Town Meeting is the first Tuesday in March. It's where the resident voters practice democracy in Vermont.

The practice of democracy is definitely on the wane in these United States. And we Americans have been shaping our own dictators in the White House. It feels pretty darned hopeless with each day's news.

So I stop reading email news reports and turn to books. I got halfway through Frances Moore Lappé's Democracy's Edge when it had to go back to the library (not renewable). I decided it was worthy enough to purchase and went to Rivendell Books and ended up ordering it. The side benefit was finding Lappé's 2004 book, You Have the Power: Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear, coauthored with Jeffrey Perkins (2004, Tarcher).

Their premise, rather, their experience is that fear should be heeded more as an opportunity to move ahead than as a stoplight to stay in one's tracks. I've spent a great many occasions heeding fear as the stoplight. I know exactly what they are describing. As I begin reading their book, what am I hoping to receive from it? Perceived safety is so comfortable...and limiting.

I don't feel particularly wordy today, so here's a quote from the book:

You can thank fear for reminding you that you are choosing to do things differently, and that's what's important. You can congratulate yourself for attending to the urge for discovery that got you here. ... you can choose to see the dark matter inside as pregnant with possibility.

...If we listen to ourselves, we will not rest with an answer but will continue asking the next question throughout our lives. ...and we will discover that the very act of showing up generates new patterns we never could have foreseen. (pp.59-60)