For the past year and a half, I have been looking at this beautiful illustration of a plan or “PATH” for Grace.  It has remained in its place of honor, in our kitchen—the heartbeat of our home, and hung proudly with some of my favorite oil paintings.  It is a work of art.  It is a work of love, friendship, and support.  It is not the creation of one artist, but many. It is the work of people who inspire me to continue to swim upstream, not to settle – people like Tim & Bridget Vogt, and Jo Krippenstapel.  Many other amazing artists contributed to it, Torie Wiggins, a beautiful human being and talented actor & director, Michelle Markert, an amazing musician and director of our church choir, Winnie Brubach and Joe Krumm, who are singers in the choir, and other artists whose work is based in the art of love, friendship, and community.  People like Gail Webb, Barb Elleman, Ellen Fain, Amy Bailes, Elizabeth Pierce, Kara Broderick and Erin Broderick, Margot Brunette and the most important artist, my daughter Grace, with her brother Ben, her father Jeff, and me, Grace’s mum.

I still remember sitting at my laptop thinking through the people in Grace’s life and in our family’s life.  I remember being hung up on the fact that we have so little family here, in Cincinnati, and what that meant to Grace’s life, our life.  I remember how nervous I was at extending that invitation to join us in thinking about Grace’s future. 

A life. 

That sounded so big, long, indefinite. 

I remember spinning about who to invite, who would say yes, how it would feel if no one accepted the invitation.  It was like being back in my 20s again, putting myself out there, with the experience of rejection in my past, and the potential for rejection again, hanging like an anvil over my head.  This time it wasn’t just about rejection of me, it was about the potential for people I know and like, rejecting Grace and my whole family.  That seemed like too much to risk.  Not knowing seemed easier to me. 

Envision ostrich with head in sand right now. 

Sometimes that is just easier.  My heart doesn’t break.  My dreams aren’t crushed.  My friendships remain unscathed. 

I spent a lot of time thinking about what the invitation should say.  I spent even more time, waiting to push SEND.  Once I pushed SEND, my heart sank.  I had put us all out there.  I had risked our rejection, heartbreak and disappointment. 

Given that you see the photo of Grace’s PATH, you know what happened.  Many people accepted our invitation and showed up.  Those that had to say no, did so because they simply couldn’t be there, and offered to show up in other ways.  It was a beautiful night and it has been a beautiful, enlightening, educational, and transformative journey. 

But. . . it wasn’t the journey I expected.

At Grace’s PATH, we unpacked what was important to Grace. If you know Grace, she is pretty clear about what she wants her life to look like.  It’s something like this, I want to have my own apartment, I’m not going to live with my parents forever.  I am going to be an actor on Broadway in NYC and I’m going to have a penthouse apartment in Time Square.  I am going to help make it possible for people who don’t have money to come to my shows.  I want to perform in shows and have some of that money go to building schools for girls who have been forced into marriages and are now out, but never had a chance to go to school.  This is my daughter.  I am so proud of her. 

I am so proud of the young woman she has become. 

By the end of that night we had a plan--Grace’s PATH.  Grace would put on a one-woman show, about women, at a theater.  We had individuals who stepped up to help her do research.  We had an acting coach.  We had ideas of who to connect with around the city. The goal was specific and measurable as all good goals should be.  We had objectives to achieve the goal.  As a businesswoman, I felt like we had clarity and we were on a trajectory, which I expected to be a straight line. 

Fast forward to January 2020.  Grace performed her one-woman show, “She Persisted” to two sold-out audiences at The Know Theatre, in Over-The-Rhine.  Through these performances, Grace raised just under $2,000 for the Malala Fund.  Brava Grace!

It’s interesting though, while Grace accomplished these goals and so many people showed up, helped out, and supported Grace, what has really mattered is the journey, itself.  We always talked about this as Grace’s PATH, but in some way it became our PATH.  The journey taught us to show up more often and in more places.  The journey of the PATH taught us that there are wonderful people who share Grace’s interests and really appreciate her thoughts and contributions.  It reminded us that there will always be people who can’t see beyond Grace’s disability, but there are far fewer of these people. We learned that it takes time, it takes commitment.  We learned that there are far more opportunities than we could have imagined.

We learned that it wasn’t all about achieving the goal.  It was about doing something, contributing in some way, along with other people.

We learned more about what motivates and inspires Grace.  Each one of us stretched. Jeff and I recognized that we needed and wanted to be part of this journey.  We gained so much from being involved in Grace’s interests and we met new people, some of whom have become family friends who include Grace and expect that our invitation to them includes her too. 

At first, I saw our PATH as very specific and probably with an end, vs. a PATH that is a spark to something potentially life long.  The process wasn’t perfect.  In terms of the one-woman show, it turned out that Grace and I didn’t do a good job bringing in the people who offered to help with research.  This was partly because Grace and I didn’t have something fully in mind.  It was also that I felt like, I shouldn’t ask for help, because I can help Grace.  We worked just with Grace’s acting coach, Torie, and while we feel so lucky to have worked with her on this and will continue to work with her, it would have been better if I had asked her to involve more people.  I think it would have helped her, and it would have expanded Grace’s network of people.

With all that said, the journey wasn’t a straight line and that turned out to be just what we needed. 

Grace became increasingly interested in more than just putting on her show.  It is fortuitous that this is the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage and there is a lot going on celebrating this milestone, around the region.  We were also fortunate that Bridget Vogt heard Grace’s interests in the suffrage movement and women’s issues in general. She (and later Katie Anderson) started bringing Grace to the main branch of the public library and letting us know about events happening.  Through Chris Smith at the library, Grace met Katherine Durack, a former women’s studies professor at Miami University, and a member of both the local and national women’s suffrage celebration committees.  Katherine has become a true friend to Grace and our family, and we to her and her husband.  Thanks to Katie Anderson, recognizing Grace’s feminist interests, Grace got connected with Sara and the other “Nerd Girls” who are working on a transcription project with the Library of Congress.  Grace’s interest in strong women who have made a difference, spurred her to ask her transition program (think practical life skills program), Pathways, to see about getting an “internship” at The Harriet Beecher Stowe House.  Thanks to people like Emily and Gwen at Cincinnati Museum Center, Grace is now part of the region’s planning committee for all things “women” and “suffrage” this year. 

Grace’s one-woman show was a complete success and she did an outstanding job.  We were moved by all the people who showed up those nights to support Grace and us.  Grace’s PATH turned into so much more than what we could have imagined.  A former Montessori teacher of Grace’s wrote to us and said that Grace has inspired the next generation of girls, as her daughter immediately began researching the women who Grace represented.  Grace is seen as an educator, as most people didn’t know all the women in Grace’s show.  Grace’s participation in our church choir has gained her recognition and when she isn’t there, she is missed.  The director of the Harriet Beecher Stowe House wrote us a note declaring that Grace is “an asset to the volunteer team.”  Elizabeth Pierce, the CEO of Cincinnati Museum Center, has called Grace, “our local history ambassador.”  John Faherty, Executive Director of The Mercantile Library wrote that Grace needs to stop by The Mercantile to see the books they have about women and said, “Grace is an endlessly impressive kid. And sneaky funny.”  Yes. These are some of the “movers & shakers” in Cincinnati and while it seems like name-dropping, it is really more about these people being immediately valued by what they do and taking notice of and valuing Grace and her contributions.  The people who have been in our lives over the years showed up again. They loved Grace’s performance.  They learned from her and were impressed with what she did.  They look at Grace differently now and probably value her more.  Friends, family, neighbors showed up to support me and Jeff too.

As I sit here on a Friday night, with a glass of wine, while Jeff makes our weekly homemade pizza and we are discussing Grace’s PATH, I don’t know if I will take down the PATH as a recognition that we did it or if I will keep it up as a reminder that it is ongoing.  What I thought was an end to itself, actually created the spark for many opportunities, discovery, and relationships.  Either way, Grace is on her path, connecting with people who share her interests.  Figuring out what motivates her, has Grace desiring to go out and contribute to various projects, as well as volunteering at museums.  A PATH is not without pitfalls and obstacles.  We have a way to go, before Grace can volunteer at Cincinnati Museum Center or The Harriet Beecher Stowe House on her own.  However, people who make those decisions are flexible and desirous of having Grace be successful in these roles.  We are so fortunate.  We are on a path with Grace and with it we are learning so much about building community and growing our relationships, about Cincinnati, strong women, and Grace, herself. 

This episode of the podcast, we talk with Ashley about what it looks like to move - after you’ve made the effort to build community in your neighborhood. Ashley talks about how moving to a new neighborhood does mean letting go of some relationships built, and starting over. But the good news is, building community is kind of like riding your bike: once you start doing it, you’ve build a muscle memory for it that you can take anywhere you go. She and her family believe that community is essential - vital - to their life and their daughters life.

You’ll learn about how they started a project in their former neighborhood by planting Christmas trees in their yard and opening it up to their neighbors as an annual event. Then, how they’ve taken that spirit to their new digs and “flipped the script” on their neighbors by being their own welcoming committee on their street.

And if you’re interested in joining families like Ashley to build community in your own life, head over to our family page and sign up to learn more!

www.starfirecincy.org/families

GET THE PODCAST

TRANSCRIPT:

Ashley: My name is Ashley Hart and our family did the growing Christmas tree in Goshen project.  

Katie: Alright so you worked on getting to know your neighbors last year through this project? And talk me through that year, what did it look like, what did it take for you guys to put all that together? 

Ashley: Well it started off with me getting really excited about creating something new. So I came up with a list to my mentor of all the fun ideas I had. Then evaluating how those ideas matched with the community that we lived in and what would be a gift to them and something that we could make memories together with them. So we kind of spent time connecting with neighbors in a different way than we had before. So we might go on a walk and stop over and say good evening to our neighbor or call them over and invite them over for dessert or whatever. And that kind of got the relationship frequency enough that we were able to have more conversations.  

Katie: Yeah, and were you bringing the idea of this Christmas tree project to them right away or how did you start on that path to get to that project idea? 

Ashley: So I think one of the things that I realized for myself and took that to the way I was connecting with our neighbors was that I in my own life wasn’t prepared for a big ask and so I didn’t want to throw a big ask at someone else. Really I was still putting feelers out to see if the idea that we had could even happen. So our neighbor happened to be a landscaper, so I didn’t even know if he would plant Christmas trees in December or not, or if that was like not going to work. If the trees were going to die or the ground would be too frozen or whatever. 

Katie: Because you guys did not have Christmas trees on your property when you started this? 

Ashley: Correct. 

Katie: But you had how many acres? 

Ashley: Eleven acres.  

Katie: Eleven acres and what are you going to do with it, how are you going to make that an asset to the community? 

Ashley: Right, and we had always kind of had a vision even on our wedding day we invited people to our property and invited people to spend time there. We wanted it to be a hospitable place but I don’t think we had the tools and the permission that we were given to make it kind of an official thing to start inviting people and doing something unique for the community.  

Katie: So it took some permission seeking? 

Ashley: I think so, which is weird, but yeah. I think someone saying here’s some support and here’s some encouragement and start dreaming. And I was desperate for the idea to be dreaming about something other than being concerned about what’s going on in our day to day experience.  

Katie: Right what was your main concern at that point, what were you worrying about? 

Ashley: I think I was really focused on ensuring that our daughter would be prepared to engage in her community and the way that I thought I was going about that was through therapy and appointments and things like that because that required so much energy I just didn’t think I had anymore energy to start something new. 

 Katie: So you were trying to pave the way for your daughter to be part of the community some day, but you weren’t really sure about how to go about it. And meanwhile you had other day to day appointments and things that you had to be doing that were taking up time, energy and effort and that that permission that you go to do something off the scope of the therapy list.  

Ashley: Oh yeah it was like it was such a gift. Yeah it was just you know you get stuck in the grind of doing what’s best and the idea to imagine creating something that intrinsically you already know what is good for you, and what is good for your family and what is good for the community. And just someone saying ‘Go for it’ it’s really.. I’ve talked about that you’re getting to lift your eyes off a problem or what is perceived as a problem and getting to lift your eyes to bringing beauty into your world and your community.  

Katie: Yes, so before you started this, was it a year long project, about? 

Ashley: Yeah.  

Katie: Ten months, year long project, before you started the year long project to plant Christmas trees in your yard and invite your neighbors to, can you explain actually a little bit more about what that Christmas tree project was in the end? 

Ashley: Yeah, so the goal was, we started the project in July, and because of the event, our event was in December. So we had to kind of move quickly once we decided what we were doing but the idea was to invite families in the community, so because it’s a rural community that’s a wide area, but invite community members to come and to plant a CHristmas tree on our land. And we wanted it to be a healing experience to everyone who came so we talked through what’s healing for community and individuals. So we brought the five senses into the experience. So we had art, lighting, lumineers, paths through the fields and Christmas music anda  baker came and baked Christmas cookies that’s from Goshen and hot cocoa and a bonfire. So we tried to make it as memory making as we could by sealing in those five senses and then families are invited to come back each year and they can either take their Christmas tree if it’s tall enough for them or they can just check on it and take a picture with their family. So that’s been really fun to see families bewildered in the generosity. Families would call us and say, “ok so what are the rules around this?” or like ‘well how do we sign, and ensure that this is ours.” And so they’ve just been really surprised by the generosity.  

Katie: They also are seeking permission.  

Ashley: Yeah.

Katie: To just show up and have a Christmas tree party?  

Ashley: Right. Right.   

Katie: Yeah it kind of shows that we’ve lost a little bit of our muscle for community building. We don’t really know what to do in the face of something as ordinary and simply beautiful as this, it’s kind of like there’s a catch. Where’s the marketing here? 

Ashley: Right, exactly and we have a friend here at Starfire mention that really we’re just returning to our roots as rural people. Who used to sit on one another’s porches and play music and eat together, so we talked about that that evening that we want more of that. And we really got a sense from our neighbors that they did too. So people would come by and talk to me about it like, “Oh I have this idea or I have that idea.” So we’re hoping that fosters more and more of that.  

Katie: Did many people know your family who came to the event? How did you make connections and make that neighborliness happen?  

Ashley: So it was funny because several days before the event we had no one signed up for the event.  

Katie: Seven days before? 

Ashley: Several, several so like three or four days before. We had like signs up, we had advertised.  

Katie: So really quickly describe your neighborhood real quick because when you say you have signs and things up it’s at like the one library and maybe like… 

Ashley: One coffee shop.  

Katie: Yeah.  

Ashley: There’s one coffee shop, there’s like two fast food restaurants or three and two gas stations and a library. Otherwise it’s a very rural community. So we had posted things on Facebook, on the Goshen Facebook community page but then we had also put it in a coffee shop. So we really had no idea how many trees we needed so we picked thirty, I’m not sure why but it was crazy because somebody called like three or four days before and was like I know it’s really late but is there anyway our family could sign up? And I was like yeah we’ve got some room.  

Katie: You hang up and were like woo-hoo!  

Ashley: Yes totally, like we got one and her friend wanted to sign up too so that made two families and what we didn’t know which I think is really important is having people invested in the process, so our neighbor Dan brough him and everyone he knew to that event. He was excited about it because he had done so much in giving advice and shopping around for trees and going to get thte trees, that he was invested enough to want it to be a good event and want his people to come and experience it.  

Katie: And is this the landscaper you had mentioned? So you had a neighbor, I mean you have eleven acres how many acres are around you? 

Ashley: We have one to our right and one to our left then we have one across the street, so yeah. Not a lot.  

Katie: So you have three neighbors in the vicinity of you and neighbor Dan was one of them. What a gem. 

Ashley: I know he is a gem.  

Katie: How did you meet him? Did you already know him? 

Ashley: Yeah, he has been friends with my husband’s parents who live right next door also. So he’s been a friend of their families for a while and you know in rural communities if there’s something wrong everyone shows up. But otherwise you kind of naturally keep to yourself and sometimes you might stop over and say hi but this just was really nice because we got to spend more time together and got to use one another’s gifts in a way that brought people together so that was great.   

Katie: Yeah. So this was not the first time that you’ve been part of a community in an intentional way. This experience that you had in your neighborhood with your family was sort of precluded by your own youth living in intentional community being part of living with a family, so you’ve tried community in various forms? 

Ashley: Yeah it’s always been important to me.  

Katie: Can you talk more about that? 

Ashley: I think I’ve always experienced more joy when I’m doing life with other people and yet when you’re doing life with more people it can be complicated too. So that’s just being with other people. 

Katie: That’s a good thing to know going into it.  

Ashley: Yeah I think so.  

Katie: You had seen some of the pitfalls of it but you had also lived some of the joys of it and knew I want this for my family now too?  

Ashley: Right and you know even having your own family that’s having a small community. So yeah I’ve experienced it in multiple different settings and really just treasured the gift of letting people be beyond the veils of their front doors and back doors and getting to spend real life with one another.  

Katie: Yeah so you’ve sought it out in that way. You’ve been seeking it. How were those experiences that you’ve had in the past in the intentional community that you have been different from the one that you experienced when you reached out to your neighbors and kind of had this project type experience where you’re connecting over a shared idea, a creation versus like all living together in the same house?   

Ashley: Yeah, well it’s nice because you have a goal and it’s accomplishable and you’re kind of bringing everyone in so that’s different I would say. Then just all doing life together. You have an event and then it’s done.  

Katie: Yeah, you’ve all achieved something together and like you said earlier and it’s a way for everyone to use their specific gifts like you had the baker that came, neighbor Dan brought the trees, there were other people who probably set up the decorates and had ideas around where to plant the trees. Even the people who showed up that day, their gifts were their presence and getting enthusiastic about what’s going on. And everybody can kind of have a role there and doing something that’s kind of out of the ordinary.  

Ashley: Very out of the ordinary for Goshen. Yeah we had one experience where it was like an art installation where we zig-zagged rope through the trees and everyone brought a little lantern out, different sizes of light lite lanterns so by the end they had created this beautiful art piece and we talked about you’ve all brought your gifts here tonight, just being together and this is just a display of what could be as we spend time together and do life together.  

Katie: Yeah I love that imagery. So we’re going to segue. To the time you decided to move away from this place. The moment you made the decision after all of this goodness had been created to say you know what we’re going to try a new neighborhood. Take me to some of the decision making and what was that like? Was it difficult? Where you anxious about leaving? Did you feel like what if we regret this because we’ve made all these connections. What was your motive there? 

Ashley: Sure, yeah well I think one important thing to talk about as far as the project goes is we were in the midst of deciding while we were doing the project. So I asked my mentor should we do it in Goshen? Should we do it where we think we’re going to go? And we kind of ended up deciding to do it now and do it where you are and I think there’s a lot of lessons in that. 

We don’t have to wait until we think everything is right to start building community and to start creating spaces of belonging for our neighbors and memory making moments for each other those are always good and always can be healing, so I’m glad we didn’t wait.   

Katie: And you also have a two year old, three year old? 

Ashley: Three year old now. 

Katie: A three year old. So as parents too it’s like well I’m going to wait until my kid gets older, things are less hectic. So doing it in the midst of all of it and what’s the value in that that you found at the end even when you guys were packing up your bags and deciding to leave? 

Ashley: Well I think the biggest take away for us was that we built the muscle to like we now have the muscle to build community. And I”m just naturally looking for it all the time going like ‘oh what could we do here?’ So we’ve done a couple of things in our new neighborhood not for any project per say but because we now have the muscle and we want community where we are.   

Katie: Yeah tell me what were some of the first few things that you did when you moved to the new neighborhood that maybe you didn’t do when you moved to your Goshen neighborhood? 

Ashley: Yeah, so our new neighborhood before we had actually bought the house but we were pretty sure that was where we were headed it was trick-or-treat so we were like ok how often are you invited to every single person’s house at the same time. Like this, we can’t miss this.  

Katie: Yeah that’s a good point.  

Ashley: Yeah like never.  

Katie: Yes please come knock on our door and we’ll give you things.   

Ashley: So we went to that neighborhood that night, just to introduce ourselves and said we are probably going to be living right there and we’re eager to connect with you guys.  

Katie: Wow so even before you put money down on the house, even before you closed on the house? 

Ashley: Yes, yes. 

Katie: Wow, ok. 

Ashley: Yeah, so we were excited about building community there and we really wanted to take what we were learning and not just leave it in Goshen, but bring it along with us for all of us. So that’s one thing that we did, that was in late October and then in February we made jars of hot cocoa and put our picture on them and our address and we said we’re your new neighbors and our daughter was in a little red wagon and just saying hello and that inspired lots of conversations and people coming to our house and bringing us stuff. So that kind of got the wheels spinning in the neighborhood I think.  

Katie: Were you writing down names after each one? 

Ashley: Yes, my husband actually was really intent too which was a fun dynamic to see him to start getting invested in the idea of community building because he didn’t grow up building community like I did as much.  

Katie: And he was the note taker he was the one, yeah? 

Ashley: Yeah, wanting to know his neighbors.  

Katie: So I think what you just touched on which is really important is we think sometimes we need to be the ones welcomed in and instead you guys were the welcomers to your new neighborhood to your new neighbors to say hey we’re here and we want to know you. So taking the first step doesn’t always have to come from the other person.  

Ashley: Right, and I think that’s kind of fun for the neighbors to be like ‘wait she flipped the switch, like what just happened there?’ Yeah, and it was totally fun for us so we said we would do it again in a heartbeat because we got to go in people’s houses and visit and people came in our house, it was nice.  

