Charlie Barlie, foster dog, testing the couch.

The young girl fell in love with my dog one Sunday morning. Charlie Barlie, world’s best dog in the world, is a looker, exceptionally sweet and accustomed to being fussed over. Nevertheless, her swoon had a lonely ache to it.

Perhaps I projected my own issues, psychically connected with her, or both. An astrological reading said that I am a magnet for others’ pain. Lucky me. I sensed a single mother, working too hard for too little money, raising an only child. I’ve worked with many single moms. That young girl has many lonely hours to fill. Given that a dog’s highest calling is companionship, they are ideally suited to fill the void of loneliness.

I extended an open invitation for the girl to come over to spend time with Charlie whenever she wanted. Her mom appropriately bristled.  What was I thinking?  Of course, I invited her to come too. She declined that as well. This mother did not know that I am not only harmless, but that I could, and would, be a resource given the opportunity. These days, it seems, one can’t be too careful. Nevertheless, that child needed resources beyond what her mother could provide. And, the mother needed resources beyond what our culture provides. Surely, the mom spent many anxious moments worrying about her child, rushed to get home on time, stretched a dollar and kept up a brave front.

Being a single parent is a tough assignment. I gained fresh appreciation for the role when I was solely responsible for a dog, and for only three months. Dogs are easy. They have no emotional anxiety about boys, girls, looks, body image, grades and do not suffer teenagers’ hormonal whiplash.

Holding down a job, putting food on the table, and clean clothes in the closet is quite enough. Throwing an illness or injury into the mix,  (drama princess at the laundromat), makes your head swim.

This prompts the question: What is a healthy, grounding home environment for parents and children? Some children of single parents get through it just fine. Barack Obama did. His grandmother’s involvement made a huge difference. Still, few are that smart or that strong. David Brooks’ wrote:  Some children are bathed in an atmosphere that promotes human capital development and, increasingly, more are not.  By [age] 5, it is possible to predict, with depressing accuracy, who will complete high school and college and who won’t.

Patricia McGinn, former president of the Illinois Counseling Association, recognized in the 1970′s that, as divorce became pervasive, the consequence would be more violence and mental instability. In her view, the family structure is such a fundamental human need that the deterioration of it breeds violence in later years.

We face this reality every day: on the bus; walking down the street; seeing old people, children, and people in their prime, begging for spare change or food.  We are wary of strangers.

Odd, irrational and violent behavior is common now. Connecting with others smooths over the rough edges of our lives. Being a member of an active, aware community such as a church or neighborhood center functions as a release valve with the potential to help people make good decisions that move them forward instead of backward.

New Community Vision is committed to community building. In collaboration with organizations such as Transition Rogers Park, Sound ConneXions, Mindful Metropolis, and the Tutor/Mentor Connection we are all working diligently to support the shift to connected, sustainable lifestyles with inherent connection, support and neighborliness. Join with us in this worthy and exciting undertaking.

Neighborhood Diner

The neighborhood diner, a relic squeezed out by chain operations such as Starbucks, McDonalds, Denny’s and others, is missing today. A diner, serving as a community gathering place, would anchor a neighborhood by providing a safe and affordable place to gather, to exchange ideas and to be nourished with food and sociability. The diner of my dreams is a cooperative owned by the employees or the patrons.

I envision a quiet corner or separate room where children could do their homework in the afternoon, tutored by a senior, a teenager or anyone in between. When their parents pick them up after work, they can sit down to an affordable meal say, beans and rice, and go home with homework, dinner and dishes out of the way. This way, their homework is completed while they are alert enough to absorb the material. Also, given the community’s stake in their learning, report card day could be celebrated as a special event.

Cooperatives are member owned, operated and governed. Because a co-op’s purpose is to serve its members, it can operate close to zero profit, if there is sufficient cash flow to cover the operations. Successful cooperatives operate on general business principles, plus the cooperative principles. See  Keystone Development Center for more about how they work and the potential they offer.

Consortium of Restaurants

The food service industry is physically demanding, not well paying and the hours are loooooooonng. Legions of persons have extensive restaurant experience, and cities are littered with shuttered restaurants and good, used equipment. A consortium of co-op restaurants can break the work into manageable parts and can attract and retain higher-caliber employees who have a vested interest in the restaurant’s success. Affiliating with sister restaurants, each could share personnel and equipment, could leverage buying power, and much more. Experienced food service workers number in the thousands, so the pool from which to attract employees is broad and deep.

