[GSBN] The saddest news...

Tue Dec 27 02:30:50 UTC 2011

You can send condolences to Matts Myhrman and family at 1039 E Linden St, Tucson,                                        AZ,85719 - the Out On Bale Unlimited address - which is also their home address. Thank you for asking, Robert.

 David Eisenberg

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Laporte <robert at econest.com>
To: Global Straw Building Network <GSBN at sustainablesources.com>
Sent: Mon, Dec 26, 2011 6:14 pm
Subject: Re: [GSBN] The saddest news...

Hi Janet,

Is there an address we can send our condolences to Matts?

Gratefully,

Robert

On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 3:54 PM, janet johnston <janetjohnstn at earthlink.net> wrote:

Love to you all and especially to Matts. Judy was one of mypersonal role-models. I am forever grateful that I got to spend a little timewith her.  –Janet 

Janet Armstrong Johnston, Architect
StrongArm Construction
PO  Box 2141, Joshua Tree, CA 92252
760-366-4774  www.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, 20112:03 PM
To: Global Straw Building Network
Cc: gsbn at sustainablesources.com
Subject: Re: [GSBN] The saddest news...

Judy found the heart and soul in thestraw revival, and, like the greatest of souls, connected each person she metto that heart, and rooted us there.  She can only be missed in theordinary sense, because her extraordinary vision lives on in so many ofus. 

With gratitude prayers, love, and best wishes to Matts and her family,

John

On Dec 26, 2011, at 12:17 PM, strawnet at aol.comwrote:

Dear friends and colleagues, I have very sad news to pass on. Ourinspired and inspiring friend, colleague, leader, mentor and more, Judy Knox,lost her battle with cancer early Saturday morning. Here is an excerpt from amessage from her brother Tim that we received this morning: 

On Christmas Eve we heard the heartbreaking news thatJudy has finally lost her battle with cancer.  Matts and Judy's daughter-in-law Donna were with her when she diedpeacefully at 1:45 am on Saturday.  Philip had been helping out forseveral days and he and his children were all in the house.  We understandthat she had gone downhill very fast in the previous two days – she had beenhaving great trouble breathing and she and Matts had been considering ahospice, but then things spiraled downwards. 

For those of you fortunate enough to have met Judyover the years, or who know what an extraordinary human being she was, you willrecognize the enormity of the loss, and at the same time what unimaginably goodfortune to have had her in our lives and work for all these years. I first metJudy and Matts in 1991 though I had been hearing about them for a couple ofyears prior to that meeting. They changed my life in innumerable ways. 

Rather than try to find words to describe her thismorning I realized that I could share an excerpt of the "Straw BaleDEtour" column I wrote for the Women'sIssue (#61) of The Last Straw journal - TLS being one of Judy's many contributions to the world – about some ofthe women who have been instrumental in creating and shaping the straw balerevival. This is the part related to Judy: 

======

It is not a DEtour to take the time to honor at leasta few of the women who have helped lead the modern emergence of straw baleconstruction. It is, however, a very risky thing to do because I know that Ileave out some who are worthy of mention, people who either never came to myattention or have slipped through the ever-more porous sieve of my memory. Soapologies in advance to those not mentioned here, and please trust that I havereal gratitude for you and your contributions. I will name a few who I knowhelped open the door for many others who have been drawn into the realm ofstraw bale and natural building. 

I can'timagine starting with anyone other than Judy Knox, who I’m quite certain isresponsible 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 beenengaged in – a coherently integrated set of activities around the rights andwell-being of children, community empowerment, education, micro-economics,international relations, environmental stewardship and more. When the New YorkTimes put an article about straw bale building and Judy and Matts Myhrman (herhusband 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 andthe phone ringing off the hook for months. As a result of the depth and breadthof her experience and her commitment to action in service to larger ends, onceswept into the strong and rising current of the revival, she realized that theywould not soon return to their former lives. 

In her unique and powerful way, she saw straw baleconstruction as a vehicle to empower people, especially women, to go, as sheput 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 ormaterial, or a more environmentally responsible way to build. It was all ofthat, but she also nurtured a foundational aspect of the revival, helpingpeople see what they were capable of doing. She has always been on the lookoutfor champions—a champion of champions—seeking to pull people into their fullestpotential. She certainly had a big influence on me. 

The structure of the Out On Bale Workshops, which Iwas fortunate to be invited to attend and eventually to teach, paid as muchattention to the process, and the possibilities emerging from the workshopparticipants, as to the importance of sharing the most current and besttechnical information available. As a result of Judy'sfocus on process, those workshops became a safe place for everyone to explorepossibilities about their own capacities and for each participant to sharetheir deepest feelings about what was most important to them. This was alsoabout building people and community. And thus the straw bale community wasseeded 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 ofthe commons.

The Last Straw grew out ofa vision of having a vehicle to expand that community and enable those of us init and coming into it, to take responsibility for guiding what we were creatingwith our ever-growing collective knowledge, which occasionally rose to thelevel of wisdom. While Matts was tirelessly, inquisitively, brilliantly, and,thankfully, often hilariously exploring and working on the physical andtechnical and historical details, Judy was attending to the health andwell-being of the movement and all of us who were involved with it. Judy's initial and essential framing of the revival interms of community and personal potential carried forward and out as straw baleconstruction echoed out into the rest of the world. I know how deeply her focuson these things affected me then and how it resonated in me and became part ofwho I am and how I do what I do in the world, a gift for which I am profoundlygrateful.

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-- 
Robert Laporte
"Building the Builder"
www.econest.com
EcoNest Co.
541-488-9508

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