spoony for logophiles

Hellooooo, Anchorage!

2009-07-24T16:51:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody!

I'm super excited to announce that I made it to Alaska safe, sound and ON TIME!! No missed flights (not an option-- the flight I was on was the ONLY one going that day, eek!!) and I've spent the day in Anchorage running errands and eating delicious (and free) pizza with my awesome professors, Dr. VanEynde and Dr. Tynes. Both are delightful, happy people, and I'm very excited about what's to come for the rest of the week. Since I was the first student to arrive, I kind of have an advantage: I was told a few minutes ago that since I helped my profs with their shopping and planning, that they would help me out on my leadership day. It's not cheating, but there are some planning things that I won't really be able to do ahead of time-- like finding where to buy sack lunches in Seward. The internet here is spotty and my cell phone coverage is worse, but as long as I'm in Anchorage, I can text and email (some).

Anchorage is beautiful!!! There are flowers blooming everywhere, and it's overcast, but not too dark. In fact, the lighting is what we photographers consider to be the best conditions-- it's what we call "shadowless light." Oh- and for those of you who are burning up in Texas-- It's 58 degrees here. :) Navigating this town is a little tricky, but we've had fun making lots of U-turns. It's kind of like one big Alaskan roller coaster with Dr. Tynes at the helm! We had lunch at a place called Moose Tooth Pizza-- which, as it turns out, has the highest volume pizza sales in North America! It's named after a mountain next to Mt. McKinley (the tallest in North America) and they have 13 different home-brew beers. They also had homemade soda on tap! Oh-- and the pizza was phenomenal. I'm goingto have to take a food-coma-nap here in a litle bit, but first, I must finish my homework and email it to my profs. (I hope they send alright, I was having trouble with getting very simple attachment-free messages to send this morning.)

Alright, well, I'll try to post in the morning, but it sounds like we're going to be pretty busy. Below is the week's itinerary:

Saturday, July 25 – Anchorage & travel to Seward

Anchorage Street Fair

Travel to Seward; visit Exit Glacier

Overnight in Seward

Sunday, July 26 – Seward and travel to Ninilchik

Group A; Deep sea fishing, Resurrection Bay for Halibut and Sockeye Salmon

Group B: Hike through Seward, visit Alaska Sea Life Center

Travel to home base in Ninilchik

Monday, July 27 – Ninilchik

Purchase needed supplies

Class related activities

Tuesday, July 28 – Anchor Point or Kenai River

Group A: Halibut fishing on Cook Inlet from Anchor Point (reserved for six persons)

Group B: Red Salmon wade fishing on the Kenai River

Wednesday, July 29 –, Homer and Halibut Cove

Tour Russian village (Nikolaevsk)

Visit Norman Lowell Gallery

Travel to Homer

Boat trip across Kachemak Bay

Lunch and tour Halibut Cove

Return to Ninilchik

Thursday, July 30 – Hike to Crescent Lake

Travel to Quartz Creek Trailhead

6.4 mile hike to Crescent Lake

Picnic lunch

6.4 mile hike return

Return to Ninilchik

Preparation for departure to Anchorage on Friday

Friday, July 31 – Travel to Anchorage and departure

Travel from Ninilchik to Anchorage

Plan to depart Anchorage Airport after 2 p.m.

(Cold storage available at airport)

highlight of THE YEAR

2008-05-28T14:33:00.000-07:00

me: woah woah woah
Mark: hahahahahaha
me: i just did my budget for the year and figured out how much money i'm going to have in SAVINGS at the end of the year
guess guess guess
Mark: ummmm 50 bucks?
me: try 15,000
i love myself.
hahah
Mark: holy balls
thats awesome
me: I KNOW
Mark: i are jealous
me: haha

Art Contest Entry!

2008-05-27T08:26:00.000-07:00

grrr...so i couldn't imbed the pretty little image from brickfish's website, but here's the URL:

http://www.brickfish.com/Pages/PhotosAlbums/PhotoView.aspx?picid=502410_37724933&=fastart3_PPIMEMAIL&isep=1&pbapi=689614&pbvi=19799423

my drawing needs to get lots of traffic and votes in order to win the $500 scholarship. so go vote!

love,

-brynn

kitty lost, kitty found!!

2008-05-17T08:29:00.000-07:00

yesterday, my productivity was deteriorating so much that my boss basically ordered me to go take a nap. when he came to check on me and make sure that i didn't feel like i got "sent to my room" he found me crying, having just got off the phone with cody to tell him that ouizie was missing. my boss and i talked and came up with a compromise that included me working remotely from st. louis to make any forms or fliers needed by the team in neosho, and also being allowed the time to go look for ouizie.

last night, i got to st. louis about midnight, and as soon as my ride drove away after dropping me off at home (because i forgot my car keys in the 15 minutes i had to pack for the weekend), ouizie started crying for me. i couldn't figure out where it was coming from because it was so loud, it was bouncing off the houses, so i started calling out her name, and it was back and forth until i saw her on the sidewalk running toward me. she found me. her agoraphobia seemed to have been completely wiped away, as she roamed the porch freely while i waited for my roommate to bring me spare key to the house. ouizie almost seemed to be in guard dog mode as she sat out on the front edge of the porch watching cars go by. she also seemed to have found herself a boyfriend, whom she stared at with body language that looked like she was ready to elope with the other cat... but she stayed by my side, purring and snuggling and peeking in the glass of the front door, wanting to get inside and roaming the porch playing guard kitty.

today is the first day since sunday that i have been allowed to sleep more than about 4 or 5 hours. it feels good. :)

tornado #2 -- no-show for neosho

2008-05-14T05:42:00.001-07:00

hey guys-
just wanted to let you know that the tornado warnings and watches and severe weather reports all turned out to be not applicable with regard to the county my team is in right now.

