AmeriCorps/Nonprofit Blog
Happy Monday! Saturday went very well--amazingly well, I must say--except for one little snag: somehow the group donating lunch thought that lunch was to be delivered to the office and not the build site. So that was a small problem (remedied by the pizza place down the block). Of course I feel like an idiot-obviously I didn't make something clear enough to the group. Then again, how could I have not told them? Well, messages got mixed somewhere. I only hope that it doesn't put them off for good; this youth group was going to donate lunch once a month throughout the fall. We'll see, I guess.
But we got over 200 pieces of sheetrock loaded into the house (piece by piece, by hand). Hooray for child labor and chain gangs! I'm kidding. Kind of. There was a youth group, made up solely of hard-working high school girls, a few high school boys, their parents, and the homeowners. Even Ana Gega (wife and mother of one of our Habitat Families who is probably closing in on 60!) helped carry a few pieces. In fact, the job went so well that we actually started hanging the dry wall in the upstairs closets. Closets are the best place to practice new skills, you see. The cosmetic appearance of closets is not very important, of course. So if mistakes are to be made, they can be made in relative obscurity.
After that hard work I took a FOUR hour nap. Oops. But I was sufficiently re-energized to go out dancing with my good friend (met through Habitat. I impressed her with a well-organized email! The rest is history.) Kelly--also known as my Worcester activities director. Without Kelly, I'd be so bored!
Today I talked with the head of a local carpenter's union, and they're supplying up to ten guys to help us hang drywall this coming Saturday. As he put it to me on the phone: "Do you know what this means? You'll have the whole house finished in one day." Wahoo. His only request: lots of coffee. I can do that!
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On the entertainment front: watch the movie Napoleon Dynamite. But one condition: you have to be in a comedy mood. If you want to laugh and are looking for something off-beat, than Napoleon is perfect. It's a crazy little comedy about nerd-dom in a little middle-of-nowhere town where the inhabitants are straddling two worlds: the dawn of cyberspace (particularly internet dating and chat rooms) and a "lost in the eighties" mentality all-too-familiar in small towns cut off from the rest of the world. The title character, Napoleon spends the entire movie clad in moon boots. Need I say more?
Also, I recently watched Mean Girls, a comedy written by Tina Fey of Satuday Night Live (and one of my personal heroes! She's funny and smart and not annoying like other SNL members). As one reviewer said, it's a movie about teens that feels like it was written for grownups--but the teens can watch too.
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Concerning the world of politics and feminism: what is this talk about the women vote? As if we were some sort of minority mind-set to be wooed, similiar to the pathetic attempts to win the "Latino Vote." Let me just say I have problems with all of these groups to be one. I think enough has been said by many people about the ridulous concept of the "Black Vote." Because, of course, geography, income, and education have nothing to do with how people view the world.
But I digress.
This whole idea of the women vote is just crazy. Do politicians and pundits talk about the male vote? The "Man Vote"--that necessary demographic? No, of course not. They're the "norm," the given. Everyone else is a tangent to the original and default population. Ugh. Err. Ahck!
I'm starting to sputter with not-so-suppressed ire. I need to go calm down.
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4:33pm
OK, I'm a bit calmer now. Here's some interesting tidbits, though:
Former President and Nobel Peace Laureate Jimmy Carter wrote an article about Florida and elections--specifically how it does not currently meet international standards for fair elections. How do you like that? How do you like them apples?
Also, if you see a listing for a film called Yes Men, go see it! (And/or read the companion book.) I heard about it on NPR (where else?), specifically Fresh Air. Mike Bonanno heads an organization called Yes Men. He and Andy started a spoof website of the World Trade Organization, and people thought it was the real site! Soon he and his cohort started receiving emails asking them to attend conferences, and they did--all over the world. And nobody, it seems, ever doubted they weren't actual representatives, even though they frankly disclosed the "unpleasant" side of WTO policies. Rock on.
And a few interesting tidbits from Mother Jones about the war in Iraq. One article in the September/October issue looks into corporate stakes in the war. “The battle for Iraq is not over oil,” said one Defense Department official involved in communications. “It’s over bandwidth.” Cellular bandwidth frequencies were up for grabs, and American cellular giant Qualcomm wanted them. It's a fascinating article.
Another interesting tidbit: There's at least one company with government contracts in Iraq who has ties to a notorious arms trafficker. HIs name is Victor Bout, and he's known world-wide as the "merchant of death." How pleasant.
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OK, folks. I need to go be an AmeriCorps for awhile and assemble volunteer informational packets. Rock on.
My arms hurt! I spent yesterday hanging drywall, which I really quite enjoy it turns out. But the process of it with the volunteers being led by Leo (who really is on the brink of total burn out, poor Leo!) was a bit frustrating. He's very concerned about staying on schedule and having everything just so--and that's a good thing. But I think he finds the lack of control--volunteers not completing what he thought they could--very hard. The result is a sense of rushing, needing to rush, and volunteers make mistakes if you rush or push them too much. We did eventually find a reasonable pace, and then we made quite good progess.
Today I'm catching up on emails (why is it I receive the most mail on days when I'm not around? There are days when I sit in the office and stare at Microsoft Outlook and get no mail at all!) and trying to return a sense of order to my job. Everything got a bit jumbled when there was no one overseeing the office, and now I need to re-figure everything based on my new responsibilities and the retirement of others.
I'm still trying to figure out how to coordinate the newsletter. That process is still a bit "fuzzy."
(Fuzzy math!)
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I'm so excited about the debates--and not at all excited about the pundits. Fair had a good op-ed piece about how pundits focus so much on the little details (Gore's sigh, etc) and pay very little attention to the substance. It's a very good piece. Example: initially most people thought that Gore had one that debate; then the media over-saturated everyone with the "sigh," and people suddenly changed their minds. Stupid media! What pundits and other outlets should be doing is checking out the facts behind statements made during the debates. Many accusations are out and out lies, but the media never makes the candidates responsible for those lies. Just read the article! I'm getting upset again....
Ooh, book alert! I'm so excited! Hooray for The Connection. David Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas has been short-listed for the Booker Prize. It sounds amazing, somewhat akin to another favorite of mine, Calvino's If one a winter's night a traveler... Seemingly unconnected narratives are intertwined into one giant adventure of a story. Forgot paying rent--I'm going to stop at Tatnuck Booksellers after work! I haven't been this excited about a book since Harry Potter. :-)
COUGH! SNIFFLE! COUGH!
Ugh. I am not amused. And to make matters worse, no matter how sick I might get, my insurance company has basically scared me out of going to the doctor. I keep getting these notices that my bills will be paid, contingent on receiving the correct information from my doctor. What if she doesn't give it? I've already got over $400 worth of expenses I'm trying to convince them to pay for. I certainly can't afford to pay that--that's an entire pay check! That's a month's-worth of food. That's a lot of pair of shoes! (kidding)
Our telephone/internet was sabotoged this morning by Verizon. You see, GWHFH is leaving them for Lighship which will provide us a T1 internet line and phone service. And Verizon is not happy, so in the process of switching over, it seems that the pulled a few pranks of sorts. But--as I'm now online writing here--it must have gotten straightened out. Lovely.
So, how 'bout that debate? I say--and many agree with me--that Kerry won! Bush was a bit pouty and came across like a broken record. He wasn't debating but spouting Bush rhetoric. It was almost funny, really, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
