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Naomi's Internship, Week 3: National Pollinator Week Madness

Naomi Neal, Kathryn Stresak, Dorian Gomberg, Ed Vlcek, and Brad Krautwurst are Shimer students participating in the Shimer Internship/Mentorship (SIM) Program. They regularly post updates about their internship experiences.

This post is from Naomi Neal, who is interning at Tryon Farm and the Tryon Farm Institute in Michigan City, Indiana.

Even now, two days out, it's hard to collect and arrange my memories of this past week at Tryon Farm in a coherent manner. It was exhausting! It was National Pollinator Week, and the series of events for which I'd been helping prepare finally took place. Tuesday and Wednesday were a blur of last-minute meetings and arrangements, and on Thursday, the ball dropped and the events began.

On Thursday, TFI hosted a private educational event for foster children from Chicago's branch of the Lydia Home Association. The planned activities including weeding in the pollinator-habitat garden which a group from Lydia had planted the previous summer, a butterfly/bug hunt in the meadow, and a short lecture and honey-tasting given by one of the Tryon beekeepers. However, the butterfly hunt got rained out at the last minute, so the kids worked instead on pollination-themed craft projects in the barn. These Chicago kids were, for the most part, eager and rambunctious when faced with the unfamiliar scenery of the Farm, and the high-energy group approached the activities with a lot of enthusiasm. They were full of questions about the goats, the bees, the bugs, and the plants, bouncing from one adult to the next for the satisfaction of their curiosity. The field trip ended pretty abruptly when one of the kids broke out in a plant-provoked rash, which to his and the rest of the group's urban eyes must have seemed far more unusual and terrifying than it did to locals. I must admit to having a somewhat similarly outsized reaction to the nasty case of poison ivy which seems to be slowly engulfing me.

The next day, preparations continued, and a TFI-sponsored movie night in nearby LaPorte (which I didn't attend) drew a large audience. And then it was Saturday, the big day.

The day began with our Meet The Bees! event at the barn. Thanks to our collective efforts, the in-house local goods market, beekeeping demonstration, kids' butterfly hunt, and movie screening seemed to go off, for the most part, without a hitch. After running around helping to get things set up before the event started, it seemed I didn't have too much to do during the event itself. This turned out to be lucky, since the freedom from pressing duty gave me the opportunity to be present for a meeting between Ed Noonan and Gary, who is a builder and jack-of-all-trades who works for himself and at Tryon, and who is working on and supervising the eco-pool project. Gary and his team are transforming an old cinderblock storage shed across from the barn into a natural swimming pool, preserving some elements of the original structure, and it was very valuable and informative to me to hear him and Ed discuss the various concerns and decisions which need to be made in undertaking this project. We also arranged for me to be apprenticed to Gary on the project, as a part of this crew, starting tomorrow. I'm very excited to learn what it takes to build, to get my hands dirty and to get some practical skills under my belt, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous, too. I'm sure I'll make a lot of mistakes at first, and I hope I can avoid discouragement and keep soldiering on. Stay tuned!

After the builders' meeting, I wandered through the ongoing Meet the Bees! event, trying to get as many photographs as possible. I'm no photographer, but thanks to the wonders of the digital age, I did manage to get a few passable shots. Here are a few of them:

 

A shot of the local goods market in the barn's Information Office, in full swing.

Beekeepers Colin Tennant-Brown and Suzanne Kraus show onlookers a comb from the hive during their demonstration.

Ed Noonan at the check-in table with TFI boardmember Marty Balogh, who helped coordinate Saturday evening's Pollinator Dinner.

Butterfly- and bug-hunters, big and small.

After all the pictured activities, documentary Queen of the Sun was screened in the barn's loft, to a respectably-sized crowd. A discussion followed the film. For me, this time and the later, post-event afternoon, provided some space to help in the clean-up, count the market's profits (a final number is still undetermined, but we did much better than expected), get in a little rest, and water the plants.

