Where have I been?

Like, whoa. I haven't posted in waaaay too long. Many people have wandered up to me and mentioned it, which makes me giddy (I have an audience!) and yet here I am, driving you wall away with my utter remiss-o-rama calvalcade of absence.

Well, since July 11th, I've been everywhere. Firstly, I went on VACATION! Yep, a barely-checking-my-email, actual-quality-time-with-friends-and-family vacation. Elly was even there with me! I even have some pictures from it, and some day, perhaps in October, I'll have time to upload it here.

But the important bits are that I got three days in Sonora with my fams, and Elly and I cavorted around town, which was good. We then split up and saw a bazillion people, which was still not quite everybody I'd hoped to see, so if I missed you this time around, we're hoping to be back for a week in the Winter. Highlights include:

• Seeing Juliana for the first time in over two years, who drove up from Santa Rosa and arranged to be away from her two young kiddos in order to spend three hours with me
  
• Nicole M. and Mia throwing me a party at their swank new pad in Berkeley with tofu balls and delightful Greek salad (feta on the side)
  
• Attending a HeadsUp film night about Queers & Gentrification with all my comrades, and being recruited to facilitate on the spot (thanks, Mel!)
  
• Four hours of catching up with Sharon M, since we haven't been able to catch each other on the phone for months
  
• Lots of QT with that cutie Baby Anju and her lovely parents Michelle and Marc in Oak-town
  
• Flirty times at Mango with Jackie D. gettin' the ladies!
  
• Left Wing soccer practice with many a sweaty hug
  
• post-Soccer ankle recovery and bonding courtesy fo MC & Alex
  
• Pupusa madness with Sarah J. & Jill S.
  
• The fabulous Peta waxing poetic about Bay Area politics over Thai food in the Castro
  
• Jeff G with the brunch of Direct Action and Eastern Bloc talk
  
• Toddling off to San Mateo with Karl T, Lisa and Alicia. Whee!
  
• Bolinas and long talks on the beach about class, race and the work of Resource Generation with Cathy Rion, comrade supreme
  

It quelled my homesickness for a brief moment, but since it was a whole week, I kept thinking that I'd moved back. So much love! So much to miss! But also, so nice to come back and see everybody.

Upon my return I worked my tail off pretty much around the clock until the following Wednesday, when I boarded a plane for the first annual Youth Encuentro de Immokalee of the Student Farmworker Alliance. The Encuentro was an excellent space with very dedicated and thoughtful folks in attendence. I had a great time hanging out with people and I had almost forgotten that it was my job to be there. Since our national conference is this coming week I had to be in and out of the space - between the church where everything was held and the SFA office, the site of what's likely the only high-speed wireless network in Immokalee, FL. Immokalee itself is amazing; it was very reminiscent to me of small towns in El Salvador (especially with the 3:00 daily rain shower and intense heat) and parts of Sonoma County - farmworker housing truly sucks in every agricultural space that I've seen. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers never ceases to inspire me, and we were given a walking tour of the town and the new space the offices are moving to. It's in the process of being refurbished with a new studio for their radio station (La Tuya!) that runs programs for kids and has several weekly hours of programming in indigenous languages of Guatemala. How awesome is that? The site of the SFA/CIW offices now runs a cooperative store that has community members streaming in all day long.

Satya had invited first Elly, then myself to help co-facilitate a seven-hour day-long anti-oppression training. Does that sound exhausting? It WAS. Despite that, I think it went pretty well. Due to each of our hectic schedules and Elly's flight being delayed, we were up until 4:30am the night before, and ran the whole darn thing on a whopping 2.5 hours' sleep. Yipes! Unfortunately, by the last section (patriarchy, the gender binary system, heterosexism and transphobia), I couldn't even define "transgender" - I think I lost a merit badge for that or something. Elly had to step in and define it for me. We had some work to do afterwards, and it could all use some work, but it was good to be back int he training ring. I hadn't trained about classism & capitalism before, and I felt it went off pretty well. Many thanks to Paul Kivel's latest book: You Call This a Democracy? Saved my tail, seriously.

The next morning I was on for a "Unions 101" but mercifully the lovely and talented Becky Wasserman of American Rights at Work and Marc Rodriguez of the SFA/GSA (UMass - Amherst) handled most of it. I was beyond toast by that point.

Elly and I returned today, and I fly to Chicago this coming Tuesday for our national conference. Wish me luck! Look for another posting, well, uh, early September. OK, I'm kidding. I'll get at least another one in this month, I swear. After we return post-conference, next Sunday, my co-workers take some well-earned days off, I hold down the office, and take an overnight trip to Montreal to speak with a surgeon. And we're not even in the semester yet!