Saturday, January 17, 2009

History

Today, I got to be a teeny part of history and guess what (ha ha), you can too.

I tried to ignore the first e-mail from Michelle Obama. I mean, I looked at it and all, but I was like, yeah that's nice/delete. And then my friend Fran, massage therapist to the stars(me) sent an excited e about service opportunities and I was like, yeah that's nice Fran/delete. And then MK actually poked around the USA Service site and found something to do and sent THAT to me and I was like, yeah that's nice/and, I signed up.

Not because I am suffering from advanced good will toward men or anything. It's because my bullshitometer so quickly runs low for myself and I get tired of thinkin' the thoughts that come even before talkin' the talk, ya know? And even more, because of a line in the sand that somebody once literally drew for me.

Here's that story in a nutshell: I was living in Elmhurst, thinking of coming to Oak Park and a woman was trying to explain to me that it was okay for me to come here as long as I stayed between certain perimeters. North Avenue to the North. Eisenhower to the South. Harlem to the West and Ridgeland to the East.

She even drew it up in pencil on the map my Dad got me for my truck. (I betcha it's still down there. I'll have to check.) Don't go beyond this area:It's Not Safe.

So, here in my inbox was an invitation to officially bust through those boundaries and yeah, I move through the West Side all the time but I don't spend a whole lotta time at the North Austin Branch Library. And so, MK and I joined a small group of other humans in an event that was planned by a woman named Juanita who had heard the call from the President-elect and answered by running a session about Active Listening that she'd learned as a foster parent.

I entered, hoping I could be of some assistance to somebody. I left, having handed myself some hope.

Not a bad afternoon at all.
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You can go to the sign-up site, plug in your zip code and instantly sign-up for something fun and cool and oh yeah, change the world.

On your mark get set go.

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