IdeaJones

Tag: IdeaJones

  • Love Bead Safe Harbor Pin Weekend Is Here!

    814 chances to choose radical respect!

    If you’re going to be within driving distance of San Francisco this weekend (June 2-4), and you’d like a free Safe Harbor pin (to show that you support treating everyone with respect), you can celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love and get yourself a free Love Bead Safe Harbor Pin.

    We started out planning to distribute 250 sets of pins (each card has 2 pins on it, so that’s 500 pins). We just finished packing up to make the trek, and we’re coming with 407 sets! 814 pins that promote “radical respect,” the idea that we can choose to treat everyone, even people we don’t understand, or with whom we disagree, with respect. We can recognize our common humanity.

    After this, we’ll try to carry a few spare sets with us (because, as other people who’ve gotten pins and worn them can tell you, it’s a conversation starter), but this is the last big pin giveaway we have planned. We’ll put a few in our Etsy shop with part of the money going to charities (like Opening Doors, helping refugees resettle, or Mustard Seed School, helping kids from homeless families), but this last distribution in San Francisco marks the end of the project.

    We have a couple of “pop up” sites that won’t be announced until just before they start, and one we can announce now. Here’s the schedule — for updates, like the pop-ups, check our Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/Ideajones/

    Friday, June 2:

    2-3 pm: Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, 558 Clayton Street, San Francisco, CA

    558 Clayton Street, San Francisco

    3-4 pm : Pop-up (location TBA, check our Facebook page) — we’ll announce it here when it’s time

    Saturday, June 3:

    10-11 am: Pop-up (location TBA, check our Facebook page) — we’ll announce it here when it’s time

    noon – 1 pm: SCRAP, 801 Toland Street, San Francisco

    A note about times — it’ll start at the listed time, and I’ll be there until I run out of pins. So far, they’ve gone quickly (I’ve given out more than 100 in 15 minutes). So if you really would like to get your hands on a set, best to be there as close to the start time as you can.

    If you know anyone in the Bay Area who might like a set of pins, please share this. Hope we see you soon! #safeharbor

  • Pin Tales: Giving Girl

    Pin Tales: Giving Girl

    This project is about human interaction — how we choose to treat other people.

    (Thanks to Janice Jow, who suggested writing down and sharing the stories from The Love Bead Pin Project).

    After a few months of handing out Love Bead Safe Harbor Pins informally, just carrying a few with me and handing them out whenever someone admired the pin I was wearing, I had worked out a system. By then I had started slipping the card into a cellophane sleeve, thinking that I wanted to make it clear that this hand-beaded pin was a little gift, that thought and effort had gone into its creation. Most were single pins, one on a card.

    I decided to step it up and make 125 pins. It took quite a while. They’re not something you can just crank out. It’s actually pretty tough on the hands to make a lot of them. But I picked a local event, made 125 pins and bagged them up. A few were smaller, and more simple (a plain pin with a pendant), and I put those on cards in pairs, but the fancier ones were singles.

    Mark drove me to the event because parking was hard to find and I needed him to drop me off (when you’re on crutches, as I usually am, distance is an issue). I got out with my big sling bag of pins. I didn’t know how long I would be, I reminded him. It might be hard and take time to give away 125 pins. It took 15 minutes.

    A group of young women looked through the pins, holding them up and discussing which pin would look best on which person, “You always wear pastels, so this one would look good. Hold it up to your shirt…”  One young woman watched as her friends sorted through the pins and debated. She reached in and picked a package of two pins, each just a pin with a small pendant.

    “No,” her friends told her, “not that! Here, this one is prettier…” The held up other choices, single pins, more elaborate.

    She shook her head. “I want this one,” she said, smiling as they protested that she should get something nicer. “I like the idea of keeping one and giving one away. I can share this with someone else.”

    In an instant, she had a major impact on this project.

    A light went on in my head. “That’s how it should be,” I thought. “There should be one pin to keep and one to share with someone else.” It makes giving an integral part of the project. It turns the person who shares that pin into an ambassador for the ideas behind Safe Harbor. It makes each pin even more truly Love Beads.

    Because of her, there will always be two pins on a card. One to keep, one to share. So she is a part of every set of pins we give away.

