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01/01/2004: "About"

This seems to be a good day upon which to anchor some exposition, easy to find and easy to remember.

Me. I live in central New Jersey, and I have lived in this town off and on since I was thirteen. I was born in Los Angeles, and spent my early years in the Boston area. I am the youngest of three sons, unmarried but open to possiblities (and finding few). I received a BA from Connecticut College in philiosophy and Classical Greek, minoring in alcohol and art.

The church. The place where I work, a mainline Protestant institution with about a thousand members, mostly prosperous white suburbanites. The church is on the liberal side of most questions confronting its denomination (with no sign of unanimity among the members). It is long on missions and short on evangelism, with a strong music program and an increasingly pompous liturgical style.

VNA. The Visiting Nurse Association of two counties here in central NJ, I have been associated with it for ten years now, the first five as a client and the next as a volunteer. After my mother's stroke, the VNA provided home health care, nursing and therapy, companionship and finally hospice care. She was disabled and housebound, but as comfortable and happy as I could make her, mainly due to the caring efforts of the staff and volunteers of VNA. After she died and I got involved with the church, a friend there providentially invited me to participate in a particular volunteer activity associated with VNA, namely:

Rummage. A twice-yearly fundraiser for VNA, it takes up all of my free time in April and september. It is reputed to be the largest rummage sale in the mid-Atlantic. All items we sell are donated and all labor is volunteered; we accept donations for three weeks at a local park, store them in huge tents and barns, sort and price everything and then hold a three-day sale, first weekend of May, first weekend of October. It's backbreaking work putting this together, but it raises a staggering amount of money for VNA. The volunteers who do this are the people about whom the word "awesome" was coined.