Thankful

Today’s holiday is as good a reason as any to take a moment and think about what the beavers have given us this year, and what we’ve given each other as a result. They’ve been a destination, a mascot, a environmental repair crew, a publicity team, a socialization tool, a focal point, and a family-time soap opera. Along with your slice of pumpkin pie, I thought you’d enjoy a slice of comments from beaver supporters:

I work downtown and have been following your accounts of the precious beavers from the beginning. Thank you. I feel so special by seeing for myself how the many wonderful creatures have blessed Martinez by coming upstream and into the downtown. My friend/coworker and I have been watching from the first beaver sighting. However, I think I noticed the fish first, then the beaver, river otter and the muskrat. The water birds and the habitat changing has been just so amazing. I really liked seeing those two geese when I went for my coffee; I will miss the companion. I will be waiting in anticipation of how nature will fill the emptiness. SLH

Dear Heidi,

I am thankful to have witnessed your public activism during the last 15 months beginning when I first discovered your beaver videos on You Tube.

Your admirer,

GTK

i am thankful that they are still here and that they appear to be ok.

i am thankful that they have such a dedicated network of protectors.

I am thankful for cheryl’s beautiful pictures, which make the beavers so easy to see and understand.

We are thankful for the media boost you gave to the woodpeckers. Linda did a fantastic job of setting up those relationships.

I can’t believe your posting on the history of the wall. What scalawags! They seem to be unaware of that whole “photography” thing. It is great to have it on YouTube, now how can we get it into the hands of each and every citizen of MTZ?
Thank’s again!

Hi Heidi
You do a wicked presentation. You remind me of our Green Party leader. Calm, cool and very much to the point. As much as I admire a claymore (its a guy thing) her use of the rapier is artistry. The council must run for cover when they see you coming. Thanks for the beaver pictures at the end of the presentation.

WHG

I kept forgetting to thank you for the new beaver brochures. They have been lodged in their proper locations. They have been going quickly, so we would like to have more of them. This past weekend was the beginning of the holiday travel season, and timetables and other brochures were being sucked off of the information counter.

CS Amtrak Volunteer

Last night’s six thirty news had a story on the woodpeckers and the Mt. Diablo Audubon Society’s plans to partner with Rossmoor to find a different solution to the killing. I can’t even begin to say how gratifying it is to have played a small role in elevating the level of awareness for this situation. The reporter mentioned that a similar killing had already taken place but it had flown under the radar of the watchful eyes of the media.

Similarly gratifying was walking up to the Main Street directory last night and seeing the beaver sticker. I have a lot to be thankful for this year and am very happy to have you two to share that with. Feeling a bit sappy – but the news this morning said people who have the capacity to feel gratitude had lower instances of heart disease – so I think I’ll just wallow in my sappiness. Linda Meza VP Public Relations

Your sappiness is well deserved,and I feel the same. We have all done good work this year and the woodpeckers were a bonus. Cheryl Reynolds VP Wildlife

Heidi- thank you, I knew Cheryl would be on this. Mt. Diablo Audubon had asked me to be the contact person with the property manager and I am working on meeting with him this week to find out where they are going with this, we were told they are putting this off for “2 weeks” and I have been putting out feelers for the many alternative resources that were available to them before the spent $170.000 dollars over the last 8 years? So I really appreciate this contact take care DG

