…I couldn’t help but be aware of how much my life has changed in the last few years.

Last week I flew to San Diego to speak at a Rotary International Assembly. It was a bit heady for me. Not only my first time with a teleprompter and six-language simultaneous translation, . . . → Read More: Teleprompters, Translation and a Tie]]>

…I couldn’t help but be aware of how much my life has changed in the last few years.

Last week I flew to San Diego to speak at a Rotary International Assembly. It was a bit heady for me. Not only my first time with a teleprompter and six-language simultaneous translation, but I was an ‘opening act’ for the President of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, who announced that they were chipping in another $50 million to Rotary, on top of their previous $200 million matching grant, to support Rotary’s ongoing effort to wipe out Polio entirely. And some great news had come out of India in the week previous to the conference: it has now been over a year since a new case of polio has been reported there.  That brings the number of countries where polio is still endemic to just three—Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

I was there to talk about the Rotary Peace Fellowship, which I was awarded in 2008 (back when it was called the Rotary World Peace Fellowship). Rotary is trying to endow the program so that it will be self-supporting, and they are two-thirds of the way to their $95 million goal. Congratulations to them for the good work they’re doing. Rotary Peace Fellows are having an impact, and I think we’ll see them having an even greater impact in years to come.  I believe in this program, and I’m grateful for opportunities to support it.

Rotary ran this article on its web site this week:  Folk Singer Turned Peace Fellow is Changing the World. There is a link from that page to the text of that talk, and even to a DVD of it.

To . . . → Read More: Welcome Rachel!]]> I’m thrilled to announce that Rachel Wilson has begun working as my new booking and logistics manager.  I met Rachel last year in Raleigh and was immediately impressed by her.  I’m so grateful that she has elected to work with me and keep things organized around here (you know how artists can be…).

To reach Rachel to talk about booking me for a show, workshop, keynote, etc., please email her, or you can reach her by phone at 919.923.8494.

Rachel has this to say…

When I first saw David play I was 17. It was at Bluestone Conference Center in Hinton, WV.  He and Deanna had just gotten engaged and I remember the length of their smiles across their faces when David announced the news to the audience. That performance had a profound impact on this teenager from West Virginia. I am incredibly grateful for this opportunity to work for someone I truly believe in and look forward to this new journey.

See?  She’s cool. 

As many of us do this time of year, I looked back over 2011 recently, and I was amazed to see all that had happened. Some of it has been hard and some has been thrilling, but I definitely feel alive. I was theoretically taking it easier this year in order . . . → Read More: Looking Back, Looking Forward]]>

As many of us do this time of year, I looked back over 2011 recently, and I was amazed to see all that had happened. Some of it has been hard and some has been thrilling, but I definitely feel alive. I was theoretically taking it easier this year in order to work at the NCCC and work on writing a book, but still managed to play/speak in eleven states and four countries. Wow.  I don’t usually write a “year-in-review” blog, but in jotting down a few of the extraordinary experiences that came my way in the last twelve months, it seemed like something worth sharing.

Less than a year after moving back to the US from Australia, Deanna and I got to go back for a short visit. Rotarians from Sydney flew both of us down so that I could speak at a District conference, and we built in a side trip to Brisbane to see friends there. That was a treat.  Part of our hearts will always live in Oz. It was dangerous to my inflatable ego that folks would fly us both to the other side of the world so that I could speak for a half-hour, but it sure was a fun trip.

February also held some very hard news, in that Deanna’s mother was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer. As I write these words, she is in the hospital in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and Deanna is there with her. So far she has done better than expected, and we are holding her in the Light and helping in all of the ways that we can think of.

I had a ‘first’ this year that I wouldn’t have wished for — my first night in jail. Deeply concerned over the direction that the North Carolina legislature has taken on a host of issues this year, I made the decision to engage in a civil disobedience action in the state House. As it turned out, I didn’t have the chance to break any laws, but I was rounded up anyway simply for standing near those who were doing so. That was fine, though the experience was harder for me than I expected it to be. No regrets, though. The goal was to bring the things that were happening in the legislature to the attention of more people who were understandably too busy in their daily lives to tune in. I think we did that, and I congratulate Gov. Perdue on her courageous vetoes, especially of the proposed gutting of the NC Racial Justice Act, the action most significant in convincing me to take a stand.

Shortly after that I had the chance to be involved in the launch of the Wild Goose Festival here in North Carolina.  It got off to a good start, with artists like Michelle Shocked and Over the Rhine, and speakers including Jim Wallis, Phyllis Tickle and Richard Rohr.  I performed, but also helped to in some of the organizational work.  If you didn’t make it last year, I highly recommend you check it out this year.

