I am grateful for:

1. Old growth coastal redwood trees.  Once there was over 2 million acres of them on the west coast.  Now only 4% of them exist.  If you ever get a chance to see them it is a must – they are amongst the most noble and spectacular sites that nature has to offer.
2. My new colleague Linda who is an amazing coconspirator in trying to get adults to behave rationally and have reasonable expectations of one another.
3. Borderland Books – source of an incredible selection of sci fi, horror and fantasy books in SF and online http://www.borderlands-books.com/
4. Snuggling with my little Raine last night on the couch.
5. Fresh water
6. My vornado fan on a warm summer day
7. Old school biz people going new school sustainability – even if it is just for the money.
8. Peace – however seldom it stops by my door
9. Quiet  - I still believe you are out there – I met you once in he sands of a foreign place.

OK so I have been very negligent lately in expressing my gratitude publicly but it doesn’t mean I haven’t been grateful.  Let me do a little catch up here.

1. I am grateful that the love of my life and the mother of my wonderful little girl has successfully come through gall bladder removal surgery.  As always my sweet you have been a trooper and have taken it like a tough amazon goddess!
2. I am grateful that my little girl Raine continues to thrive and do well in her world.  She traveled to Russian River where we attended a wedding and where her mommy convalesced – and I am grateful that for that time Papa was enough to keep things together.
3. I am grateful that Raine is sleeping like a champ.  She now likes to be put in her crib still awake and to put herself to sleep. 
4. I am grateful that SweetRush got the space next door to us so we don’t have to move our offices due to growing so much this year.
5. I am grateful for a new potential project doing the good I want to be doing in the world with the Global Footprint Network.
6. I am grateful for my new coworkers in San Francisco and costa Rica.
7. I am grateful to have been at the wonderful wedding of Arturo and Danielle – truly beautiful and sweet
8. I am grateful for Café Gratitude where I took my friend to lunch yesterday.
9. I am grateful to myself for finally reading something that has no learning value whatsoever – World War Z – as in ZOMBIE  Braaaaaiiiiiiiinsssssssssssssss…

This one goes out to my buddy E. who is struggling under the yoke of the animation industry to maintain his clarity, creativity and hope.  Strange that an industry focused on entertaining children could treat the big kids so inconsiderately.

I am grateful for:

1. Sherry and Raine stopping by the office and seeing Raine laugh at Chili chasing the ball in the office.
2. Amy bringing Chili to work so Raine could laugh at him chasing the ball.
3. The office bought organic Nectarines Dru told me were ripe.  It was so good that I simultaneously want to tell my office mates about it and also not  :P
4. My speakers working in my office again so I can listen to music.
5. Sarah N’s computer working again so I can hear about all the things she is grateful for.
6. That I will see my grandparents tomorrow and Raine will meet her Great Grandparents.
7. The desire to live more simply
8. Sherry trimming my hair this morning
9. Deadwood

This one goes out to my new gratitude partner Becca.

I am grateful for:

1. Becca’s smile – you can light up a room with that genuine bright and hopeful smile that is all lips, all teeth, all eyes and all cheeks – prize winning show stopping gratitude inspiring smile!!!
2. Natasha my friend and MT – thanks for making me shut up during my massages.  It’s about time I shut the trap and relax.
3. My new coworker Karina who brings both French and Japanese sensibilities, a genuine appreciation for her new coworkers and a kind and genuine presence that I know is going to be matched by fiercely competent project management.
4. My wife Sherry who continues to put up with me working too much, continues to be encouraging of healthier choices and continues to find new ways to love me and appreciate me even when I am not being as good at the same.
5. My sweet little Raine drop.  I am so grateful that you are growing into a vivacious, funny, beautiful little girl.  I am so grateful to have gotten to watch you run down the grassy slope and make it all the way down without falling.  To see you turn with both exhilaration and pride of mastery in your eyes was a memory I hope holds for many years in the frame of the time and space that I found it.
6. A good night’s sleep.  I am positive I saw one around her somewhere.
7. Xbox 360 playing gears of war with bro in law Dan and his kids Kelsey and PJ this weekend – even if for only a few games.
8. For the trust Dan gave me in talking through his business challenges.  It is good to share the road with you man.
9. For Piccino Café in dogpatch for not cutting us off when we had too much coffee - Dan eight shots of espresso and two cups of coffee are seriously too much.  You need help.  Next time give me some more - I will help you carry the load brother!
   

