Update:
Everyone quit all at once in a blinding flash of comradery. Like a candle in the wind. The troops are limited to:
myself,
one other instructor,
nice boss,
mean boss
and mean boss’ husband the groundskeeper
They called in some folks to help from another site, so we got three more girls.
Girl 1
Girl 2
Girl 3
This week is the clean-up week, so really all you need to be able to do is be strong enough to do manual labor (lifting, moving, dusting, sweeping, picking garbage from between beds with dental picks, etc). But that would be too easy:
Myself – having to stop every 5 minutes to sneeze and/or blow my nose because of all the dust
Other instructor – severe head cold: almost lost his voice – had to miss a day
Mean boss – in the big city in meetings for two days straight
Nice boss – covering for mean boss with office duties, cleaning with us and cooking because mean boss chased away all the cooks with her meanness
Mean boss’ husband – recovering from a botched bout of home dentistry followed closely by a visit to the real doctor (massive amounts of jaw pain and lack of sleep)
Girl 1 – can’t stop talking about herself and broadway show tunes
Girl 2 – no notes
Girl 3 – no notes
I think I finally understand the term “motley crew”. That would be this remnants of a once-happy work force.
.
We’re hoping mean boss is in the big city because she’s getting fired, but I think that dream might be more of a fantasy than reality. I wrote an e-mail to HR* explaining additional reasons why she should be fired.
*I didn’t explain that after the orange-throwing incident, my co-workers used every resource imaginable to report the poor managerial skills of mean boss. As a result, the head of HR drove all the way out to us to meet one on one with us regarding a number of incidents that are potentially “fireable.” She was very nice. We talked about the world series and she let me pet her Labradoodle. I liked her.
Other news: We all went to a rural town of 2000 people in the southeastern part of the state for a Halloween party at our recently fired friend’s parents’ house. We drank a little, dressed up a homemade piñata as Mean Boss and beat her to the point of decapitation with a broken broom handle. We then went dancing at a Mexican restaurant where I put back Bloody Mary’s with authority. And I danced for probably about two hours. We showed up and were the first ones on the dance floor. When we left, it was a party. I was dressed as a Shakesperean actor complete with make-up and I only received one negative (not quite homophobic, but pushing that envelope) comment the entire night. Dancing with good friends after you’re a little liquored up is apparently a lot of fun!
It’s very strange having everyone gone from camp like this. I’m here for just two more days. I guess I should pack at some point. A plus tard!
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Disaster!
I guess I’m not sure where to start about the events of today. A summary is probably in due order. Two days ago, I was standing around with two of my co-workers and what was once an innocent dare, “I’ll bet you I can throw this orange over our manager’s house,” became a complete and utter meltdown for the entire staff of this camp.
The first orange was lofted with grace and dignity and cleared the house that was maybe 50 yards away. The second orange fell short and hit the front of the house with a resounding thud, the magnitude of which would change our lives completely. Did that sound melodramatic? I hope so, everyone reading this knows that there’s nothing I love more than melodrama. NOTHING.
Melodrama aside, shit went down today hard. That mis-placed orange was never cleaned up and when our boss returned from her weekend trip, she called her boss back in the city and brought him out here to get our co-worker fired. And fired he was. He was fired under the guise of “insubordination” and “making her feel disrespected and uncomfortable”.
To have this situation make sense, you need to understand the living situation that we are a part of. Work = our lives. In most professional situations, you have a day of work and then you come home and are NOT at work. We live 30 miles from the closest city of over 30 people. The closest city of 10,000 is about 80 miles away. We cannot go anywhere. We have to get along with each other. There is no other option.
Everyone has hated our boss since way before I started work here 41/2 months ago. Everyone except her husband and her best friend, the cook. I haven’t developed a reason to be particularly upset with her personally aside from the fact that on numerous occasions, she has been so abrasively condescending and rude to my co-workers that I was rendered speechless wondering if I was imagining the conversation. She is awful to people that I respect and love and that is absolutely a reason to be upset with someone.
My coworker that got fired may be the most honest-to-goodness, kind, happy person I’ve known in a long time and she fired him for throwing an orange at her house and citing feeling uncomfortable. It’s like one of those underdog stories where there’s a tyrannical government and the blue-collar workers have to rise up to overthrow the government once one of theirs has fallen.
Four people are quitting by the end of the week, leaving five of us to clean camp for the final three days of my time here next week. It’s going to be miserable. Camp is divided into two teams and it seems like no one is going to end up winning. All of the employees are hell-bent on getting my boss fired for a lack of professionalism, rightfully stating that if the orange incident was enough to get someone canned, then we should be able to get her canned every time we feel uncomfortable or disrespected. The nature of living with your co-workers is that you see people at their best and at their worst. You can’t be your best 24 hours a day. Even I can’t.
He will be missed and now the group is working on making this camp more beautiful by having our manager removed. Hopefully she won’t be able to run this camp into the ground as quickly as she is going at the moment.
Always fight the man. Always!
The first orange was lofted with grace and dignity and cleared the house that was maybe 50 yards away. The second orange fell short and hit the front of the house with a resounding thud, the magnitude of which would change our lives completely. Did that sound melodramatic? I hope so, everyone reading this knows that there’s nothing I love more than melodrama. NOTHING.
Melodrama aside, shit went down today hard. That mis-placed orange was never cleaned up and when our boss returned from her weekend trip, she called her boss back in the city and brought him out here to get our co-worker fired. And fired he was. He was fired under the guise of “insubordination” and “making her feel disrespected and uncomfortable”.
To have this situation make sense, you need to understand the living situation that we are a part of. Work = our lives. In most professional situations, you have a day of work and then you come home and are NOT at work. We live 30 miles from the closest city of over 30 people. The closest city of 10,000 is about 80 miles away. We cannot go anywhere. We have to get along with each other. There is no other option.
Everyone has hated our boss since way before I started work here 41/2 months ago. Everyone except her husband and her best friend, the cook. I haven’t developed a reason to be particularly upset with her personally aside from the fact that on numerous occasions, she has been so abrasively condescending and rude to my co-workers that I was rendered speechless wondering if I was imagining the conversation. She is awful to people that I respect and love and that is absolutely a reason to be upset with someone.
My coworker that got fired may be the most honest-to-goodness, kind, happy person I’ve known in a long time and she fired him for throwing an orange at her house and citing feeling uncomfortable. It’s like one of those underdog stories where there’s a tyrannical government and the blue-collar workers have to rise up to overthrow the government once one of theirs has fallen.
Four people are quitting by the end of the week, leaving five of us to clean camp for the final three days of my time here next week. It’s going to be miserable. Camp is divided into two teams and it seems like no one is going to end up winning. All of the employees are hell-bent on getting my boss fired for a lack of professionalism, rightfully stating that if the orange incident was enough to get someone canned, then we should be able to get her canned every time we feel uncomfortable or disrespected. The nature of living with your co-workers is that you see people at their best and at their worst. You can’t be your best 24 hours a day. Even I can’t.
He will be missed and now the group is working on making this camp more beautiful by having our manager removed. Hopefully she won’t be able to run this camp into the ground as quickly as she is going at the moment.
Always fight the man. Always!
Sunday, October 24, 2010
My computer is completely messed up. It passed away in the middle of the night, so I don’t think it felt anything. I am writing on it currently, but all the colors are all messed up. Microsoft word is still relatively legible. Just gotta get by for the next two weeks until I can get back to Portland and try to make my brother fix it.
We just finished up our beer science weekend. What a wonderful experience. I was paid to lead hikes. There were a number of workshops that the participants had a chance to rotate through that taught about beer-making, home-brewing and all sorts of complicated things I didn’t understand. One of the workshops was a hike led by me. When I wasn’t hiking, I was helping one of the presenters pour beer for his taste-test and pushing next on his powerpoint presentation. His presentation was about what makes beer go bad, such as being overly oxidized, exposed to UV light, bacterial growth and things like that. It was pretty interesting from a biological and chemical stand-point. My hikes were pretty uneventful: I did the same thing four times, and had some interesting conversations. The folks who attended this workshop were very, very friendly and good-natured. Even though I knew nothing about beer-making, I felt included through their jokes and stories.
Everyone got tanked both nights. The brewery that co-sponsored this event brought one keg, but it got completely drained the first night (there was no miracle of the beer that lasted two nights). So the next day, one woman drove all the way back to the big city to pick up more beer and after her 7-hour journey, returned with a full keg and also a pony keg, both of which were not finished and both of which we subsequently get to keep!! They also showered us in gifts: a t-shirt, a 22-oz bottle of specialty beer, a tasting glass and a temporary tattoo for all. They also took the presenters and staff into the back room and gave us a private tasting of 10 or so of their delicious beers and also probably the best whiskey I’ve ever tasted. All as a thanks to US! I WAS ALREADY GETTING PAID AND ON TOP OF THAT, SO MUCH DELICIOUS BEER AND WHISKEY! It was sort of like the most wonderful thing ever. I then got out the gopher snake and brought him around to everyone so they could pet or hold him. We also brought out the bearded dragon and milk snake after having brought out the owl the night before. Turns out, when beer-makers get loaded up, they want to play with animals! Who knew? There was also a moderately interesting lecture and beer-tasting activity led by the keynote speaker, a professor of fermentology from the state university. He brought in some of his beer that they brew at the school. One of them was a stout brewed in whiskey barrels, so it still had a woody, whiskey flavor in addition to the rich, almost sweet stout flavor. Soooo good.
