Hello friends,
I think of so many folks so often and by the time my head hits the pillow at night I've missed more chances to tell folks that they are in my heart and on my mind.
This is what my days are like-I get up early, and it's chilly out with the sun peaking through fog. My commute is either a five minute bike ride (if I've slept too late) or a 15 walk to campus via a trail on the edge of a field. Most mornings the field is full of fog starting to burn off with orangey yellow sun rays coming through the line of trees in the middle of the field. It's a good way to start the day. Then I go to work where I feel like I'm being paid to be a student... minus the homework. My job has turned out to be combination community organizing as well as being a liaison between community groups and Berea campus folks. The theme of the grant I'm overseeing is "Energy and Empowerment" so we work with everything from groups organizing to help folks with a low-income weatherize their houses and lower their energy bills, to a Church group who wants to start a community solar panel project, and there is of course work to do to fight the Eastern Kentucky Power Cooperatives (EKPC) proposed new coal-fired power plant, as well as organizing to work to strengthen the unsuitable for mining petition at Bev's holler in May Town, Eastern KY. Finding out what is going on to save Bev's place (she doesn't own the whole holler, but she's got enough energy to organize around saving it), has been really meaningful, as the botany trip in the spring of '07 was one of the reasons I knew I wanted to take this job.
I feel like I'm taking a course in a lot of things:
-I get to learn more about community environmental and economic justice organizing
-I get to see how lots of community organizations function
-I'm learning the politics (surprise!) of being a staff member at a college
-In working with such a variety of groups through the collaborating Energy and Empowerment group, I get to see and essentially try out a lot of different levels/styles of activism and organizing...and it seems to me like it all matters, from the local environmental lawyer who uncovered the fact that EKPC is planning to borrow up to $700,000,000 from a bank in China with the hope that the US goverment will loan them money before they have to pay it back in full in five years-- to the man who says "yeah the photo-something kind of solar panel, that's what our church should look into"... all of us can take some steps to go from where we are to a different kind of future, we need an inclusive movement.
It's got me thinking too, about what I might consider the "daily sacraments" of simple living that I want to practice. Things like cooking with real food from farmers who I know, turning off lights, using little water, learning and noticing as many plants as I can, riding my bike or walking most places I go, making my own music and living in community. When I first started working for the SENS program at Berea College I was mostly interested in these, mostly curious about how I might lessen my environmental footprint. Now I feel like I'm not letting classes get in the way of my learning. I am getting to see a much bigger picture, and trying to understand how environmental work fits into the existing systems of power and privilege. There are times where I feel like I want to disregard all of the red tape etc. and slowness of organizing, times when I think maybe I'd rather do hands-on reclamation at Mountaintop Removal sites, or do direct action to stop the coal industry...times when I feel like environmental work is the highest priority and the current environmental crisis of global warming and peak oil have led us to total urgency...but I know that there is value in other kinds of service as well... I think my feelings of passion are a good indicator that I'm in the right place, but I've got to be careful not to let them give me a distorted sense of importance. Right now seems to me like a time of learning. A time of contributing as a facilitator of collaborations and taking more in than I'm used to. I know it's in some ways ridiculous, but most every day I come home from work and feel so energized that my housemates hear everyday how much I love my work.
okay...enough of the update... here is what I'm grateful for:
-having the ability to read
-being on a College campus and going to the events hosted there
-a place to sleep, and rent I can afford
-clean water
-the privilege to do another AmeriCorps year
-a three day weekend in Shelby County (in time for harvestin' things)
-asthma medicine
-reuniting with old friends after a year
-praying with Beth
-paw paw fruit
-tomatoes, and their long season
I think of so many folks so often and by the time my head hits the pillow at night I've missed more chances to tell folks that they are in my heart and on my mind.
This is what my days are like-I get up early, and it's chilly out with the sun peaking through fog. My commute is either a five minute bike ride (if I've slept too late) or a 15 walk to campus via a trail on the edge of a field. Most mornings the field is full of fog starting to burn off with orangey yellow sun rays coming through the line of trees in the middle of the field. It's a good way to start the day. Then I go to work where I feel like I'm being paid to be a student... minus the homework. My job has turned out to be combination community organizing as well as being a liaison between community groups and Berea campus folks. The theme of the grant I'm overseeing is "Energy and Empowerment" so we work with everything from groups organizing to help folks with a low-income weatherize their houses and lower their energy bills, to a Church group who wants to start a community solar panel project, and there is of course work to do to fight the Eastern Kentucky Power Cooperatives (EKPC) proposed new coal-fired power plant, as well as organizing to work to strengthen the unsuitable for mining petition at Bev's holler in May Town, Eastern KY. Finding out what is going on to save Bev's place (she doesn't own the whole holler, but she's got enough energy to organize around saving it), has been really meaningful, as the botany trip in the spring of '07 was one of the reasons I knew I wanted to take this job.
I feel like I'm taking a course in a lot of things:
-I get to learn more about community environmental and economic justice organizing
-I get to see how lots of community organizations function
-I'm learning the politics (surprise!) of being a staff member at a college
-In working with such a variety of groups through the collaborating Energy and Empowerment group, I get to see and essentially try out a lot of different levels/styles of activism and organizing...and it seems to me like it all matters, from the local environmental lawyer who uncovered the fact that EKPC is planning to borrow up to $700,000,000 from a bank in China with the hope that the US goverment will loan them money before they have to pay it back in full in five years-- to the man who says "yeah the photo-something kind of solar panel, that's what our church should look into"... all of us can take some steps to go from where we are to a different kind of future, we need an inclusive movement.
It's got me thinking too, about what I might consider the "daily sacraments" of simple living that I want to practice. Things like cooking with real food from farmers who I know, turning off lights, using little water, learning and noticing as many plants as I can, riding my bike or walking most places I go, making my own music and living in community. When I first started working for the SENS program at Berea College I was mostly interested in these, mostly curious about how I might lessen my environmental footprint. Now I feel like I'm not letting classes get in the way of my learning. I am getting to see a much bigger picture, and trying to understand how environmental work fits into the existing systems of power and privilege. There are times where I feel like I want to disregard all of the red tape etc. and slowness of organizing, times when I think maybe I'd rather do hands-on reclamation at Mountaintop Removal sites, or do direct action to stop the coal industry...times when I feel like environmental work is the highest priority and the current environmental crisis of global warming and peak oil have led us to total urgency...but I know that there is value in other kinds of service as well... I think my feelings of passion are a good indicator that I'm in the right place, but I've got to be careful not to let them give me a distorted sense of importance. Right now seems to me like a time of learning. A time of contributing as a facilitator of collaborations and taking more in than I'm used to. I know it's in some ways ridiculous, but most every day I come home from work and feel so energized that my housemates hear everyday how much I love my work.
okay...enough of the update... here is what I'm grateful for:
-having the ability to read
-being on a College campus and going to the events hosted there
-a place to sleep, and rent I can afford
-clean water
-the privilege to do another AmeriCorps year
-a three day weekend in Shelby County (in time for harvestin' things)
-asthma medicine
-reuniting with old friends after a year
-praying with Beth
-paw paw fruit
-tomatoes, and their long season
posted by Megan at CCAT @ 9:17 PM
1 comments
