"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.