Environmental Crusades
When we were younger, our summer vacations were usually spent at the Holidome in Springfield with the Illinois Soil and Water Conservation District Annual Convention. We thought it a magical sort of place--there was a pool, an arcade, and country music on the television; every year, at the end of the week, there was even a big party, with a buffet and a dj! There we were: four kids dancing dancing dancing to the sounds of Bachman Turner Overdrive, cheering as we shifted our feet on the slippery floors, hopping up and down, and taking care of the proverbial business; our bangs as big as they ever were, t-shirts as over sized as they ever were, cut off shorts as tight (and black, of all things (and possibly Richard's--is there anything worse than coveting your little brother's black cut off shorts?) as they ever were. Clearly we were a family of mystified adolescent fashion plates.
Every summer we sojourned to the Capital, cheering when the pair of old smokestacks, the very same that marked the first view of the city and, if we were lucky, could be seen from our hotel window, came into view. There were restaurants to eat in and prairie grass buffer strips to learn about. Those feelings of camaraderie that we had cemented with the rest of the Boone County Soil and Water Conservation District were so important to our futures. Even after Dad was too busy to remain on the Board, when the Boone County Soil and Water Conservation District came to our elementary school to show us how to take soil samples they still remembered me. Later, when Dad had to go to the office that the Farm Bureau shared with the Conservation District, we would always stop in to chat with the Conservation staff, where we were impressed with valuable guidance: "whatever you do, don't join the military! And if you do, get pregnant right away! That's what I told my son-in-law to do! Get my daughter pregnant!"
From these origins, and also my Aunt Debbie's story about a turtle who wanted to fight pollution and encourage sustainability, my mind was set to study Environmental Science and Public Policy. For two years I battled against the dangers to the environment, (especially against chemistry, which posed a very real danger to my personal environment), and as I looked towards my summer prospects it was natural that I turn to the Boone County Soil and Water Conservation District for employment and real work experience. The year before, I had waited too long. When I returned home from college and walked into the Conservation District, I was greeted with a familiar joviality, but then when I asked about internships the faces fell.
"Sorry," they told me, "but we already hired this girl."
They gestured towards a hulking mass in the corner, who looked up from licking envelopes with a swollen tongue and a similarly swollen, sticky, and bland countenance.
"Too bad you didn't come in earlier," they said, "we'd have hired you for sure." "Yeah, sorry, this girl already has your job!"
Disappointed, but not without my signature good humor, I joked, "oh no! Oh well, watch out! Maybe I'll key her car!" We all shared a laugh and then another board member divulged, "she doesn't even have a car! She rides a bike!"
"Well then she better watch out!" I cried, "because I'll run her over with my car!" More hilarious laughter ensued. The giant girl kept licking envelopes.
This year I was prepared to do things right and so applied to the Boone County Soil and Water Conservation District in early spring. To cover my bases, I also applied to the Boone County Department of Parks and Recreation and the Winnebago County Soil and Water Conservation District. Somehow, though, despite my prompt intentions, both the Conservation Districts had already hired interns for the summer.
The Department of Parks and Recreation responded by telling me that they weren't sure what I had in mind for a job, but that they would be happy to offer me a position as a captain of the thistle removal team alongside the I-90 corridor in Boone County. This was insulting to me. Since I would soon be half way through a Harvard education, I thought I should expect better than to be the captain of a thistle removal team, overseeing a "team" of "environmentally concerned citizens," probably tied together and wearing bright orange jump suits. Perhaps, though, I was the only one with such expectations. My mother, for example, suggested that I contact the Department of Animal Control for a job. This is something I like about my mother--her refreshingly oblivious nature. Like the time that she decided to "help" me with the tyrannically hard Sudoku I was working on or the way in which she thought Jacqueline Kane's little sister actually was in the "retard" Olympics, her ideas that I spend the summer in the ghettos of Rockford, (a city where Aretha Franklin was scheduled to perform, until she found out about the concert and subsequently canceled the tour and fired her tour manager), responding to complaints of loud and rabid dogs, "um, excuse me, I'll ignore the drug paraphernalia and the stack of stolen stereos in your living room, but I'm going to need to you quiet that dog," or cleaning up carrion along the road side, (I believe this needs no illustration), were quite dear in their inception but overwhelmingly debilitating in practice.
