Lydia Likes It

Pick-up line

The city of Newton sits adjacent to Boston; it's a vibrant suburb, home to several colleges and universities and shopping malls and many restaurants and ample green space. Some time in 2025, Ted and I plan to move to a brand new senior independent living community in Newton, and it's occurred to us that we don't know much about the city at all. Most of our activity -- cultural, medical, volunteering, and our previous work life -- has been centered in Boston. Imagine my delight to learn that Newton has a city-sponsored on-demand ride service called New Mo: Newton in Motion. NewMo, which operates Monday-Friday, costs just $2 per ride, anywhere in Newton, and works just like Uber or Lyft. (If you are age 60 or older, the NewMo Senior Service offers some additional benefits, like door-to-door and Saturday morning service and the ability to prebook for medical appointments.) Affordable, sustainable, easy to use on your phone: I can't wait to try it.

Grandmothers united

Here's one of the best ideas I've read about in a long time (in The Boston Globe, my hometown newspaper). In Zimbabwe, Dr. Dixon Chibanda was one of only 15 psychiatrists in the entire country, and the mental health needs of most of the population were going unmet. Dr. Chibanda had a simple idea: to harness the wisdom and listening power of grandmothers, who would be trained to provide supportive counseling and practical assistance to people without access to health care, in the nonclinical setting of park benches. The Friendship Bench program offers an inexpensive and elegant solution to a frontline mental health need -- and, research shows, provides benefits to the grandmothers as well. A couple of cities in the US are trying this. Could we replicate this idea in more communities?

Little Free Library

Once upon a time, when we still lived in Boston's South End, my husband Ted and I served our community as its only little free librarians. Ted built our library out of scrap wood and pieces of an old Nordic Track, with help from his friend Matt, and painted "make way for readers" ducklings on the roof; our neighbor Ken Clark contributed the duck feet. The library stood on our front stoop and anchored the street. It could hold nearly 50 books, depending on size, and the idea was simple: take a book, leave a book. Thanks to its placement near the intersection of a major walking street, our Little Free Library turned over nearly one quarter of its contents every day, and any children's books we were lucky to get disappeared almost instantly. We ran the library for three years, until we sold our house. Another neighborhood group adopted it, repainted it, and moved it a few blocks away. There are now more than 150,000 Little Free Libraries worldwide, in more than 100 countries. Ours was #24,688. When you're out and about, pull up the map on the website, and search for them on your travels.

The volunteering life {when you close one door...}

Every few months, I cast a critical eye over how I'm spending my volunteer hours. Does this class feel like a good fit? Am I putting enough time into the postcard group? Should I be making more welcome blankets for refugees? Rather than immersing myself in one project or commitment, I've always done best with three or four different types of activities in the mix. Like Marie Kondo, I review each activity to make sure it sparks joy. I believe that we do best at volunteering when we have fun. It's also important that the mix be right -- that all of my volunteer energy comes together in one giant joy spark. 

In 1605, the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes wrote in Don Quixote: "When one door is shut, another is opened." Surely he was looking ahead to a particular day in April 2022, when, to my total surprise, I closed one door and another door popped open that very same morning.

On this particular April day, I sensed it was time to step back from organizing a women's book group in my building. I sent the book group members a note, and got ready to meet up with Jacqueline Church, a friend who runs Boston's creme de la creme of Chinatown walking tours and teaches cooking classes. Throughout the pandemic, she has advocated for Chinatown businesses and the AAPI community, on TV, podcasts, and in magazine articles. We settled in for coffee at the cafe next door.

Ever since Ted and I moved to Chinatown four years ago, I've been wanting to connect with the community in a meaningful way. As a white, middle-aged (okay, slightly older than that), middle class woman -- a gentrifier, by any definition -- connecting isn't easy. Last year I met with the folks at Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center about working with Chinese-speaking English language learners, but their model of one-to-one tutoring for six months at a time didn't feel like a good fit for me. I've talked to the Asian American Civic Association about working with them, but nothing clicked.

After lots of catching up, Jackie filled me in on a new 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization she created during the pandemic. FAN Chinatown's mission is to support those in need in Chinatown, especially its seniors, restaurants and the arts community. She's just getting started, and building a small board of directors. Would I be interested in joining the board? No, I told her; it's a lot of work, and I don't have the time or desire to be involved at that level at this stage in my life.

Would I join an advisory group? Yes, yes, yes! I'm honored to be asked, and look forward to contributing good ideas and energy. I'm also excited to meet the other people involved in FAN Chinatown and make some connection with the community; I know Jackie will pull together an interesting and engaged group to help get this organization off the ground. 

The idea of FAN Chinatown, and giving back to the community where I live, sparks joy. Lots and lots of joy. I'll introduce you to the organization in a future post.

When one door shuts, another door opens. I wasn't making space consciously for a new project, but my subconscious knew the time was right. 

Image above: FAN Chinatown's logo.

Paper stories

I'm no artist. (Don't make me prove it.) I can't paint or draw, but I do like to create simple collages by cutting and ripping things up, so I'm drawn to the work of collage artists who use the two-dimensional form in a more sophisticated way to show movement and tell stories. Boston's Museum of Fine Arts introduced me to the artist and activist Ekua Holmes. Earlier this year, the museum presented an exhibit of her vibrant mixed-media collages created for six children's books, along with sketches, portraits of her community of Roxbury, and a wonderful video interview that ran on a wall screen mounted above the wooden table where she used to make art in her grandmother's kitchen. (Image from Museum of Fine Arts web site.)