Category: community

behavior · community · culture · Social

From Tsunami to Storm, communities continue to give

Beth Kelley
The worldwide expansion of Salvation army
Salvation Army's presence throughout the world. Image via Wikipedia

My work was having a bake sale today for the tsunami victims of Japan when we heard the news about the major tornado in Alabama (one of the managers’ first thoughts: “maybe we should have another bake sale for Alabama.”). For my birthday we made crafts to donate to a local children’s hospital.

While it seems like the last couple of years have been filled with horrible natural disasters (or man-made; thanks BP!), and a bake sale isn’t going to fix much in the large scheme of things, what struck me is that despite our nation’s economic woes and our disaster-weary national psyche, we are still interested in reaching out to help each other, whether across the nation or across the Pacific.

As organizations and first responders offer emergency relief, food and shelter, many people across the country are looking for ways to help storm victims.

The Salvation Army has set up 10 mobile kitchens to provide hot meals to survivors in hard-hit areas like Tuscaloosa, Guntersville and Lauderdale in Alabama and Montpellier and Oxford, Mississippi.

Another 22 mobile kitchens are on standby.

Follow The Salvation Army’s blog for updates, visit its website or text “GIVE” to 80888 to make a $10 donation to the organization’s relief efforts. It will show up on your next mobile phone bill.

Samaritan’s Purse has dispatched experts and two disaster relief units, tractor trailers stocked with emergency supplies and tools, to assess the needs in Tuscaloosa, Birmingham and Cullman, Alabama.

more via Storm recovery: How you can help – CNN.com.

There are lots of different ways to help both nations. Post here for different ways you have seen your community reach out, either for these disasters or others.

community · creativity · play

Knitting the potholes together in Paris

Beth Kelley

In 2009, Juliana Santacruz Herrera began filling Paris’s potholes with elaborate knitted plugs; she called it “Projet Nid de Poule” (Project Pothole). What the yarn lacks in durability it makes up for in whimsy.

projet nid de poule (via Craft)

community · environment · happiness · Me · Nature

Appreciating the daily commute

Beth Kelley
South Lake Union, Seattle, Washington 2
South Lake Union, Seattle, WA. Image by tedeytan via Flickr

I originally wrote this essay as a response to the daily prompt at StoryPraxis, a very cool project that encourages people to write for just ten minutes a day. The particular prompt inspired me to write about my current hometown, Seattle, and how enriching its natural environment is. For example, I probably have one of the prettiest commutes in the United States. You can read the original post here.

Seattle is probably the prettiest city to have to commute through. You drive over lakes, over sounds, past mountains, past forests. You cross microclimates, and probably experience at least three kinds of weather in 20 minutes or less.

Cresting over one of the many hills the Olympics suddenly burst out onto the horizon in front of you, the bright morning sun making the snow caps shine just below the cloud layer so it looks like a clear, sunshine day “over there.” The sky above you is filled with gray clouds, but today they are more textured than a gray blanket, allowing the light to bounce off creating interesting shapes and textures.

Each neighborhood you pass is very distinct, either due to geographical divisions like water or hills, or more cultural markers like Buddhist prayer flags mixed with solar panels on 1950s bungalows which two blogs later transform into modern condos with Priuses parked out front.

Coming up over the I-5 bridge you’re now high above the city, the commercial waterways 100s of feet below. From here you can see almost all of Seattle’s signature neighborhoods in a 360 degree view – University district, Wallingford, Fremont, Ballard, Queen Anne, South Lake Union, Downtown, Capitol Hill. You see the Olympics on your right, and now the sun is reaching its fingers over the Cascades on your left, injecting the gray clouds with pink and purple, adding bursts of color to the gray sky above.

The freeway has ivy and trees growing over the sides, threatening to spill onto the roadway. You merge onto one of the eastbound bridges, and suddenly you’re cresting over a giant lake, now so close to the water you’re almost floating. To your right off in the distance across the water is Mt. Rainier, shooting its head above the clouds, fighting to keep them from swallowing it whole. A great blue heron casually floats over the morning commuters, and a bald eagle stands vigil on top of one of the lamp posts dotting the bridge.

You pull off your exit, the trees and shrubs now practically enfolding the off ramp. On a sunny day they call to you, “come climb in my branches, come run through my meadow fields.” It’s good that it’s so damp and gray today, or you’d never get to work. The tulips and crocus popping up in the road dividers, almost weed-like in their determination to grow anywhere and everywhere, add some color now that the sun has risen above the clouds, taking the pink streaks with it.

You’re sad to go inside, but know you’ll have a literal birds-eye view into the trees growing just across the street of your office building.

