You are Invited!

The Bead People kindly request your presence at the making of a new world where people celebrate their differences instead of fighting over them. To attend this event, you are asked to check your coat and the following items at the door. Guns, knives, and fists Generational mistrust or pain The closed off heart Any righteousness Your small child view of the world We look forward to seeing you at this special event--it may take a decade or two. Black tie not required. Politicians may attend if they comply to the above requests.

To accept this invitation please visit www.thebeadpeople.org and register on our site. Send this to ten people in the next 24 hours. Nothing special will happen to you, but it will make you smile for maybe ten seconds. You do not need to reply to this email.

Sincerely, The Bead People International, Inc. 

 PS Pay no attention to Jamie Lee. She is just the person behind the curtain 
or visit her blog at www.jamieleeonline.com for more ideas on creating the life you want.

A while ago I had an email from a nice woman, Julie Roberts, who also believes that art and creativity are the path to peace.  She is a big thinker, like me, who is audacious and outrageous enough to believe that the simple actions of ordinary people can create peace in the world.  Her site, One World Art, invites contributors to come and hang out together.   Although she just launched it, it is already filled with interesting people doing interesting things. 

I know there must be more of us who are foolish enough to believe we have something to contribute.  I think I will start a viral message today that says “The Bead People kindly request that you lay down your guns, your jealousy and anger, and that you open your wounded heart again so that it can fill with the one thing that really matters—love.”

Love is not item or action.  Love is not even emotion.  Love is the energy that fills the spirit, drives creation, connects one lonely soul to another and, most importantly, makes you feel like smiling again.  Say these words or something like them to one other person today . . . . 

I love you because of your laughter. 

I love how you are different from me

and I love how you are the same. 

I love the way your hair sits on your head and

that funny way you have of bending your neck when  you are confused. 

I love the way you encourage me

and I love the way you piss me off in such a way that gets me moving again. 

Love is creative—it likes to bring fresh new things into being

It sees a new view on an old canvas. 

Love feeds the spirit.  Love feeds. 

If you get a call to peace in your email, pass it on.  

I was so saddened by one more school in Omaha, NE in January.  I can’t help but think that if that young man could have found the creative center of his spirit, where thing are allowed to flower and grow, he would not have needed a gun.  Although on the visible level, our little Bead People Peace Project is mostly a “cute” little project, I actually believe that there are many levels beneath the obvious.  The Bead People do the following:

• They carry a message of sweet acceptance of others—the energy of support and celebration
  
• While building a Bead Person, the builder is automatically led by his or her creative spirit into an experience of peace.
• When we do a Bead People project, we naturally foster and nourish a moment of coming together, creating something fun and cool, generating conversation, and admiring one another’s efforts.  This IS community and collaboration.
  

You see, The Bead People are not preachy or just symbolic—they are active and creative.

At an educational event we went to a couple of years ago in Rapid City, this woman, a well-respected Lakota Elder, wandered by our table where we had at least 200 Bead People laid out in little rows.  She walked by, and then actually backed up and returned to our table.  A beautiful smile lit up her face.  She put out a hand, palm down, and kind of scanned the rows of Bead People.  Then she looked up at me, still smiling, and said, “They are wakan—each one has its own little spirit.”  In Lakota, wakan means “sacred.”

Call me crazy, but I believe they are alive with spirit just as she said.  There is no other way to explain why people seem to light up when they find their own special Bead Person.  They light up—with recognition of creative spirit, recognition of peace.

I have put off writing or sending this newsletter for a long time because I thought I had to learn the language of “marketing.”  The truth is, I’ just not built that way.  I will never master the “M” word and am forced to do what I do—share who I am at the level of heart and spirit.  It will have to be enough.

Having admitted that, I could use your help to spread The Bead People Peace Project across the world.  Already 6500 Bead People have traveled to 18 different countries, but I am greedy for more peace, more creativity, and more connection in this world.  I believe the wakan energy of The Bead People can help us move toward a that if we take the project one-by-on, community-by-community and start a movement of celebration and acceptance.  I have had it up to my eyeballs with being fed on a diet of fear and separation. 

