The Baboon Congress

Volunteers

82 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Jim in Clark’s Grove.

I see two kinds of volunteers in my world – plants and people.

Volunteer people give up their free time to do work they feel is important. Sometimes they’re thought of as being not as good or as serious as a paid worker. Plants are called volunteers if they show up someplace they aren’t expected. Often they’re yanked out and tossed away.

But what if we tried to change the way we view these volunteers?

Various plants are always popping up in my garden or yard without being invited. One that appears on its own in many places is Feverfew. It is usually found in places where I have applied some of my homemade compost, thanks to my old habit of putting Feverfew plants that went to seed in the bin. This year, before I did any tilling in my garden, I decided to transplant some of the young Feverfew plants into a flowerbed instead. By using these plants that came up on their own as bedding plants they have become an integral part of my gardening efforts. Now I’d miss them if they were gone, and I no longer think of them as just volunteers.

Doug is the first person I think of when I think of people who do volunteer work. In his last years my father lived with us and also in a nursing home. Doug was a volunteer in an organization that recruited people to make visits to shut ins, and he came by to see my dad almost weekly in both places. Dad began to look forward to Doug’s visits, in part because Doug understood how much some shut in people need to have company. And Doug approached this work like it was meaningful and not just an activity to fill his spare time. For my dad, it became something much more than a random visit – it was an essential service that improved his life.

Just as I have found ways to use Feverfew that make it more than a volunteer plant, people like Doug have found ways to be helpful that go beyond what is expected of a mere “volunteer.”

What have you volunteered to do?

82 thoughts on “Volunteers”

  1. hey jim . i was out picking volunteers from myhosta beds this weekend and when i went to the gare center to pick somethin up i realized that part of what i had been picking was the perennials i had bought in years gone by. with the bird food going to seed and the other invasive stuff that grows so well if left unchecked i try to sty on top of it and i get a little more pro removal than i should.
    as for my volunteering i am so bad at committees that i do what i can to avoid them. i am on the board of directors for my daughters basketball league and my term is up this year and i wil do what i can to avoid being part of that again, i have been a baseball coach, basketball coach, art director, music director and precinct chair over the past fistfull of years and i am ok as a coach, i love working with the kids but when they dont ask you back there is obviously a problem. today my involvement is down to political stuff. i round up folks to run for office, help them get focused raise funds, pound signs door knock call center detail crap that drives me crazy but that needs to be done. i help organize the district and get involved where i can. i do not like the committee end of this stuff either. give me a job and ill let you know when its done. dont make me sit in too many meetings discussing what we will be discussing. drives me nuts,

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  2. Rise and Raise Your Hands to Volunteer Baboons!

    In the last few years while my work has been so demanding, I’ve volunteered less. I used to volunteer at church a lot, until the last minister, a control freak, reduced my desire to do anything voluntary around him, including attending his church. In my time I’ve planted gardens for others, maintained gardens, pulled weeds, walked to raise money for MS and Breast Cancer research, served meals out of church kitchens, served on committees, taught Sunday School, led Tiger Cub lessons, etc. My favorite is to contribute food or flowers to any event that needs it.

    In my garden I usuallly have volunteer Cosmos, Sunfdlowers. spider flowers, and Morning Glories. i try to guide them into places I want them.

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  3. Hey Jim, good blog idea. I have a dandelion yard, although there are still a few patches of bluegrass lawn volunteering to compete with the dandelions here and there.

    I used to volunteer for MPR by answering phones during pledge drives. Before the big remodeling of a few years ago they didn’t have a decent place to house the phone volunteers, so they stuck us under a stairwell in a room with bad acoustics. I have poor hearing anyway, so I had trouble making sense of what I heard on those phones. Almost the first call I took was a guy offering a generous donation for the memory of his dead partner (AIDS, probably, for this was the 1980s). When I couldn’t hear him well enough to get the spelling of names right, he almost hung up on me in disgust.

