Flutterby™! : On Turning 50

Copied over from Facebook: In a few hours it'll be June 26th in Japan, and Facebook will become unusable for a day as the notifications explode. And somewhere with that rotation of the earth, I'll unlock level 50. Facebook assures me it's traditional to beg for donations on one's birthday, so, a list of suggestions for ways to improve our world:

• Go introduce yourself to a neighbor you haven't met yet.
• Say "hi" again to one you have.
• Host a neighborhood potluck. Or go to one. Or take a couple of neighbors to a coffee shop and have the conversation there.
• Do art, in public, so that people drop by and say "wow, cool!" and "I want to do that!". And so that kids say "when I'm older I want to make one of those!"
• Help a friend fix something.
• Learn how your city (and state, and country) works. At least skim your town's General Plan, and know what committees and commissions it has. Think about how a decision that you agree with, or don't, was made.
• Talk to a candidate for public office, or an elected official. Especially a local one whose votes you don't seem to understand. Listen.
• Ask a developer why they build the sort of projects they build. Ask what would need to change so that they build the sorts of projects you wish they'd build.
• Move some of your car trips to walking or biking.
• Pet a cat, or scritch a dog behind the ears.

By all means, feel free to block the idiot on Facebook who maligns your knowledge while complaining about "immergrants", but help educate and inform your community. And yourself.

If you feel the need to give money, well, heck, I can provide a list: Woodhull Freedom Foundation, Scarleteen, any of the huge number of organizations helping with refugee settlement, ACLU, EFF, CBLDF, Nature Conservancy, Planned Parenthood, Coalition on the Shelterless (or your regional homeless to permanent housing services organization), and I'm sure that you can come up with many more.

But improving our communities starts with individual actions. So start there.