mellowtigger: (cooperation)
2024-10-14 04:22 pm
Entry tags:

teaching at work

I am foolish sometimes.

I didn't apply for new job at work (slight promotion, noticeable pay increase) at the weird hours (Sun-Thu 10am-7pm) that I mentioned back in April. I got everything written up for the application, then I wanted to ponder some more before clicking the submit button, then work overwhelmed, and I didn't think about it again in time to apply.

Then, I volunteered to work that same shift anyway. Then I volunteered to mentor a new hire, which is normally reserved for pay grades above my current one. So... I'm now doing the job without the pay? LOL I'm a silly volunteer bunny.

Anyway, I just completed the first day of mentorship. I've done training before, but today was not my best work. I'm still trying to figure out the bureaucratic steps to get this worker the needed access to different systems. Onward we go. I'll work on Friday this week too (usually one of my days off) to help train the new person too. Training will be ongoing for many weeks. I definitely want to train this person at a slower pace than I was trained, but I'll ask them tomorrow about the pace and method that's good for them. We want success, not burnout. For both of us.

mellowtigger: (thumbs up)
2024-07-04 06:30 pm

some progress

Thanks to the rain, the fireworks are not as bad as usual for this July 4th holiday in the USA. I was still awake until almost 3am last night, hearing both fireworks and sirens everywhere. I caught up this afternoon on about 2 hours of that lost sleep, but I need a few more hours. Rain tonight will be scattered, so the noise may keep me up again.

my small house in north Minneapolis, with white siding and now bright turquoise window framesI didn't post earlier, but I completed the painting on my house. The part that I will do, anyway. The quality looks only "okay" right now. I need to buy some Goo Gone like [personal profile] foeclan suggested, to see if I can loosen up all of the tape that's still stuck around the windows. But the painting is done. Now, I need to find a company who can paint the rest of the house. I probably shouldn't wait another year for that repair. Those eaves obviously need it now. The bright turquoise is growing on me. Now, I like it even better than the previously dark navy blue.

And the yard needs work. I've started reclaiming it, but it needs a lot more work.

After several weeks, workers finally finished installing the upgraded storm drain in the alley directly behind my house. They poured concrete instead of laying asphalt, and they finally added dirt back in around the sides after it dried. They also added grass seeds, which I don't want, so I threw out some more clover seed, and we'll see which takes over. I vote for clover. Anyway, I'm glad to see this improvement. To thank the government for this service, I just now signed up as an official volunteer to keep it clear of debris. This program has several sponsors, but I think I first learned about it through the city of Minneapolis. I'm not yet finding a way to link directly to "my" drain, but you can zoom around this Adopt-A-Drain map to see the kind of participation they have from other citizens. It's a nice idea, and it's sort of a citizen science issue too. They want regular recurring data about what is cleaned up, how much (in gallons or pounds), and how long it took to clean (in minutes). Here's the photo of the new drain.

new storm drain in the alley behind my house in north Minneapolis

Unrelated to all of that, I wanted to report some other minor good news. I realized yesterday that the box of wine in my fridge is probably a few months old. Which is okay, as such things go, since it's not fine wine to begin with. But then I realized that it means I have not been drinking to get to sleep. When did that change happen? I'm beginning to think that it's thanks to using the Corsi-Rosenthal box to get to sleep at night. There's more to that story.

My database administrator, from the mainframe programming job I had when I first moved to Minnesota a quarter-century ago, gave me one of those Amazon Echo spheres as a birthday or Christmas present. I had to go check my emails to remember, but I ordered an Amazon Smart Plug in mid-March this year. With it connected to the air filter, I can crawl into bed and say "Alexa, turn on plug 1 for 1 hour." This gentle noise from the fan helps me get to sleep, and it doesn't run all night either. Apparently the noise is very effective, because I have been sleeping better by not having to listen to arguments and gunfire as I'm trying to fall to sleep. I hadn't noticed this effective change, until I realized that old box of wine was probably bought around the same time. I'm sure that's good news for my liver.

mellowtigger: (absurdity)
2022-03-29 11:07 am
Entry tags:

that could prove interesting

If you're near Oxford in England, there's a study commencing for #LongCovid fatigue.  If they solve this particular mitochondrial problem, it could also greatly benefit people with chronic fatigue syndrome.  They're looking for more volunteers.

