Archived from TacomasOutsidersGuide.com circa 2018·Today this work continues as THE WALL & Stars 4 Peace: y2112
Tacoma's Outsider's Guide Contents
Tacoma's Outsider's Guide — 1 Sound 1 Life, w/ Artists 4 Life in the Sound

The header above is the original 2018 site banner — its links are part of the picture. To move around this archive, use the “Site navigation” menu just below, or the “Start here” links at the top of the page. The photos for the guide will be re-added over time.

Sound

Recovered from the Internet Archive capture of 15 March 2018. Images not recovered: 14.

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Artists 4 Life in the Sound
Access is Progress

Promoting Cultural Enrichment,
Encouraging Humanity, Variety & Originality

Introducing Outsiders to Culture in Tacoma
and Life in the South Puget Sound
A resource useful for introducing friends, visitors and others to our neighborhoods and city life, 'The Menu' is located on the Destiny Home Page, with businesses listed by category on the left hand column, by neighborhood in the center column and our work with introductions by field on the right.

Also:  Discover & Love our Sponsors
We believe there is something better for you in Tacoma - so we  introduce you to the ways of life we believe are better for all of us. It's rewarding, and it feels good.

Whatever your lifestyle, there is something in this city's culture that you will prefer in place of what you already know.  We introduce you to the experiences in our community that set our South Sound lives apart from everywhere else, and show you where to go in Tacoma for the  unique sense and charm our city is better known for. 

Created in gratitude for a community life unlike any I have ever known, my intent has been to introduce my own family to Tacoma's neighborhood life.  Working with community organizations and professional teachers, we have added the element of learning with the arts.
Luminary as Medium
The Substance of Our Work: Encouraging Community
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a Wright Kind of Tradition

Our active work is likely to surprise you:  Discover how what we do automatically benefits you, our community, our region & the world.  Established as a fun, interactive means of learning and as a wondrous introduction to the character of South Sound life in our city, Tacoma's Lumins Festivus is an Autumn Holiday tradition unlike any the world over.

Created by us and for us, the language is mythopoeic, the atmosphere is wonder, the Spirit is uplifting and the medium is light.  Tacoma's Lumins Festivus happens at the onset of every Autumn, and is a Holiday tradition established in 2012.  On top of this, we coordinate learning with the arts.

 

Next Things:  Returning the Love
Join Artists 4 Life in the Sound at

image: Picture
At First Night, join us for the biggest shortest parade in the world as we include lumins from years past in First Night for the first time. If you would like to be a volunteer holding one of the luminaries, email us here.
image: Picture

In the coming year, it will be our work to facilitate the vision of our peers for what the Lumins is to become. Three year's worth of Creative Collaboration (see below) have solidified our core values - now it is time to give the celebration over the people that both facilitated and originally inspired it.  
Inspiration & History
The Lumins was inspired by a magical people unlike most in this world have known, and the hands that have contributed to this vision would be difficult  to number.  Without them, the work could never have become what it is.  Discover who inspired us & how it happened.

Why We Exist:  Introducing Life & Learning
through Celebration & the Arts

image: PictureThe Mad Orca (bottom) & Dolphin
Beyond the media, past the headlines and apart from the sales pitch, there are real  advantages to the ways of life available in our local neighborhood communities.  It is our work to introduce others to the benefit and resources available to them, and to the lifestyle options that lay hidden in plain sight right in our own back yards.  This city is a magical place on earth - it is our work and joy to illuminate those that make it this way.

There is a lot to experience, and approaches to life here vary greatly - that is part of the unique kind of charm our city has. The different ways we achieve similar ends is remarkable, the originality that comes from this is a hallmark characteristic of our neighborhoods, life and culture.  Joining forces with those well known and responsible for the greater understanding and quality of life we enjoy, we coordinate a vision.

The Learning Approach
The Foundation of Our Work

The resources of knowledge available throughout our South Sound communities are extraordinary.  In simplest terms, we believe that access to reliable, high quality information will lead to better lives for the people in our community and the visitors coming through our city.

With quality introduction through artistic illustration, the benefits of what I have termed 'Sensible Northwest Life' become obvious.  Involving themselves in any way, or adopting the beneficial lifestyles  community, our environs and the organizations largely responsible for the ways of life available to us here.
See what we have done in 2014 here, and discover a new approach to learning and life in the South Puget Sound.

Every Year We Celebrate in a Given Elemental Theme -
Then Learn About that Theme in Academic Collaboratio

In 2013 we celebrated, The Oceanic.  Before the Lumins event, we reached out to organizations like Puget Creek Restoration Society, Surfrider Foundation, Harbor Wild Watch and others.  In 2014, we hosted preeminent world scholar, Dr. John Stark of WSU, to present to us the substance of his work. 

John's work has led to legislative change at the international and State levels, but has not yet been translated into layman's terms. Nevertheless, the significance and importance of his work is both substantial and imminently relevant - our community organizations and institutes need to be familiar with it.  So, we threw him a party - 4 bands played, John spoke and we had the evening professionally recorded.  Soon, this work will be public.

Connecting with community organizations at the ground level and learning from those actively responsible for creating and preserving the rare quality of life that sets our city and region apart in the world, we work to bridge the gap between the highest levels of learning and those already doing outreach at the ground level in our community.  Integrating the new academic knowledge into their existing platforms, the work of those like Dr. Stark reaches more people and involve others in their organizations, as both volunteers and learning participants. 

A major element of our work is to introduce others to the essential elements of South Sound life, and our approach is one that has never been accomplished so far as any of us know.  Marrying the arts and music with highest-caliber learning, we host events for academic leaders and specialists in their field to honor their work and provide them a platform for reaching our people with the message and the substance of their work.  Read how this has worked here (right column).