Katie: Yeah when you left your neighborhood behind did you have any lessons that you were taken from what you learned over that year with the Christmas tree project that you were like we’re going to do it differently this time. We tried it that way and now let’s try it this way. Was there anything that stood out where you’re like… 

Ashley: Lessons learned? 

Katie: Yeah.  

Ashley: Yeah, I think the big lesson, my big takeaway from growing Christmas trees in Goshen was with a new event, a new project no one knows what to expect so it’s really hard to get people invested unless they’re a part of the creation of the idea, and so we only had a couple people that were involved with the creation of the idea. And so that ends up meaning that you’re doing a lot of the creation and administration of the event, so my take away in the future is that I want our neighbors there with us like what should we do with our community what would be something that our community needs or wants that would be fun for everybody. So bringing everyone into the decision making piece.. 

Katie: From the beginning? 

Ashley: From the beginning. Now we’re trying to back track and go like maybe we do a Christmas planning in July so we get everybody to come together to start working towards the goal for the event. 

Katie: Yeah and it’s what you said before neighbor Dan was invested from the beginning and he was somebody who brought a lot of people with him, so the people who come it’s hard to sometimes invite the whole neighborhood if it’s just your family. But the more people who come, the more networks they have and everybody's networks kind of show up too. But also you’re saying just the excitement piece and getting it all together, it’s not all on you as a family to plan it all and dream it all up and there’s more shared ownership.   

Ashley: Right which means there’s more presence at the event too. There’s ten families that are excited about it and they’re bringing all their gifts and networks there. So that’s a big help, so I think that that would be if I was doing that again when we tried to do that but I think we’re all just learning as we go and I think we did it by inviting a group of people, we weren't good at explaining this is what we’re thinking about we just said come plan with us we’re going to do an event and they were like i have other things going on so.. 

Katie: Yeah, sounds like work.  

Ashley: Yeah, exactly, so eventually they came to the event and they’re definitely a part of our community but not bringing people in early to help ideate and create it.  

Katie: What about just in terms of knowing neighbors and interacting with them differently are their things that you do as part of your lifestyle now that maybe you didn’t do you know in your former neighborhood that know you can kind of.. I guess I’m asking that because you can reinvent yourself when you move somewhere, you can be a new person in a way. So there’s a benefit in showing up as this new neighbor and being like ok this is the type of neighbor I want to be now, I might not have been that in my neighborhood prior but now I can show up and nobody knows me and I can start new right? 

Ashley: Yeah I think the big thing that we’ve done differently is just at the outset let people know that we’re interested in being together. So a lot of people I’ve learned that in suburban neighborhoods like to play and do outdoor life in their backyard with their privacy fence and so we’ve spent a lot of time in our driveway and in the front yard and going for walks and interacting with people that way so some of it is just relearning how to be in a new environment too.  

Katie: Yeah I love that so you’re spending time in the front yard so that when people get home from work and they pull in their driveway you can be like ‘hey’! 

Ashley: Right.  

Katie: Privacy, there’s a value of privacy that we have as Americans. 

Ashley: For sure.  

 Katie: But we aren’t necessarily happy in our private lives we’d rather spend it with other people we just don’t know what that looks like any more.  So do you think that you have a different mindset than you started this with and in what way? 

Ashley: I definitely, I have a huge different mindset yeah. In so many different ways I mean it’s like so many different layers, my mindset during community building I’m still super excited about community building in our new neighborhood and I’m also so grateful that i now see people who are neighbors with their gifts. Like that I think is different than before which is surprising to me because I thought that I saw people that way always but I think you know as we were getting to know people in our new neighborhood we were like ‘oh my gosh this is amazing we have this person across the street that does this or that’s interested in that’ and before I think we were just trying to do our own thing and then relating to people asit happened where as now we’re much more intentional about making it happen that we connect with those people and creating spaces where we can do that together.  

Katie: So seeing those gifts as an avenue for ‘this is how we can connect with them, wow’ let’s learn from that person or is that the difference? 

Ashley: Yeah and I think even outside of our neighborhood I’m just learning how other people we’re connected with have their gifts and who they are, connect with us and vice versa.  

Katie: Like the common?  

Ashley: Commonality, yeah the things we share and care about. For example, my uncle is a musician and piano tuner and everytime he and my daughter get together they just love doing music together. And so I asked can we do this quarterly even though you live two hours away, can we like break bread together and do music together and so we’ve been doing that for two and a half years since we started getting involved here. So I think just being more intentional and making it happen putting it on the calendar and dreaming in a different way.  

Katie: Yeah and you brought up your daughter and I think I want to bring it back to this idea that in the beginning you were like I need to prepare her to be part of the community. In what ways do you see her now as a part of the community and was there preparation in that or did it sort of did she, did she just get immersed in this way through gifts? 

Ashley: Yeah I think I’ve been really intentional about not putting her up on a stage to be engaged with but instead just being a part of our family and people engaging with us and with her. If that makes sense.  

Katie: Was that a shift for you to think of it that way? 

Ashley: I think possibly yeah I think I had an intrinsic sense of her belonging and her belonging in her community but I think I had to learn what things I want to bring our family around and to fuel and what things I want to invest in with our family, if that makes sense. 

Katie: Time-wise even? 

Ashley: Yeah. 

Katie: Where you’re spending your time? 

Ashley: Yeah, we did study with our congregation with families and the number one asset the number one deficit that they had was time. That’s your number one thing, right, you have to spend it where it counts and so for us we really decided that we look like being together as a family and being with our extended family and being with our neighbors.  

Katie: Yeah. I guess that part of it in the beginning you were looking at therapy and things to get her ready for people and now you’re just like you’re doing those things still.  

Ashley: Yeah, and I guess my answer is I always had a sense intrinsically that she belonged no matter what and I think that having conversations with my mentor affirmed my intrinsic sense of her belonging, does that make sense? 

Katie: Yes, do you think that hearing that from somebody who is in the disability field to say something as ordinary as like go get to know your neighbors, was that.. Because it’s playing into your instincts as a parent that you already know and it seems like most places aren’t playing into those instincts they’re telling you ‘we’re experts and this is what we know that you don’t’. And for someone to give you something that you already know as a way of life, you have taken that and it’s caught on so quickly and so rapidly. 

So I guess that was kind of part of my question was like in the beginning you were waiting maybe on ‘well we’ve got to get these things done, we’ve got to line this stuff up and then maybe we’ll find community or maybe there will be a way to be connected to people, maybe there will be a better time’ and then hearing from somebody who's in this role to say no it’s now, that you do it the best time is now.  

Ashley: Yeah, I think it was helpful that my mentor also was involved with their neighborhood, like they’re doing it, I’ve been involved in community and i know the fruits of it. It’s helpful to be reminded that it’s good and my eyes were just stuck on ensuring that I did everything that I thought I needed to do to support her. It was kind of like with blinders on just missing like the biggest piece of providing her abundant community now and making those connections.  

Katie: Well what I love about this too is that it’s a metaphor for most people’s lives, whatever that thing is that you’re trying to do the best at, do right at is preventing you from just living and usually that is all you need to be doing. But we’re going, we’re trying to succeed or we’re trying to reach these different heights that have these requirements and steps along the way. 

Ashley: And then we reach those and there’s more. Yeah, we’re on like the treadmill of the institution and instead of getting invited out of that and saying ok I’m also going to look for something outside of those boundaries to build my life on is huge.  

Katie: So what is at stake for you for your family if you don’t make an effort then to get off the treadmill? If you don’t make this effort to connect to the people around you? 

Ashley: My daughter being isolated as she gets older and I mean for a girl who is in my bones to know the joy of community that’s just not an option. So it makes me really sad to think of her facing isolation when it’s not in her bones either. 

Katie: Were you getting a glimpse of that already? I mean she’s really young, were you already feeling like that was part of your lives or becoming part of your lives? 

Ashley: Well interestingly I was going to a lot of different community things, events and stuff and we were the only ones there who had a child with a disability and I was like I know that’s that is not always the case but in the unique places that I was that was the case. So one I thought it was important that I was there and two I just hate that that’s the culture that that’s set out for families for anyone that's marginalized, right? 

 Katie: The culture being we don’t go to ordinary places in the community.  

 Ashley: Yeah being like, well the culture being you’re welcome if you are a certain way. 

Katie: Yes so the culture speaks more towards the families of and unwelcoming sense to say like there’s a group for that and it’s over there.  

Ashley: Yeah I think one thing was we belong and we’re going and she was really young so I mean when you go to a six month old story time it’s fine. Difference is more evident as kids age but I think so kids get older it probably would be more challenging to face that head on for the first time without having some understanding and foundation in kind of what do we believe about this what do we believe is true.  

Katie: As you grow into connections in your neighborhood do you think you’re kind of heading off that uncomfortable feeling in the community when you, as your daughter does get older?  

Ashley: Yeah it’s interesting because we have two or three intervention specialists in our neighborhood. So you can always tell when people have a predisposed idea and so you know you just meet those in conversation and bring to the conversations what you believe in small snippets over time. But yeah I think we have work to do and I think our daughter will lead the way in that with our support. So I think the biggest thing I think maybe it was a quote I read from Starfire, you guys were quoting someone that talked about when you toddle, have people who have known you since you’ve toddled. Do you remember that quote? 

Katie: David Pitonyak, “Who holds your story?”   

Ashley: They’ll be like that’s.. You know we know her, yeah? 

Katie: Yes. Ending on a piece of hope what is one hope that you have for your family in the next ten years that has to do with your community building work? 

Ashley: I hope that we establish rhythms with our neighbors that go on year after year and that we know one another’s stories. And when my neighbor is sick I know what to make him because I know what he likes, you know, just the good life of community. And if my daughter is out and she isn’t supposed to be out then they know me and they know where to bring her, or that she gets invited to the pool party across the street. Just the basic stuff, nothing extravagant but maybe extraordinary in this time, yeah.  

Katie: Yeah that is extraordinary, is there anything else you would want to say? 

Ashley: I don’t think so. 

Katie: Ok I love that, thank you.  

In June of 2019, I profiled Jean Vanier and his life of supporting people with disabilities in intentional communities, L’Arche.

This weekend, multiple news outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, the BBC, and Catholic Telegraph report, “Jean Vanier, founder of the ecumenical L’Arche communities that provide group homes and spiritual support for people with intellectual disabilities, used his status to have "manipulative" sexual relationships with at least six women, concludes an internal investigation commissioned by the organization.”  The report is explicit that the inquiry did not find evidence of sexual abuse of people with developmental disabilities.

Starfire, like many organizations and groups who stand in support of people with developmental disabilities and their families, remain saddened by this news. As an organization that has shared Vanier’s work, we must now also reckon this complex history.

Et tu, Vanier?

What it reminds us and teaches us is a healthy skepticism of figurehead leaders, particularly of older men who seem to hold the sacred wisdom. To be aware of the allure of those who seem to know the answer to a complex, difficult question of “where do we belong?” and to resist elevating humans, systems, or programs towards sainthood, idolatry, and worship.

Instead, this unfortunate news reminds us that it is once again, the average, everyday work of people, families and communities that make a community whole. And, as an organization, we challenge ourselves to de-centralize Starfire as the authority, and instead, continue to work to center families’ voices, lived experiences and work at the forefront of this movement.

"The culture of power-over people with developmental disabilities is stubborn. Admonitions to respect the right to choice and dignity of risk are seldom sufficient to relax its grip. The dominant presumption that something about a person demands fixing or treatment hijacks thoughtful consideration of a whole person’s purposes, will and preference and empowers professional judgments about health and safety. The struggle to create the conditions to intentionally exercise power-with people continually challenges our practice.”

Recently, seven of our colleagues in inclusion from across the U.S. (Carol Blessing, Marcie Brost, Beth Gallagher, Kirk Hinkleman, Peter Leidy, Beth Mount & John O’Brien) published DISSENT FROM CONSENSUS: A Response to the Person-Centered Planning & Practice Interim Report.

The Practice Interim Report in question is a piece developed by a consulting company commission by the US Department of Health & Human Services to come to a consensus on defining person-centered planning for systems.

Our colleagues write passionately about the danger in “consensus” from human service professional and government entities around a practice and experience that has given birth to a variety of dreams, imagination, clarifying identities, competencies, and giftedness, and emerged a vision of newness for people with developmental disabilities, their families, and our communities. 

Starfire fully supports the Dissent opinion and rejects any effort to standardize, mechanize or otherwise systematize, a practice which has given life to numerous people with developmental disabilities, their families, and our communities.

Our colleagues’ writing reads to us, as a list of what people with disabilities and their families and the people who care about them are up against - in one concise and beautiful sentiment.  They make a case for the wisdom and usefulness in “chaotic self-organizing” allowing people themselves to design, experiment, plan, and dream alongside the support from family members, service providers and community members to bring to life the possibilities set forth. It is, at the heart, what person-centered planning has been designed for. 

Person-centered planning has had the most profound impact on Starfire’s work, radically shifting our understanding of our role in people’s lives and setting us in motion phase out of legacy and congregated models of group support.

Allowing people to come to get to dream, ideate, and set action steps together for what a good life can look like and can mean, they write, “person-centered planning as one disruptive element in a purposeful process of organizational and social change.”

This has been my experience in 100+ person centered plans that I have graphically facilitated and helped to host since 2010, representing 100+ unique people, stories, their families, and their dreams of what an inclusive, good life could and might look like with a little luck and some good work.

Admittedly, there were suggestions made in the 100+ during person-centered plans over the past decade that I have been in that I simply didn’t record.  Once, a suggestion that Beau would be happy in a nursing home (at age 23) because they had lots of activities and he could be kept busy. We were able to shift the conversation to what kind of business was important to Beau, and the conversation led to a dreaming around teaching kids to swim, volunteering at a local school and the idea of institutionalization fell to the wayside. Having something important to do was at the heart of the suggestion, and this uncomfortable pause with markers in hand, allowed the conversation space to breathe.  And it stopped “nursing home” from being Beau’s North Star.

Another time, a debate about scheduled laundry days was a part of a vision for a good life for JP. We were able to navigate the conversation to what a good home life looked like to JP and steered the conversation into autonomy around his days with his group home staff, setting up a schedule that worked for him and wasn’t regimented on rotating staff schedules that conflicted with his love of WWE Monday night raw events.

The Consensus report lists competencies and qualities required of a good facilitator, and many of which Starfire would agree with.  However, an exhaustive list wouldn’t cover the examples above – how to navigate a conversation back to the goodness and intentions of inclusion and assuming a facilitator holds the same values of inclusion. How to hold space and sit silently while a “bad” idea is proposed, how to assist the group to continue to remember the good things in life are not often found in services, strict schedules, congregated programs, disability-centric opportunities. While the competencies as a whole are a good list, it doesn’t encompass the intangible skills of allowing a conversation to flow and capturing the big idea, the good life idea, and sift through filler that is often not in the best interest of the focus person, not truly inclusive, and neither positive nor possible.

In 2010, Starfire began to fully invest in learning about person-centered planning, and about PATH planning specifically.  As I’ve written before, I was admittedly, skeptical. The idea of putting down to paper a vision for the future seemed ludicrous.  We practiced mini-PATHs for each other, and colleagues walked away hanging their posters above their cubicles. I recycled mine.

From Things Change and That’s the Way it Is Part 1:

“Bridget learned about PATHs, and lead a staff training on it to bring us along…We did very small personal mini-PATH’s (the North Star conversation only on speed.)  I remember my North Star included buying a house, getting married, learning about bee keeping, starting a garden in my backyard, writing, and a few others that I can’t remember.  I was skeptical about the whole process, not buying into the hippie shit of drawing what you’re feeling and dreaming out loud, and all the other hokey stuff I thought I’d left behind from when I planned retreats.  At some point, I became embittered by it.  We gathered as a large group again, shared our North Stars and at the end of the afternoon, everyone rolled theirs up and took it to their desk.  “I’m going to keep this” someone said.  “I’d love to hang this above my desk as a reminder of what I could be. I’m embarrassed and ashamed now to say that I felt very differently.  I immediately crumpled it up and recycled it.  The idea of “writing something down and seeing it as an image makes it more probable to happen” was bullshit.  I was not an immediate believer in the process and wasn’t buying that this was something that would really change people’s lives.  And who cares about drawing pictures?  Was I ever going to really learn to keep bees?  Buying a house?  When I’d just graduated in 2007 with large amount of student loan debt and was paying out of pocket for graduate school?”

And yet, I did do all those things, which I later blogged about here, and here, and here.  And many people whose PATHs I was a part of have also gone on to accomplish their goals, bring to life their North Stars, on their own timeliness outside the bounds of a service system which mandates outcome reports, yearly MyPlans, skills assessments, billable hours, and the like.

"When we think of person centered planning, we think of specific faces, names and stories. As we read it, the Interim Report aims to meet health system demands that position person centered planning as an instrument of that system, bounding a universally defined process in meetings, specifying competencies to facilitate plans, and outlining system management processes to assure compliance in implementation."

Likewise, when I think of person-centered planning, I think of 100+ PATHS.  Conversations that were joyful, laughter filled remembering best moments, childhood stories, inside jokes and time spent in communion, tough and difficult (I want to move out/I want her to move out), conversations that led to new identities – docent, brewer, fashionistas.

Starfire will continue to incorporate person-centered planning into all that we do.  Not because it’s regulated and or perhaps required, but because its role in our work continues to hold importance and power for people with disabilities, their families, and our communities.  And because we’ve seen, what happens when we invest fully in what is positive and possible.

Thanks for your interest in Starfire! We are always grateful when ordinary citizens such as yourself wants to find a meaningful way to get involved.  

First, we’re glad you found us. It goes to show that citizens realize the important role they can play in the life of a person with a developmental disability, and their own ability to change the culture that excludes them.

To start, here’s a brief primer on what we don’t do: 

1. We don’t host school groups, sororities and fraternities, or corporate give back days that are a “one and done” experience where groups of people can drop in and drop out of the life of a person with disability. If you’re looking for a place where you can fulfill a volunteer hour requirement of some sort, please look elsewhere. Your group would be welcomed at a variety of wonderful nonprofits who need a group of willing volunteers to get some work done in a few hours.

Starfire isn’t that place.

2. We don’t put disability on display for groups. We know that volunteer groups can sometimes have a takeaway after volunteering that is to feel better about themselves, or approach volunteering as a lesson in gratitude for what they have, to see someone else’s struggle and feel better about their own lives. We approach our work with 360 degrees of dignity and protect against putting people with disabilities or their families in an undignified role.

To be frank, inclusion requires a different kind of work than a traditional service model: one in which people are not in separate unequal groups of “volunteer” and “client” but instead, seen as equals as neighbors, coworkers, and collaborators. Traditional volunteering separates us from each other and creates a power dynamic where one party (the volunteer) is the benevolent good person and the other (the client) is the disadvantaged person in need of services. 

And while there are lots of nonprofits that could absolutely benefit from a large group of volunteers helping to paint walls, play music, pack lunches, bake cookies with, chaperone an event, or sort donated goods, we’re just not that type of place. 

One-and-done volunteering with Starfire does more harm than good. Especially in the lives of people with disabilities whose life experiences have been full of temporary people who don’t stay.

3. We don’t want to turn you away from being part of building inclusion!

We want people just like you – curious about how to make the culture more inviting and welcoming to people with disabilities and their families to dig in with us. 

If you’re interested in educating your corporate group, service class, or other group about disability issues, institutional injustices, then let’s start that conversation. 

4. We don’t think volunteering is not worthwhile or impossible to do at Starfire. In fact, if you really, really want to help Starfire here are a few things you can do: 

• Become a megaphone for our message and help promote our work. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and subscribe to our mailing list.

• Donate. Seriously – if your company or group wants to give back to people with disabilities, invest in Starfire.

  We put grants in the hands of families of people with disabilities who decide how best to spend those dollars to work towards inclusion in their lives and neighborhoods.

  Donations helped projects like this, this, this, and this come to life.  By donating you are saying that you agree that families are the best stewards of resources to make their loved one’s life with a disability the most fulfilled.

• Fundraise for us.  Get some friends together and host a happy hour or a give back dinner night at your local restaurant. Run a Facebook campaign in support of our work. If you’d like to know how to get started on that — contact us!

• Be inclusive in your work/neighborhood/faith community/life.

  If you’d like to learn how to do this, a radically different approach than volunteering, then let’s talk.   

The dynamic between paid staff and a person with disabilities can be tenuous. When not taken seriously people with disabilities' days can wind up being centered around purposeless activities, meant to fill up time instead of making a person’s life full but if a staff person is thoughtful the support they give can be more. They can be a bridge to community and relationships that lasts beyond paid support. Carole and Katie have figured out such a dynamic. This episode is all about a window into the stories that have come from their work together, as a team, building community in the art and fashion world. The insights these two women share are potent for any learner interested in changing the way you, your family or perhaps an organization you run sets up care for people living with labels.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

1:11 - 2:31 

Carole: My name is Carole and I’m passionate about Japanese fashion and hopefully bringing it into community.

Katie Anderson: My name is Katie, I am passionately working at this point to build community around fashion with Carole.

Katie B: So fashion but particularly Japanese fashion?

Carole: Mhm. 

Katie B: Tell me what type of Japanese fashion?

Carole: It’s Lolita. Lolita is inspired by the victorian European style era. Where they, you know like the ladies wear the poofy dresses, the over the top here, the styles they wear a lot of accessories jewelry. They wear petticoats under the dresses. It’s kind of like that. 

2:32 - 3:55

Katie B: Yeah and this was brought to Japan..