If you're in Washington State of the USA, someone is looking for volunteers for outdoors nature work.  You get to work with adorable pygmy rabbits.  :)

If you're into feminism, I ran across the website FeralFeminisms.com recently.  I've only skimmed a few of their Anthropocene topics.  I can't tell yet whether it's brilliant future systems thinking or just pointless navel gazing.  Maybe, like Post-Autistic Economics (which I recommend), it's a bit of both simultaneously?

I mentioned potato skins earlier, and now they're making news in relation to prebiotics.

I wish that government tax bills were required to tell you where they spent that money.  My county is raising my taxes from $762 to $1,029.  I wish I knew why.  It seems to be simply that they're assessing the value of my house about 20% higher than last year.

mellowtigger: (changed priorities)
2021-04-07 05:08 pm

mapping prejudice

I'm so proud of my city, county, state, and local university for creating a first-of-its-kind map in the USA, using a massive volunteer corps.  Mapping Prejudice examined deeds for houses to identify legal clauses that excluded black people from living in those homes, and they created a map over time.  It is amazing.  Their effort resulted in a new state law and a service to help people remove such language from their deeds.

What is a racial covenant?  Here are examples from actual deeds:

"The party of the second part hereby agrees that the premises hereby conveyed shall not at any time be conveyed, mortgaged or leased to any person or persons of Chinese, Japanese, Moorish Turkish, Negro, Mongolian or African blood or descent.  Said restrictions and covenants shall run with the land and any breach of any or either thereof shall work a forfeiture of title, which may be enforced by re-entry."

"No persons of any race other than the Aryan race shall use or occupy any building or any lot, except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race domiciled with an owner or tenant."

"... the said premises shall not at any time be sold, conveyed, leased, or sublet, or occupied by any person or persons who are not full bloods of the so-called Caucasian or White race. And this condition and covenant shall run with the land and bind the heirs, executors, administrators and assigns of the party of the second part."
 
I recommend watching this YouTube video describing the projects and their results.  (It's 1 hour long and well worth the time.)  It includes a lot of local and national history with newspaper clippings.  The first covenant appeared locally in 1910, but we watch the spread of covenants across the map as the racial purity effort metastasizes across the region.  It is a powerful visualization.  Redlining and freeways are also powerful forces shaping community demographics.  It becomes obvious how racism becomes integrated into our systems themselves.  You can reach the original publications by clicking each image here.

racial covenants in home deeds in Hennepin Countyfreeways and black population in Minneapolis

From the video, I learned that they used 3,000 volunteers on the initial project for Hennepin County (Minneapolis).  They added another 3,000 volunteers for the next project for Ramsey County (St. Paul), donating 21,000 hours of labor to help compile this data.  Kudos to every one of them!

Despite being outlawed in 1968 by the Fair Housing Act, covenants are still written into many deeds.  If you live in the Twin Cities area and have a covenant in your deed, you may contact Just Deeds for assistance in removing that language from the contract.  For free.  How convenient!
mellowtigger: (we can do it)
2020-03-13 11:02 am
Entry tags:

it's time for the serious part

Now comes the hard part. Because the USA has done almost nothing for months (and I'll write a separate post about that topic), things will escalate quickly from now through June. It will be bad. Some estimates are that the USA will see half a million deaths. Not 3,000 deaths among 80,000 cases like China currently. The USA should prepare for 480,000 deaths from 96 million infections.

The vast majority of people will survive. That's not the point, though. Those survivors and other uninfected people must act in order to save as many people as possible from unnecessary death.

covid-19 flatten the curve by hand washing and social distancingThis image is being shared with good reason. That horizontal dotted line represents the capacity of your local healthcare system to care for the severely ill. Simply by slowing the spread of the disease, we can prevent the growth of sudden peaks of total infections and major illness. When a peak exists above that healthcare capacity, then doctors will have to perform triage and choose who gets a respirator (and probably lives) and who does not (and probably dies). It's important to flatten the curve.

I want to add an improvement to this graphic. I want another dotted line, but a vertical one somewhere on the right-hand side of the chart. It would represent the point in time, someday in the future, when a vaccine is developed and can help introduce immunity to the general population. Again, if we flatten the curve by delaying infection as long as possible, then we can hope for a vaccine introduction to chop off part of the right-hand side of the graph. It would represent many people who never have to become ill in the first place. Again, it's important to flatten the curve.

