red v. blue in real life

 This is my friend Carly. We became friends on line with our respective blogs, when she lived in California. Then, sight unseen, she stayed in my apartment when I wasn't there for—a month maybe? Everyone said I was crazy to house a stranger, but I felt confident it would be fine, and it was. I think we first met IRL maybe 15 years ago. She was originally from Missouri, and when I bought the Goose in 2009, she came down from Kansas City with some frequency. Now that she lives in Arkansas, in the town where I grew up, we get together probably once year. She and her young son spent a month at the Goose at the outset of the pandemic in 2020. 

   I have watched her move from finance, to art to psychology. This Saturday she is giving an on-line presentation at the Jung Institute. YOU CAN REGISTER HERE. I don't understand psychology-speak that well, but I certainly understand the topic she addresses firsthand. As does she. In the Ozarks, she and I are blues in a red sea. I hope she has some answers to the pressing question: How does one communicate with people whose world view is utterly different?  The NYT did address this pre-Thanksgiving dilemma in THIS ARTICLE.

   Carly writes of her research project: "The intent was a radical act of hope: If the investigator looked deeply into social division, could creative potential be found within the destruction? The results of this research answer that question through the lived experiences of people across the United States who sought to engage, human to human, with their sociopolitical other. The themes that emerged illuminate movements in awareness that occurred during conflict: self and other, personal and collective, past and future. Together, the themes tell a story of what happens when a choice is made to wrestle with social angst and division."

   I'm hoping to find hope in this radical act of hope. Please join us. This must be resolved.

Carly's first visit to the Goose in 2009, where she fell in love with the Eleven Point River.