100 Things I Want to Tell My Children and Grandchildren: #6

(Me in high school - 1964-ish)

You can be different, and that’s OK.

Not unlike most of life’s lessons, I came to the above realization in a rather round-about way during my brief, but colorful, days of caving.

It all started around 1962-ish, when one of my high school friends, Dee Dee Wright, told me that Opal Hail, wife of the owner of the local Ford dealership in our tiny home town, Iraan, Texas, had offered to take us caving. I was a little surprised, but not totally. Unlike all the other women in town who wore lipstick, dresses and heels, and spent most of their days homemaking, Opal wore blue jeans and work shirts, nary a spot of makeup, and she rode horses and drove an old beat up, open-top jeep. I remember observing her from afar, not really knowing what to think, other than she was just so different.

It was still dark the morning Opal pulled up in front of our house in her jeep, the sun just threatening to peak up over the horizon. She and Dee Dee and I were about to set off on another caving adventure. We’d already been caving a couple of times, nothing big, mostly just a lot of driving to climb in and out of caves we’d heard about. Anywhere you drive out in west Texas is separated by 50 miles or more of nothingness. And more often than not, that nothingness includes a dirt road. I remember driving for what seemed like forever, the wind whipping our hair into straw and our yelled conversations into the dust billowing behind Opal’s jeep. After the examination of a small cave on the Joe Chandler Ranch, we followed the dirt road through a number of bump gates to an old ranch house that just seemed impossibly far from anything.

A tall, lanky cowboy sauntered out of the house screwing on his cowboy hat to greet Opal and us junior cavers, who really just wanted to get on with the cave hunt. After courtesies, we trekked up the steep side of a hill to an outcropping of rock that demarked the top of the mesa. What we found was a cave that looked promising, at least from the outside anyway.

We built a small fire at the mouth of the cave to chase out any Javelina hogs or Rattlesnakes that might have called the place home. Not only did we not rustle up any critters, but when we were able to enter the cave, it was really pretty shallow. We didn’t care. It was all part of the adventure.

On the way back home that day, Opal yelled over the roaring jeep and the wind, “Do you know who that guy was? That was Bud McFadin,  a famous football player.”

It wasn’t until much later in my life I realized just how famous.  Bud McFadin  played football for the University of Texas, was an All-America and a five-time pro bowl player for the Rams, Broncos, and Oilers.

Not too long after that caving trip I became more interested in boys than caves, but I’ve never forgotten the great times Dee Dee, Opal and I had squirming in and out of dirty, dark, muddy holes in the ground. And I’ve never forgotten Opal Hail because she taught me that you don’t have to be the same as the people around you. You can be whatever your heart tells you to be, and as long as you are good to yourself and good to others, that’s OK.

Coreyography by Cory Feldman

OK, let’s get this out of the way right up front.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I bought this book, and even more embarrassed to admit that I liked it, sort of.

Cory Feldman wasn’t an icon of my generation, so I’m not sure why I was even interested in reading his autobiography, but I’d seen a few positive reviews, and I couldn’t seem to get into Khaled Hosseini’s new book And the Mountains Echoed. So I decided to slum it in a “tell all.”

In Coreyography, Feldman tells of a horrible upbringing by a physically and psychologically abusive mother who relied almost exclusively on Feldman’s acting income to support the family. Feldman doesn’t talk as much about his father, but it is apparent that he is mostly absent in every way. The stories about his childhood are so extreme, beatings, no food in the house, mom sleeping almost constantly, etc., that it makes one wonder if Feldman’s acting skills came as a result of his constant need to pretend to be normal.

Thankfully, Feldman balances out his tale with fun details of his early acting career – the making of The Goonies, Lost Boys and Stand By Me. And his rather sweet friendships with Michael Jackson and Steven Spielberg give us that “fly on the wall” sensation. But there’s always the nervous undercurrent of desperation to get another part, to make more money, to “stay in the game.” And when you consider that he was dealing with those very stressful needs at the age of eight, well, you can’t help but say, “Is it any wonder?”

Then there’s the other bad stuff. Feldman dedicates a great deal of the book to the details of his, and his best friend Cory Haim’s, sexual abuse and drug abuse. He claims they were both victimized by men with the power to make them famous (or not), and that all young actors are at risk at the hands of predators in the business of screening children trying to get work in Hollywood. Neither Feldman nor Haim had any kind of protection from a parent, and sadly, their lives were so messed up that neither knew if what was happening to them was right or wrong. So they self-medicated until it nearly killed them – or in Cory Haim’s case, killed him.