It was just so bizarre having kegs of delicious beer and beer-making stations set up in our teaching spaces. There are usually children and we don’t let them mention drugs, alcohol or other vulgarity. Today, we got to shake off the hangover and clean up after the mayhem. It took the better part of the morning. It will be sooo bad if it turns out I missed a beer bottle in one of the cabins normally used to house children. Sooo bad.
One week of maintenance, one week of clean-up and then I’m out of here. I don’t know what to think about all of this. I’m done teaching! Aah! Weird. It will be good to get back to Portland, but I'm certainly going to miss this lifestyle from time to time.
Listening to Pagliacci right now. Love it!
We just finished up our beer science weekend. What a wonderful experience. I was paid to lead hikes. There were a number of workshops that the participants had a chance to rotate through that taught about beer-making, home-brewing and all sorts of complicated things I didn’t understand. One of the workshops was a hike led by me. When I wasn’t hiking, I was helping one of the presenters pour beer for his taste-test and pushing next on his powerpoint presentation. His presentation was about what makes beer go bad, such as being overly oxidized, exposed to UV light, bacterial growth and things like that. It was pretty interesting from a biological and chemical stand-point. My hikes were pretty uneventful: I did the same thing four times, and had some interesting conversations. The folks who attended this workshop were very, very friendly and good-natured. Even though I knew nothing about beer-making, I felt included through their jokes and stories.
Everyone got tanked both nights. The brewery that co-sponsored this event brought one keg, but it got completely drained the first night (there was no miracle of the beer that lasted two nights). So the next day, one woman drove all the way back to the big city to pick up more beer and after her 7-hour journey, returned with a full keg and also a pony keg, both of which were not finished and both of which we subsequently get to keep!! They also showered us in gifts: a t-shirt, a 22-oz bottle of specialty beer, a tasting glass and a temporary tattoo for all. They also took the presenters and staff into the back room and gave us a private tasting of 10 or so of their delicious beers and also probably the best whiskey I’ve ever tasted. All as a thanks to US! I WAS ALREADY GETTING PAID AND ON TOP OF THAT, SO MUCH DELICIOUS BEER AND WHISKEY! It was sort of like the most wonderful thing ever. I then got out the gopher snake and brought him around to everyone so they could pet or hold him. We also brought out the bearded dragon and milk snake after having brought out the owl the night before. Turns out, when beer-makers get loaded up, they want to play with animals! Who knew? There was also a moderately interesting lecture and beer-tasting activity led by the keynote speaker, a professor of fermentology from the state university. He brought in some of his beer that they brew at the school. One of them was a stout brewed in whiskey barrels, so it still had a woody, whiskey flavor in addition to the rich, almost sweet stout flavor. Soooo good.
It was just so bizarre having kegs of delicious beer and beer-making stations set up in our teaching spaces. There are usually children and we don’t let them mention drugs, alcohol or other vulgarity. Today, we got to shake off the hangover and clean up after the mayhem. It took the better part of the morning. It will be sooo bad if it turns out I missed a beer bottle in one of the cabins normally used to house children. Sooo bad.
One week of maintenance, one week of clean-up and then I’m out of here. I don’t know what to think about all of this. I’m done teaching! Aah! Weird. It will be good to get back to Portland, but I'm certainly going to miss this lifestyle from time to time.
Listening to Pagliacci right now. Love it!
Thursday, October 21, 2010
High school... again
This last week, we had a group of high school students that stretched our resources to the max. On average, our services comfortably support around 80 middle school students. This was 130 high school students. Big difference. We had a group of girls sleeping in a large tent at the base of the climbing wall and we threw spare mattresses and cots anywhere we could fit them. It was madness and mayhem the entire week. I'm going to use my congratulatory letter I wrote to the staff as a way of summarizing my experience. 2 hours after the high school group left, a group of 70 4th and 5th graders showed up and most of the instructors (myself excluded) taught them today while the rest of us were cleaning. I also taught an archaeology class earlier in the week that explored an abandoned homestead, which was really cool! I hope you enjoy.
__________________________________________________________
I just finished cleaning up from our big week and I was with my own thoughts for a while, which gave me time to reflect and appreciate what just happened.
We did something unthinkable. Looking at this week from afar, I'm sure I'm not the only one who was extremely nervous about the prospect of 130 high-schoolers pouring out of all corners of camp. This was a task that had any of a number of different ways to fail tremendously.
I think it would have failed tremendously had it not been for such a dedicated, persevering and intelligent group of employees. Each and everyone one of us stepped up to the task and worked together to make a beautiful week for a tough group of kids whose demographic we do not have a lot of experience with. [new guy 1 and new guy 2] worked their asses off to figure out how to teach material they maybe had never even thought about before. It was like a dance we all did the whole week to steer clear of each other on the trails, in teaching spaces, in [the dining hall], and my goodness, was it an elegant dance.
I did not spend a lot of my time in the kitchen directly, but from my observations of the way the meals went, there was plenty of delicious food for every meal in spite of the fact that even with the volunteers, the shifts being worked by the cooks were even longer than they normally are and were endured without complaints.
There was a moment today when I was cleaning and I was watching [names] leading their tours of 4th and 5th graders around camp just about 2 hours after our group of high-schoolers left. Your vocabulary, your speech patterns, your general demeanor switched flawlessly back into elementary school mode, keeping these excited little faces and bodies engaged on the tour. [boss2] was enthusiastically leading her teachers and chaperones around on their own tour after two days of KP/ programming coordinator! [boss1] was hard at work in the kitchen making hamburger buns from scratch on top of everything else she does and [names]and myself were moving mattresses and heavy boxes all around camp, yet EVERYONE IS STILL ABLE TO SMILE!!
Maybe it's just that I haven't been doing all this quite as long the rest of you, but this is remarkable. This job we do I solemnly believe is something most people do not have the mental and physical strength to endure, not to mention intelligence, quick-thinking and passion that is evident in each and every one of you. I don't think we were able to congratulate each other quite as much as we should because of the other school group coming in today, but we really ought to stand to back and look at what we were able to accomplish as a team.
I don't know where I'm going to be in the next stage of my life, but I am just so honored and proud to be a part of this team because we really are making a difference in the world. Thank you all for everything. There's a lot of love here.
Affectionately yours,
[me]
__________________________________________________________
I just finished cleaning up from our big week and I was with my own thoughts for a while, which gave me time to reflect and appreciate what just happened.
We did something unthinkable. Looking at this week from afar, I'm sure I'm not the only one who was extremely nervous about the prospect of 130 high-schoolers pouring out of all corners of camp. This was a task that had any of a number of different ways to fail tremendously.
I think it would have failed tremendously had it not been for such a dedicated, persevering and intelligent group of employees. Each and everyone one of us stepped up to the task and worked together to make a beautiful week for a tough group of kids whose demographic we do not have a lot of experience with. [new guy 1 and new guy 2] worked their asses off to figure out how to teach material they maybe had never even thought about before. It was like a dance we all did the whole week to steer clear of each other on the trails, in teaching spaces, in [the dining hall], and my goodness, was it an elegant dance.
I did not spend a lot of my time in the kitchen directly, but from my observations of the way the meals went, there was plenty of delicious food for every meal in spite of the fact that even with the volunteers, the shifts being worked by the cooks were even longer than they normally are and were endured without complaints.
There was a moment today when I was cleaning and I was watching [names] leading their tours of 4th and 5th graders around camp just about 2 hours after our group of high-schoolers left. Your vocabulary, your speech patterns, your general demeanor switched flawlessly back into elementary school mode, keeping these excited little faces and bodies engaged on the tour. [boss2] was enthusiastically leading her teachers and chaperones around on their own tour after two days of KP/ programming coordinator! [boss1] was hard at work in the kitchen making hamburger buns from scratch on top of everything else she does and [names]and myself were moving mattresses and heavy boxes all around camp, yet EVERYONE IS STILL ABLE TO SMILE!!
Maybe it's just that I haven't been doing all this quite as long the rest of you, but this is remarkable. This job we do I solemnly believe is something most people do not have the mental and physical strength to endure, not to mention intelligence, quick-thinking and passion that is evident in each and every one of you. I don't think we were able to congratulate each other quite as much as we should because of the other school group coming in today, but we really ought to stand to back and look at what we were able to accomplish as a team.
