Erin Miller

As labor day rapidly approaches signaling the very sad end of summer, I figured it was time for another update. My summer was full of weddings, vacations, and changes and as things have calmed down I have started working my regular 8:30-5, EVERYDAY, and unlike undergrad, when I am really tired and busy I cannot just skip the first lecture of the day and sleep in — this, I find, is sort of a bummer.
I have attended three weddings this summer, and fourth is coming up next weekend — crazy kids, has anyone ever heard of enjoying your youth? Just kidding. Being in my friend, Rachel’s, wedding was a true honor and it was some of the most fun I have ever had. John and Rachel are going strongly on two and half months as a married couple and seem to be continuing to have the time of their lives. I also accompanied Dan to his cousin’s wedding in San Fransisco where I had the pleasure of meeting Dan’s Mom and witnessing a hippy wedding. The weddng was complete with an Apache poem and the breaking of a glass, which I am convinced was done at least partially to give everyone in the audience a chance to yell “Mazeltov!” The official dress code for the wedding was “no tie, no option.” It was my first trip to San Francisco. I told my mom I would go to California and sit on a beach and swim in the ocean she said, “not in San Fransisco you won’t.” She was right, though I think that at least part of the reason for that was that I could not find a beach.
I also made a trip to Oklahoma to visit my mother’s side of the extended family. The trip was as pleasant as possible in hundred and twenty degree heat (maybe a slight exaggeration, but a very slight one.) I got to spend some time with my grandparents, uncle, and my aunt and her three beautiful kids who are growing up quickly and will soon enough have some trouble fitting into that “kids” category. I spent a lot of time reading novels in the lazy boy strategically placed both near air-conditioning vents and the thermostat. In this way, I was able to guard the thermostat so that if some hippy trying to save money or conserve resources or save the world or something tried to turn the air up to 83 I could discreetly lean over and move it back down to 78. It was all I could do to stop myself from joining the dogs on the floor over the air conditioning vents.
My family also made our annual pilgrimage up to Vail to allow ourselves some deep breaths and an opportunity to re-connect with nature. My boyfriend Dan accompanied our family on a 9 mile hike and a class 4 white-water rafting trip and determined that my family’s vacations were “hard core.” The second part of the week my family (minus Mom who wimped out) went on our first class 5 rafting trip. We were all, including our guide, scarred out of our minds. My sister, Kelly, actually turned a surprising shade of white. The rapids really were big, more like waves, as they splashed over the front of the raft. But we are relatively experienced rafters and were lucky and everything worked out well, giving me one of the best adrenaline rushes I have had in a while. We did spend some time just hanging out and I smoked my siblings in a game of scrabble, I am sure that they would mention that they toasted me at monopoly, but whatever.
I have moved out of Boulder, packing and cleaning were distinct acts that symbolized a much greater closing of a chapter in my life and a moving forward. I am now splitting my time between Dan’s apartment in Denver and my parents’ place in A-town. Spot comes along during my time at Dan’s apartment and has adjusted surprisingly well to life as a city dog. She enjoys watching people pass outside the window and barking at passing dogs, and her 4-5 walks a day. Her physical attractiveness and general ability to sit-stay while on a leash gets her invited into almost all stores — florists, office depot, and the liquor store — where I had to give her a warning about not knocking over expensive bottles with her tail.
