Criminal investigations

Today, my main job was to figure out who amongst the Habitat for Humanity volunteers was a sexual predator. Apparently, Habitat International has a rule that a background check must be performed of all volunteers. If any are found to be sex offenders, they are not allowed to volunteer at Habitat for Humanity. Habitat Geauga had not been following this rule since... forever... and they figured it was time to get caught up. And what are high school interns for if not probing into the backgrounds of everyone there and discovering all the evil things they've done?

I was a bit uncomfortable doing my job since my views on the treatment of sex offenders conflicted with what I was doing. This was amplified in this situation since anyone who was a sex offender would not be able to volunteer at a non-profit organization, essentially punishing the homeless for their crimes. I had a paranoid fear that one of the most devoted volunteers would turn out to be a sex offender. Luckily for me, no one who volunteered at Habitat Geauga had a spotty criminal record, so I didn't have to make any deep moral choices.

Afterwards, I discovered that the tool box I had painted on Friday was not firmly attached to the newspaper it had been on top of when I painted it. The rest of my day was spent trying to remove the newspaper from the tool box, which I did not finish before I went home.

More Painting!

Ezgi and I finally muster enough courage to paint the top of the very high mural we are painting. We took turns holding the rusty old ladder for each other, while the other one painted the top of the wall. This task would have been to begin with but it was even more challenging in 95 degree heat. We were both dripping in sweat and paint. It was so hot that our painting trays melted in the sun. Ezgi ended up dropping a ton of paint in my hair, which was a disaster. Mainly I'm just hoping that we finish the wall tomorrow or else we are going to have to come back an finish another day. Unfortunately, Ezgi and I angered a hornet that had made its nest by our wall and it flew around, circling us. We were both very scared to paint the wall so we ended up working in the kitchen or about an hour until the hornet left. It was kind of scary though, we were both freaking out.

We did do yoga before we painted and my mom ended up joining the class, which was fun. Afterward she told me that she felt very relaxed and ready to tackle her day, which is why yoga is done. Donna, the teacher, told me that yoga is suppose to be done either at sunrise or at sunset. It should be done to start and end your day. This fact is because yoga brings peace to the body and mind and thus can set you up for a very good day or can help you end your day and prepare you for restful sleep.

The Final Days at Karamu

Hello everyone I hope that the end of everyone's senior project is running smoothly!

As for me the last week and few days at Karamu have been kind of "blaaahhh" if that makes sense. I haven't really do many exciting things. Just really coming in and answering phones all day and occationally typing up something or making some flyers and brochures for upcoming programs and things of that nature. However, today and tomorrow we are going out on interviews at Collinwood High School as well as Ginn Academy. These are the interviews that I believe I talked about in my last post. They are for our Reality Theatre program in which we go out and do these interviews and then our resident playwright takes that information that the students gives and writes a play over the summer which will then be performed at those same schools in the fall. This year's theme of the play is all about being who you are and the places and people that affect who you are. I feel like it is going to be really interesting to hear what these teens are only a year or so younger than me talk about what makes them who they are and how their schools and teachers affect who they are. I'm interested to see if I would say some of the same things or not. These are public schools around the area and as we all know Hawken is private and in the middle of nowhere so I'm anxious to be able to make that comparison. I will be sure to let you all know how the interviews go and I'll probably even share with you a little bif of the comparisons that I found while sitting in a listening.

I will see you all Thursday at breakfast and then again Friday and then again for what is going to be one of the best days of our lives GRADUATION ON SUNDAY!

Helping around the office

This Friday, Cheryl was busy doing work that she felt it was best if she did herself. As a result, I ended up helping people other than Cheryl for the most of the day. The only job I did for Cheryl was to paint one of the toolboxes that I had helped make early in my senior project. Though Dan wasn't asked by anyone to do so, he volunteered to help me with the painting. This was fortunate, since, unlike me, Dan actually had experience painting (certain events made me question whether or not Cheryl had an idea of how to go about painting, either; some people in the ReStore seemed to be confused by the direction she gave me).

After that job was done, I was given work by Meredith Ashkettle, the Restore manager. The first thing she had me do was alphabetize the receipts for donations that had been filled out. This job didn't take very long since since Meredith didn't give me that many sheets.

The next thing I had to do was make the receipt forms. Have you ever seen one of those sheets that has an identical sheet behind it that gets written on when you write on the front sheet? That's what I was making. Essentially, all I had to do was glue the front sheet to the back sheet. This job got boring incredibly fast, especially since I was doing it alone. However, once I was done, so was the day, and I headed home.

Robert's Senior Project- 12

My final post. I will just leave off by saying my project has been very valuable. It has taught me a lot about historical research and the Civil War. Its important to understand all of the documents out there that have not yet been discovered. There must be tons of stories and quotes in them that are one of a kind. If no one every sees these stories they will be lost to history. That is why I believe historical preservation is very important. We can learn so much from documents from the past. They are out there, we just have to look for them.

Robert's Senior Project- 11

So now I am working on my final set of documents, the collection of diary entries from throughout the Civil War. They are: the 1863, 1864, and 1865 diaries of John Watkins, and the 1864 diary of Michael Houck. Michael Houck is the relative of my sponsor, Chris Whipple. These entries are short, just a few sentences every day about what happened that day, but they are still useful because they are a day by day account of the 19th OVA in the Civil War. There is not much new information to be found in these documents, so what I am doing is comparing what is said in the entries to the 1878 book by Tracie. These are two different accounts of what happened, one written on the day and the other written years later, so it is understandable that there are some discrepancies. So for there is nothing major, only that Tracie appears to have gotten some dates mixed up, but it is still good to know if there are any differences. Unfortunately, due to time, it looks like I won't be able to get through everything, but I will do what I can.

Even More of the Same

Thursday came and went just like how I thought it would. After beginning to work on the third collection of works on Wednesday, Thursday was solely dedicated to finishing this task. So this day went on without much change from the last. Step one: flip current piece. Step two: record the data onto the papers provided. Step three: take some pictures of the piece for the online database. All of these steps made up my day. The only thing I guess that I can add to this topic is more on how it is to do this all day. I covered this before, but there may be some things that I could have left out, so bare with me. At first, the cataloging is occupying enough. Just keeping myself busy with what needs to be done. But after a while, it gets pretty draining. I can assume that this is because having such a large amount of things to get through is a pretty far away goal when chiseling away at the load one at a time. You know that you can’t stop the slowing down, but you won’t be able to do anything else unless you continue right on track. I’m sorry if I said any of this stuff in a previous post, but when doing this kind of a task for the entire week, you can’t really come up with anything else to say that hasn’t already been said.

Not Much to Really Say

Wednesday did not have much to report on. My responsibility for that day was just more cataloging of the books. I’ll still be writing the necessary amount of blog entries, but I’m warning that there will not be as much to talk about. Wednesday went pretty much exactly as I had imagined it would. Just spending the whole day working on the next book of pieces. However, one piece of good news was that I now only have to do two the three books. One of the volunteers at the Archives was assigned to catalog the contents of the second book, leaving me with the only the third one remaining. Even though this doesn’t change the large amount of pieces I still have to go, it does severely lessen the number, which is never bad news in my book. So, in conclusion, just more of the same today with some good news, but I really don’t see much changing from this during this week.

No Surprises Today

The start of this week at the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve was not slow but also not anything remarkable. Before getting to work on the more cataloging that I had to do, I was told to help set up for a presentation that would happen later in the day. Simply involved laying down plastic sheets on the carpet and setting up chairs. Laying down the plastic sheets was easy enough in that all I had to do was place them and then use tape to secure them to the floor. The only possible hiccup, as minor as it was, that happened was that the second roll of tap that I used was more difficult to work with, but it hardly slowed anything down. After placing the chairs out I went back into the warehouse to continue my heavy load of cataloging. There’s not really much to talk about at this point, just more of the same. Just flipping through the binders and filling out the sheets repeatedly. However, I am glad to say that after that day I finally finished the first book of things.

More kittens!

Today was a day filled with kittens, so it was a good day.
Melissa and I started in Kitten Iso, cleaning cages and taking care of the seven kittens there. It takes a while for us to do this room because these kittens don't get as much attention. My favorite kittens there right now are Moonlight and Adiemus, who are both adorable and lovable.

After that we moved to the Kitten Room, where there are currently nine kittens. Normally one would start in the Kitten Room because the kittens there have been cleared and are healthy enough to be adopted, but today we didn't. We cleaned all the cages, which meant I got to hold up to two of the kittens. My favorites are two orange tabby kittens, which I've named for myself, but the shelter calls them Hazel and Florence. My other favorite is a orange tabby tom who was on hold to be adopted that day named Asher, and to create more space since all of the kittens in the back were moving up, we decided to put Asher's siblings in with him. They were separated into twos after their surgery, but since they were from the same litter it was okay to combine them again. Unfortunately, the kittens didn't get along like we thought they would and we had to move Asher to another cage all by himself.

Melissa and I then set up the empty cages for the new kittens and began the process of transporting them. We started with Adiemus and Moonlight, and they didn't like their new living arrangements very much, but we tried to comfort them as best we could. Then we transported the next three kittens, and they were much more angry being held than the first two. The last two kittens were an easy move, as well, but after all that work Florence and Hazel managed to knock over their water bowl. This meant we had to clean their entire cage AGAIN, but it also meant I got to hold my favorite kittens again!

