1. Job opportunity in invasive weeds
2. Important Restore Sharp Park hearing Thurs 30 April 1 pm
3. California Wildflower Show at Oakland Museum May 1, 2, 3
4. CNPS field trip May 2/Program May 7 - CA Academy of Sciences' Living Roof
5. Words on the environmental crisis from Denise D'Anne
6. Two great people at SF MOMA in May: Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams
7. Green Hairstreak Corridor's last field trip May 9
8. Birding and plant tour of Glen Canyon Saturday 2 May
9. 5th Annual Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour Sunday 3 May/Native Plant Sale May 2 & 3
10. Feedback: SF Botanical Garden fee/Sharp Park Golf Course
11. An evening with Tuolumne River Trust and Sean Elsbernd April 30
12. CNPS member discount days at Middlebrook Gardens May 2 & 16
13. Budding threat to global food supply: wheat stem rust
14. Assault on false ideals of progress: Gray's Anatomy
15. Obituary: Maurice Jarre, film composer
16. Words of wisdom from Marion Berry, former mayor of Washington DC
1. The Bay Area Early Detection Network is seeking an early detection Coordinator. For the right candidate, the position is a rare opportunity to revolutionize invasive plant management in the Bay Area --and beyond!
ABOUT THE BAY AREA EARLY DETECTION NETWORK:
The Bay Area Early Detection Network (BAEDN) is a collaborative partnership of regional land managers and invasive species experts which serves the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. The BAEDN coordinates Early Detection and Rapid Response to infestations of invasive plants, proactively dealing with new outbreaks before they can grow into large and costly environmental threats. This “stitch-in-time” approach prevents the environmental and economic damage caused by these invaders; educates citizens regarding natural resource stewardship; and reduces the need for the planning and resources required to control large, established invasive plant populations.
POSITION DESCRIPTION:
The Coordinator will lead development and implementation of the Bay Area Early Detection Network (BAEDN), with input and direction from the BAEDN Steering Committee.
The position is largely office-based, with some site visits and outdoor trainings expected. Office work may involve extended periods of sitting and using a computer, mouse, and telephone. Work location is flexible, and travel throughout the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area region is expected and will be reimbursed. The Coordinator will be hired on a contract basis at billing rate $23-$30/hour, depending on experience. Alternative work schedules will be considered.
This is very condensed. For more information, email gluesenkamp@egret.org
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2. Restore Sharp Park - SF Board of Supervisors hearing Thursday the 30th, 1 pm
At the hearing, San Francisco's Board of Supervisors Government Audit and Oversight Committee will consider a City ordinance to restore Sharp Park for expanded recreational uses instead of only for golf. It should also be managed for the federally-listed endangered species: San Francisco garter snake and California red-legged frog. It further provides for the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department either to manage Sharp Park jointly with the GGNRA or to transfer ownership to them outright.
San Francisco City Hall Room 263
Thursday 30 April, 1 pm
The off-leash dog advocates and golfers will be out in force, and could conceivably kill this legislation. If you want to get into the room you must be there early.
Two websites for more information:
http://www.restoresharppark.org/
The San Francisco Preservation Society's news page: http://www.sfpsociety.org/news.html
features an adapted version of the SF Chronicle story from April 8th on the Sharp Park debate.
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3.
California Wildflower Show 2009
Oakland Museum of California
1000 Oak@ 10th St
One block from Lake Merritt BART
Preview: May 1, 5–9 p.m.
Saturday May 2, 10–5
Sunday May 3, 12–5
Included with museum admission. Hear from the experts and savor the colors and fragrance of hundreds of freshly collected native flowers.
Saturday, May 2, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
11 a.m. Dr. Richard Beidleman: "In the Shadow of Darwin"
12:30 p.m. Dr. Linda Vorobik: "Sierra Nevada: A Celebration of Wildflowers"
2 p.m. Dr. Frank Almeda: "Sustainability and the Living Roof of the California Academy of Sciences"
3:30 p.m. Glen Schneider discusses native plants for the garden
Sunday, May 3, 12-5p.m.
1 p.m. Bob Case: "Invasive Plants: A Serious Threat to California Wildflowers"
3 p.m. John Farais talks about cooking with native plants
Presented in collaboration with the California Native Plant Society, the Jepson Herbarium, the University of California Botanical Garden, and Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour.
SHOP the Museum Store for all your Wildflower guides!
PHOTOGRAPHERS – California Wildflowers Show is for you! Plenty of flowers to photograph – No flash – Visit the museum on Flickr -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oaklandmuseumofcalifornia/
Exhibition on view:
The Future of Sequoias: Sustaining Parklands in the 21st Century
http://www.museumca.org/exhibit/exhi_sequoia.html
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4.
California Native Plant Society field trip
Baker Beach Bluffs
Saturday 2 May, 10 am
Leader Michael Chasse
Once dubbed the "Great Sand Waste," the dunes of San Francisco are now mostly covered by roads, buildings, and weedy back yards. Some of the best examples of coastal foredune and dune scrub habitat remain along the western shore of the Presidio at Baker Beach. Years of persistence in the removal of European dune grass and iceplant have renewed the diversity of these communities, including the return of extirpated species such as beach morning glory, Calystegia soldanella. Come explore these remnant and restored dune habitats with Michael Chasse of the National Park Service. Meet at the south Baker Beach parking lot at 10 am. Call Michael at 561-2857 for directions and to RSVP.
California Native Plant Society program - free and open to the public
California Academy of Sciences Living Roof
Speaker: Dr Frank Almeda
Thursday 7 May, 7.30 pm
San Francisco County Fair Bldg
Dr Almeda's presentation will cover the planning and implementation of the new Living Roof at the California Academy of Sciences. He will discuss the challenges of assembling it; its many environmental benefits; its performance; and the ways in which it is being used not only as a sustainability feature but as a public exhibit, outdoor classroom, and as a setting to conduct research on a dynamic living landscape and its interaction with local biodiversity in Golden Gate Park.
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5. BEYOND CHRON, April 21, 2009
Dear Editor:
On April 22 we will be celebrating, the 39th anniversary of the beginning of Earth Day. It began because of people’s concern with population growth and the first conscious glimmer of global warming. Earth Day was supposed to make us more aware of the need to have a sustainable environment. Recycling became de rigueur. And guess what, corporations started to take advantage, especially those producing various packaging material. No reason to complain about excess packaging because it can be recycled. We now have more things swaddled in plastic and other unnamable material than ever before. But, it can be recycled.
We could be celebrating unEarth Day. We are at the point of no return as far as the environment goes. The planet is on life support, but remember we can recycle our way out of this tragedy. At last, we can also compost. This is done with thousands of truck trips picking up our compostable material. And the trucks will run on bio-fuels. To get this fuel, just un-forest the forests and plant food crops, not to eat but to feed the beast - our pets - the automobile.
Oops, forgot to mention electric cars. Everyone in world can have one, if only we could knock down all the structures standing in the way of getting these cars around.
HAPPY EARTH DAY EVERYBODY!
Denise D'Anne
San Francisco
The Story of Stuff: http://www.storyofstuff.com/
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6. SF MOMA May 2009
Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams met in 1929 while in Taos, New Mexico, and began a lifelong friendship based on a profound shared appreciation for the natural world. This new exhibition brings together some of their most important works, revealing numerous parallels between their distinctive visions of nature.
“With a resolute whisper, Lobos Creek flowed past our home on its mile-long journey to the ocean. It was bordered, at times covered, with watercress and alive with minnows, tadpoles, and a variety of larvae. Water bugs skimmed the open surfaces and dragonflies darted above the streambed. In spring, flowers were rampant and fragrant. In heavy fog the creek was eerie, rippling out of nowhere and vanishing into nothingness.”
From Ansel Adams’ 1985 autobiography. Adams grew up near Lobos Creek in the early 1900s
“Both the grand and the intimate aspects of nature can be revealed in the expressive photograph.” Ansel Adams
“Nobody sees a flower, really. It is so small it takes time—we haven’t time—and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”
Georgia O’Keeffe
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7.
Nature-in-the-City's Green Hairstreak Corridor has gained much attention of late--eg, an outstanding article by Josiah Clark in the current Bay Nature magazine. Two walks this spring have led to many more people seeing these amazing creatures. Quickly sign up for the last walk of the season: Saturday, May 9th. at steward@natureinthecity.org Meet at the corner of 14th & Rivera. A $10 donation will be asked for at the end of the walk to go towards the project. Two hours (11 am-1 pm) strolling a beautiful part of the city few people realize is there.
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8.
Miraloma Park Improvement Club Presents a Grand Bird and Plant Tour of Glen Park Canyon
Friends and neighbors, you have a treat in store. Allan Ridley and his wife Helen McKenna-Ridley will be giving a 2-hour walking tour of Glen Park Canyon on Saturday, May 2, followed by a chat about what we’ve seen (and not seen) at the Miraloma Park Clubhouse. Allan may be familiar to some of you who have gone on his wonderful birding tours of Mt. Davidson in past years.
Allan Ridley, MS, taught biology and ornithology at the Urban School of San Francisco. Helen McKenna-Ridley, MS, taught biology and environmental science at George Washington High School and became principal of Raoul Wallenberg High School. Helen is an experienced docent at the San Francisco Botanical Garden (SFBG) in Golden Gate Park. Together they have traveled widely and have led birding and natural history trips to Costa Rica, Ecuador, New Zealand, and Australia. On the first Sunday of each month at 8:00 AM, they lead a bird walk through the SFBG.
Event: Birding and plant tour of Glen Park Canyon with Allan Ridley and Helen McKenna-Ridley
Date: Saturday, May 2
Time: 9 AM for the walking tour, 11:15 AM for gathering at the Clubhouse
Place: For the walking tour, meet behind the Recreation building in Glen Park (enter from Elk St. behind tennis courts). For the gathering after, Miraloma Park Clubhouse, 350 O’Shaughnessy Boulevard at Del Vale (enter the parking lot from Del Vale). See miralomapark.org for more information and directions.
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9.
Fifth Annual Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Companion Event: Native Plant Sale Extravaganza Saturday and Sunday, May 2 and 3, 2009
Digital photographs available at www.BringingBackTheNatives.net
This free, award-winning tour features 50 pesticide-free gardens that conserve water, provide habitat for wildlife, and contain 50% or more native plants. This self-drive tour showcases a variety of Alameda and Contra Costa county gardens, from large parcels in the hills, to small lots in the flats. Space is limited and registration is required; register early to ensure a place. Volunteers are needed. Please register or volunteer at www.bringingbackthenatives.net
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10. Feedback
Robert MacConnell:
Regarding item #12 "Slaughter of birds by communication towers". This note is to inform you that not all towers are killers. I spend 4 hours/week over the last two years at the KPFA site on Grizzly Peak. I have yet to see a single dead bird there. Many live ones but no dead ones. Perhaps it would be a good study to find out why this is so.
Dennis Antenore:
Jake, I very much appreciate your facilitating a dialogue about the proposed fee to enter the Arboretum (Botanical Garden). First let me say that I am a very strong supporter of the Botanical Garden as are most people opposing the fee. Personally, I am a member of the Society and would not be affected by the fee. I have tried to look at both of sides of this issue and am somewhat disappointed that the proponents merely respond with orchestrated rhetoric. I know that there are legitimate issues here that need to be addressed, but also have come to believe that charging a fee is, overall, a negative development. Many of us have visited the Garden regularly for decades and appreciate its value more than can be easily expressed. Most people treat the garden with respect and see it as a quiet retreat for relaxation away from the traffic and noise. One regularly observes parents with baby carriages strolling through the garden, elderly people sitting on benches enjoying the sun and others sitting in a secluded corner reading. Obviously the proponents are correct in pointing out that there have been abuses, but I know from very regular visits over decades that these are rare. The proponents of a fee seem to be using this bad behavior of the few as an excuse for punishing the many. The garden has survived beautifully for many decades without a fee, and the resources to deal with occasional damage have been found. I ask the proponents to please look at this issue from the perspective of the vast majority of the visitors who see this, rightly or wrongly, as a seizure by special interests of control over a public resource. The idea of a so-called public-private partnership is anathema to many. There is obviously a clash of visions for the future of the garden. Raising the issue of the long range plans to develop a cafe is far from a red herring, but is emblematic of this clash. We feel that decisions about the future of the garden should be in the hands of the public not controlled by the few, however well intentioned they may be. Some people have opined that because of the seriousness of the budget crisis opposing this fee in the face of drastic cuts elsewhere in the City budget can't be justified. But, on the other hand, many of us see this as more of a development scheme than a response to the budget. When the economics are examined and the costs of building gates and hiring personnel are considered it requires unrealistically optimistic assumptions about potential revenues from the fee. Visitorship will obviously drop dramatically, as has happened, for example, at the Japanese Tea Garden. The issue of maintaining public access to this resource should be seen as a very valuable asset in and of itself. Dennis Antenore
Dennis: I will do my best to respond to a number of statements you made--mostly those in regard to the three correspondents you refer to, all of them friends of mine. Two of them are closely connected to the Garden as either staff (of the supporting Society, not the City) or long-time volunteer. The other, now living in Portland, was a frequent visitor to the Garden. All three are people of integrity; they may have biases, but can not be accused of orchestrated responses. The opinions expressed are coming from them, and are as sincerely held as your opinion is.
In this discussion it's important to make distinctions. There are two entities involved in management: The City & County (which owns the land, pays the salary of the director, the gardening staff, and garden maintenance), and the support organization, the SF Botanical Garden Society (which funds a large staff and all the many educational programs, the superbly-run Helen Crocker Russell Library, the volunteer program, special projects (design and installation costs of many of the gardens: Arthur Menzies Garden of California Native Plants, the Cape Province Garden, the New World Cloud Forest, and many, many other projects too numerous to mention).
I feel myself willy-nilly wandering into deep waters here. It is a very complex matter and not given to easy answers. Add to that my own personal history with the Garden and with City employment, and it begins to resemble a can of worms. As I stated before, when I was on City staff through the 1970s and '80s, we were discussing an entrance fee then, and I was split down the middle regarding its desirability. Like you, I am opposed to privatizing and paying for what have been free. If it were a simple matter of this sort--which seems to be the way you view it--the decision would be easy.
The main reason I differ from you is that I sense that you are reasonably happy with the current state of the garden, including maintenance. I am not, and it is a source of deep unhappiness with me. Although the Society touts it as a "world-class garden", that is just pretense, something that we're used to in San Francisco. The horticultural knowledge and garden maintenance are sub-standard. If they aspire to world-class status, a number of things need to happen:
1. There is a need to rationalize the bizarre management structure (referred to above). One reason it is a problem is because the garden is run by the City, with all the well-known defects of its Civil Service, the union, governance by one political party, &c. It has resulted in the City being employer-of-last-resort and lacking accountability. Public service attracts a very high caliber of people who want to do that--serve the public. However, once hired, motivated employees encounter all sorts of obstacles and frustrations, and good people are stymied in their efforts. Some persist in spite of these obstacles, but they are seldom promoted on the basis of merit. This is not a recent phenomenon; it goes back several decades, at least to the death of John McLaren in 1943. Civil service was originally designed way-back-when as a merit system. It has evolved into a demerit system.
2. In addition to lack of professional training, staff size is inadequate to create a world-class garden. One hears only of inadequate budgets. Budgets are a problem, but a secondary one. First is poor management--starting at City Hall with the Mayor and Supervisors.
3. The SF Botanical Garden Society needs to be educated regarding standards. It is too prone to surface show and self-promotion--style without substance. I don't want to be too hard on it because it is in a difficult situation, the garden location being an integral part of Golden Gate Park and under the above-referenced management. There may be unspoken discontent on their part, but they are stuck with a difficult situation. Less pretense and more dealing with nitty-gritty would be helpful.
4. Too much is made of "privatizing" the garden. It is public land, it's maintenance is funded by the taxpayer, and it cannot be privatized, nor do I think that is the intention of the Society. The purpose of a fee is to provide funding to improve horticultural and management standards. Those standards are sorely in need of improvement. People are so accustomed to paying to go to the museum, symphony, opera, or whatever. Our botanical garden is the sole exception in San Francisco, and this is not fair. For better or worse, Americans don't publicly fund these things on any large scale.
5. As you can see, I have ended my 30-year inner conflict whether to charge an entrance fee: I think it is desirable. I would like to see a first-class botanical garden here, and you're not going to get it unless it is better funded and led.
6. For whatever it's worth, I have no love for the Society. My reason is the treatment I received from them in 1988, and I still harbor resentment. But this is too important a public matter to let personal animosity influence my decision.
My attitude has just been given a fillip. After writing the above six items, I just read the most recent Yodeler of the Sierra Club Bay Chapter. It contained a tendentious article on the subject, inaccurately headlined "Fee proposal would move towards privatizing Arboretum". Among other distortions and inaccuracies, it equated the cost of the entrance fee to the cost of becoming a member of the Society. That is dishonest. And the Club used the technique so often used against the Club when they were, eg, opposing logging of a forest, in which case the local logging communities trotted out the kids, who were exploited by being portrayed as dependent on the income from the logging to pay for their schools. The Sierra Club uses the same tactic in this article, and it is shoddy journalism. The Club should look in the mirror. It is yet another example of the Sierra Club Problem: dependence on volunteers to do most of its work, especially at the local level. The Club is confronted with many complex and difficult issues, and only volunteers to master and explain the issues to the members. The results are often bizarre and damaging.
I am not unmindful of the downsides of an entrance fee. But there are many ways the program can be structured to compensate for hardships.
Well, there is much more to be said, but this is way too long now. I hate to differ with you, Dennis, because I understand your thinking, and I know you're coming from a good place. But there are too many cogent reasons why I must differ.
A final shot: the problems of the botanical garden are nothing compared to the problems of Golden Gate Park, which I regard as becoming a basket case, with no hope in sight. The neighborhood parks have the Neighborhood Parks Council to advocate for them. Golden Gate Park is an orphan. But that's for another day.
My apologies if I misinterpreted the motivations of your friends. It just seemed to me that there was a consistent line with the same arguments and language being used in every forum in which this is discussed. From what you say, I was probably wrong in this case.
