Category: Uncategorized

By Grace Maselli

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a panoply of human experience at our Sunday, December 2 Show & Tell. And the naked truth is we had a ton of fun and some tears, too. Just under 20 TBT members and friends brought their wonderful Show & Tell items and regaled us with stories from Africa, Brazil, Russia, and Wesley Chapel, Florida. We sat in a giant circle with our bellies full of star fruit and eggplant, hummus and crab salad garnished with garden fresh greens to hear about favorite nanas and one-of-a-kind aunties who never had children of their own; one tale was of a beautiful ring with a light blue topaz stone and diamond chips selected by a very young son and paid for by a now-deceased but deeply cherished former husband. The ring is so precious to the owner that she passed it around by walking from participant to participant with the topaz still on her hand to avoid risk of loss. Now that’s an attachment!

Here are some quick additional highlights, a sampling in no particular order, of the other expressive, stirring goodies our generous participants brought to share, along with a table full of equally soulful potluckery:

• A genuine rubbing from Shakespeare’s tombstone in Stratford-upon-Avon, England;
• A 50-year-old Brazilian medicine-woman-and-midwife doll, from a country where our member lived as a child;
• A painting of Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev (sans birthmark) brought back from a member’s trip to Saint Petersburg, Russia, along with a mysterious piece of (we think) bone with holes in it found in a Virginia river. Consensus is it may be a musical instrument;
• Medical “handcuffs” from before the time of anesthesia (Yes, wincing is acceptable…);
• A cherished brooch from a beautiful aunt;
• An acrylic painting, a member artist’s rendering in lush colors of her backyard and the synchronicity story of how her house found her;
• Two pieces of vivid, hand-hewn glassware;
• A money plant shared between cousins;
• A handmade necklace made of silver and Tanzanite, with the stone found in Africa by the jewelry maker herself;
• A slender, sculptural statue of Mary, a revered object cherished by our participant’s mother, and now, her adult daughter;
• A homemade Buddhist altar complete with gemstones, Italianate glass, and paper birds.

What, dear reader, would you have brought to the TBT Show & Tell? Any other comments? Don’t be shy, leave a reply below!

By Grace Maselli

Reminder: It’s Show & Tell potluck time! Bring us your quirky and nostalgic—your cornball and wistful. We welcome it all!

Date	Sunday, December 2, 2018
Time	3 to 6 PM
Address	2128 Park Crescent Drive Land O Lakes, FL 34639
Questions?	Give Grace a shout-out at 215.834.4567

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Show & Tell potluck comes straight out of the pantheon of classroom classics. But the one on December 2 is for big kids. So whether you want to bring the rutabaga you grew from seed, a lace doily tatted lovingly from scratch, miniature doll furniture made of walnut shells and tree sap, or the photo of Clark Gable’s Cadillac you snagged at the Clark Gable Birthplace Museum in Cadiz, OH, then cool! Come to Show & Tell and share memories, dreams, losses, and gains. Tell us why you picked what you picked. What about  it speaks to you? We want to know. Because no matter your age, connecting, communicating, sharing ideas and objects—can pique curiosity, give license to expression, and open doors to audience interests. Bring some grub and a friend too who may be interested in learning more about timebanking as we move into the future with our TBT revitalization efforts.

By Grace Maselli

 

Our early bird potluck meal and membership meeting on Tuesday, November 20 rocked the house. Or just as aptly, filled Tampa’s  Life Enrichment Center where we meet every third Tuesday of the month with a razzle dazzle of Thanksgiving food and conversation. Idea sharing encompassed core timebank concepts including the belief that people are our greatest assets, and that we’re here to help one another by offering services we’re drawn to provide because they bring a sense of efficacy and joy. And all without an exchange of wampum. Of course, center stage was turkey, accompanied by mashed this and that, salads, veggies, and broccoli and cheddar scrumptiousness, along with pie, pie, pie.

Florida Factoids

According to some historians and Thanksgiving aficionados, Plymouth, MA in 1621 was not where the first celebratory meal was shared between colonists and Wampanoag Indians. Rather, roll it back by an approximate half century to 1565 when a boat load of Spaniards came ashore to Florida’s very own St. Augustine where the Europeans broke bread with the native Timucuan people.

