Meeting Your Neighbors

I’ve been busy lately. Very busy.

I have somehow gotten involved in a group of about 30 people (and there might really be closer to 15 who are really working hard at this) who are trying to organize about 2,000 homeowners in our area in order to negotiate an agreement with gas companies who want to lease the mineral rights to our land. And it has picked up a lot of steam in the past 10 days.

Among my tasks have been to create a website for the group (swapo.info), be personally responsible for informing 125 houses of what is going on (which includes going door-to-door meeting people, calling people, telling them what is going on, collecting email addresses, sending email updates almost daily–that sort of thing), meeting with other leaders in our group, meeting with gas companies, asking people if I can place signs in their yard, and probably a lot more.

We’re making a really big push to get the word out before a December 18 meeting for the whole community. Hopefully after that we can take a little breather for the holidays.

So, that is the reason there are cobwebs around here lately. Almost every spare minute I have (and even spare minutes I don’t have) are being put towards this effort.

It’s been really interesting, though. This is the first time I’ve met a lot of people on my street (and a lot of people not on my street). I’ve had hour-long phone conversations with other people in our group about what is going on, a guy from San Diego called me wondering about his son who has a home in our area, and I’ve spent almost half an hour at every single home where someone will open the door.

People are very interested and receptive to what is going on and want to know more. It’s amazing how people will talk your ear off about this. I don’t exactly live in a “friendly” neighborhood. I don’t mean it is dangerous, but it is a place where people keep to themselves. People drive home from work and go inside their house until the leave for work again they next morning. There are a few people within a ten-house radius that I have literally never seen after living here for 18 months. But, people want to talk about this. Usually for at least 30 minutes.

So, though I enjoy blogging, I have also enjoyed getting to speak with many new people that live near (and some not-so-near) me. If the blogging must suffer a little bit in order for me to interact with living, breathing people next door, so be it.