Carole: This was brought to Japan at the time where the women were supposed to look stereotypical, they had certain standard how they wanted the women to look but the women didn’t want to look like that anymore. They wanted to be themselves so they decided that they wanted to keep it and it was the opposite of what the Japan standard was. 

Katie B: So in some ways, this Japanese fashion Lolita is the anti-Japanese fashion?

Carole: Mhm.

Katie B: Ok, the Japanese fashion for rebels, rebel women?

Carole: Yeah.

Katie B: So tell me how you guys know each other, Katie how do you know Carole?

Katie A: Carole and I are connected through Starfire as a community building partnership, so we’ve been working together for probably a year and a half now. 

Carole: Yeah.

Katie B: What does that time look like?

Carole: We get together every Wednesday.

Katie A: Wednesday mornings. 

Carole: Wednesday mornings. Until noon and we go to coffee shops and we sit down a think about what is our next step of what we want to do in the community, with Lolita or something that has to do with my interests. 

3:56 - 5:56

Katie B: So you guys get together around something that you’re interested in and what was that in the beginning what did that look like in the beginning?

Carole: Well it was hard at first because I’m interested in art and so we tried to get together with some artists but that didn’t pan out so well, apparently artists like to be very.. Well either they’re very busy or they’re very shy to do anything with anybody else. They like to do their own thing. 

Katie B: More like introverts?

Carole: Yeah. 

Katie B: I guess the perception of artists is that they don’t necessarily want to hang out with each other but maybe in just the way that they hang out is in smaller groups and more intimate settings. So have you found people just that one on one connection to go and do art?

Carole: When I visit Rhoda, I go over to her house and she has this like garage, she has her art studio in there and I go and we do art in there and we have a meal too. She gives me advice on how to do.. What she thinks I should do with my art, like add a color or a hint of a design or something. 

Katie B: Tell me who Rahda is again, just kind of explain who she is.

Carole: Rahda is awesome. How do I explain her?

Katie A: What kind of art does she do?

Carole: She makes a lot of mandalas. Her artwork is all around the city. 

Katie A: You were recently involved with a project she did. 

Carole: Oh, we made prayer flags and she had them hung up at the Music Hall. 

Katie B: So drilling back in the time that you’re spending together is around your interests and that fit in with your interest in being connected to someone in the art world but then tell me how the fashion piece started to come into play. 

5:57 - 8:02

Carole: I had interest in the fashion since 2014 and I’ve always worn like little bows and things like that here and there. But I’ve really wanted to actually try it so I bought one of the little dress pieces and..

Katie B: This was just on your own, you just kind of went online and found what you wanted? 

Carole: Yeah I went online and I also had help from mom too. Yeah she helps make some of my stuff sometimes and I mean I help with the sewing too. I’ve always watched my mom sew and she taught me some things. 

Katie B: Yeah. When you guys first started what were your first initial attempts, what did that look like?

Katie A: Just from my conversations with Carole, and you can tell me if I’m wrong Carole, you enjoyed art but you kind of felt like that had run its course as far as creating a project. So our plan together would be to keep up those connections you had and start fresh with a new idea. Which we started doing cosplay, so we thought we’d meet some people around cosplay. 

Carole: Yeah, that didn’t really work out so well. Nobody really showed up. 

Katie B: At the cosplay meetings?

Carole: Yeah, after one meeting we had like a few people but then after that nobody else started coming so it kind of stopped. 

Katie B: How did that feel when something you tried didn’t work out?

Carole: I mean it hurts because you know you put your heart into it and passion and you take your time on making like these little arts and crafts that we had. 

Katie B: What were the arts and crafts?

Katie A: The idea was to have like when someone passed by they could just kind of join in and grab it real fast and make something without feeling like they had to be a major cosplayer.

Katie B: Were there things that you learned from that and you were like ok we got to do something different?

Carole: After that we just kind of figured well this is not going so well so..

8:03 - 11:12

Katie A: Then I think we just had some conversations around ok that’s not working, what else are you interested in? So it was just some more research and we had talked a lot about fashion. 

Carole: Yeah. 

Katie A: And we went to Facebook. 

Katie B: Oh yes. The Facebook.  

Carole: Then we went to Facebook. 

Katie B: What did you find there? What was..

Carole: There were like two Loltia groups for Ohio.

Katie A: And that was something that you were involved in separately from me. 

Carole: Yeah but I wasn’t like active, like I am now. 

Katie A: Yeah. 

Katie B: So you had already been a part of those groups on Facebook but not really actively posting on stuff. So you find them and you are like ok and you guys discover them together like hey this is something we could look into more and really at that point it’s just a random group of people that you don’t know in person, you just know they all like the same thing. How do you start to come up with an idea of how to meet them in person? Because the goal isn’t to stay digital it’s to have some sense of social connection that’s live. 

Carole: Well somebody had asked the group like if I set up a meeting, meet up in Cincinnati what would you want? So it was kind of set up already for us.

Katie A: Yeah there was a list of like thirty five things that people wanted, so we were like this is an opportunity, let’s choose one and let’s plan it. 

Carole: Yeah they wanted tea events, they wanted crafting events, they wanted it all. So we decided ok let’s have a tea event and also let’s have a crafting event at the tea event too. The first time we didn’t do any crafting but we had a few people come out to the tea event at Essention?

Katie A: Yeah, Essention Tea. 

Carole: Oh one of the Lolita’s we met at the cafe that we always go to, her name is Breanna. 

Katie B: And you met her how?

Carole: She came up to me because I was wearing Lolita that day, and we were working on finding like what to do with the Lolitas. And she was like, “Excuse me, are you wearing Lolita, or are you a Lolita? And I was like, “Yes.” And she was like, “Oh my gosh.”

Katie B: So she just randomly saw you sitting at the coffee shop and saw this woman over there, wearing this fashion that if I saw it I wouldn’t have a clue.. She obviously did and she came up and said, “Hey” she wanted to talk to you. 

Carole: Yeah. And she’s like “I wear Lolita too.” And she was very happy. And I was like huh, somebody else knows about Lolita besides me here? And she was like “I don’t really see anybody wearing it here but I saw you and I had to come rush over and get your number and then we started talking. 

Katie B: Ok, so the spark happened there. 

11:13 - 16:18

Katie B: Where you there when that happened Katie?

Katie A: I was there and it was like I didn’t exist, it was awesome. They just went into their Lolita language and they..

Katie B: What is Lolita language?

Carole: We talk about like petticoats and wrist cuffs.

Katie B: So then you have Breanna, and you have a Facebook group and you start with that premise of we’re going to do this because this is what people in the Facebook group are saying they want, in Cincinnati, and when you got to the tea party, when you got to that day tell me the steps leading up, what made it possible? What made it successful and what the day of like how did that feel when you got there?

Carole: We made a Facebook event and we invited all of the Lolita’s in the group and I think by the time like a day before, it was like five people who said they could come. It only ended up being me, Katie, Breanna, and two other girls but it was a big deal because people actually showed up. 

Katie B: Yes, people you invited came. 

Carole: Yeah, we were very worried other people wouldn’t be able to come because it was raining that day. It was raining and…

Katie B: Oh do Lolita’s not like to get wet?

Carole: No if we really want to go we’re going to go, it was just..

Katie A: You take an hour putting your dress on you’re not staying at home, right?

Carole: Yes, like today I got up at six and I didn’t get completely dressed, like everything together, until like 8. It takes forever to get together. So it started raining and I was like oh I wonder, and it was windy too, and I said oh I hope somebody wearing a petticoat, I hope they brought their umbrellas because it’s raining. But..

Katie B: See that was one of the things, everybody showed up and you were..

Carole: And we had a group picture and all that. 

Katie A: I think one of the important things too was, was Breanna like we had already had that initial conversation, one on one, like this would be really cool right to meet up and she had felt that personal connection to her relationship with Carole.

Carole: Oh yeah, because we had met before the event too. 

Katie B: I think that’s really important that you just pointed that out because there’s something about the personal invitation that makes people want to show up more than maybe with your original event, which was a cosplay event, and that was more of a like did you make a flyer for that and just invite people?

Carole: We made events, we made the whole nine yards.

Katie A: Right, but we hadn’t been able to meet anyone kind of like who you were really really connected with, which just happened and I feel like that’s how relationships are sometimes. And I think that’s part of Breanna’s struggle too is that she wasn’t able to find someone so when she found Carole she was like we are doing this, let’s plan some stuff and let’s find some people. Yeah. 

Carole: I’ll give you my number, we’ll text. So every now and then before we get new dresses or something we’ll text each other and be like hey it finally came and oh let me see. And then we’ll send a picture of the dress and be like “Oh this would cute with this accessory or this would be cute with this color or something. 

Katie B: Yeah and you’re pointing out that there’s a connection beyond just the day of the tea event there’s like stuff to talk about and things to text each other for so you have this friendship that formed. Which is awesome, and that couldn’t have been forced, right? Like you had a level of serendipity just being there and showing up in community to make this random connection turn into something like a friendship, there was no formula or path or steps A to B, except for continuing to get out there and try and not giving up after that first disappointment with the cosplay event not working out, right?

Carole: Yeah. 

Katie B: So time and..

Katie A: Bravery. 

Katie B: Bravery.

Carole: Because had it not worked out I don’t know what we’d be doing. 

Katie A: It’s almost easier to say, you know, this didn’t work and let’s just not do it anymore. 

Katie B: Right, what would you be doing do you think, if you had given up and stopped trying? What would you do instead? What are your other options?

Carole: I would have been at home right now, I would have gave all the way up because that’s what I did before when it didn’t work out but I’m happy it worked out this time because I get to get out and meet other people and do new things. Like there’s another event Sunday and they're having a brunch. The same Lolita that came to a couple of our tea events and her mom is doing Lolita now. 

16:19 - 18:49 

Katie B: So your first attempt to get something going in Cincinnati is now taken a life of its own

Carole: Yeah and now everybody wants to..

Katie B: And now you’re getting invited to those.

Carole: Yeah. 

Katie B: When you think about connecting Carole you know outside of agency settings, day programs, workshops and things like that do you think that is a way of you saying like these aren’t good enough?

Carole: I think what I’m trying to say is that they could do better. Like the way they’re doing it now is not helping anyone express themselves, I think. LIke a lot of the ways that most people or the person with a disability doesn’t have a choice. They are pretty much stuck in the box but I think if you give that person a chance to express themselves then you’d be surprised. 

Katie B: So there’s a limited options based on what the box defines as choice?

Carole: They don’t really give us a choice to decide anything. I think they figure because of what they see on the paper is how they should treat us but we’re more than just the paper. We’re human too. 

Katie B: Yeah, there’s options like going out to eat or going to the movies but getting into what your purpose is in life there isn’t much interest in exploring that. 

Carole: Yeah, there’s other.. people have other interests besides movie or Youtube. 

Katie B: Does that happen at day programs? Do you watch Youtube a lot?

Carole: Yes, we watch a lot of Youtube. We watch a lot of movies. We play video games or we draw. Not that I have a problem with drawing they have like open art, but I like to be told we’re doing charcoal, we’re doing sketching, and we don’t really do that. 

18:50 - 20:59

Katie B: Yeah, you’re more interested in deepening your skill set and learning more and getting.. being taken seriously when it comes to your art. And Rhoda provides that for you in a sense of what you were saying earlier she critiques your art and says why don’t you add a little color here or there, and you’re learning from here but in the day program setting it might just be something like here’s something to do. 

Carole: Here’s something to do. Like I don’t mind doing it but I want to learn not just here do this. Like if I go to a program I want to feel like I’m doing something I’m not just here to be babysat. 

Katie B: So do you feel other people that you know in the day program feel the same way? Because you’re an extremely articulate person when it comes to this topic and I always like having this conversation with you because you put it so well but I wonder if some people you know who may can’t articulate it this way, do they feel similarly? And how is that you know that or don’t?

Carole: I feel like I can always tell when someone is frustrated because of how the program is, or they want to do something but no one is listening. They’re trying to tell them but they can’t really tell them, I mean I can tell the staff about what they’re trying to do but programs period don’t really listen to the people there they just feel like you know well we have this client so we have to do this and make money. But people just want to feel like they’re heard, and they’re not heard a lot. And it’s frustrating because when we come to the program we have all these nice things but we aren’t getting to where we are supposed to be getting. 

Katie B: So it looks like a good program on the outside..

Carole: It looks like a good program on the outside but on the inside it’s different. 

21:00 - 21:44 

Katie B: Yeah, living it day to day is different, is what you’re saying? 

Carole: Yeah. It needs to change too because it’s kind of hurtful to the people who go there day to day but they not being listened to and they’re set up in this little box of everybody is on the same level. But everybody is on different levels and they think they should be on one, the staff thinks they should be on one level. And that frustrates people, that frustrates me sometimes. 

Katie B: Right and then..

Carole: And some people can’t say they don’t like it. If I try to stand up for myself or other people they feel like I’m trying to step on their toes. I’m.. no, I’m just trying to tell you how I want to be treated or how I want things to be done so it would make it easier for you it would make it easier for me and everybody else. 

21:45 - 26:45

Katie B: There are people being put into a group who all have varying needs varying interests varying different ways of showing up in the world and what you’re trying to deal with as Carole the woman who loves art and Lolita and fashion and Japanese culture is sort of like plain beige, you know, no options. And on top of that sometimes you’re feeling like you’re not heard and you’re not listened to and the people around you are not heard and are not being listened to and on the side of the staff, their challenge there is really really hard is to say somehow I have to provide a service that makes everyone in this room happy right now. And that makes everyone feel like they have an option or choice and while that’s impossible there are still programs out there who are saying that they do that, right? Do you have empathy for that, like sort of set up for people who are in that situation as a staff person trying to make it work because of course we’re not trying to paint this picture that everyone’s bad?

Carole: I feel like.. No, no, no not everybody is bad. I feel like you can do something good intentionally but sometimes it doesn’t show, it doesn’t show up the way you want it to. They feel like they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing, I do feel for them because like they think they're doing good things but they’re missing some things. And so sometimes you have tell what.. I see what you’re doing, you’re doing a good job but here’s some things that could help you do things better. 

Katie B: I like that and Katie I want to bring you into this conversation too because I think there’s also a way to do the work that’s being done at Starfire now in a way that can either be you’re listening and you’re hearing and you’re one on one and you’re doing this great work and you’re in the community and there’s also the way of doing it that isn’t great. You could still be one on one but you could be going to a restaurant everyday. 

Carole: Yeah. 

Katie B: Or you could be kind of doing stuff that isn’t intentionally driving toward community building experience, right? So Katie what ways are you intentional in this role that you try and save guard from stepping into maybe a status quo type role?

Katie A: When I’m thinking about our time together it’s really thinking about Carole as the leader of our time together, so always thinking about planning things around her interest and planning for something that’s going to bring other people into what we’re doing. Like when we talk about the tea or we talk about other events, those things are always going to bring people, other people that are going to connect to Carole into our work together. So it’s not just me and Carole doing things, it’s me and Carole and someone else who is going to build on Carole’s interests and connection.. 

Katie B: Yeah so you, ok so you’re being the bridge? It reminds me of a quote from Janet Lee who is a woman out of Toronto whose life work has been about liberating people with disabilties from segregated settings and building around interests and connections and we’ve learned a lot from Janet Lee. One of the things she says is, she asks the question of people, “When you leave [because at some point Katie you might leave, you might quit Starfire right and Carole you’re nodding your head, like you’ve had a lot of different staff]..”

Carole: Yeah I have a lot of different staffs.

Katie B: At Starfire, yeah. So that’s an inevitability that we kind of face and we own up to in this work and so what she asks is, “When you leave are you a void [in Carole’s life] because you were her only friend? Or are there more people in your life [Carole now] because [Katie] someone was a bridge?” And I love that way of framing what you just said which is that Katie you said that the work that you do isn’t about you and Carole, it’s about you and Carole and somebody else always. Is that what you value about your time Carole or is there something about that that resonates with you Carole?

Carole: I think, I agree with the bridge because sometimes it takes a bridge to get things moving. Everybody has a way to connect with other people, even if Katie is not available I’m able to still go to like some of the meet ups with the other Lolita’s, if I know someone from our other tea event is going to be there. And I’ll go because I know them already. 

26:46 - 28:37

Katie A: I think the cool thing about our work is it’s teamwork. It’s scary to show up to something by yourself and I don’t necessarily have to be the Starfire support person I’m just a person who doesn’t know much about Lolita. 

Katie B: How do you show up as a team member without it being “I’m her staff” and making Carole look or feel different than everyone else because you’re there?

Katie A: I get to have the unique position of I don’t know much about Lolita so can you all educate me? And I am going to buy my first dress and..

Carole: Yeah, I helped pick out the dress, and Brianna helped her let her know that it was a good beginners dress. 

Katie B: So there’s a way that you are adapting to this lifestyle? You’re starting to blend in in a way and it doesn’t mean that that’s something that you’re going to take on for life but Katie is this more of a way for you to show up more intentionally so that you do blend in not as a staff person but..

Katie A: Right, right and it’s honoring Carole’s interest also. I think it’s important, I don’t know, it’s interesting to learn new things, I love learning new things. Carole has taught me lots. 

Carole: Plus I don’t want to introduce Katie as my staff. 

Katie B: How do you introduce her? 

Carole: My friend. Or this is Katie. 

Katie B: Yeah. 

Katie A: And I think we early on kind of made the agreement we met through volunteering because that really is what we’re doing, we’re working as a team to volunteer to build community..

Katie B: I love that. 

Carole: So that way they don’t feel like, “Oh well this is an event, but we have a staff here..”

Katie A: That’s not how I want to be seen either. You know, I want to be seen..

Carole: Just put a sticker that says Katie right there, staff member. 

Katie B: It would be a lot harder to make those natural connections. 

28:38 - 30:52
Katie B: And also Carole what you said before which is just so powerful is that Katie is so much a part of it in a way that is a catalyst, she helped get things moving by being a bridge. But if she stepped away tomorrow you’re still going on your own and people aren’t seeing Katie as essential to your presence.

Carole: Yeah. 

Katie B: Yeah, you can be there, and Katie you’ve stayed out of the way enough for Carole to really be the one making these relationships. They’re about her relationships not you, you’re not texting Brianna, are you, at night? 

Katie A: She’s not asking me for any advice.

Carole: No. 

Katie B: Well you guys this is such a beautiful story and thank you so much for sharing it I really appreciate it, you taking this time. What is your hope, let’s end with that, what is your hope for the next ten years Carole of building community around your interest?

Carole: My hope in the next ten years I hope that a lot of people that have built good relationships with and community with, being more friendships. We’re small we’re very small so I’m hoping also that we get bigger. And we start to see other people making their own Lolita communities inside of Cincinnati. 

Katie B: A ripple effect. What about you Katie?

Katie A: I would hope for Carole that you just keep making your voice heard, you have so many wonderful things to say and to bring to the community, you know.

Carole: I will do my best.

Katie B: I have no doubt, yeah. Well thank you guys. 

Carole: Thank you

Lauren Culbertson has been on a learning journey with Starfire over the past year. First, she spent a few days with us on assignment from Coburn Venture’s Community For Change (CFC) to learn about community, change, and innovation. Then she joined Starfire’s leadership event, alongside 15 other nonprofit seeking to making changes to the current disability service model. And again came to Starfire when we hosted Darcy Elks to learn about the power of image, connectedness and relationships.

This writing is an excerpt from her notes on what her learning has meant for her personally. We love sharing these notes because as a learner, Lauren is adding so much wisdom and experience to our work at Starfire. #letsgettoit

To say that Starfire is a nonprofit in Cincinnati that works with people who have disabilities is one of the greatest understatements of the decade. Yes, this is true stripped down to the most literal sense, but it is impossible to summarize Starfire by the people it serves and fully capture the spirit of the transformational work they are doing, breaking down artificial barriers and bridging the private and public life of neighbors.

Tim and Bridget Vogt started Starfire in 2003 out of their passion to see adults living with disabilities in the Cincinnati area live meaningful lives. So, they designed a program that was and still is a very popular model to address the challenge of people living with disabilities not being able to enjoy life like everyone else: day programs. Starfire originated as a center where adults with disabilities could come together each day and participate in activities like cooking, playing games, going on field trips around the city, or taking classes. People would be dropped off in the morning by their parents or whoever they were living with and then go back home and do it all over again the next day.

I distinctly remember the first time I met Tim and he told his story. He said the moment the lightbulb went off for him was when he realized that they were creating “parking lots” rather than “launching pads” for the people that were coming to the day program. All they were doing was keeping them in the boxes where society had put them. The model reinforced the stereotypes that people with developmental disabilities could only flourish when with other people with disabilities, or that they couldn’t make decisions for themselves about how they wanted to spend their time, or that they didn’t add much value to the rest of their communities. Tim and Bridget realized that the entire model upon which they had built this growing nonprofit over the last five or more years was not really doing much to help…at best, it was just keeping people right where they were and supporting negative stereotypes for the rest of the people around them. 

 So, Tim and Bridget did something that is really really hard for an entrepreneur of any kind: they admitted they made a mistake and that things needed to be radically changed.

They needed to let the Starfire that they had come to know die.

And today, Starfire IS radically different than the day program it once was. The model is much more decentralized (the building where the day program was once held is now rented out as office space to other nonprofits). The unit of participation (for lack of a better phrase) is no longer just people with disabilities, but entire families. Starfire’s core program today is giving sizable grants to families to do independent projects that work to integrate the family better in the community and build natural relationships between people who have a disability and people who don’t.

