Red, White and Blues (adapted 2026)

 

Happy birthday America, land of contradictions

—and of truths, still becoming

I have a bus pass for the month of June. It was an impulse buy. As I bought it, the voice in my head suggested fervently Make this purchase. The cash is in your pocket. The working premise in this self-talk: give yourself a financial incentive to break free from your routine You are in a rut.

I travel daily. It is most often in a family car, designated as mine, but not owned by me. I rarely walk anywhere. When I do, I fill my phone camera with images of what I notice along the way: nature and human inspiration, painted on rocks. A couple mile trek, amidst beautiful allergens, results in a full day headache. Google Maps estimates 30 minutes for this hilly walk.

I have learned to calculate ‘taking in’ my surroundings for any excursion outside of my routine.  Anything that should take about 30 minutes is easily an hour. Some might call this lack of focus AD(h)D. Others may view this as experiencing what life has to offer, especially in retirement. I have difficulty doing leisure activities, until I do. Then, I become absent-mindedly absorbed in living. Deadlines, now of my own construction, skew my ‘maven-time’ choices.

Full circle, my daily travel is three miles. I leave home for the TV station. I return six to twelve hours later. When I count the years, my life has been in maven-time, I use both hands and all my fingers.

Maven is a very apt name for an Apache Software tool that can build any number of projects into desired outputs from accumulated knowledge. For me, it is an aspiration. I am driven, in the moment and for the future, to bring people and ideas together in service of something greater. In retirement, my work is optimizing and connecting to possibilities from years of accumulated experience. It is work, until it isn’t. To achieve brain collaboration—debunking my personal left-right brain myth—is one part ‘as life allows’ and another, opening terrifying doors. 

I am early-retired and on a limited income. Life’s choices find me living on a hill in a suburb rather than in a walkable city. Here everything except the public library, and where I spend my days, the community TV station, has a price. I really cannot afford impulse purchases of any size. I tell myself this will change when I start my Social Security Benefits at 67. Even though I am not on any medication, as is the case with most Medicare eligible people, healthcare insurance costs factor large in strategic life decisions. I volunteer full-time. If I were to be paid what they would strain to afford, every penny would ultimately pay for subsidized health insurance.  Obama Care is a benefit and a box. My countdown to Social Security is now the fingers on one hand. Someday, no more fingers to count and Medicare for all-at least in my family.

Time does move on. Soon it is late June. My bus pass is to expire by weeks end. I’ve taken one ride. The impatient voice in my head is now contradictory. Be less impulsive! That is not the problem. Yes. Life deserves MORE life! Go to the city. You know you can do free, freeing things there.

The urgency of liberation stalks my thoughts. Memories break through the disparaging self-talk.  I am getting nothing accomplished anyway, so I yield. Where would I go this time of year when I lived in the city? The answer pops through like sun at the end of the Westville tunnel or the building itself:  The Beinecke.

With an assist from Google, I confirm the bus and Beinecke library schedules. In a fleeting moment, I remember the avid quilter from the corporate IT help-desk.

Judy, an affable redhead, tapped me on the shoulder. “Look. I have something super-incredible to show you. It will be a verb someday.” She laughs. She deftly saves what I was working on. She enters ‘google’ into my computer’s browser. My eyes track her fingers. She points to the word SEARCH displayed on my monitor besides a long empty rectangle. She instructs: “Type anything.” “Type your name.” ‘My name’ always gives me pause. I type “dandelion” A page of responses spew back: Plant. Wine. Health. Taraxacum. I take a moment to marvel.

This rabbit hole of a game, and her enthusiasm, attracts others. My tension escalates. Play. Work. Work Play. I excuse myself, suggesting I need some water. When I return to my desk, the distracted cadre is clustered a few cubicles away around a co-worker.

I extricate myself from my memory. I re-engage with year 2018. I Google. It is now without question a verb. With the words ‘coffee wall street new haven’, I find the ‘Blue State Coffee Menu.’ I pocket enough cash to buy lunch. But, I don’t.

I relish, with mounting anticipation, the reunion of my city and our memories. My city is a bus ride away. Within an hour, I am on the North Haven/Wallingford/Meriden bus. I will arrive, as I always do: Temple at Center Green.

In this moment, I am grateful the exhibit is not ‘virtual’. There is a synchronicity of mystery and wonder that you subsume when you step inside any museum. Today, I need such a step.

Stumbling Off Main Streets

In 1974, the student ‘me’ literally stumbles on Wall St. I trip on the uneven sidewalk, distracted by the unexpected. I am walking toward Broadway. Suddenly, a bold geometric white-ish building glistens before me.

Broadway is several city blocks from downtown. My usual route, walking in the opposite direction of traffic from New Haven Public Library, is on Elm Street. Occasionally, I walk down Grove Street past the brownstone wall and iron fence of the ‘city of the dead’ to the roundabout where Whalley, Goffe and Dixwell Avenues converge. In the four years I have walked about New Haven, I have always stayed its main streets. But this day changed all that.

 I walk up Wall St. Unlike the city-owned surface parking lot near the highway entrance, or the city block filled with the Superior Court and Church, this section, I tell myself, should look like the pseudo gothic stone buildings of Yale. But soon, I see neon in the window of a rustic brick 3-story row house with a street level storefront. It is unexpected, but not alien. A pizzeria. New Haven is a city known for pizza. Then, on a large expanse in a plaza, appears a one-of-a-kind structure. As I catch myself from falling, I pause and marvel.

I would not let myself imagine then, that I, a pedestrian, could actually go inside the pizza place, coffee shop or, as it turns out, the library. However, not feeling welcomed was more about my door phobia, then anything specific to the local establishments.

A few weeks later, a transit ad on the inside of a bus heading downtown changes that. There is a picture of the alien building. The details refer to a public celebration, a tenth anniversary. I pull the calendar from my book bag. I scribble aside Saturday July 3^rd: yale. marble building. 12 - 4.

