"One Bag" Theory for changing the world!
In 2011, my wife and I took a three week trip throughout Europe and visited some long time German friends. It was an eye-opening trip as we saw things we did not remember being so common place in our earlier visits.
During 1972-1974, I lived in Denmark and traveled throughout the country. In October, 1974, I returned to the US via Switzerland and the UK. I was enamored by the countrysides, the people and the reputed cleanliness of the places I lived and visited.
As luck would have it, in 1980, I took a job with a firm that had me traveling the world and I was fortunate enough to spend nearly 6 weeks in Europe. The "Wall" was still up so my travels entailed the whole of Western Europe and Scandinavia. The cities and towns and countryside were, as I had remembered, beautiful and shopkeepers appeared to take pride in keeping their stores very clean and tidy. I still see an older woman, in the Netherlands, bending over a well used broom/brush implement and scrubbing vigorously on the front stoop of her small store. She was representative of the shopkeepers throughout Europe as I traveled. These industrious folks were up early and stayed late. I loved the experience and wanted to return as often as possible. This is not to say that were not sketchy areas in the larger cities and some countries were a bit dicier than the rest. I recal Piccadilly Circus eing the place in which I felt the least secure. Walking through the railway neighborhood of Stuttgart left me a bit anxious but on the whole, I would walk for miles in any country and any time of the day or night and felt safe and it appeared that the locals took pride in their surroundings.
It was this memory and positive impressions that prompted me to offer Paris to my wife as the site of our honeymoon, in 1994. We spent 10 days in the artist district, she is an artist and it felt this would be the appropriate place to inspire her if she elected to paint. Dicey, indeed; our hotel was a haven against the neighborhood of strip clubs, noisy night clubs and the like. We are not prudes and appreciated the unique ambience of the area but found that the imposing Sacre'-Coeur Cathedral had been plagued with graffiti and various forms of defacement. We took a tour of the Versailles Palace and found visitors' names etched in the woodwork and on many of the statues, inside the palace. As we strolled the palace and the grounds I was reminded of my trip to the Vatican and watching a young couple etch their names in the soles of Peter's statue. It seemed the "romantic" language regions had begun defacing their heritage at an alarming rate. I held out lots of hope for the rest of Europe.
Fast forward to 2005. We returned to Germany to visit friends and found that it had remained relatively unchanged. Our friends own a butcher shop that has been in their family for nearly 200 years. They live in a little backwater, bedroom community to Cologne/Koeln. We enjoyed our outings and walk-abouts in their town. It seemed much like I remembered the small towns and villages during my earlier visits. Our connection to this family was through their son who had spent 2 summers in our home. I would drive into Koeln with the father, on his early morning rounds of deliveries and purchases. Koeln had a more edgy appearance as there were signs of graffiti and some of the industrial areas were not as well treated as I remembered from 25 years earlier. I assumed it was just a big city thing and happily returned to the small town and drove the AutoBahn to see idyllic farm communities from which our ancestors immigrated to the US.
We returned to this same small town,, in 2011, as mentioned earlier. The people were still friendly and we still enjoyed ourselves. What was different was that the entire side of the our friends' shop had been grafittied and the town was showing signs of tagging. As we travelled through Scandinavia, a bastion for cleanliness in the '70's and '80's, we found graffiti in cities large and small. It was this new reality that prompted us to create the idea of "one bag".
While in Germany, we spoke with our "German Son" about the tagging that was obvious in his hometown. We asked why it was allowed to remain and he said that it was just the way things were now and that no one had the desire to fix it. The problem was bigger than one person and so why fight it. The community might address it but it would take time, meetings and money before a program could be hashed out to fix the results of tagging.
We asked him what he thought one person might do to make a difference. He remembered the media highlighting Rudy Giulianni and his idea that if you fixed the broken window and removed the graffiti immediately that it would change a neighborhood. In our discussion we asked him if one person on every block picked up one bag of trash could that have an affect on the neighborhood. As he thought about it he realized that one person could have an impact. We challenged him to think about how he could change the world, one-bag-at-a-time.
During our travels, we picked up trash and tried to leave each place we visited in better shape than we found it. When we got back to our friends' home, we bought some nail polish remover and some cotton wipes women use to clean off makeup and nail polish and spent the day walking through town attacking the various tags we found. We started with our friends' wall and then walked along the main walking street. Townspeople watched these two strange Americans removing graffiti from walls and pillars and windows. We took plastic bags and collected debris and garbage from an abandoned parking lot, just above the main shopping area. It was very empowering to us and left an impression on the residents. A little girl, probably 4 or 5 watched us clean off paint from a pillar and then looked her mother and said, "Sauber ist besser"; clean is better. We can only hope the message got through.
This has changed how we look at our lives and purpose. Whenever we are out and see shopping carts lazily deposited in the middle of the parking lot, or trash dropped inches from the garbage can, we step in to make a difference, at least in that place at that moment. We challenge everyone, everywhere to make a difference and join the "One Bag" army. It is like the young man throwing sea stars back into the ocean; you may not save them all but at that time and in that place you make a difference to that one sea star. Make a difference.