There are no ugly Bead People.  They are all perfect, beautiful, unique, and enlivened with creative spirit—just like us.

Here are just a few ideas that my wild mind has come up with, but I will definitely need your help bringing them into action.

1. Create a Bead People exchange program for students, churches, women’s groups—whoever.  People of one country getting to know people of another country through the most ancient means of exchange—beads.
   
2. Set up bead People Peace Festivals in schools, youth groups or church groups—kind of a school carnival with a purpose.   For this idea I have found other similar project such as The Pulsera Project and Pennies for Peace that, when put together with The Bead People and other teacher driven ideas such as Poster Projects, Poetry Slams etc, would make for a fun, educational and culturally relevant event.  Not to mention GREAT FUN.
   
3. Bead People in a Box.  I send out a box of already made Bead People with books to seel within schools or groups.  The proceeds go to support our monthly Bead People Peace Prize.  We already have kits available if you would rather build your own—or build Bead People to contribute to this effort.  My fingers are getting calluses.
   
4. The Bead People Peace Prize.  Every month I want to pick out a worthy project and award them a Bead People Peace Prize that comes with a donation to their project.  There are so many people working at the grass roots level to support creating a more peaceful world—we want to recognize and collaborate with them.
   
5. Creating curriculum to go along with Bead People projects.  This I have already started, but I am open to good ideas.  
   
6. The Translation Project:  Again, we have already started this.  The Wind story is already available in Spanish, Lakota, Danish, and other languages.  What we want to do is use Google translate but then have native speakers polish our translation for us.  We probably can’t physically print each translation, but we can make them available online.
   
7. This one is a recent idea that I did not come up with but love.  A senior community center in Stillwater, MN is hosting two intergenerational Bead People events this May.  Seniors with work with grade school classes to build Bead People.  What a great idea, Karla!
   

See what happens when a wild mind gets infused with creative spirit?  As you can probably figure out, this is bigger than what Milt and I can do.  But we are patient and willing to ask for help. 

Did any of those ideas spark your interest?  Would you like to join our community and see what develops over the next many years?  Your time means as much as your money.  We want you to become a part of The Bead People community.  To open this up, we have built a project on Indie Go Go as a way to build our community.  We also, of course, have a FB fan page and our own blog and website.  All of these resources are listed below.  Check them out and check in with us.  Become a fan, join our list, purchase your own Bead Person or kit , or offer a translation on Indie Go Go.  

The Bead People just attended a Presbyterian Women's Retreat.  It didn't work out for me to go, so we decided to let them go solo.  I sent books, beads, and wires and happy thoughts that all would work out.  I just had a nice email from the organizer, Pat D.  Here is what she wrote.  
Jamie--

I have to tell you how successful the Bead People were at our camp this past weekend!! Just phenomenal! There were women making them all weekend long, and many kept appearing on the zipper pulls of the jackets and vests we were wearing. I would believe there were probably 100 bead people made—maybe more.

The women loved the story in the book. They found it quite addictive making the people. There were requests for us to do it again.  I will be back in touch with you—but wanted to give you this quick update.

Thanks again.

Pat

Did you ever do something “just for fun” and then have it bloom around you like a pretty garden?  A couple of years ago I was making earrings and got bored with it, so “just for fun” I used the wire to create little people out of beads.  Then a year ago I was scribbling away and wrote a little story about this big wind that comes and blows all the people of earth into one another until even their body parts get mixed up.  I liked the story and the message it carries—how about we should just get along and accept each others’ differences.  It is the same basic story First Man tells Albert in Albert’s Manuscript—minus the beads. 

