Jeanette is a grand-hearted PGE employee who saw Jari Osborne’s Nature documentary on beavers and contacted me a few years back asking how to help. Since then she has been a regular volunteer at our festivals, as you can see here pictured with her niece getting into the spirit (Jeanette’s on the 
right). Even though she lives all the way in Auburn (the beaver killing capital of the state) she has family in Pinole and that meant she could be local enough to help out from time to time. It also meant she could attend my talk at SARSAS and get excited about the beaver/salmon connection.
Last year Jeanette worked on a prize wheel idea for the membership booth and was able to get the project accepted under the matching funds program for the company. Which meant that yesterday donations to Worth A Dam arrived from both PGE and Jeanette, which is pretty dam wonderful when you think about it.
(Also kind of full-circle considering my father started work for the company as an oiler in Oakland a million years ago and worked his way up to a shift foreman in many river plants before retiring as general manager of operations from the downtown San Francisco office. It was my father with whom I first saw the Martinez beavers, and who brought me to the Martinez plant once as a child: I remember we shared half a sandwich and some pea soup from his black lunchbox in the noisy powerplant before checking the screens to pull up the only eel I have ever seen. And it was my father who arranged for the newly emigrated Jon to have a job interview when no one else wanted to hire an ‘alien’.)
So you can imagine how happy I was when Jeanette forwarded this from a foreman in Sacramento who knows of Jeanette’s love of beavers:
Ho ho ho! Since a power pole is treated with nasty chemicals to make it resistant to termites and other invaders, we’re hoping this beaver didn’t swallow at all as he sharpened his precious teeth. But I treasure this photo and its sender. Jeanette is a genuine beaver blessing.
And Dad, wherever you are, this one’s for you!