 

Years earlier, I would have been admonished by a new resident of Liberation House—the ex-offender halfway house where I served as a VISTA volunteer— had I crossed him on the street. “You a crazy white lady. You best stay on the main streets. Never mind no short cuts, else you be cut short. You hearin’ me Sista. I’d be happy to escort ya. But, you know the rules. I am half-way locked up.”

 

He may have been right, except for one thing. I was the alien that belonged in this neighborhood. No one messed with the Halfway House residents, or me, the white lady the residents protected in return for helping them learn to read, find jobs and arrange visits with their children.

Community-centric Truths in the Bicentennial Year

On Yale University’s campus, at the corner of streets converted to walkways, is a principal repository for the world’s rare books. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, located at 121 Wall St., is entirely devoted to rare books and manuscripts. Rare means printed anywhere in the world before 1800, and books, newspapers and broadsides printed in the United States before 1851.After being deposited downtown by bus, I take campus walkways to reach the exhibit. From Elm St., Rose walk extends to Alexander Walk which ends at the mobile-like ‘Gallows and Lollipops’. It is an abstract sculpture by Alexander Calder installed in 1975. It stands rather than hangs. Painted in primary colors, its steel elements hover in constant motion, as if they are an invitation to play. Its geometry is an expressive counterpoint to the exacting symmetry of the observable library. For a few minutes in late afternoon, the sunlight refracts through the marble, spewing color bands of light onto Hewitt Quadrangle. 

Without previously attending the anniversary Open House, I would certainly have wondered How can rare books be relevant to the community? Frankly, I could not fathom the connection between dinosaurs and environmental justice either Whatever that was when the Peabody Museum’s annual events began two decades later. The Peabody Museum’s community-centric event would become an annual fixture of New Haven’s MLK Day celebration.

Since 1976 was long before Google became a verb, I do not recall exactly how I came to expect free refreshments. As a graduate student, I was no longer on the college meal plan. This added enticement sealed the deal for me to check out the writings of Thomas Jefferson, and more, for the second time. Besides, another win in the battle with my door-phobia was always welcome. Ironically, I never did partake in a cup of tea served, in a roped off area, near the library guard.

My first visit inside Beinecke was kinesthetically memorable. The sunny day gave new meaning to the allure of six-stories of translucent cathedral-like walls of Vermont marble. Once inside, the rise of the glass tower of books through the core of the building amplified my feelings of insignificance. The stacks were reserved for permitted use. I mustered up the courage to walk through the revolving doors into the mezzanine. In a sunken courtyard, visible but not accessible from the plaza, is a pyramid, circle, and cube. Awareness of the boundaries, more than gently, disrupted my sense of well-being and welcome.

It was Yale after all. I was a student from the public college down the street. Southern Connecticut State College was a public bus ride across the city, and then, a short walk into Yale campus, on streets comprised entirely of university properties.

The Bicentennial exhibit was awkwardly community centric. Once again, the historic ‘Dunlap Broadside’ was carefully exhumed from a sub-basement drawer for the nation's founding exhibit. Yale’s copy is one of 26 known to survive. The first public printing of the ‘Dunlap Broadside’ version of the Declaration of Independence is assumed to be 200. Within weeks, it would be printed in newspapers. The library has copies from the July 15, 1776, edition of The Connecticut Courant and Hartford Weekly Intelligencer. Like the tip of an iceberg, the role of newspapers in democracy begins to take root in my conscience. Like a tip of an iceberg, the landmark look of the library obfuscates its true presence—with three underground levels extending under the plaza, most of the library is hidden.

While more ponderous than accessible, the initial step inside the revolving glass doors was a transformative experience for me. Upon leaving, I felt more whole than I had upon arrival. Maybe it was the title of the sculpture that puzzled the pieces of my experience together. “Nowhere, yet somehow familiar,” is how Isamu Noguchi describes his assemblage of the earth, the sun and, most provocatively, the cube of chance. The senseless paradox of my feelings of unworthiness dissipated. I was the community the curators had hoped to reach.

June 2018 - Bus Pass Day #2 ‘We Hold These Truths’

The promotional materials at the library entrance demonstrate that decades of programming evolved the Annual Nation’s Founding Exhibit into a city-wide experience. In the library mezzanine, the latest brochure announces a July 5^th reading. It details complimentary exhibits at other locations. The We Hold These Truth brochure features John Trumbull’s painting, “The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.” at Yale University Art Gallery. To invoke curiosity, it tells the reader: “The painting bares a true likeness of all the founding fathers. Mr. Trumbull traveled across America to meet them and sketch them in his miniature version of the painting.”

On my previous June bus ride, I discovered a side entrance to that gallery on High St. There is no signage. It appears to be for people who know where they are going. It leads to an interior sculpture garden soon to be the temporary home for ‘Gallows and Lollipops’. I also discover John Trumbull is buried under the building That is monumental.

The promotion continues:

Actors, in costume, will read the Declaration of Independence and Frederick Douglass’ 1852 oration, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

Brochures of exhibits from recent years are also on display in the entrance. Frederick Douglass had been featured in several recent programs.

In 1935, The Franklin Papers, the most extensive collection of materials by, about, and around Franklin and his times to be found in a single collection anywhere in the world, was gifted to be among the ‘rare’. In more recent history, The Fredrick Douglass Papers compiled by Yale University Press in 2009 are added to the library’s rare holdings.

Curators mingle rare into the ethos of current events by juxta positioning documents and providing context with labels that introduce unknowns like ‘Nigger Heaven’, or reexamine linguistic concepts like ‘Under God’, ‘equality’, and ‘freedom.’ 

History’s callouses are brought to light with the purposeful side-by-side placement of the “Declaration of Sentiments” Report from the 1848 Woman’s Rights Convention and the Dunlap Broadside.

 “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal … ” is viewed  aside the ‘all men’ of the Declaration of Independence speaking volumes by virtue of presentation alone.