Mike Mooney:
Hey Jake, I'm an avid golfer (and weed warrior, as you know) and I just played Sharp Park. There's only part of one golf hole that seems to be affected by the flooding of the wetland area. It'd be a shame if the entire course would be closed due to this conflict. Although golf courses could do better, obviously, they do provide a fair amount of natural benefits, such as habitat, open space, fire breaks, etc.
I am not opposed to golf--to the contrary--and I'd like to provide for everyone's need on this increasingly crowded planet. I can't go into the details of a complex subject, but the main reason I am for converting this to a nature center and restoration site is because of the natural values it has and its possibilities for enhancing those beleaguered values. And the course does imperil two federally-listed endangered species.
The need for connection to nature by city dwellers, the need for education regarding natural values where the young can be exposed to the real world, the need to feed their natural curiosity--these are overwhelming needs, and they trump providing diversion to adults. Where can young and old go to satisfy these desperate needs? Sites are few, and diminishing. To put the frosting on the cake, the course is losing money for San Francisco, where crucial needs are not being met because of funding. The status quo is out of the question, because legal requirements for upgrading the course and protecting endangered species necessitate huge expenditures which neither San Francisco nor Pacifica can afford.
That's all I can say in a few sentences; there is much more to it.
“We are the children of the earth and removed from her our spirit withers.” George MacCaulay Trevelyan
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11.
An Evening With Tuolumne River Trust
And Special Guest San Francisco Supervisor Sean Elsbernd to discuss The Tuolumne River and Water Conservation
Hosted by Ann & Stephen Clark
Thursday, April 30
7:00 – 9:00pm
2000 Monterey Blvd
San Francisco
Please RSVP to karyn@tuolumne.org
7:00 wine and hors d’oeuvres
8:00 30-minute presentation
childcare provided
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12. CNPS Member Discount Days - May 2 & 16, 2009
On May 2 & 16, 2009 Middlebrook Gardens is hosting a special discount day for CNPS members, and we will also be giving two free lectures each day. The first lecture is at 10 am, and the second will be at 2 pm. The lecture is open to the public. A 10 % discount will be offered to CNPS and CNGF members on all plant purchases on these days.
76 Race Street, San Jose, 408-292-9993
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13. Budding threat to global food supply
Stem rust, the wheat pest that was vanquished by science five decades ago, has returned in a destructive new form
A virulent new version of a deadly fungus is ravaging wheat in Kenya's most fertile fields and spreading beyond Africa to threaten one of the world's principal food crops, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
Stem rust, a killer that farmers thought they had defeated 50 years ago, surfaced in Kenya in 1999, jumped the Red Sea to Yemen in 2006 and turned up in Iran last year. Crop scientists say they are powerless to stop its spread and increasingly frustrated in their efforts to find resistant plants.
Nobel Peace Laureate Norman Borlaug, the world's leading authority on the disease, said that once established, stem rust can explode to crisis proportions within a year under certain weather conditions. "This is a dangerous problem because a good share of the world's area sown to wheat is susceptible to it. It has immense destructive potential," said Borlaug.
Coming on the heels of grain scarcity and food riots last year, the budding epidemic exposes the fragility of the food supply in poor countries. It is also a reminder of how vulnerable the ever-growing global population is to the pathogens that inevitably surface somewhere on the planet.
...Unlike common rust infestations, which reduce but do not wipe out yields, stem rust can topple a whole field. "It can take everything," said (the director of Australia's rust-control programme). "It is the most damaging of the rusts."
Excerpted from Washington Post
“Our competitors are our friends. Our customers are our enemies.” Retired president of one of the major U.S. grain companies
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14.
In a hurry to go nowhere
John Gray's assault on false ideals of progress is timelier than ever
Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings, by John Gray
John Gray is far too forbearing to tell us that he told us so, but he did. The title of one of his key works indicates his foresight - False Dawn: Delusions of Global Capitalism. What is significant is that this closely reasoned polemic came not from the pen of some hot-eyed zealot of the left or a green-fingered son of Gaia, but from a liberal conservative thinker of a quietist cast of mind, an admirer, albeit in a qualified way, of Margaret Thatcher, a shrewd commentator on the likes of Friedrich Hayek and George Soros, and a dedicated foe of Enlightenment values. He is surely the most incisive political philosopher that we have, and one whose time has, sad to say, definitely come.
Sad, because no one wants to be around when Cassandra's prophecies come true, not even Cassandra herself. Gray excoriates the follies of our globalised world more in sorrow than in anger. He has no grand solutions to offer for the troubles of our apocalyptic age, and urges a programme that is radical only in its mutedness: "Other animals do not need a purpose in life...the human animal cannot do without one. Can we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see?"
..."For Saint-Simon and Comte, technology meant railways and canals. For Lenin it meant electricity. For neo-liberals it means the internet." The conviction that our own time is at last "modern" and that we are the "last men" is, for Gray, one of the most lamentable of the many delusions that humankind allows itself. We imagine ourselves original yet are mired in the past. He quotes Keynes's apposite insight: "Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling the frenzy of some academic scribbler of a few years back."
Keynes was writing at a time when public policy was governed by outdated economic theories. Today it is ruled by a defunct religion. The social engineers who labour to install free markets in every last corner of the globe see themselves as scientific rationalists, but they are actually disciples of a forgotten cult.
...For Gray, the Enlightenment idea of the soul progressing in tandem with technological advances is pernicious. Progress in science is real - painless dentistry and the flush lavatory, he concedes, are certain goods - but spiritual progress is a myth. "Scientific and technological advance has not, and cannot, diminish the realm of mystery and tragedy in which it is our lot to dwell."
Gray is rightly dismissive of contemporary millenarianism which, until very recently, considered that we had arrived at the "end of history" and the dawn of a new age of endless expansion - "the project of promoting maximal economic growth is, perhaps, the most vulgar ideal ever put before suffering humankind" - and sees, in the destructive and exploitative activities of Homo sapiens, an unwilled urge towards our own destruction. He argues for an entirely reformed attitude to the world and our place in it, and above all urges that we relinquish the delusion of progress.
In the long essay An Agenda for Green Conservatism - which, by the way, every Green politician, and voter, should read - he sets out his case most subtly and persuasively: "The idea of progress is detrimental to the life of the spirit, because it encourages us to view our lives, not under the aspect of eternity, but as moments in a universal process of betterment. We do not, therefore, accept our lives for what they are, but instead consider them always for what they might someday become."
Recognise the truth of this contention and we are on the way to the getting of wisdom.
Excerpt from review in Guardian Weekly 24.04.09
"The most difficult values to jettison are those that have helped you in the past." Jared Diamond
"The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos." —Stephen Jay Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack
LTE, Guardian Weekly
Sir: Joseph Stiglitz continues to refer to the absurd concept of negative growth--apparently, growth is such a totem that we must continue to refer to it where it does not exist. Please consider, in future, calling it exactly what it is: contraction.
Adam Williamson, Vancouver, BC, Canada
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15. Obituary: Maurice Jarre, composer for film, died on March 28th, aged 84
THE cinema, as he remembered it, was off Trafalgar Square. It was small, stuffy and dark. And there, over 40 hours in early 1962, Maurice Jarre watched the first rough cut of David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia”. The showings started at 9am on a Monday and did not finish till the Friday. And he was mesmerised. Peter O’Toole, the blue-eyed, white-robed Lawrence, rode his camel along a beach at dawn. He crested the dunes and gazed out over a landscape of shimmering oranges and greys. Cavalcades of Arabs, keffiyehs flying, raced across the sand. It was astoundingly beautiful. And it was completely silent.
Mr Jarre’s commission was to write the music for it. It was extraordinary that he had been asked. Sam Spiegel, the producer, had heard only his ten-minute score for a French film called “Sundays and Cybele”, written for bass, counter-bass, flute and table-harp. Now he was supposed to produce, in six weeks, two hours of music for a 100-piece orchestra. Back in his room in Half Moon Street he tried to read all he could about T.E. Lawrence, including the huge “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”, as well as searching for that little swatch of notes that might turn into a theme. Search, search, search, search, as Stravinsky said. “Sam Spiegel told me, you have the job of Superman!” Mr Jarre joyously recalled.
...Few directors, Lean apart, really understood how powerful music could be in film. Mr Jarre did his best to tell them. Music, he emphasised, could reveal emotions no words or pictures could. The drama and effort of the barn-building in “Witness”, underlined with the mounting rhythms of a passacaglia; the first stirrings of sexual feeling in “A Passage to India”, pointed by sitars; and Lawrence bowing ecstatically to his own flowing shadow in the desert, a moment now never recalled without Mr Jarre’s soundtrack welling behind him.
Excerpted from The Economist 18.06.09
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Special to Bayview Hill-Jake Sigg's Nature News
1. Rationale behind the Endangered Species Act/celebrating Endangered Species Day, May 15
2. A way to act on Endangered Species Day: Help restore Sharp Park
3. And endangered landscapes: Hetch Hetchy Valley
4. Dept of Fish & Game Fisheries Restoration Grant Program soliciting proposals
5. Hawk migration counters needed
6. Permaculture transformation, redesigning and getting off the grid, April 29
7. Nominate for San Francisco Beautiful 2009 Beautification Awards
8. West Marin Bike to Work Week May 10-16/Green New Deal for the North Bay--transform Marin and Sonoma Counties into environmental sustainability
9. 1 in 60 Brits go to church/The End of Christian America?
10. Evolution, again
11. Cal-IPC'S Northern California field courses/call for contributed papers and posters
12. Slaughter of birds by communication towers
13. Venus grazes the Moon
14. Feedback: botanical garden entrance fee/lawns in arid climates and Frederick Law Olmsted
15. "Trough Plants Czech Style" in Oakland April 29
16. An alarming view from Worldwatch's Lester Brown
17. Malthus redux
18. Are you biased toward noticing good or bad events? Genetics?
19. Mr Ahmadinejad meets Rush Limbaugh. In my dreams
20. Notes & Queries
21. Too many bipeds in Antarctica
1. Endangered Species Day, May 15
The rationale behind the Endangered Species Act was complex and varied. The idea was to save genetic information, and an item of genetic information having appeal was the compounds produced by plants and animals that may be of use to human beings--in particular, medicines. Many in Congress, when considering writing the legislation of the Act, thought only in terms of large creatures, or warm and cuddly ones. It never occurred to them that it might include a fly, a mite, or a pathogen.
In the Winter 1992 issue of Wings, journal of the Xerces Society, Thomas Eisner of Cornell University wrote an article 'Insects: The Master Chemists'. Here is a small excerpt:
"...Of the millions of insect species that inhabit our planet, only a tiny fraction, far less than 1%, have been studied chemically. Our chemical ignorance of insects, and of invertebrates in general, has practical implications. Invertebrates are largely ignored in searches for chemicals of use, such as medicinals.
In our very limited studies at Cornell University, we have discovered cardiotonic substances in fireflies, sedatives in millipedes, and hormone analogs in carrion beetles. There is no telling what molecules or molecular processes might be uncovered if invertebrates were to be screened as intensely for chemicals as microorganisms and plants are. Truly frightening is the prospect that so many potentially useful chemicals from invertebrates will vanish as a consequence of species extinction before they have been discovered...."
If anyone is in doubt that Homo sapiens is digging its own grave, this should dispel it. Genetic information in the form of species, subspecies, varieties, and races are disappearing daily from that vast treasure trove bequeathed to us by nature. The Endangered Species Act is a treasure in this politically difficult world, but it can't even scratch the surface of the crisis. But it's all we have.
Started in 2006 by the United States Congress, Endangered Species Day is the third Friday of May.
Celebrate Endangered Species Day - May 15, 2009
On Friday, May 15, 2009 our nation will celebrate America’s commitment to protecting and recovering endangered species. As we well know in California, without the Endangered Species Act, our natural heritage would be hopelessly lost.
The goal of Endangered Species Day is simple – to educate people about the importance of protecting endangered species.
Click here to visit the Endangered Species Day website and:
* Find an event near you
* Get help in planning an event
* Request educational materials
* Sign a personal pledge
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2. Don't just celebrate Endangered Species Day--act on it:
ACTION ALERT – Join us to support the effort to Restore Sharp Park:
1. April 30, 2009 – 1 pm at San Francisco’s City Hall: The Board of Supervisors will consider Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi’s planning legislation to protect the endangered San Francisco garter snake and red-legged frog at the City-owned Sharp Park and to ensure that future uses of the Park are compatible with protecting its natural resources. Some golfers will oppose this basic planning document: they don’t want alternative uses to even be considered. And they will show up for the hearing. If we don’t get more people out to this hearing than they do, this basic step towards a better future may never occur. If you only attend one Board of Supervisors meeting this year, make it this one: please make time to join us because a show of public support will be essential to encourage the Board to pass the legislation.
2. Volunteer: Organizers of the Restore Sharp Park effort need volunteers to help with data entry and phone banking.
Contact Brent Plater (bplater@ggnrabigyear.org ) if you can help.
3. For more information and updates, please visit the Restore Sharp Park website at http://www.restoresharppark.org/, or contact Brent Plater at bplater@ggnrabigyear.org.
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3.
Hetch Hetchy is a grand landscape garden, one of nature’s rarest and most precious temples. As in Yosemite, the sublime rocks of its walls seem to glow with life…while birds, bees, and butterflies help the river and waterfalls to stir all the air into music…These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to hve a perfect contempt for Nature, and instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar…Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.
John Muir 1912
Restore the dream of John Muir. Restore Hetch Hetchy! Click Here to Donate
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4. The Department of Fish and Game (DFG) Fisheries Restoration Grant Program is soliciting proposals for fisheries restoration projects in California’s coastal watersheds. Proposal packages are due on May 15, 2009. The primary goal of this program is to ensure the survival and protection of coho salmon, steelhead trout, Chinook salmon and cutthroat trout in the state’s coastal watersheds.
Workshops, map of area where grant applies (all of western half of California is possible):
http://www.dfg.ca.gov/fish/Administration/Grants/FRGP/Solicitation.asp
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5. Hawk migration counters needed!
Each fall, the Bay Area is host to the largest numbers of raptors (birds of prey) in the Pacific States! Tens of thousands (of 20 species) of hawks, kites, eagles, osprey, falcons, vultures, and harriers can be seen migrating over the Golden Gate. We need your help keeping track of them all.
For more than twenty years, the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory (GGRO) has been training people from all over Northern California to identify, track, and monitor birds of prey. Hundreds of GGRO volunteers annually use counting, banding, and radiotracking techniques to keep a pulse on this immense raptor flight, and report our findings to state and federal officials. This spring we are holding our only new-volunteer recruitment classes for 2009 hawkwatchers. Come to a no-obligation informational talk at Ft. Mason in San Francisco to hear what’s required and included. You’ll get lots of time outside in the beautiful Marin Headlands, and you’ll give back to the environment while enjoying the hawks.
Volunteers must be at least 15 years of age and able to commit to one regular day in the Marin Headlands every two weeks, from mid-August through the beginning of December 2009, along with some weekend and evening trainings in July. The training schedule will be available at the meetings. Please join us for one of the three dates below to see if you want to help with this innovative conservation program:
Wednesday, April 29 from 7 to 9:30 pm; or
Thursday, April 30 from 7 to 9:30 pm; or
Saturday, May 2 from 10 am to 12:30 pm
All meetings will be held at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area headquarters, Building 201 at UPPER Fort Mason, in San Francisco. Enter Fort Mason at Franklin and Bay streets. For more information, call the GGRO at (415) 331-0730 or e-mail us at ggro@parksconservancy.org. You can also visit our website at www.ggro.org.
(Incidentally we just watched a spring migrating juvenile Bald Eagle cruise into Kirby Cove from across the Golden Gate, about 1 mile west of the GGBridge, then soar over the Marin Headlands and disappear north bound. A lovely big eagle holding its mouth agape for the heat.)
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6.
Title: Transition City
Date: April 29, 2009 - 7:30 p.m.
Place: CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission Street (@ 9th), San Francisco
Free & open to the public
Description: Permaculture transformation, redesigning and getting off the grid. How can urban dwellers begin immediately to move towards self-sufficiency? What are the impediments, what are the resources? We'll have several permaculture practitioners presenting step-by-step recommendations for the next six months, a 1-year and a 3-5 year transition. Is there a relationship with backyard habitat restoration?
Speakers: K. Ruby (sparkybeegirl.com), Chris Shein (Wildheart Gardens), Urban Permaculture Guild.
Contact: steward@natureinthecity.org, 415-564-4107
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7. San Francisco Beautiful 2009 Beautification Awards
Bring recognition to individuals, organizations, businesses and civic entities that have partnered to improve the quality of life in San Francisco. Nominate a project that has enriched the life of your community by enhancing the City's physical environment. Nominated projects must be located in San Francisco and visually or physically accessible to the general public. Due date for nominations is June 1st.
Special consideration will be given to those projects that reflect this year's theme, "Saving Our City: Beauty Has a Place". We are looking for beautification projects that happen due to creative thinking and collective efforts - even in the face of resource shortages (both financial and natural) and some urban planning policies that threaten neighborhood character. These beautification projects take many forms and happen everywhere - schools, parks, stairways, neighborhood historic districts and streetcar lines. These projects often start with a few people who have a vision and then a community force builds around them.
For details, call 415.421.2608x12 or visit www.sfbeautiful.org
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8.
Monday May 10 - Saturday May 16: 2nd Annual West Marin Bike to Work Week
The Environmental Action Committee of West Marin, League of American Bicyclists, and Black Mountain Cycles invite you to join us for West Marin Bike to Work week, running from May 10-16. Each day you bike to work or school that week in West Marin's communities, send an email to bikewestmarin@yahoo.com and we’ll enter a raffle ticket in your name, featuring prizes from local businesses. Visit eacmarin.org for more details.
Join us for “Bike to Work” Day on Thursday May 14. Join over 50,000 Bay Area residents and show your support for alternative transportation. To learn more call 663-9312 or go to http://btwd.bayareabikes.org/
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Green New Deal for the North Bay
How can we create a sustainable future that includes economic equity and social justice? How can agendas for labor rights and environmental protection become more integrated into progressive political work? The Green New Deal for the North Bay is a grassroots initiative aiming to help transform Marin and Sonoma Counties into a more resilient community guided by environmental sustainability, economic equity and social justice.
