a Plains Justice post and people to care

http://plainsjusticeblog.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/the-few-the-proud-the-green/

aaaaah....see, it's working.   i go to these things, i click through the links, i think to myself, "who would care about this, who would be interested in knowing this??"   i keep clicking on the share button.  and i click again and again.....

no one wants e-mails and FB posts about stuff like this.  i do keep trying but i know eyes roll and sighs are heard.  actually, i'd be lucky to get that much reaction.

but now, i know first "there's a POST in here".   there is someone pushing a piece of the puzzle.  there are more someones who have looked into these problems enough to know to move.  and the undergrounders not only will want to KNOW about it, but they will DO something.  they will encourage the puzzlers and the solvers.

i'm staggered really that this could work, that i am finding people with the resonance to do this with me.  i'm so deeply deeply affected by this effort.  i can't always say hopeful because the needs are so BIG and this is so small, but i'm trying to reserve judgement.  i'm drifting and the movement is a good one.

the community

changed last night for me.   We now have at least one identified poster who is completely unknown to me.  not a maple leaf.    it's thrilling and weird.   the *most* weird was ken's immediate response: "i hope they know that you write nice things".   wow.   that NEVER occurred to me.... a post that wasn't in the spirit?   tucking that concern or consideration into the hinter land.  see? weird idea.

sue touched on this.   "i kind of want a select bunch".   she's proceeding that way.   i do too i guess b/c even though i've reached out to many of my friends, they still are my friends for a reason and i *haven't* announced the idea on FB which would seem the way to attract followers.   guess i too was liking the "hand-picked".  

somehow it seems bigger also b/c that new person just spoke up on the site.   just like that!   wow.  

i'm going to begin to think about the true idea that was to have been part of the strength.   that premise is a power of knowing that there are concerned and involved people laced into life everywhere.  as jami said, those concerned but w/o a pulpit.   collecting will feel hopeful.   expanding beyond the posters already connected is not only a logical step but *should* be the result of the design of this project.   i *meant* to appeal to a sensitivity that i *HOPED* wasn't an isolated, small one. 

this is good.   it's a tilt maybe not a tip.    it does mean that i've lost a little control and loss of control in the first place was what started this.   aha.   THAT'S it.   loss of control....   that's the real reason it feels so significant.

ponder that one karen.

Underground 2.0

Big revelation on Neal Ave. today.    Time to re-make the site.    It's really not about nice.  Gratitude and thankfulness.  too overused.  their power is spent.   this effort is one to aupport changemakers, to blow open the concept and to recognize the people there.   there are the just-do-it types of a decade ago.

the most useful piece that i have read lately, most hopeful actually was this.   Following the recognition that we have a lot that needs changing in our world comes the realization that more people need to see themselves as CHANGEMAKERS.    we obviously can't leave it to the politicians.   and we clearly can't leave to someone else.

i want the people we address, those who are making change, to know that they are HEARD and that they are inspiring others.   they are leading by example; others will follow.    lead some more, think some more, keep at it.   take others under your wing.   power to the people.

i need new intro pages, a new picture.   what's the platform and what are the planks.  

the hummingbird

one mushroom is one mushroom MANY mushrooms is something else.

i woke up this morning thinking on the little hummingbird story that Wangari Maathai [Green Belt Movement] highlighted in the movie Dirt.  

i *am* doing what i can.  
at least experimenting with it, drifting, reserving judgement

at least it is one thing that i *can* do, i'm riding it undauntedly for now.  sometimes it feels foolish; sometimes brilliant.

remember the "reserve judgement" part, karen.

before this what i could do was study and read.   i had thought that i needed to go back to school to move in this direction.  ruminated on that for a while and decided it was an excuse really. "not the right training, not the right degree".   i have plenty of skills and can learn whatever i need to.   i just need to keep thinking about how the things i am can combine differently.   it wasn't helping to wake up everyday and lay awake at night with worry and fear in my heart.

something else along these lines that i need to get down:   i've forgotten where i read it but the idea is that there are so many things that need to change that we simply need more change-makers.   bingo.   more people need to see themselves with that mantle on.   our politicians, academics, religious, philanthropists..... they aren't the only ones.

what if the work every day is "making change"....

oh, loved thinking to myself last night that i had sent a postcard to Paul Stametz.  the mushroom guy.  famous enough to be in this documentary.   "hey i sent him a postcard a few weeks ago.  whooee".   go underground.

another circle.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=490895500961&set=a.120835970961.129109.70922460961

and http://twitter.com/greenlightbklyn/status/29618140415

it *is* magic.   and seeing the pile of cards photographed on FB i see also - as i originally thought about but had forgotten - that they're so BEAUTIFUL.   it's public art.   i can't see who wouldn't put a ribbon around this pile of cards and keep it with the stuff they grow old with.   "When I ran the bookstore....one week we began getting postcards....they came from everywhere....." 

In my life I had only one true random act of kindness that remains a mystery to me.  Living in so. Mpls. a year or so out of college someone left a bouquet of flowers under my windshield wiper.  I didn't have off street parking so jockeying for a place on the street was always an issue.  As was moving the car after 11pm on a snow emergency.   That was a piece I rather liked actually and have thought of often.   The apts. emptied on snowy cold nights and a neighborhood shuffling of cars got underway.   Anyway,  one morning there were flowers on the windshield of my Chevy Vega.   Not a couple of daisys plucked from the garden near by but a real bouquet.  It was part of my experience of anonymous city living and yet it wasn't. 

Point being that the randomness left a life long mark.   I tell this story of belief in humanity and "chosen-ness".   It is a plank in my life.   Our "addressees" won't forget our marking them once, picking them, taking time for them.   I know it's big.

Also touched by the Greenlight Bookstore ladies sending their own version of random out as a thank you.   Tweet, tweet.   We heard!

nope, wrong

Today there's no work involved.   This is a belief, not a chore.  

It's belief in people, in passion, in engagement.   By looking for that each day, by reading about person after person involved in the zillions of things there are to be involved in, I'm drawn THERE.   I feel them with me.   Their work, their path expands mine and my experience.   I'm the one getting.

I used to think I was giving and felt uncomfortably thanked for my positive outlook.   But now I've tipped.   My effort here really wasn't about doing the nice thing, about being positive so much as it was a knock-down drag out fight not to give in to hopelessness.   I feel a tiny seed of hope now.   I'm starting to believe a little of what I am writing.  

Could it be that enough people could shout from the rooftops and actually be heard?  Really, could it be?

It's too much to hope that the others with me feel this yet really, but maybe sometime.   We are what we pay attention to.   That's a lesson constantly given to me.
k

the like-minded

Thinking today that I wonder if people on board with me now understand that this is real work.  It's more than a warm feeling that a good deed has been done, it's a commitment to working on our issues.

Postcards from the Edge

http://coolplanet.org/2010/10/18/postcards-from-the-edge/

A second crazy happenstance in which it all comes full circle and there is a peek at the other end.  

a card in my mail from one of the Posters

"I love how all of us non-engineers and soapbox-less citizens can play a role by nurturing the roots of huge ideas.  We've set in motion a beautiful thing".