time flies

just over 2 months before AmeriCorps is over.

just over 2 months before i pack up and head to argentina and chile.

i have 2 months to plan where i'm going, learn spanish, sell my car, and work a million hours at the restaurant (on top of minimum 40 hrs/week @ americorps) to make mad cash.

oh. shit.

(also i am starting a garden in my friend's backyard, we're working on an urban farming collective within SF! so i have an unfunded project to return to post-trip.)

(you can also find me at nattles.tumblr.com.)

AmeriCorps: take action!

I'm copying and pasting this from an email I was forwarded:

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On Friday, May 16, 2008, U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut will introduce the AmeriCorps Act of 2008. The bill will:

• Raise the education award to $6,185,the average annual cost of tuition and fees for an instate student at a four year public university
• Make the education award tax exempt
• Restore the Corporation's previous authority to partner with other Federal agencies to use national service as a strategy to carry out Departments' priorities
• Promote the Corporation for National and Community Service to Cabinet level status.

AmeriCorps Alums encourages all AmeriCorps Alums to support this effort, as it recognizes the importance of service and promotes access to education by increasing the value of the Segal AmeriCorps Education Award. Since its inception in 1994, more than 540,000 citizens have served through AmeriCorps to address the unmet needs of our nation. These citizens have given over 700,000,000 hours toward improving the lives of other Americans.

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To take action:

You can build support for national service by encouraging your Senators to join as original cosponsors of the bill. Call today; the deadline for cosponsors is Thursday, May 15th at 4:00pm.

Action Steps for the AmeriCorps Act of 2008:

1. Call the Capitol operator at (202) 224-3121 to be connected to your Senator.
2. Ask your elected official to be an original cosponsor of the AmeriCorps Act of 2008.
3. To cosponsor, interested offices should contact Mary Ellen McGuire with Senator Dodd’s office by email: MaryEllen_McGuire@help.senate.gov. Deadline for cosponsors is Thursday, May 15th at 4pm.

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And of course, I am NOT doing this while clocking hours (hello, lunch. jamba juice & a popsicle! apparently a predicted high of 95 degrees encourages SF to buy popsicles, even though its really like 75 degrees.)

I am so lazy.

I spend a lot of time on the internet, but none on this thing.

Life is easy. I just started my second term of AmeriCorps Watershed Stewards Project, this year with the Institute for Fisheries Resources. Today was my first day at the office. It took me over an hour to get there, and obnoxiously the thing that makes it so long is my walk to the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). It's during commute hours so I can't bring my bike on, and the shuttle from the BART to the office doesn't have a bike rack, so I can't cut down the commute by 30 minutes.

On the other hand, if I hadn't become such a wimp for the cold, I could ride my bike the 7 miles there in about 45 minutes.

Prior to starting at IFR, AmeriCorps WSP had an orientation/training up in Northern California, similar to last year except longer. This year we were inland enough and it was cold enough that there was SNOW. Serious SNOW. Something like a foot of SNOW. We did our swiftwater safety training in the river while it was really, really cold out. It was fun.

In other news, my neighborhood is not safe. My car was broken into down the block and my cubs hats stolen out of it. My roommate's friend was robbed at gunpoint two blocks down the street before Christmas. I need mace. I have no problem/fear riding my bike home late at night, but I don't like being on foot walking home from the BART at 11 pm or later.

Also I bought a MacBook. I love it.

I skipped July. So here's an entry for August.

I've been very, very bad at updating this blog. I like to blame some of the problem on a lack of (home) internet during 3 weeks of July, and my computer's wifi capability (or card?) breaking down, thus requiring me to plug directly into the line when I'm at home which isn't terribly convenient. The other, more realistic reason is lack of motivation.

But enough with excuses, on with adventures!

So what's happened to me since late June? Well, a lot of stuff. In July, this 25-foot steel and fiberglass salmon visited SPAWN on it's journey around the West, garnering support for removal of the four lower dams on the Snake River, one of Save Our Wild Salmon's campaigns. This is a video stolen from the blog of the trip, condensing the trip into about a minute. I'm actually in the movie - the shot of the "It Takes a Valley to Raise a Salmon" is from our float at the 4th of July parade in Woodacre, and I'm the one in the big sunglasses escaping the camera (and handing candy to kids) right before the video moves on.



The thing was hollow and the interior was painted with the life cycle and some other cool stuff, but honestly I didn't explore the interior because a) it was really hot on the 4th and I didn't want to be in an oven very long; b) on the 3rd I was wearing a skirt and wasn't about to climb up; and c) I don't like those kinds of confined spaces.

