Jan Penn, advisory board member of SOEI
It all started with Jan Penn’s first bee. Being in gardens, fields, and woods with her family, how she first experienced nature, leads us to why Jan is such a loving and compassionate advocate for the environment today. She says one of her earliest memories, she will always remember was sitting in a field of dandelions in the lawn, it was spring, and one of her grandpa’s was a beekeeper. A bee came flying around her and she started to swat at it. Her grandpa said, “They’ll bite you if you start swinging your hands. Sit and be quiet and tell the bee that you will exist quietly with it.” So she did and the bee flew away from her and didn’t bother her again. And she never forgot that beautiful memory and lesson in caring for the environment.
“That is one memory, there is more.” Another story she recalls was of her grandfather taking her to Potawatomi hunting grounds, teaching her to find arrowheads by focusing in. “I could find one, just a little piece sticking out of the mud, by not seeing the symmetric, ”she says. He taught her how to really pay attention to the little things, and also helping her look for four leaf clovers.
Her grandmother was a Union organizer and always told her, ‘if you want something, go for it’. “She was a strong lady, an earth person, understood the seasons, she was a farmer.” Penn got her inspiration to be involved with environmental issues because of both of her grandmothers. “I am a lucky person, I have been blessed,”she says of her childhood.
Her family has farmed in lower Wisconsin since the early 1800’s. In 1972, Jan moved to the Chequamegon area from lower Wisconsin. On a trip visiting her husband Rick’s grandmother, she discovered the country of the Northwoods. Jan could likewise see that in the Northwoods of Wisconsin health care needs were being missed. “I wanted to do something different…in the 1960’s you were either a teacher or a nurse. I wanted to be a nurse in a rural area, and demonstrate my nursing ability. ”
“I have always dreamed of being a midwife because of the story of Margaret Breckinridge,” she says. In the 1920’s, Breckinridge lost her young children and moved to the most poverty stricken area of the United States, Hyden, Kentucky where the infant mortality rate was very, very high. Breckinridge felt nurse-midwives would make impact on the outcome of a pregnancy. Jan says, “Doctors wouldn’t go there, but Margaret Breckinridge did. Afterwards babies and women were surviving…and she proved that is what nurses really could do.”
Jan later became a nurse practitioner, not the midwife she originally dreamed. She loves “helping people to be healthy and know what’s around them and help them make that connection.
“There is no way to separate health and environmental issues. A healthy place is a healthy person. It all interrelates; the air we breathe, the noise we hear, how we feel,” Jan says, “I tend to be philosophical and make those kinds of connections.
“I am not a Board member with money. What you see is what you get. I want to keep the direction honest and I have a lot of energy. I focus on the critical issues of the region and am not afraid to do that. “I knew people on the board and was involved with various campaigns. They needed local representation and a balance on the board, and knew I understood the dynamics- social, cultural, and environmental science.
“Board members and trustees are afraid to get into controversial issues like motorized recreational sports. I didn’t know Sigurd Olsen personally, but he’d support it, he was into controversial issues.”
Penn is also active in 4-H and the League of Women Voters, besides being on the Institute’s advisory board. She also works on the writing award, working towards getting the children’s award off the ground. She says, “It is all still nursing because it deals with health, that’s how I think about it.” Jan has been amazed at turning kids on to what’s around them; get them into water quality and ecosystem. The educational perspective of Loonwatch has been a good tool for her goals.
Jan loves Emerging Issues as well. “There is a lot happening here that could devastate the balance that is left. We haven’t identified all the issues we need to,” she says. She wants to make things happen and work on getting the resources for change.
“At times I am really tired. I get energized by seeing things happen…after giving the message to over five generations of families, it is motivating to see at least one person is receiving… the light bulb turns on. You have to be in it for the long haul until you see movement and growth. A lot of people in the area do not even know what is going on around them. “She likes to be the educator - to make people see, and then turn the light bulb on in their minds to what they do not know. That’s her reward.
“There is movement to the whole, a sense of connection with everything around you. That’s what heath is to me. As you move to the higher point, it is complex. I see it with families, it may take several generations of one person in a family willing to break away from destructive behaviors. Water flows through all. It is a one by one thing. It gives me hope. And hope and trust that there will be movement for a better, higher point. If you lose hope, it is over. That’s what motivates me.
“I like to see things from all sides and passionate about all causes. I guess that I would add to that, well, it has something to do with justice, seeking justice and solutions.
“A big part of me that is introspective and quiet, I don’t do well at big parties or bars. I recharge by going to a quiet place. When I feel discord, I have to go to a real quiet place and there will be (usually) a message. Something that gongs. And that is how I stay grounded.” She described a trip to the Boundary Waters with her daughter where they saw a baby eagle in the distance. It was on a branch and became clumsy, tipsy trying to hang on with its talons, upside down. The baby finally got up there and took off, as his belly grazed the pine trees as he tried to take off. “It has something to do with a feeling that comes when you discover falling upon, or sitting quietly, the combination, the intricacies of the quiet of the woods. The little things that go on, that we are oblivious to.” She says her motivation comes from, “things that make me laugh, being in a place and seeing a fluke, something hilarious and funny in nature and desiring the opportunity of seeing that happen.
“I see tremendous energy in students. Engaging in the community, this amazing energy that can be utilized, in their own learning experience and in the planning process in the region. They can help government bodies about key issues and decision making.
“Practical research, helping projects, all the things that go into environmental activism. The learning experience has to be community based and experimental and will get the message out and people will look for a place like Northland.
“We are the last frontier, we are doing pretty good, and nowhere near the developed condition of watersheds of Illinois or Ohio. Educating message across disciplines is essential…The Institute has a tremendous role to play in saving the North. If we can’t do it here, it is over. We have the capabilities to make a difference here.
“Each generation comes to think they are on the precipice of some huge change, some intense shift and that’s probably been true forever. For many reasons we are really at a critical time and shift, the potential for annihilation is there, in a way it has never been in the history of the world. The need for humans to make a difference is true.
“Remove yourself from the negative. There are good people and an amoral, powerful subgroup of evil people. You have to use all senses to be connected to a positive, ethical world. We have to pay attention; we have to see that little arrowhead point. Pay attention. All we are here to do is help the next generation make the connection with the greater good and part of a greater ecosystem. We have been entrusted in a unique way with protecting a gift, in doing so; it’s an interaction, reciprocity in the process. We are there to protect and connect and interact for balance of the whole.”
« return.