Hopelessly Dense

I spent some time this evening reviewing handouts for one of our last sessions on nonviolent communications. This subject has completely failed to connect with me, both then and now. About as close to "getting it" as I've gotten is the recognition of a section on "faux feelings," that is to say, judgments masquerading as feelings, in part because I can well remember some of them being used on me in the past.

One of the most egregious examples was an instance where some girlfriends and I went to the Winter Olympics in Utah, and one of our party decided that she didn't want to participate in one day's sessions. Now, the Olympics were spread out all over central Utah, and even though some of us had cell phones, it wasn't easy to stay connected. Due to the crowds, we missed our planned rendezvous, and later, the friend reported feeling abandoned, which mightily ticked the rest of us off. I hadn't fully realised at the time why I was angry, and now I know.

I guess I'll have to hold on to that nugget of learning for now, and hope that the rest of my communications style is up to par.

More on Exempt Wells

Mark (Class XXV) sent me a link to a story on how exempt wells are being abused in Kittitas County. In a nutshell, while the town of Roslyn rations its precious water (Roslyn holds a junior water right dating to 1908; the Yakama tribe holds the senior water right), McMansions in Suncadia and environs are poking wells into the aquifer, taking full advantage of the exception for wells drawing 5,000 gallons or less.

The Seattle Times calls it a "huge loophole," the very word I used in my talk. While this issue wasn't chosen as a policy project, it's a looming problem on both sides of the mountain, and developers are taking super-size advantage, with over 7,000 exempt wells drilled last year.

In other class news, David sent me a copy of his thank you note to Court (Class XXI) and I got a nice note from Ellen thanking me for being class liaison, which was an unexpected pleasure.

Showing Gratitude

Today I wrote all (or nearly all) the thank you notes for the speakers at the Wednesday afternoon session as well as a donor acknowledgement; I also received a PDF copy of Branden's thank you note to Rufus.

In the electronic age, hand-written notes really stand out, and it's a very good thing to reinforce sending them. I'm usually a terrible correspondant, but I've had really good role models, so cannot blame it on them. Among the best is Dr. Gene Sharratt, who routinely dashed off a personal note of thanks for the slightest favour.

Leadership is all about going the extra mile; it's also all about remembering the people who helped you get there. Thanks to my wonderful network of helpers!

Death March

This session was grueling: first, because illness decimated our ranks. Thisj was laid low for the three-day session with bronchitis and Friday morning Josh was hospitalised briefly. For the rest of us nominally healthy ones, Wednesday through Friday was an endurance march.

Wednesday

We convened at the Confluence Technology Center Wednesday afternoon and my husband Mark (Class XXV) gave a few introductory remarks to the class about the partnerships formed to construct the CTC. Afterwards, we toured the Chelan PUD's operations center (a string that Mark pulled on our behalf) and, if we can hold onto the information, may well help us next year when we examine the Columbia River system. He departed for a full week of his own, and Dr Glen Klock (Class II) talked about his work with Ag-Base, selling Washington products over the Internet. He hopes to establish MySpace-type pages for ag businesses to sell directly to the consumer.

After lunch, we divided into two groups to give our five-minute speeches, utilising the technology at the CTC to videotape each classmate. Note to self: when did I get so middle-aged and so fat?? Andrea (Class XV) and Vicky (Class X) were our evaluators. Andrea was very kind to us, offering both positive reinforcement and gentle suggestions for improvement.

I'd rehearsed mine many times and was comfortable with the topic, but chose to use my notes at the podium (which we were all required to stand behind, owing to the pressure-sensitive mat which focussed the camera on the speaker) and found the notes to be somewhat of a crutch. I did far better the next day when I left the notes in my book and just went for it!

My classmates all chose interesting and thought-provoking topics—even those who I knew had drafted theirs the night before! Not everyone was comfortable speaking, but everyone came from an issue or experience that they could be passionate about.

After the evaluations, we walked to the Wenatchee World offices and Rufus (Class XXIV) threw a nice little reception, showed the class a video of the paper, and talked about the generations of leadership his own family had provided.

I'd made reservations for us to eat at the Roaster, and poor Thisj had called the restaurant to order us all a round of drinks, so Steve took the initiative to send him a balloon bouquet Thursday, which we were told touched him very much. At dinner, David surprised us all be reading several funny quotes that he'd copied down in Pullman last month. Some of them were hilarious, and if this keeps up, we could well write a book at the end of two years (though we might be the only audience to fully appreciate it!

Thursday

I slept soundly that night, but my own otherwise healthy body wasn't ready for the alarm: I woke at 06:30 and drove down to the Center at about 7:30, threading my way in through all the Festival of Trees Christmas crap (don't get me STARTED on American Christmas traditions!). From 8:00 to 12:00 we gave our speeches once again for the entire group (many much improved, including myself) and broke for lunch. During lunch we voted to winnow down all the topics to the top five which would form the nucleus of our public policy work teams. Considering the difficulty, this went fairly quickly.

Here are the five projects and the teams (as it stands now)

Consumer Awareness Ad Campaign

• Clay


• Lois


• Jennifer D.