  • Field Guide To Love Bead Safe Harbor Pins: The LGBTQI Pin

     

    Because we’re all human and valuable.

    A Field Guide To The Love Bead Safe Harbor Pin (kind of like a bird watcher’s guide to birds).

    If you’re new to the Love Bead Safe Harbor Pin and you see one “in the wild,” on someone on the street, in a restaurant, at school, at work, or any of the places you might find cool people, you might wonder if there’s any significance to the color, or the charm hanging from the pin. The answer? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

    The safety pin is what makes it a “safe harbor” pin. So no matter the color or decoration, it’s still a Safe Harbor Pin. The rest is about standing up for a special cause that is close to your heart. It doesn’t mean you don’t care about anything else, just that this particular cause is one you’re especially passionate about, or is especially relevant to your life, or in the lives of people you know.

    A (very) simplified guide to the LGBTQI acronym.

    The LGBTQI Rights Pin:

    I’m such a fossil, I didn’t know what the “Q” and “I” were until a friend explained it to me (and I did a bit of research of my own). In case you don’t know, here’s a very basic breakdown of “LGBTQI:”

    The most important thing to know about this issue:  It’s none of my (or your) business who neighbors/ coworkers/ random people we encounter conduct their sex lives.  If you find out someone is doing something illegal, call the cops. Otherwise, it falls under “ANOYB,” or “Ain’t None Of Your Business.” People have the right to conduct their lives as they see best, in safety, and be treated with respect, whether we understand or approve of their personal choices or not.

    So wearing an LGBTQI pin doesn’t mean you approve of someone else’s life, because the point is, you don’t have to in order to believe that person deserves to be treated with respect, and his or her civil rights respected. Think of it as “radical good manners.”

    This is the rainbow pin. The type and finish of the beads may vary, but the rainbow color pattern makes this pin an LGBTQI pin.

    For me, the sex lives of other people fall under “things I don’t have to have an opinion about.” If I’m not being asked to participate or watch, it doesn’t concern me. So I really don’t have any opinion about whether people “should” or “should not” be, say, homosexual. “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” I’m too busy trying to get my own stuff straight. Other people are human and I respect their humanity and right to live without feeling threatened or abused, and I don’t need to suss their private lives because it’s not my job to judge the “worthiness” of my fellow human beings. I don’t have any “gay friends.” I have friends who are gay (or somewhere in the LGBTQI spectrum), but we don’t talk about their sex lives, or mine. It’s not relevant. It’s simply a fact about that person, about on the level of height and eye color.

    You can wear the LGBTQI pin and be fully supportive of, indifferent to, or somewhere in between, on any of the many ways human beings experience or express their gender or sexuality. You can even feel uncomfortable with all of this and wear the pin. Wearing this pin says “I believe in the rights of human beings to be treated with respect,” and a recognition that those who don’t conform to what is expected based on the gender they “seem” to be face an uphill battle in this world, and can use allies.

    The peace symbol charm on this pin signifies your feeling that people, regardless of what they look like or what they do with their personal lives, should be free to live in safety without fear of being attacked, bullied or discriminated against.

     

     

  • Pin Tales: The Boy With The Hat

    Pin Tales: The Boy With The Hat

    I’m 137 pins distributed into this project as of today. This means about 140 interactions with people so far, and as you might expect, those interactions vary widely. This project is about human interaction — how we choose to treat other people. I was telling my friend Janice about some of them, and she said, “You’re writing these down, aren’t you? It’s part of the project! You should be telling the stories that go with this.” So begins “Pin Tales.” These are the stories associated with this project, both the good and the bad. When you feel like a bit of light reading, join us on Tuesdays for the latest Pin Tale. First up:

    The Boy With The Hat

    Mark and I went to a theme park (we love theme parks). As we were leaving, we found staff lined up to wish everyone a good night (and probably to answer last-minute questions). I was passing by a young man (every year, more of the population is younger than I am. He was probably in his 20s). As I passed, we smiled, but then he looked at the Love Bead Safe Harbor Pin (let’s say “Love Beads”) I was wearing. He approached me, speaking softly.