    For many years I served on the committee that makes the magazine for the International Wolf Center. Then i had a catfight with their new editor. I told him I put up with people like him when I get paid for writing, but since I was writing “for fun” I had no reason to put up with him. And I walked. Last week I had a great meeting with the new (even newer) editor, and I’ve now resumed wolf magazine volunteering. A-a-a-a-wOOOOOOO!

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        1. No back then my hearing was fine, although I did find all the chatter from the other volunteers on the phone in the same room distracting.

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      2. I did that here in Rochester. It was just me; I sat in the office at someone’s desk and I don’t think the phone rang at all. I remember Mindy Ratner had come down to the station to sit in with the local person. And hanging on the wall next to the desk was an MPR contact sheet and there was Garrison Keillors phone number!

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  4. I thought it would be interesting to make a connection between the way some volunteer plants can be fitted into a garden and the way some volunteer people serve important roles in communities. I had a little trouble putting this thought into words and Dale provided a lot of help by doing some fairly extensive editing. I guess there are all kinds of roles for both plants and people as volunteers, but sometimes there are places where they can make a big impact and fit into a niche that you wouldn’t usually expect to be filled by a volunteer. In fact I see some volunteer work as a necessary part of practicing good citizenship and, sometimes, volunteer plants can become good citizens in the plant communities we maintain if put to good use.

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  5. I volunteer for the local public school music boosters and for things at church. i will be glad to be done with the music boosters since I really hate fundraising. Now that daughter is a senior, I am on my last year for that. I also find that I volunteer for public speaking and education, mainly for foster parents and mental health professionals and social services workers, which I also hate doing but that I am sort of good at. I guess I like to teach but stress out over the preparation. I tell myself every time when I am done that I will never do it again, but i never seem to stick to my guns and say no when people ask. I presented at a major conference sponsored by the ND Department of Human Services this May, and I really don’t want to do it again. As I developed the material on work time they couldn’t pay me for it but I got to attend some other presentations and got free CEU’s.

    Husband volunteers for the Junior Master Gardener Program and Unified Softball, which pairs community members and developmentally disabled individuals on softball teams. He has a lot of fun doing that. He would like to volunteer at Head Start when he retires. Now that would be loads of fun and I hope he does it, since he is so good with small children.

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  6. I am volunteering for the neighborhood cleanup on Saturday. Volunteers are stationed at large dumpsters in the yard of a local trash hauler, and help residents dispose of whatever they cleaned out of their garage or basement this spring. Mattresses, carpet, broken concrete, defunct computer monitors, all the stuff that doesn’t fit neatly into the residential trash receptacle.

    In the yard: Virginia waterleaf, jewelweed, purple bellflower, oregano, shasta daisy, nanking cherry, honeysuckle, lots of buckthorn and red maples.

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    1. That damn Virginia waterleaf is in competition with the creeping Charlie to take over a large chunk of my back yard, and those purple bellflowers are everywhere. Thanks for volunteering at the cleanup, Linda.

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  7. Good morning baboons.

    Where do I start? Over the years, so much of what I have done has been volunteer work. It all started roughly a year after I separated from wasband. Having lived in the Twin Cities only a short time, I knew no one other than the people I worked with, and had no friends or relatives close by; I had to find something meaningful to do with all that spare time. I signed up for counseling training at Face-to-Face, and once I had completed that signed up for doing phone counseling Friday evenings from 7 to 11 PM. During that period I began to develop friendships, several of which endure to this day, with fellow volunteer counselors with similar interests. I quit after a couple of years when my social life had evolved to the point that Friday evenings could be filled with more fun activities.

    I have served on the boards of Danish American Fellowship, Riverview Crimewatch, Riverview Garden Club, and Twin Cities Legal Administrators, and I agree with tim, that this type of volunteer work was the least satisfying, perhaps because it is the same type of work I did in my professional life.