 It puts the power into the hands of families and local communities and says, “I trust that you know how to be the best stewards of this funding.”

The goal is to empower families to play a role in “artfully facilitating” relationships between their family, their family member who have a disability, and their local community. And what they are doing seems to be working now.

But this change made some families and funders who partnered with Starfire very uncomfortable…even angry. Some cut ties completely.

 The beliefs held by Tim and other Starfire leaders such that day programs should be abolished, that too often institutions are making decisions for people that they are fully capable of making themselves, or that the value of a person is not derived from their economic contribution to society, are still far from mainstream. As I witnessed in the conversation of some Starfire families and disability practitioners, these ideas completely go against the grain of traditional thinking of how we as a society can best help those with disabilities. It is not comfortable to start to wonder if the way you have thought about something – especially something directly related to the identity of a son, daughter, or patient – may not be what is for the best.

We have become a society conditioned for comfort. We struggle to sit on the train or wait in a line without scrolling through a newsfeed. We are obsessed with good-smelling candles and oils and set our thermostats to our exact preferred temperature. We like to surround ourselves with people who reaffirm our beliefs and who we can commiserate with, we surround ourselves with media that creates an echo chamber of what we are already thinking. We like to live around people who are just like us. We’ll do just about anything to stay comfortable and make sure that comfort is not disturbed.

But where is the joy in that?

During a break in one of the workshops I got to attend at Starfire, I stepped into an empty conference room to take a call. Soon after, a young woman whose name I later learned was Ann, walked into the room, leaning on another woman. I recognized them both from the audience. Ann is nonverbal and has limited mobility, and in full transparency, I don’t think I had ever had a conversation with someone who is nonverbal before. As I continued my phone call, Ann walked towards me, looking at me straight in the eye. The woman she was with smiled. In full transparency, I felt pretty uncomfortable. And I think it was only because of what I had learned those last few days at Starfire that after I hung up the phone, I smiled back and gently took Ann’s hand and said, “Hi, I’m Lauren, it’s nice to meet you.”

If it had been at any other time or context, I don’t think I would have talked with Ann.

Why?

Because I was uncomfortable with not knowing how Ann and I could communicate since we communicate differently, and I probably wouldn’t have wanted to lean into discomfort out of fear of making a fool of myself or offending or just doing something wrong. 

One of the things Starfire reinforced for me is that there comes a point where remaining in comfort is no longer productive.

 In his “Letter to a Birmingham Jail” at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King Jr. talks about how tension – perhaps another term for “discomfort” – is imperative for progress as a society:

“Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”

It is perhaps a societal construct that we need to avoid discomfort, that it is a bad thing. But when looking back upon the arc of human history, in retrospect, the greatest leaps and bounds society has made were preceded by eras of tension. Today more than ever, Western society holds us to an expectation to have an answer – and to be convicted in that answer – at all times. My time with Starfire has also reinforced the importance of allowing space for people to feel uncomfortable – even encouraged to feel uncomfortable - and feel supported in getting to a place where maybe they will say, 

“I am going to change my mind. Maybe there is a lot I don’t know, and I want to learn more.”

There is freedom and there is joy in being able to utter that statement without judgement and knowing that you have a community of people behind you. Without tension, we – and the rest of our communities – remain stagnant. We don’t progress. In my case, I would not have made a new friend. I don’t think we find joy just when we are comfortable…I think joy sometimes comes after (even during) periods of discomfort, periods that produce growth, progress, inclusion, even a greater sense of love.

This is part two of Starfire’s conversation with John McKnight. He talks about his what he learned about community working alongside leaders in the disability rights movement, how he believes families working with Starfire are pioneers in this next generation of community builders, how to know if you’re on the right track, and his most urgent call to action.

If you haven’t heard the first part, you’ll want to go back and listen because John gives depth to what the gifts of community are, and how we can access the good things in life when we come together.

Download Starfire’s Pocketbook Guide to Building Community: www.starfirecincy.org/guidebook

About John McKnight:

John has spent a lifetime dedicated to the common good. He’s a Korean War veteran, who worked under John F Kennedy to create the affirmative action program, he was the Director of the Midwest office of the United States Commission on Civil Rights before leaving the government to work in communities. Among his many works, he is the author of The Careless Society – a critique of professionalized social services and celebration of communities’ ability to heal themselves from within. Alongside Peter Block, John is the Co-Founder of the Asset Based Community Development Institute housed at DePaul University and Senior Associate of the Kettering Foundation. And it also helps to mention that John trained a young President Obama in Chicago when he was a Community Organizer. He later wrote one of Obama’s letters of recommendation to help him enter Law School!

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TRANSCRIPT:

Katie: Yeah so pivoting a little bit I’d like to talk about this idea that for people with disabilities especially because that’s what we care a lot about at Starfire, that this connection to social services usually means a disconnection from community life.

That it means a person getting kind of pulled off the path of community member and onto a path as a client. What can you say just initially about how that looks and how that works for people with disabilities?  

John: I learned a lot from people who are labeled disabled, I’m not the wise guy on this. My response is I’ve learned from people with the real experience. One of these people was a Canadian named Pat Worth. And Pat was a younger man when I first met him, maybe 25, rather tall. He had escaped from an institution for the developmentally disabled, big old fashioned institution. And he said to me, “You know I think, one of the things, not all but one of the thing we ought to do is to organize people who are labeled in local communities so they could have a strong voice. Not their parents, not the professionals, but them, me, right?” He said, “You know about organizing, will you come with me for a month across Canada and see if we can start little organizations in the major cities of people who could come together and become a voice for themselves?” And so we did that and we got started with a fair number of groups. They chose as a name People First. When we got done we ended up in Vancouver after a month Pat said to me, “Now I think you can finally understand that our problem is not that we are disabled, our problem is we are disorganized. And the answer for us is to be organized.” But he also recognized, “and become active in communities.” 

And I think initially that he had the idea that People First would be entry points into community life because they would be independent of agencies and systems.

Once we understand what Pat understood, that what we call and label a disability is really a name for a lack of power to join everyday life. The lack of power to join everyday life. And Pat had discovered how to make that power when he escaped from the  institution, right?

So one of the basic things I think about the movement is, is everyday life goal? Is being a citizen in connection with others the place in life that you’re trying to achieve? And Pat had that in mind when he formed the group, but he first thought we ought to get enough power to get free of people who were controlling us and then we would have the possibility of moving to the world where we were connected rather than disconnected, or disorganized.  

Another thing, one of my best friends, she passed away I think now three years ago, was another Canadian named Judith Snow. I think she was very famous in the United States too. And Judith was born so that she could only move her thumb and her face. And we became very, very close friends. She used to come and visit us for her vacation. And she told me one time she said, “You know it wasn’t until I was thirty years of age that I really understood who I was.” 

And she said, “I had spent so much of my life being labeled and accepting the label and fighting the label but that didn’t tell me who I was.” And then she said to me, “When I was thirty I had a revelation, and it is that I am exactly the person who God created me to be and therefore I have every reason in the world to participate in this world because I have God’s gifts.” 

Now you don’t have to put it in religious terms, you could say “I have gifts.” And so I think the relentless, relentless insistence that the critical question about somebody is not what’s wrong. It is, what’s their gift? And building a life out from their gift is the key to entering community.  

Katie: You know for listeners who don’t know who Judith Snow is she is a pioneer really in education, in training programs, she’s an author, she’s written a lot of things and I actually had pulled a quote of hers leading up to this because I knew of your friendship with her. 

“A gift is a personal quality that when it’s brought into relationships in a valued way allows opportunity to emerge.” - Judith Snow

John: Oh boy, that’s Judith. And Judith was a person who wanted to be a part of everyday life and I remember one time we have sort of a weekend home up in rural Wisconsin. She knew I was a fishermen and so she said to me, let’s go fishing. And I didn’t know about whether or not that was something that was going to be very good for her or if she’d really like it. But we went and the place we went to fish had some canoes and she said, well if I’m going to fish, I’ll have to be in a canoe. And she was in a wheelchair. You know and the idea of getting her into that canoe seemed to me a little perilous. But she had an aid and we got into the canoe. You know they’re a little tippy, I was very careful, a little afraid. And we went out together and I fished and she talked with me and watched and enjoyed the lake. And I caught more fish than I’ve ever caught before.

And I thought you know, she made me a real fishermen by taking her adventure, desire to discover, to be a part of it all. And she brought me into that world, and see what a benefit I got? 

Katie: And those are exactly the gifts that she’s talking about.  

John: Right.  

Katie: Yeah, I love the list that you share that she has, that she said the gifts that people with labeled with disability have. I’ll link to that in the show notes for people to see but it’s brilliant.   

One thing you mentioned when you were speaking about Pat’s story that I want to go back to is that sometimes parents, in the time that Pat was advocating and starting People First, parents were actually getting in the way of people with disabilities being part of community life. And now today, what we’re doing at Starfire is really putting families at the center of building community and we’re asking families and parents to participate alongside their children with or without disabilities to be a part of effective community change. So how do you know when you’re on the right track with that, as a parent, as a neighbor, as a connector, how do you know when you’re on the right track with building community? 

John: You know that very idea is pioneering. I’m looking forward to learning from these families what kind of things they did, sometimes it might not have worked, I’d like to know that too. So I think I would probably approach the question you’re asking the same way I would approach if you weren’t say, anybody involved happened to have a label. And I would say that a family might first examine themselves in two ways: number one what do we all care about? What common interest do we have? And the second is: what gifts do we have? Those answers to those two questions are the keys to opening your access into community life.

Because you’ll usually find that almost any interest that people have there is some group, club, or association that is focused around that. So if you can come to that part of the communities’ life with what makes the group work anyway, a common interest about the same thing, I think that’s a pretty clear path to becoming engaged. Now you’re not creating something anew but something new may grow out of that relationship, right? And the other possibility is your gifts as against your interests. Your gifts are key to your entry into community. So what do we have that we care about, and can share, can use as our key and if we have been great stewards of Christmas maybe we can bring more Christmas to the block than the block has had before. I think that’s happened with one of your groups. So they’re looking at what they have to offer as the starting point that would involve other people who are attracted to that. Now, there aren’t a lot of people sitting around thinking, “Gee, I’d like to have a better Christmas.” But when a group of people offer them a better Christmas, right? All of a sudden they’re attracted. And that’s what makes almost all groups work.

Natural groups, clubs, groups and associations in neighborhoods are groups of people who are together for one or two reasons or both. Number one they care about each other, number two they care about the same thing.

Very often the way you come to care about one another is you get together because you care about the same thing. And then your care for each other grows. So those are the avenues I think of, what’s the ramp into the community? And it’s interests and gifts. And your honest conviction that you have something to offer, and not that the community will solve your problems. 

You have something to offer. Everybody does. I’ve never met anybody who didn’t have something to offer.  

Katie: So it sounds like you’re on the right track as long as you are using gifts as your north star and you’re focusing on that and the minute you start to veer off into some other direction maybe around your empty half or the problems, or going toward the service to fix things then you’re kind of veering away from the path.  

 John: Yes, excellent summary.  

 Katie: One of the things that you worked on in Chicago was a project called Logan Square. You were the principal investigator in this what became a publication written by Mary O’Connell. And in this introduction Mary starts to describe the myths of the ideal of a small town past where “people sipped lemonade together on the front porch, watched out for the neighbors kids, shared the works of the town and the fruits of their gardens.” And I think there’s a common argument, especially today, we’re very aware of how the way things used to be is oftentimes mythologized, you know, things were way worse back then for people who were marginalized typically who are left out typically. People with disabilities, people of color, people who are part of the LGBTQ community, people who are typically just like I said left out of communities. So when we’re talking about community building are you trying to get back to the way things were, or how do you marry those two ideas? Because I know you worked a lot with civil rights in your career? 

John: Well I’m not sure they’re two things. I think people who are concerned about civil rights are concerned about equality and they’re overcoming formal ways of exclusion. So you can’t discriminate against me when I eat or when I’m in a restaurant or when I’m seeking housing. Those are formal ways of overcoming exclusion. But the law can’t reach to a local community that may be exclusive, right? You can’t pass a law saying you can’t be exclusive here folks. You’ve got to include everybody.

So I think our asset based development effort is always circumscribed by something that Judith said, and she was one of our best faculty members.

She said, “It’s our job to ensure that there's always a welcome at the edge. That exclusion is not what binds us together but invitation and welcome is what binds us together.”

 I think that the idea of “civil rights” works as a means of dealing with formal structures and systems - but it is invitation and inclusion that works in the space that isn’t the formal world.  

Katie: It’s so interesting how you just put that because it goes back to what you said about police officers, we need to generate safety in our own communities. They can’t be the only answer, and same with laws, laws can’t be the only answer in creating equality or inclusivity. We have to be the inviters and conveners.   

John: People of color, people with labels of any kind live in a world where the majority or at least a large number of people, do not respect them. And laws will not produce respect. But if somebody on a block says, I know this person who's been on the margin and they have something to offer, come on in, we need you and that gets shared. Then you begin to see respect. And it’s the building of respect I think that is very much a word that says, we want you because you are valued, we know you have something to offer.  

Katie: That’s beautiful. I’d like to just end with one final kind of question and it’s something that I like to end on usually is hope but I think too we need change and sometimes when you end on hope it doesn’t motivate people to do anything on their own. So I’d like to motivate people today with this question. What is the most urgent call to action that you think we have today as citizens? 

John: Know your neighbor. Start at home. Margaret Mead said that all change starts with small groups of people. It doesn’t start out there it starts in here. So just historically if you want to change things, go next door, start there. 

Having a big name in local community building seems to go against the rules. But my guest in this podcast, John McKnight is a big name in community building. In today’s conversation John talk about what exactly Asset Based Community Development is by definition, and the six assets or gifts he’s found people use in neighborhoods. This is just part one of our conversation - in the second half we dug a little more into the impact people with disabilities have had on John’s understanding of belonging in community, and what his take on the myth of that “small town past” circa 1950 America.

John has spent a lifetime dedicated to the common good. He’s a Korean War veteran, who worked under John F Kennedy to create the affirmative action program, he was the Director of the Midwest office of the United States Commission on Civil Rights before leaving the government to work in communities. Among his many works, he is the author of The Careless Society – a critique of professionalized social services and celebration of communities’ ability to heal themselves from within. Alongside Peter Block, John is the Co-Founder of the Asset Based Community Development Institute housed at DePaul University and Senior Associate of the Kettering Foundation. And it also helps to mention that John trained a young President Obama in Chicago when he was a Community Organizer. He later wrote one of Obama’s letters of recommendation to help him enter Law School!

I really hope this interview with John can help anyone on the path to building community in your own neighborhood!

Check out free trainings on how to be a connector at ABCD institute: https://resources.depaul.edu/abcd-institute/resources/Pages/tool-kit.aspx

Abundant Community Initiative in Edmonton, Canada: https://www.edmonton.ca/programs_services/for_communities/abundant-community-edmonton.aspx

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TRANSCRIPT:

John: My name is John McKnight and I’ve been interested in I suppose local communities, because I was raised in several. And my mother was an Irish Catholic. She was a person dedicated to the idea of family and local community as being really important. So I think I first started with her values then built around them rather than making it up myself. So I had my mother’s interest in local community and then at the university I learned a more conceptual way and practical way too.  

Katie: What were some of your mom’s values that you carried forward? 

John: Well, that we had an obligation to each other. She was not big on individualism. Our good is a common good, not just individual good.

That idea she had stuck with me that the basic question of: the good part of society doesn’t have to do as much with what I individually do but with what commitment I have to do things together with others.

She and my father were both, I think a little unusually for people who are from small town Ohio, committed to inclusiveness. I was raised with the idea that excluding people or discriminating people, especially because of their race at the time, was a bad thing. So that was another value I think I carried forward from both of them.      

Katie: And your work and it sounds like your mom’s values and influence on you has impacted an entire movement of people around this idea of “asset based community development,” is that a phrase that you coined? 

John: Well I’ve always had, since I went to the University after I left the government a colleague named Jody Kretzmann. He and I worked with each other and jointly created that framework for understanding what’s in a community.  

Katie: I’ve heard a lot of different definitions of what asset-based community development is, I’ve heard Cormac Russell put it that it is not a model but a description of what happens when local people come together in relationship to make action.  

John: And I think that’s right. It isn’t basically for most people a paradigm shift so that they pay more attention to the full half of people and their communities than they do to the empty half. 

These needs and problems that you saw in people and neighborhoods was half the story - the empty half. You oughtta have a full half too.

So we, Jody and I decided that it would be a good thing if somebody did research that tried to identify what was there in neighborhoods.  

 Katie: As far as assets, as far as gifts? 

John: Yeah, what was there we called “assets.” And that was based on four years of talking to people and interviewing them in neighborhoods all across Canada and the United States. And it turned out we had a couple thousand stories but there were about six things that appeared in these stories that people used. Quickly, they were first that people used the gifts and talents of people in the neighborhood. Not their defects and problems. Second they used their own groups/organizations and clubs to get things done. The third thing is they had local institutions that they used, like a library for instance, or a small business. Or some kind of agency that they had created that was local, not those that were downtown. And the fourth thing is they used resources, the physical, the environment, the ecology as a resource. The fifth thing was they were constantly involved in connecting those other four, we call that exchange, they were connecting things, exchanging things. And the last thing is they were reflecting and developing a culture by telling stories. So stories are the way they captured what they knew, what they valued, what they wanted to do, and became a part of their culture. So those are the six things that people used in neighborhoods. So we have emphasized the role of people who understand what the local assets or resources or ingredients are and take action to form groups, or themselves make connections among those assets. So that’s what asset development is.  So that connecting has always been the central action. That’s different than leadership. A leader is at the front of the room, the connector is in the middle of the room, right?

Katie: And this is back to your mom’s value of a common good and also this differentiation between independence and interdependence, can you talk more about what you said with the leader is at the front of the room and a connector is at the middle of the room and how that comes into play? 

John: Well a leader is a definition but one way of thinking about them is they are the public voice of community determination or will. So often they are people who know how to speak, who are vigorous, who have some kind of charisma, people look to them as being good representatives. Now, if you went back to the Civil Rights Movement and say who was the leader of the Civil Rights Movement? Well it was Dr. King. But the Civil Rights Movement was created significantly before Dr. King became a spokesperson or visible. It was very clear that he wasn’t leading the thousands and thousands of groups all over the country that had coalesced into a movement. He was their voice, he wasn’t speaking for himself. So that’s one role of a leader.

A connector on the other hand, is somebody who understands and has knowledge of all of the resources in a local community. They know about the gifts of a lot of people they belong to a lot of clubs and groups. They are very much aware of who the librarian is and who the druggist is. And they can see that there are vacant lots that could become assets, and made into a community gardens right? And they tend to be good storytellers as well. They connect those things or get groups of people together who will make that kind of a connection. So a word that I would use for them, a classic word is host or hostess. If you're giving a party and you’re inviting a bunch of people a host or hostess, might stand at the front door and greet people as they come in. And then say, “well you know Mary you play the piano and there are two people here who are musicians I’d like to introduce you,” take you over and introduce you. And then they go back. But what they’re doing is they’re connecting, they don’t join the musicians’ discussion so much but what they’re doing is putting people and other resources together and not leading that but precipitating them into relationships that result in action. So it is a role that satisfies a lot of people but is a role that is usually not recognized, people don’t, if I said what is a connector they wouldn't exactly know. So it doesn’t get a lot of recognition so it has to be people who are satisfied with the role of host or hostess. They get a joy out of putting people together rather than standing in front of them. Both you need, both are legitimate.

But what really builds community is people who multiply connections because what makes things better is connecting assets and that doesn’t happen on its own, usually, somebody or some group has to do it.  

Katie: And the description that you gave of being at a dinner party and the host knowing enough about the guests coming in order to connect them is such a good way to describe how any of us can mobilize gifts in our neighborhood. You know whether that’s at a dinner party, or another type of an event that’s just the natural way and it seems like that could be an easy way to start, maybe? 

John: I would say one other thing that we know is you can’t train people to be connectors. However, I’ve never seen a block in North America where there are not at least two to three connectors. They’re there - but you have to identify that and in a sense enhance and enable them to do their work on a broader scale then they tend to do naturally. So finding connectors on a block is a way to start and often you can find them by knocking on doors talking to somebody who’s on that block and asking them is there anybody here that you know that most people respect or if you have a party who will pull them together or if there were somebody who knows about everybody else, is there somebody like that around here, right? And you’re liable to find that what you’ve got is a connector. The wonderful thing about connectors is they just love to bring people together and that’s what was required for asset based community development.  

Katie: Well and you just put voice to, not everybody is a connector, and so there are some people who might be best at finding the connectors. And the way that they do that is that - knocking on people’s doors and saying hey are you a connector? Or how would you say people approach that? 

 John: A city in North America that has gone furthest in this kind of development of connectors as the base for city life is Edmonton, Canada. And there one or two people began an initiative that they called the abundant community initiative. Because they knew about or were connectors, were good people to find... it takes one to know one, in a sense. So they were able by engaging people on another block to identify people who had this attribute and this became so popular, so many blocks and neighborhoods were interested in beginning to get people together that they hired half time a connector to be responsible for 50 blocks, finding local connectors on each block. And if you are really interested you can go to their website and they have a guide for connectors. How do they work? You’d find the best experience that anyone has ever had written down of how to go about finding and mobilizing local connectors.  

