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.
