SF Nature News Jake Sigg
Evelyn Waugh said, "The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish."
1. California Wilderness Coalition hiring for new position
2. Change of date for San Pedro Valley County Park field trip/restoration - will now be this Saturday, the 18th
3. Join petition drive for the Mother of All Waterfront Height Limit votes in June
4. Permanent closure on one block on Irving Street? Community meeting Thursday Jan 16
5. Environmental Education Sessions with Kids in Parks
6. Gardening class at Piedmont Adult School
7. Grass, Soil, Hope: How Organic Farming, Carbon Ranching, and Land Restoration Reverse Climate Change
8. San Bruno Mountain wetlands stewardship program, starts Jan 18
9. What's Happening with the FEMA Grant to Remove the Eucalyptus Trees from Claremont Canyon
10. Letter to SF Supervisors re AT&T utility boxes
11. Wendell Berry tells of a place you can go where you are quiet
12. Occupy the Sierra Club! How to become engaged in the world
13. Crissy Field Refresh Drop-in Workshop
14. Possibilities, by Wislawa Szymborska
15. New York Sun editorializes about a Centennial Monetary Commission. Good luck
16. Notes & Queries
17. Jumping spider
1. The California Wilderness Coalition is hiring for a new position dedicated to protecting wild places in the California desert from development and other threats. See full job description and details at our website: http://www.calwild.org/jobs
Deadline to apply is January 31, 2014.
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2.
A combination field trip/work party was scheduled and announced for San Pedro Valley County Park on January 25. However, circumstances forced that date to be changed to this Saturday, January 18, from 9 am to noon. Meet at the park's visitors center. We will be clearing brush from wildflower meadows. I will be leading. JS
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3.
No Wall on the Waterfront
Jake,
The Petition Drive to qualify the Waterfront Height Limit Right To Vote Act for the ballot is now well underway!
This past Saturday more than 50 people gathered together to kick-off the petition drive to qualify a measure for the June ballot that would require San Francisco voters to review and approve any plans to increase waterfront height limits for luxury towers or high-rises along the historic waterfront. Watch this good NBC-TV story about the petition drive by clicking here.
Voters are responding enthusiastically to the petition -- in just a few days we have already collected several thousand signatures. But time is short and we need your help now to be able to collect the 17,000 signatures we need to submit by February 3rd in order to place the Waterfront Height Limit Right to Vote Act on the June ballot.
Here are three things you can do to help us get the Waterfront Height Limit Right to Vote Act on the ballot:
1) VISIT the No Wall on the Waterfront office at 15 Columbus Avenue in North Beach and pick up some petitions to sign and circulate among your friends and neighbors. Office hours are Monday to Friday 10-6, Saturday & Sunday 12-4. The phone # is (415) 410-9588. Call or just come by!
2) SEND a contribution to support the petition drive and help pay for printing petitions, signs, and other things we need to get this on the ballot. Please mail your donation of any amount to No Wall on the Waterfront, P.O. Box 330476, San Francisco, CA 94133. Please include the name of your employer and your occupation with your donation. There are no contribution limits for this campaign.
3) JOIN us this Saturday, January 18th at 12:00 Noon at 15 Columbus Avenue for a Campaign Mobilization event to learn more about the petition drive and what we need to do to win!
www.NoWallOnTheWaterfront.com
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4.
* Irving Commons Community Meeting*
*THIS Thursday*
January 16th, 6:30-8:30pm (doors open 6pm)
St John of God Hall, *1290* 5th Ave at Irving
Light refreshments and snacks provided
Event details <http://www.irvingcommons.org/event/commons-public-meeting/>
This is an invitation you to attend this Thursday at St John of God Hall during the first community meeting about the Irving Commons <http://www.irvingcommons.org/> project.
At the meeting, you'll get the chance to find out more about this idea and to help identify what areas need to be studied so the community can make an informed choice about the Commons idea.
*If you can't make the meeting, we still want to hear from you. Share* what you think about the Irving Commons concept.Complete this short survey <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1HIv802ZAo8MRIlbf1Nh2kiwJwRMrnY23U9yWiK1LWGo/viewform><https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1HIv802ZAo8MRIlbf1Nh2kiwJwRMrnY23U9yWiK1LWGo/viewform>or visit the Irving Commons website <http://goldengateheights.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d811c28448dad109f96206fcb&id=da027cb96b&e=c31c0f7ae9>.