And that’s just a sampling of the kind words that have been thrown our way this year.We do get the other kind of words as well, but these are the ones we save.So what am I thankful for? I feel enormously blessed that the beavers came into my life and gave me such a perfect window into their activities. I’m grateful for the UCLA student I found on Craig’s list that taught me how to make videos and grateful for every person that watched them and came to see for themselves what all the fuss was about. I’m grateful for beaver videographer Moses Silva, who has spent more time with our animals than anyone and who has learned to trust me enough to share his precious footage with me on occasion. I’m grateful for every warm body that filled the performing arts center on Nov 7; the many who became personal friends and colleagues, but the more that I never saw or heard from again. I’m grateful for the media that pulled attention our way. I’m grateful for Don Bernier who decided this story was worthy of his documentary and has been a calming presence all the way through. Thanks for Bruce who started this webpage and Michael who fine-tuned it. Thanks to Mitch Avalon and Igor Skaredoff who were among our first creek-wary converts and became two of our most respected advocates. Thanks to Rona Zollinger and her inspiring ESA students who gave us a jump start of credibility. I’m grateful for all the beaver experts who gave me so much help and support over the year, Mike Callahan, Sharon & Owen Brown, Skip Lisle, Sherrie Tippie, Jake Jacobsen. Thanks to Kathi Mclaughlin who was our resident Brown Act expert and made the city do what they were supposed to some of the time. Thanks also to Lory who has been as devoted to the beavers as any of us, came to meetings and helped out, but skillfully avoided a formal role in Worth A Dam. Thanks a million to our anonymous benefactor who allowed Worth A Dam to challenge the city in court, and who never fails to make me smile. I’m grateful for my flexible life that allowed room for the beavers to expand their demands into running a webpage and a campaign, grateful to all the friends and family I’ve paid less attention to because I’ve been “beavered”, and grateful to my parents who knew I was crazy about the beavers so brought me the sacramento bee about Mary Tappel’s role in the Elk Grove killings because they guessed I’d be interested. I’m grateful to every person who helped us by watching the beavers and letting us know what they saw, who came to the festival, and who volunteered to sit on the unexciting bridge through first night and sheet pile installation and lots of time in between.

Last but not least, I’m grateful to the members of Worth A Dam, none of whom blinked when I asked them aboard. Our first treasurer Donna Mahoney who did so much to get us organized and keep us on track, and our second, Jon who stepped seamlessly into her role and who, despite his english upbringing, found himself a smooth and engaging beaver docent as he parked himself on the bridge during the work. After 23 years of marriage he is still learning my parents’ advice was true…”Life with Heidi will be a lot of things, but it will never be boring.” To our secretary Catherine Dalton, thanks for your faithful keeping track and popping in to ask questions whenever new items occur. Thanks to Linda Meza, who bravely stepped aboard at the very beginning and has never hesitated to do the things that fill me with the utmost dread, I am enormously grateful. Her background in sales has made it easy for her to approach and ask for things, and it was her skills that gave us the tree planting and the festival. She woke up for countless interviews at 3 in the morning, and worked farmer’s market most thursdays. Along the way she landed a column in the gazette that has made fans of many martinez readers. Linda is the heartfelt, fearless advocate who came to court looking very tall and stunning and reminded our new city manager that he could have hired her instead. Thanks for everything, and I mean it.

Finally I want to thank VP of wildlife, Cheryl Reynolds, whose photographs have given a face to the beavers’ story. On any given day she might be kneeling or sitting on the bank to get the best photo, and often has a telltale smudge on her trousers that has become affectionately known as “beaver butt”. I met Cheryl in the wee hours of the morning on beaver watch, and learned quickly that she was an amatuer photographer with a naturalist heart. Cheryl’s was there for Library night in 2007, and was the first to recognize our scaup visitors. She likes to say she is not a writer but at last count she has started two blogs to keep track of all her involvements. Cheryl ran the video camera at the festival, and took photos of the tree planting. Alongside Linda, she worked farmer’s markets and helped out with the massive summerschool program with far too many children. Her friendly nonconfrontational approach earned us friends and inside information during the sheetpile project and beyond. Thanks Cheryl, for all you do.

There are certainly eight more thankyous left, and as words really don’t seem to express what I owe them, I thought I’d give a video instead. Moses created and filmed this, and I think it is a great way to celebrate. The soundtrack was fairly unavoidable, as it is the most famous thanksgiving song ever written. I’m hopeful that Linda, with two children in the military, will not be too annoyed. Try not to think of it as an anti-war song…think of it as a “small govermment makes mistakes in a way that grows into larger goverment song”. Sorry to Arlo too for the edits…the full version runs nearly 20 minutes and youtube only holds ten.

Happy Thanksgiving All!

Heidi P. Perryman, Ph.D.

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=_04HUh5RoHU]