Step Number One

(Press the middle to play)

Upon hearing about the project, I immediately thought of Kate's presentation about environmental protection. She had told us she was part of the Citizens Committee to Complete the Refuge(CCCR) and that her family was very involved with it. So, being a good friend of Kate's I figured that this would be a great opportunity to help out in our community without being put too out of my comfort zone. It turned out to be a really great choice as I was warmly welcomed by the heads of the Committee, Florence M. LaRiviere and her husband Philip. We(Kate, Kate's mom and older brother, Britney, and I) drove to the LaRiviere's home in Palo Alto and talked to them about a project that we are going to be working on. This project is to document the history of the Committee and such by interviewing long-time members and creating a video of these interviews. After all these years, since 1967, there has never been official documentation of the history of what the Committee has done and how it has changed the Bay Area. It will be our duty to create this video and if it looks good enough it may even be aired at one of the wild life refuges in the Bay Area. I find this a big commitment because we will be required to go and interview different people and then edit a video that looks good. But I believe that together we can do it and hopefully do our best. Back to what we did at Florence's home, we also ate dinner there and were able to see a lot of stuff relating to CCCR. They showed us a bag that was used to advertise the Committee, plaques they were given, and tons of documents that were from cases where they saved wetlands around the Bay. It was really interesting and I loved how inspired and committed Florence and Philip were about saving the wetlands. At one point during the evening, Florence started talking about some wetlands in the Bay Area that have been planned to be demolished and create soccer fields. She said “Ryan you are going to be my go-to man for this one”. This really hit home for me, because it created a conflict inside of me. Right then and there, I thought to myself that I would definitely not be helping Florence out on this one because I believe that it would be great to have some more soccer fields built. But thinking on the subject later I began having different opinions. I started realizing that maybe that is being too selfish, that it is wrong to kill thousands of plants and animals to provide access to more soccer fields. Presently I am still undecided on which side I would defend, but I think I am leaning towards Florence's side because I feel it is not right for us humans to destroy wildlife for some fun on the weekends. I was amazed that this controversy could arise from just going through the motions of a school project. I now partly understand why Mr. Shawn and Mr. Speckels would want us to do this project, not only to help others and create relationships with our community, but also to learn about ourselves and use that knowledge to make a difference.