Indictment

Food is a huge part of what I do at work now. Thinking about how to get food to people, teaching people about cooking, and acknowledging the socio-economic causes of food insecurity. This clip from NPR artfully catches the crux of latter.



As well as the former, and that in between one too.

I have to admit, I'm compelled to try that Kool Aid Pickle.

The Precipice

I have a big presentation tomorrow at work that I feel like will define my relationship with the rest of the company. I am presenting to all the department managers. The Executive Director is going to do an introduction.

It all seems rather daunting at the moment!

Very Grownup Indeed

First, the good news: Not only can I get a manicure, but I can get business cards too!

That's right! Even though I didn't get to keep my position working in Brown Bag, The Food Bank hired me for another exciting position. I am officially the Agency Capacity Coordinator for Franklin and Hampshire county! (That is, starting Monday :)) That means I'm a liaison between The Food Bank and all the various community organizations that make up the emergency food system. It's a pretty exciting and interesting opportunity and I'm very pleased to accept it.

We went to the Moan and Dove last night to celebrate, and accidentally stumbled into the opening of an art show there. Giddy on professional advancement and Hennepin, we decided to purchase one of the stunning paintings by local artist (and self confessed "anti-archtophilist" - it's on his business cards!) Brent Klockars. It was the first time that I think I've bought real art, and it seemed like kind of a milestone.

Here are some examples of Klockars' style. The paintings are really more beautiful though when you see them in person. They'll be on the wall until the end of the month there at the Dove. You can also check out his etsy store.

New job, new art. March is actually turning out to be a good month for once, even considering the weather.

The Beginning or the End?

So I am officially applying to become a full-time employee at the food bank, in the position I have now. While I'm feeling fairly optimistic about my chances, there is a pretty big roadblock in the way of my success. The person who takes this post should be bilingual en Espanol. I have some skills, but I'm nowhere near the fluency that would be ideal for the job. So I feel like I'm kind of on a 50-50 shot trajectory here. I think that my bosses and the people I work with like me and think I'm a good worker. But I can understand the desire to have somebody completely fluent working with non-English speaking clients. I feel like I'd be OK with either outcome, but obviously I'd prefer to stay employed.

If I do get hired, the first thing I would do would be....

Get my own business cards! It's been 2 years since I've had a permanent, long term post, and I've always been jealous of friends who could whip out their card. I feel like this would be the cornerstone of my metamorphoses into a professional.

If I don't get hired, the first thing I would do would be.......

Get a manicure! This job is HARD on your hands. I've got blisters, paper cuts, cardboard burns, and ten raggedy-ass nails that I don't really pay much attention to. When you spend half your day unloading trucks and breaking down boxes, it doesn't make any sense to try and make your hands pretty. I did get my nails done right before the wedding, and I really enjoyed the pampering and how nice they looked afterward. If I had the assurance that I wouldn't mess them up immediately, I'd totally get a nice french tip.

We'll see!

Harvey had it right...

Facing the prospect of another snow storm is just aggravating me right now. It would be ok to get some more little flurries. Psha, whatever, I'm not phased by that. I'm over it, I'm a New Englander in the flush of winter. And it wouldn't be so bad if this was one of those epic snow storms that shuts everything down forever. That would be exciting and fill me with all sorts of childhood snow day nostalgia. But NOOOOO.

It has to be one of those stupid storms that leaves a giant pile of poo for you to shovel up AND does it all before 6 AM so you still have to go to work. BULLSHIT.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. It's like my mantra during my commute:



Is it spring yet?

Her heart grew 3 sizes today!

Some of you may have heard me talking about a fairly infamous volunteer at a certain site I go to to distribute groceries. She's a rather old, fragile looking lady named Trudy, who (to quote a seasoned volunteer) "ain't happy if she ain't bitchin'."

Last month, Trudy gave me the business, so to speak, when I attempted to take a finished bag off the assembly line and put it on the table for the completed bags. She blustered over in her signature purple wind pants and got in my face, screaming that I "had to put the bag right back where it was this instant". Basically, Trudy was/is so controlling, that they had to give her one thing to have complete control over, or she'd try to make herself queen of the brown bag. That thing is the monthly newsletters, and when she caught me putting a newsletter in a bag for her, It was like I tried to steal her livelihood.

