WOW

The last ten days have been very much up and down. There have been extremely positive and uplifting experiences coupled with very negative and depressing ones. Last Friday night my computer just plain stopped working, much to my dismay and confusion. Now, understand that the extent of my knowledge of tricky computer commands is holding control, alt, and delete. Once that doesn't produce results and a simple restart fails to fix the whole situation, I am at a complete loss. I called Dell technical support on Saturday morning and, after an hour of running tests, was told that my hard drive had crashed. I calmly freaked out because all of the files for ERACE Poverty were saved on my hard drive, and it sounded to me like all were lost, leaving us with another year's worth of work to do to get back to our current position. To make a long story short, I was able to boot the computer up in safe mode and pull all the files off to be loaded onto the new hard drive that Dell sent me under the warranty. All files are safe, not to mention double backed up, and life goes on, at least in that respect.Last week was positive and very educational, as I spent more time at the community service office with the clients and employees. Magda, the advocacy specialist who has been there over 20 years, was nice enough to impart on me her knowledge and experience of the world of benefits. She told me about all the complications she faces with people who come in trying to gain access to their benefits, but who do not have the appropriate documentation to do so. Starting from scratch with no legal documents and eventually get to the point where they have federal photo documentation to prove they are who they say they are is a long, arduous process. This is something that I have never considered because I have never had to, but it is heartbreaking to hear her stories of people who have been in the system their entire adult lives, and then are not allowed access to the benefits they have earned due to unfortunate circumstances. These circumstances may be a fire, theft, name change upon immigration into the country that was not properly documented, etc. Magda is able to get most of these type of situations resolved, but not without a great deal of time, energy, and stress on her part.I'll tell you about two extremely positive experiences before I get to one more negative. First, the NYC Marathon was on Sunday, so naturally I made plans to be there the whole day and enjoy the festivities. Unfortunately I totally spaced it when I was going to sign up to get into the lottery to get a number for the race, but just being there was an experience in itself. A friend and I stood at 90th St. and 5th Ave, where the runners entered Central Park at about mile 24, for easily an hour. We saw the leaders of the Men, Women, and Wheelchair divisions pass, and then walked the rest of the course to enjoy the atmosphere. I have been to a few races, some of them pretty large, and never have I been so lifted up by a race atmosphere. Over 100 countries were represented in the field, which exceeded 38,000 runners. With that many people from different backgrounds you would expect to see some negative interactions, but all I saw was Americans cheering on Germans, Canadians encouraging Italians, and Australians rooting for Brazilians, just to name a few of the combinations. Being a part of something that made everyone put aside their differing views and stereotypes, even for just a few hours, was so touching and truly impacting.
Speaking of impacting, Tuesday night's election is something that I will never forget as long as I live. Whatever your political beliefs, you have to admit that this election was encouraging and obviously historical. I was at a cafe with some friends to watch the results come in, and as soon as Barack Obama was declared the winner we raced to Times Square. This is the point where I felt as if I was taken to another world. There were over a million people in a couple square block area, all alternating between complete silence and awe, boisterous cheers, and heartfelt chants as we watched his acceptance speech on the big screen. I have never received more hugs and high fives in a two hour period in my entire life, and all from perfect strangers. Exhilarating is the closest I can come to being able to describe the situation, though that word still doesn't fully describe it. Our country came together on that night in a way that I have not seen since September 11, 2001, but with much more positive energy, as it arose from a positive situation.
This morning, as I sat in the welfare office waiting room, the main circulating conversation was one of excitement over Obama's election. This of course was constantly being interrupted by angry comments about the system for which we were all waiting initial or continued enrollment. At the recommendation of Valentina, an employee at the CFL office, I went in to go through the public assistance application process. I thought this was a great idea, although I knew it was going to be painful. From what I had been told it made the DMV experience seem like the most enjoyable carnival you have ever been to. That may be a bad analogy I just came up with, but it proved to be true. After waiting in three different lines and waiting rooms for about 4 hours, my name was finally called. Unfortunately for me, the lady who called my name came out of the door on the opposite end of the room, which was filled with well over 100 people at that time. Once I realized that my name had been called, it was too late. She had already made her way back into the back office, and the security guard told me to have a seat and I would hear my name again. At this point, I was very surprised to have a couple of people, both clearly veterans of the system, come to my aid and essentially yell at the guard until I was allowed into the offices to go find Ms. Drake, as they called her. The interview lasted about 20 minutes and I was told at the end that I needed to bring in much more identification before I could become enrolled. This was intentional on my part since I was there just for the experience, not the actual benefits. To sum it all up, I have never been in such a relentless and overpowering negative environment. I found it nearly impossible for myself to smile or engage in a positive conversation with anyone there, and actually found myself feeling physically ill after a few hours. It is really too bad that it is such a negative experience because I feel like these people could use a little bit of positivity when they have already humbled themselves to the point of entering the building. I will continue to process this experience and take it to Magda to get her feedback.

So much action to cover in this post, I hope you are still with me and not too bored. There are a couple photos from the marathon, one showing American Paula Radcliffe taking home the title for the second year in a row. Also there is a photo of John, my very good friend from Seattle, and me standing in front of the city at the promenade, and a photo of me sitting in an exhibit at PS 1, a really great modern art gallery in Queens that we went to on Monday. Have a great weekend everyone!