So... what can I do? What can the average USA citizen do?
  1. Don't touch your face. Easier said than done, I know. Your body is constantly exposed to fomites (any small infectious particle), and you don't want to swap this virus (or any other) from your hands to your eyes, nose, and mouth.

  2. Wash your hands with soap.  Alcohol will not kill norovirus. Plain old soap is good for removing lots of stuff. Wash for 20 seconds. Wash between your fingers. Wash your thumbs. Wash the deep grooves in your palms.

  3. Avoid crowds. For the next 4 months, avoid crowds. Yes, 4 months. Not just 2 weeks. The USA prepared badly, and this party is just getting started. If possible, when shopping for groceries and other supplies, make bigger but fewer trips. Remember to sanitize again afterwards.

  4. Buy different kinds of food online. Are scared people clearing out even the food shelves at your local grocery store? Buy something different. I happen to be well stocked in Soylent, so I can survive quite a long time if I got stuck indoors by mandatory quarantine. I'm sure there are other long-storage rations available online.

  5. Cancel your social events. Sure, you like your friends. Meet them online instead. People can transmit this new coronavirus even when they show no symptoms. It doesn't matter that your friends seem healthy.  This rule is also a lesson from the HIV heyday.  If you assume that everyone is HIV-positive, then you will remember to always act safely.

  6. Shower before social events.  In case you can't simply avoid all contact with humanity, then after grocery shopping, after riding the bus, after driving home from the office, during these times when you might unintentionally be carrying infectious material on your body or clothes... shower before you interact with your family.

  7. Stop shaking hands. A friendly nod can suffice.

  8. Make your own mask, but only if you really need one. Don't buy surgical masks unless you are sick (or know you've been exposed and might be infectious without symptoms yet). This YouTube video shows you how to make your own face mask from alternative materials.

  9. If you can work from home, do that. It's not even an option for lots of people. Because of USA internet infrastructure, I also suspect it will be less than ideal if lots of people try to do it at the same time. Companies have not invested in home/rural infrastructure like they have in dense commercial areas.

  10. Donate money to your local food banks. The USA has terrible social safety nets compared to the rest of the civilized world. Many USA families are simply unable to cope financially if a parent has to stay home from work (unpaid) because all schools are closed indefinitely. They can't afford childcare. The financial burden adds to their existing problems. The kids may have depended on schools for some of their meals too. So find your local food bank and donate cash during this extended crisis.
  11. "Privilege is the difference between disruption and devastation. I refuse to complain." - twitter


  12. Volunteer your time, if you're able. Are you healthy, fit, and willing to risk exposure by meeting lots of people? I'm sure there are volunteer organizations in your area that need help delivering meals, groceries, or other supplies. I've seen volunteers at my nearby hospital too, although that gig might require extended training first.

  13. Donate money to particular political candidates. If you still have lots of money left over, consider donating to the election campaign for opposition candidates to any politician (in your vicinity or somewhere far away) who has voted against disaster preparedness, against welfare funding, against science-based initiatives, or against worker safety. COVID-19 will not be the last new disease to reach pandemic level. The USA desperately needs a government that functions properly next time.
That's all I have this morning. I'll be sure to add more if anything else practical crosses my news feeds.  There are certainly longer lists than mine, but I think I've got the highlights covered here.  If we take what seems like extreme measures now, if we keep the curve flat, then we can avoid unnecessary deaths.  If all goes very well, then it will seem like an overreaction.

Remember Y2K?  It's like that.  It requires a lot of very expensive measures, but it can turn out okay if we commit to those practices.

mellowtigger: (Terry 2018)
2019-10-28 04:04 pm

addendum to the rough week

This is my 4th day since the end of training last week. My normal mental state is starting to make an appearance finally.

Coincidentally, a tweet appeared on my feed during this recovery period, a message that nicely encapsulates one of the disturbing insights of the whole power UP/DOWN exploration.

"Half the harm that’s done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
–TS Eliot"
- https://twitter.com/STEPD0C/status/1187796719951630341


That is maybe the key distinction between "diversity training" (learning definitions and dialogs by rote) versus "engaging across difference" (exploring understanding and impact). Nobody tests out of it. Nobody gets a pass.