I found out later that she thought I was a stupid high school-er who didn't know anything, which fueled her lashing out. Weird!

So needless to say, we didn't get off on the best foot. Getting screeched at in the face will do that to a first impression. I also noticed that the other volunteers give Trudy and her newsletters a good 5 foot berth while she works on folding them.

Then today, almost everybody was surprised and impressed when Trudy asked for help with her precious paper work. It turns out that they were putting Christmas cards in with each newsletter, and she needed help folding the cards into the creased "Brown Bag Beats."

The cards were really nice, each one different, blank inside with matching envelopes. It was the gift of being able to wish somebody else a Merry Christmas. I mentioned to the site coordinator how nice I thought it was that they were giving out these cards.

"Oh, you know that was all Trudy's idea. We had been doing it the last five years or so, and I only just found last month that she had been buying all the cards for the Brown Bag out of her own pocket."

I suddenly became aware that the reason Trudy wears those purple wind pants every month wasn't just because they were her signature look, it was also because they were her only pair of pants.

It really made me see another side of this cantankerous old biddie. She bought everybody in town who needed these free groceries a Christmas card. In my eyes, it was like she went through the Grinch's heart x-ray machine.

I guess it was a lesson on open-mindedness and the duality of nature. No doubt Trudy will be back to her newsletter dictatorship in January, but it was nice to see her caring side and Christmas cheer.

I meet such weird people doing this job....

Picturesque

So, I've been lucky enough to snag another job that involves getting out of the office and doing some hands on outreach work. My new temp position in the Brown Bag program at the Food Bank gets me driving all over the 3 counties of western MA. Yesterday I visited by far my favorite town yet: Shelburne Falls


The town has two claims to fame, outside of being wicked beautiful.

1. The Glacial Pothole rock formations

2. The Bridge of Flowers, which is a beautiful, free community garden that just happens to be suspended across the Deerfield River.

Betheny, the food bank intern and I got lunch at that little pub that you can see on the left of the picture, over looking the bridge. I got grilled cheese and spinach and mushroom soup. It was a delicious addition to the first day that really felt like fall. We walked over the bridge on the way back to the car and it was positively exploding with Dahlias of every color. You can really tell they take care to plant the flowers so there is something blooming from April to October.

The village is just nestled in this little mountain valley, and full of these neat metal suspension bridges. The town center is surprisingly active too, given how isolated Shelburne is. There were lots of neat little artsy shops and independent cafes. No wonder Bill Cosby lives here. I am hoping to get back again soon!

Heart Music

This is my new favorite song right now. It reminds me that fall is basically here and the so called "dog days of summer" are gone. Plus the video is the pinnacle of amazingness!



Florence and the Machine is awesome. My favorite tidbit from her (Florence Welch) wikipedia page is this:

"The debut single for the album was "Kiss with a Fist" and featured on the soundtrack for the film Wild Child , Jennifer's Body^[25] and in the "Looks Like a Lesbian Attack to Me" episode of the television series of "Saving Grace." "

Lol.

Incidentally, my co-worker in the Brown Bag program is named Florence. She's pushing 80, and I will be driving her with me to many of the distribution sites. She loves sweets. On the way to the drop site on friday, we stopped for donuts. On the way back we stopped for ice cream. Florence's favorite flavor is orange pineapple. She hasn't had black raspberry since she was a little girl. PS: She's diabetic, so she always goes for the plain cone.

Almost every time we've hung out together, she's told me about her favorite place to go when we go on distributions. There's a little creamery near Cummington where we'll stop and get scones.

"One time," Florence told me, "I had the scone and I was still hungry, so I went to the senior center cafeteria and had the most delicious breakfast sandwich. They'll make your eggs any way you want. They used to give out free homefries...but they don't do that anymore."

She looked pretty sad about that.

It's a funny old world

I am currently on the job hunt! My tenure at the Quaboag Valley CDC is officially coming to an end on August 31. I'll miss working there, it was a really positive experience. Too bad crummy Deval Patrick only lets you do Commonwealth Corps for one year.

