When you join the Peace Corps, two of the many forms they ask you to fill out come from the Press Office. They are the Release Authorization Form and the Hometown News Release Form. The former is a standard, brief legal waiver. It will take about 15 seconds to fill out. The second is basically a series of mini-essays; seven, to be exact.
I've procrastinated filling them out. Indeed, I've procrastinated making an official announcement to family and friends. Many know by now, but some of the dearest friends I have still do not know. Now I'm being asked to let the world know.
I've always been a rather private person. I am still adjusting to the realities of joining national service. Now I am going to become an individual who is part of a larger entity. I really believe in the mission of this entity, to the point where I'm ready to change; to become a more public, "out there" kind of person. I'm coming out.
I have an opportunity coming up to do some of my announcements in person, at a family reunion, for which I will travel back to St. Paul. This will occur in mid-June. That is also about the latest I can wait to release the news to the press there. Meanwhile I should release it here, where it is much more likely to be published. Even if it is published, however, I don't expect any real notoriety. Which is just fine. If I wanted a high profile, I'd create a profile on Facebook.
Once I am in the Peace Corps, I intend to continue blogging, as a form of communication with my family, but in the public sphere and therefore also as a form of citizen journalism. Part of the intention of this blog is to ease me into the public blogosphere. I'm coming out.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Goodbye, TiVo
Okay, I'm going to come clean about my most serious addiction.
I am a news junkie.
For the past decade, it has been building. It started with PBS: The News Hour, the year George Bush defeated Al Gore. An evening ritual for me was watching it when I returned from work. I'd relax, have a glass of fruit juice or sparkling water and maybe a snack, while I watched Lehrer and colleagues. When it was over I'd make dinner. After dinner, I watched The Daily Show if it was on. Yeah, I know it's not "news." Comedic commentary became part of the addiction equation early on. Another was the periodic scanning of Google News headlines, about four times a day.
As the Bush administration settled in, news seemed increasingly important. From the beginning, the new administration seemed a slow-motion train wreck. I couldn't peel my eyes away. After 9/11 I felt it important to broaden my perspective. I added the BBC World News to my nightly lineup.
The BBC came on early, though. Frequently I missed my fix. When, just as I took on a second job, a friend suggested getting digital recording capability, I went for it. I subscribed to TiVo. Evil TiVo. I do think it's evil.
"Time-shifting" was lovely, even if the TiVo is an inexact device. It misses its target nearly as often as it succeeds. Even so, that "on-demand" quality is seductive. I succumbed; slipped deeper into my addiction.
I started scanning other news services, briefly checking Fox to see if it was as bad as its reputation (it was) and, less briefly, CNN, to see if it lived up to its reputation (it did not) before settling, finally, on the VERY interesting MSNBC, just as Keith Olbermann started offering Countdown. That led me to Anderson Cooper and Chris Matthews and eventually, half-a-dozen more interesting points of view. I was taping the weekend shows, too: Tim Russert and George Stephanopoulos, The McLaughlin Group.
During my convalescence from surgery in the beginning of 2008, I started listening to talk radio. Thom Hartmann and Randi Rhodes; later Stephanie Miller, who has become a lasting staple since I returned to work. Eventually, I was watching more than four hours a day watching news, and countless more with the radio and the Internet, chasing news and commentary on news.
One of the attractions of the Peace Corps was the opportunity to radically alter the mediated experiences of my life. I hope to spend much more time face to face with people, and much less time face to screen. We'll see. Meanwhile, I am taking steps to reduce the screen time.
Or at least, I've been working towards thinking about the planning steps for eventually carrying that plan out. See the evasion in that sentence? Yeah. I'm still working on it.
But I'm hitting the wall of reality now. With all I have to do to get ready, I simply do not have the time to follow the news with this intensity. Lately, I've been realizing that the addiction is comprised more and more of habit, and less and less of any genuine passion. So it should be getting easier. As my service approaches, I find myself caring less and less about the minutia of current events. Now it is the force of habit that remains the only barrier.
So my latest goal is this: I am canceling the TiVo before the next billing cycle. I am cutting cable back at least to Basic, and if I can figure out how to get PBS without it, may cut it out entirely. Before the next billing cycle. A friend will take away the TiVo machine, gratis. I will return the cable box and be free of that expense. More importantly, I am going to reduce my viewing back to the one-half the original level: I will limit myself to The News Hour (forgoing The Daily Show).
