It's Time.

"You have been telling people that this is the eleventh hour.
Now you must go back and tell people that this is the hour!
And there are things to be considered:
Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your Garden.
It is time to speak your truth.
Create your community.
Be good to yourself.
And not look outside of yourself for a leader.
This could be a good time!
There is a river flowing very fast.
It is so great and fast that there are those who will be afraid.
They will hold on to the shore.
They will feel that they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.
Know that the river has its destination.
The elders say that we must let go of the shore,
push off into the middle of the river,
keep our eyes open,
and our heads above the water.
See who is in there with you and celebrate.
At this time we are to take nothing personally,
least of all, ourselves.
For the moment that we do,
our spiritual growth comes to a halt.
The time of the lone wolf is over.
Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.
We are the ones that we have been waiting for."

- The Elders, Oraibi, Arizona Hopi Nation

"Do You Guys Want Some Advice?"

09/30/2010 Moon in Cancer

Today was a great day out on the streets except a song that you can't sing was stuck in my head. We talked to some extremely rad people and got a lot of good and fun work done. I was pretty intensely aggressive for the last few days, so I brought along a Moonstone to put a little yin in my yang and calm the nervous system a bit. It worked and I'm glad that I did it. The people that we talked to today were generally rad. We knocked on a lot of empty houses and met a lot of cool people. Highlights.

*We met a lady that was really into weeding, which is not an asset that many people we've talked to have had. In fact, she might be the first. Definitely the neighborhood wants this lady as a friend.

*We met an older gentleman that was watching Wrestling on the TV. We talked to him for a while and he had a pretty intense twinkle in his eye. During our conversation there was a point that he said, "I'm not paying any attention to anything you're saying right now." I looked to where his gaze was directed and a very beautiful woman was walking down the street. I laughed, and he did too.

*We talked to a couple with the last name Richmond. We were pretty sure that this couple was related to the founders of the neighborhood, but were disillusioned. They're from California, so our dreams of personal recollections of the neighborhood was dashed to the jagged rocks in front of our eyes.

*We talked to a lady with the loudest Clothes Dryer I have ever heard outside of some early industrial laundromat. She liked fruit trees and wanted a neighborhood basketball hoop.

*Our last conversation was a 19-20 year old that's just about to go out into the world as an Americorps volunteer. He knew everything there was to know... We kept asking questions about what he'd like to see in the neighborhood, he kept kind of answering. Then he said the words. "Do You Guys Want Some Advice?" Cyd and I immediately and instantly said "No". We just really didn't want his advice. But sometimes advice is so close to the surface that it just has to come out. He did preface by saying that he worked for Grassroots Campaigns Incorporated as a canvasser for an unspecified length of time and he "averaged $100 to $200 a night".

He went on to let us know that we should shorten our "rap". We proceeded to let him know that we were well aware of traditional canvassing methods as between Cyd and I we've had about 12 years of canvassing experience between us. But we were actually working to have conversations, not just extract the largest amount of money we could out of the neighborhood for our "cause". So we talked a little longer to explain the project, to which he replied "Oh, that's a pretty good idea", to which we replied "Of course". Have a good time in Americorps kid! You are not a Jedi yet.

Back to the Streets

09/28/2010 Moon in Gemini

Today, we're getting ready to head back to the streets after a short hiatus where we created a task list for the project that's been decided by the community. That was quite a fun project, and I'd like to give a shout to all the people that helped to make it a success. The next step is to go out and talk to some community members in order to build some excitement and fill some of the vacant volunteer slots. I personally am tired of development, and want to get down to the nitty-gritty of implementation and promotion.

We're definitely hoping to get some help from the fine members of City Repair on this project. We've sent quite a few e-mails out to the community, including some e-mails that we didn't mean to send out. They weren't pornography or anything, they were just these random automatic e-mails that came from the project management software we were trying to use. That was a big oops. Sometimes development doesn't go the way one wants it to go.

I've been feeling super excited lately about the potential of the project to be a success! The reality is that most of the people we're talking to are definitely into the ideas, and our job is to combat the basic inertia that's inherent in human nature and move people towards concerted action in their own communities. The reality is that if we don't work to organize ourselves we tend to be organized by our fears or our prejudices. This process of being led by our fears tends to take us headlong into dark chapters of our collective history. Fascism, Witch Hunts, Religious or Racial Persecution, Repression, Regression and War. I'll leave it at that for now.

