I volunteered at Festival of the Arts last year, which segued into volunteering for ArtPrize. I decided to repeat my efforts for both gigs this year and, luckily, Fred (who coordinates a lot of this stuff) was up for having a volunteer of the younger variety come along too. Last night we spent an hour and a half laying carpet tiles and cleaning windows. (In a very hot and humid building since the Old Fed is unoccupied most of the time and they don’t run the AC.)

He was such a great helper! He’s a whiz at laying carpet tiles (and snagged some of the remnants to take home) and didn’t complain at all about the window cleaning. He got bored a few times and was, naturally, not thrilled about the sweaty hot mess he was becoming. But he liked it enough to volunteer again tonight. More window washing. And then some shelf washing. The latter was his favorite because it involved a big ladder with wheels.

Fred also made Dev’s evening by inviting us and another volunteer, Nicole, to climb up into the upper ceiling of the building, which used to house a post office. Up above there’s a huge space where people used to supervise the mail sorters below, peeking through slats to make sure they weren’t stealing mail. It’s dusty and creepy up there. So, of course, Dev loved it!