1. Benefit in Pt Reyes Station for Mesa Refuge Writer Retreat TONIGHT
2. Green Hairstreak volunteers, Saturday the 15th
3. Rilke: Live the questions - now
4. Can - or Should - Hetch Hetchy Valley Be Restored? Moraga Oct 18
5. San Francisco's straws sucking even more Tuolumne River water - for development
6. Man...a new unique form of life...
7. Searsville: another dam to come down?
8. Oakland launches rain barrel program
9. Keeping Nature in the City - October 20
10. The Future of Food, Palo Alto Oct 21
11. Take the temperature of the new ag movement - Tues Oct 18 in SF
12. Inner Sunset Street Fair Sunday the 18th
13. Feedback
14. UC Landscape Architecture Environmental Program lecture series
15. A Word A Day: monopsony, monopoly....
16. Conservation and Conservatism
17. Choice quotations about trees and nature
18. Population potpourri, including Population Clocks. Disturbing
19. Dark fate for immigrants
20. Notes & Queries - six nouns in a row
1. A Benefit The Mesa Refuge Writer Retreat
Friday, October 14, 2011 in Point Reyes Station
6:00pm Pre-event reception at the bookstore: $40.00 (includes both reception and reading)
7:30pm Reading and Conversation at The Dance Palace: $15.00
Mark Hertsgaard the author of HOT: Living Through the Next 50 Years on Earth will be in conversation with local author and investigative reporter Mark Dowie. Herstegard is one of America's outstanding environmentral investigative reporters. This event will benefit the great work of the Mesa Refuge, a writers retreat www.mesarefuge.org here in Point Reyes which has hosted over 500 writers these past 12 years.
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2. Come Steward Green Hairstreak Habitat this Saturday Oct. 15th!
@14th and Pacheco
9:30 am to 12:30 pm
Now every 3rd Saturday of the Month
Come for a half hour to socialize and enjoy morning treats with other neighbors, volunteers, and nature enthusiasts. We are a month away from our two major planting workdays of the year and we need lots of help to prep the sights for some new plants! The workday begins at 10 am promptly, when we will orient volunteers on the different sites.
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3.
... have patience with everything unresolved in your heart
and to try to love the questions themselves
as if they were locked rooms or books written
in a very foreign language.
Don't search for the answers,
which could not be given to you now,
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~
(Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Stephen Mitchell)
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4. Can - or Should - Hetch Hetchy Valley Be Restored?
William Keith Forum
Tuesday, October 18th
7:30 - 8:30 p.m.
Saint Mary's College
Soda Activity Center
1928 Saint Mary's Road
Moraga, California
Restore Hetch Hetchy Executive Director Mike Marshall will headline a forum on the restoration of the Hetch Hetchy Valley as part of "The Comprehensive Keith: 100th Anniversary Celebration" Exhibition at Saint Mary's College in Moraga on Tuesday, Oct. 18, from 7:30 - 8:30 p.m.
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Hetch Hetchy Valley by William Keith
Moderated by by Mike Taugher, environmental reporter, Bay Area News Group, the forum also features a representative of the San Francisco Public Utilities commission and Michael Marchetti, Ph.D., professor of biology, Saint Mary's College. The forum is titled Can - or Should - Hetch Hetchy Valley Be Restored?
The exhibit celebrates renowned artist William Keith, a lifelong friend of naturalist John Muir and features Keith's panorama of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, which he painted after a November 1907 sketching trip to the valley with Muir. Muir, who called the Hetch Hetchy Valley "one of nature's rarest and most precious mountain temples," led the fight against the 1913 clear cutting and flooding of the Hetch Hetchy Valley.
Restore Hetch Hetchy's mission is to return the Hetch Hetchy Valley to its natural splendor while continuing to meet the water and power needs of all communities that depend on the Tuolumne River.