We see great opportunity for rethinking the way we live while planning a community response to coming changes in climate, energy and jobs. We want to hear from you about innovative, effective, practical ideas for achieving greater economic stability and equity within our region. Your voice is important for influencing decision-makers. Open Community Forums to HEAR from YOU:
May 8, 6:30 p.m. - San Rafael, CA - City Council Chambers
May 12, 7 p.m. - Point Reyes Station - The Dance Palace
May 16, 1 p.m. - Sea Ranch - Del Mar Center
May 19, 6:30 p.m. - Mill Valley - City Council Chambers
May 21, 6:30 p.m. - Sonoma - Community Center
May 30, 6L30 p.m. - Novato - School Board Meeting Room
TBD - Petaluma, CA
During the summer, the commission will assess the community input and schedule public hearings for the fall of 2009 to hear testimony from experts on such issues as food, housing, water, energy, health care and social equity. The Commission will then create a report outlining recommendations for government, businesses, community groups and other institutions with the goal of increasing community participation to reach our goals in the North bay. For more information, call 415-663-9674 or 707-227-0047
Your input is invited at a community forum on May 12 from 7-9 p.m. at the Dance Palace in Point Reyes Station. Call 415-717-6833 for details. Co-sponsored by the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin and Mainstreet Moms.
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9. Ian Wilson on de-baptism certificates:
"Every time the Pope says something outrageous we get another rush on the certificate"
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1891230,00.html
"Official estimates are that fewer than one million Britons regularly attend Sunday services, but there are currently 26 Church of England bishops sitting in the House of Lords. "With churches, everybody checks in, but nobody checks out," says Evans, who was baptized as an infant. "There's no exit strategy except the funeral.""
The population of the UK is about 60 million, so this means that only 1/60 Brits regularly attend Sunday services. Presumably this means that Hell will be full of my fellow-Brits, all complaining about the heat, lack of running water, how rude the staff are, etc. -- a fitting punishment I suppose. Ian
AND...(busy guy, this Ian):
Ian Wilson 6 April 09:
This Newsweek article is entitled "The End of Christian America". Hyperbole to be sure, still it's interesting (dare I say encouraging?):
http://www.newsweek.com/id/192583/output/print
Bill Maher used the Pew Forum Poll finding that "the percentage of people [in the US] who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith has doubled in recent years, to 16 percent" in his recent movie Religulous.
On a related theme, religious types often say that Darwin believed in God because he mentioned a "Creator" in the final paragraph of the Origin of Species. Indeed he did:
"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."
However:
http://www.csuchico.edu/~curbanowicz/DarwinDayCollectionOneChapter.html
The phrase 'by the creator,' in the final sentence of the selection chosen here, did not appear in the first edition of Origin of Species. It was added to the second edition to conciliate angry clerics. Darwin later wrote in a letter [to Joseph Hooker], "I have long since regretted that I truckled to public opinion and used the Pentateuchal term of creation, by which I really meant 'appeared' by some wholly unknown process."
This "truckling to public opinion" is the reason there probably won't be an atheist president of the United States during my lifetime. (In fact are there any US senators or congressmen who will openly admit to being atheists or at least agnostics?)
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10. LTEs, Scientific American, 5/09
Sir: "The Latest Face of Creationism," by Glenn Branch and Eugenie C. Scott, details the tactics of those agitating against the teaching of evolution in public schools. Scientists have, to some extent, contributed to creationists' arguments by using the term "theory" when referring to evolution. It is not a theory but an established law. Robin A. Cox, Scarborough, Ontario
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Sir: Simply suppressing the teaching of intelligent design (ID) sends the wrong message to students. They ought to learn that science is about understanding the world and that it proceeds in stages. The questions they should ask are, Does ID make predictions? And can those predictions be tested? If the answers to both are negative, they themselves can conclude that ID is "only a nonscientific theory." Oscar Estevez, University of Amsterdam Medical Center
Q :Why did the chicken cross the road?
Evolutionist: Pure chance.
Evolutionist: Only the fittest chickens survive crossing the road.
Creationist: God created the chicken on the other side of the road. There is no proof it ever was on this side.
Q: Why did the dinosaur cross the road? A: Chickens hadn't evolved yet.
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11. Cal-IPC's 2009 Northern California Field Courses!
Santa Rosa - Mountain Home Ranch - http://www.cal-ipc.org/fieldcourses/index.php#SR
May 13 - Biology & Identification
May 14 - Control Methods
Sign up before the end of April to receive the Early Bird Discount!
Santa Cruz Mountains - San Lorenzo Water District's Olympia Well Field - http://www.cal-ipc.org/fieldcourses/index.php#SCM
July 21 - Advanced Mechanical Control Methods NEW!
Click here to register now.
Cal-IPC's field courses train natural resource managers and restoration volunteers on all aspects of invasive weed management.
HUGE Discount for restoration volunteers! You qualify as a restoration volunteer if weed management is not part of your professional work and you volunteer for an organized restoration effort. Please tell your volunteers!
Registration and details at www.cal-ipc.org/fieldcourses/index.php
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And:
The California Invasive Plant Council invites abstracts for contributed papers and posters for our 17th Annual Symposium in Visalia! This year's theme is "The Leading Edge of Wildland Weed Management". Main Symposium webpage: http://www.cal-ipc.org/symposia/index.php
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12. Alice Polesky:
Also, I'm forwarding you another alert that I thought might be of interest, about the tragic numbers of bird deaths from towers.
As to the tower story, perhaps I'll post. I've already posted about birds crashing into night-lit downtown highrise buildings, and the windmill hazard is not new. However, this renewable energy craze is making me nervous. We don't ever think things through, we just lurch from one crisis to another without thinking first what might be the consequences of the new course we embark on. I used to think that we were beginning to learn that actions have consequences and that we should look before we leap. I don't think that anymore. I don't think we're capable of learning. (Do I sound depressed?)
Slaughter of birds by communications towers
It's hard to beat the power of pictures to bring words to life. Here is a URL that will help:
http://audubonaction.org/campaign/fcc_commtowers?rk=P13v%5fVS1Wi9NE
Last week, Audubon, Defenders of Wildlife, and the American Bird Conservancy petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to address the killing of millions of migratory birds from collisions with the more than 100,000 communications towers throughout the United States.
Now, we need your letters to support our petition. Please e-mail the FCC today.
The Problem
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that millions of birds are killed each year because of communications towers. Scientists have shown that—especially during bad weather conditions—migrating birds become disoriented and trapped by the halo of light surrounding towers using steady-burning illumination, circling endlessly until they either collide with the structure, collide with each other, or fall dead from exhaustion.
In one instance, an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 dead birds were documented at just three nearby towers in a single night!
The Solution
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has issued science-based guidelines on the siting and operation of these towers to minimize bird deaths. Unfortunately, the FCC—the government agency that licenses towers--has been dragging its feet implementing them for nearly a decade, despite repeated appeals by Audubon and other conservation groups; as well as independent scientists, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and even a federal court order.
With the annual spring bird migration underway, there is no better time to e-mail the FCC and urge them to take immediate action to prevent future migratory bird deaths at towers.
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13. Contributions from readers
Doug Allshouse:
Jake, I saw something this morning (Apr 22) that I have never seen in my life. About 6:15 I was beginning my morning walk, the sun was about to rise and I looked at the sliver of the crescent-Moon. Since the sky was half-bright (dull blue), Venus was visible, but it was positioned as though it was just peeking out from the dark side of the Moon, almost like it was eclipsed. What are the odds of that? I'm thinking that tomorrow morning the Moon and Venus will be farther apart. Doug*
Ooh, that hurts. I read Astronomy magazine every month, which always arrives a month early, in order to give amateur astronomers time to fill out their monthly calendar and prepare for observing events. (The June issue is due this week.) So events that won't happen for a month or more I usually jot down in notes or enter on my wall calendar. On receiving your note I got out the April issue, and sure enough there it was: a picture of the crescent moon with Venus immediately to the left of the unilluminated portion of the Moon--it was barely grazing the Moon! And the caption: "The Moon occults Venus the morning of April 22 for observers in the western two-thirds of North America." Damn!!
What a sight! And I missed it! Darn you. I'm raw with envy.
I need a secretary. And yes, Venus and the Moon will be substantially apart tomorrow morning.
**BTW, if you're wondering how Astronomy could show in February a photograph of the event that won't happen until April, it published a photo of the same phenomenon that took place in Europe last December--with a bonus: Besides Venus grazing the crescent Moon, Jupiter was thrown in on upper right--at no additional charge. So yes, it does happen. It's not rare, but it's not common either, and always exciting and dramatic when you see it. I'm now getting used to the world passing me by. With envy, Jake
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14. Feedback
Barbara Pitschel (regarding entrance fee to the SF Botanical Garden):
First of all, this was the first I had heard about the "cafe," which is a red herring to divert rational discussion from an issue that deserves serious discussion and consideration. I'm glad I waited, because Allan Ridley's discussion with Michael McKechnie and Michael's response in today's Nature News email clarify this discussion very well. There is no cafe planned at this time, and everything in the entire master plan would be inside existing buildings, as there are no changes planned to the footprint or envelope of buildings in Golden Gate Park. And these are not in any way part of this discussion.
What is my personal opinion? I am 100% in favor of this modest admission charge at this time. As Allan noted, the Library, the Bookstore, and the entire Entry Garden will be accessible outside the admission gate, with professional staff providing information to visitors about the resources they may choose to visit. And also, your point that a annual reasonable membership fee would provide unlimited admission and additional benefits is pivotal.
As Jake and Allan have noted, the Garden collections contain rare plants, plants that are being preserved from extinction in their native habitats, and plants of considerable interest and value. Yes, many people respect this living museum, but many others consider it a jogging trail, a pest-animal feeding place, a sporting ground, and even a place for illegal barbeques; apparently it appears somehow different from the other museums because it isn't indoors. Other people break in at night to steal plants and equipment, and I don't even want to talk about the flashers and the overnight campers who consider it a refuge. In this time of economic cutback, it is even more difficult to protect our unique resources. (And by ALL, I mean all of us--San Franciscans and people everywhere with environmental respect and concerns!)
The goal of the leaders of the Botanical Garden and the Botanical Garden Society is not to exclude people. They are trying to find the best possible ways to make these resources accessible to everyone who is interested in them, regardless of age or financial situation, and they are really hoping to work with people to address genuine concerns, rather than deal with the above-mentioned red herrings!
There are very few botanical gardens or arboreta anymore that are free of charge. As I have often said to groups for whom I have presented library orientations, without the work the SF Botanical Garden Society has contributed over the past nearly-sixty years SFBG would look more like Big Rec across the street. It does cost money to build, maintain, and preserve plant collections.
So thanks for requesting the opinion of a dedicated public-serving professional librarian, who has served the public free of charge for the past 28 years!!!
Gray Brechin:
Jake, Regarding your reader's (and your own) remarks on lawns in an arid climate, you probably know that Frederick Law Olmsted was — as usual — about a century ahead of his time when at the time of the Civil War he told the promoters who wanted him to lay out an English landscape like that of Central Park on the western SF dunes. He wrote to his wife "The sojourning habit of the people [here]... is shown in their want of interest in the fixed qualities of the place. Nobody knows what the trees and plants are." He proposed instead a linear park along what is now Van Ness Avenue planted largely with drought-adapted natives "acquired from the canons of the coast range," with a compact and more English-style park in the Duboce Triangle area in the lee of Buena Vista Hill and where there were springs. This is not what the promoters wanted, of course, and so he returned to the East to found the profession of landscape architecture and create parks across the country.
Twenty years later, Leland Stanford hired him to lay out his new university. He and Olmsted disagreed since Stanford wanted that old English landscape again and Olmsted insisted on one more suited to a Mediterranean climate so that precious water would not be squandered. They split the difference so that the central quadrangle is like a Spanish plaza but the Oval is a vast water-wasteful lawn. Of course, ever since Hetch Hetchy water came in, Stanford has thrived on the popular illusion that anything can and should grow in California — as long as you can use remote control technology to steal the water from somewhere and somethings else.
I didn't know that this is when he created the profession.
Sigh. If only our City fathers had listened to Olmsted. Vain regret. I spend a lot of my life regretting what might have been. I could never be a businessman or a politician, one who has to deal with realities. I much prefer a fact-based world, not one catering to narrow interests or distorted beliefs. It was not just San Francisco leaders, it was the whole American psychology of the time. Read Wallace Stegner's Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West. That pretty well lays out the fantasy that motivated this country, and still dominates it.
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15. Speaker Josef Halda is a noted botanist and seed collector from the Czech Republic, who has travelled the world to many obscure and botanically significant places to bring back unique collections of seed for sale. He is an expert and has written monographs on Primula, Daphne, Gentiana and Paeonia. His lectures are filled with exquisite, artistic and rare photos of plants in their native habitat.
"Trough Plants Czech Style" at the Lakeside Garden Center (in Oakland near Lake Merritt) on Wednesday, April 29, at 7:30 PM.
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16. Glum picture painted by Lester Brown
Anxiety-producing events in this over-anxious world are not items I like to post in this newsletter. However, in the case of an article in the May 2009 Scientific American titled 'Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?', there seems no point in trying to ignore the situation portrayed. Lester Brown, in the words of the Washington Post, is "one of the world's most influential thinkers", and similar accolades have been bestowed on him throughout the world.
However, the accolades are not why I am taking him seriously. I take him seriously because I have "written" (ie, composed in my head) the same article, and the facts Brown cites are well-known to anyone paying attention in recent decades: water shortages, soil losses, and rising temperatures are placing severe limits on food production. Without massive and rapid intervention to address these three environmental factors, a series of government collapses could threaten the world order. (Save Haiti, the 20 countries closest to collapse are in Africa and Asia. There is no way to isolate disorder; it spreads like the plague--or, more apt, like a tsunami.)
I find it difficult to envision the collapse of civilization. That is a problem. Nobody can; it is an abstract concept. We mouth it often, but it lacks reality. The collapse of civilization is beyond anything we can imagine; there has never been anything like it in history. My head is totally convinced that we are heading toward an unmanageable condition, yet I am unable to believe it. If I have a problem envisioning it, what about the several billion who are too busy surviving to another day to take notice--and who do not even have the facts to be noticed? The leaders of those people must respond to their people's immediate needs. Even in the U.S., where we have data pouring into our brains at an unassimilable rate, we still can't entertain this catastrophic event seriously.
President Obama plans to allow "12 million" (actually probably 20 million) illegal immigrants to obtain citizenship. Possibly he knows better but is forced into it by the politics. We have been declaring amnesty and granting citizenship to illegal immigrants many times, and apparently will continue until the situation becomes untenable and results in violence.
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17. The Malthusian question
…Yet human numbers continue to swell, at more than 9,000 an hour, 80 million a year, a rate that threatens a doubling in less than 50 years. To make matters worse, human numbers threaten the survival of other species.
Malthus's arguments were part of the inspiration for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, and they have validity in the natural world. On the savannah, in the rainforests, and across the tundra, animal populations explode when times are good, and crash when they are not. Is Homo sapiens an exception? Perhaps. Humans can consider each other's needs, and cooperate; there is also plenty of evidence that they choose not to. The Optimum Population Trust does not have the answers, but the questions remain, quite literally, vital.
Guardian Weekly editorial excerpt 27.03.09
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18. Half empty or half full
People are typically biased toward noticing either good or bad events, and a common genetic variation may underlie such tendencies for optimism or pessimism...The findings in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, help to explain why people may be less prone to anxiety and depression and could lead to therapies that help some look on the bright side.
Caption (to a picture of a spider and a stack of chocolates): What do you prefer to look at? Optimists tend to pay attention to images of chocolate and avoid pictures of spiders; pessimists do the opposite.
From Scientific American, 5/09
(JS: I looked at the spider. Is that because I'm interested in natural history, or because I'm a pessimist? Or both?)
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19. Quote of the week
President Ahmadinejad of Iran said after a highly controversial speech at a UN racism conference his purpose had been to promote "international love and tolerance".
Mr. Ahmadinejad, I'd like to introduce you to Mr Rush Limbaugh. Mr Limbaugh, Mr Ahmadinejad.
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20. Notes & Queries, Guardian Weekly
(JS: Notes & Queries is placed in a section of the weekly called Diversions.)
How much chaos and mayhem can one stand?
Why do Notes & Queries respondents display such a dismal sense of humour? What about some serious answers to interesting questions?
This is an interesting question, so I will respond with a serious answer: most of the questions in Notes & Queries are nonsensical, and therefore easy prey for "silly answers". Moreover, since this column is titled Diversions, it is obviously intended as a pleasurable distraction, and not meant to be pondered over by pundits or dissected by an elite of intellectuals.
Of course, there are serious question-and-answer columns in most world-class publications, but they are generally simplistic, boring, and, unfortunately, invite the opining of egomaniacs and mental cases. Frankly, I welcome Notes & Queries for interjecting a note of humour in an otherwise intolerable world of economic recession, war, crime, disease, illiteracy, religious and political strife, and perhaps one of the most pitiful of all human failings - those who lack of a sense of humour. Les Dreyer, New York City, US
Any answers?
Why is black black, brown brown but yellow blond?
Jonathan Seyghal, Berlin, Germany
When can air travel to a conference about sustainability be justified?
Chris Watson, Wellington, New Zealand
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21. Antarctica
Cruise ships visiting Antarctica carrying more than 500 passengers will be prohibited from landing anyone. Only 100 visitors are to be allowed on shore at any given time. the limits, agreed by 28 countries that have signed the Antarctic treaty, were decided after figures showed that visitor numbers had risen from 6,700 in 1992 to more than 45,000. Guardian Weekly
2. A way to act on Endangered Species Day: Help restore Sharp Park
3. And endangered landscapes: Hetch Hetchy Valley
4. Dept of Fish & Game Fisheries Restoration Grant Program soliciting proposals
5. Hawk migration counters needed
6. Permaculture transformation, redesigning and getting off the grid, April 29
7. Nominate for San Francisco Beautiful 2009 Beautification Awards
8. West Marin Bike to Work Week May 10-16/Green New Deal for the North Bay--transform Marin and Sonoma Counties into environmental sustainability
9. 1 in 60 Brits go to church/The End of Christian America?