Then, (oh, my relentless mind) I wanted pictures to go with the story but couldn’t find an illustrator (I can’t draw), so one night I was puttering around on Publisher and created a “mock up” of the story using geometric shapes and curves.  It was kind of cute so I printed a bunch and put them with The Bead People.  I ran out right away and so I then took the little book to the print shop and printed 1500 of them.

Now, one year later, the Bead People are on a walk-about around the world.  They’ve traveled to Finland, France, Germany and who knows where else.  Schools and organizations are calling me—we started taking trays of beads to festivals and school classrooms and letting children build their own Bead Person---just for fun.  The books are almost gone and I need to go back to the print shop because we have too many events scheduled for the next two months and not enough books.  So then we decided to build a website (www.thebeadpeople.org) and start an international peace movement (getting a Bead Person automatically makes you a member J).  Milt even created a film of one of the festivals with a remake of the Beatles song, “All You Need are Beads” as the sound track.  

I think of all the many paths I’ve worked so hard at trying to make my way in the world and, suddenly, The Bead People come along to teach me that all I really need to do is something that expresses who I am and what I believe, and the path will unfold naturally.  They are such clever little beings, those Bead People.   Milt and I have been making up fun sayings like “Don’t Worry—Bead Happy” or “To Thine Ownself Bead True”.  We may put them on T-Shirts—just for fun.

I will never get wealthy from my little “just for fun” project, but acquiring wealth or stuff has never rung the bell for me.  I am, however, discovering a small side benefit.  Having schools call me is opening doors and allowing me to talk about the Natural Human Learning Process with teachers and administrators.  This process has transformed my own classroom and, I hope, will soon be transforming other classrooms.  (To see free videos of the process, visit the front page of www.manykites.org or to download free guidelines on how to use NHLP in your classroom visit Dr. Rita Smilkstein’s website at www.borntolearn.net ).

My bottom line.  Today I had the fine opportunity to watch two classrooms full of developmental English students wrap their minds around the structure of a sentence and really GET it for the first time.  I get to watch them as they realize their own potential to learn anything—given the right chance.  This is wealth beyond measure . . .

Good night and sleep well.

Jamie

 

This is an historical post.  Note the date.  

5/24/08








God Night

I feel like I am coming home to myself at last.  I needed a bit of summer to restore my spirit.  Today I went to the park and built Bead People underneath a tree.  It is so strange how those little characters can restore my equilibrium.  The project itself is beginning to grow outside of my own creations.  My daughter, Nichol, has started the first outside Chapter of Friends of The Bead People in Lincoln, NE.  And, in typical Nichol style, she has created a beautiful, enchanted booth that makes me want to go to Lincoln and build a few just to sit inside of it.  She called the other night and told me that she had three blind people building bead people in her tent.  It was such a lovely image I nearly got teary-eyed. 

It is strange how engaging such a simple project can be.  It reminds me that beads have been a part of every single human culture since the beginning of time.  They have been created from mud and glass and seeds and shells.  They have been used to adorn, as money, and of course, as gifts.  It must be embedded into our collective souls—this love of beads.  

Sadly, her partner Lynette, who is 7 months pregnant, has been told she needs to be on bed rest for the remainder of her pregnancy.  Although I’ve never met her, her energy and enthusiasm for the Bead People has reached me from 11 hours away.  We will hold her in our thoughts and prayers.  Nichol also told me that she sent her husband home with a list of necessary items she would need for her hospital stay—and top of the list were her Bead People supplies.  

We are now inviting others to get involved.  You can see details and meet Nicci and Lynette at www.thebeadpeople.org.  In recent weeks we have had money donations for printing, bead donations from as far away as Australia, and several requests to get involved.  Two women at our own Journey Museum fell madly in love with The Bead People and I spent over an hour with them as they handled each little person in order to pick the ones they wanted for the gift shop.  I loved watching them play.

That is what the project is about.  It is play—with a mission.  It gives us a way to sit around and get to know each other and to talk about life and how to create the world we all want, where “family” takes on a much bigger meaning.  I love the Lakota saying, Mitakeya Oyasin—We are all related.  I believe that in my heart.  Our humanness so outweighs the differences.

