Dear HIPSters:
I’m very glad to be back after a wonderful break and time with my family.
Welcome to new subscribers. Your support means a lot to me. As always, I appreciate hearing readers’ thoughts, reflections, or ideas.
As a new school year launches here in Portland, OR and as we hit the final stretch of summer, I wanted to highlight a few good things. I hope to make this a regular practice and a part of HIPS from time to time.
Bill McKibben, a leading environmentalist, documents the climate crisis in a substack called The Crucial Years. In a recent post, McKibben reflected on where to live as our climate shifts our present and future reality. A message he drove home is that no matter where we live it will be critical to focus on nurturing social trust.
Here’s an excerpt:
We’ve come through 75 years where having neighbors was essentially optional: if you had a credit card, you could get everything you needed to survive dropped off at your front door. But the next 75 years aren’t going to be like that; we’re going to need to return to the basic human experience of relying on the people around you…
Inspired by McKibben’s words, here are 3 ideas I came across recently that I believe are helping to nurture social trust in different but related ways.
The Bike Bus. This week as I dropped our son at his elementary school, there was hardly anyone around. The playground was empty just 15 minutes before the starting bell. Then, this happened (which I caught on my camera).
I love the voice of one student who yells, "I did it” at the beginning of the video. There are now 10 bike bus or walking school bus programs across Portland. The idea was borrowed from Barcelona’s Bici Bus. The basic idea of a bike bus is to gather students & parents together on a regular timetable to encourage bike commuting and increase safety (more visible).
The bike bus has grown significantly in the past few years and has garnered national media attention in Portland. Here is a segment on NBC Nightly News. It continues to build a community around cycling or walking to school — some of the rides now have upwards of 200 students involved or 1/3 of the school arriving on bikes or by foot.
When Representative Hoa Nguyen saw how a walking school bus increased attendance (by 30%), she decided to join forces with other legislators and pass (HB 3014) the “Bike Bus Bill”. The bill allows school districts to have more flexibility in how they spend their transportation dollars to allocate money for crossing guards and/or coordinators to lead walks or bike buses.
The Bike Bus Bill was signed into law by Oregon’s governor on July 31, 2023.
Books to Prisoners. Since 1973, Books to Prisoners has been mailing tens of thousands of free books to prisoners. This all-volunteer-run collective receives approximately 1,000 requests for books each month. As prison libraries tend to be very limited and access to them is often very restricted this organization is filling a clear need.
My daughter and I had the opportunity to visit Portland’s branch (which just became an incorporated non-profit). We opened several letters sent from prisoners across the U.S. The letters included hand-written requests for different books or genres. After we opened and read each letter, Eve & I browsed through a small, but diverse library to find books that best matched each prisoner’s request. Next, we wrapped and prepped the books for shipment. We got letters requesting books on Dungeons and Dragons, American survivalist fiction, and romance novels.
What struck me was how grateful the prisoners were for having their requests filled and how many envelopes the organization receives each week from the approximately 2 million people incarcerated in the U.S. today.
Here’s a short video on Books to Prisoners.
An Irish Goodbye. On a plane trip this summer from New York to Dublin, Ireland, my wife and I were inspired by An Irish Goodbye (2012), an Oscar-nominated short about two estranged brothers with very Irish names (Turlough & Lorcan) who are forced to reunite to mourn the passing of their mother. The film is a poignant and joyful exploration of family, connection, and our responsibility to one another. It is available on Hulu, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime.
Here’s the trailer.
These are 3 good things that I came across. If you have good stuff you want to share that is nurturing social trust or building community in your neck of the woods, I’d love to hear from you.
Please consider sharing in the box below.
Thanks for reading and see you again in two weeks.
Keep well & stay curious.
Eoin