As some of you may already be aware, the city of Neosho, in Newton county, Missouri, was hit by an F-4 tornado on Saturday and devastated a couple hundred homeonwers, including many uninsured occupants of modular homes. The death toll for Newton county alone is at 15, including a local firefighter. Yesterday, while we had teams in the field trying to tarp as many roofs as possible before a second band of storms swept through town, we were also keeping tabs on some severe weather forecasts calling for baseball sized hail, thunderstorms, and winds upwards of 70 miles per hour. When it came time for the storms to hit, though, they just sort of magically broke up and migrated to other places on either side of Newton county's lines. The larger band of storms turned south at the last minute and hit Arkansas, and the smaller, second storm cells broke up and scattered across the counties to the north of us.

So thanks for all your prayers, because, apparently, they worked!!

more evidence of the awesomeness that is "logistics"

2008-05-13T14:10:00.000-07:00

My friend, Kara, was starting the decent of her caffeine high and wrote the following in response to the assignment of thanking corporate givers. enjoy :)

These businesses and people rock. They should get a piece of recycled paper that says THANKS A BUNCH FOLKS! Or maybe YOU RULE! Or quite possibly a little ditty (about Jack and Diane...no, sorry i get side tracked sometimes) or poem that goes something like this: ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUE, YOU HELPED US, WE LOVE YOU...maybe not use love, like would be slightly more appropriate. If we told them we loved them they might get emotionally attached and then follow us around like lost puppy dogs and sit by the phone waiting for us to call. Basically putting their lives on hold, which could lead to lost jobs, living in their parents basement and eating cold french cut green beans right out of the can. Gross. And if they lost their jobs we wouldn't have people to bug for free stuff. Bogus.

Lowes

Wal-Mart

The Copy Center

The guy that saved Jeremy K's ass

Tim Raymer-MDC

behold: the awesomeness that is my job.

2008-05-13T12:41:00.000-07:00

why, yes. while running logistics in response to a tornado, i do get to boss around the next tornado coming in with a megaphone called "street thunder." heeellll yesssss.

best 10 consecutive days in years

2008-02-28T20:33:00.000-08:00

feb. 15- After being back home from the field for only an hour, my friends Vicky, Drew and Derek and I repacked our bags and loaded into Vicky’s car to embark on a 2080-mile road trip. it was originally just going to be a college visit for Derek in Philadelphia... but after we dropped him off for the campus tour, drew and Vicky and I high-tailed it to see the ocean. needless to say, I was ecstatic to see my old friend, the Atlantic.
feb. 16- We were still driving through Pennsylvania, but at some point in the wee hours of the morning, had acquired a new passenger: Rowdy the dog. Although he looks real, especially with his ears blowing in the wind in this pic, he was, in fact, just a plush, life-sized, toy dog. In fact, the manufacturers worked so hard at making him seem realistic that he has steel rods in his legs to help him stand up... So you might imagine how crowded the car got.

feb. 17- We returned to St. Louis at about 10 p.m. and were exhausted! It was a lovely trip, though.

feb. 18- Snow day! I spent a much-needed day of rest, at home with Ouizie. I am teaching her how to spoon with me when I take naps. It's adorable.

feb. 19- (Happy birthday Mom!) Back to work... but good news! I got sent to SEMA (state emergency management agency) in Jefferson city to take a course in emergency donations management. We stayed in a really fancy best western with an indoor pool and hot tub, an exercise room, continental breakfast and queen sized beds for everyone! Not only did SEMA pay for our lodging, but we also feasted like kings and queens on our $36/day SEMA food allowance. We found it a tad bit difficult to spend all that money every day, but it wasn't too painful... :)

feb. 20- More SEMA training, feasting, exercising, and enjoying the hot tub!

feb. 21- Due to impending "severe" weather (less than an inch of snow), our instructor rushed the completion of the course so we could get back on the road ahead of the incoming storm. Our director ended up calling and telling us to stay put. So after a leisurely lunch, we found ourselves in a new class called "training the trainer". We learned what a MARC (multi agency resource center) was, how it worked... and were then told to write a manual on how to set one up that would be easy to read by volunteer agencies, as well as John Q. Public. Holy cow!!

feb. 22- We stayed in Jeff City (still on SEMA's dime) and did some more work on the MARC manual and I made a pretty spiffy pamphlet out of what we learned from our emergency donations class. Not only was my AmeriCorps boss impressed with my work, but so was the director of SEMA!! He was so impressed, in fact, that he is pushing to have it mass produced so we can pass it out to the public in times of disaster, so they will know how to actually help, instead of only feeling like they are helping. yay!! (click the numbers to see close-ups of the pages. 1 2 3 4)

