She did it!!

Thats right...Aisha Anjali Woodward graduated Saturday from Bowdoin College with a liberal arts degree in Government and Legal studies. I can not say how proud I am of my "other girl"!

She was also the receipient of a couple of grants for further study as well as the award for Initiative in Leadership and Public Service. In a month she will travel back to Ghana to do some

community work after studying there last year. In January she plans to travel to Italy to teach English learn more Italian, study Dante and then apply to Grad school.

She took advantage of every opportunity Bowdoin offered her, and gave it back three fold. She helped research and author the second Mitchell Institute Study on secondary education in Maine, she took two groups of students to the Bronx to teach during spring breaks, and she continued to help find ways to make entrance to colleges like Bowdoin something every Maine student has an option to do...

Whatever effort we put in to getting her there, pales in comparison to how she ran with her education once there...she made everyone that helped in that process very very proud.

It was a wonderful day, sun stayed out as long as possible, the speakers were for the most part very good, the traditions of a campus like Bowdoin are always so nice to see, Alumni in their straw hats, the band marching the grads all over the ENTIRE campus before they hit the stage,

statues dressed in caps and gowns!

We all went out to lunch afterwards, Aisha her two brothers, sister Becky and husband Tom, Nancy Buckingham and our family, to Jamesons Tavern. Then we presented the "little wanderer" with a suitcase, from LL Bean, so she doesnt have to drag back packs and duffels throughout Europe!

She is a wonder and a delight and we are so lucky to have her in our lives...I look forward to seeing what she will accomplish in the years ahead..

Ok she is somewhat back on the planet..sorta

Hello fans...Now let me explain that last blog..I actually wrote this long detailed blog about where exactly ARC girl had been and the darn website lost it so I was just too exasperated and tired to deal so I just left it that way..it actually had a better effect! Besides do you all really care that all I do is work, work and more work...?

Well I do have a little bit of a life if you call going out for a drink at 10 pm in the county after driving thru a hail storm .. and singing broadway tunes from the sirus radio broadway station with Hillary to annoy Pat Adams a life well than there you have it!!

Honestly folks its been nothing but the Bangor office and flooding and FEMA for weeks. With the exception of a quick trip to DC to pick up the diva daughters stuff but not her..she stayed behind for boyfriends graduation and flew home this week... and do you think those people from National ARC left me alone..nope..the staffing person (Beeethhh)
actually called me in the car on the way to Washington..that woman never did get it!! AND I almost had to room with her in the county because there were not enough hotel rooms...I had Pat Adams put a stop to that one!! He of course is now our interim executive director and finding me to be a "tiny bit" high maintenance! I mean really! MOI???

So I have been in the Ellsworth office this week two days...this is a record..I havent been there two days in one week in a month!! Tommorow though I head back to Bangor for Suzans party and then to Portland, as Aisha (my adopted one) graduates from Bowdoin on Saturday morning.

In other news my dearest friend is a new grandfather...as of last Friday. Connor is his name and he is very sweet, I actually had the opportunity to see him as I was in Bangor the day he was born. Grandfather Mark is very proud and quite smitten. As well he should be.

Caroline is home with all her attendant stuff...it will take weeks to put it all away ...and Tyler is slowly finishing up his Elementary school career with his eighth grade project of a mural on the wall of the school..its really quite incredible.

So there you have it...I am alive..and well not necessarily well but getting there!! Looking forward to the long Memorial Day weekend...Hello Super sibs!! xo

ARC Girl

Where oh Where is ARC girl??

"water water everywhere....

So..Do you want to know what ARC girl has been up to? Or do you? Heard of those Floods in Northern Maine?? yep! We have been preparing for such an event for well over a month now...the fact that it would be a 100 year event though is not lost on this newbie to disasters that require DR #'s and telephone calls to Washington DC..because we no longer have a service center..closed the day of the flood!!

Last Wednesday the flood waters reached that 100 year event in Fort Kent and as I was driving to work, I was quickly diverted to Bangor..and with the exception of a quick drive home that same day to pick up clothing I moved up there to take over chapter disaster operations and Hillary moved up to the County. It was "hell on wheels" for a couple of days. The phones literally never stopped ringing...and at times I had my cell on one hand and a regular phone on the other. They rang through the night..and when they were not ringing we were on conference calls..the situation changed rapidly, but nothing was as telling as the calls I got...I had the Chapters phones for all flood related calls, so I would get these calls from some small town, and a person saying...I am flooded out, the roads are all closed where do I go what do I do? Some of these towns were miles from open shelters..some I could not find on maps as I talked to these people thru the night..

Thursday, the National Red Cross gave us a disaster relief number and we started to put into place the makings of an operation..unfortunately without the normal advice of a service center the process was thrown into chaos and it was one of the worst days I have ever spent!! Friday National was up and running..bare bones but none the less we had a place to put our complaints and issues...I started to deploy volunteers from the chapter Hillary meanwhile went toe to toe with the EMA directors and relief operations at the EOC!! I think she was the only woman in that building in Fort Kent!!

By Saturday we were exhausted but we knew we were both going to go home and sleep in our own beds!! She left the county and I left Bangor...
NO the phones have not stopped ringing and things are no where near normal...but we made it thru the first 72 hours and then some and even though the hassels and communications and frustrations have been immense..we haven't lost anyone yet..we are delivering the best our chapter can under the circumstances..and we did when it counted the most!! And we will continue to push forward with this relief operation and in the end will be better directors because of it...

In the mean time send chocolate, coffee and wine in care of Hillary and Gretchen
ARC Pine Tree Chapter...