Katie: Wonderful. What do you think gets in the way of people wanting to start this work? I mean you gave a great resource there and people can go check that out. At the end of the day I think there are still some things people find that get in the way even if they know exactly what to do next. What are the things you see most common? 

John: Well, I think most common is a strange sort of hesitance or minor fear and that is to knock on the door of your neighbors. Usually you have to find somebody who is willing to go up to a neighbor’s door and knock on it and introduce themselves and begin to talk with them about their gifts and their talents, to invite them to maybe join them in talking to other neighbors about gifts and talents and what they could teach. And it is sometimes difficult to find a person who feels at ease just knocking on the door of their neighbors, they live on the block but still. That’s not a gift everybody has. So overcoming the kind of, I don’t like to use the word ‘fear’ but justifications people have for not knowing their neighbors, right. ‘I don’t want to interfere with their lives’ or ‘I don’t want to be turned down’ all those kinds of things are I think that the threshold limitation that you run into.  

Katie: The threshold limitation, that’s interesting, does that mean that once you get past that there’s no more excuses? 

John: Well I think that if you find a person or two who are willing to do that or willing to learn how to do that with your support, they are the starting point, they are the hosts and hostesses of the block. Some people call them the ‘block champion.’ In Edmonton they call them the block connector. But if you get that process going it breaks down fears that people have even of talking to somebody who comes to their front door. Because this is their neighbor and they see that their neighbor values them. 

So you begin to shift the culture of: close your door, be an individual - and begin to see that no, you could open your door and together you can do more than you can do by yourself. It’s pretty basic, it’s a culture shift. 

And it’s not.. It is all in action. It’s getting people together for a block party, it’s getting them to identify what they know that they would be willing to teach the young people on the block, it’s finding out what kinds of knowledge they have that they’d be willing to share or join together with others on the block to develop or enjoy. You might three or four people who walk for exercise. Well, why can’t they walk together, right? So a connector might find out first and know that somebody really enjoys walking and then introduces them to two other people on the block so they’re not each walking alone but they’re getting to know each other as they walk. And they become a node for which the connector can begin to ask people, do you exercise? Do you like to walk, you know there’s three people who start out every morning at seven o’clock, and let me connect you to them. That kind of a process. It’s people who are not thinking, I have something I’d like local people to do, I work for an agency or I’m in a program or I work for a government. It’s people who when they talk to somebody light up and say, “oh you know, you play the clarinet and I’ve just met four other people on the block who play different instruments, let’s get together and maybe we can have a block band.” So the joy isn’t in what they do, it’s what these people do. That’s a host or a hostess.  

Katie: Yes and there’s so much research coming out now about how important it is for us to have connections. And that it leads to better well-being and your example of getting together to go on a walk, you know something like that can motivate us to be more consistent to getting out and exercising if we know we have other people who are meeting us at seven in the morning. And the reason I bring that up is I think so many of us say that we’re too busy for this kind of commitment to be involved in the neighborhood in any way - but if it’s something that you already naturally do, which is this example you gave. You’re already going on a walk, why not do it together? 

John: Yeah, or why not play your instrument with others? Or if you spend too much of your time in childcare there are probably some other people on the block who feel the same way, maybe if we got together we could begin to split the load. Begin to think about how when I need some free time you can help me and vice versa. The reciprocal kind of relationship can grow from. Or a couple people are gardeners and they’re willing to teach kids in the local school and they’re willing to create a garden on a vacant lot in the neighborhood.

In a sense, if you really find out what gifts, skills, passions, knowledge people on the block have, they are waiting to share it.

And Edmonton has got more invitations going out than any other city in the United States or Canada. And that work they’re doing there has in a way revolutionized the city. The city now has as its community policy this initiative. We have seen so much more change, responsibility and creativity growing out of the connection of neighbors on a block that we couldn’t do anything with our programs or policies that would begin to match what they’re doing now.  

Katie: Right and this is not a conglomerate of a developmental organization, this is a group of neighbors is your point? 

John: That’s right.  

Katie: Yeah, you know another thing that I hear people say is that there’s too much crime in my neighborhood and back to your earlier point about the empty half, people tend to focus on that first and say this is too big of a hurdle. So do you think there is an answer to that?  

John: Well, if you get groups of people together any way and produce what scientists will call social capital these days, they are producing a kind of wealth and its measurable. So that you can compare people who are in active blocks with people in inactive blocks and say well what’s the difference in terms of major concerns people have? Just the fact that you are in a collective relationship of personal knowledge of each other produces much safer neighborhoods than the police can ever bring. And it goes that way with food, it goes that way with energy, it goes that way with children, it goes that way with care.

When we get together in small groups, locally and we do it not in programs somebody else is pushing from some institution but we do it because it grows out of our mutual interest, regardless of what the mutual interest is, we are going to be safer, healthier, wiser, and raise better children. So how would you like that? 

Katie: Yeah, I think we would all like that. Yeah.  

John: Right, so there’s all kind of evidence that the reason above all for getting people connected at the local level is that all good things in life are generated by their coming together.  

Katie: Yes, and another way of saying that that I’ve heard you put is that care is not something that can be managed it’s freely given from the heart. We’ve almost just delegated too much responsibility to social services and so for police officers, to expect them to keep an entire community safe when we ourselves are not knowing our neighbors.

John: And you know who would make that point these days more strongly than anyone else? Police Chiefs.  

Katie: Right.  

John: I mean I just read in this morning’s paper here in Chicago, the police chief talking about how they can do just so much. And then it’s up to whether people are organized in their local blocks…

Among the barrage of back to school paperwork for a preschooler and a kindergarten there it is was. An unassuming invitation for after school dance classes. A description that says this particular program enrolls children who are at least 5 years old, live within the Cincinnati area, and are willing to attend class in dance appropriate clothing every week. And then, ever so subtly, an additional stipulation. In order to participate, they require that children “do not require special needs assistance for a physical or mental condition.”

And there it is. An explicit “You Are Not Welcome Here.” I’ve heard from families of people with developmental disabilities that this experience is a common one for them. The metaphorical door slammed in their faces. It happens at birth of their child – what is meant to be a joyous day, is met with avoided eye contact… It happens when looking for childcare – we can’t take your child given the circumstances... It happens when enrolling and advocating for a typical Kindergarten class… It happens for soccer teams and theater groups and summer camps and scouting groups and after school rec center activities... A variety of voices saying, “No.” “We just can’t...” “We won’t be able to…” “Surely you understand…”

This rejection can be explicit and in your face offensive, degrading, dehumanizing – someone calling a person “retarded.” I find however, that more often, they are the brief, and everyday occurrences that send the message verbally or otherwise that a person’s presence if disabled, isn’t welcomed, isn’t valued, and frankly, is inconvenient to everyone else. And in our folder, and in take home folders all across the school district, families of children with disabilities were also reading that flyer. It’s just a flyer for a children’s dance class, you may be thinking. Surely, there are other dance classes? Ones that children with disabilities can go to? Yes, it is just a flyer, and yes, it is just a dance class. And yes, there are other dances classes specifically for children with disabilities. What we are noticing is the instinct instead to separate, distance and push away, instead of asking “might there be a way to include everyone who wants to dance?” These rejections reinforce the explicit or implicit message you do not belong here. This isn’t for you.

That while we said children who are at least 5 years old, live in Cincinnati, and can wear their tap shoes and dance pants each week, we obviously didn’t mean those kinds of children. While it’s just a flyer and just a dance class now, it quickly becomes a classroom, an apartment or house, a job, community and friendship and love later. The rejection is cumulative, the isolation it is creating is compounded over time. When this rejection is constant, what does that do to you? Your family? What you start to believe about your community, your neighbors, your friends, your own family? I don’t know the gutting feeling of my child not being welcome, of hearing no over and over again. But I can certainly bring it to light and work against the culture that believes this to be okay. That some of us get opportunity, invitations, and welcomed and some of us just don’t, and won’t, and can’t isn’t okay.

At Starfire we’ve thought a lot about how to approach the work with an understanding of what people with disabilities and their families are up against. And, while my children have no interest in dance and we wouldn’t sign up anyway, and they don’t have disabilities so they wouldn’t be excluded had they wanted to, this is something that all other families would also receive in their take home folder. And just because it doesn’t affect my children, doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect our children.

At a recent celebration of a past teacher of mine, a keynote speaker told a story of a purpose.

A city dweller had purchased land on a whim in the countryside and had forged a connection with the farmer next door. Knowing little about farming, but having an insatiable interest in growing things, he bought the land and got to it. It was hobby project, not his livelihood– a summer home of sorts, but one that brought him such joy to experiment in planting crops and flowers.  And as it happened, the farming adventure led to a friendship with a seasoned farmer next door who was willing to offer practical advice, lend tools and assistance, and guide the city dweller in his fantastical efforts.

Years passed and the farmer’s wife passed on as well. Now much older, unable to care for the land into his old age, or keep up with the maintenance of the farmhouse, and the farmer found himself preparing to move into an assisted living home in the coming weeks.  His beloved land was was being auctioned off as well as the farmhouse and most of its possessions.

The city dweller purchased some chairs from the auction and went one day to collect them from the house. The farmer, happy to see his friend before his move, remarked that he was grateful that someone he knew and cared about was taking the chairs. Surprised by this, the city dweller inquired why this was. They were nice, solid chairs, but certainly not heirlooms pieces.  What was it about the chairs?

The farmer said that the chairs primary purpose of course was for sitting and that they were very good and sturdy for that purpose, and that over many decades those chairs had served he and his wife well in that regard.  Sure, they had some knicks and scratches and marks from time, but their remaining days certainly outnumbered his own. Their significance was not in the primary purpose of the chairs, but their secondary purpose. And that was that they brought he and his wife together each night, to reflect on their days, which turned into weeks, which turned into years, and their lifetime together.  The chairs provided a space for togetherness, for pause and conversation over a lifetime.

He said the chairs held memories of his young pregnant wife, of her as a new mother nursing their children, of them watching storms dance across their fields together as a family. He said the chairs were where he became a grandpa, nestling a new grandchild and meeting each other for the first time, completely enamored.

The chairs held precocious children (and numerous more grandchildren) in pouty time-outs, and children nestled on grown up laps reading stories next to the Christmas tree, and children’s coloring books and crayons which often missed the pages and made their presence known on the wood. The chairs had been the backbone of forts and caves and castles through the years with linens and sheets and blankets and doilies strewn across the top. They’d been the trusty accomplice, a partner in crime to reach the top cabinets in the kitchen where the treats were hidden from sight. The chairs held the occasional household cat over the years – and stacks of books and magazines that were read or sometimes just collected upon them to keep the cats off.

The chairs, he said, had held friends, tipsy from summer porch beers and eyes wet from laughter, and sometimes held them safely until the next morning when they’d gather their senses and keys and head home. The chairs had held his wife, sick, with an afghan blanket around her as her remaining days dwindled. The chairs held visitors paying their respects after his wife died, friends who had travelled near and far to share a memory, and to hold his hand.

The farmer remarked that the chairs of course we’re just a place to sit, and that the city dweller would find them to be adequate for that use – sturdy, reliable. That was their primary purpose of course, sitting, but their secondary purpose was to gather and that they had served him well throughout his lifetime.

I listened the speaker telling this story, shifting uncomfortable in a folding plastic chair in a high school gymnasium and wondered about this notion of primary and secondary purpose. How many objects and things are utilitarian, and we miss the underlying secondary purpose of their everyday existence in our life? How many people are utilitarian, and we miss their underlying secondary purpose of their everyday existence in our life?

We talk a lot about the purpose of jobs and Starfire’s approach to helping people with developmental disabilities in becoming employed.  We’ve been successful in this work – helping well over thirty different people find unique jobs that fit their skillset and their limitations.  From IT to marketing to gardening and hospitality services.

The primary purpose of any job is to earn a paycheck and to fill up one’s time, to have something to do.  But the primary purpose of employment isn’t why we’ve supported people with disabilities in finding a job and working to help them keep it. The secondary purpose is the driving factor behind this work of finding work.  The secondary purpose of working for many people with developmental disabilities is more important than the primary. To fill one’s time is fine, necessary even, but not if that time is filled with meaningless, disrespectful, devalued tasks.

Do we find jobs just to find jobs?  The answer has always been a resounding no. The secondary purpose of work and Starfire’s work of finding employment has been in the nature and potential of relationships.  In becoming a coworker, having a role within a team, being needed, being known, making a contribution, and perhaps in some places, and perhaps over time becoming a friend.

Sure, a chair is a place to sit. But the farmers story tells us that its secondary, and perhaps true purpose, is providing a space for human connection.

Sure, a job is a place to earn money.  But perhaps its secondary- and true purpose in relation to our work of community building- is providing a space for connection as well.  An additional avenue for people with developmental disabilities to be known, be seen, be valued, be accepted, be challenged, be needed, be respected.

-Campfire Girls Award ~ 1925

I found this proclamation at an antique store a few years back and immediately purchased it to bring home to the Starfire office. It isn’t widely known, but Starfire’s origins date back to Campfire Girls here in Cincinnati before our inception as “Starfire” in 1993. As our history tells, the scouting organization was inclusive to people with and without disability – a vision of inclusion we hold still today.

Through my investigation, it seems that the Guardian of the Fire award was given annually to a leader who exemplified the values above. And we love the wording and imagery it creates.

(We’ve subtly used the campfire as a central image of connectedness and goodness a few times, too.  Like in our video here)

Over the years, Starfire has given awards to recognize leaders of inclusion in Cincinnati.  These awards have been given to outstanding volunteers, paid staff, family members, and people who disabilities who have given back to the community in some extraordinary way. This year, we are proud to bestow the inaugural Guardian of the Light Award to recognize a person in the community who has furthered the work of inclusion, heightened the imagination of what’s possible in our communities, and lives these values through action.

This year, Starfire will recognize Cary Brodie, who has shown a deep and consistent ethic of inclusion. Cary has been working to restore a half acre of woods in Madisonville that was given to the Park Board by Myron G. Johnson Jr. in 1972.  The land had fallen into disarray, overgrowth, and a de factor trash dump.  Cary, along with neighbors, spearheaded weekly cleanups, removal of invasive plant species, and land clearing to make it bird friendly again. In doing so, Cary has brought together dozens of neighbors from all walks of life – young and old all willing to work towards the vision of a beautiful restored space in the neighborhood.

Before and after photos of the changes in Johnson Woods.

It is because of her vision, and her hard work and inclusive spirit, that Starfire bestows the Guardian of the Light Award:

It shall be thy task to keep the newly kindled fire alight;
To know the earth, the sea, the stars above; 
Hold happiness; seek beauty; follow right; 
Offer a friendly hand to all who ask; 
And, day by day, 
Lead sister feet along the golden way—
The road that leads to work and health and love.

Join Starfire at our 2019 Annual Celebration Friday, September 20, as we honor Cary and all those who have built inclusion this past year!

Buy tickets (kids free!) to our 2019 Annual Celebration >>

All photos courtesy of Johnson Woods Bird Sanctuary on Facebook

A group of nieghbors with Cary (far right).

More neighbors of Cary's.

A work day clean up

Cary includes a neighborhood kid who helps water new plants.

Danny and Cary pose in Johnson Woods

 When Carole and I became community building partners I had never heard the word “Lolita.” Beyond the word there is this beautiful culture that I was completely unaware of. If Carole were to relay a story of her first time telling me about Lolita she would probably laugh remembering my attempt to repeat what she said. She would continue by telling you about how she patiently began introducing me to a world and culture that she is so passionate about.

If you have never heard of Lolita I will try my best to introduce you in a few words. The dresses are inspired by Asian culture and have a vintage flair. It is also referred to as Japanese street fashion. They have sweet, feminine details like lace, frills and ribbons. Accessorizing is also important. Shoe choice, tights, jewelry and hairstyle pull together the look. It’s not a style that you would wear to a job interview or to school, but rather to express a feeling of joy and happiness through fashion design. Each dress is a work of art.

The more I thought about Lolita the more I realized the unique power within the community.

Our job as community building partners is to meet people who share similar passions with Carole. It’s obvious as soon as two Lolitas meet each other. They have a powerful sense of self and a desire to be independent of how society defines beauty. This deviation from society’s definitions allows for a more inclusive world - I had never heard or seen anything Lolita related, and wherever we are, whoever we meet, I am welcomed by someone new who is thrilled to introduce me to her passion. Creativity radiates from their soul. It is beautiful.

So began my journey in collaboration with Carole to create regular, inclusive events among this fashion world that would hopefully draw beginners and experienced fashionistas alike. Carole worked to create a Facebook event, a tea party and lunch, that drew in three interested women. The second event drew in five women. It is Carole’s leadership and sense of self that brought these women together. Often it isn’t easy to leave your comfort zone and meet up with people you don’t know. Our brains can be pretty unforgiving imagining all of the things that might go wrong. But she persisted. We planned events that didn’t go as planned and she was willing to come back to the table, brainstorm, and keep working toward her goal. She has been successful in making multiple new social connections, and it is due to her intentional networking that the connections continue to grow into closer relationships. 

What we learned in collaboration with each other are lessons that can’t be taught in a book, at a conference, or in a class. It takes bravery to meet people and experience that unique joy you feel when you connect with people who share your same passion. People are waiting to be asked about their gifts. Don’t be afraid to ask. What if Carole hadn’t brought these wonderful, brilliant women together? What if I had never learned the word Lolita? That one word has enriched my life and I’m better because of it.

Kathleen shares her story about her families’ belief in a life with big possibilities and dreams - and not being defined by disability.
 

 TRANSCRIPT:

When Grace was born she was born with some issues, we didn’t know right away it took a few months. But for some reason my husband and I took on this belief that we were not going to be defined by whatever this was that was going on with Grace. And it was partly because at that time we had a three year old son and we just kept thinking like ok so we are going to have some serious issues going on with Grace we are going to have to give her lots of attention we get that. We understand, like we went to counseling and we understand we are going to constantly grieve the loss of her dreams or our dreams for her, etc. etc.  

But we kept thinking we’ve got this three year old boy too, we can't just be focused on Grace. And we can’t define Ben by Grace. And I didn’t want to be defined by Grace. Like I saw myself having friends and connections and doing things that were unrelated to disability. So we really had this mindset that we can’t be defined by this disability. And I will tell you that it is profoundly hard to work against that because for my daughters condition there’s an organization out there, she has a neuromuscular condition so its MDA. So immediately, MDA gets involved right at the hospital, they want to be involved in your life and they want you to give money and all this other stuff, right? 

And if you have someone who’s born with Down syndrome it’s the exact same thing, right? And I’m sure it is with autism and all of these groups. And I understand that all of these groups do really great work and some of them like the MDA fund a lot of important research for treatments and cures and all that stuff. So I am not down playing the importance of that, but what happens as a parent is you’re inundated from the get-go with ‘be a part of the disability community.’

And that was hard for us because we were thinking like ok, we are not this is not who we are, like we don’t define ourselves this way.  

We had this belief in Grace from the get-go and I remember a doctor looking at me like I had four heads. And I told them all Grace is going to go to college and she’s going to do whatever she wants in life. We had these huge beliefs that Grace could do anything, in some ways it was bad because Grace isn’t going to college. And to have this mindset of that being what defines a successful life, is not good. If she doesn’t go to college that doesn’t mean she isn’t important or wonderful.

The good part of it is we just always had dreams for her. And we believed she could do a lot of things.  

So we weren’t even in therapies and we love OTs, but you know you get to a point and you can’t applaud what accomplishment she just made, you immediately have to fix the next thing. But we wanted to be focused on the positive. And we would say often we don’t want to be the poster family for MDA, we don’t want to be the poster family for disability. And that’s how we lived our lives. And then after that, we found a school. And literally this school — I went in one day, they never looked at Grace in terms of disability. It just wasn’t an issue. Grace went in and she needed a walker at this time to go in. She went in with her walker and they did, I don’t want to call them interviews, but it was just to see if the child was ready to go to school at that point. And she went in with her walker and she did what most two and a half year olds do, which was cry like anything because their mom just left them and they’re in this room with all these kids they don’t know and never met before and these teachers.  

They accepted her and I want to make sure I quote this correctly, but I remember going into school one day for these little teas that they do, it was a Montessori school, Mercy Montessori. And they invite you into a tea that your child does for you. I went in and we were sitting in this little circle in these teeny tiny chairs. And the kids are all on the floor. And Grace is on one side of me and another kid is on the other side of me. And the other child puts his or her (I don’t remember) hand on my leg and says “now she is going to need to use your leg to stand up so she’s just going to stand up that way.” I was like oh my gosh, like he didn’t say she can’t get up. What that little child said was this is how she does it.  

And then I followed her to her work, which is what they call them at Montessori. And her partner said to me, it was a little boy. So you will see that I do it this way and Grace does it this way and we just both get it done. And it was amazing. Now one of the things that I did do is they asked me if I wanted to address the class, when Grace first joined and talk about Grace’s concerns or issues or anything. And I said no I don’t want to do that because then what everyone hears is that Grace can’t do this, or you need to help her with this and I just felt like everyone will figure it out.  

Between the teachers and the students, they all figured it out. And it was just beautiful.

And we stumbled across that. We really did. We were just looking for Montessori setting because our OT said I think it would be good for her to be in a Montessori setting. So that’s all we were looking for and this is what we found and it was wonderful and it was in line with what we valued as a family, but we also failed. 

