I found my blog on only the second try this time. I'm so glad it's not too hard for me to locate. Thanks, Google.
My exciting news update of the evening is that I went grocery shopping. "Wait," you say, "you love food. Of course you went grocery shopping. Why, you probably go twice a week!" Okay, I admit that's true. This, however, was a special grocery trip as it was my first with food stamps. Translation: actual groceries!
My savings would have allowed me to spend lots of money on groceries up until now, but I'd rather attempt some minuscule understanding of what it's like to wait for federal aid to kick in so I had been spending fairly day-to-day up until now. Granted, I got lots of fresh fruit; I tried to limit the fruit and other purchases to things I would consume in the next couple of days in hopes that my EBT card (the debit card on which food stamps are now distributed) would arrive in the mail. Due to my AmeriCorps term showing up in a federal-database search of my social security number, I had to send in an excepted income letter (which VISTA provides to all active members) before I could receive benefits. This states that members' pre-existing benefits cannot be reduced as a result of our AmeriCorps living stipend. Since I applied ten days before I started service, I could use this letter to receive benefits at pre-AmeriCorps levels. The outcome of this letter-requirement was that I was moved from expedited to regular processing for SNAP benefits so ended up receiving my EBT card about 2 1/2 weeks after applying. This is, I will note, much better and nicer than having to wait the full 30 days it could possibly take. I'll now get $200 every month to spend on food. This makes grocery shopping generally more pleasant and enjoyable.
As a side note, I'm enjoying shopping at Stop & Shop much more than I thought I would. I had planned to do most of my shopping at Whole Foods, but I love that the Stop & Shop a mile from my house in Bridgeport helps make Bridgeport not-a-food-desert and I feel obligated to support it in its provision of fresh produce and other healthy options to the community. I also like shopping in the community which I serve rather than across the border in Fairfield. As I generally consider the Fairfield-Bridgeport community my service domain (and hope students will grow to see that as their community too), this may be a bit hypocritical. That said, I'm fully aware that I do service here because Bridgeport is here, not because of Fairfield. Supporting the Bridgeport economy and non-food-desert status works for me.
Happily, I now have delicious salads prepared for all week. Yum.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Let's Talk About Service
06430, one of the zip codes of Fairfield, Connecticut, ranks 40th overall on Mongabay.com's list of the "100 richest zip codes in the United States". But wait, you say, where's its neighbor Bridgeport on the list? Well, let's look at Mongabay's list of the 200 wealthiest zip codes in Connecticut (all lists ranking by income as per IRS tax returns). There's another Fairfield zip code. Still no Bridgeport....
According to money.cnn.com, which ranked Fairfield as one of the 100 contenders for the ten best places to live in the United States in 2010 (the city placed 9th in the same ranking in 2006), Fairfield's median family income per year is $127,920. While I'll be serving at Fairfield University this year, few (if any) of the volunteer opportunities I help shape for students will be in Fairfield. Most will be in Bridgeport, Fairfield's neighbor to the east, which shares a common border but differs on most levels, from road quality to racial diversity to income.
As I prepare to drive to Philadelphia for my VISTA pre-service orientation tomorrow, I decided to take a look at the numbers: how different are these neighbors? I checked out the composition of each city in 2009 at city-data.com. Here's how they stack up:
Population - Fairfield: 57,578; Bridgeport: 137,298
Median household income - Fairfield: $101,192; Bridgeport: $39,949; CT average: $67,034
Primary racial composition - Fairfield: 93.6% white alone; Bridgeport: 35.6% Hispanic, 33.7% black alone, 26.7% white alone
That's just a quick sketch - obviously both cities are far more diverse than any three quantitative statistics could show - but it does paint quite the picture for the service year ahead. Here we have a rich, white town bordering a much less wealthy, far more ethnically diverse city. Suddenly the white = rich assumptions people made about us obruni in Ghana, along with all the corresponding inaccuracies and stereotypes, seem relevant again.
As a final note on the disparity, I'll comment that my landlord rents this beautiful duplex on the water in Bridgeport (in Black Rock, one of the so-called 'safe' neighborhoods) because she decided she would rather pick up and move her son to Fairfield so he could attend public school than pay for him to go to private school in Bridgeport. There was no real consideration of sending him into the Bridgeport public school system. There's a lot of potential for valuable service here.