When all of that was done Melissa and I cleaned all of the cages in Kitten Iso, and then moved on to clean all of the cages in Recovery, as well. I felt like I needed a chisel to get off the mess in those cages, but somehow we managed.

Robert's Senior Project- 10

Another perhaps interesting topic is how the soldiers fighting for the Union felt about the soldiers fighting for the Confederacy. Its kind of a complicated relationship. The Confederate soldiers are definitely perceived as the enemy. In nothing that I have read have I found any indication the Union soldiers had any real moral objection to fighting fellow Americans. If anything, the Confederate soldiers were like people from another country. Usually they are called the "rebels" or the "enemy", and there is often descriptions about the southern territory feels really foreign even though its really part of the US. There is a lot of teasing; before battles begin one side may yell insults about "rebels" or "Yankees". These are all insults but they are said in a funny way. So its not as if the two sides hate each other either. Many times Union soldiers will talk to confederate prisoners about home life or something like that. And really, once the war ended the two sides would get together and talk. Because very often a Union soldier will know a rebel. Either they were friends or they may even be related.

Kittens!!

Nothing all that exciting happened today. Melissa and I started in Kitten Iso, cleaning the cages and getting food and water for the babies, and then giving them attention. There are currently seven kittens in Kitten Iso, and usually I hold one or two so Melissa doesn't have to worry about them getting in her way, but since there are so many we usually have to use cat carriers to hold them while we clean.

When that was done, we decided to do Drop Off. One of my favorite cats in Drop Off, Henrietta, who usually is very reserved and shy, came directly up to us today and was very affectionate. She began rubbing her head against the water bowl and accidentally tipped it over onto her head. It was such a funny moment, but Henrietta must've been very embarrassed because she immediately retreated to her litter box.

On Thursday mornings two girls come in to volunteer and take care of the Kitten Room, and while their help is appreciated and needed, Melissa and I more than likely need to go back and redo their job. We have a certain way of preparing the cages so that kittens who usually climb the bars don't fall back and hit their water/food bowl, thus tipping it over and making a mess. We place the food/water bowls in the back of the cage so the kittens can climb all they want, but most other workers just put the bowls at the front. So, we had to redo every cage, but the upside to this is that I was able to hold a bunch of kittens today!

The rest of the day went normally, we finished up doing Quarantine, and then checked to make sure all the cats were still okay.

I spent a long time in the hot sun/windy rain writing down names on the bricks in the front garden. There are a lot of bricks there, and a lot of the names engraved on the stone are weathered so it's hard to tell what they say. I would much rather be cleaning cages than recording the names of donators.

Hep from the Legal Community

This Monday, a vast majority of my time (five hours) was spent inputting the contact information for members of the legal community (lawyers) into the Habitat for Humanity database. There was a somewhat weird moment when I entered the contact for information for one my friend's father; it was an eerie sort of, "Hey, I know him!" moment. Apart from that, the day went by normally and was just another day of data entry in the office.

The next day, the contact information was put to good use. A member of the Habitat for Humanity office named Christine Bucknell wanted to send letters to all of the lawyers in the database asking them for money. The letter they sent was asking for $1000, which seemed like a lot to me (my friend's dad wasn't going to give that much). However, the donation envelope that was to be sent with the letters allowed any amount to be donated, so it seemed like $1000 was more of the ideal than the expected amount.

My job was basically to put the donation envelopes in the letters which I would then put in envelopes. I would then put a mailing address label on the envelope that corresponded to the address written on the letter. I put stamps on some of the envelopes, but this project required more stamps than the entire office had, so Christine said she would buy more stamps later and put them on the envelopes herself. This job actually ended up taking all day, so I didn't do anything else on Tuesday.

WFR- Part 5

So, last evening a couple of friends and I left after classes to go rock climbing. Although I don't go rock climbing frequently it was cool being able to just get out there and climb a couple of faces and boulders. Most of them were very seasoned climbers and guides so i was in safe hands. Anyways, today I learned about heat related injuries (heat stroke and dehydration) and did a few simulations where we preformed a few traction splints and dealt with stroke/seizure patients. We also learned about anaphylaxis shock and how to administer epi-pens.

The end of the course is near and I'm only one written test and a practical exam away from getting my WFR license. I get the test later tonight and tomorrow I am to preform a simulation that I must execute nearly perfectly in order to get my license.

Messy Day

Today was not the best day I've had working at the Humane Society, but it wasn't completely terrible. Melissa and I started in Kitten Iso, and I got to hold all of the cute kittens and entertain them, which is always fun! This morning I also gave a tour to my senior project adviser, but after that was done Melissa and I had to redo a kitten cage because the monsters were climbing their cage bars and tipped the water bowl. This is why cleaning up after the kittens can take hours of your time.

It was later in the morning when I learned that one of my favorite cats had to be put down because of her behavioral issues, so that wasn't good news. I really liked Ophelia, but it would have taken her a very long time to adjust to the Humane Society and then if she was ever adopted it would have been stressful to adjust to a new home, as well. The sad truth is that the Humane Society can't make exceptions for every animal, no matter how much they try, and space is necessary for other animals that can use it.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I went through my daily routines, and nothing too exciting happened until we had to clean Recovery. Usually cats are kept in this room, but a few days ago there were puppies in two of the cages. Puppies are much, much messier than cats, and in their wake they left the worst mess I have ever seen. Melissa and I worked together to clean all of the cages there, but it took us a long time because there was just so much to clean.

Ladders and Avocados

Mere came and helped Ezgi and I paint the sun and his face on the wall today and it looks pretty good. Another problem is the wall is pretty tall and Ezgi and I are both scared to stand on the old ladder that the center has, to paint the top. The ladder is really rusted and scary looking and really can any of you imagine Ezgi and I trying to lift this ladder into place without breaking anything? We tried to put it in place and almost dropped it off the deck, which is about a twenty-foot drop, which is scary in and of its self. The owners mother Barbra (who we refer to as Grandma) was sitting there laughing at us in our futile attempts. We adore her. We also realize we may have made a mistake getting only light colors because they are kind of bright and in your face. I’m just hoping Ezgi and I pull it off. On a separate note Tom, the manager of the raw foods kitchen returned from California and now the kitchen is running much more smoothly. The Juice is usually finished by about ten-thirty or eleven. Tom even let us play around with the different smoothies they made. Ezgi and I made one for ourselves that was the green juice as its base (cucumber, celery, lemon, and parsley), cilantro, ginger, garlic, more parsley and avocado. I like the smoothies a lot more than just the plain juice because it has more of a kick to it. I enjoy the flavor a lot more. During this whole time Ezgi and I ate about an entire avocado between the two of us, with just salt and lemon juice on it (which is delicious). Tom was teaching us about how to tell when an avocado is perfectly ripe or not.

Painting!

Ezgi and I are painting one of the building’s walls at our project. The problem is Ezgi and I literally have no idea what we are doing. The walls condition is not great; it has a mural on it that is peeling away due to weather exposure and time. Ezgi and I spent a morning chipping away at a lot of the peeling paint, unfortunately when we put a new coat of paint over the existing paint more of the existing paint begins to peel and we have to undo our hard work. We have designed a mural of a sky with a large smiling sun in the center with henna like designs coming out, growing less dense as they reach the end of the wall. We went out and bought all the paint we needed with one of the guys that works at the center with us. When we returned from the store we realized the center had about one paint brush, so we turned around and went back to the store and bought tarps and brushes to paint. Since Ezgi and I do NOT know how to paint outdoor walls we really did not know what to buy, s we sort of guessed. Luckily it has not rained while we’ve been at project so we have been able to start painting. We put down most of the base color, which is a sky blue. Mere Mendosa is coming to help us paint the sun and detail work on the wall because she is a lot more artistic than Ezgi and I. Hopefully that goes well!

Week Four at Karamu

Wow guys senior project is seriously going by faster than I ever thought it would. Its like I'm really comfortable and loving it here and we only have one more week left. Anywho...

Today is day sixteen of my and I just wanted to let you guys know what has been going on around here at Karamu. Yesterday, we finally performed SPEAK at Warrensville Library and it was definitely the most memorable experience of this project thus far. Just to be up on a stage with professional actors and actresses just showing them my own talent was incredible. I even got to sing in the show which just made it all the more exciting. Performing poetry and writing it as well has always been a passion of mine so to be able to pay homage to all the great African American writers was a very rewarding experience. I got lots of good feedback and they have even invited back to perform it again with them sometime which was great. It was just nice to have people come up to me and tell me how great of a job I did and to really accept my talent. I have some footage that I will be showing the day of presentations so that should be pretty cool as well. Moving on, today has been a lot of phone calls because Karamu is getting ready to set up their Reality Theatre program and so what they do is get the kids from different schools involved so what we have to do is set up interviews and things. We do that because Reality Theatre is essentially a play that deals with different topics every year but we interview teens because their voice is what makes the play. For example, this years play deals with identity and knowing who you are so we are therefore going to interview the teens about who they are and the things around them that can get in the way of who they are and based on those things the playwright here at the Karamu House will write a play using those voices and then when school starts they will go back to those schools where they interviewed the kids and perform the play for them followed by workshops and discussions so its actually really cool. I'm really sure what the rest of the week has in store but I will be sure to keep you guys posted. Hope all is well with everyone's senior project!

