I Haven't Cried in a While

In the 30 minutes since I last posted, I've become aware of some troubling news. Project Hip-Hop has lost one of its youth due to street violence. An overwhelming feeling of sadness, guilt, despair, and hostility is running rampant through my head right now as I type this. Apparently, our Executive Director sent out an email earlier today, but I just had a chance to read it tonight. I'll post just a snippet here. If there's ever a time when the words "keep ya head up", "take care", or "peace out" could ring more true, please fill me in. I don't belive I got around to mentioning it yet, but another reason for my inclination to work in the city was to be more accessible and available to participate in the extracurricular actvities that I so enjoy, which include NSBE, Project Hip-Hop, mentoring, and playing ball; among others. Well, this past weekend, I served as the driver for PHH for the pre-summer retreat. A group of about a dozen students who will be this year's partcipants in the annual PHH Summer Trip got together and bonded as a family at the Packard Manse in Stoughton. I drove three youth down on Friday, while MWH drove the big van and on Saturday I returned to drop another 3 youth off at their homes. It's not as though if I had been more involved in PHH would this tragedy been avoided, but I feel so useless right now. How can I be a part of something like PHH, ever so amorphously, yet something like this can still happen? I'm tired, I'm sleepy, but I don't want to impose on anyone by calling them in the middle of the night to simply vent over a lost soul already gone who I only met ever so briefly. The congrete jungle has consumed another of our gems. Our work is far from done.