Tangentially related (if only that it also involves the upcoming service year), I now understand why AmeriCorps NCCC considers itself the hardcore younger sibling of VISTA and State & National, the two other AmeriCorps National Service programs. It considers itself thus because it is. There's no question in my mind - zero - that all three programs provide opportunities for amazingly valuable service, but NCCC gets hands dirty and hearts invested, asking members to give 100% every day physically and mentally. VISTA only asks for the mental and allows lots of that 'free time' unknown to NTrips.
When I was on disaster last year, my team worked multiple 60-plus hour, 6-day weeks. I logged over 70 hours a couple of those weeks. The VISTA commitment at Fairfield? 8:30 to 5 on weekdays. That includes a lunch break. Those 70 hours did not account for lunch. Rather than spend 10 or 11 hours on site plus two more doing paperwork before crashing for the night, I'll work until early evening then pack up and go home. Not every second will be devoted to service. I'll rarely end up in the office until 8 or 9 at night. Crazy, huh? It'll be a huge adjustment to have this entirely different schedule. I may spend a fair amount of off-hours time plotting new service partnerships or volunteering myself, though, which is something to which to look forward. Another thing to look forward to is the chocolate-chip-walnut brownies I made tonight as a gift for the friend I'll be visiting in Philadelphia tomorrow. Nobody said they all had to make it to her. Another difference from NCCC is the freedom and flexibility in food. Imagine going from one half of one refrigerator shelf for a week's worth of groceries to triple that for shop-whenever-I-want groceries. The difference a car makes in independence versus only our awesome, black, 15-passenger government van is phenomenal.
According to money.cnn.com, which ranked Fairfield as one of the 100 contenders for the ten best places to live in the United States in 2010 (the city placed 9th in the same ranking in 2006), Fairfield's median family income per year is $127,920. While I'll be serving at Fairfield University this year, few (if any) of the volunteer opportunities I help shape for students will be in Fairfield. Most will be in Bridgeport, Fairfield's neighbor to the east, which shares a common border but differs on most levels, from road quality to racial diversity to income.
As I prepare to drive to Philadelphia for my VISTA pre-service orientation tomorrow, I decided to take a look at the numbers: how different are these neighbors? I checked out the composition of each city in 2009 at city-data.com. Here's how they stack up:
Population - Fairfield: 57,578; Bridgeport: 137,298
Median household income - Fairfield: $101,192; Bridgeport: $39,949; CT average: $67,034
Primary racial composition - Fairfield: 93.6% white alone; Bridgeport: 35.6% Hispanic, 33.7% black alone, 26.7% white alone
That's just a quick sketch - obviously both cities are far more diverse than any three quantitative statistics could show - but it does paint quite the picture for the service year ahead. Here we have a rich, white town bordering a much less wealthy, far more ethnically diverse city. Suddenly the white = rich assumptions people made about us obruni in Ghana, along with all the corresponding inaccuracies and stereotypes, seem relevant again.
As a final note on the disparity, I'll comment that my landlord rents this beautiful duplex on the water in Bridgeport (in Black Rock, one of the so-called 'safe' neighborhoods) because she decided she would rather pick up and move her son to Fairfield so he could attend public school than pay for him to go to private school in Bridgeport. There was no real consideration of sending him into the Bridgeport public school system. There's a lot of potential for valuable service here.
Tangentially related (if only that it also involves the upcoming service year), I now understand why AmeriCorps NCCC considers itself the hardcore younger sibling of VISTA and State & National, the two other AmeriCorps National Service programs. It considers itself thus because it is. There's no question in my mind - zero - that all three programs provide opportunities for amazingly valuable service, but NCCC gets hands dirty and hearts invested, asking members to give 100% every day physically and mentally. VISTA only asks for the mental and allows lots of that 'free time' unknown to NTrips.
