Sad Sack’s Last Mission: This is the end my friends…

One last hello, minions. As I recline here on my ragged couch watching Ernest Saves Christmas on the Hallmark Channel (it’s either this or a Proactive commercial), I can’t help but wonder “What’s this wet stuff seeping from my eyeballs?” Surely, it can’t be tears of sadness? I guess I just can’t believe that three months have already come and gone and, though I did most of the talking here, I feel like we were just getting acquainted. I was just getting used to your anonymous faces. I feel empty, poppets. I guess the only thing to do is look back at these missions and try to figure out if we did any good…and maybe think of something else we can do to help our city in the future.


Sack, In Real Life

LEARN/REVIEW

I'm not sure if I really understand the format of this week's mission, but here’s a quick synopsis of our past missions and proposed solutions:

1. Education. The city’s cutting funds, teachers, programs (particularly the arts) and overcrowding classrooms. The Solution was to appeal to the community, bring in senior and local volunteers…and appeal to the city for more funding.
2. Employment. Modesto has twice the national unemployment rate and high crime. No solutions were settled on, I wanted to keep local businesses from leaving the country and wait it out.
3. Safety and Personal Empowerment. Modesto’s really cut down on law enforcement and fire department personnel. The solution was to start a citizen bike patrol, neighborhood watch and virtual tip line.
4. Healthcare. Healthcare costs are astronomical and there may not be enough doctors to fill future demand. We wanted to provide healthy school lunches, start community gardens and make the neighborhood safe for walking…and appeal to the city more funding.
5. Housing. Foreclosure rates are way up and home values are way down. Foreclosure hurts the whole community. My solutions were to try and prevent foreclosures by renegotiating loans and counseling home owners and also to help people ousted from their homes into new places.
6. Transportation. I learned (after reading the other heroes’ experiences) that although there seems like a lot of transportation options in Modesto, the buses down come very often and they stop running early. There also no decent bike paths available. I proposed to fix the bike paths and increase the buses. So…another appeal to the city for funding.
7. Leisure. People never go outside and play anymore, they spend their free time online or watching TV. This leads to depression, higher crime rates and a decline in social capital. I decided to reinstate park funding by crunching the budget numbers and I also wanted to start a sort of family campfire program in the parks.
8. Entertainment. This mission dealt with the artistic and entertainment venues available in town. Apparently, amateur art outlets contribute to a good society. I wanted to help by encouraging student murals, radio shows and poetry readings.

Now that I’m more informed on the ills that plague Modesto, it would make sense to pass this information along. I can think of a lot of ways of getting the message out: city meetings, blogging on the Modesto Bee website, radio shows, podcasts, flyers, emails, phone banks, the list goes on…to me the problem is really about getting people to care about the issues.

ACT

I think the Building Imagination Alliance should tackle Apathy. Yes apathy. Our biggest enemy is ourselves – we don’t care. We are conscious of the problems, but we aren’t concerned by them. Perhaps it’s the anonymity of our culture; the shielded one-sided interaction of the internet has made all our experiences virtual and, therefore, unreal. Whatever the cause, I know that the ills of the world do not touch me at all. It’s scary being unable to care about something important.

I would encourage younger people to take part in this mission. They have a lot of raging chemicals and hormones bubbling all up in them that I think could be channeled into actual passion. The only way I would change the game would be to open it up to a larger audience.

The only extra tools I can think of wanting would be courage, a heart, a brain and a way home (I get my inspiration from various places)…well, definitely courage and heart. I would come back for season two to offer guidance and answer any questions new heroes may pose.

IMAGINE

Ah, well, here’s the point where I imagine the next big mission, here goes…

Oh no! Something terrible has happened in Modesto! A terrible sleeping spell seems to have blanketed its citizens in a walking dream. People move about their daily business only half-awake. All around them, the city crumbles; schools, jobs, personal safety, healthcare, housing, transportation, leisure and entertainment are in turmoil. Don’t they see? Why don’t they care? What can we do to cure our citizens of this outbreak of APATHY?


