costume mishap --> altered persona

"I am a man of the people. The people of Cal-i-fornia."
~Zorro

Well, this Halloween, I wasn't a man for the people of California, but I was an educator for the children of the Olympic Peninsula. Though not my usual self. In fact, a misplaced bandana led to a two-day long social experiment with a few amusing results. Read on below for more!

Last weekend, for the local Halloween party, I dressed up as Zorro. For the past almost 2 months, I'd been growing out my beard so I could trim it down to a Zorro mustache with plenty of length to curl the sides up with adequate flair. Well, I guess I should have gotten some mustache wax, because my hair goo wasn't up to the task...but it was close. One of my more successful costumes in recent memory, it included the hat and cape (which I rented from a costume shop nearby), black bandana with eye holes (pilfered) button-down vest, black shirt with poofy sleeves and black pants (goodwill), calf-high leather boots to tuck my pants into (my own) and a thin-bladed French sword (local pawn shop...not quite a foil, but the closest I could find). A way fun party with live music the first half and then great dance mix the second.

But the real fun begins wednesday. We had two programs this week, both from Sequim Middle School, with half the 6th graders mon-wed, and the other half wed-fri. Wednesday was what we call a crossover day, because one group left as another arrived, and we had but an hour to recuperate and re-energize before grabbing another group and beginning to teach. Wednesday was also Halloween.

I had planned to be Zorro again for the kids, though with black waders and rain pants, a shorter cape, and only the bandana with eye-holes and no hat. But in the morning, I couldn't find my bandana, and had to get to work...so no Zorro. Instead I donned a short cape with a Harry Potter "Gryffindor" crest, and apparently looked like a Seeker with that, my red soft-shell jacket, and black leather driving gloves. That was the morning. The experiment began during the crossover.

Excited to mix up my costume, I looked through the costume box and found several items which, together, changed my look quite a bit:

Item one: thick plastic-framed glasses, with non-prescription lenses, meaning they looked like real glasses.

Item two: an old, trucker-style Pac-Man hat.

Item three: lavender-colored ear-muffs.

Item four: a wool jacket, short, with buttons and a belt-buckle wrap around the waist, kind of like some sort of air force meets gamer jacket.

All together, I looked a little ridiculous. But I decided to have a bit of an experiment. Since these kids had never met me, I decided not only to be in costume, but to alter my entire persona, and continue the experiment thursday as though I wasn't in costume at all on wednesday. So I spoke a bit higher, talked faster, got excited at decidedly nerdy things (well, even more-so than usual) and changed the gait of my walk.

The next step was that night, when I dressed up as an old man as part of our night-hike evening program. With an enormous gray beard, wig, and "old man" makeup, barely any of my face was visible and in the dark I led 4 groups of kids (1 group at a time) to the dock to tell the story of the Lady of the Lake. Marissa dressed up as the Lady, and hid in the canoe next to the dock, and at the appropriate point sat up and scared the heck out of the kids, before calming their fears by explaning that she's a friendly ghost. It was great. And, none of the kids knew who I was. At all.

The next day, I returned to my daytime-dorky persona, and when a few kids asked if I was at the night hike I told them no, I had the night off, which they believed. So I stayed in character the whole day.

This morning, I showed up at morning meeting to tell my kids where to meet me when dismissed -- sans glasses, and also with my mustache shaved off, and with a beanie rather than the trucker hat. When I walked in, gave a quick direction in my normal, lower voice, and then walked out, I heard several kids ask "Hey! Where's Yoshi??" Perfect.

When we met up, I told them I celebrate halloween on fridays, and this was my costume. I got a few head scratches at that. Successful experiment? Check. More analysis of change in social interaction due to different personas pending, for I must be leaving.

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A pleasant encounter after a rockin' (first) solo backpack

As per my last post, I often get annoyed at drivers on the road. So often they're obnoxious, oblivious or obstinate. But today, I had an encounter of the opposite nature that just tickled me.

As I drove out of Olympic Natl. Park earlier today, having just completed my first solo backpacking trip (more on that later), I was having fun speeding around the curves of the road that leads to Hurricane Ridge. As I came around one corner and approached another, a truck approaching me flashed its lights several times. My first reaction was to slow down, which I did, then wondered "why was that guy flashing his lights at me? Did he think I was driving too fast? Hm."

Well, my answer came around that next corner, where I saw a parked Ranger Truck clearly looking for speeders. And, because the dude in the truck had flashed his lights at me (which I now realized was a warning) I was going just over the speed limit -- not nearly fast enough for the ranger to pull me over. Had I not received that warning, however...it quite possibly could have meant a speeding ticket. And who needs that? So, as I drove past the Ranger truck with a wave, I couldn't help but giggle out loud and pumped my fist up in the air with a "rock on!" salute to the driver who warned me that a Ranger was around the corner waiting for speeders like me. Guy in the truck, whoever you are, you rock. I wish more drivers were as thoughtfully awesome as that guy.

That being said...as I mentioned earlier I just completed my first solo backpacking trip. AWESOME. is what it was. I had yesterday and today off work, and figured I should do something worthwhile, and decided to go backpacking in the Olympics, especially since I got a sweet new backpack for my birthday. Since nobody else was off, though, I didn't have any companions...thus the solo. After a couple recs, I decided to start at Obstruction Point, a short drive from Port Angeles, and head out to the Grand Lakes area via the Lillian Ridge traverse. I also wanted to check out Grand Pass/Grandview Peak, but decided I would probably set up camp before that point and then do a quick trip up and back.

