Exciting announcement and opportunity

Job Description-Position Announcement

Executive Director- Project Laundry List

Project Laundry List is a 501(c)(3) organization based in New Hampshire that advocates for energy conservation through the promotion of line drying of laundry, and other easy, practical money-saving steps that individuals can take to use less energy. PLL was founded by Alexander Lee in the mid-1990s while he was a college student at Middlebury College. PLL has since grown to be recognized as a unique, innovative organization. It has been featured in national media, including Time Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and the Colbert Report. Research Project Laundry List at www.laundrylist.org.

The Executive Director will report to the Board of Directors, and will be charged with the day-to-day operation of PLL, its long term growth and advancement, and the continuation and implementation of its mission through advocacy and innovative educational programming. The Executive Director, first and foremost, must have a passion for energy conservation and line drying as a means of conserving energy. He or she must also be pleasant, optimistic and personable—our founder was fond of saying that PLL is “pro-clothesline, not anti-dryer.” The Executive Director must feel comfortable with public speaking, attracting and thriving in a spotlight. He or she must be articulate in written and verbal communication; must be creative and practical; and must be capable of doing the difficult and less-exciting aspects of running a non-profit advocacy organization, such as fundraising, bookkeeping, and administration.

At present, the Executive Director is the sole employee. Consistent with these broad principles, specific areas of responsibility include:

I. Establishing a thorough working knowledge of the media, fundraising, communication and technical systems required to run PLL daily.
a. Managing administrative details (rent, utilities, communications charges, finances (quickbooks), etc.)
b. Understanding and managing technical assets (website, paypal interface, online store, Google Adwords accounts, donor tracking systems, technical partnerships with Uncommon Goods, Seventh Generation, etc.).
c. Volunteer management (identifying, tracking, tasking, retaining volunteers).
d. Communications (newsletter assembly, content creation/gathering, blog updates, public lectures, media strategy)

II. Fundraising and Sustainability
a. Work with PLL corporate partners and interested supporters to establish revenue generating partnerships, including possible retail sales agreements with Uncommon Goods, Vermont Country Store, Levis, Timberland, EMS and others.
b. Develop donation strategy for large and small donors, including evaluation of membership dues, incentives to generate dues-paying members, and networking in the broader NH, NE and US philanthropic community for large grants.
c. Develop corporate donors whose corporate mission is consistent with PLL’s focus on energy conservation and clean energy.

III. Programming and Message
a. Develop and implement advocacy strategy to drum up support for Right to Dry legislation at the national and state level.
b. Develop and implement media strategy to garner attention for organization, and promote line drying as an alternative to dryer usage in the home.
c. Develop and implement programs, using all of PLLs volunteers, college and corporate connections, that educate the public about line drying and promote the use of clothes lines as a practical alternative to gas and electric dryers.
The Executive Director will allocate his or her time to give equal attention to advancement of the mission, and securing a stable foundation for the organization. However, the first steps will be understanding the mechanics of the organization, on a technical basis, and raising enough money through ongoing revenue generation or private donations for the organization to be sustainable on a 24 month horizon. Some travel will be necessary from time to time.

Requirements:
• BA/BS or equivalent experience
• Passion for energy conservation
• Facility with electronic media, and ability to learn the technical mechanics of communications systems
• Quickbooks knowledge a plus
• An ideal candidate would have prior experience in sales and in non-profit management.
• US citizenship or valid work authorization

Salary commensurate with experience. Project Laundry List is presently headquartered in Concord, New Hampshire; however, the Board is taking applications from interested parties anywhere in the United States or Canada (subject to the work authorization requirement), with a view toward nationalizing Project Laundry List’s scope.

Kindly email a resume or CV and cover letter (word or pdf format) with your reasonable salary expectations, noting “Executive Director Application” in the subject line, to:
jeggleton@laundrylist.org
 
For questions or information, please email Board Member Jeremy Eggleton at the above address or call 603-223-9122.

Some Questions You Might Ask...

"The face of the moose is as sad as the face of Jesus." -Mary Oliver

What makes a good teacher?

What proceeds is one of my favorite lines of poetry introduced to me by my favorite college professor, with whom I had the distinct honor and great pleasure to speak via Skype a couple weeks ago for the undeserved period of half-an-hour. These adoring remarks are unseemly, as he informed me at that time that I am at the top of my game with my writing and that he reads these brief posts with pleasure. Having joined his profession as teacher and scholar somewhat lackadaisically in college and after college, but now in earnest, I nonetheless brown my nose, doff my cap, bow at the waist, kowtow and otherwise supplicate to this master, sensei, and emeritus professor because there is, in such deference, no matter how suspect and revolting, a larger lesson about education: Praise and encouragement, though not singularly, are essential ingredients to the success and progress of the student and novice as much as they are to the teacher and abbot.

