Update on things that maybe someone cares about

I haven't even been here for a week and I'm already having trouble remembering Nashville summertime. There is so much to learn we're still training for 9, 10 hours a day, followed by socials that last into midnights, and there's little time to think about even what day it is.

I had a one-on-one talk with a trainer for placement on Sunday and she told me to think about going to California. I'll know for sure where I'll be sent by the end of the week.

I can't believe I'm moving on Sunday!

Somewhere, here I come!

Boston

First time here and it's a pretty rad city so far. Wide side walks that are well-lit, lots of nice people, and last night I met someone who designs shoes! Who designs shoes besides Steven Martin in Father of the Bride and the dad in Jumanji? A stranger, in Boston.

Training for my new fellowship with Environment America is one day down, nine to go. Ten hour days leads to a surplus of new ideas I want to research or talk out.

So far the most important thing I've learned is that every conversation with a stranger can lead to new and exciting opportunities. If I can be an open mind and open book, everything is available.

There is palpable potential here. Everyone is so willing to be open.

"After Years"

Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.

Ted Kooser

"Kindness"

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

-Naomi Shihab Nye

"The Summer Day"

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

-Mary Oliver

Predicting the next 100 years

taken at the lake

(!!!) I have been hired by a Environment America to start in August. It's a big girl job in the big girl world, complete with a salary, paid-time-off, and a dress code. I'm stoked out of my mind, but I was thinking today that I've been hired to be a go-between. Go-betweens are great, but in our capitalistic society, they're phased out ASAP.

My broad-term job description is "environmental advocate." Buzzword: advocate.

Advocates are usually the good-guys, which is hopeful, but they inherently stand between two entities. Those two entities exist whether the advocate is there or not, like a child and a courtroom. Unfortunately for me, the advocate's existence depends directly and completely on the necessity of its existence. Interesting.

I am currently an unpaid advocate of the environment, mostly because I'm a student in environmental studies who likes to communicate. But soon, (i.e., August) the difference will be a definite rise in income and productivity. I will officially be a go-between. "People of the United States, ladies and gents we chose to make our decisions for us, meet the environment. You've know her all along, but this is what she does for you..."

It's all public relations really, because who's going to argue with me when I say, "If our planet isn't healthy, we aren't healthy"? Maybe a lot of folks, but not forever, especially since the American learning curve seems to be steepening. Steepening? Steepening.

Go-green ads aren't just for adults anymore. I became aware of this while watching TV the other night and when I came across the Disney Channel's greenery. Of course, I started looking things up online. Studies are showing that "Green Teens," or those teens most interested in environmental issues, are also more likely to be popular in school. With the Disney channel in all its celebrity saying what's up AND the added potential of becoming prom queen? What pre-teen isn't going to go green?

This is my evidence that my job is temporary. Hopefully.

I'm looking forward to the moment when environmental advocacy jobs are something of the past. I hope to goodness that my job becomes unnecessary and out of date sooner than later. Then, I will know my job is done. The neat thing is, I think it will happen in the next couple of decades. And in a hundred years I hope kids laugh at how silly an environmental advocacy job sounds. Why need a go-between when we can all do it ourselves?

My very own morning cup of links

syncretism

anxiety culture

"His heart is as open as the sky." -Tao Te Ching

If you like scrabble, maybe you'd like Bananagrams.

If you like trivia, maybe you'd like sporcle.