All posts by laurahinnj

From the field, Small truths, Whatever

The public’s business

12 Comments

I remember fifteen years or so ago when first offered a job with social services being asked, rather snidely, “You don’t intend to stay there very long, do you? Who wants to work with those people?” I really had no clue what I was getting myself into and was just interested in a paycheck and the chance to put all those years of studying Spanish to good use.

I remember being bothered, to begin with, mostly by the lack of any similarity of values with my clients. It seemed like everyone was having kids with just anyone with no concern for how they were to be supported. Fourteen-year-olds having babies really bothered me. Women staying with the same abusive guy for years. Teenagers having abortion after abortion.

For most of these fifteen years, it’s all been stories on paper or over the phone, with very little direct face-to-face contact. Other than an occasional visit to a little old ladies’ home to complete paperwork, it’s all remained very abstract and I’ve been able to pretend a certain distance from the people I work with.

Not so anymore.

If anything, in all these years, I’ve learned that there’s really very little that separates me from my clients; us from them. Values and chance are what I think it comes down to. Big factors, but easy to explain away by circumstance or luck.

Something else I’ve discovered recently is that nothing shocks me anymore. This hasn’t been a sudden thing, I don’t think, but the accumulated weight of years of sad and twisted stories. I do wonder that I’ve not become cynical or jaded. Maybe my own values have just slipped along the way; who knows.

Two days a week now I’m out there snooping around in people’s homes and poking into their private lives, all in the guise of making sure that their living situations are safe and sanitary because you and I are paying a portion of their living expenses each month. Most live just like you and I do; others, well… it’s not anything that is really polite to discuss in mixed company.

😉

But discuss it we do; usually late in the afternoon when any sort of productive work is well beyond possible. It’s a good sort of release and a good time to laugh at ourselves, mostly, and the things that still bother us. Not shock us, just bother us, or make us afraid. Child abuse, bed bugs, gang shootings, cockroaches, sex offenders.

This afternoon after I sent a letter along to notify a client that I would be visitng in the next two weeks, I took a minute to look through the case file. Oh boy! Do I really mean to go there alone? Safe-enough neighborhood, but the client has a history of drug use (not just that, really, more like a history of running crack houses) oh and look there! – a police report about prostitution and confining women in the home against their will, and just last month an arrest for crack possession (again) and buying alcohol for minors.

So I went to the big boss and asked if we shouldn’t just terminate any sort of assistance to this guy and do I really need to go into his house… please? Well, the fact is, he hasn’t been convicted of anything yet, so I need to make the visit.

I think I must have sat at my desk for an hour trying to come up with a way to sell this visit to any one of my more experienced coworkers – a trade maybe? Fresh-baked muffins everyday for a month, perhaps? In the end I just asked if anyone had the time to accompany me on a visit to a crack house and dear sweet Susan, who sits across the way and is totally overburdered with her own work, volunteered to go along with me. How two blonde German-Irish girls are to make each other feel safe I’m not sure, but she assured me she’s not fazed by it. She’s sat across the kitchen table with the mothers of murderers and knows that these people, our clients, the ones we mean to help on their way to self-sufficiency, really like us and mean us no harm and are glad for the intrusion into their lives.

I’m not convinced of that yet, but wonder if I shouldn’t have offered fresh-baked muffins everday for two months instead, or just taken that job on Wall Street so many years ago.

😉

Birds

Hoodies

13 Comments

NJ is small and especially full of rude people, but we’ve got great birds, particularly in winter along the coast. You have to be the hardy type and enjoy the frigid wind in your face, but it’s worth the frostbite for the variety of waterfowl, gulls, raptors, and other goodies.

It’s still too early in the season for there to be great numbers of waterfowl, but I enjoy keeping up with whoever’s arrived in the neighborhood. On my days in the field, I plan my lunch hour around visiting a few of the coastal ponds that dot the north shore of the state. For whatever reason, the local ponds don’t attract the variety of the more southern ponds, but last week there was this nice group of hooded mergansers, a canvasback or two, some coot, and I think I may have imagined a ring-necked duck. Of course, the good ducks never get close enough for a decent photo, but there’s plenty of canada geese and mute swans to practice photography with.

There’s a lake along the ocean at the base of one of the senior citizen buildings that I visit that always has lots of gulls. I’m not often of a mind to sort through the ring-bills, herrings, and great black-backs but when the lake is frozen there may be bonaparte’s or a lesser. Mostly I have to be really bored to give gulls that much attention, but some birders are into that sort of mind-numbing exercise. I prefer the pretty ducks.

The ocean and bay have their own treasures; loons, grebes, oldsquaw, ruddies, bufflehead, harlequins. The marshes have harriers and short-ears, and rough-leggeds – the list goes on and on. But I’m getting cold just thinking of it.

So.. what birds get you outside in the winter? Or is it just the ones that wait beside the empty feeder?

😉

Snapshots, Whatever, Wildflowers

Trout lilies

3 Comments


















“It happened I couldn’t find in all my books
more than a picture and a few words concerning
the trout lily,

so I shut my eyes.
And let the darkness come in
and roll me back.
The old creek

began to sing in my ears
as it rolled along, like the hair of spring,
and the young girl I used to be
heard it also,

as she came swinging into the woods,
truant from everything as usual
except the clear globe of the day, and its
beautiful details.

Then she stopped,
where the first trout lilies of the year
had sprung from the ground
with their spotted bodies
and their six-antlered bright faces,
and their many red tongues.

If she spoke to them, I don’t remember what she said,
and if they kindly answered, it’s a gift that can’t be broken
by giving it away.
All I know is, there was a light that lingered, for hours,
under her eyelids — that made a difference
when she went back to a difficult house, at the end of the day.”
–Mary Oliver

Some cold and gray snowy days it’s nice to be reminded of spring and trout lilies.

