#ia764 iatselocal764 764cares 764volunteers 764strong edenmiller volunteer

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Reposted @metoperawardrobe Last night we opened X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X to a full house at @metopera

Here’s a sneak peak of our dressers setting up for Act 3. 🧐 Fun fact: It takes 14 dressers to QC our Men’s Chorus in Act 3. They have just under 2 minutes including travel time to go from their Mecca to 1960s Riot looks.

#wardrobe #metwardrobe #opera #iatse @iatselocal764 @iatse

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#764Volunteers:  Eden Miller shares her story of giving back.

“The foundation for my life with costumes began with volunteering.  When I was 8 years old, my mother was a volunteer with a local nursing home, walking distance from our apartment. My mother enjoyed spending time with the elderly after a destabilizing divorce, and I was fawned upon roundly. A community granddaughter come to visit! They were deeply concerned when they found out that I, great-granddaughter of a tailor, couldn't sew, and commenced immediately to teaching me hand and machine sewing, knitting, crocheting, embroidery, tatting, darning, and in one ill-advised move, bargello.

At first I thought they wanted to impart their knowledge before shuffling off their mortal coils, but those crafty ladies and gents got a lot of alterations out of me in the name of practice, and by the age of 12, I was designing and constructing costumes for their semi-annual talent shows. A career was born.

Jumping forward 30 years to New York City and the financial crash, I found myself with loads of free time, and a wide variety of difficult to translate skills. Rather than tear my hair out looking for work under every rock and feeling impotent, I came back to volunteering. First I sought out a local mixed care housing facility in Astoria run by HANAC. Then I signed up on a website called VolunteerMatch for opportunities to help city-wide. I worked with them for a while, and wanted something with more flexibility when I got work. I began to work with GMHC and City Meals on Wheels. Later, I signed up with The Church in the Village Helping Neighbors in Need program specifically chosen because they practice radical inclusivity for queer and trans people, and Repair the World, which is a phrase taken from a Talmudic tract. This from a profoundly devout atheist, mind you. Further on, as I found myself side by side with many groups from New York Cares, I signed up online for their orientation, and found myself booked up with volunteer opportunities.

Much of our wardrobe work involves working in tandem with other people to create a collaborative vision. This is difficult to maintain when sitting alone in one's apartment, inventing ways to feel useful. For me, volunteering provides a way to still my mind, feel as if I am contributing to my communities (intersecting and overlapping), and gain a calm center when circumstances feel out of control. During this past election cycle and new presidential term, I've also used volunteering to channel my anger and feelings of ineffectuality into help for communities that are affected directly. Specifically, I feel the same kind of dissent-driven joy in helping a recent female Yemeni immigrant to study for her citizenship test at the Center for Arab American Families as I did as a teenager participating in Die-Ins with ACT UP in Washington, DC, or helping my mom escort women at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Poughkeepsie.

In less specific ways, food and hunger is universal. Participating in volunteer opportunities at food pantries and soup kitchens feels good, as it actualizes the universally nurturing phrase "Come, eat." Feeding someone is one of the fastest ways to make another person feel better, and it's without any underlying agenda or message.

I am not a better person because I volunteer when I'm not working. I'm actually pretty uncomfortable when people suggest that while I incessantly post on Instagram and Facebook, urging folks to come take action. But I do feel better about the world, and I foster far more hope that people are inherently good than if I didn’t act. I can't recommend volunteering enough as a balm for the soul.”                                                                                     -Eden Miller

Below are links to some of the organizations mentioned by Eden:

http://www.newyorkcares.org/

https://www.volunteermatch.org/

http://www.churchofthevillage.org/hnn/

http://www.repairtheworld.nyc/

https://www.nebhdco.org/golden-harvest-food-pantry/

http://hanac.org/

https://www.citymeals.org/get-involved/volunteer-with-us

http://www.gmhc.org/get-involved/volunteer-15

http://xaviermission.org/programs/foodpantry/

http://www.fathersheartnyc.org/

http://bedstuyagainsthunger.org/support-us/volunteer/