Jean Matuska – Worth A Dam

Friends & Family

heidi08 Uncategorized June 11, 2010

Photo: Cheryl Reynolds

Ahhh the new baby always brings out the best in family and friends. Today this photo ran in the San Francisco Chronicle with a very glowing article by longtime beaver-beat reporter Carolyn Jones. The article has an “alls well that ends well” feeling, and quotes from Skip Lisle and Dave Scola as well. I, of course, wish she had mentioned Worth A Dam or the beaver festival in the article (an article entirely structured around my press release and our half hour interview, including the latin for beaver!) but at least she got the story straight and the details of our very special family in print for all to see. And, most important, it was the first beaver article in history without a single “pun” in the title to indicate that this wasn’t “important news” and the story shouldn’t be taken seriously. You can help us out by “voting” for my comment so that the important things Carolyn forgot to mention get mentioned!

As if that wasn’t enough good news for one morning, my post yesterday about the contest in Lithuania prompted this heroic response from Alex Hiller, our foreign correspondent in Frankfurt Germany.

Thank you for your information about Riga beavers at risk. As a participant of the 5th International Beaver Symposium in Vilnius, Lithuania, the previous year I decided instantly to go to Riga, Latvia, checking on the beaver site and considering proper solutions to keep the beavers. I just got a Lufthansa flight ticket to Riga, Latvia, departing in Frankfurt, Germany on July 21 for a week to be spent over there. Expect online reports and photos as your approved foreign correspondent.
Best Alex

Skip Lisle & Alex Hiller at 5th annual Beaver Symposium in Lithuania

Alex tells me that he’s already hard at work, translating articles and looking up photos. I can’t tell you how pleased and proud we are of your committment Alex! On behalf of the beavers of baltic countries everywhere, THANK YOU!!!

One more act of kindness worth mentioning comes from our good web designer friend Jean Matuska of JM Design. I was beginning to receive ominous error messages when I posted new articles on the website, something dire about a “Fatal error” which terrified me. Jean went searching through her tool kit and figured out the solution, redesigning our memory limits and voila! No more fatalities! Thanks so much Jean! We will leave a smaller data footprint in the future!

If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose,” the Walrus said,
“That they could get it clear?”
“I doubt it,” said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.

Lewis Carrol

Admiration

heidi08 Beaver News, Friends of Martinez Beavers January 7, 2010

Yesterday I was so thrilled with the new logo I dangled it appealingly in front of Jean Matuska who helps with the web design and said, wow wouldn’t this look great on the header, gosh too bad no one knows how to put it there. Mean while I was dangling the logo appealingly in front of the designer Kiriko Moth and saying, gosh wouldn’t this look great on a hunter green table cloth, too bad its the wrong color.

Joyfully, Kiriko offered to print the opposite of the design, and send that to our tablecloth order. And Jean figured out how to tuck the logo into the photo strip. Once we saw how easy it was to change the header I asked very politely, maybe someday, when she was burdened with free time, we could choose the photos together? Because our original web designer, Michael Cronnin, just picked those photos without our input. And Jean, who was inspired to great heights by the lovely logo and a charming owl protest on sunday, said, pick the photos and I’ll do it for you.

Give a hoot!

It was her 10th anniversary, so when they got back from a celebratory dinner, she made the switch! I wished her a very happy anniversary and assured her it was excellent luck to fix a beaver website on such an occasion. (Since beavers mate for life.)

I love the new photo strip, all originals from Cheryl Reynolds, more than I can say. But I thought it would be good to pause and remember the old one fondly. It saw the beavers from a time of great danger to a time of civic protection. From a time when we the site had 80 readers a day, to a time when it had 800 readers a day. It was a gift from a friend who donated generously with his time and made the painstaking transition from martinezbeavers.com to martinezbeavers.org/wordpress. It featured the dam and the flow device because that is what everyone needed to focus on. Now it features our heroes. The strip is dead. Long live the strip.

A (key)Stroke of Jean-ius

heidi08 Educational January 30, 2009

This is our 396th post, and we’re approaching Worth A Dam’s first Birthday! Other great reasons to celebrate?

Our loyal readers will remember that we suffered a website blow last month and have been struggling to right ourselves since then. The kind viewers using Microsoft Explorer have seen a navigation bar of gibberish, and the rest of us on Firefox and Safari had to put up with general untidiness. Beaver friend Kelly boldly offered help, but WordPress was not forthcoming in disclosing her secrets and he despaired. In one of those extended panics that just keep getting worse I wrote our friend Lisa Owens Viani of the San Francisco Estuary Project and said, “by the way who does YOUR web page and um…how do they feel about beavers?”

Lisa suggested a beaver fan closer to home, Jean Matuska who was one of our tree planting volunteers. Like Kelly I had no idea of what she did for a living or I’m sure I would have bothered her sooner. (I’m thinking any woman with a shovel can plant a tree, but how many can decipher html?) So I got my Sunday come a’courting email out and approached with the most imploring and unassuming tone I could muster to ask if she might possibly consider helping.

SHE DID!!!

Today in a burst of brow-furrowing, puzzle-solving, encryption worthy of any sudoko match, she rebuilt our navigation bar, expanded, resized and recolored the links and made more space in between. Then she went back and did it all again for explorer users because explorer is no longer feeling the love from WordPress and obeys only half of every other command it is given. Next she unearthed the beloved Worth A Dam at the top of the page which, like a chameleon or cuttlefish, was there but had so blended into its surroundings as to become invisible. Mind you in the middle of this she continued to respond kindly to all my panicked emails and resembling Washington in the Potomac, remained steady.

And the best part? When it was all finished she said she might continue to help out in the future!

So Beaver friends all need to repay her kindness by following the link to her site and admiring the other sites she has designed. Maybe you have a boss or a colleague that is thinking about a new look for their online presence, or maybe you’re just interested in what a real designer can do. We owe Jean great thanks, and I promise to need her help as little as possible in the future.