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Seven - July 4

Hello everyone!
Happy Fourth of July weekend!! I hope you all are
enjoying the long weekend with family and friends and
that you are having a wonderful summer so far! It's
been so long since I last sent out an update email, I
hope none of you thought that I had fallen off the
edge of the world or anything... I'm still out here in
Woodburn, Oregon enjoying the last few weeks of my
experience in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. Needless to
say, a lot has happened since I last emailed in
March... I'll hit the major highlights and there are
quite a few good pictures too for those patient enough
to get to the end! =)
Those of you with good memories will recall that my
family made a visit out to beautiful green and rainy
Oregon in March. It was wonderful to get to spend a
few days with them out here, because you really have
to see Woodburn to believe it. It really is an island
of Mexico in the pacific northwest. So of course
knowing my family we ate at the little taquerias
almost every night they were here, quite the treat.
During the days we took trips to the coast, and to Mt.
Hood and Mt. St. Helens, and went for a little hike in
the Columbia River Gorge. And lucky enough for my
mom, the tulip fields which Woodburn is also famous
for (the largest tulip festival outside of Holland)
were in bloom the week they were here, so needless to
say they were quite impressed with my little world out
here. They saw it at its absolute best. What
surprised me though when I asked them what their
favorite part of the trip was, after seeing all of
Oregon's natural beauty, they all said working with me
and the other volunteers in the food bank one evening
was the experience that touched them the most. I had
always known that service runs in my family, and it
was wonderful to be able to share a little bit of this
JVC experience with them.
In April I finally got the chance to teach my "Extreme
Weather" class to the 6th graders at St. Luke's
school. We had classes on hurricanes and tornadoes
(of course) as well as the life cycle of a
thunderstorm and how lightning forms by the separation
of positive and negative charges within a cloud. They
did SO well and it was so much fun to teach kids that
were so interested and excited to learn. Of course I
got some difficult questions like "what would happen
if two tornadoes rammed into each other?" but thanks
to my excellent Jesuit education at SLU, I was able to
answer most of them ok. No student missed more than 2
questions on the final test so evidently they either
learned something or I made the test way too easy.
For memorial day, my roommate Katie and I drove down
the Oregon and California coasts to San Francisco. On
the way we stopped at Redwood National Park and walked
among the tallest trees in the world. We both found
ourselves in silent reverence for this ancient forest,
many of the trees over 2000 years old and well over
300 feet tall. As I had heard from many people before
we left, it truly was a spiritual experience. You
could really sense the immense power and beauty of
God's creation. (This is where the Ewok planet from
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi was filmed, to give you
a visual) We then proceeded on down the California
coast through Mendocino and Sonoma counties on Hwy 1,
on a GORGEOUS sunny blue day (which by the way is
where most car commercials are filmed!) winding down
the coast with the ocean on your right and beautiful
green and brown hills on your left. It was almost
just as good as the redwoods. We stopped for a little
picnic lunch on the side of the road, and it was hard
to leave! We stayed with the JV's in San Francisco,
so gas was just about our only expense for the
absolute best four day weekend of my life.
The following week was the peak of strawberry picking
season, which is the traditional start to the berry
harvests in Oregon and the first crops to be brought
in from the fields. So as a small sign of solidarity
with the migrant workers who do a large majority of
the actual harvests, I decided to pick strawberries
that Friday morning. I got up at 5am, dressed in old
clothes and took the Caprice out to the field. I
didn't tell the field owners where I worked or
anything about myself, I just asked if I could work.
So I was given two rows and some crates, and I started
to pick. The berries were so cold for the first hour
or two that it was hard to work very fast. There
could be no green leaves left on the berries, so each
one had to be pinched off, which left you covered in
juice. At the beginning I was concerned about making
sure I was doing a good job, but as I started to feel
the curiousity from the other workers and the
supervisor - even though I spoke spanish - they
wondered what a young white guy was doing working in
the fields, I began to work faster to try to show them
(and myself) that I was able to do a good job. After
three and a half hours, the last portion of the field
was finished, and me and my six crates (the man in the
next row picked at least 15 in the same amount of
time) received a total of $24.50 for my work. I
didn't pick enough to receive the wage that everyone
else received, so I got minimum wage. But I think I
will forever on measure the prices of things in "hours
picking strawberries" instead of dollars. I was so
sore from bending over and reaching, picking as fast
as my little hands would pick. Thinking about the
experience afterwards I realized that this more than
anything else during my JVC year taught me about
social justice and the struggles that some people must
endure in our world today. And what I discovered was
an overwhelming sense of respect for the conditions
and intensity of labor that so many migrant workers do
EVERY DAY to support their families, sacrificing their
bodies and their dignity to ensure that their children
will have something to eat that night, and sometimes
even that is not even enough. Occasionally (but still
far too often) workers have trouble getting the wages
they earned and end up receiving little or nothing for
their work. Increased legal and immigration pressures
in the past few years have prevented a lot of workers
from even trying to work, and they must either return
to their families in Mexico or try to apply for
citizenship, which is a long and drawn out process.
