A note from Dave: Bert was one of the first friends I made when I moved to Portland in 2016, and he is a veritable mad genius. His father, a renowned animator, was the inspiration for Pinky from “Pinky and the Brain”. Quite literally, no shit. This explains, in part, Bert’s absurdist humor. The content of Bert’s event will be serious, but prepare yourselves for hilarity. And by the way, in case you were wondering, the photo Bert sent me features him proudly displaying a book entitled “Goats in America” at the Second World Kiosk that was installed this past summer in Simone Weil’s yard.
If you’ve driven down NE 15th to Emerson, you’ve probably noticed something called Second World - a kiosk and “village commons” and, well, the epicenter of another world. With some help from the biblical Pentateuch and It’s a Wonderful Life we’ll get into why in this second world neighbors are family, and how this patterns an economy and protects it from the market. This is an idea of economics “so old it feels new again”, so we will tell you about how our Simone Weil House extended community as well as churches and others we work with have been experimenting with a few of these family practices for several years now, highlighting the credit union partnership through which we can “redeem” each other’s interest bearing debt. But, be warned the event will unfold at a tedious pace - each idea has a greedy commercial sponsor. For example, this disclosure was sponsored by All Day Pie, a pie that you eat clockwise (!) through the day from the Am egg wedge to the dessert pie pie.
Bert Fitzgerald founded the Simone Weil Catholic Worker in 2019 with the help of local friends (like Dave!). He became Catholic despite being named after Bertrand Russell, the philosopher who convinced his father to become an atheist, and ended up doing a Masters in Theological Studies at Notre Dame. His work has often been organizing experiments in “a world where it is easier to be good”, to use the words of the co-founder of the Catholic Worker, Peter Maurin. This has included starting a farm-to-table network and a low income grocery co-op, a trust economy public house, and our current banking partnership around redemptive lending.
A note from Dave: Bert was one of the first friends I made when I moved to Portland in 2016, and he is a veritable mad genius. His father, a renowned animator, was the inspiration for Pinky from “Pinky and the Brain”. Quite literally, no shit. This explains, in part, Bert’s absurdist humor. The content of Bert’s event will be serious, but prepare yourselves for hilarity. And by the way, in case you were wondering, the photo Bert sent me features him proudly displaying a book entitled “Goats in America” at the Second World Kiosk that was installed this past summer in Simone Weil’s yard.
If you’ve driven down NE 15th to Emerson, you’ve probably noticed something called Second World - a kiosk and “village commons” and, well, the epicenter of another world. With some help from the biblical Pentateuch and It’s a Wonderful Life we’ll get into why in this second world neighbors are family, and how this patterns an economy and protects it from the market. This is an idea of economics “so old it feels new again”, so we will tell you about how our Simone Weil House extended community as well as churches and others we work with have been experimenting with a few of these family practices for several years now, highlighting the credit union partnership through which we can “redeem” each other’s interest bearing debt. But, be warned the event will unfold at a tedious pace - each idea has a greedy commercial sponsor. For example, this disclosure was sponsored by All Day Pie, a pie that you eat clockwise (!) through the day from the Am egg wedge to the dessert pie pie.
Bert Fitzgerald founded the Simone Weil Catholic Worker in 2019 with the help of local friends (like Dave!). He became Catholic despite being named after Bertrand Russell, the philosopher who convinced his father to become an atheist, and ended up doing a Masters in Theological Studies at Notre Dame. His work has often been organizing experiments in “a world where it is easier to be good”, to use the words of the co-founder of the Catholic Worker, Peter Maurin. This has included starting a farm-to-table network and a low income grocery co-op, a trust economy public house, and our current banking partnership around redemptive lending.
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