Mary Beth Doyle Preserve

The following is an e-mail that was sent out by Scott Rosencrans. Mary Beth was a dear friend and fierce environmental advocate with whom I'd worked with at the Ecology Center of Ann Arbor. She was killed in a car crash in November, 2004, and I still can't believe it. The following refers to former Brown Park that is located on Packard Rd. across from Buhr Park. The park has an easy-to-miss-if-you-blink entrance, which wasn't like Mary Beth at all. She had a gigantic personality. The woods there are beautiful and loaded with trillium and more trout lilies than I had ever seen before in the spring.

I am pleased to let you know that the memory of our dear friend MB will live on in our community in another, permanent, form. On October 16, 2007, along with my fellow committee members: Council Member (now former) Robert Johnson, Fellow Parks Advisory Commissioner Gwen Nystuen, and, David Borneman, the head of Natural Areas Preservation, we presented a resolution to the Parks Advisory Commission for the creation of a new category within the parks system called "Preserves". The resolution passed unanimously in PAC and was subsequently approved by City Council.

The resolution was the fruit of months of work from which we developed universal cooperation and it provides protection to designated natural areas within the system because of their superior floristic quality, or quality of wildlife habitat, and prevents these areas from being developed for any other purpose. If maintenance of existing underground infrastructure is needed, the area must be restored to its original condition. There has never been stronger protections within our Parks system.

In addition to the natural areas within Mary Beth Doyle Park (formerly Brown Park), which will be named The Mary Beth Doyle Preserve, their are eight more designees which are sections of Furstenburg Nature Area, Gallup Park Wet Prairie, Barton Nature Area, Bird Hills Nature Area (which Mary Beth helped to create), Cedar Bend Nature Area Woods, Dolph Nature Area, Scarlett Mitchell Nature Area, and, Black Pond Woods Nature Area.

It should be understood that MB Doyle Park is land that is used by the City, but, owned by the County and that, if for some reason, the County should decide to use it for another purpose there is little we could do about it. However, the hope is that the designation as a Preserve would be meaningful to that body. Current utilization and planning indicate a continuation of the current status.

There is a mechanism within the Resolution that allows for additional areas to be designated as "Preserves" and the hope is that such protection of our natural areas will grow over time.

MB Doyle Park is currently undergoing maintenance which will allow it to serve as a natural processor of storm water run off; something that would excite MB herself. The park will re-open this summer and I hope you all can take advantage of this beautiful resource while remembering our dear friend.

Then There is That Little Matter of My Sanity

I have been bored out of my mind. I feel like have no purpose. I have been working towards nursing school for the last two years, I got what I wanted, then wham. I had to admit I was in over my head. Now I'm just at home, and I go crazy with the household routine, I feel like I'm a hamster in a habitrail and I get less and less productive. Thank goodness for my friends, because I don't have the social outlets that one gets through work or a partner that goes out in the world. These are the times that I find myself having heart-to-hearts with cashiers.

I think I came up with some things to patch me through and help me feel like a productive member of society until I see if I get into nursing school when I reapply for fall. I want to check into learning Spanish, for one. The other idea is to do something that links local farmers/food with Ypsi schools. I'm not sure what yet--maybe a food tasting event, or possibly a day where the school lunch is prepared with local foods. Something... I was on the Wellness Committee for the schools a couple years ago, and I think there would be the interest there to do something, it would just be a matter of money and making it happen.

Feel free to toss some ideas my way. Kate suggested checking into Slow Food of Huron Valley. I have a Farmer's Market Advisory Committee meeting later today and I'm going to talk to the folks there, too.

Like Quicksand, It's the Small Things that Bring Us Down

I quit the nursing program. Yes, you read this right. I've been having nervous breakdowns, feeling overwhelmed, feeling like I wasn't being a good mother, not keeping up the house, not keeping up on the reading for school. All these little things that add up, like taking care of vehicles, shopping for food, paying bills, keeping things running around here. I could not do it.

All is not lost. I still have Florence Nightingale ambitions. I'm going to reapply for the traditional program that starts in the fall, taking 2 1/2 to 3 years which would have taken 16 months if I would have stayed in the accelerated program. The thing is, I had to decide which program to apply for earlier last year before I knew the kids' dad was moving to California. I knew we were getting divorced at that time, but I figured he'd be around to help with the kids. It was too much, and it felt crazy for me to feel like I was hanging by a thread myself and then think I was going to go out and take care of sick people.

I could only have done it if I would have neglected my kids for the next year and that is an insane trade-off.