That week on the news they showed farmers plowing
their strawberry fields under because prices were so
low and there weren't enough workers to harvest the
fields. What I believe that I think many in the
government don't understand is that our nation and our
economy depends on these workers to harvest our food,
and being a nation of immigrants ourselves, we should
allow them to work if they want to work. America
should strive to be a true beacon of hope for people
of the world in their times of crisis.
On a similar note, I was excited that the main topic
of our third and final retreat of the JVC year in June
was hunger and social justice. This retreat was held
at Sequim, WA (pronounced "squim") on the Strait of
Juan de Fuca near Victoria, B.C. This is one of the
most beautiful places in the country. On the way up
we stopped at the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic national
park, which is the only temperate rain forest in the
united states, and one of very few in the world. This
forest receives over 140 inches of rain every year,
not counting 30+ inches JUST FROM FOG DRIP. As a
comparison, Osage City, Kansas recieves about 28
inches of rain a year. So there was a lot of moss on
the ground and in the trees. A lot is an
understatement. But this was just one more reason why
the northwest is so special, and I was thrilled to
experience it. At the retreat we laid out under the
stars at night and learned that there is enough food
being produced in the world to give every person on
earth a 3000-4000 calorie diet per day (which is a
lot) but due to a variety of reasons, it is not
distributed equally, and a lot is wasted. Everyone
got super excited in all of our discussions, which
gave me hope and amazed me yet again of the type of
people that JVC draws in and that I am so thankful to
have spent the year getting to know such interesting
people. I feel comfortable knowing that many of these
people will continue to devote their entire lives to
working for social justice and helping the poor and
forgotten people of our society while I entertain
myself chasing tornadoes and the like. It definitely
takes a special person to keep the drive and passion
alive within them while working in social services.
My job is going pretty well, and it's nice to see the
need going down a little since the harvest has
started. We have a new president of our St. Vincent
de Paul Society conference at St. Luke's, and there
have been a lot of changes at the food bank and a lot
of ideas for the future, which I am excited to see and
I know that my work will be in good hands when I leave
and no JV will take my place due to our house closing
after this year. This month also featured my last
thursday quilting group, last "Trendsetters" monthly
potluck lunch and just yesterday we said goodbye to
Becky, who will be leaving a little early to go back
home to Chicago and get ready to start a Masters of
Divinity program at Notre Dame in August. It was sad
to see her go, because now it turns into a waiting
game for the other two to leave, and then I will be
here by myself for the last few days packing and
shipping boxes home before I leave on August 8th. It
has been a wonderful year though and I wouldn't trade
it for the world.
Before Becky left, we spent the entire day yesterday
cleaning the house from top to bottom (washing walls,
cleaning the oven, EVERYTHING) and catching up on a
year's worth of partially neglected yard work outside.
Seven hours of hard work together was just about the
best community builder we have had this year.
Let's see what else... I planted a garden which has
been very faithful to me so far. The first tomatoes
should be ready in about a week or two. On the spur
of the moment last weekend Katie and I took a 700 mile
tour of the desert in Eastern Oregon, and turned it
into a gigantic geology field trip. We collected
"thundereggs" near Madras, OR (agate filled geodes,
the Oregon state rock), ~30 million year old plant
fossils in apporopriately named Fossil, OR (from when
that part of Oregon was a tropical rain forest), and
obsidian from Glass Butte near Burns, OR. On the way
back we stopped at the Deschutes brewery in Bend, OR,
which arguably was the best part of the trip. And our
prayers were answered this week when my parents
finalized the sale of their business. So a change of
pace and hopefully less stress await them in the
coming years as my dad went from 20+ employees to
three. Too bad their kids couldn't have been with
them on the big day... my sister is studying this
summer at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC and I
am here. But in a few weeks it will be very nice to
have everyone back together again for awhile before I
leave for grad school at the University of Oklahoma
(where I am still looking for season football
tickets... don't worry though, when we play K-State I
will be wearing purple!) Tonight we are going to
barbeque and go to a rodeo, and tomorrow a group of
six of us are going to climb Mt. St. Helens (an 8
mile, 12hr hike), so I am going to do my best at
making the most of the holiday weekend. I hope you
all do the same and enjoy the time spent with family
and friends! I miss you all and think of you often!