As soon as I got back to St. Louis, I rushed to my apartment, packed up some "bear necessities" and hurried off to the airport for my birthday weekend in Texas with Cody! We spent the night in the fanciest hotel I’ve slept been in, located right on 6th street. Even the stone inlay on the headboards was worth a second look.

feb. 23- We woke up super early and drove to an undisclosed location west of Austin. (Cody wouldn't let me spoil the surprise for myself, so everything that weekend was very hush-hush.) I found myself at Enchanted Rock! (pics to be posted soon.) We climbed the big rock and scrambled around in between smaller ones that made cave-like structures and explored around until our knees started creaking like the floor boards of an old boat.

Then we drove into Fredericksburg and checked in to the Hangar Hotel. So cute!! (you GOTTA visit the website... my words won't do it justice.) Every detail down to the notes typed in courier font saying things like "urgent message from the front line: please use these towels to remove makeup" was intended to make you feel like you've just stepped into the 1940s. Mission accomplished.
In Fredericksburg, we went window shopping, ate gourmet chocolate, checked out a classic car showroom... and eventually found our way back to the hotel to get cleaned up and explore around the various parts of this fascinating place! The captain's lounge (pictured left) was just the spot to feel extra swanky in our snazzy duds while sipping a couple of cocktails before dinner. Later, we had some delicious German food at a brewery/restaurant in town. When we settled in for the night, we had the pleasure of leaving the windows open and enjoying the cool Texas breeze from the comfort of our pillows.

feb. 24- In the morning, we went down to the airport diner (also in immaculate 40's decor) for a hearty breakfast, and a nice show of little private airplanes coming and going right outside the window. After breakfast, we made our way back to Austin, where we did some more shopping, and finally spent a lazy afternoon at Zilker park napping (Cody) and reading (me) in the cool shade of a rock outcropping. By 4, I was already back at the airport and ready to start missing my beloved Texas... oh. right. I'd miss my beloved Cody too ;)

Sigh... it was nearly as much of a whirlwind to write this blog entry as it was to live all that in 10 days!!

free hugs! this almost made me tear up... :*)

2008-02-11T15:05:00.000-08:00

in the words of the almighty wikipedia:
Free Hugs Campaign is a phenomenon which involves individuals who offer hugs to strangers in public settings. It began in June, 2004,^[1] and was widely publicized in 2006 by a music video on YouTube. The campaign is an example of a random act of kindness, a selfless act performed by a person for the sole reason of making others feel better. The original organizer has stated in interviews that the purpose is not to get names, phone numbers, or dates.

sigh. this makes me happy. :)

holy cow! i just read the wikipedia article!
apparently the free hugs campaign became a worldwide phenomenon! my favorite part of the article is the part that mentions what happened in Chicago:

On November 25, 2006, two friends in Chicago had a Free Hugs outing, and persuaded the police to join in the hugging.^[14]. On December 10, 2006, the same people, Amber Gribben and Nicholas Markos, along with additional friends, had another Free Hugs outing in downtown Chicago. They were found by a Fox News Chicago crew, who featured a report about them.^[15] Proceeds from the sale of downloads of the song ("Gimme All You Got" by bee) used in the first video are being donated to UNICEF.

axes, pack tests, spring break!

2008-02-09T06:45:00.000-08:00

wow. I'm extremely overdue on a new post on here. Sorry guys!

The latest news is that I'm still spending my weekdays at the same ol' Peck Ranch working on firelines and burning cedar slash... but now I'm teaching people how to use chainsaws (when they ask for coaching) and I've been working on my precision axing skills! Also, the weekend before Mardi Gras, I had my pack test and passed!

The pack test is the last thing I had to do to get my Red Card, which will certify me to fight fires on federal land, or just outside Missouri. Yes, that includes out west. What I had to do was don a weighted vest that weighed 45 pounds and trek around a park a few times until I had completed 3 miles... all under 45 minutes. It's a test designed to make you work really hard for 45 minutes, so that if you're going to have a heart attack, you can get it out of the way safely, instead of on the side of a mountain while fighting a fire. My goal was to finish in 42 minutes and I finished in 42:18! This morning I intend to head over to the park and do the pack test again with the rest of my team because it was such a difficult, but refreshing workout. My goal for today is 40 minutes.

Mardi Gras was a system overload of fun. We saw the parade, got lots of beads, drank plenty of beer, had a dance party on the sidewalk and barbequed in the back yard. Good times, great friends. That Sunday, I spent most of the day laying around the house and finishing up laundry. It was a great weekend... and it got the little remaining bits of crazy out of my system for at least the next 6 months.

Speaking of 6 months, This month marks my 6th month in AmeriCorps! I'm half-way finished!! Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm starting a countdown, because I can't wait to get out of here... it's just that I can't believe I've gotten this far, this fast! I've learned so much and have gotten so much stronger in character and in body... I honestly can't imagine what the next 6 months will bring.