When I was on disaster last year, my team worked multiple 60-plus hour, 6-day weeks. I logged over 70 hours a couple of those weeks. The VISTA commitment at Fairfield? 8:30 to 5 on weekdays. That includes a lunch break. Those 70 hours did not account for lunch. Rather than spend 10 or 11 hours on site plus two more doing paperwork before crashing for the night, I'll work until early evening then pack up and go home. Not every second will be devoted to service. I'll rarely end up in the office until 8 or 9 at night. Crazy, huh? It'll be a huge adjustment to have this entirely different schedule. I may spend a fair amount of off-hours time plotting new service partnerships or volunteering myself, though, which is something to which to look forward. Another thing to look forward to is the chocolate-chip-walnut brownies I made tonight as a gift for the friend I'll be visiting in Philadelphia tomorrow. Nobody said they all had to make it to her. Another difference from NCCC is the freedom and flexibility in food. Imagine going from one half of one refrigerator shelf for a week's worth of groceries to triple that for shop-whenever-I-want groceries. The difference a car makes in independence versus only our awesome, black, 15-passenger government van is phenomenal.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Reality Shows & Muffins
As you may recall, I'm not as big a fan of reality TV as I used to be. When I was younger, MTV was hip and the Real World showed me all I could aspire not to be in all of its language-censored glory. Now...not so much. After getting to see the actual real world - that big blob spinning through the universe at thousands of miles an hour - reality television just isn't that interesting anymore. Why watch people fight when you could be hiking a mountain only ever traversed by goats and their herders in Argentina or lighting up a child's face with the gift of a ten-cent banana in Ghana? There simply seem to be better things to do with my time - attempt to fulfill my part in saving the world, for example.
All that noted, I found comfort in reality television last night. I was sitting on the couch of my new living room enjoying a fantastic Bollywood film on education - directed, produced by, and starring my new favorite actor Aamir Khan - when my housemate asked if there's any chance I watch the Bachelorette. I took this as a hope that she could watch it - it was - and we enjoyed the next hour settled in for an overly-drawn-out finale of love found and love crushed. As this was one of the two shows my roommates insisted we watch regularly in college (the other being Grey's Anatomy), there was a retro nostalgia (I know, I know, college is too recent for true nostalgia) in watching. More importantly, there were frequent commercials during which Staci and I had bonding time. She's moving out next week, bound for Florida for her next three-month optometry placement, but we can be friends in the meantime. I'm happy to know someone here now.
Another mundane-to-you, exciting-to-me happening last night was my actual lease signing! Yay! Now I'm all official here and can start feeling like this truly is home. In honor of this newfound home-iness, I baked muffins tonight. I used my new favorite banana-blueberry-walnut recipe, my spin-off of a basic banana muffin recipe. It's butter-free, oil-free, otherwise generally healthy, me-approved, parent-approved, and 100% delicious. Since I no longer have parents or parental coworkers on whom to foist extra muffins, I plan to freeze half so they can last, well, maybe a full week. Seriously, these muffins are awesome. The kitchen heated up beyond comfortable from the warmth-radiating stove, but the stove works and the muffins browned nicely so it was totally worth it.
Along with muffin success, I put my new frying pans (a holiday present from my mom) to good use making a stir-fry for dinner tonight. This included these awesome local green beans from home, some of which are traditional green and others of which are dark purple! The purple ones turn mottled purple-and-green in cooking, providing for a fun end result.
Speaking of food (as we so clearly were), I applied for food stamps today. We'll apparently be encouraged to apply for this and other government programs at next week's AmeriCorps VISTA orientation; it makes sense that they would encourage us to learn what it's like to be on food stamps as our stipend is just below the poverty line to help us better understand the experience of those we serve. I know my experience this year will be far cushier than that of most of the people I joined in line today, especially since many of them had multiple small children in tow and were in that office in the middle of a work morning and I saw a few teary-eyed faces of people departing from the back rooms. That said, I am so glad I have had this food-stamp experience thus far. It's one I never would have had were it not for AmeriCorps.
The office accepts applications from 8:30 to 11:30 every weekday morning and there was already a line of about 25 people (maybe 15 families represented) by the time I arrived at 10:30 AM. I had already printed and completed my application, but most people arrived empty-handed and were given the form to begin a new application as they stood in line. There were two other Caucasian people, an elderly couple, in line - Bridgeport is predominantly black and hispanic - and many mid-thirties mothers with young children. I waited about half an hour, handed in my form at the desk, was directed to wait for an interview, filled out one more form while waiting, was called into the back section of office cubicles after 15 minutes, passed through the only-unlocked-when-open door to meet the woman doing my intake, chatted with her and signed a couple more forms (e.g., stating that I'm not requesting food stamps for any fleeing felons), and headed out on my way. The whole process took just under an hour. Now I have one more form to mail in (verification from my housemate that we purchase our food separately) and I'll hypothetically begin receiving benefits.
