{"id":107114,"date":"2022-02-04T05:54:42","date_gmt":"2022-02-04T12:54:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=107114"},"modified":"2022-02-04T05:54:42","modified_gmt":"2022-02-04T12:54:42","slug":"jaimi-butler-badass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/02\/04\/jaimi-butler-badass\/","title":{"rendered":"Jaimi Butler, Badass"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m convinced that my friend Jaimi Butler has been, and continues to be, our most persistent and effective voice in the battle to save the disappearing Great Salt Lake. When it comes to the lake she’s a highly knowledgeable, passionate and eloquent firecracker and I love that in her.<\/p>\n

I first met Jaimi, Coordinator for Great Salt Lake Institute at Westminster College, maybe ten years ago when she asked to use some of my photos for an ongoing research project tracking toxic mercury compounds moving through the Great Salt Lake ecosystem. We hit it off at the get-go and we’ve been friends ever since.<\/p>\n

Jaimi is a passionate advocate of the lake. She spends endless hours with GSLI staff and students traipsing around the remote margins of the lake doing research, she’s pretty much the go-to person for news media regarding lake issues and she works closely with our legislators regarding the lake.<\/p>\n

If an issue involves the Great Salt Lake, Jaimi will almost certainly be part of the equation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Copyright Jaimi Butler – photo used by permission<\/em><\/p>\n

This tiny, spartan, canvas-sided camper on Antelope Island has been Jaimi’s home all week and it will continue to be for several more days. She, as scientist-in-residence and Nan Seymour, local poet and founder of River Writing, are winter camping on the island during an intense effort by many to bring attention to the lake and its issues during our current legislative session. I won’t go into all of the details here but much more information about the effort can be found by following this link.<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

I follow Jaimi and GSLI closely on social media so a few days ago when she posted the above photo on Facebook I posted on her timeline. We’re in the midst of our coldest spell all winter, daytime temps barely reach freezing and nighttime temps are typically in the low teens, so I empathized with Jaimi’s camping situation. Jaimi and Nan are in separate camping units and Jaimi doesn’t even have running water – she’s dry camping in early February. Jaimi is hardcore.<\/p>\n

I’ve copied and pasted our Facebook conversation below.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I didn’t respond to Jaimi’s request so she didn’t know if I was coming or not.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But I figured she deserved some moral support so yesterday morning I semi-surprised her by knocking on her camper door just after 9 AM.<\/p>\n

Even though I interrupted her brushing her teeth she greeted me with her typical huge and charming smile. I have to be extra careful with Covid so we visited for quite a while outside her camper. The only thing that kept us from jabbering longer was a group of high school students that were scheduled to do a lake walk with her at 11 AM.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And you knew I’d be bringing the whiskey she requested, which widened her smile to the breaking point. Since she didn’t know for sure if I was coming I knew she might not be there when I arrived so I attached a note to the bottle so she’d know where it came from if I had to leave it on the step of her camper.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It was the last of my whiskey supply but I figured she deserved it more than I did.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As I type this at 4 AM my thermometer reads 16\u00b0 F. and it’s usually significantly colder on Antelope Island than it is here in the city so my thoughts are with Jaimi. Badass Jaimi.<\/p>\n

If you have any inkling to support Jaimi and Nan and so many others in their efforts to save the Great Salt Lake please visit the link I included under the first photo for suggestions. There are many ways to provide support – financial, moral and otherwise.<\/p>\n

We simply have to save that lake.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m convinced that my friend Jaimi Butler has been, and continues to be, our most persistent and effective voice in the battle to save the disappearing Great Salt Lake. When it comes to the lake she’s a highly knowledgeable, passionate and eloquent firecracker and I love that in her.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,334,8],"tags":[31,622,5271,6165,6167,6166,621],"class_list":["post-107114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-great-salt-lake-institute","tag-jaimi-butler","tag-nan-seymour","tag-river-writing","tag-saving-great-salt-lake","tag-westminster-college"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/jaimi-butler-1942-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-rRE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107114"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107160,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107114\/revisions\/107160"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}