My birthday is also coming up and I will be 22! I can't believe how fast time flies as I get older. When I was little, it seemed like decades passed between my birthdays, and now it's like the years are shrinking into blocks of 3 or 4 months. It's been over a year since I met Mrs. McNutt at the Summit... It's been almost 2 and a half years since I met Cody in San Marcos while he was on R&R... It's been almost a year since Tiffany's wedding, and it's been a year and a half since I adopted Ouizie, my beloved kitty.

Next month, my sister, Claire, is coming up to visit me for spring break!! woot!! I got approval from both my bosses for her to come into the woods with us for a week and do conservation work alongside me! The higher up boss even said we might be able to get her level 1 fire training, so that, if need be, she can help us with prescribed burns! (I don't see when there would be time for that, so it's doubtful, but I'm still soooo excited!!) Claire is pumped too, but she's trying to work out the travel expenses and find out if her car will make it to St. Louis and back without a new catalytic converter. We'll see.

Well, It's time for me to start stretching and getting ready for pack test #2. Much love to all!!

new video!! gangsta cookin with derek!!

2007-12-11T22:38:00.001-08:00

hehehe enjoy...

p.s. at the very end, the weird sentence that derek says is, "my seester tahched a monkee... and she eht hees soop."

what it's like manning the missouri winter storm hotline

2007-12-10T17:01:00.000-08:00

wow. this winter storm hotline business can get pretty crazy... example:

a woman called about an hour and a half ago saying her mother had many special needs, including being oxygen dependent, paralyzed on one side, has a catheter and is diabetic. she only had 2 or 3 hours of oxygen left, and was heating her home with her gas oven. she called asking for batteries for flashlights and 2 or 3 oxygen tanks. we advised her that she should try to get to a shelter that can handle special needs because it is extremely unsafe to heat your home with an oven, and at this time we had no way of getting supplies to her house. she insisted that they had one window cracked about 3 inches to let the fumes out and they did not want to leave the house.

so i called the only shelter open in that area and asked if they could handle special needs. they said no, and that they were diverting special needs patients to the hospital. the red cross people stationed at the shelter advised me to call the local police to get the woman transported out of her home asap.

i called the police and talked to the chief, who told me that "oh crap" had become a technical term in the last 24 hours. he said that the only place that could take the woman was the hospital. i gave him her contact info and he said he would call her and try to transport her to the hospital.

i then called the woman back, and explained the situation and again insisted that the oven heating the house was very dangerous. she insisted on staying in the house and said that she would not go to the hospital because she would be billed for the visit. she also said that she had been trying to get ahold of her oxygen supplier all day and had not received any calls back from them. I told her that i would call the hospital to check on the billing situation, to see if there was an exception due to the disastrous weather emergency, and get back in touch with her.

i then called the police chief back to inform him that the lady did not want to be moved from her house, but he did not answer, so i left a message. I then called back my contact at the original shelter, and was informed that a new shelter was being opened in the basement of the city hall, and they might be able to accommodate special needs. I got the number, and called city hall, only to get ahold of the answering machine.

So then I called the hospital, and talked to the ER and found out that they, indeed, are billing patients upon admission because they do not have a shelter set up at the hospital. The hospital also informed me that I could dial 0 to get past the answering machine at the city hall, and i would be able to get in touch with someone there. I called city hall back, punched in 0, and talked to another member of the police department and told him about the woman's situation. he said he already had heard about her, and that the only place she could go was the hospital, because the city hall shelter also could not handle special needs. I told him she refused to go to the hospital because she would get billed. He said they had been sending people with special needs to the hospital all day, and he thought because it was an emergency situation, that the people were not getting billed. He then put me on hold, and asked someone else at the shelter about the hospital situation. As it turns out, the hospital had been billing patients all day and would not back down because of the emergency situation.

So then i called the red cross to find out if they could deliver oxygen to the woman's house. the red cross put me through to the disaster management chapter and they told me that they cannot, under any circumstances, carry oxygen, even for a CPR class because of liability and insurance issues. The red cross told me to talk to a different hospital than the one i had called earlier, to ask them about who their oxygen supplier is. So i called freeman hospital, and talked to the administrator in charge of getting their oxygen. The woman told me that their regular line was down- which explained why the woman in her home could not get ahold of them. Then, the administrator connected me to someone at the oxygen supplier and i gave them the woman's contact info and address, and i was told that the oxygen supplier would contact her and resolve the issue.

I then followed up with the woman and told her a very brief summary of everyone i had talked to since my last call to her, and let her know that she should be hearing from the supplier. She then told me that she had already heard from the supplier, and would be receiving 10 cylinders of oxygen soon. she still had no way of getting batteries for the flashlights, but assured me that her mother had been heating the house with the oven for years and had never had a problem. she also told me that they had cracked the front door and turned on the vent above the stove to provide more ventilation for the fumes. (i just realized that the vent would not work without power, so she might have been lying, or she doesn't know how the vent works.) i informed her that the oven might also spontaneously catch fire if left on for too long, which concerned me because of the oxygen and the candles. I also told her if she gets cold, to snuggle up with her mom and to be safe.

so the lady might still blow up, or suffocate from the fumes coming from the oven, but at least she has oxygen. it took me over an hour to do all of this, but at least she is (slightly) better off than she was when she called... (aka not dead... yet.)

sigh... i really hope she doesn't blow up.

p.s. my director just came in and aksed how it was going- and i told him this story and he said this was the sort of thing that needed to be written down. i then went and printed out this blog entry and he was not only surprised but impressed, and is now working on trying to get this woman out of her house. (yay!)

p.s.s. now the director is working on resolving this issue (with special needs patients getting billed by hospitals) on a state-wide level. awesome!

totally stalling before going back into the woods...

