In April 9 this year I wrote about how I felt largely disconnected from what these days passes as news, and how that disconnection might be signaling me to change course. Here’s what happened.
Two months after that April 9 blog, “Disconnecting, or Changing Course?” I met with a long-term friend and Larkspur City Council member Catherine Way. We shared our enthusiasm for the new Larkspur library and how it might become a community hub and a base for realizing a more planned and exciting citywide infrastructure.
The library Director Damon Hill supported the idea, and I am now building a group of interested leaders from several community-wide organizations.
Initiating a community project and the related organization is new for me. It takes finding appropriate interest groups and the person in the group who is motivated to join the project.
Part of what’s enticing me to head off in this new direction is my disappointment in working with the County. Large bureaucracies like the Marin County administration all too often unwittingly tie their own hands, limiting themselves by their own past expectations of who and what they are, and what they can and can’t do. They also interpret and apply the California’s “Brown Act” to inhibit their ability to get out in the community and freewheel with the kind of actions you have to take as an entrepreneur. If you are birthing something good, but don’t know what kind of a baby it will be, you definitely can’t limit yourself by publishing a public notice five days in advance of everything you do. This is not necessarily a limit imposed by the Brown Act, but rather by the local jurisdiction’s lawyers’ interpretation of the Brown Act.
In contrast I’m excited by the idea of working with people who are interested in building a bigger, brighter, stronger Larkspur community that reduces isolation and loneliness. Isolation, and loneliness increase with retirement, children leaving home, spouse dying, hearing, vision, and mobility loss, and of course our mercantile democracy’s disregard for people who are no longer contributing financially. Isolation increases illness and shortens life. It is a growing problem in our nation and particularly in my rapidly aging City and County.
I don’t have the energy or stamina for heavy lifting, but I am motivated to dive in, pull together a group of equally motivated residents and leaders, and see if it’s possible to intentionally reduce isolation and loneliness by building a more vibrant city — both emotionally and physically.
My partner helped me turn the nebulous unstructured idea into a fairly structured, understandable project. She asked obvious questions such as, “What is the need?” and, “Why the library?” Obvious questions to her but not so much to me.
Looking back further, in the February 2025 blog I mentioned that I wanted to shake myself up and try some new directions. This new library-downtown project seems part of that change process. I’m a little apprehensive because I haven’t done anything like this before. It’s definitely a new direction, and it’s exciting, fun, open-ended, and manageable, just like my remaining years.
It’s a good match.
Thank you for reading.
Barry
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