AmeriMania!

So, what did that rejuvination bring about?

Well, first off....Snowboarding!


The week that we returned, Mary got me up on the slops. I was terrified and even once I'd grasped it, was still not sure if I could be convinced to become a sloper. I spent my first day drifting in wide zig zags - what is called "falling leaf" that I really garnered no control over. I felt pretty rad when I actually got enough speed and distance to feel a breeze but Mary later told me there is absolutely no skill in falling leaf (buzz kill! But no, there really isn't.) I also excelled at falling. I did a pretty excellent number, running into another novice and sort of half somersaulting around him. I got so used to falling that I think I would get to points in my run where I felt like I was just supposed to fall and let it happen more than I needed to. I was pretty into things by the end but on my second to last run, I went off the groomed area and nicked some harsh snow that sent me hurling sort of forward and over and caused lots of really unpleasant cracking. I was unsure if the noise was all my neck or mostly my helmet but a mild headache I'd had catapulted into a dazing throb.

I'd inconveniently plotted my fast throughout the next days and I am sure this did not help my re-coup time after my first excursion. It took quite a few days, and a chiropractor visit to feel decently mobile again.

The second time around, I approached the idea with almost the same inner dread. Yet what transpired throughout the day was a shift from anxious survival to sheer enjoyment. I started to dabble more in toe-side - the more difficult of the positions with which to control direction - and managed to hold it momentarily a couple of times (before promptly falling). We were not graced with the same springy weather as before however, and by the time we were leaving the snow was acquiring a crunchy meddlesome layer of powder and the winds were starting to eat beyond our winter armor. But I left that day with an assured change in outlook. I am officially excited for the time I get to go up next. And last night I met a guy who instructs up there and who offered to help me progress with that (and also teach me safe falling.)



The weeks of cleansing leading up to February were really like my pre-game amp-up for a crazy-busy month. I re-vamped my outlook on the Community Garden attempts (to be covered in a separate post because its so exciting and involved) and took the reigns in promoting our annual AmeriCorps Pancake Feed. Insanity had us put it on our calendar for the week we returned from winter break. It had been done that haphazardly the year before and for lack of advertising, about five people came to chow down. I've developed a fairly good endurance for the tedious task of promoting and advertising events and such so I took a chunk of motivation from my depository and got on top of spreading the word.

In the same vein, I rolled out permission slips for our next Bowling Field Trip for the younger kids and after weeks of just leaving a form of interest on the Open Gym table for ordering our AmeriCorps-designed T-shirts, I realized I could be taking it out and about town. So the pre-game was lots of walking and talking and out and abouting.

Late January did present a couple of events as well.

On the last day of my fast, a group of us volunteered to serve at the annual Packwood Crab feed, perfect for me since the crab smell certainly did not increase my appetite.

For Martin Luther King Day, we held our "Civic Engagement Project: Healthy Meal on a Budget." I don't recall whether or not I mentioned this in a previous post, probably because as soon as it was voted upon that this would be the result of our team's practice of the Civic Engagement Camp that we do with the kids in the Spring, I checked out. Mentally, and pretty much physically to any extent that I could. At the last minute, I worked up enough commitment to research some of the nutrition and cooking tips of our meal plan and make a price comparison at local stores. But I was not thrilled about the project. The Civic Engagement curriculum is supposed to prepare kids with the tools, resources and understanding of what it takes to put on a service project for your community and the importance of actively engaging in your community. And on our day of service, we found ourselves hiding away in a church kitchen with three parents that knew how to cook, a restless kid, and a teen there for class credit. I felt like we were completely disconnected with what the community could find useful. At least everyone enjoyed the food.

Alice cheerfully flips flapjacks

fluffy!

We held our Pancake Breakfast on February 1st. Mary and I had picked up our big order from Blanton's the night before and had it all ready to dive into at the Community Hall. Even so, we were up at 4am. Setting up the tables and cutting our first plate of fruit took next to no time but the early arrival was necessary in order to get a head start on the bacon, perhaps even more of a hit than the hotcakes. Around 6:30, we started to heat our three griddles...on the same wall. We didn't get very far before the fuse blew and we had to rearrange. Still, the trickle of early risers was next to nothing and with a few more of the team arriving, we were well-stocked for our first diners.