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5.
Environmental Education Sessions with Kids in Parks (KIP)
San Francisco Park Alliance's park partner Kids in Parks (KIP) is the only Bay Area organization offering regular environmental education sessions to underserved students year round. KIP just recently kicked off an exciting project called Pacific Chorus Frog Education and Restoration. In partnership with Visitacion Valley and Herbert Hoover Middle School students, KIP will revitalize nearly 10,000 square feet of school grounds, transforming them into thriving habitats for this special frog species. The Pacific Chorus Frog was once found throughout San Francisco but is now limited to one naturally occurring population. While building new frog ponds and restoring native plants, KIP educates disadvantaged students on the science behind how this species thrives and ways to cultivate the ecological conditions in which it lives. Learn more about how you can get involved here.
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6. Gardening class
Want to grow vegetables, see more hummingbirds, and enjoy your garden more with less work?
Attract butterflies, bumble bees, song birds, hummingbirds, and other beneficial critters to your garden.
Learn healthy garden management, grow edible plants, learn how they can help you sustain an environmentally friendly, water saving, easy care garden.
Beginners, black thumbs, seasoned gardeners all welcome. Get thrilled to spend time in your garden. Have fun with beautiful slide shows and hands on
Field Trip. http://thegardenisateacher.com/
Class is 4 wednesdays, 7pm - 8:30pm starting Feb. 5, and 1 saturday, March 1st, 8:45 am -10:30 am
Piedmont Adult School
http://register.asapconnected.com/Courses.aspx?CourseGroupID=9155
(510) 594-2716 ex5105942
piedmontadultschool@piedmont.k12.ca.us
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7.
https://www.globalonenessproject.org/library/articles/rivers-and-stories
Grass, Soil, Hope: How Organic Farming, Carbon Ranching, and Land Restoration Reverse Climate Change
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_29008.cfm
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8. San Bruno Mountain Watch
We are starting up the Cypress Lane wetlands program again in Brisbane on Saturday, January 18th, from 2:00 to 4:00 pm. Please view this informative video: http://www.mountainwatch.org/about-cypress-lane/
We are planning to work at Cypress Wetlands twice a month for now, the 1st and 3rd Saturdays each month, from 2:00 to 4:00 pm. The first meeting will be on Saturday, January 18th, at the end of Cypress Lane in Brisbane.
The goals of our wetlands stewardship program are:
•Protection and enhancement of important local wetland natural resources, including Pacific Chorus Frog habitat;
•Community volunteer stewardship and management;
•Public education for interested people of all ages;
•Partnership with the City of Brisbane, and businesses in the industrial park.
Please call Ken McIntire, 415-467-6631 with any questions and to volunteer, or email kmcintire@mountainwatch.org
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9.
What's Happening with the FEMA Grant to Remove the Eucalyptus Trees from Claremont Canyon
As you will recall, removal of the eucalyptus trees from the north side of Claremont Avenue in the upper canyon awaits approval of funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA has determined that these trees pose a fire hazard but FEMA's grant to the land owners, including the University of California in Claremont Canyon, which would fund the removal of these fire-prone trees depends on certification of an Environmental Impact Statement.
The Statement or EIS was issued in draft form last Spring and a public comment period which included three public hearings concluded last June. Since then FEMA has been reviewing the public comments received, working with the three grant applicants including the University and drafting the final Environmental Impact Statement or EIS. The Conservancy submitted a comprehensive written statement and members of our organization testified at the hearings. We now expect that the final EIS is at least two months away from completion.
In the meantime the Claremont Canyon Conservancy has been carefully monitoring the process and taking every opportunity to highlight the importance of removing the eucalyptus fire hazard. One of the things we have done is to prepare and distribute a set of questions and answers about the issue. You can review it on our website at http://claremontcanyon.org/press_questions_and_answers.php.
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10.
Letter to San Francisco Board of Supervisors re AT&T utility boxes
Thank you for the meeting abut the AT&T upgrades. I am unable to attend but wanted to send my opinion since I recently voiced my opposition to the utility box near 17th & Alabama in the Mission.