In July I ended my year on staff at the NC Council of Churches as their Program Associate for Peace.  I worked on peace and justice issues ranging from interfaith efforts at justice in the Middle East to local school board issues.  It was the one experiment with conventional employment I’ve had as an adult, and it was enriching and good to be there. I met extraordinary people and loved working with the staff at such a vital and effective organization. In the end, though, the pull of my other callings to music, writing and speaking won out, and I left the NCCC to give more time to that work.  I am still doing some work for the NCCC, but on an ad hoc basis, and I continue to treasure that relationship.

Healing, when it comes, is always wrapped around hurt. September brought some of the year’s highlights for me, and they were directly related to tragedy. I spent 9/11/11 in two places — Woodbury, NJ, where I held an hour-long concert/talk/remembrance on the tragic events of Sept. 11 for a church there, then zipped into New York City to perform with Pete Seeger, David Amram and others at a memorial concert called “Love Wins,” organized by Lyndon Harris of Gardens of Forgiveness. Both of those events were deeply moving to me, and a privilege to be a part of.

Two months later I performed in Joplin, Missouri at a concert to mark the re-dedication of a church after the devastating tornadoes there. The destruction in Joplin is ubiquitous, even six months later, but so is the active rebuilding and the almost-palpable hope. One of the images that moved me was the sign in front of “Hope High School.” Like much of the town, the school was destroyed by tornadoes. Adding insult to injury, two of the letters in “Hope” were blown away by the wind. Someone immediately showed up and replaced them with duct tape letters, though. Months later, the duct tape is holding, and that speaks volumes.

Also of note this year, my sister Kathy graduated from Cornell Law, passed the bar and began work on post-conviction death penalty defense in South Carolina.  How cool is that?!

I’ve been doing about as much public speaking as singing lately, and really enjoying the rich conversations that have been growing out of that work. Mostly, I’ve been addressing peace issues and “Worldchanging 101,” also the title of a book I’m working on, which has to do with challenging our cultural mythology around our own supposed powerlessness to bring about social change.

The least conventional lecture/workshop I did this year was at the US Embassy in Moldova, via Skype, with young Moldovan activists. I’m looking forward to some exciting speaking gigs coming up in the next few months, from the West Coast to the Far East.

A student at the Pachaj school

October took me to Guatemala for the second time this year.  I got to check in with several of our projects there, including the school band in El Tejar, the Escuelita David LaMotte in Tzanchaj, and the public school in Pachaj, Quetzaltenango, where I presented funds donated by you at my concerts to build a classroom onto an overflowing school.  As always, work with PEG Partners is wonderfully tangible and a privilege to be a part of.

In November I organized a big concert event at Duke University called the Abraham Jam. It featured songwriters from the three major Abrahamic faiths in the US, Islam (Dawud Wharnsby), Judaism (Dan Nichols) and Christianity (yours truly). There were also nationally known performance poets and an improvisational dancer who did an amazing interpretation of my instrumental song Shadows. It was a beautiful night, and Dan, Dawud and I are kicking around some ideas about doing some more touring together as Abraham Jam.

Deanna, Mason and our good friend Billy at Wild Goose

In December Deanna finished up her first semester of a Masters in Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill, and (am I allowed to brag on her?) did very, very well.  She’s enjoying studying and she’s learning a lot, while balancing partnering with me in parenting Mason and making frequent trips to South Carolina to care for her mother.  Mason is enjoying his new school too (he can’t really get the letter ‘s’ on the front of a word, so he calls it his ‘cool’). Mason turned three on Halloween, and he’s a joy.  He especially likes singing with me on stage.

There’s so much I’m looking forward to in the new year. Some wonderful concert opportunities and speaking gigs are already on the calendar, and there are some extremely exciting things in the wings that I can’t quite talk about yet (stay tuned!).  I’ll also begin a term as the Clerk of the AFSC Nobel Peace Prize Nomination Committee. I’ve just completed my first year doing that work, and it is an immensely hopeful thing to be a part of.

The biggest thing on the horizon for me, though, is the release of a new book, White Flour. The text is a poem I wrote four years ago, telling the true story of a Ku Klux Klan march in Knoxville, Tennessee, and a whimsical and disarming response by a group calling themselves the Coup Clutz Clowns. I am delighted to be working with Jenn Hales, an artist living in Raleigh, NC. We’re well into sketches for the book, and hoping to have it out in April, just in time for the five-year anniversary of the event it celebrates.

The new year also brings a new partner in crime (I guess I shouldn’t throw that term around so lightly any more, now that I’ve been a jailbird!), Rachel Wilson, who recently signed on to handle my booking. That is already a rich partnership, and I’m so grateful.