I don't know where I'm going to be in the next stage of my life, but I am just so honored and proud to be a part of this team because we really are making a difference in the world. Thank you all for everything. There's a lot of love here.
Affectionately yours,
[me]
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
She responded!
[And this is a blog I wrote a few days ago, but was apparently too tired to successfully send]
The girl from the desert conference responded to my heartfelt email. Here is the the email word for word that she wrote in response about three weeks after I wrote her my original email
[my name],
Thanks for your kind email. I do have a boyfriend, and he is not big and scary but he is a really great guy. I appreciate your compliments and I will revisit them any time I need a reminder or a day-brightener.
Best of luck in [The City]
[her name]
The city name and our names have been edited out to maintain anonymity.
We have a group of high school kids this week, so we're stepping up our material to make it withstand high schoolers. But they're from an alternative learning school, so they really aren't very smart.
We dissected grasshoppers today and I was trying to talk with one of the teachers and explain why I thought mammal dissection was a valid lab for high schoolers (fetal pigs probably) and that potentially, if you are dissecting an arthropod with an open circulatory system and cerebral ganglion in place of a brain, that really isn't going to be furthering any students' interests about medicine and human physiology. But they are an alternative school, so they can do whatever they want to. They exhaust me.
The girl from the desert conference responded to my heartfelt email. Here is the the email word for word that she wrote in response about three weeks after I wrote her my original email
[my name],
Thanks for your kind email. I do have a boyfriend, and he is not big and scary but he is a really great guy. I appreciate your compliments and I will revisit them any time I need a reminder or a day-brightener.
Best of luck in [The City]
[her name]
The city name and our names have been edited out to maintain anonymity.
We have a group of high school kids this week, so we're stepping up our material to make it withstand high schoolers. But they're from an alternative learning school, so they really aren't very smart.
We dissected grasshoppers today and I was trying to talk with one of the teachers and explain why I thought mammal dissection was a valid lab for high schoolers (fetal pigs probably) and that potentially, if you are dissecting an arthropod with an open circulatory system and cerebral ganglion in place of a brain, that really isn't going to be furthering any students' interests about medicine and human physiology. But they are an alternative school, so they can do whatever they want to. They exhaust me.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Update
I woke up this morning at 5:45 to cook breakfast for a group of college students and it is midnight:15. How did I get roped into this? Tomorrow we are required to do sexual harassment training, which is funny because:
A. Of the eleven staff members here, 8 of them are either in serious relationships with each other or are married to each other. One more has a girlfriend elsewhere
and B. We have three weeks left before the end of the year.
It will be a party, for sure. At least I get to sleep in until 10!!
This last week was pretty crazy, just like every week, I suppose. I had to teach two classes I had never taught before. One was a class about the weather, which I made quite informative, but I feel like I fell short in the making it interesting department.
The other class was an invasive species mapping class. I used the information I had gained by doing research on invasive grasses of the arid steppelands of the eastern part of the state and adapted it to 8th graders. We collected soil temperature, distribution %, declination and general appearance data and pooled our separate data collections to create a complete set of data for a number of locations around the area. In the end, they presented their findings and we walked our way through the scientific method. I had their principal shadowing this class, so I was extremely nervous. On his eval of camp, he said this particular class was his favorite!! I think that means I did something right. The kinds ended up loving it too. One particular girl mentioned that she thought it was going to be boring because of the name, "Ecological Mapping" and should be changed to something cooler like "killer plants!". All that made me feel okay with screwing up the weather class, which I understand is not necessarily a legitimate trade-off.
I'm about to pass out. Goodnight, friends. I've got much more to talk about that I didn't get to.
Ducks are # 1 in the country! Cool!
A. Of the eleven staff members here, 8 of them are either in serious relationships with each other or are married to each other. One more has a girlfriend elsewhere
and B. We have three weeks left before the end of the year.
It will be a party, for sure. At least I get to sleep in until 10!!
This last week was pretty crazy, just like every week, I suppose. I had to teach two classes I had never taught before. One was a class about the weather, which I made quite informative, but I feel like I fell short in the making it interesting department.
The other class was an invasive species mapping class. I used the information I had gained by doing research on invasive grasses of the arid steppelands of the eastern part of the state and adapted it to 8th graders. We collected soil temperature, distribution %, declination and general appearance data and pooled our separate data collections to create a complete set of data for a number of locations around the area. In the end, they presented their findings and we walked our way through the scientific method. I had their principal shadowing this class, so I was extremely nervous. On his eval of camp, he said this particular class was his favorite!! I think that means I did something right. The kinds ended up loving it too. One particular girl mentioned that she thought it was going to be boring because of the name, "Ecological Mapping" and should be changed to something cooler like "killer plants!". All that made me feel okay with screwing up the weather class, which I understand is not necessarily a legitimate trade-off.
I'm about to pass out. Goodnight, friends. I've got much more to talk about that I didn't get to.
Ducks are # 1 in the country! Cool!
Monday, October 11, 2010
The True Renaisance Man - Eat your heart out Danny DeVito
Last week was pretty crazy too. I was supposed to be working maintenance, but as it turned out, I ended up doing maintenance, teaching and cooking all in one week. I did not see that one coming when I took this job a month ago. When I took the job, I knew I would be working occasional maintenance weeks because there weren’t enough openings for instructors every week. This was fine with me because of my theatrical carpentry background. I’ve always enjoyed fixing things, and THIS WAS THE FIRST 9-5 JOB I’VE EVER WORKED IN MY LIIIIIIIIIIIIFE!! How relaxing! I worked maintenance for the first two days and on the third day, I was supposed to help cook from around 2-8pm. 6-hour day. The reason for this is that our dinner cook quit and normally the maintenance guy or the camp manager cooks the dinners (ridiculous, I know). Incidentally, they are great cooks, so it usually turns out fantastic, but this week they were going out of town for three days for some meetings and their anniversary (they’re married, I don’t know if I mentioned this). This left the poor, breakfast cook to cook three consecutive breakfasts and two consecutive dinners by herself. They then decided to throw me in to help her with dinner, not knowing if I would be any help or not. FORTUNATELY FOR THEM, I AM A MAN OF MANY SKILLS. A RENAISSANCE MAN, IF YOU WILL. I LAUGH IN THE FACE OF DANGER. I LOOK AT TASKS THAT ARE DAUNTING TO SOME MEN or women AND I GO ABOVE AND BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY TO COMPLETE THEM THOROUGHLY, HUZZAH! She’s really beautiful and the only other single member of the staff here, so it turned out to be alright with me. She let me make the salads and open cans of vegetable or fruits, but I also cut all the onions she needed because she cries too much when she cuts them and also the chicken because she is grossed out by raw meat (+2 man points, woo! -1 grammar point for that last sentence, meh).
This would all have been fine and dandy, if I hadn’t also been teaching for one of the instructors who had fallen ill (too much box wine, Hamm’s and sitting in wet clothing from the rafting trip is apparently not the best thing for your immune system). I learned that I would be filling in for her at 8:32am when one of my bosses knocked on my door and asked me if I would lead the 5-hour paleontology hike that started at 9:00am. I, of course, acquiesced, threw on some clothes, grabbed some breakfast and was out on the trail in a jiffy. I returned from my hike at 2:00pm, put away my teaching supplies and reported to the cook I was assisting to begin dinner prep. She told me I could take a break if I wanted, so I read some national geographic and just sat down for about 20 minutes.
FACT: A certain species of anemone fish (like clown fish) mates, then the female dies and the male transforms into a female and then mates with a different male. HOW CRAZY IS THAT?!! It’s pretty funny to imagine if that was how humans worked. Maybe people would be more ok with gay marriage?
After my national geographic break, I helped cook dinner for the next four hours, then ate dinner, prepped for my evening lesson with these kids and led a night hike, which was, of course, eventful for its own reasons. I had a child who was theoretically in 5th grade, but looked and acted like he was in 3rd grade and was apparently terrified of the dark. The key to night hike is that we don’t use our flashlights and we walk around in the dark and listen and feel for cool things. We also lead brief activities and do a little astronomy to boot. Once this child figured out what exactly we were doing (even though we explained it a thousand times earlier, he decided he was terrified and started crying and freaking out, which of course made the rest of the children develop fear of the dark. It didn’t help that I inadvertently stopped them for an activity next to a pile of cow bones we use to teach vertebrate physiology structures. After a fair amount of panic from this child, I gave him my red flashlight (we can’t use white light because it wrecks your night vision and actually makes most of the activities impossible) and this seemed to pacify him relatively thoroughly. I then thought we had stepped off the trail because we had crossed over a log I didn’t remember, which did not help ameliorate the group’s fear of the dark, but I distracted them with candy and shiny things until they forgot about their troubles. I then pointed out some constellations, tried to have a conversation about comprehending the vastness of the universe, but when it got steered in the direction of God vs. the Big Bang Theory, I decided to steer clear and took them back on their merry way.