Around 5:30, I went over to the nearby Holy Macaroni Cafe with local organic farmer and (to her surprised discovery) Tryon volunteer Sacha to begin setting up the Pollinator Dinner. Set-up went very smoothly, and the guests began filing in after seven. I enjoyed a delicious plate of vegan fare sourced from local pollinators and friendly dinner conversation with keynote speaker Jennifer Hopwood and her husband Tim. Jennifer was there as a part of her work with the Xerces Society, an organization devoted to saving invertebrate species from extinction. Her speech was tailored to the issue of pollinator extinction, for the occasion, and like everyone in the audience, I found it very interesting and informative. We learned, among other things, that the recent and ongoing honeybee population collapses can be, to some degree, compensated for by individual efforts to encourage native pollinator populations.

 

Hopwood answering questions after the lecture.

All in all, it was a successful and rewarding National Pollinator Week festival. I look forward to my debut in construction this week--I'll keep you posted!

Girls of Summer at Richmond Public Library

Kathryn Stresak, Dorian Gomberg, Ed Vlcek, Brad Krautwurst, and Naomi Neal are Shimer students participating in the Shimer Internship/Mentorship (SIM) Program. They regularly post updates about their internship experiences.

This post is from Brad Krautwurst, who is interning with the Richmond Public Library in Virginia.

My post about City Records is going to be put on hold, because I wasn't able to work with them this week after all.  Instead, I am going to write about an event held at the library on Tuesday that really allowed me to apply a Shimer class, in this case, Feminist Theories with Ann Dolinko, a course that offers a sweeping look at the development of the fight for women's rights in the world.

 The event, called Girls of Summer, was the second in an annual attempt to collect the best young adult books involving strong, smart female characters as the main character or characters.  The event was organized by Meg Medina and Gigi Amateau, two local authors in Richmond,  and from all aspects it was a huge success.   

From left to right: my boss, Patty Parks, the library community services manager for the main branch of Richmond Public Library; Gigi Amateau, author of A Certain Strain of Peculiar and Chancey of the Maury River; Meg Medina, author of Tía Isa Wants a Car and Girl from Away.

 They announced the list and, periodically, girls who were of the target age range for each book would read an excerpt.  Ice cream and refreshments were served, and a fun time was had by all.  Around the halfway point of the event, once all of the books had been announced, there was a  question and answer session with the author of the last book to be announced, Wendy Wan-Lon Shang, debut author of The Great Wall of Lucy Wu, a book chronicling the development of Lucy Wu's relationship with her great-aunt, who comes to stay for the summer. 

From left to right: Gigi Amateau, Meg Medina, and author of The Great Wall of Lucy Wu, Wendy Wan-Lon Shang participate in a question and answer session.

 They also held a raffle; one prize was a beach bag full of the picture book, chapter book, and early middle school titles, and one a beach bag full of the middle school and young adult titles.  If that weren't enough, during a break to get refreshments and ice cream, a local bookstore, BBGB's Tales for Kids, sold the entire list, just in case you weren't one of the lucky winners. 

Meg hoists the prize while Wendy gets the honor of picking a name from the raffle.

All said, the event was a rousing success.  I haven't read any of the books that were chosen for the list, but I'm just going to list three that piqued my interest.  You can see the full list here, and you can find more information about Meg Medina and Gigi Amateu here.

1. Just Being Audrey written by Margaret Cardillo and illustrated by Julia Denos.  Yes, it's a picture book, but it's a picture book about Audrey Hepburn, and it doesn't just portray her films, it also portrays her work with UNICEF, her survival of World War II, and her work as an advocate for children.
2. Me... Jane written and illustrated by Patrick McDonnell.  A picture book about a prominent scientist we read in Natural Sciences 2, Jane Goodall, more specifically about her childhood.  I think this one looks particularly interesting, and come birthdays and Christmas, I'm definitely planning on getting this for my various nieces and nephews!
3. Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White by Lila Quintero.  This is a young adult graphic novel chronicling the author's experience growing up as the only young Latina in the middle of the Civil Rights movement: 1960's Marion, Alabama.  She is the daughter of a photographer who documents the escalating violence of the time, and experiences exclusion from her peers, because she is seen as neither black nor white.

