Yesterday, as usual on a Friday morning, I got the kids off to school, worked out, made myself a veggie/goat cheese omelet, boiled water for my yerba mate and sat down to write a Feel Good post. I’ve come to rather enjoy my Friday rhythm. Whatever I’m writing is usually light (if I write at all), it’s the time of the week when I wrap up loose ends to ensure a work-free weekend, and on this particular Friday, I was to introduce the second Home Work project — one that I’ve been totally excited about — so the day was almost certain to be a good one.
By noon, however, when I still didn’t have much to speak of save for a few properly sized photos and a paragraph or two I’d probably end up scrapping, I started wondering what I could possibly be stuck on. This was easy writing, after all, and around subject I happen to love.
By two, when I still hadn’t produced anything publishable, I decided to get out and clear my head. Circumventing the annual spring Maya Festival enveloping the whole neighborhood to my left, I hung a right and headed toward the cemetary. On my ten-minute walk, I passed:
- a cluster of older gentlemen who looked to be talking weather or shop or maybe fishing considering the pile of crustacean parts at their feet
- a grade school boy peddling his kindergarten-aged sister home on his handlebars (no helmets, you might have guessed)
- a mama with her year-old baby peeking over the side of a deep, woven basket strapped to the back of her rusty cruiser
- a half dozen preschoolers kicking a mostly-deflated soccer ball (attended by no one but street dogs)
- no less than thirty children under age ten walking home from school in happy, adult-less packs
- a pair of mamas who looked to be sisters hanging laundry, their babies waving at me from the dirt at their feet
- the three young guys who run the tienda closest to my house, hunched together on fruit crates, watching Twilight with subtitles.
- the same jovial fella perched on the curb I pass every afternoon who flashes a friendly, toothless smile when he sees me coming
- two tiny abuelitas who live on my street, their embroidered white dresses a tidy contrast to their wrinkled, tropical tans
- a proud cook’s grandkids busy at play in a water spigot next to her sizzling taco cart
Back home again, it was a little more clear to me why I was having such a hard time writing about cultivating community, of all things. Because what I see in the street every day here — a people happy not because of money but because of connection, a people still largely untouched by the propaganda of fear, and an easy way of life known to many of our parents but quite foreign to the children of developed nations — has taken what I once intuited about local living; what I once aspired to as a campy quest for theoretical sustainability and grown it into a driving passion rooted in the belief that thriving local communities are not just essential to but the essence of a thriving culture, and how do you sum up your heart of hearts in a few measly paragraphs?
I guess you don’t. I guess if true change is what we’re after, we each offer what it is we have to offer, trust the rest to the greater good, tuck our ideals in our back pockets and roll up our sleeves, just like they do.
Home Work Project #2: Cultivate Community
If project #1 was wide open, this one is downright bra burning. The only rule I propose is that you take on something you’ll enjoy and not feel overwhelmed by.
Just to get your creative juices flowing, here are a few ideas off the top of my head:
- Invite your neighbors for tea or libations or a pool tournament or gunny sack races.
- Organize a junk or clothing swap. Clean out your garage or craft closet or toy explosion and make a sizable “things I can be happy without” pile. Put up signs and spread the word amongst the neighbors. You could totally have my stash of embroidery hoops and leather scraps in exchange for your sifter and vintage tins, if we were swappin’.
- Be the one to convince the homeowner’s association to install speed bumps and allow street ball because your patient, well-presented argument makes more sense than theirs.
- Find someone elderly, bake for him and listen to his stories. You never know, he might need time with your kids as much as they need a neighborhood grandpa.
- Get together with your crafty friends and yarn bomb something.
- Go to the park, engage with the other moms and invite them over spontaneously without apologizing for the state of your house.
- Find someone with a green thumb and ask for advise and cuttings of their plants. Better yet, invite them to your yard and get their two bits about your garden.
- Barter goods and services with someone whose work you admire.
- Promote a neighborhood clean up or green up day. Maybe you pick up trash, maybe you make sure your neighborhood receives all recycling sevices available or create an apartment-wide compost pile with signs showing how to use it.
- Leave random notes in people’s mailbox telling them what you like about them. Make people wonder.
- Promote a neighborhood Easter egg hunt or a first of spring bonfire.
- Find out about abandoned spaces near your house that might could be used for pick up ball games or community gardens or kite flying every Sunday.
