My 4-H Story--2002--Eight Year in 4-H

Note from John 10/8/2010

I apologizes for not having too many photos in this post.  They are all terrible quality, and won't look good at all if I scanned them.  Got to love technology back then.

My 4-H Story

Written 2002

Age: 14

Year in 4-H: 8

     This year has come and gone by very quickly.  From California Focus preparations to school stuff I was kept very busy.  Our club has many things going on as well.  Hello, My name is John Trammell.  I can't believe I have finished my 8th year in 4-H.  This is my first year as a teen member of 4-H.  My projects this year were Citizenship, Leadership, Food & Nutrition, Group Determined, and of course Photography.

     In July my photography project got a big jump start.  My dad took the family up to June Lake and from there we made photography field trips to Bodie, Yosemite, and Devil's Post Pile.  I like going to Bodie for my photography meetings because it is such an interesting place.  There are many special places to take pictures of, photos that capture a moment of history where nature is trying to reclaim what man had built.  This year was great because I met a professional photographer there and we had a long chat about how to take photos of Bodie.  He gave me some excellent tips on what I should do.

Our next photo shoot was at the Devil's Post Pile and Rainbow Falls in Mammoth.  I have been there before as well.  But this time we were going to work with lighting and moving water.  My leader showed me how to photograph the water so that it gives the feeling of movement.  This was something new for me to learn.  At Yosemite I practiced Scenery shots.  However, it gets tricky to do photos without people in them because there are so many people always there.  While in Yosemite we went to the Ansel Adams Gallery.  There I learned more about my favorite artists and the techniques he used.  The rest of my photography project was done in Southern California.  We took trips to photo exhibits in Riverside and in Los Angeles.  The one in Los Angeles introduced me to Edward Weston who was a friend of Ansel Adams.  From this exhibits I learned more about black and white photography.  I also learned more about subject matter.  Someday I would like my photos to look as good.

     We went on a special photo shoot to Joshua Tree National Park, Cajon Pass, Living Desert (at night) and other local areas.  We revisited some of the old photo shoot haunts with the new photography members.  We even visited Kodak web site and got some good lessons on how to do good photo composition.  One of the other things that I do and have been doing now for several years is to enter my school's PTA Reflections contest.  Each year the National PTA comes up with a theme and then kids in schools do art, music, essays, poetry or photography to match the theme.  This years theme was "I hold in my hands..." I entered several photos.   I won 1st Place at the School Unit Level, then I won at the Redlands Unit Level and went on to the District Level.  I didn't win there but I am glad my photos got to the district level.  This has been a very busy year for the photography group and it has also been a very busy year for me.  

     The next exciting thing to happen during the summer is when I found out that my photo I sent to the State Fair Best of Show Competition won 1st place.  What was even more interesting was that my cousin who also had a photo go to State Fair Best of Show Competition won 2nd place.  My dad siad that his photos never made it to the State Fair when he was in 4-H so he surprised us and  flew the family up to Sacramento so that we could see it on display.  We flew up in the morning and returned that night around 9:00 PM.  This was the first time I got to fly in an airplane.  It was a very short trip, but it was interesting.  

     Our club has been collecting pop top tabs for the past couple of years for the Ronald McDonald house in Loma Linda.  This year we set a goal of collecting 1 million of the tabs.  To jump start this goal, one of our leaders had her friends keep all their cans for us.  Then we had pop-top pulling parties.  Once we were done pulling the pop-tops, we went swimming in her pool.  At one of the parties we also had a party with hot dogs and the works.  The rest of the year all the members collected the pop-tops and brought them to each meeting.  The turn in to Ronald McDonald House was in March.  We only collected 98,980 of them, so we missed our goal.  Next year maybe we can set a more realistic goal of 200,000.  

     This year I was in 8th grade at Clement Middle School.  I again was on the Speech and Debate team.  It started out to being a great year and then September 11 happened.  The whole school was in shock that something so horrible could be done to people.  I felt really bad for the people who lost their family members in that attack.  Our school wanted to do something to help the children that lost their parents, so we came up with an idea.  The principal said that she would kiss a pig if we could raise $300.00 just by collecting our change from our lunch and snack money.  Well we took the challenge and raised $1,500.00 dollars.  Then she really had to kiss a pig.  At first she kissed a stuffed toy pig but we wouldn't settle for that. Then she tried to get away with kissing my counselors guinea pig but we didn't fall for that either.  Finally, someone brought a real pig and she did kiss it.  The money was sent to New York via the Red Cross.  We felt great that we could do a little something for the people in New York.

     For this club year, I signed up as a Teen Leader.  I have been a Junior Leader so I decided to continue on and keep helping the photography leader.  I still want to keep improving on my leadership skills.  This year was going to be a challenge in the photography group since we had new members that were beginners and we also still had the advanced group.  So my leader and I decided to have separate meetings for the beginners a couple of times so that the advanced group wouldn't get bored.  We then also had meetings that everyone would participate in.  It was a good idea but some of the younger members still managed to not focus on what they were supposed to be doing.  We'll have to come up with a better plan next year.

    One of my new challenges this year was when I joined the Citizenship project.  This was for the California Focus that we would be going up at the State Capital.  We met every month and learned something new about the State of California each time.  Bernadine was our leader.  I learned a lot of new information that didn't know before.  One of the things that we had to do was come up with a plan of action this delegation would accomplish.  We came up with photographing and cataloging the Veteran's Memorials that are in our county.  There was a bill that was passed by the Senate, which was authored by Senator Schiff.  It is called bill #1635.  They want to register all the Veteran's Memorials in the State of California so that there is a record of them.  However, no money was put with this bill and so the project needs to be done by volunteers.  The San Bernardino County Delegation decided that we would take on the task of finding and registering the ones that are in our county.  A great bonus for me is that I can use my photography skills photographing these memorials.  I will also learn new techniques to get the best shots of these memorials.