As I explore, I submit to cognitive sensations, both bitter and sweet, child-like curiosity and adult incredulity. As I wander from display to display, I realize that the primary sources we uphold as pure and sacred are not immune to impurities. The issues of sources, timeliness, and accuracy existed long before the invention of television.

As I read, I learn, or relearn: The official printer of The Declaration of Independence is John Dunlap of Philadelphia. The commentary labels explain…in the “Rough Journal of Congress” is an order that there will be a “… committee appointed to prepare the declaration, superintend & correct the press.” The story of this first printing is put forth as: On the evening of July 4th, the broadside was brought to Congress by Dunlap who had turned the handwritten text into ‘the equivalent of a presidential proclamation.’ There is only speculation as to which members of the drafting committee were present to proofread it in advance of the formal presentation. And questions remain as to who read the proof. Thomas Jefferson? John Adams? Benjamin Franklin?

The community-centric exhibits evolved from portraying democracy’s male heroes to informing visitors how these men were men of their times. Jefferson, who was simultaneously a Founding Father and slave holder, was no longer presented as an irreproachable all-knowing hero. He was a real man with serious flaws. Gone was the image of a patriot brimming with confidence. What remained; a man who made choices while struggling with self-doubt.

I was intrigued by the contrasts, even polarity, of Jefferson’s writings. He constantly shifted between utopian ideals and realist solutions. Jefferson, who owned and lived on a plantation, had frequent urges to visit Philadelphia, then the cultural capital of the country. Yet, he held the view that cities were powder kegs of chaos and hothouses of epidemics. Writing helped him formulate his opinions and points of view. The rare book library ultimately helped me value writing as, not only a process and a legacy, but a means to formulate ourselves.

Red White and Bicentennial Blues

Revisiting the nation’s founding exhibit is a memory trigger of a personal kind. My first visit ignited a preoccupation with patriotic propaganda. The year following that visit, using whatever time I could squirrel away to create, culminated in my writing project: Red, White and Blues.

By osmosis rather than conscious choice, the project transformed from a collection of poems and essays into an album collaboration with my husband. Today, I am the only one who can hear the related music, his contribution. I have no talent for music. The song fragments are among the voices in my head. The collection’s physical pages were destroyed in one of life’s natural disasters a.k.a. dysfunctional family, rage, pyre of fire. The toxic memory is now a phantom smell of burnt plastic common to household accidents. My 3-ring project binder, every scribble, every poem, gone Not by accident in household full of harm. I take a moment to marvel at my survival.

While late to the “cash-in on the bicentennial” party, the plan was to release a bicentennial album with songs that explored our common history through the musical genres of our country. The demo cassette tape of Red, White and Blues had mixed reviews. Ultimately, prospective funders deemed it too controversial. I was not willing to abandon my words a second time.

The song that remains foremost in my memory speaks to the paradox that is America.

America is both sides of the coin

We come to make, that’s what makes her great

…the original poem reminisced about seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time. The “I” in that poem is me—a girl not yet sure she had the standing to call herself a writer, or to claim the liberty Lady Liberty promised. Women’s right to vote was barely fifty years old. My right to my own credit card, not yet won. I did not struggle free of that in the writing. But that struggle is mine.

Red, White and Blues

I was looking up, at Lady Liberty,

in the harbor of immigrant city,

when an old man, cautions questioningly,

What does this lady speak to me?

 

My knotted thoughts they struggled free…

What America means… What does America

mean? To me?

 

Grandma was an immigrant. Grandpa philosophized.

America is both sides of the coin

we come to make. That’s what makes her great.

So he set his hands to working, until they ached.

Grandma prayed for my Daddy’s sake.

 

I believe that you, can show me too,

Red, White and Blue.

Because you’re part of me, and I am part of you.

Then my dad inherited what they had done,

he continued on, it was for his son.

Now I’ve 16 years of schooling

where in something lies, ‘bout what Grandpa philosophized.

America it’s you I make, and when you ache,

I am aching too. But I believe in me,

And so you see, I believe in you.

My knotted thoughts they struggled free…

That’s what America means,

what America means, to me.

 

Another song in the collection, Never A Sunshine Patriot, embodied in stanzas the biography of the inconvenient revolutionary, Thomas Paine. His ideas fueled the revolution. His pamphlet, Common Sense advocated American independence. These ideas were rearranged in the song that I cannot reclaim in memory.

The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind…sunshine patriot …shrink from the service. Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem to lightly…These are the times that try men's souls.

I do remember that my poem changed all references to men to non-gender words like ‘our’ and ‘we’. And I remember the last stanza referred to Paine’s death as a pauper, burial unknown. Since cemeteries tout gravesites of luminaries as the “men of history”, the conclusion of this revolutionary’s story held significance for me.

Roger Sherman is interred at Grove St. Cemetery.  He is the only man to have signed all four documents of American sovereignty, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He was from a poor farming family, a shoemaker who would become a lawyer, A Congressman and Senator. Yet, it is an aide-de-camp to George Washington, Colonel David Humphrey, who is graced with pomp, circumstance, and speeches on Independence Day celebrations at the cemetery. Humphry, a Yale man, wielded such political power in his time that the Paugussett Tribe’s reservation at the falls of the Naugatuck River was turned over to him to construct his woolen mill. The stories we choose to foster tell a lot about ourselves.   

A similarly odd contrivance of history is active in Wallingford today. The Center St. Cemetery in Wallingford is across the street from the TV station. It is where Lyman Hall, not buried there, is memorialized as a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The orphaned Moses Y. Beach, Wallingford’s first philanthropist, is buried there. His story, overshadowed by that of Lyman Hall, is muted by the caretakers of local history. Caretaking of this property, the legacy, and its stories, is rich with controversy. Burials and cemetery lore remind me of the unburied Thomas Paine and the whitewashing of America.