Stoked to see some of our kids stop by for breakfast on the way to the Pass

Live Action Advertising

There was a lot of nervous apprehension going around after the previous year's big bust - about 5 people had turned up - and for the first hour or so, we looked imploringly out windows at the passing cars. I challenged Lou to even go so far as to stage some performance pancake-eating outside on the side of the road. Eventually the day picked up and we had a modest but steady flow.

On February 4th, we took some of our younger Open Gym kids to the Bowling Alley.

The Bowling experience itself was a bit grueling.

-The heat had not been working all day so the place was being warmed by one space heater
-The kids rarely held out past their turn before running off to pass the time with other games
-The youngest tended to think that money just came from adults and kept asking the owners for quarters
-All of the money they did bring went towards WAY too much sugar from the vending machines
-By the end of the night, they were all wrecking havoc on the small play area that the owners had set up for their own children during work hours

However, the most beneficial thing for me was the drive. Mary took the large van which tends to be all the more enticing to the kiddos cause it fits more friends. In the rush to call dibs, I ended up getting some of our more tough-minded kids in my car for the drive up. One in particular, E, claimed shotgun. With the toughest wall I have ever tried to communicate with, the most I had ever talked about with E beyond discipline and oversight was electronics. He loved to gush about every iPod, iPhone and computer you had to the point that you would start to wonder if he would run away with it right then and there. On the drive up, his entire focus was my phone and my ipod and trying to get music that he liked. For a while, he scrolled through my iPod music selection, laughing at some K'naan titles and surprisingly pausing longer at Norah Jones that I would have expected. Eventually his eagerness for rap led him to try and get Pandora working on my phone. As luck would have it, the connection was not in the mood to cooperate and he spent most of the drive bouncing back and forth between devices, cursing the internet while I tried reasoning with him to think about how much effort it takes that little device to connect. When we were almost there, I had gotten sick of the frustration. He had been trying to play Eminem and conveniently enough, a pang of nostalgia had struck me just the other day and I my old copy of Curtain Call that my middle school friend had burned me in my CD player. There was a mix of bafflement, frustration and joy as I disclosed the secret I'd been stashing. I was most hesitant because curtain call is not exactly his cleanest album but all of the kids in the car were gung-ho fans and knew all the lyrics anyway. And luckily E was so ADD that we didn't even listen to a full song before we had arrived.

I still felt uncomfortable with the fact that I was just letting these young kids listen to profane rap without inquiry. My allowance had won them over, vying to be in my lift on the ride home but I told them I would not let them play it the whole time. Still they were eager to ride with me. We listened to the CD about half-way but I kept it on low and while the music went on in the background, I began to try and carry some conversation. I asked E if he had ever free-styled, asked him what he found so appealing about the music and through these and other questions, the conversation spilled over into things deeper - glimpses of insecurity, resilience and limitations - and I realized that I had just won a new level of respect with this kid.

Then the busy-ness kept coming. Assisting at a health fair. A fashion show. A roller rink. I have also been trying to get more involved in monthly Teen Center Girl's nights that Alice has been hosting. This month, I got into planning mode with her and we had a small but engaged group join us to make art, watch movies about Media influence and discuss what it means to have inner confidence. These nights produce a delicate balance of fun and entertainment while also encouraging some deeper discussions to surface and I think over the next months, we can see that evolve more and more.

Waitressing gig for the Morton Fashion Show

Don't we look professional? 

When was the last time YOU were in a bouncy house?! Highlight of the Health Fair. 

Also: most well-put children's book about childhood abuse ever. 

A night at the Roller-rink (and I got to get in a pair of blades!)

My beautiful contour drawing of Alice for our Girl's Night Art Project : ) 

Multi-facited February...and there was more!

Through my assistance at the food bank, another big thing that I took on this month was a revival of the White Pass Backpack Program. The program is meant to act as a way to get food to students in need by sending them home with a backpack full of meal components for the weekend. One day after packing food, I got dragged into a  reviewal food bank meeting. I ended up becoming a key component when a few members mentioned this Food Assistance Program that had been started with AmeriCorps a number of years ago and despite of its value, had abruptly stopped. There was consensus that everyone wanted it up and rolling again and the only piece that was missing was talking to the school...and making sure there was someone willing to continue it. So I took the role and a few weeks later was collaborating with school faculty and our Food Bank Director to order food and get out permission slips. It has been good to have another project that will bring me more into the school pool and I am excited to re-vamp it a little. One criticism that our superintendent had about the previous attempt was that a lot of junk was being sent home and we were not actually meeting meal requirements. And so with our collection of food, I asked for some bulk items like oats and rice and produce when available from the food bank fridge. I wrote up a "newsletter"of sorts called the Backpack Buddy which I intend to fill with recipes, nutrition about some of the contents of each pack, cooking tips and various health reads as called to. With the backpacks going out every other week, alternating with food bank weeks, I will hopefully have time to write one for each backpack weekend. If not, at least every other one.