Child Care

When taking the bus or an “L” I often talk with young mothers. Several of them have confided that they commute two hours each way, taking their child to day care, going to work and then reversing the process at night. A colleague drove his son over an hour-and-a-half each way with the same scenario, because $350 per month for after-school care was completely out of the question.  Because he spent so much time transporting his son, he wasn’t able to work the lucrative overtime hours. His marriage couldn’t take the strain and is headed for divorce court and he lost his job in the economic downturn.

Every neighborhood has reliable, trustworthy people, retired or unemployed, who genuinely like children and would be willing to keep an eye on them.  They could possibly teach skills that a child would like to learn such as gardening, cooking, knitting, a musical instrument, singing… One important thing these neighbors and children surely could do is listen to each other.  The children could help with chores, run errands, or lift something heavy.  Undoubtedly, the child could program the electronics, teach computer skills, and perform other technical wizardry.

The obvious flaw in this arrangement is figuring out who is trustworthy.  Anyone who thinks that she or he can protect a child from our sexually provocative culture must be wearing blinders. Sexy ads appear on everything from billboards, such as Bebe clothing and the bionic woman  promoting Svenska vodka, to the Yahoo banner using young girls to advertise the personals page.

A more serious concern is child abuse. I don’t have children, so I’m not speaking from first-hand experience, but it seems that the way out of this dilemma is sunlight and frank discussions. Since children pick up on everything, surely they are aware and wary of this potential problem.  If a child is informed and communicates with her or his parents, is this adequate inoculation from harm?  What about the child who doesn’t have open communication?  I don’t know the answer, other than it must be solved at the family and community levels.  If we can’t turn to each other for support, and are left only to ourselves, we stay stuck and impoverished.  Sunlight and frank discussion can only help.

Elder Care

Many of us have experienced the declining health of aging parents or spouses.  We have navigated the confusing territory of assisted-living and nursing-home arrangements, Medicare, and countless other elder-care details.  Someone who has faced the situation with their own parents has valuable knowledge to pass on to those who are being initiated into this difficult phase of life.  The new initiate would be grateful for a road map into this difficult territory.  Much of this advice will be freely given; but it seems logical to think that a good opportunity exists for those with this knowledge to create a lively consulting business. See more about this topic in Community Needs Meet Resources.

Car-Sharing

I estimate that 90% of the cars in my parking-challenged neighborhood do not move.  A car is basically an expensive, rusting liability – an appliance.  Obviously, someone pays for its maintenance, including license plates, city sticker, insurance, repairs, depreciation, and parking tickets incurred for forgetting to move it for street cleaning.  The owner may hate the expense but find the idea of not having a car daunting.  Car-sharing is an obvious solution.  For this to work, an arrangement must be agreed upon for maintenance, insurance, and logistics.  All parties need to know that they can they can rely on each other and that the car will be completely functional and parked at the appointed place and time.

Transportation Network

All over the country, people drive within a wide radius of every metropolitan area. If we were to take advantage of that activity by transporting additional persons, fresh produce, arts/crafts, food stuffs, and other goods, we would increase the flow of goods and people while lessening the wasteful practice of one person per car, driving back and forth, back and forth.

In the Chicago area, the roads to Dubuque, South Bend, Rockford, St. Joseph, Galena, and many points in between are surely well worn. This commuting doesn’t seem to be anything more than a boring obligation, a burden. A database that identifies the commuters, their schedules, and their routes would leverage commuting into a valuable resource. Anyone who needs to get something or someone someplace could log on to a Web site or call a telephone bank to see who is going where and when, and the capacity they have for taking persons or goods with them.

The various social networking sites will facilitate this resource sharing.

Food, Nutrition, and Food Deserts

Alongside the challenge of housing is the relentless task of feeding ourselves.  It is a sad fact of life that one has to go far afield to find nourishing food.  Agribusiness and food-processing companies have such a grip on food production and distribution that finding food that is not processed or genetically modified is challenging and, in some neighborhoods, impossible.