1 Stark Example

Dr. John Stark works 15 minutes away from us, at the WA State University campus in Puyallup.  He holds 8 official positions, and his work has led to  historic legislative change at the international and state levels - but almost no one in our community has heard of him !

So on Sept 5 we hosted an evening to honor and listen to him. Under-known and under-appreciated, his work was a revelation to a full house at NPCC. 

We also hosted events in 2014 that touched on issues related to the year's Soil of Earth theme - food, and the Bodily Arts.

Tacoma's Lumins Festivus
an Autumn Holiday Original to the City of Destiny
& a Text in Time
The stories passed down to next generations become the substance of lives as the lessons implied are absorbed and converted to action. What basic elements of life can be perceived across our communities, and more or less agreed upon - these are the values we have sought to impute to the Lumins.

2012 The Stellar Galactic
Zü of Life

image: Picture

. . in with the New

Stellar:  At a very basic level, there is a light in all of us. We say, if you have a pulse, you have a light.  And so we celebrated the stellar people of our city.

Galactic:  2012 marked the end of an 'Epoch' in the most sophisticated of the eastern cultural calendars (the Mayan). Theories abound about the significance of the event, and we decided that our community could create its own story about the importance of the event - by what we put our hands to afterward.

Zü of Life:  This 'Zü' is a play on words (this is why we put the umlaut there): 
1st, there is great diversity in our city and region well worth celebrating - it is the character of our people and place. 2nd, there is an ancient people's hero named 'Zu,' who was the son also of a beer goddess.  Now, Zu was a hero to his own people, whose culture was an oral tradition, so they passed down the wisdom of the people from the old to the next generation in stories.  (We can do the same thing in our own way).

But a heroic act for one people can be an act of rebellion to another - Zu's act was that he stole the Tablets of Destiny from the chief god's chest, because the Tablets had been used to control his people. So he set his people free.

But the civilization that conquered the people of Zu was a literate civil society, and they turned the story of the people's hero around - they wrote a different story and destroyed all the evidence of the previous culture.  They criminalized his heroic act, demonized the hero and ultimately punished him by death.  They only preserved the story that exalted and promoted their own ways of life, and forgotten were the people and culture of Zu.

Well, we live in the City of Destiny.  So, the Destiny of our people is in the hands of our people - that is the spirit we acknowledged. It is not up to the powers that be, or the rest of society to bring about the lives we desire for our loved ones in our homes. We alone are the ones responsible for what happens in our city and our region and our time.  So we celebrated this in 2012. 

What we have done afterwards is set the precedent for future work and established a foundation of learning for ourselves and future generations.

2013 The Oceanic

Primordial Proceedings

Very many mythologies in the world begin with primordial waters.  'We are all born of the maternal waters, and so, in creation mythology, worlds are typically born of the waters.' (Singer).  Out of the waters emerge the gods and what ultimately become the frame of reference for the life of the people. 

In 2013, in celebration of The Oceanic, we began reaching out and learning from the organizations responsible at the ground level for teaching us about life in the waters of the world and the South Puget Sound.  We met with the Surfrider Foundation, Puget Creek Restoration Society, Harbor Wild Watch representatives, and the UPS Ocean Intellect Group even funded our official after party. 

These are the kinds of organizations that do the groundwork that makes our region and city a better place to live.  They clean our beaches, teach us about our environs and actively work to expand our understanding of life in the South Puget Sound. They are great for our society, and we work to encourage you to learn about them.

We also centered our activities at Good Karma, Center for Joy - because the community you surround yourself with ultimately determines the quality and character of the work you do.  The people here are genuine, life-affirming and open-hearted; we are fortunate to have worked with them: Every lumins building class was held there at Good Karma, and Rosemary Ponnekante of the TNT even interviewed us there. 

We also documented some things.  First of all, music is an essential element of culture the world over - it is no exception here in the South Sound.  And Jeremy Leveque, a local musician and clay artist, hand crafted 54 clay ocarinas shaped like adobe dwellings, denoting the musical quality of our homes.  We then inscribed them with images denoting the compassionate and peaceable nature of our people, and we handed them out to whoever wanted one at the Lumins celebration.

We also held a modest ceremony, at a local family's private library, with the intent to convey the understanding that a sharing community is necessary for any and all of us to become the better person we are able to become. .

You can read more about 2013 here.

2014 The Soil of Earth

image: Picture
An International Dove of Peace led the 2014 Lumins.  Contributed by friends associated with Jane Goodall's Day of Peace celebrations, its presence was a special acknowledgement to the peaceable character of our people.

Seeds of Wright Life

2014 has been a very special year.  We continued reaching out to community organizations, it is true.  And we also began to accomplish the greater vision of our work:  Creating access to the highest levels of learning for our people and community organizations. 

We held three first-of-their-kind events for us, each with its own intention and purpose, and invited friends from all over the city and the region to learn about life in our community. 

We will express more in this section soon - in the meantime, read about the 2014 Lumins here.

More about the current work is under the links at the top of this page.

Did You Know:

A small selection of instruments from the National Music Museum.
The National Music Museum wants a satellite museum in Tacoma.  Such an institution would bring to our lives invaluable cultural riches, and Tacoma would be known in the Northwest and the world over as a veritable cultural center for world culture in the South Puget Sound.  To support this effort, learn more:  Email us to learn about current activity and how you might help us bring this treasure to our city.
The same is true for music in the soul of a city:  A musical institution of such a caliber as the National Music Museum will resonate the world over - the Universe will hear the voice of our city.