small is beautiful

as are the people in the small places, baking the bread, fixing the bikes, teaching the children, nursing the patients, cleaning the streets, designing the plans, gathering the leftovers to share, caring enough to shout, caring enough to quietly hold it together

The daily deluge of commenting, "reporting," analyzing, pontificating, wishfully trying to draw a picture of where our culture is and where it is going - when I can put that all down and talk with people, I have hope.

My generation is not hopeful. They feel the earthquakes, and few have the ability to put aside the fear of losing our footing. 

My kids' generations are not always hopeful, but they are doing. They may be shouting as much as those they shout against, but the shouting turns more and more to working. I have hope in the 20-somethings, the 30-somethings, as they start nonprofits, call out the destructiveness of some of the shouting, build into where they live, and volunteer where they believe, imagining a new world instead of needing a return to an old one.

They see what the country may need as a whole, and they start where they are.

That is where I want to be.