I've had a fair bit of luck on my search, and have actually had several interviews. But nothing has panned out yet. The competition is fierce, and the bulk of who I am up against out there are far more experienced. I'm sure something will work out for me sooner or later, but I'm starting to lose confidence that I'll be transitioning immediately from one job to another. C'est la vie.

This job search though has gotten me thinking more about the global economy. I recently watched this really interesting episode of Vanguard where they examined the migrant workers of the Philippines. An astonishing large fraction of the nation's people leave the country every year to work in other countries. They send billions of dollars back to their families every year, but this monetary influx isn't improving the economy.



I thought it was really interesting too, how so many of these laborers go to Saudi Arabia for employment. Saudi Arabia is a country that I realized suddenly I know almost nothing about. I know we get our oil from them, and that their moral code is extremely strict. But it's hard for me to imagine moving there and living there and working there. Though it's unlikely that that would happen to me, as women are largely barred from working in the Kingdom.

Being morally obligated to be covered head to toe all the time must be kind of a drag. Check out their bathroom signs. It's a far cry from our triangle-shaped skirt ladies.



As the Original poster said: "The only uncovered woman in Saudi Arabia and she's on the door of a toilet. It's a funny old world."

Mr. President?

Whilst driving home from work today, I managed to catch a segment about the upcoming Presidential elections in Colombia on NPR. The elections are four days away, and most reputable polling agencies are saying that Juan Manual Santos, the US-backed former Minister of National Defense and will likely win by a great margin. However, the former Mayor of the capital city Bogota, a descendant of Lithuanian immigrants, is really rising in popularity.

I strongly suggest listening to the piece: here

His name is Antanas Mockus, a former collegiate dean and mathematician/philosopher. He is pictured above in his "supercitizen" costume, which he wore while mayor to encourage a more aware and civically engaged populous. As mayor, he also hired over 400 mimes to mock people who committed traffic violations, "because he believed Colombians were more afraid of being ridiculed than fined." He also, as the NPR article mentions, is most notorious for mooning a lecture hall full of rowdy inattentive students during his tenure at the National University. It did get them to shut up....

Even though he's best known for his zany behaviors and gimmicky political initiatives, he actually made a huge difference in the cultural and public life in Bogota. Under his mayorship:
-Water usage dropped 40%
-Clean drinking water became universally available (as opposed to just 79% of households in 1993)
-Homicides dropped 70%
-Traffic fatalities dropped over 50%

Et cetera. He is also a living example of a successful, dynamic leader with Parkinson's Disease. I think it would be really cool to see him become president. He seems to have found just the right mix of weird showmanship and political savvy. Also- Awesome Beard.

You can watch a documentary about him too:

The doctor knew just what to do....

Where I work, lunch is a team effort. Almost always, all the ladies in the office at QVCDC sit down for lunch together. Compared to my last job, where I always ate alone, it's an interesting and fun. Today. Kerry, our sassy receptionist told us all a great story.

A few days ago, her husband went upstairs to check on their 5 year old daughter, who was playing quietly in her room. He walked in to find her in the yogic "child's pose"-

with her shirt lifted up, and her pants around her ankles. She was also rubbing her rear with one hand. Understandably, he was a little freaked out. When he asked her what she was doing, she gave some distracted kid answer that really didn't explain the behavior.

Kerry's husband told her about it later than night, and they spent the longest time trying to figure out what might be going on with with their kid. They didn't want to keep bringing it up and pressing her on it, because 5 year olds aren't always the most straightforward about giving an explanation about things, and they didn't want to encourage fabrication.

Fortunately the mystery was solved at approximately 0:25:

Adventures in Panoply

As the fundraiser I'm organizing for work gets closer and closer, I'm finding myself going out into the community a lot more often to sell ads and beg for items for the auction.

On Friday, Kerry and I went together to Whiskey Hill Sports, in West Warren (people who live there seem to take the "west" vs. regular Warren thing very seriously, even though they are not geographically or technically distinct). The owner of the store, who likes to go by "Bope" invited us to come by and pick out some things for the event, which was super nice and generous of him.