Small truths, Whatever

A rant revisited

16 Comments

Humor me and go back and read this post from last February. Remember that? It still cracks me up to read it, but I got myself into such a mess at work that I almost don’t dare to bring it up again. A few coworkers who’d never previously had any interest in what I write here suddenly came out of the woodwork convinced that I was accusing them of being the source of my ire. I suppose there’s some lesson for me in that, but mostly I think I learned a great deal about the character of particular people and how little interest I had in working with them any longer.

I’m thinking about this now because it occured to me today how happy I am to be working with a new group of people and in a new position. I took quite a leap into the darkness with this job and it’s worked out okay and I’m finally feeling sure that I made the right choice. The job itself is far less glamorous than my old position (that’s a laugh) but I’m seeing the benefit of surrounding myself with good, smart, professional, self-assured people. I’m also enjoying that none of them are too very interested in me or my life outside of the office – it’s nice to be anonymous! Also wonderful is that we’re all too busy for gossip or that chattiness that makes me nutty about women who work together. Oh and my new boss (who retired just last week) visited today and brought each one of us (20+ social workers and our small army of secretaries) a bouquet of roses as a thank you for sending her off into retirement in such a nice way.

Dog days

Six month pupdate

7 Comments
“It’s difficult to decide whether growing pains are something teenagers have — or are.” – Author Unknown

Luka has unofficially arrived at that stage of puppyhood considered the beginning of adolescence; the haphazard sum of many parts: nose, elbows, long velvet ears, and heart, all fueled by a limitless supply of enthusiasm. Brains, so far, appear to remain optional.

Suddenly he’s big and strong enough to go all day dragging me along behind him, but lacks judgement and any sort of focused concentration, like most teenagers. This time in raising him requires lots of patience and the challenge of seeing past the immediate irritations to appreciate the dog he’ll one day mature into.

At least Luka, like all Labs, comes with the built-in means of endearing himself to those around him, no matter how trying he often is. He always manages to convince me that he never intended any harm. He radiates charm, even as he spills a full cup of coffee all over my iPod (ruining it) and then pulling the same trick a few days later by jumping into my lap and sending another cup of coffee all over the laptop. One day soon I’ll learn not to drink coffee around him! Most of his antics do not produce such destruction; instead they make me laugh in a way that begs an official pardon for his misdoings.

The beginning of his adolescence marks a period of transition that will last for at least the next two years. Right now he’s little more than an overgrown puppy, all random energy and unfocused enthusiasm, but if he ever matures (god help us!) he’ll be a wonderful and playful companion. Hopefully he will have learned something between now and then, and will be trained well enough to resist the temptation to misbehave. For a while, at least.

In the neighborhood, Seasons, Snapshots, Whatever

First snow and a photo assignment

13 Comments

Little more than a dusting before it turned to rain this afternoon, but enough to make things especially pretty in the neighborhood. I love the juxtapositions in this shot – it was autumn only yesterday, yet someone lucky enough to have their own dock on the river has set out a little Christmas tree to hold back the darkness some and cheer up my view. And it’s all dusted with just a hint of snow. This is one of my favorite spots to pass by when I take the long way home from the beach; a little cove on the far side of the river where wigeon call from the shoreline. I don’t think there’s any sweeter sound until February when the oldsquaw are courting.

Signs of Christmas are popping up everywhere but here at home; there was snow on my porch pumpkins this morning and on the red peppers and gourds that I haven’t gotten around to picking from the garden yet. I’ll catch up one of these days, honest I will!

I’ve dreampt up another assignment for the camera happy among you. Find something festive and quirky that makes you smile. Send along a photo and we’ll laugh together at the goofy ways peole like to display their cheer for the season. Would two weeks be long enough? A deadline for Friday, December 14th? Quirky is the key word, please!

PSA, Seasons, Snapshots

Visiting with trees

5 Comments

“What did the tree learn of the earth to confide in the sky?” –Pablo Neruda

Another of Neruda’s questions to ponder on a Friday night. This is one of the local trees that I keep track of and photograph now and again. Nice tree, nice view. I like to see it as the landscape around it changes. The fields just out of view have woodcock or meadowlarks in season. Maybe a bluebird or two. And harriers, usually, or a kestral. The day I took this pic I sat myself down in the tall grass there and watched a harrier for an hour or two with the sun on my face.

The leaves have finally fallen and there’s talk of a bit of snow for the weekend. Only just enough to be a nuisance, though.

The Festival of the Trees should be up and running by the time many of you read this tomorrow. Be sure to stop by for a visit.

Bunnies, PSA

The sun’s most gentle rays

11 Comments

The low light caught the velvet fur of Boomer’s ear while he dreamed bunny dreams late this afternoon. His sleepy eyes smiled at my hand against his nose… and he nudged me… a persuasion to again run my happy hand through his dark coat.

I don’t pick out sweet rabbits; they don’t come here silly, jumping figure-eights at my feet. They’re dumped, neglected, frightened. Or worse, like Boomer and some of the others here, sent to slaughter. I pass by that slaughterhouse on my way to work most days and wonder how many others come and meet their death in that place without ever knowing a gentle hand. I look away of course; I don’t have the courage to see what actually goes on there or to do the really hard work of going in and choosing which rabbits to rescue. But I’m glad to be able to support a local rescue that does.

Boomer is a survivor! A Flemish Giant, bred for show but not perfect, so he was sent to slaughter and netted his breeder about $10. His sister and companion, Cricket, passed away last May. A new slaughterhouse Flemmie, Sunshine, found her way to me shortly thereafter and has slowly worked her magic on Boomer’s broken heart. The big news here is that finally (after 6 months!) the two are spending the night together.

😉