Wednesday, February 7, 2007 10:48:31 PM

This morning we had breakfast with out community sponsors at the museum, this meant that we had to be up earlier which was really hard to do after last nights performance. After Breakfast we had a seminar on the oil and gas industry during which I took quite a few notes. As part of this we also finally took a tour of the museum. We all loaded onto our bus and headed out for ship rock. Ship rock is an old gigantic lava cone that sticks some 5000 meters into the air. We had lunch on the Navajo reservation, the largest native reservation in the US, at Shiprock High School. The school population is around 800 Navajo students. We certainly got to feel like the minority. They put on a program of traditional dancing and song. There were many high ranking officials there. The security guard of the school who was on duty was actully an UPW alumni from 1981; there certainly are a lot of alumni. We drove back to Farmington for a wrap up of the day and the week. Many people were doing well and had many good story to share, some, not so many and are having a hard time coping with the schedule. I’m one who is doing quite well I think. I finally broke down and hugged some people today who were having a rough time. Its all Good™ Tomorrow is the longest day yet with setup in the morning at 7:45 , rehearsal in the afternoon, show in the evening, and take down till probably around 11:30 PM or so.

Here are some of my notes from the day:

San Juan basin was originally (as well as the entire central US) was an ocean floor. The oil and gas was formed from microorganisms. Hydrocarbons are extracted from rocks. Porosity is the percent of pour space which determines how much oil is on the rock.

Experiment:
Gravel has 50% porosity. The sandy material has about 30%
So you can say that the density is tied directly to the permeability.

Permeability is the rocks ability to be permeated by water.
20,000 gas wells in the San Juan Basin, 200 within Farmington where pump jacks “suck” the gas out of the reservoir.

Natural Gas, Propane, Butane, Methane, ect. All are stable as a gas; longer carbon hydrocarbon chains are stable as liquids.

Fracture “frac jobs” are where shafts are filled with sand so that it is still permeable by the gas molecules.

Interesting comparison:
1 Acre of land for a gas well
9 Acres for the same energy for coal power
100 Acres for the same energy for solar panels
309 Acres for the same energy for wind mills
536 Acres for the same energy from wood burning
An average well will produce for 40 to 60 years.
When a well is dry, it is filled with cement and the land is reclaimed.

Tucson Prep
• Former headquarters of UWP (Tons of Alumni)
- Moved to Denver because of donated land and infrastructure (1990)
• Very close to the Mexico border, lots of problems associated with illegal immigration
- Border Vigilantes - armed private citizens patrolling the border


Social Justice
Ideal condition in which all members of society have equal rights and benefits.

CI Tucson
www.pascuayaqui-nsn.gov


Today’s News:
ShipRock high school:
• They talk about a lot about how people outright accept us, in the high school we interacted with the “outgoing” kids. There was some resentment towards people that were different because of the bad treatment they have received in the past for immigrant white populations and the US government.
• They were very open and willing to let us experience their culture. It was hard for us to realize the importance and impact of our visit, but there were many high ranking people there to welcome us.
• Marry within the clan system, can marry inside the Navajo clan but are also free to marry outside of it.

We Made The front Page of th Local Paper; Again.
Kristin , Jonas, and Vero Ride the Geovator, an exibit at the museum where yu follow the well drilling process.
George on the Bus
BadLands
Me with a 20,000 Megawatt natural gas powerplant and its cooling pond behind me. Also Greg from Belgium.
Up with People, you meet em wherever you go!
Got Milk?
Maria, Armando, and Kat on the bus to the Navajo Reservation
Ship Rock



Climbing the Lava flow outside ship rock

David and Ship Rock
Kenzo and the New Mexico Desert


Ship Rock High School gym
Navajo Dancers

Wednesday, February 7, 2007
10:04:35 PM

Today we had a regional learning session where we learned the following trivia:
Main Industries of Farmington: Coal, Oil, Gas.
“Four Corner States”: Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico.
Farmington is in San Juan Country
Rig Worker: Roughneck, one of 10 most dangerous jobs in the world
Navajo’s Role in WWII: Used Navajo Language as “Code Talkers”, Only code never broken by the Japanese during the war.