You can also forget the bird 450+ years ago. The History Channel says what was served up “lacked most of today’s typical Thanksgiving dishes, but it did feature a traditional post-Thanksgiving staple—leftovers. Unlike the Pilgrims, who served food freshly harvested from American soil, the Spanish were forced to make do with whatever provisions survived the long voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. According to Robyn Gioia, author of the children’s book America’s REAL First Thanksgiving, the European colonists likely ate hard biscuits and cocido—a rich garbanzo stew made with pork, garlic, saffron, cabbage and onion—washed down with red wine.” Delicioso!

 

By Grace Maselli

Join us for a member meal and gratitude. TBT is celebrating appreciation and membership on Tuesday, November 20th at our Third Tuesday of the Month gathering at Tampa’s Life Enrichment Center (LEC). In the spirit of sharing, this November we’re having an early Thanksgiving potluck, complete with all-natural turkey from Sprouts Farmers Market to proclaim our gratitude for life, love, chocolate bonbons, and thoughts of A People’s History of the United States remembered at the collective table. Friends welcome!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our happiness extends to joyous circumstances that mean we’ll have more soulful stuff to chew on than Charlie Chaplin’s Thanksgiving boot. Join the potluck sans boiled footwear, share your favorite holiday dish and an impromptu tale about amusing Thanksgivings Past, and let’s offer special thanks to timebanking! You can check out our Tampa Bay Time Bank Flyer too for a handy reminder of our Third Tuesday activities.

Date	Tuesday, November 20, 2018
Time	6:30-8:30 PM
Address	9704 North Boulevard, Tampa, FL 33612; phone: 813.932.0241.
Questions?	Contact coordinator@tampabaytime.org or call (215) 834-4567 and reference our Thanksgiving potluck at LEC

 

 

 

 

By Grace Maselli

The eagle has landed, dear readers. Today TBT took a giant leap forward in support of our growth, momentum, resurgence, and reawakening, or what we like to call, “The TBT Revitalization Project.” Today, at the groovy Kaleisia Tea Lounge in Tampa, the venerable “Whole System Team,” complete with veteran players, consultants, and would-be new team mates, met to put their collective heads together, nosh on spring rolls, and throw back cups of iced orange Creamsicle tea. Wide-ranging discussion included improved communications and an expanded advisory group. On the docket are methods to recruit new members and how to expand working together with community partners, among other examples of expansive and inclusive thinking. In other words, big doings as we shoot for the moon.

Stay tuned for progress reports. Meanwhile, the Whole System Team will be revamping, rejiggering, re-arranging. You get the idea. And speaking of ideas, don’t hesitate to throw your two cents in. All member thoughts most welcome. Contact coordinator@tampabaytime.org or drop us a line on Facebook. 

 

 

By Grace Maselli

 

The happiness factor. Immediately below the surface of the timebanking philosophy is where the happiness factor lives. Briefly, the philosophy is underpinned by a belief that “wealth” is intrinsic to the economy’s people who have innate worth and dignity. The basic piece of the happiness factor is that giving to others—through interaction and proximity, having  ties and tethers and face-time in the dimensional (non-virtual screen-focused) world with other human beings, contributes to their peace of mind and optimism and other people’s, givers’, own well-being.

The timebank philosophy expands this notion of unconventional wealth by assigning value to everything we do as humanoids: provide emotional support, caregive, check in on our neighbors. Happiness can be derived through the timebank’s system of services exchange that goes beyond cash-ola, and which might include hours earned for giving someone who needs it a ride to a doctor’s appointment. Or bringing a person chicken soup. Let your skill set and imagination be the guide, the philosophy elicits!

YES! magazine provides data points. “One person’s happiness triggers a three-degree chain reaction that benefits not only their friends, but their neighbors’ friends and their friends’ neighbors’ friends.” The article goes on to given percentages of happiness increases by categories linked to interaction and proximity as it relates to happy people:

Being near one happy person increases happiness for:

Neighbor	Spouse	Sibling living within a mile	Friend living within a mile
34%	8%	14%	25%

In other words, prosperity in the land of timebanking is directly correlated with support for each other. Being seen and heard and helped builds our reservoir of collective good and puts a smile on the doer’s and the receiver’s face. Yippee! According to YES! magazine, it’s official, “Giving to others increases our own happiness.” And it has an exponentially positive effect…

By Grace Maselli

A shout out to the Spring Hill, FL timebank! Spearheaded by member Dr. Andy LePage, the newly formed timebank in Hernando County’s Spring Hill is off to a rousing start. You can check out their new website right here. In typical Andy-style community organizing, he rallied the timebank troops from St. Peterburg’s and Tampa, luring peeps with food (including lots of desserts!) at the Sunday, October 14 potluck at his house in Spring Hill. Timebank experts B.J. Andryusky and Donna Terrence from St. Pete’s timebank, and Rita Cobbs and Nancy Wolf from TBT, hitched rides and headed northward to Andy’s to “hammer out a lot of ways the three timebanks can work together,” notes the host. “We here in Spring Hill are so fortunate to have B.J., Donna, Rita, and Nancy hold our hands as we venture around websites and learn to use the great strengths of our Spring Hill people,” he adds.

