Comments

Episode-1164- Curt Linville on the Power of a Prepared Community — 12 Comments

  1. Hi,
    I have two sons, one is 23 and interested in technology and the other is 20 and he is interested in helping in emergency situations but has quite a few health problems so is not too strong. Do you have any suggestions in possible career or training suggestions? What about CERT? Neither are too interested in ‘gardening’.
    Thanks

  2. Jack, you keep putting up podcasts about topics I’ve just been mulling over on my own. Thanks. I’m looking forward to this one!

  3. Love your last comment, Jack! This isn’t my church. I’m sharing a local idea for as a seed to plant in other churches. This year I joined them (below) as they adopted a local public school. They painted a very, very large Junior High inside and out, washed all the windows inside and out, cleaned all the desks, pulled all the weeds, and re-landscaped the quad, Over 1500 people showed up, it was done in 2 DAYS! Many churches join together to make it happen. I asked them if we could expand to other cities. They may be interested in helping other churches. Years past, they completely refurbished a disabled veteran’s house. Church people, Jack is right–Change your community; change your world.
    http://westgatechurch.org/compassion/local-compassion/

  4. “You might not like your neighbors, but that doesn’t matter.”
    Great quote! And totally true. Sadly our culture is loosing this skill fast, or has lost it already. To have community (in a town, a church, a marriage) you have to have some commitment to stick together through thick and thin.
    So many relationships have been “financialized” (IE: I pay a guy to fix my car, instead of getting help from my neighbor or whoever) that we don’t have a reason to interact with people not like ourselves.
    In my church, we look out for each other, but sometimes they get on my nerves, and I can step on some toes myself. But we stick together because of commitment. Shoot, we have forgotten this so far that our culture that half our marriages end in divorce! We can’t even put up with one person!

    The ability to put up with people who sometimes annoy you, or have relationships with people who are different (minded, looking, age, etc) than you are is the number-one skill in creating and sustaining community.

  5. This interview brought back so many memories of listening to my grandmothers stories of the good ole days. Today will certainly be a day of reflection and remembrance of all the stories she used to tell.

    Thank you Curt and Jack for that interview

  6. Great episode and I like what Curt said about helping a neighbor who is painting a house. I did something similar a few weeks ago with a new neighbor. He was clearing some brush up on the edge of his property and being a new homeowner, he only had hand pruners. I brought over my parang machete and introduced myself. He was so thankful for the use of the parang after he finished his work. This allowed us to meet each other and from that meeting, it opened the door to meet my other neighbors.

  7. I did not have the luxury of knowing either set of my grandparents very well as they lived in Cape Giradeau, Missouri and my parents and I were in the Bettendorf area of Iowa. Trips were 2x per year and the adults wanted to visit. I just hung out and amused myself in whatever ways possible.

    I do remember my mother telling me that my grandfather was the town undertaker and that during the depression people did still need to be buried. He would take whatever they had in trade if they had no money. So he had wealth in food and supplies as well as money. My grandmother would cook up big meals every day and my grandfather would drive around looking for folk who were obviously in need of a meal, a bath and some fresh clothes. He would load them up and bring them home with him, feed them, get them cleaned up and in some fresh clothes and sometimes better shoes if he had them and put a couple of bucks in their pockets. And that’s love.

    I adored Bill Hicks. Miss him and his incredible style so much. But one of his most memorable performances for me was the one on ‘What is the point to Life’… http://youtu.be/DVMjiB9Bwqo I MISS BILL HICKS.

  8. There are a couple of things this episode made me ponder..

    First, the concept of ‘neighbor’.. the way its being described here is like an extended family. So, like with your family, you might not like all of them, but they’re family. So when you go to the reunion, you say hi, and if they call you help out, and if there’s a disaster, you all pitch in.

    Growing up in a small town myself, there was a sense that ‘we’re related to everyone somehow’.. which wasn’t literally true, but everybody acted like it was. That didn’t mean you liked everyone equally, or wanted to spend all your spare time with them.. but they got the attention and respect you’d show another family member.

    On the ‘why aren’t relationships with neighbors like this anymore’?

    I’d blame the ‘a la carte’ lifestyle. Strong relational ties are formed by a hundred little kindnesses, or to put it a different way, a hundred little gifts.

    The average suburbanite has no gifts to give.. no extra tomatoes, no fruit and especially NO TIME.. they feel too busy and overwhelmed to watch your kids while you run to the store, drive your grandma to the pharmacy, or pitch in on that fence building project.

    The tragedy of this is that if they’d work with their neighbors.. EVERYONE would have MORE of everything, including time.

    So I guess social poverty leads to time poverty, and money poverty (having to buy all that stuff you and your neighbors could be producing yourselves).

  9. I didn’t ‘learn’ any new skills or how to be a better ninja/cowboy/seal but this may have been the most powerful episode of TSP I’ve heard yet! Just brilliant!

    Thanks Jack for a podcast that shows how powerful people are and how they’ll be our greatest resource when the poop hits the propeller!