Tomorrow we’ll be leaving the Museum and taking a Guided Bus tour to the Navajo Reservation.
One of the main industries in Farmington is the oil industries is the Oil industry. A lot of migrant mexican workers work in the oil field. Many of them don’t have the proper training because many don’t have green cards which makes it legal to work in the US. As a result, deaths are very frequent. There are two main jobs in the field work of oil production; there are those who drill the holes and lay the pipe, and there are those who come and install the compressors. The more dangerous of the two is drilling and spinning the pipe. These jobs generally go to the untrained migrant workers.
Compressors are basically giant engines which run off of the gas that is extracted that push the gas down the pipeline. An individual well could be in production for 50 years or more. Compressors however, usually only run 40,000 hours before they break down. When they break down they are fixed immediately, no matter what time of day. People are always on call. Colorado provides about 30% of the natural gas or the USA.

This Morning after our morning meeting and regional learning session; Patrick, Gabe, Mary, and myself went back to PATH to finish up with the pantry restocking and doing the baseboards in the living room. For Lunch we had brisket and nachos. We had had some Special guests in that morning from a local university to do fitness with the majority that stayed.
In the afternoon we did a complete run through. I think it went rather smooth considering its ben a while since we rehearsed. For supper we had more beans. A note on the beans; they’ve gotten to the point where they are adversely affecting me; and those around me. On more than one occasion I’ve cleared half the entire stage with my noxious fumes. Things are not going to get any better before they get worse either. Anyhow, we had supper in the civic center; catered by Navajo first nations people. The theatre was pretty much packed. We had people from local high schools participating in our “stomp” number as well as the Four Corners Childrens Choir joining us on a couple of pieces. After the show I went out an signed autographs like I was some kind of rock star. I was interviewed for the paper and everything. It was all good.

Our show tonight alone raised $17,000 U.S. For local charities and non profit organizations. We have another on Saturday as well; should be awesome.

This week we as a group have provided over 740 hours of community service in Farmington.
I also learned that I’ve been selected to do advanced work in the Netherlands. This means that I’ll be taking off 2 weeks early to set up everything in that city from host families to meals and community partners. Its going to be freaking awesome, but very very very intense.

We got all of the staging taken down by 11:30 pm and loaded into the trucks. Back with our host family, we had a midnight snack and are heading to bead because we’ve got to be up even earlier tomorrow for breakfast with our sponsors. Its all Good™

Wednesday, February 7, 2007
10:04:35 PM

Today we had a regional learning session where we learned the following trivia:
Main Industries of Farmington: Coal, Oil, Gas.
“Four Corner States”: Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico.
Farmington is in San Juan Country
Rig Worker: Roughneck, one of 10 most dangerous jobs in the world
Navajo’s Role in WWII: Used Navajo Language as “Code Talkers”, Only code never broken by the Japanese during the war.


Tomorrow we’ll be leaving the Museum and taking a Guided Bus tour to the Navajo Reservation.
One of the main industries in Farmington is the oil industries is the Oil industry. A lot of migrant mexican workers work in the oil field. Many of them don’t have the proper training because many don’t have green cards which makes it legal to work in the US. As a result, deaths are very frequent. There are two main jobs in the field work of oil production; there are those who drill the holes and lay the pipe, and there are those who come and install the compressors. The more dangerous of the two is drilling and spinning the pipe. These jobs generally go to the untrained migrant workers.
Compressors are basically giant engines which run off of the gas that is extracted that push the gas down the pipeline. An individual well could be in production for 50 years or more. Compressors however, usually only run 40,000 hours before they break down. When they break down they are fixed immediately, no matter what time of day. People are always on call. Colorado provides about 30% of the natural gas or the USA.

This Morning after our morning meeting and regional learning session; Patrick, Gabe, Mary, and myself went back to PATH to finish up with the pantry restocking and doing the baseboards in the living room. For Lunch we had brisket and nachos. We had had some Special guests in that morning from a local university to do fitness with the majority that stayed.
In the afternoon we did a complete run through. I think it went rather smooth considering its ben a while since we rehearsed. For supper we had more beans. A note on the beans; they’ve gotten to the point where they are adversely affecting me; and those around me. On more than one occasion I’ve cleared half the entire stage with my noxious fumes. Things are not going to get any better before they get worse either. Anyhow, we had supper in the civic center; catered by Navajo first nations people. The theatre was pretty much packed. We had people from local high schools participating in our “stomp” number as well as the Four Corners Childrens Choir joining us on a couple of pieces. After the show I went out an signed autographs like I was some kind of rock star. I was interviewed for the paper and everything. It was all good.

