USCRI

Elsewhere in this blog I've mentioned Nipper, a giant dog on top of a building, and my favourite Albany landmark.  As far as I used to know, the Nipper building just housed Arnoff's Removal Company.  Tonight I went inside and learnt better.

On the ground floor there's an Irish-American Museum - who knew?  But I wasn't there for that.  I was heading up to the next floor to attend a volunteer orientation event at the local branch of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.

USCRI is the hub of support for refugees in the Albany area - and much of that support comes from volunteers.  About 400 refugees arrive here each year, fleeing war or persecution, and they desperately need assistance.  Many, such as those from Burma, have lived for years in rudimentary camps in the jungle, and they arrive in this country with little more than the clothes on their backs.  USCRI sets them up with a place to live, basic resources and a case worker to help them begin the challenging process of settling into a brand new culture.  Refugees have just 90 days of fully funded, professional assistance - three months to try and find their feet in an environment so alien they may as well have landed on another planet.

Volunteers act as mentors, teachers and friends as they try to help refugees along the road to independence. They might lend a hand with booking medical appointments, or explaining paperwork, or teaching how to navigate the public transport system.  Some volunteers offer English lessons.  Others organise collections for needed household items, or help furnish an apartment. There are all sorts of ways to help.  

I know most of my readers aren't anything like local, but if you do happen to live around here, and if helping refugees is something you'd like to get involved with, there's lots more information here.

Fast and fiery

The other evening the Boy had been invited out to the cinema (Cars 2 in 3D, verdict: better than the well-liked original) and the Girl was hankering after Mexican food (never thought I'd get to say that about my daughter), so the Man and I took her to the Chipotle in Stuyvesant Plaza.

Chipotle is a Mexican grill fast-food chain restaurant.  Put like that it doesn't sound too enticing, does it, but I was actually pretty impressed.  They make a big deal of using fresh, local ingredients (they know what their middle-class farmers' market-shopping clientele is after), and I have to say the vegetarian burrito that the Man and I shared did taste very fresh and good.  The Girl enjoyed two beef tacos, with meat from hormone-free, pasture-fed cows and seemed quite happy about it (though she had to suck on ice-cubes afterwards to counteract the spiciness).

The decor was a bit industrial for my taste (polished concrete floors, unfinished ceiling etc), and the poor acoustics and wide range of choices plus our funny accents made ordering the food a bit of a chore.  Next time we'll rehearse our order before we go in.  Because I liked it enough to hope there'll be a next time.

On hold

We should have had tickets for our annual UK visit sorted out by now - only there's a glitch.  The Girl's passport needs to be renewed.  We had in fact cottoned on to this a while back and I submitted the old passport to the British Embassy in Washington DC some seven weeks ago, knowing this would give us plenty of time as the relevant website clearly states that renewal takes four weeks, six at most.

Or it did.  They posted a message on the website on June 16 to say that due to unexpected demand they are "experiencing delays".  And since they only got round to processing payment for our application on June 17, we know those delays apply to us.  In an effort to confirm when, if ever, we're likely to get our daughter's passport back, I've been trying to ring the inappropriately named passport "helpline".

Advice on the helpline costs money (72p a minute, plus tax) so the automated message when you first call up instructs you to have your credit card at the ready - otherwise no advice.  If you don't have a credit card that's just too bad, I suppose.  Anyway.  I listened to the message, then was surprised to get a real dial tone almost at once...but it cut out.  I rang again.  Listened to the message.  Listened to the dial-waiting and the soothing Scottish voice telling me that due to a heavy load of calls I might want to ring back later, or I could stay on the line if I didn't care about the cost of an international call... I hung on, got through to a real person (!!) and got as far as telling him I'm in the USA...and then the call cut out.

I rang again.  Listened to the message.  Listened to the dial-waiting message.  Eventually got through to another person.  She needed me to key in my credit card number.  I tried to do so via my on-screen skype dial-pad but it didn't register her end.  Neither did my keyboard.  She advised me to check on my "keyboard connectivity settings", or try another phone, but didn't offer to key in my number herself even though we were clearly two real people speaking to each other - she wasn't allowed to do that, don't ask me why.