10. Evolution, again
11. Cal-IPC'S Northern California field courses/call for contributed papers and posters
12. Slaughter of birds by communication towers
13. Venus grazes the Moon
14. Feedback: botanical garden entrance fee/lawns in arid climates and Frederick Law Olmsted
15. "Trough Plants Czech Style" in Oakland April 29
16. An alarming view from Worldwatch's Lester Brown
17. Malthus redux
18. Are you biased toward noticing good or bad events? Genetics?
19. Mr Ahmadinejad meets Rush Limbaugh. In my dreams
20. Notes & Queries
21. Too many bipeds in Antarctica
1. Endangered Species Day, May 15
The rationale behind the Endangered Species Act was complex and varied. The idea was to save genetic information, and an item of genetic information having appeal was the compounds produced by plants and animals that may be of use to human beings--in particular, medicines. Many in Congress, when considering writing the legislation of the Act, thought only in terms of large creatures, or warm and cuddly ones. It never occurred to them that it might include a fly, a mite, or a pathogen.
In the Winter 1992 issue of Wings, journal of the Xerces Society, Thomas Eisner of Cornell University wrote an article 'Insects: The Master Chemists'. Here is a small excerpt:
"...Of the millions of insect species that inhabit our planet, only a tiny fraction, far less than 1%, have been studied chemically. Our chemical ignorance of insects, and of invertebrates in general, has practical implications. Invertebrates are largely ignored in searches for chemicals of use, such as medicinals.
In our very limited studies at Cornell University, we have discovered cardiotonic substances in fireflies, sedatives in millipedes, and hormone analogs in carrion beetles. There is no telling what molecules or molecular processes might be uncovered if invertebrates were to be screened as intensely for chemicals as microorganisms and plants are. Truly frightening is the prospect that so many potentially useful chemicals from invertebrates will vanish as a consequence of species extinction before they have been discovered...."
If anyone is in doubt that Homo sapiens is digging its own grave, this should dispel it. Genetic information in the form of species, subspecies, varieties, and races are disappearing daily from that vast treasure trove bequeathed to us by nature. The Endangered Species Act is a treasure in this politically difficult world, but it can't even scratch the surface of the crisis. But it's all we have.
Started in 2006 by the United States Congress, Endangered Species Day is the third Friday of May.
Celebrate Endangered Species Day - May 15, 2009
On Friday, May 15, 2009 our nation will celebrate America’s commitment to protecting and recovering endangered species. As we well know in California, without the Endangered Species Act, our natural heritage would be hopelessly lost.
The goal of Endangered Species Day is simple – to educate people about the importance of protecting endangered species.
Click here to visit the Endangered Species Day website and:
* Find an event near you
* Get help in planning an event
* Request educational materials
* Sign a personal pledge
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2. Don't just celebrate Endangered Species Day--act on it:
ACTION ALERT – Join us to support the effort to Restore Sharp Park:
1. April 30, 2009 – 1 pm at San Francisco’s City Hall: The Board of Supervisors will consider Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi’s planning legislation to protect the endangered San Francisco garter snake and red-legged frog at the City-owned Sharp Park and to ensure that future uses of the Park are compatible with protecting its natural resources. Some golfers will oppose this basic planning document: they don’t want alternative uses to even be considered. And they will show up for the hearing. If we don’t get more people out to this hearing than they do, this basic step towards a better future may never occur. If you only attend one Board of Supervisors meeting this year, make it this one: please make time to join us because a show of public support will be essential to encourage the Board to pass the legislation.
2. Volunteer: Organizers of the Restore Sharp Park effort need volunteers to help with data entry and phone banking.
Contact Brent Plater (bplater@ggnrabigyear.org ) if you can help.
3. For more information and updates, please visit the Restore Sharp Park website at http://www.restoresharppark.org/, or contact Brent Plater at bplater@ggnrabigyear.org.
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3.
Hetch Hetchy is a grand landscape garden, one of nature’s rarest and most precious temples. As in Yosemite, the sublime rocks of its walls seem to glow with life…while birds, bees, and butterflies help the river and waterfalls to stir all the air into music…These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to hve a perfect contempt for Nature, and instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar…Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.
John Muir 1912
Restore the dream of John Muir. Restore Hetch Hetchy! Click Here to Donate
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4. The Department of Fish and Game (DFG) Fisheries Restoration Grant Program is soliciting proposals for fisheries restoration projects in California’s coastal watersheds. Proposal packages are due on May 15, 2009. The primary goal of this program is to ensure the survival and protection of coho salmon, steelhead trout, Chinook salmon and cutthroat trout in the state’s coastal watersheds.
Workshops, map of area where grant applies (all of western half of California is possible):
http://www.dfg.ca.gov/fish/Administration/Grants/FRGP/Solicitation.asp
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5. Hawk migration counters needed!
Each fall, the Bay Area is host to the largest numbers of raptors (birds of prey) in the Pacific States! Tens of thousands (of 20 species) of hawks, kites, eagles, osprey, falcons, vultures, and harriers can be seen migrating over the Golden Gate. We need your help keeping track of them all.
For more than twenty years, the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory (GGRO) has been training people from all over Northern California to identify, track, and monitor birds of prey. Hundreds of GGRO volunteers annually use counting, banding, and radiotracking techniques to keep a pulse on this immense raptor flight, and report our findings to state and federal officials. This spring we are holding our only new-volunteer recruitment classes for 2009 hawkwatchers. Come to a no-obligation informational talk at Ft. Mason in San Francisco to hear what’s required and included. You’ll get lots of time outside in the beautiful Marin Headlands, and you’ll give back to the environment while enjoying the hawks.
Volunteers must be at least 15 years of age and able to commit to one regular day in the Marin Headlands every two weeks, from mid-August through the beginning of December 2009, along with some weekend and evening trainings in July. The training schedule will be available at the meetings. Please join us for one of the three dates below to see if you want to help with this innovative conservation program:
Wednesday, April 29 from 7 to 9:30 pm; or
Thursday, April 30 from 7 to 9:30 pm; or
Saturday, May 2 from 10 am to 12:30 pm
All meetings will be held at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area headquarters, Building 201 at UPPER Fort Mason, in San Francisco. Enter Fort Mason at Franklin and Bay streets. For more information, call the GGRO at (415) 331-0730 or e-mail us at ggro@parksconservancy.org. You can also visit our website at www.ggro.org.
(Incidentally we just watched a spring migrating juvenile Bald Eagle cruise into Kirby Cove from across the Golden Gate, about 1 mile west of the GGBridge, then soar over the Marin Headlands and disappear north bound. A lovely big eagle holding its mouth agape for the heat.)
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6.
Title: Transition City
Date: April 29, 2009 - 7:30 p.m.
Place: CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission Street (@ 9th), San Francisco
Free & open to the public
Description: Permaculture transformation, redesigning and getting off the grid. How can urban dwellers begin immediately to move towards self-sufficiency? What are the impediments, what are the resources? We'll have several permaculture practitioners presenting step-by-step recommendations for the next six months, a 1-year and a 3-5 year transition. Is there a relationship with backyard habitat restoration?
Speakers: K. Ruby (sparkybeegirl.com), Chris Shein (Wildheart Gardens), Urban Permaculture Guild.
Contact: steward@natureinthecity.org, 415-564-4107
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7. San Francisco Beautiful 2009 Beautification Awards
Bring recognition to individuals, organizations, businesses and civic entities that have partnered to improve the quality of life in San Francisco. Nominate a project that has enriched the life of your community by enhancing the City's physical environment. Nominated projects must be located in San Francisco and visually or physically accessible to the general public. Due date for nominations is June 1st.
Special consideration will be given to those projects that reflect this year's theme, "Saving Our City: Beauty Has a Place". We are looking for beautification projects that happen due to creative thinking and collective efforts - even in the face of resource shortages (both financial and natural) and some urban planning policies that threaten neighborhood character. These beautification projects take many forms and happen everywhere - schools, parks, stairways, neighborhood historic districts and streetcar lines. These projects often start with a few people who have a vision and then a community force builds around them.
For details, call 415.421.2608x12 or visit www.sfbeautiful.org
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8.
Monday May 10 - Saturday May 16: 2nd Annual West Marin Bike to Work Week
The Environmental Action Committee of West Marin, League of American Bicyclists, and Black Mountain Cycles invite you to join us for West Marin Bike to Work week, running from May 10-16. Each day you bike to work or school that week in West Marin's communities, send an email to bikewestmarin@yahoo.com and we’ll enter a raffle ticket in your name, featuring prizes from local businesses. Visit eacmarin.org for more details.
Join us for “Bike to Work” Day on Thursday May 14. Join over 50,000 Bay Area residents and show your support for alternative transportation. To learn more call 663-9312 or go to http://btwd.bayareabikes.org/
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Green New Deal for the North Bay
How can we create a sustainable future that includes economic equity and social justice? How can agendas for labor rights and environmental protection become more integrated into progressive political work? The Green New Deal for the North Bay is a grassroots initiative aiming to help transform Marin and Sonoma Counties into a more resilient community guided by environmental sustainability, economic equity and social justice.
We see great opportunity for rethinking the way we live while planning a community response to coming changes in climate, energy and jobs. We want to hear from you about innovative, effective, practical ideas for achieving greater economic stability and equity within our region. Your voice is important for influencing decision-makers. Open Community Forums to HEAR from YOU:
May 8, 6:30 p.m. - San Rafael, CA - City Council Chambers
May 12, 7 p.m. - Point Reyes Station - The Dance Palace
May 16, 1 p.m. - Sea Ranch - Del Mar Center
May 19, 6:30 p.m. - Mill Valley - City Council Chambers
May 21, 6:30 p.m. - Sonoma - Community Center
May 30, 6L30 p.m. - Novato - School Board Meeting Room
TBD - Petaluma, CA
During the summer, the commission will assess the community input and schedule public hearings for the fall of 2009 to hear testimony from experts on such issues as food, housing, water, energy, health care and social equity. The Commission will then create a report outlining recommendations for government, businesses, community groups and other institutions with the goal of increasing community participation to reach our goals in the North bay. For more information, call 415-663-9674 or 707-227-0047
Your input is invited at a community forum on May 12 from 7-9 p.m. at the Dance Palace in Point Reyes Station. Call 415-717-6833 for details. Co-sponsored by the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin and Mainstreet Moms.
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9. Ian Wilson on de-baptism certificates:
"Every time the Pope says something outrageous we get another rush on the certificate"
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1891230,00.html
"Official estimates are that fewer than one million Britons regularly attend Sunday services, but there are currently 26 Church of England bishops sitting in the House of Lords. "With churches, everybody checks in, but nobody checks out," says Evans, who was baptized as an infant. "There's no exit strategy except the funeral.""
The population of the UK is about 60 million, so this means that only 1/60 Brits regularly attend Sunday services. Presumably this means that Hell will be full of my fellow-Brits, all complaining about the heat, lack of running water, how rude the staff are, etc. -- a fitting punishment I suppose. Ian
AND...(busy guy, this Ian):
Ian Wilson 6 April 09:
This Newsweek article is entitled "The End of Christian America". Hyperbole to be sure, still it's interesting (dare I say encouraging?):
http://www.newsweek.com/id/192583/output/print
Bill Maher used the Pew Forum Poll finding that "the percentage of people [in the US] who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith has doubled in recent years, to 16 percent" in his recent movie Religulous.
On a related theme, religious types often say that Darwin believed in God because he mentioned a "Creator" in the final paragraph of the Origin of Species. Indeed he did:
"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."
However:
http://www.csuchico.edu/~curbanowicz/DarwinDayCollectionOneChapter.html
The phrase 'by the creator,' in the final sentence of the selection chosen here, did not appear in the first edition of Origin of Species. It was added to the second edition to conciliate angry clerics. Darwin later wrote in a letter [to Joseph Hooker], "I have long since regretted that I truckled to public opinion and used the Pentateuchal term of creation, by which I really meant 'appeared' by some wholly unknown process."
This "truckling to public opinion" is the reason there probably won't be an atheist president of the United States during my lifetime. (In fact are there any US senators or congressmen who will openly admit to being atheists or at least agnostics?)
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10. LTEs, Scientific American, 5/09
Sir: "The Latest Face of Creationism," by Glenn Branch and Eugenie C. Scott, details the tactics of those agitating against the teaching of evolution in public schools. Scientists have, to some extent, contributed to creationists' arguments by using the term "theory" when referring to evolution. It is not a theory but an established law. Robin A. Cox, Scarborough, Ontario
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Sir: Simply suppressing the teaching of intelligent design (ID) sends the wrong message to students. They ought to learn that science is about understanding the world and that it proceeds in stages. The questions they should ask are, Does ID make predictions? And can those predictions be tested? If the answers to both are negative, they themselves can conclude that ID is "only a nonscientific theory." Oscar Estevez, University of Amsterdam Medical Center
Q :Why did the chicken cross the road?
Evolutionist: Pure chance.
Evolutionist: Only the fittest chickens survive crossing the road.
Creationist: God created the chicken on the other side of the road. There is no proof it ever was on this side.
Q: Why did the dinosaur cross the road? A: Chickens hadn't evolved yet.
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11. Cal-IPC's 2009 Northern California Field Courses!
Santa Rosa - Mountain Home Ranch - http://www.cal-ipc.org/fieldcourses/index.php#SR
May 13 - Biology & Identification
May 14 - Control Methods
Sign up before the end of April to receive the Early Bird Discount!
Santa Cruz Mountains - San Lorenzo Water District's Olympia Well Field - http://www.cal-ipc.org/fieldcourses/index.php#SCM
July 21 - Advanced Mechanical Control Methods NEW!
Click here to register now.
Cal-IPC's field courses train natural resource managers and restoration volunteers on all aspects of invasive weed management.
HUGE Discount for restoration volunteers! You qualify as a restoration volunteer if weed management is not part of your professional work and you volunteer for an organized restoration effort. Please tell your volunteers!
Registration and details at www.cal-ipc.org/fieldcourses/index.php
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And:
The California Invasive Plant Council invites abstracts for contributed papers and posters for our 17th Annual Symposium in Visalia! This year's theme is "The Leading Edge of Wildland Weed Management". Main Symposium webpage: http://www.cal-ipc.org/symposia/index.php
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12. Alice Polesky:
Also, I'm forwarding you another alert that I thought might be of interest, about the tragic numbers of bird deaths from towers.
As to the tower story, perhaps I'll post. I've already posted about birds crashing into night-lit downtown highrise buildings, and the windmill hazard is not new. However, this renewable energy craze is making me nervous. We don't ever think things through, we just lurch from one crisis to another without thinking first what might be the consequences of the new course we embark on. I used to think that we were beginning to learn that actions have consequences and that we should look before we leap. I don't think that anymore. I don't think we're capable of learning. (Do I sound depressed?)
Slaughter of birds by communications towers
It's hard to beat the power of pictures to bring words to life. Here is a URL that will help:
http://audubonaction.org/campaign/fcc_commtowers?rk=P13v%5fVS1Wi9NE
Last week, Audubon, Defenders of Wildlife, and the American Bird Conservancy petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to address the killing of millions of migratory birds from collisions with the more than 100,000 communications towers throughout the United States.
Now, we need your letters to support our petition. Please e-mail the FCC today.
The Problem
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that millions of birds are killed each year because of communications towers. Scientists have shown that—especially during bad weather conditions—migrating birds become disoriented and trapped by the halo of light surrounding towers using steady-burning illumination, circling endlessly until they either collide with the structure, collide with each other, or fall dead from exhaustion.
In one instance, an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 dead birds were documented at just three nearby towers in a single night!
The Solution
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has issued science-based guidelines on the siting and operation of these towers to minimize bird deaths. Unfortunately, the FCC—the government agency that licenses towers--has been dragging its feet implementing them for nearly a decade, despite repeated appeals by Audubon and other conservation groups; as well as independent scientists, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and even a federal court order.
With the annual spring bird migration underway, there is no better time to e-mail the FCC and urge them to take immediate action to prevent future migratory bird deaths at towers.
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13. Contributions from readers
Doug Allshouse:
Jake, I saw something this morning (Apr 22) that I have never seen in my life. About 6:15 I was beginning my morning walk, the sun was about to rise and I looked at the sliver of the crescent-Moon. Since the sky was half-bright (dull blue), Venus was visible, but it was positioned as though it was just peeking out from the dark side of the Moon, almost like it was eclipsed. What are the odds of that? I'm thinking that tomorrow morning the Moon and Venus will be farther apart. Doug*
Ooh, that hurts. I read Astronomy magazine every month, which always arrives a month early, in order to give amateur astronomers time to fill out their monthly calendar and prepare for observing events. (The June issue is due this week.) So events that won't happen for a month or more I usually jot down in notes or enter on my wall calendar. On receiving your note I got out the April issue, and sure enough there it was: a picture of the crescent moon with Venus immediately to the left of the unilluminated portion of the Moon--it was barely grazing the Moon! And the caption: "The Moon occults Venus the morning of April 22 for observers in the western two-thirds of North America." Damn!!
What a sight! And I missed it! Darn you. I'm raw with envy.
I need a secretary. And yes, Venus and the Moon will be substantially apart tomorrow morning.
**BTW, if you're wondering how Astronomy could show in February a photograph of the event that won't happen until April, it published a photo of the same phenomenon that took place in Europe last December--with a bonus: Besides Venus grazing the crescent Moon, Jupiter was thrown in on upper right--at no additional charge. So yes, it does happen. It's not rare, but it's not common either, and always exciting and dramatic when you see it. I'm now getting used to the world passing me by. With envy, Jake
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14. Feedback
Barbara Pitschel (regarding entrance fee to the SF Botanical Garden):
First of all, this was the first I had heard about the "cafe," which is a red herring to divert rational discussion from an issue that deserves serious discussion and consideration. I'm glad I waited, because Allan Ridley's discussion with Michael McKechnie and Michael's response in today's Nature News email clarify this discussion very well. There is no cafe planned at this time, and everything in the entire master plan would be inside existing buildings, as there are no changes planned to the footprint or envelope of buildings in Golden Gate Park. And these are not in any way part of this discussion.