As I began leaning more and more towards a second year here, I decided to start looking into the schools this month to see how I might want to be involved there more. Thus far, I've only seen the experience of working with the high school/Junior high and based on these accounts, the jury is definitely still out:

-High school shadowing: I followed Mary around to her classes for a full day and left exhausted, disgruntled and yet still feeling my need to be there more than ever. Most of her classes were math and I felt way under-qualified to dive in in any capacity. However, during one english class I couldn't take it anymore and broke out of my observation role to help a couple of students write poetry. The class was in shambles. They'd had a sub that day and both the sub and the kids had a mutual disdain for one another. And so, after 5 minutes of attempted sharing of their "5 sense poems" between shuffles and commentary and peer-pestering, Mrs Vessy was yelling at the class to "BE QUIET" and "Well, not how I wanted to spend this class but now all of you are just going to sit and write me twelve of those poems. Cause apparently you can't handle sharing." This did not go over much better and the two girls nearest to me kept chatting away. One of them was tossing out plenty of ideas and yet the pencil did not once touch the paper and so I rolled my chair over and began to facilitate some actual writing. I managed to get her to do two of the 12. Near the end of the class, it was obvious that most people would not finish and so instead, I decided to just ask her why the assignment seemed so difficult. She answered justly, that she had to feel inspired. And so I asked what inspired her and she said "the outdoors." Here, in a musty room of 20 or so rowdy, restless teens, I couldn't blame her for not wanting to write. In fact, I couldn't blame anyone. She, probably like most of the kids, was pitted bitterly against the sub, seeing her as nasty and disrespectful and the sub in turn saw them in the same light. It was a battle of stubborn egoism and uncompromising discipline. There was no understanding, no room or time for it. I saw this all throughout the day and I was split. I knew I would get endlessly frustrated being in a school like this and yet I knew that I had the potential to plant ideas of different educational models if I came to work in these classrooms, even if they were just the smallest grains of inspiration.

Junior High Dance: This was all kinds of flashback. The blinding drama of teen love. The insecure social awkwardness cloaked in complexes of confused egos. The crying. The giggles. The odd phenomenon of people coming to a function to sit or stand around in fear of what they actually came to do. It was brilliant. Highlights include: the couples that took half the night to even say hello and when they finally got to a slow dance, stood shoulder to shoulder with their buddies and talked girl to girl, guy to guy the entire song. B, one of the few always blissfully removed from the typical drama, seeing it all through only the eyes of a camera. The girl with heels that were an inch too big for her feet. Noticing the ratio of time spent on the dance floor to time spent in corners on cell phones. Realizing that I am not there and never have to be ever again.

Field Trips: Mary got me an in on going on any and all of the field trips for the rest of the year. I took the opportunity to hitch a ride to Seattle with 15 seniors for a visit to the newish Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI). This group had hardly any reason for a chaperone - a whole other experience from the rest of my school interactions. The trip was great except that we had far too short a time to peruse the 3-story building that explored everything from the first pioneers to the last to make history in the City of Seattle. I had to rush through most of it but I was glad that I opted to sit through a particular video that explained the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 that caused the city to have to be rebuilt. The event was documented musical style, assigning old artifacts as "singers" in the skit. Very Schoolhouse Rock style. I think they should make a whole feature musical covering all of the topics in the museum. Even with the short time, it seemed like most of the kids got something from it and found a favorite part, whether it be the maritime exhibit, the vast display of famous faces from seattle, the history of Microsoft, Seattle during the war, or dabbling with the interactive maps that show you where you would most fit in in the giant collection of neighborhoods.

Hobo code used during the Great Depression

Neat sculpture built from old boats and left to weather's whim for years. Old fish oils stain it with color.

Next week, I will be shadowing Mackensie in the elementary school to compare notes.


In February, I began to pump more into the day-to-day as well, keeping up with my "today in history" posts at Open Gym, bringing craft ideas along and engaging more in the basketball and football happenings of the evening. But my biggest focus of the month was the turn of a doubtful vision into a blossoming actualization....