Oh yeah, I should probably mention that Whiskey Hill sports is primarily a gun store. I was a little intimidated by the whole concept of going there (especially after having a look at certain parts of the store's website), which is why I asked Kerry to come with me. I can honestly say though, that going to this store was a really cool and unexpectedly fun and interesting experience. Bope has more guns and knives than Higgins Armory, and some of them are in considerably better shape. The place was like an antiques store and a bunker mixed together with a auto dealership, and the owner took us on a really sweet guided tour of his wares.

Things you can buy at Whiskey Hill Sports:

- Airsoft guns
-Modern and antique bows and arrows
- The bowie knife from Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven", Or as Bope put it "That knife he sliced up the whore with." Incidentally, Bope also has a special bowie knife that was personally made for him by the master knife maker who made that one for Eastwood.
-A 6 foot long flint lock gun from the civil war
-Guns from WWI and WWII
-Guns from Vietnam to present
- Antique Leg Irons
- A signed Mickey Mouse collectors plate from the 40's
- 90 year old cast iron toy cars
- Motorcycles
- Tasers
- A Music Box that looks like a German Beer stein and plays "Little Brown Jug"
-Maple Syrup
- Ride-on-lawn Mower
-Antique Chinese Cigarette case
- Incredibly beautiful Stained Glass Wheel Kaleidoscopes
- One of these:
Which Bope let me try on. Badass, beautiful and dangerous!
- Samurai Swords
- Japanese Anti-aircraft guns from WWII
- Antique bullets from every period in gun manufacturing.
- Various fiber-optic light decorations (one shaped like an Eagle!)
- A taxidermy'd chicken
- Watches
- He even had a "ladies" gun department, where he kept tiny, feminine pistols.

Also present but not for sale was a glass grenade style fire extinguisher from the 1950's, tons of pictures from hunting trips and trophies (dead animals.com) and Bope's first teddy bear that he got the day he was born.

There was a ton of other really unique and interesting stuff too. The store is also equipped with a wicked intense surveillance system that films that beeps when cars pull into the driveway. I guess that's fair though, when you've got so many guns around. I've got a soft spot in my heart for these intense wildernessy hunter guys, who love the second amendment and being manly. Though it's not entirely my cup of tea, their primeval survival skills really impress me.

Thanks for the donation Bope, you're the man.

IRS SchmIRS

Part of my non-profit job is doing volunteer tax prep for people in the community. We ordered reference guide packets for everybody a few weeks ago. These packets, among other things contained Publication 1278. Publication 1278 is a carrying bag for all our Big thick IRS tomes. Yeah...They even have Publication numbers for freakin' bags. Bureaucracy central!

I have to say too, that I was a little bummed that my 1278 was a plastic bag. "Carrying bag" suggested canvas, I thought. But I guess they aren't wasting taxpayer $$$.

Caturday XII

Kitty Business Trip!

Perils of Event Planning in the Quaboag Valley

I'm trying to put together the spring fundraiser for my non-profit. We're attempting to do an adult bake sale of sorts, with desserts and a wine tasting. I've spent the last 2 weeks looking for a venue to host it at. Of the three places I've courted so far, one is too expensive, one doesn't meet the requirements for a Charity Pouring license, and one won't return my calls. I just googled "function halls near Ware" to see if there were any other options that I hadn't considered, and this is the image I got:

That big blank area surrounding Ware is the Quaboag Valley. That "A" is the restaurant they held the fundraiser at last time. It's like a big restaurant killing bomb went off with a radius exactly the size of our service area.

Learning a New Skill

At work, I've been put in charge of creating graphic promotional e-mails. The framework we use to create these little newsletters reminds me a lot of livejournal. There are lots of templates you can fiddle around with, but it really, really helps to know a little HTML.

One of the girls I work with gave me a Hypertext study guide to reference while I'm fighting with the code. I really like this guide for two reasons. One, my personal helper on this formatting journey is a little cartoon pig in steel-toed boots and a denim jumpsuit. He has a sweet von dutch trucker hat, toolbelt, and a nametag that says "HTML" on it. He helps me out by equating everything to being an auto mechanic. Transparent GIFs? Why, that's just like a car overheating! Setting up a project folder is also basically identical to stacking some tires, why not.

