Day Five
I apologize for not posting last night but this cold is slowing me down some.
Yesterday (Tues) began with Chapel done by the young people and it was
awesome. There was singing, clapping, dancing etc. as well as thought
provoking scripture. The centre of all our worship services is a door,
just a door and frame, sitting in the altar space, sometimes open and
sometimes shut.
There was a briefing by the Commission to NGOs at 8:45 and something
unheard of until now happened. The Chair of the Commission actually
attended the briefing and presented "us" with a hard copy of compilation
draft #2. Usually we are scrambling to get a copy of the compilation
text and he just handed it to us. I already had an electronic copy about
10 pm Mon evening but what he did changes the tone of the event into a
very cooperative atmosphere - it is not "them" in the closed chamber and
"us" outside the building trying to figure out what is going on.
After the briefing I journeyed to second Ave. to the Episcopal Church
Centre to hear Leymah Gbowee speak. She is one of the two Liberian women
who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year and she is an amazing speaker. I
thought that I had recorded her speech on my phone but I cannot find
it so maybe it did not work. Two quotes from her talk are "Let us do
what we profess" and "Good work is bright light and it attracts lots of
shadows".
After a quick lunch I headed off to "meet the Canadians" which means
meeting the Canadian negotiating team in the UN building itself. They
are very good about meeting whoever shows up every day at 1 pm.
However it is a big hike and I guess all the exercise I worked on during
the winter is no where near enough. They have moved the entrance to the
UN buildings from 45th street to 47th street. So I set out at 12:30 to
head over from 44th to 47th, through the entrance and security, through
the building to the outside and back to the other building and then all
the way across that building, near 42nd. The meeting was good and we
heard about the current negotiations as well as a couple of seminars
which the Canadians were pushing. I was fortunate enough to negotiate an
exit onto 42nd street so that I only had to walk back to 44th street to
go to my room and have a nap.
As chair of the advocacy committee, I chaired the "debrief" Tues. At the
debrief as many as can, meet and talk about our day and what is
happening tomorrow. We meet at 6 pm at the Episcopal Center. I think
that it went well.
After the debrief, the Canadian Anglicans had dinner together at
"Patsy's" an Italian restaurant. We are not often together all in one
place so this was fun. Ellen's husband Tim and daughter joined us as did
honorary Canadians Joan and Ross Fraser and Lynnaia Main. Good food and a
fun time; delicious calamari.
At dinner I asked everyone to write down the one thing that he or she
felt that a Canadian Anglican should say to the Canadian Ambassador. An
interestingly diverse set of answers.
We did not get back until about 10 pm so I did my email and played a few games and crashed.
Productive day. Wish I was not so tired.
Blessings Judy
Day Six
As usual Chapel starts at 8 am. We had breakfast in our room this morning from oatmeal I brought .
There is a room on the end of our floor where you can get a
complementary breakfast but it is not especially nutritious - cold
cereal, pastries, yogurt, and some fruit. Sometimes I go and have yogurt
and fruit.They have bread or bagels but their peanut butter is old and
dried up.
The hotel is extremely dry and today I scored a humidifier. This is
great because the design of the shower does not put steam in the room.
By the way - have you ever seen a square toilet? We have square toilets
throughout the renovated part of the hotel. Our room looks south I think
and our view is the Chrysler building and the Empire State Building.
After Chapel and briefing, the advocacy committee met to start looking
at the compilation draft. We met for an hour and then agreed to work on a
section each and report back to me.
I returned to my room to have lunch and worked on a draft statement for
our meeting at the Canadian Mission tomorrow. I fell asleep around 2 and
woke up at 4:30. So much for seminars today. Finished draft one and
headed out for a planned "Advocacy" dinner. About 80 people having
dinner at the Church Centre, pasta, salad, chicken and grilled
vegetables. A nice meal and an opportunity to catch up with some
Canadians and some old friends also.
Now I am back in my room and the draft is circulating. For the first
time since I got here the TV is on and I will quit working now.
I hear that it may snow here tomorrow. I hope not. It was 55 yesterday and about 45 today.
Blessings Judy
Day Seven
I cannot believe that I have been here 7 days. The time goes by so quickly. We are so busy that you do not realize the time.
Today was blessed. Started with Chapel as usual. Then I went up to the
briefing. The tone continues to be very positive and open which is
wonderful, and the room was full. Next week there will be less people as
many cannot stay for the 2 weeks.
This morning I returned to the Episcopal Centre to hear Lakshmi Puri
speak. She is part of UN Women and spoke for nearly an hour. She talked
about the Millennium Development Goals and the future beyond 2015 when
new goals possibly called Sustainable Development Goals will come into
being.
Back to my room to put the finishing touches on our visit to the
Canadian Mission this afternoon. I arranged this visit and all of the
Canadian Anglicans got a private audience with the Ambassador for 1
hour. He spent some time explaining how things work at the Mission and
who works there. We had a prepared statement which he had read before we
arrived. I had asked the youth to prepare a 4 or 5 minute presentation
as part of our time and they did an awesome job. They talked about
access to post secondary education, missing Indigenous women,
difficulties for the LGBT community and the problems of stress and other
mental health issues in young people.
Our paper talked about poverty and hunger, access to resources and
services, access to education, employment and decision making positions
and the need to look at violence in a non-gender way ie: violence
against a person instead of violence toward women and the need to
involve men and boys as well as women and girls in the solution. We had
examples from our own experiences to illustrate our points.
We left the Mission quickly because Ecumenical Women were scheduled to
have a private audience with the American Mission at 4:30 and we barely
had time to get there. This was an excellent meeting and I thanked the
mission personnel for their openness and willingness to come to us for
this meeting.The meeting lasted nearly 1 1/2 hours.
Immediately after the briefing we held the Ecumenical women debrief
which I also chaired. This one was a bit faster because there have been
no new drafts of the concluding document and everyone seemed very tired.
Alice and I got take out from the Olympia and came back to our room
and had a leisurely dinner in our pyjamas and just chatted. Most
enjoyable. (I had a craving for meat loaf).
It was cold in New York today and windy, I had to dig out my toque. It will be sunny and warmer tomorrow.
Some of our group left yesterday - I hear they had to stay in Toronto
before returning to Muskoka today. More will leave tomorrow. We will
miss you all. Caitlin, who has been bunking with her mother til now,
will move into our room tomorrow for the next week. Two old fogies and 1
young one.
More tomorrow, Stay warm and safe
Blessings Judy
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