One of the Team!

Naomi Neal, Kathryn Stresak, Dorian Gomberg, Ed Vlcek, and Brad Krautwurst are Shimer students participating in the Shimer Internship/Mentorship (SIM) Program. They regularly post updates about their internship experiences.

This post is from Dorian Gomberg, who is interning with Emergent Order.

Today was a REALLY awesome day at the office. I had been doing research on my own for a project about _______ (well, I can't yet say), and today was the first day I really got to work collaboratively on the project. Jason and I sat down for a few hours and tried to parse out and piece together a coherent structure for how the ideas (in the song, since it will be sung!) should take shape. It's supposed to be a debate between two different view points, but first we have to figure out exactly what those two viewpoints will be! I wish I could talk more in detail about the project, but what I really want to share with you is the thrill of the process. Working with Jason today felt very much like a Shimer class. It was intense and rigorous and sometimes we trailed off on tangents (interesting though they were). I had been craving collaboration for a over a week since everyone else in the office has been super busy wrapping up the last project, getting in those last final late-night edits and such. (It was cool, I got to go to the color correctionist's office and watch John, Josh, and the colorist Nick figure out exactly what tones and shade were appropriate were every shot. It's crazy how much detail goes into this stage of post production! For this piece, they wanted it to feel cold and hostile, so they gave the shots a bluish tint, but then had to adjust for the skin tones, so the actors lips didn't look purple and zombie-ish. It took two days, for a 5 minute piece!)

Last week I worked on my own song that I'll be directing a music video for in the next couple of weeks. I got a grant from the Moving Pictures Institute to do this video and John and the rest of Emergent Order are going to help oversee the process and have already offered awesome feedback on my song lyrics and ideas for the video! Working alone all week made me realize how much I thrive on input from others and how used to that I've gotten at Shimer.

Later in the afternoon, a writer came by the office to discuss ideas for another project (for such a small company, it sure seems like there are a lot of projects going on at once!) and John asked me and the other intern, Jose, if we would join the meeting. At first I was a little intimated, and expected that I would just be there to watch, listen, and learn quietly (as I have been doing a lot of). By the end of the evening it was just John, another collaborator, Max, and I talking about the vision, the aesthetic, and the message of the proposed piece, and I felt like one of the team! The bouncing back and forth of ideas was exciting and felt natural and I wanted to stay to do it longer though it was already late. It's nice because, like I said, I feel like I've been relatively quiet thus far in the office, a little intimidated by the awesomeness, but also focusing on listening and soaking it all in, but today I really felt like I got to show more of myself, my natural exuberance and whatnot in conversation and in working through ideas collaboratively.

It's funny, because whenever I mention to someone here that I have two years of school left, John kind of jokes (but also kind of seriously says) that he wants me to drop out of school and come work for them, but I think that through our creative sessions, I'm beginning to prove that what I've gained at my school at least, really is worth something! 

At my desk at the Emergent Order office in downtown Austin, Texas. (Austin is really cool, by the way).

Librarians as Social Workers

Kathryn Stresak, Dorian Gomberg, Ed Vlcek, Brad Krautwurst, and Naomi Neal are Shimer students participating in the Shimer Internship/Mentorship (SIM) Program. They regularly post updates about their internship experiences.

This post is from Brad Krautwurst, who is interning with the Richmond Public Library in Virginia.

Well, it has been a long time coming, but I finally arrived in Richmond Wednesday night last week, Thursday morning I met various people I will be working with, and was allowed to go home to rest and finish unpacking before starting work Friday.  So far, I have done a few different things, with quite a few more tasks planned for the next few weeks.

Librarianship, from my experience working in the Shimer library and the few days that I have been working here in Richmond, seems to be more of a far-reaching job than many people, myself included, realize, requiring varied skillsets depending on if one is working in a public library in a city, like I am, a public library in a rural area, or in an academic library,  among others.  At this particular library, a large part of what is needed most is people to help with job searches.  I am working at the main branch of the library in a large city, and as one might expect in these turbulent economic times, many of the patrons who regularly make use of this branch's service are homeless, unemployed, or underemployed, and use the library's computers to search for jobs.