I don't especially like being around humans of any stripe. No categorization necessary. It doesn't matter their race, sex, orientation, religion, or social class; I'd rather be on my own. But I'm willing to find some way to meaningfully contribute to government policies and neighborhood perceptions that still succeeds at keeping me "at arm's length" as much as possible. There's gotta be some way to do it. This generation is more like "me" than any other before it, because the whole self-involved cell phone browsing is messing with their minds.  If I can find a way, then maybe it can be replicated at larger scales.

That workshop was intended for use in our workplace. I'm more concerned, though, with how life plays out in Minneapolis and my own city block. I can think of things that "other people" could do in my place, but I'm still struggling for ideas here that are realistic for "me".  What volunteer activity can I perform that will rebalance any power UP/DOWN differences on my city block?

Meanwhile, here's a picture of a rose in my front yard amongst the rasberries and strawberries.

orange rose blooming in near freezing temperatures

The temperature is barely above freezing today.  It will be well below freezing tonight.  Make whatever metaphor you wish.
mellowtigger: (Default)
2009-02-24 08:41 am
Entry tags:

America needs repair

I missed this CNN article when it first came out. It talks about America's failing grade for its infrastructure.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/01/28/infrastructure.report.card/

The group doing the grading is the American Society of Civil Engineers. Their recent report cards are as follows: (i = incomplete or not graded):
broken bridgebroken water pipeI35W bridge collapse
category20092005200119981988
AviationDD+DC-B-
BridgesCCCC-C+
DamsDDDDi
Drinking WaterD-D-DDB-
EnergyD+DD+ii
Hazardous WasteDDD+D-D
Inland WaterwaysD-D-D+ii
Public Parks and RecreationC-C-iii
RailC-C-iii
RoadsD-DD+D-C+
SchoolsDDD-Fi
Securityiiiii
Solid WasteC+C+C+C-C-
TransitDD+C-CC-
WastewaterD-D-DD+C
LeveesD-iiii
estimated 5-year cost$2.2 trillion$1.6 trillion$1.3 trillionii

Note that the current estimated cost is 3X the massive spending bill passed by congress this month. As a solution, some people are proposing bringing back the Depression-era organization called the "Civilian Conservation Corps". In this program, people (men) lived in work camps and were housed, clothed, and fed by the government. They were required to send 80% of their earnings (which were small) back to their families. Their projects included forestry, roads, parks, phone lines, and flood control.

I think of it sort of as a homeland version of the Peace Corps but much bigger. The proposal this time is to include women in their ranks. If they recreate this group, then I hope they'll also consider old men like me. I think it's a project worth leaving home to join.

The conditions were harsh, and their unofficial motto was "We Can Take It".  Some people hoping to recreate this group have their own website with good history and other information.
http://www.wecantakeit.org/

The massive spending bill just passed is only a small part of what's needed to help America succeed.  For much too long, we've diverted precious resources from national investment into personal investment (war profiteering, house profiteering, etc), and it'll take a long time to get ourselves out of this problem.  We first have to muster the intention to do so.

You can help notify Washington DC of your support by signing the petition to recreate the Civilian Conservation Corps.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/national-petition-for-the-reactivation-of-the-us-civilian-conservation-corps
mellowtigger: (Default)
2008-10-01 10:13 pm
Entry tags:

yay team (rare experiences for me)

Once a year, AHS closes its doors to the public, buses everyone from 5 locations to one place, and conducts a day-long workshop. Today was my first time to participate in this workshop. I spent the day at the Arboretum with the other 200+ employees (with only a few of the legion of volunteers).

After the first small group sessions, we rejoined everyone in the main room.  A spokesperson from each group summarized their results for the crowd.  Polite applause followed each summary.  I don't applaud for these occasions, though.  I think it's a silly reason to applaud and detracts from the flow of the event.  *shrug*  But the more social monkeys do enjoy the group participation, it seems.  ;)  Anyway, our group was next to last.  Our spokesperson got up and introduced herself (paraphrased), "Hi, I'm Jane.  I'm a volunteer at the Saint Paul facility."