Food stamps are awarded from the day your application is received at the office, so mine would begin from today. Applicants generally wouldn't start receiving SNAP (the food-stamp program is now technically the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits for up to 30 days, but I noticed that "Emergency SNAP (7 days)" was checked on my form rather than "SNAP (30 days)", probably because my only current income is well under a dollar of interest each month on my checking account while I'm paying full rent on my housing. VISTA, as a government service program, is considered excepted income; that is, my future VISTA stipend won't affect how much I receive in SNAP benefits, though it would be a factor were a VISTA to apply after beginning the service year. And you thought the government complicated things sometimes.... Overall, it'll be nice to have the extra money to put towards healthy, nutritious (read: generally more expensive) food. My landlord Stephanie seemed very surprised when she learned last night that fully two-thirds of my VISTA stipend will go to housing (rent & utilities). And that's for one of three rooms in one of two halves of a duplex. Welcome to the poverty line.
Addendum: I forgot to mention the most memorable part of my visit to my local branch of the Department of Social Services (where SNAP and other benefits are allocated): the security. Along with the perma-locked door to the back offices and movie-theater-ticket-window protective 'glass' encasing the front-desk workers (though not those at the information desk), one must leave a driver's license or other identification at the information desk to get the key to use either of the gender-specific, single-person bathrooms. I noticed the signs announcing this policy and watched one man return the key for his ID. There's also a police (or security?) officer always on duty there. It's easily apparent how such a place could foster distrust for the Department and feelings that no one really cares. The space for disconnect and distrust is quite large, full of locked doors and glassed-off spaces.
All that noted, I found comfort in reality television last night. I was sitting on the couch of my new living room enjoying a fantastic Bollywood film on education - directed, produced by, and starring my new favorite actor Aamir Khan - when my housemate asked if there's any chance I watch the Bachelorette. I took this as a hope that she could watch it - it was - and we enjoyed the next hour settled in for an overly-drawn-out finale of love found and love crushed. As this was one of the two shows my roommates insisted we watch regularly in college (the other being Grey's Anatomy), there was a retro nostalgia (I know, I know, college is too recent for true nostalgia) in watching. More importantly, there were frequent commercials during which Staci and I had bonding time. She's moving out next week, bound for Florida for her next three-month optometry placement, but we can be friends in the meantime. I'm happy to know someone here now.
Another mundane-to-you, exciting-to-me happening last night was my actual lease signing! Yay! Now I'm all official here and can start feeling like this truly is home. In honor of this newfound home-iness, I baked muffins tonight. I used my new favorite banana-blueberry-walnut recipe, my spin-off of a basic banana muffin recipe. It's butter-free, oil-free, otherwise generally healthy, me-approved, parent-approved, and 100% delicious. Since I no longer have parents or parental coworkers on whom to foist extra muffins, I plan to freeze half so they can last, well, maybe a full week. Seriously, these muffins are awesome. The kitchen heated up beyond comfortable from the warmth-radiating stove, but the stove works and the muffins browned nicely so it was totally worth it.
Along with muffin success, I put my new frying pans (a holiday present from my mom) to good use making a stir-fry for dinner tonight. This included these awesome local green beans from home, some of which are traditional green and others of which are dark purple! The purple ones turn mottled purple-and-green in cooking, providing for a fun end result.
Speaking of food (as we so clearly were), I applied for food stamps today. We'll apparently be encouraged to apply for this and other government programs at next week's AmeriCorps VISTA orientation; it makes sense that they would encourage us to learn what it's like to be on food stamps as our stipend is just below the poverty line to help us better understand the experience of those we serve. I know my experience this year will be far cushier than that of most of the people I joined in line today, especially since many of them had multiple small children in tow and were in that office in the middle of a work morning and I saw a few teary-eyed faces of people departing from the back rooms. That said, I am so glad I have had this food-stamp experience thus far. It's one I never would have had were it not for AmeriCorps.
The office accepts applications from 8:30 to 11:30 every weekday morning and there was already a line of about 25 people (maybe 15 families represented) by the time I arrived at 10:30 AM. I had already printed and completed my application, but most people arrived empty-handed and were given the form to begin a new application as they stood in line. There were two other Caucasian people, an elderly couple, in line - Bridgeport is predominantly black and hispanic - and many mid-thirties mothers with young children. I waited about half an hour, handed in my form at the desk, was directed to wait for an interview, filled out one more form while waiting, was called into the back section of office cubicles after 15 minutes, passed through the only-unlocked-when-open door to meet the woman doing my intake, chatted with her and signed a couple more forms (e.g., stating that I'm not requesting food stamps for any fleeing felons), and headed out on my way. The whole process took just under an hour. Now I have one more form to mail in (verification from my housemate that we purchase our food separately) and I'll hypothetically begin receiving benefits.
