a year old.

Postcard Underground is a year old today....

About 80 people have had random communications from a random group, randomly written from around the country.   nice. 

The latest feedback:   It’s a deliciously simple yet powerful idea. All hail the postcard underground and their fine attitude to making the world a better place. You really did make my day.   from Mark Stevenson, An Optimist's View of the Future author who lives in England.   He took the time to find the blog and comment on his posting.  Also blogged about us on his site.  

Deliciously simple yet powerful.    I'm very proud of this.   I personally am feeling some growing pains but I haven't lost the faith in what this is.   Current issue is wondering if others are tiring and just who really does do this.   do the new people pull the weight or are the faithful there.   Just how many cards *do* go out.   Some concern about the increasing numbers as posters feel that it won't "matter" if they get theirs out.   How to encourage but not nag.   How to structure the direction to suit people.   Does everything need to be fast and easy? 

Trying not to get comfortable in this skin w/o always wondering if there is something else completely.....

Will simply feel proud today though.  Will scroll through the people i wrote to this year... will put a candle in a cupcake.  

what was stately and luxurious

just saving this thought here.   and these pictures.   it isn't exactly a fit but for me it is a heartbreaking, no heartbending, example of when enough can never be enough.

i'm so sorry that my treasured luxurious childhood home is now tricked out and empty.   apparently not suitable for anyone??

http://www.remax.com/property/73273157-60110501/1625-S-Main-Ave-Sioux_Falls-SD-57105/

Casting about, not unusually

Not everyone wakes up reading about Svalbard, Greenland Right Whales [Bowheads] that are all but extinct but live to be 200 years old, the Global Seed Vault.   Why me?   Just how did a piano playing marion the librarian GET here?????   Today it is The View From Lazy Point, Carl Safina.  In the balance I'm honored to be with a writer like this,  my kinship is real.  I have found my people.   It's a most unusual path but I continue to be fascinated and amazed.   what could be better than that?

Funny Deborah and I keep joking about "who are our people???".   I forgot to throw the seine far enough.  aha.

I love reading about these extreme Norwegian places,  just as i love reading about Long Island and the Pacific Northwest.  This busted-open-me is a good me.    I'll continue to think about what  my role can be, what part I can play.  I'm honored that I have found this secret door, this invisible mantel.  The Underground has been launched, it has a toe print.    How can it be different, what could be better, what should be it's shape.

Keep thinking.   If I *felt* things any less, I wouldn't be where I am and who I am.   exhausted and exhilarated both in greatly variated ratios.
k

Staggered.

Be acted upon and then take action.     

Nearly paralyzed by the Japanese earthquake, tsunami and now nuclear catastrophe.   How does one go on with "business as usual".   Pam says such a shaking requires a shift.  Our usual has shifted as well.  I'll think about that.

I will say today though, that again, posting has been my breath.   I've been trying to seek out someone in the nuclear energy realm who will help me keep up the hope that our move to that source hasn't just also evaporated.  The press has terrified us all.  As of today, we have a serious crisis and I am reluctantly reading about the plant operations and rescue which will likely result in deadly radiation for some.   But the real story is the 2,000 people who have washed up on a beach and the older people and babies who are without homes when it is below freezing.   Anyway, my heart bleeds, my spirit mourns and that's about all I can do.

I began this bit today because as I said, I still wished to have a post next week.   I still was hoping that the people who know about this could lead me to a positive sliver.   There is one.  There is a type of green nuclear, it involves thorium, the Chinese know about it, some Americans know about, and get this I know about it!  Go figure.   I can glance at Roger Pielke's blog today, agree with him and know what the commentors are writing about.  All because of posting.  All because I have figured out a way to take action that makes me not feel powerless when a worldwide crisis runs me over.

who knew.   amen.

so just who are my people?

So oddly, that's a question that permeates all of my lives but my place here is about my posters.   I'll dissect them a little:   a few are clones of myself, several others friends of those near-hearted people and I might guess aligned pretty closely with my circumstances and thinking.   There are a few enough older than me that they do this as an entertainment and to be nice.  And the others?? All young very engaged, smart young people.   ah ha. 


The need to think here today is again the news and the key, major shifting worldwide which is almost entirely overwhelming.   Even if you discount the silent long range worry about carbon and oil, budgets, overthrows, labor demonstrations, unemployment, rising food prices, Michele Bachmann; it can hardly get worse.   [Actually it did just get worse b/c Newt Gingrich just declared his intention to run for President.]  What is everyone else doing?   If you aren't bankrolling lobbyists and think tanks, what are you doing?   If you aren't pedaling as fast as you can to protect your money, what are you doing?   If helping at the food shelf each week isn't enough, what else do you do?