So, I headed out from the trailhead right about 1130 after eating an enormous breakfast at The Haven in PA - veggie scramble plus one slice of their special autumn french toast, since I couldn't decide btwn the two options - which was totally delish. Good thing I was going backpacking, because I ate a lot. After filling my water bottle at the Hurricane Ridge Visitor's Center, I headed down Obstruction Pt. Road, which is decidedly treacherous at some points and I don't recommend if you have a serious fear of heights. After not too long, though, I got the trailhead and got myself ready to head out.

The trail heads up a nice little uphill stretch - just long enough to get the legs burning - and then cuts along Lillian Ridge with awe-striking views of the escalating mountains to the southwest and timber-filled Badger Valley to the northeast. I expected rain sometime in the afternoon, and the clouds didn't seem like they would let me down as they cast a thick wool blanket over the sky and the wind tore around the ridge.

After a mile and a half or so, the trail begins cutting down into Grand Valley, along steep talus-strewn slopes that made me glad I brought along trekking poles. Grand Lake came into view after another mile, and after a succession of switchbacks that brought me into a dark and cool fir forest and a couple small stream crossings I found myself at the junction above Grand Lake where I took a break before heading further to Moose Lake and eventually to Gladys Lake where I made my camp.

Gladys Lake is the smallest of the three tarns - small mtn lakes, often formed in cirques created by glaciers that carved out the mountainside and then left a lip in their wake as they receded - in Grand Valley, with a house-sized boulder sitting on the peninsula that extends into the middle of the tarn. Though adequately tired out, I kept looking past the first campsite to see what other options I had, and found a perfect little heather meadow nestled into the slope just on the other side of the lip that holds the lake. With a rectangular flat area on ground slightly higher than the dangerously tempting flat circular recession a few yards away (a bad idea, especially with rain in the forecast), which would become my cooking area, and a near-horizontal fallen tree suspended a good twenty feet off the ground - perfect for hanging a bear-line - I knew I had found my site.

I got some water boiling to make some miso to go with my peanut butter crunch Clif Bar (dipped in peanut butter - mmm) and got my tent set up, and just as I got my bear-bag hung the rain began to drizzle. Tired as I was, with plenty of day left to spare, I crawled into my sleeping bag to enjoy my miso, read a bit and take a nap. Disaster nearly struck when I knocked my miso cup onto the tent floor, but luckily it stayed in a constrained puddle long enough for me to slurp most of it up before it could spread all over (my tent is clean...right?). While I wiped it up pretty well with my camp towel, I had kind of broken the whole "no food in the tent" rule pretty badly...hopefully the rain and falling temperatures would keep the bears from snooping too closely? Hm.

At any rate, I awoke from my nap to discover that the rain had stopped (and that a deer and fawn were grazing outside my tent - hullo), so I grabbed the window of time to hike up to Grand Pass, another mile+ or so up the trail. My pack substantially lighter without my food, tent, sleeping bag, pad, etc., my legs nonetheless burned and groaned the entire way up. I made it to the top though, and a little further up to Grandview Peak (6670 ft), and was treated to astounding views of Lake Lillian and McCartney Peak to the southwest, Cameron Creek down in the valley to the south, and Grand Valley and another valley whose name I couldn't figure out (Lillian River Valley?) to the northeast and north. As the wind kicked up and clouds swept by around me at right about 6 pm, I gave a good whoop that echoed in the valleys and then made my way back down to camp.

The rain started coming down again just as I got into camp (sweet timing) and I got water going for dinner. Scrumptious. Just as it was getting dark, I pulled my headlamp out, which opened at the same time and I heard something roll down my pack and into the underbrush. Looking at my headlamp, I saw that two batteries were missing, so reached around in the bushes and found one battery pretty quickly despite the quickly receding light. The second, however, proved a rather different story. After a few minutes of poking around trying to feel it, I decided some light was in order. How ironic. The headlamp with a missing battery being my only light, and having not brought extra batteries (oops) I pulled out a lighter and used the small light from the flame to search around for that elusive battery. A good ten minutes later, it was still nowhere to be found. Well, I wasn't panicked - I could certainly feel my way back into my tent and into my sleeping bag, and didn't think I would need the light for an emergency hike-out. But it was only 7:45 and I wanted to read for awhile before bed. About to resign myself to the darkness, I had one last idea spring to mind and reached into my backtop to find that the other battery had fallen not onto the ground but into this pocket. Hooray!

Headlamp on head, I escaped the rain and read up on the Natural History of the Olympics for a couple hours while I warmed myself up. It was really hard to pull myself out of my sleeping bag and into the rain to pee, but I knew I wouldn't sleep well without peeing first. So, having peed, I wondered whether the rain would last all night, and whether enough would seep in through the seams I forgot to seam-seal to be problematic, and then went to sleep.

I awoke about 2:30 to discover that the rain had stopped, and poked my head out to see that, though a thin veil of clouds covered the just-past-full moon, it was still bright beyond belief and my entire campsite was lit in a pale and serene (and kind of spooky) glow such that I half expected wolves to wander through and break the quiet with their howling, despite wolves having been extirpated from the Olympics back in the 1920s. Needless to say, a really cool moment that was much appreciated before pulling back in and going back to sleep.

After sleeping in, I was glad to hear that the rain had not returned, and was even more surprised to find sun and blue sky above when I got out of the tent. Not that it was warm, mind you. The beads of rain from earlier in the night had frozen to the tent and the heather was frosted through the meadow. But seeing the valley in the sunlight was a beautiful contrast to the also beautiful shades of grey from the day before. So I made some tea and grabbed my siddur.

