.

Godsil
http://www.milwaukeerenaissance.com/Main/TheFourthEstate

The Emancipation of the Fourth Estate

It has been my experience in over 40 years of work
In the major movements of our time,
That the reporters of St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee,
Fargo, Denver, Brooklyn, and Detroit,
Were quite often the first people in their city
To “get” some major new social trend or fact,
To grasp the “essence” of new developments.

It is also my understanding that many of the
Best and the brightest of our nation, i.e. big city reporters,
Sometimes find themselves intellectually and spiritually challenged
By virtue of the imperatives of the cash nexus.

It is my hope that the internet may afford
A response to this challenge,
A means for small miracles in the lives
Of we citizens of the great cities of the
Great Lakes and Mississippi River regions,
With connections to our brothers and sisters
In the east, west, and southern coasts,
Reporters, the Fourth Estate, and
Citizens, alert and active.
Educating one another.
Co-creating a more graceful civilization.

The Fourth Estate?

Conversations With Bohemian Gentry?

Why Have Not Hillary, Obama, and/or Edwards
Looked into City Farming?
Are They Not Ignoring
Millions of “Locavore” Voters?

Are They Not Missing a
Costless, Creative Way
To Transform Our Health System?

Does anyone have any idea as to how it could be
That our top Democratic Three,
Have not yet understood the cancer
That is industrial agriculture?

Michael Pollan inspires in me
The concept that we are violating
Our bodies and our spirits
By a basic, “systemic” flaw
In our “food system.”

Local, organic, city farming
As pioneered by Milwaukee’s Will Allen,
Dramatically endorsed by Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley,
Is proving a creative, evolutionary response.

But somehow none of our best and brightest Democratic candidates
Has awakened to this new possibility.

Why not?

Olde
Zero Degree Day
January 2008

Norm

What a man!
What a force of nature!
Look at all he did!
Witness the fruits of his labor!

You would have had to live a while,
Alongside of Norm(to paraphrase Otis),
To have any chance
Of understanding…words won’t do!

Where to begin? What can one possibly say?

Hampton Gardens, 1952.
Tall, dark, handsome, strong, lithe, agile,
Totally at ease with his self and his body.
A friendly smile, soft spoken,
A tad shy with the straight Irish-American elders.
Warm and friendly with us little guys—second graders,
Destined to become “Betty’s Boys.”

Knock-down dead gorgeous movie star beauty wife, Betty,
Brand new apartment, the hottest possible cars
(was that the red Cadilac to Betty’s pink Studebaker era?).

Traveling at 90 to 100 mph through Illinois
To give the nation the sweetest ice cream—custard!
A professional baseball player in his 20s,
Made it as a pitcher to the St. Louis Browns for a time!

An Italian! Brother of a millionaire Italian trucker!
Played cards at high stakes with guys on the edge of …
Played golf, probably at high stakes, with others, on the edge of ???
Spent time with wife and son at great Italian restaurants,
Had, something his son’s friend’s families only dreamed of,
A night life!

Norm Tarantola introduced some kind of a Mediterranean way
To South St. Louis, just a bit beyond “The Hill.”
He sent his son Norman Jr.(“Rock”) to private Catholic schools,
St. Joan of Arc then Chaminade,
Correctly believing that a good education would
Make life easier than it had been for him.

This was in the early 1950s, when most northern European families,
Including the vast majority of St. Joan of Arc, German and Irish,
Had barely any contact with Italians, whose culture was different,
Some of it very, very much better, e.g. excellent spicy food, gardens, wine & celebrations,
Some if it a mixed blessing, e.g. explosive temper outbursts.

To be continued…

An Old Roofer’s Response to Quantum Physics’ “Zero Point Field”

May we help you…
Calm and stoke your fire?
Perfect pitch your symphony?
Manifest your most glorious selves?
Gracefully order you elegant chaos?

Thank You For the Tears of Joy

We were violently cast adrift
In the cold and briny deep, clutching
Our ship’s detritus, gasping for air.

Barely conscious face down in the sand,
Freezing shivering, vomiting water,
Bodies bruised and swollen.

After what seemed a lifetime of misery
Some rays of sun began to dry our
Clothes and bodies—we slowly awakened.

Able to open our eyes and hold our heads up,
Eventually pushed ourselves from the sand,
Knelt, crawled, and finally stood—wobbling.

We began a halting walk
Away from the sea, across the sand,
Toward higher drier land—hungry.

Past the dunes we climbed small bluffs
And spied a modest house
Set in a yard with a once painted picket fence.

The gate had no latch,
We walked past toward the porch,
Knocked on the door—no one was there.

The door knob turned,
We opened the door
And slowly walked in.

It was a lightly furnished house,
Rather recently occupied,
With some food on a kitchen table.

We gathered at that table
By windows where the warming sun
Welcomed us to sit and eat.

We looked at each other.
Smiled, then laughed,
And wept for joy.

