Super busy day
Hey! Look! It's another post! Within a day or so of the last one! What's the world coming to? ;-p
Anyways, It was one of those days I'm surprised by just how much I got done. Drove cross county to take the kid to school. Drove back cross county to catch the metro into town. I needed to be at our end of the Red Line so that I could get to piano lessons on time. Then I took the metro downtown where I put away clean dishes, sort through some seriously manky strawberries, and wash a decent amount of dishes at the McPherson Sq. Occupy DC site. Then, I head down to Freedom Plaza (on Penn Ave. where the Turkish festival is) with fellow organizer J. to sort out that encampment's library. Once that's done, it's a metro ride back to Shady Grove, then a quick lunch, piano lessons, and scooping the kidlet from school. I was really happy to get home.
Besides what anyone feels about the Occupy movements, there are a lot of people learning a lot of things. Both about our political system and about organizing groups in general.
I really feel sort of badly for the men running the kitchen at McPherson Sq. because they don't get a lot of help from their fellow Occupiers and it's a bit of a thankless task. In some ways, I'm very glad that I have so little time to help because that makes me set limits.
I'd really hate to be in charge of something as large and important as a kitchen serving approx. 500 meals a day and doing it with a tiny handful of helpers. Talk about a short road to burn out.
Organizing the library at Freedom Plaza was fun! I got to use skills I've not used in long time. In approx. 3 hrs., I sorted through the collection of about 150 books. Separated the duplicates, the fiction from non-fiction, the foreign language materials, kids books, and humor. The non-fiction is in a big rubbermaid tub that we can stuff in a tent if the weather gets bad. We're hoping to get a tent of our own for the library in a day or two.
It's also weird to be old enough to be noticeably middle aged in the different groups. When I'm hanging around my friends, it's not so noticeable. But at the encampments, a lot of the people are young enough to be my kids. And I'm saddened that things have gotten so bad in our country that we have to protest to have things like a job.
These aren't people who ended up with a useless degree like philosophy, these are people with degrees in criminal justice or education, who, because of municipalities having smaller budgets, can't hire all the people they need to run the services that they've had in past years. Or because people can't afford to retire, so they work far longer (and because our overall health is better, survivng, healthy enough to keep working desk jobs) and don't leave space for younger people to take over.
I really hope the Occupy movement is able to get the populace thinking about what's best for the average person and then vote the politicians in that will make changes that benefit the 99% rather than the 1% which has been happening for far too many years.
Anyways, It was one of those days I'm surprised by just how much I got done. Drove cross county to take the kid to school. Drove back cross county to catch the metro into town. I needed to be at our end of the Red Line so that I could get to piano lessons on time. Then I took the metro downtown where I put away clean dishes, sort through some seriously manky strawberries, and wash a decent amount of dishes at the McPherson Sq. Occupy DC site. Then, I head down to Freedom Plaza (on Penn Ave. where the Turkish festival is) with fellow organizer J. to sort out that encampment's library. Once that's done, it's a metro ride back to Shady Grove, then a quick lunch, piano lessons, and scooping the kidlet from school. I was really happy to get home.
Besides what anyone feels about the Occupy movements, there are a lot of people learning a lot of things. Both about our political system and about organizing groups in general.
I really feel sort of badly for the men running the kitchen at McPherson Sq. because they don't get a lot of help from their fellow Occupiers and it's a bit of a thankless task. In some ways, I'm very glad that I have so little time to help because that makes me set limits.
I'd really hate to be in charge of something as large and important as a kitchen serving approx. 500 meals a day and doing it with a tiny handful of helpers. Talk about a short road to burn out.
Organizing the library at Freedom Plaza was fun! I got to use skills I've not used in long time. In approx. 3 hrs., I sorted through the collection of about 150 books. Separated the duplicates, the fiction from non-fiction, the foreign language materials, kids books, and humor. The non-fiction is in a big rubbermaid tub that we can stuff in a tent if the weather gets bad. We're hoping to get a tent of our own for the library in a day or two.
It's also weird to be old enough to be noticeably middle aged in the different groups. When I'm hanging around my friends, it's not so noticeable. But at the encampments, a lot of the people are young enough to be my kids. And I'm saddened that things have gotten so bad in our country that we have to protest to have things like a job.
These aren't people who ended up with a useless degree like philosophy, these are people with degrees in criminal justice or education, who, because of municipalities having smaller budgets, can't hire all the people they need to run the services that they've had in past years. Or because people can't afford to retire, so they work far longer (and because our overall health is better, survivng, healthy enough to keep working desk jobs) and don't leave space for younger people to take over.
I really hope the Occupy movement is able to get the populace thinking about what's best for the average person and then vote the politicians in that will make changes that benefit the 99% rather than the 1% which has been happening for far too many years.