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I have a jacket.
Feb. 8th, 2003 09:53 amIt's a good, warm winter jacket. Not entirely enough for the clodest days out there, but it keeps out the wind and it's really quite warm on average winter days. It's blue, lined with grey, and it has two outside pockets and one inside pocket. It was given to me about a year ago by my Red Cross chapter's Disaster Services - sorry, Emergency Community Services - department. In that time it's become my winter jacket of preference. My black leather jacket is slick and smooth and warm, but it's a Good Jacket; you can't wear it in the wet, or to places where it's likely to get bumped, scuffed, or torn - it looks like a jacket that's supposed to be part of a Look, or the final piece in an Outfit. My only other usable jacket (I cannot quite part with my high school leather jacket, even though it's in no condition to be used as much more than a ferret hideyhole) is a rain jacket that I bought in western Canada. It keeps you dry, but it's made of plastic, lightly lined at best, and cannot stand up to wind to any real degree. Got a hood, though, that's a plus. It's the same blue as the Red Cross jacket. But it still isn't any good in winter by comparison.
The thing about the jacket that Disaster gave me is that in addition to all its other characteristics, it is a Red Cross jacket. There is a big 'Disaster Services' patch on the back, between the shoulder blades - the same grey and white logo that we have on the Ugly Vests with Big Pockets. The right shoulder has a Disaster Services patch showing stylized symbols for flood, fire, lightning, and tornado. The front has a smaller version of the Disaster Services grey and white patch on it.
There is a rule in our Employee Handbook that we may not wear any article of visibly Red Cross clothing into a place where alcohol is served, because we must not do anything that might give the impression that Red Cross workers drink booze while on duty. It doesn't matter if we're sitting in Jose Tejas Bar and Grill with the only virgin daiquiri for fifty miles; if someone with a camera might photograph us, or someone might walk past our table, and reasonably make the assumption from what they saw that we were drinking alcohol - no dice. Change your clothes. Since I don't drink, this isn't a problem for me. I wear the jacket pretty much as my winter default and I take it off if I go into a restaurant, and that's that. Other rules in the employee handbook state that Red Cross workers are supposed to uphold our seven key principles while representing the Red Cross, said principles being humanity, neutrality, impartiality, independence, voluntary service, unity, and universality. No wearing Red Cross clothes to political activities other than secret-ballot voting. No wearing Red Cross clothes to protest rallies or marches. No wearing Red Cross clothes to endorse some ethnic, political, religious, or military side at the expense of another - it's okay to wear them to a generic 'support America's troops' kind of thing, because our Congressional charter requires that the Red Cross assist service members and their families, but it's not okay to wear them to 'War? Hell Yes/War? Hell No' functions. Or, to borrow an idea from NationStates, to wear them to a 'Bigtopians Suck So Let's Make An Insulting TV Show About Them' affair.
I've never felt entirely comfortable wearing my jacket in church. The Red Cross works with religious organizations all the time; we'd be in a really bad way if we didn't have the assistance of the Southern Baptists' men's organization, because they do the kind of mass-feeding work with their mobile kitchens that ordinarily takes a Jewish carpenter and a bundle of fishes and loaves. But that's disaster operations, not religious services. Red Cross neutrality in religious matters dates clear back to Henri Dunant, the founder of the International Red Cross movement; if you can honestly tell me that political correctness and separation of church and state were out of control in the form of a Swiss businessman's ideas in 1859, then I'll be very surprised. We can pray, we can have people pray in our disaster shelters, we can take spiritual requests from disaster victims, soldiers, victims of war, etc. and relay them to their clergy of choice. It's just that as an organization, we're not supposed to endorse particular religions, and I tend to wonder just a bit if wearing the logo in a church setting might not construe an endorsement. I've about gotten to the point where I allow that it's not, and I do my best to think of it as a way of saying 'our members are among you, and we are just like you; we will be there when you need us because we might well be anywhere'. This is because, frankly, I don't want to stop wearing the jacket. It's warm and it's comfortable and I like the look.
I think I've gotten to the point where the jacket is part of my assumed self-image. I'd suck as an entrant to The Matrix, because I wouldn't have a stylish outfit as my baseline, or even that outfit Keanu wore. I'd have jeans and my sneaker-boots (four years old and still going strong!) and probably some T-shirt or other, and my Red Cross jacket. I have come to this conclusion because last week, when I went into Chinatown, I did not wear it. I wore the rain jacket, because it was drizzly and wet. Also because I wasn't sure what stores or restaurants I'd visit and I didn't want to walk into someplace inappropriate with the jacket on. I was in Chinatown both Saturday and Sunday, and I felt faintly uncomfortable the whole time; it was cold and windy and the jacket wasn't enough, and there seemed something missing.
