[GSBN] The saddest news...

[janet johnston]

Love to you all and especially to Matts. Judy was one of my personal
role-models. I am forever grateful that I got to spend a little time with
her.  -Janet 

 

 

Janet Armstrong Johnston, Architect

StrongArm Construction

PO Box 2141, Joshua Tree, CA 92252

760-366-4774   <http://www.strongarmconstruction.com>
www.strongarmconstruction.com

 <mailto:janet at strongarmconstruction.com> janet at strongarmconstruction.com

  _____  

From: GSBN-bounces at sustainablesources.com
[mailto:GSBN-bounces at sustainablesources.com] On Behalf Of John Swearingen
Sent: Monday, December 26, 2011 2:03 PM
To: Global Straw Building Network
Cc: gsbn at sustainablesources.com
Subject: Re: [GSBN] The saddest news...

 

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 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. 

 

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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