Hope McAllister Miller

Like my still life with passport, Freire, and Boal? Tomorrow I’m leaving the States for almost a week in Brazil and I don’t anticipate blogging much. It’s a work trip with some really fun colleagues and with a little time for sight-seeing. I don’t think I’ll be near the protests. But I will be near some waterfalls.

Today, like this whole week, like this whole month, has been a whirlwind and I am exhausted. So, I’m not going to say much. I arranged this silly little still life because these two thinkers–Freire and Boal–really interest me. (I’m fortunate that some of the work I do actually involves their methods.) With all the stress and headache of getting ready to leave the country whizzing around me, I wanted to take a moment–a very brief, half-conscious moment–to acknowledge some of the possible meanings around this trip.

Let me put it another way: I’m going to spend my time on the 9-hour flight writing, thinking, and reflecting on how to put of Freire and Boal’s ideas into practice in my life.

When I return, I promise lots of pictures. Stay tuned. And, thank you, as always.

Hello, everyone! My apologies (again) for missing a couple of days. I feel like every minute of my time has been scheduled this week. Fortunately, the hectic-ness is winding down.

One of the things on my schedule was volunteering. In theory, I think volunteering is a great idea. In practice, my experience isn’t always that great. Sometimes I feel like I’m not really “doing” anything as a volunteer. In high school, I volunteered at a hospital and I filled up ice pitchers. That ice is important, I know, but I really didn’t have much contact with the patients and, honestly, didn’t feel like I was really making an impact. My volunteering history has been a bit sketchy since then.

Enter the SPCA. You know I love dogs. And by volunteering with the SPCA, I can have a direct impact. I work right with the dogs–playing with them–and in so doing, the dogs are getting exercised and socialized. Both of which make them more adoptable. The SPCA shelter in my neighborhood is so overbooked and understaffed that dogs get out of the cages about once a week. (A dedicated group of volunteers is trying to change that so that each dog gets out once a day.)

I’ve been assigned two cages, and it’s my job to make sure that the pups in those cages get outside. Tigress is one of my dogs. She is a sweetheart. Sadly, she’s been at the SPCA for almost a year. Imagine if you were in a cage all day, every day, surrounded by the sounds and smells of really stressed out animals. You go outside for about 20 minutes a week. It’s heartbreaking.

Tigress is good dog; there’s no reason not to adopt her. What tugs on my heartstrings even more is that she looks just like Scout, who is also from a shelter.

When I came home from volunteering today, Scout wouldn’t have anything to do with me. She sniffed me and backed away. Even though I’ve showered and changed clothes, she still won’t engage with me. The shelter smell of stressed out animals must be stuck to me, and it’s certainly stuck to her. She remembers what it was like.

Someone once said to me that dogs remember everything we humans do to them. Which is why a rescue will flinch when you go to pet them because they remember being hit. It’s also why a rescue will kiss you and cuddle with you because they remember that you are safe.

As promised from yesterday, here’s a photo of some newly planted petunias in the garden. It’s hard to believe that at 7:30 this morning I was in Cincinnati planting flowers and now I’m in Manhattan, around the corner from the 9/11 Memorial.

From the vantage point of 7:30am, this was a good photo to take. But throughout my day today, I had pangs of wanting a different image to capture my day. Not so much because these petunias are inadequate–no. Instead, I felt like I saw so much today. There was so much to depict and record. There’s a lot to take in in this world.

My flight was delayed, and as I sat at the gate waiting, I got to watch a team of police officers test their K-9 bomb sniffing dogs. It was amazing to watch these beautiful, slouchy German Shepherds work. They loved to work, following their handlers’ commands. Watching animal and human work together in that seemed very moving to me, in spit of the bizarre circumstances (training an animal to sniff out a bomb). One dog in particular–an almost-all-black shepherd–would get so excited to find the “bomb” (a squeaky toy) that he would prance in circles with the toy in his mouth, clearly delighted in himself.

On my flight, there was a girl who had severe scarring. That isn’t quite the way to say it. I’m not quite sure what happened to her. My best guess is that she was in some sort of accident and was severely burned. She had patches of hair on her head, almost no nose. I think one of her arms ended in a round, blotchy stump. Something horrendous and horrific and painful had happened to her. And yet she was very much a kid, maybe 10 years old. She’d look out the window, saying, “Mom, Mom, look at this!” She was a child.

I smiled as I walked past their row while boarding the plane. I was trying to find that delicate balance acknowledging and ignoring. In our culture, we are so programmed to not stare at people who look “different” that I think sometimes we just ignoring them and their humanity. I don’t know what the “right thing” to do is. I made eye contact quickly and smiled and kept moving.

Obviously, I wasn’t going to take a picture of this injured girl or of the officers testing their dogs. So, the petunias stand.