A Remembrance Departing Head Scrapbooks the SEJ Life By BETH PARKE I’ll be packing up the


SEJ office in coming months.


Complete sets of SE-


Journal will go to J- schools. Some files are destined for the shredder, others to storage. Another box, headed home, will hold some favorite photos: Batman, a.k.a. Don Hopey, at a Pittsburgh 2004 con- ference podium; my mother, Helen Parke, in a Utah parking lot holding a billboard of SEJ tour names and bus numbers; a postcard of Rachel Carson in 1951, near harbor and boat, in a ball cap with binoculars, ready to lead an SEJ dream tour. Another box, destina- tion unknown, will contain the SEJ corporate seal, checkbook and all that goes with it, addressed to SEJ’s next executive director. I haven’t decided what to do with my trove of en-


Damn! This scrap- book has a lot of sections! Here are a few: It’s 1995, the MIT


At SEJ’s annual conferences for the last 25 years, Executive Director Beth Parke has seemed ever-present. In Roanoke, Va., in 2008, she was there when Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, chair- man of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (right) conversed with attendees, including the late environmental photojournalist Gary Braasch (left).


Photo by Kate Lutz


velopes that once contained grant checks long ago spent for SEJ programs. I admit it. I’ve kept them for encouragement. Like the ceramic and possibly magic money beads on my desk, provided by Amy Gahran, SEJ employee #1, year one. “These are faces of peo- ple who will be supporting SEJ,” she said. She was right, and that’s really the magic. There are so many good people who absolutely get it about SEJ and always will. Thanks for being among them with your membership, your dona- tions and your volunteer time. It’s been my honor and privilege to represent SEJ and marshal these resources over the last few decades as SEJ’s executive director.


Assignment: Memories


I’m on assignment for SEJournal now and the topic is memories. If you’ve ever had such an assignment, or indulged this particular style of reverie, you know how that word, “memories,” is stun- ningly inadequate. Eyes closed, I find myself in a rapid fire 3-D time-travel mind’s-eye scrapbook of SEJ experiences, complete with ticket stubs, autographs and a beer cartography of the U.S.


conference. International journalists have joined us. E.O. Wilson and Al Gore speak today. Also E. Bruce Harrison, whose promising PR career began with attacks on that same Rachel Carson. Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the Interior, misses out on lunch when students policing the lunch line turn him away for not hav- ing a ticket. We scheduled the panel on airborne particu- lates in the Twenty Chim- neys room. SEJ staff always did have a sense of humor! We’ll need it on Sunday at Walden Pond when we are wiping soda can condensation from a table that dates from Thoreau’s time.


Next I’m on a side-


walk in St. Louis in 1996. SEJ buses are puzzling the tourists. They are looking for a bus marked “Gateway Arch.” Ours are marked “Dioxin Town” and “After the Bomb.”


Next I’m in a series of labs, control rooms and study sites with journalists and scientists. Here they are taking the census of ant populations, here we are looking at real-time data from power grids across the country. I’m peeking into a cloning lab, looking at sen- sors in an experimental forest. Hey, there are some specimens col- lected by Darwin over there in that temperature-controlled robotically accessed filing cabinet.


Now I am saying hello, one at a time, to a very large number of people named Cousteau. Here I am in Roanoke asking Wendell Berry if I might please give him a hug. He signs a book of his poetry for me: “Given.” “Communicate slowly. Live a three-dimensional life,” it says. I’m on the phone now. Conference Chair Wevonneda Minis is returning my call from atop a fire tower.


Next I’m paying a few bills. One of them is to reimburse Marla Cone for dog sled rental, her research transportation for a book, “Silent Snow,” with SEJ her fiscal agent. The phone interrupts. It’s


6 SEJournal Fall 2016


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