2. Job opportunity: IPM coordinator for San Francisco parks
3. 2009 is the Year of Science/enroll in a science course
4. San Francisco Nature Education newsletter/new program at Herons Head Park
5. Now we know: Reason for financial meltdown discovered!
6. Remarks on Obama's Agriculture and Interior Secretary appointments
7. Know what it is to leave abundance and safety
8. Nominations to the California Coastal Commission
9. After the burn, uncounted seeds are stirring beneath the ashes
10. Asia appetite or turtles seen as threat to Florida species
11. Save the date for Bay Area Invasive Species workshop: Feb 4
12. Feedback on trout
13. Attract butterflies with rotting fruit
14. Progress on climate talk: That semicolon goes
15. Fear makes us stupid: Will fundamentalist religion derail the founding fathers' brilliant plan?
16. Good reason not to like Mondays
17. Good books from California Native Plant Society
18. Want a rotary-dial telephone?
1.
The machine has divorced man from the world of nature to which he belongs, and in the process he has lost in large measure the powers of contemplation with which he was endowed. A prerequisite for the preservation of the canons of humanism is a reestablishment of organic roots with our natural environment and, related to it, the evolution of ways of life which encourage contemplation and the search for truth and knowledge. The flower and vegetable garden, green grass, the fireplace, the primeval forest with its wondrous assemblage of living things, the uninhabited hilltop where one can silently look at the stars and wonder—all of these things and many others are necessary for the fulfillment of man’s psychological and spiritual needs. To be sure, they are of no “practical value” and are seemingly unrelated to man’s pressing need for food and living space.
But they are as necessary to the preservation of humanism as food is necessary to the preservation of human life.
Harrison Brown
*************************
2. The San Francisco Dept. of Recreation and Parks is hiring a new IPM coordinator - see the attached job description. The job's duties now include management of the Golden Gate Park nursery. PLEASE NOTE THE JAN. 5 DEADLINE!!!
Click for job description: http://www.jobaps.com/sf/sup/BulPreview.asp?R1=PBT&R2=0922&R3=055173
This position is critical for the success of the citywide Integrated Pest Management program. I know there are some excellent candidates for the job on this list - please give the job serious consideration. If you have any questions about the citywide IPM program, I would be happy to discuss.
=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:
Chris A. Geiger, Ph.D.
San Francisco Dept. of the Environment
(415) 355-3759 (voice), (415) 554-6393 (fax)
chris.geiger@sfgov.org
*************************
"Truth springs from argument amongst friends." - David Hume
3. Did you know that 2009 is the Year of Science?
The Year of Science 2009 is a national, year-long celebration of science, designed to engage the public in science and improve public understanding about how science works, why it matters, and who scientists are. For information and nationwide event listings: http://www.yearofscience2009.org/home/
Science helps satisfy the natural curiosity with which we are all born: why is the sky blue, how did the leopard get its spots, what is a solar eclipse? With science, we can answer such questions without resorting to magical explanations. And science can lead to technological advances, as well as helping us learn about enormously important and useful topics, such as our health, the environment, and natural hazards. Without science, the modern world would not be modern at all, and we still have much to learn.
______________
And you can personally connect with the scientific world by enrolling in one of the many Jepson Herbarium public programs on botanical and ecological subjects. Go to http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/workshops for listings and descriptions. Most of the courses are taught at UC Berkeley, and many of them are in the field. I have enjoyed and benefitted from the many workshops I have taken there.
“Truth comes out of error more easily than out of confusion.” Sir Francis Bacon
"The most violent element in society is ignorance." - Emma Goldman
************************
4. SF Nature Education: Click here to see our latest newsletter. Read all about our new program at Heron's Head Park.
*************************
5. Reason for financial meltdown discovered!
It's Pluto. Remember that planet that we demoted to a planetoid? Well, it turns out that little Pluto is a disruptive force and wreaks havoc everywhere. I heard on NPR's Marketplace that the reason for our current economic problems is that Pluto has moved from Sagittarius, which is about expansiveness and growth, to Capricorn. Capricorn, you see, is known for taking a hard look and determining what's real. So why didn't those smart guys on Wall Street figure that one out? If they want to attract investors in the future they'll have to keep an astrologer on staff.
