Completely Delayed - Week 8 (the last!) at CSL

So it has been far too long of an amount of time between my last week and this blog post. Since then I've been up in Connecticut, enjoying the cool(er) weather, working at the food pantry and researching for my town hall's website to make up for all the hours I didn't do while I was at Oxford. Anyway.

During my last week at the CSL, I interviewed a few more people for my "CBR" project, became even more frustrated with the state of the food assistance programs, and decided that food assistance is not enough. It's not helping the problem, it's only patching it. There is no antibacterial cream, no stitches, no plaster cast, no plucking out the glass shards embedded in the wound ... just a splash of water and a band-aid. NOT ENOUGH. Rah. It's frustrating to see so much water pouring into such a big, desperate, empty bucket with a big hole in the bottom. OK. Enough metaphors. But does that make sense? And I want to do something about it, but just working at the food pantry or volunteering at the SNAP (food stamps) office ISN'T ENOUGH. It's not fixing anything. I mean, it's good to be helping people in the meantime, because hey, if they need food they need food and they obviously must be provided for. BUT. What about in a week, when the food from the pantry runs out or the EBT card has no more benefits on it? What about after six months, when they have to reapply because nothing has changed? So frustrating. It's just another instance of the issues that are so clear, but yet again the solutions are so ... nebulous (love that word :D). Something I've been confronted with a lot this summer through my work at the CSL and the interviews with the community partners. So much need, not enough solutions.

Anyway, other than that, we also finalized the new First-Year Bonner Experience (I think we should call it FYBE, rhyming with "vibe" because FYBE, as in "fib" is ... not really a good association!), called the partners, and they were all SUPER excited about everything, which I think I've mentioned before, but it was still really reassuring. Um ... what else? Our last day, we went to this place called Sweet Melissas for lunch which had quite delicious food, though it was completely sketch and boiling hot. But I loved it anyways.

I shall conclude my final SoS 2010 blog on a happy note: I LOVE BONNER (insert heart here). B-love to all Stetson Bonners, and to everyone else out there in cyberspace. There's plenty to go around :)