We then had campfire. That was a 12.5 hour day with one 20-minute break to rest my legs and read National Geographic. (sigh)
I just had a really relaxing weekend here at camp with just a few people. I got to sleep in and I feel rested and ready to tackle a new week of maintenance/teaching/ maybe a little bit of cooking again if I want to. I have to go to sleep though now. Tomorrow, I will be building a shed for our new telescopes. I actually know how to do that!!
Goodnight.
This would all have been fine and dandy, if I hadn’t also been teaching for one of the instructors who had fallen ill (too much box wine, Hamm’s and sitting in wet clothing from the rafting trip is apparently not the best thing for your immune system). I learned that I would be filling in for her at 8:32am when one of my bosses knocked on my door and asked me if I would lead the 5-hour paleontology hike that started at 9:00am. I, of course, acquiesced, threw on some clothes, grabbed some breakfast and was out on the trail in a jiffy. I returned from my hike at 2:00pm, put away my teaching supplies and reported to the cook I was assisting to begin dinner prep. She told me I could take a break if I wanted, so I read some national geographic and just sat down for about 20 minutes.
FACT: A certain species of anemone fish (like clown fish) mates, then the female dies and the male transforms into a female and then mates with a different male. HOW CRAZY IS THAT?!! It’s pretty funny to imagine if that was how humans worked. Maybe people would be more ok with gay marriage?
After my national geographic break, I helped cook dinner for the next four hours, then ate dinner, prepped for my evening lesson with these kids and led a night hike, which was, of course, eventful for its own reasons. I had a child who was theoretically in 5th grade, but looked and acted like he was in 3rd grade and was apparently terrified of the dark. The key to night hike is that we don’t use our flashlights and we walk around in the dark and listen and feel for cool things. We also lead brief activities and do a little astronomy to boot. Once this child figured out what exactly we were doing (even though we explained it a thousand times earlier, he decided he was terrified and started crying and freaking out, which of course made the rest of the children develop fear of the dark. It didn’t help that I inadvertently stopped them for an activity next to a pile of cow bones we use to teach vertebrate physiology structures. After a fair amount of panic from this child, I gave him my red flashlight (we can’t use white light because it wrecks your night vision and actually makes most of the activities impossible) and this seemed to pacify him relatively thoroughly. I then thought we had stepped off the trail because we had crossed over a log I didn’t remember, which did not help ameliorate the group’s fear of the dark, but I distracted them with candy and shiny things until they forgot about their troubles. I then pointed out some constellations, tried to have a conversation about comprehending the vastness of the universe, but when it got steered in the direction of God vs. the Big Bang Theory, I decided to steer clear and took them back on their merry way.
We then had campfire. That was a 12.5 hour day with one 20-minute break to rest my legs and read National Geographic. (sigh)
I just had a really relaxing weekend here at camp with just a few people. I got to sleep in and I feel rested and ready to tackle a new week of maintenance/teaching/ maybe a little bit of cooking again if I want to. I have to go to sleep though now. Tomorrow, I will be building a shed for our new telescopes. I actually know how to do that!!
Goodnight.
Let's go rafting!
It’s been awhile since I last wrote. I guess I’ve had less down time where I’ve been sitting alone in my cabin because I feel like I’m finally a part of the staff here at camp, which is really awesome. I think the rafting trip + punk rock concert in back-to-back weekends really helped push through some of those uncomfortable boundaries.
The rafting trip. There was really too much that happened to really be able to recount for storytelling purposes, but I will tell a number of a stories that will help paint a picture of what it was like and include some lessons I was taught along the way by (literally) licensed professionals. This doesn't fit in a lesson or a story, but I jumped off a 37' cliff into a deep pool (with my life jacket) at a famous jumping spot. We take children there, so it really must be safe or this operation would have been shut down years ago.
Lesson I:
You need lots of beer. Coming away from the trip, I would say the hardest part of rafting is figuring out a good place to keep your beer so that it doesn’t tip over and fill with Giardia-riddled water. The skill I developed was to stick it down the front of my life jacket so that it couldn’t go anywhere. To complete this maneuver successfully, however, one must first drink at least 1/3 of the beer. Very tricky.
Lesson I.5:
Never abandon a soldier:
If there is an inter-raft beer exchange and a beer goes astray, leap into the water and retrieve said beer. There will always be a number of folks to help pull you back into the boat
The drinking was the key. While one of our numbers had to go to sleep by around 8pm because he was practicing this skill too hard, the rest of us sat around and ate and watched the stars through the carved columnar basalt cliffs that had been shrouded in the black drop cloth of night. I ended up sleeping on the side of a hill on top of a bush because of the state I went to sleep in. Turns out that’s not great for your neck the next day.
The next day we putzed around for a while and got down the river just in the nick of time for me to get out and drive my car back to the city for the opera! There was a double-bill of Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci and Carl Orff’s infamous Carmina Burana. Without even realizing that I was seeing two operas, (opere?) I fell in love with the magic and power of I Pagliacci. I recognized the famous Aria “Vesti la Giubba,” and it has been stuck in my head for the past week and a half. Carmina Burana was wonderful as well, but they put dancers in front of the soloists and chorus and had a woman with an enormous live snake on stage. I have a few problems with this: First of all, this is cruel to the animal. These people are wearing a living creature as an article of clothing. Secondly, as a theatre semi-professional (boy, it takes some nerve for me to throw that one out there…), there has got to be a cheaper and less difficult way to create the impression of a snake on that woman without actually having a live snake on stage. The article in the paper was all about how difficult it was, which I would certainly believe. You’ve got to be able to make a puppet or just a stuffed animal that would look like a snake to the roughly 2000 person house this opera was playing to. I don’t know, maybe that was just me.
All in all, a beautiful, moving night at the opera, which was preceded by a ridiculous, but at this point, not at all unexpected weekend. I arrived in the city at around 6:30pm on Saturday and left the following morning at around 1:30pm to pick mushrooms with my father and head back to camp (if you would like further description of that activity, ask me later). Entering the opera building was a moment of peculiar perspective for me. The crowd at the opera (roughly 2000) was more people that I had been around in weeks. There are never more than 120 people in camp at any given time, most of them children, and it takes almost 90 minutes to drive to a town with a population larger than that (6000). For the first time in my life, I felt strange and out of place in the city I grew up in. It may have been the fact that I was wearing jeans and was covered in dried up river water, beer and sweat to a formal theatrical event, but who knows?
Vesti la giubba, Canio's aria from I Pagliacci
Recitar! Mentre preso dal delirio, To recite! While taken with delirium,
non so più quel che dico, I no longer know what it is that I say,
e quel che faccio! or what it is that I am doing!
Eppur è d'uopo, sforzati! And yet it is necessary, force yourself!
Bah! sei tu forse un uom? Bah! Can't you be a man?
Tu se' Pagliaccio! You are "Pagliaccio"
Vesti la giubba, Put on the costume,
e la faccia in farina. and the face in white powder.
La gente paga, e rider vuole qua. The people pay, and laugh when they please.
E se Arlecchin t'invola Colombina, and if Harlequin invites away Colombina
ridi, Pagliaccio, e ognun applaudirà! laugh, Pagliaccio, and everyone will applaud!
Tramuta in lazzi lo spasmo ed il pianto;Change into laughs the spasms of pain;
in una smorfia il singhiozzo into a grimace the tears of pain, Ah!
il dolor, Ah!
Ridi, Pagliaccio, Laugh, Pagliaccio,
sul tuo amore infranto! for your love is broken!
Ridi del duol, che t'avvelena il cor! Laugh of the pain, that poisons your heart!
The rafting trip. There was really too much that happened to really be able to recount for storytelling purposes, but I will tell a number of a stories that will help paint a picture of what it was like and include some lessons I was taught along the way by (literally) licensed professionals. This doesn't fit in a lesson or a story, but I jumped off a 37' cliff into a deep pool (with my life jacket) at a famous jumping spot. We take children there, so it really must be safe or this operation would have been shut down years ago.
Lesson I:
You need lots of beer. Coming away from the trip, I would say the hardest part of rafting is figuring out a good place to keep your beer so that it doesn’t tip over and fill with Giardia-riddled water. The skill I developed was to stick it down the front of my life jacket so that it couldn’t go anywhere. To complete this maneuver successfully, however, one must first drink at least 1/3 of the beer. Very tricky.
Lesson I.5:
Never abandon a soldier:
If there is an inter-raft beer exchange and a beer goes astray, leap into the water and retrieve said beer. There will always be a number of folks to help pull you back into the boat
The drinking was the key. While one of our numbers had to go to sleep by around 8pm because he was practicing this skill too hard, the rest of us sat around and ate and watched the stars through the carved columnar basalt cliffs that had been shrouded in the black drop cloth of night. I ended up sleeping on the side of a hill on top of a bush because of the state I went to sleep in. Turns out that’s not great for your neck the next day.