I realized that having people step up to help me out by watching my kids for me was fantastic and it helped enormously, but it's not the same as having other people around that are are actually invested in their well-being. I felt like everything was a transaction, and it was taking too much of me away from the kids just when their dad left, so...

Woohoo! Free time! I am purging my feelings of guilt and failure for quitting (we'll just call it "putting it off") and I'm going to clean and organize. I could try to learn my mandolin again. I can be a person. I can keep up on what my kids are supposed to be doing for school. I need something else to to do, though, I should volunteer for something. One of the things I'll look into is hospice care. I'm intrigued by the idea of being a death doula. Like the experience of birth, I feel like there are some experiences of dying and death that should be reclaimed from the medical industry. That's something I'd like to explore. Yes, indeed, I willl stay busy. But Nurse Ratched will be back!

Dr. Martin Luther King Bean Dip

Nerf bullets are whizzing around me. The boys have the day off school and are in the house playing war with the neighbor kids. I'm preparing a steaming hot bean dip, a dish to share that integrates humble beans, sweet corn, local peppers and onions, salsa and olives. White cheese and black olives mingle together harmoniously. To honor the slain civil rights leader, and wishing all weapons were only Nerf artillery, on top it says "love".

Nurse Barbie

I finished my first official week of nursing school, and was it ever tiring. I have Art and Science of Nursing I and II, which includes two days of clinical, two days of skills labs, and a lecture, and a health assessment class that takes a big chunk of Friday but only goes for 7 weeks. That's enough for me, but most others are also taking Pharmacology. I sagely took that already, last year.

I'm not used to this kind of schedule. I've been spoiled. This program is moving in double-time. At the beginning of the week, some of the other students were saying how the instructors keep commenting on how intensive the program is, and how it seemed fine. By the end of the week we were all wiped out.

It'll be fine, I just have to get organized and I didn't have the time during the week to do it. It was if a baseball throwing machine was loaded with my books and syllabi and checklists and instructional videos and all this other paperwork and then it started chucking it all at me. I also thought I was done buying supplies but I still need a penlight, white shoes (Danskos, I'm getting the best), and a nursing diagnosis book. This is a way expensive program.

I like it. So far, so good. The instructors and students are nice but kind of badass, too.


I got to dress up in my new hunter green scrubs and report to the hospital on Wednesday and Thursday. I felt like Nurse Barbie putting on my uniform at some ridiculous morning hour, marching through the hospital doors with my official identification badges with absolutely no idea of what I was doing. Fortunately, they ease you into any real responsibility but I did get to shadow a nurse around one day and we were running! There wasn't time to adopt any pieta poses like the one above. You will not see us in flowing robes, gazing out picturesquely as we clutch unidentifiable bundles.

In other news, I got to see Whitey Morgan last night for the first time in a few months, which has already been reported on Visions of Ypsi. It was a late night last night, and I won't be able to do that for awhile. It was good to get my Whitey fix. I chatted with the sitter for a bit when I got back. She's just a couple months away from finishing nursing school and is working as an aide at UM Hospital. She told me some of her stories, like working with the mentally ill prisoner who had swallowed a toothbrush, razor blade, and light bulb to get out of prison. It is going to be interesting out there.

Then I found out today that my grandfather has been hospitalized again, this time with pneumonia. He has been in and out of the hospital with so many problems within the last few years. I was trying to figure out if I could spare the time to visit him tomorrow when my aunt called back and told me she found out that he has MRSA in his bloodstream. WTF. The nurse told her that it wasn't a big deal because it's not in a wound, but I read up on it and bloodstream infections can cause septicemia. My aunt didn't know if his pneumonia was caused by the staph. So...I guess I'm not going there. I feel bad about it, too, but I just can't take my kids there. My kids that will take any opportunity to smear their faces across the closest disgusting surface.

My grandfather's sister, my great aunt Treva, is also doing poorly. It makes me think a lot about death and how all of our technological and pharmaceutical advances have extended life for many people, but not necessarily a good quality of life. It seems that most people fear death and will make that trade-off, but maybe I'm wrong. If someone dies suddenly without any chance to treat an underlying illness, then it is seen as tragic. I see the real tragedy as those that continually suffer the effects of somewhat-mediated illness with false hopes of recovery.

Yes, it is going to be very interesting.

Scary

My niece was in a rollover accident yesterday afternoon. Apparently the driver lost control of the car when he tried to avoid hitting a squirrel. Koty was ejected from the car but she's fine and nobody was seriously hurt. The car stopped just a few feet from the house, and the picture below shows how it landed. Scary, scary, scary. No, she wasn't wearing her seatbelt.