Brian M. Bowman
"Blessed is the man who...is like a tree
planted by streams of water that yields
its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not
wither. In all that he does, he prospers."
- Psalm 1:1,3 ESV
The progression of events in the course www.women with Dr. Diane Maluso:
I have never taken a course with Dr. Maluso before, but I completed a session with her for orientation a few years ago. She seemed like an awesome professor and someone that is tons of fun. My friend Renaldo had taken this course with her the previous year and he had a great time and learned how to make several websites. Once I decided to no longer pursue education as a major, my Term III opened up, allowing me to choose any course that interested me. The ability to make a website is a skill that I have always wanted to acquire, so the www.women course seemed like a perfect fit.
With a focus on women and the environment, the class began to brainstorm possible environmental projects that we could do in the community. We came up with geocaching, a farmer's market, hiking a gorge, working on a community garden in Elmira, and picking up litter.
The first project that the class worked on was their personal website, which this section is part of. With the help of Dr. Maluso and Renaldo, I became familiar with some of the basics of Dreamweaver so I could begin to assemble my site.
Another component of the course was to interview a woman that has done some environmental work. I worked with my friends Chris and Sarah and interviewed my sister, Melissa. Melissa just did an art show with her students from Barker High School using all sorts of recycled art materials. On a Wednesday night, we drove to my hometown to prepare for the interview the next day. When we woke up, we drove to the Market Street Art Center in Lockport, New York, where her students were painting one of the walls on the street with some of the attractions of Niagara County. While we were there, two local newspapers were gathering information from Melissa, her fellow teachers, and the students working on the wall.
After meeting the students and asking them some questions about their art show using recycled materials, Sarah, Chris, and I went down to the Erie Canal Locks in Lockport, viewing some of the large dropoffs in the water levels and the mechanisms behind the locks themselves. Our next stop was the Western New York area chain restaurant Mighty Taco. We all got super mighty burritos, as well as some nachos and empanadas. It was the first time Chris and Sarah had Mighty Taco, and they loved it. It was nice for me to get some local food.
We went back to the Market Street Art Center to interview Melissa. We did the interview in the area the exhibit was in. We video recorded the interview, asking many questions about the nature and impact of the project, focusing on its environmental aspects. Afterward, we recorded Melissa while she described the materials and processes behind each piece of art in the exhibit. Sarah took some extra pictures of some of the pieces, then we headed back to Elmira.
Our first in-class field trip was to Robert H. Treman State Park to go hiking around the gorge. I drove Sarah and Chris up, and we went hiking with Marki, Emma, Alex, Lindsay, Maddie, and Collette. The scenes we encountered were beautiful, including several waterfalls and rapids. When we got to about the 1.5 mile mark, we found out that the main gorge trail was closed, so we had to cross the bridge and use the rim trail, which had tons of steps on it. The large waterfall at the end of the hike was by far the most spectaular element of the day, making our trek well worth it. After hiking all the way back, our legs were tired, but we had a great time. Before driving back to Elmira, Sarah, Chris, and I enjoyed some calzones from D.P. Dough in Ithaca.
Our next adventure was geocaching at Tanglewood Nature Center. On a hot, humid day, Dr. Maluso plugged in the coordinates of the geocaches into the GPS units we had. The group I was in was Eric, Michelle, Alex, and Chris. The first geocache that we found was in a camouflage canister. It had a few trinkets in it, but we did not want any of them. Michelle wrote a note in the notebook, and we went to find the next one. This one was not too far away, but we looked in the area for a good 15 minutes before finding the box behind the tree. We exchanged for a singing chipmunk and a bracelet for Dr. Maluso. The last geocache was the farthest away and took us the longest to find. We ended up choosing the wrong trail, so we had to go through mucky trails. We finally found it hanging on a small branch in one of the trees. It was pretty tiny, and had a few things in it. Chris got a bunny rabbit ring. By this time, we needed to head back to the cars. After a long hike, we returned to find that the other group only found one geocache and their GPS ran out of batteries. Chris had lost Dr. Maluso's water bottle on the hike, so Chris, Renaldo, and I had to go back and find it. When we got back, we rode back to Elmira with Dr. Maluso.
