Happy January!

In celebration of the new year (and in anticipation of colder weather to come, hopefully- it's been awfully warm this winter in Philadelphia!), I present a delicious recipe for stout gingerbread that I tried out over the holidays while back home in Seattle (which has proven to be a decidedly more wintry locale this year than my current place of residence).

This recipe is from a 2009 edition of The New York Times. Due to my sister's not liking lemon, we didn't make the lemon glaze, but I'm sure it would be delicious. The stout gives the gingerbread a nice denseness. Enjoy!

Butter for greasing

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder

2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg, preferably fresh

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup, packed, dark brown sugar

3 tablespoons turbinado sugar

2 1/2 tablespoons finely grated fresh ginger (a 2-ounce piece, peeled)

Grated zest of 2 lemons

1/2 cup grapeseed oil

1 large egg

3/4 cup stout beer

3/4 cup molasses

1/3 cup brewed coffee

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted

2 tablespoons lemon juice.

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease an 8-inch springform cake pan and line bottom with parchment paper.

2. In a bowl, whisk flour, cocoa, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Set aside. In a large bowl combine brown sugar, turbinado, ginger, zest of 1 lemon and oil. Beat in egg.

3. Place beer, molasses and coffee in a deep pot, at least 3 quarts. Bring to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in baking soda. Mixture will bubble up. Allow to cool 5 minutes.

4. Whisk flour mixture alternately with beer mixture into brown sugar mixture, in 3 shifts. Pour batter in pan and bake 40 minutes without opening oven. Give pan a 180-degree turn and bake another 15 minutes, until cake is springy and a tester comes out clean. Cool on a rack. When cool, remove sides of pan, invert briefly to remove bottom of pan and paper and set upright on a plate.

5. Place confectioners’ sugar in a bowl, whisk in remaining zest and salt, then lemon juice. Spread over top of cake, allowing glaze to drip down the sides.

Working on a Saturday

Well it is a beautiful Saturday morning in New York City and I am currently writing this blog post from my office at ABC. Now normally I don’t work on Saturdays, but today is a special occasion. One of my biggest projects so far has finally come to fruition. In the beginning of January, I received information in a newsletter about the American Italian Cancer Foundation’s Mobile Mammogram Van. The AICF provides free breast cancer screenings for women, including those who are uninsured. I thought that our community’s population in East Harlem would greatly benefit from such a service, so I scheduled a visit.

Little did I know, this would turn into an enormous project. I had to arrange a minimum of 30 appointments, and the women had to be over 40 years old. Considering my main contacts in the community are the parents of our Head Start students who are all very young, I soon realized that I was going to have to step out of my comfort zone and reach out to the wider community.

I started slowly by posting flyers at local libraries, laundromats, and schools. When we were still short on appointments with less than two weeks to go, I realized I had to get more involved. I went to the local Salvation Army building, reached out to East Harlem’s City Council representative, and formed linkages with several of the other service organizations in the area. I went back to the laundromats, libraries, and schools, but this time I tried to engage any women I met there. I learned their stories and they helped spread the word through word-of-mouth in the very close-knit community. Suddenly, the appointments were pouring in.

Before this project, I was definitely an outsider in East Harlem, but now I feel genuinely connected to the community. It has been a really special experience in my fellowship and totally worth coming into work on a Saturday.

Loan Advisory Committee Meeting

Today we had a Loan Advisory Committee meeting, where the LAC approved a new loan for a health center in New Orleans. New Orleans is an exciting place for investment; in Louisiana there remains a market ready for new projects but folks are still recovering from Katrina all these years later. Remarkable. Friday capped a busy week of sending funds to borrowers, revising some closing documents for another health center loan that is closing in February, and reviewing the financial performance of the loans in our portfolio. Thankful for a great week.

Life at CEP with a New Boss!

Here we are, midway through our fellowship years, and I feel like I can finally say that I have fully adjusted to working a 9-5:30 schedule. However, my routine at the Character Education Partnership has been shaken up quite a bit over the past month with the arrival of our new President & CEO, Mark Hyatt! It has been quite interesting to have the opportunity to directly compare the two very different leadership styles represented by Mark and Joe, our former president. Joe was a very detail-oriented, hands-on leader--always in the office, making sure everyone stayed on task and represented CEP in an exemplary manner. Mark, on the other hand, is more of a big-picture, visionary leader. He has a seemingly endless number of ideas and projects that he wants to see CEP take on, and he is usually in the office only three or four days per week so that he can go chat it up with potential donors to fund these proposals.

