Longtime Subud member and world-class photographer Marius Hibbard is having an exhibition of recent photos he took in Croatia. It’s happening in Anacortes (see flyer below) where he lives and serves on the board of the Anacortes Art Commission. December happens to be Croatian cultural month in Anacortes. The opening is Friday and Saturday, December 5 and 6, at the Croatian Cultural Center. Everyone is invited. And check out the feature on the exhibition in Anacortes Magazine here.
A group of 40, friends, family and acquaintances gathered at the Subud House yesterday for a memorial to Phillip Quackenbush, who died at the age of 78 on Sunday, October 26, 2014. There were Subud people, members of the Council House residential community and even members of a non-duality discussion group of which Phillip was a member.
Francesca Cameron and Oriana Quackenbush, Phillip’s ex-wife and his daughter organized the event and Oriana emceed the proceedings.
Some notes and photos from the event are expected soon. In the meantime this short poem taken mostly from notes I took at the event:
Menucha
A workshop was held at Menucha this year, the annual Pacific Northwest Regional Kejiwaan gathering and a report was created Paul Woodcock, with comment from Morris McClellan. Among their recommendations:
1) Create a permanent Menucha Scholarship Fund and state its purpose with clarity and inclusiveness. Spread the word that the purpose of the fund is to raise money so that all who wish to share the Menucha experience can be included.
2) Raise funds year round by promoting donation on the website, regular solicitation and several annual fund-raising events. (I suggest that we should start raising money for next year at the end of each Menucha by “passing the hat” for next year’s scholarship funding, maybe a Menucha evaluation/feedback form each year with a solicitation at the end and inclusion of a fund-raising mention with all Menucha- related communications etc.? PW.)
3) Find a volunteer fund/funding program director under the Regional Commitee to help oversee the fund and fundraising and not add these duties to an existing committee position?
4) Funds should be distributed by the method currently used. The process needs to be kept simple (through a personal statement of need by each scholarship applicant?). If there are funding requests that cannot be met one year, those applicants should be moved to the top of next-year’s list. (This important part we did not thoroughly discuss.)
You can download the whole report here: https://www.subudgreaterseattle.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Menucha_Where_Do_We_Go_From_Here__Discussion_Report.pdf
National Dewan
The National Helpers and Committee will be meeting in Seattle from November 21 to 23 at the Subud Seattle house.
Subud USA is looking for volunteers to help with:
Accommodations for our guests for Friday-Sunday Night.
Transportation to and from the Airport on Friday and Sunday.
Meals organization for Friday Night, Saturday Morning and Lunch, Sunday Breakfast, and potluck lunch for group.
The Committee and Helpers will be attending the Group Sunday Latihan on November 23, 2014
If you can help in any way please contact Sebastian Tedrow at either executivedirector@subudusa.org or by phone 360.708.2725.
I will be going to Menucha so I will be out of town from Thursday Nov6-9th.
Thanks for your Support and good Wishes.
Sebastian Tedrow
(Photo by Rachman Cantrell)
Phillip Quackenbush has died from cardiac disease. He passed away on Sunday, October 26, at his home in Seattle. He was 78, and had several health problems but was independent, writing music and making puns until the very end.
A memorial gathering will take place on November 15 at 2PM at Subud House/Spring Street Center, 1101 15th in Settle at the corner of 15th & Spring, celebrating the many aspects of his life. Free thinker, musician, composer, father, brother, friend, he was a Subud member for over 50 years. He was excited up to the last about the next song he was writing, eager to put his gifts out in the world.
Philip Quackenbush
Philip Quackenbush, described as Subud Greater Seattle’s own resident multi-instrumentalist, played harp at the September 2014, Poems for Peace event and read a poem that punned on the word Fins. (9. 4:47). It may have been his last public performance.
Phillip Quackenbush at Menucha 2011 (Photo by Rachman Cantrell)
Halim Scott photographs Phillip Quackenbush (Photo by Rachman Cantrell)
(Photo by Rachman Cantrell)
Phillip Quackenbush SF 60s (Photo by Rachman Cantrell)
Please join us Saturday, November 1, 2014, at 7:30, for an evening of poetry and music as Sam Hamill and Chris Yohmei Blasdel are reunited for one evening at Spring Street Center, 1101 15th in Seattle at the corner of 15th & Spring. This event is made possible by Subud Greater Seattle and SICA, the Subud International Cultural Association, which exists at the intersection of creativity and spirituality.
Habitation (Lost Horse Press)
In the liner notes to his 1999 CD, Heart of Bamboo, Sam Hamill quotes Rainier Maria Rilke, who he says saw the foremost function of poetry: “You must change your life.” He also says that “the roots of poetry inevitably return us to music” and “Poetry and music share a common root: both begin in deep listening.” Hear the title poem of that CD here.
Hamill and Yohmei Blasdel first performed in Tokyo in 1988. “With his playing of the ancient masterpiece San’ya, a song I’d heard other masters play, I felt I had found a soulmate.”They reunite for this evening to celebrate Hamill’s new book: Habitation: Collected Poems.