In order to find some sunlight, I took my tea and siddur with me across the stream nearby and davened shacharit in the crisp sunlight with a chilly wind occasionally blowing through. Interestingly, as I approached the Amidah I felt distinctly warmer between the wind calming down and the sun climbing higher in the sky. I walked back to my campsite humming nigguns and got breakfast water going.

While waiting for my food to hydrate, I did a few of my favorite katas and Mon Gon Teon (that will only make sense to a few of you) to loosen up and get the blood flowing, and chowed down before packing up camp and heading out. Saying a hooray inside for the continuing sunlight, I soon passed Grand Lake and turned northeast to head back along the Badger Valley trail to loop back to Obstruction Point. Following Grand Creek down Grand Valley before crossing over to Badger Valley and climbing up out the Badger Creek drainage, this trail is longer but less steep and stays lower for longer as it passes through thicker fir forests than my previous route. It also shows opportunities for some very cool water features on Grand Creek - ie the splendiferous waterfall I went off trail to get a good view of and the smaller drop-off into a brown-tinted pool that almost looked more like it belonged in Australia than in the Olympics, where I took a break and ate a chocolate brownie clif bar smeared with peanut butter and drizzled with honey on top. Backpacking lets you make such great creations.

Anyway, the legs were mad tired as I climbed out through the Badger Creek drainage, and while the sun was still shining here and there as the clouds opened (wow they move quickly) the temperature was definitely dropping and around 3:30 some tiny snowflakes whisped around me (apparently it snowed at nearby hurricane ridge). The final climb up to Obstruction Peak was a haul, but well worth it as I got to my car at 5 and chatted for a minute with an elderly couple coming up to see the view.

So, fully satisfied with my quick trip out n' around, I came back into town and chowed down a huge portion of phad thai, and am now chilling at the house in port angeles listening to Blake attempt to control the girls by talking to them like the girls he coaches in soccer - "Kris! A spoon and ice cream now or you gotta run a lap!" It's not working very well. Maybe someone should remind him that there really is a doghouse outside.

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Like most good environmentalists, few things get me more riled up while driving than the sight of an enormous Hummer roaring down the blacktop. But today, while driving back to the Olympic Peninsula after spending Yom Kippur in Spokane, I chanced an encounter that was almost beyond absurd.

Somewhere between Cle Ellum and North Bend as I drove through Snoqualmie Pass (rugged territory, I know...especially where the highway goes from two lanes to four; good thing I have an all wheel drive Suby) I approached a bright yellow Hummer.

What struck me first was that this was an old-school Hummer, back from the days when Hummers (or were they called Hum-Vees back then? I'm not sure we ever got that figured out) were still a sight that aroused a response more akin to "what the hell is that thing??" than "[insert numerous expletives, curses and hexes here]" like today.

As I came closer, I saw that the Hummer had a Jesus fish on its rear bumper, and a stenciled window decal of Jesus -just the face with the crown of thorns, not the whole body crucifixion- on the back window. Hm. Not your usual Hummer flair.

With an eyebrow raised, I passed the Hummer in the right lane and was rendered speechless by the phrase I could see in my rearview mirror, repeated twice along the bottom of the windshield: "Team Extreme."

Wow. An old-school, bright yellow Hummer (or is it HumVee?) with Jesus stickers on the back and Team Extreme blazing across the windshield in front. Needless to say there were also rally-car high-beam lights affixed to the top. Anyone who has seen Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle will appreciate the wonderful irony of seeing this phenomenon in real life. I almost feel blessed that I had such a rare opportunity today, were it not for the faint rumble of nausea that accompanied the experience.

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an update on the life

Well my goodness a lot has happened since my last post. Most of the people who actually read this blog (my mom, my sister, maybe maggie and rachel...maybe...any other consistent readers I don't know about?) will already know, but I decided not to take the fellowship in boston. yadda yadda but it wasn't the right choice for me this year. After looking into things, and flying to Chicago unsure of where I would go once I picked up Shayna's car, I got a voicemail upon landing from Kim at the Olympic Park Institute (OPI), who I had called the week before to inquire about any staff openings (and left a message...so had never actually spoken person-to-person), to let me know a couple positions had opened up and she would like to speak with me. Long story short(er) - I sent her my resume etc, we spoke the next day on the phone, I got an offer the next morning, and the next morning (last saturday) I left chicago to drive west.

4 full days of driving (and 2,269 miles) later, I was at Kim's house for a welcome dinner where I met new and returning staff, and then went to the house - Le Sage, as it's called - across the lake from OPI where I'll be living this fall. And discovered I have no cell phone reception or internet out there (but do have a landline phone). Definitely felt like I'd regressed 12 years back to the mid-90s. But it's absolutely gorgeous, right on glacier-fed Crescent Lake, with an enormous deck, dock and boathouse, and I share it with 2-4 other staffers (depending on whether Margaret and Chris, a staff couple, are sleeping there or at the house in town).

The next morning, I caught a ride in to the OPI campus with one of my housemates (Claire) and saw it for the first time, just 20 minutes before new staff training started. Hard to believe that just a week earlier at roughly the same time I was boarding a plane to Chicago without any idea what I would be doing, and now I was starting a new job. Oh, what is this job, exactly? Excellent question, and I suppose one that would have been good to answer a couple paragraphs ago. I'll be a field science educator here at OPI; essentially a field instructor, very similar to the environmental education work I was doing at MOSS, but teaching a wider range of ages and topics.