Muir called William Keith a "poet-painter." Keith's love of nature was a common thread throughout his painting career, and one of several bonds between him and Muir, who was the founder of the Sierra Club and "father" of the National Parks system.
Despite Muir's urgent pleas, in 1913 the federal government approved San Francisco's request to clear-cut and flood the valley for use as a reservoir. The decision horrified wilderness-lovers and helped spur the creation of the National Park Service and the international environmental conservation movement. Prior to its destruction, Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy Valley was one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world and home to thousands of plant and animal species.
The movement to Restore Hetch Hetchy is gaining momentum in the wake of several recent milestones. In July, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission filed comments concurring with Restore Hetch Hetchy that the geographic scope of the environmental impact analysis for the relicensing of Don Pedro Reservoir extend upstream to Hetch Hetchy and downstream to the San Francisco Bay, a significant step forward for the campaign. Also in July, Restore Hetch Hetchy's third annual Muir's March increased participation by 500% over the previous year as activists converged at the Hetch Hetchy Valley to advocate for its restoration. Meanwhile, a July editorial in The Sacramento Bee asked readers to imagine Yosemite with a Restored Hetch Hetchy Valley, invoking poet Harriet Monroe's question: "What right has a single city to absorb the property of the nation?"
Keith's Hetch Hetchy Valley painting is part of the exhibition, which is open to audience members after the forum until 9:30 p.m. on October 18th. The forum is free and museum admission is $5.
The Exhibition will be held at Saint Mary's College of California, 1928 Saint Mary's Road in Moraga, California.
For more information about the forum and The Comprehensive Keith: 100th Anniversary Celebration click here.
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5. From Tuolumne River Trust
Unbelievably, it looks like San Francisco is once again trying to find a way to take more water from the Tuolumne River. And the Modesto Irrigation District, which has said they have no water to spare, is in talks to sell it to them.
Tell San Francisco and MID that if there is water to spare, it has to go back to the river!
This news comes at a time when the lower Tuolumne River is dying a death by a thousand cuts. Our native salmon population has crashed to historic lows and we are in immediate danger of losing it altogether. Just this week, the EPA listed the lower Tuolumne as impaired for high temperatures - which are deadly to salmon and a key indication of poor water quality. The Tuolumne is impaired because the Irrigation Districts and San Francisco divert most of the water from the river. This leaves the lower Tuolumne to stagnate in the summer, cooking under the Central Valley sun along with anything trying to live in it.
Right now, federal and state agencies are looking at ways to improve the health of the river through the FERC relicensing of Don Pedro Dam. This means finding a way to put more water back in the river - not taking any more out!
During the relicensing, MID has maintained that they use water as efficiently as possible and that they have no excess water to put into the lower Tuolumne. Yet we now know that MID is engaged in private talks with San Francisco officials about a potential water sale. The possible agreement would involve MID building small reservoirs in their canal system to recapture water they could sell to San Francisco. The fact that MID is able to consider this water sale proves that there are ways they can free up excess water by re-operating their system and using it more wisely.
Send an email to the general managers of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and the Modesto Irrigation District and tell them that any water that's saved needs to go back to the river - NOT used to flush San Francisco toilets!
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6.
And was there not one moment in time
when our liberated adventurer
might have felt himself to be
a new unique form of life on earth
Was there not one moment when he felt
a quivering a wavering vibe
between himself and all breathing beings
and a deep ineffable delight
engulfing him
as if he were not a man separate and apart
from the rest of creation
but a part of pure nature
without the hubris to destroy it—
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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7. Another damn dam to come down?
Stanford Daily Editorial-University has "Faulty priorities" for Searsville Dam
Today's Stanford Daily Editorial staff calls out the University's faulty priorities when it comes to addressing the over-century-old Searsville Dam.
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8. The Watershed Project
rain3.jpg
Look to the Sky
Oakland Launches Rain Barrel Program
On the 20th anniversary of the Oakland hills fire, The Watershed Project is asking you to look to the sky. Find out how you can get a massive discount on top-of-the-line rain barrels, protect your property, and promote a healthy and safe watershed.
