6 Fictional Characters I would hire for my nonprofit

Wednesday Addams (The Addams Family)

Wednesday is a thoughtful tactician who applies creativity and rationality in everything she does professionally. She is able to analyze data quickly, gather compelling support materials, and write strategic proposals under tight deadlines. Wednesday has the ingenuity to expand her writing and research responsibilities as her expertise develops.

Position: Grant Writer

Best Qualities: Thirst for knowledge, sharp mental acuity, deadpan wit, persuasive communicator, exposes problematic societal norms with powerful monologues

Favorite Quote:I’m not perky.”

Wednesday would have a low-profile, but influential role as grant writer who packs a lot of punch and isn’t afraid to prove her power.

Samwise Gamgee (The Lord of the Rings)

Dearest Sam, of course he makes the list. Could you ever hire a truer hero? He can face great foes with courage. Sam has well-developed people skills and can build robust social relationships. He is receptive to change and new ideas. He has a knack for engaging others within the work we support with enthusiasm and generosity.

Position: Executive Assistant

Best Qualities: Loyalty, dependable companion, repeatedly saves us all from disaster

Favorite Quote:How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.”

Lastly, he would bring “a few good taters” to the team potluck.

Darth Vader (Star Wars)

Who doesn’t love an epic villain? Lord Vader would offer any nonprofit organization solid direction amid adversity. He is a fearsome leader who would always deliver the fundraising results that are expected of him. Vader is dedicated and strong-willed, with references stating he is consistently hard-working.

Position: Fundraising and Development Director

Best Qualities: Sales background, experience training fundraising staff and volunteer leaders, telepathy, the Dark Side/Force, provides rides on the Death Star

Favorite Quote:Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them.

He would evaluate and plan fundraising campaigns that no prospective funder or donor would be safe from.

Clifford (Clifford the Big Red Dog)

Clifford is charming, selfless, and easily has insights to what speaks to people’s hearts. It is difficult to describe this quality on a resume, but Clifford easily relates to others’ emotions, helping minimize conflict. He would promote equity, diversity, and inclusion in all aspects of his work.

Position: Community Outreach Coordinator

Best Qualities: Unusual size, gentleness, loves unconditionally, grows referral sources, gathers wonderful client success stories and feedback

Favorite Quote:Share your smile with the world. It is a symbol of friendship and peace.

Clifford grew up to be the Big Red Dog because his owner, Emily, loved him so much. Now, he always wants to help people and makes new friends (and nonprofit partners!) wherever he goes.

Chef (South Park)

When interviewed, Chef was clearly full of passion and charisma. He has experience with all levels of government and wants to eliminate inequality by dismantling existing systems of discrimination. Chef would take on multiple responsibilities with competence and good cheer. He also has the ability to convey complex concepts clearly, both orally and in written format.

Position: Advocacy and Policy Director

Best Qualities: Cheerful, background in community legal aid, shares wisdom via soulful or jaunty singing, bakes delicious treats to share with colleagues

Favorite Quote:Well then don’t buy into this fad, Kyle. Be who you are. Not what’s cool.

Chef has the capacity for insightful communication and is inspired by the opportunity to take action for meaningful work, knowing that efforts contribute to something bigger than himself.

Mary Poppins (Mary Poppins)

Hiring some who is always polite and proper is no hardship. Mary Poppins is happiest when she can help someone learn something new. Mary Poppins is generous, compassionate, and sensible. She may come across as bossy, but only because she cares so deeply. Basically, she is practically perfect in every way.

Position: Educational Director

Best Qualities: Experience working with children, makes menial tasks more bearable through song, magical abilities (including umbrella transportation and speaking with animals)

Favorite Quote:Anything can happen if you let it.”

Efficient as she is elegant, she would help plan amazing educational events and delight participants.

Which fictional character would you add to this list?

Unicorn Farts Might Be Funny, But Not As Funny As These Top 7 Fart Memes:

Okay, what have I learned as a mother and step-mother of all boys? Farts … it turns out…. are always funny. Not in the mood for farts? Too bad, because they are funny – ALWAYS.

  1. Can you imagine if they found out the actual truth!?

2. I thought that was one of the main reasons to get a dog….that and cleaning up the kitchen floor and all of the pets!

3. Sometimes it is just easier not to say anything:

4. Probably didn’t think hard enough before speaking!!

5. Good ole corona virus – has even changed the way we cough and fart in public

:

6. Which could also be known as the ring of fire….

7. Ummmm, I will be right back!

And to close, there has to be an actual unicorn fart meme, because you can’t have the title talk about unicorn farts and not have a meme about them. That would just be rude.

ZERO to FARM, Dear Dungarees

“If it doesn’t excite you and scare you at the same time it’s not adventure.” Zero to Farm.

