Singing Class

The Randolph County Community Arts Center is right across the street from my house. They have lots of opportunities for singing, dancing, and art classes. With my roommates Matt and Brittany, I took a harmony gospel and folk singing class.

It was six weeks long, and the ten or so participants divided up into two, three and sometimes four part harmony. We learned the harmonies by ear, and many of the songs I knew from the "O, Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack. It was a great to have to sing, but not have to sing by myself. I learned a lot, although I'm not sure I can hold onto a harmony by myself yet.

Here is a recording of some of the songs we sang in class. "Do Lord" and "Angel Band" are particularly good.

Enjoy!

Business as usual

It is hard to keep up on a blog when I don't have internet! And life has started to settle into a pattern so there isn't too much to write about.

One question I am asked by family and friends about my time here is how do I know what I am going to do everyday since I have multiple places/projects that I am working on. Well, two days a week it is pretty easy to know.

Mondays I work at the Historic Beverly/ Rich Mountain Battlefield Visitor Center in Beverly. This involves answering the phone, attending to visitors, and working on other projects they have me doing. Currently that means helping build exhibits and designing a temporary exhibit on Laura Jackson Arnold, Stonewall Jackson's sister who lived in Beverly.

Tuesdays I work in Buckhannon, WV at the Upshur County Historical Society. While there, I work on processing collections (artifacts and documents that have been donated) and organizing the new computer system they have to manage the collections. I am also writing an article for the newsletter that will be published next year about a small town called Hampton. Some of this work I am able to do from home an additional day each week.

Other days, I either come in to work in Beverly on those projects or others, depending on the need. And these coming weeks I will be doing some historic preservation work. The Riverside School, the old African-American school in Elkins, is being stabilized after having gone into disrepair for many years. The plan is to have an education and resource center as well as museum about the African-American heritage of the Elkins area. We are also working on restoring the windows in City Hall simultaneously.

I also have the opportunity to do some conservation work, whether it be wilderness surveys, tree plantings, trail surveying, or tree surveying.

So one of the best things about my job is that there is always something new and different to do!

Halloween

For Halloween, my roommates and I got dressed up for the Augusta Heritage Center's costumed square dance!

(L to R: Count Snackula, Michael Flatley, Dinosaur, Kitty Wells and Lucille Ball.
Aka Kevin, Matt, Becky, Brittany and me)

This is the first picture of all of us together, and I think our costumes reflect our personalities nicely.

Charleston

This past week, I went to AmeriCorps training and swearing in, in Charleston. We had two and a half days of training, which is part of the Mountain State Leaders program - a program that we continue to attend throughout the year. Once a month, we will meet in Fairmont, WV to conduct different modules of the leadership training. Having been to leadership trainings before, it wasn't a very exciting couple of days.

[Our team! L to R: Sarah, Donna, Jess, Meagan, and Anna]

But, we did get to go to Milton to do a corn maze! We divided up in teams and set out through the dark corn maze. We were really enthusiastic, but not very good at first. When we finally came up with a plan, which was to send scouts out to figure out if the paths just converged again or would actually lead us somewhere, we finally got somewhere. But our group was still pretty bad; it took us 10 minutes longer than the rival boys group...

The swearing in ceremony was also interesting. We sat with all of the other year-long AmeriCorps members and listened to a great speech by a former AmeriCorps, who as an adult finally found her calling by being an AmeriCorps member. We also got to meet Joe Manchin III, the govenor of West Virginia. He too gave a speech, but unfortunately it was not as eloquent or interesting as the one that proceeded him.

[Joe Manchin, III]

After the ceremony we had lunch and got to explore the new West Virginia History museum. I realized that I knew more about WV history than I thought! The museum was well laid-out, the right amount of interactive, had great exhibits and was overall very impressive.

The Mountain State Forest Festival

Every year, Elkins is home to the Mountain State Forest Festival (aka Forest Fest). It involves Elkins growing in size from 6,000 people to 20,000; a lumberjack competition; multiple parades; a carnival; the crowning of "Queen Silvia" and more. Sounds like fun, right?

