Anita Fonte
July/August My Turn
Anita Fonte and Talk UP^ Tucson
Author Anita Fonte, who earned her PhD from the University of Arizona, has lived in Tucson since 1971. She has worked in community development for nearly 30 years. She writes poetry, short fiction, and essays. Her book Talk UP^ Tucson was recently published by Community Renaissance. She is also a contributor to a book of flash fiction, Writing at the Paradise Café.
Talk UP^ Tucson is a montage of local and international research on happiness and prosperity, woven together with bits and examples of the author’s personal and professional story. The book focuses primarily on the identification of community happiness and prosperity in the regional area of Tucson, Arizona, and it references perspectives of thirty-two interviews and multiple reading resources. The appendix includes a complete “how to” workbook for designing and hosting a community conversation on happiness and prosperity and other community issues.
Of Talk UP^ Tucson, Fonte says: I wrote this book because I was feeling less optimistic about living in Tucson after the 2008 shooting of Rep. Giffords and the passage of SB 1070, matched with the reality of getting into my 6th decade and wondering where my next steps would be taking me if I stayed in Tucson, if I kept living with a feeling that my life’s cup was half empty. I knew, from experiences of working with low-income nonprofit organizations over the years, that poverty issues in Tucson were hampering an improvement of quality of life for many residents. But I also knew, from working with many of these organizations and departments of local government, there was a shared desire to improve Tucson and I understood other communities similar to Tucson were facing similar challenges and moving forward. I wanted to be part of that movement forward for my community.
Excerpts from Talk UP^ Tucson
What’s up with Tucson? How can I, and others, talk up about our community of choice and create more personal and community happiness? Does community happiness affect community prosperity? Are the two concepts, the same, different? How do they relate to individual happiness and prosperity?
I came to the Talk UP^ Tucson questions motivated by personal and professional experience, personal effort and investment in the place where I live. The questions that drove the effort of Talk UP^ Tucson also came out of bubbling frustration and sorrow. These feelings emerged after the Arizona State Legislature’s passage of an anti-immigrant bill (SB 1070), and the January 8, 2011 Tucson shootings that killed six people and seriously injured former U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The Talk UP^ Tucson questions framed the starting point for my three month community happiness and prosperity exploration.
In my exploration, I was trying to discover what lifted Tucson “up” in people’s minds: happiness, prosperity, kindness or something else? What qualities of life did we believe possible to build upon for a better community, and how happy are we as individuals? The Talk UP^ Tucson questions were also influenced by many recent public meetings on a variety of community related issues.
At these meetings, I observed folks coming together and expressing anger, frustration, and grief over community changes and a sense of loss in their neighborhoods and businesses. The perspective they commonly shared was that the quality of their individual and community life in Tucson was declining: “the Tucson area is a cup half empty” was the way several long-time residents described metropolitan Tucson. After a time, listening to their personal stories which they often shared at public meetings, I began to suspect that perhaps their individual cups were also half empty and that this feeling was impacting the way they envisioned the places where they lived.
I could empathize with what I heard many of them share….
I recognized I needed to find a way forward so that I could live with more optimism in my life, my community and my world. So, I started with my own life in my exploration and expanded it to others. I didn’t set out to write a book, but I did want to create a pathway to alter my attitudes and actions and also be able to continue to contribute to my community and beyond. If this exploration could influence others toward living a more positive personal and communal life, perhaps a book would be an effective tool.
As pre-conversation background, I picked up a copy of Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project and read it in a week. I also used her online Toolkit materials so I could keep track of my happiness level every day, each month of the year. (Rubin’s The Happiness Project is a Happiness 101 text and the other recommended readings in Talk UP^ Tucson Resource List offer additional depth and diversity to the subject of happiness, abundance and prosperity)….
“’Men work together,’ I told him from the heart,
Whether they work together or apart.’”—Robert Frost,
In 2012, I started each summer day with my research readings while sitting on my front porch with my newly adopted cat, Gray. Mornings or sunset on the porch are the cooler times during summer in Tucson and the best times for connecting with others who live near me. I began to wave-with-an-intention at my neighbors as they rolled down the street in their cars on the way out of our neighborhood. I waved at them as they returned, driving at a more leisure pace. Their windows were rolled up to climate control their cars, but most of them began to wave back at me, intentionally or not. As neighbors passed by on foot and were introduced to my new cat, I made an effort to know their names and, particularly, the names of the dog walkers and their dogs each morning. Sometimes I confused Yogi’s parents with Billy’s, or Sadie’s “mommy” with a dog sitter, but mostly I got the names right.
I have lived in my neighborhood for thirteen years, but not until I began to do these regular acknowledgements to others, did I feel connected to them in a more personal way.
