The Book of Jonah Read Online Free Page A

Aaron began. “I know you all have drinks to finish, and, frankly, so do I.” This joke got more laughter than it deserved, but Aaron could have been reading selections from The Tibetan Book of the Dead and gotten a laugh. “First, I want to thank you for coming tonight. Your donations keep the lights on at QUEST, and more important than money, I want to thank you for giving what’s most precious of all, your time. I also want to direct your attention to the silent auction, which will close at eight, and I want to thank the organizations and individuals who contributed items. I should point out that this year we have two Mets season tickets up for bid, in case anyone is crazy enough to want them.” (Laughter.) “I am pretty sure my bid of five dollars is still leading.” (More laughter.) “So if anybody wants to buy my tickets for the first Mets game this year…” (Sustained laughter.)
    At this point Aaron put his right hand in his pocket, moved his face a bit closer to the microphone—getting serious. “We try to have these drinks for the friends of QUEST every year. A lot of you have been with us from the beginning, back when we weren’t getting grants and I was giving the spiel you probably all have memorized by now in my living room to small groups of you. We try to do this every year because it’s good for the staff and the board and myself to relax and socialize with so many old friends. But we also do it because QUEST, at its heart, is still about those late-night bull sessions in Abbey or Adrian’s kitchen, when all we had was an idea of how to fix New York City schools, and the faith that if we gave people a chance to do the right thing, they would.
    â€œNow, our generation gets accused of apathy a lot. And as a member of the MTV generation old enough to have actually watched videos on MTV, I understand why. No, our generation by and large doesn’t affiliate with religious institutions. We view politics with deep skepticism. We’ve seen the limits of what conventional charities can do. But that to me isn’t apathy. That’s realism. When our generation identifies a problem—and identifying problems is something I think we’d all agree our generation excels at—when we identify a problem in our government, in our society, in our schools, instinctively our first thought is not to turn to some pastor or politician or pundit. We turn to one another. We look to our friends. We go to a friend’s kitchen, and we sit down, and we say to one another, How can we make renewable energy affordable? How can we drive social justice in this country? How can we fix New York City’s schools and lift up New York City’s students?
    â€œAre we that arrogant? Yup. Are we that foolish? Maybe. But we’re also that brave and hopeful and confident. And we are not—we are not—apathetic. Yes, we’ll do it our way, yes, we’ll do it a new way, our own way, but we’ll do it. This is year five of QUEST. We’re in dozens of schools, we’ll double that number in three years, our success metrics are off the charts—whether you want to talk about attendance, exam performance—you name it, we’ve optimized it. And we did it with cocktail parties, we did it with white-box Chinese food, we did it by trusting each other and believing in each other and that is how we are going to keep on doing it. So please: Make a bid, buy a ticket to the gala this fall, be bold enough to bore your friends and colleagues with our story. And if we do all that, we will be the generation of New Yorkers that saves this generation of students. Have a great night, and thank you for coming.” The applause from all corners of 555 Thompson was warm, sustained, heartfelt.
    As Aaron’s speech began, those on the catwalk had moved toward the railing to see, and in this realignment of bodies Jonah had managed to detach himself from