    “Do you know what it means to wear the safety pin?,” he asked. I said that yes, I did, it was a Safe Harbor Pin and that I’d made it. I always carry a few with me, so I offered him a set.  As he took it, he said, “You made this?”

    “Yes,” I answered, “I make them and give them to people.”

    He didn’t say anything for a moment. He just stared at the set of pins, lying in his palm on their little card. “People are getting harassed,” he said quietly. “I know people who’ve been bullied, and…” He looked up and made eye contact. “Is it all right if I hug you?”

    As people who know me can tell you, I’m not big on physical contact with anyone I’m not close to, but I couldn’t say “no.” I nodded, and he hugged me quickly. “I can’t wear this while I’m working,” he told me, “but I will wear it. Thank you.” We said our goodbyes, and Mark and I headed for the Administration Office at the park (we had a quick errand there).

    As we came out of the Admin Office, I heard my name. Looking around, I saw the young man jogging toward us, with something in his hand. “This is the hat I wear when I’m not at work,” he said, showing me a hat with his new Love Beads front-and-center. “I’m going to tell my friends,” he said, “that this came from someone I didn’t even know, who makes these and gives them away. I’ll tell them that we aren’t alone, that there are people we don’t even know who want us to be safe.”

    “There are people hoping good things for you who don’t even know you,” I said.

    “Can I hug you one more time?,” he asked. We hugged, said goodbye, and Mark and I left.

    I’m a big ol’ introvert, so just talking to strangers is a stretch for me, but a very wise friend once said, “If it’s important to you, don’t wait until you feel like it, or feel up to it. Do it scared.”

    When I started this project, I wasn’t even sure of the purpose of it myself. It was instinctive, divine inspiration, a need to react to the increasing negativity and hostility I was seeing and hearing. Soon, I realized that it’s about the potential in every human interaction. Every time we meet, or talk, we make a choice about who we are and how to treat other people. Friends can tell you there are no signs of incipient diety about me. No aura of sainthood. I fall short of my expectations on a daily basis, if not hourly (some days are like that). So this project reminds me of the potential in every moment.

    With each interaction, I make a choice of how to approach or speak with someone, and he or she makes a choice about how to treat me. All the choices we make become who we are, in our own eyes, and in the eyes of others. We are largely who we decide to be.

    In that moment, I decided to come out of my comfort zone, and so did The Boy With The Hat. We decided how to treat each other, and how to respond to how we were treated. In that moment, we both decided to cooperate to build something small and beautiful.

     

     

     

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  • A Field Guide To Love Bead Safe Harbor Pins: The Civil Rights & Social Justice Pin

    A Field Guide To Love Bead Safe Harbor Pins: The Civil Rights & Social Justice Pin

    Why this color? What does this charm mean?

    A Field Guide To The Love Bead Safe Harbor Pin (kind of like a bird watcher’s guide to birds)

    If you’re new to the Love Bead Safe Harbor Pin and you see one “in the wild,” on someone on the street, in a restaurant, at school, at work, or any of the places you might find cool people, you might wonder if there’s any significance to the color, or the charm hanging from the pin. The answer? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

    The safety pin is what makes it a “safe harbor” pin. So no matter the color or decoration, it’s still a Safe Harbor Pin. The rest is about standing up for a special cause that is close to your heart. It doesn’t mean you don’t care about anything else, just that this particular cause is one you’re especially passionate about, or is especially relevant to your life, or in the lives of people you know. First up:

    The Civil Rights and Social Justice Pin

    Equality before the law and human rights.

    This pin will be iridescent black (the individual beads shine with a lustrous finish like the colors of the rainbow, so in this case, a black bead that has a shiny finish that shifts in the light, like light playing on water). It looks kind of like very dark steel. The color signifies the strength and durability of steel, like the strength and durability people have to show fighting for freedom and justice. (I know, “Oooooh, deeeep!” But it’s true).

    Mine have a peace symbol charm, or a heart. The peace symbol is a charm I use on most of my Love Bead Pins. In addition to the usual meaning of the peace symbol, on the Civil Rights Pin, the peace symbol also honors those who, like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, use nonviolent means to fight for their causes. That is probably the hardest route to take, to not lower yourself to the level of those who oppose you and hold to your principles in the face of opposition or even danger.

     

     

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