Hello. Mark was kind enough to extend an invitation to me to join this group, which I find very interesting for several reasons. Thank you for having me. After telling Mark some of my experiences over the past week, he suggested I post them here in the journal.
But first, just a bit of background might be in order. After working in Philly 10+ years, for the past year and a half I’ve been working for an environmental non-profit based in Wilmington. But my main office was in Trenton NJ until May of this year. That created all sorts of challenges for me (commuting distance, unfriendly office environment, etc) and I was really hoping to get my position moved to Wilmington. A variety of lucky factors came together in late April, which paved the way for this transfer on 5/16. Since then, I’ve been happily based in Wilmington.
My new office sits on the tidal Christina just upstream from the confluence with the Brandywine, and I’ve been loving the team spirit of our group of 10+ staff. With this move complete I’ve been able to initiate several new environmental restoration proposals that build on work I’ve done to study the river’s ecology since about 1999. Most of my study sites have been further up, near the DE/PA line where I’ve snorkled the entire bottom for 6 miles. I know less about the land surrounding the river, mainly because it’s so developed and the undeveloped properties sit on wealthy estates that are tough to get access for. But my background has given me a sense of the challenges and opportunities in the watershed, particularly with environmental issues.
Mark told me about the group at the Assembly Retreat last weekend, and I signed up as soon as he invited me. Then, during the week a sequence of interesting developments occurred. First, on Tuesday evening, my non-profit had our annual fund-raising benefit dinner on the banks of the Brandywine at the Hagley Museum (http://www.hagley.lib.de.us/slide-birkenhead.html). And….. a well-connected individual from a major company approached me about wanting to find funding for one of my environmental restoration proposals, which happens to be a big Brandywine-based project that I’ve had trouble getting advanced until now.
Then on Wednesday, I found myself standing in the middle of the Brandywine River just north of Wilmington on a field trip to show some colleagues from Del State Univ how to find freshwater mussels that I work with in my research. It was interesting because weather, high flows and a multitude of other problems had thwarted efforts to get this little meeting of academics together for many months. There had been no prior plan, but soon after reading this journal and thinking about Will, I got a call from the others that they wanted to go, the predicted bad weather for Wednesday didn’t materialize, and we got out there and had success.
So I take these various events as signaling that there are lots of windows of opportunity opening, perhaps having something to do with “fixing” or helping the Brandywine River and watershed. In the environmental world for instance, there are many big things in the works such as removing the remaining 9 dams on the lower river, since these relic dams (many are mill dams) impair natural processes.
So, I’m looking forward to learning more and doing what I can to help. Sorry for the long first post!
Blessings,
Danielle
