I am in mourning today. It really pains me that half of this country voted for a man that stands against almost every value of mine. It pains me even more that most of these fellow citizens also claim the same religion as I do. My only consolation is that God was there even when Israel's government was at its most corrupt, and that God was there when the reminder that God was a God of justice and love was nailed to a cross, so God will be here even when the religion of justice and love is codified into government as a religion of oppression, hate and war. How appropriate that we are only a few weeks from Advent, a time when we are most reminded of this. O Come, O Come Emmanuel!
I�m not feeling so hot today. I have a gummy throat and feel a little sick to my stomach, and unfortunately I think it is from more than just the election, although that certainly made me sick enough. Hopefully it won�t get too much worse. I, of course, am still going to choir. We�ll see how long I can sing before the voice gives out.
Last Friday I got to record our case management rebid review panels. It is quite an elaborate process. Agencies in the Chicago metro area sent in thick proposals to receive funding for HIV case managers. Then we had several teams of reviewers made up of HIV service providers, other community service providers, and clients. Each team went through 10 proposals. They were given very strict guidelines on what to look for, gave each proposal a score in several categories, and then discussed the proposal�s strengths and weaknesses with the team. The team then either recommended the proposal for funding, recommended with considerations (things the agency needs to fix first), or not recommend. After that the proposals and recommendations from the review panels go to AFC staff, who will take into consideration things like geographic location, populations served, prior experiences with the agencies, etc. to come up with staff recommendations. I think there are more steps after that, but I�m not too sure about that part yet. It was definitely a learning experience.
Saturday the housemates and I watched Fahrenheit 911 since some of them hadn�t seen it yet. It was a powerful movie, even the second time around. Good pre-election watching :) This election has been a sort of bonding for us (misery will do that for you). Erica got to go to Wisconsin on Election Day to remind people to vote. It was interesting to hear her stories from �the swing states�. I also got to call Dad and hear first-hand from Ohio. When you live in a tiny spot of intense blue (Chicago went over 80% for Kerry), you have to get your election news second hand (all of the candidates ignored us).
Sunday we got to sing an awesome version of �When the Saints Go Marching In.� The rest of the congregation really got into it, which made it even better. I love songs that really lift your spirit like that.
Well as you see I missed my Thursday update, but I have a good excuse, we were at retreat last weekend. I�ll catch you up on that Thursday. One of the things we did at retreat is present our community covenant. Each LVC house discusses what is important to it and puts that together into a covenant, which they present at retreat. Our house covenanted to meet together on a daily basis. In LVC we are supposed to meet together as a house once a week for a �community night� and once a month for a �faith night� but we found our house was so busy we weren�t doing very well at scheduling them. As a result if felt like we weren�t really spending much intentional time together. We discovered that we usually have at least 15 minutes between the time the last person comes home and the first person goes to bed, so we decided to take that time together. We are hoping that we can grow from there. At retreat we presented the covenant in a dance. Since we are all taking Old Town School of Folk Music dance classes, we each started the dance doing our own dances from class (I�m sure it was pretty interesting to see West African, Hip Hop, Latin and Ballet dances going on at the same time to the same music!). Then we all spun into a circle seated on the floor. Then we held up words representing ideals we wanted to uphold in our covenant together. At the end we crossed arms, pulling each other up, and danced off in our own way again. We have only had our covenant in place for a few days, but already I feel so much better about our community. I feel like I will have a much better chance to get to know my housemates now, and feel much more in touch with what they are doing and feeling at work. Gotta go! Bye�
Yesterday was the AIDS Foundation of Chicago�s annual meeting of our board of directors and our Service Provider�s Council. It is a nice time to show off everything we have been doing over the year. Our Executive Director runs down a top "10" list (both years I have been here it wound up a top 11) of accomplishments, approve new board members, chairs, etc, and generally schmooze with everyone. This year we also presented our new strategic vision. Really reminds me what a great place I work for.