    I’ve volunteered at the Cedar Cultural Center and various folk festivals put on by the now defunct Minnesota Folk Festival; great fun that led to more friendships. I’ve helped establish and plant the Garden of Good Hearts here on the West Side. This led to more friendships with neighbors interested in gardening, and that in turn spawned a group of women who under the tutelage of a journeyman carpenter set out to become handywomen. For a couple of years we worked on a number of homes being rehabbed in the neighborhood, in the process learning carpentry, tuck pointing, sheet rocking, and plumbing skills.

    Volunteering is a great way to expand your social network and learning new skills while doing important work, and I think most people who volunteer find that they benefit far more than they give. There is something very satisfying and rewarding in knowing that you’re making a difference.

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  8. My number one volunteer activity has been being a Big Brother with Big Brothers BIg Sisters. I’m finishing up an 11+ year match with a terrific kid who has endured a chaotic childhood and has one of the most resilient spirits I’ve ever seen. I’m proud to say he earned his GED a few months ago, after dropping out of high school in his junior year. The irony here is that he “graduated” 3 months ahead of his peers.

    His other major accomplishment is staying out of jail so far, which is also huge because his father did some time, and children of criminals tend to follow in the parent’s footsteps.

    Zach did suffer through a two-year period of drug abuse but got treatment and seems to have taken control of that problem. Since he’s always been living on the edge (thanks to a seriously troubled mother, who seems to have precipitated many of his problems), there’s no guarantee that he’ll continue developing into a “successful” adult, but I know in my heart I gave him my best shot and if it hadn’t been for the BBBS program, he and other kids just like him would be worse off than they are.

    If you are looking for a hands on volunteer activity, I can’t recommend BBBS highly enough. Most of us Bigs believe we get more out of the match than our Littles.

    Chris

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  9. Since 1998, I’ve volunteered to help run the largest comic book convention in Minnesota (and this side of Chicago). As part of our show, we support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (helps provide benefits and legal counsel to freelance comic creators that have helped make Marvel and DC what they are), the food shelf, Greyhound Pets of America (MN branch), Mpls. College of Arts & Design, the Loft Literary Center, and the Lupus Foundation of MN.

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    1. How could I forget, lots of Queen Anne’s Lace, although this falls in the category of a plant I intentionally planted before I realized how generously it proliferates. I have major clump of it that will make lovely cut flowers when it blooms.

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  11. Morning–

    I think I used to volunteer more. Lately it’s all work and kid stuff.
    Garden? I plant it, I walk away, whatever survives can stay. Well, mostly– I might weed it once as I walk by pulling button weed and lambs quarter.
    Last year we added a flagpole and I did some minor landscaping around it. I transplanted a couple ferns around it knowing they probably wouldn’t survive in this sunny location. And they died off. But they came back this spring which surprised me. And I’ve planted some bulbs now… so I’m sort of hesitant to pull anything because I’m not sure what’s what in there anymore.

    I think I killed off some cucumbers yesterday. Was doing the ‘annual weeding’ of the garden and wasn’t paying attention that the cucumbers were already sprouted.
    (You have to understand; ‘garden’ for me is just whatever corner of whatever field close to the house I decide should be the ‘garden’ this year. Anything closer and the darn chickens will be in there and have it all dug up. Maybe that’s why the eggs taste so good? All my vegetable seeds?)

    Volunteering; I’ve helped out at the schools when the kids were younger. We’ve helped w/ the Senior year end party. I put up lights or ‘consulted’ with churches or schools on various theater things.
    Our son volunteers at ‘Friendship Place’; sort of an after school program. He enjoys playing with the kids there. And on his mission trip to Mexico last week worked at an orphanage but mostly pulling weeds and digging out sharp, prickly plants. Didn’t bring any children home with him.

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  12. It looks like by trying to make the connection between volunteer plants and volunteer people I mostly introduced what seems to be a good topic, people volunteering. As a person who loves gardening I do appreciate hearing about the volunteer plants that some of you have mentioned.

