Ripe Ensemble With Juice

Ripe: Ensemble With Juice

I am newly planted and just peeking through my own leaves. Though I have been following Ragged Wing Ensemble for years, I've always kept a distance, cultivating my own concerns. Now I am on the inside. As the new Communications Director, I am amazed at what I find, inundated with the juciest creative fruit possible, and not just the fruit but the secret making of that bounty, a creative community process that is ready to be shared with multitudes but is, for the time being, savored by only a local few. I go to sleep and wake up with the taste of it on my lips, knowing that a secret like this cannot keep, nor should it.

There are times when a group of people is ripe. When circumstances consipre to yield a bumper crop, a tipping point when conditions are perfect for growth, anticipating a harvest of creativity that is culture-changing, leaning like a fruitful branch bends toward a deeper grounding and more humane understanding of what living can be. Ragged Wing Ensemble in Downtown Oakland is beautifully ripe, and needs your hand to reach out and pluck and share the available bounty. It needs patrons in seats and small donations, but it is profoundly ready, in a way that even most insiders cannot know yet, for the deepest and most sutainable kind of support--big giving from the heart--the expressions of hope and appreciation that make institutional growth possible.

It almost doesn't matter how you reach out. Just bump the branch with a casual donation in the final days of the current campaign, or seed the fertile soil with a significant amount or money and time. Share with your friends and the world the power and generosity of passionate creativity in a world growing more mean and grasping. Whatever you decide: act now. Don't wait. The birds and bugs of Bills will be buzzing and binging. Don't assume that somebody else will put up what is so sweet. It cannot be preserved because it is Alive and must be shared now. The company is preparing the Fall season...seeds need water that only you can provide...to harvest even more original work that brings out the best by working creatively through the thorniest of issues. That is what our era seems to be starving for, and it is in your hands to support runaway creative integrity today and through the upcoming season.