Questionably Fabulous

By John Bach:

I’m going to volunteer with an organization called “Animal As Intermediaries” – they take animals and items from Nature into all sorts of interesting places like locked wards for severely disturbed kids and prisons and geriatric homes, etc.

Here is an abbreviated autobiographical sketch that I am sending to AAI in the hopes that it will be helpful to their accepting me as a volunteer…  And not send them running away.

… I am a 61 year old white straight educated healthy male with a very wide comfort zone.

… I am a painting contractor/handyman who works for himself and has a very flexible schedule.  I purport to live in balance with Nature and hold myself accountable for treading lightly on our Mother.  I subscribe to the notion of “Right Livelihood.”

… I am a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and attend the Friends Meeting, Cambridge.

… I have recently moved to Arlington to live with the beautiful woman I love (and will soon be married to) from the mountains of Colorado where I spent 13 years as a commercial dog musher.  My partner and I conducted all-day, 20 mile-long tours 5 days a week with 10-12 dogs per sled.  We lived with 30 dogs and worked collectively and in harmony with our teammates.  We had an exemplary retirement program for our older dogs.  I’m pretty sure I have dug more dog graves than anyone else you know.

… I have also lived with as many as 8 horses at one time, and have imprinted foals at the moment of their birth.  I am comfortable with snakes.

… For the last four decades I have been an extreme hiker, and have summitted most of the 54 – 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado, well over half of them with my beloved lead dog of 10 years, sometimes in below freezing weather or gale force winds.

… I am a political activist and non-violent trainer, and have involved myself in what some have called “the burning issues of the times.”  In the mid 1960s, as a high school student in Pennsylvania and later as a college student in Connecticut, I was part of the Civil Rights movement in the Deep South.  In 1967 I purposely left college to renounce my student deferment, which I saw as racist and classist to oppose the war in Indochina, and subsequently spent 35 months in federal prisons and penitentiaries. I returned to college (Wesleyan University) and graduated with Honors.

… I have tried to remain faithful to that non-violent trajectory, fully engaged.  I have an arrest record literally longer than both my arms.  I did construction work in Nicaragua after the revolution, and I worked in the sanctuary movement during Ronald Reagan’s wars in Central America.  I was a conductor on the new Underground Railroad, escorting political and religious refugees from Guatemala and El Salvador across the Mexican border in order to apply for sanctuary.  In Connecticut I employed undocumented refugees.  I was imprisoned in Honduras for political/human rights activity and deported from El Salvador. 

… I was an early member of the Clamshell Alliance, opposing the nuclear power plant in Seabrook, NH.  I have worked with Habitat for Humanity, doing difficult painting work with my crew and also leading communication workshops.

… For years, another Quaker and I would spend a weekend at a maximum security penitentiary in Connecticut conducting an “Alternatives to Violent Program.”

… During my time in Colorado, I spent quality periods with the Western Shoshone at the Nevada Test Site, helping to purify the toxic and irradiated land with ceremonial sunrise prayer circles, dances, chanting, drumming, sweat lodges, seminars and civil disobedience.  My Quaker sense of spirituality was always very much in sync with their Nature based orientation.  I frequently burn sage.

… I have written two books and numerous magazine articles.  I regularly am a contributor to a woman’s blog-a-zine helping women FIND THEIR INNER FABULOUS.  I tell stories.

Still reading?  I do hope I haven’t put you off with too many “I’s”, but that’s in the nature of autobiographical presentation.  I dislike abstract nouns without specifics.  I am attracted by humility, really.

If you’re still interested after wading through this, I would look forward to meeting with you.

Thanks for your time and the good work you do.

John