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  13. What lovely lists of volunteers… plant and people! I have a love/hate relationship with plants that come up and spread… some of them I adore (bring on hostas and lilies and irises any day), but some of them drive me nuts (spider grass, creeping charlie, borage).

    I have a long long list of volunteering that the Teenager and I do, from monthly Feed My Starving Children and Loaves & Fishes to my big coat project every fall. I also support a couple of groups (knitting group, sick kids, cards for servicefolk) with my stamping.

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        1. Oh, I lOVE arugula, and I don’t mind having a forest of it. But it is all self sown volunteers from one plant I planted two years ago. As far as I’m concerned, it can take over the lawn if it wants to!

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  14. Volunteer plants include, but are not limited to: lemon balm, tiny maple trees, columbine, and violets, And dandelions, which are attempting to totally take over the little bit of lawn here. Last year, I had a huge, sprawling volunteer cantaloupe plant. It grew better than most things I planted last year.

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  15. My big volunteering these days is at Daughter’s school – a short art curriculum in the fall through the Mpls Institute of Arts, the 6 lessons of music appreciation with a curriculum through Schmitt music. Love ’em both. The music is great fun – I can make up more of my own lessons with those and it’s such a treat listening to what the kids hear in the music, how they make connections between the pieces and composers, and it’s just plain neat to know that while they probably won’t remember most of what we talk about, at least they’ll know that classical music and older jazz (think Ellington or Scott Joplin) is are cool. This year I did a project with my two classes for the piece we studied by local composer Steve Heitzig – our volunteer coordinator saw the outcome (creating musical scores using stuff from nature, like twigs and rocks and leaves and flowers) and sent a picture to Mr. Heitzig. Got a nice note back. Cool stuff. I’ve done other volunteering too (neighborhood board, event planning, theater stuff, one dubious year of being a treasurer for a service group…), but not nearly as fun or rewarding as working with the kids. Might just have to continue with it after Daughter is off to middle school (if they’ll let me).

    Volunteers in my garden, well…yeah, we have a number of those. We have an aggressive shrub rose that we have ruthlessly whacked off in several places to keep it from choking out other things. The one branch my husband stuck in the ground along the driveway (not root toner or anything, just lopped it off close to the ground and poked it in across the driveway, gave it some water) is not its own bush 2 years later. Like Ben, I’m sort of a benign neglect sort of gardener. Though I take a fair amount of joy naming the plants I got from friends (Cathy’s Irises, Rach’s ferns, Mike’s wild ginger, Steph’s yellow primrose-y thing…)

    OT – Sorry I missed yesterday’s discussions. BiR – thanks for sharing your stories and memories. If you ever need a lefse buddy, let me know – I have only made it a couple of times, but I’m pretty good at rolling the dough out. 🙂 And Jim, if you ever want to make krumkake let me know – I have my grandma’s recipe (including her vague direction to beat the batter “long and hard”) and I’m willing to share. Thinking on yesterday’s topic and today’s, sharing an enthusiasm for music is one way to keep connected to my dad and to my maternal grandfather – both were musicians and enjoyed sharing their love of music.

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    1. I think it’s great that parents volunteer at their kids’ school, and your projects, Anna, sound like a lot of fun. Can’t imagine that they wouldn’t want to keep you.

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  16. Why am I not surprised that Baboons are a volunteering group?

    My people volunteering goes in a rollercoaster pattern. I start saying yes, yes, yes to requests until it gets to be too much. Then I say no, no, no for a while until I’ve forgotten that too many responsibilities is too many.
    I think I’m actually at a rare plateau at the moment.
    Currently, I’m on the memorial committee (funeral and memorial receptions) at church. I’m heading up the A Brush With Kindness sub-project for the church’s Habitat for Humanity involvement. I wash towels for the church kitchen (a staff member decided to save money by giving up the paid towel service).