This nugget alone might be enough to earn your collective and singular forgiveness for so indulging myself in these virtual pages, but there is a more important nugget still. Being a teacher of any slight ability, no matter how humble, meek, or mediocre, is sure to earn you the love, devotion, admiration, and respect of some number of your flock, though certainly not all of them and certainly for a wide variety of barely good and quite questionable reasons. (It is, doubtlessly, the same for celibate priests, fallen statesmen, rapacious captains of industry, and others who hold serious responsibilities.) To abuse these feelings of fidelity or to think that they have anything at all to do with your own abilities (rather than gifts and fortunes) is fallacious and hubris of severest proportion (ask Mr. John Edwards or the pious keepers of American public opinion). While I can promise you that these reflections are not at all meant for my professor's contemplation, because he has no pretenses or appearance of false modesty, I do think they are worth mentioning, because I am informed, rather darkly and all too regularly, by my direct superior that no small number of my peers and predecessors at this post have thought that the clapping and favor showered upon them by certain segments of their student population did rain down upon them as reward for their exemplary services and skills. 'Tis not likely the case. Furthermore, Chinese students are fairly required to respect and like their teachers, even foreign devils the likes of me.


How do you say "cheers" in Mandarin?

As this post may be the creative spawn of bai jiu's blacker characteristics (Chinese grain alcohol and the infamous, ubiquitous, cheap "white liquor" of the Middle Kingdom), I repeat here (early on) the last question of one of my high school classmates from her recent interrogatory. (We shall turn to some other questions you and she might ask, momentarily.)  I wish to dissect this rather simple question because it betrays her sophistication. She is aware that Mandarin is the language that a) I am slowly learning, b) is native to this city, and c) is predominantly spoken throughout China. Cantonese and many other languages indigenous to the 55 minorities here are also spoken across this diverse and expansive nation. There is no way to say, "Guzzle your alcohol" in some of these languages, because alcohol is verboten by devout Muslims, at the very least, and, as any reader of the newspapers knows, Uighurs figure among their number.

Due to the overwhelming, almost crushing hospitality of the Han (the 56th ethnic group of the People's Republic) upon every other nearby tribe and nation, lost or founded, in their vicinity, they nearly all comport, I am guessing, with the flavor of the Mandarin ejaculation, "Gan bei!", which means, literally, "dry the cup" or, loosely (so to speak), "bottoms up." You are, once everybody has a glass raised, meant to nick your friend's glasses and then throw back the fiery broth with gusto upon the utterance of these too frequent syllables.

A variety of resources from those who find themselves in the state I find myself tonight more regularly (I insist, in a rather Gertrudian fashion, that I am not under the influence) will allow you, my dear reader, to familiarize yourself with many variations of pronunciation and form for toasting your compadres the world over. Would be a wonderful world if such summer linguists and sunshine polyglots dedicated themselves to listing the various ways of saying "I am sorry" or even "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned" with the same Celtic passion that they have poured into these compilations. Alas, that is not the case and I do not wish to dwell upon it in my current state. Rather I wish to finish my exegesis of the drinking culture of northeastern China. Prosit!

The traditions around drinking here are enough to make the blue-blood in John McCardell's curled toes curdle. While there is no drinking age here, the way that you prove your manliness, twas 'splained to me by a Chinese reporter this eve in front of his girlfriend and mine, is to drink as much as you can. Such sporting is not just for manly men, though.

A woman here--petite and entirely Han in build and mostly in demeanor--will enter a bar, if a traditional Chinese woman can be guilty of this act in the first place, with a friend of hers and order a case of beer on her tab, as a gesture of friendship. While the beer is less potent than its American counterparts, to watch 24 bottles get imbibed between two slight girls is nothing short of remarkable. While this complete intoxication is less seldom the case (pun intended) and a great number of warm bottles (paid for, but unopened and, thankfully, not skunked) usually get left behind in the wake of such debauchery, they, like their shirtless male counterparts, drink their pi jiu (beer) and bai jiu (white liquor) accompanied by ornate plates of fruit whose centerpieces are, invariably, curlicues of watermelon rinds.  These girls, whether 12 apiece or something short of that, not infrequently find themselves fouling the sidewalks with splashes of hydrochloric acid, regurgitated fruit, and whatever else was swashing around just below the cardiac sphincter. Purged, they re-enter the establishment ready to resume their drinking. It is, while a big, boisterous and bold way of going about cementing a friendship, a foul and abusive practice that the Pentagon should exploit if it seeks to disrupt the social order here. No government decree nor any proclamation of a resident or alien lama or mullah is likely to put an end to this practice.

More questions you might ask will follow tomorrow, but I must go to bed like the early moon that God clipped from his opposable thumb earlier this week.

Five things I did not do in Dalian

Dalian was wonderful. It is a big city--3.5 million to 7 million depending on how you count--and renowned for its beaches. It was not beach weather this weekend, though, so I did a lot of other fun things with my friend. Here are five things that I did not do:

I did not go rollerblading, but I did ride the scariest of the rides and go bowling in a fallout shelter.

