One of My Dreams

Here's a dream of mine: I would like to make a living rehabbing vintage Airstream travel trailers. I could buy one to start, besides the one I have now, rent space to do the restorations, hire some people to help me. Eventually, I could fix and sell a couple, and keep a couple to rent out for some income, for people who want to take a weekend or a week here and there, but don't have the money to buy them, or don't have room to store them.

I have always known that I have competence in working with mechanical things. I think it is in my genes, which is kind of a pun, because my Mom's name is Gene, Imogene really, but she always was called Gene. All my life, I watched her fix things around our house, and watched her uncles fix cars and farm equipment, using all kinds of neat tools and welding equipment. Now that I am learning welding, I remember a lot about those visits to those great-uncles. My Dad would not let her have power tools. I gave her a sabre saw once for Christmas, and he gave it away. Guess what? I have all kinds of dangerous tools! My mom also told me that great-great-how many greats ancestors, husband and wife immigrants from Ireland were behind a lot of my interest in working with my hands. He was a blacksmith, she carved gravestones. In this current age of slower living, I think it feels very good to recover something of quality, bring it back into a beautiful state, and use it for slower pleasures of getting out into nature. OK, enough of the romance of hard work and restoring trailers.

I wonder if there is a warehouse near Mapleton-Fall Creek, where I can rent the space I need? I wonder if there are any skilled laborers in the neighborhood who can help me with the things I don't know yet, like electrical systems, advanced mechanics of brakes, trailer frames, axles, and wheels?

I'll need people to help me restore the warehouse, first. Roofers, HVAC to make the place humane for summer and winter extremes. I'll need security workers because the tools and trailers will have to stay in the warehouse.

I'll need a lawyer to help me with the business legalities, and an accountant to help with the business plan. I'll need a loan to buy the warehouse and fix it up, hire and pay the people, buy some health insurance for everyone.

Eventually, I would like to work my way out of the job, sell it to someone in the neighborhood who can keep it going. It could also become something else, someone else's dream.

While I own this business, the standards would conform to and exceed those of the original Airstream dream. I will bring in experts and DIY enthusiasts as consultants for updating our practices. We could generalize some training to various skills like welding, electrical systems, HVAC, small space design, engineering for trailer frames, brake systems, and the monocoque shells unique to Indy cars, Airstreams, and Avion trailers. People who take our training don't have to work for me. They can work anywhere. That's the beauty of the idea. People can train, and I can connect them with employers.

So, when can I begin? I wonder if I can get a grant for this dream?

Make Poverty History Manifesto

I read the Make Poverty History manifesto this morning. I should be thinking about how to get the Airstream ready for the family camping trip coming up in a couple of weeks, but I'm puzzling over this statement.

I don't know what our pastors are proposing, if it is not more confrontation of the powers with regard to poverty, while also finding the "appropriate" path out of poverty for our particular community.

What are my gifts and dreams? What power and influence can I leverage in my social location as a relatively wealthy and intelligent agent of change? What do those formerly known as poor have to leverage in their social location?

What do I make of Jesus' identification of the poor as blessed; of the poor as the least? What do I make of the Jesus of the Gospels, when he confronts the rich and warns them that their wealth is dangerous? Is Jesus using the poor as a prop for his political message of overturning powers? Isn't this where a lot of the guilt I have comes from, anyway? Woe to the rich, blessing to the poor? Don't we need the poor around to remind "us" of our spiritual poverty? This is cynical, I know, and I don't believe it, but something about this logic is troubling to me.

While we are changing our thinking about who the poor really are, what do we do about the rich? Where does this conversation about gifts and dreams go for the ones who are more economically comfortable? Complacency is a dangerous thing, isn't it?

Liberation theology teaches that God has a preferential option for the poor. It's easy to recognize this preference. Liberation theology teaches that the rich need to beware, that poor far outnumber the rich, and once they figure out how to organize and gain a voice, they will overpower the rich and set the accounts right and balance the economy -- by force if necessary. Liberation theology says a lot more than this, but for my thinking this morning, that's as far as I am going.

I suppose the balance of another kind is coming into focus for me today. The thinking change about what's upstream and what's downstream is percolating in my little brain today. This has to be about more than semantics and psychological reframing. Language games and mind games will get us/me nowhere.

By the way, upstream thinking comes from my time spent with the UCC. Their entire social justice process begins with thinking upstream. I found an article (p. 3-4 Scott Anderson, Exec. Dir., Wisconsin Council of Churches) that explains pretty well the approach.