(no subject)
In exactly 24 hours I will be sitting on a plane, waiting for takeoff, to take me to Minneapolis, where I will meet up with Bart, and another plane will take us both to Rapid City, South Dakota, where we will be picked up by a staff member of the Re-Member outreach program, who will drive us to the Oglala Lakota Reservation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, where we will spend the next 6 weeks of our life building bunk beds, shepherding around volunteer groups, cleaning up and paying our respects at the mass grave site at Wounded Knee, and generally doing something good in the world, and letting something good happen to us. Go to www.Re-Member.org if you're interested in finding out more about this amazing opportunity I've been granted. I won't be online very much--not that it matters on this forum, since I haven't posted since the end of classes anyway--but I will, if I can be disciplined, keeping a detailed paper journal, and I'm sure that some condensed versions will make it on here. My sister gave me four disposable cameras "for my trip", even though she obviously just had them lying around for whatever reason. Bart has a nice digital camera, but I think I'll take the crappy cameras anyway and try to document certain aspects of the trip. It's kind of fun not being able to see how your pictures will look until they're actually developed--the old fashioned way, just without the capability to zoom in and out. It's more exciting at the end result, to see your pictures, in your hand.
Send me love and positive vibes while I'm out there; I'm incredibly excited about what I'm doing, but it's going to be depressing. Pine Ridge is the poorest county in the nation, and the reservation is filled with poverty, sickness, alcoholism, and depression. It's hard to face the truth of our history, and of the people we broke, but it's also an honor to contribute to the healing, and to experience some healing as well. It's going to be a good summer.
Send me love and positive vibes while I'm out there; I'm incredibly excited about what I'm doing, but it's going to be depressing. Pine Ridge is the poorest county in the nation, and the reservation is filled with poverty, sickness, alcoholism, and depression. It's hard to face the truth of our history, and of the people we broke, but it's also an honor to contribute to the healing, and to experience some healing as well. It's going to be a good summer.