The problem that I am here to assist with is that many of these folks are older, have been at their job for 20 or 30 years before they were laid off, have never had a resume before, and lack basic computer skills to create one.  Essentially, what I have been doing is keeping an eye on the computers reserved for jobs to help anyone who needs it.  Sometimes that's been correcting spelling errors, and sometimes it's been teaching them how to copy their resume into a form, but it's all very much lived up to the conception of a librarian as a social worker that my boss talked to me about my very first day.  It boils down to libraries needing to evolve as e-books and other digital collections take over, and one of the ways librarians and library directors have found to adapt is for the library to become a community resource center, and more than simply a place to check out books.

I am supposed to be working with the City Records subset of the library much of this week, so I will write about that for next post.

A few edible incidents and some smoke

Kathryn Stresak, Dorian Gomberg, Ed Vlcek, Brad Krautwurst, and Naomi Neal are Shimer students participating in the Shimer Internship/Mentorship (SIM) Program. They regularly post updates about their internship experiences.

 This post is from Ed Vlcek, who is interning with The Chicago Honey Co-op.

"The principal things necessary for the life of men, are: water, fire, and iron, salt, milk, and bread of flour, and honey, and the cluster of the grape, and oil, and clothing." 

 Ecclesiasticus 39:31

       Every Thursday I have been going with my mentor to Marshall Metropolitan High School. They have a small, productive plot there with a hoop house, a chicken coop and 2 hives. The first time I went, we gave some students from, I think, their junior class a demonstration on beekeeping. We showed them some basic hive maintenance, including how to search for the queen and any unwanted new queens developing, as well as cleaning off any unneeded or awkwardly shaped comb. I also showed one kid how to operate the smoker.

        We use the smoker, a bellows and chamber for blowing smoke, to briefly dissipate the bees from the area we want to work and calm them down. We use any organic matter we can find to light the smoker, and it apparently works for two reasons. When bees smell smoke, they instinctively fill their bellies up with honey as a precaution if they were to have to leave the hive, possibly an adaptation to forest life and the regularity of forest fires. Secondly, the smoke masks the alarm pheromones they release when threatened. Playing with fire everyday, for those of us that love to do so, is one of the many extra benefits of beekeeping.

        Down the street from Marshall is Cristy Webber Landscapes, a local natural landscaping company, which has a green rooftop where Honey Co-op Bees are living. One day we went there to check on the hives. It was wonderful weather, and we enjoyed the panoramic view of the city and the silly sounds of the rooster who lives up there. The first thing we did was level out the hives and give them some racks of honey from last season for a general boost of energy. If you don't give them some help early in the season, and too much time is spent foraging, the hive may suffer. As we worked we found lots of drone larvae, which is a developing male bee. A worker at Cristy Webber and I decided, when told that these larvae were a delicacy in other places, that we had to try them. It wasn't bad, as far as larvae go - a sort of milky sweet, slightly acrid taste - but the “pop!” of the developing exoskeleton as I bit into the drone was a little too much to handle. I hear they are a lot better stir-fried.

        We also had a chance that day to taste some royal jelly, a secretion worker bees feed the queen larvae, and a bee product that sells for a lot of money at health food stores. The supposedly active component is Royalactin, which possibly sets off an epigenetic signal for the egg to become a queen rather than a worker. It tastes kind of like the larvae, but sweeter. It makes you feel like you are eating something you shouldn't, like some stolen magical potion.

        Somehow, in the midst of working, which often includes talking, Michael and I got onto my schooling and what I am doing with it. I told him more about Shimer, and my particular interests and aspirations. He surprised and delighted me when he said that he loved Theodor W. Adorno. The same worker I shared the larvae experience with, who is a biology major at Northeastern, joined the conversation as well, sharing his hopes for a more sane and ecological society. I am still perplexed and delighted by that day of eating bee larvae and talking about the Frankfurt School on a rooftop in Garfield Park.

