Hello to Honolulu

This is my Chicago blog. Tangled Hair in the Windy City just won't work outside of the Windy City. So I'm moving to a new location for my years in Hawai'i. It's still connected to this blog... just go into my profile and it'll have both listed. Or, go directly to http://82andsunny.blogspot.com/.

But just so you know (I don't want to be called a liar), it's 8/01/07, and the high today is 87. Just like it has been these past four days. Before that it was 88, and in a few days it's gonna drop like madness to... 86. :)

I'll see you all there!

Goodbye to Chicago

Four years.

It's amazing how much can change in four years. How much I have changed. But as I prepare to leave this place, I think back and it is obvious how much I have learned, and changed, and grown. And it is obvious that I will take these lessons--working with the poor, the ignored, the hated, the feared--and I will move forward in my life with this mission in my heart. I have learned kindness to those who are treated badly. I have learned love for those who do terrible things. I have learned to talk to those so often ignored. I have learned to speak for those who have no voice.

All of this is important. This is my mission. This is the calling I feel in my heart. This IS what brought me here, but over the years it has developed. And now I take my mission with me. I'm leaving the volunteer program. I'm leaving this parenthesis, this life within yet outside of American society, and I'm rejoining the world with a much better understanding of how it works for those who do not have power. I move back into the world of paying bills and working for money, and I'm nervous, but I'm content. I understand this life now, better than I ever have before. I understand the difference between necessity and luxury. I know people who have nothing. Nothing at all. I've had long, heartfelt talks with murderers. I have cried with mothers who have lost their children to violence. My friends have been shot, have been beaten, have been ignored on the streets while they cried out for help. They have starved, and they have hungered for attention in a way I never have. But I know the desperation that people feel, are bound by. It's not right, the cavalier way we treat those who are in need. Who could really blame them for the mistakes made in this life? Theirs is not the same as the life I've led.

Will you listen to me, because I am educated and white? Will you listen to me because I am attractive and well-spoken? Will you listen to me because I have seen things you will not see? Will you listen to me because I have walked down the streets you avoid, have spoken to the people you fear, have heard their stories and taken the time to understand their suffering? Will you listen to me and let me tell you all of these things I know? Will you hear their stories from my safe mouth? Will you let them affect you? And will you then go out and see for yourself?

I say goodbye to Chicago. I say goodbye to the Claretian Volunteers. I say goodbye to Holy Cross, to St. Paul, to Casa Catalina. I say goodbye to my gang-bangers, my immigrants, my at-risk youth, my homeless, my poor, my coworkers, my mentors, my friends. And as I say goodbye, I am sad. But I am filled with so much gratitude for these past four years. This has been a gift beyond anything I could have asked for. This time, these experiences, have been given to me by God, and I love them. I cherish them. I will never forget them. At times I feel cynical for this life we live. But far more often, I feel my heart grow and I learn to love the unloveable. I understand now what Dorothy Day was on about.

So thank you, thank you for this. Thank you Chicago. Thank you Claretians. Thank you Back of the Yards. Thank you.

This is what it's like to be a grown-up.

If you've got a few minutes to kill and want to read something fun, go check out the comment someone left me on the post entitled, "On a Lighter Note."

Wow.

But back to me. I get nervous about work, because I'm going to be leaving it so soon. And in a lot of ways, I'm not ready for it. I have spent the last few months realizing over and over how much I have grown here, in Chicago in general, with the Claretian volunteers in general, but with this job in the pantry in specific. There was a time, very recently, that I still felt like I was waiting to be an adult so that people would listen to me when I spoke. I don't feel that way anymore. Now, I speak. And people listen. And now that I'm here, I wonder if I grew into this because of my age, because of my accumlated experiences, or... I don't know, if I could have grown into this earlier if I had just been here or someplace like here sometime before. I don't suppose it matters in the end. What matters is how good I feel about it.

In a lot of ways, I've never really felt like I had a choice in the matter of who I was and who I was becoming. Certain choices were made for me because that's what happens when you're young... people lead you. Certain choices were made for me because I was too scared to do anything differently. I made a lot of choices out of anger, indignation, or a sense of injustice. I've followed spiritual paths and logical paths and ethical paths and moral paths and philosophic paths and... they've all basically led me in the same direction.

When I first met Michael, I was fascinated with many things about him. Still am, truth be told. He is probably the most interesting person I've met in my life, and he continues to interest me. He had a piece of paper pinned up on his bedroom wall that said "Chapel Perilous." I asked him what it meant, and he explained that it is the state of being when you learn something and are left with having to decide what to do next. It's the precipice you stand on, and you must decide if you should turn around and head back to what you know, and what is safe, or if you take the flying leap into the unknown. Maybe I shouldn't talk about this, because it occurs to me that I don't know the origin of the phrase. I do know that it specifically refers to the spiritual precipice, to deciding if you will walk the world in between. But I apply the phrase to most everything I do.

