3 posts tagged “continental drift”
The MRCC itinerary called for an end-of-Drift strawberry pick and jam-making party. It was a wash-out; the strawberry fields weren't ready for trampling because of all the rain we've had over the last few weeks. On the other hand, the seasonal turns of fortune created a different opportunity, albeit one that all concerned would rather not see arise. We, the eleven traveling Continental Drift participants who arrived at Dreamtime, were asked to help with the post-flood clean up of a bookstore and post office in Viola, which is about a half hour from Dreamtime by car.
Five of us, Claire, Brian, Mike, Courtney, and I, were available to answer the call. We put in a good four hours of labor, including the moving of all the furniture from the post office to a safe and dry space in a building across the street. The Viola post office is small but there were enough pieces of heavy steel shelving, lockers, and assorted overbuilt tables and desks to make for a good workout. The post master was there to help and supervise, along with two volunteers from the local area. One was a mother with a small boy (who couldn't help much with the heavy lifting) from Viroqua and the other a local Amish fellow named Eli (with whom I moved a bear of a locker, full of stacked files). Together we moved the furniture, then pulled nails from the swollen floorboards, and finally cleaned and mopped. The post office was the priority, obviously, but the bookstore needed help, too.
The bookstore is called Driftless Books and Music and what a bookstore it is. If you're in the area, please check it out. While waiting for direction we had a few minutes to browse among the many fans turned to dry the wet floor. The offerings are quite substantial and full of surprises. One of the proprietors, Eddie Nix, said that about 2000 books were badly damaged and/or lost. But they've got holdings of well over 100,000.
Some books needed to be moved there, too, in order to make room for cleaning, but they weren't quite organized enough to make use of the five of us. That was just as well–the afternoon of lifting and carrying left my arms sore for a couple of days after. But it was a good, meaningful way to put in some Dreamtime labor. Getting to hear the story of how this massive trove of quality used books came to rest in Viola, on the Kickapoo flood plain, was a bonus.
We had wonderful evening and night of food, socializing, and discussion back at Dreamtime. For me, at least, being comfortably tired, especially after a few days of driving and sedentary living, helped facilitate the conversational part of my brain. On that level, the clean-up was just the same as the berry pick was hoped to be.
Even though in calendar terms we are nearing the end of the MRCC / Continental Drift, it feels like the mental processing and theorizing is just beginning. I think we could have easily added two or three days to the Drift in Madison, but the physical exhaustion is catching up to me and probably everybody else. A final stay at Dreamtime Village is the perfect way to wrap up the far-flung rural leg of the journey, and I am impressed that eleven Drifters are here for the upcoming day of reflection, talk, hanging out, cooking, working, and as Claire Pentecost put it, confabulation. Some of us may take a side trip back towards LaFarge to the Brown Family Land, but otherwise most of us are staying put. The eleven here at a remote site near the end of the ten days represents a very strong collective commitment to the MRCC / Drift. The overall number of people who took part in some active fashion, who for a day, an evening, or the whole ten days, as a host, a guide, or a fellow traveler, co-authored this adventure must be in the hundreds. The Radical Culture Corridor, indeed.
Unable to join for the days put together by the Urbana Four, I hitched my wagon to the Continental Drift Through the Midwest Radical Culture Corridor for a couple days in Chicago. The highlights were an AREA magazine release in Paseo Park, facilitating a discussion with the visiting Gerald Raunig at InCUBATE, then the next day a mind-blowing tour of the far, far South Side neighborhood of Riverdale conducted by the always inspiring Martha Boyd, and the weekend wrap-up with a screening of The Spook Who Sat By The Door with a long Q&A with the author and co-producer Sam Greenlee. In between the last two events people enjoyed a tasty potluck (not always the case with potlucks, ya know) at the Experimental Station, to which I contributed the 18-piece wing bucket from (where else) Harold's, where the bird is always fried to order.
I'm skipping out on the Milwaukee day because I have to work, but will rejoin sometime on the way to Elk Mound, Wisconsin. A few others are aiming join as the Drift comes back down around to Madison for next weekend. The ever-shifting nature of the traveling group is emerging as one of the beautiful dynamics. Because the combination of voices keeps changing, the conversations surrounding the various experiences are always a little bit different, and in fact may be the sort of productive discontinuity that keeps the Drift lively in ways that the sit-down seminar cannot.
The rural days will be a further test, because we really don't have a lot scheduled. The new information to be absorbed will be provided by the settings themselves. But then again, by the time we reach Elk Mound, especially for the folks who have been with the troupe all
along, time and headspace for reflection might be much needed.