    In the past, I have worked on Habitat builds, helped with VS’s coat project, been on a women’s retreat planning committee, worked on fundraising auctions for church, my son’s school and a camp I attend each year. I’ve also been registrar for the camp, block club leader and baking and clean-up worker bee for all kinds of organizations.

    I have discovered that I MUCH prefer to be given a job that doesn’t require too much planning or brain work (see baking and clean-up above). I don’t mind committees and meetings but I really don’t do well having responsibilities for organizing or recruiting.

    Plant voluteers: I used to have tons of cilantro that self seeded but it has dwindled. Mostly it’s dandelions, violets, plantain, lily of the valley and unnamed (by me) weeds. I tried to herd the violets into one spot but they are very independent. A friend gave me some bee balm to help start my rain garden. They are very frisky in the reproduction department.

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    1. I had forgotten until you mentioned “self seeding” about the sweat pea I planted a few years back. I was told it is an annual, but it reseeds itself and comes back with a vengeance every year. Lovely plant. Bought it because we call Daughter “Sweat Pea” and like Daughter, it thrives with a little guidance (a sturdy tomato frame) and encouragement (water, sunshine…that’s about it).

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      1. I love sweet peas, but for some reason, have no luck growing them. Their fragrance is so sweet and delicate; same thing with lilies of the valley. I’m making the assumption that a lot the volunteer plants mentioned by various baboons aren’t necessarily disliked. I love columbines and don’t have the heart to rip them out even when they show up in places where I don’t necessarily want them. In early spring I love all the violets that pop up in uninvited places. A little later in the season, I rip them out, trusting that they will return next year.

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        1. I like most of my volunteer plants, too. The columbine seem to be short-lived perennials – they rarely seem to be in the same place from year to year, so they must be reseeding themselves. It’s okay with me, I love columbine and I even took some of Robin’s baby columbine to supplement what I had in my yard.

          I forgot to mention my morning glories. I bought one pack of Grandpa Ott’s Morning Glories several years ago – never had to buy any since.

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  17. Jim, My favorite volunteer plant story comes from my farming friends. At one point the option to receive treated sediment from the sewage plant was available. It worked wonderfully as a fertilizer, but nothing they did killed tomato seeds. The farmers abandoned the option because it was hard to harvest corn and soy beans with tomato vines mixed in.

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      1. It says “treated sediment from the sewage plant,” Steve. You wouldn’t be dumping raw sewage onto your land. (If you did, the yard nazis on your block would be wishing they hadn’t complained about your dandelions.)

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  18. I’m glad to hear about all the volunteering and the volunteer plants both of which seem to be abundant as far as this group is concerned. And some times there are too many of those volunteer plants and there are some problems with the volunteer work. However, I guess no one needs to tell this group about the rewards of volunteering and the need for it. And, as Linda said, if some plants didn’t volunteer, they would be lost.

    I have been noticing volunteer plants more than ever this spring because I have only tilled the parts of my garden that needed to be planted close to the time they were planted and still have some untilled areas that I haven’t planted. I’ve harvested a few meals of lambs quarter that made very good cooking greens from the untilled areas and there is a big patch of volunteer lettuce in another untilled area that has provided many salads. However, some of the lambs quarter has grown so tall that it had to be pulled and discarded. Also, there was too much volunteer lettuce and I had to be turn some of it under.

    One of my volunteer activities is participating in the Seed Savers Exchange. My garden has a lot of volunteer lettuce and some other volunteer vegetables because I let the lettuce and other vegetables go to seed and some of the seed falls to the ground before I get it harvested. I agree with those who have said that they gain a lot themselves from being volunteers. I certainly have found being a volunteer in the Seed Saver’s Exchange to be very rewarding.