2007-11-12T07:35:00.001-08:00

but i just had to make note of some wierd things people have been saying lately!

the following are (mis)perceptions people have had about me lately, haha

"But I don't want to have the dinner party at Kim's* house. It's dirty. I want to have it at yours!" -Carmen

"Brynn, how do you get your teeth so white?" -Roice

"You look like you're up to no good." -some drunk guy at a piano bar

"You can fix my pants, right?" -several boys... on separate occasions... with pants that need to be donated to a dumpster

"So what you're saying is, that if I stop saying obscene things about your mom, you'll make me dinner?" -Drew

*name was changed to protect the innocent

food fight video is finally up!!

2007-11-10T06:34:00.001-08:00

it explains itself. enjoy!

long time, no write!

2007-11-08T20:08:00.001-08:00

So I'm sure you guys have been starving for an update, but before this week, there really wasn't much going on. We spent two weeks at Peck Ranch, located in the beautiful Ozarks, raking fire line in preparation for a prescribed burn coming up. It was a lot of hard, repetitive work, but it felt good, and at the end of last week, we finished the 2 and a half mile stretch through the woods. The fire line we made was about 6 feet wide, and raked down to the mineral soil, so that the fire wouldn't jump across the line. we had to do a lot of lopping (using loppers to trim/cut away small branches and thick undergrowth) and blowing (usuing huge industrial strength backpack leaf blowers to blast away the soggy leaves), in addition to the regular ol' raking.

with all the hard work, came a nearly insatiable stomach. My tummy definitely can tell time when we are in the field. Here's the routine:

6:30 wake up, get dressed
6:45 eat oatmeal and/or bagel with cream cheese and jelly
make two peanut butter, jelly and apple sandwiches for lunch
7:00 load the trucks with tools and gear
7:15 drive to eminence forest service office (sleep the whole way there)
8:00 load the rest of the tools there and check in
8:15 arrive on work site and begin service project
10:30 eat an apple and/or a cliff bar
12:00 eat two sandwiches and the other apple
4:00 load up trucks and head out, (sleep the whole way back)
stop for groceries or gas or duct tape on the way
5:15 arrive back at Peck Ranch and start making dinner
6:00 serve dinner for 10
7:30 clean the kitchen
8:00 finally sit down to read or watch boys play video games or just zone out with hot cocoa
9:00 fall asleep in the middle of whatever I'm doing
10:00 shuffle my feet to bed

This week, my team stayed in St. Louis to do some maintenance around the office and help the education team with an after school program at a nearby elementary school. The kids have been fantastic. I taught a kindergartener to do double digit addition in columns today and he got every problem i put on the board right, even though he still counts on his fingers and writes most of his numbers backwards. I also worked with a girl in second grade who came in with almost all of her homework complete, and then proceeded to write all of the word puzzles on the board for me and had me solve them before checking her paper... which was flawless. I also was given hoola hoop lessons and a jump-rope reminder crash-course, as well as many emphatic high fives.

I love my job.

chainsaw training at peck ranch

2007-10-19T09:23:00.001-07:00

Last night we got back from 4 days on a 21,000 acre ranch where we learned how to use chainsaws and the basics of fighting wildfires. It was pretty exciting, except that I had a cold for the first 3 days (a really quick one!), so I was nervous about bucking limbs with chainsaws when I knew that my ears were so clogged up that I'd missed part of the instruction... But it turned out fine. My tidbits of ballet training helped me a lot with my posture while handling the chainsaw, so I was able to make my small amount of energy last a bit longer.

We spent several hours in the classroom with our chainsaw books learning proper terminology for different things we would encounter in the woods and different types of cuts we would be making. Thanks to my photographic memory, I could remember the pictures in the books, but not necessarily the words for them, haha. So bucking limbs went fine. I knew to be careful with the tip of the saw bar so that it wouldn't kick back, and I learned how to sharpen the chain and clean the air filter and put fresh oil and gas in the saw.

The next day we spent a while in the classroom but then we went out to cut down trees. Snags are dead trees that are hazardous because they are going to fall down eventually. Our main purpose in cutting down snags was in preparation for a controlled burn that was coming up. We didn't want snags falling across the fire line, which would carry the fire outside the controlled area. The snag I chose was the biggest of the day, and my leader let me do it because I was patient and waited for all of my other group members to cut down their snags before me. The tree was about 2 feet DBH (diameter at breast height) and about 60 feet tall (we measured it by walking it's length once it was felled). We also attempted counting its rings and figured it was about 100 years old.

My face cut was pretty good, although tough on my wrists; and then my leader, Evan, bore cut the center out, and then I did the back strap. It fell exactly where I aimed it and didn't get caught up in any other trees. Success!

back home from chadwick, mo (yay for manual labor and chainsaws!)