Or, if you’re barely treading water yourself, attend someone else’s shindig or simply swap kids with another mom while you get your groceries. Kids are the ultimate when it comes to brainstorming and often come up with clever, simple ideas, too. Here are a few more:
When it comes time to compile our results (I’ll post four weeks from now on April 12th), send along…
- your first name and location
- a brief description of your undertaking
- a photo that captures some part of the process or story
My own plan is admittedly ambitious, but only because I’m kind of on fire about my own community right now, you gotta go with it when you’re feelin’ it and I finally don’t have a baby on my hip:
- I’m going to host a potluck brunch for all the lady friends I’ve met in town so far (I love a potluck almost as much as I love brunch almost as much as I love connecting my people).
- We’re going to get involved with our teeny tiny farmer’s market, offering first kambucha, then yard eggs, then whatever else we can get to grow.
- I am going to find out who’s in charge of the market and offer to promote it around town every week.
Here’s what our farmer’s market looked like as of last weekend. So far, someone is selling sunflower sprouts…
someone else has vegan cheese…
and a family from Germany is selling fresh-baked bread…
There were also some metaphysical something or another and a few gypsies lightening their load…
…and that’s…about it. The competition’s pretty fierce, but I think we’ll manage.
I already smuggled my kambucha mushroom over the border and I now just need to find a couple of giant glass jars and keep working on the right blend of gingery and bubbly. (Anyone out there brewed THE PERFECT kambucha?)
As for yard eggs — Hunter has agreed to help me build our coop this month (truth is, I’ll be helping him) and we’ve met a guy who breeds chickens for cock fighting, so we’ve got at least one source for hens! No idea what our coop will look like yet, but thankfully, we’ve no neighborhood association to answer to, and there’s certainly no shortage of inspiration around us in the make-do-with-what-you-have department…
So, whether your greater motivation is economic and political restoration…
A proper community, we should remember also, is a commonwealth: a place, a resource, an economy. It answers the needs, practical as well as social and spiritual, of its members – among them the need to need one another. The answer to the present alignment of political power with wealth is the restoration of the identity of community and economy. – Wendell Berry
a desire to share the load and joy with those around you…
One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn’t as individuals. When we pool our strength and share the work and responsibility, we can welcome many people, even those in deep distress, and perhaps help them find self-confidence and inner healing.― Jean Vanier
or the acquisition of age-old wisdom…
Everybody is a story. When I was a child, people sat around kitchen tables and told their stories. We don’t do that so much anymore. Sitting around the table telling stories is not just a way of passing time. It is the way the wisdom gets passed along. The stuff that helps us to live a life worth remembering.― Rachel Naomi Remen
I have no doubt there’ll be a whole lot of good that comes of this project and that we’ll each gain even more than we give.
03/16/2013 at 8:38 pm
I’m really on fire about this one! I’ve got a clothing swap planned for early April, so I might submit that one. Or maybe one of our neighborhood potlucks. Lots of options! Thanks for such an inspiring post- cultivating community has been on my mind so much in the past year.
03/16/2013 at 8:56 pm
Can you tell us more about where your kids go to school? I’m likely sending my two oldest off to school for the first time this fall, and trying to imagine life without the “ideal” of homeschooling. It’s a big step for this mama!
03/16/2013 at 9:52 pm
Glad you finally got something down because this is good stuff. I’m not easily inspired to get connected. I’m most-likely to hide when I see people coming rather than engage. But these ideas are attainable and inspire visions of a community I could actually NOT want to dodge. Here’s hoping…
03/16/2013 at 10:00 pm
I’m excited to start another homework project! However, I’m pretty introverted (aka socially awkward) person, so this will be a little challenging.
03/17/2013 at 10:45 pm
Okay, we still haven’t gotten our seeds planted yet and now we are supposed to TALK with people!?! You are a radical one :)
I like this notion and since we just had March break we did push ourselves to be more social and build our little circle of friends by spending time with them. Perhaps I will consider more of this.
One of the social events had myself and three other moms I met during mat leave get together. Perhaps I will seek their permission to share the pics.
Thanks again for helping me move beyond my comfort level.