I have lived in this neighborhood since 2001 and have seen more than one boom and bust but what has been constant is the shrinkage of public space. There is a huge disparity wealth and poverty, and ever increasing regulations against the public in public spaces - homeless encampments, overnight parking, "clean-up" of 16th street, camping, etc.
I can't say I oppose the graffiti on the boxes. The military look of these boxes with some spray paint actually works well aesthetically for me. It's one of the few free expressions left. I do oppose mitigation measures for the boxes like planting trees or having artists paint on them, as they do in Palo Alto. One cannot make up for lost public space. With so little of it left, keep it open!
I am attaching a photo I recently took that shows another angle of how the space around these boxes is being used. The parking on this street has recently been changed to accommodate bike lanes. 17th street is a busy road through Mission. What is not necessarily clear is at this point 17th becomes steep. Cars go really fast through the stop signs and bikes really slow down making a merge difficult and frustrating for both sides. The service vehicle is in the bike lane blocking it. Not sure the cones really serve any purpose here. This is not an isolated incident, nor will regulations on servicing help. What will help is keeping private companies off our public streets.
Thank you!
Inga
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11.
Sabbaths 1998, VII
(For John Haines)
There is a place you can go
where you are quiet,
a place of water and the light
on the water. Trees are there,
leaves, and the light
on leaves moved by air.
Birds, singing, move
among leaves, in leaf shadow.
After many years you have come
to no thought of these,
but they are themselves
your thoughts. There seems to be
little to say, less and less.
Here they are. Here you are.
Here as though gone.
None of us stays, but in the hush
where each leaf in the speech
of leaves is a sufficient syllable
the passing light finds out
surpassing freedom of its way.
~ Wendell Berry ~
(Given)
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12.
(I post this editorial from the Sierra Club's executive director because it illustrates a process of great outcomes from small, unexpected beginnings.)
CREATE | New Possibilities
Occupy the Sierra Club!
By Michael Brune
ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT the future? Do you feel like our politicians and institutions are failing to respond to the world's urgent problems?
Here's some good news: You don't have to wait for them. You can have at your command one of the largest, most powerful social-change engines in the world: the Sierra Club. But to put it to work, you need to make it your own. You need to occupy the Sierra Club.
Amy Meyer occupied the Club and used it to create a national park.
In 1970, Meyer, a San Francisco mom, went to a meeting of her local Sierra Club chapter. She didn't know a single person there. One of many items to be discussed that night was a plan by the U.S. General Services Administration to build a gigantic archives building on the magnificent, federally owned headlands overlooking San Francisco's Golden Gate. Meyer had already heard about the plan at a neighborhood meeting. None of her neighbors liked the idea, but no one seemed to know what could be done.
As the Club meeting was ending, someone said, almost as an afterthought, "What about the archive building?" At first, there was silence. Then Meyer heard herself say, "I'll look into it."
Meyer's only prior experience in activism had been stuffing envelopes for political candidates, but the chapter was happy to help her get started. Within days she learned that the coastal site in question was also part of a proposal for a new park, and soon found herself at the center of the drive to create what became the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Now 80, Meyer is still raising hell to defend the park from development threats.
We were grassroots before the word was coined—it's in our DNA.
Meyer's story is exceptional but far from unique. Throughout the history of the Sierra Club, successive generations of young activists have occupied it, reinvented it, and used it to do great things. Kim Richards in New Hampshire got the Club to convince the EPA to investigate pollution from nearby coal plants, while Kathy Lacey in New Jersey used it to save locally endangered terrapin. In Puerto Rico, after hearing about a proposal for an incinerator that would burn thousands of tons of trash per day in her town, Jessica Seiglie Quinones took a 14-week Sierra Club grassroots-organizing course and started what is now an island-wide zero-waste campaign.
Meyer, Richards, Lacey, and Quinones understood that the Club isn't just another nonprofit. It's an engine of change. And it's at your disposal.
There are a thousand ways for you to engage it. You can attend public hearings, cleanups, or rallies. You can take a bunch of kids on their very first hike. You can fight for clean energy in your hometown. If you want more parks and wilderness, find some like-minded folks and put yourselves in charge.
