un otro visto de Aberdeen

so this blog has been mostly dedicated to my work in as an americorps volunteer in aberdeen. That has really been a very small part of the total experience and I'm thinking I might start writing more about the broader experience...so get ready my friends!

like today I was in my favorite place in town, the popcorn factory, one of the only local coffee shops (only open til 6 on weekdays, 5 on weekends!) and talking to the owner who I've come to know through numerous conversations. After all I'm there for hours on end usually at least one day, sometimes, more a week. Sometimes i opt to work from 'the fac' instead of going into 'the office,' which is actually more a classroom full of random shit related to the history of the NR dept at GHC, the model watershed project and the CRLC...along with all the 'materials' used to conduct environmental education. funny thing is we've touched probably less than 1/4 of the shit in there and the rest gets rearranged at our whim when one of us gets ansty with the clutter, with that most often being me, only to result in frustration on the behalf of my boss who never knew where anything was in the first place.

That brings up that I do like the flexibility of my job and boss. Now things have heated up and we are busier, don't have the resources we need in our 'office', some other environments can be more productive and so she lets us kinda do our own thing as long as we get our work done. and that has upped my productivity big time...:)

oh yeah, but back to what inspired me to write this post. at the fac, talking to the owner and we get talking about interior decorating and her home, which was a barn in the beginning...that she rented out for a long while. The conversation leads to her telling me about her last tenants that "tweeked out" her place, resulting in a battle to evict them. she described the wreckage the tweekers left behind, saying it was utterly disgusting, just brown and yellow everywhere, shit all over the place, needles scattered all over the house, along with all kinds of dildos. Yeah. Then she went on talking about all the trouble she'd had with them since they were evicted. They were robbed three times, and then her ex-husbands house was robbed as well. They found the tweekers squatting in their families cabin at lake quinalt. and the police couldn't do anything because "the jails are full." how sick is that?

What makes it worse is that this is not the first time I've talked to people about how twisted tweekers can be, not knowing what they'll do, how far they'll go or how they will react, their compulsions, desperation, the pure addiction that drives them, that it has to do something with sex, how great it is, that its never the same without the drug (possible partial explanation of the dildos?), how hard it is to get off and rehabilitate, and how it change them permanently, how quick that change happens. I've talked to recent addicts trying to get clean. Recently I'm pretty positive one lady I interacted with a lot at the college relapsed...

there is a lot of darkness, negativity, poverty, addiction, desperation in Grays Harbor. I'm quite isolated from it most of the time, i see and hear about it in bits and pieces. The other day I'm quite sure i witnessed a drug deal of some sort by this old guy sitting by a dumpster in the back garage of a building. Two kids, probably not more than 16 came upto him, look around sketchily and see me looking directly at them, continue with their backs to me, kinda fidgety and then just walk away...young boys!

Someone mentioned the other day that by 12 or 13 many of the kids here are into drugs and alcohol, that there are more than 220 homeless kids in harbor. We were meeting about what kinds of programs are out there to get kids involved and there are not many at all.

can be pretty depressing. it is insight into another side of life. the anthropologist in me is fascinated, and my humanitarian side just wants to help.

my capstone project is to start a Roots & Shoots group here. hope that will help in some way...and planting seeds of environmentalism in youngin's heads is too, i hope.another

finds it typical of Grays Harbor College doesn't have internet on its mac!

uh, so i went to the computer lab to work because we only have two laptops for three people and i've finally accepted that fact and decided that I don't want to use my personal computer for work, as it creates no separation between work and personal life, school, etc. And so I get freakin excited there is a mac, and log in and then try to pull up the internet, but it won't work. I ask the lab guy and he explains to me that it doesn't have internet because of this and that reason. WHAT!??!? what is the freakin purpose of a mac without the internet? Just more evidence of how backwards GHC can be...

dear me, o my!

Tree Plantings galore

There is an area of a stream that we've planted hundreds of trees around for a stream restoration project. We've had overwhelming volunteer support and even a school class participating in one of the plantings. its pretty cool to see young and old come together for a cause like this...not to mention to see the behind the scenes efforts of volunteer coordination and such. More good experience piling up...

A Breath of Fresh Air...

Every time we get together for meetings with PEI, I am renewed with an enthusiasm for all that we are aiming for, and the broader change that is being worked towards. The more encompassing learning philosophies that are being introduced and implemented in schools. And the kind of people that i respect and look up to that are part of this larger effort of environmental education and inquiry based learning. Even though personally, things are a bit rough right now, I left that meeting a lot more energetic and motivate, with a better understanding of the broader picture, and ideas abound.

Things are really starting to pick up and our agendas getting fuller and fuller, to the point it is getting overwhelming, but exciting at the same time. There are so many wheels churning on so many levels, and our work is just a small part of that...