Introducing...The Glenn

Ever since I started applying for the AmeriCorps position with the South Whidbey Commons and the Island Coffeehouse and Books, everyone has been incredibly welcoming. After my interview and acceptance, all six people I would work with sent me emails welcoming me to the team.

I finally arrived to the island on Sunday and was impressed by the Sound, with a backdrop of snowy mountaintops. In the evening, I had a chance to get to know the other AmeriCorps volunteers, who are awesome, and of course the wild panther living with us, Samson.

On Tuesday, I started meeting the staff, volunteers, and board members at the Commons and Coffeehouse. Everyone was so positive. The atmosphere was impressively upbeat for having the entire center of the coffeehouse ripped to pieces. Who would not feel at home after a hug from Jo, a talk with Jim, or the positive vibe from Rosie and Gena?

As part of the Coffeehouse and Commons team, I look forward to using experience as a Community Organizer in Peace Corps Costa Rica to help the organization. I’m also excited to start new programs and get new people involved as I get to know the community better.

As well as working with the Coffeehouse and Commons, I’ll be working part time with the City of Langley as a volunteer coordinator for the Neighbor to Neighbor program. This will include disaster preparedness and resource conservation.

Thanks to all of those who have been so welcoming and I’m excited to work with all of you for the next six and a half months.

The walking drum (of construction)

Growing up, I loved to read. All kinds of books really: first Lord of the Rings, then Star Wars books (I can't believe I'm publicly admitting this), then Louis L'Amour, Clive Cussler, and finally, in high school, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner. Through college, my favorites were Cormac McCarthy, Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Wolf. There are some big names in there, but there was one book that ruled them all: The Walking Drum by Louis L'Amour. I read it as early as middle school and as late as senior year of college.

Louis L'Amour wasn't lyrical like Fitzgerald or Wolf, and his books didn't have the profound world-weary wisdom of Hemingway or McCarthy, and the worlds he described weren't complete like those of Tolkien or Tolstoy, but he could tell one helluva story.

The Walking Drum is an epic story set centuries ago, but it is the motif of the walking drum in the novel that continues to intrigue me. In a caravan of merchants, the walking drum was the constant beat of the march forward. From place to place, from fortune to misfortune and birth to death, the walking drum was the heartbeat that gave the travelers courage and reminded them always that what would be would be and all they could do was look forward to the horizon and put foot in front of foot.

Here is a quote from the book: "We often sang as we marched, and there was always the sound of the marching drum, a sound I shall hear all my life, so deeply is it imbedded in the fibers of my being..."

Here at the Commons, on the build site at ICB, I can hear the walking drum. I see us all looking ahead and marching forward. I see the progress as the floor is ripped free, walls torn down, and as if by magic (but really by muscle), sand comes to fill in the holes and cover the gathered rainwater; the sand rises and is leveled by a humming machine (The Whacker), gravel covers it. Flat, ready for the new floor.

Soon - I can see it already, just ahead - I can see the new floor gleaming warm in the sunlight, polished and strong, its foundations deep in this Langley earth. We are getting closer, and I would like to invite all of you in the community to come to the site and see our progress. To join the caravan and march forward with us.

Red cowboy hats, tapas, and the Western Heroes

By all accounts, the night was a success. People from all parts of the community came to Mukilteo Cafe to eat tapas, drink wine, listen to the Western Heroes, and, above all, show their support for the South Whidbey Commons. The support was not limited to simply showing up, either. Boosted by one heck of an auction hosted by Jim Freeman, we raised $8,403 on the night - and that's net income, not revenue. It was perfect, and we had all hands on deck to get it there.

When I arrived at 3 to start setting up, most of the work was already done. The board members were all there, Gena and Rosie, Caitlin and Molly, Mukilteo staff, an ICB volunteer, Sam E, and others who had graciously offered their time and energy to help in any way they could. Rosie and Gena, among others, had done a beautiful job with the decorations.

