Anne Keehnen has spent years building relationships in Nacogdoches, Texas, one conversation and one local effort at a time. She’s run for city council, worked with younger residents on walkability, stayed involved in city meetings, and kept looking for ways to connect people around street safety and neighborhood life. Anne compares that work to building good compost: the conversations and relationships accumulate, creating better conditions for the next idea to take root. Anne describes what she has learned from staying with a place for years and why seeing the same people, listening to their stories, and earning their trust can become part of the work itself.
Hi there, and welcome to Bottom Up Shorts. I'm Norm with Strong Towns, and I'm delighted to be able to interview so many different people from the Strong Towns movement who are looking at their community, taking notice of the needs, and seeking together with others to address them.
With me today is Anne Keehnen of Nacogdoches, Texas, who is one of my favorite people. I met Anne through the Strong Towns Toastmasters Club and continued to really connect with Anne over the years, and I got to see her at the national gathering this year. Anne, welcome to Bottom Up Shorts.
Thank you, Norm. So good to talk to you. I've really missed seeing you at the Toastmasters Club, and it was good to see you in person for the first time. That was a real treat. It certainly was, and thank you for thinking of me to talk on the podcast.
You invited me, and I almost turned you down because I thought, I'm not actually doing anything, and I never did that much to begin with. Why is Norm wanting me to talk about the Bottom Up Revolution? I like to listen to Bottom Up Revolution podcast episodes because I get inspired by people who've done great things and accomplished all this in their community, and I kind of haven't done that. As a matter of fact, I get inspired, and then I go back to my normal life and do little things here and there. But Norm, I keep showing up.
I haven't stopped. There are a few more people here, a few more people there. We've done some things in the past, and we'll do some things in the future. Just because I'm not doing a lot right this minute, and I don't have 300 people showing up once a month to a meeting, I'm not letting that make me think I'm not doing anything.
I think that is so familiar to so many people who likewise are trying to do little things or helping their community become a little bit more Strong Towns aware simply by being that person who brings up, "Hey, have you heard of a different way of thinking about these issues?"
Do you want to share some of the needs and opportunities that you've noted? One of the neat things that you're involved in—and I should clarify, it's not the Strong Towns Toastmasters Club anymore; it's the Strong Town Speech Club—is the opportunity to encourage other people, but also find your own voice. Do you want to share a little bit about that project?
Okay, I will do that, Norm. I've been involved in Strong Towns for a long time. I can't even remember when or how I first got involved, but I'm one of those people who read my first Strong Towns article and went, "Bingo." It hits everything that I believe in, in a way where it covers everything. I didn't have to pick: Do I want to get involved with my church? Do I want to get involved with this women's group? Do I want to get involved in blah, blah, blah? By participating in Strong Towns and following Strong Towns philosophy about things, everything else just falls right into place.
I guess in 2023, I was involved in a group, and we wanted somebody to run for city council. Our favorite city council person was not going to run again, so I did that. That got me very involved in city politics and getting to know a lot of city employees and how things work. I still go to city council meetings and listen to them, and I may yet run again or get involved in that again. Although I didn't get elected, I think that was kind of a blessing in disguise, for sure.
Being involved in the city and meeting all those people, we had a pretty active local conversation group. We had meetings at the brewery. A bunch of people came, and we talked about a lot of different things. Then we had a kind of splinter group of young people who really got involved in walkability. They took off and created something called Walkable Nacogdoches and put signs up saying, "Share the road." I worked with them. We organized a few block walks, invited city council members, wore big, bright yellow T-shirts, and got some publicity. That was great, and people got involved in that.
Nothing really happened. I think some sidewalks went in, but they were going to go in anyway. But the young people who were involved in that have started their own little coffee shop in a walkable part of town, so they're very busy doing that. I got to know a lot of younger people doing that project.
My problem is that I take off. I have family in Australia. I have grandchildren there. Periodically, I go to Australia and I'll be gone for three months. Sometimes something comes up, like I just had shoulder surgery, so I'm in the hospital right now. I'm kind of doing everything in my head and thinking, when I get back, when I get my shoulder working again, I'm gonna do this, this, this, and this. We'll see if I do.
But I think one thing I do, Norm, just by being involved and keeping that conversation going, is build up a lot of good compost. If it was a garden, I feel like the conversations I have, the people I talk to, the things I post on our pretty good Facebook group, and the reactions I get mean that when we do start something, it will thrive because of the little things—just showing up, the little things that we've been doing lately. Does that make any sense?
It does, and I love it. You made me curious: What are some of the things that have made for good Facebook engagement? We sometimes roll our eyes or think Facebook is tough to engage in, and sometimes it can be, especially the local channels or groups where people are really worked up about things.
