Wednesday, November 10, 2021

GOOD STUFF

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GOOD STUFF #1
In my neighborhood paper, The Noe Valley Voice, there is a long report on housing, with some amazing information. A developer wants to build 24 new luxury homes on a vacant hillside in our very genteel neighborhood. He will be required to pay $3 million to avoid having to set aside any of the space for affordable housing. Nothing amazing about that, right?

BUT:
"Nearby residents are opposing the plans, arguing the entire project should be designated affordable housing."


Wait. Whaaat????

  • "Nearby residents are opposing the plans, arguing the entire project should be designated affordable housing."

Are these Noe Valleyans out of their minds? "We demand more poor people in our neighborhood!"

Thank you, my neighbors, for acting with compassion. Truly, we do not need more luxury housing in San Francisco.



GOOD STUFF #2
Alvarado Elementary School is a half a block from my house. I noticed something new when I walked by the other day:
THE KINDNESS ROCKS PROJECT
Of course I took one:
Be a
Frien
d
It's actually having an effect on me. I put it on the kitchen table, which causes me to glance at it often. Then I stop and ponder whether I have actually been a frien d lately with whoever I've encountered as I saunter/stumble/plough through my life.

Needless to say, the rock wouldn't be nearly as powerful if the child had been able to get the whole word on one line. My Kindness Rock is perfectly imperfect. I'm going to get a couple of flat ones when I go to the beach so I can be a frien d and make a contribution to the Kindness Rocks Project.

In case anyone feels compelled to get involved, Alvarado School is between 21st and 22nd St. on Douglass.


GOOD STUFF #3
THE CALM LINE
From the NY Times, Oct. 19:
"BOGOTA, Columbia -- A new hotline takes calls from men struggling with jealousy, control and fear -- and challenges assumptions about masculinity.The calls are often urgent and pleading.

I've hit my wife. I've lost my temper. I'm jealous and don't know what to do.

Callers are young and old, wealthy and poor. But they all have one thing in common: They're men. The new hotline they are calling is aimed at fighting violence against women. But instead of focusing on women, it puts men at the center of the conversation, in an effort to teach them to understand their emotions and control their actions.

The shift is simple, but profound. The idea of the CalmLine, as it is called, is not just to prevent violence, but to address what many experts say is one of its root causes: machismo, the often ingrained belief that men must be dominant."

This is a truly brilliant idea from Bogota, Columbia -- initiated by the government of the first woman and first openly gay mayor of that city, no less. In other words, SHE'S A DYKE!! The idea is simple. It's cheap. It's catching men who are controlling or violent towards women at the moment that they REALIZE they are being macho creeps, at the moment they want help so they can change. The men initiate the contact when THEY are ready for it.

"The creation of the line comes as women increasingly demand that society cast off norms that have limited them at home or in the workplace, even as they make strides in higher education, business and politics.

In recent years, women from Mexico to Argentina have poured into the streets in mass protests to push for the legalization of abortion and call for an end to the violence they have suffered.
A feminist anthem, 'A Rapist in Your Path,' written by a Chilean feminist collective, placed the responsibility for violence squarely on the shoulders of men, touching a nerve with women who performed it together in public spaces across the region, and then the world.

'The fault was not mine, or where I was, or how I dressed,' tens of thousands of women changed in plazas and public streets beginning in 2019. 'The rapist is you.'"

So. Women throughout Latin America are marching and singing for the end of patriarchy. And the city of Bogota offers men who are ready to look at their machismo:
  1. The Calm Line
  2. Free one-on-one workshops to work through issues
  3. A school for men, known as "Men in Care," to teach husbands and fathers how to tend to their home, their children and their partners
  4. A television mini-series, "Calm," featuring a cast of four male friends who support one another as they struggle with anger and control issues.

Bogota. Colombia.
My mind is seriously blown -- in the nicest way possible.
May Latin American feminists teach us all
how to transform the patriarchy from the ground up.


Bloggelinis, you haven't heard from me much lately partly because I have been busy with good things -- a Buddhist practice period, theater. But I also have not wanted to look at the world. It's just a bit too much. I want to hide. Perhaps you have felt the same way. But I must look at it, no matter how painful it is to do that. In fact, the more painful, the more important it is to look. I'm not saying I cannot take a break from looking. But I must return because, in the end, hiding from the world is an admission of defeat, which depresses me more. But engaging with the world lifts my spirits -- and, along with all the tough stuff, I find Kindness Rocks & The Calm Line. Terry

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