So far, staff training has been going well. The new staff get along really well, and the older staff are all very open and enthusiastic. Right now I'm at the staff house in town (port angeles) where they just got internet installed. Tonight we'll probably head to Le Sage for dinner, which none of the other new staff have seen yet, and tomorrow we're hoping to go to Port Townsend for the wooden boat festival, which should be fun.

So that's about it for now. I'm sure I'll update more later as more happens, but I'm super excited to continue staff training and then start teaching in a week. It seems like a great community, and I think I'll have the opportunity to learn a heck of a lot. Righteous.

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oregano with the wind

There's an oregano field just outside Rathdrum, ID that I pass when traveling to/from Sandpoint. the past couple times the herb has been in full bloom, a shimmering facade of purple over green topped only by the incredible smell.

In the house on Manito Blvd where I grew up, we used to have a patch of oregano growing in the garden. Situated as it was along the dilapidated sports court between our house and the back alley - which was the usual route home, whether from school or from our grandparents' house around the corner - I passed the oregano cluster sometimes several times a day, and it's a smell ingrained into my childhood, much like picking fresh blackberries and raspberries from the fence along the alley. Being a smell, though, it hits something different from the somewhat more abstract memory of picking berries - though I'm sure if I were standing along a blackberry bush, its smell would hit me similarly.

Anyway, the point is really just that the oregano field smells totally, absolutely, completely wonderful and is just one more reason I'm glad I started taking a different route between Spokane and Sandpoint, bypassing Coeur d'Alene for the Rathdrum Prairie with its rural golden fields and aromas.

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A Reason to Worry

On my way to Coeur d'Alene this morning, I saw a bumper sticker that read:

"Why worry? God is in control."

Incidentally, the car also had a Bush/Cheney '04 sticker on the window as well. The combination really got me thinking - what a terrible philosophy to go about your daily life with. It's tantamount to saying humans have no responsibility for the consequences of our actions and decisions, whether for ourselves, for others or for our planet.

Let's take global warming as an obvious issue that I'm concerned with. To follow this bumper sticker ideology, we shouldn't worry. And we shouldn't feel the need to take any responsibility either. Sure, the climate is changing, the ice caps are melting, sea levels will rise, populations up to the millions may die or get displaced by flooding as coastal cities find themselves off-coast disaster areas. Infectious diseases will spread increasingly rapidly, drought will juxtapose flooding, food will be scarce - but why worry? God is in control.

We could look at any number of issues - Iraq, Darfur, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - and excuse ourselves from responsibility because hey, God is in control. Iraq is a mess, but clearly God wants us to interfere with the spread of Islam and is in control in Iraq. Millions are dying from disease and conflict, but it's God's bidding, so why worry?

As I see it, the last thing God would say to humanity right now is not to worry. If anything, God would say "My children, why aren't you doing more?! How can you continue destroying your brothers and sisters and my earth??" God would want us not only to worry about the state of the world, but to also do something about it. Tikkun Olam. I just cannot submit to a fatalistic view of God's will. As Jews, we are taught that we've been given stewardship over this planet and all its - God's - creatures. Stewardship has a very specific connotation, different from ownership or signing a lease. A steward is defined as one who administers anything as the agent of another or others. We've been placed in charge, been given this charge, by God to administer the affairs of this earth, which places a huge amount of responsibility in our hands.

For better or for worse, God may be in control, but not in the way the bumper sticker implies. God is in control the same way as a parent or teacher is, who gives their children or students a task and then sits back to watch as the child is then free to make mistakes, to find failures and ultimately successes. In this way, the child is taught accountability for their decisions and actions. They cannot rely on the mantra: "mommy and daddy will make it all ok." And we cannot rely on the mantra: "Don't worry, God is in control, and will make it all ok." If there exists a messianic era to come, we have a lot of work to do - work that only we, as humans, can choose to do - before we've prepared each other and the world for that era.

So don't tell me not to worry. I will worry, as long as humans continue to dominate and destroy each other, as long as humans destroy the planet and its resources. But I will also hope, and that goes hand in hand with worrying. Because if you concede that God is the only factor controlling everything, then it doesn't matter what we do as humans. And if it doesn't matter what we do, what significance do we have in our destinies, individual or collective? I can't accept this lack of significance. So I will worry, and I will hope, and I will choose to take responsibility, because that's what God asks of us.

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karmic(?) ubsurdity

I had a day yesterday. I suspect karma may have something to do with it, but if that is indeed true, I'm worried because I really don't know what I've done. At any rate . . .

My day began with heading down to the emissions testing center since my (17 yr old) astrovan is need of renewal. It didn't pass. At all. I'll need to take care of that.

Possible source of weird joojoo number one: polluting the environment despite not only being an environmentalist but working in the field.


So, after this disappointing news, I got on the road to head back to Sandpoint for a couple days. Traffic was getting questionable as I approached Post Falls, so I decided to try a different route that had been on my radar for awhile, but through which I'd never actually gone. This route took me through Rathdrum and spit me out back on 95, north of Coeur d'Alene, thus bypassing the corridor with lots of traffic lights and potentially heavy traffic. Saved me 5-10 minutes, and is a more pleasant drive.

So ok, feeling pretty good after this. Arrive at the hatchery to find that the bench and, more importantly, my mailbox that sits on top of the bench, are gone. Hm. See the bench a ways off under some trees (my guess - appropriated for sitting...suspicious) and find my mailbox inside the hatchery building. Fourth of July cleaning? Perhaps. But in case there was any attempt to deliver me my mail, it would have been unsuccessful this week, which is not a good thing. I'll have to check with the post office on that.