Hi there - had to share a recent email exchange that I had with one of my coworkers in Costa Rica:


S of Costa Rica

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. - Thomas Jefferson

Celebrate and enjoy your freedom, guys. It´s a privilege. Happy 4th!

Don´t get me wrong... This is a huge day for you and your country, but what I meant to say is that it´s also a day to compare the freedom that your ancestors thought about when they proclaimed their independence with the freedom that you have right now. There may be a huge gap between them.

I don´t want to spoil the party being a kind of Debbie Downer here, I just think this is the best day to judge the freedom you have and think about its cost to you and the world. And if your thoughts bring you down, what can you do to reverse that?

All I know is that if Jefferson and company lived to see how things are right now and the kind of freedom that you have, they would be highly disappointed... It´s the awful truth.

So, celebrate and enjoy, but don´t forget, and most importantly, think and act, so that the 4th becomes not only a ¨flag waiving¨ or ¨fireworks show¨ day, when everyone just looks apart from the truth and denies reality, but a day to celebrate freedom, the true kind.


My reply:

Thanks for the thought provoking message.  In fact Jefferson and company - at least many of that company - were highly disappointed even before their lives ended.  Jefferson was as close to an anarchist (complete freedom and self governance type of anarchist) as has ever been in the White House. People like he and John Adams saw the ideals they worked for descending into schism.

At the beginning of our country's independent history a few came together to design the experiment that is the United States and crafted a path to both independence as well as the basic human rights that are at the root of democratic rules of government.

Then many came together to fight for these rights, but even more so to fight for freedom from the injustice of taxation by an absentee landlord - the King of England - who was out of touch with his tenants.

But these fights fell away long ago.  The names on the document that they wrote are fading and the paper crumbling.  The concepts are still true though and I believe seen in much of the basic respect and rights we believe in at SweetRush - social justice, equality, fair wages for a days work, etc.

In addition, those concepts made their way across the globe as with any idea whose time has come, and the United States has been an ambassador for this concept for a few centuries. 

New fights emerge today however.  How do we apply these concepts in an age when new powers such as global corporations hold our life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness hostage?  Or how do we improve a society when so many still remain in poverty and it is so easy to fall into that place?

The answer is still the same as long ago.  Self governance - personal responsibility - and a value system that does not place property above life.  When we give the governance or responsibility of our own lives and decisions over to others we create a situation that will head inevitably towards some sort of injustice like taxation without representation or buying your kid toys that it turns out have lead paint in them placed there by some careless manufacturer.  When we give our lives over in mass to a minority with great power, then we strengthen another form of tyranny.

So wherever you are celebrating an independence - whether in the US, Canada, Costa Rica, Kyiv, etc. - in my estimation it comes down to celebrating the same thing.  I have been afforded a life and with it the responsibility to live it in concert with the many other lives around me and those yet to come.

I was blessed today to celebrate it with my moms - my biological mother and my heart mother (the woman who my mom has been committed to since I was a small boy), my sister and her new boyfriend, my mother in law, my wife and my daughter.

We played, sang, ate and drank together and I got to see my moms with their granddaughter.  Women who when I was small it was illegal to just love one another.  The house behind us is a family where the father is Palestinian and the mother is Puerto Rican.  There are Jordanians across the street and a few families from Mexico, I just read an email form the father of my Ukrainian god daughter.  I work in a workplace that has many powerful and brilliant women free to engage their talents in their workplace.  Now I am responding to an email from a coworker in Costa Rica.

In my mind there is no freedom without responsibility. As long as we close our eyes to the areas of our lives and our societies that need the application of that responsibility, we remain in bondage. 