I am working with Mark much more closely than I ever worked with Joe, mainly because he has essentially filled the role of my old boss (the Director of Resource Development) in addition to serving as President (Joe has stayed on in a part-time capacity to help him keep track of the details). And, so far, I am happy to say that I am really enjoying working with him. He has been so receptive to my ideas for how CEP can further its mission, and he has really emphasized to both Carol and me that he wants us to use our fellowship year to pursue our interests and do work for CEP that we find engaging and, when possible, relevant to our future career path. For example, Carol and I went to a panel this week that reported on the progress of the DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative, which was inspired by the famous Harlem Children's Zone. While it wasn't directly related to CEP's work, I found the panel to be a fascinating opportunity to learn more about early education and child development in an urban setting. And in general, I am extremely grateful for the effort Mark has put in to get to know all of us on staff and to make each of us feel like his equal, and I sense that the future fellows at CEP will have a large say in how they want to contribute to the organization.

That being said, I am also very appreciative for the time I had working with both of my other bosses. I feel like I am having almost two different fellowships in one, because while my role has stayed the same in some major respects (I still do a lot of writing for grant proposals and other fundraising efforts and I am still planning the Exhibit Hall for the Forum), I am working with new people and learning to adapt to their writing styles and their expectations as supervisors. For instance, Mark has encouraged me to pursue my interest in working more directly with students, so I came up with a rough proposal for an essay contest that would bring more students to the Forum--an idea that he is now trying to find a donor to sponsor. I am also working closely with Arthur Schwartz, one of our newest Board members and the former #2 at the Templeton Foundation, to research organizations that serve parents so that we can expand our own outreach efforts to this highly influential but underutilized population in the field of character education. Learning to work closely with and for all of these different people has been a significant opportunity for me to grow as a professional, and I'm looking forward to seeing how my fellowship continues to change and offer new experiences in the months ahead.

January update

Hi everyone,

It is approaching the middle of winter (although the 50-degree weather makes it hard to tell) and I can't believe how quickly this year is going! I guess part of living in New York is being CONSTANTLY overwhelmed with things to do--and since I have very intense FOMO (fear of missing out) I tend to overbook myself rather than risk missing anything. But I love it and would much rather be too busy then bored.

In addition to having a pretty busy life outside of my job, work has definitely started to pick up recently. I don't know why--maybe there has been an increase in arrests overall or maybe the judges have begun to prefer our program--but we have an somewhat overwhelming number of kids in the program right now. It is actually kind of great for me because I much prefer being busy to having nothing to do--although I am getting a bit tired of doing intake interviews (I feel like I am going to start having dreams about describing consent forms). But I don't think we have ever had this many kids in the program before so it is definitely a new terrain for everyone at Choices.

Outside I've work I've mostly been focusing on upping my running mileage (since I signed up for a marathon, kinda gotta start training for that) and figuring out where I want to go for law school! More than anything, however, I am just trying to enjoy this year before I enter the terribleness that is the first year of law school!

That is all for this blog post! More later.

Steph

City Life

Having lived in suburbs all of my life, I've never been especially familiar with public transportation.  Yes, I've taken public buses before, and yes, I've taken trains to NYC and Philly, but I've always had to look up schedules and prepare a detailed itinerary before embarking on any trip of any distance.  I've always been impressed when my friends and family in New York City, for instance, were able to direct me to specific trains without skipping a beat.  While I've always liked the idea of taking public transportation, it just hasn't been a big part of my life. 

Until now, that is!  My brother (a past P55 fellow) visited me in D.C. over the weekend, and his visit brought to light just how familiar I am with both public transit and the city in general.  I was the one showing him around; I was the one who knew where the closest metro stop was; I'm the one familiar with D.C.

Surely many other car-less fellows have come to a similar realization at some point during their fellowship.  Still, it was exciting to realize that I'm really settled into my new city.  I've been here for 6 months but it feels like much longer--in a good way.    

January Update

I think that many fellows would agree (at least the friends in the program that I have spoken with have agreed), I seriously cannot believe that it is January. At Princeton, everything was on a schedule. I counted everything. This many days until this midterm. This many hours left to post a response. This many paragraphs required. This many hours to sleep . . . You get the picture. And I always ended up with the same conclusion: there is just not enough time at Princeton to do everything that you want or feel necessary to do.

On Saturday morning (clearly, post Princeton), I slept in as if I had nothing hanging over my head, no looming schedule with no time crunch. I woke up to a bunch of snow with the freedom to say: what do I want to do today? That simple freedom was invigorating, peaceful--I chose to go out and run in the snow like a kid. While admiring the snow, it finally felt as though the depths of winter had hit. And after the kid-like excitement rubbed off, I reflected upon the fact that I have worked for over 7 months. Time flies when you are not counting, not wishing time to fly by.

When you are content with your job, the projects that you are working on, and how you are allocating time, you worry less. Period. I know that this post is bordering on over-the-top. Maybe I have already passed that point. I am to the point in my fellowship that I am not nervous to approach my directors with a concern or thought (time permitting). I have a job that, overall, I feel as though I am providing and not taking from the world. I am learning and growing in my career aspirations. And I still have time to come home, regroup, and recharge.

January has been a good month.