Go into my trailer to discover that the little (probably 3-6 mm long, or smaller) spotted beetle-bugs that I occasionally found around my trailer before this week have multiplied in my absence to a number best described as problematic. Work up quite the sweat getting rid of all of them I can find (it's approaching 100 degrees outside, and my trailer isn't any cooler). I think I made a solid dent in their population, but I still find them frequently for the next 20 hours. I will probably find more when I return for lunch.

Ok, so having scourged the trailer of beetle-bugs (I don't have a more specific name as of now), pores saturated and body covered with sweat, I jump in the lake. This part is not odd or bizarre, just nice and refreshing. I then head into town to get some work done at the library.

After leaving the library, I swing by the store for some groceries, and then back through town to get on the main road that takes you out of town and across the bridge south on 95. There's often some backed-up-ness on this road, so I when I see a long line of cars ahead of me as I approach the T-intersection, I don't worry, just wait for some nice person to let me in so I can join the waiting fun. After moving approximately 1.72 blocks in 8 minutes, traffic stops completely. Less than a block ahead of me, I can see the traffic light for the right turn, and as it goes from green to yellow to red to green to yellow to red to green . . . you get the idea . . . and we haven't moved a foot, I start to get suspicious. It's seeming less and less like your run of the mill traffic slow down. Eventually, I realize we ain't goin' nowhere anytime soon, so I cut the motor, and try not to let the heat and dehydration get to me too much.

After some 35 minutes of people watching and eight or nine songs on the radio later, traffic starts to creep. We even crawl for a few minutes, then creep again. A woman walking along the sidewalk who had come from the other direction (traffic was only stopped going our way) told us it's bad, and it's gonna be awhile. Well, it had already been awhile, but seeing as I really needed to get back to my trailer at some point, and the only other options were driving 1.5-2 hours west around the lake or parking my van in town and walking, I decided to sit it out a bit longer. Just as I began weighing options for walking - ie what I should take with me, what I could just leave in the van, whether I could reasonably carry all my perishable groceries as well as my laptop the 4 or so miles back, etc - we began crawling again, and then even bearwalking!

So, at a slowish pace, we finally crossed the bridge. There had indeed been an accident, and a doozy of one too. Just past the two gas stations between the long-bridge and town (those of you familiar with Sandpoint will know what I'm talking about) was a small, oldish hatchback with its front completely smashed in and a SUV flipped completely upside down, with its top half (think a horizontal line from the top of the hood back - everything above that) completely smashed flat. Glass and flecks of paint and plastic everywhere, of course, but what struck me as I drove past (I got a better look than usual since we were going so slow) was that you could see all the random little things that are tossed in various pockets and corners. Little bottles of lotion and sunscreen, a granola bar, a pen or two - that kind of thing. And then I wondered, How does that even happen? There's a bit of a curve in the road there, and the speed limit drops from 55 to 35, but this wasn't a flipped over in a ditch kind of thing. It was just laying there in the middle of a two-lane road, hemmed in with guard rails on either side. Perhaps the driver was distracted and realized they were going to run into the slowed or stopped cars ahead, and swerved radically, thus flipping themselves? And the small little hatchback ran into them from behind? No clue. I do hope that nobody was seriously injured. I also wonder if we have some sort of preordained traffic destiny. Maybe each of us has a specific length of time required to sit in traffic, and where we scoop off the top in one case to save time, we'll get pounded at another time. For example, while I saved 5-10 minutes of traffic by swinging through Rathdrum instead of CdA, I obviously lost substantially more than this later that day.

At any rate, I finally got back to my trailer an hour after departing Safeway (rather than the usual 12-15 minutes), and when I went to grab my groceries saw that a chocolate bar had not only melted at the bottom of the paper bag, in the extreme heat it had oozed all over, getting gooey chocolate and cocoa oils everywhere. Well, I sigh, but nothing is ruined (besides a good part of my chocolate bar) so I salvage what's left of the chocolate and put it in the fridge to solidify it, clean the goo off everything else, and decide to mix myself a glass of emergen-C to help with this headache I've developed somewhere between the library and home.

I grab the full Brita filter I so thoughtfully placed in the fridge before leaving, fill up my favorite glass, dump in a packet of lemon-lime and a packet of raspberry (they taste way better when you mix them), and give the glass a good stir. I take the glass in my right hand, lift it towards my mouth, and am startled to find that the bottom of the glass is no longer attached to the portion of the glass actually in my hand and emergen-C has gushed out this newfound waterway and is rapidly spreading across the counter, stove and floor like a little pink mini-lake missoula flooding across the Columbia Plateau.

At this point I grabbed my phone, stepped outside my trailer, sat on the step, and called Rachel because I needed to share these events with someone who would understand their absurdity. She agreed, we chatted a bit - this part was also nice - and then I was drawn back into my trailer by the evaporating, increasingly stickified emergen-C coating my countertop.

Thus, back to our chain of odd events. How or when this crack around the lower circumference of my favorite glass which led to a splitting of top and bottom occurred, I have no idea. But I was left with a hollow glass cylinder and a dense paperweight-ish glass-bottom sitting on my countertop, neither of which I wanted there nor in the plastic bag I call my trash either (sharp and heavy glass inside flimsy plastic seemed like a poor choice). So, what to do?

