Ordinary Hero: Michelle O'Neil

Image copyright L. Kathryn Grace, 2009
All rights reserved

She's funny, poignant, involved, deep, light and a just plain good read. She's a registered nurse, a former radio reporter, a political activist, a writer. She's totally in love with her fella, whom she refers to as Hot Toddy.

A big shout out to my technical guy Todd O'Neil. Not only does he do all my computer stuff, but he's good smelling, warm, and doesn't hog all the covers.

My Technical Guy

Like so many of us, she resists disappearing into mommydom.

The pendent felt like a big blinking neon sign that read, MOTHER, NOTHING ELSE. Wasn’t the screaming baby attached to my body advertisment enough?

The Necklace

She writes a lot about her two children, Riley and Seth. Both are intelligent, funny, eager, loving, brave. With autism, Riley, the oldest, has a few more challenges than her little brother. O'Neil shares many of these with us, heartbreakingly so at times, and also the precious moments. On packing day, Mom is at her limits and sends Seth to his room for a time out, then sits back on the floor to calm herself. Riley climbs onto mom's lap, straddling her hips, and gives her mom softies.

The feel of my fingernails up and down her arms has always soothed her. It almost puts her in a trance. Now, she's trying to comfort me with them.

Softies

A shy friend, perhaps a bit reclusive, in an effort to expand her world has attended a Zumba dance class--that yummy, fast-paced, sexy workout. Zapped with the spirit of the moment, another student shouts exuberantly, "Charo-like". On the way home, in the car, exulting in her new freedom, the friend lets loose, Charo-like, over and over. O'Neil celebrates.

When we free ourselves, we give others permission to do the same.

Work it girl!

Taking the kids in for shots can be a hassle at best any time, right? Try it with a child with autism. Then get a clinic who understands how to work with children, who prearranges for you to take your children past the registration desk, avoiding the wait, and greets the children with smiles, music headphones, dancing, joking. Both children are at ease when the shots come.

Special needs parents have so much gratitude for the kindness of strangers.

People are good

She shares the things she learns that help her cope, gain insights, make peace, if only for ten minutes.

I want to tell you about a meditation I sometimes do. ... You start where you are, and go back chronologically in age. ...

Fade to black

She celebrates her daughter's wisdom far beyond her years, beyond many adults of any age.

"It's okay little guy. It's okay if you die, 'cause you just go straight back to God. Don't worry, okay? Everybody dies."

Riley, speaking to a sick baby squirrel in Everybody dies

She uses what she learns from her past, with regret at behavior born of ignorance and perhaps a certain unconsciousness, to educate those in her community with a receptive bent and, just possibly, win a few playdates for her daughter.

I just keep thinking about Besty. Wishing I had handled it differently. Wishing I had known more. Wishing I had been a better person. I am ashamed I didn't allow myself the gift her friendship would have been.

It would also be a shame for the little girls in our neighborhood to miss out on the opportunity to know Riley.

The more we know, the better we do.

Playdates and regret

For these reasons and so many more, Michelle O'Neil of Full Soul Ahead is the Ordinary Hero of the week. Thank you, Michelle, for sharing so much of your life, for giving so fully and intelligently, for being exactly who you are, an ordinary woman living an extraordinary life.

I encourage any one reading this to immerse yourself in Full Soul Ahead. Learn. Laugh. Love more. Michelle shows us all a bit more of the vision of Ordinary.

Ordinary Hero: Van Jones

Image copyright L. Kathryn Grace, 2009
All rights reserved

Seven months ago, when I first wrote about him, Van Jones was promoting green jobs and a green economy for the blue collar worker.

We need a green economy that honors the earth ... but not a green economy only for the eco-chic. ... The people who are struggling for bus fare--they have a place too.

Van Jones, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights

That alone is enough to warrant the Ordinary Heroes award. There's so much more. If it's green, if it's the economy, if it's jobs, Jones is there, showing us how we can lift ourselves and help others lift themselves from poverty to prosperity, slow human-caused climate change and protect our environment in the bargain. In fact, he's shown up twice more here, on Realizing Ordinary, in I'm ready for the green economy--Are you? and in Pinning our hopes on youth.

Hear what he has to say.

We are just now at the beginning of this green wave of new technologies that are environmentally friendly, and that green wave now has to be designed to lift all boats.

Van Jones

A 1993 Yale graduate, "serially successful social entrepreneur", and author of the New York Times best seller The Green Collar Economy:to cite just a few of his accomplishments, Jones is now President Obama's green-jobs czar at the White House, a decision that marks the level of the president's commitment to building a greener economy.