Olde
2008

If John Kerry Had Offered This Speech at Milwaukee’s Soldiers Home

First Draft of John Kerry Speech for Delivery at Steps of Old Main at
Soldiers Home of the Great M Idwest?, in Milwaukee, Wiconsin.

Milwaukee is becoming home to all of God’s children.
It is a lovely city
where the waters and citizens from every continent meet.

Milwaukee, like life itself, is a terrible beauty,
the scene of great tragedies, but also, of great triumphs.

It is humbling and awe-inspiring to meet with you at the Soldiers Home
of the Great Lakes and the Great Midwest, home to the sacred remains
of the gallant soldiers and families, who faced the horrors of war,
and whose finest aspect informs this gathering today.

I have chosen the Soldiers Home as one of my major Midwest
destinations, so that I and we can experience the spirit of these buildings,
where healed and died the soldiers who fought the war that ended
10,000 years of slavery in Western civilization.

These are also the buildings and the graves where
inhere the spirit of the soldiers who fought the wars that wiped the
malignancy of Hitler’s Nazism and Mussolini’s facism from the map of
Europe. And these are the buildings and the graves where will reside
the spirit of the Soldiers who have made the ultimate sacrifice fighting
the scourge of terrorist fundamentalisms in these times.

It is at these grounds that I wish to address the issues of war and
peace, and the issues of race and religious reconciliation.

How can we learn to be good soldiers and citizens in a just war,
without learning the lessons of the Soldiers Home?
How can we learn to be good citizens in our domestic
war against intolerance, injustice, and violence, public and private,
institutional and individual.

These 43,000 graves and these marvelous buildings that housed those
maimed and wounded by the dogs of war, speak clearly to a basic and
fundamental principle.

This great country should never go to war because we want to.
We should only go to war because we have to.

These buildings which constituted a nurturing village for our soldiers
since the Civil War era, are currently in a disgraceful state of
disrepair, largely forgotten these past 15 years. This failure inspires a second
principle to guide our collective enterprise: when we make a mistake,
when we overlook something of great importance, we must seek out a wise
response to our mistake, apologize to those harmed by it, and move on
to a brighter and more thoughtful tomorrow. It is quite human to err, to
apologize, and to move on, informed by our mistakes. It is quite
limitingto our humanity to err, evade, and continue on misguided pathways.

Let us renew these buildings and fill them with new life and new purpose.

Let us renew our foreign and domestic policy. Let America once again
embody the charisma of freedom and democracy. No more unilaterial
wars! No more rejection of treaties designed to heal our
environment. Never again Abu Ghraib!

We will reclaim the Soldiers Home for the generations. We will hear
the spirit of these fallen heroes. We will extricate this great nation
from a narrative of self-destructive fear.

Let us reclaim the narrative of hope that has served so well this
nation’s great contribution to the advance of liberty, community, and justice.

(to be continued)

Dare to Dream of Three Generation Households

Is it possible to imagine laying plans for
A three generation household in old Milwaukee?

Where old granpa and/or olde grandma
Live in pleasant, modest, and private
But accessible quarters, in the same lot or hamlet
That mom and dad, and perhaps young children
Also live, perhaps work, and surely play?

And not necessarily just biological family hamlets.
Spiritual, cultural, artisinal, etc. “families”
Could aspire to succeed in Three Generation Households.

Say like the Polish working class neighborhoods of a century ago,
With the duplex in front, often a cottage in the back.
Where the elders helped with looking after the grandchildren,
Often cooking large meals for all 3 generations,
Maybe earning pocket change with some neighborhood service
That further connected families with clans with communities?

Can some of us children of the movements of the 60s,
Pull something like that off with our kids and grand kids?

Young elders with gardening, fix-up, cooking, cleaning,
Driving, errand-running, and child-rearing skills,
With compassionate, exuberant, kindly focused spirits
Surely are blessed with the kinds of resources
That might inspire the new generations to risk some shared fates.

Young elders with new generation partners!

If 10 percent of us did that, if 5 percent of us did that,
It would be an historic project!

What must one do to arrive at as much?

The Indiginous Peoples of North America have told me…
“Watch the animals and learn how to live.”

So watching the bonobos is high on my list.
Barbara Bell, Harry Prosen, and Gay Reinartz
Should be consulted.

Talking with family therapists about their “shop” another.
Mary Maroney, Jim Morningstar, and Roberta Hanus for the humans.

And then there is talk with my family and my friends.

Perhaps some of the three generation households
Will not be biology as destiny but rather
Freely chosen fully conscious transgenerational partnerships.
With eyes wide open!

“Shadow work” with Jung’s children.
Trips to witness possible household members
In challenging circumstances.

Baby steps and escape plans
A plenty.

And more talk with my neighbors, work and other kinds of partners.

The sweet ones!

Study the bonobos. Talk with the sweet ones.
Experiments. Baby steps.

