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A Quiet, Thoughtful Afternoon in Mexico

by RitaGoldenGelman

So everyone (my son, Mitch, his wife, Melissa, and five-year-old Cris went off for the afternoon to La Paz, about an hour from here (Todos Santos). I opted to stay home where the quiet is wonderful. F0r the last hour I’ve been reading articles on The Gap Year, some from the US, some from England. I’m hoping to link to a whole bunch of them on the Let’s Get Global website (the one that I’m still working on). It doesn’t make sense for me to restate what has many times been so eloquently and passionately expressed.

I may take a couple of sentences from each article and then put in the link.

The hardest arguments to present are the ones that are based on statistics. There really are none. Oh, there’s the one that says young people who do a gap year are more likely to stay in college and graduate. And there’s the one often cited that 30% of college students drop out. Others say between 20 and 30%. And some go lower and some higher. In making an argument for funding, statistics are crucial. And no one has statistics, even about how many gappers there are. It’s kind of sticky to quote statistics if there are none that are official.

Last night over dinner, Mitch suggested, Think big, start small. I’m thinking he’s right. Maybe Let’s Get Global should start with, say twelve schools from different segments of the population and diverse geographical locations. Together we could create and initiate a plan, tweak it for the different populations, but basically keep it the same. After a few years we will have statistics of our own that we can present to a lot more schools around the country. And each year we could expand the number of schools involved.

I’d love comments and perhaps some suggestions of schools that you think would be good test communities. We’d like to take the test across economic, racial, urban, rural boundaries so we can come up with a strong picture of what happens when we bring our ideas into different areas. Our campaign in each community would be designed to include guidance counselors, student clubs, events, local fundraising ideas (for scholarships), and fundraising projects for the students, etc.

Would any of you reading this like to get involved in making this happen in a school in your community? It would be pretty exciting to be a part of the initial twelve. Please write to me at: info@letsgetglobal.org And feel free to comment here as well. Thanks, Rita

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Rita Golden Gelman: MAY I HAVE YOUR ORDER, PLEASE

by RitaGoldenGelman

So everything was going great. I was researching foundations, writing a query letter to them explaining who we are, and making a list of things to do before I left at five to meet some unmet friends for dinner about an hour away. I was struggling with the letter….it all had to be right. The organization of the information, the words, the facts. The only thing in the whole world that I am a perfectionist about is my writing. For those of you who think writing is easy for writers, you might enjoy this quote from Thomas Mann. He speaks for all of us: “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

But I was doing it and the words were piling up nicely.

Then it was time to go. I left early because I’d never been to the town in Maryland where we were meeting. The drive wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been and I was happily listening to NPR in the almost rush hour traffic. Then, after I’d been on the road for forty-five minutes, the guy on the radio said something about “the weather on this fifth day of October …” No! Our dinner was on the sixth!” I got off the 495 highway going north and got back on going south.

I’d been thinking all the way about pupusas…a national dish in El Salvador that they served at the restaurant . Now I wasn’t going to have them. So I got to thinking about national dishes and suddenly I wanted, needed, craved a Big Mac. Yes, I couldn’t wait to bite into a Big Mac. I get that urge about once a year. This was my Big Mac day. I smiled in anticipation; but I had no idea where I would find a McDonalds. I decided that I would take my chances and hope that those yellow arches would appear. I couldn’t remember any along the way, but I stuck to the route home. Then, miraculously and by mistake, I turned the wrong way on South Van Dorn and there they were, inviting me to have my Big Mac. I got into a long line of cars, two of which were strangely trying to back out of the Drive-In order line.

I ordered my Big Mac and the voice in the machine informed me that they had no meat. I thought I didn’t hear right. I ordered again. No meat. No hamburgers. No Big Macs. But I was in a McDonalds. There had to be meat. That’s the definition of McDonalds. “We have no meat,” she said for the third time.

Now once upon a time I was in a vegetarian McDonalds in India….but this was Alexandria, Virginia. No meat really meant no meat. Apparently the truck with the meat never arrived. I ordered six chicken nuggets and a small French fries and drove back to the house where I am house-sitting. Not a good day!!!

Tomorrow it will be pupusas…and the good news is that I know how to get there.

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Rita Golden Gelman: SETTLING INTO A NEW U.S.LIFE

by admin

I’ll pick up in my next entry on my Spain visit. Vaughan Town was pretty amazing and Barcelona quickly became my favorite city….but I was so into changing the U.S. that I spent hours and hours Skyping about Let’s Get Global. Actually it was pretty appropriate to begin a global movement from out of the country. But more on that later.
Now I want to move into the present for a bit. I’m deep into the Gap Year project which we are calling Let’s Get Global. I’m on it 24/7. I’ve given up nomadding for at least a year, although I will probably be talking and traveling a lot, just not in exotic places.
I’m currently staying in a tiny studio apartment in Washington, DC. I’ll be there until mid-March. A couple of weeks ago I got a call from a family I had met in June (when I get back to the history of birthing this movement I’ll talk about them again); they were going to California for a month. How would I like to house-sit in Alexandria, VA? Sure, why not. So I have gone from a nomad with no home to someone with a city house and a country house! The invitation came with a car because there’s no metro in the part of Alexandria where my country house is. When I saw the car, I almost died. A silver Mercedes!
“Oh, no, “ I said. “I don’t want to drive that. What if…” He cut me off. “Rita, it’s a car,” he said, handing me a card from his body shop! So I’ve been hanging out at my country house in Alexandria for the last two weeks. A couple of days ago I drove from my country house in Alexandria to DC. Got lost, of course. But got there.

birth of a movement Gap Year let's get global rita golden gelman tales of a female nomad Uncategorized

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