Oh Noes! It's APATHY ZOMBIES!

LEARN - Educate yourself about the many problems plaguing our city. Why aren't the people of Modesto angry? What's causing this mass APATHY?
ACT - What can you do about it? Use your own self-described super powers to light fires under the asses of our community. What can you do to wake people up?
IMAGINE - Unleash your creativity. Tell us how you were able to spark passion for local issues in your friends and neighbors.

That’s all minions, I’ll miss you.

Sad Sack out!

Sad Sack’s 8th Mission: All Work and No Play Makes Sad Sack a Dull Blobule

Hello my loyal and discouraged minions. I’m still here. I’ve just been having a slight bit of writer’s block, which is humorous as this mission is all about self-expression. I don’t know how actual writers do it, at least the prolific ones, steadfastly typing away each day. I wonder if they just find themselves writing a bunch of crap or the same line over and over again like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. So, as I said, the mission deals with both self-expression and the entertainment events available to us locally. Me, I usually entertain myself it the privacy of my own home – by reading books! What did you guys think I meant? Perverts. But what if my soul desires more interactive and public forms of expression? What then, minions? I guess I’ll have to look at the entertainment and activities Modesto has to offer.


Only some of them are X-rated

LEARN

Well, my research started dismally. I learned that many places in the area (Livingston, Delhi, Ripon, and Turlock) have canceled their Fourth of July fireworks shows and the Sierra Hope Ride canceled their annual event. Funds are no longer available for these big community events and charity events get bogged down in red tape. I was feeling typically crabby about it all. Then I clicked on the e-artnews calendar and was pleasantly surprised at the amount of stuff going on in this area. It’s not perfect, you may need to travel to Merced, Sonora, Columbia, or Sacramento, but the Gallo Center has really increased the number of local events. This is good news because according to D. Garth Taylor, “There is a significant correlation between the amount of amateur, informal arts activity and neighborhood stability and/or improvement…Arts create shared experience, they encourage intergenerational activity and make public spaces enjoyable.” He says that the arts magnetize the community by making public spaces fun and appealing places to gather, creating shared experiences, and by encouraging different generations to interact freely and willingly with each other. Taylor suggests involvement in murals, a healing garden or sculpture park, street banners, community radio, recording of rap and spoken word events, festivals, Bomba classes, and open microphone coffeehouses as ways to mobilize the community.

ACT

I had a chance to walk around the 3rd Thursday Art Walk last night and it was pretty interesting (though I was discouraged by the turnout). There was quite a variety of media on display; photography, sculpture, painting, decorative arts. I picked up a class schedule from the Chartreuse Muse and was excited to see that they offer figure drawing from a nude model every Tuesday night from 7 pm to 10 pm for only $10! Also, my (recently ex-) stepmother was really involved in Modesto and Merced theater so I’ve seen many plays at the Gallo, Playhouse Merced and The Black Box Theater. They’re a lot of fun and the people involved do it because they truly love it. One of my favorite things I’ve seen was when Elizabeth LaPrelle came to the Gallo with her Crooked Road group:



As far as what I, Sad Sack, could do to infuse more art into the community – I like some of Taylor’s suggestions. I would work with teachers at all grade levels to get them involved in painting murals around town. The murals can be designed and executed by the kids. I would talk to coffee houses like Deva and the Queen Bean (are they still open?) about hosting spoken word events and open mics. We can encourage kids to start their own radio shows and podcasts using blogtalkradio.com and talk to local stations like http://valleymedia.org/ about replaying them on the radio (I did that for a few months last year and all eight of our listeners appreciated it). I think these things would really generate some excitement in the community.

IMAGINE

Five years down the line, there will be murals everywhere. The downtown area particularly will be covered with bright, happy colors that the local kids painted dealing with all sorts of subject matter from local themes of history and agriculture to personal and cultural themes. There will be more new independent coffee houses throughout the city that host open mic and spoken word nights and people will gather, get hopped up on caffeine, and pour their hearts out. Kids will gain confidence and learn to speak their minds on their own radio shows and they’ll help local bands out by playing their music on the air. It’ll be good, I promise.


