As we begin to forget more than we know, it becomes clearer that what holds us to our own meaning are the stories we choose for our narration. -Adele Houston
Every act of giving has a story Many stories actually. #MyGivingStory is
an annual Giving Tuesday social media storytelling contest. Funded by the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation, it began in 2015. The foundational idea is that sharing ‘stories
of giving’ can foster a public conversation and inspire others to give. However,
it is a contest which, by its very nature, awakens a competitive spirit. This multifaceted enter-to-win ‘contest’
incorporates financial incentives equivalent to small grants and a click-vote
tournament for the most-popular storyteller.
In 2019, I submitted an essay entitled A Thorny Journey Blooms in Story which joined 2,663 other moving stories composed from a personal lens.
There are two ways to win social media contests; have a secret go-viral ingredient
in your submission or have a plan, network and ambassadors. Committing to a competitive fundraising campaign—a surreal quest for only a
few dollars to move a dream forward—is daunting. The constant trolling for
eyeballs, goodwill and daily votes from grateful connections is akin to being a
minnow that keeps swimming in
the gut of a whale even though it has already been eaten alive.
Before embarking on this
competitive adventure, I had not fully considered the math. I did not conceive
of the hours per day promoting would swallow up. It was not a one size fit
all endeavor. One email solicitation by any school to the parents of
students and alumni might grab more click-votes in a day than most service
agencies could accumulate, in total, from weeks of promotional effort. But
thinking about ROI, return on investment, was, while being the point, not
really the point. It was ‘the odds’ of winning local hearts and minds that I
needed to overcome.
Each participant had a promotional link
with a vote-button that connected directly to their story. It could be used in
numerous ways: In any type of Social Media posts, emails, or direct messages. My
plan was to direct message the link to nearly 2,000 friends of WPAA-TV in the Facebook
Messenger App. This approach quickly hit a ‘firewall’. After sending several
identical messages to friends, the Messenger app messaged me: “You have been
temporarily blocked from performing this action.” Thus, crashing my ill-conceived
promotion plan and my campaigning adrenaline rush.
On the day the #MyGivingStory winners
were published, I realize that I had only read about ten percent of the
submissions. During the campaign, the #MyGivingStory web page randomly
displayed entries. The site provided no clues about chances to win, not even a count
of the participants—One in 2,000+!
Seeing this statistic filled me
with curiosity. The voice in my head declared: This could be an interesting self-report qualitative study dataset.
In my presumed-random reading sample, I noticed patterns. There were several similarities
and popular themes like rescuing dogs, helping adorable children and, to my
surprise, tigers. Or for the researcher in me, comparable populations, being served
in different communities is an expected finding Possible proof that programs like Feeding America are essential to
amplifying the work of local food pantries.
Detailed likenesses about storytellers
also emerged. Many volunteers began purposeful commitments upon retirement from
working for their daily bread. Several programs started with school projects Kudos for High School Community Service requirements.
While others were created to be ‘I made myself a job’ nonprofits. A pet peeve
of mine Maybe there are a few too many. Regardless, they all employed
the ‘cute factor’. Their projects boosted by an appealing image accompanying
the text.
My ‘Giving Story’, unlike most, was
not affiliated with one organization or cause. The story I offered up for
consideration was not about what I do. It was about how my story scraps quilted
together. My special ingredient: a multi-decade smorgasbord of service.
At the close of the promotional
period, twenty entries with the highest popular vote were forwarded to the
official judges. Prizes were awarded to sixteen storied-places, many rescued
dogs, and A Future Superhero And Friends, a national nonprofit featuring
Spiderman visits to hospitalized children Not
Disney Endorsed.
The Work, and I, Are Alive But Not Well In My Community.
It was complicated. I already knew
that professing the value of a free speech organization in a marginally diverse
a.k.a. mostly white suburb was no
match against front-line services in a head-to-head fundraising drive. I did
not know how much, if at all, my unknown story, now entwined with the destiny
of the organization, could be an asset.
I wanted an opportunity to check the
pulse of my community for the work I was striving to do. I saw #MyGivingStory
and the dangle of a $10,000 prize as that opportunity.
Check the pulse That it did.
I mustered the courage and words to
put pen to page. I wanted to pull off the scab on my life-style secret. Both
light and silence had been my dance partners for a long time. In most moments,
surviving, as it is for so many unnamed people, had to be its own reward. I
still carry an abundance of stories that only a few can know.
