Kate and Neil’s Awesome Website

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 658 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Neil Ransom, on the other hand, is much more unique. Bugger!

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 7 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Does anyone else remember that just three weeks ago Utah was a chilly wintry wonderland, snow was still falling in the mountains and my apartment was the loveliest of temperatures and then all of a sudden as if over night it’s 92° outside and my apartment feels like the impact zone of a nuclear blast? Well it’s strange, and now I can’t sleep very well because our windowless apartment is just too dang hot. For the last two weeks Kate and I have been battling it out each night over whether to sleep with our tiny street-side bedroom window open or closed. Kate sleeps best when she’s wrapped in quilted blanked and the room temperature is right around fresh magma. I, on the other hand, can only sleep when naked in a bath of liquid nitrogen. Needless to say, this has been a source of contention in our family resulting in sleepless nights, me on the couch, late night showers and early morning runs. I’m just hoping I will get used to this because if we end up moving to Arizona I will perish.

It gives me a little extra confidence to know that in a pinch Neil and I can come up with costumes for Susan B. Anthony & Emiliano Zapata exclusively from items in our closet. Every house needs a costume closet, and ours just happens to be inseparable from our normal one.

Our friend Ash turned 26 and had a birthday party with the theme of “reformers.” I have developed a recent obsession with the suffrage movement of the turn of the century so, of course, I whipped up a Susan B. costume & Neil went for the legendary Mexican reformer, Zapata.

It was great fun and involved a lot of akward white people freestyle rapping about the various characters… which is ALWAYS a good time.

We were also glad to see the revival of the Frida Khalo & Diego Rivera costume.

Happy Birthday Ash. Viva la revolucion siempre.

So a few weeks ago I went to San Francisco for an interview weekend with Green Corps an environmental activism group that leads environmental campaigns throughout the US. The weekend interview included public speaking, canvasing, two personal interviews, a mock campaign planning, and a handful of social events. It turns out I did not get a position with Green Corps, but they did refer me for a job with the Fund for Public Interest Research (which I just interviewed with). So I guess the job part of the trip turned out to be successful (if the Fund offers me a job). Either way it was great to meet and mingle with environmental activists who are on the front lines fighting for the environment. I met one gal who organized the campaign to stop New Orleans from privatizing their water. Anyway, it was awesome.

The other great part of the trip was visiting my friend Heber and staying at his place in downtown San Francisco. It was so much fun to be right downtown and to be able to walk to some of the world’s tastiest restaurants (unfortunately I never made it to the Burmese restaurant) or take the BART to fantastic museums and parks. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip. I even liked the Amtrak train I took from Sacramento to San Francisco, although the food they offered was less than ideal. And finally to top off the trip I had dinner at my sister-in-law’s house in Sacramento before we all (my brother and his wife) climbed into the car and headed back to Utah.

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Do you ever just feel so busy that you take a few seconds to lay on the floor & wish you had some free time? Yeah, me too.

For the past two weeks I have been putting on little graduation parties at the different elementary schools where I organize English classes for the parents. This is the project I have been working on as an Americorps volunteer for the English Skills Learning Center, a private non-profit in Salt Lake. The idea is to integrate the parents into the school system by delivering English classes to them where their children attend school & forming partnerships with the school administrators etc.

These parents are so impressive to me. Whether you’ve been in the US for a few months or many years, it’s difficult to learn English. Couple this with the fact that many of our parents have little or no education in their home country (some are not literate in their own language) & their progress is amazing. These parents are making the effort to learn English so that they can help their children succeed and so that they can improve their lives.

They meet with a volunteer tutor, at their children’s school, twice a week. The classes are small & tailored to the specific needs of the parents. They have lessons on basic communication & what we call “survival English,” things like how to make a doctor’s appointment or how to tell if a letter that comes in the mail is important v. junk mail. The students develop a strong bond with the volunteer teacher & are so grateful for the help they receive.

I have had the opportunity of teaching & filling in for many of the classes & have come to love these hard working, sincere parents. Many of the parents are refugees, the others are immigrants (many of whom I consider to be economic refugees). One man told me when I asked him about his childhood that he began working full-time as a 5 year old in Mexico. He said, “it wasn’t that bad. It was traveling alone that I really didn’t like.” He is now a single dad with three children that he reads to as much as he can in English so that they can be successful. I am amazed by thier dedication and effort despite the fact that many of them work multiple jobs or night shifts.

Their stories break my heart, but their courage gives me strength.

Neil went to San Fransisco this weekend for an interview with Greencorps. He spent one day going to antique shops looking for a 1920s hat for me (a recent obsession). He found this 1950s retro hat that was copying the 1920s style.

What a great man!