I am back at work on another novel.  While we were in D.C. recently, I had a note from my agent with her list of first submissions for my novel, One Drum.  Suddenly it struck me that my life-long goal of “being a writer” was at hand and I want to be ready if a publisher wants to see what else I have up my sleeve.  The novel I went back to work on is about a small and very wise lizard (yes, I said lizard), named Sulee who is sent to help a girl named Lela.  This little lizard is so engaging.  He is smart, funny, and very sincere.  It sounds like a children’s book but it is not.  It is in the same theme of what I’ve begun to think of as my “Earth Series”.  Sulee lives in a world where the animals, the stones, the trees are all awake and aware, tuned into the earth in a way that humans have forgotten.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll post the opening pages just to give you an idea of this wise—but young—little lizard.  Oh, the working title is “Sulee—A Lizard’s Tale”.

God night.  That was a typo but I rather like it.

Jamie 

This is an historical post.  Note the date.  

5/24/08








God Night

I feel like I am coming home to myself at last.  I needed a bit of summer to restore my spirit.  Today I went to the park and built Bead People underneath a tree.  It is so strange how those little characters can restore my equilibrium.  The project itself is beginning to grow outside of my own creations.  My daughter, Nichol, has started the first outside Chapter of Friends of The Bead People in Lincoln, NE.  And, in typical Nichol style, she has created a beautiful, enchanted booth that makes me want to go to Lincoln and build a few just to sit inside of it.  She called the other night and told me that she had three blind people building bead people in her tent.  It was such a lovely image I nearly got teary-eyed. 

It is strange how engaging such a simple project can be.  It reminds me that beads have been a part of every single human culture since the beginning of time.  They have been created from mud and glass and seeds and shells.  They have been used to adorn, as money, and of course, as gifts.  It must be embedded into our collective souls—this love of beads.  

Sadly, her partner Lynette, who is 7 months pregnant, has been told she needs to be on bed rest for the remainder of her pregnancy.  Although I’ve never met her, her energy and enthusiasm for the Bead People has reached me from 11 hours away.  We will hold her in our thoughts and prayers.  Nichol also told me that she sent her husband home with a list of necessary items she would need for her hospital stay—and top of the list were her Bead People supplies.  

We are now inviting others to get involved.  You can see details and meet Nicci and Lynette at www.thebeadpeople.org.  In recent weeks we have had money donations for printing, bead donations from as far away as Australia, and several requests to get involved.  Two women at our own Journey Museum fell madly in love with The Bead People and I spent over an hour with them as they handled each little person in order to pick the ones they wanted for the gift shop.  I loved watching them play.

That is what the project is about.  It is play—with a mission.  It gives us a way to sit around and get to know each other and to talk about life and how to create the world we all want, where “family” takes on a much bigger meaning.  I love the Lakota saying, Mitakeya Oyasin—We are all related.  I believe that in my heart.  Our humanness so outweighs the differences.

I am back at work on another novel.  While we were in D.C. recently, I had a note from my agent with her list of first submissions for my novel, One Drum.  Suddenly it struck me that my life-long goal of “being a writer” was at hand and I want to be ready if a publisher wants to see what else I have up my sleeve.  The novel I went back to work on is about a small and very wise lizard (yes, I said lizard), named Sulee who is sent to help a girl named Lela.  This little lizard is so engaging.  He is smart, funny, and very sincere.  It sounds like a children’s book but it is not.  It is in the same theme of what I’ve begun to think of as my “Earth Series”.  Sulee lives in a world where the animals, the stones, the trees are all awake and aware, tuned into the earth in a way that humans have forgotten.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll post the opening pages just to give you an idea of this wise—but young—little lizard.  Oh, the working title is “Sulee—A Lizard’s Tale”.

God night.  That was a typo but I rather like it.

Jamie