A rain barrel is easily installed at the gutter downspout of a home. All of the rainwater that falls on the house's roof is then diverted into a barrel or cistern. This system slows the flow of stormwater over their property, preventing erosion and preserving the health of Oakland's streams and rivers. The rainwater system also helps homeowners save water in wet months to use to water their garden in dry months.
Read More
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9.
San Francisco Natural History Series
Keeping Nature in the City
Guest Speaker: Peter Brastow
Thursday, October 20th, 7.30 pm
FREE at the Randall Museum, 199 Museum Way, San Francisco, CA
Nature in the City's founder Peter Brastow shares his vision of how we can more meaningfully interact with the wild in our city: restoring natural areas in our neighborhoods and backyards and through projects like the Twin Peaks Bioregional Park and the Green Hairstreak Corridor.
Peter Brastow founded Nature in the City in 2005 with the idea of connecting urban people to where we live. Doing this would help the growing movement to conserve San Francisco's natural areas and biodiversity, helping to carry ecological restoration and stewardship that much further.
You can read more about Nature in the City and its projects at natureinthecity.org
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FUTURE TALKS
11/17 – Reclaiming the Art of Natural History – John (Jack) Muir Laws
More talks coming in 2012 (if you have any thoughts, please send them our way. Thanks!)
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SEPTEMBER LECTURE NOTES, by Adrian Cotter:
To a packed house on September 15, Greg Gaar gave a great tour through the history of San Francisco with his collection of slides. The land on which our city sits has irrevocably changed through the hand (and machines) of mankind. There were dunes, lakes, coastal prairies, tidal bays that today are gone, or were buried beneath the expanding city. The sands of SOMA were used to fill in the waters of Mission Bay. Creeks now run underneath our streets, the native trees long since cut down and replaced with the eucalyptus.
Sutro was apparently one of Greg Gaar’s childhood heroes, only later did he realize the damage that the huge groves of tree have done. To highlight these he contrasted a eucalyptus forest in Australia to one here. The one here was dominated by one tree and two ivys, it looked nothing like the Australian forest.
The story is as much a social one as a natural one: with tales like Sutro’s, but also involve cemeteries, grazing, private water companies, railroads, laundries, butchers, and now restorations. Greg also gave us a tour of the 32 Natural Areas that are spread through the city, and while there are many challenges they is also hope. The
restoration of Heron’s Head with its recently spotted Clapper Rails being a highlight, but overall it is an exciting time: we now know how to repair biological systems — and can repair them.
There is also a hopefully growing appreciation of nature: when the sea lions first appeared at Pier 39, people wanted to get rid of them. It’s hard to imagine that mindset now.
Greg encouraged us to imagine other possibilities, no matter how seemingly outlandish. We cannot sit back and let the planet go to ruin at our hands.
http://sfnhs.wordpress.com/2011/10/01/a-changed-landscape/
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10. The Future of Food
Friday, October 21
7:00 pm - 9:30 pm
Peninsula Conservation Center
3921 East Bayshore Road, Palo Alto [map]
On October 21, Acterra will be showing The Future of Food, a powerful and influential film on what has happened to our food supply. In follow-on discussion, we'll let you know about the efforts to label GMOs and how you can get involved.
For more information, please view the event flyer.
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11. Internet Archive and The Greenhorns are shortly to host "Seeding the Future," an extravaganza that will include, among other events:
-- a fall harvest potluck with food & drink from green and seasoned farmers, and maybe you
-- a screening of the new and excellent documentary film "The Greenhorns" in our giant auditorium
-- a panel and roundtable discussion on decentralized food production, the new farming, and how to encourage 5 million new young farmers
-- music, conversation, and party.
Whether you're an eater, a gardener or a farmer, this is an excellent way to take the temperature of the new ag movement and experience the warmth and wonder of interdependence.
