Monday with Marley

August 4, 2008  





S.A.D.D.  
Subdivision: the American Dream Disease.  
 
Please allow me to diagnose S.A.D.D. in each of your lives. I invite you to respond to any or all of the following statements. Just click on my email and thereon paste a copy of your responses. marley@livingarchitecture.com.                                                        
 
                                                 SURE    SORT OF     NO WAY
1.    While driving home in my
         air-conditioned car, I feel
         connected and intimate with
         drivers in other cars.        
                        COMMENT:
2.    As I approach home, I wave 
         to neighbors who are sitting on
         porches or walking along 
         the sidewalk.        
                        COMMENT:
3.    I push a button. The garage
        door opens. I pull in. I walk
        through the laundry room to
        the kitchen. Home.        
                         COMMENT:
4.    I pour a cool drink and go
         out on the porch to wave
         to other neighbors on their
         way home from work.            
                          COMMENT:
5.    My home is my castle,
         my sanctuary.  I feel it
         protect and wrap about
         me like a mother or a lover.            
                          COMMENT:
6.    It feels good to know my
         home looks just like every
         other home on our
         street, it doesn't stick out.            
                          COMMENT:
7.    I love to work in my garden
         at the back of my house.  
         The garden shed, against
         the garage, is perfect.        
                          COMMENT:
8.    I relax on my back porch.
         I rest in my hammock
         between large trees.  I enjoy
         inside-out and outside-in.        
                          COMMENT:
9.    I don't mind at all the city
         and county taxes I pay each
         month.  I feel happy
         to do my part.  
                           COMMENT:
10.   I love having such a
          big house, with large power
          bills and high maintenance.        
                           COMMENT:  
 
An attorney might suggest to a judge that these statements "are leading the witness, your honor" and the attorney would be right. I am leading you, I hope,with intention, to an understanding that the status quo simply isn't OK anymore.  
If I'm right in the diagnosis of S.A.D.D. in America, the prognosis is even more sobering: The American Dream of owning your own home on your own property where you have the right to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is eroding into nothing more than a romantic paperback novel poorly written. Like a Victorian romance novel, the brittle plot of The American Dream is old and yellowed and out of touch.   
But The Dream is not dead! Not yet, anyway.  
A gifted doctor friend, Ann and her friend, also a healer, Tim, commented that somebody they had just seen was cronically deficient in Vitamen D, that all this person needed was 20 minutes in the sun each morning to protect himself from many potential diseases, just a little sunshine.  
From the beginning of time, humankind has formed community. Community is the Village of homes. Community is That about which everthing else spins. Community is the Reason for Being. Community is the Vitamen D, the sunshine in the morning of living.  
 
Community is the cure for S.A.D.D.
and in this class, September 19th and 20th at the American Small Business Institute next to the campus of Wizard Academy, you will be given the Keys to Community Making.  
Those lenders, developers, builders, planners and architects intelligent enough to register will discover how the Keys to Community Making can generate incredible revenues even in a down market, can set them apart from the status quo and might just make them feel good about things, you know, way down deep inside good about things.  The American Dream.    
 
Looking forward to seeing you there.


Marley Porter