Cacophony

Today we explored corn. The morning of course was trees and soil with some high schoolers mixed in, but in the afternoon we went to our sponsor's farm. The told us the corn used to be handpicked, 1,000 bushels a day. With the right tools (which cost roughly $270,000) this amount of corn could now be picked in twenty minutes. The ground was covered in silt from the recent floods, and under that a layer of sand before the good black soil.

In the old hayloft my teammates had interesting observations:
Will Team Leader: "Imagine not having any food for a week, sleeping up here... that's what the Great Depression was like."
Josh Fellow card-carrying member / Compadre: "This is why I won't ever live on a farm."
Lee: bounced up and down on the rotted floorboards next to me

I wish I'd brought my camera when we climbed up inside the ventilated silo which was almost completely packed with sweet corn kernels. I was the first one in and the first one out. Andrew covered himself completely except for his face so when our sponsor Mark climbed down the ladder and took a step toward the group he gave a gasp of shock.
He said, "Now not being from a farm you wouldn't know that if a truck bumped into the bottom of this structure and started siphoning corn it would create a vaccuum sucking us all down and suffocating us."
Andrew: "Well I'd jump up and grab hold of that sorter."
Mark: "Actually, you'd be the first to die."
Will chimed in: "MY favorite part was when you said Andrew would be the first to die."

That's the way Will is, a little weird with a lot of dark humor. Must be why we get along so well.
Will is from Alaska. He got me into this game which we have yet to play called Vampire: the Masquerade. Apparently it was the 90s answer to the early 80s Dungeons and Dragons parties, but this ran with a darker crowd. Currently my character isn't a vampire. He's a biker, with Native American influences. He collects things like tattered concert posters to remind himself where he's been. He has a journal but always forgets to keep track of it. He also collects bras... I figured he should be a little different :)

One day when I can upload pictures this thing is going to be jam packed. I had an amazing independent service project over the weekend. For an hour and a half I helped organize the Vinton Pumpkin Drop. Kids took their moldy pumpkins to the top of the community water slide and dropped them onto the sidewalk below. Prizes were given out after the messy ordeal, everyone who threw a pumpkin got a personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut (yours truly included), and three anyway large pizzas were also given away (two extra were given to the four guys working the event). And so we had Large stuffed crust meat lovers pizzas and watched Star Wars. It's the opposite of girls night with tubs of ice cream and tissues, you know?

Jamie, one of the four guys, left for Mississippi the next day for disaster relief. His team leader? Zar from my old team. at 7:00 AM I got a text from Jamie, "Thanks guys so much. I love you all and can't wait to come back" then at 7:50 AM, "Zar is already power-tripping!" I can't help but think he's being rewarded for being a dick, and now I know why they didn't fire him.
Turns out his wife, Jess, isn't in AmeriCorps for the educational award because having served twice before she's not eligible, she's only there for Zar whose only been in the program once before. If they fired Zar, Jess would leave, and she does most of the busy work in the office that nobody else wants to do for very little money. Ugh... is this a microcosm of the government or what?

The luster of my project has faded away I'm afraid, as this week we've been fed busy work because we've conquered all the tasks laid before us. Damn, we're just too good. We have been watering all the trees days before huge storm systems come through, and mulching which needs to get done. At the beginning of this the results of our work was right there, a bare school landscape was covered in almost 300 trees in three weeks. Now it seems there's nothing left to do with a few weeks left. Good thing I'm going to keep myself busy.

Tomorrow four members of my team are going to Rockford, IL and I'll be leaving them by bus or train to visit Erin in Chicago. I've never been so this should be very fun. I know I won't even scratch the surface of this town so I'll have to come back. Maybe seeing a friendly face will keep me going.

On the 19th I'm driving to West Des Moines with Andrew to go see the Dropkick Murphys play at a bar I'm assuming. Will might go as well. And a good time was had by all!

Only a couple days after that, heaven forbid I forget how many days away that is or when my brain is working how many hours away that is, I'll get to go home to good ole Nashville. Never thought I'd miss the place so much. I guess when I was in college I was still very close, and at UT I came home at least once every couple months. I've been away for five months at this point and I'm still homesick. This is going to be a very good trip for me.

Two people leave AmeriCorps today: my roommate John, and my good friend Sam. John is pretty dumb so he's leaving for dumb reasons to go back to California and probably pick up an old meth habit again. Sam on the other hand is quitting because she loved her first project so much she wants to go back. After a short stint in New Orleans doing disaster relief for no pay, she'll go back to Camp Courageous, a camp for those with mental and physical disabilities. Hopefully she gets a full-time position as a counselor like she wants. I wish her the best.
At this point I have no idea how many people are still left in this program. From my dorm it remains at this point 3 out of 5, which I think is a fair representation of the whole campus. I hope it doesn't end up being 2 out of five, because we'd be in trouble.

Blog News:
Aside from having the awesome Twitter updates in the top right of this blog, there have been occasional links in those posts. These are pictures of my trip. I'm not sure how long they last or if it's a temporary site, but please while they're up you can check them out. If you've missed updates you can go to my twitter page to review all my posts in at least the last two weeks.
I know my Mother asked for some suggestions for Christmas, and since I've been so bad about this in the past I decided to get an early start. You can go to Amazon and type in my Email Address: Drink.Monsters@GMail.com or follow the link below. My favorite part is that most of the things on my list are really cheap books, and the list grows daily as I busy myself with my phone instead of digging shallow holes in mud. Please please please sacrifice time of delivery to buy used copies of books, it's not a big deal to me, I just love reading.
Amazon Wish List