        The most iconic and exciting recent workday involved me carting the hive boxes I refinished the week before on my bike trailer to City Hall, and installing them in the garden on the roof. Needless to say, this was by far the most beautiful setting we had worked in yet. In the middle of the Loop, a veritable Illinois prairie sits hidden away, with two thriving beehives. In fact, as we worked on the hive we were putting the new boxes on, we realized that they were already producing loads of honey! This is fine, early season honey, perhaps from the pollen of black locust trees or other earlier blooming flora. It had a light, rich but calm flavor. There is really nothing more exciting than taking a huge gulp of honey, right off the comb, on top of a massive building in the middle of downtown Chicago. The hard clean glass and old worn concrete of the city makes a wonderful, challenging contrast to the ordered chaos of the garden and the wandering bees. I don't have my own photos of this, but here is one that's way better than anything I could take anyway.

So now honey production is way up, and just yesterday we extracted the first batch of the season. The bees are busy, and so are we!

 

See What's Up on the Farm

Naomi Neal, Kathryn Stresak, Dorian Gomberg, Ed Vlcek, and Brad Krautwurst are Shimer students participating in the Shimer Internship/Mentorship (SIM) Program. They regularly post updates about their internship experiences.

This post is from KC Stresak, who is interning with Growing Power.

Hello again all. I thought this time I would shoot you some pictures, since much of my work I feel is all about activity. 

These gals are the Dynamic Trio of Growing Power. They are in charge of the sites and are teaching us everything we need to know about what it takes to be a farmer. On the left is Erika Allen. She is the head of the Chicago-based crew. I like to think of her as our ballet instructor. She can be pretty firm on the right and wrong way to farm, but really she's crafting us into beautiful farm dancers. Middle is Laurel. She is second in command and has worked with Growing Power for 10 years. I work with her most often and and constantly amazed with the stamina and patience this woman has. Laurilin is on the right. She has been with Growing Power for 5 years and is in charge of the Cabrini Green site at Chicago and Leraby, Growing Power's first Chicago site. 

Cadessia (below, top photo), Camilla (bottom left), and Terri (bottom right) are all workers at our Altgald Gardens site. Camilla, who is in charge of the site, is so excited about the project. I absolutely love seeing her face light up when a good crop comes in from Altgald or when she shows people around the site. Cadessia and Terri are so much fun to work with. We are always cracking up about something or another.

This is Jeremy. He was one of the first people I met at Growing Power. He does a lot with compost pick up from restaurants and other go to necessities when a truck is needed. He's a baller driver. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Left is part of our Grant Park "Art on the Farm" project. Started in 2005, the vegetable garden incorporates aestheticism into its design that shows how practicality is beautiful. I work a lot at this site and am really starting to fall in love with it. 

Left is part of the greenhouse at the orignal Milwaukee site. January through June there is a workshop weekend every month during which the Chicago-based crew helps out. We also have the chance to take the workshop classes. Some of the classes include aquaponics, year-long growing, renewable energy, composting, bee-keeping, mushroom growing, and project planning. The workshop weekends, though tiring, are a lot of fun. I was forunate enough to attend two of them where I learned a lot about composting. I even started brainstorming potential businesses that would involve composting. 

That's all I have for photos right now. You can see I am surrounded by a colorful and thriving community that I am whole-heartedly invested in. I am excited to see what the summer has left in store for me! 

Summer Colors

    Hello! As a Shimer student who has been blogging for three years now, I like to imagine that I have some sort of following out in the real world (hi, mom!). It is this idea that allows me to believe that some of you are just dying to hear whether or not I have continued painting after the class ended.
    Fear not! I am a painter for life now. Amanda Cadogan, painting instructor extraordinaire, has converted me. Now, I have not gained too much skill or patience since you last saw my still life, but I am still going at the canvas with vigor.
    I have two projects going on simultaneously right now. Both are replications of famous paintings. One of them is tip-top secret as it is a present for a dear friend of mine, but the other I am very excited to share with you. A lot still needs to be done on it, but I have made good progress.
    The original painting is by Judith Leyster. She was a well-known, oft-commissioned Dutch painter in the early to mid-1600s. I wrote a research paper on her, and other famous classical female painters, towards the end of our Oil Painting class and fell in love with her painting The Proposition.
    My copy of it is really a detail, I have chosen to zoom in on the subjects and cut out the surrounding area, but my painting is actually several inches larger than hers.