As I pulled off the scabs on my
secrets, I would often hesitate, reconsidering the public-story decision.
Sometime tears would roll down my face as the story took shape. There would be
more tears. Once told, stories take on a life of their own. And social media
has been rightly described as an Escher-like
‘hellscape’ by journalists and educators.
On these perilous platforms—comments
quickly revealed how little was understood about the mission of community
television, the rules we try to abide by and the policies that support citizen
media makers. At first, cruelty only commingled with gratitude. That is, before
displacing it entirely. Instead of offering a vote to help secure funding, the
misinformed were poised and ready to pounce with accusations. “I told you, it
is all about her!” The math for winning hearts and minds often fails to factor
in resistance.
My #MyGivingStory Essay Revisited
When I was ten, I certainly knew
that being sixty-five was old. Today, not so much. Sharing my Giving Story as I
celebrate eligibility for Medicare seems like the right choice. I may be at the
halfway mark. Or, perhaps, near the end.
What can I add to the conversation
by joining other ‘good-from-giving’ stories? I volunteer. I reconstructed my
timeline and calculated that I performed forty-thousand two-hundred hours of service.
I recalculated again, trying to grasp exactly what that meant. Had I really volunteered
the near-equivalent of a ‘twenty year’ job in addition to my student-wife-employee-parent
life? Now, I am contemplating the possibility of twenty consecutive years with
one organization. The question is: Are there insights from a lifestyle of
service that forgoes a paycheck?
When people hear that I do not get
paid, they assume I am married to a wealthy man. If counting grandchildren is a
sign of prosperity—that would be so. Being his life jacket is one of my
stories—we survived together—just a different kind of love. We live in a home
too big for two, which has sheltered dozens of people in need of transitional
housing. One transitioned to heaven.
My life trajectory Name changes and five hometowns has led
me to abandon a lot So much. I avoid invitations to coffee or other occasions
that might bring forth, in conversation, things I experienced under another
name. Conversation excavates memories.
Old resumes, with those other names,
help me recall the affiliations, events and people for my Giving Story. Details
emerge as memories reveal themselves. Details I cannot share. But I can close
my eyes and sit with what is not forgotten, the smiles. Each one, deeply
personal and unique in its discovery, somehow shared with me; sometimes with hugs
or happy tears.
The smiles of children showing their
mom a new-to-them unwrapped toy from under the holiday tree in the prison
visitor room, or children happily hugging plush rabbits after the Easter community
dinners, or families waving good-bye as the volunteer relocation team drives
away from them in their new home. Seniors smiling at the prospect of a home-share
companion or help with fuel assistance. The older couple that rescued toys, him
in his woodworking shop, her sewing new clothes for restored dolls. Dozens of
people pleased with the treasures they accumulated to be gifted to strangers or
excited about their bargain shopping results. A
runaway accepting a left-over all American hot dog at the Yale Student
International Fair. The faces of gratitude flood back amongst the
stories I took part in. What is left-over are no
longer scraps, rather a comfortable quilt sewn with one through line: A
lifestyle of consistent activism leads to change, one person at a time.
When I saw the #MyGivingStory
solicitation, I remembered a moment in 1979 that changed my life forever. The
moment I made a secret pact with myself. For one day a week, for a lifetime, I
would try to do something like my VISTA work: advocacy and action for a better
world. This would approximate a ten year work-week-equivalency by the time I
retired.
I had accepted a job at a bank upon
completion of my uncommon two-year enlistment in VISTA and was feeling
conflicted. In my exit interview, my Dept. of Corrections Supervisor described my
work with parole, police, inmates and ex-offenders, (Some, just people no
longer in jail) as ‘light under a basket”. He said, “I hope you will embrace
your light. If you continue to do as you do, you will be an inspiration for
others.” I told him he was seeing a reflection and thanked him for his
dedication to justice.
Many of my stories of service—shared
stories of struggle or tragedy experienced with others—remain untold to avoid a
public-feeling of shame or stigma. I have been the shelter, the shoulder, the
coach, the mother, the underwriter, the whisper, the connection, the
opportunity-maker, the report, the pocket change, the ride, the teammate, and the
facilitator of dreams come true Like a poem
shared on stage—fleeting ripples.
As a girl born in the 1950s into a
large family of laborers, I found myself taking risks with life. I deeply valued
the laborer’s sense of hands-on accomplishment and marveled at the gifts of
kismet. But I often used the wrong tools and yielded much to serendipity. My steady
diet of embracing service—civic engagement as a lifestyle—began with extending
my enlistment in VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) to two-years in 1978.