My first inclination was to smash them gleefully against the rocks on the shoreline, but then you've got broken glass everywhere, which is not a good thing. So instead, I took the top cylinder into the hatchery building, and threw it in the trash sitting inside the bathroom where I shower and go No. 2 (and where it sat for several days mocking me before it was eventually covered by paper towels), and decided that, due to its heft and the bizarre nature of the whole thing, the bottom portion of the glass deserved a different fate. Its fate, I decided, would be to sit at the bottom of Lake Pend O'Reille for all of eternity. Or at least until forces of water and pressure slowly grind it into bits and pieces at which point it would join the sandy bottom of the lake, and continue its journey through the rock cycle. But, I digress.

Satisfied that I had a good plan, I took this chunk of glass with me to the dock, and, looking at this glass in the palm of my right hand, said something like:

I don't know what it is about today, but there's some bad joojoo going on, some weird and bizarre karma. I'm not sure what the source of all this is, but seeing as you are a direct manifestation of the latest occurrence in a strange day, I imbue within you all the bad joojoo responsible for today's events. As surely as you will sink to the bottom of this lake, may the negative (or at least odd) energy surrounding me find itself vanquished.

With that stoic monologue, I gave the glass bottom a mighty heave, and watched it arc into the lake with a solid splosh. Smiling, I looked down at the hand that had thrown away this manifestation of oddness, and saw that, in the act of throwing, I had made two small but clean lacerations in my first and middle fingers, and sighed at the blood slowly trickling out.

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additional thoughts

Re-watching the mtv global warming video I posted a couple days ago, I thought I would share some additional thoughts. Many of you will no doubt find the message a bit jarring, which I did. Some of you could validly accuse the ad of subscribing to sensationalism, which I think, to an extent, it does. But that doesn't make it wrong.

The key thing I would emphasize when using this kind of approach is that your target audience is everything. College students, my parents, my friends - these types of people are who I would show this video to. Fifth graders? Not a chance. This cuts to the heart of our teaching philosophy at MOSS, which is that we do not teach (/preach) values, we teach science. What is the point of spreading so-called "doom and gloom" messages to students who are too young to actually do anything about it?

Not only is it counter-productive, it can actually be detrimental to our broader goal of instilling that key sense of awe (about the natural world) that is such a huge factor in ultimately making choices that are good for the planet. When students are given depressing messages without the ability to have any impact on what happens, it leads to a kind of nihilistic defeatism - if these things happening are bigger than me, then my choices don't matter, and since I can't have an impact, it's ultimately easier choosing not to care.

That being said, there are some fantastic programs happening around the country that are able to directly mobilize students - at surprisingly young ages - to create local projects that actually do have an impact. The key is that these things have to start local. If you teach your 4th grade class about rainforest destruction half a world away, and have a bake sale to raise money to save the rainforest, then what happens next? The school cuts a check, sends it off to X charity, and at most the kids get some pictures and a thank you note saying "your money saved 1 acre of rainforest land that you'll never actually see!" Ok so I'm totally being hypothetical/fictional - but contrast that to the kinds of local projects that have a tangible impact, whose presence can be seen on a regular basis as kids go through their schoolyards or neighborhoods. And then extend that kind of foundational positive experience to choices made later in life and contrast those choices to our earlier defeatist model. I think it's obvious which the preferred method is.

None of what I'm saying is particularly ground-breaking, and there's a solid amount of literature on these topics out there for further reading. The point I wanted to get across is that while I found the mtv ad worth sharing - it has an important message and is well-crafted - its limitations weigh on me. That being said, if you haven't watched it yet, scroll down and do so!

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Collaboration? No Sweat!

Al Jazeera TV interviews Jewish-American CEO Adam Neiman, No Sweat Apparel, regarding producing a line of union-made T-Shirts in Bethlehem, Palestine:



"Both Israelis and Palestinians agree on this one thing...that more good jobs - in Palestine - will help, and won't hurt."
~Adam Neiman, President, CEO - No Sweat Apparel

"We're working for trade, not aid."
~Bethlehem Factory Manager

A wonderful example of the type of collaboration that will establish roots of change necessary for any sort of permanent solution.

Check out their website here

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I came across this video today in Brad Soulas' advertising blog. In the words of Brad:

SO, instead of counting down the days till the iphone hits stores, causing mass pandemonium, this piece by MTV gives us a countdown for the time left until we have done irreversible damage to good ole' blue/green. The production is stellar, the concept is great and the message, although daunting, is just right.

I couldn't put it much better myself.


note: the text in the video is a little hard to read at this size and resolution, so I copied it here:

Global warming's tipping point means that if we don't do something in the next 10 years . . . it will be too late to do anything at all.

So, there are just ____ days left to save the world.

[end]

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what next? Casa Nueva Vida next!

I've been procrastinating for far too long right now, so this will have to be a quick post, but I thought I should give a quick update now that I've decided what I'm doing next year! That being, Childrens' Education Coordinator at Casa Nueva Vida, a homeless shelter in Boston for single Latina mothers and their children which seeks not only to provide safe, permanent and affordable housing, but also to empower their residents to become independent of all forms of public assistance. I'll be working with children anywhere from infants to high school kids, tracking their progress, coordinating volunteers who come to help tutor, creating and running ed. programs and field trips, etc. Lots of one-on-one time, which will be great, as well as enough administrative work to keep it interesting.

The position is actually a placement for a fellowship with the Jewish Organizing Initiative. I received a conditional acceptance back in April, and have been working on finding a placement since then. It's been a long process (not without its frustrations, as noted in an earlier post) and I'm glad it's over! Friends and family will note (and probably question) that the position has no direct correlation with environmental work -- and this is something that I agree is unfortunate -- but I think the benefits of working in a diverse community, gaining educational experience and a year of training workshops and seminars in organizing through the fellowship program (every friday the fellows come together for this as well as Jewish learning), and the Jewish community created by the fellowship of young Jews interested in social justice will make it a very worthwhile year. My task will then be to bring this experience and learning with me when I return to directly environmental work.