Before June 9, I will have canceled the services, leaving a one-hour commitment to the screen, as much Stephanie Miller as I can hear before I leave for work in the morning, and the browsing of the Google News.
Step by step. Cold turkey is a nice, clean method, but I will ease myself out of this cloud of news slowly.
I am a news junkie.
For the past decade, it has been building. It started with PBS: The News Hour, the year George Bush defeated Al Gore. An evening ritual for me was watching it when I returned from work. I'd relax, have a glass of fruit juice or sparkling water and maybe a snack, while I watched Lehrer and colleagues. When it was over I'd make dinner. After dinner, I watched The Daily Show if it was on. Yeah, I know it's not "news." Comedic commentary became part of the addiction equation early on. Another was the periodic scanning of Google News headlines, about four times a day.
As the Bush administration settled in, news seemed increasingly important. From the beginning, the new administration seemed a slow-motion train wreck. I couldn't peel my eyes away. After 9/11 I felt it important to broaden my perspective. I added the BBC World News to my nightly lineup.
The BBC came on early, though. Frequently I missed my fix. When, just as I took on a second job, a friend suggested getting digital recording capability, I went for it. I subscribed to TiVo. Evil TiVo. I do think it's evil.
"Time-shifting" was lovely, even if the TiVo is an inexact device. It misses its target nearly as often as it succeeds. Even so, that "on-demand" quality is seductive. I succumbed; slipped deeper into my addiction.
I started scanning other news services, briefly checking Fox to see if it was as bad as its reputation (it was) and, less briefly, CNN, to see if it lived up to its reputation (it did not) before settling, finally, on the VERY interesting MSNBC, just as Keith Olbermann started offering Countdown. That led me to Anderson Cooper and Chris Matthews and eventually, half-a-dozen more interesting points of view. I was taping the weekend shows, too: Tim Russert and George Stephanopoulos, The McLaughlin Group.
During my convalescence from surgery in the beginning of 2008, I started listening to talk radio. Thom Hartmann and Randi Rhodes; later Stephanie Miller, who has become a lasting staple since I returned to work. Eventually, I was watching more than four hours a day watching news, and countless more with the radio and the Internet, chasing news and commentary on news.
One of the attractions of the Peace Corps was the opportunity to radically alter the mediated experiences of my life. I hope to spend much more time face to face with people, and much less time face to screen. We'll see. Meanwhile, I am taking steps to reduce the screen time.
Or at least, I've been working towards thinking about the planning steps for eventually carrying that plan out. See the evasion in that sentence? Yeah. I'm still working on it.
But I'm hitting the wall of reality now. With all I have to do to get ready, I simply do not have the time to follow the news with this intensity. Lately, I've been realizing that the addiction is comprised more and more of habit, and less and less of any genuine passion. So it should be getting easier. As my service approaches, I find myself caring less and less about the minutia of current events. Now it is the force of habit that remains the only barrier.
So my latest goal is this: I am canceling the TiVo before the next billing cycle. I am cutting cable back at least to Basic, and if I can figure out how to get PBS without it, may cut it out entirely. Before the next billing cycle. A friend will take away the TiVo machine, gratis. I will return the cable box and be free of that expense. More importantly, I am going to reduce my viewing back to the one-half the original level: I will limit myself to The News Hour (forgoing The Daily Show).
Before June 9, I will have canceled the services, leaving a one-hour commitment to the screen, as much Stephanie Miller as I can hear before I leave for work in the morning, and the browsing of the Google News.
Step by step. Cold turkey is a nice, clean method, but I will ease myself out of this cloud of news slowly.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Spending more time with Arabic
Slowly, I am getting into this. LiveMocha is good, though I find tutorials on learning the script to be totally absent. I’ve sent away for some books on the script, because I’d like to know it before I get to Rabat. I’m not so concerned about Arabic itself, because I know I’ll be learning Darija. For those unfamiliar with these details, Darija is a variation of a dialect. The North African dialect is one of five major forms of colloquial Arabic.
To be truly literate, I must also learn some Classical written Arabic, but I’ve been told that French is used more than Arabic for business communications. My main reason to learn it would be to impress people, and I’m not sure that’s necessary for me to be successful in my work. Respect is more important than admiration.
So for now, I do the listening and speaking exercises and ignore the reading and writing exercises. I am using LiveMocha for French as well as Arabic.
So it’s a start. A toe in the water. shwiya b shwiya (little by little).