Community Renaissance http://www.community-renaissance.com/
Anita Fonte and Talk UP^ Tucson
Author Anita Fonte, who earned her PhD from the University of Arizona, has lived in Tucson since 1971. She has worked in community development for nearly 30 years. She writes poetry, short fiction, and essays. Her book Talk UP^ Tucson was recently published by Community Renaissance. She is also a contributor to a book of flash fiction, Writing at the Paradise Café.
Talk UP^ Tucson is a montage of local and international research on happiness and prosperity, woven together with bits and examples of the author’s personal and professional story. The book focuses primarily on the identification of community happiness and prosperity in the regional area of Tucson, Arizona, and it references perspectives of thirty-two interviews and multiple reading resources. The appendix includes a complete “how to” workbook for designing and hosting a community conversation on happiness and prosperity and other community issues.
Of Talk UP^ Tucson, Fonte says: I wrote this book because I was feeling less optimistic about living in Tucson after the 2008 shooting of Rep. Giffords and the passage of SB 1070, matched with the reality of getting into my 6th decade and wondering where my next steps would be taking me if I stayed in Tucson, if I kept living with a feeling that my life’s cup was half empty. I knew, from experiences of working with low-income nonprofit organizations over the years, that poverty issues in Tucson were hampering an improvement of quality of life for many residents. But I also knew, from working with many of these organizations and departments of local government, there was a shared desire to improve Tucson and I understood other communities similar to Tucson were facing similar challenges and moving forward. I wanted to be part of that movement forward for my community.
Excerpts from Talk UP^ Tucson
What’s up with Tucson? How can I, and others, talk up about our community of choice and create more personal and community happiness? Does community happiness affect community prosperity? Are the two concepts, the same, different? How do they relate to individual happiness and prosperity?
I came to the Talk UP^ Tucson questions motivated by personal and professional experience, personal effort and investment in the place where I live. The questions that drove the effort of Talk UP^ Tucson also came out of bubbling frustration and sorrow. These feelings emerged after the Arizona State Legislature’s passage of an anti-immigrant bill (SB 1070), and the January 8, 2011 Tucson shootings that killed six people and seriously injured former U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The Talk UP^ Tucson questions framed the starting point for my three month community happiness and prosperity exploration.
In my exploration, I was trying to discover what lifted Tucson “up” in people’s minds: happiness, prosperity, kindness or something else? What qualities of life did we believe possible to build upon for a better community, and how happy are we as individuals? The Talk UP^ Tucson questions were also influenced by many recent public meetings on a variety of community related issues.
At these meetings, I observed folks coming together and expressing anger, frustration, and grief over community changes and a sense of loss in their neighborhoods and businesses. The perspective they commonly shared was that the quality of their individual and community life in Tucson was declining: “the Tucson area is a cup half empty” was the way several long-time residents described metropolitan Tucson. After a time, listening to their personal stories which they often shared at public meetings, I began to suspect that perhaps their individual cups were also half empty and that this feeling was impacting the way they envisioned the places where they lived.
I could empathize with what I heard many of them share….
I recognized I needed to find a way forward so that I could live with more optimism in my life, my community and my world. So, I started with my own life in my exploration and expanded it to others. I didn’t set out to write a book, but I did want to create a pathway to alter my attitudes and actions and also be able to continue to contribute to my community and beyond. If this exploration could influence others toward living a more positive personal and communal life, perhaps a book would be an effective tool.
As pre-conversation background, I picked up a copy of Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project and read it in a week. I also used her online Toolkit materials so I could keep track of my happiness level every day, each month of the year. (Rubin’s The Happiness Project is a Happiness 101 text and the other recommended readings in Talk UP^ Tucson Resource List offer additional depth and diversity to the subject of happiness, abundance and prosperity)….
“’Men work together,’ I told him from the heart,
Whether they work together or apart.’”—Robert Frost,
In 2012, I started each summer day with my research readings while sitting on my front porch with my newly adopted cat, Gray. Mornings or sunset on the porch are the cooler times during summer in Tucson and the best times for connecting with others who live near me. I began to wave-with-an-intention at my neighbors as they rolled down the street in their cars on the way out of our neighborhood. I waved at them as they returned, driving at a more leisure pace. Their windows were rolled up to climate control their cars, but most of them began to wave back at me, intentionally or not. As neighbors passed by on foot and were introduced to my new cat, I made an effort to know their names and, particularly, the names of the dog walkers and their dogs each morning. Sometimes I confused Yogi’s parents with Billy’s, or Sadie’s “mommy” with a dog sitter, but mostly I got the names right.
I have lived in my neighborhood for thirteen years, but not until I began to do these regular acknowledgements to others, did I feel connected to them in a more personal way.
Community Renaissance http://www.community-renaissance.com/
