Corporation vs. Love

It took a while, but I finally tracked down one of those childhood movies my sister and I used to check out from the public library and watch over and over again. Among the ranks were those delightful BBC productions of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" and a number of other obscure 1980's productions.

The object of this hunt was none other than "Konrad, the Factory-Made Child". If you can get your hands on a copy (don't look on IMDB - it's not there), I highly suggest watching it. The anti-authoritarian plot is based on a book that comes out of 1970's Germany. An evil corporation is mass-producing perfect children in an institution and then hand-picking the perfect (wealthy, uptight) families that deserve to receive them. A misprint in the shipping department accidentally sends one of their prototypes (who arrives in a can, by the way) to the wrong, very wrong, person - a messy, artsy, failure of a woman who has lots of love and joie de vivre.

What happens to perfect little Konrad when he is exposed to the messy lifestyle of his new mom? What happens when the evil corporation inevitably discovers their mistake and wants to recover their "property"? Clearly you can see a Herbie-style debaucle will ensue as mustached men chase each other around town....

It captivated me at age 7; it will captivate you too!

How to Make the Best Raspberry Jam You've Ever Had

1. Get to Homer, Alaska.

2. Find the "Seaside Farms" campground and pitch your tent in the horse field. Be sure not to step in the horse poo. And don't mind the horse; he won't bite.

3. The next morning, walk out of your tent and into the organic raspberry patch. Pick to your heart's delight. Be sure to get low and look under the leaves. It's rude picker's etiquette to only pick the easy-to-reach berries.

4. Eat lots of berries as you pick. But also pick a lot and put them into your bucket.

5. Be sure to observe the epic view across Katchemak Bay to the mountains and glaciers on the other side of the sea. The berries have spent their whole lives imbibing the view. This makes them taste extra spectacular.

6. Carry the berries with you the rest of the day to make sure they stay safe. Whatever you do, don't let them out of your site. Berries tend to disappear that way. They also tend to disappear into bellies, so keep an eye out for snitching fingers too.

7. Purchase Certo liquid pectin, sugar, and canning jars at Fred Meyer.

8. Back at your trailer, mash the berries carefully. Be sure to say, "Smash smash" every time you make the mashing motion.

9. Follow the recipe inside the Certo package for making raspberry jam.

10. Make a big sticky mess.

11. Clean up the big sticky mess.

12. Eat delicious jam!

Granola is Holy, Constipation a Sin

This tidbit of history (read below) is just too ironic.

In case anyone was wondering if religious movements are influenced by time and place. Because everyone knows that today's good right-wing Christians wouldn't be caught dead eating granola. Obama probably eats granola.

And vegetarians are just straight up sinful. Didn't God create animals for us to eat? Except he apparently also created constipation to punish us for eating meat. I always knew he was a tricky bugger.

"During the early 19th century, most Americans subsisted on a diet of pork, whiskey, and coffee. It was hell on the bowels, and to many Christian fundamentalists, hell on the soul, too. They believed that constipation was God’s punishment for eating meat. The diet was also blamed for fueling lust and laziness. To rid America of these vices, religious zealots spearheaded the country’s first vegetarian movement. In 1863, one member of this group, Dr. James Jackson, invented Granula, America’s first ready-to-eat, grain-based breakfast product. Better known as cereal, Jackson’s rock-hard breakfast bricks offered consumers a sin-free meat alternative that aimed to clear both conscience and bowels." http://blogs.static.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/20822.html

Mushroom season

Mushroom season is progressing very nicely. I would post photos if it weren't so darn difficult around here.

The warm summer and recent warm showers have created perfect conditions for a generous mushroom year. I am in heaven just walking the dog (yes, dogsitting again) and observing all the beautiful - and not so beautiful - varieties in abundance.

I've also been eating them. I've tried 5 varieties, a not-at-all shabby number for my first ever season of wild mushroom collecting. I'm impatient, but slowly I'm learning how much I can add to my cache of experiences and skills with time - and only with time. I can't expect to do everything at once.

So far, I've had: brown and orange birch boletes, honey mushrooms, gypsy mushrooms, and puffballs. My favorites is definitely the puffball - sliced thin and fried until crispy, like a mushroom potato chip. And conveniently, puffballs are among the most numerous and definitely easy to identify. The brown birch boletes are also numerous, but the flesh is often mushy, they are always infested with fly larvae (read: maggots), and honestly, they don't taste better than store-bought canned mushrooms.

Job Hazards

Life is rough.

"Do you want a coloring project?"

--my boss asks me today.

Oh yes. That is, if I can fit in in between sticking labels on notecards and moving photos around in Corel.

A nice day to welcome me back to work.

Last week, my mom and sister visited me while I took annual leave.

We went clamming in view of Redoubt and caught more clams than we know what to do with. They squirted us.

We went to Homer and picked raspberries and made jam. The best raspberry jam I've ever tasted, and I don't think it's just personal bias.

We stayed in the brand-new Kelly Lake Cabin (and managed to survive on only one match).

We altogether found much diversion and much conversation. Hooray.

Fungus are EXPLODING all over the Peninsula. I'm getting ready for Mushroomania Fair numero uno in a few weeks.

Ok, that's the life update.