I'm thinking about it again right now because of a man that came into the pantry last week. His name isn't John Smith, but it might as well be as common as it is. John Smith is crazy, though he doesn't seem so at first. He's on disability, but his SSI was cut off recently because one of the offices told him he had a warrant out for his arrest. So he went to the police station, turned himself in. They said they didn't have anything on him. So he went back to the SSI office and explained this. They said, no, you have a warrant so you can't get your federal funds. And they say it could be mistaken identity, with a name like John Smith, but he has to get that in writing from the office that issued the warrant. That office, of course, says they don't have a warrant on him. And they're in Maryland. (And John Smith didn't know that was another state. When he first came in, he asked me if it was in Chicago, and if we could just go down there.)

And back and forth and back and forth, and meanwhile this guy is living on the streets because he couldn't pay his rent. And he's crazy. He came in and we talked for a bit and I quickly realized that he couldn't resolve this on his own. One, he gets confused about who he's talked to and what has been said. Two, he believes he is owned in a very real and literal way by Jesus and God and when things get even slightly complicated, he starts developing complex theories about how people are trying to destroy him but Jesus and God will come down and seek vengeance for him. Three, people are not comfortable talking to him, so they brush him off again and again. The people who *could* help him get his SSI back *will not* because they don't want to deal with a crazy person.

So I started helping him, walking him through the steps, talking for him to various officials and then explaining over and over and over again what was happening. And with me present, in the office with him, the people in the Social Security office stopped brushing him off. They were happy to help, but they didn't know how to help *him*. They knew how to help *me*, because I am not crazy. I do not yell sometimes or get confused with what's going on or try to explain that someone the Social Security Office in Milwaukee is in league with those who would work against God. They can help me.

The thing is, I don't really mind crazy people. Or homeless people. Or drug addicts. Or violent crimes offenders out on parole. I don't get uncomfortable working with poor people who deal with poverty issues every day. A lot of people that come from where I come from just can't do it. They feel uncomfortable and lost. They don't know what to say or where to look. Maybe they're scared. I don't know. But I don't have those problems. I can do this. Therefore I must. Because who else would?

Me? I couldn't work with little kids all the time. I like them enough, but they exhaust me. Let someone else do that. I couldn't work administration. I couldn't do fundraising. I mean, I could do these things, but I wouldn't like doing them, which means that I would become more and more ineffective with time. I'd rather work with crazy people. I know this is not common. Therefore I must. If you can do something that no one else will, you must do it.

I stepped out of Chapel Perilous when I embraced this idea. I no longer wonder if I should move forward, fully and officially, into this life that I lead. I am here. I don't worry about alienating the people I've always known and loved, because we will know and love each other even if we don't have the slightest idea what the other is talking about. I'm okay with being far outside the norm now. I feel comfortable in my skin, right where I am. I am no longer the type that can be intimidated by the idea of taking up the case of a crazy man that walks in my door, even if that case involves navigating systems I don't know anything about. And I look back and think how far I've come, how much I've grown. And I'm glad.

Jobs and Climate Change

Maybe a month ago, I watched Who Killed the Electric Car. The major thing I learned in that movie is that electric cars exist. Or, more rightly put, they did exist. 100% electric. Not gas-electric hybrids. Electric.

They were on the roads, leased by real people, for a year or so. Then the automobile companies pulled them all. No one was allowed to buy, even people willing to pay way more than market value. The cars were then destroyed.

The easy answer as to why this happened was that, as part of an experiment to see what they could do, the auto industry had created a product that would put themselves out of business. It would also screw over their big oil buddies, but I'm not personally concerned with that so much. In an electric car, there is no combustible engine. When you pop your hood and look inside, no longer would you see all that mysterious metal junk. Instead, there are only batteries. That means that all that mysterious metal junk no longer needs to be manufactured, fixed, and replaced. That is a HUGE industry. And bam, with the advent of the electric car, it's gone.

Now we have gas-electric cars. They have combustible engines that need to be manufactured, fixed, and replaced. The industry will survive.

A really good argument against the electric car is this: If people are powering up their battery-operated cars every night, and we still use dirty energy to create our electricity, we're not really making the auto industry cleaner. And this is true.

But if the ultimate goal is to transform our dirty energy power plants into clean energy power plants, then this is not going to be an issue for much longer.

(By the way, the ultimate goal HAS TO BE to transform our dirty energy power plants into clean energy power plants. One other thing I've learned over the past year is that the "debate" over whether or not climate change is a real threat was settled over a decade ago in the scientific community. However, at that point, Exxon-Mobil (may it burn in Hell) (lower-level workers are excluded from this damnation) set out to create a "debate" on the legitimacy of climate change in the public eye. Why? Because they didn't want to lose all the money they were and are making. As long as the public was unconcerned, as though as they thought the science was still up in the air, there would be no outcry for change, and fast. Exxon Mobil didn't need to win the debate. They just needed to keep it going. Climate change is a fact, and we HAVE to reduce our carbon emissions or within 100 years, 95% of species on this planet will be extinct, and 50% of the land the human population lives on will be underwater. Poor populations of today will be no more, because they'll all be dead. Poor populations of tomorrow will spring up in new places-- places that are fairly temperate now, but which will be far less so once this gets going. We, the rich people in temperate climates, will be the last ones to be affected. Really rich people are already buying up land in Alaska. It's currently covered by permafrost, but in fifty years, it'll be nice. Exxon Mobil execs will live on, I'm sure.)