Fin is the salmon's name

Paola, Heidi, me.

Heidi inside

The hottest day I've felt here thus far - in the 90's
(yet still not as muggy as the Midwest)

It was exciting to connect with salmon folks working on a larger scale issue - SPAWN is focused on a small watershed in West Marin, really, the San Geronimo Sub-Watershed of the Lagunitas Watershed. While our salmon population is crucial and the creeks hold the largest wild run of wild coho, the amount of people directly benefiting financially from them is small. The fish in the Snake are, yes, still endangered and thus not fished, but by removing the dams and restoring the fishery, jobs will be created - both in restoration and monitoring, but also in commercial and recreational fishing. I've never worked on an environmental project that made sense even when you ignore environmental impacts.

****************

Heidi and I held our Independent Service Project in July as well; pictures will be on Flickr, eventually. I promise I'll post those soon and then post here to let you know. Though, honestly, I doubt the pictures are exciting. We recruited volunteers to removed invasive Himalayan blackberry and English Ivy at a property on National Park Services Land, along Lagunitas Creek - a property where SPAWN's office will be moving to at the end of this month.

****************

Immediately after the Independent Service Project, Heidi and I trekked up north again for AmeriCorps WSP summer training. We all camped for a week near the mouth of the Klamath River, where Dick Cheney may have been responsible for a major salmon kill a few years ago. As much as these trainings wear on my quickly (by Wednesday I can usually be heard whispering to Heidi or Kristin (AmeriCorps WSP at IFR, see below) "it's Wednesday! Almost done!"), this one had some fairly kick ass moments (there is no way to more eloquently say that).

The Klamath meets the Pacific.

There were elk, bald eagles, osprey, comorants, AND GREY WHALES. I have never before seen a whale and it was awesome. I also saw an osprey catch a fish, but a) it paled in comparison to WHALES ROLLING IN THE OCEAN; and b) I told my dad and he's like "oh yeah, don't you remember seeing that when you were kids on such-and-such trip?" (I remember seeing ospreys nesting but no fish).

****************

So my future. I guess that's the next topic I need to discuss, since putting it off in order to write about how I'm starting to like cats (even ones that you cat-sit and that wake you up at 6 am by sitting on you) is kind of lame.

My WSP internship ends at the end of the mouth. Technically, it ends after I complete about 30 more hours, but that's 3+ days of work and there are 3 more weeks left till the end of the month. I'm planning on taking it easy, yet still working until the end.

I'm also definitely applying for another term in AmeriCorps WSP, even though it won't begin until January. My mind is still the same and I'm applying for a position at the Institute for Fisheries Resources (IFR), whose office is in the Presidio. I'm not really worried about the application (though, honestly, at this moment in time my essay question answers -- and I use the term essay loosely -- are not really up to par) or the interview. For a while I was worried about this four month period in between where I would be unemployed, but I think I've got a handle on things now. I'm working part time as a caterer on the weekends and I've been applying for other part time jobs. Since I can take lots of time off, I plan on using it to apply to restaurants and retail places in person. If I work at IFR and life in San Francisco, my rent will be significantly higher than what it is now, so I'll need a second job anyway. What's better than finding that and settling prior to starting stressful, awesome work? I don't know.

As for living situation, I'm attempting to move out of Mitch & Julie's house as soon as possible. The past 11 months here have been awesome; I really cannot say enough good things about living with them, their family, the pets, their house, the location, and on and on. However, I'm still not *really* supporting myself here. I'm also in an area with very few 20-somethings and it's getting kind of tiring. I'm ready to move on.

As I'm writing this, I got my first twang of "wait... I don't really want to leave Mitch & Julie's because I'll miss them!" For a while I knew I'd miss Lily (kitten who stalks me in the mornings and evenings and is currently curled up in the chair next to me), and maybe the sentimentalism has taken hold because I haven't been living in the house much the past 3 weeks (Klamath + cat-sitting) and thus haven't been living with 5 kids (since they are all away this week the house is quiet and empty - talk about an advantage of second marriages with ex-spouses still maintaining joint custody) (not to say I don't love the kids too - but 5 for a full week when there is no school for them is a lot).

****************

Today I spent the day in the San Joaquin and Central Valleys of CA touring Tuolumne River restoration sites as part of Kristin's independent service project with IFR, thus spending a large portion of the day with my potential future bosses. Like I said, I'm not too worried, though I never ever count on things like that (you never know who else might apply) and I would never not take something seriously because of it. Hilariously, Zeke (exec director) and Pietro (president) both have worked with Jean Flemma (Prairie Rivers Network!). It is truly a small world.

