Awesome!

Every once in a while, I come across something that leads me to believe that humankind is going to survive the current malaise and meshugas.

That most recent something was an article I saw a couple of weeks back on The Boston Globe web site, when it was still free. (This content is no longer available unless you’re a subscriber. Sigh!)

The article was about a group of Cambridge twenty-somethings who, a couple of years ago, established the Awesome Foundation, which is committed to “forwarding the interest of Awesome in the universe, $1,000 at a time.”

It’s not actually a foundation-foundation, like The Ford, or The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur, or The Rockefeller. It’s not sitting on a big endowment, and passing out big checks. It doesn’t sponsor anything on NPR. What it does award is small amounts to help fund small ideas. Not so much a genius grant, as an ingenious grant.

It works like this: Ten trustees each kick in $100 a month, and together they review the submissions - the original chapter, now known as the Boston chapter, reviewed more than 130 for August - and the winner is given $1,000 for the project, with no strings attached.

As of this writing, they’re down to two awesome ideas for their latest grant, two finalists weeded out from 100+ submissions:

… a woman who wanted to buy a couple of goats to rent out as urban lawnmowers, and a sculptor who could “no longer make a case’’ for sculpture and instead wanted to buy a portable welder so he could go around and fix his city.

Goats are awesome, and all, but they do leave scat, however neat and pellet-y. So my vote goes to the guy who wants to weld his town. (And I do hope he doesn’t give up on his sculpting.)

Of course, my vote doesn’t count, because I’m not (yet) awesome.

Since the Cambridge/Boston chapter was founded in 2009, 22 other Awesome Foundation chapters have been formed throughout the US and Canada, as well as in Berlin, Hamburg, London, Zurich, Melbourne, and Sydney.

Grants are awarded ‘no strings’, and follow these rather loosey-goosey, yet awesome, guidelines:

Awesome projects are not strictly defined, but tend to challenge and expand our understanding of our individual and communal potentials. They bring communities together, casting aside social inhibitions and boundaries for a moment. They spark an instant of joy and delight and inspire a long-term hope for a more awesome future.

As I always say, some are born awesome, some achieve awesomeness, and some have awesomeness thrust upon ‘em.

Sure, I was born awesome – aren’t we all? But that was then and this is now.

What I wonder is whether it’s too late to achieve awesomeness or have it thrust upon me.

I don’t actually have any awesome ideas to offer.

But does anyone out there want to join forces, throw in a hundred bucks a month, and achieve us some awesomeness by throwing a bit of cash at some folks who do?  We could call it the getting old geezers chapter.

Awesome, no?