Well said, Connie! and thank you.

Joe Monda Seattle
----- Original Message -----
From: Connie Sidles
To: TWEETERS tweeters
Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2011 11:26 AM
Subject: [Tweeters] Fill Community


Hey tweets, The current melee about individuals' behavior in the field reminds me that we are each capable of doing good or harm. It is our choice, one we make in hundreds of ways every day: the choice to be kind or cruel, helpful or hurtful, loving or uncaring. Like it or not, we are a community, warts and all. We achieve the most good for our beloved birds when we act together, in peace and respect, remembering that each of us in our own way loves the wild. Anything we can do together as a community to foster love and understanding of the wild will help the world preserve species that are under severe pressure from us and from nature itself.


I had the privilege of witnessing a recent example of the goodness of our community. This morning, I set up my camp stool inside the greenhouse fence at the Fill to watch a team of five good people put up our Purple Martin gourds!!! You should stop by and see how beautiful our new addition is.


Eight white gourds are hanging off a re-used cedar (or possibly redwood) pole just inside the fence. The gourds were supplied by you, dear tweets, in response to my request for donations. The pole was supplied by the UW Botanic Gardens. The decorative arms, ropes, and assembly were supplied by one of the Friends of Yesler Swamp, Jerry Gettel, who is a construction artist in disguise. Take a close look at his ingenuity, which will give us the ability to raise and lower the gourds for cleaning. The installation was supplied by guys from the UW Botanic Gardens staff, who dug the post hole by hand, hefted the 13-foot post with sheer muscle, and hung up the gourds carefully, one by one. We were all thrilled when the pole went up and the gourds started swinging in the breeze. Inside each gourd are clean cedar chips, waiting for a martin passerby to take note and move in.


All together, we have created a work of art that will, I hope, bring Purple Martins back to the Fill. No one of us could have achieved this alone. Like everything else at the Fill, this project worked because we all helped, because we all respect nature, and most of all, because we try as best we can to balance the needs of people and wildlife.


We have within us the power to create much of our own environment, at least the cultural parts. What we choose to create is up to each of us - as individuals, but also as people working together. I hope when we each make our choices about how to act in both our natural and cultural worlds, that we choose to better our environment and bring out the best in each other. - Connie, Seattle


constancesidles at gmail.com
www.constancypress.com


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