Nutrition

“Food desert” describes a community where the only food readily available is processed. A diet of primarily processed food slowly but surely saps health, energy, and intelligence. Millions of Americans hold two or more low-paying jobs just to make ends meet. This lifestyle depletes their energy and robs them of time with their families. It leads to health problems resulting from food choices that are quick and easy but costly and nutritionally bankrupt. Sadly, many people are unaware that processed food mostly looks like food but does not qualify as food that nourishes. Many think of Kraft cheese singles as “cheese” when in fact it is a combination of chemicals that resembles cheese but has scant nutritional value.

I recently tried to shop at a chain-store grocery near DePaul University, in the pricey, well educated Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. It was chock-full of attractively packaged food of every imaginable variety. Every single item, even the produce, was processed and packaged for convenience: an entire grocery store, and not a nutrient in sight! Although Lincoln Park hardly qualifies as a food desert, the grocery store in question was deceptive; in the food deserts located in poor neighborhoods, junk food is not disguised as health food.

Neighborhood or Church Purchasing Co-Op

By adopting a cooperative model, we can serve co-op members and our communities. One solution may be for neighbors organize to send a few people to a produce market in a van, a few days a week, to purchase produce in bulk. Churches might offer another solution; disadvantaged neighborhoods seem to have a lot of churches, each with a van, and a scarcity of nourishing food. If churches organized to purchase produce in bulk and distribute it or prepare meals, their members could have access to nourishing food at a fraction of the cost to individuals.

Reading with Grandmother in Wheelchair

The glamorous commercial property manager had recently given birth to a baby who couldn’t digest its food properly. I don’t recall if it was colicky or something worse. Neither of their families lived nearby so it was just she, her husband, and the wailing baby. Commercial real estate is a demanding job, dressing to the nines, negotiating contracts and keeping everyone-from the tenants, to the landlord to the secretaries-all paddling in the same direction. She showed up every day looking as if her life was in complete control.

In our private conversations however, she was at wits end and exhausted. As the magnet for others’ pain, (see Single Parents Dilemma) I wracked my brain for a way to help this young mom and her husband. The only thing I came up with was offering to drive out to the suburbs and pick up her laundry. Of course, she appropriately declined the offer. Each of us moved on from that company and I don’t know how it turned out. I presume that they got through it.

Within the last couple of weeks, NPR broadcast a segment in which a nurse translated by phone for nurses and doctors who treat non-English speaking people. A young mother and her husband wrapped their hot, fevered infant in blankets. Translated, they said that all of pictures of Baby Jesus showed him swaddled in cloth. They were doing the best they knew how, but it wasn’t the best for the baby at that time.

This brings to mind the need for a Legion of Grandparents. Knowing how to care for an infant or a child seems like it should be natural. Although it is for animals, it definitely does not work that way for humans. Human parents learn how to parent from others who know have trod that well worn path. Luckily, there are millions of people who love babies and children and are expert at caring for them. This valuable resource, grandparent-type people, exists in every community. A Legion of Grandparents could be a resource for new parents and for those whose families are not nearby or not readily available for support. This need is real enough that Western Union purchased billboard advertising with a photo of a young mom holding a crying infant captioned: Send Grandma. If this is done right, the Legion of Grandparents can hold down the fort until the real genuine article arrives.

It’s not just the crises that we need grandmas and grandpas for. It is also for trips to the playground, skinned knees, learning to tie knots, to fish, to knit, to garden, to read to children and much more. Grandparents fill countless roles. If your parents are not here, there are lots of good ones that can stand in very well.

Contact Terry Edlin to mobilize your neighborhood with community gatherings to identify who has what you need to get, who needs what you have to give, to get people socializing to create supportive, resourceful communities and to identify the people who can fill the important role of standby grandparent. For everyone’s safety and well being, it is important that we gather and socialize regularly and form alliances gradually.

Thanks to Ned Horton for the use of the photo Reading with Grandmother in Wheelchair. I welcome comments on anything on this website, including all blog posts.

