Had Some Setbacks, Had Some Fun

Setbacks first; the delivery guys came a third time to install our new fridge but now the plug doesn't fit. (Sigh.) After whining about it here and then again here, I choose to think of other things today.Like the fact that our son came home this past weekend  from faraway Arkansas and made us laugh til our sides hurt about the adventures he and his buddies had trying to drive an RV so wide that saplings were breaking off along the lonely desert road until they managed to get the hang of it. (It's like when you're pregnant: at first you just don't KNOW how wide you really are.)Also, the Whole ABC Family gathered to celebrate Fall Family Weekend, and had such had a nice time eating and talking and cooking (and square dancing!)Also fun looking at pictures of ourselves doing all this. :-)Then too, one of our 'extra' kids  came home  and did some champion sleeping in his room. (Computer Science major is not for the faint of heart; he was tired!)  We went through some of his stuff from high school and I came upon this picture from when he was just a freshman with Winchester ABC. He doesn't look a thing like this now but what fun to be reminded of when he did. Was it only four short years ago?Sunday morning I took my two grandsons to eat pancakes at a McDonald's Play Place where they came to the realization that at six and nine they now feel too big to crawl inside those large plastic intestines. Sad! The first of many closing doors for them but instead......Instead we came back to our house, just in time to meet the rest of the fam, pretend to watch football and bask in the joy of being all together.Which is what it's all about really in life. Which for sure is what it's about. 

A Chore That Isn't a Chore

Once a week I take the ABC scholars of my town over the landmark Zakim Bridge to tutor kids in the historic Boston neighborhood of Roxbury. (This is that bridge with Boston Harbor and Paul Revere's famous Old North Church in the background.) And here you see ABC scholar Enderson Naar, Winchester High class of '15, helping a child with his math - and that's his WHS classmate Tobi Omola in the background.)

The place we tutor at, 826 Boston, has done some amazing work helping kids unlock their potential as writers and readers and wide-wake individuals in general who never miss a trick. The children come after school to do their homework and learn, even as our ABC scholars come to assist, and admire their writing and help them feel about reading the way everyone else in the place does.I’m only the chauffeur on these  jaunts. Four years ago when we started doing this, I decided it would be best to stand aside and let them shine; also to let them really own the experience. They have to commit to a day and a time-slot ahead of time and register online. Then at 2:15 when they're just out of class themselves, I appear, my car loaded with snacks, and we head into the city, talking the whole way.It is wonderful to arrive there on the Roxbury-Dorchester line, the place I was born and spent the first ten years of life. I love the area, and these eight guys seem to love it too, as they are from some great old neighborhoods themselves: Harlem and Philly, Queens and Brooklyn, and two from the proud old Connecticut cities of Bridgeport and Meriden.We perk right up when we move through the tunnel, get off at Mass. Ave, and go right down Melnea Cass Boulevard. Sometimes take a new way, trying to shave time and see all new things. When we passed a Popeye’s last time, LaVon said "I feel like I’m home! Stop the car!"When we arrive at last  here, they walk into the whimsically named Greater Boston Bigfoot Research Institute and get down to work. I, meanwhile, sit in my car dreaming back to the time my big sister and I attended the old Notre Dame Academy the site of which is not 1000 yards away. A fantastical place that old school was, with long-gowned nuns floating down the marble hallways, their feet as invisible as duck’s feet. The Dimock Health Center, once the New England Hospital for Women and Children, was built at the same time and has the same beauty. See?When I went to school here, this Egleston Square section of Boston was unlovely, with the elevated train darkening all its streets. Today I find it nothing but lovely. I recently walked to the very site of my school and took this picture.Here is the old stone wall made of Roxbury Puddingstone, at the edge of what was once the school's grounds and is now a graceful apartment building:And these are the homes we pass along Washington Street.When the boys get done with their 90 minutes of tutoring they bound out to my car with their spirits even higher than they were. They laugh, and listen to Bob Marley, or Frank Ocean, Justin Timberlake or Bruno Mars as I carry us homeward. Often they sing. And sometimes when I think they’re not aware of it, I prop my phone on the dashboard and record them doing it. I couldn’t love this weekly task more if the ABC program paid me to do it but everyone' efforts for the program are donated. Tell you what doing it makes me feel so alive I often think I should be paying ABC.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR4rudLMhng&feature=em-upload_owner#action=share]

Holiday Surprises

Things aren't going that great around  here. We began having the kitchen painted the Monday after Thanksgiving and as of this past Tuesday all the kitchen stuff was still in the dining room. Holiday decorating!My little guys came over a week ago and put all the fake-dripping-wax 1980s-era candles in the windows but the rest of the project stalled.I didn’t even buy the tree 'til last Sunday, in the pouring rain and dark, and failed to notice at the time that it has a kind of giant goiter of branches on one side only. Hence it falls over.Twice it careened onto the ground and once, when we turned it goiter side in, it fell into the wall behind it , which made the front half of its base life right up off the floorLast night just before dinner was the last time it fell. We heard that telltale whoosh and then a sort of muffled thud as of a heavy person sitting down on the floor. We hurried into the living room and there it was.There it is I should say. It's there as I write.Another complicating factor in my week was my last-minute opportunity to go with all the ABC scholars I love, and their Resident Academic Coordinator Mario Paredes, into the Boston State House to meet with the Honorable Deval Patrick , Governor of the Commonwealth.What a lovely man he is, who made these eight feel how much he has in common with them , having himself left home at 14 to be an ABC student at Milton Academy.I was too shy to ask for a picture of me alone with him but everyone else got to do that as the official photographer snapped away.This picture is one Mario took as we first sat down together at the table in that jewel of an office in the old Bulfinch building.  Look at these happy faces! How glad I am that Mario arranged this and the Governor agreed to give us 30 minutes!It's a lesson to me: nobody cares what the table looks like at most gathering, as long as everyone can find a seat at it.And we'll get there on the house preparations. Today we're lashing the tree with wire to hardware on the two windows that flank it. The show must go on!  :-)

Here's the tree after its third and most recent  fainting spell. ( Sigh.)  At least there aren't any lights or ornaments on it yet. 