During 1972-1974, I lived in Denmark and traveled throughout the country. In October, 1974, I returned to the US via Switzerland and the UK. I was enamored by the countrysides, the people and the reputed cleanliness of the places I lived and visited.
As luck would have it, in 1980, I took a job with a firm that had me traveling the world and I was fortunate enough to spend nearly 6 weeks in Europe. The "Wall" was still up so my travels entailed the whole of Western Europe and Scandinavia. The cities and towns and countryside were, as I had remembered, beautiful and shopkeepers appeared to take pride in keeping their stores very clean and tidy. I still see an older woman, in the Netherlands, bending over a well used broom/brush implement and scrubbing vigorously on the front stoop of her small store. She was representative of the shopkeepers throughout Europe as I traveled. These industrious folks were up early and stayed late. I loved the experience and wanted to return as often as possible. This is not to say that were not sketchy areas in the larger cities and some countries were a bit dicier than the rest. I recal Piccadilly Circus eing the place in which I felt the least secure. Walking through the railway neighborhood of Stuttgart left me a bit anxious but on the whole, I would walk for miles in any country and any time of the day or night and felt safe and it appeared that the locals took pride in their surroundings.
It was this memory and positive impressions that prompted me to offer Paris to my wife as the site of our honeymoon, in 1994. We spent 10 days in the artist district, she is an artist and it felt this would be the appropriate place to inspire her if she elected to paint. Dicey, indeed; our hotel was a haven against the neighborhood of strip clubs, noisy night clubs and the like. We are not prudes and appreciated the unique ambience of the area but found that the imposing Sacre'-Coeur Cathedral had been plagued with graffiti and various forms of defacement. We took a tour of the Versailles Palace and found visitors' names etched in the woodwork and on many of the statues, inside the palace. As we strolled the palace and the grounds I was reminded of my trip to the Vatican and watching a young couple etch their names in the soles of Peter's statue. It seemed the "romantic" language regions had begun defacing their heritage at an alarming rate. I held out lots of hope for the rest of Europe.
Fast forward to 2005. We returned to Germany to visit friends and found that it had remained relatively unchanged. Our friends own a butcher shop that has been in their family for nearly 200 years. They live in a little backwater, bedroom community to Cologne/Koeln. We enjoyed our outings and walk-abouts in their town. It seemed much like I remembered the small towns and villages during my earlier visits. Our connection to this family was through their son who had spent 2 summers in our home. I would drive into Koeln with the father, on his early morning rounds of deliveries and purchases. Koeln had a more edgy appearance as there were signs of graffiti and some of the industrial areas were not as well treated as I remembered from 25 years earlier. I assumed it was just a big city thing and happily returned to the small town and drove the AutoBahn to see idyllic farm communities from which our ancestors immigrated to the US.
We returned to this same small town,, in 2011, as mentioned earlier. The people were still friendly and we still enjoyed ourselves. What was different was that the entire side of the our friends' shop had been grafittied and the town was showing signs of tagging. As we travelled through Scandinavia, a bastion for cleanliness in the '70's and '80's, we found graffiti in cities large and small. It was this new reality that prompted us to create the idea of "one bag".
While in Germany, we spoke with our "German Son" about the tagging that was obvious in his hometown. We asked why it was allowed to remain and he said that it was just the way things were now and that no one had the desire to fix it. The problem was bigger than one person and so why fight it. The community might address it but it would take time, meetings and money before a program could be hashed out to fix the results of tagging.
We asked him what he thought one person might do to make a difference. He remembered the media highlighting Rudy Giulianni and his idea that if you fixed the broken window and removed the graffiti immediately that it would change a neighborhood. In our discussion we asked him if one person on every block picked up one bag of trash could that have an affect on the neighborhood. As he thought about it he realized that one person could have an impact. We challenged him to think about how he could change the world, one-bag-at-a-time.
During our travels, we picked up trash and tried to leave each place we visited in better shape than we found it. When we got back to our friends' home, we bought some nail polish remover and some cotton wipes women use to clean off makeup and nail polish and spent the day walking through town attacking the various tags we found. We started with our friends' wall and then walked along the main walking street. Townspeople watched these two strange Americans removing graffiti from walls and pillars and windows. We took plastic bags and collected debris and garbage from an abandoned parking lot, just above the main shopping area. It was very empowering to us and left an impression on the residents. A little girl, probably 4 or 5 watched us clean off paint from a pillar and then looked her mother and said, "Sauber ist besser"; clean is better. We can only hope the message got through.
This has changed how we look at our lives and purpose. Whenever we are out and see shopping carts lazily deposited in the middle of the parking lot, or trash dropped inches from the garbage can, we step in to make a difference, at least in that place at that moment. We challenge everyone, everywhere to make a difference and join the "One Bag" army. It is like the young man throwing sea stars back into the ocean; you may not save them all but at that time and in that place you make a difference to that one sea star. Make a difference.