Ok, speaking of work, I'd better get back to it. One last comment though - I'm excited to be back in Boston! Those of you still in the Boston area (and the entire northeast, for that matter) who I haven't been able to see nearly often enough this past year will therefore find me saying hello in person far more frequently :-)

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Finally took some pictures of my trailer and the hatchery area, so I thought I'd post them to give ya'll an idea of where I'm living for the summer!

This is my cozy trailer:

The building behind it is the hatchery building, where they develop eggs and is where I have a real bathroom and shower, which is nice. Past the bottom left corner of the trailer you can see the grate above the outflow for the hatchery building. It adds a nice babbling brook soundtrack as I go to sleep, and is a great makeshift cooler for bbq's and such when I need more room to cool beverages than my fridge accords me.

When I'm not working at the library, this is my office:


That's the Pend O'Reille river; technically it's the river and not the lake, but in all other aspects it really functions as a lake still. Behind the river you can see part of the Selkirk Mountains, in and amongst which Sandpoint is nestled.

Here are some pics of the hatchery site and developing Waterlife center areas. You'll see the hatchery building, pools and some loading equipment for the tank-trucks used to transport fish to area lakes, rivers and such, and then what will be the interpretive center (the house under renovation), the pond and the amphitheatre/viewing area for the WDC:



And, finally, a couple more pretty pics from the dock. That's Game Warden Tom Whalen's boat cruising away after stopping by to say hello. There's no actual gangplank connecting the dock in the picture to the dock on which I'm standing, so I can't actually get out there yet unless I want to swim.

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what now?

I found out today that I didn't get the position I was hoping for at the Haley Elementary school in Boston. Essentially, it was because I couldn't fly out to meet in person, and the principal didn't feel that he could get the proper "buy-in" from staff and parents to hire an outside person without meeting that person.

So where does that leave me now?

Well, I can still look into other JOI placements - though, to be honest, I'm not feeling incredibly optimistic right now. This has been an incredibly long process, starting with the application due in April, the rounds of interviews with JOI, waiting for placements, a couple phone interviews the past couple weeks for the Haley placement, and now it's back to square...3 or something. Or maybe square one, if no JOI placement works out. Add in the whole Green Corps application and interview process, and it feels like my other full time job has been getting a job for next year. I suppose that a process this lengthy (back to JOI) means either that it will be really worth it when I do find a placement...or it's time to pack it in. I'm not going to yet, I'll see what the other placements offer and whether I can see myself working at any of them for a year...but nothing is for sure.

Other options for this coming year? There's always the back up working at the Teva Nature Center, teaching Jewish env. ed. That wouldn't be a bad fit, right? Work there for the fall season, and figure out what next...could be NOLS outdoor educator semester, could maybe be working with some program like the Jewish Volunteer Corps overseas with a NGO anywhere from Thailand to Ghana to wherever else. Like I mentioned in my previous post, I'm feeling the itch to travel...so maybe this is all fortuitous? I think it's too late to do nols' year in patagonia this year...their waiting list must be lengthy. But I could look into it. And then the other big option is applying for the Arava Institute's Master program in Israel. I'd intended to hold off another year or two...but maybe the time is now? Don't know. The application is due in two weeks, which is enough time (barely) but means I need to decide this weekend if I'm going to apply for this fall.

Of course, year in patagonia would be pretty incredible...maybe I had better get myself on that waiting list...

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world traveler...?

Well, Maggie is on her way to Rwanda as we speak, and it's definitely got me thinking about the traveling I've done and the places I've been and worked. The last time I was out of the country (not counting Canada) was summer 2003, just after freshman year of college, when I went with my family to Thailand.

Four years ago.

I've always wanted to be a "traveler of the world," so why has it been so long since I've actually traveled outside the country? I haven't been able to afford any vacation travels, that's true. But I also haven't looked into doing any sort of work or volunteer programs abroad. I had my reasons for not going abroad during college, and I've been enjoying the work I've done since graduation, and feel that it's been good and important work, as are the things I'm looking into for next year. And I do feel that there is so much to see and so much to fix within our own country that there's surely nothing wrong with choosing to stay. That being said, I'm definitely feeling the itch to travel - and not only to travel and visit and see places far away, but to do something good while I'm there - tikkun olam.

There are certainly many options and opportunities to do just that. I suppose the question is when, and of course where. The main point, I suppose, of this post is just that I feel ready to see the world in a way different from a year or even a few months ago. I hadn't truly thought of myself as the person who goes to a tiny village in Africa or Thailand or the Americas helping out those small communities - but now, I can picture it much better.

Hm...

Lech L'cha!

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ow

there's a little girl crying/screaming and it's giving me a headache. I don't understand why her mother doesn't take her to the lobby until she quiets down. Honestly. It's a library.

Last night I dreamed I stole a red Ferrari and went joyriding, eventually to a very rural gas station, outside of which I delivered a baby. Weird. But the delivery was without complications! So that's good.

[end]

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conversation of 30 seconds ago:

[as I walk through the library foyer and pause to look at the blue masking tape outline of a body inside an area marked off with "caution" tape...]

kid [matter-of-factly]: "somebody died."
me: "well, shoot."

don't worry, nobody actually died. It's a promotion for the library's reading program this summer, "get a clue @ the library"

kids are great.

