OPEN QUESTIONs // National Donut Day
Big welcome to all the new subscribers and thanks to everyone who’s been sharing these posts. Means a lot, truly. OPEN QUESTIONS is my way of sharing an idea—and then, in the same breath, passing that idea on to you to riff on, reflect on, and otherwise respond to. Most people choose to do all that on their own (I know because they tell me so in DMs and emails) but all are encouraged to connect via the comment section as well. It really helps build better discussions here, and boost the profile of this ‘stack so that others can find it.
As I sit writing this, a quick Google search tells me today is National Avocado Day, World Ranger Day, National Raspberry Cake Day, and Uncommon Instrument Awareness Day. And here I had thought it was just Tuesday.
I guess it’s always Something or Other Day somewhere, and while I am often the first and last to roll my eyes about manufactured desire and commercialized sentimentality, I seem to have a soft spot for national days. That’s sort of hard to admit, but it seems true sometimes.
It’s definitely true of the one coming up on us on August 30: National Grief Awareness Day.
I can’t even remember now exactly how I happened to alight on the knowledge of this yearly end-of-August day reserved for outward-facing grief, but I know it was when I was knee-deep in initial plans and prep for something called Mourning Clothes, a performance/happening commissioned by a 50-years-running Labor Day Weekend arts fest here in Seattle called Bumbershoot.1
A performance, that is, focused on outward-facing grief and planned to immediately follow the end of August.2 I remember sitting at my desk feeling vaguely spied on and weirdly lucky and also quite satisfied.
I mean, there I was: Hunkering down into this big weird idea about how to cross style and expression with grief—how, really, to bring awareness to grief via the constructed identity of our personal style and dress—the universe said back to me, “Yeah, we’re into that, too.”
So, in light of my little campaign lining up with this pre-existing national campaign, what I’m curious about here is:
Is it possible for any national day to accomplish much of anything? And if so, what is it that you would want National Grief Awareness Day to accomplish?
And okay then, how can you imagine that playing out? Which artist/singer/poet should be Grief Awareness Day’s poster person? What national something-or-other chain should sponsor it? What media sources should get behind it?
And, crucially, what would the slogan be? What should the soundtrack be? Who would design the billboard?
Would you ever personally go to bat for it? Can you imagine saying to your community—via post, via postcard, via phone call, via a coffee date—something like, “It would make me really happy if you would join me in increasing grief awareness by ______________________.”
And how exactly would you fill in that blank?
What would it look like to see a tangible uptick in the visibility and awareness of grief, and what would that tangible uptick do in terms of your need, desire, and ability to share what you want to share and feel what you want to feel?
And finally, if you answered that last question—if you have a sense of how you would and could change or react or become or express in the right kind of situation, is it possible that you can create the circumstances of that situation without National Grief Awareness Day?
And if you’d like to know more about Mourning Clothes, there are links here and above for that—and if you are now remembering the other time I asked you about mourning clothes, yes, that was about this.
Just reminding you that Labor Day weekend is always the first weekend in September.