2007-09-30T14:28:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I know that my last couple of posts have been (painfully) lengthy, and I will try to remedy that from here on out. (lord knows how many more disclaimers like this i'll write in the next year)

We just returned from a national forest in the Ozarks, near Ava, Missouri. We spent the week doing lots of manual labor in a national forest-- mostly to repair the ATV trails to make them safer and sturdier. The forest we went to is one of the few in the country that allows ATVs, and as a result, the trails get quite a lot of traffic over the years; but the problem is that the ATVers aren't just driving all over the trails, but the forest floor as well.

Most of the people that go to this forest have been going for many years and know the trails better than some of the rangers do. The ATVers come not only for the pleasure of driving their vehicles all over the beautiful forest, but also for the thrill of going as fast as they can, wherever they can. Consequently, the trails that the park service has tried to improve by installing con-lock blocks, interlocking concrete blocks which help reduce erosion and discourage speed, have only encouraged more erosion where the ATVers zip around the blocks.

On the first day of service, we were split up into 3 teams: one for each work site on a particular trail that needed to be patched up and protected from further damage. Fresh, clean con-lock blocks were delivered to us and all we had to do was dig up the rocky soil and install the blocks. The areas that had been damaged by ATVers driving around the blocks were subsequently covered up with large dead trees and sticks which I helped weave together so that they wouldn't just roll away if someone stubborn enough decided to try driving over them.

While the work was hard and the sweat was plentiful, it was a good day's work and we walked back to our campsite famished and fulfilled. We cooked 16 pounds of spaghetti, with venison sausage in the sauce, and had plenty for everyone to have seconds and more. We also had salad, and a surprise from the team that had gone grocery shopping: fancy cheesecake. Some slices had caramel and some were marbled and some had chocolate chips on top. We reveled in our new motto: work hard, eat hard.

After chatting around the campfire and showers and a very encouraging debriefing from our group leader, Evan, we finally settled down and went to bed in our massive tents under the gorgeous stars. The next morning, we got up at 7:15 to make our lunches and eat our oatmeal, and were at the new work sites by 8. There was a new team in charge of sawing and swamping. Swampers have a very important task: they pull limbs and brush away from the sawyer after having been felled, so that the sawyer doesn't trip while operating his chainsaw. The sawyers and swampers mostly cut down dead trees that ran the risk of falling on the trails, or cutting down live trees so as to block off dangerous or eroded trails.

The first time I watched a tree fall, I was speechless. There is so much power and energy in a tree that you never encounter by just walking by it; but the sounds and movement and vibrations you experience as this massive, solemn thing bends and creaks and slams into the ground are phenomenal. The death of a tree by the hand of man is sad, but the tree's last words are awe-inspiring.

_to be continued_

"Boat Access," pirate pranks, and orienteering in the dark

2007-09-23T09:46:00.000-07:00

okay, okay, I'm aware that I need to work on being more concise. I'll try.

So we unloaded at "Boat Access" and then stood around for a while, for reasons somewhat unknown to us. We saw Kathleen, the leader of the blue team, which was also dropped off at Boat Access, talking to our leader, Russel, and Bruce, the big boss-- who mostly wandered from group to group stealthily through the woods. Anyway, we waited for a little while and stood around next to a pile of old life jackets on the ground while still examining our weird maps.

I was so excited to be out of those vans and ready to start our adventure that waiting was just about the last thing that I wanted to do. I was practically bouncing up and down like a little kid wondering why we haven't gone into the candy store yet. C'mon, c'mon, the door is riiight there! let's go in! let's go in! candy candy candy!!! So, waiting for instruction was obviously not on my agenda.

Finally, Russel came back over to us and led us up the road a little bit so we could sit in a "raccoon circle" and start learning how we would make group decisions. A raccoon circle happens when the whole group sits, or stands, in a tight circle while all holding a rope tied in a big loop. As long as we are all holding the rope, we are all involved in the decision-making process, and we don't break the circle until the group has reached a unanimous consensus.

This was also a bit of a struggle for me, since there are some rather passive, submissive people in the group, and I did not want to wait around for them to hesitantly voice their opinions. I bit my tongue, though, reminding myself that this is not a youth group or a summer camp. This is my job, and I have to live and work with these people for the next year. I have to treat these people with respect and patience, because they are my coworkers first; friendships will come later.

Russel showed us his much more detailed map which had our prescribed route drawn on it in Sharpie. He said we would only get to look at it for about 20 minutes and then he would put it away for the rest of the trip, so we had better commit it to memory. It was hard to compare it to our maps, which did not have nearly as many "topo" lines or trails on them because of how Xerox machines break down the quality of images a little bit after each copy; but we did sort it out, and were eager to set out in the canoes.

Then we waited some more.

Then we finally got the canoes unloaded, the packs tied inside heavy duty trash bags, in case any of us were to tip over, and the canoe teams divided up among our 4 canoes. The tricky thing about navigating Devil's Kitchen Lake is that it is "filled with underwater snags, the stumps of dead trees from the valley forest that once lived where the lake is today. Fishermen are advised to be aware of these snags. Swimming is forbidden in Devils Kitchen Lake." --Good thing we didn't have Wikipedia with us when we were ready to set off on our journey. Maybe, in some cases, ignorance really can be (slightly) blissful.