Back to my original conversation...

One of the things that bothered me most about the collapse of the auto industry due to the theoretical introduction of the electric car on a large scale is... the mechanics. Where the hell are they going to work? There are a lot of mechanics and a lot of factory workers who build combustible engines. They need jobs. And because I'm the sort of person who needs to look at all issues, I can't in good conscience advocate clean energy that is to the detriment of working class people the world over. I don't want a clean energy future where even still the rich get richer, and get to drive nice cars, but the poor get poorer because they all lose their jobs.

I've been chewing on this question for weeks. Where will the jobs be?

Right now I'm reading George Monbiot's "Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning." It's a great book. The premise is that very often, environmentalists (like myself) advocate massive change (cut carbon emissions) but then don't say how and don't say what the world will look like afterwards. The main reason for that, I'm learning, is because it's a scary freaking proposition. The simplest way to cut carbon emissions by 90% is to plunge us back into the stone age.

Most people don't want that to happen. George Monbiot is one of those.

He figures that the only way people are going to be willing to make the necessary changes is if they can remain basically the same, specifically, if they can maintain their modern comforts and lifestyle. So that's what he has set out to do. He looks at our industries, at our lives, at our energy consumption, and tries to figure out how to change everything in a cost-effective way so that everything basically stays the same, but cleaner. It is an optimistic book, because above all else it says that it can be done.

This morning I was reading the chapter on exactly how much energy renewables can supply, and that's when it hit me. This will be a huge freaking industry if we can get it going. And yes, it will be cost effective to governments, people, and the energy industry. But it will take a lot of work to get it going, and keep it going.

Jobs! Jobs everywhere! And good jobs that would help save the planet. And then rich people could have their electric cars.

So what we need is for the auto industry to convert... what half? some amount... of their factories toward producing solar panels and High Voltage Direct Current cables, and wind energy propellers and water energy harnessing equipment. And mechanics can shift their expertise from fixing cars to creating and maintaining various clean energy alternatives.

This is not a perfect answer. But it is an answer. Which means to me there are others as well.

Everyone go read "Heat" by George Monbiot. Now. Trust me, you won't regret the time spent on this book, and you'll walk away with a lot of useful knowledge.

Getting ready for The Big Move

And time is flying.

I knew it would come to this. I knew we'd get to the point that the volunteer year would be about to end, our time in Chicago would be about to end, our time with the Claretians would be about to end... and here we are. As we got closer and closer to The Big Move, my anxiety level rose higher and higher, until last week I stopped sleeping altogether. Which is, of course, an exaggeration. But I wasn't sleeping well.

Which means it is time to Get Things Done.

So I've started packing. I've sealed up two big boxes of books for my parents' attic. My god, do we have a lot of books! And we're always accumulating more. We came to Chicago with like, 10. Now we've got about 7 shelves full. I dream of a time in the future when we have our own place and one room is wallpapered with bookshelves. But that will be another four years on, once I've got my degree and we're heading back to the mainland. Until then, my parents keep them for us. They act like it's the least they could do. But it's a lot. We love our books.

I separated out my clothes even further in the What I Wear realm. Now, I have a suitcase halfway packed with things I don't need to wear in the next month, and the rest is in my dresser. Just over a week's worth of clothes, on repeat. Maybe it's anal to be packing so soon, but it made me feel better. And again let me reiterate how many clothes I have! Many.

And Michael took over renting a car to get us to TN and back before the closing retreat. And he's also been shopping DSL, which we'll probably need since we'll both be in college, and internet access at home is now the standard and not the exception. And he'll be in charge of changing over our money from the local bank to a national one, so that we can access our funds in Hawaii.

For my part, I'm finding us a place to stay once we move. I have to take the little of what I know of Honolulu's geography, balance it with rent, hope we can find a good place that meets our needs. It does make me nervous. I'll feel a lot better once that's settled.

And in the meantime I try to tie up all my loose ends at work. And with the Claretians. Lucky for me, the Claretian Assembly is this week, so on Wednesday night I'll get to have dinner with every Claretian in the Eastern Province. So I'll get to say goodbye. And I know that after that, that there are many of them that I will never see again in this lifetime. But maybe we'll cross paths with a few at some later date.

This is a big goodbye.

But I do expect to sleep better this week, with us working so hard on the process of moving, with us Getting Things Done. So I don't have to worry that the day will come and we won't be ready. Physically. As for the rest, well. Come What May.