But just knowing you, I suspect you have some ways of neutralizing some of the objections, but also helping people come around and say, "Oh, I'm actually interested in what you're talking about."
Well, I don't know about that. When things come up locally, just the other day, somebody wanted to put a drive-through coffee shop in a little vacant lot across the street from the high school at a pretty busy intersection, and it's near a residential neighborhood too. There are a lot of people very upset about that. They're convinced it's going to be dangerous and it's not going to work.
A woman I kind of know—mostly through Facebook; I've met her a time or two—was involved in our parks program. She was going to the meeting, and she posted, I believe, one of John's little videos about traffic safety around intersections. She was adamant about this not being a good thing. I texted her, and she's going to call me Monday next week.
Maybe with that group getting involved, we cannot just show up at city council and protest this one poor little coffee shop. It may or may not be a good coffee shop. I have no idea, but they're certainly getting the brunt of the public ire from this neighborhood that's worried about the safety of their kids and their intersections. I would love to see us be more involved in our intersections in general.
We had a pedestrian death not long ago. I would love to get people aware of the Crash Analysis Studio and figure out a way to not just see a cool video on YouTube and go, "Oh yes, this intersection. We can do good things, and our intersection is so bad." Broaden it, look at the thing as a whole and as a group, and figure out ways to address it one by one as a community, rather than just get upset about one thing and show up at city council meetings.
People love to do that: show up in massive city council meetings about one thing and get it shut down. Then they all go back to normal, and nothing has really changed, especially not the thing that they were really concerned about, which was public safety and safety around cars.
I'm hoping I can work with Michelle and a few other people, and when I get back maybe we can take that issue and evolve it into a Strong Towns group that addresses crashes and crash analysis.
My biggest problem is I have an idea and I might talk to one person. I do not share leadership. I don't take on leadership, and then I certainly don't share it. I think I'll be a lot more successful and we'll have more involvement if we're able to do that more. I know, Norm, that your Local Conversations group has a lot to offer me, helping me to do that, and I really want to start taking more advantage of that and get that going.
Yeah, that's a great plug. We have weekly training sessions for our groups at different levels, and we also have regular drop-in times, partly with that goal of addressing, "How can I pass on responsibilities or get other people to help in times where I'm at my peak and I'm maxed out?"
But I love that no matter where you are in that journey, as you're talking about, Anne, being an ambassador is something that we can all do. Being somebody who gently, discreetly at times drops in an idea or shares a thought and, as you said, responds to a very real tragedy—a pedestrian dying in the community—and then asks the question, "All right, is there more that we can be doing?" Helping people begin to ask those types of questions can generate things down the road where you're starting to see something happen that wouldn't have happened without that upstream activity.
Looking at your life, what are some of the key features that have made you the person who's passionate about these things today?
That is a great question, Norm. I would love to share that. There are a few things. I think about my first job working at a grocery store in high school. I used to be shy, but people come and go. Every minute, people come, and you can learn to talk to people. They're going to be gone, and you'll never see them. So you learn that it's safe to talk to people, and they're not going to think badly of you. If they do think you say something stupid, that's okay. They're gone. It's over. The moment passes. Life goes on. Nobody died, and I got comfortable with that. That helped a lot.
For me, I also think being in the same community for a long time helps. I left Nacogdoches for about 12 years and took a job in Houston, but it's about a two-and-a-half-hour drive away, and I was back home almost every weekend. I kept my house and rented it out. So I think living in the same community and knowing some of the same people for generations actually helps a lot. I think it's the power of staying with something. I love the book I saw at the gathering, You Don't Have to Move to Live in a Better Neighborhood.
It's just so much of what I believe. I want every person in my town to believe that and start making their neighborhood better. For me personally, I think it's the confidence that comes from being someplace and talking to people, sharing ideas, and having people appreciate that.
I'm a natural smiler. I smile. People are drawn to me because I'll smile and laugh and talk to anybody about anything. We live in a pretty politically tense part of the country, but we just never go there, and that hasn't been a problem for me. I'm amazed it hasn't, but it hasn't.
I think it's just being with people and being willing to show up. A lot of times I'd rather stay home, but I go. I show up to little things and big things, and people get used to seeing you. That makes a difference.
Do you have a tip or a suggestion that you'd like to share with folks, maybe about attending council meetings or participating and sharing ideas? Is there something that stands out to you, or something somebody passed on to you that you want to pass along? What comes to mind?
What comes to mind is that I'm older now. I'm 70 years old. For me, it's interacting with young people. Although much of your audience is already young, so that won't really apply to them. But maybe for them, it's interacting with old people.
I think having things be multigenerational and trying hard, in my town, to have things be multiracial and multicultural has been important and hard, and not something that comes naturally. It's tough to find vehicles to do that.