I ended up being on point in my canoe, so I was in charge of telling the person steering in the back which way to go in order to dodge upcoming stumps and branches, and also how to get to our docking point. Since we were usually the last canoe in the line of 4, I could watch what the other canoes did, and plan the best route based on who had to row backward out of a clump of dangerous stumps, and who was able to successfully glide around them.

At one point, Russel called all four of the boats together and we floated, rafted by holding onto each other with our oars. He said we could either tie our canoes together with rope and try to navigate the lake in pairs, or we could tie the canoes up in trees once we docked, in order to play a prank on the next group that needed to use them. We opted for the prank.

No one ran aground (well, technically "atree") and we docked safely, with nearly an hour of sunlight left to aid in our pirate pranking. I say "pirate" because by this point, we were already excited that the next day would be National Talk Like a Pirate Day, and were celebrating early. Malcom, my canoe's steer-er, was most enthused about being a pirate. While the rest of the group helped hide oars high in trees, string them out over the lake by tying them off to a stump about 20 feet off shore, and hide the last pair of oars underneath a canoe in the grass; he and I planned out our walking route to get to the campsite, and composed a pirate riddle, which we subsequently tied to a tall plant for the next group to find. The riddle read something like this:

"Heeeear yee!
He who seeks ye oars strung above the salty seas, like ye brethren, must first be findin' hidden treasures aground.
-The mullet scalping, viking dueling, pirate espionage squaaaarrrd"

As it turned out, the group that ended up finding these oars dangling overhead never saw the amusing note, because they were busy tending to their leader, who was having an asthma attack upon seeing this new challenge. They had been the most lost out of any other group, never found their campsite to sleep at, which meant they also never got to replenish their water for day 2. So basically, the pirates made a new enemy, instead of entertaining friends. They also didn't find the two oars we left for them on land, so one of them tried to wade out into the lake to get the oars strung out over the water; then they returned to the land and used a big stick to gondola out to the stump and untie the oars. Sucks to be them.

_more later_

p.s. here's a topo map of the area we hiked.

http://cewalter.tripod.com/id128.htm

back from the wild!!

2007-09-22T09:08:00.000-07:00

This blog will, for the next year, be the chronicle of my adventures with Americorps St. Louis' Emergency Response Team (ERT).

Last night I returned from the Illinois wilderness, south of Carbondale, where we did a trip called "Quest/Immersion," (sort of two trips in one). Not only is this the only ERT Americorps program in the country, but this trip is also unique to the St. Louis Americorps chapter. We also found out that we made a 1 in 5 cut to get onto this team, and that FEMA relies heavily on us for disaster relief all over the midwest. So basically, I went on a unique trip with a really unique group of people, AND I COULDN'T HAVE HAD A BETTER TIME!!

I've come to nickname Americorps "the hippie army" because it is like the US Army in that there is a lot of unknown and fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants about what we will be doing, when we will be doing it, and where we will end up, for an amorphous amount of time. I call it the "hippie army," though, because it is A LOT less militant than the Army, and a lot more about being in touch with your feelings, Native American ideals about stewardship of the Earth, and going with the flow. There is never a fixed agenda, and if there is, it is certainly never in writing, much less etched in stone.

While these observations may be having you thinking, oh god what have I let this kid go get herself into?? --don't worry. It's a fabulous test of my patience, and I never once felt like the leadership didn't have a firm grasp on the big picture of what needed to get done, nor did I ever feel the need to question their ability or competence in getting those prescribed goals met. This is, after all, the second oldest Americorps chapter in the country, and the directors of the program, Kathleen and Bruce, have been the grandparents of the group since it was conceived.

Okay, okay. Enough back-story- it's time for the Quest!

We arrived at the Americorps office at 8 on Monday morning. We were told beforehand to bring our belongings separated into two giant trash bags. One was for the two days we would spend hiking and camping in the wilderness, and the other for the three days we would spend at an actual camp. My old buddy Ben dropped me and my trash bags off at 8:01 and and I went inside to get my pack, which would serve as my slightly more substantial suitcase for the week. We were split into groups of about 15 (there were almost 90 people, including the leadership team) and were subsequently given plastic flagging so we could more easily retrieve our bags once unloaded from the trailer upon arrival in Illinois.

Aside: The thing with Quest is that it's all very hush-hush. All we knew was that we were going into a national forest south of Carbondale, and we would be sweating, hiking, and carrying extra group gear besides what we packed just for ourselves... but other than that, we had no idea what to expect out there.

So we packed our trash bags for Quest and the group gear into our hiking packs, and then flagged our camp bags with our team color and loaded those second bags into the trailer. Once the canoes were hitched up to one of the pickup trucks, our bags were all loaded via an assembly line passing gear from the building into the trailer, and then, finally, we loaded ourselves into the hot vans with weak a/c; we could hit the road. I think we left around 10:30-- which was apparently amazingly snappy performance compared to last year's departure.