What is my personal opinion? I am 100% in favor of this modest admission charge at this time. As Allan noted, the Library, the Bookstore, and the entire Entry Garden will be accessible outside the admission gate, with professional staff providing information to visitors about the resources they may choose to visit. And also, your point that a annual reasonable membership fee would provide unlimited admission and additional benefits is pivotal.
As Jake and Allan have noted, the Garden collections contain rare plants, plants that are being preserved from extinction in their native habitats, and plants of considerable interest and value. Yes, many people respect this living museum, but many others consider it a jogging trail, a pest-animal feeding place, a sporting ground, and even a place for illegal barbeques; apparently it appears somehow different from the other museums because it isn't indoors. Other people break in at night to steal plants and equipment, and I don't even want to talk about the flashers and the overnight campers who consider it a refuge. In this time of economic cutback, it is even more difficult to protect our unique resources. (And by ALL, I mean all of us--San Franciscans and people everywhere with environmental respect and concerns!)
The goal of the leaders of the Botanical Garden and the Botanical Garden Society is not to exclude people. They are trying to find the best possible ways to make these resources accessible to everyone who is interested in them, regardless of age or financial situation, and they are really hoping to work with people to address genuine concerns, rather than deal with the above-mentioned red herrings!
There are very few botanical gardens or arboreta anymore that are free of charge. As I have often said to groups for whom I have presented library orientations, without the work the SF Botanical Garden Society has contributed over the past nearly-sixty years SFBG would look more like Big Rec across the street. It does cost money to build, maintain, and preserve plant collections.
So thanks for requesting the opinion of a dedicated public-serving professional librarian, who has served the public free of charge for the past 28 years!!!
Gray Brechin:
Jake, Regarding your reader's (and your own) remarks on lawns in an arid climate, you probably know that Frederick Law Olmsted was — as usual — about a century ahead of his time when at the time of the Civil War he told the promoters who wanted him to lay out an English landscape like that of Central Park on the western SF dunes. He wrote to his wife "The sojourning habit of the people [here]... is shown in their want of interest in the fixed qualities of the place. Nobody knows what the trees and plants are." He proposed instead a linear park along what is now Van Ness Avenue planted largely with drought-adapted natives "acquired from the canons of the coast range," with a compact and more English-style park in the Duboce Triangle area in the lee of Buena Vista Hill and where there were springs. This is not what the promoters wanted, of course, and so he returned to the East to found the profession of landscape architecture and create parks across the country.
Twenty years later, Leland Stanford hired him to lay out his new university. He and Olmsted disagreed since Stanford wanted that old English landscape again and Olmsted insisted on one more suited to a Mediterranean climate so that precious water would not be squandered. They split the difference so that the central quadrangle is like a Spanish plaza but the Oval is a vast water-wasteful lawn. Of course, ever since Hetch Hetchy water came in, Stanford has thrived on the popular illusion that anything can and should grow in California — as long as you can use remote control technology to steal the water from somewhere and somethings else.
I didn't know that this is when he created the profession.
Sigh. If only our City fathers had listened to Olmsted. Vain regret. I spend a lot of my life regretting what might have been. I could never be a businessman or a politician, one who has to deal with realities. I much prefer a fact-based world, not one catering to narrow interests or distorted beliefs. It was not just San Francisco leaders, it was the whole American psychology of the time. Read Wallace Stegner's Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West. That pretty well lays out the fantasy that motivated this country, and still dominates it.
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15. Speaker Josef Halda is a noted botanist and seed collector from the Czech Republic, who has travelled the world to many obscure and botanically significant places to bring back unique collections of seed for sale. He is an expert and has written monographs on Primula, Daphne, Gentiana and Paeonia. His lectures are filled with exquisite, artistic and rare photos of plants in their native habitat.
"Trough Plants Czech Style" at the Lakeside Garden Center (in Oakland near Lake Merritt) on Wednesday, April 29, at 7:30 PM.
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16. Glum picture painted by Lester Brown
Anxiety-producing events in this over-anxious world are not items I like to post in this newsletter. However, in the case of an article in the May 2009 Scientific American titled 'Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?', there seems no point in trying to ignore the situation portrayed. Lester Brown, in the words of the Washington Post, is "one of the world's most influential thinkers", and similar accolades have been bestowed on him throughout the world.
However, the accolades are not why I am taking him seriously. I take him seriously because I have "written" (ie, composed in my head) the same article, and the facts Brown cites are well-known to anyone paying attention in recent decades: water shortages, soil losses, and rising temperatures are placing severe limits on food production. Without massive and rapid intervention to address these three environmental factors, a series of government collapses could threaten the world order. (Save Haiti, the 20 countries closest to collapse are in Africa and Asia. There is no way to isolate disorder; it spreads like the plague--or, more apt, like a tsunami.)
I find it difficult to envision the collapse of civilization. That is a problem. Nobody can; it is an abstract concept. We mouth it often, but it lacks reality. The collapse of civilization is beyond anything we can imagine; there has never been anything like it in history. My head is totally convinced that we are heading toward an unmanageable condition, yet I am unable to believe it. If I have a problem envisioning it, what about the several billion who are too busy surviving to another day to take notice--and who do not even have the facts to be noticed? The leaders of those people must respond to their people's immediate needs. Even in the U.S., where we have data pouring into our brains at an unassimilable rate, we still can't entertain this catastrophic event seriously.
President Obama plans to allow "12 million" (actually probably 20 million) illegal immigrants to obtain citizenship. Possibly he knows better but is forced into it by the politics. We have been declaring amnesty and granting citizenship to illegal immigrants many times, and apparently will continue until the situation becomes untenable and results in violence.
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17. The Malthusian question
…Yet human numbers continue to swell, at more than 9,000 an hour, 80 million a year, a rate that threatens a doubling in less than 50 years. To make matters worse, human numbers threaten the survival of other species.
Malthus's arguments were part of the inspiration for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, and they have validity in the natural world. On the savannah, in the rainforests, and across the tundra, animal populations explode when times are good, and crash when they are not. Is Homo sapiens an exception? Perhaps. Humans can consider each other's needs, and cooperate; there is also plenty of evidence that they choose not to. The Optimum Population Trust does not have the answers, but the questions remain, quite literally, vital.
Guardian Weekly editorial excerpt 27.03.09
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18. Half empty or half full
People are typically biased toward noticing either good or bad events, and a common genetic variation may underlie such tendencies for optimism or pessimism...The findings in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, help to explain why people may be less prone to anxiety and depression and could lead to therapies that help some look on the bright side.
Caption (to a picture of a spider and a stack of chocolates): What do you prefer to look at? Optimists tend to pay attention to images of chocolate and avoid pictures of spiders; pessimists do the opposite.
From Scientific American, 5/09
(JS: I looked at the spider. Is that because I'm interested in natural history, or because I'm a pessimist? Or both?)
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19. Quote of the week
President Ahmadinejad of Iran said after a highly controversial speech at a UN racism conference his purpose had been to promote "international love and tolerance".
Mr. Ahmadinejad, I'd like to introduce you to Mr Rush Limbaugh. Mr Limbaugh, Mr Ahmadinejad.
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20. Notes & Queries, Guardian Weekly
(JS: Notes & Queries is placed in a section of the weekly called Diversions.)
How much chaos and mayhem can one stand?
Why do Notes & Queries respondents display such a dismal sense of humour? What about some serious answers to interesting questions?
This is an interesting question, so I will respond with a serious answer: most of the questions in Notes & Queries are nonsensical, and therefore easy prey for "silly answers". Moreover, since this column is titled Diversions, it is obviously intended as a pleasurable distraction, and not meant to be pondered over by pundits or dissected by an elite of intellectuals.
Of course, there are serious question-and-answer columns in most world-class publications, but they are generally simplistic, boring, and, unfortunately, invite the opining of egomaniacs and mental cases. Frankly, I welcome Notes & Queries for interjecting a note of humour in an otherwise intolerable world of economic recession, war, crime, disease, illiteracy, religious and political strife, and perhaps one of the most pitiful of all human failings - those who lack of a sense of humour. Les Dreyer, New York City, US
Any answers?
Why is black black, brown brown but yellow blond?
Jonathan Seyghal, Berlin, Germany
When can air travel to a conference about sustainability be justified?
Chris Watson, Wellington, New Zealand
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21. Antarctica
Cruise ships visiting Antarctica carrying more than 500 passengers will be prohibited from landing anyone. Only 100 visitors are to be allowed on shore at any given time. the limits, agreed by 28 countries that have signed the Antarctic treaty, were decided after figures showed that visitor numbers had risen from 6,700 in 1992 to more than 45,000. Guardian Weekly
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Special to Bayview Hill-Jake Sigg's Nature News
1. Sunday Streets, April 26: safe, car-free, fun
2. CNPS Santa Clara Valley 37th Annual Wildflower Show April 26
3. Alternatives to avoid planting problem pests
4. UC Botanical Garden Spring Plant Sale April 25
5. San Francisco International Film Festival programs on the environment
6. Contributions from readers: seed balls, lawn substitutes, water: charge for it?
7. More water
8. How to ensure the environment is properly accounted for?
9. The Public Lands Service Corps Act, H.R. 1612
10. Feedback: Charge for SF Botanical Garden?/chemical companies v the Obama garden
11. Donate towards Charlie Wms 545-mile AIDS LifeCycle
12. Brisbane City Council needs information on managing wetlands
13. Obama derangement syndrome: How do we tackle long-range problems?
14. The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-first Century
15. How big is a trillion? How many days since AD 1?
16. The most efficient life form on earth
17. Every human problem, every human need, will be solved by the market
18. April 23 is the birthday of the great satirist, Art Hoppe. Oh how we need him in these dark times
1.
Sunday Streets 2009
April 26, 2009, *9 a.m.-1 p.m.
Route: AT & T Park (4th and King Streets) to Aquatic Park (Jefferson and Hyde) along The Embarcadero
Web site: www.SundayStreetsSF.com
Sunday Streets is an initiative dedicated to bringing safe, fun, car-free places for people to get out and get active in San Francisco neighborhoods on Sunday mornings.
*Fisherman's Wharf Community Benefit District Health, Fitness & Safety Fair at Aquatic Park, presented in conjunction with Sunday Streets from 10- 4 p.m. Sunday Streets Concert at PIER 39 from 12-3 p.m.
Sunday, May 10: 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
Route: Waterfront Route in the Southeast Sector, highlighting the San Francisco Bay Trail, which is celebrating its 20th Anniversary in May. From AT&T Park to the Bayview Opera House, along the Bay.
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2.
37th Annual Wildflower Show
Saturday & Sunday, April 25 & 26 - 10am to 4pm.
Mission College, Hospitality Management Building, 3000 Mission College Boulevard, Santa Clara.
This two-day expo showcases the plant biodiversity of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties. The region's premier botanical/horticultural event displays over 400 species of wildflowers and native plants, each accurately labeled, many suitable for the home garden. Free classes on native plant identification and gardening with native plants. On sale: native plants, books, posters, seeds, and note cards. Children's activities table. Parking free in Lot C only. Sponsored by California Native Plant Society, Santa Clara Valley Chapter, and the Mission College Biological Sciences Department. For more information, visit www.cnps-scv.org,email cnps_scv@yahoo.com, or call 650-941-1068.
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3. Alternatives to avoid planting problem pests, by Joe Eaton and Ron Sullivan
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/04/12/HO6B166O1P.DTL
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4.
UC Botanical Garden Spring Plant Sale
Saturday 25 April - 9 am - 2 pm
http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu
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5.
San Francisco International Film Festival
April 23 to May 7, 2009
The San Francisco International Film Festival brings the best of world cinema to the Bay Area and will present several films on the environment, including A Sea Change, featuring stunning underwater footage in its discovery of the consequences of global warming on undersea life.
For tickets and information, visit sffs.org
A Sea Change
USA 2009
Dir. Barbara Ettinger
Grandfather Sven Huseby embarks on a quest to learn about the dire consequences of global warming on undersea life. Using stunning underwater footage and stark interviews, this documentary sounds the alarm about ocean acidification but conveys hope for the future.
The film screens on April 25 at 3:45PM, on April 27 at 6:15PM, and on April 30 at 1:30PM
at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas.
For more information on Sea Change visit http://fest09.sffs.org/films/film_details.php?id=79
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6. Contributions from readers
Robert Hall:
If you have time, check out this article on seed bombing empty lots. All Things Considered, April 15:
Environmentalists Adopt New Weapon: Seed Ball
Thanks, Robert. I heard the broadcast, and it made me a tad nervous. Not that there was anything wrong with what is described in this story. But it is a simplistic approach, and the world is very complicated. If the activity is confined to an urban situation where natural ecosystems are absent, there is no harm. But most cities--including Chicago and San Francisco (the third densest city in the U.S.)--have fragments of the original landscape with denizens of that original landscape, and these areas are without price. Scattering seed there may have unknown or unintended consequences, and may upset an existing natural balance. Conservationists should be conservative.
It may make people feel good, even "in control of their lives". It gives the media a story, but I wonder if there are lasting effects, and if those effects are positive or negative.
Amy Dawson:
FYI, I was out birdwatching from the Emeryville spit towards the approach to the Bay Bridge, and ended up talking to some of the firemen at the firehouse about the shorebirds and the molten metal from the Judson Steel factory. One firefighter happened to mention that last weekend the leopard sharks were in the area - he said over five thousand come in to mate right in that area between the firehouse and the bridge! Do you know anything about this?
On Apr 14, 2009, at 12:55 AM, Adah Bakalinsky wrote:
Jake, do you know of any company or institute that is doing research on a ‘grass’substitute that needs neither water nor fertilizer; looks green and inviting to sit upon. Adah B/
Oh, Adah, you're confusing this life with the afterlife. Wait until you die and go to heaven; there are none of these problems there. Google Elysian Fields.
In the 1950s, when I started my occupation as a gardener, Sunset magazine was promoting the No Mow Lawn: dichondra. That fad didn't last long, although it was big business while it lasted. Landscape companies made lots of money tearing up lawns, installing dichondra, selling fertilizer and fungicides to apply to it. So they were happy. The customers were less so: The dichondra stained clothing, and shortly developed fungus problems from all that unaccustomed fertilizer and water. Then the landscapers made lots more money ripping up the dichondra and reinstalling lawns. It's the American Way; that's how we got rich.
I hope you don't mind my having a little fun at your expense. Truth is, the gods couldn't care less about us humans and our wants. We want control, but the gods have made it clear that we're not going to get it. First off, this is California, a mediterranean-type climate with long, dry summers--and it's hot away from the coast. So maintaining a green lawn takes lots of doing, as you're fighting nature--a formidable foe, as any gardener can tell you.
Some people have made compromises that they are able to live with by planting some drought-tolerant native bunchgrasses, such as red fescue. These lawns are primarily dependent on rainfall, although they are usually given a small assist by light watering into late spring, and resuming watering in the autumn. They can tolerate a modicum of traffic, but not heavy use. If they are not going to walk or sit on them, people also introduce a few native wildflowers, including bulbs, such as blue dicks, Ithuriel's spear, and mariposa lily. I am talking only conceptually here, and this is not a recipe to be followed, as there are devils in the details.
As for gods and other worlds I have a story. I like to listen to conversations while I walk. A few weeks ago, I heard someone walking behind me on Pine St. so I slowed down feeling she (her heels were clicking,) wanted to talk. Well, she did. And complained about too much rain, too much wind, too cold.
Then she stopped talking for a few seconds. Suddenly, she pronounced, “ Well, you can’t blame god for what Mother Nature does.!”
And she turned the corner at Polk. In one brilliant stroke she got god off the hook. So now, I always write and speak Mother Nature in capitals. adah b
A final word: the SF Dept of Environment sponsors a panel The Lawn Goodbye at the main library on June 24. Fred Bove and I will discuss this subject. I'll send a notice as we get nearer the event.
Sue Hubbard:
Jake: In your 4/16 newsletter in Awash with Waste you quote the Economist as saying water would be used more efficiently if it was charged for. I am not at all sure this is true – paying a monthly water bill does not mean water is used wisely. It also leads to situations like on the Monterey Peninsula where homeowners almost never get water rights to build an extra bathroom but there always seems to be water rights available for hotels and other large developments. In addition the statement does not say who will do the charging. It says politicians can not do this so it would seem to suggest corporations should be the ones. Corporations are eager to profit by charging to supply us with water. However, attempts to privatize city water supplies have often not been successful with higher prices and less service. When Bechtel took over the city water supply in Cochabamba, Bolivia price increases led to riots which only ended when the city kicked Bechtel out. I am not opposed to paying for water but I do think decisions about local water should be made locally and not in some far off corporate headquarters. I also think, we as a society have to ensure that water is available to everyone – even those who cannot pay.
Thanks for the newsletter – I really enjoy the variety of topics you cover.
I am in total agreement with you (I think). I am very aware of the Cochabama fiasco. I was appalled when they first privatized it and delighted when the people took matters into their own hands. The Economist acknowledged serious problems in this kind of arrangement. I don't know just where they stand on privatizing. But I thought the article pointed up questions and problems that need to be considered--and will have to be considered as population burgeons and water problems multiply. In the Central Valley cheap water has allowed the growing of water-guzzling crops like cotton, rice, alfalfa. The acreage devoted to some of these crops has decreased about one-third now that the price of water has tripled because of water scarcity. Market-priced water is introducing a little sanity.
In San Francisco, where not that long ago the more water you consumed the lower the rate for additional units. We changed that so that the rate escalates when consumption increases, an acknowledgment that everyone needs a certain basic amount. The Economist is biased toward free enterprise v. govt. However, to my knowledge it has not advocated privatizing water, merely devising a system that recognizes its scarcity and its worth. Correct me if I'm wrong.
“When the well’s dry, we’ll know the value of water." Benjamin Franklin
This is a complex subject which we are not paying sufficient attention to, just as we ignore the problem of population--and the two are intimately related. Take a glance at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5269296.stm
“Twenty percent more water than is now available will be needed to feed the additional three billion people who will be alive by 2025.” World Commission on Water for the 21st Century
“Because of population growth, California will be chronically short of water by 2010.” (Association of California Water Agencies)
A river is water in its loveliest form; rivers have life and sound and movement and infinity of variation, rivers are veins of the earth through which the life blood flows to the heart. RODERICK HAIG-BROWN
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7. Water: from Jeffrey Caldwell
Over the weekend I watched Flow: For the Love of Water (2008) - http://www.flowthefilm.com/, a documentary I rented from Netflix.