That's exciting. Even more exciting, though, is the hand Jones gives to the most impoverished of our nation and how hard he is working especially to help youth of color to a piece of the American dream.

We can't just keep sending our children away to funeral homes and prisons.

A Tennessee native with keen entrepreneurial savvy, Jones could have done anything with his life. He chose to devote his incredible talent, energy, charisma and intelligence to stopping violence and near-rite-of-passage imprisonment for our nation's youth of color. Three years out of college, he co-founded, with Diana Frappier, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in 1996. In direct disproportion to society, our overcrowded prisons are stuffed with blacks and Latinos. That fact alone makes crime and the prosecution of crime in this country a matter of human rights. Jones sought to change those statistics by changing the lives of the people behind them.

He is perhaps the first to articulate on the national level that more than schooling and jobs are required to change a community from one filled with drive-by shootings, funerals and revolving prison doors to one filled with picket fences, school books and cookies in the oven. Because the poorest of us grow up in the most marginalized communities, often built over landfills and toxic waste dumps, children develop asthma and other chemically-induced diseases in greater proportion than children of affluent neighborhoods. It's not enough to give people a hand up; we need to help clean up.

Jones is committed to cleaning up the toxic mess we made in the last two centuries, and preventing its occurrence in the future--a matter of life and death for poor children.

The next big play in the economy is going to be greening the economy, turning away from the suicide economy to a sustainable economy. Let's make sure those communities that were locked out of the last century's pollution-based economy are gonna be locked in to this new clean and green economy.

For his commitment to ending poverty and endemic racism through the development of environmentally safe industry and for using his passion, energy, intelligence and love to help the poorest of us build prosperous lives while reclaiming the fresh, wholesome beauty of our Earth and preserving our soil, water, air and natural world for generations to come, this week's Ordinary Heroes award is offered to Van Jones with deepest gratitude.

Happy Earth Day everyone!

Image Credit: NASA/JPL

Isn't she beautiful? I'm old enough to remember the first Earth Day in 1970. Are you? In honor of Earth Day, I measured my ecological footprint today.

If everyone on the planet lived my lifestyle, we would need 1.83 Earths to support us all. That's down slightly from the last time I took the quiz, but not by much.

If I want to live in the bounteous and never wasteful world of Ordinary, I must be more conscious of my choices. Everything I do either works toward creating a world more like Ordinary or less. Over the next year, I'll take steps to reduce my eco-print. Here are some of the things I know I can do:

• Walk further before I get on the bus each morning and evening (good for my health as well as the planet)
  
• Purchase energy-saving Smart Stripsfor our home computers, television, radio, small appliances and cell-phone chargers
• Learn about ways I can reduce water usage and save energy by changing my laundry habits
• Defrost my refrigerator and freezer four times a year
• Purchase renewable energy for our apartment
• Join a garden co-op and grow my own veggies
• Encourage my landlord to provide a green compost bin (Will it save him $$?)
  

That's enough for starters. There are plenty more options for reducing my footprint, once I've accomplished these.

Will you join me? What's the next action you plan to reduce your ecological footprint?

Earth Day 2009: Just one thing

Thank you, Rocketboom, for making this 2007 video.

Trash cans are rare in the world of Ordinary. How is that possible?

Ordinary Hero: Paul Gillespie

Image copyright L. Kathryn Grace, 2009
All rights reserved

Drivers of hybrid fuel taxis in San Francisco are pocketing $9,000 a year in fuel savings, thanks to Paul Gillespie, says Hybrid Cars. If you've wondered how long a hybrid battery would last in real road conditions, they don't get much more of a beating than they'll find on the hilly streets of San Francisco where all but two of the hybrid fleet have logged nearly 300,000 miles without a battery issue since they hit the road in 2003.

"Ford never really intended this vehicle to be used as a taxi," Gillespie said as he tooled around the city's hilly Pacific Heights neighborhood in the silent hybrid. "We adopted it because I was desperate to find a vehicle that would save drivers fuel costs and save greenhouse gas emissions."

Los Angeles Times

According to the Los Angeles Times in San Francisco's hybrid taxis prove their worth, fourteen percent, or approximately 200 of San Francisco's 1,438 taxis are hybrids. They're saving drivers money, helping keep San Francisco's skies blue, lessening the amount of traffic-caused pollution that blows to the East Bay, and giving us all a quieter ride.

For his persistence in advocating the adoption of hybrids into the San Francisco taxi fleet; for proving their value; and for starting where he lives and works to improve one relatively small, but potentially globally significant, fossil-fuel sucking, climate-changing problem, the Ordinary Heroes award this week is kindly offered to Paul Gillespie.