At the South Bay of the beautiful Flathead Lake on a Reservation in North West Montana rests a gorgeous town. Polson. My life has been located here for 25 years. Close enough to main street to walk to parades and far enough from the lake we can still afford the property taxes. Most often you can find us backpacking in the summer, paddling around the lake or floating the river. It’s been a great place to raise kids. But something was missing.

Obviously what’s missing is a farm. I decided a few months back I am going to write a book about sustainable farm living on a Rez whilst living in town with little to no property and a deep dislike of animals. I know nothing about sustainable farm life but I will learn as I write. My husband can grow loofah seeds so all my family can have sponges and dish scrubbers from our vines. I feel like a homesteader already. We can grow lentils and garbanzos. I will walk out onto my porch and wrap a blanket like a shawl around my shoulders as I look to the heavens for a sign of rain. Incredible. I think my hilarious lack of knowledge of anything pertaining to farm or sustainable living will hopefully fill my book with much humor and relatable failure. I recently bought a pair of overalls from a local thrift store so Im totally a farmer now.

Noteworthy sidebar, I am prone to be more absurd than absolute. More daring than dull. I often find myself on the outside of level-headed, practical conversations with little input to contribute. Watching all the sensible people talk, wondering when they last dreamed, who stole their excitement for life, and what causes them to process information like plain toast. Listen. I married a first born male who is incredible in his level-headed ways. It is truly a gift to us dreamers as we may find instead of eating or paying bills we forget altogether and float away in a hot air ballon. I need, WE need all the sensible, practical people in this world. And we need all the free-spirits. And this is where the next chapter in our farm life begins.

This farm thing has been a thought for years. Not sure how it would materialize we researched city ordinance for chickens. My level headed husband learned how to make sourdough bread and got obsessive about owning quail. My mom and I joked about buying goat girl dresses and learning how to can. I bought overalls and a seed catalogue and listened to James Taylor and Kenny Loggins for inspiration on peaceful living. Then bam!

This week we bought a farm on accident. More accurately, by chance. It presented itself in a place we weren’t expecting. 2 hours South of home. Victor, Montana, on the Bitterroot River. Fly fishing anyone? We fell in love with a piece of property that most describe as “It has potential.” We couldn’t live without it. We are selling our houses on the Rez and moving into a commune style life with my family on this farm. Away from the familiar to foreign.

We are cramming 2 families (possibly 3 if we can talk my brother into joining us in our absurd farm dreams)  into one house much smaller than our current houses. Shedding off some of our spacial comfort in exchange for acreage, river front, and doing this farm life together. In community with our people. Our family. Ridiculous and incredible. Stay tuned for the continued adventures of zero to farm.

PS. I bought our first goat. She is majestic. She will have friends. Not sure how many yet. Thanks to my dear goaty friend for hand picking our herd. Our pack? What are a group of goats called? Gawd… I have so much to learn.

Trip. They are called a Trip of goats. Thanks Google.

#tripofgoats #sustainable-living #farmlife #reservation #montana #flathead-lake #polson #victor #river #bitterroot # flyfishing #riverfloat #paddle-board #goats #familycompound

Continue reading “ZERO to FARM, Dear Dungarees”

Raising My Pit Bull Puppy

I would like to introduce Mac, our 10 week old Pit Bull puppy. Mac was born on July 10th, 2020. My fiancé, Lyndsy, and I had been wanting a dog for some time and we were looking to get a puppy or rescue a dog near the end of summer. To our luck Lyndsy’s Aunt’s dogs (dad was full breed pit bull and mother was mostly pit with a little bit of lab) had a litter and we were the first people she asked to see if we wanted a puppy. We immediately said yes and she sent us pictures of the litter so we can pick one out. This little grey ball of joy stuck out to us and we knew he would be perfect for our family. We would get updates from Lyndsy’s aunt on how he was doing and she even started calling him Mac for us around 3 weeks old. We picked him up on August 21st and he has forever changed our lives. Mac can be a handful but is usually very well mannered for a puppy. We are making sure he is crate trained at night where one of us will take him out to potty in the middle of the night, he rarely whines about being in his crate anymore. One nice purchase that we have made is the Fresh Patch, which is a patch of grass (4ft by 2ft) used for dogs to help them train and get them comfortable with the transition to going to the bathroom outside. We are enrolling Mac into some puppy training classes that Lyndsy and I will attend. I cannot wait for this little guy to grow up and be the great dog I know he will be. As of right now he weighs 20 pounds and we are expecting him to be about 90 pounds when he turns a year old.   

 

 

Picking up Mac

 


Bears are Scary

Yeah that’s right. Bears are terrifying. That’s the blog.