It's at Internet Archive, 300 Funston (at Clement St.) in the Richmond district of San Francisco, this coming Tuesday night (Oct. 18) at 6:30 pm.
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12.
A block party on a neighborhood scale!
The Inner Sunset Street Fair 2011
Sunday October 16th 2011 ~ 10am-5pm
9th Avenue & Irving Street, San Francisco
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13. Feedback
On Oct 12, 2011, at 9:18 PM, Don French wrote (re Notes & Queries):
What is the first thing I will see or feel when I exit this current existence?
There is no answer because the question is based upon the false premise that there will be an "I" after the current existence.
You go to the head of the class, Don. You're right, except that it doesn't make a witty response. That's OK, because accurate information is also valued at N&Q. It may be a bit late to submit your answer now, but I submitted it in your name.
Linda Erickson (aka "the spider chick"):
> But now I see that not only does your Oct 12 NNJS include me in the schedule, but ALSO you added that lovely comment at the bottom!! Well that sure makes me (and my spiders) feel special! And I cannot even tell you how pleased I am that your appreciation of spiders is growing – even to the point of defending them against brooms and dusters, and proclaiming your Really, THAT is my mission, The Spider Chick mission- to open people’s eyes to how extraordinary and magical spiders are, to dispel the rampant myths and misinformation, and to help people understand that they need not waste their energy being terrified (arachnophobia may be the #1 phobia in the US). So anytime someone actually responds to spiders in a positive way, it’s like 10 points for my team! Thank you for that note!
Atta Pilram:
> Jake, on the subject of God, I thought you may want to listen to the podcast of Monday's KQED FORUM on Swervers How The Workday became modern. Atta Pilram
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14. UC Landscape Architecture Environmental Program lecture series
All talks on Monday evenings, beginning at 630pm in Rm 112 Wurster Hall
Oct 17 “Water's Flow and the City of Rome.” - Katherine Rinne, CCA, Oakland.
Using Rome as a case study, this lecture explores social, cultural, aesthetic, topographic, technological, and political changes that the construction of water infrastructure engenders in the city as it spurs urban development. Rome provides a compelling model for increasing our understanding of how cities function and evolve over time as access to fresh water increases, diminishes, or disappears.
A graduate of the UC Berkeley M Arch program, Katherine Rinne teaches advanced level architecture/urban design studios and seminars at California College of the Arts. Author of The Waters of Rome: Aqueducts, Fountains, and the Birth of the Baroque City, her independent research on water infrastructure has garnered numerous awards and fellowships.
Other talks:
Nov 07 “Community, Sustainability, and Public Space: Urban Design after the Arab Spring” - Amir Gohar, Urbanics, Cairo
Dec 05 “The Inclusive City: Planning Policy and Design Solutions” - Dan Iacofano, MIG, Berkeley
http://laep.ced.berkeley.edu
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15. From A Word A Day (wordsmith.org)
monopsony : one buyer, many sellers
duopsony : two buyers, many sellers
oligopsony : a few buyers, many sellers
monopoly : one seller, many buyers
duopoly : two sellers, many buyers
oligopoly : a few sellers, many buyers
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16. Conservation and Conservatism
The philosophy of free-market conservatism has swept the political field virtually everywhere, and almost everywhere conservatives have been, in varying degrees, hostile to the cause of conservation. This is a problem of great consequence for the long-term human prospect because of the sheer political power of purportedly conservative governments. Further and better reading is intended to instruct in the hope that enlightenment might show that conservatism and conservation share more than a common linguistic heritage. Consistently applied they are, in fact, natural allies. To make such a case, however, it is necessary, first, to say what conservatism is.
