Food Fancy? Fancy Food!

Heading to the culinary mecca of NYC this weekend for the Fancy Food Show with some friends. We plan to eat our way around the Javits Center and possibly find some new sources for creative products for the café but as any trip I take to the Big Apple, it’s just a weekend of tasting, eating, and absorbing in a place that has almost everything to offer. I love going into the dark commercial kitchen stores with wares piled high and dust all over the shelves at the back. I love going into the Japanese knife store and looking at all of them and having no idea what they’re used for. I love going into the boring office building and getting off the elevator at J.B. Prince and spending an hour looking at $300 French dessert books.

I also love sitting on the subway that smells vaguely of urine and watching the people get on and off. Whole lives lived on the train right in front of you. Our metro isn’t like that, we’re so proper and prim. The first time I went to New York was when I was in 4th grade and we went in to see Annie. We ate at the Magic Pan…crepes…and then walked through Times Square on our way to the theater. I saw my first opera in New York…Lucia de Lammermor. My father hit a Secret Service car in New York. I cried when the World Trade Centers fell down and I cry every time I visit that hole in the middle of Manhattan. It’s some of the best therapy and it’s also the best asylum to walk away from. I would live there in an instant and I would probably love and hate every minute of it simultaneously.

So, wish us luck in our pursuit of new yummies for the café, hope that our cabs have seatbelts, and we’ll see you when we’re back.

I'm going to rant now...

Please, please, please…if you’re going to “make a difference” to make yourself feel better, just stop. This isn’t your therapy, this isn’t your angst, these aren’t your bad decisions to facilitate. If you are going to step up then step up all the way, not half-assed. If you’re going to parent, then parent and do it consistently. Because when you don’t, I get to pick up the pieces and you go on your merry little way.

These kids aren’t toys, they aren’t entertainment, and they’re not your salvation. Sorry to rant but I’m watching someone who claims to care allow a minor a safe place to make bad decisions and the crap just gets everywhere. We’re the adults and yes, we’re allowed to make our own bad decisions but we’re not allowed to sit by and let someone (a kid...a minor...a chronological adult) who doesn’t know any better make the same ones and not say something. If they’re under your roof it isn’t a freaking popularity contest, it’s a responsibility. So, grow up…stop being afraid and be the village.

What's Your Word?

I was at a lunch table the other day and we were asked to pick a word that described what the non-profit community could expect in the next year. You could almost see the wheels spinning inside our heads because those types of set-ups usually has everyone trying to think of the most creative or positive word to describe their situation (whether they just got a million dollar grant or they're hovering on the edge of bankruptcy) but one of the people at the table said, "revolution." It's an interesting concept and one that I absolutely love for a variety of reasons. Mainly I think it's the power inherent behind the word. It's like the word "holocaust." Once someone puts that word out there, it's hard to put it back and everyone else definitely has something to say about it so we tend to use those kinds of words either very willy nilly (in an effort to disempower them) or very carefully.

I like the word revolution because I spent a lot of time in the nonviolence community and it's a word that frames certain forms of action. It was a very powerful moment for me to realize that a small group of people could build social change if they all believed in and acted upon the same thing. It's a two way street too, the people who don't share my views can also create change. But lots of us in non-profits spend our entire careers just working to stem the tide. We don't think of ourselves as powerful...after all, we are often more subject to the vagaries of money and funding so why rock the boat and put all our hard work at risk? Our jobs become more about protecting ourselves and our programs than about standing up...but Rome is burning people!

So "revolution" is a perfect word to describe what we want to do and how we get there...no fear! As a friend of mine said last week, "We all die," and we do and so do we want to come to the end of our life without fighting for something?

"Revolutionaries do not make revolutions. The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and then they can pick it up." Hannah Arendt

I know what power looks like.

History

History shows me what came before and helps me determine what I will do in the future. When you start a new organization, there isn't a history other than your previous experience. But we're now in the business of creating our own history so while I can look to my experiences and use them to build this new thing, I can't use them to determine what the outcome in this particular situation will be...and it's frustrating. When one week is spectacular, we're packed, the place is humming and hopping and the following week is slow...I don't know, is it the weather? Is it a review? Is it the stock market?

