watch out for the bourne mad dogs!

Things have slowed down a bit since MLK day, but we've still been busy!

Two weekends ago two of my housemates and I went to Boston for a day, just to get out of the house for a bit. We did a brewery tour at Sam Adams, went to Faneuil Hall and a walk around the North End (and had some delicious cannoli!)



Last Friday we had a WetFest in Sandwich. I did two booths - EnviroScape (where I teach the kids about watersheds and pollution when I am not too distracted by the toy dinosaurs and tractors) and DO the Limbo, where we use the limbo to teach about dissolved oxygen and what causes its levels to go up and down. The Corps also puts on a play about stormwater runoff - it's a trial in which Sammy the Scallop puts a dog, a car, and a toilet on trial for polluting his bay. It's pretty ridiculous but the kids seem to like it - the toilet and scallop costumes are a big hit.


Last weekend I got the rare opportunity to hurl rubber balls at public officials when we played in a dodgeball tournament! One of the local fire departments organized it and initially asked us to be referees (which some of us were), but we asked to join and came up with one team from each house.



the competition:


It turned out to be a little more intense than I expdected.... we had representatives from fire, police, and sherriff's departments as well as SWAT teams attempting to peg us with dodgeballs (and they weren't going easy on us). Our team (the Bourne Mad Dogs) walked into the room never having played, practiced, or recently exercised (though we were looking quite snazzy in our matching shirts). Needless to say, we quickly ended up at the bottom of the loser's bracket with more than a few bruises. But the team from the Wellfleet house managed to win first place in the whole tournament... so at least we got to cheer them on!

Yesterday we were supposed to do another day of beachgrass planting, only to arrive at the beach and realize after an hour that the ground was just too frozen to get any work done. We headed back to the house, where we spent the morning listening to a presentation on resumes and coverletters from one of our members. In the afternoon, four of us got on our safety gear and did some chainsaw work. A large tree had fallen down next to our house during a recent storm, so we cleared it out and cut it up for firewood. The rest of the house took sledgehammers and picks to the ice sheet that had formed over our entire parking lot. Not a typical day, but a productive one! At the end of the day we headed over to a beach to fly some kites.






Yesterday a group of us wanted to go for a hike in Falmouth. Thanks to some recent rain and cold weather, the entire path had turned into a sheet of ice. We braved it anyway and had a great hike other than a bit of slipping and sliding.



Not too much else new on the Cape right now. We recently discovered a flying squirrel living in our basement. After naming him Clark, we spent a week trying to capture him and were finally successful (we let him loose a few miles away this morning). I've got a few trips planned to Maine and New York that I'm looking forward to... though right now my biggest concern is trying to avoid a nasty stomach flu that has gone through almost everyone at the other house and a few at ours... oh, the joys of community living!

MLK Day!

SO. Yesterday, as you may know, was Martin Luther King day! I was pretty nervous about how our project was going to go since it was such a huge event (we've been planning since October), but it seems we pulled it off.

We cleaned and painted all 17 rooms at the housing shelter. The time I spent recruiting volunteers paid off - we had at least 150 people show up, probably closer to 200 (we'll do final counts on Thursday). We had a pretty good article written about the whole thing in the Cape Cod Times (you can read it here).

I actually spent the majority of the day over at a local church, supervising all of the sewing projects I had organized. My team of about 25 volunteers managed (after a little initial chaos) to make 40 sets of curtains from a hodgepodge of bargain fabric. Another group of members took a mural we made over to the local Boys and Girls Club, where some kids learned about Dr King and then decorated it in the spirit of his "I have a dream" speech. The result was fantastic, and we'll be hanging it in a community room at the shelter. We also built 4 benches for outside the rooms, and put plants, new lamps, shelves, and energy efficient bulbs in every room.