WFR- Part 4

Hey guys, I just had my first half of classes. We looked through slides of rescue missions my teacher, Bill, lead. Bill is looks like a british, balding version of Anthony Hopkins who had numerous experiences with SAS operatives, rescue missions, and paramedics. Experiences that he'd have to kill you if he told you. Anyway. We looked at pictures of people caught in blizzards on top of Mt. Washington. Some of them were frozen solid, others got lucky. One unfortunate climber had a ice axe penetrating his abdomen through and through (He survived). Although we didnt learn anything new first-aid-wise, we did learn the details on how rescue missions work. What surprised me is that when I picture rescue missions, I think of highly trained professional veterans wearing uniforms all knowing what to do and while for many rescuers, that is true, the reality is: many of the rescuers are exactly like me. some of them are around my age and possess the same amount of training as me (maybe even less!) called up on a random weekend to preform a life-saving rescue. It's crazy to hear that once i get my license, I can qualify to be one of these rescuers pulling people out of life threatening situations.

It's about time for class, I just wanted to share my thoughts. I might go rock climbing with some other students later!! should be fun. Until next time....

WFR- Part 3

Hey guys, so after our hiking and movie-night filled weekend off we started up class on monday by learning about dislocations. We were taught how to reduce (snap back into place) shoulders, fingers, knee-caps, etc. We also learned how to create the fabled traction splints for broken femurs (If you've ever been to OL first-aid, you'll know why it's "fabled"). We also talked about head-trauma and how were absolutely helpless when it comes to treatment and our only hope is by diagnosing it and praying for a swift rescue. We ended that day with some more simulations!

Today, the rain FINALLY stopped and the sun actually came out, yet we spent most of our day inside learning about cleaning wounds and preventing infection. We also talked about chest trauma and why it sucks (seriously, you can pucture you thorax and your lungs and air could escape from that hole and thats called a "sucking chest wound"). We also learned how to build a litter (stretcher type deal) out of sticks and rope and did some simulations where we transported victims after treating them. We also looked into abdominal organs and such. It was really awesome.


WFR training begins to feel like a first-aid intensive combined with a summer camp vibe where I'm one of the youngest ones. Sometimes it gets a little uncomfortable, but we all share the common outdoor interest so its always really fun.

The second cookout

Because of the atrocious weather, Youth United won't actually be able to start building anything until June 4th. Since that is some time away, Youth United is trying to focus their current efforts on raising funds. In order to accomplish this, they held another cookout two days ago, again on a Saturday.

As with the first cookout, business was initially nonexistent. After setting up the tent where we would sell everything, there wasn't much to do. Not one to sit around doing nothing, I got one of the volunteers who had been present at the previous cookout, Janae, to help me with the infamous business of advertising. A sign was made, and we went down by the street.

Unlike last time, we did not get a line going, even when lunch time came. However, we did see a few signs that people might've been taken in by our advertising: suddenly slowing down turning around to come to the Habitat for Humanity headquarters, etc. We also seemed to get a lot of nasty stares. One person actually flicked us off, which signaled the end of our advertising efforts. After that, we returned to the cash register, where we did manage to get some business.

A new assignment!

Today I started working with Carolyn, and we cleaned all the cages and fed the cats in Cat Iso and Drop Off. Nothing too exciting happened there, except that we saw an adorable beagle puppy through the window to the clinic, and Lindsay, one of the noisy cats, began tearing apart her newspaper because we couldn't feed her since she was having surgery that day. Nadia's cage was empty, and I later saw her on the Adoption Floor, which is a happy and sad feeling. I want all of the cats to go to good, happy homes, but at the same time I don't want to see the cats to whom I've grown attached leave.

After we took care of all the cats, we prepared cages in Kitten Iso for new kittens, and redid a cage where four kittens were already staying, but at the time were in surgery. Also, Melissa's foster kitten, Patty, wasn't in his usual cage, but his name wasn't on the adopted list, so I assume he's in recovery after his operation. Melissa is very attached to him, as is everyone, since he's just a cute, spunky ball of orange fur.

Carolyn and I then went through all the donations, folded, and sorted all of them in the kitchen, which takes a long time, surprisingly. Today there were more donations than usual. It always seems like when they need tons of blankets/towels there is nothing there, but when no one needs them there are a thousand.

When that was done, we asked Vicky if any dogs needed to be taken on a walk, and she said that Polly and Candy (who are only allowed to be walked by staff) could be taken out. We took Polly out first, and she was a funny, messy, outdoorsy dog who didn't mind getting muddy at all. She is a very nice dog, but rather enthusiastic about jumping on people to get their attention. The next dog we got was Candy, who saw one look at the rain and mud and turned right around. She is a little lady princess kind of dog, who is dainty in every way possible. Carolyn and I stayed in her pen for a while to groom and play with her. Her cage is beside Dwayne's, a HUGE collie mix type of dog, and he is very affectionate and eager to please. It was so funny seeing them next to each other since Candy is at least a third of his size.

As we were walking out to leave, Katrina, who works in the office, grabbed me and said she had an assignment for me. I don't usually see people in the office since I'm so busy in the back cleaning, but her assignment for me was to basically make a grid map of the front garden. In front of the shelter is a courtyard of sorts, where names of donators/names are inscribed on the bricks. Katrina wants me to note all of the garden area and label all of the bricks on the sheet, and then put it all in Excel. I'm somewhat worried about this since I'm not good at math or working with Excel, and my schedule is usually full when caring for the animals, but hopefully I can do this, too!

Week three

our third week of project was surprisingly uneventful and even a bit boring. we went down to ottawa on monday morning and did our usual work of car counting. we continued for half a day on tuesday. we weren't able to come back on wednesday or thursday due to a combination of conflicting events. thus in order to make up time we decided to drive down to the park on friday morning and work through the day and then return home. on thursday night at about midnight. Ian received a text from Mr. Wilson that he would be visiting us at about noon. clearly Ian and i were worried due to the fact that all we could do that day was count and there was no fun/exciting field work to be done and also we wanted to make sure Mr. wilson didn't get too bored lest he decide to eat us for lunch. he arrived and we decided to take him on a tour of the park because we felt that siting in a car counting visitors wouldn't be a particularly exciting activity to do with your supervising teacher. we walked through the park trails and even got to see areas of the park that we previously hadn't seen. we walked for about an hour and a half and had a really fun time. Mr. wilson then returned home and we worked for a few more hours before heading back home.

Robert's Senior Project- 9

I will take a little detour with this blog to talk about one of the things I did to prepare for my project. Over spring break I visited the meeting center/museum for the 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry in Sheffield Lake. This is a different unit than what I am studying, but the two units followed each other very closely in the War. Basically the 103rd was the infantry and the 19th was the artillery that backed them up. It was a very extensive museum, with a lot of artifacts from actual members of the unit. They had things like peoples uniforms, guns, swords, bugles, and so on. There was even an recreation of a soldiers quarters. This visit was useful because it gave me a perspective on the kinds of things Civil War soldiers had with them. It was fun to be so close to all of those artifacts. The 103rd was a very close nit group, and to this day every year there is a reunion for descendants of the unit. The picture is of a map which shows the route taken by the 103rd in the war. It is a little different for the 19th, but you can get a general sense of where they were during the war.

Blog 9- raw vegan pie

On Friday, the center was holding thermograph testing for cancer. I am not entirely sure how this works, but I think that the person administering the screening takes picture of the patient and then determines whether cancer is present based on the temperature of certain parts of the body based on those pictures. I am not really sure how this process is done. The center has started selling vegan baked good, which are absolutely delicious. Since they are not raw we don’t make them in the kitchen; the goods are ordered from Poison Berry Bakery. Sam informed Ezgi and I that the raw foods kitchen does make desserts that are raw. They make things like pies that for example have crushed nut and sunflower seed crust with a date filling. Apparently raw desserts are Tom’s, the raw food kitchen owner, specialty. The kitchen also makes things like raw vegan lasagna, with thinly sliced zucchini instead of pasta and cheese substitutes. Sam said that the kitchen usually makes these more extravagant raw foods in summer because they sell more then, due to the fact that most people want hot food in winter. Ezgi and I did palates Friday; we’re still the only two in the class so we get special attention. I prefer yoga to palates by far but palates is a good core work out.

Robert's Senior Project- 8

So I have said that a lot of a soldiers life in the Civil War is camp life and waiting at orders. While this is true, it is not to say that there is no fighting. There certainly was, and plenty of it. The unit I am studying, the 19th Ohio Volunteer Artillery, did not fight in any really well known battles. They did not really start fighting until later in 1863, so a lot of the early months of the unit were spent in camp. But they did end up seeing some action. They joined up with General William Sherman and actually were a part of his Atlanta campaign (although they did not join him on his March to the Sea). The unit also has the distinction of firing the first shots of the Atlanta campaign. They did fight in a few battles in Georgia on their way to Atlanta in places like Resaca, New Hope Church, and Kennesaw Mountain.

One thing I can tell from my readings is that the fighting was fierce. It was very noisy with a lot of smoke coming from the cannons. And then there was the dead and the wounded. One story Tracie tells is the night after a huge battle the unit could hear the cries for help from the wounded Confederate soldiers still on the battle field. Reading it, I can't imagine how horrible that must have been. The Union soldiers could not help them, and for some reason the Confederates were not helping either. Whats worse is that in the morning the screaming had subsided substantially, but some of the men were still alive. Reading the description of this, its pretty powerful stuff.