Well, now I officially feel like an Elkins local because I do not like Forest Fest. The people walking around the streets make me nervous and uncomfortable, the parades involve streets being blocked off and lots of fire trucks (not to mention all the trash that got left on my lawn after people sat on it to watch the parades), the carnival means there are a lot of sketchy people around town, and the crowning of a 'beauty' queen isn't really that exciting. But by far the worst part was a speaker that was playing a country music radio station outside of my house. It wasn't all the time, but it was at 8am on Saturday morning. And I felt like I was in 1984 and Big Brother was watching and playing commercials about why coal is awesome.

I guess a benefit is that it brings money to Elkins. But I won't be in Elkins again during Forest Fest if I'm not forced to.

Working!

So I have been pretty busy lately with working and trying to organize a work schedule. I actually have multiple projects/ places to work so I'm not at the same place every day. I have about half my time in Historic Beverly helping the exhibit designer finish the last of a series of exhibits that he has been working on for about two years. I'm excited to learn more about the exhibit process and help finish the really great exhibits that are at the museum.

The other majority of my time will be spent doing collections management at the Upshur County Historical Society in Buckhannon, WV. For a small historical society, they have a massive collection that needs to be put into and electronic format. They also have a museum open during the summer with new exhibits every year. Hopefully I'll be able to help with that some as well.

Finally, a small amount of my time will be done doing hands-on historic preservation work. I have only worked on that one day so far, but I got to use power tools and learn how to frame a wall. But I learned that I am pretty bad with a hammer. My co-workers just think that I need some practice to get better. We also have workshops and training sessions to learn how to do preservation trades. Last weekend we went to Hinton, WV to learn about masonry. I was again learning things that I had never really thought to think about - like how to appropriately match new mortar with the original mortar of a building.

Right now a lot of time is being spent on the Mountain State Forest Festival which turns Elkins into a crazy town with lots of people! More on that later...

My House!

I found a place to live by sheer luck. I was in the right place at the right time. And the results have been wonderful!

I live with four other people. Three of whom are VISTA* AmeriCorps volunteers with the Augusta Heritage Center and the fourth is a student at Davis and Elkins College. We have like-minded opinions about our expectations for living together and are sort of turning into a commune. We make dinner and eat together most of the time, take turns doing dishes and cleaning, recycle and reuse everything that we can, and love playing music together. (We have three banjo players, two guitar players, a mandolin player, two fiddlers and three dancers... it gets a little crazy sometimes.)

Here are some photos:

[My room]

[The living room]

[From the dining room into the living room]

[The kitchen]

[The dining room]

[The back porch]

Come visit and see for yourself!

The Valley

Last week, two days of our training were to take place in Canaan Valley, which is known for its ski areas. Since Canaan is about an hour away and we were going to have to be there for two days anyway, a couple of us got the idea to camp out up there. In the end, it was about 12 of us who stayed the night.

The first day in Canaan began at the Canaan Valley State Park, where we took a guided naturalist walk to learn more about the ecology of the area. Although it was only about a two mile hike, it took us about two hours; there was a lot of stopping and talking and discussions about everything. In the afternoon we learned about wilderness surveys that we will be doing. In the National Forest there are wilderness areas that are trying to meet certain specifications. Some of us will be surveying those to see what the impact of people using the wilderness areas is. We went to the Otter Creek Wilderness Area and hiked in to see if we could find campsites. Sometimes we are just going to survey the area and record what the area looks like, if it is too close to the path or water source, what kind of damage has been done to vegetation, etc. We found three campsites, all which didn't meet the guidelines. But apparently this is common for campsites that are close to the trailheads where people arn't really concerned with being in the wilderness and arn't familiar with 'leave no trace' practices.

After we were done, we got to the campsite. It was down a long, dusty road on Canaan Valley Institute land, right by the Blackwater River. Although apparently where we were was downstream from a power plant because the water did not look very appealing at all. We set up camp and had more tents than people, so I didn't get a chance to use my new tent.

The next day I really felt like I was part of a government work program like the CCC. We spent the day trail building for CVI. Ken, the land manager, is an expert trail builder and gave us an overview of some concepts of sustainable train building. Our job was to help build some switchback turns on a trail that was being converted from a partial old logging trail to a hiking and mountain biking trail. It was amazing to start with something that wasn't a sustainable trail at all, work really hard for the afternoon and come up with a tangible, visible difference that we had made. As my first hands-on work project, it was a lot of fun.

