(That’s Seven in Ranger Years)
To celebrate our first birthday –
Birthing The Rangers:
An Oral History
John
‘I grew up in a tiny town. Four blocks long. One traffic light. 800 people. Ever since leaving it, I’ve craved that village, even while living in cities. So, starting maybe 25 years ago, I got serious about forging communities, from scratch – around theater, cocktail parties, elections, poems – all kinds of different hooks. The pandemic upped the stakes. A lot. Everywhere I turned, these waves of loneliness, of disconnection. It seemed, more and more, like it wasn’t just me – like the world needed more village.’
Christopher
‘We came to Reynoldstown in 2001. It kinda goes without saying that it was a different place then. It was so much smaller, but with a real verve and can-do attitude, maybe born out of hard times. Everybody pitched in and leaned on each other, ‘cause we were all we had. Homespun and bootstrapping and really sweet. You didn’t just lean back and wait for someone else to do it. It’s so much bigger now, and not just the population, which has tripled. Add in a hopping Beltline, and some happening restaurants, and suddenly ten cars can drive past, and you don’t know any of them. It’s exhilarating, and what a city should be, but I often asked myself: Is community the price we have to pay? Is there another way?’
John
‘Starting in 2022, I dove even deeper into social capital.* Checked out tons of books, looked all over the web, seeing if anyone was doing what I had in mind. I dug up lots of scholarship, describing what social capital looks like. Or – how to bring it to communities dealing with trauma or injustice. But that felt like the emergency room approach. I wondered more about creating it in advance, banking social capital before the hard times hit. How do you create compassion among many people? The answer was obvious: You form it in small groups. So then: What do these small groups do? What’s the root behavior that leads to compassion and connection? It felt like a real breakthrough, the idea of ‘Paying Attention’ as the gateway.’
*Social capital is the complex web of values, traditions, networks, and permissions that hold groups together, so to work toward common purpose.
Christopher
‘John and I had already logged a lot of porch hours, just generally figuring out the world. When he first broached the ideas that became The Rangers, I remember being excited, and nervous, and thankful, and overwhelmed. What are we poking at? What's about to happen? The question had been on my heart for a while. The two of us just kept at it, yammering and rambling and debating. What's the core problem and how do we solve it? I knew we were on to something immediately, but did we have the chutzpah and the wherewithal to pull it off? And does anyone else care? Will it resonate? I leaned into how important and right it is, to dream and challenge. I thought, ‘Even if it comes to nothing, it’s still worth trying.’’
John
‘Quilting came first. It just made sense. The Reynoldstown Quilters had been a force for forty years, but the last of them were fifteen years gone. As gardeners, Christopher and I knew the best way to predict what would thrive – you pay attention to what has flourished before. Quilting had grown here once; it could grow again. So before anything else, we launched The New Reynoldstown Quilters.’
Christopher
‘Quilting is super cool to me, the history and the hangtime. And it’s in my family. So it mattered to us – a lot – that we talk to the children of the original quilters, to Miss Antoinette, and to Young, and to the elders, like Miss Pam. To hear their stories, and to get their blessings. They did more than bless it – they made us promise. Then it was an obligation.’
Sarah
‘I came to the Rangers by way of the Quilters.’
(A half dozen people, including Aisha, started as Quilters, then became Rangers.)
Dan
‘I came because John asked me to. He knows I appreciate his writing, but can also use scissors on it when needed. We’d already done the same sort of copywriter/art director duo for ‘Vote with Dignity.’* Except this time around, we were an art/word quartet, with all of George’s amazing gifts, and Sarah’s wisdom.’
*VwD, an earlier community-building program, around the democratic process, ran from 2020 into 2021, when new laws were passed in Georgia, blocking all of its component activities.
George
‘I’m George. I like to draw coyotes.’
Sarah
‘I remember that for a long time we were just planning a publication – an owner's manual for a neighborhood. It was much closer to a project than a process. We were going to print this thing, then hand-deliver it to every household in Reynoldstown – 1200 or so, we thought. Months later, when we did an actual household count, it turned out to be three times that number. By then, thank God, the idea had evolved.’
Aisha
‘I came in when it was still called the ‘R-town Rangers.’ My first major contribution was insisting that we had to spell out Reynoldstown. You’re welcome.’
John
‘Aisha was right to insist, but I mourn losing the old ‘R-town Rangers’ theme song, sung to the tune of ‘This Land is Your Land’...
‘Our town is R-town
R-town is our town
From Atlanta Dairies
To the MARTA station.’
… And so on.
If I’m honest, I kept holding onto ‘R-town’ so long, just so we could keep that one joke.’
Aisha
‘I was the last of the ‘o.g.’ Rangers to join. The six of us are the only ones who got the original hats. They’re gonna be worth a fortune some day.’
John
‘My notes from these days are all over the map – ‘UCLA Loneliness Scale’ next to ‘asset-based maps.’ But one really stands out, and was a huge influence – The Inman Park Squirrel Census.
Dan
‘John had all this stuff from the Inman Park Squirrel Census,* and just would not shut up about it. It was like a test – show the new people Squirrel Census, then judge how much they liked it. Their work was all, admittedly, hugely relevant and smart and beautiful. Their question – what happens when you follow something to the nth degree – became our question.’
*If we went off on an IPSC tangent, we might never return. Here’s a recent appreciation of our most honored and brilliant forebear.
