I am going to preface this post by noting that I am incredibly lucky, and I’m going to list the reasons:

– My parents are absolutely wonderful, supportive and loving

– I don’t have to worry about money

– I have fantastic friends and a beautiful, intelligent, passionate, kind-hearted girlfriend

– I get to go to work every day and love every minute of it

– I am healthy

– There are plenty more reasons, but you get the idea

Okay, so time for the kvetching.  Last Sunday, I went on what was supposed to be a 50 mile bike ride and, 8 miles in, my rear tubular tire went flat; that was the end of that ride.  This morning, I planned to bike 72 miles to Connecticut for a Capital Good Fund staff retreat.  3 miles into the ride I realized that I had forgotten by clothes at home, so back I go.  Now I’m back on the road and, after a few miles,I hit a pothole.  As a result, a bolt comes loose on my rear fender, leaving the fender rubbing on the rear wheel to the point that it barely spins.  I spend 30 minutes trying to get the wheel off so that I can fix the fender but the skewer won’t come off.  That’s the end of that ride.

Words cannot describe how hard I’ve been working of late and how much I was looking forward to this ride.  Last night I bought a bike rack for my car and a special headlight to ensure that cars would see me at dusk.  I got up at 4 AM and was on the bike at 4:45.  But instead of being on my bike on a beautiful day feeling the power of my legs and the joy of riding a bicycle, I am furious and angry and frustrated.

Now I need to remember how I started this post: I am so lucky.  This is minor and it’s time for me to let it go.  I’ll fix the bike and ride another day.

It’s 1 AM and, 15 hours after I started my work day, I am finally settling into bed.  Now, I’m not unaccustomed to long days at the office–in fact, given how much I love what I do, work doesn’t usually feel like work–but today was brutal.  I am exhausted, drained, frustrated.  And the source?  A Federal grant!  If you please, imagine this: at least 80 hours of work spread out between three employees (myself, Libby and Jake) to apply for $30,000 in funding. The instructions alone comprise 80 pages.  25 pages of narratives.  Countless instances of the same question asked the same way in three different locations.  Opaque and difficult to understand requirements that are often contradictory.  And did I mention that all this was for $30,000?

Here’s the problem: When contractors seek contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, or when big banks receive bailout funds from the United States Treasury, there are all-too-often minimal requirements, minimal oversight and minimal follow-up. Big money, easy money.  But when I seek a couple thousand dollars to provide free tax preparation to the poor, or when the poor seek food stamps, or when schools try to expand after school programs, they are put through the ringer.

Let me be clear:  I have no problem whatsoever with being asked difficult and probing questions to evaluate the efficacy of a grant application. I get it.  What frustrates me, what I find unjust, is the yawning chasm between what we ask of those serving the average person and what we ask of those in power. What I want is the same standard, broadly applied: you want taxpayer money?  Prove your efficacy, whether you want money for tax preparation or reconstruction projects in Iraq.  What I don’t want is us pitching pennies on the one hand and throwing away millions of dollars with the other.

In his iconic ‘I Have a Dream’ speech,’ Martin Luther King spoke of the fierce urgency of now–the moral imperative to address injustice in the present as opposed to in some vague, ill-defined future.  Further, in his masterpiece ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail,’ he wrote that “For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity.  This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ We must come to see…that ‘justice too long delayed in justice denied.’”

As the Executive Director of a small, rapidly growing non-profit, I often find myself trying to balance the imperative to solve problems today with the need to think strategically and build the infrastructure needed for scale and growth tomorrow.  My obsession with the ‘fierce urgency of now,’ however, had until recently always been rooted in a firm belief that when we put off doing the right thing, we are in many ways creating excuses for denying justice.  But recently I’ve been thinking more carefully about why the urgency of now is so ferocious, and I’ve come to a new conclusion: every day that goes by without us solving a problem, the harder that problem becomes to solve.  To borrow the parlance of climate change mitigation we are, in effect, ‘locking in’ injustice for years, decades and centuries to come.

