Voices We Love: The Grassroots Traveler

by Callie Strouf

Blue Moon Community Farm

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Today, I would like to introduce you to a local Community Supported Agriculture farm just South of Madison, WI, Blue Moon Community Farm.  Owner and Farmer, Kristen Kordet has somehow managed to create not only a beautiful farm where over 150 families obtain nutritious and organic produce, but she has also developed a true sense of community and connection to our food and environment.  When speaking with Kristen it is easy to feel her curiosity and excitement for the experience that each new growing season brings. 

“At Blue Moon we raise about 40 different vegetables and over 200 varieties. Our vegetable fields are in rotation with our pastured livestock as a natural system of replenishing fertility. We believe that crop diversity is essential to our stewardship of the land.”

20140806-CallieJane-BlueMoon-#2Kristen goes above and beyond to develop a real sense of community with her weekly on-farm member produce pick-ups. She is always available to answer questions and point you in the right direction if you are inclined to visit the flower and herb gardens, or the many self-pick opportunities available.

She graciously hosts Fall and Spring on-farm potluck festivals for member families.  As the children play amongst the straw bales and feed a snack to the feisty pigs, the grown-ups set out a feast with Blue Moon produce featured in almost all of the homemade goodies.

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It is almost magical to walk the fields on a crisp day; feel the lumpy crunch of dried dirt under your feet and truly experience where your food comes from.  The sense of connectedness extends beyond the farm and its members, recognizing one small role in a much bigger system of change.

**As a Grassroots Traveler, I am committed to finding and supporting those businesses that promote local and sustainable values, both while traveling and when exploring closer to home.

Projects We Love: The Gay Men Project

The Gay Men Project is a personal project by New York based photographer Kevin Truong. His goal is to create a visual catalog of gay men living across the world.

Every profile shares a story in the person’s own words. In Kevin Truong’s own words:

“This project is simple. Basically I’m trying to photograph as many gay men as I can. My goal is to create a platform, a visibility on some level, and a resource for others who may not be as openly gay. A visual catalog of gay men and their stories. When I think of my own experience, and all the time I spent in the closet and hiding the fact that I was gay–to be at a place now where I feel completely comfortable being on the blog and telling the world “Hey, I’m a gay man,” I think there’s a power in that, for me and for a lot of the men on the blog. So it’s kind of a numbers game, I think the more men I photograph, the more impact the project has.

My dream is to take the project to as many different cities as I can across the world.”

If you would like to participate please contact:

kevin@kevintruong.com

The Gay Men Project: the First 373 Portraits from The Gay Men Project on Vimeo.

Monday Spotlight: Being Creative When Donating Time or Money

I have had to get creative with my volunteering lately while carless here in Wisconsin so I thought that I would make this Monday Spotlight all about volunteering and donating in creative ways.  One of the largest obstacles in getting people to donate their money or time today is that in order to do so, we feel that we have to bring the rest of our entire life to a halt.  I don’t know why, but in the back of our minds volunteering is a much larger activity than it really is.  To schedule a time to give our time with no return besides the greatness of the fact we are volunteering seems to be a concept even I have a difficult time with once in a while.  Ultimately then, we need to find ways that our loves, passions and enjoyments come out in our volunteering and donating.

I have put together these few things to at least get your minds going.  The fact is, we all do want to donate our time and money.  It is a human instinct to give.  So, in the year 2012, we just need to become more creative sometimes in our giving when circumstances aren’t to any extremes.

  • Wines For Humanity: My friend Angie is always so great about finding these ways to volunteer and fundraise that just amazes me.  I don’t know when she finds the time but thankfully she does because she finds me gems like this.  Wines for Humanity has strong feelings about homelessness. The hosts of these private wine tastings and their guests relax while enjoying the wines in a fun, educational environment. Not only does everyone have an extraordinary time with great wines and good friends, but a portion of the proceeds from every bottle promoted also directly benefits families in their community who find themselves on the brink of homelessness for reasons beyond their control.