I challenge you to go even further, though. This is a bottom-up organization. We were grassroots before the word was coined—it's in our DNA. But like any organism, the Club needs to keep evolving and adapting. Do you want to see new tactics, new faces, new languages, new goals? You can make it happen.
So whether you're a student or a grandparent, a fifth-generation native or a newcomer to this country, this is your Club. It's the largest democratically run grassroots environmental organization on the planet. Become a member, and you have a say in electing our board of directors. Become an activist, and use the Sierra Club brand to fight for clean energy and a healthy democracy and to protect the land and wildlife in your backyard. Volunteer, run for a Club office, or just go on an outing to explore our wild America. Come occupy the Sierra Club—and make it your own.
Sierra, Jan-Feb 2014
(JS: Amy Meyer's odyssey started casually, accidentally, just as stated here. She went on to become one of the most effective conservationists around, and it started as described with that little phrase "I'll look into it". Her self-discovery has been repeated by thousands of others. Do yourself a favor and buy her book New Guardians of the Golden Gate, which relates the wonderful story resulting from that "I'll look into it". She, a modest housewife, and Edgar Wayburn were essentially the people who made the Golden Gate National Recreation Area happen. Does that tell you something? Read the book.)
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13.
Crissy Field Refresh Drop-in Workshop
Thirteen years after the restoration, the National Park Service, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, and the Presidio Trust are taking a fresh look at Crissy Field. By reassessing visitor use, reviewing cultural and natural resource goals, and taking stock of maintenance needs, we hope to "refresh" this popular park site.
On Thursday, January 16, 2014, we are inviting the public to participate by sharing their thoughts and ideas in a drop-in workshop held at the Crissy Field Center (East Beach) from 5:30-7:30 p.m.
RSVP is not required, but it is appreciated. Contact Camey Yeh at cyeh@parksconservancy.org by January 10, 2014.
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14.
Possibilities
I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the river.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love's concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms' fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here
to many things I've also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.
~ Wislawa Szymborska ~
(Nothing Twice, trans. by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh)
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15.
On Jan 12, 2014, at 7:07 PM, David Wiesner wrote:
http://www.nysun.com/editorials/the-senate-awakes/88543/
The decision of Senator Cornyn to get behind the idea of a Centennial Monetary Commission should put a bit of a spring in the step of the heroic band on the Hill that is nursing the idea of monetary reform.
It seems that the entire liberal establishment is determined to get through this current crisis without seriously exploring the idea of whether monetary policy — and even monetary structure — might be one of the culprits behind the fact that the Great Recession has consumed the first three quarters of the very presidency in which they’d invested so much of their hopes. What is at the bottom of this blitheness? Is it the vested interest in inflation in a nation whose government owes so much money? Is it the heat that the Fed has taken away from a Congress to which the Constitution grants the enumerated power of coining money and regulating its value?
David: I expect this will go nowhere. Why? Because, regardless of the soundness of such a move (and I have questions about that), the poisonous political atmosphere will prevent its being seriously considered. In order for it to be considered, there would need to be a dispassionate discussion and analysis of the consequences for such a move.
It won’t get it.
(I made comments to the NY Sun at http://www.nysun.com/comments/88242)
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16. Notes & Queries, Guardian Weekly
Only in a manner of speaking
Why call a residence with stairs a "flat"?
Whatever did you think "apart" meant?
Stewart Dutfield, Delmar, New York, US
• Frequently houses in multiple occupation were let or leased to tenants floor by floor (level by level) to afford greater privacy.
Bernard Burgess, Tenterden, UK
• Because you are "flat out" tired when you get to the top of the residence.
Vipen Sawhney, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
• Because once you're up it is.
Jacques Samuel, Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada
• The Concise Oxford defines a duplex in British English as "a flat on two floors".
Nicholas Albrecht, Paris, France
Wishful thinking indeed
What is so special about a kiss under the mistletoe?
The mistletoe has a symbiotic relationship with the tree, spewing its seeds, from which it shoots invasive roots into the tree. Wishful thinking of compatibility it must be.
Henk Buzink, Rock, UK
• It's a custom-sanctioned opportunity for opportunities that are customarily sanctioned.
Anthony Walter, Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
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Heerzlookinatcha
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