Our show tonight alone raised $17,000 U.S. For local charities and non profit organizations. We have another on Saturday as well; should be awesome.

This week we as a group have provided over 740 hours of community service in Farmington.
I also learned that I’ve been selected to do advanced work in the Netherlands. This means that I’ll be taking off 2 weeks early to set up everything in that city from host families to meals and community partners. Its going to be freaking awesome, but very very very intense.

We got all of the staging taken down by 11:30 pm and loaded into the trucks. Back with our host family, we had a midnight snack and are heading to bead because we’ve got to be up even earlier tomorrow for breakfast with our sponsors. Its all Good™

Wednesday, February 7, 2007
10:04:35 PM

Today was an interesting day. In the morning we did pretty much the same things as yesterday but with a new group of about 60 high school students. At 11 we all boarded busses to our CI project sites. Today I went to the Navajo Ministries facility.

Navajo Ministries Inc. serves people, primarily the Navajo, in the Four Corners area of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado. Since 1953, we have helped to meet the physical, emotional, educational and spiritual needs of Navajo families and children. We will continue to build a future for Navajo families through programs which establish self-sufficiency, resilience and Christian family values.

http://www.navajoministries.org/

While there we cleared land using axes, bow saws, and trimmers. The site will eventually have a school built on it. We cut down mainly Russian Olive trees; very hard wood and tough thorns. I ended up cutting myself up pretty badly. I just went crazy with the axe. We had pizza from pizza hut for lunch on site. In the afternoon we headed to the Civic Center to set up the stage for tomorrows show. I’m on of the truck crew leaders operating the lifts on the trucks. In due process I crushed my left pointer finger between two crates and its now turning a lovely purple colour which matches my pinky finger on the same finger. It still really hurts and typing is very frustrating. I still hope I can play the fiddle somehow in the show tomorrow. Michael the music guy was somewhat upset with me for my “carelessness”. Ah well, I’m clumsy, it was bound to happen anyhow. Here is todays proverb that kind of applies to what we are doing in UWP.

A traveller was walking along a beach when he saw a woman scooping up starfish off the sand and tossing them into the waves. Curious, he asked her what she was doing. The woman replied "When the tide goes out it leaves these starfish stranded on the beach. They will dry up and die before the tide comes back in, so I am throwing them back into the sea where they can live."

The traveller then asked her "But this beach is miles long and there are hundreds of stranded starfish, many will die before you reach them - do you really think throwing back a few starfish is really going to make a difference?"

The woman picked up a starfish and looked at it, then she threw it into the waves. "It makes a difference to this one" she said.


A human Knot

Navajo Ministries Site
Yamil and a Llama
We even made the front page of the local paper this morning.