Paine’s support of women’s rights remained in the shadows of his prevailing need to ‘rally men to the cause.’ After the American Revolution, Paine left to rally the men of the French Revolution with the universal thesis within The Rights of Man. However, his opposition to the death penalty—hundreds of revolutionaries sent to the guillotine­—and writing Age of Reason arrested his impact. The controversial notion that God influences the immoral actions of people disturbed both the men he aimed to muster and the powers they fought to dismantle.

It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.

The nation that had hailed his ideas, in the pursuit of freedom, decried his opinions expressed after Common Sense:

I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.

One line from my poem lingers in memory as sung. “Sunshine patriots we, have yet to be,” with a refrain “Thomas Paine.” Oddly my brain goes to ‘Let the sunshine, Let the sun shine in.’ by the 5^th Dimension’s on their Age of Aquarius album each time I hear it among the voices in my head.

Two hundred and fifty years on, the contradictions have not resolved. They have accumulated. Jefferson’s self-doubt and Paine’s inconvenient truths, the Dunlap Broadside and the Declaration of Sentiments, the man honored at the cemetery and the man erased from it—these are not footnotes to the founding. They are the founding, still unfinished. The bus pass expires. The voices stay. That, too, is America.

Powerful stories aren’t experienced alone. A world of hyperpersonalized stories is a world where we don’t have a shared reality, ...we can’t build common ground across our differences. Stories (and all forms of culture, from art to music) are not powerful simply because they make you feel something when you’re sitting alone experiencing them; their power also comes from the conversations they start.

— Harris Sockel  @Medium

Yesterday, I had a circular conversation. It may have set back what I anticipated could be progress. It feels like failure amplified exponentially by failing memory and eyesight. More distant, a sustainable future has become, because the creatives that come through the door are focused on the 'Me" and not the "We". 

HEMAN, a man from Vermont

by Adele Houston (1993)

"What makes America work?”
Grandpa slipped his soul into conversation
like a late-night visit to the cookie jar - clandestine
spirit, satisfaction, hmmnn - sweet energy.
His eyes twinkled with exclamation: "It's people!"
I suspect this old Democrat who fettered party fundraising letters
with the lavishness of a nesting Oriole - took a vital life step, the day
this question "What makes America work?" infested his psyche.
He left pastoral, rural Vermont - the farm
earnest to sweat for the sweet favors of a dream.
His hands and back, supple and furrowed as the land.
His mind, quick to cast off - long like shadows on rowed corn.
His morning - up with chickens. His retirement - retooling
the incorruptible gears of his clock - set for a Century. Meticulous
ideas, sprung from a barn -- welded by the heat of a coal stove.
The syrup runs and the sugar house glows - the morning
rises after the mountain. He is a Vermonter.
Our visits began with the drive
North. Off the concrete highway by dark. Along
riverbeds of boulders, hints of streams, long steep trails, shadows
of logged timber littered with Birches, white and yellow
a patchworked hill, night capped with Balsam Firs
Collectively we, retired
our eyes, slumped head to shoulder, quilted
grandchildren in the back seat of a '64 Impala.
There was an aimless, busy quality about the cutting
of rhubarb and asparagus, the harvesting of berries by the peck,
tractor rides that turned up potatoes, brook crossings, stepping stones
to reach snow pea vines. In the yard, there were four John Deer seats
recycled on the ride-a-round and a moon-walk grain mover among
the chickens. There were reincarnation promises - the ’52 Pontiac
car hood would clear the ice pond in winter. There was game
to be eaten, not played to win. There were mysteries
in hymns, cistern water and the Fraternal Order of Masons.
More than half a Century later - the Maple Syrup
still sweetened whatever went with eggs, still fresh
from hens in the yard. The tractor pulling what the man
could once manage by hand, the barn full
still of mystery - the conversation
often leaving Vermont and returning - like the man.

Fresh Eggs. A sign
brings back all that is Grandpa.
All that Heman dreamed in Green Mountains.

Will I keep at bay Echoes of 2008?

 Pencils are unfamiliar

 At the keyboard, I must face disabilities. I do not type, I am trifocals challenged. What it feels like to write with a pencil is a distant memory. What it feels like at a keyboard is imperfection. Crippled.

ditto 2023

The New Year is attended by fatigue, a lack of momentum, and an ever more fleeting commitment to ideas that are hard; that must be coaxed, shuffled, strained, and simplified to enter a public place.   

In 2023 I was powering through a technical nightmare and barely had time to notice a holiday.

The ‘Glimpses through stained glass blog – is sometimes an incoherent public scribble, does it qualify as a journey journal? Or merely an inside look at my distractibility even as I write a line.

In 2023 the visits are rare.

My 2008 year-end review:

Seeking Synergy

Overwhelmed

Inundated

Besieged

Beset

Retirement, will it be a reprieve?

Spring of 2023 starts tomorrow.  Today I am mired in back-ups that date back to 2008 and all those words bubble up again. The TV station will turn 30. I will turn 70 and my memoir -- what will it be?

The Gritty Part of Integrity

As honeymoons are eclipsed by days of light

and orbits evoke forward movement in celestial time,

lasting transformation still rest upon integrity.

"Sometimes it takes a long time to sound like yourself" ~ Miles Davis

In the imagination of the 10-year-old me, people were famous if they had a quote published in Reader's Digest. This was my secret aspiration for fame. The promises of the family's first magazine subscription were palpable. When I decided to get back on track with some of my goals I googled to find some current Twitter-sized wisdom only to find the iconic magazine filed for bankruptcy in 2013.  On the magazine's website circa 2009, there were 4242 pages under the browser navigation Wit & Wisdom of previously published quotes.

