What is this? It‘s the

Monthly Newsletter | Issue IV volume IV | November 2008

STUY KEY CLUB

What is this? It‘s the

Locksmith



,

the official newsletter of Stuyvesant High School Key Club!

Did you know?

We‘re celebrating the 17th anniversary of Stuyvesant Key Club.  The official colors of Key Club are blue, gold, and white.

Find out more of these interesting facts at www.stuykc.org!

From The Desk of the Editor Hey look, it‘s a letter from the editor!

It‘s this time of year! There‘s something special about it, isn‘t there? Having the spirit is to recognize that all of these celebrations are about life and love. What does this season mean to you? What you‘re doing, community service, is giving the present of your presence at events and taking time from the usual things that happen. I thank you for your undeniably beneficial and honorable deeds (and just for being awesome).

This time of year is charity time, so if you haven‘t been active as you would‘ve liked to be, start taking steps in the right direction in the new year! Gather your friends, get together, and do something very meaningful together— go volunteer! Service brings people together.

The greatest and biggest gift of all comes from the heart. We, the youth and the next generation of America, can be the start of something big and accomplish the unimaginable if we spread this idea and all work together toward a common goal to make this world a better place.

just transform their lives. That‘s the key, the bottom line, and that‘s ―our way of life.‖ Now that‘s the spirit. Happy holidays! Have a happy new year. Enjoy reading!

Look inside this issue, and you‘ll find Another Reality, an article about Feed 500 For Thanksgiving, written by Fannie Law and Club/Pub Fair by Katherine Chen.

Teensgiving photos! And more Teensgiving photos!

So give the gift of time this holiday season, not just monetary gifts, and be thoughtful. It doesn‘t matter whether you get back anything or not immediately. It matters how you treat others. Be thankful. Be with your family and your friends. Sometimes, we take many things for granted. Stop and think at this time of year about how lucky we truly are. Appreciate what you have. Spread the idea and the gift of giving Caption contest! Send a caption for the service. Give that gesture to show that you care above photo to locksmith@stuykc.org! about other people. You never know; it might

Clippets of Teensgiving

Another Reality

By Fannie Law The temperature in here is only marginally warmer than the temperature outside. Trains rumble into the station, opening their doors and letting out crowds of people who make even more noise. It’s a cold Saturday morning and I’m standing in the subway listening to a homeless person talk for three hours.

Wonder how I got into this situation? Well, it wasn‘t an accident. I was on one of the many Key Club events during the weekend, volunteering for the New York City Urban Project. This particular event happened to be Feed 500 for Thanksgiving.

I started my day off by traveling up to 207th street, where the event took place. At first, I got lost walking there because it was actually in a church. When I got there, I met Jonathan, who was in charge of the whole event. He was really upbeat and enthusiastic and asked where I was from. I told him that I was from Stuyvesant Key Club. ―So, you guys didn‘t bring any keys?‖ he joked. Haha. I explained that Key Club was an organization with members who do community service by volunteering at events. After that, I signed in and waited for other people to come. Once there were enough people, we started bringing in supplies from across the street to make sandwiches. I recognized some people from Key Club and we got to work putting oranges into lunch bags, opening boxes of chips and cookies, and looking for bread to make the sandwiches. When we finished making all of the lunches, we sat down and waited for Jonathan to make his speech. ―Today, I‘m asking you guys to take that extra step. I‘m asking you guys to step into another reality—one that actually exists in this world. I want you to go up to that homeless person you see sleeping in the subway today and talk to him or her and listen to his or her story. That‘s right, I said homeless PERSON. Not a problem that the police should get rid of. Not an obstacle in your way when you rush to catch the train. I‘m talking about a PERSON. I want you to sit down with them as they eat their lunch and just listen. And I want you to get to know them and love them just because the same God who made you made them. Just because they are. Just because they exist in this wonderful world. The market will crash and everything else will change, but love endures.‖ Well, it wasn‘t word for word, but that was the general gist of his speech. It was truly inspiring. After a few moments, he started to recite a poem called ―My Release,‖ which I don‘t really remember a lot of, but there were some key phrases that did stick in my head throughout the whole day—that there was something bigger than you and bigger than me. That he was majoring in law, and now, he‘s majoring in life. That you are something more than your GPA. And of course, that there was something more important than the next season of Gossip Girl. That got a lot of laughs.

Our group was assigned to 181st street after everyone else rushed to get 42nd street and 34th street. It was fine, since it was only three stops away. Once we got there, we split up into three smaller groups and went our separate ways. Jeshipio and Yvonne were in

More Clippets of Teensgiving

Another Reality [continued] my group. The first person we met was Alejandro, who only spoke Spanish. Ivonne talked to him for a bit and I listened in. We said a prayer for his health and went on. Actually, we forgot to sit down with him and talk to him while he ate his lunch, but it would have been a bit awkward since Ivonne was the only one out of our group who was extremely fluent in speaking Spanish. We resolved to ask the next person and continued walking down the station. At the very end, there were three homeless men, one of whom was awake. When we gave him a lunch, he asked for two more so that he could feed his friends. When we started talking to him, he told us that God was the Father, Jesus was the Son, and that he was the Holy Ghost. We asked him what his name was, but he wouldn‘t give us his real name. ―Just call me Mechanic,‖ he said.

