From my journal September 6, 2012:
When I attended an open space session on story harvesting as a practice for nomads, I was unsure, even skeptical maybe. My first, limited concept was finding stories of Art of Hosting (AoH) practitioners and I couldn’t really imagine finding many of these on this journey. But the suggestion was to collect stories of places where community is working.
Today I’ve been paying attention to this and I am surprised by what I have observed. Here was Camelia, who offers her home and her conversation to travelers at an unbelievably low cost. There was the “Free Hugs Guy” walking around at Notre Dame with a sign offering free hugs. He inspired me so much that I went back and see if I could find him and ask him for his story and to see if I could apprentice with him. He seems like another incarnation of the “Gummy Bear Guy” from the Seattle airport. Instead of finding the “Free Hug Guy”, I found Jean Pierre who was giving free 10 minute massages He is part of an organization that has been doing this for over 10 years. Their purpose is to reduce stress.
The gift economy is alive and thriving! I also encountered it in street musician s who all seemed to love what they were doing. I was also impressed by the infrastructure for making electric bicycles available to people in the city. The infrastructure includes computer locks that release the bikes and checks them back in. The bike locks also recharge the bike batteries. Since they are available in multiple locations throughout the city, you can rent on at one location and drop it somewhere else making short commutes easier than the subway. All fully automated. And the first half hour is free! What an amazing combination of computer, electrical and credit card technologies.
What became increasingly clear to me throughout the day is that the gift economy is a manifestation of an alive and functional community. Lot’s of stories to harvest.
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