The next day we putzed around for a while and got down the river just in the nick of time for me to get out and drive my car back to the city for the opera! There was a double-bill of Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci and Carl Orff’s infamous Carmina Burana. Without even realizing that I was seeing two operas, (opere?) I fell in love with the magic and power of I Pagliacci. I recognized the famous Aria “Vesti la Giubba,” and it has been stuck in my head for the past week and a half. Carmina Burana was wonderful as well, but they put dancers in front of the soloists and chorus and had a woman with an enormous live snake on stage. I have a few problems with this: First of all, this is cruel to the animal. These people are wearing a living creature as an article of clothing. Secondly, as a theatre semi-professional (boy, it takes some nerve for me to throw that one out there…), there has got to be a cheaper and less difficult way to create the impression of a snake on that woman without actually having a live snake on stage. The article in the paper was all about how difficult it was, which I would certainly believe. You’ve got to be able to make a puppet or just a stuffed animal that would look like a snake to the roughly 2000 person house this opera was playing to. I don’t know, maybe that was just me.
All in all, a beautiful, moving night at the opera, which was preceded by a ridiculous, but at this point, not at all unexpected weekend. I arrived in the city at around 6:30pm on Saturday and left the following morning at around 1:30pm to pick mushrooms with my father and head back to camp (if you would like further description of that activity, ask me later). Entering the opera building was a moment of peculiar perspective for me. The crowd at the opera (roughly 2000) was more people that I had been around in weeks. There are never more than 120 people in camp at any given time, most of them children, and it takes almost 90 minutes to drive to a town with a population larger than that (6000). For the first time in my life, I felt strange and out of place in the city I grew up in. It may have been the fact that I was wearing jeans and was covered in dried up river water, beer and sweat to a formal theatrical event, but who knows?
Vesti la giubba, Canio's aria from I Pagliacci
Recitar! Mentre preso dal delirio, To recite! While taken with delirium,
non so più quel che dico, I no longer know what it is that I say,
e quel che faccio! or what it is that I am doing!
Eppur è d'uopo, sforzati! And yet it is necessary, force yourself!
Bah! sei tu forse un uom? Bah! Can't you be a man?
Tu se' Pagliaccio! You are "Pagliaccio"
Vesti la giubba, Put on the costume,
e la faccia in farina. and the face in white powder.
La gente paga, e rider vuole qua. The people pay, and laugh when they please.
E se Arlecchin t'invola Colombina, and if Harlequin invites away Colombina
ridi, Pagliaccio, e ognun applaudirà! laugh, Pagliaccio, and everyone will applaud!
Tramuta in lazzi lo spasmo ed il pianto;Change into laughs the spasms of pain;
in una smorfia il singhiozzo into a grimace the tears of pain, Ah!
il dolor, Ah!
Ridi, Pagliaccio, Laugh, Pagliaccio,
sul tuo amore infranto! for your love is broken!
Ridi del duol, che t'avvelena il cor! Laugh of the pain, that poisons your heart!
Sunday, October 3, 2010
The no-fly zone
I’m not sure what it means, but as I moved back in to my cabin after a raucous, action-packed weekend, Mother Nature gave me a sign. There was a fly in my room buzzing around my light high above my head. It was very loud, which prompted violent retaliation on my part. I threw everything that I could think of at it that would not be hard enough to break the light, but would be hard enough to break the fly (socks, papers, a stuffed animal (this was as far as I got). I then left the cabin to retrieve a bag from my car and upon my return, the fly was making a terrible buzzing noise that sounded a lot more distressed and actually panicked. I looked up to see what was going on and it turns out that it had flown into the spiderweb hanging around my light long enough for the spider to mount the fly and begin the slow process of killing it. The spider was smaller than the fly, but it hung on as the fly thrashed about wildly. Eventually the fly’s “cry” spat and sputtered and eventually fizzled out. That spider performed the task that I was unable to perform myself (killing the fly without breaking the light). If I could high-five that spider I would.
More details to come, but exciting stories to come include drunk rafting, a 20-hour trip to the big city to see an opera, and the conclusion of teaching a whole ton of lessons that I know nothing about. Stay tuned for when I have more time.
More details to come, but exciting stories to come include drunk rafting, a 20-hour trip to the big city to see an opera, and the conclusion of teaching a whole ton of lessons that I know nothing about. Stay tuned for when I have more time.
Monday, September 27, 2010
What happens in the high desert, stays in the high desert
This weekend was nuts! I had some serious time for contemplation and realized that I had never spent a weekend away from civilization before without my family. Correct me if I’m wrong, loyal followers. There were two big events for the weekend:
1. Punk rock concert!
2. Desert conference in Young Life/ ex-Raj Neeshi-sexually-exploratory Camp
Most of the rest of the staff had tickets to go see Against Me! – two hours east of camp. They are a punk rock band from Gainsville, Florida, who to me sound like a more screamy, less musical version of Dropkick Murphy’s. Those of you who know me are probably thinking – screaming punk rock in the middle of nowhere – sounds like Adam’s cup of tea. This is sarcasm. It was a strange concert. Overall, I had a wonderful evening, but a few things about punk rock shows aren’t very fun: getting punched in the nose in the midst of a mosh-pit a week after smashing myself in the face with my own tennis racquet, paying $20 to see a show and having them take up one of the three hours that you spend there, and returning home piss-drunk at 3:15am, just four and a half hours before you are supposed to wake-up and represent your place of employment at an intellectual, ecological seminar. Did I mention that the final 20 minutes of the drive home is a winding country road that mimics the path of a first-time alcoholic taking a walk-the-line test on the side of a road? If you’ve been drinking whisky, beer, and a couple of Irish Car-bombs with a generous quantity of Jameson, whipping along that road at 3am feels kind of like dying. I had to stay awake, however, because one of my co-workers was driving my car and was probably just as tired as I was (but a lot less drunk). I would stay awake and try to act social as long as possible before I had to pass out again to fight off the desire to vomit up the Domino’s pizza I ploughed through earlier in the evening. We stopped in my favorite park in Madras to pee in the bushes, stretch our legs and curse the fact that he last hour we spent crammed into the back of my car was only the first half of our 2-hour journey starting at 1:15 am.
Oh, right, the concert itself! I had never been moshing before and it turns out that drunk me decided it would be a great idea to pick up the flannel I found on the ground after the concert and take it home with me as a souvenir – a free one at that. I also got a sweet hat that I found on the ground earlier in the night. FREE SOUVENIRS! WOO! The event itself was alright. Turns out Against Me! and their famous song that has something to do with being a teenage anarchist didn’t really play to my social distresses as much as the rest of my fellow concert-goers. It was pretty fun though experiencing a new cultural phenomenon and doing something I just would never have done if I hadn’t been going with my then co-workers and now friends. I got to see my good buddy with his punk Jedi curl from the summer there as well – it has since been bleached-blonde to enhance his Jedi powers, so that’s great.
41/2 hours later I woke up to begin the second leg of my fantastic desert weekend: the desert conference, which is held at this ridiculous place where the Rash-Neeshi used to live and preside over his countless number of free-loving cult-members. Check out Wikipedia if you don’t know anything about this episode of US history. There’s an out-of-service airstrip to welcome you that theoretically used to be able to accommodate 747s. After that it gets even more ridiculous: zip lines into a man-made lake with a “blob”, a nice swimming pool with chaise-lounges, a whiffleball field with a fence, (I did not hit it over, but my co-worker did – we spent about 20 minutes trying: awesome!), a huge grassy field for many purposes, an orchard, three lodges that double as hotel rooms and meeting halls, countless dorms, a dining complex (I don’t use this term lightly) that could theoretically cater to 700 people using 5 banquet rooms, and I’m sure there’s more that I didn’t get a chance to check out. Perfectly manicured, lush, green lawns everywhere. AND THIS IS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DESERT! The middle of nowhere. It takes about 20 minutes before you reach a paved road and then it takes another hour before you reach a town of more than 100 people (another 3 or so before you hit a town with more than 500). This is Young Life Washington Family Ranch. The lectures were interesting, but kind of repetitive. There was a lot of talk about expanding/ creating new wilderness areas to protect the deserts of the John Day basin – Cathedral Rock, and the Painted Hills are just a few of the notable ( I do use this term lightly) landmarks in the area. I saw four 90-minute presentations, but the best of all was the last guy who was supposed to talk about birding in the area. He was about 70 years old and had maybe 30 overhead projector laminations that he had an assistant put up and he would name the bird and maybe add a little about their migration patterns: maybe. He sometimes couldn’t identify the bird because the quality of the laminations was so poor. This was compared with folks who were discussing new legislation on wind energy vs. solar energy, the creation of wilderness areas and GIS-mapping technology outbreaks. It was really awkward and kind of embarrassing, but it was also rather hilarious. He had a ridiculous drawl and would pronounce the state to our north as “Warshington.” Great end to a long, caffeine-riddled day of lectures. They provided us with two delicious meals and free local microbrews as well as one keg of something from Deschutes Brewery. Delicious! All free! The $20 registration fee was paid for by my employer. I was supposed to go with my boss, the maintenance guy, and four other instructors. My boss and the maintenance guy ended up going to a different conference in a different city and two of the other instructors stayed and slept in because they were “sick” (they were at the concert with me the night before). So in the end, there were just three of us there, but we had a good time.