Interesting? Yes. True? I don’t know, and that’s what bothered me most about this book. Something about the phrasing of his words, or the pace of the narrative  – I couldn’t shake the feeling that Feldman was playing a part and really, really wanted to win an Oscar.

And the Oscar for best actor goes to….Cory Feldman for Coreyography!

Read it? Sure, but only if you find yourself feeling bored, or if you need reassurance that your life is actually pretty sane.

Very Smart Gals Salon

I had no idea what time it was, but the bartender in the lounge at Ruth’s Chris Steak House did. 

“I’m not going to tell you ladies again. The bar is closed!” he yelled.

We were deep into solving Texas politics, and talking books and a plethora of other pressing and superfluous issues, so we ignored him. 

Then the lights went off and stayed off.  

“Turn the lights back on so I can at least find my freaking purse!” I yelled back at the bartender.

Then I woke up.

(Apologies for the photo - long story - L-R)  

Dean Lofton, Mary Harper, Lynn Meredith, Cathy Casey, Deborah Hamilton-Lynne, Sarah Bird, Suzanne Franks, and I didn’t get thrown out of Ruth’s Chris, but this gaggle of Very Smart Gals virtually torched the place Thursday night with some of the most salon-worthy banter ever, apparently inspiring my crazy dream that same night. It had been a while since I hosted a Very Smart Gals' get-together, so it was high time, and gal-howdy was it a high time. 

Cathy Casey, Vice President, Editorial Licensing and Communications for Texas Monthly magazine was the first to arrive, so we revisited a little of our shared Don’t Mess With Texas and other history and caught up. Cathy is one of the quiet, behind the scenes people responsible for Texas Monthly’s decades of success touting the virtues of Texas. She has also played a significant leadership role in several non-profits' success, including the $10.5M capital campaign for the construction of the Kozmetsky Center for Child Protection.

Next to arrive was Dean Lofton, my publicist and editor, and founder of The Lofton Agency, a boutique PR, media and consulting firm. Dean has lost 90 pounds and looks fab, but she didn’t loose an ounce of brain, and that’s really the source of her fabulous-ness. Dean has the enormous and often-impossible challenge of trying to make sure my writing is free of faux pas. She’s also the head “cat herder” for my Very Smart Gals Salon events, which is no small task!

Next to fly through the door was Sarah Bird, multiple award-winning super-author of eight fabulous novels, including The Gap Year, which was my pick for one of the best books of 2011! I’d contacted her a few weeks before to see if she wanted to attend an event at the Wildflower Center. To which she replied in her typically hilarious manner, “I would love to go anywhere with you. But that is the night before I have to give a big speech, and I'll need to set that time aside to freak. Ha! Sort of kidding. Mostly not.” So I invited her to the Gals Salon. Sarah shared some delicious, top secret details about her spectacularly intriguing new book, which is coming out soon! Stay tuned!

Deborah Hamilton-Lynne, editor in chief of Austin Woman magazine and executive editor of ATX/Austin Man magazine, arrived next looking très chic in her Channel earrings. She said she could only stay a short while though because she was headed to “Big Reds & Bubbles,” The Wine and Food Foundation’s annual fundraiser. Deborah must be the busiest woman in town! She recently spent 13 hours a day downtown for two weeks leading up to and following the Austin Film Festival and Texas Book Festival. Deborah led a rousing discussion with the Very Smart Gals about Wendy Davis's gubernatorial bid and what it will take to get more Texas women to the polls.

Suzanne Franks, who was in my daughter Jolene’s high school graduating class, was by far the youngest attendee, but also one of the most interesting. After earning an M.B.A. at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Suzanne ended up in NYC at Salomon Smith Barney. She recently returned to her Texas roots, however, to establish Vivid Research, Inc., providing financial services too complicated to explain in this post. Hometown girl makes good! So happy to have Suzanne in our circle of Very Smart Gals!

Lynn Meredith never disappoints. The gal is such a fount of info - the Arianna Huffington of Austin! Any topic that came up, that she didn’t know a lot about, which was precious little, she quickly researched on her voice activated, super fast Motorola Android, whipping out online data and trivia faster than a teenager hyped up on Starburst candy. We can thank Lynn and her family for their significant role in many Austin community enhancements, including the about to open Thinkery (Children's Museum), the new Sustainable Food Center, The Blanton Museum, and much more.