The allure of Chinese cookie wisdom remained foreign, quite literally, for nearly a decade. And, the ubiquity of social media quotes, or misquotes, shared by millions would be for generations yet to come as would be the promises of blogging. On November 27th, 2007 as AdeleHouston who appears in the middle of everything my blog GlimpesThroughStainedGlass enters hyperspace.  

transformation in technology
Stories can connect the world. The truth is always beyond the next word or the 1st: Hello.
Ayoh, hallom, HELLo, the stories of this common, nearly universal and reflexive greeting "hello" are many, multi-faceted and often linked to the advent of faceless communication with technology. One storyteller shares the idea that a prankster's potentially irreverent humor can become a clever, simple and transforming change in the world. So 'hello' is my choice for starting a blog whose purpose is to gather ideas that give me pause, stir passion or have no perfect place to be. 
whole be thou - an alternative version of the meaning of hello as a contraction of archaic English seems to hold a promise of transformation.
Hello visitor

It is the near equivalent to what Natalie Goldberg suggests as first-thoughts in Writing Down the Bones if it were to be done with a pencil. The remains of my actual first-thoughts in pencil notebooks are barely decipherable. Most were lost to life's natural disasters. I must confess that the quality of the writing is ostensibly first-draft, however, the exploration of the ideas in hyperlinks gives me and any random reader insight into what I was wrestling with and how I anticipated that the urge to write might help fix life itself. 

With the exception of many of the poem entries, sometimes shared in iterations, the blog posts were random raw attempts to explore connections and eke out serendipitous insight. In the 2009 post wisdom quotes - I do read the tea tags the Mark Twain quote "The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself" helps me deal with the suicide of a young friend. It did not make it into my trash. It was to be a reminder to visit Twain's CT home.

I found the tea-less tag again today (March 2020). It's professed wisdom morphs. I still reel from the loss of a most genuine young person whose discomfort overcame him on Oct. 3rd.

A wise friend eulogized this life. A Christian burial or this non-believer but one of many anomalies of existence that contributed to discomfort.

From the eulogy:

He was genuine. Do not underestimate the interminable value of such a quality. It made his words drip with honesty, his gestures bleed sincerity, his compassion captivate with clarity, and his life – touch every person who found themselves fortunate enough to cross its path. He was a good man. Let me repeat this statement, for it seems to necessitate an extraordinary emphasis. He was a good man. In these lives we lead, such men are as rare to find as they are difficult to lose.

