January 15, 2016

Today.

I went out to Berwyn, IL. It was a looong train ride which involved construction, slow trains, missed connections and going the wrong way. Rough commute. I was on my way out to hang some Iraqi refugee art. Which I did.

Looking at the art again made me happy, making up for the commute, reminding me of things I want to remember. I haven't seen the art up on walls in a while. It's so beautiful. I really hope we can sell some/most/all of it for the artists. But even just seeing it all up again was special. I started to breathe a little easier.

After getting back to my neighborhood later in the afternoon, I noticed three new places I had never noticed or been into: A fru fru upscale shop, a small town divey diner and a really cute hip bar. I love that there are secret places that I didn't know where there! I thought I knew everything in my neighborhood! I started to breathe more deeply.

As I left the shop I crossed paths with a little old lady. Literally. She stopped with a huff dropping her heavy grocery bags almost in front of me. I asked if she was all right. She said yes and so I went off in the opposite direction. But then I paused. I got a nudge and so looked back at her. She probably could use some help, I thought. Indeed she could.

"Thanks kid!" she said when I offered my assistance.

"No problem," I returned.

Kid. (If only she knew I was recently diagnosed with "50's shoulder" 50's!!!)

"Are you going out of your way?"

"No, it's ok I live close."

"Thank you so much, kid. But I think you're going out of your way."

"It's ok. I don't mind." I smiled at her.

At the corner of 7-11 and her apartment building, she was digging in her purse. I hoped she wasn't looking for money, but I didn't know what to say. I didn't want to assume, so I waited, her bags in my hand. Finally she brought out a bank envelope stuffed with money.

"Nooooooooo! I don't want any money."

"Come on kid! Take a dollar!"

"No no no no no no. Thank you, but no. Just glad to help!"

Back and forth we went a few more rounds, me trying to back off graciously, her trying to hand me a dollar.

"Please I really don't want any money..."

"Buy a lottery ticket with it here at 7-11, then. Will you do that? Please kid. You might get lucky. Well, not as lucky as if you bought it last night. But come on! Will you take it? Buy a lottery ticket with it, will ya?"

Never one to ignore fate or upset a senior citizen, I relented. I would take the dollar and I would buy a lottery ticket at her 7-11 and if I won big, we would split the earnings (She refused to agree to that last part, stubborn old broad.)

And so Patricia and I parted ways. Her with her bags. Me with her dollar, my breath stifled in anticipation of my possible destiny.

So into the 7-11 I went to buy the lottery ticket.

Big loser. Nada. Zip.

But still somehow I felt like I had won. Cliche. But true. I won this day.

Life goes by fast. Soon you might have 50's shoulder. Take what you can. Give what you can. And enjoy the ride.

Winter Solstice Writing

Today is the winter solstice which means it is the shortest day of the year. The longest, darkest night of the winter. Here we are. Sigh. As I write at my desk, overlooking the quiet street below, it is already dark. This happens I guess due to seasons and axis tilt and other things I don't really know about, but the point of it all is that we are in the dark of the dark! And there is only light from here. Hallelujah!

It's been a rough winter for the U.S as a country and as collective communities---between police violence against people of color, more and more gun violence and mass shootings and profiling and demonizing of Muslims and refugees, my heart has been darkened. This is to say nothing of the violence, pain and suffering happening in the greater world including Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Paris, Lebanon and more. Always more. It can be overwhelming.

And the loud, angry voices heard in the dark aren't helping---voices of intolerance, voices of hate, voices of fear.  It's easy to be afraid in the dark.

Now certainly there is value in darkness: contemplation, silence, reflection and renewal can be found in periods of darkness. This dark day can be a special day, but it is the light we look to. The dawn after the night, after the storm. We always seek light. And yes, sometimes it takes courage to seek light from darkness. But tomorrow will begin to give us more light, little by little. It's a start. So now is the time for courage, for our voices to demand more light, in more ways than one.

May the increasing length of our days bring us increased generosity and tolerance towards our fellow humans. May the sustained light remind us of our responsibility to others and of the value of compromise and kindness. May this season of lights bring us deeper, action-driven empathy towards those suffering. May it keep our hearts open to each other, even just a moment longer.

May we remember it could be any of us in that dark in a heartbeat. Our roots are the same.

How to become an office superhero

I just finished teaching four days of presentation skills through improv and authenticity training.

To accountants.

Oi. :)

They started off skeptical. Completely. Skeptical. "There's a certain way things are done. There's a "company" way of presenting. Who was I to tell them otherwise, anyway?"