See more progress on: learn arabic
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Blogs of My Predecessors
I have been starting to read, avidly, the blogs of Peace Corps volunteers who are already in Morocco. There are quite a few of these volunteers online, going back several years.
Through one of these blogs, I learned that there is a registry for Peace Corps volunteers who blog. You can add your blog to a "blogroll" which rolls up the latest entries from fellow bloggers and sorts them by country for you. So I will be able to get to know my predecessors, online, before I even get to the country. Is the Internet great, or what? I signed my blog up.
Reading them, I'm picking up a lot of interesting information about the early part of the process. My strategy is to go to the beginning of each blog, and work my way up. I've read through the first months of 4 or 5 volunteers. So far, I've learned where the Staging event takes place (Philadelphia) and that there are two training cycles for the Morocco program. One cycle starts in March, when Environmental and Health Education volunteers are trained, and a second begins in September, when Youth Development and Small Business Development volunteers are trained.
I'm thrilled to know I'll be spending at least some training time with Youth Development volunteers. When I heard about Youth Development, it sounded like so much fun. I've been volunteering with kids here in Venice, California, and really enjoying it. So I would be coveting that assignment, except that I know my strength lies in working with adults. It's always been that way. I've been in post-secondary education for most of my career, starting back in the 70s when I worked for the Minneapolis Area Vocational Technical Institute. Oh, my gosh, I'm really revealing my age, aren't I! But the truth is, as a teacher and a trainer, I relate very well to adults, and feel very comfortable in that role. So, while I'm very satisfied with my assigned progrm, I am happy to know I'll be getting to know the volunteers in the YD program. I hope to make good connections with those assigned in the near vicinity. I love hanging out with kids, and it'd be cool to meet the NEXT generation of small-business owners as well as working with the present generation.
I'm also learning it is not uncommon for volunteers to bring laptops, which makes me feel much more comfortable about bringing my own.
Through one of these blogs, I learned that there is a registry for Peace Corps volunteers who blog. You can add your blog to a "blogroll" which rolls up the latest entries from fellow bloggers and sorts them by country for you. So I will be able to get to know my predecessors, online, before I even get to the country. Is the Internet great, or what? I signed my blog up.
Reading them, I'm picking up a lot of interesting information about the early part of the process. My strategy is to go to the beginning of each blog, and work my way up. I've read through the first months of 4 or 5 volunteers. So far, I've learned where the Staging event takes place (Philadelphia) and that there are two training cycles for the Morocco program. One cycle starts in March, when Environmental and Health Education volunteers are trained, and a second begins in September, when Youth Development and Small Business Development volunteers are trained.
I'm thrilled to know I'll be spending at least some training time with Youth Development volunteers. When I heard about Youth Development, it sounded like so much fun. I've been volunteering with kids here in Venice, California, and really enjoying it. So I would be coveting that assignment, except that I know my strength lies in working with adults. It's always been that way. I've been in post-secondary education for most of my career, starting back in the 70s when I worked for the Minneapolis Area Vocational Technical Institute. Oh, my gosh, I'm really revealing my age, aren't I! But the truth is, as a teacher and a trainer, I relate very well to adults, and feel very comfortable in that role. So, while I'm very satisfied with my assigned progrm, I am happy to know I'll be getting to know the volunteers in the YD program. I hope to make good connections with those assigned in the near vicinity. I love hanging out with kids, and it'd be cool to meet the NEXT generation of small-business owners as well as working with the present generation.
I'm also learning it is not uncommon for volunteers to bring laptops, which makes me feel much more comfortable about bringing my own.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
End-of-April Wrap-up
It has been an eventful week. I sent my Aspiration Statement and Resume to Morocco today. Tomorrow I hope to meet with the property manager about my tenancy while I'm serving. I've gotten my photos for my new passport and am nearly ready to send that paperwork in.
Meanwhile, it has been really sinking in that I'm going to be going to Morocco for 2 years! My life is going to be radically different than it is now. I've been telling people that the amount of time I now spend staring at electronic screens will instead be spent in face-to-face interactions. Staring at screens is something I do for at least 12 hours a day, if you count work, internet and television; often more. While I am looking forward to spending less time with electronic screens, I wonder what it will be like to spend so much time with people? I think I'm going to love it, but I know I'll miss having solitude, too.
