Terry Tempest Williams

Tonight I had the extraordinary opportunity to see Terry Tempest Williams speak at Colorado College. I took my 16-year-old daughter Natalie along. We were surprised to see my 21-year-old daughter, Marlene after the lecture, who had also attended, along with her boyfriend, Dennis.

This evening was very powerful from the introduction by a young English professor from the college--which TTW said was the best intro she had ever experienced--to the "ground-truthing" theme she kept coming back to as a reference point for her perspective on building a compassionate response to 9/11 instead of a reactionary response with war as a first resort.

I first came upon her new book, "The Open Space of Democracy" while in Maine mere weeks before the fraudulent election of 2004. I spent a week in the mainly blue state of Maine, just travelling around and enjoying the Indian summer of mid-October, my purpose to 1) climb the high point of Maine, Mt Katahdin, and 2) to run the Mt Desert Island MArathon, which began in downtown Bar Harbor. In between these two endeavors I enjoyed some days of leisurely driving along the coast. One brilliant sun-shiny day I stopped in the small town of Blue Hill, ME, and found an independent book store. This independent book store had as its best selling book "The Open Space of Democracy". I bought it and read the 100-page book that afternoon as I meandered along the coast, stopping at picnic tables and blank spots. The book transformed me. Later, after my return to Colorado I bought 15 copies of the book and mailed them to family and friends. I hoped they could be transformed as I had been. My sense is that some have been affected--maybe 10%. If so, my effort was worthwhile.

We have to keep the conversation going.....