• Brad

Immigration Reform

• Shawn


• Derek


• Juan


• Rachel


• Stephanie

Transfer of Development Rights

• Orv


• Grant


• David


• Sarah


• Jennifer

Partnership between Environmentalists & Farmers

• Steve


• Ginny


• Julie


• Josh


• Sara

Wildfire Policy

• Jim


• Branden


• Matt


• Dan


• Rhonda

My group chose me to serve as temporary chair of our group until we meet again in Spokane. Once we meet again, we'll need to allow Thisj a chance to choose a group, and that might mean some reshuffling. He's a smart guy; it was very unfortunate that he was deprived of the chance to go through this session (as we were deprived of his contributions) but I am sure he will be able to get up to speed when he recovers.

After lunch, Ellen gave the first part of her lecture on working effectively with others, then her friend Liv led a session on nonviolent communications. I'm sure that there is value to the subject, however. I (and perhaps others) were so tired after the mental anxiety of the speech session) that I struggled mightily to remain engaged. If Liv hadn't gotten us up for a couple of exercises, I probably would have curled up in the corner and snored.

Last on the agenda Thursday afternoon was a panel discussion with Russ (Class XI) and Sarah on the process of establishing the Entiat Watershed Plan. Again, I suspect many of us struggled to give them our full attention. Please. Must. Sleep!

Thank the gods, a break at last, and Rhonda, Ginny and I walked down the Avenue to Palmer shoes, so Rhonda could replace her beloved and worn-out Halflinger clogs. The fresh cool air was a tonic, much-needed, before we returned to the bowels of the Center for the alumni reception. Jennifer said Friday as we were reflecting on key learnings that networking was the last thing on her mind, however, she established a key contact with Ron (Class XVII) which will be of real benefit to her. The value of the networking sessions cannot be overstated, for often they are the most lasting benefits of the Ag-Forestry program. It was nice to see Erin (Class XXIX) again, and she gave me her Washington DC tour book and introduced me to her husband.

Our dinner speaker, nicely introduced by Rachel, was Jon Wyss, Government Affairs Director at Gebbers Farms. Jon's topic was immigration reform, already eloqently illustrated in Rachel's five-minute speech, but there was much to consider about the problems we face if the nation does not effect meaningful reform.

Friday

I'll just sleep when I'm dead...actually, I slept better, but still was feeling an energy deficit as I downed my coffee and headed off for another full day. We assembled in our new policy groups and Ellen led us through more exercises on working effectively, including a pretty funny role-playing process where we each were required to take on the positions of special interests and hammer together some ground rules for a fictional watershed planning process. Poor Shawn: he was chosen to facilitate and we were brutal to him; he wanted to give up halfway through! It was a valuable exercise, though.

We broke for lunch and dined with the board (outgoing and incoming members) and I had an interesting conversation with Trustee Terry Gilmore, a forestry consultant. We enjoyed a nice pep-talk from Court, (Class XXI) the incoming president. After lunch, we reflected on some of the key learnings from the three days and Clay gave us a glimpse of the media seminar which will be in *gulp* three weeks. We've also looked ahead, a tiny bit, to the Washington DC trip.

As eager as I was to finish for the day, I felt a bit sorry to see everyone go. We're a wonderful group. I cannot wait to see where we take ourselves next, so long as we can survive the fun. I'll probably need every minute of the next three weeks to rest up!

Hay's in the Barn

And the ducks are in a row, to use a couple of hackneyed phrases. I've practiced my speech so many times I bore myself, and boredom's a far better feeling than terror. I've communicated with some classmates who are only just composing their speeches.

They're the ones that my husband figures won't be listening when he gives his presentation tomorrow afternoon. If my classmates aren't too preoccupied with the speech sessions, my guess is that they'll find the technology center pretty amazing, from the bells and whistles of the PUD's operations center to the work that Dr Glen Klock (Class II) does selling ag over the Internet.

How persuasive?

I've spent the last week practicing my five-minute speech on water law revision. Now I knew nothing about the subject before crafting five pages on the need for reform, but that mustn't stand in the way of swaying one's audience! I've had some excellent advice on the subject and my only fear is going over time, which consistently happens by about 5-10 seconds on read-through.

Mark and I attended the annual Auction Gala in Seattle last Friday, and it was a real pleasure to see at least five of my classmates in attendance. We felt lucky to be eating: a glitch resulted in Shari running around to find us a bid card and seats at one of the tables (thanks to the Washington Potato Commission and classmate Matt for hosting us) so we didn't have a chance to bid on any of the silent auction items. If we go next year, we'll try to be better prepared too: the dessert auction alone raised 28,000 for the Foundation. It's marvelous to see how much support exists for the Ag Forestry Foundation— and that means support for my classmates and I as well as the staff. Running a non-profit, big or small, is always a financial roller-coaster.

In just a few days the whole class will be here in Wenatchee, and I'm still running around to find a place for us to dine Wednesday night after our long day of speechifying, as well as running my portion of Wednesday's program and preparing for my own speech. I darned near got a ticket coming home a couple of weeks ago: it was nearly midnight and I was mentally rehearsing introducing my husband, who will be speaking at our first session. Damned if East Wenatchee didn't come up all of a sudden, and I still had the cruise control on 60! A State Patrol car pulled me over right away, and I confessed to woolgathering. Fortunately, there're probably more drunken fish to fry at midnight on a Saturday than a distracted speech-maker. Thankfully, he let me off, and I've learned to pracice my speech delivery at home or in the office rather than behind the wheel.