The second reason I like the guide is that the sample website they use for examples is a very lame Lord of the Rings fan page. One screen cap reads as follows:

Aragorn - The King Returns

In Tolkien's epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings, Isildur's heir was Aragorn, in whose veins two or three thousand years worth of old Numenorean blood ran true. Wow!

It's too bad that mylordoftheringssite.com doesn't really exist, so you could see the terrible formatting (a picture right in the middle of a sentence? Whatever you say Mr. Pig.) and awkward assertions made by this super fan (AKA "lotrnut@hotmail.com") like - "Saruman was really the progressive of the two", and calling Gandalf "diabolical".

I tried to find a bad angelfire site that would be a good approximation. This is probably the closest I'm going to get.

Suprise History Lesson

One of my jobs at the Quabog Valley CDC (which is not the center for disease control, despite popular opinion) is to drive around to all the town halls and libraries in our service region and deliver our catalogs. I get to drive around with Kelsey, my fellow Commonwealth Corps intern, and see the beautiful western MA countryside like a couple of leaf peepers. We also attempt to schmooze with the local public servants on the side.

It's been pretty cool seeing all the different town buildings, and how they range from the very new and very huge, to the very old and quiant. One of the town halls (I can't remeber which one, but I want to say it was Brookfield) had a little museum-like display put out in the halls of the town offices. One of the cases turned out to be a bizarre tribute to 19th century male facial hair.

The case was full of ceramic shaving mugs, boxes of moustache wax, and a rather grand collection of moustache cups, which was something I didn't know existed.



Apparently, in the age of big-front-wheel-bicycles, moustaches were so cool a special cup was invented to protect ones meticulously groomed whiskers. The cusp of the cup was designed to keep your handlebar dry, and keep your hot tea from melting your moustache wax.

Museum Musings

So my internship at Higgins Armory has been cool so far. The drive is obnoxiously long, but once I get there, I enjoy being there. I go twice a week. On Thursdays, I go and do archival work for the curatorial department. This is cool, because it's something I'm interested in studying in library school. It's nice to get some experience under my belt and realize that I actually like doing it.

Right now, I'm digitally scanning Higgins Family photos into the server. It's a little dull, but I really enjoy looking at the pictures, it has a kind of found magazine vibe to it. Two weeks ago, I was doing family portraits, which included one of Mr. Higgins Sr. as a baby in a kilt and stry-ped tights, and one of his wife as a child taken at the St. Louis World's Fair (1904).
This week, I'm getting into the weirdness of pictures from the family house. This includes faded, unflattering snapshots of the family bathroom, and a bizarre photo of a child mannequin in a baby-sized suit of armor, labeled on the back as "Jody".


When I'm there on weekends (usually Saturdays, sometimes sundays, but I won't be there next week if you were thinking about visiting...) I'm taking visitor surveys for Beyond Belief, our interactive art exhibit about mythology and crytozoology. This is kind of cool, because I get to sit outside the exhibit and watch little kids play in the quest gallery, where you can try on helmets and play dress up and the like. There are lots of cute little kids out there in the world. The other day, two even came to the museum already in costume. One was dressed like a little knight, and the other, for some reason, was dressed in a metallic silver spaceman suit.
I haven't even seen that many kids being rude or bad in there, or throwing fits, which is nice.

I have to say, seeing 200+ kids every weekend, I've learned which baby names are officially played out. Literally every other little boy who comes through the museum is named with some variation of Aiden. Hayden, Jayden, Caiden, or Brayden. It's actually kind of startling. There are also a crazy ton of Noahs, which is too bad, cuz I always liked that name.

No more Teachers, No more books

I've been meaning to post some updates about the house for awhile now. Things are finally starting to come together, and it's starting to feel like a true home. We got new hard wood floors over the weekend, and have almost finished painting and sanitizing everything. At some point, very soon, I will post pictures and updates. I've also been meaning to show you guys the crazy shit that the previous owners have left behind. They left so much random stuff behind! I'll endeavor to post this stuff before the week is out

In other news though. Friday is my last day at Learning Skills - Correct Read, after a year and a half of not-so-hard labor. I complained about working here a lot. But it was never really because the job was that bad, in a demanding sense. It was just because working there was ridiculous. Period. As my time here is coming to an end, I find myself not feeling sad, nor wistful, nor nostalgic at all. Mostly I'm just excited to jump this sinking ship.