Such a bad blogger!

I am such a terrible blogger! I didn't want to be one of those people who starts a blog and then never publishes anything, but that seems to be what is happening. I have been really busy lately getting started with work and doing all the stuff there is to do in town. Here are some things that I promise I am going to blog about soon:

My house
The Randolph County Fair
My trip to Canaan Valley
Swimming
My first days of work

I promise!

Seneca Rocks

Last weekend, Sean and I went to Seneca Rocks in the Seneca Rocks/ Spruce Knob National Recreation Area. It is about a half hour from Elkins, but it actually lies on the other side of the Eastern Continental Divide. This means that the watershed is actually part of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, and the Discovery Center is part of the Chesapeake Bays Gateway Network. I first became familiar with that network working at Patuxent, which is also a member. It was fun to see such broad connections of tourism sites!

The Seneca Rocks are well-known for rock climbing, but there is also a mile and a half long trail that you can climb to get to the top of the rocks. Since Seneca Rocks is small and far away from any towns, I didn't expect there to be many people. But it turned out to be pretty crowded, probably because it was a holiday weekend. The view from the top was beautiful... but I forgot my camera so there are no pictures.

At the bottom of the trail, there is also a homestead set up to educate visitors about settlers of West Virginia. I was also impressed because there was so much going on! The homestead included an apple cider making demonstration, where they used apples from their garden and an apple press. The results were delicious. In the Discovery Center, we sat briefly and listened to music by a hammered-dulcimer player. He also had a variety of Native American instruments that he let the audience play.

We ended our trip with a late lunch picnic and headed home before a huge rain came. I learned that Elkins is on the 'rainy side' of the mountains and it can rain for days at a time. And maybe snow too...

Welcome to Elkins

This past weekend, Sean and I loaded up my car and the family van with all my stuff and drove over the mountains to Elkins. We got in around 3, unpacked, built my bed, and had an awesome dinner with my roommates, who have been in the house for about a week and a half.

The house is absolutely awesome. It is an old Victorian style house with a wrap-around porch, wood floors, and real character. The rent is also incredibly cheap. But, we also don't have internet access in the house. So today, after an entire weekend of no internet, I am sitting at a coffee shop down the street that has free wireless. There are a lot of places that offer free internet, but unfortunately I can't sit outside and use it since I have to plug my computer in. Apparently the plan is to try to get the wireless password from the firehouse or the college, but we'll see how that works out. Until then, the posting might be sparse!

Politics? I said, "Noothanku."

I started out a Political Science major at UMBC until I realized I didn't really like politics at all. Sure, I read the news and stay updated on current events and have opinions, but I was not nearly out spoken and crazy enough to deal with it all. Nor do I like political blogs. They are kind of a narcissistic place for people to write about their own opinions and assume others want to read about it. (Yea, all blogs are narcissistic, I admit it - the book Julie & Julia made me think about that more.)

That all being said, I can't help but share this video with you. In it, Glenn Beck, a conservative news host for Fox News who most recently is known for the advertisers who left his show after attacks on Obama, basically makes a comparison between AmeriCorps and the formation of Hitler's SS and Saddam Hussein's personal army. While basically anyone can realize that this is pretty nutty talk, his "news" is basically a slight basis in fact with a whole lot of speculation and misinformation.

With the whole no politics/ no political blogging in mind, part of the bigger issue is that people really don't know what AmeriCorps is. A lot of people assume I will be teaching, like Teach for America, and Glenn Beck assumes that all volunteers are in the NCCC, in which volunteers do live together and wear uniforms while working and is a continuation of FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps. After explaining what I will be doing with AmeriCorps, which surprises most people, I also explain that through the AmeriCorps program, which in a lot of cases pairs individuals with specific non-profit organizations, volunteers can find a number of opportunities from creating recreation opportunities in inner cities, to developing community gardens, to working on self-sustaining farms, to grant writing for an organization.

