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​Laurels for Judy Jones, Nature Photographer and Past President of Historic Rivers Chapter
By Shirley Devan, VMN-Historic Rivers Chapter

In 2008, Judy Jones was still teaching reading at a local Williamsburg elementary school when her spouse, an avid naturalist, joined Cohort IV for Basic Training. In 2012, her spouse died after a relatively short fight with cancer. Our chapter offered Judy emotional support and she began to feel a part of the group.

In 2013 after retirement, Judy began Basic Training in Cohort VIII. She was a quick study and soon became an enthusiastic Master Naturalist.  

​In March 2016, Judy became President of our chapter. She was a superb Chapter leader skilled in group facilitation and full of compassion for everyone in our Chapter. Judy always has a “thank you” for to our volunteers: “excellent job, amazing work, impressed by your contributions, great success, wholeheartedly approve, and much more.”  She is a true champion of our Chapter and our members.

Since she joined Historic Rivers Chapter, Judy has become a skilled wildlife photographer. Each year she participates in our chapter and state VMN photo contests and submits her stunning nature photos to various local, state and national contests. This summer, VIRGINIA WILDLIFE magazine published Judy’s photo of a Sharp-shinned Hawk in the Fauna category. Also, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s 2019 Calendar features Judy’s photo of a fisherman casting his net into the Bay.
Many nature lovers in Virginia and the mid-Atlantic region are enjoying Judy’s photos. Congratulations, Judy!

BRFAL Graduates New Volunteers
By Geoff Orth, VMN-BRFAL
​
​The Blue Ridge Foothills and Lakes (BRFAL) chapter of the Virginia Master Naturalists (VMN) class of fifteen students from Bedford and Franklin Counties  graduated April 28 in a ceremony at Sontag Park near Rocky Mount. They had completed a two-and-a-half month course focused on nature themes over eight weekday evenings and three Saturdays. 

Highlights included Nell Fredericksen’s herpetology class, complete with live snakes and amphibians; the  basics of birding, led by Linda Corey of Roanoke, including instruction on how to use binoculars; nature hikes led by Ferrum faculty members Bob Pohlad and Todd Fredericksen; and overviews of the worlds of insects, led by Kal Ivanov, staff entomologist at the Virginia Museum of Natural History in Martinsville, and  fish, led by chapter mentor Don Kelso, an emeritus professor at George Mason University.  

Students were supplied with pocket manuals and computer apps for identification of trees and shrubs; mammals, from bears to moles and voles; butterflies; wildflowers; and insects. They needed all of these references to complete their field work and the final assessment, which was conducted along BTWNM’s extensive trail network.  As part of that assessment, students were required to identify trees, vines, and shrubs; evidence of mammals; stream, soil, and geological features; and plants and wildflowers. They were also asked to explain various other natural processes, such as bird migration, natural succession after such events as forest fires, and seed propagation.  

New River Valley Chapter Member Receives Presidential Recognition

Steve Bridges, Certified VMN in the New River Valley Chapter, received the President’s Volunteer Award in recognition of his service as a range monitor in the Jefferson National Forest.

Shout-outs for Three High Knob Chapter Members

Myrel Short was recognized for his exceptional service maintaining the Pine Mountain Trail (PMT), which borders Virginia and Kentucky.  Other PMTC board members frequently joke that Myrel is a one-man trail crew, due to the amount of time and energy he gives to the upkeep of the trail.  A USFS employee recently commented in an online discussion that the PMT is the most well-maintained trail in the district.  (Note: You can read more about the Pine Mountain Trail in a Blue Ridge Outdoors magazine article by Wally Smith, an instructor and local partner for the VMN-High Knob Chapter.  Also check out the trail website)

Paxton Allgyer received the Diane Relf Master Gardener College scholarship to attend the VCE Master Gardener College (similar to the VMN Statewide Conference and Volunteer Training) in June.  Congratulations, Paxton!

Chris Allgyer was featured in a Coalfield Progress article for his retirement from Mountain Empire Community College in May.  Chris was the last original MECC professor, having taught math at the college for 46 years.  He’s planning to use his retirement to spend more time on volunteer service and being a VMN volunteer!