Counting down: 4 months, 7 days 'til Orientation
Meanwhile, it has been really sinking in that I'm going to be going to Morocco for 2 years! My life is going to be radically different than it is now. I've been telling people that the amount of time I now spend staring at electronic screens will instead be spent in face-to-face interactions. Staring at screens is something I do for at least 12 hours a day, if you count work, internet and television; often more. While I am looking forward to spending less time with electronic screens, I wonder what it will be like to spend so much time with people? I think I'm going to love it, but I know I'll miss having solitude, too.
Counting down: 4 months, 7 days 'til Orientation
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Aspirations
I've been working on the Aspirations Statement, which really breaks down as five different statements:
A. The professional attributes that you plan to use, and what aspirations you hope to fulfill, during your Peace Corps service.
B. Your strategies for working effectively with host country partners to meet expressed needs.
C. Your strategies for adapting to a new culture with respect to your own cultural background.
D. The skills and knowledge you hope to gain during pre-service training to best serve your future community and project.
E. How you think Peace Corps service will influence your personal and professional aspirations after your service ends.
I've already spend quite a lot of time writing my answers. Should I post them here, I wonder? I notice if you Google "Aspiration Statement" you can find statements written by other volunteers. But I think rather than posting them, I'll just make them available for download for anyone who is interested.
I am amazed at how any obstacles are disappearing and things I worried about are proving to be much less problematic than I thought they would be.
A. The professional attributes that you plan to use, and what aspirations you hope to fulfill, during your Peace Corps service.
B. Your strategies for working effectively with host country partners to meet expressed needs.
C. Your strategies for adapting to a new culture with respect to your own cultural background.
D. The skills and knowledge you hope to gain during pre-service training to best serve your future community and project.
E. How you think Peace Corps service will influence your personal and professional aspirations after your service ends.
I've already spend quite a lot of time writing my answers. Should I post them here, I wonder? I notice if you Google "Aspiration Statement" you can find statements written by other volunteers. But I think rather than posting them, I'll just make them available for download for anyone who is interested.
I am amazed at how any obstacles are disappearing and things I worried about are proving to be much less problematic than I thought they would be.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
The Invitation
The official invitation to join the Peace Corps arrives along with a packet of file pockets filled with work to do: everything from passport and visa applications to the personal, legal and insurance papers: Forms to fill out, reading, writing and thinking to be done. There is a telephone call at the end of this process, to make my formal commitment. I have only a few days to do the tasks that lead up to that commitment (which, at least, is only some of the things I mentioned).
I have been volunteering at a local arts organization that runs after-school classes in photography, film making, animation and digital arts, partly because I hope to be able to work with kids as a secondary project in my community. Today was the final class for our middle-school kids. We took Pierre, Maarten, Jeramiah, Tora, Larry, Kevin and Caitlin to an animation studio where they saw the workplace of animators working on a bunch of stop-motion productions.
It is unbelievably exhausting to put seven lively kids into a mini-bus and drive them through heavy L.A. traffic for nearly an hour, keep them well-behaved and in line during a 40-minute tour and visit, and then drive them back. The paid teacher did the driving and I was the back-seat "parent" enforcing seat belts and indoor voices. But I think it's worth it. Learning happened! Always a wonderful experience, being a part of that.
But I am beat. There will be no heavy reading for me tonight! With some planning, I can leave work a bit early tomorrow so I can finish the reading and get the essays written when I get home. I would like to plan on making that call on Thursday or, at the latest, on Friday morning. I also have to write an announcement or "press release" for my extended family and wider circle of friends. This needs to go out by the weekend.
I have been volunteering at a local arts organization that runs after-school classes in photography, film making, animation and digital arts, partly because I hope to be able to work with kids as a secondary project in my community. Today was the final class for our middle-school kids. We took Pierre, Maarten, Jeramiah, Tora, Larry, Kevin and Caitlin to an animation studio where they saw the workplace of animators working on a bunch of stop-motion productions.
It is unbelievably exhausting to put seven lively kids into a mini-bus and drive them through heavy L.A. traffic for nearly an hour, keep them well-behaved and in line during a 40-minute tour and visit, and then drive them back. The paid teacher did the driving and I was the back-seat "parent" enforcing seat belts and indoor voices. But I think it's worth it. Learning happened! Always a wonderful experience, being a part of that.
But I am beat. There will be no heavy reading for me tonight! With some planning, I can leave work a bit early tomorrow so I can finish the reading and get the essays written when I get home. I would like to plan on making that call on Thursday or, at the latest, on Friday morning. I also have to write an announcement or "press release" for my extended family and wider circle of friends. This needs to go out by the weekend.
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