december 17th

Boas Novas of the day: Paola's project got funded!!! It was so exciting to follow the funding process because it was as if they had a huge leap at the last minute! When I checked before going to bed on the 16th, they had 9 hours to go and still needed $3,000 to reach their goal of $29,500. They ended up raising $30,155 with 264 backers! Mindblasting! :)

"This year, we want to encourage five Latino-American mural and graffiti artists who are currently living abroad and have never been to Mexico to come to Puebla in April 2012. This is an opportunity to celebrate an exchange of talents and experience through a collective effort towards the restoration of these Xanenetla homes.

Destination of funds

With your generous donation, you will be contributing to the project by helping five Latino-American artists come to Mexico and contribute to Latinamerica by painting murals with the community of Xanenetla, as well as twenty other local artists. Donations will go towards all the necesary materials to paint twenty five murals including the restoration of the twenty five facades, coordinate several workshops with the artists during the two-week mural painting festival, and document the entire creative process on video and printed material. Every single dollar will support us. If we are successful together, we will be celebrating the triumph of art over anguish and economic struggle. We shall celebrate community effort over dispersion. We will celebrate the joy of coming together as friends and families over territorial limits. We will celebrate color over deconstruction. We will celebrate the voice of cooperation and the power of sharing.

Puebla: Mural City by Colectivo Tomate

Puebla: Ciudad Mural

Colectivo Tomate

Today was a day of getting several things done at the apartment - installing a clothesline, hanging the old door as a canvas to paint on, stripping paint from the doorway, hanging up artwork, fixing the doorknob for the bathroom door... it felt good to hang out with the family and leave the apartment more snazzy and fixed up. Today was also a beach day! It's actually the first time I've been to the beach since I got back from India - I've been so busy preparing for my family's arrival that I was doing little else, so it was so nice to chillax for a bit. Sun, bikini, pastels, caipirinha, mate gelado com limão, and reading a few more chapters of "You are Therefore I Am - a declaration of Dependence" by Satish Kumar.

"We are part of the web of life, not the owners, nor even the managers nor the stewards; instead we should consider ourselves to be the trustees of the Earth.

The idea of trusteeship was first formulated by Mahatma Gandhi. He believed we humans should hold the Earth in sacred trust on behalf of all living beings and on behalf of future generations. It is the responsibility of a good trustee not to squander the original capital - only the interest can be spent, without depleting the capital.

As trustees, we need to look for ways and means to replenish and enhance rather than diminish the Earth.
If we continue along the path of ownership and hope that all people - six billion of us - can have access to the same resources, we will soon be disappointed. If everyone were to seek a Western standard of living, we would need the resources of four to five planets, which is absurd. We need a new purpose in life which is different from the ideology of high living standards for everyone. This new purpose could be termed 'trusteeship and elegant simplicity for everyone', where quality of life is more important than quantity of possessions."