Chiron Communications

Musical Invocation: Odyssey of the 8th Fire

by Leave a Comment

ANTHEM FOR AN EMERGING ERA – This is my first song ever. I wrote the lyrics over 20 years ago as the Invocation for my epic, nonfiction saga of the Americas in transition: Odyssey of the 8th Fire < 8thFire.net >  Then this week I logged on to Suno.com – an AI platform for music creation. I plugged in the lyrics, made some artistic choices, and voila: a soul-stirring anthem for some of the core ancestral teachings of the Americas — teachings acutely relevant to our present moments of history. My lyrics are printed below.

INVOCATION – Odyssey of the 8th Fire

A way ya, nyen tow
A way ya, nyen tow
A way ya, nyen tow
Ho way – Ya

Sing in me muses and prophets
Sing in me of the fires,
Seven times having burned

Sing of sparks
Struck by the steps
Of the sunbow pilgrims

Sing of trials, triumphs, and teachings
Sing of sacred places
and sacred ways

Sing in beauty
of all that may be revealed
for the eighth generation and beyond now arise

Sing in us of the sparks
And the 8th Fire arising

A way ya – ho!
A way ya – ho!

Meegwich Mishomis

Copyright 2026 – by Steven McFadden

Post Views: 381

My Marvelous Meme Museum Makes Memories

by Leave a Comment

In recent years the web-birthed form of communication known as “memes” has become a creative outlet for me. By combining an image with a few words to create a meme, anyone can bring an idea into sharp focus. By now I’ve probably created several hundred memes over the last 8-10 years, relying on the talented photographers of Pixabay, and the design capabilities of Canva.

The memes in my digital museum bring to light some of the ideas in the books I’ve authored. Yet by now the memes are scattered across the Internet like individual digital snowflakes. I felt the memes, at least some of them, deserved to be gathered in one place. Thus, with a wink and a nod, I established and continue to develop Chiron’s Museum of Marvelous Memes – Now with 8 Online Galleries.

With a beguiling sample of the four memes posted below, I now cordially invite you to enter My Marvelous Meme Museum:  Gallery I

Post Views: 132

Podcast book review of Deep Agroecology (5 minutes)

by Leave a Comment

Academia.com recently reviewed my book, Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food and Our Future. They rendered their review in a five-minute podcast. You can listen to it by clicking below on the start arrow for the MP3 recording.

Their AI-generated Abstract
Steven McFadden’s book Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future presents a blend of spiritual and scientific perspectives on agroecology.

The book argues for the inseparable connection between agroecology and the survival of the Earth, emphasizing a holistic approach that integrates the physical and spiritual realms within food systems.

Through a critical analysis of modern agricultural practices and historical contexts, McFadden advocates for a shift towards sustainable agroecological methods, which he posits as essential for addressing ecological crises and fostering an intentional relationship with nature.

The book suggests that by seeking deeper knowledge and connection with our food and farm sources, we don’t just eat better, we participate in much bigger, far more consequential healing deed as our life-sustaining Planet Earth passes through an era of tremendous challenge.

Click on the start arrow to listen to the brief podcast review:

This is a rendering  of an AI poster for the book, also from Acdemia.com.  In my view it is just kind of ok, but one statement is way off the mark. AI claims the book “advocates for the fusion of human and non-human life.” What? I never wrote that, never even thought it.  Dangerously wrong “wishful thinking” on the part of AI.

Post Views: 618

Half a Century Later: My Odyssey in Journalism

by 3 Comments

A HALF CENTURY LATER – From the Sandia foothills of New Mexico, I send greetings to all, and a brief message about the art and craft of reporting. I’m a graduate of Boston University’s 1975 journalism program at what is now the College of Communication (COM).  I’m still standing. Still writing. Still passionate. Still reporting on the Beauty Way paths integral to our land and our lives.

Fifty years ago as a student, I had the good fortune to be a small part of The News, a valiant student newspaper that in my era had been defunded and kicked off campus. The paper’s great offense? Reporting facts and opinions that embarrassed what we regarded as an increasingly authoritarian BU administration. In other words, putting the skills we were learning in the classroom to the test, and learning that they were often unwelcome.

Vibrant and cheeky, The News persevered through the late 70’s as I recall. Then soon enough – scorned by the admin and depleted of resources (yet possessed of unforsaken integrity) – The News faded away into the vast and ever-expanding morgue of yesterday’s stories. For me, though, the excitement and learning that came from having been part of that honorable student effort endures as a soul satisfaction, a pearl of great price.

This snippet of COM history comes to mind for me now in parallel as the current Administration in Washington intensifies its attacks on all forms of media that exercise their First Amendment Rights (and Responsibilities) by reporting facts or opinions that do not conform to government desires. The stakes are obviously far higher now in the present challenge, far more consequential. The attacks are real, immediate, and impacting every communications professional.