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      1. I haven’t tried it as a medicinal plant. I’m not sure why I started growing it. I guess it was one of those plants that looked interesting in the seed catalog. It was in the herb section of the catalog, but it can be used as an ornamental and that is what I do with it. It does well in light shade and has nice looking ferny leaves and is easy to grow and easy to transplant. That makes it a good plant to fill in bare places in my flower beds. Also, of course, it produces a lot of nice volunteers fairly early in the year that I can transplant.

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  19. I volunteered about 10 hours a week for 17 years at what is still the country’s only free-standing walk in counseling center on Chicago Avenue. Other than a skeleton, underpaid staff, this free counseling to anyone who walks in is entirely possible due to master’s level volunteer therapists. To this day, I try to promote donating to Walk-in Counseling Center – it’s been around since the
    mid-60s and provides excellent emergency and ongoing help to people who either have no insurance or are on a waiting list weeks long.

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    1. I have a friend involved with the Walk-in Counseling Center and it seems like a great asset to the community. Kudos to you for volunteering there. My math tells me you donated over 8000 hours. Wow.

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    2. Cb, seventeen years! That’s a serious commitment to a cause. Another organization that I have done some volunteer work for is Pathways. It was a godsend to me when I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer 16 years ago; simply had to give back when I recovered.

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      1. Pathways is a Minnesota treasure! Good for you. Both Walk In and Pathways are excellent examples of the value of volunteering. Congratulations on recovering, too – you’ve made it way past the 5-year mark (which I hope to as well in 3 years!)!!

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        1. So far so good, Cb. You just keep dancing and loving life, one day at a time, and before you know it you’ll have made it way past the 5-year mark.

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  20. Enjoying your analogy between the “super-volunteer” people and plants, Jim. Like many above, I’ve done lots of short term volunteering over the years. The one where I pretty much got in over my head, though, was back in 1979 when I was at a Wedge Co-op annual meeting, and suddenly realized my hand was in the air as they asked for people to run for the board. I served two years, one as Treasurer (what were we thinking?). They have apparently survived, but it wasn’t my fault.

    Since we retired in 2007, Husband and I have tried various volunteer jobs within our school district, and now seem to have found our niches. I help out in the office at Highview Alternative (high school), and he is doing some math tutoring with 5th graders, and also “Story Theater”, a group of senior-age people who act out the stories being read in the lower grades – in costume. The other day he was the lizard. 🙂

    Yesterday while weeding in the veggies, I accidentally pulled out my eggplant. Realized it in time (I hope) and replanted. My flower gardens are a mix of intentional things and volunteers that I’ve allowed to stay. Let’s just say they are interesting gardens. I wouldn’t mind having some of your feverfew, Jim – a friend gave me some once but it didn’t last. (This may have been before I realized you had to keep them watered when there wasn’t much rain.)

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  21. I used to volunteer for the Nature Conservancy as a preserve monitor (lots of great hiking) but I stopped doing that several years ago. I am a founding member of the original Cannon River Watershed Partnership and served as the board secretary for seven years (1990 – 1997). Now all of my volunteer efforts are toward Rock Bend Folk Festival. Each committee member has his/her role and some have additional helpers. I’m the stage manager and emcee for Joyce’s North Grove Stage. Up until this year, I’ve done a lot of the cooking for volunteers and musicians with one other volunteer. She handled the meats and I took care of vegetarian dishes. We’re planning to hire catering this year. We’ve talked about seeing if the St. Peter Food Coop would be interested in doing it. It will be nice to have that particular volunteer chore off my hands!

    I have lots of volunteers in my yard. Some of my nicest plants started out as volunteers – especially the Solomon’s seal and the starry false Solomon’s seal. I also allowed Virginia waterleaf in my lawn and have lived to regret it. It spread through an entire garden but I’m slowly gaining control. I love pagoda dogwoods and planted several until I found out how aggressively they spread. They’re easy to recognize and pull though, so I have better control of those too. The one thing that is simply, permanently out of control is creeping charlie. It is truly everywhere and seems to mock me when I walk past it.

