Many Blessings…
by Sara on November 30th, 2008
Hi all!
Happy holiday season to each and every one of you. I have taken a few extra moments this Thanksgiving season to ruminate about the very many blessings that God has bestowed upon my life.
Here’s a few:
-My amazing family, who is comprised of lovingly supportive, astounding people.
-My boyfriend Jordan, who continues to bless my life each day with letters, phone calls, and smiles.
-My education, which has garnered me a job and a pride in myself.
-My health, which I so often take for granted.
-My HECUA teachers and classmates, who have inspired me and encouraged me to write what’s real, to write with a motive in mind.
-Deb, the woman I live with, who opened her home to a complete stranger and has become a lovely, dependable fixture in my life.
-Compelling writing, which inspires and enlightens my life.
In this holiday season, it’s important to take the time to realize how God has blessed your life. I encourage all of you to thank the people that bless your life.
As for those of you who bless mine, thank you. I couldn’t be me without you.
“Changeling”
by Sara on November 23rd, 2008
Last night, Deb and I went to see Angelina Jolie’s new movie, “Changeling”.
Two adjectives come to mind: bizarre and compelling.
The plot line was fascinating: a woman returns home from work one day in the 1920s to find her son missing. The Los Angeles Police Department conducts a search, and returns home a boy who the woman, Christine Collins, swears is not her son. The story then unleashes a load of corruption within the LAPD, nearly costing Christine Collins her sanity.
Based on a true story, the film transpires at a languished pace, often devoting many minutes to action that proves irrelevant to the plotline. However, the cinematography in the film is outstanding. Angelina Jolie offered a passionate and convincing portrayal of Christine Collins. Jolie provides a compelling manifestation of a devoted mother by tapping into Christine Collins’ emotions. Angelina is a skilled crier, that’s for sure.
If you’re a nut for shows like “TruCrime”, I would suggest watching this movie. The fact that the film is based on a true story makes the plotline all the more harrowing. Also, as Deb and I reflected upon leaving the movie theatre, a movie like this really puts things in perspective. We, in the 21st century, don’t really have it all that bad. At least we’re not directly subject to police corruption; at least our children aren’t missing; at least we have answers to our insignificant problems.
I’d give the film a B overall; I was often frustrated by the film’s slow pace and was certainly perplexed by the ending of the film.
“Changeling” is rated R, and they’re not kidding. No kiddos, people. Some definite violence.
My Trip to Montevideo!
by Sara on November 23rd, 2008
Hi all!
Sorry for the long hiatus in blog posts…I’ve been a busy girl!
My HECUA class and I went to Montevideo, MN, earlier this week. We left on Wednesday morning from the HECUA offices in St. Paul, where all eight of us girls piled into a six person van so we could all ride up together. It was so much fun hanging with the girls; I missed that!
Upon arriving in Montevideo, we all ate lunch at Valentino’s, which is a homestyle cooking, family-owned restaurant right on Main Street in Montevideo. I had the special: scalloped potatoes and ham. YUM!
After lunch, we went and visited A to Z Printing, which is a printing business that prints all flyers, cards, business cards, envelopes, etc. for the entire town of Montevideo. Talk about investing in the local economy! Andy, who does the printing, carves the designs out of ceramic blocks to do a lot of his printing. It’s fascinating :)
After visiting Andy at A to Z Printing, we went and learned about CURE (Clean Up the River Environment). This nonprofit is based in Montevideo and works on behalf of protecting the Minnesota River. A focused initiative of CURE is to stop the building of the Big Stone II power plant in Milbank, SD. We learned a lot about CURE’s employees and their background in community organizing, illustration, and environmental concerns.
After learning about CURE, we took an hour and explored Main Street on our own. I visited a few stores, including a REALLY inexpensive antiques store, a fibers store full of scarves, hats, wool and yarn, and a design store with VERY LARGE fake flowers (almost as tall as me).
