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293 I sat on the couch in the office looking at Depression K406. Depression K406 didn’t say much and had a leering grin. I called him, “No Exit.” Beside him sat his fat companion. I didn’t know his companion’s name. He just blocked out the sunlight. No Exit. What was my plan when Bahia Street reached this stage? The building was going great. Rita was sending me photos. It had been demolished in less than two months and now they had laid the foundation. In Seattle, we had just had our biggest fundraiser of the year, a summer Brazilian Harvest Festival. Everyone had a great time. The most talented Brazilian and Brazilian-style musicians in the area participated. Long time volunteers pulled everything together. We had a silent auction organized by an experienced volunteer. Food was donated and organized by a professional chef. I was gratified. I was honored. And I had to force myself to do every tiny piece of organization. I was tired of it. I wanted to go hiking, do some interesting research, some fun writing. The meager funds I had been able to put aside when I quit my teaching job were long gone. I was tired of buying all my clothes at second hand shops and never going out to eat. I should have been saving money for my older years, and I had nothing. I had been living on $15,000 or less for years now, and it wasn’t working any more. I wanted to go on kayak trips, to do something that engaged my mind. I wanted out. But there was no way out. Grant writing. I always hated grant writing. I was not bad at it. I’d done it for years, long before we started Bahia Street. I’d funded most of my research through grants. But then, it was a necessary, ugly task leading to a delightful end. Now it was the whole. My skills now focused on taking complex situations and ideas and reducing them to simplistic bullet points that a reader, who knew nothing about the subject, could understand by skimming a one-page review. My job now was to tailor an application to fit the funders’ desires without compromising what we actually did at Bahia Street. I could thirty resting on the wings of a butterfly 294 dance lest we all fall down now write what the funders wanted, and not actually lie about where their money would go. I spent my time resisting the temptation to convince Rita to change the program in Brazil to something that had less relevance there just because a certain idea was trendy and more likely to get funding. Something had to happen. I couldn’t continue. I was hollow. With this attitude I would never inspire. I felt like a cheap sales promoter. More and more people kept describing me as “noble,” presenting an image of sacrifice they could only watch and never hope to achieve. I didn’t like that image. I didn’t do this for noble reasons; for political commitment, yes, but the mantle of noble was too heavy. I wanted to prance around in a swimsuit or light down ski coat. My house needed so much work, it was falling apart and I had no money to repair it. I wanted to leave, to go live in Europe or Canada. I didn’t care. I just wanted out. I traveled to Alaska for two weeks, spent the time hiking in high alpine meadows and coastal forest, encountered a moose, camped with the door (not the mosquito netting) of my tent open to an endless light that compromised to twilight for the shortest of time. I didn’t think about Bahia Street. I didn’t think much about anything. I did crossword puzzles. I met strangers and learned about their lives. When I returned, I rang Nancy. I didn’t know her well, but she had been a long-time supporter of Bahia Street. She was vice president of the Seattle World Affairs Council. Over the past seven years, she had developed a very successful global education program in the local schools. She also had had two children and finished a Master’s degree in Public Administration. I wanted to ask her for advice, to see if she might be interested in some joint project. I wasn’t sure what. “I’d love to do something,” she said. “When I have time. I...

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