Yard Sale-aroonie

The Spring Hill timebank is hosting a yard sale. Can you say super fun? Here’s what the crew tells us about the details: “We have great items,” and lots of ’em, “especially Christmas ornaments, Christmas lights, and Christmas figurines. Bring your friends!” You read it here. Prepare to get good stuff.

Date	Saturday, November 3, 2018
Time	8 AM to 2 PM
Address	Diana’s house… 10506 Maderia Street Spring Hill, FL 34608 (A few blocks north of Spring Hill Drive; two blocks west of Mariner Boulevard)
Questions?	Call Andy at (727) 517-1148

 

 

 

 

 

By Grace Maselli

Whoopee, we did it! A friendly bunch of TBT members and friends kicked off the inaugural third-Tuesday-of-every-month TBT orientation and community gathering at Tampa’s Life Enrichment Center (LEC). Our Third Tuesdays are part of TBT’s revitalization initiative to dispatch our efforts further into the community by way of a metaphoric human cannonball! (It should be noted, dear reader, that the first person to be sprung thusly from a cannon was 14-year-old Rossa Matilda Richter in 1877 at London’s Royal Aquarium.)

Time and Repartee

Natural light and shared food (Read: potluck!) for attendees who gathered on Tuesday, October 16 made the welcoming LEC space even more receptive to talk on timebanking, invoking broad discussions, including those in response to showings of two videos as part of the education and togetherness vibe. One video is from the timebank in Central Vermont where approximately 1,000 services are offered covering everything from iPhone tutoring and aromatherapy to weatherization, taro card interpretations, cake baking, and reading to persons who are sight impaired. A link to the second video shown is available further below in this post. The October 16 repartee extended to the idea of community connection that time-and-service exchanges can bring—the warm and fuzzy polar opposite of social isolation.

A Wedding—from Soup to Nuts

Demonstrating the power of timebanking, one Central Vermont member had an ENTIRE wedding brought to life (dress, venue, flowers, minister, music, and maybe some Italian Wedding Soup and nuts to nosh on)  thanks to our timebank cousin in the northeast! Now that’s something to write home about. TBT is thankful to LEC Executive Director Maureen Murphy who has generously opened LEC’s doors to us the third Tuesday of each month for orientations, ever-wonderful community potlucks and social events. LEC is “a private, non-profit organization whose mission is for students to fulfill their lifelong creative potential through the ageless engagement of the arts.” Their address is 9704 North Boulevard, Tampa, FL 33612; phone: 813.932.0241. You can also check out our Tampa Bay Timebank-LEC Flyer right here!

By Grace Maselli

Here’s a friendly reminder and re-post that our inaugural 2018 third-Tuesday-of-the-month TBT event is less  than a week away. We welcome each and every one of our members!

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Beginning Tuesday, October 16 from 6:30-8:30 PM, TBT will meet every third Tuesday of the month at Tampa’s Life Enrichment Center (LEC), “a private, non-profit organization whose mission is for students to fulfill their lifelong creative potential through the ageless engagement of the arts.” Yay! The venerable organization has been in the business of art since 1980—38 years large! LEC Executive Director Maureen Murphy heads LEC, a long-time TBT organizational member that, under Maureen’s direction, has generously opened its doors to us the third Tuesday of each month for social events, orientations and ever-wonderful community potlucks.

Also in their own words: “The LEC is an innovative arts education center for adults, operating in North Tampa’s Forest Hills neighborhood since 1980. It is one of only a few centers across the country focused on redefining and reshaping retirement and the experience of aging. Its cultural arts program has received national and international recognition and serves as a model of a successful community-based organization, serving adults primarily 50+.” There’s a bundle of classes offered—more than 25 to choose from every week that interested TBT members can avail themselves of. Double yay! Among the gems: creative writing, drawing, pastels, oil/acrylics, watercolor, bead weaving, Tai Chi, yoga, Mahjong, and bridge. LEC’s address is 9704 North Boulevard, Tampa, FL 33612; phone: 813.932.0241.