We drove east for about 3 hours with only a vague notion of where we were going. When we arrived at a picnic area on the edge of the park, we all got out and ate lunch (PB & J on pita bread), loaded the rest of the food into our packs, and had a big group meeting standing in a circle on the gorgeously green grass. Bruce, the executive Director, led the meeting, reminding us about things such as team work, anticipating each other's needs, proper blister care, and what some Native American chief once said about how our lives are made up of concentric circles, not unlike the rings of a tree.

We finally got back on the road after our 2-hour lunch, and along the way, (our small team of 15) was handed mysterious maps of where we were, and where we would be going. The maps were laminated and had boundary lines delineating the edges of the wildlife preserve, the surrounding counties, and a lake called "Devil's Kitchen." They were topographical maps, but they did not have a compass rose on them, nor did they have a scale or legend, describing what the different types of lines meant.

The van was filled with questions that went unanswered: Is that a trail or a road? Are we on a highway or just a path? Is that a boundary or trail? How old is this map? Are these trails still there, or are they grown over and thus useless? Which way is north? How far apart are these "topo" lines? Is the grid in square miles? kilometers? tens of miles? Where are we going? Where are we now? How much longer until we reach our drop off point? Where is our drop off point?

The list goes on and on, but instead of getting frustrated with our leader's apparent silence and vagueness, our group pulled together and started scouting out clues on the road to figure out how the map corresponded with reality. We watched the clock on the van (since we were told not to bring watches) to see how long it took to get from one place to another. We paid attention to the curvature of the lake's shoreline as we drove around a small part of it. We noted what side of the tree trunks the shadows were on. We decided that we were headed past Little Grassy Lake, over to Devil's Kitchen Lake, and that when we finally stopped, we had arrived a small black dot called "Boat Access." We pointed out that it took no more than 5 minutes to drive from Little Grassy to Devil's Kitchen. We decided the grid was in square miles and that the top of the map was north.

_to be continued_

color exercise- what red means: lessons for the blind woman

2007-03-14T15:53:00.000-07:00

As a painter, I must say that colors are what give the world flavor, movement, texture, emotion, even symbolism. Colors give light meaning, and have sometimes profound effects on mood. I once dyed my hair hot pink as a way of rebelling against a control-freak ex-boyfriend, and also as a way to cheer myself up in the mornings when i woke up alone. They say when you are sad, that wearing bright colors cheers you up, and conversely, that wearing dark, drab colors like black and grey, can perpetuate your solemn mood.

As a writer, I often find it frustrating when the colors described in my peers' works are not palpable- but rather 2-dimensional words stolen from a crayon box. When you, Lynn, touch a crayon- they are all the same to you, except you might notice the paper wrapper of one is missing, or the point of another is worn to a bald nub. Colors, like lighting, emotion and sound, should always be something the reader can experience, because when a writer assumes the reader experiences color in the same way that everyone else on earth does, the writer is cheating himself, as well as his audience.

Red- the Crayola-name for the color of blood, passion, heat. In the Chinese culture, red is the color of luck, and is a dominant color in wedding ceremonies. If a Chinese person is in the hospital, it is better to bring them red flowers for encouragement. In the western culture, mostly because of Christian symbolism, white is a color of hope, faith and strength- and as a result bouquets with white lilies (also a symbol of the purity of the Virgin Mary) are often brought to the bedsides of the sick. If you brought a Chinese person white flowers in the hospital, it would likely cause more harm than good, because white is the color that symbolizes death in their culture. think of the light at the end of the tunnel, if you will.

Red, like all other colors, can come in thousands of shades and hues-- all of which might change the emotional impact of it. A bright, clear red is the color that often symbolizes alarm- which is why it is on firetrucks and stop signs. It grabs people's attention, I think, because it is the color of blood. An attractive woman in a slinky red dress is not wearing that dress solely because it's comfortable or warm: she knows when she puts it on that she is going to turn heads, and her strut down the sidewalk will also probably dictate this awareness. Her chin will be held high, and her hips will swing more emphatically, probably a subconscious (or conscious) way of saying to onlookers, especially her honey, "hey babe, these things do good work!" She will probably take longer, quicker steps to drive this gyration of the hips. She is the picture of confidence, and it's because she knows she looks good in her slinky red dress, and she knows every one else looking at her thinks she looks good. Red is what you wear when you want to make a grand entrance. It's alive and vibrant, sensual and demanding.

hmm... I think I now have two blogs by this name?

2007-03-14T14:48:00.000-07:00

It suddenly occurs to be that I may already have a blog on this site with the same title as this one, but it's not like I've posted on it more than maybe four times in the last year, so I guess I'll have to actually use this one to keep it from suffering the same fate as the aforementioned one.

FYI- I'm not a poet, in fact I pretty much completely suck at poetry. On the up side, though, I am a pretty decent fiction writer, even if my short stories do end up wandering more toward the novel realm. I also paint! I'm currently working on completing 200 paintings (which vary in size from 8"x10" to 20"x30" and maybe larger) by my next birthday. 349 days to go; something like 12 paintings completed and two in progress. I suppose here is as good a place as any to keep myself accountable to the masses in the achievement of this goal.

well, I better get down to the garage and get painting number13 out of the way!

ciao,

-brynn