WFR- Part 2

Hey guys, So my WFR course is almost over and thus far I've learned a lot of new things about advanced first aid as well as new modifications on techniques I learned through OL. We've learned CPR for all sorts of scenarios, how to deal with spinal related injuries, how to move victims safely, how to record SOAP (patient analysis stuff) notes, and how to splint broken things. I really like the simulations where we get to play with fake blood because I get to demonstrate all the skills I learned through OL (tarp building and first aid) and I've always enjoyed pretending....

It's unfortunate that it has been raining ALL WEEK and when it isnt raining the black flies are out meddling, so it makes some of the outside scenarios kind of unbearable. besides from that, the food is awesome, the reading assignments aren't to demanding, and the people here are all really cool outdoor enthusiasts like me. Right now it's the weekend so were all just hanging out in the main building looking for the rain to clear to hike Mt Washington (They give us a lot of freedom here, a little taste of what college is going to be like)!.... We'll see how that goes...

What Just Happened?

I was well aware of what I would have coming up for me following the unpleasant revelation on Wednesday. One hundred and fifty cataloging sheets weren’t going to fill themselves out, so after greeting my coworkers I headed straight to the warehouse in order to bring the number down. It’s kind of hard to recall the very specifics of Thursday because of many different reasons, many I probably can’t nail down. When doing something like this for around six hours, it starts to get strange. You lose track of time while you’re working on it. You lose track of time while you’re taking a small breather. The best way that I can describe it is that it’s like a marathon where the only goal is to finish. Strangely, doing the same procedure for similar looking items takes a lot out of a person. The moment you realize this, you’re pretty much done for the day, but you still have much more to do and you know it. I’m not going to be melodramatic and say it virtually robbed me of my sanity. And after all, I definitely know that it could be much worse given that some archived artists have boxes full of items numbering in the hundreds that need cataloging. So I guess I’m grateful that this artist never felt the need to send in everything they made.

Wait. There's More?

I knew what I would do for the day upon entering the Archives on Wednesday. It would be simple. Repetitive, but simple. Electronic cataloging is not that much different than the regular kind, albeit without any sort of interaction with anything outside of the data. I was having an easy time with inputting the same data that I recorded earlier during my time at the Archives. After finishing the last page of the database, I was given a review sheet that showed all of the pieces that the artist gave to the archives. Looking at the paper, I noticed that there were three items that I neglected to catalog. The sheet said they were three books, so I thought this correction would be quick, an hour at most. In hindsight I can definitely say that I was hideously wrong. It was almost time for me to leave when I went to the warehouse in order to find these books. I would start the work the next day. At the artist’s storage bin, I noticed that under the unframed pieces on the lower shelf were indeed these three books. I originally thought them to be guides, or something else of the sort. In actuality, these were really not books, but very large binders for display purposes. Opening them, I saw that each and every page of the binders held drawings or paintings on both sides, totaling about fifty works per binder. In disbelief, I mumbled, “Aw crap!” I am far from being over with the archiving. The twenty four pieces I catalogued? A mere warm up compared to the one hundred and fifty I now have. Yeah, I’m going to be busy for a while.

Another Week...

After the highs and lows of last week, I felt that I was beginning to develop expectations for my work at the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve. Since the board the annual board meetings for the Archives took place on Friday and Saturday, it was my job starting this week to help clean up from those events. Overall, this was an easy task to accomplish. First, they had me collect all of the chairs used on that day and afterwards return them to the neighboring establishment. Upon finishing this, I was handed a vacuum cleaner and started to clean up the place. Whilst doing this task, I was astonished by how much dust and small pieces of trash could be concentrated in a single weekend. Further cleanup included carrying the tables from the events to the warehouse in the back, and emptying the coolers used to hold refreshments of any water and leftover items. After these tasks were finished I was sent back into the warehouse so that I could finally finish cataloging the artist I was working on, Anita Rogoff. All that was left were a few framed pieces, which I took care of relatively quickly. In conclusion, Tuesday was a slightly more eventful day than those from last week.

Uneventful day

Today mostly focused around cleaning every square inch of the Humane Society from top to bottom and in every corner and crevice. Tonight they're hosting an event called Leadership Circle for all the organizations who donated $1000 or more to the Humane Society. The center gives a presentation, has food and drinks, and this event is just a nice thank you to those who donate and keep the shelter running.

So, because of this event, all today every staff member on duty had to scramble to clean/feed/care for all the animals, and clean the entire building. Melissa and I started with the kittens in Kitten Iso, moved to the kittens in the Kitten Room, and moved to Drop Off. There are currently six cats in Drop Off, and four of the cats are Persian mixes. These cats aren't in the best condition, as they come from a hoarding situation, and so they're fur is matted and they're not in the most healthy state, as of now. This makes it extremely important that everything is sanitized and cleaned thoroughly after we were done with them in order to prevent disease from spreading from cage to cage.

Once all the cats were done, Erin, the assistant Shelter Manager, had Melissa sweep the lobby and community room and had me dust the shelves in the community room. This was the first time anyone had dusted these shelves in months, so I had plenty of cleaning to do. When I had finished, Melissa had me sweep the kitchen, and the floor in the kitchen is always covered in fur, dust, string, etc. Every day I usually do a quick sweep just to make it look tidier, but it is always messy within ten minutes because the dog/cat food bins are there, the laundry is done there, the trash is there, and it is the center of all traffic. Regardless, I swept thoroughly multiple times before I moved to the lobby to sweep in there again so Melissa could go over with the vacuum.

That was the extent of my day today. Not much to report.

Robert's Senior Project- 7

The second part of my research is working with a book titled "Annals of the Nineteenth Ohio Battery". This is a book written by Theodore C. W. Tracie, who was a private in the 19th OVA. This book was written in 1878 and is sort of an account of everything that happened to the battery, where they were, who they fought, who died/got wounded, etc. But its not all about military stuff. There is also a lot about camp life and what the soldiers did when they were not fighting. There are plenty of interesting stories in this book, both that I already saw in the letters and some new ones. I will be looking for the same things in this book as the collection of letters of John Watkins. Additionally, I will be comparing this book and the letters to see if there are any differences in dates or events. As this was written years after the fact, its possible that the author became confused about specific dates, or changed things around for some unknown reason. So I will also be looking for that. Its important that these accounts be written and published because if the stories or accounts were not written down they would be lost to history and we would knew very little about the 19th Ohio Volunteer Artillery.

Working with John

So, these past few days, I spent a lot of time on data entry. I actually managed to get through all the data entry that Cheryl had put forth for me. Dan was assigned to the job of trucking, so he was not present for most of the time I was there. However, I did spend some additional time working with the craftsman John Dagil. John was the person who I had helped cut wood on previous days, though today I got a bit more control.

Today, John wanted to sand some wood that had already been cut. John used a machine that's nature eluded me to begin this job, but, for the more important task of rounding the corners of the wood, a more hands-on approach was required (by me). The machine John used was essentially a giant, circular piece of sand paper spinning at an incredibly fast speed. The machine moved so fast that John told me I could only use the half of the disk that was spinning downwards (I learned that he was right the hard way).

The next day, John had a different job for me: help me cook a meal for everyone at Habitat. John was making a taco salad that consisted of chips, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, meat, and yogurt. My job was essentially to spread these ingredients out on the tray for the taco salad. It felt a bit odd to be cooking while working for Habitat for Humanity, but it was refreshing to do something different from what I had been doing for the past two and a half weeks.

Magenta!

There isn't much to report about today. It was pretty routine, just cleaning cages and petting kitties, however, I suppose I'll write about a certain cat named Magenta.

Magenta is a half tabby half white female cat, who is playful, energetic, and fun. Unfortunately when the Humane Society got her, all of the white spots on her fur were dyed a bright pink, hence her name Magenta. Regardless of this, she is happy and recently delivered a litter of kittens, who were all adopted!

I've come to really like Magenta. She always is excited to see us when we go to her cage and can be a real pain in the butt when trying to clean around her. She's affectionate and silly, and always makes us laugh.

At the Humane Society, veterinarians routinely come in to spay and neuter cats, and with kitten season almost here there is an abundance of momma kitties. A number of operations took place these past few days, and Magenta was one of them. Unfortunately, the amnesia that is used during the operation didn't agree with Magenta, and she fell ill.

Normally, Magenta is jumping around her cage, meowing, and being lively, but yesterday she was curled up into a ball in the back of her cage. Melissa, Nancy, and I, who all work with cats, all noted the drastic change in Magenta's attitude, and alerted the clinic. After she was checked over by the clinic, she was eventually moved to Drop Off, so she could have a larger cage, but we were all still worried about her.

This morning however when Melissa and I were making our rounds to the cats we were delighted to find that Magenta was back to her usual self! She was running around her cage, rubbing up against our arms, and meowing so much it was like she was making up for lost time.

This is a pretty anticlimactic ending, but it's still a good thing one of my favorite cats is feeling better!

