For this episode, Mary spoke with Katja Biesanz, Katja says of herself, "I help people like you to discover and to integrate different parts of themselves." She provides this service as a professional counselor, drawing on her experience as a dancer, poet, masseuse, and forest farmer.

By the time she was 12, Katha and her family had livied in five different countries. Several of these countries were dictatorships; the things she saw through her child's eyes have stayed with her. She routinely draws on them. including using them to help shape how she thinks about climate change and climate action.

Katja is also profoundly skilled in dance and movement. She draws on this knowledge in her therapeutic work. That service is also significantly influenced by her immersion in Latin American cultures, experience she credits with seeding in her the capacity to sense the energy people carry.

Finally, it's important to mention Katja's commitment to land stewardship and restoration. As you can imagine, ours was a wide-ranging and rich conversation, entirely in keeping with the suggestion that each of us is our own wilderness.

You can learn more about Katja by visiting her website at katjabiesanz.com. You can also check out this facebook link to - The Land - TEMENOS where Katja and her partner practice forest farming - tending and harvesting only the plants that grow in the ocean-front rainforest ecosystem.

Below you’ll find references for the three books authored by Joanna Macy that Katja mentioned early in our conversation. You’ll also find the list of characteristics shared by dictators that Katja has compiled as a diagnostic tool and as a warning.

Perhaps most powerful in our time talking together were Katja’s offers of ways for considering our energy fields in relation to those of each other and all of the natural world. Let’s take what she suggests and open to the possibilities.

Joanna Macy (2012). Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re In Without Going Crazy.

Joanna Macy (2007). World as Lover, World as Self.

Joanna Macy (1991). Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory.

Distilled List Dictator Traits (in progress)

• Like to hang out with other “Strongmen”
• Showmanship
• Entertaining
• Humor
• Emotion — such as Hate Mongering
• Demagoguery
• Usurp sacred symbols of other religions
• Uniforms and special clothing
• Demagoguery
• Knows how to get attention
• Not taken seriously until it is too late
• Saying what will do and only the avid believe it
• Desensitization
• Numbing, wearing down
• Scapegoating
• Dehumanizing
• `Press distortion
• Emotion
• Make self/followers victims
• Hate (see scapegoating)
• Nationalism vs Patriotism
• Use religion (usually cynically)
• Projection of unowned parts of self
• Violence
• Encouraging Amateur Violence
• Paramilitary
• Military against own people
• Many are military or control it, but few know war
• Self Enriching
• Countries Wealth Blended with own
• Plutocracy — Wealthy become more so, as long as stay allies
• Ordinary people often suffer
• Many can have extraordinary wealth even in a ‘Communist ‘country
• Lack of truth
• Repetition - repeating lies
• Propaganda
• Discrediting reliable sources
• Say things obliquely, plausible deniability, mafia don
• Power
• Use government functions for retribution
• Loyalty is to party or self, not to the country or all the people

MUSIC ~

This episode includes music by Gary Ferguson and these other fine artists.

Jazz Waltz - Music by Denis Pavlov from Pixabay

Southern Jazz Bossa Nova - Music by Denis Pavlov from Pixabay

Beautiful Piano and Flute Instrumental- Music by Denis Pavlov from Pixabay