More than you ever wanted to know about Alabama native Joe Watts
I’ve been doing the annual report every year for the Alabama Association of RC&D Councils.
Here’s the cover for this year. Lots of good projects inside: a 40 page report on their 2011 work. Mostly gets used to hand out to the Alabama legislators to show the work done in Alabama on resource conservation and development. Full RC&D Annual Report 2011
Just sent this panel off to be produced. When complete, it will be mounted at the Alligator Trail area on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers property in Chambers County, Alabama. You can read more about the location by visiting www.alabamabirdingtrails.com and clicking on the Chambers County link.
Had a great Friday several weeks ago, spending the day with Corps of Engineers folks and several folks from the Birmingham Audubon Society as we looked at Corps of Engineers properties that are potentially on the new West Alabama and Black Belt Birding Trails, all part of the Alabama Birding Trails project I’m working on with the University of Alabama Center for Economic Development in partnership with the Alabama Tourism Department.
West Alabama is filled with birds. We really couldn’t have timed it better: we saw a Bald Eagle soaring overhead, a Belted Kingfisher fishing, along with lots of smaller birds and several hundred wading birds, all in the course of a long but enjoyable day topped off with BBQ chicken in Demopolis, Alabama!
One of the photos I snapped near Backbone Creek at the edge of Marengo and Greene Counties.
Just wrapped up a new website for some friends I met through Alzheimer’s of Central Alabama, Concierge at Home. Concierge at Home provides a single resource for clients and their families to simplify the overwhelming task of maintaining independence. They are a physician directed program providing comprehensive geriatric assessment and ongoing management of every aspect of our clients’ healthcare needs at home. Here’s the website:
Wow! A little over a year ago, I started working the Center for Economic Development on the University of Alabama campus on a project with the Alabama Tourism Department. We took the project over from a consultant who had done a good bit of initial work into organizing folks. We held the first of four kick-offs last week, this one for the Piedmont Plateau Birding Trail. We’ll be doing the other 3, along with some additional work on 4 that already exist to varying degrees in Alabama, over the next year. For now, explore the Piedmont Plateau Birding Trail on the statewide website that I’ve set up: for the Alabama Birding Trails project: www.alabamabirdingtrails.com. It isn’t fully developed yet, but you can read about each of the sites, see photos for many of them and find all of them via gps mapping. What a great project! (Snapshot of the website below)
Just returned from a great 5 day workshop in Saint Paul, Minnesota hosted by the National Association of Interpretation (NAI). Learned a lot about developing interpretive media for sites (from printed display panels to ipad apps), got to travel along the Mississippi River to see Bald Eagles and Tundra Swans (as well as probably 150,000 various ducks floating in rafts). Really educational AND fun trip. Met lots of really interesting folks–everyone from nature center directors to National Park Service front-line interpreters (the folks that tell you the story of the tree while you hike along) and Bureau of Land Management folks. So much stuff for us to do in Alabama!