Post 8- Shavasana

So today Ezgi cut her finger with a cucumber peeler and there wasn’t a single band aid in the entire healing center, which I found ironic because it’s a “healing” center. Ezgi had to wear a glove the rest of the time we were in the kitchen so she would not contaminate the products. Sam, the person running the kitchen this week, was late; Ezgi and I made the juice basically on our own with no problems!! We are now confident that we can prep all the veggies and run them through all the juicers in the right order and right amount without destroying the kitchen or messing up the juice. Thursdays are always my favorite day at the center because we have yoga with Esther, who I adore. Her yoga is particularly challenging and spiritual. She made us do balancing poses and lots of strength exercises, which lead to a deeper Shavasana, relaxation at the end of the practice. During Shavasana, Esther walked us through a guided relaxation exercise, designed for deeper tissue relaxation. I felt as if my body was sinking into the floor with every muscle relaxed, heavy and calm. After yoga on Thursdays Ezgi and I go into the Sauna for an hour, which is always an experience. We basically sweat more than you would every think was humanly possible. I feel very healthy and pleasantly tired after all of today’s events.

Post 7- Muscle Testing

On Monday, Cindy, the owner of the Creative Healing Center, and Dr. Mike, a holistic doctor who works at the center, showed Ezgi and I muscle strength reflect tests. I forget the exact name of the thing they were showing us but it was something like that. Basically the test was to see what our bodies needed and what they would reject based off of muscle responses. I held my arm out and Dr. Mike pushed on it to see how strong my arm was and how that strength varied when I held certain objects. When I held the green juice I was less strong, indicating that my body did not need or want the green juice. When I held the hot chocolate I was drinking I was stronger, indicating my body wanted the chocolate. They also told me that I could use this technique in the grocery store. I could stand up strait eyes closed and hold the product I was considering buying and ask myself if I needed the product. If I leaned forward that would mean my body was telling me it was okay to get the product but if I leaned backward that would indicate that my body was not okay with me getting the product and I did not need it. I am not sure I really buy this self testing mechanism however the other test are somewhat reasonable, since I could feel a difference in my bodies ability to raise my arm.

WFR- part one

I'm not sure how many of these I'll be able to do, but I'll try to send in semi-frequent reports in on how I'm doing. So. After a day of traveling I arrived in Conway, NH at the SOLO institution of wilderness medical training on 5/16 where I met some friends I would be staying with for the next 10 days to get my Wilderness First Responder license. While some of them are training to be wilderness EMT's (4 week course) we're all housing together.

Classes began the next day at 8:00 where we we're introduced to our new temporary home. Our teacher, and old british former SAS operative named Bill, started the first day of classes with a lesson on Patient assessment, including primary survey (is it safe? are they still breathing? are they bleeding to death?) and secondary survey (where is all their broken stuff?) Classes ended at around 5:00 pm and we were assigned some reading HW.

Today, we learned all about CPR. The teachers here are all hilarious, candid, and professional and it makes learning first-aid surprisingly amusing and thorough. I just finished lunch so we still got another 4 hrs ahead of me. This kinda feels like a first-aid intensive. It's pretty neat, I'm excited for the remainder of my days here.

We're not alone

So, today, a student from Newbury named Dan came into the Habitat for Humanity office so he could also do his senior project. This was a very welcome change for me since I had felt a bit isolated after working at the Habitat office for two weeks.

Despite the extra person, there was still work for me to do. Actually, yesterday and today, there were really only two different jobs for me to do: data entry and finishing the creation of flower pots. Data entry involved entering information regarding when certain volunteers had volunteered and for how many hours. It's a job that gets mind numbing fairly quickly, but, using the help of my iPod, I managed to get through five hours of data entry on Monday alone.

As for the finishing of the flower pots, that was my first time using power tools all by myself. The actual pots had already been created; they simply needed a hole in them to drain water. So, a hole needed to be created in the bottom of the flower pots via use of a drill. Now, if you've ever tried drilling a whole in ceramic, you'll know that it takes a while. In addition to the amount of time it takes, you also have to stay focused, lest you break the pot. Though I did not devote as much time to the flower pots as I did to data entry, I only managed to complete four pots due to the time it takes to create one.

Week 3 At Karamu

Day 9: I began to talk a little bit about day nine in my last blog post so I wanted to just kind of rap that up for you guys. As I said before Sheffia had to do a radio broadcast which I was able to sit in on. It was actually really cool. We drove over to Cleveland State University where we met up with the guy named Mr. Williams who would be conducting the interview as well as some other actors in Ruined as well as the director and musical director of Ruined as well as the linguistics coah (I think that was his title). Seeing them sit and talk about why they chose the show and how it feels to be putting on such a powerful show was really moving to me. When you go to see plays and things like that very rarely to get to talk to the actors and actresses and get their perspectives and ask them about what is going on inside their head when they are up there performing. It was amazing. I guess it was because I had read the play Ruined in my gender class so it was like i knew exactly what they were talking about and it was easy to understand where all of them were coming from. Sheffia told me that she brought me along so that I could see another aspect of what she does. While she is an actress and the director of cultural education and outreach she also has to do many things like this in order to really promote and to let other people know what is going on with her as well as with Karamu.

Day 10: Day ten was what just a boring day. There really wasn't that much to do. All I did was answer and return phone calls. Continued prepping for the SPEAK performance which is actually coming up pretty soon on the 24th. That is always fun.

Day 11: Day eleven is possibly the slowest day that I have had since I've been here. I went down to the buisness office and did some more data entry and then I had to type up this proposal because Karamu is always asking for grants so one of my jobs was to type up a proposal that would be used to ask for a grant. Not the greatest job in the world but hey it definitely kept me busy for a while. The answering phones is a given. I do that all day every day no matter how busy I am or what other task I'm working on. People are always calling in regards to tons of things so one thing that I have had to do is really learn a lot of information about Karamu and their programs so that I don't always have to turn the phone call over to my sponsor or her assistant. I've actually gotten really good at it and I feel like I actually work here because my sponsor and everyone else around here treats me as such and I like that idea.

Day 12: Well day twelve is actually today. Seems like I've just been returning phone calls and setting up meetings all day. Anywho, this week is sharing week for the kids so I will be able to go and sit in on that so that should be cool. Sharing week is a time when all the kids get to show off all the things that they have been learning to their family and friends. They are all so cute so I'm excited to see them all do their thing. I still go in from time to time and help out with the Parade the Circle workshops which is always a good time. Painting and doing paper mache (if thats how you spell it) and just really having fun with the kids. This week we also have a COA performance which is a play that Karamu takes to different schools and presents to the kids. It is one that talks about the different social problems that go on in schools. I think that it is going to be a lot of fun to watch and it reminds me of Expect Respect which is a play that I actually do that does the same thing only its about teen dating violence and not social problems as a whole. I'll be getting back to you all on all of this really soon. This week should actually be a fun one.

Hope all is well with you guys. See you today for our mid project meeting :)

Scrubbing walls...

Hey, everyone!

Today I started with Carolyn, who usually does dogs except on Mondays when she does cats, and we began in Cat Iso. There are currently around seventeen cats in Iso, and that means having a lot of cages to clean. We start at one end and work our way to the other, fluffing their blankets, cleaning their litter boxes, giving them fresh food and water, and petting them. Today, one of the cats, Kitty, who hates being contained, jumped on Carolyn's back while she was cleaning his cage and while I was turned around getting his food. He was running everywhere and it took us a while to get him back in his cage, but he's just a great cat with a lot of character.

When we moved on to Drop Off, I was told my one of my favorite cats, Broadway, had been adopted over the weekend, and while I was sad that I couldn't play with her anymore, I was happy that she went to a good home! Another cat, Neil, was also adopted, so Carolyn and I set to removing all of their things and cleaning the entire cage, then going back later to refurnish it, so to speak, for newcomers.

Rescue Village is preparing for a major event this weekend, so everything needs to be taken care of, not just the animals. In the latter half of my day Carolyn and I had to scrub the walls in the Dog Area to remove any dirt and imperfections. The only good part about washing walls was seeing all the dogs that I don't usually see, like Drew, who is a sweetheart. Afterwards, Carolyn and I took a few dogs out for a walk, but not even the dogs wanted to be out in this weather.

In the next few days I expect to be doing TONS of cleaning!

Yard work

At the end of Thursday, a man from a landscaping company had come by asking if we would accept a donation of a collection of shrubberies and trees to be sold as fundraiser. Cheryl naturally accepted, but recognized that we didn't have time to empty the entire truck (I later had to count how many had been donated - 72 trees and shrubs altogether).

So, the first thing we did the next morning was attempt to empty the truck. Given that it was over 80 degrees outside and I was not used to performing physical labor to this degree, the job took longer than it necessarily needed to. To speed things up a bit, Cheryl decided that I should move the plants to the front of the truck by myself so we didn't need to constantly climb onto the back of the truck. The plan was that I would jump down after completing this task so I could return to the job of carrying the shrubs and trees. However, I poorly planned out events and placed a wall of shrubs by the back of the truck, preventing my exit. After some delays, Cheryl created an exit for me and I continued work as normal.

After a long time spent on the physical labor, a man from the Habitat Restore came by and asked us why we were carrying the shrubs and trees by hand when they had carts in the Restore. Cheryl claimed that she hadn't known we had any. At this point, only seven of the 72 plants were left, but things went more than twice as fast with the help of technology.