    From the wikipedia article about Leyster, "She signed her works Judita Leystar, often as a monogram with her initials JL with a star attached. This was a play on words; "Lei-star" meant "Lead star" in Dutch, which was the common name for the North star used at the time by Dutch mariners. Leyster was particularly innovative in her domestic genre scenes. In them, she creates quiet scenes of women at home, which were not a popular theme in Holland until the 1650s."
    In my replication, I still need to finish both faces, give both of them fingers, and paint the gold coins in his right hand.
    The reason I found this painting so interesting was the subject matter. Leyster was pointing out that many men in her time were propositioning women who were not prostitutes for sex. Leyster depicts this woman as sitting in the light of the candle, holding a thread (possibly embroidering), and ignoring the man while he attempts to pay her. He is standing in shadow and laying a hand on her arm possessively as he leans in over her.  (Hopefully my painting is decent enough that these things are apparent.)
     The part I am most proud of is the woman's shirt. It is also the portion that I spent, by far, the longest on. It was also painted under Amanda's watchful eye. One day I really believe that I will be able to paint something beautiful without needing her to hold my brush.
    That's not for a while yet though. So, I will continue working on this, and my super secret painting, and all of you will be able to say "I knew her before she was famous." (Ha!)
    Until next time!

Naomi's Internship, Week 2: Dirt, Bugs, & Sunshine

Naomi Neal, Kathryn Stresak, Dorian Gomberg, Ed Vlcek, and Brad Krautwurst are Shimer students participating in the Shimer Internship/Mentorship (SIM) Program. They regularly post updates about their internship experiences.

This post is from Naomi Neal, who is interning at Tryon Farm and the Tryon Farm Institute in Michigan City, Indiana.

This week I continued my desk-based work for the Tryon Farm Institute, but incorporated much more agriculture into my daily routine. My week began on Tuesday, when I arrived at the Farm, pumpkin seeds in hand, ready to plant a second, larger pumpkin patch on the TFI land at the back of the large open field which greets visitors to the Farm. I'd already planted a smaller patch near the barn, on non-TFI land, last May, and the sprouts are getting impressive--at least, to my untrained eye: 

On Tuesday, I planted nine beds in the field in question, of two different varieties. In the interest of experimentation, I planted the largest of these beds right at the treeline where the fields meet the woods, in a spot with more available groundwater but less exposure to sunlight. We'll see how it goes, and hopefully the results will be useful to future Tryon pumpkin gardeners. One of the (apparently very obvious but revelatory to me) things I've learned about gardening so far is that it's important to cover fresh plantings with straw, in order to discourage birds from eating the seeds and to retain water. Another of these little lessons has been that "straw" is an entirely different substance from "hay." Who knew? Not this suburban-grown, soon-to-be college graduate. Anyway, we grow hay at Tryon, and this week it was harvested. My boss had me take some photos for publicity purposes:

If it seems like I'm taking a long time in coming to my point, that's because it's an embarrassing one: I covered my new pumpkin beds with hay. Not straw--the hollow, water-wicking stuff--but hay. Here's a photo to document my foolishness:

See that? Hay. Darn. A cursory Googling suggests that this isn't much of a problem, but that won't keep me from feeling a small bit embarrassed. Still, I'm glad to be learning new things. I am incredibly grateful for and satisfied with my Shimer education, but there's something about learning from practical mistakes (like the hay v. straw debacle) which can be more fulfilling than learning from intellectual mistakes (i.e., even though I've read all of the Phenomenology of Spirit and have discussed the lord-bondsman dialectic in several classes, a small part of me will always cling to the idea that the lord and bondsman are two parts of the same consciousness, which I thought the first time I read it). This isn't to say that what I've learned at Shimer hasn't given me strategies with which to face life difficulties, big and small--but only that, sometimes, it's nice to learn these shortcuts for making practical decisions. It's reassuring to have both knowledge and the tools for seeking it.