The ace up my sleeve was my status as a federal work study student. If I were able to find a job with a government agency or a non-profit, the federal work study program would pay ninety percent of my wages. If, then, I were working in Illinois, where the minimum wage was $6.25 an hour, (a bountiful raise from the five dollar wages I made the year before working at the ice cream store), my employer would only have to pay me sixty three cents an hour. The Department of Parks excluded, I contacted those places to which I had applied and offered them this information. The Boone County office was at full intern capacity, but the Winnebago Office was interested.
Upon my return home in June I visited with Brad Holcombe at the Winnebago County Soil and Water Conservation District. He asked me why I wanted to be involved with Conservation and I enlivened him with my worries for the future for rural communities, the seemingly irreparable damage that humans had done to the area ecosystems thus far, and my desire to promote organic agriculture around the Northern Illinois area. He responded to these concerns with hearty laughter and asked, "we really only have to pay you five dollars a day? Why don't you fill out the paperwork with Melissa."
I was given an office in the copy room and no instruction.
Most mornings I would wake up at 4:30, head to the YMCA to row for a couple of hours, and then leave for work. I spent my days sitting in the copy room with the lights off, propped on top of a stool, balanced on my elbows on the edge of the cutting board. A book on stream corridor restoration was open before me and, with my head buried in my hands, I would sleep the days away.
Occasionally someone would come into the room and turn on the lights.
"Haha!" they would cheer, "if you keep trying to read in the dark you'll hurt your eyes!"
"Yes, um, reading in the dark...learning...streams..." I would mutter as I wiped the sleep out of my eyes and tried to adjust to the light as quickly as possible.
Some days, I would sit by the doors and wait for someone to leave the building in a department truck.
"Whereareyougoing? Whereareyougoing? Whereareyougoing? Can I come too!?" I would yell as I chased them out the doors.
These excursions took me on a tour of the shopping centers and housing developments with Brad, where he would point out the incorrect applications of straw bales to prevent top soil runoff and then jeer "but since it would be a real hassle to fix, and I'm a good guy, I'm just going to let it go", a visit to a septic field with Dennis, and bird watching with Ryan, not quite so affectionately named "Nature Boy" by the rest of the staff of the Conservation Department and of the Department of Natural Resources that shared the building. In the lunch room, the old government employees would ask what I did that morning and then chuckle. "How was your time with Nature Boy? Do any nature things? Huh? Huh? Nature Boy!"
Nature Boy had planted a garden of hardy, drought resistant local grasses and flowers in order to show home owners attractive and low impact landscaping choices. Nature Boy had orchestrated a massive no-till initiative among Winnebago County farmers to prevent soil run off and improve water quality in streams and rivers. Nature Boy knew the names of all the birds and where to find all the nests, he never left the office without binoculars and he resented my presence on his personal field trips into the world. I should wish that all Conservation Districts were run by people like Nature Boy. Unfortunately they are not. I wish that all the tasks I did with the Conservation District involved shadowing Nature Boy. Unfortunately they did not.
After being at the Conservation District for a week, Brad had decided that I was learned enough to go out into the world on official business. Armed with a disposable camera, I was to visit construction sites and photograph drainage ditches to make sure that they were functioning according to protocol. By this time I was already disillusioned with the mechanics of conservationism--too few of the people involved with the process seemed interested in really preserving wetlands or halting the spread of urban sprawl; combined with the daunting prospect of organic chemistry awaiting me in the fall, I was beginning to rethink my course of studies. The final straw, though, was the task at hand: visit loathsome housing developments and take pictures of infractions that probably would not be dealt with according to the "I'm a good guy, so I'll let it go" doctrine.
I was already feeling ill about the state of the world and then, as I wandered through construction sites, clicking away at ditches and ponds, I began to have another, more disturbing sensation. I looked around and realized that not a single eye was upon me. Construction workers everywhere and not a single cat call! Not even so much as a glance. Was I not only ineffectual as an environmental crusader, but unattractive as well? At the next site, I hopped out of the truck, took my hair down, and waved my head about. I waited. And nothing. Not even the crickets commented.