Christopher
‘I’m a scoutmaster. My son just now became an Eagle Scout, and so the whole emerging ranger/scout/guide ethos felt really easy and natural. What we hadn’t hit on yet was the tone of it, the voice, the feeling.’
John
‘I literally sat up in bed at the moment when the match between our neighborhood coyotes and Wylie Street came to me. Wylie T. Coyote. 100% local. Just different enough to avoid a lawsuit from Warner Bros., or maybe to attract one. Either way, a no-lose situation. Wylie became the key to unlocking the whole identity – voice, visuals, branding, all of it.’
Dan
‘The moment we saw George’s first character drawings, Wylie arrived fully formed. This entire persona, just emerged from the understory. He serves a crucial function – he’s a fun character that lets us take the focus off of us, and who can say stuff that we can’t. He’s our Elmo – everyone knows he’s not a problem.’
George
‘I’m George. I like to draw coyotes.’
Dan
‘It all started out quaint and achievable, and we just kept at it until it was vast and sprawling and impossible. But the deeper we went, the better it got, and the more grateful we were for one another. Every new person made it feel more real, and they each brought something irreplaceable.’
Sarah
‘It finally felt like we had something, like we were ready to move it off the porch. It’s all like one long conversation, kind of a blur. But I do remember that when we committed to debuting at the Wheelbarrow Festival, it all got really real – or as real as an organization with a spokescoyote can get.’
Dan
‘The Wheelbarrow Festival was the first time we had to deliver anything to anyone. It forced us to test everything. We had a lot to decide – What are we going to do? How do we interact? How do we welcome people in? Show them our version of the neighborhood? How do we justify taking up the space? It was something bigger than us, and it had to fit into 8 square feet.’
John
‘By the time we committed, all the spaces were already spoken for. Our lovely neighbors at the DEAL committee very kindly made room for us. But it was just a tiny corner.’
Aisha
‘In asking ourselves who we were, we came up with this analogy of a neighborhood as like a high school. We definitely weren’t the student council – RCIL* was already doing that job, and doing it well. Rangers were more like the yearbook staff, or maybe the pep club. Prep for the Wheelbarrow Festival became known as ‘the yearbook staff builds a homecoming float.’ There we were, with hot glue and paint brushes, just making it work.’
*Reynoldstown Civic Improvement League (RCIL) is one of the oldest and best-run neighborhood associations in Atlanta.
Dan
‘Everyone pitched in for the build out, we all made the choices together, figuring out our group dynamic, on a new level. The stakes were low for everyone but us – no one had any expectations of us. We had no idea what we were doing. And what we found out was that it worked. That ‘not knowing’ was what allowed us to do something new.’
Sarah
‘It was just so hot that day. We’d tested everything the night before, but dragging it all in, we were – what’s the word – ragtag. Very sweaty and ragtag. But in a good way.’
Aisha
‘We handed Christopher a bunch of postcards, and he was off, like a bee pollinating flowers, just going from person to person.’
Christopher
‘I have a strong affinity for the Wheelbarrow Festival. It’s not like other neighborhood festivals, but more like a reunion – a real laidback, family feel. Time to catch up, sweet and easy. I wanted us to represent that feeling – a time to get to know each other. And I was very excited about this fledgling thing. It was easy to talk to people, get them primed. I wanted them to know about us, watch out for us, and say to folks, ‘We have a way to get to know your place, your people.’ We’d made a gorgeous installation – it felt substantial, something you could point to. And then the amazing graphics. Those made it easy to share.’
Sarah
‘There was this one moment that summed it up. George and Dan made this meticulous neighborhood map, drawn from multiple sources, all super-vintage browns. We had pins there, for people to mark where they lived, what they loved. This one guy came up and stared at it for a while, and I could see his disappointment. He said ‘I live on Chester Alley. Maybe it’s not an official street, so it’s not on here.’ But then his neighbor came up, and pointed right to it. The first guy was just jubilant: ‘You included us! I’m on the map! I feel seen.’
John
‘We’ll never forget him, from Chester Alley, the ‘I feel seen’ guy.’
Aisha
‘We were like the new kids in the neighborhood, and we’d just brought all our toys out onto the lawn. Just hoping that someone would come play with us. And they did. Because Reynoldstown. Then we packed it all up, and rolled away home. With such a good feeling.’
George
‘In our day jobs, Dan and I create visuals for other companies. With the Rangers we got to make something more personal. We quickly hit on a very clear idea for it. John wanted a “Wes Anderson’ level of specificity. Dan and I were interested in an Americana vibe, adapted to this place. We gave John images, and then he gave us back words that sort of upped the ante. We all got obsessed with the tiniest details. We made something pretty oddball, and then kept it undiluted.
But here’s the part I didn’t see coming: this thing that I thought was really niche, really personal – all of the other Rangers love and claim it too, and so do many others. We’ve all added our own little bits and pieces, tiny grace notes, to this shared thing. And ultimately, what this whole Ranger world has proven, is that we’re all – everybody – our own kind of weirdo. But just keep showing up, paying attention together, and you’ll find something bigger than yourself. You might even find your own tribe of weirdos.
I did.
They’re called the Reynoldstown Rangers.’
Christopher
‘It’s pretty simple, really, the message of the Rangers:
Stay curious. Don’t just flop down.
Be an active human.
We need you.’
Though we usually stick to first names, we’re proud to say (just this once) that the o.g. Rangers quoted above are Dan Deming-Henes, John Gibson, George Hanna, Christopher Leerssen, Sarah Pinson, and Aisha Washington.