                               Here in Wisconsin, the primary organization that receives the benefit is Porchlight, one of the organizations I have mentioned in the Madison section of Project Kinect.  Look into who your consultant is in your area to find out the organizations who are benefiting from Wines for Humanity.  This really is a great way for us wine drinkers to get together, taste some great wine and donate some money to an extremely important cause. 

  • Volunteering While Traveling:  I could kick myself for all of the times that I didn’t volunteer while I was traveling.  So many trips in my twenties that I didn’t even think about volunteering.  I know, as we all say, “it’s a vacation!  Why should you be working?”  Well, volunteering is not working because the word work implies that you’re getting paid.   When you’r
    This family we met up with twice. Once was at the Salvation Army distrobution center and the other was Dressing Up Tuscaloosa. They planned their vacation around this need to volunteer.

    e on vacation, you end up doing day trips and excursions and sightseeing; so why not decide to volunteer while you’re sight-seeing?  You will definitely get the spontaneous excursion that you were looking for.  Here are two additional links to give you some ideas of how to find volunteer opportunities while on vacation.  I do apologize, these websites are more geared for abroad travelers but even domestically, you can find great volunteer opportunities in any community.  You can also take it one step further and plan your vacation around a volunteer opportunity just like this family did who we met when we were in Tuscaloosa.

                                        I to I Volunteering

                                        Spunky Girls Monologues: 37 Ways to Volunteer While Traveling

Really though, this is all just to get you thinking about volunteering and how it doesn’t have to be a chore.  Look at what you absolutely love to do in your life, and find a way to share that or combine that in a volunteer opportunity.  My grandmother loves to play games and socialize.  So, two days a week, she goes to the nursing home in her town and plays bingo, colors, or chooses an assortment of other games with the residents.  For her, she gets to do what she loves and coincidentally, my mother works there as well as some of her friends are there.   My grandma would never consider this time volunteering, but that is what she is doing and the residents love her.  It is in there, in our happiness, where we can be the best “volunteer” that we can be.  Remember Jo who I met at the Tampa Hostel?  Look at how much volunteering she did as she was sailing around the world teaching yoga to all those youth at every port they stopped?  Her job for seventeen years was to sail that boat for the family on it.  She would have never considered her time “volunteering” when she was with any of those children. When volunteering isn’t in an extreme situation like natural disasters, then we must find that balance of where we volunteer hand-in-hand with something we love.

The Course of a Year

It’s Tuesday, December 13th.  We’re on the stretch of the twelve days of Christmas as well as the final stretch of 2011.  Where does that leave me?

I am normally someone who reflects often but I never really spend a ton of time reflecting on the past year as we approach New Years.  For some reason, this year just seems to be different. I am in a spot right now that I had never imagined when I began this year.  Where I would be was undefined, but I was confident that it wouldn’t be working a restaurant job in my home town.  That, unfortunately, saddens me a little and it shouldn’t.  I have no reason in the world to be sad and that is why it is necessary for me to do a check on what I have accomplished, have had huge hurdles with, and how have evolved in that span of three hundred and sixty-five days.

Before we reflect on the past year though, I believe it to be extremely important to look at what we know for certain that the next year will bring.  I know for a fact that I will be turning thirty-two next year and have to deal with whatever that means to me.  I know that I have some really extraordinary people in my life getting married which include my close friend Beth and my cousin who has always been another sister to me. 

In April I will be returning to Los Angeles in the hopes of making it to a point where I am able to live as a self employed person who can contribute the absolute most possible to society.  That move also has the motive of making steps forward on the opportunity to live not only in Los Angeles, but in Madison, WI as well. In my adulthood, I truly know how difficult it is to not be near your family.  Not just your biological family, but your entire family that you pick up along the way while traveling our journeys.