Being genuine is often a lonely road. I agree with this characterization. As hundreds of young acquaintances and some true friends mingled among disarmed friends-of-family to pay respects or say farewell... another anomaly played out and spoke to the dissonance that created such profound sadness and ultimately, loneliness. However, I am left to wonder if good humor was also a mask on this soul, and sadness the ultimate poison. Believing that masks do not just hide but often provide a layer of understanding, I wonder: if the temptation to give-in to pain can be replaced in others because they touched this profound loss.

~~~

At an LGTB Rally [National Equality March] many lay claim to the temptation of life taking in the face failure to be accepted and the possibility of equality. To all those attending and knowing such a pain -- may they find strength in the self-knowing as exemplified by Lt. Dan Choi. May those who feel the pain of distance from family for any reason - may you find a larger human family to connect every day - not just at this rally.

I am grateful that a trip to the theater helped me know the story of Matt Shepard. As a mother, I am encouraged that as of 10.08.09, the nation was one step away from a better union with a conference report on the Matthew Shepard Act before the Senate with the real potential to become law.

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act is an American Act of Congress, passed on October 22, 2009, and signed into law by President Barack Obama on October 28, 2009, as a rider to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2010 (H.R. 2647).

Excerpt Citizen Media Maven --- 1995 Legacy and Local Governance

From Filling Our Dance Card: The Governance Waltz which comments on having community roots.

From a staff perspective, one of the most awkward things about nonprofit management is recognizing a future boss amongst your random encounters. It is often the expectation that a board will rejuvenate itself with prospective successors. However, carbon copy replacements, if put forth, may not be strategically in the best interest of sustainability or progress. And compelling newcomers are muted by the legislative legacy of our state, one of the first states to implement expediency for cable companies in the franchise process that underwrites community television. Communities do not have a seat at the table.

The Legacy

In Connecticut, the media democracy movement is not strong. Community-based franchising was eliminated in 1995. Democratizing our communities with local government meeting participation and archives, distance learning delivered via TV, or non-commercial media from underserved voices remains legislative rhetoric, not the on-the ground reality. On the twenty-fifth anniversary of The Alliance for Community Media the Executive Director  Riedel, wrote “No longer a Thought, but an Institution” in the Community Media  Review (1976-2001). In spite of the fact that every Connecticut community was to have some form of Public, Education and Government Access with PA-95, ACM's Director Riedel’s exclamation was not fully realized in Connecticut. Dismantling the franchising process eliminated the frail but consequential opportunities available to local communities.

I believe the history of our local Public Access leadership is similar to small stations everywhere. Initially, governance seats were filled with early advocates of public access, those who literally wanted access to the tools and stage. If stations had staff, it was rare that the staff was well suited to run a nonprofit, handle community relations and keep abreast of technology. What has sustained the movement is the idea of media's importance to democracy and the need for its accessibility for all. 

At some point in the history of every nonprofit community TV station, leaders discuss producer representation on the governance board.

In Wallingford, community media began in 1975 as an electronic message board operated by library staff. It evolved into formally managed video productions with shows like 200 Main St, about happenings at the Library. By the mid-80s, Focus on the Mayor was a regular program in which the Mayor was interviewed by local reporters.  By 1990, people became interested in making video with cameras they could borrow like checking out a book. Then poof. A badger parody brought the town employee operated, coordinated operation, to an abrupt and boisterous end. Without the self-interest of a handful of producers, a public access nonprofit rebirth would not have occurred. However, producer myopia ultimately crippled the organization. 

Townie vs Outsider 

Townies know the whispered stories: the rivalry within rivalries, truth concealed within tragic accidents and earth shaking losses, the high school relationships—bitter and sweet. They know what is absent on main streets, and why. They may have seen what is alleged: a drug deal with a janitor, bruises on a family elder, the ‘hidden’ liquor cabinet, doors entered or exited at the wrong times of day, fake IDs, or the carcass of an arsenic poisoned fox in one of several local apple orchards. 

Serving in a community where you grew up has advantages. As a townie, many of the proverbial layers of the onion have been peeled. Nevertheless, organic waste is toxic. It is best to compost scraps. And, no matter how chill your preparation, tearjerkers sting.  The intimacy of being a townie comes with knowing when tears will come and can help build the strategy for purposeful distance. Sometimes, a comforting application of cold water, and making the necessary cut at the root, is unavoidable in a first time encounter with a person and their story.

Most hometown quilts have champion teams, unsung scholars, decades of community gatherings All hail those parades, the bands that tempted fame, the talents that decided to leave and not return making them similar. However, the cross-stitched names, the fabric choices, the reason each quilt is hung behind glass in the foyer of the town hall, or grange, or library is hyper-local. The devil is in the intimate stories of every community. 

The upside of being a newcomer is that everyone gets the same opportunity to be welcomed and discovered. The down-sides are the awkward moments. Even if you were born with a charismatic halo, or a Simone Biles like talent and grace for uneven bars, balance and vaulting; some moments will have their own infamy.

Chances are you will come up short in the awkward times. Those moments you hear who did cocaine after shifts at the local diner, who no longer has a driver’s license, who already battled cancer, who sold the farm land developed into mansions, who is on their fourth fifth marriage Not that I would be counting, or that the person you are chatting with served on the Town Council, or ran for mayor, decades ago. If you were a townie, the family names on buildings would be connected to stories. The clubs for Hungarians, and Italians and Polish and Spanish and Filipinos would be connected to actual people and community heritage.  

It often comes down to that. Building and working with a board has its own learning curve. These are the bosses who must help guide decisions on purchases, regulatory responses and, most of all, fundraising. They need to believe in the mission and trust you. They need to watch the channel and welcome conversations with people they know about the station's value to the community. 

One of my go-to gurus for board related self-training is Joan Garry, the consultant branding her work as ‘because nonprofits are messy.’ She admonishes that the word ‘only’ be excised from our vocabulary in the context of tolerating ‘any judgment about whether our mission is less worthy than some other nonprofit.’ 

I was guilty of devaluing our mission. How could free speech and video stories stand side-by-side with feeding the hungry, or housing the homeless, or daycare? Then, I realized all the nonprofits in my community are better with us. Indeed, the entire community is better with us. Joan Garry puts it this way: 

“The land of nonprofits is like an orchestra. Each organization, each sector is like an instrument. The work of the orchestra is to build a more civil society, and help to create a more perfect union. In that analogy, every instrument matters.”

I had days that I tried to look at impact and accountability with math. Fifteen to twenty thousand cable subscribers But no measure for how many watch. 

Daytime hours had an exponential impact on use of the resources. Several hundred have visited or participated in TV making annually. There is no reliable data on impact or connection to the community. 

Social media insight reports provide hints. Video clip shared on platforms other than TV can have a handful, or upwards to several thousand, engagements. However, counts across platforms are tangled up in territorial boundaries. Ugh! And there are several personal milestones a day to acknowledge with 1,500 friends Growing, Growing, Growing. Around the clock cablecasting is 8784 hours in a leap year. Our stats outshine our peers in the number of unique programs per year But I fear: What if no one is watching?

To deepen the value of the board to the organization, and my connection to the mission, I needed to become a better storyteller. My waltzes, one-on-one engagements had to be translated into inspiring stories. 

If the Board is not watching, can we really expect others to be watching? Arrival at meetings can be awkward. Personal conversations between members with relationships are best to happen at the end of a meeting. 

Board Meetings now start with short videos from recent productions. I also needed to step into to improve the health of the organization. Studies show that dancing the waltz three times a week for eight weeks can improve the heart and lungs. Direct in-person engagement three times a week could likely do the same for the organization. Multiplied by each member of the Board and we could thrive unlike the same exertion on a stationary bicycle. Waltz is the basis for many dances. It is lively with a strong first beat and flowing steps that follow.

The “playing Democracy Now” story begins with how the show gets to be scheduled on WPAA-TV.

When the telephone is ringing at 3:03 PM it is usually because my day has gone off track. It rings when an anonymous, but vigilant viewer of Democracy Now finds it missing from play.  I am reminded that I am part of a community with this telephone ring. I am the volunteer that connects the viewer with the neighbors who think Democracy Now is “good enough to share.” represent the content as a guarantor, thereby making it ‘local.’ Being good is how Democracy Now is played on access stations across the nation because it is sponsored by someone in the community. We rebranded this sponsor process as GoodEnough2Share.  

Or, 

There is a son and mother who knock at our door, instead of just coming in. They have something important to tell the people at WPAA-TV. Don Meno will not be returning. His last six weeks with us were precious. He loved working with the youth team on diction and making his show Face4Radio. “He was a very handsome man when he was on radio,” she said. RIP

Or, 

There is a veteran partnering with a hearing impaired intern to design art that represents our mission Of course there was a service dog in the illustration.

Or, 

There is the millennial with debilitating leukemia. A letter is written to affirm her disability claim. It describes her, vigilant but challenged volunteer trying to be of service at the station few days a week. Her inability to work full-time became clear to the judge at her Social Security hearing.

Or, 

There is the actor performing sober for the first time with the theater company you host thanking the ensemble for their support.

Or, 

The neighbor who fell off his roof was inspired to fight for his life when he saw the Sharing Joy video created by the community to wish him recovery.

There are more stories shared by our hosts and contributors. A common theme is being approached by strangers in parking lots because they look familiar and discovering why. They saw them on WPAA-TV. My favorite is how Beth became a rock star to all the residents at Masonicare where she works. A few actually described her as ‘brave.’ Indeed, she is And that is another story.

Until the board members watch the channel enough, talk about the channel enough, and discover their own stories, it is my obligation to show them how we know our impact exists. I need to make social media posts that they can fervently share and comment on. Here is where empowering people through their community roots can make the critical difference in our mission Be it a game of solitaire or dominoes, each, one engagement at a time. 

The voice of Johnny Nash is as clear with its message as it was in 1972 when I began to venture out into the world on my own.

I can see clearly now the rain is gone

I can see all obstacles in my way

Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind.

It's gonna be a bright (bright)

Bright (bright) sunshiny day.

Or

And tomorrow’s gonna be a brighter day

There’s gonna be some changes

Tomorrow’s gonna be a brighter day

This time you can believe me

- Jim Croce

Wisdom Quotes - I Read Tea Tags

Oct 2009 revisited

What is it about October and being overcome by life? 

Mark Twain  is quoted on the teabag tag:

                                 The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself. 

This tag does not make it into my trash. I tell myself it is a reminder of my intent to visit Twain's CT home. But, it is more. 

Too often it is an outcome. A most genuine young person's  discomfort overcame him on Oct. 3rd, 2009.

A wise friend eulogized this life as --- an anomaly. 

He was genuine. Do not underestimate the interminable value of such a quality. It made his words drip with honesty, his gestures bleed sincerity, his compassion captivate with clarity, and his life – touch every person who found themselves fortunate enough to cross its path. He was a good man. Let me repeat this statement, for it seems to necessitate an extraordinary emphasis. He was a good man. In these lives we lead, such men are as rare to find as they are difficult to lose.

Being genuine is often a lonely road. I agree with this characterization. As hundreds of young acquaintances and some true friends mingled among disarmed friends-of-family to pay respects or say farewell... another anomaly played out and spoke to the dissonance that created such profound sadness and ultimately, loneliness. 

I am left to wonder if good humor was a mask on this soul, and sadness, the ultimate poison. Masks do more than hide. They reimagine. They cover up and that is not a road to healing.

The Christian burial of this non-believer provided a hyper-view of how anomalies of existence contributed to discomfort.

At the LGTB Rally [National Equality March] many lay claim to the temptation of life taking in the face failure to be accepted and the possibility of equality. To all those attending and knowing such a pain -- may they find strength in the self-knowing exemplified by Lt. Dan Choi. 

May those who feel the pain of distance from family for any reason - may you find a larger human family to connect every day - not just at this rally. 

I am grateful that a trip to the theater helped me know the story of Matt Shepard. I was encouraged as a mother on  10.08.09 that the nation was one step closer to being a better union thanks to a conference report in support of the Matthew Shepard Act before the Senate. Matthew Shepard was a gay student who was beaten to death in Wyoming in 1998. But it was a step, a legislative rider, limited to facilitating investigations of actual acts of violence, not threats of violence or other verbal conduct. Later the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 was passed

