Yesterday was a nice day. I still felt tired, but---hope against hope---not quite as tired.
In the morning I had arranged with my friend Ann to be at her house at 10:00 AM, at my request, so she could show me what she packs for the Migrant Trail hike. It was a good thing to do because I now feel much more at ease about the whole undertaking. She lent me a kind of pad which rolls up small but inflates to about an inch thick as soon as you unscrew the stopper. She also had a sleeping bag which she assured me would be plenty warm, because the June desert nights do not get that cold.
I had planned on buying a sleeping bag (the ones we have are huge and thick, for mountain nights) but I'll just borrow the one she's lending me.
Besides the sleeping bag, I am allowed to bring a small duffel about the size of the sleeping bag. Ann said that some people bring more, but that the organizers encourage less. Two changes of everything, apparently you can rinse out things and they'll be dry the next morning.
She also brings a small folding chair, the kind which folds into a long thin shape. The list they give you does not say to bring a chair, but everyone who comes a second time always brings one, and people who don't bring one try to sit in the chairs brought by people who do. "A word to the wise," said Ann.
Everybody gets put on a team (food team, safety team, etc.). We also get rotated in and out of a team which stands night watch and wakes everyone else up in the morning. You have to pack up everything except your Sierra Club style cup before you eat breakfast, and breakfast is just coffee and pick-up food such as a bagel with peanut butter.
She said that all decisions were supposed to be made "by consensus" but that in reality, not so much.
"Yes, I think I know about that," I said, "I've lived in several communal situations. The strongest personalities win."
"Yeah, pretty much!" said Ann.
Last year, she herself volunteered to go on whichever team she was most needed on, and they put her on the food team. This year she was asked to run the food team.
I told her that I would rather be on the food team, in order to spend more time with her. But that I hope to be altruistic enough to volunteer to be on whichever team most needed members.
We walked over to a Mexican restaurant and had lunch and a great conversation. I was interested to hear about the "non-Roman congregation" renegade-type Catholic church which she has joined.
Apparently this group, which like the humanistic Jewish congregation event I once attended has no fixed building of its own, and does not mandate that members pledge belief in God, rents space in a building which also rents space to several other congregations and flies a rainbow flag. The leader of Ann's group is a woman, and the congregation is mostly made of people who were raised Catholic but do not hold with many of the patriarchal beliefs, prejudices, and celibacy requirements for clergy of the official Catholic church.
Ann was "babtised" by this church, after attending for quite a while and deciding that she really felt at home there. So they must keep enough of the original practices that they babtise people, though she was never asked to pledge actual faith in God or belief that Jesus Christ was immortal.
She herself was not raised Catholic, but at her late husband's request, her children were. (He was Irish, and their kids have dual citizenship.) She attended the catholic church with him and them, while never making a secret of the fact that she herself was not actually a member nor wanted to be.
She said that one of the congregations had rented space in the building was an evangelical Christian group, but that group left when the other congregations voted to fly the rainbow flag outside the building. Surprisingly, a Babtist group then started renting that space, and said the flag was fine with them.
"Love between people, that's what God is to me," Ann said with a beatific smile. Of course the question, "So what's the point?" flashed through my mind....I think she finds comfort in the ritual, and in the work with the local homeless people which this congregation does. She also said once that when she would go into a church while walking all the way across the top of Spain on the Camino de Santiago, that she felt closer to the memory of her husband.
After a short nap at home, I drove to the Apache Junction Library, which is right on the way to the Boys & Girls Club. I printed out tax estimate forms, and created a study worksheet on Microsoft Word for those drama club members who missed lines when I tested them on their memorization on Wednesday.
During homework time at the club, some of the girls got interested in filling out their own study worksheets. The worksheet has a space at the top to write in the cue which came before the line they missed, and the line before the cue as well. Then there is a solid line, and below it is written the line which was missed. The idea is that the young actor covers up the area below the solid line, so that only the cue is visible, and tries to say the missed line without looking at it.
I was pleased that they wanted to fill the worksheets out themselves, because that will help memorization even more.
One of the girls, always strident and self-confident, broke into tears when I told her the date which the club staff and I had agreed on for the performance: Monday, May 2nd.
"That's my hip-hop dance class, I can't miss that!" she wailed. She's got one of the main roles in the scene, so hopefully we can work something out. I know I can't do anything on Wednesday evenings because so many families attend Wednesday night Bible study groups. Not a majority of families, but such a self-righteous, vocal minority!
Welcome to the American hinterland, you who live on the coasts have no idea what it's like! (All the time I worked in the school system, no evening event was ever scheduled on a Wednesday evening.)
Love,
Lennie
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