And then there was one

With the end of summer season, all the camp activity is over, and all the summer seasonals have gone back to the places where they came from, which means...

Betsi has time to post online again!

Here is a long and boring update of my summer, in a nutshell. I had to write it for work, but I figured I could post it here in case anyone wants to read it. It's very... plain. As in, not witty or insightful in any way. Because it was for work.

DO NOT READ! if you would like to maintain the false premise that I can only write wonderful, witty and intensly insightful things. You will be vastly disappointed.

Spring/Summer 2009 SCA Reflections

In April (so long ago now!) I worked on a variety of projects.
For the Bear Safety Program, Michelle and I took suggestions from the Kenai Brown Bear Committee and created a 15 minute presentation for 1st-6th grades about reducing bear attractants around homes. I went to a lot of the local schools to make bear-aware Jr. Rangers.

We spent a lot of time creating our Moose Discovery Room – a program for homeschoolers K-6, held at the EEC. The final result was excellent, with multiple tables covering themes related to moose and grade-appropriate worksheets that took about an hour for the students to complete. It was a fun challenge to create interesting, interactive displays that had information to offer participants at every age level. Amazing how much solid work goes into a one-day program, but hopefully the Refuge will be able to recycle this program every other year.

Between these two programs, I feel like I developed a stronger sense for each age level’s capabilities. For example, 3rd and 4th graders need a significant amount of guidance even for simple word problems. K to 2nd grade find writing even a few words laborious.

I attended a Project Learning Tree class with Matt Weaver, and I’m so glad! A few of the classmates banded together afterward to continue birch tapping and make birch syrup, though mine fermented before I got a chance to use much of it (oops). I learned a lot that weekend, not just from the material, but from closely watching the techniques of the instructor as well. Since I mostly work with and observe Michelle, it was great to also see another educator’s approach.

We did a few spring field trips after break-up, but mostly I will become more familiar with these trips when they are offered again in the Fall.

Outside, the month started covered in snow and ice and ended ready for spring – with even the first bits of green showing. We had a quick breakup, not the weeks and weeks of mud and slosh I was expecting. We basically went straight from winter weather to sunny, 60+ degree afternoons – though I don’t think every spring is so lucky!

It wasn’t until May that the trees started growing leaves, and boy was I happy when they finally did. Everything exploded within a week to become soft and fuzzy, covered in that light yellow-green color. Plus everything smelled like aromatic cottonwood sap.

Mid-May brought the arrival of summer crews. Training and Orientation was a strange time for me, because I was partly a participant and partly responsible as a leader. Also it was quite a transition to go from being mostly solo in the housing area, to the place being full of other seasonals! Parts of the training were a real treat, like our day-long sightseeing cruise in Kenai Fjords or the weekend canoe trip, while other parts were rather… tedious. As can be expected. Lots of paperwork and regulations.

I decided to do an interpretive campfire program, so I spent a lot of time preparing for that with my SCA partner. I loved doing this program every time we presented it! It was definitely a highlight of the summer, even though it made the rest of my schedule (juggling with summer camp scheduling) a bit awkward at times.

Summer Camp: the main project for the summer. We had four people working on it together. Another 3 month SCA took the new 2nd & 3rd grade camp (Critter Camp) under her wing, and we worked side-by-side brainstorming, finalizing a detailed schedule, writing curricula for every activity, and working out all the kinks. I got to draw a fun animal logo for Critter Camp tee-shirts. The others found it stressful at times, especially since we only had a couple of weeks to get the whole thing ready to go, including all our purchasing, but mostly I found it really fun.

Critter Camp was… amazing! The program was only 4 hours each day, but the days were jam-packed with activities and games, hands-on discoveries and trail time. Between prep time and cleanup time, the days flew by. In between we were also prepping for the two weeks of 4th & 5th grade camp (Get Out and Get Dirty) that were happening next. Busy busy busy. During June we did our best to get out of Soldotna on the weekends – camping and other excursions – but in July, by the weekends we were just ready to crash.

We made some changes to Get Out and Get Dirty, which piloted last year, to make it a more solid program ready for future summers. It was fun to transition from the younger kids to the older. Techniques for interacting with them, controlling them, and getting them interested are so different. At times it got complicated trying to communicate effectively between all four leaders so that we were all on the same page. Last minute changes and miscommunications required a lot of flexibility and positive attitude. The campers never know if the schedule’s been changed, so with a little bit of energy from the leaders, they are guaranteed to have fun. It’s good to have a few camp games ready to go in case time-fillers are needed.

The campers really liked both camps. Even the more academic activities (which were few and far between), like identifying fish organs in their journals, were enjoyed by all. I highly recommend having at least one active/running game per day, which we had in Critter Camp but could be added to Get Out and Get Dirty.

We spent a lot of time making detailed notes for future leaders of these camps to use, but the plethora of pictures we took may tell the story better. Lots of smiles, lots of fascinated little explorers, and lots of goofy candids of the counselors!

Before the last week of camp I got a really bad sprain (proof that you should stay on the trail and not try to rock climb on Skyline…). It did not diminish my love for camp, though it kept me off the trail, both with the kids and in my free time – trying not to let that get me too bummed. I don’t want to miss the beauty of late summer on the Peninsula, but 2.5 weeks later, I’m still bound by crutches.