Here are the things I will miss:
- Getting to knit all day long at work.
-Getting to surf the internet all the live long day.
- Getting to read so many books and get paid for it.
- In summary, the copious and unwaveringly boring downtime.

Here are the things I will not miss:
- Hearing the same monologue over and over from helicopter parents about how busy and important their kid is because they play a sport. And how stressed and overwhelmed they are because of their freshman year workload....which is the least amount of workload you can possibly have in college. What do they want me to say? I'm sorry your child is in school?

- Having to deal with the careless/ stupid mistakes that my boss makes and his inability to deal with reality. I tell my boss that there's a pivotal issue with a class that needs his attention and he responds by running out the door to do his personal banking. Most recently, Lew cost us $90 in overdraft fees by accidentally using the business card to pay for his groceries.

- Coming back from my lunch break and smelling that my boss has most definitely been smoking inside the office, and finding ash on my desk planner.

-Working with another office that doesn't have e-mail, and having to fax them everything. Now that I'm leaving, the other office is thinking about getting the internet. Lew told them not to worry about paying for a router, and just to sign on to some other unsecured networks for free. He told them "we do that here all the time!". So. Untrue.

-My boss basically assuming that I am incapable of doing anything. When I was first working here, it was suggested that I write new test texts for the classes. He told me that it was "too hard". I'm and English Major who has done almost nothing but write. I also offered to revamp their terrible website. I learned that it was only re-done about 2 years ago. Also, Lew again told me that it would be "too hard for me". It's like, because everything is so hard for him to accomplish in his daily life, he doesn't think that anybody can do anything.

- Having to give my boss rides to his doctors appointments and the DMV.

-Fending off the telemarketers that call the office 24 hours a day. If Lew doesn't want them to hassle him at work, why is gods name does he give them all this number?

- Having to explain simple computer concepts like sceensavers and desktop wallpaper. Also, having to hear the internet get called "aol" all the time.

I really could go on forever, I have a year plus worth of craziness. But like I said, it wasn't hard or difficult to work here. Just unendingly bizarre and astonishing. Someday I'll write a book.

Epiphany

Today, I had what I would call a life changing experience. An awesome moment that totally changed my perspective on the last year or so of my life, and made me feel, honestly, a lot better about myself.

I had to sort through resumes to find my replacement. My good friend Meredith wrote this funny post on the same topic a little while back.

The amount of response to the Criagslist ad I put up, in just under 48 hours, was really impressive and kind of overwhelming. Sorting through them all, I really started with the intent on reading them carefully and considering people's needs and feelings. But I realized pretty quickly that this just wasn't feasible. My job, quite frankly, is so easy a monkey could do it, so almost everybody who applied was qualified. It just became a matter of superficially sorting through things and trying to find a way to narrow my options down.

- People who clearly didn't tailor their materials to the job, out. Why would you tell me you want to work as a medical transcriptionist, when this is not the advertised position? Also be sure that if you use a form letter like "Dear (Insert Person Here) I am interested in (insert position here)" That you actually do the inserting.

-As Meredith pointed out, a cover letter is a really important aspect of making your skills known, but you really need to keep it short and sweet. I don't need a 2 page essay about your time at Walgreens. Nor do I want to read a dissertation on the importance of a cover letter, that barely talks about you or why you want this job (really.) Just tell me briefly why you'd be good for the job. I figure out the rest from your resume.

- Don't forget to attach your resume and references. "Please find my resume and references attached" is impossible to accomplish if they're not there!

-With such a big pool of applicants to compete with, little things can totally ruin your chances at an interview. Like using waaaay too many exclamation points in your cover letter, or having grammatical errors and typos.

The whole process made me realize, that this past year of job search failures wasn't really my fault. That even as a very strong applicant, I had so many other people to contend with that I easily got lost in the shuffle. Also, that the fact that I even got a new job (working here, through Commonwealth Corps) is basically a miracle. It was really a positive experience to actually see what I was contending with as an applicant, and it made me feel silly for having so many negative thoughts about myself as a result of it. It also gave me some attention - grabbing tricks to log away for the next time on the job prowl. Overall, helpful and eye-opening.