Last Video From the Road: Episode 6 - Welcome Home Riders!

Here's the final Legacy Bus Tour video, Episode 6: Welcome Home Riders! It covers our trip down the West Coast, including Portland and Grand Ronde, OR; the Redwoods in Crescent City, CA; San Francisco and the Monterey Bay Aquarium in CA; Phoenix, and then onto our final destination, Tucson, AZ.

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We were so lucky to be able to share this trip with you through our videos, photos, and blog. We discovered hundreds of inspiring individuals and institutions making a positive impact on American Indian and environmental issues in the U.S., and shared our hopes and visions for the future with thousands of Americans ourselves. We will carry the knowledge we gained forever as we return to work on all aspects of these issues in our careers, studies, and lives.

Udall alumni are everywhere, doing amazing things, so keep your eyes and ears peeled. If you are a student devoted to tackling these challenges, check our website www.udall.gov for information on the Udall Foundation's scholarships, internships, and fellowships.

Happy Trails!

By: Jen Baldwin

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Driver Salute: Joel Prive is our Hero

For those of you who do not know, Mr. Joel Prive was our official Udall Legacy Tour Driver. I have a pretty silly memory of meeting Joel Prive for the first time…..

Everyone on the tour had yet to meet Joel until the official kickoff event in Washington DC. At the official kickoff event of the Udall Tour, we met so many wonderful supporters of the Udall Foundation. I remember shaking Joel’s hand and telling him it was nice to have met him. He joked back to me and said “he’d see me around”. I soon found out what that meant once we boarded the motor coach for the first time and he was sitting behind the driver’s seat! It’s a laughable memory and one I can now joke about.

Joel was far from just our driver. He is also a husband and father of three. His wife Lisa was a huge supporter of the tour – she frequently read our blog and commented on the tour flickr photos. His children are Zak age 7, Emily age 5, and Caitlin age 3. We had the pleasure to meet his family at our Vermont stop. Joel, in addition to being a family man, also helps run Lamoille Valley Transportation in Vermont as Operations Manager with his father and owner, Norman. Lamoille Valley Transportation, along with the Udall Motor Coach, were first to be Green Certified with the new program through the University of Vermont Extension.


In Phoenix, Joel’s family joined us for the last few days of the Udall Tour. We are thankful to all of our family and friends who we had to part with for this journey. For example, Sapna spent weeks away from her fiancé, David. Her wedding was only a few weeks after the tour! Between the crew, we all left friends, boyfriends/ girlfriends, brothers/sisters, parents, and other loved ones. Traveling around the country for eight weeks came with a sacrifice to those we love – and we are appreciative for all who supported us while we were away. Joel, however, was the only one who had to leave a spouse and children. Lisa, Caitlin, Zak, Emily, and Norman - thank you for your support and for sharing your husband, son, and father with us.



Joel was one of our biggest motivators and supporters. Joel hiked with us in national parks, he came to our alumni meet ups, he helped us plant trees, remove invasive species, made sustainable pizza with the Portland Boys and Girls Club, and much much more! Joel also made sure we always found a place to get B20 biodiesel, made sure the motor coach was always in tiptop shape, and did his best to make sure we made it on time to all of our many stops across the country. Joel never complained and always stayed positive. He significantly enhanced the group dynamic on the tour.

Joel left us with many fond memories. I’ll never forget when a dead branch was in the way of the motor coach while in Grand Teton. Joel stopped the coach and jumped up like Tarzan to move the branch. Joel went canoeing with riders on Jenny Lake in Grand Teton, went to a Harry Potter party at a bookstore in Seattle with riders, and he took Bret to the post office to help us mail off our Parks in Focus cameras for our programs in Michigan and New Jersey. To write down all of the things Joel has done would take many many pages! Yes, Joel was our driver. Most of all, he is our friend and a part of the Udall family.

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Episode 5: Rocky Montana High, Sustainable in Seattle

The Legacy Bus visits an art show on sustainable tranportation in Colorado, learns about Farm to College programs in Montana, enjoys the outdoors in Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, and explores campus sustainability at the University of Washington in Seattle.

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By: Jen Baldwin

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Episode 4: Over the River, Across the Bayou, to the Heartland We Go!

