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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