Change Is Hard

This morning I wrote the first draft of a fundraising letter for Truck Safety.  It will be going out to Dad’s friends and family, and our friends as well.  It’s a difficult thing to do, to fundraise, even when you believe in the cause as much as we do.  There is a sense of being uncomfortable asking for help, much less money.  But if I’ve learned anything from all this (and I’ve learned a lot!) it’s that small steps will get you where you need to be.  So it’s not that we’re asking for a lot of money from a small group of people.  It’s that we’re going to ask for a little money from a lot of people.  I guess we’re lucky that Dad had so many friends! 

Instead of beginning homework, or thinking about paper topics or even going for a walk on this finely beautiful day I am sitting at the computer writing about numbers of dead and injured and the legislation needed for change.  Amazinging I was able to write that letter without tears.  I think that’s in large part because tears are often my response to a feeling of helplessness, and when I’m doing something tangible to make changes I stop feeling helpless.

I can feel Dad smiling.

I was fooling around with “right sizing” pictures and accidently did that to this picture of Dad.  So I thought I’d throw it up on the blog just to see how that works.

This is Dad in China standing on the Great Wall.  He’s wearing a sweatshirt over his jacket. The sweatshirt says “I walked the great wall.”  That was very unlike him, to purchase something like this and I don’t remember seeing it when we cleaned out his closet after he was killed.  I wouldn’t mind having it now. 

This week during a shift at the library reference desk I was asked about the following: Information about bipolar desease because a friend of the patron had just been diagnosed with it. What the meaning of “exousia” was. Whether or not I had an pencil eraser. (I didn’t.) What the zip code was for a small town in W. Virginia. The address and phone number for the magazine Better Homes and Gardens. Where the bathrooms were. What the email address was for a former University President. How to use a Spanish/English translation dictionary. Who lived at a particular address in Ann Arbor in 1910. What the results were for a water test done on a specific drain system. Where the bathrooms were.  (again) Whether or not the library subscribed to a particular magazine. (We did not.) How to get the library to subscribe to a particular magazine. If I had a stapler. (I did.) The phone number for a friend who had moved across the country years ago. How to get annual reports from particular companies. Where to find maps of bicycle paths in Washtenaw County. If I could order a book in Spanish from another library. (I did.)

And then I got to go home.

Heard on the radio while driving home: “Walking’s easy when the road is flat but those dang hills will get you every time. The good Lord gave us hills so we’d learn how to climb.”

President Bush is threatening to veto the entire DOT appropriations bill (onto which the amendment disallowing the Mexican truck pilot is attached) unless he gets his way and the pilot is allowed to go on.  This is a pilot with no measurement of success or failure, though I suppose to fail would be to kill a large number of people, no way to document the safety of the trucks coming over the boarder, and no way to monitor the drivers actions prior to coming across the border.  It’s part of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement)  that we would open our borders, but I don’t think there’s anything in there about opening our borders without regulation or safety measures in place.

So.  We shall see what he does next.

Today I work and go to school for 12 hours straight.  In there is a total of one hour and 30 minutes when I am not actually working a shift or sitting in a class.  That sounds bad enough, but I had to get to Ann Arbor early to deliver some books to classmates, and we had to get up early in order to move our bed from our room to the guest room in preparation for the delivery of a new bed for the master bedroom.

So all in all, I misjudged time, and arrived on campus at 7:30 this morning.  Way too early.  I have delivered the books to appropriate mailboxes and now I sit in a computer lab reading email and wasting time until I can walk the few blocks to the library to start my shift at 9:00.

Obviously I am making this day more difficult than it has to be by being overly anxious about my schedule and arriving way too early.  I could have had another hour of sleep!  Lesson learned.

I try not to be political here, but you need to know the work the Truck Safety Coalition is doing right now.

The Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Bush administration are pushing hard to start a “pilot” program to allow Mexican trucks to drive anywhere in the U.S.  Currently Mexican trucks are restricted to certain border areas.  This has been a hot issue for several months and has been studied by several agencies, including the DOT Inspector General ‘s own report that identified serious safety deficiencies that still exist in the program.

Specifically key pilot program requirements that address federal laws regarding safety in the US have been ignored with this pilot.  At least five states (NE, NV, MT, RI, UT) and perhaps more are not ready to enforce safety rules for the pilot program.  Half of our states do not have procedures in place to oversee and enforce requirements in several areas of safety and security.  There are unresolved data deficiencies on Mexican truck driver convictions and violations.  Safety inspectors do not have important safety information on vehicle accident reports, or driver violations maintained by Mexican authorities, nor any information about whether the pilot motor carriers, vehicles or drivers have insurance.  There is no method to ensure that Mexican drivers comply with U.S. drug and alcohol testing laws.  In reality, we have no way of controlling what the Mexican drivers are doing when they are in Mexico just prior to driving over the boarder onto our roads.   

