TAKE A STAND (helpful hints)

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Sunday, July 18, 2010

Temporary Hiatus while CEO goes to camp

Sadly, the lemonade stand is going to be be out of commission through July 23rd while the owner takes a much needed vacation at sleep away camp.  As much as I want to, I think setting up a lemonade stand without a kid to legitimize the enterprise would be a tad unseemly.  Try as  I may, I can't bribe my 4 year old into taking over temporary proprietorship.

While Luna is away, I may be reorganizing the blog so check back for updates including:


  • FAQs, 
  • Ethics of THE STAND*,  
  • a CONTEST to win a punk rock SeattleSCOLL t-shirt, 
  • and possibly a new poll feature.


*Ethics of THE STAND will include  details behind our new policies:
  1. What happens on the bike path stays on the bike path and no one gets hurt.  
  2. The no-peeky rule:  A lemonade stand has got to have a code.

4 comments:

Nicole said...

Do you pick the moveis/music advertised here?

The Shea-ZAM(tm) Lunaverse said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

cool - I was wondering if there was a no-peeky rule...
what does it mean to say "What happens on the bike path stays on the bike path and no one gets hurt." You must not mean the secrets since they get posted here, but I'm not sure what you mean then... what DOES happen on the bike path? (maybe you can't say... hmmm)
**Love your blog!**

The Shea-ZAM(tm) Lunaverse said...

Hi Anon-Thanks for asking about these two topics. These are profoundly visceral topics for me, so I'm going to have to put a little time into constructing the actual "Ethics" portion of the blog that deals with them, but suffice it to say, these two rules are elemental to our project and to life and because you asked I'll give you a brief lowdown of where they come from:
The first, the no peeky rule, well, besides it being just plain good manners, there's a self-protective element to not knowing who writes which secret. Not to mention that we are trying to build trust and compassion in the community and to peek would undermine our intention. People put the secrets in the box with the explicit understanding that the secrets will be seen but they, the person, will not be. I love that and I could go on and on about why that is important, but I'll save that for later.
The "What happens on the bike path stays on the bike path" was more of an inchoate rule, of which I was only nominally conscious, hadn't quite articulated to myself or anyone else. And then...well, then, something happened. I blew it. And I am kicking myself about it. And I can't undo it. So I did the one thing I could do so it won’t happen again. I made a rule. And the rule is "What happens on the, bike path stays on the bike path."
I'll tell you what happened, Anon, because I bet you want to know. And because I don’t think there is any harm in telling this story.
I ran into someone who had stopped at the lemonade stand and he introduced me to his wife and he told her about the lemonade stand. And we chitted and we chatted a little. And it was nice and it was pleasant but I was buzzing on a bit of hypomanic energy that too much lemonade and love can manifest, and I asked, "So did you put a secret in the box?" And he said "Yes."
No big, right? Wrong. About 10 minutes later I saw him, again, and I said something chipper and cheery and he grumbled and kept walking. Alone. Toward the parking lot. Well, we, the family and I, happened to be sitting in a kiosk by the parking lot and a little time went by and then a little more and then, about 20 minutes later, the wife came out. And she didn’t look too happy, either. And I thought it strange, what could have happened between the milk aisle and the exit that could have separated two happy people by 30 minutes and a million miles?
And then it dawned on me that after we went our separate ways the wife asked, “what was your secret?” It doesn’t matter if she was only semi interested, very interested, ragingly suspicious, she couldn’t ask that question. But there was no way for her to know she couldn't ask that question, not having been there, not having participated, not understanding what this experience was. She couldn’t know she couldn’t ask. And she asked. So the jig was up, because what could he say? He couldn’t tell her. It would spoil the fun. Or maybe he wrote something he didn’t want to share with her, because he was ashamed or embarassed or indignant or protecting a moment. Because he had had a moment on the bike path when he could write anything about himself, anything, and be completely anonymous, and whether he chose to write he likes lemonade or something more edgy, it was a moment in life where, in complete solitude, could touch the universe. How do you explain that to someone who, with each growing deflection, is more worried about the mundane ... and rightly so? He couldn't tell her. She couldn't ask and he couldn't tell her. And they were suddenly trapped in solitude, with no hope of touching the universe or eachother and this door that was opened slammed shut. This opportunity for connection and communication, for intimacy and solitude, it all retracted back into nothingness.
Of course, this could all be conjecture. Nonetheless, we now have a new rule.