The last time Pluto was in Capricorn was in 1776--the American Revolution. Who would have thought that a tiny piece of rock and ice floating way out there in space would have that much influence on the lives of creatures on a tiny piece of rock billions of miles away? Or why it would even care?
Look, Pluto, we're sorry about demoting you. Honest. We'll take that up with whoever it is that decides these things and ask them to put you back as a planet. How were we to know you were going to mess things up so? I mean, we were a lot more afraid of those big bruisers Saturn and Jupiter, and they're a lot closer than you are. And was it really 1776 the last time you were in Capricorn? Heck, we visit Cap every year. Man, you are far out!
*****************************
6. Two Obama Cabinet nominees: Agriculture and Interior
(I am pleased with most of Obama's Cabinet choices, with only two exceptions:)
From NPR
Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and a leader in the sustainable food movement, said Obama will not make progress on climate change or energy
independence — or health care, for that matter — unless America's food system is included in the plan.
"The food system is responsible for about a third of greenhouse gases," Pollan told NPR's Renee Montagne. "It is responsible for the catastrophic
American diet that is leading 50 percent of us to suffer from chronic disease, and that drives up health care costs."
A secretary for food, Pollan said, could put the focus on diversifying America's farms and using local food sources around the nation.
But those topics weren't in the spotlight when Obama chose Vilsack to be agriculture secretary, said Pollan, who also wrote The Omnivore's Dilemma
and The Botany of Desire.
"I was very disappointed in that news conference," he said, "not to hear Vilsack use the word 'food' — or 'eaters.' And the interests of everybody except eaters was discussed: farmers, ranchers, people concerned about the land." And so, he said, it's difficult not to see Vilsack's selection as "agribusiness as usual."
In the months before Vilsack was named to the post, Pollan wrote an article urging the president-elect to rename the Department of Agriculture as the Department of Food, led by a secretary of food. That did not happen Wednesday.
____________________
Obama nominates Ken Salazar as Secretary of the Interior
(JS: Interior administers a half-billion acres, one-fifth of the United States)
As the overseer of the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Mineral Management Services, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Endangered Species Act, the Secretary of the Interior is most important position in the protection of America's lands, waters, and endangered species.
The Department of the Interior has been rocked by scandals during the Bush Administration, most revolving around corrupt bureaucrats overturning and squelching agency scientists as they attempted to protect endangered species and natural resources from exploitation by developers, loggers, and oil and gas development. Just yesterday, the Interior Department Inspector General issued another in a string of reports finding that top Department officials systematically violated laws and regulations in order to avoid or eliminate environmental protections.
"The Department of the Interior desperately needs a strong, forward looking, reform-minded Secretary," said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. "Unfortunately, Ken Salazar is not that man. He endorsed George Bush's selection of Gale Norton as Secretary of Interior, the very woman who initiated and encouraged the scandals that have rocked the Department of Interior. Virtually all of the misdeeds described in yesterday's Inspector General expose occurred during the tenure of the person Ken Salazar advocated for the position he is now seeking."
While Salazar has promoted some good environmental actions and fought against off-road vehicle abuse, his overall record is decidedly mixed, and is especially weak in the arenas most important to the next Secretary of the Interior: protecting scientific integrity, combating global warming, reforming energy development and protecting endangered species.
Salazar:
- voted against increased fuel efficiency standards for the U.S. automobile fleet
- voted to end protection for offshore oil drilling off of Florida’s coast
- voted to allow the Army Corps of Engineers to ignore global warming impacts in their water development projects
- voted against the repeal of tax breaks for Exxon-Mobil
- voted to support subsidies to ranchers and other users of public forest and range lands
- Threatened to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service when its scientists determined the black-tailed prairie dog may be endangered
- Fought efforts to increase protection for endangered species and the environment in the Farm Bill
****************************
7.
"To write honestly and with conviction anything about the migration of birds, one should oneself have migrated. Somehow or other we should dehumanize ourselves, feel the feel of feathers on our body and wind in our wings, and finally know what it is to leave abundance and safety and daylight and yield to a compelling instinct, age-old, seeming at the time quite devoid of reason and object."
William Beebe, American naturalist
***************************
8. The California Senate Rules Committee has sent a letter to the Boards of Supervisors (and I presume, the mayors) of Marin, Sonoma, and San Francisco Counties asking for nominations to the Coastal Commission.
