article of my week

"Refugees Find Hostility and Hope on Soccer Field" -- amazing story. Nice to see it's the top e-mailed story of the week for the Times, as well. Clarkston soccer team made up entirely of refugee kids. Below, a few excerpts.

About Clarkston:
"From 1996 to 2001, more than 19,000 refugees from around the world resettled in Georgia, many in Clarkston and surrounding DeKalb County, to the dismay of many longtime residents."

About the coach:
"Coach Mufleh’s car is also an equipment locker, and her work continues off the field. “You suddenly have a family of 120,” she says.

Upon hearing of the low wages the refugee women were earning, Ms. Mufleh thought she could do better. She started a house and office cleaning company called Fresh Start, to employ refugee women. The starting salary is $10 an hour, nearly double the minimum wage and more than the women were earning as maids in downtown hotels. She guarantees a 50-cent raise every year, and now employs six refugee women. "

About the kids:
"In 1997, in the midst of Liberia’s 14 years of civil war, rebels led by Charles Taylor showed up one night at the Ziatys’ house in Monrovia. Jeremiah’s father was a low-level worker in a government payroll office. The rebels thought he had money. When they learned he did not, they killed him in the family’s living room."

"“What makes us work as a team is we all want to win bad — we want to be the best team around,” Qendrim says. “It’s like they’re all from my own country,” he adds of his teammates. “They’re my brothers.”"

About the field:
"Ms. Mufleh and Ms. Ediger, the team manager, spend the holiday vacation visiting the players’ families. On Dec. 26, Ms. Mufleh receives a fax on Town of Clarkston letterhead."

"Effectively immediately, the fax informs her, the Fugees soccer team is no longer welcome to play at Milam Park. The city is handing the field to a youth sports coordinator who plans to run a youth baseball and football program."

Are you a Cultural Creative?

About 50 million Americans are. Go here to find out.

I learned of this demographic subgroup reading "The State of Non-Profit America." Salamon states

Cultural Creatives differ from both "Modern" and Traditionalists," the other two dominant population groups in America, by virtue of their preference for holistic thinking, their cosmopolitanism, their social activism, and the insistence on find a better balance between work and personal values than the Moderns seem to have found. Although they have yet to develop a full self-consciousness, Cultural Creatives are powerfully attracted to the mission orientation of the non-profit sector and could well help to resolve some of the sector's human resource challenges.

Demographer Paul Ray, who coined the term, has this to say on his website:

While Cultural Creatives are a subculture, they lack one critical ingredient in their lives: awareness of themselves as a whole people. We call them the Cultural Creatives precisely because they are already creating a new culture. If they could see how promising this creativity is for all of us, if they could know how large their numbers are, many things might follow. These optimistic, altruistic millions might be willing to speak more frankly in public settings and act more directly in shaping a new way of life for our time and the time ahead. They might lead the way toward an Integral Culture.

The same site has a nice list of books/websites on the subject of "living lightly."

MARTA-dreaming

Gwinnett, which approved MARTA in theory but refused to pay for it back in the 1970s, may get another chance. As a new convert to the Gwinnett concept, forgive me for getting excited about this! Article in today's AJC here.

Other asides:
On the train home tonight, a large group of mostly bleached blondes discussed how much their kids love riding MARTA (they like to bounce, said one.) I thought the ringleader was going to etch the window glass with her enormous rock.

Which brings me to another observation. When did it become practically obligatory to give a girl a diamond if you wanted her to make you coffee (or vice-versa, in my particular case) for the next several decades? There's a definite generation gap. With mine and the thiry-somethings I know, they all sport shiny left ring fingers, and the hand-talkers pose a definite risk to their conversation partners.

Now that I've (somewhat ambivalently regarding the ring, full-heartedly as far as what it represents) joined this club (with a conflict-free ring, way to go Slim!), I've taken to noticing other womens' entries. Because make no mistake, it is a contest. The way my gal pal grabbed my hand and clutched it to her chest the first time she saw it (her own is more overwhelming) said it all. It's like those decoder rings that came in cereal boxes when we were kids -- they are keys to hidden, mysterious worlds, and it didn't matter how much granola you have to eat to get one, it's all about the ring. For some people anyway.

For the Colombian women I knew, especially displaced Colombian women, the ring was more of a barrier wrapped up in an access code. It was the key to a club they did not belong to. These women had lost everything, often including their husbands. Yet somehow they were still able to listen to my happy shiny story and smile. Maybe that's what every bit of metal and stone wrapped around the fourth finger says: ask me how it happened, and I'll glow.

Reason # 2 why I'm ring-obsessed: this week I'm picking up vestiges of a much sadder story, to be sold on ebay. I wonder who would buy a failed attempt at happily ever after? ... Maybe someone who knows that the attempt to lasso some kind of forever happy is capable of dissolvin in a moment, only to solidify once more with a look. And that behind every look, each touch, all the stray words and silent deeds is the choice to love and be loved.

quit dreaming and get a life

In "Mixed response on rail funds," in the AJC last week, passenger rail advocacy group GARP describes its modest proposal for commuter rail: $62 million to fund the Lovejoy line, $38 million to take it to Griffin, and $10 million to start work on the Athens<-->Atlanta segment.

According to GARP, at $62 million, these lines of rail would cost less than two miles of a six-lane highway.

But when the group sent its proposal to our elected officials in the state legislature, they got this reply from state Rep. Don Lakly (R-Fayette County). "Please don't tell me how many folks will use public transportation; they just will not. Quit dreaming and get a life!"

It's good to see Southern civility is alive and well down at the Capitol.