So clear to me again, that in my circles anyway, I'm a downer.  But, my need to push for change, to read and think about what's on our hands has found an outlet.  It's isn't the talk of the day.  [Did solving cultural problems ever used to be the talk of the day?]  Encouraging those who aren't bankrolled might a way to summarize...

Remember Karen that this IS your path.  I drifted and watched and wandered boldly through the crack in the door and I came here.   It's the right use of my talents.  I know why I have this kind of life and the couple decades stretching ahead of me.   A lot of the time I'm very, very invigorated by that.   As my cousin Barb practically hollered out from GA last week..... " this is VERY empowering".  

It is right for some others too, but I need to weigh every week what I bring forward.  I need to consider how much opining I do and I need to think constantly of the young people who are with me.   What an honor that is. 

Mostly think of the kids.  Find things that can help THEM feel like the world can get a hold of things, that their future is something vigorous and brilliant.

no voice in the noise.

Feeling particularly down heartened today as I read about what all the Republicans expect to cut out or repeal or turn back.   Transportation funding, new energy development, weatherizing dollars...on and on.   No use contacting my rep and pretty much no use being one voice on the other side.   Considered floating something out on FB with a honest plea for suggestions..."just how *can* i pipe up and to whom????".

Stopped tonight then to remember that this is territory that i've already traveled.   No, i won't be heard and no, putting a call in or a letter out isn't anything.  HOWEVER, work harder to identify those voices that ARE currently heard, find smart articulate, thoughtful, informed people visible in the media and to the legislators, encourage them to stay the course.   POST them, gather more posters~!  post more people.    i *do* have a way to make a difference.  

It wasn't that i was discouraged w. the underground effort, but for a bit there i forgot that this is my way.   this, as one new person on board said, ... this IS the only way we'll make change happen.

reach up a level or two!

karen, i'm not so much about the green thing

so, the tone needs to change.   in truth i'm not so much about the green thing either.  Sal said...."i don't get excited about the things people do to make themselves feel good about the environment as it's all for naught if we don't curb population growth".   and you know what?,  i've been there also.   is it that i didn't dig deep enough for the pivotal issue?  did i shy away from what is almost unaddressable?   maybe, but i have a plank to step out on; i haven't given up on it all as a long time friend has.   different personalities is part but as i ponder it, i'm quite sure my impetus is the "fierce" mother i am.  it's not an option to turn away from it.   i've latched on to posting as my part.  i must though, continually look at how to make it bigger, how it will appeal to others and still be true to me.  

environmental and green isn't what it is to me.   maybe i don't even need to lay out my energy concerns.   i had thought i might draw people that way, but possibly a wider net is the way to bring posters together.   does that mean tempering it?  doses of nice?  that's also not it for me.   doses of interesting and doses of industry, passion, creativity.

at issue here is a rejection.  when people i know well reject the game, i don't react so well.   i've accepted the fact now but haven't learned the lesson entirely.
k

Is it useless to take my morning to write each of our MN congresspeople and in particular is it useless to write a long letter to Michele Bachman.   It may be.   Postcards go to most; they *may* be pulled out of the mail, they *may* be shown to the congress person.   My hope is the that the flood of mail will be what matters.   I continue to hope that people CARE about our politics and not just TALK about our politics.   The big question is what does "care" mean and how do these elected officials really represent us.   

Since I was pleading for civility I was polite to M. Bachman.   I didn't even mention that I disagree vehemently with everything that she stands for.   I didn't remind her that she represents me also and might occasionally need to think on the other side of her line.  Instead I asked her to change the tone of her Tea Party.   I suggested that if she saw herself as a key and visible public figure in our national arena that she WAS one who could call for the change of rhetoric, take responsibility for the current abysmal theater and CHANGE it.   She'll never see the letter.  Why would I bother.  ? 

Then I think of the posting.   What if it were 2 years from now and we had 1,000 people posting.  Maybe they come in and out, write when moved or interested.   What if THEN we had such a tragedy as this and THEN there were hundreds and hundreds of hand written postcards piling up on out politicians desks.  Posters free to take whatever angle they wanted, express any political allegiance they embraced but being GRASSROOTS, standing up LOUDLY and together and being noticed.   wouldn't that be important and isn't it possible?  [i'm getting a little teary].  can we make that happen?

stats

paper eval:

oh, my goodness, just checked the "where" part of my site stats and during the month of Dec 2010 we had 642 hits in the U.S., 3 from the U.K., 2 in Peru [a known poster there... ;)], 1 in the Netherlands and 1 in Norway.

still very weird to think that i can scheme and launch something from here that is read from there.
and there.
and there.

paperless eval:

i continue to THRIVE on this idea.   i have no doubt that it can be something and i can't foresee a time that i wouldn't be interested in doing this.    have i found my place?  is this fluid idea the me for years to come.   i'm not just "wondering" now, im a step past that and comfortably and confidently just putting it on.
k