The highlight of the trip, however, was this girl who worked for the organization that put on the conference. She gave a presentation that wasn’t phenomenal because she was clearly nervous, but was insightful and well-prepared. She was beautiful and young (c. 25 years-old), but she captured my heart in the span of one delirious day. I wanted to try to talk to her during the drinking hour before dinner, but I was too scared. The final event of the evening was a keynote speaker (Edward Norton’s father – don’t ask, I didn’t get it. He was terrible. My problem is when people think it’s a good idea to have a famous person’s parents speak at a function. IF YOU CAN’T GET THE FAMOUS PERSON, THEN THEIR PARENTS ARE JUST SOME OTHER PERSON WHO DOESN’T REALLY HAVE ANYTHING IMPORANT TO SAY! COME ON, PEOPLE!) During the speech, this girl came in and stood next to me. There were plenty of places to stand but she stood right next to me and then she inched closer to me. The next part was verified by my co-worker, but we later decided that she kept looking over at me every 30 seconds or so during the speech. She was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt with moccasins and no socks. She was also coyly twirling her hair, which may have been absent-minded, but there in that moment, was the cutest thing I’ve seen in a good long time. She also was frequently scratching her back and removing her moccasins in public, which are unattractive qualities in most walks of life, but somehow in this situation, made her feel more real. More down-to-earth. I don’t know, it was weird. While she was looking at me, I also was looking over at her and would look away whenever she looked at me because I’m afraid of pretty girls. She then walked in front of me and leaned on the counter in front of her in a potentially, but not necessarily - in fact very unlikely - provocative fashion. She then proceeded to look behind herself at me again off and on during the speech. No one was speaking during this speech – no one. Not even whispers. There was no way I could get away with talking to her. My heart was racing, I was sweating like a pig (thank you Italian father and Jewish mother for the best sweating genes ever. I’ve got thermoregulation by evaporative cooling down pat). In the end, my coworkers and I decided that since the speech sucked so hard, we were going to leave in the middle, which we stealthily did. I realize I’m building this up for some sort of dramatic moment where she races out of the lodge and shouts, “No, stop! I’ll never love another like I love you!” We then run into each other’s arms and passionately kiss in the streets during a rainstorm. But, alas, this is the desert: there are no rain storms and my overly active imagination let me down once again. She did not come running and the three of us (my co-workers) drove home that night, while one of my co-workers very strangely was discussing how easy it is to get around child-pornography laws in foreign countries – strange and uncomfortable for sure.
That night, I looked her email up on her company’s website and wrote her an email saying that I thought she was very beautiful and I wished that I had the opportunity to speak with her. If she ever comes through the area around camp, she should email me and let me know and I could take her on some hikes or something. It was dumb, but I felt that I really ought to let her know that I thought she was so pretty and cute. She twirled her hair at me! What was I supposed to do!?!? I felt that in the very least, everyone can stand to be told that they’re beautiful, you know? That always makes someone feel good, even if it’s a little creepy. In the very most, she liked me too and maybe we could somehow meet, even though I believe her company is stationed in this part of the state. In any case I haven’t heard back from her, and at this point, I don’t really expect to hear anything, which is fine. Just a fun, little one-day crush.
Furthermore, one of our cooks quit. This is after two other quit over the summer due to, let’s just call it a “disagreement with the manager.” Now we just have one cook, so the other half of cooking duties are getting split up and I’ll definitely be doing some dinner-cooking next week when I’m working maintenance. I’m pumped. I don’t know jack-crap about cooking for two people, not to mention 100. It’s gonna be an adventure.
I must sleep now. You probably do too after trying to get through these entries. Just a couple days in my shoes. I hope you enjoyed. I certainly enjoy writing them. Until next time, my friends.
1. Punk rock concert!
2. Desert conference in Young Life/ ex-Raj Neeshi-sexually-exploratory Camp
Most of the rest of the staff had tickets to go see Against Me! – two hours east of camp. They are a punk rock band from Gainsville, Florida, who to me sound like a more screamy, less musical version of Dropkick Murphy’s. Those of you who know me are probably thinking – screaming punk rock in the middle of nowhere – sounds like Adam’s cup of tea. This is sarcasm. It was a strange concert. Overall, I had a wonderful evening, but a few things about punk rock shows aren’t very fun: getting punched in the nose in the midst of a mosh-pit a week after smashing myself in the face with my own tennis racquet, paying $20 to see a show and having them take up one of the three hours that you spend there, and returning home piss-drunk at 3:15am, just four and a half hours before you are supposed to wake-up and represent your place of employment at an intellectual, ecological seminar. Did I mention that the final 20 minutes of the drive home is a winding country road that mimics the path of a first-time alcoholic taking a walk-the-line test on the side of a road? If you’ve been drinking whisky, beer, and a couple of Irish Car-bombs with a generous quantity of Jameson, whipping along that road at 3am feels kind of like dying. I had to stay awake, however, because one of my co-workers was driving my car and was probably just as tired as I was (but a lot less drunk). I would stay awake and try to act social as long as possible before I had to pass out again to fight off the desire to vomit up the Domino’s pizza I ploughed through earlier in the evening. We stopped in my favorite park in Madras to pee in the bushes, stretch our legs and curse the fact that he last hour we spent crammed into the back of my car was only the first half of our 2-hour journey starting at 1:15 am.
Oh, right, the concert itself! I had never been moshing before and it turns out that drunk me decided it would be a great idea to pick up the flannel I found on the ground after the concert and take it home with me as a souvenir – a free one at that. I also got a sweet hat that I found on the ground earlier in the night. FREE SOUVENIRS! WOO! The event itself was alright. Turns out Against Me! and their famous song that has something to do with being a teenage anarchist didn’t really play to my social distresses as much as the rest of my fellow concert-goers. It was pretty fun though experiencing a new cultural phenomenon and doing something I just would never have done if I hadn’t been going with my then co-workers and now friends. I got to see my good buddy with his punk Jedi curl from the summer there as well – it has since been bleached-blonde to enhance his Jedi powers, so that’s great.
41/2 hours later I woke up to begin the second leg of my fantastic desert weekend: the desert conference, which is held at this ridiculous place where the Rash-Neeshi used to live and preside over his countless number of free-loving cult-members. Check out Wikipedia if you don’t know anything about this episode of US history. There’s an out-of-service airstrip to welcome you that theoretically used to be able to accommodate 747s. After that it gets even more ridiculous: zip lines into a man-made lake with a “blob”, a nice swimming pool with chaise-lounges, a whiffleball field with a fence, (I did not hit it over, but my co-worker did – we spent about 20 minutes trying: awesome!), a huge grassy field for many purposes, an orchard, three lodges that double as hotel rooms and meeting halls, countless dorms, a dining complex (I don’t use this term lightly) that could theoretically cater to 700 people using 5 banquet rooms, and I’m sure there’s more that I didn’t get a chance to check out. Perfectly manicured, lush, green lawns everywhere. AND THIS IS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DESERT! The middle of nowhere. It takes about 20 minutes before you reach a paved road and then it takes another hour before you reach a town of more than 100 people (another 3 or so before you hit a town with more than 500). This is Young Life Washington Family Ranch. The lectures were interesting, but kind of repetitive. There was a lot of talk about expanding/ creating new wilderness areas to protect the deserts of the John Day basin – Cathedral Rock, and the Painted Hills are just a few of the notable ( I do use this term lightly) landmarks in the area. I saw four 90-minute presentations, but the best of all was the last guy who was supposed to talk about birding in the area. He was about 70 years old and had maybe 30 overhead projector laminations that he had an assistant put up and he would name the bird and maybe add a little about their migration patterns: maybe. He sometimes couldn’t identify the bird because the quality of the laminations was so poor. This was compared with folks who were discussing new legislation on wind energy vs. solar energy, the creation of wilderness areas and GIS-mapping technology outbreaks. It was really awkward and kind of embarrassing, but it was also rather hilarious. He had a ridiculous drawl and would pronounce the state to our north as “Warshington.” Great end to a long, caffeine-riddled day of lectures. They provided us with two delicious meals and free local microbrews as well as one keg of something from Deschutes Brewery. Delicious! All free! The $20 registration fee was paid for by my employer. I was supposed to go with my boss, the maintenance guy, and four other instructors. My boss and the maintenance guy ended up going to a different conference in a different city and two of the other instructors stayed and slept in because they were “sick” (they were at the concert with me the night before). So in the end, there were just three of us there, but we had a good time.
