“Same Old, Same Old Soil”

Today was a beautiful spring day and I was able to get outside to build two mounds of the same old, same old for future planting. The mounds consist of some compost, fresh waste of coffee grounds and wood chips, some enriched soil with castings and of course worms. I learned from Will at Growing Power over the winter when he was talking to us in the DMZ garden that the mounds of homemade soil need to be 18–24 inches high to be most effective for growing. I will add some more compost and some of the enriched soil from the in the sunroom before I broadcast the seeds. One of the mounds will be for salad greens, which I can plant any day now. This paradox of using waste and turning it into enriched soil for growing amazes me.

Tonight I went over to UWM to hear James Douglass, a longtime peace activist, theologian and writer talk about his new book. I had met Jim and his wife Shelly, Catholic Workers, at Mike & Nettie Cullen’s Jesus’ camp about 8 or 9 years ago. At the time he told me that he had just attended the civil trial on Martin Luther King’s assassination and that his next book would be on the common thread in the assassinations of King, Malcolm X, Jack and Robert Kennedy. This seemed like an unusual thing from a theologian who had written some well-known books like the Nonviolent Cross. Over the years I lost contact with Jim and Shelly but always wondered what happened with the book. A few weeks ago I heard that Peace Action was sponsoring Jim Douglas’s talk about the first of his trilogy of books on the four assassinations. It is called JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters. He did it. The documented stories of how these four died are amazing “burdensome knowledge”. Like Gandhi and Thomas Merton, Jim speaks “truth to power”. It is a paradox of why these four leaders of movements were killed by our own government security forces. In Jack Kennedy’s case it was when he turned against the war in Vietnam, was reconciling with Castro of Cuba and ending the cold war, not waiting to ‘win’ it, with Soviet Union.

Waste is turned into fertile soil. The “unspeakable” powers in this country stop movements from turning into real “people power” like in Venezuela. The same old paradoxes of good and evil live on and we need to learn from them.

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