Hey everyone! So I figured I should come on here and actually update with what I'm doing right now for this SoS. So, ya know how we do CLAs and positions and all that? Remember how sometimes it's not "good enough" and we have to rewrite them? Well, I'm currently doing Bonner national reviews. This means that all of us in the office have a list of schools and have to review the Summer period of Bonner work. Also, we have to go back to the Fall of 2008 and review eeevveerryyy position, CLA, and training and enrichment that a school has done. Exciting. Actually, it kind of is. it's really interesting to see what's going on at the other schools. Also, The Foundation is really good at giving us a bunch of projects at once, so I'm currently working with two other people to bring all Bonner's social media into the "useful" state. It should be pretty cool. The vision we're working with is going to be an activist blog, a lot like this one, that also posts to Twitter and Facebook..but it's not going to be dumb, boring stuff - it'll actually be interesting. Also, this PolicyOptions.org thing is shaping up. I think we're talking about making some algorithm (or adapting one) that will take all the service news and import it to one big feed. Or something. I dunno. If you're really interested in what I'm on about go to http://techmeme.com/.....this site is one of the first to do this, but it's for technology.
Anyway, have fun all!
Monday, July 12, 2010
HoundHaven week 4
Week 4
~~ This past week has been crazy. With all the new dogs and the crazy things happening during the evening shifts that the morning shifts have to endure. I work every morning and sometimes I work the afternoon and/or the night shifts. The times that I have not worked the night shifts there have been problems that have made it hard on the morning shift. I love working the morning shift because you can get close to the dogs and love on them. We do have to do a lot of cleaning but as long as the dogs are happy and in a healthy, clean environment then I don't mind cleaning their kennels. A lot of times we clean to allow new dogs to come into the shelter with a clean environment. It also allows us to disinfect the kennel because the dogs get sick easily. Thankfully this past week we have had two dogs go to a home. Everyone was so happy that they were able to go to a good home because they were such good puppies and needed to get out of the shelter. Thankfully that has also given us some more room and we have been able to move our dogs around so that they are in the proper places. We try to keep the dogs that the sick are quarantined away from the rest of the dogs that are healthy and are going to adoption events. Although a new dog arrived today but this dog was at the shelter once before but apparently that home did not work out for her.
I hate it when people adopt a dog and after a few months they give the dog back because they don't like something about the dog. I wish that more people would take a dog for all the good and the bad. Animals are not perfect and they are bad just as much as they are good. These dogs have such a great temperment and are so lovable as long as they have a good home. It's amazing how the bigger dogs that seem to look intimidating are the most sweetest dogs. One of our biggest dogs, Bear, is a black lab and he will attack you face with kisses and topple you over just to give you even more kisses. I love these dogs so much. They are so adorable and all they really want is love and a permanant home. If you or your parents or someone you know is looking for a a beautiful dog with Lab in his geneology then please send them to HoundHaven.
~~ This past week has been crazy. With all the new dogs and the crazy things happening during the evening shifts that the morning shifts have to endure. I work every morning and sometimes I work the afternoon and/or the night shifts. The times that I have not worked the night shifts there have been problems that have made it hard on the morning shift. I love working the morning shift because you can get close to the dogs and love on them. We do have to do a lot of cleaning but as long as the dogs are happy and in a healthy, clean environment then I don't mind cleaning their kennels. A lot of times we clean to allow new dogs to come into the shelter with a clean environment. It also allows us to disinfect the kennel because the dogs get sick easily. Thankfully this past week we have had two dogs go to a home. Everyone was so happy that they were able to go to a good home because they were such good puppies and needed to get out of the shelter. Thankfully that has also given us some more room and we have been able to move our dogs around so that they are in the proper places. We try to keep the dogs that the sick are quarantined away from the rest of the dogs that are healthy and are going to adoption events. Although a new dog arrived today but this dog was at the shelter once before but apparently that home did not work out for her.