Robert's Senior Project- 6

Another topic of interest- health and medicine. With the 19th OVA spending sometimes months at a time in the same camp, disease became rampant. There was really no way around it, pretty much everyone in the batter was sick with something at some point. Throughout the war, the 19th only had about 6 deaths, all of which were from disease. In the letters I am reading there is always a mention of someone sick in the hospital. Many times the unit had to move out and the sick had to be left behind. Most of you probably know sanitary conditions in the Civil War were horrible. For a lot of wounds to the arms or legs the only option a doctor had was amputation. In one letter Watkins describes having to visit the hospital and seeing all of the amputated arms and legs laying in a pile. It was not a sight he wished anybody else to see.

That's it for the letters. Next I will begin looking at the 1878 recollection of the Civil War. More on that next post.

Post 6- Green Juice

Tom, the manager of the raw foods kitchen, is out of town and, so someone else is running the raw foods kitchen for the next couple weeks. This fact means that the stress level at the center is higher than usual. Friday, the green juice tasted kind of weird and worse tasting than usual, however Sam, the girl who is filling in as manager while Tom is out of town, did not really know how to fix it. We had not done anything differently than we usually do, so we could not figure out why the juice tasted bad. The juice tasted like bad parsley so we attempted to cut that taste by adding more lemon juice and in the end we kind of just had to deal with the juice the way it was. Ezgi and I decided not to drink the juice that day. Besides making the juice that day, Ezgi and I took a Palates class that ended up just being the two of us. We learned about more of the health benefits of Palates and also about a variety of different moves. Friday, we used stretchy bands as resistance for strength training in Palates class in order to intensify our poses and work out.

Post 5- Headstands and spinal twists

In yoga on Thursday Esther, the yoga instructed of the class that day, had us practice different kinds of handstands. I always thought that handstands were not particularly good for you because they strained your wrists and sent all the blood to your head very quickly, but according to my yoga teachers handstands are very good for the body. Handstands are supposed to strengthen your shoulders, back, arms, and abdominal muscles, as well as mixing up blood flow. I don’t know if I buy that fact that mixing up the blood flow direction in your body is a good idea but they tell me it is. We did two different kinds of handstands. One where you walk your legs up the wall until they make a ninety-degree angle with your torso, then if you have enough balance and strength you kick one leg off the wall so you are doing the splits. The second pose is the handstand on the wall, where you do a traditional handstand with your legs resting on the wall; we held that pose for about a minute (longest minute of my life). I also learned that “inversions” are very good for the body. One typical “inversion” is “legs up the wall,” in which you lay with your legs up the wall and your back on the floor. Keeping your legs and stomach above your heart is supposed to be excellent for circulation. We also did about eight different kinds of “spinal twists,” which are supposed to be very good for digestion and body movement. The kind of yoga that is done at the Creative Healing Center (my project) is very spiritual and less about working out and more about fixing the alignment and energy of the body. Yoga, with Esther in particular, is by far my favorite part of my project.

Post 4- Tai Chi Qi-Gong

On Wednesday I participated in a Tai Chi class and I learned about all the different schools of Tai Chi. There are many different kinds of schools (styles) of Tai Chi and they each have different forms (series of movements that are choreographed into one piece). Sandy, my Tai Chi instructor, told us that there are four or five primary forms that each have similar movements in them, but that in each form the movements are put in a different order. We have no actually started a Tai Chi form but instead we are working on a series of movement called “the three treasures.” “The three treasures” are technically Qi-Gong and not Tai Chi. Qi-Gong just refers to the practice of concentrated breath in coordination with physical movement. The practice of Qi-Gong prepares you for the Tai Chi forms. Sandy refers to Tai Chi and Qi-Gong as “meditation in movement.” She told me that the monks in ancient China who invented Tai Chi Qi-Gong did so because their bodies were tired of sitting all day. The monks wanted to fuse their meditation with movement and thus they invented the deliberate practice of Tai Chi Qi-Gong. Ezgi did not participate because she pulled her hamstring last week however, Dr. Mike, an alternative medicine doctor who specializes in acupressure and acupuncture, tried to health her leg with acupressure. Acupressure seems really painful since the specialist doing the acupressure pushes very hard on different pressure points in the body. Ezgi had a couple bruises and too our disappointment it did not seem to help her leg at all.

Week two and our visitors

The second week of project wasn't the most exciting one. on monday we both had our Bio AP test. which by the way didn't go so well (i did get a really good nap in during it though). after our test we grabbed a quick bite and then left for oak harbor. the weather wasn't too great so we did our counting in the car. we worked till about five and then went to the cabin where we enjoyed a succulent meal of macaroni and cheese and watched inception. in the morning we worked for a few hours without any major hiccups and we learned how to calibrate the electronic car counters in the park. we had to leave at about 12 so that we could get back to Hawken in time for Ian's track meet. Usually we take Wednesdays off but because Ian also had a meet on thursday we had to come back to the park on thursday. Ian had a statistics AP on Wednesday so we had to leave late we got to the park around 6 and went straight to work. we managed to get about 2-3 hours of counting in at hours we previously hadn't so that was nice. as we pulled in to our cabin we noticed another car parked right there. we entered the house and to our surprise there was a man and a woman sitting at the kitchen table. turns out they were experts on aquatic ecosystems from the us geological services and our mentor told them that they could stay there on Wednesday because we usually have that day off. the only problem was that he forgot to tell them that we'd be working that day. we could have stayed in the cabin together except for the fact that i am not 18 yet and as government officials they couldn't stay in the same house with me if i wasn't 18. after a long and unsuccessful effort to find lodging for the night. after a long search they eventually found a place to stay. thursday we ended up working for a few hours before heading home so that Ian could attend a track meet.

Habitat for HUmanity

(this post is late because blogger wasn't working for me for some reason. Sorry)

So, this Thursday, I basically just did more of the tasks I've been doing so far. I kept working on the design for the Youth United web page. I spent some more time n the invites to the house dedication. I spent a short amount of time cutting wood for the porch of the house. I entered some volunteer information into the computer.

One of my new tasks was to make a scrapbook for the family Youth United is building a house for. The scrapbook is basically a collection of pictures documenting the progress of the build as it occurs. During the house dedication ceremony, it is given to the partner family along with several items. My minimal experience with photoshop meant it took a while to get use to what I was doing. Even once I knew how to use the technology, some design issues swamped me. For instance, the templates made for the scrapbook always seemed to be tilted at an angle that did not complement the square photos well. Having to pick construction was nowhere near done (YU has faced five weeks of delays due to weather). For that same reason, I didn't finish the scrapbook, though I got a good start.

Robert's Senior Project- 5

I thought I would spend this post talking about punishment in the Civil War. Bottom line, it was severe. No one did something bad and got off easily. Desertion was rampant, of course, and the deserter was not always caught. If the person was caught, a lot of the time the punishment was death. If not, the punishment was still severe. The captain of the 19th OVA, Captain Shields, liked to punish would be deserters by putting them in a really heavy ball and chain and make them do a couple months of hard labor. So you definitely did not want to be caught deserting. There would also be similar punishments if men became really drunk (which often happened). One time, the captain punishment two drunk men by tying them to a tree for a night. Knowing how sever punishments were, the men became really good at hiding whisky and other stolen things. When word got out of an surprise inspection of the camp, the men would hide everything really quickly but in very good hiding spots so the inspector could not find anything. But if you were caught with something, you would really pay for it.

PUPPIES!

Normally at the Humane Society there are certain people assigned to take care of designated areas. I usually shadow people who work with the cats and kittens because the dogs can be quite a handful, but today there was a shortage of dog workers. When this happens, other staff members fill in to help, and so Melissa and I offered to help Kat (who works with dogs) with the new litter of eleven puppies.

And after that experience, I think I'll stick with cats.

Don't get me wrong, these puppies are ADORABLE, but having to clean up after eleven of them is definitely NOT adorable. Stepping into the Puppy Room your ears are assaulted with eleven deafening howls and yips and your nose is accosted with their odor. There are five girls, and six boys (five girls to a cage, and then three boys to a cage). The bottom of the cages are covered in newspaper and then covered with piles of shredded paper, blankets, and their food and water is in a corner.
In order to be able to clean the cages, Melissa and I had to carry each wiggling puppy from their cage to two crates so that they wouldn't bother us. This alone is a challenge, and their barks only get louder. We have to clean out all the newspaper and shredded paper, remove their bowls and towels, and then scrub down the entire cage since puppies are so messy. We then reapply newspaper to the floor, cover it with shredded paper and blankets, and try to cover our ears from their voices. Trying to get the puppies back into the cage is near impossible, since they all try to jump and climb and nip at your hands that you can barely close the door.
We had to do this three times, and when we get to the last ones the first cage is dirty again, but I guess that's just how it is dealing with baby animals.

The rest of the day Melissa and I attended our usual tasks of cleaning and tending to the cats in Iso, Drop Off, and helped move newborn kittens to a crate in Kitten Iso. These kittens were adorable, and were so young their ears hadn't popped up and their eyes were still closed.

Today was definitely the hardest day yet, but I still love being around all these animals!

Robert's Senior Project- 4

So one thing I have discovered in my research is that Watkins did not have a very high opinion of the south and southern people. He describes almost every southern town and southern person he encounters as either "dark", "dreary", or "sad". He comments on how the south is not as advanced in industry as the north, and how the people are all of a lesser standard. So he does not have many moral objections to the fact that he is killing Americans; he kind of already separated the north and the south anyway. He ends his last letter by saying "I wish old Jeff [Jefferson Davis] could get his just dues".

