AIDS Walk San Francisco

Thank you to all of you wonderful people who donated to my team for today’s AIDS Walk San Francisco. As part of Team Gilead, I was able to contribute $550 to our team total of $47,221!

It was not the best weather for a 6-mile walk through Golden Gate Park. While temperatures were low, spirit & morale were high – so many happy, smiling faces walking around Sharon Field, grazing on free breakfasts & listening to good music. As the walk started, we made our way to the front of the pack… slowly. It took 45 minutes to go the first two miles because there were a TON of walkers. I think the final tally was more than 20,000 walkers, and they didn’t exactly keep a blazing pace. But we progressed, and in our little party of six, we found ourselves taking pee breaks every half mile – someone always had to go. As we made our way through miles 2-5, we saw AIDS quilts laid out on the lawn, a Memorial Wall for folks to leave messages on, some live music, and plenty of gung-ho volunteers there to cheer us on… it was such a fun way to spend a Sunday morning. And of course, this is all before you remember that we did it for such a great cause. We felt good being out & about, we got some free live entertainment, and we got to take part in something that’s much bigger than all of us. Such an awesome way to take part in the community.

Ninety minutes later (a 15:00/mile pace), we found ourselves EXHAUSTED, back on the grounds of Sharon Fields. We couldn’t believe just how tired, sore & hungry we all were; luckily, the nice folks at Boudin SF (a Forklift Brand restaurant) donated plenty of box lunches for us. We sat on the lawn, enjoyed our lunch, and made our way home.

R is already asleep on the couch (six miles is still six miles), and I’m writing this now to make sure I say thank you, thank you, thank you, to all of you who supported us today. And now I’m going to catch a nap. :)

Posted in AIDS walk SF, giving back, thank you | No Comments »

Events Like These

Last night our friend Mary Schaefer brought us along to a benefit dinner for 826 Valencia:

From their website:

Simply put, 826 Valencia is dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their writing skills, and to helping teachers get their students excited about the writing. Our work is based on the understanding that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success and that great leaps in learning can be made when skilled tutors work one-on-one with students.

So, last night we had three hours of sushi, wine, and an unexpected “field trip” experience in which all 70 of us collectively composed a short story. The short story was typed up on-screen as we went, as well as illustrated on the fly courtesy of Lisa Brown, author of Baby Mix Me a Drink and wife of Lemony Snicket (Dan Handler). We all left with a bound book, a decent wine buzz, and feeling like we had contributed to an important, nay.. VITAL .. community organization.

I, however, left with a serious jones to be a Volunteer Leader within this organization, joining the ranks of Jory John (website, which is funny but not about him) as a Field Trip leader. Jory & his leaders basically do the highly-improvisational work of leading a classroom full of kids through the highly-improvisational process of highly-improvisational story creation. The work is improv because he can’t possibly plan how things will end up, the process is improv because each class will go about it differently, and the story is improv because, well, they’re making it up. You can tell that he really loves what he does and that it’s highly rewarding for him. I’d love to take some of the burden off his shoulders. 826 has like 1,600 volunteers on its rosters in the Bay Area, but only six.. SIX… of them share the Field Trip leader responsibilities with Jory. I’m hoping to be lucky number seven.

Now, most of you don’t live where 826 Valencia makes a difference… but you probably do live damn close to one of the other 826s.

826NYC
826LA
826Chicago
826Seattle
826Michigan
826Boston

If you’re at ALL intrigued by the concept of empowering our future through the thoughtful donation of time & resources to help children/students write sentences better than this one, I urge you to investigate this organization. It was founded by Deggers, one of my favorite authors, and has been helping students around the country based solely on support of donors (of both money AND time). It’s an AWESOME endeavor, and I really can’t wait to play a bigger role in it.

Now it’s just the issue of figuring out how to sell the boss (& her boss) on me taking 3 hours every other week to lead a Field Trip. If anyone is an expert at getting a small-to-medium corporation to release you from business needs for volunteering opportunities that aren’t organized by same corporation, please let me know. Jory has offered to write a very nice letter to those who need to approve my departure, but I’m still nervous – any tips/tricks would be helpful. (I would’ve been happy just participating in the company’s Junior Achievement program, but they totally dissed me – I signed up to volunteer and haven’t heard diddly-squat back – so now I’ve got 826 as my avenue to give something back.)

Anyway, back to work. The pressure’s eased a bit, hence the blogging over an actual lunch period, but I still have crap to do.

Posted in 826, giving back, improv, new goals, sf | No Comments »