After I took the 2008 Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training, I took their Map Your Neighborhood (MYN) workshop. Then, I gathered neighbors on my street to meet. We shared contact information, learned steps to follow in a disaster, and listed the resources we could contribute in case of emergency. For example, on my block, we discovered which neighbors are willing to assist with a chainsaw, have medical training, or may need assistance.
Since then, I read the New Yorker article “The Really Big One” and Sandi Doughton’s Full Rip 9.0: The Next Big Earthquake in the Pacific Northwest. I learned that the 2001 Nisqually 6.8 quake lasted 45 seconds. A 9.0 could shake for five minutes. We may be unable to reach hospitals or stores, and lack running water, power, phone, natural gas, etc. for weeks or months.
MYN is an increasingly important program. First, scientists say The Big One is a question of when not if. We will need resources to live on our own for weeks; even winter storms have caused us to lose power for over a week. Second, MYN is a way to meet our neighbors so that we recognize who belongs. Third, it builds community even if we don’t have an emergency, so it’s never a wasted effort.
So please contact Lynnette Eastlake at safety@mirrormont.org or me to say you will host a MYN meeting of 10—15 households. We will organize a meeting of “hosts” to explain the MYN program, and then lend you a DVD to provide a format for the meeting with your neighbors.
I also encourage you to take the 8-week, $35 CERT training. It’s a blast to use a fire extinguisher! To participate on our Emergency Preparedness Committee led by Lynnette Eastlake, contact her or me.
I’ve loved living in Mirrormont since 1988, and I care a great deal about our unique community, and am honored to have served as MCA President since 2014. I first became actively involved with the MCA when I volunteered to deliver a few Welcome Bags to new homeowners in 2008. Suddenly I found myself leading the Welcome Committee. In 2009, I submitted a proposal to the Board to build Mirrormont Pea Patch, wrote a grant to fund it, and have been actively involved on the Board since then. I became a Master Gardener in 2013 so I could better coordinate our Pea Patch and offer Growing Groceries Clinics to everyone in Mirrormont. For Mirrormont’s 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2012, I took on the role of historian. In 2013, I initiated a project, along with Janet Horton, Meg Wade, and Maryfrances Lignana, to create signage and a guidebook for forty native plants in Mirrormont Park.
In 2014, I began our Speaker Program. Wanting to find a way to reach all residents in Mirrormont, I revived Mirrormont News as an annual print newsletter, with Griffin Cole doing layout, and Maryfrances Lignana obtaining advertising to defray the cost of postage. When wildfires became an issue in Western Washington in 2015, I initiated a Firewise program in Mirrormont and we became a Firewise Community/USA, which made us eligible for grant funding for events such as Chipper Days.
Professionally, I have a Ph.D. in biochemistry, worked for two biotech companies, and taught for an online doctoral program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in the Department of Transformative Studies. I’m the author of Lifting the Veil: The Feminine Face of Science, which won a Washington State Governor’s Award, and a co-author of Walk on the Wild Side: Native Plants of Mirrormont Park. My passion for plants led me to study herbs and ethnobotany, and I relish eating nettle soup in the spring, and summer vegetables from the Mirrormont Pea Patch.
