Sarah Wong

The bulk of Bowling Alone traces the decline of American social capital through a web of contributing factors, looking for the largest culprits. Putnam identifies these as generational change, pressures of time and money, television, and sprawl. Each of these are key explanations, but they don’t capture the full complexity of this decline.

Permissioning based on precedents (like case law)

• Every space starts with basic template of rules which are iterated thereafter


• Everything is allowed (within legal limits) until something happens to change the rules


• Templates need to be updated regularly (time limited templates)

Kossoff’s Domains of Everyday Life framework is a systems/holistic approach for doing this.. The Domains framework places an emphasis on everyday life as the context within which people satisfy their needs and therefore the context within which future visions are developed.

a community group that is place-based and in-person, serves a specific population (veterans, service members, and their families), and offers a specific set of activities (the arts, broadly defined)

Seek to discover common interests and areas of agreement by focusing more on why than what, more on personal experiences than positions.

There is no quicker way to end a conversation or escalate to conflict than to start spouting facts. In general, facts should not be your first line of defense, even if they are your initial go-to. Research shows... See more

A folk example of helpfulness in the parochial realm is the famous “cup of sugar” that good neighbors supposedly can, but rarely do, borrow from another. Nevertheless, the “cup of sugar” is a symbol for any kind of assistance that does not cost the giver much yet may mean a lot to the receiver because of a particular situa-tional constraint. Actual... See more

We replaced attending to the proximate and tangible with attending to the distant and abstract. And we replaced engaging with our rich local cultures, instead engaging with the monoculture of consumerism.