I learned a lot from Mechanic. I learned about proverbs (the right to be stupid is the right to do whatever you want), biochemistry (my mother had a dialysis—when they take all of the blood out of your body and filter it), vocabulary (retaliate, which means to fight back), and even math (a score is 20 years, two scores is 40 years. Half a score is a decade.

A decade is 10 years. Points to Jeshipio. What‘s three and a half scores? ―Um…70 years!‖ answered Jeshipio.). He told us about the time he was beaten in the park by ―15 red devils,‖ or 15 Dominican boys. They hit him in the back of his head with a baseball bat and kicked him in the face. He also told us about the time a Blood member punched him in the face for no reason and knocked out his front teeth. When his friend got up to leave, he thanked us for the food and went on his way. Mechanic looked a bit stunned and said ―I‘ve known him for about a week and I didn‘t think that he would have the heart to say ‗thank you‘.‖ Surprisingly, Mechanic still had a job. He was—you guessed it—a mechanic. He earned about $200 – $300 fixing cars, but he gave away his money to other homeless people. He said that he preached to them and then gave them the money. He also told us a bit about his former life—he was an extremely rich executive with $25,000 suits and even had a girlfriend who was ―6-ft tall and a fashion model.‖ He used to bet on horses, but he lost a lot of money doing it. ―You guys probably just woke up today on a Saturday morning and thought, ―well, I‘m going to do some volunteer work today.‖ But you have no idea what you‘re actually doing. You‘re doing so much more than that. It‘s like, when you have a toothache and the dentist fixes it, you love the dentist. Wait…oh! I‘ve got it! When you‘re giving these lunches, you‘re giving [homeless people] an extra day of life.‖ Those weren‘t his exact words, but I was really touched because it was just like Jonathan said—that there was something more important than us out there and now I was experiencing it secondhand from someone who had been through it—someone who had experienced more tragedy and pain than I would ever have. Someone who was telling me his story right then. And suddenly, I realized that I didn‘t regret waking up early on Saturday anymore. Nor did I care about the loud noise from the trains or about the cold temperature. Because at that moment, I was in another reality.

Club/Pub fair

By Katherine Chen

Others just wanted the candy. Unfortunately (for them), I told them, no candy without As I walked to the cafeteria with Shan Shan, signing up! Many of them signed up for a piece Kevin came and gave me seven sheets of white of candy. paper and told me to write KEY CLUB on it.

And he left. Bewildered, we went in the By then, we had more people manning the cafeteria and picked a table in the middle and table and I was free to walk around. It was began drawing big block letters on the paper. beginning to get stuffy. I walked around with My friend, Jessica, from Free Hugs helped us pamphlets and gave some out, but very few too. For one whole period, we had fun making took one. Most of them either were in Key different designs for different letters. Then all Club (which is a good thing), not interested, too soon, people started to arrive. or not listening (not a good thing). The candy disappeared very early on (which is also a good We were barely done with the letters when thing). When we needed to get the attention the first freshmen arrived. We still had to of more people, we did the Beaver Cheer. color them in and everything. Well, we tried That got a lot of attention. to explain what Key Club was, what we did, and what kind of events we had. Sometime in Towards the end, when there was practically the chaos, Gavin came in and dropped off no one left, we started a congo line and had markers, candy, tape, and some other stuff, lots of fun. After a while, most of the other and left. Still confused, I tried to answer their clubs left and we helped clean up the cafeteria. questions without getting wordy. I don‘t think We got many pages of new members and we I did a very good job explaining. One person had a great time. kept asking me more and more questions.

Visit our district Web site, www.nydkc.org!

Members of Stuyvesant Key Club gave back to the community by planting trees, cleaning up parks, and painting fences at Teensgiving, hosted by the 92nd Street Y and held on Sunday, November 9, 2008.

Wanted: Articles!

Submit your articles, photos, crosswords, word searches, art, lists, etc. to be published in the next issue to us at locksmith@stuykc.org!

Anything is appreciated.

Teensgiving 2008

Need a reminder? Take a look at our calendar of events at tinyurl.com/stuykc and write about an event you went to!

Meet the cab & committee heads!

Gavin – Your President Victoria – Your Vice-President Kenny – Your Secretary Adeline – Your Treasurer Victor – Your Editor Antara – Advocacy Committee Head Rebecca – Advocacy Committee Head

Visit us on the web at stuykc.org!

Email stuykc@yahoo.com for any inquires.

Join groups.yahoo.com/ group/stuykc.

Helen Luo – New Projects Committee Head Christine – Public Relations Committee Head Peiyu – Public Relations Committee Head

Snigdha – Art Committee Head Brenda – Art Committee Head

Donna – USACF Committee Head Helen Song – USACF Committee Head

Shayra – Fundraising Committee Head Amy – Fundraising Committee Head

Jensen – Web Committee Head Chris – Web Committee Head

Bette – Locksmith Committee Head Bryan – Locksmith Committee Head

Photo credits: Thank you to Emily Koo, Katherine Chen, Shirley Lu, Karen Wong, Angie Koo, and Joann Lee for submitting photos for this issue!

Amanda – New Projects Committee Head