Saturday, October 30, 2021

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.

Monday, October 18, 2021

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.

Saturday, February 20, 2021

A Thorny Journey Blooms in Story

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 LongThe 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