I saw all the DVD "extras" as well ... and considered every one worthwhile. (It was tough for them to distill over 300 hours of footage into an 84 minute film!)
Flow: For the Love of Water is an overview of water developments and possiblities, ominious and hopeful, especially the provision of water and the control of water, worldwide ... how these developments and possibilities are all linked, what is happening there (wherever) also has relevance here (wherever) ...None of it I'd have wanted to miss, though to pick and choose among the extras I'm especially glad to have seen:
Deleted Scenes: River Linkage in India;
Expanded Interviews: Jean Luc Touly, former accountant, Vivendi/Veolia Corp., and Oscar Olivera, Bolivian Activist, Leader of the 2000 Cochabamba "Water Wars";
Call to Resistance: Sunita Narain: Fighting the Drink Companies;
Additional Clips: "City Water Supply, 1941", an old educational short explaining New York City's early water infrastructure development.
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8. Environmental values
How to ensure the environment is properly accounted for
ANY attempt to put an economic value on fresh air, clean water or tropical rainforests can offend the delicate sensibilities of those who argue that the conservation of nature is a moral duty. Yet although the best things in life appear to be free, that does not mean they are without financial value. It simply means that nobody asks you to pay when, for example, you watch a beautiful sunset over the hills.
Putting a financial value on the environment, however, may be the most important thing that people can do to help nature conservation. When governments allocate money, they do so according to where it will bring benefit. If a government is unaware of the value of a landscape to its tourism, or of a swamp to its fishing industry—and thus its foreign-exchange income—then it will invest too little in managing these resources. Worse, if the true value of a forest or swamp is hidden, governments may destroy it by subsidising the conversion of the land to agriculture. The costs are unknown for now, but may appear eventually as the price of building a filtration plant to remove the sediment from the water that the forest once took care of, or the price of importing food when fish vanish.
Shutterstock
Some estimates of the annual contribution of coastal and marine ecosystems to the global economy exceed $20 trillion, over a third of the total gross national product (GNP) of all the countries of the world. Even so, says Katherine Sierra of the World Bank, such ecosystems are typically much undervalued when governments made decisions about development.
Glenn-Marie Lange, also of the World Bank, attended a meeting in Washington DC organised by her employer to launch its report “Environment Matters” on April 6th. She told participants that one of the reasons why ecosystems become degraded is that their value to local people is often small. As a result, these people do not have much reason to manage their resources carefully. She estimates, for example, that only 36% of the income generated by the coastal and marine environments in Zanzibar goes to locals. Most of this comes from fishing; only a tiny fraction of the money from tourism ends up local hands.
More broadly, Dr Lange wants the value of the environment to be integrated into national and local accounting. She argues that governments should identify the contributions that marine ecosystems make to their countries’ GNPs and foreign-exchange earnings. She also wants them to examine whether or not they are running down their countries’ “natural capital”.
Emily Cooper of the World Resources Institute, an environmental think-tank, put some figures on the value of tourism, recreation, fisheries and shoreline protection in Belize. It was an impressive $395m to $559m. The entire economy was worth about $1.3 billion in 2007. These figures, she thinks, have allowed environmentalists to protect Belize’s threatened mangrove forests better.
For too long, an absence of proper green accounting has allowed people to privatise the gains from the environment but socialise the costs, to paraphrase Carl Safina, an American scientist and environmentalist at the meeting. As Dr Safina puts it, “conservation is not a trade-off between the economy and the environment. It is a trade off between the short and long term.”
The Economist, 13 April 2009
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9. The Public Lands Service Corps Act (H.R. 1612) will expand service opportunities for national parks and other public lands through important expansions to the existing Public Lands Corps. Take action: http://act.npca.org/campaign/servicecorpscosponsor?rk=e73cnV1qX7bBE
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10. Feedback
Kathy Schrenk:
That letter to Michelle Obama is hilarious! The scary thing is, people like my right-wing relatives in the midwest support the chemical companies. Last time I talked to my mother-in-law about such things she started spouting some tripe about Monsanto "feeding the world"!?!? They really do think organic foods hurt farmers. Oops, all the small farmers got replaced by Monsanto-fed farms!
This is going in my blog...
Christine Colasurdo:
Hello Jake, I am very interested in the proposal of charging a fee to enter Strybing Arboretum. I used to explore and enjoy the garden several times a month when I lived in San Francisco. I appreciated it very much that is was free. But if I had had to join as a member and enter as a member, I would have done that too, gladly. I think users should indeed help support something they use and enjoy. I don't think that's commercialization necessarily. Strybing is not a true "commons" because it's not a city park; it's a private nonprofit organization inside of GG Park.
Up here in Portland we have Hoyt Arboretum (part of Portland Parks) and the Japanese Garden, which is a lot like Strybing (a well-maintained private garden inside of a larger publicly-owned city park). Hoyt Arboretum is free; the Japanese Garden charges admission but is free to members. I think Strybing would be wise to follow the Japanese Garden model. The organization thrives on membership dues and yet is not too expensive for occasional visitors/tourists. So if you're a member, it's free, and you can visit all you want.
The Japanese Garden does not have a cafe. Nor does it allow visitors to even eat a bag lunch in the garden. But it does have member events with food. I don't think Strybing needs a cafe. There are several cafes within a stone's throw of its entrance.
Allan Ridley:
After reading the exchange between you and Dennis Antenore, I checked with Michael McKechnie about any Cafe plans for the SFBG.
As you may know, the SFBG has been involved in quite a back & forth with the Sierra Club about the new greenhouse proposal. They currently plan to oppose the SFBG plan at every step possible despite the need, logic of placement, ultra-green technology (living roof, reclaimed water sys., short flat road to existing gate on South Drive, etc.) I simply can not fathom their reasoning on this issue....BUT they use every little argument they can think up and exaggerate, to raise public suspicion and concern about what is happening in the Garden.
My point is that this cafe issue is another such diversion. The real discussion - as you suggest in your comments - needs to focus on the SFBG as a "museum of plants" a world class collection of plants - some of which especially from the collections of Dennis Breedlove in the Mexican Cloud forest, may actually no longer exist in the wild. This is a special place not just another pleasant, easily accessible greensword in GGP (albeit free of DOGs, bikes, skateboards and balls) A benefit of admission fees would be increased security, tighter entry control (the presence bikes and dogs both seem to be increasing in my recent experience) and funds to get the Garden fully staffed with knowledgeable gardners, the new plant prop. facility etc. The SFBG are a special place.
Enough of my rant, here'ds what Michael McKechnie had to say in response to my question about the "cafe".:
There are no current plans for a cafe and no money to develop it. There is a future planned small cafe and visitor center tucked into the east end of the Gallery in the County Fair Building in the Master Plan. This would serve any visitor and would definitely be in the main gate area that includes the library, bookstore and County Fair Building. The visitor center and cafe would not add additional built footprint to the Garden but would use existing built space reconfigured for these purposes.
Thanks very much for the clarification, Allan. I can't keep up with all the detail and the research needed for some of my posted stories, so I depend on readers to provide facts and perspective. I suspected that any future cafe would have to be in the current County Fair Bldg, as I couldn't see any possibility of an added structure in the park, which would encounter overwhelming opposition.
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11. From Charlie Williams:
Thanks so much to everyone who has sent me messages of support and/or made donations towards my participation in the AIDS LifeCycle this year. I understand that we are in a recession so I really appreciate your contributions - every little bit counts. Thanks to your support I have been able to get to one-third of the way to my goal - I am at $1700.00 so far!
AIDS LifeCycle is a 545 mile bike ride over 7 days from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise funds that make a world of difference for people living with HIV and AIDS (http://www.aidslifecycle.org/). This year it will take place between May 31 and June 6th. The ride is a huge physical challenge--I did it last year--that I am ready to tackle - I have put in a lot of miles on my bike so far in preparation and will continue to do so right up until the ride.
I still need to reach my goal of $3000 in order to participate this year by May 28th. Fund raising has been tough so I am planning some additional fund raising events and widening my donor pool search to help close the gap. I could use your help and am asking those of you who are able to support me through a donation, of any amount, to visit my personal page and make a tax deductible donation at http://www.tofighthiv.org/goto/Charlie.Williams. As I said, I am aware that we are in a recession and understand if you are not able to make a financial contribution at this time - just having your moral support will be added motivation to get up those hills on the way to LA.
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12. From Dana Dillworth:
Dear Wetlands Advocate,
On April 13th the City of Brisbane's Open Space Consultant Mr. Peter Dangermond made a presentation to receive comment on the progress of defining Open Space for the Brisbane Baylands. If you would like to add to the public record, send comments to cityhall@ci.brisbane.ca.us
While it is closer than ever to the important things necessary for maintaining vital wetlands out there, there were a few omissions. One issue is CA Fish and Game's no-net loss of wetlands policy and the way that the consultant has re-arranged the wetlands, substituting saltwater marsh along the lagoon for freshwater marsh that we have been watching, helping, and documenting for years.
The second issue being that the Public Open Space areas chosen are the most toxic. While wetlands are an important function in cleansing toxic areas...there hasn't been a study as to the extent of wetlands needed to do the job.
One member of the public noticed that no wetlands are proposed for the east side of the tunnel near the tank farm. This is an area with a small vernal pool and lots of frog habitat. The proposal from our Parks and Recreation Committee is for soccer fields and a charter high school.
The good things this plan shows is a better connection of the Levinson Marsh to the Baylands showing up as "Detention Pond" west of the Round House which shows up as "Civic-Cultural Envelope." It is still a meager, bottlenecked habitat with roads to contend with.
You have to be aware that council members were talking about how wetlands stink and they do nothing half of the year. PLEASE EDUCATE MY CITY COUNCIL. My response was that it still is providing habitat and that it is a reflection of poor management (pesticides and flushing the lagoon,) not an evil to be eliminated or marginalized.
Additional info:
Proposed map: http://www.ci.brisbane.ca.us/Upload/Document/D240003541/Map.pdf
or contact Dana Dillworth at earthhelp@earthlink.net
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13. Obama derangement syndrome
The president is driving some people mad. That may be to his advantage in the short term
...It is hard to judge so early in the game what the rise of anti-Obama sentiment means for the Obama presidency. Bush-hatred eventually spread from a molten core of leftists to set the cultural tone of the country. But Obama-hatred could just as easily do the opposite and brand all conservatives as a bunch of Obama-hating cranks.
What is clear is that the rapid replacement of Bush-hatred with Obama-hatred is not healthy for American politics, particularly given the president’s dual role as leader of his party and head of state. A majority of Republicans (56%) approved of Jimmy Carter’s job performance in late March 1977. A majority of Democrats (55%) approved of Richard Nixon’s job performance at a comparable point in his first term. But today polarisation is almost instant, thanks in part to the growing role of non-negotiable issues such as abortion in American politics, in part to the rise of a media industry based on outrage, and in part to a cycle of tit-for-tat demonisation. This is not only poisoning American political life. It is making it ever harder to solve problems that require cross-party collaboration such as reforming America’s health-care system or its pensions. Unfortunately, the Glenn Becks of this world are more than just a joke.
Excerpt from Lexington in The Economist
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14.
The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-first Century
Jacqueline Olds MD, Richard S. Schwartz MD
The personal and societal effects of the unheralded epidemic of social isolation in America
In today's world, it is more acceptable to be depressed than to be lonely--yet loneliness appears to be the inevitable byproduct of our frenetic contemporary lifestyle. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, one out of four Americans talked to no one about something of importance to them during the last six months. Another remarkable fact emerged from the 2000 U.S. Census: more people are living alone today than at any point in the country's history-fully 25 percent of households consist of one person only. In this crucial look at one of America's few remaining taboo subjects--loneliness--Drs. Jacqueline Olds and Richard S. Schwartz set out to understand the cultural imperatives, psychological dynamics, and physical mechanisms underlying social isolation.
In The Lonely American, cutting-edge research on the physiological and cognitive effects of social exclusion and emerging work in the neurobiology of attachment uncover startling, sobering ripple effects of loneliness in areas as varied as physical health, children's emotional problems, substance abuse, and even global warming. Surprising new studies tell a grim truth about social isolation: being disconnected diminishes happiness, health, and longevity; increases aggression; and correlates with increasing rates of violent crime. Loneliness doesn't apply simply to single people, either-today's busy parents "cocoon" themselves by devoting most of their non-work hours to children, leaving little time for friends, and other forms of social contact, and unhealthily relying on the marriage to fulfill all social needs.
As a core population of socially isolated individuals and families continues to balloon in size, it is more important than ever to understand the effects of a culture that idealizes busyness and self-reliance. It's time to bring loneliness-a very real and little-discussed social epidemic with frightening consequences-out into the open, and find a way to navigate the tension between freedom and connection in our lives.
From Cambridge Forum
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15. LTE, Guardian Weekly
Sir: I was intrigued by Marcus du Sautoy's article in which he encourages comprehension of how big a trillion is. I have always sensed it by the fact that since the beginning of AD 1 we have not yet, in 2009, experienced a million days in total; by my calculation the millionth day will occur sometime towards the end of 2739AD.
Neil H Turnbull, West Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
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16. The most efficient life form on earth
Ants have been architects, farmers and skilled specialists for over 150m years. Their collegiate lives make perfect research models, says Alok Jha
…Ants eat the same resources as solitary insects but they have been far more successful. Why? “that’s easy”, says (E.O. Wilson. “they live in groups.” Ant colonies range from a dozen to millions of insects, mostly sterile females in specific jobs as workers, soldiers or caretakers, with one or sometimes a few reproductive females presiding over the entire brood. Any males are usually temporary, drones kept long enough to inseminate the queen, then driven out of the nest or killed. A queen can store the sperm from a male for a decade or more, using it over time to fertilise millions of eggs. This system has worked well for them. “They really did, through the powers of evolution, discover the major principles in industrial revolution – but their revolution came tens of millions of years before ours,” says (a researcher studying social insects).
…Their work rate is astonishing. A nest of Atta ants can defoliate a citrus tree in a day and, in the South American rainforest, they typically harvest about a fifth of the annual growth – more vegetation than any other animal. In a single lifetime, a leaftcutter colony turns over and aerates 40 tonnes of soil. The farms can include livestock, too. Many ant colonies keep aphids, tranquillising them with drugs to keep them docile and “milking” them* with their antennae for sugary honeydew.
…What makes ants far more than a scientific curiosity is that this collective behaviour from chemical-sensing automatons hints at similar systems in humans too. Neurons are individually dumb but, with billions of them working together in our brains reacting to levels of neurotransmitter chemicals, something creative and remarkable emerges. “Maybe our own brains are using these thresholds,” says (a researcher). “When you model ants and when you model the brain, there are some great similarities.
…The sophisticated genetic blueprint hidden within ants that led Wilson and Hoelldobler to propose a new class of life: the superorganism. “A superorganism is a closely knit group that divides labour among its members altruistically,” says Wilson. “There are individuals who reproduce in the group and are promoted to be reproducers, and those that do not reproduce and are workers. This allows the group to function as a giant organism.”
That’s a neat description of an ant colony; think of a superorganism as a creature that can stretch out limbs to be in many places at once, going out to forage for food and then withdrawing into the nest. In their recent book, Superorganism, Wilson and Hoelldobler describe their idea by comparing each ant in a colony with a cell in the human body, specialized for a task and working (to its own probably death) for the good of the organism as a whole.
…The next big step in biology, according to Wilson, is to find out how groups of social creatures organize themselves into superorganiss. “We live in a world of ants,” he says, “and it’s time we woke up to our little six-legged neighbours.”
Excerpted from Guardian Weekly 20.03.09
* (Sounds just like human society.)
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LTE, Guardian Weekly
...Alok Jha's article, 'The most efficient life form on earth' refers to the impact of 14,000-plus species of ants being minimal compared to the impact of humans. The major difference between them is that ants have been around for 140m years and Homo sapiens for only perhaps 150,000 years. The human race is probably now on the road to extinction, whereas the ant is very likely to be around for another 150m years or more. Surely that is wonderful! Clare Owen, Lusaka, Zambia
[The water, the population, the climate crises bring to mind that wonderful Tom Toles cartoon of two cockroaches talking (from memory, not verbatim): "When they said there would be only one species left, they thought it would be them." (In the little picture in the bottom corner): "Too bad we're too primitive to appreciate the irony."]
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17. I shop, therefore I am.
“Their god is the market—every human problem, every human need, will be solved by the market. Their dogma is the literal reading of the creation story in Genesis where humans are to have “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the Earth, and over every creeping thing...” The administration has married that conservative dogma of the religious right to the corporate ethos of the profits at any price. And the result is the politics of exploitation with a religious impulse. Meanwhile, over a bilion people have no safe drinking water. We’re dumping 500 million tons of hazardous waste into the Earth every year. In the last hundred years alone we’ve lost over 2 billion hectares of forest, our fisheries are collapsing, our coral reefs are dying because of human activity. These are facts. So what is the administration and Congress doing? They’re attacking the very cornerstones of environmental law: The Clea Air Act, the Clean Water Act, NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act). They are allowing 17,000 power plants to create more pollution. They are opening public lands to exploitation...The Interior Department is the biggest scandal of all. Current Secretary Gale Norton and her number two man, J. Steven Griles, head a fifth column that is trying to sabotage environmental protection at every level. Griles has more conflicts of interest than a dog has fleas. The giveaway of public resources at Interior is the biggest scandal of its kind since the Teapot Dome corruption. You have to go all the way back to the crony capitalism of the Harding administration to find a president who invited such open and crass exploitation of the common wealth.”
---Bill Moyers, winner of 30 Emmy Awards for broadcast journalism, in an interview with Grist Magazine (I lost the date; the interview was several years ago)
Corporation, n. – An ingenious device for securing individual profit without individual responsibility.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
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18. A special person from my personal pantheon: Art Hoppe: 23 April 1925 - 3 February 2000
(April 23 is also the birthday of a less-well-known author, William Shakespeare)
You can find much more information from this delightful writer and human being on the internet. The following are disjointed lines cobbled together from the San Francisco Chronicle obituary and other sources:
His satire is as wickedly funny as ever, his straight columns can be unflinchingly bold and righteous, but he remains the nicest, most unassuming, most unfailingly gracious person in the office.
