Bored President

I once invested a year as Board President. Indeed, I was often a bored resident of our State Affordable Housing Coalition. My platform, to speak grandly of what was more of a healthy whim, was for safe and beautiful affordable housing Habitat is not just an optional frosting on the State's health and wellness and prosperity cake, A nurturing confection to become multiculturally accessible, co-responsively owned and managed, and filled with resident ingredients trained and experienced, invested and engaged in supporting each other's cooperative needs and hopes and polycultural faith in healthy outcomes Home-based ingredient as essential as 7-grain flour AND the warm slow-flowing rich and savory golden brown honey of an organic home-grown carrot cake. At the end of my first non-lustrous, unfrosted year of the healthy carrot, we were planning our annual conference, to include our annual meeting, the election of officers from a slate nominated by the Board of Directors. During the Board's planning meeting, We first heard from the Executive Director about the conference theme, which was to be "Housing is the Answer" [to whose privileged executive question?]. Housing is the exclusive answer to my bigger and better health and well-being cake. I undiplomatically suggested perhaps this is a monocultural answer to a nutritional question hardly any voters are asking, Which was, I further supposed, the reason we have an Affordable Housing Coalition, to gather our failing corporate wagons of besieged non-profit housing developers and their corporate survival lobbyists, who usually make about three or four or even more, times what their median income residents take in each year. I thought, instead, that affordable, responsible, and compassionate housing, cooperative environments and structures and support systems, are part of the liberating and secure health care question, issue, potential resolution, integral climate for Earth's health care, gardening and farming, and feeding, and repurposing, and recycling resident future through past EarthTribe compassion. Next we discussed our slate of more mentally healthy officers for next year. In the past, we assumed by hoary precedent that Presidents stay president until their board term expired, Then we tried to talk some other ambitious, yet already over-committed, extrovert to be our unanimously acclaimed presumably fearless and nearly flawless leader, Second in real world presence and power only to the Executive Director and, OK, maybe third, after the Financial Director. Even so, Board members present and accounted for, sitting in our wisdom busyness circle, seemed discouragingly relieved when I began this agenda item by announcing that we need to find a new President because I was clearly not hearing their politically correct answer without questions of my own health and welfare agenda. I was happy to nominate a young up and coming Latino leader from my home town at the time who was new to the Board. After the Annual Conference and Meeting, and his quasi-democratic elevation by affirmation, Off to the north side of the chandeliered ballroom, holding less than sacred space for mostly Ivy League graduates without the good sense to dim the lights and dance to The Beatles together, maybe sing "Let It Be" in multicultural harmony, The new President confided that he shares my taste for the health care giving and receiving cake and the 7-grain housing and the golden brown honey of resilient Earth cooperative residents But, does not feel it is safe or liberating to talk about that as President resident. I was his first clue; probably not his last.