But he is certainly not one of the worst. One particularly enlightening story comes from a man from Tennessee the unit met. He tells of how back in Tennessee, once the war started, he would go out and pick fights with random people to see if they were southern sympathizers. He would then go home and get his gun and hide in the bushes. When the people walked by looking for him, he would jump out of the bushes and shoot them. He would rarely bury them and would usually leave them in the street to rot.

It was a different time.

Still Slow. But Better

After the slow grind of Wednesday, I was somewhat tired when I walked into the office of the Artists Archives. I felt that more days like that would result in me falling asleep as soon as I come home. Luckily for me, Thursday proved to be more engaging than creating databases. One reason that I became relieved was that I would be doing more cataloging for the artist I was working on. Cataloging that didn’t have vague directions mind you. Overall there is not much to say of the cataloging, given that I already described it, but it was what I hoped for anyway. After finishing cataloging the last piece, I was put to work helping set up the gallery for the exhibition coming on Friday. Mainly this involved simply hanging up the final few pieces not yet on the wall. Another step in preparing was vacuuming the strangely quite dusty floor. Upon concluding this task, all I had remaining for the day was setting up some chairs in the gallery. This measure was for the board meeting prior to opening the exhibition. Overall, Thursday was slow, but it was far more engaging than the previous day.

Pretty Slow

After a slightly eventful Tuesday, Wednesday seemed somewhat slower in comparison. A very obvious reason for that would probably be that I was being taught how to catalog on the computer. As it turns out, this took longer than I had previously expected. The process for digital cataloging is easy enough though, all it involves is just putting the information that you wrote down previously into Microsoft Outlook. However, this simple lesson was lengthened by some slight problems in inputting into the database. This was namely because a database was not yet made for the artist that I spent time cataloging. This hiccup resulted in spending more time than desired copying and pasting from older databases, but it was done. Eventually, I started work in cataloging on the computer until I was interrupted with another task. Apparently, one of the other archived artists still had some pieces that needed cataloging. The only problem for me was that all of these pieces essentially looked the same and the only way I had of telling them apart were some very brief descriptions of the pieces. Ultimately, Wednesday was tedious, but I’d be nitpicking if I said it was bad.

A Busy Start

When my week started, I was told that the exhibition that will be coming up will be on Friday. In order to make the proper preparations, I was put to work setting the gallery up. Mainly, my job for this day was to hang the pieces on the wall, what I thought would be a relatively easy task. As it turns out, more effort and time is put into this task than one might think when looking around in a museum. I knew there would be some easy math involved, but I didn’t think it would sound as convoluted as it did when being told it. Firstly, you start with sixty inches; then you measure the height of the piece and divide it in half, then you subtract the distance from the hanger to the top of the piece from the halved height. Finally you add this number to sixty and that is where you mark the wall for the hook to be nailed in. After hanging the first painting, the process becomes easy enough, but you also need to keep a consistent horizontal distance between paintings. Partly because this task keeps you quite involved, I had no complaints in doing it for the day.

Week Two At Karamu

Hello everyone hope project is going well for everyone! I figured instead of blogging three times a week I'll just go day by day and let you all know what I have been up to lol. Hope you care to know hahahaha!

Day 6: Day six was one of those boring, not much to do days. I did like four hours of entering the Ruined surveys into the computer and doing those calculations. Math is definitely not my thing so just imagine how I felt. I also did some more "speak" prep and thats always intriguing to me so that lightened my mood after doing all that data entry. Not the best day at Karamu, thats all I have to say.

Day 7: Day seven entailed lots of filing or should I say office work in general. Phones were ringing off the hook as usual and I also had to make these folders. I call them promotional folders. The staff at Karamu is always going on meetings and things of that nature so when they go out they like to "show off" what Karamu is up to so I had to but all these different flyers and brochures and buisness cards into folders and make them look really nice so that wasn't that fun but I didn't mind it. I also go to go help out with the Parade the Circle workshop again so that is always relaxing and fun. A pretty busy day but a good day.

Day 8: So day eight was interesting. I was supposed to be going with Sheffia to a radio station to hear her talk about Ruined but that got reschedule for Day 9 so I'll be letting you all know how that goes. As I've said before Karamu is getting ready for their summer camp that starts pretty soon so day eight was all about helping Sheffia prepare for her meeting in which she will be presenting the ideas for the camp and things like that. She will talking about what she has planned so its a big deal. With that came things like getting the rights for the musical the kids are doing (Suessical) and calling some people for her and really just acting as her assistant even though she already has one lol. Sheffia is definitely a busy lady so it was crazy to watch her in action and she put me in action as well.

Day 9: So today is actually day nine. The morning consisted of calling tons of people back in regards to summer camp and different kinds of classes that people wanted to get involved with. Sheffia also had her meeting about the summer camp which she is actually in as we speak. It is 11 30 and pretty soon we will be leaving to head over to the radio station so that Sheffia can talk about Ruined and all that good stuff which she was supposed to do yesterday. I don't really know what is up after that but it should be fun. I'll fill you in on the details tomorrow. See ya at mid project meeting!

Day eight!

Hi, everyone!

Since today was Wednesday, the Humane Society was closed, and usually this means a slower day, but so much was going on around us that it felt hectic anyways.
Melissa and I tackled the Kitten Room first, where two new kittens were playing, and I got to hold the playful one so it wouldn't bolt. It's not so bad now, but one kitten season fully commences it could take hours to clean the room, but it wasn't so bad today.

Melissa and I spent a long time in the Cat Cafe. We cleaned the litter boxes, refilled the food and water bowls, dusted, swept, and mopped the entire area. We also stayed a little bit longer to play with the cats there, since they don't get as much attention on days that the shelter isn't open.

We then moved on to clean the rabbit's (Nod) cage, and the real fun part was getting to make his salad since I always come up with elaborate designs.

All while this was going on we had workers in the Adoption Floor, removing and replacing the old tiled ceiling with new, cleanable ceiling tiles, so as to make the area easier to clean. This is a good thing, but it meant having to take all of the cats (and there are a lot) from their cages and putting them into carriers for most of the day.

In the afternoon, everyone on the staff was called in to attend a mandatory meeting regarding the Health and Safety Codes, and I was asked to attend. My sponsor, Sarah Westman, went over all of the changes to the Health Manual and reviewed what hadn't changed. She covered things like fire and tornado safety, emergency plans, and health codes. After that was done everyone had to take a quiz, but she said even if I failed I wouldn't be fired, so I took it anyway! :D

More office work

So, now that the cookout's over, I'm back to doing office work. I've surprisingly found that, if I'm going to do menial tasks, I'd prefer to do things that require physical exertion over things that involve using a computer. And sadly, office work is the latter. Happily, not all of my tasks were menial. Though my days would often start out with a bit of data entry, I eventually moved on to tasks that required more thinking.

The first of these tasks was to write a thank-you letter addressed to a group of volunteers (we were writing and printing one thank-you letter for all of them since they all came from the same school). Since I had previously had the job of editing previously written thank-you letters for different donations, I had a vague idea of what such a thank-you letter should look like. Nonetheless, I found myself opening other thank-you letters that were saved on my computer to decide what to write in my thank-you letter.

Later on, I did a more in-depth design of the web page I had began designing on the first day. This task was somewhat frustrating since Microsoft word had the nasty habit of moving every bit of text in the document whenever a picture was re-sized, inserted, or moved, but I eventually managed to get the job done. I then moved to the job of designing postcards using the more picture-friendly Microsoft publisher. This job had less limitations imposed on me, so it felt quite gratifying.

Kitten season is almost here!

Today was my seventh day interning at the Humane Society, and this week everyone is just prepping for the weeks to come when it will officially be Kitten Season!

I was with Melissa again, but there weren't any kittens in the front room yet so we began cleaning Cat Isolation. There are about fifteen cats in Cat Iso currently, as a few new ones came over the weekend. I was panicked when I first came in because Jake and Broadway's cages were empty, and I was worried that the Clinic had to put Jake down because he was sick, but I wasn't sure since he was improving. In the meantime, we cleaned their cages, and I've already grown attached to a small, new cat named Tink who has a genetic mutation in her paws so she has extra toe, which looks like a thumb on her paws. Another new cat, Kitty, has a giant snaggle tooth, but she is a good sport and somewhat of an escape artist.

When we moved to Drop Off I found Broadway in a larger cage and on the Adoption Floor I saw Jake, which made me happy! Also, a cat that was previously moved to Quarantine finally returned to the Adoption Floor, and made me grateful to everyone who works at the Humane Society. They tirelessly work to ensure the animals' safety, and do everything they can to make them better again, and it usually pays off. The workers at the Humane Society are not people who easily give up if there's a chance to help an animal, and that makes me proud to be working there even if it's just for my Senior Project.

Robert's Senior Project- 3

A couple more thoughts about the letters I am researching with. One, it is easy to see the love John Watkins has for his fiancee Sarah ann. In his first letter he says how he already wants to return to "where the treasure of my heart is", and he makes constant references to how he misses her. Also, as the letters go one he gets more creative in how he ends them. He begins with a simple "yours truly, John", es escalates to "I will remain true to you as ever, John", and ends with things like "darling I will remain true to you as ever as long as I am in the service and when I get home we will be just the two happiest mortals alive, John". Watkins certainly has a talent for expressing his feelings into words.