Somehow all of those qualities come through in his column, which helps explain his legion of loyal fans. It also keeps his political detractors thoroughly flustered.
In keeping with his smile-and-a-wink demeanor, Hoppe has a favorite response to letters from his more intemperate critics. "I'm sorry, if you continue to complain, I will have to cancel your subscription."
It is safe to assume that few ever took him up on the challenge. Hoppe's column has a habit-forming quality.
Hoppe's son, Nick, said that (his father's) book's Having a Wonderful Time -- My First Half Century as a Newspaperman) modest sales were a source of amusement to their author. "Dad always said," he recalled, "that some people collect rare books and that he writes them."
Self-deprecating remarks were a specialty. The best thing about being a columnist, he once wrote, is being "able to say exactly what I think . . . I've always claimed that I enjoy the utmost in freedom of the press because the publisher doesn't read my output."
But the publisher did read Hoppe's column, and so did the rest of Hoppe's colleagues, with admiration and awe.
Hoppe gave birth in his column to a cast of whimsical characters -- confused redneck Joe Sikspak, lowly Private Oliver Drab, an earnestly unelectable Harvard-educated gorilla, the all-knowing expert Homer T. Pettibone, the celestial Heavenly Landlord and a presidential candidate named Nobody -- who assisted their creator in his self-described lifelong campaign of tilting at windmills.
His columns spanned the presidencies of Just Plain Jack; Elbie Jay; Nick Dixon; the Scoutmaster, Jiminy Beaver; Sir Ronald of Holyrude; Mr. Lifestyles of the Rich and Humble; and Billy Boomer, Boy President.
Like many humorists, he was grateful for the 1968 election of such handy subjects as Nixon and his Vice President Spiro Agnew, whose photographs he kept on his office wall and whose resignations, he often moped, robbed him of years of additional copy.
"I had always thought, and still do, that Mr. Nixon's basic problem over the years was his, forgive the word, insecurity . . . He always seemed ill at ease. His suits -- he never wore anything else -- didn't fit quite right; his sense of humor was nonexistent; he had no capacity whatsoever for small talk. He was the boy you let play only if it was his ball. . ."
Hoppe made fun of presidents using a variety of scenarios. In satire, he said, it is important to like your subject so you don’t “bludgeon them to death.” And to the end, he said that he liked a number of presidents, including Richard Nixon.
His coverage of the Kennedy administration bordered on soap opera parody with “Just Plain Jack,” the story of a lovable Irish family fond of cocktail parties, the bigger the better. To cover the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, he created a combination of “Bonanza” and “The Beverly Hillbillies.”
Bill Clinton was one of Hoppe’s least favorite presidents, apparently losing the columnist during the “I didn’t inhale” episode. “He’s the first person I ever heard of who smoked pot for the flavor,” Hoppe noted. But Hoppe also could be serious as well. In August 1998, he wrote a column urging Clinton to resign over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In March 1971, he wrote eloquently of his private struggle as he changed his position about the war in Southeast Asia. “The radio this morning said the Allied invasion of Laos had bogged down,” Hoppe wrote. “Without thinking, I nodded and said, ‘Good.’ And having said it, I realized the bitter truth: Now I root against my own country.”
“This is how far we have come in this hated and endless war. This is the nadir I have reached in this winter of my discontent. This is how close I border on treason.”
He was little impressed with his longevity at the Chronicle. In a column last July, he poked fun at making the half-century mark: http://articles.latimes.com/2000/feb/03/news/mn-60515
(JS: I miss this guy more than any other journalist. His column appeared three days a week, and in between I felt a little hole in my life. Reading him was far more than entertainment; I learned from him, and I felt shifts in my opinions on various subjects. What impressed me--and what made him so effective--was the lack of anger. [Or at least it never showed. The same trait is one of the things I value in Garrison Keillor, a very different talent. It occasionally shows in Keillor.] It was a lesson to me: anger alienates; gentleness and humor attracts. He makes a gentle jibe which you think is gentle, but shortly after you realize it was devastating, and you find the recipient bleeding to death.
He made the most graceful exit from life of anyone I've ever heard of, save Socrates.)
2. CNPS Santa Clara Valley 37th Annual Wildflower Show April 26
3. Alternatives to avoid planting problem pests
4. UC Botanical Garden Spring Plant Sale April 25
5. San Francisco International Film Festival programs on the environment
6. Contributions from readers: seed balls, lawn substitutes, water: charge for it?
7. More water
8. How to ensure the environment is properly accounted for?
9. The Public Lands Service Corps Act, H.R. 1612
10. Feedback: Charge for SF Botanical Garden?/chemical companies v the Obama garden
11. Donate towards Charlie Wms 545-mile AIDS LifeCycle
12. Brisbane City Council needs information on managing wetlands
13. Obama derangement syndrome: How do we tackle long-range problems?
14. The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-first Century
15. How big is a trillion? How many days since AD 1?
16. The most efficient life form on earth
17. Every human problem, every human need, will be solved by the market
18. April 23 is the birthday of the great satirist, Art Hoppe. Oh how we need him in these dark times
1.
Sunday Streets 2009
April 26, 2009, *9 a.m.-1 p.m.
Route: AT & T Park (4th and King Streets) to Aquatic Park (Jefferson and Hyde) along The Embarcadero
Web site: www.SundayStreetsSF.com
Sunday Streets is an initiative dedicated to bringing safe, fun, car-free places for people to get out and get active in San Francisco neighborhoods on Sunday mornings.
*Fisherman's Wharf Community Benefit District Health, Fitness & Safety Fair at Aquatic Park, presented in conjunction with Sunday Streets from 10- 4 p.m. Sunday Streets Concert at PIER 39 from 12-3 p.m.
Sunday, May 10: 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
Route: Waterfront Route in the Southeast Sector, highlighting the San Francisco Bay Trail, which is celebrating its 20th Anniversary in May. From AT&T Park to the Bayview Opera House, along the Bay.
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2.
37th Annual Wildflower Show
Saturday & Sunday, April 25 & 26 - 10am to 4pm.
Mission College, Hospitality Management Building, 3000 Mission College Boulevard, Santa Clara.
This two-day expo showcases the plant biodiversity of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties. The region's premier botanical/horticultural event displays over 400 species of wildflowers and native plants, each accurately labeled, many suitable for the home garden. Free classes on native plant identification and gardening with native plants. On sale: native plants, books, posters, seeds, and note cards. Children's activities table. Parking free in Lot C only. Sponsored by California Native Plant Society, Santa Clara Valley Chapter, and the Mission College Biological Sciences Department. For more information, visit www.cnps-scv.org,email cnps_scv@yahoo.com, or call 650-941-1068.
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3. Alternatives to avoid planting problem pests, by Joe Eaton and Ron Sullivan
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/04/12/HO6B166O1P.DTL
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4.
UC Botanical Garden Spring Plant Sale
Saturday 25 April - 9 am - 2 pm
http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu
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5.
San Francisco International Film Festival
April 23 to May 7, 2009
The San Francisco International Film Festival brings the best of world cinema to the Bay Area and will present several films on the environment, including A Sea Change, featuring stunning underwater footage in its discovery of the consequences of global warming on undersea life.
For tickets and information, visit sffs.org
A Sea Change
USA 2009
Dir. Barbara Ettinger
Grandfather Sven Huseby embarks on a quest to learn about the dire consequences of global warming on undersea life. Using stunning underwater footage and stark interviews, this documentary sounds the alarm about ocean acidification but conveys hope for the future.
The film screens on April 25 at 3:45PM, on April 27 at 6:15PM, and on April 30 at 1:30PM
at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas.
For more information on Sea Change visit http://fest09.sffs.org/films/film_details.php?id=79
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6. Contributions from readers
Robert Hall:
If you have time, check out this article on seed bombing empty lots. All Things Considered, April 15:
Environmentalists Adopt New Weapon: Seed Ball
Thanks, Robert. I heard the broadcast, and it made me a tad nervous. Not that there was anything wrong with what is described in this story. But it is a simplistic approach, and the world is very complicated. If the activity is confined to an urban situation where natural ecosystems are absent, there is no harm. But most cities--including Chicago and San Francisco (the third densest city in the U.S.)--have fragments of the original landscape with denizens of that original landscape, and these areas are without price. Scattering seed there may have unknown or unintended consequences, and may upset an existing natural balance. Conservationists should be conservative.
It may make people feel good, even "in control of their lives". It gives the media a story, but I wonder if there are lasting effects, and if those effects are positive or negative.
Amy Dawson:
FYI, I was out birdwatching from the Emeryville spit towards the approach to the Bay Bridge, and ended up talking to some of the firemen at the firehouse about the shorebirds and the molten metal from the Judson Steel factory. One firefighter happened to mention that last weekend the leopard sharks were in the area - he said over five thousand come in to mate right in that area between the firehouse and the bridge! Do you know anything about this?
On Apr 14, 2009, at 12:55 AM, Adah Bakalinsky wrote:
Jake, do you know of any company or institute that is doing research on a ‘grass’substitute that needs neither water nor fertilizer; looks green and inviting to sit upon. Adah B/
Oh, Adah, you're confusing this life with the afterlife. Wait until you die and go to heaven; there are none of these problems there. Google Elysian Fields.
In the 1950s, when I started my occupation as a gardener, Sunset magazine was promoting the No Mow Lawn: dichondra. That fad didn't last long, although it was big business while it lasted. Landscape companies made lots of money tearing up lawns, installing dichondra, selling fertilizer and fungicides to apply to it. So they were happy. The customers were less so: The dichondra stained clothing, and shortly developed fungus problems from all that unaccustomed fertilizer and water. Then the landscapers made lots more money ripping up the dichondra and reinstalling lawns. It's the American Way; that's how we got rich.
I hope you don't mind my having a little fun at your expense. Truth is, the gods couldn't care less about us humans and our wants. We want control, but the gods have made it clear that we're not going to get it. First off, this is California, a mediterranean-type climate with long, dry summers--and it's hot away from the coast. So maintaining a green lawn takes lots of doing, as you're fighting nature--a formidable foe, as any gardener can tell you.
Some people have made compromises that they are able to live with by planting some drought-tolerant native bunchgrasses, such as red fescue. These lawns are primarily dependent on rainfall, although they are usually given a small assist by light watering into late spring, and resuming watering in the autumn. They can tolerate a modicum of traffic, but not heavy use. If they are not going to walk or sit on them, people also introduce a few native wildflowers, including bulbs, such as blue dicks, Ithuriel's spear, and mariposa lily. I am talking only conceptually here, and this is not a recipe to be followed, as there are devils in the details.
As for gods and other worlds I have a story. I like to listen to conversations while I walk. A few weeks ago, I heard someone walking behind me on Pine St. so I slowed down feeling she (her heels were clicking,) wanted to talk. Well, she did. And complained about too much rain, too much wind, too cold.
Then she stopped talking for a few seconds. Suddenly, she pronounced, “ Well, you can’t blame god for what Mother Nature does.!”
And she turned the corner at Polk. In one brilliant stroke she got god off the hook. So now, I always write and speak Mother Nature in capitals. adah b
A final word: the SF Dept of Environment sponsors a panel The Lawn Goodbye at the main library on June 24. Fred Bove and I will discuss this subject. I'll send a notice as we get nearer the event.
Sue Hubbard:
Jake: In your 4/16 newsletter in Awash with Waste you quote the Economist as saying water would be used more efficiently if it was charged for. I am not at all sure this is true – paying a monthly water bill does not mean water is used wisely. It also leads to situations like on the Monterey Peninsula where homeowners almost never get water rights to build an extra bathroom but there always seems to be water rights available for hotels and other large developments. In addition the statement does not say who will do the charging. It says politicians can not do this so it would seem to suggest corporations should be the ones. Corporations are eager to profit by charging to supply us with water. However, attempts to privatize city water supplies have often not been successful with higher prices and less service. When Bechtel took over the city water supply in Cochabamba, Bolivia price increases led to riots which only ended when the city kicked Bechtel out. I am not opposed to paying for water but I do think decisions about local water should be made locally and not in some far off corporate headquarters. I also think, we as a society have to ensure that water is available to everyone – even those who cannot pay.
Thanks for the newsletter – I really enjoy the variety of topics you cover.
I am in total agreement with you (I think). I am very aware of the Cochabama fiasco. I was appalled when they first privatized it and delighted when the people took matters into their own hands. The Economist acknowledged serious problems in this kind of arrangement. I don't know just where they stand on privatizing. But I thought the article pointed up questions and problems that need to be considered--and will have to be considered as population burgeons and water problems multiply. In the Central Valley cheap water has allowed the growing of water-guzzling crops like cotton, rice, alfalfa. The acreage devoted to some of these crops has decreased about one-third now that the price of water has tripled because of water scarcity. Market-priced water is introducing a little sanity.
In San Francisco, where not that long ago the more water you consumed the lower the rate for additional units. We changed that so that the rate escalates when consumption increases, an acknowledgment that everyone needs a certain basic amount. The Economist is biased toward free enterprise v. govt. However, to my knowledge it has not advocated privatizing water, merely devising a system that recognizes its scarcity and its worth. Correct me if I'm wrong.
“When the well’s dry, we’ll know the value of water." Benjamin Franklin
This is a complex subject which we are not paying sufficient attention to, just as we ignore the problem of population--and the two are intimately related. Take a glance at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5269296.stm
“Twenty percent more water than is now available will be needed to feed the additional three billion people who will be alive by 2025.” World Commission on Water for the 21st Century
“Because of population growth, California will be chronically short of water by 2010.” (Association of California Water Agencies)
A river is water in its loveliest form; rivers have life and sound and movement and infinity of variation, rivers are veins of the earth through which the life blood flows to the heart. RODERICK HAIG-BROWN
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7. Water: from Jeffrey Caldwell
Over the weekend I watched Flow: For the Love of Water (2008) - http://www.flowthefilm.com/, a documentary I rented from Netflix.
I saw all the DVD "extras" as well ... and considered every one worthwhile. (It was tough for them to distill over 300 hours of footage into an 84 minute film!)
Flow: For the Love of Water is an overview of water developments and possiblities, ominious and hopeful, especially the provision of water and the control of water, worldwide ... how these developments and possibilities are all linked, what is happening there (wherever) also has relevance here (wherever) ...None of it I'd have wanted to miss, though to pick and choose among the extras I'm especially glad to have seen:
Deleted Scenes: River Linkage in India;
Expanded Interviews: Jean Luc Touly, former accountant, Vivendi/Veolia Corp., and Oscar Olivera, Bolivian Activist, Leader of the 2000 Cochabamba "Water Wars";
Call to Resistance: Sunita Narain: Fighting the Drink Companies;
Additional Clips: "City Water Supply, 1941", an old educational short explaining New York City's early water infrastructure development.
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8. Environmental values
How to ensure the environment is properly accounted for
ANY attempt to put an economic value on fresh air, clean water or tropical rainforests can offend the delicate sensibilities of those who argue that the conservation of nature is a moral duty. Yet although the best things in life appear to be free, that does not mean they are without financial value. It simply means that nobody asks you to pay when, for example, you watch a beautiful sunset over the hills.
Putting a financial value on the environment, however, may be the most important thing that people can do to help nature conservation. When governments allocate money, they do so according to where it will bring benefit. If a government is unaware of the value of a landscape to its tourism, or of a swamp to its fishing industry—and thus its foreign-exchange income—then it will invest too little in managing these resources. Worse, if the true value of a forest or swamp is hidden, governments may destroy it by subsidising the conversion of the land to agriculture. The costs are unknown for now, but may appear eventually as the price of building a filtration plant to remove the sediment from the water that the forest once took care of, or the price of importing food when fish vanish.
Shutterstock
Some estimates of the annual contribution of coastal and marine ecosystems to the global economy exceed $20 trillion, over a third of the total gross national product (GNP) of all the countries of the world. Even so, says Katherine Sierra of the World Bank, such ecosystems are typically much undervalued when governments made decisions about development.
Glenn-Marie Lange, also of the World Bank, attended a meeting in Washington DC organised by her employer to launch its report “Environment Matters” on April 6th. She told participants that one of the reasons why ecosystems become degraded is that their value to local people is often small. As a result, these people do not have much reason to manage their resources carefully. She estimates, for example, that only 36% of the income generated by the coastal and marine environments in Zanzibar goes to locals. Most of this comes from fishing; only a tiny fraction of the money from tourism ends up local hands.
More broadly, Dr Lange wants the value of the environment to be integrated into national and local accounting. She argues that governments should identify the contributions that marine ecosystems make to their countries’ GNPs and foreign-exchange earnings. She also wants them to examine whether or not they are running down their countries’ “natural capital”.
Emily Cooper of the World Resources Institute, an environmental think-tank, put some figures on the value of tourism, recreation, fisheries and shoreline protection in Belize. It was an impressive $395m to $559m. The entire economy was worth about $1.3 billion in 2007. These figures, she thinks, have allowed environmentalists to protect Belize’s threatened mangrove forests better.
For too long, an absence of proper green accounting has allowed people to privatise the gains from the environment but socialise the costs, to paraphrase Carl Safina, an American scientist and environmentalist at the meeting. As Dr Safina puts it, “conservation is not a trade-off between the economy and the environment. It is a trade off between the short and long term.”
The Economist, 13 April 2009
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9. The Public Lands Service Corps Act (H.R. 1612) will expand service opportunities for national parks and other public lands through important expansions to the existing Public Lands Corps. Take action: http://act.npca.org/campaign/servicecorpscosponsor?rk=e73cnV1qX7bBE
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10. Feedback
Kathy Schrenk:
That letter to Michelle Obama is hilarious! The scary thing is, people like my right-wing relatives in the midwest support the chemical companies. Last time I talked to my mother-in-law about such things she started spouting some tripe about Monsanto "feeding the world"!?!? They really do think organic foods hurt farmers. Oops, all the small farmers got replaced by Monsanto-fed farms!