If you are a city council member or supervisor, it is now very timely to ask your county's mayors and board of Supervisors to nominate you to serve on the Commission. This is a somewhat urgent matter, and should be done no later than early January.
If you are a coastal activist working on this project, please contact the city council members or supervisors you support, and be sure they act soon to be nominated by the mayors and/or supervisors.
**************************
9.
San Bruno Mountain Watch
From Year End Newsletter 2008
Aftermath
The mountain burned black
in mourning around the stony offspring
of a planet's fiery skull --
But, do not worry in the dinge,
for, charred roots now sprout
in secret midnight moisturing fogs,
uncounted seeds are stirring beneath these ashes,
tender in the crumbled crust.
And still the creekbeds waver
in a silent heat
with cicadas and beetle,
frogs, slugs and snakes,
hidden hearts still beating
toward the seeping of springs.
And deeper in the dead scrub, a tiny river
bubbling down the loam's silence
between still burning waxmyrtle roots,
pulsing under fire rotting wood,
coursing new little worts, mosses and lichens.
Febrilating canyons beat
in league with the flickering flame of stars
and back into all beginnings--
Spreading all voiceless shadows
up the ridges and down
into the night's renewal.
Across all the perched crags of death,
humble bearers of the dirt's birth.
--David Schooley, 8/08
**************************
10. Asia appetite for turtles seen as a threat to Florida species
The reptiles, especially softshell turtles, are prized in China as food and as a source for traditional medicines. U.S. experts fear the trade could lead to extinctions.
By Kim Christensen, December 27 2008
The turtle tank at Nam Hoa Fish Market is empty, but not to worry: The manager of this bustling Chinatown store says he has plenty in back.
The complete article can be viewed at: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-turtle27-2008dec27,0,7386179.story
**************************
11.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7410542.stm
The global cost of tackling invasive species costs $1.4 trillion (£700bn) each year, the report estimates.
_______________________
SAVE THE DATE for the Bay Area Invasive Species Workshop: Wednesday, 4 February 2009
Scottish Rite Center, 1547 Lakeside Dr., Oakland
Registration information to follow in early January. Cost: $30 each.
Hosted by the California Invasive Plant Council and the Bay Area Open Space Council.
****************************
12. Feedback
Robert Hall:
Thanks for shedding light on the trout situation. I read Stienstra's article in the SF Chron and smelled a rat. It's too bad the thousands of other people who read his column won't have access to this perspective.
Posting again:
Read the Center for Biological Diversity statement on interim restrictions on stocking trout to protect native fish and amphibians in California waters:
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/fish-stocking_reform/pdfs/PRC+CBD_statement_on_fish-stocking_agreement.pdf
Find out more about the Center's Fish Stocking Reform Campaign: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/fish-stocking_reform/index.html
See what the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance says about the restrictions on trout stocking: http://www.calsport.org/12-3-08a.htm
Read CalTrout’s statement on the interim restrictions: http://www.caltrout.org/article.asp?id=379&bc=1
*******************************
13. From Jeff Caldwell:
I don't usually advocate 'artificially feeding' wildlife, but this idea seems harmless enough. I'd like to share some snippets from articles I found in the Austin Butterfly Forum's archived newsletters: http://www.austinbutterflies.org/
The articles are about attracting butterflies with rotting fruit. Which, I suppose, sounds kind of weird. But they suggest an elegant way to do it, and interesting things do come to the fruit.
(JS: But some less interesting things, like rats, also. So be careful how you provide the fruit; hang it if you can.)
****************************
14. Progress on climate change talks
…to judge by the latest, tortuous moves in climate-change diplomacy—at a two-week gathering in Poland, which ended on December 13th—there is little sign of any mind-concentrating effect.
To be fair to the 10,000-odd people (diplomats, UN bureaucrats, NGO types) who assembled in Poznan, a semicolon was removed. At a similar meeting a year earlier, governments had vowed to consider ways of cutting emissions from “deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries; and the role of conservation [and forest management]”. After much haggling, delegates in Poland decided to upgrade conservation by replacing the offending punctuation mark with a comma.
Excerpt from The Economist 20 Dec 08
************************************
15.