You’re thankful to have one of the most beautiful commutes in the world, and just sad you have to experience it all from a car.

community · Social · technology

Social Media Powers Medical Research

Beth Kelley

An interesting social experiment as well as clinical study, from the Wall Street Journal; while the study itself, which looked at using Lithium to treat ASL (Lou Gehrigs disease) found the treatment didn’t work, they DID find that using social networks to recruit people for the study turned out to be incredibly effective.

The new study, published online in the journal Nature Biotechnology, represents an early example of how social networking could play a role in clinical trials, an area of medical science with strict procedures that many would consider especially difficult to apply in the online world.

“The approach has tremendous potential,” said Lee Hartwell, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist now at Arizona State University, and formerly president of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Standard clinical trials play a central role in the research enterprise of both of those institutions.

Dr. Hartwell, who wasn’t involved in the study, said social-network trials aren’t likely to replace conventional randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trials, the gold-standard for generating medical evidence. But such trials have become so complicated and time-consuming that new models are needed, he said.

Read more about the study

I think this is a great example of the power of communities, whether they exist online or are geographically-based, or both. People with illnesses and their families need support networks, which they find online. I think this is great that doctors and clinicians are also able to tap into these communities and ask for their input and insight into the treatment. Not only is it a great instant resource for the doctors, it loops the patients back into the whole treatment process.

Related Articles
anthropology · behavior · community · culture · environment · health · Nature

It’s Raining Rain Gardens | Sightline Daily

Beth Kelley2 Comments
View of a bioretention cell, also called a rai...
Example of a rain garden. Image via Wikipedia

Oh, all right, but only because you asked soooo nicely; for Earth Day, an example of how communities in the Puget Sound are coming together to protect the Earth and improve their own personal environments as well.

Researchers have pointed the finger at stormwater runoff as the top source of pollution that’s getting into Puget Sound and other Northwest waterways. And because runoff comes from just about everywhere — roofs, roadways, parking lots, farms, and lawns — the solution has to be just as widespread.

Enter 12,000 Rain Gardens.

This week Washington State University and Stewardship Partners, a nonprofit working on land preservation, announced a campaign to promote the installing of 12,000 rain gardens around Puget Sound by 2016. The website even has a counter tracking the number of gardens and encourages folks to enter their rain garden into the database.

more via It’s Raining Rain Gardens — Sightline Daily – Northwest News that Matters.

Related Articles
anthropology · behavior · children · community · education · environment · Nature

MoMA engaging youth in art criticism (some harsh)

Beth Kelley

Happy Earth Day! I feel like I should have a blog post dedicated to the benefits of nature and why we need the Earth, but to be perfectly frank none of those environmental changes we talk about are going to happen unless we get everybody on board and engaged!

So, instead, here is one example of getting people, and particularly kids, involved and engaged, thinking critically about what they did or did not like about their experience, and giving it credibility and recognition by posting it to a public forum, and not just the online kind:

Flights of fancy, lively drawings, dreams of piloting the Bell helicopter, disdain for a museum with no dinosaurs… many of our absolute favorite “MoMA stories” were left by kids, from toddlers to teenagers. So for our second post about the “I went to MoMA and…” project, it wasn’t hard to pick a theme.

Some people think modern and contemporary art is too “hard” or “weird” for kids to understand and get excited about. Not the way our younger visitors tell it, though! It made us incredibly happy to hear from so many kids who thoroughly enjoyed their day at MoMA: admiring colors and shapes, learning new things, trying out Material Lab, picking a favorite artist, getting inspired to draw, and spending time with friends, parents, and grandparents. Take a look at some of the responses below, and a big thank you to all the kids who participated!

check it out at MoMA | “I went to MoMA and…”: The Kids Are All Right.

Kids read each other's feedback on MoMA

community · creativity · culture · happiness · music · play · Social

Promoting public dancing through flash mobs!

Beth Kelley
A pillow fight that took place in Lausanne, Sw...
Flash mob pillow fight in Switzerland (neutral, yeah right!). Image via Wikipedia

Thanks again to the Seattle PI for bringing us great stories of spreading joy and happiness (see posts from earlier this week)!

If you were out and about in Seattle Sunday, you might have encountered more dancing and music than expected.

You can thank the TV show “Glee” and Seattle’s propensity for flash-mob participation for that.

“Glee” flash mobs broke out in several spots around the city Sunday afternoon. Here’s video of one of the best performances I’ve seen out of a bunch posted on YouTube.

Continue on to see the video (direct link below).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWr-wQ8kBOI&feature=player_embedded

This is such an awesome trend of seeing flash mobs of people performing public dancing and performance, from Michael Jackson’s Thriller to Glee to improv and beyond.

anthropology · behavior · community · happiness · mental health · Social

Transparency: Which Countries Are the Happiest?