This is going in my blog...
Christine Colasurdo:
Hello Jake, I am very interested in the proposal of charging a fee to enter Strybing Arboretum. I used to explore and enjoy the garden several times a month when I lived in San Francisco. I appreciated it very much that is was free. But if I had had to join as a member and enter as a member, I would have done that too, gladly. I think users should indeed help support something they use and enjoy. I don't think that's commercialization necessarily. Strybing is not a true "commons" because it's not a city park; it's a private nonprofit organization inside of GG Park.
Up here in Portland we have Hoyt Arboretum (part of Portland Parks) and the Japanese Garden, which is a lot like Strybing (a well-maintained private garden inside of a larger publicly-owned city park). Hoyt Arboretum is free; the Japanese Garden charges admission but is free to members. I think Strybing would be wise to follow the Japanese Garden model. The organization thrives on membership dues and yet is not too expensive for occasional visitors/tourists. So if you're a member, it's free, and you can visit all you want.
The Japanese Garden does not have a cafe. Nor does it allow visitors to even eat a bag lunch in the garden. But it does have member events with food. I don't think Strybing needs a cafe. There are several cafes within a stone's throw of its entrance.
Allan Ridley:
After reading the exchange between you and Dennis Antenore, I checked with Michael McKechnie about any Cafe plans for the SFBG.
As you may know, the SFBG has been involved in quite a back & forth with the Sierra Club about the new greenhouse proposal. They currently plan to oppose the SFBG plan at every step possible despite the need, logic of placement, ultra-green technology (living roof, reclaimed water sys., short flat road to existing gate on South Drive, etc.) I simply can not fathom their reasoning on this issue....BUT they use every little argument they can think up and exaggerate, to raise public suspicion and concern about what is happening in the Garden.
My point is that this cafe issue is another such diversion. The real discussion - as you suggest in your comments - needs to focus on the SFBG as a "museum of plants" a world class collection of plants - some of which especially from the collections of Dennis Breedlove in the Mexican Cloud forest, may actually no longer exist in the wild. This is a special place not just another pleasant, easily accessible greensword in GGP (albeit free of DOGs, bikes, skateboards and balls) A benefit of admission fees would be increased security, tighter entry control (the presence bikes and dogs both seem to be increasing in my recent experience) and funds to get the Garden fully staffed with knowledgeable gardners, the new plant prop. facility etc. The SFBG are a special place.
Enough of my rant, here'ds what Michael McKechnie had to say in response to my question about the "cafe".:
There are no current plans for a cafe and no money to develop it. There is a future planned small cafe and visitor center tucked into the east end of the Gallery in the County Fair Building in the Master Plan. This would serve any visitor and would definitely be in the main gate area that includes the library, bookstore and County Fair Building. The visitor center and cafe would not add additional built footprint to the Garden but would use existing built space reconfigured for these purposes.
Thanks very much for the clarification, Allan. I can't keep up with all the detail and the research needed for some of my posted stories, so I depend on readers to provide facts and perspective. I suspected that any future cafe would have to be in the current County Fair Bldg, as I couldn't see any possibility of an added structure in the park, which would encounter overwhelming opposition.
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11. From Charlie Williams:
Thanks so much to everyone who has sent me messages of support and/or made donations towards my participation in the AIDS LifeCycle this year. I understand that we are in a recession so I really appreciate your contributions - every little bit counts. Thanks to your support I have been able to get to one-third of the way to my goal - I am at $1700.00 so far!
AIDS LifeCycle is a 545 mile bike ride over 7 days from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise funds that make a world of difference for people living with HIV and AIDS (http://www.aidslifecycle.org/). This year it will take place between May 31 and June 6th. The ride is a huge physical challenge--I did it last year--that I am ready to tackle - I have put in a lot of miles on my bike so far in preparation and will continue to do so right up until the ride.
I still need to reach my goal of $3000 in order to participate this year by May 28th. Fund raising has been tough so I am planning some additional fund raising events and widening my donor pool search to help close the gap. I could use your help and am asking those of you who are able to support me through a donation, of any amount, to visit my personal page and make a tax deductible donation at http://www.tofighthiv.org/goto/Charlie.Williams. As I said, I am aware that we are in a recession and understand if you are not able to make a financial contribution at this time - just having your moral support will be added motivation to get up those hills on the way to LA.
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12. From Dana Dillworth:
Dear Wetlands Advocate,
On April 13th the City of Brisbane's Open Space Consultant Mr. Peter Dangermond made a presentation to receive comment on the progress of defining Open Space for the Brisbane Baylands. If you would like to add to the public record, send comments to cityhall@ci.brisbane.ca.us
While it is closer than ever to the important things necessary for maintaining vital wetlands out there, there were a few omissions. One issue is CA Fish and Game's no-net loss of wetlands policy and the way that the consultant has re-arranged the wetlands, substituting saltwater marsh along the lagoon for freshwater marsh that we have been watching, helping, and documenting for years.
The second issue being that the Public Open Space areas chosen are the most toxic. While wetlands are an important function in cleansing toxic areas...there hasn't been a study as to the extent of wetlands needed to do the job.
One member of the public noticed that no wetlands are proposed for the east side of the tunnel near the tank farm. This is an area with a small vernal pool and lots of frog habitat. The proposal from our Parks and Recreation Committee is for soccer fields and a charter high school.
The good things this plan shows is a better connection of the Levinson Marsh to the Baylands showing up as "Detention Pond" west of the Round House which shows up as "Civic-Cultural Envelope." It is still a meager, bottlenecked habitat with roads to contend with.
You have to be aware that council members were talking about how wetlands stink and they do nothing half of the year. PLEASE EDUCATE MY CITY COUNCIL. My response was that it still is providing habitat and that it is a reflection of poor management (pesticides and flushing the lagoon,) not an evil to be eliminated or marginalized.
Additional info:
Proposed map: http://www.ci.brisbane.ca.us/Upload/Document/D240003541/Map.pdf
or contact Dana Dillworth at earthhelp@earthlink.net
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13. Obama derangement syndrome
The president is driving some people mad. That may be to his advantage in the short term
...It is hard to judge so early in the game what the rise of anti-Obama sentiment means for the Obama presidency. Bush-hatred eventually spread from a molten core of leftists to set the cultural tone of the country. But Obama-hatred could just as easily do the opposite and brand all conservatives as a bunch of Obama-hating cranks.
What is clear is that the rapid replacement of Bush-hatred with Obama-hatred is not healthy for American politics, particularly given the president’s dual role as leader of his party and head of state. A majority of Republicans (56%) approved of Jimmy Carter’s job performance in late March 1977. A majority of Democrats (55%) approved of Richard Nixon’s job performance at a comparable point in his first term. But today polarisation is almost instant, thanks in part to the growing role of non-negotiable issues such as abortion in American politics, in part to the rise of a media industry based on outrage, and in part to a cycle of tit-for-tat demonisation. This is not only poisoning American political life. It is making it ever harder to solve problems that require cross-party collaboration such as reforming America’s health-care system or its pensions. Unfortunately, the Glenn Becks of this world are more than just a joke.
Excerpt from Lexington in The Economist
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14.
The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-first Century
Jacqueline Olds MD, Richard S. Schwartz MD
The personal and societal effects of the unheralded epidemic of social isolation in America
In today's world, it is more acceptable to be depressed than to be lonely--yet loneliness appears to be the inevitable byproduct of our frenetic contemporary lifestyle. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, one out of four Americans talked to no one about something of importance to them during the last six months. Another remarkable fact emerged from the 2000 U.S. Census: more people are living alone today than at any point in the country's history-fully 25 percent of households consist of one person only. In this crucial look at one of America's few remaining taboo subjects--loneliness--Drs. Jacqueline Olds and Richard S. Schwartz set out to understand the cultural imperatives, psychological dynamics, and physical mechanisms underlying social isolation.
In The Lonely American, cutting-edge research on the physiological and cognitive effects of social exclusion and emerging work in the neurobiology of attachment uncover startling, sobering ripple effects of loneliness in areas as varied as physical health, children's emotional problems, substance abuse, and even global warming. Surprising new studies tell a grim truth about social isolation: being disconnected diminishes happiness, health, and longevity; increases aggression; and correlates with increasing rates of violent crime. Loneliness doesn't apply simply to single people, either-today's busy parents "cocoon" themselves by devoting most of their non-work hours to children, leaving little time for friends, and other forms of social contact, and unhealthily relying on the marriage to fulfill all social needs.
As a core population of socially isolated individuals and families continues to balloon in size, it is more important than ever to understand the effects of a culture that idealizes busyness and self-reliance. It's time to bring loneliness-a very real and little-discussed social epidemic with frightening consequences-out into the open, and find a way to navigate the tension between freedom and connection in our lives.
From Cambridge Forum
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15. LTE, Guardian Weekly
Sir: I was intrigued by Marcus du Sautoy's article in which he encourages comprehension of how big a trillion is. I have always sensed it by the fact that since the beginning of AD 1 we have not yet, in 2009, experienced a million days in total; by my calculation the millionth day will occur sometime towards the end of 2739AD.
Neil H Turnbull, West Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
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16. The most efficient life form on earth
Ants have been architects, farmers and skilled specialists for over 150m years. Their collegiate lives make perfect research models, says Alok Jha
…Ants eat the same resources as solitary insects but they have been far more successful. Why? “that’s easy”, says (E.O. Wilson. “they live in groups.” Ant colonies range from a dozen to millions of insects, mostly sterile females in specific jobs as workers, soldiers or caretakers, with one or sometimes a few reproductive females presiding over the entire brood. Any males are usually temporary, drones kept long enough to inseminate the queen, then driven out of the nest or killed. A queen can store the sperm from a male for a decade or more, using it over time to fertilise millions of eggs. This system has worked well for them. “They really did, through the powers of evolution, discover the major principles in industrial revolution – but their revolution came tens of millions of years before ours,” says (a researcher studying social insects).
…Their work rate is astonishing. A nest of Atta ants can defoliate a citrus tree in a day and, in the South American rainforest, they typically harvest about a fifth of the annual growth – more vegetation than any other animal. In a single lifetime, a leaftcutter colony turns over and aerates 40 tonnes of soil. The farms can include livestock, too. Many ant colonies keep aphids, tranquillising them with drugs to keep them docile and “milking” them* with their antennae for sugary honeydew.
…What makes ants far more than a scientific curiosity is that this collective behaviour from chemical-sensing automatons hints at similar systems in humans too. Neurons are individually dumb but, with billions of them working together in our brains reacting to levels of neurotransmitter chemicals, something creative and remarkable emerges. “Maybe our own brains are using these thresholds,” says (a researcher). “When you model ants and when you model the brain, there are some great similarities.
…The sophisticated genetic blueprint hidden within ants that led Wilson and Hoelldobler to propose a new class of life: the superorganism. “A superorganism is a closely knit group that divides labour among its members altruistically,” says Wilson. “There are individuals who reproduce in the group and are promoted to be reproducers, and those that do not reproduce and are workers. This allows the group to function as a giant organism.”
That’s a neat description of an ant colony; think of a superorganism as a creature that can stretch out limbs to be in many places at once, going out to forage for food and then withdrawing into the nest. In their recent book, Superorganism, Wilson and Hoelldobler describe their idea by comparing each ant in a colony with a cell in the human body, specialized for a task and working (to its own probably death) for the good of the organism as a whole.
…The next big step in biology, according to Wilson, is to find out how groups of social creatures organize themselves into superorganiss. “We live in a world of ants,” he says, “and it’s time we woke up to our little six-legged neighbours.”
Excerpted from Guardian Weekly 20.03.09
* (Sounds just like human society.)
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LTE, Guardian Weekly
...Alok Jha's article, 'The most efficient life form on earth' refers to the impact of 14,000-plus species of ants being minimal compared to the impact of humans. The major difference between them is that ants have been around for 140m years and Homo sapiens for only perhaps 150,000 years. The human race is probably now on the road to extinction, whereas the ant is very likely to be around for another 150m years or more. Surely that is wonderful! Clare Owen, Lusaka, Zambia
[The water, the population, the climate crises bring to mind that wonderful Tom Toles cartoon of two cockroaches talking (from memory, not verbatim): "When they said there would be only one species left, they thought it would be them." (In the little picture in the bottom corner): "Too bad we're too primitive to appreciate the irony."]
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17. I shop, therefore I am.
“Their god is the market—every human problem, every human need, will be solved by the market. Their dogma is the literal reading of the creation story in Genesis where humans are to have “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the Earth, and over every creeping thing...” The administration has married that conservative dogma of the religious right to the corporate ethos of the profits at any price. And the result is the politics of exploitation with a religious impulse. Meanwhile, over a bilion people have no safe drinking water. We’re dumping 500 million tons of hazardous waste into the Earth every year. In the last hundred years alone we’ve lost over 2 billion hectares of forest, our fisheries are collapsing, our coral reefs are dying because of human activity. These are facts. So what is the administration and Congress doing? They’re attacking the very cornerstones of environmental law: The Clea Air Act, the Clean Water Act, NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act). They are allowing 17,000 power plants to create more pollution. They are opening public lands to exploitation...The Interior Department is the biggest scandal of all. Current Secretary Gale Norton and her number two man, J. Steven Griles, head a fifth column that is trying to sabotage environmental protection at every level. Griles has more conflicts of interest than a dog has fleas. The giveaway of public resources at Interior is the biggest scandal of its kind since the Teapot Dome corruption. You have to go all the way back to the crony capitalism of the Harding administration to find a president who invited such open and crass exploitation of the common wealth.”
---Bill Moyers, winner of 30 Emmy Awards for broadcast journalism, in an interview with Grist Magazine (I lost the date; the interview was several years ago)
Corporation, n. – An ingenious device for securing individual profit without individual responsibility.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
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18. A special person from my personal pantheon: Art Hoppe: 23 April 1925 - 3 February 2000
(April 23 is also the birthday of a less-well-known author, William Shakespeare)
You can find much more information from this delightful writer and human being on the internet. The following are disjointed lines cobbled together from the San Francisco Chronicle obituary and other sources:
His satire is as wickedly funny as ever, his straight columns can be unflinchingly bold and righteous, but he remains the nicest, most unassuming, most unfailingly gracious person in the office.
Somehow all of those qualities come through in his column, which helps explain his legion of loyal fans. It also keeps his political detractors thoroughly flustered.
In keeping with his smile-and-a-wink demeanor, Hoppe has a favorite response to letters from his more intemperate critics. "I'm sorry, if you continue to complain, I will have to cancel your subscription."
It is safe to assume that few ever took him up on the challenge. Hoppe's column has a habit-forming quality.
Hoppe's son, Nick, said that (his father's) book's Having a Wonderful Time -- My First Half Century as a Newspaperman) modest sales were a source of amusement to their author. "Dad always said," he recalled, "that some people collect rare books and that he writes them."
Self-deprecating remarks were a specialty. The best thing about being a columnist, he once wrote, is being "able to say exactly what I think . . . I've always claimed that I enjoy the utmost in freedom of the press because the publisher doesn't read my output."
But the publisher did read Hoppe's column, and so did the rest of Hoppe's colleagues, with admiration and awe.
Hoppe gave birth in his column to a cast of whimsical characters -- confused redneck Joe Sikspak, lowly Private Oliver Drab, an earnestly unelectable Harvard-educated gorilla, the all-knowing expert Homer T. Pettibone, the celestial Heavenly Landlord and a presidential candidate named Nobody -- who assisted their creator in his self-described lifelong campaign of tilting at windmills.
His columns spanned the presidencies of Just Plain Jack; Elbie Jay; Nick Dixon; the Scoutmaster, Jiminy Beaver; Sir Ronald of Holyrude; Mr. Lifestyles of the Rich and Humble; and Billy Boomer, Boy President.
Like many humorists, he was grateful for the 1968 election of such handy subjects as Nixon and his Vice President Spiro Agnew, whose photographs he kept on his office wall and whose resignations, he often moped, robbed him of years of additional copy.
"I had always thought, and still do, that Mr. Nixon's basic problem over the years was his, forgive the word, insecurity . . . He always seemed ill at ease. His suits -- he never wore anything else -- didn't fit quite right; his sense of humor was nonexistent; he had no capacity whatsoever for small talk. He was the boy you let play only if it was his ball. . ."
Hoppe made fun of presidents using a variety of scenarios. In satire, he said, it is important to like your subject so you don’t “bludgeon them to death.” And to the end, he said that he liked a number of presidents, including Richard Nixon.
His coverage of the Kennedy administration bordered on soap opera parody with “Just Plain Jack,” the story of a lovable Irish family fond of cocktail parties, the bigger the better. To cover the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, he created a combination of “Bonanza” and “The Beverly Hillbillies.”
Bill Clinton was one of Hoppe’s least favorite presidents, apparently losing the columnist during the “I didn’t inhale” episode. “He’s the first person I ever heard of who smoked pot for the flavor,” Hoppe noted. But Hoppe also could be serious as well. In August 1998, he wrote a column urging Clinton to resign over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In March 1971, he wrote eloquently of his private struggle as he changed his position about the war in Southeast Asia. “The radio this morning said the Allied invasion of Laos had bogged down,” Hoppe wrote. “Without thinking, I nodded and said, ‘Good.’ And having said it, I realized the bitter truth: Now I root against my own country.”
“This is how far we have come in this hated and endless war. This is the nadir I have reached in this winter of my discontent. This is how close I border on treason.”
He was little impressed with his longevity at the Chronicle. In a column last July, he poked fun at making the half-century mark: http://articles.latimes.com/2000/feb/03/news/mn-60515
(JS: I miss this guy more than any other journalist. His column appeared three days a week, and in between I felt a little hole in my life. Reading him was far more than entertainment; I learned from him, and I felt shifts in my opinions on various subjects. What impressed me--and what made him so effective--was the lack of anger. [Or at least it never showed. The same trait is one of the things I value in Garrison Keillor, a very different talent. It occasionally shows in Keillor.] It was a lesson to me: anger alienates; gentleness and humor attracts. He makes a gentle jibe which you think is gentle, but shortly after you realize it was devastating, and you find the recipient bleeding to death.
He made the most graceful exit from life of anyone I've ever heard of, save Socrates.)
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