Or maybe the brainwashing has begun...

Spruce and Guns

So what else did I do on my trip to West Virginia? Some things that I thought were very West Virginian. And a good sign of things to come.

In the afternoon after I had 'looked' at some houses, my one host Evan, had been reading about a section of red spruce forest that had been missed by surveyors around the turn of the century. The result is a piece of virgin forest with 250 year old trees! Because red spruce cannot grow at a lower elevation, the one replanted section of forest creates a stark contrast to forests I am used to. The spruce, with their thick, coniferous needles, block out almost all sun light and prevents anythig except moss from growing on the forest floor. The virgin forest has started to change, which the interpretive text panels kept saying over and over again, leaving spruce mixed in with maples, beeches, and other hardwood trees. It was amazing to see these huge trees and realize that it was only because of sheer luck that it wasn't logged with the rest of West Virginia. It was great to be able to just on a whim go look at something and experience something new.

That evening I talked with my other host Russell about hunting and shooting. I had never shot a gun, but hunting seemed to be a favorite topic of conversation. He agreed to take me to the old quarry on Rich Mountain the next day for target practice. I was really excited. Along the way we stopped by Beverly and looked at some work the historic preservation team had been doing and met some volunteers. When we got up to the quarry, Russell went over gun safety, how to load, hold, and shoot his single-barrel 20-gauge shotgun. My excitement turned to nervousness. Guns were a thing of movies, T.V. and videogames. Not shooting at green glass bottles in a quarry in West Virginia. After Russell shot, I gave it a try. I couldn't shoot one he threw in the air. That was a little forward. So I tried shooting a bottle sitting on some rocks a distance away. With the first one, my hand was steady. As I shot, I got more nervous and shaky rather than more relaxed. Finally I was able to shoot some bottles and feel like maybe target practice would be a source of fun in my new West Virginian life.

Finding a house...

I am a planner. I like to have this organized and ready before I start anything. With school work, this often manifested itself with writing an outline, getting quotes, and organizing a whole paper before I started working. [Well, I guess that's only true when I was serious about writing something...]

In the case of moving to Elkins, I wanted to be sure I had a place to live before I moved out there. My first trip with my mom was intended to start that, but it was pretty unsuccessful.

My first instinct in finding a place to live was craigslist.org and the Internet. When I realized the Internet is not how things get done in Elkins, I was stuck in the conundrum that so many of my generation are: what do you do when the information you want isn't online? Needless to say, it means you have to look in print materials (like the local newspaper) and actually call people (like local real estate agents and people I know in Elkins). I also realized that I needed to see Elkins to figure out where I would want to live and find some of those non-Internet resources.

When my mom and I got to Elkins, I wasn't ready to look for a place live. I needed to work out the contacts, and then it was too late to actually go look at properties and it was almost two months until I would be moving anyway. But it was nice to figure out the layout of the town and meet some key people I would be working with.

Last week when I went to Elkins, I had scheduled to look at some houses and had a better idea of what the market looked like. But even after my first appointment at a property management office, I was left disappointed. Although I wanted to go look at two three-bedroom houses that would be available September first, the woman basically refused to let me see the houses because the previous renters had "left them in such bad condition" and they were painting and putting in new carpets. I went and tried to look into the windows of the houses, but it didn't work too well. I felt like I had driven all that way and my best two options were not working out.

Then, I met my hosts, who are both AmeriCorps with AFHA right now. They lightly tried to convince me that in Elkins, things just happen; you can't plan too far ahead. They had come to Elkins without a place to live and found a decent apartment quickly. But that's not my style!

My next adventure was looking at a house that belonged to the mayor. I had been to Elkins before and thought I knew where it was. I drove around for about 1/2 hour before I realized that I didn't know where it was and I couldn't contact the mayor to ask him where it was. [Yes, I haven't even moved to Elkins yet and blew off the mayor. I went the next day to his office to apologize but he wasn't there.]

My last viable option was that Becky, a friend of my hosts, had found a five-bedroom house for rent and needed one more person to live there. Becky came over and gave me the landlady's number, so I was able to set up an appointment to see the house the next day. In the end, it was exactly as my hosts had described it. I found a place to live and it just kinda happened. Although I am indecisive, I just went for it because I knew that it meant I was leaving Elkins with a place to move in September; organized and ready before I got there.