So swimming upstream, we finally cave at one point. MDA said we’d really like to hear your family's perspective it’s a little different then a lot of our other families. And I thought well that’s fine we could do that because they’re letting us talk about our perspective. Well it was awful, and I had to cut it short because basically they wanted me to tell a sob story about our daughter in order to get money, right? And I hate it, I get it but I hate it. So the man came to our home and started to asking me these very specific questions that were to go down this sob story path. And I just had to say look we’re not going down that path. You either say what we want to say or we end it right here. So he let us say a few things and I think it was a very abbreviated I think film for what they were looking for. But we learned a really valuable lesson that you have to hold strong, you have to understand what other peoples’ values are, because even when you cave, maybe you cave into someone who really shares your values. But there are going to be lots of places where you feel like you’re going to cave and you do cave like we did, and their values are not our values and we didn’t get that. If we had gotten that, we probably wouldn’t have caved.  

The other thing that I would say is, you know, as a family we do struggle. My husband worries about the finances, (I’m not crying I really have something in my throat) — I worry about the friendships, whose going to be in Grace’s life. We’ve taken Grace and Ben to several countries, multiple times. And Grace’s disability has never stopped us from doing anything. She’s had this amazing life and that helps move me upstream. 

Where we are today is, we no longer have our dreams for Grace, we have Grace’s dreams for Grace. 

Her dreams are to become an actress on Broadway. So we are not going to crush Grace’s dreams ever. She can try to do that as long as she wants. We will support her to the best of our ability to do that. Eventually she’ll figure out that, you know what, I just want to be in Cincinnati and if I can be in something related to theater and history I’ll be good. And I think she’ll come to that on her own. So we’re on this path now where she’s doing a lot of things around that.. She’s doing a one-woman show, that she and myself and some else has written, and she’s going to perform that hopefully in the spring. She’s doing this with an actress who actually was in the movie that’s just out with Robert Redford “The Old Man and the Gun” I think it’s called, and she works with Grace every week. Grace has invited her to go to some plays and she has gone to these plays with us. So this is a person who until Grace’s high school acting teacher gave me her name, she had no sense of anyone with a disability.  But she understands what it is to be an African American woman in the theater. And so she knows how you can be marginalized that way.

We also - we support her to have people who know her. 

So Grace today is in the church choir, she’s not in a special needs choir. She's probably not the best singer, in fact I’ve kind of thought she might be the worst singer until the other day and someone was a cantor and I though, yeah maybe not. She's working with Starfire to do a StoryCorps. So people are seeing Grace now as the person in the choir but also the person who is doing this StoryCorps thing. And when Grace is not at choir, people stop us on the way out of church, “Where’s Grace?” She’s missed when she’s not in choir. So those are really great ways of Grace being in the community.

So slowly but surely — Grace is in a valued role. And I think that’s all I wanted to say. That’s our family.  

Christopher Alexander’s book, The Timeless Way of Building, is one of my very favorites.  It is primarily seen as a book about architecture, but is also a book about a way of life.  Alexander wrote the book in a beautiful way, with one or two lines in italics that sum up the general principals of his thinking, followed by un-italicized prose that dives deeper in the specific applications to architecture and design.  He suggests reading the italicized parts first, then going back and re-reading the entire book, which can be accessed in it’s original form, but digitized, here: https://archive.org/details/TheTimelessWayOfBuilding/page/n2

At the risk of breaking up the pattern, I was interested in a version that was italics only, for ease of reading, and so converted the PDF to the following document, and edited out the un-italicized portions.  I told a few people about it and they asked if I could share it and there seemed to be interest, so here it is!

In the transition from PDF to text, some of the translation ran into trouble, so I reformatted any typos that popped up.  In particular, commas were translated as “y” or “-“…and there were many cases where “p” was interpreted as “f.”  I think I’ve caught all of these, but it is possible a few remain.  If you discover any of these in your reading, please email me at tim@starfirecouncil.org orteevee999@gmail.com and I’ll make the edits.  There are also a few italicized lines that I edited out as they referred specifically to pictures in the book, which were confusing as I read them.  I think there might have been only 3 or 4 instances of this and I left any that referred to pictures but also contained narrative included.  If you have better ways of thinking about this or suggestions  – add the pictures? – that is welcome, especially if you are willing to work on it.

Enjoy and please remember that this is no replacement for reading the whole book.  This is simply a way to get started into it and I created this in deepest respect to Christopher Alexander and the content, which never is far from my mind as a constant inspiration.

Here is the link to the PDF:

Timeless Way Italics Only

enjoy!

This podcast with Rita is about planning a garden party in tandem with her local Rec Center’s back to school picnic. Her goal was to promote the neighborhood garden to families who could benefit. She shares how she learned to manage it all as a single mother in part by realizing she didn't have to do it all on her own. Rita says she found the energy to keep up with the project by "putting her cape on every morning" and designing ways to multi-task by including her son in the project planning. Rita's love of her neighborhood's rich racial, ethnic, and economic diversity launches her into greater community leadership once the project is complete.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Rita: My name is Rita Covington. I guess the question you asked me — what am I passionate about my community. I think being different and embracing that. I have like a fairytale fantasy of people living in harmony and I like seeing that. I like how we all are different and that brings flavor like a good pot of chili and I want to see that.  

Katie: Talk a little bit about Price Hill. 

Rita: Well, Price Hill in general holds over ten percent of the population of Cincinnati and three nationalities: Appalachian, African American, and Latinos.  

Katie: And that’s the pot of chili with flavor, you were talking about. 

Rita: Yes, yes.  

Katie: Do you think right now the neighborhood is living in harmony? Like you were saying as a dream of yours a fairytale dream, is it happening? 

Rita: I think people in general, especially in Price Hill, have invisible walls up — that we’re afraid of the unknown.  

Katie: We all have stories in our heads about people and that maybe creates a lack of opportunity for people to cross paths or be more intertwined in each others’ lives.  

Rita: People are comfortable. They’re with who they’re always around so I think its almost like a club or a clique, you know I just stay with people who look like me or think like me.  

Katie: Tell me about your work with building community, how did that start? 

Rita: Well it actually kind of started with, I did AmeriCorps, I served in Price Hill. I got very familiar with the people in Price Hill. I got aware of different other small non-profits in Price Hill so I could collaborate to serve the people better.  

So I love to garden and I find gardening is very healing. I’m like a “go green” type of person, like if you litter in front of me I probably will have to like *gasp* “My god, Captain Planet - No!” So we had our training at the Price Hill Rec Center which to me I call it the nucleus of the community. So the nucleus, right so we’re having the meeting at, we’re having our first week of AmeriCorps and here I see this guy come in with bags of green beans and I’m like I think this is the guy that people have been talking to me about who works for Turner Farm. My intuition is like, “Go introduce yourself, go ahead.” So I introduced myself I was like, “hey” and I was really more intrigued you know like do you need volunteers really to help with this garden because I walk past it everyday like from the library to the Rec Center.  

Katie: And this is a garden on the Rec Center property? 

Rita: It’s literally next door. Yes.  

Katie: So where did your love of gardening come from and your environmental passion? 

Rita: My grandmother. See, my grandmother used to hide money in the garden. She taught me how to garden ever since I was little.  

Katie: She would hide money in the garden? 

Rita: Yes, in this like cookie can and she was like, “Don’t save for a rainy day, save for a thunderstorm.” She would tell me life lessons while we gardened. Some of my most memorable thoughts was while we plant and my grandma taught me to garden.  

Katie: So it’s a literal tie back to a woman in your life, your grandmother. 

Rita: Yes, my first mentor. Who was a community person too.  

Katie: She sounds like a really inspirational person who kind of took you under her wing in a way that you’re still living with her. Tell me about the steps that it took then to being part of a community garden or being connected to other neighbors through that passion.  

Rita: So from there I was also meeting up with my mentor, we were just thinking of ideas of how we could get this community working and get this community, like involved. Because my biggest thing was, it has so many, it was so rich with resources and I don’t think a lot of people in the community knew what these resources had to offer — especially for me working.  

Katie: Yeah based on your experience in AmeriCorps the community garden would be a great place to start, hey let’s try and amplify this is here, for all the neighbors to know and start to use more.  

Rita: Yeah, and so first I went through what Turner Farm had to offer. So they had these ten week classes that you attend and you learn more about gardening you learn about soil you learn about compost and everything else. And do some volunteer hours and then you get a bed, they build you a garden bed in your yard. I just started volunteering. I wanted it to be authentic, that I wasn’t just trying to like, alright, I really was passionate. I really wanted to get my hands dirty, literally.  

Katie: Was that a step for you to kind of say alright I’m going to start taking some of my time out of my day, out of my week and make room for this extra obligation that also just like a fun thing to do but it’s anytime we take parts of our time away and give it to some place else it’s a compromise right, like what else did you not get done? You know you kind of have to weigh the options. Was that a tough thing to commit to? 

Rita: When I think back on it from last year I don’t even know how I did it. I had some superpowers, I put my cape on every morning and like I didn’t even dry clean it until like September. Like seriously but to be honest I got good at multitasking and overlapping multitasking. So I think I got good at making things a double win for me. 

My son started going to spaces that most kids didn’t go to. So the compromise was for people to accept there was actually a child in the class learning about gardening. I basically had to make a meal, pre-make our dinner, microwave it using the utensils at the Rec Center. Warm up my son something to eat while he you know sit and listens and plays on the phone a little bit while I was in gardening for those ten weeks. It was also a good balanced project that we could do together to you know bond even.  

Katie: So you made it work for you? You made it fit into your life in a way that wasn’t too much of an ask, and I think that’s all about design which I think is brilliant.  

Rita: So what came next was to keep continually building relationships and I think that’s the important part of any project is having authentic genuine relationships with people because those relationships turn into networks.  

So here I was you know going inside this Rec Center no one really knowing these staff members like they’re like in a mystery like what is she doing, I thought she just used our services for the after school program but she’s involved with community stuff, right? So I got the attention of the director at that Rec Center, so then you know... 

Katie: Just from being involved? 

Rita: Yeah, yeah so then he became a mentor to me. So now I just gained two mentors, and I was like this is what I’m suppose to do.  

Katie: That’s when it was like the “ah-ha”.  

Rita: Yes! Because everything started flowing like a wind, like oh my god. I met John McKnight in that process.

Katie: Who is the book writer on Asset Based Community Development.

Rita: He is the Beyonce of community development. He’s  Beyonce. So yeah and that’s the biggest thing. Is that I really grew to be like you can’t do it all, you can’t. It takes the fun out of it. It’s humility, it makes you humble, its not about you it’s about community. I wouldn’t have been able to do none of this without all those small little pieces which were big pieces to the whole vision.  

Katie: Ok so what’s the design for the project? 

Rita: So we had the Rec Center, we had Turner Farm, we had Santa Maria, different businesses like truck food, and it was like a win-win situation because it was like ok we had back to school.  

Katie: Yeah so your project ended up being a way to transform or redesign something that had already been happening at the Rec Center, right? 

Rita: Yeah, and they were expecting two thousand people, period. So I was like yeah so this is where you promote the garden right here.  My objective was like I want the community to know about this garden. Because this is the purpose of it. And I wanted to at least capture three or four people, which we did, we did more than that.  

Katie: How did you do it? 

Rita: I planned, I failed, I got back up. I planned, and then we conquered.  

Katie: That is a pretty precise way of putting it, that is how every project happens, and there’s so much grace and I think compassion for yourself when you can put it that way. And knowing and being able to look back and say, it worked out. Do you think part of the reason you stuck with it through any of the road blocks was that you saw this as your dream, of people coming together over something very basic and fundamental like gardening?  

Rita: Yeah, getting back to the beginning of the story everyone just stayed in their spaces and it was the first time I seen this diverse community - a Latino kid and a black kid and a white kid and they were all listening to music. It was like families up in the garden getting fresh fruits and vegetables, like I can’t wait to go back. It’s like a wedding to me, like its like my birth of my life of my passion because I was just so blown away. 

Katie: It was an amazing time and I think everybody, you were saying it was the dream coming true. Everyone was convening around things like music, gardening, food and just being there together and I think the back to school event that happened every year is never going to look the same.  

Rita: I know right, It's so funny because I gained respect within the leaders of my community and I found out that I am a force to be reckoned with and I think that’s the beauty.  

Katie: How does that change the way you show up in your neighborhood, your voice being heard and being respected? 

Rita: I think now when I walk in a room, my opinion is more respected because I put the work in. I think they’re impressed. I feel like I'm no longer more of like a threat or a question of why I’m here. More like I’m the advocate, I’m the person in the middle.

I want to concentrate more now on the solutions than the problems. And I feel I have an obligation to influence more people to attend circles where they’re usually are not used to going. We need to have tough conversations; we need to address some things that we just really as a society really push away.  

Katie: And that’s what you’ve done. 

Rita: Yeah, I think so.  

Rita: We have to have this space that we all can live together and I think I want to keep the funk of East Price Hill, that I think is cool. When I think about that it keeps me going to try to organize something. 

Katie: And I think it’s important for you to know there’s a way to talk about this that feels actionable. That feels like ok these are small things that I can do. So you’ve been going to your city council meetings and having these conversations? 

Rita: Yeah. 

Katie: It’s interesting how your approach to this work began as a volunteer in AmeriCorps and then it turned into creating something with a project, doing something interesting as an added value to your neighborhood and now it’s more of a day to day it sounds like for you as a voice, showing up on a regular basis to things in the community. So it doesn’t necessarily have to mean your project is continuing or its happening every year but what it’s turned into is you’ve dug your heels in even deeper and that cape needs to be put up in the hall of fame.  

Rita: Don’t do it! I’m a Pisces I’m a cryer, don’t do it!

I’m just so thankful for this experience, period. It gave me self-worth. This process, also seeing how my son is proud of me. But this thought and this collaboration with Starfire has built real life relationships of network, in my community. People now call me to get me involved.

There’s a lot of politics in this but overall love wins.

I think I want to keep creating spaces for people to see that we all… you keep talking to me we might have an interest but the conversations need to happen, the relationships need to happen.  

Katie: Yeah. Well, thank you for being a force and allowing this to happen. 

Rita: You’re welcome thanks for having me. Yay!

In this podcast, you'll hear how the Vogt Family thought if community is the answer, then they needed to figure out what community looked like, and how they might be active in theirs. 

This podcast was recorded live at Starfire. To follow our show "More" - head over to Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Spotify, and hit subscribe.

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The Bellevue Garden

TRANSCRIPT:

Bridget: I’m Bridget Vogt and I have worked at Starfire for twenty years in a variety of ways. 

Katie: That’s two decades. So that’s a long time. What has been all the variety of ways? 

Bridget: When I first started it was just office help and doing the outings that we had during the evening and weekends. You know a few years after that we started a day program so I started that, doing the day program. A few years after that we started StarfireU, so I worked in both and then just StarfireU and now I am doing one-on-one work with people and their families.  

Katie: What do you think has changed in the way that you show up to work from then and now, and what has stayed the same? 

Bridget: Well I’d say there’s just a different way of showing up when you’re starting your day with a room of 12 people or 15 or 20 people with disabilities versus showing up and talking to one person at a time. There’s a much different energy, there’s a different effort, there’s a different priority that is just the reality of probably day program life. You know, you’re hoping that everybody gets along and that they can say they had a pretty good day and I think the days of working with a group of people at a time it is more about being an entertainer and showing them a good time and keeping them happy and building them up. Now working just with one person at a time it is still about building them up and making sure they’re confident but it’s not quite the same, the word entertainer keeps coming to mind. The people who were really successful in the day program that keep coming to mind were the staff with big personalities who drew people in with just who they were naturally and they could almost perform, if that makes sense. They were a good storyteller or funny, all those things, and that’s not necessarily as useful or needed with just one person. So you’re still building into the person to help them understand who they are and that they’re a good person, that they have gifts to give, what are they, and figuring all that stuff out. And that’s kind of the biggest difference is working with one person and thinking.. You know.. Where do you belong... what do you do? Where are you going to be happy doing? 

Katie: Yeah, so it’s a little bit more of an in-depth conversation when you’re sitting with somebody, you don’t need to be the entertainer. You need to be the deep listener and over-shadowing a person by being too enthusiastic or too much of the entertainer could give the opposite effect than when you’re working with just one person at the time.  

Bridget: Yeah, I think that’s possible. Like I definitely think that’s happened, you know we’re working to help people meet people and if you kind of take over and don’t let that person who you’re working with shine more than you than you’re not doing a very good job.   

Katie: Yeah, so you stayed through this change, and you’ve had to turn on different parts of you or skills/strengths that you have during the change, and so what’s been really consistent about the work? Obviously, it’s kept you here, doing it. 

Bridget: Well I think we have, one way or another, throughout these times — we did what we thought was best and that’s still the case. I care a great deal for all the people we’ve met with disabilities out there.

And to recognize that appealing to a group of people doesn’t change what happens in their lives in ten years. Letting that sink in and figuring out how to do something that hopefully will mean something in ten years with or without my presence is the bigger key too. So I think that’s what keeps me here, is the belief that what I’m doing is going to matter in ten years to these people that I know. 

Katie: So obviously like a deep well of love or care for people with disabilities is consistent in you, you showed up in both worlds with that, with that intention.  

Bridget: Yeah, yeah I'd say so. There wasn’t a whole lot of outside forces drawing or keeping me. There are plenty of potentially simpler things to do out there in the world definitely probably more lucrative things to do out there in the world but that’s not where my heart was or what I felt called to do. And Starfire seemed like a good place at the time when I started here.  

Katie: Yeah, Starfire had something different even back then twenty years ago than other places, it was founded by family members who were looking for a better way and so that thread of intentionality and family driven-ness has kind of carried through.

One of the things you told me before this podcast around building community was that If we want other people to learn how to build community or do it on their own we have to really learn how to do it ourselves. Take me back to when things did try to shift to Starfire being more of a community building place for people with disabilities to connect to the community — and what was your involvement in the community when that change started to happen? 

Bridget: You know, before anyone saw any changes at Starfire, before it started to change Tim [Vogt, Bridget’s spouse] and I, mainly Tim, started doing a lot more learning around topics like asset-based community development (ABCD). And being introduced to some concepts that we had not heard of or knew anything about and kind of working through those and wrestling with some of the things we were learning with. You know if there was a belief that the community is the answer, it sounds great that the community can be the answer but we don’t always see it. But part of why I think for us what we had to acknowledge was well our community is not our answer — we’ve lived in Bellevue for three years and we don’t know anyone. We only know two of our neighbors and that’s probably about it. And we go to work and then we come back and then we had some old friends from like college and high school and those are who we see and not our neighbors.

That was sort of the beginning of noticing, we don’t really know our neighbors so this idea of community being the answer is just ridiculous. But is it ridiculous or is it that we just haven’t tried? And if this is possible, if community is the answer, then we probably need to figure out what community it is, and what does it look like and what are we doing to be active in our community.   

Katie: Describe Bellevue, describe what that neighborhood is like.  

Bridget: It is one square mile, in Kentucky, on the river.  

Katie: Is that it? 

Bridget: Yeah, one square mile.  

Katie: Oh wow.  

Bridget: You didn’t know we were that little? So it’s pretty small, what else would you say about Bellevue. It’s overall a working class neighborhood. 

Katie: How many people in the one square mile? 

Bridget: I don’t know. 

Katie: It’s pretty concentrated, like there are a lot of houses.  

Bridget: Yeah, I mean it’s urban. You know houses are very close together there’s not a lot of yards.  

Katie: There’s a big.. There's a great little main strip there with coffee shops and... 

Bridget: Yeah like your typical main street.  

Katie: Kind of on the river.  

Bridget: Close to it, yeah.  

Katie: Ok, so when you’re thinking back to that time and you’re just learning these new concepts around community building and you’re looking in you’re neighborhood and you’re like ok there’s.. We don’t have any connections here.. Did you have any revelations at that time or what started to shift and how did you start building community? 

Bridget: Tim was a little more, I know he had been to Peter Block and John McKnight and they had been talking about neighborhood interviews. Truly going and finding people and interviewing them and Tim did that. He was like, “Alright the challenge is I’ve got to meet five different people, I’m going to interview them on their gifts and talents,” and then he was like, “you should too.” And I said maybe in a more informal way.  

Katie: What was your hesitation around that? 

Bridget: Yeah, well it’s weird right, like this is an awkward beginning of like ‘hey stranger’ or someone that I’ve just seen in passing, ‘Could we sit down and I’ll interview you?’ I think anyone would say once they’ve done it it’s not weird at all it’s just the hurdle of asking. Because I think I did talk to a few people but I didn’t… I would just kind of talk to them instead of like scheduling it. I would just kind of be in a conversation and kind of work my way through what the interview probably would be.  

Katie: So like what are your talents, interests, passions, skills? 

Bridget: Yeah what do you like to do? 

Katie: So you kind of start with the low hanging fruit, I already know them.. 

Bridget: I started with the easy-peasy, ‘Hey friend that I already know’ and then we started talking about doing a starting a community garden in Bellevue, I wanted to do it, one of the people we like already knew was interested in doing it and then that kind of grew out of there. Like ok throw it out to the masses, who would want to start a community garden? 

Katie: So once you started talking to neighbors you start to kind of plot ideas? I feel like that’s kind of a natural thing that happens just with people, is once you get to talking you start talking about what would be great in our neighborhood? And that conversations just kind of naturally evolves right like, probably pretty informally like the way that your conversations evolved.

Bridget: Yeah I think so, like what would you want to do? Oh do we have this here? 

Katie: So did you find that there are people who are really driven/motivated to get something created off the ground like ‘ok we’ll do all the plans for the garden’ and then there are the people who step in once it’s there and say ‘yeah we’re going to establish this and make it set’? 

