The Blackburn Digest

It is no one’s fault but my own. . . . .when the alarm rings at 5:30 AM, it is really going to hurt!

I spent ten hours at the TCEA convention today; most of them on my feet searching for misplaced awards envelopes, tracking down missing speakers (“His session starts in 25 minutes!!”), magically producing tape, scissors and whatever else was needed, decorating for the evening banquet – - – -the typical activities of a seasoned & unpaid volunteer. I am footsore and weary, but expected that and enjoyed seeing old team-mates. Meant to depart directly after the banquet, but members of the Board urged me to stay for the awards ceremony – “We need the seats to be filled” Well, yeah – been here, done this, valid point – but I should have smelled a conspiracy! Ready to clap enthusiastically for the next award winner, I hear my name announced. Huh?! I now have a “suitable for framing” certificate of The Volunteer Who Never Says NO award! LOL – my fellow Community Educators are a sneaky lot!

*Strange title, right? Well, maybe not quite so strange. . . .Dotsero is, in reality, a small community near the head of Glenwood Canyon in Eagle County, Colorado. Although there is some …. um, conflict….over the origin of the town’s name, recorded history shows that Ferdinand Hayden did, indeed, use this location as “Dot Zero” on his survey maps of Central and Southwest Colorado in the 1870′s. I will leave that argument to more scholarly minds, but adopt it as a fitting “re-start” for my blog. I’ve left the digest blank for mumbletoolongmumble months, and intend to correct that starting now – today is Dot Zero, and (as time allows) I hope to back-fill with a few dates and data which became somewhat lost in the general bustle of life.