  

Mary Harper is my daughter’s sister-in-law, but I call her my daughter-in-law, because I adore her and claim her as a closer relative than she is. After graduating from TCU, dabbling in modeling in NYC and Milan, then real estate in Miami, Mary returned home to manage her family’s assets in San Antonio. One summer weekend when she and a college gal-friend were staying at our house she met her soon-to-be husband, Will Harper, whose family owns Capitol Chevrolet. Now, she and Will are married and have an adorable four-year-old daughter, Flora, and a beautiful newly refurbished home overlooking the Austin skyline.

Ruth’s Chris served up seared ahi tuna, saffron infused veal osso buco ravioli, calamari, spicy lobster and some superior crab cakes, but honestly I was so into the conversations going on around our packed table that I didn’t eat nearly as much as I would have liked.

So, we didn’t get thrown out of the bar, but a super time was had by all, reminding me that when smart women get together, smart things happen! 

Oh, and Deborah is forming a revolution, so let me know if you want to join.

Ciao!  SueAnn

Happy 40th Birthday JoLene!

You are the best of me and the best of your dad, and the best of everything that makes us all believe in the purity of humanity. 

I love you my beautiful, wise little daughter. 

You are my eternity…and the splendid residue of my life.   

Happy Birthday My Precious Girl. 

And thanks to everyone who helped make JoLene's SURPRISE 40th birthday party a warm, fun event!

100 Things I Want to Tell My Children and Grandchildren: #5

If you want to have friends, you have to be a friend.

(High school friends, Acey Mullins, Betty Word, and LaNelle Stokes)

This is something I didn’t learn until I was older. Maybe I didn’t have to learn it because I always had plenty of friends, or maybe I always had good friends because I was a friend.

When I was young, I wasn’t the smartest or prettiest girl, so I had to be a good friend. I couldn’t depend on my looks or grades to garner me the worship often heaped on kids for doing nothing more than being handsome or pretty or uncannily smart. I always related very personally to the old Avis motto, “We try harder because we're number 2". I always felt like I had to try harder. (More high school friends - slumber party at my house, L-R Eileen Stuart, Rhonda Badgett, Suzanne Heath, Claudia Walters, Sherry Chalfant, Suzie Smithson, Dee Dee Wright in front.)

In his new book David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, Malcolm Gladwell, who also authored Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, and What the Dog Saw, claims that people who aren’t naturally endowed with assets valued in our world are sometimes more successful. This is because they spend their whole life trying harder and being more creative about how to achieve the desired results in spite of their perceived lesser assets. In fact, as only Gladwell can, he demonstrates through real-life characters, like Richard Branson, Charles Schwab, and Brian Glazer, all of whom are dyslexic, how disadvantages are often advantages, and vice versa. His bottom line being, “use what you got.”

That’s the story of my life. I use what I got. I’m not naturally gregarious, but I can present a very convincing act that I am, and gain the advantages that come with being gregarious. People never believe me when I say that I am not a natural networker or social. “But you do it so well, SueAnn,” they say. Yes, I do, and I enjoy the benefits.

Same thing goes with being a friend. I’m not all that likable. I don’t have people lining up to be my friend. So I compensate for that by remembering birthdays, showing up, buying lunch, and making the call. The irony is this - although I have to make myself do those things, when I do, I feel really great.

So be a friend, so you can have friends, because whether you know it or not, you need friends, and they need you.

With Arianna Huffington and Texas Observer Board Member, Mary Nell Mathis at UT Alumni Center

100 Things I Want to Tell My Children and Grandchildren: #4

(Photo is of the staff in Bob Honts' Office, 1985, including yours truly on the left)

There is a special place in your heart where you keep your moments of greatness tucked away.

I had no idea what I was getting into in 1984 when I showed up at the Travis County Courthouse. The job interview was as assistant to then County Commissioner, Bob Honts, who honed his sagacity against the steel of Texas political icon, former Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock. Honts was, unbeknownst to me at the time, a “colorful” local legend characterized as a revolting show-off by his enemies and a slightly flawed genius by his friends.

When I walked into Honts’ office that day, he shook my hand, looked piercingly into my eyes and said, “I have to get back on the dais, so you have 20 seconds to tell me why I should hire you.”

