busy busy busy

Hi all!

So glad to see your beautiful photos and faces. This summer I've been in Baton Rouge interning four days a week at the Center for Planning Excellence (CPEX), and continuing to do work at the Hilltop Arboretum 1-2 days a week. I am also doing some landscaping work on the side, getting my house in Louisville ready to sell, helping my partner remodel his house here off Plank Road (I moved in last month), and slowly but surely creating a garden there.

Porch time is very important! Also I love figuring out what plants work in this climate...

At CPEX, I have mostly been an administrative assistant, event planner, and graphic designer. There is a workshop at the end of the month that will bring together multiple city-parish departments and organizations to work more collaboratively, pool resources, and apply resilience values to priority projects in Baton Rouge. So I've been making posters and exercise booklets, hotel and catering reservations, Save-the-Dates, mailing lists, etc.....

I've also gotten a little bit involved in other projects CPEX has going on: I posted flyers and talked to folks in Terrebonne parish one day, made lots of calls to residents in St. John about a parish meeting, transcribed interviews from homeowners on a repeatedly flooded street who are being offered a buyout, put together a map for a community survey on the far side of Mid City BR, and helped lay out posters for a connectivity plan in Covington and a Coastal Day fair in Houma. 

Me in the wild (i.e. Terrebonne)

All to say that while I have not been DESIGNing, I have been learning more about local politics and regional social + environmental issues... and getting really good at Adobe CS in the process (hah). I've also learned a lot about what a positive work environment looks like (after some bad past experiences), and really appreciate the people who are sticking it out in Baton Rouge to do good things for communities all around southern Louisiana.

I do wish I was outside more... but it's also getting stupid hot and humid here, so on second thought, no complaints. I'll have some gorgeous vacation photos for everyone the first week of August!

xo,

Mai