Monthly Conversations

Interviews with Social Artists, Uncommon Heroes

January 5, 2012

From the Editor

Richard Whittaker

Welcome to newsletter issue #22. It's possible that one could get inspired by reading some of these stories. We'll start with Taya Doro Mitchell. She's one of those exceptions that the word 'exceptional' was made for. When I first heard about Taya in 2008 I made a beeline in her direction. I knew she was someone I had to interview. [more]

More Conversations

• The Journey of Awakening: Conversation with Mark Nepo
• Juan Rodriguez: I Was A Gallery Guard at the Met
• Americ Azevedo talks to his meditation class at UCB

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John Chambers: You Bloom, We Bloom

BloomBars: 'This gets people because they think they're coming to a bar and I never say we're not a bar. I don't think you have to serve alcohol and if you came here thinking that, I want you to feel like you were served something else. I want you to consider looking at that, at the value of what you get, at what the offering is. The idea was to have multiple bars that served books, vegan foods, and even causes; a 'cause' bar that served different organizations every week. It was all about serving things that were feeding your soul in different ways.'

Following Taya

Taya Doro Mitchell is unusual. What readers won't know is that, at the age of 74, Taya left East Oakland and moved to a small agricultural community on the Rio Grande in New Mexico. It wasn't that Taya was tired of her practice of decorating the new bullet holes in her windows from nighttime activities in her neighborhood. She had lived there a long time and wasn't afraid, she told me, even coming home late at night--which was typical. And she was content with solitude, she assured me. So begins an amazing story.