I hate it when people adopt a dog and after a few months they give the dog back because they don't like something about the dog. I wish that more people would take a dog for all the good and the bad. Animals are not perfect and they are bad just as much as they are good. These dogs have such a great temperment and are so lovable as long as they have a good home. It's amazing how the bigger dogs that seem to look intimidating are the most sweetest dogs. One of our biggest dogs, Bear, is a black lab and he will attack you face with kisses and topple you over just to give you even more kisses. I love these dogs so much. They are so adorable and all they really want is love and a permanant home. If you or your parents or someone you know is looking for a a beautiful dog with Lab in his geneology then please send them to HoundHaven.
Salvation Army Convention, 24 Hour Charity Run, Church In The Forest^
Alot of exciting things have happened over here in Germany since the last time I posted. Well and one big disappointing thing (we didn't make it to the Finale WAAAAAAAH!)
About two weeks ago, the Salvation Armies from the South-West of Germany got together in a nearby city for a day of workshops and friendship/contact making. It was really interesting seeing the different people that the Salvation Army attracts and was even more interesting to find out that one of the highest administrators of the Salvation Army is from Canada... 0.o weird, huh? There were three different workshops and, not really paying attention, I ended up in the Spiritual Healing one. I know one was a workshop about children but I forget the name and the topic of the other one. The workshop I sat through was... interesting and was led by a German woman who now lives in New Zealand. She told stories and showed photographs of people who have been healed through her by God. If you're reading this you already know, from my previous posts, that I'm not exaclty religious. I am always skeptical of stuff like that and didn't know how to react to her workshop.
All in all, it was a great day where I made new friends and got to see a bit of the hiarchey of the Salvation Army in Germany.
Last weekend was the 24 Hour Charity Run for childrens' rights. The Salvation Army is somewhat teamed with this organization called PAIS here in Freiburg. My boss from the Salvation Army basically sublets me and the other volunteers at the Salvation Army to this program and we help where is needed. They needed people to count the chips (which were used to count how many laps a person did) and to run a few laps to help support our team. Which I guess I should explain. There were numerous teams, let's say 30, who came to compete for money for their organization. I'm going to assume that every organization had something to do with youth empowerment, based on the name of the event. Each team is given a stack of poker chips with a specifc color and number on them. They are also given a transponder that, when passed over the reciever after every lap, recognizes how many laps a team has run. (way high tech). Needless to say, the team who had run the most laps received the most money. Our job as volunteers for this event was to count the chips every hour, on the hour, and to seperate them and return them to the appropriate teams. I ran a few laps for our team but slept a lot of the time haha, I'm not an all nighter person.
Our Salvation Army had church in the forest yesterday. The weather was beautiful and we had so much fun. The service was mostly a skit that I only partly understood and the rest of the day was a bbq and a huge water fight. It was so nice to be in the forest with nice weather and all of my friends from the SA having a nice BBQ. After the BBQ, the kids started water fighting and, well after I was ambushed by my boss and the rest of the SA and dunked into the baptism tub we brough along, I joined in.
About two weeks ago, the Salvation Armies from the South-West of Germany got together in a nearby city for a day of workshops and friendship/contact making. It was really interesting seeing the different people that the Salvation Army attracts and was even more interesting to find out that one of the highest administrators of the Salvation Army is from Canada... 0.o weird, huh? There were three different workshops and, not really paying attention, I ended up in the Spiritual Healing one. I know one was a workshop about children but I forget the name and the topic of the other one. The workshop I sat through was... interesting and was led by a German woman who now lives in New Zealand. She told stories and showed photographs of people who have been healed through her by God. If you're reading this you already know, from my previous posts, that I'm not exaclty religious. I am always skeptical of stuff like that and didn't know how to react to her workshop.
All in all, it was a great day where I made new friends and got to see a bit of the hiarchey of the Salvation Army in Germany.