In 2011, I retired from an ample—somewhat accidental—corporate paycheck to what
my dad called my “life’s job”. In retirement, I live on a poverty-level stipend
which I pay myself from short-circuited savings. I run a community media center
and do a bit of social service on the side.
There is an abundance of past
stories in so many venues: justice, housing, environment, humanities, and
democracy. For nineteen years, the last three months of each year revolved around
the collection of new and like new toys and personal hygiene products for Somers
and Niantic prison chaplain ‘holiday’ programs. This same time span was also
consumed with arranging transport for family visitors to prisons Never on Public Transit routes and
housing policy, reform, and hands-on action. Homelessness, fair zoning
practices, supply and credit, there are so many broken systems under the
housing umbrella.
For three weekends a month, my
first ecumenical volunteer experience lasted over three years. It was immersive
and sweaty. Sometimes, my heart and brain went numb. But I made an impact.
Legions of families were
temporarily placed in motels by the state My toddler son played with an untold
number of children, often a dozen at a time. In the New Haven area, most families were in two adjoining rooms at
the motels by the West Rock Tunnel just off the Merritt Parkway.
Gentleman, Self-professed and Real
I was familiar with this location, differently.
In another life, in these same motels, I was paid cash by the man-hour A Gladstone Gal. In 1999, the Fairfield
County Weekly carries a version of the article I had hoped to write about
Gabriel Gladstone in 1978. Gladstone’s incredulous deflection, referring to
exploitation of the witless as the true crime, angers me. He humiliated the
ladies with this derogatory word often. “Witless”. I would flashback again when
the Cusano murder is in the headlines with the subtitle “prostitution
ringleader testifies during probable cause hearing.”
Mr. Fred Chambers, a grandfather
with two grandchildren, a boy eight and a girl ten, shared one room. They had
lost their home in a fire. Sheltered for nine months—they were at the motel the
longest. Fred gave up their place in the relocation rotation numerous times. With
the wisdom of a social worker who lived close to the edge and was not
unfamiliar with the fall, he would tell organizers: “Prioritize the families
with parents. The stress of being here can break more than is necessary.”
Most motel-sheltered families were
relocated to the Hill, Fair Haven or Newhallville, once a postcard perfect
thriving industrial America neighborhood. Fred’s family would live in
two-family tenement, walking distance from the Winchester Repeating Arms factory until moving into my home in Beaver Hill. I managed to get Section 8
approval for my Norton Street home—my first house—when I moved my growing
family to rural Northford. Our foster care Social Workers strongly encouraged
our move out of the city.
I never aspired to be a landlord,
but I did like making dreams come true. When Fred’s grandchildren visited Norton
St., they would always leave saying: “Thank-you for letting us visit you at
your nice house.” Knowing they no longer needed to leave made us all happier.
It was a modest house, the first
one after the Beaver Hill Section brick pillars, where the esplanade began. It
was the neighborhood that made the difference. Fred would live out his last
years here, smoking cigarettes on my porch I
never successfully helped anyone kick this habit. He retained the instincts
of a neighborhood watch member but was no longer living with 911 on speed dial.
A proud gramps, he waited for his kids to walk home from Hill House High School,
after spending their afternoons at the popular basketball courts. On the
Sabbath, Fred would tip his hat and nod to his Young Israel Synagogue neighbors
as they walked by the house. My foster daughter Jenn called it “parade day.”
Fred was a gentleman and a teacher.
He helped me recognize bias in my good intentions. I would pay for his funeral:
hoping there was enough ‘ripple’ overflow from our friendship for both of his grandchildren.
They were both over age twelve and were reunited with their mom Struggling with Crack recovery and loss of
her father.
When I was President: TV, the Public Square, and a Hot Mic Moment
In my eight years as President of
the League of Women Voters of New Haven (LWVNH), the issues and projects ran
the gambit: recycling policy (bottle bill), reproductive rights, ethics, clean
water, international peace keeping and, of course, Voting Rights and voter
registration.
C-SPAN reached out to the President
of LWVNH That’s me about providing
the ‘grassroots’ aspects of televising their first grassroots candidate debates
This was big. I learned from this
experience, as I would over and over again, that people, especially women, run
toward, but mostly away, from cameras Nothing
in the middle. I am still partial to being behind the camera.