Talent is another under utilized resource. Thousands of people are unemployed or work in jobs that are neither well paying nor satisfying. Take food service for example. Experienced food service workers number in tens of thousands, along with thousands of shuttered restaurants and acres of used equipment. Let’s consider a diner in the context of a member member owned, operated and governed cooperative. “The economic forces on a cooperative tend to drive the business to operate at a zero profit. Since the owners are also the customers who shop at the cooperative, they want to pay as little for their food as possible and tend to discount their share of any business profit. As long as the business can maintain a healthy cash flow, a low profit cooperative is viable.”¹

This quote is from Cathy A. Smith, Ph.D., Executive Director of Keystone Development Center, Inc. It referenced a grocery co-op, but the principle applies to cooperatives generally. The food service industry, well known for the unappealing combination of long hours and low pay, serves the important function of quickly filling the hunger urge. In my home town, Stockton, Illinois, local farmers finished their morning milk and gathered at The Lantern, a rickety diner run mostly by teenage girls, serving mediocre food and coffee. Nevertheless, as a gathering spot, it served to knit the community together. I believe that every community needs a diner where people gather to connect with each other casually and predictably.

By operating community diners as cooperatives, the potential exists to employ enough people so that the burden is shared and the hours are not grueling. In the diner of my dreams a quiet area is set aside for children to do their homework after school, tutored by seniors, teenagers, or older children, while they are alert enough to absorb the material. When their parents pick them up after work, they could enjoy a simple, affordable meal and go home with dinner, dishes and homework out of the way. A cooperative diner could anchor a neighborhood by providing a safe and friendly place for people to gather.

The imbalance of time and talent continues to gnaw at me to look for solutions that I am convinced lie within each community. Sign up for the newsletter and look for more in future posts.

¹ Cooperation Works! Training Session, Fall 2008

The tragedy of this situation is that there are people who need each other but there is no broad-scale way for them to find each other. The need to feel needed is fundamental to our well being. The young professional husband and wife could do their jobs more easily if an available adult, whom everyone liked and trusted, was around when they traveled.

Everyone, from rich to poor, needs to feel connected.  A friend living in a very posh Chicago suburb reports that she was the only at-home parent in her entire cul-de-sac. Ferris Buehler’s Day Off poignantly illustrates the isolation and loneliness that privileged children experience. I have to believe that there are trustworthy, interesting adults who would welcome the opportunity to participate in a child’s life.

Children, teenagers especially, aren’t going to cotton to just anyone. Gathering community-by-community, month-after-month is the way to grease the social gears. As people get to know each other, they will establish areas of common interest, see each other in safe settings over time, and gradually learn whom to trust. Alliances will naturally form. Discovering who has what you need to get, and who needs what you have to give, can lead to richer, more satisfying lives.

New Community Vision’s goal is to facilitate gatherings community-by-community, month-after-month, throughout the country, to brainstorm for solutions to our universal problems of child care, elder care, housing, transportation, jobs and social isolation.

If you long to live in a friendly, supportive, cooperative community, please contact Terry Edlin to get your neighborhood cooking with regular gatherings.

What I do know is that if these families lived with other people, or had neighbors whom they knew well and trusted, maybe those children could have stayed asleep in their beds.  Children who are out at midnight have little chance of success in school the next day.  On the occasions that I’m in a grocery store at 9 p. m., children are often there with their parents, a sight that always troubles me.  David Brooks, the conservative op-ed writer for the New York Times often writes about children growing up in chaotic homes having less chance of success in life. A predictable, well ordered home environment could go a long way toward stabilizing children’s lives and improving school performance.

For the 24 million children who live in single parent households, a well ordered environment may be a distant dream. The single mother that I met on the bus last week commutes four hours a day, (2 hours each way) to take her 17-month old child to day care on the south side and then get to work. She hopes for an opening at one of three north side day care centers. A four-hour daily commute, and caring for an infant, leaves little capacity to create a well ordered environment.

Barack Obama succeeded spectacularly in a single parent home due to his mother’s commitment to education and to his grandmother’s involvement. Natalie Angier wrote in the November 5, 2002 New York Times,  “The presence or absence of a grandmother often spelled the difference in traditional subsistence cultures between life or death for the grandchildren.” Weighing the Grandma Factor; In Some Societies, It’s a Matter of Life and Death. Western Union capitalized on this phenomenon a few years ago by creating a billboard showing a young mother holding a crying infant with the caption: Send Grandma.

The message is clear, throughout history, young families need help. Often, birth families function well, yet  sometimes they fail catastrophically. If your family is far away, or if it falls on the unhelpful end of the spectrum, having a community that fills the role of a supportive family can be a balm to your spirit and can even be life saving. Allowing someone into your family circle for friendship or a helping hand requires that you know them well and that the adults and the children actually like each other. The way to get to know people well, and to find out if you like them, is to gather casually, often and preferably in a variety of settings.

