Chalk it up!

08/20/2010 Moon in Capricorn

Mercury Retrograde began today. Cyd and I got to work on getting ready for the next big step. We're having a meeting on Sunday with the community. The meeting will be a Potluck and we're hoping that some people show up even though the weather people are pretty sure it's going to rain. We've got to get together some kind of container for water, but if needs be, we can just buy a few gallons or use our Brita's. Today, by working and putting one foot in front of the other, I was able to keep my mind focused on what's in front of me rather than what's behind me.

We talked to a few people today in the Southwest quadrant of Richmond today. There was a lady that was very interesting and informative. She lived close to a new development of condo's and had worked with the Richmond Neighborhood Association to make sure the community's needs were being taken into account. She went to a lot of meetings and organized her community, but when life threw her a curveball that demanded more of her time, the energy that she helped to generate dissipated. It goes to show that leadership, and spearheading are very important aspects to community organizing. Although it didn't seem to be the case with her, it is easy for people that are involved in activism of any sort to experience activist burnout.

Also today, we talked to a couple that are expecting a baby not too long from now. They were awesome, and talked about their desire to see more gardening in their area, they were willing to give up their yard for raised garden beds, but didn't have the gardening skills to make it happen. They were both very interested in living as low of an impact life as they could, which I thought was admirable. After the conversations that we had, we realized it was important to go out into the community and advertise the Sunday meet-up.

To do this, we needed two things:
1. Sidewalk Chalk
2. Our legs

For #1 we used some given sidewalk chalk, but realized that wouldn't be enough, so we purchased some. We left the message of the coming meeting by using #2 and walking around the areas that we had organized and writing a short message in chalk on key corners that would likely have a lot of foot traffic. We're not putting any big expectation into turnout, but we're hoping to have enough neighborhood participation to get some projects and events going.