Bridget: I don’t know, there were some people who were interested in the beginning but they had some pretty… They were randomly enough when I went to community garden training there were two other people that I never met from Bellevue.  

Katie: Is that how you got started was just to go and learn how to do it? 

Bridget: That was one of my commitments, is I said I'm going to well I thought that I would get one I would interested helpful practice probably. And all the like powers that be were very supportive like the neighborhood association the people that were there at the time, had talked about it but they’ve never done it and I’m like I’m really going to do it, I’ve already signed up for the class. And they were like sure, go for it, you know we’ll support it  and you can do it under the neighborhood association umbrella.  

Katie: Had you gardened before? 

Bridget: Just in the backyard a little bit, I mean I still would say I’m not an expert gardener. Whatever, you plant seeds that grow, maybe they don’t, and that’s ok you just. You just keep going and that’s what’s great about it because the weather is unpredictable, the season is unpredictable. There’s no guarantee that just because you did it well last year you could do the exact... You could think you’re doing the exact same thing and it’s not.  

Katie: I like that approach, I really like that because I think there’s a lot of wisdom in that for people who want to do something that they don’t know how to do and maybe think they’ll never know how to do or be experts at, and for something like gardening that can be really intimidating. And what you’re saying is that’s ok even if it fails. The whole point isn’t necessarily...  

Bridget: Well, and that would be my perspective on it and what I bring to the community garden. I think I was talking about how there were two people at that training who wanted to grow their own food. They had plans to make a community garden, they wanted to sustain their living, they wanted to plant enough food to last their... They wanted to eat off their land. But it wasn’t going to be their land it was going to be some neighbor’s property that as an empty lot. And we kind of parted ways because they were very serious about, like we will be producing enough food for ourselves and the difference between the lot they already thought they could use and some of the lots like empty some vacant property that we were looking at they were like “oh there’s not enough room, not enough room” and I was like “not enough room for what?” But like my idea was not going out to produce enough food to support all of Bellevue.

It was always going to be a community garden, a place to meet, a place to garden, a place to enjoy each other. And hopefully get some vegetables out of it. 

So meeting those people at first was exciting and then it was like this is a struggle, they were not interested in the community aspect of it.  

Katie: The community aspect of it is what.. And that’s what you went to people with.. It wasn’t do you want to grow vegetables it was do you want to be part of a community that is growing vegetables? 

Bridget: Right. Yeah like bring your kids, it won’t matter, we won’t care. No hard core rules no you know some of the strict regulations.   

Katie: That’s the key. So then how did the potluck evolve? 

Bridget: There was ourselves and another family, the Salzmans,  who I guess we just decided we should try it. There wasn’t a whole lot of planning involved other than like we all do it once a month, we’ll have it at the city building and that’s it. And we don’t know what will happen, I think it was just mainly them and just saying like well it might just be the four of us - and kids who show up and we’ll just see what happens from there.  

Katie: And so during this time, you guys are starting to shake a little bit of your patterns about how you live in your neighborhood, can you talk about some of those smaller micro-things that you’ve done to build community and ways that you’ve also met neighbors. Because you know it helps to have that form of communication where it’s not just a flier going out. What were the ways you got to kind of know more neighbors so you could make those invites?

Bridget: I think a lot of it was, one the coffee shop became much more of a hub. So there were people coming and going and just running into people and saying hello. There were programs that our kids did, like there was a basketball program with young kids and we walked around, I think we went around to a few different people and talked to them about, ‘hey would you come? You’d be welcome.” There was a neighborhood group started on Facebook too. 

Katie: And I love that you guys do stuff in your front yard too. 

Bridget: Yeah we usually have our fire pit out there, so we’ll sit out there. Halloween we sit out there with a fire and hot dogs or just anytime and there’s quite a few kids in our neighborhood especially at this point, that just kind of wander around, hang out looking for stuff to do. So if we’re doing that they can come and hang out and sometimes their parents come with them. Sometimes it’s a formal ‘hey we’re having a fire pit who wants to come?’

Katie: And the same spirit happens at the garden. Right where people just kind of walk by and they see it so that’s an invitation?

Bridget: Yeah and I have gone to the school and done, like with the after school program, pretty much since the beginning brought a group weekly or however often works in their schedule. So there were a lot of kids then that I got to know who I would meet their parents somewhere in the grocery or wherever and be like ‘oh hi I know you’ and then they’d have to explain who is this lady? And then there is stuff like when people walk by, still like ten years later like ‘What is this? We have a community garden?’ And the community garden was communal, that was the other thing that we did, it’s not as if you pay a membership due and get so much property or square foot bed, it’s just everybody gardening together, so that if somebody is to come once, they don’t have to wait until next year to get their bed or whatever. They come and they can do whatever we’re doing, like everybody works on it together, same thing with kids and everything.  

Katie: So I mean taking it back to when you guys were first looking at Bellevue and saying this is not a place where we can build community to today it just seems like... 

Bridget: I don’t think we thought that we couldn’t build it but we just hadn’t. 

Katie: Yeah or I guess.. 

Bridget: We just didn’t know what community was, like to sit back and be like ‘oh yeah when we grew up we could talk to all these neighbors and we did run.. Like I did run around with my neighbor friends, there were five or six kids I was allowed to go around the block... I just think we as adults had not even attempted. Like we were just the people coming in and out our front door, parking, getting out and going out to work, coming home and staying home or going out somewhere else. And we just had that shift of well what is going on here in Bellevue?

We should be a part of this. If this is where we are going to live, let’s live here.

It shifted from work and people we know from work or old college friends that we’re going to go visit and see to shifting to like well who are our neighbors? You know maybe we thought that the neighborhood itself wasn’t very welcoming like when I look back nobody welcomed us what the heck. But we’ve been here long enough we are the people who have lived here, we should be the “welcomers” so I think we just kind of recognized our own role. If we want our community to look a certain way we’ve got to do it. We can’t wait and think well nobody else did that, so I guess it doesn’t exist.  

Katie: That’s just not part of our neighborhood.  

Bridget: It’s just not a thing.  

Katie: And that’s also something that you almost don’t want to impose on people its like ‘well nobody else is doing that here so maybe that means people don’t want it and if we tried we’d be imposing’ or we’d be asking people too much. But I’m wondering too is there something to the rhythm of the garden and the potluck that has allowed for this to take shape? 

Bridget: I don’t know I wanted to make a community garden. I think that as far as where is your energy best,  where gives you energy, what makes you happy is a big factor. So if it’s going to make you miserable to garden then you’re probably not going to be the person that starts the community garden. Like you might help with some aspect of it but going to the garden overall is a fun time for me, I enjoy it, it makes me happy. I love when new people come I love when old people show up versus trying to do something just because I think it’s a good thing to do, if that makes sense. There’s definitely been times and roles that I have taken on because ‘oh wouldn’t you, would you be willing to do this for us, you’d be really great at that’ ..Ok, I can do that, you know I’ll commit to that role… and then realizing this is killing me.. Like this just makes me miserable, why would I say I’d do this and now I say I’ve done it so I’ll do it but I’ve got to step out quickly. And I think that’s more like there are plenty of ways to build community and plenty of things that you can do, I think it’s just making sure you’re enjoying them. And then it’s also possible to make sure you’re enjoying them with the right people. You know some of those.. 

Katie: Keeping an eye out for who is going to be in the same.. Who has the same motivations as you. 

Bridget: Versus being like, oh if you’re willing. You know sometimes you agree just to have help, to have anyone on board to do something but if its... You know what you want and you’re going the wrong direction you might be really disappointed.  

Katie: You can be discerning when you build community and it doesn’t mean you’re not a good neighbor. 

Bridget: Yeah, I think the other things we’ve done like the potluck we were very conscious of doing things that are simple, keeping it simple, don’t make it complicated, don’t promise gourmet meals. We have never said that we are going to... You know the tables will be set up by 5:30 and we will have brought the main dish, anything like that. It's kind of, the more people come the more comfortable they are, like “oh it starts at five o’clock and that means we just get here at five o’clock and we start setting tables up and chairs and arranging the room it doesn’t mean at five o’clock dinner is served and you’ve walked into like a dinner party with tablecloths. It’s very laid back, we make sure there are plates which actually on Sunday we ran out but oh well. People figured it out, they reused some, ate off the cake plates. 

Katie: Yeah, that’s the part that stresses me out about potluck, when I hear it and I think of hosting it I think I have to bring the main dish, I have to be the one to set up everything and you figured out a way to make that low key.  

Bridget: You just kind of set it up with the expectation of 1) there’s not really a host, like Ryan will put it on the Facebook group and he’ll set the events, it’s every fourth Sunday and that’s kind of done for the year actually. Between a few of us we throw in paper plates and forks every once in a while, so yeah and just kind of knowing we could have put the bar really high from the beginning but I think at that point we were aware enough to know that that would wear us down. We wanted to make sure it would be nothing any of us dreaded going to and that’s not going to keep it going.  

Katie: Yeah, and how could you ever go on vacation or have a missed week? 

Bridget: Yeah and if we’re not there what do you do? You know luckily there’s not a key, the way Bellevue works is we just call the police and they have a key to the building and they let us in. Now anybody, the early birds know that. So if we’re not the first one there the other first person knows ‘oh I just call this number and they’ll come and let us in and we can get the tables out and start moving things around.’ I mean that all took time you know, but I think just to be cautious or thoughtful about if it’s something that you want to do for a long time, what is it that you enjoy doing and it won’t drain you over the long-haul? 

Katie: And how often do you go to the garden? How often are you.. 

Bridget: In the season I’ll go twice a week. 

Katie: Ok, and are you going at a set time when everyone else is coming too? 

Bridget: Yes, Wednesdays 6:30, Sunday at 9:30. 

Katie: So you have set hours? 

Bridget: Those are the established.. They kind of shift from year to year but usually it’s like Wednesday night and Sunday morning. 

Katie: Ok. How many people would you say are showing up to these different things, does that even matter? How important is that to you? 

Bridget: It’s great when there is a crowd. There’s probably like 30-40 people plus kids, and then some kids at the potluck.  

Katie: Starting out it was just you and the Salzmans right? 

Bridget: Well a couple more people came and even then obviously in the time that we’ve been doing them, who shows up and who is still showing up has changed. The same thing with the garden, some people who were really helpful and got us you know came and did some hard work at the beginning, you know one couple’s moved out of Bellevue another one is still semi-involved, actually a couple of people have moved out.. You know so some people who were involved are gone. And now it’s a different wave of people almost. And then there’s people that for some of those people that were a part of the community garden they never came to a potluck, that wasn’t their scene. We even though it is kind of close.. Bellevue is pretty small, so you could be conscious of — ‘oh they’ve never shown up once’ but it’s not their thing. So I think to just keep that.. Because when you first.. When things first get started and they’re sort of in that fragile state of beginning, it is sort of fragile right and you think ‘oh how come they aren’t coming to the garden, I thought they’d help and they’ve never shown up.’ And you can take it personally but then again another part of living in a neighborhood for your life is expecting you to live by these same people. So if you want to hold a grudge about the fact they said they’d show up and they didn’t you probably aren’t going to be great neighbors, you know like this is a lifetime of living so let’s not hold a grudge about the time they said they’d show up or why didn’t they and all that kind of stuff. Because that’s not necessarily going to help build community either.  

Katie: One of the things that I’m wondering now is if it is a new neighbor and they want to get involved in the garden, do they contact you? If they do want to come to the potluck is there a main person there to kind of coordinate things or.. 

Bridget: I think the Facebook group is a pretty big communication device for everyone, and that shows the times and then if somebody asks a question then the person tags my name or somebody else in there and say “hey they want to know about this” or you know I think Facebook is a big driver as far as communication that I’ve had and then it might be a personal message or text from somebody whose met, you know maybe they live next door to somebody who had that question and they say ‘oh here’s her phone number or I’ll text her or email her.’  

Katie: So you are the main contact for a lot of these questions for the garden?  

Bridget: I mean for the garden I am, I don’t know that anybody really reaches out for the potluck as much as they would just show up and be like ‘what is this, who should I talk to?’ And then people would probably point out a few different people to talk to there.  

Katie: So when people talk to you I guess they see you as a coordinator of the garden especially, and they come to you and they have a brand new idea for the garden or they want to implement something, being in that role as the main contact how do you deal with that how do you respond? 

Bridget: Usually it’s that sounds great, you can do it. Just recently we had a big, one of our neighbors was part of Crossroads and she was leading a go global effort in Bellevue and she wanted to do it at the community garden and she was like, ‘I’ve got some ideas’ and I was like ‘I’d love to hear them’ and they wanted to put in a pergola and a grill. The grill didn’t happen but the pergola is up and it was like that would be amazing, that would be great, and they did it. There have been many suggestions like at the potluck we should use silverware, all this plastic and I was like, ‘I hear ya I bring my own.’ My answer to that is me and my family, we have the dishes we come here with and we take them home.  

Katie: So you bring your own set of dishes and silverware?  

Bridget: I do.  

Katie: Oh that’s smart.  

Bridget: But I provide the paper ones as well, but one of the people who comes says we should really.. Or shouldn’t we all.. We should just have silverware here and I’m like, ‘if you want to bring it and take it home and wash it I would love it.’ But I am also making it clear that I’m not volunteering to do that.  

Katie: To clean everybody’s dishes.  

Bridget: I am taking home these five plates and these five forks because I would really probably resent everyone as I washed their dirty dishes, right?

Katie: Oh my gosh yeah.  

Bridget: But I would love it if somebody really was motivated and was like I’m going to do this, this is my thing I’m going to do every month, I would totally support that.  

Katie: Yeah I mean, it goes back to do what you want other people to do, sort of be the change by living it. I think people forget what an individual looks like versus what an organization looks like. It’s like an organization who runs a potluck would probably take that and maybe implement a new system of dishwashing because they could but an individual or a family…

Bridget: Or organize like it’s your month. Like could you imagine the rotating.. 

Katie: No. 

Bridget: Who knows... Who knows what any organization would do.  

Katie: But that’s the slippery slope of it getting really entangled and enmeshed in this sort of process, agenda, structure that ends up killing the spirit of it.  Now when you look at your neighborhood, Bellevue, what does community look like? What would be like a key image? 

Bridget: There’s a few that come to mind, like one it is the ability for my sons...  like Patrick who is old enough and friends live with he just walks around and finds friends. Like that’s a pretty great image for me.

That’s kind of his classic line at this point is “I’m going to go out and find some friends, I’ll be back.” That’s a pretty big deal for your kids to be able to go out and find some friends to play with.

I don’t know there’s a lot of images, you know we just had the memorial day parade and we weren’t in the parade but knew... Waving at all the groups that were walking by, how many people we knew or as people go to sit down or as we go to sit down and talking, knowing so many of the people that are around that’s pretty great.. That's a big day for Bellevue I feel like Memorial day parade but pretty great. 

Katie: Do you ever feel the need to go back in time to this hidden life of pulling in from work and going in the house and not talking to any of your neighbors, is there ever a time where you not regret but wish you could be more undercover I guess in your neighborhood? 

Bridget: I don’t think so, no, like I said I think there is the things you learn about being in community and being around your neighbors of knowing how far to take what you think is personal feelings right, ‘oh you hurt my feelings.’ And kind of working.. Being aware of who you are and why that hurt your feelings, like don’t hold onto that forever because I could find a way to probably be upset with a lot of people if I wanted to, right? We could find hurts everywhere or slight grievances whether they’re real or not, whole other story, but if I wanted to take that as a personal affront to what they said or not showing up... 

Katie: Or even just differences in political opinions.  

Bridget: That would be a big one right now. Like stuff like that, Facebook profile what somebody said on Facebook or on the group page you know, like how much do you engage in those conversations that people get started? So no I don’t, but at the same time I think there’s been moments of struggle where you have to sit down and say ‘ok this is what community is about, it is about you can be this person and we can still talk about our kids being friends even though we have this… We are not alike in a lot of ways.  

Katie: That part of it is what I think is most magical. Is when you can actually get to a place where you can be common with people who you are so different from and you can feel connected and familiar with them even though you might never have chosen them but they’re your neighbor. It’s kind of like family but in a different way.  

Bridget: It is, and it’s not to paint this picture…. there are plenty of people who don’t want to know me. It’s not as if the whole neighborhood is all sharing… You know there are those people who think a community garden is a waste of space, that’s fine. There were people when we first started who thought we were taking away a place for kids to play, we can win them over or just ignore them. You know they’ll either be won over all with time, I mean its not our intent, it’s not as if we’re hiding some intention other than I don’t know if some people are suspicious like, ‘why are you doing this’ ‘what’s your end goal?’ And I think there have been some people who have asked me that and I was like ‘um what do you mean? End goal? We’re going to get to know each other isn’t that enough’” But that’s not enough some people just don’t.. I don’t know people have suspicious nature sometimes, sometimes they don’t understand that you can just be doing it. I don’t know how many times Tim has been asked if he is going to run for mayor. He’s not… Or City Council. Like are you running for something? Some people thought I worked at the school, ‘well you’re a teacher there right?’ ‘no, no I just live in Bellevue.’ But like people’s concepts of why people do things, you know it’s your job to do them versus no this is just what I do for fun. This is my hobby.  

Katie: Yeah and it.. I think the intrinsic motivation behind why you’re doing something or if you were trying to get something out of it even if it wasn’t this is my job or I’m trying to run for City Council, if it was something less tangible than that like ‘I want to do this so I am.. So that people like me so I’m a good neighbor.. I’m going to do this so everyone thanks me and loves me for this garden at the end of it I’m going to be well-renowned’ - so even that gets you in trouble because there are people that say, ‘you took away my this this or this’ by doing it, you can’t make everybody happy. Or like you said, you can’t win everybody over so your motivation has to be pretty... I would even think it gets whittled down to being just a pure motivation of the only reason I would do this is because I love it and I want to be with the community. The community doesn’t have to all love it but if some people do and we can enjoy it together then that’s enough. I can see though where that would be really hurtful to be like but wait a minute, especially in the beginning, wait I’m not trying to hurt anyone why is this being misconstrued? 

Bridget: Why, why would you mock my garden? What do you think this is? But yeah. So you know that’s one of the learning, take your toys and go home or stick it out and see what happens, see who comes around, all things with time. Sometimes it’s hard at this point to be like ‘wow it’s been ten years’ ten years of growing and what did it look like then, what were the struggles when we started versus what are they now? You know, I think overall the struggles now, there's not really. We kind of went over some of the hurdles and now it’s just like I don’t stress about it a lot. You know if people’s expectations when they come to the potluck are let down because there wasn’t a greeter at the door or there’s not assigned seats, or whatever they had in their mind when they come in the door they may come and be disappointed because it wasn’t organized enough and they really think it should be organized. And they probably don’t come back and that’s too bad I wish they would but at the same time this is maybe not where their energy is fulfilling, like they would be really stressed out by our lack of…

Katie: So loose structure just kind of lends itself to anybody being able to fit in at the same time… 

Bridget: There are people who come to the potluck who do not always bring a dish for whatever reason, they don’t cook maybe they can’t afford the meal, nobody is checking at the door. We can all show up differently and bring a different gift. I mean and that ties pretty directly to our work right and all that we have done. Not everybody… The stricter the ways are the more exacting and perfect you have to be. At the community garden, it would be really hard for groups of kids to show up at our community garden if you can’t touch this and you can’t touch that and if you step there... I knew I wasn’t going to organize, I wasn’t going to manage ten plots and ten people’s opinions on how each plot should look. I was like heck no. That’s one of the things a lot of garden managers, community garden managers do. 

Katie: Ok so it has a lot of your spirit in it and whatever community effort is built has the person who starts it, has their spirit in it. So let’s take it back to Starfire’s work real quick. Where is this type of community building that you do in your own life where does that show up in your work at Starfire and how is it influencing your work with disabilities one on one, do you think you’d be able to do the same type of job if you weren’t doing this at home? 

Bridget: Yeah, I think I could. I can definitely.. I know I believe in the community building work. I’ve seen it I’ve lived it in my own live and seen how if we had not changed or shifted what we were doing around our own neighborhood I don’t know what our kids would be doing. Because of how we’ve shifted and lived I know that there is a lot of good things a lot of potential out here for communities to build up around. 

So I think that helps motivate the work but I think I could do it even if I hadn’t. I wouldn’t quite understand all the ins and outs I wouldn’t have had the experiences to understand or think through some of the things but some have probably played off each other too.  

Katie: So your work at Starfire has kind of informed your role in your neighborhood and vice versa? 

Bridget: I would say it has.  

Katie: Yeah, how could it not.  

Bridget: I don’t know how it wouldn’t have at this point, but I’m sure they’ve definitely influenced each other.  

Katie: That’s the work/life blend I think that was talked about at the beginning of this change at Starfire. It’s not that we have to take our work home and do our work at home it just means that our work is actually is a way of life and we do it everywhere. We do it at our work but we don’t clock out and go home and be sucky neighbors because it kind of just influences the way you live everywhere.  

Bridget: Yeah.

Katie: Why do you think it’s important for you to do this work in people with disabilities lives? 

Bridget: Well I think the... What I’ve seen in our own world and I think with some of the people that have started projects as families too is that it kind of spurs on the next thing. So by starting something it kind of opens another door. It’s the ripple effect of all of it. So I think that if somebody starts something in their neighborhood and then you know you don’t necessarily have to do it all, there are people who will be motivated to something else then maybe you just show up to support them or tell them they did a great job later on.

