The case of a diamond in the rough

I recently watched a TED Talk by "Bill Gross who has founded a lot of start-ups, and incubated many others -- who got curious about why some succeeded and others failed. So he gathered data from hundreds of companies, his own and other people's, and ranked each company on five key factors. He found one factor that stands out from the others -- and surprised even him."

"The number one thing was timing. Timing accounted for 42 percent of the difference between success and failure. Team and execution came in second, and the idea, the differentiability of the idea, the uniqueness of the idea, that actually came in third.

The last two, business model and funding, made sense to me actually. I think business model makes sense to be that low because you can start out without a business model and add one later if your customers are demanding what you're creating. And funding, I think as well, if you're underfunded at first but you're gaining traction, especially in today's age, it's very, very easy to get intense funding" Bill Gross

I believe our timing here is nearly impeccable! Combining the global ecological situation, the fact we are Perched on the edge one of of the worlds most important biodiversity hotspots and being that it is so Untouched by development. This is the key, the silver lining... because it is simply ripe with pure positive potential.

Wilson and I go back a couple years now. He has been coming by my house a couple days a week to say hello ever since I moved here. He lives in a household next door that suffers the situation of absolutely heartbreaking poverty. On one of the early days when I first arrived, Im looking down at this tiny 6 year old chatting away to me at my gate, and said to myself...there's got to be something I can do for this kid.

Wilson peeling sugar cane to eat

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With just $995 to go !!! Can you help me to get us all the way there?

Early stage funding is critical. At this point every penny is meaningful and everything counts! Seeking to increasing number of families I am supporting, each and every contribution helps me to meet the growing community needs.

As the only foreigner here, and only organization on location, I really need your help to do something to balance up the fragile ecological and humanitarian crisis that is out my front door. I am submitting grant requests for Land, Sustainability, and Arts Grants, but until we land one, we are needing all the support we can get.

"All development should be based around nature.

Nature should be our number one client" Neri Oxman

In 2017 The MIT Media Lab developed the house printer you now see being used around the world (right) Display of bio plastics ( Middle) Bio Materials Chair at an expo ( Left)

I am a big fan of Neri Oxman, an American–Israeli designer and professor at the MIT Media Lab, where she led the Mediated Matter research group. She is known for art and architecture that combine design, biology, computing, and materials engineering. I am inspired by many of her concepts as I look at social and environmental development and the cross over between nature, design, and the arts.

ACTIVATING LOCAL GOODS & SERVICES

CULTURAL & CREATIVE CAPITAL

THE GARDEN CREATURES AND GROWTH

Things are taking really starting to take on shape and form. As the biodiversity on the property is being increased more and more species are moving in. More butterflies, more bees, more toads. We have very special new comers. I have found 3 Red Coffee Snakes now in the past weeks. Google told me thankfully are not venomous and not to kill them. A squirrel was around for a few weeks, and a big old lizard about the length of my arm. I added the hummingbirds who aren't new but they are pretty;)

After months hovering around 100 degrees, dry, no rain, watching from afar with mega garden envy, as yal had spring, your beautiful flowers and crops growing tall and beautiful. The air did finally cool and a rising sense of excitement came with the rains bringing planting season. I have been working an absolute ton in in garden, and engagement with the community surrounding planting greater diversity of food is catching on.

OTHER THINGS FROM THE GARDEN

COCONUT PALMS

For most folks here everything except the fruit has any use or value. The whole village is strewn with a somewhat massive amount of left over coconut tree 'garbage' that isn't being used for anything. With families desperate for additional incomes while opportunities of gold are lying around on the ground...

Ive been familiarising myself and beginning to work with some of the materials that nature offers up here in abundance. My goal is to create prototypes and examples that families could take over to be developed as home made handmade sellable eco items. To have more little community owned and run start ups that can produce new forms of incomes for families.

How about a coconut cloth lamp, flower pods that sell on eBay for between $20- 40 or the coconut tree trunk chair for a whopping $1,200! Right?

A LITTLE LOCAL TRADE AND BARTER

Some local guys came by the other day, bought and loaded an entire truck full of coconuts from lots of properties in our village. They got 300 from ours plus left me with heaps of materials to create things and work with. It showed a bit of what the property can produce and a wonderful example of what I have been talking about non stop- creating local trade and local economies. Perfect.

CERAMICS

Dona Virgilia Says "Aye Dios, if I had clay that's what Id do, Id dedicate myself to that. Thats money!"

It is such an honor to be able to work with a community grandmother who is willing to share her lifetime of experience and to pass it forward to the next generations. Dona Virgilia and I are working together now on forming the first women lead, Ceramics Cooperative on the lake.

At 76 years young and going strong Dona Virgilia recounts as a young girl walking hours with her mother to go to dig clay. They would load up huge heavy sacks and carry them home on their backs. Haciendas would place orders with her mother for mugs, plates, jugs, water vessels, different sizes of cooking pots. Her mother taught her how to create the right consistency in the clay body, how to make all of the pieces that would go out in the order, to wood fire, glaze, and deliver.

We had a lovely first visit. I showed her all of the varieties of the clays I have found, and we compared them with the ancient Mayan bits of broken relics.

Because her body is now somewhat elderly she can't get clay for herself anymore.

Dona Virgilia has three sons in the US, none of whom send her any of their US bucks. Since her husband died she has had no household income. I made my proposition. I asked her what if I bring clay to her, would she be willing to teach me- would she be willing to teach with me, would she be willing -if other women or men would also like to learn and join us ( I will keep teaching the children) would she be interested in a shared community Ceramics Studio and form a women's lead Ceramics Cooperative?

