"Beauty confronts us with the requirement that we place ourselves among...the redeemers, the leaders in the protection of life. Once you have seen the bush on fire, you are not going to get out of the assignment unless you close your eyes to the beauty.... [You] either have to close your eyes or go back to Egypt and set the people free." - Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, "Rising to the Challenge of Our Times"

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Diary

I wanted to have more bullet points, so here they are:

  • 4:50 a.m. or so: woke up, kind of
  • 5:25 a.m.: went to spinning class at the gym (a little late)
  • 8:00 a.m.: breakfast meeting with a Chico city council member to talk about ACLU LGBT committee project(s) and any other letters of the alphabet
  • 9:10 a.m.: arrived at work
  • 1:30 p.m.: case review meeting, decided that welfare fraud cases and clients who act like they may have personality disorders should be recurring soap opera themes to complement all the comas and cases of amnesia.
  • 3:30-ish: done with case review
  • 5:00 p.m.: went to General Plan Citizen's Advisory Committee meeting to discuss preferred land use alternatives for eleven study areas in the unincorporated vicinity of Chico. Spoke twice in the meeting. One of my proposals for a 500-acre cluster of high density zoning in a 9,400 acre area, next to existing dense development in urban Chico, and pending a Specific Plan & City oversight, with the remaining 8,900 acres designated Resource Conservation, actually got two other votes besides mine (out of about 18...that's 16.6%! Wa-hoo!).
Worried that I sounded too meek or conciliatory and perhaps uncertain when I talked; decided it was just because the people who did most of the talking talked loudly, and a lot, and sounded like they believe they know quite a lot about everything. Coincidentally they were all white men over the age of 45. Occasionally a few white women over the age of 35 would say something too. You'd think that there were no people of other colors living in the county. I guess they didn't want to be on the Citizen's Advisory Committee. I wonder why?
  • 11:00 p.m.: meeting adjourned
  • 11:20 p.m.: came home, watered cat and fed plants.

2 comments:

Emily said...

Oh...and P.S.: when I arrived at the meeting tonight, it appeared that all the pizza had already been gobbled up, and I'd really been counting on it since I overlooked having lunch today. I felt very morose (and lightheaded) for the first 45 minutes of the meeting but then more pizza appeared and things got better.

carla said...

wow, i'm sure the purpose of your post was not to make me feel like a complainer but thank you for making me take a look at my life. you are amazing. not only do you bike 100 miles but you wake up before 5. i think my husband will appreciate me reading your blog, my complaining will decrease quite a bit.