Sam
Sam Hamill was born in 1943 and grew up on a Utah farm. He is Founding Editor of Copper Canyon Press and served as Editor there for thirty-two years. He taught in artist-in-residency programs in schools and prisons and worked with Domestic Violence programs. He directed the Port Townsend Writers Conference for nine years, and in 2003, founded Poets Against the War. He is the author of more than forty books, including celebrated translations from ancient Chinese, Japanese, Greek and Latin. His new book is Habitation: Collected Poems.
Chris Yohmei Blasdel
Chris Yohmei Blasdel began the shakuhachi and studies of Japanese music in 1972 with Japan’s Living National Treasure Goro Yamaguchi and continued with the master until his death in 1999. In 1982, Blasdel received his MFA in ethnomusicology from Tokyo University of Fine Arts and was honored with the professional name “Yohmei” from Yamaguchi in 1984—the first of only two non-Japanese accredited by Yamaguchi. Presently, Blasdel performs around the world and has taught or lectured at such prestigious institutions as Earlham College (Indiana), Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok, Thailand), Texas A&M University (College Station, Texas), University of Washington (Seattle), Charles University (Prague) and many others.
A report by Paul Nelson on his outreach to British Columbia to investigate the possibility of using the Cascadia Poetry Festival as a too for SICA outreach. Paul founded the festival in 2012 and there have been two iterations, the second being this last May at Seattle U and the Subud House in Seattle.
Errington War Memorial Hall
On Saturday, October 18, Bhakti Watts, Chair of Subud Portland drove to Seattle and we drove together to Vancouver, BC, Canada, where the next day we drove with Lucas Hille, Chair of SICA Canada, to Errington, BC. Our plan was to attend an annual gathering of Subud members from around Vancouver Island, from Victoria to Comox and discuss the potential for partnership between the Cascadia Poetry Festival and SICA, with the idea of creating greater awareness in the world of SICA while helping the festival gather momentum and become self-sustaining.
Bhakti, Lucas Hille 10.19.14 Ferry to Nanaimo
We got an early ferry from Horseshoe Bay Sunday the 19th, and met David Fraser and Kim Goldberg in Nanaimo, on the other side of the Strait of Georgia. We discussed the developments they were overseeing as members of the local organizing committee for the third Cascadia Poetry Festival in Nanaimo in 2015. This is a festival founded by Seattle Poetics LAB, (SPLAB) a non-profit organization I founded in 1993.
David and Kim discussed their participation in Cascadia II, in May 2014, and the remarkable experience they had, in large part, because of the use of the Seattle Subud House as a venue and hospitality center for the fest. The sense of community and the depth of the sharing in the democratic reading, the Living Room, were highlights as I recall. They discussed their recent news of being awarded a grant for $5,000 for the 2015 festival (Apr 30-May 3), use of the Painted Turtle Hostel for lodging (at a considerable discount) and how to get festival attendees from downtown Nanaimo to the events at Vancouver Island University and other logistical issues.
Paul, Lucas Hille 10.19.14
Bhakti and I had met in Portland on September 26 with John Beer, a poet and Associate Professor of English at Portland State University and head of the PSU Creative Writing Program and Kamron Taber, a PSU student and the campus representative for Cascadia Now, a non-profit organization working to develop a sense of Cascadia culture and a sponsor of the second Cascadia Poetry Festival.
After about an hour our party headed north to Errington, and arrived at the Errington War Memorial Hall, where an annual Subud gathering had happened the last 6 years. We gathered with Subud members in a circle, then split up into two groups by gender and did latihan and testing. There was discussion of the role of culture and its definition, some men believing it to be the arts and creativity, and testing was done on that. The real key for me was a test on how it would be for SICA to be involved with the Cascadia Poetry Festival and all men received that it would be positive and half the men got that it would be remarkable, one man mentioning something akin to a sun in his receiving. The men present, in addition to Lucas Hille, myself and Dave Hitchcock, were:
Craig Rogers from Fanny Bay
Howard Pattinson from Comox
Rasjad Coleman from Duncan
In the sharing of the test results, Lucas Hille confided that when first approached about this potential partnership, his impression was that this effort was about me getting my person needs met, but he soon experienced that the effort is much more significant than that. Bhakti did not test on SICA but on personal matters with the women, of whim there about 16.
We shared a meal, discussed the test results and the vision for the collaboration, and Lucas, Bhakti and I each performed either a song or poem and soon we were on our way. We parked the car in the ferry line, walked to the Painted Turtle and got a tour of one of the rooms and one of the common areas where participating poets will be gathering and were quite impressed. We took the short ferry from Nanaimo to Gabriola Island and spent the night at the cabin Lucas has owned for many years, right on the water, with ferries silently criss-crossing until late at night. Lucas asked if I were interested in doing a poetry workshop at his cabin and I would love to do that and give the proceeds after expenses to SICA – Canada. Bhakti felt it would be good to have a place in Nanaimo during the festival to do latihan. This would serve a few purposes. Subud members could have a chance to gather and share latihan, our purpose and engagement in the festival would likely be more focused were this to happen, it would serve as a chance for Subud members on the island to engage with one another and might help revive the small Subud community in Nanaimo. In fact this festival might be used to strengthen already healthy Subud communities in the bioregion, or help revive struggling ones. My vision after Cascadia III in Nanaimo in 2015 is to stage the fest in:
Bothell, WA 2016 (perhaps involving Subud Greater Seattle with an emphasis on the East Side Subud membership;
Portland, OR 2017;
Vancouver, BC 2018;
Arcata, CA 2019.
