apropos of anything

Tonight I am attending a benefit to raise money and awareness for the famine in Niger and Mali. The snotty part of me wants to snark on how maybe this fundraiser should have been a few months earlier, say in June or July when news of the crisis first reached mainstream media (and even then aid workers were saying it might be too late for many), but the rest of me is just grateful somebody is paying attention to the poor in Africa.

The event has been coordinated by the Georgia Tech MSA, and nothing makes that so obvious as the time they chose to begin. 6:30 on a Friday afternoon. On race weekend. It’s like they want their guests to have stress and anxiety and bad hair days.

I get that students don’t typically think about things like rush hour and when people get off work, but if you’re organizing a fundraiser that depends on the generosity of the employed… perhaps you should take that into consideration. And race weekend? Race weekend? We’re all going to have to make a special du’a before we venture out onto the road.

Race weekend reduces Tara Blvd. to a veritable parking lot. Technically, the big race isn’t until Sunday, but today and tomorrow there are practices and qualifiers. The Busch series practice starts in fifteen minutes, and then the action down at Atlanta Motor Speedway doesn’t cease until after the Truck race, which begins at 9:15 p.m.

Alhumdulillah, the benefit is down by Hartsfield Airport, which means I-85 S instead of I-75 S, so things should ease up considerably after we make it through the Connector. It’s the making it through the Connector part that’s going to have me shaking in my churidar.

(If, in fact, the churidar is what I decide to go with. Six-thirty means I have to get dressed at work, and I couldn’t decide between two outfits all week, so I’ve brought them both and plan to make a decision on the fly. Or, to let Diane decide for me.)

But. Despite the traffic and the time and general inconvenience, if you’re in the Atlanta area tonight, please try to attend. It’s an important, important cause, and if that’s not enough for you, there’s also renowned keynote speaker Siraj Wahhaj. Try to make it out.

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