Determining roles, debate rules and
candidate questions—What is your position on the party lever in voting booths?—was
a collaborative effort between the League and several News organizations, most
notable a relatively new and short-lived monthly news publication: New Haven
County Women. This was certainly not the first debate organized by LWVNH but it
would be the first ‘televised’ debate. Television changed the dynamic for
selection of the guest panelists and moderators. It would be a few more years before
Storer Cable would contract with the first Connecticut nonprofit to run a Community TV
station, Citizens Television, making televised debates common. I would be an
incorporator of that nonprofit.
I could not be at the back, middle
and front of the house As is my nature to
attempt but somehow I was in all those spaces. The ‘house’, in this
instance was actually a church on the ‘public square’ with the perfect legacy
for the occasion. Ensuring the civil rights movement would be televised, and at
the request of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the United Church of Christ, host
of the debates, was instrumental in court action that ensured airwaves are
public property.
My first television appearance was in these 1984 CT General Assembly C-SPAN debates. My front of the house duties were to welcome everyone, lay out the floor management for questions from the public and introduce the moderators. A huge satellite dish was parked on Temple Street between United and Center Church on the New Haven Green. Initially reported as an hour delay due to technical difficulties, the uplink from United Church ultimately failed. However, this might have been good fortune. While awaiting good news about the technology dilemma our moderator blurted on a hot mic that she “felt like an Oreo-middle”.
Serving the People: Activism and Politics
Incumbent Representative William(Bill) Dyson, a math teacher and larger-than-life solution oriented ‘realist’, won reelection This time and the next and next. We shared many interests that were not on the LWV’s agenda, such as opposing the death penalty, fighting for prison reform and youth job training. Pat(ricia)Dillon, a first-time winner of the other featured election contest, went on to serve thirty-six years. Our shared interests were domestic violence shelters and expanding health care rights. She was cofounder of the New Haven Battered Women's Shelter. Both Pat and Bill served on the powerful Appropriations Committee. Bill was chairman for over a decade, holding influence over the budget, and debate on issues, that budget action can dissipate. As a policy wonk, he did the math. My hero worship of Bill He has no idea made for challenging dinner conversation when I was dating House Speaker Irv Stolberg, one of the ‘liberales’. Both Gab and Irv would, in a similar manner, casually categorize people as "witless".
On two occasions, I was invited to
speak to women in a nearby suburb. In one of these meetings, I met Wallingford RepresentativeMary Mushinsky. Mary was first elected in 1980 to the Connecticut State House
of Representatives on an environmental activism,
consumer advocacy and improved energy policies platform. I have had the honor
and privilege of voting for Mary since making Wallingford my fifth hometown.
She is Connecticut’s longest serving state representative And may hold this record indefinitely.
How Many, How Long—The Game of Life
Some lives are prescriptive. You simply
follow the dots. But some dots, like some lives, find themselves in
unconventional places. I believe the dots of my life best resemble those found
on Dominoes. And I aspire to be a Guinness World Record Domino line competitor:
carefully setting up diverse blocks with a connected design of purposeful navigation.
In the game of life, each Domino represents a new skill, a forever mate, a job,
a friend, a new perspective, a place to live, a new language, a movie made, a
fear overcome, a new passion discovered, a network created, a hashtag
connection, a song that gets a whole room singing. And the cascading connection
between them creates an image that only reveals itself in due time.
I endeavor to make community TV
‘more than TV’. And so, our amplification of Free Speech with performance
speech and #SocialActionArt becomes a gallery with a ‘community impact award’ and
a public-art mural. While my focus is now citizen media and local TV, the range
of impact remains broad. Our core TV service connects viewers to wide-ranging programs.
Our open doors have inspired some to make life decisions.
Today, I run an organization whose
mission is tethered to transparency, accountability, speaking truth and telling
stories. I still avoid the spotlight. When WPAA-TV leadership decided to pursue
social media engagement, I encouraged the adoption of a persona for the
station’s outreach. The outreach identity was borrowed from an historic American
Revolution muster call on The Parade Ground in Wallingford. According to the Cradle of American Liberty presenter at
the Wallingford Historical Society, the town crier called men to a special
meeting where they took the ‘Oath of Freeman’ proclaiming allegiance to America
and a democratic future. Freeman, a mascot, a metaphor, a small blue bird in
the wrong part of the world Our world is
full of enigma is short for Freeman Penny Quinn, 1st Free Speech
Ambassador. The blue penguin is a visceral metaphor for civic engagement by
whoever walks in the door at WPAA-TV.