The Sickness and the Health

09/23/2010 Full Moon in Aries

Wow, I've been feeling sick for the last couple of days. Not sure exactly what's been going on, but if I had to describe it, it's like I was a computer with a typically stable power source that got unplugged and had to operate with a compromised battery. But feeling better now, and even though I was sick, I managed to accomplish some good work with the help of Cyd. This whole week has been given over to developing tasks and ways to track what's getting done with those tasks. Hey everyone, if you want to get involved in a Portland project that needs some help to get off the ground click here.

Basically, the project is to bring attention to the crosswalks in the Richmond Neighborhood in a creative and artistic way. A real "Reclaim the Streets" moment is possible through this project, and we're excited to get it off the ground. We've created affinity teams that can operate independently and help to inform each other about what's going on. For more on the teams click here So here we stand, getting ready to create an e-mail to send out to all the people we've talked to in the neighborhood so far and to get this thing started. Welcome everyone, to a new season of getting things initiated. Also known as fall.

Twas a Lovely Meeting

09/18/2010 Moon in Aquarius

Jupiter conjuncts Uranus today. And it was good. We had a meeting at Owen Spencer's house today, where we brought a bunch of food, and had a very solid meeting structure for the day planned, which kind of fell apart in the third quarter. (That's a football reference) It was a pretty good turnout, I think around 18-20 people and we all got to know each other and got to talk about some of the project ideas that had come from the community. It really fun to be there, we had a circle up, where we said our name, one thing we loved about Richmond and checked in. That was really good.

After that we announced the three top ideas that had come from the community, we broke into small group discussion about each of the ideas. The three top ideas were better crosswalks in the neighborhood, a community generated art project, and community gardens. What ended up happening is that the crosswalk group and the community artwork group ended up blending the two ideas. That was amazing because both groups did that independently.

So when we came back to the main group and people presented their ideas, there was almost unanimous buy-in on the combined project from all those that were in attendance. Some of the ideas that were floated were really cool, like a community regenerated crosswalk project on Division, where the lines in the street are highly visible and are also pieces of community generated art. I thought this idea was rocking! I also thought that the ease with which the group was able to pick out salient points, and connect to bigger pictures and to possible organizations that could help us were amazing too!

At the end of the meeting we cleaned up and talked about a potential game night at Owen's house on Thursdays, which was very exciting because I've heard that they have Munchkin. There was a lot more that happened, but our next step is to get all that information to all the people that were in attendance and offer to share the developing documents through google docs.

All in all, a great day, and a pretty good meeting regardless of the picture that I placed at the top of the page.

A Day to Remember

09/14/2010 Moon in Sagittarius

Today was great. For a lot of reasons, but mainly because today is the 9th anniversary of my wife and I becoming a couple. We celebrated this day a lot more before we got married in 2007 and had a more formal date to give ceremony to. But enough about me, what about the project? We went to Owen's house to talk to him about this weekends neighborhood meeting. We also talked about the potential of social media to get kids in trouble in their adult life. I'm of the opinion that the more you can own the dumb decisions of your youth, the less power they have over you.

The canvassing today was a little bit hard, Cyd and I were unable to match our energy very well, which led to a few awkward moments. We did talk to a person that had gone to Burning Man where I got some advice on how to build a proper shade structure if I ever want to go in the future. That was pretty great. I got onto my bike a little before 9pm today to come home and celebrate my wife and I's time together, that was great too. In general it was a good day.

DIY Development

09/09/2010 Moon in Libra

It's development time! Woot! I'm spending time with Cyd creating systems to pull people that we talk to at the door immediately into actionable community participation. It's fun. Part of me would rather be out knocking on doors, but it's definitely important to get the systems together so that we're not wasting energy, as that would be rather unsustainable of us. Today was honestly great, there was lots of conversation, lots of love, and lots of strategy. I got to see some old friends that I used to work with in the Greenpeace office.

Other than that, we are gearing up for getting down. We talked to Owen today, and it looks like he'll possibly, with housemate permission be able to open his house up for the meeting that we're planning on Saturday the 18th to decide which project to move ahead with. There are some really good ideas, including community gardens, intersection repairs, murals and many more. It seems like things are coming together and I'm super excited about it. I'd love to see more people in Richmond follow this blog though. Not because of narcissism, but because the links I've been finding are really fun. It's awesome!