As I spent time today with my moms - both who have worked tirelessly for women's and minorities rights - and I hear their conviction even in their sixties to continue that work - I am reminded of the daily need for a commitment to that work.  We have been building something special at SweetRush and much of it does have to do with taking responsibility for the work we touch and the lives we touch.  We are collectively building something that provides a growing number of individuals and families with a increased quality of life, liberty and happiness. What better way is there to honor the spirit of our forefathers and mothers unless it is to do more of the same :)

Again, thanks for the thought provoking email Stuart. Happy 4th of July to you too.

Good Things,

andrei


-----

Here are a few favorite quotes that a few of my fellow U.S. colleagues added to the conversation -

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson  - This was a lead quote from an article

or another from a U.S. colleague

Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.  John Adams

Waves of gratitude for:

1. My father who would have been 65 today.  He passed in February.  Our relationship was strained for much of the last decade plus, but we loved each other and I had some very special memories with him which I am thankful for.  Dad - remember those pancakes you made us in the shape of dinosaurs and mickey mouse.  I was thinking of them the other day.
2. Arts and Crafts style - Greene and Greene brothers - thanks for affirming in your work what my heart has always wanted to see in wood, stone, tile and copper.  Genius.
3. Global Footprint Network
4. Coworkers who don't give up and for a team that works together across timezones and cultures. I am thinking about Alexey's wedding in Kiev and hearing the Scorpions singing Winds of Change - "Did you ever think that we could be so close.. like brothers".  So much to change still but working together is a start. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taVW8Kv2HcQ
5. Vornado fans on a hot day
6. Women with tattoos in the Mission District of San Francisco in summer.
7. Primavera of Sonoma Salsa and vegan tamales and jasmine rice Sherry made.
8. Rootbeer and iced tea - next to water they are the best beverages on the planets
9. The thing in me that won't let me quit, that causes me pain when I am not on my path, that knows when I must make amends or when I have not done my best.  Whatever that is and wherever it came from, I have infinite gratitude for its existence and its persistence in helping me shape my life.
   

I am grateful for:

1. My moms visiting for the weekend and falling even more in love with Raine.
2. Conversations about staying agitated in order to fuel change in ourselves and in our world
3. A day of cooking and serving
4. Seeing our Raine and little Zoe rolling around on the floor together.
5. Grandmas working for social justice in their communities
6. That my daughter is happy and healthy
7. The beautiful and loving looks my Sherry gave me today while I was cooking and serving
8. New directions and opportunities that make me feel like choice and chance are still alive in the world
9. A walk with my family by the reservoir and Raine mesmerized by swaying grass.

1. the idea of a new tattoo
2. my moms coming to town tomorrow
3. the new level of closeness i have with Raine
4. awaking from the nightmare of her death to find that she was indeed alive
5. Sherry being sweet when I told her about it
6. A mellow day in the office with one good heated and interesting conversation with Arturo
7. a paycheck
8. a clean home office
9. the salad i made tonight with lettuce from the backyard

gratitude fullness:

1. Memories of Baltimore - of note today was looking down into Tom Everhart's studio when he was painting snoopy and peppermint pattie - also listening to Louie Armstrong in our backyard while sitting on the swing drinking iced tea and smoking.
2. Time with Raine today - and how she is getting to be generous with her kisses.
3. Sherry putting up with my crankiness
4. Purple potatoes
5. Amazing coworkers who don't give up
6. Amazing artists who I can ask favors of
7. Bob Marley
8. silence - assuming it still exists somewhere :P
9. Blue bottle coffee

I am overflowing with gratitude for:

• my little Raine drop for playing chase with me in our house
• my lovely bride who dressed up cute for my birthday dinner (about two months past) at Atlas Cafe - yes I had the beetloaf sandwich again.
• Bohemia beer
• Resilience thinking
• Dogeared books on Valencia Street http://www.dogearedbooks.com/dogeared/index.php
• Alemany Farmers Market!!!  White Peaches, strawberries, dates and Armenian cucumbers
• Arturo - my business partner who never stops, even sometimes when I want him to :)
• Amy who is taking on a project everyone else is scared of
• Clean water to drink