My Dad And I

This is a story about one man, my father, and his brave battle with a puffy prostate.  It is a tale of many things—woe, pain, hope, despair and perseverance—but alas, in the end it is not one of victory.  It all begins when Dad, who goes by Dick (no pun intended or needed), sees a urologist in the mid 90s.  At the time, Bill Clinton is President, going through his own penis-related travails, albeit on the opposite end of the genital experience spectrum: for a blowjob is as far away from a puffy prostate as you can get without departing the nether regions entirely. 

At first blush, an enlarged prostate doesn’t sound bad; after all, the prostate is often referred to as the “Male G-spot.” Indeed, a certain hopeful logic leads ineluctably to the conclusion that the greater the surface area of the erogenous zone, the more intense the erotic pleasure.  Unfortunately, an enlarged prostate, also known as Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH), leads only to difficulties related to the expulsion of urine, namely: urinary retention, dribbling at the end of urination, bloody urination and incontinence.

In the kitchen stands my love.

I want to unfold her

Like a tablecloth, smooth her edges,

And feast upon her; but there

Is a draft, and she is sick.

I feel cold like glass in the morning.

No glances, no words can cure

This elusive girl.

All I can do is wander alone, in thought,

Until from love and despair I, too, am sick,

For my only path to healing winds through her.

Written on Friday, November 22nd, 2002

“Today, 85 percent of the $400 billion that the government spends to encourage things like home ownership, college attendance, investment and small business ends up in the pockets of the top 20 percent of earners (and half goes to the top 5 percent). Very little ends up helping the working poor. On the other hand, many social benefits cut off when a family’s income rises roughly 30 percent above the poverty line — which is still a far cry from being out of poverty.” (From an NYTimes article titled Out of Poverty, Family-Style)

Think about that.  The government spends money to incentivize the better-off to do what they would be able to do without the subsidy, while they penalize the poor when their income increases.  That is an eye-opening fact, one that puts into stark contrast the policies affected rich and poor in the wealthiest country in the world, and one that should force us to re-think traditional notions of why people are poor.  The truth is that the deck is stacked in favor of those with power.

As the absurdity of our current budget process becomes ever more painful (we cut services to the poor during a recession but refuse to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans) the extent of our military spending has become that much more egregious.  This quote, by Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was an opponent of the then inchoate military industrial complex, captures what happens when we spend more on guns than on education…

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

We are a nation more interested in defense than in what we are defending.  It is time for a new generation of people to emerge that will question–and change–the status quo!

I arose before the cheeks of dawn had had the chance to blush their vibrant hue,

when darkness hung over the world like black ink dripping from a mighty pen. I arose to

find my heart filled to the brim with pain, with joy, with life. Picking up that very pen from

which both light and dark, good and evil emanate, I began to write the story of today–a

tale of great forces entangled in the Cosmic Drama.

At present I am seated on a train. The wheels are humming along the tracks just

as the earth seems to hum as it whirls around the sun, for there is a great joy to motion

that infuses the traveler with the very buzz of existence. Outside my window the curtain

of dawn has begun to lift, revealing the bright orange costumes of actors eager to

astound the audience. What wonders will transpire today? What discoveries? What

ideas spawned and loves consummated?

The last month has been an absolute blur for me.  I defended, presented and completed my masters thesis.  I then spent the next few weeks working full time on Capital Good Fund and Group stuff, while also dealing with the final stages of purchasing my new condo–which quickly turned into a nightmare of back-and-forth emails, revised documents, etc.  For graduation week, two of my best friends, Jared and Danny, as well as my parents, came out to visit.  The week started out with Jared and I going out for a bike ride on an absolutely beautiful day in Providence.  We had been eagerly anticipating the ride for quite some time because we hadn’t gone for a ride together in a while.  As the ride was starting, I noticed a strange notice coming from my bike, but I didn’t think anything of it until about 10 minutes in when suddenly my rear derailleur snapped completely in half (photo below).  It turns out that as a result of a crash I had about a month and a half ago the carbon faceplate on the derailleur had sustained a tiny crack that got larger until it suddenly failed.  However, Jared and I did end up doing several beautiful rides–with me on my touring bike and him on his race bike–and that about exemplifies how the last month has been: on the whole, absolutely fantastic, but also stressfull and full of surprises.  Read on for more about my graduation!