Culturally, there is a great yearning for the experience of a supportive community but this social skill has rusted. New Community Vision’s goal is to plant the seeds for cooperative living by facilitating gatherings community-by-community, month-after-month, throughout the country, to brainstorm for solutions to our universal problems of child care, elder care, housing, transportation, jobs and social isolation. Contact Terry Edlin to jump start your community with gatherings that support individuals and families and lead to healthy, vibrant neighborhoods. Sign up for our newsletter so you don’t miss anything and to find out where and when communities gather.

Here’s an opportunity for her and her community: Gather to brainstorm every month and find out who needs what you have to give and who has what you need to get. In our marvelous, metropolitan melting pot, I guarantee that within a one-mile radius there are the following:

• people working hard to launch non-profit organizations and small businesses;
• dozens of good, honorable, retired or unemployed people who feel lonely and unneeded;
• children going home to empty apartments, eating junk food and surfing the internet unsupervised;
• people with marketing expertise;
• talented writers, including grant writers;
• people skilled at handy-man work;
• shuttered restaurants;
• hundreds of experienced food service workers;
• acres of used restaurant equipment;
• people who love cars, love to work on them, and could use some extra cash;
• cars sitting under-utilized on the street, day after day.

Somewhere in our fabulous city, video equipment that could be tapped to publicize a cause or a a small business is sitting idle. If communities gather regularly to brainstorm for solutions to universal problems, and say what they need to improve their lives and what they have to improve others’ lives, we will mobilize resources and see a resurgence of hope.

New Community Vision’s goal is to facilitate gatherings community-by-community, month-after-month, throughout the country, to brainstorm for solutions to our universal problems of child care, elder care, housing, transportation, jobs and social isolation.

If you long to live in a friendly, supportive, cooperative community, please contact Terry Edlin and let’s get your neighborhood cooking with regular gatherings.

Although I support Obama’s message “Yes we can” a million percent, fundamentally re-evaluating “yes” so that when I say it, my commitment is behind it is surely more effective. In The Year of Living Dangerously, the 1982 movie set in Indonesia, the take away message was to make a solid difference in life. The reporter befriended a family, literally making the difference between life and death. Friends remind me to put my own oxygen mask on first. Good advice.

Obama consistently elevated the tone of the campaign from fear-baiting, gutter politics that has been all too common in recent years. I look forward to four years of inspiring, articulate and thoughtful speeches delivered by a truly elegant man.

NPR’s Weekend Edition broadcast an interview yesterday with an Arabic reporter who said that he wanted a Barack Obama for his own country and he explicitly admired McCain’s concession speech in which he said that Barack Obama was his president too. Showing the world that a democracy sometimes elects the smartest person, and the one with an inspiring message, is the surest way to defeat terrorism. As we face challenges on every front-financial, environmental, military, diplomatic-we need big, bold ideas. Small-minded fear mongering has no power to inspire. The hope of the world rests with Obama.

When Bob finally crossed the street and met the old guy, Hans offered all of his equipment, including a 10-foot lathe-big enough to produce columns-to the young kid, providing he would haul all of it away. That way, he could legitimately turn down the work and finally retire. He offered to come across the street to teach the young kid what he knew. It was a good arrangement for both men and Bob lined up his friends to haul the equipment that weekend.

What happened? Hans dropped dead from a heart attack the next day. His brother from Wisconsin took all of the tools and equipment, leaving nary a screwdriver for the aspiring carpenter.

This is a true story of an opportunity missed on several levels. Bob came tantalizingly close to getting a treasure trove of a master craftsman’s tools and equipment for free. Perhaps the deeper loss is that the men didn’t know each other, or their mutual interest, at a time when each could have benefitted from it. Hans went to his grave with roughly 60 years of experience that he didn’t pass along to an eager student. Most craftsmen would be honored to pass their knowledge on to a new generation.

New Community Vision’s mission is to organize gatherings, community-by-community, month-in and month-out. As you meet your neighbors, you will be astonished at the breadth and depth of resources that exist within your town and possibly on your block. Pooling resources could make a huge difference in your life.

Sign up for the newsletter and contact us to get your community buzzing by pooling talent and resources.