I hung up.  Tinkered with my settings.  Rang again.  Credit-card message.  Dial-waiting message.  Dial tone... Cut out.

Bureaucracy meets technology, with tedious consequences.  I have given up.   I might try again - when I have regained the will to live.

Strawberry fields forever

Not just sheep encounters yesterday, but goats too.  The goats were at Indian Ladder Farms where we went to pick berries. 

Raspberries are just coming into their own now, but the strawberry season is pretty much over.  Much of the last fruit was spoiled by all the recent rain, too - more's the pity.  But the smell took me back to warm summer evenings in Oxford, rolling home along Binsey Lane from the Perch after a half of Guinness (I always have been a very cheap date); the light of the moon and the heady scent of rotting strawberries wafting over from the pick-your-own fields.  Happy days.

What scents take you back to times past?

Sheep-shape

We made a trip with the 4-H club today to Ravens Roost sheep farm in Hannacroix, about half an hour south of home.

Ross and Liz, the owners who kindly showed us round, run the farm more as an exercise in self-sufficiency than as a business, although they sell their surplus at a couple of farmers' markets.  They led us through their fields, where we met their chickens and, further out, their small flock of Icelandic sheep.  Both chickens and sheep are penned, but the pens are rotated around the meadow every few days onto fresh pasture.  So these were pretty happy, healthy creatures. 

 We were given a lesson in wool:  how to get it off the sheep; then how you have to pick it clean and carefully wash it; how you "card" it with spikey metal brushes to get it into a state to spin it using a drop-spindle or a spinning wheel;  how to twist the spun wool into 2-ply yarn; and how to wind it into skeins, ready for knitting.  We also talked about felting, and how to mould wet felt into hats and slippers or craft it into toys.  As Liz says, to have the patience to go through all these labour-intensive processes you really have to love doing it - or else why would you?  It happens that she does enjoy dealing with wool, and likes to keep traditional crafts alive.

If ever anyone gives you a gift made from handspun, hand-knitted or hand-felted wool - treasure it.  You'll never credit all the hours and effort that went into it.

Diversity

So, what to write about today?

I could tell you about the special event "honoring refugee cultures" that I attended at the Unitarian Universalist church in Albany this afternoon.  The hall was packed with refugees from Burma, Bhutan, Iraq, Senegal, Sudan...all in traditional costume, taking turns to perform music and songs and dance.  Day to day it's easy to forget what an interesting, colourful and diverse world we live in - this was a great reminder.

Or, speaking of diversity, I could give a hooray for New York State finally saying yes to Marriage Equality, giving gay couples the same rights as straight couples and making this corner of the world a slightly fairer place.  I hope other states and countries can be equally grown up about this issue and quickly follow suit.

Or shall I just relate a small but noteable incident that happened at home?  At 6:05 this morning a skunk passed through our front yard.  How do I know? Because it was so stinky that I had to get up and close all the windows.  No matter how long we're here, there are still new and surprising experiences to be had.

No-fly screen

It has never happened before, but this year we keep getting birds flying around in the house.  One got in while my parents were here, another got trapped in the three season room last week, and today two wrens came and flapped all around the downstairs until I opened a window and shooed them out.  Forgetting to close the sliding flyscreen at the back of the house obviously doesn't help, but I don't think we're being more careless than we ever used to be.  Anyway, today I just had time to note how different a bird looks when it's not in its natural environment.  Or maybe it's not the bird itself that looks different, but the way that you find yourself looking at it when it's perched on the back of a dining chair?

Meanwhile the kids got involved with a nature observation project of their own this afternoon.  Each had a friend over, and they spent a good chunk of their time together hanging out in a couple of muddy ponds that have formed on some land up the road.  The children discovered lots of tadpoles and froglets, and got busy with containers, moving tadpoles from the swamp most likely to dry up first to the deeper one across the road. 

They all ended up covered in mud, with their wellies full of pondwater.  Hooray!  You can't beat the summer holidays!