Meet on the Ledge

I've been working with Hands On USA, a sister organization to Hands On Thailand, formed in response to the Indian Ocean tsunami last Christmas. Today, Wednesday, is our day off, for people who have been working hard for the previous six days.

The best part of my workday is the morning, when the crews are heading out into the field. I can't explain the feeling of joy and pride that I feel when the trucks pulling the front-loaders and back-hoes pull out of the parking lot. Part of it is that the heavy equipment can make my own work easier. I've been working on a tree crew, cutting up fallen trees and hauling them to the curb to be loaded into dump trucks hired by the city. One front-loader can make a big difference in how long it takes to get a massive trunk out of a yard.

One part of my being here that has surprised me has been my exposure to different music: while I've been driven around from job to job, there has generally been a CD playing in the car or pickup truck. I have a new-found appreciation for Willie Nelson, and for an Austin singer-songwriter named Bob Schneider. "Extraordinary how potent cheap music is," quipped Noel Coward in Private Lives. "Cheap" isn't fair, but the power is there: Dave Matthews singing "Where Are You Going" brought unexpected tears to my eyes.

There's a guitar here in the church meeting hall that is the Hands On USA headquarters, and it's available to anyone who wants to play it. That guitar has been quite a consolation to me; I've been playing it every chance I get. And I'm using it to get under my fingers a song that's been an earworm for me the past few days:

Now I see I'm all alone
But that's the only way to be
You'll have yor chance again
Then you can do the work for me....