Hi! I’m Lolly Walsh. I’m a short sleeping schemer, substitute teacher, story listener, sustainability experimenter, room and life rearranger, and brainstormist with BA in history. (Book a session with me today!).
I have been car-free for 25 years in cities around the US since I graduated with that history degree and moved to Chicago to live in a 21 person house where we shared all of our resources, including all of our meals. (It was the best food and living experience EVER. I can also help you plan something similar in your own life / neighborhood / business / community).
Currently based in Saint Paul, Minnesota but will enthusiastically travel for the right assignments.
Seeing the world from Different Perspectives
I’ve always relished seeing things from a different perspective, which I learned early as a tiny child in gymnastics. I spent as much time upside down as I could, hanging from swing sets and monkey bars, standing on my head, hands, and cartwheeling wherever possible.
I cartwheel across bridges when the streets are closed for marathons, or when my job “open streets for people” like when I worked in San Francisco for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. Then I trained, recruited, and managed 150 volunteers for an amazing street “closure” every month in San Francisco. I stood on my hands in front of the US Capitol when I met up with the Climate Ride in 2014 and saw Washington, DC in a way most people will never see.
In 2009, I started a blog called “Reimagine an Urban Paradise,” at 2am one night when I lived in Washington, DC, as a way to, uh, “reimagine” cities as a places that could be a type of paradise.
This was a charming idea, in theory, but it came with an unintended consequence. In order to write about things that we could improve, I had to look really closely at problems cities and then come up with ways to improve it.
Once I saw the problems and the solutions, I couldn’t UNSEE them or ever stop thinking about it.
Brains, these days, am I right?
And making changes in cities is NOT FAST. This can maddening, especially when the obvious change could save people’s lives!