Maybe it was my sour disposition towards the whole affair or maybe it was the rough looking polo tee and khakhi pants with tennis shoes that kept heads wholly unturned. Maybe the blame for the affair should be rested on the unwarranted, yet very high, image I had conjured for myself and then the disappointment that I experienced when my ideals--both environmental and fashionable--faltered. Maybe when you start from a base of your brother's cut offs and your sisters' hand me down shirts you aren't going anywhere near to the sun. At any rate, I bowed out of the Conservation District and organic chemistry and put my energies towards anthropology to find some truths in the world. I'm still working on them, but here is one for starters: when we used to visit Springfield we had some really great moves; and I'm pretty sure we still do.
Every summer we sojourned to the Capital, cheering when the pair of old smokestacks, the very same that marked the first view of the city and, if we were lucky, could be seen from our hotel window, came into view. There were restaurants to eat in and prairie grass buffer strips to learn about. Those feelings of camaraderie that we had cemented with the rest of the Boone County Soil and Water Conservation District were so important to our futures. Even after Dad was too busy to remain on the Board, when the Boone County Soil and Water Conservation District came to our elementary school to show us how to take soil samples they still remembered me. Later, when Dad had to go to the office that the Farm Bureau shared with the Conservation District, we would always stop in to chat with the Conservation staff, where we were impressed with valuable guidance: "whatever you do, don't join the military! And if you do, get pregnant right away! That's what I told my son-in-law to do! Get my daughter pregnant!"
From these origins, and also my Aunt Debbie's story about a turtle who wanted to fight pollution and encourage sustainability, my mind was set to study Environmental Science and Public Policy. For two years I battled against the dangers to the environment, (especially against chemistry, which posed a very real danger to my personal environment), and as I looked towards my summer prospects it was natural that I turn to the Boone County Soil and Water Conservation District for employment and real work experience. The year before, I had waited too long. When I returned home from college and walked into the Conservation District, I was greeted with a familiar joviality, but then when I asked about internships the faces fell.
"Sorry," they told me, "but we already hired this girl."
They gestured towards a hulking mass in the corner, who looked up from licking envelopes with a swollen tongue and a similarly swollen, sticky, and bland countenance.
"Too bad you didn't come in earlier," they said, "we'd have hired you for sure." "Yeah, sorry, this girl already has your job!"
Disappointed, but not without my signature good humor, I joked, "oh no! Oh well, watch out! Maybe I'll key her car!" We all shared a laugh and then another board member divulged, "she doesn't even have a car! She rides a bike!"
"Well then she better watch out!" I cried, "because I'll run her over with my car!" More hilarious laughter ensued. The giant girl kept licking envelopes.
This year I was prepared to do things right and so applied to the Boone County Soil and Water Conservation District in early spring. To cover my bases, I also applied to the Boone County Department of Parks and Recreation and the Winnebago County Soil and Water Conservation District. Somehow, though, despite my prompt intentions, both the Conservation Districts had already hired interns for the summer.
The Department of Parks and Recreation responded by telling me that they weren't sure what I had in mind for a job, but that they would be happy to offer me a position as a captain of the thistle removal team alongside the I-90 corridor in Boone County. This was insulting to me. Since I would soon be half way through a Harvard education, I thought I should expect better than to be the captain of a thistle removal team, overseeing a "team" of "environmentally concerned citizens," probably tied together and wearing bright orange jump suits. Perhaps, though, I was the only one with such expectations. My mother, for example, suggested that I contact the Department of Animal Control for a job. This is something I like about my mother--her refreshingly oblivious nature. Like the time that she decided to "help" me with the tyrannically hard Sudoku I was working on or the way in which she thought Jacqueline Kane's little sister actually was in the "retard" Olympics, her ideas that I spend the summer in the ghettos of Rockford, (a city where Aretha Franklin was scheduled to perform, until she found out about the concert and subsequently canceled the tour and fired her tour manager), responding to complaints of loud and rabid dogs, "um, excuse me, I'll ignore the drug paraphernalia and the stack of stolen stereos in your living room, but I'm going to need to you quiet that dog," or cleaning up carrion along the road side, (I believe this needs no illustration), were quite dear in their inception but overwhelmingly debilitating in practice.
The ace up my sleeve was my status as a federal work study student. If I were able to find a job with a government agency or a non-profit, the federal work study program would pay ninety percent of my wages. If, then, I were working in Illinois, where the minimum wage was $6.25 an hour, (a bountiful raise from the five dollar wages I made the year before working at the ice cream store), my employer would only have to pay me sixty three cents an hour. The Department of Parks excluded, I contacted those places to which I had applied and offered them this information. The Boone County office was at full intern capacity, but the Winnebago Office was interested.
