Why I Love My Job, Redux

on thursday, i got to go to a fancy luncheon at the chicago hilton for the american refugee committee (ARC) giving me cause to dress up for work two days in a row... anyway, for some reason, the luncheon made me feel more in touch with the weight of the kind of work im going. it's easy to forget when im sitting in an office on the 18th floor of a chicago loop office what the people who come to ask for our help have been through. not only is it easy, it's necessary for me to be able to do my job. but, a twenty minute slide show of refugees and camps really served to drive the point home.

and then seymour hirsch spoke. and it was more gloom and doom. he told everyone to buckle down for a long four years. he predicted that the economy was going to suffer and we as americans will as well. he explained that our president is driven by blind belief in his ability to bring democracy to the middle east, flowing from a fountain in baghdad. this blind belief is what has enabled him to ignore the fact that we've already lost the war and that there's nothing we can do about it. what was the bright point of this celebratory lunch you may wonder? well, as hirsch put it, at least gonzalez won't be appointed to the supreme court...yet.