Awards for Fairfax Master Naturalist Volunteer and Partner

Rentz Hilyer, VMN-Fairfax Chapter, received the Beautification and Environmental Improvement Award from the Friends of Little Hunting Creek for his service cleaning up and enhancing a public trail at the creek.  Rentz also serves as the Vice President of the Fairfax Master Naturalists and works at the Northern Virginia Conservation Trust.

Alonso Abugattas, a longtime instructor and partner for several Northern Virginia VMN Chapters received the 2018 National Association for Interpretation Master Interpretive Manager Award, one of NAI’s most prestigious awards.

All enrolled Virginia Master Naturalist volunteers are invited to register now to join us at the Fredericksburg Expo and Conference Center in Fredericksburg, Virginia for our 9th Virginia Master Naturalist Statewide Volunteer Conference and Training. This year’s conference is hosted by the Central Rappahannock chapter.

This event is an opportunity for VMN volunteers to share ideas and learn from each other, to participate in high-quality continuing education sessions, and to learn about a region of Virginia that may be different from their home communities. It’s a time and place to recognize and reward volunteers and chapters for all their efforts.

Our chapter hosts have done a wonderful job of choosing programming they think you will enjoy. We will have many and varied concurrent sessions on Saturday and Sunday. There will also be opportunities for pre-conference field trips on Friday and field trips on both Saturday and Sunday as part of the conference.

As of August 1, 183 people are registered for the conference, but about two-thirds of the sessions, including some field trips, still have space available.  If a session is full, don’t hesitate to sign up for the waiting list.  We are frequently able to accommodate people from the waitlists closer to the conference date.  All but one of the five Sunday field trips are still available, so the Full Conference registration option will give you the most choices for field opportunities. 

Early bird registration ends August 6!  Regular conference registration continues through August 20.

​The Virginia Master Naturalist program’s state office is now accepting nominations for six statewide awards: Volunteer of the Year, Project of the Year (with four subcategories), and Advisor of the Year.  These awards will be judged by the VMN statewide office team and one or more VMN Steering Committee member.  We will announce and distribute the awards at our annual conference, Friday evening, September 7. 
 
To submit a nomination, please send the information requested for that particular award to Michelle Prysby, mprysby@vt.edu.  Nominations are due by August 1 at 5 pm.

Get inspired by our 2017 winners!
 
Volunteer of the Year
This award is intended to recognize a volunteer who has made outstanding contributions to natural resource education, citizen science, stewardship, and/or chapter administration.  Criteria we consider include the impacts the volunteer has made on natural resource conservation and education, demonstrated leadership by the volunteer, and impacts the volunteer has made on the local chapter and its volunteers.  There is no minimum requirement for amount of hours or length of service for a volunteer to receive this award.  Our focus is on the last one to two years of service.
 
In your nominations, please include the following:

• Name, email address, and VMN chapter affiliation of nominator
• Name, email address, and VMN chapter affiliation of the nominee
• Description of why the nominee should receive the award, limited to 400 words.  You may choose to include a description of the individual’s service, specific examples of positive impacts made, aspects that make the individual stand out from other volunteers, and quotes from other volunteers or local partners.  Please place your primary focus on the last 1-2 years of the volunteer’s service.

 
Project of the Year
Subcategories: Education/Outreach, Citizen Science, Stewardship, Administrative
This award is intended to recognize a project that has made significant and noteworthy positive impacts for natural resource education, citizen science, stewardship, and/or chapter administration within the last 1-2 years.  Our focus is on projects for which the VMN chapter played a significant, unique role in creation, implementation, and leadership.  We will give awards in each of four subcategories:

• Education/Outreach – Volunteer service in which VMN volunteers educate the public, such as interpretive programs at parks
• Citizen Science – Service projects involving data collection, monitoring, biological inventories, etc.
• Stewardship – Service projects to improve habitat or improve the ability of the public to access natural resources through trails, etc.
• Administrative – Projects to improve the functioning of a VMN chapter, such as re-vamping of the basic training course, mentorship programs, efforts to streamline chapter processes, etc.