Upon my return home in June I visited with Brad Holcombe at the Winnebago County Soil and Water Conservation District. He asked me why I wanted to be involved with Conservation and I enlivened him with my worries for the future for rural communities, the seemingly irreparable damage that humans had done to the area ecosystems thus far, and my desire to promote organic agriculture around the Northern Illinois area. He responded to these concerns with hearty laughter and asked, "we really only have to pay you five dollars a day? Why don't you fill out the paperwork with Melissa."
I was given an office in the copy room and no instruction.
Most mornings I would wake up at 4:30, head to the YMCA to row for a couple of hours, and then leave for work. I spent my days sitting in the copy room with the lights off, propped on top of a stool, balanced on my elbows on the edge of the cutting board. A book on stream corridor restoration was open before me and, with my head buried in my hands, I would sleep the days away.
Occasionally someone would come into the room and turn on the lights.
"Haha!" they would cheer, "if you keep trying to read in the dark you'll hurt your eyes!"
"Yes, um, reading in the dark...learning...streams..." I would mutter as I wiped the sleep out of my eyes and tried to adjust to the light as quickly as possible.
Some days, I would sit by the doors and wait for someone to leave the building in a department truck.
"Whereareyougoing? Whereareyougoing? Whereareyougoing? Can I come too!?" I would yell as I chased them out the doors.
These excursions took me on a tour of the shopping centers and housing developments with Brad, where he would point out the incorrect applications of straw bales to prevent top soil runoff and then jeer "but since it would be a real hassle to fix, and I'm a good guy, I'm just going to let it go", a visit to a septic field with Dennis, and bird watching with Ryan, not quite so affectionately named "Nature Boy" by the rest of the staff of the Conservation Department and of the Department of Natural Resources that shared the building. In the lunch room, the old government employees would ask what I did that morning and then chuckle. "How was your time with Nature Boy? Do any nature things? Huh? Huh? Nature Boy!"
Nature Boy had planted a garden of hardy, drought resistant local grasses and flowers in order to show home owners attractive and low impact landscaping choices. Nature Boy had orchestrated a massive no-till initiative among Winnebago County farmers to prevent soil run off and improve water quality in streams and rivers. Nature Boy knew the names of all the birds and where to find all the nests, he never left the office without binoculars and he resented my presence on his personal field trips into the world. I should wish that all Conservation Districts were run by people like Nature Boy. Unfortunately they are not. I wish that all the tasks I did with the Conservation District involved shadowing Nature Boy. Unfortunately they did not.
After being at the Conservation District for a week, Brad had decided that I was learned enough to go out into the world on official business. Armed with a disposable camera, I was to visit construction sites and photograph drainage ditches to make sure that they were functioning according to protocol. By this time I was already disillusioned with the mechanics of conservationism--too few of the people involved with the process seemed interested in really preserving wetlands or halting the spread of urban sprawl; combined with the daunting prospect of organic chemistry awaiting me in the fall, I was beginning to rethink my course of studies. The final straw, though, was the task at hand: visit loathsome housing developments and take pictures of infractions that probably would not be dealt with according to the "I'm a good guy, so I'll let it go" doctrine.
I was already feeling ill about the state of the world and then, as I wandered through construction sites, clicking away at ditches and ponds, I began to have another, more disturbing sensation. I looked around and realized that not a single eye was upon me. Construction workers everywhere and not a single cat call! Not even so much as a glance. Was I not only ineffectual as an environmental crusader, but unattractive as well? At the next site, I hopped out of the truck, took my hair down, and waved my head about. I waited. And nothing. Not even the crickets commented.
Maybe it was my sour disposition towards the whole affair or maybe it was the rough looking polo tee and khakhi pants with tennis shoes that kept heads wholly unturned. Maybe the blame for the affair should be rested on the unwarranted, yet very high, image I had conjured for myself and then the disappointment that I experienced when my ideals--both environmental and fashionable--faltered. Maybe when you start from a base of your brother's cut offs and your sisters' hand me down shirts you aren't going anywhere near to the sun. At any rate, I bowed out of the Conservation District and organic chemistry and put my energies towards anthropology to find some truths in the world. I'm still working on them, but here is one for starters: when we used to visit Springfield we had some really great moves; and I'm pretty sure we still do.
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