Listen to Fred Rogers’ Mother

[swan_tower]

Fred Rogers, the uncanonized saint of American television, said it best: When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’

(via Making Light)

That is, in essence, what these tikkun olam posts are for: they’re a place to find helpers, to remind yourself that they’re out there, and even to motivate yourself to be one of them. So that when you’re like ickle Fred Rogers, the world might seem a little less scary.

So share your news of how you’re helping, be it big or small. Are you doing volunteer work, either through a formal organization or an ad hoc arrangement with someone you know? Are you changing your own life so that you’ll be a better citizen of your town, state, country, planet? Have you made a donation to some good cause? Don’t feel like everything you mention has to be new; continuing efforts are just as good as one-off or additional things. And remember that everything is fair game, even if it’s not very big. Sometimes the little gestures mean the most.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

Today I had coffee with the mayor at a local shop. There were three other people there, which is apparently pretty standard. It sounds like the useful level for a lot of these things is county level (for sanctuary city issues especially -- "Because that's where the jails are"). I found the coffee a surprisingly good way to get the lay of the land and find a few avenues to investigate further! (There's a series of Civility Round Tables I might find interesting, and I should look into the Community Emergency Response Team program.)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

But how did you even find out about the coffee shop event?

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

It was mentioned on the City of Mountain View G+ account.

Does your city have a city hall website? They're often badly designed, but I'd expect it to have a community calendar, or schedule of city council meetings, or something along those lines. The other place you might check to get started would be the public library -- the information desk might have flyers for upcoming events, or there could be a community bulletin board.

Around here they're very good about publicizing meetings about traffic or park planning or stuff like that, which is a less obvious in but if you show up early or hang around afterwards you can ask whoever's presenting where the more relevant resources are.