Though in late July the House passed an amendment to their DOT appropriations bill that will not allow DOT to spend any money on this pilot until these issues are remedied, the Senate had not done the same, and DOT still planned to roll the pilot out. 

However, members of the Truck Safety Coalition were called to action, and we all called, faxed and emailed our Senators and today the Senate approved an amendment to their own DOT appropriations bill that also prohibits spending on the pilot until these issues are cleared up.  This is the direct result of our work, and I for one am proud that somewhere out there at least one life has been saved by our efforts to keep Mexican trucks from rolling freely over our roads without having to follow our own safety standards.

Stay tuned, I’m sure this issue has not gone completely away.  Check out more about the truck crisis at:   http://www.trucksafety.org

This past weekend marked the 17th wedding anniversary for husband and me.  We spent Saturday doing homework (me) and installing a new dishwasher (him).  Any thoughts of going out to eat were negated by a hose too short requiring another trip to Home Depot and generally irritated feelings of disgust, his by installation, mine by homework.  So we went to dinner Sunday instead and ate too much, drank too much wine and generally behaved in a refined but irresponsible way.

Today we are back on track, diet and study wise.  Even Katie the dog seems to recognize that I HAVE TO GET SOME WORK DONE!  NOW!  and has retreated to her bird watching pillow.  I have finished the readings for my Tuesday archival class and will attempt again to get the assignment done for the Wednesday government docs  class.  The instructor has emailed me more specific instructions so maybe it won’t be so frustrating this time.  Then on to Thursday’s grant writing reading, and then the dreaded Friday search and retreival class preparation.  All by the end of the day today.  Sure.  No problem.

Now..Katie, what did you need?  To go outside?  RIGHT NOW??   (..sigh..)  Ok.  

Homework.  Last year I liked homework; that feeling has worn off.  I am attempting to read four chapters in a government document text book, and two in a book that is describing the history of archiving.  I finally resorted to sitting out in the car to accomplish this as Katie the dog was not ready to take a nap and asking to go out approximately every four pages.  Yesterday I attempted the reading feat by going to my local library.  Where I promptly couldn’t stay awake.  I am obviously literally out of academic shape.

Out in the car the government documents book actually got interesting as I considered that the information I was unearthing there about how a bill or resolution goes through congress might help me in the truck safety fight.  I know, I should have learned all this civics stuff in high school.  But high school was a long time ago and if I ever knew this I sure don’t remember it now.

Now on to the assignments for these two classes!  At the moment I can’t even remember what my four classes are for sure, but I’ll concentrate today on the ones I have to be prepared for on Tuesday and Wednesday and concentrate tomorrow on the Thursday and Friday classes. 

I need to get myself into a new rut; studying all day on the weekends!

Today I attended two classes.  The first was a grant writing course put on by the School of Socialwork, and held in the School of Education.  Most of my classmates are education or socialwork graduate students.  They are all very young.  As we went around the room introducing ourselves, each talking about what we want to be when we grow up, I felt the raw energy and the idealism of these youngsters.  They all believe they are going to change the world.  Some of them will.  All of them, in some way, will change the part of the world they inhabit.

My second class is put on by the School of Information as well as the Ford Business School.  The topic is ethics and technology.  Here most of the classmates are people I’ve had in other courses during the past year.  There is less idealism, more cynicism as we listen to stories about “incidents” which revolve around computer fraud, identity theft and more.  The objective of the class is not to learn how to do these things, but to learn how to deal with them, how to determine the undermining issues revolving around them, and how to critically think, review and supply recommendations.

Both classes are going to be a lot of work.  One of them has to go.  I was fooling myself if I thought I could handle 5 classes, work 19 hours and spend 3 hours a day commuting.  Tonight after my 5-8 p.m. class ended and I was waiting in the warm evening air for the bus (which was late) I made a decision to let the ethics class go. 

I think I want to be around some idealism for awhile.

So.  I’ve attended one class.  It seems fun, but it looks like a lot of reading.  Not that I’m opposed to reading, actually I sort of like it.  I’ve learned, however, that puppy Katie is an anti-reading dog, so reading at home has become a hassle.  This first class is on archiving, which I know nothing about.  Feels good to learn something new again.

One down, four more to explore.  I need to drop one of the five classes I’m enrolled in…but which one?