Yesterday’s Trip.

View up Seventh Avenue

As I wrote yesterday, I went down to New York City with a number of senior center administrators and a couple of consultants (I guess that I was also one of the consultants, since my expenses were paid for by the non-profit that sponsored the trip.)

The trip for me got off on the wrong foot. As usual I woke up in the middle of the night (3:45am) and couldn’t get back to sleep so when my alarm went off for some reason I thought I was late and rushed to get ready and went flying out the door at 5:45 and I was half way to the Park & Ride where I was to meet some of the others to car pool to the New Haven railroad station, before I realized that I was an hour early. I drove back home and had a leisurely breakfast.

The train ride down on Amtrak was uneventful and we had a meeting on the train to discuss what we wanted to learn from the trip. SAGE (Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders) senior center was only a couple of blocks from Penn Station so we walked down 7^th Ave.

View from the 15th floor

The center is quite busy and most of their funding comes from government agencies and therefore they cannot discriminate so the center is open to everyone. Its focus is on LGBT community but anyone came come in for any of the programs and they do get a number of straight people who come in for the services.

One of the things that they pointed out was that the community drove the programs. If someone wanted a program that the center would train the volunteer to run the program and if critical mass is achieved with the number of attendees the program could continue. It is kind of like “put up or shut up” if you want something bad enough we will give you the tools to run the program. They have a number of trans programs including support groups and programs for trans allies.

After the meeting we got lunch across the street from Penn Station at the Stage Door and went back to the station to eat there while we waited for our train.

It was sobering this morning to wake to read about the Amtrak train wreck, that train was bound for Penn Station.