Next year, I'll be able to look back at this year and say to myself, "well, it was a holiday weekend or we had 10 feet of snow (don't even get me started on the plowing!)" but this year, I'm flying blind. How do you plan for that? KL tells me to relax and he's not the only one to give me that advice but there are people relying on this to work...staff, apprentices, volunteers, the community and sometimes the pressure is so heavy. I want to be proactive and not reactive. I want to be able to make the right decisions at the right time for the right reasons. And I want the decisions to create the history that we've planned for and not blow up all the landmines along the way...because that's going to be painful.

I suppose I want to be able to know the future even though I know that's not possible. Don't all the self-help books say that you have to allow yourself to make the best choices that you can given the knowledge that you have in that moment? I don't actually read self-help books...perhaps it was an episode of Survivor or maybe a Tracy Chapman song.

So where does that leave me...should I work harder? Of course that is a given because I won't squander this opportunity but what is the answer here? Is it me, is it my choices, is it structural...is there even a solution that I can put in place to solve my dilemma? Gandhi said, "A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history." I have that but will it be enough? Maybe I'll leave it in Gandhi's hands for tonight.

To Run or Not To Run?

Me? I don't like running...generally don't like the whole concept of exercise. I don't get the endorphin rush and I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist. But I do like Cakes for Cause, and I like the idea of a cupcake running with sneakers on, and I like the idea of eating a cupcake as a reward for running a 5k so with all that in mind I'm going to solicit you to run in the first annual Cakes for Cause 5K Cupcake Run: The Sweetest Race in Town. Not only are there cupcakes, cool t-shirts, blinged-out medals with cupcakes stamped on them, Golden Spoon awards, and so much fun on a Sunday morning that we're beside ourselves...all the proceeds benefit the Cakes for Cause vocational program that provides employment and training to youth who have aged out of the foster care system. There's still a couple of days to get the early registration discount (midnight on Wednesday to be exact).

Oh, and there's shrimp and grits at the cafe for afters!

The Zen of Moxie

I came across Robert Egger's blog today where he said, "Shut up and feed the poor". Now, he was talking about yesterday's Supreme Court decision about the limitations on non-profit advocacy in the public arena but I also think that the meaning I get from his words is "stop talking about it, stop thinking about it, stop arguing about it and just do it". I wake up nights and wonder why I ever thought this would work. 10 years ago when we started the press, I remember thinking that social enterprise was an amazing idea. Why not teach kids in foster care a trade and the skills to help them be successful? We live in a society where it’s easier sometimes to write a check than it is to reflect on what happens every day in our own communities and while I look at that in the same way I look a Harlequin romance reader (at least they’re reading) it limits us and it limits our ability to truly change our world. Until every person in our own backyard, isn’t “left behind” from birth (to paraphrase Geoffrey Canada), how can we ever really expect to make a difference?

Or perhaps that’s the point. It’s lonely to take a stand…more people would do it if it were glamorous (or if I looked like Jennifer Aniston).

So why did I do this? Lots of people ask me that and I try to explain it and sometimes it sinks in and sometimes it doesn’t. I developed Moxie because I was no longer willing to sit by quietly and abandon our children. Yes, our children…mine and yours. Some of them are really unpleasant, some of them don’t like you, and some of them are already lost. But we have chosen to let someone else deal with them rather than confront the ugliness that gets them into foster homes where people don’t care about them, their caseworker might only visit them once every 30 days, and you and I don’t have to think about them. Yes, we protect them from abuse and neglect and there is an honorable intention behind that but most of us don’t take even an hour out of our week to mentor them, guide them, or teach them alternatives. Agencies all over this country struggle to recruit good foster parents…there’s never enough and too many people foster for the wrong reasons. Mentoring programs scramble around for money every year…and can’t get funding to support caring people in the community who try to help. Soup kitchens run out of food and we call hunger pangs in 5-year-olds “food insecurity” And we lose our children, more and more of them every year.

One definition of moxie is “aggressive energy” and I’ve come to realize that more of us need to get aggressive and angry to deal with ourselves and our role in this mess. But how can we when the people who are closest to us, the people who do the same work as us are tired, frustrated, and scared? There are days when I just want to "get along", when I want nothing more than to have a job where I don't even have to think about the choices I make and whether they'll help or hurt someone. But if we don't do it, who will and can we live with the consequences if nobody tries?

I still wouldn't mind looking like Jennifer Aniston though.