 
In your nominations, please include the following:

• Name, email address, and VMN chapter affiliation of the nominator
• Name, email address, and VMN chapter affiliation for the primary VMN volunteer contact for the project
• The primary award subcategory for which you are nominating the project: Education/Outreach, Citizen Science, Stewardship, or Administrative.  The project may include aspects of multiple subcategories and you may describe these aspects in your nomination statement, but you should indicate the primary subcategory under which you want to nominate the project.
• Description of why the project should receive the award, limited to 400 words.  Please include a description of the project goals, activities completed, and impacts and outcomes for natural resources in your community and/or for your chapter.  Include the roles and contributions of VMN volunteers to the project.  Identify any significant partners for the project. 

 
Chapter Advisor of the Year
This award is intended to recognize a chapter advisor who has made significant and noteworthy contributions to a VMN chapter within the last 1-2 years. 

​In your nominations, please include the following:

• Name, email address, and VMN chapter affiliation of the nominator
• Name, email address, and VMN chapter affiliation of the chapter advisor
• Description of why the chapter advisor should receive the award, limited to 400 words.  Please include specific examples of how the chapter advisor has helped the chapter run effectively, make positive impacts in the community, or otherwise achieve its goals.

​Please help us recognize the outstanding people and work of your chapters!

–By Marie Majarov, VMN-Shenandoah Chapter

Editor’s Note: The subject of this article is unusual for The Pollinator, but I wanted to include it because safety is such an important consideration for VMN volunteers. Marie is thoughtful in sharing her personal story so that her fellow VMN volunteers (and others) may learn from her experience. If other VMN volunteers have personal stories to share related to safety during VMN activities (e.g., experiences with tick-borne diseases, heat-related illnesses, etc.), please send them. I hope to make these safety stories a semi-regular feature. –MDP