Secondly I should point out that the unit was not a particularly active one. They never participated in any huge battles, and unlike the movies suggest their lives during the war are not always about fighting. Often the unit will simply stay at camp for months at a time. Obviously this does not leave the men with much to do, so most of them spend the time drinking. Watkins did not drink much (according to his letters), but many people in the unit were drunk almost every night. Whisky was prevalent among the men, and if none was available legally they were not afraid to steal it. One good story follows two of the men who snuck out of camp in the middle of the night to go into town and drink. Eventually the officers realized they were gone and went into town and put them under arrest. They were then put in jail. Apparently the men were not as stupid as they looked, and they found a way to escape from jail. The men then decided to use their new found freedom to head back into town and get drunk again. So, again, the officers went into town, found them again, and put them under locked guard. So there are a lot of stories like that that make my reading more exciting.

Youth United cookout

So, this Saturday was the Youth United cookout made to raise funds for building houses. This involved selling hot dogs, chips, drinks, toolboxes, and mother's day gifts. As with Thursday, I wasn't the only volunteer present, though it wasn't as crowded as when NDCL came.

For the first hour and a half of the cookout, we got exactly zero customers. This sort of made sense since no one would want to buy food from a cookout between 10:00 and 11:30, but it was still very discouraging. So volunteer Kyle Dipre and I decided to launch an advertising campaign. Some of the volunteers found a poster board, wrote some info about the cookout on it, and gave it to me to show to cars as they drove by.

After my lunch break ended, I went back to the cookout location to discover that my advertising efforts had paid off (or people finally got hungry enough to eat lunch. I like to think that's not the case). At this point, the job of advertising had been designated to two other volunteers, so I worked at the cash register for a while. However, the job of advertising was eventually handed back to me and a volunteer named Nathan.

At this point, someone had written "jumbo" before "hot dogs" on our sign even though that clearly wasn't true. Nathan was an energetic kid and somehow got the idea to shout out our advertisement to any passing cars that had their window down. I quickly joined in, and, miraculously, a line actually formed by the cookout, so we continued the practice.

Soon after Nathan and I quit our job as advertisers, two of the volunteers left, and no one else felt like advertising, so no one did the job. The rest of the day was spent at the cash register until it was time to clean up the stand.

Cataloging = Soothing?

After the improvement that was my third day at the Artists Archives, I began to think that the office work may cut even with the more hands on jobs. Walking in through the front doors of the office, I took my seat to talk to Ken. He told me that I would start cataloging new pieces from one of the archived artists. Entering the large warehouse that was the archive, I was given brief hands on instructions before I was left to do the job independently. The process of cataloging involves carefully taking out the pieces from their storage area (wearing gloves) and recording the information about them on sheet of paper. The basic data points that need to be recorded are things like the piece’s dimensions, the artist’s name, and a brief description of the piece itself, among others. The final part of the process is taking a few pictures of whatever is being cataloged for the online database. Overall, cataloging is not the most exciting activity, but it is very rewarding if that’s believable at all. The atmosphere in the archive is much more calming than in the office, what with the constant hum of the fans (for maintaining temperature and humidity) and the more relaxed pacing. And also you can apparently listen to music while working in the archive, an option that I will definitely abuse.

An Unexpected Trip

Returning to the Artists Archives after a slow two days I was ready to see what else I could do. Firstly, I needed to finish calling all of the people on the surprisingly lengthy list of possible attendants. Chipping away at the list, artists were coming in and out of the office to drop off their pieces for the upcoming exhibition. After finally finishing making those calls, I was put to work assembling the labels that I laid out the day before. In the middle of this job, I was called by my sponsor, Ken Goerg, to come with him and one of the archived artists downtown in order to pick up some of the art from the Charter One Global Enterprise Center. As it turns out, the artist that Ken and I accompanied was George Roby, a former Hawken teacher. On the way downtown, he talked about his time there, and asked me if any teachers he knew were still teaching. Going into the Charter One building, we quickly removed all of the sculptures and paintings that the building didn’t want any more, nails and all. The only problem was finding a way to put the pieces in the van in a way that wouldn’t end in disaster. A few cushions and curses later, the art was securely on board, giving us our cue to return to the Archives. While assisting in putting the pieces in their correct places in the archive of the Archives, I considered how much more of an improvement this was over calling people only to say the same thing.

A Slow Start

To begin with, the scheduling for my project is somewhat strange, and by this I mean working Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. Personally, I couldn’t be happier with the extra time I have for sleeping. After taking the APES exam, I began my work at the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve on Tuesday. Entering the building, I thought that I would be doing more on my first day. As it turned out, my introduction to the Archives involved a great deal of reading. Sitting at the central table in the small office I perused through various books and pamphlets, all having to do with the procedures for handling and taking care of art in a collection. After reading all of this, I came to the Archives on Wednesday thinking that would be my main task. As it turns out, that day I had to help with some of the initial preparations for an upcoming exhibition. I was given a list of artists and their submitted works for the event and typed up the labels for these pieces. After this job, I made phone calls to the members of the Archives and gave them a reminder of the exhibition. Wednesday was an improvement from Tuesday, but I am hoping that my jobs at the Artists Archives will not be limited to these things alone.

Robert's Senior Project- 2

For my second post I will go into more detail about the collection of letters I am researching with. The letters are all written by John Watkins, a native Clevelander and private in the 19th Ohio O.V.A. The letters span from August of 1862, when the unit was commissioned, to April of 1865, when the war ended. The letters are all written to John's fiancee back home, Sarah ann.

By reading the letters its easy to tell that John was a very intelligent man. He has very good writing skills and articulates his thoughts well. Nearly every letter starts off with John saying "I hardly know what to write", and that he will attempt to write "a few lines". But he ends up writing really long letters about 2-3 times a week for years. The stuff in the letters really valuable to researches are the descriptions of troop movements, what unit is where and when, and any specific mentions of people, so that it is known where that person was on that specific day. These pieces of information are useful to paint a picture of where the unit is in relation to the rest of the army.

There is also other tidbits if information that are interesting, such as the description of conditions faced while marching or complaints about food prices. John also gives his thoughts about the American south, its people and cities. None of it is good, both the cities and the people are described as "dreary". So even though he says he has nothing to say, each letter says a lot. Coming up in the next post I'll write about some of the funny stories I have come across in the letters, many of which are about drunk soldiers doing stupid things.

WEEK ONE- Ottowa Wildlife Park

Sorry for not posting earlier, I was having trouble signing in.

My first week of project was a really cool experience. On Monday Ian and I had an APES exam in the morning. when we were done with the exam and lunch we left for Oak Harbor. we go there around three PM. Rebecca who is in charge of us and is in charge o the visitors center at the ottowa wildlife refuge drove us around the area and showed us places to eat and where we could buy groceries. she then showed us the house where we would be staying and told us about the park. which is one of three sister wildlife refuges which cover an area of about 9000 acres. the first two weeks of may happen to be the biggest weeks in the year for the park because thousands of migrating birds stop in the area on their way up north. due to the large number of birders that come to see the birds, the park management needs to know how many visitors come. thus our job for the first two weeks of project is to count how many cars enter the park at specific times and how many visitors are in each car. this will hep the park calibrate their car counters that are present at the entrance to the park. we stayed in oak harbor on monday night and on tuesday we started work. we posted up in one of the five spots that were designated for us and counted for a few hours. we then had to go back home.

We returned to the park on thursday and spent the day counting the number of visitors entering the park. we collected a large amount of Data at different spots. at about two we went to a ceremony which kicked off "the biggest week in American birding" and had some really good cake. me and Ian then walked around the trails of the park and got to see some really cool wildlife in addition to having some close encounters with a family of geese and a snake which we thought was dead but in fact wasn't. we stayed the night on thursday which included some very good dinner by ian. and on friday we kicked the day off with a breakfast. while frying up some bacon we set off a smoke alarm and due to the fact that the facility which we were staying at is a government building the police came and had to file a report. we counted for about three hours before having to come home due to ian having a track meet.

Meat causes cancer? -Post three

Yesterday Ezgi and I took a Pilates class from a little old woman who was stronger than both of us. She explained that Pilates is a slow moving type of exercise that is designed to allow the muscles work deliberately and precisely, allowing the participant to concentrate on the motions they are doing. After the class my abs were very swore even though I did not notice them working that hard turning the class. After the class Tom, the head of the raw foods kitchen, had Ezgi and I watch a movie about the health benefits of being vegan. The doctor in the video basically said that protein from animals’ causes cancer and that humans were never suppose to sustain themselves on meat. Furthermore, he claimed that processed food causes cancer and that the only thing people should consume is whole vegetables and some fruits. He talked about a lot of correlation studies about people from different parts of the world and their cancer rates in relation to the amount of meat they consume. Ezgi and I do not really buy his argument but it’s interesting to learn about. While watching the video Ezgi and I used the Chi machine, which is suppose to oxygenate the blood and stir up your energy or something along those lines. Basically you but your ankles on the machine and it shakes you back and forth, neither of us really felt a difference. I also sat in the Center’s sauna for an hour, which is probably not healthy but that’s how long they told me to stay in for. I enjoyed it.