{"id":3075,"date":"2018-08-08T15:31:50","date_gmt":"2018-08-08T22:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/?p=3075"},"modified":"2018-08-08T15:31:50","modified_gmt":"2018-08-08T22:31:50","slug":"cartwheeling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/?p=3075","title":{"rendered":"Cartwheeling"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Now and then in upcoming months, you\u2019ll see pieces I write tagged with the word \u201ccartwheeling.\u201d The series responds to a cluster of questions I\u2019ve struggled with since the 2016 election. As I\u2019ve puzzled over how I can best contribute in a changed and changing world, I\u2019ve written essays with questions as titles: \u201cWhat should a concerned citizen do?\u201d\u00a0\u201cSo many ideas, so much to do \u2013 what\u2019s next?\u201d and, \u201cWhat\u2019s my piece of the puzzle? Is resistance enough?\u201d I\u2019ve thought of these as my \u201cpuzzle pieces.\u201d The Cartwheeling series is one way I\u2019m answering these questions.<\/p>\n

So why cartwheels?<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve tried to figure out my role, I’ve had to accept as given my stubbornly positive disposition. This has been its own kind of stumbling block, which I explore in \u201cPollyanna?\u201d As I wrote that piece, I realized that the sense of possibility I get from leaping into things feels akin to my 8-year-old granddaughter Livia\u2019s cartwheeling spirit. I can learn from her. Livia can and does cartwheel anywhere, even on the way home from school in the winter while wearing her huge, flowered backpack.<\/p>\n

\u201cCartwheeling\u201d as a rubric works for me. I loved the feeling of doing cartwheels as a kid, though the idea of this 73-year-old trying it now is daunting, if not a little scary. Mentally though, I like the idea of cartwheeling as another way to carry on. After all, you have to turn upside down to do a cartwheel. And to find our way to a better future we need to turn many of our ideas and assumptions upside down, then right side up, and upside down again.<\/p>\n

Cartwheeling isn\u2019t just a solo act. It can be an exchange, a conversation. I ran across a news story from Washington DC about a \u201cconversation\u201d between a kid and a cop by cartwheel and backflip. The kid\u2019s challenge came first. The cop followed in kind.<\/p>\n

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Cartwheeling can be done anywhere, in Westminster Abbey by a joyful clergyman after the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton and in Antarctica by a team of graduate students taking a break from McMurdo Station.<\/p>\n

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It can also be teamwork. We can learn to double cartwheel and everybody-all-at-once cartwheel.<\/p>\n

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Cartwheeling is moving by revolving. How many revolutions, or kinds of revolutions, will it take to get there, to get where we want to go? It\u2019s not the fastest or the easiest way, but working together a Canadian team of ten doing cartwheels travelled 31 miles in a single 24-hour period to set a record.<\/p>\n

The road can\u2019t just be about efficiency and how fast we\u2019re going. It also has to be about where we\u2019re going and how we get there. The phrase \u201cdoing cartwheels,\u201d after all, means to feel good about something. We might even get farther and accomplish more if we know where we\u2019re heading and if we move with spirit and joy in the possibility of finding ways to get out of this mess.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ll use the Cartwheeling series to share stories about work done and action taken by friends and others who inspire me and give me hope. I have many examples already; more will come. Two follow here. \u201cHonestly, you have been very patient with me\u201d was originally posted as a comment on my \u201cPollyanna?\u201d piece. Then, Boting Zhang writes, in \u201cBeneath Partisan Politics,\u201d of her shocked response to the 2016 election. Bo didn\u2019t wait to take action. Born in China and raised with images of America as \u201cMeiguo<\/em>\u2013 the Beautiful Country,\u201d she writes, \u201cthe America of my young imagination compelled me to facilitate a year-long conversation across the red-blue divide.\u201d With Between Americans, a conversation that involved 12 people who voted for Clinton and 12 who voted for Trump, she wanted to understand and perhaps help bridge the polarization in this country. What she learned is not what she expected.<\/p>\n

In Cartwheeling I\u2019ll look for connecting threads, broad ideas or theories that tie the various stories together and add to their power. I’m finding books and other materials that may help. At the end of 2016, in \u201cA bigger choir \u2013 a countervailing force,\u201d I expressed my frustration with the, usually disapproving, expression, \u201cYou\u2019re just speaking to the choir.\u201d It\u2019s one of the assumptions we need to turn upside down, a small one perhaps, but for me a beginning. At the time I suggested that instead of being critical of speaking to the choir, \u201cWe should work to expand the choir, build connections with other choirs, welcome different voices in our own, and allow for differences since dissonance is a powerful part of music.\u201d I wondered whether we can create a force that incorporates the strengths of both our differences and what we share.<\/p>\n

As we start to understand these connections and their potential power, we have to figure out how to move together with them. Cartwheels are all about movement, but backwards cartwheeling is nearly impossible. We can\u2019t go back. We need new ways to understand where we are and, as importantly, we need to imagine how we want to move and where we want to go.<\/p>\n

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References
\n<\/strong>(a few links are videos, most are not)<\/p>\n

\u201cPollyanna?<\/a>\u201d
\n\u201cWhat should a concerned citizen do? November 15, 2016<\/a>\u201d
\n\u201cSo many ideas, so much to do \u2013 what\u2019s next?<\/a>\u201d
\n\u201cWhat\u2019s my piece of the puzzle? Is resistance enough?<\/a>\u201d
\n\u201cA cop shows off to a group of kids with an epic cartwheel and backflip<\/a>,\u201d ABC News, 7\/1\/18 (video)
\n\u201cCartwheeling \u2018clergyman\u2019 can\u2019t contain wedding joy<\/a>,\u201d Channel 4 News (UK), 4\/29\/11 (video)
\nGreg’s Antarctica adventures, \u201cLeading trips to Room with a\u00a0View<\/a>,\u201d by Greg Zerban, February 19, 2014
\n\u201cHow to do a double cartwheel\u201d by the Cheernastics2<\/a>” (video)
\n\u201cOlympian Gabby Douglas attempts cartwheel record<\/a>,\u201d in St. Paul, MN\u00a0 ABC News, 6\/4\/14
\n\u201cA bigger wave \u2013 a countervailing force<\/a>,\u201d Anne Focke, December 31, 2016<\/p>\n

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  Now and then in upcoming months, you\u2019ll see pieces I write tagged with the word \u201ccartwheeling.\u201d The series responds to a cluster of questions I\u2019ve struggled with since the 2016 election. As I\u2019ve puzzled over how I can best contribute in a changed and changing world, I\u2019ve written essays with questions as titles: \u201cWhat…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-after-the-2016-election","category-the-commons-civil-society"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7pXN0-NB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3075"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3198,"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075\/revisions\/3198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}