Elkins Overview

So next year I will be in Elkins. Here is some basic information about Elkins (which I probably should have looked up before I visited this weekend):

Elevation: 1,926ft. (But to get there, you have to climb above 3,500 ft.)
Population: about 7,000 (Elkins is also home to Davis and Elkins College, which has about 700 students.)
Founded: 1890 and named after Senator Stephen Benton Elkins.

It is located on the edge of the Monongahela National Forest, which has a lot of outdoor recreation opportunities. In town, the railroad depot serves as a tourist attraction with trains that take trips throughout the summer. In the past, this depot was run by the Western Maryland Railway for both commercial and passenger trains.

Pointers and Advice

I just got back from visiting my friend Maribeth who lives in Denver. If you have read my other blog, you'll know her as someone I met in Chile and visited me in Sweden and Germany last summer.

My trip out to Denver was fun on so many levels, but it was also a learning experience. Maribeth started an AmeriCorps VISTA position with Growing Home, a non-profit that helps children and their families, last January. Although I had already heard about AmeriCorps options, Maribeth's experience made me want to look into what possibilities there were. After research and searching, that's how I found the AFHA.

The first piece of advice Maribeth imparted on me was about food assistance. In one interview for an AmeriCorps position I had, they said straightforward that the living stipend was low enough to qualify for food stamps. I figured that at less than $12,000 a year for living, that made sense.

I had no idea how food stamps worked or what the process was to qualify. Luckily, Maribeth had already gone through the experience, which sounded actually more like a complex process, and could give me some pointers. Although it is different for each state, after doing some research, it seems like I will have to go through an equally complex application process, which probably won't start until a month or two after I have started my position.

This coming Sunday and Monday I will get a better idea about the coming year because I will be visiting Elkins. I am going to meet with the director of the AFHA, checking out Elkins, and possibly finding a place to live!

A bit more information...

With my upcoming tour of duty in West Virginia a lot of people have been asking me what exactly I will be doing with the Appalachian Forest Heritage Area. Before, I had simply said it would either be heritage development with museum or historical societies in the area or hands-on historic preservation of buildings in the Elkins area. Now, I have somewhat of a better idea of what I will be doing, but the final details won't come until I have actually started.

It looks like I will be spending half my time with Historic Beverly Preservation, which is located in Beverly, WV, about 10 minutes from Elkins. Part of that time will be spent at the Beverly Visitor Center, but it seems like I will also be able to work on a project of interest to me which will encourage heritage tourism development. Still pretty vague, I know.

The other half of my time may be spent doing historic preservation in the Elkins/Beverly area. This is hands-on work that repairs and construction on historic buildings. I may also be doing smaller heritage tourism projects for other organizations. All of these opportunities excite me, since I have the possibility to do a lot of different tasks and learn a lot. One of my personal goals for this year is to learn as much as I can about historic preservation, heritage development and museum work; I hope doing different projects will accomplish that.

A new experience, a new blog.

In celebration of National AmeriCorps Week, I am launching my AmeriCorps blog!


AmeriCorps is a program of the federal government that works with local and national nonprofit groups to address critical needs throughout the U.S. The three types of programs (State and National; Volunteers in Service to America; National Civilian Community Corps) serve all types of communities throughout the U.S. in a variety of different ways. To learn more about AmeriCorps in general, click here.


In September, I will be going to Elkins, West Virginia to serve with the Appalachian Forest Heritage Area. "The Appalachian Forest Heritage Area (AFHA) is a regional, grassroots effort to integrate central Appalachian forest history, culture, natural history, products, and forestry management into a heritage tourism initiative to promote rural community development" located across 18 counties in West Virginia and western Maryland.

What will I be doing? I'm not exactly sure yet. The AFHA will have 17 AmeriCorps volunteers serving in positions of heritage tourism development, conservation, and historic preservation projects. I was drawn to the AFHA because of my interest in public history, museums, and hsitoric interpretation. I am looking forward to learning a lot and helping the community while doing something I really enjoy.