Gardens and tarbabies

[primsong]

Been spending a little time working on stuff for One Small Garden - we get official non-profit status this week, woo! Good stuff is the original Elanor garden is well-kept, and Sean is still very much supporting it. Bad news is the reading program folks (whose office/house is the one with the garden in the yard) are both ailing badly and not expected to last long. The long-term plan is to start gathering donations and support to buy the land/house and keep a literacy center there. Lots to chew on in getting that done.

Been giving thought to emotional tarbabies also, as we are dealing with someone in that group who is 'stuck' in an emotional rut of the past and won't stop bringing it up...really drags every meeting into a negative mood. Not a good way to get more volunteers. We have a couple of these floating around in the fan community also, and it can be hard to know when you can help someone get unstuck and when touching it just means you get stuck too. And how to 'extricate' from the tar without them thinking that you don't care about them...

(and no, none of them are here on LJ, so I'm *not* talkin' about you! Heh...)

Ah well. I think of you all often and with good thoughts - may this day be a pleasant one for you. (((f-list)))

Comments

[irascian.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear that some of the problems of the past (I read my "When the fan hits the ****" book) are behind you and the project has been able to move onto bigger and better things.

Politics invariably creeps into these things but sounds like you have a good handle on it all and it's not stopping things getting done.

Go you (all of you) involved in this!

[primsong.livejournal.com]

We are currently working on 'pulling the last weed' leftover from that mess - have one individual who keeps forgetting that it *is* in the past and is overly negative and revenge-oriented. Good thing is everyone else recognizes it's a problem and there is a consensus on dealing with it before it poisons the 'feel' and presentation of the organization to potential donars/supporters. As you said, politics will be inevitable but hopefully we can keep it to a dull roar.

Should be a good way to learn a bit about how this whole process (going from 'good idea' to functioning small organization) is done within the legal framework. Already had one mildly amusing event where they had to rent out part of the building - it was rented by some nuns who are running a tiny Catholic bookstore. When we went to weed the garden we found a large Mary statue right in the middle of our wildflower bed and our master-gardener about had her jaw drop off the pavement. Heh. They had the rules of the garden (i.e. no one puts ANYTHING in there, and its non-religious, non-political) explained to them. They were apologetic and quite nice about it. Moved Mary to preside over their own doorway instead. After Sean popped in on them for a chat when he was here, they got all sparkly and excited and now they want to help weed and water it too. ;-D