Think of it. I was born a mere 80 years after the end of the Civil War. My great grandmother, who I knew, was alive then. She took my great grandfather out to the territories to treat his tuberculosis. I used to think with some amazement how they came of age before the automobile, before the telephone, before radio even.
It is now as unimaginable to GenZ that I was born before the end of World War II, before television, Levittown and suburban sprawl, touch tone phones, commercial air travel, cell phones, computers, the internet, robotics, Artificial Intelligence. I flew to Europe the first time in 1961 on a Flying Tiger prop plane; we did it in three hops to refuel. The second trip four years later was on a student ship that took a week, enough time for hanky panky. The pill came on the market when I was in High School. Elvis came on the scene about the same time as I got my period. I saw the Beatles first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, and watched Edward R. Morrow smoke and soberly present the news. Sputnik was launched when I was in High School. Kennedy was elected before I could vote but I worked on his campaign. The summer after High School I worked at the 1964 World’s Fair. College summers I worked across from the Figaro in Greenwich Village in the era of the Bohemians and then the Beatniks.
The loom of my life
Mass movements for civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, ban the bomb, end the war, anti-nuclear, American Indian Movement, environmental protection are the histories on which my life is woven. I picked the folk music, back to the land, question authority, psychedelics branch of the 60s; my environmental activism started in the late 1980s when we officially went into Overshoot and exponential growth clearly threatened to crash earth’s systems right about now – which explains all my work, projects and activism of the last 30 years. While we knew none of the movements solved the problems they addressed, we thought at least they set a course towards better, a rising social tide, a dream not yet realized but at least a more perfect union. Now the lie is being revealed. Climate activists are facing off Aramco, Exxon and the fossil industries as CO2 TikToks up. The Doomsday Clock is 100 seconds to midnight. #MeToo named a type of abuse I’d considered my private shame. #BlackLivesMatter named the racism that never left this country. Standing Rock made clear that the mercantile class emanating from Northern Europe 500 years ago never intended to cede any land to Indigenous Peoples. The Stock Market is hitting new highs while the economy sputters. Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft are more powerful than the global governments – perhaps they are the government. We are getting it, the whole bundle of exploitation of everyone and everything by the logic of capitalism and the design of money, banking and finance. We are getting intersectionality – but at the 11th hour and 58th minute and 30th second.
The end?
Boomers were so bright and shiny back when we came on the scene, riding the rising tide and thinking we made it. I am, by age, at the head of the flotilla of Boomers now drifting towards the horizon, once full of sound and fury, signifying good intentions and cleverness at least, and maybe at best. We rode glories of technologies and consciousness expansion and movements for justice yet have been unable to influence the biggest problem: the apparent incapacity of our species to govern our appetites and grow up sufficiently to alter the march of extinctions. Will we drag a huge net behind ourselves, pulling all the disenfranchised people and glorious diversity of nature along with us off the edge?
My heart is sorrowful at my ignorance and our blindness. And yet, I celebrate every wrong and right turn, every person woven in to my story, all the minor good I may have done even as the major good eludes us still. I celebrate all the creativity and ingenuity and brilliance of the people I’ve grown up and old with – you are amazing. I know this story isn’t over. I know tragic pasts are the loom on which new futures are woven. I know that people at the end of every fallen civilization considered it the end of the world but it wasn’t – it was just the end of the world as they knew it. Migration. Speciation. Seeds buried in the tundra. Life goes on and on. It may be that this current incomprehensible, mostly still invisible complexity and threat to all life will snap into something unimaginable yet as beautiful as the earth when life began – whether humans are here or not. The arc of the Universe is long but it bends always towards wholeness.
What could possible go right?
I’m hosting a series of interviews, sponsored by the Post Carbon Institute, called What Could Possibly Go Right? I’m asking cultural scouts to look into the mess of the moment to tell us what green shoots they see in the slurry of what’s been precipitated by Covid and #BLM and economic contraction. If I asked myself that question – and I might in a video interview of myself – I would say that this is a healing crisis. Healing does not mean curing. I see no bright future over the horizon. We may grow up but I’m not betting on it. I do see truth being faced, though, and reconciliation beginning with all we took from nature and others to build our city on the hill. I love the word “repentance” – Wikipedia richly describes its meanings – because I think this is a moral moment, a falling on our knees before the monumental amplitude of our arrogance. We need to enter a recovery program, to admit we are powerless over our will to power and control, and turn our lives over to a Higher Power. We need to sober up and if there is a “we” anymore, it’s being born now in fire. I don’t mean we should toss our computers (like ten year old desktop in front of me) and cars off the cliff in some act of public contrition. I mean we need to humble ourselves and I see that happening in the massive global marches for justice and the dawning realization that, from the point of view of Coronavirus at least, we are one. Young people know we are 100 seconds to midnight. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are taking the reins in sober awareness of what’s ahead. I’m planting hops, fruit tress and kiwis. Perhaps in the end this will help. I hope I am of use to people a tenth of my age.
Happy Birthday to Me
Having said all this, I’m so grateful for my life, warts and all. I am fully ready to live into this complexity for years and years, all the while repenting and repenting and making amends and welcoming back into my heart all I harmed through my ignorance, aversion or fear. I will work to protect what I can, nourish what is given to me to tend, and keep on with the great adventure of life. Maybe now it’s time to sing this. Or this.