I’m also grateful for you.  If you’ve read this far, you’re interested in what I’m trying to do with my days, and I’m humbled and moved by that.  Thank you.  Blessings on your next trip around the sun.  Here’s to 2012…

David

I have been in or on a pretty amazing array of motorized vehicles in the last 24 hours, from public buses (a.k.a. ‘chicken buses,’ retired school buses from the US, often painted up in classic Latin style, but sometimes with the names of American counties still painted on the side) to a taxi . . . → Read More: Update from Guatemala]]>

I have been in or on a pretty amazing array of motorized vehicles in the last 24 hours, from public buses (a.k.a. ‘chicken buses,’ retired school buses from the US, often painted up in classic Latin style, but sometimes with the names of American counties still painted on the side) to a taxi with half of the dashboard missing, to the backs of pick-ups, to, a half-hour ago, a vw van with no fewer than 25 people in it, two standing on the sideboard and hanging out of the open side door. It was a good day in Pachaj. I’d say it was worth the dodgy transportation, but the truth is that I enjoyed that part too, so it’s hard to call that a traded sacrifice.

I started the day in my $19/night hotel, which provided the first non-cold shower I’ve seen on this trip.  The shower here is wonderfully hot, interspersed with ice cold, and I’m thrilled at that luxury.  I hadn’t shaved on this trip until this morning, and it’s nice to be smooth-faced and -headed again. The electricity is entirely out at the moment, but my laptop has plenty of battery, so I can get a few things done.  The truth is that I’ll probably get more done, since I can’t procrastinate online.

PEG has had a relationship with the public school in Pachaj for several years.  We bought a few computers for a computer lab a while back, and they are still being used there, though there were some complications in the community over who had control of the computers, etc.  For a time they weren’t where the students all had access to them, and some of our communication “went pear-shaped,” as the Aussies say.

That bump in our relationship with the school only made today that much sweeter.  From that experience we learned that when we are negotiating a plan together, it is essential that all of the stakeholders in the community have a hand in that conversation. Today they did.  Parents of students were there, the director of the school was there, teachers were there, and the mayor and several of the ‘cocodes,’ town commissioners of a sort, were there too, and took part in the conversation.

When I first started working in Guatemala I felt uncomfortable with the inevitable speeches and emotional presentations of thank you gifts that are a part of the work we’re doing here. In truth, I still do. I’ve stopped trying to discourage them, though. I now understand that the respect of speaking at such an event is as important as the respect shown in being spoken about.

Perhaps more importantly, I have begun to understand that in a society where many of the parents are illiterate (some of our documents have thumbprints instead of signatures for some of the committee members), accountability has less to do with the paper agreement than it does with everyone being present at the meeting and hearing the same thing.  Having everyone’s eyes on the project makes it much less likely to go astray.

Today I was presented with a beautiful piece of weaving made by my friend Miriam and her husband, and embroidered with my name, the name of the school and today’s date. I will treasure it, and hang it in our home as soon as I return.

The school in Pachaj is the only public school in a town of about 8000 people, with many outlying areas beyond the town borders sending their kids there as well.  All ages attend the same school.  When I visited in February, they were holding classes in the open air on the porches of the school, and they had loosely partitioned a few of the porches with scraps of plywood and other random materials to create temporary classrooms. To put it simply, the school is bursting at the seams.

The school is bilingual, teaching in Spanish and Quich’e (pronounced Kee-Cháy), one of Guatemala’s many Mayan languages. They teach Mayan mathematics, culture and history along with Euro-centric math, history and language. I have been there to see classes meeting before, and I can attest that it is a fine school.

Today we agreed to fund the construction of a new classroom at the school, and began conversation about buying some school desks as well.  They need 400 of them.  One classroom will cost about $2500, money that has been donated primarily through my concerts and John Smith’s, a musician friend who accompanied me here before I left for Australia.

We have many other projects in Guatemala, but this one is really taking root in my heart, partly because I am developing friendships here that go beyond construction projects and budgets. We shared tamales and hot chocolate today after signing our agreement, then I piled into the back of a pick-up truck with six Guatemalan women in traditional clothing to go to the bank and open an account.  Three of them will need to be there together to make a withdrawal.

The first bank we visited couldn’t process my US check, and also explained that the women would need copies of their power bills to verify their addresses in order to open an account at any bank. So we went back to the pueblo and they all went to their various houses. I went with Miriam to her house, and it turns out that she operates a daycare there, so I got to play with the kids and see her husband working at his foot loom, weaving a classically stunning Guatemalan tapestry.  She found the documents she needed, gave me a bag of apples they had grown, and off we went with the other women to another bank in the city.