It is very warm here today. I hope we don�t have weather like this all fall and winter. It is bad enough we never really got hot enough to have a summer. I love the Midwest because of the changing seasons. If it is just going to be blah all the time I might as well move to Florida (no offense Grandma and Grandpa :) ) At least it does make for nice bike weather.
This weekend my housemate Erica is going down to Ft. Benning, Georgia to protest the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly the School of Americas). She works for an agency that fights for peace in Latin America and also to help Latin Americans here in the US seeking sanctuary from the violence in their own countries. Unfortunately, they have found a lot of the violence is supported by US military aid, and a lot of the worst perpetrators were trained at the SOA. It should be interesting to hear her stories.
Ok, so I really do have an excuse for missing two Thursday updates in a row! Two Thursdays ago I was enjoying a wonderful Thanksgiving meal with by supervisor, Shelly and her family (in-law side). I Baked bread, and of course, there was a lot of other yummy food, and the conversations were fun. There are a lot of teachers in her family!
Last Thursday was AFC�s "World of Chocolate" fundraiser. It is definitely my favorite! It is in honor of World AIDS day (which was the day before) and raises funds for our grant-making program, which we then give out to agencies in the community. Chocolatiers from all over the city come and show off their creations. The biggest creation was a life-size motorcycle (all in chocolate)! We couldn�t eat that one, but there were a whole bunch of yummy bite-sized creations to taste. Most of AFC staff has a stomachache the day after the event, I wonder why? I haven�t heard yet how we did fundraising-wise.
On World AIDS day itself I went to the citywide commemoration where our Faith In Prevention program had a table. We had lots of people come ask us questions, and made some helpful connections. We had put a list together of everything our church partners had accomplished in the first 3 months, and that was really neat for both me, the partners, and passer-bys to see. One of the partners said in a meeting that she really hoped FIP could help dispel the myth that the church is just an obstacle to HIV prevention. I think our partners are doing their best to prove it wrong!
This afternoon we had the second meeting of our "Altria Food and Nutrition Advocacy Partnership". I tried calling it "AFNAP" (sounding like the duck in the Aflac commercials) but that didn�t go over too well. It is amazing the amount of work that is already being done even though the partnership is just starting. We have two broad goals: to train case managers and clients on how to apply for food stamps and to develop a position paper on reforms we would like to see. It will be neat to see if we can actually get any of those changes made. Some training is already being done, and we have some broad ideas for our advocacy goals. We are hoping to get a lot of stuff done in a short period of time, as we will need to apply for a renewal of the grant in the spring. It will definitely look better if we have something to show for the money they (Altria � the parent company of Kraft and Phillip Morris) have already given us.
My last West African dance class is next week. For the next session at Old Town School I signed up for a jug band! They supposedly will teach us how to make our own instruments from things lying around the house. We will then play music from the jug band era, and then make our own! It�s a new class, so hopefully enough people will sign up for it. I think it will be really fun.
Speaking of dance, just so you all know I have really flipped, I decided to dance with Broadway UMC�s liturgical dance group for the Christmas concert. What was I thinking? It also is fun, but I am no more coordinated at liturgical dancing than I am at West African, and I have to do this in front of people! At least God will have something funny to watch :)
Wow, time sure flies. I can�t believe I haven�t written since December 9th! Lets see going way back to then� The week after that I went to a Red Cross training with our Faith in Prevention partners. We are now certified HIV instructors! It was a really neat experience to go through the training with them since it is pretty intensive. I feel a lot more confident about being able to talk about my job now too. The partnership itself seems to be doing well. It is amazing what the partners are able to accomplish.
The other partnership I work with, the Altria Food and Nutrition Advocacy Partnership, is also going well. It is really cool to work with such experienced organizations. I really hope our projects can help get more people enrolled in food stamps and also create a strong partnership that can bring other resources to the hungry in Chicago. So many ideas, now we just have to do them!