I'll tell you what's made my life so much better, my town so much better, and communication so much better: the brewery. We built a brewery about nine years ago. It's right down the road from me. Until we had the brewery, there were not that many places besides Kroger's where I got into conversations with people all the time about all kinds of things.
At Kroger's, I can't do that anymore because hardly anybody shops at Kroger's, and if they do, they've got their earphones in. I can't really strike up conversations at Kroger's anymore, but I do all the time at the brewery. I think it's so important to have a place like that. Matter of fact, I want to talk to the owners there about maybe opening a brewery on the south side of town.
Creating those norms of gentle but generous engagement together, conversations, and that openness is so powerful within our places.
It is. Listening to people, asking questions, and letting people tell their stories. It's easy to talk, but it's much better to listen and tell stories.
Speaking of talking, I wanted to put in a plug, so to speak, for our Strong Town Speech Club. It's really slowed down since the days when you were in it. It used to be an official Toastmasters group. I actually would love for it to become a Toastmasters group again, but we need more people. We've just gotten too small for that.
It's so good to have some practice with public speaking. I think for a lot of people, that holds you back. As I said, I got my skills at that working at the grocery store, but before that, I was so shy. Public speaking is hard. It's one of the biggest fears that people have, and practicing it once a week with people who are encouraging, who are doing the same thing—and especially with the Strong Town Speech Club, with people who think the way you do about issues and can give you feedback both about your content and your presentation—has been a lot of fun.
At our last meeting, I practiced this interview a little bit. I let Jonathan be you, and he practiced interviewing me. I think it was as much good practice for him as it was for me. We meet every Wednesday online, so if anyone's interested in that, the link's on the Strong Towns website somewhere. I'm sure you can just Google Strong Town Speech Club, and it'll pop up. We have a lot of fun.
That's a great plug. Thank you for sharing that. I definitely would recommend it, especially if you don't spend all your day on Zoom. Being able to drop in and take a little opportunity to build capacity, build competency, and really increase your confidence can go a long way.
As we close, I always love to ask: What's something that gives you hope in your community?
I saw that question, Norm. That's one of my favorite questions. Everything gives me hope for my community. It really, really does.
One thing in my community: I love seeing young people moving back to town with their families, raising their families. My kids have left Nacogdoches, and I don't think they'll ever come back. But a lot of my friends' kids have come back. That gives me hope. We have a university town. Our university is growing, and that gives me hope.
I see people being good to each other in the long run, and I see people willing to give each other the benefit of the doubt. Hard things happen, and our little town, like a lot of little Southern towns, has a difficult history too that people don't like to talk about. But sometimes people are okay with facing it and letting you talk about it.
I think what gives me hope is the fact that everybody likes each other and respects each other and is really willing to give, and not just be selfish about what they want. That's not everybody. I think one of the biggest issues that we deal with is people thinking that their main job is to take care of themselves and make sure they have a nice house. If they have a nice house, they want a pool. If they have a pool, then they want a boat. They want to have things, and they want to take care of their family. They think that's what it's about.
I see people catching on more that actually taking care of your community and other people, and helping your neighbor get a pool that you can then use, is better than building your own pool. Sharing things with each other and looking out for the community rather than yourself keeps you safer. It keeps you happier, and it keeps you richer and more prosperous than anything you could ever do for yourself.
I see it. I'm looking at building two little tiny houses in my backyard. That's my latest project. I'm looking at houses going up in my town, and I just can't stand the houses with a big garage out front and then the little front door way back there that you can hardly see. It's like, are you trying to make people live lives where they never see another human? Do these people not like other people? Is that the goal? I think maybe it is, and it may have something to do with the Texas heat. But despite the heat, I'm hoping we can get out and see each other, talk to each other more, and make friends.
I love that. Well, that'll be a good opportunity for a check-back conversation.
It will, Norm. I am going to get back up on that merry-go-round for sure. Thank you for contacting me.
That's fantastic. At the core of the Strong Towns mission is for us to be able to live in places that are safe, livable, and inviting. I just love that in this whole conversation, each one of those elements is at the foreground. I wish that for you, and in increasing measure in more and more of our communities. Thank you for joining me on Bottom Up Shorts today.
Thank you, Norm. I appreciate it so much. Take care.
Take care as well.
I'll be in touch. I promise, I'll be in touch.
Please do. As we continue this work in our communities, know that you can take inspiration from what Anne is doing. Take inspiration from the fact that sometimes it doesn't always go the way that you plan for it to, and yet persisting in it, smiling at other people, and participating in good faith in building our communities can give us all hope.
With that, take care and take care of your places. This episode was produced by Strong Towns, a nonprofit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to you, deepen your connection by becoming a Strong Towns member at strongtowns.org/membership.