The crowd interrupted her with their loud applause.  I applauded too this time, since it was a worthy occasion.  The (underpaid, pay-frozen-in-2008) employees greatly appreciate the work of this "virtual" workforce.  There are lots of programs done by this organization that could not be done at all without the volunteers.  I was glad to see that we "real" employees seemed to be unanimous in our gratitude for their efforts.  Yay, team effort.  Not contrived team-building group activities in once-a-year retreats, but real life daily work activities.  Stuff that matters.  That's a good reaction.

Later on, we were supposed to go back to small group sessions again.  Upper management spent so long going on about the issues brought up from the first session though (things that we were "not confident" about as employees) that we didn't have enough time left in the day to follow the schedule.  We were given a choice of skipping the last item on the list and returning to our smaller groups as planned, or we could ignore the schedule and tackle the last topic instead.  The topic was euthanasia.  Well, specifically the topic was our employees-in-the-trenches lack of confidence that our organization was taking every possible action to lower our incidence of euthanasia of animals.  There's only enough time left to do one or the other this afternoon.  So, quick show of hands, who wants to go back to the small groups... ?

Not a single person in the whole auditorium raised their hand.  Yay, team.  :)

The long-winded speaking had gone on for hours, and I'm sure everyone else was wanting easier things to think about too, but nobody was willing to give up the opportunity to talk about this issue as an entire organization.  I'm glad that the employees of AHS take very seriously their responsibility (both as individual and as organization) on this particular topic.

There wasn't time to turn it into a brainstorming session for any new things we could try, even if we had wanted to create one right then.  I mentally drafted my list, though, and wrote it down as soon as I reached a computer later that afternoon.  I'll send my ideas tomorrow after I ponder them some more.

I want to post later my thoughts on euthanasia, but I still need to ponder it a while longer to make sure I have some amount of certainty in what I write.  I just wanted to say here that I am glad that this organization doesn't back down from hard topics, even when everyone is surely tired and ready to move on to more pleasant things.

Yay, team.
mellowtigger: (Default)
2008-09-01 01:06 pm
Entry tags:

NoLAR 2008 in review

I suppose it would be appropriate now to review my impression of this year's retreat. I found things both pleasing and worrying about it.

It will continue. NoLAR is modeled on the Autreat experience. Attendees to any event will find things to complain about, of course, but the only complaint that I found legitimate about Autreat is that it is primarily the product of a single person. If anything happened to that one person, then Autreat might fail to return. A few people last year (and this year) referred to NoLAR as "Terry's event". I wanted to make sure that it could survive without me, so I withdrew more than necessary to let others "sink or swim" in their efforts to keep the conference on schedule. It worked. I'm very pleased to report that it is not my event. It can survive without me. NoLAR is a phenomenon with a momentum of its own. There will be more of these retreats in the future. That's good.  That's very good.

It provides new perspective. We had attendees that ranged in age from 20s to 60s. We had people diagnosed late in life and very early in life. One young man explained that his attendance this year would not have been possible just 8 years ago without all of the lessons and continuing support that he had learned during specialist care during his early years. I think that those of us (me included) who were "thrown to the dogs" in our 20s and learned to cope (even if barely) while alone were able to see the value of gaining survival skills at a much earlier age through tutelage instead of trial-and-error.

It will provide social growth. I mentioned earlier that I hoped the retreat would avoid becoming edutainment. Since it focuses on being just a local event, I keep hoping that it will encourage people to support each other in practical endeavors locally. That didn't happen much this time. Or... at least, not by my definition. Being mostly the talkative crowd, the attendees seemed to enjoy each other's company and they plan to maintain contact after the conference. That's a very significant outcome, considering the audience. It's progress worth celebrating.

One of the quiet loners (who avoided most of the sessions and events) approached me to try to keep in touch after the retreat. I don't do phone conversations, unfortunately, and he doesn't have email access. I decided to write him a note with my mailing address so he has the option of contacting me that way if he wants. Baby steps. It's a big world out there.

It will be weird. The evil dragon of otherness raised its head again. I need to find a way to remind all of us in these situations that NTs (neurotypicals ("normals")) are not all evil just because they tend to have a better understanding of lies and deception than we do. Just because they understand it does not mean that they practice it. It's difficult, though, to overcome hard lessons learned in actual experience.  Some stereotypes are appropriate when they're based in real personal experience, but we need fewer barriers, not more barriers, to useful communication.