I also know that in 2012, there will be everything that I didn’t mention.  It is equally important to acknowledge there is so much room for everything we don’t know will happen.  Our journey is the meat and that meat is everything that is unexpected, not forethought and comes up in the details.  Knowing that you haven’t planned everything and there is room for the unplanned is comforting.  Find comfort in the year to come knowing that things will happen that we are not prepared for and that we will have the tools to handle it; whatever it may be. Acknowledging these future events can better help me think about this past year.

Today I got three remarkable things in the mail:  A post card, a Christmas post card and a Christmas card.  The significance of this mail is who sent them.  I speak of inspiration often and this mail has brought me inspiration from how strong and amazing these people are who mailed them to me.  In the last year, they have all went against some life-breaking obstacles and have came out better because of them.  That is inspiring.

The post card came from Korea.  One of my past employees from Starbucks made a decision on a whim when a friend invited her to come stay with his family in South Korea, nanny and teach English.  With no preparation except the drive for new experiences and adventure, she said yes only having two months to make sure everything would be put in place in Los Angeles. 

The Christmas post card came from one of my closest college friends and her family.  The picture is her, her husband and their beautiful baby boy, Catcher.  This last year she finished graduate school on the east coast, picked up everything with her new family and moved across the country saying good bye to the life they had built and some phenomenal human beings they had met while living in the north east. 

The Christmas card that I received today was from a friend down south. She had a rollercoaster of a year that gave her some great steps forward revolutionizing an arts community that is already ahead of its time.  She has taken a chance by putting herself out there for a man who is near the level of brilliance she is; all this happening in the midst of losing a job in a career path she had put her whole being into.  This has not stopped her one bit, and has used it as an opportunity to create exactly what she wants for her life.  Her journey is only ten times stronger because of this hiccup. 

As I look at my year, I spend time looking at answers to the question why?  Why did I give up my nice salaried job in Los Angeles?  Why did I throw all of my money into the opportunity to travel and meet people throughout the country? And, why have I continued to take a chance on a media company that needed a lot more work than I could give to it this last year?  Well I look at the events of this past year and find all of these answers and so much more.

I find the answers in the moment I was on top of the world, or just on the roof of a restaurant in Saint Petersburg, FL watching the sunset, listening to a man play music watching three older women dancing having the time of their lives.   Again I find answers watching my friend Alyssa give her whole self while listening to painful story after painful story when we were in Tuscaloosa.  Not blinking or turning away, just listening, reminding me of the importance of listening.

I remember my phone going absolutely crazy the morning I made the Today Show and everyone was facebooking, calling and texting me to tell me they saw me.  Answers came from my surprising cab drive at seven in the morning in New Orleans, learning a valuable life lesson from a New Orleans resident for the entirety of his life.  This twenty minute cab ride in search for beignets will forever be in my mind.

The moment I realized I was taking spiritual responsibility for my god daughter in Las Vegas and then later sitting with close friends discussing music from our past hits me with answers as does getting picked up at the Milwaukee airport in a snow thunderstorm in the middle of April by Melanie for her birthday.  Later that week, I got the opportunity to experience a ride along with the keeper of the Kishwaukee Corridor in Rockford, IL. 

I am not only given the answers but am reassured of the path I am on when I think about Dina and I doing our two year anniversary show in Los Angeles.  Having created this experience with one my best friends is reason why all by itself. Reassurance is sitting on a stopped train for six hours on the way to New York because of tornadoes knocking over trees onto the tracks. This “delay” gave me the opportunity to have an in depth conversation with a mother of two just trying to get back home to Raleigh.  I am further reassured by the spontaneity of life when a random trip to the only bar open in Beaumont, TX introduced four tired travelers to Rhonda, a drag queen who just needed to get out that night. 

I remember sitting listening to Arlene Goldbard talk at the APASO conference in Austin and knowing I was exactly where I should be as well as when I met Jo in Tampa.  Her story of traveling for so long on the sailboat, her journey with Yoga and running the Olympic torch is something of legends. 

