Time’s flying

Every Friday, I have to write a journal for AmeriCorps, summarizing what I’ve done over the past week.

As a result, I can tell you exactly how many weeks I’ve been here

.

In today’s case, it’s 12. That’s three months as the weeks count, though my arrive-in date to Minot was, I think, June 18.

But 12 weeks down means 40 to go, and that is a very weird thing. I feel like I just got here, even though it’s started to get chilly in the mornings. (Although, come to think of it, it was darn chilly some of those June mornings, too.)

I’ve done quite a bit since I got here, more so than during PC service. Most of that is I’m not dealing with a Japanese volunteer countering my every move and I have a supportive supervisor. So yay on that.

I am, however, falling behind in blogging. Not writing, though. This is my third blog post today, as I wrote two for www.hopevillagend.org. I think I did three Facebook posts, too, for Hope Village. So at times I feel like I run out of things to write.

This week, though, I had a cool highlight. The National 9/11 Flag came into town and I went up to the university to see it.

I have a whole backstory surrounding its arrival, but if you haven’t heard it I’ll spare you. Suffice it to say, YES it was the story. And YES, it was cool.

This flag was damaged on Sept. 11, 2001, but was pulled from the wreckage and displayed.

 

Now, it’s been restored by survivors of other disasters. Where there had been holes, flags from other disasters have been sewed in.

The thing has two little white patches, too: one is made up from a piece of the flag that draped Abraham Lincoln’s coffin and the other has three stitches that were made from thread taken from THE “Star Spangled Banner” flag – the one Francis Scott Key saw through the rockets red glare. And I got to hold it.

So it was very cool to see that, with the long procession of fire fighters and personnel from the air force base here.

We also have Stars of Hope in town, which are an artistic and cathartic thing for the flood survivors to do. They had a painting at the university here and the stars look really cool. 

 Tomorrow they’re being placed in the community. I’m in a back seat position on that bus now, but I do hope things work out all right for the community on that one. A team up from Joplin brought them in and I’ve had very little interaction since the initial news conference.

Truthfully, I have no idea of what’s going on but neither does anyone else. I just hope it works out all right.

But man, that flag was cool.