Beth Kelley

Thanks Facebook for directing me to this follow-up to my earlier post!

For decades, the World Database of Happiness has tracked down how happy people are—not at all happy, not very happy, quite happy, or very happy. As it turns out, most of us are mostly happy, even when things aren’t going so well. Here is a look at how happy people said they were (on average) over the last 30 years.

Find out more at Transparency: Which Countries Are the Happiest? – Culture – GOOD – StumbleUpon.

anthropology · behavior · community · emotion · happiness · Social

The State of Happiness in Washington State

Beth Kelley

Well, I was having a good day…but enough about me, what’s going on in with the rest of the world? Pretty miserable stuff, actually: Libyan rebels, Japan’s earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown, the government shut down barely avoided…well, how are individual states doing? Now we know! A map on alexdavies.net used Twitter to determine just how happy each of our fifty nifty states are. Illinois seems darned happy. Washingtonians are – apparently only kinda sorta happy. From the Seattle PI:

On a scale of one to 42 — where one is ecstatically mirthful — Washington state has a happiness index of 21. In other words, it could go either way.

A map from alexdavies.net uses Twitter keywords to pinpoint just how positive or negative states are.

So, if lots of people are using words like “love” and “amazing” when they tweet, their states might get a better ranking.

Oddly enough, sad words for Washington include “Phillies” and “presale,” according to the site. “Starcraft” and “gentleman” also show up as negative words.

Read more at alexdavies.net.

anthropology · behavior · community · culture · environment · health · mental health · Social

Elderly community centers at risk

Beth Kelley

 

elderly communities
From NYT: Ms. Bosco, 95, spends much of her time at Seaside with Delores Brown, 73.

This New York Times article about budget cuts in New York State affecting senior community centers struck a nerve with me. In a good way. I am a strong advocate for promoting quality of life even into old age, especially into old age, and I think we youngsters forget just how important these community spaces can be for old folks.

 

In these places seniors can get a cheap meal, planned activities like games or fitness classes (we’re talking more Tai Chi than Tai Bo) but also companionship, and opportunities to do new things and learn. They also get experiences they never would have gotten to do otherwise; they realize they love to dance, or simply fall in love again.

However, with states and cities as cash strapped as they are, these places are in jeopardy of closing.

Last year, [New York] state and city budget cuts threatened 75 of the centers… and 29 were ultimately closed. The centers are intended to serve New Yorkers over age 60. This January, the dance began again: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo proposed redirecting $25 million from the centers to child welfare; that, said the city’s Department for the Aging, would mean closing about a third of its centers; on March 15, the centers got a reprieve, with the Assembly and the State Senate voting to restore the money.

In a country where we are already isolating generations away from each other, it seems all the more important to at least offer a place for this demographic of people to meet and have some kind of community.

My grandparents belonged to a retirement home that practically forced them to go out and socialize with each other, be involved in community efforts, and participate in outreach to youth. I was thrilled to see new activities and challenges thrust upon my grandparents; learning new skills and taking on new responsibilities at 80 plus was revitalizing for them. However, that retirement home also ate up a lot of money, money that most folks don’t have, and soon-to-be-old folks are in worse shape as far as savings go due to the economy.

Some people may argue that it’s not worth investing in a demographic that isn’t giving back to our society. Besides the argument that they already GAVE to our society for 50 or more years, I’d argue that many of them could give back if we gave them the opportunity. There are lots of volunteer and time-bank programs where retired folks can donate their skills, from fixing leaky faucets to knitting to mentoring.

One of the programs my grandfather was in was a mentor for “troubled kids” as he’d call them who were bussed into the retirement home every other week or so to sit for an hour to talk to an old person. It was community service that a lot of them probably didn’t like the idea of at first, and to their friends they probably didn’t get all that excited about it. But when you actually saw the kids interact with the older folks, these kids opened up and really enjoyed their time with him. This was the first time in a long time that a lot of these kids got to say what was on their minds, and were really listened to. My grandfather also just happened to be a guidance counselor for many, many years, so for him this was also a treat to brush up on his old guidance counseling skills and feel like he was helping kids along the path “to the straight and narrow.” But even without that training, the older mentors felt like they were contributing to society, and so did the kids, as well as both getting something in return.

So before we look to cutting budgets on senior community centers, I argue we should look at these as possible hubs for other community activities, or community focal points. Just like lots of groups rent out the church basement for meetings or choir rehearsals, city planners should be looking at these spaces as community centers, not just senior centers. These centers offer a chance for a human being, of any age, to feel like a party of a community again, to feel human.

 

Related Articles