My sewing room:

The blank mural:


Freshly painted wall with our fabulous curtains:

The whole crew:


I barely sat down the entire day and the whole Corps was exhausted when it was over, but the staff and residents were thrilled with the results and it seems like the volunteers had some fun too! One of the long-time staff from our program gave us a HUGE compliment and said this may have been the most successful MLK day yet. It was fun, but I admit that I'm looking forward to some time working on smaller projects for the next few months.

Today I was able to spend my lunch hour watching the inauguration with some fellow members at our office. Truly a historic day, and I think Obama's call to service hit a little more close to home after our work yesterday.

I'm going to keep this updated, I promise!

The first 4 months of service here on the Cape have flown by ridiculously fast. I honestly cannot believe that it is already 2009.... seems like so recently that I was at Bard. But here we are in a new year, and even though I won't call it a resolution (because I'm not a fan of them) I am going to try and do a better job of documenting my year of service.

Several of my housemates here in Bourne have been keeping blogs for their family and friends back home, and I finally jumped on the bandwagon. I'm going to do my best to use this page to keep everyone updated on the work I'm doing here on the Cape, and to share some pictures.

SO LET'S GET THIS THING STARTED. I realized a lot of people don't actually know what I'm doing here on a day to day basis, so here's a recap of this past week and the types of things I've been working on.

We've been back at service for a week now after our holiday break. I spent Christmas in Media with Aleia, and New Year's here on the Cape, where I enjoyed a relaxed celebration at a friend's house (and endured a pretty fantastic snowstorm).

After the break, last Monday was my first chance to use chainsaws outside of our training sessions. We worked with the town of Eastham's DNR to cut and clear trees and brush at a couple of different sites. A pretty demanding work day (at the end of which my feet were soaking wet) but fun nonetheless.

On Tuesdays I work with the Association to Preserve Cape Cod (www.apcc.org), a nonprofit environmental group based in Barnstable. I'm working with their volunteer saltmarsh monitoring program. Right now, this involves a lot of data entry and other office tasks, but once it warms up a bit I'll be able to get out into the field and work in the marshes, which I'm looking forward to.

Wednesdays I am with the Barnstable Land Trust (www.blt.org) working on land management plans and volunteer outreach. This past week I started organizing ideas for a few volunteer projects for this spring, and also am compiling a list of abutters for each of the properties owned by the land trust. Mostly office/computer work at this placement, but I'm definitely learning a lot about land management and property regulations.

Thursdays I work in the AmeriCorps office with a few other members, working on community outreach and education programs. For the last few months, we've been preparing for next Monday's Martin Luther King Day, a big national day of service for all AmeriCorps programs. We're planning a project to renovate a local transitional housing shelter - we'll be painting 17 rooms, sewing curtains, building benches, and generally revamping the whole place. I'm in charge of recruiting volunteers, and I've still got a lot to do before next week, but it looks like we'll have at least 120 volunteers from outside the Corps.

Last Friday was a WetFest, an education festival we put on at local elementary schools about water pollution and conservation. This week I played Twister (with a little lesson about watersheds) and also made edible aquifers (ice cream and soda and 5th graders.... quite the experience).

Saturday I worked with the Dennis DNR doing a firewood giveaway. Basically I spent all
morning loading logs and occasionally small trees into trucks and vans for town residents.

















Today we did a beach grass planting in Falmouth. We spent the whole day digging holes and planting the grass to form new dunes and prevent erosion. It was cold and snowy but the day got better as it went on.... and it was great to see real results from the day when we were done. (I'm easy to spot.... check out my awesome yellow pants.) We made the front page of the local newspaper for this one!





After the planting, about half of us did ran into the ocean for a polar plunge. One word: COLD. (This wasn't unexpected, considering there was snow on the beach, but I don't know if my muscles have ever felt that much of a shock.) We jumped into our cars (heated and waiting) and headed back for some hot chocolate and tea at the house. It was a bit chaotic and probably insane, but totally worth it.


SO. this was incredibly long.... But here it is, and I'll do what I can to keep it updated between now and July! Off to bed now, all that grass planting and ocean swimming really tires you out.