I opened my mouth and words came tumbling out from some place I didn’t even know existed. “I have above average intelligence, more energy than I know what to do with and a low tolerance for boredom,” I rattled off breathlessly.

“Okay,” he quickly responded. “Will you take this?” He was pointing to a long list of numbers on a piece of paper he held in his fist, and which I later realized was salary levels, but at the time just looked like a bunch of impossibly small numbers.

As I leaned into the paper willing my brain to catch up to the moment and my eyes to focus, Honts, not one for pauses, pointed higher up on the salary level list and said, “How about this?” I just wanted to agree and get the hell out of his incredibly intimidating presence. “Okay,” I said in a quivering voice.

“We’ll process the paper,” he said, as he turned and walked out, back to that dais where issues I couldn’t have conceived of previously would become de rigueur for me over the next four years of my employment.

Within the week, I found myself sitting on the front row of Commissioner’s Court, pen and paper in hand, no idea what I was supposed to be doing. The first item on the agenda was the consideration of an oil lease on property Travis County owned. The prospective lessor, and his very handsome son (another story, another time), owners of an oil and gas exploration company in Ohio, had stated their proposal eloquently and the county attorney had recommended the contract.

Commissioner Honts waggled his fingers in my direction summoning me to the dais and whispered, “What do you think?” Good Gaud! He was asking me if I thought Travis County should sign the lease!

Having dealt with a fair share of oil and gas lease issues when I was married and living on a ranch in the middle of oil country in west Texas, the one thing I knew for sure was that everyone “lawyered up” big time.

“I think you should have an oil and gas attorney look at the lease,” I whispered back. Honts requested a delay and the county eventually made a lot more money off the lease than was originally proposed.

That was my first day, followed by many more filled with similar issues of intrigue. But my favorite, and the focus of this #4 of the one hundred things I want to tell my kids and grandkids, was STARflight.

(The first STARflight is pictured right. The inscription says, "To SueAnn - A STARflight all by herself - Bob Honts.)

It all started one day about a year into my “Honts experience,” as I was sifting through the two-foot pile of mail that came across my desk on a daily basis. On a magazine cover I saw a photo of a man standing in front of a helicopter, obviously a doctor as he was wearing the requisite white coat over blue scrubs and had a stethoscope draped around his neck. The caption on the cover said something like, “Dr. Red Duke and Lifeflight,” which I found out was a helicopter ambulance service associated with Herman Hospital in Houston.

Big Brother: A Novel by Lionel Shriver

A good friend, Charlena Vargas Prada, recently sent me an email asking for a quote for the back cover of her new book, Mrs. VP luvs Shakspeer. At the end of her email she said, “By the way, I’ve heard that Big Brother is good.” I had been sniffing around that book for a while myself, and Charlena’s book recommendations are reliable, so I ordered it up post haste!

Big Brother: A Novel by another one of those female writers with a male name, Lionel Shriver (pictured), is a story within a story, within a story and they’re all good. 

First, you have the story of Pandora and her husband and his two kids, a teen boy and a pre-teen girl from a previous marriage, and their strained family dynamics. This story, along with Shriver’s exceptional way with words would have been enough to lure me page-to-page.

Pandora has achieved some fame for inventing “Baby Monotonous,” custom-made dolls that look like, and when you pull the string in their back, talk like, whoever the purchaser specifies, repeating the phrases that characterize the person the doll portrays.

I found this piece of the book singularly titillating, making me wonder what phrases I would include if I did a doll, let’s say, of my husband. Maybe his doll would say, “It’s not in here,” because he can never find anything, or “Shit, that’s hot!” because he can’t seem to remember that pots on the stove are hot. It also made me wonder what my doll would say. 

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink

Two things I learned from this book:

When nature turns on us, no amount of preparedness is enough.

When you lose air conditioning in a warm climate, civility goes out the window.

Five Days at Memorial is exactly that. It is about five days at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans, prior to, during and after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. This is a very sad story and a wake-up call for anyone who thinks they’d be okay in a storm of that magnitude. The answer is, no, you probably won’t. Why? Because as I said above, no matter how much hospitals practice emergency procedures, no matter how well-prepared the National Guard is, no matter how many times the Red Cross has served at natural disasters, each disaster presents a unique scenario for which there is no procedure.