After exploring, we spent our Wednesday night at the Java River Cafe, where we ate dinner and then organized an Open Mic Night. Most of the HECUA students in my class read something that they had written; I read a poem that I’ve been working on over the last four years. It was an unbelievably empowering experience to read something that I’ve worked so hard on; everyone in the audience was extremely warm and welcoming. It was an amazing experience, and I can’t wait to do it again!
That night, my class and I had a big sleepover on the floor of a church! Woo!
The next morning, we had breakfast at Valentino’s (I had cranberry pancakes and a caramel roll; yum!) and then returned to the church, where the townspeople of Montevideo set up a panel discussion with 8 area writers. The discussion lasted approximately two hours, during which we learned about each writer’s background and their opinions on what ‘writing for social change’ meant. We also got a chance to mingle with the writers for about a half hour; one author gave all of the students one of his published works for FREE! The remaining time was spent discussing strategies for writing and favorite works or novels.
After the panel discussion, my class and I went to Camp Release, which is a monument erected to honor those Native people who traveled around the state of Minnesota many, many years ago.
We then returned back to Minneapolis! It was a really great trip full of many memories that won’t be soon forgotten :)
Montevideo!
by Sara on November 18th, 2008
Hi all,
I’m signing off for a few days to take an overnight field trip with my HECUA classmates to Montevideo, MN.
Back on Thursday evening, hopefully with a lot of great stories! Take care!
-Sara
My Friend Ashley
by Sara on November 14th, 2008
Hi all,
Sad news has surfaced in the past few weeks…my friend Ashley from Augustana, who’s in her early 20s like me, visited the ER in Sioux Falls one evening, only for the doctors to find a mass the size of her fist in her chest. She has Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which, luckily, is a very treatable form of cancer. She is set to begin chemotherapy treatments around Thanksgiving.
She’s started a CaringBridge site to keep her family and friends updated; here’s the link. Please take a few moments to sign her guestbook; she’s a wonderfully brilliant woman with an unbreakable faith and a loving family.
Please pray for healing for Ashley, for wisdom for the doctors, and for everlasting hope for the family.
A Shoutout to Shonda
by Sara on November 13th, 2008
Dear Shonda,
You brought me the stellar show that is Grey’s Anatomy. You gave me a second soul in Meredith, a suckerpunch of a crush in Derek, a sidekick in Cristina, a big brother in George, and a Mama bear in Bailey.
Thank you.
But my dear Shonda: you’ve certainly pulled a number on me with Izzy and my scruffy, drawling dreamboat Denny.
You CAN’T kill off my Denny in Season Two, and then have him come back in Season Three, and Season Four, and Season Five. You CAN’T have Izzy touch him, and you certainly CAN’T have her feel his warm fingertips. If you bring him back, you CAN’T have me see Izzy in her prom dress, lying on the bathroom floor, just like you CAN’T have me see Denny reading the tabloids, waiting for Izzy to arrive in said prom dress, and see his chest heave with a stroke. It defies logic, pure and simple. IT BREAKS THE RULES.
You CAN’T keep making me grieve for him. Izzy’s grief is fragmented, and you’re making me feel it, too.
You’ve got to know that when Denny died in the finale, I lost it. I cried for two weeks. I felt like a part of my soul died, too. I felt for Izzy, and how empty she must feel. You left me grieving for an entire summer. You made me feel all of this, and I am really, REALLY upset that you’re dragging all of these feelings up again.
I guess that’s what grief is. Fragmented, complicated, sometimes never-ending.
I wish I had a sweater to burn.
And for all of you out there calling up the loony bins to reserve me a straight jacket, this is for you:
True, Grey’s Anatomy is a TV show. But that doesn’t mean it can’t affect you like a powerful line in poetry, like a lyric to a song, like a passage in a book of literature.