Tuesday, February 6, 2007
10:51:11 PM


Today has been a pretty eye opening day to say the least. I’ve decided to to start referring to my room mate as George as that is the english version of his name and its easier to spell and say. We had fresh coffee and cinnamon with mango juice for breakfast. Peaches the bird decided to jump up on the table and try some himself. Unfortunately he then decided to walk in the icing and jump on my shoulder. I got iced by a parakeet. Arriving at the Gateway park Museum at 8:30 we were briefed on the day’s upcoming transpirations. We were son joined by students from 4 local high schools. There were probably about 40 of the total.
Our first session together was a discussion given by local crime enforcement officer Detective Skinner: Child abuse unit. He talked at length about the meth-amphetamine drug use problem that is become of pandemic proportions. 85% of all theft and 72% of all violent crimes in the San Juan district of New Mexico were related to drug use; either under the influence of drug addiction or to gain funds to purchase more drugs. While working undercover, during a transaction, he discovered that a mother had given her 4 year old daughter as payment to the drug dealer to repay a 700$ debt. She had been kept in the basement of the home is a dog kennel and had not been given food or water for over 4 days. Of course he was arrested on the spot but the fact that a drug could be so addicting that someone would do something like that just to get more of it is quite frankly horrifying and sickening.
He then went on to explain why he was so passionate about his work. His younger sister died three weeks before her grade 12 graduation because of an overdose on meth amphetamines. Despite the fact that people had told him that they thought she was using it, he ignored them with the attitude that “this doesn’t happen to people like us”. If he had taken just that one step and confronted her about it up front perhaps she’d still be alive today. The message is that if you know people who are getting themselves into the vicious cycle of drug use, you should intervene because it is an addiction and sometimes that is all it takes to save a life.
We later had a team building session with the high school students where we taught them the “stomp” dance from our show. We also tried to untie human knots and arranged ourselves alphabetically without using spoken or written language.
Splitting into three groups we went by bus to our community impact project sites. I was in the group that headed to the P.A.T.H. Project. The facility of People Assisting the Homeless was in need of renovations and repairs so we provided the man hours to get it done. Working along side our partner high school students, we painted, raked, shoveled, swept, and moved everything from couches to washers and dryers. For lunch we walked over to the “Daily Bread” soup kitchen where some of the other UWP students were working throughout the day.
This was one of the most eye opening experiences of the day. As we got closer; one of the homeless people standing outside, an aging man of Navaho descent, Yelled at us “Are you Guys Christian?”. Poor Kelly, one of my castmates from Colorado was the first to get into the spiel about UWP. Right after she had said that some of us were he cut her off calling here a dirty whore and telling us as a group to “go the hell back to wherever the fuck we came from.” We all quickly shuffled inside. I sat for lunch with Gabe and Mitch; we sat solemnly, glancing occasionally at each other. I know I shouldn’t ever take things personally; especially things like this, but this is the first time I’d really been put in a situation where people automatically disliked me because of my religion. I’ll admit that it was difficult and had I been alone I bet I would have cried or something. With discussion we had later I leaned that although many Christian organizations help support the poor and homeless people in Farmington, that there had been a program similar to Canadian residential schools instituted by the church and that there is still a great deal of resentment over that for many reasons. We ate the same lunch as the other people who came to the soup kitchen, we sat with some of them at lunch in their cafeteria as well. Some were very eager to talk, some not so much. Lauran, another one of our US students told later about how she had a really good one on one conversation with a guy who was sitting over on the side by himself. Sometimes all it takes to make a difference is to lend an ear.
After lunch we went back to finish work at our project site. Many of the people who were painting inside got paint all over themselves. We finished up around 3:30 and headed back over to the food bank for our afternoon session on Human Rights. It was quite the shocking session. We first discussed “what is a human right” and how there are still many places in the world where basic human rights are denied. Armando from Mexico got up and told us how in Mexico there is still lots of persecution of women. We were introduced to the term “Femocide”, genocide but specifically women; and this has happened in Mexico within the past 20 years. Men killing women solely on the fact that they are female. How can this still happen in this day and age? Another thing that also occurs with relative frequency in some places is female genital mutilation. Why would someone force this medially unnecessary, painful and detrimental procedure one someone?
Linn from Norway stood up and started talking about despite the fact that their country is one of the most socially progressive in the world that there is an enormous problem with human smuggling and prostitution rings. Young girls, some as young as 11 and 12 from poorer countries like Estonia are literally “shipped” to Norway with the promise of work and a better life but instead are forced to work in the sex industry. The problem is 10000 times worse in the country of Singapore where young girls are forced into prostitution to help pay off family debts and to help support their families. This whole system is utterly wrong on so many levels; its just appalling. I don’t think that this issue gets enough attention in the world and that societies and governments alike must do more to bring it to the forefront.

Stop and think about that; really stop. These kinds of things happen all over the world everyday.
It Is NOT All Good; not by a long shot.

Back with our host family, we had Pot roast with potatoes and carrots for supper with pie a la monde and A&W root beer floats for supper. We took a quick tour of the town with their son and we stopped at Best Buy where I bough some over the ear studio headphones for the next bus ride. When we got back, George and I got out the maps and showed them all our pictures from home. I also played some fiddle music. Peaches danced along and it was quite neat. Tomorrow follows the sam pattern as today with the exception that we’re not off till 8:30 Pm because George and I are on the crew for setting up the stage for our performance at the Civic center on Thursday. It will be interesting for sure.
Inspector Skinner

Stomping it Down
PATH CI Site


Cleaning their kennels too
The Backyard
Painting the town
Painting Ourselves



Our High School Partners

Peaches Likes Carrots
1 TB drive, only about 400$ american :P


Its all Good™