Monthly Archives: July 2023

AND OTHER DUTIES AS ASSIGNED

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Hey ho, just another day in a non-profit director’s life. Follow, please:

The “free library if you pick it up” consisted of 15 boxes, books a friend had decided she wouldn’t need now she was getting out of the massage business. I was heading to Wise County in a couple of weeks to run a monthly session of our Community Nourishment Project, aka the CNP. I knew a friend who would LOVE to have those books. Since she’d had a hard year, what the heck, haul them over to her next time I was going.

CNP is a pathways activity from pre-med through residency interacting with people who live in rent-controlled housing, so everyone understands each other when they meet in an examination or emergency room.

I was looking forward to the CNP this month; in July we hold our annual school supplies picnic. Well, what fool would buy the supplies in Wytheville and haul them to Wise County, right? Just buy them online and have them delivered!

Except, the delivery times for school supplies a month out from school opening are pretty scattered and we had to have them for the picnic this Saturday. And Friday I had appointments all day, so no shopping there. The only day I could go was Monday, plus my car was half-full of books. Well, how big can those supply lists be and it’s only 30 kids, right? My friend Nora volunteered to help me shop.

Four fully loaded shopping carts later, I left two very happy check-out ladies who had opened a private lane for us guarding the stuff with my friend Nora, and went to pick up our pick-up truck. The supplies completely filled the bed.

The truck bed full of kid stuff, my car stuffed with the giveaway library, my phone rang. Did my community nourishment project want 12 dozen ears of free corn from the gleaning society?

I booked a rental SUV and rejoiced in all the good fortune coming our way for the community nourishment project.

Enterprise car rentals has let me down before, but the one that happened the morning I planned to load all the good fortune was particularly spectacular; Enterprise employees aren’t normally rude while being inept, but that guy was. So I left without the SUV they didn’t have, sporting 750 cubic feet of haulage space, to figure out how to fit school supplies for 30 kids, donations from the local food bank, drink donations from the local women’s club, an entire Reiki and Reflexology library, and five dozen ears of corn in my Prius.

Have you ever seen a Prius stuffed with 1527 bits of school supplies, 96 ears of corn (they gave us eight dozen) and four coolers? I can’t roll down the windows. When I open the back door, lunchboxes will fall out.  But I’m really proud of that little tunnel between the notebook paper and the binders, allowing me a six inch square to see out the back.

Another day, another problem solved. Non-profit directors get stuff done.

Would anyone like some corn?

A Journey with No End #2

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Jack continues with his pursuit of marrying Wendy – – –

At the end of last week’s episode our intrepid heroine was heading to Newfoundland to start her PhD in Folklore at Memorial University in St. Johns. This to add to her degree in journalism, her other degree in German and her masters in education (mine at that point were a certificate in education and a diploma in painting and decorating!).

She set off from her parents’ house in Knoxville in her ancient and bedraggled Toyota – with non-working windows, a muffler that didn’t muffle, a headliner that draped over your head and engine that broke down frequently. I was a bit worried!

As her travels progressed the car did breakdown often and, at one point, she caught a serious cold. Luckily that happened in Maine where I was able to contact friends who organized a garage and accommodation until she recovered. There were no cell phones back then so contact was sporadic and sometimes when I phoned her Mom, who sounded very like Wendy, to find out how she was doing I would think I was talking to Wendy. Her Mom found that highly amusing!

Eventually she arrived at Memorial, found somewhere to stay and started her studies. The first class was in transcribing field recordings to be made by her and her fellow students of local ‘worthies’, but this was October in Newfoundland and the snow was already higher than the houses! As her fellow students donned their gear and headed out she remembered an evening in Tennessee and a Scottish guy. That’s how our first meeting is a fully transcribed tape lodged in the folklore archives of Memorial University and cross-referenced under ‘courting rituals’.