[end]

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small town opportunity

Just came from sitting in a meeting of the City of Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce Ed. Committee (wow that's a long title); I was invited to come by the chair, Paul Krames, who is also involved with the Waterlife Discovery Center (WDC - where I'm working) so that I could meet more people involved in education in sandpoint - networking, connections, etc. I'm not sure exactly what the committee's role is in the broad sense, but sitting there I started thinking about the different ways people get involved in communities, and the community differences inherent. For example, I've been in town for less than two weeks, and here I am sitting in on this Ed. Comm. meeting. Obviously it was because of my connection to the WDC, and Paul Krames was at the WDC Ed. Comm. BBQ held last week the day of my arrival - but, then, that's exactly the point isn't it? Even in Spokane, not an enormous city, this wouldn't happen the same way. But something I've noticed, and that's been noticed by many others also, is that in Spokane it is relatively easy to get deeply involved in something in a short amount of time. Certainly compared with a larger city --Boston, Seattle, not to mention NYC-- Spokane's infrastructure is not difficult to break into.

Back to the original point, though, is that this definitely gives me some encouragement with being able to "plug-in" to Sandpoint's educational community. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to tag along with Tom Whalen, an IDFG Game Warden who is also IDFG's bull trout education officer as he taught an outreach program at Priest River elementary. I helped facilitate some of the activities, and was able to bring in some MOSS experience connecting the bull trout sketching station to field science sketches--e.g. "so kids, did you know that as you sketch you're being scientists?" "REALLY?!"--and it was great to see the kids get excited about it all. Also learned some useful fun facts on bull trout along the way. They're particularly useful to study because of their status as an indicator species--because they need such cold and clean water to survive, their population status is a very quick response to changes in water quality. We still have a fair number here in the Sandpoint area, but even so by fair number we're talking ~75 bull trout. Not exactly an overwhelming population. There's a particularly slow-running and mucky area of the pend o'reille river, the worst of which is called the "mudhole" (it's actually labeled that on the highway sign) which is popular for swimming and such, and apparently the bull trout just book it through that part of the river on their way to a tributary that runs down from the other side of Schweitzer mountain, where the water is cold and clean. Anyway, they're an endangered species, so keeping them is illegal--we're talking a minimum $300 fine. They take their fish seriously up here.

"No spots on the fin? Put it back in!"

Tom also offered to take me along on a patrol in his patrol boat sometime, which would be pretty neat and even exciting if we have to take down any pirates...I mean, check any fishing licenses. I often forget that game wardens are kind of nature cops, meaning they carry a gun on their belt and a fairly high-powered rifle in their truck, for those rare times when they run into more trouble than a fisherman who ran over his limit. Being in that fairly friendly and casual role most of the time, Tom tells me it can be tricky to switch into "cop mode" quickly as they sometimes need to do--e.g. when he runs a driver's license and discovers he has a convicted run-away rapist in the truck in front of him.

"Excuse me sir, could you please step out of the car? I'm afraid you just can't be trusted with that fishing rod."

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san fran wham bam

Back in Sandpoint now after a glorious weekend over in San Francisco for a 2nd round interview weekend with Green Corps. I'll hear back at the end of the week if I'm being offered a position (yikes!) but regardless of that outcome, I got so much out of the weekend it's phenomenal. Roughly 20 of us were there (competing for 2-3 spots...no pressure) and it was quite an experience being with so many people clearly motivated by drive and purpose to affect serious change in our world. Not only was I inspired hearing their stories and aspirations as we got a chance to see what it's like being an organizer, I also just had a blast! We were at the UC Berkely campus all day saturday, sent in groups to various action stations such as petitioning, public speaking, campaign strategizing, etc. to get some practice doing much of what, if accepted, we'll be doing next year (and of course to show the interviewers what kind of skills we have). Public speaking was probably my favorite -- we had one minute to organize some notes on a prompt (e.g. You've been given $1 million to spend any way you want, with the one stipulation being that you use it for the public good...how do you choose to spend it?) and then three minutes to speak on your answer to the prompt. I love coming up with ideas and arguments on the fly, it's difficult but exhilarating when you come up with something good. Perhaps I should have done more debate in high school and college, I think I would have enjoyed it...oh well.
I haven't much idea whether I'll get an offer thursday...I feel confident that I was a strong candidate, and I'm pleased with how everything went...but exactly how that translates to the options of an offer, a waitlist position, a referral to another similar organization, or nothing at all (those being what we'll hear, or not hear, at the end of the week), I do not know.

[end]

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the first post!

Well, I guess this is as good a time to start up my new blog as any...I've just moved up to Sandpoint, ID for the summer leg of my AmeriCorps placement, as of last Tuesday when I arrived, met with my supervisor and got my trailer set up. Yep, living in a trailer in Idaho on the banks of the Pend O'Reille River...not bad right? Some people build multimillion dollar lodges, condos and cabins on lakefront property...me, I hook up with Idaho Fish and Game and get a trailer with a boat dock and huge lawn, not to mention the nature trail on the other side of the road.

Realized yesterday, once all the hullaballoo of meeting various people to know was over and I was pretty much on my own all day, that this is definitely the most alone I've been...maybe ever? Definitely all year. It's going to take some getting used to, but I think it'll be a pretty useful side-effect of being up here. Can't always be surrounded by friends, right? Hopefully after not too long I'll be able to flip the switch into "alone" mode and get by fine.


Not feeling particularly profound at the moment, so I think this I'll just wrap up this post by saying that i'm super excited for the work I'll be doing this summer, it'll be a challenge but definitely one worth undertaking. And, seeing as I'm going to have plenty of time on my hands when not working, look for more posts soon!

[end]

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