At first it seems that Memorial Hospital is the place to be in a hurricane. Nurses and doctors bring in their families and pets and picnic baskets to “wait it out” in safety. They’d done it before. No big deal. But Katrina had other plans. 

The water soon got so high that the generators, illogically installed in the hospital basement, went out, and the hospital was without light, without air conditioning (imagine New Orleans in August without AC), without ventilators pumping oxygen into critically ill patients, without elevators in an eight-story building, without flushing commodes, and without drinking water.

(Photo is of Memorial Hospital during the flood)

When people started dying, they were moved into the chapel, and the heat spread the smell of decaying bodies throughout the hospital. When rescue helicopters tried to land on the top floor of the adjacent parking garage to rescue people from the hospital, there wasn’t a reasonable way to get the patients from the hospital to the helicopters. 

No one was in charge, and no one was communicating effectively from the outside to coordinate rescues. Every rescue effort was horribly overwhelmed and evacuations were needed all over the city. Families had no idea of the fate of their loved ones because there simply was no communication. People were asked to bring their boats to rescue people, but then they had to stop because of snipers and looters.

The protocol for evacuation was that the sickest went last, a policy that seemed both horribly right and wrong to me. Pets were euthanized because the rescue helicopters wouldn't transport animals. And then, one of the doctors makes the decision to euthanize eight patients she deems too ill to move, and one too overweight to move.

100 Things I Want to Tell My Children and Grandchildren: #3

Relationships go through phases, so just relax.

The issue of relationship phases came up last night as I was enjoying dinner and wine with my hubby of 23 years, Mr. Crouse-y-poo. We were discussing how glad we were that we’d weathered some tough times in our marriage to get to where we are, and it occurred to me that a little insight into  “relationship phases”  was something that might be of value to my kids and grandkids.

If over fifty years and multiple love relationships teach you anything, it teaches you that everything about relationships is temporary. Contrary to traditional wisdom, which tells us that relationships are all about permanence, temporary-ness is not a bad thing. You’ve heard of the five phases of grief, well, relationships have five phases too: sex, fear, anger, resolution and comfort.

In the early phases of most “love” relationships it is all about sex, and that rocks. But at some point, just like a new toy it may lose some of its luster and/or be taken for granted. If you are truly committed, you’ll be satisfied to explore the relationship and find new ways to keep it exciting and interesting. 

The thing about sex and relationships, and it took me years to learn this, is that they are almost entirely about how you feel about yourself. If you don’t feel good about yourself, you will feel insecure, which causes fear. This fear compounded by the stress of money, work and kids, will eventually, and pretty much unavoidably, lead to the third phase of relationships, anger. This is often where divorce or counseling happens.

There is an old adage, “If you don’t know what to do, do nothing.” Which, when you are in the middle of it, seems impossibly unbearable. It is here at this critical crossroad you find out how smart you are. If you can be still long enough to figure it out, you have reached the next phase, resolution. Some might call this stage compromise, but as I often tell my children, being right feels good for 15 minutes. If you’re still miserable after those 15 minutes, what have you really accomplished? A good bit of compromise/resolution in relationships is about accepting who you are and accepting who your partner is.

So here we are at a point past the sex, fear, anger and resolution – which may be 10-20 years into the marriage – and you’ve arrived at comfort, which is strangely similar to the sex phase, in that it is just fun. You may still have rows, but when you wake up the next morning, you let it go. 

Long story short, relationships go through phases, so just relax.

Cluster Critiques

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown

I cried at the end of this book. Not because it was sad, but rather because I didn’t want the book to end. I’d already purchased it, along with four others, but when my BFF described it as “endearing,” I put down what I was reading at the time and picked up The Boys In The Boat and I am glad  I did.

The Boys in the Boat is about nine young men at the University of Washington who overcame numerous odds to ruin Adolf Hitler’s day by winning the Gold metal in eight-oar rowing at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. These sons of loggers, shipyard workers and farmers took on and defeated the sons of bankers and senators rowing for elite eastern universities, and those of British aristocrats rowing for Oxford and Cambridge, to stun the Aryan sons of the Nazi state.

“Against the grim backdrop of the Great Depression, they reminded Americans of what can be done when everyone quite literally pulls together. And they provided hope that the ruthless might of the Nazis would not prevail over American grit, determination, and optimism.” - Daniel James Brown (pictured)

Described as “Chariots of Fire, with oars”, and compared to Unbroken and Seabiscuit, I predict that The Boys in the Boat will end 2013 as one of the top five books of the year. 

