Welcome to A Habit of Hope — a weekly practice of optimism and joy. We get inspired, there’s music, and use a set of tools for community and accountability.
Yesterday was the “Economic Blackout” and already the pontificating is thick. “It was a step in the right direction!” “It was naive!” If you thought it was gonna make a huge economic impact, you’re probably disappointed. If you thought it was a trial run for future action, you might feel, as I do, a stir of hope. Here’s what I have to say about it: a whole lotta people — not sure how many but gut feeling, at least a couple million — joined together to try using their economic power to impact US policy.
And that was the point.
Can we do two days next time? Can we give up shopping at Amazon for good? I’m happy to say it’s been about three weeks for me and I feel like a spell has broken. I needed a new lightbulb for our Lava Lamp this week and I bought it from…the Lava Lamp company! Not Amazon. How about that?
The news is so overwhelming, it’s easy to forget that people as a group do indeed have power. Using it effectively is the challenge, but it was a joy watching everyone online realize they were practicing being a part of something bigger than themselves.
A Habit of Hope
This week’s edition is going to be very short, as I’m holed up in an undisclosed location powering through the newest draft of my play This is Water. (Shameless plug: tickets go on sale May 1st for the World Premiere during the Hollywood Fringe Festival!)
Okay, where I am is not that undisclosed — it’s the Disneyesque village of Solvang, CA, and I’m hiding out in a Danish-themed motel. I just got home from a dinner break at the Copenhagen Sausage Garden — and if you’re thinking “that’s what she said,” you are correct. I will be joking about that name for a long, long time.
We take our laughs where we can right now! It’s pretty freaking surreal working on an earnest, hopefully ultimately optimistic play about coming to terms with my white American childhood, while our nation is under such duress.
So, about nations under duress…
Jedediah
It’s late 1777, and the Continental Army is hunkered down in Valley Forge after big losses at the Battle of Brandywine. Twelve thousand people — soldiers and families — are suffering malnutrition in the bitter cold because of supply chains disrupted by the British Army. An estimated 1500 people and hundreds of horses perish that brutal winter.
With Washington at Valley Forge is a Brigadier General named Jedediah Huntington, who was born in Connecticut and came of age in the runup to the War.
His exploits in battle are notable, as are the vivid letters he sent home, which are the source of much scholarship of the era.
He is not, however, our Person of the Week. Instead it’s the songwriter who combed through his missives in order to embark on an impassioned retelling of those dark days in the thick of the Revolution — no, not Lin Manuel Miranda — but a descendant of Huntington, singer-songwriter Eliza Gilkyson.
Music
I could talk about Eliza Gilkyson all day — she’s one of my very favorite songwriters. Her impeccable craft; her earthy, angelic voice; her bravado, self-doubt and empathy somehow intertwined — she’s the bomb, as far as I’m concerned. And what she’s created with the story of her ancestor is a profound lesson to us right now.
When she performs the song, she’s quick to point out that Huntington was not motivated sheerly by idealism. He and his fellows definitely hoped to profit after the war and were, of course, profoundly hypocritical for fighting for a “free country” that built its wealth on human bondage.
She wrote “Jedediah 1777” in the wake of the Iraq War, her hippie ethic enraged by the “chickenhawks” in Washington talking tough while wreaking devastation on countless Iraqi civilians and thousands of our own soldiers, while they themselves sat comfortably stateside. Eliza was inspired by the bravery of her relative and his peers, willing to put their own lives on the line for their cause. The sheer suffering endured by Jedediah Huntington, in her recounting of his letters, is astonishing. The song begins:
"Jedidiah out in the snow Walkin' the frozen trenchlines Wet boots and his wool coat comin' apart at the seams"
Here, you can just listen to the whole thing:
What are we willing to endure for our vision of America? How do we summon the strength to stand up — over the course of years, perhaps — to a King?
A Habit of Hope
Reminder: I have something for you — a Habit of Hope Journal! Feel free to download it for your own use in a practice of optimism and joy. And feel free to comment in the chat about how it’s going!
Thank you, so much, for subscribing, and please feel free to pass this on. And if you’re interested in my work as a performer and songwriter, come visit my website!
xo Rain
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