But my job was to help them be more authentically themselves and use that same newly discovered authenticity in their internal and external speeches. But as it stood now, there was no speech or speaker, there was only powerpoint and graphs and bullet points. There was no cohesion. No story. No sense of self.

They were afraid: What if higher-ups or potential clients didn't like who they really were? What if they thought they were 'unprofessional'? What if they failed? Good Lord, what if they failed? A questions we ask ourselves all the time. What if I fail? "If I am my authentic self, what if someone doesn't like it? Doesn't like me? And what if that person is important in my life -- like a boss or a spouse? Yikes. Scary indeed.

Being authentic is always a risk. But being who you are sets you apart from the pack. It actually makes you who you are. Being who you are is what no one else can do. Being who you are makes you happy and successful. Anything else is living a lie. And who wants to do that?

And when you bring that--that sense of authentic self-- to a speech or a presentation or a conversation. Jinkys! A miracle occurs!

Everyone presented a speech at beginning of the first day and the same speech, revamped, at the end of the last day. Transformation occurred.

Speeches that I could not even begin to wrap my brain around on day one suddenly made sense. People who I thought must be so miserable in their daily lives, suddenly came to life and were fully realized people standing in front of me. I listened. I was engaged---on topics I have no interest in!! Their authenticity brought about my presence. In other words, their realness brought about mine. We were alive again, in communication. Possibility existed.

This is what happens when you risk showing your authentic self: truth, engagement, connection.

Heck, you may even become an office superhero!

Lake Michigan Epiphanies

Improv teaches commit.

In order to have a successful scene, one needs to commit fully to where they are and what they are doing. Accept! Accept! Be there for real 100% and then see what happens. Usually funny, truth and the unexpected happens. It's why I love improv.

I spent eleven years in New York City without ever really fully committing, truth be told. Sure I had an apartment (several in fact!) I had friends and a community and a church and jobs and other things that make a home, but I never really made it my home. Of course, I would never admit that at the time. No way. New York was home!

Don't get me wrong, I loved New York, truly, but it was never really home. It was always a place I was for a while. I always wondered inside when I would leave. I mean, I kept an apartment in Minneapolis for that entire time! I had furniture in Minneapolis! Wine glasses! Things! Minneapolis was always my fallback. "Well, I can always return there!" (and who knows I still might for cry-i...) After all, friends and family and potential employment lived in Minneapolis. And this is to say nothing of the extended time I spent in Mexico, being gone for months at a time. I think it some ways it held me back from fully being present and accepting NYC as my home. I don't think that was bad or good. It just was.

And now I have moved to Chicago. And I almost felt myself falling into the same trap. "I'll try Chicago for a while. Who knows for how long..." Not that there is anything wrong with that. It's how I have lived my last 14 years, but something has shifted (age?) and I feel the need to lay down some roots, to stake some claims, to be fully present where I am and in what I am doing...to commit. I said it: I feel the need to commit. So I went back to Minneapolis and picked up my wine glasses. They're all here now.

So, yes, I live in Chicago. And for now that's where I'll be. I'll still likely flit off to Mexico now and then to run an artist residency or two, as I do love Mexico :), but probably less. I want to work in Chicago and be a fixture, not a guest.

Recently, I was walking on the beach of Lake Michigan near my new apartment that I have committed to being in for at least the next year or two, and I was thinking, "I'm super lucky!" I have work I mostly love, an agent who believes in me, opportunities in Mexico and elsewhere, I have new friends, a family who lives close, an amazing new apartment that makes me happy and I can walk to a beach!! The beach!

I am here and the truth is --- I love it.

And even if sometimes I don't...just saying the words changes things.

"How do you like chicago?"

"I love it!"

I'm committing. And then --- who knows? Maybe Chicago will commit to me.

Rings and all.

Mexican Manners

So I spend a lot of time in Mexico.

I love it for so many reasons: the people, the culture, the food, but not the least of which are the manners I have consistently noticed and experienced in this country.

For example, when someone walks in a room where people are, (and by people, I mean strangers) the entering person almost always say hello. "Buenos Dias!" to almost all the little groups of people and then they respond! "Buenos Dias stranger!!" (Well, they don't say "stranger", but you know what I mean.) I love this!!! How civilized! You walk into a room or a bus or a restaurant and you greet those already there! Why not? It's pleasant people! Pleasant!