Last weekend was the 24 Hour Charity Run for childrens' rights. The Salvation Army is somewhat teamed with this organization called PAIS here in Freiburg. My boss from the Salvation Army basically sublets me and the other volunteers at the Salvation Army to this program and we help where is needed. They needed people to count the chips (which were used to count how many laps a person did) and to run a few laps to help support our team. Which I guess I should explain. There were numerous teams, let's say 30, who came to compete for money for their organization. I'm going to assume that every organization had something to do with youth empowerment, based on the name of the event. Each team is given a stack of poker chips with a specifc color and number on them. They are also given a transponder that, when passed over the reciever after every lap, recognizes how many laps a team has run. (way high tech). Needless to say, the team who had run the most laps received the most money. Our job as volunteers for this event was to count the chips every hour, on the hour, and to seperate them and return them to the appropriate teams. I ran a few laps for our team but slept a lot of the time haha, I'm not an all nighter person.
Our Salvation Army had church in the forest yesterday. The weather was beautiful and we had so much fun. The service was mostly a skit that I only partly understood and the rest of the day was a bbq and a huge water fight. It was so nice to be in the forest with nice weather and all of my friends from the SA having a nice BBQ. After the BBQ, the kids started water fighting and, well after I was ambushed by my boss and the rest of the SA and dunked into the baptism tub we brough along, I joined in.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
SoS Blog 3
So into week three I never realized how hard it would be to put structure to an organization. I’m sure initially it’s probably more of a trial and error approach, but I really was hoping to alleviate as much possible chances of failure as possible! Unfortunately there isn’t really much you can do when you get to a certain point in the planning.
I can establish offices and their roles. I can suggest plans for finances, and suggest a suitable election process. I can develop a system for handling business and events, but in the end of the day it’s only a rough plan with many loop holes for students to fill in. For the most part that’s actually the easy part to digest.
Now what if there isn’t support for the group? Yes a group like this is necessary. Yes it can offer a good deal to the student body and community. However, was it requested by the student body or the community?…. Not really. Which fuels the scary question, will the organization even take off? I guess that’s something we’ll just have to test out.
The New Music Machine was very successful in many regards last year, but they never really had as much structure to their organization or any really need to hold meetings aside from office meetings. Will this GLBT music organization arrive at promising conclusions as well under the same format? Would I be diminishing multiple benefits that attach themselves to organizations by limiting the interactivity?
I can’t really say just yet. I do have my predictions though. I suppose all I can do is prepare for the worse, and try to get as many people involved as possible when the time comes
I can establish offices and their roles. I can suggest plans for finances, and suggest a suitable election process. I can develop a system for handling business and events, but in the end of the day it’s only a rough plan with many loop holes for students to fill in. For the most part that’s actually the easy part to digest.
Now what if there isn’t support for the group? Yes a group like this is necessary. Yes it can offer a good deal to the student body and community. However, was it requested by the student body or the community?…. Not really. Which fuels the scary question, will the organization even take off? I guess that’s something we’ll just have to test out.
The New Music Machine was very successful in many regards last year, but they never really had as much structure to their organization or any really need to hold meetings aside from office meetings. Will this GLBT music organization arrive at promising conclusions as well under the same format? Would I be diminishing multiple benefits that attach themselves to organizations by limiting the interactivity?
I can’t really say just yet. I do have my predictions though. I suppose all I can do is prepare for the worse, and try to get as many people involved as possible when the time comes
SoS Blog 2
There’s much to be said about the gay liberation movement, specifically on the impact it had on the public psychologically. Since Stonewall there was a need for exposure. The main purpose of any GLBT event was to establish grounds. We needed to at least be able to put our names on the table before we could actually begin any plan of attack for change. In the early 1970s (even late 1960s), there was a great need for pride parades and protests. It was a dangerous time to be gay and out.
Not only was the public unforgiving, but they were even violent. Reported crimes rates relating to sexual orientation disagreements were not as high as they are now, but that was largely because they were unreported. That of course is probably a result of a number of factors other than the corruption of the police force.
As we moved past the assignation of Harvey Milk there was still a need for the riots. The public needed to know we were “queer and here.”
In the social climate of today there is a new struggle which for the most part is an internal problem in the community. Through all the degradation we tried to resist we inevitably internalized way too much of the stereotypes in hope of devaluing them and formed a frame of mind that would inevitably cause somewhat of a social chasm in our community. The GLBT community was separated between those who reinforced the model of the gay image and those who deliberately tried not to. Both groups were wrong in their own ways.