    OT – very, very special guest blog yesterday, Barbara. Your son must have been a great guy. Thanks so much for sharing with us.

    OT2 – we had Harry Manx at Rock Bend two or three years ago. He’s wonderful.

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    3. when i open my book about doc i remember him still being so sad it brought him to tears about his son merle who had died in a tractor accident 4 or 5 years earlier. he really loved traveling and playing with merle and then when merle died doc continued on but there was a big hole in his soul. i really enjoyed doc and spent a fair amount of time learning to pick the two finger style he used to make that doc picking sound he does so distinctly.

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  24. Lots of plant volunteers this year: black raspberries, lilacs, a wild version of black-eyed susans, lily-of-the-valley, yarrow and many others, as someone else said, with names known by others. My strawberries are on a march to take over my backyard as are romaine, leaf lettuce, dill, cilantro and some type of Asian spicy salad/green and Egyptian onions. I have a problem being ruthless, even though some mornings that is my plan.

    I dislike meetings, boards, advisory boards and now that I am retired, I have turned down every offer. My job for 20 years was to help 9th-12th graders prepare for and enter college; it was about numbers and paperwork, but I loved the students. Four days a week I was in high schools and once a week in my college office. I used to get in trouble for having too many students in my office??? I was supposed to hand them off and not see them again. Now, I am free to “mentor” young people in my own grassroots way by being able to meet individual needs. I have a mix of easy and hard-headed mentees. Really enjoy both types.

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      1. Total freelance now. I tutor some of the kids of my older mentees. And have tutored some of the parents of refugee students. Sometimes it’s a little wild; in the last month when someone’s family member died of an OD and one of my Somali students left for an internship in Somalia and life goes on with highs and lows that I am honored to share.

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  25. What wonderful questions and thoughts the last few days – everything from aging and wisdom to how we are changed by the people we’ve loved and lost, to memory and ritual and how we edit our lives in the many ways we spend our time and give of ourselves. It’s late and I’m too tired from babysitting to stay up and write on Jim’s good post, but just wanted to say I’m so glad to be here. Thanks you all!

    No, no, there is no going back.
    Less and less you are
    that possibility you were.
    More and more you have become
    those lives and deaths
    that have belonged to you.
    You have become a sort of grave
    containing much that was
    and is no more in time, beloved
    then, now, and always.
    And so you have become a sort of tree
    standing over a grave.
    Now more than ever you can be
    generous toward each day
    that comes, young, to disappear
    forever, and yet remain
    unaging in the mind.
    Every day you have less reason
    not to give yourself away.

    ~ Wendell Berry ~

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    1. I have never heard this before. Great quote. I plan to change the “you” to “I” and use it as a meditation. thank you

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  26. What a nice community of commenters but I could have figured that from Dale’s audience.

    My main volunteer thing the past 12 years is with animals, something I didn’t catch reading through the posts here. Just returned 6 orphan kittens to a shelter–mom cat was run over so I bottle-fed them for 5 weeks. My current family is a mom and now 2 kittens (one died last night) that were abandoned in an enclosed porch ‘with no care for quite some time’ according to the humane society.

    I can’t decide which is more gratifying–orphan kits, or mom and kittens. Orphans bond with me since I’m the mom, providing food, cleaning, love. The mom cats are such heroes surviving awful situations with babies to take care of. I guess both situations feed my care-taking need and I get to have an endless supply of kittens. And when I take them back, I get more.

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    1. Bless you momkat. I tried volunteering at a no kill shelter once, but it was too much of an emotional roller coaster me, just couldn’t handle it. Heaven knows we need volunteers with big hearts to fill a growing need of taking care of these animals.

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    2. welcome momkat. glad to have you here looking after the animal end of the spectrum. i have 3 rescue dogs and a coupe of rescue tortoise in my life right now. who knew tortoise would come running to greet you.

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