To Be Amongst Hope on New Year's

I was going to sit this one out watching the ball drop, kiss my wife and go to bed. But the urge to be with friends was too much so we'll take the train into the City and subway down to Fulton Street and eventually wind up at Zuccotti Park where, we hope, many of our friends will be.

I say "hope" because it's always chancey with OWS...sometimes it's on, sometimes not. When they want to do something big they always pull the rabbit out of the hat...like on December 5th when 30,000 walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. I think it's more about my inability to crack the code of communication. When an OWS member stayed us with over Christmas her cell phone went off all night. Later she told me that she had forgotten to turn off the "commo blitz." (?) See what I mean? Different generation, different means of connection. Which makes a person like me a perpetual student of information.

But they aren't so foreign or advanced that they aren't open to some feedback from me. One time I worried with them how they had settled an internal dispute too abruptly. Rather than ignore it they stopped business and addressed it then and there. Later, a leader expressed his concern that he might have inadvertently brought the "ways of the world" (my expression) into the avowedly gentle atmosphere of OWS. He was really distressed and we talked.

You see this is the kind of transparent group of people I'd like to be around when 2012 arrives. I'll take it that I bring your presence there too.