Scarlet and gold, dude.

Sad Sack’s 7th Mission: Putting the “Eisure” back in Leisure

Yeah, this blog’s title makes no sense – but, I’m perfectly okay with that. Good afternoon, my lovelies, my cherub-faced mischief makers. I assume you’re glued to your computers reading this magnificent blog because there’s absolutely nothing else in the whole, wide, world out there to do, right? Hell, even if there was, there’s nothing you’d rather be doing. I totes agree. If I can get through an entire day without seeing the sunlight once, I considered that a successful day. My brain must be steeped in the fluorescent glow of my laptop screen at all times or I will get the shakes. I’m talking fidget city. Even whilst watching the teevee, I need this thing in my lap roasting my lady parts (I’ll adopt).

Unfortunately, sacrificing all of our free time on the altar of technology is apparently a little unhealthy. How can that be??? I’ve been asked to look into our city’s leisure activities and improve them or something.

LEARN

First, I wanted to learn what was so detrimental about TV and the interwebs. According to my research, computer-using teens have fewer friends and are lonelier and more socially isolated. I guess that’s bad, although I consider that my every day. By barricading ourselves in our houses we’ve also seen a reduction in our “social capital” or the “fabric of activities that connects us to one another.” Some examples of declining capital over that last 25 years are “attending club meetings is down by 58 percent, family dinners are down by 33 percent, and having friends over has declined by 45 percent.” This results in increased crime, bad schools and an overall lower quality of life.
Next, I looked up the leisure amenities available in Modesto. Villageprofile.com painted a very rosy picture of the park situation touting “75 amenity-filled parks totaling more than 500 acres. Playgrounds, tennis courts, lighted ball fields, picnic sites, a wading pool and more than 15 miles of bike paths are among the many features discovered throughout the Modesto area park sites.” However, we know from our previous missions that the bike paths are a joke and the city can’t afford park upkeep. The city’s cutting funding for softball, day camps and rec center games, parks will be closed on weekdays, cemeteries neglected and libraries shuttered. But don’t worry, they’re pulling out all the stops to keep the golf courses open, so old white men will be happy.

ACT

It turns out we can counteract our lack of leisure with a half hour of “moderate physical activity” a day. We can walk, romp, dance, etc. When I was a little blobule, I enjoyed camping. We went on several family trips a year and it was tons of fun. We also took family bike rides on weekends (just assume I was strapped in a child’s seat and don’t over think the legless thing) from my dad’s house in Merced to Yosemite lake. Also, I loved loved loved my Slip ‘n Slide.


Yay, camping!

Once again, I’ll turn my Evil Eye upon the City Council folks and have them reinstate park and recreation funding. We are already paying plenty in taxes and fees. I took, like, three accounting classes, so I will channel my expertise into a citywide audit of our spending. Wasteful programs will be re-canoodled or eliminated and the funds redirected to the parks.
Parks will become more of an interactive family experience. Some of my favorite things about camping were the Campfire Programs. Why can’t we do that in our “75 amenity-filled parks totaling more than 500 acres”? We will build small outside theaters with benches and a fire pit. Park rangers will lead the kids in songs and teach them about all the different kinds of birds and wildlife that live in the park. We could go on nature walks or bike rides and have summer movie nights. We will offer free bike and rollerskate/blade rentals…and there will be a snack bar because I like snacks.

IMAGINE

In the future, families won’t think twice about taking their kids out to the park a few times a week. Men will learn how to cook, so if mom is working late – they can pick up the slack instead wandering around wondering “When’s dinner?” Computers will be used to type up homework assignments, but not much else (probably because we’ll already have computers implanted in our heads, though). Everybody will have friends and there will be a gigantic, soft, Slip ‘n Slide in the park for me to ripple down (I may enlist Monkey Woman’s help to grow bananas to keep the slide nice and slick).


This is either a Slip 'n Slide or a bike path