More Video! -- Featuring Local, Organic Music

Here's another video – they're going faster than hotcakes now! Episode 4 is our first tribally-focused video, covering our stops with the United Houma Nation, the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation's Native American Health Symposium, Haskell Indian Nations University, and the Haskell-Baker (Wakarusa) Wetlands.

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This episode, like all of our videos, features very special music. Jason Pitre, the son of Houma's Principal Chief, Brenda Dardar Robichaux, was kind enough to give me an album of songs of the Medicine Tail Singers recorded live at the IICOT Powwow of Champions, which he mixed himself. The album is called "We Sing For You," and for further information about the singers and Jason's recording business, Native Rhythms, you can contact him at nativerhythms [at] yahoo.com.

I'm trying to feature musicians local to the places we're visiting in each video documenting our trip. Please check out their web pages, give their other songs a listen, and support them, as well as the local music scene where you live!

By: Jen Baldwin

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Two Years Later – New Orleans

Bret Muter eloquently described in words the scene we encountered as we toured the homes of Juana Ibanez and her next door neighbor on the 4th of July, almost two years after hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.


Here are some of the images.

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Katrina is no longer in the eye of the mainstream media, but there is still much work left undone, and more need there than I have ever encountered. We were truly inspired by Juana's optimism about rebuilding the house where she grew up, whether it takes a second story with a turret, boat, and all.

We feel so touched that Juana showed us her city, and that she and her husband opened their homes to us. We wish her and her neighbors the best of luck rebuilding their homes and community.

By: Jen Baldwin

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The Udall Legacy Bus Tour Comes Home

On Aug. 3rd, our bus rolled into Tucson. Home. Not home to any of the riders -- but home to Mo and the Udall Foundation.

Andrew Lee (Scholar '06) leads the welcoming cheer (Photo by Tom Spitz)

And it was definitely a homecoming. We arrived to the loving welcome of the Udall Foundation staff. Not only were we received with open arms -- but also a full on cheer. The cheer on Friday was surpassed only by the cheer the following day from all the 2007 scholars led by Andrew Lee (Scholar 2006) in front of the Foundation's HQ in downtown Tucson.

The end of the tour coincided with the 2007 Udall Scholar Orientation -- the annual gathering of all the recipients of the Morris K. Udall Scholarship. It was an appropriate place to end the tour considering that it was two years ago at this same event that the idea of a big 'ol bus tour was first kicked around.

The energy at Orientation was infectious. It always is. Udallers, as we saw on the tour, and were reminded of again in Tucson -- are incredibly passionate, caring, and engaged. The "small talk" during Orientation is often about organizing a campus, researching a problem, or tackling policy issues head on. I always find it's such a recharge -- which was a great way to end our Tour.

The official finale of the tour included remarks from Carol West (Tucson City Councilor), Ramona Grijalva (who read a message from her husband, Rep. Raul Grijalva), Terry Bracy (Chair of the Foundation), and Anne Udall (Mo's daughter and vice-chair of the Foundation). After Bret, Jen, and I spoke about some of the most memorable moments of the trip we moved into the building where, amidst the mingling, there were photo and video slideshows showing images of the past two months.

Anne Udall speaking at the finale event in Tucson (Photo by Tom Spitz)

The photos and video -- as good as they are -- can't capture the tour fully. This blog can't do it either. Nor do they do a good enough job thanking everyone who made this tour possible: the Udall Foundation Education Team, the many alumni who helped plan stops, and the many friends who opened their doors to a traveling group of public servants. But we hope that all of it - stories, photos, and video -- have been able to convey at least a little bit of those thanks and communicate what the Udall Legacy Bus Tour was.

Thanks for riding with us!

By: Eli Zigas

P.S.
(Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more video posts ...)

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Connecting the Dots in (hot hot) Tempe(ture), Ari(d)zona

Because my forte is looking at the big picture and seeing the connections (shameless plug: tell me - what kind of jobs should I be looking for right now?), our time in Tempe, Arizona was a playfield for me. I am going to denote all connections in my head as ‘CXN.’ This will give you an insight into the much sought-after inner workings of my brain.