Phrases spoken too loudly or with the wrong prosody will cause distress. A few minor disturbances (but no major ones, thankfully) appeared because of words spoken harshly.  Nothing that interrupted the flow of the conference though.  And we're not as skilled at pleasant teasing as we want to be.

Then there was the weirdness at the last hour while waiting to take a group photograph before we left for the bus. Some folk started choosing categories as summaries of the event. One man had the best clothes, another the best physique, and I was voted to have the best hair... which quickly devolved into my being voted the sexiest attendee. Very uncomfortable and weird. They were having fun with their categories, though, and that's a common autistic "thing"... trying to classify experiences. It can easily be inappropriate though when it's actual living people (who are standing right there with you) that are being classified.

It will change. What worries me though is that with a distributed organizational structure, NoLAR's purpose and execution will change. That can be good or bad, of course, but I'm worried about a particular change that seems inevitable. It's something that I've noticed in the monthly support group over the last 5 years: the group changes to favor the kinds of interactions that the "talkative autistics" prefer.

I realized at NoLAR that I was gravitating to sitting either alone or next to the other "quiet autistics". There were 1 or 2 who spoke less than I did. We tended to sit by each other. I realized that I do the same at the support group meetings. There's one man who's attended those meetings as long as I have (over 5 years) and I've never heard him speak anything other than his name, "No", or "I pass" when his turn came to speak. I realized at NoLAR that he and I tend to sit next to each other too. I don't remember if it's me seeking him or him seeking me. I'll try to notice in future meetings.

The final session of the event was a kind of brainstorm session about future retreats. The conference that they want is the edutainment variety, with paid speakers and multiple concurrent sessions and more group social events (like this year's pontoon ride on the lake). Definitely not what I was hoping for. If it's useful to them, then I intend to continue helping produce the conference, but I still worry that the quiet folk will slowly self-select themselves out of participation like happens with the support group.

I was hoping to maintain the Autreat-style quiet-time retreat, but it looks like that won't happen without keeping a single person in control of the event. Opening things up to group control (which I usually approve) favors a slow but inevitable creep towards "talkative" standards. I need to ponder how best to maintain a "quiet autistic" aspect to the retreat so that all kinds of folk will continue to find it welcoming.
mellowtigger: (Default)
2008-08-13 08:59 am
Entry tags:

2 more weeks to NoLAR 2

I'm starting to get excited about the second (annual, yay!) Northern Lights Autism Retreat. It's the best name that I could come up with alone last year when interest was still tepid. This year, a few other people volunteered to help organize the event, and it's moving along nicely. I'm pleased that it won't end up being just "Terry's event", as some people were referring to it last year.

I confirmed with my boss that I'll have Friday off from work (so I can ride the bus transport and do 'roll call' there) and the weekend free from pager support (so I can focus on the event itself).  Yay for bosses who can take over sole support for their areas.  She'll be the only one of us in our department at work that day, so she's going to handle it all for Friday through Sunday.  This is very different from the tech support boss that I had 2 jobs ago.  I like this one much better.

Because this conference focuses on being just a local event, I'm hoping that it can avoid the tendency that other events have to fall into high-priced edutainment with celebrity presentations.  I hope that at some point I can instill in other attendees the vision that it remains a community-based event with no fees paid to presenters and minimal fees charged to attendees.  I like the idea that since all of us are locals, we can take ideas uncovered during the event and continue to pursue them together after the event also.  I'd like NoLAR to become a kind of "brain charge" that sparks other useful projects during the rest of the year.

One can hope.
mellowtigger: (Default)
2008-06-21 08:03 pm
Entry tags:

searching for Keith

I drove out today to assist in the search for Keith Kennedy. I was dressed and prepared for scraping through forest, dense brush, and high prairie. I was not ready, though, for swamp. Oh, sorry.... marsh. Near as I can tell people use the word marsh when they don't want to admit that an area is a swamp. As soon as I got home, I tied my boots up on a pole in the backyard to dry for a few days, dropped all my clothes in the washer, and jumped into the shower, then took a pleasant hot bath to do a thorough check for ticks and other nasties. (None found.)

