Good Things Brewing #2 - Kirsten | Learn English at EnglishCafe

Vocabulary Words

MANTRA- a repeated chant or phrase

WRY - a little bit deviant or twisted

SARDONIC - humor that mocks or is cynical

It is easy to complain.  Some days I wake up reciting a list of the things I don’t like about my country, my state, my county, my town.  All these negative thoughts pulsing through my brain.  School budgets cut, waterways polluted, litigation everywhere, criminal financiers, gas-guzzling cars, outrageous military spending, fast food winning, children’s' health losing…the list goes on and on, a nightmare mantra.

For a while now, it hasn’t been “cool” to be happy or positive.  Mainstream U.S. culture would have you believe you’re better off sardonic, wry and hip.  But with a buffet table of items to be negative about these days, I think we’ve got to be grateful for even the smallest dish of cheerful and optimistic.  It’s time we bring “happy” back.   

Psychologists and sociologists have figured out a few things about the mysteries of happiness.  Here are two:  people who think good thoughts are happier; happiness is contagious (as is unhappiness).  These findings were echoed in the global anecdotes of a book called The Geography of Bliss, which I recommended in a recent blog http://www.englishcafe.com/blog/a-question-happiness-16861  So, for both my own increased happiness and for more altruistic reasons, I have begun to take note when I see positive happenings around me.  I will write about these small blossoms of human goodness in an effort to honor them and share their fragrance.  I’ll call these writings Good Things Brewing (this site being Englishcafe, after all).

A recent blog entitled Here Comes The Sun will count as my first entry http://www.englishcafe.com/blog/here-comes-the-sun-solar-panels-installe...  It is about the positive steps my children’s small school has taken to protect the environment.

In this installment I want to acknowledge both my daughter’s teacher and a local organization that is serving the needs of our county’s most impoverished, while adding richness to our town.  For the past couple of months I have accompanied my daughter’s class to a homeless center called New Beginnings that is within walking distance of her school.  Her teacher, Steve Kinney, searched for a service opportunity for this high-spirited and capable seventh grade class, and he found a good match in the New Beginnings garden project.   

Our unstable economy and high home foreclosure rate means that record numbers of people are living in their cars or on the streets.  Homeward Bound (http://www.hbofm.org/), the parent non-profit for the New Beginnings center, has turned former military base housing into transitional living for homeless individuals and families in Marin.  The seventh grade students have put their energy to good use, digging, weeding and planting in the large scale organic garden at the New Beginnings center.  The garden is so successful that New Beginnings has been able to donate 400 lbs of produce to the Marin Community Food Bank and still provide for their own resident’s meals.  They’ve developed a series of cooking classes, offered by a high-profile local chef and open to the community, and the Fresh Starts Catering business, is run by residents, using produce from the garden.  Fresh Starts Catering also makes and sells a line of lovely truffles, jams, preserves, salsas and relishes made in the Fresh Starts Culinary Academy, which offers job training to people moving out of homelessness.   

There is something so satisfying about a creative business model.  This charitable organization has put the puzzle pieces together – human needs, human capability and nature’s offerings.  The seventh graders are fortunate to be exposed to something so successful.   

Vocabulary Words

MANTRA- a repeated chant or phrase

WRY - a little bit deviant or twisted

SARDONIC - humor that mocks or is cynical