We got some stares.  I brought a blazer with me for this day, since I was meeting with the mayor and all. Even at not quite six feet tall, I tower over these six women. I’m wearing nearly all black and they are wearing impossibly colorful huipiles, all doubtless hand woven by people they know, or by themselves. We make a strange looking team, for sure, but we are friends.

Jauna Herlinda Yac Salanic was one of the women. She is a community organizer and a women’s leader and lay pastor, having trained with Karla Koll, a Presbyterian mission co-worker and friend of mine.  She and Karla came to the US for a month-long tour which only ended this week. While they were in the US they ate dinner in our home, and it was wonderful to see Juana Herlinda again so soon, and here instead of there.

I had hoped that Karla would be at the meeting today, but due to a tragedy that touched her family deeply, she needed to be elsewhere, and I’m glad she was right where she was.  I was a bit unsure about having some fairly subtle conversation without any recourse to a translator, but as it turned out, I think we made ourselves understood very well, and negotiated some potentially sticky points with goodwill and clarity.

I was also pleased to find that another organization has donated funds to build three other classrooms, and they are already underway.  Still more space is needed, but this year we can only fund one.  Perhaps next year we will fund another.

Sincere thanks to each of you who have been a part of this work through contributions.  I explained very carefully today at the meeting that this was not my money, but was primarily very small donations that many, many people had contributed. This year also saw our first very large donation, and I’m glad to put those to use as well, but I’m particularly glad to know that so many people are doing a little bit each.  That’s what a movement looks like, and it’s how we change the world.

un abrazo fuerte,
David

Photos to go with this blog are here.

photo by Colin Wishart

David LaMotte: Making a Difference From the Heart

David LaMotte is being the change in so many ways that it’s almost impossible to keep up. LaMotte . . . → Read More: Harmony for Humanity Interview]]> This is a recent interview and article published by Harmony for Humanity, please click the link below to read the rest of it.

photo by Colin Wishart

David LaMotte: Making a Difference From the Heart

David LaMotte is being the change in so many ways that it’s almost impossible to keep up. LaMotte is an award-winning songwriter and peace activist. A veteran of ten CDs and 2000 concerts on four continents, he suspended his eighteen-year music career at its peak in 2008 to accept a Rotary World Peace Fellowship to study International Relations, Peace and Conflict Resolution at the University of Queensland in Australia.

In 2004, David and his wife, Deanna, founded PEG Partners, a small non-profit organization that supports schools and libraries in Guatemala. He continues to volunteer as the Program Director for PEG. LaMotte serves on the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Nobel Peace Prize Nomination Committee, which is responsible for selecting AFSC’s nomination each year. He is also a consultant on Peace and Justice at the North Carolina Council of Churches, an author, public speaker and workshop leader. Recently, David returned to limited touring, nationally and internationally. David spoke with us from the Greenbelt music festival in England.

HFH: You are involved in so many projects that make a difference in our world. What is your vision for your life from this point forward?

DL: I hope some of these projects are making a difference, and I believe that they are. Small changes matter. What’s exciting me most these days is just having the conversations, though. We have a lot of misguided mythology around how things change and how they don’t, and I’m enjoying challenging some of those ideas and questioning the assumptions of powerlessness that so many of us are plagued by. At this point, speaking invitations are at least as nourishing for me as concerts.

The main thing on my radar right now is finishing a book I’ve been working on, trying to get some of those ideas down on paper.

I’m glad you asked about vision and not “plans,” though, because plans are hard to nail down. I love the line in the John Gorka song, “I never had no plans, just dreams and vague directions.” That is how it’s always been for me. The driving vision for me, right now, is to remind others of their power to make the world a better place, and challenge the cynicism that dismisses that very phrase as naïve.

HFH: David, you took quite a leap of faith in 2008 when you suspended your successful music career to pursue peace work. Talk about that decision.

DL: Yes, it was a huge change after eighteen years of touring full-time as a singer/songwriter, but I had a strong sense that it was the right thing for me to do. My last concert in Asheville was quite an emotional event because it was like saying goodbye to a part of me that had been so important in my life, and it wasn’t completely rational to suspend my music career when things were going better than ever. Somehow it seemed…

To read more, click here.

I’m honored to get to share the stage with Pete Seeger, David Amram and other fine people in New York City this Sunday afternoon, on the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.  I can think of no better way to spend that day, or people with whom to spend it.  The event . . . → Read More: Playing with Pete]]>

I’m honored to get to share the stage with Pete Seeger, David Amram and other fine people in New York City this Sunday afternoon, on the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.  I can think of no better way to spend that day, or people with whom to spend it.  The event will honor 9/11 responders and benefit the Gardens of Forgiveness project.

If you would like to attend the concert, tickets are available here.

Peace,

David