The most important thing to me is to make sure what I am trying to set up for people works for them- her answer was YES! This was such a wonderful affirmation. Making this match, building up the ceramics workshop with her is a critical move and change that can to begin to support her and help resolve her situation effectively immediately. It also means I now have someone on board with me, who can guide me.

No other and who better than a wise old local Mayan grandma to hold up and carry forward the traditional indigenous methods of working with clay! This is beyond but also so much what I had been hoping for. Hows that for timing?

THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF THE ARTS & PLACEMAKING

There are so many examples of down and out cities, barrios, and towns around the world that were put on the map having become vibrant thriving places of cultural attraction with flourishing arts, communities, and economies.Brooklyn, Bilbao, Chicago, San Miguel de Allende. I saw it in Guatemala City and most of us saw it with Hudson. I think its safe to say we would agree it was The Arts brought Hudson to life. Jan Hanvic and the CCCA, Arts Walk, TSL, Carrie Haddad, the Badillas and extended family, the revival of the Opera House. Starting with some nice Antique shops , the art gallery boom exploded making it close to 50/50. Then bars, Venues, restaurants, shops, etc to now, trendy, utterly swank and unaffordable. But for some years there before it got fancy and polished, the scene was fabulous, so contagiously raw and alive!

I was just thinking back to the days when only a handful of kids rode the Hudson bus to HVS and most of you can remember- Warren Street- it was half boarded up! As a youngster I knew Hudson to be a bit of a dodgy rough place with city street smart kids who attended the school I went to where I lived in the boony hills of la la Valley. One would look back now and one would say "Yes, back then, Hudson was just a diamond in the rough. "

Time and again this same story can be told in exactly the same way, of other places, some more than others maintaining the original authenticity and vitality that the artists and creatives initially brought in.

In order to put a village on the map, some one or some ones have to create something that will make it a place of interest. We are about to do that.

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From down here... The North is like God... up there... you know... like up there... like in the heavens.

From down here, north is up. You literally lift your hands in an upward gesture

When I look around, at the whole situation, I see so much potential, and so many possibilities that nobody is doing anything with. And all the beautiful bright chatty smiling children, innocently suffering the consequences of all of this mess- of which as a US citizen, who's country partially caused, and continues to partaking in its perpetuation- YES it absolutely lights a fire under my derrière- to up my game- and to do what I can to end this cycle stat.

I had been planning to write more about the migration and remittances situation here with almost unanimously every household having someone in the US, but I found this Time Magazine article They Left Guatemala for Opportunities in the United States. Now They Want to Help Others Stay which is by far THE best article I have ever read on the subject. It explains to a T what we are dealing with! It is very relevant to the work I am doing. It really helps to make sense of why I am so passionately insistent about the importance of taking in- country- action here, if you have an extra moment please do read it. They literally saved me writing a whole section in this post ;)

PEOPLES STORIES

Kevin, one of the villages top cowboys, has a Dad and brother in the US, Kevin has no interest in going. He is sitting on the motorcycle talking shop with Jorge, who left his wealth of freedom- filled- expanses-of fields, house, horses, his huge warm extended family and loving wife Carla with two little children- for some USD's, 7 years of brutal isolation and solitude, a thousand miles away, alone, in Maryland working as a dishwasher. Id have to ask him if it made a difference for them in their lives- to have that money- if it was worth it, what they were able to do with it? I have become a bit like family with Jorge, Carla and the kids. These are their stories.

Very happily back home forever again the last four years, Jorge in the blue shirt with his brother, who just moved here with his family, abandoning their town, home and livestock, fleeing extreme violence further south. Jorge now Celebrates simple life, days with his teen age girls and big huge family, in our lovely, quiet, peaceful, quintessential farming village. Who could ask for more... but we have to... with so many folks daily on the brink of starvation... with so few and limited opportunities... people are still leaving to the US- all the time. It's extremely extremely challenging here.

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Holding the vision, a Mid Year Review

Looking back over the past six months, the first thing that stands out to me is how gosh darn brutally slow 'measurable progress' sometimes feels like its been. Some days I look around me and say to myself "I have been working like mad nonstop but what if anything have I actually accomplished?" But to do a proper analysis, one must not only look at the things which are measurable, one also has to look at the things that have been un measurable, yet, quite possibly even more important than the more- obvious, more- easily calculated things.

Like for example the hours of research, the sharing of information, the connections we make and build. Looking at the results of how holding the vision and staying the course has made me become a part of every day life with the families here. Im no longer just a passing face, Im now someone who shows commitment to staying and living here. Gaining peoples trust and confidence has no price, and it also doesn't happen overnight. I have slowly won over the pessimists, and beginning to get little hellos from even the most timid folk who wouldn't raise their eyes or say hello back before. Thats a pretty big thing.

How many wonderful by the by conversations on life, how much continually learning, how much deeper the engagement with my village neighborhood, listening to so many personal stories voicing their struggles with the living life in destitution. Every day gaining new insight on the situation here, working together to see what is needed, and seeing how to put into place possible solutions that will work for them. I consider the ongoing dialogue as the most valuable parts of anything I do. Its It is the collective voice that informs, creates the drive and impose that is needed in order for us to be able to make the changes we set to create. In each encounter with one another we are building forces, gaining solid momentum and traction. As we continue we to grow, I think its important to stop sometimes to take a moment to aknowledge the small that wins that often go un noticed and unaccounted for.

No one climbs a mountain without having taken a first step.

Thanks everybody, that's all for now

Sending you all much love

Yours truly

Emily

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