I did not give a 100 RMB to a bird at the bird show, but somebody else in the crowd did.

I did not get my picture drawn by a street artist, but I did get my photograph taken a lot by random people.

I did not receive the group activity large-scale sandy beach party.

 

I did not feed Coke to a Tibetan bear, though many others did just to see them unscrew the top and guzzle. In this video, he is eating crackers from a plastic bag as the trash from tourists floats around him. 

Into the Bustle of China’s Boom

This was such a wonderful article that sums up my sense of excitement about being here that I wanted to share it with this blog community: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/jobs/26pre.html?src=recg#h[IaaAew].

Siberian Tigers, oh my!

Yesterday, I went to Jingyuetan National Forest Park--a AAAAA-rated tourist site--for the third time. For the first time, I forked over a little less than ten US dollars (60 RMB) and entered the Jilin Provincial Siberian Tiger Park.

I am not sure what I did to incur his attention, but I was nearly mauled by a red-crowned crane. Should I feel good that I was nearly nipped by the beak of the revered bird of fidelity, luck and longevity? After I fled a few feet, he continued to follow me around for the next ten minutes until I wandered off to look at peacocks and parrots.

Jingyuetan or Moon Lake

The entrance to the Tiger Park wherein also lie great birds of prey and beasts of the forest.

A beautiful tree along the shore of the reservoir.

A girl pets a chained Siberian Tiger cub.

Adorable lemurs running about in their display area.

Through the glass, a Chinese girl and her brother tantalized the little creatures. You could pay extra to go inside and have them jump up on you like a jungle gym.

An owl.

A large bug that landed on my shirt. Ewww.

My hunter.

My attacker.

My careful observer. We both watched each other carefully after my initial encounter.

Another magnificent bird.

Certainly the most exciting and excitable bird that we saw.

I declined an opportunity to hold this bird on my hand, having just had a run in with a crane almost equal to me in height.

In love...with China

I should be asleep. Tomorrow is my marathon day from 7:40 AM to 8:50 PM with a couple of hour long breaks for lunch and dinner, but I cannot sleep...so I write:

CHINA

As I delve into your ancient soil, it occurs to me that you are a hoyden.
The moon hurls its umbra into your uberous rivers, surging with fecundity.
By day, a jaded phoenix emerges in the sunlight with a vermillion dragon,
A Manchurian crane with its ruby diadem stabs around in the bullrushes for sushi,
Wukong's needle tucked behind his ear, itself full of a thousand years of enigmas
Whispered in the hutongs and verboten palaces where dynasties once reigned.
Today, your gamine only-children set out smeared with technicolor stigmas,
Proclaiming jingles their illiterate grandmother's would not have deigned;
Stuffed rabbits and monkeys poking corpus spongiosa out of vade mecum sacks,
More heavy with science tomes than Latin texts to ply their insomnious skulls.
They crowd the pedestrian byways and honk themselves down teeming highways,
Emperors of our destiny disguised as Burberry and Louis Vuitton trulls.
Still bursting with five millennia of pride as it was once and will be always.

A Chinese-style funeral

This morning at 3:55 AM my alarm went off and I hurriedly donned my suit and went out the door to meet my colleagues for the funeral procession. We met at school and our cars and buses and vans all had a 68 written on them--the age of the deceased. Jack would have turned 69 this weekend.

I went in the American car of a doctor from my class of doctor's and Leader Lee, a nurse from my class, and another one of my students were in the car on the return trip.  My landlord was there and so were a dozen notable members of the local government, including the head of the health bureau and a deputy principle from the High School Attached to Northeast Normal University. Janet, the widow, did all right and her son was there, too. He looks like her.

Imagine fifteen of these (only oblong) being thrown into a fire.

If you want to learn more about Chinese customs surrounding death and burial, there is a good summary at China Culture. We each were presented with a flower on the way into the building which we lay at his head. Our hands were washed with grain alcohol on the way out. We all wore white sachets.

For me, the most appalling part was that we burned ten of fifteen 6x3 foot panels of styrofoam with plastic flowers in a big open air chimney at the conclusion of the ceremony. That will happen a couple dozen more times today. The western part of Changchun, where the private funeral home is, was home to the first car plant and was as polluted as Shenyang. The black soot issuing from the chimney as we drove away was disconcerting. There is a new train station being built very close to the funeral home. Steve, my doctor friend, told me that the municipal cremation place is on the other side of the city and that there are only two in all of Changchun--a city of 7 million or so.

How you decide to honor and deal with the bodies of 1.3 billion people is not a small matter. I remember the most fascinating Green Drinks that I attended in Concord was a couple of women who specialize in green burial practices. If you have any interest, see Green Burial - the final recycling effort.