Blessings,
Eric

Hello again all,
Thanks for being patient, July fourth and fifth were
very busy days out here, with all the barbequing and
rodeos and fireworks and mountain climbing, I'm just
now getting around to sending out the pictures that
accompany the email I sent on Sunday afternoon. It
was hard sorting through 3-4 months of pictures (as
many of you know... I take a lot) but these are the
ones that I think are best.
Enjoy,
Eric

Photo 1: my family and I in front of the Woodburn sign
in march
Photo 2: the tulip fields near Woodburn
Photo 3: the view of Mt. Hood from my airplane window
coming back from my early April visit to St. Louis
(sorry if you were there and I didn't get to see
you!!) The pilot asked for clearance to fly as close
to the mountain as he could. You can see the results.
Photo 4: Katie on our lunch break driving down the
California coast on Hwy 1 towards San Francisco
Memorial Day weekend
Photo 5: me in front of the "big tree" in Redwood
National Park

Photo 6: skyline of San Francisco (this is where they
filmed the "Full House" intro)
Photo 7: a stream in the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic
National Park
Photo 8: me in front of the Painted Hills in Eastern
Oregon (near John Day, OR)
Photo 9: our garden... from left to right: a row of
strawberries (under a cage so the birds don't eat
them), a few green bean plants in the front, then 6
green pepper plants, then 2 huge zuchini plants in the
back, then nine (yes nine) tomato plants, then
marigolds and sunflowers. I am so proud. =)
Photo 10: Mt. St. Helens from the parking lot
yesterday morning about 7:45am. since my camera died
about 1/10 of the way up, this was one of the few
pictures that survived (don't worry, I had my film
camera along also, but I just haven't gotten them
developed yet) I marked our route on the photo, up in
red and down in green. The beginning of the climb was
through about 2 miles of forest, and once we reached
timberline, the rest of the climb one-way was about
2.5 miles and a 4600ft elevation gain. The summit of
Mt. St. Helens is now ~8300ft after the eruption in
1980. At timberline you transition through zones of
krumholtz (small twisted trees) and then alpine meadow
(where there were many flowers in bloom). After that
is lots and lots and lots of boulders. Big boulders,
small boulders, round boulders, jagged boulders, all
the boulders you would ever want to see. This was the
most fun of the whole climb, cause you were actually
climbing ("bouldering"), looking for hand holds and
footholds and jumping over gaps and such. The
boulders gradually got smaller and smaller as you
climbed higher and higher, and eventually turned into
a kind of loose gravel. By this point the oxygen was
getting pretty thin (yes mom I took my inhaler along
=) ) and if you weren't cautious, it was easy to slide
downhill when you took a step. The best method was to
kick and dig your foot in a little bit to create your
own foot hold, but by doing this you caused mini rock
slides, so the five of us had to space out a little
bit more between us. There were also a fair number of
other people climbing with us in other groups, and it
was nice to build a little sense of solidarity with
the other groups. The other groups had also figured
out this foothold-making technique, so it was nice
when you ran across a trail of footholds from someone
who went before you. Farther up, the loose gravel
transitioned into pure ash for about the top 100ft or
so of the climb. Because we were so exhausted
already, and the air was so thin, and the ash so
difficult to climb in, this 100ft took us about a half
hour to climb up. Once we reached the top however,
the view was so so worth it. Mt. Rainier and Mt.
Adams looked close enough to touch, and on down south
Mt. Hood, Mt. Jefferson and the Three Sisters near
Bend (150+ miles away!) were also visible. From the
crater rim we could see where the eruption of St.
Helens had created a gigantic landslide that took a
large portion of the mountain with it, along with the
lava dome and the new glacier that was forming. We
also saw several mini-avalanches inside the crater
while we were on the rim. On the way down, we had
heard that the easiest, fastest and most fun way down
was 'glissading' down the permanent snowfields (which
means sliding on your butt about 40mph down the
longest snow slide I have ever seen). At one point I
was going so fast that my ears popped and I could
actually feel the temperature getting warmer as we
descended the mountain. I brought along my host
family's geology hammer that I took to Eastern Oregon
which I used here as an ice pick to slow myself down.
We went down about 2/3 of the mountain this way. So,
if any of you ever get the opportunity, I HIGHLY
recommend climbing Mt. St. Helens, it was by far the
best outdoor recreational experience of my life.