Also, Jo's idea of using Mardi Gras beads as auction items to sell, for example, $25 of nails or $250 of lights, was executed to perfection by Caitlin and Rosie, with other hands helping too, I'm sure (on the decorating side), and Jim Freeman (on the bullying and selling side). To be honest, I was skeptical. No offense Jo. Maybe it's because of my recent economics and business studies, but I just couldn't understand why people would buy a string of beads with a picture of a golden toilet on it. Where is the incentive, I wondered. Thankfully, I was wrong. They sold like Beanie Babies in 1995.

Also, the music was fantastic. The Western Heroes know their stuff, and several times I had to blindly feel around on the floor for my face after it melted during a guitar solo. As good as the music itself was, though, its result was the true peak. For me and I believe at least Caitlin and Molly, the highlight had to have been seeing Jo and other Board members rush the dance floor and crank the energy up a notch. It really set the tone for the event.

Thank you to every single one of you who support us either financially or with your willingness to volunteer or patronage of the coffeehouse and other programs or simply through your neighborly positive energy. We couldn't do it without each and every one of you.

Bobcats, house cats, and tall trees

I knew it was going to be a good day when I walked in the door and Gena had just finished brewing a pot of Mukilteo Peruvian blend coffee—one of my favorites. The guys were already hard at work picking up where we left off yesterday.

Since I didn’t post yesterday, I’ll quickly sum the day up: we removed the siding (got a little too ferocious on the ripping and was rewarded with a knot on my head where I got drilled by a stray bullet of a siding chunk), the big dogs tore down basically the entire inside of the coffeehouse, and probably a lot of stuff that I just don’t know how to describe. Basically, a lot of stuff happened.

Today, they’ve got a bobcat digging dirt out to create enough of a hole to pour the foundation for the Rosie-dubbed glass room that, despite the connotation of that name, does not have “any more windows than ordinary,” to quote Gena. I’ll try to track down Jim and get more of an insider scoop when I can. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, let me tell you a story about our cat Samson. Great cat, Samson, but apparently he inherited my dad’s fear of heights. He seems to be able to climb just fine—he flies up tree trunks like they’re laid flat across the ground. However, as we discovered last night, he can’t seem to get back down. In fact, he becomes too terrified to even attempt to climb down. I first discovered him up there around 4 and decided to leave him up there as I cleaned my car, hoping he’d finally just quit crying and man up.

He didn’t. At that point, he was pretty low down, maybe 10 feet off the ground. So, I borrowed a painter’s ladder from Jim and Jo, thinking that would be enough. By the time I got back, that little moron had climbed up to about 25 feet—probably crying the whole way up. We were at a loss for a couple of minutes, but then Caitlin remembered we had a slightly taller ladder in the shed, so we leaned it up against the trunk (it topped out at about 8 feet off the ground), and I climbed up the tree in the night rain with my headlamp on. When I got to him and tried to pick him up, he clutched the branch with his claws like I was trying to toss him off a cliff. Anyways, we got him down at last, and that was our excitement for the week.

And the demolition begins...

(This was actually about Tuesday, just got it posted a day late.  More on today and, I suppose, tomorrow soon.)

This week we finally got started with the real work, and let me tell you, we had one heck of a start.  Last week set the precedent for smooth, quick work – despite the gargantuan task –, and it looks like that trend will be continued.  Yesterday, I was around for much of the day, poking my head in intermittently, hoping to be of some use and quickly finding that unless I knew how to operate a jackhammer or was an experienced construction man (neither), I would probably just get in the way.

So at around 12, I headed to the house and met Jo to look at the dimensions of sinks so we could have the info ready for the plumber.  Apparently, all the pipes have to be laid completely, with the ends aligned with where the faucet heads will be, before the concrete can be poured and the floor put in.  She walked down at around 12:30 with her constant companion Duke.  Duke met Samson the cat, Samson arched his back and hissed, Duke wandered off to find a cat food snack, Samson followed discreetly on the counter, and Joe and I got a helpful quote from Seattle Restaurant Supply Store.

All this is to say that the sight that greeted me this morning was a shock.  The interior walls of the coffeehouse were gone, a new door had been cut into the back, a humongous dumpster had been deposited, the side patio concrete had all been removed, and, at 7:55am, the crew was already hard at work again.

Yes sir, that is one heck of a start.