The highlight of the trip, however, was this girl who worked for the organization that put on the conference. She gave a presentation that wasn’t phenomenal because she was clearly nervous, but was insightful and well-prepared. She was beautiful and young (c. 25 years-old), but she captured my heart in the span of one delirious day. I wanted to try to talk to her during the drinking hour before dinner, but I was too scared. The final event of the evening was a keynote speaker (Edward Norton’s father – don’t ask, I didn’t get it. He was terrible. My problem is when people think it’s a good idea to have a famous person’s parents speak at a function. IF YOU CAN’T GET THE FAMOUS PERSON, THEN THEIR PARENTS ARE JUST SOME OTHER PERSON WHO DOESN’T REALLY HAVE ANYTHING IMPORANT TO SAY! COME ON, PEOPLE!) During the speech, this girl came in and stood next to me. There were plenty of places to stand but she stood right next to me and then she inched closer to me. The next part was verified by my co-worker, but we later decided that she kept looking over at me every 30 seconds or so during the speech. She was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt with moccasins and no socks. She was also coyly twirling her hair, which may have been absent-minded, but there in that moment, was the cutest thing I’ve seen in a good long time. She also was frequently scratching her back and removing her moccasins in public, which are unattractive qualities in most walks of life, but somehow in this situation, made her feel more real. More down-to-earth. I don’t know, it was weird. While she was looking at me, I also was looking over at her and would look away whenever she looked at me because I’m afraid of pretty girls. She then walked in front of me and leaned on the counter in front of her in a potentially, but not necessarily - in fact very unlikely - provocative fashion. She then proceeded to look behind herself at me again off and on during the speech. No one was speaking during this speech – no one. Not even whispers. There was no way I could get away with talking to her. My heart was racing, I was sweating like a pig (thank you Italian father and Jewish mother for the best sweating genes ever. I’ve got thermoregulation by evaporative cooling down pat). In the end, my coworkers and I decided that since the speech sucked so hard, we were going to leave in the middle, which we stealthily did. I realize I’m building this up for some sort of dramatic moment where she races out of the lodge and shouts, “No, stop! I’ll never love another like I love you!” We then run into each other’s arms and passionately kiss in the streets during a rainstorm. But, alas, this is the desert: there are no rain storms and my overly active imagination let me down once again. She did not come running and the three of us (my co-workers) drove home that night, while one of my co-workers very strangely was discussing how easy it is to get around child-pornography laws in foreign countries – strange and uncomfortable for sure.
That night, I looked her email up on her company’s website and wrote her an email saying that I thought she was very beautiful and I wished that I had the opportunity to speak with her. If she ever comes through the area around camp, she should email me and let me know and I could take her on some hikes or something. It was dumb, but I felt that I really ought to let her know that I thought she was so pretty and cute. She twirled her hair at me! What was I supposed to do!?!? I felt that in the very least, everyone can stand to be told that they’re beautiful, you know? That always makes someone feel good, even if it’s a little creepy. In the very most, she liked me too and maybe we could somehow meet, even though I believe her company is stationed in this part of the state. In any case I haven’t heard back from her, and at this point, I don’t really expect to hear anything, which is fine. Just a fun, little one-day crush.
Furthermore, one of our cooks quit. This is after two other quit over the summer due to, let’s just call it a “disagreement with the manager.” Now we just have one cook, so the other half of cooking duties are getting split up and I’ll definitely be doing some dinner-cooking next week when I’m working maintenance. I’m pumped. I don’t know jack-crap about cooking for two people, not to mention 100. It’s gonna be an adventure.
I must sleep now. You probably do too after trying to get through these entries. Just a couple days in my shoes. I hope you enjoyed. I certainly enjoy writing them. Until next time, my friends.
We are but men, ROCK!
Whew! What a couple days of craziness! I just got finished with dinner and teaching my first geology and minerology course. I can’t begin to tell you the amount of anxiety coursing through my veins before my lesson started. I had many reasons to feel uncomfortable teaching a class about rocks and minerals and these are just a few of those reasons:
1. I think geology is extremely boring
2. I don’t understand fundamental aspects of geology – although my knowledge multiplied infinitesimally over the past week.
3. At the end of my lesson I finally figured out what a mineral is
The lesson plan is vague and is chock full of information that is helpful in teaching college-aged students, but not so much for teaching 11 year-olds. One of my coworkers said she did these activities in college. Another bothersome concept was that I already knew a little bit about rocks, but the entire lesson plan was about minerals, with the mention of rocks as an afterthought (crap)!
The idea was that I had to lay down the law about what a mineral was (even though I didn’t – but do now- fully comprehend the idea of a mineral.) A mineral is a solid, crystalline geologic structure that is made up of the same molecules. Rocks are then made up of multiple minerals. Seems simple enough, right? I then went on to describe a number of tests you could do determine characteristics of an unknown mineral to try to make it a known mineral. For example, if you pour HCl on a piece of Calcite, it effervesces, or if you can scratch the mineral with your fingernail, you know that it is one of the softer minerals and you can locate it on the Moh’s hardness scale. They had to positively identify 12 minerals in 45 minutes, by finding their: hardness, color streak (when you rub the mineral on a plate), color, luster (metallic or non-metallic – I didn’t bother to explain this one and realized in hind-sight I should have), cleavage (I was shocked and baffled to discover that no one laughed at that one. I remember laughing at that one when we learned rocks and minerals in 8th grade), test magnetism, taste the mineral (if it’s salty, then it’s halite aka table salt), and pour HCl on it. I did my utmost to make sure I didn’t let anyone lick the pieces of clear, quartzy-looking minerals (calcite, halite and quartz) that I had put hydrochloric acid on – I think I succeeded. I made sure they asked me before they tasted them for this reason and this one kid asked me if he could taste every single mineral! Even black and gray minerals that were clearly not salt! COME ON!
These kids are remarkably sharp in general, however – from a French-American school in Portland – so I’m looking forward to teaching less stupid children (like last week’s). It just means I have to know what I’m talking about!! Eek! The final verdict of my lesson was that roughly half the kids finished and I have to grade the papers and turn them back in to their teacher for an actual grade – which is exciting, but will be sad for the little girl who finished 3 of 12 and the other half of the students who aren’t overachieving little shits (like I was at that age…) who did not finish either. I guess that’s the heart-breaking part of being a teacher in a real institution (not outdoor school). Tomorrow, I’m teaching my newly discovered specialty – Geology and Paleontology hike and Team Challenge – both of which I know, so I’m going to go hot-tubbing with my new instructor friend! Exciting! For those of you who reading who know camp pretty well, he looks like a piece of broccoli. Tata for now. I will try to get my next entry in later tonight to sum up the mayhem that was this weekend.
1. I think geology is extremely boring
2. I don’t understand fundamental aspects of geology – although my knowledge multiplied infinitesimally over the past week.
3. At the end of my lesson I finally figured out what a mineral is
The lesson plan is vague and is chock full of information that is helpful in teaching college-aged students, but not so much for teaching 11 year-olds. One of my coworkers said she did these activities in college. Another bothersome concept was that I already knew a little bit about rocks, but the entire lesson plan was about minerals, with the mention of rocks as an afterthought (crap)!
The idea was that I had to lay down the law about what a mineral was (even though I didn’t – but do now- fully comprehend the idea of a mineral.) A mineral is a solid, crystalline geologic structure that is made up of the same molecules. Rocks are then made up of multiple minerals. Seems simple enough, right? I then went on to describe a number of tests you could do determine characteristics of an unknown mineral to try to make it a known mineral. For example, if you pour HCl on a piece of Calcite, it effervesces, or if you can scratch the mineral with your fingernail, you know that it is one of the softer minerals and you can locate it on the Moh’s hardness scale. They had to positively identify 12 minerals in 45 minutes, by finding their: hardness, color streak (when you rub the mineral on a plate), color, luster (metallic or non-metallic – I didn’t bother to explain this one and realized in hind-sight I should have), cleavage (I was shocked and baffled to discover that no one laughed at that one. I remember laughing at that one when we learned rocks and minerals in 8th grade), test magnetism, taste the mineral (if it’s salty, then it’s halite aka table salt), and pour HCl on it. I did my utmost to make sure I didn’t let anyone lick the pieces of clear, quartzy-looking minerals (calcite, halite and quartz) that I had put hydrochloric acid on – I think I succeeded. I made sure they asked me before they tasted them for this reason and this one kid asked me if he could taste every single mineral! Even black and gray minerals that were clearly not salt! COME ON!
These kids are remarkably sharp in general, however – from a French-American school in Portland – so I’m looking forward to teaching less stupid children (like last week’s). It just means I have to know what I’m talking about!! Eek! The final verdict of my lesson was that roughly half the kids finished and I have to grade the papers and turn them back in to their teacher for an actual grade – which is exciting, but will be sad for the little girl who finished 3 of 12 and the other half of the students who aren’t overachieving little shits (like I was at that age…) who did not finish either. I guess that’s the heart-breaking part of being a teacher in a real institution (not outdoor school). Tomorrow, I’m teaching my newly discovered specialty – Geology and Paleontology hike and Team Challenge – both of which I know, so I’m going to go hot-tubbing with my new instructor friend! Exciting! For those of you who reading who know camp pretty well, he looks like a piece of broccoli. Tata for now. I will try to get my next entry in later tonight to sum up the mayhem that was this weekend.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
In the beginning...
