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