Sarah Dawn Johnson!

Sarah Dawn Johnson, in addition to having a very pretty name, and, in fact, BEING very pretty, is one of the new(ish) volunteers we are most excited about. Rarely does a new recruit so seamlessly fit into our culture. We don’t want to make it sound creepy, for those of you familiar with Freaks, but she really is “one of us.”

Sarah Dawn Johnson’s trajectory with 826 happened thusly: She facilitated a few Drop-in Writing sessions in September, and then she started with our drop-in program for ELL (English Language Learners) in October. This is when things really started to happen, as it were, as described by ELL-leader Eric Canosa:

Then, on November 17, she baked the ELL team an INCREDIBLE cake, all from scratch. It was a chocolate cake with white chocolate frosting. I had not yet re-veganed and therefore ate some of the cake. It reprogrammed my taste buds forever. This is when I began to suspect that Sarah was Something to Be Excited About. For this cake, Sarah was awarded the “Cool Application of Killer Edibles” paper plate award. Yes, ELL has an awards ceremony at the end of the term. Yes, we nano-rock that hard.

Reader, we found that paragraph so delightful that we almost just posted THAT as her VOTM write-up. Because that really sums it up. AND, another marvelous thing she has recently come up with involves “robo-tweeting,” is really all about summing it up, and is awesome. But we can’t tell you about it just yet. Let’s just say 826michigan’s twitter page is, in the very near future, going to make magic, and it’s all because of Sarah Dawn Johnson.

Furthermore, Sarah Dawn Johnson is co-planning our Visions of the Universe (with Eric), she seems to know what Google Wave is and what it does, she facilitates workshops, and as of two weeks ago, she has joined our illustrious crew of Robotiers, helping out in the Liberty Street Robot Supply & Repair on Thursday nights. (Rumor has it that she might grow a mustache for us this spring, but details on that are forthcoming.)

MOST importantly, Sarah Dawn Johnson once sent us an email titled “826 is my new happy place,” and, frankly, the email was at least ten times as charming as the title.

We’ll end it with another quote from Eric, because this one’s good too, and we’re NOT into plagiary (Although, um, can you believe that’s how “plagiary” is spelled? Have we been pronouncing it wrong or does it seem to have an unnecessary “i”?):

Those are all valid statements of fact (with some commentary), but Sarah’s true value lies in her motivation, intelligence, and creative spirit.

And so, THANK YOU, Sarah Dawn Johnson, for sharing your time and your creativity with us. We like having you around. And we hope that you know that we are inspired by you AT LEAST twenty times as much as you are inspired by us. Infinity.