Whether it was sitting in the car on a trip to Las Vegas with a toddler, late night recordings on skype, waiting for Matt to get me at Penn Station, finding out the ins of the EPA and adventures of free D.C., getting a surprise travel companion to Baltimore, seeing behind the scenes of Cirque Du Soleil, wading through the beautiful and untouched by man Hurricane Creek, experiencing the demonstrations in St. Paul for gay marriage, or an afternoon impromptu photo shoot with a close friend, I have been given all of the answers to the questions why from this past year. 

I am thankful for all of these moments and am eternally grateful for each one as well as everyone that was involved.  I laugh at how some of these memories really were so time-sensitive and just worked out.  Getting a moment with Holly literally minutes before she got on a flight to India, getting a lunch with Michael as he was driving from one show sight to the next and just sitting with Adam while he was home from Dubai. 

The distance from the beginning of a year to the end of one is so short that we need to cherish and reflect on this distance so we can appreciate what has happened and what will come.  The beginning of this year was sitting at Big Wangs in Hollywood as Dina and I watched our phones patiently for the launch of our online magazine.  In the life movie in my head, that is a significant scene, as well as an impromptu country music concert with Dolly and April and my staff being so supportive just last night, as we had an event that did not produce the turn out I had expected.  The pictures and moments with my staff make this year’s journey whole.  I was supposed to have this experience back home with the group of people I had it with. 

I could go on and on with moments and experiences from this last year, but that is not the only reason why this journey is significant.  For me, even though it is a bit selfish, I was to get to know myself better. In observing and experiencing our country, I inevitably got a chance to view myself in a more clearly defined light.  I needed to get to know me for who I am and get a better idea of how I am perceived from the outside.  I needed to take some time and see if the view from the outside matches who I claim and think I am.  All these experiences help to make that assessment on this gigantic integrity check.

As for the rest of the year, I will continue to look at the goals I have made and setting up a plan of action into getting those goals fulfilled. While finding comfort in the balance of who I want to be and who I am from the outside world, I need to still make sure I am being productive and moving forward.  I additionally need to take time to recognize those who have supported and been inspirational to my past year.  That is necessary as I move forward.  Those people responsible for me getting this far need to know how impactful they have been because it is true, WE ARE ALL INVOLVED! This was not the journey of one person.

As the New Year approaches, I want to go further with the WE ARE ALL INVOLVED campaign by turning my resolutions into acts that include a larger amount of people than just me.  I ask that if this inspires you, that you also involve others in your resolutions.  Stray away from losing ten pounds and reading more and turn it into getting a walking group together who meets at lunch, or creating a youth reading program.  This is the direction we need to be evolving; from me to we. To become stronger and healthier as a community, we have to be united and start watching out for one another. It is that level of social responsibility that will get our dreams accomplished as a whole entity and raise the level of brilliance even higher for our entire species.  It is a simple statement that has become my mantra.

WE ARE ALL INVOLVED!

We Have Hit Three Months

It wasn’t until I heard my friend tell me a story about her visit to China while she was in the graduate school on a cruise ship that I really began to digest what I have been doing for the last three months.  If you haven’t been following me and Project Kinect, here is a rundown of the first three months.  Writing this down also helps me comprehend what I have done and where this year is going.

I started out the end of February in Las Vegas. There I met with the Human Feng Shui Project, witnessed my god daughter’s baptism and got a good look at the economy of Vegas and what they are doing to try and grasp the magnitude of their situation.

From there I was in Texas.  I spent a good amount of time in Austin with my friend Jess.  There I helped with the Association of Performing Arts Service Organizations (APASO) conference, witnessed the South by Southwest Interactive portion.  I also got see some extremely innovative theatre and learn about the ATX equation.  Austin led me to San Antonio, a thriving city, and then to Beaumont, which is a barely hanging on city. 