I expect that there’s much ongoing discussion and debate at journalism schools about all of this: the many systematic, focused efforts to muzzle or otherwise control the press. There better be discussion and a great many waves of wise courageous journalism, or we’re in for a long, hard season of thought control, domination, and abuse of power.

My COM professor for JO 101 was Jeremiah (Jerry) Murphy, an affable old-school writer for The Boston Globe. In various ways over that first semester in 1973 he asked us to ask ourselves, “Who am I as a professional? What do I stand for? How can I best fulfill my mission?” Damn good questions.

I’ve had five decades to engage. At age 76 my responses are known: I’m a maverick independent journalist; I stand the best I can for honesty, caring, sharing, and respect for all the people and all the creations in the Sacred Hoop of life; I best fulfill my mission by asking, listening, and reading carefully, then deliberating to sort out what I have found to be worthy, ennobling, and possessed of potential to endure in goodness for the next Seven Generations of our children, and more.

Thus now at graduation season 2025, as is the prerogative of elders, I hereby raise my medicine song into the ethers, extending my blessings to the COM community, to those who are studying and graduating, and to all working journalists. May your education, Jeremiah’s questions (and a thousand other meaningful ones), serve you in cultivating worthy insights and good work for yourself, your colleagues, your communities, and our world. We need you to be strong and true.

Good luck, Steven McFadden

HALF A CENTURY LATER PHOTO – While digging in the garage over Memorial Day 2025, looking for a family photo, I came upon this one. It shows some fellow staffers at The News (Boston University) late one night in 1975. It’s a photo that I took as a deadline was looming for the next edition. I was completing a photojournalism assignment for a group photo. Just about everyone else on staff had the same homework, and the group had already been assembled over and over again as the week went on. I think I was about the last person to implore folks to get together so I could complete the assignment. They were tired, fed up with posing yet again, and wanting to get it over with and go home. But they let me click the shutter and record their exasperation for posterity.

Post Views: 2,492

Key talk about farms and food 2025 – English y Español

by Leave a Comment

As of 2025 one of the classic books about the CSA movement—Farms of Tomorrow Revisited—has been translated and published in the Spanish language as Las Granjas del Mañana Revisitadas: Comunidad apoyada por Granjas, Granja apoyada por Comunidades.

Nearly 40 years ago I was the Organic Outlook columnist for a rural newspaper when I met a farmer setting down roots the next town over, Trauger Groh (1932-2016). Trauger and his colleagues Lincoln Geiger and Anthony Graham were founding one of the first CSAs in the nation: the Temple-Wilton Community Farm in New Hampshire.

Recognizing the importance of the seeds the first CSAs were planting, Trauger and  teamed up to write Farms of Tomorrow in 1990, published by the Biodynamic Association. 

Eight years later we returned to the subject and wrote Farms of Tomorrow Revisited (1998) to consider what farmers and communities were actually experiencing and learning. That’s the version of the book now translated as Las Granjas del Mañana Revisitadas by Martin Alonso of StayTrue Organics in Argentina.

Along with other CSA books, educational materials, and organizations, our books have helped to spark and to support well over 8,000 CSAs (est.) in the USA, and many thousands more worldwide.

Journalist Steven McFadden stands before a poster for Farms of Tomorrow, and also one for Farms of Tomorrow Revisited.

Whether in English or Spanish, the subtitles for our books express a main point of focus: “Community Supported Farms, and Farm Supported Communities.” The phrase reversal in the subtitle highlights an key point. In recent years CSA has often been promoted as a “marketing model,” whereas Trauger and I—along with many others—envisioned CSA as a “community model.”  Consequently, in our writing we actively explored social, environmental, and spiritual dimensions of this emerging form.

Our explorations remain healthfully provocative now in 2025, and beyond, especially the explorations of “associative economy,”  “parallel polis,” and the preservation of farmland via innovative trusts, that young farmers might be enabled to fulfill their vocations.

Note: In early February 2025 I participated in an online zoom conversation about CSA with the publisher of Las Granjas del Manana. The English-language recording of that zoom call is at this link; the Spanish-language recording is at this link.

In a review of the English-language version of our book, Resurgence Magazine commented “It is rare to come across any practical farming guide that sets out, from its inception, a set of principles that embrace social, spiritual and economic concerns on completely equal terms…The wisdom and clarity of philosophy are striking throughout.”

