Welcome to Grandgather. My name is Josephine Ferorelli, and I co-founded and co-direct Conceivable Future. Here’s me and my organizing partner Meghan Kallman talking about that work in the Atlantic. I’m a writer/illustrator, yoga instructor, and climate organizer. Those subjects all converge for me in this series of entries. You can find more of what I’ve written in Burn Zone–a collaboration with photographer Danny Lyon, the collection Motherhood In Precarious Times from Demeter Press, and at Occupy.com.
I started this particular writing project not because I believe I have a silver bullet, or that my views are unique, but because I am so heartsick at the climate crisis that I’m trying to turn my whole life to face in that direction, and I hope to find a world full of other people similarly motivated. I write to keep my courage up and draw from experience, study and self examination. I hope to be wide open to critique that’s given in the spirit of generosity and engagement.
I focus on myself not because I think I’m more important than anyone else, but because I only have access to my own insides. My conviction is that if I look inward with enough integrity, I will find a reflection of the world there. But any introspection has to inspire and guide action if we’re to stand a chance. And our actions have to aim at the biggest levers we can reach in what precious time we have.
The title Grandgather was originally a typo for grandfather I made while transcribing an interview. When I noticed it though, it seemed to describe very well the tactic of pulling from many disciplines and subjects; the wider I look the more fruitful structural comparisons have become.
“Why not simply leave the pathological questions out?
To this I reply in two ways: first, I say, irrepressible curiosity imperiously leads me on;
and I say, secondly, that it always leads to a better understanding of a thing’s significance to consider its exaggerations and perversions, its equivalents and substitutes and nearest relatives elsewhere.”
-William James, Varieties of Religious Experience
All text and images are the original work of the author unless otherwise noted, and should not be reproduced without written permission. Contact the author at thegrandgather (at) gmail (dot) com.
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