Another big gardening to-do this week was my work with the Pollinator Hill. Last Sunday, while I was in Chicago, Tryon volunteers planted a hill on the property with various native seedlings, the blend of which was specifically chosen to encourage pollinators such as bees, butterflies, and birds to visit and pollinate the garden. To be clear, when I say "hill," here, I mean "mound," but I'm adopting the vocabulary already in use. I think the hill/mound distinction changes somewhere between California and the Midwest.

The first challenge of the Pollinator Hill project was the problem of watering it. Someone--I can't remember who--told me this week that the soil of the hill is the material which was removed, years ago, from some of the property's swampland in order to create an artificial lake. Based on the consistency of the soil, that makes a lot of sense. The earth is fine and silty, and when my boss and I first hooked up the elaborate, three-hundred-foot system of hoses to water the garden, the water permeated only the topmost layer and then drooled down the sides, leaving the seedlings' roots as dry as ever. Through trial and error, I developed a watering technique that allowed me to give the plants water without losing too much topsoil. Here's a close-up of a part of the hill from Thursday morning:

The date is important, because that afternoon I came up against a more difficult Pollinator Hill challenge: to plant wildflower seeds between the seedlings and then cover the lot with straw (not hay). This posed some difficulty for a few reasons: the soil was hot, and already dry even though I'd watered for almost an hour that morning. When I tried to wet it, the water would evaporate out of the soil too quickly for me to get much done, so I had to work in patches--which, to my mind, is a little like writing, editing, and perfecting each paragraph of an essay in order, without having the full scope already laid out. The seeds were difficult to spread and the planting instructions were woefully unclear, and I was barefoot the whole time, stepping over thorns, rocks, and twigs (having learned already the inadvisability of walking around on the pollinator hill unless prepared for mud-soaked shoes). Most importantly, I had to be certain to avoid trampling, or smothering with straw, the hundred-odd tiny seedlings scattered all over the hill.

The main reason to mention all these difficulties is to make my success seem like a big deal, I suppose. I think I did a pretty good job. I may not have spread the wildflower seed as evenly as I would have liked, but the Pollinator Hill is a multi-year project, and what doesn't bloom this year probably will next year. Here's an "after" shot:

My reading has fallen even further behind this week. I did finally finish War and Peace this week, but got very little else done, and I know exactly who the culprit is: my laptop. I didn't bring it the first week in order to cloister myself with my books, but now that I know I'll need it for TFI work, it's on constantly. In preparation for Oxford, I've been trying to be more self-disciplined. I think, this week, I'll try my hand at self-binding behavioral conditioning--i.e., I'll leave my laptop at the office every night to place the temptation entirely out of reach. I'll let you know how it goes.

In conclusion, please remember to check out the events TFI is putting on this weekend (June 22nd and 23rd) for National Pollinator Week at TFInstitute.org, and enjoy this photo of the birds' nest which appeared this week in the planter box right outside the front door of Ed and Eve Noonan's house at Tryon:

Big Shot on a Big Shoot

Naomi Neal, Kathryn Stresak, Dorian Gomberg, Ed Vlcek, and Brad Krautwurst are Shimer students participating in the Shimer Internship/Mentorship (SIM) Program. They regularly post updates about their internship experiences.

This post is from Dorian Gomberg, who is interning with Emergent Order.

