i coulda slept late...

Getting up early on a freezing cold Saturday to go on a major subway schlep to dig through crap in a park in Harlem. Sounds great, huh?

Actually, it wasn't as bad as it sounds.

It was actually a bit of a convoluted connection. The Student Conservation Association (SCA) has an annual service event where they get students (and others, I guess) to do restoration work on one of New York's historic parks -- this year it was St. Nicholas Park in Harlem. The Mission Continues (TMC) made it one of their service events. And Ethan and I, as leaders of the New York chapter of Stack-Up, signed up to work with TMC on the project.

By way of background, TMC is a charity for military veterans who want to continue serving their communities. I first came across them when Blair and I, representing Stack-Up, attended a meet and greet sponsored by The Wounded Warrior Project (WWP)*. Ethan and I signed up for a few of their events last year. But the one that was truly a service event (cleanup in the Bronx along the Harlem River) was cancelled, so the ones we attended were show businessy types of affairs -- the kind of events that are more in the realm of perquisites than service.

So, despite the early hour, the cold and the schlep, it was important to me that Ethan and I keep this appointment. An alarm that I set improperly, and a bunch of rerouted subway lines** made us late, and it was tempting to take that as an excuse to be a no-show. As an aside, I wonder if they had no-shows? Fortunately, despite being late, we didn't miss anything except some speeches.

Ethan and I were put into a group clearing culverts of debris. Some of the paved paths in the park have old cobblestone culverts running alongside for drainage purposes, and these culverts fill with soil, leaves twigs and such. So we were part of a crew digging them out. I know -- thrills, thrills. It actually wasn't that bad, except for the fact that it was cold, and my fingers were freezing.

The one thing I missed was that we weren't connected with anyone in TMC. They had all been grouped together. We weren't grouped with them, and I didn't know to ask about it. Fortunately, Blair was coming by later to meet up with us. So, after an hour and a half of clearing, we got a call from her. She had found the TMC group and was wondering where we were. So we ended up switching groups. So, for the last half hour or so we were with a different group, doing what they were doing. Which was...clearing culverts. At least we already knew what work was needed.

Blair is so much better at networking than I am, so she managed to turn this into a good connection with TMC. Afterwards, we went for barbecue with them -- I'm talking more than a dozen people from TMC. With any luck, we'll be collaborating with them in the future. We're inviting TMC to our next Stack-Up event -- our third annual animated shorts night with Dr. Eliska Decka. And, with any luck, we'll be part of more of their events.

*Gee, has this post degenerated into an exercise in name-dropping of military-supporting charities? Sorry.

**These days, there are subway reroutings every night and every weekend, so they can do maintenance. When I was a kid, they were much rarer. More of the maintenance was done while trains were in regular service.

a stack-up kind of a day

This past Saturday was perhaps the longest day of work on behalf of Stack-Up that we have had yet.

It started with Macy's in Herald Square -- the brand's flagship store. Macy's, as a corporation, is a big

supporter of the military, and an active recruiter of military veterans for employment. As in past years, Macy's has partnered with Got Your Six to raise money for a variety of military charities. Customers could donate three dollars to Got Your Six, and in exchange get a coupon for 25% off storewide. During the week or so that this program was ongoing, several military charities had tables at various departments at Macy's, 

So we -- Ethan, Blair and I -- had a table set up in Macy's (by women's shoes -- I don't know why) where we handed out information about Stack-Up and tried to sell the coupons. We're not exactly expert salespeople, and in fact only two people bought the coupons from us. Though to be fair there were plenty of people who expressed interest and went to buy the coupons at the cash registers. Truth be told, I was perfectly happy to have people buy at the register instead of from us. The charity gets the same money, and I didn't have to worry about handling as much cash.

But, while we manned the table starting at 1:00, we actually had to be at Macy's at 9:30 in the morning. That was so that Ethan could speak about Stack-Up at a "rally." As near as I could tell, the rally was essentially a departmental pep talk. A half hour before the store opened, the employees of the women's shoe department gathered and one person (their boss? I'm not sure) talked about sales results and goals, and handed out certificates to high performers. They also talked about the Got Your Six campaign, and then introduced Ethan who had a minute or two to introduce Stack-Up. He was great. It's so gratifying to see him getting better and better and more and more comfortable speaking to groups. After the rally, we had a couple hours to go shopping at the farmers' market in Union Square and have lunch before being back for our 1:00 table-manning.

It was great to find out that Macy's is supporting the military in this way. Until I had heard about this campaign, I had had no idea.

After that, it was off to the headquarters of The Wounded Warrior Project. WWP is a military charity that helps injured veterans deal with their life back in the civilian world. WWP was having a Mario Kart competition, and we were going there to help out. And provide a Wii-U, since they were short one. I think we have plans to help WWP with some of their upcoming social events.