Unexpected encounters such as
court-mandated community service or a get-well video message have changed
lives. A family in mourning said the happiest six weeks of a retired radio
announcer’s life were his last, those spent with us making his show A Face for Radio. Several differently
abled young adults proved themselves in ways they could not imagine. A few
veterans renewed their service with us. A local photographer has a permanent exhibit
and a photo book deployed to help those facing food and housing insecurity. It
made the News. The related StreetshotZ
video won a national community impact award. The muralist literally explored
new heights and became known as among the best in the world. ARCY would be recognized
among the ‘40 under 40’ in Connecticut with worldwide accolades for multi-story
murals in 2021. A guest on a show about midlife decided to embody a transition
to ‘memoir artist.’ A recovering alcoholic stabilized to become an exceptional
math tutor; an actor performed on stage—sober for the first time—with a WPAA-TV
hosted theater company that gave him a new start.
New stories are experienced and
shared each day. Any topic is fair game, from Creation Station, a show featuring a four-year-old, to teens
interviewing folks from all walks of life about first jobs. Subject matters range
from the evolution of women in the trades to how to make hummus, a pumpkin
martini, or even raise bees. Among the challenging topics are guns, terror, identity,
taking a knee, recovery, stigma, faith, and commentary on local issues.
In a variety of capacities, resource
gatekeeper, trainer, studio technician, set designer, or sounding board for
ideas about to bloom, I influenced the creation of over 5,000 shows in my
initial five years as WPAA-TV Executive Director. I curated and processed
nearly 30,000 more. My ADHD life is a good match for Community TV.
My conviction is that everyone
needs to be digitally literate. I strongly urge others to watch how media can
be reconfigured and remind advocates that gavel-to-gavel is great for archives
but not so great for connecting people for action. Editing is a ‘power' tool
and community media users need to get better acquainted with it.
My practice is to actively listen,
boldly suggest and demonstrate. I see failure as an opportunity to do better. I
learned this by observing people that I believe make a difference Against the odds. I agree with Representative
Dyson who I observed walking the talk and adjusting in stride because he
listened. In a New York Times interview he said, “When we lock in to ideology
and when we cease to hear, all we are doing is making the difficult more
difficult…We are not resolving the issues. We’re not listening to the other
side.”
Finding Me
I have no need to look for
purposeful and story-full opportunities because they find their way to me,
daily. Time after time I see someone realize that they are award-winning, or
published, or exhibited or connected to their own story. To be a survivor of your
own story is a genuine gift.
My blog Glimpses Through Stained Glass, adelehouston.blogspot.com, where I write under the pseudonym Adele Houston, is the space I give my personal voice room for public expression. The WPAA-TV blog,is for Citizen Maven commentary on citizen media topics and the operations of WPAA-TV. In a post there, I shared: I retired from a paycheck to what my dad considered my “life’s job”. I recall a conversation he started with a poke, “You’ve finally decided what you want to be when you grow up,” to which I replied, “Yes, a thorn.” Perhaps I will stay sharp for a few more decades. But any day could be my last, so I choose to embrace my civic life—fully. PS: My little station won Best in the USA for its size in 2019.
Revisiting is the writing process. It is also how we find the
bloom in our stories.
From prompted first lines into a bloom.
Daffodil
Inhaling,
the past into the present
for a
horizon to inhabit
cultivating
our speech flowers
daffodills
& buttercups
within
the stone walls of poetry's cottages
blooming
in seasons, imprinted
We
call them poems
Erect,
on white plains
It is
the gardener’s memories, wilting
As
the cliché of age
takes
root
15 hours later after a complex day ---
Daffodil Bulb
inhale
your past into the present
resilience
blooms
from
cold spells
daffodils
stalwart among the earliest of buttercups
cultivars
awaken
anew
and conspicuous
speech
flowers
blanket
the horizon
near
neglected stone walls of poetry's cottages
distilled
nectar tickles where sap healed wounds
The
gardener’s memories
Adroop
As
the cliché of age
takes
root
in a
new season
A few days later ---
Daffodil Bulb
Inhale
your
past into the present.
Let
cultivars awaken.
Let
resilience bloom
from
cold spells.
Daffodils
stalwart,
among the earliest of buttercups
anew
and conspicuous
speech
flowers
blanket
the horizon
near
neglected
stone walls of poetry's cottages.
Distilled
nectar
tickles where sap healed wounds.
A
gardener’s memory
Adroop
As
the cliché of age
Takes
root
In a
new season