So that's what's been going on. As of now, I've been awake for over 20 hours today and I think it's time to go to bed. Maybe I will roll into work a little late tomorrow... hopefully literally as I want to pump some air into my borrowed bike (!also news though only exciting to me!) and take it instead of the car.

Job Searching

My time with SPAWN is coming to a close. I'm about to hit month 10 of the 11 month internship and August 31st is coming up quickly.

This means that I'm constantly hearing "So what are you doing next?"

The answer: I don't know.

A second year of AmeriCorps at the other site, IFR, is still up in the air. Funding issues (?) caused there to be a question of whether or not the site would exist, and while we were initially told that we'd know the answer to that question in early June, we still don't.

I'm not particularly excited about this mystery. Yesterday I heard a rumor that the start date for a second term would begin in January, so if I decided to apply for it, I've possibly got 4 months of unemployment to look forward to before it begins.

Rather than sit on my hands and wait, I've decided to apply for other jobs in the Bay Area. In doing so (and really throughout this internship), I've been trying evaluate what I'm really good at and what I want to do. I still don't think I necessarily have to decide this for the rest of my life, but at least it should help me shape what part of myself I want to explore and develop next.

Send job postings this way!

May 2007

Wow, a long time since I updated… so I’ll try to keep this to exciting new things.

Disclaimer: My camera was running out of batteries, so some of these pictures were taken with my cameraphone.... which I have yet to master. More photos can be found on flickr.

Two weeks ago I spent the week up in Petrolia for AmeriCorps spring training.

About 53 of us AmeriCorps Watershed Steward Project interns gathered in the Mattole Watershed, near the lost coast, for “career building” and other get-together stuff. It was fun – it’s super rural there. Only ~40 miles from Fortuna and Eureka (fairly large towns in Northern California), it takes around 2 hours to get there because the road is windy, tight, and full of blind curves. You also get to drive through the (largest?) oldest stand of old growth redwoods in North America. And they were massive. The redwoods by me at Muir Woods are nothing in comparison. Of course, coming from the south it took more like 5 or 6 hours to get there.

Mattole Salmon Group's screw trap for smolt trapping -
go to March 22nd entry to read about SPAWN's
smolt trapping project.

Measuring chinook, steelhead, and the occasional coho
caught in the Mattole Salmon Group's screw trap.

WSP members climbing a large in-stream structure installed
by the Mattole Restoration Council made of woody debris and rocks,
put in to decrease erosion, create pools and habitat for salmon.

The mouth of the Mattole River.

This smelly dog that decided to hang around during training.
Eventually his owner showed up to bring him home. Picture
by Bob Atwood.

On the drive home, Kristin, Heidi and I decided to stop at those giant redwoods we drove through on the way to Petrolia. Coincidentally, this is where Creek Days was held two weeks later (read on).

----------------

After a week back at SPAWN, I went back up to those old growth redwoods to camp and work at an outdoor environmental education fair, Creek Days, organized by our education team leader, Karen.

My first night getting to the campground and there are only a handful of us there. Karen, who has been there since the day before, tells us how the park ranger saw a black bear cub down the road (5 miles) at the site where we were having our education event and it was the youngest she had ever seen alone before and was NOT afraid of humans. Usually with black bears, you make a lot of noise and act really big and they take off. They want berries and trash, not people. Karen also tells us that she went to the bathroom mid-dinner prep the day before and returned to find claw marks in her boxes of food... and of course there's recent bear scat ~30 feet from the outdoor kitchen set up.

*I want to insert here that I am unable to sleep through the night, almost any night. I usually wake up 1-2 times to pee. Also, there are flush toilets at our campground but they are a ~3-4 minute walk, making a pee break 10+ minutes. And it's cold at night.*

Needless to say, I spent a large part of the first night (Sunday) composing a fan letter in my head to Stephen Colbert about how I now agree with him that bears are the #1 threat to America.

Tuesday night I wake up around 1 am needing to pee, of course, and I can hear something in the kitchen. It sounds like something rooting around.

I'm freaking out. I'm so goddamned sure it's a bear, and now that I'm worried I'm unable to make myself sleep. I have to pee more. So once I hear the last noise, I give it 30 minutes, then pop out of my tent, clapping a little and scanning with my headlamp to see if anything's out there, and just pee right outside the tent.

Phew, safe!

Wednesday, my coworker Tambra caught me on my way to the shower and asked if I wanted to drive her to Arcata and sleep on her couch - no bear, free shower, food, plus internet and cell phone charging! HELL YEAH! NO BEARS!