Therein lies one path to take!

You Are Invited To My 100th Birthday Party

June 18, 2045 at around noon.
Bring a Friend. Bring The Friend!
We’ll start out at the Riverwest Co-op Cafe.
With a tour bus.

Great food, drink, music, and Sweet Ones!

All will merit a prize, perhaps hand crafted
Coffee table books of interviews and pictures
Of the great and modest beings who sparked some kind of
Historic Milwaukee, Great Lakes, and
Mississippi River Valley
Renewal.

Some kind of Upper Mississippi River Great Lakes Culture.
Growing our own food and culture.
Growing Power!

Harvesting our water and wind!
Sun power! Soil power!
Rain power!
Our power!

Cultivating healthy spirits,
Young and old.

I am hoping for your blessing and support
For adventures of the Mind and Spirit,
Following my 100th, which is past 8 a.m. that day,
Perhaps just through the food, music, dance, poetry,
And performance art that mark the day.

Or perhaps I’m by my 100th worthy of
Sacred mushrooms and the like.

In any case, the birthday party may extend beyond
June 18, 2045,
And may involve touring beyond the borders of
MyOur Milwaukee.

And, if I don’t quite make it to my 100th,
You’re invited to my funeral!

If you don’t quite make it to my 100th,
Or my funeral,
Do your best to let me know.
I’ll shed a tear for you…
You know.

Rainbow dancing in the streets,
Even those whose people
Have not danced sober in the streets
Since the dawn of the industrial age.

RSVP: sacredmushroomsifworthywhen100@milwaukeerenaissance.com

Our Hearts Are Made of Love

Don’t be afraid.

It’s ok.

You can fall in love.

You can say “I’m in love”
Even if your love
Sometimes makes you crazy.

Literally.

Or would prove impossible to live
Day to day with…

Always.

Our hearts are made of love.

It’s good to be falling into love.

With one special person.

With many special persons.

In different realms of being.

In different galaxies.

In the regions of the heart.

The rich paths to the Soul.

Yes Magazine Article

Poetry and Prose 2007

Poetry and Prose 2006

Poetry and Prose 2005

My Life’s Highest Professional Honor: The Good Word from Grace Lee Boggs

A HEALTHIER FOOD SYSTEM IS POSSIBLE
by Grace Lee Boggs
July 1, 8:35 a.m.

My friend, James Godsil, is a poet and roofer who lives in Milwaukee,and works closely with Will Allen, the retired basketball player who is known nationally and internationally for Growing Power, the 2–1/2 acre urban farm with five greenhouses which produces over 100,000 pounds of chemical-free vegetables a year and is also a fish farm.

To date, Will has taught farming and food processing to more than 1,000 students and helped launch more than 25 urban gardens, some in the poorest counties in the U.S.

For example. Sharon Adams has eliminated blight and reclaimed her Walnut Way neighborhood not far from Growing Power with youth community gardening programs developed by Will Allen.

“We’re not just growing food, we’re growing communities,” says Will.

Godsil is the webmaster for Milwaukee Renaissance and works tirelessly not only to spread the good news about Growing Power but to create a national network of urban farmers as the surest way to rebuild and respirit 21st century U,S. cities. See www.milwaukeerenaissance.com/BillSell/AnUrbanManifesto/

continued at Grace Lee Boggs

Renowned Slate Roofer and Green Trailblazer Joe Jenkins to Publish “Confessions of a Sissy Roofer in “Traditional Roofer” magazine.

This is a dream come true!

Wrote Luhrssen in the “Shepherd” re “My Milwaukee”’‘’

August 02, 2007

Jim Godsil is someone everyone in Milwaukee meets sooner or later. The intellectual roofer and soulful artisan has conducted countless campaigns by e-mail and in person on behalf of bettering local social and cultural life—calling out the treasures hidden in the city’s history, the potential of the present and the promise of the future. In a booklet of poetry that catches his visions in short, lyrical phrases, Godsil addresses his thoughts to “We Sons and Daughters/Of the Sweet Inland Seas,” the Great Lakes bioregion that might function quite well outside the orbit of Washington, D.C. Godsil’s human preoccupation with his homeland, Milwaukee, has universal resonance at a time when globalization has become the engine of global catastrophe. Gracing My Milwaukee’s cover is a painting of a local landmark, Soldier’s Home, by Shelby Keefe, another artist filled with the unique spirit of our Great Lakes city.

http://www.shepherd-express.com

Denise Dee organized the presentation of “My Milwaukee” at Schwartz’ on Downer to include Dave Luhrssen’s review which may have more soul than that reviewed!

Olde Godsil

Olde Godsil at Riverwest Co-op Office, August 2, 2007
Photo by Jake Hay

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Godsil Interviewed by Julia Kolker

Confessions of a Late Comer to the Environmental Movement

60th Birthday Greetings from Family and Friends…

http://sixtygodsil.blogspot.com/

Godsil