 ~~~ Back to Quotes At age 10, my life's goal was to have a published quote in Reader's Digest. 

In 2009, there were  4242 pages of RD (Reader's Digest Quotes) quotes online. They were categorized as Wit & Wisdom. Now Twitter-sized on-line world, everyone is self-published and searchable. Wisdom is metered out in blogs. It remains a habit, an immediate go-to to find the quotes when I come across an RD magazine.  And I am still in search of wisdom within from with my own experience.

The Mayor’s Rolodex is Out-of-Date

This is an excerpt from the chapter Filling Our Dance Card: The Governance Waltz in Citizen Media Maven - The Life a memoir with stories grabbed from citizen media experiences.

There never seems to be enough time… I 've looked around enough to know

 Jim Croce Folk Rock Waltz

 Time In a Bottle --shared with the world posthumously in 1973

To Keep Things Exactly As They Are

The local election is a few weeks away. The incumbent Mayor has been in office 38 years. This is uncommon and perplexing. Many voting for him say, ‘…no need to fix, what is not broken.’ It is an opinion held by many on fixed incomes. Some plan cruises. Others live in homes badly in need of repair, rooted in circumstance, not complacency. They all want low taxes. They vote, swayed by the myth of low taxes, unaware of the potential power of active governance. Myths provide comfort.

Those who do not vote for the Mayor see a pattern of neglect for town property, while other voters see demolition, attrition and elimination as a means of keeping taxes low for themselves. Their household budget, much like a dance card relic, is penciled in with the power of worry.

As a senior citizen myself, I see much irony in this somewhat prevailing libertarian view of government. The idea that government has a tendency to fix things that aren't broken, and not fix things that are broken, was ushered in during the Carter administration. It was popularized by the head of the Office of Management & Budget (OMB). President Carter is now the face of Habitat for Humanity, formed the year before he was elected. His post-presidency popularity is fueled by his visible public service. This endearing public presence indirectly reinforces the idea of minimal intervention by government in private lives.

Elections bring us to our toes. In time, we relax, and are on flat feet again. Much like the popular waltz, elections are moments of public intimacy: exhilarating, occasional and full of ‘if only’ sentiments.

In anticipation of his child's birth, Jim Croce composed a waltz, an 'if only' love song with wishes to keep Time in a Bottle.

If I could save time in a bottle

... make days last forever

…had a box just for wishes.

 Some may remember hearing Time in a Bottle, as the old, wishing to be young; Muppet sought a scientific solution to ‘making days last forever.’ Ironically, video clips from The Muppet Show, Season 2 Episode 7, are in the cloud. Humanity’s memory. These puppets often interpreted songs which had seeped into our shared consciousness. These artistic renderings furthered their meaning in our collective memory. Internet archives, such as muppet.fandom.com, enable anyone, of any age, to see Jim Henson as the old chemist searching science for life’s elixir.

Another posthumously published song about holding on, both bright and brooding, remains persistently relevant.

..there been times that I thought

I couldn't last for long

But now I think I'm able, to carry on

Commenting on music, commemoration and change, David Cantwell, wrote a piece for The New Yorker in 2015: The Unlikely Story of “A Change Is Gonna Come.” He suggests that “…old tunes will be tools that we can use—recycled or repurposed, sampled for the dance floor, or shouted in a crowd, to aid in work that still needs to be done.”