As a naturalist with great respect for the sun and the natural world, an outdoor & nature photographer, a retired clinical psychologist with some medical savvy, and as a septuagenarian I had no idea! And neither have most people I’ve talked to since my recent, eye-opening experience with eyelid cancer.
            I want you to know!  As Virginia Master Naturalists I believe we need to be well informed as we are frequently out working, observing and serving in glorious sunshine. We also have a responsibility to set good examples with our self-care in the sun and to be able to educate those with whom we work.
            I thought I had a sty on my left lower eyelid, no big deal. I used warm compresses, standard treatment, but in a few days when it did not go away — actually it got quite a bit bigger, baby lima bean size and really  irritating to my eye — I went to see my eye doctor.  “A chalazion” he said, a cyst-like nodule in or on the eyelid often developing after a sty or resulting from obstruction of an oil gland within the eyelid. “I’ll lance it, you will feel much better by tonight, and it should heal right up.”  
            Lancing however revealed no obstruction, inflammation, or infection; it was a hard growth, and not likely a standard chalazion. My doctor carefully removed a piece of it and sent it off to the lab and explained that there was a possibility that it could be cancer, skin cancer actually.  “We’ll see what the lab report says, one step at a time…”
            It was cancer, basal cell carcinoma. My doctor told my husband and me that he was not surprised, that he was fairly sure of a cancer diagnosis as soon as he cut into the growth, just not sure what kind. He was fearful it could be squamous cell carcinoma or worse, melanoma.  I was lucky.  
            Four days after the diagnosis I was in the office of an outstanding ophthalmic plastic and reconstruction surgeon in northern Virginia.  A whole new chapter of learning opened up before me. Surgery was scheduled for 10 days hence to remove the growth, and probably about a third of my eyelid with an inch of tissue below the lid aiming for clean margins, and followed by eyelid reconstruction.  
            This was MY EYE!!!! Eyes are so incredibly important to us all, and I am a photographer you know!  Reading and having my surgeon explain and show me pictures of all that was involved in the hour and 45 minute procedure to be carried out so very close to my eyeball, both helped and made me even more anxious!  The reconstruction pictures he showed me were amazing, but getting there made me apprehensive. To be honest, I was really a nervous wreck! 
            The surgery went beautifully and was not as onerous to me as the visions that swirled in my head leading up to it. The surgeon, with a pathologist present to evaluate the removed tissue, was able to get clean margins, the best of news to all cancer patients!  Anesthesia today is amazing; and incredibly I had minimal pain afterwards!  I had 48 hours of wet dressings, ointments on my raft of stitches for 2 weeks, and I had to keep my head upright even while sleeping, then just healing time….not bad at all.  The results looked amazing from the beginning. It was hard to believe the surgeon had removed as much of my eyelid and tissue as he did and then was able to put things back together so smoothly. There will be little visible evidence of the surgery and most importantly my eye will work normally.  Again, I was so very lucky!
            My surgeon says that a “lifetime of sun” is the culprit here. I grew up in a generation where we were encouraged to get as much sunshine as possible. It was “good for us.” There was little known about skin cancer, sun screen products with SPF numbers were not available, and kids were not encouraged to wear sunglasses or hats. On many beach vacations I was quite sunburned and absorbed lots of sun glare from hours of enjoying the ocean and white sandy New Jersey beaches…for fair skinned people such as myself, a recipe for later problems.  As a college student I worked summers as a lifeguard and swim instructor, wearing sunglasses…but I am not sure how good they were at that time. I am sure that it was a perfect situation for glare off the water to bounce up to my eye lids. I didn’t know, no one did, the problems that could lie ahead.
            The Skin Cancer Foundation reports that “the eyelid region is one of the most common sites for nonmelanoma skin cancers. In fact, skin cancers of the eyelid, including basal cell carcinoma (BCC), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), and melanoma, account for five to 10 percent of all skin cancers. Ninety five percent of these tumors are basal cell or squamous cell carcinomas.” Most being lower eyelid cancer. Absolutely staggering statistics, I had no idea!
            Prompt treatment is crucial to good outcomes. While basal cell carcinomas do not spread/travel to other organs and therefore are not usually life threatening, they do spread in their area of origin. This is particularly tricky around the eyelid where the tissues are thin and if left untreated cancer cells can infiltrate to nearby vital ocular structures and even the perilously close brain. 
            One of the most common presenting symptoms for skin cancer on the eyelids is a growth like mine, which was likely growing under the surface for quite some time, years in fact. Other possible signals reported in the literature include: a change in appearance of the eyelid skin, swelling of the eyelid, thickening of the eyelid, chronic infection of the eyelid, or an ulceration (area where skin is broken) on the eyelid that does not heal. 
            Awareness that eyelid cancer and other skin cancer can happen to those of us exposed to much sunshine over our lifetimes is the first thing I want you to know.  Next are the protective measures we can take and encourage others to take.  Sunscreen is an important preventative measure in all skin cancer. So slather up exposed skin areas when you are in the sun…and don’t forget your ears a delicate area where basal cell carcinoma also takes a significant toll.    
            For the eyelid area however, slathering up with sunscreen is awkward to impossible because of the potential for rubbing it into and causing irritation to the delicate eye. Sunglasses must be your sunblock.  Wear sunglass that blo
ck 99-100% of ultraviolet light. This is essential!  Also broad brim hats that have a darker underside to the brim help greatly to decrease glare to your cheeks and eye area. The brim should surround the hat; baseball hats are not as useful because they allow for glare exposure from the side, and as to other skin cancers they leave ears and neck exposed. 
            I have long worn a great UV+45 kaki colored Virginia Wildlifehat (a present from the editor) with a perfect brim, underside forest green. My sunglasses however often get tossed aside or tangled as I struggle with straps around my neck for my camera, a lens viewer, binoculars, glasses etc. while I photograph and observe nature. No longer will this happen; when healed all the way there is a large style pair of prescription transition glasses in my future. In fact I take this so seriously I am even considering wearing black under my eyes like a football player when I garden or am out on the water! 
            Make no mistake, this is very serious. Eyes are precious!  I am indeed very fortunate that my cancer was diagnosed and treated quickly once it became visible. I want you to know, to be aware, and take precautions. ….and please educate others. 

References and Resources:
https://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/eyelid-cancer/overview        
https://eyecancer.com/eye-cancer/conditions/eyelid-tumors/basal-cell-carcinoma-eyelid-cancer/
https://www.skincancer.org/prevention/sun-protection/for-your-eyes/the-eyelids-highly-susceptible-to-skin-cancer

Marie Majarov (mariemilanmajarov@gmail.com) is a Shenandoah Chapter Virginia Master Naturalist and photojournalist whose work is frequently featured in Virginia Wildlife Magazine.