I am so sick and tired of this Winnie the Poo sounding, “Man, I hope we see a bear on this hike” having bullshit I hear every time I go into the woods with my friends. Sure, seeing a little black bear in the distance while you’re in your car on “Going to the Sun Road” gets the dopamines flowing. But when you’re actually in the woods without the protection of a massive metal cage on wheels while driving a road traveled by millions of visitors every year, spotting a bear is a whole different story. Bears are big and dangerous, wild animals that should be left alone to tend to their own business.

Let me just start with a brief history of notorious bear and human relationships.

  1. Short Faced Bear

Back in the olden days of 1.8 million years ago until only 11,000 years ago, an absolute beast of an an animal existed, deemed the Short Faced Bear. This freak of nature weighed a solid 2,500 lbs., had a height of about 12 feet standing up, and if you can recall early history, LIVED WHILE HUMANS DID. As people much smarter than me can speculate using geographic means, there was a bering land bridge that stretched from Russia’s North-Eastern point to Alaska’s Western coast, in which people who lived in Asia would use to travel in order to inhabit North America.

What they couldn’t count on was this ginormous tank, murder beast that literally could not be stopped by any means. Scientists say this bear was so deadly, that it prevented human migration entirely across the bridge for a period of time. Nobody was stopping to admire nature when they approached this thing; they either died trying to get past it or cut their losses and turned back to Russia. Just imagine, you freeze your nuts off in Asia for years while fighting Woolly Mammoths and Saber Tooth Tigers, so you decide to march 620 miles to possibly find something better, just to be met with a big hairy killing machine that prevents you from crossing.

No thanks. I’ll fight Manny from Ice Age any day of the week over the Short Faced Bear.

2. Hugh Glass

Alright the story of Hugh Glass is pretty insane. This guy was a frontiersman and fur trader who operated around Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota in the early 1800s. He had built himself quite the resume of badass activities, from being a pirate to living with the Pawnee Native American tribe. He was an expert navigator and survivalist who had taken on many dangerous missions across the Western United States, until his legendary encounter with a Grizzly in South Dakota. Upon running into a bear and two cubs, Glass prepared to be charged and was able to get one successful shot off from his musket as the bear began to maul the shit out of him. I mean, have you seen The Revenant? This bear comes back for seconds, then thirds “Oh don’t mind if I do”, just annihilating Glass before ultimately dying of the gunshot wound. This griz tears the guys scalp off, absolutely shreds the entire rest of his body and leaves his legs utterly useless.

But guess what. Glass isn’t dying like this, he’s a former pirate of the Black Pearl for Godssakes. And this is what the movie doesn’t show, Glass could not use his legs at all so he -crawled- the entire 500 mile trip to his fort destination. He survived the ordeal and became a legend in his own right. Take a guess who would not be able to navigate, survive the elements, and crawl 500 miles to the next help station while bleeding relentlessly? Me. Or probably any normal human that lives in the 21st century, because that is WAY too hard. There’s no chance I’d survive that initial mauling even. Bears aren’t snuggly or graceful animals. They have giant knife hands along with pointy teeth and beady little dark killer eyes. Hugh Glass would certainly attest to that.

3. Timothy Treadwell

What if we were nice to the bears and wanted to treat them like one of our own? Maybe we try and bridge human society and bear society together? Sounds like a nice idea. Having a bear friend would be awesome, I bet he would know some pretty legit fishing spots at least. I know the University of Montana football team could certainly use a grizzly bear as a linebacker; he’d probably even become All League.

Timothy Treadwell thought similarly. The titled “Grizzly Man” thought he could cohabitate with bears in Alaska and they would learn to accept him as family. To the amusement of many, he was able to successfully do this for 13 consecutive summers. Each bear had a name and different personality, and they would all reside in the same area. He was never armed, and did not even carry as much as pepper spray. Unfortunately, this fairytale story came to a tragic halt in October of 2003 when he was mauled to death by a fully grown Alaskan Brown Bear.

Looks like we aren’t meant to live with bears after all.

To wrap it up:

No, I don’t want to see a bear in the wild, bro. We aren’t meant to mess with them. Sure it would be cool at a distance, if I’m in a bear resistant, protective unit. Bears will not wander over, lick you, and beg for some pets like a dog. Bears will literally rip your face off and walk away as if nothing happened. There is no other thing on the planet where it is recommended to carry a gun and pepper spray in-case you come into contact, and many people still want to have that BeAuTifuL and nATurAL encounter. That’s like saying you’d love to run into a serial killer on a jog because it would be so cool to see one, but hopefully it won’t attack.

No thanks. I’m totally good without meeting any bears in my travels.