This quest for self-identity has led us into what I now consider to be the age of gay social enlightenment.
This Is basically a little snipit of what I am defending in my research paper. Let’s see where it goes next!
Not only was the public unforgiving, but they were even violent. Reported crimes rates relating to sexual orientation disagreements were not as high as they are now, but that was largely because they were unreported. That of course is probably a result of a number of factors other than the corruption of the police force.
As we moved past the assignation of Harvey Milk there was still a need for the riots. The public needed to know we were “queer and here.”
In the social climate of today there is a new struggle which for the most part is an internal problem in the community. Through all the degradation we tried to resist we inevitably internalized way too much of the stereotypes in hope of devaluing them and formed a frame of mind that would inevitably cause somewhat of a social chasm in our community. The GLBT community was separated between those who reinforced the model of the gay image and those who deliberately tried not to. Both groups were wrong in their own ways.
This quest for self-identity has led us into what I now consider to be the age of gay social enlightenment.
This Is basically a little snipit of what I am defending in my research paper. Let’s see where it goes next!
SoS Blog 1
Hey everyone. I know I’m posting these blogs late, but I am at least posting them! However, since I’m posting these blogs late I decided to edit all of them and begin all of the posts from the perspective of having finished my service. So instead of a blog this is probably going to be more like a series of chapters.
At the beginning it was quite interesting. I had a rough plan for what I was going to do, and took it (for the most part) and then ran a whole different direction unexpectedly.
My main purpose was to do something somewhat intensive and long-lasting in regards to the gay liberation movement. So my proposal contained a three part plan to fulfill that goal.
The first part was I wanted to make a research paper that would focus on the psychological progression behind the movement and suggest its flaws and solutions. To do that of course requires that labor intensive job that is ACTUALLY RESEARCHING. The only way this paper can actually get any attention is if I make it credible through statistical analysis. At this point in the summer I had NO IDEA how to do that. I didn’t even know where to begin. There are so many articles and novels on the subject it would take years to be an expert. Well, luckily I don’t have to be an expert; I just had to prove my point.
I went to Dupont Library and checked out a few books I thought might be of use, printed almost every article and pdf file on the Human Rights Campaign website, and actually started reading the newspaper regularly! This is of course way in the future, but as of July 8th 2010 the New York Times published an article on the unconstitutional act of banning gay marriage. This was pretty big in the state of Massachusetts and sent a shockwave through the nation. Side anecdote over…
We’ll talk more about the paper later in another post, but for the sake of laying out the rest of my proposal, I’ll continue. The second part was to begin building what would be the first gay music organization at Stetson. This was probably less ambitious than the first part, but much harder to facilitate. The first question anyone should ever ask when starting an organization is WHY? To say it plainly I find some GLBT composers to be under represented. I wanted an organization that would foster the performance and presentation of music by GLBT composers. In the current climax of the movement it is most evident there is a need for role models. This is something I’ll continue to talk about in my paper, but role models like these composers would reinforce the inclusive state of mind in the general public. There are of course many other reasons for having an organization that are probably more generic than anything; however, that’s the gist of it.
Finally the third portion of the service is of course the nitty-gritty-get-your-hands-dirty hands-on service! In my opinion this is the most exciting part, because this involves the planning with my community partner. This includes workshops for the public, speaking to the elderly and the younglings, and speaking up to our businesses in Deland. Ideally the goal was to educate, but as you’ll read later, it turned out to be much more than that. I was immersing myself in the minds of others. It was almost the most thrilling thing I’ve done in a long time. I got a chance to understand the minds of my community and how they arrived at their conclusions and opinions. Of course you can imagine the hardest part of hands-on service is communication and planning. I officially know how to reserve rooms at Stetson! A tool I plan to utilize again and again during my last two years here. I can also talk in front of a crowd without stumbling on my words not nearly as much as I use to!
I think after week one I was pretty certain no matter what I did, even after my hours were completed, I wasn’t going to really finish anything. Most of this service is carrying on into the fall semester. I won’t spoil anything just yet, but things are looking really exciting for the fall!!!
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 :)
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