A letter from Ben Sherwyn:

Growing up in Bakersfield, California, I witnessed many vibrant young friends suffer for their inability to see and freely access what I had experienced just beyond the horizon. As a child, I was lucky to have many opportunities to travel, learn, and foster a pragmatic imagination. The world opened and possibilities grew limitless. My curiosity led me to live in communities outside of my hometown where some extraordinary opportunities began to present themselves. I realize now that these pathways would have been very difficult to see had I lived my life in accordance with the conventions of the town where I was raised.

Enjoying the expansive view good fortune provided, I was often bewildered by the contrasting stories of those I left in the central valley. As my path was leading me towards wisdom, inspiration, and opportunity, the paths of my friends were being determined by convention, their aversion to it, and an inability to find another way. As a result, I've watched a startling number of creative and intelligent peers fall to substance abuse and court lifestyles and careers they'd always been fundamentally opposed to - all because they knew of nothing else. In more privileged communities, these vibrant, curious, and critical minds would become successful leaders. However, these integral qualities were widely treated as defective, pretentious, or troublesome within the context of working-class occupational placement. As such, a creative person was to be broken, re-trained, or criminalized. The potential of these important young voices had been systematically restrained and I've been saddened to see these circumstances met with resignation and consent. If I were to recognize this and turn my back, I too would be consenting.

So I've begun to collect the stories, skills, art, and wisdom that, I feel have saved my life from that same fate. They are compiled, borrowed, and bootlegged from the greatest teachers, artists, and liberators that I have encountered in the first twenty-eight years of my life. I've become devoted to learning, translating, and getting knowledge across class, race, and economic boundaries and I'm looking for others passionate about doing the same. As a result I've parted with most of my belongings, packed a tent and a bedroll, laced up my best pair of walking shoes, and hit the road for the long haul - determined to connect vital voices with eager ears. The chronicles of this adventure will be archived within the following website, www.tumbleweedamerica.org.

Keep heading for that light... See you on the road.

Love you,

Benjamin A. Sherwyn

Tumbleweed