It’s not you for everything, but I definitely think for more people to know each other is good for everyone, for sure.  

Katie: So what is your hope for the next ten years? In the next ten years, let’s say ten years from now what is your hope for Bellevue? 

Bridget: I think that’s pretty hard because I think Bellevue is pretty great right now it doesn’t need to change anymore, but I’m sure there will be change in ten years and hopefully it will all be good change. My hope is that it is just a welcoming happy community for everyone and continues to be that and in ten years my sons will then be young adults - will want to be there too. That this is a place where they will want to be as well and feel as strongly connected to as they do now. 

Katie: And maybe carry through with some of the work that you guys have set? 

Bridget: Maybe I can’t imagine… In their own way they’ll be doing something else. I have no doubt they'll be doing something.  

Katie: Maybe they’ll run for mayor. One of them will run for mayor.  

Bridget: No, well maybe who knows. We’ll see. Which one would that be? No telling. 

Katie: Alright well thank you, I appreciate it.  

Bridget: Thank you Katie.  

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This conversation with the Stauber family takes you into their story of what it was like to connect with more people who love birding. They decided to host a weekend birding retreat and invite people they met through networking to come. This podcast outlines how they came up with the idea, planning and logistics, and how they navigated the "environmental concern" that almost derailed their entire weekend.

Their project was done in partnership with Starfire as part of our work to put families at the center of community building.

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Tammi: My name is Tammi Stauber and we have a 20-year-old son named Kyle. And we live in West Chester.  

Katie: So, you guys just completed a year with Starfire. Tell me a little bit about what that project was? 

Scott: One of Kyle’s big interests is birds. So what we did was created a birding weekend, and invited a bunch of guests who were connected with the Audubon Society, Cincinnati chapter, Cincinnati Bird Club. People along that line those who share the same interest in birding as Kyle does.  

Katie: Yeah and this interest in birding is more than just - I like to be outside and in the woods, right? Tell me about that interest that Kyle has and what that looks like.  

Tammi:  When Kyle was born we had two acres in the woods and my husband is the biggest Audubon-nut known to man. And we had every bird in our yard. So Scott had all these CDs  from Audubon and from Cornell University of bird calls.   

Tammi: What we didn’t realize is Kyle’s gift is audio memory and at age 2, age 3 he was putting those CDs in our old stereo and memorizing, we didn’t realize, he was memorizing all those bird calls by track. We’re thinking three hundred, four hundred, or five hundred bird calls he has memorized, and he still knows them to age 20.  

Katie: That is incredible, I didn’t realize that it was something that started that young. So when you chose what to do, you were thinking around Kyle’s interests. Why were you looking at Kyle’s interest in particular? 

Scott: Well we want to get him integrated, involved in the community - trying to link him up with like-minded people. People with the same interests, shared interests.

Katie: So let’s unpack how you came up with the idea to eventually have a retreat, what was your initial concept around what you would do?  

Tammi: My initial thought was a running event, Kyle ran cross country in eight grade and he wants to run again. But Scott and I don’t run long distance. So I thought I thought we would set some kind of annual running event. And that was mom, all on my own, in my own head, I get caught in my head.  

Katie: What do you mean by that? Why was it like being caught?  

Tammi: When we came to Starfire and started learning different strategies.  Taking people to lunch, taking other runners, birders, artists, taking even neighbors, just taking people to lunch and pick their brains, I just call it getting out of my own head.  

Scott: Yeah the cool thing about some of this was when we first started thinking about this we thought well we can do this, we can do this with no input from anybody else you know we’ll come up with the idea and then we can help execute. And then talking to a particular person at Starfire we were told to just talk to people, see what they think and let them kind of run with the program. Don’t plan everything for yourself, this is not about you, this is about Kyle integrating into the community. Don’t even make the event about him, just make an event of which he is an equal part of and let people volunteer and get the buy in from that. 

Katie: How important do you think those coffees were and those plannings were over time? 

Tammi: They were critical.  

Scott: Critical that’s the word I was thinking too.  

Tammi: It was fun and it was critical to get everyone’s feedback and to brainstorm with others. The synergy of getting all our ideas together.  

Scott: Yeah, simple conversations and getting buy-in, otherwise you’re going in cold asking people to do something when they don’t even know who you are. It just, you have to. 

Tammi: And we took a few birders to lunch and they said, well why don’t we rent a cabin out in rural Adams County and go birding? And that had never crossed our minds.  

Scott: And then all the pieces, well what would we need to do for this and this and and it just kind of fell in place in some ways. It still look a lot of planning.   

Katie: And did it fall in place because the people who helped come up with the idea were helping with some of the logistics and thinking through what to do?  

Scott: Yeah. 

Katie: Some shared ownership there, and that’s kind of what you were saying that you might get caught in your head, that the original idea didn’t have anyone else owning it and so that’s the shift where some other people being part of this and feeling just as passionately is what drives the whole ship.  

Tammi: Absolutely.

Katie: And then so everybody who participated in the planning of it how did you work with their schedules to make sure they were involved? 

Scott: Our event was more of a regional draw, it’s not people who live on our street. So our meetings were one on one, they were through email, phone calls things like that. It wasn’t like a collective group of people meeting all the time. Turned out there was a bigger interest than we really kind of expected so we had to kind of pull back on it because the place we were getting for the weekend wasn’t large enough to hold everybody. So their enthusiasm made things so much easier. The worse thing you can do is throw a party and nobody shows up.  

Katie: That’s really neat. And what was Kyle’s role in the project planning itself? 

Tammi: Excellent question.  

Scott: I won’t say Kyle initiated any of the plans himself, what we would do is we would always ask Kyle if he wanted to do this, get his sign-off essentially.  

Tammi: Is it ok to have a sleepover with ten people in a cabin? And he would give us a thumbs up or thumbs down. He would come on all the lunches with us or the coffees we would have with people.  

Katie: Once you came up with this idea together and you landed on your theme, you came up with what you were going to do, you probably set a date, picked a location, were there any other things logistically that you really had to work through that were big parts of this? 

Tammi: We had to watch the weather, and it rained, which actually turned out to be a good thing because the birds like the rain.  

Scott: Yeah, it was migration season for the warblers, it was in May, so a nice spring rain kept them calm and singing.  

Tammi: Picking trails that were accessible and worthy of seeing lots of birds. Picking a trail that was near a lunch picnic shelter, because we provided lunch.  

Katie: Did anything come up during the process where you felt like, oh no this is never going to work? 

Tammi: Oh big time.

Scott: Yes

Katie: Can you name a couple of those?

Scott: Well, we had a spot all picked out, it was an hour and a half east of the city of Cincinnati, and was it a week or two before? They said, there’s — I’ll just call it an environmental issue. They had some wild animals on the premises, and we cannot have you come to this.  

Katie: What type of wild animals? 

Scott: Feral hogs. 

Katie: Oh of course

Scott: Feral hogs were loose on the property and we need to trap them and we can’t have humans at the facility because it’ll spook the feral hogs. So we had to scramble, Tammi actually did, scrambled and found a place that we then rented for the weekend.  

Katie: That must have been just.. How did that feel, gut wrenching? 

Scott: (Laughter)

Tammi: Gut-wrenching except that the rental I think turned out to be a better option for us.  

Katie: So it was a good thing, hogs feral hogs who would’ve thought can actually be the best part of your project?

Scott: Yeah and then we walked into the place we rented and the first thing we see is the mounted head of a hog on the wall, and I was like, this is perfect, it was meant to be.  

Katie: So take me to the day of the birding event. It sounds like a lot of the planning happened with you all and you were the connection but maybe having everyone in the room at once was kind of an exciting thing. Where everybody’s like, now we’re all here. Tell me about the day, how did it feel? 

Tammi: It was May and it was rainy and we all met at a trail head and that’s how we got our day started with a hike. 

Scott: And we turned the hike procedures and all that over to one of the birders, who was familiar with the trail. So they led the hike and we just participated like everybody else.  

Tammi: It was exciting, everyone showed up.  

Scott: Everyone showed up.  

Tammi: We had 17 on the hike and I think 14 came back to the cabin for dinner. That was exciting to finally get inside and out of the rain. We had a lot of fun stories to tell. And then ten people, that’s the limit on the cabin for spending the night, so we had ten conversations to midnight.  

And what Scott and I noticed too, Kyle being such a (I don’t want to say expert) but the audio memory, he can hold his own in that group of experts.

Katie: Were they impressed by the level of knowledge that he has?

Tammi: Absolutely.

Katie: After all this your goal to help Kyle get more integrated into the community, and also as a family to connect more socially with people who share the birding interest, what has happened since? What is a result of this project that you want to share? 

Scott: During that weekend one of the activities we did was we had a little contest where we would play a bird call and the avid birders had to identify what the bird was. We had fifteen birds and Kyle ended up winning the competition. It was pretty cool in and of itself. Then a few months later there was a bird outing, and the person that was leading the birding walk - we had never met. And when we introduced ourselves to him he said,

“Oh Kyle I’ve heard about you, you’re the one who knows all the bird calls.” 

So we decided to take him to lunch just to make the connection with him.  Over lunch he said he would like to do that, he heard about the birding weekend, he actually knew of the place we went and said that was one of his favorite places to go birding ever. And he would like to do that same weekend if we’d be interested in doing it with he and his buddies. So great yeah, we’ll do that. And then at lunch he decided I have about an hour, I’m going to go birding, Kyle would you like to join me? So we all went birding and it was kind of interesting because Josh kind of took Kyle. And they went birding and Tammi and I were kind of behind them watching it was pretty cool because it all came out of the birding weekend. It was that connection, he knew about the weekend, he knew about Kyle’s skills, he knew of where we went birding, it was just this perfect puzzle that was put together.

Katie: And you didn’t even have to put that out there? 

Scott: He did it all. It was his idea, and it’s his guest list, so we’re connecting Kyle to a whole other group of people he didn’t know before.  

Katie: That’s incredible, thank you guys anything else you want to say?

Tammi: Well, I was going to say, I felt as the non-birder, you know the big let down after the big weekend… Birders all go away for the summer and I thought, oh my gosh we did all of this and there’s no connection. And then a month later they go on that hike and then — there’s Josh.  

Katie: Pretty awesome.

Tammi: It was awesome.

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Ever felt stuck? Or like you don't know where to begin? This conversation with Mieke will help you conquer some of your own doubts around just getting start. Mieke is part of Starfire's initiative to put families at the center of community building… This means she was granted a small stipend and offered a mentor from Starfire, to help nudge and uncover her family's own wisdom around building community. She addresses some of her own struggles - like expanding her concept of who her "neighbors" might be, her epiphany  around how to bring her four kids' passions  together in one project, how she leveraged weak ties of people she already knew to help with the project, and what tools you actually need to get started…

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Mieke: My name’s Mieke and I have been passionate about community building pretty much since forever. I was the kid who was the bridge between friend groups in elementary school, I got voted most outgoing in my high school class of 307 people and I have just always been about bringing different groups of people to the same table.  

1:59 – 3:12 

Katie: Yeah, and that’s very true. I know you personally as well and I know that that’s been my experience with you. So your high school classmates - they had it right. So one of the questions that comes up a lot about community building and trying to do a creative project in your neighborhood is that starting is the hardest part and for somebody like yourself, it sounds like you’re more outgoing, so help people who might not be as outgoing, also bring them along in this podcast, so they can get a deeper understanding of what ittakes. Because I don’t think this is just for people who are outgoing, do you? 

Mieke: No, definitely not.  

Katie: Ok, take us back to when you first started your project with Starfire what were some of your first steps? 

Mieke: The hardest thing about getting started for me was that I didn’t feel like I was owned by any particular geographic neighborhood. I feel like I belong to Cincinnati, and I wasn’t sure how to narrow that down.  

Katie: So your project really started around that problem that this is supposed to be a way to activate my neighbors, but what you kind of had to come around to or learn was that community could be a community of interest, is that right? 

3:13 – 4:09 

Mieke: That’s exactly right. So that was my first struggle and I struggled with that for like five or six months. We walked our neighborhood, we looked around and we looked at the community bulletin boards and looked at the rec center and met people and I just still did not feel like that was what we wanted to do.  

Katie: And you had said that was a neighborhood you had newly moved to? 

Mieke: Yeah, and so just kind of first problem expanding my concept of who my neighbors are and realizing that it’s ok to do a project on a community of interests rather than a geographic community.  

Katie: So once you landed on that how did you come up with that community of interests?  

Mieke: The next big problem that I had was that I was very involved in a lot of this community work in Cincinnati but I was doing it without my kids.  

Katie: And you have how many kids? 

Mieke: I have four kids.  

4:10 – 5:12 

Mieke: From 10-17 and they all have very strong opinions and a lot of varied interests.  

Katie: Ok, so each child had their own thing going on? 

Mieke: Yeah, a lot of our time is spent going in different directions.

And so I would say another big hurdle I had to jump over was how do I bring it all in guys, coach mom at the helm here trying to figure out what we’re going to do as a family and how we are going to combine all the things that everybody, exploring everybody's interests and bringing everybody back to the table together. So that each kid can feel some ownership of our project.  

Katie: Yeah, I think it’s really interesting as a parent to do that because you do, you end up, well this child likes ballet and this child likes soccer, this child likes crafts and this child likes theater. So you end up doing things very separately and in their own age group. So then to bring it all back together and say we are going to do something as a family, was that more effort in the long run to have everybody come together or was it more efficient with your time?  

5:13 – 6:29 

Mieke: I would say having a central focus point for what we are going to do with our project did end up bringing the kids all together which did make it somewhat more efficient. But the fascinating part to me was that the project that we picked had so many different tasks. We had a master tasks list and each of the tasks built on each kid’s strengths. One kid could really care less about art in some ways but he took on the role of you know I’ll walk the stuff over to the venue and I’ll walk my youngest brother over to the venue and I’ll help by transporting things and carry things. Which was really helpful because I don’t have a staff I don’t have administrators, or secretaries or anything you know, I could use about five. And you know another kid is very creative but very picky so I said well you can do all the décor and you cann design the space and she was ecstatic about that, that’s in her wheel house. I guess what I’m trying to say is the project ended up having lots of little tasks that played to each kid’s strengths which brought them all around the table in a way that I did not expect.  

 6:30 – 7:29 

Katie: Yeah, and I love the idea of having really intentional invitations for your children to participate but also anyone who is getting involved from the community, you have that mind set of: ok where are they going to thrive and how is this going to feel energizing for them so it’s not a chore? And definitely coming from a mother/parent asking your kid to do something often sounds like a chore but you found a way to make it this fun thing that they did together. So tell me a little bit more about your project, what exactly you guys ended up landing on.  

Mieke: I had been meeting with my mentor for this entire time at a café in our neighborhood and it turned out that being at that café every month ended up being the open door for my daughter to get a job there. So then my daughter started working there and we became friends with the owners, and made community for ourselves in this space and then one day our mentor said why don’t you hold an event at this café? You’re friends with the owners already, they’re open to doing cool stuff in their neighborhood.  

7:30 – 8:29 

Mieke: So we ended up saying what can we do that is a community event that gives back some kind of creativity opportunity to the kids in the neighborhood, our friends, the people that we know. We wanted to do an event that had mindfulness, art, music and food. And we ended up inviting some artists, we invited the pop-art truck, my friend Janet owns that.  

Katie: And you had not known Janet as a friend when you reached out to her right, because you guys had known each other as acquaintances and then you reached out, how did she take to that invitation? 

Mieke: Yeah, she was thrilled. She was super excited, I told her what my budget was she said she would make it work. At first with my mentor I was brainstorming, I could put out a call to artists, I could put out an ad and then it was like, stop, think. I already know people.  

Katie: So you had the pop-art truck, you had a woman from the Hive.  

Mieke: Yes, there’s a woman whose an art teacher who made art journals with people, like these little made out of one sheet. Then my youngest son is also an artist, and he taught origami at this table and just him being able to you know use his gift of creativity to do the actual teaching which he thrives in. Having him have his own space you know, where he felt respected, was huge for him.  

8:30 – 9:29 

Katie: And he did awesome, at ten years old I was super impressed.  

Mieke: He was nine at the time.  

Katie: Ok, yeah not even in double digits and he mastered me in origami I could not do it.  

Mieke: He’s pretty amazing at that.  

Katie:  So do you think for people who are just getting started and they might not have the vast network that you already had, do you think one of the steps might be, who do I know who knows a lot of people and going out to find that super connector in their life who might be willing to reach out to their network? 

Mieke: Yes, I think that makes a lot of sense, because you are your own best resource. 

Katie: Yeah, and it seems like what we tend to do right now is I’m going to go online, I’m going to Google it and then you just don’t have that personal connection to really start with.  

9:30 – 10:33 

Mieke: Right. And I think don’t minimize the fact that no matter how young your kids are, they have ideas, so don’t lose sight of your own household as a source for ideas.

Even for somebody like me who already has so many connections, it’s like, I have so many other things on my plate, this is for the benefit of you, the benefit of your family, the benefit of your community. There’s nothing to feel guilty about or feel stressed about, it’s a win win.  

Katie: Yeah, because we can definitely put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be the ideal of what we have in our minds.  

Mieke: Exactly.  

Katie: So how do you know when you’re ready to jump in?  

Mieke: That’s a great question. I think of it a lot of times as how do you know when you’re ready to start a family? You’re never ready, there’s some things you can’t predict everything and you can’t know the end from the beginning. You just have to trust that it’s ok to not know what you’re doing and get started at the same time.

Things will happen almost organically and dare I say, magically.  

10:34 – 11:30 

Mieke:  It just kind of happens and you don’t have, there’s so few things in life that you are actually are ready for before you do them, but you just do them anyway.  

Katie: What’s the magic? 

Mieke: The magic is you already know people, you have a family, you have a community, you just haven’t really stopped to think about it. But it’s already in you. Literally you are the magic. You bring you to the table and everything else happens. You are the only tool you need. 

Katie: So it’s that simple? You don’t need some master chart that you hang up on a wall, it’s within you? 

Mieke: 100%.  

Katie: Mieke that’s too easy.  

Mieke: No I know, well let me just tell you a little secret. I did buy this big wall chart, it happened to have five rows and we have five people in our family and it had all the days of the week and it had all these little post it notes. I lost it.  

11:31 – 13:30 

Mieke: And then I replaced it, it arrived from Amazon and then I lost it. Basically there are no tools.  

Katie: Clearly it wasn’t being used enough if you’re able to lose it. Well I think that’s really important because sometimes tools can get in the way of doing what is hard. And it’s not to say that tools are bad or that they don’t come in handy for some people but the point is that there is no magic thing that’s going to get you on that track.  

Mieke: I mean I think everybody has all the tools that are needed just kind of built into being an adult in this world and you just keep putting one foot in front of another and you keep going down a path and it ends up being something so much more special than you set out to make it.  

Katie: Well let’s end on this quote then, from T.S. Eliot “For us there is only the trying, the rest is not our business.”  

Mieke: It’s good.  

Katie: What’d you think about that?  

Mieke: In more poetic terms it’s a value that I live by.

I’m not responsible for the outcome, I can’t make people love something that I do or participate in something that I am passionate about but I just keep going anyway. And yeah I think you just have to take the leap, trust that there’s going to be a trampoline under there somewhere and that you’re going to bounce back higher than where you started.  

Katie: Sounds like fun too. When you put it like that. 

Mieke: Super fun. I’m all about fun.  

Katie: Well thank you, I appreciate it.  

At the age of 90, Jean Vanier died last month leaving behind a remarkable legacy in this world. If you’ve not heard of him, it’s likely because of his steadfast dedication to the lives of people with developmental disabilities, people whose lives were on the periphery of society, not often seen or valued.

Known as a philosopher, theologian and intellectual he was most simply, human. In 1964, after becoming aware of the inhumane conditions of institutions in which people with disabilities were living, Vanier bought a small house and welcomed two men with disabilities as housemates, Raphaël and Phillippe and founded the first L’Arche community, one example of community living for people with disabilities. Instead of starting a program, or building a new institution, Vanier instead lived alongside his friends and at the time of his death this year, had lived over fifty years in communion together with people with disabilities.

Referred to by many as a living saint, he was just a person, like any of us. While he gained notoriety, asking to present and speak across the world, receiving awards for his work with people with developmental disabilities he was quoted as saying,

“I feel that people are saying, ‘You’re doing a beautiful work’; and that doesn’t interest me, because what they are really saying is, ‘I’m glad you’re doing it, not me.’”

Through his work in the L’Arche community, we are given one example of how we all might work to build “inclusive communities of faith and friendship” wherever we are. One in which “transforms society through relationships that cross social boundaries.” L’Arche today has communities in 38 countries, with over 10,000 members with and without disabilities living in community together and continues to grow. This was one step towards more integrated community life for people with disabilities. Jean Vanier’s work and his life began to spark the imagination for what more could be possible for our friends, family, and neighbors with disabilities.

His life serves as a reminder that it is not our purpose to create more systems or institutions in which people “go” but to instead foster the kind of community and culture that Jean Vanier embodied in his life: welcoming, reciprocal, personal, and individual.

It is our purpose instead to work towards creating communities that truly believes for everyone: You Belong Here. 

Jean Vanier, September 10 1928 - May 7, 2019

Candice Jones Peelman is the Executive Director of Starfire, a visionary organization working to build better lives for people with disabilities.

L’Arche is able to testify that the art of living together is born from the creative welcoming of humanity’s diversity and fragility. Learn More: www.larche.org