Our events at Arizona State University were made possible in large part by Rod Groff, the Program Manager at the ASU Global Institute of Sustainability, Kate Widland (’02 Scholar) who now works at the Salt River Project, and to Udall Foundation Trustee Mike Rappoport. Kate joined us for most of our tours, and for dinner.

In exploring how innovative and cutting-edge ASU’s contribution to environmental service is, we stopped first at the Biodesign Institute. After a grueling 10 minute stroll (ah! sun!) that left us sweating and panting, we stepped into the cool air of the Biodesign Institute, Arizona state’s first LEED Platinum certified building.

Kim Ovitt gave us an introduction to the Biodesign Institute, which houses programs which serve to find biological solutions to our shared health and environmental problems. The building’s engineer and architect who worked on the project joined us and talked to us about the concept, design, and certification of the connected buildings, highlighting how they took into account the purpose of the building - glass allows the exchange of light and communications into research labs.

When we walked into our next stop was at the Decision Theater, we were handed 3-D glasses. John Fink, ASU VP for Research and Economic Affairs, showed us what the Decision Theater was all about.

Photo courtesy of: Dustin Hampton, Decision Theater

We filed into a circular room, clothed in 5 floor-to-ceiling screens which supported video-game like simulations of city planning decisions, in real time, in real 3-D.

-Toggle drought and withdrawal scenarios – find out data for groundwater depletion.
-Look at a map of the city, zoom down to a 3-D ground-level view – see what happens when you change building height regulations.
-You will soon be able to go below ground also, so that policy makers can know whether actions will disrupt water mains or electrical wires.

This has cut some city decision processes from months to one hour.

CXN: These simulations resembled stuff happening at Google Earth, where Crystal had been working for a few months.

CXN: John Fink mentioned how many universities the Phoenix area has relative to another city of similar size: Philadelphia, where we had visited. They also did a population projection of the area versus Chicago, where we’d visited, concluding that Phoenix would reach a Chicago size in the next few years, based on the population growth projection models. They showed the other megalopolises modelers have been discussing: Sun Valley or Sun Belt (Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson – so long Colorado River!), SoCal, NoCal, Cascadia (Portland, Tacoma, Seattle), Piedmont (Chicago, Milkwaukie, parts of Indiana and Ohio), Peninsula (Florida), Southeast (Louisiana, Houston, etc.), Northeast, I-35 corridor (Dallas, Oklahoma City, Kansas City). We were there - to all except Florida!

CXN: they’re teaming up with the UW and Seattle to build a decision theater, and with China. (woo!)

CXN: My friend sitting next to me – Yuling Jia - had just transferred with her advisor to ASU from Rice, having arrived in Tempe 4 days prior from a visit to friends and family in Chengdu (I met her during my study abroad 3 years ago at Sichuan University in Chengdu). John Fink, our presenter, had been in Chengdu a month prior.

And the world gets even smaller…

CXN: Even my bag that I was carrying was from my friend Kui Li (l, f) I met while working at Earthcorps last year, who also went to Sichuan University, which is how she also knew my friend Jia Yuling (L, F).

Next on our tour was the Arizona Public Service Company (APS) Solar Test and Research (STAR) Center. There, Jim Quaid gave us an introduction to solar power testing in Arizona, and gave us a tour of the grounds. To find more viable alternatives burning fossil fuels to keep our economy running, they are testing new generations of solar arrays which seek to concentrate the sunlight to increase their efficiency, which rotate in 2 ways to follow the sun.

The following day, we visited the Salt River Project (SRP), a power and water utility for the area – 3rd largest in the nation! We were treated generously and guided by Victoria Cummiskey, Sid Friar, Herjinder Hawkins, and Udall Trustee Mike Rappoport. They showed us a utility seeking to establish a community connection, working to ensure that there will be water and a healthy environment for future generations. They have been seeking substitutes and incentives to increase the share of renewable energy sources in their portfolio. I hope that their collaborations with other utilities continue and that we continue to have utilities which support finding viable and sustainable energy solutions.

By: Kayanna Warren

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Yosemite - In Pictures

A sampling of photos from Yosemite.
(To see all the pictures from the Tour, go to our Flickr Page)




Photos by: Bob Filbin

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