It was about 100 miles each way. (So that's about $30 in gasoline for the whole trip. Ugh.) When I arrived, they told me to turn around and drive back a few miles to the local fairgrounds. They had shuttle buses carrying folk back and forth. When I got back to the site by shuttle, I signed in at 1:05pm (signed out at 5:50pm) and was the 300th person that day to join their search.

Most of the effort was coordinated by the sheriff's office. I waited about 15 minutes until the next batch of group leaders were ready. Then a fullsize schoolbus took about 60 of us on the next search tour. Each tour, I was told, lasted from 1 to 2.5 hours. Ours, unfortunately, took longer. They drove us about 4 miles away and we got out, lined up along the road, and waited for the signal to start. Lucky us, swamp (oops, I mean marsh) was only a few strides away. I started out this adventure by getting my hiking boots filled with water. There was another swamp farther ahead where I had a hard time pulling my legs out of the muck, and we found several other very wet areas.

I spent the next 2+ hours walking in squishy boots and soaked pants legs. Not pleasant. Supposedly we crossed only about 1 linear mile in that time, but we changed directions a few times and bypassed two fields with bulls so it was a longer walk. I scared off two small deer and one pheasant during my search. I found some beautiful purple daylilies. Who knew that they grew in swamps but not prairies?

We didn't find Keith or any evidence of his trek. I overheard the leaders talking to someone else, and they said that even the "corpse hounds" (was that the term they used? I can't remember) in other groups weren't sniffing out his decomposing body either. So it's been about a week and people still have no idea where he is. While we were waiting for the bus to pick us up from the end of our assigned trail, one woman mentioned that the camp had popped lots of popcorn on Sunday, attempting to lure him back to the site on his own power.

Being my first manhunt, I didn't know what to expect. I think their method is pretty good for getting untrained people to find something/someone that's staying in one place. I think it's pretty bad, though, for finding someone who wants to avoid being found. On my next manhunt, I'll plan to bring waders (for traversing swamp (I mean marsh)), walking stick, and fanny pack.

I hope someday to wander off into the forest and not come back. I don't mean that statement as a metaphor for living on a plot of land away from the cities. I mean it literally. I'll be sure, though, to announce my intentions so that this kind of effort is not launched in a misguided attempt to locate me. And it'll surely not happen while T'Reese is here. She does like her kibble. But someday.... *pleasant daydream*
mellowtigger: (Default)
2008-06-19 11:29 am
Entry tags:

locals: volunteers needed for search

Keith Kennedy, a 25-year-old autistic man, wandered off from Trade Lake Camp on Sunday. So far, 300 volunteers have been unsuccessful in finding him. They're needing more people to come help the search. This Star Tribune article has details including the phone number (715-488-2690) of the camp near Grantsburg, Wisconsin, that is about 90 minutes from the Twin Cities. The news story says to call first before heading out. My email from AuSM says the area is dense woods and swamp, so wear long pants, long shirt, boots. Bring water and bug spray.

I hope to wander off into the forest someday too, but it sounds like his disappearance wasn't planned and that he needs to receive some kind of medication that he takes.
mellowtigger: (Default)
2008-04-22 06:20 pm
Entry tags:

fundraising (for Minnesotans)

Minneapolis in May is very predictable. The snow is finally gone, the weather is consistently warm, and everyone's been cooped up inside for too many months with lots of pent up energy waiting to be unleashed. So we walk. We walk each weekend, rain or shine, with fundraisers for various charitable organizations.

It's this same lineup every year, though I'm probably forgetting some other prominent fundraisers. This year, I'll be participating in the "Walk for Animals" in Golden Valley. (There's another event at the St. Paul shelter for those on the other side of the Mississippi River.)

weekend 1: Animal Humane Society and multiple sclerosis research
weekend 2: Susan G Komen breast cancer research
weekend 3: Minnesota AIDS Project
weekend 4: American Heart Association

I'm very low key about this stuff. Mostly I do it just to have fun with my own contribution, not to coerce other people into handing over their wallets. *grin* Considering the state of the economy, I'm assuming that most people are on budgets as restricted as my own. But, if anyone has money to burn, consider burning it in honor of one of the above charities that try to make the world a little bit better. If you'd like to use it for the non-human critters, I've created my personal webpage with the fundraiser. You can donate online via credit card. You can make your donation anonymous too, which I like, since I'm certainly not doing this project as a contest.

MellowTigger's donation page (aka Terry Walker)