Thanks to smilie117 for her help with changing the colors of my journal and adding some new icons. My new default for a while will be Fortitude, the official symbol of Delta. I love what she stands for, and most of the Delta stuff I have as a newborn neo feature her in some way. Even if you're unfamiliar with our organization, it is just a beautiful work of art.
I wore my flashiest Delta pin to church on Sunday, all ruby and diamond rhinestones. My pastor, a member of another Divine Nine org, Alpha Phi Alpha, announced my crossing to the congregation. Of course, I had on my crimson suit and pumps, along with all the other sorors across the city in celebration of May Week. I removed the pin during communion, however. My bond with Delta is temporal, but the rite of communion to me is eternal. After that portion of service was over, I put the pin back on.
I decided not to change from AngieJ after all. All the names I thought up weren't worth the bother.
Am hard at work on my revision, although this month is shaping up to be another busy one. I'm advising and laying out the student magazine for our new school building's ribbon-cutting gala and planning a poetry slam--a last labor of love for the school district that I am finally (finally!) leaving. Around town, I'm managing a bimonthly community forum for Detroit Synergy Group, running my high school best friend's campaign for school board, and of course there is my sorority's work in the community. All this, and a move to Ann Arbor next month.
In other, rather redundant news, Detroit Public Schools laid off 2800 teachers. Yes, I was one of them. At this point, I've been pink slipped so much until I have ceased to care. With over 30 schools slated to close, every teacher hired after 1996 in a non-critical shortage field has been told to wait and see if they'll be able to eat/sleep in a bed/pay $2.50 a gallon for gas in September. The union will likely strike, the city is in a terrible mess, and people are leaving in droves. Receivership is all but inevitable. And if one of the Big Three goes under, it will be the end of my city.
Thus ends my six-year, one-woman quixotic quest to Save the City of Detroit. I cannot save her if I cannot save myself. As Mary Oliver once wrote...
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice— though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do— determined to save the only life you could save.
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angiej) wrote,
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