I�ve really started being able to put my skills to work on the data side of things here at AFC. This past year we switched to client level reporting of services (before we just said we served x number per month, now we can say Mr. Smith received x). When we first started we had so many errors and missing information that we were putting about 45% of the information into our system. This of course, meant we were way short of what we said we would provide when we reported to the city. In November (we haven�t done December yet) we were able to put in over 95% of our data because of cleaning processes I developed and report forms I was able to produce for the agencies letting them know what was wrong with their data. It made me feel really good to know I could make such a difference. It was even better when Roman was able to give agencies a report that would help them with case management based on the numbers I was able to help get into our system!
I spent Christmas in Ohio with my Dad and family. Ohio had just got socked with a big winter storm so everything was still pretty messy. Fortunately dad was one of the ones that only lost power for 11 hours, others in the Columbus were still without power when I left (6 days after the storm!). We went to church at Linden Community UMC, ate, played games, and watched movies. New Years I was back in Chicago as I worked Tuesday and Wednesday. I celebrated the change over of the year the same way I usually do: snuggled up in my warm bed snoring :)
Every year Broadway UMC has a Pre-Christmas celebration since a lot of the congregation is gone at Christmas. All of the choirs sing, the Reader�s Theatre read �How the Grinch Stole Christmas� and the liturgical dance group did a dance with candles. It was a lot of fun. I sang with the non-gender specific choir and danced. It was a really spiritually moving experience for me.
Yesterday was the first session of my new class, jug band. I think it is absolutely hilarious that this devout Methodist will be learning how to play a whisky jug :) We learned about chords, how to make the lip noises necessary for playing a jug (a lot like brass instruments but since there are no valves you have to be able to control the buzz even better), and the history of jug bands. Then we played songs on whatever instruments people had brought. Next week we learn how to play with kitchenware (spoons, pots, pans, and anything else we can make into a percussion instrument!) Should be a riot.
I really do have a good excuse again this time for not writing in three weeks. Two Thursdays ago we were in the car on the way to Wisconsin for retreat. Last Thursday I was writing a novelette to friends and family for my annual after-Christmas letter (if you didn�t get it just yell at me for not considering you friend or family and I�ll give it to you). Fortunately I have the Woman�s Support Group tonight so I have an extra day to write!
While retreats are not usually my things (I much prefer to either stick to the grind stone or go completely on vacation) this past one had some good points. We watched a video from PBS on class that was really interesting. Up until now it seems like most of our LVC functions have focused on racism without too much look at other "isms". There were several things in the video that really struck for me, especially scenes I recognized from my experiences or those my housemates have told me about. There were of course lots of good discussions, some volunteer led, and some spontaneous unscheduled deep discussions. There was also time for play with lots of knitting, tubing, and card playing. I even found enough people from the Michigan/Indiana/Ohio to play a few rounds of Euchre! For anyone not from one of those three states Euchre is a 4-player card game that almost everyone who plays is either from Michigan/Indiana/Ohio or taught by someone in those three states. Occasionally you find some Illinois and PA Euchreists but that is a stretch.
Work�s been going good, working on the same projects I�ve talked a lot about. Still trying to convince them they want me around after August :) I think I need to convince our funders more than I need to convince AFC though.
Worship was especially powerful for me last Sunday. It was something like the Day of Prayer for Christian Unity (can�t remember the exact name). Anyway, being in a church that so often defines itself as being against so much of what the official church structure is doing was interesting. Rev Dell made some very good points in his sermon about not dividing ourselves over trivial things but also remembering that Jesus fought very much with the religious authorities of his day when they did not represent who he knew God to be. He also pointed out that we couldn�t let our differences divide us from the fact that our �enemies� are to be disagreed with but still loved. While this is a pretty common sermon at Broadway, it just seemed to hit me more this past week than usual. It also helped that the music for this service was all very familiar and fun hymns (We are the church, Lord you have come to the lakeshore, Lord of the dance, etc.).
It has been a wet sloppy few weeks for bike riding. We got hit with over a foot of snow and then it warmed up, so now everything is a gray sludgy mess. YUCH! I, of course, am still out there in it with a big grin on (well ok, maybe not the whole way � and certainly not when I took rain gear off after riding and looked at how quickly my 75 cent washing wore off).
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