*Also, it turns out it was probably a raven or raccoon I heard, not a bear. No damage was done, though a wooden spoon was missing.*

So Friday was our last day of kids at Creek Days and there are only 3 groups (instead of 11 or 12). I have one with 10 3rd graders and 6 adults (parents, teacher). We go to our first booth, stop and chat, then walk a bit and I stop to talk to them about redwood tree rings and tree structure. Another AmeriCorps WSP-er, Jen, down the trail is looking at me as I'm trying to get the kids to quiet down etc and giving me the weirdest look... Either she looked behind me or the kids saw it first, but I turned around and behind me, a bit above my head, is a black bear cub. Maybe 5 or 6 feet away from my head.

Holy shit... I just freeze - this is the one that the park ranger contemplated putting down because of the potential danger it was to humans. I look at Jen, she starts clapping and shouting at the bear, and I just start trying to herd my kids back down the trail. Of course, all the parents have to stop and take pictures, and I just want these kids to keep moving.

I'd never seen a bear in the wild before. It was pretty awesome, especially being so close. The whole rest of the day I kept trying to contain questions to what we were learning about and NOT the bear ("I thought it was fake or a trained bear that you guys put there..." I must've heard that from one 3rd grader 40 times), but as soon as the kids were back on the bus, my excitement was boiling over and all I could talk about was the bear.

Hopefully one of the parents will send me a picture, because I didn't take the time to get my camera out.

Other pictures from Creek Days (I'm a poor photographer so most of them didn't turn out well):

Sharah has the kids smell a fish carcass

The work days ended fairly early (3 pm) so we entertained
ourselves with games including nails, a hammer, a stump, and beer.

Cheers.

Tambra takes a swing.

Kids doing some macroinvertebrate sampling.

Matt the sustainability pirate.

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The day after I returned from Creek Days I started a second job. I’m working at a catering company based out of the North Bay, though my first job was at a wedding reception in the Presidio (within the city). It was a pretty easy job, though I think most of that was facilitated by the party itself – less than 100 people, really nice people and just smooth sailing. All the music was 50s and 60s rock, r&b, and soul. It was pretty awesome, as weddings go. I’ll be working for the catering company on occasional weekends, certainly not a lot – I already work a number of weekends for SPAWN. I plan on using the money I made at the first job to go to the optometrist. My eyes have been red far too often and for too long of time periods lately and it’s making me really nervous to wear my contacts. Yay health!

I’ve been thinking a lot about after August when my internship ends. I would really like to do a second term at IFR, but there is some question as to whether or not that will continue to be a site. Well, that’s not really putting it right – the AmeriCorps Watershed Stewards Project has undergone some budget cuts and that means that some positions will be cut next year. That will include some positions at sites with more than 2 members and will also probably include some sites in their entirety. One of the things that the board that makes the decision will look at is how much “Watershed Assessment” time is logged at each site. IFR is all policy – watershed assessment generally refers to time spent in the field. So it’s a safe assumption that IFR is in danger, though is has been a site for 13 years, since WSP’s inception, so that should give it some gravitas, as it were.

WSP will know about IFR’s status in a couple weeks and at that point I’ll start applying or I’ll start a massive job search. I’d like to stay in at least the Bay Area, preferably moving to the city. It takes a while to establish roots and meaningful friendships in a new area, and I’ve just gotten that. I don’t want to give it all up so fast. However, I do want to have housing, etc, so I plan on looking back in Chicago and I’m also considering New York City. Unfortunately any move is incredibly expensive, and a nearby move would be considerably cheaper.

We’ll see what happens.

A bear! I saw a black bear cub!

It's hard to find pierogis here.

I'm seriously considering a second term in AmeriCorps. Part of me may be thinking "oohhh... don't have to worry about real jobs for another whole year!" But most of me is thinking about how much the experience could do for me.

If I did another term in the AmeriCorps Watershed Stewards Project, I would absolutely want to stay in the Bay area. I really don't want to go through another big move - making friends can be a pain, especially when you're broke as a joke. If I were to look for a real job, though, I'd prefer to look in, again, the Bay area or back in Chicago. I have friends in both places (I feel like I'm actually now starting to really develop more than superficial friendships here, and it would be annoying and difficult to just drop those), I know Chicago and I'm getting to know Marin and SF.

Basically, that boils it down to another year at SPAWN (which I love, and is perfect) or at IFR, the Institute for Fisheries Resources. IFR is a non-profit in San Francisco that is entirely entrenched in policy. Little to no outreach or field work. I'm really interested in finding out if I am interested in policy. Did that make sense?