I continue to enjoy my job at WIC. I still occasionally become very frustrated with our health care system, and also with immigration laws. I saw one young woman (15) who was pregnant, and had a very low hemoglobin, indicating a severe iron deficiency and putting her at risk for having a low birth weight baby. When I told her that she should really ask her doctor about it she informed me that she did not have a doctor because when she went to apply for medicaid she was turned away because she did not have a proof of citizenship. Under new Colorado laws, one must be a citizen to receive medicaid, though pregnant women, even those who are not citizens are allowed to be on medicaid in the name of creating healthier American babies. But apparently, with the new laws somebody somewhere got confused and turned away a 15 year-old pregnant girl because her Mom had lost her birth certificate in California. This is system that we need to fix. I am usually able to pause (through the more or less constant sound of babies crying) and appreciate kids from all over the world, who do not speak a common language, gathering around my toy box and sharing toys. My Spanish has improved dramatically and I am now able to get through entire appointments without calling a translator as long as my clients are willing to slow their speech, offer some alternative vocabulary for words I don’t understand, and use hand gestures to indicate taking, giving, saying, hearing, past, and future. It’s a good thing that most of our clients are so incredibly appreciative and patient. I have been promoted to a retail coordinator position meaning that I have to monitor the more than 3 retail stores in the Denver area that accept WIC checks, and I have to take and follow-through on complaints from both WIC clients and the stores. It is a surprisingly challenging and intriguing aspect of the job that is allowing me to have a greater understanding of the program as a whole.The position does occasionally involve calling Spanish-speaking clients, which is more difficult as neither of our hand-signals are nearly as helpful. Overall, the new position provides a fun and interesting challenge.

So first, the basics:
I graduated from college. Crazy right? I graduated Summa cum Laude and With Distinction (crazier still) with a BA in history and a minor in biology. I also got a job. I am working at Denver Health in the Women Infants and Children (WIC) program. The program is a government funded supplemental nutrition program. In ordered to be hired into my position, one is suppose to be fluent in Spanish (because about half our clients are Spanish-speaking only) and most of the people who do what I do have some sort of background in nutrition or child rearing (I am still not sure how it all worked out so well for me). So I have been quickly refreshing my Spanish and learning nutrition education; and, after a bit less than a month on the job I am fumbling though appointments and confusing clients all on my own. The only requirements to receive the services the program offers are that someone be a woman (pregnant or breastfeeding), an infant or a child, live in Denver and fall in our income guidelines (185% of the poverty line or about $35000 a year for a family of four.) Half the infants in this country are on WIC. Our program sees a lot of immigrants and refugees, because one does not have to be legal to receive our services. It enlightens the current debate on immigration for me, though I have not worked out a solution to the problem of illegal immigration. Any given day I work (through interpreters) with Spanish, Russian, or Somali speaking clients. I see world peace being created on my office floor as children from all over the world gather around my etch-a-sketch. I really like the job.
I also have a boyfriend who I really like. Dan and I met years ago playing broomball (hockey without skates), and started dating about three months ago. He drives me to and from the airport which my mom says means that he loves me. I have keys to his apartment, but we are not “living together.”
I will be in my first wedding (since I was a flower girl as a youngin’) this Saturday. One of my best friends is tying the knot, I guess that means we are growing up. Rachel and John, I wish you the absolute best.
Now, for the travel adventure:
I spent last week traveling in NYC and Boston with my best friend Caitlyn. Caitlyn is doing the Americore program, a volunteer program that stations ambitious young people all over the country. Caitlyn’s program, NCCC, travels, staying for about 6 weeks in each new location. The program has been instrumental in disaster recovery from Hurricane Katrina. Prior to NYC Caitlyn’s group was in New Orleans and beginning work in Mississippi. I met up with Cailtyn in the Bronx where she had been living. The dedication shown by the volunteers is impressive. They were living 12 to an apartment in the projects, each receiving about 4.50 a day for food. The volunteers generously gave me a cot of my very own in the living room. Walking through her Bronx neighborhood was an experience as everyone gave us at least a second look, if not a third or fourth and assumed we had gotten off on a very wrong subway stop. The volunteers were running an after-school program for the kids in the apartment complex, and working as TAs in a nearby elementary school. Caitlyn told me that her class’s teacher would get the kids quiet by telling them to “Shhh and listen for the birds.” You have to get pretty quiet to hear birds in this Bronx neighborhood, but Cailyn said that they would always hear some. The impact the volunteers had on the kids’ lives was apparent as the volunteers (and me as well by association) were greeted in the hallways of the apartment complex and throughout the neighborhood by kids stretching to reach our waists for a hug. I spent an afternoon checking-out the after-school program and walked to the park with Tyshawn. As we walked, he said, “man, a lot of stuff goes on here, just a lot of stuff. My mom doesn’t like all the guns.” There had been a shooting recently on one of the corners of the complex. I realized that this third grader’s reality night have been larger than mine. Bush has proposed a large cut to the NCCC program’s budget. If any of you find yourselves with extra time on your hands, just twiddling your thumbs, you should send a quick shout-out to your senators or president supporting Americore NCCC, if you’re in to that kind of stuff.
