Dawn Incipient

Up early ahead of the opening shift

In a few moments, the clock will tick over to 5 AM and I have a little time before having to get ready for the opening shift at Daily Provisions. I’m grateful for the opportunity to serve. On Monday, Lynn and I drove back from our three night stay at the Guild House Hotel in Philadelphia where I’d been attending Unlimited Devotion (this clip from the first night really opens up about 6 minutes in).

It’s part of what I do to be a good ancestor. Being a small but integral part of the events in Philadelphia over the past years since the first weekend back in 2016 helps me feel that I am moving the needle just a little in the direction of goodness in the world. I’m grateful to have befriended many who make up the community. I’ve already shared a bit about it in my post yesterday:

These events are the East Coast edition of the birthday celebrations for Wavy Gravy. I was fortunate to run into his son, Jordan Romney, outside the venue and have a nice chat between sets. I’d gotten a booth for the last night and “miracled” the seven other seats to friends. Here’s one of them:

Sam enjoying the ambience of the VIP booth

Bringing joy to others while also helping Camp Winnarainbow which is doing so much for kids, and Rex Foundation. The latter defines itself thus:

The Rex Foundation aims to help secure a healthy environment, promote individuality in the arts, provide support to critical and necessary social services, assist others less fortunate than ourselves, protect the rights of indigenous people and ensure their cultural survival, build a stronger community, and educate children and adults everywhere.

In pursuit of its Mission, the Rex Foundation Board established the following Guiding Principles and Values:

• Support organizations committed to grassroots action.

• Identify entities doing good work that might otherwise be overlooked.

• Help people who are helping others and are trying to make a difference.

• Benefit the broader community and the broader good.

• Respect individual rights and differences.

• Respect traditional wisdom cultures.

• Be a catalyst for change where our involvement helps leverage greater impact.

• Provide support beyond direct funding by boosting the visibility of the recipient’s work.

• Help people develop bold new solutions to problems.

• Exercise appropriate risk-taking while practicing trust, inclusiveness and open-mindedness.

• Promote an active, informed citizenry.

• Remain non-partisan.

Later this week, there will be a screening of “The Wavy Gravy Movie: Saint Misbehavin’” on Wavy’s actual 90th birthday (5/15) at the Presidio in San Francisco. On Saturday, he’ll be feted again at the Masonic Temple in a benefit concert for Seva which has provided sight support to those in need since its inception in the late 1970s.

Putting our good where it will do the most is what this is all about.

Yesterday, I was fortunate to stumble upon a “Substack Live” with Jesse Paris Smith who was holding forth from the UK where her mother, Patti Smith, was playing the Brighton Dome. I commented in the chat that it was a beautiful day in DC and Jesse picked up on it, relating a story about signing books ahead of the 50th Anniversary of Horses show at the Anthem; a concert I attended. It was good to interact a bit, passing on the quotation from Margaret Atwood - “In the end, we all become stories.”

Jesse was sharing a bit about how she named things that had come to her after the people who had owned them previously and attached their stories to these objects of furniture and such as she gets ready to launch and artist space in Brooklyn some time in the summer or fall of this year. It apparently is in a former rope factory. This was really charming to hear about for me. One of the last things my father was working on was a book of advertisements of tradespeople from the 18th century in Virginia and by his computer was an advertisement about a “Rope Walk” for sale in Richmond, VA in the late part of the 18th century. There is such a walk here in Georgetown DC over near Dumbarton Oaks.

I digress. One thing leads to another as I write “Harrowings” articles. Living life large is also on my mind. I’m grateful to be here now and hopeful for the future for all of us. I can only be the change that I want to see in the world but I am hoping that more of you will pick up what I’m laying down. We can connect at depth and amplify each other’s voices in hopes of waking our fellow creatures up to the immense responsibility to be good ancestors with which we, the living, have been entrusted.

So, what’s it going to be? What are you up to today? How is your life impacting others? We cannot live a single day on this planet without impacting everything else.

If you won’t listen to me, listen to Jane:

Onward!

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