My other favorite Mexican tradition is when you walk by someone eating or about to eat you say, "Provecho!" --the Spanish equivalent of bon appetit. It's so polite! Everyone says it--to strangers! I love it! "Enjoy your food! Provecho! Even though I don't know you! I wish you a pleasant mealtime experience! Provecho!"

I even say it now. When I walk by someone eating, I give them a little knowing smile and like a local say, "Provecho!" They look up to thank me, thrown for a moment perhaps because I am not Mexican, then with a smile full of pride for the polite gringa, they thank me.

De nada. De nada.

Lesson for us all: It takes so little to make someone's day pleasant.

Manners: underrated

I heart MX.

Refugee art

It's been a while since I have spoken about all the beautiful Iraqi and Syrian refugee art I have for sale. For the past four years, I have been trying to sell art for my professional artist friends, who also happen to be refugees. I met many of them in Syria. Some are still there, some are back in Iraq, some are living elsewhere in the region and a few lucky ones have been resettled to a third country. They are all from Iraq or Syria and they are all still in need, having had there lives completely uprooted due to the violence.

Many of you have bought pieces. Thank you! If you could... sharing this link would be most helpful. It's a direct way to help a refugee artist.

If you are interested in more pics or more information including prices, please comment and or email me at kimschultz1@gmail.com. Also, if you are interested in a particular artist and want to see more of their work, I can put you in touch. Prices are all reasonable. Please see website for sizes and more.

www.iraqirefugeeart.weebly.com

May peace prevail.

Muslim in America

I have been thinking a lot about little Ahmed from Texas. A 14 year old boy feeling the effects of a country and state and school filled with fear and bigotry. He just wanted to show an incredibly cool clock he built and instead he gets humiliated, cuffed and arrested because, let's be honest, he was Muslim. A young Muslim boy---the recipient of all the hate and religious intolerance this country is experiencing, dimming our alleged beacon of light. The worst part is by arresting him like that and parading him cuffed in front of his schoolmates, they were only perpetuating the fear, the narrative that: "Islam is bad! Ahmed is bad! Be afraid of him and others like him! Clearly, he's a terrorist! All Muslims are terrorists!!"

But then something happened. (Did his school Irving MacArthur High School in Texas apologize? No. Actually the opposite, although an apology would have been the proper response and could have created a learning moment.) But people stepped up. It's like what I was talking about in a previous blog about the refugee crisis. In this case it was a really important person: the President of the United States. Holy cow, you guys. President Obama tweeted this:

How amazing. I was so proud of our president for stepping into this and tweeting a HUGE show of respect and support for Ahmed. if only all of our leaders would step up in ways like this and be role models instead of "must-get-re-elected-fear-mongering-crazy-people". What a game changer that must have been for Ahmed. Follow that by hundreds of thousands of tweets supporting him: #istandwithahmed and special invitations from Facebook, Twitter and MIT. What a day!

And now, maybe just maybe, a little sting of this day is off for Ahmed. Maybe, just maybe he realizes he is okay, smart and yes, even valued in this society even if he has brown skin and a Muslim faith. Maybe, just maybe, he will accept that he is not a criminal or a terrorist as he said he felt and has been called---but just a kid, like every other kid in his school, a good kid in a crazy world. Maybe now he knows that although many of us are fearful and bigoted, not all of us are. It takes just one to step up, to change the tides, to take that heartbreaking look of fear off his face. It could be any of us in a different situation.

We have opportunities every day to be more of who we say we are, who we want to be, who we claim to be as a people. We are a nation of immigrants who seem to have forgotten that fact. We are a nation founded on religious freedom, yet seem to now think that only applies to Christianity. We claim the "land of the free and home of the brave" but have become the "land of the intolerant and home of the fearful."

Shame on the teachers and administrators at Irving MacArthur and the local police. Shame on them for perpetuating hate and stereotypes, for teaching their students fear and bigotry, for reacting from their lowest selves. Shame on them for perpetuating the Muslim-as-terrorist narrative, as Bitter Gertrude blogged. And shame on the current political voices encouraging, even embracing that fear, bigotry and yes, the narrative. Shame on them. We have a responsibility to not let these voices go unchecked, to not let bigotry and xenophobia reign, to see that acceptance, goodness and generosity become the loudest voices in the room.

But thankfully good is coming out of this. I can only hope more will, that our true colors will fight to shine through. And I hope Ahmed's life brightens in ways he can't imagine because of this shameful event. Maybe ours too.

#istandwithahmedandmuslims #weareallthesame #manufacturedfeardamages #nicejobpotus #hashtagheaven #I'vebeenbloggingalot #you'reabeacon