ALIVENESS: Key to Human Survival? June 9th “Supper Club” rocked!

June 11, 2025

On Monday this week, I attended my fifth Supper Club, a new monthly Bloomington venue for the those in this academic town who don’t suffer from mild to severe TDS virus (Trump Derangement Syndrome).

For backstory, see these posts:

TONIGHT, DATE WITH DESTINY: Brownstone Institute Inaugural Midwest Supper Club

and this:

My Experience of Last Night’s “Supper Club” launch

We Bloomington contrarians are still rare, but I sense our numbers growing. Or maybe I should say, we (or at least I ) are (am) becoming “braver,” speaking my truth for the first time yesterday, for example, on Next Door, concerning the local NoKing rally planned for Bloomington on June 14. And you can imagine how many “comments” that inspired (a few pro, mostly con). Next step: do I attend this rally with some kind of notification that I’m not going along with the crowd? I don’t have a Trump hat; but I do have a tee-shirt with “AWAKE, BUT NOT WOKE.” Maybe wear that?

If I go.

Will I go?

Waffling.

But it really does feel like it’s time, folks. The uproaring in Los Angeles especially, highlights the old adage that he who remains silent is complicit.

And it’s not that one side is “wrong” and the other “right;” not that one is “good” and the other “evil.” No. It’s that whenever one side of any polarity dominates the other, then oppression rules. And usually, at least for us in the “civilized” world,” domination is possible because the other side of the polarity prefers to remain polite, i.e., silent (and, apparently, doesn’t mind being censored?).

These Supper Clubs — each one of which I look forward to immensely as an injection of greater aliveness into my own personal (bodily/mental/emotional/spiritual) system — feel, at this point like utterly necessary (monthly, except for May) injections of food and drink, good cheer, stimulating presentations on wide-ranging topics, and spirited, unabashed, authentic conversation among those who do not hate Trump, but, on the other hand, who do who occupy all sorts of idiosyncratic niches in the constantly widening spectra of opinion. That’s what I love about these stunning events; I walk in, and all of a sudden, I feel free, utterly free. Nothing I say will be considered “too much,” “too intense,” “utterly crazy,” or just plain wrong. I can be fully myself; as we all need to be fully ourselves; no matter how wild and wonderful!

I thank Joni McGary for her continuous, indefatigible determination to get and keep this venue going, because, as she keeps repeating, “Bloomington needs it.” Exactly.

Here’s her final email to those on her growing list about this latest event, hoping to still attract enough people to go through (at Lennie’s restaurant) with what she had planned. The situation was dicey; not nearly enough people had signed up to justify the special dinner. Was it because it’s summer?

But, in the end, a total of 32 people signed on, many more than seemed possible not even two weeks earlier. Among them were folks who did not live in Bloomington, but who, like us, need this kind of venue to feel at home in conversation with others. One was an IU biology professor, who had come for her first Supper Club. One came from Michigan, one from another Indiana county, and two from the Netherlands. Sampling what this country has to offer, they came across the brownstone.org website, and the planned events, one of them in Bloomington, IN! — so they drove here from Colorado, their latest housesit. The woman of this couple, BTW, like me, holds both a PhD in philosophy, and is also an MD who, when the covid con revved up in 2020, realized she could no longer retain her integrity while practicing medicine.

And all these were sitting at my table. Lots of other tables with who knows who sitting there. I know there was at least one practicing physician in the room. The table next to me had a bunch of what I took to be aging (emeritus?) (economics?) professors (IU), likely contrarians, both in the way they talked, and by the fact that they were very much enjoying this venue together!

These Supper Clubs not only bump up my own aliveness, but feel like utterly necessary (monthly) social/cultural injections of food and drink, good cheer and spirited, unabashed, authentic conversation following a stimulating presentation.

The Supper Clubs are an outgrowth of brownstoneinstitute.org, which was founded by Jeffrey Tucker in response to the covid con in 2021. The website now sports thousands of articles, with Supper Club venues like ours in several places on the east coast. We are the first midwest supper club. Hopefully not the last!

Last night’s talk, by Bret Swanson, president of Entropy Economics, was devoted to how society is verging on an AI explosion, and what that might mean in the very near future. He personally, he says, is optimistic; lots of others there were not; in fact decidedly pessimistic. More and more, both self-described optimists and pessimists spoke up, presenting many different, and all good, interesting, real, perspectives. Indeed, this time our post-talk discussion was unusually lively, cantankerous, and fun. Nobody found what anybody else said “offensive.”

Geez! We need more of this. Yay for Bloomington Supper Club!

BTW: Mattias Desmet has a new article out, and brownstone.org is featuring it.

Censorship in Our Materialist World

Also, check this out. Found it on The Free Press, to which I just subscribed.

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-ten-warning-signs

 

 

Green Acres Permaculture Village: RENAISSANCE

June 10, 2025

While yes, over the weekend I was focused, with part of my busy left brain on events beyond this little green acres homestead —

OMMIGOD: I stop posting for three days, hoping to leave “the news” behind. Joke!

— much the larger part of my brain, including the remainder of the left brain, and all of the right brain/heart/source, was devoted to bringing into manifestation, again, the “social media” aspect of greenacresvillage.org a service which had “slipped my mind” for many months, reaching back to October of 2025.

For the past 15 years (one half cycle of Saturn!), this little template for the transformation of suburbia has been fermenting, forming, fulfilling its mission through what permaculturists now call “emergent design,” little by little, each tiny choice enlarging the frame and inviting the next choice; on and on, no end to it.

(In other words, you don’t have to know what you’re doing. But you do have to know what you desire. Then, just take the first tiny step. See what happens. See how the world rearranges itself in line with your intent. Because it does. It always does. Take that piece of advice from an 82-year-old contrarian crone who has been living consciously for nearly 50 years — trusting the universe, taking massive risks all along, and thriving.)

Continuing to document the changes here, and their many unexpected gifts is, I do feel crucial, part of our purpose, as we continue to inspire others to do the same, as in:

Hey folks? Who is your next door neighbor? Meet and greet them. Share a meal. Start talkin’ about what is most important in life. You might even decide to do a common garden in between your two houses! Start there! Share tools, expertise, get others to join in. Move to back yards, front yards. Meanwhile, get to know each other, as per our motto:

So, over the weekend, I decided to “begin again.”

I wrote up two new posts, and have yet to figure out how to easily broadcast them, since the little icons at the top of the page don’t appear to work. (For many years, I was able to rely on someone who used to live here for technical questions; I’m hoping to attract another tech-savvy person in the coming months who is willing to aid me, or even better: take over!)

Here are the posts, and frankly, they both imply Renaissance in our little decentralized paradise. At this point in our already well-established shared space, we are managing to easily harness and creatively utilize the forces of massive tumultuous change.

Grateful.

https://www.greenacresvillage.org/blog/

(go to the above url for both these posts)