Non-Profit Love

... Or How I Become a Envelope Sealing Expert

Thursday I went back to Habitat after the break for the holidays. Therefore I'm finishing/posting an old post about my dear non-profit-job. The grown-up-ish of my current two jobs is working part-time at Habitat for Humanity MoCo as the person who organizes all the Faith Team Builds and whatnot. It's fun.  Plus I get to sit at a desk = both fun-ish and grown-up. 

In addition to sending out copious amounts of emails, I also man a table at volunteer fairs and help at events. I've wrapped presents at a Barnes and Noble, bar-tended at the 30 anniversary event, attended college volunteer fairs, and gone to a children's mitzvah fair. A few weeks back I spent a couple of days working on a mailing with my boss and volunteers from Riderwood. [Riderwood is a retiree's utopia: huge campus of building with every level of assisted living, any club you could imagine, groups out the wazoo, shuttles to stores, and pretty much anything cool you could think up.]

War And Peace Marathon

Back in November I spent a day watching a marathon screening of War and Peace at the Russian Embassy. I spent the whole entire day because this was a screening of a four-part eight-hour Russian version. As a reward for sitting through all the way till the end we each received a pin, I've never been so proud.

Yes, I may have been more excited to get this button than my college degree, it was hard earned.  

Hens and Thoughts for Christmas

"On the third night of Christmas my true love gave to me

                                     Three french hens!  Two turtle doves! 

And a partridge in a pear tree!"

Mu-ha-ha fear my awesome google-images + paint abilities!
I give you ... three french hens!

I've got Christmas-related-thoughts, so I'm going with the whole today-is-only-the-3rd-of-12-days-of-Christmas giving me until Epiphany in January. On that note, let me wish you a merry day-three-of-x-mas! Enjoy the French chickens! And here are my mildly-ramble-ly-thoughts:

End of the World

...And I Feel Fine

I love the internet, and the internet loves the ancient-Mayan dates-for-the-end-o'-the-world. Since today is December 21st, I think we should have a good soundtrack for the apocalypse this one is funny, and of course this one is perfect, but this one is one of my favorites:

"I'm waking up at the start of the end of the world

But it's feeling just like every other morning before..."

Got any other good ones for today?

Annie, Bernadette, and Bilbo

I went to see The Hobbit with my childhood neighbors and awesomesauce friends Annie and Bernedette last weekend. Super duper exciting. 

 

Posting a Post

It's been forever (or honestly just too long for me to be pleased) since I actually finished and posted a blog post.

Democracy

Yesterday was the election -- ballots were cast, results were announced, and there was much rejoicing and/or weeping and gnashing of teeth. I have a lot of thoughts about the race, the president, and our ballot questions like 5 and 6 and 7, but I think those deserve a more thoughtful post and honestly I am mildly hesitant of topics that are such holy hand grenades so today I am just having E.B. White do all the work for me. I heard this earlier today and really liked it, Charlotte and Wilbur's creator originally wrote it during World War Two.

E.B.White's meaning of democracy:

    "We received a letter from the Writers' War Board the other day asking for a statement on "The Meaning of Democracy." It is presumably our duty to comply with such a request, and it is certainly our pleasure.

'56 Hungarian Revolution

... the flag with a hole in it

October 23rd is the anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, so today I'm going to indulge my history-major-side. Junior year I did an Oral History project interviewing a man who fought in the 1956 uprising as a 15 years old. Part of why I find the Hungarian revolution so fascinating is I spent a summer with brilliant Hungarians, I adore Budapest, and my grandma's side of the family is Hungarian. But it's also fascinating because they were my age and even younger, because those two and a half weeks were epic, and because it's the type of story you hope will end well --even when you know the ending.

I hope it's more like a story and less like a term-paper,
because these people were amazing

In October 1956 Polish workers went on strike, an incredibly risky thing to do under a strict communist government. This inspired students at the Technological University of Budapest, they organized a simple protest walking along the Danube down to a statue of Bam - a Polish native and Hungarian hero who had fought in the 1848 revolution. The students created a list of 16 demands and as their protest grew and attracted more and more students and then workers and people from all over the city they went to the radio station to broadcast them.