 With the assistance of my friends Alyssa, Levi and Megan, we journeyed to Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Mobile and onto Saint Petersburg. Outside of Mobile, AL we checked out Dauphin Island and how it has coped with hurricanes, the BP oil spill and the constant erosion that is inevitable for an island in that location of the gulf.

  In the Tampa/Saint Petersburg area, I learned about what is being done to fight against the high rate of pedestrian accidents.  I spent a night in the Gram Place Hostel and met Jo and Valoree who are contributing to their communities in great ways.  After the hostel I met Stacy, a friend of a friend and we got to talking about technology in schools and what that looks like as an educator. 

Stacy brought me to the train station and I went to New York with a fifty degree change in weather and an incredibly empty pocket book.  In New York I met with the Central Park Conservancy, The True Colors House and a whole bunch of different people adding their gifts into their communities.  New York was amazing because I had a chance to see what ten years of healing looks like after the travesty of September Eleventh.  New York came and went so fast that I feel like I hadn’t accomplished any connecting but then look at my picture from the today show and remember what great strides were made.

From New York I went to Connecticut, more specifically Mansfield, CT and hung out on the University of Connecticut (UCONN) campus for a few days.  I chatted with some graduate students about how their lives had changed at UCONN and sat through the technical rehearsal of Urinetown which is a musical that has so much relevance to our society right now. 

I then was in D.C., had a great sit down at the EPA, realized how amazing it is that majority of the Smithsonian Museums are free, and just took in our nation’s capital in a way that I had never done before. Washington D.C. was pivotal for me though when I realized I had connected an idea from one community, Yoga for youth, to another community.  That was when I realized what I was doing was actually getting people to think about what is happening in their communities and what they can learn from other communities that don’t cross their train of thought.

D.C. brought me to Baltimore.  In Baltimore I learned about what a city with such a bad representation with crime does to change the opinion of an entire nation.  Baltimore’s most significant addition that I saw was The Circulator that is a free bus.  It has three routes that venture through much of the city and prides itself on ten minute services until nine in the evening.  When I return, I will look further into the managing of this by the local government and how that bus system got budgeted in.
I then arrived into Milwaukee where it was raining, snowing, hailing with thunder and lighting and I was whipped around like a leaf from a leaf blower.  My friend Melanie picked me up and got me safe to Rockford where I gathered for her birthday, painted a wall and spent some time with Dana from the Weed & Seed Kishwaukee Corridor. 

Dolly came and got me from Rockford where I went home for a week, spent some time in Madison getting some follow up news on the Governor Walker Protests in February and March.  I had a quick look at Porchlight and the AIDS Network while I was there but I really wanted to spend some time with family before I was off to Los Angeles. 

In Los Angeles, other work had to take priority but I still got a chance to talk with the film maker Katherine Brooks and her summer project Face 2 Face where she is going to spend the summer meeting fifty of her facebook friends and filming it.  How amazing is that?

From LA, I flew into Minneapolis/St. Paul and went to an organizational meeting for the creation of a new nonprofit that will be dedicated to the goal of connecting LGBT youth so they have an even larger support system which will ultimately help to lower the rate of teen suicide.  To be on the ground level of such a purposeful endeavor was truly a gift.

I then went to hide out at my father’s house in Eau Claire, WI.  I spent some time up at our cabin, and then attempted to get caught up on editing and developing the next three months.   I had a chance to inquire into my Circle K club from college and to find out that this once small service club that I was once the president of is currently the second largest club of the entire international organization.  That is a ton of service hours helping to benefit the world that we all live in from an enormous group of selfless young people. 

I then made my way back to St. Paul and the Minnesota Aids Walk with my friend Danny’s kids from St. Paul’s area Gay/Straight Alliance clubs.  The following day was a huge rally at the capitol building where I interviewed people who were fighting for the right for gay and lesbian couples to marry.  The week gave me a chance to see four different people from extremely influential moments in my life.  It was a great week of reflection and then two fantastic female Lutheran Pastors drove me back to Wisconsin Dells where I am now preparing for a month helping out the schools that were destructed in and around Tuscaloosa, AL.

