My Road to Making a Difference

For the last 10 months, AmeriCorps-Vista has been my life, and my road to making a difference...
I was working as a part time naturalist, barely making enough money to eat, but doing what I love, when I heard of a job opening with the Cahaba River Society. The Cahaba is one of my favorite places to paddle because of its sheer, blazing beauty and also because I know the water is clean. I’ve been paddling the Cahaba for the past three years in Lily Season [March-May] and year round above the 280 bridge. It’s become a tradition to go down to Bibb County and see these giant spider (Cahaba) lilies growing straight out of the river bedrock, through the water. It’s a fairy tale setting – so when I heard about an AmeriCorps job with the Cahaba River Society, I Jumped. And I called, setting up a meeting with the current VISTA, and then sending in my resume.
AmeriCorps VISTA is a program focused on helping impoverished communities and the people therein better themselves. It’s like Peace Corps, except you stay at home and get to help people. The specific arm of AmeriCorps in which I’ve been working, OSM VISTA, had the environmental tie-in I was looking for. So it began. I worked for two months to get the paperwork through the bureaucracy and get to know the community, and by the end of the summer; I was already a part of the community.
What I’ve realized in Bibb County, as a result — huge personal growth, ecotourism planning, reviving a committee for a Coke Ovens Community Park, helping put on new events for the river (cleanups, River Ramble: Year II,) promoting more educational field trips- taking kids to the river in their backyard through CRS's Shane Hulsey CLEAN Program, and especially aiding community members in making the changes they want to see – is making a difference.
It’s documented on the web, here in this blog.
Now, I’m ending my AmeriCorps journey. I'm handing the projects over to my friends and starting my new job!! Through this year's work, I've been able to get a full time job in the environmental protection field. I’m the new watershed organizer for the Alabama Rivers Alliance, so I’ll be going statewide. If you have a desire to help- your self, your communities, your state, your river, the environment > then get involved. Try looking up your local watershed group if you live in Alabama and go to a meeting, volunteer with organizations or events you think are cool. See what’s already going on in your town. Recycle, be conscious of your water and electricity use. And if you want some good experience and training, are willing to work for practically nothing, gaining as much as you put in it, try AmeriCorps.

Prayer Garden Dedicated at First Baptist, West Blocton

Sunday, July 29, marks the dedication of a prayer garden at the First Baptist Church of West Blocton. This event culminates the run of the Smithsonian Exhibit, Between Fences, in West Blocton and in Alabama. For more information on the prayer garden, contact the Reverend Bob Praytor at 205-938-7392.

Students from West Blocton Elementary School Place in International Web Design Contest

If you want to see a really neat, fact-filled, website designed by 4th graders from West Blocton, go to www.bibbed.org/wbes/CSI/index.html
The team has placed in the International Thinkquest Competition and will be traveling to Atlanta to present their work. The prizes for honorable mention are new laptops for each person on the team, a trip the the Aquarium in Atlanta, and a trip to a Braves game, provided by the Friends of the Cahaba National Wildlife Refuge. This is a huge honor for our kids, our school, and Alabama. The site focuses on the Cahaba River and the wildlife on the Cahaba National Wildlife Refuge.

Smithsonian Exhibit Opens- from the Tuscaloosa News--

Fence history exhibit opens
Published Saturday, June 23, 2007
By Lucinda Coulter

----Dorthy Grimes laughs as she talks with volunteers trained to be docents, people trained as guides and lecturers to conduct groups through a gallery, at the Smithsonian-sponsored exhibit “Between Fences” at the Cahaba Lily Center in West Blocton on Tuesday.
Staff Photo | Dusty Compton----

WEST BLOCTON | Barbed wire and picket fences are more than barriers of steel or wood. They are the saga of the nation’s settlement — of laborers who set posts, of farmers and ranchers who fought boundary disputes.

The Smithsonian Museum on Main Street’s exhibit “Between Fences” tells it that way in a display of five kiosks with text and photos at the Cahaba Lily Center downtown.

For West Blocton Town Council member Myrtle Jones, the exhibit is another step in an effort to encourage more visitors to come to the once prosperous coal-mining town. She helped organize the museum display and events.