Food stamps are awarded from the day your application is received at the office, so mine would begin from today. Applicants generally wouldn't start receiving SNAP (the food-stamp program is now technically the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits for up to 30 days, but I noticed that "Emergency SNAP (7 days)" was checked on my form rather than "SNAP (30 days)", probably because my only current income is well under a dollar of interest each month on my checking account while I'm paying full rent on my housing. VISTA, as a government service program, is considered excepted income; that is, my future VISTA stipend won't affect how much I receive in SNAP benefits, though it would be a factor were a VISTA to apply after beginning the service year. And you thought the government complicated things sometimes.... Overall, it'll be nice to have the extra money to put towards healthy, nutritious (read: generally more expensive) food. My landlord Stephanie seemed very surprised when she learned last night that fully two-thirds of my VISTA stipend will go to housing (rent & utilities). And that's for one of three rooms in one of two halves of a duplex. Welcome to the poverty line.
Addendum: I forgot to mention the most memorable part of my visit to my local branch of the Department of Social Services (where SNAP and other benefits are allocated): the security. Along with the perma-locked door to the back offices and movie-theater-ticket-window protective 'glass' encasing the front-desk workers (though not those at the information desk), one must leave a driver's license or other identification at the information desk to get the key to use either of the gender-specific, single-person bathrooms. I noticed the signs announcing this policy and watched one man return the key for his ID. There's also a police (or security?) officer always on duty there. It's easily apparent how such a place could foster distrust for the Department and feelings that no one really cares. The space for disconnect and distrust is quite large, full of locked doors and glassed-off spaces.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Dangerously Awesome?
1.7 miles. That's how far from my new residence the huge, just-opened-in-June Whole Foods is. It shares a complex with also-useful CVS and Home Depot, the latter of which I've already frequented to pick up a small saw. Apparently bed assembly sometimes requires a bit of construction fun time. (I had opted to use a board over a box spring; the board had opted to be just too big at one corner to fit the frame. It has since changed its ways.) In good news, Stop & Shop is even closer than Whole Foods. This certainly isn't New Orleans.
As you could guess, I've officially moved into my new apartment (house? something?). I share one half of a duplex with two housemates. We have a big, sunny kitchen, a backyard with a porch looking out over the corner of a pretty cove and across to a baseball field (yay for Little League games!), and a living room with a super-cushy couch. (I should know, as I'm sitting on it right now.) My room is wonderful, which is to say it easily fits both a bed and my erg. Here's a picture:
The desk belonged to my great-great-aunt Ruth. My mom, who wonderfully let me take it, also helped me hang the pictures on the wall. It took ages due to the nature of the frames, but we finally got them straight! All three prints are by Aboriginal artists living in central Australia.
In other fun unpacking news, one of the newspaper pages my parents used to wrap up my dishes for the kitchen (thank you!) was an article from the New York Times Book Review about one of my history professors at Brown whose class on the American Revolution I took in his final semester before retirement. The article talked about how amazing he is as a leader in the field. As I hadn't generally been skimming the pages as I unwrapped, this was a neat chance find. I do remember his encyclopedic knowledge on the Revolution - kind of cool.
As you could guess, I've officially moved into my new apartment (house? something?). I share one half of a duplex with two housemates. We have a big, sunny kitchen, a backyard with a porch looking out over the corner of a pretty cove and across to a baseball field (yay for Little League games!), and a living room with a super-cushy couch. (I should know, as I'm sitting on it right now.) My room is wonderful, which is to say it easily fits both a bed and my erg. Here's a picture:
The desk belonged to my great-great-aunt Ruth. My mom, who wonderfully let me take it, also helped me hang the pictures on the wall. It took ages due to the nature of the frames, but we finally got them straight! All three prints are by Aboriginal artists living in central Australia.
In other fun unpacking news, one of the newspaper pages my parents used to wrap up my dishes for the kitchen (thank you!) was an article from the New York Times Book Review about one of my history professors at Brown whose class on the American Revolution I took in his final semester before retirement. The article talked about how amazing he is as a leader in the field. As I hadn't generally been skimming the pages as I unwrapped, this was a neat chance find. I do remember his encyclopedic knowledge on the Revolution - kind of cool.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)