Attending California Focus was a really great experience.  They kept us very busy from the time we got up, which was around 6:00 AM, to the time we would go to bed, which was supposed to be at 11:00 PM.  We got to see a performance of Phantom of the Opera, we got to see the Train Museum, and we even got to meet the First Lady of the State, Mrs. Davis.  We learned a lot about the Senate and the House of Representatives.  They even introduced us on the floor of both houses.  That was exciting.  I met a lot of new people and I learned a lot of new things.  I highly recommend this program to all the teen 4-H members of this county.  I am going to be going again next year.  But I am also going to set my sights on Washington Focus.  If California Focus was this great, I can just imagine what Washington Focus would be like.  

     I joined another new project group this year called Group Determined-Nature Studies.  This is a bit different than wildlife because we also studied the geology of the area we live in.  On one of our meetings we volunteered at the Moonridge Zoo in Big Bear.  There we made a hammock for an animal called a Fisher.  We made the hammock out of old fire hoses.  They were very hard to cut through.  I guess those hoses have to be tough because of the water pressure they have to survive.  But that didn't make it any easier for us to cut through.  We had a great time working with the zoo keepers.  On one of our other trips, we went to the beach to check out the scene out there.  We went looking for life in shells and we actually found shells that still had live animals in them.  We put them back where we found them once we were through looking at them.  But the most amazing thing happened just as we were about to leave.  We got so see millions of sand crabs hatching.  It was tough walking around without stepping on these little critters.  The waves would come up and wash them out to sea.  I have never seen so many animals in one place except for ant colonies.  On the last trip out with this group we found a mini ecosystem under a bridge where fesh water was being pumped up.  There was a small river and a small pond.  There were water plants groupwing and to our amazement, there were frogs, tadpoles, snails, dragonflies, and water bugs of all kinds there.  I almost expected to see baby fish there, but as hard as we tried, we didn't see any fish.  We saw a lot of butterflies and there were thousands of bees there because there were beehives close by.  We then walked around and our leader showed us how to tell which rocks are volcanic and which ones are sedimentary.  Several of the members collected rocks for their rock collections.  I didn't because I already have a pretty big rock collection.  

     The food and nutrition project suffered a little this year.  For two of the meetings we already had other appointments and we couldn't go.  But I did make it to one of the meetings and I did try to enter into the Food Fiesta.  This year we wouldn't go to Food Fiesta either.  The date was moved and our club had already promised to work with the Highland Woman's Club Luncheon as we do every year.  But, according to the forms, we would be able to send in an entry that did not require us to be there.  I decided to enter my Oriental Chicken Salad.  My leader took it up to Food Fiesta.  When she got there, they didn't want to take my entry.  After some time though they did take it.  However, I never got a critique sheet and I still don't know how I did.  Next year I hope that I can be at Food Fiesta.  I like going to this event.  I also like to cook at home.  Many times instead of having my mom or dad cook the main dish I would cook.  I like trying out new recipes.  A couple of new things that I tried out this year was an Oriental Chicken Salad, a Mexican Chicken Salad, Marinated BBQ chicken (I created a special marinade), and Piquant Marinated Pork Chops.  I also cooked my usual things like pizza (form scratch), taco salad, and club sandwiches.  The only thing I don't like is the clean up afterwards.  That is one thing I am going to work on, not making too many dishes dirty so I don't have to wash so many.  Also this year I went to a food handler's workshop that the County does.  After they did their presentation, I had to take a test to get my food handler's certificate.  This certificate is good for 3 years.  Now when I work at food booths, I can actually handle the food.  

     One of the things that happened in February was that my grandmother got sick and had to have open-heart surgery.  That was pretty scary for us.  She had a quadruple bypass on her heart.  I am glad that this was done because now she will be around a lot longer.  But the story doesn't end there with my grandmother.  She is going great from her surgery but one day when she was outside in her garden she fell and broke her right wrist.  She had to have surgery on it and had pins in her arm for 2 months.  My dad and I helped do many things for her.  Well, mostly my dad helped her, but I helped when I wasn't busy with school or 4-H.  She is doing much better now and her pins were taken out.  I hope she doesn't have any more surgeries for a while. 

But that isn't all I did this 4-H year.  I was at the Redlands Market Night with our club for National 4-H Week.  I worked at the club rummage sale.  I attended Achievement Night and I attended all our club events.  I helped a Brownie Troop for the Redlands Christmas Parade.  I attended Regional and County Teen Council meetings.  I worked at the food booths for County Field Day and Regional Field Day.  I worked the food booth for the Horse Show in Mya the whole weekend.  I attended County Council Meetings and Regional Council Meetings.  I did a Bowl-A-Thon to raise money for the California Focus Trip.  Our club hosted the County Fashion Revue and the County Expressive Arts Exhibit.  I helped my dad with the Arts Exhibit part.  I went to TIC for the first time.  I had such a great time that I am planning on going next year again.  I made hundreds of phone calls.  I attended fairs.  I traveled all over California in the pursuit of 4-H knowledge.  This has been a great year.  It seems like each year gets busier but it also seems like I am having a lot of fun.  As I am getting older I get to do more things and meet more people.  I guess that is what 4-H is really about.  I am looking forward to next year.