As I proofread this, it reads as if someone else has done this.  I sit and digest that this is my journey and I think how it is missing so many great details.  If you are reading this and this is your first introduction to Project Kinect, then please read what you’ve missed.  Something may inspire you to look at the communities in your life and involve yourself in a new way. 

If you are a faithful follower of what I have been doing, then please continue to follow and PLEASE share this with your friends.  My project doesn’t work if it isn’t shared.  I need people to continue emailing me, commenting and adding what they feel when reading and watching what is happening.  It is a group effort and in this group, everyone counts.

Well, next is Tuscaloosa.  I’m going to go get dirty with my friend Alyssa for a month and really try to help a group of people who lost everything.  I’m teaming up with The Forsaken Generation but still need your help.  Larger sponsors haven’t joined on yet so I’m still depending on the last of my savings and donations for living.  If you have been wanting to donate and haven’t yet, now is the time:  Now that my fourth month is starting, there is really no turning back…

Damon Reflects

Even though Damon’s birthday has now passed, it is important to share this video that we shot while I was in New York. In it, he shares what it means to become forty, what he has accomplished and what his journey has been. I shared part of my sit down with Damon last month when he discussed social media. While he shares some of his thoughts and accomplishments, maybe take note on yours.  It happens to be a great moment for you celebrate them. 

Here are a couple other links that I though would be a great pairing with this post.  This first one is Damon’s website Should-less where you can check out his book as well as his forty lessons to forty blog.
 

Karen’s Adventure

On Saturday, as I was walking back to my Grandma’s after a long day of working on different projects at Starbucks, I got a surprise text from my friend Karen.  To the wonder of Facebook, I had let her know that I was in the area because I would love to see her.  Karen has an extremely free spirit, she had just recently graduated college and took a life changing trip to Costa Rica and I wanted to find out about what had happened.  This trip had given her such an outlook that she now wants to live for an extended time in Costa Rica.This is us at our friend Rachel's wedding last November.

What amazed her about the country was how they spoke of the land. To them, the land is the most important thing and it needs to be cared for as a family member would.  She feels that she can learn how they do things and with that form of sustainability, one day work it into her life here in Wisconsin. 

She also admires how in Costa Rica, there are more school teachers than police officers.  There is no need for them.  Each citizen of Costa Rica has a social obligation to make sure everyone succeeds.  Yes, their definition of success is extremely different than ours, but it is success.  How is it that they are able to continue living in this way while going forward into the modern world without its modern problems?  Karen wants to find these things out.  Thank you Karen for everything you do for all of us and bringing what you do into my life.   Thank you also for the ultimate reminder that we can’t sweat the small stuff; It is a waste of energy.

Alyson and Cirque Du Soleil

While in Baltimore, I had the chance to visit with two of my close friends that have been touring with Cirque du Soleil for the last four years.  The two of them happened to be there with the new show Totem.  While Alyson and I sat and caught up, she talked about the show and what it takes out of each one of them as a traveling community to keep things running successfully.  We also got into how their community is affected and affects the different communities it travels to.  A great example of this would be that in Baltimore, the location where they set up the show isn’t necessarily the most beautiful part of Baltimore but with the exposure that Totem is bringing to that neighborhood, it gets the opportunity to begin to grow into a much more safe, diverse and fruitful neighborhood.  This is just another way that different communities have a symbiotic relationship to create a better environment for everyone. 

One Month In

Last night I escaped to the pool of the apartment complex I’m staying in.  I’m tending to this nasty sunburn that I received down here on the first couple days when I fell asleep on the beach.  It is not pretty and I am about to get on a train for twenty-seven hours.  I laugh at it because it is all a part of this journey that I am so fulfilled to be on.

While I was down by the pool, I met this woman who had just recently moved with her husband from Michigan.  She was also escaping for a moment.  Her husband was taking care of their one year old while she enjoyed the hot tub.  They moved to Tampa because her husband is in the Air Force and he was placed in Tampa. 