Conservative philosopher, Russell Kirk, proposes six "first principles" of conservatism. Accordingly, true conservatives:
* prefer social continuity, i.e., the 'devil they know to the devil they don't know'
* believe in 'the wisdom of our ancestors'
* are guided by prudence
* feel affection for the proliferating intricacy of long-established social institutions, and
* believe that 'human nature suffers irremediably from certain faults'
* believe in a transcendent moral order)
In its older definition it also meant an awareness that all actions can lead to unexpected consequences
(I am uncertain, but I think the preceding paragraphs were probably written by Stanley Temple in Conservation Biology several years ago. JS)
(JS: I cringe when media pundits describe the likes of Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Pat Robertson, or Sarah Palin as conservatives. They are nothing of the sort, and the pundits make the mistake of ratifying the "conservatives"' self-description.)
"Society is a partnership not only between those who are now living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born." Edmund Burke
For the past 200+ years, conservatives have recognized 18th-century British parliamentarian and philosopher Edmund Burke as their progenitor or fountainhead. More recently Russell Kirk (1918-1994) was recognized as the spokesperson of conservatives.
Russell Kirk: “The modern spectacle of vanished forests and eroded lands, wasted petroleum and ruthless mining…is evidence of what an age without veneration does to itself and its successors.”
Letter to editor, Guardian Weekly 2/12/04:
Simon Schama does an enormous disservice to the legacy of Barry Goldwater by presuming that he would be happy with the triumph of the hypocritical hoodlums who now occupy the White House. Goldwater's conservatism was a far cry from that of Schama's "Godly America". He was a fiscal conservative who favored a balanced budget. He was a social libertarian who opposed govt restriction on abortion and who opposed the exclusion of homosexuals from the armed forces. He would certainly not have won the support of the misguided moralists who are credited with the Bush majority.
In 1981 Goldwater openly opposed what had become the ultraconservative fringe of his own party. After Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell said "good Christians" should be worried about supreme court nominee Sandra Day O'Connor of Arizona, Mr. Goldwater told reporters, "Every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass."
Stuart L. Rich, St. Michaels, Md.
"This generation will decide if something untrammeled and free remains, as testimony we had love for those who follow." David Brower
According to the head of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, 99.9% of information suppression, i.e., classification for security reasons, is made not by identifiable individuals in charge of departments, but by career employees at mid- and lower-levels. Before you dismiss this as misleading or obfuscating, true conservatives are not happy with information suppression, as they do not trust the government and favor doing business in the light.
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17.
Look deep, deep, deep into nature, and then you will understand everything. – Albert Einstein
A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children.
– John Madison
“Ever seen a leaf - a leaf from a tree?”
“Yes.”
“I saw one recently - a yellow one, a little green, wilted at the edges. Blown by the wind. When I was a little boy, I used to shut my eyes in winter and imagine a green leaf, with veins on it, and the sun shining …”
“What’s this - an allegory?”
“No; why? Not an allegory - a leaf, just a leaf. A leaf is good. Everything’s good.”
– Dostoevsky, The Possessed, Dialogue between Kirolov and Stavrogin
Every language is an old growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought, an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities.
– Dr. Wade Davies
Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them. – Bill Vaughan
People who will not sustain trees will soon live in a world which cannot sustain people. – Bryce Nelson
Beautification be damned! Urban and community trees should be planted for economic, environmental and social reasons.
– Donald C. Willeke
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18.
Preparing for China's one billion city residents
McKinsey Global Institute projects that China will build 50,000 skyscrapers, 5 billion miles of paved roads and 170 mass-transit systems by 2025.
If the population of China walked past you, in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction. If you are an average American, in your whole life you will spend an average of 6 months waiting at red lights.
The average Southern California commuter loses 93 hours each year in traffic jams, the worst in the nation.
Texas Transportation Institute
One of every 11 new babies born in Mexico will wind up living in the U.S., and about half of these will come illegally.