We also feel that SICA may want to be a sponsor of CPF # (2015) at the Red Cedar level ($1,000) and have a table to pass out Subud and SICA brochures and talk to people about what Subud is. See: http://cascadiapoetryfestival.org/sponsor It would also be helpful if there were gold passes purchased by Subud members starting in February when a crowd-funding campaign will be starting to help raise additional funds for and awareness of the festival.
One last note. Bioregionalism is the effort to reimagine ourselves and the places where we live in ecological terms in harmony with natural systems that contain life. Peter Berg, one of the early users of the term bioregionalism said that the direction of traditional environmentalism was about preventing air and water pollution, protection of human health and a slowing down of the destruction of nature, it was essentially from “the mental perspective of industrial society surrounding nature.” He felt that thinking was backwards and that bioregionalists should focus on knowing the natural features of where they live, how they get their water, urban sustainability and restoration of habitats and ecosystems. His “Green City Program” called for some radical shifts in the way in which we design and live in urban areas and knew that the future was going to require urban sustainability given the massive shift of world population to urban living. I very much resonate with this perspective. – Paul Nelson
Subud Greater Seattle’s Building in 1974
We had cake a week early today, but we celebrate 40 years of Subud Greater Seattle’s house at 1101 15th Sunday, October 12, at 12N, after latihan. It’s a pot luck, so please bring something tasty. There is a dewan meeting at 9A, with latihan before that for dewan members at 8:45A.
Sebastian Tedrow can’t attend on the 12th, but told us today that upon walking into the house 40 years ago, he knew it was perfect and Lawrence Crouse wrote a check on the spot for the earnest money. The house was purchased from the Missouri Synod and, because of discord in their organization, the closing did not happen until August 1974, though Subud members were doing latihan as early as March. The first Subud celebratory event happened in April of 1974, so April is probably the best month to celebrate future anniversaries. Sebastian also mentioned that when they saw the downstairs room, they knew that would be perfect for a latihan hall.
One member today wondered if we are still feeling the effects of the discord in our community. It may not be us! Perhaps a cleansing, Subud-style, is in order. Both the men and women have taken to doing short latihans AFTER the Sunday general latihan to focus on group harmony for Subud Greater Seattle.
Re-cap:
40th Anniversary Celebration Sunday, Oct 12, 2014, after Latihan.
Other news, Menucha sign-up deadline is Friday, October 10. Register here.
At the 10.5.14 general membership meeting, the vote was unanimous to remove the House Guidelines, so they are no longer on this site. It was expressed by more than one person that Bapak was not in favor of guidelines, but wanted Subud members to use their own capacities to work out issues. One other member suggested that the by-laws of Subud Pacific Northwest called for Helpers to take a more active role when there is behavior by members that is not in accordance with group harmony.
Also, with Oswald Norton taking over as Vice-Chair of Subud PNW, we need a Secretary as he was essentially performing those duties for the local dewan. If you are interested, please come to the dewan meeting at 9A, Sunday, October 12. Latihan before that meeting, to insure the best meeting outcome, happens at 8:45A.
Robina Page, Alexandra ter Horst and Oswald Norton Sept 27, 2014
The 2014 Subud Pacific Northwest Regional Congress happened Saturday and Sunday, September 27 & 28 at the Portland Subud House. Latihan at 11 was followed by lunch in the Men’s Latihan Hall of the beautiful house that has been home to Subud in Portland for nearly 40 years. Following lunch was the group reports from Subud communities in the region: Skagit County, Seattle and Portland, as well as some discussion about isolated members in the region. Sherwin O’Bar gave an extensive financial report and his skills were lauded by the gathered and Sebastian Tedrow represented the Subud U.S. National Office. Chair Daniel Stralberg was celebrating the, or recovering from, the birth of the third daughter born to him and Sarah. The baby’s name is Rozaria.
Sarah Stralberg & Daughters
New officers were tested and elected, with Marius Harold, Congress Chair, presiding over the proceedings once outgoing Chair Robina Page turned the event over to him.
Portland’s Alexandra Ter Horst was elected the new Chair of Subud Pacific Northwest. Oswald Norton was named Vice-Chair. Their term is for 18 months, as it was decided by the gathered that the Regional Congress be moved to March since it no longer takes place at the annual Family Camp event.
One other item mentioned was the need to reach out to Subud members in British Columbia and beginning to embrace a more bioregional approach to the “Pacific Northwest” region.
Lena and Faiza
There is a write up on the recent Poems for Peace evening held at the Subud House, September 20, 2014. See: https://www.subudgreaterseattle.com/poems-for-peace-2014/