I think policy is neat and I'd like to learn more about it. But I don't know if I'm really interested in policy for a career. I took the LSAT a couple years ago; obviously I've had some interest in environmental law at one time or another.

So, yeah, I've been considering IFR. This past wednesday I visited the AmeriCorps WSP interns there to check it out, see what they did, where they worked, etc. None of their mentors were there, unfortunately, so I did not meet anyone except the part time accountant. (I stopped and ate pastry at the Headlands on the way, that was fantastic).

We went to a salmon fisheries meeting with the department of fish and game (DFG). Mainly, the point of the meeting was for DFG to present last year's catch numbers to salmon fishermen, suggest ideas for next year, and get public comment and input from the fishermen so that they could better make up the allowed catch etc for this upcoming season. Tensions were high. CRAZY high. Commercial fishermen were pissed off about last season and this season, in part because last year, after all these meetings and an eventual DFG decision, at the 11th hour the governor-appointed commission decided to scrap the whole season. So their anger, paranoia, and distrust in the government has a very clear foundation.

Luckily, not all IFR days are spent at meetings that stressful or annoying (a lot of people being mad), because if it were, I'd say "HELL NO" to policy. I'm still undecided, though definitely more interested.

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In other news... I leave for Arizona on Wednesday! I'm going to Cubs' Spring Training! (and I'm going to see Kerry and Vince!)

MLK Jr and Ed Training

So the service day and ed training are done. Hooray.

For our service day on MLK, Jr. day, we learned about Tsunamis, and then we were split into teams of 3-5 and sent to local towns where we would canvas, giving people information about what to do, how to know if you're in danger (natural warnings rather than official warnings), and where they should go in their community.

I was in a little town called King Salmon, essentially a large trailer park.

Definitely going to be underwater in a Tsunami.
You can see it cause I circled it with red.

The tsunami danger reminded me of tornadoes in the midwest. The warning to watch elevation, the sirens (which either don't exist, don't work, or don't carry far enough in the North Coast area...). The main difference was that everyone in the midwest knows what to do if a tornado is on it's way. Basement, low point, not by a tree. The sirens are used, tested regularly, and acknowledged (unless you're in the middle of nowhere). Not so much for tsunamis.

WSP member Tambra pushing her independent service project at
King Salmon's Tsunami information station

Thus the event, while being in its first year and thus poorly organized (not enough sandwiches for people, no organized rides to the communities-to-be-canvassed), was still clearly helpful for a number of community members. A lot of people knew where to go, but not necessarily the natural warning signs. And of course a lot of people knew what to look for or feel, but didn't know where to go.

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The education training was alright. We went through a lot of stuff that was redundant, considering the number of field trips Heidi and I have done at SPAWN. But we also learned a lot of new games to play and useful tips on classroom management, we dissected a steelhead trout, and went through what is required to complete our "Real Science" portion of the AmeriCorps WSP.

One of the new games is a salmon pageant. I was a shimmery, shiny smolt.
Jacob is a spawner (adult coming back to spawn)

Another new activity is fish printing - using plastic fish molds,
painting them, and then pressing them to paper. Yay a fish.


Are you ready steelhead? It's going to hurt.


I told you so.


Fish organs. Tasty. Or not so much.

We also met the new January hires (there's an October hire period and a January hire period in the WSP), one who is from Champaign-Urbana and went to Parkland. Yay chambananites.

We played catchphrase and drank cheap beer.

It was colder up there, and I spotted some snow on the drive back! Driving along hwy 101, Heidi slowed and I rolled the window down and took a couple pictures. Kristin laughed. One of the pictures showed up.

SNOW! Or possibly ice/frost that never melted if it's always in the shade.
I'd like to believe it's snow.

You can kind of see the white ahead along the road...
another small patch of snow. /frost. Didn't turn out so well.


I like this town's sign. It's a fairly large town along hwy 101.

While we did have to buy our dinners while we were up there, we got to claim them as expenses. Of course we won't see that money for many, many months. I did finally receive my physical reimbursement ($70.15!) from September. I think I may have been the first person to receive it!! Yay money.

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Talking to Kristin, who is the AmeriCorps WSP at Institute for Fisheries Resources, made me really curious in possibly serving a second year, specifically at her site. The position at IFR is all policy, so no field work and little outreach. I would really like to know more and experience more of the policy side of this whole industry, but I'm not sure I'd want to spend an entire 11 months away from field work and outreach. Currently I feel like I learn something new every day or at least reinforce newly acquired knowledge. I have this fear that I'd forget all this new knowledge.

Whatever, it's a long ways away before I need to start worrying about applying for another job.