A bunch of women in Valley City, North Dakota

I spent the week providing training and technical assistance for one of our affiliated agencies in Valley City, ND. Tuesday and Wednesday were taken up with workshops for the supervisors from several non-profits and I had a great time with some wonderful people. Thursday was the capper, though.

Thursday, I spent time shadowing supervisors in various work areas, mapping their processes, asking questions, putting in my two cents when it seemed appropriate. Most of what I had to offer they already had well in hand. I helped one supervisor re-imagine her work area to make for a more efficient layout. She’ll be able to train and supervise her crew of persons with learning disabilities with less strain to herself and therefore, have more of herself left over to help her workers expand their horizons.

This is what I do for a living. I notice things. I read and research a fair amount but mostly, I watch people do good work and then I put that learning into my memory banks so I can share it with other folks down the line. Hardly ever do I think up something original, mostly because I don’t really need to be all that creative in order to steal other people’s good ideas and hard won experience.

Mainly, I just have to notice and if you’ve picked up one thing from reading this blog, it’s probably that noticing is kind of an obsession with me. Noticing required no particular effort in Valley City. I would have to be an utter dolt not to have realized what I was seeing there.

Gene the maintenance guy spent three decades in law enforcement before coming to this agency as a sort of retirement job. He told me he loved being a cop but even so, wished he’d made the change twenty years earlier. And after spending Thursday with the women who run the Open Door Center, I understand why he feels this way.

I watched them operate a food preparation business, mixing, filling, bagging and boxing, labeling and packing for shipment. The work is mostly done by the disabled clients under the supervision of women who could be running a fill operation for any packager in any city large or small but choose to do it here, in this town, with these workers.

I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to spend a few hours with a woman who is both eager to hear what I might have to suggest but sure enough of her own competence and knowledge to quickly sort through my comments to get to the nuggets. What nuggets there were, that is – it was difficult to find good suggestions to offer when they were already doing so well.

Perhaps the most joyful and heart trending was my visit to the day activity center, where the most severely disabled citizens spend their days. I watched one guy crush cans for recycling. He works from his wheelchair, taking the cans one by one from the hands of a staff member and dropping them in the chute, where the machine does the rest. On a good day, he can crush fifty cans.

This doesn’t qualify as high tech, high volume production, I agree. But for this guy, it represents achievement. Engagement. Membership in the great ‘us.’

While I was there, other staff were helping severely disabled adults eat, entertain themselves, interact with each other. As I left, I glanced to my right into the room where a young woman was changing soiled sheets after having changed and cleaned one of her charges. She grinned and waved. She was dealing with the detritus of an adult client’s bodily functions, performing a function that would make most people gag. And she grinned and waved.

The Americans who are served by the Open Door Center are routinely marginalized by many of the ‘able-bodied’ in this country. These are the folks who are used as punch lines by the Ben Stillers of the world.  They are the ones that Peter Singer would encourage us to euthanize if born this way and Clint Eastwood would smother with a pillow if they came to their conditions through accident or illness. They are the folks whose protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act Rand Paul would erase with a quick vote and the stroke of a pen.

The women (and a few men) who run the Open Door Center see people as people and dedicate their lives to making a society in which we all work together to make a life for all of us, not just those upon whom the good fortune of healthy bodies and facile minds has been bestowed. These folks are why our society works.

I have a couple of weeks at home now and I’m glad for the time to recharge and catch up on my admin and other work. But pretty soon, I’ll be itching to hit the road again. There’s a lifetime of learning out there waiting for me in various nooks and crannies of this country. And having come late to it, I need to suck it in as quickly and fully as I can.

I wish my daughters could spend some time with the strong women in Valley City. We all have a great deal to learn from them. The Ann Coulters of the world may get press explaining why their use of words like ‘retard’ is perfectly fine. The women of Valley City don’t get national notice. But what they do is far more important for this country than any of the ‘accomplishments’ of the Coulters and Eastwoods and Singers of the world.