That's when I realized that even in the rain jacket, I was mentally assuming I had the logo jacket on, and that everything I did reflected on my organization. As far as my brain was concerned I was still carrying the Red Cross between my shoulderblades and had to be at least some kind of an example of behavior. Even though I knew damn well that all I looked like was a tourist in a blue jacket and Australian cowboy hat, the reversed Swiss flag was still there...
Congratulations, Red Cross. You and your jacket have achieved an omnipresence in my moral and ethical decisions that the nuns and lay teachers of three separate Catholic schools and a CCD program never could.
Oh, and I'll be wearing the jacket into Chinatown today.
The thing about the jacket that Disaster gave me is that in addition to all its other characteristics, it is a Red Cross jacket. There is a big 'Disaster Services' patch on the back, between the shoulder blades - the same grey and white logo that we have on the Ugly Vests with Big Pockets. The right shoulder has a Disaster Services patch showing stylized symbols for flood, fire, lightning, and tornado. The front has a smaller version of the Disaster Services grey and white patch on it.
There is a rule in our Employee Handbook that we may not wear any article of visibly Red Cross clothing into a place where alcohol is served, because we must not do anything that might give the impression that Red Cross workers drink booze while on duty. It doesn't matter if we're sitting in Jose Tejas Bar and Grill with the only virgin daiquiri for fifty miles; if someone with a camera might photograph us, or someone might walk past our table, and reasonably make the assumption from what they saw that we were drinking alcohol - no dice. Change your clothes. Since I don't drink, this isn't a problem for me. I wear the jacket pretty much as my winter default and I take it off if I go into a restaurant, and that's that. Other rules in the employee handbook state that Red Cross workers are supposed to uphold our seven key principles while representing the Red Cross, said principles being humanity, neutrality, impartiality, independence, voluntary service, unity, and universality. No wearing Red Cross clothes to political activities other than secret-ballot voting. No wearing Red Cross clothes to protest rallies or marches. No wearing Red Cross clothes to endorse some ethnic, political, religious, or military side at the expense of another - it's okay to wear them to a generic 'support America's troops' kind of thing, because our Congressional charter requires that the Red Cross assist service members and their families, but it's not okay to wear them to 'War? Hell Yes/War? Hell No' functions. Or, to borrow an idea from NationStates, to wear them to a 'Bigtopians Suck So Let's Make An Insulting TV Show About Them' affair.
I've never felt entirely comfortable wearing my jacket in church. The Red Cross works with religious organizations all the time; we'd be in a really bad way if we didn't have the assistance of the Southern Baptists' men's organization, because they do the kind of mass-feeding work with their mobile kitchens that ordinarily takes a Jewish carpenter and a bundle of fishes and loaves. But that's disaster operations, not religious services. Red Cross neutrality in religious matters dates clear back to Henri Dunant, the founder of the International Red Cross movement; if you can honestly tell me that political correctness and separation of church and state were out of control in the form of a Swiss businessman's ideas in 1859, then I'll be very surprised. We can pray, we can have people pray in our disaster shelters, we can take spiritual requests from disaster victims, soldiers, victims of war, etc. and relay them to their clergy of choice. It's just that as an organization, we're not supposed to endorse particular religions, and I tend to wonder just a bit if wearing the logo in a church setting might not construe an endorsement. I've about gotten to the point where I allow that it's not, and I do my best to think of it as a way of saying 'our members are among you, and we are just like you; we will be there when you need us because we might well be anywhere'. This is because, frankly, I don't want to stop wearing the jacket. It's warm and it's comfortable and I like the look.
I think I've gotten to the point where the jacket is part of my assumed self-image. I'd suck as an entrant to The Matrix, because I wouldn't have a stylish outfit as my baseline, or even that outfit Keanu wore. I'd have jeans and my sneaker-boots (four years old and still going strong!) and probably some T-shirt or other, and my Red Cross jacket. I have come to this conclusion because last week, when I went into Chinatown, I did not wear it. I wore the rain jacket, because it was drizzly and wet. Also because I wasn't sure what stores or restaurants I'd visit and I didn't want to walk into someplace inappropriate with the jacket on. I was in Chinatown both Saturday and Sunday, and I felt faintly uncomfortable the whole time; it was cold and windy and the jacket wasn't enough, and there seemed something missing.
That's when I realized that even in the rain jacket, I was mentally assuming I had the logo jacket on, and that everything I did reflected on my organization. As far as my brain was concerned I was still carrying the Red Cross between my shoulderblades and had to be at least some kind of an example of behavior. Even though I knew damn well that all I looked like was a tourist in a blue jacket and Australian cowboy hat, the reversed Swiss flag was still there...
Congratulations, Red Cross. You and your jacket have achieved an omnipresence in my moral and ethical decisions that the nuns and lay teachers of three separate Catholic schools and a CCD program never could.
Oh, and I'll be wearing the jacket into Chinatown today.