As Bill T. put it in an Amazon review: “The concepts of community supported agriculture (CSA) grab at the imagination: reconnect with the land and farmer, know exactly where your food is coming from…”

In yet another review published in the Journal of Applied Communications, Mickie Swisher wrote “For those who have little or no previous experience with community-based agriculture, this book brings together information and resources in one place. Even for those who think that community-based agriculture is either unimportant or unrealistic, Groh and McFadden’s book is worth reading. It will, at the least, stimulate thought. With luck, it will produce action.”

The actions now needed – actions that Las Granjas del Mañana Revisitadas can help stimulate – are the further development and networking of clean, healthy, just CSA farms in thousands more communities, both Spanish and English speaking, along with the many other languages of the world.

Post Views: 1,529

Odyssey of the 8th Fire accelerates in 2025

by Leave a Comment

      Mythic, illuminated Sirens sing out from eras ancient, present, and forthcoming, We are all being invited once again to make a journey through time, space, and spiritual fire. Big changes are afoot.
    Beginning on Christmas Day last, 2024, the hashtag #Odyssey went viral. Oscar-winning director Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer) had just announced his next project: a film of Homer’s enduring classic, The Odyssey.
      The Odyssey hashtag came immediately alive on the Internet, and will likely remain astir at least through 2026 when Nolan’s film will be released. My hope is that in their personal digital journeys, many Net pilgrims will, by use of the hashtag, also come upon the true, online story, Odyssey of the 8th Fire .
       8th Fire is an epic tale of a inspired, contemporary journey by people of all colors and faiths. This odyssey tells of an eight-month walking pilgrimage. The multicultural band of men and women were guided, eventually, by dozens of traditional spiritual elders of North America.
     The long walk took place 30 years ago in 1995-96. It took 230 days to take the steps from the Eastern Door at the Atlantic Ocean toward the Western Gate at the Pacific. Along the way, from sea to shining sea, elders met with the 8th Fire walkers and gave them messages to carry.
     Over the last 30 years I’ve remained steady in the view that the long walk of the 8th Fire pilgrims can be regarded as a sample, or an archetypal expression of the great challenging journey that all of us alive are on, right now as the Earth shakes, the winds howl, and governments mutate.
    This is an odyssey that we are all on, everyone on Planet Earth. Moving fast now. It appears we are going to go a lot faster, Soon.
      What the written story of the  8th Fire Odyssey offers to readers is an opportunity to grasp some of the foundational teachings of this Turtle Island  American continent — teachings that have been tried and tested on this continent not just for five or six centuries, but over many thousands of years.
     Through this freely-offered nonfiction saga, readers will engage an opportunity to hear and to consider the words of many traditional elders of this Turtle Island continent we now call America.
      That has always been my devout intention: to create a bridge of communication and understanding between the ancient, core knowings of this land and our current, forward-leaning civilization. The forthcoming Odyssey film from Christopher Nolan and creative company will help with this, my intuition suggests.
     With the wisdom of the elders for support, we are readied for what lies in the present and future. Onward now along our individual and collective odysseys, to and beyond 2025 along the Beauty Way that is indigenous to North America. ?
Post Views: 3,890

Spiffy new makeover for one of my satellite websites

by Leave a Comment

Screenshot of updated Deep Agroecology blog.

After 16 years wearing the same internet face, my website for Deep Agroecology needed an update. My steady-state blog about food, farms, and our future has been online since 2008. For several years its messages made their way through the digisphere as The Call of the Land. But the blog now bears the name Deep Agroecology. That may sound abstract or academic, but the words actually represent what I regard as one of our main chances for navigating safely and wisely through the cascade of earth changes now unfolding,

My thanks to Tim Hill of Draft Horse Studio for expert web support, making the transition smooth and straightforward for Deep Agroecology.

Chiron Communications–upon whose pages you now gaze, dear readers–is my main, umbrella website, hosting a range of subjects that have drawn my interest over the years.

But to give emphasis to particular subjects, I long ago created and two satellite web sites. They remain alive and active.

The first website is my blog for Deep Agroecology, which has now undergone a facelift. The focus on that blog is the intelligent, and proactive response of farms and communities around the world to establish clean, just, sustainable food systems in the face of ongoing climate change.

My second satellite web site is Odyssey of the 8th Fire. That site tells at epic length the true saga of a great, long pilgrimage on foot from the Eastern Door at the Atlantic Ocean, toward the Western Gate at the Pacific Ocean. The 8th Fire relates a nonfiction tale about a quest arising from the deepest roots of our land, but taking place in the present and the future. In it, circles upon circles, elders make a great and generous giveaway of the teachings they carry.

My 8th Fire website could use a facelift as well, no doubt. But that will have to wait for the right moment. For now, I’m pleased to be able to shine a light upon the new look of Deep Agroecology — a main chance for us all.

 

Post Views: 3,591

Recent Posts

My Books

Share Buttons

Subscribe to the Chiron Communique

* indicates required