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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">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: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;
color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">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. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;
color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">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. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">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: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">======</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;
color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">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. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;
color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;
color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">I can't imagine starting with
anyone other than Judy Knox, who I’m 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. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;
color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;
color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">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.</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:
Arial;color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;
color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;
color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">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.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;
color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:
EN-US">The Last Straw </span></i><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:
Arial;color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">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.</span></div>
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