The Newsletter That Almost Killed Me

If someone were to ask me what I did with the month of October and first half of November I would say I produced the ABC newsletter. It feels like all I did in these last seven weeks but now it is done thank God, thank God.It was hard for me mostly because I have scant aptitude for serious information-driven writing and our student editor was just up to his eyeballs with academics and music lessons and football, so I said I would do it alone.  So I basically just used a bunch of pictures of these eight guys, got them to say a word about themselves and then just did some reporting about what the fall of 2012 was like at the Winchester ABC House,  just the way I would tell you if you were sitting here by me drinking soup say. On the couch say, in front of a fire say, our legs tucked up under us. It’s the only way I know how to write.I should say that National Program for A Better Chance has been opening the door to educational opportunities for thousands of young people of color in this nation for almost 50 years. Look here to read more .I have been Chair of Student Life for our local chapter of ABC for the last three years.This means I get to see our eight scholars a lot and in the most delightful ways.Example:At 8:30 on Halloween night I realized we had bought WAY too much candy for the number of Trick or Treaters who showed up at our door.I texted the ABC House leader, 17 year old senior Rayvoughn and said as much. He texted me back immediately. “We’ll be there in 20 minutes,” he said and sure enough at 8:50 here were five of the eight of them at my door. (The other three had too much homework to come. Winchester High is a hard school and these are serious achievement driven learners.)They got right at that bowl of candy.Then the boy called Hazees, a junior said “We want to see Dave."They like Old Dave, my husband since the first Moon Landing very nearly."David is reading in our room,” I said.“He'll want to see us, I know” said Hazees.So I hopped up the stairs to see if this was true. It was true and so up came all five and stood around our bed. David said "Not you guys again!", while smiling from ear to ear and they went on as males tend to do, saying jokey mock-insulting things back and forth.I took a picture with my phone but it's sort of terrible. It does show three of them standing around in our room.Better pictures are in the newsletter itself.. Like this one of Tobi, a sophomore who plays five musical instruments AND varsity football.and this one, of freshman LaVon:Then Gamaral with his mom  and his nice host family:Freshman Bryson with his two host brothers:And then there is this picture that isn't in the newsletter but shows three of the guys studying some of the pics I took on my phone:

Machias, Enderson and Tobi

What great kids they are and how I do love them all!Here is a page from the newsletter explaining a little of the more serious side of the program if you care to see it.

Important Notice: ABC Matching Gift Challenge is Under Way - A Message from the Board

As part of the 2012/2013 Annual Appeal, ABC has announced the kick-off of an exciting challenge from the Cummings Foundation.In honor of ABC’s long-time supporter Mike Regentz who passed away this past April, all donations to ABC in excess of last year’s pledges will be matched dollar for dollar up to $100,000. Also if a person’s employer has in place a matching donation program, the Cummings Foundation will ‘double the double’. Thus, a new gift of $100 which is matched by the donor’s company, would become $400.Funds raised in this way will be designated for college preparedness, and will make a huge difference to the lives of our scholars who must compete for those coveted college slots. Accordingly, we have over the last few years, begun identifying summer programs for them, as well as SAT preparation courses and college seminars.These things cost money, but the scholars could tell you how much they have benefited. In the last few years the guys have taken courses in Computer Science at Brown, Bioengineering and Molecular Biology at Clemson University, Writing at the University of Virginia, Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Psychology at Cornell, and general Humanities Courses at both Davidson College and Carleton College.When they come back to visit us as graduates they all go directly to the House at 2 Dix Street. This means that the current scholars all know their older ‘brothers’, and not superficially, but well.  DaLonn Pearson put it into words when he spoke at the Gala put on by the North Suburban YMCA. “This is what we do,” he said. “We build community.”  He expresses it exactly. It is what we all do when we are at our best, as brothers and sisters to one another and citizens of the world.

DaLonn at the podium Winchester High School class of 2009

Please help the scholars - and us - continue to build this extraordinary community of learners and future leaders.Winchester ABC has been opening the door to educational opportunity for talented, young men of color since 1971. It is funded entirely by private donations from Winchester individuals and organizations committed to making opportunity available to all. Donations may either be sent to Winchester ABC. P.O. Box 94, Winchester MA 01890 or made on line at www.winchesterabc.org 

Maybe the newsletter was hard to put together but it sure was fun gathering the news.

Now it's at the printer and very soon we will go get it bring it to the Post Office and out will go all 1700+ copies to all the good people who make the program possible.

Hazees and Ray below, with last spring's newsletter.. I feel so lucky, just to be watching them all on their journey.