“It really is an honor for a little small place like us,” Jones said. “I think the museum will help us with the local economy and civic pride.”

The exhibit is part of a touring Smithsonian program encouraging tourism in small towns. West Blocton, Decatur, Demopolis, Greenville, Centre and Headland hosted the “Fences” tour earlier this year.

Subjects range from how fences evolved from agrarian to urban cultures, the meaning of fences in slavery times and the impact of Canadian and Mexican borders.

Jones said $5,000 from state grants and private sources was used to install better air conditioning at the Cahaba Lily Center in time for the display.

Jones said she hopes visitors will enjoy both the national exhibit and West Blocton’s own offerings — its

history and natural beauty of the nearby Cahaba Wildlife Refuge.

Now retired, she has loved the town’s rich immigrant lore since she started teaching at West Blocton High School in 1955. Her students told her stories of their Polish and Italian grandparents.

And Jones listened to the stories as she and her students swept the wooden floor of the old school together.

“They were proud of their heritage,” Jones said. “On weekends, they’d show me the cemetery and coke ovens. They knew there was something special in the lives of their grandfathers.”

Italian settlers were some of the first to mine coal in the area, and Polish settlers built many of the 19th and early 20th century buildings still standing on Main Street.

Many of the stories of the Italian immigrants buried in the cemetery are tragic.

“One child died at sea and another whole family died of eating poisonous mushrooms,” Jones said. “Each grave carries a special story.”

In addition to the national exhibit, the exhibit includes student interviews with longtime residents about life 90 years ago in West Blocton and a 19-piece photo exhibit by Columbiana artist Rachel Fowler.

West Blocton Elementary School teacher Annette Harris assembled 11 interviews that third-graders recorded from their grandparents’ stories.

The story of the last circus that came to town, submitted by historian Charles Adams, is especially interesting, Harris said.

Museum tour guide Bill Hubbard said he is looking forward to volunteering during the month-long fences exhibit.

“This exhibit will fill up our town with people,” Hubbard said.

Reach Lucinda Coulter at lucinda.coulter@tuscaloosanews.com or 205-722-0206.

FINAL Chance to comment on your COKE OVENS PARK PLAN!

Tuesday, July 10th is the final day to weigh in on what you want your Coke Ovens Park to be in the future. Our last meeting for the park master plan is at 6:00 at the Library/Municipal building in downtown West Blocton. This "master plan" is the outline for what will be built and how the park will be developed in the coming years. If you are interested in having zip lines at the park or in bulldozing the ovens or in restarting the coking operation, come to our meeting and tell us what you want to see!

National Wildlife Refuge Selected for Remediation!!

Good news for the Cahaba River~~
Old mining spoils and a high wall on the Cahaba River National Wildlife Refuge have been selected as a priority cleanup site for the 2008 Alabama Abandoned Mine Lands Program. This is something that we have been working toward for three years with our VISTA program, and a huge accomplishment for the Cahaba River Society, the Cahaba River National Wildlife Refuge, our regional Office of Surface Mining, and our state AML office.

Stat's on the First Renew our Rivers Cleanup

The friends of the Cahaba River National Wildlife Refuge held their first annual cleanup on the Cahaba River in Bibb County on Saturday, April 21st. This event was sponsored by Alabama Power as part of their Renew Our Rivers Program.

Sixty-four volunteers from Bibb, Tuscaloosa and Jefferson counties pulled 3.22 tons of trash from various part of the Refuge, including 200 pounds of recyclables and 68 tires – four still attached to a 1995 Lincoln.

A dump amnesty day was also held in conjunction with the cleanup, to encourage people to dispose of their trash correctly. The Cahaba River National Wildlife Refuge paid to have the dump opened and the dump received 75 tons of trash with 115 customers! This is reportedly the most people to ever use the dump in a single day.

Additional support for the cleanup was provided by the Cahaba River Society, AmServ, West Blocton Police Department, Bibb County Sheriff’s Department, Sun Beam, Little Debbie, R L Zeigler, and Sav-Mor Associated Foods.

The second annual clean up is scheduled for Saturday April 12th 2008.

If you are interested in joining the Friends of the Refuge to help protect, preserve, and restore the river, sign up at www.cahabafriends.freespaces.com.