Friday, June 24, 2022

"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).

Sunday, February 6, 2022

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