After she told me the basics: How they met? Where they got married? Why they came to Tampa? She told me her passion for art and music from video games that get mixed into different music genres.  Then, we got on the topic of fan fiction.  Remember Claire at the Starbucks in Austin?  She was a fan fiction author.

When I met Claire and her fans, I had no clue what fan fiction really was, but I faked it well.  Last night in the pool, I was educated.  The abridged version is fiction written in order to combine two or more characters from different story or plot lines.  A good example would be if I wrote about Harry Potter in a samurai story with Edward from Twilight.  There are no boundaries to what the story can do so it really unleashes the imagination into limitless scenarios.  Even though it doesn’t have boundaries, it does have very philosophical rules.  I’m not educated enough to really go into them, but can say some thought really did go into the creation of fan fiction.

This conversation at the pool last night though really got me thinking about my journey in just a month.  Tomorrow I go to New York to stay put because I am quickly running out of funds.  In New York I can stay with loved ones who are family and being in New York, I will have plenty of content as well as resources.

My intentions of completing this full year are big and bold.  As I look over this first month, I am overwhelmed by the greatness I have come across. Las Vegas opened my eyes to things that we have overlooked in our country like social responsibility from private entities in our communities, the fact that refugees are still coming to our country in hope of a better life, and what a community looks like when it’s second strongest source of revenue stops.

 In Austin, I met Claire the fan fiction writer, Teresa who is working on a project to really show talented dancers in our country, the entire group from the APASO conference and hundreds of more. Their stories are all individual and have a right to be shared.

This progression of eye opening moments and great lifelong stories have been constant since Austin into San Antonio, Beaumont, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Mobile, Panama City, Saint Petersburg and now into Tampa.  Rhonda sharing with us in Beaumont to my Cab driver in New Orleans talking about the progression of New Orleans over the last fifty years all has relevance in our lives.  All of it as a whole makes us a community and that continues to be an underlying theme in Project Kinect.

I’m not sure yet of the outcome of this year will be and I probably won’t until much later in the year.  I am sure though that there is a benefit to what I am doing even if only for entertainment.    We need to know each other better without judgment and without prejudice.  We will never get further as a society if we don’t take the time and find the common ground with one another.

As I take the next twenty seven hours off line, on a train, heading toward New York City, please take a moment to think about what Project Kinect can mean in your life.  If it does nothing, then that is that.  For majority of us though, we really need that human connection on some level so Project Kinect should really hit close to home.   In order for me to continue with this and see really where this movement can go, I need all the help I can get.  I ask that you please share this, donate, email me, or any other assistance you can think of.  Once I have the resources I need to reach out to as many people as possible then and only then can we see the capacity of Project Kinect. 

Thank you all for your support so far and see you in New York City.

Tons  of love,

Gregg

Bri’s Modern Life

I am fascinated at my friend Bri’s spontaneous life. I have always been on the edge of my seat watching her go from big event to big event with the ease of a tight rope walker. She was able to get what has now been coined as the quarter life crisis rather gracefully.  If you’re unfamiliar with the quarter life crisis, it’s what our generation, and ones growing up now, dealt with getting into their twenties with new ideals, new technology, new problems, and very old schools of thought.  

Our parents were raised by a generation that got married, had kids, bought a house and lived their lives. Our parents followed in similar steps even though our society was changing with new problems and new concepts.  They then raised us the way they were raised while they continued to adapt to the changing environment.  My generation then, graduates highschool, goes or does not go to college, and then because of all the variables, really don’t know what they should be doing with their lives.  That is the base of the quarter life crisis: A lack of identity in the face of an extremely new technology based realm. 

 Here her and I sit and talk about her life over the last ten years and now as a parent, what she worries about.  Bri and her husband Mark have been through a lot and now that they are planted back in San Antonio, they look to see what raising their children in the city looks like.