Thus begins the blog. For those of you who are unaware of my situation, I am an outdoor sciences instructor whose name shall remain nameless, at a camp that shall remain nameless due to the publicity of this blog. I teach outdoor education to 6th and 7th graders throughout the duration of the fall. Too much ridiculousness goes down on a daily basis to prevent me from sharing it with the world through the shameless, tawdry projection known as the internet. I figure if Steve Blake’s wife has a Twitter account that people follow, why shouldn’t I have a blog for the things that truly are interesting (or at least I find them to be).
I started work last week as the kitchen helper. Each instructor has to “do time” as the kitchen helper throughout the fall and I got mine done early. I was also required to shadow other instructors as they taught, which meant that I was working non-stop for two days straight (6:30am-8:30pm). This might be a reasonable expectation if I was either paid hourly, or was given overtime for working more than 8 or 9 hours a day (is that really what normal people’s work hours are like?). This was the time, however, that I was supposed to be learning how to teach. I worked here during the summer, so I picked up a few of the lessons from that, but the fall outdoor school programs are different, so as it turns out, I will be throwing out most of my previous knowledge anyway. But this all happened last week.
This week, I began teaching! Very exciting! I had been losing sleep over the idea for the past three nights (that’s just how I roll, I suppose).
Allow me to begin by saying that I am not new to teaching. I taught outdoor science education as a student leader at the public middle school’s outdoor program in high school and part of college. I learned my way around those lesson plans like the back of my hand after spending 8 weeks there spread over 6 years. We taught from laminated note cards provided by our lead instructors, so we really just had to be good at reading, and pretending like we knew what we were talking about it, summarized appropriately as “fake it ‘till you make it.” It required no research, and if you were good enough at it, you really didn’t need to see it taught before you felt comfortable taking the plunge and teaching yourself.
In spite of the fact that I had previous teaching experience, this is different. We are given vocabulary words, concepts and recommended activities that everyone else ignores because they require extraneous amounts of prep time, which is extraordinarily limited. What I end up teaching becomes some sort of twisted cacophony of various instructor’s ideas combined with cracked out ideas from the book. The chemical formula for this equation would look like this (I’ve been thinking scientifically, ok? BACK OFF!)
Instructor 1’s intro + (instructor 2’s lesson plan + instructor 3’s lesson plan) + alternative teaching method listed in the syllabus + instructor 4’s ‘outro’ = BEST LESSON EVER (with a slight amount of disunity and tangential thoughts)
I find myself getting excited about some semi-related thought and following it for awhile until I realize that I’ve deviated a great distance from the originally intended fact or concept.
It’s funny because my education is in theatre…. and general biology/ marine biology, so OF COURSE I’M TEACHING GEOLOGY IN THE MIDDLE OF A HIGH DESERT!!! HOORAY!! I enjoy teaching here, but I really feel like my skills would be put to better use if I were teaching more biology and less geo/paleo, but I always love an opportunity to expand my skill set. My 5-hour geo/paleo lesson combined with a beastly 4-mile, 500’ elevation gain and lost hike went extraordinarily smoothly, as did my reptiles and amphibians lesson and team challenge activity. Tomorrow, I’m off to teach the geo/ paleo loop again packed with animal physiology, which I’m going to bullshit my way through for 90 minutes. It’s gonna be a party
Random fun fact of the day: 6th grade cheerleaders are just as ditzy and clueless as high-school cheerleaders
Random science fact of the day: When snakes are eating, they can’t breathe. They have two lungs: one below the other, which they fill with air prior to prey consumption. I’ll bet that’s why you don’t hear of very many asthmatic gopher snakes!
Feel good moment of the day: There was a very quiet girl that I noticed the first day during rec-time who was sitting by herself far away from the other children. I asked her if she was okay and when she said ‘yes’, I went on my merry way because I had a lesson to prep. Today, I signed up for rec-activity leading and after being suggested by another instructor, I decided to take out the Play-dough and a big piece of butcher paper with pens and colored pencils and see who wanted to create (gasp) ART with me. This girl came over and spent almost the entire time drawing various things and they were very good. She was very quiet and humble and after about 30-40 minutes went on her morose and sullen way. Strange, but I was glad I was able to provide an alternate entertainment for a child who clearly was not a big sports fan. Side note – This child with a curly fo-hawk spent 15 minutes making chickens out of Play-dough, axes out of Play-dough and mercilessly chopping their heads off leaving behind pools of Play-dough blood. Ah, to be a middle-school boy again…
Until next time, my friends and whoever else took time out of their day to read one tired, yet humored and decently satisfied young teacher’s thoughts. Thank you and goodnight.
I started work last week as the kitchen helper. Each instructor has to “do time” as the kitchen helper throughout the fall and I got mine done early. I was also required to shadow other instructors as they taught, which meant that I was working non-stop for two days straight (6:30am-8:30pm). This might be a reasonable expectation if I was either paid hourly, or was given overtime for working more than 8 or 9 hours a day (is that really what normal people’s work hours are like?). This was the time, however, that I was supposed to be learning how to teach. I worked here during the summer, so I picked up a few of the lessons from that, but the fall outdoor school programs are different, so as it turns out, I will be throwing out most of my previous knowledge anyway. But this all happened last week.
This week, I began teaching! Very exciting! I had been losing sleep over the idea for the past three nights (that’s just how I roll, I suppose).
Allow me to begin by saying that I am not new to teaching. I taught outdoor science education as a student leader at the public middle school’s outdoor program in high school and part of college. I learned my way around those lesson plans like the back of my hand after spending 8 weeks there spread over 6 years. We taught from laminated note cards provided by our lead instructors, so we really just had to be good at reading, and pretending like we knew what we were talking about it, summarized appropriately as “fake it ‘till you make it.” It required no research, and if you were good enough at it, you really didn’t need to see it taught before you felt comfortable taking the plunge and teaching yourself.
In spite of the fact that I had previous teaching experience, this is different. We are given vocabulary words, concepts and recommended activities that everyone else ignores because they require extraneous amounts of prep time, which is extraordinarily limited. What I end up teaching becomes some sort of twisted cacophony of various instructor’s ideas combined with cracked out ideas from the book. The chemical formula for this equation would look like this (I’ve been thinking scientifically, ok? BACK OFF!)
Instructor 1’s intro + (instructor 2’s lesson plan + instructor 3’s lesson plan) + alternative teaching method listed in the syllabus + instructor 4’s ‘outro’ = BEST LESSON EVER (with a slight amount of disunity and tangential thoughts)
I find myself getting excited about some semi-related thought and following it for awhile until I realize that I’ve deviated a great distance from the originally intended fact or concept.
It’s funny because my education is in theatre…. and general biology/ marine biology, so OF COURSE I’M TEACHING GEOLOGY IN THE MIDDLE OF A HIGH DESERT!!! HOORAY!! I enjoy teaching here, but I really feel like my skills would be put to better use if I were teaching more biology and less geo/paleo, but I always love an opportunity to expand my skill set. My 5-hour geo/paleo lesson combined with a beastly 4-mile, 500’ elevation gain and lost hike went extraordinarily smoothly, as did my reptiles and amphibians lesson and team challenge activity. Tomorrow, I’m off to teach the geo/ paleo loop again packed with animal physiology, which I’m going to bullshit my way through for 90 minutes. It’s gonna be a party
Random fun fact of the day: 6th grade cheerleaders are just as ditzy and clueless as high-school cheerleaders
Random science fact of the day: When snakes are eating, they can’t breathe. They have two lungs: one below the other, which they fill with air prior to prey consumption. I’ll bet that’s why you don’t hear of very many asthmatic gopher snakes!
Feel good moment of the day: There was a very quiet girl that I noticed the first day during rec-time who was sitting by herself far away from the other children. I asked her if she was okay and when she said ‘yes’, I went on my merry way because I had a lesson to prep. Today, I signed up for rec-activity leading and after being suggested by another instructor, I decided to take out the Play-dough and a big piece of butcher paper with pens and colored pencils and see who wanted to create (gasp) ART with me. This girl came over and spent almost the entire time drawing various things and they were very good. She was very quiet and humble and after about 30-40 minutes went on her morose and sullen way. Strange, but I was glad I was able to provide an alternate entertainment for a child who clearly was not a big sports fan. Side note – This child with a curly fo-hawk spent 15 minutes making chickens out of Play-dough, axes out of Play-dough and mercilessly chopping their heads off leaving behind pools of Play-dough blood. Ah, to be a middle-school boy again…
Until next time, my friends and whoever else took time out of their day to read one tired, yet humored and decently satisfied young teacher’s thoughts. Thank you and goodnight.
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