Thinking Around the Table

If you go to a Sonora City Council meeting or watch one on TV, you might notice that three Council members face the public behind a long table, and the other two Council members do not.  It didn't always look this way.  When I joined the Council in 1995, five Council members sat behind that long table and looked directly at the audience.  The five of us were shoulder to shoulder.  At first, I was unnerved by the arrangement.  I thought we looked like actors in a play, or maybe judges in court.  More to the point, five people sitting next to each other at a table is not too comfortable, especially when your job is to debate, decide, and vote.  To debate, decide, and vote while confined in a five person lineup, you have to stretch your neck and twist your head if you want to make any eye contact with your colleagues.  How can you conduct serious business under those conditions?

I came up with what I considered to be a better seating plan and convinced Greg Applegate, the Chief Administrative Officer, to try it out.  The way to set things up, I told him, was to have only three Council members sitting in back of the long table.  Put the other two at each end of the table facing each other so that they could see their three colleagues behind the table, and also turn the other way when necessary to see the audience.  After one meeting using the new arrangement, it was a done deal.  The Council members liked it.  That's the way we carried on with our business from then on, and it was a whole lot better than the five of us staring straight ahead, never looking at each other as we worked through the issues before us.

Instituting the new seating plan meant a lot to me.  It allowed me the space I needed to make eye contact with people I was meeting with, and as a consequence, I could do a better job of representing my constituents at our Council meetings.  It was a good legacy to leave with the Sonora City Council members because of the benefit it afforded them as they conducted their deliberations.  Making the world a better place to live is a core value in my life.  I learned it very young and it has never let me down.

E Pluribus Unum?

I found a news clipping from my 1994 City Council campaign the other day.  It was an advertisement in which I described myself as a "pro-community" candidate.  I don't know whether my claim made any difference, but I did win that '94 election.

Maintaining a "pro-community" voting record in the City is much easier than in the County.  The City is  a defined community, whereas the County is more like a collection of communities, or maybe an alliance of communities.  So  "pro-community" voting in the County requires that most fundamental of all political skills:  imagination. You have to think about a big tent to properly analyze the issue.

So who is under the big tent?  Put another way, which communities qualify for the resources that find their way to the County coffers?  Are they the brick and mortars which can be located on maps, or are they groups of like-minded people bound together by their interests?   

Making decisions when it comes to approving resources for a "community" can be a tricky business.  It requires a steady hand.  The only new thinking I've seen on this problem is the suggestion that Tuolumne County create a flag so people could start thinking about community living from an entirely different vantage point.  That actually did happen a few years ago, but most people I know operate as if it did not.  That's fine with me.  Some day that flag will make a difference. There is a lot to be said for unity of purpose, and sometimes people come around to wanting to experience it, but I'll leave it to voices in the future to describe new ways in which that can happen.  In the meantime, I'll stay on the "pro-community" side of the ledger.
It is only common sense to do so. 

The Hawaii Connection

I'm doing my grandmothering these days via videocalls through my computer.  I'll be the first to admit that this is not warm-and-fuzzy grandmothering, but there is an upside to it.  The time Emily and I spend on the calls is more focused than telephone time.  While we are on camera, she has my undivided attention and she reciprocates. I wait patiently while she gathers words to express ideas.  She shows me things, like books and drawings.  She tells me about her playdates and favorite people, and when she runs out of things to share, she leaves the room and lets me talk to the rest of the family.  The experience is structured and orderly and I'm fascinated by the opportunity it presents.  My parents did not have this method available to them when they were in their grandparenting years.  They both would have used it, I'm sure.  And here's another good feature:  It saves travel time when the grandchild lives in Hawaii and the grandmother doesn't, which is our case.

Of course there is a downside to all this since nothing really beats personal visits when it comes to grandmothering.  Even though nothing beats those visits, videocalling is a worthwhile substitute.  I'm glad it is part of my life now, and that's the way I feel about Emily as well.  My son and daughter-in-law adopted her from China a few years ago.  I've been to Hawaii to visit with her many times since she joioned our family, and I'll be going back as time goes on.  Right now, though, videocalling is working fine for all of us.  It makes me feel grateful to be living in an age when such things are possible.