Not as awesome as Selena in her combat boots

Hello you wonderful people!

Selena has driven me to posting. I can just picture her in her virtual combat boots stomping all over our emails, reminding us to write. So here are some snapshots of my recent life:

- I fell into a minor depression once many of you left after graduation weekend. I was mopey all over the place. What could I do? It was just so good to see you! Veronica even said to me in the Zu kitchen, "No wonder you're so sad!" after she went through the roster asking if each of you had left yet ("What about Carmella? Megan? Rose?"). Maybe it's melodramatic, but it felt like saying bye to you all at Chapman once again. It also foreshadowed the steady stream of friends who will leave the Happy Valley this summer. Some have already gone: Julian and Kendahl (we miss you!); Will Bangs (the Hampshire friend from high school who Selena followed around Chapman); Tauhid; Dylan Bianchi; Marcella. Some are about to leave: Scott and Sara DZ; Jenny Morgan; my friend Liz from Smith; potentially Becky and Steve. Obviously they are all going off to exciting things...
- I have dealt with the scary prospect of losing friends in Western Mass by making an effort to make new friends out here. My roommates are a total lost cause (why does every interaction have to be so weird?), but my coworkers are amazing people. I have become friends with two in particular: Amy, who reminds me of a mix of Carmella, Rachel, Selena and my friend Ellice from New York; and Lauren, who is unlike anyone I know. We have been cooking breakfast together before work, which is a glorious way to start the day. Amy also started an all-young-women skill share, which, if any of you have one near wherever you are, I highly recommend joining. It's one of my favorite things right now. Usually a group of 6 - 12 of us get together, do some popular education, eat some delicious food, and have an awesomely good time. I didn't know anyone in the group before, but it's a bunch of amazing women. (Not quite Chapman of course, but Chapman-esque.) So far we've learned about sex, feminism, and bread baking. We also did a clothes swap, a la Megan! And we're going to make goat cheese, can fruits and veggies, play with power tools, learn about camping and international travel, talk music theory... the list of things that we can teach and learn goes on and on. (Generally, it's a good, confidence-boosting activity to make a list of all the things that you could teach a group of people. It turns out to be more than you would think.)
- I have also made friends with a woman, Vanessa, from the Ivory Coast. We get together at the Holyoke Mall (yucky, but she likes it), and practice our English and French.
- Monty and I went camping this weekend at the same place that Carms went with her family. It was rainy and wet, but there was still wisdom in the woods.
- New friends + camping + going home for Memorial Weekend + still hanging out with old friends in the area = me coming out of my mopey phase. But I still do miss you guys.
- I can't seem to make myself care about the World Cup. Soccer's sort of boring, but everyone else in the world likes it. I liked playing when I was eight, but it was a fad, and we all just ran after the ball in a huge clump of snotty kids. I got over it.
- My work got painfully frustrating during the month of May. For those of you who don't know, my job is to bring a struggling affordable housing agency back to life by building a Board of Directors and facilitating their meetings, raising monies, participating in strategic planning, networking with partners, doing advocacy as needed (ie taking on public corruption) and, my personal favorite, building community among our homeowners (ie community organizing). Last month, however, I realized that there was absolutely no good expressed reason for bringing this organization back to life, and that there was no vision or direction for its future. The conversation with my boss, the Executive Director, went something like this:
Me: So, Eric, if money or time or staff constraints were no object, what would you want the organization to do? [This question after I had pitched multiple exciting ideas and had been shot down each time because of "money, time or staff constraints". Grrrr.]
Eric: Oh, I don't know ?
Me: So then..........why did you want to restart this organization when you could have just shut it down?
Eric: Oh, I don't know. First, the Land Trust was really closely tied to my career and identity, so I wasn't ready to let it go. [WRONG. Selfish.] Second, I had the vision of it growing into a national model of foreclosure prevention, and of myself being congratulated by President Obama for staying off the domestic housing crisis. [WRONG. Also selfish. And totally unrealistic. We are an organization with no money in the bank, no staff, no programs, and no reputation. A handshake from Obama is just not in the future.] Third, I sort of needed something to do. [WRONG. Pathetic.]
At this point I was ready to throw in the towel, furious that I had basically wasted six months of my life on an organization that was going nowhere. But then I decided to give a big shpeel to the Board of Directors, and it worked! I was so mad, that I got up the courage at the next Board meeting, and told them that they HAD to get their act together and start making some decisions about the organization, or we were just going to close the whole thing down. They hemmed and hawed a little, but I made them each go around and say whether or not they actually wanted to keep it going, and they all finally made a concerted commitment to invest serious time and thought and energy into it. Yes! So now we are going places! It's not like I have a lot more direction now (don't get me wrong, I still spend a lot of time reading blogs and web cartoons at my desk), but at least I don't have to quit my fake VISTA job.
- Plus, this whole week my lame boss has been on vacation, so I get to do whatever I want! I came in to work at noon on Monday and 10:30 this morning. Yesss. No one cares what I do.
- Most exciting ever: I am going to the US SOCIAL FORUM next week!!!! Between 10 and 20 thousand activists are descending on Detroit, ground zero of globalization and the economic crisis, from June 22 - 26. We are going to take it all on: Goldman Sachs, BP oil, corporate interests, Monsanto, the man, Halliburton (I hate so much), insurance companies, whatever! I am pumped. Mostly, actually, I am going to community organizing workshop after community organizing workshop, and I am going to come back skilled and revitalized. Watch me get inspirationed up! Everyone I know who has ever been to a US or World Social Forum has said that it's a life-changing experience. I used to learn about these Forums in Development Studies classes. (Selena, remember that radical Turkish Marxist Econ professor -- what was his name? He showed us footage of the World Social Forum in his class.) So I'm really excited to be part of the real thing at last, as opposed to just learning about it in a classroom.
- Talk to you guys soon!!!!!!