I left Portland, Oregon after only one successful attempts to link up with my Son over his 23rd Birthday. I was his age once and can understand his not making himself more available...I figure he will make his own efforts to meet once he is about 35, give or take a decade - I had left Panama where I had been living with that intent, along with seeing all the rest of my family and filing my usa Federal income taxes (my expat tax filing extension was bout to end nd the required paperwork, called a W-2 was back in North America). My family was very supportive but re-gearing for extended travel and traveling about to see them ate up my funds, so in early October, 2009 I prepared to leave the expensive U.S. (for a retiree) with a stop first at "The Farm". Many years I had thought about visiting "The Farm" in Tennessee, the largest and most successful Intentional Community in North America. A Big Deal. Well, once there I decided that the 10th Bioregional Conference being held was in antithesis to me, so I became instead absorbed in washing dishes for about 10 days and got to know the real people behind this great experiment in Community. After all, Conferences are in essence meetings and I would anything to miss meetings, unless of course it's a Quaker Meeting where Silence is Golden and not a pontification fest.

After all, this meeting was mainly hosted by and large the good people at The Farm - they were only hosting it. Pitching in and washing dishes for the Conference attendees with The Farm's residents seeing it was me, was a no-brainer. I hate meetings and essentially all autocrats! Well, they both really Suck more than Gravity. Anti-Gravity is my Speed.

The Good Farm folks, the original 60's Haight-Ashbury Hippies (which I am too) were a perfect fit for me and being that I was next headed again to Guatemala for the 3rd time, where they had done good works through their own relief org, PLENTY, International in 1976 after the catastrophic earthquake and genocidal "Civil War". They are remembered fondly there and introduced that Nation's only Soy Diary which is still in operation in Solola fighting protein deficiency, thereby becoming the actual role-model for who Americans abroad should emulate. Feo Americano, no mas.

Enough said.