I wanted a party. In person. I had plans to buy everyone masks on which they could write their names or greetings or something funny. I had plans for socially distanced games to play. While isolation has suited parts of myself, it goes against the grain of my life. I pledge allegiance to society, to the messy, in-person, improvisational theater of creating the world together through meetings, families, graduations, weddings, funerals, reunions, dances, concerts, street encounters, marches. Shoulder to shoulder. Hugging and laughing with mouths wide open. Inside I’m as rebellious as Trumpsters on the way to a rally, but I know that Covid makes the rules now and I love my friends and don’t want them all to die in a super-spreader birthday party.
So…
I wrote this instead.
Happy Birthday Vicki! Your book had an enormous impact on my life and I enjoy your words here on your site!
Happy Birthday, Vicki! I am so glad you were born. Thank you for the perspectives, the definitions, the songs. May the best of your todays be the worst of your tomorrows. I look forward to meeting maskless at the Commons when it is again the ‘norm’. Carol
Happy 75th! Vicky. You have been such an inspiration for us during the past 12 years🥰. And I suspect that won’t change as we move through this. Keep on. Hugs. Nick
yes, maskless in the commons
I’d love to come to your 75th. I didn’t see a link on Eventbright. Could you email the link to me? Looking forward to celebrating you from the houseboat.
you are the BEST – my sister in the fold. You are one year older and a million years smarter. Thank you for taking me to Brazil, to sharing your writing, to our shared point in time in the Transition movement. It is so wonderful that you continue to inspire, question, focus and help others develop faith. Happiest of love and laughter for your new journey around the sun. I will see you on your return when I turn 75.
try this link https://forms.gle/mizMBLaxJzewuka16
seeya soon dear fellow voyager on the starship earth
Happy Birthday! You do so much for the world and the beings on it. Thank you. I would like to attend the Zoom party, and I, too, looked for a way to sign up on Eventbrite and could not find it. I clicked on the two links you have in your email, and neither bore fruit.
Try this link https://forms.gle/mizMBLaxJzewuka16
Happy birthday, Vicki! You have done so much for so many of us! Your Money or Your Life had a great impact on my life. I am so glad that you are part of the deep adaptation group. Your birthday letter here is just wonderful.
you are the BEST – my sister of in the fold. You are one year older and a million years smarter. Thank you for taking me to Brazil, to sharing your writing, to our shared point in time in the Transition movement. It is so wonderful that you continue to inspire, question, focus and help others develop faith. Happiest of love and laughter for your new journey around the sun. I will see you on your return when I turn 75.
such good memories
Hi Vicki. Thanks for the beautiful write-up. Your creativity and talent are boundless. I’m so happy to be among your friends and almost neighbors and to be the beneficiary of your writing, thinking and actions. You are truly a gift to our world. Happy Birthday dear one. May you have many, many more. 🎉🤗 BTW, there is no active link in your blog for your birthday zoom.
love you too
You are such an incredible writer and brilliant Being. Thank you for all you’ve done and for how you continue to inspire. I celebrate your life, your vision and your enormous heart
thanks!
I passed 75 last year.
I studied building ecologically with natural materials, still wanting to pass it on.
My website, http://lorien.free.fr , needs updating but my isolation started many years ago.
Now I’m coming out.
Love you all.
Thank you Vicki. Only just zoom-met you but already really appreciate your energies so have got a ‘ticket’. Being my 70th next month separated across the world from all family, I might be inspired to emulate your efforts!
Vicki, I am so, so grateful for the gifts you have showered into my life. The focus and skills that I learned from the New Road Map folks changed me utterly. The years we lived together had so many precious heart-connected moments. And since then you have continued to inspire me, as well as touch my heart again by keeping an eye on my personal journey. Oh, I love you! Happy Birthday!
Oh I love you too!
Dear Vicki – Happy and blessed birthday. You have been my inspiration, since I read “Your Money or Your Life”, so many, many years ago. I am a young 71 year old, and very involved with the ongoing of our world, ecosystem, etc etc. Thank you for being you. Blessings, June
Happy birthday, Vicki! You’ve been an inspiration to me for decades and have helped form a lot of my thinking and living. I love your humor, impassion and clarity. Hope you have a wonderful birthday and feel back all the love you’ve given so freely for so long.
Happy birthday Ms.Robin!
Happy birthday, Vicki!
We met either at O.U.R. Ecovillage or at the Port Townsend Economics of Happiness conference — or maybe both. Or maybe I just imagined it… 🙂
If you’re ever near Salt Spring Island again, perhaps we can set up something for you, assuming we ever have public presentations again.
I have a call during your zoom party, so I’ll leave this and maybe we can talk another time. There was a moment… you and I sitting in some park in Seattle talking about “deep” and “important things” to heal the world, when you suggested some time we should go get a mani pedi together. And that’s when I knew I had found a true sister. It was one of the most delicious moments of my life. I am so so happy that we are alive at the same time and grateful that I can call you friend. I still have your ring. xoxoxoxo
did we ever get the mani pedi? i can’t remember saying that but it does sound like me :-). or maybe with covid we’ll just have to do one another’s nails.
Happy Birthday Vicki
Happy, Happy Birthday, Vicki!!!! You are such an inspiration. I am so lucky that you are in my life. Onward….
Happy Birthday Vicki! Nice to share a birth year with you.
Wonderful piece of writing as a gift forward– thank you so much!
Happy Birthday Vicki! I’m so honored to be working with you and hope that we can keep it up for many more seasons!
Happy Birthday, Vicki! You have improved the lives of countless people and made our world better. Here’s to many more years of a life well lived!