03/18/2013 at 2:26 pm
I am excited about this one! My daughters and I planted seeds, but towards the end of the first challenge as we live in Lake Placid, NY and it was way too early. It is still too early as the seedlings grow leggy from not enough sun. We will start our true batch of seeds in a few weeks in the greenhouse, but having even the leggy seedlings on our table makes us feel that spring is coming despite the 16 inches of snow forecasted for tonight and tomorrow! But we have struggled with a feeling of community here and I am excited to reach out in a few different ways! Next weekend we are going to host a night sledding party with lights for the girls in our dorm ( we live at a boarding school), as well as the faculty and the local kids. A fire, s’mores, and hot chocolate or cider as well as the sledding hopefully will foster good feelings!. We are also going to attempt to invite a different acquaintance over every Saturday night for dinner for the next few weeks in hopes of fostering stronger bonds. We are also getting involved over the summer in the idea of a work party. Every month we will meet at a different persons house or farm and do four hours of work followed by food, libations, and music. That way everyone gets some extra hands to accomplish projects and a good party to boot! I cannot wait to see and hear other people’s ideas!
03/18/2013 at 3:56 pm
Building community has been my personal project for a while now… too long, actually, because I keep trying and not having much success. But it’s back on top of the priority list and I love getting encouragement and support from all directions, because clearly I need it! If you find the perfect recipe for ‘booch let us know, but I suspect there is more environmental impact on it than would allow me to recreate yours. I use 3T jasmine green tea and 3T assam black tea for 6 quarts of water and 2c sugar, brew in two gallon jars, then add sliced ginger as a secondary ferment. Sometimes it’s awesome, sometimes just OK. But I’m sure yours will be a hit at the farmer’s market!
03/20/2013 at 3:04 pm
This is a great idea and a great post for people to read and ponder, whether they intend to participate or not. I love the idea of the work party once a month-that is AWESOME!!! What a great thing for kids to be involved in growing up! I grew up an only child, away from extended family, and with divorced parents who both worked constantly, from when I was 2 onwards, so I have come to understand that I have always kind of been without community, as my parents have always both been kind of loners themselves. I am a decently outgoing person so I am always looking for ways to build a group, for myself and for my children to grow up in. One of the reasons I think this post is good for others to read is that I have run into the same weird scenario so many times it makes me feel there are too many people out there who let themselves become shut off from any community (for whatever reason-there are many-usually because we become too busy with our own household stuff, which I myself suffer from today also) and begin to see anyone pursuing a new friendship or trying to build relationships or community as “stalkerish”. There seem to be so many new unspoken “rules and boundaries” around the new ways people communicate these days, mostly through texting and social networking, things are just so different than when I was even in college. I wish more people would just get out there and say, do the work party idea or have the potluck or neighborhood get-together…Most people today look at you like you are crazy if you even suggest doing anything “extra” from their hectic schedule…and then begin to list all the reasons why they can’t…OR just never respond…I think many people have become so disconnected from others, and maybe some take community forgranted because they always found themselves in one without having to seek it out or learn how to do anything to maintain it…I really like that you brought this up; it is very thought-provoking…
03/20/2013 at 8:24 pm
I have bad postpartum depression and wish someone in their community would reach out to me. I know you need to help yourself and be the change you want to see etc, etc… but I’ve tried to start conversations, form friendships with other moms at the park and library and it always seems like they get to a point where — besides commenting on my baby’s cute clothing — they are not interested in talking and they start inching away (body language) or just take off all together. Im not pushy or weird, honest! I small talk, give appropriate compliments, ask a few questions like “so what do you do?” “How old is your little one?” I dont know why its so hard for me to make friends with other moms. Maybe they don’t want ‘another friend’ as though it is just another thing to add to their to-do list. I dunno. But I don’t have a single friend and almost every time I go to the park and see a group of women sitting together with kids all around, laughing and sharing their experiences…my loneliness is compounded. I’ve left many times with tears streaming down my face the moment I turn toward home, and I return to my empty neighborhood where everyone is so isolated that they even DRIVE to pick up their mail. I mean, here your mailbox is no more than two houses away and people STAY IN THEIR CAR and get it, then drive into their garage and shut it before I see an actual person. I must look totally like a fish out of water because I actually walk with my daughter around the neighborhood and to the park and only rely on the car when I need to. Anyway, I’m not sure why im writing other than to share this with someone because I have no one and to encourage all of you reading this to please, reach out to others!!!! Especially middle-aged moms, please reach out to the younger moms! I would love to have an seasoned mom full of wisdom and life experience, who knows what the baby stage is like to just share a cup of tea with me. I can’t tell you how much that would mean to me!