Sylvia's Journal

Yesterday was half vacation, half work, a fieldtrip into Boston. First stop was Shepard Fairey’s exhibit Supply and Demand at the (magnificently located) Institute for Contemporary Art. When you have completed the tour of the fourth floor you get so sit at the glassed in gallery looking out over Boston harbor, watching the planes take off and land at Logan and the boats come and go. I could have sat there for hours.

But we had a rendezvous with Tessa who had already ordered us the best sandwiches and pastries at the French bakery (Flour) in her upscale workplace neighborhood. We ate them in the sun under bright blue skies sitting on the boardwalk across from the Children’s Museum, surrounded by ducks and, of course, children.

Next stop was Chris’ and Kairos’ brand-new baby Maia who we found sound asleep in her laundry basket crib
with her Japanese grandma watching over her. The Chinese grandma is probably waiting anxiously on the West Coast for her turn. I listened intently to the replay of the birthing ordeal. I am not sure whether Axel did as these stories are infinitely more interesting to women. We both admired the outcome – I got to hold Maia for most of the visit. We left her with a homemade yellow striped knitted tiger (or kittycat).

And that was the end of the vacation part of the day. I reported to my supervisor Alison for my annual performance review which we did in the sun on a picnic bench behind the building (I’m good). After that a meeting with Alain to talk about Afghanistan while Axel scoped out the ‘green’ house in Cambridge that Gary has rehabbed and which is on the market for a million and a half. For that you get a house within walking or biking distance from Harvard and MIT, four parking places, a small garden, 3 floors, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and a low ecological footprint. Axel is doing some of the marketing materials and needed to see the place for himself.

We drove back in bumper to bumper holiday weekend traffic that took us one hour and 45 minutes to get home. I was glad to have company and that Axel did the driving. As soon as we got home Axel and Steve headed to the Manchester Club for their thursday night dinner and all-male social. I turned around and drove to Gloucester for an event hosted by my friend Martha who hired me in 1986 for Planned Parenthood’s counseling and referral hotlines that, I hope, got many teens back on the rails or kept them from derailing altogether.

The topic for this awareness raising house party was sex education which is now named something else, for middle and high school students (‘Get Real’). The young PP’s Director of Education, who is about Sita’s age, spoke eloquently and which much passion about their efforts to help parents and kids talk about sex.

Gloucester was the center of attention last year because of alleged ‘pregnancy pacts’ among teenage girls. It was a perfect entry point for Planned Parenthood and its advocates who have been tirelessly working to get to the approval of the Get Real curriculum in the Gloucester school system – the vote is next month.

A young man of Tessa’s age, in a crisp white shirt, one year out of college, also an employee of PPLM, did his first public speaking as the resource mobilization man while his father was proudly watching him perform from the back of the room. The kid moved back in with the parents so he can afford to work in Boston, commuting an hour and a half to and from work each day. As it turned out, all the parents in the room who have adult kids have them living at home again – with high student loan debts, high housing/rent costs, this is now normal in this part of the world. Some mind, we don’t. And Tessa did pay for our lunch ysterday, which was not cheap.