But I know a change gonna come

Oh, yes it will

Uncommonly personal, this anthem of hope is said to have been written upon reflection of his life's purpose, a few years before Cooke’s murder.

Even when time is elusive, in short supply, change is gentler, if we let the music in. Cantwell concludes, “Cooke’s rough, sweet voice—blues-born and church-bred, beat down but up again and marching—still rings.”  James Baldwin, an expatriate, famously said, "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."

Music can bring order to chaos. In mythology, it charms deities. The mystery of music speaks to us about something universal. …a force, a hope of a transcendent possibility. Music is difficult to suppress. Echoing literary sage, George Steiner who speaks of the Debussy, Dachau and asks. ‘Is it a nonsense question? .. Could the music have said no?’

There is a universal, personal, answer. Music plays us. It does not say no.

Music can open our secrets. Nobody Knows The Trouble I HaveSeen. Music and lyrics by Sam Cooke, sung among Muppets, by John Denver, uses Cooke’s adaptation of the spiritual. With veiled protests against the anarchy and slavery music help us collectively face change that must come. It soothes souls, even those in transport to gas chambers. What you know by heart, they cannot take.

Speech on the other hand can love, build, forgive, torture, hate, destroy, even annihilate. This paradox is the arrogance of language. As personified by Steiner, ‘Language, in its arrogance, believes that it can imagine, record, contain, excuse and abolish evil.’ Obsessed with the inexplicability of the holocaust, he resists the belief that there is power in art to arrange and transcend, there is power in community to rise up, and yellow ribbons of hope can unite us in solidarity.

Mission Bright Yellow Home

The First Congregational Church mission service project, resembling Habitat For Humanity, was literally close to home—happening in town in 2018. Four hundred youth, from seventeen churches, in eleven states, converged in Wallingford for Workcamp.

In advance, local Workcamp coordinators reached out to WPAA-TV staff asking to ‘cover’ the story and assist in identifying eligible low income seniors or disabled as recipients of charity.

After the ‘Happy to help.’ reply comes ‘Here is how citizen media works. You are the media makers. We provide the tools & stage and production training. Our policy requires at least one volunteer participate in the production.’ Following the policy disclosure, a plan was devised to record a conversation amongst team members. Cam Regan, a high school student, who would be a Workcamp participant, learned video post-production. The dozens of hours of post-production support for the promotional stories transcended the arrangement of clips and sound bites.

This well connected church also reached out to government access, WGTV. Within a strict interpretation of WGTV policy only ‘a non-profit that receives funding from the town budget’ qualifies for government media coverage. Therefore, a strategy to be 'produced by WGTV' was devised. Since the mission project had a Wallingford Office of Emergency Management angle, and a the Youth Services Director was willing to host, an episode of the very occasional Profiles of a Caring Community was produced for them. There is always more than one way to tell a story.

Cam would later decide to document his participation in the mission with his smartphone camera in a ‘as it happens’ style. His mission service team painted the home of a local senior. The house was transformed from dingy to bright yellow in a matter of days.

When staff asked Cam for permission to remix his documentary to train Team Hercules youth, he readily agreed. One of the techniques used to illustrate various aspects of storytelling, in our Team Hercules youth training program, is ‘story remix.’ With permission, the TV station uses archival footage, to either extract a story into a shorter form, or retell it from a different point of view. Much of the basics of documentary storytelling are learned in this process as well as digital literacy and storytelling fundamentals. Each video remix has a different emphasis, point-of-view and uses commercial free audio tracks to set the tone.

While all these connections were serendipitous, the actions and responses aligned with a vision and strategic plan. The ability to demonstrate the difference between government and citizen media, a collaboration with a local church outside of Sunday Services, and a story to remix that would resonate with our summer youth team because it was original produced by someone like them can be tied up in a yellow ribbon: Support those fighting for something bigger, better, brighter.

Community Roots & Connection

Walt, the original yellow house home owner, passed away about six years before the mission project. While not a member of the mission church, he attended Zion Lutheran; he was active in Wallingford as a scout leader and champion of recycling. He led a simple life on a property that welcomed wildlife. He empowered scouts to be self-reliant future leaders. He encouraged citizen action to save the planet. The family members that remained in his home were known in the community for giving, not from abundance, but from compassion and talent. The youth, painting the house with lovely gardens, felt this connection over lemonade, stories and observation of a home filled with loving memories and clever crafts.

Walt had succumbed unexpectedly in an accident. When he passed, the local flower shop delivered a fresh flower bouquet to his home address with a yard full of summer’s blooms. It was addressed to Walt’s ex-wife of fourteen years. It was signed by the Mayor.

Walt’s beloved companion of ten years, as referred to in his obituary, called the Office of the Mayor asking about the intentions. Should she pass the flowers along? The Mayor’s Secretary, a companion employee of many years, confirmed the note had been dictated by the Mayor. There was no apology, in the moment of the call, nor with a follow-up note.

I learn about the bouquet delivery, almost a decade after Walt’s death, the day after depositing my 2021 absentee ballot in the voting drop box. My vote, for a different Mayor, never felt more right. It resonates politically because I know sending flowers is in the playbook of U. S. Senator Mitch McConnell who has a network of local florists across Kentucky misrepresenting his connection.

How a misstep is handle, ripples. Freeman volunteers, tasked with celebrating life’s milestones, are taught to confirm that the person Facebook tells us is having a birthday also has a pulse. A post suggesting ‘enjoy your next trip around the sun’ on the virtual friend’s legacy timeline could be a serious misstep. While the Freeman of the moment may have no personal connection with the person being celebrated, they are connected in the spirit of community, and are governed by a protocol to 'look around enough to know ... Who we want to go through time with? 

Change is going to come. Will there be more occasional profiles of a caring community, or stories rippling from a Rolodex that is out-of-date?  

VOTE.