(A few lines from article by George Monbiot in Guardian Weekly 07.11.08:)
How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind's closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? ...The founding fathers were great thinkers. How did their project degenerate into George Bush and Sarah Palin? ...Susan Jacoby's book The Age of American Unreason shows that the degradation of US politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies...One theme is both familiar and clear: religion--in particular fundamentalist religion--makes you stupid. The US is the only rich country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing.
Fear makes us stupid
LTE, Guardian Weekly
I have just reread George Monbiot's article on the role of religion, particularly fundamentalist religion, on US politics. Many of us find it frightening that people like George Bush, Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin have positions of any responsibility at all. How could a country founded on the principles of the Enlightenment end up with such poor examples as public figures? It would seem that their religion was at fault, but there are a lot of highly educated believers whose faith encourages questioning.
In the early history of the United States the churches in small, isolated communities served as the social locus of settlers' lives as well as a source of spiritual support. Either you belonged or you didn't. This situation has not fundamentally changed. The world outside has changed drastically, however.
In the past generation a technological revolution has intruded on the insularity of people's lives. Children whose sole frame of reference used to be that of their parents and their church are now exposed to the same nefarious influences to which the children of the point-heads and the drug dealers and everybody else "out there" is exposed. It has become necessary to separate the Us from the Them to preserve the life one values. And so, during the past 30 years the framing of public discourse has polarized the country--conservative/liberal; pro-life/pro-choice; Joe Sixpack/the elitists; straight/gay; beer/chardonnay--to the point that rational debate is almost impossible.
We have always had fundamentalist churches in this country, but never before has their voice been so strident. There have always been fundamentalists in the Middle East, too, but never have they been so threatening. Time of social upheaval produce fear, and fear makes people try as best they can to hang on to what has always been important to them, and lash out at the threat.
As Monbiot's article points out, Darwin's theory upset the previous order and caused an upsurge of religiosity., The invention of the printing press led to the Reformation and the awful violence that swept Europe during the religious wars.
Things will settle down after a while as they usually do, and then, perhaps, we can start to work together to repair the structural underpinnings, like our education system and healthcare, that we have so long neglected.
Deborah Sigg, El Cerrito, California, US
**************************
16. Good reason not to like Mondays
The time-honored phenomenon of Sod’s Law, which dictates that a slice of toast when dropped always falls butter side down, is statistically likely to strike most on Mondays. That is according to a pointless but fun analysis of 2,226 sufferers by an insurance company’s presumably under-worked employees. Their survey found that all the little irritations of life—power cuts, empty cash dispensers, minor cuts, and so on—were overwhelmingly likely to happen on Mondays.
The survey failed to take account of Murphy’s Law, an extension of Sod’s Law, stating that the slice of toast will indeed fall butter side down, save when dropped for the purpose of proving this truth.
Guardian Weekly
**************************
17. Available from California Native Plant Society - cnps.org/store.php, or 916-447-2677
Nature's Beloved Son: Rediscovering John Muir's Botanical Legacy, by Bonnie Gisel; images by Stephen J Joseph - from Heyday Books
The California Deserts, by Bruce Pavlik
The California Deserts explores the remarkable diversity of life in this harsh yet fragile quarter of the Golden State
California's Fading Wildflowers, by Richard Minnich
This book offers the most comprehensive historical analysis available of the dramatic transformation of California's wildflower prairies.
Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification, by Thomas J. Elpel
Botany in a Day provides simple, easily learned tools to assist in plant identification. Line drawings highlight family characteristics, and plant entries discuss medicinal uses, edibility, toxicity, and look-alike plants.
Botany for Gardeners, by Brian Capon
An essential overview of the science behind plants for beginning and advanced gardeners alike.
Calochortus, by Mary E. Gerritsen and Ron Parson
With their graceful stance, brilliant colors, and intricate markings, members of the North American genus Calochortus are among the most dazzling bulbous plants in the world.
*********************************
18. I have reluctantly replaced my old rotary dial telephone. I was loathe to part with it because it was made to last by Ma Bell, when she owned all telephones and had to repair them. Now that it is the customer's responsibility, they're purposely built to break down after awhile. But I finally gave up the fight to keep it.
If anyone is interested in acquiring it, let me know.
Jake Sigg 415-731-3028
No comments:
Post a Comment