Jenny's
AmeriCorps/Nonprofit Blog
Thursday, September 9, 2004                            

For a second week in a row, I have been a bad, bad blogger.  The internet--or rather, our internet service, is partly to blame.  I did try a number of times to log on and blog, but all attempts were unsuccessful  until today.

News!  The Bike and Build Organization granted our request: $3,370 towards our Perry Avenue project.  Another grant under my belt.  It's all about the colored charts.  :-)

My Cafe Press store has two shirts now: "Liberal and proud of it" and "If CNN told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it:  Be smart, think for yourself!"

Yesterday I attended the Clark University (perhaps my future grad school) Volunteer Fair as the Habitat representative.  But I also acted as a exemplary volunteer of the Horizons for Homeless Children program.  I got to catch up with Whitney, my fellow AmeriCorps Vista here in Worcester.  She has been hired by her organization, and will be working full time at the Boston office when her VISTA service is ended.  Lucky her!

I woke up yesterday morning to an NPR discussion of great first lines in literature.  Examples came from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude (one of my all-time favorite books!) and Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle (another great book--and film!).

But in honor of this list of first great lines, I came up with one of my own (for a story not yet written):

                   It is my fate that daily I cross paths with a three-legged greyhound.

If I come up with a sentence to follow that, I'll let you know.
Here it is: the continuing saga of my experience as an AmeriCorps Vista volunteer in Worcester, Massachusetts.  I would love to hear from any other AmeriCorps volunteers or nonprofit employees--especially volunteer coordinators.  Email me--tell me what you think, or share your own experiences.  Together we'll survive this crazy nonprofit world!
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Friday, September 10, 2004

I've revised my first line.  It now reads:

          It has been my lot in life that I daily cross paths with a three-legged greyhound.



So Powell has declared the Sudan "situation" to be, in fact, genocide.  And what is the United State's next move?  To push for sanctions.  Unbelievable.  Even more unbelievable is the Powell's hesitation, his obvious destaste to mention the Rwanda genocide.  "It's not that bad," was his basic statement.  May I just add a word to that: yet.  It's not that bad yet.

I ask the question that Philip Goureveitch asks in his book about the Rwandan genocide: in the end, do numbers really matter?  Once people start dying, once a certain group is targeted for death (and ultimate destruction) does the number, does the manner of those deaths, really matter?  Death is death, and is not the intent the truly horrific thing?  Thus, the world's hesitation to act is just as horrific.  Politicians, aid organizations, and the press toss around the word genocide--is it's use justified or an exaggeration of an "unpleasant" situation?  While some may tout that the world's willingness to discuss genocide is a breakthrough in and of itself, I can think:

To the people dying, to the people fleeing, the words don't matter!  They suffer regardless of the words.  We need action.  And nobody is doing anything.  And it's driving me mad.

On the eve of the third anniversary of September 11 the world mourns the tragedy but does nothing but talk about the one currently happening.

Towards the end of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, Kip says that the West would never have dropped a nuclear bomb on a Western country--on a nation of whites.  I can't help think, as we keep not taking action to stop the genocide in Darfur, that the same sentiment--no matter how hateful--possibly applies here.  If this was happening elsewhere, if in some strange parrall universe Canadians rose up and started killing the Quebecois, the "world" (a.k.a the UN) would not be hesitating.

I'm so upset that I made a shirt which reads: The definition of GENOCIDE matters lttle to the THOUSANDS already DEAD.

Here's a twinkle of happiness at the end of all this awfulness: the situation between GWHFH and the City of Worcester has been resolved.  Our house is not too tall.  We can resume building!