I was in Sebastopol recently, as the guest of a local community activist and organizer.  A woman who had organized the protection of the California coast was there.  The movement arose when someone bought 13 miles of coast and wanted to develop it.

She said that her organization, after winning a state-wide referendum to establish a Coastal commission, organizes 12 coastal walks every summer.  She herself had walked, over several years, from Oregon to Mexico along the coast. 

Someone else in the room said she had learned it was important to connect “emotions to issues.”  This seems to be what the organizers of the coastal walks know and are doing.  It is one thing to want to preserve the coast of California as an ideal.  It is quite another to walk on the rocks and the sand, to smell the ocean, to see the surf breaking, to feel the sun and the sand in your toes.  I think this might have been what she meant by connecting the emotions to the issue. 

I, myself, remembered over 35 years ago, how I had gathered a bucket of mussels near Stinson Beach, brought them home, boiled them in white wine and tasted how good they were.  The memories of taste and small last longer than thought.

So how do we connect emotions to issues?