Some nice people say nice things about me

As you probably know from my postings here, I was a volunteer for Santa Clara Valley Audubon for over five years, including helping found and chair their Outreach committee (social media and, effectively, marketing in general) and for two years, the Birdathon Committee, which is their annual and largest fundraiser for the organization. Having moved to Washington, I’m no longer active in the organization but still happily a member and plan to be for a long time.

It came as a complete surprise when I read the latest Avocet (the chapter newsletter) that they wrote some quite nice things about me, which left me with a smile on my face for the last few days. I wasn’t expecting that, and I’m quite appreciative that they decided to do that.

I’ve been a member of SCVAS for a long time, and at one point it lost it’s Executive Director and went through a bit of a hibernation. I came on board after they brought in an new ED, Ralph Schardt, who needed to stabilize the organization and get it growing and moving forward again. We both saw possibilities and opportunities, and I felt the organization had a lot of potential and that it was worth investing my time and energy in.

I was right. Ralph was able to get things moving forward and started building out some new programs and get the organization moving in interesting new directions. The then decided it was time to retire and spend more time with his cameras, and SCVAS hired and brought on board Matthew Dodder as the new Executive Director. Matthew had some very big ideas for what the organization could be that I loved, and under his direction, we dug in and started to try to make those ideas reality.

SCVAS has a very small staff; Matthew as ED, April as the office manager, Shani Kleinhaus is a full-time Environmental Advocate constantly working with local companies and governments on bird and nature related issues, and Carolyn Knight, who manages and does much of the educational programming and outreach. Very few Audubon chapters have a full time advocate like Shani, and she does great work mostly behind the scenes to educate and advocate on bird safety, habitat and other issues with local governments and companies. Carolyn — kinda does everything, amazingly well.

The organization also has a great team of volunteers supporting it, like Ann Hep, who took over Outreach when I stepped back from being chair and has done incredible things in terms of building alliances with other groups, diversity outreach and throwing a lot of energy into many different things, Eve Meier, who took on organizing our group outings — and when the pandemic hit and we all locked down, created an entire program of virtual outings and self-guided tours to keep us outside and birding and sane (the tour I wrote for Ulistac is here). Barry Langdon-Lassagne, another fellow ex-Apple person, took over and drove a complete re-design of the web site and manages it for them today, and oh, yeah, now chairs the board of directors and a bunch of other things. Bill Walker, Peter and Diane Hart, Bob Hirt and Mike Armer are the others ones I work ed with the most, and they and all of the board members were joys to work with.

The Pandemic turned into this crazy busy time as we all tried to figure out just how to both keep the chapter relevant and keep the funding going, when group outings were the big social activity of the chapter and also, through things like the Birdathon, primary fundraising platforms. Out of this came a massively enhanced web site with a lot of good and useful content. I believe SCVAS could be used as a model for how a chapter could be run and what kind of content a chapter should be providing, and I believe it’s one of the top ten local chapters within the Audubon community today.

SCVAS also worked with me to take over ownership and stewardship of the South Bay Birds mailing list, which both allowed me to step away gracefully and hand it over to new leaders and give it a home into the future that is not dependent on one person willing and able to keep the thing running.

Here in my new location, I’m not committed to do anything for anyone for the first time in a few decades, and it honestly feels weird, but in a good way. I’m able to focus a bit more on my things, which to date has been, oh, unpacking and working out the paperwork on five thousand little bits and details. I’m starting to get writing done on a regular basis again, and am no longer feeling guilty if I spend a couple of hours on a weekend doing something other than working to settle things down in the house. That said, I miss the people I worked with at SCVAS more than anything else in Silicon Valley, and the work we did together to make the county a great place to bird and be a birder. Those people were a big part of my life and social network, and I don’t know when or if I will ever build up something like that up here.

But I’m happy that my time and energy I invested in SCVAS took what was a good chapter and with the help of all of those people above and many more, turned it into a great and innovating organization with even more massive potential to do great things. I’ve always said that in doing philanthropic work, writing checks is easy, and it’s when you commit to the time and sweat equity that great things can happen. I did that with this group, and I’m proud of the results I helped make happen there, and I know there are many other things they’re working hard to bring forward over the next months and years as well. Can’t wait to see what else they come up with.

As I sit here at my desk staring at the feeder out the window where the chickadees and juncos and nuthatches are stuffing their faces and I’m regularly entertained by three different woodpecker species (Hairy, Downy and Northern Flickers) coming in to feed, I both miss the fun energy and chaos that were the teams I worked with at SCVAS, and see a new and interesting future for me here in Washington that is barely begun. SCVAS has great and motivated people behind it who will do great things with or without me, and I have this new, unmarked territory of possibility just waiting for me to start filling out the todo list with things to do and build and enjoy. But I will miss seeing and interacting with the people there as I did for all those years, and that will be difficult or impossible to replace.

Thanks, all of you. And keep doing the great things you’re capable of.