My first two days at Emergent Order I worked as a production assistant on the set for a huge two-part video shoot. I'd never experienced a shoot so big, and to be honest, it was a little intimidating! Right when I walked in, they gave me a walkie-talkie and headset and sent me to assist the wardrobe designer and make up artist. My first task: steaming the wrinkles out of costumes (something I had never done before!) I had no idea that I would be gaining such valuable domestic skills during this internship! My other duties included guarding doors to make sure no one disturbed the set while the cameras were rolling, picking up pizza, getting paperwork signed, standing in for one of the actors as the camera and lighting crew set up a shot, and lots and lots of good heavy lifting as we packed up equipment at the end of the day. It was really different working with a crew so large, as I'm used to working with two or three friends where everything is really informal and we come up with a lot of ideas for shots as we're filming! Everything in these film shoots, however was planned down to the very last detail. You have to work as quickly and efficiently as possible. The actors and crew are paid for their time spent on set, so going over time even just 20 minutes can cost thousands of dollars depending on how large of a production it is. It was cool being in charge of lots of little things that don't seem significant on their own, but without them, the production would eventually fall apart! The next day back in the office, the cinematographer came over to film an additional shot and this time it was only John, me, and Jason (who works in the office) there to help out. This set up was a lot more like what I'm used to (except with waaaaaayyy nicer equipment, of course). 

(Me and Jason on set)

 

               

 

Naomi's Internship, Week 1: The Tryon Farm Institute

Naomi Neal, Kathryn Stresak, Dorian Gomberg, Ed Vlcek, and Brad Krautwurst are Shimer students participating in the Shimer Internship/Mentorship (SIM) Program. They regularly post updates about their internship experiences.

This post is from Naomi Neal, who is interning with the Tryon Farm.

I got home yesterday evening from my first formal week as an intern for Tryon Farm and the Tryon Farm Institute in Michigan City, Indiana. So far, I've been working in the Institute office, helping in the preparation for The Birds + The Bees Festival, which TFI is putting on during the week of June 22nd in honor of National Pollinator Week. In addition to these and a few other duties, I've also been learning the land and figuring out what place I have in it.

The Birds + The Bees Festival, which will consist of some public, educational-entertainment events and some private educational events for children in school and foster home groups, is by no means an inexpensive endeavor for the Insitute, so the bulk of my work this week went to the task of finding sponsors for the events, making cold calls and sending emails to members of the local business community. Talk about working outside my comfort zone! As my best friend will tell you, I'm a hard woman to get on the telephone, so it took me a little psyching-up to call total strangers and eloquently request monetary support. But all in all, I managed to not make too much of a fool of myself on the phone, and helped to get three sponsors on board with the event. One of these sponsors specifically mentioned that she wanted to contribute because of her preexisting concern for the bee population crisis. The Birds + The Bees events will include the screening of a documentary on that very topic, as well as hands-on workshops in beekeeping and cultivating pollinator-friendly gardens. For more information, see the poster below: 

I think the experience of confronting and conquering my phone-phobia provided me with a good lesson that I hope will follow me for the rest of my internship at Tryon and, perhaps, my professional career in the green construction field: not everything is easy or immediately enjoyable for you, but when you know you're working for a good cause, even those tasks for which you may not be initially suited have meaning, and keeping that in mind makes them easy and enjoyable. Even talking on the phone can be Arendtian, philosophically-rewarding action when it is toward a considered end.

Besides securing sponsorships, I also made plans for upcoming projects. On Tuesday I'll be putting in a large pumpkin patch on TFI land near the back of a large meadow, and there are endless considerations--water, humane deer-repellent--to be made. I also spoke with a fellow intern from the IIT Architecture program, with whom I'll be working on the construction of a bird-watching blind in that same meadow. I'm excited to work in these different areas of Tryon's life, and to approach the work of conservation from several angles.

I also began reading one of the books which has been lent to me for my edification from my various Tryon mentors, but I'll confess that I haven't made much headway. I'm around a hundred pages from the end of War & Peace and its story and characters run through my mind throughout the day. It's wonderful to feel this way about a book again--the way I felt as a child, reading--but I really should get down to my work reading, both for Tryon and for my upcoming Shimer senior thesis. Hopefully I'll finish my foray into the Napoleonic Wars soon and knuckle down.

In conclusion, here is a picture of a chicken. I'm afraid that I don't know this chicken yet--or rooster--but there's plenty of time for that, I suppose.