AmeriCorps/Nonprofit Blog
Another week has begun. And since it turns out the house is not too tall, we can start working on the house again. What a relief! I know the homeowners will be thrilled. :-)
On a selfish level, though, it was nice having Saturday off to do as I pleased. It's nice to enjoy a regular weekend ("like everyone else").
So now I'm in the process of finding experienced volunteers to help lead other volunteers when we start hanging drywall.
And my apartment is coming along nicely (hooray for all of that Habitat experience painting houses). The kitchen is going to look so nice and homey instead of apartment-y with the nice warm green and the crisp white trim. Lovely.
I watched the most amazing movie last night: Iron-Jawed Angels, about the women's suffrage movement in the United States. HBO produced this film in which Hillary Swank stars as Alice Paul (the entire cast--including Angelica Houston and Julia Ormand--is wonderful) it is such an incredible story. These women protested and went to prison and suffered what amounted to torture to gain equal rights. Bob Gunton portrays President Wilson. I know him best as the warden in The Shawshank Redemption, and in Iron-Jawed Angels, he's almost equally evil. Gunton is very gifted at making the audience loathe the character. It makes my hackles rise just thinking about him.
In this important election year, Iron-Jawed Angels could go a long way to firing up the population!
I've been listening to NPR (nothing new, obviously), specifically The Connection. He was talking with Frank Conroy of the Iowa's Writing Workshop about writing and teaching writing. It got me to thinking about myself. Now this blog of mine, I hardly think of this as Writing. This is blogging, it's blabbing, a sort of public journal, and a place where I can rant and rave and know that only two or three people are really reading it. In public, but then again, not really.
The writing that I was thinking about were the stories I used to create, and how I just stopped. This wasn't writer's block, it was an all out bulldozing. But I've been tempted a lot lately to try again, and I think, perhaps, I will. After all, I've got the first line!
Oh my goodness. I'm listening to an interview with the mime Marcel Marceaux. He's such a cute-sounding little old French man with a lilting voice. It's absolutely adorable. Right now he's recounting how he met Charlie Chaplin.
And speaking of adorable... I recieved a volunteer form from an older retired gentleman who has "heard of your wonderful efforts. Have time on my hands.... Would love to help out." So I called him this morning, and his wife answers. She's all flustered because she was picking cucumbers in the garden and doesn't have a pencil to take down a message. Would I mind waiting while she switches to a different phone? And after I answer that I wouldn't mind in the least, she sets down the phone, and I can hear murmuring to herself as she walks upstairs (she was in the basement) to get a different phone. She was so polite. So happy to take my message for her husband.
Back to Marcel. He was 15 when World War II starts. He joined the French Resistance, falsified documents to protect people, and help others escape into Switzerland. He posed as a leader of a group of hiking children, and marched them all over the Alps and into the safety of Switzerland. Awesome. And then he became a mime. And for those who aren't familiar with him (and I wasn't either before today), when you picture a mime, you're picturing him. :-)
OK, completely different subject.
The Boston Catholic Diocese is closing down many parish churches, and some congregations are protesting! They actually are staging sit-ins. One church has been continually occupied for over two weeks now. They refuse to let their church close.
I'm not a Catholic--I can't even profess to be very religious/spiritual right now. But I love the grass roots initiative of those people. And that first group has inspired a few more congregations to do the same thing. I imagine that deep down, the Church can't really be that upset. I mean, on one hand, they are probably are a little perturbed at their disobedience. But on the other, I would imagine a deep joy that the congregations would fight, however peacefully, for their church. I think it's quite nice, really.