Their demands were first off the removal of all Soviet troops from Hungary. Soviet forces had liberated Budapest and Hungary from Nazi forces at the end of World War Two. While it is a huge relief when someone gets rid of Nazis, it becomes worrisome when they immediately set up their own secret police in the same office building and people continue to disappear to the dungeons and death, with no sign that the troops have any plans on leaving it is not as acceptable.

The student's 16 demands listed free and legitimate elections open to all parties.

For the Love of Funny Alphabets

 This fall I'm taking Russian 101. Just for fun because I enjoy studying languages and have a slight obsession with funny alphabets. To be honest this is probably due to the fact that my real desire when-I-grow-up is to be Mara and overthrow evil-ancient-egyptian-pharaohesses by acting as a-double-spy-translator-bad-ass-chick-who-runs-around-bare-foot. Since these dreams of being an blue-eyed-ancient-egpytian-bi-lingual-secret-rebel will most likely never be a reality, I have to settle for attempting to be bi-lingual . . . or more actually jump at any chance to study a language that has a funny alphabet. Although I am miles away from fluent in anything but English, I very much enjoy my kindergarten-level-of-skill at sounding-letters-out-painfully-slow-to-attempt-to-read-words, because the fact that those foreign squiggles mean anything intelligible to me makes me happy.

Day of the Brave

The United Nations made October 11th international Day of the Girl, which is particularly fitting as the recent attacks on Malala has brought a more attention to the issues she has been writing about and fighting for since she was eleven. Because this girl so-freaking-amazing-awesome that she has been standing up to the taliban since she was barely double-digits-old. I pray and hope she and her classmate fully recover. It is impressive to see how powerful the ideas of this young lady are, that they're seen as a threat to the taliban. Malala is an epic example of what a dis-proportional-positive-effect educating girls provides for their community.

Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani blogger fighting for girls to be able to go to school 

the play is just a can of soup

... the audience is really the art

Last weekend we went to a see The Government Inspector at the Shakespeare Theatre Company (Not Shakespeare but really good anyway). This play-going all began when I needed to see a couple different productions for THET 101 at HCC. At one point in that theater class my professor mentioned that I should check out Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe when I was looking for a  monologue. I Googled it and loved the part of the play I found. Although I intend to, I've never actually read/ seen the whole play, but the portion I came across that someone posted is pretty great. Since it pops into my head at plays I looked it up again and decided to share it here too. [Googled it again actually and despite what Blogger might try to tell me that is in fact a word]

Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans

The Government Inspector

My brothers, sis-in-law, and I went to see The Shakespeare Theatre Company's Government Inspector last weekend and it was quite fun. The lovely STC has much-less-costly-to-get-to-see-lots-of-awesome-plays-season-subscriptions-for-students/under-35ers because it makes them so happy to see non-retired-white-hair-audience-members. We tend to pair of theater-going with yummy food beforehand and I'm extremely proud to say that we have almost completely out-grown of our traditional jog-from-place-with-yummy-food-to-theater-to-rush-to-seats-before-curtain-is-raised, not that it wasn't an exhilarating way to start a play.

Gogol's The Government Inspector is a satire about a town and its mayor who mistake a gambles-too-much-lady's-man-lowly-and-currently-broke-government-clerk with a fear-and-bribe-inducing-Government-Inspector -- hilarity ensues. You know it's a comedy because of all the doors and bright colors on stage. And there was all the laughter too.
I loved lines like: "When I see the stupid faceless masses I just want to scream 'Where are your faces?! Are you stupid?!'" The characters all had a nearly a Scarlet Pimpernel level of ridiculousness which continued nonetheless to be charming and entertaining.
The costumes were no-bones-about-it comic. To the point that the interchangeable-and-often-mixed-up middle class Pyotr Ivanovich Bobosky and Pyotr Ivanovich Dodosky were all but dressed like umpa-lumpas. Seeing a Russian play was also fun to complement the Russian I've been attempting to learn (but more on that later).