Pew Hispanic Center
At least 300,000 to 350,000 anchor babies annually become citizens in California. - Dr. Madeleine Cosman
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Michael Pollan: Whatever we can do as individuals to change the way we live at this suddenly very late date does seem utterly inadequate to the challenge. It’s hard to argue with Michael Specter, in a recent New Yorker piece on carbon footprints, when he says: “Personal choices, no matter how virtuous [N.B.!], cannot do enough. It will also take laws and money.” So it will. Yet it is no less accurate or hardheaded to say that laws and money cannot do enough, either; that it will also take profound changes in the way we live. Why? Because the climate-change crisis is at its very bottom a crisis of lifestyle — of character, even. The Big Problem is nothing more or less than the sum total of countless little everyday choices, most of them made by us (consumer spending represents 70 percent of our economy), and most of the rest of them made in the name of our needs and desires and preferences.
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http://www.census.gov/population/international/
Population Clocks
U.S. 312,422,536
World 6,968,407,345
21:53 UTC (EST+5) Oct 14, 2011
(JS: It's hard to keep up. When I posted the above item the U.S. population was given as 312,403,708!!)
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the resident population of the United States, projected to 10/11/11 at 23:44 UTC (EST+5) is
312,403,708
COMPONENT SETTINGS FOR OCTOBER 2011
One birth every.................................. 8 seconds
One death every.................................. 12 seconds
One international migrant (net) every............ 45 seconds
Net gain of one person every..................... 13 seconds
Note: The U.S. population clock is consistent with Census 2010 data and the most recent national population estimates.
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19. (This paragraph from the Guardian Weekly editor, describing contents of this week's issue, identifies what I consider a straw in the wind--the dark fate of immigrants in most countries of the world. I have carried items about the downsides of immigration when it is not coupled with strong population policies--policies that are absent in most governments. Straw in the wind? Yes. The world is going through a paroxysm of adjustment to the physical and economic realities, and economic situations will continue to deteriorate until we find ways of adjusting our needs and wants to what the earth can provide. JS)
Not entirely unrelated is the theme that runs through the paper - immigration. We look at internal movement in Italy (there's a flood of southerners heading north, with considerable social as well as economic effects), while northern European states are seeking to push asylum seekers from Africa back towards the Mediterranean coast states - mostly Italy - where they landed. Meanwhile in Britain, the prime minister has announced an immigration crackdown. People are being urged to report anyone they think is an illegal immigrant, and families who want to sponsor family members to settle in Britain are being asked to put up hard cash to show they can support them.
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20. Notes & Queries, Guardian Weekly
Long and short of it
There is a sign in Leamington Spa consisting of six nouns in a row: "Warwickshire Learning Disability Partnership Board Office." Has anyone come across still longer examples of the genre?
- Philip Machanick (April 20) observed that the example could be extended by imagining the sign over the door and adding the word "Entrance". But I don't think that single nouns are allowed in Council-Speak, where multiple words can be used, so "entrance" would surely be "access enabling device" and one could imagine the sign to the side of the door "Warwickshire Learning Disability Partnership Board Office Access Enabling Device Public Opening Hours".
Alan Williams-Key, Madrid, Spain
- You are asking the Warwickshire Learning Disability Partnership Board Office Question; I am a Warwickshire Learning Disability Partnership Board Office Email Respondent.
Stewart Dutfield, Catskill, New York, US
- I am a board member of the Eastern Kings Memorial Community Health Centre Council (seven nouns). The administrator of the centre has the title of: Site Manager Eastern Kings Memorial Community Health Centre (eight nouns).
Dian Odin, Coldbrook, Nova Scotia, Canada
Make that a double!
In westerns, cowboys are always slaking their thirst by drinking whisky. What did they really drink?
- Milk.
David Isaacs, Sydney, Australia
Let it begin with me
What is the stupidest idea for which people have been asked to fight and die?
- Everlasting peace.
Jeph Mathias, Jibhi, Himachal Pradesh, India
Any answers?
Has anyone been converted by Jehovah's witnesses on a doorstep?
John Bateson, Coventry, UK |