THAT was special.
We all felt it.
Our 37th banner was the first (that I can remember, anyway) where we weren’t protesting anything.
We were promoting, we were celebrating. The 56th anniversary of Earth Day. Our sun. Our Ocean Beach. A perfect windless morning. The low lulling roar of the Pacific. The sand squishing under our shoes — beneath some bare feet, too, plus many paw pads. The possibility of a renewable energy future. The notion that we truly are one big human family on this small planet, all of us in this thing together.
There was music, there was singing, lots of old friends, lots of new ones.
Our image came off as we’d imagined and as we’d designed it — with, of course, the usual human flourishes and imperfections...
We were singing “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…” and about to call it a day, when drone pilot Jack Morris “called an audible.”
He suggested a crowd “trick” we'd never considered before, and within minutes our totally willing crowd pulled it off flawlessly. In a single take!
Turn your sound on for this 28-second YouTube.
Every person I’ve talked to who has seen that video has loved it.
Thank you so very much to everyone who came.
I will never forget this one.
So much more to say, but for right now I’ll leave it at that.
Warmly,
Brad, for myself and co-organizer Travis Van Brasch
Plus the whole team at human banner-SF.com
And the 35-40 volunteers who showed up early yesterday morning to make that special day happen.
[ Travis, Bill, Annie, Brahna, Sally, Jenny, Brad - in front of our new baby, the sunflower-yellow tarp in the background ]
PS — Well, maybe I won’t leave it at that…
Friday, just two days ago, was a pretty special day, too.
For 10 days, Travis and I and the whole team had been looking forward to the delivery of a hard-to-find sunflower-yellow tarp (40 feet by 40 feet), due to arrive on a truck from Los Angeles in “a few days.”
We scheduled a tarp-cutting workday for 9:00 am on Thursday, two mornings before the event.
When Monday (five days before the event date) passed with no tarp delivery, I was…nervous. The whole premise of the event revolved around that magnificent tarp… We had — I had — no backup plan.
Tuesday, we were told the tarp was "on the truck" and would be delivered Wednesday.
We pushed our tarp cutting party back to 9:00 am Friday — you know, just in case.
On Wednesday we were told it would be delivered on Thursday.
Gallows humor set in: “You know that zen koan, ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?' Well, what is the sound of a tarp-cutting party with no tarp?”
Thursday noon, no tarp.
At 5:00 pm on Thursday, a message: “It’ll be delivered Friday.” No time specified.
My only backup plan was to take some of our large blue tarps from past events, paint them yellow, tape them together, but it was a fanciful moonshot-total-mess of plan… The only other godawful option: Cancel?
Let me just say that the lead-up to this event, which has now turned out so beautifully, was one of the most excruciating stretches of my life.
Then, at 5:30 pm on Thursday, half an hour into my deepest anxiety, I answered a call from an 18-year veteran banner teammate, Frank McLain.
Frank, a construction professional, was not going to be able to join us for this event, but had a different thing he wanted to discuss with me.
When we’d finished, Frank asked, in what sounded like an afterthought: “Say, did you guys ever get that tarp?”
No, I said, and started in on my sad story.
While I whined, Frank opened his computer, and before long, he interrupted me:
“I see that the website for Truitt and White Lumber in Berkeley shows they have one on their shelf. Whether they actually have it or not, who knows? But they closed at five o'clock. They open at six tomorrow morning.”
I called Truitt and White — you know, just in case. “We are closed now..."
At 6:00 am on Friday morning, I was waiting outside their gate.
Friday's 9:00 am tarp cutting party was a noisy, spirited affair, with all hands clapping, a Happy Birthday sung to Brahna, birthday muffins included:
At yesterday's “Energy From Heaven” I saw lots of very very happy people, but none could possibly have been happier than yours truly (above, yesterday), eating one of Lynn Samuel’s delicious "Death By Chocolate" cookies on yet another perfect (and perfectly relaxed) morning at Stairwell 17, Ocean Beach, San Francisco.
All for now (again!) — And again, thank you for all your interest, support, attendance — past, present, future.
Warmly,
Brad Newsham, Travis and the whole Human Banner-SF Team
humanbanner-sf.com
PS — This afternoon Travis told me that shortly after he went to bed last night (Saturday night, some ten hours after the conclusion of “Energy From Heaven”) a flatbed truck backed up to his house — beeep, beeep, beeep, beeep, beeep — and left on his doorstep a yellow tarp — forty feet by forty feet — that we’d been desperately waiting for, for ten days. Now we have two!
So sorry I had to miss this one, it looks amazing! Looking forward to whatever comes next. I think the next one should say “86 47”!