March 2013 Covering Brewster, Eastham, Harwich, Orleans and Wellfleet
More Info:
NausetNeighbors.org
508-514-7067 |
We had our Second Anniversary Party and Volunteer Celebration on Thursday, February 14 at the Brewster Ladies’ Library, where many of our volunteers and members had the opportunity to put names on faces, tell each other stories, shake hands and express gratitude.
Bob Yaps, one of our active handymen, helped as usual. Look at that smile!
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One of our most important services for our members is transportation, and in the news these days is the next new thing: automated cars. An array of optical and radar sensors already exist on a growing number of cars that warn if a collision is imminent and, increasingly, take evasive action  automatically. Google, Stanford and Carnegie Mellon are researching fully automatic cars. Volvo, BMW, Audi and Mercedes have announced cars that will drive themselves in heavy traffic up to 37 mph. Two states, California and Nevada, have made it legal to operate self driving cars as long as a human is inside able to take over.
Imagine Nauset Neighbors when the current crop of volunteers becomes members! Can’t you just see us all zooming around???!!! We suppose conversations won’t be as interesting…
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Would you like an insider’s view of some of the challenges that our call managers face? We are state of the art. We use Google Voice, Google Docs and Club Express Software; we use email, voice mail and forums; we use desk tops, laptops, smart phones, cell phones, home phones. What have we left out? Someone has it. And yet with all this technology, at either end is a person. Things happen, either our fault or the member’s fault. There can be miscommunication due to confusion, hearing difficulties, simple misunderstanding or overlooking something. There can be difficulty reaching someone, either the member or the volunteer. It always amazes me how many things our bodies do right. Likewise, I am amazed how many times our call managers put our members and our volunteers together, considering the number of service requests we fill.
Following is an example of a request we could not fill, which occurs infrequently: It is Wednesday. A member called several days before for a service request for a doctor’s appointment on Friday, and it was put online. A volunteer signed up to do it, and it was put into the system. The member then called with another request, and thanked us in advance for Thursday’s ride. The call manager (CM) was suddenly alert. What ride on Thursday? The ride was for Friday. The member insisted it was for Thursday. The CM confirmed with the doctor that the appointment was Thursday. The CM knew she had a problem and immediately called the volunteer to see if she was available on Thursday. There was no answer, and after an email and repeated calls that afternoon and evening, the volunteer was finally reached Thursday morning and could not make it. The Wednesday CM had another commitment or she said she would have done it. Our call managers go above and beyond, like so many of our volunteers. The member was given the phone numbers for FISH and the COA, but in the end the appointment had to be rescheduled. This was an example of miscommunication, underscoring how vital communication is in everything we do.
Following is an example of a last minute request we were able to fill. Last minute requests are problematic, but we were lucky with this one. A volunteer called to let us know that a member had fallen and had to cancel his service request for the next day. As it happened, the CM was trying to fill a last minute request for a doctor’s appointment for another member. The volunteer agreed to do it...a match made in heaven.
Call managers have to keep their wits about them. The job is varied, dynamic and challenging, both in dealing with people and in the technology. Somehow they pull it off, and along with all our other volunteers, manage to fill almost all service requests. Kudos to all.
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- Esther Elkin
Nauset Neighbors has grown to 164 members in 146 households. They are being helped by 218 volunteers, about 60% of whom have been active within the last three months. February services were near an all-time high. We delivered about 160 services this month, about the same as last month. The total number of services in the past 52 weeks is 1608.
Volunteers are now filling about 70% of all services via online signup, reducing the number of calls and emails that need to be sent out. Members are now requesting rides to medical appointments well in advance, which helps fill them online. We have 112 future services, half of which already have volunteers assigned.
We added eighteen new volunteers in January, but only two more in February. With many volunteers away this month, our existing volunteers have stepped up their involvement significantly.
-Dick Elkin
Each of us, members and volunteers alike, has our own unique story, some unusual and surprising, some rising to the level of compelling and enchanting. We're not a bunch of creepy old people. Each month we'll tell you a little about a volunteer or member of our community.
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W. Randolph Bartlett, Jr.
These days, Randy Bartlett spends much of his time fishing in his small skiff in the serene beauty of Gull and Higgins Ponds. He can see both ponds from the windows of Gull Cottage, the antique home he shares with his wife, Pat, in the National Seashore in Wellfleet. It is a long way from his crib in his bedroom in Pearl Harbor when, on December 7, 1941, a bomb destroyed the kitchen while his father, a navy pilot, was fortunately nowhere near the harbor.
From that beginning, Randy spent his early years as a “military brat,” as he calls himself, living in California and the west coast, Chile, Newport, R.I., Jacksonville, FL and eventually Copenhagen, where his father was the naval attaché. Randy went to the American High School in Frankfort, and is now writing a coming of age novel of friendship and loss set in the mid 1950s in Copenhagen and Frankfort with material drawn from his life.
Randy began his college career at the College of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA, and then transferred to American University. He spent his summers in Woods Hole, where he met Pat Avery, who was to become his wife.
Between college and graduate school, Randy went to Ecuador with the Peace Corps, worked at NIH in the Office of International Health, and then joined the army in 1966 as a lieutenant one step ahead of the draft. He was given orders to go to Vietnam, but his orders were changed to a tour in Washington DC in charge of Medical Intelligence in Latin America. He left the service three years later as a captain and went on for his doctorate at American University under the GI Bill.
Randy holds a PhD in History, and is Professor Emeritus of History at Cape Cod Community College, where he taught for 35 years. He is well known around the cape for talks on his dissertation topic, Lorenzo Dow Baker, the noted Wellfleetian banana entrepreneur who launched a company that eventually became United Fruit. Randy's next scheduled talk will be part of Wellfleet's 250th Anniversary Celebration this summer.
Randy and Pat enjoy whitewater canoeing, wilderness camping and sailing, and have traveled widely with friends who are master birders, from whom they learned to identify and appreciate birds. They are challenge-level square dancers, and have two children and three grandchildren, the main focus of their lives. They also run a bed and breakfast in their beautiful home in the National Seashore, which has been in Pat's family for over a century.
Randy restored three wooden boats, a canoe, a Herreshoff 12 ½ antique 1919 sailboat, and the wooden skiff he now uses mornings and early evenings on Gull and Higgins Ponds when the weather permits. Randy loves fishing, and he loves the quiet beauty of his surroundings.
There are times when the quiet is disturbed by nature herself, and not by man and bombs. One day, a sharp-shinned hawk grasping a live bird in its talons flew in a straight line in front of Randy five feet above the pond. The bird was struggling to be free, but suddenly the hawk dropped straight down from the sky, holding itself just over the surface with spread wings so that the prey was underwater. It was an awesome sight. After about fifteen seconds, the hawk flew up with the drowned prey. Randy had never seen anything like it before, nor have many others.
Randy plans to spend many more hours in his skiff.
-Esther Elkin
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