The first day I was in the Bronx, after multiple naps on Caitlyn’s cot, catching up from my red eye flight, I went down to the little Italy of the Bronx, widely acclaimed to be the best in New York. I ordered an espresso, and the owner picked up my tab. I’m not sure if it was due to the look of awe on my face at being surrounded by the closest thing to Italy I had seen in a year in the middle of the Bronx or because I could “talk Italian” but either way, pretty sweet. There was an Italian festival going on so the arcade games had been left set-up from the night before, though unmanned. There was one of those trick basketball games with the really small rims set up outside the coffee shop. The owner of the cafe game outside smiling, a few gold teeth showing, spinning a basketball on his finger and offered me some shots. So I shot a few hoops with a couple of New York-Italians in the middle of the Bronx, needing to duck into the sidewalk to allow trucks to pass behind us. It was a quintessential Little-Italy moment.
Also while in the city I met with a guy in Columbia’s sport club program. I am angling for a grad assistantship (reduced cost grad school) beginning in 2007. I am thinking of acquiring a masters in public health. We’ll see how things work out I guess. The last night in Manhattan, Caitlyn and I spent some time drinking a beer as the sun set in central park — sweet.
Caitlyn and I also traveled to Boston for a few days. We took the China Town bus (15 bucks each way, by far the cheapest way between the two cities). It poured from the time we left New York until we arrived in Boston and the China Town bus began to leak, directly onto one of Cailtyn’s Americore friends. It was pretty amusing for Caitlyn and I, I think Robin was just cold and wet, but hopefully she can see the humor in the situation in retrospect. It continued to pour for almost the full three days we were in Boston. I decided I never need to live in Boston because it was cold and rainy in June. We walked around town and saw the tourist spots. We saw Paul Revere’s house and the Old South Meeting House where some of history’s greatest minds took three days to decide to dress up, run down to the harbor and dump a bunch of tea into the ocean. I am a history nerd, so it was great. We then walked across town in the pouring rain to go see the actual ship that these men dumped tea off. The ship was labeled on all of the tourist maps so we walked in its direction. We got lost but eventually got to feeling like we must be close. I went and asked for directions only to discover that the ship had been struck by lightening two years ago and was being rebuilt, SLOWLY, colonial style. One would think they could update the freakin’ map. Alas, our soaking walk was for naught, so remember, there is currently NOT a Boston tea party ship in the harbor. The Boston holocaust memorial is really well done.
Our last day in Boston, Caitlyn and I spent over two hours in the Harvard Bookstore. We are nerds and it was a complete blast.
There was a break in the rain so we went to the public gardens and walked through a park to get back to Boston’s Little Italy (Yes, I was on the east coast and saw three little Italies.) We walked through a gay rights protest. We were pestered into signing some form and wearing some stickers that read “I support equal rights.” We wore the stickers out of the park and two homeless men on a bench harassed us with a fairly vulgar comment — the comment opened my eyes to a world of discrimination had never fully understood.
Alright, well sorry for the lack of communication the last month, and for the VERY long catch-up email. I am not sure what I will end up doing in the next couple of years. I know that for now I am happy working at WIC and happy being with Dan. I want to get a masters in Public Health. And I know that I want to get back out of the country for awhile, probably to improve my Spanish.