Last year eight friends took the day “on” to paint Hine Middle School. This year I was on my own—alright, well I was a group of one—joining the JCC volunteers at 
in Anacostia. I still had a fun and fulfilling time, but it was tinged with the disappointment that this isn’t a more respected national holiday. Regardless, I plan to keep the tradition going and at least for myself make the association between MLK Day and volunteering as strong as Thanksgiving turkey and fireworks on the Fourth. And perhaps in the future, if not recognizing the holiday, more corporations will at least take after National Geographic and offer their employees a floating volunteering day. 
The bookend to my school day was yet another return to Woolly Mammoth Theatre, this time to see Nilaja Sun’s one-woman show about the school system entitled “No Child…” For those keeping track, yes, that would indeed be my third trip to Woolly Mammoth in three weeks and my second one-woman show in two weeks, and yes, as satirized in Nutshell, the two Woolly Productions involved both a ghost and a dysfunctional family! Apparently I am addicted, or else my New Year’s Resolution somehow evolved into see-woolly-more (rather than free-willy-more?). Although I enjoyed “No Child…” and think Nilaja did an outstanding job portraying the characters, the piece itself really didn’t cover any new ground for me. That’s not to say it isn’t an accurate portrayal of the struggles of teaching (I know my middle-school-theatre-teaching sister could identify), just that in my mind it will be hard to top the depiction of the inner-city school system from Season 4 of The Wire…
Notes to Jon:
- On the surface (which is all I saw) both the school and the neighborhood were in much better condition than I had expected
- For a small group (like 1) I think the JCC is a better option than Greater DC Cares. At least for the school I was at, the volunteers seemed to be an assortment of friendly individuals or small groups, whereas my impression from last year with Greater DC Cares is that it was much larger groups. Greater DC Cares did provide lunch though…
- Woolly Mammoth must be instituting a frequent attendee program because our seats were right in the second row, despite being about 80 people back in line (after arriving at 6:10).
