At Prosperity Pie Shoppe
Room with a View
Happy Eleventh!

Hello from Lake Wobegon and welcome to this month's 11 - this is my monthly newsletter where I share what I'm thinking about and where I'm headed. I've been sending this newsletter out about 11 times a year since 2008. I'm always open to feedback and to hearing what you're up to - so, please take a moment and hit reply and share what's up in your life or any reaction you have to what I share below.

This month is mostly about me. I've had some big changes. I moved out of my home of 6 years, Scooterville, at the beginning of the year. I've sub-letted a friend's house for 2 months and that's giving me a chance to spread out and have some pure Albert time. It's very luxurious and I'm relishing it. My home is near the Bagdad Theater so if you'd like to come visit you know where to find me. Come March 1st, I'm looking for a new home - either a room in a shared house; another sublet/housesit/pet sit or... I may travel. If you hear of something great, please let me know.

I've been thinking a lot about community lately. I've been part of a very tightly knit community for about 10 years. In the last couple years for various reasons that community is not as close and I've been trying to figure out what to do about it. There's nothing quite like being close to a lot of people and having lots of social events to go to and good friends all around you. I have an article on how I've been using Nextdoor.com to re-create this. I've had some success with this approach, but I haven't gone far past creating a list of people to write to :)

Building community takes work. The community I reference above came out of Portland's vibrant ecstatic dance community. We danced and then we had after dance potlucks for years. That led to a group of friends who I still cherish, but who are more spread out than we once were :) So, I have ideas on how a new community can be created, but I also have new interests - playing music, for one. Starting a community house whose purpose would be to host music events and various trainings (public speaking, social media, activism) could be one solution. Finding a co-housing community to join could be another. And then I'm thinking - what if I take my community-building hat off for a bit and travel to Peru and see Machu Picchu? And then visit my parents/family in Philly for a bit. And then come back and get started :) One place I've been sharing my thinking on this topic and collaborating with others is in Jan Keck's Ask Deep Questions Movement FB group .

In the meantime, I'm definitely looking to figure out who my close friends are and spend more time together - so, if that sounds like you, please get in touch :) Maybe I need to go to a friends' convention .
If you're curious about my business, Albertideation, please click here .
I grew up listening to Steve Goodman's music . I heard him at the Philly Folk Festival; Mariposa Folk Festival and at various college shows in the 70s. He was a one of a kind songwriter and performer - full of heart, humor and joy. He is a performer's performer - someone beloved by other musicians of the time - they would often collaborate with him and there is a ton of his music out on video if you're curious. So for the past couple years I've been dreaming about bringing his music out into the open more. I've made contact with a couple FB groups of his fans and his biographer and everyone seems happy with the idea, so the first concert will be on February 7th at Prosperity Pie in Multnomah Village. I hope you'll come. My intention is to do a series of shows around Portland, see how that goes, and then maybe bring this to other cities and towns that show interest. Steve died at 36 from Leukemia, so I'm also trying to make this a fundraiser for LLS and I'm dipping my toes into those waters, as well. I've never done anything like this before so I'm taking it slow. But I don't want to take it too slow, because all of us who loved Steve's music are aging and such.

In other news we've had a great win at the Portland City Council level with the passage of legislation where the city will transition away from gas-powered leaf blowers in the next year. Yeah!

Also, the work we're doing on the tree front in Portland is also paying off. Many of us testified this past week in front of City Council and were able to make headway on making changes to our city's tree code which will make it harder for developers to cut down large trees .

There's a lot that's tough going on right now, no doubt about it. We lost City Commissioner Nick Fish to cancer at the beginning of the year. We have a child in the white house who has no idea what he's doing and who lies repeatedly which is bad timing for fighting climate change and building the alliances we'll need for that fight worldwide. And, somehow I'm still having fun trying to change the world.

I haven't talked about work much, lately, but I am considering rejoining the workforce, possibly in the CMX community (online community management). This idea was proposed to me by a new friend and it seems like it could be a good fit. I've been invited into a few new online worlds this year and I'm curious where they might take me. Or, I might take them :)

I hope you're doing well. Keep in touch.

Much Love,

Albert

PS - My goal for 2020 is to sit less. So, if you see me sitting, feel free to ask me "what do you stand for?" which is a phrase that's helping me get up on my feet more and moving about. So far, it's working :) What do you stand for?
Friends Nextdoor

How to land in a new place and create community Ever since I learned about Nextdoor I saw its potential to help people land in a new place more quickly and build a community around themselves. Most of the time when we move it takes a while to...

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albertideation.com
Here's an example of Steve Goodman playing the Song "You're the Girl I Love".