The post that ensures I will never be linked to in the VISTA enewsletter.

Blog Action Day is here. On Blog Action Day, bloggers are supposed to tie whatever they normally write about to a certain topic to generally raise awareness. Last year it was the environment, so a participating food blogger would have talked about sustainable farming.

This year the topic is poverty, which is sort of weird for me. I suppose that this blog is technically a record of the year I've committed to fighting poverty, but I subject whoever might read this to my external processing on a large-ish, somewhat disjointed pool of topics. (Or I did...)


Side story for just a moment:
My work is in evaluation. I'm building a system for this organization to take an honest look at how well they do what they say they do. At a meeting earlier this week, someone called a nascent evaluation point I'm working on a "dangerous question." This, of course, makes me feel like a real, live researcher.

The point of that story is that in the spirit of asking dangerous questions, I am going to ask myself a dangerous question (or at least uncomfortable) about VISTA and poverty. So here it goes.

VISTA income is below the poverty line, and we are prohibited from having any other employment/income. In training and orientation materials, there are two justifications offered for this. One is that that a more comfortable total income would somehow separate us from the communities we serve. Do I feel more connected to impoverished people in the Indianapolis communities I serve because of my modest living allowance?

Let's start answering this with a financial example.

I live in a pretty nice three-bedroom duplex that costs almost exactly the median monthly rent for the area. My rent is 48% of my living allowance and food stamps income. A household is considered cost-burdened if more than 30% of income goes to rent. About half of Marion County households are cost-burdened, so I'm probably connected to more neighbors this way than I know.

Well, never in my life have I had a complaint-free conversation about rent(not that I would ever talk to anyone my organization serves about housing). Also, I knowingly chose this rent ratio because it means that I live in a safe neighborhood, save gas because it's a mile from where I work, and it's big enough that I don't need to worry about storage. So, I guess I resent that these three fairly simple criteria mathematically indicate that I am somehow living beyond my means.

Is that the basis of a connection between me and impoverished girls in central Indiana? I seriously doubt it. Virtually any example I could use would be this ambiguous. Yes, I went through the paperwork to get on food stamps. But I'm qualified for way more than I would be if I was not a VISTA, and I certainly would never talk about this with the girls we serve.

There are strict limits on direct service where I would have the chance to interact with the girls, but it's probably more important that poverty is not limited to a lack of financial resources. Girls Inc. programs focus on every singe poverty-related resource listed in my VISTA handbook:

emotional stability and control
mental capacity and critical thinking skills
social capital and support systems for times of need
role models
financial assets



Look at that list. Obviously, poverty means more than an outdated math problem. It would be ridiculous to go about connecting with any community through only one of these routes.

And let's not kid ourselves. I won't walk away from this service year with a particularly robust story about a lack of financial resources because I am so rich in other resources. (Thanks for the toilet paper, Mom! Thanks for mailing me your old clothes, Caitlin!)


So I guess the point is that I don't blog much about poverty in my VISTA blog because that subject would make me a big, fat liar. I love what I do, and I believe that I am changing this city for the better, no doubt. But 1/3 of the way through my year of service, I'm the same privileged chick from the suburbs. I just have less money.

That alone does not prevent a connection to any community, impoverished or not. Sitting at a computer all day does.




Edit: I'm worried that this comes off like me making a crass blanket statement about VISTA or the poverty experience of others. I'm not. I'm making a crass statement strictly about my own experiences.

In response to my Dad, who started reading when I stopped writing.

A simple promise to blog more was the wrong way to go about blogging more.

The main problem is that I've become less excited about the journaling format I started here. I'm hoping to fix that before Halloween, so don't give up on me.

Probably just graph-obsessed.

While I'm not sure that I like being on food stamps better than I would like a higher living stipend, it certainly is enlightening to see that system from the inside.

I got a letter yesterday from the Marion County Department of Family Services, and I was almost afraid to open it. I'm in the process of switching banks and I thought that maybe I had to notify my caseworker and it was going to be a huge headache convincing them that I'm not trying to cheat the government. Turns out monthly benefits are being bumped. Mine are going up by $13. My income is completely disregarded for food stamps, so I get the amount that an adult who makes no money gets. I don't know what the increase is a different income levels.

Federal minimum gas mileage reimbursement (not a social service) went up by about 8 cents in July. Maybe I'm graph-obsessed, but I think it would be interesting to see a layered line graph of how these have increased over time. Is this a typical lag? Throw in a line for inflation and highlight different administrations over time, and I'm in graph heaven.



I finally got an invite to beta test Daytum, if it's not obvious. Click here to see me satisfy my quantitative urges.

I'm back. Promise.

I know I broke my promise to post more pretty much as soon as I made it.

Whatevs. I'm pondering the plural of VISTA. It stands for Volunteer in Service to America, so the full plural is Volunteers in Service to America, right? But the way I generally abbreviate it is VISTAs, which logically is Volunteer in Service to Americas, which always bugs me. I suppose it's less annoying than VsISTA, though. Oh well. I'll be damned before I start using an ugly apostrophe.



Oi. I think I've been spoiled too much these past few weeks to post about anything interesting. Got loaded down with just about my weight in swag and free food at Speaking of Women's Health on Friday. Today our CEO, who I adore for her affinity for (always good) surprise meetings, took the VISTAs for a picnic and hike at Eagle Creek Park. So, it's been a charming few days.

Blog Action Day is October 15

Getting to yarn, finally and with all due insanity

Visiting a new local yarn store is always like the first time you work out at a new gym. There's no way to know the rules, who is cool with eye contact, and it is always either way too hot or way too cold. Also there is that unshakable feeling that when you leave everyone there will bust out laughing because you have absolutely no chops and oh my gosh how did that loser even find the place.

This irrational fear has only been confirmed in one non-Indiana LYS and zero gyms, but that hasn't stopped me from completely over analyzing the following question, posed to me during a recent first visit:


"What do you knit?"


And this was the first thing the shop manager asked me. Not how long I've been knitting, not what my current projects might be, not even what I was looking for. Is it a nice way of asking all of those sensitive questions? Like, if I said "scarves," she could assume I was a beginner in need of lots of attention and if I said "lace sweaters that I design myself," she would ask me to teach a class? Or is she just addicted to socks like all those cool kids I hear about and assumes that everyone kind of finds their niche? Was she trying to determine how much money I would probably spend? Does a sock-knitter spend less overall than a sweater-knitter?


Of course I was a nervous wreck to begin with, so I just spat out, "Uhhhhh texture... different things with texture," and didn't explain it very well. So that's my next post. A manifesto of all the reasons why texture work is better than color work. Because maybe some LYS employees in Greater Indianapolis will eventually find this blog and not think I am so stupid I should be euthanized.

the big picture

While I was savoring the election this morning, a thought occurred to me. Accusations of all sorts of prejudices have been floating around the media and campaign trails. I wonder, which ones will be judged as valid concerns by history and which ones will be totally embarrassing to talk about with my future grandkids?

Like, was all that scrutiny of Clinton's wardrobe based in social reality or manufactured by a bored and sexist media? Is it acceptable to objectify Palin's body now if she did it first in past pageants? What if there are more than cosmetic concerns involved? (P.S. Thanks to Bryan for that last link.)

How are we going to justify to generations after us that in 2008, a good number of United States citizens and journalists were still so racist that they actually believed that Obama = terrorist business? What's it gonna take to get us to a point where we can laugh at that?

And how about the matter of McCain's remaining life expectancy? Is it ageist or a legit numbers game? Would it be more ageist to bring this up if there weren't concerns about Palin's qualifications?


I suppose we'll see.