[GSBN] The saddest news...

[martin hammer]

Beautifully said David and John.

I remember Judy¹s grand talk at the 2006 ISBBC in Ontario.  Her health had
already begun to fail her, but in addition to her always wise thoughts, she
expressed such joy and confidence that the movement she and Matt¹s had
started many years before had been adopted and carried forward by so many
extraordinary people throughout the world.

To me Judy was the godmother and soul (along with Matts) of strawbale and
whatever this is we all do.  To call it any one thing diminishes and limits
it, and knowingly, Out On Bale was so aptly named (un)Limited.  Thank you
Judy.  You have done, and will continue to do more good than you or any of
us will ever know.  With great appreciation and love.

Martin


On 12/26/11 2:02 PM, "John Swearingen" <john.skillfulmeans at gmail.com> wrote:

> Judy found the heart and soul in the straw revival, and, like the greatest of
> souls, connected each person she met to that heart, and rooted us there.  She
> can only be missed in the ordinary sense, because her extraordinary vision
> lives on in so many of us.
> 
> With gratitude prayers, love, and best wishes to Matts and her family,
> John
> 
> 
> On Dec 26, 2011, at 12:17 PM, strawnet at aol.com wrote:
> 
>> Dear friends and colleagues, I have very sad news to pass on. Our inspired
>> and inspiring friend, colleague, leader, mentor and more, Judy Knox, lost her
>> battle with cancer early Saturday morning. Here is an excerpt from a message
>> from her brother Tim that we received this morning:
>>  
>> On Christmas Eve we heard the heartbreaking news that Judy has finally lost
>> her battle with cancer.  Matts and Judy's daughter-in-law Donna were with her
>> when she died peacefully at 1:45 am on Saturday.  Philip had been helping out
>> for several days and he and his children were all in the house.  We
>> understand that she had gone downhill very fast in the previous two days ­
>> she had been having great trouble breathing and she and Matts had been
>> considering a hospice, but then things spiraled downwards.
>>  
>> For those of you fortunate enough to have met Judy over the years, or who
>> know what an extraordinary human being she was, you will recognize the
>> enormity of the loss, and at the same time what unimaginably good fortune to
>> have had her in our lives and work for all these years. I first met Judy and
>> Matts in 1991 though I had been hearing about them for a couple of years
>> prior to that meeting. They changed my life in innumerable ways.
>>  
>> Rather than try to find words to describe her this morning I realized that I
>> could share an excerpt of the "Straw Bale DEtour" column I wrote for the
>> Women's Issue (#61) of The Last Straw journal - TLS being one of Judy's many
>> contributions to the world ­ about some of the women who have been
>> instrumental in creating and shaping the straw bale revival. This is the part
>> related to Judy:
>>  
>> ======
>> It is not a DEtour to take the time to honor at least a few of the women who
>> have helped lead the modern emergence of straw bale construction. It is,
>> however, a very risky thing to do because I know that I leave out some who
>> are worthy of mention, people who either never came to my attention or have
>> slipped through the ever-more porous sieve of my memory. So apologies in
>> advance to those not mentioned here, and please trust that I have real
>> gratitude for you and your contributions. I will name a few who I know helped
>> open the door for many others who have been drawn into the realm of straw
>> bale and natural building.
>>  
>> I can't imagine starting with anyone other than Judy Knox, who I¹m quite
>> certain is responsible for the humane and generous character of the straw
>> bale revival. Judy came to a leadership role in the straw bale revival
>> somewhat unwillingly, seeing it as a distraction from what she saw as the
>> larger work she had been engaged in ­ a coherently integrated set of
>> activities around the rights and well-being of children, community
>> empowerment, education, micro-economics, international relations,
>> environmental stewardship and more. When the New York Times put an article
>> about straw bale building and Judy and Matts Myhrman (her husband and
>> co-conspirator in their little business that emerged from all this, Out On
>> Bale) on the front page of a section of the Sunday Times, the world
>> (literally) beat a path to their door with a flood of mail arriving daily and
>> the phone ringing off the hook for months. As a result of the depth and
>> breadth of her experience and her commitment to action in service to larger
>> ends, once swept into the strong and rising current of the revival, she
>> realized that they would not soon return to their former lives.
>>  
>> In her unique and powerful way, she saw straw bale construction as a vehicle
>> to empower people, especially women, to go, as she put it so clearly, "from
>> 'I can't' to 'I can!'" And it was her attention to the human and personal
>> potential of this movement, that shifted the revival to being much more than
>> about a building technique or material, or a more environmentally responsible
>> way to build. It was all of that, but she also nurtured a foundational aspect
>> of the revival, helping people see what they were capable of doing. She has
>> always been on the lookout for champions‹a champion of champions‹seeking to
>> pull people into their fullest potential. She certainly had a big influence
>> on me. 
>>  
>> The structure of the Out On Bale Workshops, which I was fortunate to be
>> invited to attend and eventually to teach, paid as much attention to the
>> process, and the possibilities emerging from the workshop participants, as to
>> the importance of sharing the most current and best technical information
>> available. As a result of Judy's focus on process, those workshops became a
>> safe place for everyone to explore possibilities about their own capacities
>> and for each participant to share their deepest feelings about what was most
>> important to them. This was also about building people and community. And
>> thus the straw bale community was seeded with a communitarian spirit and a
>> generosity rare in building circles. Judy and Matts made it clear that this
>> was a building system that was part of the commons.
>>  
>> The Last Straw grew out of a vision of having a vehicle to expand that
>> community and enable those of us in it and coming into it, to take
>> responsibility for guiding what we were creating with our ever-growing
>> collective knowledge, which occasionally rose to the level of wisdom. While
>> Matts was tirelessly, inquisitively, brilliantly, and, thankfully, often
>> hilariously exploring and working on the physical and technical and
>> historical details, Judy was attending to the health and well-being of the
>> movement and all of us who were involved with it. Judy's initial and
>> essential framing of the revival in terms of community and personal potential
>> carried forward and out as straw bale construction echoed out into the rest
>> of the world. I know how deeply her focus on these things affected me then
>> and how it resonated in me and became part of who I am and how I do what I do
>> in the world, a gift for which I am profoundly grateful.
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