Not only is the story endearing, I also I found the athleticism of rowing surprising and fascinating. Physiologists calculate that rowing a two-thousand meter race takes the same toll as playing two basketball games back-to-back, in about six minutes. At top speed, the crew are rowing up to 46 stokes per minute – nearly one stroke per second. “It’s not a question of whether you will hurt, or of how much you will hurt; it’s a question of what you will do, and how well you will do it, while pain has her wanton way with you.” - Daniel James Brown 

One of the stories within the story that made me want more was that of George Yeoman Pocock, the British builder of the boat of choice of all the top-rated rowing teams, and whose enchanting quotes began each chapter. For example: “Harmony, balance, rhythm.  There you have it.  That’s what life is all about.” - George Yeoman Pocock 

Read The Boys in the Boat. 

Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld

 

I don’t know if Sisterland author Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld goes by Curtis because she, like many female writers, felt she would be given more credit as a man, but in any case she is in good company with some other famous gals who adopted male pen names, including Joanne Rowling (J.K. Rowling – Harry Potter), Emily Brontë (Currer Bell - Jane Eyre), Alice Blixen (Isak Dinesen – Out of Africa), Louisa May Alcott (A.M. Barnard – Little Women), and Nelle Harper Lee (Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird).

In Sisterland, Sittenfeld (pictured) gives us identical twin sisters, Daisy and Violet Shramm who have almost nothing in common other than their on-again off-again psychic powers. Vi, the eccentric, milks her “gift” eventually nabbing a spot on the Today Show when it gets out that she has predicted a massive earthquake in the St. Louis area. Daisy, who has changed her name to Kate in an attempt to escape her “psychic” persona, just wants to be a good mother and wife. In fact, it seems they’ve dedicated their lives to being as unlike each other as possible.

In the end, the story of what happens really doesn’t matter because that is not what makes Sisterland worth the read. It is the emotional geography shared by Daisy/Kate and Violet - “sisterland” if you will. Sisters don’t have to be identical twins or psychics to read each other’s minds, and it is this territory in which Sittenfeld soars. The dialogue and dynamics between these sisters rings genuine, and that is what makes the meaningless story of Sisterland meaningful.

Is there an earthquake in St. Louse? Yes, of sorts. Read it if you want to find out, but go into it knowing it’s about sisterhood, not predicting disaster.

Political Potential by Dean Lofton

Dean Lofton’s (pictured) Aug. 25, 2013 post

Dean's List - Let's get smarter - A writer's rambling blog

The call for a Citizens’ Filibuster to testify against appalling legislation moved me out of a decade of political apathy. My work as a women’s political group founder and feminist journalist in South Carolina left me burned out on political action, and since arriving in Austin six years ago I’ve been hesitant to put down roots in another politically repressive state. I’m an independent voter and not a member of any of the organizations who did an amazing job mobilizing the masses to testify and protest.

I spent about 35 hours over three days observing the Texas legislature’s first special session. I was still there in the early morning hours when Cecile Richards stood in the packed-to-capacity capitol dome and read Senator Wendy Davis’ text relaying that SB5 had been defeated. And as I sang “The Eyes of Texas” for the first time in my life with over 1,000 of my new best friends, I knew I was a Texan and I was home.

I also knew the citizens made a difference just by showing up. While it seemed like a short-lived victory, the community building, organizing and inspiration will last far beyond this one issue or bill. It sounds cheesy, but it restored my faith in humanity to see people show up, speak up and rise up. I loved the visible expressions of resolve and commitment on citizen’s faces as they settled into their seats in the galleries with books, knitting, laptops and phones and filled the hallways waiting in line. The group dynamics were a mix of rage at having to address this issue again, and joy at seeing the increasing numbers of protesters grow throughout each day.

There was an intense sense of immediate emotional connection with the massive crowd of mostly strangers – each with their own stories and reasons this moment was their call to action. I’ve tried to describe the silent acknowledgment as our eyes met in the galleries and hallways, but words don’t seem big enough to hold it. The photos, videos and press coverage come close to conveying it, but there’s something more. There was a sense of awe and hope for the future and wondering – if we can do this… imagine what else we can do. The hours of silence in the galleries and the roaring voices of the people were full of the potential for real change.