Think about something that has captured your soul and forced a myriad emotions to cry from your core. Feelings of grief, feelings of love, feelings of sadness, of joy, of anxiousness, of despair, of redemption. You could find this phenomenon in a person, in a sunset, in a comic book…in anything. I breathe a wealth of emotions when I encounter characters, when I am inspired by writing, when my hands clasp over my mouth in disbelief.
I find more of myself in television.
Who I am defies logic when I encounter myself in television.
This is me.
So thanks, Shonda Rimes. Thank you for Denny.
But seriously…you best be more careful with my heart this time. And with his.
[For more information on tonight's episode, click here.]
Camp Obama
by Sara on November 12th, 2008
Hi all,
I attended a lecture today organized by graduate students at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. The speaker offering the lecture was Harry Boyte, who is a long-time community organizer and Co-Director for the Center for Democracy and Citizenship, where I work.
The lecture focused on how community organizing has evolved over the years, and how the concept of community organizing has finally reached the mainstream media with the Barack Obama campaign. The intent of this post is to summarize what Harry Boyte discussed, and also to offer my own insight into his words and the concept of community organizing.
Harry began by mentioning that Obama began his career as a community organizer in the mid 1980s in Chicago, as a lot of America is now aware. A career in community organizing, according to Harry, is focused upon giving citizens the tools to learn to define problems and work to solve them. Harry also mentioned a variety of early community organizers, starting with Jane Addams and culminating with Barack Obama.
Harry also emphasized the importance of “Everyone is embedded in a particular history”. I’ve heard this same concept rephrased in another way: “Everyone has a story”. It’s fascinating to think about how the history that I’ve grown up in, the context that my life fits into, shapes who I am and what my passions are. Harry suggested that this is the foundation of building relationships with others, and that this is a key reason why Barack Obama’s campaign strategies were so successful: Obama (and the thousands of volunteers and organizers working for him) took the time to listen to the stories of others.
Harry also drew a contrast between mobilizing and organizing. While the notion of mobilization was developed by progressives in order to address threats like taxation and toxic waste, it lacks substance capable of change. In mobilization, a target enemy is defined; everyone knows who’s in and who’s out. Because of this mentality, everyone’s either good or bad. And, depending upon who you’re dealing with, you have a script that you stick to: “Come to the good side. This is what you should be mad about.” Mobilization takes the approach that we as Americans need rescuing, and that the only one who can provide adequate rescue is the government. The practice of mobilization has dominated politics (look at the campaigns of John McCain and Hillary Clinton).
A strong contrast to this is the notion of community organizing. Organizing focuses upon values, not issues. Organizing sees issues as a means to an end, not the end. Organizing, as Harry puts it, focuses upon “building community power to empower values”. Instead of focusing on developing an enemy and convincing Americans that they need rescuing, organizing strives to promote the values of respect (that is, respect for all political leanings/voters); empowerment (through the aim of skill-building); and inclusiveness (no “us vs. them” mentality).
Harry also discussed how to continue the momentum that Obama’s election victory has created. To get community organizing models in the strategies of government, it’ll take organizing. Everything comes back to organizing. Recognizing that work is necessary to make organizing successful is also a key notion to understand. The key difference between mobilizing and organizing is empowerment; while mobilizing strives to tell us we can’t rescue ourselves, organizing convinces us we can (hence the “Yes We Can” mantra).
An interesting statistic: according to NPR, in the state of Florida, the Obama campaign created 19,000 neighborhood teams led by 500 paid organizers. Other efforts, much like this one, was also replicated in battleground states. To adequately train all of these volunteers, Marshall Ganz, an experienced organizer who developed models for the Obama campaign, created Camp Obama, a weekend retreat where volunteers found their “story” and learned to use it to garner attention and support for Obama in their neighborhoods.
Question: What if we had Camp Obama’s accessible to young people to teach the skills of community organizing? How drastically different would our nation be?
It was a fascinating lecture. If you’re interested in more information about Harry Boyte, please read his book, The Citizen Solution.
Thanks for letting me praise community organizing; I’m so fascinated by it. It’s change at its finest.
Next Page »